When the question arises, “Why write? Why create?” I’m drawn to ask, “Why breathe? Why climb to a place where you can see the horizon? Why look for things soft and durable to wrap around a wound? Why call into the canyon between us to see if anyone is there?” Because all these efforts help us live.

Repeatedly, we’re called to engage experience as a way to manifest what we carry within us, bringing what is dormant into the world. As the tree that a seed carries breaks ground in time, reflection, dialogue, and writing are seed-like forms by which we release our inwardness into the world. This is why we listen and express. This is why we write, why we create. Because expression is like sunlight that emanates from within. It causes the soul to blossom in time.

Life that contributes to the whole. We are all part of something bigger and we have a role to play. By contributing to the whole, we are then building a world collectively that is better than the world we came in with.

Can you overcome these obstacles and contribute something positive to the world? As you contribute something positive, you uplift everyone around you.

We all know what it is like to be held captive of the little things in life — those petty concerns and small desires that steal their way into how we look at our lives and pit us against anyone or anything seen as trying to take away our anticipated desire. Here is a short list of these little troublemakers that often make big trouble for us whenever we mistake them for being our friends:

• Unrealistic expectations that others should treat us only as we imagine they should

• Strong attachments to even the smallest and strangest of our possessions

• Pressing convictions that no one else sees things as clearly as we do

• Nagging resentments from relationships past and present

• Perfect certainty that no one is permitted to interrupt our pleasures

How can we say for sure that these conditions are little more than big nothings in the scheme of things? We have all been through those telltale moments in our lives when, due to a crisis of some kind beyond our control, we are momentarily able to see where we had lost sight of what was really worthwhile.

There are simply endless opportunities that we have daily to help others. It feels good to us to help, and it feels great to the recipient, too! Scientific studies have shown that giving of our time, energy, or money greatly helps boost all of those feel-good chemicals our brains just love.

Here are seven real benefits – backed by science – of how contributing to the lives of other people can help us find peace.

1. A Longer Life – If you want to enjoy a long, healthy life, start volunteering! Find out what kinds of things you can volunteer for at your childrens’ school, make scarves for the homeless, or help deliver food to those who are home-bound. Studies show that the people who contribute in these ways will actually lengthen their lives due to an increased ability to handle stress, a reduction in depression, and an increased immune system strength. The caveat is that you can’t just do it once – it needs to become a consistent part of your life in order to reap the health benefits.

Can you believe that it's already August?

Have you gotten around to doing all the things that you said you would do this summer?

Have you had that “perfect” summer day?

I am big believer in creating perfect days! Although it tends to happen more when I am on vacation or weekends, a few times a month I religiously wake up and declare “Let’s have a perfect day.”

Now I know that some people tend to shudder at the word “perfect” since being a perfectionist or trying to get things “perfect” has caused them pain or utter exhaustion. So, when I talk about a “perfect day,” it is not about some ideal of perfection or creating a day with moments that look picture perfect on Instagram. It’s about creating a day that is perfect for you and the people partaking in your perfect day.

Thirty-four years ago, in my mid-thirties, I was working hard at becoming a good poet, when I was thrust into my journey with cancer. The torque of that experience pulled me from all my goals and routines and aspirations. I was left in the raw, uncertain simplicity of being alive and trying, by any means possible, to stay alive. I had few native gifts to help me through. The one closest to my heart was the aliveness of expression that lived below my want to be a poet. And so, I began to journal daily about my deepest fears, feelings, pains, and dreams, about the prospects of living and dying. I didn’t think of it as “writing” or as “material.” More, I was climbing the rope of honest expression, day by day, into tomorrow. It became a muscular and tender, honest space in which I began to access my own inner healing. This was my first in-depth experience of writing as a spiritual practice.

“If life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” so the old saying goes. Easier said than done, perhaps? I don’t think so. You see, life’s trials can be seen as horrible events that make you question, “Why me?” Or, those same trials can be seen as great opportunities to grow, expand, and evolve in ways we may not have thought possible.

So the question is: how? How do we harness the power of these challenges and turn them into amazing opportunities instead of allowing them to suck us down into the mire of negativity where we know we’ll get stuck?

Of course, everyone’s experience is going to be a bit different, but there are some basic “guidelines” to follow in order to learn to persevere in the face of adversity! To that end, here are four ways to see the opportunities among the challenges.

Guess what? Every single part of you is perfectly integrated into your life’s purpose! And it is all happening right now….

As a former attorney turned writer and unconventional career coach, I listen to creative minds, visionaries, and entrepreneurs every day in my coaching practice. I am moved by the grand spirit that moves them. They climb walls with passion, ambition, and frustration. They secretly dream big, because they are big. “I don’t even know if I’ll ever have what I want,” they say. But I do. I know we are relentlessly drawn to where we belong.

We don’t choose our wildest dreams. They choose us.

When we’re not using our deepest gifts, we can feel like trout thrashing about on a dock desperate to find water. It’s that necessary to live our calling. We’ve said “yes” to some sacred arrangement in the ethers, and here on earth—until we live our most meaningful dreams--we ache with the pangs of blessings unfulfilled. We can golf if we want to, but it will never fill that hole. We can shop, but we can’t buy our freedom.

I wrote this letter to the part of myself that dared to listen to her pain more than her need for stability. That part helped me write my first book This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love and discover my best life.

Years ago, I sat in front of the Pacific Ocean, and considered taking my life. I didn’t see another choice. I was an honors graduate of Harvard Law School on partnership track at a corporate law firm. I couldn’t bear my day-evening-weekend job, even with its ostentatious paycheck. I couldn’t figure out any other options with my frantic analytical mind. I had no glistening faith or trust in myself, the Universe, or even the tooth fairy, back then.

You build that faith, when you leap--- not before.

So, I screamed and cried in my journal. I let out one desperate wail near sunset. And I made the choices that gave birth to a life I couldn’t imagine. This letter is to her with my love and gratitude…

You wanted an impossible life. You wanted freedom. You wanted to rip off your lawyer clothes and identity and walk for miles on beaches-- on a Tuesday, a weekday. You didn’t even really know what you wanted.