If you haven’t realized, I have a bit of a stubborn streak. I like to be right. It’s a thing I do. Once, when I was arguing with someone because I knew I was right and I just couldn’t let it go, he said, “I can tell you really like to be right.” It was just an observation – not a judgment. He even said it kind of nicely. “You really like to be right.”

And I was like, “YES, I like to be right? Why would I not? Do you go around letting people think things that are wrong?” And he looked at me like, yeah, that’s an option.

There’s a saying, “People will doubt but you say but they will believe what you do.” And this is because it is well-known that what we say isn’t always what we mean. What ultimately matters is what we DO. How we show up in the world.

Here we are – at the end of the year, maybe looking back and wondering how it all happened the way it did. Maybe holding some grudges or deep resentments…or shame about how we showed up. The good news is, if we want to, we now have a chance to do things differently.

We’ve arrived at the final few days of the year, and how we participate in this transition will set the tone for the next one to come. If we want to be active creators of our own life instead of massive observers of our life (letting things happen TO us), it’s important to get clear and move, think, and feel with intention.

Lovingkindness is foundational to cultivating wisdom and compassion in our mindfulness practice. A lot of people feel like mindfulness is a peaceful and relatively sterile thing where we are aware of our surroundings, but I’ve found that at deeper levels of mindfulness, there is also an element of love.

There are dichotomies everywhere. It’s part of nature, and we are all a part of that.