Photo: “Purpose Driven” © Martha Brettschneider / Damselwings Photography
Before we dive in — if you’ve been looking for a gentle, structured way to build a mindfulness practice, my 15-Day Meditation Refresh starts this Wednesday, July 1. Join us here.
A friend challenged me recently on something I’d said. I’d used the phrase “you need the dark to see the light,” and he pushed back: “There’s more evil in the world than good. How does that track?”
I’ve been sitting with that ever since. Not because I think he’s wrong to notice the darkness. It’s everywhere, and it’s loud. But I think we’ve confused visibility with volume. We see the hard, the harmful, and the heartbreaking more, especially now, with social media engineered to trigger our threat responses and shrink our attention spans. Our brains are wired to scan for danger. That wiring kept our ancestors alive. But it was never meant to be our only lens.
I’m in the business of a different kind of attention.
My work — as a mindfulness teacher, as a Positive Intelligence® coach, as someone who has spent years learning to notice where my energy actually goes — is fundamentally about this: that attention is trainable. That where we point it shapes not just our mood, but our lives. The more time I spend noticing the beauty of the natural world, the quiet good works of ordinary people, the resilience of living things, the more grateful I am for this life. My sense of meaning deepens in direct proportion to that noticing. Despair gets very little of my time, not because I suppress it, but because I’ve built different muscles.
I want to tell you about some of the people and organizations building those muscles right now, because we don’t hear enough of these stories.
Recently, a room full of people came to my “Composting Your Inner Critic” workshop to do something pretty courageous. Our negativity bias is survival wiring: ancient, automatic, and not our fault. But it isn’t our destiny either. Redirecting attention toward curiosity, empathy, and what’s generative takes real, deliberate effort. The people in that room were doing exactly that. It’s a badass move after a lifetime of letting your survival brain call the shots.
What starts as a private act — choosing curiosity over fear, empathy over autopilot — can become something much larger. The non-profit organization Machik is proof of that.
I have recently had the privilege of becoming friends with the founders of this extraordinary organization, which supports Tibetan communities in ways that are both practical and profound. Machik was founded by a Tibetan refugee family. Their father was once one of the Dalai Lama’s bodyguards. That lineage — of protection, of loyalty, of care for something larger than oneself — runs through everything the organization does.
I’ve donated a number of my own products and services to their online auction, running through July 21, which has grown into a virtual gathering of remarkably creative and generous people. Auction offerings ranging from unique experiences to handmade items and special services. There’s also a direct donation option if you’d prefer to give that way. The auction offers a beautiful bouquet of opportunities to put your attention where it counts. I’d love for you to take a look, and to share it with others who might find something that sparks their interest: givebutter.com/c/MachikAuction
Workshop participants. A nonprofit carrying a lineage of devoted service across the world. These aren’t different in kind; they’re different in scale. Each one represents someone deciding to direct their energy toward what’s possible rather than what’s broken.
This is what I mean when I talk about building muscles. It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not looking away from what’s hard. It’s training yourself, deliberately and repeatedly, to also notice what’s growing in the shadows, what’s courageous, what’s quietly flourishing. The good stories are there.
Coming back to my opening program reminder, if you want to start building those muscles, I’d love to have you join me for my 15-Day Meditation Refresh, starting Wednesday, July 1. Fifteen days of practice with a beautiful like-minded community. All skill levels are welcome, including first-timers. The practices we’ll explore are the building blocks to train your attention towards what’s actually here, including the good.
