The Less Triggered Tribe

Just Roll With It, Baby

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:02:50 GMT

We arrived at O’Hare just as United’s systems crashed all over the country.

The family trip was our son Quinn’s graduation gift, not to mention his send-off to college. In other words, we were bringing more than luggage to the airport—we were bringing emotional baggage, too. We wanted the experience to be special, and a chaotic airport terminal didn’t feel special at all.

So, what do you do?

Years ago, that was a complicated question for me, and my mind would offer countless answers, each one more anxious, angry, or sullen than the one before it. These days, the answer is singular and simple: You open your heart to it. Instead of protesting against it, you find a way to participate with it. You just roll with it, baby, as Steve Winwood once sang.

Of course, this is easier sung than done.

Imagine you’re facing someone, arms outstretched, your palms out. They suddenly reach out and press hard on your palms. What will you do?

You’ll reflexively push back, every single time.

Muscles in your core and arms will engage. You’ll lean forward with all your weight. You’ll instinctively resist the pressure being placed on you. And maybe that’s the right thing to do.

But also, maybe it’s not.

You see, if you automatically push back against the force being applied, then your actions are being dictated by the force. You’re not acting, you’re re-acting. If you fight the force, you can’t be free of the force.

This is what happens when your heart closes.

Life pushes on you and you instinctively push back. You can feel the pushback in your body at first. Sometimes it’s almost imperceptible, like a pilot light whooshing on in a furnace.

A small pit in your stomach.
A congealing of something beneath your sternum.
A fullness in your chest.
A pulse in your temple.

But it’s more than just physical. It’s spiritual, too. When your heart closes, there’s an ever so subtle quickening and thickening of your whole being. Your soul is armoring up. Your spirit is shutting down.

What feels strong at first, then, leaves us weaker at last.

The computer glitch pushed on my palms, and I could feel myself pushing back, as my heart started to close.

However, after years of openheartedness practice, I found it relatively easy to open back up.

“It is what it is,” I thought, feeling not frustrated but free. “We’ll depart when we depart. We’ll arrive when we arrive. And we’ll figure out how to have fun along the way.” I didn’t push back on it.

I rolled with it, baby.

Quinn’s disappointment with the trip was a different story.

On day one, he picked up a sunburn that would keep him off the beach for several days. No problem, though, because we had adventures planned. Quinn rallied. He opened his heart.

On the second morning, he’d be watching the sunrise from the top of a volcano. Except the clouds were especially high that morning so the mountaintop was enshrouded in dense fog. No sunrise to be seen. Strike two. Quinn rallied again. He opened his heart.

On the third morning, we were halfway to our snorkeling expedition when we got the call: a swell was making the waters too murky to see anything. The expedition was cancelled. Strike three. And Quinn was out.

His heart closed fiercely.

The whole trip had been “tainted” by his sunburn, he said. Mother Nature had made the vacation a “disappointment.” He announced he was tapping out for the day. Told us to go to the beach without him. Pulled out his phone. Started scrolling. Algorithmic anesthesia.

I did not roll with that, baby.

My heart closed to his closing. I felt more than just a pilot light in my gut. The furnace threatened to blow full blast. My temples didn’t just pulse. They pounded. I wanted to push back fiercely, too.

It’s so, so, hard to stay openhearted when you’re in pain.

Fortunately, my years of practice allowed me to get a foot in the door of my closing heart. It was mostly closed. And yet still a little open.

The closed part of my heart was willing to use any weapon to push back on the situation. It wanted to tell Quinn he was selfish for looking this gift horse in the mouth. It wanted to pep him up with a cheerleading routine about how none of this was as bad as he was making it out to be. It wanted to coach him and cajole him, mentor him and mold him.

The open part of my heart, on the other hand, could see how that would just make the situation worse. It could see that Quinn was in pain. It could see that he didn’t want to tap out. It could see the opening of his heart was his work to do, not mine. However, it also had something it wanted to say, so it asked permission of Quinn to say it.

Quinn said yes.

“One of the most important things I’ve learned over the years,” I said, “is the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is inevitable. It’s just part of being human. Suffering is all the unnecessary hurt we create by resisting the pain. By fighting it. Closing to it.”

He’d stopped scrolling.

“For example,” I continued, “seeing you in pain triggers my own pain. It hurts when someone you love is hurting. But I’ll create exponentially more suffering if I try to force you out of your pain. So all I can do is feel my pain and let you decide what to do with yours.”

His response sounded something like, “Hmph.”

I left to join the rest of the family at the beach. I wasn’t feeling happy, but my heart was all the way open again. So I was feeling free.

An hour later, we were sitting in the sand when my wife got a text from Quinn.

She read it. Smiled. Looked up.

“He wants to go for a hike with me this afternoon.”

I smiled back.

Because Quinn, too, had gotten free.

When life doesn't go according to plan, what's your first instinct: run from it, fight it, fix it, or roll with it? Let us know in the comments—and feel free to leave any other reactions as well!

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I Just Have to Tell You About This

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:02:49 GMT

I make things because making them brings me great joy.

Secondly, I make things to bring joy into other people’s lives.

Finally, I make things to sell them, so I can earn just enough money on what I made to make the next thing.

“Selling” doesn’t come naturally to me. Actually, it’s quite awkward. I wish we lived in a world where you typed “The End” and money fell out of the sky. But we don’t, so every once in a while I have to “sell” it.

However, I’m learning that—when you do it with an open heart— selling is simply telling.

And I have something I just have to tell you about, because, in the same order:

it brought me so much joy to make it,
it will unlock so much joy in your life,
and, um, I’m currently in five-digit debt on it.

I’m talking about the Relational Intelligence Summit I hosted in Utah in June.

Find out more

I’ve attended, keynoted, and hosted countless events over the years, and it was easily the most valuable event I’ve ever been a part of. We brought in three world class facilitators—Joshua Wenner, Stefanos Sifandos, and Christine Hassler—and, oh my goodness, did they deliver. Our guests learned how to stop reactivity in its tracks, replace unproductive patterns with healthy habits, and turn conflict into compassion.

Here’s a glimpse:

And now you can be a guest, too.

On September 3rd, I’m hosting the Virtual Summit Experience.

This isn’t just a replay. We’ve carefully curated the segments attendees found most powerful, then built a live experience around them. I’ll be there with you throughout, interacting with you in the Zoom chat while we watch those segments together, answering your questions, guiding you through the experience, and providing 90-minutes of real-time coaching in the afternoon. I’m going to make sure you walk away knowing how to put what you’ve learned into practice.

Here’s what to expect (all times Central):

8:30-9:40am — Session 1: Discover the Real Reason for Your Reactions
9:45-10:45am — Session 2: Break Your Patterns of Self-Protection
10:50am-12:00pm — Session 3: Connect with Compassion
12:00-1:00pm — Lunch Break
1:00-2:30pm — Live Coaching with Dr. Kelly

If you save your spot for the event but you can’t ultimately attend, no worries. We’re going to record it for you, and you’ll have access to the Complete Summit Library, which will include the Full Replay of the in-person event, plus the replay of the Virtual Summit Experience. So you can return to both again and again, forever, mining more and more growth from them every time.

Save your spot

As I wrote in The Road Less Triggered, you can have an agenda or you can connect but you can’t do both—and boundaries begin by simply asking for what you want.

So, no hidden agendas here. No me trying to convince you to do anything. Just me transparently telling you what I want:

I want to see you at the Virtual Summit Experience, because helping you brings me great joy. I want you to get unstuck in your relationships and unlock even more of the joy in your own life. And I want to break even on this event, so I can justify making another one!

I know this isn’t for everyone, but you’ll know if it’s for you. And thank you, thank you, thank you for being the kind of people from whom I can openheartedly ask for what I want. 🙏

Get your Gold ticket

I hope this post doubles as encouragement to you to reach out and ask for the things you want in life. What’s one thing you’re learning to ask for? What’s one thing you’d like to start asking for? Please feel free to share what it is, or any other reactions to this post, in the comments!

Tired of Tiptoeing Around Conflict?

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 10:01:41 GMT

A Note from Kelly

There’s something special happening in our Tribe. On our monthly community calls, meaningful connections are being made, spontaneous support is being offered, and you’re making a difference in each other’s lives.

Today, I’m thrilled to extend some of that community experience beyond the monthly calls, with our next guest post.

has quickly become one of my favorite writers on Substack, as well as an engaged presence in our community. I love her perspective on life. I value her writing voice. And I leave every interaction with her feeling more hopeful for humanity. In this guest post, she shares tools that have transformed how she shows up in her marriage.

Tired of tiptoeing around conflict? Jeannie’s got some valuable suggestions for you…

I don’t write about my marriage publicly. Maybe I’m afraid of betraying my husband, or the image people have of us together. Yet it’s within my marriage, more than any other relationship, that I am learning how to stay centered and less reactive during times of conflict. And the more I speak with a few trusted friends who have also been in long marriages, the more I realize my situation isn’t so unique, after all.

Adopting a growth mindset is something I have valued since childhood, where I first witnessed and participated in conflict that was not overtly expressed, acknowledged, metabolized, or resolved. I remember asking a question, like, “Why doesn’t Grandpa talk to Uncle Steve right now?” and my parents would hush me and tell me it wasn’t polite to speak up about something that wasn’t my business.

My family tiptoed around interpersonal conflict but had no trouble voicing their strong convictions when it came to politics, religion, finances—all the taboo topics we’re taught to refrain from bringing up when company comes for dinner. But I wanted us to work through tension. I wanted us to admit when we’d hurt each other, apologize, and commit to changing our behavior.

This is the mentality I took into my marriage, too. And it worked well. Until it didn’t. Around the birth of our fifth child, my emotions became too much for my husband. I’d lament, and he’d sit in his recliner, mute as a plant. For six years, that pattern persisted, and I saw no way out.

Then my oldest daughter met a friend at the local roller rink. Her friend’s dad is a family therapist who recommended a book our couples counselor hadn’t mentioned. He described it as a “game changer” in communicating differently with his wife: Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg.

I borrowed it from the library and took so many notes I decided to purchase it. Here’s where things shifted for me: I tried implementing Rosenberg’s suggestions in the way I communicated with Ben during times of conflict.

Example: Ben is a funny guy and often interjects humor into serious or painful discussions. I used to pout, say something passive aggressive (“Well, that was helpful”), or explode (“Why can’t you just say what you mean? This isn’t funny! I don’t know why every conversation has to turn into some joke for you…”).

After reading Nonviolent Communication, I’d pause just a beat before opening my mouth. It’s incredible how powerful this is, truly: taking a long sip of water, inhaling slowly, and letting my lizard brain catch up with my rational thinking. I’d learned that jumping to conclusions (what Rosenberg calls evaluations) often leads to circular arguments. For instance, if I made assumptions about Ben’s intent or motivation for inserting humor into our serious conversations, it would derail authentic, vulnerable connection.

Once I allowed the wave of my big feelings to die down, I’d stick with what Rosenberg calls an observation: verbalizing only the behavior and its impact on me, rephrasing my initial internal reaction into an intentional bid for connection. I might say something like, “Ben, when you interrupted me with that joke, I felt dismissed. In the future, I need you to stay with me when I’m sharing something painful with you, because humor doesn’t help me in those situations.”

It’s interesting to me how many tactics humans use to circumvent what we really mean to say. Sometimes I think it’s because we don’t truly know ourselves or the deeper needs we carry. There is risk in exposing the most tender parts of us, and deflection, mutualizing, minimizing, judging, etc. all offer a buffer against rejection. But they also serve as armor against real love.

Caution: Not everyone responds to the way of nonviolent communication. Be prepared for that. The people closest to you will not always cooperate with your attempts to strip away the layers of defense that have created a gaping hole in your relationships.

But please don’t give up trying.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that we live in an increasingly hostile and polarized world. It’s exhausting. We’re overwhelmed and oversaturated with information. We’re all carrying heavy loads. This is why I avoid social media and double down on keeping my reactivity in check when I am in public.

I believe the external world changes when I focus on changing my inner world. That’s the beauty of using intentional language in my closest relationships and with strangers: I can live anchored to the truth that I am content to be who I am, a person committed to kindness. Because when you’re committed to kindness without self-abandonment, you’re already on the road to deeper connection, whether your people know it or not.

What's one practice that's helped you become less reactive in your closest relationships? Feel free to share it, or anything else, in the comments!

[Course] Step 4: Simplify the Solution

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:02:33 GMT

Have you ever noticed how quickly your mind tries to explain why you’re hurting?

They’re not listening. They don’t care. They never change.

Or maybe it turns inward.

What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get this right? If I could just do better, this wouldn’t keep happening.

We try to fix our relational problems either by changing someone else, or by endlessly improving ourselves. But what if neither is the real opportunity in those moments? What if the real pivot is to stop solving our problems and to start seeing our pain?

In this session, we explore an idea that will completely change how you understand your triggers.

Beneath every triggered moment is not a complicated collection of problems, but one simple pain point. It’s the pain of feeling unseen, misunderstood, and/or unsupported. In a word, it’s the ordinary pain of loneliness.

When our loneliness is stirred up in relationships, we tend to default to one of two roles. We blame the other person for it, or we shame ourselves for it. Shame or blame. However, both of those paths pull us farther away from the healing and connection we’re longing for.

The journey isn’t about battling yourself or your loved ones. It’s about befriending yourself gradually, so you can befriend them eventually.

Self-compassion doesn’t begin when you figure yourself out—it begins when you stop arguing with your pain long enough to listen to it.

In the replay, I introduce a brand-new framework I’ve been developing over the past year. It has already transformed how I understand conflict in my own marriage and in the lives of the people I work with.

It’s one of the most important new pieces of the Peaceful Pivot Process so far.

Paid members, I’d love to continue the conversation from the call with you in the comments.

Free members, you can upgrade below to view the whole replay, join the discussion in the comments, and get access to our next community call/course recording on August 21st.

The Most Loving Thing We Can Do

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:02:46 GMT

I almost ruined our twentieth anniversary vacation to Hawaii.

We had planned a week in paradise, but when I looked at the forecast, it didn’t look like paradise. It looked like cloud cover and drizzle. And that, frankly, was unacceptable.

Oceanside sunshine makes my wife happy—happier than pretty much everything except her children—and happiness is what I was determined to give her for our anniversary. So, when I saw the forecast, I started scheming.

The flight was non-refundable, but the hotel could be canceled without penalty. So, we’d fly to our destination, then I’d book another flight to an island that was supposed to be sunny, find us lodging on that island, and book a return flight to our original island so we could fly home from there. It would be way too expensive and a huge hassle, but hey, that’s the cost of making your people happy. Right?

I am at my worst when I’m trying to make my people happy.

That’s been a very disconcerting lesson to learn. After all, aren’t we supposed to want others to be happy? Aren’t we supposed to live in service to other people? Aren’t we supposed to leave the world a better place than we found it?

The issue, of course, is that word: better.

What does “better” mean, exactly? And why did I decide that making my people happy is what better means? Well, the honest answer is that making my people happy means making them happy with me, which makes me feel loved and safe and like everything is going to be okay. So, it’s not really love. It’s survival. It’s my sweet but sneaky strategy for regulating my own nervous system.

When I told my wife how I was planning to make her happy, she told me she’d prefer my full attention over my distracting solutions. Presence over plans. Rain or shine. It seemed too simple, until I remembered what really makes most of us happy: a sense of safety.

Safety over sunshine, every time.

What if love isn’t about making our people feel happy, but helping our people feel safe?

I’d learned that lesson by the time our family vacated to Mexico for Covid Christmas #2. Instead of trying to make everyone happy, I simply resolved to keep my heart open, no matter what happened, because openhearted people make everything feel safer.

Right after returning from the trip, my wife encouraged me to tell our kids about the openheartedness I’d been practicing for a year. When I finished, my daughter got really quiet for a moment, and then said, “That must be why every time something went wrong on the way to Mexico, I looked at you and felt calm.”

My open heart helped her feel safe. Mission accomplished.

You might think I’m writing this for you, but really I’m writing it for me.

We’re heading to Hawaii again. I swear we don’t do this as much as it seems. When our kids graduate from high school, their gift is a family vacation of their choosing. Our son chose Hawaii. So we cashed in all our points, and here we go.

This time around, though, I’m not checking the forecast, I’m checking my heart.

I’m not going to try to make my family happy, I’m going to help them feel safe.

Rain or shine, it’s the most loving thing any of us can do.

Does the shift from “happy” to “safe” resonate with you? Bother you? Inspire you? Let us know in the comments—and feel free to leave any other reactions as well!

Before you go! Could you please support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below? I really appreciate it!

How to Make Your Boundaries Beautiful

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:03:08 GMT

I was twenty-three when I bought my wife’s engagement ring.

I used a credit card she would ultimately pay off when we merged our bank accounts after the wedding, so she basically bought her own ring. But, believe it or not, that’s not the most embarrassing thing about that ring.

The most embarrassing thing is that the jeweler didn’t give me the ring I ordered, and I never said a word.

Two months of a graduate student’s “pay” is exactly nothing, so I’d chosen a small marquis diamond with tiny claws holding it in place, hoping the setting wouldn’t dwarf the diamond. When I picked it up, however, the jeweler handed me a ring with thick, v-shaped prongs that devoured the diamond.

And I said nothing.

For years, I believed I stayed quiet because it couldn’t be corrected in time for my planned proposal a few weeks later. And that might have been true, but I didn’t even try to find out what was possible.

Now I believe my silence had nothing to do with my calendar and everything to do with my boundaries.

A few years ago, when I first started telling people about the power of openheartedness, I’d get pushback.

“So I just have to let people walk all over me?” they’d ask.

They assumed an open heart means open boundaries—a very understandable but very unfortunate misconception. The truth is, your inner condition and your outer actions are two different things. And once you grasp the difference, this quote from The Road Less Triggered starts to make a whole lot more sense:

An open heart doesn’t make your boundaries weaker, it makes your boundaries wiser.

In order to illustrate the relationship between the state of our heart and our boundaries, I created a framework called “The Interdependence Intersection.” It looks like this:

When I saw those v-shaped prongs, my heart closed but I said nothing. In other words, I was in the codependent corner of the intersection—abandoning my wants and intuitions in order to avoid friction and conflict. I resented the jeweler. I was worried my future bride wouldn’t like the ring. I kicked myself for not being clearer when I ordered it.

But I just swallowed all that emotion and stayed silent, in part because the only way I’d ever seen someone set boundaries was “independently,” which is to say angrily, aggressively, and with a closed-heart. That kind of boundary-setting always seemed to start battles that nobody won.

Twenty-five years later, I now know it’s closed-hearted boundaries that inevitably start battles—not because boundaries are bad but because, if you wear boxing gloves to church, a boxing match will break out.

Now I know it’s possible to set boundaries with an open heart—and openhearted boundaries cue collaboration, not conflict.

A few month’s short of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, we decided to add solar panels to our house.

I love our house and I love the way it looks every time I pull into the driveway, but I was willing to alter the aesthetic in exchange for energy independence. So, before the installers began, I’d prepared myself for the appearance of the panels.

What I had not prepared myself for was metal conduit running all along the front roofline of our house, cascading down its siding—like v-prongs devouring a diamond. When I saw it after the first day of installation, it was like seeing that engagement ring all over again. I resented the installers. I feared what my wife would say about it. And I kicked myself for not being clearer about what I wanted.

The difference was, this time, my heart didn’t stay closed and I didn’t stay silent.

One of the most important things I’ve learned about boundaries over the years is that boundaries aren’t demands or attacks or even requests. At their essence, boundaries are simply an expression of what you want, and it’s possible to express what you want to others while showing them kindness.

So, I opened my heart and decided the installers weren’t trying to ruin my life, they were simply uninformed about what I wanted. I messaged them and set an interdependent boundary. In other words, I simply told them what I wanted.

“Tomorrow morning, I’d like to discuss running all the conduit down the back of the house.”

They were actually eager to help. By breakfast the next day, a new plan had been hatched. And by lunchtime the house looked great again.

The morning after the installation was complete, I told my wife I had a confession twenty-five years in the making: Her ring was never meant to have those big, gaudy prongs. Together, we decided to take the ring to a local jeweler to find out what’s possible.

One way or another, though, I know it will turn out beautifully, because that’s what openhearted boundaries do.

They make things more beautiful,

whether that thing is a ring

or a relationship.

What was your biggest “A-ha!” in this post? How about your biggest “Huh???” Let us know in the comments—and feel free to leave any other reactions as well!

Before you go! Could you please support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below? (Did you see what I did there…I asked for what I wanted—the essence of an openhearted boundary! 😊

Freedom Is for Losers

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:02:55 GMT

It’s Father’s Day morning and, I’ll admit it, I have expectations.

The truth is, I’ve spent my whole life seeking appreciation while pretending it doesn’t matter to me, but one day a year I let myself openly long for something special. Golf is my favorite pastime, but this year I haven’t played once. Eighteen holes doesn’t seem like too much to ask for Father’s Day.

The weather, though, isn’t taking requests.

The rain starts at sunup, and it doesn’t stop until after sundown. The thermometer doesn’t top sixty all day. It’s bad weather for Easter, let alone Father’s Day.

And it feels personal, if you know what I mean.

So my mind does what minds do when they take something personally: it starts telling its always-escalating stories.

“I work so hard, when am I going to get to have some fun?”
“I can never have anything good for myself.”
“The universe is out to get me.”
“No one loves me—I’m all on my own.”

Suddenly, the clouds outside are nothing compared to the storm clouds gathering inside of me. My heart is closing quickly, and I know how a closed-hearted Father’s Day is going to go. It’ll be dark and heavy. Grumpy and grouchy. Tiny and tortured. Limited and loveless.

In a word, it’ll be a prison.

A closed heart is captivity of our own creation.

It turns out, you can lose your freedom to something as a simple as a low pressure system. In fact, you can lose your internal freedom to pretty much anything that doesn’t match your preferences. You can be in the middle of a perfectly good day, when…

your wife says that thing she always says,
your husband doesn’t do that thing he never does,
your teenager’s eyes roll so dramatically it seems their eyeballs will fall right out of their hormonal head,
your friends don’t invite you to the thing,
the traffic is jammed,
your news feed is doomed,
a home improvement project goes sideways, or
a visit with family goes even worse.

When these things—and countless others—happen, you can give away your emotional freedom in one totally triggered moment, or you can get triggered in slow motion. Either way, you end up behind the bars of your closed heart.

And sure, the bars will keep the people and the pain out there, but it will also keep your soul stuck in here.

Souls aren’t meant to be sequestered, though, they’re meant to be together.

So, as the rain streaks the windows, I do what it takes to open one’s heart: I become a total loser. I just give up.

I give up my preferences for the day—what I wanted for it, and how it was “supposed” to go.
I relinquish control of the weather, because—news alert—I wasn’t in control of it to begin with.
I surrender my ego—the complicated matrix of self-protection I’ve been developing since childhood—this wonderful creation intended to save me from separation and sadness, this accidental creator of the problem it was supposed to solve.
I let go of all the things my ego attaches to—like winning, and being right, and getting my way, and proving my point, and momentary invulnerability, and the undependable happiness that depends on everything going the way I want.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

What a recipe for losers.

Then he said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

A double dose of loserdom!

He went on, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

The third time he exults the losers, you start to realize maybe he isn’t fumbling his words. In fact, he might be making a point so shocking to our egos that we’ve mostly missed it for two-thousand years:

Being a particular kind of loser is the surest pathway to spiritual freedom.

Lose your life so you might find it, he says. Let go of your ego, so you can recover your soul. Open your heart so you can show up to your life with your best, wisest, most loving stuff. Every time the prison cell beckons, ask yourself if you want to lock yourself behind bars like a stubborn winner, or if you’ll be a loveable loser and stay free to fully live your life, no matter what is happening.

As the rain streaks the windows, I open my heart, because I know an open heart is the best gift I can give myself for Father’s Day. And as I walk into the kitchen, I feel like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. The rain has washed me clean.

My daughter greets me with a hug.

“Do you want to make pancakes together like we used to?” she asks.

It may not be a round of golf, but it’s a pretty great way to spend a Father’s Day morning.

Or an Independence Day.

Or any day for that matter.

Is openheartedness coming easy to you right now, are you finding it difficult, or are you somewhere in between? Let us know in the comments, and feel free to leave any other reactions as well!

No comment and no order? No problem. Before you go, would you support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. Thank you! 🙏

[Course] Step 3: Cultivate Calmness Before Connectedness

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:03:40 GMT

The key to satisfying relationships isn’t connection, it’s calmness. Connection is simply the room that calmness unlocks.

The number one complaint of couples presenting for couples therapy for the last 50 years has been “communication.” Indeed, it’s the top concern in almost every relationship that is failing to reach its full potential.

However, poor communication isn’t the problem, it’s merely a symptom.

It’s the inevitable result of a dysregulated nervous system.

That’s the truth we tackled in this month’s session of our new online course, The Less Triggered Teachings:

Most of what we call conflict is really just two dysregulated nervous systems trying to calm themselves through each other.

And that has worked zero times in human history.

Seriously. Zero times.

That’s why one of the central ideas in The Road Less Triggered is this:

Love isn’t connecting with others to calm ourselves, it’s calming ourselves to connect with others.

And that’s also why this particular pivot in the Peaceful Pivot Process is so important: When we’re triggered, our body tells us to deal decisively with threats out there, when what we really need is to focus on our feelings in here. Regulating them. Understanding them. Feeling them instead of defending them. So we can respond instead of reacting.

A reaction is a failure of self-regulation, while a response is the fruit of self-regulation.

In The Road Less Triggered, I focused on expanding our capacity to handle tension. In this Teaching, we supplement that with a focus on reducing tension in our nervous system altogether. Here’s what you’ll take away from the hour:

A metaphor to remember when you’re tempted to change everything around you rather than regulating what’s happening inside you.
A visualization you can carry with you to reverse the tightening that happens around your triggered moments.
A framework for understanding your ideal zone of arousal, somewhere between distressed and depleted.
Six strategies for regulating your nervous system in real time, by teaching your vagus nerve to calm your body.
A guided meditation you can use to continue building your capacity for tension, so you can hold it instead of reacting to it.

Learn how to regulate before you relate.

You’ll literally never regret it.

Paid members, I’d love to continue the conversation from the call with you in the comments.

Free members, you can upgrade below to view the whole replay, join the discussion in the comments, and get access to our next community call/course recording on June 19th.

Where I Found Peace

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:02:23 GMT

4U Ranch - Peoa, Utah

It’s the morning after the Relational Intelligence Summit.

I wake to sunlight streaming through the bedroom windows in Peoa, Utah. My body is humming with something I can’t quite comprehend. It’s deeper than exhaustion, sweeter than relief, and more sublime than success. It makes me want to cry.

So I ask my wife the question I’ve asked her several times before: Why do runners sometimes burst into tears at the end of a race?

The longer we discuss it, though, the deeper the feeling descends back into my body. I’m reminded in real time of what I wrote in The Road Less Triggered:

You don’t understand your way to feeling, you feel your way to understanding.

It’s not until I’m in the silence and solitude of the guest bathroom that the humming returns. The feeling is vast and urgent. Once again, I’m faced with the choice we’re all faced with when an emotion rises within us: You can analyze a feeling, or you can allow a feeling, but you can’t do both.

I allow it.

Once we quit telling our emotions what to do, they tell us what they’re about.

“Fifteen years ago I was so scared and ashamed, I’d flinch if you so much as looked at me.”

That’s the thought that comes with the first wave of tears.

The Summit was a one-of-a-kind event, and it was a home run for those in attendance. One guest remarked, “I can’t believe how much value you delivered in a single day without it once feeling overwhelming.” My emotion isn’t about the success of it, however.

It’s about the fact that I was entirely at peace while leading it.

Fifteen years ago, that would have been inconceivable. All the moving parts and potential for mistakes (and, thus, shame) would have been more stress than I could have handled. On the day of the Summit, however, I’d remained openhearted to all of it, seeking to control none of it, trusting it to be perfectly imperfect, just trying to lead the event as intuitively as possible.

The emotion is the feeling of being completely at home in my own skin, after so many years in exile. It’s so big because it contains both the exile and the homecoming, all at once.

#1. Good news: If you are in exile from yourself, there is a healing process that can lead you home.

“But I wasn’t peaceful in a vacuum, I was peaceful in community.”

The second wave of tears threatens to carry my eyeballs away with it. I feel gratitude so large it simply can’t stay in a body.

Loneliness has three main ingredients: feeling unseen, misunderstood, and unsupported. Feeling unsupported is my loneliness language, so support is my love language. And the Summit was supported by so many wonderful souls:

my longtime friend and collaborator Jeremy Reisig who helped design it;
the masterful hospitality of my director of event operations Rhonda Jenkins;
the genius and generosity of our dear friends and owners of the 4U Ranch, Donna and Gary Urban;
the brilliance of Weltzin Media, who documented it for replay on September 3rd;
the culinary giftedness of Chef Dalton at Park City Elite Private Chefs who fed us all day;
the deep wisdom and deft guidance of the Summit’s world-class leadership team—Joshua Wenner, Stefanos Sifandos, and Christine Hassler;
the tireless support of my wife, who has been my solid rock for the last quarter of a century;
and the presence and commitment of every single guest who attended live—they’re way more than fans, and even more than friends…they feel like family.

For so long, I tried to achieve inner peace by changing my people. You see, so much of what we call personal and relational growth is really just a cleverly-disguised attempt to change the “weather” (a.k.a., the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the people around us).

#2. If you want different weather, don’t try to change the weather—change your location.

You need to surround yourself with people who support you and your authenticity. Of course, the “weather” will never be perfect—in any community there will always be stormy days—but every once in a while there’ll be a day so beautiful you’ll have to ask if you’re in heaven.

No, they’ll say, it’s Utah.

“It turns out there are finish lines in life, if we can recognize them when we cross them.”

The giant wave of emotion gives way to a gentler one, as I realize that one of the truest things I always say—“You’re not here to be finished, you’re here to be formed”—is only half true. I feel a satisfaction so deep I know no other accomplishment will ever transcend it.

A #1 New York Times Bestseller?
Riches and fame?
A legacy-like impact on the world?

I wouldn’t complain about any of those things, but I can feel all the way to the center of my soul that they won’t be more satisfying than the experience I’ve just had with my people.

#3. In the end, our places of belonging are the big door prize.

I look up and look in the mirror. My eyes are bloodshot and glassy and swollen. I haven’t seen eyes like that in the mirror since I was a little boy. Back then, that little kid was in a lot of pain.

On this morning, however, he’s left only with the peace that remains after the pain passes through you.

It’s a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Which of the three “clues” feel most important to you today? Let us know in the comments, and feel free to leave any other reactions as well!

No comment and no order? No problem. Before you go, your support of this message would mean so much to me—you can do so by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. 🙏

10 More Conversations About the Power of Openheartedness

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:02:25 GMT

Show up less triggered so you can end up more together.

The interviews just keep getting better, as the conversations take us deeper and deeper into how the practice of openheartedness turns our triggers into togetherness, and I’ve curated another ten episodes that are the best fit for you and our community.

Pick one, or listen to all of them. Either way, I guarantee you will wind up more centered and more focused on how to show up differently to the key moments in your relationships.

Enjoy!

Front Row Dads: How to Stop Reacting and Start Connecting

Every chance to talk with my good friend, Jon Vroman, the founder of Front Row Dads is a gift. But this conversation is a particularly special treasure. Here’s what FRD focused on in their release notes:

“You can’t defeat your defensiveness. You can only learn to watch it instead of wielding it.”
I’ve spent years trying to eliminate my reactivity. More meditation. More journaling. More books. Kelly basically said that’s a dead end. Your entire body is designed to protect itself. That’s never going away. Spiritual maturity isn’t becoming some guy who never gets defensive. It’s developing the capacity to watch your defensiveness without letting it drive.
This should be taught to every man at a young age. It would change how we show up in our marriages, with our kids, in our businesses — everywhere. Instead we spend decades trying to beat it out of ourselves and wonder why we can’t.
That’s not just about [our kids] either. It’s about [our co-parenting relationships] too…hearing Kelly frame it this way gave me room to breathe. Maybe I can start naming it out loud instead of letting it run the show.”

One of Jon’s questions—”What’s the hardest boundary to set?”—led to a deeply meaningful segment about belonging and boundaries. You’re going to love it.

Watch on YouTube

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast: How to Solve the Problem of Human Disconnection

Ginny Yurich is the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, the global platform for reclaiming childhood, reconnecting families, and restoring mental health in the age of artificial intelligence. With almost a million Instagram followers, her movement is truly global, and she says several times during this conversation that The Road Less Triggered is the most life-changing book she’s ever read.

From her show notes:

This conversation will change how you see almost every frustrating moment in your day because it shows you what’s actually happening underneath it. Dr. Kelly Flanagan explains the exact moment your heart closes, why small things feel so big, and how quickly disconnection takes over in marriage, parenting, and everyday life. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it and you don’t need anyone else to change for it to start working. This gives you a clear, practical way to shift from reacting to connecting, right in the middle of real life.

The Three Percent Podcast: How to Be Less Triggered

Why do the people we love most have the ability to trigger us the fastest?
In this conversation, I sat down with , and his co-host Jamie Haigh, on the podcast, and it became a masterclass on emotional and relational intelligence.

Together, we unpacked why anger is often a doorway into deeper emotions, how sadness gets blocked for many men, and why healing begins by asking not “What’s wrong with me?” but “What happened to me?” The conversation is practical, deeply compassionate, and full of memorable metaphors that make complex emotional dynamics easier to understand. It offers a hopeful path toward greater calm, freedom, and connection.

Here are some key takeaways:

Why being triggered is normal—and doesn’t mean you’re broken
How to move from protection mode back into connection mode
Why anger often points to sadness underneath the surface
What it means to restore your sense of choice in conflict
How boundaries can be set with an open heart
Why healing turns 30-day conflicts into 30-second recoveries

Things Above Podcast: A Conversation with Dr. Kelly Flanagan

In this episode of Things Above, I’m blessed to join one of my favorite authors, James Bryan Smith, for a conversation about The Road Less Triggered. He is also the founder of the Apprentice Institute and the host of the annual Apprentice Gathering, where I’ll be teaching in September. Jim is one of the leading thinkers and feelers in the Christian spiritual formation space, so this conversation goes a long way to connecting the dots between emotional reactivity, relational healing, and spiritual growth.

“I just love your work so much,” Jim says to kick off the episode,” but this book, I marked it up over and over with highlighter and pen. That’s big. We’re talking pen. When you’re writing in the margins, not just highlighting.”

And it was his thorough read of the book that took this conversation to levels you’ve not heard before.

ManTalks: How to Control Emotional Reactions

In this episode of the ManTalks Podcast, I sit down with Connor Beaton, a Jungian coach, teacher, and speaker, and the founder of the ManTalks community. We unpack:

what really happens when we get triggered
why it feels so hard to stay in control
how our nervous system hijacks us,
how past experiences shape our reactions,
what it actually means to “keep your heart open” in conflict
how to take ownership without taking blame

This conversation is a practical look at how to respond instead of react, especially in the relationships that matter most.

Marriage on the Daily with Julie B: What Your Triggers Are Trying to Teach You About Your Marriage

In this episode of Marriage on the Daily, I sat down with marriage expert Julie Baumgartner to unpack the real meaning behind being “triggered” and how couples can navigate those moments in a healthier, more connected way. We explore how our reactions in conflict often have less to do with our spouse—and more to do with what’s happening inside of us. From understanding how our nervous system shifts into protection mode, to learning how to regulate ourselves before responding, this conversation offers practical tools to help you move from conflict to connection.

You’ll discover:

Why “you triggered me” can actually give away your power
The hidden pain beneath most emotional reactions
How to calm yourself before trying to communicate
A simple daily practice to help keep your heart open
How your triggers can become teachers instead of tripwires

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in the same arguments or wondering why communication breaks down in key moments, this episode will give you a fresh perspective—and a hopeful path forward. Because in marriage especially, it’s not about avoiding conflict…it’s about learning how to show up differently in the middle of it.

Watch on YouTube

That Makes Total Sense with Alexis Busetti

This is my third conversation with Alexis Busetti, on her podcast That Makes Total Sense. I really, really loved the first two, but in her words: This one is “phenomenal.” We talked about how to keep our heart open during those interpersonal moments in which we’re most tempted to close.

What sets this episode apart, though, is how much we tackle our current cultural and political context. Not sure how to talk to your people on the other side of the political aisle? This might be exactly the conversation you need to hear.

Alexis’s big aha’s included:

the three-stage process of being “triggered,”
the nine ways we close our hearts,
the three pillars of loneliness, and
the buoyancy of sadness.

Called to Love: How to Live Less Triggered As Adoptive and Foster Families

In this episode, I joined Somer Colbert for a conversation about managing triggers as parents. We explore the clinical definition of “triggered,” as well as its everyday definition, and we apply the concept to parenting relationships in general, and adoptive/foster parenting relationships specifically.

Key topics in this episode include:

The physiological signs of being triggered and how to use your sixth sense—interoception—to navigate those moments more wisely
Balancing regulation and recognition in emotional responses
Empathy and boundaries in trauma-informed care
Practical steps for owning moments and modeling for children

This is a really helpful conversation for parenting children of all ages through their triggered moments—and your own.

Superbold: Boldly Overcoming Your Disconnection

Fred Joyal is an international speaker, the bestselling author of Superbold: From Under-Confident to Charismatic in 90 Days, and the host of the Superbold Podcast. His humble brags are that he once beat Sir Richard Branson in chess and was also a question on Jeopardy!

In this episode of the podcast, we explore how our impulse to disconnect is often related to pain or trauma from our past, and how we get stuck in those patterns when we try to spiritually bypass actually healing them.

Watch on YouTube

Thriving Beyond Belief Podcast: How to Live Sustainably in an Overstimulating World

Cheryl Scruggs is the host of the Thriving Beyond Belief Podcast, an online community providing women with encouragement & support to better manage their stress, create healthy relationships, and build a life that thrives beyond belief.

I sat down with Cheryl for a conversation about what it really means to become less triggered in a world that keeps all of us overstimulated, reactive, and exhausted. We talked about the difference between ordinary frustration and those moments when our nervous system activates, our heart closes, and we fall back into the same painful relational patterns again and again.

Along the way, we explored how modern life keeps us anxious and dysregulated, why learning to regulate before we relate transforms our relationships, and how paying attention to our bodies can help us recognize a triggered moment before it hijacks us. We also talked about the deeper loneliness underneath so much defensiveness—the universal ache of feeling unseen, misunderstood, or unsupported—and why compassion begins when we learn to see the pain beneath people’s protections, including our own.

That’s all for the Summer 2026 podcast digest. I’ll be back with another compilation when I have ten more conversations that I believe will take the connection in your relationships to levels that traditional communication strategies can’t touch.

Until then, I look forward to connecting with you in the comments of our weekly posts and during our monthly recording of The Less Triggered Teachings!

Did you listen to an episode? Which one? What was your biggest takeaway?

Trees Don't Go Running All Over the Forest Trying to Grow

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:00:50 GMT

On my son’s last day of high school, I resurrected the carpool playlist we curated during his elementary school years.

We called it “Attack the School Songs.” It’s filled with rock ’n’ roll anthems both classic and contemporary—a high-adrenaline, slightly aggressive, very loud collection of music designed by dad to make the drives to school more memorable. It was the soundtrack of an era in which our family’s whole future lay sprawled out before us.

I launched the playlist for the first time in years and promptly burst into tears.

“You don’t understand your way to feeling, you feel your way to understanding,” I wrote in The Road Less Triggered.

Your tears tell you what they’re about, as they leave your body. In this case, my tears weren’t about Quinn graduating from high school. They were about me graduating from the first half of my life.

I have never felt more at the midpoint of life, suspended between seasons.

I’m 49 years old. By “midpoint,” I don’t mean I’m expecting to live to 98. Rather, I’m referring to that inflection point between the first half of life (during which your life fills up and speeds up) and the second half of life (during which it empties out and slows down). I’m talking about that ever-so-subtle (at first) shift from scratching and scraping, going and growing, establishing and expanding…to slowing down and settling down, to deepening your presence and distilling your essence, to saying grace and saying goodbye.

I’m talking about that optional but essential—and often resisted—pivot in the middle of our lives,

from the fortification of the ego to the resurrection of the soul,
from succeeding to surrendering,
from achieving to appreciating.

As “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twister Sister gave way to “Jukebox Hero” by Foreigner, I had the sudden impulse to race home and to write and rewrite a 1000-word viral essay about how important it is to allow that sacred segue into the second half of life. Fortunately, a still, small voice spoke up from somewhere way down deep in my soul and said something like,

“That’s adorable, Kelly—you want to write about the second half of life for first half of life reasons.”

I am suspended between seasons, indeed—like a mid-September day in the upper Midwest, when you can’t tell if summer is ending or autumn is beginning, and you know you’ll miss the heat, but you’re also ready for the relief. You see, the second half of life isn’t a lesser half. It’s just a different half, and in many ways—if we allow it—a deeper half.

Many of the sweetest things about being human are waiting on us in the second half of life.

There’s birdsong waiting on an ear to hear it and sunlight waiting on a face to turn toward it. There are regrets waiting to be released. There’s sorrow waiting to be transformed into joy by your tear ducts. There’s someone you love, waiting for someone to simply sit with them. There’s a thread of grace running through all things, just waiting to be pulled. There’s calm after the storm, as soon as you decide you’re done being the storm.

“Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf was playing when I pulled into the driveway, got out of the car, looked up at the trees surrounding our home, and was reminded of a very second-half-of-life sentiment I’d recently posted to Substack Notes:

Here’s to the second half of life.

Here’s to being rooted while reaching for the light.

Here’s to wiser ways of becoming what we’re here to become.

Does this give you permission to slow down and enjoy the simplest, sweetest things a little more? If so, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.

No comment and no order? No problem. Before you go, it would mean the world to me if you’d support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. 🙏

[Course] Step 2: Disrupt Your Defensiveness

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 27 May 2026 10:02:17 GMT

Openheartedness isn’t a personality trait, it’s a practice.

More specifically, openheartedness is the practice that turns triggers into togetherness. And that practice becomes most important precisely when you least want to practice it.

I kicked off this session of The Less Triggered Teachings by sharing a story from my own marriage, when I was absolutely convinced I was being the world’s greatest husband and father. Helping. Serving. Showing up. Until one small comment from my wife revealed the truth:

Part of me wasn’t simply loving, it was performing for approval.

From there, this session explored these core insights:

Some of our most “openhearted” behaviors can actually be closed hearts in clever disguise.
You don’t solve your defenses, you soften to them.
The defensive parts of us aren’t enemies to destroy—they’re younger versions of ourselves trying to keep us safe from loneliness, rejection, shame, disconnection, etc.
Transformation begins the moment we stop attacking those parts with criticism and start welcoming them with compassion.
A practical framework for instantly turning disconnection into connection, by confessing our closing.

I concluded my keynote with this quote from The Road Less Triggered:

There’s no such thing as a perfect world, but a more peaceful world is well within our watchful reach.

And then we concluded the call with a deeply meaningful time of conversation, Q&A, and coaching, which proved that to be true.

Enjoy!

Paid members, I’d love to continue the conversation from the call with you in the comments.

Free members, you can upgrade below to view the whole replay, join the discussion in the comments, and get access to our next community call/course recording on June 19th.

A Letter to the Happiness-Pushers (About Graduation and Grief)

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 20 May 2026 10:01:54 GMT

Dear Happiness-Pushers,

I know you mean well.

I know it’ll be okay when he’s gone.

I know every ending is another beginning.

I know we’ll find pleasant surprises in the quiet he leaves behind.

Here’s what you need to know, though:

Happiness is how you say hello to something you love, and grief is how you say goodbye to it.

Happiness is how we said hello to him when his mother’s water broke in the bathroom on a September Sunday morning and we raced to the hospital over jarring railroad tracks and painful potholes and his heart rate was dropping because the cord was wrapped around his neck and they pulled him free and cut if off and he let loose his first of countless cries.

Happiness is how we said hello to his first steps and his first Lego castle and his first soccer game and his first best friend and his first bike ride and his first bus ride and his first academic accolade and his first girlfriend and his first too-adult joke and his first college application essay.

However, on the eve of graduation, I’d ask you to let us be on the edge of grief for just a little while—maybe even a long while—as we take some time to goodbye.

Grief is how we’re going to say goodbye to the things we knew we loved…

rap music issuing from the shower and pulling into the driveway,
him tossing peanut M&Ms into the air and catching them in his mouth until he missed one in the middle of the kitchen on an ordinary Wednesday night,
the friends who have followed him into our home and who raid our fruit bowl like its their own,
his laugh—the kind you can hear all the way across a parking lot or a soccer field, all throughout a home—his laugh, mostly ours until now, the laugh we’ll soon be sharing with the world,
rage-baiting his mom, over and over again, until each time she realized what was happening and broke down into her own laughter of love,
the aroma of fried eggs made for breakfast every morning of his senior year.

And grief is how we’re going to say goodbye to the things we never knew we loved until they were gone…

the temper tantrums of his toddler years
the marks on the walls and the marks on our hearts
the clothes completely burying his bedroom floor
the fights about phones
the mold growing in a cup of something left too long in the basement
egg yolk impossibly crusted to a frying pan never soaked well enough

Sure, lots of hellos and happiness lie ahead, but, for now, please don’t deprive us of fully feeling this departure. It hurts like hell. That’s how it’s supposed to feel. It’s how you know you’ve loved something that is leaving you. I know, I know, I know…the pain won’t last forever.

But for now,

for today at least,

as he puts on the gown and the cap and the tassel, and as his name is called, and as he and his classmates toss those caps into the spring sky above, and as he walks out of our life and into his life,

just let us take some time to look at it through tears,

just let this goodbye be a blurry one.

Gratefully,

Parents everywhere

Does this give you permission to be in pain about a departure in your life? If so, let us know in the comments.

If this hit you in the heart, please feel free to share it with your people.

"Press lighter, Dad."

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:02:10 GMT

“Press lighter, Dad.”

My son Quinn is 48 hours from launching a business at his high school’s CEO Trade Show. He’s perfected a chicken quesadilla with a secret sauce, and he’s spent months planning and purchasing everything he needs for the grand opening. His company is called Quinnsadillas.

Two night before he goes live, our whole family and two hired friends are madly prepping food at a local Kitchen Incubator. I’ve been assigned eighty pounds of cheese to shred, but I’ve never used a food processor and I’m drastically under-qualified for the job.

I ram the first block of cheese into the processor, push the button, and the motor revs but the blade doesn’t spin. I tell Quinn he purchased the most impenetrable cheese humankind has ever created. He gives me the kind of look you’d give a senior citizen who tells you their TV is broken because they can’t figure out how to turn it on.

“Show me what you’re doing,” he says.

So I do, and the motor hums but the blade stands still, and I stand back with a smug little look on my face.

Quinn smiles again and tells me I have to press the cheese into the processor more lightly. I was pushing so hard it was pinning the blade in place. And sure enough, I feed the next block in gently, and voila, instantly shredded cheese.

Press lighter. Less effort. Better results.

Go figure.

A couple hours later I’ve graduated to chicken-shredding duty.

I wield a claw in each hand—looking like Marvel’s Wolverine turned prep cook—and attack the boiled chicken breasts as violently as Wolverine attacks the bad guys. I tear into a breast and it simply breaks into two big pieces. So I tear into each of those pieces, and they break into two more pieces. I might as well be dicing with a knife. No shreds to be seen.

I lament to Quinn that he purchased the softest chicken breasts that humankind has ever produced, and he looks at me like I’ve forgotten how to use the remote again.

“Show me what you’re doing,” he says.

So I do, and once again he smiles.

“You have to press lighter, Dad. Just like the cheese.”

Sure enough, when I scrape gently with the claws, the chicken shreds quickly.

Press lighter. Less effort. Better results.

And suddenly I’m like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense, seeing so many previous scenes so differently.

Six months earlier, I was in our kitchen at home, making my hallowed Thanksgiving Eve chili.

My work day had run long so I was moving quickly to catch up before dinnertime. I lined up all the cans of tomatoes and peppers and beans in a row on the counter, applied the can opener to the first one, and furiously spun the little handle.

Nothing. The can was unaltered. I lamented to my wife that her can opener was busted.

She took the can opener from my hands and promptly opened a large can of crushed tomatoes.

“You have to turn it more slowly,” she explained. “When you spin it too fast, the teeth can’t get a grip.”

Turn slower. Less effort. Better results.

I’m starting to see a pattern here.

Several weeks before the cheese and the chicken, Quinn had the first tennis meet of his senior season on the same night as his senior honors banquet.

He wanted to play tennis very much, and he wanted to go to the banquet not at all. I, on the other hand, was hell-bent on getting him to the banquet, so I’d hatched a plan. I got permission to drive him home myself, packed him a change of clothes, cut out of work early, and broke traffic laws the whole way to the tennis meet. If the match went quickly, we’d have just enough time to get to the banquet.

The match didn’t cooperate. Long points. Multiple deuces in every game. Full sets. Tie-breakers.

As soon as he won it, I hustled him to the car and tore out of the parking lot like his water had broken and he was about to give birth.

“Dad,” he said from the passenger seat, “if you really want to go to the banquet, let’s do it. But we’re going to miss the food, and I’d rather just have dinner with you.”

Years ago, when I didn’t know what a closed and controlling heart was, I’d have blown past that moment and hit the accelerator. However, when his words landed in my chest, I could feel the all-too-familiar resistance to them. So I breathed and opened my heart and instantly knew: rushing him to the banquet was my way of managing my grief about him leaving us.

As if watching him honored could freeze him in time.

Instead, we stopped on the way home at a new Mexican restaurant we’d been wanting to try. And our conversation over tacos will, I’m sure, be one of my favorite memories of his beloved childhood.

Conventional wisdom says more effort gets you better results. Go faster. Work longer. Push harder. But what if sometimes—perhaps even a lot of the time—the opposite is true?

“Press lighter, Dad.”

Press lighter, everyone.

Can you think of a situation in your life in which pressing lighter might yield better results? If so, leave a “yes” in the comments!

No comment and no order? No problem. Before you go, you can support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. Your support is much appreciated!

Calm Is Contagious

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:01:49 GMT

A Note from Kelly

Almost a decade ago, I published a little book called Loveable, and it found its way into the hands of Ashton Gustafson, host of the Good, True, & Beautiful podcast. Ashton invited me to keynote a retreat weekend at his home in Waco, and a friendship was born.

Recently, we sat down for another conversation, this time about The Road Less Triggered. When I read the article Ashton wrote about it in his quarterly newspaper, The Citizen, it was like looking at a painting of a beautiful landscape that is somehow more beautiful than the landscape itself. So, I just had to share the “painting” with you.

Here’s an abridged version of Ashton’s article. Enjoy!

The Road Less Triggered: On Calm, Conflict, and the Quiet Power of an Open Heart

In his first book, Loveable, Kelly gave language to our deep longing for worth and belonging. The Road Less Triggered steps into a messier conversation: what happens when we forget. Because we all do.

We forget in conversations that turn sharp.

We forget in the split-second between a comment and a reaction.

We forget when something small hits something old.

And suddenly, we’re not responding—we’re reacting.

The Space We Don’t Think We Have

At the center of this conversation is a deceptively simple idea: There is a space between what happens to us and how we respond. Most of us don’t believe that. Not really. We tell ourselves:

Of course I reacted that way.

They disrespected me.

They didn’t listen.

But as Kelly puts it, communication doesn’t break down between people—it breaks down within people. That shift alone reframes everything. The argument isn’t just out there. It’s happening inside.

The Doorbell, Not the Problem

On the road less triggered, a trigger isn’t something to eliminate—it’s something to listen to. A doorbell. An invitation. Not to fix the other person, but to turn inward and ask: What just got activated in me?

Because beneath nearly every triggered moment lives something far more ancient than the present conversation—threads that run back years, sometimes decades. And more often than not, they point to a familiar triad:

The fear of being unseen.

The ache of being misunderstood.

The weight of feeling unsupported.

We don’t usually recognize this in real time. So instead, we assign blame outward. Or, as Kelly writes with disarming clarity in The Road Less Triggered:

If you don’t know what you’re reacting to, you’ll blame who you’re reacting to.

The New Definition of Power

This isn’t just about insight, it’s about an invitation. To a different kind of power.

Not control. Not dominance. Not getting your way. But presence.

“We don’t have power over people,” Kelly said in our podcast conversation. “But we have tremendous power around them.”

We are, in his words, the weather. And anyone who has walked into a room and felt tension—or peace—knows exactly what he means.

A calm nervous system doesn’t just stay contained. It spreads. A grounded presence creates space. An open heart invites another to open. Calm, it turns out, is contagious.

From Reaction to Relationship

What makes The Road Less Triggered compelling isn’t just its insight—it’s its practicality.

This isn’t theory for the shelf. It’s a lived framework for doing the actual work of human connection:

Noticing your trigger sooner.

Interrupting your default defenses.

Regulating your nervous system.

Turning toward your pain instead of away from it.

Only then—after you’ve done that inner work—do you return to the conversation in front of you. It’s a reversal of how most of us live. And it changes everything. Because when you learn to sit with your own pain, you begin to recognize it in others.

Compassion becomes less of an effort…and more of a reflex.

The Path Back

Beneath the psychology, beneath the practices, there is something older here—something almost spiritual. A quiet acknowledgment that the human soul was made for connection. That disconnection, no matter how subtle, registers as a kind of wrongness. That we are, at our core, designed for communion. And that every triggered moment, if we’re willing, can become a path back.

This isn’t just about conflict resolution. It’s about how we show up:

in our homes,

in our work,

in the moments that matter most.

It’s about learning to pause. To listen. To stay open when everything in us wants to close. And to discover that the most powerful move we can make isn’t usually the most obvious one.

It’s often the quietest one.

Another Note from Kelly

The great, unexpected blessing of my writing life has been the relationships I’ve developed with readers and other writers. And I want you to be blessed by them, too!

That’s why I invited Ashton to guest post, and that’s why I’ve decided to start publishing one new guest post every quarter. You’re about to meet some lovely souls.

Next up this summer: Jeannie Ewing, with “I’m Learning Not to Escalate: How Nonviolent Communication Reshaped the Way I Show Up in Conflict.” I can’t wait for you to read it!

What’s the most powerful phrase or idea from Ashton’s article? Share it in the comments to highlight it for others! Or feel free to share any thoughts or questions about this article—and I’ll be sure to respond.

Not feeling comment-y or order-y today? No worries! You can still support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. I really appreciate your support!

Why I Went 60 Hours Without a Calorie

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:01:20 GMT

Hour 1

I finish dinner on a Sunday night at seven o’clock, and my fast begins, as I forego my typical handful of M&Ms (and everything else I usually pilfer from the pantry). My body, of course, doesn’t know I’m fasting yet.

Hour 12

My body is still oblivious. As far as it’s concerned, I’m simply doing my morning exercise routine. The two of us have a deal: I’ll stress it with an hour on the stationary bike, and then I’ll reward it with a cup of coffee—one teaspoon of sugar, one tablespoon of cream—followed by a fruit smoothie.

Hour 14

My body notices I’ve broken our deal. I gave it half a cup of coffee—because I’m not crazy…depriving it of calories and caffeine could be catastrophic—but the coffee was black. And there’s no smoothie in sight.

I ignore the uncomfortable rumbling in my stomach at first, so it escalates its complaint. The hunger becomes all-consuming. My whole body blares like a disaster siren.

Hour 14 is why I’m fasting.

Sure, I’m doing it to break the unhealthy pattern—craving and consumption, craving and consumption, craving and consumption—I developed during a pre-launch book tour and post-launch celebration tour. And of course I’m doing it to shed a few stubborn pounds. But mostly I’m doing it because:

The boundary land between our comfort zone and our discomfort zone is where much of our flourishing or floundering happens.

For instance, you’ll be totally present to your life one moment, and then suddenly it’s thirty minutes later and you’ve been scrolling your social media feed the whole time. What happened? More often than not, an uncomfortable experience arose within you, and you unconsciously diminished it by doing something distracting. Our phones are an easily-accessible emotional anesthetic.

We do something so we don’t have to feel something.

Or consider the moment in which your loved one says that thing, or gives you that look, or retreats in that way, and suddenly the pilot light in your nervous system kicks on. The discomfort in your body is telling you to do something about it. Maybe you’ll retreat from them before they can retreat from you, or lash out, or attempt to coerce them back into the behavior that will settle you down.

We do something so we don’t have to feel something.

At Hour 14 of the fast, the nearly unbearable urge is do something. To put food into my mouth and sugar into my bloodstream. To make the feeling go away.

I don’t, though, because that’s the point of this exercise: to practice doing nothing when everything in me screams to do something. To feel the thing instead of fixing the thing. That’s how we change our patterns. That’s how we become more familiar with our inner world and less addicted to our outer world.

Michael Singer writes, “If you want to know why you do something, don’t do it, and watch what happens.”

For the rest of the fast, I will practice watching.

Hour 48

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m as hungry as I’ve ever felt, and yet it no longer feels like an emergency. It feels like a companion. I go for a walk in the woods with it. As I’m walking, I recall that wonderful Thich Nhat Hanh quote:

The situation is difficult, and many people say, “Don’t just sit there, do something.” But doing more things may make the situation worse. So, you should say, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” Sit there, stop, be yourself first, and begin from there.

Every other mammal on the planet, when it reaches the edge of its comfort zone—when it gets triggered into fight-or-flight—immediately reacts. It instinctively does something to restore its sense of comfort as soon as possible. We human beings are the only creatures on the planet who can recognize that our discomfort zone is not a zone of fragility but a zone of possibility. A zone of transformation.

And oftentimes, we’re transformed not by doing something, but by doing nothing.

Hour 60

I wake up Wednesday morning, and everything I’ve heard about Hour 60 is true. The desperate cravings have passed. I’m hungry—but it’s like an old, achy joint—I can live with it. In fact, I feel like I could easily extend the fast to 72 hours, or perhaps even 84. I don’t, though, because it was never about finding the final edge of my discomfort zone.

It was about reclaiming my power to choose on the front edge of it.

The same is true on the road less triggered:

When we choose to do nothing at first, we’re not choosing to do nothing forever.
We’re choosing to do nothing until our behavior is no longer an impulsive reaction geared toward getting us back into our comfort zone as quickly as possible.
We do nothing until we can lead with an intentional response, arising from the strength we’ve just developed in our discomfort zone.

On the road less triggered, we respond with:

the resilience we reclaimed while we were doing nothing,

the freedom we found deep down in our discomfort zone,

the power we’ll harness on the other side of our pause.

What’s one reaction you’d love to delay? Name it in the comments and we’ll cheer you on! Or feel free to share any thoughts or questions about this post—and I’ll be sure to respond.

This post highlights some of the principles in Chapter 2 of The Road Less Triggered, titled “Disrupt Your Defensiveness.” Grab a copy for yourself or your people!

No comment and no order? No problem. Before you go, you can support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. I really appreciate your support!

[Course] Step 1: Sense Conflict Coming

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:02:17 GMT

Most of us start paying attention to our triggers when it’s already too late.

We try to repair our connection after we’re already triggered—after the defensiveness kicks in, the shutdown starts, or the relationship has ruptured. But by then, it’s like trying to put a cat back in a bag.

Research shows your body starts signaling distress about 80% sooner than your mind catches up to it. A tight chest. A clenched jaw. A churning gut. By the time your head becomes aware your body is triggered, your nervous system has already been activated—and your heart is already on its way to closing.

In other words, you’re not getting triggered in the moment you think you are.

You’re just becoming aware of it then. And that’s what sets the Peaceful Pivot Process apart from other approaches to navigating triggers. Instead of focusing outward—on what they said or did—we practice turning inward, toward what’s happening in the body.

You have an underutilized superpower called interoception, which is your ability to sense what’s happening inside you. It’s a capacity you already use every day—to know if you’re tired, hungry, or need the bathroom, for instance. Here, we’re learning to consciously apply it to the most important moments in your relationships.

Your new attunement with your body will give you a leg up on a simple practice we discussion in this session: the Name Your Number exercise. On a scale from 1–10, how open is my heart right now, where 10 is fully open and 1 is completely closed? The goal of course isn’t to judge your number—it’s to notice it. Because the moment you notice a shift—I just dropped from an 8 to a 5—you’ve created space. To pause. To pivot. To keep your heart open.

Catch the moment before the moment.

If you’re not being mortally threatened, be inwardly attentive.

Your body is telling you that you’re about to choose conflict over connection.

This session is about learning how to listen to it.

Paid members, I’d love to continue the conversation from the call with you in the comments.

Free members, you can upgrade below to view the whole replay, join the discussion in the comments, and get access to our next community call on May 15th.

The Hail Mary Humanity Actually Needs

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 10:02:09 GMT

Project Hail Mary is a ridiculous science-fiction story.

I know that’s not a popular opinion. The book is a #1 New York Times Bestseller with millions of copies sold, and the movie has grossed half a billion dollars at the box office in its first month, with a 95% critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It is generally beloved, in every format.

But hear me out.

Hail Mary is the story of a disgraced cell biologist turned high school teacher recruited to save the planet from a cosmic bacteria that’s draining the sun. Ryland’s mission: travel through space with two astronauts to a bacteria-resistant star and, upon arrival, somehow figure out why it’s unaffected and send the solution back to Earth before the planet freezes.

I’m no astrophysicist, but Jillian Bellovary is. As the director of astrophysics at the CUNY Graduate Center, she told the New York Times that many of the plot mechanisms—from the bacteria itself to a magical gas-turned-solid that drives much of the action—are far-fetched. And Charlotte Olsen, an astrophysicist at City Tech, describes the movie’s scientific premise as “very squishy.”

None of this is a problem for Hail Mary, though, because its widespread appeal has nothing to do with its science. Rather, the story confronts us with a very different—very terrestrial—epidemic, and then illustrates its solution with textbook precision.

The epidemic I’m speaking of is loneliness.

Hail Mary isn’t really about bacteria; it’s about belonging.

In True Companions I wrote:

In 2018, Britain created the Ministry of Loneliness. Its stated goal is to address the epidemic of loneliness in the modern world and to alleviate its public health consequences. Britain estimates approximately nine million of its citizens are often or always feeling lonely. They speculate it costs employers in the United Kingdom approximately $3.5 billion annually. And it’s not just Britain. The US Surgeon General recently proclaimed that the health effects of loneliness are equivalent to smoking approximately fifteen cigarettes per day. Joe Camel has been replaced by Joe Lonely.

But what is loneliness exactly?

As a clinical psychologist, I’ve listened to countless stories about the loneliness that lives within so many of us. Over time, I’ve come to believe loneliness is an umbrella term that encompasses three exquisitely painful human experiences:

feeling unseen
misunderstood, or
unsupported.

And in Hail Mary, Ryland finds himself utterly lonely.

[Spoiler alert from here on out.]

He wakes from a medically-induced coma after years of interstellar travel on a ship in deep space, to discover that the only other people on the ship—the pilot and the engineer—died in transit. He’s entirely alone. No one to see him, understand him, nor support him.

And that is why the story hits so hard for so many of us.

Of course, unlike Ryland, we’re still here on Earth, rooted to the ground by gravity, surrounded by people. But you can be just as lost in a crowd as the cosmos.

At its core, Hail Mary is about:

all the times you said “Lookit!” to your parents and no one looked.
that space between being dropped off for your first day of kindergarten, and finally making a friend on the playground at recess.
the middle school cafeteria where everyone knows your name but no one really knows your heart.
leaving behind the belonging you have built, to face the fear of building it all over again in college or a career.
being overlooked, unheard, not taken seriously, dismissed, mischaracterized, blamed or shamed, left out, left behind, and left to your own devices.

Then, Hail Mary introduces a companion, and a bro-mance is born.

Rocky is a spider-like, rock-like creature from the planet Erid. He is also on a mission to study this mysteriously resilient star. He is also the last surviving member of his vessel. He is also in need of a friend.

At first, Ryland and Rocky have to figure out how to simply see each other, as they learn how to dock their ships and come together, despite depending on very different atmospheres. Through the help of the magical gas-turned-solid, they solve that part of the loneliness problem.

Then they have to figure out how to understand each other, given that they speak very foreign languages. Thanks to a good ear and a magical bit of software, Ryland learns how to translate Rocky’s harmonics into English, and vice versa. They both feel understood.

And ultimately, in the movie’s climactic scenes, Rocky risks his life to save Ryland, and Ryland risks his to save Rocky. Sacrifice is the highest form of support, and they’re willing to sacrifice themselves for each other.

In the end, Hail Mary isn’t a story about spaceships, it’s a story about relationships.

It’s more rom-com than sci-fi.

It’s a touching tale of togetherness.

It presents the antidote to a deadly epidemic.

And that’s exactly the Hail Mary our planet needs.

Did you read the book? Did you see the movie? What’s your take on the story? What’s your take on this post? Feel free to leave any reaction—or ask any question—and I’ll be sure to respond.

I’m happy to report The Road Less Triggered is back in stock wherever books are sold, so you can get yours now!

No comment and no order? No problem. Before you go, you can support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. I really appreciate your support!

How do you find the upside of sorrow?

Dr. Kelly Flanagan — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:02:27 GMT

“When you block pain, you also have to block pleasure. Joy and sorrow are not separate rivers—when you open your heart, they flow as one. If we dam up sorrow, we dam up joy. Then we wonder why it feels so stagnant and lifeless downriver.”

A friend of mine posted that quote from The Road Less Triggered on LinkedIn, and one of his connections replied with a simple but profound question:

How do you find the upside of sorrow?

The short answer, I wrote, is by letting it pass through you.

Sorrow that passes through you becomes joy. Sorrow that gets trapped in you becomes trauma.

Then I discovered I had more to say.

I wrote: The longer answer is that the most important word in your question is not “sorrow” but “upside.” It implies that sorrow is mostly “downside.” We tend to push away things we categorize as “negative,” and as Ram Dass says, “Whatever you push away has got you.” We become prisoners of what we push away, because we arrange our lives around avoiding it, so we put it in a position of power over us.

Another way of saying this is:

We spend most of our lives arranging for pleasure and avoiding pain and then we wonder why we suffer—but it turns out, all of the arranging and avoiding is the suffering.

When you open your heart all the way, you discover joy and sorrow are simply different ways to encounter the human experience. So, no arranging and no avoiding necessary. Suffering sent packing.

The upside of sorrow is that it isn’t a destination but a direction. It’s the way toward joy and peace and passion. For most of us, our greatest energy is trapped right behind the sorrow we refuse to feel. By unleashing sorrow, we also unleash our other energies.

In other words, don’t get caught believing sorrow is only good because we couldn’t appreciate joy without it—the truth is, we can’t get to true joy without it.

Just like you can’t get to the morning light without the darkest moment of the night right before it. Sorrow isn’t just a releasing, it’s an opening. It creates space for what will follow on its heels. It takes great faith to trust that what follows will be even more freeing than we can imagine.

I paused again, thinking I was done, until I realized I wanted to say something about the upside of sorrow in our relationships too.

Relationally, I wrote, the upside of sorrow is that it enables us to be in true connection with our people through the whole human experience. Many of us are only willing to participate with our people if they’re happy, but happiness is only one of the four core human emotions: fear, anger, sadness, and happiness.

If we’re willing to be with our people only when they’re happy, then they will feel alone in every other experience.

That was where I finally ended my response. It was a LinkedIn comment after all—there are word-limits on those things.

Here, however, I’d like to conclude with another thought about how to let sorrow pass through us, from The Road Less Triggered:

Our sadness begin in our gut. When it starts to rise up within us, we push it back down by closing our heart to it. The collision of sad energy coming up with closed energy pushing down creates all that anxious tension in the chest. Therefore, when we open our heart, the tension evaporates and the sadness rises higher in the body. As it gets above the chest, we often transmute it into anger at the last moment and expel it through aggressive words or actions. However, if we allow it to remain sadness, we’ll feel its journey upward toward our eyes. A lump in our throat, perhaps. Then that prickly, swollen feeling in our nose or sinuses. Then pressure at the back of the eyes. Then, finally, tears.

What does your relationship with your sadness look like?

Are you like siblings who haven’t talked in a decade?

Are you like a marriage on its last legs, constantly fighting and pushing each other away?

Or are you like two old friends, on a long, long road trip together, finding the upside, and sharing the view?

Which part of this post resonates the most? Which part raises the most questions? Please feel free to share in the comments. I’ll be sure to respond.