About Laurel
Find the magic in ordinary days.
Even the boring Tuesdays.
Most high-achievers don’t struggle because they haven’t accomplished enough. They’ve built the career, the business, the life that looks right on paper.
They struggle because somewhere in all that achieving, they lost the thread to their own life. They’re not broken. They’re just moving too fast to feel any of it.
So they keep optimizing. Chasing the next milestone. Waiting for some future moment to finally feel like enough.
That’s the gap I write about.
Hi, I’m Laurel – Canadian entrepreneur with a primatology degree, a business degree, and a master’s in adult education, living in Europe for the past 16 years. I run two businesses, hike mountains most weekends, and spent years mastering the art of accomplishing everything except actually enjoying my life. This is the story of how that changed.
👉 The magic was never in the milestone – it was in the ordinary day you rushed past to get there
👉 You don’t need a bigger life. You need to actually notice the one you have
The Real Story
I built a life that looked perfect from the outside. I was still missing all of it.
Here’s the version nobody puts in their bio: I left a well-paid job at a university, moved to Germany for love, and built something entirely my own – Monkeys and Mountains, an adventure travel blog that grew into one of Europe’s leading hiking tour companies. Nearly 16 years in, I’ve helped over a million hikers explore Europe.
From the outside, it looked like I’d made it. Freedom, an international business, mountains every weekend. What actually happened is I worked harder than I ever had, for a fraction of what I used to earn, and I was too busy running the business to notice I wasn’t living the life it was supposed to buy me.
Some of that “freedom” looked like getting paid to travel – part of running a travel blog is that brands invite you on trips, and yes, it’s as good as it sounds, most of the time. But there’s a strange tax nobody warns you about. The first time I stood in front of a castle in Germany, I felt genuine awe. By the hundredth castle, I caught myself mentally drafting the caption instead of actually looking at it. I’d quietly traded wonder for content, and I didn’t notice until most of it was gone.
Then COVID hit. Borders closed. Running an international hiking company became impossible overnight – the hardest stretch of my entrepreneurial life, one I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I pivoted into something completely unexpected: hosting online talks about monkeys, drawing on a primatology degree I hadn’t touched in a decade. It kept the lights on. But it also did something I didn’t expect – it reconnected me with a part of myself I’d sidelined for years of hustle.
That gap is what I’ve spent the years since trying to close – using the same evolutionary psychology lens I studied in primatology, because personal growth makes a lot more sense once you understand how humans are actually wired, instead of how the self-help books say we should be.
Here’s what my actual weeks look like now – and it took a long time, and a lot of unlearning, to get here:
That’s what I want for you too – not another optimization system. Just permission to notice the life you’re already living.
What I Do Now
Personal growth, seen through an evolutionary lens.
I look at personal development the way I was trained to look at primates – through evolutionary psychology and the neuroscience of how behavior and belief actually change – not generic wellness language. I write, and build AI tools, for people who are high-achieving but quietly disconnected from their own lives. Not broken. Just moving too fast.
Personal growth through an evolutionary lens
20+ years studying how humans actually work – through evolutionary psychology and the neuroscience of behavior change – not another self-help framework borrowed from someone else’s life.
Finding the magic in ordinary days
The whole philosophy behind Magic Moments: you don’t need a bigger life. You need to actually notice the one you have – starting with the most ordinary Tuesday.
AI tools for real life
I use AI in unconventional ways – as a decision-making partner, an identity-change coach, even a dating pattern-recognition tool – and I build those same tools for the people who read this site.
What I’m Really Good At
You don’t need to be fixed. You need someone to talk to you like an adult, and a few tools that actually help. That’s what this is.
Why the AI Tools Actually Matter
AI isn’t here to optimize you. It’s here to help you actually notice your life.
I didn’t start building AI tools because I love technology. I started because I kept reaching for the same insight at 11pm – “what am I actually doing, and why” – and realized an AI that remembered my patterns could reflect that back to me faster than I could figure it out myself.
So I built a journal that notices you mention feeling stuck every Sunday. A tool that reads a conversation and tells you the truth about the pattern you’re in. Not therapy. Not a wellness app. Just an honest second opinion, built by someone who tested it on her own life first.
The best personal growth tools are built around how you actually behave – not how you’re supposed to behave. Evolutionary psychology and the neuroscience of real behavior change, not vision boards.
Most high-achievers aren’t stuck because they lack insight. They’re stuck because they’re moving too fast to use it. That’s the gap these tools close.When the weather is too good to sit inside, I close the laptop and go. Noticing that this counts as a full life is basically the whole philosophy.
I have a degree in primatology. I still take trips to observe monkeys in the wild – it’s where a lot of the evolutionary-psychology lens in my writing actually comes from.
Friends, a glass of something cold, zero notifications. This is a magic moment. It doesn’t need to be more than that.
My cats have strong opinions about my schedule. I’ve learned that this, too, counts as a well-lived Tuesday.
This is what the Magic Moments philosophy actually means in practice – not chasing bigger moments, just noticing the ones already happening.
If You’re Here…
You’re probably already doing well. You’re just not fully feeling it yet.
Maybe your life looks right on paper – the career, the relationship, the routine – and you still feel like you’re watching it from a slight distance.
Or maybe you’re just tired of being told to optimize your way to happiness.
That’s exactly who this is for.
No wellness jargon. No 5am wake-up calls. Just a different way of looking at your own ordinary days.
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