This is Optimal Living Daily episode 3096, an invitation to dance like no one is watching.

By Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Dr Kelly Flanagan.com, and I'm Justin Molly your very own personal narrator. I read to you every single day of the year so that you don't have to go find articles yourself,

only in an effort to make your and my days just a little bit better. So at that let's get right to it and

continue optimizing your life.

An invitation to dance like no one is watching by Dr Kelly Flanagan of Dr Kelly Flanagan.com.

The ugliest thing in a person is ultimately essential to preserving the beautiful thing we are

becoming. My son pulls a book called Wonder out of his backpack. His face is full of resolve and I ask him why he looks so serious.

He tells me kids at his school keep returning the book to the library within the first 50 pages

because they get too emotional. I ask him if the same fate will befall

him. He says, like the tough guy, the world is training him to be, nah, I won't cry.

Two days later he walks out of his bedroom, his face now full of crumbled resolve, and he puts

the book in front of my wife.

So she picks it up, and I lose her for a day as she disappears into the

fictional world, into Oggy's world, the story of an 11-year-old boy born with

extreme facial deformities. The story of a boy beginning

public school for the first time venturing into the wild where his tender heart is

the prey and his peers are the predators.

My curiosity gets the best of me and I start reading the book.

And the story does something completely unexpected to me.

It turns some more of my hate into gratitude.

What I hate?

I hate ego, the part of our minds responsible for protecting our hearts from a wounding world.

...