Amidst the pace and pressure of public service leadership, I’ve found mindfulness to be less a retreat from the work—and more a way to meet it well. This reflection explores how the quiet tools I first learned on mindfulness teacher training retreat have become a steady thread through the leadership programs I design and facilitate.

Gratitude often feels like a soft, passive emotion—something we express when things are going well or when we’re on the receiving end of kindness. But there’s another kind of gratitude, one that’s far more active and interwoven with the work we do in the world. As a coach, I’ve come to understand gratitude as not just a response to life’s gifts but as something that emerges through deep, reciprocal human connection.