Issue 001
Something Feels Off
Sometimes nothing is actually wrong.
You have work. Maybe even good work. The bills are getting paid. Your relationship is okay. The kids are doing well. You're healthy enough.
From the outside, life looks pretty good.
But something feels off.
I've learned that, at least for me, it usually doesn't announce itself in some dramatic way.
It's the little shit.
Traffic pisses me off more than it should.
A phone call feels like an interruption.
Something goes wrong at work and I carry it around for the next three hours.
My son comes into the room wanting to show me something. On another day I'd laugh, get down on the floor and play along with him. But today I'm irritated because he's bothering me.
Everything starts to feel heavier.
And maybe the biggest warning sign is that my mind starts looking for what's wrong.
The traffic. The person in front of me. Work. The phone. Something somebody said. The weather.
There's always something.
I've started to recognize that feeling as a signal.
It doesn't necessarily mean I need to quit my job, move somewhere else, end a relationship or blow up my life.
Sometimes I'm simply out of alignment.
The difficult part is that when you're in it, it can be surprisingly hard to see.
Fighting the ocean
The water has taught me a lot about this.
When you're paddling out into surf, you can fight every wave.
Put your head down. Paddle harder. Get frustrated. Get knocked backward. Burn a bunch of energy. Paddle harder again.
Eventually it can start feeling like the ocean is working against you.
Of course, the ocean doesn't give a shit about your plans.
It's just being the ocean.
When I'm relaxed, the experience is completely different.
I watch the sets.
Maybe I have enough time to paddle over this one before it breaks.
Maybe I sit up and let another roll between me and the board.
Maybe I turtle roll.
Maybe there's a channel I hadn't noticed.
And sometimes you just get absolutely fucking worked.
That's part of it too.
The point isn't avoiding the waves. It's responding to the wave that's actually in front of you instead of fighting the ocean because it isn't behaving the way you wanted it to.
There's a difference between effort and force.
I think I've spent a large part of my life learning that difference.
Play this point
I coached competitive tennis for a lot of years.
One thing I constantly told my players was:
Just play this point.
You can't replay the point you just blew.
There's no value in worrying about what might happen three games from now.
And you certainly can't control the person standing on the other side of the net.
So what can you control?
Your effort.
Your preparation.
Your attention.
How you respond to what's happening right now.
Then the point ends.
Let it go.
Play the next one.
I coached that lesson for years.
I'm still learning how to live it.
Direction without demand
I don't think the answer is to stop striving.
That's certainly not how I'm wired.
I like building things. I like challenges. I like learning. I want financial freedom. I want to provide for my family. I want to be a good husband and father. I want to get better at the things I care about.
There's a lot of fulfillment in pursuing something meaningful.
But I'm starting to understand the difference between having direction and making demands of life.
Direction says:
This is where I'd like to go. This deserves my effort and attention.
Demand says:
This needs to happen exactly the way I've decided, on the timeline I've decided, or something is wrong.
That's when I start gripping.
Forcing.
Getting pissed off when reality doesn't cooperate with the version I've already written in my head.
And reality has this annoying habit of not giving a shit about my plans either.
So maybe the practice is pretty simple:
Have a direction.
Control your effort.
Protect your attention.
Stay with what's in front of you.
Let go of the outcome.
Not because the outcome doesn't matter.
Because you don't completely control it.
The best stories went sideways
Melissa and I have noticed something funny when we're sitting around telling stories with friends.
Almost none of our best stories are about the days when everything went according to plan.
They're about the crazy shit.
Trying to leave Tulum and dealing with customs people who wanted to take our motorcycle and our car.
Taking almost two weeks to make our way back through Mexico to Florida.
At one point I basically traded a car for a watch because getting the damn thing out had become such a pain in the ass that we finally said, fuck it.
None of this was particularly funny while it was happening.
Now it's hysterical.
Those are the stories we tell.
And I think that's because when the plan disappears, something else becomes possible.
You have to respond to what's actually happening.
You improvise.
You meet people you weren't supposed to meet.
You end up somewhere you weren't supposed to be.
You're surprised.
And sometimes what happens instead becomes far more memorable than whatever you'd planned.
Leave some room for magic
That's something I don't want to lose.
The ability to be surprised.
Because when I'm irritated, rushing, controlling everything and mentally cataloguing what's wrong, nothing surprises me.
There's no room for it.
I've already decided how the day is supposed to go.
But when I'm lighter and present, something changes.
My son says something ridiculous and instead of being annoyed, I laugh.
A wave shows up that I wasn't expecting.
I notice something underwater I've probably passed a hundred times.
A conversation goes somewhere completely unexpected.
A plan goes sideways and what happens instead turns out better.
Those aren't interruptions to life.
That's the life.
Maybe that's what concerns me most when I start feeling heavy.
I'm not just less happy.
I'm less available to life.
So busy trying to force the world into what I've decided it should be that I've closed myself off to being surprised by what it actually is.
Magic doesn't happen because you demand it.
You have to leave a little room for it.
The break before something breaks
I've watched people—including myself—wait until something major happens before reevaluating things.
A relationship ends.
A business fails.
Burnout.
A health scare.
Some kind of wipeout finally forces us to stop.
But maybe we don't always need the wipeout.
Maybe we can get better at noticing the quieter signals.
I'm angry more often.
I'm complaining.
I'm distracted when I'm with people I love.
Everything irritates me.
I'm forcing things.
I'm gripping an outcome too tightly.
My attention is going somewhere I don't really want to spend my life.
Something feels off.
That's the Inner Break I'm interested in.
The break before something breaks.
Not necessarily so you can change everything.
Just so you can create enough space to notice.
And maybe make a small course correction.
Try this
Sometime this week, get away from your normal noise for an hour.
Walk. Paddle. Sit by the water. Go into the woods. Ride your bike. Find a bench.
Whatever works for you.
Leave the phone behind if you can.
And don't spend the hour trying to fix your life.
Just notice.
What feels heavy right now?
What am I fighting?
What outcome am I gripping too tightly?
When do I feel light?
Where is my attention actually going?
And maybe the one I like most:
When was the last time I let life surprise me?
You don't need to have all the answers.
I sure as hell don't.
I'm figuring this stuff out too.
— Rob