I’ve now been active in the health and wellness space for two decades. I began in my mid-twenties and in less than two months I’ll be turning 47.

My journey into this world, the one where I discovered that just about every belief, study, headline and ‘expert’ is worth questioning, began in the summer of 2006 after three years of struggling post vaccine injury. That summer I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. When the doctors gave me no option other than pharma medication for treatment and management of symptoms, I took this as an invitation to look in the other direction. I was invited to ask what health really is, and if a ‘cure’ was impossible, what would healing look like?

This one question took me through an intensive healing journey, through nutrition school and into 15+ years running a culinary nutrition education business, writing two bestselling books and championing the most important aspects of health: keeping it joyful, manageable and delightfully sustainable.

Since that time, I’ve watched trends rip through the health and wellness space and often disappear just as quickly (remember celery juice?). And with each one there are the cultists that will hang on for dear life (and adopt an identity to go with it) swearing that this diet/supplement/device/practice is the answer to it all for everyone.

I’ve witnessed entire dietary philosophies treated as gospel and then quietly abandoned. And of course the period where ‘die-hard’ vegans could no longer sustain health and would have to endure a grand coming out and vitriol by their audience for not living up to the standards of the strangers they had been preaching, too.

I’ve also watched an industry get exceptionally good at making you feel like you’re behind, that you need more and that you’re not doing nearly enough. The bloggers-turned-influencers and the experts-turned-salesforce telling you that you’re missing something without their product/program/approach.

It has begun to feel like the answer is always one more product, one more protocol, or one more expert away.

I have never believed that and I hope never made anyone feel that way. In my heart it was always— Here’s what I’m doing, or here’s what the research says.. If it aligns, go for it. If not, you know best what’s for you right now.

For fifteen years, I was teaching cooking classes and trying to remind everyone of what they already knew: that for the most part you already have access to everything you need to resolve the most urgent shifts that are needed for your own unique makeup and your own unique health needs.

What I know to be true, and what the last twenty years has only made me more clear is that the fundamentals of human health are not complicated. What it takes to be healthy is not new and does not require a coach, a subscription, or an expert to tell you.

All of this, however, does require your attention, your discipline and your willingness to stop outsourcing what you already know you need, and to just buckle up and commit.

What follows are my guideposts for health. They’re not trendy. They’re not grand or aggressive or result in quick transformations. That’s not the point and never was. They also do not need to be defended. This is the basics of human life and human resilience, what you need to swim instead of sink. Once you remember that we are of nature, not merely living on this planet surrounded by it, it all becomes remarkably simple. The discipline then is to just move in the direction of truth and wholeness. Neither requires incentives, claims, or aggressive action. It is just what is.

I have spent many hours consolidating what I believe are the forty plus keys within eight guidepost categories. These are the things that have held, decade after decade, across every change in my life and work.

Food: What We Eat

Everything you see online about food right now is trying to complicate something that isn’t complicated. I have always stood by the fact that turning your meals into a math equation is no way to live or thrive. It is only necessary (and can be effective) when you’ve lost your connection to a healthy relationship with food and satiety.

You cannot take a single variable: protein, carbohydrates, seed oils, lectins, oxalates, grams of this over grams of that, or whatever this month’s villain happens to be, and then optimize your entire diet around it. You’ll be missing out on critical aspects of life. For example, telling ‘perimenopausal’ women to eat their body weight in protein, regardless of the form or quality (ie. protein powders from processed dairy, egg whites in a carton, bars and snacks jammed with hydrolyzed pea protein) without any conversation about what that demand costs your digestive system, your endocrine system, or your relationship with eating. That’s not health that can sustain a healthy life. That’s marketing— likely for a supplement or a program.

Also marketing are the incessant labels. ‘Seed oil free’ and ‘GMO-free’ are two of the more popular at the moment and neither means anything if your objective is to avoid food-saturated in glyphosate.

After twenty years, my fundamentals have not moved. This is them.

Choose organic. Not wherever possible. Just choose organic. This is not a preference. It’s a response to the chemical load we’re carrying. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, these are known human carcinogens, known endocrine disruptors, known obesogens— in short, these chemicals contribute to every chronic disease we are trying to prevent or heal. These chemicals accumulate and degenerate. I used to tread lightly on this topic but I don’t anymore. It’s too easy to be fooled by the label on processed foods (including those in ‘health food’ stores). Choose organic first, always, work backwards from there based on what’s available. Does it cost more? Yes. But if you minimize or skip the processed organic food and stick to whole foods, it should also be a spending priority.

Eat whole foods. Let the processing happen in your own kitchen as much as possible. This means, if you want cookies, buy the ingredients and make the cookies. You want protein? Grill some chicken. Protein powders and supplements exist to supplement a whole foods diet — not replace it. Real food has synergy no powder or pill can replicate. Build meals and snacks around food and fill your pantry with ingredients.

Cook from scratch. When I cook, I know what’s in it. I control the quality. I slow down enough to connect with the food and nourishment as if this is something sacred that matters. Because it is and it does. This is non-negotiable. Does it make it harder to eat out because eating crappy oils, too much salt and sugar in everything makes you feel a bit ill? Yes. That’s your body simply saying WTF did you just eat?

Eat a wide variety. Change it up. Buy new and different things, optimally what’s organic and in season where you live. Diversity in the diet supports diversity in the microbiome and this helps build resilience. Also, it’s more interesting and the brain lights up with novelty.

Sit at a table intended for dining. This line is taken directly from my first book. I mean this as seriously as anything else on this list. A calm, connected mealtime is not a nice-to-have. It is one of the most health-protective things you can do. We plan our schedules and after school activities around ensuring we sit down to eat, and do so together.

Don’t eat ultra-processed food. Organic label or not, it doesn’t matter. Ultra-processed food is not food that aligns if your values are for health and longevity. My approach is not to think of it as “I can’t have that”, and definitely never “I’m not allowed”. I simply don’t. The ‘don’t’ removes any ongoing negotiation. It’s just not an option.

Sleep Like Your Days (and Life) Depend On It

Sleep is not a recovery strategy or a biohack. It is the foundation that every aspect of your life rests upon. No amount of morning routine or supplement protocol compensates for chronically poor sleep. Here’s how to be set up for sleep success.

Protect your sleep window. Six hours, seven hours, eight hours, nine hours— we all have our optimal and often it’s about quality of sleep. Your body and nervous system do their most important work while you are in deep sleep. Without this, nothing else will function as you hope. Staying up later than usual? Waking up earlier than usual? You better make sure sacrificing your sleep is absolutely worth it for as you get older, that lack of sleep hangover is harder and harder to recover from.

The bedroom should be dark, cool, and quiet. No TV’s, no phones, no screens in the bedroom. Cover up anything that has a bright light, get the blackout blinds installed, the sleep masks on, the fan going, your natural mattress and bedding in place. The environment matters more than anything. Most people are sleeping in a nest of plastic with foam mattresses made from petroleum and now many ‘hotel’ standard sheets are blends with polyester. Polyester in any form is plastic. Take note.

Get outside first thing. Go get some morning light into your eyeballs. Not screen light, outdoor light. Even just five minutes. Morning light sets the circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm governs sleep, hormones, and mood. A good night’s sleep begins first thing in the morning.

Stop eating two to three hours before bed. Deep sleep and digestion don’t go together. At night you want your body doing the repair work, not digestion. Plus, giving yourself a 12-16 hour fasting window has its own set of benefits.

Wind down like you mean it. A bath, a book, stillness — the hour before bed is preparation, not dead time. This, again, includes a hard no on screens (or if you do, invest in blue light blocking glasses. The nighttime setting on your device doesn’t cut it). Just as you may have your practices for a great day, create the rituals for a great sleep.

Remove your phone. I mention this above but it deserves it's own line. People managed to wake up for their day forever before they had phones. A $10 clock will do the job.

Also, in case it also requires it’s own line item— alcohol has no place in your life if deep and restorative sleep is a priority.

Move Your Body

The fitness industry has always sold transformation. Before and after! Look at me! What the body actually needs is consistency, variety and enjoyment on the movement front. Stress your body without injuring yourself, make it something you love to do, not dread and keep going. It’s not that complicated.

Move every day, (and doesn’t always need to be in a gym). Walking is one of the highest-return health behaviours available to any of us. You don’t need an aura ring to know if you’ve moved enough. How you feel is sufficient but in case you’re wondering, you’re liking walking 1,000 steps for every ten minutes of walking. Want to walk 10,000 steps (an arbitrary count BTW), then walk for an hour and forty minutes a day. Just move, dance, stretch, pilates… MOVE

Lift something heavy, regularly. Strength training preserves muscle, supports bone density, stabilizes blood sugar, and makes everyday life feel easier. Being strong in body strengthens every aspect of your life. I learned this only in the last few years. Since focussing more on strength, I am less chemical sensitive, less reactive to external stresses and though I have more aches from lifting, I am injured by regular life movement less. I use a workout app that I love, I challenge myself to hit my limits (safely) and I genuinely look forward to this every time.

Stretch and mobilize. Keep your body pliable, comfortable to be in and able to get onto and off the floor easily. Whatever keeps joints happy and the body moving through its full range — yoga, Pilates, a simple floor practice. Avoiding this in favour of what gets you the mirror muscle/transformation results is how we end up injured and sedentary earlier than we want to be.

Find movement you love. This gets skipped in every fitness conversation. Again, we see the experts and influencers with their workout plans. The quick videos that say do these moves 100 times everyday and look like this. Yes, maybe. But will you still be doing it in 5 weeks? In a year? Movement we enjoy is movement we will keep doing and also modifying and changing up when it’s time. Tune in to how you feel. What you love and align it with your goals. Then do it again tomorrow.

Rest, mama! Not out of laziness and without the guilt. Recovery is also part of effort. It’s part of the practice. Overtraining will suppress immunity, disrupt hormones, increase stress response, reduce resilience, contribute to burnout and leads to injury. Build in recovery with the same intention I bring to everything else. Lately I’ve been hitting up Thai Chi with the seniors in the park and it’s the best thing ever!

Relationships

This pillar gets left out of most wellness. Put on a happy face for socials, document that get together, but is there depth of love and connection? Forget how things look. How do your relationships feeeeeel? That’s a significant omission. The research on loneliness and chronic disease is as critical and powerful as what we know about diet and exercise. Connection is not a soft metric even if it’s hard to measure. It is foundational. Living in the country can be magical, and so can a spontaneous chinwag with a neighbour in your densely populated city life.

Invest in close relationships like your quality of life depends on it. Because it does. Depth over breadth. A few people who truly know you, who you can laugh hard with and go deep with is worth more — powerful and real over a wide, thin social network. Relationships matter, they take effort and time and sometimes work. They are an exchange. Give a little and take a little when you need. Make them count.

Eat together. I already said this under food. I’ll say it again here. Shared meals are one of the oldest forms of human bonding, and I don’t take them for granted. I am fortunate that my bestest friends are also all in the health field, and though we don’t all eat along the same value set, we do all value real food, real connection, real conversations, and a really great time together. We plan our collective meals in our calendars and these are often the days I most look forward to.

Create and then protect your free time. The most important relationship maintenance often happens in the unplanned space in between. These are the walks after dinner, the slow Sunday mornings, the spontaneous juice or coffee date. Give yourself time and space for spontaneous, joyful, and rich connection time to happen.

Be in community. We are not built for isolation. A book club, a creative practice with others, a gathering of any kind, an activity together, even just eye contact and a “what’s on your mind today?” with someone you know can go a long way. Belonging to something larger than your household is a genuine health-protective factor. I feel this in my own life. We need to proactively participate in cultivating community to feel a part of one.

Learn to repair or let go. Every relationship has conflict. And some are worth repairing and some we simply (though it’s never that simple) need to let go of and move on. I’ve come to learn that we all operate on varying frequencies and sometimes those frequencies resonate, will either attract or deter others. It’s all okay. Know what’s real, what’s worth working through and also when it’s not.

The Home

Your home is an internal environment. Most people give enormous care to what goes into their bodies and almost no attention on what surrounds them every day. This became so evident that my husband and I created an entire course focussed on the simple things you can do to make your home a healthy space. In a world saturated in synthetics, make your home as real to the feel as you can.

Reduce the chemical load. Synthetic fragrance is one of the most underestimated endocrine disruptors in most homes. This includes candles, cleaning products, laundry detergent, and air fresheners. GET THEM OUT. The smell of clean is no smell at all. The cumulative load matters.

Filter your water. Municipal water contains things the body doesn’t need. It’s full of pharmaceuticals, cleaning agents, and other endocrine disruptors. I cannot stress this enough. A good filter is one of the highest-value investments in a home.

Filter your air and open the windows. Indoor air quality is often worse than outdoor. Get yourself a great air filter for the longer winter months and whenever possible, swing open the windows and turn on our fan. Fresh air is free and I use it. And I can’t, I have several air filters around my home as well as in my child’s classroom.

Reduce plastic everywhere, and especially in the kitchen. Glass, stainless, wood, or cast iron. The swap doesn’t have to happen overnight, but it should happen. Cutting boards, cooking utensils — once you start paying attention, you’ll beginning to notice how hard it is to avoid plastic. We seem to forget that plastic is the oil and gas industry made solid. It’s everywhere now, including our wardrobe.

Create spaces that support the life you say you want. Organize your kitchen to be a space that makes you want to cook. Create a quiet corner where you can sit in stillness. Want to work out at home, sort that out. A closet that invites you to dress in a way that feels good? Clean out your closet. Get rid of the clutter, replace artwork, paint a wall. Do what you need to keep your home feeling like the sanctuary it should be. Environment shapes behaviour more reliably than willpower ever will.

Personal Care

This is the extension of the home that most people miss. But like the home, it’s the things that you can switch once and never think about again. It’s an easy upgrade with big returns. What goes on your body absorbs into your body and impacts your organs of detoxification and elimination as well as your nervous system. Skin is not a barrier but a gateway in. Most of us are applying and exposing ourselves to hundreds (and in many cases, thousands!) of chemicals everyday without once looking at what’s in them.

Eliminate synthetic fragrance. The word “fragrance” on an ingredient label is a legally protected trade secret that can contain up to 10,000 individual chemicals, none of which have to be disclosed and the rand majority have been grandfathered in, assumed safe until proven otherwise. You’ll find fragrance in shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, deodorant, laundry detergent, dryer sheets, fabric softener, cleaning products. And also in candles, oil sticks, and room sprays. If it smells like something and it isn’t a whole food or a pure essential oil you’re dealing with a chemical cocktail, most often afloat in a sea of waste product from the oil and gas industry. The smell of clean is no smell at all.

Read labels like you read food labels. The personal care industry is largely unregulated and the marketing is extraordinary at making products sound safe and natural when they are neither. “Clean” and “natural” on a label is meaningless. Reading the actual ingredient list is what counts (same goes for packaged food, by the way). Resources like EWG’s Skin Deep and the Think Dirty app exist and can help if you’re just starting to pay attention — but eventually you’ll just know. The nose will know and your skin will know.

Makeup is worth getting honest about. You don’t need to stop wearing makeup, just upgrade, especially if this is something you wear everyday. Foundations, lipsticks, mascaras, blush are applied directly to some of the most absorptive and sensitive surfaces on the face, daily, often for decades. The cumulative load is real. It likely will take some research and time upfront and maybe some trial and error, but it’s well worth the investment if makeup is an important part of your everyday.

Hair dye is also worth examining. Personally, I am going grey, gracefully. I actually love it. I’ve always wanted highlights and these require no maintenance. I call it my unicorn glitter. Conventional permanent hair colour contains some of the most aggressive chemicals found anywhere in personal care. Layer on that this is applied directly to the scalp, which is one of the most absorptive surfaces on the body. The frequency with which most people colour their hair, multiplied over years or decades, is a significant cumulative exposure. There are alternatives worth exploring: henna, plant-based colours, root blending, or choosing the lowest maintenance option of acceptance of what this stage of life is— growing out our wisdom streaks!

Oral care is health care. The mouth is not separate from the body, though we tend to treat it that way. The links between oral health and cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and systemic inflammation are well established and consistently. Floss and care for your teeth but also look at what’s in your toothpaste and mouthwash. You do not want to be rinsing your mouth with alcohol and artificial dyes. Most conventional versions of oral care products destroying the oral microbiome, which is the real source of health gums and teeth.

Stop wearing plastic. I wasn’t sure where to slip this one in, but it’s going here. Polyester, nylon, acrylic— it’s all plastic, derived from the oil and gas industry. And this is then worn against your skin all day. The “recycled” claims don’t hold up the way the marketing suggests. Those ‘diverted’ water bottle most often are new bottles. Even when they’re not it’s worth asking whether keeping water bottles in the bottle cycle makes more sense than the energy and resources required to convert them into soft-wicking bras and yoga pants with a fancy trademark. It’s still plastic. Move toward natural fibres as things need replacing: linen, organic cotton, hemp, wool. This doesn’t need to be an overnight revamp, and it does require some search but an added bonus is you typically ended buying pieces that last longer, are better made and by default you move out of the fast fashion consumption vortex.

Spend Your Waking Hours Wisely

This is one area I am working on rewiring everyday. For all of my life I fell prey to productivity culture. What I’ve come to realize is that feeling busy and being actually productive towards the big and little goals and two very different things. The answer to how to spend your hours is not, in fact, to optimize them. Get clear on what a successful day looks like and feels like for you, and then put in place the practices to make that happen.

Protect time offline. Phones keep us hooked, we know this. That is their function. My default does is having my phone silenced and out of reach. Otherwise I will be distracted. Build real pockets of offline time into every day and guard them.

Spend time in nature. Not as a special occasion, or a treat but regularly. Time in nature (and a city park counts) reduces cortisol, restores attention, and reconnects us to something that moves at a different pace than everything else in my life. Be one of those people who sits under a tree and reads, even for ten minutes, or ten pages. Or join me and the seniors for some Tai Chi.

Make things with your hands. Cooking, weaving, making…. These embodied, tactile work regulates to the nervous system in a way that screen-based life cannot replicate. I have always been a maker but my cooking turned mostly into work on a screen. Weaving landed in my heart like a calling and it is healing me in ways I didn’t know I needed.

Practise stillness. Coherence, a few quiet minutes, whatever it looks like on a given day. Five minutes of genuine stillness is more restorative than most things I could add to my morning. We live in hustle bustle which makes honing the ability to drop in to quiet and get comfortable with it that much more profound and healing.

Know what you’re here to do— at least for today. Purpose is not a productivity framework. It’s a health-protective factor for cognitive resilience, reducing risk of depression and anxiety and is vital for longevity. People with a clear sense of meaning live longer, recover better, and report higher wellbeing. I come back to this regularly. I am not seeking a profound answer, but to actually check in with myself. Lately, I’ve come to remember that we are here for joy. What if that which brings us the most joy also serves as our purpose? Could it be that simple. I do think it is.

The Mind — What You Feed It, What You Follow

We can (and do!) talk endlessly about what we put into our bodies, and almost never about what we let into our minds. This is also especially critical for the developing and the declining— children and seniors. The information we consume, the voices we allow in, the inner dialogue we keep running all lands somewhere. This is what shapes how we view ourselves, those around us and the world.

The whispers of the soul don’t shout. They don’t send push notifications. The soul whispers in the still moments. Keep showing up for them and you will hear them louder and clearer.

Curate what you consume with the same care you bring to food. News, social media, podcasts, conversations, relationships; all of it enters the nervous system and wires the brain. Be selective. Stop following things that leave you feeling smaller or more afraid than when you started. Tune in to what brings a sense of safety, abundance, love and joy. More of that!

Tune in to the difference between fear and knowing. Fear is loud, urgent, repetitive. Knowing is quiet, patient, clear, and it doesn’t keep changing its mind. Knowing can be scary but also expansive. My best decisions have always come from pausing long enough to hear the whispers and sometimes waiting longer than I needed to trust it.

Give yourself unstructured time to think. This isn’t about time to plan or produce or journal. Just think, feel, go with the flow. This is hard to do when you’ve been riding the productivity train for so long. But letting the mind wander and make connections it wouldn’t make if we stayed busy all the time offers powerful insights. We are infinitely wiser than we think.

Listen to the body as intelligence, not a problem to solve. Symptoms are messengers. Fatigue, anxiety, a persistent ache, a recurring dream, cravings and non-beneficial habits we repeat out of habit— these are the body asking for attention. The cultural default is to suppress and push through. Hustle, hustle, hustle. Stay busy and distracted. I’ve found more useful information in sitting with something and asking what it’s trying to tell me than in almost any protocol I’ve ever followed.

Stay in a relationship with something larger than myself. For some it may be religion, for others a spiritual practice, a moment of awe in nature, or the kind of heart coherence that comes when we get quiet enough.

Do more of what brings you joy. The experience of joy is the ultimate medicine. Joy isn’t earned by hitting your metrics — it’s the medicine itself, and the ordinary pleasures (shared meals, swimming, laughing, making things) are the point not the the payoff.

Last Word

There is something profoundly stabilizing about not believing I have to figure everything out from my rational mind alone, and also accepting that I most certainly do not have it all figured out. The heart knows things the analytical mind can’t access. I’ve learned to trust that. I keep showing up for it.

Twenty years ago when I was diagnosed with a supposed ‘incurable’ autoimmune disease, what I wish I had been told then and what I absolutely know to be true today is this: We have everything inside ourselves to live the life of our dreams. We know what we need to be well, we just have to do it, even if that means going against the conventional paradigms.

I wish I’d known it would all work out so long as I keep up my practice of tuning in. I do believe that life is a practice of continually doing the things that remind us of what we already know and doing less of what causes us to forget. As it stands today the addiction to screens and tech, and sugar and fast results all serves to disconnect us from both ourselves and the source of who we are.

It is the work, therefore, to be disciplined enough to remember. To remember to tune in, to listen and find ourselves in the chaos, even when (especially when!) it can feel like we are persistently swimming upstream. The fact is, we are. That is exactly what we’re doing because the alternate, to flow with the masses and where this is all heading will not work for you. It doesn’t work for anyone.

None of this is complicated. The insertion of human-made complications is where it gets messy. We are here on this earth walk to learn human lessons. To experience joy and love and also grief and fear. Abundance and loss. Delight and sadness.

True health is learning how to balance this, to experience it all without being taken down by it. And to build the resilience we need to be able to do that, we have to go back to the simple pillars of health that align us and enable us to live as close to alignment with nature and what our body and spirit needs. It may not be more supplements, or red light therapy. It might be a from scratch meal, enjoyed with friends, after a beautiful walk together in the sunshine.

I was meandering along the path you see in the photo above and thought— this is it. This is the best medicine there is.

In full transparency, I took this photo about thirty minutes before I got a call from my child’s camp to come pick him up as he’d taken a rock to the eye and needed to get to the ER. The day did not then follow the flow I had envisione…

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I have no idea what’s coming next.

I do my best to step back from trying to have a game plan for every possible direction it can all go. What I do know is that once upon a time I built something beyond my wildest imagination and then walked away from it. I didn’t wait until I was forced and didn’t wait for a crisis to make it happen. That was what made i…

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Here is the question I’ve been pondering lately:

How are you curating the algorithm of your life?

If you use social media, you know about the loved and loathed “algorithm.”

As small business owners, we are constantly trying to figure out how to beat it, and then, of course, it changes.

As consumers of content, we know that more of the same—plus more of the same—will keep delivering us more of the same, landing us in an echo chamber. We become less able to see or hear what we’re not regularly seeing or hearing, allowing us to ignore anything that falls out of sync with our belief set. It’s a beautiful way to entrap yourself (and mostly your ego) in your own confirmation bias. Why be uncomfortable, challenged to learn or have empathy for another’s perspective when you can always just feel right?

Enjoy on the go with an audio recording of the post in its entirety.
Full written post below.

Available on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Let’s get technical for a moment: An algorithm is a step-by-step set of instructions or rules designed to perform a specific task or solve a problem.

When it comes to social media—and also our life—we get to choose the energy of our own algorithm. We have the capacity to influence it, guiding how we meander through our day and navigate life’s little and big challenges.

It can be easy to fall into the doom and gloom of what surrounds us, chasing the ongoing dopamine fix or adrenaline surge. If you’re not mindful about this, you may find yourself feeding a low-vibrational algorithm for your life. As humans, we are wired to spiral down. We are conditioned to keep our eyes peeled for threats. That survival instinct is why we still exist.

How Do We Break Free from a Living Doom Scroll?

How do we free ourselves from a low-energy life algorithm?

Recently, I was home alone for a whole week. Just me. This wasn’t in the plans, but it’s how it evolved. Suddenly, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had no plans and no schedule. I became finely attuned to how my time was being spent. And without anyone else’s energy to bounce mine off of, I also became acutely aware of how I was feeling.

In short, I began to mindfully curate my life frequency—the personal algorithm of what I was willing to be served.

Is this easy to do?

No. Especially when you have a job, a partner, a pet, a kid (or three)—in other words, commitments, obligations, and responsibilities beyond yourself and your own basic needs.

You could also argue that when you have all of those things—people, pets, and life to take care of—you must be even more mindful of what you can control so you can capitalize on the opportunity to live at the highest vibration of life.

Is this making sense to you?

How Do You Shift This?

Start paying attention.

• Reading a novel that stirs up anxiety and makes it hard to fall asleep? Read something else.

• Using social media in a way that fuels isolation, wasteful wants, or less-than self-talk? Change who you follow or opt-out altogether.

• Working too much to avoid addressing what needs to be addressed in your life? Cushion your resilience so you can face it head-on.

When you start examining this, you’ll quickly realize just how much you have the capacity to shift.

If you’ve followed my work on energy, retraining the brain for happiness, the joyful rebellion, or taken my free coherence class, you know that I live and thrive (most of the time) by the understanding that what we generate and put out in the world will directly influence our experience of it.

This isn’t woo-woo—it’s the science of energy and the quantum field.

Just as we can choose the tone of voice we use to respond to someone, we also choose the energy we bring to our life.

When it feels like, time and time again, you’re being thrown off course—before blaming others or circumstances outside your control—first, ask yourself:

What is within my control that I can shift?

The answer will always be: Your own energy. Your own perspective. Your own response in any given situation.

Ultimately, the algorithm you are curating for your life.

A Small But Impactful Courageous Pivot

An easy shift of your life algorithm? Short of throwing your phone under the bus, start curating a highlight reel of your own life. Rather than mindlessly scrolling through others, take some time and scroll through your own camera reel. Remember the moments you have forgotten, seek out the joy and start noticing the highlights in your present day. Where our attention goes, our energy flows. Curate that algorithm mindfully, for as I said at the beginning, more of the same will deliver more of the same. Choose mindfully what you are calling in more of.

Share The Courageous Thread

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Did you think you were clear on your purpose and what made you feel of service and useful, and then 2020, 2021, 2022, whatever this year is bringing is happening…

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As someone with a predisposition to autoimmune disease, and having healed from Crohn’s naturally over a decade ago, I am extra mindful around this time of year to make sure my immune system i…

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I can’t recall when it was that I last sat down to write a post of this nature but every week can feel like a lifetime these days. After a period of feeling rather exhausted, new work, a new desire to serve is inviting me to show up in a new way. It has me thinking that we all need to be showing up right now. This is your time!

In the Spring of 2022, I w…

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My son, now four years old, loves drawing people with really long necks, long oval eyes, a dot for a nose, a jagged line for a mouth and sometimes there’s a torso, sometimes the arms and legs come straight from the neck. He puts marker to paper, or chalk to sidewalk and just goes for it. There’s no pause. No doubt. No I’m worried this won’t turn out lik…

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The time in between is where the magic is. It’s what I am learning to live for and be present for. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard though. It’s hard to get there. Now more than ever perhaps.

In fact, for me, writing is one of those things that fills a need for my mental wellbeing. It’s how I process ideas. Some of it you get to read, some of it never sees …

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A variation of my grain-free fruit crumble is featured in my first book UnDiet, called the All Season Fruit Crumble for the very awesome reason that you can literally use whatever fruit is in season to make it – berries, peaches, pears, apples, etc. (Please refrain from experimenting with watermelons.)

This has been a summer staple in my family for ten y…

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Have you ever heard the term ‘coherence’ as it relates to inner harmony? Perhaps, simply reading the words ‘inner harmony’ and ‘coherence’ bring about a desire to feel a little more firmly planted within yourself?

It’s not easy right now. I mean, life is rarely what anyone would describe as easy – but as far as my lifetime goes, it’s never been quite thi…

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Most of what I’ve written here, I recently shared in my monthly note with my insider crew – my subscribers. About once a month, I send a personal note about what I’m thinking about and working on. This note had such a strong response that I thought it would be beneficial to share part of it on my blog, too.

It’s about listening. Or rather, being open to …

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It is a significant task to tame our minds and connect with our hearts, especially amid external influences that divide and manipulate. As we navigate complex beliefs and divisive rhetoric, fostering unity and compassion becomes paramount for our shared humanity. Let’s step back from the chaos, find inner harmony, and strive to spread love and peace in …

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It’s time for our first sweet harvests of the season – rhubarb is here, and strawberries are not far behind. I get really excited when I see new seasonal produce in the market, and whether I have a plan for it or not, I buy it. That is how I ended up with four giant stalks of rhubarb in my fridge.

I had originally intended on making a crumble, but it jus…

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You know that thing, that dream, that big idea you fantasize about? You have to do it. It’s that thing you think about in the middle of the night, or the thing that creeps into your mind as you commute to your job or as you sit in your office/cubicle/storefront/kitchen/car. Maybe it flickers like a spark, maybe it flashes brightly at times and dims at o…

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Earth Day has always been important as it raises awareness about how our actions can be modified to positively impact the earth. A day, of course, is not enough. Our efforts and insights on how our actions affect the planet need to be part of our daily life. We are seeing this now, with the most clearly focused lens. As a global population, we are exper…

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The Summary: In today’s divisive world, fostering critical thinking requires questioning ingrained beliefs. The challenge, of course, lies in separating oneself from the mind, a skill seldom taught. The burden of societal expectations hinders our pursuit of true joy. Reconnecting with inner wisdom and questioning the mind leads to slow but transformativ…

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Where has our humanness gone?

Locked in our homes for two years, glued to our devices, and our humanness has declined. What does it mean to be more human? What connects us? And most of all, how do we get it back?

In states of fear we lose our ability to think clearly. We seek out constant distraction to keep the truth out. When we have a moment’s pause in…

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Passover is a Jewish holiday that extends for eight days, requiring observers to avoid leavened bread. That’s the basic rule. No problem. I don’t remember the last time I ate leavened bread. If that was all that is required for an UnDiet Passover, I’d be fine.

Beyond this, the rules get a little fuzzy. You could join ten different families for Passover o…

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