I am currently quite full with reading requests right now, but if you have an authenticated birth time and wish to be waitlisted, contact me HERE.
Welcome to 2023, everyone.
We’re set to see massive, global change this year. Of course, a lot of that will ripple down to the micro.
Relationships are set to be a major focus. And even if you’re flying solo, change will come to your relationship with money, art and values.
We enter the year on unstable footing. If you take this at face value, it can prepare you for a year in which staying stable in old senses really isn’t advised.
We’ll have to find new forms of stability, and that’s what I’d like to discuss with you today as we review the early January zeitgeist.
Some of my recommendations will be familiar to longtime readers. A new form of stability might take the shape of inner beauty. And by that I mean a relaxed awareness of your capacity to create.
This isn’t a perfectionist ramrod that you try to force “results” with. In fact, the urge to blister the earth with your “resolutions” is precisely how we should kick off this talk.
Resolutions are fine, but they can often be a bit weird. You have a blank slate, but it’s easy to tell yourself that you’re starting from scratch and square one and ground zero.
Fall 2022 has been tense enough in making us feel stymied, stuck, stagnant, behind schedule. As we head into this changeful new year, it’s imperative we recognize how far we’ve come.
I can sympathize with the pressure many of you feel. We’re wrapping up a 15-year cycle about mastery, and as we reach our summit, we want a proper sendoff.
We’ll get that. Promise. But not until March. I think we all feel a bit like this free climber who is literally holding on for dear life as a slush river pours on him near the peak.
The climber survived, but he wrote that years of experience had prepared him for dealing with a freak occurrence.
That’s how I’d describe this current window of “instability.” Detours, surprising obstacles or impasses.
It’s not that we’re down without any tools. The guy still had his ice ax—and importantly, his knowledge of how to use it.
Would it have been better if he never encountered the impasse? I think we might be asking ourselves that very question!
“Wouldn’t it be better if I wasn’t blocked by this obstacle near my summit? Wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t have to wait on this person to decide if they like me? Wouldn’t it be better if that job offer or contract was no longer waiting in limbo?”
This is important, because it’s in these thought experiments that we rob ourselves of the capacity to choose.
It’s time to talk about free will and choices. Let’s dive in.
Last Night, Tomorrow
There’s a fun film from 2013 called “About Time.” I think it can help us process our feeling of being swamped by our past while urgently trying to head into the future—a rewarding future we had planned for, no less.
This will also help us see the importance of the human capacity for choice.
Tim lives by the sea with his father and sister Kit Kat. One summer, Kit Kat’s friend Charlotte comes to stay for the season.
Tim is quickly smitten by Charlotte. But there’s more to this story. As a rite of passage, Tim’s father tells him that his family has the power to time travel. All it takes is walking into a closet or cupboard, then imagining the moment you want to be transported back to.
Here’s Tim confessing his attraction to Charlotte on the last night of her summer stay:
As we see in the clip, Charlotte rejects Tim—she says his strategy of pushing everything towards a heroic summit moment was never going to work.
It’s too much pressure. Instead, she says he should’ve tried sneaking to her room sometime earlier in her stay.
Tim leaves, dismayed at how he just faced a cold slush river at the peak of his mountain. What’s left to aim for now? Another season at home by the sea, watching time pass?
He bids Charlotte goodnight and takes a breath, looking over to the closet outside her room. He travels back to midsummer, in the same exact location. Charlotte’s chilling on her bed again. Tim knocks.
He confesses his love again (for the first time to her, but the second time to his own soul). Charlotte listens with rapt attention. . .and then says, “Let’s see how the summer goes. Try me again on my last night.”
That’s when Tim REALLY feels like his hope in tomorrow is under strain. No matter how many timelines he hops, the sovereignty of free will is always in play.
He must learn from Charlotte that he, too, has the capacity for choice—and that there is more adventure to go.
Tim decides to go further back in time and enter law, instead of staying at home for this painful unrequited summer. This ends up leading him to cross paths with Charlotte yet again, but from a different vantage point.
This is a timeline in which they never met by the sea, but with him as an ambitious lawyer in London. She reacts to him very differently—with great attraction to his power and confidence. Now the tables have turned. What is his choice?
I won’t spoil the movie, but we are learning during this difficult time that we have the power of choice at our disposal—a choice to continue on this chaotic adventure, to tear up the script, to ride the chaos.
Perhaps many of you are even dealing with people from your past coming back for a second chance now, while you are a very different person. And it’s like fate knocking at your door, saying, “You tried to run away, but here’s your cold river of slush yet again!”
We had laid our eyes on a feast of skeleton keys that could unlock every obstacle.
But really we had starved ourselves of the power of choice.
Script Flip
Climbing a mountain is hard. No one in our culture is getting there overnight. I’m sure you can think of a few characters who tried to helicopter their way to the top and are experiencing a fall now—the river of slush stops for no one.
But that doesn’t mean achievement is impossible in our society.
In fact, if you’re reading this, it’s likely you are a very unique and talented individual.
You’ve learned to overcome self-limitations and rely on your trusty ice ax.
The world lays out its own logic, like the lay of a mountain. You have to respect it.
But your non-linear path up that mountain is a mixture of patient grit, choice and the capacity to retain knowledge over time.
It really doesn’t matter if you can snap your fingers to avoid the Slush River that’s on us this winter.
What matters is: “Are you choosing to show yourself that you have the capacity to wield your ice ax?”
That’s how you flip the script, rather than vote for a better Gulag.
Because if you’re not seeing this situation as an opportunity to express your mastery—yes, under adverse and imperfect conditions—then you’re robbing yourself of the chance to display the mastery you long for.
Yes, it’s not some Instagram-worthy dance on the summit.
It’s gross, unsexy, scary and even a little anti-climactic. The view sucks and your eyelashes are frozen shut.
Nothing says you have to look cool being a master.
Just like Tim, we’re learning that true mastery is ours now because we choose to complete our mission by making friends with chaos—not because we’re waiting on some picture-perfect sign that says, “Mission Completed.”
By the time we do get to our peak, we’ll already have had our peak experience. It’s purely ceremonial at that point.
The reward is already being bestowed on you right now, as you reach into the future and say, “Tomorrow’s bounty is awaiting me, because I started on my journey last night.”
I am currently quite full with reading requests right now, but if you have an authenticated birth time and wish to be waitlisted, contact me HERE.