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Posts tagged with “presence”

What Happened When I Stopped Making Rigid Rules for Myself

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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor E. Frankl

I stood in my kitchen, staring at the leftover red velvet cake from my birthday party the night before. It was beautiful: layers of deep red with cream cheese frosting that I knew tasted incredible. And for the first time in years, I heard something different than the voice that had ruled my life.

For so long, there had been this other voice. Dominating. Controlling. It told me exactly what

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A Simple Practice That’s Keeping Me Out of Catastrophic Thinking

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“Hope is not a prediction. It is the choice to believe something good is possible before we have proof.”

For most of my life, I lived with an internal alarm system that never turned off. I expected disaster around every corner—financial collapse, professional failure, health crises, humiliation, and loss. Catastrophic thinking wasn’t just a habit; it felt like responsibility. It felt like vigilance. It felt like survival.

As a documentary filmmaker, anticipating the unexpected is part of the job. We learn to obsess over what could go wrong—equipment failures, weather shifts, emotional volatility, permissions falling apart, safety concerns, or a

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How to Create Micro-Moments of Joy to Help You Keep Going

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“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I want to shine a light on something that often gets overlooked in both the medical world and the mental health space. Something I didn’t have a name for until I lived through it myself.

I call it joy deficiency.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve felt it too.

Maybe you’re living with Crohn’s, like I am.

Maybe you’ve faced chronic migraines, cancer, autoimmune symptoms, depression, fatigue, or simply the exhaustion of carrying emotional pain for far too long.…

The Cost of Chronic Stress and 6 Practical Steps to Presence

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“You are not your thoughts. You are the observer of your thoughts.” ~Amit Ray

I was in the middle of responding to my third “urgent” email of the morning when I realized I hadn’t tasted my coffee.

The cup sat there, half-empty and cold. I had no memory of drinking it.

That small moment became the crack that let the light in. Because if I couldn’t remember drinking my coffee, something I claimed to love, something I looked forward to every morning, what else was I missing?

The answer, I would soon discover, was almost everything.

The Illusion of Productive

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The Question That Helped Me Reclaim My Time and Energy

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“You can’t add more to your life until you first let go of what weighs you down.” ~Unknown

I used to think being busy meant being successful. My days were a blur of meetings, notifications, and commitments. My calendar looked impressive, but at night I lay awake wondering why I felt so exhausted and strangely unfulfilled.

One rainy Tuesday, stuck in traffic between two appointments I didn’t really want to attend, it hit me: I wasn’t living my life. I was managing it. I’d filled my days with activity, but not necessarily with value. That moment of realization started a …

What Losing My Faith Taught Me About Being Truly Alive

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“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I grew up as the fifth of seven children in a strict religious family where faith shaped everything. From an early age, I learned to follow the rules, perform to be seen, keep the peace, and be good.

My religious upbringing taught me to give my power away. The church held the answers, the authority, and even forgiveness itself. I learned to seek approval from outside sources instead of developing a relationship with my own inner truth. …

Finding Peace When You Don’t Know What Comes Next

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“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” ~Eckhart Tolle

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the kind of person who plans everything.

My calendar was color-coded, my to-do lists perfectly alphabetized, and I could tell you what I’d be doing six months from now almost down to the hour.

I thought control meant safety. If I could organize my world tightly enough, maybe nothing bad would happen.

For a long time, that illusion worked. I graduated near the top of my class, got a good job, and built …

Why the Breath Is More Powerful Than Willpower in Addiction Recovery

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“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” ~Amit Ray

I don’t remember the moment I decided I wanted to live again. I just remember the breath that made it possible.

Three weeks earlier, I had been lying in a hospital bed, my liver failing at the age of thirty-six after years of drinking. I knew I wouldn’t survive another relapse; yet the day I was released, I went straight to the liquor store. Unsurprisingly, I ended up back in rehab—completely exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I wasn’t looking for …

The Truth About Healing I Didn’t Learn in Med School

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“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

I’ve spent most of my adult life helping people heal.

I’m a podiatrist, a foot and ankle surgeon, and I’ve seen pain in many forms. Torn ligaments. Crushed bones. Wounds that just won’t close. But if I’m being honest, the deepest wounds I’ve encountered weren’t the ones I treated in my clinic. They were the invisible ones, the ones that patients carried silently, and the ones I had unknowingly been carrying myself.

I used to think healing was straightforward. Diagnose. Treat. Follow up. Recover.

That made sense to me. …

Why I’m Listening to My Aging Mother More Deeply Now

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“When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.” ~African Proverb

For most of my life, I thought aging was about bodies slowing down—hair turning white, memory fading, steps getting shorter. But caring for my ninety-six-year-old mother has changed that. I now see something deeper and more painful: the slow erasure of wisdom in a culture that prizes the new, dismisses the old, and moves too fast to notice what it’s losing.

We live in a world that idolizes youth and innovation—new tech, new trends, new ideas. “Old” has become shorthand for “outdated.” When wisdom becomes invisible, we …

Why Listening Matters More Than Giving Advice (A Barbershop Lesson)

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“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” ~Stephen R. Covey

I used to think running a barbershop was all about haircuts, schedules, and keeping clients happy. I measured success by the number of chairs filled, how quickly we moved through the day, and whether everything ran smoothly. Efficiency felt like the most important thing.

Then one afternoon, a moment with a customer changed everything.

Mr. Hicks, a regular, came in looking unusually quiet. He slumped in my chair, barely making eye contact, and gave only short, mumbled answers when I …

The Prowler in My Mind: Learning to Live with Depression

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“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” ~Leonard Cohen

When depression comes, I feel it like a prowler gliding through my body. My chest tightens, my head fills with dark whispers, and even the day feels like night. The prowler has no face, no clear shape, but its presence is heavy. Sometimes it circles in silence within me. Other times it presses in until I don’t know how to respond.

In those moments, I feel caught between two choices: do I lie still, hoping it passes by, or do I rise and face it? Often, …

The Invisible Prison Shyness Builds and What Helped Me Walk Free

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“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” ~Anaïs Nin

When I think back on my life, shyness feels like an inner prison I carried with me for years. Not a prison with bars and guards, but a quieter kind—made of hesitation, fear, and silence. It kept me standing still while life moved forward around me.

One memory stays with me: my eighth-grade dance. The gym was alive with music, kids moving awkwardly but freely on the floor, laughing, bumping into one another, having fun. And there I was in the corner, figuratively stomping paper cups.

That’s how I …

The Unexpected Way Jiu-Jitsu Brought Me Back to Myself

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“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are.” ~Maya Angelou

There was a time in my life when everything felt heavy, like I was constantly carrying around a weight that no one else could see.

I wasn’t in a crisis, exactly. I was functioning, showing up, doing what needed to be done. But inside, I was struggling to stay afloat—trapped in my own head, questioning my worth, and unsure how to move forward.

One evening, I walked into a Brazilian …

Micro-Faith, Huge Benefits: Reasons to Believe in Something Bigger

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“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

My grandmother passed away a few years ago after a long battle with cancer. Even as her health deteriorated, she never lost her spirit. She’d still get excited about whether the Pittsburgh Steelers might finally have a decent season after Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement. She’d debate the Pirates’ chances with the kind of passionate optimism that only comes from decades of loyal disappointment.

But what I remember most are the afternoons she’d spend napping in her favorite chair with my son curled up …

Planning Without Panic and Learning to Live in the Now

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“You can plan for a hundred years. But you don’t know what will happen the next moment.” ~Tibetan proverb

Some days it feels like a fog I can’t shake—this underlying fear that something painful or uncertain is just around the corner.

I try to be responsible. I try to prepare, make good choices, take care of things now so the future won’t unravel later. But beneath that effort is something harder to face: I feel helpless. I can’t control what’s coming, and that terrifies me.

Maybe you’ve felt this too—that tension between doing your best and still fearing it’s not …

Can You Live a Meaningful Life Without Being Exceptional?

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“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ~Alan Watts

As I enter the later stage of life, I find myself asking questions that are less about accomplishment and more about meaning. What matters now, when the need to prove myself has softened, but the old voices of expectation still echo in my mind?

In a world that prizes novelty, speed, and success, I wonder what happens when we’re no …

How to Make Peace with Uncertainty—One Ritual at a Time

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“Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored.” ~Terry Tempest Williams

Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual.

One day, it’s a relationship you thought would last. Another, it’s a career path that suddenly dissolves. A health scare. A financial setback. Aging parents. A terrifying diagnosis. A global pandemic.

If you’re lucky, you haven’t experienced all these—yet. But let’s be honest: we are all living in the liminal.

The space between what was and what will be is where most of life actually happens. Yet we rarely talk about how to be there. We try to optimize or …

How I Learned to Be Present—One Sound at a Time

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“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.” ~Miles Davis

When I first read that quote, it hit me right in the chest. Not because it sounded profound—but because it was something I had been slowly, painfully learning over the course of a very quiet, very long year.

Time used to feel like a race. Or maybe a shadow. Or a trickster. Some days, it slipped through my fingers like water. Other days, it dragged me along like a heavy cart. But always, it was something outside me—something I was chasing or trying to escape.

I spent much of …

To the Dreamers Reading This, I Want You to Know…

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There I was, eating cereal and watching a CNN documentary about Kobe Bryant—yes, I mix deep life reflection with Raisin Bran—when his old speech teacher said something that made me pause mid-chew. He described Kobe’s approach to life as giving everything—heart, soul, and body—to his craft. No halfway. Just all in.

I sat there thinking, “Yes! That’s it!” That’s the very thing I try to convey to my students in class, usually while making wild arm gestures and accidentally knocking over a marker cup. I believe in that philosophy with every fiber of my chalk-dusted being.

High Risk, Deep

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