Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure”

---

Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure.”

Pleasure is a beautiful thing.

Pleasure is built into our bodies.

Pleasure is part of our power as humans.

Pleasure is feedback.

Pleasure is our birthright.

And, there needs to be discernment around when healthy pleasure tips over into unhealthy “pleasure.”

There is a difference between seeking real pleasure—things that nourish, replenish, enliven, and satiate you—and unhealthy pleasure, which is a bottomless numbing mechanism for pain, rather than a movement towards health.

Healthy pleasure satiates and replenishes us—it is balanced.

Unhealthy pleasure is a detour to distract us from pain—which it can’t ever actually fulfill, which is why we always crave more of it. When imbalanced, it can turn into addiction, numbing, distraction, or overindulgence in an attempt to self-soothe.

We do need to self-soothe, but we need to get to the root of just what it is we are actually trying to soothe and address it directly, rather than trying to tamp it down. This is where deep inner work comes in, dealing with our shadows and trauma, and learning new skills for healing and balance.

And, we need to learn to choose healthy, balanced pleasure SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS PLEASURABLE.

We don’t have to justify it. We win no extra points at the end of the game of life for denying ourselves true pleasure. Healthy pleasure is a tool for self-balance; without it, it’s hard not to fall victim to unhealthy pleasure in some way.

How do we discern balanced pleasure from imbalanced gratification?

Imbalanced gratification leaves us wanting more—it is never complete. It never has enough, so we don’t feel lit up by life. We feel anxiety about not getting the thing we’re craving. When we get it, we feel let down—if we don’t numb that feeling, too.

Healthy pleasure makes us feel ALIVE, energized, and connected to life, others, and ourselves. Healthy pleasure is tied to our values, gifts, and deep desires.

Healthy pleasure fills us up WITH OURSELVES, so we feel generous—healthy pleasure wants to be shared. Which means healthy pleasure is healthy not just for you, but for others, too. That is a beautiful thing.

Come back to your senses. Literally.

---

If the world looks like it’s lost its senses, maybe it’s because… it has.

Literally. 

Our senses aren’t irrelevant afterthoughts to human life.

Sensory information is data; our bodies and our brains interpret that data to create our lived experience.

In one aspect, our senses are overwhelmed: by constant screen use, noise pollution, light pollution, exhaust fumes, pop-ups, traffic noise and exhaust, artificial flavors, overstimulation. 

On the flip side, we’re starving for rich, true sensory connection—for pleasure.

Pleasure, too, is data.

What if the craziness in the world is pointing to a primal need to return to… pleasure?

To take in data that soothes our nervous systems because of its evolutionary familiarity?

We forget, sometimes, that we evolved along WITH everything else. We are wired from our reciprocal connection with all that is—through our senses.

What might pleasureful senses feel like?

Sound: Birdsong, crickets, crashing waves, raindrops, wind rising and falling in the trees—sounds we’ve evolved along with, but don’t always get to hear, nowadays.

Touch: Dirt underneath our feet, the way different earths talk to our toes in different tongues. Human touch: playful, sensual, familiar, warm, safe. Co-regulating our nervous systems in community through safe, healing touch.

Taste: A palate rehabilitated from the onslaught of artifice, that can taste with delicacy the wholeness of whole food, discern seasonings, know satiation that comes from food as an immersive experience, not just fullness. The tentative touch of tongue to the unfamiliar. The knowing taste of tongue to sun-kissed skin after emerging from the sea.

Scent: The million different scents of earth after different types of rain. Fallen pine needles toasting in the summer sun. The varied terrain of our human bodies. Wet dog. Dry dog. Ocean. Trees in the morning. Night blooms.

Sight: Beauty. Horizons. The billion shades and patterns of ocean waters, sweetwater brooks, puddles, tide pools. The Milky Way, unadulterated by light pollution. A newly-fledged cardinal chasing its parent, vibrating its wings and chirping to be fed. A baby anole wagging its tail as it stalks bugs. Cumulonimbus clouds. The humble pinecone.

All of these sensory experiences speak to us; they remind our bodies what our life is about, how life feels through pleasure, where we find pain.

To come back to your senses, try feeding yourself with conscious pleasure.

This is how we re/member ourselves, and remember our place here on this planet.

This is how we come home.

What it means to rewild

---

What it means to rewild

In ecology, rewilding is a movement that allows the natural world time to replenish after cultivation: time to rest, enrich, and realign with her innate intelligence, patterns, and rhythms.

What if humans allowed ourselves a similar process of rewilding? Of rediscovering our true nature?

This could look like…

• Learning how to tune into our intuition

• Rediscovering our instincts

• Learning how to listen to our bodily wisdom

• Naming our strategies for getting our needs and desires met

• Expressing ourselves authentically

• Taking off our masks so we can connect fully and freely

• Reclaiming our passion

• Claiming our truest power

• Creating: a gift, an idea, a poem, art, a project, a paradigm… whatever wildly unique offering you have singing beneath your skin, ready to surge through you. 

When we untangle ourselves from outdated conditioning, stories, and habits, allow ourselves space to sieve through our own rich soil, then plant seeds for a new vision and nourish our deepest desires… we bloom.

Our blood remembers how to sing.

I developed the Creative Rewilding journey as a regenerative process to restore ourselves to our natural state of curiosity, creativity, and vibrancy.

To reignite our fire.

To wander between our inner and outer landscapes.

To tune in to our unique gifts and values, align with patterns in nature.

To fall in love + lust with our own lives—so we can use that as scaffolding to “code” our life force and create what only we can create. 

To fire up our own life force so it can surge through us.

This is generative activism: We transform the world by aligning with its natural rhythms and patterns. And our own.

You know you have a gift you’re meant to offer the world.

The Creative Rewilding process will help you clarify what that is and shift limiting perspectives, so you can GIVE IT. It's needed.

Your greatest gift is someone else’s deepest desire. Will you give it?

Step one: Redefine power

Redefine “power” to mean being in love with life. YOUR life.

What would it feel like if you were in love + lust with your life? What would it look like?

What would the world look like if everyone was in love with their lives? What if that was non-negotiable?

I can’t magically make our problems go away. This is not an excuse to turn away from the suffering in the world and what we all need to do to alleviate it.

But I can learn what I love, and hold myself accountable to honoring what I love with my time and energy. I can learn what makes me feel vibrant, and honor that with my time and energy.

I can learn to scale out my perspective so I see how indescribably beautiful the sheer improbability of this planet is.

I can marvel at the craziness of fireflies, and feel a little bit jealous that I can’t do that.

I can do others the honor of asking them what they love, what brings them alive. 

When I allow myself to do what I love, I feel powerful, happy, generous. When I’m filled to overflowing with my own humanity, I want to do that with everyone else.

I happen to think that if we all did this, the world would start healing in bigger and faster ways. And this is totally doable. It’s not everything (or maybe it is), but it’s something.

Joy loves joy. Power loves power. When power is joyful, and joy is powerful, we will have found ourselves smack in the middle of a new paradigm.

Start right now. Some ideas? Glad you asked! Here are a few:

---

When someone asks you what you do, tell them what you love.

Then ask them what they love.

What if we were all allies, helping each other to uphold for ourselves what we love, helping us stay true to what we love? What if we were asked many times a day to share what we love, and why? What if what we love is non-negotiable?

We all “do” a million things, play a million roles. I think what you love is the most interesting thing about you. I’d love to know what you love.

---

Take off your masks.

We all play a million parts throughout our lives. Often, we put on masks in order to fit into different scenarios, to be acceptable to different people, to be valued by various systems—all of which are playing their parts, as well.

The problem is, we sometimes lose sight of who we truly are beneath our roles and masks.

We play our parts so well, we forget that they are just that: parts.

And when we lose sight of ourselves, we need others to validate our existence, rather than knowing the truth of ourselves—and sharing it—from the inside out.

Who are you without your masks? What would happen if you took them off, one by one? What if vulnerability and transparency was accompanied by relief—relief that you can finally respond to life as YOU, not a small subset of you?

We find ourselves in a strange spacetime in history where we are both starving for connection and inundated with it at the same time.

What we’re craving is not just any and all connection, but authentic, nourishing, pleasurable connection: not surface-level, smush-yourself-down-into-a-box-to-conform empty-calorie connection.

We’re aching for quality, not quantity.

There are those of us who want more of you. There are those of us who want to see all of you, and are waiting for you to reveal the rich facets of who you are so we can play as whole, in-it-all-together human beings.

Trust follows truth.

Connection follows trust.

Authentic connection heals the trauma of disconnection—and of domination masquerading as connection.

Taking off our masks is a great first step.

---

Don’t make an impact ON the world, realign with its natural intelligence. And yours.

If you’re reading this, you probably think a lot about where we’re headed as earthlings. I sure do. You know you want to do good, to leave the world a better place. I want that, too.

But I’ve also realized that life wants something from me.

That my intentions, no matter how noble, how visionary, will rapidly become wobbly if I don’t anchor them in what the world needs and desires along with me.

That imposing my vision on the world is a very old-school, will-based, power-over, my way or the highway pattern. It’s all about me. It’s about making my mark, making an impact ON. This is the type of overpowering that happens when we’re actually unsure of our power.

But my relationship with life needs to be consensual.

Playing WITH life, co-creating along with it—that’s the bigger game. That’s the game I want to play. Then it is about me, and also about everyone and everything else. The beauty of this is that, while I might be cultivating my particular vision of a garden, I’m never doing it alone.

Life is telling us what it desires all the time. It is showing us where there are needs all the time. It is giving us opportunities to learn about our deepest desires and gifts all the time (#naps). It is giving us information about what we definitely want no part of all the time (#math).

When we align our natural intelligence—the feedback system of pleasure, pain, love, grief, talent, joy, beliefs, vision—with the natural intelligence of the world, then we will have aligned ourselves with life as it is: a fluid ecosystem continually giving and receiving feedback about how to come back into balance.

This feels much more real than pretending I’m in control of it all.

This is how you co-create an impact FOR the world, with the world.

This feels much more connected to my natural human intelligence, which intuitively and instinctively knows that everything is interdependent, that systems have innate intelligence.

This feels like a relief. Try it out. Let me know how it goes?

---

Asking for help is you exercising your agency; it is NOT “victim-mode.”

Enough with the victim-shaming. Asking for help is not the same thing as asking someone to do something for you, it’s asking someone to do something WITH you.

Our true nature is to give, AND to receive. We are not designed to do everything alone.

Do we need to build up our strength, skills, resourcefulness? Absolutely.

Can we be prompted to see and rely on our own power + agency? Absolutely. 

Do we need to rescue everyone? Nope. 

But we need to get real about the fact that there are incredibly difficult circumstances that people need help with. Sometimes, this even means doing something for them.

Telling someone (or yourself) to get out of “survival mode” and into “thriving mode” may be turning a blind eye to the systemic circumstances that perpetuate pain + suffering, and puts all of the burden on the individual to overcome them.

There is a time and place for “thriving mode,” for sure. But we need to be able to discern whether or not our minds, bodies, nervous systems, and external experiences are aligned enough for us to make that transition. If not, we end up stuck and feeling the shame of yet another “failure” to live up to our potential.

Please, be kind with yourself + others. It’s entirely possible that we have within us conflicting parts, some of which are able to thrive, some that aren’t. This is just fine, as long as we don’t bulldoze the parts that aren’t yet ready to shift or glorify the parts that are.

It may be that the “victimy” part desperately longs to know it doesn’t have to do life alone.

We will likely flow in and out if thriving + surviving, victimhood + creatorhood throughout our lives, just because life is life.

We are works in progress, always. So is life. Understanding this might be the most powerful thing you can do for yourself, and others.

Learn from nature’s patterns: radiate

---

Learn from nature’s patterns: radiate

This one’s pretty obvious. Nature shows us endless examples of the radial:

• dandelions

• the sun and stars

• hands and fingers

• the iris of our eyes

• a drop rippling outward in the water

• sunflowers

The lesson of the radial?

Let yourself shine your radiance—in all directions.

Throw yourself out there—in all directions. 

AND

Receive from all directions.

Draw nourishment from all directions.

Put out feelers in all directions, so they can draw in the nurturing you need—into your core.

Let your own radiance feed your core: your heart.

This may be the secret wisdom of the radial: that it flings itself outward in all directions… because it knows all roads lead back to the heart.

Shine on, wild ones. Happy rewilding.

Learn from nature’s patterns: fractal

---

Learn from nature’s patterns: fractal

Consider the fractal:

• tributaries of a river

• veins and arteries in our bodies

• a fern

• the branch of a tree

• spines of mountains

• leaves of a succulent

• our lungs and neurons

All are examples of fractals, a pattern that repeats itself over and over at different sizes as it grows and expands.

The fractal is another pattern in nature we see everywhere—but how can the fractal pattern bring us closer to ourselves?

Ever repeat a pattern over and over in your life, for better or worse?

That pattern was created because it works (or worked) in some way. Repeated over time, that pattern creates structure—it becomes its own blueprint and scaffolding for replicating itself. It’s a fractal.

Our brains LOVE this: predictable, repeatable patterns simply require less energy than doing things differently.

This is one reason it can be so hard to break a pattern—the wiring wants to perpetuate itself.

The good news is, this is also why truly changing a pattern ripples out into ALL areas of our lives—the pattern reconfigures itself at all levels.

This is why personal self-development is not different from leadership development is not different from relationship development is not different from culture-shifting.

Same skills—different scale.

That’s a fractal.

One example that’s common with my clients (and myself):

Learning how to have difficult conversations while maintaining authentic connection. This is something that will help you in conversations with your colleagues as much as with your partner and friends.

Same skills—different context. 

Is there a pattern in your life you’d like to rewire?

If you were to shift one pattern, what areas in your life could transform?

I’d love to know—share in the comments!

The importance of showing up messy

---

The importance of showing up messy

I’m someone who, for the most part, has been able to show up well in my life. I’m pretty presentable. I know how to play well with others. I can get the job done. Not always perfectly, not always the best, but good enough.

One May day in 2020, I woke up and everything changed. I had a cerebrospinal fluid leak, which caused by brain to sag, which prompted a cascade of neurological and physical degeneration over the next 13 months. It was awful, and terrifying. It screwed up my life, and my nervous system. I was conscious, but my brain would fade in and out constantly. I cried and catastrophized frequently, methods my body and brain used to try to find regulation. I was a complete mess. I felt like I was losing my tether to my body and this planet.

Interestingly, I could still show up, albeit in a diminished way. I could still have conversations. I could still garden or make art, some days. I could smile and laugh, sometimes. I grieved with some friends who were also going through difficult challenges. I even navigated the sh!tshow that is health insurance. I was just a complete mess while I did it all.

And this was an important lesson for me:

I’ve learned that showing up messy doesn’t diminish my intelligence.

I’ve learned that showing up in grief doesn’t lessen my impact.

I’ve learned that showing up in tears doesn’t mean I can’t get things done.

I’ve learned that showing up even though I’m a mess doesn’t mean I care any less.

I’ve learned that showing up inconsistently is sometimes me giving 100%.

I’ve learned that showing up scared is actually pretty courageous.

If anything, these messy, inconvenient states remind me of why I’m showing up in the first place: to help and to care, and to normalize helping, caring, grieving, healing—in all realms of our lives. Even when we’re a mess.

This doesn’t mean I don’t need days of respite and solitude—I do.

This doesn’t mean I should push through everything, no matter what—it doesn’t.

This doesn’t mean it’s always a great idea to show up messy—it isn’t.

But there are a lot of stories floating around about how we should “never let them see you sweat,” that emotions are unprofessional, that grief is something to be dealt with… somewhere else, some other time, if at all: we don’t really make time or space for grief—or people experiencing it—in our culture. (And look into the origins of “professionalism” and ask yourself if just maybe we need to update the concept.)

At times, these ideas held me back from showing up, because I didn’t feel I measured up—that my mess, emotional state, ill health, inconsistency was a burden, one to be borne alone, by myself.

But really, these stories are just telling us to turn off our humanity.

To keep us alone, isolated, or shamed by our humanness when we most need to connect with others in it.

To keep the machine running.

I’m not at all interested in performing like a machine. I just can’t live down to that expectation.

I’m bringing human back—to all the places we’ve been told it’s too imperfect to work.

These might just be the spaces we need it most.

And in return…

We need to get comfortable with others showing up messy.

There is a lot going on on the planet. Too much.

If we’re going to move through these times with our humanity intact, we have to create compassionate space for falling apart—for ourselves, and for others.

This can’t be relegated solely to the realm of therapy, counseling, or self-development.

Grief, illness—they don’t care about our timelines. Q4 is irrelevant.

Grief and illness are the disruptive technologies meant to jolt us back into our humanness, and they will show up when and where they please. Maybe in the middle of a Tuesday.

And—if our systems can’t accommodate our humanness… remind me, what is the point of them?

We need leaders in every arena to learn and model how to hold grief, illness, and nervous system dysregulation humanely.

We all need to learn how to do this. There is a lot of grieving and caregiving to be done; this will be anything but convenient.

I truly believe that in some not-so-distant future, organizations will be evaluated by how well they are willing and able to embrace this.

We can’t turn a blind eye to the magnitude of change occurring. I’m not the only one who had a rough few years. Many went through worse than I did, or have been dealing with it for far longer.

It’s an invitation for us all to lean into our humanity, re-learn how to be fully human, and recalibrate our systems so they are in alignment with our full humanness—together.

This is the heart of humanful leadership: our capacity to hold one another in the full spectrum of our humanity—not just the sanitized parts.

It’s a mess. Hold on. Embrace it. And each other.

The savior and the nurturer

---

Celebrate small, everyday acts of nurturing. Tell stories about them.

As long as we idolize heroes, we will unknowingly perpetuate the need for hardship and violence that give rise to them.

I say this not to diminish acts of heroism; life will naturally give us reasons to need them, and thank goodness for them.

And, we humans artificially manufacture many of the situations that give rise to the need for saviorism, as well. Create a problem, sell the solution. Let things fall apart, swoop in to fix it. Poof, instant heroism.

Why are so wed to the story of tragedy and the hero?

Maybe, in part, because it’s romanticized—we see and hear stories of it all the time. We love the story of the lone savior swooping in at the last minute to save the day.

Maybe, because it’s dramatic—and the drama of the adrenaline rush can be seductive.

Maybe, because of who it elevates—the lone wolf, the solo savior, the One—all reasonable role models in a fragmented, isolated society. If we continue to hope for a hero, we don’t have to do the mundane work of nurturing, maintaining, caring for, repairing, healing.

Maybe, because it’s good PR.

It’s time to elevate new narratives: stories that render the ordinary extraordinary; of reverence toward countless minuscule daily acts that affirm and nurture life—the ones that make life worth living.

We need nurturers as much as we need saviors. 

Maybe, when we can continually celebrate and uplift the nurturers, we’ll find we need fewer saviors. 

Maybe when we tell story after story of small acts of caregiving, we’ll have less that needs saving—and more that is thriving.

Small acts of kindness, to ourselves and others, are every bit as crucial as sweeping episodes of heroism.

We need firefighters to come in and stop the blaze with a deluge of water.

AND, we need those who plant new seeds, water them consistently, nourish them, and help them grow. We need nurturers who create conditions for life to thrive.

We need this for ourselves, and for our planet.

Not as big + dramatic, perhaps, but still a matter of life and death. Growth does not happen without the right conditions.

Celebrate small kindnesses. Elevate a caregiver. Create legends about tiny, joyful things. Live that kind of legend.

What’s a tiny story of nurturing you witnessed or embodied? Tell me in the comments, I’d love to know!