Momma, I'm coming home early 🏡
In saying yes to my business, I said yes to showing up as my best self, which means yes to stability, and yes to going where I can get stability. Any other choice leads us away from the goal.
Hello, my good people!
Apologies for what has seemed like a prolonged absence. The last two months have been a bit of a whirlwind and I’m just now catching some much-needed downtime to write.
May was a month full of hard decisions and June has been a month of reorienting myself to best align for success. Decisions were hard because I misunderstood the consequences of my initial decisions (that I made months ago) and ended up in the present day with a set of choices I would’ve preferred not to select from.
I’d like to blame this on poor planning, but the reality is I made the best calls I could with all the information I had at the time. The issue was that I never updated the game plan once new knowledge was obtained.
Decisions are trees that branches of choice stem from. I planted all these trees but now there are unexpected issues that I can’t necessarily afford and instead of creating a new plan, which could result in cutting down and replanting some trees, I just continued to iterate and make choices based on the old one. But I’ll circle back to this in a bit.
In the last newsletter, I wrote how I ultimately chose to rest in London as opposed to keep exploring Europe, which was a great choice, but it gave me time to realize that outside of that particular decision, many leading up to that were done without much thought. I said yes or no to things without fully acknowledging the potential consequences that could arise from it.
So let’s talk about them:
Decision 1: Because I said yes to traveling wherever my heart desired, what suffered by default were things that required consistency; my writing, yoga practice, and pottery. Writing and yoga required energy that traveling didn’t always allow. I was often inspired but rarely energized to act on it. Pottery requires time. To see a single piece through to completion can take weeks.
These things matter to me because they keep me grounded with a sense of stability and act as an outlet for me. Given the lack of outer stability I referred to not having previously, you can see how also not having these things further contributed to that feeling.
This leads us perfectly to my more recent decision…
Decision 2: Because I said yes in March to co-found a company, I didn’t realize the inherent yes that came with it until May; yes to cutting my time in Europe short. In hindsight, there was no way this wasn’t the outcome but I’ll say in my being overly optimistic, I figured I could power through and keep both dreams afloat. In reality, I was way over my head and my extended rest time in London helped me see that.
What I needed to operate at my best self was stability. Stability is the one thing I haven’t had while here, so I made the hard choice to cut my trip short and come back to the States. Whew. Yes, I cried about that. But my business was a tree I wanted to be planted, so the decision that followed was not easy, but it was simple.
As Trevor talks about in his book, It Takes What It Takes, if you want certain things for yourself, the work requires what it requires. He speaks on the illusion of choice and how in most things, we actually have a lot less choice than we think we do.
When you say yes to getting a car, you also say yes to paying for gas and maintenance. In saying yes to being a student-athlete, you say yes to the 4:45 am practices. In saying yes to my business, I said yes to showing up as my best self, which means yes to stability, and yes to going where I can get stability. Any other choice leads us away from the goal.
After I made the decision I’d be coming home months earlier than expected, I gave myself 3 weeks to finish my European tour, which consisted of me traveling to Florence, Venice, Rome, Paris, and Brussels to see Queen B herself! I touched back down stateside two weeks ago and have been laying low in a much-needed state of recovery.
I said a lot in this newsletter and this feels more of a brain dump than my usual writing, but the TLDR is to be mindful of your decisions and how they may impact the things you value. Be conscious of the trees you plant and both the fruit and weeds they’ll bear. I came across this last week from Farnam Street and found it extremely helpful:
The new way I’ve been framing all of this for myself is, what trees do I want to plant and at what cost? Hopefully, this may help you prune a bit yourself!
With love always,
Jamie ✈️ 🌎
Questions I’m thinking through:
What trees do I intentionally want to plant?
What fruit do I want them to bear?
What am I actively and potentially giving up when planting these trees?
Links I’m loving:
It Takes What It Takes - Book ( I LIVE BY THIS BOOK!!)
Second-Order Thinking - Article
The illusion of Choice - Article
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Well timed and much needed for myself. Appreciate your insights, always!