mission & perspective

SOMETHING BIGGER THAN THE BOOK

A WIDER LENS

Own Your Shit began as a book about self-awareness, accountability, and being brave enough to face our insecurities. I wanted to understand why we behave the way we do, why we repeat patterns that hurt us and other people, and what actually helps us change. 

Since then, the idea behind the book has grown into something much bigger. 

While working on other projects, my research took me down a rabbit hole. Each answer was followed by another question.
I’m fascinated by psychology because I want to understand why humans behave the way we do. That curiosity led me to neuroscience because I wanted to know how our brains learn, adapt, protect us, and change. I’m interested in how culture shapes what we believe, value, and consider normal, often without us even realizing it. Relationships can teach us what to expect from other people, how to communicate and connect, and how our experiences with others shape the way we move through the world. And I’m endlessly curious about what evolution and the natural world can teach us about ourselves and our place within it.

And the questions kept getting bigger.

Why do we avoid things we know we need to face? Why does insecurity sometimes make people cruel? Why do certain experiences stay with us for decades? Why do humans need belonging so badly? What can other cultures teach us about happiness, community, aging, or meaning? What can the natural world teach us about ourselves?

Sometimes understanding gives us an answer. Sometimes it gives us a better question. Both are valuable.

I found that so much of our behavior begins to make sense once we understand how our brains learn, how experiences shape us, and the basic human needs we’re trying to meet. 

Making sense of behavior doesn’t mean excusing it. Understanding gives us information. What we do with that information is where accountability begins.

I believe that having this understanding helps us to be more compassionate, both toward ourselves and toward others. And when we’re curious about ourselves and others, it’s easier to let go of judgment and become less afraid of what’s unfamiliar to us.

Curiosity has become the heart of my work. Understanding changed my perception, for the better. Instead of assuming, I ask questions. I’ve developed more compassion and patience for myself and others, and that’s why I’m sharing what I’ve learned.

 
Imagine a world where we spent more time trying to understand each other than finding reasons to separate ourselves.

FEAR NARROWS OUR VIEW

curiosity opens it

When we make assumptions and judgments instead of asking questions, it can lead to stereotyping, rejection, hostility, us-versus-them thinking, and other behavior that further separates us from each other.

We fear what we don’t understand when we fail to see beyond ourselves and our immediate frame of reference. Sometimes we condemn people simply because their beliefs, cultures, identities, choices, or ways of living are unfamiliar to us, even when those differences pose no actual threat to our lives.

Fear itself isn’t the problem. It’s a necessary emotion that triggers our survival response; it protects us and helps keep us alive. The problem comes when we mistake unfamiliarity for danger.

Something is different from what I know.

It feels uncertain.

Uncertainty makes me uncomfortable. 

My brain wants an explanation.

Instead of getting curious, I reach for a judgment.

They’re wrong.
They’re weird.
They’re dangerous.
People like that are ruining everything.

Where fear and judgment create distance, curiosity creates the possibility of connection. Sometimes understanding tells us that separation is, in fact, appropriate. And if that’s the case, at least we made an informed choice rather than one driven by fear of the unknown.

Curiosity requires us to accept the possibility that our current understanding may be incomplete.

 
Wait. What don’t I understand?

Someone avoiding an important conversation can ask, What am I actually afraid of?

Someone encountering a culture they don’t understand can ask, What might this culture teach me about another way of seeing the world?

Someone angry about another person’s way of living can ask, Does this actually threaten me, or does it just make me uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar?

Someone convinced they’re right can ask, What information would change my mind?

We won’t always understand everything, and that’s okay. But when we make an effort to understand before we judge, we create more room for compassion, thoughtful disagreement, and genuine connection. We have the chance to see beyond our own experience and consider other perspectives. We don’t have to abandon our values or agree with everyone. Sometimes asking one more question is enough to change the way we see someone, and it can help us make more thoughtful, informed choices about ourselves, each other, and the world around us.

THE WORLD WE BELONG TO

We Were Never Separate From Nature

We talk about nature as though it’s somewhere else. We go out in nature. We spend time in nature. We get away to the mountains, the woods, or the ocean.

But we are nature. 

Humans evolved as part of the natural world, surrounded by plants, animals, soil, water, microbes, changing seasons, sunlight, weather, and all the other living systems we depended on for survival. Yet we’ve become remarkably good at behaving as though nature is something outside of us rather than something we belong to.

Our bodies seem to remember the connection even when we don’t.

Researchers have repeatedly found associations between spending time in natural environments and improved mental and physical health. One large study of nearly 20,000 people found that those who spent at least two hours a week in nature were more likely to report good health and greater well-being. Two hours isn’t an exact prescription, but the finding adds to growing evidence that regular contact with the natural world matters. 

And then things get delightfully weird.

Researchers in Finland brought pieces of the forest into urban daycare playgrounds by adding forest floor vegetation, sod, and gardening areas where children could play. Within 28 days, the children developed greater diversity in certain bacteria on their skin, along with changes in how their immune systems functioned. That’s significant because exposure to a diverse range of harmless microbes helps teach the developing immune system what requires a defensive response and what doesn’t. Researchers found an increase in regulatory T cells, which help keep the immune system from overreacting to things that aren’t dangerous, the kind of overreaction involved in allergies and some inflammatory conditions. The study didn’t prove that playing in a more biodiverse environment prevents those conditions, but it offered fascinating evidence that changing the environment where children played could change their microbial exposure and influence immune regulation inside their bodies.

Think about that for a second. The environment around us doesn’t just give us something pretty to look at. We physically interact with it.

Even the air in a forest is biologically interesting. Trees release airborne compounds that have been studied as one possible explanation for changes in immune activity observed after people spend time in forests. Early “forest-bathing” studies have reported changes in the activity of natural killer cells, part of the immune system’s defense network. Scientists are still trying to determine what’s responsible. Is it something in the forest air? Walking around and movement? Reduced stress and noise? Cleaner air? Or some combination we don’t fully understand yet. 

None of this means that walking through the woods cures disease, that everyone needs exactly 120 minutes outside each week, or that hugging a tree will fix your problems (but it won’t hurt, either). 

What the evidence does suggest is much more interesting to me: our well-being and the health of our environment are connected in ways we’re still learning to understand. 

Biodiverse environments expose us to living systems with which our own bodies interact. Natural spaces provide habitat for countless other species while also contributing to the quality of human life.

That makes the way we treat them more than an environmental issue.

 
When we destroy natural spaces without considering what we’re losing, pollute the places we depend on, or treat undeveloped land as wasted space because it isn’t generating money, we’re making decisions about our own quality of life, too.

We don’t exist outside the ecosystem making choices about whether nature deserves to survive.

We’re inside it.

And maybe remembering that is another way of broadening our perspective. 

Then there’s awe.

Stand beneath an enormous old tree. Look across an ocean that disappears into the horizon. Watch a thunderstorm roll in, sit beside a fire, or stare at a night sky far enough from a city that you can actually see it. There’s a reason experiences like these seem to stop us in our tracks. 

Psychologists have found that awe can temporarily reduce our focus on ourselves and increase our sense of connection to something larger. Some experiments have even associated awe with more helpful and cooperative behavior. 

Nature has a way of reminding us that we’re small without making us insignificant. 

And maybe that’s something worth paying attention to in a world where it’s easy to become consumed by our own little corner of it. 

What Are We Losing?

Children may give us one of the clearest examples of what can disappear when nature disappears from everyday life. 

Research has linked greener childhood environments with benefits in areas including attention, working memory, physical activity, and well-being. That doesn’t mean nature prevents or treats ADHD, and technology isn’t inherently harmful. But it does raise an interesting question.

When hours spent exploring, moving, playing, socializing, getting bored, getting dirty, and figuring things out are replaced by hours of screen use, what else are we replacing along with the outdoors?

Maybe the question isn’t whether children have too much technology. Maybe it’s whether they still have enough of everything else. 

The same question applies to adults and entire communities. 

When natural spaces disappear, we don’t just lose somewhere pretty to walk. We can lose places to gather, exercise, play, cool down, experience quiet, encounter other living things, experience beauty and wonder, and briefly step outside environments constantly demanding our attention. 

And sometimes we don’t realize what we’ve lost because we’ve gradually become accustomed to living without it. 

We build communities around cars instead of people. We replace trees with pavement and then build structures to give us shade. We tolerate noise, traffic, artificial light, polluted air, and endless development as though these are simply the inevitable price of modern life. 

Maybe some of them are. 

But curiosity asks us to question the things we’ve learned to accept as inevitable. 

Does progress always have to mean building more?

What are we gaining, and what are we giving up to get it?

What Is Nature Worth?

There’s another question I think is worth asking. 

If nature did none of these wonderful things for humans, would it still deserve our respect? 

We’re remarkably good at assigning value to the natural world according to what humans can get from it. A forest becomes valuable timber or valuable real estate. An animal becomes important because it pollenates our crops, controls pests, attracts tourists, provides food, or performs some other useful function. Even some of our strongest arguments for conservation eventually come back to what nature does for us.

Those are legitimate reasons to protect it. 

But are they the only ones?

Does another species have value only when it’s useful to us?

Do we value a forest only when somebody can monetize it?

And on a much smaller, more personal scale: What do you do with your trash when nobody sees you?

There’s no reward for carrying an empty bottle until you find a trash can. Nobody congratulates you for leaving a trail or beach exactly as you found it. The forest doesn’t know your name, and the animal whose habitat you respected will never know you did it. 

You do it because you recognize that your responsibility doesn’t disappear when nobody is watching. 

How we treat the natural world when there is no reward, recognition, or immediate consequence says something about our character.

there Are Other Ways to See Our Place Here

The idea that humans stand apart from nature isn’t the only way people have understood our relationship with the world around us. 

Across cultures and throughout history, people have developed very different ideas about land, animals, ownership, stewardship, reciprocity, community, and our responsibilities to the living world. Indigenous cultures aren’t a single group with one worldview, and it would be simplistic to romanticize any culture as living in perfect harmony with nature. Human relationships with the environment have always been complicated. 

But different ways of seeing the world can challenge assumptions we didn’t realize we were making. 

What might we learn from cultures that understand land through responsibility or relationship rather than ownership alone? What changes when animals, rivers, forests, or mountains are understood as members of a living community rather than resources waiting to be used? What have industrialized societies gained through development and technology, and what might we have lost along the way? 

We don’t have to adopt another culture’s worldview to become curious about it. 

We can simply ask:

What might they see that we don’t?

Maybe broadening our perspectives means questioning the assumption that humans are the center of everything. 

We are one species among millions, dependent on systems far older and more complex than anything we’ve created. Our bodies interact with those systems whether we think about them or not. The air, water, soil, microbes, plants, animals, and climate around us aren’t scenery surrounding the human story. 

They’re part of our story.

Protecting the natural world certainly benefits us. The science gives us plenty of reasons to believe that. 

But their value was never ours to determine in the first place.