The Roots Hold

 

May 25, 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 Roots Hold Dear Empowered Reader, "Tending is not the same as starting. It is quieter, less glamorous, and more necessary." Last week, I drove about 45 minutes north to the Metro area of Minnesota with an empty trunk and came home with it full of hostas. My parents had divided their beds, something gardeners do every few years when a plant has gotten large enough to share itself, and they filled two buckets with layers of hostas. Some were small. Some were the size of a dinner plate. All of them looked, honestly, like they might not survive the afternoon, especially with me being a novice gardener. The next day, I planted them. I dug each hole wider than it needed to be, loosened the soil underneath so the roots could spread without resistance, watered deeply, and covered them with mulch to hold the moisture through the week. Then, I walked inside and left them alone, even though I wanted to keep tinkering and adjusting. But I didn't. There was no hovering. No checking. No second-guessing the placement. This is the part of gardening and of life that nobody puts on the inspirational poster. We celebrate the planting. We celebrate the bloom. But the long, quiet, unglamorous middle weeks of tending, of showing up when nothing seems to be happening, that is where everything is actually decided. In the last issue, we talked about starting. About the cost of waiting for perfect conditions. About the wildflower seed that blooms not when everything is right, but when enough is right. And I meant every word of it. But here is what I didn't say, what I want to sit with today: starting is just part of the work. The larger question, the one that behavioral scientists and gardeners and anyone who has ever committed to something that mattered already knows, is this: How do you stay with something long enough for it to matter? Before and after photos of one of the hosta gardens. There is a well-documented pattern in habit research sometimes called the "six-week stall." When people begin something new, a creative practice, a fitness routine, a business, a relationship repair, the initial momentum is real. Intention is high. Novelty provides its own energy. And then, around week four to six, the novelty fades, life reasserts itself, and the effort starts to feel like effort. Habit researcher Wendy Wood, whose work is gathered in Good Habits, Bad Habits, has spent decades studying why people maintain or abandon new behaviors. Her central finding disrupts the conventional wisdom entirely: sticking with something is not primarily a matter of willpower or motivation. It is a matter of friction and context design. When the environment makes a behavior easy to repeat, when the tools are visible, the cue is reliable, the reward is immediate, the behavior persists even when motivation dips. When friction is high,  when you have to seek out the tools, rearrange your schedule, override competing cues, the behavior stalls, no matter how much you want it. The implication, Wood says, is significant: "Most people think they fail because of a character flaw. They actually fail because they haven't changed their context." What derails most beginnings is not weakness. It is the accumulation of small frictions: the journal that isn't visible, the practice that requires rearranging three other things first, the goal that lives only in your head and nowhere in your physical environment. I thought about this as I planted the hostas. I didn't put them in a corner of the yard, which I rarely visit. I put them in my front yard. I can see them from my home office. Not because I planned to fuss over them, but because I knew I needed to see them. The seeing would do the tending. The tending would feel natural. The naturalness would become a habit. This is Wendy Wood's insight translated into soil and footsteps. The top photo is from Pinterest and is my inspiration. The bottom photo is my starting point. The bucket contains the sprouts of little hosts that came from my parents' garden. Divided from plants that have been growing in our family for over two decades. There is another layer that research on sustained effort consistently surfaces, and it is one we do not talk about enough in the culture of individual achievement: we need to be seen in the doing. Not celebrated. Not evaluated. Seen. Accountability research, from Gail Matthews' studies on goal achievement to the broader literature on social commitment devices, shows that sharing our intentions with someone we respect increases follow-through significantly. But what's more interesting is why. It is not primarily the fear of disappointing them. It is the experience of having our effort witnessed that makes the effort feel real, worth continuing, part of a larger story someone else is holding with us. "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap." An old gardener's saying about hostas and about most things worth doing. After 5 hours of yard work. This is the "finished" product, time to keep tending and see what grows. I want to offer you a reframe, because I think the phrase "sticking with it" is doing us harm. It implies that the thing we've started wants to leave, that it is trying to escape, and our job is to hold on with sufficient grip. But that is not the experience of sustained practice. The experience, when we have designed our context well and found our witnesses, is less like gripping and more like returning. You return to the work the way you return to a conversation with someone you trust. Not because you are forcing yourself. Because something in you knows this is where your growth lives. Self-compassion research,  particularly Kristin Neff's work, shows that people who extend kindness to themselves when they stumble or miss days are significantly more likely to return to a practice than those who respond to lapses with self-criticism. Harshness does not produce consistency. It produces shame, and shame produces avoidance. I was told by a neighbor who noticed I was planting the hostas that the hosta that gets transplanted will wilt a little. It always does. That wilting is not failure; it is the plant redirecting its energy downward, investing in root structure, preparing for what comes next. If you panic and overwater, you drown it. If you trust the process and tend steadily, it recovers and, eventually, it thrives. You are allowed to wilt a little. The roots are working. AFFIRMATION "I do not need to feel momentum every day to be making progress. I tend with patience, with presence, and with trust that the roots are forming even when I cannot see them. I return, again and again, not because I must, but because I know this is where I grow." This is not a willpower practice. It is a design practice. Here is how to build the conditions that make returning natural: Reduce the friction. Look at the thing you've started. What does it require of you to show up? Now ask: what one change to your physical environment would make that easier? The journal on the nightstand, not the shelf. The running shoes by the door, not in the closet. The document open on your desktop, not buried in a folder. Friction is not a character flaw. It is a design problem, and it has a design solution. Name a witness. Who in your life could hold this with you, not as an evaluator, not as a cheerleader, but as someone who knows you are doing the thing? This does not need to be formal. It can be a weekly text to a friend: "I showed up today." It can be a community, a book club, or a coach. What matters is that someone else knows the work is happening. Being seen in the doing changes the doing. Practice the return, not the streak. Give up the streak. The streak mentality makes one missed day feel like total failure. Instead, practice the return. You will miss days. The practice is: how quickly and kindly can you come back? "I missed Tuesday. I'm here now." That sentence, spoken to yourself with warmth rather than judgment, is the whole discipline. Research consistently shows that self-compassionate return outperforms guilt-driven consistency over the long arc. Mark the slow growth. The hosta won't look different from one week to the next. Neither will most meaningful practices. Build in a rhythm of reflection, monthly, not daily, where you look back and ask: what is different now than it was 30 days ago? You will be surprised. Growth that is invisible at the daily scale becomes unmistakable at the monthly scale. Give yourself the longer lens. Let it be ordinary. The most important shift in sustained practice is releasing the expectation that every session should feel meaningful or productive. Some days you write one sentence. Some days, you plant one plant. Some days, you simply show up and sit with the thing without producing anything visible. That is still tending. And tending, done consistently over time, is what makes the third-year leap possible. REFLECTION QUESTIONS For your journal, your walk, your quiet morning Think of something you've started in the last six months. What does the friction look like right now, the small resistances that make it easier not to show up than to show up? What single change to your environment or routine could reduce that friction by even 20%? Who is witnessing your current work? Not judging it, not evaluating it, simply holding knowledge that you are doing it? If no one is, what would it feel like to let one trusted person in? Where in your life have you practiced the return, come back to something after stepping away, without letting the gap become a story about failure? What did that return teach you about the nature of commitment? The hostas are in the ground now. They look, still, like they might not survive. One of them is doing that classic post-transplant wilt, leaves soft and low, pretending to be defeated. I know better. I've been here before. I'm tending, not rescuing. There is a difference. I'll show you what they look like in September. Take care, dear Reader, Julie Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Click here to get your own subscription. May Time Poet:Cobb Sweet is the fragrance in the air, The cool and laughing breeze; The gardens now are wondrous fair With blossoms on the trees. The hills and valleys now are green read the rest at https://www.stresslesscountry.com/gardening/

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.

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.