WEEK 44: PEACE HAS A PULSE

The Little Way of Collapse: How contraction creates room for meaning.

Three pages. One peace.

When Permission Comes Too Late

If you were told you had cancer,

no one would question a drastic reset.

You’d have permission to simplify overnight.

But what if you granted that permission early,

when your hair began to thin,

your blood pressure crept,

your marriage cracked under fatigue?

Most people wait for collapse before they reorganize their lives.

The wiser ones notice the tremors and act before the earthquake.

That’s what this week is about:

building mercy into the system before life demands it.

This isn’t productivity theatre; it’s nervous-system literacy.

A humane plan is crisis prevention disguised as paper.

It lets you do twice as much with half the pressure,

because the body finally stops fighting the plan.

The Swing

I’ve been working these three pillars for close to eight years now,

and they still argue with me.

Before that, my life was one long to-do list,

half sparks, half smoke.

In rigid systems that scatter looked like range;

outside them it was just drift.

What began as curiosity became clutter,

and clutter became fatigue.

So, I started cutting back.

Stoic on the surface, Taoist underneath,

simple enough to keep breathing room.

It works. My body knows it.

The only part still fighting is the one that equates stillness with death.

That old engine keeps whispering stay busy, 

even when every wiser cell says be still.

And that’s where these three statements began,

not as goals, but as anchors for a life that finally fits in its own skin.

I am the leader of my family.

Leadership here is quieter than people think.

It isn’t speeches or strategy, it’s staying when the room goes cold.

It’s the long reach across the table after pride has already spoken.

Most days, love is just endurance with better manners.

Belonging isn’t a state; it’s a ritual.

You build it in the dark, one awkward repair at a time.

No one finds the perfect family, they cultivate one, crooked rows and all.

I am the athlete.

The body is the first field I ever tend.

Some mornings it’s soft ground, some mornings stone.

I work with what answers.

Tennis, flight, language, they’re all the same sermon:

stay in the friction until grace appears.

Fluency comes in the moment the body stops flinching.

Discipline isn’t drive, it’s listening until I can hear the hinge of my own breath.

I train until the noise quiets,

then I train to hear what’s beneath the quiet.

I am the owner of a business that affords me total time freedom.

I built it strong enough to cage me once.

Fifteen-year-old hunger grew teeth and called itself success.

Now I run it like a good pasture, grazed, rested, never stripped bare.

Vacations are non-negotiable.

Check-ins stay brief.

Exhaustion earns no applause here.

Boundaries keep fear from dressing up as devotion.

Freedom isn’t a finish line;

it’s a daily rotation of fences that hold just enough wild inside.

The Myth of More

Over-planning and over-performing masquerade as commitment but function as control.

Planning itself isn’t the problem, the state of your body while planning is.

If the plan tightens your chest, it’s fear;

if it lengthens your breath, it’s clarity.

A calendar full of goals isn’t a life unless those goals grow from what already matters.

Color-coded order can hide emotional disorder.

Devotion, Not Deprivation

A concise plan isn’t restraint, it’s devotion repeated over time.

Peace isn’t passive; it’s pressure mastered.

Regulation frees bandwidth: calm brains decide faster, cleaner.

You can do more with less strain when the body trusts the pace.

You don’t meditate to escape the game;

you meditate so you can stay in it.

Calm is rehearsal for chaos.

The real mastery is carrying that stillness back onto the field of play.

The Little Way of Collapse

How contraction creates room for meaning.

Some of the ancients, and a few modern doctors of the Church,

say the secret isn’t expansion but reduction.

To find your path, you must narrow it to what stands in your way.

The Tao calls this returning to the root.

Thérèse of Lisieux called it the Little Way, small acts, faithfully repeated, until even your ambition learns to kneel.

True peace isn’t broad. It’s precise.

In my own practice, that truth found its form.

I no longer run a company built on growth for its own sake.

Now I run a quiet, single-person not-for-profit, one that writes a weekly letter, teaches English, and mentors Brazilian youth learning to stay human in a world that rewards the opposite.

It’s humble work. It’s also holy work.

Every task is a reduction, a pruning toward essence.

It’s what happens when the nervous system and the soul finally agree: enough noise, enough chasing.

These days, even my coaching follows the same law.

I work by invitation only.

I never advertise.

People come when they’re ready to be who they already are, independently successful yet hungry for something real.

They don’t need a new identity; they need a home inside the one they have.

That’s the quiet economy of fulfillment.

It’s slow, sovereign, and shockingly efficient.

This is what the ancients meant by collapsing inward.

It’s not defeat, it’s concentration.

It’s where focus narrows until it touches truth.

How to Build a Humane Plan

Page 1:

Year Theme + Three Statements of Being

Begin with who you’re becoming(*examples above) and your theme (**example: ‘Deep Roots, Wide Reach’).

If a project doesn’t nourish those pillars and theme, park it. Refusal is a skill.

Page 2:

Quarterly Arcs

Twelve progressive sentences, one per season per pillar. Direction, not micromanagement.

Think compass headings, not GPS coordinates.

Page 3

Minimum Standards of Excellence

Name the floor(s) that keep you steady,

the smallest repeatable acts that keep the lights on in body, work, and home.

If done right they keep you in a little friction to seed some growth.

You always do your best, and that is variable day to day.

Then write your Peace Pact:

• When you’re off and unreachable.

  • Weekends, Holidays, Rest Days and Vacations

• Where does that work queue when you are off.

• Who, if anyone, carries the baton.

• How you’ll handle the itch to add goals once it’s signed.

  
  

Choose a seasonal boundary, Thanksgiving (27 Nov 2025) for many, to lock your plan.

After that, stop planning. Start living it.

(W36 ,  Close the Field. Name the Yield → protect what’s finished before starting again.)

If this is your first round,

a good coach can help until the rhythm becomes yours,

but the ownership must return to you.

The process is only as humane as you make it.

The world throws you enough suffering,

you pillars are your playground,

look for joyful friction in your life,

you deserve it.

It may take years of compassionate planning to deprogram ambition,

that refined form of fear, from hijacking your nervous system.

Don’t mistake simplicity for ease; this is graduate-level self-trust work.

The goal isn’t a prettier plan; it’s a calmer pilot.

The Farmer’s Table

A farmer at winter’s table sketches next season’s rotation on an envelope.

No apps. No consultants. No noise.

Just intuition, pencil, and patience.

Even simple plans need mid-season recalibration,

the first rain always edits the map.

The plan fits in a pocket yet governs a year of abundance.

Three Pages. One Peace.

Clarity over clutter.

Peace over performance. Pressure handled skillfully, not avoided.

This is the pulse of sovereign work.

What to Read While the Ink Dries

• Essentialism

  -Greg McKeown | The discipline of less but better.

  
  
  
  

• Grit -Angela Duckworth | Endurance for what truly matters.

  
  

Subtract to See

“To attain knowledge, add things every day.

To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.” - Lao Tzu

Freedom Is a Clearing

Freedom isn’t the absence of structure;

it’s precision under pressure,

the ability to choose your pace even when the world speeds up.

Your three-page plan isn’t a cage; it’s a clearing.

Distill your statements of being.

Write your three pages.

Sign your Peace Pact.

Then let the plan show you who you’ve been trying to meet all along.

If it takes four pages this year, fine.

The goal isn’t austerity; it’s honesty.

If you miss the Thanksgiving deadline, note why,

but don’t add pages after you finish.

Self-mastery isn’t in the adding;

it’s in the listening,

and in adjusting what you hear.

Map vs. Terrain

This map ends here. The terrain is yours.

If you’d like company while shaping your Peace Pact or refining your Minimum Standards of Excellence, that’s terrain work, I can walk beside you if you’re ready.

Next week, we enter Digital Winter ,  a deliberate fast for the mind.