I am recording this on February 1st. I’m in Nashville, still no power day 8 due to this gnarly ice storm….., and I’m at a hotel so I’m fine, but I can’t help but notice all the parallels because what I know is that we are collectively switching power sources as humans. We have been looking to feel powerful outside of ourselves, and we are now being urged to build something from the inside out because it’s much more stable.

January was already quite the kickoff to the year, and it sure looks like February is going to be the same. So this moment isn’t calling on you to pretend like you’re fine, and it’s also not asking you to look away, It’s asking you to find a sense of power inside.  So stick with me, im going to give you 5 simple ways to do just that.

So I’m in the middle of teaching my Feel Better class and I swear I have tinkered with renaming this class a million times. I’ve never found a name I like better, so I’m sticking with this for now, but I think I have been worried that people will hear the title and think oh I just want to feel a little better, like a coddling kind of vibe, like a bandaid. When in reality what I show people is that you have to understand what makes you feel bad in order to feel better. You have to actually see the problem if you want to solve the problem. And you know what makes you feel positively awful?  …..feeling powerless. Feeling helpless. And there’s enough awareness now in the zeitgeist about victim mindset as though that’s the most embarrassing thing you could ever be without any understanding of what causes it, so nobody wants to be embarrassed and so instead they pretend to be strong. And you can feel it of you’re sensitive enough, it’s a façade. It’s not stable.

The more you’ve built this for yourself, the more you see through the façade, all of these people who have amassed a lot of earthly power, because they feel so insecure and they keep looking outside to add more political power, more money, and all the good looks that money can buy and they’re adding it to a leaky bucket, this is why you see this impulse for more more more. There's nothing wrong with political power, There's nothing wrong with money, There's nothing wrong with good looks—those are all neutral , but if you want to feel good in a sustained way, you want to be adding those things to a bucket that has no holes in it so that the bucket can start overflowing and it becomes this fountain that feeds everyone. We really believe that we need more stuff from out there,  when if you tend to your own bucket it will fill up very quickly. This is really what the feel better class is……because feeling powerful is , I think of it as a feeling of self trust, safe and secure in yourself.

So as we are going through these collective difficult times, I want everyone to keep their eyes on the future….I want to remind everyone that No one tells you that feeling better starts with feeling worse.

Have you ever noticed that When you’re learning something new, you feel kinda dumb before you get it.
When you start working out, you feel weak before you’re strong. 

You want to feel brave, but bravery requires fear.

Healing requires pain first.  

Your entire purpose in life is to grow, and Life disguises growth as failure and progress as pain.

So I just want to remind everyone, if it’s hard, it matters. WE are upgrading. Away from this fundamentally insecure way of living. And aren’t you ready for it? I am. I can’t believe that it’s 2026 and we are still killing people in the name of defense. We are still living at this low, primitive level—hurting other humans, hurting the planet. And rationalizing it. Literally, we are living from our Lower minds, building systems based on lack and scarcity. Seeing resources as scarce and therefore there isn’t enough to go around. And we end up needing to defend ourselves. It’s such a low level of living driven by  our beliefs that are coming from the PB.  And the only way you break that cycle, is to transcend that mind. To use your will to see abundance.

This time that we are in is mostly about you. Isn’t that amazing? Do you choose to unhook from these unstable power sources? If so, then how do you do it?

Okay I’m going to give you some things to do, but before I do I want to give you some inspiration. Because we can all feel like yeah I want to feel secure and powerful, but I can’t with the world the way it is…..and the person I always bring to mind is Harriet Tubman. She was granted exactly zero earthly power. None. She was owned. She had no human rights granted TO her by the outside world. The power she possessed came from inside.  Nothing came from outside. She never let go of the freedom that was in her own mind. She kept imagining what was possible regardless of what people were telling her to believe about herself. She took the very real circumstances and very real limitations of her life, and she asked what is possible given these parameters. Not only did she free herself, but then her bucket was overflowing and she started gathering more resources, inspiring so many other people to the cause. We mostly give away our own freedom by telling ourselves that we have no choices. We use our imagination to create more limitations. Your thoughts about you and your life are powerful. There are the facts about your life, and then there are your thoughts about those facts. And they are very, very different. Do not just accept other people's limiting thoughts. About your life. Or anyone else's.

So this idea of being empowered, of switching power sources is something that is completely available to you, it’s a practice and you start by doing simple things. Here are five simple things you can start doing today.”

## 1) Separate the facts from the story

DO: Say it out loud: “Here are the facts. Here is what my mind is saying about the facts.”

DON’T: Don’t treat your interpretation as reality. Don’t say, “This means I’m screwed,” like that’s a fact.

Example:

Fact: “I lost power.”

Story: “This is a sign.” I shouldn’t be living in Nashville.” Now that makes it seem like there's something else in charge of your life and you can't figure this out on your own. I will never go that route. The power is going to come back on, I'll figure this out.”  And just notice the difference in how each of those make you feel…..

## 2) Stop asking questions that create looping.

You want to ask questions that create agency:

One of the questions that creates the most looping is, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? It sound slike such a logical question, but so often, there is not a satisfactory answer. It's just your brain going if I can figure out why this happened then. I'll be able to go into problem solving mode. But skip that part and justice go into problem solving mode.

* “What’s mine to do today?”

* “What’s one step that would help?”

* “What would the most confident version of me do right now?

## 3) Spend more time in nature, without your phone or air pods. Just you and nature. Nature is alive and it is coherent, it is completely in flow with the way things should be—it’s not resisting anything. You are that. Let their energetics inform you, have aCCESS to you. Its all available to us and itrequires no effort.  We will have a very hard time this year if we spend too much time around things and people who are disconnected from a higher power source. Connection is very easy—the world has worked very hard to disconnect the humans from their power. Take big breaks from your technology. If you feel like you should get off of social media, do it. Some people can handle a little bit of it. Most of us can't. So just. Look at your own cost benefit. And decide for yourself. Spend more time. Doing quiet analog things. Like. Reading a book, having a cup of tea were there, That's all you're doing is drinking the tea. Make sure you have more quiet. In your day, In your car,,,,,resist the urge to fill your head with more more more information. I recently got rid of my New York Times games on my phone. I never thought I would do it but ohh my goodness, it became just this. Like almost like a nervous habit. If I was on the phone with someone I would open up my near times games and start playing, you know, talking and doing a game at the same time. Um, yeah, that's the kind of stuff I'm protecting now. I'm protecting my own focus and my own attention. I want to feel at ease with no distraction.

## 4) Stop outsourcing your power to other people’s minds

 DO: Choose your inner authority. As often as you can, ask and answer your own questions. So often, we are asking other people’s opinions from people who have completely unmanaged minds. Then we hear their fearful thought, their limiting thought and our brain immediately thinks that’s probably the one that is true.  My neighbor who also doesn't have power, texted me and said. Nashville Electric is turning away volunteer lineman from other states because. Um. They are union and Nashville Electric is non union so that's why it's going so slowly. And when I read that. If I didn't know how to manage my mind, I might immediately go into outrage. But instead I thought, huh. And I googled it and sure enough, it's just a social media story that's not based in fact at all. Nashville Electric is also union. So be careful of this contagion. Literally there's like mind viruses where people just start believing things and it spreads and spreads and spreads. Um, let that stop with you. You want to think for yourself., And even if something is true, you still get to decide how you want to think about it. How you will use that information.  

#5…..Embrace your own counterculture, whatever that means to you. We are living in a culture that is sick., and pretending like you are doing just fine in a culture that is so deleterious. To our well-being is just self abandonment and it's also enabling. The status quo. I'm sick of the status quo and I'm very, very sick of the people who enable it. More people are opting out of old ways that do not support our best interests: going into mountains of debt for the right car,  giving your time & attn to celebrity culture, violent shows, eating crappy food….people are turning away….people don’t want to earn a lot of money in a way that costs you your soul and all of your time. The empowering question for 2026 is: What am I building instead? What am I no longer tolerating in my life? Who or what can I delete from my life that would make it so much better? This year will reward the  builders, the builders might be quiet, but they will be empowered—meaning they are holding themselves and their wishes in high esteem. Only you can do that.

“This month, and this year, your work is to build the bucket with no holes in it.

Self-trust.

A mind you can rely on.  Becoming your own reliable friend.

“And when you do that… you become a fountain. It spills over.

Not because the world out there became perfect.

But because you’re no longer so dependent on unstable power sources.”