Hey honeys and hustlers,

Less grinding, more grounding. My mom asked me over Sunday dinner how I felt about my year, and the question immediately repulsed me. It’s been a rough year, and I hadn’t really stopped to reflect on what I’ve been through and accomplished. I’ll hash out my thoughts in a later article. For now, I thought it might be nice to talk about how I’m staying grounded as I unpack the highs and lows of the past 12 months. December is typically the time of year when I think about what I’ve accomplished, think about what truly matters to me, and where I’d like to go in the following year. It's in these quiet moments—the ones where everyone is slowly logging off for the holidays and asking to circle back in the new year—that my best ideas emerge.

P.S. I’m co-hosting a live virtual event to help you develop your interview skills on December 18th! Stay until the end to learn more and RSVP for free!

P.P.S. Tomorrow night at 8PM is my last Substack live with Corey and Michelle for the year! Come share your thoughts on 2025 and what you’re focused on and looking forward to in 2026!

Our brains need downtime to process, to iterate, to make sense of all the input we're constantly feeding them. Without it, we're just collecting information without wisdom, moving without direction, hustling without purpose. I've noticed something about the major decisions in my life: I never made the best ones in a state of frenzy. The choices I'm proudest of—the ones that truly aligned with who I am and where I wanted to go—came from a place of calm.

When we're constantly in motion, we're often reacting rather than responding. We make decisions under external pressure, based on what we think we should do, and to keep up with everyone else's pace. But when we give ourselves permission to be still, to sit with discomfort, to let questions marinate rather than demanding immediate answers, something shifts.

Stillness gives us access to our inner wisdom. It helps us distinguish between the voice of anxiety and the voice of intuition, between what society expects and what we actually want, between movement that looks like progress and movement that actually is progress. Stillness is how we hear ourselves again. It's how we reconnect with our own values, priorities, and definition of success. It's how we remember who we are beneath all the roles we play and expectations we're trying to meet.

Grounding is the antidote to grinding. Grinding is external—it's about meeting metrics, hitting goals, proving ourselves to others. Grounding is internal—it's about staying connected to ourselves, our values, our sense of what matters.

Grounding practices look different for everyone. For me, it's morning pages, long walks (even when it’s cold and miserable outside), and sitting with my coffee or breakfast before opening my laptop. It's saying no to things and not feeling guilty. It’s taking time to count the things I’m grateful for and not to focus on what I perceive I lack. It's building in buffer time between commitments. It's treating rest as productive rather than something I need to earn.

These aren't revolutionary practices. They're simple, almost boring. But that's exactly the point. We don't need another productivity hack or optimization strategy. We need permission to do less, to be still, to let boredom work its magic.

As we approach the end of the year, I'm extending an invitation—to myself and to you: What if we allowed ourselves to stop for a moment and be present? What if instead of asking "How productive were you?" we asked "How grounded did you feel in pursuit of your goals?" What if we measured our years not by how much we accomplished professionally, but by how well we stayed connected to ourselves, our friends, our families (inherited and chosen), and our loved ones?

So here's to the quiet moments. To the stillness that scares us. To the boredom we've learned to run from. To hearing our own voice again. To making decisions from a place of calm rather than chaos. To whatever this is—this gentle, grounded, unoptimized way of being.