I’ve been fortunate enough to take the right amount of risks to create a business that can be driven by energy.

As business owners, we have no shortage of variety.

Endless tasks. Admin. Personalities to manage. Clients to sign.

I see this as an advantage.

I’m not in DMs scheduling coffee every day.

Believe it or not, I’m an introvert. So, my default is to sit, think, write, read.

And many days, that’s all I do.

But when the energy is there, I’ll message people I’ve been thinking about in a flurry and within a day, I’ve booked out a couple of weeks.

The general mindset here is utilize an energy that feels so right it can’t be wrong.

And lately, this thing I love—the very newsletter you’re reading—hasn’t had its usual energy inside my body.

On the spectrum with pure joy at one end and necessary task on the other, it’s been trending more task.

Which bothered me a bit because I’ve said in the past I could write emails for a living and be perfectly happy with that.

They feel so personal to me. Letters enclosed in an envelope of weight, sealed with wax.

A sacred conversation.

It’s never felt like a task until recently.

So, I wanted to unpack my thinking with you. A mental shift I’m experiencing that’s helping me navigate it.

I’m finding this mental shift is pretty universal to any task, too.

I spoke with an entrepreneur who talked a lot about his discipline in the gym, his relationships, and his work.

It’s inspiring how much he holds and how he shows up for it.

So, what I’m about to share is with him in mind and an effort to solidify my practice publicly.

I see this conundrum more in terms of emotional connection.

The battle between our ears.

Because when something starts feeling a bit off, or unexplainable, or too hard, there tend to be two common routes:

[1] Put it down and do something else.

[2] Force it under the umbrella of “stay disciplined.”

The mindset I’m adopting has been a third door, for me:

Moving the privilege from the result to the work itself.

And therefore, I don’t need to make the work feel good.

No one’s holding a gun to our heads. We don’t have to do it at all.

But quitting or forcing seems more an emotional response than a useful one.

Because when we see the work itself as a privilege. When we look at it as something that can teach us rather than something we need to manipulate, we can discover new wrinkles.

Like when a rock artist switches it up and plays something acoustic.

Or something as simple as a writer going from prose to poetry.

The work you do on your health, your relationships, your vocation, it’s a multi-faceted landscape with hidden nooks and crannies we can discover.

New levels of art sit between the mundane and the unseen.

There was no correct version of this email waiting for me. There was only what I found and what I left covered up.

And so, typing these words, I found it useful to not go in with any expectation of sounding useful, entertaining, or following any specific structure.

I wanted to discover a new wrinkle.

And now that I’ve written a few words, I can say it’s rewarded me.

Artistry didn’t enter my mind when I sat down to write. And now, as if by magic, those analogies appeared.

And through the privilege of the practice, I feel I’ve deepened my relationship with this form of expression.

Which means the delightful byproduct of shifting my mind to privilege in the work has yielded a deeper relationship with you, the reader.

How dope!

So, let’s circle back around.

I’m all for discipline. Very little in life gets achieved without it.

But what’s your emotional tie to it?

Speaking with this entrepreneur, we started to understand that when discipline becomes the master, it eventually locks itself up and stops explaining its reasoning.

You’ll walk into the gym, sit at your journal, or cross off another task on your list and start asking why?

And discipline on its own doesn’t seem to answer back.

So, maybe the third door isn’t about discipline at all.

I see it as devotion.

What can I discover when I approach the task?

What new wrinkle lies in the landscape?

What expectation can I let go of so I can properly see it?

These questions do have answers.

And they seem to illuminate much more easily when you remember it’s a privilege to approach the craft at all.

We can be disciplined at anything, but discipline alone won’t offer us meaning.

Therefore, let’s see discipline’s most useful expression arising when it’s paired with devotion.

And devotion is an act of discovery, not capture.

So, let’s not ask why the discipline doesn’t seem like enough.

It was never designed to be everything.

Let’s ask: Where am I disciplined without devotion to discovery?

Then, without guilt, remove what you’re disciplined in but not devoted to.

And become an explorer with what’s left.

Til next time,

C

P.S. The same mindset lives here.