“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I used to be one of those people who didn’t know how I liked my eggs—literally and figuratively. I always went scrambled because it was  the least offensive (and easiest) and I was thirty-five before I experienced the joy of a runny yolk.

In the figurative sense, for much of my life I didn’t take a stance on anything. I never saw it as a drawback. I was always curious, full of questions, and genuinely loved the middle ground and wading through it to try to see from someone else’s perspective. Staying uncommitted meant more fully hearing others’ opinions and gleaning from their experiences to inform my research or writing.

But then I had kids. Initially, I thought I’d teach them to live like me—incessantly asking questions, always learning, and never really settling or taking a stance on anything. It quickly became clear that wasn’t going to work.  In fact, my latest screenplay–The Middle Distance–is a political thriller about a mom in midlife who constantly tries to take a middle stance in a world of extremes, and is forced to choose sides in order to save her life. It is ultimately about how raising kids made me realize how important it is to have clear principles, whether I choose sides or not.

The process of writing and creating this blog (and the screenplay) has made me realize that no matter how hard it continues to be to choose sides, I’ve had my principles all along, and now I’ve found a reason to state them. Here are some principles that heavily inform how I raise my kids, and how I think about life through Simple Life, Big Dreams:

POSITIVITY IS PARAMOUNT

I truly believe my level of positivity can make or break what I set out to do in this life. And I think this applies to everyone. I probably explain this best in my blog Your Thoughts are Things, but it basically amounts to the idea that you can look at your life and see the good in it and be motivated by it, or you can look at your life and see the bad in it and be victimized by it. One will get you far, the other won’t get you anywhere. Life is always going to be better or worse than someone else’s—it’s all a matter of what you focus on.

ROUTINE SIMPLICITY & IMPACT

I believe in making the things you do everyday as simple and impactful as possible. The first part came to me when I learned Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks everyday to avoid decision fatigue and focus on more important things. The second part I realized after reading James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. It boils down to the fact that we all have the same amount of hours in a day, and while multi-tasking isn’t all that productive, creating routine and habits that double (or triple) down on our everyday actions is hugely important. In my blogs about water, leveling up, and others, I talk about making the things I do every day as simple and impactful as possible so I can get to the things most other people don’t get to everyday. 

SAY YOU’LL DO SOMETHING, AND DO IT

My coach, Julie Anderson, told me this quote and it struck me so much that I made it my computer background. Finishing is powerful… in part, because it seems so unattainable in our culture of distraction. Whether it’s half read books, partially checked-out shopping carts, abandoned home projects, folded laundry that’s never put away, returns never made, dropped plans with friends, fad diets…hell, even half launched businesses! The number of examples are matched only by the number of reasons we don’t finish. Sometimes it’s the sheer amount of options that surround us, sometimes it’s the fault of marketing and wanting to move onto the next best thing, sometimes it’s because we didn’t set a clear intention when we started, and sometimes it’s simply because we don’t have enough time. It’s too easy to start and too hard to finish. I write a lot about this, and how knowing why to start and when to finish—and how much more time and energy stopping and starting again later takes—is so important. 

FOOD IS THE BEST MEDICINE OR THE SLOWEST POISON

This is a common principle in Ayurveda, made popular (at least in some circles) by the proverb  “When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.” The idea goes back as far as freaking Hippocrates who said “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” YES! What we put in (and on and around our bodies) is so incredibly important. More important, even, than what we read, who we’re surrounded by, or how we spend our time. Inspired by Kimberly Snyder and others, I eat a plant based diet 75% of my life, and truly believe that nature (excluding animals) provides everything we need to survive and THRIVE! And yet more of the food marketed to us is killing us instead of helping us. Our food choices (like our attitudes) can make or break our lives. I’m also realistic. With a meat-eating family members who possess different palates, I try not to make multiple meals at dinner-time, but I do lean into plant based cooking in hopes that my kids will one day develop a taste for it.

SIMPLICITY AND INTENTION SAVE US FROM LAYERING

The concept I’ve loosely coined as “layering” is about noticing how often we do things only to undo them later—burning time and energy because modern conveniences make it easy to act without intention. Think of eating fast food, then dieting to compensate; driving everywhere, then paying for a gym to “get our steps in”; streaming on demand for enjoyment because it’s easier than connecting with our partners, then paying for therapy to fix our lack of connection; or overbuying online, then decluttering closets or rushing to get returns in before we can’t get our money back. I first woke up to this during COVID (as I wrote in It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times), but the idea really crystallized when I watched Live to 100: The Secrets of the Blue Zones. Researcher Dan Buettner shows how these long-lived communities thrive not just on plant-forward, nutrient-dense foods, but on living simply and intentionally—using their bodies daily, cultivating close ties, and staying aware of their surroundings. The contrast with our American way of life is stark: conveniences promise ease but often leave us working twice as hard to undo their side effects.

PAIN IS A RESOURCE THAT SHOULD NOT BE AVOIDEDPain, struggle, challenge…all these things, once experienced, create grit. In today’s world of instant gratification it takes a lot of effort to live in our pain, especially long enough to create grit. There is always a quick way to avoid whatever we are feeling—good or bad—and that avoidance is accessible to us 24/7 whether through the internet (binge watching, doom-scrolling, online ordering, online shopping…) or a myriad of other distractions. Rarely do we have to focus too long on what we lack or miss. There’s always something to move onto. This  avoidance is a lot like the layers I talk about above—in some cases it IS the layers. Avoiding our pain is a lot like staying in the mindless process of layering and un-layering I discuss above. It consumes our time, and ultimately causes more pain, because we can’t learn from the little bit of pain we allow ourselves before we move onto something else. My blog In The Weeds touches on this idea. There’s an upside to experiencing our pain that goes even deeper—when you face your pain you learn about yourself in a way that reveals parts of yourself you wouldn’t otherwise see. And that is crucial to achieving your dreams.

Ultimately it is the nature of our world to be pulled in all directions at all times. As Emerson states, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Knowing your principles, in my mind, is the first step in knowing yourself.

So, find a quiet space, take some time to write down what you believe in, and refer to it whenever you find yourself lost or stuck or scared. Do whatever you can to keep being yourself.