Hey, it's Katy :) I'm restarting my weekly-ish newsletter to bring you back home to yourself. Stick around if you're ready to 10x your income, impact, and ALIVENESS by becoming the version of you who's a match for your most expansive life & the business that fuels it. This one's all about the power of environment to pull out the happiest, healthiest, and wealthiest version of yourself.

My red-eye landed in Lisbon on Tuesday morning, and I exhaled.

Not the “glad that’s over” exhale of a long flight. The other one. The one where your nervous system goes: Oh. Here we are.

I’ve felt it before — in Buenos Aires, in Puerto Rico, and in Costa Rica after a sunset surf session. But Lisbon hits different.

Exactly one year after I first came here, I can officially call this city home.

Two years ago, I packed everything I own into 2 suitcases and started traveling full-time.

I didn’t have a master plan. I started following my intuition on where to go next.

To some, I looked lost. To me, it felt like freedom.

It was one great big experiment.

I didn’t expect to learn so much — not just about the world, but about myself and the power of environment in reconnecting with our true selves.

Environment shapes who you are. Quietly, constantly, and faster than you think.

I started chasing summer in the middle of winter and quickly realized how much better I felt when life outdoors was natural, not a reward I had to schedule. I started rearranging my day around sunshine, fresh air, movement — instead of squeezing it into the edges. No wonder my nervous system could finally exhale.

Each place taught me something different:

New York taught me to hustle.
Buenos Aires taught me to slow down.
Costa Rica revealed the joy of a simple life.
Puerto Rico showed me how much I value community.
Lisbon brought community, presence, nature, and the version of me I like most — more creative, more free, more connected, and more tapped into the essence of LIFE so I could channel that back into my work.

Honestly, I’ve been feeling pretty off the past few weeks back in Michigan, in the limbo between now and next as I awaited my visa in the mail and prepared to move 3,800 miles away.

On the plane it dawned on me, "Wow, I am finally moving to Europe. I've dreamed about this for years." ​
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I felt my spark returning immediately.

That said, you can't escape yourself by shipping off to a new place.

People often forget: Wherever you go, there you are.

You have the same inner challenges. Same stories. Same beliefs running in the background.

But in a new environment, the context changes. Your world expands. You remember that there are infinite degrees of freedom to design your life. And you will get to meet different parts of yourself as a result.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to access a version of you that felt out of reach back home.

You don’t have to move across the world to reconnect with yourself. Your environment is more shapeable than you think.

You can audit your environment, and make some changes to feel good now.

You get to shape your surroundings to extract out the most on-fire-for-life version of you.

Look across the many facets of your environment — your neighborhood, your home, your workspace, your closest relationships, where you work out, the circles you’re in, your daily routine.

Start with one question: What side of me does this naturally bring out?

Be honest about what needs to shift. Some aspects take more commitment to change than others. But most are more adjustable than you’d think. Start experimenting!

You can also reflect back on the times in your life when you felt most ALIVE, most expanded, most YOU — reverse engineer why that was. Infuse those elements into your current life & routine.

And if where you are right now feels more constrictive than expansive — it’s time to book the trip. Use the plane ride as a portal: Decide which version of you is walking off on the other side. Try them on. Let them breathe. Then, bring 'em home.

If you liked this… reply “GOT IT” so the next newsletter lands in your primary inbox.

I’m on a mission to help you design a life and business that reflects the happiest, healthiest, wealthiest, most empowered version of you. So you can build your Living Legacy. Much more to come.

Xx,

P.S. On the topic of environment… I shared why you should always join the nicer gym (75K people on TikTok got angsty about this) and more on why getting out of town is the best way to get your spark back. Worth a watch if this landed.