I sat with it.

Observed it.

Tried to forget about it.

It kept on cycling…

I took in my surroundings… The tree swaying outside my window with the leaves sounding like a soft chandelier in the wind. The way the light hitting my vase drew patterns on the wall. The smell of the coffee I made earlier lingering …

Something started to shift.

It didn’t suddenly feel resolved, but sticking with the mix of sensations grounded something.

As if my capacity to hold the moment was stretching.

The air started to feel like it was expanding.

Feeling off didn’t automatically mean you can’t go on.

It seemed like holding a messy realization was becoming more doable.

Feeling more than one streamlined idea of what you expect to feel might show you that you can hold more. Letting your armor be pierced. Not blocking what feels hard to bear right away but wiggling around a bit. Making yourself more vulnerable to unsettling sensations while also enabling more pleasant ones to surface alongside that moment.

Deciding to evade the blow of the moment because facing it feels too raw can be a way out.

It also keeps something from connecting…

Exchanging distraction for more contact with the moment changes your perception. The response to what is happening can feel messier, louder, more varied.

More Tender.

More Raw…

Your sensitivity heightens.

Retreating from giving something a try can be a strategy to evade defeat.

It also can keep you from knowing what you are capable of.

When you look for a reason not to work out today you will likely find one.

Whenever I have not run for a longer time, starting off again does not feel great. I’ve wobbled on my mat restarting my yoga practice after a break. I´ve come back to it so often though that I know the pattern. Recognizable enough to come back.

Often, it’s as ordinary as something not going well until it does.

Sometimes you're simply in the period when you're still bad at it. Then eventually you're less bad at it.

Many things you label impossible you might find yourself having done some day.

Until I ran my first marathon, it was something I categorically didn’t consider. It came with the worry about embarrassing myself. The risk of being seen, overtaken, not making it to the officially declared finishing line.

At times, you leap when your curiosity gets the better of you and is stronger than the desire to stay safe. You let yourself be touched by what you have shied away from so far.

Daring discomfort.

Staying with that bewildering mix of daring while wanting to hide.

Breathing through the concoction of emotions you can´t clearly discern.

Choosing curiosity alongside fear.

Daring alongside trembling.

Staying with it.

Letting it unfold some more before you conclude prematurely.

After cringing at my oversight, I took a closer look. To my delight, a few small holes that had been bothering me had shrunk into themselves, closing up, while a newly felted effect gave the piece a modern edge. I found myself drawn to its second life.

What if error is merely a label?

What if an apparent failure is the ignition that opens the original plan up into something more?

I began experimenting further, breathing new life into sweaters that had lost their shape.

Admittedly, I’ve shrunk some down to fit a friend’s Jack Russell terrier, but I’ve also expanded my joy of exploration and wardrobe.

It´s the silver lining of the mishap.

Testing and adjusting.
Chalking it up to experience.

When visiting a weaving factory in Morocco a few years ago, I learned from artisans developing recipes for natural dyes. Trial and error was the way — a constant back-and-forth between knowledge and recalibration.

It amounted to taking the next step while leaning into unpredictability.

Allowing inconclusiveness to linger.

This path rarely takes you where you expected. Yet it’s often how you breach the barriers separating you from a breakthrough.

My undeniable lack of direction often lands me in places I didn’t know existed. It’s how I know my surroundings better than most - because I get lost so often.

And still - what if being lost is just a label for seeing something for the first time?

We often get identified with the labels we give things, without noticing. Your knowledge expands as you resist the security of the default.

You allow doubt to linger long enough to unravel premature judgement. Letting the friction loosen the grip of a fixed story.

Born with a severe hip displacement, I spent my first two years in solid plaster and special orthoses. It restricted the natural progression toward walking. The doctors’ advice at the time was minimal interference, to allow the toddler to discover the most natural way around the obstacle.

I figured out my own moves, wiggling around the limitation. Rarely repeating what didn’t work.

Playfulness over instructions.
Action over theory.
Refining strategies on the go.

Knowledge grows from lived experience.

Touching a hot surface teaches a child to pull back faster than any conceptual warning ever could.

It’s how you form your own reliable truth.

In design, some of our most successful outcomes came from testing a single shape in different fabrics, because the result spoke for itself.

Putting yourself out there - and possibly failing - takes guts.
It means allowing yourself to get bruised.
Knowing when something is worth the gamble - and when to yield.

Questioning the fatality of failure is how you find the courage to continue.

The regular traffic dies down - on the roads, at the coffee shop, among the regular early birds in the woods.

It feels like a breather.

The rushed pace slows, giving room to reconnect with the neighborhood. The people who stay move slower to brace the heat, as if the regular movie of life is running in slow motion.

It lets you see more.

It lets you reconnect.

Have you ever explored your own neighborhood as if you were a tourist? Appreciating what you ignore on a daily basis?

For most of my life, I have been in constant motion. There has always been this untamable curiosity to explore and create – piano, flute, percussion, choir, ballet, rock climbing, skiing.

As a kid, I hosted tea parties for imaginary friends and stuffed animals regularly and drove my caretakers to the brink of sanity - like the time they found me standing on the windowsill of a three-story building, covered in white Penaten crème, serenading the ghosts of the past.

There is this inner drive I’ve always felt. It´s propelled me along and occasionally almost spun me out of my orbit.

It’s been thrilling.

It’s been exhausting.

What you want might not always be what you need.

Overriding the signals works until it doesn’t.

I found myself confronted with the unasked questions that had been hovering alongside the action once I was forced to slow down.

The energy I once threw outward suddenly seemed to be bouncing around internally, unassigned…

…Seeking a different outlet.

Slowing down has turned out to be more difficult than accelerating.

As you stop trying to be everywhere, you connect deeper with where you are. You direct your energy more precisely…

You stay alert.

Actively waiting.

Conserving your strength.

…speeding up more efficiently when needed.

I’ve been noticing how conversations seem more profound when slowing down enough to let them resonate. Food tastes more intense when I chew slower. Colors seem more vibrant, sounds more detailed, and feelings have more depth.

Things become more intense when you stop skimming across the surface.

You use the energy instead of being used by it.

It felt bizarrely accurate…

…Experiencing something not being enough.

That drive to share.

Wanting to be witnessed.

Needing proof.

When living in NY just before social media truly took hold, my experiences in the fashion scene - dancing topless on bar counters - remain vivid in my mind, without a record.

Not feeling monitored felt freer.

It also felt more protective.

I wasn’t preoccupied about having my unflattering moments or what I maybe should have skipped altogether replayed.

There was a sense of freedom…

…And there were downsides.

Knowing you are being captured alters how you act.

Feeling unobserved can blur your boundaries.

Your self-consciousness becomes louder.

So does your awareness of others.

Being off-line triggered a sense of responsibility to watch out for each other. We checked in face-to-face, gaging if a friend needed support by how their energy felt.

The close-up came with more warmth and more bluntness. You found yourself keeping tabs if a friend was about to disappear with a stranger, agreeing on a sign of life call the next day. You often found yourself patiently listening the next day if it had gone pear-shaped.

It was a different kind of exposure and a communal safety net – cheering on exciting developments while sharing cringe-worthy moments, often saving you from the sting of repeating them.

It takes courage to look each other in the eye.

Virtual communication blurs things.

It’s harder to say things in person.

It also changes everything.

Often, a personal exchange reveals more than I expected, as when you stay with the moment nuances start to show.

Things become more visible.

More memorable…

A highly creative former boss liked to point out how taking notes prevents you from fully absorbing an experience as your attention splits.

I started to notice how getting stuck on the notepad decreased my ability to listen. To my surprise I could recall a remarkable number of details when I exchanged jotting things down for focus.

Maybe forgetting to document something means you were fully there.

No proof—just the moment.

We pondered that the more roles you pile on, the easier it becomes to lose touch with yourself.

You subtly disconnect from the most important relationship you will ever have.

Yourself.

By constantly focusing on how you appear you dull your capacity to embody your experience.

I have a friend who got so infatuated with her online persona - distorted with filters - that she got hooked on adjusting her real-life looks to match the image.

She struggles to face her reflection in the mirror, feeling alienated from the person looking back at her.

It’s limited her life to the few people she feels okay meeting face-to-face, having exported her self-worth to external acknowledgment.

When you rely too deeply on the mask you create the mask starts wearing you.

The contact with life becomes more challenging.

A friend of mine living in NY will never enter a bar without making sure the person she is meeting is already there by sending a message upon arrival.

It´s a security measure.

Resisting exposure.

It also keeps life one step away.

My mom comes with a childlike spirit, lacking countless filters that society navigates the smoother operation of their interactions with, sometimes delivering the bluntest remarks without hesitation.

Her frankness has stunned me at times.
It’s also made me deeply trust her.

It´s unapologetically her.

She married a Black man who wasn’t Catholic—a decision that challenged both racial and religious norms in the Irish community she was raised in before settling in a foreign country.

The disability shaking her balance forces her into unpredictable contact with life, asking her to fall, bruise, and carrying on.

It´s uncompromisingly direct.

It strips away the illusion of perfection

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There is something unguarded in the way she is open to the unfamiliar.

She fiercely sticks with an unwavering inner beat.

Performative posture can act as a smoke screen concealing your inner fears, depriving you of true connection.

On a business trip in Hangzhou, I watched a group of stylish young people at a trendy rooftop bar ordering elaborate cocktails they never drank, posting photos to sell a lifestyle, barely engaging with each other, trapped in a bubble of digital curation.

The impulse to post gets between you and the moment - exchanging the sensation for proof of it.

Contact often begins where distraction no longer works.

Life becomes harder to avoid once you stop buffering it.

Who you appear to be can be far from your true nature.

In that gap, something important gets lost.

You can move convincingly through life while feeling completely absent.

In my work on gowns for red carpet appearances, countless fittings brought me close to people the world recognizes instantly – who often claimed to not ever feel seen.

It’s tempting to get trapped in the illusion of feeling alive by staying busy - confusing what you do with who you are.

The more you keep yourself occupied, the less space there is to process.
The more you rely on external input, the less you can stand boredom.

It feeds itself.

Eventually, something gives.

It’s often in that boredom that an innovative song begins to surface. Sitting with the vacuum lets you hear what’s trying to reach you.

As intimidating as white space initially feels, your nervous system adjusts to more nuanced perception.

Sensitivity increases. Sound separates into delicate layers. Colors sharpen - like a Polaroid developing.

The blur lifts.

Life becomes clearer.

Not always comfortable.

Undeniably real.

While these circumstances made me see performance as a natural part of life, I also developed an inner rage against the constant pressure to deliver - deeply insecure about whether I could be appreciated for simply being me.

It felt like a transaction.

It made me confuse my worth with my output.

In a fight with my dad one day, who insistently claimed I was special, I stormed out of the house screaming, “I just want to be ordinary” - surprising both of us.

It’s a tricky balance: wanting to be seen while refusing to sell yourself out.

External approval will likely never provide durable relief.

It always irritates me when I hear about overnight success. It’s like skipping the painstakingly arduous path that leads to a gold medal, bestseller, scientific breakthrough, or regained health after a severe illness.

We highlight the performance, neglecting that it´s only a fraction of the process – an echo we give more weight to than the tedious path of dedicated repetition.

Most of your life lies in the ordinary.

Success is as fleeting as anything else.

It’s those disciplined hours practicing an instrument, writing, painting, or training that ask for your persistence. It’s the mundane moments of washing, cooking, and exercising.

The daily repetition.

Your habits.

Your grit.

Your ability to keep going.

You sign up for life by considering every moment relevant, rather than gazing at some far-off horizon of relief.

You accept impermanence.

You allow Imperfection.

A friend who curates a flawless online persona recently confided in me about a serious health challenge they are battling. I felt caught, realizing I hadn’t challenged the shiny cover story that served as a shield from an uncomfortable truth—for both of us.

It felt as if I had chosen an anesthetic that kept me from having to relate to a more demanding reality. Buying into the performative surface image had hindered true communication.

Connection is more nuanced.

It often occurs in the off-beat moments.

At flashy professional fashion events, some of my most memorable encounters have been while waiting in line for the bathroom—helping a stranger with a stuck zipper while sharing a laugh about life beyond the formal setup.

At family parties, the best conversations consistently happen while gathering in the kitchen to clean up, instead of sitting at the set dining table.

It´s off the grid.

It deepens the contact.

Singing in the national opera as a kid, genuine connection happened backstage. We bonded in the costume rooms and makeup areas while waiting for the next scene—stripped of our onstage personas, away from the stage lights.

Beyond categorization.

Reading between the scripted lines.

Throughout my work in fashion, the intimate setting of celebrity fittings led to memorable encounters with world-famous individuals outside their public personas.

Preparing for a perfected spotlight moment was immersed in discussions about meal prep, podcasts, new workout routines, body insecurities, children, hand-washing sweaters, and dogs.

When letting your guard down, you allow life to reach you.

A friend once suggested that we must commit to a room in life so as not to spend our days in the hallway. It stuck with me for a long time, challenging my decisions that led to spending more time in transit than being stationary.

Over the years, the comment paled. It has been in literal hallways, backstage areas, kitchens, doctors’ waiting rooms, and at airport gates that I’ve felt most connected to the rawness of reality.

Beyond the scripts.

Challenging the agenda.

Wendell Berry said “It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.”

Life has always felt the most real to me in the margins.

Those in-between moments before committing to a specific action.

Remembering to play.

Connecting with the joy of it.

The actual process being the goal.

It’s that energy of engaging without contemplating the outcome, like the kids playing basketball in a caged court opposite a café I frequent where the palpable energy of laughter, shouting, and quick responses to the game vibrates across the square.

Doing something you truly enjoy lets time fly.

Your energy can expand when doing something for the sake of it, like my deep need for hiking, which defies rational reason - climbing a mountain only to descend again.

At times you need the most unreasonable things most.

You find yourself needing to cook an elaborate 5 course dinner from whatever ingredients are left in your fridge even though you are the only guest, as it triggers a specific enthusiasm.

You allow yourself to interact with reality before knowing the outcome.

It seems Illogical.

It makes total sense to you.

You connect to unexpected ideas from a space beyond your mind. Allowing yourself to explore as you hover around a topic even though you can’t explain why.

Talking to a friend who was working on a project making costumes for a show, we observed how playful exploration seems to be getting less attractive. She was struggling to find people who see creative development as something that includes trial and error to reveal new techniques and ideas as applicants were mainly interested in a precise plan.

The blank canvas seemed threatening.

Which kept innovative energy at bay.

It’s in the space of unscripted idleness that the most creative ideas often reveal themselves. It’s usually less about finding something new and more about seeing what’s been there all along within new context.

Encouraging possibilities.

Staying with the moment.

Reinventing the known.

We were laughing with a friend about how we had about ten cassette tapes as kids, replaying them countless times, looping the tape back in with a biro when the tension wore out. She mentioned how her child, with limitless streaming services, finds repeating a story even just once an affront to his overstimulated senses.

You take in the familiar with new eyes.

Many friends of mine in the fashion business are increasingly frustrated by being pushed to merely copy whatever garments seem successful at competitor brands. Playful experimentation is increasingly frowned upon as a waste of paid time.

The pressure to perform suffocates the trust in creative innovation, resulting in comparable brands having very similar products.

The other day, I recognized that a person I know took the helm at a known commercial fashion brand before getting confirmation, as the clothing range was almost identical down to the details we had developed together for a brand, we had worked at previously.

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The pressure to perform suffocates trust in innovation.

It can kill the enthusiasm to continue.

Some of the best creative work I’ve collaborated on has emerged from a playful approach. It grew from experimenting with aspects of a project away from the set expectations of the final presentation. Those sewing tests that randomly came from playing with fabric to understand what it can do in the atelier, before it gets framed into a presentable design.

In my first years of working for couture studios all of the gowns that ended up on the red carpet from the Emmys to the Oscars came from experimental swatches to find a language that could be translated into a full garment.

Encouraging failure.

Not seeing it as final.

Seeking security in pre-defined results can numb your courage. It stifles serendipity of things coming together in a coincidental way you could not have thought yourself into.

It was through an error that we developed a new way of finishing lightweight garments that were a successful addition to traditional tailoring. Someone burned a fabric by ironing it too long to see how the texture changes to realize that it left a clear edge that was resilient enough to not need further finishing.

It was an initial mistake.

It became an innovative steppingstone.

Missing a goal can reveal an alternative result that was hiding in plain sight. Releasing the pressure on a specific outcome than heighten our courage to try something unexpected.

Staying open-minded.

Engaging.

Throughout my years in design, it became apparent that to truly understand clothes, we had to wear them. No theory could replace the real-life insight of lovingly draped double-bowed wrist ties dangling in your lunch soup or while overlength belts hanging out of the car-door, dragging along the street on your commute to work.

Following your gut first.

Allowing real-life contact.

Letting observation refine the idea.

An Iraqi friend who came to Sweden as a refugee and worked as an accessory’s designer in London and Paris while frequently working in Italy is an amazing cook.

She calls cooking is her relaxing playground where she toys around with all the different cultures she is being impacted by. She mixes traditional recipes, often contradicting and expanding her equally talented mom’s teachings, creating dishes you wouldn’t necessarily try from a rational point of view.

Rattling traditional instructions.

Seeing what shakes free.

The most straightforward way for the wires to reconnect is to take the speed down.

Letting things untangle.

Letting emotions settle.

Pausing.

You listen to your energy levels rather than insisting they function according to a strict, unyielding agenda. You grant your body the respect of trusting its hints.

You stay with the unrest until it pales.

Catching up with yourself.

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When pointing out that he is in a hurry, a character in Claire Keegan’s book Small Things Like These advises a man delivering coal: “Then stay until the urgency falls away from you.”

Moving with a constant, underlying urgency wears you down faster. It’s like failing to switch gears, blocking you from running smoothly as you blow all your fuel in one rigid go.

When living in Madrid, I learned from a local friend to walk considerably slow to brace the heat when we went out for lunch at the height of noon. It was completely counterintuitive to me, but it also kept me from sweating through my business attire.

You adjust your pace.

You maintain vibrancy.

In the high-pressure environments I have been engaged with, constant busyness was sported as a bewildering status symbol. Pausing was often frowned upon, making it habitually unlikely to ever step on the brakes.

It was shortsighted.

The tension increased.

The capacity to recover subtly drained.

As a child, I always looked forward to the intermissions during the operas we frequently attended because of my fragile attention span. It was the breathing space I craved to digest the drama, beauty, and longing evoked by each performance.

I reveled in the intensity of the performance being soothed by the slow motion of the people wandering through the halls wallpapered in silk, with the crystals of the grand chandeliers vibrating with the energy of the intermission. The sensory overload of the piece was suddenly slowed down to people sharing hushed comments, carefully balancing champagne flutes, or fanning their overheated faces with the program leaflet of the evening.

The pause felt every bit as important as the performance.

It allowed processing.

Letting things settle.

Refreshing attention.

While working with a psychoanalyst in Spain after years of habitually racing along, I realized I had lost the ability to distinguish if I was numbed by constant input, tired, or hungry. My questionable strategy was to override unpleasant feelings I’d rather not have a closer look at with the next immediate plan of action.

There was a constant itch to keep on going on a schedule I felt perpetually behind on, while the adrenaline I was running on proved to be an inconsistent energy source, plummeting the moment I stopped.

Unable to bear ambivalent feelings, I developed a habitual reflex to anxiously push for the next experience before I could process anything - overwhelming my system with unprocessed data.

Slowing down seemed an unlikely move.

It was also the most urgent one.

When you fail to digest what you are experiencing, your natural recovery mechanisms stop functioning because you constantly override their capacity to reboot.

The constant craving I felt was a warning signal. I’ve learned over time to pick up on the urge to seek relief, chase what I suddenly want, and search for immediate solutions, without believing I need to act on it right away.

You sit with an unsettling energy long enough for it to start showing you something. You allow yourself to unplug long enough to start feeling clarity.

Remaining available.

Staying curious.

Listening.

Noticing.

At times, slowing down is the most efficient way forward.

You gain time by distinguishing frantic doing from efficiently getting something done. When you find your most natural pace, your energy reserves recharge on the go.

You reconnect beyond the noise dulling your processing.

Missing links suddenly become accessible.

You find yourself trusting your gut.

Your focus restores.

Maybe it’s not your coping mechanisms you need to change, but the lifestyle that requires them in the first place.

The pandemic revealed how dependent I had become on the dopamine rush of constant activity and novelty, losing touch with myself. As life slowed down, I started to explore the nearby woods extensively and never stopped since. It was like finally looking up and realizing I had stopped taking in the life I was living.

Exhaling.

Getting lost in the moment.

Regaining the capacity to stay with where I am.

It felt like resetting my inner clock. Learning to breathe deeply again. Feeling my nervous system gain stability by relaxing after having been riled up, rather than staying in constant alert mode.

Time not filled with a schedule is becoming the ultimate luxury of our modern world.

You give yourself space to recalibrate, to refrain from running full speed in the wrong direction. You allow your doubt to surface to show you where you might be scattering your energy. You feel the vulnerability, anxiety, and fatigue so they can fully unfold for you to let them go, rather than habitually pushing them back down.

Stepping out of the daily race is a powerful move to feel yourself again, to detect what you truly need.

You allow your signals to fully form before you judge them. You give yourself enough time to feel what naturally heightens your enthusiasm as you do more of it. You express your own truth repeatedly until a suitable structure naturally emerges around it.

You breathe deeply before responding out of reflex.

It lets you detect your own voice beyond the noise.

It’s not necessarily loud, but stubbornly persistent. It has the power to sap all the steam I got up with in the morning, like air puffing from a balloon that seemed bouncy just a moment ago.

It feels edgy.

Curious.

At times blunt.

Every time I pass one of the bridges weighed down by lovelocks, I find myself wondering if we are trying to outsmart doubt—attempting to lock down something that was never fully controllable to begin with.

Doubt has made me question anything and everything. My choice of apartments in an unfamiliar city on a hunch. If I’m following my own rhythm or someone else’s expectations? My family’s? My industry’s? Social media’s? If I remember things the way they actually were at the time? Where I am conforming to a general truth that does not align with how I feel? Why I am here at all?

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It feels like a somewhat awkward flavor right in the middle of the conversation with life, a bit like a pinch asking for attention.

It can feel like a slow drain of energy over a longer period, like when I increasingly caught myself wondering why my enthusiasm for my job didn’t feel as real anymore when representing that role.

It often shows up for a split second, like a plug being pulled, when I feel caught by myself stating something while realizing mid-sentence that it feels surprisingly off.

When creating, doubt is an inevitable part of the equation. It can feel thrilling to challenge what you are working on, and devastating when you realize you should have listened more closely to your intuition.

It’s fickle.

It’s bold.

It rattles the cages you keep yourself confined to.

It’s also what propels you toward what is actually yours.

Doubt can increase your sensitivity. It can reveal more clarity, like clearing a lens when you allow yourself to question the easier choice of one-dimensionality. Like when considering that your colleague might have had a tough morning with their kids, struggling to get to work on time as they rush past you without greeting you.

Doubt can take the sting.

It allows humanness.

Doubt is the edge taking you beyond your automated behaviors.

It lets you go deeper.

Beyond the obvious.

You question what you think you know—that you might not ever get the bigger picture. It’s a kind of intelligence that brings you closer to your innate inner wisdom as you are courageous enough to face your own disillusionment.

Questioning yourself is a form of intelligence.

Doubt can reveal what certainty hides.

Yet, at times it’s your doubting itself that you need to seriously question.

If all the brides I’ve accompanied through making their wedding dresses had acted upon the doubts that reliably showed up during the fittings, none of them would have ever got married.

Some doubt is wisdom.

Some doubt is noise.

The challenge is discerning between the two.

Often the best way to face doubt is right through the middle of the discomfort while not getting carried away by its current.

With any creative team I have worked with, we could never shake doubt when developing new ideas. Was something going to look as cool as we felt it would? Would it sell? Would it work in the chosen fabric?

Doubt becomes information.

Nothing to obey.

Nor eliminate.

But observe.

At times, listening to the doubt would have prevented us from leftover glitter fabric nobody on the sales team got excited about the way the creative teams had felt. But there were also surprising innovations, like jelly bathing shoes becoming commercially unexpectedly successful despite doubt loudly participating in each meeting.

Doubt accompanies both, good and bad ideas.

Maybe doubt is like taking the temperature of a situation rather than something to solve.

It’s curiosity.

It’s perspective.

Doubt has kept me from embarking on the final ridge towards a mountain peak as much as from going through a dark alley that didn’t feel safe to me.

You stay in conversation with reality, making the best decision you can with what is available to you.

I’ve moved to new countries despite doubt being a persistent companion, becoming intimately familiar with everything I was second-guessing while never knowing what would have happened if I hadn’t taken the leap.

There often won’t be feedback.

You keep moving without ever knowing what would have happened otherwise.

There was an increasing trend of silent retreats, detoxing, and meditation sanctuaries to spend some time off-the-grid in a minimalist lifestyle that ended up being a scheduled interruption of an otherwise overloaded everyday existence.

There was a moment of recovery.

The effect wore off surprisingly fast.

Maybe you don´t need a retreat but a life you don´t want to escape from?

Perspective matters.

When living in NY I ran and rollerbladed countless kilometers along the Hudson River, trying to shake off the restless energy building up alongside my over-loaded days.

While trying to cram as much life as possible into a day, it slowly dawned on me that the only way I ever seemed to have more time was by doing less.

Going fewer places.

Taking them in more deeply.

The quality of what you do is shaped by the space you give it.

Letting your feelings catch up with the moment rather than being stuck in a perpetual hangover from too many impressions.

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It’s like relaxing by listening to the birch swinging in front of my kitchen window, instead of cramming more input into my overloaded brain while making tea.

Lightening the overload.

Being more focused.

You choose to be less available. Not picking up the phone every time it rings, not joining every party, not knowing every trend. You refrain from frantically networking with everyone you meet, to give undivided attention when you do connect.

You let yourself miss things, considering that continuous input can dull your senses the way overeating eventually makes food less enjoyable.

You choose what you want to spend your time on - deliberately saying No to many things so you can say Yes to what matters most.

Discerning.

Moving in real-time.

You observe your senses, catching the tipping point when the reward of the intake tilts towards draining your energy. Experimenting with pausing subscriptions, stepping away from apps, leaving notifications unanswered, or skipping routines you never questioned.

When I increase the coffees I have in a day, the effect weakens over time. Sometimes it feels as if wanting in general works the same way.

You take a step back.

Observing yourself.

You distinguish between reflexive habitual actions and those that bring you genuine joy. You question what you truly want to experience or what you might only be doing because most people are doing it.

Choosing voluntary simplicity.

Filtering out distractions.

It makes your experiences more precise, the way saying less sometimes conveys more, while saying nothing at all sometimes says it all.

There is this clarity of something not needing an explanation as it´s self-explanatory.

I love the smart packaging of the Japanese triangle-shaped onigiri rice snack. It integrates the packaging into the process of opening, holding, and eating it.

The simplest approach is often the most comprehensible one. Like an outfit of few items making it more convincing, while nothing is more attractive than a person’s effortless energy, regardless of clothes.

Choosing less is an attitude.

It feels like taking charge of what claims your time.

You challenge the true cost of living by challenging how much of what’s already there that you are missing, like not shopping for food a few days longer to see more in your cabinets. It can be as banal as realizing that while you are stressing about not having pasta, there is rice sitting right there.

You contemplate how much is enough.

You surrender to things being finite.

Not knowing how much time you have makes it more precious. You let it remind you how small the return can be on some of the things claiming your energy, time, and attention.

The room expands.

The silence becomes louder.

You start to hear yourself again.

When re-reading them in the evening most of them have naturally worked themselves out or become obsolete. It’s made me experiment with eventually throwing the list away without looking at it again as the most urgent matters seem to stick by themselves.

There is a natural selection system.

It makes the list obsolete most of the time.

In the corporate rush, we often ended the day feeling we hadn’t accomplished anything because we were struggling to catch up with the to-do lists we were constantly adding to. It felt like we never got to our actual job because we were too busy trying to clear the desk to get started - mistaking preparation for participation.

A list can feel soothing.

It can end up owning you.

Completing trivial tasks gives the illusion of progress.

It can also keep you from getting anything significant done.

The relief of ticking off an item rarely lasted as it was being swallowed by the anxiety of the next item. While the list was meant to be a safety net to lower anxiety through structure, it often did the opposite.

It became a self-expanding entity that blocked the capacity to discern.

It felt busy while not being efficient.

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Traveling before social media, I repeatedly found myself frantically following must-see items in travel guides, my attention stuck in the book rather than on the road.

Taking in the advice from experts kept me from fully engaging with where I was. Making a strict beeline for a specific goal made me miss the scenery on the way.

Maybe by letting go of your lists you see more of what’s right in front of you.

Dropping the plan.

Gaining the experience.

I’ve discovered that I usually end up in the relevant places by chance when I loosen the frame and trust my gut - recognizing patterns, following the energy of what attracts me, asking a local on the spot.

Your instincts sharpen as you rely on them.

There will always be more things to drop than things you can do.

Letting things fall off the table strengthens your focus on what you do with your finite time. You remember what’s important to you as you make space for it.

You drop the bucket list.

And you write your own story.

It’s about being more curious than worried. It’s about not deciding in advance what the experience is supposed to be.

Allowing for unexpected opportunities.

Living instead of planning.

It shifts the energy from what you think you should be doing to engaging with what you feel drawn to.

Trusting that things have more than one way of working themselves out.

Letting it be different from what you imagined.

I’ve repeatedly been invited to dinner just as I was fretting about having no food in the house. When worrying about washing the car in spring, heavy rain often clears the pollen off the surface.

When shifting focus from what you think is necessary you free energy to work with what’s available.

It makes you see more.

Even though it´s the same.

My friends in their eighties and nineties are the ones who encourage me most to follow what I intuitively feel drawn to. They bluntly state that often, by the time you feel you’ve finally cleared the slate to do what you truly desire, you are no longer capable.

What if you are can no longer climb the mountain you are waiting for in a few decades?

What if the person you want to ask out on a walk is no longer around once you gather the courage?

It stuck with me.

On a walk the other day after weeks of rain I passed several uprooted trees that made the sensitive balance of the roots holding enormous trunks and expansive canopies visible. It exposed how much of their life had been hidden beneath the ground.

What if you leave space for what isn’t obvious?

What if something is at work even when you can’t see it?

In my time in corporate fashion having visible proof for an idea vs. trusting a hunch was a constant quarrel between the creatives and the planning teams.

Often ideas we felt certain about got dropped, not because they seemed bad, but because they were more difficult to explain.

Pressure made it harder to trust. It felt like quite the stretch.

Then things started coming up once we allowed for them.

Sometimes answers show up.

You don’t know why.

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You start noticing more…your body…small signals, like your heartbeat picking up when something feels right.

Sometimes you just know. Like not being surprised when running into someone you were intending to meet up with.

There are patterns you can’t explain. Like thinking of someone

- and then they call. Or a friend that fell of the radar reappears, and the conversation picks up where it left off.

Creative insight often shows up out of nowhere.

A hunch proves to be accurate in hindsight.

A friend of mine that was grappling with a complex problem in computer science told me that while he had been methodically analyzing an issue for weeks, the answer came out of the blue when he intended to give his mind a break by swimming his usual laps one morning.

Something in you keeps processing.

I’m often surprised how logical certain developments seem when looking back.

When one of my closest friends in NY moved to Madrid, it hit me hard. Not long afterwards things shifted and I ended up moving to the same city.

It seemed unlikely.

It made sense in hindsight.

At times, when I am on a windy walk in the woods the trees seem to be whispering to each other. I feel sheltered. Protected. Connected to their energy as If something seems to be moving through it all.

It seems unlikely, yet it makes total sense to me.

We sat on the pavement with me feeling anger rising while she was laughing. She explained that her response propels her toward getting up again rather than letting a darker mood get the better of her.

Her response keeps her moving.

It´s the push she gives herself.

What you see depends on how you look.

It changes everything.

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Missing connecting flights brought me to places I never planned to see. Choosing how to approach the detour was on me.

Our personal lens is always shifting.

The markers are unsteady.

A great-aunt of mine used to insist my father use the cheap whiskey for her and save the expensive bottle for guests. When he gave her a questioning look, she explained that she drank for the effect, not the flavor.

You see what others see—and take something else from it.

It´s up for interpretation.

For me, going up a mountain feels necessary.
For others, it makes no sense.

How something registers reveals your dreams and insecurities.

When the trend of perms was at its height, my friends got frizzy treatments while I did everything possible to flatten my curls. As a kid, I made hairbands out of straight Christmas tinsel to achieve my ideal style.

How you look at something changes how it feels.

It´s subjective.

When traveling in Uganda and the DRC my ex-boyfriend’s military background led him to view the heavy military presence and armed guards as protection, while I felt threatened.

In contrast, when visiting a relative’s home in a village in Italy where the doors are rarely locked and the hiding place of the key in the garden is known to many, I feel safe.

I wonder if security cameras of well-kept mansions invite attention, while a rundown exterior suggests there’s nothing worth taking.

Maybe the assumptions you make about something have more weight than what you’re looking at.

When I return to a place I’ve lived in, it often feels different. As the stories I lived there pale, it clears the palette.

Not because the place changed—but because I did.

For me, it took the collision of losing my job, my relationship, and our shared home—along with a heavy skiing accident and my dad waking from a coma to not recognize me for months—to shift how I saw things.

It was rough and tender all at once.

It pushed me towards a second take.

I felt more connected, raw

and real when things fell apart than when everything worked.

There’s a tradeoff.

Insisting on a prediction can blind you to what’ s currently brewing.

In the mountains I’ve found myself taking cover from a storm several times despite meticulous preparations.

Paying attention becomes more relevant than relying on a plan.
Focusing your energy on where you are.

Moving with the moment.
The terrain.
The weather.
The current step.

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My mom, who falls frequently due to a genetic defect affecting her balance, was beaming the other day, as she realized halfway through walking to a nearby store that she forgot her stick.

We agreed to plan for the likelihood of falling - while expecting a better outcome. She is in a long-term scientific research program where her case continues to prove medical predictions encouragingly inaccurate.

Unlearning what you felt certain about widens your options.

Releasing your grip on a specific result opens the door to defying even the worst odds.

It’s a chance.

It’s a choice.

Trend forecasts are central to business strategies in the fashion industry. I’ve found it to be a double-edged sword. Over-preparation often hindered adaptability in my corporate experience.

It often worked best to treat daily tasks like a dance - adapting the movement when the choreography no longer aligned.

Working with dissonance.

Holding tension.

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I had programmed myself to reflexively think about the next task while still busy with what I was presently doing - accelerating the moment doubt about my pace crept in.

I was seamlessly moving, as if scrolling through life - the way social media has no page break, one topic flowing into the next.

While it seemed I should have been getting more done, coming up for air from the haze often revealed that I had bypassed what truly mattered. Trying to clear the path to get there kept me in a loop—missing what actually resonated.

When that fell away, the vacuum felt like a threat. It made me feel naked – stripped of the noise and distraction, alone with the silence I had buried under intensity.

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Silence is an intimate state that can make you feel surprisingly exposed.

There is courage in letting it linger. Waiting for the sting to lessen. Allowing it to change shape.

To me, the first step toward space was often taking a deep breath in the middle of the rush. A faint opening interrupting the density of the day.

Noticing.
Staying with what is unfinished.
Letting conversations remain open.

Not turning everything into a conclusion. Establishing a rhythm rather than chasing a result.

Allowing space is a door to let the unknown in. It makes room for what can easily be missed - and cannot be forced.

It’s a subtle question buried under set structures. It is a chance for adventure, innovation, and growth—a course correction that suits you better than the autopilot program you had been running on.

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The smallest choices you make can be micro-manifestos. They draft the blueprints for what comes next by rattling the status quo.

You shape your life through how you answer the countless daily requests - by how you respond to the seemingly ordinary.

The way you process small things often echoes in larger ones.
Patterns repeat more than you might realize.

The future isn’t a far-off state to reach. It’s the sum of your present moves.

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It´s the energy you bring to the equation that matters.
The intensity. Your patience. Your trust.
Your sensitivity to perceive what’s there.

How you meet the current moment writes your story.

Working in fashion means constantly forecasting what people will want and learning how seductive it is to mistake a prediction for a fact.

In a brand I once worked with, we spent two years developing a premium down collection, only to see unseasonal warmth leave warehouses stuffed with unsold parkas.

Climate change doesn’t follow trend reports. Being fixed on a specific goal blinded us to changing conditions.

Insisting on things to be a certain way narrows your vision.

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A friend who had reached his goal of paying off a bungalow worth several million once told me he felt surprisingly let down by the effect. He described it as a balloon with the air let out—his motivation evaporating the moment he scored.

I felt similar after completing my first marathon—questioning why I should carry on running at all.

What about that subtle backlash of a declared finish line?

Do you underestimate the valley that follows a peak?

What if the anticipation of a goal is more powerful than achieving it?

The output changes the equation.
A shift in energy.
A shift in gravity.

It might explain why many highly successful people can’t stop, even though they could slow down. Why countless athletes or artists whose success seems to come overnight after decades of practice out of the limelight, spiral into disorientation when the declared ends have been met.

How much is enough?

What happens after the summit?

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In hiking the answer is blunt. Going up mountains for decades taught me that reaching the top is only being halfway there. Most accidents I´ve been witness to and had myself have happened on the way down, when focus slips, as fatigue sets in.

I’ve admittedly struggled to surrender when weather forced us to turn back with the summit already in view.

It’s where going forward starts to mean turning back.

Surrendering.
Honoring limitations without losing motivation.

Maintaining motivation depends on pacing yourself to refuel along the way.

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It has asked me to tend to parents needing unexpected care, to be ejected from the corporate work structure, to face a landlord claiming my apartment at the most inconvenient moment.

At times it has pushed my nervous system to the edge—once leaving me in tears in front of a bewildered supermarket clerk when they only accepted cash that day.

The relentless pursuit of certainty ironically makes you more insecure. You can propel yourself toward a lingering anxiety by constantly checking the odds—like frantically refreshing a weather app, fearing the rain will ruin a garden party.

The more you try to nail down a conclusion, the tenser things get—like the Gordian knot tightening the more you try to loosen it. For me it shows up physically: a cramp from constantly pulling my shoulders up, my digestive system struggling, my tinnitus flaring.

Avoiding the unfamiliar is like avoiding contact with life.

Life is a contact sport.

It’s not about feeling as comfortable as possible but committing to participate. Becoming able to contain contradiction.

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Insisting on things moving in a specific way divides you from the flow. It pulls your energy away from the present—as you incessantly hold your breath.

Alan Watts put it vividly:
“A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.”

What if you invest in adaptability over guarantees? Breathing through the unexpected rather than choking on it.

Preparedness over prediction.
Actively waiting—to meet what comes.
Staying alert.

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It’s when I find myself milling over yesterday’s conversation that rattled me, pondering an email I’ve been avoiding, wondering if I should fold my sweaters differently; yoga or running; green tea, herbal, or neither - the insistent chatter threatening to blow my circuits as I struggle to discern what actually deserves attention.

How often do you feel your thoughts are running you rather than the other way around?

How serious do you feel you need to take the relentless mumble in your mind?

Thoughts can hijack your entire energy.

Yet most of them tend to dissolve.

…If you let them.

I catch myself getting stuck in the past—unsure whether I even remember events correctly—or planning for future scenarios I have no evidence will ever happen.

Your mind spins its wheels trying to solve as many apparent problems as possible in the name of security. The mechanism is so ingrained it’s easy not to question it—even as it jams your ability to process the present.

There is a tipping point.

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Putting more energy into preparing for the next moment than being where you are is a t…

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