How to Create a Nourishing Life & Business So You Can Thrive

I recently explored the idea of creating businesses that nourish our souls and our lives in a recent newsletter (subscribe here). And I’m beyond excited to dive into what this means to me and how we all can create more nourishment in our lives.

Despite what our modern consumerism-driven culture tells us, we are deeply sacred, primal beings. These containers we’ve poured our purposes into (aka “businesses”) are simply another extension of our commitment to living a life full of purpose and soul.

So as we go about creating these soulful, purposeful businesses, we have to also be intentional about how we build those containers, systems, and structures. We have to be incredibly intentional with our whole lives.

Because we are not fractured robots, but are instead whole beings.

Modern western society is driven by a hustle mentality. Loads of Shoulds and Must-Dos. We’re still being pushed around by an archaic toxic masculine energy that is driven by fear and competition.

Needless to say, this is not nourishing. It’s exhausting. And we can all say that we are fucking exhausted by the chaos, the stress, the overwhelm. 

I feel this work swirling inside my soul. Turning into a kind of manifesto. Driving me to deeply contemplate this concept of nourishment. How we’re all craving a life that truly nourishes our being, inside and out. That extends to the beings around us, human and otherwise.

When we feel nourished, we exude nourishment from our cells. And others can’t help but feel nourished by our presence.

So how do we explore this concept of nourishment? What are the components of nourishment and how do they differ from person-to-person? What is needed to live a good life, in right relationship with ourselves and the world around us?

Let’s dive in and see what we can uncover, shall we?

To Nourish: A Verb

The first thing to really puzzle out is this word Nourishment, and its base word Nourish. To nourish means to help something grow, develop, and thrive. This could be through nourishing food or through emotional nourishment. 

In this context, nourishment is a conscious act of creating an environment in which you can grow, heal, and thrive. This perspective can help you create a business container that removes the hustle and promotes the nurture. It can also help you to take better care of your body, heart, mind, and soul. 

The Many Sides of Growth

Nourishment isn’t all sunshine and rainbows either. In order to grow, we have to also heal. And healing requires work that often encompasses the many sides of ourselves that we’ve neglected, ignored, and avoided.

Running a business, being a mother, committing to living a life of depth and connection… these all require deep healing in order to fully connect with life itself.

Healing isn’t a linear process either. It’s not something you do in a weekend. And it’s not something that is ever truly finished. We are always healing, repairing, integrating until the day we stop breathing (and perhaps beyond that point as well).

Yes, healing is an important conversation in business-building as well. As you start to work with clients, become more visible, and stand in your own power, you’ll start to be confronted with your shadow side often enough. Your business will point out your insecurities, your strengths, and where you need to do more inner work.

And honestly, as healers we should always be actively working on our own healing. Because it’s impossible to create healing for others when we ourselves are wounded. Instead, we might try to heal through others, which can be a very harmful behavior. We can wound others in our work instead of creating the nourishing, healing spaces that we dream of.

Shadow work, death acceptance, deep healing, and inner work are all essential components of building a nourishing business and a nourishing life.

Embracing Life: Deep Acceptance

Part of this process is also accepting what you can change now, what you can’t change at all, and what is a slow work in progress to be changed over time.

Radical acceptance of life is a concept promoted by acceptance therapists, Zen Buddhists, and so many others. But it’s a necessary component of nourishment because it requires us to see life as it is and roll with the punches.

Shit happens. We injure ourselves. Bad accidents happen. A friend or family member becomes ill or dies. Relationships end. Our children break our hearts. 

Life is not easy. In fact, it’s really, really hard. But by embracing this truth, we are more likely to actually be able to weather the storms with more grit and grace than we might otherwise be able to.

Facing our own vulnerabilities, our own mortality, our own primal needs allows us to start to embrace the parts of us that we’ve neglected. We can start tending to our WHOLE soul and not just the parts that we like.

Healing is part deep acceptance, deep trauma resolution, and deep deep deep nourishment.

We are alive. We are breathing. We are loving. And as long as this is still true, we deserve self-nurturing. We deserve to thrive, even in the face of hardship.

The Many Components of Nourishment

When we talk about living a nourishing life and building a nourishing business, it requires a whole-life approach. You can’t fix one thing in your life and expect it to have a whole-life effect (with a few exceptions). 

You have to commit to a new way of looking at your life as a whole, if this hasn’t been your approach so far.

Nourishment has to become your promise to yourself. Your mantra. Your affirmation. The question you ponder as you make decisions: Does this give me nourishment or does this detract from how nourished I feel?

Of course, there will be things you must do that don’t feel nourishing but are necessities. That is part of living life as a human. It doesn’t necessarily feel warm and fuzzy to do your bookkeeping, to change a diaper, or to be woken up by a sick little one who needs your attention.

But we can do what is functional and also build in reserves of nourishment that allow us to do those things without resentment. Without driving our lives toward burnout.

Here are a few aspects of life that we can dive into from the perspective of creating self-nourishment. This is not remotely comprehensive. Each of us are individuals. Yes, we have shared mammalian needs. But we are also products of culture and environment. Each of us need slightly different things in order to truly thrive. The key is to listen to yourself and be mindful.

1. Food and nutrition.

As many have said before, food is love. And it truly is. There’s nothing quite like a comforting meal, a dish made just for you by a loving parent or friend, or a warm mug of something that fills you up emotionally as well as physically.

Food is a very functional part of being alive. And it is so, so laced with Shoulds and Must-Dos in our western culture. It’s driven by corporations who study our weaknesses and then capitalize on them. It’s covered in toxic poisons promoted by sadistic corporations who can only see greed, instead of what they are doing to our bodies and the environment. It’s commandeered by experts who are certain that This One Way is the way everyone should eat.

I’ve heard it said before that for such “advanced” animals, it’s a pity we still haven’t figured out how to do something simple as knowing what to eat.

This honestly deserves its very own blog post. Or series of blog posts. Food is a BIG topic that I have explored extensively in the past 20 years. I would love to share what wisdom I’ve gleaned over that time. Another time.

The bottom line is to simply focus on adding nourishment to your food, instead of fixating on what you’re doing “wrong” or what you need to subtract from your diet. Pay attention to how foods make you feel and how nourished you feel when you eat them (truly nourished in your body, no right or wrong thinking). 

Food that you love triggers oxytocin in your body, which is the hormone of love. Balance the functional needs of your body with the needs of your soul. Don’t forget that food is love.

2. Rest and sleep.

Western cultures struggle with sleep in some truly alarming ways. Many of us have experienced bouts of insomnia or issues with sleepless nights (not triggered by a needy little one). Between our never-ending light-filled days and our drive to do, do, do… Combined with our mounting responsibilities (and the anxieties they trigger)... It’s no wonder we struggle so damn much.

Rest is another puzzle our culture hasn’t yet figured out. We’re still clinging to the vestiges of Puritan and Calvinist values of WORK UNTIL YOU DIE. We see rest as being lazy. We struggle with our finances, producing anxieties of needing to work more so we can pay the bills. Our culture doesn’t give us adequate paid maternity leave, sick leave, rest and recovery leave (at least this is true in the US).

We’re being treated as robots, instead of the sacred dynamic beings that we are. 

The first step is awareness. 

• You deserve rest. You deserve peace. You deserve alone time. You deserve decompression time. You deserve to sleep a full 8 hours, every night that you can.

• You deserve to be cared for, your time honored, your body appreciated. 

• You deserve rest. And you are allowed to demand it.

• You are allowed to build your life around the healthy need for rest. It is not lazy to do so. There are strategies to figure it out.

You are worthy of rest.

3. Movement and flow.

There are plenty of people out there promoting hardcore exercise plans. Again with the Shoulds and the Must-Dos. Americans in particular are quite obsessed with the perfect sculpted body, made by whatever the current flavor of acceptable methodology might be.

You do not have to do any of these things. It’s not a requirement to be a “good” person. 

Your body does need movement. It is a basic requirement of being a mammal. Movement produces endorphins that feel really good. It strengthens your muscles, which strengthens your bones leading to better physical alignment and life-long resiliency. It enhances your brain's ability to produce happy hormones. It allows you to think better. It allows you to focus on and connect with your body. It strengthens your immune system and floods your body with life-giving oxygen.

But there is no prescribed way for you to do movement. You can release all the shouty experts telling you how much you’re failing. You’re not. You just haven’t yet found joyful movement.

Your wild animal body has been forgotten and is just waiting for you to once again sink into the primal being that you are.

Explore. Drop the expectations. If you don’t “get your heart rate up” you didn’t fail. If you sat on the floor and allowed your body to tell you what it needs stretched, that is enough. If you walked around the block, admiring the autumn leaves and the beauty of the last roses of the season, that is enough. If you got lost in the woods or a meadow, talked to a raven, admired a very old oak tree… that is enough.

You are enough and your body is enough. Move to feel free. Move to produce joy. Move to find flow and get lost in the world around you. Move with others, soaking up the shared conversation and delight.

Reconnect with your body so you can listen to its needs. The more you listen, the more nourished you will feel.

4. Rhythm and structure.

As a diehard Sagittarius, I’ve been a perpetual resister of routines and too much structure. I’ve managed to create good habits despite this. But I know that I always tend to thrive more when I am more intentional in the ways in which I spend my days. 

As humans in a culture that often fails us, we crave warm structure. We crave external guidance and mentorship. And sometimes we get that. But often we don’t. And so we have to have the wisdom to create the conditions in which we will be successful and thrive for ourselves. 

We can do this in community, with friends, lovers, and our children. We can also just care enough about living meaningful days that we also do it for ourselves, regardless of what others are doing around us (this is harder, be gentle on yourself).

This means taking a long hard look at your habits and daily patterns. Are you happy with them? Do they feel good in your bones? Do they detract from other habits that are truly nourishing? Do they make you feel a live and more like a whole person?

I know how hard it is to change our habits, especially as they become more ingrained over the years. It is a struggle. But it’s not impossible. And since you deserve to live a deeply nourishing life, it’s also not something to avoid or ignore.

Keep your focus on the habits you want to enhance and encourage. You’re doing so well. 

Choose a habit that doesn’t feel as nurturing, then make a plan to change it. 

I highly recommend reading Atomic Habits by James Clear(*) for primal human mammal tips on how to work with yourself to create better habits instead of against yourself. Please, do not ever beat yourself up. That isn’t nourishing and leads to further non-nourishing behaviors. Remember: You are inherently good and whole.

Designing loose structures for your life and your business allows you to finally create the conditions in which you thrive. You get to finally make that list of daydreams a reality. You get to be more intentional and mindful about how you build a nourishing life.

5. Self-Acceptance and Playing to Your Strengths.

In life and in business, we often look at what others are doing for inspiration and ideas. There’s nothing wrong with this as it’s default human behavior. But after you’ve gotten inspired and gathered your ideas, it’s important to also take a step back from the world and come back to your center.

You are a unique being with a special mix of skills, wisdom, and passions. You cannot be like anyone else and still feel like yourself. As you are learning how to do life and work in the way that you do, lean into the idea that there is something unique and special for you to be doing. You’ll find it. Just keep moving, taking aligned action, and staying open to yourself.

You’ll feel it in your body, in the way you light up, in the way that a particular something energizes your soul. 

To do this, you first need to fully accept who you are. This isn’t a simple or easy process, of course. And we are always changing. We will have to intentionally accept ourselves until the day we die. 

But it is a beautiful mantra. An important meditation. A verb. A conscious daily practice. You are you, you are your body, you are your soul. You are your whole being. And it is beautiful, worthy, and whole.

Lean into it. Trust it. You’ll find your way. And you’ll also often feel self-doubt. This is normal.

We are not seeking perfection or transcendence. We are seeking to BE in our bodies and wholly in our lives. All of it. Even the parts that feel shaky and ungrounded.

Trust yourself.

Always Unfinished

The lie sold to us by our society is that there is some perfect finished version of us (or our businesses) ahead in the near or far future. The truth is that there is not. We are always beautifully messy and unfinished.

As I write all of this, I am reflecting on how I too need to work on these areas. Knowing and doing exist in separate parts of our brains. It takes years to allow knowings to turn into doings. We have to live, soak in life, experience things, and then be ready for the next aha moment. The moment when one lesson clicks in the way that we need it to.

Life is a slow unfolding. We are never finished. We are always learning, experiencing, being. 

And so we can rest, knowing that there isn’t a race. Knowing that the way we truly make changes is by slow and consistent action. Knowing that the way we truly soak up life is by slowing down and being present for it.

After all, living a nourishing life is entirely about being as present as we can be in every moment. 

Seeking nourishment is essential to living a slow, awake, present life. You can do this. You are worthy. 

If you’re a business owner, you deserve nourishment in the way you design your work. Your clients deserve the nourishment that emanates from you, blessing their lives.

We all deserve deep, lasting nourishment.