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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

Listen now

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

Listen now

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.

Listen now

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.

Listen now

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.

Listen now

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.

Listen now

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.

Listen now

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?

Leave a comment

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.

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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!

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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.

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

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“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!

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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.

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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.

Leave a comment

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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

Leave a comment

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

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“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.

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I love doing podcast interviews.

Oftentimes, they become co-creative conversations in which deeper layers of meaning emerge from my work and new frameworks are formed. In other words, as the listener, you’ll get value from my podcast interviews that you can’t get anywhere else. So, every once in a while, I’m going to curate for you the episodes I think will be most helpful to our community.

I encourage you to dive into whichever ones call to you the most!

Good/True/& Beautiful: Relational Calluses and the Road Less Triggered

Twice recently, I sat down with my good friend and podcast host extraordinaire, Ashton Gustafson, for a conversation about:

• my first book Loveable,

• the “relationship calluses” described in that book,

• and how The Road Less Triggered is a handbook for how to handle those calluses.

In the first conversation, we explore why our closest relationships—marriages, friendships, families—often become the very places where our hearts slowly harden. Of course, the calluses that once kept us safe eventually restrict our ability to feel, connect, and remain openhearted with the people we love most.

Ashton and I identify what it takes to gently soften relational calluses and re-open the heart, including practical pathways like naming our patterns without shame, allowing sadness and tenderness to rise without suppressing them, forgiving ourselves and others, and choosing courageous acts of vulnerability.

Listen now

And this is how Ashton described our second conversation in his weekly newsletter:

Kelly unlocked a huge truth for me: Communication doesn’t break down between people. It breaks down within people. When we’re triggered, it feels like the problem is out there. But most of the time, something inside us feels:

• Unseen

• Misunderstood

• Unsupported

And when we don’t know what we’re reacting to, we blame who we’re reacting to.

Here are the lines that stayed with Ashton: A soothed nervous system soothes nervous systems. A calm soul calms souls. An open heart opens hearts. We don’t have power over people. But we have tremendous power around them, if we can pause in that space between stimulus and response—and choose connection over protection.

Listen now

Minimalist Moms: Why We Get Triggered—and How to Stay Connected in Conflict

Why does connection disappear the moment we feel criticized, dismissed, or misunderstood? In this episode, I sat down with Diane Boden to explore what’s really happening when we get “triggered” in our closest relationships.

I explain how conflict shifts us from connection mode into protection mode and I introduce the powerful mindset of “regulate, then relate,” a concept rooted in nervous system science. Together, we explore defensiveness, emotional reactivity, compassion, and how learning to notice when your heart is closing can change the way you show up in marriage, parenting, and everyday interactions.

Listen now

Awesome Marriage: What if the real goal in marriage isn’t making your spouse happy—but making them feel safe?

I sat down with my friend and fellow marriage expert, Dr. Kim Kimberling, for a deep but practical conversation about:

• Why emotional safety, not happiness, is the foundation of lasting connection

• How “triggered” moments hijack your nervous system and shut down intimacy

• The difference between reaction vs. response—and why it matters in marriage

• How to recognize when you’ve shifted into protection mode

• Why personal responsibility is the only path out of recurring conflict

• A simple, repeatable process: Get calm. Get free. Get connected.

• How faith creates the safety needed to keep your heart open—even in conflict

• Why your greatest growth as a spouse often hides underneath your biggest triggers

If you feel stuck in repeating arguments, walking on eggshells, or emotionally disconnected, this episode offers a clear, hope-filled path forward—without blame, shame, or quick fixes.

Watch on YouTube

Pivot Parenting: Stay Connected When Your Teen Triggers You

Many parents interpret their teen’s behavior as disrespect—but what if your child’s behavior is related to a deeper question: Where will I belong?

Grades? Athletics? Band? Their future? It all pales in comparison to the question of whether or not they will find a place to belong in the world. However, we parents make the mistake of personalizing the angst they live in.

So, when they give us attitude about doing the dishes, we interpret it as disrespect and we get triggered—when in reality, they are just trying to manage the cognitive load of not winding up lonely. A pivot toward compassion can be a powerful unlock: enabling us to remain openhearted, while maintaining our expectations about emptying the sink.

Listen now

Love and Trauma, the Real Deal: How Couples Can Stop Living in Defense Mode

You can understand trauma, triggers, and nervous systems—and still keep hurting each other. So I joined Danielle Sebastian for a conversation about what actually changes things in a relationship — especially when both partners feel activated or protective. We talked about:

• Why couples get stuck arguing about the explosion instead of the wound

• How to take responsibility without collapsing into shame

• What it really means to move from defense mode back into connection

If you’re interested in the deeper work of building relationships that are both honest and compassionate, I think you’ll appreciate this one.

Watch on YouTube

Living Richly: How to Stay Open When You Want to Shut Down

This conversation marks my fourth appearance on the Living Richly Podcast, with my good friends Eric Deschamps and Rob Dale. We explore why shutting down feels protective—but ultimately blocks connection and growth. This episode offers practical tools to stay open when every part of you wants to withdraw, including:

• Pause + Soften,

• the 3‑Q Self Check, and

• the Stay in the Room practice.

Whether you’re navigating marriage, parenting, leadership, or your own inner world, this episode shows how calm isn’t a sign of courage, but a prerequisite for it. It’s a transformative conversation for anyone wanting to live more fully and love more bravely.

Watch on YouTube

Follow Your Curiosity: Why You’re Always on a Hair Trigger (Online and at Home)

This is a conversation with our very own , and as always it’s a banger! Nancy introduces the episode in this way:

Have you noticed how easy it is to feel on a hair trigger lately? Whether it’s a comment online or a small frustration at home, our nervous systems often react as if we are facing a mortal threat. In this episode, Dr. Kelly explains how to notice your heart closing and how to find the “window of choice” to open it back up.

If you’ve tried therapy, psychotherapy, or journaling and felt like “nothing sticks,” you aren’t alone. Most traditional advice in psychology focuses on “fixing” your triggers so you can get back to being a high-performer. But on this podcast, we provide a sanctuary for messy, joyful creativity that focuses on your aliveness, not your productivity.

What we explored in this episode:

• Smarter Boundaries: Why open-heartedness doesn’t make you a doormat—it actually makes your boundaries more effective.

• The 80% Warning: How your body gives you an early signal that your heart is about to close before your behavior does.

• Calm Before Connection: Why any attempt to connect while you’re dysregulated is likely to end in conflict.

• The “Writer’s Block” Reframe: Why “writer’s block” is often just a closed heart, and how naming your fear can get your creativity flowing again.

Watch on YouTube

The Power of SPACE: The Road Less Triggered

is a good friend of mine, and one of the kindest, wisest souls on the planet. It’s his depth of presence that takes this conversation deeper into some of the key themes of the book:

• the process for turning triggers into togetherness

• the felt experience of openheartedness vs. closed-heartedness

• the key difference between responding and reacting

• the importance of getting calm before getting connected

• and something I call the “Pretend We’re Not in Pain Game”

In Ali’s words, “This whole discussion supports the rising problem of HUMAN DISCONNECTION–which is what Kelly ultimately wants to help people with.”

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Ambitious Dads: Conversations on Shame, Triggers, and Connection

This discussion with host centers around the challenges and emotional complexities of fatherhood, particularly as children grow into young adults. It’s an honest conversation between two fathers about our fears, ambitions, and the realities of parenting. We talk about how the challenges of parenting do not diminish but rather evolve as our kids age.

We go on to explore the nuances of emotional expression, particularly the cultural stigma surrounding sadness. We discuss how children naturally express their emotions and the importance of creating a safe space for them to do so. Ultimately we identify that sadness is a natural emotion that should be embraced rather than suppressed, as it can lead to greater emotional openness and connection.

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Okay, that’s all for now. I hope you listened to at least one conversation, because these ideas aren’t just encouraging, they’re life-changing. I’ll be back with more interviews when I have another ten conversations to share with you. Until then, I look forward to walking the road less triggered with you in all the other ways!

Did you listen to one or more episodes? Which did you enjoy the most? What was most impactful?

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Do you get hijacked by your triggered moments, or do you feel empowered to own them so they don’t own you? In this first module of our new online course, The Less Triggered Teachings, we’re focused on diving deeper into the introduction of The Road Less Triggered than anyone has gone before. The goal: to leave you without a shadow of a doubt that you have the power to turn tension back into togetherness.

In this main session, we cover:

• The space between stimulus and response, in which we have the power to choose, but which we often overlook altogether

• A three-stage definition of “triggered” that includes the physical, the emotional, and the decisional

• A powerful new metaphor for understanding why your heart closes, giving yourself grace when it does, and opening it back up when you choose

• The misconception that an open heart makes your boundaries weaker when it really makes them wiser

• The truth that communication doesn’t break down between people but within people

• A simple but transformational call-to-action and detailed guidance for implementing it

In this course, for the first time ever, we’re also replaying the Q&A, conversation, and coaching that follows the teaching. This is the wisest, kindest group of souls on the planet, so be sure to watch this meaningful conversation, which will quickly expand your awareness about the moments that make or break relationships.

You’ll notice how those in attendance were empowered to steer the conversation in the directions that were most relevant and helpful to them. If you couldn’t join us live, I hope you’ll do so next time, so you too can shape the content and conversation in our calls.

Enjoy the replay!

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

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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 April 17th.

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“How do you hit #23 on the USA Today Bestseller List?”

I was asked that question by someone last week, right after The Road Less Triggered did that very thing.

Note: Thank you to each and every one of you who purchased a copy before or during release week and helped to make that happen. We did it! And now, for my answer to the question…

“You endure a tremendous amount of rejection,” I told them, and then watched their brain break in real-time.

I can understand why. After all, when your book just outsold The Let Them Theory, Atomic Habits, Wuthering Heights, and a dozen Dr. Seuss books, doesn’t that mean it’s been widely embraced? Isn’t that a moment of great acceptance?

Yes, it is. Absolutely. And at the same time, that moment of acceptance sits on top of a mountain of rejection. You see, to sell that many books, you have to ask a lot of people to buy it—and every time you ask, you’re inviting rejection.

I've experienced more rejection in the last three months than I experienced in my previous 48 years combined.

• For every podcast I appeared on, there were dozens that rejected my proposal.

• For every social media announcement that got a thousand views, there was one that got basically none.

• Old friends told me by text they had no plans to buy it.

• Newer friends told me the same thing to my face.

• And hundreds upon hundreds of people unsubscribed from this community as soon as I started mentioning the book.

Over the last few months, I’ve been reminded again and again of a story once told by Nick Santonastasso, a young man born with Hanhart syndrome—a rare condition that left him with no legs, one arm, and a single finger. This is how I recall Nick’s story…

He was booked on a Southwest flight, when passengers were allowed to choose their own seat. As a person with a disability, he was invited to board first, and he chose a prime seat, right in the front of the plane.

The flight attendant warned him, “These are good seats and we have a full flight—you’re going to have company right away, so get yourself situated quickly.” Soon, the other passengers began boarding. And one by one, they looked at him in his condition, bypassed the prime seats next to him, and chose a lesser seat in the back of the plane.

Nick turned to look out the window, not because there was something to see out there, but because he could feel the tears coming. A rising tide of feelings—ugliness and loneliness and unworthiness. Nick stared at the tarmac as he bravely allowed them to leave his body through his tear ducts.

And once the tide ebbed, he discovered a great treasure had washed up on the shoreline of his soul.

From somewhere deep within him, he heard a still-quiet voice, whispering, “Nick, your body isn’t working against you. It’s working for you. It’s telling you who you belong to and who you don’t.”

I could fill a whole fleet of jumbo jets with the people who walked past me in the last few months.

And I guess, if I had guru aspirations, I would tell you I never needed to look out the window, because I’ve found the keys to the kingdom where nothing hurts and it’s all just peace and pleasure.

I’m with Nick, though.

Rejection hurts. There’s nothing noble about “transcending” that reality—in fact, there’s something honorable about feeling that reality. It opens your heart to a great, great gratitude for those who do sit down next to you.

That’s you, dear reader. You’re still here. You’ve chosen the seat next to me. We’re taking off together. Hopefully we’ll land.

We might even discover, somewhere up in the clouds, that we belong to each other.

Thank you for flying with me. 🙏

I’m not very talky on planes, but I’d love to hear your reaction to this post in the comments, and I’ll be sure to respond. Then we can put on our headphones and wait for beverage service. 😊

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The book’s first print run is sold out, so it’s currently backordered at most retailers, but you can click below to get it from Barnes & Noble immediately.

Not feeling talky or ordery today? No problem, you can still support this message by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. Thanks again for your support!

It happened. Twenty years earlier than I would have predicted. My wife and I became mall walkers.

When I was a teenager—way back in the 1900s, as my kids like to say—shopping malls were still thriving.

There was a large one called Cherryvale about an hour’s drive from our hometown, and it was a regular destination for my friends and me. We’d arrive around lunchtime and head straight to the food court for a massive, greasy slice of Sbarro’s pizza, chased down with that mysterious concoction called an Orange Julius. As teenagers, we felt like the center of the solar system.

At the mall, we kind of were.

And orbiting around us were these peculiar satellites: mall walkers. They weren’t there to shop but to exercise. Back then, I thought they were crazy.

Now, at forty-nine, I realize they weren’t crazy—they were just cold.

Recently, my wife and I wanted to go for a walk outside, but it was in the 20s, and neither one of us was interested in cold toes and fingers and noses. We’d all but given up on the idea, when I was struck by inspiration.

“What if we went to Northland Mall?”

Back in the ‘90s, if you didn’t have time to drive to Cherryvale, Northland was much closer, albeit much smaller—just one long, cavernous corridor lined with shops on either side. So, on a Saturday afternoon in the February of my fiftieth year, we joined the satellites I’d once mostly ignored from the center of my adolescent solar system. There were three other satellites that Saturday—a group of women who wobbled so much while they walked that we kept cringing at what might happen next.

It was the mall itself, though, that really had me cringing.

Northland Mall—like most malls in this year of our Lord 2026—has seen better days:

• The Waldenbooks—where I bought my first Robert Ludlum novel—stands empty, a dark hollow space mostly obscured by cardboard taped to glass.

• The Maurice’s too is empty and blocked off by a descending metal grate that is also broken, so that if you wanted you could slide beneath it to explore the abandoned clothing racks and displays.

• The music store where I bought a cassette of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell II on an overcast Halloween day in the fall of my senior year has been replaced with an indoor miniature golf course that looks more like a money laundering operation than an entertainment venue.

• And the JCPenny’s at the end of the mall is now a discount furniture store, though we could still see the fitting rooms from the entrance as we walked by. One is now labelled F-tt-ng Room, because apparently the “i”s were no match for gravity and time.

And that’s an even deeper, more difficult truth of course: that I’m no match for gravity and time, either.

For more than five years, my singular spiritual practice has flowed from a New Year’s resolution that never ended:

“Moment to moment, I will notice my heart closing and try to open it back up.”

Walking the mall that day, I struggled to keep my heart open to the dilapidation and disrepair. “It’s just depressing,” I said to my wife as we peered into one of the vacancies, the group of women passing us by, one of them leaning precariously to her left.

It’s just depressing—that’s what you say when your heart is closing to the fact that something you’ve loved is becoming something else. It’s what you say when the things you cherish do what everything eventually does: change.

That kind of depression, though, isn’t extreme sadness. It’s a resistance to feeling sadness. It’s sorrow trying to come up through us, seeking to leave us through our eyes. But all too often we close our heart to it so it can’t make its exit. Then it’s not just sadness. It’s a stoppage. A blockage.

It’s grief that isn’t getting to happen.

When your best friend moves away or goes away. When your spouse gets too healthy to keep your marriage the easy detente it’s been for a decade. When your child stands on the threshold of leaving home. When the diagnosis reminds you nothing lasts forever. When summer ends. When you can no longer eat Sbarro’s pizza without serious consequences. When you go from the center of the solar system to a satellite.

• Then, grief isn’t a way of dying, it’s a way of living.

• Then, tears aren’t weakness—they’re the strong, strong surrender to change.

• Then, sadness is a sure sign not of a broken heart, but an open one.

It’s a heart that has learned how to handle everything that’s about to happen, instead of cringing as life passes by.

What do you love that your heart naturally opens to? What changes do you naturally close to? How are you learning to keep your heart open? Please feel free to share in the comments. I’ll be sure to respond!

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Fourteen hours after I got married, I tried to slash open our brand new luggage with my car keys.

We’d departed the hotel for our honeymoon in the dark hours before dawn. As poor graduate students, it’d be just us and a few other bleary-eyed newlyweds on the cheapest flight out of Philly. All was going well until I missed the first airport exit…and lost my mind.

Unbeknownst to my new bride, I’d always been an easily triggered air traveller.

I panicked and started driving like a madman, treating traffic signals like they were optional. As I ran a red light, we almost got T-boned by an airport shuttle bus, and my wife expressed in no uncertain terms that she’d prefer to honeymoon alive.

We made it without further incident to the ticketing counter, where they informed us that due to new 9/11 restrictions we’d need to remove the brand new combination locks from our brand new luggage. I dropped to my knees, rolled the tumblers, and…nothing. The combination didn’t work. So I reached for my keys and hoisted them over my head, preparing to rip the luggage open, extract our clothes, and, I don’t know, carry them by the armful onto the plane?

Thankfully, rather than suggesting divorce, my wife suggested I try the numbers on either side of the combination I thought I’d set. I followed her advice and, presto, our luggage was unlocked, and we were on our way to Jamaica.

Like I said, I’ve always been an easily triggered air traveller.

Now, fast forward twenty years.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and our family has just returned from a Christmas vacation in Mexico. It wasn’t an easy trip. We were late getting to O’Hare. We ran into trucks with machine guns on turrets in Mexico. And we’d basically been extorted for all of our cash while returning to the United States amidst Covid restrictions.

We’re sitting around the dining room table setting our family intentions for the coming year, when my wife suggests I tell the kids what I’ve been practicing. A year ago to the day, I’d made a New Year’s resolution:

“Moment to moment, I will notice my heart closing and try to open it back up.”

Over the course of the year, it had become the main meditation of my days—my singular spiritual practice—through all the happiness and heartache of being human. So, I told my kids about it, and a silence fell over the table. Then, my daughter broke the silence:

“That must be why,” she said, “every time something went wrong on the way to Mexico and back, I looked at you and felt calm.”

In The Road Less Triggered, I write:

A year into the practice, it occurred to me for the first time that openheartedness wasn’t just changing me, it was changing the people around me, too, even if they had no idea I was practicing it. I thought about how the world had spent much of the last two years concerned about a contagious virus called SARS-CoV-2, but viruses aren’t the only contagious things on the planet. Calmness is contagious, too. A calm soul calms souls. A soothed nervous system soothes nervous systems. An open heart opens hearts.

We don’t have power over our people, but we do have power around our people.  

You see, you’re not just a friend or a parent or a spouse or someone’s child or sibling—you’re the environment in which your people are living and breathing and becoming. What kind of environment will you choose to be?

• Will you become the calm soul that calms souls?

• The soothed nervous system that soothes nervous systems?

• The open heart that opens hearts?

Here’s to walking the road less triggered together, and the power we’ll harness along the way.

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If you can see yourself in one of these moments, then I wrote this book for you…

• It’s for the day your bestie forgets your birthday.

• It’s for all the romantic date nights reduced to mediocrity by a tension no one can really name.

• This one’s for the Easter Egg Hunt with your friends who are downright devoted to the other political party.

• It’s for putting on your favorite socks and then stepping in dog pee on the new carpet, because the kids promised they’d care for a dog if you got one but, well, you know—kids.

• This one’s for every time you did your best and your spouse kinda-sorta implied it still wasn’t good enough.

• It’s for anyone who disappears into themselves because they don’t know what else to do.

• It’s for every companion who’s said, “I’m done!” when what they really mean is, “I don’t know where to begin.”

• It’s for the dark hours of the night, lying awake, replaying the same old scene, with no solution in sight.

• It’s for the text message that will only fuel the flames of the fight.

• It’s for anyone who plans to calm down but throws down instead—or those who plan to speak up but clam up anyway.

• Did I mention this one’s for when you do your best and it’s still not good enough for the people you love?

• Also, it’s for trying to get out the door in the morning while a kid refuses to put on their shoes.

• It’s for when your sibling says the same infuriating thing they’ve been saying since childhood.

• It’s for every time your teenager’s eyes almost roll out of their head in response to a simple request.

• It’s for the photograph in your social media feed of friends out having fun without you.

• Okay, it’s for pretty much anything in your social media feed.

• This one’s for thinking you’ve arrived spiritually, until you drop by your parents’ house, or your grown kids stop by yours.

• It’s for the futile feeling of taking two steps forward and three steps back in any relationship.

• It’s for the moment togetherness turns into tension, connectedness devolves into defensiveness, harmony gives way to hostility, or communication collapses into conflict.

• This one’s for when we get trapped by our triggers and stuck in our cycles.

I wrote it because the patterns we don’t break are the prisons we can’t break out of.

I wrote it because we don’t lack the power to change these patterns.

We’ve lacked the process.

Until now.

The Road Less Triggered is out today.

You can get it in paperback, digital, and audio at Amazon or B&N or BAM.

Or wherever books are sold.

I can’t wait to walk the road less triggered with you.

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It’s so easy for good people to get down on themselves when they’re not “getting better faster.” At those moments, self-acceptance may be the only true way forward.

Here are some of the ideas we explore in the keynote I delivered during our monthly community call:

• As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it.”

• When you get triggered by your people, get tender toward yourself.

• Your closing is telling you something important—give yourself the space to listen to it.

• This human journey is not about perfecting ourselves; it’s about becoming more familiar with ourselves.

• Spiritual bypassing goes around a closed heart, while spiritual growth goes through a closed heart.

It felt like we all left the call with a different kind of consciousness taking deeper root. If you couldn’t be there, I hope you enjoy the replay and feel the same!

Before you go!

As I mention at the beginning of the keynote, a bonus for pre-ordering a single copy of the book (less than $20) is six-months of membership to our Paid community ($150 value)

And if you do so by Friday, March 6, at 5pm CT, we’re going to upgrade you for a year to our new Full membership tier ($500 value). Enjoy a year of growth with the new online course and private trainings, for the cost of a single book.

We’d love for you to join us!

Get a copy

In other words!

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to watch the full replay above, do not upgrade to a paid subscription below.

That’s right, you heard me correctly: do not upgrade below. Instead, order a single copy of The Road Less Triggered and join us in the paid community by registering your order on the landing page—and following the prompts from there to claim your bonuses.

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