Donald Miller's Blog, page 18

Make the Most of the Path You’re On

There is a path we all walk in life. All the places we go when the path gets too rocky and exhausting and brutal and beautiful are dead-end detours. If you take these detours you are not bad, but you are wasting your time and energy.

The path looks like this:

Come back to the path.

There’s no other way.

You will never find your perfect life “balance” on the path for the same reason you will never find a unicorn on the path – because these things don’t exist. Forget unicorns and balance. If you were perfectly balanced, you’d never have to take anyone’s hand to steady yourself, and that would be a tragedy.

There is no solid ground on the path — so don’t hold your breath till you find it. Breathe deeply and keep moving forward awkwardly. You can make it down the whole path imbalanced and flailing. When you fall, give thanks for the opportunity to rest. While you’re down, send love to every other path walker who’s down with you at that moment.

Then get back up.

Or crawl. Crawling is encouraged and respected. Path running is fine, but crawling is much better. Crawlers travel with their eyes close to the ground — so they never miss an inch of the beautiful, rocky path. Crawlers get less glory but learn the most about the path’s terrain.

And know your fellow travelers are both your teachers and students. Your relationships with them will be the hardest part of path walking. To avoid humbling oneself into the role of student and having the courage to position oneself into the role of teacher — many try to walk the path alone.

But the path was not designed for solo treks.

The path was designed to teach Love. Whenever you introduce your true self to a fellow path traveler and listen and speak and learn and stay with her for a while – that is called Love. Walking with and staying with messy fellow path travelers for any length of time is Love. Love is the most brutal and beautiful part of path traveling. Participate. Learn from and teach every path traveler you encounter. Exchanging love with fellow path travelers is how we gather the wisdom and strength we’ll need to overcome the next obstacle on our path.

Note: You do not teach by teaching — you teach by loving. Be humble and courageous.

You always have enough strength.

And courage and wisdom. You always have exactly what you need for your daily trek. Sometimes you won’t believe this, because you will encounter stretches of the path that are treacherous and terrifying, but if you give up in the middle of those stretches — if you sit down permanently in them — then you have to live there. Don’t live in the dark, scary parts. Trust and keep moving. There will be a clearing soon and you will feel the warm sun again.

The One who created your path is outside of time, so your life is an epic movie that has already been scripted. So don’t plan or worry — your job is to trust your path and participate fully and notice as much as you possibly can and keep on moving.

But don’t become proud or ashamed.

Don’t become proud that you are further along than many travelers or ashamed that you are far behind others. Your position on the path relative to other travelers has nothing to do with your strength or stamina or wisdom or cunning. We are all in different places because we all have different entry points to the path.

Where you are and where everyone else is along the path is none of your concern or business.

Let that go.

You are exactly where you are supposed to be, always, and so is everyone else. The portion of the path you wake up to today was written for you.

Everyone is exactly where he or she is supposed to be. You are not your own or anyone else’s path-planner. You are just a traveler. You just keep moving. Trust the Path. Follow in the footsteps of a billion other mighty travelers who have walked and run and crawled the path before you.

Fear not. And carry on, warrior.

Glennon will be speaking and hosting a breakout discussion at Storyline Conference at the end of this month. Register today to join us in Chicago!

How to Spot A Controlling Person (Even If It’s You)

I don’t like it when people try to control me (especially indirectly through manipulation) and I would have sworn I didn’t do a thing to try to control others. But it turns out that isn’t true. For all I know, I might even be manipulating you right now. Raise your hand if you think I’m trying to control you. (I see that hand. Now put it down. Now scratch your nose.)

I realized I was a controlling person not long ago when a therapist caught me in the act. I was wondering out loud why a friend was doing what she was doing and the thearpist questioned why I was trying to get inside somebody else’s head.

“What does it matter why people do what they do? Are you trying to predict behavior to gain a sense of security?”

It was a terrific observation.

Trying to figure out why people are doing what they are doing is a preface to trying to control or influence them indirectly. If I really wanted to know why they were doing what they were doing, I could just ask. But I didn’t want to ask because it was none of my business. They had a right to think and do as they wished.

Photo Credit: Leo Hidalgo, Creative Commons

Turns out controlling tendencies can hide anywhere.

And most of the time (if not all the time) we don’t know we’re doing it.

The therapist went on to explain how relationships should work.

She put three large couch pillows on the floor and stood on one of the outside cushions. She then had me stand on the other outside cushion so there was an empty cushion between us.

“This is my pillow” she said, “and that is yours. This is my life and that is yours. The pillow in the middle represents our relationship. So, my responsibility is all about the pillow I’m standing on and yours is about yours. Together, we are responsible for the relationship. But at no point should I be stepping on your pillow.”

What she meant by that was this:

I can’t change anybody. I can’t force them or guilt them or shame them into doing anything. All I can do is stay on my pillow and ask myself whether or not I like the relationship. If I don’t, I can tell the other person what I want in a relationship and see if they want the same thing.

If not, I move on, and so do they.

In marriage, of course, it’s much harder. You can’t just walk away. But in business relationships and friendships, and even in dating, the model works quite well.

I found the metaphor freeing, actually.

No more wishing people would change or explaining “if they only did it this way we would be better friends.” Instead, I just say “this relationship doesn’t work” and there’s nothing I can do about it. If I’ve explained what I want in a relationship but the other person isn’t on board, no harm no foul.

It’s difficult in some relationships, I know, because sometimes you have to watch people destroy their lives, but that’s just the point.

Their lives are theirs to destroy.

I found the principle to be true in business, too.

When somebody tries to sell a little too hard, they are on my pillow so I back off or set better boundaries. It’s also a great way to find and enter into relationships with clients. If they want what you’re selling, great, and if not, that’s also great.

Business relationships work better when they’re natural and not forced and everybody stays on their pillow.

And in my spiritual life it’s the same.

If somebody is giving me a guilt trip, they’re on my pillow. I believe much of evangelicalism is influenced by leaders who don’t realize they are standing all over their congregation’s pillows. Some leaders feel incredibly insecure unless they are managing the lives of everybody around them.

Make no mistake, this isn’t strength, it’s incredible weakness. Just tell the truth, explain the consequences, and let people make their own decisions.

Here are a few ways to know whether you might be a controlling person:



You imagine a life in which somebody else was different, and indirectly try to affect their change.





You get angry when things aren’t going your way and you let people know it.





You can only be surrounded by people who are submissive to you.





You give the silent treatment to people you are angry with.





You are often tempted to show somebody the errors they don’t see in themselves.

What ways do you tend to step on other people’s pillows? Do you shame people (I’m guilty of that) or give them the silent treatment? How do you try to influence others without being direct or when their lives are none of your business?

Is Trying to Be Better Distracting You From How Great You Already Are?

A few weeks ago my husband and I took our three small children to Disneyland to celebrate our son’s second birthday. After riding “It’s a Small World” we found ourselves in one of the outdoor theaters watching one of the live shows Disneyland puts on throughout the day.

The show starts with a big picture of an animated map that has been painted except for the compass in the corner. Throughout the show, Mickey is chasing the compass around with a paintbrush, doing his darnedest to paint the compass, but it keeps running away from him, dodging his paintbrush and transporting him to all the far off lands Disney has created over the years.

After dozens of failed attempts to give the black compass some color, Mickey has a realization and says to the compass: 


“Maybe you didn’t want to be painted. You’re a masterpiece just the way you are.”

I began to cry right then and there.

I looked at my children, all three of whom have been adopted, and two of whom have Down syndrome and thought of all the times so many different people, including myself, have tried to paint them, turning a blind eye to the fact, that maybe, just maybe, they are a masterpiece just the way they are.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk, Creative Commons

As this new year has made its way to my front door, I have found myself thinking often about the wise words of that famous mouse.

I’ve been thinking about the people or people groups around me.

Minority groups who have a quiet or often misunderstood voice.

People like my son and daughter with Down syndrome, who are constantly being chased around with a paint brush in an attempt to make them “better” and “more” and “normal”.

So often we look at seemingly voiceless or misunderstood people and try to splash them with a little red or purple paint, all in the name of “helpfulness” while maybe all along, they didn’t want to be painted at all.

It’s also got me thinking about all the people out there, who are a lot like me.

People with a voice, who, during this time of year, use it to set goals and make plans to be something else, something better than who we are right now. And I think that’s good. I think setting goals and striving to be the best version of ourselves should be happening through out the year, every year.

I’m happy for a new year and a new start to offer the space for us to try to become the best version of ourselves.

But there’s a fine line between striving to be our best and painting over the masterpiece we already are.

I fear, all too often, we see how beautifully others have painted their maps and so we try to paint ours to look the same losing site of our masterpiece already in the works.

This is my hope and prayer for 2016, inspired by Mickey of course.

That we put down the paintbrushes in our lives, the ones trying to cover up the brilliant and beautiful already on the paper. As we set goals and strive to be the very best version of ourselves.

May we also make an extra effort to take the time to see the masterpiece that already exists both in ourselves and in each other.

What to Remember While You’re In Waiting

According to my Instagram feed, the New Year is all about new beginnings, starting something new, setting new goals. I’ve seen pictures of green smoothies, running shoes, blank to-do lists, and organized closets.

Many feel like the New Year is a chance to start over. And this is great.

This is great if the New Year actually does find you in a new season, and not the same season you were in in December. If your life really does look different in January, and you really can leave the old behind and start fresh.

But what about for the rest of us?

What about those of us who are still waiting for something from last year to resolve, or still hoping for something that we hoped for last year to happen? What if the New Year finds you smack dab in the middle of your story, and not at the beginning of a new one?

Photo Credit: Leo Hidalgo, Creative Commons

I love this line from Cormac McCarthy’s novel All the Pretty Horses: “Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”

Were truer words ever written?

So often most of us are lying in wait.

We live much of our lives between the wish, and the thing that we wish for to actually come true. We live our daily lives between where we are and where we want to be. Between what we have and what we want to have.

If only January 1 was a magic genie that made our wishes happen so that we really could start over each year, so that we really could stop waiting.

I was thinking about this the other night while I was working out.

I go to this class called Beatbox in Nashville, and it is really hard. It’s an hour long and as soon as it starts, I anticipate its ending. From the first minute, I can’t wait for the class to be over so we can do the cool down song and get out of there.

Working out is hard, especially for someone who has little to no upper body strength.

But you know what happens between the beginning of Beatbox and the end of Beatbox? Beatbox. The actual exercising part happens. Without the middle part, there would be no work out at all. There would be no reason to anticipate the ending because no work would have been done.

There would be no results, no reason to feel proud of myself, no healthier me.

I want to start viewing the place “between the wish and the thing” like a Beatbox class.

The waiting part is hard and difficult. Being in the middle of your story can feel exhausting. It can leave you breathless, hopeless (just watch me try and do a real push-up), and discouraged.

The middle part, also known as most of life, is hard, but the middle part is where we change. We are stretched and we grow. We become stronger during the wait, not all of a sudden at the end of it.

I wonder what you are lying in wait for? I wonder how long it has been? Are you on the brink of giving up? Is this New Year simply a reminder of all the things you don’t have yet, all the things that haven’t happened?

I get it. I get that.

Some things we lie in wait for take days.

Some things take years. That’s why we have to be where we are. We have to sit in the waiting place is if it is where we are supposed to be, not what we are trying to escape from. We have to recognize that good things are happening to us here, in the middle.

We have to grit our teeth and fight the bitterness.

We have to lean on something bigger and more powerful than our own weak selves and if we can, we will turn around one day and see that during the tension, we were formed into a person with stronger, deeper, more loving, understanding and patient stuff.

So often the waiting is more about us than the thing.

Remember, you’re not alone in this. As McCarthy says, the world lies waiting. We’re all in this waiting thing together. Waiting and hoping for different things, but waiting together nonetheless.

The space between the wish and the thing is slowly but surely becoming a place I am more ok with being, and a place I am realizing I will spend a lot of my life. This is a good thing because it is during the tension, and not at the end once the thing is achieved, that we are becoming who were meant to be all along.

How Aiming For Imperfect Can Improve Your Life

Whether you’re an avid resolution-maker or not, January finds many of us thinking about what we hope to be better at or how we’d like to adjust the sails.

I’ve written before about my tendency to want to do something perfectly or just not do it, and about how good I am at finding legitimate-seeming loopholes for avoiding real action. Both of these qualities can come in remarkably unhelpful when making fresh starts.

Photo Credit: iulia Pironea, Creative Commons

The overachiever in me says “something is only valuable if it’s flawless” and the bare-minimum-finder says “well…technically you can get by without x, y, and even z, and here are six thoughtful-sounding reasons why that’s okay.”

Most often, this bare-minimum voice pipes up when I feel like I’ve missed the boat on “perfect”.

So, lately—when I’m trying to challenge the places where I tend to be lazy and trying to give a break to the places where I want (and/or think I’m supposed) to look impressive—I’ve found it helpful to remind myself that there are only two ways progress gets made in the world: imperfectly, or not at all.

From stumbling through how to approach problems that face our communities to figuring out how to just make myself go on a run, the elusive and mystical “perfect” option can be an enticing distraction.

Deep down, we know this.

We Pinterest-pin and set our phone screens with images reminding us that opportunity is “dressed in overalls and looks like work” and that we shouldn’t “let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” and the like.

Yet that ideal set of actions lurks in my imagination and often hinders me from going ahead and getting started on “imperfect, but at least it’s something.”

Granted, “imperfectly” is different from dishonestly, half-heartedly, or carelessly.

And this idea of aiming for imperfect may not be motivating to everyone.

But for me, someone who sees anything less than the impeccable as a tempting opportunity to throw in the towel, disciplining myself to think like this has been a helpful tool. Eliminating the elusive “perfect” option from the list of possible choices relieves enough pressure for me to scoot forward and applies enough pressure for me to see it’s up to me to do so.

When I start to feel myself slacking off or getting hung up because I (theoretically) ran 2.5 miles instead of 3, or because I scrolled through six cities’ ten day forecasts on my phone instead of hopping straight out of bed, I’m resolving to believe that plodding forward happens imperfectly or not at all, imperfectly or not at all, imperfectly or not at all.

Why You Should Tell Your Story, Even if It’s Messy

I have recently been asked to speak and write more often about a very sensitive and very personal subject. I fight moving towards it because making a platform out of such a “hot topic” seems exploitive, like I’m benefitting for personal gain at the potential expense of relationships and feelings.

It would almost feel like using the death of my grandfather to gain attention for myself because I know the story would move people.

It feels a little gross.

And still, the more and more I pray about what the next steps are for me, the more and more I am being led back to speaking and writing—and that of course includes this topic. I am daily seeking Christ and talking to those who I am in community with and they are all pointing me back towards the very thing I am trying to run from.

I don’t want to speak. It’s too hard. It’s too vulnerable. It’s too divisive. It’s too confining.

Photo Credit: Nadine Dereza, Creative Commons

I want someone to speak, I’m just not sure I want it to be me.

I talked to a friend of mine who serves to poor in Mexico.

Starting 30 years ago, she began helping families and doing community empowerment by working in an orphanage.

Since then, the organization she started with her husband, who she also met at the orphanage, has grown into one of the largest short-term missions organizations in the world, building thousands and thousands of homes, schools, and churches in the slums on multiple continents.

She is for the poor, about the poor, and speaks on behalf of the poor.

It is what she is known for.

However, she makes a strong distinction between her calling and her vocation.

She said, “I am not called to the poor. I am called to Christ and he has led me to the poor.”

It would be easy to not want to speak about the poor. It is a hard life, serving in the slums on a daily basis and challenging those of privilege to care for something outside of their own comfort and safety.

But, I know she seeks Christ in all things and this is where he has led her. While most people look at her and think she could never walk away from this ministry, I know if she felt Christ calling her to a new thing, she would go immediately. This powerful distinction has freed me to be more open to the idea of speaking and writing about this difficult subject.

I am called to Christ, and this is where he is leading me.

So as I read through 1 Corinthians today I kept coming back to that familiar first verse.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Only this time I heard a Gentle Whisper switching some of the words around to say, “If I have the love that is the fullest expression of man’s earth and God’s heaven, but do not speak, I am only a hollow drum or a silent cymbal, made for celebration and dance but sitting in silence, never used for its intended purpose.”

Love speaks.

Love speaks on behalf of those who do not have a place to voice their suffering. Love speaks words of affirmation and hope to those who can’t see past the darkness that keeps the light at bay. Love speaks in light of personal cost and discomfort. Love speaks truth. Love speaks hope. Love speaks joy. Love, very simply, must speak.

Who needs you to speak on their behalf today?

Want to Make Better Decisions? Here’s a Mental Trick

Here’s a mental trick: To make better decisions, imagine your life one year from now. From that perspective, look back on where you are now and think about how you wish you would have handled your current situation.

Photo Credit: Joe St.Pierre, Creative Commons

I was talking with a friend recently who was going through a tough breakup. He was angry, to be honest, because his girlfriend hadn’t been faithful.

It’s easy to get caught up in a moment like that. Our subconscious, squirrel brain takes over and we want to react, vent, seek vengeance, and basically trade pain for pain.

As I talked with my friend, my advice was simple.

“A year from now,” I said, “when you’ve mostly healed from all this, and perhaps seeing somebody new, how will you have wanted to deal with your current situation?”

The question was sobering for my friend. He realized he was making all sorts of mistakes. He realized immediately he was reacting and his reactions were going to make things worse.

Humans have the unique ability to self reflect.

We are not like other animals, always being motivated by pre-programmed instincts. We have those, for sure, but we also have the ability to override them.

And those who practice overriding their base instincts are considered wise.

Instead of reacting, we took out a tablet and wrote some words he could live out of for the next month or so. Words like strength, kindness, truth, forgiveness, resolution and so forth.

My friend realized a year from now, he would likely no longer be angry, but instead would feel sorry for his ex-girlfriend.

She certainly had a lot of issues to work through and was in no shape to be in a healthy relationship.

It wasn’t easy, but my friend decided to live out of that wise, one-year removed place rather than in reaction. He was tempted to react, of course, but when tempted he returned to his notepad and read the descriptors, and every conversation he had with her, including e-mail and text messages, came from a place of strength and forgiveness and also resolution. He didn’t take her back, but he also didn’t seek vengeance.

Because of his strength, his ex realized she’d lost a great man.

And she grieved and made some changes. If my friend would have reacted like an animal, it’s doubtful she would have changed. She would have just felt like they were even, both hurting each other.

I know most of you aren’t going through a breakup, but what are you going through that could be helped by removing yourself from the situation? My advice would be to imagine yourself a year from now and look back to ask how you’d do things differently. Get out a notepad and write down some words and maybe even a few phrases you can use in your interactions with key people and live out of that wise, one-year removed place.

Wisdom can see the present in hindsight.

We can all learn from each other.

Even if you aren’t going through a breakup, what would you want to have done differently in this season of your life if you were looking back a year from now? Would you want to have finished a project, faced some conflict you were avoiding, been more devoted to a cause?

Share what you’d want to have done differently in the comments section to stimulate more thought for the rest of us, would you?

How I Found Time for the Things That Really Matter

Listen. I know this isn’t some life hacking blog, but I have seen major changes in my life because of a few small decisions… I thought what better time than now to share with you what this old man has learned?

1. I’m an artist

2. I do my best work late at night,

3. I like to be awake when the world is asleep.


4. FALLON!

These used to be some of the reasons I would spit out when people would ask why I stay up so late.
 I used to stay up till 2am or later every night. 
It was habit.
 What started off as simply playing Madden in college till 2am simply became who I was—A guy who stayed up late and hated waking up.


Little did I know the value of what I was missing.

Photo Credit: Brandon King, Creative Commons

Here are some reasons that have helped me decide to become a morning person:

1. Most of your lazy butts aren’t awake yet. 
Which means most of you aren’t filing up my twitter feed with cat videos and royal baby jokes [Which I Love] yet. This way I’m not distracted and can focus on getting my junk done.

2. Working out on an empty stomach first thing in the morning has a fantastic effect on my metabolism.
 I know that people argue this but I’ve found it true.
 I’m not hungry at all at 4:45am so it’s not really an option to eat. 
And in 2 short months of working out early, I’ve dropped almost 16lbs. 
When UK researchers questioned adults about their sleep habits, they found that people who stay under the covers on the weekdays until 9am are more likely to be stressed, overweight, and depressed than those who get up at 7am. My wife likes my new pecs.

3. I’m in charge of my day and you are not. 
When I used to wake up at 9:30am, I already had 5 text messages and 20 emails. I was catching up ALL day long and it felt like a race. So now that I’m up and at ‘em early, I’m texting you first and that small change has changed everything…

4. My kids get more of me.
 I know this may not be an option for some of you but there are ways to work the system.
 Now that I’m up so early, I’m literally done with most of my “work” by 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
 This means I get home while my kids are still doing school. They get way more of me than when I used to get home at dinner.

I used to feel like getting home late was some sort of badge of honor from working so hard.
 That’s Stupid. My kids won’t remember that badge. They will simply remember me not being at dinner.

Now I know that some of you don’t have this option… So wake up early and take your kids on morning dates. They will remember time with you in the mornings just as well as time in the evenings.

These are just some of the reasons I’ve made the change to wake up early. It’s not necessarily the right thing for everyone, but I lean towards the camp that says waking up early will make your life better.

20 year olds, don’t let me lap you.
 Come, join me and get yo butt to bed.

How Loneliness Made Me Stronger

I lived in England once. For a year after college, I studied English literature in one of the oldest university towns in the world. Many unexpected things happened that year, but the loneliness was perhaps the most surprising.

I had studied abroad in the same city during college just a couple of years before and my previous experience had been full of friends. I lived in a house with twenty people I went to college with in the States, and we were all venturing together.

England “take 2” was completely different.

I arrived with three enormous suitcases and few acquaintances. The town was full of familiar streets, but strange faces. I forgot knowing how to get around did not mean I would know actual people—the thing that really matters in the end.

I had felt lonely before.

I had felt like I had no friends before. My entire 8th grade year, for example. But this type of loneliness was different. There was an added layer to it: I was a foreigner.

Photo Credit: Christopher Michel, Creative Commons

We, as Americans, know that our culture is influential, so when we travel abroad, we expect to be understood by the natives. This does not happen. I didn’t feel like British people got me, and I certainly didn’t get them. We spoke the same language, but the social nuances, cultural references, and even their priorities when it came to things like beauty and education left me far outside their walls trying hard to listen in.

I couldn’t understand, and I was consistently failing.

That is what made my time in England so rich and so full—feeling lonely. At first, I sat in the loneliness. I spent a lot of time by myself and felt sad. “Nobody gets me here…I can’t understand my professor’s Irish accent…I don’t know how to find anything in these supermarkets…”

It was a lot of that for a while until the day I had a brave moment, my turning point: I invited people over for dinner. They were acquaintances from class, one from England and two from South Africa, and they came to my house one night and taught me how to cook curry and we talked for a long time.

I felt like myself again.

I felt like I might survive this country and that there was indeed a way to understand each other, maybe not on a national level, but at least on a human level.

There are few things I champion more than spending an extended amount of time abroad. It forces loneliness upon you unlike most life scenarios. But I know we don’t have to travel far to feel like aliens. This world is a long and spread out Tower of Babel. It can feel like no one speaks your language, and your own home, school or workplace may be what’s fostering loneliness for you right now.

Loneliness is the worst.

The absolute worst, but it can be effective at changing us for the better, forcing us to do brave things and appreciate relationships. You won’t notice the change at first, loneliness is stealthy.

It delicately changes your perspective while you’re in and it is not until you are fully out of it that you look in the mirror and notice a difference.

Why You Should Waste Some Time Today

Okay. Today’s Challenge: *WASTE* Five Minutes

One of my new things (of which there are many these days–I feel sort of adolescent, changing & growing & trying new things faster than I can keep up with, in a good way) is wasting time.

Photo Credit: Joe St.Pierre, Creative Commons

Wasting it: spending it lavishly, staring into space, wandering around the block, sitting on the kitchen floor eating blueberries with Mac.

My goal upon returning to real life after lake life is to keep my summer heart—my flexible, silly, ready-to-play, ever-so-slightly irresponsible heart. What I’ve been delighted to find is that it’s not that my real life is all wrong, by any means—it’s not that I’m doing work I hate or that I’m ill-fit for the life we’ve made.

It’s that for all sorts of reasons, I default to hustle mode all too often.

Hustle is the opposite of heart.

And so one of the tiny little things I’m learning to do is waste time. Strategically avoid strategy, for five minutes at a time. Intentionally not be intentional about every second. Have no purpose—on purpose. See what I did there? I could go all day…

In my creative/freelance/work from home/sort of always working–sort of never working world, there are lots of conversations about how to do it better/faster/smarter. How to streamline, multi-task, layer, balance, flow, juggle. How to monetize, strategize, and on and on.

Good stuff. Necessary stuff.

But my jam these days is wasting time, playing, becoming aware of that internal engine that always wants to go faster, faster, faster. That engine is not the best part of me. My heart is the best part of me.

I’m so committed to keeping this summer heart, this heart I’ve recovered, and I’m finding that one of the keys for me is wasting time.

So that’s my challenge for you: waste five minutes today.

And then come back and tell me how it felt. What did you do? How did your heart feel?

What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, non-strategic, wild and beautiful five minute breaks, reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not about the hustle?