🎨 You can’t paint your self-portrait with someone else’s hand

​Read the essay on the web ↗​

Have you ever regretted a decision that technically was the right one? You tell yourself it was the natural next step, it’s what was expected of you, if it wasn’t the right choice people wouldn’t congratulate you. Yet, after the initial excitement wears off and the chaos of change settles in, you feel a growing void.

Your whole life you’ve been a striver. At some point you learned how to get good grades, then how to follow instructions and execute to the tiniest detail. And of course, good things happened to you, but at some point the accomplishments stopped moving the needle for you.

The moment you stop looking outward and start looking inward, something will shift. You’ll start a metamorphosis that will last years and it will be worth the effort. Nothing dramatic, rather small intentional changes that stack up to something extraordinary.

In 2023, I crafted my LifeTheme. Mike Schmitz defines it as a one-sentence personal mission statement that encapsulates your life’s purpose. Mine is:

Having my my LifeTheme front and center created a domino effect that first threw me into the dark depths. What was familiar and logical suddenly felt wrong. But I slowly started to see the light as I climbed out of those dark depths and found a middle ground.

While listening to The One You Feed podcast I heard a phrase that deeply resonated with me:

In this part of the episode, Eric Zimmer and Scott Stabile talk about the contrast between conditioned responses and authentic responses.

Thinking about my own experience (maybe this is also true for you), I realized the first part of my life was guided by conditioned responses. This is not inherently bad. If you grew up in a loving environment, these responses will help you achieve what society considers a good and successful life.

The second part of my life (as you might have guessed) was about prioritizing my authentic responses. This meant making choices that felt true to me, guided by my values and my LifeTheme. It’s that “hell yeah or no” feeling.

Part of making the shift from conditioned to authentic responses is accepting that judgment will always come.

Judgement can come from a well-intended and loving place. For instance, right after I went through a layoff in 2025 my family was surprised and worried when they learned I decided to not start looking for a new job right away. Every time we talked they’d ask about my projects hoping one of them would be job hunting.

Flowing with your authentic responses is not easy because it means deliberately letting some expectations drop.

In the book Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff encourages choosing progress over perfection by deciding on the parts of your life and work where you will drop the ball to achieve excellence in other areas.

Once you feel the call to shift how you have been living your life and define what you truly want, you need to trust things will work out while also reflecting and accordingly adjusting your plan.

In my personal experience, reflection is usually the missing piece of the puzzle. Once I started reflecting on my life every quarter, I gained a better understanding of my journey and how to move forward. It prepared me for the unexpected, like the layoff I mentioned earlier.

Remember, it’s never too late to pursue what you truly want from life. Knowing what you want gives you the clarity to make hard decisions that once felt impossible.

🎯 The 1% Practice of the Week

Think about the last decision you made. Was it a conditioned response or an authentic one? Are you driven by internal or external factors?