Everyone Has a Lord of the Rings Story Inside Them
Vitality, Alignment, and the Courage to Change Your State
There’s a reason the story The Lord of the Rings still moves us. It isn’t the battles or the magic, it’s the moment an ordinary life is interrupted by a quiet knowing: Something matters. Something is calling. And I can’t unhear it.
Every one of us is living a version of that story. Not the cinematic version, the internal one. The terrain isn’t mountains and forests, it’s habits, grief, responsibility, comfort, and the stories we repeat so often they start to sound like truth. And the real adversary isn’t darkness out there, it’s misalignment inside.
Where Change Actually Begins
If you want to create change, real change, you don’t start with strategy. You start with state. Before plans. Before goals. Before fixing anything. Check your state.
How do you feel in your body right now? Expanded or contracted? Energized or dulled? Hopeful or resigned? Your state tells the truth long before your mind does. From there, review the story you’re telling yourself. Because every action you take is downstream from a story, it’s about who you are, what’s possible, and what’s worth the risk.
Only then do you create a strategy, one that actually aligns you instead of forcing you forward. And here’s the key: You can always tell when you’re aligned by the way you feel.
Changing Your State Means Leaving Comfort
Where to find vitality, passion, zeal, and enthusiasm? The truth? It’s everywhere. But it doesn’t live inside your comfort zone. You change your state by stepping outside of who you’ve been willing to be. Not dramatically but intentionally.
Think of every meaningful change you’ve ever have made. What decision made that a thing? How conscious were you in that moment? How alive did you feel? What was the payoff?
Vitality doesn’t arrive by accident. It arrives when awareness meets courage.
Inspiration, Gratitude, and a Better Story
Last summer, Benson Boone inspired me with his song Beautiful Things. The song holds a paradox I recognize in myself and probably share with others, gratitude for everything we have, paired with the fear of losing it all. And yet joy still lives there. Love still lives there.
Watching the way he sings that song, fully present, fully open, I could feel his state. He wasn’t protecting himself from loss. He was honoring what mattered.
He inspired me to name the last quarter of 2025 “My No More Excuses Tour.” I started it by immersing myself in a new state. A week before the quarter started, my daughter flew across the country to spend 5 days with me. We yoged, drank coffee, had mind-bending conversations, hiked, and went to see Benson Boone.
Watching him in his Joywork, watching him in his heightened state, with that energy he created an unforgettable experience, one that lifted the room. The audience didn’t just listen, we rose to him.
That’s the power of alignment.
Telling a Better Story and Letting It Feed You
After that night, I realized something simple and profound: I needed to tell myself a better story than the one I had been telling.
From there, everything shifted.
I fed my physical body first because state lives in the body. I challenged myself to go cold swimming, I mean, really cold swimming. It is good for the body, they say. Then I thought, Benson would definitely go cold swimming.
It wasn’t comfortable. But when I got out of that water, I thought: Wow. I did that. That single choice fed my courage. That courage fed my awareness. That awareness invited me to bring my best to my life with more honesty, more presence and more heart. One aligned action began to nourish the rest of me.
The Order Matters
Start by changing your state and begin with the body. Step outside your comfort zone and move your body by interrupting patterns.
Notice the story you tell yourself. Then tell your story consciously. Choose a narrative that honors your vitality instead of shrinking it.
Create a strategy from this alignment. Let action arise from who you are becoming, not who you’ve been.
Your Quiet Call to Adventure
Change your state.
Tell your story consciously.
Create strategy from alignment.
