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Hey 👋

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of A Little More Conscious!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Happy Saturday 🙂 

There's a game I've been playing lately that has a secret option that appears once you finish it - it's called Game +.

When I saw this I was curious and thought I unlocked a new level or something.

It's actually a mode that you can select that lets you start the game over again, but with all of the skills and resources you earned your first time through.

And it got me thinking - what if I could apply this to my life?

Take all of the skills and tools and resources I have learned, developed, and collected and start from Day 1.

I would do so many things differently.

I would think differently.

I'd have a very different lens with which I would look at things through.

Almost like when you read the same book over again at a different point in your life and it hits you differently.

And then I thought…what if there was a ++ option, and so on - each time you start over you have an even wider breadth of experiences to rely on to do life with a different spin.

Would you choose to take more risks?

Would you choose to focus your energy in different places?

Would you choose different types of relationships?

Would you choose a different way of earning income to support yourself?

I'm reflecting on these types of questions myself, and I keep thinking:

“Just start from this point forward. Now is better than never.”

What would your Life + look like?

What would be different from how you have navigated up until now?

How Was This Edition? 🫠

I’d love to hear your feedback so I can keep improving A Little More Conscious. I use this to make adjustments to the content and also better understand you and why you signed up! It also helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Send me context for your response.

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this edition and it inspired you to live a little more consciously.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of A Little More Conscious!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

I’m trying something new! If you’d like to listen to me read this edition to you while you’re walking or doing the dishes, click on the button below.

Hey 👋

Happy Saturday 🙂 

Recently I’ve been trying to find activities that I can do when I’m having a particularly hard day and can’t move a ton with some of the health things I’ve been dealing with.

I ended up getting a refurbished PS5 and have been getting really into gaming.

Did I think this is what I’d be doing at 37? Absolutely not.

Would my 10-year-old self be proud? Absolutely.

I’m still figuring out which kinds of games I like the best, but seem to be gravitating to adventure games and I think I know why.

With some of the health challenges I'm facing at the moment, when I can’t explore physically, this is a way for me to explore virtually.

And what I have discovered is that, against the stereotype of video games being a waste of time and bad for you, I have found them to be really helpful.

How so?

I’ve thought a lot about what a life well lived really means.

(There's a segue coming up, I promise).

Some argue that we need a singular purpose - one that helps give our lives meaning, an overall direction, and that motivates us. It's something that helps influence our daily decisions, shapes our goals, and helps us navigate life’s challenges.

Personally, I have discovered that I’m more of a free spirit.

And, while some parts of me have remained the same, I have changed a lot. So has my inner guidance system. It’s confusing, as Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne point out in Bridesmaids, and not necessarily binary.

More recently, I’ve been gravitating towards living a values-based life - one that isn’t necessarily focused solely on achievements but that is geared towards taking action in ways that are aligned with our values.

But…what if there’s a way to combine them both?

This is where gaming comes in.

Go on quests that align with your values.

Add some curiosity and adventure into the mix.

Meet interesting people along the way.

Grow in unexpected ways.

I recently played the Last of Us 1 and 2 and was pretty blown away - they are not new games and I had already watched the show, but they do an amazing job at character development (the first is way better at this than the second) so you truly understand who these people are and what’s driving them. And then, aligned with those drivers, you must go on quests which turn into one big adventure (albeit a scary one in this case).

Horizon Zero Dawn is another example where I think the developers struck a great balance between “who is this person?” “what do they care about most?” and “what adventures will they go on as a result?”.

So…what if we could apply this to our own lives?

What if we could replace doomscrolling or being on an endless sleep-eat-work- treadmill with days filled with quests that align with what we care most about? Quests that challenge us. Quests that help us meet new and interesting people. Quests that help us learn more about ourselves. And…quests that make life…a little but more of an adventure.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to apply this day-to-day and have landed on a few ideas:

1. Quests that are just plain fun (i.e. “Find the best donuts in the city”)

2. Quests that stretch us and that we know will help us grow in some way (i.e. Misogis)

3. Quests that help us meet new people (i.e. “Go to a bar solo and talk to a stranger”)

4. Quests that help us turn potential negatives into curiosity and growth (i.e. “Learn as much as I can about the immune system from the doctor I have an appointment with today so I can figure out what to do to best support it.”)

5. Quests that feed into bigger communal purposes (i.e. "Sign up for Run for the Cure and raise $2000 for cancer research”)

So…whether your quest today is to find the best donuts in your city…or to go on a 12 hour walk…or to learn how to code or have a conversation with someone in another language…

I hope you are able to find some creative ways to add some new quests to your life that feel aligned with your values.

Cheers to being your own main character 🕹️

Stuff That Stuck With Me Recently 🫠

1. How the Zoom In/Zoom Out Principle Changed My Life

2. How to Get Over the Fear of Being Seen

3. Read This For A Mental Refresh 

How Was This Edition? 🫠

I’d love to hear your feedback so I can keep improving A Little More Conscious. I use this to make adjustments to the content and also better understand you and why you signed up! It also helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Send me context for your response.

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this edition and it inspired you to live a little more consciously.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of A Little More Conscious.

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Hey 👋

Happy Friday 🙂 

I've gone through a lot of life experiences (and therapy) that have made me feel infinitely curious about:

• Understanding myself better

• Understanding what belonging really means

• How other people operate and what we can learn from each other

• “The bigger picture”, collective intelligence, and spirituality

This has led to a lot of reading over the past few years and I thought I'd share some of my favourite books with you, in addition to asking for what you’d add to this list.

Reply to this email to let me know - I’d like to assemble a shared “Conscious Reading List” that aggregates these recommendations in a curated and organized way.

To me, “conscious books” are books that contain thoughts, ideas and stories that have reframed how I perceive myself and others and the world and our place in it.

They have made me think through decisions differently, approach relationships differently, and approach life differently.

But, more than anything, they've helped me learn how to love myself more (still a WIP) and have helped me to take practical steps to live more consciously - to make sure my life is no longer on autopilot and lived with intent.

Huge thank you to my friends near and far who suggested many of these books 🙏

• Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav

• The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

• Lost Connections by Johann Hari

• Designing Your Life and Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

• Who Will Cry When You Die? by Robin Sharma

• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

• Be More Human by Tony Riddle

• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

• The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein

• The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck

• The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter

• The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

• The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

• Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors by Janina Fisher

• Foundations of Health by Eric Goodman

• Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza

• Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan

• Stop People Pleasing by Hailee Magee

• The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

• Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab

• The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

• How to Do the Work by Nicole LePera

• Untamed by Glennon Doyle

• The Handbook for Highly Sensitive People by Mel Collins

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

• The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

• Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

• Rising Strong by Brené Brown

What’s on your Conscious reading list?

What books have genuinely helped you become more aware of your actions and behaviour and patterns and how to interact with people and the world?

Reply to this email to let me know!

How Was This Edition? 🫠

I’d love to hear your feedback so I can keep improving A Little More Conscious. I use this to make adjustments to the content and also better understand you and why you signed up! It also helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Send me context for your response.

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to live a little more consciously.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of A Little More Conscious! (Yes, I updated the name!)

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

I’m trying something new! If you’d like to listen to me read this edition to you while you’re walking or doing the dishes, click on the button below.

Hey 👋

As humans we are wired for survival.

But something that I almost never hear anyone talking about that I think about a lot is how often our individual needs can conflict with group survival dynamics.

Let me give you an example.

At some point there was a discussion on Oprah about women paying attention to their needs and there was an expert interviewed and she said that one of the simplest things to do is, if you need to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom. Doesn’t matter if you’re in a meeting at work - just go vs. suppressing the need and waiting for the meeting to be done. Because, she explained, when we suppress the signals our body is giving us to stay alive, we are causing an executive dysfunction in the nervous system. And over time, this leads to chronic mental and physical health issues.

But…what happens when what our body is telling us that we need to survive goes against what we need to fit into a group, which is, arguably equally important for survival?

Before I knew I had a connective tissue disorder, when I was younger I had a lot of signals I was getting from my body that I ignored so that I would be socially accepted.

One of my worst body-related fears was being on a road trip with my friends because I need to go #1 VERY frequently. I didn’t know at the time, but I intuitively have always been over-hydrating to increase my low blood pressure (this happens when you have extra stretchy veins and arteries). I didn’t want to have to be the one to ask to stop the car every 30 minutes. Thinking about it from their perspective, that would have been extremely frustrating and I did not want to be the one to elicit negative emotions from everyone around me. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to belong somewhere.

So…how do we choose when we are in this situation?

Before we evolved as a species into what we are today, early humans lived in tight-knit tribes where maintaining cohesion within the group was essential for things like protection from predators, gathering food and hunting, sharing knowledge and caring for offspring.

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied primates and looked at brain size (specifically the neocortex or the part of the brain that is responsible for higher order functions like sensory perception, motor control, cognition, language, and also plays a role in social interactions) and based on his research, proposed that from a brain PoV there’s a cognitive limit on the number of stable social relationships we can maintain. The bigger the brain, the more people within the tribe. He proposed what is now called “Dunbar’s Number” - that humans can only manage about 150 relationships.

However, they are not equal. It’s not just about knowing 150 people - it’s about keeping track of who they are, how they relate to each other and where you stand with them. All things that are important for survival and cooperation.

Dunbar also proposed that they exist like layers of an onion with a smaller number of close friends, and a larger number of acquaintances.

Image Credit: The Atlantic

TL;DR: We are innately wired for group belonging. There’s even a substantial amount of research that shows that when we feel socially excluded it activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain.

Having an ancient biological need to be part of the gang is thought to drive behaviours like people pleasing, over-accommodation, conflict avoidance, and, you guessed it, need suppression.

Digging deeper, there are hormonal influences at play as well - when we have positive social interactions, they are capable of reducing HPA axis activity (a cascade of hormone activity initiated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system that regulates your body’s response to stress and rise in cortisol levels). The opposite is true for negative social interactions.

Oxytocin, specifically, is a “bonding hormone” that research has found to play a pretty major role in driving “tend and defend” responses among groups, or promoting trust and cooperation within an existing group and defensiveness toward outside groups.

Why is all of this helpful context?

BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT CRAZY FOR WANTING TO SUPPRESS YOUR NEEDS TO FIT IN.

It’s an inherent part of being human. It’s chemical and neurological. It’s engrained in us.

I am in the process of working through this inherent contradiction (as I am guessing, maybe you might be too) and keep thinking about the storytelling framework “The Hero’s Journey”.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

We can replace the “call to adventure” with “awareness and acknowledgement” - about this inherent survival conflict (perhaps a different kind of adventure 😂). Accepting that you’re not broken for finding this difficult, and that it’s just how you are wired.

The threshold could be replaced with a willingness to adapt and begin to reprogram your nervous system.

Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist but these modalities are some of the things I’m working on at the moment:

• Learning what your nervous system needs to feel regulated in the first place through somatic work like breathing, shaking, movement, and vagus nerve stimulation (in addition to removing stressors or removing yourself from a stressful environment, even if it’s temporary so that you can feel the difference between regulated and dysregulated).

• Inner child work (Understanding how your inner child feels and core wounds/unmet emotional needs from childhood it’s dealing with on repeat like feeling abandoned. Then, holding them, letting yourself feel these emotions, validating them and comforting yourself as if you were parenting yourself).

• Parts work (Awareness and understanding around how different parts of you fragmented and evolved to help “protect” your emotional wellbeing, what is driving them, and how those parts are different than your wise adult self)

• Understanding what safe and trusting relationships feel like (Noticing the sensations in your body when you are in a relationship that is safe vs. unsafe. In X relationship when you are with the person, do you feel expanded? Do you feel like you can breathe normally? Or do you feel contracted and like there’s a weight on your chest or tummy or your throat is constricted?

You’ve definitely heard of the phrase “you gotta put your own oxygen mask on first” - it’s always bothered me because…what does that ACTUALLY mean? Now, I think it means doing the work above to be regulated within your own body and being able to feel safe within yourself.

In order to do these things, it also means implementing boundaries gradually to shift into more aligned situations that support you. Instead of saying no altogether to a specific plan that you know won’t make your body feel good, perhaps there are some proposals you can make to still spend time with a person or people but that fit your needs better. Like going to a restaurant that offers gluten-free options if you have celiac disease vs. not going at all. Or doing a phone call vs. meeting up in person.

The reality that has been really challenging for me to face is a lot of the time, this means knowing that in making these types of decisions and in setting some of these boundaries, not everyone in your current Dunbar’s circle is going to be okay with them.

You’re doing this, in a sense, to build a new tribe, so that you can have your needs met AND belong.

And that is really, fucking hard.

It’s the “Abyss” part of the Hero’s Journey.

My hope is that if I can make it through the abyss, I can create a more aligned life.

And maybe that inspires someone else to take steps to better align theirs.

So…cheers to being your own hero 🦸🏻‍♀️ and to navigating balance with your needs and social belonging.

Stuff That Stuck With Me Recently 🫠

1. Remove Shit to Be Happy - Mo Gawdat

2. Trust Your Future Self to Handle Future Problems - Dr. Emily Anhalt

3. Take Care of Your Body - It Doesn’t Matter What Other People Think - Mike Chang

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to life life a little more consciously.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Always open to your feedback on each edition - it helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Heyyyoooo 👋

Over the past several years, my health has been deteriorating.

I’ve tried to find the silver linings, go out of my way to figure out creative solutions by doing a shitload of research and running my own experiments, connected with really smart humans in different fields to learn from them, changed my diet, improved my sleep, and done a lot of therapy and nervous system regulation. Heck, I even wrote about a lot of the things I was doing here.

None of these things I regret, and they have all helped in some way.

They have all helped me become a more aware, deeper, more conscious person. They have helped me figure out what I definitely DO NOT want my life to look like, and what I DO want it to look like. They have helped me understand myself better and lean into my intuition more and more. I will forever be grateful for this.

Something that has been difficult for me to write about is the feeling of having your whole life in limbo.

I’ve been unable to work since October of last year.

I have a million things I want to do and feel like I can only do a very small percentage of them, or on some days, none of them.

I am in medical limbo, now having gone through many, many rounds of tests via traditional medical streams and more holistic ones and I am hoping that I can some more clear answers soon even though I know it’s a possibility that I might never get a clear diagnosis that makes everything make sense. TL:DR I have about 100 different symptoms affecting many different systems and a lot of abnormal test results but no one has been able to help me put together the pieces to understand why. I don’t feel good and I haven’t for a long time.

I also have anxiety, PTSD, and depression, all of which seem to be tied at least in some way to some physiological things I have going on, in addition to my life experiences. For example, when I got hearing aids a few months ago, my anxiety improved and I didn’t feel like I was on a rocking boat for the first time in a long time.

Some days my body feels broken. Some days my brain feels broken. And lately it’s been both.

If you’re reading this and we have met in person, worked together, perhaps played a sport together, or met in another venue, you’ll know that there’s a lot of things I am not good at, but one thing I am exceptional at is working really hard.

I feel like I am going crazy right now because I want to apply that work ethic to feeling better, and would spend all day every day doing things to support this, but I am really struggling with where to focus my efforts if I am playing whack-a-mole without understanding how everything is connected or what inputs will result in better outputs.

But the hardest part for me has been…the feeling of being left behind.

Don’t get me wrong - I am extremely grateful to be able to have time to focus on my health right now. I was really struggling trying to juggle this and working full-time before.

I am at a point now where I have spent almost a year with my life “on pause”.

I’ve been fielding questions like, “When will you know what’s wrong?”, and “When are you going back to work?”. It’s really difficult to answer both of those and frankly, I don’t know what to say at all.

People around me are moving through life - some with traditional milestones like marriage, having kids, buying homes, moving forward in their careers - and some with things that just make them happy, like travelling, running marathons, getting dogs, playing pickleball, going to cottages, dating, experiencing concerts, and more.

I know that I am moving through my life in a very different way right now and it’s okay - it’s what I need to do to take care of myself at this point. And, at the same time, it’s been incredibly isolating.

When you’re in your 30s and on the outside look relatively “normal” (PS I hate this word and the word “perfect”), people make a lot of assumptions that most of the time aren’t true. It costs energy to reset the baseline and the ability to decide if it’s even worth it given the situation. A “choose your battles” situation.

I get asked how I am doing or what’s new and my gut reaction is that I do not want to share anything about my life or what I am going through. It’s complicated to articulate and my experience has been that most people don’t understand.

I get asked a lot if I am seeing anyone, if I am married or if I have a partner or a family, etc. The truth is, it’s really hard to start to invest in those things when you don’t feel good. Most days I feel like I can barely take care of myself, let alone have the capacity to be a good partner to someone else.

I have a small group of friends that I really, really appreciate. I always feel better when I can spend a part of my day feeling like I’m part of something and I belong somewhere or am seen or can broaden my perspective outside of my own internal world.

I want to make it clear that I am not writing this for sympathy or because I am expecting anything. I’m writing this because I want to share a perspective from lived experience that I realized is rarely shared. It’s something I wish I could have read before being on this path.

So - thank you for reading. If you have someone who is important to you in your life who is in limbo or who is on pause mode, some questions that might be helpful to ask are:

• “What does support look like right now?”

• “Is there anything you want to share with me that would help me understand you or your experience better?”

• “Is there anything I can do that would help you feel less alone?”

• “What are the things that are hardest for you day-to-day right now?”

• “Do you need someone to just be with you, to listen, to give you space, to help distract you or think about something else, or to give you a hug?”

If you’re reading this and are the person on pause, something that I have found helpful is to spend time understanding what I need first so I can communicate these things more clearly.

For example, I just had to have a brain MRI and I have been feeling increasingly exhausted and honestly, kind of sad from having to go to what has now become a massive pileup of tests by myself. So, I reached out to two friends and asked if it would be okay if we did a check in before/after so I didn’t feel as alone. It really helped.

There’s a lot of things I don’t know, but one thing I do is that everybody goes through hard things. To live is to suffer. It just looks a bit different for everyone.

Having empathy and compassion for and curiosity about other peoples’ experiences goes a long way in making the hard stuff…a little less hard.

If you’re on pause right now…I sincerely hope you can press play soon.

And I am trying to remind myself that sometimes a pause is the best thing to get you to stop climbing the wrong ladder and switch to a better, more aligned one.

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to think slightly differently about how to navigate life more consciously.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Always open to your feedback on each edition - it helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Hey 👋

There's a question that came up in a book I was reading a few years ago that really stuck with me:

Are you living from love or are you living from fear?

When we were young, many of us were not taught emotional skills to help us understand ourselves, our feelings, and how a regulated vs. dysregulated nervous system manifests.

Without these skills, and without emotionally in tune adult caretakers supporting us and showing us how to use them, many of us learned first hand that feeling emotions is overwhelming and scary.

Western society reinforces this in many cases - I can't tell you the number of times I watched movies and shows as a kid and every time a child cried the parents were like, “STOP”. It was just how it was handled.

Internally, I think this is how a lot of us face our emotions. We just say, “Go away” and have societal unwritten rules engrained in us, like it's not okay to cry in a restaurant or anywhere in public for that matter.

But the emotions we are running from can become the things that control us.

Looking back, I have made a lot of my decisions from a place of fear or feeling trapped or like I was choosing the lesser of two evils vs. really going for what ideal would feel like to me - expansive, supportive, and energy-giving.

I was scared of and didn't have the tools to face my emotions and they overwhelmed me. My nervous system was dysregulated and I was operating from a place of survival.

And guess what? A lot of those decisions made from that place actually made me feel a lot MORE trapped. The cycle kept repeating.

I don't play golf but have heard a saying “If you look at the sand, that's where your ball will go.”

In some ways I think that's true and if we make decisions from a scarcity of fear-based mind, the results will be more of those feelings.

But I also think we need to look at the sand sometimes - stare into it deeply. Feel it. Listen to what it's saying. Really listen.

I got to a point where it became apparent that I absolutely needed to press “pause” on many things in my life in order to create space to begin to learn this skill.

What we learn from this can help give us essential information to help us understand ourselves better and why we are scared of whatever it is we are.

It can help us understand and change the patterns that subconsciously control us.

Usually it comes from some kind of core wound stemming from unmet emotional needs in childhood like abandonment, rejection, or shame.

I don’t want to keep making decisions from these core wounds in the sand anymore. I want to move through the sand and make them from the green.

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to think slightly differently about problems you encounter in your own life.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Always open to your feedback on each edition - it helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Soundtrack for this edition (you can play this while you read):

Azawade

The Touré-Raichel Collective · The Tel Aviv Session · Song · 2012

open.spotify.com/track/5xroZaCO0KVHY7xmSzWWRp?si=qhGYvZhHTKi5W1zF1XaAeQ

Hey 👋

I’m reading a book right now called “The Wild Edge of Sorrow” by Francis Weller and it’s kind of had an unexpectedly profound impact on me so far.

It’s about grief, and how, in Western society, we often get stuck in cycles of not metabolizing it communally. We are left weighed down by the many forms of accumulated grief that we collect and hold on to vs. digest with rituals involving safe support.

There’s a chapter that describes the grief of illness and it really hit home with what I am going through right now. I’m sharing this quote from the book in the hopes that maybe, for some of you, this helps reframe an experience that you are going through right now or that you have gone through.

“When we are in the grips of illness, a major focus in our mind is the hope of getting back to where we were before the sickness began. But we are not meant to go back…we must recognize that we have been uprooted by our cancer, our heart attack, our depression, and we have been set down on some new shore. Like any true ritual process, we are meant to come out of the experience deeply changed.

Illness strips away all excess. Winnowing us down to the bare essentials. When the choice of denial has been stripped away, as it is in illness, we are brought face to face with our own mortal lives, our tender vulnerabilities, the old wounds that linger in our hearts, the fragility of flesh, and the immensity of soul. We are ushered into a darker night that sheds an astonishing light on our deeper and more genuine shape. The old stories, crafted in a mixture of childhood wounds and societal fictions, slowly yield to something more generous, elastic, and responsive to the life of the soul. We begin to experience a more vivid complexity that takes us out of the either/or world of adolescence and into the alchemy of our adult selves. Here, in this more ripened place, we can see how much more we can hold, tasting both the sweet and the bitter, the beautiful and the painful, all in the same moment. Everything we avoided for the sake of living safely yields to a desire to encounter it all. We slowly recognize that no emotion is foreign to the soul, and every one of them can be welcomed as they arrive at the door. We gradually become able to embrace the full terrain of living.”

🤯

(This was my reaction ^ when I read this.)

The way I interpret this is…illness can be a tool that forces us to peel away the onion layers…of ourselves.

There’s a vlogger, Ben Brown, that I have been following for a long time (since he was skateboarding through cities and airports on a Penny board and filming epic Visual Vibes videos like this) and I remember him describing the way his emotional range changed after he “hit rock bottom” or went through a "dark night of the soul” and this whole excerpt in the book made me think of this.

I’m summarizing, but essentially he said, it’s like the old Ben had a very small emotional range - he wouldn’t get too happy or too sad, he’d be hovering around neutral most of the time. After a motorcycle accident, depression, and the collapse of the YouTube empire he had built, and embarking on a profound journey of self-discovery, he describes looking at life through an entirely different lens now, and how going through this changed the scale of his emotions and allowed him to feel a lot more profoundly on both ends of the spectrum.

I would say I have and am in the process of experiencing the same - it’s like my internal radar is in the process of a software upgrade that I didn’t plan for but I am glad is happening.

Everything exists on a spectrum - it’s rarely just “good” or “bad”, “yes” or “no”. I believe everything we experience in life is meant to teach us something about ourselves and get us to tune just a little bit more, including illness.

I hope that this excerpt can help you or someone you might know who is going through something similar right now.

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to think slightly differently about the presence of illness and grief in your own life.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Always open to your feedback on each edition - it helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Hey 👋

Happy Sunday ☺️

I recently saw this post by Eric Hinman about how he designs his “perfect day”.

Instagram post

He builds each day around a list he made of tiny wins - things like:

• Sleeping for at least 7 hours

• Creating something

• Going on an adventure

While a lot of people might look at this and go, “this is totally unrealistic with my work schedule”, I think there's a ton of value in the work of figuring out what your boxes even are and then seeing how many of them you can tick.

I often find we skip that first step and shut ideas down and converge before we really give ourselves the freedom to be open and ask ourselves, “If this were a completely blank slate - what would I really WANT?”

My favorite part of his process?

What he discusses in the video at the end - before writing his wins list, he did an audit of all the things in his life that were draining his energy or where he wasn't fully present or where he wasn't adding value.

He then used that as data to fuel his “perfect day”.

While I cringe at the word “perfect” as a recovering perfectionist (and know nothing is ever truly perfect - everything in life is flawed and I don't think it would be as enjoyable if everything always worked out 100%), I started implementing my own daily wins list.

So far, I really like it, specifically because I think it fits my personality really well.

I'm a free spirit and love to just go with the flow. Planning stresses me out and makes me feel trapped.

The flip side of that is it can create chaos and can be too “open” - as humans we have essential needs and not paying attention to them or planning around them in some way can really bite us in the ass.

I like this approach because it's a happy medium between the two - “let me tick the boxes to keep me disciplined, but give me the freedom to choose the how and when and where each day.”

FWIW: Doing one creative thing every day is also on my list so I've been trying to write more, which is why some readers have noticed my frequency has increased lately.

What approaches have you found help you with your life design?

What would you do differently if you did an honest life audit?

What would your wins list look like?

Stuff That Stuck With Me Recently 🫠

I am neurodivergent and can get sucked down wormholes of research very easily. The most recent one has been lucid dreaming communication - in a story right out of Minority Report, there's a startup called REMspace that was able to achieve communication between two people who were lucid dreaming.

I found out there's actually a significant amount of research that's already been done in this field, including a landmark 2021 international study that was able to show lucid dreamers, while dreaming, can communicate with the outside world (in this case, experimenters involved in the study) and answer simple questions and do simple math problems while asleep.

I haven't watched every episode of Black Mirror (ironically because I felt the content of the earlier seasons became our reality very quickly after the show came out) so I'm not sure if this has been covered yet but it feels like it easily could.

The potential implications and applications of this are, like most new tech developments, both exciting and terrifying.

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to think slightly differently about how you design your life.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Always open to your feedback on each edition - it helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Hey 👋

I’m writing this now because it’s been something I’ve been thinking about lately.

I’m in the process of restructuring my life, body, mind, routines, etc. etc. etc. as you may have gathered by some of the topics I write about.

I have realized that I have forced way too many things in my life and I am now paying the price. And I don’t want to keep incurring the debt of misalignment.

I feel like I’ve lived 10 lives in one even though I’m only in my 30s.

I now have a loooong list of what not to do and what doesn’t work. I feel like I am so stubborn that the universe had to back me against the wall to really have me FEEL what misaligned feels like to know where the boundary is so I can go in the opposite direction.

A lot of these lessons have my wheels spinning to try to define what “a life well lived” actually means. Maybe in general. Maybe…just for me?

I think I’ve learned enough about myself by this point to know that a lot of the things that make other people happy don’t seem to make me happy, and the inverse is true as well.

I think for me, my current running list looks like this:

1. Freedom

2. Connection

3. Authenticity

4. Empathy

5. Intention

Freedom

Spending years at a time feeling trapped has made me realize that one of my most crucial core values is freedom.

Freedom to be flexible and have the capacity to adapt and learn and grow.

Location freedom: Freedom to explore and wander and travel.

Time freedom: Freedom to organize my day to help nurture meeting my needs and best support myself.

Movement freedom: The ability to have a large movement capacity and robustness and explore within that great capacity.

Connection

I’ve also dealt with a lot in my life that caused me to be extremely isolated - both physically, location-wise with minimal support systems close by and emotionally isolated - like the feeling when you’re in a big group but feel very lonely and like you can’t relate to the people around you.

I have really struggled with the latter especially because I think the way I have lived and the way I make decisions and the way my brain works is and always has been divergent from the norm. It often feels like a lot of my life experiences are very difficult for anyone to relate to, and at the same time, these experiences make it hard for me to relate to others, especially in my age group. For example, what I share here with you goes through a bit of a “can people relate to this?” filter before I decide what to write about.

I’m self-aware enough to know that my brand of weird doesn’t always land. And now I think that’s something I’m totally okay with. (See “Authenticity” below).

I want to form authentic connections with people who have similar values, who make me feel energized during and after I interact with them, and who make me feel excited about life. I want to have people around me who I am excited to share life with - not just the good things but also the messy and confusing things - and have a safe space to be able to hold this connection.

Where I’m at right now, it feels very difficult for me to engage in small talk. When I meet people, I genuinely want to connect with them. I don’t know if it’s a years of therapy thing or an awareness thing or a “lived through several near death experiences” kind of thing but I just can’t. I feel my own energy change when I feel like I’m being superficial and I don’t like the me I am when that happens. I know that’s not for everyone, and that’s absolutely okay. I also know this is related to trust and trauma - it’s actually a really good thing to build a trust rapport with someone after repeated engagements in order to feel safe enough to be vulnerable and open and have deep conversations.

I’m learning to find a better balance between being too closed or too open. And to read the signals my nervous system gives me to understand when to be open and when to protect.

Authenticity

When I was a kid, I was just myself, always.

Somewhere along the way, this got lost…and so did I.

I was a tomboy with a mushroom cut and a rat tail. I didn’t care if my clothes matched. I loved being ferrel and spending my time outside running around, biking in the forest, finding bugs, and running my own mini science experiments like taking foods from the fridge and creating cultures to see which ones grew mould, what it looked like, how long it took to form, etc. I made friends by asking kids if I could play with them if I was naturally drawn to something that was happening - like playing mini sticks or skipping - and didn’t think twice about it. I was the only girl on my hockey team and I didn’t even really realize because I was having so much fun.

But when you get to a certain age and socialization is engrained in you, it can be hugely disruptive to what would have been one’s natural, innate expression of themselves.

I knew I was gay in high school but I did not feel I was in a safe place (Catholic school, Catholic church, etc.) in the early 2000s (when it was very much not okay to be gay) to be able to tell anyone about it so I kept it hidden until the middle of university.

I knew I was experiencing pain while training for and playing high level sports - but I was brought up in “no pain, no gain” environments and I just thought, “Well, everyone else is feeling like I am and they’re doing it” so I pushed myself to.

Every time I ignored the voice inside of me, I died a little bit. And so did my authenticity.

I’ve been really working at this to make sure I don’t suppress that inner voice and give it space to express itself. And create the space for me to listen.

And every time I listen, even though it’s often really scary, something positive turns up in my life.

I want to live authentically to fully express myself and also be 100% me when I’m with other people and form connections from a more aligned place.

Empathy

I used to work as a journalist and stopped for a number of reasons, but one of them was that I found it very hard to detach myself from what was happening in the news and how it made me feel. Every time I had to do a sweep of “what’s happening in the world?”, I took on the energy of the attention-grabbing, negativity-biased headlines.

I thought something was wrong with me.

It turns out I’m just a highly sensitive person and have a lot of empathy.

Rather than turn my head and ignore things that are going on, I want to be the kind of person who can feel deeply with boundaries.

I want to care about people.

I want to care about how people feel and how that makes me feel and how I make them feel.

I want to care about other people’s experiences and sometimes feel them as if they were my own so I can use that as data - to connect, to take action, to solve a problem, etc.

I don’t think the answer is to live in a bubble - I think the answer is to figure out how to use my sensitivity as a tool and treat it like one - a tool that needs consistent sharpening, a tool that needs breaks, and a tool that needs sufficient energy to use.

Intention

I can’t tell you about the number of times I have seen posts and IG reels about meaning and purpose.

Both of these feel too abstract and big for me - you can make up your own meaning but then realize after X unexpected life experience that you have found a new meaning. You can say your purpose is to build a unicorn company, to revolutionize X,Y,Z, or leave ___ type of impact on the world, but to me those always feel quite grandiose and self-manufactured.

I think a life well lived is intentional.

I want to be able to think about where I’m putting my energy, my time, and who I’m connecting with.

I want to focus on areas that help me feel expansive vs. contracted.

I want to intentionally explore to find out who I am, what makes me tick, and what I’m really made of at the core.

To me, intent is everything.

What does “a life well lived” mean to you?

This is my current running list - what does yours look like?

FWIW I found this thread on Reddit and it’s got a ton of different perspectives - here are some of my favourite nuggets:

Stuff That Stuck With Me Recently 🫠

1. You Can Just Do Things - A post by Justin Welsh

2. Foundations of Health - A book by Eric Goodman

3. What if you don’t love your body because you don’t trust it? - An IG post by Bam Lionheart (read the caption)

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to think slightly differently about how you define what a life well lived means to you.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Always open to your feedback on each edition - it helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Hey 👋

The world we live in now is full of unpredictability.

I believe the ability to quickly assess context and adapt and act with compassion (towards ourselves and others) is key to not just surviving but figuring out ways to thrive (this is a big WIP, personally).

I would argue that in our world, creative problem solving coupled with exceptional communication are going to be (if not are already) the top in-demand skills.

As a millennial, I was brought up within the ladder system by baby boomers - if you do X, Y, and Z, and do well in school so you can move on to a good career, you’ll be safe, secure and happy.

This has been far from my reality.

I never really fit into any boxes, which is why I think I like living outside them and gravitate towards finding others who do the same.

With my tentacles extended pretty much at all times in search of divergent thinkers and ideas, I thought I’d share a few I’ve come across to help jostle your creative juices and hopefully inspire you a little bit to find meaningful problems to solve with simple, elegant solutions.

Also - some of these stories are just really cool and I wanted to share them.

1. The surfers who made a floating trash can for the ocean

Photo Credit: The Guardian

There are estimated to be 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean totalling over 150 million tonnes. What is more - 80% of humans now have microplastics in our blood and tissues, and research is ongoing around the link between microplastics in our brains to medical conditions like dementia in addition to other health issues. Plastics in our oceans have also wreaked havoc on the animal kingdom and on our ecosystems - marine animals risk entanglement and ingestion, and at the current rate, the plastic in the ocean is expected to outweigh the fish by 2050.

To help solve this problem, two Australian surfers - Peter Ceglinsky and Andrew Turton invented a device called The Seabin - a floating garbage can that siphons and captures debris to reduce marine pollution.

Photo excerpted from Seabin.io

Totally tubularrrr 🌊 (Sorry, I couldn’t resist).

(See a recent update on the Seabin project by Pacific Longboarder).

2. Chilean border collies trained to disperse native tree seeds to assist in wildfire recovery

Photo excerpted from @summerbordercollie

In 2017 wildfires ripped through Chile and destroyed close to 1500 homes, killed 11 people and burned through close to 600,000 acres of land.

In an effort to re-forest the area (3 times the size of New York City), dog trainer Francisca Torres saw an opportunity - her three border collies, Das, Olivia and Summer already loved running through the forest. So, she put tiny backpacks on them full of native tree seeds that slowly release as the dogs run.

Born runners, her dogs cover up to 18 miles and can spread 20 lbs of seeds in a single day.

I love this!

(See the full story on Upworthy).

3. Fighting skin cancer with…soap

Photo Credit: Time Magazine

Fourteen year-old Herman Bekele recently won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge and became Time Magazine’s Kid of The Year after spending a year developing a bar of soap that can treat skin cancer.

You read that right - at 14.

When I was 14 I was watching A Makeover Story on TLC and trying to make a Rube Goldberg machine to make my parents’ toilet flush.

Bekele, who grew up in Ethiopia, saw first-hand the dangers of skin cancer after watching many people work outdoors without skin protection. This inspired him to ask a question - could imiquimod, a drug already approved for treating certain skin cancers that costs $40,000, be adapted to treat earlier stages of the disease and be made more affordable?

So, he worked to develop a soap that contains imiquimod nanoparticles that work on the skin even after you finish washing by activating the body’s immune cells to fend off cancer.

The soap is still in development, now with Bekele working with John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and molecular biologist Vito Rebecca (yes…while still attending high school).

Bananas!

Stuff That Stuck With Me Recently 🫠

1. How to Build A Life You Love - A post by Eric Dodds

2. Bear the Pain of Nothing - A post by Cru Mahoney

3. How to Embrace Failure and Let Go of Fear - Podcast by Jonathan Van Ness with Dan Harris

Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and it inspired you to think slightly differently about problems you encounter in your own life.

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

Always open to your feedback on each edition - it helps me feel less like a robot behind a glass wall.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Hey 👋

[Full disclosure: This post is mostly notes to myself as I am working through some things but thought I would share in case this real-time processing is something you relate to and that might help you in some way.]

I have trouble with acceptance.

I'm awesome at thinking about the future and dreaming.

I suck at accepting how things actually are, today, in reality.

I think it's because sometimes when the present isn't what you like, it's hard to look at clearly, let alone accept.

I don't mean accept like acknowledge - a nod of the head and now we're carrying on.

I mean accept like deeply understand what right now means and engrain that in your cells.

Hope is something that keeps me going majorly - whenever I am going through a hard time, thinking about a better future always makes me feel better.

But I have learned that I can't rely only on hope and ignore the present. It's like running on fumes. And the fumes run out.

To a large extent, a lot of the things I've done in my life were because I was completely delusional.

Someone told me it was impossible? I'll figure out a way.

This is how I navigated through my personal life, sports, and career.

But it's come at a very high cost - one that I'm not willing (or frankly able) to pay anymore.

I never properly assessed my current circumstances as the first step and then bridged the gap intelligently to do the impossible thing.

I just threw myself into the fire.

I learned SO MUCH which I am grateful for.

But I incurred stress during the process and often did this in several areas at the same time. That was a bonehead move that I would not recommend.

I didn't really look at where I was struggling and where I needed help first.

I didn't properly assess my physical and mental capacity.

I didn't look at the support network I did (or did not) have in place.

I didn't do a resource reconciliation.

Sure, I did the things.

But most of them didn't feel good while doing them.

I was stressed out, in pain, and very often felt isolated and alone.

These are hard lessons I have learned.

I need to get better at accepting my current state, no matter how painful or ugly or how far away from how I want show up in the world that is.

It's the only way to get to where I want to go and actually enjoy it and build confidence along the way.

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please reply to this email and drop me a note and let me know! I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall.

If you think this edition could help a friend, feel free to forward it.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously (read: not on autopilot).

Hey 👋

I've been struggling a lot lately with fear.

It's warranted and makes sense.

It is deeply tied to a lot of hell I have lived through.

My brain and body are connected to the past and want to connect any small sensations and experiences from now to what happened then.

I had some inner resources then that kept me alive. Now in hindsight, I am SO grateful for those!

But now they are firing on all cylinders frequently and keeping me trapped.

It's like I am a car and I gave myself instructions for operation and now I am a different model and on a completely different part of the map and those instructions need to be updated.

Today, my resources and circumstances are different. Re-writing the old pattern and replacing it with a new one has been the hardest and most confusing thing I have ever had to do.

One of the things I am finding really challenging is when I am feeling like I am currently - in the middle of a flare up that brings back all of the old feelings of survival, being trapped and alone with no way out, and other not so fun things to think about - and I see things going on around me and I think about how I used to feel and what my life used to look like.

I open my Instagram and see people at the gym, hiking in beautiful places, going out with friends and enjoying themselves, and doing things I want to be doing.

I look out my window and see people doing things that look fun and enjoyable.

I have people in my own life contacting me and asking me if I can get together to do X or Y.

Right now in the season of life I am in, I don't always have the capacity to do them even if I want to and it's been really challenging.

It's been difficult to maintain relationships, a career, hobbies, or feel like my life is moving forward in the ways I want it to be.

I have felt very, very stuck.

At first it would make me so mad and frustrated and I would face my pain and fear and this feeling of being trapped with anger and resentment.

A “Why are you here? Go away!” type of attitude.

A chronic pain psychologist I used to work with would describe this as suffering - I am adding to the pain I am already feeling by attacking myself.

But these things that are holding me are the very things that literally saved my life.

They needed to. It took everything my little kid Lisa inside me was made of and more.

And I am so glad that they did.

One of the main post-hoc repercussions of that resourcing - reaching beyond the tools I was equipped with to keep myself alive - was that my body lost trust in my ability to protect it.

It makes sense.

Now, I am walking the path of gently holding it by its hand and regaining that trust.

I can't change it, pretend it's not happening, or carry on business as usual and ignore it completely. I can't distract myself out of it. I can't throw a hail mary pass to magically make everything better. I can't force things to be different. I can't muscle my way out of this in the ways I used to.

Life has shown me, without a doubt, that this is the work I need to do.

I need to reset my expectations and decouple the past inputs from past outputs to current inputs and new outputs.

It's the hardest thing I've ever been faced with.

But…

This is my way.

This is my assignment.

This is my journey.

Today I accept my path and am walking it as well and as deeply as I possibly can.

I know it's not easy.

And I know I can't do this (or anything else for that matter) alone.

My hope is that one day I look back at the season I am in right now and say, “Damn. That really made me become a strong ass motherf*cker!”

What's your journey?

What is life shining a light on that you've been trying to distract yourself from or ignore?

In what places are you being called to step up?

I'm sending you good vibes, energy and strength to accept your challenge and your journey today, whatever it may be.

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please reply to this email and drop me a note and let me know! I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall.

If you think this edition could help a friend, feel free to forward it.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

Hey 👋

As I'm learning more about myself one of the major themes that keeps coming up again and again is how many times I have forced myself to do things I didn't want to do.

It's like my logical brain could see the positives in doing X or Y and the somatic part of me wasn't even in the building to chyme in.

Sometimes it was just blatantly not a good fit for my personality and sometimes I had very clear signs from my body that I just ignored.

Objectively I don't think this resulted in bad decisions per se, but subjectively it did result in bad decisions for me, given my unique context and constraints.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about intent and how this shapes how we operate in the world.

The WHY behind what we do is more important than the HOW.

I could force myself to exercise but why is that something I want to do?

Is it because I'm scared of the repercussions if I don't?

Or do I want to exercise because I love myself and I want to take care of myself?

If it's the latter, I might actually choose a different type of exercise to meet my needs.

It's a lot easier to talk about making decisions out of love vs. fear than it is to put them in practice.

I think this is because it's not normally what we see people do.

IMHO it also contributes to the depth or shallowness of our relationships, both with ourselves and with others.

I don't want to be a friend who goes to events out of fear and obligation. I want to be a friend who really shows up when I have the capacity to do so because I care and want to connect and share authentic energy.

I don't want to show up for myself superficially and make decisions that go against my core values in situations that would make others more comfortable. I want to be able to genuinely show up with compassion for myself so I have more capacity and more energy to be myself and present in my life and come from a place of abundance vs. scarcity.

I used to make a lot of decisions from my ego which I think is deeply connected to making decisions out of fear.

The results of this were a life that made me deeply unhappy and unhealthy.

My friend April often says, “Lisa, you gotta make your ego your Amigo!”

The way I think about this is…

If you know what your values are…

And you know how you want to feel…

And you know what you want your life to look like or areas you want to explore if you're not sure…

And if you take a breather before deciding to do anything to check in with whether a decision makes you feel expanded or contracted…

You can work with yourself instead of against yourself.

You can get clear on your intent.

And I think this amplifies outside of the self to others. If you can work with yourself better it will help you work better with others. And help you find the others you want to work with who are aligned.

Now, when I do things…it could be small things like making myself tea or stretching or lying down or learning something new or watching a show or having a conversation with someone…I am trying to ask myself more and more...”What is my intent here?”.

The number of times I catch my actions going against my intent is shocking - like when my intent is to relax and enjoy a story and then I find myself on my phone while a movie is on. I think a lot of modern technology makes this the easy decision and we need to step up hardcore to make the harder decision to align our actions with our intent more frequently.

I'm done forcing myself to do things that feel fear-avoidant rather than towards love. And the main person I need to work with in order to consistently do this is myself.

What is your intent in reading this right now?

What is your intent with whatever you're on to next in your day?

What is your intent with your family, relationships, job, education, where you live, how your mornings look, your nighttime routine, your exercise and food habits, meditating, and all the other things you put energy behind?

The WHY questions are the ones that we often skip over to get to the HOW.

But they are crucial in setting our rudders.

I'm adding this to my list of things I wish I learned in school that I'm only now learning in my 30s.

Better late than never!

 Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note by responding to this email and let me know! I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall.

If you think this edition could help a friend, feel free to forward it.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

Hey 👋

Most of the information we consume is highly generalized - this applies to health advice, career advice, relationship advice and more.

If there's one thing I have learned during my healing journey over the past few years it's been don't always listen to what “most people should do”.

In a lot of ways it’s easier to read about something that's “good for you” and assume that it's something you should add to your routine because there's research supporting its benefits.

The harder thing to do is to expose yourself to new ideas and run them through your own personal filter of “is this actually helping me?”.

I used to listen to everything doctors told me. I used to follow what other successful athletes were doing in their training without question. I used to listen to generalized nutrition advice. Until…that didn't work for me anymore.

Salt went through a period where it was all over the news and it's been popularized that it can cause high blood pressure and that high salt diets should be avoided. But if you have low blood pressure like I do, salt is actually a really good thing.

I did cold showers regularly for more than a year before realizing with the help of data from Whoop that because I was already spending a lot of time in a sympathetic state, amping that up even more constantly was causing detrimental stress.

I have tried fasting for longer periods of time because there's a lot of research supporting it's benefits. But most of that research involves male subjects only and if you're a woman with high cortisol, not eating for prolonged periods can actually make your cortisol increase even more and be detrimental.

I spent years thinking pain I was experiencing during training and sports was normal and something everyone around me was experiencing because of the “no pain no gain” mentality that was ingrained in us. But it is definitely not normal to dislocate your shoulders or jaw several times during a hockey game.

Waking up at 5 am can be great for some people. For others (like me) it may be better to go with your natural rhythm if you skew towards being a night owl. (I recently stumbled upon this cool chronotype quiz to help you understand what you naturally skew towards in terms of sleep and wake cycles).

My point is, it's important to expose yourself to new ideas, try new things, and be an explorer of sorts. It is equally important to check in with your body to see if these things are giving you green lights or if they are giving you red lights.

Then, to work towards stacking more green lights.

And not to immediately reject the red lights but to be curious about them.

If there are changes you can make to re-test and re-assess the initial red lights that feel like the right thing to do, go for it.

Then reduce or remove the red lights that remain to make space for more green lights.

The hardest part of all of this?

Listening to your body sometimes means going against the grain.

The grain of social norms and what is “socially acceptable”.

The grain of schedule norms and “what the normal thing to do is”.

The grain of identity - “if I don't do X anymore I don't know who I am”.

But I can tell you from first hand experience that the repercussions of ignoring when your body is screaming at you are significant and worse than continuing to push through.

I would also argue that there are a lot of things that are considered “normal” in our society that….are definitely not good for us objectively and it would work to our collective benefit to take individual steps toward more green light alternatives.

I'm very much still on an epic healing journey and framing things through this lens. Using green and red lights seems to be helping.

I hope this helps you in some small way with what you are experiencing in your life at the moment.

Lisa ✌️

Soulwork 💜

📚 The Body Keeps The Score

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note and let me know! I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall.

If you think this edition could help a friend, feel free to forward it.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot. ✨

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

The older I get and the more life experiences I have, the more I appreciate simplicity.

When it comes to goal setting, there are a million different approaches that have become popularized like SMART, breaking down large goals into smaller milestones (annual big goal —> smaller monthly goals), OKRs, and a whole lot more.

I've also written before about outside the box approaches like Sahil Bloom’s Anti-Goals and Jennifer Broxterman’s Year Without Goals.

But this is probably my favorite approach so far:

“What path do I want to be walking down?”

This video summarizes it really effectively:

Instagram post

How do you approach setting goals?

Thanks for reading. Have a great week!

-Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

The demand for people who work in decision-making jobs is drastically increasing. Thanks to the rise in automation and machines handling more work, many of the “leftover jobs” for humans involve open-ended decisions and require skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, and adaptability.

The Wold Economic Forum even deemed that this skill - decision-making - is the skill that employers want most.

There's only one catch.

The way we are currently trying to harness this skill within the existing framework of “the way we work” has some conflicts with meeting many of our basic human needs.

I’ve had a few conversations with friends lately that have inspired me to write about this topic as it's a hot one.

Our early ancestors were focused on survival and rather than have separate jobs from “daily living”, work was integrated into their lives. It was structured around survival, community needs, and reciprocity. “Work” consisted of activities like hunting, fishing, farming, craftsmanship, and more. It was communal. It was tied to nature and seasons and the weather. It was tied to movement. There was a connection between what was beneficial for the group as a whole and what was beneficial for the individual.

As we became more industrialized, we could be more productive a whole but with the emergence of factory work and urbanization, our work moved towards working in set shifts, working in hierarchal structures, and focusing on wage output vs. goods output.

Since then, there have been a number of other changes that, IMHO, have changed the way we need to approach taking care of our basic human needs.

These changes in the way we work have meant that our focus has had to shift mostly from present (what can I find to eat right now?) to future (what can I do to help the company in the future?). We are constantly shifting from trying to understand data and trends from the past to help us understand and better predict the future to reduce the degree of uncertainty we will face.

But perhaps the greatest change since the industrial revolution has been that most jobs have gone from time based to decision based. Rather than clocking in and out at set times and having a hard cut off between work and life outside of work, many of the jobs we work today are focused on the quality of our decisions.

If our value is defined by decision quality, it becomes quite a challenge to have an “on” and “off” switch to tell ourselves when we can start and stop collecting information, connecting dots, framing and filtering data and context to feed into those decisions. The lines between work and life become blurred.

There's a lot of research around when sparks of creativity and ideas happen and they commonly occur during blank space time when the mind can wander, like when you're having a shower, when the subconscious is at work in the background and has space to flow.

I would argue that now, at least in North American society, we have become so productivity focused that we have optimized the crap out of ourselves out of ourselves and engineered away most of our “blank space time”. We are always connected, always scheduled, and always feeling behind in some area of life. So, not only can our brains not turn off because we are predominantly working decision-based jobs, but we also are overworking ourselves without giving our subconscious mind time to roam freely and support us.

Some contextual “knowns”:

• There are 24 hours in a day

• There are things we need to do in a day to take care of our basic human needs in order to function (sleep, eat, hygiene, move, and more) (survival)

• Most of us need to do some form of work that creates some form of value in order to obtain resources to fund our existence (survival)

• Some of us need to care for others in addition to ourselves - family members, children, etc. (survival)

• Many partnered households require 2 full-time incomes to survive (survival)

• There’s a growing trend in North America around adults remaining single and unpartnered (according to 2021 Pew research study, 31% of US adults say they are unpartnered and a 2023 study done by the U.S. Census Bureau found that 46.4% of US adults are single) - (read: more people in North America are leaning on themselves only to survive…or leaning on parents and other family members more)

If you take a given 24-hour period, for example:

• Say 8 hours are allocated to sleeping (ideally) plus 1 hour as a buffer to wind down before bed (24-9=15 remaining hours)

• Say 8 hours go to scheduled work (15-8=7 remaining hours)

• Say 1 hour is needed to get ready for work in the morning (waking up, hygiene, getting dressed, makeup, hair) (7-1= 6 remaining hours)

• Say 3 hours are needed for making and eating 3 meals (6-3=3 remaining hours)

This is not taking into account any commuting for work, overtime hours for meetings before or after regularly scheduled meetings or responding to Slack messages and emails or business trips and leaves only 3 hours to take care of the rest of our basic human needs like exercising, banking/finances, cleaning, laundry, taking care of kids, socializing, investing quality time with a significant other and family members, doctor's appointments, car maintenance, meditation, and anything else we need to do to take care of ourselves. It also doesn’t take into account travel time for anything outside of work (i.e. picking up kids from school, getting to and from doctor appointments, etc.).

Breaking it down and looking at the numbers is something I find quite shocking.

I'm reading the book “Civilized to Death” right now and it quotes a 1928 essay written by economist John Maynard Keynes called, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” where he imagines what the world will be like a century in the future (now):

“For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem. How to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest have won.”

Now, the average North American is not twiddling their thumbs trying to figure out what to do with our time. Instead, we are playing a dangerous game of tradeoffs with our basic human needs, while at the same time, also aren't giving ourselves the blank space time to feed into better decisions (both at work and in our lives). We are on a treadmill that keeps speeding up while we keep breaking down. And I think the rise of AI is going to ramp up the speed and incline exponentially.

When Henry Ford instilled the “OG” 9-5 in 1926 at the Ford Motor Company, it was designed to create more stability and certainty for workers during an uncertain time while carving out set hours for more rest and free time during which employees would be encouraged to buy more consumer goods. It didn't take off immediately. The Fair Labour Standards Act was passed in 1938 in the US and 9-5 working hours became more mainstream outside of industrialist fields by the 1950s and 1960s with the rise of white collar office jobs. Now, we don't have the same physical boundaries around the time that we work and I believe we are at another critical inflection point.

We have the rise of decision-based jobs coming amidst another period of global uncertainty and instability. Pair this with the current technology landscape (AI, automation, ecosystems for connected remote work) and we are at a point where the old systems don't necessarily fit 1:1 with the current circumstances. I would also argue this is all factoring into both Canada and the US experiencing their lowest ever happiness ranking scores.

While more and more of us who come from younger generations are looking at the way things work and going, NOPE, turning 180 degrees and becoming self-employed influencers, content creators, affiliate marketers, and more, I think there's a bigger question to ask:

What can we do about the current way we work as a whole so that our systems work with us vs. against us?

I believe the future of work involves structuring our lives around practices that support improved health and improved decision quality. This involves better connection with our own internal world and more awareness about how our bodies and minds are feeling and what they need to feel good over the long-term.

One that involves prioritizing sleep quality, natural foods, frequent movement, time spent outdoors in the sun, building connected, genuine and nurturing relationships, and longer periods of nervous system regulation. One that involves de-coupling decision quality from time. One that involves being clear on our values and structuring our lives around those values in a flexible and adaptable way. One that involves better boundaries between work and life and blank space time.

By identifying what matters most to us and defining what boxes we want to tick, it gives us a better chance to tick more of them.

By doing regular life check-ins with ourselves and keeping it fucking real (with compassion). Identifying the specific areas where we are feeling misaligned that are taking our energy vs. nurturing us and giving us energy. Identifying the things that are making our bodies scream at us while we subconsciously say, “Just hold on a little longer - I'll take care of you later.” vs. the things that are giving us green lights and making us feel good.

By starting with the basics like sleep, we can start to build better habits that we can stack and that amplify our capacity as individuals and as a collective group.

If you're in a leadership and/or HR position and are reading this and it resonates, I would urge you to think about any changes you can tangibly make to help support some of these things IRL.

IMHO they could include options like 4-day work weeks to allow for more continuous unblocked time in a given 7-day period, flexible hours, output value and productivity measurement that is decoupled from time input (i.e. similar to how consultants sometimes offer value-based vs. time-based pricing), flexible working locations and options (i.e. the ability for employees to choose between remote, co-working spaces, in-office in a flexible way based on what works best for them to operate most effectively in their role), and crystal clear and upfront expectations around communication (specifically outside of regular working hours).

Additionally, we can take a closer look at ways of working that help balance the need to coordinate and produce things as a company with supporting individual employee needs, the feeling of employee ownership, and the feeling of employee empowerment.

Perhaps part of the resistance to changing things is our inherent biologically ingrained aversion to uncertainty. But we are already living in very uncertain times…so maybe it’s the best time to try something new.

I certainly do not have all of the answers. But I do know what it feels like to hit the wall and have no other options but to change my priorities. And I absolutely think this is a topic worth exploring further.

It’s also important to call out that many people have found jobs and lifestyles they love that are working with them - they may be decision based or may not be. I think that's awesome and if that's you, keep on going! If it is, perhaps you can respond to this with what you have found has worked for you as well. I'd love to hear your PoV.

What are your thoughts about the shifts in how we work? How have these shifts impacted you? What changes would you like to see?

Soulwork 💜

• ✨ Shoutout to my Aunt Lucy for forwarding this great Mel Robbins podcast episode to me: How to Control Your Mind and Redirect Your Energy to Self-Transformation

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note and let me know. I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall. If you know a friend who might enjoy reading this, forward it to them.

Sending good vibes and intentions your way. You got this. ✨

-Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

Hey 👋

My journey in aligning my life and feeling better has involved A LOT of experiments. It’s also still very much ongoing.

I’m a problem solver and I’m also innately curious about things.

So, through experiencing a significant amount of both mental and physical health challenges, I’ve tried a million and one things (and probably will keep doing this because I am…well, me) to see what might help. If any of my experiences and first-hand perspectives re: things that have helped me can help you, too, that would be an added bonus.

In that vein, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time is assemble a quick list of some of the “helpers” - the tools and practices I have found that actually make a measurable difference in my life when it comes to being more aware of my thoughts, emotions, and actions and that have played a role in improving my health.

Additionally, before getting into anything, outside of any products I use or practices I have in my life, working with an excellent trauma therapist has helped me reframe the lens through which I see the world, be more aware of when my nervous system is dysregulated, and understand tangible things I can do to regulate it. I would say this has helped more than any daily ritual or tool I have added or experimented with.

Finally, there’s a great book called Lost Connections that highlights what I think are a lot of the reasons why in North America our basic human needs are not met inherently because of the systems we have created and are living within and why we have to work extra hard to make more conscious decisions and “go against the grain” to meet them. I strongly believe that a lot of the measures I will discuss below would not be as necessary if we lived in stronger authentic communities, with access to high quality food, baked in physical movement and more time spent outdoors. These are the long-tail things I’m looking to improve in terms of my overall life design.

[Disclaimer: This is intentionally meant to cast a wide net. If there are any areas you’re particularly interested in and would like me to dig into more, let me know. Any links I include below for products or apps or services I am sharing are because they have helped me - I don’t receive affiliate income them. Also, I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. I would recommend meeting with a doctor of there are any changes you’re interesting in making based on anything I am sharing here that might impact your health].

Mindfulness and General Self-Care

I’ve tried a whole lotta things in this space and find that the best products for me usually have these things in common:

1. Solve a good problem.

2. Simple.

3. Minimal ads.

4. Ideally, free.

Insight Timer: Of all the meditation apps I have tried, this is my favourite. I love how flexible and simple it is. I use the unpaid version which still offers lots of value. I LOVE the filters for time (i.e. “I’m looking for a 5 min thing vs. a 20 minute thing”) and LOVE the timer option with custom sounds like a wood block and gong 😂. Sometimes I just want to be with myself rather than have someone guiding me. This is especially true when I’m feeling the most overwhelmed.

Breathe Easy: I have tried a bunch of guided breathing apps, have gone to Othership and done guided breathing in a sauna, Wim Hof, and a million other things James Nestor mentions in his book Breathe. As someone who deals with anxiety and PTSD, I think if I can master breathing as a tool it will go a long way in helping my nervous system stay more regulated. I love Breathe Easy because it’s the most basic one I’ve tried. I often find that when I am listening to a guided breathwork session, I get stressed if I am not staying exactly on pace with the instructor which can make my stress increase instead of decrease. This app is so freaking basic that it’s gold - all you do is set a timer for how long you want to inhale, hold, exhale, and hold, and then watch the animation on the screen and follow along. You can choose a circle, a square, or a heart. That’s it. Simple. Effective.

Finch: I am a recovering people pleaser and have often focused outward when dealing with trauma triggers (i.e. Trying to change my environment to make it more safe or change the way I operate in interactions I am having to make them more safe) vs. inward (understanding my own experience and why I don’t feel safe in the first place). I am getting better at this but have struggled with prioritizing taking care of myself. I’m also left and right-brained and am going through the ADHD diagnosis process so having lists help me tangibly connect the needs I have with actions I can take to meet them. This kind of feels like a woke-2025 version of a Tamagotchi. The idea is you set daily actions you want to take to take care of yourself and by completing them, your little animated self-care companion grows. It lets you set daily and weekly recurring actions and also has a lot of tools I have yet to explore as emotional first aid if you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, sad, etc.

Sand Timers: Yes, I am going here and bringing things way back to the basics 😅! Sometimes I get into a funk where I want as little to do with my phone as possible. My phone in itself can be an anxiety trigger. I just got these little timers and love them. I use them when I am meditating or stretching, and would like to experiment more with them while working vs. using a Pomodoro Timer, countdown clock, or alarm which can add stress instead of reduce it.

Sleep and Recovery

Whoop: To change something, it often helps to measure it to understand it better. Whoop has been a huge helper for me to understand how every action I take - going to bed at a certain time, how closely I eat to my bedtime, how much exercise I am getting, breathing exercises, supplements, social interactions and more directly impact my sleep and HRV (Heart Rate Variability - a general measure of nervous system health and resilience - people with high HRVs are usually more adaptable, less stressed, and happier). While Whoop became popular initially with athletes, I would recommend this product to anyone looking to improve their health. Rather than get overwhelmed by focusing on a million different metrics, I pretty much just make a change and see how it is impacting my HRV - a bunch of mini experiments. The things that help I can stack. The things that don’t I can try to minimize or remove. So far I have learned that meeting 100% of my sleep need, a consistent sleep schedule, zone 2 cardio, infrared light, wearing a mouthguard at night, and electrolytes (I take LMNT but have also just used salt in warm water or drank coconut water) have a positive impact on my recovery. (Also…having my .)

It sounds redundant but standard sleep practices have helped as well. Keeping my phone in a different room. Keeping the temperature pretty low (68 F/20 C). Using a sleep mask to make it even darker. Not eating a huge meal or drinking a lot of water right before bed time. Not drinking alcohol or caffeine (I’m off both right now). Doing some breathing exercises before bed. Getting sunlight when I wake up to help set my circadian rhythm. Limiting blue light exposure at night (altogether or by wearing blue light blocking glasses). The Huberman Lab podcast is a great resource for understanding sleep and actionable things you can do to improve it.

I’m experimenting with a few other things right now and trying to understand how they impact my sleep and HRV so if you’re interested in me writing more about this and what I’m finding, let me know.

Supplements: I spent a lot of my life not wanting to add any supplements to my diet and wanting to focus on creating a whole food situation that met my basic needs. I decided to get some tests done though within the last year and found out that I was severely deficient in Vit D (and probably had been for most of my life) in addition to a few other things that were at a detriment to my health and making me feel worn down and get sick often. So I started taking Vit D, Vit C, magnesium citrate, and a multivitamin to cover my bases, and am currently working with a naturopath and GP and experimenting with fish oil, creatine, protein (I’ve tried a few forms and so far whey and beef protein isolate seem to agree the most and I found 2 brands that use just a single ingredient for each), GABA, l-theanine, ashwagandha, probiotics, a digestive enzyme, and a few other things with the goals of a) Improving my digestion, b) Improving my body’s ability to rest, recycle and recover, and c) Downregulating my nervous system and supporting my nervous system health. I don’t want to go into the weeds here but can in a future post if that’s of interest. I have also experimented with TONS of different diets and food situations and have a lot of thoughts based on my own experiences that I might summarize in a later post (vegan, vegetarian, low-fodmap, low-histamine, high protein, no gluten, no dairy, no nightshades, etc. etc. etc.). One thing I will mention here is that this book has helped me a lot - The Bloated Belly Whisperer. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like 😅.

Environment

As someone who’s had a lot of complex medical issues and allergy symptoms, rather than masking symptoms, I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on and take the data my body is giving me and use it to change my environment in small, practical ways. Essentially - how can I remove some of the things that are stopping my body from being able to recycle and recover efficiently?

Something I didn’t think about much until pretty recently was the quality of the air and water I’m ingesting or exposing myself to.

I recently got a water filter for my drinking water, a water filter for my bathtub, and an air filter.

So far the main impacts are that my skin is a lot softer, I am not sneezing as much, my water tastes a lot better and when I make tea my kettle is a lot easier to clean because there’s less mineral deposits.

The air filter in particular has been an interesting tool to use as a data point - I was pretty shocked at how much my air quality drops when I light a candle or am cooking. It’s been pretty eye-opening. Now, when I cook I keep the window open.

I have also been trying to make more of an effort to buy more clothes made of natural materials like cotton. Same goes for jewelry - I’ve been buying wooden jewelry from Rare Olive for a while now and love it. Same for soaps, shampoos, and creams - Dr. Bronner’s has been a great brand in this vein - in addition to using more natural cleaning products and laundry detergent.

The idea behind most of this is that we’re exposed to a lot of endocrine-disrupting synthetic materials like BPA every day that have now been proving to cause a hell of a lot of health problems. Personally, I don’t think we’ll be able to totally eliminate plastics in our lives, so I’m kind of approaching it as “How can I at least take some steps to minimize exposure?”

I’ve also been trying to organize my living space around a biophilic design with lots of plants and wood.

So far these things all seem to be helping anecdotally but I want to track this over a longer time period to truly understand the impact they have.

I’ve been following this guy - Joey Sorts - for a while and I like a lot of his basic tips for reducing the things we’re exposed to every day that are health-detractors and things we can do to improve our living spaces to help us.

It's also important for me to say that I do think it’s possible to take this too far where it limits your quality of life and social interactions. I’m trying to approach it by slowly adding breadcrumbs of these things to my life and being flexible.

Body

The way I’d frame how I approach taking care of my body would be to separate things into 2 phases:

1. Damage control: What I do when things are not good.

2. Preventative/Maintenance: Things I do proactively to help increase the chances I’ll feel better in the long-term. Daily practices to keep the machine running.

Damage Control:

• Chronic Pain: Having dealt with chronic pain my whole life, two resources that have helped are John Sarno’s book, “Healing Back Pain” (which applies to back pain AND many inflammatory-type conditions) and Nichole Sach’s course, “Freedom from Chronic Pain”. I am still dealing with some pain on an ongoing basis so this is very much a work in progress.

• Heating Pad: I got this little guy from Shoppers Drug mart a few years ago and love it! I’m actually using it while typing this out.

• PowerDot: Helps with circulation and pain management plus it’s small and easy to travel with.

Preventative/Maintenance:

• Barefoot shoes: I switched to wearing barefoot shoes almost 100% of the time a few years ago and it significantly changed my life. My feet are stronger, more flexible, and I have a more stable foundation for everything up the chain. I’ll write a separate post about this because it’s a big topic to dig into. Doing an assessment with MyFootFunction helped me a lot here as well. The most shocking part, though, was that my feet increased 2.5 sizes because I had been wearing shoes that were essentially foot binding my whole life.

• Regular strength and and mobility work: I have experimented a ton with this especially though many injuries and to offset a lot of the issues I have because of my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. One thing I would recommend if you’re starting from scratch or experiencing pain currently is Whealth - Katie and Andrew that run the online program both have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome like me. They changed my life and how I approach taking care of myself. Here’s a bit of my backstory with their program and what I went through.

• Regular Zone 2 cardio: I used to cycle but recently switched to swimming in a warm water pool to help downregulate my nervous system even more and it’s been a lot better for me overall.

• Massage and muscle scraping: I use a small Sidekick tool and it has helped me break up a lot of scar tissue from previous injuries. I also use these tune up balls and a bunch of other tools like foam rollers, lacrosse balls, and voodoo floss to help assist my tissues and recovery.

• Dry cupping cups: I had a massage treatment done with these recently and it really helped my tissues glide more freely so I bought my own on Amazon. I would speak with a professional before using these on your own though because they can break the capillaries near your skin and are not good to use on certain body parts.

• Sitting on the ground regularly vs on a couch or chair and putting myself in different positions throughout the day - there’s a great episode of the Blue Zones docuseries on Netflix (the Okinawa, Japan episode) that talks about this and its impact on longevity.

• Not doing any intense exercise in the morning or at the end of the day. Being gentler with my system while it is revving up and revving down.

• Having lots of baths! Sometimes with magnesium and lavender. Recent research has shown that a warm bath activates the same nerve endings as physical touch and causes your body to release oxytocin. Read: It’s like a hug.

I am still experimenting and have by no means found the holy grail, but I have found a lot of things that help through this process. Let me know if there are any areas that would be valuable for me to expand on. What are some of the things you’ve experimented with and have found to have helped or hindered?

Soulwork 💜

• 🧘‍♀️ A great healing meditation for if you’re going through some hard things.

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note and let me know. I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall. If you know a friend who might enjoy reading this, forward it to them.

Have a great week!

-Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

Hey 👋

Happy Thursday :)

I just saw this reel on Instagram by Ike Wynter. It hit me right in the gut and I wanted to share it with you:

Instagram post

If you've never heard of Ike and his story, he lives in Wisconsin, dumpster dives to find pieces of wood and scraps and turns that trash into really cool nostalgia-infused art like this:

He’s brought his spin on wood art to the New York Stock Exchange, thrown a first pitch at an MLB game, and now sells his garbage-turned-art for thousands of dollars.

In his 20s, he suffered from long Covid which brought on depression which he still deals with. Since then, he has become a mental health awareness advocate. Part of his drive? Making people smile and giving them hope.

These are two of my favourite quotes from him:

“I just get to cut wood all day and listen to music - that’s my joy.” (From an interview he did with The Today Show).

“I’ve kind of always followed my heart and done what I wanted to do.” (From an interview he did with NBC).

I wonder what the world would look like if more of us were able to navigate life with this kind of compass.

His Instagram reel really got me thinking:

1. What would I say in a message I would send now to my younger self?

2. What message would I want to hear right now from my future self?

I think this is a great thought exercise to go through to help make yourself feel seen, supported, and loved.

What message would you leave on your own voicemail for your younger self?

If you could think about a message you would want to hear right now from Future You, what would it say?

If you’re open to sharing, let me know.

P.S. Here’s his website if you want to take a look at some of his creations.

Soulwork 💜

• ✨ This is a great podcast episode that talks about how to move more naturally and pain-free.

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note and let me know. I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall. If you know a friend who might enjoy reading this, feel free to forward it to them.

Have a great rest of your week!

-Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

(Psst. I’m experimenting with ads. If you hate this please let me know).

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Hey 👋

I’m in the middle of reading and listening to a few books that are all weirdly connected to the idea of getting in your own way.

Pretty great timing for me if I am being honest 😅

One of them is Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain Is You.

In it, one of the things she calls out explicitly is reasons why we self-sabotage.

We are genetically wired to want to be more comfortable vs. uncomfortable and be in more predictable vs. less predictable situations.

Any discomfort - a variance from our normal baseline - can send off alarms, even if the change is a good thing. This is amped up even more for highly sensitive people.

Things often happen in life that are beyond our control, but there are a lot of things that are in our control that we subconsciously derail because of discomfort avoidance, self-limiting beliefs, and deep identity associations.

For example, if, growing up, your parents struggled with money and painted a picture of being rich or having money being a bad thing (i.e. “rich people are mean and self-centered”), subconsciously this might make it harder for you to accumulate money and resources because you do not want to identify as the negatively-perceived thing you were programmed to avoid.

If your baseline was being in anxious-avoidant attachment pattern situations, you will probably subconsciously seek this in relationships without even being aware of it because it’s what you’re used to.

If growing up you were taught that being beautiful or attractive or simply your authentic self is a bad thing because it attracts dangerous people and situations, you will likely subconsciously make efforts to dim your light and be less attractive, make yourself smaller or take up less space, and be less “you”.

On top of this, we usually also have beliefs about ourselves that we learned growing up that are not actually objectively true - they serve to protect us but actually end up limiting us.

For me, some examples are “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not smart enough”, “I am not worthy of this/I don’t deserve this”, “I’m unlovable”, “Feeling good is a bad thing - it means the other shoe is about to drop”, and a whole lot more like this.

We often go on like this, repeating the same patterns and seeing the same problems come up for us again, and again and again until…

1. We either have the awareness to see what is happening, create space and take a step back and consciously approach these things with curiosity and action with intent with appropriate support in a gentle, progressive way.

2. We are backed against the wall and put in a situation where we literally cannot go on like this and NEED to change NOW - our bodies shut down or our lives implode. Often, both happen at the same time.

Part of the reason I’m writing about this is because I fall into bucket 2 and my hope is that by writing more about some of these things, if you’re reading this and recognize some of these patterns in yourself, you can avoid bucket 2 altogether by planting yourself firmly in bucket 1.

Most of the ways we self-sabotage involve substituting one thing for another…and we usually choose the easier thing vs. the hard thing.

For example:

Hard thing: Asking for a promotion.

Risks: Failure, shame, blow to confidence if denied.

Easier thing: Don’t ask to avoid potential risks.

Another one:

Hard thing: Setting boundaries for yourself in any relationship

Risks: Boundaries are not respected, relationship does not work out, getting hurt when vulnerable.

Easier thing: Avoiding relationships.

Are you avoiding relationships so you avoid getting hurt?

Are you avoiding investing in your business idea or asking for a promotion because you’re afraid of failing?

Are you making yourself smaller to avoid having to deal with any conflict that could arise by being your big, awesome, authentic, self?

From my own rollercoasters of experiences, I think having some awareness can go a long way and will also say that a lot of this work is MUCH easier said than done. Pain substitution is kind of how I think about it. What small pain do you I want to deal with now (i.e. having a hard conversation) to avoid bigger pain down the line (i.e. regretting a life path you took for 30+ years because you didn’t have the conversation)?

In The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein, she talks about these hard things we must do to avoid worse hard things down the line as “our assignments". I kind of love the idea of taking the feeling of being on our heels and flipping it on it’s head into something that we can own and be proactive about.

What are some of the ways you recognize you are limiting yourself? Feel free to drop me a note and let me know.

Soulwork 💜

📚 I just read a book that I loved and wanted to share with you:

• We Were Dreamers (Simu Liu’s Memoir) (Fun fact - I decided to read it after bumping into him while ago while he was filming a movie in Toronto. He seems like a great guy and very genuine).

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, let me know! I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall.

If you think this edition could help a friend, feel free to forward it.

If you aren’t a fan, I invite you to unsubscribe - it’s all good 🙂 no hard feelings.

Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot.

Lisa ✌️

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

I’ve been thinking a lot about energy.

And not because of my hydro bill.

I think it’s easy to get stuck in loops thinking about things we need to do to make our egos happy - what titles we need to have, how much money we need to make, who we should be friends with, what our car and house should be like, etc.

These are the messages we get from the marketing we are exposed to - both consciously and unconsciously - all around us.

But if we feed our ego more than our soul, at some point the buck will stop because we are not working from a regenerative energy source.

We’re working from external sources which will run out eventually.

For some, it’s running into health issues.

For others, it’s running out of money.

Sometimes, it’s looking up and realizing that you’re not actually supported emotionally and you don’t have people in your life that give you energy so you feel alone and isolated.

For some people (like me) this can manifest with life falling apart in many different ways at the same time.

This isn’t the universe working against you.

It’s working for you to show you what you need to change and take action on to be able to get to a place where you can expend energy and have other things in your life that give you energy back.

I’m still navigating this for myself but being more aware of my energy has been really eye-opening.

Asking myself questions like:

• What interactions do I have in my life that give me energy vs. take my energy away?

• Does my work make me feel energized or depleted?

• Do I do anything daily as part of my routine that takes my energy away that I should stop doing/replace with things that give me energy?

• Where do I need to bake in more rest to recharge?

As a highly sensitive person, I also am a lot more aware of how my energy changes depending on what is around me.

For example, when I’m in situations where I feel stressed, my voice changes immediately - it’s higher pitched (I never thought about this until I saw Jane Fonda’s documentary where she talks about how her voice has dropped significantly).

Sometimes when I’m in really crowded spaces - the worst being a conference with tons of ambient noise, intense lighting, and lots of people movement - I hit the wall and my brain just goes, “Nope!” and all I want to do is go be alone in a dark room in silence.

When someone I’m talking to in person is really excited, their energy usually makes me feel excited and my heart rate increases.

I’m still working on finding a balance of things that give me energy vs. things that take my energy away.

I think it’s also been helpful for me to view energy through the lens of nervous system regulation - what can I do when my nervous system is dysregulated to bring it back to being regulated?

Additionally, thinking about how my emotions play into this has been helpful.

Emotions are energy in motion.

Most non-western medicine practices center around energy movement vs. stagnation in one way or another rather than focusing on symptoms.

For example, in some Eastern medicine practices, blocked chakras can lead to energy draining health and life imbalances.

Thinking about this somatically has helped me figure out how to understand this better as it relates to emotions - here’s a great example from Julie Menanno:

Instagram post

With all of that being said, what does this look like for you?

How is your energy balance right now?

Do you feel energized or depleted?

Do you know what might be contributing to this?

Like most things, I think having awareness is a huge first step in the right direction (even though it can sometimes feel really overwhelming).

Soulwork 💜

• ✨ I’ve been listening to Matthew McConaughey’s book Greenlights and it’s pretty wild and entertaining, in addition to giving me energy

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note and let me know. I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall. If you know a friend who might enjoy reading this, forward it to them.

Have a great week!

-Lisa ✌️

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