A Quick Tool to Calm and Ground Yourself.

Inspired by the sweet, delicious boysenberries as we end the summer…

For all adults, girls, and BOYSENBERRY busy, stressful, and demanding environments, here’s a quick tool to calm and re-center yourself.

•Open up your hand so it looks like a starfish ⭐️
•Beginning with your thumb, sync your breath while you trace the outline of each finger
•Slowly inhale through your nose as you go up your finger
•Slowly exhale through your mouth as you down your finger
•Repeat with all five fingers

It’s a fast yet effective way to reset and ground yourself so you can enter into that next meeting, class, or conversation with intention and clarity.

If you’re enjoying these food illustrations, puns, and lifestyle tips, be sure to check out my book Food For Thought, coming out soon in Nov 2023!

Delicious Ambiguity.

I started making daily to-do lists when I was twelve. My brain loves structure and organization and certainty. Give me a checklist to follow and Mr. Anxiety is nowhere in sight. But to-do lists rarely take into consideration life’s unexpected curve balls. When life is dismantled and in disarray, there is no list. Only chaos.

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My friend Ted gave me a card with this quote when I finished grad school. I found it while unpacking my things when I moved back in with my parents after a broken engagement. At the time, ambiguity felt anything but delicious. It felt dark. Directionless. Depressing. Devastating. I would’ve used any other adjective to describe floating aimlessly in life while everyone else was merrily checking off the boxes of a successful life. But there was something about this quote that gave me hope. Hope for something new. Something better.

This particular card survived four moves thereafter, pinned on various apartment refrigerators and eventually making its way onto my vision board. Uncertainty makes me uncomfortable. But the itch to experience every drop of what life has to offer, the thrill of growing and developing into the next version of myself, urges me forward into the unknown.

Everytime I am tempted to stay safe and comfortable, I am reminded of Radner’s invitation to view ambiguity as delicious. Juicy. Something worth savoring. Ripe with opportunity. Bursting with flavor. Ready to be enjoyed.

And it is up to me- up to all of us- to take that first bite.

The Key To Having A Good Work Ethic.

Is to have a good rest ethic.

Devote as much time to resting, relaxing, musing, pondering, dreaming, and replenishing yourself mentally and physically as you spend on your work. The best ideas come when we’re in a state of flow. Not when we’re actively working to solve a problem, grinding out a task, or creating spreadsheets. They arrive unexpectedly while we’re soaping up and rinsing off in the shower. While driving. On a morning walk. After an afternoon nap. While peeling a mandarin orange.

Take sabbaticals. Go on vacation. Give yourself space and breathing room between big projects to re-center, re-calibrate, and reflect. On a daily basis, architect these intentional spaces of rest into your day.

Athletes know this well. After a peak training phase, there’s a recovery week (mentally and physically) built in. Without this rest/recovery phase included in the structure of the training plan, they’ll likely burn out or get injured.

Our work is important. But in order to do high-quality, impactful work, we need to be rested. Replenished. Recharged. Rejuvenated.

To have a good work ethic, have a good rest ethic.

Grateful Living.

Appreciating the beauty on the road of life.

Most of us are familiar with gratitude. But what about the notion of grateful living? Grateful living is continuing to practice gratitude even and especially in times that are challenging and difficult. When you’ve lost your job. When the MRI results reveal your worst fear. When your body erupts in hives and you find out your ex is taking you to court. When you’ve lost all sensation in your arms and legs and you’re now confined to a wheelchair.

These are the opportunities to practice grateful living. Perhaps it’s finding gratitude in the opportunity to pivot careers and pursue the business idea you had since you were 23. Maybe this is celebrating the fact you have health insurance and a care team to support you through the next steps in your health. Perhaps it’s celebrating you have the financial means to hire the best attorney. Or allowing, for the first time in a long time, to be cared for, sponge-bathed, and fed by your loved ones.

Grateful living is not always easy. But it provides an opportunity for you to take back your power, focus on what’s going well, and find internal freedom and joy even despite challenging circumstances.

Anchor.

An incredible view of Crater Lake a few minutes before the storm came in…

When someone shares a song with you, you naturally think about them when it comes on. Last Saturday this happened, and I sent that person good thoughts. It’d been months since we’d last chatted.

Two days ago, out of the blue- he told me his sailboat had flipped over from 40 mph winds and he was stranded in the middle of Flathead Lake, Montana. The story made the local news. For 11 hours throughout the night, he balanced precariously on top of his boat. It was, essentially his ‘dark night of the soul’. The search and rescue teams reached him the following morning. He survived mentally and physically by staying present with his thoughts, grounding himself somatically, and harnessing breathwork to stay rooted.

“What night did this happen?” I asked.

“Saturday,” he said.

The same day I’d heard the song and sent him good thoughts.

The song? “Anchor” by Novo Amor.

The world is big and the universe is vast, but moments like this remind me that we're all interconnected and intertwined.

The Chorus of Your Soul.

The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, Santa Cruz

There are times when I listen to a stanza of a song and I don’t know all the words. But when it reaches the chorus, my whole body lights up. I know the chorus. I sing it from the depths of my being.

Sometimes the stanzas of life feel unfamiliar and new. We tentatively sing the words, unsure of ourselves. But what roots us is the chorus.

I hope you always return to the chorus— the melody you know by heart, the one you hum while folding laundry, the place that feels like home. Your place of belonging and comfort and strength. I hope you return there again and again, even after many seasons, to find refuge and remember your song.

Learning to Sea (Beans).

Made with Sea Beans, a type of flowering succulent plant that provides a salty, briny bite to foods.

These Sea Beans were part of an assorted package of mushrooms from FarWest Fungi (they have stores in Santa Cruz and at the SF Ferry Building Farmer’s Market).

Looking to improve your physical and mental health post-PANDAemic? 🐼

Aim to include as many diverse plants into your meals (30+ is ideal) per week to support your gut microbiome.

Make it a game to add new plants each week. I recently discovered Sea Beans, also known as Sea Asparagus, Sea Pickle, and Salt Daddies (!), that add a salty, briny, umami crunch to stir-fries, pasta, and salads. Even though they’re salty, they don’t impact blood pressure. They also contain trans-ferulic acid, a phytochemical with proven antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-aging benefits.

What new plants can you include in your meals this week? 🌱✨

The Spectrum.

If you’ve ever participated in Toastmasters, you’ve experienced what I call The Spectrum. You have professional speakers who get paid to speak at large events. Also in the room are beginners, whose hands visibly shake while they’re holding their notecards. What’s incredible about this atmosphere is how it holds space for everyone. The newer speakers can learn from the more experienced speakers. The professionals can celebrate how far they’ve come with practice and repetition. The room is a place for growth, trial and error, learning, and community.

I had the honor of being one of eight artists chosen to perform last week at Chopstick Alley Art’s CreativTEA open mic in San Jose, CA.

If you’ve ever attended or performed at an open mic, you’ll notice The Spectrum there too. It’s a container of bravery, vulnerability, and experimentation. Everyone in the room is either there because they’re supporting someone on stage, or because one day they want to perform. Of all the open mics I’ve been to, there’ve been flawless, breathtaking performances. There have also been moments when an artist forgets a stanza or blanks out in the middle of the song. Moments when it’s silent and awkward and we all hold our breath, finally exhaling and erupting in cheers when the musician remembers the chords and relaxes into the music. Moments when you feel a complete sense of awe and inspiration when an artist finishes a poem or song and you can only smile and shake your head knowing this is what they were created to do and share with the world.

At all the open mics I’ve attended and participated in, there’s a sense of community. The audience is rooting the performer on, thanking them for their bravery, their courage, and for sharing a piece of themselves.

Whether it's Toastmasters or an open mic, you’ll find The Spectrum. It’s a beautiful way of celebrating how far we’ve come, and how much more we can sharpen and hone our craft.

With each scenario there’s a commonality- someone has something to say and the bravery to share it.

Interdependence.

When I flipped the new page of my Morning Altars calendar to the month of July, my eyes caught something special. On the 4th of July, Day Schildkret made a tiny (but powerful) edit. He changed “Independence Day'“ to “Interdependence Day.”

I loved it, and immediately sent him a message. It’s a reminder of how our growth and flourishing as an individual, community, and culture happens with interconnectedness and interdependence. Everything at the macro level is witnessed on a micro level. Cancer cells are the most damaged and isolated cells whose repair mechanisms have been destroyed. They’ve lost their natural function and cell identity.

We are meant to thrive together in community. When we are isolated, alone, and disconnected is when dis-integration and dis-ease are created. Conversely, when we work together and are in healthy communication with others, we thrive. Nature exemplifies this:

“You can check this out for yourself simply by looking up into the forest canopy. The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a neighboring tree of the same height. It doesn't grow any wider because the air and better light in this space are already taken. However, it heavily reinforces the branches it has extended, so you get the impression that there's quite a shoving match going on up there. But a pair of true friends is careful right from the outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other's direction. The trees don't want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of "non-friends." Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that sometimes they even die together.”

-Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World

Scarcity mindset is everywhere in society. That ideas are sacred and the only safe space to create is in a vacuum. That’s not true. We thrive in a scenius. We all grow taller and healthier together. There is enough sunlight and air and water for all of us to thrive.

The Practice.

I’ve recently started reframing everything as a practice. It frees me from the binary categories of “success” and “failure.” You may have an art practice. A meditation practice. A daily movement practice. Perhaps you practice nourishing and fueling your body well. Practice bravery and courage.

When something becomes a practice, it inherently provides room for mistakes, experimentation, and growth. It makes space for curiosity, playfulness, and self-compassion. Life becomes an ongoing series of opportunities to show up again for yourself daily- believing and trusting that you’re still learning, growing, and ever-becoming.

Growing up, I had to practice the piano for 1.5 hours a day. This was in addition to swim practice and basketball practice. It was full of tedious scales and drilling measures over and over again until muscle memory took over. But practicing the piano taught me the meta-skills of perseverance and discipline. These same skills of showing up day and day, even and especially on the days I did’t feel like it, all translated to triathlon, #the100dayproject, and writing my first book.

Creative work doesn’t come with a guarantee. Learn to separate the process from the outcome. First and foremost, focus on the practice.