My sister, Kat, and I began walking up the gravel road. Bristol Mountain, a ski resort in upstate New York, provided an ideal location for a springtime hike. With 1,300 feet of elevation in 1.7 miles, we anticipated some exertion. My brother-in-law and his cousin ran on ahead, planning to take a lap at the top and run back down a slope. They left us with Mickey and Molly, two lab/Pomeranian mixes whose well-groomed coats glimmered in the morning sunlight.

We weren’t far up the path when I realized I’d forgotten to eat. A small protein shake upon rising requires that I eat mid-morning to maintain blood sugar levels. I’d planned to fry up some bacon as an easy, portable snack. Neglecting to do so put me in a compromised position.

Kat asked if I wanted to go back. I didn’t. Picturesque hills in shades of green, a cyan sky with bright white clouds, and my love of hiking urged me on. Would my body cooperate for the duration when running on empty? To help, Kat took over both dog leashes.

Then I remembered reading about the power of the creative imagination. In many circumstances, what we imagine can be as powerful as actual physical practice. Think of the Olympic athlete who rehearses a high dive or floor routine over and over in the mind, experiencing every bodily sensation, to prepare for the Games. OK, I thought. Let’s test this out. I’ll imagine eating bacon and see what happens!

I first tasted salt, and my salivary glands physically responded. Good, I thought, an electrolyte. Then I savored the crispy texture, as make-believe pieces broke apart in my mouth and the hickory-smoked flavor dissolved into my senses.

Up ahead on the trail, we noticed an orange plastic fence blocking the road. If the gravel pathway to the top was closed, now what? The only option was to trudge directly up the slope under the chairlift. We began plodding. In full sun and tall grass, I soon felt the cardio workout and stopped to catch my breath. Molly sweetly circled back to check on me.

When we finally reached the summit, we crossed to a slope on the far side, assuming the descent would be easier. But with grass at thigh level, and uneven ground, we had to watch our every step. Only brief glimpses of the scenic valley landscape took my attention off my complaining knees.

Near the bottom, the guys walked up to meet us. Their run had been rigorous, but successful. I asked how they navigated the road closure and was told the fencing we saw didn’t actually cross the roadway, though it appeared so from a distance.

I’m not sure why Kat and I had to take a steeper shortcut rather than a gentler grade. But my body held out. Back at the car I downed a coconut water, surprised at my physical endurance and chuckling to myself at the power of imaginary bacon.

What are the steps that take us from a place of frustration, stress or despair to one of hope, new choices and clear vision? Are you aware of how you get from dark to light?

A client of mine writes her way out. Not that she intended to, but the progression emerged when she began writing about her life. I often experience the same with writing. The upward spiral is magnified exponentially when I imagine sharing with someone who already understands me completely. The pressure is off; grace enters; and a door opens to a higher viewpoint with more options and more hope.

This week I found myself sinking into a tired, dark place because of physical injuries and illness. I decided to witness the mechanics, and I discovered some keys to the prison of gloom. One is that I don’t exit discomfort just because I want to; I have to take action. The action can’t be running away from the problem, but rather giving myself every advantage to solve it. This might involve creating more space or time around a situation before I respond. It could mean choosing to take full responsibility for my experience so I don’t feel like a victim of anyone or anything. Most of all, it’s about shifting my perception and listening to Life as It tries to lead me. The message could be as simple as getting good food or good rest. Will I follow?

I also saw that I must calm my emotions before I can address what’s troubling me. If I’m churned up, I won’t see the simple solution right here. The other night, I found myself practicing this detachment from overwhelm in a dream: I was in a dark, crowded and low-consciousness city. I’d been asked to speak at a spiritual seminar, but I couldn’t find my notes, didn’t know where to go for the event, and was beginning to panic. Then, I remembered EFT [Emotional Freedom Technique], and I began tapping meridian points on my body while speaking uplifting words. I balanced out. A woman appeared to help me decide what to wear and get backstage. I knew I’d be fine giving the talk.

A third key I noticed involved waking up to how Life is supporting me right now. For example, I drove past a garden of bright, colorful tulips, and even though I’d been in a fog, I knew this was a gift—a flash of beauty to remind me that life is beautiful. When I arrived at the store to pick up medical supplies, a kind pharmacist helped me. Then the cashier, full of good humor, inspired me to shift my mood. Life kept bringing me these not-so-small gifts so that I could connect them, one to another, and hoist myself out of the quicksand.

Linking Life’s moment-to-moment gifts supports practical, upward momentum, step by step. Like climbing a ladder out of a swamp, we pull ourselves up to where we can breathe again in the light.

The hallway into the main room is lined with framed pictures of dogs, cats and birds. A glass display case houses a picture of Eric and his former K-9 companion. Tasteful jewelry, keepsakes and urns lend an atmosphere of comfort. Someone truly cares.

I’d called Eric at Rainbow Bridge Crematory the afternoon my 21-year-old cat, Belle, passed on to her next spiritual journey. I had no idea I’d be entering a kind of way station to heaven when I walked in the next morning.

I’m the only one here and that feels purposeful. I sit at a simple, round table in the center of the room to fill out paperwork. Eric brings me a small metal tag, asking me to write the number in the space provided on the form. It’s a special number for me.

We’re the only tagging crematory for pets in the country, he explains. A buddy of mine had a funeral parlor, so I knew how tags worked for humans. If you don’t have a tagging system, the government shuts you down. So, why not with pets? You put the tag into the box with your pet and when your ashes are returned, the tag is in there.

A former fire inspector for the state of New York, Eric worked with a K-9 friend for nine years. When his dog passed, he went to a crematory, but wasn’t allowed to witness the process. That’s when he decided to open his own pet crematory with a different approach to service. He offers 24-hour pick up. Families (or the Board of Health) may view the entire process via camera system. He gives back to the community through free, private cremation for active and retired police/fire K-9s.

Mostly, Eric offers me authentic kindness and compassion as he meets my eyes. He gazes at Belle’s body with the same respect. The day we meet, he wears a Harley Davidson sweatshirt. He’s the real deal.

Pets give unconditional love. Why shouldn’t they be treated with the same respect as humans? he asks. Why, indeed?

I look at the choice of three urns— wooden, floral tin, photo—and choose the floral for Belle’s ashes. I can have a paw print in clay, a lock of fur in a laminated pouch, and a framed rainbow bridge poem with a picture of her, if I e-mail him a photo. At the time I choose none of these, though later I opt for the poem. I tell Eric I don’t want to lock her into that form, now that she might take on another. He gets it, and I imagine he may know reincarnation in his own way.

For more than two decades, Belle and I shared daily life. She’d even left her body while lying across my lap. Eric’s choice to activate his unique purpose and mission—tending animals and their people—provided me a most welcome bridge to acceptance, grace and gentle closure.

One of the guiding principles in mastership of any sport, art, or spiritual endeavor can be summed up in the words, Be the Best You Can. We live in a culture of striving, often believing that the best we can be involves some sort of superhuman effort or achievement. Yet the story of a high school wrestler who surrendered a match he could have won stunningly clarifies what this principle looks like in action. Marek Bush is one unusual teenager, and this is his humble, heart-opening choice.

As a sophomore and champion wrestler from Utica, New York, with yet another state championship on the line, Marek faced his rival on the mat. He’d practiced hard, and he wanted to beat his opponent, Logan Patterson.

But when Logan badly injured his elbow in the last 30 seconds of the match, an extraordinary spiritual opportunity unfolded. Marek had been losing up to this point. All he had to do to win the championship was pin his compromised competitor. Instead, after telling his coach I got this, he went back in—and did nothing. He surrendered, allowing his opponent to win the match. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marek-bush-champion-high-school-wrestler-surrenders-a-match-he-could-have-won/

The video shows fans on their feet and in tears. The subsequent interviews crack open the heart. Marek assumes his choice would make him look kind of like a weakling, but that’s all right, he says. The referee’s voice cracks as he shares that he’s never seen anything like it, and that Marek is no weakling at all. State championships come and go, he says, but that—you can’t take that away from a kid. Marek’s father is the most overcome with emotion. When the reporter asks if he’s proud, he quickly answers, very proud. He must have passed along his own values to his son. As he puts it, Winning isn’t everything, it’s about doing what’s right. And he did.

Even the reporter highlights what he saw as the most important element of this story—that Marek thought his choice would make him look weak, and he did it anyway.

Everyone takes away something a little different from this story. I’m seeing a key to mastership with greater clarity. Being the best we can means following our heart and acting courageously upon what we know to be true no matter what appears in the outside world. In each experience, the choice is ours. And even when we’re wrestling with the world, there’s always that one defining moment—that opportunity to tune in to our highest self and surrender to what’s most true. Love is always a choice.

We may consider maximum-security prison as the place of least freedom on earth. Valentino Dixon has proven otherwise. His exoneration last fall, sparked by a surprising journey involving colored pencil golf sketches, serves as an example of the highest we can choose in the most limited circumstances.

Dixon’s trial reads like a classic crime drama meant to incite our sense of injustice. Yet it’s the alignment of his lifelong path to freedom that most caught my attention. Dixon shared that in the worst nightmare imaginable…for whatever reason, God kept sending me signs. And I wasn’t a strong believer in God before that. But He kept sending me signs, and each sign He sent was like “Hold on.” Here’s the unfoldment.

Dixon’s uncle brings art supplies to the prison to encourage Dixon’s love of art. It takes seven years for him to begin drawing again. He’s not allowed oil paints, so he explores a new method of layering colored pencils.

Louise Piromalli finds his art on the Internet; they marry in the Attica cafeteria in 2002. She prints and distributes his greeting cards designs until an expired visa requires her return to Australia.

Enter the next catalyst—Attica’s superintendent and avid golfer, James Conway, who brings a photograph of the 12th hole at Augusta National, asking if Dixon might draw it as a favor. Dixon’s response? After 19 years in Attica, the look of a golf hole spoke to me. It seemed peaceful. I imagine playing it would be a lot like fishing. Within that peace, Dixon draws over 100 “golf designs” in the next two years, often referenced by photos in back issues of Golf Digest lent to him by a fellow inmate.

Eventually, Dixon reaches out to editor Max Adler, answering a story request from the monthly column called How Golf Saved My Life. The small golf drawing included opens Adler’s heart and mind. Max gets involved with the case, bringing the media attention that attracts key people who eventually secure Dixon’s release.

Though many played their part, only Dixon himself could maintain the spiritual state that would allow events an opportunity to play out in his favor. He chose not to hold a grudge against the man who actually committed the crime because I knew it would kill my spirit. He accepted all gifts that came his way, whether challenging or uplifting. He focused on creating what he loved and spent much time imagining freedom.

Everything good that I have now, like sharing delicious food with my family, sleeping under my mother’s roof, I dreamed about for so many years, it’s like I’ve done it already. All that time, you see, my mind was on the outside. Drawing and reading, I was living in a fantasy. Now that I’m here, it’s no shock.

In a sense, was Valentino Dixon just as free behind bars as outside the prison walls?

Dixon’s humility and heart is evident in this interview. May it help you find your own freedom trail.

The video has gone viral, but if you haven’t yet seen the under-two-minute floor routine of UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi, may I suggest you do so now? https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/katelyn-ohashi-viral-video-ucla-gymnastics-ncaa.html. Rarely do we get to see such alignment with joy, with sharing one’s gifts with the world.

Katelyn was an Olympic hopeful. She beat Simone Biles to win the America Cup in 2013 before Biles went on to win an Olympic gold medal. Ohashi was expected to compete in 2016, but instead left the elite gymnastic world. Why? Not only did training and competition fracture her back and tear her shoulders, it broke her spirit. She was constantly told she wasn’t good enough, she didn’t look a certain way, and that she had gotten too big. At 13, she wrote that she was used to waking up with the taste of blood or iron in her mouth, as if she might almost throw up from being so hungry.

Katelyn left elite competition to compete instead in the college circuit. It was with her coach at UCLA that she rediscovered her joy, giving the world one of the best examples of what it looks like to be full-out love in motion.

Even more than the floor routine, which brings me to tears, is watching Katelyn after she finishes. She high-fives all of her teammates. The perfect 10 score appears—and watch what she does next. There’s no over-dramatization of the moment, as if her whole life has built to this crescendo of success. She hugs a friend and then stands in casual conversation with her colleagues, being fully present for the next moment. No ego. No theatrics. Just natural, calm, self-possessed and poised. I was stunned.

We’re so used to seeing athletes strive for perfection, for record-breaking, history-making victories. But what’s the lasting gift in relative perfection? A lifetime of remembering and reliving that single moment? A constant, relentless desire to one-up oneself? Perhaps a celebration of championship followed by a grace period of floating on air before the temporal dissipates, as it always does.

What I saw in Katelyn was the true genius of knowing all is in its right place—the routine, the body, the seemingly effortless effort, the music, the crowd, the playfulness, the rhythm, and the grounded joy that lasts a lifetime. This young woman appeared to have nothing to prove and nothing to lose. I imagine that’s why she was able to deliver such a performance.

No matter what you see when you watch Katelyn, there’s no doubt she landed more than a perfect score. She found an alignment of character, the grace of a true champion, and the freedom that comes with choosing the highest happiness.

Photo credit: Ben Liebenberg/AP

This week’s story is written by Silvana Messing-Notari from Castlemaine, in Victoria, Australia. Enjoy!

A week ago, I was feeling unhappy and slightly depressed. Wherever I looked, it seemed a smoke screen blocked the light from shining into my Soul. I spent a good seven days in a haze.

I prayed every night before sleep, asking the heavenly beings to help me, but I could not hear them. I was too deep into feeling sorry for myself. Then one morning just before waking, I heard the voice of one of my Spiritual Mentors. If you ever feel the light vanishing from your soul, do a good deed for someone else; there is no room for victimhood in the act of giving.

Yea, Yea I thought to myself, I already know all about that. I went about my day, dismissing the voice. In the hope that a good book would distract me, I went to the library. Once there, not knowing which book to choose, I felt worse than before. I left and went to the second hand store, only to walk out again because of a dispute between a customer and the clerk. This is not working, I thought, and I stormed towards my car to drive home.

On the way, I noticed that the fire brigade depot had their doors wide open— all the trucks ready to drive off on an urgent call. Suddenly, I felt as if someone’s hand was pushing me behind my head. Turn here, the voice said. Park around the corner and go and tell these people who are about to go and save lives how much you appreciate them. I knew I had no choice, so I stopped the car, crossed the road, and walked up to one of the truck drivers. He was a bit surprised, but asked, Can I help you? with a kind smile. I just came to let you know how much I appreciate the work you do. You people do such an amazing job putting your life at risk for the community. Thank you. I would love to give a donation.

Oh! Thanks for your kind words, the man replied. People don’t usually come to tell us this; it is always uplifting and encouraging to hear that we are appreciated. He passed my gratitude on to the rest of the team who also thanked me. Unfortunately, he explained, they were not able to accept my donation at the fire station.

While driving home, I remembered that once a month at the local market the Country Fire Authority have collection buckets at the entrance. I shall drop my donation in one of their little buckets, I thought. Within minutes, the haze had lifted. I felt lighter and more at peace. My heart opened.

We are blessed with the right to choose in this precious life. Here I chose to listen, to let the inner voice guide me, and to trust in the miracle of giving. The light returned to open my heart—and the act of giving and receiving came full circle.

Anyone who grew up in upstate New York (the real upstate, not Poughkeepsie) knows the true value of Wegmans, one of the best supermarket chains in the world. Years ago, I worked in the deli department for a short time, so I understand firsthand why Wegmans is revered. Beyond its multitude of quality offerings that other stores may provide, a culture of service is central, vital and vibrantly alive.

I drove to New Jersey this week when I discovered a Wegmans had opened nearly a year ago. In the parking lot, I texted my sister (living in the real upstate) a picture to prove I’d made it to grocery Mecca. Inside, I was suitably overstimulated by expanse and variety in a kind of culture shock. I meandered with my small cart, acclimating to the ambiance, then set off to find one of two items most important to my pilgrimage—organic almond butter. Wegmans sells its own store name brand for $9.99. I know! Granted it’s roasted, not raw, but this is half the price of any other brand.

In the nut butter aisle, the shelf was completely empty. I’d driven a distance, so I thought it worth checking at the customer service desk to see if there was more. I was greeted politely, signed up for a store discount card cheerfully, and my inquiry on almond butter was received with sincere interest.

Here’s where the word service begins to be redefined. The employee makes a phone call, talks to another worker, asks if I tried aisle 2B, then walks me all the way back to the shelf location. Seeing my conundrum, she takes a picture of the product shelf label bar code on her phone, and asks me to wait right there while she personally goes into the back to check incoming supplies.

Two minutes later I hear her talking to a man who’s describing another location in the store. Where’s the customer? he asks. She leans into my aisle—smiling—and waves me forward, saying come with me. We walk to an end cap in natural foods where, top to bottom, jars of smooth and crunchy are perfectly arranged. Waving her hand across the display, she adds this can all be yours, if the price is right. I delightedly thank her; place six jars into my cart; and, head to the meat section.

But the service isn’t over! As I peruse beef packages on a plentiful wall of organic meats, my phone rings. This is Ennea from Customer Service, she says. You left your coupons and Menu magazine at the customer service desk. Would you like them? From a mildly stunned state, I mutter that I’ll be happy to swing back around.

Ennea’s tone of service was simple, decent, human courtesy with a touch of playfulness that persisted until the job was complete. How many of us can say we serve like that? Just a great example of what’s possible for the holidays, and beyond.