These days are among the hardest we will ever live through. The wind is blowing, but because we are together in this, we have hope. Most days. Maybe more than ever before in my lifetime, my friends and I are aware of our brokenness and the deep crazy, the desperation for light, hope, food, and medicine for poor. What helps is that we are not all crazy and hopeless on the same day. one of us remembers and reminds the rest of us that when it is really dark you can see the stars.

All it takes is one safe person to listen, to hear, to noodge us to start over and not give up.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath.

So I practice the fifth Get: I get in touch with others. I tell my partner the truth about how crunchy I feel inside, how unevolved or vindictive. Or I pick up the three-hundred-pound phone and tell a close friend. Or I get in the car and head to where one of my precious communities has gathered. This might be a park, my church, my Sunday school room; with hikers, sober people, townsfolk.

Twenty minutes later, my ski patrol woman did come back, rubbing her bare hands together. "How you doing?" she asked. At first the enthusiasm in her voice worried me, because she sounded as if we might now move on to calisthenics.

If you travel on an airline and they get you there safely, you don't tell anyone. That's what's supposed to happen. What makes it remarkable is if it's horrible beyond belief or if the service is so unexpected (they were an hour early! they comped my ticket because I was cute! they served flaming crêpes suzette in first class!) that you need to share it.

Once you've engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them. If you hide your spark, bury your ideas, keep your questions and notions from the team, you have hurt them as badly as if you had stolen a laptop and fenced it on eBay.

We don't need more noise, more variety, or more pitches. There's noise all around us, but it's often the idle chatter of people hiding in plain sight, or the selfish hustle of one more person who wants something from you. Our world is long on noise and short on meaningful connections and positive leadership.

Your best customers become your new salespeople.

Humans are lonely, and they want to be seen and known.

The communication can be one of four kinds: • Leader to tribe • Tribe to leader • Tribe member to tribe member • Tribe member to outsider

I'm not in charge of you, and I'm not manipulating you. I'm simply establishing the conditions for you to get to where you said you wanted to go. You tell me where you're going and what you need. You make promises about your commitment and skills development. I'll show up to illuminate, question, answer, spar with, and challenge you. I'll work tirelessly to make sure you're part of a team of people who are ready to care as much as you do.