Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets don...
What almost no one understands is how every level of severity in this diagnosis is underpinned by shame. Which means we don’t fix it by cutting people down to size and reminding folks of their inadequ...
We invite compassion into our lives when we act compassionately toward ourselves and others, and we feel connected in our lives when we reach out and connect.
We are complex beings who wake up every day and fight against being labeled and diminished with stereotypes and characterizations that don’t reflect our fullness. Yet when we don’t risk standing on ou...
The most difficult part of our stories is often what we bring to them—what we make up about who we are and how we are perceived by others. Yes, maybe we lost our job or screwed up a project, but what...
Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to one another by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounde...
Sometimes the most dangerous thing for kids is the silence that allows them to construct their own stories—stories that almost always cast them as alone and unworthy of love and belonging.
Shame resilience is the ability to say, This hurts. This is disappointing, maybe even devastating. But success and recognition and approval are not the values that drive me. My value is courage and I...
Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. Common humanity: Com...
Real isn’t how you are made, said the Skin Horse. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real. Doe...
Pema Chödrön. In her book The Places That Scare You, Chödrön writes: When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves le...
Pain will subside only when we acknowledge it and care for it. Addressing it with love and compassion would take only a minuscule percentage of the energy it takes to fight it, but approaching pain he...
Our unexpressed ideas, opinions, and contributions don’t just go away. They are likely to fester and eat away at our worthiness. I think we should be born with a warning label similar to the ones that...
One of the most powerful ways that our shame triggers get reinforced is when we enter into a social contract based on these gender straitjackets. Our relationships are defined by women and men saying,...
One of the greatest barriers to going back is related to empathy. If our goal is perfection rather than growth, it is unlikely that we are willing to go back, because it requires a level of self-empat...
Not caring about our own pain and the pain of others is not working. How much longer are we willing to keep pulling drowning people out of the river one by one, rather than walking to the headwaters o...
Mindfulness: Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness...
I’ve come to the conclusion that the way we engage with social media is like fire—you can use them to keep yourself warm and nourished, or you can burn down the barn. It all depends on your intentions...
I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude, and grace. I’m also learning that the uncomfortable and scary leaning require...
It’s helpful to keep in mind Alberto Brandolini’s Bullshit Asymmetry Principle or what’s sometimes known as Brandolini’s law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bi...