You must be Present to Win

I hope you all had a nice weekend. Over the last several weeks I have been going through and organizing all of my writing starting back from my first blog post in 2012. While doing so, I was reminded of an anecdote that Jack Kornfield shared about a friend of his who had a sign hanging in his office that he had found in a casino in Las Vegas. It said “You must be present to win.” 

Of course this is true about a casino but it is also true in many other ways in our lives. What is winning? Well if the “journey is the joy” in life than the way to “win” is to be able to allow yourself to be fully connected to the experiences in the moment. This means allowing the struggle, the pain, the joy, the happiness, the elation and the balance between them. 

On the mat is a good place to practice; the slower and more intentional we are with our movements, the more we “get out” of them; that’s the WIN. The more we can soften, the more we strengthen and I don’t mean muscles, rather our ability to be with a wider range of both emotions and sensations. Because the more we “win” on the mat, the more we “win” off of it. 

The definition we all associate with the word WIN is to be successful or victorious yet there are many ways to win. It is not just measured in competitions or achievements but in how we “play the game”. I thought about this mantra quite a bit this week; allowing myself to keep the wandering mind at bay and instead soak in the moments as I was experiencing them. There is undeniable certainty that we will all get to that final finish line, the practice is to “win” along the way. 

I am hoping to have information next week to share about my August 2026 retreat in Morocco.