Reawakening in Nature with Kelsey Ayres Part 1 (of 2)
“For me, when I’m among the trees, I think about how interconnected everything is, and then how interconnected we all are, and the impact that we have.”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM Kelsey ayres
With an unlikely background studying anthropology and working in social work, Kelsey has come to truly love working in and with small businesses. She is the president of Mike Michalowicz's brand company, Obsidian Launch. Small business owners are true change-makers and it is her mission to support them so they can create a more equitable and just world. Growing up in rural New Jersey and now living in the woods of Northeast Pennsylvania she has a deep appreciation of nature and has made it a life priority to travel the world to see its many wonders.
Daily Practice in Nature
“Things that you just don't anticipate necessarily, and the ways that things can snowball into other things, and lead you down these other paths that you just don't think about, but it was awesome and amazing. And so then at the same time, I was like, Well, if I own my own business, I can live wherever I want. Why am I staying in the Northeast where it's cold and wintery? So I moved to Florida. Thus began my very kind of beautiful relationship with daily practice in nature. So, as I mentioned, I had started meditating regularly, it is an ingrained part of my day. But then I started walking to the beach every morning, and I would meditate at sunrise every morning. And it was the most grounding experience. Especially at that time when I was in this sort of period of transition and figuring out what I wanted the rest of my life to look like, and who I wanted to show up as every day.
There's something so humbling about the ocean for me…just this massive ecosystem that exists without our human involvement. We're not the ones running those ecosystems in any way, shape, or form. We're only doing harm wherever we do kind of touch it. But there are so many creatures that we don't even know exist down there. And the way that all of them subsist together is just magnificent to me and makes me feel very small in the big universe.”
Interconnected
“When I had moved into my apartment, I had this very eccentric, amazing landlord. But she was a legitimate tree hugger. We would go on walks, and she would hug the trees and talk to them. She would tell me the stories that they were telling her and just had this incredible perspective about the world at large. She lived on a Sioux reservation for a while, and she had basically hitchhiked around the country. So she had all of this perspective that was so far beyond my little myopic world. And I realized how small I had made my world, and I think that lack of connection to nature is the hugest part because you realize how tiny you are. The more you get out, the more you realize how vast and dynamic world is. For me, when I'm among the trees, and I think about how interconnected everything is, and then how interconnected we all are, and the impact that we have in our kind of small ways. As small as we are, we can have a really big impact.
So I started hiking by myself, which was amazing, because it opened up whole new worlds for me. And that became a very meditative practice, finding my little spot. There's a trail that I used to do when I was young. And then, when I had moved back to the area, I would hike the same spot every single day, so that I could see and I would just meditate in my one little spot. There's a creek, so I put my feet in the creek, and I would say my little mossy stone, and day after day, you could just see the changes, and I could feel the change in the water. And there's something so just very, very humbling about that process. It just fills me with immense gratitude for all of the things that make up a world that we don't really pay attention to, but just operate every single second, all these things are creating, and happening without any of my influence.”
Growth
“I started to travel for the sake of exploring new places. And I think that in and of itself, opens up new neural pathways, at least for me in terms of what we're capable of, how we perceive ourselves versus how we can actually show up in the world. So I think I had a very narrow idea of who I was, and who I could be. My process, in a lot of ways, was just sort of letting go of ego, and letting go of any sort of pride associated with failing. Not that I don't have it, because of course, I still have those fears. But genuinely, if I can serve somebody in any capacity, then I will. And it's the process of just putting myself in uncomfortable places, which started out with hiking, and then I started hiking in new areas that I wasn't familiar with. And then I started traveling to different countries just to marvel at the beauty of wherever I was, but it was initially very scary. And once I figured out that I could do it, then I felt like, that's the process: you just try, you put yourself in it, you ask for help when you need to, you don't get married to an expectation. It's almost like just being as if anything else in nature is, they just do their thing. They don't think about doing the thing. They just do it and you know, it all shakes out. So as humans, I just sort of want us to do it. And not think so much about not doing it right.”
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