The good news:

1. Your access to this Soul Gym Forum (as well as our FB Group Soul Gym Lounge) will continue indefinitely. Although Heather and I won't be monitoring it anymore, you are welcome to continue posting here and commenting on one another's posts.
   
   
2. I'm giving you lifetime access to these courses -- Authentic Content Flow and Joyful Productivity.
   
   
3. I'm launching The Joyful Productivity Club (JoyPro) -- with Heather's support!) --and it begins in August.  The price is $60/mo, which is still less than most of you are paying for Soul Gym. I believe that JoyPro will serve a greater purpose than Soul Gym, because it's about building excellent habits in multiple areas of business/life, including content creation.
   
   

Toward the end of the pandemic, I joined the Great Resignation and set sail on a journey to build the next chapter of my life.  

At the time, I had a plan and naively thought that within six months, I would reach a new shore.  

As plans often go, reality intervenes with unexpected plot twists, which is something none of us are spared. 

Those six months have become nearly three years. 

I do my best to commit my Sundays to reflection and recalibration, approaching them as the first day of my week ahead rather than as the tail end of the weekend.  

I take a short walk every day at sunrise to focus on my intentions for the day. My Sunday morning walks are focused on reflections, which I've been sharing with our Soul Gym community for a while now. 

Having banished the word "fail" from my vocabulary and replaced it with "Learn," I'm committed to keeping growing, rising, and moving forward in my life, as these are the only constructive directions one can follow. 

This past Monday, my wife and I spent the day at Universal Studios.  

As a historic movie studio, they are experts at creating facades and illusions, an irony that wasn't lost on me as I’m struggling with a confrontation within myself of what feels like a similar endeavor. 

I recently began reading Adam Grant's latest book, "Hidden Potential," and twenty pages into the book, there’s a passage that deeply resonated with me, which I'll share now. 

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Character is often confused with personality, but they're not the same. Personality is your predisposition - your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act.  

Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts. Personality is not your destiny - it's your tendency.  

Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles. It's not about the traits you have - it's what you decide to do with them. 

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Today, nearly three years into my journey, it occurred to me that, at this moment, I have nothing but facades and illusions to show for the efforts I've poured into building and lifting my business off the ground.  

I'm faced now with yet another plot twist in my journey. I cannot change the past, nor can I predict the future. I only control my actions in the present moment. Three of the virtues among those I meditate on daily are Perseverance, Resilience, and Equanimity. These are like handrails stabilizing my balance on the shaky staircase of uncertainty. 

My wife reminds me that I began this journey by reading Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist. I remain convinced that I am following my true path and that the universe continues to conspire to help me on my path. But at this moment, all I feel that I have to show for my efforts are facades and illusions, and I wonder what the future holds.