🍽️ Issue #41: The Hummingbird & the Power of Now

Tribe - Memorial Day. Austin style.

We started on Lake Austin: sun on the water, the right kind of quiet, that particular hush a city earns when remembrance is in the air. 🇺🇸

Then Zilker Botanical. Green & shade & old-growth oaks that have witnessed more Memorial Days than any of us.

Denudo Coffee for a reset. ☕

Pinthouse for a righteous IPA. 🍺

Ribeyes on the grill to close it out. 🥩

A good day. A grateful day. Earned by people who never got to have one.

Yes, this one lands late. No apology there. Memorial Day asks every veteran to pause, to remember, to breathe. I did. Every veteran should.

A different word, though, for those of you waiting on a signed copy of SET YOUR TABLE:

I owe you an apology. The printed books are taking longer to land than I planned. The moment they hit my doorstep, I’ll be signing & shipping. Every one. You haven’t been forgotten. Thank you for your patience.

The Hummingbird

Somewhere between the koi pond & the rose garden, a hummingbird stopped me cold.

It hovered. Maybe two feet from my face. Wings invisible. Eyes locked on mine.

Then gone.

Four seconds. Maybe.

In those four seconds, I wasn’t thinking about the book launch. Not Patriots Hall. Not the AWS prep. Not the emails I owe. Not thirty-three years of accumulated should-have-dones.

I was just THERE.

That’s what the Zen masters call shoshin: beginner’s mind. The mind that sees the bird as if for the first time. The mind that hasn’t already sorted the experience into known/handled/dismissed before it lands.

A combat soldier learns this the hard way. So does a cancer patient. So does anyone who has stared down something that could end them.

You stop narrating. You start SEEING.

Most of us run a commentary track over our own lives like background noise we forgot to turn off. The hummingbird interrupted mine.

The Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle has a line that has lived rent-free in my head for years:

Not your retirement plan. Not your sales rank. Not the meeting Tuesday. Not the regrets you keep polishing like old armor.

THIS. Right here. The coffee in front of you. The breath you’re taking. The face across the table.

The hummingbird doesn’t worry about the next flower. It IS the next flower, in its turn.

Memorial Day taught me again: the men & women we honor today gave up their NOW so we could have ours. The least we can do is actually inhabit it.

Set your table HERE. Not someday. Here.

The Book Is Finding Its Tribe

SET YOUR TABLE is gaining momentum.

Reviews are landing. Strangers are messaging me. A few of you have told me the Freedom Gap™ named something you’d been carrying for years without language for it.

That’s the whole point. None of this works as wallpaper. It works when it WORKS for you.

If you haven’t grabbed your copy:

​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX3733HQ​

If you want to go deeper, the Starter Workbook is here:

​https://setyourtable.kit.com/products/set-your-table-starter-workbook​

Patriots Hall. Dripping Springs. June 18. We launch the party.

Until then: notice the hummingbird. Drop the commentary. Be HERE.

Stay in the fight. Set your table.​​ ~ Brian

Want to join the Tribe? Share this with someone who needs it or grab the workbook at setyourtable.kit.com

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