The Soil Remembers: What are you waiting for to begin?

 

May 12, 2026 Regenerate Your World  Build the future you want to live in. I know these times aren't the easiest for all of us, but I am an optimist - I see the glass as refillable instead of half-full or half-empty. To brighten up your days, I publish the Regenerate Your World newsletter coming to your inbox on a bi-weekly basis. Let's Get Empowered!

The Soil Remembers: What are you waiting for to begin? While hiking in Snaefellsjokull National Park, I came across this flower. I had to take a picture as I was so impress with its ability to grow in such harsh conditions. Dear Empowered Reader, In the last issue, we sat with seeds. We talked about the patience of geology, the way arches and canyons form over thousands of years. We talked about springtime in the desert. The strengths of the desert start with the seed. Here is where I want to go deeper with you today: seeds don't wait for perfect conditions. They wait for enough conditions. And there is a big difference between those two things. A wildflower seed in the Utah Desert can remain dormant for a decade, not because conditions are wrong, but because conditions are almost right, and the seed is calibrated to know the difference. Then one winter, the rain comes in a particular pattern, the temperature drops to a particular depth, and overnight: bloom. The desert erupts in color that feels miraculous precisely because it was always possible. I think about this a lot when I hear people say or when I say, "I'll start when things settle down," or "I'll begin once I have more clarity," or "I'm just not ready yet." Because I want to ask: ready by whose measure? And more importantly, what is the cost of waiting? Psychologists have a name for the paralysis that comes from waiting for the perfect moment: decision paralysis, or more specifically, the phenomenon researchers Barry Schwartz and others have called "maximizing”,  the tendency to seek the single best option rather than a good-enough one. Maximizers, studies show, experience significantly more regret, anxiety, and inaction than "satisficers",  those who act when conditions are good enough. Research on readiness shows that our brains are wired to overestimate the risk of beginning and underestimate the cost of delay. Waiting feels safe. But cognitive science reveals it as its own form of loss, one made of accumulated unlived moments. There is also a well-documented psychological pattern called future self-discounting: we trust the future version of ourselves to begin things we will not begin today. "Future me will have more time, more energy, more courage," Neuroscience tells us, however, that we actually experience our future selves as strangers, which may be why we so easily assign them the hard work. The gap between intention and action is one of the most researched phenomena in behavioral science. And what closes it consistently is not better conditions. It is a single, concrete, small first step taken in the present moment, what researchers call an "implementation intention." Not "I will start my creative project when I have a free weekend," but "I will write for ten minutes tomorrow morning before I open my phone." The conditions were always going to be imperfect. That has always been the deal. What changes when we accept that everything is. Photo of Maya Angelou Quote What does this look like in the real world?   Julia Child was 36 years old, restless and a little lost, when she sat down to a meal of sole meunière at a small restaurant in Rouen, France. She had tried government jobs, secretarial work, and even a stint in advertising. Nothing had stuck.  She had no culinary training, no plan, and by her own admission, no particular talent in the kitchen. But something about that butter, that lemon, that simple fish cracked something open in her. She enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in 1949 at age 37, describing herself before that moment as "a terrible cook." She didn't wait until she felt ready. She didn't wait until the timing was right or the conditions were perfect. She simply took the next available step toward the thing that had moved her. She wasn't an overnight success, she was terrible at first and failed her first exam. She spent the better part of the next decade, moving between countries, testing and retesting recipes, writing the book that would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published when she was 49. At 51, she introduced America to the television cooking show with The French Chef.  The career that followed lasted more than four decades and changed the way an entire country thought about food, about pleasure, about what was possible in an ordinary kitchen. What's striking about Julia Child's story isn't the fame. It's the timeline. She didn't discover her life's work until she was nearly 40, and she didn't step in front of a television camera until her 50s.  She didn't wait for confidence to arrive before she began. She didn't wait for a free weekend, or for her children to be grown, or for some internal signal that the moment had finally come. She tasted something that mattered, and she moved toward it imperfectly, incrementally, and without guarantees.  The desert bloomed because she stopped waiting for better conditions and started working with the ones she had.  Learn more at, https://medium.com/@thebubblejoy/that-adorable-late-bloomer-julia-child-5be87a28162c  Read this slowly. More than once….. Affirmation "I do not need perfect conditions to begin. I need only this moment, this breath, and the willingness to take one honest step. The ground beneath me is already enough. I am already enough. I begin now, with what I have, from where I am." Take a moment now to ask yourself, what could you start today, with what you have? This is not a prompt for the grand gesture. The grand gesture is overrated; it requires grand conditions, and we've already established those aren't coming. This is a practice for the quiet, irreversible act of beginning. Name the thing you've been waiting to start. Write it down. Don't explain or justify it, just name it. The creative project. The difficult conversation. The business idea. The walk you've been meaning to take. The apology. The application. Identify the "condition" you've been waiting for. More time? More money? More clarity? More courage? Write it down beside the thing. Look at it honestly.  Ask: has this condition ever fully arrived for anything important in my life? Or did I simply begin anyway? Find the smallest possible first action. Not a plan. Not a strategy. One physical, concrete action you could take in the next 24 hours. Send one email. Write one sentence. Make one call. Walk one block. Name it with the word "I will" followed by a specific time: "I will open the document at 7am tomorrow." Do it before you feel ready. This is the whole practice. You will not feel ready. Do it anyway. The feeling of readiness almost always follows action, it almost never precedes it. You build the courage by walking through the gate, not by standing at it. Notice what changes. After the first step, notice the shift. It may be subtle, a small loosening, a breath released, a feeling that was frozen becoming liquid again. That is the glacier moving. That is geological time meeting human time. That is you, beginning.  A moment of reflection after a hike in Arches National Park. Reflection Questions For your journal, your walk, your quiet morning 1 What is the story you have been telling yourself about why now is not the right time and what would it mean about you, your life, or your identity if you began anyway? 2 Think of a time you began something before you felt ready. What did you discover about yourself on the other side of that beginning? What is that memory trying to tell you now? 3 If the version of you who has already begun, who has already taken the first step and is six months into the thing, could send you one sentence, what would it say? The desert does not apologize for blooming in imperfect conditions. It simply blooms. You are made of the same dust and matter. You have been becoming, for a long time. The ground beneath you is enough. You are enough. It is Time to Begin. Take care, dear reader, Julie The Utah desert in bloom. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Click here to get your own subscription. The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knew What you had to do, and began, Though the voices around you Kept shouting Their bad advice‚ Though the whole house Began to tremble And you felt the old tug At your ankles. “Mend my life!” Each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, Though the wind pried With its stiff fingers At the very foundations‚ Though their melancholy Was terrible. It was already late Enough, and a wild night, And the road full of fallen Branches and stones. But little by little, As you left their voices behind, to read the rest go to https://static.oprah.com/images/201104/omag/the-journey.pdf

In the Media Where can you find EMPOWER Possible? In addition to posting on my own social media, I collaborate with other entrepreneurs.  Check out my conversation with BYOK on Exploring Your “Why” Tune in to hear about audacious steps towards living the life conducive to achieving joyful success, the importance of learning your why, and more. Click here! Interested in catching up on our previous podcast episodes? I invite you to explore our library of past recordings, where we delve into a diverse range of topics related to happiness and well-being. https://empowerpossible.com/podcasts/&nbsp Upcoming Events Mountain 10 Workshops What is Mountain 10?                                                                                                                                                         During this three-hour workshop, we will focus on accessing your inner wisdom to bring about the changes you deeply desire in your life. We will use the Mountain 10 process, a proven, new technology for deep reflection on human change. It is based on the conviction that every person has the most important answers about direction, purpose, and calling within them. This directed reflection process leads you through four terrains of exploration, stopping at points on the journey to consider key questions about awareness, letting go, vision, and realization. The terrains of your journey will take you into deeper observation of your feelings, thoughts, and images. You will explore what you need to let go of as you truly seek what you really want. We will open a space for a new vision and consider the practical steps to actualize that vision. We will deepen our insights in small circles of trust. Journaling and guided reflection will be used throughout the journey. Click HERE to sign up to be on the waitlist for the next workshop. I will reach out once a workshop is scheduled that meets your availability. Please reach out if you have any questions, info@empowerpossible.com

Connect with me on social media! Copyright © EMPOWER Possible  Northfield, United States EMPOWER Possible is dedicated to empowering individuals, organizations, and communities to organize and act together to regenerate our world through Self, Social, and Systems transformation.  info@empowerpossible.com \ Website \ Mission You are receiving this email because you expressed an interest in my work—thank you! You can change your email preferences or unsubscribe at any time.  Disclaimer: This newsletter contains content that has been modified and inspired by ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI. While we use ChatGPT to enhance our content, it should not be considered professional advice. For specific concerns or decisions, please consult with a qualified professional or trusted source. The newsletter authors are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided by or inspired by ChatGPT.

Desert Bloom: On surprise, resilience, and the life hiding inside change

 

April 27, 2026 Regenerate Your World  Build the future you want to live in. I know these times aren't the easiest for all of us, but I am an optimist - I see the glass as refillable instead of half-full or half-empty. To brighten up your days, I publish the Regenerate Your World newsletter coming to your inbox on a bi-weekly basis. Let's Get Empowered!

Desert Bloom: On surprise, resilience, and the life hiding inside change A surprising find along a hike in Canyonlands National Park. A desert in bloom.  Dear Empowered Reader, I wasn't expecting to be moved by a desert. My husband and I visited Arches and Canyonlands National Parks earlier this spring. I have visited the Parks before in summer and have seen photos of the parks, of course. But on each hike, I kept thinking: I did not expect this much life here. That surprise turned into a question I've been sitting with. And I think it has something to say about where you and I are right now, in this season of change and renewal. What the desert actually taught me was a lesson in change.  I expected a desert and red rock landscape. The first lesson I got was a lesson in geology, that the rocks are still moving. Here's what I didn't know before I went: the arches don't just sit there. They're forming right now. And they're falling. The same forces that build them, water seeping into cracks, salt shifting far below the surface, freeze-thaw cycles expanding and contracting rock over thousands of years are also, slowly, bringing them down. For example, the Wall Arch collapsed in 2008. The park has lost several arches in recorded history alone. And yet, the desert around the collapse was not diminished. It was just different. The rubble became part of the story. The opening in the rock became space for something else to grow. The arches exist because of pressure, not in spite of it. The same force that threatens to break the rock is the one shaping something worth seeing. The thing that really stayed with me was the salt. Deep below Arches and Canyonlands, there's an ancient salt layer, Paradox Formation, geologists call it,  that's been shifting for 300 million years. That underground movement is what buckled the Colorado Plateau upward, creating the conditions for all those towers and fins and arches. The drama you see on the surface starts with something you can't see at all. I stood there thinking: that's not so different from us. A view of Double Arch in Arches National Park. The second lesson was that the desert blooms. I didn't expect to see as many wildflowers as I did. Spring in the desert is brief and it doesn't announce itself. You have to be there for it. Desert bloom happens because of a combination of moisture, temperature, and timing that doesn't come together every year. Some seeds wait in the soil for years before the conditions are right. They don't force it. They read the season and then they go. There's something about that I find genuinely steadying. The capacity to bloom was always there. The flower wasn't failing during the dry years, it was waiting for alignment. Connecting it to our own lives. We're in spring (in the Northern Hemisphere). For many of us, that means transition, in our work, our relationships, our sense of what comes next. Spring is not a gentle season, actually. It's turbulent. Temperatures swing. Ice and warmth compete. Things that looked dormant start moving in ways that feel uncertain. The desert showed me that transformation has its own timeline. The arches didn't form quickly. The salt underneath was moving for millions of years before the landscape responded. And when an arch falls, it doesn't mean the desert has failed, it means the geology is still working. What would it mean to hold your own transitions that way? Not as evidence that something is broken, but as the process of something taking shape? Research on resilience backs this up. A 2022 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that people who described their difficult experiences in geological or natural-process terms , slow, layered, inevitable reported greater self-compassion and lower anxiety than those who framed change as crisis. Our metaphors matter. They shape how we move through things. Reflection questions for April Where in your life are you in a "forming" phase, pressure applied, shape not yet visible? Is there something you've been waiting for conditions to be right to begin? What would "right" actually need to look like? What's one thing that looked like loss or collapse in your recent past that created space for something new? What's your "underground salt layer", the deep, unseen thing that's been quietly shaping your surface? A sight I wasn't expecting to see, Cottonwood trees in bloom. This month's practice is simple: go look for life where you don't expect it. That might be literally a walk where you notice what's growing in the cracks of pavement, or what's blooming early. Or it might be figurative, looking at a hard conversation, a slow project, or an uncertain relationship and asking: what might be forming here that I can't fully see yet? Keep a note in your phone or a small journal. Just a sentence a day.  What surprised you? Where did you find aliveness when you weren't looking for it? Build it up over the month. You may find that you've been standing in the middle of a desert bloom and didn't know it yet. An Affirmation: "I trust the layers I cannot see. I am part of a process longer than any single season. I bloom when conditions align, and I hold my ground in the dry years." One of the many inspiring viewpoints during our trip. The best moments of the whole trip were standing at the various overlooks and viewpoints of the Park. The vastness and beauty are hard to describe. My husband and I didn't say much as we hiked from point to point because there wasn't much to say; we just had to experience it. Sometimes what we most need isn't more information or a better plan. Sometimes we need to stand in front of something ancient and remember that we are part of a very long, slow, still-unfolding story. I hope April brings you some of that. And if you're in a dry season, I hope you can trust that the bloom is already inside you, waiting for its moment. A huge thank you to my sister, Joan Zaruba, for gifting this issue's poem. Her words capture something so true about the journey that the summit is earned step by step, in good company, and the view at the top makes every hard stretch worth it. It's a perfect reflection of what Regenerate Your World is all about. I'm so grateful to have her alongside me, on the trail and in life.  Take care, dear reader, Julie Zaruba Fountaine Founder, Empower Possible Questions, reflections, or moments of your own desert bloom? Write to me: info@empowerpossible.com Empower Possible · Newsletter No. 106 · April 27, 2026 Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Click here to get your own subscription. Not So Far Not So Far by Joan Zaruba the summit looked so far away we started walking anyway sometimes we spoke laughing and teasing sometimes we fell silent looking and listening sometimes we needed a brief rest sip of cool water granola snack pulled from a pack then back to the hike walking and walking as the trail ascended navigating rocks and sand one step and then another until we looked up and realized we made it to the summit where we started looked so far away from where we now stood thrilled with ourselves and the view happy to have made it there, together the rock never looked so red the sky, so blue as it did from that desert summit view

In the Media Where can you find EMPOWER Possible? In addition to posting on my own social media, I collaborate with other entrepreneurs.  Thank you to "Stories That Inspire" Our conversation on empowerment, reframing, and engaging in our own well being has the potential to harmonize our lives in ways that we did not anticipate. The true test for some, is when to say “No”. NO is a complete sentence and needs no further explanation; Take a listen here: https://www.podpage.com/stories-that-inspire-us/stories-that-inspire-us-with-julie-zaruba-fountaine-050123/ Interested in catching up on our previous podcast episodes? I invite you to explore our library of past recordings, where we delve into a diverse range of topics related to happiness and well-being. https://empowerpossible.com/podcasts/&nbsp Upcoming Events Mountain 10 Workshops What is Mountain 10?                                                                                                                                                         During this three-hour workshop, we will focus on accessing your inner wisdom to bring about the changes you deeply desire in your life. We will use the Mountain 10 process, a proven, new technology for deep reflection on human change. It is based on the conviction that every person has the most important answers about direction, purpose, and calling within them. This directed reflection process leads you through four terrains of exploration, stopping at points on the journey to consider key questions about awareness, letting go, vision, and realization. The terrains of your journey will take you into deeper observation of your feelings, thoughts, and images. You will explore what you need to let go of as you truly seek what you really want. We will open a space for a new vision and consider the practical steps to actualize that vision. We will deepen our insights in small circles of trust. Journaling and guided reflection will be used throughout the journey. Click HERE to sign up to be on the waitlist for the next workshop. I will reach out once a workshop is scheduled that meets your availability. Please reach out if you have any questions, info@empowerpossible.com

Connect with me on social media! Copyright © EMPOWER Possible  Northfield, United States EMPOWER Possible is dedicated to empowering individuals, organizations, and communities to organize and act together to regenerate our world through Self, Social, and Systems transformation.  info@empowerpossible.com \ Website \ Mission You are receiving this email because you expressed an interest in my work—thank you! You can change your email preferences or unsubscribe at any time.  Disclaimer: This newsletter contains content that has been modified and inspired by ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI. While we use ChatGPT to enhance our content, it should not be considered professional advice. For specific concerns or decisions, please consult with a qualified professional or trusted source. The newsletter authors are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided by or inspired by ChatGPT.