I read something recently that stopped me in my tracks.

It wasn’t loud or dramatic. It didn’t offer answers or advice. It simply lingered — the kind of reflection that quietly rearranges something inside you and stays there long after you’ve finished reading.

It was about joy.

Not the shiny, everything-is-going-well kind of joy, but the quieter kind. The kind that shows up in the middle of mess, grief, or disappointment. The kind that doesn’t erase difficulty, but somehow coexists with it.

It made me reflect on how often we think joy is conditional — something we earn when circumstances improve. And yet, if we’re paying attention, there are moments when joy appears anyway. A shared laugh. A small, beautiful detail. A memory that surfaces unexpectedly. A reminder of what matters.

This time of year can stir up a lot. For some, it’s filled with warmth and connection. For others, it brings loss, exhaustion, or a sense of something missing. Often, it’s a mix of all of it. What struck me most was the idea that joy doesn’t require us to deny what’s hard. It simply asks us to notice what’s still alive, still human, still meaningful.

I’ve been sitting with that.

Sometimes joy isn’t about fixing anything at all. It’s about staying open. About letting a moment land. About remembering that even when things don’t go as planned, there can still be something gentle and real waiting to be seen.

This reflection was inspired by a piece written by Zachary Guin, shared through Starcross Community, an organization devoted to spiritual life, hospitality, and service. His writing reminded me how powerful it can be to pause, notice, and allow beauty to exist alongside everything else.

If you’d like to learn more about their work — or support what they do — you can visit them here: Starcross Community

As we move through December, my hope is simple: that you might notice one small thing that feels like a quiet gift. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be real.

If this reflection resonated, you might also enjoy my more recent piece, What’s Real in Us This Holiday Season, where I explore what’s truly real beneath the noise of the season and how noticing it can bring a sense of calm and clarity.

My Norfolk Terrier, Miracle, turned 15 yesterday. I am in awe of her for so many reasons. Yet the most startling thing to me is how wrong I was about so many things about her.

Miracle’s birth was not easy. I bred her mother, Cali, and owned her father as well. When labor began, it was too long for Cali, so we opted to have a c-section to make sure the two pups survived. We got to the vet at around 3:00, and Cali was immediately prepped for surgery. Then I waited. And waited some more. Finally, a vet tech came out to say that a boy pup had been born, breathing, but that breathing stopped shortly after he was born. They tried valiantly to save him, but it was not to be.

Miracle was then born, yelling at the top of her lungs—clearly healthy and ready for life! However, Cali would not let the pup nurse. We tried until the vet closed, then took mom and pup home. I was certain that Cali would be fine given some time, and that I could hand-feed the pup for the first day to support her. However, Cali had, unknown to me, Eclampsia, which caused her to bite down too hard on the pup when she tried to pick her up. Now we had an injured pup who had not eaten anything since she was born. Back to the emergency vet this time, who was swamped, so they took the pup and told me they would call me. She weighed about 4 ounces at the time.

Fast forward, we finally went home without her, and watched the World Series game (SF Giants, my team, vs. Texas Rangers), doing our best to be distracted. All I could do was count my losses as I was certain that pup would not survive. I called and pleaded with the vet to return the pup to me so I could hand feed her. They would not, so I finally went to bed, weeping.

We got a call at around 8 AM the next morning that I could come pick up my puppy. I had underestimated her tenacity for the first time and would continue to do that for much of her early life. She was given a two-week course of antibiotics and lived in an incubator when she was not nursing from her mom. Cali was still not out of the woods, so we hand-fed her every two hours after letting her nurse a bit from Cali.

That medication both saved her life and ruined her liver. Sigh. And I began to relate to her as a disabled pup.

She grew up like any other pup and blossomed into a true show girl. There seemed to be no long-term effects from the liver damage when she was young, so she began her show career and did quite well for the first year. Then I took her for her first Heart Test (something we do in Norfolk Terriers to weed out breeding stock with silent heart issues that can cause early death). And she had a heart murmur at 18 months. So, I pulled her from my breeding program and the show ring, as any responsible breeder would have done. I also decided that her hard start and her heart issue could possibly cause her to have health issues during her life, so I decided to keep her rather than have a family have to deal with possible health issues going forward.

Seeing Through My Own Ego

And yesterday, she turned 15. Here’s what I’ve learned. My ego will convince me that what I see is the truth. Every indication says she should not have lived this long and should be struggling in life about now if she did. While it is true that she has had kidney issues for years, and has a horribly cirrhotic liver, none of these seem to cause her any problems or pain. She just keeps going. Is she on support meds? Yup. And a special diet for her kidneys? Yup. And she still walks a mile each day with me and still tries to run the house. And now my husband and I, when she gets sassy and wakes us up in the middle of the night, we look at each other and say, “Yup, tenacious. That’s what has kept her alive all these years.”

Recently, I came across several powerful descriptions of the ego. One, from Marianne Williamson, is:

“To the ego, you will never be enough. It doesn’t tell you that you did something wrong, it tells you that you are wrong.”

And then from Sydney Banks, one of my mentors:

“The ego is everything we think about, everything we make up about ourselves and about the world and about what’s going on.”

I see now that my ego had created an image of her — and it was wrong. As I have lived with her through these years, I see now that when I just calm my ego, allow it to take a back seat, she and I work out how she can live well. I follow HER lead, not my ego’s — and that seems to be working out beautifully.

Letting Go of What We Think We Know

The next time you’re certain things are terrible and rush to fix them, pause. Try not knowing. Follow your intuition. Be gently suspicious of what you think you “know” to be true. At the very least, you may notice you are far more relaxed and calmer.

The power of pausing can be life-changing—especially when we find ourselves stuck in habits we wish we could shift. How many of us have a somewhat (or very) compulsive thing that we do that we know should be moderated or stopped?  Maybe it is eating too much chocolate (been there, done that!)  Maybe it is spending too much time on social media.  Delaying that walk we want to do each day until we don’t have the time to do it.  Or buying just one more book to read. 

Maybe you’ve tried different things to stop the compulsion.  Will power usually fizzles out at about 7 PM (that is true, scientifically).  Being strict with ourselves also ruins self-esteem.  So, what does a person do to break the cycle?

The Power of Pausing in Everyday Habits

It turns out the brain researchers who discovered the plasticity of the brain, (the ability of the brain to repair and change itself) provide us with a clue.  They designed an experiment with people diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.  All the participants reported that they felt the need to lock their door 4-5 times before they felt it was safe to leave.  The participants were told there was no pressure to stop locking the doors as many times as they needed to.  What they asked, though, was that when they noticed themselves locking the door, they were to pause for 60 seconds to two minutes, either deep breathing or just waiting, and then they could continue with locking the door.  This was practiced, then the participants were on their own.  At the end of 6 weeks, all the participants reported a lessening of the compulsion, and many, if not most, stopped needing to lock the door more than once.  So, what happened?

That pause signals to the brain that there is a change in habit.  The old habit, lock the door 5 times before you leave, did not include the pause.  That simple pause allowed the brain to invent a new habit around that circumstance, with no shame or pressure. 

So, think about that habit you wish you could break.  One of my mentors decided to make the pause enjoyable.  When he noticed himself working under pressure (he was self-employed!), he would get up from his desk and walk down to the creek to fly-fish for 15 minutes, then he would come back and finish his work.  Even when he had an impossible deadline, he did this.  He kept his fly-fishing rod right at the back door so he could just grab it when he felt pressured.  This was his pause.  He reported something amazing after the first day he went fly fishing.  The second time he felt pressured, he got up, grabbed his rod, and half-way down to the creek the sense of pressure had already lifted, so he turned around and went back to work.  From that point on, the most he needed to do was touch the rod, and often he only needed to look at it.  The brain had rewired itself to work from a calm place.

Many of my clients report success with the power of pausing.  One wanted to be able to get out of bed and workout.  So, he made a deal that when he woke up, he would put on his exercise clothes, then do whatever he wanted.  That pause of dressing for the activity allowed his brain to rewire in very short order so that he began exercising and enjoying it.

The trick is though, that you must actually do the pause activity a few times.  Otherwise, the strong neuropathway or habit you are trying to alter won’t budge. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. The power of pausing might just surprise you.  It is WAY more effective than trying to use force of will to shift.

And if you’re curious about how a single question can shift your whole perspective — not just your habits, but how you move through life — I share more about that here.