The Big Ideas

Wise Living. Here’s what this place is all about:

1. 1. What you love, what you long to do, is really, really important. When you live in alignment with those things, life becomes joyful, alive, full color, move-you-to-tears gorgeous. But most of us get lost from our true loves along the way in life. There is a way to get back on track.

1. 1. If you are here on this planet, there is a unique contribution you are meant to make. That’s what I call your real work. Sometimes we can do our real work through our jobs, and sometimes we choose to do it outside of our jobs. Which you do doesn’t really matter. But it really matters that in some way, you do your real work. It will make you happy, and the world desperately needs your contribution.

1. 1. We all have a relentless inner critic and voice of fear within. Wise living involves learning to recognize those voices for what they are, and separate them from the voice of your authentic self. Then you can choose who to listen to.

1. 1. Human beings get hooked by fear. We get unhappy because of stories we make up about how things are or how things need to be. But the big fabulous miracle is this: there is always a way out of stress, fear, pain, resentment or anxiety. That way comes from making subtle internal shifts, (I call these “two inch shifts”) that allow us to move from suffering to peace, from constriction to expansiveness. You can learn to make those shifts.

1. 1. Most suffering comes from leaving who we really are, or leaving love. Simple as that. That means most suffering can be relieved by 1) returning to a spirit of love or 2) returning to ourselves.

1. 1. If we fill our lives up with doing and shoulds and overscheduling, the life that wants to emerge in us never can. We need to carve out white space in our calendars and lives. We need to become skilled at the art of subtraction. And we need to focus our attention in ways that serve us.

1. Compassion is a form of wisdom. We all need forgiveness. The world is starving for more love. Compassion is strength and compassionate responses work. They heal and they stop the cycles of waste, of attack and defend, that plague our world.