Are you reaching for your phone instead of your life?
This summer, I finally had to answer that question for myself.
The last year has been a thrill. I have been flying. Learning AI at a pace I did not know I had in me. Teaching 200+ students. Speaking, all year, about my KEEP SHINING framework. Traveling to New Zealand and Argentina. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I finished writing a book.
It was productive. It was exciting. It was full. It was also a year where I never got to exhale. Or, honestly, unpack. The suitcases from those trips. Everything else I was carrying, too.
Here is the difference I had to learn. Falling behind means the world moved and you stood still. Running on empty means you moved so hard there is nothing left in the tank. One asks you to catch up. The other asks you to stop. I was not behind. I was empty.
The Presence Gap I wrote a whole book about. Then fell into.
In my work, I call it the Presence Gap. The distance between your inner capacity for connection and your actual, lived participation in real life. Chronic stress widens it. Digital overload widens it. Shifting roles widen it.
It shows up in three ways. Disconnection from yourself, when you are not sure who you are anymore. Disconnection from others, when you have a thousand contacts and no one to call. Disconnection from purpose, when your days have structure but no meaning. Some of us are living one of these. Some of us are living all three.
Here is what I did not expect. I spent a year teaching people how to close this gap. By June, I was living in it myself. Nothing was wrong. Everything was just moving so fast that I had stopped being present for any of it. I was watching sunsets through a phone screen. Answering the next message before I finished the last thought. Behind on my own life.
So what is KEEP SHINING?
The name is not just a phrase. It is a framework. Eleven principles, built to close the Presence Gap.
It has two halves. The inner work and the outer work.
KEEP is the inner work. The work of becoming yourself. Four principles. Kindness. Explore. Empower. Purpose.
SHINING is the outer work. The work of connecting with the people and the world around you. Seven principles. Serve. Happiness. Innovation. New Friends. Inspire. Nurture. Gratitude.
Eleven in all. One for each letter. It is not something I dreamed up. It pulls together what the research on well-being and human connection has been saying for decades, and what twenty years of sitting with people in transition showed me actually helps.
Here is the part that matters most. It is not a checklist you finish. It is a rhythm you live. Some seasons you turn inward and tend to yourself. Some seasons you turn outward and give. The gap closes when you can move between the two.
So this summer, I did the thing I had been telling everyone else they were allowed to do. I turned inward first.
One rule. One reset.
I carved out real time to unplug. One rule. No laptop. No Zoom calls. I checked in on social here and there. I am not a monk. The work machine stayed closed.
My family and I packed the car and drove north. We started in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, with a stop at Dollywood. Then we kept going, up through New England, all the way to the coast of Maine. We chased mountains and coastline and little towns I had never heard of. I let my mind go quiet for the first time in a year.
You cannot close a Presence Gap while you are sprinting. You close it by standing still.
The trip cracked me open. Home is where I finished the job. It took a few weeks, longer than I want to admit. Pile by pile, closet by closet, I cleared the physical chaos I had been stepping over for months. The suitcases I never unpacked. The laundry that never got done. My space got lighter. So did I.
Yes, I fell behind on AI for a while. Remember, digital well-being is my whole field. I closed the laptop anyway. I came back not depleted but lit up. Not burnt out. Shining. Clear-headed. Organized. More myself than I have been in a long time. This was my KEEP. The inner work. It is exactly why I have the fuel for what comes next.
Even the dog needed a vacation
Lucky came with us. For months, he had been limping. Two bad legs. An old friend who seemed to be winding down.
He got a new shot for his legs right before we left. That helped. The shot was not the whole story. Then Maine happened. Fresh air. Open fields. His people around him all day, instead of a quiet house while we worked. Somewhere in those meadows, Lucky started running again. Full out. Ears back. Living his best life.
He needed the shot. He needed a change of pace. He needed his people. The help, the rest, and the ones who love him. Lucky is like the rest of us. We do not thrive on a screen. We thrive on people.
I talked to people. I really listened.
Here is the part of the trip I did not plan for. I did not just rest. I connected. With fellow travelers. With friends. Over long dinners in restaurants and around the table in vacation rentals. I put my phone down, and I listened.
I heard the same thing, again and again. It is hard out there right now. People have been laid off. People lost jobs they thought were safe. People are months into a search that used to take weeks. Between AI and the economy, the ground has shifted under a lot of good people. None of this is their fault.
I want to be honest about where I sit. My work gives me room in the summer that many people do not get. Not everyone can step back and still have something to come back to. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
Still, here is what I saw in the faces of the people I met. A step back, even one you did not choose, does not have to be a step down. It can be the moment you find out who you are when the title is gone. Because you were never only the job.
Presence does not pay rent. I know that. It will not land you the job. What it can do is keep you grounded while you fight for one. That matters most exactly when everything else feels like it is falling apart.
What comes next. The book.
This is what my new book is really about. Transition. The layoff. The reinvention. The in-between season when the roles that once defined you have shifted, and you are not sure who you are yet.
We have never been more connected. More tired. More alone. We scroll. We perform. We keep up. Yet deep down, we know. This cannot be all there is. KEEP SHINING is how you close the Presence Gap. Not by giving up technology. By learning how to live fully human inside it. Told through stories from a jungle in Borneo, a mountain in Bhutan, and a healing city in New Zealand.
It is for anyone running on empty in a world that never logs off. The helper who gives all day and has nothing left by evening. The educator. The counselor. The coach. The leader trying to stay human in an AI age. The person in transition who is not sure who they are without the title.
If you spend your days holding space for everyone else's transition, this is a reminder to tend your own.
Read it when life is shifting. Come back to it when you need a reset.
Where I go from here
This summer was my KEEP. The inner work. This fall is my SHINING. Turning back outward.
That is why I am saying yes to only a few speaking engagements this fall. Three, maybe four. If your conference, event, or retreat wants to talk about closing the Presence Gap, staying human in an AI age, or how to keep shining without running on empty, I would love to hear from you. Reach out before the calendar fills.
The algorithm knows what keeps you scrolling. KEEP SHINING knows what keeps you human.
So let me ask you what the road asked me. When did you last really unplug? Close the laptop. Shut off the screen. Come back to your own life.
Dr. Nancy Richmond is a professor, speaker, and author whose work sits at the intersection of digital well-being and human connection. A counselor by training and a pattern-seeker by instinct, she has walked beside thousands of people in transition. She wrote this book to shine light in a disconnected world.
