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Progressive Verbs

Subscribe to Progressive Verbs, a newsletter by coach, facilitator, and author Jeff Jacobson. For past issues, click the Posts tab below.

Featured Post

Honk-n-Wave

The Kind Point August 4, 2026 HONK-N-WAVE Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! But does this really make a difference? I regularly had that thought as my husband Terry and I walked the ten blocks to a large intersection near our home. Last summer, a couple who lived four...

The Kind Point April 24, 2026 NUMBERS Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! Give me a frickin’ break! That was my first thought when I read an onslaught of online comments the other day in response to CNN reporting on a website (Warning: This report contains details of...

"Up yours, mortality. Who invented you? Why do the lives of such vibrant, loving people have to end?"

The Kind Point December 30, 2025 Wall Photos Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! “Don’t worry. Everybody passes,” Steve used to say in our year-long seminar Unmasking Mortality whenever someone reported that they hadn’t done the homework. The joke never got old. Until the...

The Kind Point September 2, 2025 GET OUTTA TOWN Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! Whenever I hear someone say, “Get outta town,” the literal part of my brain flashes to a scene from the film Waiting for Guffman, with Ron and Sheila Albertson, local celebrities in the...

I know a lot more about a few things than I did

The Kind Point June 12, 2025 UNEXPECTED GRATITUDE Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! When Terry and I were at the grocery store two weeks ago, an employee in the self-checkout area rolled up to me in his wheelchair and asked, “Hey buddy, how’d it happen?” as he gave my...

The Kind Point March 27, 2025 MUSCLE MEMORY Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! My mom’s dog Maggie went blind over a year ago and is currently wearing one of those cones so she can’t scratch at an abscess on her leg. She plowed into me while I stood at my mom’s hall...

The Kind Point February 18, 2025 Doom Commenting Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! I’ve often wondered if there’s a moment right before drunk texting when people think, "Hey, let’s not do this. Let’s put the phone down. We can review the words tomorrow after some sleep...

The Kind Point January 31, 2025 Crotch Roulette Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! There my mom and I sat, talking about bidets, as mothers and sons do. I’d told her that Terry and I were going to install a high-tech Japanese bidet toilet in our primary bathroom. She...

It’s relatively easy to look back twenty years or more and regard myself with a gentler perspective.       Can I do the same for the me of twenty minutes ago?

The Kind Point January 9th, 2025 Eating Paper Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! While studying in Taipei in 1992, a new friend and I went out for breakfast before class. She held up one of the steamed buns she’d ordered and admitted that she almost ate the white paper on...

The five buckets of kindness are honesty, clarity, sweetness, playfulness, and vulnerability

The Kind Point December 19th, 2024 Kindness—It Isn't What You Think Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended! In the second of the X-Men movies, as Storm and Nightcrawler are about to confront a villain who can distract people with illusions, fellow superhero Jean Grey issues...