Welcome to Our Best Life Project! We’re a family on a mission to live with more intention, joy, and adventure—and we’re blogging the journey along the way. Alongside our stories, we’ll bring in a little science about happiness, habits, and how the brain works, so we can build not just a good life, but our very best one.
About the Project
The Our Best Life Project is a yearlong journey to take the best of neuroscience and psychology—and actually live it. Each week, we focus on one simple, science-backed theme, things like building healthy habits, eating for energy, practicing gratitude, strengthening relationships, sparking creativity, and finding joy in everyday life.
Weeks we’ve completed to date:
What began with my family is now an open invitation—for anyone ready to feel healthier, happier, and more connected than ever.
About Me
Hi, I’m Adriane. I’m a neuroscience Ph.D., wife, mom of three, and former psychology professor. For nearly two decades, I’ve studied how the brain learns, adapts, and thrives—and I’ve always been particularly fascinated by all the ways science can help us live better lives.
Our Best Life Project grew out of a simple but powerful realization: it’s not enough to know what the research says—we have to live it. I wanted my family’s everyday life to reflect the best of what science teaches us about health, happiness, and human flourishing. So I began weaving together evidence from neuroscience, psychology, and biology to plan weekly exercises we could actually use at home. Thus began our journey to apply research-backed strategies to our life for 52 weeks straight.
I will share the Our Best Life Project journey as both a scientist and a mom, combining evidence-based insights with the realities of raising a family. My hope is to make complex science simple, practical, and inspiring—so that we can all move from just getting through the days to truly living our best lives.
Blog
Welcome to Our Best Life Project Blog!
Week 4: Food
Goals: Try a Plant Diversity Challenge competition as a family. Have the kids create healthier breakfast and snack ideas they’re actually excited about. In Week 4, our focus shifted to another cornerstone of well-being: nutrition. What does healthy eating mean? I was recently reading Super Agers by Eric Topol and he defined a research-based healthy …
Week 3: Exercise
Goals: Schedule workouts on the calendar and try a new family activity together My graduate work focused on the effects of cardiovascular disease risk factors on age-related memory decline. Spoiler alert: it’s not good! I often summarize six years of research with the phrase, “What’s bad for your heart is also bad for your brain.” …
Week 2: Sleep
Goals: Strengthen sleep hygiene (especially optimizing the sleep environment), lengthen sleep opportunities for everyone, and stick to a consistent wake-up time each day. Whenever I teach a course, I end by asking students to share one thing they learned that changed their behavior or perspective. In Intro Psych, the most common answer is almost always …
Contact
Feel free to reach out to get more information about Our Best Life Project!