Welcome to Doug’s Newsletter. Every Thursday, I share one tip for reclaiming the freedom of your time.

Today’s Setlist

🎩 One Tip → Gratitude

😄 Funny Business → I won a da race!

📊 Community Poll → On Fridays we wear pink.

🎩 One Tip: Gratitude

I returned home to Los Angeles last weekend after seven days of traveling in Peru with my partner, Morgan. The journey was incredible, and I’m very grateful to be home.

I’m chronicling our travels here so I can save myself from repeating the story every time I get asked, and can simply point people to this post. I call it proactive laziness. If that’s how you got here, welcome! And check out this cool button:

I’ll start at the very beginning.

Our trip was planned by a friend of mine I met through my plant medicine work, Rubén Orellana. Ruben is the former Head of Archaeology at Machu Picchu, where he discovered 44 new sites surrounding the Crystal City including the North Inca Trail.

As we all know one does when they are a former Head of Archaeology at Machu Picchu, Ruben LOADED our itinerary with thoughtful quality.

As we walked out of customs in Lima, Morgan and I happen to be talking about my previous post on Do Not Disturb Mode. Then we spotted our driver, Oscar.

I’m currently reading Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe by Laura Lynne Jackson, and this not-so-secret sign was a wonderful start to our trip.

✨ The universe is always speaking to us. All we have to do is pay attention.

On Day 2, we took a quick flight from Lima to Cusco, the main hub of the Sacred Valley (#1 on the map below).

We were driven straight from the airport to Urubamba (#2 on the map), a town Ruben vacationed in during his youth. Our first hotel, Lizzy Wasi, offered the luxury of a Ritz Carlton in Bali at the price of a Howard Johnson in Albuquerque.

On Day 3 we visited multiple archaeological sites (pictures at the end). Our resourceful tour guide, Alberto, rhetorically pondered how the Inca people 600 years ago built such sophisticated structures that worked in harmony with the Earth’s cycles:

“What else did they have to do?” I replied.

Yes, a joke, but also a trigger of gratitude.

✨ Gratitude that we live in the time we do, have the resources we do, and get to live the life situations we do.

On Day 3 we also took the train to Aguas Calientes aka Machu Picchu Town (#3). Ruben booked us in the First Class cabin. When we weren’t drinking champagne, having our portraits drawn, and laughing about the economy with the other royalty onboard, we were treated to a local show and dance.

Anyone with social anxiety knows what happened next: the dancer asked me to dance for everyone, too.

And of course, I crushed it (I assume…here’s the video, I’m scared to watch it).

✨ I was grateful to get outside my comfort zone. Grateful to still be able to move my body in all types of ways. Grateful to make a beautiful memory simply from dancing.

Thinking back on it now elicits one of my favorite quotes on WeCroak, the death reminder app:

“And yet if you look at a society who sings and dances as a regular thing, it’s not that it has their effect on their life–it is their life.” -Gary Snyder

On Day 4, we went to Machu Picchu. It was neat.

On Day 5 back in Cusco, we fed alpacas and llamas!

This earned a rare '!' from me because it was awesome.

✨ Nothing else can make humans feel the way nature, animals, and pets make us feel. I’m very grateful for that love.

On Day 6, I was lucky enough to get a full-day private tour of the bathroom in Room 206 at the Munay Wasi Inn.

Even though Morgan and I shared all our food, I got food poisoning and she did not. I am grateful for that, and for her love in helping me get back to health in only half a day.

Lying in bed—not able to even speak from a lack of energy—the signs were obvious to me that I was experiencing life how my Papa experienced his life in his last months on this side. It made me very grateful.

✨ Grateful Papa was still full of joy until the last second, even if he couldn’t show it. And grateful I hopefully have many years left in this body to keep dancing.

♟️Your Turn: What are you grateful for?

Write three things down you are grateful for at this very moment. I promise there is no better use of your next 30 seconds.

If you feel better after, consider finding where in your routines you can make it a daily habit.

More pictures:

😄 Funny Business

Tooting my own horn this week because winning The New Yorker Caption Contest is the greatest achievement of my life.

Nice try, Rick from Palm Harbor!

I actually love Rick’s caption and would have voted for it if I didn’t have an ego.

📊 Community Poll

Results for last week’s question: Do you scrub your feet in the shower?

Fascinating! I was very confident that no one would admit to being a water trickler, and I was wrong.

I was a trickler until about two years ago. Now I get in there a bit, but not as much as the rest of my body. Bending down is rough.

“I wear the same 5 things and never touch the other 90% of my closet” was too long to make an answer choice…but yeah that’s what I would pick.

How I Can Help

Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 ways for us to work together:

1. Grab time with me for a 1:1 session on community, consumer-driven research, or anything else.

2. Join me at a 4-hour retreat.

When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…