I know, this is long overdue.    November 25th was the last entry I made with Part II of my interview with Philip McCluskey who lost half of his body weight (went from 400 to 200 lbs) on a raw food diet.  Have you seen his incredible weight loss photos?   If not, take a moment to visit both interviews and see for yourself.

Then BOOM, the Thanksgiving holiday came and went and now it’s DECEMBER!!

For those of you who are on my RSS/email subscription list, you will see two blog posts today.

The first, of course, is this “End of the Week Gratitude Theme” that was supposed to have been delivered last Friday.  The second is a short interview of myself…once again, giving you yet another opportunity to get to know me while I wait for future interview guests to get back to me with their responses.   Click here to read more...

Here we are, with Philip McCluskey, the inspiring raw foodist who lost half of his body weight in 2.5 years just from adopting a raw food lifestyle.  If you missed the first part, go see Stephen Hopson Interview with Philip McCluskey, Loving Raw, Part I of II before you read the final part.

Before we call Philip from the back, I just want to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving!  I’ll be writing my weekly gratitude post at the end of the week as usual, after Thanksgiving.    Hopefully you’ll have a moment to look at it despite the holidays.

Okay, let’s do it – I can’t put it off any longer.  This guy is the real deal!  He is proof that embarking on a raw food lifestyle (not diet) works.  His story is one of the most inspiring I’ve encountered in a very long time, which is why I’m thrilled to have him back her for the second part of my interview with him.   Click here to read more...

Before we delve into this week’s gratitude post, I thought I’d share that I’ve noticed lately that whenever I upload photos, especially if there are more than a couple, it somehow messes up the HTML coding, cutting off certain parts of the article.   I never had that problem before so it must have something to do with the recent WordPress upgrade to Version 2.6.2.

The last two posts got screwed up because of this HTML thing.  Thankfully it was spotted by Nita, an alert subscriber, who told me she couldn’t see parts of the article and the comment box – they had “mysteriously disappeared” said Nita.

After a brief investigation, I found some HTML gooblygook lurking somewhere inside the post – somehow it found its way there.   When I removed it, the whole article plus the comment box miraculously reappeared.   But when Philip’s interview first went live this past Wednesday, I hadn’t yet caught it.  The questions and answer section was completely cut off, including the comment box.    Not good.   Click here to read more...

Now that I’m back from London and Dallas, I’m finally getting back into the groove here at Adversity University.    Hopefully you enjoyed reading about my Dallas speaking engagement with Frito-Lay and the trip to London last week.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I began my raw food journey in September 2008 with awesome (I should say RAWsome) results.  I created a new category here called “Raw Food Journey” for those of you interested in this way of eating.   Not long ago, a domain name was reserved for “Stephen Gone Raw” (a.k.a. Stephen Gone Crazy).    I’m in the process of looking for a theme to adopt and then implement a new blog just for this topic – raw foods.    So stay tuned!   Click here to read more...

This is a plate served at the famous Gratitude Cafe in SF

GOOOOOOOOD morning folks – at least it’s morning here – 4:52 am!

I got up at 4 am which has become the norm for me this week starting with 3 am the day after I returned from London followed by 4 am and 5 am the two mornings after that.

What’s going on?

I’ve read in several raw food books that the cleaner you become inside, the less sleep you need.   Could this be what’s happening?   Or am I still getting over jet lag?

More on that later.

So here I am wide awake, pecking away at the keyboard with incredible energy and clarity, the likes of which I’ve never before experienced, especially this early!

This is how I found out Obama won the election while in London!   Click here to read more...

The title says it all.

What’s the point of life if you aren’t willing to play and take chances like making last minute, seemingly irrational decisions and fly off somewhere because your intuition told you to do so?

I just got back from spending an incredible week in London and I’m about to tell you all about it.   London was a place I had never before been to and is a place I know I will be visiting more and more frequently in the future.  Heck, I might even move there!   No, I’m not kidding.

As I sit here at 4:45 am writing this post (9:45 am London time), I am drinking my first green smoothie in a week (blended 2 fistfuls of kale, one peeled banana, 8 oz. water, fistful of frozen berries and 1 whole sliced apple – kale has a strong, bitter taste for the early raw foodist so throwing in berries and an apple made it sweeter).   Click here to read more...

"Reflect Each Day On All You Have To Be Grateful For And You Will Receive More To Be Grateful For." -Chuck Danes

Wow, what a week!    The weekly gratitude posts are turning out to be more popular than I thought – who ever knew?

First of all, the week was filled with mostly travel to and from Dallas for my Frito-Lay speaking engagement, which I will touch upon with some photos.

Today (Saturday), I am packing to fly to London tomorrow for a week.    It was a sudden, last minute decision where all the pieces of the puzzle magically fell into place.  Unbelievable how it happened – more on that in a bit.

If you look underneath the picture on the top left corner, you’ll see we already have a quote for this week.  I got it from the Gratitude Quotes website through Googling.   (Ah, the power of Google!)   Click here to read more...

My goodness where did the time go?  It was just a week ago when we aired Part I of my interview with Barbara Swafford but it felt like it happened yesterday!  If you didn’t catch that fabulous interview, I suggest you go back to Stephen Hopson Interview with Barbara Swafford of Blogging without a Blog, Part I of II because it set the Adversity University campus on fire with over 50 comments – the most ever!  This promises to be even MORE explosive because, according to Barbara, my questions truly pulled some things from the depth of her soul.  You’ll see in a moment.

By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way Texas for a keynote speaking engagement with Frito-Lay.  WOOT!!  I’m so excited!  There’s so much happening, I can barely keep up with it – more on that later.   Click here to read more...

View outside my office window Thursday morning

As I sit here Thursday morning, I am feeling a burst of incredible sense of gratitude that it only made sense for me to write it NOW rather than waiting until later.

I HAVE SO MUCH TO SHARE WITH YOU.  Let me start off by saying that for some reason, I’m feeling indescribably clear-headed with full energy coursing throughout my body.  While I peck away at the keyboard, I am looking outside and witnessing the emergence of a gorgeous, sunny Fall Day.  Nothing compares to looking at crystal blue skies with the sun spilling every-which-way!  I’m so grateful that we can be blessed with something equally accessible to everyone – THE SUN!   It just amazes me how the sun can be out in full force like that, giving everything life-sustaining energy.   Click here to read more...

Ok, it looks like we’re back to interviewing people again after a few absent weeks.    Sorry about that folks!

Now the blogger I’m about to introduce you to was brought to my attention by Sharmaine Hobbs of When Women Awaken -  you all remember her when she was interviewed here, right?   Well, because she recommended this particular blogger, I decided to check her out and found myself intrigued with someone who runs a blog called “Blogging without a Blog.”

I asked myself, “Now, how is it possible to blog without having a blog?”   I’ve never heard a such a thing so I spent some time on her site and realized this was someone I wanted to interview.

So, Barbara Swafford is here from “Blogging without a Blog” – let’s call her out from the green room!   Click here to read more...

District Humorous Speech Contest First Place Trophy

If you’ve been following my journey on the Toastmasters Humorous Speech Contest in the last month or so, you know I’ve been steadily advancing through different levels all the way up to the District finals, held yesterday at the Sheraton Hotel in Independence, Ohio.

Simply by the title of this post, I already gave away the surprise of telling you that I won.  Many of you have been sending me emails on how this journey has inspired you to look into the possibility of joining Toastmasters.  I even heard from a young man from Singapore saying the same thing!

Humbled and grateful at this response, I felt inspired to share with you six tips that were crucial to winning first place.  They are not by any means exhaustive, but I believe you will find them useful because many of you will be called upon to give a speech at least once in your lifetime.   Click here to read more...

Well, hello there my good friends!

How is everything going with you?  Are you holding up okay despite the yo-yo behavior of the stock market and the results of the third presidential debate?

I have to tell you that I didn’t watch the 3rd debate on TV but followed everything on Twitter.   I was lucky enough to have a pretty good idea of what was happening throughout the debate because of funny, snarky Twitter commentators like Michael Martine from Remarkablogger.  He was quite the character, giving his no holds-barred opinions throughout the debate, which made me laugh and smile.

Okay, let’s talk about gratitude.   Click here to read more...

At the end of my post, “Update on the Raw Food 30-Day Experiment” last week, I put it out there to the community and asked if this experience was something you wanted me to continue sharing.  (Photo:  Veri Kleiner Winkel)

Everyone I heard back from was in favor of it.   Some people said if I were to start a new blog specifically devoted to the raw food lifestyle, they’d become active subscribers.

Other people like Rhonda James said, “I think whether people want to admit it or not, they are constantly thinking about weight and health.  Slowly but surely everything you report about will start to “sink in” and you will be helping to change a lot of lives.”

Even though this blog appears to be about overcoming adversity because of the title, it is a personal development site covering a wide range of topics including health-related issues.   Click here to read more...

As I sit here and write this gratitude post, I’m admiring the flood of sunshine splashing all over the place outside.  The sky is crystal blue and the air is tranquil.  I am normally at the gym working off a sweat at this time but I have held myself hostage to a forthcoming UPS shipment.

Because of that, I decided to spend my time focusing on things I’m grateful for because that’ll help me forget the “eagerness” I’m feeling for this particular shipment.  You know how that is, right?   In other words, I’m practicing “Letting Go and Letting God” by taking my focus and putting it elsewhere like writing this post.

Okay folks, so many interesting things happened this week – one was downright embarrassing while others were inspiring and uplifting.

Let’s do it:   Click here to read more...

I am incredulous how quickly 30 days have whizzed by because I really wanted to give you a week-by-week progress report on this new lifestyle like I did with the “Tim Ferris Diet.”

Somehow I got sidetracked with speaking engagements, a week-long visit with my family in VA and other things.    I’m beginning to find myself in a comfortable groove once again at Adversity University but in a few short weeks, I’ll be off again to Texas for a keynote at Frito-Lay.  That’s okay, it’ll only be for a few days (last week of October).

If you’ve been reading my responses to various comments on other articles I’ve written on this blog or have been following me on Twitter or you’re a Facebook friend of mine, you will have caught glimpses here and there about the progress I’ve been making with this new 30 day raw food experiment.   Click here to read more...