First, if you haven’t completed the free Wholehearted Inventory, this is a great time to do it. You can find it at brenebrown.com/wholeheartedinventory

Make a list of the work that inspires you. Don’t be practical. Don’t think about making a living; think about doing something you love. There’s nothing that says you have to quit your day job to cultivate meaningful work. There’s also nothing that says your day job isn’t meaningful work—maybe you’ve just never thought of it that way. What’s your

I highly recommend Marci Alboher’s One Person/Multiple Careers.

I remain inspired and transformed by something I learned from Harriet Lerner’s book The Dance of Connection.3 Dr. Lerner explains that we all have patterned ways of managing anxiety. Some of us respond to anxiety by overfunctioning and others by underfunctioning. Overfunctioners tend to move quickly to advise, rescue, take over, micromanage, and

In our increasingly complicated and anxious world, we need more time to do less and be less. When we first start cultivating calm and stillness in our lives, it can be difficult, especially when we realize how stress and anxiety define so much of our daily lives. But as our practices become stronger, anxiety loses its hold and we gain clarity about

Stillness is not about focusing on nothingness; it’s about creating a clearing. It’s opening up an emotionally clutter-free space and allowing ourselves to feel and think and dream and question. Once we can let go of our assumptions about what stillness is supposed to look like and find a way to create a clearing that works for us, we stand a

I used my research to formulate a plan to lessen my anxiety. The people I interviewed weren’t anxiety-free or even anxiety-averse; they were anxiety-aware. They were committed to a way of living where anxiety was a reality but not a lifestyle. They did this by cultivating calm and stillness in their lives and making these practices the norm.

Get Inspired: I’m continually inspired by Stuart Brown’s work on play and Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind.4 If you want to learn more about the importance of play and rest, read these books.

Get Deliberate: One of the best things that we’ve ever done in our family is making the “ingredients for joy and meaning” list. I encourage you to sit down and make a list of the specific conditions that are in place when everything feels good in your life. Then check that list against your to-do list and your to-accomplish list. It might surprise