Let's dismantle one of our most seductive illusions: that we’re in control, and that that's what makes us safe.

In this episode, we explore how control, expectations, disappointment, and safety are intertwined. We get into what we don’t control (almost everything) from what we do influence (ourselves). We dig into the fact that attempts to control life often backfire—amplifying frustration, resentment, and suffering—and that presence, humor, and self-responsibility tend to soften experience and open up better outcomes.

The episode offers practical ways to “delete the default” of externalized control: replacing should with want, giving yourself the reassurance you seek from others, practicing believable self-talk, and meeting fear and disappointment with compassion instead of resistance. Ultimately, this is a conversation about letting go without giving up—recognizing that it often takes more strength to release control than to cling to it, and that a meaningful life includes falling off the wall, wiping out on the wave, and laughing at your own humanity along the way.

What if love isn’t a feeling, but a verb—a set of actions, choices, and ways of being?

In this episode, we take on one of the most loaded words in our culture—love—and get underneath the defaults our culture hands us about what it is and how it's supposed to look.

We explore reorienting toward love as an action, a practice, and a capacity for growth—rather than a possession, performance, or obligation.

Resources we mention:

• All About Love by bell hooks — a foundational text reframing love as an ethic and a practice

• The Road Less Traveled — source of the definition of love discussed in the episode

• Joe Hudson — referenced for his approach to truth, grief, and relational integrity

In this episode we explore curiosity as a way of being, as a practice that softens defensiveness, loosens certainty, and reopens the doors your nervous system has been calling “walls.” We talk about how our minds invent “facts” in order to maintain the comfortable illusion of certainty, why being wrong is not a moral failure (it’s freedom), and how curiosity makes conflict, coaching, and real relationship possible.

If you’ve been feeling closed down, reactive, overly serious, or stuck in “I already know,” this conversation is an invitation to come back to play, possibility, and the courage to ask a better question.