013. On Alignment

(n): a sense of fluidity between your body and mind, where you are totally absorbed by and deeply focused on something, beyond the point of distraction.

As I started to have conversations with old colleagues and friends, I started to notice which ones would light me up, and which ones would drain me. It was the ones that drained me where I felt like I was playing a role that wasn’t me. I was acting like something I wasn’t. And it’s being shown to me how much in the last 15 years of my career I’ve been doing that. Molding myself to fit in. To climb the corporate ladder, to dress a certain way, to act a certain way. What that’s helped me with is an understanding of what I am not. And the types of people I’m no longer interested in surrounding myself with.

So what does that leave me with? I’ll tell you what it left me with for the first two months was a deep pattern of procrastination. I froze. I distracted myself. I had no idea what to do. Where to go. Who even am I? I know I’m no longer interested in operating the way I did before, but with the looming reality that I need to be productive and make some money, I had no idea how to operate moving forward.

That’s where alignment came in. What I eventually realized is that this inertia wasn’t a flaw. It wasn’t laziness or avoidance or lack of discipline. It was my entire system refusing to move toward something that wasn’t in resonance anymore. It was like life was saying, “You can’t go back there. That frequency isn’t yours now.”

Inertia exists when there’s no alignment. When the soul is whispering no, but the mind is trying to bargain its way into safety. The freeze was protection. It was guidance. A pause that forced me to stop doing what I’ve always done: push, hustle, override. It made me sit in the empty space long enough to actually hear myself again.

And once I understood that, the real question became:
Okay… so how do I align?
How do I move from this new place I find myself in, instead of dragging old versions of me into a life I’ve already outgrown?

For me, alignment started in the heart. Not the mind, not the to-do list, not the panic about productivity. I had to drop all the way into the quieter, softer place inside me—the place that actually knows. The place that isn’t scared. The place that isn’t trying to keep up with anyone’s expectations.

When I sat with myself long enough, the answers weren’t complicated. They weren’t grand business plans or five-year strategies. I kept coming back to the same feelings every time: community, love, joy, nature, and helping others. Those were the things that made my chest warm. Those were the things that made me feel alive again. Those were the things that felt like truth.

And it became clear: alignment isn’t about figuring out what to do next. It’s about remembering what lights you up—and letting that be the compass. When you follow that, momentum comes back naturally. Energy returns. Doors open. You start moving not because you’re forcing yourself to, but because you’re pulled.

Alignment isn’t a strategy. It’s an inner yes. And the moment I stopped trying to resurrect the old version of my life and started listening to what my heart was actually asking for… everything began to shift.

Honestly, it still makes me laugh. The universe has a sense of humor like that. I’ve spent my whole career helping startups and entrepreneurs. I always wanted to support the underdog and I would tell myself that I could never be an entrepreneur myself “because it was just too hard”, but that I would do anything I could to help them. Literally you don’t understand how many times I’ve been asked if I would be my own boss and how many times I responded: “No way, are you crazy? do you know how hard it is? No, I’m good, I’ll always support them from the sidelines but it’s not for me”. I spent years cheering everyone else on, championing their ideas, connecting dots, helping them launch their visions into the world — all while secretly believing I wasn’t built for that path. That I was safer as the observer, the supporter, the “strategic friend in the background.”

Well lo and behold. Here I am. 4 months post sabbatical, after combating deep inertia, procrastination, fear, and purposelessness, I find myself at the door of entrepreneurship.

All of a sudden entrepreneurship doesn’t feel like a hustle era. It feels like a heart era. Like a new chapter that isn’t about proving anything, but expressing something. It feels like the next natural step after months of stripping everything down, sitting in the void, and listening for what was real.

And what was real was this:
I don’t want to rebuild a life that drains me.
I don’t want to contort myself into old shapes.
I don’t want to chase things for the sake of safety or status or familiarity.

What I do want is to follow what lights me up. To create spaces where people feel connected again. To bring love, community, and joy back into rooms, conversations, and experiences. To help others reconnect with themselves in the same way I was able to reconnect with me.

Entrepreneurship, is about resonance. It’s about energy. It’s about choosing the path that feels like truth in my chest — not the one that makes the most logical sense on paper.

And so here I am. Incubating a new business. Building a new field of resonance with authenticity. This isn’t the career move I expected to make after a sabbatical. But it’s the only one that feels like me. And guess what I’m calling it?

The Rewilding Collective.

Because through the rewilding of my own soul, I was able to find resonance with the path that I’m meant to walk. A path that lights me up, one that brings me joy, and allows me to do the thing that I’m convinced I’m on this Earth to do. Walk beside others on their own path back to themselves.

My love for classical music has grown tenfold over the past year. It was one song that really got me started - Spring 1, by Max Richter - which I’m sure many of you know and recognize. Classical music has become my go-to background music for hiking (if I’m not actively listening to the sounds of the birds), working, and writing - especially when I need to get in the zone. I did some light research and of course there are several studies that point to the benefit of listening to classical music:

• Calms the nervous system — Studies show it lowers cortisol and heart rate, helping the body enter rest-and-digest mode (University of Oxford, 2023).

• Boosts focus and creativity — Complex compositions like Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony have been linked to improved attention and cognitive performance (MDPI, 2024).

• Improves sleep and emotional balance — Listening before bed can enhance sleep quality and support emotional regulation (British Journal of Nursing, 2022).

• Tunes us to harmony — Classical music’s structure mirrors natural patterns, helping us reconnect with rhythm, flow, and inner stillness (Royal College of Music, 2023).

My playlist has slowly been building and I wanted to share if you’re ever interested in getting start with classical music.

If you respond well to visuals, I also fell in love with Sofiane Pamert - a modern French-Moroccan classical pianist, through his Cercle series on YouTube. I sometimes just put it on in the background as I’m hanging out in the camper.

Until next time! 👋