All That Matters

We each have someone we know, maybe even went to school with, or perhaps closer to home, who blame themselves for problems they didn't create but lead them to spiral.

Jan shares the true story of a friend who grappled with the same issue and found a way, before it was too late, to let go of that negative energy, save his own life, and claim a future he hadn't dreamed of.

So can we all.

The pain we endure in life can be used to help illuminate a deeper ability to succeed. To do so, we must 'drain the profane' of that wound, the negative energy, to uncover the light.

As Jan shares in the story of his own divorce and the death of his father in the same week, we are then able to find the miracles inside of us that help us heal and encourage us to grow.

IN a reprise, Jan introduces you to the story of Snowflake Bentley who taught us no two snowfall crystals were alike, each original, just like each of us.

Asked as a teen to write the theme song for the local PBS production on Bentley's life, he discovers the inspiring creativity found in nature that definitely leads to more of the good stuff of life.

We need people who can lift us and remind us to believe in ourselves.

In a reprise ATM, Jan shares the story of the day he was contacted by one of the giants of music and creativity, a call that helped shape his life.

Our positivity podcast takes us on a visit to a zen koan, a mini-teaching, at first bewildering until Jan leads us through an understanding that can help us claim the present and the wisdom of wounds we've suffered along the way.

Jan shares the dying words of a "wealthy but poor" man who urged him to share this brief profound lesson he'd learned too late.

Trees can inspire us. Especially the redwood that teaches us about support and interconnection.

Jan shares a bit of the tree magic that can remind each of us how best to grow and thrive and begin again!

Living life means opening ourselves to the wounds that come with it. Jan shares the story of a Japanese artist whose approach to his art carries lessons for how to live life with everything we have.

What does it mean to pull us out of the life cycles that deaden us and into the light that illuminates and warms us?

Jan shares the words of John O'Donahue, a Catholic priest who chose to leave the activity ministry to follow his creative heart in pursuing writing, poetry, and philosophy, falling in love with the natural world and lifting our souls in the process.

When the world's news is filled with ancient hatred and violence towards persons of differing ideologies, we are in need of balancing it all in small, uplifting ways. Jan looks at some unusual facts about nature and life that can help refocus and reconnect us to the wit, wisdom and whimsy of the world in which we live.

Having been wounded in life, one can be broken open in ways that make life deeper. Hidden in these recesses are gifts of light to help us and those with whom we interact. Jan shares his own wounds of wonder that left him weeping on a lake in Scotland and filled him with an understanding that has helped him live a life richer and deeper because of life's pain.