Swell Revolution

08/18/2026

Thinking about it (and how it could blow up in my face) didn't get me any closer.

I needed to adjust a boundary with my spouse. Again.

We'd been going back and forth on it—feelings, logistics, all of it. He was tired of talking about it. And honestly, same. But with each adjustment, it still wasn't working for me.

So I did what I do: mulled it over for days. Lay awake ruminating on how to say it "right" so he wouldn't reject me, shut me out, or worse.

I tried to do the work: Examined my worries, chose helpful thoughts, shifted my perspective. But the emotional friction kept showing up.

Here's the thing I kept missing: This wasn't just a ME thing—it was a US thing.

I was trying to plan out the entire path in my head before taking a single step.

I couldn't solve a two-person equation inside my own head. I needed a partner, not just a better internal monologue. I needed a conversation where I could speak my mind without fearing it would destroy us. My job was simply to control my part: get in the right headspace, set the table, listen, and stay present.

Once I saw that, the internal work became clear, and we talked the next day.

When something is fully in your control, you can manage your mind around it and anchor into your choices (even when uncomfortable). But when other people are involved, no amount of overthinking replaces talking to them.

You can still hold your boundary. You can still propose the solution you want. And you can seek to understand where they can bend, and where you can, too.

It doesn't guarantee a quick fix. But it opens the door to connection and collaboration—which is more than a week of lying awake ever gave me!

It's okay to be afraid of bringing up hard truths. But no amount of delaying, spinning, or avoiding draws an accurate map. The path forward is only made when you actually start walking—one real, honest conversation at a time.

08/14/2026

07/31/2026

Do you remember that feeling before COVID lockdowns hit? Like an antelope sensing a lion nearby, watching. Something bad brewing, but not quite here yet. That's dread.

A lot of people I talk to have that same feeling right now. Makes sense—there's real reason for concern on a geopolitical, socioeconomic, and eco-sustainability level. All the way down to how we're existing in our relationships and workplaces:

From proposed data centers in a desert near the Great Salt Lake—which is already collapsing, threatening the economy, habitats, and health of everyone in the hemisphere, driven by power and wealth hoarding (a rant for another day);

to avoiding a conversation with your boss about a plan you don't think will work;

to tiptoeing around your partner, resentful because they get defensive when you try to talk about how you feel.

All of it is real. I won't pretend otherwise.

But nothing changes until we're willing to face it—and have the uncomfortable conversations.

It's easy to get sucked into helplessness right now. But you have more power here than you're giving yourself credit for. What conversation would you be willing to have if you knew it would make a difference?

It requires you to feel solid in yourself, regardless of how the other person reacts. No guarantees—but when you stay solid, you give the other person permission to be solid, too.

07/23/2026

This past week has been challenging—a loved one's crisis, potential life pivots, and living in total limbo.

It would’ve been easy to fall right back into old patterns—spinning in how helpless I felt, or convincing myself nothing has changed just because old emotions showed back up.

That's the loop: same old rerun playing in your head while your real life waits for you to show up.

But this time, I couldn't ignore the progress. The emotions felt familiar, but my response wasn't. Things were not the same.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote: "What we save, saves us." She meant the planet, but it works for us too.

What you choose to save (your attention, your energy, your next hour) is what ends up saving you right back.

You don't need someone to save you. You just have to decide that the people in your life are worth your time and energy—and that how you show up for them is always your choice.

And you have to decide you're worth taking care of, too. Taking care of yourself isn't selfish—it helps you show up to what actually matters.

What are you choosing to save today?

07/21/2026

Old stories don't ask permission before they start playing.

Last year around this time, Blake and I went camping with a big group of near-strangers. We didn't try to be anything but ourselves (something we had been really focusing on when meeting new people ). Some people liked us, some probably didn't. Cool either way. The right people heard us and came to dance with our tune.

Although that was somewhat difficult in the moment, that was the easy part.

A year later, here we are dealing with a major crisis this last week (probably more on this later), and I'm so incredibly grateful that I've surrounded myself with so many wonderful people who make up my support group.

At times, my brain likes to tell me it's a small group, but it's not. As things were going down, many people were out of town, dealing with their own major stuff, and just getting through life. And there were still plenty of people to lean on, talk to, and who were checking in on us. I'm not talking about just a select few. I'm talking more than a handful. I've been told that I surround myself with good people, and I 100% agree. As someone who didn't grow up as the "popular kid" or believe he could have many close friendships, this is astonishing to me. When you create so much evidence to contradict a belief, how can it not change?

Here's what I didn't do: hold it together. I let the wave come instead of resisting it. I let myself cry. Leaned into the pain. Let my body tense up, and the tears fall freely. I let myself be supported, in front of people, without stuffing it down. That's a vulnerability I used to avoid — letting myself be seen, and trusting the people around me to hold their own emotions and boundaries instead of managing mine for them.

And when the next thing showed up, I could pivot and address it without it derailing me.

And because it's important to take credit and accountability for what we create, I can confidently say I created all those relationships. Obviously not entirely by myself—it takes two people to be in a relationship (so absolute shout-outs and kudos to my people as well). But I built them with love and intention—through authenticity and reciprocity. All things that living my coaching practices out loud has multiplied exponentially. This is also why I'm so passionate about the relationship coaching I do with people. This s**t matters.

Life will always have its challenges with varying degrees of difficulty and levels of needed support. Resilience doesn't have to mean "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." It can mean supportively guiding yourself between your big-picture vision and the very next step, pivoting without it completely derailing you, and anchoring into who you are at your core AND who you want to be.

The volume you turn up in the small, easy moments? It's the same volume that gets tested when things get hard. The bass didn't blow out my speakers when the volume got turned up, because I reinforced my stereo system.

Tune up your system, and turn up your volume so the right people hear your music.

07/20/2026

"If I fall asleep right now, I'll get exactly three hours and twelve minutes before my alarm goes off."

Then the real spiral starts. You look at the clock for the third time, calculate the damage, and decide right then and there that tomorrow is going to be a total disaster.

Here's the evidence that your brain is lying to you: before electricity and artificial light, waking up at 3am was completely normal. Humans didn't sleep in one massive block; they slept in two distinct chunks. They’d wake up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire, pray, write, or just talk quietly in the dark, then drift back to sleep.

It wasn’t insomnia or a malfunction to fix—it was just human nature.

So when you wake up, your body isn't necessarily malfunctioning (but I'll leave that determination to you and your medical professional). But the layer of added pain is the story you tell yourself—the belief that your body isn't running the way it's supposed to. You're literally running on hardware that predates the lightbulb.

Then there's the additional layer of how your day is going to be impacted:

Because you assume being awake will derail your day, you immediately brace yourself. You reach for your phone, scroll out of frustration, clench your jaw, and actively fight to force yourself back to sleep.

By the time the alarm goes off, you actually are exhausted—not because you woke up, but because you spent two hours treating your bedroom like a battleground. The wake-up isn't what wears you out. It's the two-hour argument you have with yourself in the dark.

The story you choose at 3am dictates exactly how you show up at 9am.

When you realize that waking up isn't a glitch, you get to choose an entirely different response.

Next time your eyes pop open: don't reach for your phone (I know, the urge is super real!). Don't spiral into the next day's calendar. Just stay there for 5 to 10 minutes. No fixing. No judgment. Just a gentle redirect to being open to the quiet.

See what happens to your day when you stop deciding it's ruined before the sun even comes up.

07/17/2026

Your brain is forecasting a future that hasn't even happened yet.

3am. Eyes open. And before you've even checked the clock for the third time, you've already decided how tomorrow goes: brain fog. A wasted day. Proof that you're behind again.

Except none of that has happened yet!

You're not just awake—you're forecasting a future based on past evidence fueled by a thought error.

But it doesn't have to be that way. And it starts with a choice.

So instead of running the same tired script, I started asking a different questions: If this isn't a forecast of how my day will go, then what could it be? If it's just quiet time (cause I always wanted to reach for my phone), what else can I be open to?

I stopped clenching my jaw. Uncurled my fists. Let my body settle—not because I stopped thinking, but because I chose which thought got the mic.

And what showed up in that quiet wasn't dread. It was a solution I couldn't find all day. A sentence I'd been stuck on. Something my soul needed to say to me.

Your 3am brain isn't warning you. It's narrating a story it hasn't checked with reality.

Hurry can't hide what your soul needs to hear.

07/15/2026

Here's what 3am Overthinking Taught Me:

I used to go through phases—wide awake at 3 or 4 in the morning, mind racing, convinced my day was now destined to be a mess.

All I could think about was how awful the brain fog and low energy would be and how it would make my day that much harder.

I’d clench my jaw, determined to fall back asleep, but I'd end up flip-flopping like a beached whale, unable to find a comfortable-enough position.

But something shifted when I stopped fighting
→ Instead of battling wakefulness, I started lying on my back, eyes closed, jaw soft, and just let myself be awake. Instead of criticizing my thoughts, I decided to see what they were actually trying to tell me. And in so doing, I stopped assuming my day would be ruined.

And those quiet hours became something else entirely—a space to listen.

Now, when I let myself settle into that stillness, I’m always surprised by what shows up: a solution I couldn’t find during the day, a new way to say something I’d been stuck on, or a bit of sassy wisdom my soul needed to hear (at which point, I was usually able to fall asleep for a few more hours).

A few months ago (after battling these mid-night wake-ups), I learned about "segmented sleep." Before artificial light, humans would naturally sleep for several hours, wake to tend the fire, pray, journal, connect intimately, and then go back to sleep. Those mid-night hours weren’t a problem—they were the norm!

Maybe waking up for no reason isn't random at all...it's the only time all day you're not hurrying past your own thoughts.

Next time you wake up at 3am (or whenever you find yourself overthinking), resist the urge to reach for your phone or spiral into a story about how something will be ruined.
Just be there for 5-10 minutes and listen—no agenda, no fixing, no judgment. Notice what arises in the quiet.
Afterward, jot down any insights or feelings you remember.
You might be surprised by what your soul wants to share.

How you think about your situation matters. It can change your entire life.

Insomnia isn’t a malfunction; it’s an invitation.

07/14/2026

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and just toss and turn?

I go through phases where I'll wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and can't get back to sleep.

I used to lie there ruminating on how my day was going to be ruined—brain fog, low energy, how all the things I needed to get done would now take even more time and probably not be up to standard.

I could feel my jaw tighten and would toss and turn, trying to find a position that felt comfortable enough to fall back asleep.

But when I stopped fighting it and just let myself be awake—lying on my back, eyes closed, soft jaw, not assuming my day would be ruined—those quiet hours became something else. Space to listen.

Now that it's become a practice, I'm always surprised by what shows up: a thought or solution I couldn't find during the day, a way of saying something I'd been struggling to word, an idea I didn't know I was working on, or a piece of wisdom that soothes my soul—which usually also led me back to falling sleep for a few more hours.

A few months ago, I learned about "segmented sleep." Something us humans used to naturally do before artificial light became a thing. People would sleep for several hours, wake up to stoke the fire, pray/meditate, journal, intimately connect, etc., and then go back to sleep for a few more hours. Think of all the wisdom they received in the middle of the night!!

So if you recognize yourself in my story, please remember this:

Hurry can't hide what your soul needs to hear. Insomnia is an invitation, not a malfunction (and it's probably because it's the only time you'll listen!).

Next time you wake up at 3am, don't reach for your phone. Don't reach for the story about how tomorrow's ruined. Just lie there for 10 minutes and listen.

07/07/2026

Feeling trapped in an undesirable situation where nothing feels fair?

There is something you need to remember: You always have a choice.

If that sentence feels activating, please hear me out. I'm not trying to gloss over the very real issues that exist—we don't do that toxic positivity sh*t here.

But sometimes we choose to do things we don't like (i.e., going to a job we hate) for reasons we actually DO like (i.e., getting a paycheck that provides food and shelter).

And sometimes, our survival brain kicks our analytical brain into overdrive. It uses a story to create a loop of negativity—creating an internal tennis match. This back-and-forth prevents us from harnessing our beautifully analytical brains to actively solve problems or make the situation better.

The story we tell ourselves about the choices we are making can make a huge difference in our experience.

When you give yourself the opportunity to have a better experience, you have more energy to create the kind of experience you actually want—finding a better job, building meaningful relationships, stopping the overthinking loop so you can actually start doing something different.

When we take the opportunity to pause and choose intentionally, we find our power. That is where true freedom lives.

What's one small choice you can claim right now that redirects you towards the momentum you actually want?