An algorithm doesn't know what abundance means to you (or to me)
Fairy Falls-Yellowstone NP July 2026. Photo credit: OSS.
It was the fifth day of vacation. We were biking along a beautiful trail that circled Lake Payette in Idaho. Through a pristine forest full of pines and wildflowers, with squirrels darting around and my dog Trufa running happily beside us. Then, out of nowhere, I started hearing a little voice: "While you're here, others are moving ahead. You're losing your presence on LinkedIn. The algorithm punishes. Everything you built these months is going to cool off."
I just came back from six weeks living in the forests of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming with my family. For seven years now, every summer, we take this kind of trip, something we've decided to protect almost like a ritual. It's not a comfortable trip - camp life definitely isn't - but I love it because I get to savor something more intensely, something that fades during the rest of the year: the feeling of simply being.
These weeks move at a different pace. We live differently, we improvise more. We spend the day in nature. We hike for hours, swim in cold lakes and rivers, cook together, play games, bike, kayak, paddleboard, build campfires, read, talk without watching the clock, stare at impossibly starry skies and count shooting stars. We also get tired, get frustrated, and argue as we relearn how to live together inside the camper.
For me, life in nature has paradoxes I love: it's simple AND challenging. You have fewer things AND you feel like you have more.
And I also love it because it tests me on something that has become central to who I am: living in the abundance of embracing the "AND."
Before every trip, I assume that surrounding myself with mountains, forests, and lakes will be enough to silence the noise inside. And I'm wrong.
Changing the scenery doesn't change the conversation
Changing the scenery doesn't automatically change the internal conversations we're constantly exposed to. We can be in the most beautiful place in the world and, without realizing it, fall into the same mental race as always.
As a coach, I hear that conversation. The people, professions, and circumstances change, but the message is remarkably similar: you're behind, you're not doing enough, someone already passed you.
And I'm not immune either.
What did I do?
Starting that day, I went back to my city practices that help me reconnect with myself: meditating for 15 minutes every morning and writing to "empty my brain" of thoughts I don't want there.
And this summer, after the little voice incident, I added something new: I started saying my WHY and my HOWs out loud every morning, which I discovered through Simon Sinek's methodology. At home I have them written in front of my desk, and I anchor myself in them every day, because they help me remember who I am, what matters to me, and from where I want to make my decisions.
One of my HOWs is: "enjoy the river"
It's a simple phrase, but for me it holds a complete philosophy. It reminds me that I want to build a life where the goal doesn't steal the present, the joy of the here and now.
That day, hearing that annoying little voice, I stopped in the middle of the trail and told myself: "Sofía, enjoy the river." It made me smile. Because I realized the trap. My WHY is to expand people's view of what is possible...and this voice was inviting me to shrink my own vision to the number of posts on a social network.
It's one of the traps my WHY and HOWs help me escape.
Living your WHY is living in abundance
During these days I've thought a lot about what abundance means. Deepak Chopra describes it as a state of consciousness, and points out that true abundance happens when we feel joy, health, and a sense of purpose and vitality in every moment of our lives.
We live in a culture that invites us to measure abundance in other terms: more income, more productivity, more followers, more recognition. But we rarely stop to ask ourselves whether that definition truly makes sense to us.
My definition embraces what Deepak Chopra describes and becomes tangible when I integrate what I consider important to me. I feel abundant loving my work AND enjoying my family. Building a purpose-driven business AND having entire weeks to lose myself in forests. When I keep growing professionally AND give myself space to walk, contemplate, simply be.
I feel abundance when I live the freedom of the "AND."
A lesson I wasn't expecting
On one of the last hikes of the trip, this time in Yellowstone, with bear spray always within reach, an idea appeared that I wasn't expecting.
My husband and I were talking about our three kids as we made our way along the trail. When we arrived, we were greeted by an imposing waterfall that cascaded down to form a small lake of crystal-clear water. We looked at each other, dared each other, and we jumped in fully clothed, shoes and all.
It was really really cold.
We laughed like kids, and I thought: this is abundance. This thing that costs nothing... and at the same time, is worth everything.
On the way back, still soaking wet and happy, the conversation returned to our kids. We're raising them with the same values, the same rules, the same love. And yet, they are profoundly different. Each one learns differently, gets excited about different things, and needs different things. And it would never occur to us to think that one of them is wrong simply because they don't resemble their siblings.
That's when the idea hit me: businesses and careers work in a similar way.
Nature never produces two identical trees. No river tries to copy the course of another. No mountain tries to look like the one next to it.
Why do we believe there's a universal recipe for success?
Social media is full of well-intentioned people sharing strategies that worked for them. And many of them are excellent. The problem begins when we confuse inspiration with imitation. When we stop asking ourselves what makes sense for us and start assuming that if we don't follow someone else's exact path (or what an algorithm dictates), we're doing it wrong.
That's where scarcity shows up. Scarcity always invites us to look outward. Unlike your WHY, which invites you to look inward.
The algorithm will probably keep rewarding frequency because it doesn't know and never will know what abundance means to me.
Come back to yourself. Ask: what kind of life do I want to build? What are my values? What do I define as success and fulfillment?
Fewer posts, more life
I came back from this vacation having posted 3 or 4 times, as many as I wanted, far fewer than what LinkedIn says the algorithm rewards. But I also came back more connected with my kids, with my husband, with nature, with myself, and with more and more ideas and energy to keep living my WHY, my purpose, fully.
And even more convinced that true success and fulfillment is not about winning someone else's game. It's about having the courage to play my own.
Because when you know who you are: why you do what you do, how you want to achieve it, and what you want to give to this world, you stop blindly following other people's recipes and start creating your own, the one that makes you feel abundant.
And that feels good.
✎ What voice shows up when you stop? And what practice helps you come back to yourself?
