♟️ MY TURN:
I turned 39 a few days ago.
It’s my last year of my 30s.
Every year I try to reflect on the things I’ve learned and would tell my younger self.
I wrote this year’s reflections on a plane to NYC for work and decided my experiences might help someone a bit earlier in their journey.
PS Are you juggling a lot right now? Struggling to manage it all? I just opened 10 more spots to my group coaching program. I’d love to help you live a more intentionally imbalanced life. Want to set up a 1:1 to learn more? Reply to this email.
​
9 things I know at 39, I wish I’d known at 29.
For context, at 29 years old I was a founder of a tech startup with a baby at home. I was still treating life like a paint by numbers activity.
Little did I know the next decade would include:
- two more babies
- a divorce
- a pandemic
- a move to a new state
- building and selling a company
- and a career change
Here are 9 things I've learned along the way....
1. Every human is like a pointillism painting.
Pointillism paintings are a series of dots that, when you look at them up-close, you see all the dots in their messiness. But when you step back, it looks like a beautiful cohesive picture.
Every human gets messier the closer you get to them.
No one is the perfect picture they present. Myself included. Get closer to the paintings.
2. You can’t outrun your problems.
Ambition and staying busy are two very different sides of the same coin.
The difference? Intention.
Are you staying busy to keep yourself from feeling something or dealing with something? You can’t run from something forever. Deal with it now so you can go after your goals instead of running from your problems.
It took me 5 years to really deal with the trauma of divorce with 3 kids under the age of 4 during a pandemic. I kept saying I was ok because I didn't slow down to actually check....
​
​3. Fewer is better.
Whenever I focus on fewer things, I give more to each of them. I spent my 20s wanting more. To be more. To have more.
Now I’m focused on enough.
What does enough look like?
Likely less.
Now I chase less.
​
​4. Actions speak louder than words.
Everyone around you is good at talking (ourselves included).
We say a lot.
We talk about dreams and goals.
People say they are planning big things. But when you strip away what people say they are going to do and actually look at what they actually do, you will start to see a lot of gaps.
Look for actions over words.
​
​5. If you are growing, you are also outgrowing.
Imagine a race. Five people on the starting line. All of a sudden one person is moved to the halfway point and the other two are still on the starting line. They aren’t really running the same race anymore.
That’s what happens when you focus on your own growth and the people around you don’t.
You will wake up and realize you are so much further along in your race. You can’t want someone’s growth more than they do.
Either grow and run the race together or focus on your own race.
​
6. Investments on yourself yield the highest ROI.
Every single time I invested in my growth, the ROI is high.
Guarding time with my therapist, partner, my workouts and my financial goals have yielded so much growth.
Never underestimate the return on (self) investment.
​
​7. You deserve love. But you have to believe that to get it.
For most of the last decade (I started to think about divorce around the age of 30), I found myself in a series of toxic relationships.
I kept blaming other people for these traumatic experiences.
But the common denominator was me.
After a lot of therapy and a profound ketamine therapy session, I realized I didn’t actually believe I deserved it.
Deserved loved.
This wasn’t conscious. I really thought I liked myself.
But when you go deeper and shine a flashlight on the darker parts of yourself, you may come to realize you are self sabotaging yourself from getting love because you don’t actually believe you deserve it.
I was seeking bad partners to fulfill a deeper self belief.
I’m now in the healthiest relationship of my life because I know I deserve it and accept all the goodness they provide.
​
​8. Know what cookies they have.
If someone only has chocolate chip cookies but you wanted a sugar cookie, you wouldn’t keep asking them for a sugar cookie.
They don’t have it.
The same goes for most people in our lives. You can’t keep asking them for something they don’t have. You can either choose to accept their chocolate chip cookie or go look elsewhere for a sugar cookie.
(Maybe they will try to learn how to make your favorite cookie but they would need to do the work to learn the recipe and change their way of cooking. Not everyone is willing to do that.)
​
​9. Ride the roller coaster.
Every day of my life [as a divorced parent building businesses] can come with the most extreme ups and downs. If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past decade is this is just the constant of life. One minute you think you are living your best life and the next minute you are knocked on your ass.
When you learn to ride the roller coaster and accept the ups and downs, you don’t feel so jolted back and forth.
​
I hope that was helpful. Thank you for being on this journey with me.
Cheers to another year of playing the game of life!
🧩 XO
A
​