Numbness, Discernment, and Voting with Care

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Sometimes I am just plain numb.

Not in a dramatic, storybook way—no fireworks, no sudden collapse. It’s quieter than that. It feels like driving through fog for days: my hands still move, my calendar still gets filled, my words still come out in the right order. I can answer emails. I can make dinner. I can show up.

But something inside me turns down the brightness.

It’s as if my heart has decided, If I can’t carry all this, I’ll carry less. Do you know what I mean here? Not because I’ve stopped caring—at least not exactly—but because my body seems to be trying to protect me from the cost of caring all at once, for too long, in a world that never stops asking for attention. EVER!

Numbness doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it disguises itself as competence. Sometimes it sounds like, “It’s fine,” when what I mean is, “I can’t feel the full weight of this moment and still function.”

Then the information comes.

It doesn’t arrive all at once anymore—it arrives like weather. Right? Headlines. Updates. Breaking news. A constant parade of opinions wrapped in certainty, wrapped in urgency, wrapped like they’re personal medicine for whatever I’m currently hungry for. You don’t even have to choose it. It just finds you. It knows what makes you afraid. It knows what makes you feel righteous. It knows what you’re lonely for.

And somehow it keeps stacking until numbness looks less like rest and more like survival.

I used to think numbness was the opposite of hope. Lately I’m wondering if numbness can be a protective shutoff—not because we stopped caring, but because we’ve been overwhelmed with caring for too many things we can’t fix alone.

And that leads me to a question that keeps waking me up at night:

What can we believe? Anything?

Because belief—at least the kind that’s constantly being pushed at us—doesn’t always arrive through reflection. It arrives through pressure. Through targeting. Through personalization. Through a feed that seems to understand my nerves better than I do.

If everything is designed to convince you, then belief itself becomes slippery. I don’t just weigh information; I experience a kind of emotional tug-of-war. I borrow certainty for relief in the moment. I scroll until I find a voice that makes my feelings sound wise. I trade listening for winning. I trade the slow work of discernment for the quick thrill of being right.

Then the next wave arrives.

And I realize the certainty I leaned on wasn’t built to last inside me. It doesn’t grow roots in my values or my conscience. It just briefly covers the exposed parts of me. It soothes discomfort without earning trust. It can feel true because it feels stabilizing—but stability isn’t the same thing as truth.

What I didn’t fully understand until very recently is that the battle isn’t only “what people believe.” The battle is also the environment that trains my mind to adopt beliefs quickly, intensely, and defensively.

And I’ve felt what that training does to me—especially when I start getting stuck around elections.

I keep thinking about how I decide when everything feels like it’s trying to decide for me.

Not just who wins. Not just what side I’m on. But what I can responsibly believe long enough to vote. I was talking with one of my daughters the other day, and she is pretty dog gone smart, we got into this tug of war over voting, who’s right, who’s wrong. Because there are only two choices, correct? I mean we must stand on that statement, right?

Well, voting isn’t theoretical for me. It’s a real choice with real consequences. And I don’t want numbness to steal my discernment while I’m pretending, I’m just “being realistic.”

I’ve noticed a pattern in myself that I don’t like but can’t ignore when information gets relentless, I start chasing certainty. Then I start getting suspicious. Then I start getting overwhelmed. Then numbness shows up again—not calm, not peace, but a kind of emotional dimming so I don’t have to keep bracing.

It’s not that I can’t think. It’s that my thinking gets hijacked by urgency. Can you hear that? Urgency!

So, I’ve been trying to build a decision process that slows down instead of speeding up—one that treats belief like something I cultivate, not something I grab.

Here are a few shifts that have helped me, at least a little:

1) I check my nervous system before I check the headline.

When I’m tense, my brain reads like a courtroom. I look for evidence that will make me feel safe in my conclusion. If I notice my body is on alert, I don’t scroll as much. I pause long enough to ask: Am I trying to find truth—or trying to calm fear? Those are very different tasks.

2) I separate “credible” from “certain.”

A claim can sound confident and still be unreliable. A person can sound convincing and still be careless. When I’m tempted to treat certainty as proof, I try to look for things that last longer than a moment: consistency, willingness to update, clear sourcing, and an ability to hold up under questions.

3) I let my values be a filter, not a shortcut.

Values matter to me—compassion, justice, truth-seeking. But I’ve learned that values can accidentally become permission slips. So instead of asking, “Does this match my values?” I try to ask, “If this policy is applied in the world, who does it help, who does it harm, what tradeoffs are being ignored?”

4) I make decisions in steps, not in panic.

The election cycle tempts me to compress everything into one anxious sprint: gather all info, feel certain, choose immediately, feel morally resolved. But discernment doesn’t work well under time pressure that’s designed by other people. I’ve started asking myself what I can know enough to make the next small responsible decision—and what I need to postpone until I can look again with better clarity.

5) I treat belief like a draft.

If I notice my belief requires me to reject nuance completely—if it demands, I treat disagreement as stupidity or betrayal—that’s a sign. I want convictions that can survive complexity, not convictions that collapse the moment reality gets complicated.

Numbness and discernment both show up as signals, not enemies. Numbness can mean I’m overloaded. It can mean I need boundaries with my attention. It can mean I’ve absorbed too much conflict with no outlet except more information.

But numbness can also become its own trap: a quiet way of opting out. A way of “not feeling” that looks like neutrality while it quietly reshapes what I’m willing to care about.

I don’t want numbness to decide my vote by dulling my conscience. I don’t want exhaustion to turn into apathy dressed as wisdom.

And this is where my concern returns, again and again—back to elections.

I worry about how easily I can be pulled into certainty that doesn’t actually come from evidence. I worry about how easily my mind can be trained to treat emotion as proof. I worry about how the feed can make every issue feel like a personal referendum on whether I’m good, smart, safe, or right.

I worry that the louder the certainty gets, the more I may reach for it simply to stop the feeling of being unmoored.

When I think about voting, I try to come back to a simpler question than “Who is correct?”—a harder question that might protect my integrity:

What would I choose if I weren’t being rushed into belief?

Not what would feel best in the moment. Not what would win the argument. Not what would make me feel righteous fastest. What would I choose if I had time to look carefully, compare responsibly, and accept that I might need to revisit my understanding?

I’m still learning how to do that. I’m still prone to getting tugged into the certainty treadmill, still vulnerable to the fog.

But I’m trying to treat this moment—this election moment—as more than a headline cycle. As a chance to practice discernment instead of numbness. As a chance to believe with care, not with cravings for certainty.

Because at the end of all this, I want my vote to be an act of responsibility, not an act of shutdown. And I want my belief to be sturdy enough to survive contact with reality—especially when reality keeps changing.

Peace and every good!

The Light That Holds Back Darkness 2

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First Comes Justice: The Light That Holds Back the Darkness

This is one story I feel strongly about.

I will not soon forget the first time I walked through the heavy steel doors of a state prison with Kairos Prison Ministries. The Sally port has a clang when it shuts behind you that feels final, like the world I knew had been sealed off, and what lay ahead of me in the eyes of forty plus men whose lives most of society had quietly written off was unknown. And what I did not know when I went in is that you cannot get out of the prison until they let you out, period. And I was dead tired that day. I had convinced myself on the drive over that nothing I said would matter. Surely there were better people, more eloquent people, more useful people for this work. I almost turned around in the parking lot. I never told anyone that feeling until today.

But something made me go in. And in the back row sat a man I will call Marcus (not his name) He had not spoken a word the entire first morning, his arms crossed, his eyes anywhere but on us. No trust, none, by the afternoon, he had shifted. By the second day, he raised his hand, and no one made fun of the question. And on the third day, with tears in his eyes, he told me, “Nobody has visited me in fourteen years. Nobody. Until you.” I cried.

That is when I understood something I had read a hundred times but never felt in my bones. Justice is not a verdict handed down from a bench. Justice is a face in a doorway. Justice is the willingness to walk through the gate when every instinct says RUN the other direction. Justice is showing up, especially for the people the world has decided do not count.

Marcus did not need me to fix his life; in fact, he would have run the other way if I had tried. He needed someone to say, by their presence, that his life still mattered. That is the smallest unit of justice, and it is also the largest. Every policy, every program, every reform is built on that single brick. Just a quick note here for those of you maybe thinking this, No I do not think he needed to be let of prison because we from Kairos came to visit. Some statistics put it this way, 10% are innocent, 80% are doing their time for things they have done, and 10% should never see the light of day.

A Little History for Background

The word justice is older than any nation that claims it. In ancient Hebrew, the concept came in two intertwined words. Mishpat described justice in its sharp, courtroom sense, the kind that punishes wrongdoing and protects the innocent. Tzedakah described justice as right relationship, the kind that restores what has been broken between people. The ancients understood that you cannot have one without the other. Punishment without restoration is cruelty. Restoration without accountability is sentimentality. We learned this in Kairos.

Greek philosophers gave us the idea of justice as a virtue, the fair distribution of what is owed. The Romans codified it into law. The framers of Magna Carta in 1215 forced a king to admit that even he stood under it. Centuries later, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman risked their lives to insist that justice could not coexist with chains. Suffragists marched for it. Workers organized for it. Dr. King wrote about it from a Birmingham jail, reminding a comfortable nation that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Every generation has had to learn the same lesson the hard way. Justice is not inherited. It is not automatic. It is not the natural state of human affairs. We live with it and it is built, defended, and rebuilt by ordinary people who decide that the world as it is cannot be the world as it should be. Again, Kairos helped me here.

Justice Today, Justice Here

We live, right now, in a moment that tests whether we have learned anything at all.

Roughly two million of our neighbors are behind bars in this country, more than in any other nation on earth. And truly if you added up the next few largest countries together, we still have more in our prisons then they in theirs. Tens of millions go to bed hungry in a land of plenty. Healthcare remains a privilege rather than a right for far too many families. When we had our mission, Everyday People Ministries, we gave out 30 tons of food a month. I saw veterans sleep on sidewalks within sight of the monuments built to honor them. Children grow up in zip codes that determine, with frightening accuracy, what their futures will hold. Like the one I grew up in, in Detroit.

These are not natural disasters. They are choices. Our choices. And choices can be unmade.

The good news is that justice still wears a human face. It looks like the nurse who stays an extra hour with the patient who has no visitors. It looks like the teacher who buys school supplies out of her own paycheck. It looks like the volunteer who delivers a meal, the lawyer who takes a case without payment, the neighbor who pays attention. It looks like Lynette and me sitting at tables in countries far from home, learning that loneliness and hunger speak every language. It looks like a Kairos weekend, where men who have done terrible things and men who have had terrible things done to them sit in the same circle and discover that grace is bigger than any of us deserve.

You do not have to fix the whole system to be part of the answer. You only have to refuse the lie that this is somebody else’s problem. Volunteer for one organization. Mentor one young person. Advocate for one policy. Write one letter. Sit with one person in the hospital. The work is never finished, but the work is never wasted either.

The darkness is loud right now. It tells us we are too small to matter, too tired to try, too divided to agree on anything. It wants us to scroll past, to look away, to whisper “not my problem.” Every time we refuse that whisper, we hold the line. Every time we show up, we push the darkness back by an inch. Inches add up.

Linking Arms

I think often about Marcus, and about the hundreds of others I have met inside those walls. They taught me that I nearly missed the gift by almost “not walking through the gate”. How many gates do the rest of us almost not walk through? How many people are waiting on the other side, not for our money or our expertise or our opinions, but simply for our presence?

We began with a question. What is justice in a world teetering on the edge of chaos? It is fairness, yes. It is accountability, yes. It is law, yes. But underneath all of that, justice is love with its sleeves rolled up. All the way up. It is compassion that has stopped talking and started walking. It is the moment when the comfortable decide that the comfort of the comfortable is not the point.

So here we are, you and I. The need has not gotten smaller since you started reading. Somewhere a child is going to bed afraid tonight. Somewhere a sick person is waiting for someone who will not come. Somewhere a person behind bars is wondering if anyone remembers their name. And somewhere, a gate is waiting for someone to walk through it.

Let us be the ones who walk through. Let us be the ones who link arms across our differences and hold back the darkness together. Let us be known not by what we accumulated or what we argued about, but by who we visited, who we lifted, and who we refused to forget. Let us be the fillers of the breach, the lighters of small candles, the keepers of one another.

The world is not going to save itself. Neither is the person across the street, the person across the country, or the person across the wall. They are waiting on us, and we are waiting on each other, and somewhere in the middle of all that waiting, justice is asking whether we will finally say yes.

First comes justice. Everything else, everything good, everything lasting, everything worth handing down, follows.

Peace and every good.

Sources

  1. Hugh Whelchel, “Understanding Tzedakah & Mishpat (Righteousness & Justice),” Institute for Faith, Work & Economics. https://tifwe.org/tzedakah-mishpat-righteousness-justice/ — for the paired meanings of mishpat(rectifying/retributive justice) and tzedakah (right relationship), and the way the two words function together in the Hebrew Scriptures.
  2. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963. Full text hosted by the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html — source of the line “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The Tender Work of Healing Loneliness, Gently, Slowly.

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The ache of loneliness is deep and profound for some of us. It shows up in our posture, our energy, and the way we relate to the world. I remember when I went through a painful divorce and the loneliness I felt. I didn’t have self-esteem, and I didn’t know what was next in my life. I traveled on autopilot, grunted responses to questions, and went deep inside myself in a protective stance.

My shoulders hunched as if trying to make myself smaller so I would take up less space—and maybe be less likely to be hurt again. That posture mirrored how I felt inside: small, raw, and on guard. My days blurred together. I thought loneliness was something to be fixed quickly, as if I were just a machine with a loose bolt. But loneliness isn’t just a problem to be solved. It’s a human experience that asks for tenderness, time, and gradual re-learning about who we are when we are alone.

Loneliness wears many faces. Sometimes it’s noisy—restless, consuming, hard to shake. Sometimes it’s silent. It can arrive after a breakup, a move, retirement, the loss of a loved one, or during seasons when you don’t fit into the surrounding culture. And sometimes it arrives without an obvious cause. You might be surrounded by people yet feel profoundly disconnected. Loneliness can color how you see yourself (when I felt unlovable) and how you see others (“nobody understands me”). That lens is heavy. It makes ordinary tasks feel larger, heavier, and harder to start.

When loneliness becomes long-term, it shapes habits. You might withdraw from invitations, avoid phone calls, or spend afternoons scrolling through images of other people living bright, full lives. Facebook (as an example) can be especially brutal in these seasons. You might develop defensive behaviors—sarcasm, irritability, or constant self-criticism—to keep others at a safe distance. These are understandable survival strategies. But they can keep us stuck, tightening the loop between pain and isolation.

A friend of mine, John, is a gregarious person by nature. But after his father died, he sank into a quiet, deep loneliness. He would show up to gatherings and laugh easily, but afterward he would go home and close the curtains. One night he told me he felt like a house with rooms no one ever walked into.

Over the next few months, he knew something needed to change. He began meeting with a grief group and volunteered at a local community garden. The volunteers didn’t try to fix him. They simply shared tasks and stories. With time, his personal rooms were visited more often—not because he suddenly changed overnight, but because small, consistent human interactions built a sense of belonging again. (True Story)

Another story: Ana moved to Italy for work and felt disconnected from the language and customs. Her loneliness was layered with isolation and cultural disorientation. She found solace by starting a weekly ritual—Tuesday potluck evenings with a few colleagues. No grand obligations, just a bowl of soup and one good question: “What was the best thing you did for yourself this week?” That question became a conduit for sharing. It helped her feel seen, not solved. (Example)

If you’re lonely right now, I want to say this clearly: being lonely is not a personal failing. Gentleness is not indulgence. Responding to loneliness with self-blame usually increases the pain, as if the heart needs to be punished before it can heal. Instead, try meeting yourself with care and clarity—like you would meet a friend who is hurting.

Here are four practical, compassionate ways to be gentle with yourself on this path:

  • Acknowledge the ache without rushing it.

Sit with the feeling and name it: “This is loneliness.” Naming reduces the power of the sensation and helps you observe it instead of being swallowed by it. You might say it aloud when you’re alone or write it in a journal.

  • Normalize your experience.

Many people have felt this—it’s part of being human. Reading stories, memoirs, or essays about loneliness can make you feel less alone in your aloneness. You’re not broken; you’re human.

  • Create small rituals of care.

When we’re lonely, big plans can feel impossible. Start with tiny rituals: a cup of tea at the same time each afternoon, a ten-minute walk, lighting a candle before dinner. Rituals create structure and a sense of predictability—soothing when the world feels unstable.

  • Befriend your body.

Loneliness often settles physically tight shoulders, shallow breathing, a heavy chest. Try simple body-based practices: slow diaphragmatic breathing (inhale for 4, exhale for 6), progressive muscle relaxation, or a short yoga sequence that opens the chest. Even gentle movement can change your internal state and communicate kindness to yourself.

Even with these practical steps, there may be times when seeking therapeutic support is the most important thing you can do. A therapist, counselor, or spiritual director can provide tools to navigate loneliness, process past hurts, and gently challenge patterns that keep you isolated. Group therapy can be especially powerful because it combines professional help with human connection.

Comforting exercises you can try today

  • Write a letter to your future self.

Describe what you are feeling right now and what you need. Seal it or save it to be opened in six months. This creates continuity and an ally you can visit later.

  • Try the “two-minute reach” practice.

Each day, do one small, friendly thing for someone: send a message saying, “Thinking of you,” or thank the person who refilled the coffee. Small gestures often return warmth and remind you you’re part of a social web.

  • Use the self-compassion break.

When you notice pain, put a hand on your heart and say: “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself.” Pause and breathe for several rounds.

  • Make a list of “gentle yeses.”

These are optional social activities that feel manageable—a short walk with a friend, an hour at the library, calling a sibling. Start with one gentle yes per week.

When loneliness persists

If loneliness feels chronic—or if it’s accompanied by hopelessness, persistent fatigue, or changes in appetite or sleep—reach out for professional support. Loneliness can be connected to mental health conditions like depression, and it can benefit from therapy, medication, or both. Asking for help is a courageous, practical step. It can comfort your heart and change the trajectory of your days.

A compassionate ending

Loneliness can be a fierce teacher. It can expose where you’re tender, where you fear rejection, and where you’ve forgotten how to tend to yourself. But it can also be a doorway to deeper self-knowledge. When we meet loneliness with small acts of kindness—tending our bodies, creating rituals, reaching out in tiny ways, and seeking community—we slowly reweave the threads of belonging.

Please hear me when I say, “you don’t need to hurry the healing.” On hard days, remember the posture you instinctively assume in pain: protective, small. Try instead to soften one muscle at a time. Breathe. Put a hand over your heart. Say one gentle thing to yourself. These are not grand solutions, but they are steady—and steadiness is what heals. Over time, small moments of tenderness add up, and the world starts to feel a little less cold.

A poem I wrote about loneliness….

Alone, I fold myself into small shapes, a quiet shell against the world’s bright wind.

Don’t see me

My shoulders learn to hide, my breath grows shallow, and I move through days on soft autopilot.

Don’t see me

Inside, a spark remembers how to rest and keeps a small light against the dark.

Don’t see me

I light a tiny ritual — tea, a song, a name — and let the ache be a visitor, not the whole house.

Maybe see me

Softly I unfold, muscle by muscle, word by word, until a single hand on my chest becomes a bridge.

See me

Peace and every good.

From Scoreboard to Tapestry: Embrace Nonviolence

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My business partner’s offhand metaphor about the United States not engaging in a nationwide football game—where there are winners and losers—stayed with me. At first, it sounded like a crazy joke, the kind people make to underline how competitive and spectacle-driven our society has become. But on my reflection, that “football” image is more instructive than flippant. It captures a deep, pervasive fact: life as contest, the world as scoreboard. What if we loosened our grip on that metaphor? What if, instead of celebrating winners and humiliating losers, we reimagined success as a collective flourishing and centered a culture of nonviolence? It is a radical reframe, so bear with me and it is also one that deserves serious attention.

Competition has undeniable value. It spurs innovation, drives excellence, and gives shape to many of our institutions—from markets to sports, academic achievement to civic engagement. Yet when competition becomes the dominant frame for all human interaction, it blinds us to alternatives and normalizes collateral damage. A zero-sum mentality assumes that another’s gain is automatically our loss. It trains us to view relationships, resources, and even the planet as limited commodities to be conquered or defended. The result is not just interpersonal friction but systemic harm: escalating violence, widening inequality, environmental degradation, and eroded trust in institutions.

And…I remember times back home when I was just not up to the competition and I got my clock cleaned. The funny thing is, I was not small or weak or without merit, so I became angry, was belittled, and was told that I was less then. I wanted to quit, to run away, to hide and to lash out. Little good it did me with the overwhelming prevailing attitude of the coaches, players, cheerleaders and spectators. I didn’t stand a chance.

This is where the teachings of nonviolence offer a profound corrective. Nonviolence is often mistaken for passivity or simple conflict avoidance. But figures like Jesus and Mahatma Gandhi modeled a far more active ethic. These men and women who lived and walked on the earth had to find a courage that defied comprehension and for them nonviolence, in their practice and lifestyle, was a disciplined way of engaging the world—rooted in courage, principles, and creative action. It is not the absence of conflict; it is the commitment to resolve conflict without dehumanizing others. It asks us to cultivate empathy, to recognize the dignity of adversaries, and to seek solutions that heal rather than simply punish.

Reimagining “winning” through the lens of nonviolence means changing our metrics. Instead of tallying victories and defeats, we begin to ask different questions: Who is flourishing? Are communities strengthened or weakened? Is the planet being cared for or exploited? Do our policies and practices expand freedoms and opportunities for the many, or do they concentrate advantage among the few? Success, in this framework, is measured by collective well-being, resilience, and regenerative practice.

The stakes of this shift are extremely high. Imagine what people will say about you? Because we are living in a moment of converging crises. Climate change destabilizes ecosystems and economies; social and political polarization deepens mistrust and reduces the space for reasoned debate; economic systems often prioritize short-term profit over long-term sustainability. In such a context, a competitive, winner-take-all logic exacerbates harm. It encourages resource extraction without stewardship, political brinkmanship without compromise, and a politics of humiliation that breeds resentment and cycles of retaliation. Nonviolence, conversely, invites us to break those cycles. It reframes adversity as an opportunity for creativity and collective problem-solving.

What would living into this shift look like in practice? First, it requires cultivating inner practices that temper reactivity and encourage empathy. Mindfulness, contemplative traditions, and reflective dialogue help people recognize their fears and attachments. When we know our triggers, we can choose responses that align with shared human dignity rather than reflexively seeking to dominate. Education systems that prioritize social-emotional learning, critical thinking, and civic literacy prepare citizens to engage in public life as collaborators rather than combatants. How would that look?

 

Second, institutional redesign matters. Democracy works best when it incentivizes cooperation and reduces zero-sum incentives. Electoral systems, media ecosystems, and corporate governance structures can be retooled to reward long-term, inclusive solutions. Policies that incentivize sustainable production, equitable distribution, and restorative justice create feedback loops where nonviolent solutions are not merely moral but also pragmatic. Imagine electoral incentives that reward coalition-building, or corporate accountability systems that value community well-being as much as shareholder profit. These are not utopian fantasies; they are policy directions that have been piloted at local levels and can be scaled.

Third, we must honor the language and practice of restorative justice. Traditional punitive systems focus on retribution, often producing repeat harm. Restorative approaches center repair and the restoration of relationships. They ask victims, offenders, and communities to participate in making amends, offering a path toward reconciliation and reduced recidivism. When societies adopt restorative frameworks, they acknowledge human fallibility while working toward healing—transforming conflict into an opportunity to rebuild trust.

Fourth, environmental stewardship must be reframed as a nonviolent act. Exploiting nature as though it were inert inventory is a form of violence that kills biodiversity, undermines livelihoods, and creates crises that disproportionately burden the most vulnerable. Nonviolent stewardship means honoring ecological limits, investing in regenerative agriculture and clean energy, and ensuring access to resources for future generations. This is not a sacrifice so much as an investment in our common home and in the long-term survival of our species.

This vision of nonviolence is not naive. History is full of examples where nonviolent movements achieved change against overwhelming odds—India’s independence movement, the U.S. civil rights movement, and more recent peaceful uprisings that led to democratic opening in various parts of the world. These movements did not succeed solely because of moral superiority; they succeeded because they leveraged strategy, discipline, broad-based coalition, and the ability to expose the injustice of violent systems without mirroring their brutality.

Adopting a nonviolent orientation at scale will be messy. People will disagree about priorities and means. There will be moments when force is necessary to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The point is not to deny complexity but to insist that violence should not be the default logic for solving problems. Instead, we should design systems and cultures that exhaust nonviolent options first, that prioritize de-escalation and mutual uplift, and that recognize the moral and practical costs of violence.

If we commit to this path, the benefits are both moral and practical. Societies organized around nonviolence tend to be more stable, more prosperous, and more resilient. They foster innovation not by crushing competitors but by building networks of trust and shared purpose. They produce healthier citizens—physically, mentally, and socially—because communities that care for one another reduce the stressors that lead to harm. And they leave a legacy that matters most: a habitable planet and institutions capable of delivering justice and dignity for generations to come.

Returning to my partner’s football metaphor, I now hear it less as a quip and more as an alarm bell. AND you may not feel the way that I am writing this blog, lets have dialogue in the comments. The spectacle of competition can be exhilarating, but it can also normalize division and glorify winners at the expense of many. When we start measuring success by abundance—by how many people thrive, how well ecosystems recover, how justly opportunities are distributed—we remember that life is a tapestry, not a scoreboard. Each thread—human, animal, plant, waterway—contributes to the strength of the whole.

This transformation begins with personal commitments and ripples outward. It begins with conversations where we listen to learn, not to win. It begins with leaders who model humility and curiosity rather than invulnerability. It begins with institutions that reward cooperation and designers who build systems that align individual incentives with collective flourishing.

These Illustrations were built and drawn to portray a different way of being. What do you think?

FOR me to close here I must say that winning—if we must use that word—should mean creating conditions where everyone has the opportunity to flourish. It should mean a world where peace is not merely the absence of conflict but the presence of justice, equity, and compassion. It is a lofty aim, but not an impossible one. If even a small fraction of us commit to moving in that direction—toward nonviolence, toward stewardship, toward shared success—the change will be seismic. I promise you: start down that path even a little bit, and everything will begin to change. Hard as it will be.

Hide-and-Seek of the Soul: Learning to Be Found…

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When I was a child, summer evenings meant the sweet, damp smell of grass and the soft thud of bare feet on the lawn as we played hide-and-seek until the light thinned to the color of my old side of our old house. I remember crouching behind brick walls in that ethnic area of Detroit called Hamtramck, my breath held, counting on my hands while my young friends scattered like leaves on the wind. The delight of being both pursued and hidden—of waiting in a secret pocket of the world until someone found me—stayed with me. That game was, in miniature, a schooling in the rhythms of life: the thrill of discovery, the quiet of waiting, the embarrassment and laughter when the hiding place failed. Beginning here, with that memory of hide-and-seek, helped me see how the hidden things of life are part of the same pattern we practiced as children.

One moment we are walking along, sure of our path, and the next moment something rises from below the surface—a memory, a grief, a joy so bright it takes our breath away. We jump, we scream, we wonder, we are grateful, sometimes all in the same moment. These small detonations and soft arrivals are reminders that we are alive. They are also invitations: invitations to pay attention, to name, to bear witness.

In spiritual direction, I have found that the time spent sitting with clients and listening to the story that unfolds usually brings about those hidden things that want to bubble to the surface. There is a kind of safety in the slow arc of attentive listening. As someone tells their story—staggering details together with ordinary moments, explanations scribbled in the margins—those tucked-away parts of experience begin to show themselves. A pause becomes pregnant with meaning. A stray tear draws out a knot of memory. An offhand joke reveals a wound. The directed space is not magic; it is relational and structured, and that structure matters. It offers permission to the hidden to be seen.

Why do hidden things remain hidden in the first place? Often because we have learned survival strategies that require us to ignore certain sensations or thoughts. We may have been taught that some feelings are inappropriate, unspiritual, or unwise to voice. We may fear the consequences of acknowledgement—shame, judgment, or a sense of being overwhelmed. Or we may be so immersed in the busyness of living—work, caretaking, the small daily duties—that we simply do not have the patience to notice the subtleties at work in our inner life. But life has a way of insisting. The hidden, like water, finds the path of least resistance. It leaks through in dreams, in somatic signals, in sudden irritations, in wonderings that won’t let us go.

When those pesky hidden things are asking to be seen, what do you normally do? Stuff them down, let them out, ignore them? That’s me, Ignore them! This simple question is an important litmus test for our way of managing interior life. Each of these options—suppressing, expressing, or ignoring—carries consequences.

Stuffing things down can be a short-term coping mechanism. It may allow us to function under pressure, to remain reliable for others, or to dodge the immediate pain of facing something difficult. But suppression is porous. Pain that is not metabolized finds another expression: chronic anxiety, irritability, sleep disturbances, or unexpected explosions of emotion. Over time, what we have buried can calcify, making it harder to access and integrate. Spiritually, suppression can feel like a closing off from the grace that often arrives when we name the truth of our condition. It can turn our inner landscape into a desert.

Letting things out—expressing raw emotion—can be liberating. A cry, a fierce conversation, an honest confession, a journal entry that spills secrets onto the page: these can unbind what was stuck. But unrestrained release without discernment can also cause harm. If the expression is directed at vulnerable others or enacted impulsively, it can fracture relationships and create new wounds. What helps is a tempered expression: naming what is present without launching it like a spear at someone else. Finding appropriate outlets—trusted friends, therapists, spiritual directors, creative acts—can channel release in healing ways.

Ignoring is its own form of avoidance, subtly different from stuffing. To ignore is too busy ourselves with neutral or distracting activities—scrolling, workaholism, noise—so that we do not have the space to meet whatever is asking for attention. Ignoring can feel safe because it delays the inevitable. Yet the hidden things have stamina. They may return more persistently or in altered forms. Ignoring is a passive collusion with fear.

So, what is the middle way? From the practice of spiritual direction and from the rhythms of contemplative life, a few patterns emerge that help make the hidden visible without being consumed by them.

  1. Cultivate a listening posture. Listening is not merely the absence of speaking; it is an orientation of attention. When you cultivate a listening posture toward yourself—pausing, closing the gap between stimulus and reaction—you give the hidden a chance to emerge. Practices that cultivate listening include silence, breath awareness, journaling, and prayerful attention. In a listening posture, you loosen the habit of immediate reactions and make space for discovery.
  1. Name gently. When something surfaces, name it as precisely as you can. “I am feeling afraid,” “I notice grief behind my anger,” “There is shame when I think about that conversation.” Naming is enacting a tiny liturgy of truth: you acknowledge a reality and thereby diminish its power to run you unconsciously. Naming need not be a full-blown analysis—often a brief, compassionate descriptor will do.
  1. Use trusted containers. Not every feeling needs to be told to everyone. Spiritual direction, therapy, close friendships, creative outlets, and ritual provide containers where the hidden can be explored safely. A good container holds both tenderness and truth. It helps you stay with a feeling long enough to learn from it without being overwhelmed.
  1. Practice curiosity, not judgment. Hidden things often come with a script—a voice that tells us we are broken, weak, or unworthy. Replace condemnation with curiosity. Ask, what is this wanting from me? How old is this pattern? Where did I first learn this response? Curiosity opens pathways of understanding that judgment seals shut.
  1. Attend to body and imagination. The hidden speaks not only through thought but through the body and imagination. An ache in the chest, a clenching in the jaw, a dream, an image that keeps returning—these are languages of the soul. Attend to them. They often carry the metaphorical shape of what’s needing attention. Let your imagination be a map, not a liar; test its images against gentle reality-checks. As an example, I tend to hold stress in my neck and at times becomes so painful that I cannot use one of my arms and when I check in with my body, I can usually find the reason.

When I think back to hide-and-seek on the lawn, I notice how the children’s version of the game allowed for a safe reveal. We knew, inherently, that being found wasn’t the end of the world—it was part of the play. That trust made hiding feel not like concealment but like a temporary, innocent withholding. In adult life we often forget that being found can be met with gentleness rather than punishment. Spiritual direction, friendships, and practices of presence restore that simple truth: the world, and the people we trust, can be safe places to be seen.

Reflections on life’s hiddenness inevitably led to paradox. The very things that surprise us—the sudden joy, the spontaneous grief—are both evidence of our vulnerability and of our depth. They remind us that life is not a list of accomplishments but a living relation. When we make room for these hidden things, they can become sacramental: ordinary moments that reveal deeper truth. A tear can be a doorway; an unexpected laugh can be grace.

In the end, how we respond to the hidden shapes the arc of our lives. Do we cultivate a posture of listening and curiosity, or do we keep building higher walls? Do we find companions who can sit with the messy reality of us, or do we continue a lonely performance? The invitation is simple and relentless: pay attention.

And so, I come back, as the sun sank on those summer evenings, to the hush of hiding and the laughter of being found. The child who crouched behind the hedge trusted that discovery would not be punishment but part of play; the adult who sits in a quiet room with a spiritual director or a friend can relearn that same trust. To let the hidden things surface is not to expose ourselves to harm but to return to a game we once knew well—the risky, delightful art of being seen. If we remember how play taught us that being found often brings relief, connection, and a burst of laughter, then perhaps we can meet our inner surprises with less dread and more curiosity. Hide-and-seek becomes a small theology: what is hidden will be found, and what is found can become fuel for deeper life. Trust the finding.

Presence Over Pressure: Rethinking Adulthood at 32

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I have started todays blog with a paraphrased story to illustrate this important study for coaching and spiritual direction.

When my friend Lila brought her twenty-four–year–old nephew, Jonah, to the small group at our church last spring, I expected the usual restless energy of someone caught between college and a first job. Jonah sat quietly through the opening prayer, his hands folded, eyes darting now and then to his phone. Then he listened as a woman in her fifties talked about grief; he asked a thoughtful question about responsibility. By the time the meeting ended he admitted, with a nervous laugh, that he sometimes felt like he was “pretending to be an adult.” He wasn’t sure whether that was a confession or a relief.

This part is dense reading but worth the time if you are a coach or spiritual director. The conversation Jonah sparked has stayed with me, (Jim) because it maps a striking piece of science that demands we rethink how we guide young people in coaching and spiritual formation. IN the latest issue of “Presence” a Spiritual Directors International publication it states this study from 2025 that neuroscientists from Cambridge University published in Nature Communications (Mousley et al.) that compared diffusion MRI scans from nearly four thousand human brains ranging from infancy to ninety years old. Rather than finding a smooth, linear path of maturation, they reported discrete shifts at roughly ages nine, thirty-two, sixty-six, and eighty-three. One of the most provocative takeaways: adolescence, in neurological terms, appears to stretch well beyond what most social norms call “adulthood” — actual adulthood, the study suggests, may not begin until around age thirty-two.

This finding upends a lot of assumptions we make in churches, coaching programs, and spiritual direction. If brains remain in a significant developmental flux into the late twenties and early thirties, how should mentors, pastors, and spiritual directors show up for people like Jonah — or for us — in ways that match their neurodevelopment reality?

What the study suggests….

Mousley and colleagues used diffusion MRI to map patterns of white matter — the brain’s communication highways — across the lifespan. Prior to age thirty-two, the brain is still reorganizing: white matter is growing, neural pathways are becoming more efficient, and connectivity patterns are shifting. After roughly thirty-two, the researchers found a more stabilized architecture that often persists for about three decades, followed by later-life shifts around sixty-six and eighty-three. These aren’t just trivia about neurons; they have implications for how people form identity, sustain relationships, and engage with meaning and purpose.

A short story: the mentor, the millennial, the map When I met Jonah months later for coffee, he’d switched jobs twice and was enrolled in a night course on ethics. He confessed he dreaded the “adult checkboxes” — house, marriage, stable job — yet felt impatient with peers who seemed to have them. We talked about mentors: he wanted guidance but bristled at being told what to do. I told him about the Cambridge study — he laughed, then listened.

“Maybe being older isn’t the only way to be wise,” he said. “Maybe people can help me without trying to make me into something I’m not yet.”

That line captures the pastoral (presence) pivot we need: to offer presence without premature pressure, to accompany without imposing finished forms. The neuroscientific finding invites humility and patience. It asks us to honor the ongoing developmental work young adults are doing — neurologically, emotionally, spiritually — while providing steady practices and relational spaces that support maturation without rushing it.

Two ways for us to be present

  1. Practice steady attunement through embodied listening What it is: Embodied listening means attending to the whole person — voice, posture, affect, silence — and not just the words. It requires slowing down, modulating one’s own responses, and noticing shifts in emotion and cognitive framing without immediately correcting or advising.

How to do it:

  • Create predictable space and rhythm: offer recurring meetings that give the person time to try on insights between sessions. Stability matters to a brain still organizing its networks.
  • Use nonverbal check-ins: begin with a single question — “Where is your attention?” — allow a minute of silence, then reflect what you notice about tone and posture before asking probing questions.
  • Resist the fix: when you sense the urge to “solve” identity questions, mirror instead. “I hear uncertainty about responsibility and a desire for meaning.” This models a mind that can hold complexity without collapsing into premade answers.

Why it helps:

For a brain in flux, steady attunement supports the integration of new patterns. It offers a relational scaffold where the young adult can test emerging values and neural pathways safely.

  1. Offer scaffolded practices that combine exploration with ritual What it is: Scaffolded practices are simple, repeatable spiritual exercises that invite both experimentation and the formation of habit. They recognize that neurodevelopment thrives on both novelty (to build new connections) and repetition (to consolidate them).

How to do it:

  • Introduce three-month “experiment” cycles: choose one spiritual practice (e.g., contemplative journaling, short daily silence, or service with reflection) to try for 90 days. Check in weekly for the first month, then biweekly.
  • Combine short, diverse practices with a consistent ritual frame: begin and end with a five-minute centering practice (breath or scripture reading), then introduce a varied middle (creative reflection, dialogue, or action).
  • Encourage meta-reflection: every month, ask: “What patterns do you notice in your responses? What feels alive? What drains you?” This helps the maturing brain integrate experience into identity.

Why it helps: This approach respects the brain’s dual needs: novelty for growth and repetition for stability. Ritual gives a predictable platform for experimentation, reducing anxiety while encouraging exploration.

Why this matters to coaching and spiritual direction

  1. Developmentally informed accompaniment improves outcomes coaching and spiritual direction aim to catalyze growth: in habits, vocation, moral discernment, and interior integration. If the brain continues to rewire well into the late twenties and early thirties, then coaching strategies that treat early adulthood as a finished stage may be ineffective or even harmful. A developmental lens encourages coaches and directors to calibrate expectations, scaffold change plans over longer timelines, and attend to the neurobiological rhythms of consolidation and plasticity.
  2. It reframes maturity as a process, not a milestone spiritual direction, at its best, is about guiding people into deeper coherence — integrating emotions, beliefs, and actions. The Cambridge study reminds us that coherence can be emergent and slow. Rather than treating a thirty-year-old’s doubts as failures, we can see them as part of ongoing integration. This reduces shame and normalizes the nonlinear trajectory of faith and identity formation.
  3. It demands relational humility and patience Both coaching and spiritual direction rely on relationship. Neuroscience underscores that relationship is not merely a context but a mechanism for change: safe, attuned relationships shape neural development. Coaches and directors who cultivate attunement, ritual, and scaffolded experimentation are not just providing tools — they are offering the relational conditions in which the brain can reconfigure toward more adaptive patterns.
  4. It broadens the role of community If individual neurodevelopment unfolds across decades, community becomes a crucial resource — not merely a backdrop. Churches, peer groups, mentorship networks, and coaching cohorts can offer the recurring, low-stakes opportunities to practice new moral habits, relationships, and vocational identities. Programs that build long-term relational continuity will likely be more aligned with how brains mature.

A closing note to mentors and leaders:

When you sit across from someone like Jonah, remember you are not simply transferring information. You’re participating in a slow, relational craft of formation. The Cambridge findings do not strip away responsibility; they expand it. We must give space for the messy apprenticeship of being an adult, provide practices that balance novelty with ritual, and be present in ways that allow the nervous system and the soul to settle into new patterns of coherence.

Jonah eventually stopped checking his phone during our meetings. He still questions, still wanders in and out of certainty. But he’s started keeping a short weekly journal and meets once a month with an older mentor who listens without solving. Watching him, I’m learning to be less anxious about boxes checked and more attentive to the small, steady shifts that mark maturation. That’s the work neuroscience is asking us to honor: presence over pressure, accompaniment over answers, and the patient trust that growing up is a journey that may take longer — and be more sacred — than we thought.

Thank you for reading this study and helpful guide for professionals who coach and do spiritual direction.

Mousley, A., et al. (2025). (2025). Nature Communications. [Mousley et al., 2025, Nature Communications — diffusion MRI lifespan study]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41290675/

Gentle Steps Through the Ache of Loneliness – Hope

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The ache of loneliness is deep and profound for some of us. It shows up in our posture, our energy and the way we relate to the world. I remember when I went through a painful divorce and the loneliness I felt. I did not have any self-esteem, or knowledge of what was next in my life. I traveled on autopilot, grunted responses to questions and went deep inside myself in a protective stance. My shoulders hunched as if trying to make myself smaller so I would take up less space — and maybe be less likely to be hurt again.

That posture mirrored how I felt inside: small, raw, and on guard. My days blurred together. I thought loneliness was something to be fixed quickly, as if I were just a machine with a loose bolt. But loneliness isn’t just a problem to be solved. It’s a human experience that asks for tenderness, time, and gradual re-learning about who we are when we are alone.

Loneliness wears many faces and loneliness can be noisy or silent. It can come after a breakup, a move, retirement, the loss of a loved one, or during seasons when you don’t fit into the surrounding culture. Sometimes it arrives without an obvious cause — you might be surrounded by people yet feel profoundly disconnected. It can color how you see yourself (when I felt unlovable) and others (nobody understands me). That lens is heavy and makes ordinary tasks feel larger.

When loneliness becomes long-term, it shapes habits. You might withdraw from invitations, avoid phone calls, or spend afternoons scrolling through images of other people living bright lives. Facebook is horrible for these times. You might develop defensive behaviors — sarcasm, irritability, or constant self-criticism — to keep others at a safe distance. These are understandable survival strategies, but they can keep us stuck.

A friend of mine, Marcus, is a gregarious person by nature, but after his father died, he sank into a quiet deep loneliness. He would show up to gatherings and laugh easily, but afterward he would go home and close the curtains. One night he told me he felt like a house with rooms no one ever walked into. Over the next few months, he knew something needed to change and he began meeting with a grief group and volunteered at a local community garden. The volunteers didn’t try to fix him; they simply shared tasks and stories. With time, his personal rooms were visited more often — not because he suddenly changed overnight, but because small, consistent human interactions built a sense of belonging again.

Another story: Ana, who moved to Italy for work, felt disconnected from the language and customs. Her loneliness was layered with isolation and cultural disorientation. She found solace by starting a weekly ritual — Tuesday potluck evenings with a few colleagues. No grand obligations, just a bowl of soup and one good question: “What was the best thing you did for yourself this week?” That question became a conduit for sharing and made her feel seen.

Gentle steps to comfort your own heart being lonely is not a personal failing! Responding to it with gentleness rather than self-blame transforms the experience. Here are four practical, compassionate ways to be gentle with yourself on this path:

  • Acknowledge the ache without rushing it. Sit with the feeling and name it: “This is loneliness.” Naming reduces the power of the sensation and helps you observe it instead of being swallowed by it. You might say this aloud when you’re alone or write it in a journal.
  • Normalize your experience. Remind yourself that many have felt this — it’s part of being human. Reading stories, memoirs, or essays about loneliness can make you feel less alone in your aloneness.
  • Create small rituals of care. When we’re lonely, big plans feel impossible. Start with tiny rituals: a cup of tea at the same time each afternoon, a ten-minute walk, lighting a candle before dinner. Rituals create structure and a sense of predictability, which is soothing when the world feels unstable.
  • Befriend your body. Loneliness often settles physically — tight shoulders, shallow breathing, a heavy chest. Use simple body-based practices: slow diaphragmatic breathing (inhale for 4, exhale for 6), progressive muscle relaxation, or a short yoga sequence that opens the chest. Even gentle movement can change your internal state and communicate kindness to yourself.

Even with the practical steps above there may be times when seeking therapeutic support is the most important thing you can do. A therapist, counselor or spiritual director can provide tools to navigate loneliness, help process past hurts, and gently challenge patterns that keep you isolated. Group therapy can be especially powerful because it combines professional help with human connection.

Comforting exercises you can try today

  • Write a letter to your future self. Describe what you are feeling right now and what you need. Seal it or save it to be opened in six months. This creates continuity and an ally you can visit later.
  • The “two-minute reach” practice. Each day, do one small, friendly thing for someone: send a message saying, “Thinking of you,” or thank the person who refilled the coffee. Small gestures often return warmth and remind you you’re part of a social web.
  • The self-compassion break. When you notice pain, put a hand on your heart and say: “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself.” Pause and breathe for several rounds.
  • Make a list of “gentle yeses.” These are optional social activities that feel manageable — a short walk with a friend, an hour at the library, calling a sibling. Start with one gentle yes per week.

When loneliness persists

If loneliness feels chronic or is accompanied by hopelessness, persistent fatigue, or changes in appetite or sleep, reach out for professional support. Loneliness can be linked to mental health conditions like depression and can benefit from therapy, medication, or both. Asking for help is a courageous, practical step to comfort your heart.

A compassionate ending

Loneliness can be a fierce teacher. It can expose where we are tender, where we fear rejection, and where we have forgotten how to tend to ourselves. But it can also be a doorway to deeper self-knowledge. When we meet loneliness with small acts of kindness — tending our bodies, creating rituals, reaching out in tiny ways, and seeking community — we slowly reweave the threads of belonging.

Please hear me when I say, “you don’t need to hurry the healing”. On hard days, remember the posture you instinctively assume in pain: protective, small. Try instead to soften one muscle at a time. Breathe. Put a hand over your heart. Say one gentle thing to yourself. These are not grand solutions, but they are steady, and steadiness is what heals. Over time, small moments of tenderness add up, and the world starts to feel a little less cold.

A poem I wrote about loneliness….

Alone, I fold myself into small shapes, a quiet shell against the world’s bright wind.

Don’t see me

My shoulders learn to hide, my breath grows shallow, and I move through days on soft autopilot.

Don’t see me

Inside, a spark remembers how to rest and keeps a small light against the dark.

Don’t see me

I light a tiny ritual — tea, a song, a name — and let the ache be a visitor, not the whole house.

Maybe see me

Softly I unfold, muscle by muscle, word by word, until a single hand on my chest becomes a bridge.

See me

SEQ: Connect to Self, Others, and the World Deeply

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Blending Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence: Adding connection to Yourself (awareness), Your Familiar others (belonging),, and the World (insight).

A story that shaped everything

My wife Lynette and I were at a conference in Italy for 6 Seconds when all our stuff was stolen while we stopped for lunch. We came back to the car, looked over the top of the car, and started laughing — not because nothing was lost, but because we chose meaning and connection over panic. The CEO of 6 Seconds noticed how we were handling it and suggested adding a spiritual layer to their emotional intelligence assessment, the powerhouse that had rocketed around the world into 185 countries. That seed became a one-page profile report and a 27-page development report that helps people understand how their connection in the world is working and thriving.

Spiritual Emotional intelligence (SEQ) blends thinking, feeling, and sensing clarity, emotional regulation, and a felt sense of connection and purpose. To apply this effectively, it helps to see connection at three domains: yourself, familiar others (friends/colleagues/community, family), and the world at large. Below I use the SEQ assessment — brief indicators, reflective prompts, and development actions — to help you integrate connection practically into each of the three domains.

 

How to use the SEQ assessment concept.

Think of this like a quick self-check: for each domain, rate yourself from 1–5 (1 = rarely / 5 = consistently). Then use the prompts and development actions to grow. The aim is not perfection but awareness and repeatable practices.

Domain 1 Awareness— Connection to Yourself (self-awareness): Quick self-check indicators:

  • I know what grounds me and can return to it when I’m shaken.
  • I treat myself with kinder language during setbacks.
  • I can identify my core values and make small choices that align with them.

Reflective prompts:

  • What makes me feel truly at home in my own skin?
  • When I’m distressed, what internal voice dominates (critic, protector, supporter)?
  • Which small gestures (breath, pause, note) make me feel anchored?

Development actions:

  • Morning Awareness Check: 2 minutes — name one value you’ll live by today and one bodily cue to monitor (e.g., tight shoulders).
  • Ritual for small setbacks: Ground (60s breathing) + Reconnect (ask: what does this reveal about what matters?).
  • Narrative rewiring: Practice telling one short story each week that emphasizes resilience and connection to yourself.

Domain 2 Belonging — Connection to Familiar Others (friends, colleagues, local community and Family): Quick self-check indicators:

  • I can express need and receive care within my family.
  • We have shared rituals that create community.
  • Conflicts are resolved in ways that preserve connection.
  • I have a balanced network: people who support me emotionally, practically, and intellectually.
  • I show up in community with consistent, small actions.
  • I both give and receive in friendships.

Reflective prompts:

  • Which friendships sustain my sense of purpose, and which drain it?
  • Which family rituals help me feel rooted? Which are missing?
  • When family tension arises, how quickly do I move to blame vs. curiosity?
  • What roles do I habitually play (rescuer, fixer, avoider), and how do they affect connection?
  • How regularly do I invest time in people closest to me?

Development actions:

  • Family “Connection Minute”: weekly check-in where each person shares one moment, they felt connected and one need.
  • Conflict pause: name emotion, ask one open question, reflect shared values before problem-solving.
  • Create a family map of connection: list people, places, and shared practices that generate belonging; keep it visible.
  • Map your Belonging Network: list 6–8 names across roles (mentor, peer, creative friend) and commit to one outreach/month per person you want to strengthen.
  • Practice compassionate curiosity: in conversation, name your feeling, then ask “What mattered most to you there?”
  • Micro-rituals of presence: three minutes of focused attention (no devices) when meeting a friend or colleague.

Domain 3 (Insight)— Connection to the World (Higher power, people all over the world, causes, and meaning). Quick self-check indicators:

  • I feel part of something bigger than myself (nature, cause, tradition).
  • I can find meaning in setbacks by connecting them to larger narratives.
  • I contribute in ways that align with my values.

Reflective prompts:

  • What larger stories (civic, spiritual, environmental) provide me with meaning?
  • Where do I experience awe or transcendence? How often?
  • What practical contribution can I make that affirms my connection to the world?
  • In workplace interactions, when do I feel most seen and when do I feel invisible?

Development actions:

  • Weekly Meaning Inventory: record three moments of connection to something larger (a natural scene, a piece of music, volunteering).
  • Public acts of connecting: small consistent contributions (time, skills, donations) to a cause you care about.
  • Embodied practice: regular time in nature or contemplative practice that cultivates a felt sense of connection.

Putting it together:

Try a simple SEQ-style one-page check (Go here for PDF)

Create your own one-page Connection Snapshot. Columns: Write each Domain | and your Current Rating (1–5) | One Strength | One Next Step. Complete it weekly for a month and watch patterns emerge. This mirrors SEQ assessments (short, actionable, feedback-driven) and invites SEQ reflection (meaning, role in the larger web).

Use this sample example of a one-page layout (use a notebook or digital note)

  • Yourself — Rating: 3 — Strength: morning ritual — Next step: add a 60-second body scan.
  • Familiar others — Rating: 2 — Strength: close colleague — Next step: reach out to two friends this month.
  • World — Rating: 3 — Strength: monthly volunteering — Next step: schedule weekly nature walks.

Practical routines to anchor the work

  • Daily micro-routine (5–10 minutes): Morning Connection Check + brief body scan. Midday pause: name feeling and three breaths. Evening: short meaning Inventory entry.
  • Weekly routine (20–30 minutes): Update one-page Connection Snapshot, plan one relational outreach, and take a reflective walk.
  • Monthly routine: Review progress across three domains, adjust network map, commit to one new public act of connection.

Why this matters Connection at multiple levels stabilizes you when life is unpredictable.

You can count on life being unpredictable.

In Italy, our laughter after theft came from inner connection (Awareness), our close relationship (Belonging), and a larger orientation to life’s story (Insight). Emotional intelligence gave us regulation; spiritual intelligence gave us purpose and perspective. Together, they help you respond with presence, resilience, and aligned connections.

Final invitation Try a one-week experiment: complete the quick self-check for the three domains on day one, use the micro-routines daily, and revisit your one-page snapshot at week’s end. Notice shifts in emotion, decisions, and relationships. SEQ is built in small, repeated acts: one breath, one question, one connection step at a time.

Go to www.spiritofe.com/blog for more posts.

Seasons of Life: Plant, Cultivate, Harvest, Rest

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Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter—four words that map to the weather outside, but also to the arc of a human life. About twenty years ago I developed a simple process to explain the changing seasons of our lives, and since then I’ve used it with people at many mile markers: teenagers, young professionals, midlife leaders, retirees. The metaphor is simple and intuitive, and it helps to name where we are and what work is appropriate for that season. Below I walk through each life-season—Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter—describe its character and give concrete examples of how people typically move through them. Wherever you are, the seasons remind you that change is natural, purposeful, and cyclical. Assuming we live to an average age of 80 please follow along below.

 

Spring: Ages 0–20 — Planting the seeds of who we might become then Spring is newness. The air smells of possibility. In this life-season we are discovering tastes, talents, and identity. Curiosity rules: children test boundaries, adolescents try on personas, young adults experiment with careers and relationships. Spring is the time for exploration, learning, and making mistakes—because mistakes are how seeds learn to grow.

Examples:

  • The student who tries math club, drama, and robotics before settling on engineering: each trial is a seed of interest, some blossoming later, some composting into wisdom.
  • A teen who travels abroad for the first time and finds an unexpected love for language and culture: that spark becomes the basis for a major in international studies.
  • The young parent who reads every book on infant sleep and nutrition, building a foundation of practical knowledge that will shape family rhythms for years.

What Spring asks of us

  • Curiosity over certainty. Try things without needing to commit forever.
  • Permission to be imperfect. Early experiments are meant to be rough drafts.
  • Support and scaffolding. Mentors, teachers, and family are the gardeners who provide guidance, not commands.

Summer: Ages 20–40 — Cultivation, hard work, and tending to what was planted then Summer is warm and busy. The seeds and seedlings from Spring now require persistent care: long days of watering projects, pruning distractions, fertilizing relationships. This is the period of craft, career-building, relationship consolidation, and parenting young children. The emphasis shifts from exploration to cultivation—turning possibility into reliable growth

Examples:

  • The professional who chooses a job, enrolls in targeted training, and spends years building expertise: through daily grind and focused practice, they develop the competence that makes them indispensable.
  • A couple who buys a first home, balances bills, and learns to co-manage household stress: their relationship grows through negotiation and shared responsibility.
  • An artist who organizes a schedule to write, paint, or rehearse every morning before work: discipline leads to a body of work.

What Summer asks of us

  • Patience and consistency. Growth is the product of repeated action, not one-off inspiration.
  • Discipline and sacrifice. Summer frequently requires saying no to immediate pleasure to protect long-term gain.
  • Adaptability. Heat brings pests and droughts; similarly, setbacks will require recalibration—not abandoning the whole garden.

Fall: Ages 40–60 — Harvest, reaping what you’ve sown then Fall is abundant and reflective. The work of Spring and Summer begins to yield measurable returns. Careers reach plateaus of influence, children launch into their own lives, investments and relationships show fruit. Fall is both a celebration and a reckoning: we gather the harvest and take stock of what was gained—and what might be missing.

Examples:

  • The entrepreneur who sells a company, realizing both financial reward and a sense of accomplishment: the sale is the harvest of years of risk and toil.
  • The parent sitting in an empty nest for the first time: there’s pride in grown children, and space to rediscover self.
  • The teacher who earns tenure and sees former students’ career-success: the lifetime of small moments culminates in visible impact.

What Fall asks of us

  • Gratitude and stewardship. Harvest is a time to enjoy results and wisely distribute them.
  • Honest assessment. Some crops may not have produced as expected—this is an opportunity for learning and for pruning future commitments.
  • Planning for transition. The abundance of Fall can fund new projects, mentorship roles, or simpler living in the seasons ahead.

Winter: Ages 60+ — Rest, reflection, and sharing the wisdom of a fallow ground then Winter is quieter and slower, but not empty. After decades of sowing, tending, and harvesting, the ground becomes fallow and the pace softens. This is a season for reflection, synthesis, and giving. Wisdom rises to the surface. People in Winter often become mentors, grandparents, community elders, or artists of subtlety. They ask new questions about meaning, legacy, and contribution.

Examples:

  • The retired engineer who volunteers to coach a robotics team, passing on practical knowledge and the ethic of craftsmanship.
  • The grandparent who tells family stories, preserving heritage and values for younger generations.
  • An older person who takes up painting later in life, using decades of observation to create work with depth and patience.

What Winter asks of us

  • Acceptance of limits. Winter invites us to appreciate what remains possible rather than mourn what’s past.
  • Generosity. Sharing accumulated knowledge, time, and resources can be among the most fruitful acts in Winter.
  • Curiosity reignited. Although the pace is slower, curiosity can still lead to deep learning—reading, community work, or spiritual exploration.

Seasonal transitions: fluid, non-linear, and deeply personal and one useful feature of the seasons model is that it’s not rigid. People don’t all move in lockstep with their birth year. Life events—immigration, illness, career changes, late parenthood—can shift us into a different season. An entrepreneur in their fifties may still be in a Summer of building, while a young person who experiences early loss may enter a reflective Fall earlier than peers. The model’s strength is in naming patterns: the energy you need to cultivate, the harvest you can expect, and the rest that’s owed.

Examples of non-linear journeys:

  • A 55-year-old who starts a new company after selling their previous one: their season is an energetic Summer nested within a chronological Fall.
  • A 30-year-old who becomes a caregiver for an aging parent: their Summer includes intense caretaking that often resembles Fall’s harvesting responsibilities.
  • A person who experiences a major spiritual awakening in their forties and shifts priorities from accumulation to meaning: their internal season moves toward Winter even as biological age sits in Summer.

Practical ways to honor your season

  • If you’re in Spring: cultivate curiosity. Try internships, travel, and varied learning. Build habits more than plans.
  • If you’re in Summer: protect your daily rituals. Keep a balance that allows for growth without burnout. Prioritize long-term commitments over short-term applause.
  • If you’re in Fall: catalog your achievements and gaps. Delegate, mentor, and think strategically about legacy and impact.
  • If you’re in Winter: simplify. Share stories, mentor, and focus on relationships. Consider how your resources—time, money, knowledge—can serve the next generation.

A final note on beauty and dignity in every season Each life-season has beauty and challenge. Spring’s zeal can be naïve; Summer’s busyness can be myopic; Fall’s harvest can bring unexpected loss; Winter’s quiet can feel lonely. Yet every season also brings opportunities uniquely its own—a first discovery in Spring, a mastery in Summer, a tangible harvest in Fall, and distilled wisdom in Winter. None is superior; all are necessary.

So, as you read this, consider what season you’re in. Name it. Ask what work that season requests of you. Tend your life with the attention appropriate to the season—plant with curiosity, cultivate with discipline, harvest with gratitude, and rest with generosity. When you treat life as a cycle of seasons rather than a single, linear race, you give yourself both grace and a roadmap: the right action at the right time, and the confidence that change is not failure but natural rhythm.

EQ & SEQ: Leading Teams Through AI and Meaning Now

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When you hear “soft skills do you automatically think “soft results”? Too many leaders still file emotional intelligence (EQ) and spiritual emotional intelligence (SEQ) under the “nice-to-have” column—pleasant, but peripheral. That mindset is a costly mistake. In a world driven by speed, complexity, and automation, EQ and SEQ are not optional extras; they are strategic differentiators. Here’s a clear, evidence-based case for why skeptical leaders should care, two practical insights for how these capacities produce measurable breakthroughs, and why investing in them is essential in the age of AI.

What I am talking about:

  • EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is the set of skills that helps people perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions—both their own and others’—to navigate social interactions, make decisions, and solve problems.
  • SEQ (Spiritual Emotional Intelligence) builds on EQ by connecting emotional awareness with a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, and values. SEQ helps people align personal and organizational purpose, sustain ethical behavior under pressure, and remain resilient amid uncertainty.

Why leaders should stop treating EQ/SEQ as “soft”

  1. Outcomes, not intentions. Leaders who dismiss EQ/SEQ often focus only on outputs—task completion, process adherence, KPIs. But outputs are produced by humans. Emotions and meaning shape motivation, creativity, collaboration, and change adoption. Those drivers directly affect productivity, quality, turnover, and customer experience.
  2. Hard metrics respond. Multiple studies connect higher EQ with better performance: (See links for study’s below) improved team effectiveness, fewer conflicts, faster decision-making, and better customer satisfaction. SEQ adds another layer—lower burnout, higher retention, and stronger alignment with organizational mission. These translate into reduced recruitment costs, higher lifetime customer value, and faster time-to-market.
  3. Risk mitigation. Poor emotional dynamics cause legal risks, reputational damage, and project failure. EQ and SEQ reduce interpersonal friction, ethical lapses, and the silent disengagement that sinks initiatives.

Two insights that lead to breakthroughs

Insight 1 — Emotional fluency accelerates execution and innovation Employees with higher EQ are better at reading the emotional state of teams and stakeholders, regulating stress under deadlines, and reframing setbacks as learning. This fluency creates faster cleaner communication and fewer stalled projects.

Example: Consider two product teams facing the same technical roadblock. Team A lacks emotional fluency: blame circulates, meetings get longer, decisions are delayed, and morale drops. Team B has high EQ: they quickly acknowledge stress, reframe the problem as “what can we try next,” assign clear roles, and agree on short experiments. Team B iterates faster and ships a solution sooner.

Why this is a breakthrough: Speed and quality of execution increase (at the same time). That accelerates business outcomes—shorter time to revenue, better customer feedback cycles, and lower operational drag.

How to operationalize it:

  • Train leaders and teams in core EQ skills: self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management.
  • Use “emotion check-ins” at the start of meetings to surface unspoken dynamics.
  • Create rapid experiment protocols so teams can fail fast and learn faster without emotional fallout.

Insight 2 — Purpose-oriented leadership (SEQ) reduces attrition and amplifies discretionary effort SEQ links daily work to deeper meaning. People who feel their work matters—aligned to values and a collective purpose—are more engaged, more creative, and more likely to go beyond the job description when needed. Engagement is not “soft”; it’s the multiplier for performance.

Example: Two customer service centers have identical scripts and tools. The center cultivating SEQ frames their mission as “restoring dignity” rather than merely “managing tickets.” Agents are encouraged to find small, meaningful interventions. The result: higher CSAT scores, fewer escalations, and 20–30% lower turnover over a year.

Why this is a breakthrough: Lower turnover saves substantial hiring and ramp up costs; higher discretionary effort improves customer lifetime value and brand advocacy.

How to operationalize it:

  • Embed purpose into onboarding, performance conversations, and recognition systems.
  • Encourage leaders to connect daily tasks to higher-level impact—use stories and metrics.
  • Support reflective practices (brief journal prompts or team reflections) that help employees surface purpose in their work.

Why EQ and SEQ are essential in the age of AI

AI is astonishing at pattern-matching, prediction, and scale. It will automate many cognitive processes. But three key human domains remain distinct:

  1. Emotional nuance. AI can detect sentiment signals, but truly understanding context, relational history, unspoken tension, and moral complexity is still human territory. Complex negotiations, delicate feedback, and trust-building rely on subtle emotional intelligence.
  2. Meaning and ethical judgment. SEQ involves values-based reasoning and purpose alignment. While AI can optimize for specified objectives, it does not inherently hold or steward organizational values. Leaders with strong SEQ guide ethically aligned choices and ensure long-term stewardship rather than short-term optimization.
  3. Motivation and culture. AI can recommend actions, but it cannot inspire people to care. Cultural cohesion, discretionary effort, and resilience in crises depend on leaders who can connect work to meaning, model values, and emotionally sustain teams.

Put simply: as AI takes on more “what” tasks, human beings must double down on the “who” and “why.” That’s EQ and SEQ.

Practical steps for leaders who are skeptical—but results-focused

  1. Start with a business problem, not a course. Choose a measurable KPI—time-to-market, turnover, customer satisfaction—and pilot an EQ/SEQ intervention tied to that metric. If you can’t link training to a business outcome, don’t start.
  2. Measure what matters. Use both quantitative KPIs (attrition, NPS, cycle time) and short, frequent pulse surveys to capture psychological safety and purpose alignment.
  3. Build EQ/SEQ into leadership expectations. Make emotional and purpose-driven leadership a criterion in performance reviews and promotion decisions.
  4. Invest in coaching and practice, not just seminars. Skills like self-regulation and empathy improve with feedback and coached practice—real 1:1 coaching, role plays, and on-the-job reflection are more effective than a one-off workshop.
  5. Use AI as an amplifier, not a replacement. Leverage AI tools for data signals (e.g., sentiment analytics, workload patterns), then apply human judgment to interpret and act on those signals with EQ and SEQ.

A quick ROI sketch

  • Reducing voluntary turnover by 10% in a 1,000-person org with average hiring/ramp up cost of $20k would save millions.
  • Improving customer satisfaction by even a few percentage points increases retention and lifetime value, multiplying revenue.
  • Shortening project cycle times reduces time-to-market and increases competitive advantage.

All of these outcomes correlate strongly with higher EQ and SEQ in leadership and teams. That is measurable impact, not fuzzy feel-good talk.

Final note to skeptical leaders If you care about getting the job done—and getting it done sustainably, ethically, and repeatedly—EQ and SEQ are not optional. They sharpen execution, safeguard culture, reduce costs of failure, and unlock the kind of discretionary effort that fuels innovation. In an era where AI handles more tasks, the differentiating advantage lies in how humans relate, interpret meaning, and guide values-driven decisions. Those are learnable, coachable skills. They deserve to be treated with the same rigor and investment you give to any other capability that drives your business forward.

If you want, I can help you design a pilot program tied to a specific KPI—select a target metric and I’ll outline a six-week intervention with measurement, training components, and expected impact. Jim@spiritofeq.com Which outcome would you prioritize: faster execution, lower attrition, or higher customer satisfaction?

  1. O’Boyle, E. H., Humphrey, R. H., Pollack, J. M., Hawver, T., & Story, P. A. (2011). The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(5), 788–818.
  • Link (publisher/abstract): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/job.714
  • Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=O’Boyle+Humphrey+Pollack+Hawver+Story+2011+emotional+intelligence+meta-analysis
  1. Joseph, D. L., & Newman, D. A. (2010). Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 54–78.
  • Link (publisher/abstract): https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-21650-001
  • Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Joseph+Newman+2010+emotional+intelligence+meta-analysis
  1. Côté, S., & Miners, C. T. H. (2006). Emotional intelligence, cognitive intelligence, and job performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 51(1), 1–28.
  • Link (publisher/abstract): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2189/asqu.51.1.1
  • Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Cot%C3%A9+Miners+2006+Emotional+intelligence+cognitive+intelligence+job+performance
  1. Wong, C.-S., & Law, K. S. (2002). The Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS): Scale development and validation. Personnel Psychology, 55(4), 881– . (Also includes findings linking WLEIS scores to job outcomes.)
  • Link (publisher/abstract): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2002.tb00136.x
  • Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Wong+Law+2002+WLEIS