The other day I got a Teams message that immediately ticked me off. I adore the sender but this woman was asking a question I couldn’t answer. Not because it wasn’t my area of expertise or related to the group I used to lead. It’s because this branch office decided early on that they didn’t care what anyone, including senior leadership, said. They were going to do things their own way and this woman was asking about was one of those things.

Whenever these situations came up, I would go to Crazytown, much like I did the other day. (Since I’m no longer in a position to care, I don’t. Most of the time.)

Mix the first passive aggressive email of the day landing in my inbox with this first thing in the morning resentment , and I was in full blown GRRRRR mode before I’d finished my first cup of coffee. So I figured, let me reset and take the dogs outside. While I was trying to keep my little bowling ball of a dog-o from eating the Rose of Sharon buds that had fallen onto the patio, it hit me. “Holy crap, I’m Creon.” I felt like a 4’10” deflating bag of ego.

I knew I was right, though. It was all about my ego. I wasn’t angry because that office was hindering company progress by doing their own thing. I was angry because I took it as a personal attack. I was so focused on how I made their actions mean I wasn’t a legitimate leader, it was impossible for me to see none of it had anything to do with me.

Which isn’t good for anyone. As soon as your reason for any decision is making sure everyone knows you’re the one in charge, you’re in trouble. Everyone can see it (except you) and you forfeit any semblance of self-respect, along with the respect of anyone else.

So when I was reading Antigone this week and watching Creon make one bad decision after another — each essentially on the basis of “Because I’m the king, that’s why” — it was heartbreaking, helplessly watching someone destroy themselves and everything around them, one small decision at a time.

Creon starts with the best of intentions, like most of us do. He makes a whole opening speech about how he’ll be a king who’ll put the city’s well-being above everything else. It sounds good (if a little too well-rehearsed), but in literally the next breath he becomes the thought police. He makes a definitive “If you don’t agree with me, you’re the enemy” declaration, and sets himself up for disaster.

When you hear your new leader kick things off with a statement like that, you know your opinion is not welcome and keep it to yourself. Or only share it behind closed doors or in text messages in today’s culture. Either way, as a leader, you’re headed for the rocks.

And I get that we’re all human and Creon’s situation is stressful. He’s only king because he’s literally the only eligible one left alive. The biggest pain in his side, Antigone, is actually closer to the royal lineage as Oedipus’ daughter, but she’s a woman so she doesn’t count in ancient Greece. She still ends up having more courage than Creon.

But life doesn’t make an appointment for complete upheaval. It just drops us onto a garbage heap, pats us on the back and delivers a doubtful “Lotsa luck,” on the way out. When you don’t feel like a legitimate leader, you make bad decisions and luck won’t help you.

Once in a while you might have someone around who is willing to tell you the truth. Creon had his son, Haemon, who desperately wanted to help his father. But Creon refuses to hear it and accuses Haemon of taking Antigone’s side against him. Unfortunately, Creon doesn’t realize how wrong he is until Haemon kills himself after Antigone commits suicide. And once Haemon kills himself, Creon’s wife kills herself. (This play is a whole thing, friends.)

So Creon loses the city, his son, and his wife because of his stubborn inability to see himself as anything apart from his role as king. I’m grateful all I lost was some dignity and respect.

But I know there were countless times when I questioned my own ability to lead. Someone hands you the position and you’re thrilled. But the voice inside whispers, “Is it really because they think you’re the right person? Or is it because there’s no other choice?” That messes with your mind and influences every decision. You’re not working from a grounded place where you have everyone’s best interests in mind. Instead you’re consumed with proving your authority, that you’re the right person for this job, that you can do it. To quiet that voice, you have to make sure everyone knows you’re right, even when you’re the only one who cares. And the louder you yell, the more insecure, out of control, and unfit you appear. Looking back I realize all I was doing was setting fire to my reputation. That wasn’t good but at least it wasn’t life-ending, either.

And you wonder, how does Creon not see it? His son tries to reach him and even my guy, Tiresias (who really needs his own post), tries. A prophet who has served the city well for decades, a man even older than Creon so not as easily dismissed as young Haemon, tells him, “It’s okay to change your mind, man. But you need to act now.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

Creon never has the conversation with the one person who really matters, though: himself. He’s so caught up in being the king, he can’t actually lead. Reconsidering any choice means questioning his identity and that’s totally unacceptable. He’s the king, dammit!

I’m watching this happen in real time now. There’s a manager who can’t get out of his own ego’s way. Someone senior questions something and his first instinct is to blame someone else. His response to his support staff: “You did it wrong,” which, if you’re keeping score at home, is the fastest way to sow resentment. He doesn’t realize that every overreaction is an announcement that he’s insecure about his ability to manage this project.

Maybe he’s overwhelmed, which would be perfectly legit, except he’s hired three full-time people to help him manage this thing. If he’s still overwhelmed, then it makes me think he doesn’t know how to delegate or manage. So the bluster gets louder and the respect from the team diminishes. Every outburst announces a limited skill set, promotion beyond his capabilities, and refusal to admit he needs help. Everyone loses.

Compare him with the manager who gets a question and says to a teammate “I have different numbers than you. Let’s put some time on the calendar tomorrow to see where the difference is coming from.” It’s an approach that says “I’m still learning, too, and I appreciate the work you’re doing. Let’s figure out the problem and fix it together.” That takes more courage, strength, and character than an insecure leader is capable of. But the upside is amplified, because team connection is strengthened and character is built.

I’m not saying any of it is easy. Every decision comes with consequences. They’re unavoidable. The only variables are what they are and when you face them. If you’re listening, you’ll hear the people who love you and want the best for you. You’ll have a Haemon or a Tiresias. Disaster rarely comes as a single event. It’s more like a slow drip, one harmful decision after another, until the foundation eventually crumbles.

So will you consider and course correct when there’s still time? Or will you wait until it’s too late, and you’re standing in the wreckage of your stubbornness?

“What is she talking about?” was my first thought. I couldn’t believe she’d said the words, and I couldn’t understand how they made sense to anyone in the room, including her.

“I think you’re taking the easy way out because keeping him is too hard,” she said. “Letting him go is the easy way out.”

Not “Letting him go is the right thing to do.” Not “Keeping him here is asking everyone in the company to have to deal with the consequences.” No, we were taking the easy way out. Because telling your boss she’s wrong and needs to do what everyone else in the room knows is the right thing is “taking the easy way out.” Sure.

My boss wanted to avoid a difficult conversation with a family member more than anything else because having it meant turning her own world inside out. This is why you don’t hire family, folks.

In that moment, my boss lost all credibility in my view. I didn’t see a leader. I saw someone scrambling to protect a family member and themselves. No one said anything because it was pointless. It had all been said before, more than once. This was the fourth conversation about this, and if she hadn’t heard it before, she certainly wasn’t going to hear it now. THAT was the hard thing. To sit there and have to listen to our boss accuse us of “taking the easy way out” because we knew the only way to protect a hundred other people was to let this one person go.

Getting through that messy, uncomfortable situation showed me that a leader can decide on a conclusion before anyone else ever weighs in. And when a leader’s emotional investment in that conclusion is stronger than their commitment to honesty and reality, the people in the room who see objectively don’t just lose the argument. They get redefined as the problem for seeing clearly.

I understood the focus had shifted from what’s true to protecting someone else’s decision about what’s true. That’s….. complicated. Because in that moment, you experience it happening and also suddenly recognize that you’ve been the cause of it happening in the past. I realized I’ve been both those people at different points in my career. It feels gross.

Which brings me to Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex (sorry). I know everyone thinks it’s a story about killing your father and marrying your mother because Freud ruined it for everybody. Yes, those are the circumstances in the play; but they’re not what happens in it and it’s not what the play is about.

It’s really about a leader who is so confident in his own intelligence and ability to see clearly that when he hears a truth that doesn’t fit with his reality, his response is to attack and accuse. Oedipus is so certain he’s right, it doesn’t occur to him he’s the cause of the suffering around him until it’s too late.

When I read the argument between Oedipus and Tiresias, I was surprised by how quickly Oedipus becomes angry. It’s almost immediate. My experience happened over weeks and I wonder now if a quick turn to anger wouldn’t have been more merciful. It definitely would have been faster.

Oedipus constructed a reality that fit the only conclusion his intense mind and emotional state could handle. A trusted advisor becomes a conspirator. A valued colleague becomes the enemy. It’s the only reality that fits.

And that’s what happens when a leader refuses to even consider accepting what they don’t want to face. They turn the truth-teller into the enemy. They have to because their version of reality depends on it.

So instead the truth tellers stop talking, or they only present information that doesn’t disturb the leader’s peace, hiding anything that does. Or they leave.

If they stay, the leader doesn’t notice the information they’re getting isn’t real because they still only see what they want to see. Decisions start getting made in a reality that everyone except the leader knows is warped, and those decisions steer the company straight into disaster. All because one person was unable to accept an honest assessment of a situation.

If you’ve been the truth-teller who was attacked, I’m sorry. Being in that position is like holding a banana while being duct-taped to a hangry gorilla. You know you can’t stay there and something somewhere has to give but all the choices suck.

If you recognize yourself as that leader, the next time someone in the room says something that makes you uncomfortable or doubt their motives, what will you do instead?

Not out of character enough to start eating snails but enough to have a conversation with Claude about what I could do with my 20 years of experience to make something that resembles a living if they decide to can me.

The direction this went in was not exactly weird but it was definitely unexpected. Claude suggested I read “The History of the Peloponnesian War” by, yes, Thucydides.

I’m more of a Dr. Seuss person myself so a 500-page book written between 431 BCE and 411 BCE by an Athenian general was not at the top of my reading list. Or the middle. Or the bottom. Honestly, if you’d asked me, I would have said that of all the books ever written, this was one of them.

But I read one section of it called the “Melian Dialogue”, at Claude’s suggestion. It’s about six pages long. I figured I could handle six pages. It’s a dialogue (duh) between Athenian delegates who go to Melos to take over the island. Melos had aligned itself with Sparta in the war with Athens because they had ancestral ties with Sparta. And just to be clear, the Athenians didn’t show up with a covered dish and introduce themselves as the neighbors. They showed up with an army, ready to throw down.

Instead of going right to the slaughtering and enslaving, though, they agreed to sit with the Melian leaders to negotiate. To everyone’s (meaning, no one’s) surprise, the negotiations don’t go the way Melos hoped and Athens slaughters the men and enslaves the women and children the end.

And why did Claude send me in this direction seeing how it’s not the uplifting story of the year?

Because the Melian Dialogue revealed something to me. What happened then and what I’m experiencing now aren’t the result of character flaws. They’re circumstances beyond our control. Every person experiences some version of this, being caught in a situation not of their own making but still headed for disaster anyway.

Melos is faced with an impossible choice. Submit to the Athenians and live under their rule - not awesome but everybody lives - or refuse, hope that Sparta comes to their aid, and saves them.

Friends, I recognize that hope is not a strategy and no one is coming to save me, either.

I asked Claude why the Melians didn’t leave Melos. There were plenty of reasons, all of them good. Logistics, resources, disagreement. It’s complicated, but they were already frogs in the boiling water by the time they realized they were out of options.

I get it. I probably should have been thinking about building my own foundation when the merger happened. I definitely should have started when my boss died. But like the Melians who thought Sparta would come to their aid, I believed the structure and relationships I’d built over 20 years would protect me. That may have been naive but given everything I thought I knew, it seemed reasonable at the time.

Accepting I was wrong goes deeper than planning a new direction and trying to figure out what a next step looks like. It means deconstructing the identity I’ve built over decades.

Because identity is what tripped me up, just like the Melians. Clinging to it made it impossible to see what was actually happening, and the pressure we felt made us both believe harder. We honestly trusted that our relationships, knowledge, and expectations would protect us. But Sparta didn’t come.

And even if it does in my case, it doesn’t matter anymore. I am fundamentally changed. The identity I clung to is practically dismantled and already being reassembled differently. This one has a foundation built on my initiative and decisions. I’m not waiting for other people to give me meaning. I’m gathering it for myself.

Thucydides wrote about a conversation that took place 2500 years ago, and it helped me clear a path forward, using ancient Greek tragedy and my own insight to navigate it. I was surprised by that. When I think ancient Greek tragedy, I start feeling a tweed jacket with elbow patches, a wingback chair next to a fireplace, and a pipe engulfing me. But that’s another identity problem and I recognize it this time. (Go me! 🥳)

But that reveals something important. I know it’s too late to go back now. I’m in the same circumstances but a different person, one who’s not relying on anyone else to tell me who I am or where I’m going, and then reward me for it. Now I’m creating my own rewards and I’m ready to see where the path leads next.

I’m still drawing the line at eating snails, though.

I think the only thing worse is watching something go wrong, and having no clue it’s your fault while everyone else does know it’s your fault.

Because you look like a moron, you know? And you don’t know it! Once you figure it out, you feel dumb because now it’s obvious, like body odor and bad breath. You can’t unsee (unsmell?) it now. And you wonder, “Why didn’t anyone tell me??”

And it’s the right question to ask.

There it was!

The closest I ever came to seeing a leader get it was in a meeting a few months ago.

One project manager who was exceptionally good at the technical aspects of the work, but had frankly weaponized incompetence on all the administrative aspects of it, was never encouraged, trained, taught, or held accountable for learning and improving that area of weakness (or “opportunity” in corporate speak). It made situations more difficult for everyone around him, including his bosses, but nothing changed.

So when they recently realized he was fumbling the renewal of a contract, it finally dawned on them.

“Did we do this?”

It stunned me into silence, even though my mind was screaming, “YES!!! Yes, you f*#&@^g did this!!! Twenty odd years of never holding this dude accountable, or giving him the resources and follow-up he needed, and you’re surprised??????”

But I said nothing. We used to preach about “open and honest communication”. But when it got uncomfortable, then 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗. What good is that?

Here’s the kicker. More than one person in the organization — hell, on the leadership team itself — had seen and said something around what was happening for years. Never coming right out with it, though. Being just vague enough to ease their own discomfort while not being the cause of discomfort for anyone else.

Partners were too afraid they’d upset this guy, so no one said anything until they couldn’t cover for his deficiencies anymore. Now that they were former owners, they were accountable to other people, and too loaded up with their own work to pick up the slack on him.

The pattern kept repeating until it became inconvenient for them to continue it. And the worst part is I still don’t think anything’s changed.

Why didn’t anyone tell you?

Speaking as someone who sometimes knew and didn’t say anything, AND as someone who didn’t know and wondered why no one told me, I’m going to throw this out there:

No one told you for the same reason you didn’t see it.

Because you didn’t let them. You either shut them down directly or otherwise made it obvious that questioning you wasn’t one of the choices. I remember living that nightmare more than once, as both the victim and the perpetrator. I can’t describe how much I regret it.

You create the environment that determines what truth can reach you. When intelligent, confident, and established leaders make decisions, we don’t typically like when people question us.

When the evidence is right there, but it doesn’t fit our narrative, it almost never hits for what it really is: a flashing neon sign in horribly clashing colors of orange and hot pink, telling us something is going sideways. Because when you’re trained to be a confident leader, questioning your decisions out loud looks like weakness. But doing exactly that opens all the doors and windows for fresh ideas and opinions to come in, and establishes that you’re someone who’s open to hearing what’s uncomfortable when you need to.

When you’ve already created an atmosphere where no one feels safe telling you uncomfortable truths, that doesn’t happen. The very thing you need is the very thing you make sure doesn’t have the environment to grow. You shut the doors and windows and send the message that you’re closed. The more accomplished you are, the less you’re willing to entertain being wrong.

And everyone suffers for it.

When you think you know better because of your experience and achievements, you really screw it up for everybody. You don’t know what you don’t know, and there’s always something you don’t know. Reconsidering your position requires humility and willingness, and more than a little courage.

The bravest thing you can be is willing to be wrong. Right now, that looks like asking myself what truth isn’t reaching me now? And how did I create the environment, purposely or not, where I’ve made sure it doesn’t?

*Ahem* steps up to podium and reads from prepared remarks:

EOS™ is an accountability framework designed to help small to medium sized businesses with between 10 and 250 employees grow their operations without losing their culture.

Steps down from podium

Now, the actual point.

I was part of the leadership team, filling the finance role, and I freaking loved this system.

It gave the company an actual leadership team instead of bending to the whims and moods of one particular person. We had actual goals and a path for attaining them for the first freaking time in literally the entire history of the company. It was fantastic.

Here’s where it got tricky:

A foundational principle of EOS is trust and open and honest communication among the members of the leadership team. This was one of the areas where we failed.

No one wanted to be Copernicus

Failure happens when the senior partner has spent his entire adult life believing and behaving as if he is the center of the universe – after all, he built the company from the ground up, and by “built it from the ground up”, I mean inherited it from his father – and the people around him fall in line with that belief because confronting it is too hard.

And If no one is willing to step up and be Copernicus, explaining “Dear, sir, you are not, in fact, the center of the universe. The company, all the people in it, and our stated core focus are,” then this system does not work. Everyone walks around murmuring behind each other’s backs and then wonders why we aren’t making any progress.

After Narcissus finally retired, we had more success, and also it was super weird.

I had issues

I struggled in the new configuration. Having strong opinions was not a problem for me, and neither was hearing anyone else’s. Expressing my strong opinions, however, was a Kilimanjaro-sized obstacle for me.

With the senior partner gone, and without the obvious and universally understood rules around not violating his ego boundaries, no one was sure where the boundaries were anymore. There was a lot of toe-dipping. You don’t go from making yourself content to just sit on the step of the pool to jumping off the high board in a day. At least, I don’t.

It felt like everyone was being careful about what they said and how they said it. It was unnecessarily slow, in my (apparently strong) opinion, so I started pushing the boundaries a little more each time. Not disrespectfully. I’m not an idiot. Just expressing my opinions and seeing how they landed. Surprisingly, nothing collapsed around me, which was a huge relief.

Inside me was a different story.

One of the mostly inconsequential things we struggled with was titles. In EOS, the only specific titles are Visionary and Integrator. After that, there were three areas with leaders: Sales and Marketing, Operations, and Finance. None of those came with specific titles, which meant we could basically call ourselves whatever we wanted.

Our company was never good at giving people titles, and we treated them kind of like vanity license plates. We can make them say whatever you want. I originally asked for “Grand High Exalted Goddess of the General Ledger and also the World” but was told it wouldn’t fit on a business card so I gave that one up.

One day, though, I referred to myself as CFO, and then I looked behind me and saw the line. The side eye exchanged between the two partners accompanied by the awkward silence told me in no uncertain terms (as far as I was concerned) that I had just tripped over the boundary.

I still don’t know for sure whether my interpretation of that look or that silence was true or not, but it absolutely felt true. In that nanosecond, I shriveled up and wished I could evaporate into that heavy, awkward silence around me. I didn’t want to be seen so instead I stopped talking, and shrunk myself small enough to disappear into a vacuum of shame. I made the look and the silence mean I had neither the right nor the intelligence nor the ability to claim the CFO title, and I let that belief sink deep into my chest.

Tell a new story

Now somewhere in the back of my brain I know my worth isn’t measured by someone else’s opinion. But my brain misplaced that memo, and decided to plaster the one from my nervous system that says, ”You are 100% what someone else thinks of you!” in 86-size Garamond font, front and center, so I would see it every time I was conscious of my thoughts and even when I wasn’t. But now I’ve decided that message is neither useful nor true anymore.

For one thing, the structure around me that held it up there is completely different. The people who had all the authority then no longer have it in the same way. As a matter of fact, they’re both subject to the authority of other people now. Have fun with that. 🤣🤣🤣

More importantly, though, I’m not the same person who shrank that day. I’ve had to find my own path and purpose in this company because literally not a single person is providing any help. The print on that memo from my nervous system is fading, the tape isn’t sticking anymore, and paper is yellow, brittle, and tearing.

This isn’t sustainable over the long-term but I can hang in there for now. I’m clearing my path. Starting my own business is scary but it also makes me the CFE, Chief of Fucking Everything, thank you very much. I’m the CFO because I say so. I’m also the CEO and COO. Doing those jobs is proof, for better or worse. No guaranteed results, just guaranteed work.

I would say I have no idea what I’m doing but that’s not true. I did the CFO role as much as the people above me allowed me to do it. Apparently they had a particular image of what a CFO was and I didn’t fit it. Whatever they thought a CFO should be doing, I wasn’t doing it in their opinion; and that’s at least partially because I was waiting for permission. 🤦🏻‍♀️

After six plus years learning it from the inside, I know about running EOS. No, I’m not a “certified implementer”. But I’ve lived it, and I recognize that I know more than anyone, including me, ever knew.

Permission granted, love. #LFG

Two years ago my old company merged with a new one and my future was, let’s say, less than clear. Really it was foggy AF. That probably should have been my first clue but being the biggest cheerleader for this merger, I was optimistic and positive there was something big ahead for me.

I had no idea it was one of those giant Amazon delivery trucks.

My second clue? Frustration.

During the transition, I lost count of the number of times someone said, “Well, we don’t know what your role is going to be,” every time I asked to join a training. I started thinking my new role is going to have an inmate number attached to it if this keeps up. I was desperate to learn and, admittedly, be relevant again.

Still I persevered and someone finally came to my rescue.

Ironically enough her name was Karen (No joke.) but she was nowhere close to the metaphorical/meme “Karen”. She was an angel.

When she asked me if I wanted to work with her in what had to be the most nebulous, vague job possible, unofficially known as the “Everything no one else knows how to do but has to be done so Karen does it and she’s drowning so you’re going to help her” department, I was 100% down with it. It didn’t matter that she was in Texas and I was in New York. This role fit me perfectly. In my old company, I was Karen for 20 years so it was a natural progression.

We worked together for three short months before she went on a two and a half week vacation. When she got back, we talked everyday, even if it was just for a few minutes to catch up, and I knew this was going to work out!

Three weeks after she got back, though, she went out on medical leave.

And two months later, she died.

I was devastated. Not because of the job but because I really liked her. We had gotten to know each other. I learned about her family and that she loved baby goats. She was unquestionably the kindest person I’d met at this new company. I would miss her deeply.

And, yes, there was also the question of my job.

Without Karen, there was no role, mostly because no one in Texas knew me. No one knew how to do what Karen did and I hadn’t learned enough yet, so that made me useless.

I hate being useless.

I advocated for myself, hoping to find a spot, and was finally offered a position working with the CFO. Fantastic! She said she’d connect me with someone who would train me on my new role.

That was summer of 2025. I have yet to start a single day of training.

Here’s my dilemma: Financially, my family and I lean heavily on my job. And I may be an idiot sometimes but I’m not blind. I know the hammer is going to fall, sooner than later.

I’d rather eat snails (You cannot convince me they’re “delicious”.) than start looking for another full-time job. I’m too old and ornery to try to assimilate into another company culture.

I’m also too young (Weird to say at 56 but here we are.) and financially insecure, staring down medical and other debt, to retire. Not to mention the necessary medical insurance.

No, seriously. Now what?

I’ve already decided that jumping ship right now would be monumentally stupid. There’s no Plan B, no financial safety net, no happily ever after I can see from here.

So what else is there to do but jump on the middle-aged reinvention bandwagon! 🫤

The situation reminds me of how we pieced together ways of making a living when my kids were young. The difference is now I have an inventory of skills and talents to tap into and no childcare concerns (Hooray for middle age!!!). Back then I just had a lot of youthful enthusiasm and a high willingness to please, which is ridiculously hysterical now! Still, maybe that’s some evidence that I can pull this off? Imperfect but still moving forward?

I can’t be the only one going through something like this, can I? Maybe I am. But I doubt it.

Now I’m just trying to pull it all together, one piece at a time, building a foundation of skill AND desire, out here in the wild. Trying to figure out what I want. Asking myself what I could write about forever and not get tired of it. And maybe I could possibly help someone else along the way.

In case it’s not already abundantly clear, this is not “I did it and I’ll show you how you can do it, too!” That’s funnier than the fact I’ve been waiting almost a year for a job description! 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

This is a new adventure and experiment. Nothing about my situation is in perfect alignment for success. It’s exactly the opposite. And as the person who was the go-to for fixing situations for other people, I’m feeling pretty on my own and embarrassed that my reinvention isn’t clean, self-assured, or on schedule.

But here we are, a very public, visibly messy, unconfident, off schedule, and on purpose rerouting towards a new life. I may have missed that banner on the main highway two years ago but ready or not, it’s time to start keeping an eye out for the exit.

I’d so love for this all to be magazine-spread-ready but there’s nothing more unrealistic than believing you should be good at something you’ve never done before.

No, this will be proof that you can be a near-total mess and still move forward. Here, perfectionism is a casualty. We’re doing this messy.

Did you know you can go on YouTube and watch a video about how to build a house?

Seriously. You can watch a 21 plus minute video called, “Step By Step - How to Build a House.” If 21 minutes is too long, you can watch a 15 minute one called, “Building a House in 10 Steps.”

And if you’re really pressed for time, you can watch a time lapse video of a build that’s only 9 minutes long.

Now, what if you think house building is a thing you really want to do? Like, all of a sudden you realize, THIS IS MY PASSION!!! I want to build mansions and tiny houses and cottages and ranches and capes and tudors and those really modern type houses and those sorta odd ski lodge type looking houses and EVERY KIND OF HOUSE EVERYWHERE!

Well, then you can watch all the videos. And then you can watch some more. (You KNOW there are more videos on YouTube for house building.)

And then you can read books about house building. Eventually, you can learn everything there is to know about building a house.

Serious question: Are you now qualified to actually build a house? Do you think anyone would hire you to build a house for them?

Hell, no.

Eventually, you’re going to have to buy material, pick up a tool or two, and ACTUALLY BUILD A HOUSE.

AND…..

Before you do THAT……

You’ll probably want to ask someone who already builds houses for a living to teach you how to do it, probably by working for them, so you can learn how to do all the things, step by step.

Uncomfortable, right? Maybe a little intimidating?

Because odds are, you’re not going to be very good at it at first. Odds are, it’s going to feel awkward and weird.

Doing it will feel uncomfortable and you won’t like that feeling of not being good at it. This is what you love and you so desperately want to be good at it! You want people to love it as much as you do.

But that’s why you learn from someone else — because they can teach you how to get better while you’re doing it — because that’s the only way to become good at it.

Yes, it’s uncomfortable.

And that’s how you know you’re making progress. 💪

Stop Thinking, Start Doing

We get so caught up in thinking we have to be good at something the first time we do it. We get so caught up in it that we tell ourselves we don’t know enough yet. We need to learn more. Once we learn more, then we’ll be ready!

The problem is we never get past the researching and learning, and start the doing.

For the longest time, I wanted to write.

So I learned and took courses. Eventually, though, I had to start writing.

In public.

Where people could see it.

And comment on it.

And it was uncomfortable and scary.

And what happened?

I got a ton of encouragement and validation from other writers. I got advice and help. I got all that because I put myself out there and did the thing I was afraid of doing. And other people who’d been in that place before saw it and understood how it felt.

We’re so caught up in the fear of not being good enough or being criticized that we don’t consider that there are people out there who WANT our gifts, and WANT to encourage us.

I know it sucks but…

You cannot do something new without feeling uncomfortable!

“But what if I’m bad at it?”

Bruh.

Honestly, I’d be shocked if you weren’t. It’s new! You’ve never done it before. Why would you expect to be anything BUT bad at it?????

NO ONE SHOULD EVER FEEL BAD ABOUT NOT BEING GOOD AT SOMETHING THEY’VE NEVER DONE!

Where do we get this ridiculous idea — Yes, that’s a judgment and I stand by it. It’s ridiculous. — that we have to be outstandingly good at something we’ve never done before?

Babies don’t get caught up in being “good enough” to walk before they try it.

And no one is disappointed in a baby when they don’t get that walking thing down on their first try.

GIF credit: https://media.tenor.com/cZ9dqIXOQx8AAAAM/no-nooo.gif

We do not judge them. We don’t think they’re failures.

We are EXCITED for them! We clap and cheer! We encourage them!!

THAT’S what we should do for each other AND ourselves.

You did it!

You hit publish!

You hit send on the email!

You made the offer!

You. 👏 Are. 👏 A. 👏 Badass. 👏

GIF credit: https://media.tenor.com/S6LMOrqKVykAAAAM/fuck-yeah.gif

Does it feel weird and uncomfortable?

That’s okay.

You’ve never done this before so you don’t know what it feels like. You don’t have anything to compare it to. Just take it in. It might be different next time. Right now, though? THIS is your experience. There will never be another one like this one.

My three co-workers are sitting silently, but definitely not comfortably, listening to me verbally rip wallpaper off the walls with my fingernails, shredding every snarky, smug, and snide grenade lobbed into the conversation from my first co-worker.

The second co-worker is sitting quietly, waiting for the storm to pass, I suspect.

The third one, though, is the real surprise. I haven’t seen a look that disapproving since I told my mother, “I think you’re wrong.” (For reference, that was about 10 years ago which is shocking on so many levels considering I’m 56.)

That look, along with her condescending comments, cut through the curtain of bullshit in the conference room like the Boston Light foghorn. If it was meant to make me feel embarrassed, I was — for her.

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Most of my writing here has focused on curiosity and the inner signals that guide our choices. Recently, that same lens has been showing up more and more in how I think about work, money, and the small operational decisions we make week to week.

So I’m opening up a small, personal offering.

It’s a weekly email check-in built around noticing friction and flow — where things feel heavier than they need to, and where they feel easier than expected — especially as it relates to work, money, and every day decision-making.

Each week:

• I send a short prompt.

• You reply honestly (a few sentences is plenty).

• I read carefully and respond with patterns I notice, reflections, and the occasional question.

No meetings.
No productivity theater.
No motivational pressure.

This is for people who:

• Feel a low-grade drag around work or money

• Know they don’t need hype, but do want clarity

• Want a steady, adult place to reflect and adjust

I’m keeping this intentionally small.

If you’re curious, leave a note and I’ll send details.
If not, no worries.

Thanks for reading and take care of you.

Welcome to 100 Days to Living Aligned, your one-step-closer-to-daily nudge to make small, intentional choices that build on each other. No overthinking. No waiting. Just single, simple actions, taken one at a time, toward becoming your future self.

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I effed up.

Not in a spectacular way but enough to realize it and know other people realized it, too. The. Worst.

So I did what any reasonable adult would do. I went back to my hotel room and sobbed.

This was not a “get over it” moment. I didn’t have that in me. With life in general feeling like a dumpster fire in the middle of a cataclysmic earthquake immediately following a devastating tsunami and plague of locusts, “pull yourself together and push through it” was not on the menu.

A friend texted. “Are you okay? Can I do anything?”

“I’ll be fine. I just need to be dramatic first,” was my response.

I knew my reaction was way out of proportion to what I did, which was sing out of tune on the stage. 😱

During that particular week, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 singers crossed the stage. I know I wasn’t the only one who sang out of tune. This was not life or death. This was not even something most people noticed.

When I mentioned it to my director, she wasn’t the least bit affected. Her response was something along the lines of, “meh.” 😅

Which was great, but I knew I couldn’t unsing those notes. What I needed was to let myself feel everything and let it all out.

This wasn’t about screwing up that day. It was about all the times I’d screwed up, or didn’t screw up but got into trouble anyway. It was about fear and anxiety, and letting all that build up inside me.

Dr. Christopher Germer once wrote, “What you don’t deal with goes down into the basement and lifts weights.” That day, a ton of crap I wasn’t dealing with came charging up from the basement and exploded in a fit of tears.

(Pro tip: e.l.f. eyeshadow primer is a jewel! With all the sobbing, heaving, and tissue-dabbing, my eyeshadow remained intact.)

This is why people go off about something trivial, or lose their shit over seemingly nothing. It’s not because of that one thing. It’s about the New Year’s Day-sized gym crowd hanging out in their basement, irritatingly waiting for a bench press or treadmill to open up. So once that door at the top of the stairs opens up, these jacked, roided-up ragers rush it, spilling out in a jumble of drama.

This wasn’t about one performance, and it’s not about being too sensitive. It’s about the accumulation of crap we’re too embarrassed or ashamed to let out and feel.

Give yourself time and space because you didn’t collect this crap overnight. This is not a one-and-done situation. You need to let yourself feel uncomfortable for awhile, as you move through it. You can have all the tools and techniques in the world. I know because I’ve got tons and I practice them, and I still need time and space.

You collected all this crap and still got this far. I promise you’ll shed it, leave it all on the curb, and walk away from it, lighter, happier, and better for having gotten rid of it. That process probably looks and feels daunting, even scary.

That’s not as awful as continuing to carry the misery around.

Welcome to 100 Days to Living Aligned, your one-step-closer-to-daily nudge to make small, intentional choices that build on each other. No overthinking. No waiting. Just single, simple actions, taken one at a time, toward becoming your future self.

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Remember raking leaves into a pile and jumping in them? It seemed like the most natural and fun thing to do as a kid; one of the few pleasant experiences I remember from childhood.

Enjoying it now with my dogs soothes me. Who knew? Here I was searching “everywhere” (I.e., my phone, the tv, my computer) for something soothing and it was right outside my door. I just had to notice it.

I’m slowly learning to enjoy and savor the simple, small experiences, like the feel of my dog’s curly fur under my hand while she sleeps, and the weight of her head resting on my knee, reminding me how much room in my heart both dogs take up.

I’m unprogramming fear now. There was a time when I didn’t dare enjoy anything that was good for me because I didn’t want to feel the pain of missing it when it was gone. And it was always, eventually, gone.

I believed if I didn’t care, it wouldn’t matter. It did, though. The pain still came and I denied it hurt, keeping my head down, knowing if I didn’t look like I cared no one could use it against me. Except me. I used it against me by keeping it locked down in the basement until something set me off and I lost any and all control of my emotional state.

My knee jerk reaction was being defensive, even aggressive. Hurt me and I would cut you out of my life with barely a goodbye; and usually none at all.

And then I would hate how lonely I felt.

It’s like that.

Now I see how much worse I made it for myself when I hid how much it hurt; until I was alone and had nowhere to hide from it. I always felt the pain, except it morphed into other things like seething anger, continuous depression, and panic attacks, and other “special guests.”

These all came from fear of not knowing if I could handle what might happen, trying to run, hide, or fight, whichever seemed like it would make the fear go away and soothe me fastest. I didn’t want to feel out of control or, dog forbid, unsafe. What my nervous system screamed was unsafe was always the ghosts of past experience. They only continued to exist as long as I asked them to, and they were happy to oblige.

The known, even when it sucks, is still preferable to the unknown.

It took awhile before I stopped opening the door and inviting all these freeloaders in for dinner and drinks, allowing them to trash the place, never really leaving, just hanging out in the yard until the next time I opened the door.

A lot of work went into realizing I didn’t have to do that. I could just watch them from the window. That was a lot less stressful and required much less clean up.

Ten years worth of therapy brought me far but I still struggled. Finally, anti-anxiety tools, NLP, and hypnosis taught me the tangible skills I was missing. It’s a constant process and I’m always learning.

Now, it’s not so scary because I know what to do to make sure the gang stays outside, and I just watch from the window.

Welcome to 100 Days to Living Aligned, your one-step-closer-to-daily nudge to make small, intentional choices that build on each other. No overthinking. No waiting. Just single, simple actions, taken one at a time, toward becoming your future self.

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Blue Jays (the birds, not the baseball team) are irritating. They’re loud, they’re noisy, they’re aggressive, and they hold none of the mystique and charm of other corvids, like crows and ravens. I still think they’re beautiful birds.

While I was outside with my dogs today, I watched one glide across the backyard, into my neighbor’s tree. No flapping. No screeching. Nothing irritating. It was silent and graceful and I was capivated.

It coasted effortlessly into the tree, like it was the most natural act in the world, because duh. It’s a bird. Of course, it was the most natural act in the world.

The Blue Jay is both loud and graceful. Both are true. Both are facets of who it is.

It doesn’t question being both. It doesn’t second guess it, worry about what other birds will think, obsess over whether other birds do it better, or how many other birds are doing it. It definitely does not overthink it and it does not explain itself.

It’s another facet of being it’s own unique bird. It just does it.

Allow yourself to be all the facets of who you are. Only change or temper what is important to you to change.

Welcome to 100 Days to Living Aligned, your one-step-closer-to-daily nudge to make small, intentional choices that build on each other. No overthinking. No waiting. Just single, simple actions, taken one at a time, toward becoming your future self.

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Fourteen.

That’s how many times I tried to get on the hotel WiFi before I went down to the front desk.

The process started simple enough. Settings, WiFi, tap the network, wait for the thing to open, enter the email address, check the “I am human” box, tap Connect and………………..

Wait.

Captcha timed out.

Repeat.

Once in a while, the error message would be something about my email address not being valid. Commence swearing.

I hate bothering someone for something that seems so simple and trivial. Except this wasn’t trivial because I had actual 9-5 work to do and if I couldn’t get on the internet, it wasn’t going to happen.

And that was a big problem.

So downstairs I went.

The gentleman at the front desk could not have been nicer. I did my best to be sweet while also being from New York. I usually prefer to let things roll as they do except this time I couldn’t/wouldn’t.

That stuck feeling sucks; that feeling when you just want and need everything, including you, to work the way it’s supposed to and it refuses to.

Because you can’t make everything or everyone do what you want them to. Push all you want but nothing will budge. The captcha is going to time out or the email address won’t be valid. Something is going to be a roadblock.

Now you have to figure it out, and maybe the way to do that is to ask for help. 🤔

When you’re used to being self-sufficient and the fixer, asking for help feels more painful than being stuck. Unless you let that go of that need to be right, to be the fixer, to be, dare I say, perfect 😩, you’re going to have an awfully miserable time, my friend.

Welcome to 100 Days to Living Aligned, your one-step-closer-to-daily nudge to make small, intentional choices that build on each other. No overthinking. No waiting. Just single, simple actions, taken one at a time, toward becoming your future self.

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“Want to hear something that’s going to piss you off?”

Why, of all the things you could say to start a conversation, would you start with that? Talk about priming! Yet someone stood in my office doorway and said exactly that to me.

“No! Why would I want to hear something that’s going to piss me off? Do you mean, like, the way you’re pissing me off right now? What a stupid question!” I thought.

“Uh, I guess?” I answered out loud.

And I immediately regretted saying that. Not because of what came next, which did make my brain seize up like a car engine that ran out of oil.

I regretted it because when I said, “Uh, I guess,” I overrode all three of my brains: my gut, my heart, and my head. I wanted to be honest and say, “No, not really.” Instead I allowed myself to be open to a connection with someone based on one of the worst possible reasons: being accommodating.

I hate it when I do that.

AND…..

I also recognize that we’re all trying. We’re all doing the best we can. I don’t believe the goal was to intentionally piss me off. I’m pretty sure they were just trying to start a conversation and connect with me, albeit in a super odd way.

The thing is I’m not a “have a conversation about something completely unrelated to the present situation just for the sake of conversation” type of person. I’m a “I just want to focus on what I’m doing right now” type of person.

But I realized something this time that changed everything.

I can be myself and protect my boundaries without falling into the worn, habituated brain and emotional patterns of being aggravated and dragged down by whatever it is that’s happening.

I can protect my mental and emotional health without turning into a Gorgon. Who knew?

I’m really grateful for this experiment I’ve been conducting with my own emotional states and neural traits; and grateful for practical techniques and tools that have helped me see situations way differently than ever before.

Regulating my reaction changes everything, even awkward office conversations. 😂

Welcome to 100 Days to Living Aligned, your one-step-closer-to-daily nudge to make small, intentional choices that build on each other. No overthinking. No waiting. Just single, simple actions, taken one at a time, toward becoming your future self.

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“Do you miss your friend?”

My brain jerked and tumbled, like a dog chasing a rabbit and suddenly reaching the end of its leash and flipping over itself.

In a microsecond, I fumbled over what to say to this man, the nicest UPS delivery person I’ve ever met, and weighed whether to answer honestly or tell him what I thought he wanted to hear.

“Yes,” I lied.

“She was so nice.”

Dude, you’re killing me. Don’t you have any other deliveries to make?

“Yes. She’s enjoying her grandchildren now,” I smiled. “She deserves it.” I meant that, she does deserve it. And mercifully, he left.

When he asked if I missed my friend, my first thought was, “Who?” My second thought was, “No. No, I do not miss her and she wasn’t my friend.” We were coworkers and we were friendly. I liked her. I also referred to her as “The Yenta*-net,” albeit affectionately. Mostly.

We were close in age with similar family situations. I admired the way talking to people, and connecting with them, came so easily for her. I did not admire her penchant for talking so much about absolutely nothing or, worse, her ability to manufacture a level 9,000 crisis.

The good did not outweigh the “bad” for me.

Got a problem you need help solving? I’m your person. Whether it’s a work-related spreadsheet type of problem or wanting to change a habit or thought pattern, I got you. Just want to stand there and kvetch? Keep it moving. That’s a privilege only a select few enjoy. Hence why I’m a hypnotist and not a therapist.

As much as I admired her ability to talk to, and tolerate, practically everyone on the planet, the way she did it really annoyed the shit out of me. More than a few times, her conversations, whether in person or on the phone, were so loud I had to shut my office door just so I could think.

She seemed to fit in effortlessly. I, on the other hand, have not fit in since the day I started working there almost 20 years ago. It used to really bother me. The more I tried to fit in, though, the more unhappy I became.

As awkward as I felt, I eventually decided the awkward was better than trying to warp into someone else for the sake of fitting in. That always felt like I was a Slinky that was being twisted out of shape to the point where it was just a tangled mess that no longer worked. (And not one of those plastic Slinkies, either. The original ones, made of metal, with edges you could slice cheese with. Ah, childhood.)

So I let myself be who I was, and if I didn’t like something about myself, I worked on changing it for me. Showing up the way I wanted became my priority.

And that’s when I began to feel more comfortable. Being myself, however that looked on any given day, led me to finding the way I do fit in.

It’s not how I envisioned what fitting in would look like. When I was younger, if I wasn’t everyone’s favorite (or at least thought I was), it was devastating. Now I understand not being my own favorite is what’s devastating.

So no, my bespectacled and brown-adorned messenger. I do not miss her, though I understand why you do, and I can still support your feelings without sharing them.

P.S. *Yenta: a busybody