EMPOWER Possible: it is time to thrive

Saturday, June 6, 2026

The Cup Runneth Over

June 6, 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 Cup Runneth Over

Three weeks in. They're just beginning to show. Everything that matters is still mostly underground.

Dear Empowered Reader,

The hostas are beginning to show.

Three weeks in the ground and the bed still looks, to my neighbors, like a patch of mulch and the beginnings of a garden. But if you know what this garden started from, tightly coiled hostas you can see the color of new things, pushing up through the soil with a kind of unhurried certainty that I find, honestly, a little exciting.

The garden and the planner. Both full. The question is whether full means flourishing.

I did not intervene. I did not overwater out of anxiety or poke at the soil to check the roots. I tended steadily and then I waited, and now here is the first evidence that the waiting was the right call.

And the yard, suddenly, feels like it is on the edge of something.

I have been sitting with that word this week, “full” because summer is almost here in Minnesota. Summer comes the way it always does, not gradually but all at once, and with it will come everything summer carries: the neighborhood gatherings and the grad parties, the long to-do lists that somehow feel more urgent in the light of longer days, the invitations, the obligations that feel like invitations, and the sense that the calendar, like the garden bed, has gotten very dense very fast.

I stood at my office window this past Friday looking out at those first tentative sprouts and then back at my planner, which was also full, and I asked myself a question I want to ask you today:

“Is this abundance? Or is this too much?”

Because those are not the same thing. And learning to tell the difference may be the most important skill summer asks of us.

---

There is a concept in cognitive psychology called “decision fatigue”, the well-documented finding that the quality of our decisions deteriorates the more choices we make in a given period, regardless of how significant those choices are.

Roy Baumeister's foundational research on ego depletion, and the extensive subsequent work it sparked, showed something counterintuitive: the mental resources we use to decide, to self-regulate, to say yes or no, is not infinite. It depletes across a day the way a muscle tires across a workout. And when it is depleted, we do not make worse big decisions while our small decisions remain sharp. We make worse decisions *across the board.* We default. We acquiesce. We say yes when we mean maybe, and maybe when we mean no.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz, in his research on the paradox of choice, found a complementary pattern: the more options we hold open, the less satisfied we tend to be with the one we eventually choose. The fullness itself becomes the problem. Not because we have too little capacity, but because nothing in our modern environment is designed to tell us when we have enough.

Summer, culturally, is the season that tells us to add. Add activities. Add gatherings. Add experiences. Squeeze the juice from every long day. And for some people, some summers, that is exactly right.

But for many of us, the adding has already happened before we chose it. The calendar fills from the outside in. And we arrive at June somehow more tired than we were in April, unable to name exactly what happened.

Divided from plants that have been growing in our family for over two decades. You can't tell from the outside when something is holding more than its center can sustain.

I want to offer you a distinction I have found useful, one I first started sharing in my work with coaching clients who could not understand why they felt so drained when their lives, by any external measure, looked so full and good.

There is a kind of fullness that energizes. You know it because after the dinner party, the hike, the deep conversation, the afternoon of creative work, you feel more like yourself, not less. The activity added something to you. You drew on your resources, yes, but you also replenished them. This is what I call “richness”. It is the fullness of a garden just coming into season, the first green things pushing up, unhurried, doing exactly what they were built to do.

And then there is a kind of fullness that depletes, that wears the costume of productivity and engagement but leaves you exhausted by Friday. The meeting that could have been an email. The obligation that carries a relationship tax you didn't consciously agree to. The project you said yes to because the window was open and you had not yet learned to check the weather. This is overwhelm masking as productivity. And it is very good at its disguise.

The research of organizational psychologist Christina Maslach, whose work on burnout transformed how we understand workplace depletion, identifies a key early marker of burnout that often goes unrecognized: *the loss of the ability to feel satisfaction from things that used to bring it.* Not exhaustion first. Numbness first. The work is still happening. The calendar is still full. But something has gone quiet inside that used to thrive.

If anything in that description is familiar, I want to say gently: that is information. Not failure. Not weakness. Information from a wise system doing its job.

---

When I divided the hostas, I didn't just split the plants. I looked at each one carefully. Some were clearly ready to be divided, their root mass had grown so large that the center of the plant was starting to die back, the classic sign that the plant is holding more than it can sustain. Others needed more time. And a few were right at the edge: they “could” be divided, but doing so would cost them a full season of growth.

You cannot look at a plant's outside and know that. You have to know what to look for. You have to be willing to pause and assess.

I drove north with an empty trunk and came home with it full, not of obligation, but of roots that had been growing in my family for over twenty years. That is the shape of receiving when we do it well.

Those first small sprouts I am watching now, they are not trying to be the finished plant yet. They are doing the next right thing. Sending up just enough to catch the light. Trusting that the roots they have been building underground will support what comes next.

I think about that often as I look at my own life mid-season.

The question is not simply: am I busy? The question is: am I holding more than my center can sustain? And if I am, am I willing to let something be divided, shared, delegated, released, deferred, rather than waiting for the die-back to do it for me? A die-back refers to the gradual death of plant parts, typically starting from the tips or ends of branches. As a novice gardener this term was introduced to me by a neighbor. And it has been helpful in thinking about surviving versus thriving.

There is a point I want to highlight here that I do not think gets enough attention in conversations about boundaries and well-being.

We talk a great deal about saying no. About protecting capacity. About the courage of the edit. All of that is real and worth practicing.

But there is a practice that is in some ways harder underneath it: learning to receive.

Not just receiving rest (though that too). But receiving help. Receiving the offer to share the weight. Receiving the acknowledgment that you are carrying something real and that you do not have to carry it alone.

Research on social support and resilience consistently finds that the ability to accept support, not just give it, is one of the strongest predictors of sustained well-being under stress. And yet, for many of us, especially those of us who identify with being capable, reliable, the one who holds things together, receiving feels uncomfortable in a way that's hard to articulate. We have organized our self-concept around giving. Receiving feels, somehow, like we are failing.

Psychologist and researcher Brené Brown has written extensively about how the inability to receive, to let others see our need, to accept generosity without immediately equalizing the ledger, is connected to the same shame architecture that drives perfectionism and over-giving. It is not a coincidence that the people who most struggle to say no are often the same people who most struggle to say, "thank you, yes, I'll take that.".

The hostas my parents gave me were, among other things, an act of receiving I had to consciously choose. I could have politely declined. I could have said I wasn't ready, didn't know enough yet, would figure out my own. Instead I drove north with an empty trunk and came home with it full, not of obligation, but of inheritance, of shared roots, of something that had been growing in my family for over twenty years.

That, I think, is the shape of receiving when we do it well. We let something enter. We make room. We trust that what we are given is not more than we can tend.

And now, three weeks later, the first sprouts are proving that trust right.

AFFIRMATION

"I am allowed to name the difference between what fills me and what drains me. I do not have to earn the right to an empty afternoon or an unscheduled morning. Fullness that nourishes is a gift. Fullness that depletes is a signal. I am learning to tell the difference, and to act on what I know."

PRACTICES FOR THIS SEASON

Audit one week. At the end of this week, look back at everything you said yes to. For each item, ask: did this add to me, or draw from me? You are not looking for a balance sheet. You are looking for patterns, the categories of obligation that reliably cost more than they return.

Name the disguise. Identify one thing on your current list that *feels* like productivity but is actually overwhelm in costume. It is often the thing you dread slightly even though it's "fine," the thing that somehow takes twice the energy you expected, the thing you would quietly be relieved to have cancelled. You do not have to drop it. Just name it honestly.

Practice a small receive. This week, when someone offers help, to carry something, cover something, take something off your list, say yes before you calculate whether you deserve it. Just: yes, thank you. Notice what that feels like in your body. That noticing is the practice.

Locate your replenishers. Make a short, specific list of three to five things that reliably leave you feeling more like yourself afterward. Not things you think “should” replenish you. Things that actually do. Guard at least one of these with the same protention that you give your most important commitments. Because it is.

Build in the long lens. As we discussed last issue, monthly reflection reveals what daily living obscures. As you enter summer, set a single calendar reminder for late June and July. The question: “What has this season actually given me, and what has it asked of me? Am I holding more than my center can sustain?”

---

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

For your journal, your walk, your quiet morning

Think of a recent stretch of time that felt full in a depleting way. What were the signals your body sent you that you may have overridden or rationalized? What would it have cost you, really, to honor one of those signals?

Where in your life are you holding something that could be shared, but you haven't offered it out because asking for help feels like it means something about you? What does it mean, in your current story?

What is one thing this summer that genuinely replenishes you, that belongs on the calendar the way an obligation belongs on the calendar? What would it take to protect that time?

The sprouts are small. Unhurried. Doing the next right thing without any apparent concern for how far they still have to go.

I am trying to take their lead. Roots first. Then reach.

Monday, May 25, 2026

The Roots Hold

May 25, 2026

Regenerate Your World

Build the future you want to live in.

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

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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/

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EMPOWER Possible: it is time to thrive

Saturday, June 6, 2026

The Cup Runneth Over

Monday, May 25, 2026

The Roots Hold

The Cup Runneth Over

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