Presence is the Best Preparation I’ve spent a great deal of time in my life preparing for future events: coaching sessions, meetings, presentations, performances, and any number of other occasions. The other day, as I was talking to a client about preparing for a specific event, it occurred to me that preparation is a tool I don’t use much anymore. A much better tool has taken its place. What could be better than preparation? Only one thing: presence, sheer presence. When I think back on all the preparation I did, I can see that I didn’t really even know what I was preparing for. I thought I had a good idea of what

The Woman Who Made the Sun Come Up — Once, long ago (or maybe yesterday) there was a hard-working woman who woke up every morning two hours before daylight.

It could be summer or winter, but she never failed to be up at the appointed time. It was a testament to how seriously she took her job, which was to make the sun come up each morning. She thought of herself as the Sun Bringer.

Can You Run Out of Love? Well, you can try, but the feeling of having run out of love is always temporary. In truth, even when you feel like you’ve run out of love, what you’ve really done is to become overwhelmed. You’re feeling too much at one time, so you sort of shut down. Before long though, when you’ve settled back down, you’ll find yourself feeling love for something or someone. (Just remember; that “felt love” will sometimes include feeling love for yourself.) If we were made of something other than love, we could run out of it. But we’re not, so we can’t. If this seems hard to

Streaming Love We live in the age of streaming, where the ability to watch almost anything anytime we want is available to us. Many of us have streaming services we pay for, but never watch. What if there were a streaming service we were born with? And what if this streaming service gave you more satisfaction and connection to the bigger world than anything you could watch on a video screen? The most enjoyable, rewarding streaming service is one that we all have built into us, but that most of us don’t know about. This mystery streaming service is the human ability to stream love. People who know they have

Is There Such a Thing as Pure Evil? When I look at what seems to be going on in the world, it can be dispiriting to see how we treat and regard one another. That dispirited feeling can lead me to attach the word “evil” to people, organizations, even countries. What I’ve been able to see recently has given me an entirely different take on the subject of evil. In the past, trying to make sense of the “why” around what appears to be evil led me nowhere. In other words, I couldn’t come to any sort of reconciliation as to the reasons people would behave like that. It was

Showing Up as Love The lovely feeling of coming home after a long absence is one that most of us are familiar with. Assuming you find your home to be a safe haven where you’re completely comfortable when you come home, there’s a wonderful feeling of settling down, of coming back to yourself. Coming home as we’re talking about here isn’t about physically returning to where you live. Coming home as we’re talking about here isn’t about physically returning to where you live. It’s about returning to the deepest part of you, the part of you that allows you to be at your best. Your mind relaxes, you’re able to

Reacting from Fear, or Responding with Love? There’s no shortage of horrifying events going on around us. This seems to be particularly true lately, with a brutal, needless war raging in Ukraine, and mass shootings happening with discouraging regularity. As I see these things happening, one after another, at times I find myself feeling overwhelmed. I’ve started to notice an element that has to be present in order for me to feel overwhelmed. That element has to do with feelings of separation, and isolation. The more distance I feel between myself and both the perpetrators and victims of violence, the more discouraged and hopeless I feel. When I’m able to

What I Know About Love Today is my birthday, and I’ve been reflecting on what I know for sure about love. In the 71 years I’ve been roaming the planet, I’ve often been a slow learner, and some of what I’ll share took me decades to realize, but I’m grateful to have learned it. What I know about love may not be aligned with conventional wisdom, but what I’m sharing isn’t what I believe or would like to believe. This is what I know for certain about love. Love is a gift It can’t be earned or won. It’s not a payoff, reward, bribe, or means of control. It’s a

The Peace You Are Looking For A peaceful state of mind is everyone’s birthright, so it’s strange how we regard it as something elusive, something that can only be captured if circumstances are just right. How much time and energy do you spend looking for peace? Like a great deal of what we search for, without knowing we’re doing it, we almost always look in the wrong place; outward, to external circumstances and conditions. That doesn’t stop us from continuing to look in the wrong place The sobering fact is, we never find it there, except fleetingly. That doesn’t stop us from continuing to look in the wrong place. We