​"Don't trip over something behind you." ~Seneca

I think that's the essence of healing. Finding a way to keep the past from tripping you up today.

The challenge, I believe—and have experienced—is letting go of the idea that healing is erasing the past—just forget it ever happened. But the past is never erased. It is never gone. In many cases, it's hard to make the past even a distant memory.

But the past is not standing in the way of my future unless I put it there. I can't trip over a rock behind me unless I physically turn around and re-engage that rock.

Which I have done.

Many times.

I recently wrote an essay about The Odyssey, where I admitted that home in the later years of my life has felt more like a question than an address. It was meant as a healthy reflection. But if every new relationship or opportunity I have is evaluated through the lens of old definitions of home, yesterday can become today's map.

Yesterday can trip me up on my way to tomorrow.

Our past will always have a voice in our lives. It's inescapable. The challenge is to keep it from having the loudest voice.

Tomorrow is calling.

Walk toward it.

When the rocks of yesterday want to trip you up, stop, pick them up, toss them to the side, and keep on walking. It's not easy—I get it—but neither is letting the same rock trip us up over and over again.

​I recently met with a group of 22 leaders. We were talking about practical things they could do to help remind themselves that they matter. One suggestion was pretty simple: invest in relationships.

I asked them, with a show of hands, tell me how many of you feel like you do a good job with this?

No one raised their hand.

I assumed it was too late in the day. The energy in the room was draining. But I pressed. "Is this really true, no one in here really feels like they do a good job investing in relationships?"

I didn't ask to shame; most days I'm quick to own that I myself don't do a great job investing in connection. But I was surprised to find it so prevalent among such a large group.

As we talked about it, the reasons began to surface.

"I'm tired."

"It takes too much energy, and I don't have much to spare."

"I don't feel like people will reciprocate my energy."

"I always get burned in relationships."

All answers that resonated with me. The reality is, relationships ARE work. And in the midst of a loneliness epidemic, I'm not sure if we've come to think relationships SHOULD NOT BE such hard work—that our relationships should somehow take care of themselves—or if we've simply decided they are not at all WORTH the work.

Research tells us that relationships are among the strongest predictors of happiness, resilience, physical health, and even longevity. So, I think it's pretty important to figure out where our chronic disconnection is coming from.

I told the group that I'd spent much of the past year researching and talking about "mattering." I've discovered that investing in relationships doesn't just remind other people that they matter to us, it reminds us that WE matter. And like I've said often lately, if we feel like we matter, the things we do and the places we'll go will likely matter more to us.

Before we closed our time together, I asked the group to write down one relationship they'd commit to investing in over the next two weeks. Maybe give someone a call, meet them for coffee, go for a walk, write them a thank you note. It doesn't have to be an all-in kind of investment, just a step toward connection.

Maybe a step you've been hesitant to take.

Now, it's not like I'm a teacher and will be grading their homework two weeks from now. Chances are I'll never know if they will follow through on what they wrote down. I just hope they will.

But I did write my own personal relationship assignment down.

I will know if I follow through.

I will know if I care enough about me to invest in the thing that probably means as much to my well-being as anything:

Relationships.

​When given a safe place to talk about hard stories, people will often choose to tell their hardest stories.

Yesterday, I wrote about an experience I participated in at a training I helped lead last week. The participants were given a prompt to share a hard story in their life with a partner. It's important to note that at this point we'd spent 16 hours together.

There was a strong sense of safety and bonding amongst us.

I've participated in this particular experience in this training several times. And it always amazes me that when prompted to share a hard story, people often reach for their hardest story. Quite often a story they've never or rarely ever shared before.

Why is that?

Arthur Brooks says that in large groups of people, you find that when you ask them about the meaning of their life, they always talk about their more challenging times.

Our identity is largely influenced by what we've been through, what we've been able to navigate ourselves through. We often learn much more about who we are not by what comes our way, but by the things we overcome that are standing in our way.

Achievements are good at answering what we've done. But suffering is always asking me who I am becoming.

The promotion, the championship, the degree, the award—they become nice chapters in my life story. But divorce, addiction, betrayal, the diagnosis, the loss of a loved one—these moments are always the ones that ask the most important questions.

Who am I now?

What becomes of me when everything I've depended on is no longer dependable?

Is there any way possible to make anything good of this?

I think this is why people reach for their hardest moments when asked to simply share a hard moment. Not because it's the most painful moment, but because it's the moment that taught them the most.

The most about life. The most about themselves.

It is a great irony in many ways. We spend so much of our lives trying to avoid suffering, and yet, when we're asked to look for meaning in our lives we instinctively turn to our stories of suffering. The stories we are often most afraid to tell are often the stories that taught us who we are.

The magical part of life is that when we find the safe place to share them, the people to share them with, those places are filled with learning far beyond self.

The meaning of life is found in our shared sufferings.

I have experienced this time and time again.

I'm afraid I have lived long enough to know that pain is never going away. And I have also lived long enough to know that was never the plan in the first place.

Without pain, there is not meaning.

​Looking back, the tears weren't the hardest part. They were simply the invitation into a story I would be entrusted to hold—and eventually tell.

I noticed her on day one of our training. She looked uncertain. Apprehensive. Sad, maybe—burdens deeper than the human eye can possibly see.

Yet she leaned in. She gave as much of herself as she could possibly give in the moment. Not all of us can do that, you know. Giving all of ourselves in a moment is often far more heroic than we give ourselves credit for.

Day two came, and she returned. Sometimes the vulnerability of day one makes it very difficult to do that. To once again show up.

But there she was, and her presence alone filled me with hope.

The second day always ends with what is, for many of us, the emotional heart of the experience. Each participant begins by selecting a photograph that represents a difficult chapter of their life. The image becomes a bridge into a story that might otherwise never be told.

We then pair off and share those stories with one another. To conclude the experience, we sit in a circle and share not our own story, but the story another human being has trusted us to share.

As we were pairing off, I saw her holding a picture of a lighthouse. Tears rolled down her face. To be honest, my instinct was to run from that pairing. From that tearful story. Maybe it was the bravery I'd seen in her showing up with us that gave me the bravery I needed to show up for her.

We found a quiet spot; she shared her story first.

Her hard story took place about a half dozen years ago, on the day she discovered her mother, step-father, and half brother had lost their lives to homicide. You wake up as family. Before the day is done family is gone.

She sobbed as she shared her story. Even in the tears I saw as we paired up, I could never have imagined the horror of the story I was about to hear.

It's a story she told me she has seldom shared, but the safety she'd felt with our group the previous two days felt like an invitation to share it.

Her mother was her best friend, she told me. She collected lighthouses, which was why my new friend sat there holding a photo of a lighthouse as she bravely shared her story with me.

As we sat there in the circle, me ready to share her story with the group, I noticed her fanning herself. I asked her if she was okay. She said she was.

But as it got closer and closer to our turn, I saw her begin to struggle more, and eventually get up to go get some air.

I honestly did not know if she'd return and allow me to share her story. I would have completely understood if she had not.

There would have been no shame if she had not.

But she did. And I did. I shared her story.

There was no shortage of tears in the circle. There was an abundance of love and support and hugs. Not just for her story but for every hard story that was shared.

And then day three.....

I arrived early. I was sitting in my chair reading some work related emails. I looked up in time to see her bouncing through the door. A smile as wide as that door. A look of confidence and purpose. As if the heavy lifting from the day before had released a heavy weight.

I did not recognize this person. This was not the same person I noticed on day one.

She told us in our closing discussion that our group had changed her life. This capacity to have a safe place to share something she had rarely shared was a gift, she said.

This capacity to have a safe place to share our hardest stories—isn't this somehow the definition of humanity? My belief is yes, because the last three days I've felt as unmistakably human as I have felt in some time. Maybe as human as I've felt since the last time I helped lead one of these CHATS (Connecting Humans And Telling Stories) experiences.

I am grateful that my friend gave me permission to share this story. Because in many ways this story is not hers alone.

We all have hard stories. Hard stories that are a burden. But maybe the intensity of the burden is greatly increased in carrying them alone. In believing we HAVE to carry them alone.

There are plenty of reasons, on a daily basis, to question humanity. Reasons that make me ask how will we ever survive.

And yet, it is spending three days together, intimately, sharing the purest kind of humanity WITH humanity that always gives me the purest kind of hope.

It starts with holding one another. Yes. But until we are open to one another's hardest stories, we will fail to hold what need's held most.

We will fail to be the humanity that humanity is crying out for.

Looking back, the tears weren't the hardest part. They were simply the invitation. The hardest part is believing we were never meant to carry those stories alone.

Thank you to my friend and a whole host of new friends this week who helped me believe more than ever that we do not have to carry anything alone....

​Yesterday, I had one of the deeper and more meaningful relational experiences of my life. I am sure I will write about it this weekend when my training and traveling is complete. But for now - some thoughts.

There are stories
that should never be carried alone.

Stories with trembling hands.
Stories that arrive
wrapped in silence,
or hidden beneath
"I'm fine."

To be entrusted with one
is not an achievement.

It is an invitation.

A quiet permission
to step onto holy ground
without trying to fix the landscape.

Sometimes the greatest gift
is not wisdom,
or answers,
or perfectly chosen words.

It is becoming a place
where another human being
can finally set down
what has been crushing them.

What a remarkable thing
that a heart,
bruised by the world,
would look at yours
and whisper,

"I think you can hold this."

May we never treat
that kind of trust casually.

Because few honors in this life
are greater
than being trusted
with another person's pain
and helping them discover
they no longer have to carry it
by themselves.

​If forced to identify my superpower, I'd say it is curiosity. Nothing fuels my desire to get out of bed in the morning more than my desire to understand human stories. And people seem to respond well to my wanting to better understand them.

Whether it's a young man at the checkout counter at 7-11, a waitress at Olive Garden, or a law enforcement officer at a training I'm leading—I am obsessed with the human story. I am obsessed with discovering the greater meaning in every human encounter.

And maybe—I am thinking this morning—my obsession isn't totally driven by what I want to do, or who I want to be, but also by what I want to receive.

Maybe curiosity is as much love language as it is superpower.

A friend asked me yesterday, "Do you mainly write about things you experience in your day to day life, the people you meet, the situations that happen to someone you know?"

To you the reader maybe that seems like quite a simple question. But it didn't feel so normal. I've found myself reflecting on that.

What exactly is this power behind the curiosity superpower? It feels seductive in ways; and I mean that well beyond romantic seduction.

To me, when someone is curious about you it feels like they're silently saying: "There's something inside you worth discovering."

I am wondering this morning just how important this desire to discover is in any great relationship.

Whether this is friendship, or romance, or even a leader with her followers, no great relationship seems to be held together by ongoing excitement, it feels like they need ongoing discovery.

Because the moment we believe we've figured someone out, curiosity dies. And when curiosity dies, we no longer need to pay attention to the people we are in a relationship with. We simply begin relating to them through our assumptions about them and not all that we still long to learn about them.

Curiosity keeps a relationship alive because it refuses to let another human become so familiar to us that we stop exploring them.

Is curiosity one of the purest forms of love?

Not because it agrees. Not because it approves. But because curiosity says you are worth staying around long enough to ask another question. It says there is still so much more to uncover in you that I can't help but want to know.

I believe somewhere in us all is a desire to be uncovered. It's why I see so many lives brightly come to life on the other side of what to me feels like quite simple questions.

But it turns out this chance to be uncovered is not simple at all.

When you are on the receiving end of the uncovering, you begin to intimately get that—and can't help but want to make your curiosity superpower more powerful than it already is.

If you want to strengthen a relationship in your life, don't underestimate the power or curiosity. The SUPERPOWER of curiosity. There are so many people roaming the world believing they have nothing worth uncovering.

Curiosity says not so fast.

Stop roaming.

Tell me more......

​Blindsided.

It's a different flavor of a problem.

I've experienced it this weekend.

The nature of the events is unimportant. Mainly because a strategy I've adopted in my own healing journey is to as quickly as possible leave behind the events and begin searching for what the events reveal about being human.

About being me.

Like me, you've likely been blindsided. You don't need to know or experience my events to feel the truth in that. And so maybe the broader human question isn't about the specifics of blindsided events, but rather why they often come with such a violent kick in the gut.

I guess it's simple. When hardship comes that we see coming, we begin preparing long before it arrives. We gather resources. We brace ourselves. We practice conversations and we spend a lot of time forewarning ourselves: This is going to suck.

The cruelty and vindictiveness of blindsided is it often offers none of that.

In the aftershocks of this earthquake I did not see coming, I've been wondering why some challenges I've experienced, as hard as they were, didn't feel nearly as exhausting and utterly defeating as being blindsided.

I think it boils down to our bodies. And how our bodies relax a bit when we believe chapters of uncertainty in our lives are coming to an end. There is such tangible comfort and rest in that.

You sleep better and eat better and literally see the whole picture of the world better. Whose body does not crave better?

But then, like being awakened from a deep sleep with a bucket of ice water, the body is told that not only is this uncertainty far from coming to an end, uncertainty has reloaded its weaponry and is coming back with a spray of its punishment like you've never absorbed before.

And the body, being the body, naturally responds to that.

But here is what I've been reminded this weekend. And I want you to be reminded of it as well if you've experienced blindsided.

This weekend my peace has been disrupted. Greatly. But it does not erase the fact that I've become a more peaceful person.

This weekend I have found myself thinking:

"I thought I was through this."

"I thought things were getting better."

"I thought I could relax."

One blindsided moment can make us question and disown months and even years of progress. But that's where a more peaceful me can step in and recognize: NO, that's a lie.

Healing isn't evidence of never being knocked completely off balance again. Healing is evidence of what we do after.

Years ago, this weekend would have consumed my life for months to come. But here I am writing about it two days later. I am reflecting instead or reacting.

That's not to say there has been NO reaction at all, but the body once again finds peace the sooner we start looking to make meaning and not war.

Every event in life comes with a claiming option. Claim the event or claim the meaning of it.

Meaning is always a path forward. The event is always an invitation to stay stuck right where you are.

If I know the transmission is going out in my car, I have time to prepare for that inevitability. If I am in a collision today and my car is totaled, I've been given no time to prepare for that.

But the reality is - they are both challenging events in life. One simply demands we begin the process of meaning making and peace finding a whole lot quicker.

Sadly, the body is NOT great at that. But, as I have discovered through a lot of really hard work: The body IS completely capable of that.

Remember that the goal isn't to convince your body that nothing bad happened. The goal is to help your body discover that something bad happened...and you're still here.

Being blindsided changes the timeline, but it doesn't change what's possible. The body may need time to catch up. It may need to breathe, sleep, find people, and grace. But please don't mistake "not there yet" for "never getting there."

The body isn't great at finding peace overnight, but with our help, the body is remarkably capable of finding it again. If I've learned nothing else in life, I have indeed learned this.

Blindsided is not forever blinded.

Carry on.

​When we are born, we arrive with no clue about happiness. No pre-programmed definitions. No lived happiness experience to help us know it when we see it. In fact, we have no expectations around happiness at all.

And yet, somehow, it becomes our greatest pursuit.

This pursuit doesn't happen because we discover hints of happiness, but rather, because hints of happiness find us.

A familiar face shows up that feels happy. A gentle voice. Being held or fed. Someone laughing that makes our whole being feel safe and loved.

From the earliest moments of our lives, happiness is something that shows up and not something we are inclined to discover, chase or define.

Then, little by little, something changes. The world entices us with the possibility of grander forms of happiness. New definitions.

Happiness starts to become...

"When I get...."

"When I become...."

"When I make enough...."

"When I lose enough...."

"When I find the right relationship...."

Happiness slowly moves from being something experienced with others in the present to something postponed into the future. A future we slowly but then more aggressively become obsessed with chasing.

Victor Frankl once wrote: "Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue." Meaning—happiness often follows experiences we were not doing so much for the sake of becoming happy.

Several times in the last few weeks I've presented to audiences about things I care deeply about. And, on the other side of those presentations, I've felt happiness. I didn't pursue those opportunities for happiness, but happiness ensued.

Earlier this week, I rode a roller coaster in the extreme heat with my oldest son. Frankly, the heat was so extreme even roller coaster riding wasn't much fun. But racing down the hill of the park's largest coaster, I heard my kid belly laughing. And, in an instant, I was overcome with happiness.

Happiness ensued....

I look back on my life and rue how much of it was spent searching for an answer that already lived inside me—the answer to happiness. Or, the many years I spent deeply numbing the feeling that the answer to happiness was absolutely impossible to find.

Because now I can see that happiness was never meant to be hunted.

Or wildly chased.

It was always meant to be shared.

Shared in the here and now.

​Yesterday morning, I stopped at a local 7-Eleven to grab a cup of coffee before driving to Virginia Beach to lead a training about helping people know they matter.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Sometimes, before we ever stand in front of an audience to teach something, life decides to teach us first.

As I checked out, the young man behind the register smiled and said he hoped I was having a great day. Then, almost as an aside, he said he'd come in early that morning to make sure the store looked immaculate.

"I think it brightens people's day when they walk into a clean place," he said. "Not everyone comes from a place that's clean and nice. I want to give them something nice."

I just stood there for a moment. Empathy. Not the kind we often celebrate on stages or write books about.

Just quiet empathy.

A young man stocking shelves and wiping counters before sunrise because somewhere along the way he'd learned that environments affect people. That some people carry heavy things into a convenience store. That maybe, just maybe, a clean floor, organized shelves, and a warm greeting could be one small reminder that the world still contains kindness.

I told him where I was headed.

"I'm driving to Virginia Beach to teach people how to help others know they matter."

Then I smiled and said something I hope he will always remember.

"You will make more people feel like they matter today than I can ever dream of."

His face changed. He smiled. Not the smile someone gives after receiving a compliment. The smile someone gives when, if only for a moment, they believe what you just said.

I walked out to my car. I started the engine. Then I turned it back off. Some moments you just feel are not supposed to be rushed past. I sat there thinking about what had just happened before realizing I needed to go back inside.

I asked the young man if I could take a picture with him because I wanted to share his story with the audience I was about to meet.

It honestly felt like God had placed him in my path that morning—not to give me another illustration for a presentation, but to remind me that the message I was carrying was already alive in the world before I ever arrived.

He was the presentation before the presentation.

I opened my training with his story. As I spoke, I noticed a woman quietly wiping tears from her cheeks. It reminded me that there are people all around us who don't simply understand the idea of mattering. They feel it. Deeply.

For many people, maybe that's because somewhere in their own lives they've known what it's like not to.

As I was driving home in the endless Virginia Beach Friday afternoon traffic, I reflected on the day and another thought came to me. I have to believe someone, somewhere, helped that young man know he matters. Who wakes up before 6:00 a.m. to make a convenience store beautiful for strangers if they don't believe their own life carries beauty?

Who believes a clean store can become a gift unless someone once convinced them that they, themselves, are a gift?

Mattering doesn't usually appear out of nowhere. Someone plants it. Someone notices us. Someone encourages us. Someone believes in us long before we fully believe in ourselves. Then, one day, we begin passing it on.

That's what I challenged the audience to do yesterday. Create waves of mattering.

Not because you're a CEO.

Not because you're a teacher.

Not because you have thousands of followers.

But because you happen to cross paths with another human being.

We often imagine that changing lives requires a big platform. A microphone. A title. A position of influence. But yesterday morning reminded me that influence has very little to do with where you stand.

This young man didn't need a stage. He only needed a 7-Eleven. His mission field wasn't glamorous. It was coffee, clean floors, lottery tickets, and early morning customers. And yet he understood something profound.

Every person who walks through those doors deserves to feel like they matter.

Maybe that's our calling too. Not to wait until life gives us a bigger platform. But to make the place we're already standing feel a little more welcoming.

A little more hopeful.

A little more human.

Because here's what I witnessed yesterday.

One young man cared enough to clean a store. That inspired a conversation. The conversation inspired a photograph. The photograph inspired a presentation. The presentation moved a woman to tears.

And today, I'm writing about him.

That's how mattering spreads. Not in giant leaps. In waves. And every wave begins with one person deciding that another human being is worth caring for.

We all deserve to matter.

And perhaps the greatest privilege we have is helping someone else believe that they do.