I remember telling my mother, when I was about ten, that she was making things worse by believing a story about herself that wasn’t true.

She did not turn to me and say how wise I was and thank me. No—she did what most of us do when our stories are challenged. She got mad.

I’ll admit I’m still learning how to say the right thing at the right time. But what I said to her that day remains true.

Over the years, I’ve taught hundreds of classes, written multiple books, and coached people on how to shift a story they believe but that isn’t serving them into one that serves both them and the people they love.

It would be lovely to leave the human story altogether. But in the meantime, while we’re here in this earthly state of mind, we at least need to know the rules of the game.

And one unchangeable rule is this: what you perceive to be reality magnifies. Or, said differently and meaning the same thing: the story you tell is the story you live.

The Rule We Keep Forgetting

But here’s what I think most of us miss—some of the time, if not all of the time. The story you tell yourself about someone else, and the story you tell them about who they are, is every bit as powerful as the one you tell about yourself.

We all know the studies: a room full of children told they are smart begin to perform as if they are, and the reverse holds just as true. It doesn’t matter what the tests actually said. The children live up—or down—to the story being told about them.

And we do this to each other constantly. Spouses. Friends. Children. Politicians. Shopkeepers. The driver in the next lane. We are always handing one another a story about who they are, and they are always, quietly, believing it.

If we want the world to be different, we have to see, tell, believe, and think differently—about everything and everyone. Yes, starting with ourselves. But just as importantly, about everyone else.

We Already Know This

I’ve written tens of thousands of words about this. And it still comes down to one simple truth: what we perceive as reality magnifies. Perception blindness, perception bias—these are well documented now. We already know this. Which means we can already do better.

So when we wonder how anyone could believe that wars work, that one human being is worth more than another, that people with no moral center belong in power—we have to remember that they are living inside a story. And so are we.

Choosing the Best Story There Is

Back to the ten-year-old. I decided, somehow, that if perception was reality—don’t ask me how I knew that so young—then I should choose the best perception there was to believe.

I didn’t have much idea what that was. But over the years, I’ve done my best to choose the one that comes closest to an infinite, loving, intelligent Presence—the Infinite One.

And isn’t that what most of us are really doing? Why else would we follow our faiths, read our scriptures, sit with our spiritual lessons? We all want to live in a reality where only good exists.

So let’s be careful about what we allow to land in our thinking. Yes, tell the truth about a situation. But recognize that the story about it, the story that caused it, can be shifted. It can be rewritten. It must be.

And it always starts within our own thinking. We have to think differently first.

Write a Different Story

Here is a practice worth keeping: never say to another person, “This is who you are,” unless it’s a good and true story about them. Because they will believe you. And it won’t make the world better—for them, for you, or for me—unless we’re aligning ourselves, and them, with an infinite Good.

You don’t have to fully understand this. You don’t even have to believe it yet. It starts with the story.

We are all programming our lives. And we help program the lives around us. So for goodness’ sake, choose to install the programs that bless and assist. Upgrade your software. Write a different story.

Whatever metaphor works best for you—pick one.

Then start every description of yourself by naming yourself first as an expression of the divine. Align your human story with that. And watch what happens.

Or don’t. It’s your choice. It always was.

Romans 12:2 — . . . let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (New Living Translation)

From The Daily Nudge #286: We live our lives as we expect the world to be, without noticing that the world is only how we expect it to be. What we perceive to be reality—magnifies.

Want to go deeper on this idea? This episode is an excellent companion: “Your Mind Is a Propagandist” — The Next Big Idea. Psychologist Owen Fitzpatrick on how the mind decides what feels true and then hunts for evidence to confirm it—reinforcing our beliefs, our limitations, and our susceptibility to the stories we’re told.

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Recently, in an aerobics class, dancing with forty other people—mostly women—I flashed back to the 1980s and dancing with my friend in nightclubs.

I lived in San Diego then, and we’d meet early, dance for a few hours, and leave right as the drinkers arrived.

Now I’m twice as old as I was then. And standing there in that class, I thought: my forty-year-old self would be proud of me. Still dancing. Maybe not for as long. Maybe not in nightclubs. But still moving.

The thought made me laugh out loud with joy. No one looked at me as if I were crazy. They were smiling too. Dancing together. Still moving.

And it struck me that one day my future self might thank me, too—for not counting age as a factor in doing what I still love to do.

The Story We Tell Ourselves

Not just dancing.

But still, and always, talking about perception and how it shapes our lives. Still trying to make a difference.

In my twenties, I worried that what I had to say didn’t hold any weight, that people would think I was too young to know anything. I was more afraid of age then than I am now.

Or maybe more afraid of offending someone, when all I wanted was to point out something that seemed obvious to me.

But the more life I lived—making mistakes, figuring things out—the more certain I became of this: the story we tell ourselves is the story we live.

And most importantly, that story can be rewritten.

I suppose I could worry now that I’m too old for people to listen.

Instead, I ask myself a better question: “What good can I do today?” Because I can. And so can you.

Every day we dedicate to doing something that makes a difference—to ourselves and to others—is a good day. That’s what we’re here to do. Make a difference.

Keep our promises. Enjoy the gift of life.

Lessons From the Brave Blue Jays

Years ago, while I was sitting outside eating peanuts and finishing the writing of Living in Grace, blue jays landed right beside my computer and took the peanuts. It was the beginning of my fascination with birds. They were so brave. They simply took what they needed.

I hoped that, like those jays taking my peanuts, people would one day take the words I was writing and use them for food.

Nature always has lessons for us, if we’re paying attention.

It gives and receives in equal measure. It doesn’t hoard, and it doesn’t blame. No matter what season it’s in, it always has something to share.

This summer I watched baby birds chasing their parents, still begging to be fed, while the parents tried desperately to get away.

It reminded me how easily we fall into the habit of not learning what we need to learn in order to thrive—how tempting it is to keep being fed rather than to grow.

I also noticed that gardening in the height of summer isn’t as much fun as it is in spring and fall. And I wondered if that’s what we do with ideas.

It’s fun to start something, and satisfying to finish. But the maintenance in between? Not so much. And yet maintenance is exactly what keeps the garden—and our lives—flourishing.

Every Season Has Something to Give

So no matter your age, from one to over a hundred, you have something to share that only you can share. Something to teach that only you can teach.

Age is a number, and it has no power unless we give it power.

Each season of life holds its own perfect way to give and receive.

So when you catch yourself telling the story that you are your limitations, tell a different story instead.

You won’t only help yourself. You’ll stop passing along the stories that spread limitation, and start passing along the ones that spread possibility.

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When was the last time you saw yourself clearly?

Not the running commentary on what you should fix, or the worn story of who you’ve always been.

I mean actually seeing yourself and the gift you carry that’s so much a part of you that you’ve stopped noticing it’s there.

We move through most of our days seeing what we expect, what we fear, what we’ve already decided is true. And the hardest thing of all to see clearly is the person in the mirror.

But clear sight is exactly what these times are asking of us—to heal the separations between people and nations, and to repair the damage we’ve done to our Earth mother.

When the World Feels Too Broken to Fix

Political divisions and disputes between countries can feel so vast that we wonder how we’ll ever return to being a people who listen to understand and work together in community and collaboration.

We may despair that we’ve fouled our air, polluted our oceans, and become either jaded about what we’ve done or complacent because we believe there’s nothing we can do.

But here’s the good news: all change begins on a small scale. With ourselves.

When we heal the divisions within ourselves, we can heal the divisions we have with the people close to us. Then, like concentric circles, it spreads outward into the larger world.

First, We Have to See the Problem

Sometimes that’s the hardest part. Our ego believes that if we acknowledge a problem, we’ll be trapped inside it.

That, of course, is the exact opposite of the truth.

Clarity about a problem always reveals a solution.

And healing divisions doesn’t mean we have to agree with each other. It means we listen with the intention of understanding and work together toward an outcome that benefits everyone.

Yearn to Understand First

Years ago, a line from one of my books, A Woman’s ABC’s of Life, found its way into the world through the then-popular Reader's Digest and has been quietly making the rounds ever since.

Every so often, it surfaces in my feed, shared by someone I’ve never met. That always makes me happy.

But what would make me even happier is if we all practiced it more often.

Yearning to understand requires us to listen. Not with our heads, but with our hearts.

To listen to understand, not to answer.

And once again, we begin with ourselves.

Do we listen to our own still, small voice to gain clarity? Do we see clearly, appreciate, and honor all our spiritually unique gifts?

Not just some of us.

Everyone has gifts.

It’s a condition of being alive.

The Willingness to Say Yes

To reveal the life we desire, we have to accept that those gifts are valuable—and be willing to share them.

If we can do that for ourselves, we can do it for others. Concentric circles again.

Here’s how to begin:

• Ask yourself, What do I love most about myself?

• Are you willing to accept that it’s a gift?

• Are you willing to express that gift—to yourself first, and then to everyone you meet? In person and in thought?

Start not with a list of things to do, but with a willingness to clearly see, accept, and express your unique spiritual gifts.

It’s the best thing we can do for ourselves and for others. All else follows from there.

Start small. You know—with the person in the mirror.

Love what you see. Find a quality you can celebrate. Then do it for the next person you meet, because after all, we are mirrors for each other.

Say yes to this simple solution for living the life you want to live. It just needs to be acknowledged and practiced.

To get started:

Pick a quality—a gift—that you love most about yourself right now. (Curiosity, steadfastness, kindness—whatever it is.)

Celebrate it and use it this month. See what happens.

PS — If this is the year you want to see clearly and say yes to what moves you and no to what doesn’t, come join The Intent Course. It’s the last live cohort of 2026—eight weeks, a small group, designed to support what you want to do or build. We begin on September 7. Come find what’s yours → (and use the discount code for early birds that you will find there!)

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I always wanted to be a dancer.

But after a few dance classes as a child—I still remember the little black tuxedo my mom sewed for my tap recital—my parents decided that what I really wanted was piano and art lessons.

They were right. I loved those too.

But then I watched my future dance teacher perform in The Red Shoes, and I couldn’t stop thinking about dancing. The decision had been made, though, so I tried to live with it.

I was already writing little stories for the paper, because I knew I wanted to be a writer too.

But dance, dance was the beacon that wouldn’t stop calling.

The Beacon That Wouldn’t Stop Calling

In eighth grade, while I was earning my Girl Scout dance badge, the mom teaching us asked why I wasn’t taking dance lessons.

When I told her, she called my parents and said I had potential.

The Choice

They gave me a choice: piano or dance. I chose dance and never regretted it.

There’s more to this story, but let’s skip ahead to UCLA, where I was a dance major. Ten years older than everyone else, with three kids.

After a few years, I figured out something important. I would never be a great dancer who went on to famous companies and had a name in lights.

What I Could Actually Do

But what I could do was help other people become the best dancers they could be.

I’d been teaching since I was sixteen, so when I realized my real gift was choreography and building a company, that’s where I put my energy. I didn’t stop dancing. I changed my focus. And it made me a better dancer—and a better person.

The Power of Noticing

That’s what this post is about.

The power of noticing and being willing to change.

Taking a constraint, recognizing it, accepting it — and discovering that it opens the door to who you really are.

There’s more, of course.

Eventually, I had to move on from dance in all its forms, and I looked for ways to use what that experience had taught me.

I Needed Community

I realized that what I loved about running the company wasn’t only helping others shine. It was the community. I needed community.

That awareness carried me to the next step. I ran groups. I gathered people into masterminds while I figured out what my next “dance company” would be. I knew it would always be about encouraging others to find their gift and express it — but we would do it together.

What that looks like changes over time. The essence of it never does.

Each of us carries a gift that wants to be expressed in service to the whole.

A Different Branch on the Same Tree

What I do today looks nothing like what I did in my youth. But it’s the same thing. A different branch on the same tree.

How we do it isn’t the point. Doing it is.

If you haven’t yet found your gift — because you’re still trying to be someone or something else — then all of us are missing out on the experience of your true self.

Find the Seed

So look back on your early dreams. Find the seed of what you’ve been growing all along.

If you’ve ever planted a garden, you know that something surprising often comes up, something you didn’t expect. But it was the tending of the soil that gave it room to grow.

Life offers us constant opportunities to shift, to change, to see things differently.

It’s up to us to notice what it’s trying to show us and then to step forward into our current expression of the gift that we are, simply by being who we are and sharing it.

This is how we grow a world where listening, empathy, grace, courage, kindness, and unity are the driving forces.

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Lurking in the shadows of our lives is a fear—and a resistance—to showing up. And yet, since we are here on earth, we agreed to show up.

Not just as a person who takes up space, or who treats life as something to endure, but showing up to the something that you, and only you, are here to do.

You Already Know

I know—you might tell me you don’t know why you showed up, or what you’re supposed to do now that you’re here.

And I have to disagree, as politely as possible.

If you read or listen to my blogs, books, or podcasts, or others like them, then I know that you already know.

Maybe you’re not admitting it yet. Maybe you’re afraid of what it might mean, or what you’ll have to do. But somewhere inside, you know what it is.

Right now, at this moment, there is something you are thinking of doing that you aren’t.

How do I know?

Because no matter how present we are in the world, in our lives, there is always more for us to do.

And why am I so sure of that? Because we are still here.

Like a Stone Tossed Into a Lake

I don’t mean show up in enormous ways, like being the president of a country. Very few of us came here to do that.

No, most of us showed up to be like a stone tossed into a lake. We are here to let our actions and words ripple out in concentric circles, touching the world and the people around us. In a good way.

Because—if I may digress for a moment—if someone shows up as greed, hate, revenge, or the hunger for power over others, that isn’t showing up at all.

There’s a theory that they came to be that way so the rest of us could learn from them, and we certainly can.

But I think that somewhere along the line, they grew afraid that who they are isn’t enough. So they had to become larger in the world, to take instead of give. Perhaps they unconsciously believed that would handle the showing-up part for them. It doesn’t. But that’s another story.

For the rest of us—the ones who want to do good in the world—showing up takes many forms, and it changes as our lives move on.

The Fear Monster and the Still, Small Voice

I wrote my first blog in 1998. (Yes, I’m a nerd.) The writing had its own trials, but pressing the button to send it out into the world terrified me every single time. For years.

I still feel varying degrees of fear when I publish a blog, release a book or a podcast, or teach a class, after all this time. But most of the time, I no longer let it keep me from showing up.

We are meant to show up. Show our faces. Speak our minds. Be with people. Form communities. Walk our path together.

Speaking up has been its own lesson. In college, I made sure I never took a class where I’d have to speak. In one course, the teacher said part of our grade depended on how much we participated, and I begged him to let me write an extra paper instead, because I couldn’t do it. He kindly agreed.

But somewhere along the way, I grew more passionate about what I felt I was meant to say than I was afraid of what might happen if I said it. Slowly.

Now, when that lurking fear monster tells me not to show myself, not to help, not to speak, not to write, I mostly ignore it.

And yet—when that still, small voice nudges me to step further out into the world, the fear shows up again, right on cue.

Sometimes fear and resistance keep me from doing things for days, weeks, even years, until I finally take some small action to prove to that fear monster that I’m going to do it. Fear or not. Feel the fear and do it anyway, right?

Yes to What You Can Show Up For

I know everyone carries a desire to share something. To show up. So choose a way you can manage right now, and do it. Then expand into something else. Get help.

Read books. Form a mastermind. Join a community that keeps going.

But do it.

Because we are all waiting for you.

The world needs every voice, every expression, every way to love, every way to share. Each of us is unique in how we show up. And for the tapestry of life to be complete, it takes all of us, weaving together our glorious and diverse gifts.

Sometimes we show up to right injustices, large and small. Other times it’s to offer our creative expression, our love, a little kindness. To be generous. To lead. To speak words that heal. To give a hug when one is needed.

There are many ways to show up, and how you do it will be entirely yours.

Remember that showing up also includes the practice of saying yes only to what you can truly show up for—and no to what you can’t.

As each of us shows up in the ways we’re inner-directed to do, there will be less and less room for anything other than love, kindness, and beauty to be present in the world.

We agreed to show up. Let’s do it.

Let me know how you’re showing up. I’d love to hear. And if I can help, tell me.

A free, wonderful daily reminder of what’s “really going on.” The Truth4Today

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The day after we moved into our house, a turtle came to visit.

I was in bed. Exhausted. Wrung out from everything it had taken to buy and move into this house. But when Del told me that there was a turtle at the front door, I pulled myself up and walked to the steps.

We looked at each other, the turtle and I.

There was no logical explanation for why a large turtle was sitting at my front door. So I did the only sensible thing — I got quiet and listened.

“Slow and steady.” That’s what I heard.

Eventually, Miss Turtle turned and moved on, heading somewhere only she knew. And I got up and did the same. Slow and steady. Consistent. One step at a time.

A few years later, a house went up across the street, built where a farmer’s field had been. The new owner added a small pond.

Two days later, we heard a frog.

A frog? Where on earth had he come from? Within a week, he had been joined by others, and that brand-new pond was alive with frogs.

Here’s what I imagine happened.

Somehow, some way, a frog knew.

Maybe he’d been sitting at the edge of wherever he was living, feeling the pull of something new. A better home. More room. A fresh start. And rather than sit with that feeling indefinitely, he moved.

If he came from the nearest lake, that was nearly a mile of hopping. Through fields and roads and uncertainty. To a pond he had never seen, but somehow trusted was meant for him.

Animals don’t seem to do what we do.

They don’t spend years debating.

They don’t talk themselves out of things. They don’t wait for the perfect moment or the guarantee of a good outcome. They feel the pull, they trust it, and they move.

They know that action opens doors. That one step creates the next.

We humans, on the other hand, ponder. We stall. We wait for more signs, more certainty, more time. We mistake hesitation for wisdom.

How did the turtle know I needed that message? How did the frog know a new home was waiting for him?

Maybe the same way ideas come to us from what I’ll simply call the Infinite.

Something larger than us is always sending signals. Impressions. Nudges. Quiet callings toward what’s next.

These are not random. They are invitations.

Our free will means we get to choose: act on the idea, or let it pass. But here’s what I’ve come to understand. If we don’t move on an invitation, it moves on without us. And if we do, the door swings open and more possibilities pour in.

This isn’t a call to act on every passing thought. A little reflection is wise. Feeling it through, thinking it over, that has its place.

But then decide.

Yes. No. Or later.

• If yes: move. Do something, even something small. You don’t need all the answers before you begin. The answers come in the doing.

• If no: release it. Fully. Let it go without guilt.

• If later: choose a specific time to revisit it, and then let your mind rest until then.

More often than not, we are not stuck because life isn’t offering us anything. We are stuck because we won’t move. Won’t take the chance. Won’t trust the pull.

And sometimes the most powerful reason to move isn’t even for ourselves.

The turtle moved — and helped me find my footing in a new home and a hard season. The frog moved — and made a way for others to follow.

What if your next move isn’t just for you?

Choose a door. And open it.

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We name our squirrels. Harry Peanut was a young gray squirrel with a bounce in his step and a very particular way of approaching a peanut; examining it, turning it, deciding. But the thing I remember most about him is that he was a leader.

Every day I watched Harry climb the dogwood in our front yard, leap through the air to catch a thin branch of the maple, sometimes hanging upside down for a long second, then run through the tree to wherever he was going next.

He didn’t do it alone.

Young squirrels followed him up the dogwood to watch him make the jump. One black squirrel with a rust-red tail, whom we called Crazy Tail, climbed up, looked at the gap between trees, turned around, and ran back down.

You could almost hear her: Nope. Too scary.

But Harry stayed. He perched on that thin branch and waited. He didn’t scold. He didn’t leave. He simply waited until Crazy Tail came back up the dogwood and made the leap herself.

Sometimes a squirrel would jump from the wrong spot and barely catch the maple. I gasped out loud more than once. Harry would demonstrate again. And again, if he needed to.

Harry was also the squirrel who taught everyone — squirrels and birds alike — that peanuts were food. Before Harry, peanuts sat untouched. After Harry, the cardinals came. The nuthatches. The titmice. The woodpeckers. The Blue Jays, of course, who act like they invented the idea.

One small leader changed an entire community of beings who don’t even share a species.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

Who do we follow?

There’s a strange theory floating around, held even by some scientists, that the negative is more powerful than the positive. That bad news outweighs good news. That fear runs deeper than love.

When I first heard it, I wanted to dismiss it as nonsense.

But then I had to be honest. The reason researchers reach that conclusion is because they’re measuring us.

Our habits. What we repeat. What we click on. What we share. What we whisper about at the grocery store.

***The studies suggest it takes roughly four positive things to outweigh one negative thing in the human mind.

Four to one.

That’s not a statement about the power of negativity. It’s a statement about where we’ve been pointing our attention.

And here’s the spiritual truth underneath all of it: what we follow, we feed.

What we feed, we become.

What we become, we hand to the next person watching us — whether we meant to or not.

Someone is always watching.

We live in a moment when there is no shortage of voices asking to be followed.

Algorithms reward outrage. Headlines reward fear. Loud people insist their loudness is leadership. The noise can feel like the only thing that’s real.

But noise is not the same as truth. And volume is not the same as wisdom.

When we look closely — the way I used to watch Harry through the window — we can tell the difference between someone who is leading and someone who is just performing.

A real leader can be recognized by what they demonstrate, not what they declare.

Ask yourself:

• Are they kind, truthful, and acting with integrity?

• Do they put concern for others ahead of concern for themselves?

• Do they lead from a place of unity that welcomes difference, or do they demand sameness and create separation?

• Do they have the courage to be patient?

• Are they flexible enough to listen, and humble enough to be changed by what they hear?

• Do they admit their mistakes, or do they reach for someone to blame?

These are not political tests. They are spiritual ones.

They work in a boardroom, a kitchen, a classroom, or a comment section. They work whether you’re choosing a president or choosing who to listen to over coffee.

Harry didn’t shout. Harry didn’t insist that anyone follow him. He just kept climbing the tree and making the leap, day after day, until the others figured out they could do it too.

That’s what real leadership looks like. It is quiet. It is patient. It waits on the branch.

And here’s the part we forget: we are all on that branch.

Even if you think no one is watching, someone is. A child. A neighbor. A coworker. A stranger reading something you posted. The friend who hears the tone of your voice when you talk about the world.

You are leading right now, whether you signed up for it or not.

So the question isn’t really "should we lead?"

The question is, what are we leading people toward?

Toward fear, or toward love? Toward separation, or toward kinship? Toward outrage, or toward clarity? Toward the noise, or toward the truth underneath it?

Four positive things to outweigh one negative thing. That’s not a burden. That’s an assignment we get to accept.

Four moments of kindness. Four words of encouragement. Four times, we choose curiosity over contempt. Four leaps from the dogwood to the maple, patiently demonstrated until someone else realizes they can leap too.

We can follow the Harrys of life.

And — this is the part that matters most — we can be the Harrys of life.

Someone is watching the branch. Let’s give them something worth following.

Interested in discovering your purpose, ensuring you lead with bravery and kindness? Join my Quarterly Perception Shift. Four calls plus monthly reminders. A year of knowing yourself and grounding your purpose by living it. Starts this month. Learn more and register here.

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I never thought I’d become a mall walker.

But this past winter, when the weather turned ugly, and I needed somewhere to move my body before my early-morning Zumba and aerobics classes, I found myself joining the quiet parade of people circling the mall before the stores opened.

And what I found surprised me.

A community.

On my first day, everyone nodded and waved. The silent, universal welcome of people who share a ritual. Months later, I know some of their names. I definitely know their walks.

And that’s when it hit me: everyone walks differently.

Which is, of course, a perfect metaphor for everything.

There’s the couple who moves as one; their hands clasped, shoulders nearly touching, their strides so matched they seem to share a single heartbeat.

There’s the young man who laps me at least once every circuit, legs long and purposeful, going somewhere urgent even when there’s nowhere to be.

Some people drift in their own world. Others scan every storefront, every face. Some walk like they’re running from something. Others like they’ve already arrived.

I began to wonder: how present are they?

Not just physically present, shoes on the tile, arms swinging, but genuinely here. Aware of their own reflection in the darkened store windows.

Noticing the music drifting from somewhere near the food court, the seasonal displays shifting week by week, the way the air changes from the cold outside to the warmth within.

Curious about the person who shared their loop yesterday and walks a little differently today.

Or is the whole point simply, how fast, how far, how soon can it be done?

Because if it is, then mall walking isn’t a metaphor for life.

It is life, lived on autopilot.

Research is confirming what mystics and contemplatives have known forever: presence isn’t just a spiritual nicety. It’s fundamental to happiness, to health, to feeling truly alive.

And curiosity —that wide-open, wondering attention we had as children before it was quietly educated out of us — turns out to be one of the things that actually keeps us alive, in every sense of the word.

I watch my fellow walkers, and I wonder about them.

• Are they curious?

• Do they notice?

• Are they walking the loop, or are they living it?

What I know for certain is this: they are kind and trusting.

I see jackets and water bottles left unattended on benches, trusted to still be there on the next pass.

I see smiles exchanged between strangers who, over time, have become something more than that.

There is gentleness here, and care, and an unspoken sense of belonging.

I hope that follows them out the doors and into their days.

Because the mall is just a practice.

The real question is whether we’re walking through our lives the same way some people walk through the mall, head down, checking the distance, waiting for it to be over, or whether we’re moving through it with our eyes open.

• Are we awake to the people beside us?

• Curious about what’s around the next corner.

• Present for the whole strange, beautiful loop.

Not just finishing it.

Living it.

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Mother’s Day is a day that everyone can celebrate because everyone has had a mother.

But it could be so much more than flowers, brunch, and cards.

It could be the day we pause and honestly ask: How well am I mothering the people, places, and ideas in my life?

Because here is the quiet truth most of us forget — every one of us is a mother. Yes, everyone. Mothering does not belong to a gender, an age, or even to living things. Mothering is a quality of consciousness. It is Love expressed as care.

We all mother.

And we all can — we all must — get better at it, because mothering is the most powerful art there is.

Notice how instinctively we recognize its qualities in motion: nurturing, encouraging, supporting, listening, defending, the kind of attention that makes another being feel truly seen. The list goes on without end.

• When firefighters rush into a burning building, they are not only courageous — they are mothering.

• When a maple tree releases its seeds into the spring wind, it is mothering.

• When a stranger pulls over to help someone on the side of the road, that is mothering.

• When a teacher stays late for the student, no one else is reaching, that is mothering.

We mother ideas, too.

For years, I have been mothering books. Sometimes well. Often clumsily. Each one taught me the same lesson: an idea, like a child, has its own becoming. My job is to nurture it, give it form, and then, the hardest part, let it go out into the world to be what it was meant to be.

An idea without mothering does not grow.

• Neither does a relationship.

• Neither does a community.

• Neither does a planet.

And yet we all mother differently.

When my children were small, I was not the mom on the block whose kitchen was always full of cookies and other people’s kids. Joanna was. I was so grateful for her. I was a different kind of mother: the one organizing the events, teaching the classes, holding the structure.

Both of us loved our children fiercely. It simply looked different from the outside.

Eventually, both of us had to do the same final act of mothering: let them grow up and become exactly who they came here to be.

Setting aside one day a year to honor mothering is beautiful. It reminds us of the sacrifice, the artistry, the devotion.

But the world does not need more cards once a year. It needs more mothering every day, from every one of us.

Imagine it. If we all moved through the world from the mothering instinct, we would not be so easily seduced by greed or me-first thinking. We would quickly and clearly recognize those who refuse to mother: the bullies, the hoarders of power, the ones who harm.

And we would have the courage and the unity to remove their ability to do harm, not through aggression, but through the steady, immovable strength that mothering carries.

We would pour our time, money, and attention into teaching children the qualities of mothering, giving them the wisdom and inner strength to avoid falling into the pit of fear, scarcity, and greed in the first place.

Prevention through mothering is far more powerful than trying to undo cruelty after it has grown up.

We already call this planet Mother Earth, and rightly so. She does what every good mother does — feeds, shelters, cleanses, regenerates, and forgives. How we treat her is the most honest measure of how well we understand mothering at all.

We need leaders who consciously practice the art of mothering, rather than aggression and competition.

We need to model it for our young people in every walk of life, so they can see what it actually looks like in adulthood.

Mothering is everywhere, the moment we have eyes to see it. Let it wash over those who need more of it. Let it awaken its dormant seed in those who have forgotten how. Let us express gratitude for it wherever it appears — in a tree, a teacher, a firefighter, a stranger, ourselves.

Stephen Hawking warned, before his death, that humanity had perhaps a century to change course or risk losing this planet as our home. That was nearly a decade ago. The clock he described has not stopped.

But mothering is more powerful than any warning.

Mothering is what built us, what feeds us, what holds us together still. It is the quiet, unstoppable force underneath all the noise.

Let’s celebrate it every day. Without it, none of us would be here.

And with it, practiced consciously, courageously, and everywhere, we just might get to stay, flourish, and experience life as it is meant to be.

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You’ve seen them everywhere. Storage units. Places to store our stuff — the stuff we aren’t using, the stuff we’re afraid to throw away, the stuff we have no idea what to do with, so we keep it.

We pay for it to sit there. Perhaps never to be seen again.

But here’s what haunts me: Life Storage isn’t just a place for furniture and forgotten boxes. It’s also where we store our dreams. Where we quietly tuck away the life we think we aren’t worthy of having.

The life we can’t have because of the price we imagine we’d have to pay to live it.

The life others have told us we’re not good enough, not old enough, not young enough, not the right enough anything to live.

Or the life we’ve surrendered because living it would disappoint the people we love — the ones who have their own vision of what our life should look like.

Maybe it wasn’t one thing. Maybe it was all of it, piling up until the storage unit of your life got so full you stopped going back.

But here’s the truth: Life is a gift. To be used and lived — not stored away.

The French author François Mauriac wrote, “Most men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed off wings where he never ventures.”

Let’s not be that person.

There are seasons when we need to set a dream aside — when life demands our full presence somewhere else, and we do what we must. That’s not failure. That’s wisdom. But temporary storage and permanent storage are two entirely different things. Life storage should never, ever, become permanent.

I’ve used physical storage units a few times.

Every time, I was in motion — moving somewhere new, not yet sure if I’d stay. I put the stuff I didn’t need right then into the unit and took off. But when I knew where I was going, I went back and took everything out.

I brought what still mattered with me, and I let go of the rest.

That’s the practice. That’s the whole thing right there.

So how do we start? Two lists.

Spend the next week adding to them as you move through your days. Don’t force it. Let it come.

The first list: What would you do with your life if you took it out of storage?

This list requires imagination — and I mean that seriously. Years ago, when my life was turning upside down, close friends gave me a piece of artwork by Brian Andreas. It said: “If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination.”

I hung it on my wall. I took it to heart.

It took time. It took imagination, courage, and choices made one by one. But today, I don’t believe I have any of my life in storage anymore. And I check. Regularly.

I ask myself: Am I using the talents and gifts I have to the best of my ability? Can I hone them further? Am I sharing them?

Saying no to some things isn’t life storage. It’s a clear, conscious choice — made because you want something else more. There’s a freedom in that distinction that changes everything.

The second list: What do you not want?

This list matters just as much. You are allowed to want things. And you are equally allowed to not want things.

We are not meant to be everything or do everything.

Each of us carries specific gifts to offer the world — and when we cling to what drains us, we have less of ourselves left to give.

Author Brian Thompson put it plainly: “You don’t possess your possessions, they possess you.”

This isn’t just about things. It’s about ideas, too. Old stories. Inherited expectations. Fears that have long since expired but still take up space.

Clearing out your storage units — physical and psychological — releases you from what no longer serves you. And when you release your life from storage, it has room to expand into what it was always meant to be.

Sometimes we need help taking our lives out of storage.

Reach out and ask for it. And when you see someone else buried under boxes, they don’t know how to sort — reach out and offer help.

Those two actions can make all the difference.

I’m here if I can help.

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Sometimes loved ones leave.

Sometimes they leave by choice, either ours or theirs.

Sometimes they leave when it is time for them to leave.

Sometimes they leave a relationship with us. That means it is possible to see them again.

Sometimes they leave by dying, and we miss their physical presence.

Choice or time, physical or not, all forms of leaving have a few things in common.

One Truth underlies it all. Although loved ones may leave, Love does not. We are never alone, or abandoned, or lost, or unloved.

Our emotions may tell us otherwise.

Besides missing them, we often experience regrets.

We think, “I could have done more,” or we ask, “What did I do wrong?” These thoughts can be helpful, but only if we treat them as a learning experience rather than as a source of guilt.

Paying attention to how to become more skilled at relationships is a good thing.

We can practice becoming better at love, but we can’t stay in the feeling of pain and guilt. This will not make us better; it will only block out the joy of life.

We can practice expanding our lives into love, whether the people we love are present or not.

Think about a garden where you intentionally cultivate the conditions for what you want to grow. You create an environment where certain things thrive, and others simply don’t take root. The soil, the light, the care — all of it shapes what flourishes there.

This same idea can be applied to our relationships.

When we provide the environment that we wish to live in, then others will find comfort there. But not everyone thrives in the same environment.

This doesn’t make one good or one bad.

Although relationships may change form, Love remains.

We will experience that higher Love if we don’t allow regret, guilt, fear, or anger to take control.

In 1st Corinthians 13, we read that charity never fails. What is this charity, or Love, that Paul is talking about? It can’t be human love because it often fails. It must be the omnipotent Love that is ever present.

As we choose to practice a higher awareness of omnipresent Love we provide an environment for others to also experience the Love that never fails.

Those who are traveling the same road as us may continue to walk with us. Those who are traveling a different road will not. But Love has never left them or us.

Sometimes the different road is the transition we call death. This can be very painful because we know we won’t bump into our loved ones somewhere in our lives.

We can’t call them, visit them in person, or reach them through any of the ways we normally connect.

And yet, we know there is no death. We know this because we know that the infinite intelligence that we know as the Divine, or God, is Life Itself. We know this Life to be omnipresent and omniscient. We know that there is no beginning and no ending.

Sometimes this is easy to forget.

We are used to celebrating the seeming beginning of life, known as birth, and mourning the seeming end, known as death.

But neither is real. Both are a marking of time born within a perception that we have adopted as our own, but it is not the Truth of Life.

Sometimes we are witnesses to that passage between the awareness of the life we live now and the new awareness of life that those who are making a transition experience. This is always evidence for us that Life continues and Love remains.

We can rejoice, find comfort, and find peace in that awareness.

At the end of that same passage in Corinthians, Paul says, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

As we experience more of “knowing as we are known,” we will experience less of the sense of loss at what only appears as a leaving.

We will experience more of the joy of knowing that there is no loss, nor leaving, there is only omnipresent Love Loving Itself seen as Life.

Life continues, and Love remains.

PS
As my dad was transitioning from this life to the next, he recited a poem about the stars guiding us home. My mother wrote down what he said. My sister turned it into a song. All three of them are now in that other “place,” so to honor them, I turned the poem and song into a simple video, because I know our love remains.

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I could barely see her tail sticking up through the leaves. The rest of the cardinal was hidden deep in the burning bush outside our bedroom window — sitting patiently on her nest, waiting for her babies to hatch.

Every morning before sunrise, her song pulled me out of my office to investigate. That’s how I found her. Beautiful as her surroundings.

We’ve watched cardinal families before. The day the fledglings leave the nest is something else entirely — clumsy little hops to the ground, back up to a low branch, back down again. The parents watching. Not hovering, not interfering. Just present. Trusting the process while staying close enough to matter.

A few days after finding the nest, we heard a ruckus. Momma cardinal was chasing a chipmunk away — wings flapping, squawking with everything she had. But she wasn’t alone.

The wrens and chickadees had noticed long before we did, and they came to help.

Later, crows helped bluebirds chase sparrows from their nesting box. Every day, bluejays and squirrels broadcast warnings the moment a predator appears.

This is the grand community of nature.

They look out for each other. And once the threat is gone, they go back to singing.

We forget we do this too.

There are people tending to their communities every single day — quietly, without cameras or headlines.

We don’t hear about them because the news has decided we’re more drawn to what’s broken than what’s being built. Feed the outrage, grow the outrage. It’s a simple formula with a terrible cost.

So let’s take the oxygen out of that room.

The good outweighs the bad a thousand times over.

The caring, the watching, the small acts of protection that never make the news — they are the real story. Not measured by how grand they are, but simply by the fact that they happened.

Here’s what I know spiritually: we are not meant to carry the weight of everything that is wrong with the world.

That weight will crush us, and a crushed spirit helps no one. We are meant to tend our corner — to notice who is close to us, who might need shelter, who might need a voice raised on their behalf.

The birds don’t try to fix every forest.

They protect what is near. They sing what they know. And somehow, that is enough.

Community isn’t built in grand gestures.

It’s built in the ten thousand small moments of paying attention. The neighbor you check on. The stranger you steady. The truth you speak quietly into someone’s fear.

Each one of those moments ripples outward in ways we will never fully see or measure.

That’s not a reason for doubt — it’s a reason for faith.

The world needs less doomscrolling and more presence. Less commentary on the darkness and more people willing to be a small, steady light.

You don’t have to save everything. You just have to show up for something.

Thank you to everyone who quietly watches out for someone else.

Thank you to those who protect without being asked, who notice without being told, who give without keeping score. It matters more than you know.

Now — chase the chipmunk when you need to. Stand with your community when it calls.

Guard what is precious, fragile, and worth protecting.

And then, please. Don’t forget to sing.

Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight / awhile on boughs too slight, / feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, / knowing that she hath wings - Victor Hugo

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Ten years ago, we went away for a month. We had a few things in mind — get away from the cold, live somewhere beautiful and quiet, visit the west coast part of our family, and celebrate our granddaughter’s sixteenth birthday.

But our deepest intent was beyond any of those.

We wanted to discover what we really like, want, and feel. Not what habit tells us we like. Not what routine has convinced us we want. Not what busyness has buried so deep we’ve forgotten how to feel it at all.

We figured that would mean breaking some old habits, making some new ones, and — just as importantly — keeping the ones that actually serve us.

We certainly got away from the cold. We loved seeing our family. We stayed somewhere breathtaking and still.

And in that stillness, something interesting happened.

The place we found was one I had never visited, despite living in California for thirty years.

It had a stunning view, wide open walks, and the kind of quiet that doesn’t feel empty; it feels full.

We said hello every morning to peacocks announcing themselves like tiny royalty, horses standing in their peaceful authority, dogs trotting over with no agenda, and hawks riding invisible currents overhead.

Long stretches of walking. Long stretches of thinking. Long stretches of simply being.

Did we discover what we want, like, and feel?

Did we break old habits and make better ones?

Yes and no. And honestly, both answers matter.

Here’s what I know: it is so much easier to break a habit when you step outside your normal environment. The old context keeps calling the old behavior home. Coming back makes it harder. But much of what we learned stayed with us.

My personal theme for the trip was to lighten up—in as many ways and on as many levels as possible.

One of the first things we did was get me a simple activity tracker. I hadn’t thought of it, but my husband had one and loved it, so I listened and tried it.

This turned out to be a quietly revolutionary decision, because I learned things I didn’t know. Or more honestly, things I had been fooling myself about.

I think of myself as very active. The tracker showed me I was not then. That answered a few questions right there.

We committed to walking every day, and having something count the steps made it easier to keep the intent to move.

I got better as the weeks went on, which meant I had to walk further as my stride lengthened and my body remembered what it was made for.

We did yoga almost every day. My husband had long stretches of time for his Taiji practice. We moved our bodies as if they were worth taking care of, because they are.

We also started a daily detox drink. It was not, as we jokingly called it, delicious, but it wasn’t terrible either, and I loved the way it made me feel lighter. That word kept coming back: lighter. As if the whole journey was really about removing what was weighing me down physically, mentally, and spiritually.

On the food front, we kept it simple. We used a complete meal replacement for two meals a day. Something we’d been doing for over a year already and genuinely loved.

It saved time, removed the noise of constant food decisions, and kept us nourished without having to cook.

We ate when we were actually hungry.

We had chips and salsa from a place that declared itself the best in the world, and we didn’t argue with them. Every few days, we went out to eat. Along the way, we found a Thai restaurant we would have happily carried back to Ohio in our suitcases.

I was vegan the whole time. California made that easy. That made me happy. I had already been a vegetarian for over thirty years. It’s part of who I am, not just what I eat.

We also gave up sugar. I thought that would be the hard part. I was astonished to find it wasn’t, except for the social friction of it.

Saying no at a table full of birthday cake or holiday desserts is hard. But it’s manageable when you know why you’re saying no.

After we returned, most of those habits held.

The sugar still calls occasionally, especially in the afternoon hours when the day gets long. But not loudly enough to win.

The hardest habit to maintain wasn’t any of the physical ones.

It was the habit of stillness.

Of doing nothing for long stretches of time. Of letting the mind open instead of filling it.

I worked while we were away — coaching, writing, teaching — but still had those wide, unhurried spaces of quiet.

Back home, the small machinery of ordinary life started up again almost immediately. The details, the decisions, the doing. And those long open spaces became harder to find.

But here’s what changed: I noticed it. I noticed when I was pulled back into too much doing, too much noise, too much motion without meaning.

And noticing is not nothing — it is, in fact, everything. You cannot change what you cannot see.

Years later, I continue to ask myself: Is this what I want to be doing? Is this aligned with who I am?

For both of us, that remains a living, open conversation. As I believe it should be.

Life is about expansion, not contraction.

It is about becoming more of who we truly are, not accumulating more of what we think we need.

That requires a kind of ongoing, gentle ruthlessness, a willingness to look honestly at what we’re doing, thinking, and choosing, and to keep asking whether it serves the light we’re here to express.

Within days of returning, we both walked through the house and filled bag after bag for donation.

We had lived easily out of two small suitcases for a month.

The house, with all its stuff, felt suddenly heavy.

I started a quiet new mantra: I am not the owner of stuff.

Try it. It might just help you lighten up, too.

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On September 8, 1966, I bundled up my one-year-old son, drove over to my parents’ house, and tucked him into my old bedroom to sleep. Then I joined my parents in the living room, where my dad — a Penn State professor who taught Historical Utopias, Mark Twain, and Science Fiction — had asked me to come watch something with him.

Our house had always been filled to overflowing with books, and I had read almost all of them before leaving home at eighteen. So when Dad reached over and turned on the television, I was ready.

What I remember most, after all these years, isn’t the show itself. It’s what he said as he turned it on.

“This will change the world.”

The show was Star Trek. And he was right.

Why? Because it gave everyone the opportunity to see what was possible. It didn’t just entertain — it shifted perception. It opened doors. It made people willing to imagine a future worth living into.

Three years later, having sold everything we owned and loaded everything else into our Pontiac Le Mans, I turned to my then-husband and said, “Are you coming or not?”

I believed I had to chase my own opportunities. I didn’t have a clue what life would look like once we got there. I just knew we had to go.

Which is why, on July 20, 1969, my parents — who had come out to visit us — gathered with us in their hotel room in Santa Monica. And while my now four-year-old son stood on a watermelon to see out the window, we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

Possibilities. That’s what we were chasing. And the universe, it seemed, was saying: keep going.

Today, we are chasing the same thing.

Much of what we saw on Star Trek has either arrived or is arriving right now. The communicators became our phones. AI is moving towards Star Trek capabilities.

That all people — regardless of species, planet, or origin — deserved dignity and a seat at the table: that one is still in progress.

And of course, massive change brings chaos and confusion along with it. That has always been true. It is true now.

So as we each find our own way through this moment, what can we hold on to? What can we keep in mind so that the future we’re building is good — not someday, but now?

I keep returning to the word: possibilities.

If what worked before doesn’t work now, what are the possibilities?

If a door has closed, where is the one opening?

How can each of us turn a negative outcome into a good one?

On the show Parks and Recreation, the character Chris Traeger is relentlessly, almost comically, positive.

In one memorable scene, his friends take turns throwing him the worst scenarios they can imagine. And without missing a beat, he finds the good in every single one. It’s played for laughs.

But there’s something true in it, something that resonates with a deeper spiritual principle: there is always another way to see this.

That is not naivety. That is not denial. It is a trained willingness to look for the good — and to trust that it is there.

We won’t find possibilities by being hateful, fearful, or angry. We won’t find them by letting fear write the story.

Yes, change can be frightening. This particular moment of change — with all its speed and uncertainty — can feel overwhelming. That’s real, and it deserves acknowledgment.

But fear is not a compass. It will not point us forward.

Each of us can find a way forward by choosing, again and again, to be willing. Willing to look for the good contained in change. Willing to ask better questions. Willing to believe that a solution exists before we can see it.

There is always a solution. If we begin every problem from that premise, we move into this new age differently — with steadiness, with grace, with our eyes open.

We can be obsessively positive and clear-eyed about the pitfalls at the same time. These are not opposites.

Most of all, remember this:

Nothing has changed in the Infinite.

Good remains the only power. Life continues as an expression of Infinite Intelligence. The chaos we see is in the Earth State of Mind: the layer of experience where we interpret, react, and choose. And it is a choice.

As I have been saying for years, “What you perceive to be reality magnifies.”

So, what will you magnify?

My father knew that a television show could shift what people believed was possible. A little boy standing on a watermelon could witness history being made. An unprepared woman with a packed car could drive toward a life she couldn’t yet see.

Possibilities are not out there somewhere, waiting for the world to calm down.

They are here. They are now. They are yours.

Magnify Good.

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What you perceive to be reality magnifies. Here’s how to shift it.

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A few years ago, spring was barely a whisper on the day I took my walk — a tentative green here, a single brave bloom there.

Then, just days later, I returned from a trip and stepped outside to find that the world had exploded.

There is no other word for it. Explosion. A riot of color so extravagant it felt almost absurd — flowers, trees, and bushes erupting in every hue imaginable.

Even the lawns had joined in, speckled with dandelions and spring beauties, refusing to be left out of the celebration. In the span of a few days, the earth had gone from holding its breath to singing at the top of its lungs.

I stood there in the middle of it, and I laughed.

Because just before that trip — a short, joyful journey to the Berkshires to visit dear friends — I had found something tucked away in a pile of papers.

A small, folded note I had carried around for years and hadn’t laid eyes on in a long time. Inside it: the lyrics to a Lou Christie song, written out by hand, given to Del and me by those same friends years ago when we were traveling the country together.

It had been our theme song. We would play that cassette over and over as the miles rolled by, declaring to the open road what we were choosing and what we were releasing.

“Goodbye to things that bore me. Joy is waiting for me.”

Finding that note just days before seeing those same friends again — that is the kind of cosmic wink I have come to recognize as the universe’s sense of humor.

Synchronicity doesn’t announce itself with trumpets. It arrives quietly, in a folded piece of paper at the bottom of a pile.

Back then, traveling the country with Del, we were doing more than seeing new places. We were sorting through our lives — figuring out what we truly wanted, and gently but deliberately releasing what no longer fit.

What had “bored” us, in the deepest sense. What had become dead weight. What was never really ours to carry at all.

And then, returning from that Berkshires trip, joy was indeed waiting for us — in the form of spring’s astonishing arrival. But as I thought about it more, I realized: joy had been waiting the entire time.

It was waiting on the train. It was waiting in our friends’ warm home, in the coffee houses and restaurants we lingered in, even at the delightful little farm where we watched baby animals discover their legs.

Joy doesn’t save itself for the perfect moment. It doesn’t wait until conditions are right, or we’ve earned it, or the hard things are finished. It is present in every moment, patient and unhurried, waiting for us to turn toward it.

The problem is never that joy is absent. The problem is that we forget to notice it.

We forget because we are gripping things that no longer serve us. Old grievances, worn-out stories, fears we’ve outgrown but haven’t yet set down.

Things that “bore” us in Lou Christie’s beautiful, double-meaning sense of the word — they don’t just bore us with tedium. They bore into us. They weigh us down.

And sometimes, it’s not something internal keeping us from joy. The world itself can crowd it out. The news cycle relentlessly delivers evidence of cruelty and division. Illness arrives uninvited.

Financial pressure dims the light. People we love suffer. These are not small things, and they deserve to be acknowledged.

But here is what I know from years of spiritual practice and from a life that has had its share of hard chapters: in precisely those moments, joy becomes even more essential.

Not as a denial of difficulty, but as an act of resistance against it.

Choosing joy when things are hard is a spiritual declaration — a statement that no external force has final say over the quality of our inner life.

It is an act of faith. It says: I believe that goodness is the deeper power. I believe that light outlasts darkness. I believe that no person, no circumstance, no headline has the power to colonize my spirit without my consent.

When we choose joy, we do not pretend that hard things aren’t hard. We simply refuse to let the hard things be the whole story.

On my spring walks, when a neighbor and I catch eyes, and one of us says, “What a gorgeous day!” — that small exchange is not small at all.

It is two people handing each other a moment of grace. We don’t apologize for it. We don’t hedge it. We let our faces open into it, our steps lighten, our voices lift. We share the joy freely, without embarrassment, because joy shared is joy multiplied.

Imagine designing your life around delight.

Not as frivolity, but as spiritual practice. What if the question you returned to again and again was: Where is the joy in this moment? What if you trusted that it was always there, even on the hard days, waiting patiently just at the edge of your attention?

Play the song. Seriously — find it, put it on, and let those lyrics get lodged in your head where they belong. “Goodbye to things that bore me. Joy is waiting for me.”

Say it out loud. Mean it. Let it be a gentle permission to release something you’ve been holding too long.

The universe will have a laugh with you, as it did with me.

One final joy discovery happened as I was writing the first draft of this very piece when I stopped to jot down something I needed from the store.

I grabbed the little notepad I always keep nearby, the one I’d been using for months without ever really looking at it. I wrote my note. And then, for the first time, I noticed the word printed at the top of the pad.

Joy.

Of course.

Joy was waiting for me all along — on my notepad, in the spring blooms, in an old cassette song, in the faces of friends, in a folded piece of paper found at exactly the right moment.

It is waiting for you, too. It always has been.

👉👉 Listen to Lou Christie sing Beyond The Blue Horizon.👈👈

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For years, I rode a reclining bike every single day. I was inspired by my daughter, who had been cycling this way for years. If she could do it, so could I. And I loved it. It gave me a perfect, guilt-free excuse to disappear into a book while my legs did the quiet work of moving forward.

Then one day, the bike registered four hundred miles.

I stopped and stared at that number. Four hundred miles. From thirty minutes a day. That’s not just a statistic — that’s a spiritual lesson in disguise. I could have crossed wide stretches of this country, slowly, steadily, one half-hour at a time. I no longer ride that bike (now I have a rowing machine), but I have never forgotten what it showed me.

Slow is not the enemy of progress.

Slow IS The Progress.

I want to live like that. Patient. Consistent. Unrushed.

Like a turtle — and I mean that in the most spiritually awake sense of the word. Turtles don’t experience overwhelm.

I’ve never confirmed this with a turtle directly, but I have a deep feeling it’s true. They simply move. They simply are. Eyes forward, shell steady, one unhurried step after the next.

Unlike most of us humans.

Because we have chosen the other side. The rush, rush, rush side.

We are the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, perpetually glancing at our watches, muttering “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” — even when we have nowhere urgent to be.

When my mom was in her nineties, every morning when I’d call her around eight o’clock, she’d greet me not with “good morning,” but with a list of what she hadn’t done yet.

She’d slept in. She hadn’t made the bed. She hadn’t walked the hallway for her exercise. And there was the whole day stretched out ahead of her, with nothing required until lunch at eleven.

Why Do I Rush So Much

She started to notice it herself. “Why do I rush so much?” she’d ask me. “I don’t have anything I have to do.”

Well, Mom, I thought — we all do this. It’s a habit so deeply worn into us that it runs even when there’s nowhere to run to.

The rushing isn’t about time. It’s a state of being. And it costs us something precious: the present moment itself.

This is why learning to say no is just as sacred as saying yes.

Without that discernment, we fill our days with noise and motion and call it living — when really, we’re just passing through.

Aesop knew something when he wrote about the tortoise and the hare. And here’s what’s remarkable: in actual races between real turtles and real rabbits, the turtle almost always wins. Not as a metaphor. In reality.

Why? The turtle Is Focused.

It pays attention to where it’s going and simply goes there. The rabbit is distracted — hopping sideways, doubling back, stopping to look at everything except the finish line.

In video after video of these races, the rabbit literally pauses to watch the turtle pass by.

Isn’t that exactly us? We pause our real lives to scroll through someone else’s.

We get three steps down a meaningful path, then scatter in six directions. Meanwhile, the thing we most want — a life of depth, peace, and purpose — is quietly available to anyone willing to move toward it slowly and with intention.

The poet Mary Oliver understood this completely. Before she passed, she left us these words as both a question and an invitation:

When it’s over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Married to amazement. That phrase gets me every time.

Amazement requires slowness.

You can’t rush past a sunrise and call it witnessed.

You can’t sprint through a conversation and call it a connection.

You can’t skim the surface of your own life and call it lived.

Four hundred miles, thirty minutes at a time, taught me that. The bike is gone now, now I use a rowing machine, but the lesson remains: it doesn’t take heroic effort or dramatic gestures to build something beautiful.

It takes consistency. Presence. A willingness to show up without rushing toward the finish line.

The spiritual life is the turtle’s life.

Not passive — purposeful.

Not slow because it lacks energy — slow because it knows exactly where it’s going and trusts the journey to get there.

Let’s not just visit this world.

Let’s inhabit it — one patient, luminous, unhurried moment at a time.

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What you perceive to be reality magnifies. Here’s how to shift it.

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How many times have you tried to change something — in your life, in someone you love, in yourself — and walked away with less than you hoped for?

Without knowing a single detail of your story, I already know why it probably didn’t work the way you wanted it to.

Not long ago, I noticed something quietly happening inside me. Nothing dramatic. No obvious self-sabotage.

But I could feel it — a subtle pulling back, a slight tensing up, like a hand slowly closing just as something good was being offered to it. It was becoming more than annoying. It was becoming undeniable.

I wanted to experience more of what I know to be true at my core: that the universe leans toward us. That the Infinite is not stingy. That Life itself is constantly moving in our direction, arms full.

So I had to ask myself an honest question: If that’s true — if we live in an ever-expanding universe overflowing with abundance in every form — why does everything in my life stay roughly the same?

Why don’t more of us consistently experience the overflow we sense is possible?

The answer, I’ve come to believe, is both simple and humbling.

We say no to action and gifts.

Not always out loud. Not always consciously. But in the small, habitual, barely-visible ways that add up to a life that’s comfortable but capped — we turn away from the open hand that’s offering us everything.

Why do we do it? The reasons are as personal as they are universal.

Maybe we don’t believe we’re worthy of more. Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves we should be able to do it all on our own.

Maybe we’re afraid that receiving something great will bring responsibilities we can’t handle. Or maybe we’ve simply been practicing the habit of “no” for so long, we don’t even notice we’re doing it anymore.

Our perceptions become our prisons.

We allow just enough abundance to keep us comfortable — to maintain the life we expect, the life we’re used to — and then, against anything more, we raise an invisible wall. We don’t see it. But we feel it. And somewhere deep down, we know it’s there.

When I’m paying attention, I can actually sense my own barriers. I’ve noticed them tucked into the quiet corners of my daily life, ready to spring into action the moment things start expanding a little too much.

They’re efficient little guards, those habits. Very good at their job.

So I made a decision. Not the first time I’ve made it — I’ve returned to this threshold more times than I can count — but I made it again, this time more deliberately.

I decided to be willing.

Really willing. Consciously willing.

Not just willing in concept, the way we say “of course I’m open to more” while our whole nervous system quietly signals danger, danger — but willing in the way that actually changes things.

Willing to say yes. Willing to be surprised. Willing to receive.

It sounds so simple. And in a way, it is.

But being truly willing is one of the most courageous things a person can do, because it means releasing control. It means trusting something larger than yourself. It means standing in the open, arms out, and not flinching.

The universe moves toward us and pools at our feet. It provides what we need long before we think to ask.

We already stand on the abundant earth — breathing its air, drinking its water, walking through its beauty as if it’s ordinary.

Can the Intelligence behind all of that not also provide for the ones it loves? Of course it can. Of course it does.

The question is whether we’re willing to receive.

Say yes to what Life wants to give you.

Be willing to ask for help.

Be willing to step forward into your gifts — and trust that the gift already contains everything you need to use it. Would a wise and loving Intelligence design things any other way?

Since I made that decision more deliberately — since I’ve been practicing saying yes — remarkable things have unfolded. Things I never could have planned, engineered, or imagined on my own.

I had to get out of the way. I had to trust. I had to stay willing, even when my old habits came knocking.

And things started to shift. Not all at once. But just enough to remind me that something real is happening, and to give me the courage to keep going.

My dance teacher at UCLA used to stop us mid-movement and say, “Expand. Take up space.” That’s exactly it. Be willing to be who you are. Be willing to take up the space that’s yours. Be willing to let the abundance that’s already flowing find you standing with your arms open.

Be willing.

It’s two words, but it’s everything. It’s the foundation of every shift, every change, every transformation I’ve ever witnessed — in my life and in others. We cannot help anyone who isn’t willing, including ourselves. Willingness is always the first step.

Everything — truly everything — flows from that one point.

Be willing. It’s the two-word key to everything.

Note: Remember, you can’t make someone else willing. Only yourself. All you can do is be willing to provide the space for them to be willing.

PS: I’m teaching the Acceptance Abundance class in a few weeks. If you would like to practice willingness in a community, come join us.

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What do we do with our time? We fill it with emotion — worry, fear, regret, shame.

We reach for the phone, lose ourselves in screens of every size. We manufacture new things to do, just to stay busy, just to avoid the silence. And somewhere in all of that motion, we lose ourselves entirely.

But why? Why are we doing any of it?

Is it an obligation, a choice, or simply a habit we’ve never thought to question?

We cannot possibly be here — in this extraordinary, fleeting, once-given life — just to be busy. That is the “why” I am asking.

Not the small why of today’s to-do list, but the deep why beneath everything.

Why are you here?

And now that you are — what will you do about it?

How much of our lives are oriented toward this expanded view?

How much of our day — even a fraction of it — is given over to understanding the deeper nature of our presence here?

Imagine what would open in us if we redirected even a portion of that emotional reaction time, that relentless how-busy-can-I-make-myself energy, and offered it instead to the quiet contemplation of why.

What if, for just one moment, we touched the world Tom, and so many others, describes — the unseen, the eternal? Wouldn’t that be the greatest gift we could give ourselves?

The Invitation

The invitation is this: find a why for every action.

Not a why rooted in escape or distraction, but one that honors, in its own way, the gift of the life you are living.

Even the daily rhythms — caring for yourself, tending to your home, showing up for others — can become conscious choices made within the framework of something larger.

Perhaps your why is to bring joy. How many ways, throughout an ordinary day, can you be and radiate joy — for yourself and for every being you encounter?

Perhaps it is to inspire beauty — first within yourself and your daily life, then outward into the world around you.

Life is changing — for every person, on every part of this planet. The question before us is whether we will be awake enough to ensure that this change serves all equally and harms none.

That will require something from us. It will require inner awareness.

This awareness arrives differently for each of us. But it cannot arrive if we never make space for it. Our habits, our inherited worldview, and the relentless noise of deliberate distraction will all conspire to keep that space filled. Don’t let them.

We are living in an unprecedented moment.

Be on the side of the light.

The smallest action taken toward greater awareness — one breath of intention, one moment of conscious presence — ripples outward in ways we cannot yet see. It will change the outcome of your life, and it will change the future of all beings on this earth.

Be who you are already designed to be.

Together, we can — and we will — turn the arc of our story from separation back toward unity.

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Tools To Transform Thinking

What you perceive to be reality magnifies. Here’s how to shift it.

➡️ Free stuff:

Join me once a month for 11 minutes for focus and clarity tips.

Plus, get the free Truth For Today and The Daily Nudge.

And there’s a free book or two for you at becalewis.com 📚

🚀 Other ideas:

Find my courses and classes here.

Or if you want more, book a one-on-one shift session.

Sometimes, to figure out what we want to say yes to, we have to learn to say no first.

We can all look back on our lives and remember times when we wish we had made different choices. When perhaps we should have said no instead of yes, or yes instead of no.

After a chain of events that happened because of one spectacularly bad choice—when I said yes when I should have said no (in my defense, I thought I was making the right choice at the time)—I found myself sitting on a hill overlooking a beautiful stretch of ocean, thinking about where I had gone wrong.

The view and the time to contemplate were a gift from my friend, Alan Cohen, who knew I needed a safe place to think and regroup. On top of that hill, I had no idea where my life was going or what I could do to fix what had happened.

But I did know what I didn’t want anymore.

So even though I couldn’t see what I would say yes to, I knew exactly what I would say no to.

I still have that no-list I made that day, lifetimes later. And for the most part, I’ve honored it. That has made all the difference.

Being able to make conscious choices makes no-lists invaluable.

If you look terrible in burnt orange, no matter how cute the sweater is, you know not to buy it.

However, there are downsides to a no-list.

It might be outdated.

What you said no to could no longer be relevant. Or what you said no to was never the real problem—something else was.

Maybe someone told you that you look terrible in burnt orange, but further exploration revealed it’s actually your best color. The information was faulty.

Therefore, all no-lists need to be consistently reviewed in light of current circumstances and a deeper understanding.

On the flip side, being willing to say yes is essential.

Actually, it’s critical to our growth as souls moving through this experience.

We live in a time when the world is shifting beneath our feet at a pace never seen before.

AI is reshaping how we work and create.

Climate change is rewriting the rules of where and how we live.

The ways we connect, communicate, and find meaning are being reinvented almost daily.

Perhaps we can’t keep up with everything, but we do need to stay present. To remain engaged.

And in today’s world, staying engaged requires an open mind and a constant willingness to learn, to do, to see, to understand, and to become something new.

To keep evolving.

We have to be like a snake shedding its skin, a crab leaving its shell, or a caterpillar dissolving into something unrecognizable before emerging with wings.

We have to be willing to give up what once housed us comfortably and let go.

As members of the 21st century, we have to embrace the new while staying rooted in the values, relationships, and loves that make life meaningful.

It’s a tricky path to walk, I know.

Years ago, before smartphones became ubiquitous, Del and I resisted getting one. I had reasons. My regular phone worked fine. Why did I need to pay more for features I didn’t understand?

But our children and grandchildren were communicating through texts and apps—living in a digital world we couldn’t access. We didn’t want to be left out of their lives because we were dragging our feet, clinging to what felt comfortable.

We didn’t want to become old in our mindset.

Now, we’re among the first to try new things.

We experiment with AI tools, explore emerging technologies, and engage with ideas that challenge us.

We want to expand our minds, not shut them down.

• Keep those mental doors open to what’s available.

• Filter what doesn’t serve you, but that’s different than saying no.

• Review your no-list. Perhaps some of those boundaries are no longer valid.

The world has changed. You have changed. Be willing to say yes to an open, expansive, and transformational life.

Here’s one important thing to remember:

Saying yes to something and knowing how to do it are two different things. Don’t put them together.

Say yes first. Then say yes to learning how—one step at a time.

Ask for help. Explore. Show up for life.

Saying yes involves knowing who you are and what you want, so we’ll talk about that next time.

But in the meantime, why not make two lists: a no-list and a say-yes-list?

See what emerges.

See what wants to be released, and what wants to be welcomed in.

Yes, I wrote a book about how to say yes to what you want (but first, say no to what you don’t). You can find it here.

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Tools To Transform Thinking

What you perceive to be reality magnifies. Here’s how to shift it.

➡️ Free stuff:

Join me once a month for 11 minutes for focus and clarity tips.

Plus, get the free Truth For Today and The Daily Nudge.

And there’s a free book or two for you at becalewis.com 📚

🚀 Other ideas:

Find my courses and classes here.

Or if you want more, book a one-on-one shift session

Did you ever notice that the word “help” is only one letter away from “hell”?

Remove an L, add a P.

Sometimes the greatest help we can give ourselves is recognizing when we’ve created our own small hells—those rigid routines we’ve convinced ourselves are necessary, the shoulds that box us in.

One gift of working for myself has been learning something embarrassingly simple: I get to decide where I do my work.

This revelation took me years to fully embrace. Some mornings I walk first, then write. Other days, I sit in a coffee shop with my laptop, words flowing, knowing that afterward I’ll go for a walk or take a zumba class. Both of which bring me joy.

Why did it take me so long to claim this freedom?

Why does it take any of us so long to realize that what we think our days are supposed to look like... don’t have to look that way at all?

The Myth of the Fixed Path

Even when I worked as a Certified Financial Planner—days starting at 6:30 AM and ending at 8:00 PM—there were still moments of my own time. Pockets of possibility.

Times I could put down the phone and walk around the block, letting my mind quiet, my body remember it was more than a productivity machine.

We have choices. Always. Not unlimited ones, perhaps, but more than we typically allow ourselves to see.

Don’t let society, old habits, well-meaning friends or family, or the deadly “this is how it’s always been done” decide something as fundamental as how you organize your time.

It’s your life. Your unique and precious expression of the divine moving through you. Yours.

The small rebellions matter. Taking a different route home. Rearranging the order of your tasks. Pretending Friday is Sunday and noticing what shifts in your awareness when you do.

Finding Sanctuary in the Wild

I don’t think it surprises anyone anymore that even brief encounters with nature profoundly impact our emotional and mental well-being. Science backs this up—research shows that time outdoors improves our lives in measurable ways, even reducing violence in communities.

But for me, walking—even just around the neighborhood watching the seasons shift—goes beyond “good for me.”

It’s essential to my creativity. And creativity, I believe, keeps us all sane.

Truly sane in a world that often feels like it’s losing its mind.

It doesn’t matter how that creativity expresses itself. It doesn’t matter if it matters to anyone else but you. It doesn’t even have to look like what people conventionally call “creative.”

One morning in the woods, I found these words as the leaves quaked overhead: “Does the forest care if I’ve sold books today?”

And the answer, of course, is “no.”

The trees don’t care about my metrics or yours.

They’re busy being trees, which is precisely what trees are meant to do. They’re fulfilling their purpose simply by existing, by photosynthesizing, by reaching toward light.

What if we gave ourselves that same permission? To exist. To create. To rearrange our days according to what feeds our souls rather than what feeds our anxieties.

The natural world doesn’t just refresh us—it reminds us. Of rhythms older than capitalism. Of the way things grow in their own time. Of how creativity and rest aren’t luxuries but necessities woven into the fabric of all living things.

Your life is waiting for you to claim it. Not someday when circumstances are perfect, but now. With whatever small freedom you can carve out today.

What will you rearrange? Where will you walk? What new order will you try?

Nature is calling, and when you answer, you will find your unique expression of life is waiting to unfold like the petals of a flower.

P.S. My latest book, THE RISING, is now available everywhere. 🥳 Thank you for being here, for reading, for caring about questions that matter.

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Tools To Transform Thinking

What you perceive to be reality magnifies. Here’s how to shift it.

➡️ Free stuff:

Join me once a month for 11 minutes for focus and clarity tips.

Plus, get the free Truth For Today and The Daily Nudge.

And there’s a free book or two for you at becalewis.com 📚

🚀 Other ideas:

Find my courses and classes here.

Or if you want more, book a one-on-one shift session.