Hi friends. Today we introduce you to @lauralrubin the queen and mastermind behind @allswellcreative. Laura loves the ocean, helping people find their inner voice and calling and Neil young. She is also a cancer survivor with an extremely positive outlook on life and is setting the example of how to live with intention and purpose.
What is paradise?
“Paradise” isn’t some remote concept that requires a private island or the after life. There are so many ways to access paradise in the here-and-now...
Limbs tangled with the person you love most and no plan for the day except a home cooked breakfast.
Wave seeking with friends and a cold beer at the end of a salty day.
Home with family, including all our foibles and weird dynamics, folded into their love.
Be of service. Make something. Learn something.
A clear day in October somewhere breathtaking with a good book and a trail to wander.
Waking with a sense of purpose. Turning in with an honest tired.
Freedom, time and health occurring simultaneously.
Please tell me about Allswell....
I was out on a surf check one morning in Montauk and I got skunked. No waves. But it was a beautiful day so I spread my towel on the beach and journaled instead. I wrote “Swell or no swell, all’s well.” That was the genesis of the brand.
I like to both write and draw and had been looking for one notebook with room to do both but couldn’t find any products with both lined and unlined paper. So, I made some with a printer up in Maine that I knew. I showed the first batch to my a few of my friends with cool stores and they were happy to sell them. Those sold out. I made some more. And those sold out.
It’s been a really organic process. I now have a suite of products to inspire creativity and I lead AllSwell workshops all over the world to help folks connect with their own innate creative voice. And everyone has one, regardless of whether they are a “creative” for a living. That’s where the juicy stuff in life is, the treasure trove that leads to adventure and fulfillment.
Watching folks crack open and connect with that source is the most amazing thing I get to do in my life. It is endlessly humbling, fascinating and beautiful to witness.
Why is journaling important?
I’ve always journaled -- since age 8 -- and I knew it felt good, but wasn’t aware of the science behind it until I started AllSwell and dug into the research. It turns out there’s a whole body of empirical data that shows writing long hand has significant mental, emotional and physiological benefits. For instance, it speeds wound healing, it curbs asthma, it helps cure PTSD, and so on.
These benefits are only derived from putting pen to paper, though. There are synaptic connections in your brain that are made from the motor action of moving your hand across the page. So if you’re tempted by the “Notes” application on your phone by all means go for it but you won’t be getting the same upside as cracking a notebook and busting out a pen or pencil. Good old analog tools are still the best.
What was the biggest realization you had about yourself?
You can have a dream, achieve that dream and then decide you want a new, different dream. Your life is a creative act, one that you keep developing.
What do you need help with most often?
Anything (everything) technology oriented
What’s the most anxiety inducing thing you do on a regular basis?
Drive on the 405
What is the best advice you have ever received?
The best advice I have ever received is about not listening to advice: trust your gut. Don’t know what your gut says? Well then slow down and listen, connect. External wisdom can be helpful but if you aren’t sure what your internal compass looks like then nothing else will work properly.
How do you make yourself sleep when you can’t seem to get to sleep?
I don’t fight it. I turn on the light, pop a CBD gummy and crack a book or open my journal. Eventually sleep finds me.
What’s the worst hairstyle you’ve ever had?
There was super awkward, bushy stage when my hair was growing out after chemotherapy that I will be happy to never revisit. Not even hats helped.
What life skills are rarely taught but extremely useful?What habit do you have now that you wish you started much earlier?
Surfing. I learned as an adult and I envy folks who were fortunate enough to be taught by their fathers or mothers as kids, for whom it’s natural, innate.
What about the opposite sex confuses you the most?
I recently read a study put out by UCLA that journaling is 50% more beneficial to men, most likely because men have so few culturally acceptable avenues for self-expression. This kills me.
Some of the men closest to me have struggled with emotional, financial or physical setbacks and they are unwilling to tell their male friends because of deep levels of shame. As if they’re just supposed to white knuckle it through. But that doesn’t work, it isolates them and makes it harder. Meanwhile, no matter how dark the subject matter if I’m in a bad spot I have several girlfriends on speed dial to hear me out.
This unhealthy disparity in self-expression has got to end and journaling is scientifically proven to help. These men are our partners, fathers, colleagues, sons, brothers. Their suppressed emotional experience affects women on a daily basis. We’re all in this together.
How to cultivate self-worth. Everyone needs to learn how and yet there are so few nourishing, lasting ways (from the inside out rather than the outside in) that we are taught in our culture.
What’s the worst thing you’ve eaten out of politeness?
Gefilte fish. But now I eat it annually more out of a sense of nostalgia than politeness.
What’s your good luck charm?
Being polite.
What’s the oldest thing you own?
A big chunk of amethyst that was passed down to me in the female lineage of my family. It’s of the earth, older than anything I have that was made by human hands.
I recently pulled her off a dusty bookshelf in NYC and brought her back to Venice in my suitcase. I cleaned her up, set her in the sun to “charge” on the front porch of my bungalow and she’s literally brighter, lighter now. She’s happier here in LA, not unlike me.
What’s the most disgusting sounding word in the English language?
Ointment. Say it out loud. Even the shape your mouth makes isn’t appealing. Ick.