2025-04-02 05:59:46
I keep returning to this idea that people are our mirrors. “Everyone is a mirror image of your own thinking coming back at you,” Byron Katie wrote in Loving What Is.
It works for noticing shadow. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves,” as Carl Jung put it. But where there is shadow, there is also gold.
I’ve been having lots of meetings recently and a lot of the people I meet are covered in gold. The stories and ideas they carry sparkle like a pile of gemstones. Well, almost. Their treasure exists in the realm of potential. It is unmanifest.
When I notice, I can’t help but ask:
Have you written about that?
When those words cross my lips, I know I’ve entered “most wonderful job in the world” territory. I can feel myself light up.
I find myself in the presence of something subtle and holy. Like communion. Not the Christian sacrament, Communion with a capital C, but communion as an intimate space of sharing, of being witnessed, of being vulnerable. A moment of inspiration and aliveness.
I’m not saying everyone should write in public. It’s just an expression of curiosity: that’s so interesting, have you dug into it? Have you given it shape or shared it? Have you written, spoken, painted, drawn, danced, sung, built, drummed, or carved . . . that?
. . . then I hear the shadow words. And the real communion begins.
You know the words I’m talking about.
What if I failed? What would people think? What — and who — could I lose?
What if I succeeded? Who would I be? What would I have to sacrifice?
It’s too difficult. I don’t know enough. Nobody would care or understand.
I could never . . . I am not a storyteller, not a writer, not interesting enough, not smart enough, not funny enough . . . not . . . enough.
Shadow words are as old as time. Exodus 3:10-11: “What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Who, me? I could never!
Shadow words can feel like the weight of a lifetime. A ball and chain to keep us in place. Back pain to distract us from our gold.
Shadow words exhaust me, but I respect them. They tell me that I’m in someone’s labyrinth. There’s gold here, but also people’s demons.
I try to slow down and tap into my intuition. I reach out and feel the walls. What is the texture of this space? Are there markers to guide us? Can I find a light switch?
What I do, and someone had to point this out to me, is that I channel my inner bunny.
Picture a rabbit: big ears. Soft and warm. Gentle. Totally present. A good listener. A patient witness. The bunny does not judge. It is not pushy. By its nature it is excited to go down a rabbit hole.
Shadow words point toward an age-old nasty cocktail made with ingredients like fear, doubt, judgment, and pain.
I am afraid, I worry.
I don’t think I can.
I am not worthy. I don’t deserve.
I feel alone, separate, disconnected. . .
They point toward a simple question: Is it okay to be me?
Is there space in this world for . . . who I am, for how I am, for everything I am? Am I okay with all that I am — with everything I have done, thought, and felt? Can I meet everything I am with love and forgiveness?
Because if I could — if I felt completely comfortable and deeply in love with every aspect of myself — then of course I would share. It would be the most natural thing. Like asking for the butter at breakfast.
Unfortunately, the world can feel cold and threatening, judgmental and competitive. Maybe it does not feel like a place where it’s okay to be visible and take up space. Maybe it feels like you’re alone in your tower at night. The wolves are out there, howling at the moon. Maybe it feels like you need to protect yourself.
I get that. My safe space is a kind of isolation.
Give me a screen, books, journals. I am comfortable by myself. I don’t like to think about the downside of this behavior, the many relationships that died for lack of nourishment.
And of course there can be sacredness in solitude, in the communion with a greater force of being. But the gold I’ve been finding recently becomes visible in connection. It requires a shared space in which energy can flow.
It requires a conversation like a communion.
A magic space of curiosity and sharing that leads to the source of infinite possibility.
A space in which it’s okay to just be me.
That’s what the bunny means to me. Let the wolves be wolves for a moment and hang out with an animal that is friendly, harmless, and attentive. How nice to be heard and witness. How nice to just . . . be.
When we feel seen, accepted, maybe even understood, we remember that separation is not truth. We see a path to face the shadow and find the gold that lies behind it. We get a glimpse of what is possible.
To get there, we need to see our glow reflect in the eyes of another. To find our light, we need others who light up in our presence. We need to see it so we can believe it.
I need that, too. Last week, someone told me my questions were very intuitive. I blushed. What, me? Nooooo, you’re not serious, awwwww . . .
What I’m talking about is simple and available to all of us.
It’s as ordinary as setting an intention and preparing a space.
It’s as trivial as loving, gentle curiosity.
It’s as unremarkable as staying curious. Tell me more. I would love to hear about that. Actually, I totally think you could!
It’s as mundane as an empowering question: Have you written about that? What if you just . . . went for it?
That’s how we find the diamonds among our pebbles. That’s how we see the ancient patterns hidden in the endless sand. That’s how we remember the sun is right there, behind the clouds.
These conversations help us feel our lightning and hear our stream.
It must be the most wonderful job in the world to have them over and over, to be a mirror for magic, an instrument of sympathetic resonance, a tuning fork that vibrates in the presence of aliveness.
When we spot the gold in others, we get to enjoy the glow.
When we share our light, we get to be the light.
That said, what really excites me is that I don’t have to do the writing afterwards.
— Frederik
Channeling the rabbit for more magical conversations.
Preparation. Big ears and stillness.
Approach conversation with intention. Think of each as a room. What does the space feel like? What is the invitation?
If I can’t be present with myself, how can I be a good listener? Meditation, journaling, and walks anchor my days. Something simple like a few minutes of breathing — HRV or 4-7-8, for example — can help me find my center. When I overschedule on the other hand, my attention starts to frazzle.
This goes both ways: for my guidance calls, I send people questions to prepare. If someone can’t be bothered to invest ~10 minutes to reflect ahead of time, that has proven to be a meaningful red flag. My tolerance for this declined when I realized that my opportunity cost is a magical conversation with someone else.
Soft, warm, and gentle.
Prepare to share. Remember the levels of intimacy. People will meet you where they perceive you to be. If you’re all polished and business, the conversation will likely remain at that surface level.
We all experience inner conflict. I find it more interesting to explore polarities than to weigh in and support a side. There is information in resistance. Harmony requires that all voices are heard.
A mantra: I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. I don’t know what anyone should do. I just try to be present, curious, and I allow myself to get excited.
Ready for rabbit holes.
It’s nice to prepare, but don’t let an agenda get in the way of aliveness. I look for what wants to move. Sometimes it’s obvious, other times it hides below the surface. Both light and shadow words can lead us there.
Meeting shadow.
I find that treasure often lies at the intersection of talent and trauma. Where does the struggle to be human meet passion, skills, and knowledge?
I try to notice objections to curiosity, aliveness, and dreams. I try to inquire gently: What is behind the resistance? What makes this negative statement true or not true? What makes the other person think so — what part of them believes it to be true? What feelings or memories come up?
The emotional component is more complex.
First, the mind avoids discomfort. “I think” is a clue that someone is returning to their story after touching emotional truth. Sometimes it’s good to analyze, but often this is a diversion.
We all wear masks and people can be disconnected from their emotions. There is a lot of wisdom concealed, but I don’t know whether the other person wants to go there. I am curious: What is behind the fear and the tension? What is underneath the anger? But it’s all up to the other person.
I tend to recommend mindbody writing or specific prompts. Sometimes it’s obvious that follow-up conversations would be invaluable.
Eye on the prize.
The end goal, as I see it, is to meet everything within us with love and forgiveness.
Dealing with shadow is not easy. Affirmation is worth its weight in gold.
I picked up two prompts from James Pennebaker’s Opening Up by Writing It Down, a book about the science behind ‘expressive writing’ — writing about stressful or traumatic events.
“Benefit finding: Identify an event and then focus on the positive aspects of the experience; this might include a focus on how you have grown or changed as a person . . . and how you might be better equipped to meet future challenges.”
“Best possible future self: Think about your life in the future and write about this life as if you have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals.” What is your highest and best hope?
Use these to ‘close out’ an investigation of the shadow space.
2025-03-29 00:09:42
Hello friends,
Time for more experiments!
I’ve written a lot about the power of different journaling methods. I’ve long wondered what it would be like to explore these together. I will explore a few online space as free experiments while I figure out the format I like best.
The first will be next week Thursday, April 3, at 11 am Eastern Time. → This is the link to register.
Future ones will be at different times and weekdays to give people in different time zones a chance to join.
Rough format:
1 hour
Have pen and paper ready (I would recommend either a fresh journal or one you use for journaling/writing exercises)
I will share some thoughts and pointers about the writing practices I use
~15 minutes of solo writing time
Your choice of trying a stream-of-consciousness method or a prompt. Pick what feels most interesting/relevant
Time for discussion, questions, sharing, and feedback
Maybe pointers/prompts on how to continue the practice on your own
I want to record the introduction and prompt to share them later. I will not record the discussion. This will be a private space. Everything you write will be for your eyes and benefit only.
On this note: does anyone know how to keep out AI bots like Otter that create automated transcripts?
Price of admission. The first few spaces will be free but I ask for an offering. Bring one thing that moved or touched you. Could be anything — a quote, the name of a song, book, movie, a poem, a moment in your life, an image . . .
And for yourself: bring something that you want to move or whose movement you find challenging. Something stuck or maybe something moving in the wrong direction. Reflect on it ahead of time . . . maybe it will come up during the journaling exercise. Or maybe not. You never know.
I share different versions of these questions with anyone getting on a personal guidance call with me.
If you plan on joining the call, spend some time with these. Copy them into a fresh document. See where they lead you. Things can start to shift long before we sit down to do the work.
Before you write anything, make a conscious decision to step into radical honesty with yourself. Close your eyes, take a deep breath. Get centered in your body. (I recommend 5 minutes of relaxing HRV breathing.)
Rate each area of your life: how satisfied are you? (1 lowest, 10 highest)
Career & Work:
Money & Finances:
Partner & Love:
Family & Friends:
Creativity:
Spirituality:
Personal Growth & Learning:
Health & Fitness:
Fun & Enjoyment:
In which area(s) are you settling for less than you deserve? Why?
What are the top 2-3 things currently causing anxiety?
Do you feel stuck? If so, how?
Stuck on a specific goal, change, or decision
Stuck in an area
Disconnected from purpose, flow, energy, creativity
Disconnected from emotions, inner guidance
Different kinds of writing (among other practices) can help in each area.
Do you know your compass? What do you refuse to compromise on? How connected do you feel to your purpose?
What are you unusually passionate about? How do you share or express it with others?
What important moment(s) of your life cannot be found on your CV but explain(s) where you are today? Which of these do you . . . share, celebrate, hide?
What would you love to tell [the world / your partner / your family / your boss / … ] but it feels impossible?
If you had a magic wand, what major change would you make in your life? What is your highest and best hope? What is getting in the way?
What important idea/truth do you know but are not acting on? Why?
If journaling could lead to 1-2 outcomes or changes in your life, what’s the best you would hope for?
If you had the time and skill, what story would you tell / what idea would you share?
2025-03-28 05:54:18
Alright, here’s the deal: the time of my move is coming closer and I’m working hard to drop weight. I have a stack of finance books that I won’t be taking with me. They have been marked up, which means I can’t sell them at Strand.
I’m planning a road trip out west, otherwise I will be around the next few weeks. If one or several of these interest you, send me an email with the titles and we can schedule a date & time to pick them up (I live a couple of blocks from Union Square). First come first serve. Afternoon/evening only.
Otherwise, you know, they will enter the book sharing box at Stuyvesant Square Park where I must have left a hundred books already. . .
That’s it.
2025-03-23 02:58:58
It’s so easy to lose the golden thread, the thread that guides us through the labyrinth of life.
It happens to me when I get stuck in my head.
And that can happen oh so quickly.
It happens when I look for an optimal solution to a complicated issue. Like, where to move. Much cheaper than NYC. Access to nature. But also enough culture and community to connect with. Enough local weirdos. An active dating scene? Lower taxes? Distance to family? Local language? Car vs. walkable. . . lost in a maze of my own making.
Simple questions can ground us.
If I had one more year — or ten — would I still care about this?
If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?
If I could only select based on one factor, which would it be?
That’s how I started dropping the weight. With infinite time and space, I’d keep all the books. But time is precious. Space is valuable. Empty space can give form to the new. Constraints are very useful.
A couple of weeks ago, I watched the gorgeous and cryptic The Tree of Life, a two-hour poem of a film, a prayer set to the rhythm of life, an exploration of the sacred beauty of our world. I wept like a baby at the end.
“Don’t do it like I did, promise me that,” the movie’s father tells his son. “I dreamed of being a great musician. I let myself get side-tracked. When you’re looking for something to happen, that was it. A lie, you lived it.”
He got lost in the maze. But is he honest?
In that moment, he continues to live the “lie,” really the story, a story like a labyrinth, one that keeps him on his path. One that he could exit.
Every day is a chance to change that lie to something truthful.
Every day we don’t show up and share our gift, both we and the world are losing out.
When we don’t follow our compass, when we don’t know what the compass is, we risk getting side-tracked.
This doesn’t have to be about work or creativity.
Your heart is a gift. So is your presence.
The partner you can be to someone is a gift only you can share.
“A lie, you lived it.”
The longest relationship I’ve had after my divorce was probably . . . half a year, more or less? I don’t keep track of the time and things fray at the edges. But yeah, it doesn’t amount to much.
I have been reading a bunch by Henrik Karlsson lately — a frustratingly good writer!
My favorite was his three-part series on his marriage. The most interesting thing I’ve read about romance in a while.
“You are born with this weird interiority that no one else can see,” he writes in Looking for Alice. “You can’t see it either at first. But if you run enough experiments you get a sense of how that inner space behaves. In particular, you can figure out which types of people can fuse with your interiority and expand it.”
Now, if you asked me about the women I’ve loved (often still feel a lot of love for? they were all, in their own ways, absolutely exceptional), I would not start with whether they “fused with and expanded my interiority.”
What did she look like? What was her energy?
How sensual was the experience with her? How was the sex?
Was she smart and curious? Did she have a big heart? What did she inspire in me?
Those kinds of questions would go through my head.
But Karlsson is aware and comfortable with his weirdness. He knows what he likes, what is important to him. What drew him into the relationship was the experience of discovery and expansion in a shared space of curiosity and care (or at least that’s the aspect he chooses to share).
“The words that came out of my mouth when I talked to her continually surprised me,” he adds in Dostoevsky as lover. His experience was intense and strange, impossible to communicate. “I remember with a cold sweat that I almost turned Johanna down because I felt confused by my inability to explain what our relationship was and why I liked it.”
I recall maybe two, maybe three times that happened to me. One was insanely painful, and it took me a long time to understand and get over my obsession. I think I stopped looking for that deep connection afterwards. Too painful when it ended. Too intimate. To be seen completely through the eyes of another? Serene. Also, terrifying.
I retreated — first to the surface where I didn’t show myself fully, then to hitting the pause on dating.
Karlsson writes about his marriage as a co-evolutionary loop, a dance unfolding over years, decades, possibly a whole life.
The type of person I’m assuming we’re looking for here is 1) someone that you will find fascinating to talk to after you’ve talked for 20,000 hours, 2) you feel comfortable with them talking through the hardest and most painful decisions you will face in your life, and 3) the conversation is wildly generative for both of you, in that it brings you out, helps you become.
It felt so intuitively right to think about the longevity of a relationship in terms of the space of communication and care. “This, I think, is a healthy way to think about love,” he writes. “It is about being invested in someone’s continual expansion.”
I began to realize how much I missed that kind of deep and evolving connection.
After my spiritual awakening, dating felt impossible.
We had to be a match emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, sexually . . . not to mention life stages, plans (kids? NYC or move?) . . . forget it. Too complicated.
Karlsson makes a good point that hit me like a bucket of cold water.
The thing is, there aren’t that many people you can have an amazing life with. Maybe 10,000, spread fairly evenly across the globe? A bit more if you’re less weird than me, perhaps. Anyway, the number is small enough that you can’t afford to be casual about it. You have to never let someone like that pass you by.
Don’t obsess over finding your perfect soulmate but do not be casual about finding one of those rare people who match your weirdness. Do not get side-tracked.
That co-evolutionary loop, that space of curiosity and care, that takes time to discover and develop.
Karlsson recommends “speedrunning” dating by “jumping directly to the strange parts.” “You do not like a category,” he writes. “You like individuals.” So “go talk to a thousand people (increasingly less randomly sampled)” and find “patterns in who makes you feel excited and alive and true and heard.”
Which leads to another idea of his that I like — writing in public as a search query to let the right people find you.
“That is perhaps the most solid dating advice I have, by the way—show the inside of your head in public, so people can see if they would like to live in there.”
It’s time to sit with the part of me that is fixated on independence.
It’s time to sit with the fear behind it.
Did I buy freedom at the price of intimacy?
Time to adjust the compass.
Do not get side-tracked.
Do not get side-tracked.
I will be at my friend Rohan’s upcoming event A Bridge Between Worlds (link has a discount on the ticket) with scientists who are bridge-builders, including Dr. Alan Lightman, Dr. Neil Theise and others.
Thursday, April 3rd. Stop by and say hi!
Join us for an evening with scientists who are bridge-builders, helping us ask profound questions about our yearning for ultimate meaning, the nature of consciousness, and what lies beyond the limits of what we can measure.
Dr. Alan Lightman on scientific materialism and spirituality, Dr. Scarlet Soriano on spirituality in medicine, Dr. Neil Theise on complexity theory and Zen Buddhism, and Dr. Katy Hinman on science education as a spiritual resource.
Youtube: If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?
I’m experimenting with lots of prompts for mindbody writing. This one I got from Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It, Kamal Ravikant.
Pen and paper, timer 20+ minutes, stream of consciousness writing, always following the trail of emotional charge and discomfort/avoidance.
At first, I wrote about negative behaviors that I would no longer tolerate. Then I wrote about changes I would make to my environment (less noise, clutter). Then changes to my state (less fear, less guilt).
This led me to what I would not hold back on if I loved myself — I experienced a brief wave of sadness, then anger.
Finally, I would not hold myself back in my writing. I would write about what I love and believe.
After three pages, I ended with: “There is a whole life waiting and I am not getting started…” (Da wartet ein ganzes Leben und ich fange nicht an…”)
A tiny 20-minute roller coaster. This is why I love mindbody writing. It helps me release, let go, gain insight, and re-write the story of my life. And sometimes I even find creative gold in the shadow.
James Bailey: Where our heart echoes. An incredibly beautiful piece about the bonds that form in life and work, rich in wisdom, moved me to tears.
“Here is where we love and learn to let go. There is where we begin again, loving anew,” I said, witnessing the words as they left my lips. “If love and pain form the rhythm of the heart, here and there are the spaces they echo.”
I feel very in between the here and the there — a here that is losing reality and a there I cannot yet see. That space in-between offers room for unfolding. And James reminded me that the bonds of love don’t have to break with distance.
I also love that he carries a worn-out journal specifically "for life's great teachers."
I love The Emerald podcast and especially the latest: Singing to the beloved in times of crisis. It’s all about spirit, the breath of life, community, movement, the power of song and voice, and the strange “battle to monetize the wound.”
“The real gulf of America is the divide between us and our neighbors.”
Tom Morgan: The Most Important Word in the World. Shame, anger, choices, transformation. I read everything Tom writes but this one hit on so many ideas that are alive for me. . .
Throughout the years of my dark night of the soul, I fell from being a Managing Director at an investment bank to being rejected for $20,000 a year graduate jobs.
. . . At the very bottom of my private abyss the only thing I could feel was shame. But an incoherent, primal shame tied to the sense that I’d done something wrong. That I was damned and it was fundamentally my fault.
But this shame isn’t your fault. In fact the more you’re suffering, the more you may be learning.
Mona Sobhani: Clearing the Ashes *[Pt. 8]* I was so lucky to read this while editing The Weight. Mona offers her thoughts on an “apprenticeship with sorrow,” the practices and rituals that help us drop the weight and move through life.
“Hack #1: I framed the activity as active retrospective grieving and clearing for myself. Not like, “Let me get rid of this garbage that’s weighing me down” kind of way (which feels like a chore), but rather, “I have never properly thanked or honored all these moments and events in my life and I want to do that now, and kindly send them off” kind of way.
Hack #2: In the deep emotional work I’ve done over the past few years, I’ve noticed that grief, sadness, or hurt are usually underneath anger. What that means: in the middle of releasing anger, one of these sad emotions suddenly breaks through, dissolving the anger — clearly showing you that anger was just protecting sadness, which is the true emotional root.”
Mike just launched a coaching program for traders looking to face and work with their shadow.
Loved his short piece "I":
“Each day that I engage with markets, one of two “I”s may appear.
One trades from stillness. The other from craving.
One is real. The other, an illusion.
“I need … “ “I am …” “I will …” “I must …”
To trade as this “I” is not to trade a market, but to trade a concept of oneself.”
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Invite discomfort. Let it be a teacher and guide. Write with it.
Until next time!
— Frederik
2025-03-21 00:01:08
I ripped up a book.
I ripped up a book and now I can’t sleep.
Something came over me, burst out of me.
A wave of anger. A tide, ancient, boiling, bubbling.
I took the book and slammed it against the wall.
I hammered it against the floor until it fell apart, until pages flew.
What the fuck.
I love books!
Not this one, I guess.
But this is not about books. It’s about weight.
The tyranny of ownership. Do I own what I own, or does it own me?
I love books and have many shelves of them. So much work goes into making a book. Someone writes. Another one edits. People publish and print and so forth. So much work. So much love.
But I no longer love them all. Some of them are memories that I hold on to — the fact that I was alive and interested at one point. If half of them disappeared tomorrow, would my life be any different? Yes. It would be lighter.
But the books are still here. And they weigh on me.
They. Weigh. On. Me.
Because they must be somewhere — and I am nowhere.
I am… nowhere going… somewhere. Somewhere that feels like nowhere.
Technically, I am and always will be ‘here,’ but this place no longer feels real. My lease ends in two months. There are many places I could go to. None feel real yet. Unreality is closing in.
What does feel real is the weight.
The weight of what I own. The weight of the past. The weight of what I avoid.
It isn’t much. Books, clothes, some instruments. A few pieces of art, a full octave of gorgeous singing bowls and scattered half-burnt candles.
But it is… mine and I don’t know who I will be without it.
I could swirl through the world with a passport and a suitcase. But the weight cannot swirl with me.
There is a lot going on out there. A lot. Politically, spiritually, economically, culturally.
Things were stuck, now the plates are starting to shift. We feel the first tremors.
Things shake. People shake. Cracks appear. People get hurt and who knows what’s to come.
And I’m lying awake thinking about boxes and books, probably half of which I haven’t even read! You buy a book as a bookmark, that’s how I used to excuse this behavior. Later, when you’re at a loss, one of the books will appear. Oh, I’ve always wanted to read that. The right words at the right time.
But now I ripped up a book.
I ripped up a book and can’t sleep.
I see faces.
Faces of men who wear masks.
I meditate twice every day. Twenty minutes each time.
I love my little meditations. I’m committed. Meditation, coffee, walks, trees, music, prayer, those are my anchors.
But I ripped up a book and now I wonder: when I sit there, all smug with my feelings of peace and equanimity, am I actually at peace or am I floating, am I floating while below the weight of my anger is waiting?
Have I locked away my anger, and my power, because it feels unsafe and toxic?
I’ve been having lots of calls lately.
Calls with readers and other people I met in online communities.
Do you feel stuck? Got a big goal but you’re stalling? Want to write better? Maybe journaling and a chat could help! Let’s hop on zoom!
Bullshit.
Bull. Shit.
Sure. We talk, the men and I (I would talk to women, but none reached out).
The men talk about business and money. The men are interested in interesting things. Things capture the mind. Mazed to walk, puzzles to solve.
But their faces, their faces betray them.
I see a mask that says, “I’ve made it.” I see eyes that read, “I am in pain.”
“I am in pain, and I cannot talk about it, not in all honesty. Not with you. Not with my coach or therapist. Not even with myself. For I am afraid of the weight.”
I know that feeling.
I know what it’s like to self-censor.
I know what it’s like to hold something big and heavy, so big and heavy it feels like it crushes the one who holds.
I know the paradox: that which feels overwhelming must be held for all could unravel if the holding stopped for even a second.
We spend our days in a silent vigil.
Because we must function. We must earn. We must show up. We must be strong. Now. Today. Tomorrow. And the day after that. Strong and stoic all the way, always. The alternative? Unimaginable.
Remember Roman in Succession’s funeral scene?
The words get stuck. The tears flow. The voice ‘fails’ (more accurately: the voice is honest but fails the social convention).
Watch it.
Feel the wave of shame.
That’s the nightmare haunting us men.
Fall apart at the wrong moment and you’re finished.
“One of the most reliable shame triggers for men is being perceived as weak,” Tom Morgan just wrote in The Most Important Word in the World. “The gesture most associated with shame is covering our face: we cannot bear to be seen in that weakness.”
Great piece. Great scene. But what a shit state of affairs. All that weight.
“Each unprocessed sorrow adds another brick to the load we carry,” Mona Sobhani wrote in Clearing the Ashes, “until eventually, the weight becomes too much for our body and soul to bear. Worse, it cuts us off from our intuition and our connection to something greater.
I found three ways of looking at those calls.
One. I am projecting. People are our mirrors and what I see is my reflection. These men are screens onto which I project my inner world, my emotional disconnect.
Two. They are like me. My offer to connect was most appealing to people who are similar to me in this respect. Unconscious self-selection.
Three. Because this is an area in which I have done a lot of inner work, I am sensitive to it. I’ve spent so much time in this space, I can feel it. Among the many things going on with any individual, this is just one I pick up on.
Maybe all of the above.
Or maybe I’m hallucinating.
But I don’t think so.
What happens is that I want to reach through the screen and grab ‘em and shake ‘em awake, shake ‘em until that weight starts to fall off.
It makes me want to scream.
I trust that impulse.
I don’t scream, but I trust the impulse.
Maybe I should.
Mostly though, I wish I could share a hug instead of a zoom call.
I see boxes and books.
I see weight.
“In the deep emotional work I’ve done,” Mona adds, “I’ve noticed that grief, sadness, or hurt are usually underneath anger. What that means: in the middle of releasing anger, one of these sad emotions suddenly breaks through, dissolving the anger — clearly showing you that anger was just protecting sadness, which is the true emotional root.”
So much pain, so much weight, so many boxes.
As long as the weight is there, it demands space. It weighs, it blocks.
I lie awake thinking of U-Haul trucks and self-storage units. I think of mountain cabins and trailers in the desert. An endless circle of places and spaces and thoughts.
I look at the boxes.
I know joy is hiding here somewhere.
I know the energy of life is here, hiding, asleep.
If only I could find it.
Shame. Anger. Hurt. Judgment. Sadness. What’s behind it all?
What lies beyond?
When does the resistance end?
What happens when we simply . . . allow?
What occurs in surrender?
I smell freedom.
I hear drums.
I spent last weekend at a workshop. Dancing. Eyes closed. Going deep. Letting myself be danced. Giving shape to what the body holds.
The practice is called 5 Rhythms. It’s an hour of different beats, an inner and outer journey, a map through the space of human experience. Sometimes I yell. Other times I break open and down. It can be ecstatic, therapeutic, mystical. By the end, I am drenched in sweat and not the same.
This was more than two days of dance and by the end, the group was exhausted. One of our last movement prompts was to let the body move with the breath through waves of opening and closing. Open, close, open, close . . .
And we could, if we felt called to do so, connect with someone else. Support them if the workshop was bringing up, you know, a lot of stuff.
Oh how I felt called to be the support!
Look at me: I’ve done my homework, my inner work. All the work.
I’m such a hard worker and now I’m such a strong supporter.
Look at me being of service . . .
And then I shared a hug with a stranger.
And, oops, I just fell apart.
I let myself be supported and shook and sobbed.
And I had the hardest time accepting that this was what my body needed.
My body just . . . wanted to drop the weight. Just for a moment.
Let all the currents of fear, frustration, confusion, and loneliness come together and be released in a moment of complete exhaustion.
And then it was over.
And there was peace.
I am back home and can’t sleep, thinking of masks and faces and staring at books.
It’s crazy out there. There’s a war going on for our soul. But what robs me of my sleep are petty thoughts. What to keep, what to throw out. What book to put in what box.
It strikes me this is my version of John Sarno’s back pain. I created one weight so I could avoid another. My exhausting reality as a welcome distraction.
Earth is shooting through space at 67,000 miles an hour and all I can think is: how can we drop some of this weight? What would that feel like?
The weight of expectations, of judgment, of shame, of guilt, of rage.
Emotional weight so dense it might as well be a straitjacket and boots made of concrete.
It’s time to shake things loose, dance them off.
It’s time to give things shape and voice.
It’s time to kindle fires.
It’s time to drop weight.
— Frederik
2025-03-14 23:44:00
Hello friends,
Officially, Brian helps writers improve their work at his firm Think Deeply Write Clearly. Practically, he is a person I love talking to — a unique sounding board for ideas, a guide who knows the creative trenches, a scribe at home in the labyrinth of language. Also, someone to have a good laugh with.
Every conversation with him left me with quotes and ideas I revisit and I realized it was time to invite him for a chat. I planned to talk about the writing process, but I also wanted to better understand his journey. When and why did he realize he wanted to help other writers?
This led us down a deep rabbit hole that began with acting, Shakespeare, and the power of using a period rather than a comma. It surfaced Brian’s passion:
Through a process of writing books, I learned to become addicted to sensemaking. Through sensemaking I learned to become very fascinated with how people produce their language and communicate their sensemaking into the world — with a heavy bias toward people who produce thoughtful material.
As a writer, Brian was in a co-evolutionary loop with his book about artist Amedeo Modigliani and the latter’s lover Jeanne Hébuterne (who committed suicide two days after Modigliani’s death). The deeper Brian went in his investigation, the more the more complexity he found in the story — and the more it affected him. It’s an intimate example of letting yourself be shaped by the process of writing.
“The most intimate thing we can do [as writers] is share our own reflection,” Brian once told me. That captures a theme in the conversation and his work: the importance of sharing not just what we think but why and how we came to our conclusion. The room of our work becomes inviting when we share our engagement with perception and ideas, rather than try to impose our conclusions.
I don’t care what you think. I care why and how you think it and the quality of whether or not I’m invited into your worldview, whether or not I see that as an accurate or inaccurate representation of the world. I need to understand your perception of something, not your conclusions of something.
I don’t know whether to think of Brian as a writing or thinking coach. Forget the labels: he helps us lead the dance with our readers.
I am very happy to share our conversation full of laughter and insights. I’m sure we’ll do a round two because I barely got to ask him a handful of the questions on my mind.
How does the writer go deeper and perfect her ideas?
How does she establish trust rather than being just another voice?
How do we make sense of the world, find truths, and communicate them well? That’s a lifelong journey.
In the meantime, in case you are interested, Brian coaches people one-on-one at Think Deeply Write Clearly. He also offers an ongoing “intellectual home” for anyone into writing with the Credible Conversations program (first three months are free for my readers).
Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!
Frederik
You can look at writing as the investigative process of our instincts. If we go through an investigative process well enough, we might learn something deeply true about ourselves and about the universe that we live in. And then writing is delivering the clarity of that thought in a way that people can understand it and it can benefit their lives.
There is nothing behind this paywall except access to the full video/audio.
