The Everything Experiment

For 24 hours, I removed the noise...No phone. No music. No TV. No Computer. No podcasts. No social media. No conversations. Nothing.Just silence.What started as a simple experiment became one of the most insightful days I've had in a long time.In this episode of The Everything Experiment®, I share what happened when I intentionally stepped away from external stimulation for an entire day, including:😴 Why I realized I was more tired than I thought.📓 The surprising discovery hidden inside an old journal.🤫 How silence changed the way I think about speaking.✌🏼 Why my anxiety disappeared as the day went on.🔌 What it felt like to reconnect with myself without constant input.This wasn't about becoming a monk or escaping the world. It was simply me following an intuitive pull, which then revealed what's been trying to reach me for quite some time.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

For many of us, Avatar: The Last Airbender was more than just a cartoon.It was a story about grief, identity, belonging, purpose, forgiveness, responsibility, and what it means to become the person you’re meant to be.Years later, people still talk about Aang, Zuko, Katara, Toph, Sokka, and Uncle Iroh, not because they could bend the elements, but because they felt real.In this episode of The Everything Experiment®, we explore why Avatar resonated so deeply with an entire generation and what the creators seemed to understand about being human that many stories never capture.QUESTIONS WE UNPACK:👁️ Why did so many people see themselves in these characters?🔥 Why is Zuko’s redemption arc still one of the most beloved character journeys ever written?🧘🏻‍♂️ What did Uncle Iroh represent that so many people were searching for?💞 And why does this story continue to stay with us decades later?I think the reason Avatar endured isn’t because it entertained us... it’s because underneath it all, we were learning about life.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

For a long time, I was trying to figure out who I was without fully expressing myself in the process... really expressing myself.And that's because… awareness only gets you so far.At some point, you have to stop editing yourself and actually let yourself be seen.In this episode of The Everything Experiment, I talk about the liberating feeling of expressing yourself honestly: not for attention, validation, or performance, but because it feels aligned with who you really are.We explore:• Why self-expression becomes easier the more honest it is• The connection between authenticity and nervous system freedom• Letting go of trying to fit into someone else’s lane• Why expressing yourself reinforces identityThe more I lean into what feels true to me... whether that’s through conversations, videos, humor, thoughts, movement, creativity, or simply documenting life as it unfolds... the more connected I feel to who I've always been.And that's the point of all of it... to remember who you are, and reconnect with what's been inside you all along.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

There’s a strange thing that happens when pressure builds long enough... The options narrow, the distractions disappear, and eventually… the things you’ve been avoiding get harder to outrun.After being laid off, I found myself trying to build the smartest next step, something practical, strategic, and capable of creating stability.But over the last few weeks, another realization has been surfacing beneath all of it:What if pressure doesn’t just force decisions… what if it reveals who you actually are?In this episode, I explore the uncomfortable tension between survival and truth, capability and calling, and the difference between building something because it makes sense versus pursuing something because it feels undeniably honest.This is another real-time exploration of what happens when the version of life you think you should choose starts competing with the one that feels most alive.If you’ve ever questioned your career, identity, path, or whether the thing you’re pursuing is truly yours, this conversation is for you.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

Ever had that feeling in life where nothing is fully guaranteed… but something inside of you starts to shift anyway?In this episode, I talk about what it’s felt like stepping into something that finally feels honest.After being laid off, I found myself standing in uncertainty again, trying to figure out what came next, questioning whether I should return to another corporate role or take a real shot at building something of my own. What started as a conversation turned into a real business, real momentum, real meetings, and a growing sense that I might finally be moving toward the kind of life I actually want to live.What’s been most surprising isn’t just the business itself… it’s the way my body and energy have responded to it.My sleep rhythm is changing, my workouts feel different, I feel more grounded, more alive, more present. And even though I still don’t fully know where this path leads, there’s a calm underneath the uncertainty that I haven’t felt in a long time.This episode is about that feeling.The feeling of alignment, the energy of moving honestly, and the realization that sometimes your body recognizes the right direction before your mind fully catches up.This is a real-time conversation about what happens when life starts feeling like your own again.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

There are moments in life where something shifts, and nothing feels certain anymore.No clear direction, no guaranteed outcome, just the space between what was… and what’s next.In this episode, I’m recording before a conversation that could shape the next chapter of my life. After recently being laid off from my day job, I find myself in a place a lot of us eventually face… where the old path is gone, and the new one hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.This isn’t a recap, this isn’t a "lesson learned," this is what it actually feels like to be in the middle of it.If you’ve ever felt stuck, uncertain, or like you’re standing at a crossroads without a map... this one’s for you.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

Have you ever felt like your life is objectively good… but you still have moments where you feel frustrated, tired, sad? And then you start judging yourself for it? 🤔In this episode, I explore the tension of feeling grateful for your life while also moving through frustration, sadness, or uncertainty, and why those emotions don’t cancel each other out.So many of us have been conditioned to override how we actually feel. To stay positive, to focus on what’s good, to remind ourselves how lucky we are.And while gratitude IS powerful… it doesn’t mean that our other feelings aren't valid. Multiple things can be true at once.You can be grateful and struggling. You can be supported and still feel stuck. You can recognize the good in your life and still feel frustrated by where you are.Both can be true.This episode is a reflection on learning to stop judging your emotions… and instead allowing yourself to actually experience them... because that’s what lets you move through them.Not by forcing positivity, or by suppressing what’s uncomfortable... but by being honest about what’s there.You're not wrong for letting yourself feel.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

Yo… I had an experience recently that I haven’t been able to shake.I was sitting in a bath, just trying to slow things down, and I went into a meditation that took a turn I didn’t expect.At one point, it felt like I stepped outside of myself... like I wasn’t the one experiencing the moment anymore, but rather, the one observing it. And then something even stranger happened…It felt like I disappeared.Not physically, but the sense of “me” started to dissolve. Like my identity, my awareness, everything that feels like you, began to break apart and expand outward into something much bigger.And weirdly… it didn’t feel scary.There was this mix of peace, curiosity, and a kind of quiet sadness... like letting go of something you’ve always known, without really knowing what comes next.It made me start thinking about something I don’t usually sit with directly:What does it actually feel like to stop existing?Not from a religious perspective. Not from a definitive answer. But from the lens of experience, curiosity, and the possibility that there are parts of existence we may never fully understand.I don’t have answers in this episode. Just an experience… and the questions it left me with.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

Everything feels fast. Not just busy... but sometimes, relentless. Like life is constantly moving forward, and we’re just trying to keep up with it.And for a long time, that showed up for me as this underlying feeling of anxiety… always rushing, even through the smallest, everyday tasks.Now, of course, there are personal layers to that. But at a certain point, I started experimenting with something...I began asking myself, in real time: How slow can you go?It actually comes from my time studying acting under the Meisner technique, where a common theme was:"How subtle can you make it?”Because when something is overplayed, it doesn’t feel real. But the more subtle it becomes, the more grounded and believable it is.And somewhere along the way, that translated into life.So I started applying it to everything: walking, cooking, moving through the day… Just gently asking: How slow can you go, Austen?And what I noticed was interesting…In this episode, I explore the shift: the pace of modern life, the subtle pressure to keep up with progress, and what happens when you begin to question the speed… even just a little.Not to fix anything. Not to offer advice. Just to look at it honestly. Because the moment you begin to slow down… you might realize you never actually needed to rush in the first place.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

What happens when you stop avoiding the one thing every human shares?For most of my life, the idea of death felt distant… something to ignore, something to fear, something that only showed up in certain moments.But recently, that changed. Not in a dramatic way. Not in a dark way... In a quiet, honest way.I started actually acknowledging it, not just thinking about it, but allowing it to be real… and something unexpected happened.It didn’t make me anxious. It didn’t make me spiral. It made me calm.In this episode, I explore what shifts when we stop resisting the fact that life ends: how it changes our relationship with time, urgency, presence, and what actually matters.This isn’t about fear. It’s about clarity, and what happens when you finally see life for what it is… temporary, and because of that, pretty darn extraordinary.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

There’s something about the band Cake that has always felt… real. Not polished. Not performative. Just honest in a way that’s hard to explain. And lately, I’ve been noticing this tension, between yearning for the honest things in life, and feeling like so much of the world is tailored in a different direction.Which made me come back to their music with a different lens... Because maybe it’s not just the sound... Maybe it’s what’s under it.In this episode, I’m exploring why the band Cake feels so grounded, what they might be pointing to about the human experience, and why that feeling of “realness” seems so rare in modern life.No conclusions. Just curiosity.LISTEN TO CAKE HERE 🎧==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com==========

Lately I’ve been noticing something in real time that I never used to observe so deeply... I’ll start to go down the rabbit hole of a thought pattern… and suddenly I’ll catch myself thinking: "Wait… I’m doing it again."That moment is strange.Because the pattern still exists in some ways, but awareness has now entered the room.In this Episode 8 of The Everything Experiment, I reflect on what it feels like to catch your mind in the middle of a familiar loop. Not after the fact… but while it’s actually happening.There’s a strange liminal space that opens up in those moments, somewhere between the pattern and the choice, where you can feel the pull of the old behavior while also realizing you don’t have to be completely consumed by it.I’m not talking about solving anything.I’m talking about the curious experience of watching it. And what that awareness might reveal about how our patterns form in the first place.Because sometimes the most interesting discoveries happen in the moment we simply notice: "Wait... I'm doing it again."==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com==========

Here in Episode 7 of The Everything Experiment™, I found myself thinking about time… very differently.It all started with a documentary about dinosaurs.The Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Dinosaurs ruled the planet for around 165 million years. Humans, by comparison, have existed for only about 300,000 years.On the scale of this planet, we basically just arrived.And yet modern life often operates as if humans are the center of the story... owning land, building civilizations, drawing borders, and assuming our systems are permanent.But when you zoom out far enough, something interesting happens.Things that feel enormous in daily life... careers, titles, industries, ownership, even “success," start to look like temporary human constructs inside a much larger timeline.At the same time, another realization appears.There are over eight billion people on this planet, and every one of them is carrying their own universe of thoughts, fears, hopes, and meaning-making.Which leads to a strange and humbling observation:We are all drastically different… which in theory makes us all the same.This episode explores what happens when perspective expands far enough to soften the human ego, and what that might mean for how we live while we’re here.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

In this episode, I reflect on the way modern life quietly reduces people to performance metrics... how much we produce, how much we accomplish, and whether we’re measuring up to the endless scoreboard of progress.Careers, productivity, KPIs, constant output… it’s easy to wake up one day and realize the entire system is designed to keep us distracted.But once you see the game, a question appears:How long will you keep playing it the same way?This conversation explores the difference between participating in modern life and unconsciously feeding the machine, and how awareness gives us the freedom to change how we play.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

In this episode of The Everything Experiment, I explore a quiet tension many of us feel but rarely name:Are we living our lives, or documenting them?In the digital world, where everything can become content, it’s easy to slip into scanning mode. Instead of being present in a moment, we’re evaluating it. Framing it. Deciding whether it’s worth posting.This conversation centers around the difference between presence and proof, and what happens when you choose to experience something fully instead of turning it into content.I share a simple experiment from a recent weekend: leaving my phone alone, paddle-boarding by myself, eating sushi on the water, and noticing the friction that comes up when you resist the urge to capture everything.What I realized surprised me. The hardest part isn’t being present.It’s pushing through the initial discomfort of not proving that you were.We talk about:The subtle anxiety of not postingWhy we feel like we’ll “miss out” if we don’t documentThe nervous system tension of putting the phone downHow presence actually feels once we settle into itThis episode isn't anti-social media.It’s about awareness. Because the most meaningful moments don’t need proof... They just need your attention.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com ==========

In this episode, I talk about something I didn’t expect:Why does living in alignment sometimes feel harder than staying misaligned?When you start making choices that reflect who you actually are... when you stop performing, stop people-pleasing, and begin stepping into authenticity... friction shows up.Old triggers resurface, your nervous system reacts, and suddenly the aligned path doesn’t feel smooth, it feels uncomfortable.So what’s going on?In this conversation, I explore the internal and external friction that can appear when you change direction in life.We talk about:Why authenticity can activate old woundsThe difference between misalignment and growing painsWhy discomfort doesn’t always mean you’re doing it wrongWhat happens when you embrace triggers instead of discarding themThis episode is about understanding what friction might actually be revealing. Sometimes the resistance isn’t a sign to turn back. It’s a sign you’re finally moving in an honest way.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com

In this episode of The Everything Experiment, I talk candidly about something that’s been unfolding quietly behind the scenes: the realization that I don’t have to become more in order to matter.For years, I’ve felt the subtle pressure to produce, to improve, to optimize, to prove. Modern culture rewards output. Social media amplifies performance. And somewhere along the way, it becomes easy to confuse production with worth.But what happens when you pause long enough to actually listen to your nervous system?In this conversation, I reflect on the transition from an old version of my business into a new one, the shift away from creating for approval, and the quiet freedom that comes from making work that feels honest... not strategic.I also reference an idea from Rick Rubin about creating from authenticity rather than for validation, and how detaching from people-pleasing opens the door to work that has a natural gravitational pull.This episode is about assessing your relationship with creation, achievement, and identity, and asking a simple but uncomfortable question:Who are you doing this for?You are worthy without performing. You are enough without producing. And sometimes the most powerful shift is letting go of who you thought you had to be.==========Keep exploring 🌍austenletourneau.com

For more than 20 years, I was told what I was feeling wasn’t serious. That the pain was normal. That I should wait it out. That I was overreacting.In this episode of The Everything Experiment, I walk through the moment I finally realized that being dismissed, medically, emotionally, and internally, wasn’t normal. I share the full journey that led to my wrist reconstruction surgery: the symptoms, the doubts, the years of minimizing what I felt, and the moment self-advocacy became unavoidable. This isn’t just about a medical decision, it’s about learning to trust your own experience after years of being told not to.We talk about:What long-term dismissal does to your sense of selfThe difference between “pushing through” and honoring your limitsWhy trusting what you feel is often the hardest, and most necessary, stepWhat this experience taught me about speaking up, asking better questions, and choosing myselfThis episode is a reflection on what can happen when you finally listen to your body, and your inner voice, instead of overriding them.If you’ve ever felt unheard, minimized, or unsure whether to trust yourself… this conversation is for you.

Welcome to The Everything Experiment. In this very first episode, we're having a little fireside chat about how the show came to be, what it's all about, and the inspiration that fuels it.I'm so grateful you're here, and I hope you're ready to soak up EVERYTHING life has to offer!==========🌍 Explore What's Possible:https://www.austenletourneau.com/==========