We cut the wrong thing 1st... [🐝U]

🎧 Wanna listen along to the audio 🎧
It's me reading ...

with MORE rain & a bit of thunder in the background.

Some weeks you just want to pull the blinds, crawl under the covers, & pretend the world can wait a few days.

This was another 1 of those weeks.

Not because anything catastrophic happened.
Just death by 1,000 soggy inconveniences.

The kind that slowly wear your patience down until hiding starts sounding productive.

More rain.
More flooding.
The tadpoles that took over the driveway have moved into the barn now too… doing laps right where my truck's meant to go.

I keep joking I should've built something that floats instead of a barn.
Record snow, then record rain … probably soon to be followed by more snow.
Mother Nature isn’t doing “subtle” in Alberta this year.

& honestly?
Out of sight, out of mind sounds pretty good right now.
Blinds down. Covers up.
Wake me when it's dry.

But here's the thing about wanting to disappear.

The dog still needs to pee.

She's so miserable in this weather she actually tries to hold it…
so I march her out into the rain, wait her out, then towel down what feels like 80 layers of fur so the wet dog smell doesn’t soak into everything inside.

The cats still need feeding … and their little box cleaned.
Clients still need showing up for too (if I want to keep getting paid!).

None of that cares how I feel about it.

There’s 1 thing that always 1st off our list

& that's the part that quietly breaks your heart if you let it.

Because when life floods… the things you HAVE to show up for stay on the list.
Your pets.
Your family.
The deadlines with someone else's name on them.

The 1 thing that always seems to come off your to-do list first… is your own thing.

Which is weird when you think about it.
Because it's supposedly the most important thing.

The thing you say you're building toward.
The thing you sacrificed for.
The thing you tell yourself matters most.

Yet somehow it's always the 1st thing we negotiate away.

Your business.
Your dream-life.
That reason you started any of this.

Nobody's standing at the door making you show up for it.
No whimpering dog.
No consequence tonight if you skip it.

So it's the easiest thing in the world to whisper …
"not this week… I'll get back to it once the water-level drops."

The part that bothered me this week wasn't the flood.
It’s how fast I started making excuses for my own thing.

Funny how that works.

Need me to help a client?
I'm there.

Need me to look after animals?
Done.

Need me to spend a day solving somebody else's problem?
No hesitation.

But ask me to work on the thing I moved out here to build?
Suddenly, I've got reasons not to.
& worse, wondering “why bother?”

That's the trap, isn't it?
The dream doesn't usually die because life gets hard.

It dies because nobody notices when it quietly slips to the bottom of the list.

What I tell clients turns out to be true for a life too

So here's what I put on repeat with my coaching clients.
Focus on your who & your why… more than your what & your how.

Your what & your how are the moving parts. The tactics. The platform. The plan for the week. & those? They get wrecked by circumstances all the time.

My how right now is literally drowning.

The property work's frozen. The schedule's shot. Half my systems are baby wipes & best guesses. Every how I had a month ago is underwater.

But my why hasn't moved an inch.

That's what surprised me.

The flood changed the schedule.
It’s changing the plan.
& what a productive day looks like.

But it didn't change the reason I came here in the first place.

My friend Pauline Longdon calls it your “unshakable why”.
Napoleon Hill called it “Definiteness of Purpose”

It doesn’t really matter what label we stick on it.
I just know every time life gets messy, it's the thing I end up coming back to.

It's the reason you don't quit when the how falls apart.

Why I'm out here.
Why I'm building any of this.
Why I still open the laptop between hauling rocks & toweling off the dog… that hasn't changed.

The weather can't touch it.
The flood can't reach it.

Truth is… I don't know if I'm on this exact patch of dirt for the long haul.
Too much is still up in the air to promise myself that.

But the why underneath it?
That part I'm certain of.
It doesn't involve city living.
It never has.
Whatever the address ends up being… it's not back in "civilization" with a boss's name on my phone.

& that's the part worth holding onto when everything's a mess.

There's a picture of this sitting in my flooded barn

The pressure-treated beams.

Right now they're soaked.
Water pooling around them.
Mud's everywhere.
They look exactly like the rest of the soggy mess.

& they don't care.

Because underneath the surface, they're doing exactly what they were built to do.

They're treated for exactly this. They can stand in water, take the pressure, hold the weight… & still be the solid thing the whole barn is built on. The flood doesn't weaken them. It just gets them wet.

That's your why.

Soaked through, maybe. Tested. Surrounded by a mess that was never in the plan. But still the thing everything else stands on… as long as you don't let a wet season convince you it's rotted.

So when you're underwater… go check the beams

When your how is falling apart, don't go scrambling to rebuild the how first. That's just bailing.

Go check the beams.

→ Say your why out loud again. 
Not the polished or networking-event version
Your real 1 … The 1 you'd still believe if nobody ever applauded it.

→ Notice it hasn't changed … your circumstances did … Your season did.
But your why? It’s still standing ... & still dry where it counts.

→ Do 1 small thing that honours it. 
Not the whole plan.
Not catching up on everything.
Just 1 tiny thing that says I'm still here & this still matters. 

Because the how can come back or change.
The water drops.
The season turns ... it always does… eventually.

The why is what keeps you in the game long enough to be standing there when it does.

Let me be straight with you

I HAVE scaled back.

More than I wanted to.
There were a few moments this week where quitting sounded suspiciously reasonable.

… like standing in ankle-deep water trying to hold a plastic barrier in place with rocks while more water kept finding ways around it was definitely one of them.

That's the funny thing about hard seasons.
They make giving up sound practical.

I'm not heroically grinding through a flood with a smile on my face.
Things got cut this week that I wish hadn't.
& I've eyed those blinds more than once.

But I'm still here.
Still working.
Still trying to show up for the thing that's mine…
even if it's smaller & slower than I'd like right now.

& here's the other thing that keeps me going when the how is a write-off.

Stupider people have done it. (thanks to Jay Schwedelson’s book title, that’s my new mantra)

People built this exact off-grid life long before there was a scrap of tech to make it easier.
No tutorial.
No app.
No quitting & driving back to town for a hot shower.
They figured it out because they had to… it was literally life or death.

Me?
I'm being inconvenienced.
I can, in theory, quit while I'm behind & escape back to "civilization" any time I lose my nerve.

If they could do it with everything stacked against them & survival on the line… flooding how & all… so can I.

So can you.

Not because I've got it all figured out.
I clearly don't… tadpoles are now using my barn more than me!

But because the mess is the season.
& the season changes.

The why doesn't.

So if your own thing's been the 1st casualty of a hard stretch… let me ask you this.

Forget the how for a bit … It's allowed to be a mess.

What's your why?
Let me know …
Not the version that's buried in your business plan.
The version you'd still fight for if everything around it got washed away.

& has it actually changed… or does it just feel unreachable under all the water right now?

Make it a great "still-standing" week!
EG

PS: Want to help fund the flood-fix?
Choose whatever fits your life right now.

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Thanks for being here. 
Seriously! 
I do appreciate your support.

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