GIRL...sometimes you don’t have a clarity problem anymore. You have a movement problem.

I’m a self-proclaimed procrastinator, and not because I want to drag my feet on important decisions. My brain is just overflowing with so many amazing ideas that choosing just a few of them feels like I’m abandoning the others. Making a decision can be overwhelming.

What I’ve realized is there is a point where preparation stops being responsible and starts becoming protection.

Yes, there is information you can gather before you move, and then there is information that simply does not exist yet because you haven’t moved.

You get to the point where another hour of thinking cannot answer the question.

The experience of doing it has to answer it.

That’s where my 70% Ready Rule comes in.

And no, 70% is not a scientific measurement so please do not ask me for the formula. 😭 I use it as a reminder that I do not need to be completely certain before I move. Somewhere along the way, I started treating certainty like a requirement when really, I just need enough information for the next move.

The goal isn’t to move recklessly, although doing it scared can feel reckless. It’s to recognize when you have enough information for the next move, even if you don’t have certainty about the whole future.

First, shrink the decision

A lot of us are trying to feel ready for an entire life change when life is only asking us to make one move.

“I want to start a business” feels enormous. “ Send the offer to three people” is a move.

“I think I want to leave my job” feels enormous. “Update my résumé and talk to one person in the industry” is a move.

“I want to move to another city” feels enormous. “Book a weekend there and explore three neighborhoods” is a move.

We keep asking: Am I ready for everything that could happen after this? When a much more useful question is:

What is one move I could make that would give me new information?

That is a very different assignment because you do not have to know whether the idea will succeed before you send the pitch. You do not have to know whether you’ll love a city for the next ten years before you spend four days there.

You do not need a guarantee. But you do need enough information to make the next honest move.

Then figure out what’s actually stopping you

One of the tools I use when I’m overwhelmed and hesitating on a decision is to sort it into three buckets: Fear. Friction. Fact. Because all hesitation does not deserve the same response.

Fear sounds like: What if I embarrass myself? What if they say no? What if I choose wrong? What if it doesn’t work? Fear may need support. It does not automatically mean stop.

Friction is very practical: You don’t know who to email, the application is annoying, you don’t know what to say, you need childcare. The first step feels unnecessarily complicated, so friction usually needs a plan.

And then there are real facts: You cannot afford it yet, you need a license, the deadline passed. There is critical information you genuinely do not have, and maybe your current capacity truly cannot hold it. Facts need to be dealt with. We do not affirm our way around them.

The problem is that we often throw all three into one giant bucket called “I’m not ready.”

But I’m scared, this is inconvenient, and there is a real barrier I need to address are three completely different situations and once you know which one you’re dealing with, the next move usually gets a lot clearer.

Some clarity only comes after movement

This is the part I still have to keep reminding myself.

We love a clean trajectory, so ideally we want the order to be:

I’ve seen this in my own business. I launched an offer that did not go the way I wanted it to go. (See: “The Launch Flopped. I Booked a Euro Summer.”) But I could not have learned what that launch had to teach me by endlessly tweaking it in a Google Doc. I had to put the thing into the world!

The launch flopping was information. Would I have preferred slightly more flattering information? Absolutely. 😂 But it was real, and real information gives you something to work with. That’s the whole point.

You send the pitch. You have the conversation. You publish the thing. You make the move. And now you know something you simply could not have known while sitting at home thinking about it.

Most times the result isn’t even the most important evidence.

Keeping your word to yourself and tolerating the discomfort are building something unshakable in you. You tried something without knowing exactly how it would end, and then you learned what happened next.

The result isn’t always straight A’s on our internal scorecard. Sometimes the behavior is the receipt.

That’s part of how you build a life you’re obsessed with. This is how self-trust gets built. You don’t suddenly become a person who knows the right answer every time. You become a person who trusts herself to respond to whatever the answer turns out to be.

A quick note before we all become reckless

The 70% Ready Rule is not “well, I have a good feeling about this, YOLO.”

There are decisions where more information is absolutely necessary: your health, money, contracts, legal decisions, safety—anything where the consequences deserve real due diligence should get it.

The point is not to stop preparing. The point is to notice when preparation has stopped producing useful information and started protecting you from the discomfort of choosing.

A question I’ve found useful is simply: Would the information I’m waiting for actually change my next move?

If yes, go get it. That’s preparation.

If no? Fren. You might just be hiding in the research. 😭

So, are you 70% ready?

Think about the decision, idea, or next step you keep coming back to but haven’t acted on yet. Not your entire five-year plan. The thing.

What is one move that would give you new information? And what is actually stopping you: Fear? Friction? Or Fact?

We’re not solving the rest of your life today. You’re just mustering up enough to take the next step forward.

Because, yes, sometimes clarity arrives before you move …and sometimes? Clarity sharpens because you moved.

P.S. If you read this far and you’re like, Alicia, but I have five different things pulling at me and I can’t tell which one deserves my attention! Well, I made something for that.

My free Messy Middle Audit will help you get a clearer read on what season you’re actually in and where your capacity needs to go next.

Then you can make the move from there.

Life would smack me in the face. I start spiraling about whatever looming impossible decision I’d have to make. Sometimes i’d feel a nudge about how I should move forward. But before I had even given myself enough time to sit with it, pray about it or hear myself think… I was calling somebody.

Okay, so what do you think this means?

Do you think I should do it?

Does this feel like God to you?

I called it seeking wise counsel and sometimes it was! But most times….I was looking for somebody else to make me feel certain.

So Now What…

So how did I break the cycle of codependency in my decision making.

I was already an avid journaler, but I started doing it with a different intention. Years earlier, I’d read Calling in “The One”, and there was an exercise in the book called God Letters that had always stayed with me. The idea was pretty simple: you write to God — or whatever higher power means something to you. For me, that’s God, and you ask specific questions.

Not, What do you have for me in life? SPECIFIC.

I would write out everything I was thinking first, almost like I was clearing the noise out of my head. Then I’d write the questions I actually wanted an answer to.

And I ended every letter the same way:

Dear God, please speak to me through this pen.

Then I’d put the pen down. I’d close my eyes, take somewhere between three and ten deep breaths, and just sit there still for a minute. I wasn’t trying to hunt for an answer or force some big spiritual revelation. I was really just trying to ground myself and quiet my thoughts enough to listen. Then I’d pick the pen back up and start writing.

I’m talking full steam of consciousness, I wouldn’t stop to edit it or analyze it. Whatever came to me, I wrote.

The wild part was that it always felt like the God met me on the paper and through my pen.

Thoughts would emerge that I hadn’t considered. I’d get affirmation and encouragement when I’m normally so hard on myself. Perspectives I hadn’t imagined floated to the surface. Sometimes the tone was even very much:

Now, girl. 😂

And I would laugh because… okay. You know your children, Lord. You know how to speak uniquely to each of us.

Surprisingly sometimes what came through wasn’t an answer at all. It was a prompting.

Call this person today. Huh, I haven’t talked to them in a while.

Go visit this location within the week. Okay, completely random.

Buy this now. Can I afford it?!

What I started noticing was that those promptings often led to my next step.

I wouldn’t always get the full answer sitting there with my journal. Sometimes I’d get a direction and then I had to decide whether I trusted what I heard enough to move on it. That became part of the practice too.

I’d make the call, go to the place or buy the thing and often, once I followed the prompting, something I needed or didn’t know I needed yet would be revealed!

It started to feel almost like a puzzle. I wasn’t being handed the whole picture at once. I was being trusted with one piece, and when I moved on that piece, I could see the next one.

I learned to say, Okay. This is what I heard. This is what I feel prompted to do. Let me take the next step and see what’s there.

Learning to Trust

Slowly, I started becoming more comfortable making my own decisions. Because sometimes the choice in front of you isn’t good versus bad. Sometimes both choices are amazing.

One just might not be right for you.

And I had so much fear around getting that wrong.

Even as a kid, I watched people in my family take detours that led them down really challenging paths. So, what I absorbed from watching that was almost:

Don’t make one wrong step.

As if one decision could knock your entire life off course.

Then I heard a sermon that gave me so much freedom. The pastor essentially said: if you are sincerely seeking God and trying to follow His heart, and you take a wrong turn, God is big enough to correct your course.

That landed exactly where it needed to for me.

I didn’t have to perfectly predict my entire life.

I could pray. I could seek wisdom. I could make the best decision I knew how to make and if I got something wrong, I trusted God enough to believe He could redirect me.

Ironically, that’s also how I started learning to trust myself.

To acknowledge that there was wisdom inside of me, too.

That every answer wasn’t going to come through another person. Sometimes I needed to get quiet enough to hear what I already knew, what God might already be revealing to me, and what my own discernment was trying to say.

I had spent so much time looking outside of myself for confirmation that I hadn’t really practiced trusting what was happening within me.

And the more I did, the more I realized: I wasn’t incapable of making decisions.

I was just scared to trust myself with them.

I wasn’t looking for advice.

I was looking for certainty and I think that's what I had been looking for all along. I wasn't calling my mom and my cousin because I thought they had some magical ability to predict the future. Well… maybe a little bit. 😂 Especially my mom. I really did act like she had God on the hotline.

But really, I was looking for certainty.

I wanted enough confirmation, enough wise counsel, enough signs pointing in the same direction that I could make a decision without having to risk being wrong. Unfortunately, that is not how any of this works.

At some point, you can have the therapist’s opinion, your mom’s opinion, your best friend’s opinion, three podcasts saved, a pros-and-cons list, six research tabs open and a voice note sitting in the group chat…

…and still YOU have to decide.

There’s a difference between seeking wisdom and asking someone else to make you certain.

I still believe deeply in wise counsel. There are absolutely times when someone outside of your situation can see what you can’t. People who have lived through the thing you’re trying to navigate. People who can challenge your blind spots or ask a question you never thought to ask.

But there’s also a point where another opinion becomes another voice you have to separate from your own. And I’ve noticed that sometimes, when we keep asking, we’re not actually looking for new information.

We’re waiting for someone to finally say “the thing” that makes the decision feel safe.

Or, if I’m being very honest, say the thing we secretly wanted them to say.

That’s usually a good cue to get quiet.

Not because you have to figure everything out by yourself or because asking for help is somehow weak. Eventually, some part of discernment belongs to you.

You have to decide what you believe. Then, at some point, you have to move without the guarantee that you got it exactly right.

That used to terrify me. Now I think there’s something freeing about it because I don’t believe one imperfect decision has the power to ruin the entire life God has for me. I’m making choices with the wisdom I have today and I can trust that if I’m sincerely seeking God, listening to my inner wisdom and I wander a little off course, He knows how to find me.

So yes, I still call my mom and my cousin to ask what they see when I need to. I still seek the wisdom of those I trust.

I just don’t ask them to be God anymore. I don’t ask them to do the part that belongs to me.

So, sometimes another conversation with your community helps. And sometimes everybody needs to be quiet for a minute.

Including you.

P.S. If you’ve been asking everybody what you should do because you’re not quite sure what season you’re actually in, I made something for that.

The free Messy Middle Audit will help you get a clearer read on where you are right now and where your capacity needs to go next.

Take the Messy Middle Audit →

Okay, apparently self-trust is just a whole theme for me lately, so if you enjoyed this, read this next:

The post that inspired my rabbit hole.

CREATOR Martina Calvi

This Substack creator shared her travel journal and I literally gasped. It was this petite little book filled with pieces of her days: photos, concert tickets, train stubs, leaves, notes about where she was and how she felt. One page for each day of her trip.

It was gorgeous but more than that, it sparked something in me. I loved that she had given herself the time to make something just because she wanted to. It wasn’t a giant art project where you had to commit months to finish. It was just one page, one day and whatever she felt like creating in that moment.

So I’ve gone all in. I filled my Amazon cart with a tiny thermal printer that connects to my phone and prints little black-and-white photos onto sticky paper, cute scissors, watercolors — all the little things. I’m picturing my journal entries next to messy paint and little photos I can color over.

And the best part? It doesn’t have to become content.

Everything is so digital now. I love taking photos, obviously, but I loved the idea of having something analog and tactile to hold onto. I spend so much of my creative life making things that are meant to be seen, posted or shared… basically used for something. But this gets to be mine.

I loved arts and crafts as a kid. Flash back to when I turned my candle-making hobby into a pop-up business 😫. Somewhere along the way though, crafting became something I only did when there was a reason.

This feels different, I’m going to be creating for the sake of creating. And yes, the first few pages may look like shit but I’m extremely excited to make them.

Slight issue folks, I still need the actual journal.

There are currently three contenders.

Number one is leather-bound, personalized and has all these little charms hanging from it. I thought it was gorgeous. Bernard says it looks like I’m about to cast a spell. So there’s that. The other two are a little less Book of Shadows and have compartments for holding supplies, which is probably more practical.

The funny thing is, the more excited I’ve gotten about this tiny journal, the more I’ve realized it represents something much bigger for me.

I think I’m finding my whimsy again.

Whimsy, at least the way I’m thinking about it, is that little impulse toward play, curiosity, imagination and delight. The part of you that says, Ooh, that looks fun. I want to try that — before immediately asking whether it’s productive, useful, profitable or worth your time. And that little part of us is not as frivolous as it sounds.

Julia Cameron, whose work I’ve loved for years, built the artist date into The Artist’s Way for exactly this reason. Once a week you take yourself somewhere alone with no productive purpose, purely to refill the well. She says people resist it far more than they resist the writing, because it feels frivolous. Which is the whole problem. As someone who creates and problem-solves for a living, that landed.

Because it is so easy, especially when you’re ambitious and building something, to optimize all the whimsy right out of your life.

You’re building the business.

Taking care of people.

Solving the next problem.

There is always another practical thing deserving your attention.

But maybe play and curiosity and little pockets of delight aren’t distractions from the life we’re trying to build. Maybe we need some whimsy while we’re building, not just once we’ve arrived.

That’s when I realized something: some of the most whimsical seasons of my life were also the ones when I had the least money. When I was younger in New York, I was making around $35K a year and having some of the most fun of my life. My friends and I would go to Grits & Biscuits and dance all night. Spend whole afternoons digging through vintage stores. Go vinyl shopping. Bike through Brooklyn for hours. Picnic in Prospect park. End up at a random house party across town.

We used to frolic, with a capital F.

A lot of what we did was cheap. Some of it was free. But we had time, curiosity, each other, and a willingness to see where the day took us. What I had then wasn’t more money. It was more spaciousness.

Years later, when I was transitioning out of running my yoga studio and coffee shop, life felt very different. I knew I didn’t want to go back in-house as a CMO or marketing director. I’d spent years building brands, running e-commerce, leading teams and helping companies make a lot of money, but I had never officially been a consultant. So suddenly I had to figure out how to turn everything I knew into a completely different way of working. What am I selling? Who hires me? Where does the next client come from? I wasn’t starting from zero in experience. I was figuring out an entirely new container for it, and that took up a lot of brain space.

I used to wander. Then I started calculating.

Even fun became something I had to think through. A boat day with friends became Can I afford this right now? Girls’ night dinners became me looking at the bill thinking, I had one vegetarian dish and no drinks; respectfully, I am not funding somebody’s third margarita. 😂

Maybe you know that feeling too. Nothing is technically stopping you from enjoying your life, but every little desire has to make it through an internal committee first. Is this worth the money? Do I have time? Should I be doing something more productive? Can this wait?

I didn’t lose my joy. I lost some of my capacity to wander.

And lately, I’m noticing it come back. Bernard and I have been creating gardens at our parents’ houses, despite the fact that I still need someone to remind me what an annual versus a perennial is every single time. I’ve discovered that landscaping is basically home design with living things, which is apparently all I needed to become invested.

And then my mom mentioned wanting to visit Maine and Vermont, and I said, “Girl, why don’t we just go?”

To be fair, I hesitated because I already have a Euro trip planned and I’m doing HYROX in Tampa. Life is not suddenly an endless vacation montage and honestly, the money gave me pause too.

But I kept thinking about the memory. Me, my mom and Bernard spending six days between Kennebunkport, Maine and Woodstock, Vermont. The Northeast in early fall is a dreamy backdrop of colorful leaves We also haven’t taken this kind of family trip together in a long time and at this stage of my life, making memories with my family — especially my mom — matters deeply to me.

So within a few days, we booked it and BAM the journal is coming with me on its inaugural voyage, along with my paints that I don’t know how to use yet, my tiny printer, and whatever scraps I find along the way that feel worth keeping.

Maybe that’s what finding my whimsy again looks like, leaving enough room inside my life to follow a spark. To be bad at something new. To plant the garden. To take the trip and to make something that doesn’t need an audience.

Uncertainty always felt like something I needed to solve, but lately, some uncertainty feels like somewhere I get to play and frolic… and I really missed that version of me.

So tell me: what would you do this week if it didn’t have to be worth your time?

P.S. For my fellow easily influenced craft girlies…

Since I apparently committed to this hobby before learning how to paint 😂, I’ve already collected most of my little travel-journaling setup. I put everything I bought, from the tiny thermal printer to the watercolor set and cute scissors, into one Amazon list in case this sparked something in you too.

As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through my links, at no additional cost to you.

Take Care,

Alicia G

…my Summer Syllabus series was quietly starting to change me.

Each conversation went from something I planned and published to something I had to live.

I guess that’s the point of learning.

Not to collect more information but becoming someone different because of it.

Lesson One: Confidence isn’t something you wait to feel.

Reflecting back on my conversation with Bernard, there were so many gems. Truly, some didn’t fully hit until I sat with them a bit longer.

Presence isn’t about feeling fearless. It’s about showing up anyway.

Ironically, that lesson arrived just as I needed it most.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping Summer Syllabus would have taken off. I wanted more people to watch, subscribe and share it with their friends. I refreshed analytics more than I’d like to admit.

Some posts performed better than others and some barely made a ripple.

And every week I had another opportunity to decide:

Am I creating because people are clapping? Or because I believe this is worth making?

Confidence, it turns out, wasn’t something the interview taught me. It became something this whole project pulled out of me.

Lesson Two: Free will is more ordinary than I thought

What if your life has more options than you’ve been acting like it does?

Lately, I’ve been saying yes to small

curiosities.

Taking the random exit off the highway because a hand-painted sign promised fresh peach cider donuts (they were quite tasty).

I’ve become obssesivly fascinated by skincare lately. There’s something about women with beautiful, glowing skin that has always felt so chic to me. They just look cared for and intentional put together. Lately, I’ve caught myself thinking, I want my outside to match how I feel on the inside. My mom still turns her nose up at half the things I’m trying — VI peels, neurostimulators... she absolutely does not get it, but hey Free will right. 😂

Changing the way I move my body, I’ve always been a runner and yoga girlie but in this season I love lifting heavy weights, I feel like such a badass. Weight rooms can feel intimidating but now that I know what I’m doing babeee, I feel like a woman who’s got her life together. I traded trying to be smaller for trying to be stronger and I didn’t expect how much that would change the way I move through the rest of my life.

For the past few years I know a lot of us have felt like we were just surviving all the transitions in our life, which can leave very little room for curiosity.

When you’re just trying to get through the day, efficiency becomes the goal. But sis, something shifts once you’re no longer fighting to stay afloat.

I’ve been tuning into what feels like me now instead of automatically repeating who I’ve always been and how I’ve done things.

You finally get to ask a different question.

Not, What do I have to do?

But, Who do I want to become?

Lesson Three: Beauty can be a form of self-trust.

Before talking with MJ, I think I still saw beauty as something that lived too close to vanity but our conversation challenged that.

That’s the sentence that actually affirmed my facial balancing journey. I was already in it, but some part of me was still quietly waiting to feel like I was doing it for the “right” reason — like I owed someone proof my motives were pure before I could fully own the decision. MJ’s whole point was that the right reason isn’t some insecurity-free motive I had to prove first. It’s just deciding you’re worth the care.

The older I get, the less interested I am in chasing perfection. I’m much more interested in alignment.

Does the outside of my life reflect how I actually feel on the inside?

Not because anyone else is watching, because I am!

I’m on a facial balancing journey and if you want me to dive deeper into what I’ve been doing, drop a comment below.

Lesson Four: Rebuilding isn’t about getting your old life back.

My conversation with Adiamond may have been the final session, but it felt like the conclusion to the whole series.

We talked about what happens after the life you planned disappears… the divorce, the grief, the lost identity. Most people know how to talk about surviving the hard thing, but we don’t talk enough about what comes next.

The rebuilding and all the tiny decisions that go into collecting evidence to trust yourself again.

Her story resonated with me so deeply because rebuilding isn’t just for people who’ve divorced a spouse. It’s for anyone who’s had to become someone new.

The past few years have quietly been me releasing pieces of my life that felt foundational to who I was. The business I built. Calling myself a New Yorker for sixteen years. Who I am after losing someone who shaped how I saw my own life. What being a wife actually looks like versus what I assumed it would look like. None of those were choices I made in one clean moment. They were things I had to keep rebuilding my way back to, over and over, the same way Adiamond described collecting evidence one small decision at a time.

Because rebuilding isn’t just reserved for the losses with a name attached to them….

The hard thing isn’t what defines the chapter. The life you build afterward is.

All in My Face

As I look back, this little Summer Syllabus series wasn’t really about confidence, beauty, free will, or rebuilding.

It was about what happens after _.

After the rejection, the loss, the survival. After the burnout. After the layoff. After the disappointment.

After the dream didn’t unfold the way you expected.

It reminded me that high-capacity women are often incredibly good at surviving transitions.

We’ve learned how to carry impossible loads while adapting and keeping it moving.

What we’re less practiced at is asking who we want to become once survival is no longer required.

I’m incredibly proud that I finished this series even without a single post going viral, lol.

I became the kind of creator who finishes what she starts and you know what, that might have been the real assignment all along.

Catch Up on Summer Syllabus: Girl, Then What Happened

If you’re just finding this series — or want to revisit a conversation — you can start here:

One thing every conversation kept pointing me back to was this:

We can’t build a different life if we’re still operating from old patterns.

Sometimes what we need isn’t more motivation or another productivity hack.

We need clarity. Clarity about where we are and what’s actually keeping us stuck.

If you’re wondering what your own “next chapter” looks like, I made something to help.

Take my free Less Chaos, More Clarity Quiz to discover which area of your life is asking for your attention right now. You’ll get a personalized Clarity Audit that explains what’s keeping you stuck, what your current season is trying to teach you, and your next steps for moving forward.

Take the Less Chaos, More Clarity Quiz

Get Audit

Growth isn’t always about finding the answers. Sometimes it’s about finally asking yourself better ones.

What would you do if survival mode wasn’t making your decisions anymore?

Because if this version of you isn’t the final draft…

What are you rewriting next?

Take care,

Alicia G.

This is the fourth and final session of Summer Syllabus, a series asking one question all summer: what happens when you stop organizing your life around fear and get curious about different ways to be free? Catch up on Session 1, Session 2, and Session 3 if you’re just joining.

What happens when the life you painstakingly build starts to crumble like quicksand beneath your feet. Whether it’s the unfair termination of a job, the best friend who violates your trust, the closing of your business, the unplanned relocation away from family or friends, or the grief of a loved one.

What happens after the life you imagined disappears.

Sometimes the bravest thing we ever have to do isn’t start over. It’s learning how to feel safe enough to begin again.

A personal note before we get into it: I met today’s guest, Adiamond, for the first time at a Christmas party in 2023, alongside her husband at the time. A few months later, I saw her again at my own surprise engagement weekend, which turned out to be the exact same weekend she and her then-husband were separating. Wild timing, in hindsight. She’s now my cousin through marriage, and I’ve spent the years since watching her walk this whole process of rebuilding in real time. It’s a huge part of why I wanted her to close out this series.

Adiamond Gantt got married young, spent six years building what she thought was a forever life as a pastor’s wife, and was divorced by 26. I asked her to walk me through what came after… not the divorce itself, but the identity work, the faith crisis, and the first bill she ever had to pay alone. She’s now the owner of Adiamond Media House and founder of the upcoming mentorship program, Maiden. She’s built her second act on one brutal question: who are you when nobody’s watching you perform?

Below, an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

Losing the Title

What was the hardest thing to let go of?

There was a lot of identity rebuilding I had to do. I went from being a person I felt like everyone looked up to as I wore the hat of a pastor’s wife. People would say, oh, your pastor’s wife, and that title is often idolized within the church. Then all of that is removed, and you’re just like, I’m not needed in the same way anymore. It’s one thing to go from marriage to not-married.

“It’s one thing to go from marriage to not-married. It’s another thing to almost feel like you’re also divorcing the church in the same breath.”

How did all of that affect your relationship with God?

So much of it was intertwined. Someone like myself, serving on a worship ministry — to a degree, you’re performing. So the thing I found myself wrestling with was: who are you outside of all of this? Did the doing make me feel closer to God than I actually was? I had to rid myself of that performance identity, 1000%. God couldn’t love me any more by putting me on a platform than by giving me peace in my house.

There actually was a moment I didn't know what else to do, so I was going to find myself back in the same environment. I remember getting ready to audition for a worship team, throwing myself back into serving and I got the strangest, most obvious sign that this was not it. I don't need to perform. I need to be present.

Learning to Live Alone

Right after everything happened, what did safety even mean to you in that moment?

Safety felt like being around family. I’d lived away from mine for six years and I needed a place where I could just be me, because I felt like I’d lost the ability to be me. That’s a hard place to be in, in your own home. I went to my mom’s, then my sister’s, and ultimately moved to Atlanta to be close to her.

What were some of those initial firsts?

I don’t think I’d ever lived alone before, or made a major decision for myself. I don’t even think I’d had a bill in my own name. I remember having to turn my utilities on — I was shaking. I called Georgia Power like, hi, I need to turn on power at my place. It was crazy.

Those sound small, but they’re proof you’re not just surviving, you’re thriving. What other little things were signs of that?

Feeling comfortable enough to make friends. Showing up to events by myself and putting in the energy to go out with a girlfriend and thinking, this is so much fun, because I hadn’t done that kind of self-care outside of a date with my husband. Walking by a perfume store and picking a fragrance I loved without wondering if he’d like it. Pouring into myself is where I started finding my confidence again. You gotta win to get confident.

You gotta win to get confident.

Small reps build confidence faster than big leaps do.

Redefining Safety

How did your definition of safety change from there? What does it look like now?

It became less about my external environment and more something I had to create within myself because things kept shifting. My first apartment, I had to move out after two and a half months. Then I lost the job that was paying my rent. I had to find my foundation, what wasn’t changing. Being honest with yourself is part of it too. When you’re not truthful with yourself, you create false realities, and lying to yourself doesn’t create a safe space. That might look like being vulnerable enough to say, this is what I need.

Back Out There

How has dating been this time around? You’re older, you’ve got experience, and the whole landscape has changed.

My first time ever on a dating app was last December. I was like, is this what I have at my disposal? This is really fun. Then, this is really scary. I told myself, you’ve got to get some reps under your belt, just go meet nice guys. It wasn’t dating to find a husband. It was: figure out what you like, figure out who you’re attracting because I’d done the work not to attract people who’d take advantage of my vulnerability, and to actually recognize it if they tried. I’m currently dating someone, and it’s going well.

What’s one thing you’re not going to compromise on now that maybe you were shaky on before?

Being completely myself. In the former arena, I felt like because I was wearing a specific title, I had to mold into what I thought people wanted that to look like. It was passive, until one day I looked at myself like, girl, this isn’t you. Don’t feel bad for wanting more. I never want to be somewhere because I have to be. I want to be able to leave and not think twice about it. I am not afraid.

“I never want to be somewhere because I have to be. I want to be able to leave and not think twice about it. I am not afraid.”

How do you know now when a person actually feels safe to you?

Your body will tell you. Whether or not we listen is up to us. What’s tricky is telling the difference between anxiety and an actual red flag. Beyond that, you look at people’s fruit. Are they a gossip? Do they lie? Are they greedy, envious? You can’t just decide someone’s safe; you have to watch what grows. Sometimes you just know, this person doesn’t really like me. Previously, Adiamond would’ve tried to make them like her. Now I’m like, I’m going to believe you and I’m going to be okay with that.

“You can’t just decide someone’s safe; you have to watch their fruit.”

What She’d Tell You

If someone’s in the middle of their own version of this story, not necessarily divorce, just grieving a future that didn’t go the way they thought — what would you want them to know?

By the time you’ve envisioned yourself starting over, you’re already there. At that point you’re not staying for yourself anymore, you’re staying because of what everybody else will think. Everything about what I did was bold and courageous, and I could not care less what my mama thought, what the pastor thought, what anybody thought. I decided for myself what life to the fullest looks like.

I was working retail at the time, $17 an hour, couldn’t cover my bills but something was better than nothing, so I did it. One day there’s a bracelet on the floor. I kick it under a table, didn’t even bother picking it up. A few shifts later, it’s still there. I finally picked it up. It says: nothing is wasted. It’s in my bathroom somewhere still. Find the lessons. Don’t look at what feels wasted. You’ll never gather what you’ve learned in a season if you didn’t go through it. It’s just life university, girl.

“Nothing is wasted.”

Your Homework

Two assignments, for anyone in their own version of this story:

• Write down what “life to the full” actually looks like for you, not just good, but full.

• Then start collecting evidence: a moment you felt safe this week, someone who showed up for you, a place that felt easy. The goal isn’t to change your life in a week. It’s to notice that safety, like confidence, isn’t something you stumble into… it’s built one rep at a time.

Leave a comment

Adiamond Gantt is the founder of Adiamond Media House and Maiden, a mentorship for women preparing for healthy relationships and their whole selves, launching soon. Follow her on Instagram for updates.

Thank you for spending part of your summer with me.

Take care,

Alicia G

If someone forwarded this email to you subscribed I’d love to have you!

Has being pretty become a hustle? Spend five minutes online and it starts to feel that way — another skincare routine, another supplement, another appointment. Self-care has quietly turned into self-improvement and sometimes self-criticism. For session three of Girl Then What Happened, following last week's conversation on free will — I wanted to ask something different than what’s the next treatment to know about:

How do we take care of ourselves without turning into a permanent project?

For that, I called MJ Gandon, founder of Toniik Aesthetics . She’s a nurse practitioner whose résumé runs through critical care, dermatology, and functional medicine —which makes her allergic to treating beauty as a surface problem.

Her philosophy: what shows up on your skin is a report from what’s happening underneath it. We talked about why your twenties are for prevention, not facelifts; why she calls herself the “Korean skincare hater” in jest (she isn’t, exactly); and why the women aging best in her office never let their levels drop.

If you only have 30 seconds - by the decade

• 20s = skincare + baby Botox (prevention, not correction).

• 30s = preservation — biostimulators, collagen, baseline labwork.

• 40s = hormones, mainly for bone health.

• 50s+ = hormones, lasers, weightlifting, protein, maintain.

• On a budget: Skip the filler. Blood work first, baby Botox for prevention, then one real active (Retinal, Alpharet). Invest in medical grade skincare, a $220 product used nightly outperforms a rotating cart of drugstore serums, and pencils out cheaper per month than a daily coffee habit.

MJ, you spent years as a trauma nurse before moving into aesthetics. How did that shape the way you think about beauty now?

Critical care teaches you to read a patient completely — labs, imaging, what’s normal, what’s not. It’s never just a fever; you look deeper. It was high-stress, high-cortisol work though so I moved into aesthetics thinking I’d found something lighter, something that would make people happy. (”Girl, women are never happy,” she tells me, laughing. “I have patients who hang upside down and tell me their double chin looks worse. I’m like, I need you to please stand up, I cannot assess you like this.”)

I got bored fast, too — there’s technique, but it wasn’t the medicine I was used to. So I went looking for a way to combine beauty with actual health, landing in functional medicine and regenerative aesthetics. I’m not blowing up your face with filler; I’d rather replace a fat pad with fat, and ask what’s happening with your hormones, your collagen, your dryness.

You talk about the “deeper layers” of aging. What does that actually mean in practice?

Most of us assume that because we’re 20 or 30, we’re healthy by default. Almost none of my 20 year-olds are thinking about labs; my 30 year-olds are a little more dialed in, but I’m usually the one bringing up hormones. By 40 and 50, depletion has already hit — sex drive, dryness, libido and that’s when people show up wanting it “fixed”. So even in aesthetics-only visits, I run a full lab panel. Lately, full-body MRIs too, if we’re doing serious functional medicine work. If we’re stimulating angiogenesis and reversing cellular aging, I need a baseline: what’s already there, and what could grow.

So should more women in their thirties be starting hormone therapy?

If your labs say you need it, yes. We’re strangely scared of bioidentical hormones, partly a hangover from women being left out of medical research for so long. Clinical trials were done almost exclusively on men until 1993. In your thirties, if you’re a little low on something like testosterone, we give a microdose to keep you in range rather than waiting for you to crash. Same logic as a facelift versus prevention: one patient’s facelift alone cost more than a condo. Start at 30 and you’re managing upkeep; wait until 50, full reconstruction.

“The worst mistake we could make — in health, in aesthetics, in anything is letting all our levels drop and then trying to rebuild from scratch, instead of just maintaining what we already have.”

A confession, mid-conversation: Gandon had been dragging for weeks, blamed being overwork until her own staff jokingly, tied her down and made her draw her blood. Her testosterone came back undetectable; she’d quietly fallen off her supplements without registering it and thought the level of exhaustion she was experiencing was normal. “Women do this constantly — we run the household, the cooks, the cleaners, running everyone’s schedule but our own. Let your husbands run their own lives, you're not his mother!"

Once we were done talking hormones, I couldn't resist asking about the other biological lever having a main character moment right now: peptides.

Jay-Z played Yankee Stadium last weekend, and days later Fat Joe and Jadakiss were dissecting his physique on their podcast, speculating about what “pep stack” he and Nas might be on. When two rap legends are discussing peptides, the conversation has left wellness TikTok. So, what actually are peptides?

Amino acids, basically, short chains of protein that signal inside the body. You need blood work first to know which one is right for you. I’m very anti the gym-bro version of this, guys buying vials online with zero data. A lot aren’t FDA-approved in the U.S. yet, even though other countries have used them medically for years. Nobody should just be “on peptides” — it’s peptides plus supplements plus consistency. Not a magic shot.

What’s the biggest myth you wish you could grab the mic and correct?

That Korean skincare used on its own is enough. I’m not anti these products , I use some myself. But most of what’s marketed there is filling the dermis with water; it plumps for a day, and that’s not repair. I had a patient quietly swap her medical-grade peel pads for a drugstore version — three months of zero results, then one month back and her hyperpigmentation started correcting immediately. The rule is boring: protect in the daytime with antioxidants and SPF, repair at night with something that drives cellular turnover.

“You walk into Sephora and there’s twenty-seven moisturizers all promising the same thing. Who isn’t confused?”

People are also terrified of looking “frozen.” What’s actually happening with Botox and what do you wish women understood before walking into your office?

It’s not a true paralytic — you’re not permanently freezing the muscle. It softens movement for a few weeks, then comes back gradually, like a rainbow arcing up and down. Patients panic around week four thinking it “isn’t working”, it’s working exactly as designed. I honestly wished women understood their lines are supposed to be there. Every woman tells me she hates her smile lines — I have them too, and had to learn to love mine. Those lines are how we express, how we get character. We can soften a line. We shouldn’t erase your ability to move your face.

Walk me through it by decade, what should a woman actually be prioritizing?

In your 20’s: skincare and baby Botox. Not because you need it yet, but to keep muscles from pulling down over time. That’s it! (Please stop trying to get facelifts at 20. What skin will you have left at 50?)

30’s, especially mid-decade: preservation. Fat pad with fat pad, collagen with collagen, biostimulators and start baseline blood work now, so when something shifts at 36 or 37, you have something to measure against.

At 40: hormones enter the conversation in earnest, mainly for bone health and longevity, even if nothing feels wrong yet. Miss this window and you’re playing catch-up in your fifties.

50 and beyond: continue hormones, add lasers and CO2 resurfacing, keep working on collagen, and don’t skip weightlifting. High protein, creatine for brain health. If a patient can’t commit to everything, I ask for three things they’ll actually be consistent with. Consistency moves the needle, not the size of the routine.

If someone has a genuinely limited budget — where does it go?

Not filler, unless clearly needed. Blood work first, then baby Botox, then a real skincare active, something like an Alpharet, which runs about $220 but lasts nine to ten months on nightly use. That outperforms anything from a beauty counter and is cheaper per month than a daily coffee habit. Do the math on cost-per-month — the “expensive” option is the one that keeps you out of six-figure procedures later.

Something women start too early?

Facelifts in your twenties, unquestionably. It’s a downstream of filters and AI-smoothed images resetting what a whole generation believes a normal face looks like. I had to let a patient go recently who wanted symmetry that didn’t match her actual bone structure, you can’t filler your way around your own skeleton. There’s a trend of mirroring one side of your face to preview what “symmetrical,” looks like and it looks wrong, because no one is actually symmetrical. Chasing that is chasing something that was never real. It makes me sad, because they’re so beautiful, and the way they perceive themselves is not.”

Okay, let’s do some Rapid fire:

Beauty is

Confidence, from within.

Confidence is

Loving yourself.

Aging has taught you

Wisdom. Not the kind you can be told about, the kind you have to live to get.

One beauty trend you hope disappears

Korean skincare treated as a complete routine on its own.

The homework

This week’s assignment is simple. Instead of overhauling your routine, choose one habit you’ll commit to.

Maybe it’s scheduling blood work. Maybe it’s wearing SPF every day or starting a strength training routine. Even just dimming the lights at 6 p.m. to cue your nervous system for sleep. Whatever it is, make it something you can actually stick with and give it a full year, not two months.

As MJ reminded us, supplements alone can take three to four months to reach optimal levels in the body. Quit after eight weeks and you never really gave them a chance to work. We live in an instant-gratification culture, but our bodies don’t work on instant-gratification timelines. Consistency changes more than intensity ever will.

Class dismissed.

Resources Mentioned: Alpharet (SkinBetter Science), VI Peel / VI Derm peel pads, DHEA.

My biggest takeaway: the goal was never to become prettier. It’s to take better care of ourselves. The new rules of beauty are about understanding your own body and coming home to yourself.

Find MJ Gandon on Instagram at @toniik.medical and @mjgandon.

Tell me your biggest takeaway in the comments and watch the full conversation above for everything we didn’t have room for here.

See you next week for our last session in this Summer Syllabus!

Take care,

Alicia G.

She Had the VP Title, the Miami Apartment and the Mercedes. Then She Moved to Mexico and Got Off Every Prescription She Was On.

Lynzie Riebling spent her twenties and thirties becoming “the girlboss”: a Vice President of Insights and Strategy at REVOLT TV, a résumé full of Fortune-500 names and a life that looked, from the outside, like she’d made it. Then she got laid off — packed six suitcases, her two cats and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Ten months later, she’s off her blood pressure medication and her antidepressant. She’s taking Pilates and tennis lessons she didn’t pay for and telling friends who ask what she does for work: not much, actually. Below, is an edited and condensed conversation about agency, the cost of freedom, and what happens when the life you built stops being the one you want.

So Lynzie, for the people who don’t know you, give us a brief sketch of your upbringing.

I did not grow up wealthy or with money. If you went by census terms, I’d probably have been considered middle-to-lower class, though I never registered that at the time because my parents did such a good job of making it not obvious. We just didn’t take vacations. I didn’t get my first passport until I was 22. Very regular, public-school, cheerleader-the-whole-way-through kind of life. I got a scholarship to community college and they make you pick a major at eighteen, so I picked psychology because I loved it, though I realized fast that I was too much of a feeler to be a clinical psychologist. I’d just be home crying about other people’s problems. I didn’t discover market research existed until my junior year of college and it turned out to be everything I loved about psychology plus business strategy, marketing, and fashion.

Because of how I grew up, my dreams were smaller than maybe they should have been. I genuinely thought that if I could make $100,000 by the time I was 50, that would be it for me. I blew that goal out of the water before I ever turned 30. Then it was $200,000. Then $300,000. I landed on the Forbes list and became a Vice President at a media company at 30.

At one point, though, you’d never say any of that out loud.

I would cringe. If someone in a social setting asked what I do, I’d mumble my way to the bottom of it. I find hierarchy in general to be super cringe. I tried to manage with a lot of feminine energy but the title itself — I just felt like it was an icky, weird capitalism thing.

Did the job still feel good, even if you didn’t want to say it out loud?

Oh, completely. I get a high off it: dopamine hits from good feedback, from accolades, from being put on a list of top market research professionals. I thrive on structure and deadlines. Even now, doing occasional consulting, I can feel my nervous system get sucked back into that space. I’ll take a six-week project and by day three I’m refreshing my email like a rat hitting a lever.

So what actually happened?

I got laid off. February of last year, out of nowhere. A meeting appears on your calendar and you know how that story ends. They said it was due to company performance, not anything I did. It was a gut punch. A lot of people asked if I saw it coming, because of everything going on with the company’s founder. Maybe it was delusional of me, but no, not like that, not that immediately.

What did you do in the weeks after?

I crashed out. Took an Eat, Pray, Love trip: Morocco, Portugal, Italy. When I got back I was trying to sit on my hands and not spend any money in Miami, that’s when the idea of living abroad actually took shape. I started googling, as the researcher that I am, and quickly realized Europe was out of the question: I have brutal seasonal depression. So I got extremely specific with the criteria instead; somewhere near the equator, remote-ish but not off the grid, somewhere I wouldn’t be contributing to gentrification, ideally with a fancy hotel bar I could get a martini in. That’s how I landed on San Miguel de Allende, a town I’d never heard of, which felt very ethical of me, until I got here and realized it’s already been “discovered.” There’s a Michelin-starred restaurant and all.

How fast did this actually move?

I came for 72 hours, found a broker, looked at apartments, found one I liked, and I’ve now lived in it for nine months and just signed another year-long lease. I sold my car, found a new tenant for my old apartment, and put everything in storage. I flew out weeks later with six suitcases and my two cats. My mom flew with me because I couldn’t manage it alone. All of that happened in what felt like slow motion to me but apparently looked instant to everyone else. People look at that and go, “Oh my god, you really did the thing,” and I’m like, I don’t know, I think I just blacked out and figured my way through it, because that’s what I always do.

Did people think this was impulsive or a calculated risk as you were sharing your plans?

There’s a real fear-mongering angle around Mexico that doesn’t exist for, say, Italy or England. A lot of it is media and who’s currently president. My mom actually said to me, “What if Trump builds the wall and I can’t get to you?” I told her she’d better come live with me before that happens. She’d never traveled internationally before she visited me here but within two or three days, she got it.

Generally speaking, a lot of our peers and people I hadn’t spoken to since middle school were surprisingly inspired and clinging to my story for hope. They wanted to live vicariously through it. I didn’t expect that at all. I don’t do anything in my life trying to be an example for anyone; I just dive in headfirst knowing I’ll probably get hurt and I don’t recommend that to people. To this day I get messages: “I love seeing you happy,” “I hope I can move abroad one day too.” There was admiration in it that I didn’t expect, and also fear, because it was Mexico.

I think when people hear your story, they assume you were fearless. Were you?

Honestly, God bless that I was on Zoloft because of the year I’d had before that. I don’t know that I would’ve handled it as level-headed without an SSRI, which I’m no longer on, hence me being able to cry right now. It’s not that I’m trying to be humble or not give myself credit. I think because I’ve had to be in survival mode for so long, I don’t often appreciate how much work goes into getting myself out of horrible, mentally, financially, and emotionally abusive situations: work-wise, relationship-wise, everywhere. I don’t realize I’m crawling out tooth and nail until I’m on the other side and somebody else points it out, and I go, oh my god, wow, I’m in Mexico. How did we get here?

Did you ever think you’d made a mistake?

Honestly, no, which surprised me, because I’m someone who leaps before she looks and then gets instant regret. My therapist has a theory: I spiral for a month before I leap, so once I leap, the second-guessing should already be spent. My mom stayed with me the first three weeks, and I braced for a crash the moment she left. It never came. I’m off my blood pressure medication (over a decade on it) and off my antidepressant. I keep thinking, I wish I’d done this sooner.

What’s different about how success is measured where you are now versus where you were?

Here, if I tell someone I used to be a VP at a media company, they ask how many cats I have. When I first moved and told people I’d gotten laid off, they’d say, “Okay, my uncle owns a coffee shop, need a place to stay?” It’s communal in a way that took me a long time to register.

Being unemployed in America is terrifying because it costs a thousand dollars just to breathe. That fear just isn’t the currency here.

What did you actually have to negotiate with yourself to make this leap?

The hardest part was distance from my mom. We’re extremely close and she’s not getting younger. Beyond that, it helped that I’d already spent years living a big life. That made it a lot easier to let go of stuff, to put my favorite furniture and clothes in a storage unit in Miami, and just be fine with it.

Do you have any regrets about how you spent money back when you were making it?

Hell no. I didn’t grow up with anything: no vacations, no name brands. My mom wouldn’t let me buy anything that wasn’t Payless. So once I had money, I spoiled myself. I was giving baby Lindsey all the things she never got: solo trips, Michelin dinners, the wardrobe I always wanted. I actually think living in that excess is what freed me up to not yearn for it later. Because I’d already lived the fabulous, always-on-a-plane version of my life, it was so much easier to hunker down in a little casita in Mexico. I’d already checked that box.

What do you think people believe they need before they can make a change like this, that they don’t actually need?

It starts with unpacking who you’re living for. I spent my twenties and most of my early thirties embodying a persona other people projected onto me: girlboss, the “cool research girl,” green hair, “Lady Gaga of research.” I never planned any of that; it just accumulated because people kept calling me that and I kept rising to meet it. When I got laid off and was forced to sit still, I had to ask: if none of those labels existed, who do I actually want to be?

What has this cost you?

Re-entry. I don’t know that I could easily go back to girlbossing even if I wanted to. My résumé now reads: fled the country, out of the workforce for over a year and before that, eight years at a company founded by a man who’s now a felon. I’m proud of the work my team did there, but if I’m a hiring manager choosing between me and someone who never left the workforce, I know how that looks. Also, now that I’ve tasted this version of freedom, I’m not sure I’d trade my Thursday (Pilates, then a free tennis lesson from a friend of a friend) for a remote job paying six figures.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve gained that you don’t think you’d have found by staying?

Community without credentials. I actually posted that exact phrase, because it’s what happened here without me realizing it. In the U.S., almost all my closest friendships came from school or work, the same rooms where “what do you do” is the default opening question. Here, for the first time since childhood, I’m making friends purely on shared interest. None of them know or care what I did for a living.

I used to think I didn’t need community, because I’ve always been resilient. A little guarded, honestly, not the most warm and fuzzy with new people. But my friends here don’t give you the option. It’s kisses on both cheeks, a hug, “tell me everything, come sit at my house.” I spent eleven a.m. to six p.m. at a friend’s place last week: Pilates, then pizza, then we watched Wuthering Heights. At restaurants, my instinct is still to check the bill and go, and they’re like, no, have a coffee, sit, relax. It’s slow-paced and communal in a way I didn’t know I was starving for until it got forced on me. It’s been humbling. It’s changed me.

What’s the homework

…you’d give someone who feels stuck the way you were?

Make two columns. On the left, write every belief you hold about who you have to be and what you have to do: I have to make six figures, I have to live near my family, I have to have a full-time salaried job, whatever your non-negotiables are.

On the right, for each one, write down where that belief actually came from. Whose voice is that?

Then, at the bottom, write the answer to this: if none of those beliefs existed (if nothing had ever been projected onto you), what would the purest version of you actually want?

You probably can’t do all of it. But it tells you what you’re optimizing for, and whether you ever chose it.

You probably don’t need a layoff or a one-way ticket to Mexico to ask the question underneath all of this: whose life am I actually living? Lynzie’s disruption just made the question impossible to ignore — yours might show up quieter, but it’s asking the same thing.

Class dismissed (for now).

If Lynzie’s story stirred something in you, sit with the homework she gave us: two columns, who I’m living for, and where that belief actually came from. I want to know what comes up for you. Come tell me about it in the Substack chat.

Find Lynzie on TikTok and Instagram at @HiLynzie and if you want to help the no-kill shelter she volunteers with in San Miguel de Allende (https://www.spasanmiguel.org) you can donate here 👉🏾 https://gofund.me/87ad3cf76 .

If your looking for a great mental health provider here’s the support team Lynzie chose:

• Therapist: https://www.ginalguerrero.com/about

• Psychiatrist: https://growtherapy.com/provider/7qtgr4cxfrhc/tammy-ewing

If you missed Session 1 of this summer syllabus, catch up here. Then come back next week for Session 3. We’re not done pulling on this thread of agency, fear and what it actually costs to choose differently.

See you in class.

— Alicia G.

I had just finished helping Bernard record a self-tape audition when we sat down for this. I’m his official reader when he self-tapes and I take this very seriously but nobody has ever complimented my reading. I know. That’s not the point. But still.

Our first guest professor is Bernard Gilbert, a professional actor whose work spans television, film, and theater. You may have spotted him on Law & Order or know him as Suede from The Chi, but I’ve had the unique privilege of watching him practice his craft up close, because he’s also my husband.

The past two years he’s also been teaching acting at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, helping performers learn something most of us assume you’re either born with or you’re not: presence.

He’s spent years walking into rooms where he’s evaluated for a living. Auditions. Self-tapes. Callbacks. Rejection is built into the job description. He’s heard “no” more times than most of us ever will. Watching him over the years has made me curious about something.

How do you keep putting yourself out there when rejection is part of the work?

Presence Comes Before Confidence

I started by asking Bernard what most people misunderstand about confidence.

He told me, “You can have presence without being confident.”

Then he gave me an example. There were times, especially when he was younger, when he was about to break out in hives before a performance. He’d walk out on stage nervous, do the work and the audience would love it.

Then he’d walk off stage still nervous but the audience never knew.

He just went up there and did his job.

That intrigued me because I think most of us assume confidence comes first. We tell ourselves we’ll post the video once we feel ready. We’ll ask for the raise once we feel qualified. We’ll speak up in the meeting once we’re sure we won’t sound awkward.

Bernard was describing something different.

Presence is not the absence of nerves. Presence is the decision to stay available even while the nerves are still there.

Confidence comes later.

It catches up after enough reps.

The Framework Actors Actually Practice

One of the biggest surprises from our conversation was that Bernard didn’t talk about confidence like a feeling. He talked about it like a process.

Actors aren’t trained to chase confidence. They’re trained to ask better questions.

• What’s my objective? What do I actually want?

• What are the obstacles? What could get in the way?

• What tactics can I use? What actions move me toward the objective?

That framework immediately felt bigger than acting. It applies to the pitch, the meeting, the hard conversation, the rate increase, the content you keep avoiding and the big ask you keep talking yourself out of.

Most of us walk into those moments asking, “Do I feel ready?”

Actors are trained to ask, “What am I here to do?”

That difference matters.

Because the goal isn’t to feel confident before you begin. The goal is to get clear enough to move.

Bernard gave me an example about one of his acting students—a clinical psychologist whose job required him to testify in court as an expert witness. Every time he took the stand, he’d get rattled during cross-examination. Then he started taking Bernard’s acting classes.

A few months later, he came back with an update.

“I stopped getting cross-examined!”

I laughed. “What changed?”

Before walking into court, he’d remind himself of one thing: I am the expert. I am the expert. I am the expert. He’d repeat it to himself over and over again until he walked into the room believing it.

His credentials hadn’t changed. His expertise hadn’t changed. His presence had.

That story has been living rent-free in my head ever since, because confidence didn’t magically appear one morning. He practiced showing up differently.

Maybe It Was Never a Confidence Problem

One of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation is because I don’t actually think most people lack confidence.

I think we’re afraid of being judged.

There’s a phrase for this called visibility wounds—the idea that being fully seen or expressing your authentic self can feel dangerous because of past experiences, criticism, rejection, or shame.

When I brought this up to Bernard, he hadn’t heard the term before but he understood the feeling immediately.

As actors, they’re constantly putting their interpretation of a story in front of someone else’s imagination. Every audition is an invitation to be evaluated, compared and ultimately chosen or not.

Then he shared something I’d never heard him talk about before.

Growing up, he was teased for the color of his skin. His instinct wasn’t to become louder or prove people wrong. It was to make himself smaller.

“I wanted to be in the background,” he told me. “I didn’t want to make too many waves.”

I imagine a lot of us know that feeling.

Because somewhere along the way, many of us learned that being visible came with a cost.

And yet, a few minutes later, Bernard said something that completely reframed it.

“There’s nothing like presenting your most truthful, authentic self... and being received.”

Maybe what we’re actually looking for isn’t confidence it’s the experience of being received as ourselves. Fully, without editing.

Getting there requires something most of us underestimate. It requires showing up before you feel ready again and again.

The job is to audition.

I’ve learned over the years not to ask Bernard about auditions. Early on I excitedly ask, how’d it go, do you think you got it, what did they say. He told me, gently, that if he didn’t bring it up, I shouldn’t either. I thought at first that meant he was upset. What I eventually understood is that it’s not avoidance. It’s discipline.

One of his teachers framed it in a way that clarified everything for me.

‘The job is to audition. Not to book it.’

Booking is the best case scenario. But it’s not the job. The job is to show up, do the work, give it everything and let it go. After he submits a tape, he doesn’t think about it anymore. He measures himself against himself — did he understand the story, did he do the work, did he show up fully. If yes, done. He is not waiting on someone else’s answer to know whether he did his job well.

He laughed when I asked if that came naturally.

‘When I first started out I thought every one could be the one. This could be the one. But the older you get, even if all of them were the ones, life still goes up and down.’

A Sea Full of No’s

I asked him how he keeps going after all the no’s, and more specifically, how he separates the rejection of the work from a rejection of himself. Because I think that’s the part that trips most of us up. We put something out, it doesn’t land, and we don’t just feel like the work failed. We feel like we did.

His answer wasn’t about toughening up. It was simpler than that. He said he doesn’t have a number in his head. He doesn’t know when his last audition will ever be, so there’s no point tracking the no’s against anything. When he first started out he thought every one could be the one. But the older he got, the more he understood that even if all of them were the ones, life still goes up and down.

Then he said something that reframed it entirely. He’s watched friends book roles he went out for. Early on, that stung but somewhere along the way the feeling shifted. When the yeses start happening around you, to people you know, people you came up with, you stop reading it as evidence against you and start seeing it as evidence the YES exists and it’s close.

‘What is for you is for you,’ he said.

He shared what one of his teachers bestowed upon him

‘An audition is them asking you to come in and paint a tree. You paint the clearest, most committed tree you have. You let it live. And then you let it go. Because maybe they wanted a different tree. That’s not a verdict on your tree.’

Before we wrapped, I couldn’t let him go without chatting about charisma. That quality some people just have when they walk into a room. The aura, the pull. Are some people just born with it, or can you build it?

He brought up a concept from Stanislavski called Circles of Attention:

You. The people immediately around you. The wider room.

The most magnetic people, he said, move between those three circles almost without thinking — present with themselves, aware of who’s in front of them and holding their center the whole time.

‘There’s a magnetism that you can cultivate. It’s not a gift but a practice.’

Presence Lives in the Body.

The last thing we talked about was the body and this is where everything lands.

You cannot think your way into presence. Bernard has been clear on this his whole career. Confidence is not a mindset you access on command. It’s a physical state your body either has evidence for or it doesn’t. The reps aren’t just about getting better at the thing. They’re about training your body so that when the moment comes, it already knows what to do.

I’m a fast talker. I always have been. Now that I’m showing up on camera more: these interview sessions, the YouTube videos, putting myself out there in a more visible way. I watch myself back and I catch it. The pace climbs when I’m nervous. The words blur together. What I’ve been working on, slowly, is slowing down enough to actually be inside what I’m saying before it comes out.

He talked about what shows up on camera when you’re actually thinking the thought versus reciting words you’ve memorized. The thought, he said, shows up in your eyes before you speak. We are reading each other constantly, picking up on everything, and we can feel the difference between someone who is really there and someone going through the motions.

I told him I was a feeler. That I wanted to fully embody every word before I said it on camera.

He looked at me the way he sometimes does.

‘It ain’t gotta do all that,’ he said. ‘If you really think the thought, we already see how you feel about it.’

So I’m being extra, I quipped.

A little bit, he said.

Noted.

I’ve spent a long time thinking the answer was in my head. Get the mindset right, believe the thing, and the body follows. But what Bernard kept coming back to is that it works the other way. The body leads. You train it through repetition — you show up, you do it, it gets easier and eventually your nervous system stops sounding the alarm every time you try to be seen. Not because the fear disappeared but because the evidence got louder.

I left with the understanding that presence is a decision, confidence is a result, and the job, whatever yours is, is to show up and do it.

Everything else comes after.

YOUR HOMEWORK

Bernard’s assignments from this session:

1) Go people watching. Sit somewhere public and observe how people move, how they carry themselves, how they exist when they think nobody’s paying attention.

2) Take a walking meditation — no podcast, no music, just you and your own awareness. Notice where your eyes go naturally and how you move when you’re not performing for anyone.

3. If you’re feeling brave: learn a short poem or monologue, something that means something to you. Say it out loud to yourself first. Then to one other person. That’s the rep. That’s where it starts.

Class notes, reflection prompts, body practices, and additional resources from Bernard are in the companion syllabus.

So my question to you is:

What is one thing you’ve been waiting to feel confident enough to do?

What if you did it anyway?

Session 02 drops next Sunday.

Take care,

Alicia G.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Bernard teaches adult acting classes at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. Find current listings and enroll here. For 1:1 coaching, reach him on Instagram @Ibnard.

Acting Techniques Referenced

• Meisner Technique

• The New Yorker How the Method Made Acting Modern

More resources from Bernard are included in the downloadable companion syllabus.

You know that feeling right before a new semester starts? Not the first day. The few days before, when the syllabus shows up in your inbox and you read it twice even though nothing’s happened yet.

That’s where we are and your materials have arrived.

Summer Syllabus Intro

84.6MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

This is a few pages from your syllabus packet, the thing you’ll get every Sunday once class is actually in session: lesson highlights, guided notes, space for your own reflections, homework, and resources you’ll come back to long after the session ends.

Here’s the full schedule again, in case you missed it (or if you missed the original announcement entirely):

Four sessions. Four guest lecturers.

I’m not naming our guest professors yet. That’s part of the point, you’ll meet each one the week their session drops!

Some of you have followed me long enough to remember: I used to have a podcast called Dose of Duality.

This is the first interview series I’ve done since then and I shot the first conversation this weekend, and it brought back something I didn’t realize I’d been missing.

Most of what I make now comes from digging around in my own brain and turning it into something. This is different, someone else is in the room with me again and I get to follow a thread I didn’t write and see where the conversation actually leads.

I forgot how much I love that.

So I’m not just curious what you’ll discover this summer. I’m curious what I will too.

Every orientation week isn’t just for looking at the syllabus. It comes with homework too.

Here’s yours.

Finish this sentence, out loud or on paper(maybe in your syllabus 😉), doesn’t matter which:

“One day, I’ll...”

Don’t fix it.

Don’t plan it.

Don’t even reread it if you don’t want to.

Just get it out of your head and somewhere you can find it again. We’re going to come back to it.

That’s the whole assignment!

Class begins July 5. Office Hours are already open in the Substack Chat if you want to get a head start.

See you in class.

P.S. If you don’t know where to start, take two minutes for the Less Chaos, More Clarity quiz. It’ll tell you exactly which kind of stuck you’re in.

If you already know, and you want the space to actually work through it with me directly, the Clarity Reset is a 90-minute 1:1 session built for exactly that.

Take care,

Alicia G

If you did No Spend Saturday with us, how’d it go fren?

Be honest, even if “honest” means you made it to 2pm because it was Juneteenth weekend and I know every city had something going on. Shoutout to Atlanta for making a “lemon pepper lemon drop” cocktail with an actual chicken wing as the garnish, smh Atlanta is not a real place, lol.

But for real, how’d it go?

Win’s, barely made it or didn’t happen at all? You don’t need to grade yourself. Just notice.

I MAY HAVE FOUND A LOOPHOLE. We did an early Father’s Day celebration for my father-in-law, so I was out with family all day and ended up spending zero dollars. Not because I was disciplined because everybody else was paying. 😂 I do not advise this as an actual strategy, you can’t just schedule a family function every Saturday for the rest of the year but I’ll take the win where I can get it, lol.

Here’s what I noticed on my end, beyond the loophole: the hardest part isn’t usually the spending itself. It’s the boredom right before it. Those few minutes where nothing’s happening and your brain starts negotiating — you deserve something, it’s JUST $12, you’ve been good. That’s really what this challenge is about, becoming aware and choosing to choose differently in those few minutes right before you’d normally say yes.

Whatever happened last week, shake it off. We’re moving into Week 2 locked in.

Drop in the chat and let me know where you landed. I’ll be checking in Saturday morning with a little Hot Girl pep talk.→ Join the Substack Chat

Incase You Missed It

Last Sunday’s essay I announced the Summer Syllabus - Girl, Then What Happened, a four-week interview series kicking off July 5th. This Sunday I’ll be introducing the full lineup, so you’ll want to be caught up before then.

Signs You’re Dating From Survival Mode (And What Safe Love Feels Like) if you haven’t watched it yet, I put out a video a little while back on this exact pattern, just in a different area of life: the signs your nervous system is running the show in dating and relationships, not just your bank account. Watch below 👇🏾

Until next time…

Take care,

Alicia G

I built us a personal curriculum: conversations on free will, visibility, permission and rebuilding.

We’re not doing this just for the plot.

We’re doing it to become more curious around different ways to be the best and most free versions of ourselves.

Our Summer Syllabus is called Girl, Then What Happened?

Four weeks. Four conversations.
Each one built around a question I can't stop thinking about:
What happens when you stop organizing your life around fear?

I’m inviting you to lock in with me for the next four weeks, starting July 5th.

Attendance: optional.

Participation: required.

Homework: assigned weekly, never mandatory, always worth doing.

Session 01 · Presence 101 Visibility · July 5

Guest Lecturer: a professional actor, someone who’s spent years on screen and on stage.

We’re starting with visibility because before you can build the life you keep talking about, you have to be willing to be seen inside of it.

An idea that’s been rattling around in my brain for years is…

Maybe a lot of women aren’t lacking confidence.

Maybe we’re carrying visibility wounds.

Actors train to be seen before they feel ready. On command. On cue. Under pressure. No warm-up lap. No waiting until their nervous system is “ready”.

So I want to know: what do actors understand about confidence that the rest of us don’t?

We’ll get into presence versus performance, how to stay with yourself when you’re nervous, what makes someone compelling to watch, and how to handle rejection without letting it rearrange your entire identity.

Because confidence isn’t something you either have or don’t.

It’s a skill and like any skill, it can be practiced.

This session is for anyone who wants to speak up more clearly, show up more fully, stop shrinking in rooms, or finally let themselves be seen in the life they say they want.

Session 02 · Free Will, Abroad Permission · July 12

Guest Lecturer: an incredible woman who walked away from an executive career for a major life transition, relocating to another country entirely.

What it took to believe she was allowed to build a life that actually fit her. We’re getting into the moment she knew something had to change, the money fears she had to face head-on, and what she had to let go of believing about what a “good life” was even supposed to look like.

Because sometimes the hardest part isn’t making the leap.

It’s believing you’re allowed to.

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying “one day,” this conversation is for you.

Session 03 · Beauty Maxing Lab: How Much Is Enough? Embodiment · July 19

Guest Lecturer: an expert aesthetician/injector (still being cast).

When does self-care become self-improvement?

And when does self-improvement become chasing something you’ll never catch?

We’re having an honest conversation about beauty, aging, confidence and the things women are quietly spending money on but rarely talking about openly.

We’ll get into Botox, filler, facial balancing, lasers, peels, and all the things currently dominating our group chats and For You Pages.

But more importantly, we’re talking about why.

What are we actually hoping to feel?

What is worth it? What isn’t?

And how do we know when we’re making a choice for ourselves versus responding to a standard we never consciously agreed to?

I’ll be sharing my own experiences too: what I’ve tried, what surprised me, and what I’d spend money on again tomorrow.

This is the one I’m still casting for. If you’re an aesthetician or an injector, or you know someone who you think has a great perspective to lend, email me.

Session 04 · Rebuilding Safety Rebuilding · July 26

Guest Lecturer: a resilient young woman who got married young and was divorced before twenty-five.

What happens when the life you prayed for doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would?

This conversation isn’t really about divorce.

It’s about what comes after- the same “after” I wrote about in this piece on losing myself in a relationship, then losing myself again in my business a while back. This conversation picks up further down that road.

How do you trust yourself again?

How do you date again?

How do you tell the difference between chemistry and chaos?

How do you stop confusing familiarity with safety?

We’re talking about boundaries, heartbreak, self-trust, healing, and the slow process of rebuilding a life that feels like your own.

Starting over isn’t about finding the right person.

It’s about becoming someone you can trust first.

What did it cost you to become the next version of yourself?

I ask every guest the same thing at the end. I genuinely don’t know what any of them will say. That’s the point.

Office hours

are open the whole way through this series. Drop your questions, reactions, or your own “what happened” in the Chat thread. I’ll be there.

Four conversations. Four people who made a choice.

To be seen.

To leave.

To change.

To begin again.

You’ll hear what they gained and also what it cost them.

And maybe, by the end of it, you’ll find yourself asking the same question I’ve been carrying:

What if you actually did it?

Two ways to go deeper while you wait for July 5:

If you don’t know where to start, take two minutes for the Less Chaos, More Clarity quiz. It’ll tell you exactly which kind of stuck you’re in.

If you already know, and you want the space to actually work through it with me directly, the Clarity Reset is a 90-minute 1:1 session built for exactly that.

Take care,

Alicia G.

If you want No Spend Saturday to actually work and not just be a nice idea you forgot about by 11am — it needs a plan.

Not a strict one.

Just enough structure that boredom doesn’t turn into “let me see what’s on sale” or the walk around the block doesn’t become a $9 matcha.

So here’s your prep work before Saturday hits girlies.

Decide what your day actually looks like.

No vague intentions here. Choose it now.

Are you cooking what’s already in your fridge? Going on a walk? Calling a friend instead of meeting her somewhere that costs money? Finally watching the thing you’ve had saved for three weeks?

Decide today, while you have a clear head, not Saturday morning when boredom is doing the deciding for you.

Decide who you’re doing it with.

Solo and quiet is valid. So is a group text where everyone's reporting their no-spend wins like it's a little competition. Either way, name it now. A plan you've told someone else about is a plan you're more likely to keep.

Remove the easy outs.

If DoorDash is the thing that gets you, delete the app off your home screen for the day. If a Sephora run during a boring afternoon is your weakness, don’t go near Sephora. Small friction goes a long way.

Sis, I’ll be checking in Saturday morning.

Just a little Hot Girl pep talk to start the day! A reminder of why saving money is sexy and why we’re doing this in the first place. Nothing serious, just vibes and accountability.

Come check in with me in the Clarity Studio Chat. Tell me what you’re doing today instead of spending money. Share your wins. And if you slip up? Let us know that too, this isn’t about being perfect, it’s about doing it in community.

In case you missed it

This Sunday’s essay I built a free Hot Girls Save Money Budget Tracker to go with all of this. Income, expenses, savings, even a Joy Fund section so you can plan for the things you actually want.

Make a copy and make it yours.

→ Get the Budget Tracker

See you Saturday in the chat!

Come ready.

With care,

A

Wednesday Small Shift Tool No. 21 / The Clarity Studio / Alicia Gilbert

I’m offering another perspective.

Hot girls save money. Especially if you’re a business owner, a future business owner, or someone with real dreams of building wealth and investing. This isn’t about deprivation. It’s not about being cheap. It’s about being financially sexy, which means knowing what you have, knowing where it’s going, and making intentional choices with it.

Money wounds are real. We’ve all been in different phases and stages of life where money felt like a weight. Some of us are still there. That’s exactly why we’re here, not to perform abundance we don’t have, but to become genuinely clear about what we do have and build a real path forward.

(And if you want to start somewhere small this week — I’m kicking off a No Spend Saturday challenge in the Substack chat this Saturday. One day, no unnecessary spending. More on that at the end.)

The Hot Girls Save Money Resource List

A quick note before we get into it: rates, grant details, and program availability can change, so always check the current terms before applying, enrolling, or opening anything.

Apps & Tools I’m Actually Using

Rocket Money

Best for: tracking spending, categorizing purchases, and tax-time clarity.

Useful at both the free and paid tier. The snapshot feature alone of what’s coming in, what’s going out and where most of it’s going is worth it. In this economy groceries alone will humble you, that visibility matters.

SoFi

Best for: high-yield savings, joint accounts, and investing in one place.

Me and Bernard have our joint account here. Their HYSA is currently earning around 4.20% APY with direct deposit. Significantly better than most traditional banks. You can also create sub-account vaults for specific savings goals. I also hold an investment brokerage account here.

Betterment

Best for: high-yield savings you want to keep separate from your main account.

Clean interface, solid rates, low friction. Set it and let it grow. I put my tax withholdings here and allow it to generate some interest.

Novo

Best for: business banking if you have an LLC or side hustle.

Please separate your business and personal finances. I know it’s easy to run everything together when you’re just starting out, but it makes tax season a nightmare. Novo is built for small business owners and freelancers. It’s worth it.

Start Here: The Free Budget Template

Not everyone wants another app, and that’s fine.

I built this based on the template I’ve used myself. Income, fixed and variable expenses, debt, savings, business expenses, estimated taxes, and a whole Joy Fund section. Make a copy. Plug in your numbers. Start there.

Free Budget Template

Books Worth Reading This Summer

I Will Teach You to Be Rich — Ramit Sethi

Ramit’s framework is built around designing your “rich life”, what that actually looks like for you and then building the systems to support it.

It’s practical, it’s not preachy, and it helped shift how I think about money as a tool for a life I actually want rather than a scorecard.

Rich AF — Vivian Tu

Personal finance 101 delivered like a text from your smartest, most fun friend. No jargon. No condescension. Just actionable information.

If you like Vivian’s voice her Substack, enRICHed with Your Rich BFF, is also worth adding to your reading rotation.

Course Worth Considering

Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University

Nine lessons covering budgeting, debt payoff, saving, and investing — with a faith-based framework that resonates with how I think about stewardship. Virtual classes running all summer.

If you’ve been meaning to get your financial foundation in order, this is a structured, proven way to do it. Virtual classes are running all summer.

👉🏾 financialpeace.com

Grants to Bookmark

Amber Grant — WomensNet

The Amber Grant awards $10,000 every month to a woman business owner, plus a $50,000 year-end grant. There’s a $15 application fee, waivers are available and one application qualifies you for everything you’re eligible for.

This one is ongoin so you can apply right now!

👉🏾 womensnet.com

Hey Helen Grant Program

The Hey Helen Grant Program offers $10,000 for 100% women-owned U.S. businesses. The application is clean straightforward and worth bookmarking to applying if you’re eligible.

The Joy Fund: Plan for It, Sis

Here’s what I want to push back on: the idea that saving money means denying yourself joy. It doesn’t. It means planning for it.

The budget template includes a whole section called the Joy Fund. Slots for your dream trip, the bag you’ve been eyeing, the self-care treatments you keep putting off, concerts, experiences, home goals and two custom slots where you write in exactly what you’re saving toward.

Because joy doesn’t have to be a splurge. It can be a line item.

When it’s a line item, you get to have it without the guilt or the hole it leaves in your account.

Budget for the good stuff. It counts.

Your Nervous System Is Not Overreacting

Money makes people anxious and not always because they’re irresponsible.

I grew up with a single mom who was very money conscious. My dad was present and active, but she was running the household alone, and money was always a presence. Whether we had it or we didn’t. How to conserve it. How to steward it well. That kind of upbringing doesn’t leave you when you grow up — it becomes part of your nervous system. A low hum of do we have enough? that follows you into adulthood even when the circumstances have completely changed.

A lot of us are walking around with that hum. And the anxiety doesn’t usually come from knowing your numbers. It comes from not knowing them. We avoid the app. We don’t open the bank statements. We assume the worst and live in that assumption because looking feels too scary.

But here’s what clarity actually does: it settles your nervous system. When you open the spreadsheet, when you have the conversation, when you actually see what’s coming in and going out — your nervous system gets to exhale. Because now you’re working with information instead of fear.

A Few Things I Had to Unlearn

For a long time, I thought being smart with money meant buying the cheapest version of everything. Dollar store logic. But cheap and wise are not the same thing.

I have a Mackage jacket I bought on sale during Black Friday, it was maybe $450. Six-plus years later I still wear it, still love it. That jacket has paid for itself a hundred times over in cost per wear. The $40 jacket you replace every season? Way more expensive in the long run.

The shift isn’t about spending more. It’s about buying things that are genuinely quality, that you actually love, and that serve multiple purposes. When you have the piece you really want, you stop buying filler. You stop trying to fill the gap.

The other money wound I want to name — because I’ve been there and I’ve watched other people there too — is the “I deserve” day.

Hard week.

Things feel heavy.

You are tired of being responsible.

So you spend money you don’t reasonably have because it feels like relief.

And then it puts you deeper in the hole, which creates more anxiety, which creates more bad days, which creates another “I deserve” moment.

The cycle is real.

Money wounds are real.

We’re not here to shame them.

We’re here to become financially sexy this summer, which means meeting ourselves where we are and building a path forward.

Money is a tool. We want to use it well.

Free Summer Moment No. 1 — Host a Money Date

The best thing you can do this summer that costs nothing? Get honest about your money with someone you trust.

Me and Bernard do what we call Money Mondays — once a month, we review our joint finances, our individual finances, and our goals. And here’s what makes it actually work: we don’t start with numbers. We start with intentions. What do we want? What are we building toward? What would feel like a win?

Then we look at the numbers. With wine.

Our money personalities are completely different. I like to talk about it, he’d rather not. But doing it this way, making it feel like a conversation instead of a board meeting, means we both actually show up. It eases my anxiety because we’re in it together. It helps him open up because it doesn’t feel punishing.

You don’t need a partner to do this. Grab your girlfriends. Make it a whole PowerPoint party — goals, budgets, vision boards, snacks, accountability. The gen-zer’s figured something out with that one. Make your finances feel like a moment worth having instead of a meeting you dread.

Free Summer Moment No. 2 — No Spend Saturday

Here’s a challenge I’m starting this Saturday and I want you in it with me.

No Spend Saturday. Every Saturday for the next 30 days — no unnecessary spending. No Target runs. No DoorDash. No “just one thing” that turns into a bag. One day a week, you sit with what you already have and find the joy in it.

Cook the food in your fridge. Take the walk. Watch the movie you’ve been putting off. Text a friend instead of buying something to fill the afternoon.

The goal isn’t punishment. It’s proof. Proof that you can create a genuinely good day without spending a dollar and that the things you actually want don’t always cost what you think they do.

I’m kicking this off in the Clarity Studio Substack Chat this Saturday. Come share your wins, your almost-moments, your creative solutions. We’re doing this together.

Invest in Yourself — This Counts As Saving Too

Some of y’all are out here watching 47 YouTube tutorials trying to figure out what I could tell you in 90 minutes. I love the DIY spirit. I was that person. But there’s a real cost to learning everything the long way and it’s not just time.

It’s the opportunities you miss while you’re still in the research phase.

Investing in yourself isn’t the opposite of saving money. It is saving money. You save yourself months of trial and error. Instead of all those ideas living rent free in your head, the screenshots in your camera roll, the notes you keep adding to, the things you’ve been “planning to do” — you get an actual plan. And me to hold you accountable to it.

That’s what the Clarity Reset is. One 90-minute 1:1 session.

We get clear on where you are, where you’re going, and exactly what moves to make next. You’ll get a 90 day plan that’s ready to execute and the accountability to help walk it out.

👉🏾 Book your Clarity Reset

That’s the Energy for This Summer

Hot girls save money.

Hot girls know their numbers.

Hot girls plan for joy.

Hot girls apply for grants.

Hot girls open the spreadsheet even when the spreadsheet is acting scary.

Hot girls build lives they can actually afford to enjoy.

And they make it cute.

Not sure what your next move actually is? Start with the Less Chaos, More Clarity Quiz. It takes less than five minutes and will tell you exactly where to focus next.

👉🏾 Take the Quiz →

Take care,

Alicia G

The first week I moved to Georgia, I found myself lying on a patio I didn’t own, in a city I barely knew, next to a man I was still learning. And something in my body just... put itself down. Quietly. The kind of quiet I hadn’t felt in so long I’d forgotten it was available to me.

We were lying on this elevated second-story patio that had this charming childlike treehouse energy but grown, curated and intentional. Plants and flowers wrapped around the structure. The tops of fruit trees sprung up and sat eye level with me from this height. I could simply reach out and grab a peach or pear from where I laid. The sound of a babbling brook filled the air from the water feature below. This was the kind of space that makes you exhale before you even realize you were holding your breath. I would later learn that this is just how Bernard moves through the world, creating spaces that restore, not just impress. That patio was already telling me something about who he was and my body was clearly listening.

My last year in New York had done something to my nervous system. I don’t know how else to say it. The pace, the pressure, the accumulation of everything had me running a background program I wasn’t even conscious of anymore. Tracking, recounting, always analyzing the unspoken and staying alert for what wasn’t being said. I thought that was just what it felt like to be a productive person moving through the world. Turns out it was what it felt like to never fully land.

Bernard was doing yoga with me in the mornings. Cooking in the evenings. Opening car doors. Asking questions he actually wanted the answers to. Holding me like it wasn’t an inconvenience. He wasn’t love-bombing me. He was just… steady. The kind of steady that doesn’t announce itself, but your body notices anyway. None of it was grand. All of it was consistent. And somewhere in that consistency, my nervous system finally got the message: you don’t have to watch for it here.

I want to note, I’m very glad I didn’t get catfished because the man I was experiencing that first week still does the same thoughtful gestures today. It wasn’t a highlight reel. It was just a Tuesday.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t have language for then.

Your nervous system doesn’t separate “relationship you” from “business you” from “creative you.” It’s one system.

That system is either in a state of safety or a state of threat, and everything you do, every decision you make, every risk you take or don’t take, flows from which state you’re operating in. If you want to go deeper on what that actually looks like in your body and your work, I wrote about it here.

When you’re in survival mode in love; tracking, decoding, managing, earning — your nervous system is searching for threat detection full time. A nervous system running threat detection doesn’t have bandwidth for being bold, or the luxury for softness. You don’t pause long enough to be gentle with yourself because it doesn’t feel safe to slow down. And you don’t bet on yourself because somewhere underneath all that competence you’re not sure the ground will hold.

So you never pitch the idea to your boss. You don’t raise your hand for the project that would actually stretch you. You hold back sharing what you really think online. You filter, you soften and perform a version of yourself that feels safer than the real one. You don’t take the creative risk.

You stay exactly where you are because at least there you know the rules.

You conserve.

You hedge.

You play small because playing small feels safer than being seen and losing.

I didn’t realize how much energy I had been spending just managing until I didn’t have to anymore.

Morning yoga. Evening cooking. The car door. The curious questions. The soft place to land. None of those things sound like strategy but it was all evidence that built quietly and consistently over time into a nervous system that finally felt safe enough to expand. Turns out expansion had been waiting on safety the whole time.

I started taking risks again because my mind wasn’t consumed with “how my relationship was going”. I had built a strong enough home within to know I always had somewhere to land if things didn’t go the way I planned but this time there was extra support there waiting for me.

You might be reading this from inside a relationship where you can’t remember the last time you fully exhaled. Or inside a season of being single that has started to feel like a permanent address. Maybe you’ve been in survival mode for so long that you’re not even sure what safety would feel like in your body anymore.

I’m not here to tell you to leave. Or to wait. Or that a partner is even the answer.

What I am saying is this: regulation is a practice before it’s a relationship. You can start building the conditions for safety inside yourself right now.

Start with the conditions, not the connection.

Safety doesn’t begin with finding the right person. It begins with you. A few places to start:

Audit who has access to you. Not everyone deserves a front-row seat to your becoming. Distance can be a form of self-protection.

Notice what you keep recovering from. The thing you keep explaining away, minimizing, or needing three business days to come back from? That’s data.

Change how you speak to yourself on a hard day. The voice inside is either building safety or confirming threat. You get to decide which one gets louder.

And here’s the good news about all of it:

Your nervous system is not a fixed thing.

Neuroscience calls it neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to form new pathways based on new experiences. That threat response that has been running for years? It can be rewired. Not overnight. But it can be updated. And you don’t need a regulated partner to start. You just need consistent practice.

Practice calm in small doses. If stillness feels unsafe, start tiny. Five minutes of quiet before reaching for your phone. A slow walk without a podcast. Three rounds of breathing with a longer exhale than inhale.

Let your body move what your mind has been holding. Yoga. Stretching. Shaking. Walking. Movement that isn’t about output, but release.

Regulation isn’t passive. It’s practice. And practice done consistently is how you teach your nervous system that safety can become the new normal.

If you are in a relationship and you’re still bracing… still waiting for the other shoe to drop and shrinking yourself to keep the peace, still over-explaining to avoid conflict and giving more than you’re receiving but calling it love — I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to mistake anxiety for passion and call the chaos connection.

That is not a verdict on you, it’s just information.

And you are allowed to do something with it.

Safety in love is not boring love. Consistency is sexy. A person who keeps their word? HOT. The one who shows up the same way on a Tuesday as they do when they’re trying to impress you. That is the one worth building with.

A supportive partner was one of the most ambitious things I’ve chosen because it gave me back the energy I had been spending on survival and let me put it somewhere worth building.

If you’re not sure what’s running the show right now…

Your anxiety, your fear, your body, your old survival patterns take the Clarity Quiz. It will help you name the season you’re in, so you can stop judging yourself and start supporting yourself.

If your body needs a softer first step, start with the somatic meditation I made for the woman who has been living in her head far too long.

You don’t have to figure it all out today. You just have to take one step toward safety.

With care,

Alicia G

Apparently we stumbled into a full-blown war. The U.S. government just acknowledged aliens exist and released the classified files. Drake just threw up 3 albums on us.. all at once.

The World Cup is coming to Atlanta in two weeks and I’ve barely heard anyone talking about it and I mean anyone. Not even the big advertisers and brands whose entire job it is to be excited about something like this are making noise online. Which is strange. The Atlaliens I know IRL are mostly just annoyed by the city’s last-minute construction projects, smh… Atlanta trying to clean house before the guests arrive. 😂

But we are all looking at our phones with our eyes glazed over.

There is a palpable exhaustion in the air right now.

Here’s what I know, that exhaustion doesn’t solely come from doing too much in a day. Some of it, a lot of it… comes from carrying too much that was never fully yours to hold in the first place.

The friend’s crisis you keep replaying in your mind. The client or work project’s outcome you feel personally responsible for. The family dynamic you’re always trying to manage before it turns into a thing. The text you feel guilty for not answering fast enough. The boundary you’re avoiding because you already know someone won’t like it.

Sis, sometimes because you’re capable, people get used to you being the one who notices and fixes. That can look like love or leadership, or simple being labeled “the strong one.”

But if you’re not careful, it quietly turns into over-responsibility.

(If you want to go deeper on why your body holds all of this before your brain even registers it — this essay is for you.)

So this week’s Small Shift is a simple audit.

Before you try to organize your way out of overwhelm, take a few minutes to ask:

What’s actually mine?

This isn’t about becoming unavailable or suddenly turning every hard moment into, a sassy “That sounds like a you problem.”

It’s about getting honest about the difference between what you’re responsible for, what you can lovingly support, and what you may actually need to put down.

I put it into a two-page tool you can work through with your journal, your Notes app, or whatever paper is nearby. Three categories. A reflection prompt for each and one sentence to complete at the end that might be the most useful thing you do this week.

→ Download the “What’s Actually Mine?” Audit

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Whats Actually Mine Audit

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Download

Notice what you’re carrying. Ask what’s actually yours. Then let one thing be lighter.

You can care without carrying everything.

Less chaos. More clarity. Always.

Take care,

Alicia G

Take the Clarity Quiz, it’s a simple way to name what kind of support your next chapter actually needs.

Take the Clarity Quiz →

Some weeks the most productive thing you can do is feel it, name it and then put on a song that reminds you who you actually are sis.

This week I shared something a bit vulnerable in Sunday's essay. A failed launch, a few hard days, a mirror moment, and a Tuesday night Europe booking that changed everything. If you haven't read it yet, it's here.

But today, I don’t want to give you a framework or a checklist.
No “5 steps to bounce back plan.” (although i love a lil plan)
I’m not pretending all disappointment becomes wisdom immediately because I put a cute font on it.

Here’s a playlist.

It’s called Hot Girls Be Grateful and I created it this week for exactly the kind of reset the mirror moment gives you. It starts with a bop and ends in worship. It moves through hype, through gratitude and faith.

The arc of the playlist is the arc of the practice:

Feel the feeling → hype yourself back up → land in gratitude.

Listen to Hot Girls Be Grateful →

The Small Shift this week:

Next time you’re in a hard moment …the deadline that passed, the door that closed, the thing that didn’t land, that man that ghosted or gaslight you. Before you fix anything and strategize, even before you journal about it: Put the playlist on!

Walk to your mirror, look yourself in the eyes and give yourself the talk your bestie would give you! Hands clapping , head coccked to the side and all.

Then decide what to do next.

That’s a regulated response. That’s the work! And it starts with a song.

Hit reply and let me know what songs I missed and need to add to the playlist, I'm always building!

Leave a comment

With care,

Alicia G.

It was 10 PM on a Tuesday.

I had just finished my five-step skincare routine, tucked myself into bed, and was kicking my feet under the covers, you know the vibes. My fingers were scrolling TikTok. Not productively. The kind of scrolling you do when you're actively looking for brain rot, when you need your mind to go anywhere except the thought you're trying to avoid.

Somewhere between a travel reel and a hotel in Santorini designed specifically to humble me financially, I booked ten days in Europe.

Greece. Italy. Me and Bernard. First time for both of us.

I put my phone down. Stared at the ceiling. Picked it back up and looked at the confirmation again.

It was real. I had just accidentally given myself a euro summer.

Freeze.

Let me tell you what happened in the forty-eight hours before I became someone who apparently just books transatlantic trips on a Tuesday night.

The launch

Six weeks ago I opened the doors to Clarity Lab, my 5-week group program that helps thoughtful women move from scattered energy to clear, confident next steps.

The intersection of how you feel in your body and how you show up in your life, your relationships and your business. It’s nervous system work with clarity-led decision making.

Work I've done with clients, with friends, with business owners who came in spinning and left with a decision they'd been sitting on for months — finally off the hamster wheel. I've watched this work change people in real time. Including me.

I packaged it because I got tired of watching brilliant women stall out on decisions that were already made in their bodies. They just needed the tools to hear it and experienced support to walk it out. Not because I needed something to sell.

I chose to roll it out as a soft launch, intentionally. Lower price point, limited promotion, a chance to test the material and the flow before I committed to a full rollout. I wanted to feel how it moved and what the experience was actually like for people moving through it, before I turned up the volume. I announced it in my Substack, put it on stories a few times, repurposed one story to TikTok as carousel. That was it.

The deadline I set came… and went.

Crickets. Tumbleweeds. Dust blowing across my inbox.

Zero sign-ups.

The sting

I'm going to keep it one hundred and not give you the sanitized version because I believe specificity is what actually helps people.

I'm a thirteen-year marketer. I've launched products and brands for fashion and beauty companies you've heard of. I know the mechanics. I know what a launch requires.

Which is exactly why this particular sting hit different.

Maybe for you it wasn't a launch. It was the job you were genuinely excited about, the one you were overqualified for and still didn't get. The grant you applied for that made perfect sense on paper. The house you put an offer on. The first date you went on after a long relationship ended, the one you finally worked up the courage for, and it went sideways.

Whatever it was, you know that feeling. The deadline passes. The inbox is quiet. The door closes. And you're left in the gap between what you hoped for and what happened.

I was in that gap for a few days. Functioning. Showing up. But with something sitting on my chest. Replaying decisions. Re-reading numbers. Asking better questions than "am I a failure?"

That's not a crash out. That's disappointment doing its job.

Let me tell you the most important thing I did in those days was resist the urge to let it become a verdict.

The mirror

When I was ready to move, really ready, I walked to my mirror. The oversized antique gold, twelve hundred dollar Anthropologie-inspired one. You know the one.

I stood there and I gave myself a talk. Not a gentle one. A bestie one. Because somewhere in the back of my head, Spiffy The Goat was playing. You 👏🏾 don't 👏🏾need 👏🏾no 👏🏾beat. You better hype your bestie up !

And I thought, girl. You got this!

I started tooting my little butt up in the mirror. Dancing. Fully committed. By myself. At nobody.

I laughed and laughed and that laugh was the reset.

The me standing at that mirror was hyping the me who made the call. She did what she thought was best. She built something real. The offer didn't convert, but she didn't fail. Those are not the same thing.

A product not converting is data. It doesn't get to tell you who you are.

And then I booked the euro summer.

Which brings us back to 10 PM on a Tuesday and me accidentally becoming a person with international travel plans.

TikTok Go

TikTok just dropped something new and I need you to pay attention to it, because this is happening in the world of marketing right now and it's moving fast.

TikTok Go is a travel booking feature built directly into the app, partnered with Bookingcom and Expedia. You can be scrolling, see a hotel in Santorini, and book your hotel, experiences, and excursions without ever leaving TikTok.

TikTok basically removed the distance between "that looks nice" and "well… I guess we're going to Greece."

TikTok is converting its discovery engine into a transaction layer. The inspiration and the purchase are now the same moment.

I'm not saying I planned this. I was genuinely just scrolling to decompress but the infrastructure was there, the moment of openness was there and a Tuesday night decision became a honeymoon we never took.

What I got wrong and what I know now

Here's the real marketing lesson, and I'm giving it to you straight because some of you are building things too.

A soft launch without a warm audience isn't a launch strategy. It's a hope strategy.

I made a calculated choice, lower price, lighter promotion, test the format, without fully accounting for the fact that my audience hadn't had enough context around what Clarity Lab actually was. What you'd feel inside it. What shift you'd walk away with.

I marketed something people didn't have enough relationship with yet to say yes to.

I opened the door before enough people understood why they'd want to walk through it.

Honestly? Resonance can trick you into thinking readiness exists. People sharing your posts does not automatically mean they understand your offer deeply enough to buy it.

So if you've ever googled "how to warm your audience before a launch," this is that answer, from someone who learned it live.

Here are a few honest questions worth asking yourself before you open any door:

• Have they seen you talk about this topic consistently, not just once or twice?

• Do they understand what your offer actually does, not just what it is?

• Have you shown them what transformation looks like in real, specific terms?

• Are they engaging, responding, replying, or are they quiet observers?

• How long have you been building this relationship?

That last one matters more than people want to admit.

The part I have to own

I came back online this year. Made the decision to be visible again, not as a yoga girl or marketing consultant doing the work behind the scenes for bigger companies, but as someone living out this clarity-led, aligned life and talking about it out loud.

Some of you met me in yoga. Some in business. Some in heartbreak. Some in Brooklyn.

Some of you are newer. You found this version of me and you're still figuring out if you trust her.

That's fair. I'm still introducing myself too. We're warming up together.

Which means I have to hold my own launch with that honesty. I came back online and started posting content that resonated, and then I opened a door before enough people knew what was behind it. I own that.

What's next

Clarity Lab is coming back, September or October. Bigger, warmer, with a community of women who know exactly what they're walking into.

Between now and then I'm building something for you. A free 6-day challenge dropping in July. One live check-in, daily exercises, and a real-time experience of this work before you decide if Clarity Lab is for you

Six days where you stop intellectualizing the decision and finally move something in your real life.

Not just insight. Clarity that actually changes your behavior.

By the end, you won't still be ideating. You'll have had a clear move forward on something that may have had you stuck far longer than you want to admit.

We’re taking action and building momentum together.

I'm really excited about this one. Follow me on Instagram to be the first to know when it opens.

But right now, I want to hear from you about Clarity Lab.

Did you know the launch was happening six weeks ago?

Did you click?

Did something stop you?

Had you never even heard of it until right now?

I'm genuinely asking. Not to talk you into anything, the doors are closed right now. But I want to understand what you saw, what you wondered, and what made you pause. That feedback shapes everything I build next.

You can take a look at the landing page here, it's still live, just not open for enrollment, and then hit reply and tell me what comes up for you.

Message me

P.S. If you've been to Greece or Italy, I need your recommendations in the comments. Favorite island, can't-miss sites, the restaurant you still think about, drop it all below. Bernard and I are taking all reccs for our first euro summer!

Comment

P.P.S. If you're new here and not sure where to start, the Clarity Quiz is always available. Five minutes and it'll tell you exactly where you are and what you need right now.

Take care,

Alicia G.

This week’s essay was about the grief nobody warns you about. The quiet kind that shows up in the middle of something good.

For me, it was my name. For you, it might be a career shift, a relationship that’s changing shape, or a season that’s ending before you felt ready.

The through-line is the same: becoming always requires releasing something first but most of us skip that step entirely.

So today’s Small Shift is a reflection guide I’m calling She Finished Her Assignment.

It’s three parts. Twenty minutes. No fluff.

It will ask you to name the version of yourself that got you here, honor what she built, and get honest about what she was carrying that doesn’t belong in your next chapter.

This is not a journaling exercise for the sake of journaling. This is the actual work of identity transition: the part that makes your next chapter sustainable, not just aspirational.

Take your time with it. Come back to it if you need to.

If something comes up that surprises you, that’s the part worth sitting with longest.

Now take a breath because whew, we did it Joe!

Not sure what season you’re in or what you actually need right now? The Less Chaos, More Clarity Quiz was built for exactly this moment.

Take the Quiz

And if you already know you’re in a transition but need help making sense of it, book a Clarity Reset 1:1.

It’s a private strategy session to help you name what’s shifting, sort through the noise, and choose your next aligned move with more confidence.

Because sometimes the next chapter is already here. You just need a clear plan for how to meet it.

Get Clear

See you Sunday.

Take care,

Alicia G

Nobody warned me about the grief.

It doesn’t announce itself with a funeral, flowers and people asking if you’re okay. Sometimes it’s quieter than that. It shows up in the middle of something objectively good. Something you prayed for, waited for and it just sits there —unnamed.

Esther Perel, a renowned Psychotherapist says we don’t just lose people. We lose versions of ourselves too. I knew she didn’t mean it metaphorically but practically speaking I couldn’t picture what that meant.

Until— it happened to me.

And of all things it was my last name that did it.

Let me back up.

We are on the heels of our two-year marriage anniversary on July 26th! Whew time is flying. I got engaged and three months later I got married. Not the wedding. The marriage.

It was just us our parents and a handful of family members at the Fulton county courthouse that day.

I’ve been thinking about that season a lot lately because what looked simple from the outside was actually one of the most quietly significant transitions of my life.

We said our vows, kissed, then signed some legal paperwork and BOOM we were married. The wedding came a year and four months later, in Mexico, with everyone we love. But the marriage started in a quiet room with just us before any of it looked like what I had imagined.

Which basically means I had a lot of time to sit with what was happening to me.

The last name question was one I thought I had resolved before it even arrived. My last name isn’t my father’s so there was no complicated emotional history tied up in Ferguson in that way. I assumed the decision would be straightforward. Practical. Something I’d handle between to-do list items.

The last few years of my life have been marked by different forms of grief so we had become old friends but grief over my last name was not on my bucket list.

Yet there I was, in prayer one morning, resistant and unable to explain why. I had built my marketing career as Alicia Ferguson. My name in wellness spaces, in boardrooms, in bylines, all of it was Ferguson. My reputation, my relationships, my sense of self in the world.

I sat there with this quiet, confusing ache: why does this feel like a loss if I chose this?

Maybe you’ve felt this too. The strange ache of receiving something good while having to grieve who you were before it arrived.

In that prayer time, I heard something that left my mouth open, convicted me and also felt downright rude…

You asked me for these things, but you don’t want to deal with all that comes with the blessing.

There’s a concept I’ve been calling the backside of the blessing.

You pray for the bigger house. God gives you the bigger house. Now there are bigger bills. More maintenance. More responsibility. Not as punishment just as the honest reality of expansion. You got what you asked for, and what you asked for came with weight.

The blessing and the burden arrived in the same package.

The backside of the blessing is the part nobody posts about. It’s the identity shift, the responsibility, the grief and the quiet cost of becoming someone who can actually hold what she asked for.

I want to be clear: I’m not saying marriage is a burden. I’m saying that becoming, real becoming, not the highlight reel version of it requires you to release something and sometime you don’t realize what you’re releasing until you’re standing right in front of it hands open, chest tight with no clean explanation for why.

What I was releasing was Alicia Ferguson.

I mean not her completely. Her values, her gifts, and the years she had built were all in tact —but the container of her. The version that had calcified into a fixed identity: this is who I am, this is how I move, this is what I do. Until it stopped being an identity and started becoming a ceiling.

In that prayer, something illuminated for me:

Alicia Ferguson is who you are. Alicia Gilbert is who you’re becoming.

So who is she, Alicia Gilbert. How does she walk? What does she allow? What does she do with all her stuff —the marketing, the wellness, the writing and the faith now that she’s not choosing between them anymore?

This week, a friend texted our group chat about the time Alicia took her Nike shirt and didn’t return it for almost a year.

Listen. She stayed at my house for a weekend, left the shirt, and it got completely mixed in with my wellness influencer Nike collection. Honest mistake.

I texted back: Wow. That’s crazy. Good thing Alicia Gilbert wouldn’t do that. 😂

We were joking.

But also, we weren’t.

Because the shift is real. The woman I’m becoming has different habits, standards and different things she allows.

Some of them are profound and spiritual and hard to put into words. Some are just: she returns the shirt.

Toni Morrison said, “Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.”

Maybe that’s why this name change felt so tender. I wasn’t just updating paperwork. I was learning how to tell the truth about who I was becoming.

The more honestly I told that story, the more I realized Alicia Gilbert wasn’t a replacement for Alicia Ferguson. She was an expansion.

Here’s what I know about next chapters: they don’t wait for you to feel ready. There’s no press conference or invitation with a deadline and an RSVP. They just start.

One day you look up and you’re already in it. A different city, a different name, a different idea of what’s possible. The only question is whether you’re going to catch up to yourself or keep cosplaying as an older version because it’s familiar.

Alicia Ferguson built a marketing career as a CMO. She co-founded a yoga studio. She was a lululemon ambassador. She was published. She moved fast in rooms that rewarded urgency and called it ambition.

Alicia Gilbert is doing all of that and more with her nervous system intact. She built Clarity Studio — not as a side project or a pivot, but as the thing that finally lets all of her exist in the same room. The marketing brain and the yoga mat. The strategy and the scripture. She's cold DM-ing writers and creators she genuinely admires because she's done waiting for permission to be in rooms she belongs in. She's writing about faith not as a disclaimer but as the actual lens because that's how she sees the world and she's done translating it into language that makes other people more comfortable. She's learning to receive help, to move slowly on purpose, to make decisions from a regulated place instead of a fear state.(I wrote about what that actually looks like in the body and in your business here.)

Same woman with just a fuller permission set.

That didn’t happen in a day. I slowly changed my name. I even gave myself a deadline at one point.

The irony of scheduling your own evolution is not lost on me.

But the shift had already happened inside long before the paperwork caught up.

That’s how next chapters work.

The version of you that’s coming isn’t asking permission. She’s not waiting for your calendar to clear, or your bank account to hit a certain number, or for everyone around you to confirm that yes. Now is the right time and now you’ve earned it.

She’s been ready. She just needs you to stop clinging to the container you’ve outgrown long enough to actually step into her.

The grief is real. Let yourself feel it.

Then ask: who am I becoming?

Not who do I want to be someday. Who am I already in the process of becoming right now, in this season, in this chapter that started without an announcement?

If you’re not sure how to answer that yet, start here. The Less Chaos, More Clarity Quiz will help you identify exactly what season you’re in and what you actually need right now.

If you're in that in-between, where you can feel the pull of what's next but part of you is still gripping the version of yourself that got you here, this is the work we're doing inside Clarity Lab. We're going deep on identity, seasons, nervous-system-safe strategy, and what it actually looks like to step forward without burning yourself down in the process. Doors are open.

Take care,

A

Whoah, a lot of you felt that one!

So this Wednesday Small Shift I’m adding on to that thought because I realized I had given you the framework but not the tool. The thing you could actually use in real time, before the next big yes.

So I built one. Then I immediately had to use it on myself.

I have some resources coming in and I’ve been eyeing a sexy Black Lexus GX 550 with saddle interior, dreamy. Which would be, for the record, the first brand new car I’ve ever purchased in my life! No shame in that. But also: significant.

Now listen — I’m a material girl. I like nice things. But I’m also a frugal girl when it comes to my schmoney. So instead of letting those two women argue it out in my head for the next three weeks, I created the prompt below. Then pasted into Claude and answered it honestly about the car.

What came back, yikes lol.

It said: “The question isn’t whether you deserve a nice car. You do. The question is whose eyes are you imagining when you picture yourself driving it? If it’s yours, that’s desire. If there’s an audience in that image, even a hypothetical one, that’s worth pausing on.”

Then it said something about how certain money can carry urgency that belongs to grief or guilt, not to the actual decision… blah blah blah, essentially coming for my neck.

BUT, I sat with that for a minute.

This is the prompt. It works on car purchases. It works on business decisions. It works on the relationship you keep giving energy to that your body keeps pumping the brakes on. Use it anywhere you may be overriding yourself.

Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, or your journal with your real situation filled in. The prompt works in all three places. The answers will find you.

This week on YouTube I went deeper on all of it. What self-abandonment actually looks like in business and in your relationships (hint: it’s the same pattern, different address), and what regulated expansion means when you’re trying to grow without losing the thread back to yourself.

If you read that essay a few weeks ago and thought okay but how do I actually run this in my real life — the video is the answer.

→ Watch: 3 Questions Every Entrepreneur Needs Before Their Next Big Move

Take care,

Alicia G

P.S. If you’re not sure where you’re at right now or if self-abandonment has been quietly creeping into your decisions and you can’t quite name it yet… My free Clarity Quiz will tell you where it’s showing up Take it →

Rest Tool No. 16 / The Clarity Studio / Soul Care by Alicia Gilbert