Avi Love is a coach in gender, sexuality, and relationships. She’s also a multidisciplinary artist and a professional writer based in the Bay Area. She grew up at the intersection of tech and art - her grandfather was a software engineer who worked on early military computers, while her grandmother was a prolific painter and her mom a jewellery artist. She spent years running high-level operations in nonprofit behavioural health before transitioning to coaching, and she's explored character animation, film, music, and photography alongside her coaching and writing practice.

Denial about your calling is always rooted in making things hard for yourself - we're taught that what comes naturally must be suspicious. We're trained by misaligned people to distrust the things that flow easily to us, believing they won't make money or won't matter. But your denial is a signal pointing you toward the exact opposite of what you think. The things you do so intuitively you don't notice doing them are your clues - writing, deep conversations, understanding people. Ask yourself: what would I do anyway, even if no one paid me?

Monetise when the world asks you to, not when you preemptively decide it's viable. Don't start by asking "how do I make money from this?" Create first, share your work, and watch for organic signals. People will tell you "you should publish," invite you to show your work, make connections. This is the world asking. Follow that current rather than swimming upstream by planning everything before you've even discovered what it is.

Fear and heartbreak are signs you're in alignment, not out of it - they point to what's deeply meaningful to you. We're culturally conditioned to treat fear as a warning sign to change direction, but most fear in life isn't warning us of danger; it's announcing something that matters. The absence of fear about your job is often more concerning than feeling fear about your calling. Similarly, heartbreak (the small daily kind) is inseparable from love. If you avoid heartbreak, you avoid love.

Play is the foundational nervous system skill that enables everything else: connection, resilience, and breakthrough innovation. Play teaches us we can be activated (excited, energised) while remaining safe and socially connected. Adults who stopped playing years ago have rigid, locked-up nervous systems that collapse under pressure. But people who can laugh in difficult meetings, stay curious, and access play in chaos - they're the ones making discoveries. Richard Feynman's Nobel Prize came from investigating a wobbling food tray out of pure playful curiosity, not from forced rigor.

🙏 Special thanks to our podcast producer James McKinven! (get in touch for all your podcast needs, he’s really great!)