We need you to stop abandoning yourself.

Dear Friend,

If you're reading this, here's what I know:

You and I are kindred spirits.

You and I want to change the world...maybe right now you just want to change your little piece of the world or you want to change the big, wide world that we share together, or maybe, enthusiastically, like me, you want to change it alllllllll.

You can see that the way we're living isn't sustainable. And not in some marketing-slogan greenwashing way. Not just in how we treat the Earth, how we humans treat one another, or how we strive and push and rush and race through our very own lives. Sustainable, as in, how long can any of this keep going the way it's going?

When my children and I pick up a piece of plastic on our morning walk on the trail to throw it in the trash, what are we really doing besides managing the mess that we're in? What root cause are we actually addressing?

That seems to be where so much of our society is going wrong...we're living in the superficiality of it all. We're not cutting it out at the root. We're not creating new structures or foundations. We're kind of just managing the mess the best way we can.

When we start to take off our blinders and look at the whole, big picture of inequality and dis-ease and corruption, it can get really overwhelming and really scary, even.

So, I'm going to offer my controversial perspective:

Don't do it. Don't take off your blinders.

Stop worrying about saving the world, when your own house is burning down.

Start by staying with yourself. Start by seeing where you can release some of what you've been suppressing all these years. See how it feels to move your body, to drink some water, to take a walk outside, to create a space to be alone with yourself, to grow some food, to stop looking out there somewhere for fulfillment and joy and pleasure and peace. Learn how to express your emotions in a way that isn't abusive or disrespectful. Breathe them through. Accept them. Transform them. Keep your head down. Be selfish. Stop worrying about what anyone else thinks when you decide to self-center. It's not a dirty word; it's a strategy. Keep chipping away at the heavy, old stuff to make room for the new. If it feels really bad to be in your body, start small.

Get into the body and out of the story.

We need you to stop abandoning yourself because we are all in this together. We need you to shine and sparkle and glow and radiate because that's how you ignite your people in your corner of the world. That's how you become a super spreader, a walking transmission: by refining your frequency.

That's how we change the world. The revolution is an inside job.

All you need to do:

Just keep lighting up your little corner of the universe.

–xoxo