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Finding your Chameleon North Star helps you sort through the chaos of online opinions and guides you to the destination you have chosen that is best for you.

Note: This topic is discussed in the weekly Chameleon Academy Newsletter and is reviewed in a Saturday Chameleon Workshop on YouTube. Click here to join in with the weekly newsletter discussions: Chameleon Academy Newsletter sign up

When it comes to keeping chameleons, I’ve found the hardest part isn’t the UVB bulb or the misting schedule. It’s the conflicting opinions. For every question you ask, the internet hands you a dozen different answers, each one confidently declared as fact. So how do you choose the right path for you and your chameleon?

In this week’s episode of the Chameleon Academy Podcast, We go beyond the checklists and into the heart of a critical idea: defining your own North Star.

Your North Star is your personal guiding principle. It isn’t a place you end up, it’s a direction you go in. In chameleon husbandry, this means identifying what you care about most. Is it replicating nature? Ensuring efficiency? Prioritizing survival rates for breeding?

When you know your North Star, it becomes much easier to filter through the noise of online forums and social media. You stop chasing every new trend or feeling like you have to defend your decisions in every debate. Instead, you build a husbandry strategy that aligns with your values and stick to it.

Without a North Star, it’s easy to get lost. Confident voices online can seem persuasive even if they don’t align with what you want for your animals. One minute you’re trying to enrich your chameleon’s enclosure, and the next you’re being told to strip it down to just the basics. That kind of whiplash is exhausting and unnecessary.

Having a North Star empowers you to make decisions with intention. Instead of reacting to every piece of advice, you begin to ask, “Does this serve my direction?” If it does, great. If it doesn’t, you move on.

I review what I see as the major “North Stars” in our chameleon community and talk about how online culture distorts judgment and can confuse and mislead well-meaning keepers.

I share my own guiding principle: naturalistic husbandry. I’m not trying to create a jungle in every living room, but I do aim to match captive conditions as closely as possible to the environmental patterns chameleons evolved with. Hydration, lighting, diet, enrichment, it’s all part of building systems that support long-term health and behavioral fulfillment.

I’m not satisfied with setups that simply keep a chameleon alive. I want to create conditions that allow them to thrive in ways that reflect their natural patterns. Nature is the benchmark and I adjust based on what the animal has evolved to expect.

If you’ve ever tried to find consensus in the online chaos I hope this episode offers some relief. By helping you identify what matters most to you, it gives you a filter. It gives you something you can use to evaluate advice instead of being pulled in every direction.

This episode is about how we live, learn, and make decisions. Whether you’re new to the hobby or years into the journey, defining your North Star is one of the most empowering moves you can make.

Thank you for being part of this chameleon academy outreach. As always, every week has a topic which is presented in the weekly chameleon academy email newsletter. You can join the conversation by subscribing tot the newsletter yourself. The newsletter is a serious outreach for me. I know you are used to getting newsletters that are haphazardly thrown together to check a to-do box. But I put a great deal of effort into figuring out what is best for the community, where I want to take my herpetoculture, and writing substantial educational newsletters. So, try it out and see if it gives you the chameleon fix you are looking for!

And with that, I think it is time to send you back out into the world to be excellent to each other!

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