Mind, Mood ALIVE

The Zone of Aliveness is really about one thing: 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦?

When things feel good, and when they don’t.
When you know exactly where you’re going, and when you have no bloody idea.
When you’re doing something you love, and when you’re grieving something you’ve lost.
When you’re expanding, and when life brings you to your knees.

All of it.

Are you trying to fix every difficult feeling?
Do you need life to be different before you can fully be in it?
Or can you stay with yourself through more and more of life, as it is?

That’s the capacity we’re building.

You can be at a 3 out of 10 and still be deeply alive. You can feel sad, scared or uncertain - and still be with yourself. You’re not pushing it away. You’re not pretending it isn’t there. You’re not being taken over by it.

You can say: This is where I am right now. I can meet myself here. And I can move from what’s here, even if I’m uncomfortable.

And the opposite is also true.

You can be at a 10 out of 10 and be miles away from yourself. Pushing and performing. Trying to keep the high going because you’re afraid of what happens when it ends.

So the number isn’t the point.

The question is: Are you with yourself inside it?
That’s the distinction I care about.
That’s the .

And the more of yourself you can stay with, the more fully you get to inhabit your own life.

—

If you want a place to practice this, I’d love to have you in 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝗼𝗺. A free, live space where you can step out of the noise and back into yourself.
𝟰𝟱 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗮𝘁 𝟭:𝟯𝟬 𝗣𝗠 𝗘𝗧. 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲.
No pressure to perform. No need to have it all figured out. Just a little time to come back to yourself. Save the recurring link below and come as you are.❤️

Tom and I bought tickets to a spoken word poetry slam at the .cna National Arts Centre.

We’d never been to one before so I was curious. There were 10 poets battling for an anonymous $1000 cash prize.

In pairs of two, they started delivering 3 minute masterpieces. I found myself leaning forward, mouth open - in awe.

I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt so transfixed. And then it hit me.

It’s been a while since I experienced such genuinely alive human beings in one place.

The presence, the electric energy moving through their bodies, the deepest expressions of truth, the courage it took to stand on a stage and say this is me, this is what I see, this is what I have to say.

The creativity was pulsating through the room - and their aliveness was waking up mine.

I felt more awake, more open, more alive simply from being in the presence of people who were fully expressing themselves.

I think we underestimate how contagious is.

When someone is fully in their life, it gives something to the rest of us. Permission, perhaps. Energy. Possibility. A little reminder of what’s available in us, too.

It took me half my life to become a spoken word poetry fan. 😂 And I’m so thankful - for the artists and the joy that comes from witnessing them fully express themselves.

Support the arts.
Champion the artists.
Try something you’ve never done before.
Do it with someone you love. ❤️

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝗼𝗺 | 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀

What if you had 45 minutes every week where nobody needed anything from you?

Every Monday, I’m opening The Aliveness Room — a free, weekly, live space to spend a little time with yourself, alongside others doing the same.

I’ll bring something I’m noticing about what it means to be human right now.

I’ll ask a question you probably haven’t had enough space to ask yourself.

We’ll practise something.

There will be quiet…actual quiet.

Time to think. Feel. Write. Notice. Listen to yourself without immediately having to do something about what you find.

And if you want to share, ask a question, or put something into the room, you can. But you never have to.

You don’t have to introduce yourself.
You don’t have to turn your camera on.
You don’t have to share what’s going on.
You don’t even have to talk.

There’s no webinar. No pitch. No advice. No follow-up.

Sometimes we just need somewhere to stop long enough to hear ourselves again.

𝟰𝟱 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝘁 𝟭:𝟯𝟬𝗽𝗺 𝗘𝗧. 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁.

Enjoy a quiet, private, no-strings-attached space to be human.



Opens on Monday August 24th. Here’s the recurring link so you can bookmark it in your calendar: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84658020667.

The door is always open. You decide when to walk through it. 💛

The hardest threshold is often the one no one else can see.

Nothing has fallen apart. There’s no dramatic ending, obvious crisis or big announcement.

You’re still showing up. You’re still working, parenting, laughing with friends. Still doing all the things you’ve always done.

But inside, something has changed.

The life that used to fit doesn’t fit quite the same way anymore.

You can feel yourself wanting something different, even if you can’t fully name what it is.

This is one of the most interesting places in human development to me.

We tend to think change begins when we know where we’re going. But I think it often begins much earlier.

It begins when something in us can no longer comfortably live the way we’ve been living.

That space can feel incredibly disorienting.

You’re not who you were. You’re not yet who you’re becoming.

And because nobody else can see the distance you’re travelling, it can be tempting to rush it, explain it, fix it, or retreat to what you already know.

In my experience, some thresholds need to be lived before they can be understood.

I’ve watched people flourish when they learn to stay there long enough to listen. They simply show up, follow the small signs of life and trust what is quietly becoming clearer.

𝙃𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙛𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙖𝙡𝙬𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙖 𝙫𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣.

Sometimes it’s learning to quietly stand by what you know is true, long before there’s any evidence that you were right.

The hardest threshold may be the one no one else can see.

Cross it anyway. 💥

A client of mine has been living sober and recently attended an addiction support meeting.

He said, “It was a great meeting but I realized something.”

He described listening to people talk about addiction as an ongoing battle and he noticed, “That’s not what it feels like anymore.”

In saying this, he wasn’t minimizing addiction nor the addiction journey.

He was simply noticing that for him, somewhere along the way, something had shifted.

His energy had moved from fighting the addiction to building a life where addiction no longer made sense.

For over a year, our work hadn’t centered around the question: How do I stop using?

We started somewhere deeper. What pain am I trying to escape? What am I afraid to feel? What need has this pattern been trying to meet?

Little by little, sobriety stopped being the goal, and aliveness became the direction.

This is powerful stuff because when we begin to feel safe in ourselves… when we start trusting our own wisdom and emotions… when we build relationships that nourish us and structures that support us…the old coping strategies start losing their grip and purpose.

Something stronger starts taking its place.

It doesn’t happen overnight, nor is it simple. And it certainly isn’t everyone’s path.

But it reminded me of something I deeply believe: We don’t always heal by becoming better at fighting ourselves.

Sometimes we heal by building an experience of life we no longer need to run away from.

–

That’s the work of the .

👋 I'm Alex, creator of the ZOA. I help people build the capacities to flourish so they no longer have to abandon themselves to cope.

The Zone of Aliveness isn’t a place you arrive and stay. It’s a place you learn to return to.

We all drift.

We override what we feel. We push through what we need. We please, prove, numb and second-guess.

And slowly, a gap can open between the life we’re living and our experience of actually living it.

The practice isn’t to never leave yourself. It’s to notice when you have and know how to come back.

→ What is here?
→ What do I need to sustain myself here?
→ What is true?
→ What is my next clean move?

That’s the 𝙕𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝘼𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨.

The capacity to remain with yourself while meeting what life is asking of you - and to stay moving and expanding through it.

It’s not perfection.

Just return…again and again.

Thank you Erin Sisko and The Elleiance Network, for inviting me into your incredible community of women entrepreneurs yesterday to create a pause in the middle of everything and practice the return.

As creators, we’re constantly moving toward what’s next, so learning to return is how we build businesses we love being inside of.

P.s. If you haven’t checked out what Erin is building with The Elleiance Network, you really should. She’s creating some pretty extraordinary ripples for women in business across Canada.

I’m starting to wonder if we’ve misunderstood human potential.

We keep telling people to become better versions of themselves.

Become more confident, more productive, more resilient, more disciplined, more successful… what more can you add to this?

Then somewhere along the way, we feel, “𝘐’𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘺𝘦𝘵.”

I’ve spent years working with incredibly capable people.

They know how to achieve, to push through. They’re problem solvers; they know how to keep going when things get hard.

What they often haven’t learned is this: 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘵.

Perhaps our greatest potential isn’t becoming a better version of ourselves. It’s having the capacity to be fully alive as the human being we already are.

This is the kind of growth I believe in.

—

👋 I'm Alex, creator of the Zone of Aliveness™.
✨ I believe we don’t need more fixing; we need to learn how to fully inhabit ourselves.
📩 If this resonates, reach out. I’d love to hear what’s moving for you.

The Zone of Aliveness comes alive through 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

But not just any action. 𝘊𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.

I’ve met countless people who are incredibly disciplined. They work hard, keep going, and push through.

But underneath all that movement, they’re disconnected from themselves.

That’s not clean action.

Clean action isn’t about doing more: it’s about taking your next step without leaving yourself behind.

Sometimes that step is having the conversation. Sometimes it’s saying no.



Sometimes it’s doing nothing. Sometimes it’s missing out. Sometimes it’s finally beginning or walking away.

becomes clean when it grows out of presence, energy and truth - not fear, proving and people-pleasing.

With every clean choice, you strengthen self-trust.

And over time, that’s how your life begins to reflect who you really are, instead of who you’re supposed to be. That’s where your stops being an idea…and becomes a way of living.

You become free - not because your circumstances change, but because you stop abandoning yourself within them.

—

👋 I’m Alex, Creator of the Zone of Aliveness™️
✨ I help people build the capacities to flourish, not just function.
📩 If you're ready to stop abandoning yourself in the way you work, live, and lead, let’s talk soon.