The One Practice That Changed My Life

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

Four years ago, I was broken. Literally. The year 2020 had laid me low.

It began in January, when my best friend and I dissolved our business partnership, and our friendship. Two months later, Covid hit. My wife and I were faced with transforming our in-person therapy practices into online businesses. The kids were schooling at home and quickly becoming Zoombies. No one really knew if masks helped, and six feet apart didn’t feel like very far apart at all.

The burden of responsibility and the weight of uncertainty added up to back spasms that debilitated me for weeks.

By the time summer rolled around, my back had loosened up, but my heart still hadn’t. On a Sunday afternoon, I was angry at my wife about one thing or another and decided to blow off steam on a bike ride. I was not in the right mindset for high speed cycling. Just moments into an incautious ride, I flew over the handlebars and shattered my left collarbone on an asphalt road.

They say that bones heal stronger in the broken places. Mine didn’t. “Fibrous tissue non-union fractures,” they called them. Basically, I now have two hinges in that collarbone where before there were none. The nature of the injury meant a lengthy rehabilitation.

So, by the end of the year, my body was out of shape, and on New Year’s Eve I found myself contemplating fitness resolutions for the coming year. Keto vs. paleo. Intermittent fasting versus 5:2. Cardio versus strength training. It was then that I came across this Michael Singer quote:

“Do not let anything in your life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.”

It was a wake-up call: my spiritual heart was in worse shape than my physical body. My heart was almost always closed and, even when it was open, it would close again on a hair trigger. A change in my outer conditioning would need to begin with a change to my inner condition. Right then and there, I made my New Year’s Resolution:

Moment to moment, I will be aware of my heart closing and try to open it back up.

Most New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by the third week of January. Not this one. Years later, openheartedness has become my core life practice. It is my most sacred spiritual discipline. The apostle Paul exhorted us to pray without ceasing. The practice of openheartedness is my prayer, and every day the choice to open up gets a little clearer and a little easier.

What you’ve just read is from the rough draft of my next book, which I’m thrilled to announce will be published by Revell in 2026.

The working title is Openhearted: Turning Conflict into Connection with a Single Choice.

In the first year of my openheartedness practice, my life changed dramatically:

• As a clinical psychologist—with a specialty in communication and conflict resolution—I’d been disillusioned for years with traditional couples counseling. The couples I worked with already possessed the communication skills I was teaching them. The problem wasn’t a lack of tools. The problem was, they were shutting their communication toolbox at the most important moment in their marriages. Finally, I knew how to help them keep their toolboxes open.

• Drawing upon my clinical expertise and my spiritual experiences, I began to articulate a three-phase process for the practice of openheartedness. My marriage was my most reliable guinea pig. Not only did the guinea pig survive, it thrived.

• I started writing my first novel—The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell—because when you open your heart, you don’t just change your relationship to the world around you; you also get more deeply connected to the wonders within you. I had a story inside of me that wanted to be told.

• After returning from a year-end family vacation, I told my kids of my openheartedness practice, and my daughter remarked, “That must be why I looked at you every time something went wrong on the way to Mexico. It made me feel calm.” A soothed nervous system soothes nervous systems. A calm soul calms souls.

An open heart opens hearts.

Something else happened at the end of that first year of openheartedness: I decided to migrate our community to Substack. Like any experiment, it has been a messy one at times, as the name changed to Humaning a year ago and its offerings have evolved again and again. That’s okay. All of life is an experiment.

When your heart is closed, an experiment feels like falling down; when your heart is open, an experiment feels like falling forward.

Here’s where the experiment stands now:

• All subscribers get a free post about humaning several Wednesdays a month.

• Paid subscribers get a private email during the other week, inviting them to register for our monthly Human Hour, where we are currently working through the three phases of openheartedness.

• All subscribers get an email the Sunday following the Human Hour to notify you the replay is available.

I know Openhearted is going to be a life-changing book, because the ideas have already reshaped my life and the lives of the people I’ve worked with. If you'd like to get a jumpstart on digging into them, I've curated replays and resources on this page. Enjoy!

Openhearted

P.S. As this post goes live, I’ll be starting a solo retreat in the woods, working on the manuscript for Openhearted. Very Thoreau, I know. At any rate, your reactions to this question will influence what I address in my writing during this retreat:

When you hear the word openhearted, what comes to mind?