Asking What You Actually Want
On answering your own question instead of everyone else's, moving too fast, and why sending gratitude to someone you resented is underrated.
Facing Fears
The question is simple. Really, really simple.
What do I want?
But most of us spend our lives answering a different question… what does everyone else want from me? Friends, partners, roommates, family, peers, business partners. Playing a role we never signed up for.
The fear isn’t asking the question. That part’s easy.
The fear is following through on the answer.
It’s something you can carry with you your entire life. Just ask yourself what you want… then actually do it.
The Habit
I got injured this week. Fell off my bike going too fast across the city, rushing between meetings and schedules.
Road rash on my palms, my legs, my knees.
It’s really easy to get caught up in trying to control time… optimize everything, waste nothing, always be right on time for the next thing. But sometimes that works against you.
The habit is moving so fast that you don’t give yourself enough time to transition.
From one part of the city to the other. From one moment to the next. Just… enough space to actually get there in one piece.
Pay It Forward
Send a message to someone you used to have a lot of resentment toward.
Not to reopen anything. Just to say… I’m grateful for what we went through together. For the little things that were good between us.
It’s the last thing they’d expect to hear from you. And that’s exactly what makes it land.
Finding peace and closure can literally just be a text message.
I’m not one to burn bridges. Cutting someone off completely and staying in that justification can boost your ego, but it’s not being grounded. We all make mistakes. We fuck up. Being real and showing some appreciation for that… honestly really overlooked.
From the Week
Everything had been going really, really well… and then I’m overconfident on the road, I make a mistake, and now I’m posted up in my room watching life go by.
Can’t stand for more than an hour. Limping. Road rash on everything.
The hardest part wasn’t the injury. It was that my Immersive Growth Day was three days away… my closing chapter event before I leave Da Nang. I had guests who had already invested. I had the whole thing mapped out.
And I could not host it in that condition.
So my head went straight to people pleasing mode… I shouldn’t cancel. Just postpone one week. I can handle it. I don’t want to let them down.
I was genuinely worried that if I texted people individually to ask if they could move the date, they’d just cancel.
But here’s the thing… I already overcame it by just asking. That’s the whole move. Just ask, and show that you care enough about the day to not drag yourself through it injured.
If I’m going to host something with full integrity, I can’t do that limping.
Asking and just letting go of trying to control how people would respond was the hardest part about it.
Sam Gute Rogers
Mental Fitness Specialist