We’re down by 2 points. I’m sat in the stands, completely locked in. Rosie’s next to me, trying to make conversation. I can’t even look at her. I’m too stressed, too focused, too far gone.

We lose by those exact 2 points.

I’m devastated. Angry and sad at the same time. I don’t want to talk to anyone, not even Rosie. She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind: “WTH is wrong with you, it’s just a game.”

Yes. But also, no. 🤣

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In regular life, I’m pretty neutral. Measured. I don’t express much. Ask Rosie, ask anyone who’s known me a while - I’m the guy who keeps it together.

But put me in front of a sports game (or honestly, a board game, same energy) and I turn into a different person. I get loud. I trash talk. I shout, I jump, I get pumped, I get furious. I cry - happy tears, angry tears, doesn’t matter, they come out.

A week before that final, I was watching the semi-final alone on my laptop at Rosie’s parents’ place in England. We won. First Super League Grand Final in the club’s history. I was sobbing. Couldn’t stop it if I tried.

The intensity always matches how much I care - about the team, the player, the moment. But that level of intensity, every time, in a way nothing else in my life comes close to... that part used to confuse Rosie. Honestly, it used to confuse me too.

For a long time I just put it down to family. We always watched sports growing up - my grandad, my parents, me. TV, stadiums, didn’t matter. Two hours in the car for an F1 race, eight hours on a bus for a rugby tournament. I figured I just inherited the passion, simple as that.

Then last year, in couples therapy, this whole thing came up almost by accident.

Why do you love sports so much, I was asked. I gave my usual answers - the energy, the fact that it’s real and unscripted, how it connects total strangers (put on a jersey and suddenly people talk to you), how a World Cup makes entire countries forget their politics for a month and just cheer (Go France 🇫🇷). All true. All real reasons.

But then something else surfaced. Something I hadn’t connected before.

Sports was the one space where it was safe for me to feel things out loud.

I grew up in a loving home. I never doubted that. But it wasn’t a home that said it, or showed it much physically. And like a lot of guys, I got the classic lines growing up - don’t cry, don’t be a girl, all that BS I didn’t even know was BS at the time. So I did what kids do: I copied what I saw. I learned to keep things in.

Except with sports. Nobody ever told me to be quiet there. Nobody told me crying over a loss made me less of a man. Whatever I felt was just... allowed. So I felt it, all the way, every time.

That permission never went away. My body still remembers it.

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I spent years building a wall around my emotions in everyday life, then a program in Miami in 2019 (Gratitude Training) cracked it open and started teaching me that showing emotion isn’t weakness - it’s just true. Rosie spent even longer chipping away at that wall, patiently, long before I had the words for any of this.

But sports never needed any of that work. It was already the exception. The one place the wall was never built in the first place.

And when I look at my life now, it’s still my best release valve. In front of the TV, at a stadium, racket in hand on a padel court - it’s where I let everything out, clean and uncomplicated, no filter required.

I think most people have a version of this. Maybe you don’t even realize it yet - but there’s probably somewhere in your life where the emotions just come out, where you stop managing yourself, where nobody ever told you to keep it together. A place that became your outlet before you even understood you needed one.

So... where is that for you? And what does it say about all the other places where you’ve been holding back?

J

It stuck with me. Not because it was a new idea, but because it named something I’d been feeling for a while without being able to articulate it.

So I sat down and tried to dig into it. What follows is what came out.

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Settled, Comfortable… and Half as Productive

Since settling in Bangkok, I’ve been less productive than at any point in the past five years. By roughly half, if I’m being honest.

That’s a strange thing to admit when life looks great on paper. We have a beautiful apartment - a real one, with a standing desk, a big monitor, two couches, a swimming pool outside. After years of Airbnbs and hotel rooms, it feels luxurious. We have friends here, a social life, a city with something always going on.

And yet. I’m getting less done than I was when I was living out of a backpack.

For a while, I couldn’t understand why. Now I think I do.

The Constraints I Never Chose

When Rosie and I were traveling full-time, our days were essentially binary: work, or explore. That was it.

No couch to collapse on. No TV to flip on. No pool to drift into “just for 20 minutes.” We’d be in a simple studio or a basic Airbnb room - functional, but not comfortable in the way that pulls you away from things.

There was also real financial pressure. Work wasn’t optional. It funded the next leg. If the month went badly, it showed up quickly and concretely.

And there was something else - a kind of built-in intentionality that came from always being somewhere temporary. You’re in a city you might never return to. You don’t want to waste it. So you either work - seriously, productively - or you make the most of where you are. There’s no default third option of just... drifting.

We had what felt like total freedom. And in a real sense we did - no office, no fixed address, no boss, no routine we didn’t choose.

But looking back, we also had constraints we never consciously designed. They were just part of the structure of that life. And those constraints made us focused, efficient, intentional.

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What Bangkok Removed

The apartment changed things in ways I didn’t anticipate.

The physical comfort is the obvious part. There are now much better things to do than work. The couch is genuinely comfortable. The TV is big. The pool is right outside. Bangkok itself offers an endless feed of restaurants, friends, events, things to explore. At any given moment, there are a dozen more attractive options than opening my laptop.

But there’s also a subtler thing that happened. I set up a proper office - standing desk, big screen, dedicated space. Which is great. Except that now, in my head, “work” happens in the office. If I’m not in the office, I’m not working. And in the evenings, I want to be on the couch with Rosie, not alone at a desk.

So the thing I built to protect my work time ended up rigidifying it in a way that worked against me. There’s an irony there.

The financial pressure also changed. Earlier this year, I took on a part-time freelancing gig - 20 hours a week, afternoons only. It covers all our expenses, plus a bit more. Which is a genuine relief. But it also removed the urgency I used to feel to grow my own business. When you’re not under pressure to perform, you... don’t perform as urgently. I know this is short-term thinking. The gig will end eventually, and I’ll have to hustle again. But right now, the pressure isn’t there - and I can feel its absence.

It’s also interesting that this is coming at a moment where - once again - I find myself questioning my path. I wrote about a similar feeling last year, though the circumstances were different. That liminal space feeling is back, quieter this time, but familiar.

The point is: two forms of comfort arrived at the same time - physical and financial - and the combination hit harder than either would have alone.

The Invisible Architecture

I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing freedom. Freedom from a 9-to-5. Freedom from a fixed location. Freedom to decide how I spend my days.

And I got it. I genuinely have it.

What I didn’t realize until now is that during our nomad years, we had freedom AND structure - we just didn’t design the structure intentionally. It came built-in to the lifestyle. The bare rooms. The financial precarity. The temporariness of every place.

Remove the lifestyle, and the structure disappears too.

What I’m left with is freedom without constraints. And it turns out that combination is a recipe for drifting.

I work well under pressure, when my back is against the wall. Right now, there’s no wall. So I float.

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Where I’m At

I don’t have a clean resolution for this. I haven’t figured out exactly which constraints to reintroduce, or how.

But I’ve at least named the problem - which is more than I could do a few months ago. I knew something felt off. I knew I was moving slower than I wanted to. I knew the comfort was connected to it somehow. I just couldn’t articulate the mechanism.

Now I can: I removed the invisible architecture that was holding me up, and I haven’t replaced it with anything.

Nature has seasons. Some people will say a slower period is fine - even healthy, like hibernation. Maybe. But it doesn’t feel like a choice I made. It feels like something that happened to me while I was comfortable.

And the difference between choosing rest and sliding into stagnation is significant.

I’m not someone who wants to grind 60-hour weeks anymore. That drive is gone, and honestly, I’m okay with it. Quality of life matters to me. Bangkok gives me that.

But I do want to be moving. I crave growth and forward motion - it’s just part of how I’m wired.

So the work ahead is figuring out which constraints to put back in place. Not to punish myself. Not to recreate the pressure of precarity. But to rebuild the structure that lets me move.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

J

Three words. Said with a sigh, a disappointed look, maybe a little silence after. Not as a compliment. As an accusation.

I’ve heard it before. Maybe you have too. And every time, there’s an unspoken sentence that follows it: “... and I don’t really like it.”

It’s strange, when you think about it. We are the product of millions of years of evolution. Our species got here because of change - constant, relentless, often uncomfortable change. Our body is in a permanent state of renewal. We literally wouldn’t exist if the people before us hadn’t changed throughout their lives.

And yet, somewhere along the way, change became something to be suspicious of.

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When you change, it makes other people uncomfortable

I think the real reason people react badly to your change is not actually about you. It’s about them.

When someone close to you changes, it disrupts something. The dynamic they were used to. The role they assigned you. The comfort of knowing what to expect from you. Your change, in a way, forces them to look at their own life and ask questions they might not want to answer. Are they growing? Are they stuck? Is the version of you they knew still the one they want around?

That’s uncomfortable. And instead of sitting with that discomfort, it’s much easier to put it back on you. To make your growth the problem.

In relationships

This one is personal for me.

Rosie and I have been together since we were 22. We’ve both changed a lot over the years - I probably more than her, but I had some catching up to do. 😉 It’s one of the things I’m most grateful for: that we were able to grow as adults, sometimes in different directions, and still stay connected through all of it. That doesn’t happen by accident. It takes two people who see each other’s evolution as something to support, not something to fear.

But that’s not always how it goes. I’ve drifted from people I was once close to. Not because of a fight or a falling out - just because the version of me that clicked with them doesn’t really exist anymore. A past version of me was happy in those friendships. This version isn’t. And I’ve had to make peace with that.

Because there are really only two options when people around you change: you grow together, or you grow apart. Neither is wrong. But holding onto something that no longer fits - out of habit, guilt, or fear of the awkward conversation - doesn’t do either person any good.

A real friend, a real partner, shouldn’t be threatened by who you’re becoming. They should be curious about it.

In work

This one is harder, because the stakes feel higher.

Think about how our careers begin. At 17 or 18, barely out of adolescence, we’re asked to pick a path. Not with much life experience. Not with a clear sense of who we are. Usually surrounded by adults with their own ideas about what we should do - parents chasing their own unfulfilled dreams, teachers pointing toward “safe” options, friends making whatever decision their parents approve of.

So we pick. We go to university. We spend years building a skillset, a network, an identity around a career. And then one day, we wake up and realize it doesn’t feel like ours anymore. Maybe it never fully was.

Changing course at that point isn’t easy - financially, practically, emotionally. And the people around you will have opinions. You’ll hear about all the risks. About everything you’d be walking away from. About whether this new direction is even realistic.

I know this because when I first started thinking about quitting my job to work for myself, someone close to me called to tell me it was a bad idea. They asked why I would throw away years of work to venture into the unknown. Why I’d choose discomfort when I had a comfortable life right in front of me.

That conversation hurt at the time. It made me feel stupid for wanting something different.

But I went ahead anyway - in 2021. And that decision led to everything I value most about my life today.

In where you choose to live

Moving country comes with its own version of this. Some people are genuinely excited for you. Others immediately start listing all the reasons your new city isn’t what you think it is, pulling out statistics about crime or cost of living or whatever else they can find to talk you out of it.

It’s rarely about the city. It’s about your choice making them think about the choices they haven’t made.

When I moved from France to Miami, I heard plenty of it. When I left a stable salary to travel and build something of my own, I heard more. I lost some relationships. Others changed with time and distance. But every decision I made was in service of my own wellbeing. I don’t carry any regret about that.

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Why change gets such a bad reputation

Underneath all of it - the unsolicited opinions, the “you’ve changed” looks, the resistance from people who love you - is the same thing: fear.

Change signals the unknown. And the brain, wired for safety above all else, treats the unknown like a threat. What if I don’t recognize you anymore? What if this new version of you and I don’t get along? What if you fail and everything falls apart?

So when someone close to them changes, that discomfort gets dressed up as concern. As reason. As all the very sensible arguments for why you should stay exactly where you are.

It’s not malicious. Most of the time, people genuinely believe they’re helping. But it’s worth knowing what’s actually driving it.

You’re allowed to change your mind.

About your job. Your career. Where you live. What you want out of life.

We are evolving beings.

What used to feel like the right path may not feel aligned anymore, and that’s OK.

You’re not meant to stay the same forever.

Try. Shift. Experiment. Change.

You don’t owe anyone a lifetime of commitment to something that no longer brings you joy.

J

They know what they want. They know how to get it. Life seems to follow a logical order when you’re watching from the outside, innocent and naive.

Then we grow up... and the illusion starts to crack.

We realize we don’t have it all figured out. We have doubts. We have uncertainty. We have those quiet moments where we wonder what the hell we’re doing.

But nobody talks about it.

We’re so obsessed with keeping up appearances, with projecting the image that everything is fine and under control, that we all silently agree to pretend. And because everyone pretends, we each end up feeling like we’re the odd one. The only one who doesn’t have it together. The only one still figuring it out.

There are few things worse than feeling like the odd one out.

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I’ll give you a personal example.

From the outside, my situation looks pretty good. Since leaving my job in 2021, I’ve been working for myself - while traveling for the majority of that time. I’ve made enough money to sustain my lifestyle. What I do gives me a lot of freedom and agency over how I work and live. Plenty of good things.

But there’s an invisible side to it. An internal feeling that comes back regularly, asking: “WTF am I doing with my life?”

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Financial uncertainty is the default setting. When you say yes to entrepreneurship, you also say yes to uncertainty - it’s part of the deal. Some quarters are great financially, some are not. It has a real impact on how you live, on what you can plan, on how you see the year ahead. Overall I’ve always been fine, and I’m decent at managing money and cashflow... but there’s always a sliver of doubt lingering in the background.

Saving for the future is genuinely hard. A consequence of working for yourself is that retirement isn’t handed to you. A few years here, a few years there... there’s no pension system to fall back on. We have to build our own nest. Some days I think that’s smart - at least I have control over it. Some days I think it’s nuts, and wonder if going back to a regular job would be more sensible - for current stability, but also for the future.

I don’t belong in the traditional professional world anymore. I know this. I’d struggle to fit in and feel fulfilled. Once you’ve tasted the freedom of working for yourself, it’s hard to go back to being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it. But that awareness comes with its own weight.

I’m a generalist in a world that rewards specialists. Most companies want experts. People who stick to one domain. My brain doesn’t work that way. I get bored in the cruising phase. I need challenges. I love the dopamine of learning something new, building something from scratch. I know a good amount about a lot of different things, and I’m not afraid to pick up new skills - but in most traditional settings, that’s “jack of all trades, master of none.”

This is also a double-edged sword as an entrepreneur. I’m great at going from 0 to 1. Once everything is built though, I struggle to stay motivated doing the same thing on repeat: acquire clients, deliver, repeat. My brain starts looking for the next thing.

There’s a term for this now: building a portfolio career. Multiple income streams from sometimes completely different things. It fits my personality well. The downside is that spreading your focus across many things makes it much harder to build solid, reliable sources of income.

I’ve been doing coaching and web design for a year now. And as much as I genuinely love coaching people - through personal challenges or business ones - I’m bored of the constant client acquisition grind. My brain keeps getting pulled toward AI-related stuff those days. I know that itch won’t go away until I scratch it.

That’s where I’m at right now. From the outside, it’s all good. I work, I make money, I have freedom. But internally, I have those constant conversations with myself. Questioning. Doubting. Wondering.

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And I’ll bet you do too.

I’d be willing to bet that the majority of you reading this have some version of these conversations going on in your head. Questioning your current situation - professionally, personally, in relationships... wherever you are in life. Looking around and wondering how everyone else seems to have it all figured out.

When I was a young adult, I thought being in your 30s or 40s meant having cracked the code. I thought if you followed the right rules and principles, life would be a smooth ride. Easy peasy.

I don’t believe that anymore.

I think we’re all acting like we know what we’re doing... but to some extent, it’s all BS, it’s all a performance. We’re just riding the waves as they come, doing our best not to lose balance.

Maybe that’s the “curse” of stepping outside the traditional path. Of becoming aware of certain things. I didn’t have these thoughts much in my 20s when I had a normal job and treated it like a job - not worrying too much about whether I enjoyed it or not. But once you’ve been on the other side, you can’t unsee what you’ve seen.

The good news? I’ve stopped letting this tension bother me too much.

Those conversations in my head don’t stress me out the way they used to. Over the years, I’ve come to understand that this is just part of the human experience. I’m actually glad I question things. I’m glad to have the awareness to even have these thoughts. The tension is there, present... but it’s not holding me back. It’s something I sit with, knowing the answer will eventually come.

Now I’m curious about you.

What are the things that, from the outside, look like you have it all figured out... when in reality you’re still working through it?

Hit reply, I’d love to hear.

J

But I think about it sometimes. What did they picture when they had me? I’m an only child, so for them, it’s just me. No siblings to fill the gaps.

Most of my family lives within an hour of each other in the South of France. The “far” ones are maybe three hours away.

Then there’s me. Continents away.

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I left home at 14 for boarding school. University at 17, two hours away. Then Australia, England, Paris... back to the South of France but still three hours from home... and then I properly disappeared. North America. Four years of travel. Now Bangkok. My parents don’t have passports. They don’t fly much. They don’t visit.

I’m always the one missing things. Birthdays, Christmases, Sunday lunches, baby announcements, the random Saturday get-together that nobody planned but everyone showed up for. I don’t just pop by.

I imagine they pictured something different. Me living nearby, married to a French woman - they love Rosie, genuinely, but a French wife would have been more practical, more familiar. Close enough to visit a few times a month, to just show up for dinner without it being an event. And grandchildren, obviously. Kids they could look after for a weekend while we went away. Kids who’d come over after school, just because.

That’s what I had growing up. Both sets of grandparents nearby, always around. Sunday lunch at my paternal grandparents, every week, for years. It was just normal.

They won’t have that version. Not with me.

Rosie and I tried to have children. It didn’t work out, and that chapter is behind us now. So it’s not just the distance they’re dealing with - it’s a whole picture that won’t come together the way they imagined when they became parents. And beyond that, there’s another chapter ahead none of us have figured out yet. One day they’ll be older and might need me around. I have no intention of moving back to France right now... so that’s something future Jeremie will have to navigate. Another expectation, on both sides, that might not go the way anyone planned.

Rosie’s parents are in a similar spot. Three kids. All three married foreigners. Two living abroad for fifteen years. The one who stayed in England is four hours away. Not exactly the weekly Sunday roast.

And Rosie has her own version of those childhood memories - the family holidays, the birthdays, the time with her grandma. We both grew up surrounded by that. And neither of us is able to give it back to the people who gave it to us.

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I wrote about expectations a few months ago in The Expectation Trap. The short version: expectations are a double-edged sword. They help us dream and plan. But when life doesn’t match the picture, the gap becomes the source of all the frustration, the sadness, the quiet disappointment.

My parents couldn’t have predicted, back in the late 80s when they were dreaming about the future, that it would become this easy to live on the other side of the world. The world they imagined for me was the only world they knew. In that world, I would have stayed close.

But I didn’t. And I’m genuinely ok with that - I chose this life, and I’d choose it again. But I can also acknowledge it came at a cost, for them, and for us. And that more of those moments are still ahead.

The hard thing about building expectations around your children is that at some point, they grow up and make their own choices. Choices you can’t control. The life you pictured for them, or with them, isn’t yours to decide.

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At some point, most of us will have to grieve a version of our life that we thought would happen but didn’t.

For Rosie and me, that’s the version where we become parents. (Though even that is complicated - whether we are parents or not, given the losses we went through, including a TFMR, is actually a whole conversation in itself. Maybe the subject of a future newsletter.) We’ve had to sit with that. Accept what isn’t going to be. Make peace with experiences we won’t get to have. It doesn’t fully go away. But you learn to carry it differently over time.

Our parents are doing something similar. Grieving a version of family life that didn’t quite materialize. The grandchildren who didn’t come. The table that didn’t fill up. And the uncertainty of what’s ahead - how it’ll all look when they’re older, when they might need us around.

What do you do with that? You can spend a lot of time in the gap between what you expected and what is. Replaying it, wishing things had gone differently. But it doesn’t change anything. The past is the past.

What’s left is acceptance. Coming to peace with the life you actually have, not the one you planned. And learning to make the most of what is - not what you hoped it would be.

This isn’t just a thing that happens to people who made unconventional choices, by the way. It’s universal. The parent who imagined a daughter nearby. The couple who planned on children and it went another way. The person who pictured a career, a relationship, a version of themselves, that never arrived.

We all carry something like that. A life we imagined that didn’t happen.

The question is just what we do with it.

J

And yet... loneliness is at an all-time high. People can’t seem to enjoy dating anymore. Relationships feel disposable.

There’s a line from an Armin van Buuren song called Alone that I keep coming back to:

“Everyone’s connected, but no one is connecting. The human element has long been missing.”

That’s exactly where we are.

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We turned dating into HR

Two female friends of mine, from different parts of the world, recently shared almost identical experiences about dating.

Download a bunch of apps, set up the “perfect” profile. Lots of scrolling, lots of dumb messages. And at some point, frustration kicks in and the apps get deleted.

I find this fascinating. And I should be upfront: I haven’t dated since 2010. Rosie and I got together when we were 22, back when the closest thing to a dating app was becoming Facebook friends and messaging there. So everything I’m about to say is based on observation and listening to people talk about it, not lived experience.

Swiping through profiles looks a lot like an HR person browsing CVs. The first date is a job interview. And if you’re not the perfect candidate... you’re out. Next. Someone else will apply anyway.

In our world of consumerism, romantic partners have been commoditized. People flick through profiles like they flick through shoes or t-shirts. And because there seems to be an unlimited supply of potential dates, everyone has become extremely picky. They won’t settle for less than perfection.

It’s an endless cycle:

1. Swipe.

2. Match.

3. Message.

4. Date.

5. “They’re nice, but I’m not sure... there’s probably someone better out there.”

6. Back to step one.

And I think those two things are connected.

When you believe someone better is always one swipe away, why would you ever do the work to get through a rough patch?

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The stakes are too high from day one

When I was younger and met a girl I liked, things were simple. We spent time together, spoke, did stuff, learned to know each other. Most couples I knew started as friends. Things developed naturally.

That’s actually how Rosie and I started. We ended up sharing an apartment in Sydney - with 5 other people - just a few weeks apart. We shared meals, explored the city together, watched movies, went out. No agenda. Just two people getting to know each other.

From what I’m seeing now, people approach dating with a completely different frame: I’m on the hunt for the love of my life.

That puts so much pressure on every interaction. There’s no room for silly moments, awkward silences, the small oopsies. No room for being human with each other.

And when the first roadblock comes - as it always does with real people - the exit is right there. An infinite feed of new options. So people bail. Done. Moving on.

What I’ve been doing instead

I’m not looking for a romantic partner. But when Rosie and I arrived in Bangkok, we didn’t know anyone. I had one internet friend, Mark, that I’d met once for a couple of hours. That was it.

First thing we did: downloaded the Meetup app and looked for events we could attend. Not the underground parties advertising free alcohol - slow events, where you spend a few hours together, share a drink in a quiet cafe or a meal. Places where you actually talk to people.

I’ve also been going to every Futera United football game to build the friendship with Mark. Each trip is 1h45 there, 90 minutes of football, 1h45 back. It’s not easy. But I’m glad I do it - I met his wife, some of his mates, and we started playing padel together.

Then at a board game meetup in March, I met an Australian guy named Luke. I’d picked that event on purpose - a nerdy cafe, the kind of place where I knew I’d meet people with similar interests. Luke and his wife have since become really good friends of ours. Now there’s 8 of us playing padel on a weekly basis together.

I really got into padel here. What’s cool is that if you don’t have friends to play with, you can use a couple of apps to join other people’s matches. Great way to meet people with a similar hobby.

Are those people perfect? Probably not, but neither am I.

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What I would do if I was single

I’m still looking to make friends, and I’ll keep doing that.

But if I was alone and looking for more... I don’t think I would jump on those online dating apps. I’d have the exact same approach: go do things with other people, connect, have conversations, build connections. And I’m 100% sure the rest would follow naturally, if it’s supposed to happen.

No huge expectation about meeting The One. No massive pressure every time I open my mouth. Just basic human connections, from one person to another.

People are not profiles. We’re not objects. We’re humans, with feelings, with flaws. All of us.

In a world where feeds and algorithms are taking so much of our precious time and dictating so much of how things work... I’m certain of one thing. The best way to meet people - friends or lovers - is by being a good old-fashioned human being and talking to people in real life.

Everyone’s connected, but no one is connecting.

Maybe the answer was never another app.

J

But I knew she wasn’t happy. Not really.

In my head, the answer was obvious: end it, move on, enjoy life. Simple. (I was very wise back then, clearly. 😅)

She couldn’t do it though. And when I pushed her on why, she eventually admitted it: she was terrified of being single. Of being alone. Of not knowing what came next.

She knew she was unhappy. She just preferred a known unhappiness over an unknown future.

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Around 2021, I had what looked, on paper, like a pretty great job situation. Working from home, full trust and autonomy from my managers, a good salary, a role I could do with my eyes closed.

And I was miserable.

Not in a dramatic way. Just... bored. Stagnant. Completely uninspired. I felt like I was slowly fading. The thought of change was always there, nagging, but so was the fear. How do you walk away from something “perfect”? Who quits a comfortable, well-paying job to go backpack around the world at 30-something? It felt crazy.

So I stayed stuck. Until I didn’t. But more on that in a minute.

And if you’re reading this newsletter, I’d bet that some version of this is familiar. Maybe you don’t hate your job, you just don’t enjoy it. Everything feels a bit... meh. Or maybe you do hate it, and it’s bleeding into everything else: your mood, your relationships, the patience you have left at the end of the day. Yet you’re not making a move. Because what if the next thing is worse? What if you quit and struggle to find something new?

What if, what if, what if.

In 2016, my managers called me into the office with an offer: they were expanding to Miami and wanted me to help set things up. My immediate reaction was to mentally start packing my bags. Rosie’s reaction was... different.

We’d built a comfortable life in the South of France by then. Married, apartment, two cars, jobs, friends, plans to start a family. Life was good. Stable. Known.

Moving to a new country, a new continent, to a city with a reputation that wasn’t exactly reassuring? She wasn’t sure. The unknown was doing its thing, filling in the blanks with worst-case scenarios.

We talked it through. Decided to try it for a year, knowing we could always come back. And eventually, she said yes.

Three Stories, One Pattern

A relationship that felt safe but made her unhappy. A job that felt comfortable but was slowly draining me. A move that felt risky but turned out to change everything.

In all three cases, the same thing was happening: the fear of the unknown was winning over the possibility of something better.

And it’s not random. It’s not weakness. It’s actually just how the brain works.

The primitive part of our brain, the part wired for survival, doesn’t care about happiness, fulfillment, or growth. It cares about keeping us alive and safe. Back when “safe” meant not getting eaten, that instinct was useful. Today, it mostly just keeps us stuck in jobs we hate and situations we’ve outgrown.

When we imagine making a change, the brain doesn’t naturally wander toward the upside, how free she might feel, how energized we might be in a new role, how incredible Miami might turn out to be. It goes straight to the threat. The downside. The worst case.

We’re essentially making life decisions based on half the picture.

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Why We’re Wired This Way

I think a lot of it starts much earlier than we realize.

From the moment we enter the school system, we’re taught that following the rules leads to good grades, good grades lead to praise, praise leads to the next step. Any deviation from the path gets corrected. Punished. We learn fast.

By the time we become adults, most of us have become good sheep. We follow the script. We conform. We do what’s expected. And any time we’re tempted to color outside the lines, there’s usually someone around to remind us why that’s a bad idea.

The result? The brain, shaped by evolution and decades of conditioning, defaults to keeping us stuck.

The problem is that nothing grows in comfort. Things quietly fade there instead. And by the time we notice, a lot of time has passed.

That sense of security we feel in a familiar situation is also, in many cases, an illusion. Ask the people who spent years in “safe” corporate jobs and were let go anyway.

The One Thing That Helped

When I was stuck in that comfortable-but-miserable job situation, what eventually got me unstuck was a fear-setting exercise. The idea is simple: instead of letting your imagination run wild with vague worst-case scenarios, you write them down. You look at them clearly. You ask how bad they actually are, how likely they are, and what you’d do if they happened.

Then, and this is the part most people skip, you do the same for the upside. And for the cost of doing nothing.

I’ve written about it in detail here, and I have a free workbook you can use to walk through it yourself.

Get the Free Workbook

I won’t go deeper into it in this post, because that’s not really the point today. The point is: when I finally looked at the full picture instead of just the risks, the decision became obvious. I quit. And I have zero regrets.

How It All Turned Out

My friend eventually ended the relationship. Not long after, she met someone else. They’ve been married for years now and have kids. She built the life she was too scared to imagine.

Rosie said yes to Miami. We ended up staying three and a half years. It became one of the most defining chapters of both our lives, a place where we healed, grew, and changed in ways we hadn’t expected. Best decision we ever made.

And me? I’m writing this from Bangkok, working for myself, doing work I actually care about. No regrets either.

In all three cases, the fear of the unknown turned out to be exactly that: a fear. Not a prediction. Not a guarantee. Just the brain doing what it does, protecting us from a lion that wasn’t there.

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Most People Will Read This and Do Nothing

I say that with no judgment, because I was one of those people for a long time.

You’ll recognize yourself in one of these stories. You’ll nod. Maybe you’ll share it. And then you’ll go back to your day, and nothing will change. Because that’s what most people do. Not because they’re lazy or cowardly, but because the pull of the familiar is genuinely strong, and the brain is genuinely good at talking us out of discomfort.

The one thought that usually follows is: “Yeah, it worked out for them. But my situation is different.”

Maybe. But probably not as different as you think.

If you’re sitting with a change you’ve been avoiding and you want some help actually working through what’s keeping you stuck, that’s exactly what I do. Book a free call and let’s talk. No pitch, just an honest conversation.

Let's talk!

J

Wow, April was a busy month. Once again, I didn’t go anywhere this month, but… that won’t be the case next month. Got a VERY exciting trip planned! Stay tuned 👀

💛 Every month, paid subscribers get a more personal look at what’s been going on in my life: where I’ve been, what I’ve been working on, and a few things I’ve enjoyed along the way.

This isn’t a polished highlight reel. It’s the real stuff behind the posts - the wins, the slower moments, the things I’m figuring out. Plus a few favorites from the month: books, podcasts, articles, or anything else worth sharing.

These stay behind the paywall for two reasons: they’re personal, and I like keeping that side of my life for the people who actively choose to support this newsletter. Your support is what makes it possible to keep everything else free and open.

April 1st to April 30th: Thailand 🇹🇭

We started the month by going to the cinema to watch Project Hail Mary. I absolutely LOVED the book, so I was super excited to see the movie adaptation with Ryan Gosling. I really enjoyed it. It’s not as deep as the book (it never can be)… but overall they nailed the storytelling and the characters. Rocky was so cute 🥹

A couple of days later, I had a boring admin task: doing my 90-day reporting.

When you stay in Thailand for more than 3 months without leaving the country, you need to report it to immigration. It’s not complicated, but it gets super busy - you can queue for 4h+ for it. Luckily, I was able to snag an appointment online, meaning I just had to show up at the immigration office 5 minutes before my time slot with some papers… and I was out of there in 10 minutes.

Nothing exciting there, apart from the fact that the immigration building was GIGANTIC.

The first half of the month was pretty uneventful… I barely took any pictures. We played a lot of padel (it’s now officially a weekly thing, we even bought our own rackets)… went to a very cool café to work… and I bought some water guns for the upcoming Songkran celebrations (more on that below).

I’m still working out at the gym 4 times a week. I actually had 3 sessions with a personal trainer, which was interesting: good to get feedback on my posture and movements.

Then from April 13th… things got busy!

Thailand celebrates their new year, Songkran, every year on April 13, 14, and 15. One of the customs, linked to Buddhist traditions, is to cleanse your body with water - a sort of fresh start for the new year. Throughout the years, this tradition (still followed in Buddhist temples) evolved into big street water fights.

So on the 13th and 14th… Rosie and I got our water guns ready… and we joined the party!

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Then I left my job. Became my own boss. “I’m even more fucked. I’m basically unemployable at this point.”

Then we left Miami with our suitcases and no return ticket. “Yeah... I’m completely fucked. I can’t go back to a normal life.”

I was joking… Kind of….

What I didn’t realize at the time was that each one of those moments was a door opening. And once you walk through it, it doesn’t close behind you. It disappears.

You don’t know what you don’t know... until you do. And once you’ve opened Pandora’s box, you can’t close it.

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I’ve been living in Bangkok for about four months now.

Most of the time, I like it here. The food is incredible. I have a beautiful apartment, I can see the swimming pool from the windows as I’m typing this. The cost of living makes sense. The city has energy.

But some days… honestly most days for a while, I look at my life and feel... meh.

Not sad. Not miserable. Just flat. Like I’m going through the motions of a life that doesn’t quite fit.

I know how that sounds. I’m in Bangkok. I work for myself. I have freedom most people would trade a lot for. Trust me, I’m aware of the privilege here.

But it doesn’t make the feeling less real.

I think I’ve rewired myself in a way that made regular life almost incompatible with who I’ve become.

It started with loss. In 2017, after we lost our son, I made a promise, more to him than to myself honestly, that I would live the best life I could possibly live. That I would stop postponing happiness. Stop living on autopilot.

That promise set something in motion that I don’t think I fully understood at the time.

Years of intentional discomfort, growth, expansion... I became someone who only feels fully alive when being challenged. When things are new, unpredictable, hard. I started to understand that comfort makes you stagnant. That growth lives at the edges.

And now here I am, in a comfortable apartment, with a gym membership, a regular schedule, the same streets every day.

And I feel like I’m breaking that promise.

That’s the thing that actually bothers me. Not Bangkok. Not the routine. The feeling that I’m not living up to what I committed to. That somewhere, that little boy is watching, and I’m not delivering.

That’s the quiet anxiety underneath it all.

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There’s something no one talks about when it comes to personal growth: it raises your baseline.

You go through the work. You expand. You build a version of yourself that craves challenge, novelty, aliveness. And then one day, you find yourself in a season of life that doesn’t match that version, and normal life feels like wearing someone else’s clothes.

Where some people find comfort in anchors, a cozy apartment, familiar things, a place that feels like home, I find myself feeling weighed down by them. The gym membership, the lease, the fixed expenses. Each one a small reminder that I’m less free than I was.

Rosie is the opposite. She finds security in those things. She is genuinely happier here than she’s been in years, and I can see it clearly. That matters to me.

I want to say something about this, because it’s important.

No one forced me to settle in Bangkok. Rosie didn’t threaten me. She expressed what she needed, stability, a home, space to breathe, and I said yes. Freely. Because it’s the right thing to do, and because I love her.

We’ve been together a long time. For most of our relationship, “I called the shots.” We moved from Paris, a city she loved, to the south of France because I was done with Paris. Then to Miami for my job. She always had my back without hesitation.

So when she told me she needed this, I didn’t have to think long.

That’s what a real partnership looks like. Not two people always getting what they want. Two people taking turns holding the other one up.

But the discomfort I feel is my problem. Not Bangkok’s. Not Rosie’s. Mine.

Blaming her would be the easy route. A lot of people take that route. We live in a world where it’s always someone else’s fault, always someone else’s responsibility. Pointing fingers is comfortable. It gets you off the hook.

But it’s also a lie.

I chose this. I own it. And that means the work of figuring it out is mine to do.

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Things have been shifting a little over the past few weeks.

Work picked up, which helped more than I expected. There were a few months where things were really slow, not making enough, feeling unproductive, wondering if I was failing. That does something to you. It’s hard to feel good about life in general when work isn’t working. When business started moving again, some of that heaviness lifted.

We also made real friends here. Two couples we actually see regularly, play padel with weekly, text for no reason. Sometimes it’s couples hanging out, sometimes it’s the boys, sometimes Rosie goes off with the girls. That kind of easy, low-drama friendship... it helps.

And this past weekend, Rosie and I decided to book a trip to Japan. It’s been at the top of our list for years. Just sitting there planning it, staring at my phone for hours, looking at cities and temples and places to eat... something woke up. I’m so excited to see somewhere new, a place I’ve always been intrigued by.

I think that’s part of the answer: I need to find ways to get my “aliveness” fix without blowing up a life that’s working for Rosie. Weekend trips. New parts of the city to explore. A new country here and there when finances allow.

That last part matters. When we were traveling full time, traveling was our expense. Now we have fixed costs no matter where we are, the apartment, the gym, electricity, all of it. A trip on top of that is a holiday, not a lifestyle. With both of us self-employed, planning that far ahead financially isn’t always easy. So it depends. But things are better right now, and I have some visibility on the next few months. For now, that’s enough.

And there’s something the stability gave me that I genuinely couldn’t have had on the road. In January, I got a DEXA scan done, a quick test that measures bone density, muscle mass, body composition. I did it out of curiosity, mostly because for the first time I’d actually have consistent gym access. What was supposed to be fun data turned into something more serious: my muscle mass and bone density were low enough that the doctor told me, go lift weights, fix your nutrition, come back in 12 months. So now I go to the gym four times a week. I eat like I mean it. I’m building something for future-me that simply wouldn’t have been possible while living out of a backpack.

So even in the “meh,” something real is happening. I just haven’t made this chapter feel memorable yet. I’m working on it.

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Last week I wrote about Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, the idea that you should be willing to live this exact life again, infinitely, in every detail.

My last three or four months? They wouldn’t pass the test. Not yet.

But I know that’s not permanent. I know I’m capable of turning this into something worth repeating. The question is just how. How to find joy and aliveness without constant movement. How to be someone who fits into this chapter without losing who I’ve become.

That’s the work. And I don’t have a clean answer yet.

Have you ever been in a season of life that didn’t feel like you?

Not a bad life. Just one that didn’t quite fit the person you’d become. I’d genuinely love to know how you moved through it. Reply and tell me.

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J

The idea: imagine you had to live this exact life again. Infinitely. Every moment, every decision, every mistake, every loss. Not a better version. Not a second chance. This one. Exactly as it happened.

Could you say yes?

I came across this idea a few days ago and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Not because I have a clean answer, but because I don’t. And the more I sit with it, the more I think the discomfort is the whole point.

Why it’s a useful test

Before I get into my own mess, I think Nietzsche was onto something real here.

Most of us don’t consciously evaluate how we’re living. We drift. Days turn into weeks, weeks into years, and we wake up one morning wondering how we got here. The eternal recurrence cuts through that drift in a way most questions don’t. It forces a gut check.

If your first reaction is “God, no, I wish I had done things differently,” that’s telling you something important. Not to spiral in regret, but to pay attention. To ask whether you’re living in a way that, at the end, you could actually stand behind.

I’ve always had a similar question I ask myself: would I be okay with how I lived if it ended tomorrow? Nietzsche’s version is harsher, not just okay, but willing to do it all over again. Forever. But they’re pointing at the same thing.

I’d rather regret something I tried than something I never had the guts to attempt. When I put my life through this test, that’s the lens I’m using.

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My honest answer

Overall? Yes. I’m 38. I haven’t even hit the halfway point (I hope). But if I zoom out at my life so far, the French village I grew up in, Australia, Miami, four years on the road, landing in Bangkok, I can say yes. I’d do it again. The mistakes, the detours, the friendships that fell apart, the professional failures. All of it led somewhere worth being.

But there are a few moments where my brain just... stops.

And as always when I go deep on something like this, I come back to the infant losses.

Rosie and I went through four pregnancy losses. The hardest was the termination for medical reasons in 2017. I’ve written about it before, but I won’t pretend it gets easier to revisit. That experience was the most painful thing I’ve ever been through. The situation. The decision. The aftermath. Watching Rosie break, and breaking myself. Nearly losing her in the process. All of it.

Would I go through it again?

I have to be honest here, even though part of me, as a coach, feels like I should give you the growth narrative. You know the one: “It was awful, but it was necessary. It woke me up. Everything happens for a reason.”

That would be a lie.

That experience was a catalyst. It cracked me open in a way nothing else had. It’s the reason I started questioning how I was living, why I eventually “escaped the matrix” and built a life on my own terms. In this life, I can trace a direct line from that loss to everything I love about my life today.

But would I voluntarily go through it again, knowing how painful it would be, even knowing the outcome? I genuinely don’t know. I don’t think I could. It broke us individually. Rebuilding was hard. I don’t want to do it again. Ever.

Does that mean I’d choose to stay stuck in the matrix instead? That’s what this question feels like, being asked to choose between cutting off my left arm or my right. I’d like to believe that even without that experience, I would have found my own way to wake up eventually. Through other experiences, other breaking points, other moments of clarity. But I’ll never know that.

And I think that’s okay.

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The part nobody tells you

Nietzsche’s test isn’t really asking whether every moment was worth it. Some moments aren’t. Some things that happen to us are genuinely terrible and we’d be lying to ourselves if we dressed them up as gifts.

What the test is really asking is: in spite of those moments, do you stand behind the arc of your life?

And there, I can say yes.

I’m not at peace with everything that happened. I never fully will be. But I’m at peace with how I responded to it. With the choices I made in the wreckage. With the life I built on the other side of it.

That’s a different kind of yes. Not “I’d choose the pain again.” But “I’d choose who I became because of it.”

I think that’s the honest version of passing the test.

Where this leaves you

Most of us, when asked about our lives, give the surface-level answer. “I’m good. Things are fine.” It’s the socially acceptable response. The mask we wear without even noticing.

But deep down, we can feel the truth.

This question is uncomfortable for a reason. If something bubbles up when you sit with it, that’s worth paying attention to. Not to spiral, but to get honest with yourself, maybe for the first time in a while.

Nobody else is going to do this evaluation for you. And the sooner you do it, the more time you have to actually do something about it.

So one more time:

If you had to live your life exactly as it is, all of it, would you say yes?

And if not, what would need to change?

J

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That’s not what happens. At least, that’s not what happened to me.

The changes travel brought into my life were subtle. Progressive. Almost invisible while they were happening. I only really noticed them when I looked back.

The best way I can explain it is with your iPhone camera.

When you’ve never traveled, you see the world through a very narrow, zoomed-in lens. Think x8 zoom. You can see clearly, but only a tiny section of what’s actually in front of you. You’re missing enormous amounts of context.

Each time you travel, you zoom out a little. x4. x2. x1.

You start to see what was always there, just outside your frame. And slowly, you build a picture of the world that’s actually close to what the world looks like.

Here’s what I mean. These are four photos I took of my apartment wall this week.

Same wall. Same photos. Completely different picture depending on where you’re standing.

That’s what travel does to your worldview.

I know this because I started from about as zoomed-in as it gets.

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Where I started

I grew up in a village of 1,500 people in the south of France, near Perpignan. Everyone knew everyone. Ways of thinking, ways of living, they were all more or less the same.

There was some diversity around me, mostly due to the proximity to the Spanish border. People from Spain, Portugal, North Africa. But the message I absorbed from the adults around me wasn’t about tolerance or curiosity. It was closer to: “this is the right way to live. Everything else is wrong.”

And more specific things on top of that. Don’t trust Arabs and Muslims, they’re bad people. Don’t bring a girl home from there, or you’re out.

The TV news wasn’t much better. It never said anything directly, but the images they chose told their own story. Whenever something bad happened, the faces shown were always the same. The brain connects dots quickly.

As a good kid who listened to the adults... I believed all of it.

My first small zoom out was going to university in Toulouse. Bigger city, more people, slightly more variety. But the overall environment was still familiar enough that it didn’t shift much in me.

The first real shift came in Australia.

Sydney, 2010

I was 22. I spent six months there doing an internship - a new language in practice (my English was pretty rough), a new culture, a completely different way of life. I lived with people from Brazil, the Netherlands, England, Germany. I worked alongside Australians, Spanish, Bangladeshi.

And I quickly met Rosie. She’d grown up very differently from me. Her parents traveled. She’d been exposed to a lot, in good ways and in harder ways too. She was already zoomed out in ways I couldn’t yet see.

I remember walking around the city and seeing people with really eccentric looks, or people doing tai-chi in the park, and my immediate reaction was basically: what is wrong with you. Why are you so weird? Why are you doing that in public? You’re not supposed to do that.

Rosie would look at me and ask, genuinely: “Why do you care? Why does it bother you?”

I didn’t have an answer. The only thing I had was “it’s weird. It’s not normal.”

Which, of course, is not an answer at all.

But here’s what that moment actually was: it was the first time I became aware that I had a problem. I couldn’t justify my reactions. I had no real argument. Just a reflex, inherited from somewhere, that I’d never once questioned.

That awareness was the first step.

The second step happened on its own, slowly, just through being there. After a few weeks, I stopped noticing the eccentric people. They were just part of life. People expressing themselves, happy, not bothering anyone. The discomfort faded not through a conscious decision, but through exposure. Through being around it long enough that it stopped being strange.

No single moment I can point to. Just a gradual, quiet shift. And I think that’s actually how most real change works, not one big epiphany, but a slow accumulation of new normal.

I became less judgmental. More tolerant. More aware that the way people lived back home wasn’t the only valid way. Their beliefs weren’t capital-T Truths. They were just one way of seeing things, shaped by one particular place and time.

First zoom out. More of the picture.

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Indonesia, 2016

Six years later, Rosie and I went to Indonesia for our honeymoon. One of the largest Muslim-majority countries in the world.

Remember what I said earlier, about the messages I grew up with. That was the context I was bringing into that trip.

In Borneo, we spent four days with a local guide named Febri. She was, at the time, one of the only female guides on the island. Her father had been a guide, so she’d grown up in the rainforest. She could spot a spider or a crocodile from insane distances, in near darkness. The jungle was just her home.

She also wore a hijab. And I’ll be honest: when I first saw her, some old reflexes kicked in. Things I wasn’t proud of but couldn’t pretend weren’t there.

Four days later, every single one of those reflexes was gone.

Febri was just a young woman with a life she loved and dreams she was building. She was about to get married. She was excited about having kids. She talked about the wildlife and her island with a kind of passion and knowledge I’ve rarely seen in anyone. There was something genuinely beautiful about how connected she was to her world.

Yes, she had different beliefs, different cultural references. Some things that were completely normal for her still feel foreign to me. But I understood, really understood, that those differences didn’t make either of us better or worse. Just different.

I asked a lot of questions. She answered all of them. Four days of conversation that I can still recall in vivid detail, ten years later. Because the differences were exactly what made it so rich.

Another zoom out. More context. More of the picture.

It’s not a destination

I want to be clear about something: I’m not fully “cured.” I still carry beliefs I haven’t shed yet. Some about myself, some about others. There are corners of my thinking I haven’t cleaned out and probably won’t for a long time, maybe ever.

But that’s the point. This isn’t a process with a finish line. It’s just an ongoing expansion, zoom out, see more, understand more, repeat.

All the traveling I’ve done since has only continued that. Without those trips, without the people I met along the way, I’d still be the stubborn, close-minded guy from a 1,500-person village in the south of France. Certain he already knew how the world worked.

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You don’t need a plane ticket

Here’s what I want to say to anyone thinking: “that’s nice Jeremie, but I can’t afford to fly to Australia or Indonesia.”

The flights aren’t the point.

What changed me wasn’t the miles. It was the exposure to people and perspectives I hadn’t encountered before. The discomfort of being in an unfamiliar environment and having to sit with it long enough for it to feel normal.

That can happen in your own city if you’re intentional about it. A different neighborhood. A different community. A conversation with someone whose life looks nothing like yours. The exposure is what matters, not the passport stamp.

And one caveat for those who do travel: going to a resort where 90% of the guests speak your language and the staff are trained to make everything feel familiar, that’s a vacation, not an expansion. Nothing wrong with it, but don’t expect it to zoom you out. You haven’t really left your bubble, you’ve just moved it somewhere warmer.

The real shift comes from contact. From letting something genuinely different in.

That’s true whether you do it by boarding a plane, walking into an unfamiliar room, or simply deciding to have a real conversation with someone who sees the world differently from you. Sometimes that person is a guide in a rainforest. Sometimes it’s a coach asking you questions you’ve never thought to ask yourself.

Either way, the zoom out is available to you.

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J

Meanwhile, here in Bangkok, temperatures are rising from hot to super hot 🥵🤣.

For the 3rd month in a row, I haven’t left the country (or even the city)! The start of the month was slow... then somehow it got super busy!

Every month, I’ll share a more personal look at what’s been going on: where we’ve been, what I’ve been working on, and a few things I’ve discovered or enjoyed along the way. ✨

This isn’t just a travel diary or work recap, it’s a chance to go deeper into the real-life moments behind the posts. Sometimes there are wins, sometimes challenges, but I always try to share something honest, useful, or thought-provoking from what I’ve experienced.

I’ll also include a few of my favorites from the month: books, podcasts, articles, or tools that stood out and might inspire you too.

This post is just for paid subscribers, thank you so much for your support! 💛

I’m keeping these monthly updates behind the paywall for two reasons. First, they’re a lot more personal, it’s a real look into my life, and having it just for paid subscribers makes it feel a bit more protected and private. Second, these take me quite a bit of time to put together. I want them to be complete, thoughtful, and fun, with stories, photos, and things I’ve enjoyed throughout the month. Your support helps me make the time to create something meaningful here. 🙏🏼

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March 1st to March 31st: Thailand 🇹🇭

We started the month by exploring our “backyard” a little more. We’re lucky to live close to one of Bangkok’s most popular landmarks: the Big Buddha.

Rosie heard about a new cafe across the river from it, which offers an amazing view of the statue. So one evening, we jumped on motorbikes and headed over. I wouldn’t recommend the cafe, great location… but that’s about it.

We’ve been to the temple many times, so we simply wandered around the small streets and explored the neighborhood. We stayed until sunset to take some photographs of the sun going down behind the statue.

It’s a very local neighborhood, aside from the temple itself. Not many foreigners explore the backstreets, smaller temples, and markets around it. It was really cool to witness local Thai life - a side of Bangkok not often seen, away from the crazy or glamorous parts of the city... but it’s where I feel most at home, in a way.

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When the young elephant arrives, they don’t start with tricks. First, they put a collar around its neck and peg it to the ground with a rope. The peg is strong enough to hold a baby elephant. It can walk around, but if it pulls, it can’t escape.

After a while, the young elephant understands it’s not strong enough. So it stops pulling. It accepts the situation.

That’s when the training begins.

As the elephant grows, the collar stays on. The peg stays in the ground. And even when it becomes a fully grown adult - one of the most powerful animals on the planet - it never tries to escape.

Not because it can’t.

But because it still believes it can’t.

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I heard this story during a life coaching course I took last year. I don’t know if it’s true - but that doesn’t matter. It stuck with me, and I share it with my own students regularly.

Do you feel sorry for the elephant? I do a little.

What a shame. If only it knew how strong it had become. One pull - one single pull - and it would be free.

But it won’t try. The belief was formed too early, ran too deep, and never got updated.

That’s what conditioning does.

I had my own version of that peg for a long time.

Growing up, I was convinced there was only one way to live a good life: get a degree, find a stable job at a big company, climb the ladder. Get married, buy a house, have kids. That was the plan. That was success. I never questioned it - I just assumed it was the only path available to someone like me.

When Rosie and I graduated, she wanted to travel before settling down. I said no. We had to be responsible. We couldn’t just go off traveling - that was for rich people, not us.

I was a fully grown elephant, completely convinced the peg was still holding me.

It took years - new people, new environments, new experiences - before I finally understood there were other paths. That I could actually live differently. That the rope I thought was holding me down had never really been there.

And once I pulled? Everything changed.

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Now I’ll ask you the same question I ask myself.

Which beliefs did you form early on - in childhood, as a teenager, or even as an adult - that are still quietly running your life today? Beliefs that were real once, but are completely outdated now?

Which pegs are you still not pulling on... even though you absolutely could?

If you feel like your inner-young-elephant needs support finding the peg, reply to this email, I read every message. And if you want to work on it properly, here’s how we can do that together.

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J

Not fluently, not perfectly - just enough to communicate with locals who don’t speak English. Enough to order food without my phone, to have a basic conversation, to not feel like a complete tourist in the country I now live in.

I have two apps downloaded on my phone. I haven’t opened either of them in weeks. I have YouTube channels saved. Haven’t watched a single video.

I want to get the medal... but I just don’t want to run the race.

And honestly? I’m not about to pretend I’m going to fix that anytime soon. The truth is, I don’t want it enough right now. I can always find English-speaking people here. Google Translate does the job. I know hello and thank you in Thai, and somehow, life goes on just fine.

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I’m writing this not because I have a great success story to share, but because I think most of us can relate to this feeling.

Why We Never Actually Get There

We all have goals. Fitness goals, career goals, relationship goals, personal ones. Big ones, small ones.

But most of them? We never actually get there.

Not because we can’t. Because we don’t want to go through the process of getting there.

We love the destination. We just don’t want to go through the journey to get there.

I see this with myself, with my wife Rosie, with my coaching clients. It’s everywhere.

Getting fit. Meditating. Reading more. Earning more money. Starting a business. Having better relationships. We all want those things, or at least the idea of them. But they all require investing real time and energy. We love the outcome. We just don’t always love the process to get there.

One of the reasons this happens - and I’m sure you can relate - is how big the task feels. To learn Thai, I need to learn a full new alphabet (which is not easy when all the letters look like drawings to me at the moment), understand concepts I’ve never heard of like tones, and get comfortable being terrible for a very long time. When I compare where I am now (hello and thank you, basically) to where I want to be... the gap is so big it’s paralyzing.

So I don’t start.

And honestly? The real reason is simple: I’m not willing to make it a priority. Not with my time, and not financially either - I haven’t signed up for a class or hired a teacher. I’d rather spend that time and money on other things. That’s the truth.

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Why Our Brain Talks Us Out of It

There’s something psychological about this. We’re actually very good at doing things when we have no choice. When our back is against the wall, when the stakes are high. But when they’re not? When we feel like we have time? It’s very easy to procrastinate.

If I went to the doctor tomorrow and they told me “change your diet or you’ll likely have a heart attack next year”… I don’t know about you, but personally I’d change my diet. Fast.

But if my cholesterol is just a little high and I feel fine... I’ll probably keep eating the same way.

Same thing with work. If I was jobless with no money coming in, I’d dedicate hours every day to learning a new skill or finding clients. But if I already have a comfortable job, even one I hate, I’ll probably not do much about it. Because complaining is easier than spending your evenings developing new skills for 3 to 6 months to change careers. I see so many people stuck in that exact situation.

Our brain loves comfort. As long as it feels safe, it will keep sending us signals to stay comfortable. It will tell us: “why would we waste time and energy getting uncomfortable for something we don’t even need?” And we fall for that, every time.

That’s true for fitness goals, career goals, language learning. That’s why New Year’s resolutions don’t last.

Without a strong enough why, our brain will win that fight every time. And we’ll end up on the couch, scrolling our phones, while our goals stay goals.

I know this firsthand, in both directions.

Back in 2010, I moved to Australia for an internship. I barely spoke English. Almost nobody around me spoke French. I had to figure it out just to find an apartment, survive at work, buy groceries. I had no choice. I was so determined that I actively avoided making French friends so I had no way out but to speak English all the time. I struggled for weeks. And I pushed through it anyway - because I had to, and because I knew it was going to be a great investment for my future.

Right now, learning Thai? I don’t have that. I can always fall back on English or Google Translate. The discomfort of not speaking Thai is not painful enough to make me move.

So What Do You Actually Do About It?

I think it comes down to two questions.

1. Do you actually want this, or do you just like the idea of it?

Be honest with yourself. There’s a big difference between genuinely wanting something and just liking the version of yourself who has it.

Because if you don’t want it enough, no productivity hack is going to save you. You’ll just keep downloading apps and not opening them. (Ask me how I know.)

If the answer is yes, you do genuinely want it, then:

2. How can you make the process more enjoyable?

Because if the path to your goal feels like torture, you won’t stay on it for long.

That’s actually why apps like Duolingo work. Instead of sitting in a boring classroom memorizing grammar rules, they gamify the whole thing. Small wins, regular progress, just a few minutes a day. The content is the same, but the experience is different enough that people actually stick with it.

Having accountability partners does something similar. Going through the discomfort with someone else makes it much easier to keep showing up. I’ve written about this in the context of solo entrepreneurs, and the same logic applies here. Honestly, that’s a big part of why people hire me as a coach too. Most of the time they already know what they need to do… they just can’t make themselves do it alone. Having someone in their corner to support them, challenge them, and help them navigate the hard parts makes all the difference.

The goal isn’t to make the process easy. It’s to reduce the friction enough that you actually start, and keep going.

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And if you can’t honestly answer those two questions?

Maybe that goal just isn’t for you right now. And that’s okay.

Not every goal deserves to be chased. Some things look great on paper but don’t actually fit where you are or what you truly want at this point in your life. Letting go of them isn’t failure. It’s just being honest with yourself.

Right now, speaking Thai isn’t a real priority for me. Maybe it will be one day. But at least I’m not lying to myself about it anymore.

Is there a goal or ambition you’ve been holding onto that you don’t actually want enough to do the work for?

J

But before I get to that, I need to rewind a few years.

A club born from an NFT

In 2022, I purchased some NFTs. One of the projects I got involved in was Futera United, a Bangkok football club. The idea was simple: start a club at the lowest level of Thai amateur football and work our way up the leagues, one promotion at a time.

Being a holder gave you access to a private platform where, alongside the staff and other holders, you could actually help run the club. Choosing a logo. Picking the jersey kits. Deciding which players should start. A real-life version of Football Manager, a game I grew up loving.

So since 2022, I’ve been following Futera United’s journey, watching games online and staying engaged with the community.

Two years in the amateur leagues. Then two seasons at the semi-professional level. And this season (2025/2026), after just four years of existence, the club became fully professional, competing at the third tier of Thai football.

Last Saturday was the final home game of the season. It wasn’t an easy year, but the team survived and stayed up. That alone is a fantastic result.

After the game, I walked over to one of our players and asked if I could have his jersey. He kindly said yes.

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The symbol behind this jersey

His name is Phu.

Phu has been with Futera United since day one. Him and the goalkeeper are the only two players still here from the very beginning. Back in 2022, he was a teenager, our wonder kid. Now, he is a starter on a professional football team.

He became a professional footballer.

What was once just a dream for a kid is now his reality.

The journey wasn’t easy. Ups and downs. This season was especially tough for him. It took him nearly half the season to find his level at this new standard of play. But he got there, through hard work and sheer determination.

I don’t know Phu personally. The language barrier makes it difficult to communicate. But I wanted that jersey because of what it represents. It’s a reminder that dreams can become real. That if you work hard enough, believe in yourself, and have the right people around you, the impossible starts to look a lot more possible.

What happened to your dreams?

We all had them as kids. Those big, ridiculous, wonderful dreams.

I wanted to be an architect. Then a paleontologist. Then an astronaut.

At some point along the way, those dreams quietly disappeared. I don’t remember the exact moment, but somewhere between childhood and my teenage years, adults told me to be more realistic. To focus on school. To get a stable job that paid well. Nobody said my dreams were impossible outright, but that’s what was implied.

By the time I was a teenager, the astronaut and the paleontologist were long gone. I just wanted to work in tech because I heard it wasn’t too tiring and paid decently. Not exactly the stuff of childhood imagination.

I’m not blaming anyone. That’s just how it goes for most of us. The world is good at slowly convincing us to lower the bar.

Too many people give up on their dreams and settle for mediocre lives. I say that not to be harsh, but because I believe it, and I think deep down, a lot of people know it’s true about themselves.

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It’s not too late

I stopped dreaming for a long time. Into my twenties, into my thirties.

To be fair, I was still enjoying life. Still achieving things. But the dreams I was chasing weren’t really mine. They were the ones people had mapped out for me.

It took a personal tragedy (you can read about it here) to wake me up to that. Suddenly, the comfortable path I had been walking didn’t feel like safety anymore. It felt like a waste.

So I started dreaming again, but this time for myself.

I dreamed about an unconventional life. No regular job. No mortgage. Seeing as much of this world as I possibly could. It sounded unrealistic to a lot of people around me. It sounded impossible to part of me.

But I worked on it. I worked on my self-limiting beliefs, the fears that had been keeping me small. I got clear on what I actually wanted, built a plan, and eventually, one step at a time, I turned it into reality.

That’s why I live in Bangkok today. That’s why I’m at a professional football game on a Saturday afternoon, going home with a striker’s jersey under my arm.

If you’re reading this and thinking “yeah, cool story, but I’m not 19 anymore, those kinds of dreams don’t apply to me,” I hear you.

I thought the same thing.

But I don’t think the ability to dream ever leaves us. I think it just gets buried under years of practicality, responsibility, and other people’s expectations. Underneath all that, there’s still a version of you that knows what it actually wants.

I call it your inner child. And it doesn’t have to stay buried.

The dreams you reconnect with as an adult might look different from the ones you had at eight years old. They’ll probably be a bit more grounded, a bit more nuanced. But they’re still yours. And you still have the power to pursue them.

It starts with one thing: believing it’s possible.

In a world that can feel pretty heavy right now, I wanted to share this lighthearted story. Because Phu becoming a professional footballer at a club that didn’t exist four years ago is proof that good things still happen.

At the end of this strange, short life, you’re going to die either way. You might as well have gone for it.

I’ll leave you with two questions:

What did you dream about as a kid?

And which of those dreams, or a version of them, could you start moving toward today?

I’d love to read your answers in the comments.

J

I was enrolled in a self-development program near Miami called Gratitude Training. The goal was to shed our self-limiting beliefs, embrace who we are, and show up more fully in our lives. It was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I’ve ever done. I made friends for life.

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During one of the weekends, we walked into a room where chairs were lined up facing a small stage. Just a mic on the floor.

The exercise: get on stage, grab the mic, and answer a single question the room would ask you, over and over again.

“Who are you?”

If people didn’t feel you were really answering - if your words didn’t sound right - anyone could ask again. Any time.

I decided to go up.

Standing there with the mic, staring at 50+ people, I took a breath and started talking.

“I’m Jeremie. I’m a man. I’m a husband. I’m a son. I’m French. I’m caring. I’m kind...”

I kept going. Where I’m from. What I do. What I like.

The question kept coming back.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I remember thinking: I don’t fucking know.

I walked off that stage more confused than when I got on it.

But something had been lit. A question I had never seriously asked myself before was now lodged in my head - and it’s never really left. That moment set me on a path of introspection and self-discovery that I’m still on today.

Years later, I still can’t answer it.

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So let’s explore it together.

Are we our bodies?

It’s the most obvious answer on the surface - our bodies are what make us physically present in the world. But something about it doesn’t sit right with me. Our bodies carry too much impermanence. I read somewhere that most of our cells are replaced every 7 to 10 years. We change physically throughout our entire lives in ways we don’t control. If what makes us up is constantly shifting... can we really say our body is what makes us us?

I don’t think so.

Are we our brains?

The nerdy, rational part of me really connects with this. Unlike most cells, many of our neurons last a lifetime. Our brain develops as we develop, ages as we age. It stores our memories. Our experiences, choices, and actions physically shape it over time. It’s the center of our awareness, our personality, our thinking.

Does our brain contain our soul? That’s where it gets murky for me. But as the one constant at the core of our physical existence, this theory feels the most plausible.

Are we the things we say about ourselves?

That’s essentially what I was doing on stage. Listing labels. Roles. Adjectives. The bundle of things I associate with myself at any given moment.

But that bundle has shifted enormously throughout my life. What defined me at 20 looks almost nothing like what defines me now. So if what I say about myself keeps changing... what does that mean for who I actually am?

Are we our thoughts and actions?

We often hear things like: “you are not your job” or “it’s not because you did a bad thing that you are a bad person.” I’ve said those things myself, and I believe them.

Our thoughts are incredibly fleeting, they come and go within seconds sometimes. Can something that temporary really be the foundation of who we are? That doesn’t feel right either.

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None of these answers fully hold up. And that’s what I keep coming back to.

Are we our identity - whatever that even means? The sum of our past experiences? A combination of body, mind, and something we loosely call a soul or consciousness?

We’ve solved extraordinarily complex problems as a species. We’ve unlocked scientific mysteries, explored the universe, built things that would look like magic to people 200 years ago.

And yet this question - the most personal one there is, the one every single human being could ask themselves - still has no clear, agreed-upon answer.

Maybe that’s because the answer looks different depending on where you’re standing. Culture, religion, personal belief, lived experience - they all shape how we respond to it. And none of us can really tell another person they’re wrong.

Maybe the answer isn’t even the point. Maybe asking the question is the point, because sitting with it is one of the deepest forms of self-exploration there is.

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I’m not sharing my own conclusion here - deliberately. I don’t want my take to color yours. This isn’t a post where I hand you an answer. It’s an open invitation to explore.

So here’s my question for you:

If you were standing on that stage right now, mic in hand, 50 people staring at you - what’s the first thing you’d say?

Drop it in the comments, or hit reply if you’re reading this by email. I’m super curious to read what you would say 😁

J

Not in a deep, felt way. Not in a way that actually changes how they show up every morning.

And I get it. It’s easy to be caught up in the daily grind, the complaints, the comparisons, the feeling that things aren’t where they should be.

But today I want to shake you a little. Because once you see this clearly, you can’t unsee it. And it changes everything.

The Odds of You Existing

Let’s start with the numbers, because they’re insane.

For the individual you to be alive, an incredible sequence of events had to happen perfectly:

• Your parents meeting: ~1 in 20,000

• Them having a child together: ~1 in 2,000

• The exact sperm + egg combo that made you: ~1 in 400 quadrillion

If you put all that probability into a single coin flip, you’d need to flip heads ~2.6 million times in a row.

That’s how crazy it is that you exist.

And even if we set aside the big math, roughly 1 in 3 pregnancies never makes it to birth. Miscarriages, stillbirths, complications. The fact that you got to breathe for even one day already makes you extraordinarily lucky.

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The Winning Streak That Made You

This one really gets me.

Every single one of your ancestors, going back 4 billion years, survived long enough to reproduce. Not one broke the chain. Through plagues, famines, wars, ice ages, predators - the chain held.

You are the result of an unbroken winning streak across all of life on Earth.

One bad winter. One wrong place at the wrong time. One plague that took out the wrong person. And you don’t exist.

We Are Alone in an Incomprehensibly Large Universe

Take a step back even further.

There are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, each with hundreds of billions of stars, most with planets. And life as we know it - conscious, self-aware, meaning-seeking life - exists on exactly one of them. So far.

We are made of “space dust,” tiny atoms that somehow organized themselves into something capable of thinking about its own existence. That alone is mind-bending.

And out of 8.7 million species on Earth, you were born as a human being - the most evolved species that has ever lived on this planet. You could have been a fly with a 24-hour lifespan. A cow in a factory farm. A fish.

Instead, you got consciousness. Language. The ability to dream, create, and choose your life.

As far as we know, we are the only species in the entire known universe who can do that.

You Were Also Born at the Best Time in History

I know it doesn’t feel that way when you scroll social media or watch the news. But stay with me.

For 99% of human history, “a good day” meant not starving.

Until the industrial revolution, roughly 200 years ago, all of our focus, energy, and cognitive bandwidth served one single purpose: find food. There was no time to think about purpose, fulfillment, or legacy. Just survival. Hunter-gatherers spent their entire days searching for their next meal. When we settled, it was because we discovered agriculture. Growing food was a revolution.

For the vast majority of human history, food was the meaning of life.

And now? You can have food delivered to your door in 30 minutes. Your ancestors would have considered that magic.

Yet we’re still not satisfied. Still not present. Still not appreciating it.

(And let’s not forget, a lot of people on Earth today are still starving while we throw away mountains of food every single day.)

And You, Specifically, Won Even More Lotteries

If you’re reading this: you speak and read English, which gives you access to the vast majority of the world’s information and opportunities. You have internet. You have enough stability in your life to read a newsletter about personal growth.

You are in a very small percentage of all humans alive on Earth right now.

You have won more lotteries than you realize.

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I Learned This the Hard Way

It took me 29 years to truly understand this. Until I tried to conceive, to create a new life.

Until then, I thought it was just as easy as ordering something on Amazon.

In 2016, we experienced our first miscarriage. In 2017, we found out our baby boy had a very rare and complicated genetic disorder - we made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. In 2019, another miscarriage. In 2020, a missed miscarriage.

We tried 4 times to bring a healthy human life into the world. It didn’t work out.

Because it’s not easy. I saw firsthand how hard life is to create. How fragile it is. How it can be taken before it even starts - even today, at the most advanced point in our civilization.

Those were multiple punches in the face. But they woke me up. I see it clearly now.

I understood, the hard and painful way, how lucky I was to simply be alive and healthy.

So What Are You Doing With It?

We finally have the freedom to actually live, and most people are sleepwalking through it.

You are spending this astronomically rare gift on a job you hate, constantly worrying about what other people think, never satisfied with what you have, and just waiting for “someday” to do anything about it.

You were given a golden opportunity. The universe went through an absurd amount of trouble to get you here.

Are you living like it?

It Doesn’t Have to Stay This Way

I woke up. The hard way - through loss, through grief, through being forced to confront how fragile and precious life actually is.

But you don’t have to wait for a tragedy to shake you awake.

You can decide today to approach your life differently. To stop postponing happiness. To stop living by other people’s scripts. To actually build the life you want, on your terms.

I see it happen constantly with the people I work with. It doesn’t matter your age, your situation, where you’re starting from. When there’s a will, there’s a way. And once you wake up to how precious this life is, you can never go back to sleepwalking through it.

If that resonates with you - if you feel the itch, the discomfort, the sense that there’s more available to you - I’d love to talk.

Let’s have a conversation

Life is too short and too rare to wait.

This month only had 28 days, but it was a busy one here in Bangkok! We didn’t go anywhere else yet. Rosie is still enjoying staying in one place and not living out of a backpack or suitcase 😅

Me however, I have to admit… I’m starting to feel… something. The days and weeks are already starting to blur together, and I’m not a fan of that feeling… More on that later.

Every month, I’ll share a more personal look at what’s been going on: where we’ve been, what I’ve been working on, and a few things I’ve discovered or enjoyed along the way. ✨

This isn’t just a travel diary or work recap, it’s a chance to go deeper into the real-life moments behind the posts. Sometimes there are wins, sometimes challenges, but I always try to share something honest, useful, or thought-provoking from what I’ve experienced.

I’ll also include a few of my favorites from the month: books, podcasts, articles, or tools that stood out and might inspire you too.

This post is just for paid subscribers, thank you so much for your support! 💛

I’m keeping these monthly updates behind the paywall for two reasons. First, they’re a lot more personal, it’s a real look into my life, and having it just for paid subscribers makes it feel a bit more protected and private. Second, these take me quite a bit of time to put together. I want them to be complete, thoughtful, and fun, with stories, photos, and things I’ve enjoyed throughout the month. Your support helps me make the time to create something meaningful here. 🙏🏼

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February 1st to February 28th: Thailand 🇹🇭

That makes it 2 full months back-to-back in the same country and same city!

We finally stopped buying things for the apartment (pretty much). January was pretty intense on that front… so now we can just enjoy our new home, focus on work, and take advantage of this wonderful city.

I’ll put some snaps below of random days and evenings out… it includes: a big dachshund robot, an evening stroll in Lumphini Park, and a private sound bath.

The first weekend of the month was Bangkok Design Week, with plenty of workshops and exhibitions throughout the city. On the 7th, we went to check some of it out.

We started in a nearby neighborhood and walked around a market with local makers. While exploring, we spotted a mural from a street artist we absolutely loved in Miami (Vhils). It was really cool to see his work pop up here!

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Four moments where things didn’t go the way I wanted them to. Where I felt frustrated, annoyed, angry, or just... sad.

And in every single one of them, looking back, I see things differently now.

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Sydney, 2010

I arrived in Australia for a 6-month internship, fresh out of France, with broken English and one week of hostel accommodation booked. The plan was simple: find a flat during that first week.

I found a place I liked. Good location, good price. The landlord said there were more visits scheduled, but I could take my time. I messaged him that evening - excited, relieved - ready to say yes.

Too late. Someone else had said yes 5 minutes before me.

I was furious at myself. How could I not have decided faster?

A few days later, I found another spot. Better location, actually. And about 10 days after moving in, a cute blonde English girl walked through the door to move into the girls’ room.

That girl was Rosie. I married her 5 years later.

If I’d been 5 minutes faster that first time, we would have probably never met.

Aix-en-Provence, 2014

My current work contract was ending. My agency sent me to interview at a startup in Marseille, but the traffic getting there was a nightmare. We showed up an hour late. The interview went okay, but a few days later, I heard they went with someone else.

Fine. The daily commute would have been hell anyway.

Then, a week later, my agency called back. The person they hired didn’t work out. They wanted me.

I remember complaining to Rosie: the commute, the traffic, the uncertainty of a brand new startup... I was so unenthusiastic about it.

I started anyway. Sleepy and grumpy on my first day.

I ended up spending 6+ years there. It became the best professional experience of my life. The co-founders offered me the chance to move to Miami, which completely changed the trajectory of everything. I’m still friends with them to this day.

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France, 2017

This one is harder to write about.

Rosie and I had to make the most painful decision of our lives: we terminated our pregnancy at 6 months. The worst day of my life. I’ve written about it before, I won’t go into all the details again here.

What I know now, looking back:

If that pregnancy had gone as planned... we would not have moved to Miami. We would not have traveled the world for 4 years. We would have settled where we were, on autopilot, and life today would probably look almost exactly like it did in 2017… just with a child (or more by now).

I would not have become the person I am today.

2021 and 2022

After leaving Miami, Rosie and I were finally ready to start traveling full-time. We had a plan.

Then family situations came up. Twice. Things completely outside our control. We made the choice to be there, to delay our travels, to put our plans on hold - twice. It also cost us a significant amount of money.

Was I frustrated? Absolutely.

It’s during those months of being “stuck” that the opportunity to build my online yoga school appeared. And because I wasn’t on the road bouncing between cities, I could give it my full attention. I launched it properly.

The school is now closed, but it was a pivotal moment in my entrepreneurial journey. It gave me confidence, experience, and proof that I could build something from scratch. Without those delays, I’m not sure I would have done it at all.

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What All of This Has in Common

In every one of these moments, my first reaction was negative. Frustration. Sadness. Anger. Resentment.

Because I had expectations. And reality refused to match them.

Stoicism has a clear answer for this. Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca - they all said it differently, but the message is the same: you do not control what happens to you. You only control how you respond.

Other people’s actions, external events, things that have already happened - none of that is within your control right now. Fighting against it doesn’t change it. It just makes you suffer more.

And yet, what my life has shown me goes a step further than acceptance.

I’m not saying everything happens for a reason in some neat, cosmic way. I don’t know that. What I know is that even that one tragic moment led somewhere I couldn’t have imagined at the time.

Maybe you call it the universe. Maybe God. Maybe coincidence. I don’t have the answer, and honestly, I don’t think it matters.

What matters is the posture. Letting go of what isn’t yours to control, and staying open to what comes next.

I just know that every time I’ve let go, really let go, something better showed up. And that’s enough for me.

Has there been a moment in your life where something going “wrong” actually led somewhere better? I’d love to hear it, hit reply and tell me.

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