"Life brings many kinds of people into our path, each with their own energy and lessons to share, but may we always choose to keep close those who nurture our souls, bring peace to our hearts, kindle joy within us, and remind us that the most beautiful connections are those that allow our spirits to blossom in the light of love."💓Emmanuel Dagher

What if your deepest purpose isn't something you achieve, but something you awaken to? More presence. More awareness. More compassion. As Eckhart Tolle reminds us, awakening is a purpose we share with all humanity.

"We may not be able to change the whole world today. But together, we can change the world around us."

It's hard to stare down your patterns. But sometimes you have to. My "the way I do one thing is the way I do everything" parts project has a new name: Failure to Launch. It stars three versions of me. DanO: The unseen man who can't seem to "book em" and launch his business. Danielle: The "weak" man whose marriage ended in violence. DaddyO: The father who "did everything he knew how", now looking at his adult daughter's "failures" and the endless dialogue about where he failed her. Oh, my rude brain can get meaner. Much meaner. Usually, this is where I pivot. Find the lesson. Reframe something positively. Get curious. Think my way through it. and now.. sit with the feelings until something shifts. I've gotten very good at that. Maybe too good. Because the pattern I'm examining now is my tendency to cognate all of this into submission. Aligning my labels of feelings to the thoughts that fit. Another explanation. Another framework. Another way to make the uncomfortable thing feel manageable so I can move. Same result. Failure to Launch. Not this time. This time it's a soulful staring contest. No, "what if we tried it this way?" No clever positive reframe. No negotiations. No soothing. Neigh. 🐴 This horse doesn't get to bolt this time. Oh and my rude brain has plenty more to keep me under the weighted blankets once it gets started... Remember how you lost all your clients? Remember that successful corporate career? Twenty years at BofA. Top 1% of VPs in your group. Servant leader. "Or were you mostly a conflict avoider?" it asks. "Maybe what you called servant leadership was people-pleasing." "Maybe what you called success drafting was following and calling it leading." And then comes my favorite: "You're a fraud. That's why you fail to launch." There's the loop. Waiting. Reframing. Aligning. Thinking. Explaining. All those present-tense activities that can become a very sophisticated way of avoiding the Nike swoosh. Just do it. And now my youngest daughter, living with Type 1 diabetes.