What might change if young people learned that big feelings are not bad feelings – and feelings are not the boss? This is another song I’ve developed as part of my internal literacy curriculum for young people. It’s a teaching tool for one of the most important capacities we can help children, adolescents, and adults build: how to stay present when big feelings come. Not suppress them, perform calm, pretend they are fine, shame the reaction, or let the feeling make every choi

Learning to recognize what is happening inside you while it is happening — so automatic patterns do not have to make the next choice for you. We recognize many forms of literacy: reading literacy helps us understand words, digital literacy helps us navigate technology, and AI literacy is increasingly helping people understand and use powerful new tools. But most people were never taught another form of literacy: Internal Literacy. Internal Literacy is the real-time ability to

When a response has become automatic through repetition, insight can help us see it—but a new response still needs practice. Most people have attempted to force themselves to change: they try harder, promise harder, push harder, and shame themselves harder. They tell themselves, "I should know better," "I need to stop doing this," "Why am I like this?" or "I already understand the problem, so why am I still repeating it?" However, knowing better isn't always enough. Many patt

Why the moments that activate our old patterns are often the same moments where a new response can be practiced. Most of us think change happens somewhere outside ordinary life: after the hard season we're living in, after the stress calms down, after the relationship improves, after the job changes, after the kids are older, after we have more time, more energy, more money, more support, more clarity, more confidence. But life does not pause so we can become ready. Life is w