A few months ago, I shared the raw, real story of how I met my husband on the Issy Living podcast.

Tomorrow—June 16th—marks two years since we met. In that time, we’ve bought a house, gotten engaged, planned an intimate wedding, honeymooned, renovated our home, and weathered a few real storms together—like when I was in the ICU with a cardiac effusion and Trace slept in a chair beside me for nights on end. I needed an emergency pericardiocentesis and had a tube in my chest. He never once left my side.

I truly believe the heartbreak and loss I endured before meeting him were part of the path—so I could feel everything, write about it in my novels, and share it with others. That pain became the soil for something richer: stories worth telling, lessons worth learning, and a kind of gratitude I don’t think I could have known otherwise.

This is my inner debate…

Part of me wants to be like Henry David Thoreau in Walden: live in the woods, leave social media, work with my hands, read, and write.

Another part of me wants to embrace the internet: building in public, filming and recording on YouTube, writing on my blog, and sharing posts on Instagram.

This is how I’ve resolved this inner debate (for now!)

The Courage to Be Disliked is about a lot more than the courage to be disliked. It covers all of Adlerian psychology—a philosophical approach to psychology established by Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler. This approach to psychology is antithetical to traditional talk therapy where one could argue there are times where you mull on your problems and loop around them in circles. Rather, this philosophy puts you in charge of your mood, happiness, health, wealth, etc. You are at the center of your universe and get to decide when it can all change at any given moment. Putting responsibility on yourself can be challenging, especially when there are elements of our lives that are at times truly out of our control. But Adler psychology always pushes us back into what we can control: ourselves.

Here’s my cheat sheet to feeling better (weight loss, more energy, less anxiety, no cramps, no headaches, less skin problems, etc).

When I got engaged in April 2024, I started planning an intimate wedding. We were married just six months later. Throughout the process, I had a long list of things to do, one of which was deciding my last name. Here are a few reasons why I’m keeping my maiden name (for now).

I was brainstorming authors to interview for our blog and I was imagining getting the chance to interview Jessica Knoll. Suddenly, I thought, “That’s too good to be true.” That would be too amazing. I was associating “too good to be true” with “not likely to happen.” Just then, I realized, I could challenge myself that anything that feels too good to be true is exactly what I will go for.

I miss the romanticism of studying at University. For the next few months, I’m treating my work like a fall semester. Here’s how…

How do we preserve our personhood, privacy, and well-being in a world that encourages us to share more of ourselves online?

Over the past 3 years, I’ve heard stories from Lacy through her blog, podcast, and work. I got the “ping” on April 24th, 2022 to examine her life more closely for expansion. In doing so, I got a chance to see just how much she persevered to her level of personal and professional success.

If you’re a fellow self-awareness and self-improvement junkie, then you’ll enjoy the framework Lacy created. The concrete steps are helpful tools to help you better understand 1) what’s in your way and 2) how to get it out of the way so you can move forward.