What Are We Doing Here, Anyway?

• • Hi, friends:) There’s just something about a new year, isn’t there? Coming off of the Christmas festivities, slowing down a bit, and flipping open a brand new calendar that’s practically begging us to flip open a new chapter in our own lives… it’s hard to resist the urge to start something fresh. (Even though it can become less enthralling when it’s less fresh, but we’ll leave that topic for another time.) This year, I’m taking the opportunity to bring a refresh to this very publication: it’s not earth-shattering, but that’s deliberate. Increasingly, I’m coming to believe incremental change is the most powerful type of change. As a faithful reader or a brand new just-subscribed reader, I believe you deserve to know the answers to the following three questions. Who am I?I’m a lot of things—aren’t we all? I’m a wife, a reader, a powerlifter, a believer, a sales rep, a bit of a nerd (maybe more than a bit, it’s a common subject of debate with my friends), a daughter, a writer (largely thanks to you), a friend… the list goes on. Yet, there are some undercurrents among all of those identities, and I suppose part of what we do in our time on this earth is figure out what those undercurrents are, and how they shift over time. This year, it’s become clear to me how I’ve shifted; I used to be relentlessly driven by curiosity. I knew there was much I didn’t understand, and I wanted to understand it all. I chased knowledge in many forms, and it has served me well in many ways. Yet, I’m growing to see how much more I’m now driven by contentment. It might sound odd to be driven by such a thing: doesn’t contentment mean being happy where you are, so you have no desire to be anywhere, or become anyone, else? Technically, contentment is defined as “a state of happiness and satisfaction.” I wonder if sometimes we don’t treat contentment like a zero-sum game: if I’ve found contentment here, I won’t find it somewhere else, or if I’m not content now, it means I have to get somewhere else to find it. I don’t think this is true. Who’s to say I can’t be content here, and there? Now, and later? Contentment has never been the same thing as complacency, and I’m not sure when we decided they belonged together, but I’m challenging myself to separate them again. As a writer, I’m seeking to write from this place of contentment, while still pursuing improvement. I’m increasingly grateful for who I was created to be and who I am becoming, and it’s my hope you can grow in your own appreciation for who you were created to be and who you are becoming as you follow this project. This leads us to the next critical question. What is The Next Step?From the beginning, this has been a place for curiosity. More and more, it’s becoming a place for clarity and contentment, too. When I launched The Next Step, I started using a couple of phrases to embody what we’re doing here, but I never spent much time defining them; I’m here now to do that. Lessons learned in real-time. There are two parts to this phrase: lessons, and real-time. Let’s break it down:

• Lessons learned… Each time you open your email from me or pull up Substack, I aim to bring you value. Whether it’s a new idea, a new way of looking at an old idea, or an old idea with a new action step, it’s always my hope that you leave feeling challenged to do one thing differently. Put another way, it’s about taking the next step, no matter how small.

• …in real-time. For those of y’all who have been here for awhile, I hope it’s crystal clear: I’m taking your right into my failures, often as they’re happening, or when they’re so fresh they still sting a bit. I’ve recently picked up a saying (I’m not sure where it came from, I may have made it up but I’m sure I’m not the first one to do so) that goes “you either win or you learn.” Whether I’m about to step up to the barbell for a heavy deadlift or step into an important sales call, I remind myself of this truth because it matters. If I win, sweet! It feels good to lock out a heavy pull and it feels good to make a sale. Yet, when we win, we often take a lot more time soaking in how good it feels rather than noting what we learned about the win. When we fail the lift or don’t make the sale, it doesn’t feel so good; yet, we can gain so much value from watching the video back to see where our tech broke down or re-evaluating how we approached the sale. My goal here is to make The Next Step the place where we’re watching that video back, learning from our mistakes. Hopefully, you can learn from a few of my mistakes so you can have a few more wins for yourself.

Don’t live an aimless life. I don’t believe anyone plans to life an aimless life; it just happens. But, that’s precisely it: unless we make active choices to live with an aim, life will simply happen to us. I don’t believe we’re made to drift; we’re made to aim. We don’t need to know the whole route. When you’re road tripping across the country, you don’t need to know the last turn before arriving at your destination—you just need to know the next one. The general direction and the very next step are all we need to know to get somewhere worth going. What to Expect Next?This year, you can still expect an email in your inbox every other Tuesday morning with many of the themes you’re used to: personal growth, young career advice (and fumbles), and interpersonal relationships. You can still expect stories, questions, and challenges. You can also expect some rollouts of new initiatives (sneak peek: guest posts), more feedback-gathering, and the refreshed brand you’re seeing today. I can’t say enough how grateful I am to be here, and that you are here. What a privilege it is to take the one next step towards somewhere worth going, together. If you feel The Next Step will resonate with someone in your life, would you give it a quick share today? Share One thing differently:Replacing the “Journal Prompt of the Week,” this section is dedicated to a clear call-out of the one thing we can do differently based on each post. Sometimes I may define a specific idea or action step, other times I’ll challenge you to reflect and share what it is for you. As always, comments are welcome! This week, my challenge to you is to think differently about contentment. Have you fallen into the trap of seeing contentment and complacency as one and the same? How can you show more appreciation for where you are right now? Leave a comment