I opened the refrigerator door.

I already had a salad. The first desire was simple: What could I add to this?

My eyes saw the goat cheese.

And then, not a thought, an image arrived: baked goat cheese with this salad.

I felt it.

Not in my head. In my body. A kind of yes that was unmistakable.

So I followed it.

For weeks, I couldn't feel desire.

I kept trying to understand it.

I read about it. Reflected on it. Asked questions. Turned it over in my mind from every angle.

Nothing.

The more I thought about desire, the further away it seemed.

I felt numb.

For years, I thought crossroads were the big moments in life.

Changing careers.

Selling a business.

Ending a relationship.

Losing someone you love.

Those are the moments around which I built my coaching practice. I watched people arrive at these turning points, life shaking them by the shoulders until they woke up to something new.

Then I realized something.

Life doesn’t only shake us awake in the big moments.

It’s trying to wake us up every day.

One of the most empowering discoveries we can make is understanding how we create our experience.

Our attention moves.

Our thoughts come and go.

Our feelings rise and fall.

And from those invisible movements, our experience of life is created.

The challenge is that thoughts are invisible until we begin to notice them. Feelings are like clouds moving across the sky. They don't stay.

Life doesn't tell us what it means.

We do.

I've been reading The Way of Mastery, and one of its invitations has stayed with me.

Explore desire.

Don't try to fulfill it.

Don't judge it.

Simply become curious about it.

So, for the past several months, I've been asking myself the same question every morning.

What do I desire?

Dear Friend

It was wonderful to be with you yesterday.

What you saw is profound: you are whole and complete.

I invite you to notice what begins to show up in your life when you come from this place.

How do you move?

What do you choose?

What changes when you are not trying to become whole, but living from the truth that you already are?

Dear Friend,

It was an honor to sit with you today.

During our conversation, we saw how deeply rooted the belief, "I don't matter," was in your life.

You are not alone.

If we believe we do not matter, it makes sense that we spend much of our lives trying to prove that we do. We work harder, give more, accomplish more, and carry the exhausting burden of seeking evidence of our worth.

How do I know this?

I lived it.

I felt my rage.

We were halfway through our walk, and there it was — my breath gone, my muscles pulled tight.

I am thinking: Why am I still friends with this person?

By the time we hug goodbye, I am already rehearsing the call to my partner. Everything my friend said. How superior she is. How ungrateful. I have the whole story ready, wrapped tight and righteous.

And then something stops me.

She is my mirror.

I feel the pressure on my chest.

It reminds me of when I was little, and my brother would sit on me, and I couldn't breathe.

Yesterday, within thirty minutes, I received calls from two family members about their health crises and upcoming surgeries. In that moment, two people I love needed me.

Two people I love.

Two people I will sit with and support.

My daughter's fear and my partner's quiet stoicism, I will be present with. I will go to the appointments, hold hands, make food, and keep my feelings numb as I do.

We were two minutes into our session in the Oakland Redwoods when he said it.

A city inspector had come to his restaurant. He was telling me about the visit, the stress, what she had checked, and what she had flagged.

And then, almost in passing: "They sent the most difficult person."

He kept talking, but my attention shifted.

I had heard everything I needed to hear.

He came into our session this morning carrying something heavy.

For two months, there was a call he needed to make. A fundraising call. The kind that required him to ask — directly, without apology — for something that mattered to him. Every week, the intention was there. Every week, the phone stayed in his pocket. He'd told himself he would do it. He hadn't. And somewhere in that gap, a story had taken root — one that said something about who he was.

He used the word loser.

I used to run from my emotions like I was running from a house on fire.

Fast. Urgent. Wanting to escape.

Yet no matter how far or how fast I went, they were still there.

If anything, they grew louder, more present, and harder to ignore.

More insistent.
More present.
Harder to ignore.

Until I learned something different.

I have been fascinated with emotions for most of my life.

Not because I understood them—but because I wasn’t allowed to feel them.

When my father died, we were told we could not be sad. We were told to move on, to be strong, to shut it down. And what I came to understand, much later, is that you cannot shut down one emotion without shutting down all of them.

So I did.

And then I became interested.