Life is a choose your own adventure.

The Justin Blaney app is your guide, a compilation of wisdom distilled over centuries from history’s brightest minds, meditations that meet you exactly where you are, wherever that may be. While most wisdom is a one-way road—lectures, podcasts, seminars, essays and the like—made from often-obscure ideas that leave one confused and alone in the application, this app is a living mentor that allows you to ask questions, object, seek clarity, and gain insight into how the lessons apply to your unique situation. And if you have no idea where to begin, don't worry. You're far from alone. Try post 101 or 201 or dive in anywhere luck takes you. 

Tips for using this app.

• Each time you load this app, a fresh feed of meditations will load randomly. If you're not sure what you're looking for, these are a good place to start. 
• You can also try searching for meditations if you are interested in a particular topic. 
• When you click through to a single meditation, you will see a short version as an image that is easily sharable on social media. The full text of the meditation follows, though some are short enough that the full quote is in the image. 
• At the conclusion of each meditation are responses. These are your chance to question, debate, comment, and seek clarity for your unique situation. Following each response are links to meditations that may help you understand a new perspective. You can always go back to the original meditation and click on another link to see what else might exist in response to your position. While these links may not answer your question exactly, they should provide another way of looking at your situation. My hope is that you and I could have a conversation, like two people sharing a drink and talking about life—your dreams, fears, inhibitions, failures, wins, hopes—and in reply, wisdom gathered from countless thinkers who have done the hard work for us in generations past.
• Please leave your comments using the link at the top of every page and discuss with those who have commented before you. Life isn't just a choose your own adventure, it's a journey that is meant to be experienced in community. Your insights, questions, suggestions and experiences are vital toward the growth of others who are just like you, perhaps across the world, or just across the room.
• Be sure to subscribe to notifications, whether push, text or email. This will ensure you always have access to the latest positive inputs. Who knows which one will change your life? You can opt in to push notifications in your phone or tablet's settings. If you're looking to subscribe to text or email updates, click here.

A message of hope.

I see the brightness in your eyes, the hope of what lies near in your journey of discovering what it means to be you, of what you will become in this life you’ve been given.

Do you remember those choose your own adventure books we red as children? I’ve learned that real life is a lot like those books. We get to make our own way through this world with as much control over each decision as you did when deciding the fate of the characters who lived inside those pages.

You want happiness, love, a full life, acceptance, the attainment of your dreams—all who breathe share these desires. In a perfect story, the answer to any decision would be based on whichever choice leads you more closely to these goals, as if you were guiding your own character through the pages of a children’s book to their happily ever after. But how can anyone know what to choose in real life when we can’t flip ahead and see every possible outcome?

In my studies of ancient wisdom and scientific research, in my travels through diverse cultures around the world, in my observations of those who have attained their greatest desires, I’ve discovered that flipping ahead the pages of life is in fact possible. We are able to discover the outcomes of choices before they are made by harnessing the wisdom of  the smartest people who have ever lived, from today to those who were buried 1000s of years ago. I found their advice led me towards happiness that transcended circumstance, greater success with less effort, improved mental health, and more power to help others along the way.

I eagerly collected this wisdom, grateful to discover a worm-hole through which I could move more quickly toward my dreams, and to my surprise, to places I didn’t even imagine possible. To be sure, nothing you will find in these pages is original. I’ve merely translated the wisdom of countless forebears into our modern world—truths refined over centuries, together forming a time machine that leads not to the past, but to our own future. And now I want to pass to you what I’ve found in the hope that these collected thoughts will help you avoid a few setbacks I endured, the desert wandering, and lonely journeys through dark and unknown jungles of life.

Yet one of the hardest aspects of advice is the difficulty in sorting the good from the bad. Friends, family, books, seminars, podcasts, and the endless internet abyss offer a near-infinite supply of opinions—much of it contradictory. In my own life, this confusion often led to ignoring good wisdom that I didn’t recognize. I lacked a mentor to help me see how the advice applied to my unique situation. Without the ability to ask questions, I found myself rejecting advice I would later regret ignoring. This taught me that growth can often require more than a one-way dialogue; sometimes we need a conversation. 

The last thing I want is to give you yet another chatterbox, only adding to the cacophony that leaves you to sort out what to believe and what to reject. So this app is different. Rather than page after page of advice, much of which may feel too general, over-simplified, inapplicable to your situation or unrealistic, these meditations allow you to talk back. To argue. To question. And to find answers to those questions. You can follow your own path through these reflections, choosing your own adventure, just like you used to do for the fictional heroes of your childhood. 

You may not be ready for some of what I have to share, and that’s ok. Take what you can, use it, and enjoy today. And over the months and years to come, open up this app when you have questions, when you are struggling, when you need encouragement.  Whenever you are ready, this collection of advice I’ve come to live by will be waiting for you. I hope these ancient truths save you from a few of the mistakes I made, guiding you swiftly and surely through whatever trials and failures stand between you and the happiest, most fulfilling life you can imagine.

Your friend, Justin