"Human beings need recognition as much as they need food and water. No cooler punishment can be devised than to not see someone, to render them unimportant or invisible...To do that is to say: you don’t matter. You don’t exist."
How to Know a Person, David Brooks

Who can you truly "see" today?

Judgment happens in an instant. Curiosity requires presence. It's in that presence...that willingness to stay with uncertainty...where genuine connection happens.

Questions I’m practicing to replace judgment with curiosity:

"What were you hoping would happen?"
"When did this feeling first show up today?"
"Did something that happen before this that you'd want to talk through?"
"How can I best support you right now—listening, help, space?"

What would you add?

Our stories and the emotions within them, when shared and witnessed with others, create the deepest human connections.

Building a practice of curiosity over judgment. Maybe something I'll keep exploring here with you all.

Question reframe for today:
- Rather than "What were you thinking?"
- Trying out "What led you to think that way?"

I'd love to learn what you are reframing to shift from judgment to curiosity.

“People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like.
By going within.
Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruption—than your own soul.”
— Marcus Aurelius

Emotion regulation isn't measured by the absence of difficult feelings. It's about influencing how we experience or express them.

We don’t just have emotions. We have agency with them.

As Marc Brackett says, “Permission to feel means permission to act.” When we recognize our emotions and know we can do something with them, we're better able to support ourselves and the people we love.

I’m wrestling with lots of unpleasant feelings this week.

So a mental model and reminder for me and us: we have agency when it comes to our emotions. We can influence and shape them. We can choose what we think about them. We can choose how we approach them or not approach them.

“So much of emotion is biography.”
—Brené Brown

Get outside or listen to the birds at my house. 🐦
Listening to birdsong can lower stress and shift your mind and body towards calm. Take a moment to pause today.

#birdsong #calm #mindfulness

I believe there's wisdom in deciding what we share with our kids, but I also believe there's value in letting them see us. They don't need us to be perfect. They need to see how we navigate the messy parts of being human.

"Our ability to tolerate anger, frustration, and behavior we don't like is a skill we can strengthen by investigating the source of our discomfort." - Lori Petro

We can choose curiosity over judgment. Curiosity helps us stay open to seeing something or someone in a new or deeper way.

What feeling do you want to feel more often—and what need does that feeling fulfill?

"The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives." —Esther Perel

There’s a difference between tolerating feelings and behaviors. What have you been willing to tolerate?