10/13/2026
I accidentally left my laptop at a retreat venue last week, and had to go 5 days without it. My initial impulse to freak out dissolved once I realized what a gift that forgetfulness truly was. 🌲
See, I was supposed to pivot straight from facilitating our 10th Northern California women’s psychedelic retreat, right into logistics, spreadsheets, and strategy for our Mexico immersions in February.
Recovering workaholic anyone? After single-handedly organizing, hosting, and facilitating a plant medicine retreat, I wanted to jump into my laptop? Lame!
Luckily, the universe forced me into a total digital fast instead.
Without a laptop, I had no choice but to practice what I teach (burn-out recovery, reclaiming our attention back from the digital grid).
Instead of my compulsion to constantly produce and achieve, I spent this week walking under Northern California cypress pines and eucalyptus trees, scaling dry desert dunes on a deserted beach, smoking incredible Nor Cal w**d, and reminding my nervous system of a core truth:
Hustle isn't what creates quantum shifts, ... alignment, feeling, and physiological ease are.
Read it again friend: It’s not your effort that gets you what you want, it’s your ability to be in receiving mode. Otherwise, you’re just a hamster on a wheel.
When we live in high-beta hustle, our brains operate like ordinary Newtonian objects, locked into linear struggle: Action and Effort = Result.
The thing is, the very act of effort implies struggle, and struggle implies lack, so the harder we strive, the more we remain in the same place.
But when we unclench, step out of the "Biometric Brace," and shift into alpha and theta states more often, we open our reticular activating system to perceive brand-new possibilities, have heightened intuition, and experience life with more flow.
Yes, we still take action toward our goals, but because we stepped away, it’s inspired action, not forced action, Major difference.
--> If you’ve been running on the entrepreneurial grid, consider this your permission slip:
- Drop your shoulders a quarter-inch away from your ears.
- Put down the screen for an afternoon. Or a whole 5 days if you dare.
- Step out of output mode and go be with some trees.
Sometimes, "forgetting" your work device is the exact somatic prescription your system needs. But even if you didn’t accidentally leave your laptop behind, you can still put your phone in the drawer and pretend you did. Try it and let me know how it feels (expect a few withdrawals, just like any addiction). You got this.
