Dr. Carolyn Kurle holds degrees in Zoology, German Literature, Wildlife Science, and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. She is a tenured biology professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She is the author of dozens of scientific articles investigating what animals eat and where they spend their time and she and the members of her research lab use that information to better inform conservation strategies for imperiled species and habitats.Dr. Kurle teaches hundreds of UCSD students every year. Working with these remarkable people helped inspire her to write The Guidance Groove as numerous truly outstanding, brilliant, hard-working, and beautiful UCSD students struggle with feelings of inadequacy, obligation, scarcity, and unworthiness and exhibit many of the behaviors that stem from adherence to the Unproductive Grooves detailed in her book. The stories dominating their thoughts are clearly untrue but still dictate so many of their behaviors, thereby causing inauthenticity, unhappiness, imposter syndrome, and disconnection. Dr. Kurle's goal in writing The Guidance Groove is to teach everyone to recognize the false stories we tell ourselves so we can learn to stop believing them and discover where they come from and how they breed inauthenticity. We never quiet our minds completely, but we can learn to recognize when our false thoughts steer our choices, then choose instead to act from a place of authenticity. With practice, this process becomes more automatic, until it takes only the briefest moment to think a thought, realize it's untrue, and go deeper into what is actually true before making a choice. We can then navigate life from a place of authentic wholeness, and ease, contentment, and joy will naturally arise.Dr. Kurle is also a mother to her son, Jeremiah. She loves reading, connecting with her loved-ones, nature, and hiking, especially in Mt. Rainier National Park and on the beach. She regularly rides her bicycle, rows on an ergometer, and walks because she loves movement for its vast ability to connect with everything around her and to integrate her body, mind, and feelings for creating a more whole self from which to approach the world.
