Welcome new subscribers! I write bi-weekly about living undimmed—present and self-aware to the ways we might habitually dull our lives with certain types of drinking, eating, snark, exercise, shopping, sex, work, drugs—even over-functioning. Prior posts here. Information about Undimmed, the book (release date: Tuesday 1/6/26) here.
Years ago, I met a young woman at a five day meditation retreat. In her twenties, she’d just emerged from a series of difficult travels and was looking for a place to reset, restore, and regroup. I was there with my young family for similar reasons, but in a different stage of life.
I remember “Jane” as shy and guarded, her posture closed. She came across as fragile, hurt, and timid. We sat together one afternoon in the desert sun on the rocks outside of the meditation hall, and I heard a bit about the trials she’d been through, the heartbreak she’d endured, the health issues she’d been grappling with.
A couple years later, she and her new partner, a mutual friend, visited and stayed with our family for a night or two as they traveled through our town in Northern California. I have a vivid memory of welcoming her that time. She was barely recognizable from the lost soul I’d met at the retreat center just two years prior.
Despite her petite frame, she stood tall, embodied, with a graceful confidence. She wore neutral-colored cotton clothes that hugged her fit frame, revealing solid posture, a pair of striking tattoos, and luminous, healthy shoulders. Her steps were light yet intentional as she walked up our driveway. Her hair was pulled off her face and her head held high, but with her chin propped a bit down—self-possessed. She carried herself as the embodiment of grace and strength.
As she approached us, her black eyes met mine with a gaze that was warm, steady and calm, a far cry from the scattered and fluttering eyes I recalled from the retreat center. We hugged and I could feel both steadiness and kindness in her embrace.
I privately wondered: what had happened to her?
As our family spent time with them and our young sons—a hike, a meal or two—I learned more about her healing, her reconnection with her relatives, her letting go of old stories and patterns—and her commitment to a yoga and meditation practice. She took a few photographs with her camera (including the one below) and left us with wild flowers from the nearby trail. Her energy was engaged and creative, generous even, yet she had a stillness about her. And it was contagious. What had changed wasn’t her life circumstances so much as the way she inhabited herself. Her presence had a beautiful impact on us all, in different ways. It still does.
Here we are, a decade and a lifetime later, and Soren and I have been talking about intentions, entering the new year—as we have among friends and family in formal and informal ways since the Winter Solstice. What structures do we want to add? What time do we want to spend on new projects? What can we shed that no longer serves us?
Yet on New Year’s Eve, we got to the real question, huddled over a shared cup of coffee in the shelter from the rain outside a rental we were sharing for a bit of a family reunion. How do we want to be? How do we want to feel? If we feel a certain way—if we move ourselves into the state that we want to find ourselves in this year—are we not creating the conditions that will allow for those things to happen, those shifts to take place, the magnetism we need to bring forward what is needed to thrive, be of service?
I recalled Jane and the power of having reference points—people whose presence shows us how we want to make others feel—people who might embody something we seek in ourselves.
Maybe instead of focusing on doing, it is time to retrain our attention towards something that is bigger, more impactful: what is the state of being we need to embody to be ready for what we seek to attract? How do we, in a more subtle way, signal to ourselves (and beyond) that we are ready for the positive change or shift we seek?
We know this intuitively because we’ve all felt it: some people settle a room when they enter it, while others leave us tense or distracted, even if they say all the right things.
What do we emanate? Another word for it is presence. Presence isn’t performance or achievement; it’s the felt quality of how we are with ourselves and others. What’s important is how we show up, how we might impact how others feel, whether the energy we bring to our days is suitable for—even better—inviting for the life we want to live.
As I enter this wild month of book launching and related events, I’m practicing something simpler and harder: returning again and again to presence—the inner posture with which I meet each conversation, each room, each moment, known and unknown, as this work of years enters the world. Am I actually here, or already thinking about what’s next, or what just happened? I am trying my best to stay in each moment.
We can each have our version of this, something we are trying to evolve, move forward, attract. Here’s one way to explore this from a different angle:
Ask ourselves:
Intention: What is something I want to have attracted, evolved into, or become by the end of this year? If this is still loose, considering tapping into the Third Awareness, Intuition, and the practices offered there, to discern intuitive guidance. The Seventh Awareness, on how we spend our discretionary time, can also support this exploration.
Embodiment: How do I carry myself once this has happened? How is my future state different than how I am today? Can I start to carry myself with that orientation, embodying the readiness for this shift? It’s a bit like dressing for the role we want to have before the promotion, but energetically.
Reference Points: Are there people we are aware of, known or unknown, living or passed, who themselves embody what we are aiming for? Imagine holding that. For me, for years, it was Angelina Jolie—not for her success or beauty, but for her ability to use her position for good in the UNHCR context. It was disarming and impactful. This week I thought of Jane.
I’d love to hear from you if this resonates, either as a reply to this email (I receive them all) or in the comments.
Blessings. Love.
Miscellaneous…
🎉 Launch Day…. I am beside myself to be sharing an hour with great teachers, guides, sources of inspiration—and friends Gabor Maté and Jack Kornfield on Tuesday. A free hour, details here. More than 1,000 of you have signed up! I hope we don’t break the Zoom.
🎧 Girl Talk with the Foster Sisters… I don’t love all podcasts I do, but this one was unexpectedly fun and deep. When we hopped on I felt like the not-cool-girl and by the end, I was deeply appreciating our conversation and shared learnings about undimming. Thank you, Sara & Erin for having me on The World’s First Podcast: We’re Our Best Selves the First Week of January.
💌 Emails, Events, & More… I’ve moved the book-specific information over to a different mailing list. If you are not getting those, and want to, please sign up here. All upcoming events are also listed here.
💊 Support for Your Dry Experiment… If you are taking a break from alcohol and want the best nutritional support you can find in a supplement on the market, we are running an insane offer right now: three sets of ClearLife Reset for the price of one. Use code 3FOR1. We want to hear from you if you try it too — feedback form here.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.