It’s 7:31 am. I just opened my laptop to write this email to you. Only to notice that an old draft of it had already been sent out! I have no idea how or why… It wasn’t in my scheduled drafts. And more importantly, it wasn’t ready! So let’s try this again…
Two tall candles are flickering on the bedside to the left of me. A freshly made hot ginger tea is steaming to the right of me. Nothing but darkness and the occasional window light being turned on or off is visible through my French door windows. Mostly, it is pitch black.
Early in the morning, when I first wake up, has always been my favourite way and time of day to sit down and connect with you like this. Lately, it’s been happening less than I would like.
It’s been one of those times where the days and weeks merge and melt into each other. I look up from my life that is all-consuming in various iterations of growth, and cannot tell if it’s Saturday or Thursday or Monday. In fact, this year felt like it folded in on itself in March and then came back out in November, making it 4 months instead of 12.
I have chosen to surrender to it all. The lack of certainty, the lack of environmental consistency, the lack… lack lack lack… I say ‘lack’, but what it really is, is an emptying out. The things I deeply yearn for cannot come from lack nor from fullness. They can only come from space.
the art of noticing ~ photo challenge
Every December, I want to notice and savour the calendar year just passed, and this year I feel something different asking to come through: a communal ritual, a way of remembering beauty together. A way of closing the year not through analysis or productivity or resolutions, but through presence. Through the practice that has quietly held me through so many seasons: noticing.
Noticing is my way home. It is a return to the small, the immediate, the sensory, the real. It is a nervous system soothing mechanism disguised as creativity. A micro-dose of aliveness. A gentle psychological intervention. And when a few of my students from The Art of Noticing writing club asked if I’d offer a two-week photo challenge to help us all see the beauty in our everyday lives… I said, “Yes, of course! I’d love that!”.
So I’m opening it to everyone: the whole extended circle of people who orbit these pages.
A free, two-week invitation into the world as it actually is: imperfect, unguarded, quietly shimmering. A collective exhale at the end of a hard year. A bridge ritual between what has been and what is beginning.
The Art of Noticing: 14 Days of Everyday Beauty December 17–31
It’s a gentle daily nudge toward a softer gaze. One prompt each morning. One photo each day. A moment you saw that you might otherwise have walked past. A flicker of light, a corner of rest, a colour that feels like hope, a texture that surprises you, a symbol of care you didn’t know you needed.
We’ll move through the world together in a slow arc:
from the external world → inward → relational → closing → opening again.
A choreography of attention. A small pilgrimage. A way to let the year exhale through you.
When you notice beauty during hard times, beauty becomes the thing that carries you through. This is the paradox at the heart of the challenge. People often imagine they must feel better before they can see beauty, but the act of seeing is often what begins the softening. This practice flips the sequence.
Over the 14 days, we’ll notice:
light as it finds us unexpected softness what stayed quiet corners the simplest joy the colour of hope and the doorway into the next year
The prompts are intentionally simple because simplicity is the practice. This is about reconnecting with beauty and your creativity. A photo is small enough not to activate perfectionism, but meaningful enough to reveal something true. A way to express without effort. A way to see without striving.
And we’ll do it together, in community — because when a group notices beauty at the same time, everyone’s eyes sharpen. My noticing widens yours. Your noticing shifts mine. We become a shared lens, a communal field of attention, each of us offering the day back to each other in the form of a single captured moment. This is how ordinary days become luminous.
The vibe: gentle, imperfect, real. cosy in the quiet-hours sense. a place to land at the end of each day. zero pressure. no catching up. come as you are, miss a day, rejoin, it doesn’t matter. a slow collective walk toward the threshold of a new year.
Your next steps: Join the challenge inside the community space. It’s free. You can come alone or bring a friend. You’ll get the daily prompt, you’ll take the photo, and you’ll share it if you want to, with words or without. You can scroll through the others’ posts each night, letting their way of seeing alter your own. And at the very end, on December 31, we’ll close with a final moment of stillness. A breath shared across distance.
If you’ve felt rushed, overwhelmed, disconnected from yourself, numb, or stretched this year — come. If you’ve wanted to make something but haven’t had the energy — come. If you’ve longed for softness, for ritual, for a simple way to feel more alive — come.
This is a doorway disguised as a challenge. A ritual disguised as a photo exercise. A remembering disguised as something casual. It’s not about taking pictures. It’s about noticing your life with an eye looking for beauty and a gentler gaze.
Save your login details. You’ll likely need to sign in more than once, so it’s best to store your username and password in your password manager.
Bookmark the community link in your browser, so you don’t have to search for the invite email each time.
You can also download the Stan Community app to your phone for easy access (or do both, whatever feels simplest):
Search for “Stan Community” in your mobile app store.
Install and open the app.
Sign in using your Stan Store login details.
Once inside
Come say hello! Post a short introduction with a photo, your name, and where you’re based, plus a few lines about what you hope to experience here and a little bit about you.
6/8 — the sixth rule of her way club (aka: how to change your life in 6-12 months)
OCT 15, 2025
Continuing our 8 rules of her way club series. If you’re just joining, begin here:
1/8— deciding to play by your own rules 2/8 — subtracting what doesn’t belong 3/8 — the natural consequence: uncertainty interlude — her way deep rest 4/8 — trust yourself 5/8 — inner life 6/8 — outer life
Before we continue, 2 important things:
Next week, starting on Tuesday with the New Moon 🌚, I am gathering a small circle of writers and dreamers for six weeks of writing together for The Art of Noticing.I’d love you to join me. Doors close on Saturday at midnight. Join here.
Please continuecompleting this questionnaire. The competition ends at the end of this week. If you haven’t completed it yet (and you’d like the gift of working with me 1:1), please, do so here.
Life changes in an instant. The ordinary instant. You choose a new way to view your life, and suddenly it takes on an entirely new flavour and trajectory.
I remember the day that I decided to devote myself to living a life that is truly my own. I was living in Venice, just a couple of blocks back from the beach in Los Angeles. It was a sparkly late September afternoon, the sun in that part of the world a generous haze that fractures the light, scattering it in such a way that there are no shadows. I had just come home from a date with a curly-haired actor who lived in a garage and was delusionally committed to his acting career. If he can be so devoted to his dream, so can I, I decided.
My dream was not anchored in what my life would look like, but how it would feel.
I want a life that feels soul-led, heart-driven, alive, romantic, bohemian, and rich. I want a life that, if at any given moment it comes to an end, every moment of it was well-lived and full.
On that afternoon in Venice, I surrendered my motivation for curating a life that looks good on the outside for a devotion to one that feels good on the inside. And to allow my outer life to be a co-creation between me and a higher power based on my inner life and essence.
At first intentionally, and more recently, with a stronger desire to find my place, I have been moving between cities and countries, following the rhythm of my life and the quiet pull of my work. I don’t have a dedicated office or a desk that anchors me, but I have something far more powerful: a dedication to my expression and my work and as an extension of both, to my writing that exists in my mind, in my days, and in the life I’ve intentionally crafted.
On some mornings, I write in a sunlit café overlooking cobbled streets; on others, in a small apartment with the hum of a city below me. Sometimes, I’m sitting cross-legged on a patch of grass under a tree, letting my notes scatter into the wind. The space itself is secondary. What matters is the commitment, the devotion, and the intentionality I bring to it.
This is what outer life is really about:creating the conditions for your inner world to find expression.
The first five steps of this series built the internal architecture for this moment.
You’ve taken back your power, carved space for yourself, leaned into uncertainty, trusted your instincts, and begun tending your inner life. Now, all of that work begins to take shape. This is where the choices you make daily, deliberately, insistently, start to build a life that reflects your authentic self.
You must understand this:your outer life is a reflection of your inner life. The more intimately you know yourself, the more consciously you can build the world around you.
Outer life can be divided into three intertwined arenas: belonging, contribution, and life design. Each is a reflection of the inner work you’ve done. Each requires courage, curiosity, and clarity.
belonging
Belonging is one of the quietest, yet most vital parts of your outer life. It is about the subtle, soul-deep resonance that occurs when you are seen and reflected in ways that align with your inner self.
There is a paradox here:authentic connection requires both discernment and vulnerability. You must choose wisely, noticing who nourishes your essence and who depletes it, and yet you must remain open, willing to reveal your true self even when it feels risky.
I learned this while building my life across cities, coasting between cafés, shared apartments, and rented studios. Some friendships, no matter how long or familiar, feel heavy. They pull on my energy, asking for parts of me that I am no longer willing to give. Others, sometimes newly formed or unconventional, carried me and lifted me higher. Conversations sparked ideas, laughter became inspiration, collaboration became growth. I had to learn to notice the difference, to audit not only who was present in my life but how their presence made me feel in my body, mind, and spirit.
You started this practice in rule 2: subtraction. Take stock of the relationships you have: colleagues, friends, family, collaborators. Ask yourself, who energises me? Who inspires curiosity, excitement, and possibility? Who mirrors the essence you’ve begun cultivating through your inner work? Then notice the opposite: who consistently drains, frustrates, or diminishes your energy? The goal isn’t to cut everyone away or to judge harshly, but to become conscious of how your interactions affect your alignment.
Once you’ve mapped it, create space for the relationships that resonate and set gentle but firm boundaries with those that don’t. This could mean choosing to collaborate only with people who value your creative ambitions, or spending more time with friends who encourage risk-taking and experimentation rather than comfort and stagnation. It might mean letting go of obligations. Dinners, calls, or group chats that no longer serve your inner or outer growth.
In my own life, I’ve found immense freedom and clarity when I consciously chose to invest in friendships that fed my curiosity, supported my projects, and shared my love for a life that is deliberate and full.
Belonging, at its best, is about alignment. It is choosing to be seen and to see others who reflect your values, your energy, and your evolving essence. And paradoxically, when you practice discernment, when you allow yourself to step away from the relationships that weigh you down, you also become more open, more present, and more available to the connections that truly matter. This is where your inner life finds its reflection in the outer world.
contribution
Your contribution to the world is the vehicle through which your inner life can be expressed and give back to the world you live in by shaping it through your creations, thoughts, words and work.
Think of contribution as a state of mind.
High-agency individuals do not wait for instructions or validation. They notice a problem, a need, a desire, and move toward it, creating solutions that ripple outward. Low-agency individuals wait, follow, and defer. The difference is not titles or job descriptions; it is the inner decision to act, to trust your ideas, and to cultivate the skills that make those ideas real. Entrepreneurship, creative work, leadership, and artistry all function in this high-agency space. They require the courage to take risks, to fail, to experiment, and to use life itself as a laboratory for growth.
I’ve learned this through my own contributions in the world, by testing ideas that feel aligned with my essence. I have discovered that the work itself exposes the gaps in knowledge. It is in the doing that I learn what you don’t know and discover what only I can create.
Contribution occurs when:I give myself permission to start following a desire, pleasure, or an inspiration, before being ready.
To put this into practice, start with one project aligned with your inner life. It could be writing, a business idea, a piece of art… whatever resonates with you.
Set aside a notebook, a document, or a blank page. Brain-dump everything that comes to mind about the project: the goals, the feelings, the possibilities. Identify 3-5 sources of inspiration: people, books, practices, or models you admire. Study them. Break down what works, what excites you, and what you can adapt for your own path. Then outline your project in phases: the milestones, the skills you’ll need, the experiments you’ll try.
Most importantly, start immediately with what you know. Don’t wait to feel ready. Let the project teach you. Let it expose gaps, questions, and opportunities. Each day, complete 1-3 priority tasks that move you forward. Progress matters more than perfection. Over time, the work itself becomes the teacher, and your contribution becomes a living reflection of your inner life.
life design
There is a romantic impulse that lives in all of us. The longing for a life that feels as beautiful as it looks in our imagination. We dream of sunlit mornings, meaningful work, creative expression, and evenings that feel expansive and unhurried.
Dreaming is not enough. Romanticism must meet reality, and reality must be shaped intentionally to reflect your inner life. Life design is the art of building a world that aligns with your essence, day by day, hour by hour.
Your life is not a checklist to complete:it is a way of being to cultivate.
Your routines, your rhythms, your work, your rest, your play, all form the architecture of your lived experience. When your inner life is tended to, the outer life begins to mirror it, but only if you make it visible through deliberate choices.
Life design is about crafting that visibility.
Start with your day. Observe how you move from waking to sleeping, noticing where your energy flows, where it stagnates, and where you feel most alive. Map out routines that nourish and reflect your essence. Begin with your mornings: the way you wake, the rituals you practice, the tone you set for your day. Then structure your work blocks around your peak focus, creative bursts, and the tasks that move your projects forward. Schedule time for rest, play, and reflection as the infrastructure that sustains clarity, energy, and joy.
You will have to compromise old ways of being to bring in new ones. There are parts of you that will have to die. It may not be easy to start living the life you want to at first.
Treat your life as a project. Every week, plan, iterate, and course-correct. Some experiments will fail, some will illuminate hidden desires, and some will unlock surprising ease. Creating, making, curating spaces that feel alive, or testing new habits: each is an experiment in aligning your outer world with your inner truths.
The key is not perfection but responsiveness:noticing what works, what nourishes, and what elevates your capacity to live fully.
The ultimate aim of life design is coherence between your inner life and outer life. Your values, your priorities, your creative impulses, and your work all converge into a living, breathing system that serves your essence. When done well, life design allows your days, weeks, and years to feel intentional, expansive, and deeply satisfying.
Living a life that reflects your inner world asks you to take risks. Emotionally, creatively, financially. To fail forward, knowing that each misstep illuminates the next step. It asks you to romanticise your days, letting joy, curiosity, and pleasure lead the way, while simultaneously honouring the structures and boundaries that give those impulses space to flourish.
Have you ever been so absorbed in a book, a song, a painting, or a piece of writing that you were entirely pulled in, entranced by it? That feeling, that rush of energy and attention, is what Rick Rubin calls the ecstatic: a compass that arises in the moment. Your outer life works the same way.
Notice when fear, doubt, or external expectations are slowing you down. This is when the inner work you’ve done: the self-trust, the enthusiasm, the surrender, becomes your guide. It is your signal that you are moving in the right direction, that you are living in alignment, and that you are capable of generating a life that resonates with your essence.
Your inner landscape determines your outer reality. Clarity, boundaries, purpose, and energy are the tools of life design. Every choice you make, every connection you cultivate, every project you take on is a reflection of your inner world.
practice
Choose one project (personal, professional, or both). Identify three small but tangible steps to take this week to bring it into reality.
micro-vow
I will take one deliberate action this week to translate my inner alignment into my outer world. I trust my guidance and my ability to learn through action.
comment
What is one relationship, project, or habit you will align with your essence this week? Share below.
5/8 — the fifth rule of her way club (aka: how to change your life in 6-12 months)
OCT 10, 2025
Before we begin, 2 important things:
This fall/autumn, starting on October 21, with the next New Moon 🌚, I am gathering a small circle of writers, dreamers, and noticers for six weeks of writing together. It’s called The Art of Noticing.I’d love you to join me. Learn more here.
Thank you forcompleting the questionnaire I sent out last week! The responses are so valuable, interesting and beautiful. If you haven’t completed yours yet (and you’d like the gift of working with me 1:1), please, do so here.
Continuing our 8 rules of her way club series. If you’re just joining, begin here:
1/8— deciding to play by your own rules 2/8 — subtracting what doesn’t belong 3/8 — the natural consequence: uncertainty interlude — her way deep rest 4/8 — trust yourself 5/8 — inner life
Let’s zoom out for a moment and look at this her way club series, this living guide to “how to change your life” from the inside out, from the meta perspective.
This chapter is about self-intimacy and alignment.
You’ve taken your power back. Now you have to learn how to use it well.
Each step so far has been designed to move you from external orientation to inner sovereignty. To peel back the noise and return you to your own truth.
Here, in Rule 5, the invisible becomes visible. Your inner world: your beliefs, your essence, your nourishment, begins to take shape in how you live. This is the bridge between the private self and the life that others see; between what you feel and what you create.
Everything that follows next: where you belong, the work you do and what you createin the world rests on this foundation.
Your outer world can only expand as far as your inner life allows. Prosperity, creativity, and fulfilment all flow from how well you tend to the unseen parts of yourself.
Let’s unpack this with some questions I’d like you to sit with, ponder, or journal on:
Who are you when no one is watching?
What are the themes that keep repeating in your life (your soul’s curriculum)?
What qualities define your way of being (not what you do)?
Before we look outward, we must look inward.
Your authentic life begins with knowing yourself intimately, noticing how you show up in your life, and distinguishing your authentic essence from the patterns and conditioning you’ve absorbed.
This is where you learn what truly nourishes you, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually and cultivate the inner alignment that allows prosperity, clarity, and vitality to flow naturally. The life you want doesn’t need to be chased; it meets you when your inner world is tended, your essence is clear, and your choices reflect who you truly are.
your life is a mirror
The way you see yourself shapes the life you inhabit.
Psychologically, it’s perception in action. The human brain is a meaning-making organ. It filters billions of pieces of information each second, searching for coherence: evidence that matches your existing story of who you are.
Every encounter, every opportunity, every setback, reflects back to you what you already believe about who you are. If you carry a story of not being enough, of not being ready, of being small or invisible, the world obliges in its own subtle ways, nudging you to notice evidence that confirms your fears. And so you move through your days tense, alert, protective, half present, waiting for life to prove you right or wrong.
Three months ago, I filmed this simple Q&A. While answering one of the questions, I happened to start speaking about one of my deepest core wounds and fears: abandonment. It’s a pattern that stems from childhood. My core caretakers abandoned me as a child. The day after I published that video, my ex-boyfriend abandoned me with a phone call, leaving me alone in the city we had moved to together. Life was mirroring a self-perception I had of myself, encouraging me to release it. The past three months of my life have been a deep dive into clearing this old pattern and telling a new story. I have been on a journey of consciously changing my self-perception to change my reality. I teach how I do this in CLEAR landing in Nov.
When you begin to see yourself with gentle curiosity instead of judgment, things shift. Your life experience as a mirror is never against you. It is a teacher, a reflection of the energy you carry, of the care or the neglect you hold for yourself.
There’s a paradox:the more you accept who you are, exactly as you are in this moment, the more room you create to evolve.
Acceptance does not mean complacency or stagnation. It is where growth, change, and transformation can take root. By acknowledging your current limits, your fears, your flaws, and your brilliance, you create the space for new parts of you to emerge.
You breathe into yourself the permission to be fully present and fully human, and in that presence, the world shifts around you. Opportunities appear, guidance flows, relationships deepen, and your own intuition becomes a clearer, more unwavering compass.
Self-perception is the foundation of everything. It determines what you notice, how you act, and what you allow into your life. If you want to cultivate a life that feels aligned and expansive, the first place to start is here, in the mirror, in the tender, unwavering attention you give to the one person who will always be with you: yourself.
You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. You already know. You need to listen.
your essence
Your essence is not hidden. It is already present, already alive, already breathing within you. Your essence is your lived expression of the nexus of your soul.
What obscures it are the layers of conditioning, the inherited expectations, the shoulds, the stories you’ve been told about who you are supposed to be. Essence is what remains when you subtract those things.
You uncover your essence by paying attention.
Notice the moments when you feel fully alive, when time seems irrelevant, when your attention sharpens effortlessly, when your body and mind are in quiet alignment. These are signposts. They show you what lights you up, what nourishes you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Make a list of these moments. Be specific. What activities, conversations, environments, and ways of moving make your energy sing? Which choices leave you depleted? Which patterns make you feel small or constrained?
Parallel to discovering your essence is recognising conditioning. Conditioning is subtle, woven into your daily life like a thread you don’t notice until you pull it. It shows up as automatic reactions, habitual thoughts, the urge to conform, the fear of disappointing others, the compulsive need to perform or prove yourself.
Once you notice these patterns, you can begin to deconstruct them. You can experiment with saying no to old rules, with acting differently than you “should,” with testing new ways of thinking, feeling, and being. Each choice to step out of conditioned patterns is a reclamation of your energy, a clearing of space for essence to breathe and expand.
Essence is living, breathing, and fluid. It evolves as you evolve.
The needs and desires of my authentic self, my essence, shift constantly. The person who began writing online twelve years ago, compared to the person writing now, is entirely different. My values remain, yet they are lived and understood in entirely new ways. Love is felt in the willingness to show up for myself even when it’s hard. Freedom is claimed not through limitless choices but by being able to choose what is meaningful to me. Beauty is found in the attention I place on the ordinary. My essence is always maturing. It is a conversation with myself across time, a deepening dialogue between who I am becoming and the life I am willing to inhabit.
You cannot fully access essence when you are operating from the script written for you by others.
The act of naming your essence is also an act of claiming it: I choose this. I am drawn to this. I move in this way. I feel alive here. With that recognition, you create the foundation for all the inner and outer work that follows. The clarity to decondition, to reshape your habits, to remove the old narratives that no longer serve you, and to step forward with intention and alignment.
Sometimes we lose touch with what we’re drawn to, what we want, desire, or even like. It happened to me recently. I couldn’t access the parts of myself that once pulsed with desire. Too much had happened too fast, and life spun me around until I didn’t quite know who I was anymore. So I began a small, secret practice I call ‘Things I WANT’ list. Since I no longer knew what I wanted, I started collecting clues. Every time I heard someone talk about something they were doing, experiencing, or feeling, and my body reacted with a quiet spark of recognition, a soft ‘me too’, I wrote it down. Because they revealed something about how I wanted to feel. Over time, those little notes became signposts back to myself.
some things I overheard ppl speak about that I noted down
Desire is a compass. The things you want are indicators of what nourishes you, what enlivens you, what helps you remember who you are.
nourishment
Nourishment is the way you feed your mind, body, emotions, and spirit so that your life can function at full capacity, so that your presence can hold space for yourself and others.
Rest is nourishment. Play is nourishment. Silence, ritual, beauty, immersion in nature… they are infrastructure.
When you nourish yourself, you create a nervous system that feels safe to expand, a body and mind capable of holding joy, curiosity, and creativity without depletion. Everything you build: your work, your relationships, your life path, is only as sustainable as the inner ecology that supports it.
Pay attention to what sustains your energy rather than depletes it. Notice which conversations leave you full and which leave you empty. Notice what thoughts and stories you tell yourself that feel like nourishment, and which ones tighten, constrict, or exhaust. Notice how movement, food, and environment affect your clarity, focus, and vitality. Nourishment is as much about subtraction as it is about addition. Removing what drains you, creating space for what feeds you.
The more devoted you are to this kind of inner prosperity, the more effortlessly your life flows, because you are operating from fullness rather than deficit.
prosperity
Prosperity is measured not just in money but in clarity, in capacity, in the freedom to create the life you want. It is the overflow of a well-tended inner world. A life in which your essence is honoured, your instincts are trusted, and your energy is devoted to what makes you feel alive.
The work is always inward first: nourishing yourself, holding space for your evolution, cultivating self-trust and intuition.
Then, and only then, does the external world respond, drawn to the light you carry. Your inner abundance becomes a magnet. Attracting resources, opportunities, and experiences that match the vibrational reality you have already created for yourself.
Nourishment and prosperity are inseparable. One is the root; the other, the fruit. Without tending the root, the fruit cannot ripen fully. With devotion to yourself, your energy, and your essence, abundance flows as a natural consequence of a life lived in alignment.
The heart of transforming your life is knowing yourself intimately.
Not superficially, but at the level of your thoughts, feelings, instincts, desires, and patterns. Change doesn’t begin with the outside world; it begins with you, with the way you show up in your own life.
The question isn’t just what you want, but who you are being as you move through each day, as you respond to challenges, as you make choices. Are you living out of your authentic soul essence, or are you unconsciously following old patterns, conditioning, and expectations that no longer serve you?
Taking responsibility for this is understanding that every small choice either nourishes you or depletes you. When you begin to show up for yourself in alignment with your essence, you learn what truly sustains your energy, what makes you feel alive, what your life needs to flourish.
This is the work of self-knowledge: observing without judgment, naming the ways conditioning has shaped you, and making deliberate choices to nourish yourself in the ways that matter. Only when you are clear about who you are and what nourishes you can you begin to recognise what kind of life is right for you.
In our next step of this series, we begin to build that life externally. But first, let’s complete this section here:
practice
Take this week to quietly study yourself. Not your habits or productivity, but the subtler currents underneath: what lights you up, what drains you, what makes you feel most you.
Each day, jot down one small observation about what nourishes you and one about what depletes you. Don’t try to fix or optimise anything. Just notice. This is how self-intimacy begins: through witnessing, not forcing.
At the end of the week, look at what you’ve written. See if you can trace the shape of your essence through those notes. The qualities, environments, and rhythms that bring you alive. Those are the clues to the kind of life that fits you.
micro-vow
“I am willing to know myself deeply. I take responsibility for how I show up in my life. I will tend to what truly nourishes me, so the life meant for me can find me.”
comment
What’s one subtle way you’ve noticed yourself living out an old pattern that no longer fits? Share it below. Naming it is the first act of coming home to yourself.
P.S. A peek into CLEAR (clear your path, change your life), landing in November.
4/8 — the fourth rule of her way club (aka: how to change your life in 6-12 months)
SEP 28, 2025
Continuing our 8 rules of her way club series. If you’re just joining, begin here:
1/8— deciding to play by your own rules 2/8 — subtracting what doesn’t belong 3/8 — the natural consequence: uncertainty interlude — her way deep rest 4/8 — trust yourself
where I am writing this to you from, today
The fourth rule of her way club is about owning your path.
I’ve just returned from a kundalini yoga class. At the start, our teacher said: “There are two things people fear most in themselves: their anger and their instinct. But we need both: to metabolise anger and to connect with instinct. How could anyone not feel anger in these times, with the world stage pulling antics that belong to centuries past?”
I thought about her words all class. Anger and instinct are scary because they’re truth tellers. And truth is confronting. It forces us to face ourselves or others in ways we’d rather avoid. It makes us choose paths outside the norm.
The kriyas focused on metabolising anger. Hot, annoying, fast movements and breath that help me unglue myself from my subconscious resistances. I have my own private anger to metabolise. Anger is a fire: it burns away what isn’t meant for you and fuels you to do things differently. Anger gives you agency to choose your most authentic path.
Instinct is different. Instinct is information. It tells you, moment by moment, what next step to take. And every time, you have a choice: trust yourself and your path, or not and pay the consequences until life offers you the chance to choose again.
If rule one was claiming your agency, rule two subtracting what doesn’t belong, rule three embracing uncertainty and the deep rest required to hold yourself through it, then this, rule four, is about owning your path. We are at the heart of our journey.
Most people follow the crowd, chasing safety, belonging, and love. They measure success on someone else’s scoreboard: celebrity culture, external validation, possessions that inflate the ego for minutes rather than decades. They mistake comfort for alignment. They choose paths where the ending is visible. But knowing how the story ends doesn’t mean it’s the right story for you.
Comfort, in fact, can be the cage that keeps potential small and life mediocre. The more your life reflects your authentic code, the more alive you feel. The more you resist it by staying small, safe, palatable the more numb you become. At some point, you have to admit: the life you’ve been living might not actually be yours.
There are three keys to owning your path:
Self-trust: developing your instinct and allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Enthusiasm: devoting yourself to what makes you feel alive.
Surrender: letting yourself not know exactly how it will play out, and trusting anyway.
This is the ‘her way’ approach to creating a life that is actually yours.
Key 1: Self-Trust
Everything is spiritual, even the most ordinary logistics. Self-trust is where your inner world meets the outer one. It’s deeply practical. The more you trust yourself, the easier life feels.
Without self-trust, you continue to outsource decisions, scanning others’ opinions, adapting to their expectations, and doubting your own instincts. This is exhausting. It makes you feel wobbly and unsafe.
With self-trust, everything shifts:
You get things done. Procrastination fades when you trust yourself to follow through.
You feel steadier and safer. The world softens when you know you can rely on yourself.
You grow your instinct. Each decision becomes practice, and even mistakes turn into evidence that you can handle whatever comes.
Self-trust begins with a choice: gathering your energy back from the outside world and returning it to yourself. Each time you stop looking outward for permission and instead ask, What feels true for me? you strengthen that muscle.
It’s about being available to yourself. That means listening inward and actually honouring what you hear with action. It means tending to your body, energy, and emotions so you have the capacity to show up for your own needs. It means following through with integrity, doing what you said you’d do because you are in relationship with yourself.
Self-trust doesn’t mean getting it right all the time. It means allowing yourself to act in the unknown, to risk imperfection, to treat mistakes as feedback instead of evidence against you. The more you do this, the more natural and effortless it becomes.
When you trust yourself, you stop second-guessing, stop beating yourself up, and start freeing up energy for what matters most. Life flows differently. Relationships soften. And you begin to notice how the universe meets you halfway, aligning the pieces once you’ve chosen to stand firmly in your own inner ground.
Key 2: Enthusiasm
To live your way, you need enthusiasm. The word itself comes from the Greek enthousiasmos, “having god within.” It’s being lit up by a divine spark. Enthusiasm is devotion to what makes you feel most alive. It’s the master key to the good life.
To practice enthusiasm, your task is simple, but not easy: notice.
Notice what distorts time, what makes focus effortless, what fills you with ideas you can’t put down. Enthusiasm leaves traces: goosebumps, a quickened pulse, the sudden sense that the world has tilted open in possibility. These are signals pointing you toward your path.
Redirect your intensity away from chasing people or external validation, and toward the skills, projects, and fascinations that nourish you. Pour your energy where it multiplies, not where it leaks. Accept what cannot be changed. Eliminate or outsource what drains you.
Then make it real. Literally block off one to two hours each day: a standing appointment with your own aliveness. Do the things that bring you excitement, that light you up.
For me, that’s starting the day, phone off, writing for two hours every morning. As I have shared before, writing informs every other part of my life that literally brings my dreams and visions to life. For you, it might be something else. Devote yourself to it.
Enthusiasm is both compass and fuel. It shows you where to go and gives you the stamina to keep going, even when the path is uncertain. The more you cultivate it, the more your life begins to feel like your own: alive, expansive, divinely guided.
Key 3: Surrender
Surrender is the alchemy that allows everything else to work. It’s letting go of the need to control the outcome, releasing the illusion that you can map every step of your journey, and trusting anyway. It means holding your agency and your enthusiasm, while allowing the unknown to unfold.
Surrender begins with a choice: to step into the unknown without fear of being “wrong.” Life rarely delivers guarantees, and the map you imagined often fades the moment you try to follow it. Surrender is the practice of leaning into uncertainty with calm, of showing up fully even when the next step is invisible.
It’s also a recognition that the universe, or life, or your own deeper self, is smarter than your anxious mind. When you act with integrity, follow your instinct, and devote yourself to what makes you alive, surrender allows the pieces to align in ways you cannot predict. You trust that the guidance you feel, the enthusiasm you cultivate, and the self-trust you’ve built are enough.
Surrender is giving over. Giving over to the flow, the timing, the magic that only emerges when you stop resisting. It’s a practice: showing up for your life without needing to know the whole story, trusting that the steps you take, even imperfectly, are carrying you forward.
When you surrender, you move with grace instead of struggle. You release the tension of trying to force outcomes, and you open yourself to the full richness of living her way.
I have so many stories from this year alone about practising self-trust, enthusiasm, and surrender, stories I’d love to share. But for this her way club series (aka: how to change your life in 6–12 months), I want to stay focused on giving you the tools to take steps in your own way. I trust your innate intelligence to guide you. If you’d like more of my personal stories woven in, let me know.
practice: the self-trust check-in
Take five minutes to check in with yourself and your inner guidance. Write down:
One decision you’ve been hesitating on, and what your instinct is telling you.
One area where you’ve been looking outside yourself for approval.
One small action you can take this week that aligns with your own guidance, not someone else’s.
One way you can honour your energy, emotions, or body to show up fully for yourself.
One past moment where trusting yourself paid off, and how it felt.
Notice the difference between what your mind overthinks and what your deeper sense knows. This is your internal compass — your self-trust — sharpening.
micro-vow
This week, pick one moment where you’ll act from your own guidance, not what anyone else says you “should” do. Say it aloud:
I trust myself. I trust my path.
comment prompt
What’s one small act you can take this week to follow your own instincts, rather than someone else’s rules? Share it below…
We were sitting in my friend’s garden in upstate New York a few weeks ago. Both of us trying to reclaim our lives after they had been dismantled by forces beyond our control. Our conversation hummed with ways to feel just a little lighter when everything seemed too heavy.
The afternoon air was warm and green. Bees staggered from flower to flower. Cooled white wine warmed in the sun. Behind us, the house held the relief and wreckage of recent change. Boxes half unpacked, a rug rolled like a sleeping animal, the door left open to catch whatever breeze might pass. My chest felt unsteady, as if the ground under my ribs kept shifting. Hers too.
“The one thing that works for me when I’m deeply unhappy, when life feels misaligned and everything seems to be falling apart, is subtraction,” I said. “It’s looking at my life and stripping away anything that doesn’t make me feel good. Habits. Expectations. Commitments. Thoughts. Words. It’s usually less about what I need to add, and more about what I need to put down.”
Her face lit up. “I think that’s what I need to do, too. Remove everything that isn’t essential to the life I’m rebuilding.”
Life is so much better when you know what you’re living for.
Most of us have been tricked into thinking that “more” equals fulfilment. That meaning comes from piling more onto our plates. More doing, more striving, more proving. A fancier job title, a fuller calendar, a prettier home, a shinier version of ourselves.
And yet, the moments I’ve actually felt joy, contentment, relief, almost always arrive after letting something go. After I’ve stopped trying so hard to live up to some imaginary standard. After I’ve decided not to carry what wasn’t mine.
We are far better at adding than subtracting. Adding habits, projects, rules, identities, expectations. A way to reassure ourselves that we’re worthwhile, lovable, keeping up.
But what if the thing we actually need isn’t more? What if it’s less? A stripping down, a paring back, until what remains feels closer to who we are at our core.
Subtraction is the quiet art of laying things down. It brings us back to center without scolding ourselves. It builds a frame we actually want to live inside.
It asks simple questions: What habits, expectations, commitments, thoughts, words, beliefs, practices, attitudes, people, places can I subtract to get my life back on track? Where have I gotten sloppy? Where am I leaking energy, quietly wasting the life force I will never get back?
And then, decide for yourself what that is and how much is enough.
At a party on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut tells Joseph Heller that their host, a hedge fund manager, made more in a single day than Heller earned from Catch-22 in its entire history.
Heller shrugs. “Yes,” he says. “But I have something he will never have: enough.”
It’s the pause in your chest when you could go for more but don’t. It’s the quiet nod in your mind that says: this is enough.
Enough is peace, it’s relief, it’s contentment. It’s seeing what you have, what you’ve built, what you’ve earned and letting it be enough.
It’s the opposite of greed. and the opposite of more. It’s radical. In a world that screams more, more, more, saying enough is rebellion.
The way you know it for yourself — the way you choose it — is exactly like the way you decided if you’re in her way club last week (or not.) You stop inheriting other people’s scoreboards. You stop following their timelines, their expectations, their “shoulds.” You pause. You look at your own life. You name what nourishes you, what sustains you, what fills your essence.
You decide: this is enough for me.
From that clarity comes another quiet practice: negative gratitude.
It’s giving thanks for the things you don’t have. For the health issues that never arrived. For the responsibilities you don’t carry. For the lifestyles, people, pressures that could have crushed you but didn’t. For the “no’s” that gave you freedom.
We’re always told to be grateful for what we have. And we are. But what about what we’re relieved of? The space, the energy, the freedom quietly gifted by what is absent?
Take a moment. Look around. What’s missing in the best way possible? What doesn’t exist in your life that makes it lighter, easier, more yours?
Negative gratitude trains your attention to absence as well as presence. It shows you where you’ve already been spared, already held, already enough.
Write it down. Say it out loud. Feel it. Let it settle in your chest. Let it remind you: life is not just what arrives, it’s also what doesn’t.
In that garden, with my friend, subtraction, accompanied by enough-ness and negative gratitude, began to feed the same thing: choosing lightness where we can, so that what remains has room to grow roots.
We exchanged whispered subtractions, starting small. A newsletter I wasn’t reading, a recurring Zoom meeting that made me tense, a habit of scrolling before bed.
Each tiny release returning air to our lungs, giving space to our souls. By the time the sun dipped behind the trees, the practice of subtraction transformed from a theory into a reclamation.
a practice for you:
Take fifteen minutes today to look at your life through subtraction. Grab a notebook or your phone. Make a quick inventory: habits, commitments, expectations, thoughts, people, places, anything that quietly drains you or keeps you from feeling like yourself. For each one, ask: Does this nourish me? Does this serve me? If the answer is no, make a note to let it go.
Imagine letting go of a routine self-talk you give yourself without thinking. Every morning that you think, “I should do better,” or “I need to push harder,” like a mantra. It feels harmless, even responsible. But it’s not. It’s a subtle weight you carry, a quiet pressure that shapes your whole day before it’s even begun.
What if you simply stopped? Not replaced it with another mantra. Not “I am enough” or “I can do this.” Just stopped.
The silence that replaces it is startling at first. Your chest feels lighter, your mind less crowded. Instead, you notice the warmth of the sunlight on your skin, the rhythm of your breath, the hum of life around you that had been muted by the constant mental checklist. That small, almost invisible habit of self-criticism had been subtracting from your energy for years, quietly shaping your hours into tension and obligation. Releasing it doesn’t make you lazy or complacent. It makes you present, aligned, capable of pouring your attention into the things intentionally.
the NO list:
Here’s a little thing I love doing. I call it the NO list. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a list of all the things you’re done with. All the stuff you’re letting go of. All the habits, commitments, obligations, and little drains you no longer have to carry.
Grab a notebook, a piece of paper, your phone, whatever works. Set a timer for five minutes. Write fast. Write messy. Don’t censor. Just let it pour.
What are you done saying yes to? What are you done carrying? What are you done pretending is necessary?
It could be huge: “I won’t take on another project that burns me out.” Or tiny: “I won’t scroll Instagram first thing in the morning.” It can be easy: “I won’t drink coffee past noon on weekdays.”
Every NO you write is like a little exhale. A clearing. Space for more energy, more focus, more joy.
When you’re done, leave it somewhere you’ll see it. Saying no is saying yes to yourself.
Optional: Share one NO in the comments. Let’s celebrate the things we’re done with.
a micro-vow:
Before you close this tab, pick one thing you can subtract this week. One habit, one commitment, one mental loop. Say to yourself: I release this. I make space for what truly matters.
comment below:
What’s one thing you can subtract, a sense of ‘this is enough’ or a negative gratitude this week that will bring you closer to yourself? What’s the thing on your ‘NO’ list that you’re most excited about letting go? Share it below, so we can be inspired by each other.
I make my life transparent in these letters to you. Often with more ease than one would expect, but not always. I write candidly about the way I try to meet the gaps in my care as a child, I reveal aspects of my lifestyle that are often unmoored, I hapazardly and ambitiously run several online streams of value-for-income models, and I wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to my romances.
I have been moving through some of the tenderest times of my life recently. There are moments when I feel like life is so empty and devoid of meaning and substance. There are moments when I feel like life is exploding with colour and joy. These moments are opposite, and yet they coexist. Both are true.
And it is times like these that bring me closer to something that we all sense:
Comfort is seductive, but it’s not where we grow. We grow on the edge of things.
As I wrote in my stories yesterday. You have two choices:
a)Continue forcing the version of you that will keep your current life stitched together at the seams.
b)Surrender to the logic-defying, painful, beautiful, soul-awakening mess of where life wants to take you.
Both are true. Sometimes you will need to hold on. Sometimes you need to let go. Devotion and commitment show up as different things at different times.
For me, the answer now is surrender. And that surrender requires a rebuilding. Not of my outer world, but of my inner scaffolding. A structure made not of strategies or timelines, but of gentleness, truth, and presence. The quiet integrity of choosing to meet each moment as it is, instead of trying to bend it into something I can manage or explain. The devotion of no longer abandoning myself, even when it would be easier to. Especially then.
I begin with sleep. With rest that is heavy and uninterrupted. With giving my body the time it needs to catch up with everything my heart has carried these past months. Sleep has become sacred. A space where I remember I am not a machine built to function, but a being designed to feel.
I pay attention to what nourishes me through the textures of ordinary care. I eat slowly. I walk often. I stay close to silence. I let my feelings rise without trying to trap them in language too soon. I cry when I need to. I let joy rise when it wants to, and do not hold it hostage with questions about whether it will stay. I am learning that being with myself in this way is not indulgent.
I am tuning into my natural rhythm and letting that be enough. We all contain this natural intelligence.
The only reason you ever feel out of step with your life is that you have stopped following the natural rhythm that your body and inner essence are always trying to lead you with.
We have become so accustomed to having the rhythm set for us by external forces. Parents. School bells. Job descriptions. Capitalism. Performance. Survival. We have spent our lives learning to respond to something outside of ourselves, and in the process, we forgot how to listen inward.
We have handed over our agency in so many invisible ways that we no longer realise we are allowed to curate a rhythm of life that makes sense for us. A rhythm that honours our energy, our season, our humanity. We have accepted a pace that constantly makes us feel torn and separate and fractured, not because something is wrong with us, but because something is deeply wrong with the way we are being taught to live.
I created Planet Powered to help you remember.
Not to replace your inner agency, but rather as a gentle framework to be used as a stepping stone. A structure that holds you within the shape of your modern life while still making space for a sovereign choice, each and every day, to ask what you truly need, and how you want to meet the world from that place.
This rhythm is not about productivity or performance. It is about presence. It is about remembering that you are not here to fit yourself into a life that was not made for you. You are here to create a rhythm that holds your soul.
because so much of what we do each day isn’t really a choice, not in the conscious sense
A month ago I was invited to teach this workshop for The Wild Ones Community. Today I decided I would share it with you too.
The premise is that we are moved by invisible currents. Nudged by our surroundings. Directed by systems we didn’t design.
Through this workshop, we’re going to pause and pay attention.
To notice the subtle structures shaping our decisions — from the arrangement of a room, to the rhythms of our inbox, to the silent expectations in our relationships. And then… gently, deliberately, begin to redesign them.
practical exercise (if you feel called to it)
Choose one area of your life where you feel stuck, or where you tend to make choices you later wish you hadn’t.
Then:
For three days, notice and document all the environmental cues influencing your behaviour in that area — the physical setup, digital distractions, people nearby, time of day, even your energy levels or mood.
Identify the three strongest “currents” — the forces most powerfully pulling you off course.
Share your most surprising or interesting discovery in the comments below. What did you notice, now that you are really looking?
You never know — your insight might help someone else spot a current they didn’t even know they were swimming in.
this is where we go deeper
One of the quiet teachings of The Way She Knows is that your inner knowing isn’t something you have to find but rather something you return to, again and again.
And to return, we need to notice what pulls us away.
We need to see the systems, structures, and subtle influences that guide our days and ask: Who designed this?Is this serving me?What do I want instead?
This is an act of reclamation.
It’s a way of lifting the veil on the environments and patterns that keep you in loops and gently beginning to reorient them toward the life you actually want to live.
It’s less about control and more about tending. Less about discipline, and more about designing your life to support the way you want to feel.
That’s the deeper current of this work: To live in a way that’s attuned, not just to your values, but to your body, your seasons, your intuition, your truth.
This is how she knows. Not by force, but by design.
Maybe today something was brought into focus — a pattern, a pull, a way you’ve been shaped — The Way She Knows is where we go deeper.
Together, we release the limiting beliefs, patterns, and conditioning that keep you stuck — and rebuild trust in your own voice. Guided by the RRRRI Method (Reflect · Review · Release · Replace · Integrate), you’ll receive daily audio teachings, soul-led prompts, and two live group calls to support you in returning to your truth and leading your life from within.
You’re invited. If your body says yes, come join us. We begin in 14 days.
Some years are made for fighting shadows, some years are made for dreaming dreams, some years are made for wholly living, some years are made for falling in love, some years are made for heartbreak, and some years are the dark, rich spaces in-between that tie all the other years together.
There are moments in every woman’s life 𓂃 often subtle, always significant 𓂃 when she realises she’s been waiting for life to feel good later.
I am that woman, too.
After the move. After she’s earned it. After the next launch. After she’s healed enough, achieved enough, grown enough.
It’s not that she doesn’t want goodness now. It’s that her nervous system doesn’t recognise it as safe. She’s built her identity on high-functioning self-reliance, on holding it all together, on always preparing for the next hit of chaos.
Goodness feels foreign. Untrustworthy. Fleeting.
But there comes a point when you get tired. Not just tired in your bones, but soul-tired. Tired of bracing for bad news. Tired of living on emotional adrenaline. Tired of feeling like peace is something you can only visit in short bursts.
This moment is an invitation: what if life gets to be good now?
your body doesn’t lie
If your system is used to surviving, “good” can feel unsafe.
Calm can feel like a threat. Pleasure can trigger shame. Stillness can summon panic.
We don’t override that reality by shaming it. We honour it. We meet ourselves there. Letting life be good begins with learning how to stay with good. To recognise it. Receive it. Regulate in the presence of it.
This isn’t just a mindset shift. It’s a somatic one.
Which is why I ask myself:
What are the tiny signals of goodness I can practice noticing? ✧ the softness of my sheets in the morning ✧ the kindness in a stranger’s eyes ✧ the miracle of a moment with nothing to prove
The more I notice, the more I can hold. The more I hold, the more I trust. The more I trust, the safer it feels to expand into joy without sabotage.
you don’t have to earn softness
So many of us were raised on invisible contracts that said:
Be good, then you’ll get love. Work hard, then you’ll get rest. Suffer well, then you’ll get your reward.
It creates a rhythm of deprivation, where we become addicted to proving our worth through pain. It keeps us stuck in cycles of over-functioning, over-giving, over-efforting.
But what if we broke the contract?
What if softness wasn’t a prize at the end of your endurance? What if it was the starting point?
This is the paradox of receiving: you can’t force it.
You have to soften enough to allow it. That softness — that capacity to receive life fully — is a practice of presence, not perfection.
It asks: Can I let myself enjoy this moment without earning it? Can I stop bracing for it to be taken away? Can I let it be this good, this easy, this free?
practicing your way into goodness
Letting life be good isn’t about bypassing the hard stuff. It’s about refusing to let pain be your only portal to meaning.
Here are some ways I’m practicing:
1. Noticing where struggle has become identity. Do I feel more real when I’m suffering? More valid when I’m busy? More lovable when I’m useful?
2. Replacing performance with presence. Instead of performing wellness, I’m allowing mess. Instead of performing peace, I’m regulating in real time. Instead of performing power, I’m rooting into truth.
3. Setting up small rituals that remind me I’m safe to enjoy. A slow morning. A spontaneous dance break. A walk without my phone. Tiny practices that say to my system: this is safe, this is safe, this is safe.
4. Choosing environments that don’t require me to shrink. The people, spaces, and structures I choose are part of the goodness. They reflect back the truth that I don’t have to abandon myself to belong.
a closing truth
There’s a quiet rebellion in letting life be good. In refusing to rehearse old wounds.
In choosing to orient toward pleasure, peace, and enoughness, not as a reward, but as a right.
And like all rebellions, it takes practice.
But the more we choose it, the more it becomes familiar. The more we hold it, the more it grows. And the more it grows, the more we remember: this is what we were always meant for.
Let your life be good, not someday, but now.
Not because you’ve earned it. But because you’ve remembered how to receive it.
A gentle, practical journey to release the limiting beliefs, patterns, and conditioning that keep you stuck and to help you reconnect to your quiet knowing.
We start on Monday, May 26.
Earlybird price ends on Monday with the full moon.
a note 📝 on why trying to do life alone is not a vibe, and how the right people make everything easier, better, and way less confusing
The first marker of growth is realising that your parents are not all-knowing guides but imperfect humans navigating their own paths.
The second is recognising that while life may have handed you challenges, your power lies in how you choose to play the hand. Whether you stay stuck in your stories or rise to meet your own becoming.
The third is understanding the art of connection. How presence, warmth, and authenticity shape the way the world responds to you, weaving influence and possibility into every interaction, every moment, every version of yourself that you step into next.
This morning, I woke up feeling like a half-formed thing. My bones, my skin, my memories had melted overnight into something unrecognisable. My heart, my lungs, my thoughts, all swimming in some liminal space between what was and what is becoming.
I wanted to do everything at once. Crawl out of my skin, burrow deep inside myself, grasp at the illusion of normalcy. That fleeting sense of steadiness that comes and goes like sunlight through moving clouds.
But that’s not the life I chose.
I throw myself headfirst into new things. Willing myself into expansion, into shedding, into becoming, and then — wide-eyed, bewildered — curse myself for it.
This is what it means to be alive.
A continuous rhythm of unravelling and reassembling, of losing myself and finding my way back home.
Human transformation is peculiar in that way. We appear mostly unchanged on the outside while, internally, our very foundation liquefies and reforms, shifting us into something both familiar and unrecognisably new. Some metamorphoses take years. Others happen in a single breath. We are forever mid-wifeing ourselves through cycles of undoing and recreating.
And yet, we don’t do it alone. Evolution, growth, becoming: the process demands others. Those who have walked the path before us, showing us what’s possible.
People who, by simply existing, illuminate the shape of our own becoming. They are proof that what we long for isn’t just a dream. It’s a direction. A gravitational pull toward who we are meant to be.
There was a time when I felt so disillusioned by who the world was telling me to be. And then, a woman entered my life. She embodied a grace, clarity, a way of moving through the world that felt like poetry in motion. She didn’t hand me a map. She didn’t give me step-by-step instructions. She simply lived in a way that whispered to something deep inside me: “This is possible for you, too.”
I learned to echo her grace in my way.
We are not islands, shifting and reshaping in solitude. We are ecosystems, intertwined with those who expand us, who stretch our perception of what’s possible. The ones who have already created, built, or become something that stirs something deep within us.
A silent recognition. A quiet knowing: this is meant for you, too.
Expanders are not accidental.
We are drawn to them because they reflect what already lives within us, waiting to be awakened. They show our subconscious that the path we crave isn’t just a fantasy—it’s real, and it’s attainable. Their existence cracks open the walls of our own limitations, permitting us to step forward, to believe, to act.
A few years ago I met a woman who made big decisions without over-explaining or second-guessing. She laughed easily, moved boldly, and showed me — without ever meaning to — that I didn’t need to agonise over every choice or justify my desires. By being in her orbit, something in me softened.
I started letting things be easier. I started trusting myself more.
Who we surround ourselves with matters.
Our communities shape our possibilities. The people in our orbit either reinforce old versions of us or pull us toward expansion. Without realising it, we are always absorbing, mirroring, and becoming.
So this morning, as I sat with the discomfort of my own evolution, I asked myself:
Who is showing me the way? Who expands my world? And am I allowing myself to follow the pull?
It is impossible to avoid the challenges, aches and pains that come with life.
True community emerges when we surround ourselves with those who understand that meaningful relationships are born out of action.
Love is a verb.
We need to be the people willing to witness vulnerability without flinching.
Our emotional lives mirror the natural world’s cycles: darkness and light eternally embracing one another. Each experience of sorrow carries within it the seed of joy; each moment of connection bears the imprint of our separateness. When we touch one state deeply, we become intimate with its opposite.
This is authentic connection embodied.
Recognising that friendship and community require us to honour the completeness of human experience, to practice presence in both suffering and celebration and to build relationships that nurture our collective well-being.
This is where expanders come in.
An expander is someone who has created or achieved something in their life that we desire to also have or create. This concept is based on simple neuroscience and the creation of mirror neurons.
It’s not that expanders are perfect beings who have mastered life. They are everyday people, like you and me, who have flourished in certain areas, and because of this, they can expand us on our own journeys.
One of my closest friends is a woman nearly a decade younger than me. Her emotional maturity and dedication to skillfulness in relationships astound me. I watch the way she approaches difficult conversations — not with avoidance or defensiveness — but with curiosity and care.
Being in her presence taught me to be a better friend, lover and human.
Every single one of us inhabits the full spectrum of humanness. Those very aspects of these people that are bringing you so much inspiration are actually a reflection of aspects of you that have gotten lost due to societal, media, parental, or peer programming.1
The beauty of expansion is that it doesn’t require perfection. Only possibility. We expand one another simply by existing in our truth.
To provide access to the expanders and community that will walk alongside you as you navigate the transitions and transformations of your own becoming. Because you are not meant to do it alone.
ALIGNED is more than a course. It is an incubator for expansion, for transformation, for meeting the people who will hold you in both strength and tenderness as you step into the version of yourself you know you are meant to be.
Enrolment closes in 5 days. Learn more here: ALIGNED
Client Receipts
real stories, real impact 💫
“I’ve been following you, Vienda, for years on Instagram long before Plannher, and will join whatever community you create because I know it will be fostered in an energy of growth, acceptance, and soul.”
“I loved having someone in my court, to have someone waiting for me and knowing that would be a resource, a thing that wasn’t mine to solve, but someone I could collaborate with on solving or discovering things. That was a really lovely feeling.”
“Having a group of people to get to know helped me feel like there was a community of like-minded people and feel supported even if we had different areas working through and on.”
“I love the way you always include accountability partners and listening partners into your courses. I have always found it so valuable. I also do feel you attract interesting and powerful people to your courses that have so much value and I’ve stayed in touch with people in the past afterwards and supported each other’s businesses/visions which have been really special.”
If you are curious about finding your own expanders, choose something in your life that you would like to make real and then ask yourself these questions:
Who do I know that I feel drawn to almost instantly?
When I look at this person, what do I find appealing about them?
What is this person’s vibe that draws me to them? Is it something about their personality? Their career? Their spiritual approach or practices? The vacations they go on? Their relationship? The way they talk or how they dress?
What characteristics about this person resonate with me/remind me of myself?
What is their life story: are there any overlaps or similarities with my story?
How can I learn from this person? Do they have a book, podcast, or course? Can I spend time with them? Can I reach out and learn more about how they got to where they are?
Can this person help me become super clear on my desired manifestation? Do I realise details about their life that I would really like for my own?
Vienda Maria 