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Living in a Chicago high-rise during the pandemic came with a kind of confinement I wasn’t prepared for.

My “outdoor space” was limited to a modest balcony, which was sufficient for sunset views and a breath of outside air, but not enough to quiet the longing I felt for an actual yard, particularly when seeing the plethora of backyard sanctuaries on social media.

And leaving the building came with its own challenges. Every trip outside meant navigating close proximity with hundreds of residents in elevators, stairwells, the parking garage, and the lobby. At the height of COVID, I had to weigh every outing.

I wasn’t moving to Florida (like half of New York), and I wasn’t heading back to California. So…I did the only thing that felt restorative: I created an oasis of my own, one plant at a time.

The making of a rainforest

What started as a cluster of 4 to 5 plants grew into a 100-piece collection. Learning through experimentation offered the best foundation for expanding my green thumb, and before I knew it, my home transformed into a rainforest of my own making.

My “watering day” also grew. What began as a 5-minute task became a full Netflix episode. However, it wasn’t daunting at all; instead, it was cathartic and therapeutic.

The plants introduced new textures, shapes, colors, and movement into my urban landscape of concrete and glass. They became a source of insulation, peace, beauty, and inspiration.

Watering plants can lower blood pressure, produce brainwave patterns linked to relaxation, and increase happiness. (BMC Psychology)

A new kind of growth

After several years, life shifted — and so did I.

The self-appointed “plant lady” fell in love with an incredible human, and when he asked me to marry him, I knew the rainforest couldn’t come with me. Our combined space required a different kind of curation.

After the movers left, I looked around our home at the extensive assemblage of plants sprawled across the floor, it was obvious that something had to give. My husband could see the conflict on my face, and that’s when he offered something that cut through the moment with tenderness:

We came together and said a few words for the plants I chose to part with. There was a mix of laughter and gravity. The emotion I felt wasn’t just about the plants themselves, but about the new season I was entering, where my understanding of care expanded.

While the rainforest was built for my previous lifestyle, I needed to consider its impact on my spouse.

There’s interesting research on the threshold of indoor greenery. A 2025 study conducted by Stanford University found that when it comes to indoor nature, there can, in fact, be too much. The journal Sustainable Cities and Society describes Stanford’s findings:

Indoor greenery enhances wellbeing, but too much can overwhelm people. A greenery dose of about 20% is optimal for restoration and sense of belonging. (Sustainable Cities and Society)

The lessons rooted in care

Plants are resilient and have the power to adapt to their surroundings. They can often survive repotting, moving, lack of light, lack of water, and pests. While total neglect isn’t sustainable, plants only need a few essential things to thrive, starting with consistency.

As I was adjusting to a post-pandemic world, my plants were adjusting as well. Some of them outgrew their pots and needed a larger foundation, others bloomed flowers once or twice a year, and others changed color as they matured.

From my years of cultivation, I’ve come to understand six principles worth sharing:

Observation (plants can communicate, non-verbally of course)

If you slow down enough to observe and monitor your plants, they will often tell you what they need (e.g., our Peace Lily will dramatically droop its leaves when it’s in need of water, so I wait for the start of the droop before I water it again).

Propagation (creating new from old)

Propagation is the ultimate power move. You can create new life from a branch or leaf of the parent plant. The process for propagation differs by plant, requiring you to truly understand the mechanics of how it grows and multiplies.

Sunlight (plants are living and need sun, just like we do)

There are plants that can survive with limited sunlight (e.g., Snake Plant) while others require several hours of direct sunlight (e.g., Monstera). Learning the optimal conditions for your specific species is what will increase the chances of not just survival but flourishing.

More isn’t always better (a universal truth, really)

We know plants need water but how much water is key. More water is not always better, especially if your plant is showing signs of distress. You could be watering too much or too little. The same is true for sunlight. For some plants, too much sun will scorch their delicate leaves (e.g., Calathea).

Start small (and free your mind)

I advise people to start with just one plant, in order to focus and cater to its specific needs. Success with one can build confidence and momentum with plant care overall. Once you get the feel for it, the ritual of care becomes an opportunity to free your mind and decompress.

When to let go (and trust the reset)

One of the most difficult aspects of plant care is knowing when you’ve reached the end of the road with a plant you’ve put time and effort into. Perhaps the plant couldn’t adapt to a new environment, became infected, or simply suffered from user error. It’s okay to reset and start again — plants do it all the time.

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The first time I dreamed in a language other than English, I truly understood the power of immersion.

I was 19 years old and living abroad in Paris for the summer. With 6 years of study under my belt and a college minor in French, I traveled across the Atlantic for the first time to explore the enchanting culture in person.

I still remember the day I arrived. It was raining and I had a hard time locating my host apartment. I walked up and down Rue Oberkampf for what felt like an eternity — although perhaps it was only 20 minutes — but the rain and my tears were indistinguishable.

I heard my name and saw a woman with brown hair and kind eyes. My host mother came out into the rain to find me. I have fond memories of her hospitality and waking up to baskets of croissants and French bread with Nutella for breakfast.

When your internal language shifts

My first dream in French was both jarring and incredible. I could feel myself adopting not just the language, but the ethos of the world around me. In that moment, I sensed I had crossed a threshold, where I embodied the essence and the spirit of the place I was in.

I now understand the dream as a metaphor for how immersion takes shape. It doesn’t use force, but proximity and presence. Sustained exposure over time is what quietly reshapes us.

Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. — David A. Kolb, educational theorist

The same forces that shift our internal language also shape the internal language for organizations.

Culture is absorbed, not declared

These concepts translate to the corporate ecosystem as it relates to organizational behavior and culture change. As leaders enter new systems, it is critical to take the time to recognize and understand the internal language (both spoken and unspoken) of the collective.

In my advisory work, I’ve been part of 20+ person teams working with clients paying millions in fees to facilitate culture change and create process playbooks, only to have it eventually sit on a shelf. The work was strong, the data was vetted, and the demand was there, but ultimately, the organization wasn’t culturally ready for the change it believed it wanted.

The same pattern appears when companies design spaces without understanding user behavior.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. — Winston Churchill

A former client of mine went to a tech start-up to lead its new HQ build-out. There was an immense amount of excitement and c-suite leadership earmarked tens of millions for the project. This was following the COVID pandemic and the organization wanted to adopt a remote-first work environment.

Following the renovation, the space was beautiful, but what they didn’t anticipate was that the workstyle they optimized for didn’t match the true needs of the employees it was meant to serve. That disconnect cost them several more million to make the necessary adjustments.

Immersion ≠ Consumption

Immersion changes us while consumption only passes through us.

As consumers, we prioritize speed and short-term gain. The transaction is king, aiming for lower cost, higher value, and accessibility. There is absolutely a place for this, and entire industries are built on it.

However, consumption is heavily weighted toward extraction, and if not careful, could become a distraction, even if a welcome one.

Immersion requires purpose and reflection. It’s intentional, has the power to foster change, and the capacity to impact hearts and minds.

I was a consumer of the French language for years — I took courses, joined conversational study groups, watched movies, and read novels. It wasn’t until my visit to the country itself that I became truly engulfed in the culture, leading to my own internal shift.

A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning. — Leo Buscaglia, educator and author

A metaphor for transformation

Spaces, environments, organizations, and experiences shape us when we allow ourselves to be immersed in them. As leaders, it is our responsibility to curate the right conditions so that the outcome is a desirable one, where change is sustainable and meaningful.

Immersion is what rewires our internal language, whether we’re individuals in a foreign city or leaders inside an evolving organization.

I first learned this in Paris. Now I recognize it everywhere: immersion is what turns observation into embodiment.

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AI needs water to function.
We need it to feel alive.

This is not a condemnation of AI. In fact, I actively use it in my daily life, and I’ve spent the past year studying how it can transform organizations, including AI leadership principles and best practices for responsible implementation.

However, something else can also be true: the faster AI accelerates, the more we need to rekindle what makes us human. Understanding AI more deeply has only made me more aware of what it cannot (and should not) replace.

When acceleration demands slowing down

With the rapid pace of AI adoption, it’s even more important to learn when to slow down, smell the roses, and tap into what we can experience IRL. Unfortunately, many of us need a vacation just to remember what roses smell like.

It’s important to embolden ourselves and recapture the elements that are key to our sense of connection and community. As humans, we need nature, sunlight, and water — key elements that make us inherently living beings — not as luxuries but as conditions of existence.

Many of us only revisit this mindset on holiday, when we finally give ourselves the space to savor it. But even this approach is a false start, since the majority aren’t taking the vacations they’ve earned and have a right to.

More than half of Americans (55%) are not using all of their paid vacation time. (Forbes Advisor)

People spend about 90% of their time indoors, where pollutant levels can be 2-5 times higher than outdoors. (EPA)

The basics we keep forgetting

You might say yes, of course, this is obvious. Most people agree that access to nature supports healthy living, but in practice, this is where we often fall short, particularly in western societies.

Our most basic needs are fresh air, water, and movement. Scientific Reports recommends ~120 minutes per week outside in nature, a threshold linked to better health and wellbeing. Yet there has been a long-term decline in time outdoors.

Modern life has engineered nature out of our routines. Our daily commutes rarely involve walking or cycling. Our screen time, both in professional and personal settings, overpowers our lives, and our busy schedules dictate every available moment. We move from home to car, building to building, screen to screen, rarely taking the time to be still.

Greater exposure to natural environments (such as parks, woodlands and beaches) is associated with better health and wellbeing. (Scientific Reports)

Time in nature has been linked to better mental health…and provides a combination of stimulation of different senses and a break from typical overstimulation from urban environments. (Harvard T.H. Chan)

Artificial Intelligence ≠ Artificial Experience

We can curate vacations and excursions with the help of AI, even leverage it as a de facto travel agent, who knows our preferences, flight schedules, interests, and credit card details. It can describe what it’s like to stare out across Paris from the Eiffel Tower, but only we can truly experience the Parisian air, the sunlight on our faces, and the expansive views.

If screen time is increasing and time outside is decreasing, will the future be a world where we just watch videos of outdoor activities? Perhaps we opt to interact with simulated digital environments rather than getting outside and exploring the world ourselves.

If we’re not careful, we may outsource the very experiences that remind us we’re alive.

The irony of water

And here’s the irony: AI needs water too. Data centers require a substantial amount of water to cool their servers. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a large data center can use up to 5 million gallons per day, which is equivalent to a town of 10,000 - 50,000 people. Google alone used approximately 8.1 billion gallons of water in 2024.

And here’s the vicious cycle: As data center energy use increases, so do carbon emissions. As our demand for AI grows, so does the construction of facilities to power it. The more emissions we generate, the more our outdoor air quality deteriorates. The more we stay indoors, the more we expose ourselves to indoor pollutants.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: We’re stuck in a loop that pulls us away from the world our bodies were designed for.

AI’s needs are mechanical.
Ours are existential.

In a moment when technology is accelerating faster than our ability to process it, the risk isn’t that AI becomes human, but that we forget to be.