I recently read The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. Ok, full disclosure, I started it. I couldn’t finish it. In fact, it kind of pissed me off.

Which reminded me of something my friend Michelle sent me on Instagram. It’s a reel of a man named Michael Hunter (@upspiral.life on Instagram) giving the secret hack for when someone pisses you off. He says, “Someone pissed you off. They really did something dumb and they deserved it. However, if you’re pissed off, it means that you’re pissoffable. You’re the problem.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

That’s the first step—to realize that you’re pissoffable. The second step is to change your internal state. If you’re pissoffable, it means your buttons can be pushed. It means you have big shiny buttons that anyone can push. They’re there for anyone to push.

The most powerful person in a room isn’t the loudest, it’s the most regulated person. The most regulated person in the room holds the room.

He goes on to say that becoming the most powerful person in the room is easy. Before you go into a situation with someone you know pushes your buttons, place your hand on your heart center and hold it there for five seconds. This is going to calm your vagus nerve and send a signal to your brain that says, we’re safe, we’re steady. Your heart rate will calm. Your threat response will drop and your prefrontal cortex (the adult inside you) will return to being active and accessible.

When you do that, no one can push your big shiny buttons. That person who gets your goat no longer gets your goat.

Ok, I’ll give Mel Robbins her due here. You can let that person be them. But only because you’re in control of yourself energetically and neurologically.

You can’t control the button pushers, but you can control you.

If you’ve joined me on one of my Wednesday Facebook Lives, you may have seen me leading the group in tapping the heart center, right where the thymus gland is. It’s a fast, easy, and powerful way to calm an overstimulated nervous system.

But if, like me, you can be pissoffable, you might want to try holding (or tapping) any time you know you’re going to be in a situation where your big, shiny buttons are on display for anyone to push.

I’ve had a tarot card stalking me lately. The Chariot has come up several times in recent weeks.

The Chariot is a major arcana card, which means it deals with big life lessons rather than day-to-day matters. The basic meaning of the card centers around determination and willpower.

The picture above is from the Light Seer’s Tarot. I like this deck’s version because we can clearly see that the driver is controlling the horses without any reins. In fact, they’re not even attached to the caravan. He is using the power of his thoughts to steer.

One horse is white and the other black. We have to make decisions about the best path forward. We often feel pulled in different directions. It’s like the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. They can be logic and emotions. Needs and wants. Or the short term versus the long term. The dilemma is how to coax both “horses” toward the same goal.

There’s so much going on in this card that I love. The horses look wild and powerful. The driver isn’t sitting comfortably; he’s squatting on the roof looking at where he’s headed. There’s magic surrounding everything.

What’s the lesson here? For me, it’s deciding where I’m going next in life. I’ve been coasting spiritually. I’m spending too much time doing what’s right for the group (family in all its permutations) and not enough doing what’s best for me. I’m frequently frazzled and not doing the things that recharge me, like exercising, meditating, and just being by myself. How can I take inspired action to find balance? I love spending time with everyone. I don’t enjoy feeling burnt out.

The Chariot is advising me to decide what I want my life to look like and then control my inner and outer worlds. That, of course, is easier said than done, which is why this card is one of the major arcana, the big life lessons. But if I don’t control my life, others will. Those horses will run off in opposite directions, my “chariot” will either flip over or crash into something and nothing good will come of it.

We are the ones who choose who we want to be. And once we do, we should run toward that goal with conviction and consistent motion.

I was at the Costco optical department, and it felt like Mercury had busted a move and gone prematurely retrograde. They weren’t sure if they could put lenses in the frames I brought. The woman helping me, Jaclyn, couldn’t log on to the computer. Once in, she couldn’t find my insurance information.

Delays like that normally drive me crazy.

But I was having so much fun with Jaclyn. We were telling each other funny stories, laughing so hard we were crying.

As we were finishing up, she told me that when she shops, she likes to walk up and down each aisle of a store. It’s rare that I start spouting woo to strangers, but my intuition told me to say, “That’s Manifesting 101—looking at everything that’s available to you.”

“Why did you just say manifesting?” she asked.

Again, I don’t typically tell strangers I’m psychic, but it felt right. “Because I’m psychic,” I said.

Jaclyn pulled up her sleeve and showed me her tattoo. MANIFEST.

You can’t make this shit up.

I handed her my business card. She promised to book a session with me.

Magic, even miracles, are ours when we listen to our inner voice, when we follow that gut feeling. And every time we do, we strengthen our intuition muscle. It grows stronger and more accurate every time we use it.

Even if I never hear from Jaclyn, she and I both got strong validation that synchronicity is real; that we’re all connected. And we had a good laugh.

I have a sleep app that I love. It tells me how much deep sleep I got, how much time I spent dreaming, if I snored or coughed and when. It’s the first thing I check when I wake up.

But then I realized it was keeping me in a mindset of lack because my first thought each morning is: Did I get enough deep sleep?

The last few months I’ve been focusing on turning scarcity thinking into thoughts of abundance.

I can’t afford that. That piece of cake will go right to my hips. There aren’t enough hours in the day.

These are all examples of thoughts that keep us from abundance.

We may think we’re being realistic when we say or think something like this. Instead, what we’re doing is creating that reality.

There is always enough money for what I need and what I want with enough left over to share. This piece of cake will bring me a little slice of happiness. Time always seems to expand so that I can get everything done and then relax.

Or, in my case, I sleep deeply and soundly. I always wake up refreshed and ready to face another wonderful day.

How do you want your world to look? It is possible to have what you want. If you’d rather not bump into someone when you’re out, set that intention instead of saying it’s inevitable. If you want to have a Valentine’s Day full of love and romance, start thinking it into being rather than telling yourself it’s impossible because you’re single or because your partner isn’t lovey-dovey.

This week, when you catch yourself saying something negative, turn it around. Don’t give in to the temptation to tell yourself you’re being a realist. You’re not.

You can have an abundant life, full of all the things you desire. Health, love, money, peace, time, even a good night’s sleep are yours for the thinking.

You’re more powerful than you think. Or, I should say, you’re exactly as powerful as you think. 

Our neighbor has a flag hanging next to his garage that my husband loves to hate. I’ve told him his hate poisons only him, but he either doesn’t care or doesn’t believe me.

But he’s not the only one poisoning himself. There’s one person in my life who makes me see red. I can get myself worked up months before I have to see her.

So, I’m trying an experiment.

We know that every living thing is made up of energy. And there have been many experiments showing that our energy affects that of other living beings. When we’re having toxic thoughts, we harm everything around us from the yogurt we’re eating, to the potted plants growing near us, to the people we share our space with.

What if, instead of replaying in my head conversations from years ago, I stopped, canceled that thought, and sent this person a blessing? What would happen?

I’m going to give it a week to find out.

I’m also going to try sending good thoughts and well wishes to two others: a woman I lost touch with in 1980 and someone close to me, someone I love a lot.

I’m setting aside three minutes a day to do this, forty-five seconds per person, twice a day (in addition to the negativity-canceling and blessing-sending).

My hypothesis is that I’ll feel lighter by feeling less negative. And that the energy of my house will feel brighter by changing my thoughts. I hope that the loved one feels the benefits of being sent positive energy. And it would be a wonderful bonus if my long-lost friend tried to find me.

Will you join me? What do you have to lose—three minutes you might have played a game on your phone? Who’s in?

I just watched a Woody Allen movie, A Rainy Day in New York. At one point, Timothée Chalamet’s character responds to a woman who says, “On your first date, you took her walking in the rain and she got bronchial pneumonia.” He says, “I’ll never live this down! You can’t get sick from getting wet!”

He’s right. Can we all agree that cold or wet weather doesn’t make people sick, germs do?

But why do some people catch that cold that’s going around and others don’t? It’s not because they were or weren’t wearing a hat, that’s for sure.

It’s because every illness has an emotional or energetic cause.

Stress, sadness, anxiety, fear, and even excitement can overwhelm us. This causes harmful energy to be channeled into the body. Our body then responds by taking steps to dispel that energy. We get sick.

Sometimes, the illness runs its natural course. But if we don’t address the underlying cause, we’ll get sick again.

It’s important to address both the physical manifestation and the underlying emotional or energetic causes.

For example, I have asthma and I’m prone to bronchitis. These flare up when I’m feeling overwhelmed because I’m doing too much. When I don’t feel loved, I do more. I tend to forget that my worth isn’t tied to how much I achieve. I have also experienced more than my share of abandonment. I should take the time to grieve those who have left me, but, like so many of us, I never get around to it.

It’s that sort of cycle that keeps us stuck in the same energetic ruts.

When we remember that our ailments are our bodies’ attempts to deal with our emotional states, we can begin to truly heal.

In Chinese medicine, grief lives in the lungs. Anger lurks in the liver. Worry is held in the stomach. Fear lingers in the kidneys. The chakra system has similar correlations.

Balanced treatment, one that integrates easing the physical symptoms while addressing the underlying cause, will ensure that we quickly recover our good health.

P.S. If you don’t have a copy of Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life, I highly recommend it. It has a reference section that lists illnesses, the probably cause and a new thought pattern to use to heal yourself.
P.P.S. A session with me can also reveal unhealthy energetic patterns that lead to the illnesses that you continue to experience.

Our neighbor has a flag hanging next to his garage that my husband loves to hate. I’ve told him his hate poisons only him, but he either doesn’t care or doesn’t believe me.

But he’s not the only one poisoning himself. There’s one person in my life who makes me see red. I can get myself worked up months before I have to see her.

So, I’m trying an experiment.

We know that every living thing is made up of energy. And there have been many experiments showing that our energy affects that of other living beings. When we’re having toxic thoughts, we harm everything around us from the yogurt we’re eating, to the potted plants growing near us, to the people we share our space with.

What if, instead of replaying in my head conversations from years ago, I stopped, canceled that thought, and sent this person a blessing? What would happen?

I’m going to give it a week to find out.

I’m also going to try sending good thoughts and well wishes to two others: a woman I lost touch with in 1980 and someone close to me, someone I love a lot.

I’m setting aside three minutes a day to do this, forty-five seconds per person, twice a day (in addition to the negativity-canceling and blessing-sending).

My hypothesis is that I’ll feel lighter by feeling less negative. And that the energy of my house will feel brighter by changing my thoughts. I hope that the loved one feels the benefits of being sent positive energy. And it would be a wonderful bonus if my long-lost friend tried to find me.

Will you join me? What do you have to lose—three minutes you might have played a game on your phone? Who’s in?

Giving up the hope that the past could be any different.*

My friend Michelle recently sent me a short video where Oprah quotes someone, whose name she can’t remember, giving a new definition of forgiveness.

I like that a lot.

I was working with a client yesterday who wanted to send her ex a letter explaining how she felt about his actions. This is someone she hasn’t seen in a year and a half and has only communicated with once in all that time. We talked about her desire to let him know about her lingering anger. I asked her why she thought he’d find that interesting. Odds are, he wouldn’t.

Just as she would be writing that letter for her own benefit, we forgive for our own peace of mind. Both acts have at their core the wish that the past could have been different.

When we forgive, we honor the Divine in ourselves and in others. We accept that we are all equal. We remember our innocence, as well as that of others. Forgiveness offers us the opportunity to digest toxicity and begin to heal. It allows us to no longer let someone else’s behavior affect our happiness.

Forgiveness is a deeply holy act.

When we refuse to see the Divine in others, we cut ourselves off from the Divine. We feel we have a right to be angry (and we do), but when anger is never allowed to dissipate, the poison eats only us.

How much better to step back into our true selves and let love be our source of power.

Who do you need to forgive? What action or circumstance are you willing to give up hoping that it could have been different? What are you waiting for?

*Here’s the short video. It’s just over a minute long. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1578859192161595

You’ve seen Pantone’s color of the year for 2026 by now. It’s called Cloud Dancer. It’s described as “billowy… and imbued with a feeling of serenity.” It was designed to soothe as well as inspire us to make a fresh start.

And while we have the opportunity to make a fresh start each day, there’s something about January 1^st that gives our resolve an extra boost.

It’s time to choose your word of the year if you haven’t already.

For 2025, my word was health. About a year and a half ago, I had COVID and it left my legs exceptionally weak. That led to other issues. All I wanted was to feel strong again. Having the word health as my focus allowed me to accomplish my goal.

But somewhere along the way, I lost my sense of lightheartedness. Of playfulness. Of fun. I had become a serious goose.

I’d like to recapture my sense of whimsy. I want to be able to allow myself to be silly. I want to find my sense of childlike curiosity.

I’ve been toying with synonyms because silly seems, so, well, silly. No one takes a silly person seriously. But that’s the problem. I’ve been too focused on being taken seriously. I’ve been taking myself too seriously. So, as much as I like the sound of whimsy, I’m choosing silly.

There are so may good words to choose as your word for 2026. Astrologer Yasmin Boland chose wild because she sees in the stars that we’re in for a wild ride. A quick look online turned up lean in to encourage facing challenges, who for a year of self-discovery, and overabundance for focusing on receiving and giving.

What word will your 2026 self thank you for choosing at the end of 2025? Maybe something as simple as yes. Or something fancy like my friend Michelle’s conviviality. Rest if you’ve been burning yourself out. Or flexibility. Maybe there’s something that will only make sense to you, like gray wolf, wonderland, or luminous.

Whatever it is, write it down and put it somewhere you’ll be sure to see it, like inside the door of a cupboard or on your bathroom mirror. Then, move it somewhere new every week so that you continue to see it.

Here’s to growth in the new year!

My father-in-law wanted to spend every second together when we used to visit him in California. One time, his wife (also an introvert) and I snuck off to watch the Property Brothers because we couldn’t handle another minute of small talk. My father-in-law found us and threw a tub of cookies at us to express his displeasure. We held onto our boundaries.

Each year, I see the same lists of strategies introverts should keep in their back pocket for when the holidays get to be too much. Set firm boundaries. Leave events early. Schedule time to recharge. Shop online. Some of them are realistic. Others not so much.

Here’s a strategy I’ve found helpful, especially if you’ll be traveling: Start a novel or a TV series before you leave. That way, you’ll already be familiar with the characters, and they’ll seem like old friends. If you choose a novel that has sequels, even better. You can go back to visit those friends for months.

If you’re looking for recommendations, two sets of books I enjoy are Louise Penny’s Three Pines series starring Inspector Gamache, and Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club books. Both authors have created deeply human characters.

With all the streaming services available, I’m sure you don’t need my recommendations for a good show to watch. But do start something before the holidays get crazy. Or go back and rewatch something you enjoyed.

And then make sure you give yourself permission to not be a perfectionist. To take the time to read or watch what you’ve chosen. Put those introvert strategies you see every year to good use.

And if someone throws a tub of cookies at you, hold onto those boundaries—and enjoy the snack.