A Subtraction Session is a real conversation. We discuss subtraction at work in someone else’s life and ideas, not only mine (or yours). This August, I’m bringing the best ones back while I get ready for TEDxSanDiego (live Aug 27).
My conversation with Diane Shiffer is one I still think (and hear from you) about on the reg. Worth a rewatch, or a first watch!
This past week I sat down with my puffin mug — it has a little beak, it genuinely makes me happy every time — set a five-minute timer, and attempted what Diane Shiffer calls a Sit and Stare.
I remained seated for approximately 45 seconds before I remembered I needed to text someone about plans on Sunday. Then the dog walker arrived, the dogs went nuts, and by the time everyone settled down my matcha was cold and there were 22 seconds left on the timer 😏
I nuked the matcha. Reset the timer. Tried again.
And the second time, it actually worked. Five minutes of watching spring bloom through the window while holding something warm and searching for the tendrils of steam that Diane speaks so fondly. I honestly have never noticed steam coming from my morning drink. Either because it’s in a to-go cup with a lid, or because I’m not actually seeing it as I drink.
I’ve had ‘Take 5’ on my daily habit tracker for over a year. I usually give myself credit if I do the NYTimes games during the day, or make time for an extended session cuddling the dogs. But Diane’s Sit and Stare label gave me a more specific mandate. I liked it. I went into the rest of the day measurably differently than I usually do. And changed that habit in my tracker to “Sit and Stare 🍵”.
Diane Shiffer is known to nearly two million people as the internet’s favorite nana: a warm, funny, deeply human presence with a commitment to social justice who posts videos of steam rising off her morning coffee and cats underfoot in a 1930s house in western New York.
Before all of that, she was a special education teacher, a Head Start coordinator, a social worker, and a single mother raising five children, infant to teenager, in what she describes as a whirlpool. Head coming up for air every few months, before she’d get sucked back under.
She is not, she told me clearly, a natural joy factory. She struggled seriously with anxiety and depression. What she found, in five-minute increments, in parking lots before jobs she dreaded, was that joy could be nurtured. Intentionally. In tiny containers. And that doing so intentionally was not optional, not indulgent or irresponsible, not a reward for finishing the interminable to-do list. It became the thing that made getting everything else done survivable.
Her new book The Smallest of Joys: How to Create Your Own Magic, Let Your Best Be Enough, and Find Contentment Exactly As You Are (Hay House, April 2026) is structured like a year’s worth of letters from someone who has actually figured this out and wants to hand you the map.
In this conversation, we get into the moment a cinnamon roll changed everything. One of her first videos drew in thousands of people who said they had been invited to share about their day so generously, offering “all the time in the world”.
We talked about joy as fuel for the hardest fights, not retreat from them. About what it actually means to hold two streams of consciousness at once: your father’s cancer diagnosis and your children’s laughter, the world’s brokenness and the frost on your porch railing on a Tuesday morning, horrific political violence and beautiful antique doilies.
We also talk about permission slips, including the first one she ever gave herself, to accept something about her body that she’d been refusing to accept for years and buying clothes that fit the body she actually has. It is such a small thing. And it was not a small thing.
And we end, as every Subtraction Session does, with the question: what do you need to subtract to get there? Her answer is worth the whole conversation.
Keep on rollin’,
Nell
PS: On May 27th at 1pm ET, join me for a live Subtraction Session with J. Nichole Smith of Joy First. It’s a conversation I’ll look forward to all month, and the perfect place to take everything Diane and I started here and go deeper. Save your spot here.
And if you haven’t yet — Diane’s book is the kind of thing you want in your hands, not on a screen. Get it here. While you’re waiting for it to arrive, follow her on Instagram. Then make yourself a cup of something warm and look for the steam.
Finally, our June theme is bias, and the calendar is already full-up with Live Subtraction Sessions, designed intentionally to include you in those conversations. Join me with:
Kelly Wendorf, corporate shaman, Founder of EQUUS Inspired, and my mentor in coaching with horses — June 3 at 12:15 pm ET - RSVP here
Deb Shine Valentine, Liberatory Life Coach and author of Controversial Grace — June 17 at 12:15 pm ET - RSVP here
Abi Adamson, The Culture Ajagun and author of Culture Blooming — June 24 at 12:15 pm ET — RSVP here
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