The Workbench
How to engage differently
I walk with a limp.
I don’t mean physically. I mean that I carry personal wounds that sometimes hurt, and sometimes show others that I understand exactly how they might be feeling.
The things we carry are a paradox in that sense. Take my five redundancies in a decade: in a matter of hours I can believe that nothing is ever going to go my way, and then sit with a friend fresh off the firing line, gently reminding them with deep conviction that they will find their footing again.
Just as I sat down to write this chapter, I experienced a mix of fear and shame. Fear that I’m not worth hearing after decades of failed callings, false starts, and firings. Shame that I’m not a stable earner for my family, because our household’s security rests heavily on my wife.
Laura is my champion, but I wish she didn’t have to carry it.
In the end, it’s hard for me not to feel that this body of work is the ultimate act of self-indulgence. An expression of privilege in a world that desperately needs fewer saviours and more servants.
So I write with a limp.
Each of us will experience that tension, where the uncertain work of the practitioner collides with real-world responsibilities. But I invite you to frame those emotions with care.
The fear and shame I experience don’t make me a fraud. They make me someone others can sit with, someone who knows the stakes, someone who can serve. It is my job to notice how I sometimes feel and welcome those emotions as signals from the soul.
They remind me who I am, who others need me to be, and they create an honest dialogue with myself.
As you read this, you might feel a sense of emotional weight, because it asks you to reckon with your past and who you are going to serve at the same time. That is another paradox: as you serve the work, sometimes you will feel there is harmony across your story, and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes you will serve the work only to reveal a new direction.
This is where I have to challenge some conventional wisdom: Start with why.
In the last chapter, we exposed the problem. We are trained from birth to be outcome worshippers. ‘Start with why’ continues that dance with our flawed programming, asking us once again to decide our way forward instead of discovering what wants to happen.
Here is the problem: my biases are too real, my experiences too raw, and my judgement too subjective. Simply put, I am not a reliable witness to my own why. I cannot be trusted to understand my story in a vacuum with true clarity. Without choosing to engage differently, I cannot be trusted to notice the good things that want to happen to me, through me, and for me.
When I read the opening of this chapter to my wife, I cried.
Of course, she doesn’t want me to experience shame. And the temptation is to resolve it, to tidy the narrative and avoid the pain. But our why, our limps, and our emotional signals aren’t questions to resolve. They are tensions to notice.
They are the oboe’s A asking us to tune back in.
How to engage differently
The cornerstone of this book is a way to engage differently. It is called the PEACE Practice. It is not a framework, or a ladder, or a system. It is a set of frequencies to help you improve the dialogue you will have with yourself and others, a way to help you notice more and decide less.
Presence: serve the work, not the outcome, and treat patience as an action
Empathy: demonstrate kindness and respect for self, invite genuine connection
Action: make contact, and learn from friction and success
Constraints: allow limits to focus energy and amplify action
Evolution: notice and allow what wants to happen
The book itself is divided into five Movements, and each Movement is built around one frequency. Each Movement has its own arc, and you can read it whole and come away changed.
Take a moment to notice the signal right now. Which frequency feels the most heavy? Which feels the most alive?
Perhaps you should start there.
The Movements are not five separate books. They are five parts of one symphony. The themes cross-pollinate. The callbacks accumulate. Each Movement is complete in itself, but it knows it belongs to something larger. But you don’t have to start at the beginning.
As we travel together, you will find visual meditations, benedictions, parables, song recommendations, resources, and things to try: whatever emerges as I try to balance what I’ve decided to write with what wants to be written. All in service of helping us both connect with a life that is directed by practice, not performance.
A life destined for service.
Let me be as clear and honest as possible: this book is not a source of wisdom written by someone who has it all together. I am writing it because it needs to be written, and because of my baggage, I am the one who can write it.
You are here because something needs making too, and you are the one who can make it.
In whatever ways feel right for you, make a covenant with me now.
When the mornings feel uncertain, when we don’t know what we’re building, when our emotional signals burst into life, let’s show up, serve the work, and trust that the good things that want to happen to us, through us and for us, will emerge.
Let’s step away from the podium and return to the workbench.
Where We Are:
This is Week 4. The fourth chapter of a year-long practice.
The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.
The Workbench ← You are here
Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire
From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.