A Beginner’s Guide to FATE
I’m not sure about you, but I’m still thinking about all the delightful moments from the 2026 Winter Olympics so I figured I’d share some updates on FATE then breakdown its three pillars as exemplified by the iconic women who served on and off the ice with so much whimsy and wisdom ✨
Since my first and only blog a year ago (life got busy!), the E in FATE evolved to represent more than just Excitement. Now it’s also From Anxiety to Ease, Expansion, Equanimity, Enchantment, Et cetera.
Another enhancement: FATE evolved to include three distinct pillars with names that are cheeky and paradoxical in nature so I’ve got some explaining to do! The pillars are, in essence, a way to resist the forces trying to hijack our existence.
As we live through one unprecedented moment to the next, it’s imperative that we all establish the following:
Tools to regulate our nervous system (Comfort Zone)
Strategies to adopt a helpful mindset (Selective Attention)
Activities that give our life purpose and meaning (Life Purpose)
Don’t worry — there’s a hint of whimsy and wisdom in all three pillars. Let’s dive in!
Comfort Zone
Alysa Liu at the 2026 Olympics
“If I feel like I’m skating too much, I’ll back down. If I feel I’m not skating enough, I’ll ramp it up. No one’s gonna starve me or tell me what I can and can’t eat.”
This pillar is foundational. We can cover all the CBT skills in therapy to help you with overthinking, but if you don’t know how to breathe through a distressing emotion and you’re constantly pushing yourself beyond your limits, those moments of dysregulation and physical dread will persist.
I’ve been fangirling hard over Alysa Liu, a fellow Bay Area native. Alysa retired from ice skating at 16 because she was in “fight or flight mode all the time” and her practice was “so serious” that she would “cry after falling on every jump” (Rolling Stone). While retired, she embraced freedom, prioritizing connection with friends and going on vacation for the first time with family. Alysa found her way back to the ice rink after skiing for the first time in 2024. In less than a year, her artistry while skating was better than preretirement because she was “more in her body” and, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, she won two gold medals. We’ll come back to Alysa’s story later!
While I worked at Stanford and had access to a bajillion scholarly publications for free, I spent months researching how to achieve optimal mental health. It was an obsession. I read every journal article I could find on the topic. It turned out that these basic, accessible habits supporting optimal mental health were consistently cited:
Social connection
Quality sleep
Eating well
Physical activity
The only other habit occasionally cited was meditation.
The findings turned out to be so… predictable? Maybe my proximity to Silicon Valley led me to believe I might find something innovative. Something our ancestors hadn’t figured out thousands of years ago. Nope! Only activities missing for optimal health were sit under a tree, touch grass, etc.
Now, of course there are tons of ways to biohack your way into a regulated nervous system and there’s always a new trending coping strategy on social media to add to your daily routine, but nothing will replace the aforementioned healthy habits.
So if you want to step out of your comfort zone and work towards expansion, you need to know your limits (aka your window of tolerance) and take the greatest care of yourself consistently.
Selective Attention
Eileen Gu at the 2026 Olympics
“You can control what you think. You can control how you think. And therefore, you can control who you are. And especially as a young person, I’m 22, so with neuroplasticity on my side, I can literally become exactly who I want to be.”
I’ll be honest: I don’t love the word “control” in the quote above. Instead, I like what I heard the founder of Ritual Yoga say years ago, “It’s not about controlling your thoughts—it’s about not letting your thoughts control you.”
Every second, our mind is unconsciously processing millions of bits of information, but our mind only makes us consciously aware of the bits that have been established as important and relevant to us.
So our mind filters out 99.9995% of the information it receives every second and, as a well-meaning consequence, we only perceive the world around us based on our beliefs, conditioning, and memories. Other critical factors that influence how we perceive the world around us include:
Our mind is wired for survival, not for happiness
Our mind naturally still operates on a negativity bias for evolutionary purposes, which prioritizes keeping us safe
All of that to say that we don’t experience the world as it is objectively because our mind is constantly interpreting and perceiving it based on what it thinks is most important and relevant to us. It is projecting what will keep us safe—not what will help us expand and be enchanted with life.
You see what your brain is predicting and you think what your brain believes to be true. If you believe life is unfair and you’re unlucky, your brain will likely only show you bits of information that confirm your beliefs are true.
If we think of our brain like an algorithm, the algorithm highlights to us what it thinks we find important based on our history, lived experience, and what we’ve paid attention to in the past. But just like on the apps, we can archive content and tell the algorithm we’re not interested in certain content anymore. We can select what we give our attention to moving forward.
So even if you still have the belief come up that you’re unlucky, you can choose how you respond to it so that it doesn’t control you or how you feel.
Eileen Gu is a wizard at metacognition (therapy speak for “thinking about thinking”). Eileen describes in interviews how she breaks down all of her thought processes and takes an “analytical lens to her own thinking” (Fortune).
Like most things, there are helpful and unhelpful ways to approach metacognition. Practices like journaling, mindfulness, affirmations, visualization, and prayer can help reshape our mind’s programming.
If you’re someone who tends to get trapped in analysis paralysis, try meeting your thoughts with curiosity and compassion. Ask yourself how you would respond to the very same thought or situation if a friend was coming to you for advice. Oftentimes, we have a much easier time tuning out our inner critic and meeting our friends with compassion. Take this as an invitation to start being a good friend to yourself.
One last thing —there is no age limit to neuroplasticity! If you have a belief that you are “too old” to learn or do something though, that will probably stand in your way if you don’t find ways to challenge it.
You can decide at any point in time that you are done with an old story or belief about yourself and instead reinforce what you now choose to believe is possible for you and your life. Start striving for what you want ✨
Life Purpose
Alysa Liu at the 2026 Olympics
“I think the most important part of my story is human connection. Really, that’s all I want in my life is human connection and now I’m connecting with a hella ton of people and that’s my dream.”
If Comfort Zone is the preparation and Selective Attention is the rehearsal, Life Purpose is when you take the stage!
It’s where the foundational practices of the Comfort Zone pillar and the neuroscience-backed strategies of the Selective Attention pillar culminate to support you in living the life you deeply desire — the one you’ve been manifesting.
The image of Alysa Liu above captures someone who is embodied and fully connected to her artistry. She’s allowing herself to completely surrender to the experience without worrying about the outcome. She isn’t concerned about gold metals so the pressure that led to her retirement isn’t a factor. She’s enjoying the sport on her terms and defining what success is for herself. She’s unlocked a state of pure bliss. Goals!
Similar to one of Alysa’s many brilliant quotes, Billy Oppenheimer (research assistant to creative genius Rick Rubin) said we have to be utterly dedicated and utterly detached in our creative endeavors.
You don’t have to identify as a “creative person” to relate to this message. Your work is to connect to your values, your goals, your vision — whatever big or small activity you’ve identified gives your life meaning and purpose. That is a creative endeavor.
Please don’t let your brain get carried away with having it all figured out. Start with what gives your life meaning today (or tomorrow). A values exercise is a great place to start! You just need to know what the next small step is to get closer to whatever your vision for the future is.
This pillar is ultimately designed to help people take committed action so that they can be intentional in defining what their life purpose is.
In our capitalistic society, we tie our purpose to our careers and we’re constantly optimizing for productivity and chasing the next goal without (cliche but true) enjoying the journey.
I don’t believe that you have just one, single purpose in life. You can have micro purposes that are surrendered at the end of each day. You can, like Alysa said, “connect with everything and not be attached to anything.”
In order to do that, you need to know your values. You need have your own goals. You need to know where you find awe and meaning. You need to figure out what makes you feel authentic and whole — more integrated in this world and less fragmented.
One of the most transformational experiences I’ve had in life was attending a silent meditation retreat with Insight Santa Cruz. I’ll always remember what Dawn Neal, the Guiding Teacher, said during one dharma talk, "No moment is wasted in pursuit of wholesome, grounded living.” For me, this mantra has helped me soothe conflicted parts of me while I meditate at the hospital bedside while caring for a sick family member.
We are facing a lot of uncertainty and the fabric of society feels like it’s collapsing. I urge you to find a purpose outside of one of these Fortune 500 companies that continue to hit record growth, but lay off tens of thousands of their employees.
You have agency and can discern what’s fated for you. You can choose committed actions that align with whatever you define your purpose to be.
Sometimes we have to descend into the soul, confront our shadow, experience fragmentation or a “breakdown” in order to have the breakthrough that allows us to come out more integrated, aligned and authentic. You don’t have to do it alone.
