Philosophy

The inputs that shape me

My rules for living fully. I’ve tested these against mortality, heartbreak, and starting over.

01

The Root

Core Values

My values form a living, cyclical system. The dance between softness and growth, with love as the trunk connecting them.

Love

the trunk, the center, the through-line

My motto for life is "Do it with love." I am love. My actions are defined by love.

Softness / Yin

what roots me

  • Nature grounding
  • Calm
  • Routine and structure
  • Tradition
  • Family loyalty
  • Ritual

Growth / Yang

what elevates me

  • Beauty
  • Curiosity
  • Creativity
  • Playfulness
  • Health and vitality
  • Sensuality
  • Spontaneity

The Questions

Four questions to guide you back to when you were last completely yourself:

  1. When did you stop dancing?
  2. When did you stop singing?
  3. When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
  4. When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?

From "Now That You No Longer Have to Be Perfect, You Can Just Be Good". Read the full essay →

02

Foundations

The 10 Commandments of Lou

Before I got sick, I married myself. These are the vows, my framework for loving myself and showing up consciously each day.

  1. Me: I am the most special, sacred, magical, brilliant, caring, wonderful, loveable human I know. I live every second fully like I will die tomorrow.
  2. My Body: My body is divine. I treat myself as such. I focus on what nourishes me and enables me to feel my best energetically.
  3. My Mind: My mind is sacred. I learn like I will live forever. I take care of the information I absorb. I let the spark of curiosity guide me.
  4. My Light: I am a light to help others, but I must maintain myself first. I prioritize friendships that are mutual. I carve out space for Lou Time.
  5. My Creativity: I let my creativity flow as it will, and encourage whatever form it takes. I protect my state above all.
  6. My Roots: I am of the earth, the ocean, the air, and fire, and I need them all to survive and thrive fully. When I am in doubt, I get outside.
  7. My Darkness: I will treat joy and sadness as one. Things will come, and things will go. Everything is temporary and transitory.
  8. My Magic: I infuse my life with joyful and playful magic. No one can love me as well as I can love me.
  9. My Love: Love is always the answer. I lead with loving-kindness. I have an enormous and limitless heart.
  10. My Choice: I always turn to the light. Darkness and temptation will always be present, but I can make the conscious choice to choose light and love every time.

From "I Love Lou". Read the full essay →

03

Rules for Rooting

35 Rules for the Next 35 Years

I wrote my 10 Commandments to learn how to love myself. These 35 rules came later, as I turned 35, crossing from climbing toward self-improvement to rooting into self-becoming.

  1. Be the creator, not the consumer, of your life. Do not live in default mode.
  2. The certainty of death is clarifying. Let mortality sharpen your priorities daily.
  3. Spend more time excavating your own mind than scrolling through others.
  4. You can’t write your own story if you only ever say yes (or no).
  5. Flow trumps force. Work with your energy rhythms, not artificial deadlines.
  6. Wherever your body is, bring your mind. Half-presence is the thief of all experience.
  7. Let silence punctuate your days; without it, nothing has weight.
  8. The past is fact, but the beliefs you formed about it are fiction.
  9. Live your life in tune with nature. Avoid anything that disturbs your body’s natural rhythm.
  10. Your body is a system; view it holistically.
  11. Pay attention to how you feel after you leave someone. That’s the truth of the relationship.
  12. Where you place your attention, your life will follow.
  13. Amor Fati. Love your fate and commit to your becoming.
  14. Approach the world without the urge to classify or contain.
  15. Every moment you notice the birds, the wind, the trees, you are co-creating the world with it.
  16. Do not confuse stimulation with nourishment.
  17. Curate your environments as carefully as your thoughts.
  18. Seek thresholds and liminal spaces. The discomfort of transition is the price of transformation.
  19. Think in loops, not lines. What you put out will come back to you.
  20. Compassion is systems-thinking applied to people.
  21. Life lives in patterns. The micro is the macro in miniature.
  22. Feeling everything is better than feeling nothing. What you numb in yourself, you cannot heal.
  23. Do not get lost in the form. All religions, all art, all thought are prisms of the same source.
  24. The most personal truths are the most universal.
  25. Generosity is a system, not an act.
  26. Live the questions rather than forcing answers.
  27. Create without attachment to outcome. The act of making is the reward.
  28. If you want to change the world, focus first on yourself.
  29. Scarcity holds, abundance circulates. Life thrives in flow, not in grasping.
  30. To hold space well, you must clear your own.
  31. Without boredom and rest, imagination has no space to appear.
  32. To speak only in your voice is to live in coherence.
  33. The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.
  34. Your dreams are your unconscious mind’s way of processing what your waking mind cannot integrate.
  35. Learn to distinguish between what drains your energy and what transforms it.

From "All I Want for My Birthday Is Another Shot at Life". Read the full essay →

04

Building a Body

The 6 Building Blocks

A mantra that came to me during treatment, when I realized how much of our biohacking, supplement-obsessed culture misses the point:

All that matters is blood, light, water, food, breath, and spirit.

Blood

Do you have too much in your system or too little? Are your cells functioning as they should?

Light

We are meant to live with the sun. Our bodies need light in the morning to regulate themselves. And we need the inverse: the darkness of sleep, and the rest it brings.

Water

How much exhaustion and mental fatigue can be attributed to dehydration? It is an easy way to kill a flower.

Food

The healthiest diet for you is the one you can most easily digest and turn into lasting energy. It’s back to whole foods, back to nature.

Breath

How quickly we forget about the breath that sustains us. How grounding it is to breathe deeply, to focus on the exhale, then the inhale.

Spirit

There is no biohack for the joy of having grass in your toes, wind in your face, staring up into the crown shyness of trees. You are more than your body, and yet you live humbly within it.

From "Things I’ve Learned Lately". Read the full essay →

05

Ground Rules

The Manifesto

Before I wrote about cancer, before the diagnosis, I set down rules for how I wanted to create and share.

  1. Any ideas or notions are half-baked, at best, and presented in their rawest un-edited form
  2. Write without judgment or ambition for anything other than an extension of my journal
  3. Any thematic writing should evolve naturally without being forced
  4. Maintain a questioning mindset (you will likely offend many along the way, including your future self)
  5. Write out of love for all parts of your being, no matter how ugly or uncool or idiotic they may be

From "Manifesto". Read the full essay →

Love + Growth + Softness

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