I like strength training because it keeps me honest.

 

It doesn’t care about my mood. It doesn’t negotiate with my fears. It doesn’t listen to the stories my thoughts tell when they’re trying to keep me small. It asks one simple question: can you do the work in front of you, yes or no?

 

Most days, the answer surprises me.

 

I am almost always stronger than I think I am. More capable. More resilient. Less fragile than the version of myself my inner monologue insists on describing.

 

In fact, the only thing I’ve had a perfect failure rate at in my life is predicting my true limits. I’ve observed that when I sit alone with my thoughts for too long, my sense of what’s possible contracts. My ambitions get revised downward. My imagination starts making “responsible” edits. Safer goals. Fewer risks. Smaller dreams dressed up as maturity.

 

There’s a reason that voice sounds so convincing.

 

The brain doesn’t respond to reality, it responds to perceived threat. Whatever you focus on gains intensity. Once a belief takes hold, your mind will work overtime to justify it, even when it’s wrong. For example, did you know the brain gives more weight to negative interpretations than neutral or positive ones when under stress or emotional threat?

 

But I keep trying. I stay hopeful.

 

I don’t know if that makes me naïve. Or stubborn. Or dangerously optimistic. At this point, I don’t really care.

 

I’ve had nights that should have killed off this unrelenting optimism entirely.

 

Long nights. Nights without a lesson neatly attached at the end.

 

Nights when giving up would have been understandable. Rational, even.

 

Nights when I rocked myself to sleep because there was no one else there to do it.

 

Nights when I realize the only proof that I was loved is a post-it note I tucked into a steakhouse matchbox, because it’s all I have left.

 

In those moments, hope is my way of surviving.

 

And yes, sometimes that hope makes me feel foolish.

 

I’m also aware this makes me look like someone who doesn’t read the room and know when call it quits. Like I missed the memo that I was supposed to bow out gracefully and call it wisdom. Instead, I keep getting back up after the kind of hit most people would use as a sign to stop.

 

I’ve never been good at walking away from something that still feels alive.

 

But that same hope is also the reason I’m still here.

 

And I have this hope for other people, too. Not just myself.

 

All I want is for people to be happy. I want people to feel seen without having to perform. Heard without having to shout. Understood without having to shrink or explain themselves. That desire isn’t abstract. It’s why I do the work I do with my clients. It’s why I write this newsletter. It’s why I stay curious about people even when sometimes I really don't want to.

 

I don’t know where this optimism comes from. I don’t know why, after disappointment and heartbreak and watching truth get trampled more than once, I still believe honesty matters and effort counts and connection is worth the risk.

 

I know fairy tales aren’t real life. I’ve lived enough life to stop confusing hope with guarantees.

 

But I’ve also lived long enough to notice a pattern. Again and again, the thing I get wrong isn’t reality. It’s what I decide is “impossible.”

 

More often than not, the things I label impossible aren’t actually hard at all. They only look that way from the doorway. 

 

Once I commit fully, stop hedging, and give something an honest try, the friction drops. What felt insurmountable turns out to be simple, even obvious. Not effortless, but doable. The difference isn’t talent or luck, it’s being all in.

 

That means staying curious long enough to let myself be surprised.

 

Leaving room for the possibility that I might be wrong in the best possible way.

 

When things go my way, it makes me rethink the moments in my past where I resisted doing something. Did I actually believe it was too hard? Or did I need it to be hard, so I’d have a clean, “responsible” reason to say no to something that I want really badly, but there’s a chance it may end in disappointment?

 

Sometimes what moves me is the humbling realization that the cost of not trying outweighs the fear. 

 

Moments when staying put would harden into regret. So I jump. And someone catches me.

 

Moments when silence felt safer, but unbearable. When not saying “the thing” would have haunted me longer than rejection ever could. So I spoke. And someone heard me. The real me.

 

This way of moving through the world is not efficient. 

 

It does not protect against disappointment. In fact, it almost guarantees it. At least some of the time.

 

But it’s also the only way I’ve found where real growth happens. Where true love actually exists. Where connection isn’t theoretical or performative, but lived.

 

Every beautiful thing I cherish in my life today, and every beautiful thing I still daydream about for the road ahead, lives on the other side of risk, not safety. Staying open and moving toward what scares me is the only path I know that leads there.

 

So, I’ll happily be called naïve. Or foolish. Or irresponsible with my heart.

 

Safety is an illusion anyway. I’d rather risk being wrong than stop trying. Plus, I’m not even sure I know how to stop believing in what could be.

 

I just wish I didn’t have to keep believing alone.