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Travis and I were sharing a bottle of wine on the outside deck of a tasting room on Stearns Wharf, the pier in Santa Barbara, a couple of weeks ago.  It was a perfectly beautiful afternoon, nearing sunset on the…

A few years ago, my friend Denise shared with me a wonderful story about St. Francis of Assisi: The town of Gubbio had a serious problem. An enormous lone wolf was eating the villagers’ sheep. Several people tried to stop…

To move heaven and earth means to be relentless, to go to the greatest lengths, to give it everything we’ve got. It conveys incredible commitment, impressive strength, and heroic determination. The phrase is deliberate exaggeration or hyperbole. We’re not supposed…

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE MAD THAT YOU FEEL?by Fred M. Rogers, 1968What do you do with the mad that you feel,When you feel so mad you could bite?When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong,And nothing you…

This Hafiz poem has really been speaking to me this week: This union you wantWith the earth and sky,This union we all need with Love…A golden wing from God’s heart justTouched the ground.Now,Step upon itWith your brave sun-vowsAnd help our…

I’m not naturally a patient person. Instead of “get well soon,” I send “GET WELL NOW” cards. I’ve learned to be more patient with others — to give them space and time to be themselves and do things at their…

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain. And most fools do.” — Dale Carnegie Most advice about complaining boils down to: Don’t. Stop. I found lots of quotes from very smart people counseling strongly against it. Conventional wisdom holds that…

I listened to a podcast with actor James Corden.  For a number of years, he hosted The Late, Late, Show and met just about everybody in the entertainment industry.  So it was a fun interview with lots of name-dropping and…

Thanks to the clever (and sometimes surprisingly saucy) Merriam-Webster Instagram account, I learned a linguistic term this week: irreversible binomials. An irreversible binomial is a pair of words that we’re used to hearing and saying in a particular order. In…

“I wish…” These words can start something. We’ve got to be mindful because, if we don’t watch out, what these words can start is a sense of woulda-coulda-shoulda. They can start us regretting, which is mostly a dis-empowering relationship to…