I was floored.

As it often goes, the simplest little thing had a huge impact. There must be something fundamental about that.

I was helping my sister plan her wedding. Speaking with her is always a privilege, a cornucopia of insights, ageless wisdoms, and hard-won understandings. Helping her was the least I could do to repay what she's given me all my life.

We were vetting the caterer for her wedding. In between tastes of so many of their appetizers, entrees, and desserts, the two owners shared their story with us.

They were married. She'd been on Iron Chef America a few years back. He'd been a rising chef. They'd both come up in the Northwest - even went to the same college, little did they know at the time. And they'd meet each other across the country, in the little town of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

While we ate, I couldn't help but marvel. "Those kinds of people always amaze me," I beamed to my sister. "How do they do it? How do they achieve such incredible, amazing things with their lives? How do I get to that point?"

Sis, ever warm and airy, suddenly became pointed and curt.

"She just does what she loves," she said. And with that, her eyes narrowed and locked on mine, and held there for moments that felt like eternity. In that gaze, in the space of a time immemorial, she rang an alarm inside me, a pang of disappointment at the gifts I'd been wasting - at the great abundance I was squandering any moment I gave into fears and anxieties, any moment I settled to be less than I could be.

"She just does what she loves," she said again, holding that gaze, that sense of urgency. That plea.

I learned more in those few moments than I had at any insightful conference keynote or intensive weeklong retreat.

It was a day later that she mercifully shared with me the key to help me get through the gate to start climbing the stairs toward my own version of that life.

"Start by starting," it went. A mentor of hers had gifted it to her, and she in turn gave it to me.

It felt like gold in my hands - shiny, valuable, precious.

So simple, yet so powerful.

Since then, I've heeded the message, and my world has opened up.

It's only beginning. I cannot wait to see where it will take me, and you. Thank you for being here and sharing this with me.

Let's get started.