Simone Adams took a hard look at everything she was running toward – and walked the other direction. In this week's feature article, we dive into my conversation with Simone, founder of Color My Outdoors, who left a 60-hour work week in Atlanta, challenged herself to live on $30 a day, and moved to a town of 1,600 people to answer one question: who am I when I take away everything I thought I needed?

Three patterns from Simone's story might inspire you to rethink things in your own life: how the hustle gets inherited and disguised as ambition, what radical subtraction reveals about who you've really been living for, and why giving yourself a blank canvas is the scariest and most necessary move you'll ever make.

Find out what Simone discovered on the other side of letting go.

In this week's feature article I unpack my conversation with Dr. Karmetria Burton, senior leader at McDonald's, founder of the Paint Your Lips Red Foundation, and author of "Never Wear Red Lipstick" – to explore what happens when you finally see the rules that have been running your life without permission.

Read the full article to understand why leadership starts where you're standing, and what shifts when you stop organizing your life around patterns that were never actually yours.

Lisane Basquiat sits down with Shavone Charles — cultural strategist, musician, and founder of Future of Creatives — to unpack why confidence isn't borrowed from the room, how survival mode keeps us isolated, and why leaving what no longer fits is the only way forward.

In this feature article for Shaping Freedom, founder Lisane Basquiat challenges the myth that trauma automatically builds strength. Through her conversation with Susanna Peredo Swap—a curator who survived a spinal cord injury at five—Basquiat reveals three insights: the strongest people get curious about trauma rather than push through it; real resilience means knowing when to quit the wrong thing; and clarity about what you want matters more than toughness.

In this Shaping Freedom® feature article by founder Lisane Basquiat, psychiatrist Dr. Andrea Best reveals why healing isn’t about quick fixes—it’s about clearing what blocks your body’s natural intelligence. Drawing from three decades of practice, Dr. Best explains how chronic stress shuts down digestion and serotonin production, why your gut silently drives mood and decision-making, and how shifting out of constant crisis mode restores clarity, energy, and creativity.

Through their conversation, Lisane highlights Dr. Best’s unconventional approach—from prescribing rest and self-nourishment to showing why “every cell knows how to heal.” This article offers transformative insights into gut health, stress, and the power of creating space for the divine intelligence within us to do its work.

What story are you telling yourself when fear gets loud? In this piece, I sit down with KJ Rose, a Grammy Award–winning performance director and author who once froze on her way to meet Oprah. What she learned in that moment now shapes how she helps thousands build courage and presence.

In our conversation, KJ reminded me that confidence is situational—it grows through small, daily deposits, by rewriting the story in your head, and by knowing when it’s time to move on. KJ talks about she turns those moments of fear into rituals of self-trust—teaching us that courage compounds into confidence, one choice at a time.

Read the full article and discover how small acts of courage compound into lasting confidence.