what are you really chasing?

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Hello love,

As a kid, I used to walk around my bedroom several times a year with a big garbage bag, picking up whatever wasn't serving me anymore and throwing it away.

It would drive my mother crazy (she wanted to save everything "just in case") but I'm quite ruthless when it comes to pruning the trees.

September, January, Spring, New moons, every Monday... it's a new possibility to start anew, to do better - more intentionally, more aligned, kinder to myself.

Because my biggest fear is living a life that isn't a reflection of what I truly want and wasting it on things that don't really matter.

The balance between rhythm and flexibility

Homeschooling my kids means a strong daily routine and at the same time being flexible. Sometimes one needs more loving attention, the other needs more physical activity, or I need a break we hadn't planned for. Recently, I made my youngest skip two classes because he seemed bored with his age-appropriate materials.

I'm in constant search of what works now for us rather than general rules to apply forever.

In business, it's the same.

We need to listen to the cues and tweak accordingly.

The trick is finding the sweet balance between never letting go of things that don't work for you anymore... and pursuing every new shiny thing.

The fresh start trap

We live in a world of immediate gratification, so of course we feel lost when we don't see immediate results. We fear that maybe they'll never come, so we look for new directions, new solutions, often outside of us.

Like when you follow a recipe but the cake looks nothing like the picture.

Instead of checking your baking time or your ingredients proportion, you constantly change the recipe, not letting yourself have leverage on anything, then conclude none of this works.

But what if instead of running towards a new recipe, you'd press pause and ask yourself the right questions for real alignment?

Aligned vs. fear-based fresh starts

An aligned fresh start is about slowing down and noticing.

It's listening within for your own direction, your own wisdom, softly, slowly, with one grounded step in front of the other.

A fear-based fresh start, by contrast, is always made in a hurry - like an impulse, a knee-jerk reaction to something you've perceived is wrong, and a subconscious avoidance of the real deep work.

The questions that matter

If you're a serial starter, let me ask you: "What are you chasing? What are you trying to escape?" There's another way to live, which doesn't involve hunting. Instead, you could cultivate a garden planting only the produce you love.

If you resist change and cleaning up the weeds: "Why are you so scared to listen to yourself? When have you lost faith in your capacity to make the difference between a shiny object and something that doesn't bring you joy?"

The real work: process over results

What it really takes to stay in for the long haul is the inner work of becoming comfortable with the present moment.

Learning to sit in the discomfort of no result. Coming back to the process, finding your joy there, accepting that good things take time, just like trees take years to grow before they give us oxygen.

Developing patience, a longer-term vision, and the unshakable belief that if you keep walking with joy and intention, you will find results in the end.

When you focus only on the process, you make better decisions.

For instance, some people stopped writing their blogs or newsletters, not because they didn't love it but because it didn't bring instant likes. If they had focused on the process and not on the results, they would have kept going and by now this would have become their biggest asset in their sustainable business.

Another example is social media: if you do it because you love the process regardless of the results, great, keep going. But if you don't like doing it, or you don't like how it makes you feel, forget about the results and just stop. Keep that energy for something you love and that you can keep doing for a long time.

It's that simple. Not easy, but simple.

Your micro-choices matter

I'll tell you this: you have agency, and what you fill your days with - the activities you do, the feelings you have, the thoughts you nurture - it has a huge impact. On your nervous system, on your cells, on the energy you feel and exchange with others.

The kind of life you lead, the person you become, it's all connected to the micro-choices you keep making day after day after day, consciously or subconsciously.

Make sure these micro-choices are based in joy and meaning.

So your life gets to be something beautiful, and soft, and deeply deeply aligned.

Power and light,

Jessica