What You Miss When You’re Always Optimizing

What are you missing because you’re always optimizing?

In medicine, we are trained to always look for what needs improvement. We scan for the problem, the inefficiency, the loose end. We plan, refine, and anticipate what could go wrong. This way of seeing feels like our responsibility.

It also keeps the nervous system slightly braced.

It makes you excellent at medicine, but it also makes it harder to fully inhabit your actual life.

I now practice a different lens: noticing the beauty that is already here.

And not just the beauty in nature or objects—also the beauty in the people you love.

If you’re always optimizing, you can miss them, too.
The quiet loyalty of a long marriage. The “cup of love” moments—how someone consistently shows up for you in their own imperfect way.

When our mind is scanning for what needs fixing, it will find something. Including in our relationships.

If you’re a high achiever, you probably have a well-trained eye for what could be better—at work and at home.

I invite you to join me in noticing the ordinary beauty

The beauty that’s right in front of you when you pause long enough to actually take it in.

A drop of rain on a leaf. The sound of raindrops. Lemons on trees in midwinter. A cozy corner of your home.

The brightness of tulips and daffodils in the grocery store in February. The fact that you can stretch your spine, breathe deeply, and feel sensation moving through your body in yoga.

The way someone you love makes coffee. A shared laugh in the kitchen.

A moment of effort that would have been easy to overlook. Someone trying—clumsily, imperfectly, humanly.

Sometimes beauty is obvious.

Sometimes it’s not. And because your mind has been trained to find the cobweb in the corner first, you miss it.

If you notice this tendency in yourself, you’re human. And as a physician, you were trained to be a professional problem-spotter.

Beauty as a nervous system practice

This is not a Pollyanna approach. It’s not emotional bypassing. It’s not pretending the hard things aren’t real.

It’s strategic.

Noticing beauty changes your state.

When you train your attention toward what is working—what is supportive, what is steady, what is quietly good—you give your body proof that safety and goodness exist alongside the mess.

And from that state, different choices become possible.
Your shoulders drop.
Your breath deepens.
Your thinking becomes more flexible.
Your creativity returns.

It’s an energy shift that doesn’t require more effort—just a different kind of attention.

And in relationships, this matters. When you’re regulated, you’re less reactive.
You repair faster.
You interpret more generously.
You stop keeping score (at least a little).
You remember who you’re talking to.

If you want something concrete, try this once a day:

Find one beautiful thing. Let your eyes rest on it. Take five breaths. Notice what changes.

That’s it.

Once in a while, make the “beautiful thing” a person.

Notice one moment of effort. One moment of care. One moment of steadiness. One small “seed of love” that’s already there.

You’re not forcing gratitude.

You’re not trying to convince yourself that everything is fine.

You’re simply allowing your nervous system to register what is also true.

This blog was originally a yoga class. Why do I blend coaching themes into yoga?

I weave coaching into my yoga classes because transformation happens most effectively when you are relaxed.

When your system softens, you learn, absorb, and integrate at the somatic level. That is how real change happens—how new pathways get built, how neural reprogramming becomes possible, how the body begins to trust a different way of being.

We move. We stretch. We breathe. And we practice a new relationship with our minds.

I teach most Saturdays (sometimes and/OR Sunday) at 9 am Pacific on Zoom, and I also offer in-person retreats (which, truly, are the best way to practice live).

When we gather in community—in a bamboo studio, among trees, or on a mountaintop—there is a beauty that is hard to replicate anywhere else.

Practice yoga with me on Zoom
Practice yoga with me at a retreat