“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculation, if you live near him.”

JRR Tolkien

We are all living with dragons—real, immovable limitations that live in our lives. Something that impacts your time, health, energy, money….everybody has one curled up in the basement. We are taught to live as though these creatures are temporary (at best), easily ignored, or non-existent (at worst). So we plan - morning routines, career trajectories, weekly schedules, financial goals - as if The Right Plan will slay the monster. In reality, that plan was written for someone who lives far far away from your particular dragon.

Many of us can white knuckle it for a while: padlock it into a room, barricade the door, avoid walking down that hallway altogether.

But eventually the locks break, the door comes off its hinges, and the hallway fills with smoke. Your plan collapses. You feel like a failure. You chuck the whole project to [eat clean, get the promotion, try for a baby, find a spouse] into the bin marked “not capable enough/not disciplined enough/not good enough.”

Here’s the thing: the dragon was always going to stir, it just wasn’t written into the plan—so when it woke up, you blamed yourself instead of the beast.

Instead, we need to do as Tolkien does and write the dragon into our story. Give it a name, know what its most perilous attributes are, and study its weak spots – acknowledge it is dangerous, yes, but not undefeatable.

• Are you a working mom with three kids who wants to focus on your health & wellness this year, but feels like you have no time to yourself and no stability to count on?

• Are you single and wanting to find a partner, but you have an hour long commute in traffic every evening that lands you home long after the vibrancy of happy hours downtown has faded?

• Do you want that promotion, but report to a micro-managing, thin-skinned boss who treats your growth like a threat rather than his job?

Sit with your plans and reconcile them to the dragon living in your midst. What is uniquely hard about this season that makes even your best, most reasonable plans a stretch, if the dragon is parked on top of the gold you’re after? What weapons do you need to have on hand to push back? How does this change your timeline? How should it alter your approach?

• For the mom, maybe this means the low bar of three 20 minute strength sessions at 5 am being “good enough” right now

• For the commuter who wants to find a spouse, maybe it’s talking to your boss about leaving early one day a week, and that’s your “date evening”

• For the ambitious woman deserving of a promotion, maybe it means talking to your skip level manager about your long term goals at the company…or working with me to find a new job altogether

Allow yourself to acknowledge the limitations in this season of life. They might change over time, and suddenly you find the huge monster standing in the way has shrunk down to that of a chihuahua: easier to step right over and carry on. Or you might just get better at fighting for the gold despite its flames and claws and teeth.

It starts, as most things do, with the story you tell yourself.

Here’s the twist Tolkien never gave his dragon: you don’t have to actually slay it. You just have to stop planning as if it isn’t there. Name it. Learn its patterns. Figure out exactly where its scales are thinnest. Then go get your gold anyway—scorch marks, singed eyebrows, and all. Like the heroes of the ancient stories, it will make your victory all the sweeter to have fought for it and won.

This is the Tour de France: a grueling 21-day bike race across Spain and France. 150 riders cycle 2,000 miles up into the Alps and down into the valleys for three straight weeks to win the coveted yellow jersey.

I know what you might be thinking… a bike race? Sounds boring.

I’m here to tell you – it’s anything but.

The Tour is both a team sport and an individual sport, a tenuous balance unlike any other sport in the world.

A cycle team consists of one superstar and a small army of supporting figures called domestiques.

A domestique might be one of the top ten athletes in the world, competitive enough to win it all himself. But someone else was picked over him, so his ambitions don’t matter: his job is to channel his athletic excellence into ensuring someone else’s victory. A domestique’s glory comes only from advancing his leader across the finish line first, whether that means ferrying water bottles through a 6-hour stage, riding as a windbreak for 100 miles, or sacrificing his entire Tour so the leader can finish his…

Last year, during stage eleven, the defending champion’s bike got a flat tire just a few miles in, often an irrevocable death sentence for a rider’s chance at victory. You could feel the world hold its breath as he pulled onto the gravel, his chances slipping away with every second.

And then.

In a fraction of a second, his teammate, his domestique, pulled off beside him, leaping off before the wheels had slowed to a stop, and shoved his bike into his leader’s hands. He held it as his leader climbed on, gave him a running start push down the road, then stood and watched him fade into the horizon, his own chances at finishing the race, over.

It was a picture of sacrifice at its best. And also at its most heartbreaking. The speed at which that handover occurred made it clear that the conversation had been had well in advance: if the champion’s bike broke down, this man’s only task was to give up his own success for someone else’s victory. I am certain it did not take the sting from the moment. I am sure he grieved that night.

But the world celebrated it as heroism.

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In our families, at work, among friends — how rarely do we ask: what could I do to get someone else to the finish line first? So much of our energy goes instead to: what would get ME across first?

There is a real and good place for ambition in life. But sometimes this generation (and this country) falls into the trap of narcissism, masked as “self care” or “protecting their peace.”

It is almost anathema to suggest that there are times when we should “give up our bike.” Sacrifice is unpopular these days, and so much of what I coach my clients on is about how to make their successes visible in the workplace, take credit where credit is due, and be vocal about their contributions. Isn’t this a direct contradiction?!

For everything there is a season… want to see your friendships, career, marriage, and parenting thrive over the long run? Get better at spotting where you could “give up your bike” so someone else can succeed:

• “The Water Bottle Carry” - Be the loudest hype person on your team, championing another’s success on a project, even when you did the heavy lifting

• “The Wind Break” - Solo parent without complaining for a week, so your partner can attend that career-impacting conference

• “The Flat Tire Handoff” - Invite that friend over for dinner again, who has never once returned the favor

This means learning to stay quiet when appropriate, to “take one for the team,” and to stop keeping score. In the long run, you reap what you sow: short-term self-focus might win you the next promotion but could ultimately cost you your career. And resenting sacrifice as a parent won’t make it easier; it’ll just make it more miserable.

The key is to recognize when it’s the appropriate time to give up the bike, vs hold it and say, “today is my turn to win.” It’s a lot easier when you have an assigned role on a team and clearly defined expectations like our hero above. It’s a lot harder when it’s the sixth time your baby has woken up that night and needs someone to (once again) get up and attend to her. It’s a lot harder when you are weighing being recognized at work against being seen as a team player. It’s a lot harder when investing in community starts to strain your boundaries.

But in a culture that almost always demands you “keep your bike” and “deserve the win,” it’s worth considering if there are moments where it is more valuable to push back on that. Somewhere this week, someone needs you to be their domestique. Who could you give your bike up to, so that the team can win?

This is the most common complaint I hear from clients and friends these days. The device has somehow wheedled its way to becoming both a necessity and a burden, the golden handcuffs for our generation.

Obviously, we know the phone isn’t good for us. We know the average person spends 4 to 7 hours on their phone a day. We know it disrupts sleep, causes anxiety, decreases memory & attention span, increases car wrecks, and on and on.

We also all know it is designed to do this by delivering dopamine hits that prey on our reptilian brain. Phones use red for notifications because the color signals urgency; the no-friction, infinite scroll makes it easy to get lost for hours without any “stopping cues”; streaks & “seen” receipts create a sense of societal obligation and gamification that builds pressure for you to keep coming back (daily). Your phone was designed to be a slot machine that rewards you for continuing to play the game.

AND. Let’s be honest. It’s also the most powerful tool that keeps my life running: it holds my calendar, my Costco delivery order, my beloved Spotify, my UV monitor, Venmo, my workout tools, and these are just the things I use DAILY. Not to mention the five messaging platforms that keep me connected to best friends in Boise, DC, Orange County, Seattle, and London.

So I cannot give it up. Or at least, to do so would have major detrimental consequences on the finely tuned, fragile structure for life that I’ve crafted.

Too often, I hear clients go in one of two directions: either they mournfully capitulate to the vortex as an inevitable and unavoidable reality, or they proudly and vocally delete all social media (with, might I add, the slightest tinge of moral superiority).

Rather, I would argue there is a different path.

You are far less powerless with your technology than you think. The question to ask is: How much friction/boundary-setting do I need to restore my phone to its rightful place in my life? And secondarily: do these need to be temporary fixes (to retrain my brain) or permanent?

Here is the spectrum of options available to you to take control back over your phone:

Reduce the stimulus

• Silence notifications – SUCH low hanging fruit. Kill everything but texts, calls, and voicemail (remember? The three things phones USED to just do?) No red dot. No dopamine hit.

• Turn off the color – we are biologically designed to respond to color. Go to settings and turn the color to greyscale. Instantly, everything will become wildly less appealing to explore.

• Use “Focus Mode”, “Bedtime Mode” and “Do Not Disturb” to protect sleep, enable Flow State at work, and limit the dopamine hits at other core times

• Hide “Like” counts on your posts – click the three dots on the corner of an Instagram post to immediately decrease a reason to check back 27 times over the next hour.

Make it less convenient

• Charge your phone outside your bedroom at night – this single trick might be the most effective at reducing your scrolling at pivotal times during the day

• Make it hard to find the apps that suck you in – move social media apps to a folder off the home screen. Move them around from time to time so that muscle memory doesn’t bring you to them instinctively

• Use built in app timers (under Digital Wellbeing for Android and Screen Time for iPhone) to trigger decision points. Find you’re just clicking straight through it? Download “Pushscroll” – it makes you do pushups in order to continue accessing that app

• Use the Brick or even the Wise Phone to physically prevent you from accessing apps at certain times of day (or at all!)

• Fun trick: dig out an older cell phone of yours that’s in the drawer gathering dust, plug it into the wall by your living room chair, hook it up to the wifi, and voila that becomes your “Scrolling Phone.” Email, social media, Redfin (my husband’s kryptonite), anything that has the power to suck you in….must be done on “The Scrolling Phone.” Keeps you tethered to the wall (inconvenience, yay!) and turns your regular phone into a “safe” device.

Make an acceptable time and place

So many of my clients feel shame every time they pick it up, knowing that they spend too much time on it. If you want to decrease the amount of time you spend on it, you also need to give yourself an acceptable time TO be on your phone. Appropriate, bounded, and guilt free. E.g.,

• Pick two 30 minute chunks of time, one mid-morning and one right before dinner. Make sure it is well after you wake up and long before you go to sleep (so the blue light doesn’t impact your sleep), set a timer before you start, and then fully enjoy that time, guilt-free.

Direct the algorithm – my favorite set of suggestions

• Mute people – Is a friend being too politically divisive? Or post 10 useless daily stories? Take 10 minutes once a week to “mute” people who don’t promote healthy thinking or habits in you. They’ll never know, and you can always “unmute” them later on.

• Use the “more interested” / “less interested” buttons for both ads and posts to aggressively train the algorithm (block ads that are not appealing to you!)

• Spend time tailoring your feed – take another 10 minutes every week to go to the “Explore”/”For You” page and intentionally click on 15 posts that you want to see more of. Mine is currently all sourdough bread tips, gardening hacks, home workouts, mindful parenting, and golf updates (much to my husband’s delight). I see only content that is useful and fun. Nothing more.

• Tell Instagram your specific, labeled preferences for content – go to settings, then “Content Preferences” (under “What You See”):

  • Under “Your algorithm,” add or delete topics as desired.

  • Turn off the toggle for “suggest political content” if this isn’t your jam

  • Tell it words & phrases you never want to see

  • Snooze “suggested posts” for 30 days

• Tell Tiktok you need a break - Profile → ☰ Menu → Settings and Privacy → Digital Wellbeing → Screen Time Management, and enable “Take a Break” — set it to 30 or 60 minutes; once you hit it, the app pauses and prompts you.

  • Or turn on Restricted Mode, which filters out the most stimulating/addictive-feeling content and slows the feed’s momentum, plus you can lock it with a passcode so you can’t just toggle it off in the moment.

  • Create curated Lists of accounts you actually care about and use a List as your primary feed instead of Home — these show only chronological posts from selected accounts, with zero algorithmic interference.

The goal here isn’t to become a Luddite, or to get rid of the phone altogether. It’s core to our lives, and almost none of us are going back. The goal is simply to harness the good and limit the bad, and to remember that YOU get to set the terms, not your apps.

This week, pick one thing from this list to try. It’s not going to revolutionize your life, but it’s a visible way to declare to your brain that you are taking back your tech.

A dear friend of mine murmured this last week, and it stopped me cold. True, and surprisingly hard to say out loud.

This morning, I picked warm raspberries straight off the bush and walked them over to my daughters for their breakfast. The sheer fact that I have both raspberries growing in my garden and two daughters to give them to both feel like an unmerited miracle. It is a rich, good life indeed.

AND

It is hard. Two working parents, small children who require every ounce of your attention and energy for all their waking hours, trying to pursue an intellectual life, maintain a semblance of an exercise routine, foster an authentic community, build a vibrant marriage, and get enough sleep every night…my husband and I feel stretched past what we thought possible.

The more people I talk to, both clients and friends, it seems everyone is wrestling with some version of this right now. One client has a micro-managing boss that makes him hate showing up to work every day. A friend has a child who hasn’t slept through the night in his three years of life, therefore she hasn’t either. Another client has a wife who works 14-hour days, making him feel more like a roommate than part of a committed relationship. My stay-at-home mom friends wonder if there is more they should be doing to use their intellect, gifts, and talents. My working mom friends hate that they only see their kids before bedtime. Infertility, debt, estranged relationship with a parent, sick family member…name it, and someone I’m working with or love dearly is dealing with it.

This is not new for us in this generation. Our parents and their parents and many before them dealt with sleep deprivation from kids, bad bosses, sickness, financial struggles, and more. For some, they lived through even more severe seasons of life, like my one grandma who escaped from the terror of the Dust Bowl, only to land straight into the Great Depression. Sometimes we’re ashamed to admit we feel the weight of life when compared to those stories of our ancestors. But hard is not a relative game: hard for you is hard, period.

It’s an inevitable reality of life that we will all encounter seasons which feel like they are going to push us to the edge of our abilities and our sanity. Knowing they WILL come, how can you approach these seasons of life well?

1) Prepare for it. In his book The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter mourns how the average person today lives a finely regulated life designed to be 99% free of discomfort. AC & heat mean most exist between 68 and 72 degrees. We keep food in every corner of the house so the first sign of hunger can be staved off with a little snack. I can only go to sleep if I have my white noise machine, blackout curtains, and eye mask for pete’s sake. Discomfort has been designed out of the average American’s life, so when our bodies or minds do encounter struggle, it comes as a shock to the system. Easter’s fix? Seek out discomfort. Welcome hunger. Embrace the feeling of being too cold. Find challenges (what the Japanese call misogis) that push you far past the bounds of your physical and mental comfort. In doing so, you are training yourself to encounter difficulty from a position of strength, knowing you’ve survived and even thrived through it before, and you can do it again.

2) Name it. No, it’s not whining, it’s intellectual and emotional honesty to be able to turn wearily to your partner and say, “Today was hard.” Psychologist Dan Siegel encourages us to “Name it to tame it,” meaning that to acknowledge struggle, shame, frustration, anger, and defeat out loud is the first step to regulating those emotions. Stating what you feel out loud activates your prefrontal cortex, which calms the emotional brain and helps restore your mental balance (the science proves it!). Stop pretending like it will just go away if you ignore it – it won’t, and it will likely do even further damage.

3) Optimize what you can; accept what you can’t (My clients have heard this enough to recite it back to me) In every situation, evaluate what can be changed vs. what is fixed. For what’s changeable, get creative. For what isn’t, choose a posture of equilibrium. One of my clients had a toxic boss. We agreed she needed a new job, but given that could be a six-month process, we worked to identify smaller wins in the meantime: a side project, a new mentor, two work-from-home days. It takes creativity, courage to ask for what you need, and the agency to actually make the change, but there is often much untapped potential for finding threads of joy and hope in even the toughest situations.

4) Say no to the victim mindset. Fight the lies you are tempted to believe:

You are not alone in your suffering - almost every human around you is carrying a burden of their own

This will not go on forever, even if it might feel like it in the moment. Toddlers grow up, you find a new job, you get pregnant, you find a new relationship that makes you come alive, you make a new friend who feels like an old friend. Almost nothing is permanent (both good and bad!) See this for what it is: a season with an end point.

You have more agency than you think – find the things that are in your control and work to improve them. Even the smallest changes will help you to feel more empowered and less stuck

These seasons are hard, often painful, and can be times of great loss. They can feel lonely, hopeless, and suffocating. BUT they can also be times of extraordinary growth, self-awareness, maturing, and resilience. Arthur Brooks encourages us to “never waste our suffering.” Resistance to these seasons of life only multiplies the pain, he says, rather, surrender to it and you might be surprised to find the pain lessen.

Prepare for them, don’t be surprised by them, optimize what you can, and ultimately, push yourself to be shaped for the better through them.

When all is said and done, they just might be the seasons that matter most.

For more reading on this subject, I can’t possibly recommend enough:

- The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter

- The Meaning of Your Life, Arthur Brooks

These seasons are often harder than we anticipate. They hum with contradiction: excitement at the newness, nervousness at the unknown, stress at the never-ending list of to-dos. And they can be filled with guilt… in the darkest moments when we’re struggling, we hear in the back of our minds, “You chose this. You picked this path. You are to blame for feeling this way.” And whether or not that is true, it adds salt to the wound on a night when you already feel lonely in a new city.

Too often we just stumble through these seasons, consumed by to-do lists, operating on auto-pilot, doing whatever it takes to get by: a glass of wine, scrolling social media, Gilmore Girls on in the background. The old blends into the new, but when exactly that change happens is unclear.

But doing this leaves us feeling unmoored, lacking both closure and a true beginning. We miss the beauty of what these liminal spaces have to teach us. They can be spaces of stagnation or transformation, depending on how much intention we give them.

As with so much in life, our generation lacks intentionality in how we move from one season of life to another. We need to better architect our major life transitions.

Here’s what you need for an elegant, intentional transition:

1) Establish mile markers. The journey of a transition is made up of three distinct phases: the ending, the “messy middle”, and the new beginning, says Chip Conley. Understanding where you are along that roadmap is vital to feeling like you’ve “left” and knowing when you’ve “arrived.” To bring intention to your journey, design three key mile markers along the way:

• An Elegant Ending. We have lost the value of a ritual in our modern American culture. We have traded ceremony for convenience and we’re paying for it.
  
  What could this look like for you? Perhaps it’s a final day at a job before you move on. Take 15 minutes to do a final walkthrough of your office. Make a list of the top 10 projects you are proud to have completed. Mark the moment you walk out the door for the last time, or take off your badge. Not in a maudlin way, but with intention and gratitude.

• The Middle Pause. Go to a coffeeshop and get a good espresso and a pastry. Pull out your journal. Ask yourself, what feels “in limbo” for me right now? What routines or changes could I make to give myself more stability? Acknowledge the instability and creatively identify a few places where you have some degree of control to add in some predictability.
  
  One of my clients spent a month straddling two apartments and two jobs, as she moved from one to another. She felt like she was living out of her car, run down by the pace of managing it all. We designed a routine where Sunday afternoons, she would walk to the local Irish pub with a book and read with a good Old Fashioned. A small moment of predictability amidst the constant swirl.
  

• The New Beginning. When you’re at a place where you feel 90% stable, mark the moment. Don’t wait too long to do this – your new apartment doesn’t have to be perfectly Pinterest-worthy to be able to celebrate the official start. Feelings follow behavior. The goal here is to communicate to your mind and your body that the “messy middle” is over. Have a dinner party with your new co-workers. Host a zoom tour of your house with your friends all over the country. The how is up to you – what would it take to feel as though you’ve begun?

2) Set an anchor. Find one thing as soon as possible that will be habitual and expected each week. Maybe it’s a gym. Maybe it’s a church. Maybe it’s a running club on Tuesday mornings or a pottery class Friday nights. Find something where you will consistently see the same faces and where someone will know your name when you walk in. While the rest of your life takes a little longer to become familiar, give yourself a jump start in one small area. Bonus points if you can do this before your transition is underway.

3) Keep one daily practice consistent. Find something about your habitual daily rhythm and unapologetically prioritize that throughout the transition and into the new season. This could be your morning routine of coffee and journaling, or your daily run, or the phone call you always make to your sister on the way home from work. When everything else around you is new and foreign, having one thread of consistency will give your mind a brief moment of rest each day. In one transition of mine, I set the table every night with a placemat and cloth napkin, and it brought a little bit of order to an otherwise chaotic season of life.

4) Let yourself grieve. Even with things that are purest joy (the birth of a child) or a lifelong dream (that perfect job you’d had on your vision board for years), there is often a strand of grief that accompanies it. A new kid means the death of your independence. Maybe that dream job requires you to move away from a community you love. Moving into a new house means leaving the sweet apartment you learned how to be an adult in. Grief is good. Welcome it, give it space, and move through it.

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As with all things, it really boils down to the same foundational principles: self-awareness, intention, mindfulness, and community – the holy grail for a well lived life. As you face your next life transition (if you’re not there already, it will come!), celebrate it, grieve it, mark it. Perhaps you will even find, in doing so, you come out the other side a better version of yourself than when you started.

There’s a big basketball series going on right now, in case sports isn’t your thing (“The Finals,” as the kids call it). The San Antonio Spurs facing the New York Knicks. There, now you are culturally relevant for a day or so!

“The Finals” consist of two teams meeting up to seven times, with the first team to win four games crowned champion. Much to the city of New York’s delight, the first two games this year went to the Knicks. The Spurs lost the second game by a SINGLE point, no thanks to their superstar player, 7 foot 4 inch Victor Wembanyama missing a vital shot at the end of the game.

It’s the sort of high pressure mistake in a moment of real need that would crumple many of us. A moment to win it all for your team, the chance at a miraculous comeback win, but instead....a completely avoidable error that ends in failure. It would be easy to collapse under the weight of the shame and public condemnation. It would be understandable if he showed up a little brittle to the next game.

But Wemby (as he’s affectionately known) is a different kind of man.

The day after his loss, he was found tucked in a quiet corner of a small NYC park….sketching.

That’s right, all seven feet of him, tucked into an old wooden bench, in Gramercy Park, a quiet enclave in Lower Manhattan that requires a key to enter. You’re not allowed to take photos inside the park, ride your bike, walk your dog, or kick around a ball. It’s meant for stillness and silence and reflection. It was here that Wemby went to quiet his mind and tap into his other great love in life: that of an artist.

Over the years, Wembanyama has tried all sorts of artistic mediums: pottery, painting, sculpting. But he finds himself going back to drawing every time, calling it his second passion after basketball.

Far from being a distraction, it is a core part of his ritual for recovery: bringing mental clarity and finding stillness in his soul, after both good games and bad ones.

This time, the process worked its magic yet again. He tore back onto the court for Game Three the next day, defiantly leading the Spurs to a 115-111 win and keeping them in the series to fight another day.

Psychologists call this self-complexity. When we have multiple sources of identity, it enables us to be more resilient, less fragile, less volatile.

It’s like when you spill spaghetti down your shirt while traveling – if I know I can just pop back to my room and grab another shirt, I’m a lot less bothered by the stain and the mess. IF on the other hand, the airline lost my bag and this is my only outfit for an entire four-day work conference, you better believe I’m going to lose my mind trying to get that stain out (purely hypothetical example, of course…)

Similarly, it is good to identify with the things we are passionate about:

• I am a consultant at Bain – I help companies solve complex problems

• I am a mother – I love staying at home with my two kids

• I am an athlete – I feel most like myself when I am standing in front of a soccer goal

But if this identity becomes my only identity, then I risk being crushed when that passion is critiqued or worse still, taken away:

• The junior consultant who leaves the room in tears after a feedback session with his manager

• The mom who collapses into bed feeling like a failure after her toddler screamed at her

• The professional goalie who watches his dream fade after one too many ACL ruptures

Rather, when we maintain multiple versions of our identity, we have something to lean into when one part starts running subpar. That pivot allows us to take a breath, reset, and stay grounded in our worth. The consultant who has a rich community, volunteers on the weekend, is learning the violin, and is trying to master the perfect paella recipe…he will face criticism or even job loss with much more equanimity, knowing his worth & identity are not solely rooted in his career.

Of course, there are seasons where you need to be “all in” on something to see excellence. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be all there is.

So here’s your invitation: what is the second thing you are? Not the role on your business card, not the title that occupies most of your calendar, but the part of you that exists quietly alongside all of it, waiting for a Sunday afternoon in a city park. It doesn’t need to be impressive. It doesn’t need an audience. It just needs to be yours. Because the next time life misses a shot, that second thing might be exactly what carries you back onto the court.

Earlier generations had the opposite experience. My grandfather started work at Hewlett Packard right out of college, a straight-backed kid with a sharp navy haircut. He worked there for 45 years until the day he retired, seeing it through five decades of change, mergers, and expansion into the tech and internet age.

For our great grandparents, the life path was even more prescribed. The town they grew up in was the town they got married in, found work in, raised kids in, and died in. That sounds almost “Hallmark movie” foreign to us, the extreme opposite of our experience today. To some, that must have felt suffocating, like they had no agency. In other ways though, does a small part of you envy the certainty they had around their life decisions? They never had reason to second-guess themselves around where to live and work. Natural limitations organically narrowed their choices for them.

We have very few of these natural limitations today. If you are a single twenty-something, there is very little that tethers you to a geographic location, and there is nothing that tethers you to a particular company (yay for rolling over your 401ks!). We see transience and freedom of choice as our birthright, and opportunity as the primary motivating factor in our decision making.

But having infinite options is actually much harder on the body, mind, and soul. Our brains work just like our muscles: we have a finite amount of energy to devote to decision making, just like we have a finite amount of strength for lifting weights. One too many rounds of biceps curls and your muscles start to crumple under the weight of the final set. In the same way, too many options on the table and your mind starts to crumple out of fatigue, which usually translates to either making poor decisions, making them for the wrong reasons, or giving up altogether.

Do any of these situations sound familiar?

• You’re ready for a change at work, you start to peruse job boards. But the sheer amount of possibilities feels overwhelming, so you close all the tabs and just decide to stick it out, even if you don’t love it

• You walk into a wine shop, ready to try something new, but find yourself overwhelmed and a little intimidated, so you find that familiar bottle you always get and check out quickly

• You want to start making better choices around what you are eating, but there are SO MANY conflicting opinions about what “healthy eating” means, so you just default back to Chick fil A for dinner again

Why does the abundance of choice make us unhappy? Simply put, the downside of the mental effort outweighs the happiness created by the possibility of choice (ever wonder why the fanciest restaurants have a very short menu? They know this well). And while this may not matter much when picking a bottle of wine for the night, it is deeply problematic when it comes to picking a career, a spouse, or a place to live.

So how do we combat this?

One of the few natural limitations left for us is that of closed doors. A relationship that doesn’t work out. A bid on a house that you don’t win. A rejection for a role you thought was your dream job.

Too often, we interpret these as a failure on our part: I should have answered that interview question different. We should have made our cash offer slightly higher. I shouldn’t have taken her to THAT place on our second date.

We need to learn to see closed doors as a gift. These are tools redirecting us to the opportunity we SHOULD be pursuing, rather than the one we think we should be pursuing. And they are also offering us the gift of less choices to pick between, which, as data shows us, we need and want!1 Remember the high end restaurant: our mind wants a limited menu from which to choose.

The best part? This reframe is free and immediate. Every time a rejection stings, return to this: Infinite options are a burden. This closed door was a gift. This is the universe directing me where I need to go. Write this a post it note and hang somewhere you will see often. You’ll help your brain build a new neural pathway around this alternative perspective.

The sooner you start seeing the value in limitations, the happier you will be. Make the decision to see closed doors as a benefit, not a loss. And trust that the path you end up taking is the one you were supposed to take all along.

Watching my daughter’s intuition in building is fascinating, an exercise in psychology, decision making, and total lack of understanding of structural support (we’re currently practicing the word “cantilever” in the hopes this prevents another major meltdown when things understandably collapse).

Yesterday morning, we were building a bridge together and in our parallel work, had accidentally made one side of the bridge taller than the other. I asked my daughter what we could do to fix it, an extra block in my hand ready to hand her in anticipation of her suggesting we build the short side higher. Instead, she quietly reached for the taller tower and took the top block off, shortening it to equal the other side.

What. That hadn’t even occurred to me.

Turns out, this is because humans are prone to solving our problems by adding: we have an “Addition Bias.” This was actually properly studied a decade ago: when participants were asked to stabilize a Lego structure that was off balance (figure below), 6 out of 10 participants ADDED new blocks around the other three edges, versus the easier solution of removing the single errant block.

source: “Adding is favored over subtracting in problem solving”, Nature, 2021

The same results were found in how people approached other challenging situations, like fixing a recipe, editing an essay, or building a trip itinerary.

How many of the current pain points in your own life could be tracked back to this bias?

• You try to improve your health through adding a rigorous 4 am morning routine (cold plunge, 14 supplements, 20 minutes of meditation, etc etc)

• You aim to supercharge your dating life through downloading all five of the top dating apps

• You’re struggling to fight your depression, so you fill up your Amazon cart with things that can be delivered “Same Day!”

• You want to go for that big promotion at work, so you raise your hand to lead a special projects team in your spare time

None of these things are inherently bad. In fact, in many ways you should be praised for identifying a desire or need in your life and proactively addressing it, something many humans struggle to do.

And.

We are biased to believe that “addressing something” always means adding something new to our lives.

Worse still, the Lego study showed that when we are stressed, we’re even worse at considering the subtractive option. Stress flips our brains into autopilot, which is where addition thrives as it requires less cognitive effort.

Think about that for a minute: it takes more effort to identify where in your life you might be able to remove, reduce, or replace something than it does to add a new, “brilliant” fix that will solve everything. It also can feel less impressive or even lazy: I still get a twinge of nervousness when I put up a workplan in front of my boss that is intentionally simple, with a lot of whitespace on the page. “Is he interpreting simplicity as a lack of commitment or an attempt to cut corners?” Subtraction can feel less valuable because it is harder to see and thus harder to credit.

But the study proved one final key takeaway: the participants who subtracted walked away richer. Literally. The study designated that any blocks used would cost the participant, so only the ones who subtracted got the full financial reward for the activity.

So the question for us is: where would subtraction in my life leave me richer than today?

Some areas to consider:

• Look at your overall schedule for the week: what regular events could you consider cutting?

• The next time you write an email, push yourself to remove 30% of the length before sending (Harder than you think: Mark Twain famously said, “’I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead“)

• Write out your current work responsibilities: which could you automate and which could you talk to your boss about dropping altogether?

• Look through your closet: challenge yourself to donate a full garbage bag to the local thrift store

(Fun tip: AI can be your (kind yet ruthless) friend here. Ask it the above questions and let it give you an unvarnished opinion as your “Personal Essentialist Coach.” )

How does this make us richer? It gives us the gift of MARGIN, of “slack in the system,” time to think and create and be flexible and explore. All things that are truncated or stifled when you are frazzled and overcommitted.

My daughter didn’t reach for the taller tower because she’d read a Nature study on addition bias. She reached for it because she hadn’t yet learned not to. Somewhere between preschool and adulthood, we pick up the habit of believing that more is always the answer: more commitments, more tools, more stuff. But the richest moments in my week are still the ones with the most margin: a hot cup of coffee, a bucket of magnatiles, and nowhere to be for twenty minutes. The next time something in your life feels off-balance, try her approach first. You might not need to build higher. You might just need to take a block off.

- 2025 Client, Microsoft

Two years ago, I planted three little strawberry plants in the front of my garden. I told my daughter, just you wait until the first warm strawberries eaten right off the vine. And wait we did. And wait. And wait. The leaves grew big and the plants grew tall, and the summer came and went…but no sign of those little red gems anywhere to be found. I sighed and told her, “Maybe next year.” Add this to my (long) list of gardening failures attempts.

Annoyed, I all but ignored them the following year. Do what you want, you irritating waste of soil, I don’t care what happens to you. (But of course… I so badly did care).

Lo and behold, my negligence notwithstanding, I walked out one June morning to see the hint of scarlet fruit growing ALL OVER that corner of the garden.

Here’s the thing, plants have a limited amount of energy available to use. They have to make the most of it, to send out leaves, grow tall, and of course, to create the fruit we all love. Some plants take an enormous amount of energy to create (think of the denseness of a carrot or the complexity of a melon) and need a long time.

My strawberries take a different approach. Each year, they make a decision as to where to channel that finite amount of energy. They can either use it to grow as a plant, sending out little vines in every direction that plant themselves deep in the soil across the entire garden bed, forming brand new plants like satellites from the mothership.

OR

They can grow fruit, pouring everything into cultivating the blossoms that become shimmering red jewels.

Left to its own devices, a strawberry plant will almost always choose to grow outward, sending its missional vines to expand and conquer new territory. This is wisdom in the plant kingdom, ensuring its survival in a rough backyard world. This means that if I, the farmer, want a crop, I have to force it to channel its energy into creating fruit by cutting off the vines as they grow.

A strawberry cannot both grow vines AND fruit. It cannot increase scope and produce a robust crop at the same time. If it tried, both would be mediocre.

Isn’t this how we operate too, if we were honest?

Many of us try to do both: spread our vines and see a successful harvest. We fill our schedules full, never say no to new opportunities, over-commit, over-subscribe…and too often, find ourselves producing mediocrity and seeing burnout in every direction.

Rather, consider the approach of the strawberry instead.

Some seasons of life are for stretching and growing out: trying new things, building new relationships, taking risks, extending, expanding, reaching. But in those seasons, we should not also be expecting to see abundant, deep fruit in all of those areas.

Other seasons of life are for bearing deep fruit: focusing on one or two specific areas and pouring into them, channeling all your energy into maximizing the harvest.

Both types of seasons have tremendous value, but they will produce very different outcomes. The task of the wise “farmer” (you!) is to be intentional and deliberate in choosing which season you want to be in, and where you want to see growth.

Doing this well requires building muscle in a few uncomfortable areas: the ability to say no, awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, honesty to admit when it’s time to “snip a vine”, and humility to be comfortable with certain seasons having less to show.

But here’s the promise: if you learn to do this well, years down the road you’ll see both breadth and depth: boisterous, expansive plants that produce an abundance of fruit each year. That’s what my strawberry patch looks like now. Some years I’ve snipped the vines. Other years I encourage them. Now the field is sprawling and the harvest is plentiful.

May it be so in your life.

In 2022, La Guardia Airport got a major overhaul. Once the bane of travelers everywhere (“widely viewed as a hellhole”), she emerged from the ashes of the $8 billion renovation a “dazzling,” resting-point on the weary traveler’s sojourn.

Most articles that reported on the project detailed the artistic use of natural light, better signage, sound control to keep noise to a minimum.

But I was most struck by the bathrooms.

Stick with me here. I read an article about the specific attention given to the renovation of LGA’s bathrooms that has never left me. Many small design decisions were made that most travelers would never consciously notice, but which quietly improved the experience.

Wide stalls that can comfortably fit your bags. Curved floors where they meet the wall to prevent the collection of dirt and grime. A leather chair in a cozy, tucked away nursing room. Toilets attached to the walls rather than the floor, to enable easier cleaning.

And my favorite detail: Hooks that hold your coat, backpack, or purse, typically found on the back of the stall door, were instead mounted on the sides of the stalls. When heavy bags get flung onto a door-mounted hook hundreds of times a day, the door bends out of alignment over time. This causes it to stick, prevent it from closing, and in the worst cases renders the stall almost unusable (we have all had the unpleasant experience of someone accidentally opening a door on us in a public bathroom, have we not?)

It makes logical sense to move the location of this hook, but for all of the years of Creating Bathroom Doors for Airports, the hook has always gone on the door. And no one ever stopped to question whether that was actually the best place for it…until La Guardia.

How true is this for us too: a small habit, doing something the way it’s always been done, slowly but surely wears us down and renders some part of our life damaged, worn, or misshaped:

• Keeping our phone by our beds makes it the first thing we involuntarily grab in the morning, spiking our heartrate and starting our day with anxiety

• Keeping your money in the same savings account you’ve had since you were 15, instead of looking for more savvy investment opportunities

• Storing your peanut butter in the fridge (a core conflict in my marriage) that renders it un-spreadable (how many habits do we unconsciously adopt from our parents?)

What makes the difference here is conscious attention. Stop for a moment and scan the past 12 hours of your life. Is there something that you’ve Always Done that perhaps is in need of consideration? Something that makes you less effective or feeling worn down? One way to identify this is to think about what tasks during your day or week you try hardest to avoid or seek distractions from. That might be a sign that it’s an area that needs optimizing. Moving the hook from the door to the wall, as it were.

Think about this across the big categories of life: work, relationships, health & wellness. But also consider the smaller areas: how you drive your car, how you organize your bathroom drawer, your calendar, your to do list, etc.

Sometimes these are hard to see in yourself. If you’re feeling brave, stop your partner, friend, family member, or boss and ask them: Where do I do things in an unnecessary, inefficient, overly complicated, or antiquated way? (Nothing will enable this insight quicker than an hour with an honest sibling)

The obvious payoff is practical: something in your life starts working a little better. But the deeper reward is subtler. You know the feeling of taking a new route to work, how suddenly you’re seeing things again? The buildings, the turns, that one tree. Small changes to your defaults do the same thing for your whole life: they wake you up to it. And you might even find that tasks you used to dread become ones you don’t mind at all (e.g., since I stopped sorting laundry and proudly declined to match my socks, wash day lost its power over me entirely).

So the question is…where are your hooks hanging?

Do I play golf? Absolutely not. Isn’t this just one of four major golf tournaments throughout the year? Yes! “Isn’t this JUST SPORTS? WHY DO YOU CARE?” A very fair question.

There’s a beautiful practice in some religious traditions of fasting and feasting: fasting, meaning “going without”, abstaining from something to the extent that it produces discomfort. And “feasting,” perhaps more familiar to many but rarely truly practiced well: the guilt-free art of extravagance and communal celebration.

Americans do neither well.

We don’t like to fast. We don’t like to abstain. We don’t like discomfort. We don’t like being told no, and we certainly don’t prefer to choose it for ourselves. Famously, 80% of people abandon their New Year’s resolutions by the second week of February, and only 8% successfully keep those resolutions through the year.

But this is not new information. Much has been written on the need to improve our capacity for discomfort (more on this from me in a few weeks).

What is less talked about is that we do an equally poor job of feasting well. We are moderate at best even in our celebration. The closest we get to a true feast is a wedding, which for many (we hope) is a once-in-a-lifetime event. But when was the last time you bought an expensive bottle of wine, a huge cut of your butcher’s nicest brisket, lit candles, set the table, and invited friends over…just because? Does that image surprise you to even think about?

We must do a better job of celebrating well.

The reality is, life even at its best is hard. As we age, this reality only becomes sharper. Of course, there are the major battles we face or witness: cancer, job loss, house fires, the end of a marriage, miscarriages. But there are the quieter ones too: loneliness, months of sleep deprivation from a kid who refuses to sleep through the night, an egotistical, demeaning boss, undesired singleness, distant sibling relationships.

There is so much to grieve and battle and hold that is heavy. Life presents us with enough opportunities to struggle and suffer, and in many ways, to fast. Therefore, in the face of this reality, it is an act of defiance to celebrate.

We need to stop acting as though it is a sign of maturity to eschew birthdays, question extravagance, or disparage effort. Instead, we must start to see this as a way that we battle back against the inevitable difficulty that comes with being a human.

When you buy the artisanal, gold-flecked cake and line it with shimmering candles, and blow them out merely because it is a Tuesday and life is short, you are fighting back. When you make the effort to actually celebrate your birthday instead of the tepid nonchalance that so many adults maintain, you are fighting back. When you use the china dishes you inherited from your grandmother for dinner just because, you are fighting back.

In our family, we do this in a few different ways:

• Every Sunday night, we dine with extravagance: cloth napkins, a nice bottle of wine, the crystal candlesticks from our wedding. Even our toddler knows to look forward to this day each week (well, that, and she is allowed to take her evening bath with glow sticks for her own toddler-sized version of extravagance)

• We have a special hand-painted “Celebrate” plate which we pull out for birthdays and graduations and the usual events…but also for a big win at work, a new milestone for our kids, for anything that could even slightly be considered worth applauding

• We make a big deal out of things: The Masters, birthdays, the Tour de France every July, May Day, election results night (with my famous American flag nachos). Don’t even get me started on the Olympics…

• We make up new family holidays & traditions, like All Souls Day on November 2^nd, where we cook a massive feast that reflects each of the six countries of our heritage, and we walk our kids through our family trees

• We celebrate communally: almost every “feast” in our family involves people outside our family

• We break rules: we let our kids watch The Masters during dinner, we eat pie for breakfast (yay 3/14!), we use these as moments of joy and delight for both our kids and ourselves. As Matthew McConaughey writes in Greenlights, we are “a family of disciplinarians where you better follow the rules, until you’re man enough to break em.”

I know…you’re tired. Your plate is full. Celebration feels like one more thing to add to a life that already has too many things. But that’s exactly why it matters. It doesn’t take a huge budget or massive amounts of free time, it just takes intentionality. It means making the decision that the people you love, the milestones you’ve reached, and the ordinary Tuesdays you’ve been given are worth marking. So keep a bottle of champagne in the fridge. Not for “someday,” but for the next moment that deserves more than a shrug. Life will hand you plenty of reasons to grieve. Fight the tepid life by giving yourself just as many reasons to feast.

I envy my daughter at the playground. She goes down the slide behind another toddler just once, and that’s enough to form a fast friendship. C.S. Lewis says that “friendship is born at the moment one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” Which, for my three year old daughter, is finding out another human also likes intentionally plummeting down plastic chutes.

Unfortunately for her, it only gets harder from here. As we age, we grow more self-conscious. More inhibited. We get hurt and learn to put up defensive walls. Walking into new spaces without knowing a soul becomes, for many, a daunting act.

For a while, it’s ok. Life funnels us through natural avenues for friendship: classrooms, sports teams, band, church groups. Until we are 22 and walking across that collegiate graduation stage, those environments hand us a steady stream of people in close, repeated proximity. Which is the lowest bar for what it takes to make a new friend: proximity + time.

But then, you graduate. You move to a new city. You open your few boxes of clothes. And then sit in the silence of your new apartment, alone. And this is where the challenge begins.

So many of us are used to swimming in an ocean of relational possibilities, that it’s hard to know where to begin the first time you need to start building community on your own.

So we reach for our phones and fill the void, with authentic, meaningful long distance relationships at best or with scrolling in a vapid, addictive social world of pseudo-relationships at worst.

I have been here many times. I moved eight times in ten years, starting over again and again in that empty apartment sitting on a pile of boxes.

It is HARD to know where to start. It is tiring to put the effort in over and over for relationships that may not even pan out. It’s much easier to disappear into the digital void, and let the glowing screen fill the few precious hours between work and sleep each night.

And our brains aren’t helping. Neurologically, we gravitate towards the safest, most comfortable spaces (home, over a new and unfamiliar environment), an instinct that served us well in the age of the saber toothed tiger, but actively works against our wellbeing now. That isolation then can become a flywheel: the less we interact with new people, the more sensitive we become to perceptions of rejection and the less patient we are with others’ flaws, awkward social cues, different political stances, bad breath, etc.

But we are communal creatures, biologically wired to need other humans to thrive. And while I am all for maintaining long distance relationships through our magic cell phone devices (more on that in a few weeks), you must have flesh-and-blood friendships in your city in addition to those faraway loved ones.

So how do we do this? Where do you start, sitting on those boxes in your new apartment?

1. Find a way to log relational hours – Friendship is born through repeated time spent together. Find activities, club, groups, environments, where you can imitate the feel of that third grade classroom: where you are consistently doing something side by side and the attention isn’t on your conversation but on that activity. A running club. A pottery class. A bluegrass jam session. A monthly beer tasting. It just needs to be repeatable, and involve the same group of people every time.

2. Stop ghosting/cancelling/rain-checking – Answer the damn text message. Commit to things ahead of time. Then actually show up. This is not rocket science, but our generation is NOTORIOUS for thinking it is ok to ignore texts, cancel at the last minute, or play it loosely with committing to see if the “feel up for it” that night. If you want to have real, meaningful friendships, you need to put the work in. Show up, even when you don’t feel like it – these are deposits in the bank that over time compound to relational depth.

3. Be explicit – In the age of adulthood, your time is too precious to waste. Consider being bold with your intentions: “I know you and I are newer friends, but it feels like we’ve clicked and I would love to invest in getting to know you better. Would you consider [reading a book together and meeting over wine to discuss? Training for a half marathon together? Picking a new craft to learn together?” Notice a theme here? Repeated time together. Knowing you’re on the same page and building towards the same thing will help to accelerate the pace of deepening the friendship.

4. Be the village – Drop off flowers when you know they’ve had a hard day. Smoke a little extra meat and gift it. Ask if you can pick anything up from the store. Remember important dates in their life. Be specific in your offers to help: instead of “what can I do?” say, “I’m bringing you dinner on Thursday. Thai ok?” Involve them in normal life activities (nothing bonds two people like a trip to Costco)

5. Keep short accounts and a long fuse – Pick your battles. Stop cutting people off to “protect your peace.” Humans can be annoying, forgetful, and messy. Nine times out of ten, this is just humans being humans, not grounds for ending the relationship. Our generation is so quick to cut the cord, whether overtly or quietly through ghosting. Be patient with others’ foibles. Forgive the last minute cancellation. Keep trying. And if it still bothers you, say something. May we be the generation that figures out how to have honest conversations and resilient relationships that last.

6. Target some relationships for depth, and others for breadth – Not everyone needs to be a “best friend” - “casual friend” has merit too. Invest deeply in a small inner circle AND cultivate a broader group you support and enjoy. Not everyone needs to be invited to every party, but that also doesn’t automatically disqualify them from being your friend. Be ok with some of your friends having other better, closer best friends. A rich community should include concentric circles of intimacy and familiarity.

Will it be hard? Yes. Some won’t respond. Some will seem invested, then disappear. You’ll feel like you’re the only one trying. Keep trying anyway.

Because here’s what I’ve learned after eight moves and a lot of awkward first hangouts: community isn’t something you find. It’s something you build, one brave, slightly uncomfortable “want to grab coffee?” at a time.

Take the risk. Join the club. Commit. Show up.

My daughter on the playground has it right. She just hasn’t learned to overthink it yet.

With threads of cotton candy pink and sherbet orange, the sun was just cresting over the rim as we approached the summit of Mt. Rainier. The silhouette of my sister on the rope line ahead of me, nothing behind me but stillness and my tracks in the icy snow.

Since 11 pm, we had been picking our way up the south side of Mt. Rainier, aiming to summit its 14,440 feet by dawn. Which meant, from the time we left base camp to that first soft blush of pink dawn, we marched in pitch black. “We” being a loose term; spaced so far apart on the rope line for safety, it was easy to feel alone on the mountain.

All I could see for hours was the small ring of golden light on the snow from my headlamp. Everything else was darkness and wind. Step after step, hour after hour, no visible progress, no real sense of time or place at all. My whole world reduced to that swath of light with its single instruction: take the next step forward.

When dawn finally appeared and the world came into sight with it, I looked back and was stunned to see we had climbed nearly the entire top half of the mountain and were within striking distance of the summit. Behind me were snowfields that would have terrified me with their steepness had I actually seen them. Crevasses that would have horrified me with their depth. A distance that would have felt crushing had I seen how slow our pace was.

But because my gaze had been limited to just the three feet of light immediately in front of me, all I could focus on was my literal next step.

There is something powerful here for the way we walk through life: it’s so easy to become overwhelmed, intimidated, or demoralized when we consider major “mountain climbs” ahead of us:

• A manager leading her first client project in a new industry she’s never worked in

• A mom holding her hours-old first baby

• A resident overseeing his first major emergency in the ER

• A mid-thirties dad starting day one in a brand-new job in a total career pivot

Standing at the base of these mountains, it is not only understandable but maybe even appropriate to feel apprehensive.

The things worth pursing in life SHOULD be a little intimidating. If there is nothing in your life that makes you a little scared, consider whether you are chasing after things that are big enough. “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

So let me assume, dear reader, that you are a mountain climber like I am (literal or metaphorical), and have at some point stood at the base of a inordinately tall, snow-capped peak saying, “There!? That is where I’m supposed to go?!”

In that moment, focus on the circle of light just in front of you. Take one small step forward.

Contrary to what we might expect, the brain needs action before it can generate motivation. Starting a task—even in a small, unmotivated state—helps to create momentum by releasing dopamine, triggering a feedback loop that makes continued action easier.

This action should be pitifully small. The greater the level of your intimidation, the smaller the open salvo ought to be. Give your brain no reason to refuse.

• For the manager starting that new case, use ChatGPT to produce a short report on the industry and read it over a good cup of coffee

• For the new mom, change a single diaper. And then have a good cup of coffee.

• For the dad pivoting careers in his 30s, write down five things on a post-it note that you bring to the new role (professional instincts, soft skills, life experience, etc)…and probably have cup of coffee

• For the new doctor, pause to take a deep, regulating breath before diving into crisis mode (no time for coffee)

Shrink the scope of success so that you can log an easy win. Yes, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is a cliché. But it is true at the neurobiological level.

As you approach the next major mountain in your life, welcome the apprehension as a sign you’ve chosen worthy goal. Then click on your headlamp, and do the next right thing.

And I am ALL FOR THIS. I spend a lot of time with clients building healthier technology habits: less scrolling, more reading, more hobbies, fewer screens. The stats are numbing but worth repeating: the average person spends over 5 hours on their phone a day1, checks it 352 times a day2 (once every two minutes), and a full fifth of survey respondents said they would prefer going without shoes for a week than going without their phone3.

Many of my friends are proudly deleting social media, using app timers, or buying “dumb phones.” My husband has tried every phone lock box, app timer, and of course, “the Brick”, in an effort to restore a healthier balance between screens and analog in his life.

As someone who has never left her analog ways (still keep a paper journal, still track my daily work to dos on a post it note on my desk *gasp*), I cheer when I see my old-fashioned methods are coming back into style. You know what they say: wait long enough and your clothes will eventually be fashionable once again.

But this seesaw between extremes is unhelpful at best, and dangerous at worst. A life overtaken by technology is doomed to shrivel under isolation, shrunken attention spans, poor sleep, higher anxiety, and an eroding capacity for deep thought. But a life that eschews technology altogether is equally doomed to wither through irrelevance — cut off from the changes reshaping our world, missing the chance to wield a genuinely powerful tool. And let’s be honest: technology brings some benefits – I like being able to talk to my best friend in London. And I like having refrigerated foods.

How then should we live?

Rather than the seesaw approach, we ought to be pursing a barbell approach to life: an all-in, equally intentional pursuit of two things at once — deep fluency with the technological advances shaping our world, AND a stubborn commitment to the creative, quiet, analog work of our own hands and minds. On one end: confronting, engaging, and mastering AI. On the other: fiercely protecting space for the physical, the manual, the offline, the HUMAN.

Idealistic? Perhaps! Tough to fit into 24 hours a day? You bet! Potentially the most vital thing you could do in 2026? I am certain of it.

To succeed in the AI era, you must KNOW it: how to use it, what its strengths are, what the dangers are, how to come alongside it and let it augment, not replace you. How to BE the “human in the loop.”

And.

We must lean hard into the things that will forever separate us from it, that keep us superior to it, that keep us necessary.

What should this look like on a daily basis?

Convert to analog where you can: Wear a real watch. Buy a real alarm clock. Buy a point & click camera. Or heck, a disposable camera. Write in a journal, with a pen. Check out recipe books from the library and peruse them. Remember what it felt like to just peruse?!

And

Aim to use ChatGPT once a day: to kickstart creative thinking, do logistics work for you, edit something you wrote, meal plan, curate the news, play devil’s advocate, give a product recommendation. Whether you are a stay at home mom or CEO of a fortune 500 company, AI can be wildly helpful in improving your life.

*****

Read. Off Screen. Read your coffee table books that have been gathering dust for a decade. Print out Atlantic articles to read before bed. Subscribe to thoughtful magazines. Pick up an actual, dog-ear-the-pages book. Kindle if you must, but push yourself to go even more analog than that.

And

Keep up with where AI is going. Listen to podcasts like The AI Daily Brief. Read weekly summaries like The Rundown AI. You will either fear AI too much or not take it seriously enough, unless you are choosing to understand how it is being developed and then how it is developing our society. Those resources are 99% online, so push yourself to be online too, at the right times and with the right resources.

*****

Use your phone to maintain friendships well – most of us in this generation have some (or even most) of our core relationships living in a different city than us. The phone is the portal to maintaining and even deepening those relationships. Stop feeling bad about the 27 minutes you spend responding to texts, just start making sure those minutes count. Ask questions of substance. Be intentional. Follow up.

And

Maintain real, in person, warm bodied community. In a generation that will be tempted to see AI as their first “friend,” companion, and go-to source of advice (as a third of teenagers do4), putting in the effort to foster a real village of deep relationships around you is one of the ways we can push back on some of the more toxic elements of AI.

****************

This is hard. The nuance, discipline, and creativity it requires will challenge all of us — and we are already stretched thin. I know: I’m a working mom of two, juggling a demanding job, and a full calendar of people in my home. But there is always time. For the things that matter, that will impact me and my kids, there is always time.

Nobody knows what AI looks like in five years. Honestly, nobody knows what it looks like in five months. That uncertainty is exactly why betting everything on one side of the spectrum — pure tech immersion or pure analog retreat — is a losing strategy. The people who will thrive are those who can hold both: who open ChatGPT in the morning and pick up their needlepoint at night. Who can think with a machine and think without one. Who stay curious, stay grounded, and refuse to outsource either their intelligence or their humanity. Pick up the barbell. Do the work. The future belongs to people who can carry both ends of it.

It started one rainy night before Garbage Collection Day (if you have a young child, you know this is an EVENT, requiring consideration as a Proper Noun). As I dragged our bin to the curb at 10 pm, I noticed the house next door hadn’t put theirs out yet. We didn’t know each other well, but I remembered one of the wives had mentioned she’d be on a work trip, leaving the other wife home solo-parenting. So back up I trudged to the space we shared between our garages and pulled theirs to the curb as well. Having solo-parented many nights myself, you were just lucky to get all kids and yourself with nothing having burned or bones broken…trash cans were usually far from my mind, I didn’t blame her. The next morning, after the truck had visited our street, I caught a glimpse of movement outside our garage, and looked out the window to see that neighbor dragging my empty trash can back up to the side of the house.

And so it began. Every week, one of us puts both of our bins out. The other puts them back. Sometimes this is a hassle (on certain weeks, it means dragging six bins holding various malodorous forms of refuse). Other weeks, it has saved me from doing the desperate 6 am race to the curb in my pjs, hoping to catch the truck before it passes.

But mostly, it’s been a curious, delightful, sometimes-hard-to-swallow form of dependence on my neighbor.

Americans are famously independent, often proudly so. We love the ideals of personal freedom, self-reliance, and entrepreneurship. Supposedly, we encourage a lot of “pulling oneself up by ones bootstraps.” We have less reliance on extended family structures or communal duty.

This extends to the very form of our houses and neighborhoods. We like our fences high and our blinds pulled down. We put our yards and Adirondack deck chairs in the back of the house. Some weeks, the only interaction we have with our next door neighbor is a brief wave goodbye from inside our cars as we pull out of the driveway.

This isn’t to say we are less capable of creating beautiful community ties, but it does mean that in most instances in today’s America, personal choice and independence are prioritized over group obligation.

To be fair, there are real benefits that come with this sort of cultural norm. Innovation often flourishes. It’s common to see increased gender equality and civil liberties. There are notable correlations between having personal agency and being happier in general.

But the downsides are real: individualistic societies tend to have higher rates of loneliness, anxiety and depression, and less social cohesion.

Check, check, and check.

In May 2023, the surgeon general declared loneliness a public health epidemic in America, citing that 1 in 3 Americans feel lonely every week. Rates of anxiety and depression are at an all-time high, with 43% of US adults saying they are more anxious now than a year ago. Social cohesion is at an all time low, with only 34% of Americans agreeing with the statement that “most people can be trusted.”

We are living in our tiny kingdoms with the bridge pulled up, and we are far less happy because of it.

So if the benefits of living collectively are obvious, and the downsides are few…why don’t we do it?

Because it is HARD. It can be uncomfortable - many days, I sit working in my office and watch my neighbors pull my bins in, perfectly able to do it myself, but aware that it is “their turn” and they take great delight in it. It’s embarrassing – they see my “dirty laundry” (in this case, in a literal sense). It can be inconvenient, such as today’s escapade lugging all six trash cans back to their resting spot in the pouring rain.

But it has paid off dividends, not just in seeing improvement in my own heart’s receptivity to receiving help, but in providing a small, insignificant opening in the door to a deeper relationship with these two women. That one offhanded act led to a texting friendship between our houses, then swapping lawn care tips, then chicken coop design recommendations, plumbing assistance, HOA board founding, whiskey drinking, snowman making, and even one brave 2 am rescue mission to save our chickens from being decimated by raccoons that they heard from THEIR house.

Relationships are made through logging relational hours. Outside work, maybe the gym, maybe a church, it’s getting harder and harder to find environments where this can be done organically. So, if we want to pursue a life of flourishing, in which we are embedded in a tight web of interconnected and interdependent community, we have to manufacture ways to log these hours.

Does it make your palms sweaty to even think about introducing yourself to the apartment across the hall? Start small. Drop a cookie from the local bakery on their doorstep with a note and your apartment number. Offer to bring in a package from the house across the street when you know they aren’t home. Text a neighbor to ask about borrowing their paprika, rather than instacarting it from the bodega on the corner.

Inconvenience yourself for someone around you, and let them be inconvenienced for you. Allow yourself to feel the joy of the former, and the discomfort of the latter.

May our generation, who earned the title of the loneliest one, reclaim community and interconnectedness as its new zeitgeist. It’s not too late. Start by taking out their trash.

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The story became a fairy tale: after years of being controlled, directed, and suffocated, she came back, fully “living into her own truth”…and won the gold for women’s individual figure skating. It’s too easy of a story to write and the internet is certainly saturated with it today: live your truth and the universe will reward you.

But that’s overly simplistic, and simply not true.

For years, figure skating was dominated by the rigid, no-margin style seen predominately and memorably by Soviet, and then Russian, coaches and skaters. Water intake was limited for the girls. Weight was tracked daily. Coaching was harsh at best, emotionally abusive at worst. Not a hair out of place. Mistakes were punished. Shame was wielded like a weapon. Fear was the primary motivating tool.

And you know what? It worked.

Since 1976, nearly a third of the medalists were from just a handful of nations who used “old school,” harsher coaching tactics. 6 of the 14 gold medalists from those years were.

So, no. Alysa didn’t win just because she bucked the trend and skated out of joy. We know that fear can be an avenue to success too. We see this in parenting, in team management, in youth sports. It can get results.

But it is a lifeless way to live. Not to mention the myriad of data-driven journal articles showing that this model leads to faster burnout, higher anxiety, early retirement, increased injury rates, and ultimately, early retirement for many (as we saw with Alysa).

What I am arguing is that we have a choice: to skate by fear or to skate because of joy. To parent my toddler through intimidation or with laughter when she sharpies my wall. To subtly use shame with my team when they produce subpar work, or get my hands dirty partnering with them through offering personal, consistent support. To put on my best work shirt even though all I’m doing is walking to my home-office for another day of remote work, just because I love it and it makes me feel professional. To say YES to that opportunity at work that terrifies me but I can probably do very well. To do the work in front of us with excellence, with exactitude, but without fear.

Joy does not mean lower standards (just in the same way that fear-based living does not always equate to higher standards). I am allowed to have high expectations. I am allowed to communicate those expectations to the people I lead. I am allowed to be disappointed when they don’t measure up. I am even allowed to let them see me that way.

AND

There is a way to skate for the gold that is devoid of joy but gets the job done. And there is a way to do it that is weightless, that shimmers with contentment and vision and self-confidence and joy.

It’s not a magic trick, it doesn’t always end in a medal. But as Alysa shows us, it is proof that the gold medal is almost beside the point, that in doing so, the sheer act of living becomes reward enough. Watch just five minutes of an interview with her from the past week, and you will be struck by how she is full to overflowing with the joy of being alive and doing hard things well.

GK Chesterton once said we must try to be “sober but not serious people.” For a glimpse of what that can look like, go watch her skate, witness the lightness in her step, and see what gold this unlocks for you.

Yelp. Amazon reviews. Uber.

The vast majority of humans give either a 5 (or highest equivalent) or a 1 (or lowest equivalent). Up to 90% of reviews will often fall in one of these two categories. And this makes sense: if you’re thrilled about a product, you often want to share that (ask me about my Truly Free cleaning products, my Kizik shoes, my trusted Tumi travel backpack*). And similarly, if you are furious with your Uber driver because he dropped you at the wrong entrance to the concert and it took you so long to get in you missed the opening number, rating them a 1 is (mean) but commonly seen.

What this means that we have grown used to an inflated scale of ratings: we turn down a 4.3 rated product on Amazon in favor of a 4.7 rated product, because our hive mind has started to believe that the degrees between 4 and 5 make all the difference. And don’t even SHOW me products under 4…I wouldn’t dare buy something with a 3.4 rating. Or visit a restaurant. Or get in a car. We have less and less tolerance for anything in the middle.

YET.

Too often, we humans live very “middle” lives.

Before a first session with a new client, I have them do an exercise in advance to rate the eight “spheres” of their life: work, relationships, etc. The answers almost always come in at 9s or 10s for things they are content with, and 1s or 2s for things they want to work on with me. But more often than you might guess, I’ll see a 6. When I ask the client to talk me through their ratings, they tend to brush past this one; “it’s fine, I’m just not that thrilled with it,” “it’s ‘meh’, but not bad enough to make the effort to change,” “I have more pressing things to work on with you than that one.”

I let them direct me where they want for most of the session, but I’ll usually make them circle back to the 6 at the very end. “You’re telling me, just to be clear, that you are just barely above neutral on this rather important area of life….and you’re just ok with that?”

So many of us humans are ok with large parts of their life at a 6 out of 10. Their job. Their physical fitness. Finances. Their relationship with their brother. We all have that friend who will spend hours venting, deploring, and complaining…yet not be willing to discuss potential changes. It’s easy if we feel strongly one way or another: a 5 star job, we’re happy to never leave. A 3/10 job means we’re probably polishing our resume. But a 6 out of 10 job? Eh… Many careers plateau in this grey wasteland of stagnation and status quo.

There are usually multiple motivations at play, some of which are not bad: The desire for stability. The prioritization of the familiar. Golden handcuffs. The perception of sunk cost. Risk asymmetry (to move might get me something better, but could also land me something worse). Option paralysis (I don’t even know where to start).

There are seasons of life where 6 out of 10 is actually the best situation. I know many parents who have settled for mediocre jobs in this season so that they could be around more for their kids. If done intentionally, there is nothing wrong with making peace with a “just above average” score. But too often, humans end up just settling for 6 out of 10 in situations that could, and should, be better. In jobs they’ve outgrown. In relationships that don’t nourish them. In routines that feel hollow. It is deeply wired into our DNA to prioritize stability over optimization. But what once served us on the savanna could now be the thing holding you back from truly flourishing.

Take a few minutes out of your day today and evaluate the facets that make up your life:

• The big ones, like career, relationships, finances, fitness, etc…

• But also smaller ones, like your media intake, the cleanliness of the inside of your car, your phone use, etc

The goal here is NOT that every single infinitesimally small detail of your life must aim to be a 10/10. That would be both impossible and miserable. Rather, the goal is to challenge yourself to identify where stagnation has subconsciously crept in. The number one principle I hammer home in my coaching sessions is intention. Most choices can be good choices if done intentionally. Conversely, a lot of harm can be done through letting inertia have its way in your life.

Do this exercise with honesty and curiosity. And if you uncover an area that is “just above neutral” for no reason other than your tacit consent…consider it the greatest act of courage you’ll commit today to ask, “What is one small step I can take to raise the score?”

*I have zero investment in these products but cannot stop talking about how much I love them. No really…ask me about them.

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Sure, you could go to ChatGPT and have it pull a list of books that would feel “off the beaten path” on the topic of habit formation, self-knowledge, and vocation (the three areas I work on with clients). It would give you some of the classics that are undoubtedly useful: Who Moved My Cheese?, Man’s Search for Meaning, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Atomic Habits, etc. In fact, go take 60 seconds and try it. I’ll wait. I’m not here to argue against the greats. But I AM here to make the case for the power of the human mind in beating out AI to challenge your thinking and push you in new directions.

With that overly self-assured intro, allow me to provide you Seven Atypical Books to read with the rest of 2026 that will change your mind, shift your soul, and inspire you towards self-improvement in unexpected ways…

• Hannah Coulter – Today’s culture encourages us to be quick to cut people off when they hurt us, pick up and move as soon as a new opportunity arises, etc. While there are valid times to do both of these, we often swing too far to the extreme and end up instead feeling unmoored and deeply lonely. Be challenged by Berry’s depiction of rootedness and commitment to a place, to a person, to a way of life, even when it is inconvenient.

• Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – The world tells you to go faster, farther, harder, more more more. This relentless pace has an impact on both our bodies (keeping our cortisol high which leads to every major physical malady) and our souls. Be challenged by Comer’s push to find margin and slow the pace of your life.

• Cathedrals in the Wild – Boyd Varty takes you onto his family’s game reserve in South Africa, and depicts the beautiful process of self reflection, finding your identity, and healing through learning to track the elusive leopard. Be challenged by his assertion that belonging comes from relationship, not control. “The bush does not bend to you, you learn to bend to it.”

• Open – I am a lover of memoirs and biographies, but particularly those which don’t just tell the narrative but offer a thoughtful commentary alongside. None do this so well as Andre Agassi, the tennis phenom and rebel of the 90s and early 2000s. Be challenged by his lifelong battle between identity and the expectations that others placed on him, a battle that you and I face every day (though admittedly without a major international tennis victory on the line).

• The Comfort Crisis – We are wired to seek discomfort as a deeply rooted survival instinct, but what once benefited us on the savannah works against our wellbeing in the modern era. Be challenged by Easter’s push to embrace discomfort. Learn to see the value in being cold, hungry, and bored, and in doing so, you might be amazed to discover that your happiness increases, along with your resilience, health, and sense of meaning.

• The Road Back to You – Sorry! If you know me, the enneagram WILL make it onto every list. I cannot overstate the value it provides in self-awareness, empathy with other humans who see the world very differently than you, and grace with your own shadow side. It has changed my life and can change yours if you let it. If you hate all personality assessments and think they are nonsense, congratulations, you’re a 4 😉Be challenged by understanding the shadow side of your type; naming it is the first step to taming it.

• You Are What You Love – Long before James Clear became the go-to for all things involving habit formation, James Smith quietly made the case that we humans are shaped not by what we think or do, but by what we love. Thus, habit formation is actually more about a reorientation of our desires. Be challenged by his assertion that our desires are being shaped every day, whether or not we realize it, so we must be intentional about identifying and controlling that formation. Read just the first half if you aren’t bought into the religious aspect, but don’t miss the practical chapter at the end with tips & tricks.

With eleven months ahead of you, seven books is doable. Consider this the restart to that 2026 reading goal.

And now I want to hear, what makes YOUR list of atypical “can’t miss” books?

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Hannah Coulter - Wendell Berry

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – John Mark Comer

Cathedrals in the Wild – Boyd Varty

Open – Andre Agassi

The Comfort Crisis – Michael Easter

The Road Back to You – Ian Morgan Cron

You Are What You Love – James K Smith

What is less talked about is how to do this well. It’s not enough to say, “Sleep more, hurry less, eat more stew.” Or even to point to the Danish habits of hygge that enable entire populations to endure days with 18 hours of darkness. Whether we are talking about the literal months of winter (e.g., how to survive in the Great White North) or a more figurative “winter” season of life (one of loss, grief, or merely feeling stagnant), learning how to winter well can lead to some of the greatest growth you’ll see in your life.

Last September, I thanked my vegetable garden beds for their hard work and tucked them under a thick blanket of maple leaves from a neighbor’s tree. This thick winter coat was a heavy load for the soil to bear. It choked out the sunlight. It trapped in the moisture. It prevented any fresh air from reaching those mounds of dirt. But when I peeled it back in April, a gorgeous bed of rich, dark soil was waiting for me. The intensity and discomfort of being trapped under layers of pressure, darkness, and stale air had transformed my weary soil into a vibrant new landscape of possibility for the months to come.

As I resurrected the beds, I found that I had missed covering the corner of one of the plots. It had gone all those months exposed and open. It had felt the warmth of the winter sun. It had received weeks of rain. It got to breathe that fresh, sharp February air. Yet it was in terrible shape: it was crumbling, dry, and clearly deficient in nutrients. It did not winter well, and it showed it.

We humans dislike discomfort. We go to great lengths to avoid it. We drown it out with mindless scrolling on social media, alcohol, wandering the aisles of Target with a grande mochaccino. Given the choice, we are that uncovered corner of my garden bed: give me the light, the fresh air, the hydration, thank you very much.

But to do so means we would be missing out on the potential process of transformation that could be happening in your soul in seasons like this, alchemy that takes the dirt in your life and produces a new, vibrant soil with far greater potential for cultivating and generating and flourishing.

This isn’t a new idea; much has been written by psychologists on the topic of post-traumatic growth, the idea that it is possible to emerge from challenging seasons of life with positive psychological changes.

So how do we do this? Whether you’re trying to merely survive the seemingly never-ending grey skies and frozen snow piles of a brutal Minnesota winter, or you feel trapped in a proverbial winter of life circumstances (a job you hate, singleness that feels oppressive, or just stuck in the sluggish torpor of stale routine), having a bit of intention can make all the difference between surviving and thriving:

• Be open to change, in your perspective, your habits, your relationships, and your systems of belief || This sounds obvious, but if you don’t change, nothing changes. Recently my client was venting about his newest manager, the third he’d tried at his company in under a year. His efforts to avoid pain by jumping teams every time things became problematic meant he had missed the opportunity to identify his role in the problem, both prolonging his winter season in his vocation and doing nothing to provide growth.

• Teach yourself to embrace discomfort || Face the loneliness. Name the pain. Grieve the loss. Make space for silence. Listen to what surfaces when you do. Practice asceticism in any form to train your brain that pain is not something to fear. Start small, this is a skill you develop over time. I often challenge my clients to practice this before they reach winter seasons, so that the muscle has been built up before it’s needed. Need ideas? Go 30 days without sugar. Try a cold plunge. Go on a silent retreat. Heck, just go on a 20 minute walk without your phone. Find ways to do things that don’t feel good in the moment, then celebrate yourself on the other side.

• Build a support system || Wintering does not mean isolating, though it is often a temptation to mistake one for the other. Bring in a few people who you trust who can speak hope and truth over you. Who can bring the light and the fresh air and a reheatable lasagna when the darkness feels too oppressive. We were not meant to do this life alone, and the winter will get the upper hand if we try to walk through it alone. This is a core component of the Danish concept of hygge: safety through togetherness (so core, that it is on their national tourism website!)

This is not to say that we must go chasing discomfort in our lives (though Michael Easter would argue that). Pain, darkness, discomfort, it will find you. This is one of the unavoidable realities of life. The question is: will you be ready to walk through winter well?

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For more on these topics, check out:

• The Comfort Crisis – Michael Easter

• The Little Book of Hygge – Meik Wiking

• Bouncing Forward – Michaela Haas

• Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl

Does this make your palms sweaty just to read?

You assume you know how the story finishes, something involving Muller’s wife reading about his bravery at his funeral. But no. The story defies reason: as soon as Muller began his swim towards the jaws of death, the shark took one look at him, and changed his mind, leaving Michel floating alone in the blue with a racing heart and a new lease on life.

You see, Great Whites are an apex predator – they have almost no one in their universe who is a viable match for their strength, their speed, or (obviously) those teeth. They are used to 99% of the world running in fear from them. So when something turns around and stands up to it, it suddenly realizes that thing isn’t prey, very likely even something to be feared.

What a powerful metaphor for the inner life of the mind. How many things do we keep hidden in the dark corners of our mind, our heart, our soul, terrified to face them, thinking that if we do, they will overpower us and crush us. That anger towards your manager. That shame from that seventh grade teacher. That loneliness from being single for so long. Your failure. Your weaknesses. Your bad habits. We keep these tucked away, out of sight, and work tirelessly to keep them there.

But the problem with doing this is that your body and mind know they are there. You have a finite amount of energy to give each day when you wake up. When you choose to keep things hidden, your body has to expend some of that precious energy working to keep it stuffed away, energy that could be so much better used…

• To form new relationships

• To start a new hobby

• To take a first step towards self improvement

• To create

What we often miss is that when we finally decide to turn around and squarely face these hidden demons, they lose their terror. They lose their size. They lose their force. And they stop draining you of your energy because you no longer have to work to keep them concealed.

We need to learn to swim towards our sharks.

What does this look like practically? Curt Thompson, neurobiologist and psychiatrist, says we have to “name it to tame it.” Grab a journal, head to a quiet place, and with curiosity, see if you can put a name to what you are feeling.

Practical tip: Struggle to come up with detailed emotions? We use an emotions wheel in many of my sessions. You think I’m kidding, but as a grown adult, could you name even 10% of the ones below? We are stunted in our vocabulary around emotions and it’s holding us back…

This simple practice can have a radical impact. Consider my client Hadar: she felt intense anxiety every time she walked into her team room to present her weekly data set at work. For months, she had stuffed this anxiety down and tried to ignore it, but it had become almost crippling. Through our conversations, she was able to identify that a lot of shame was hiding below the surface, due to an off-handed comment a bad manager had given her over a year ago. We equipped her with truths about her skills to combat that comment and practiced mentally walking into the team room armed with her newly acknowledged skills. The next week, she presented her data with confidence – the shame wasn’t gone, but it was a lot quieter. And over time, it grew smaller and smaller until it was no longer an influencing voice in those moments.

Yes, this can feel like a lot of work. The work of building awareness is not easy, but it is always worthwhile. With time, you will start to see that your sharks are less of a predator than you thought, and you can take back control over the ocean of your mind again.