I was honored to take part in a new interview series my friend Keri Wilt of The Well-Tended Life is doing on finding and remembering the joy, goodness, and growth in our lives. The series was inspired by a quote from her great-great-grandmother Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book The Secret Garden: “Mistress Mary always felt that however many years she lived she should NEVER FORGET that first morning when her garden began to grow.”

We had a great time talking about these topics and I wanted to share the interview with you in case you’d like to check it out. She also has several other episodes completed, and I’ve found each one very inspiring and helpful.

One of the issues I talked about is how I’ve dealt with the uncertainty of these past few months by letting go of my need to control what’s going on (always a challenge for me!!). Here is the process that I came up with for doing that:

I do my best to release my expectations of what should happen, and my need to control what is going on.

I allow whatever is happening to be, whether or not I like it, and I accept the current reality without trying to change it.

And I trust that everything is going to be OK.

This approach has been invaluable in helping me navigate the anxiety of not knowing what is going to happen next (when I am able to remember to do it!).

You can watch the interview on her YouTube channel here. It’s also available in podcast format (“The Well-Tended Life”), available on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher; find links here.

Wishing you an abundance of joy and goodness!

I just finished Anita Moorjani’s book “Dying to Be Me,” where she relates her incredible near death experience and subsequent complete recovery from lymphoma. It is an astonishing and powerful story, and her messages really resonated with me and stretched my mind.

One main message is self-acceptance. She makes an interesting point when talking about this—that while she now lives from a place of joy rather than fear, it doesn’t mean she always thinks positive thoughts. She says that we all have negative thoughts, and since they are part of us, they are something we should accept. Rather than resisting or fearing negative thoughts and emotions, we should feel them and let them move through us.

Now I don’t know about you, but I resist my negative emotions very strongly! This was a fascinating idea to me, that I could just accept them and then they would go on, and that was actually healthier than trying to avoid them.

It seems to echo something my yoga teacher talked about recently, which is the concept of “bless and release”—if something is bothering you, rather than getting caught up in it, give it your blessing and let it go. In other words, accept it, let it move through you, and release it. This feels like a radical approach to me, and I’m really quite thrilled to start playing with it.

There is a poem I love that expresses this concept much more beautifully than I ever could. So I will let the amazing mystical poet Rumi have the floor this week:

The Guest House

--Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.