Stuff I've changed in July

*a non-comprehensive list

Dear Kula Diaries,

The one thing I know about feeling stuck is this: it’s not true. Every time that I’ve ever felt ‘stuck’ in my life, it’s because I did the same things every single day — and expected different results. When I worked for the railroad as a police officer, I had absolutely no idea how to end up working in the ‘outdoor industry’ — but I noticed that as I continued to do the same thing over and over (which, in my case was to sit around and complain about how much I hated it at the railroad), nothing changed.

When you actually stop to think about that, it’s pretty obvious that it isn’t possible to create something new by doing the exact same thing that you’re doing right now. Which is why I love the term ‘unfolding’. Each of us is constantly evolving and growing and changing. I’ve recently released the idea that I ever need to be better than how I am right now. There is nothing about me that I need to fix — because this moment in my experience on earth is important, because it is a part of the unfolding process. However, I do love the idea that as I continue move through the process of life, I can always be exploring new ideas and creating new opportunities. And the way that I do that? Well, it’s by doing new things — or even making tiny tweaks to my ‘normal’ routine. As you might have noticed during your time here at The Kula Diaries, I’m always doing and trying new things — and this isn’t because I’m bored. In fact, quite the opposite — each new thing simply feels like the next step in the process of unfolding and creating.

One thing that is consistent is that I have some type of a morning routine. What isn’t consistent is what I do on that routine. In fact, I have discovered that if I do the same thing every single day, I end up feeling like I’m ‘forcing’ myself to do something in a specific order, and it starts to have less of a ‘flowing’ feeling and more of a ‘regimented’ feeling.

The most important thing, I’ve realized, is that there needs to be some aspect of joy or fun infused into what I’m doing or cultivating. If something becomes less fun and/or starts to feel too routine — it’s time to switch it up.

Everything I do is in a constant state of flux — but I am intentional about doing something each and every day to cultivate a feeling of joy, gratitude, peace and stillness. The path to find those feelings, however, might be different.

So, I thought it would be fun to share a few of the things I’ve changed recently — things that I’ve been really enjoying as we move through the month of July.

Waking up early

I’m infamous for waking up at 4am every single day… and, yes, there has even been a time when my husband had to politely tell me that waking up at 3:45 am was indeed obsessive and not reasonable — ha! I don’t get a lot of time alone when I’m not working, and so this segment of time in the morning feels very precious to me — it’s the one time that I don’t have to answer questions or talk to anybody else or be anybody other than myself. I love my mornings so much. Now, I do get to bed pretty early — usually between 8-9pm, so waking up very early isn’t too challenging for me. But, recently, I’ve been feeling a desire to sleep in a little bit. So, I’ve relaxed my early morning wake up and I’ve been getting up at 5am instead of 4am … and doing a slightly shorter walk. On weekends, I will wake up early to do my alone walk… and then I’ll often spend some quiet time writing… and I’ll hop back into bed and sleep for a little it longer.

How has it worked out so far? Well, I really like sleeping in a little bit! I feel pretty energized during the day, and I’ve noticed that I feel, in general, better equipped to handle stressors that pop up during the day. There are certain things that are often ‘triggers’ for me as I move through my day-to-day experience, and these things annoy me far less when I feel a bit more rested. So, at least for the month of July — I’m expecting to sleep more.

Morning walks

Every single morning I go for some sort of a long walk. I live in a rural area, and I’m lucky enough to be able to hike up a dirt road on the side of a small mountain. Since I’m sleeping a bit longer, I’ve shortened my daily walks a bit, but I still do them every day. A few months ago, I was talking out loud to myself on walks — but, most recently, I’ve had a bit of a ‘break up’ with personal development work — because I noticed that I was getting obsessive about it and overthinking everything that I was doing. In fact, listening to excessive amounts of podcasts or recordings about how to ‘be better’ … was, very ironically, making me feel a lot worse.

So, I haven’t been talking to myself on all of my walks lately — but what I have started to do is to rename my walk into the following:

Many years ago, I used to live near a State Forest, and I would walk along a service road and at every single quarter mile marker on the road, I’d stop and do some sort of an activity — usually, it was something like pushups or sit ups or some type of physical exercise. But, for my joy walks, it’s a bit different. Instead of doing push ups or sit ups, I’m finding random spots along my walk to dance or jump up and down or just spin around in circles and allow myself to feel REALLY GOOD. Sometimes I don’t feel like it when I start, but usually after I dance, I start feeling totally energized and happy and completely full of life. It’s invigorating and fun.

Many years ago, I was driving around Tacoma, Washington in my railroad police vehicle on a routine patrol. I was driving along the Ruston Way Waterfront area, when I noticed a woman on the sidewalk who was doing something that looked very strange to me… she was dancing. To this day, I can vividly see that woman in my mind: she was jumping and smiling and laughing and grooving to the music. She looked uninhibited and free… and I distinctly remember looking at her while she was dancing so beautifully and thinking to myself, “What does she have to be so happy about?”. Then, I went back to being miserable and complaining about ‘how tough’ my life was. Ugh.

Now, having danced for almost 1,300 days — I know exactly why that woman was smiling and laughing and having the time of her life on a sidewalk in Tacoma, Washington. She was creating and cultivating joy from within herself. She was creating with the universe itself in that moment, and she was feeling the abundance of all of life. She was also willingly sharing her abundance and inspiration and joy with others — which is the greatest gift that you can ever give. And, yet, in that moment — I was unable to receive it, because I couldn’t possibly understand how somebody could be so happy.

Well, I now understand where joy comes from — and it doesn’t come from the things that I have or any amount of Kulas sold or any accomplishments or any likes or shares of an Instagram reel: it comes from truly feeling the infinite vastness of the love that the universe floods us with in every single solitary moment of life — if we are open to allowing it to arrive.

I do not always feel this every single day — but I do summon it intentionally. A few mornings ago, I decided to dance at my beloved cell phone tower and I flailed around up there for about 45 minutes alone — and I felt like the luckiest, richest person on earth in that moment. Now, to keep it real, I’m sure I felt frustrated about something later in the day — but for those moments on my Joy Walk, it really felt like everything was possible. And, really, it is. It’s just something we need to remind ourselves sometimes.

Quitting… every single day

I am infamous for working all day and then leaving the office and going home… and working some more. Well, I’ve recently made a pact to myself that I’m not going to do that. Instead, for the past few weeks, I’ve enjoyed playing with my cats a lot more… and Aaron and I have made a nightly practice of taking our cats out on the paddleboards (yes, our cats like to paddleboard!).

Me and Aaron out on the lake with Cinder!

I’ve also started rollerblading again — so I’m not just walking every single day, and it has felt so invigorating to get back out on my skates in the morning.

A very dorky rollerblading self-portrait, taken by a picket fence.

When I was 17 years old, my best friend Chrissie and I started a rollerblading club in our neighborhood called The Rollercoasters. If I had had access to Canva during that time period, I shiver when I imagine how many shirts I would have designed with rollerblades on them. Chrissie and I would routinely drive to a paved path near Valley Forge National Park to skate and one day… we skated 10 miles out on the path and 10 miles back — 20 full miles of rollerblading! We were astonished — and it hadn’t even seemed that difficult. We did the math, and we realized that it was only a 20 mile route to follow the path from Valley Forge National Park to the steps of the Art Museum in Philadelphia. Twenty miles? No problem! We had already done that!

What we didn’t, of course, take into consideration is that once we had rollerbladed 20 miles to Philadelphia… we also would have to rollerblade 20 miles back from Philadelphia. We carried barely any food with us, and ended up pleading with a vendor to give us free water in Philadelphia. The rollerblading lost its allure about 21 miles in, when we realized how far away from home we were. At one point, we had collapsed in a semi-crying-semi-laughing fit on the side of the trail. Somehow, we found the strength to skate over 40 miles that day — it was one of the most ridiculous endeavors of my young life.

I even made myself a special rollerblading Kula Cloth!

And guess what? The next year, just to prove a point — we did it again. But this time, we brought more food and water. It was still pretty bad, but sometimes things are better when you know what to expect.

Rollerblading has always had a special place in my heart — it feels like gliding across the earth, and I absolutely cherish my early morning skates — particularly during those moments when the beams of the sunrise start to shimmer through the misty trees.

Asking for help

In the very early days of PRE-Kula Cloth, I hired a coach while I was still working for the railroad. This ended up being one of the most important decisions that I ever made. My coach helped me discover the answers that I already knew — and really helped me stay accountable to creating the life that I wanted to live. As a result of that experience, I even went to coaching training, because I realized how valuable the coaching was, and I wanted to learn more about the process itself.

Over the past few months, I’ve felt somewhat overwhelmed about the responsibility of running a company — and I realized that I was not helping myself by trying to figure everything out on my own. Through a beautifully serendipitous series of events, I ended up meeting an amazing human by the name of Glory. The first time I met Glory, she showed up with a Kula Cloth that she wanted me to autograph — ha!

Glory, as it turns out, is an incredible human and coach — and I decided to start working with her to keep myself accountable to the things that are really important to me: namely, not getting sucked into the quicksand of running a company and completely losing it…and also, staying focused on my vision for my life and for Kula.

Glory has the energy of a radiant techno marmot on a perfect fall day, and working with her has been such a gift in my life. If self-help is an important tool… then I think that coaching is really an accelerant. Every single time that I’ve ever worked with a coach, it takes my vision and dreams and it puts some fuel into the fire. I’ve seen some pretty magical changes since we started working together — and, to top it all off, I feel more balanced, present and happier. It’s been an exciting decision for me, and I also — even more excitedly — made her a Kula that just accompanied her to the summit of Mt. Rainier!

You can just see Glory’s Kula in the upper right corner at the Mt. Rainier summit register!

Lead more, manage less

When I worked for BNSF Railway as a railroad police officer, we were taught a very specific ‘leadership model’ that included these 5 tenets:

1. Create a compelling vision

2. Model the way

3. Lead more; manage less

4. Communicate, communicate, communicate

5. Make development a priority

Now, at the railroad, embodying this Leadership Model in my yearly performance plan usually looked more like ‘creatively writing out all the things that I had done so it appeared that they matched the tenets of the leadership model’. The Leadership Model seemed a bit more like one of those things that we were supposed to do, but I didn’t really see it being lived by the folks who worked there.

As I’ve stepped more and more into my own ‘role’ as the CEO & Founder of a small company, I have realized the value in leading more and managing less. But, it’s also really challenging to do — especially when you don’t have 15 other staff members to help pick up the slack. This means that I’m constantly finding myself working on the ‘minutia’ of running the day-to-day operations of the company — when, I know that my time would be better served by focusing on doing the things that will really project the vision I want to create. In fact, spending 1 hour on the phone with the ROLLO label printer help desk did not help Kula’s long term growth strategy - but it DID help me ship orders.

This is something that I’m in the process of learning — what is my job and what isn’t? For so long, it was just me — which meant that I did everything and I have done and created each step along the way, and sometimes it feels hard to give that up. But, I’m trying. I’ve committed myself to work from home at least once every other week so that I can focus on bigger, creative things — because I know that this is the best for everybody. I realize that the more that I do to manage, the more that I deny other folks the opportunity for growth and expansion in their own development.

Eating more stuff

Last year, I talked about my journey with Intuitive Eating. For many years, I had an extremely disordered relationship with food (overeating/undereating and obsessively tracking my ‘macros’ using My Fitness Pal). At my most obsessive point, I was bringing a scale to restaurants so that I could weigh my food at the table and enter it into my app. It took 100% of the joy away from eating, and it made me so compulsive about food that I was hungry and miserable most of the time.

It was during this time, that I happened to open a ‘random’ e-mail that mentioned Intuitive Eating. Wait, you mean that people can eat what they want… intuitively? Without entering it into an app??? I was astounded. I purchased the book, and — pun intended — I devoured it. It felt like a whole new world had been opened up to me, and I was very open and excited to try out this new relationship with food. It took some time for me to fully embrace the practice of intuitive eating, but, eventually — I came to a place where I could (really) eat whatever I wanted, and eat to the point of feeling satisfied. I stopped starving myself, and I learned how to honor my hunger (instead of ignoring it). My metabolism started functioning again, and I started feeling better — physically and mentally.

Last month, I realized that it had been awhile since I had originally read the Intuitive Eating book again, and so I decided that during the month of July, I wanted to read it and re-acquaint myself with the practice. It’s been really helpful to read the book again, with a new set of eyes. When I first read the book, I very much identified with a lot of the very destructive ‘diet mindsets’ that are spoken about in the book — but now, as I am re-reading the book, I resonate far less with the examples in the book — which is really exciting, because it means that I’ve been doing a pretty great job of integrating the practice into my own life.

A few years ago, I probably wouldn’t have eaten a chocolate chip cookie… or nut butter… or a croissant. I missed out on a lot of really delicious life experiences because I was too busy ‘counting my macros’ — and it’s been fun to reconnect with flavor and texture and the true enjoyment of food again — without the endless barrage of unhealthy thoughts in my mind.

I can sometimes be a little bit of a ‘robot’ when it comes to food: it’s not uncommon for me to eat the exact same thing… every. single. day. This past month, however, I decided that I needed to get out of my endless loop of breakfast sandwiches… so, over the past few weeks, I’ve challenged myself to make new things each day. So far, I’ve eaten apple oatmeal, blueberry pancakes, waffles, banana bread french toast and avocado toast — and guess what? It’s been AMAZING to eat all of the things that I really love — and to genuinely enjoy eating them, without entering them into an app or feeling guilty.

If you are experiencing your own journey to developing a better relationship with food — I am sending you a lot of love, compassion… and also hope! It does and can get a lot better, friend — and it’s a very delicious world when we can stop and savor it.

Trying not to be so much of a hermit

A few weeks ago, I shared the story of what it is like to be ‘alone on the mountain’ — i.e. the ‘isolating curse’ of the company founder. During the time that post went LIVE on The Kula Diaries — I was simultaneously attending a weekend campout for Kula Cloth in near Mt. Baker.

Hiking at Yellow Aster Butte! Photo by my dear friend, Kelly Payne.

I do tend to have some social anxiety — and I am a self-proclaimed ambivert: this means that while I can function well in a group setting, I need to re-charge by being alone. That being said, I also tend to get into a very unhealthy pattern of completely isolating myself. At our Kula Campout this weekend, I had the chance to socialize with some incredible humans — and they really reminded me how beautiful it can be to spend time with others. I might not have the energy or the capacity to do a campout every single weekend — but I’m making a commitment to myself to try and get out and socialize a little bit more than normal.

Since starting Kula Cloth, I have done far less hiking than I’ve ever done in my life. It’s not because I don’t like hiking — it’s often because I’m just so tapped out by the end of the week that I don’t have the bandwidth to pack for or prepare to go on a long hike. So, I’m going to try to do some shorter ones — just to get out and spend a little bit more time with my husband and with a few friends. I don’t want to become that person who abandons everything that they love.

And speaking of which — this also means that I am committing to riding my motorcycle MORE. The motorcycles that Aaron and I purchased a couple of years ago have given us the ability to have ‘mini adventures’ together — which means that even something mundane, like going to the grocery store, ends up feeling really fun. A few weeks ago, we took our dual sports out to the Mountain Loop Highway and we rode up a remote forest service road to a little lake so that we could sit and eat burritos for dinner. It felt special and fun, and it gave me just the tiniest little adventure break from my daily tasks.

And other stuff — to be determined

Honestly, I don’t have the magic formula for anything — I’m just a normal person, trying my best to do something good in this world… and I’m figuring it out. Some days I feel like I’m stumbling… and other days, I feel like I’m soaring. Then, there are a whole lot of days in the middle. I’m willing to bet that you probably feel the same way — and I think that’s normal. It’s easy to look at somebody else’s highlight reel and think that you are doing something ‘wrong’ — but I promise you that you aren’t.

A few weeks ago, I ended up staying up until midnight (waaaay past my normal bedtime), thanks to a surprise visit to the Emergency Vet with my cat Cinder. Luckily, she’s fine — but, honestly, I felt like BLAH when I woke up the next morning (understandably). I couldn’t believe that somehow I had to summon the ‘inspirational’ energy to go ‘run a company’. And so, I did my best: I went on a walk and I talked out loud to myself and I told myself that everything was going to be OK. I took some deep breaths and I let myself feel everything that I was feeling. I ate some good food for breakfast… and then I showed up… not as some ridiculous entrepreneurial rockstar… but, just … as me. Because I’m starting to learn that ME is enough. That’s really what I have to do: just keep showing up as me … and figure it out and do my best along the way.

Good times: in the emergency vet at midnight - ha!

I don’t know what I’ll be doing in August — but I hope it involves cookies, rollerblades and motorcycles. I’ll probably write about it. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll wake up everyday and just feel grateful for the chance to see and feel everything that life has to offer.

Friends — I hope you have a beautiful week … and that you find some joy today in your own unique way. Keep doing your best and keep wandering on your path — you never know where it might lead you next.