What Nature Teaches Us with Amber Vilhauer

The host introduces Amber Vilhauer as a business strategist and author who has spent 20 years helping impact-driven leaders bring their authentic voices into the world. She co-authored What Nature Teaches Us with her son, Clay, focusing on emotional resilience, connection, and hope. Asked what she believes about success that most people disagree with, Amber says “resistance is data”: fear and hesitation indicate the direction in which someone may find their greatest potential, light, and return. Amber reinforces the point with a fortune-cookie message she remembers: “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” Rather than treating fear as a reason to stop, she encourages listeners to interpret it as information about the growth they need to pursue. The host connects this idea to their long relationship, mentioning that Amber helped make his book The Common Path to Uncommon Success successful and has participated in his Puerto Rico mastermind community. He says the conversation is especially fitting because Amber is speaking from the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by the kind of nature that became central to her work with Clay.

Amber traces the project back to Clay’s childhood. His first word was “light,” which she interpreted as an early sign that he would lead a life of love and impact. When Clay was six, he ran into the kitchen while Amber was making pancakes and announced that he wanted to write a book. He had been reading Dragons Love Tacos, noticed that it was a New York Times bestseller, and decided he wanted to do the same. Although Amber launches books professionally, she had never written a children’s book, so she used the forest trails and asked Clay questions about what he wanted to teach, whether the story should include animals or people, and what happens when people feel good or bad. Their first book, The Long Forest Trail, became a story about a mother and son facing obstacles while practicing a positive mindset and perseverance. Clay eventually chose the dedication, “Be the light.” He then set a goal of distributing 10,000 copies in the first year. Amber laughed because she knew how difficult that would be, but she organized a silent-auction fundraiser that raised $40,000—enough to purchase 10,000 books to give to children’s hospitals and Boys & Girls Clubs. After roughly 15,000 copies had been distributed, eight-year-old Clay asked to do it again, “but bigger.”

For the second book, Amber and Clay returned to the trails and treated nature as a source of questions rather than simply scenery. Amber would point to an element such as the sun, clouds, flowers, or rocks and ask Clay what it was modeling for people. Clay’s answers supplied the book’s lessons: the sun does not choose who or what to warm; it shines on everything, while clouds carry heavy things and still move forward. Amber wrote down these observations during a year of walks, and What Nature Teaches Us emerged as a collection of 15 natural elements and the principles they model. Amber says the result began as a children’s book but became a “gifting book” for people of any age who are asking life questions. She describes its form as closer to profound poetry than a conventional story. Nature also became personally important to her after she moved into a neighborhood with few mature trees, flowers, or bushes and felt anxious among the cookie-cutter homes. After redesigning her backyard and bringing living plants into her home, she felt her nervous system relax. The effect became even clearer after she and Clay found a cabin in the Rocky Mountains. One entrepreneurial lesson she draws from trees is that they “sway in community,” a counterpoint to the individualistic idea that people should focus only on themselves and their families.

The host asks why emotional resilience should be developed intentionally rather than left to chance, especially for children growing up in a different environment from their parents’ generation. Amber answers by pointing to adults’ own struggles with change and disruption: many people are frozen, fearful, or “burying their heads in the sand.” If adults have difficulty regulating emotions and adapting, they cannot expect children to develop those skills automatically. She is particularly concerned that children spend so much time with screens and artificial intelligence instead of practicing real-world connection and problem-solving. Amber says parents have a responsibility to model emotional regulation and to create opportunities for children to develop resilience. Her preferred method is to move children away from screens and into nature, then ask questions rather than supply all the answers. If a child discovers an insight from trees, clouds, or sunlight, that idea can become personally meaningful and may help when the child faces social pressure at school, conflict between parents, loneliness, or other difficult experiences. The host praises Amber and Clay for actually taking the walks and doing the work behind the book instead of merely making abstract claims about nature.

Clay wants What Nature Teaches Us to become part of a movement in which families “choose the light.” For him, choosing the light means deciding to be a better person and to inspire others. His practical proposal is for families to get off screens, spend time in nature, and have parents ask children questions that draw out their own ideas. He also wants more children to write children’s books. Amber says the important dinner-table or bedtime conversations are not lectures but curious questions about children’s thoughts, feelings, desires, and interpretations of what is happening at home, at school, in the community, and in the wider world. Amber sees the book as a resource for educators, school counselors, mental-health professionals, therapists, children’s hospitals, waiting rooms, schools, and homeschool curricula. She says educators in several countries have already shown interest in using the book and its possible curriculum to teach children how to write, publish, and launch books. Because the book uses poetry, she believes it can offer an entry point for people facing many kinds of questions, including what to do with a business, how to handle a relationship, or how to become a better parent. The host adds that teachers should emphasize that the book was written by a child, since children may be especially inspired by seeing someone their own age create it.

Asked what “be the light” means personally, Amber describes the experience of being present for someone, offering an open heart, and watching that person’s mood and physical state change because of the interaction. For her, being the light is a discipline of keeping her heart open despite having experienced pain and suffering. She wants to lead with love and generosity and bring her highest, best self to each moment—whether she is with Clay, the host, or a stranger. Amber argues that people communicate their internal state even when they do not say it directly. She compares this to the feeling when a difficult or unpleasant person enters a room and everyone senses that the person’s “light is not on.” Because emotional states affect other people, she says individuals have a responsibility to work through difficult thoughts and feelings rather than harden themselves or pass their pain along. An open heart and a brighter inner state can make other people’s experiences better, and that response can spread as they become more generous themselves. Amber believes this interpersonal ripple effect can do more to heal the planet than relying only on governance, compliance, or external systems. For next steps, she directs listeners to ChooseTheLight.com, where they can learn about What Nature Teaches Us, scheduled to launch October 13, and the planned six-state book-launch tour. She also offers free workshops on writing, publishing, and launching bestselling children’s books, and invites entrepreneurs to discuss books they have “on their heart.” She says children’s books are faster to write, cheaper to publish, and can support significant sales or revenue, although her own model with Clay is primarily a give-back project.