Next week is last week before school begins and my family is headed off to Newport Rhode Island for a few days of beach, ice cream, and big mansion touring.

In the bustle of packing and prepping for a few days away, I started to reflect on the past three months (gosh, how fast it goes) and some of the unexpected things I learned.

Some of these are business related, others are personal, and some are spiritual. I hope one or more of them speaks to you this weekend.

1. Bad webinars reveal more than good ones. No one likes a bad webinar (and I've done them myself this summer), but it does SO MUCH MORE to teach you what not to do. If you have a good webinar, you never get the benefit of understanding what and why it worked. This is why running 10 bad webinars before you crack a good one is a blessing in disguise. Podcast episode here.​

2. Your kids have no idea how much you carry (and that's the point). It's hard to be a parent and a spouse and a business owner. Throw in a couple of divorces and the ability to juggle all the logistics and dynamics becomes almost comical. I have had to become certain in my own mind and heart (which is hard for me to do) because I can't expect anyone not in shoes - especially my kids - to understand.

3. Delusion is nearly impossible to reason with. And we're about to see A LOT more of it than we already have (thank you social algorithms, media, and misinformation). With our ever growing attachment to AI, the possibility of AI induced psychosis is very real and more dangerous than imagining the extinction of humanity. Podcast episode here.​

4. The line between compulsion and clarity is much smaller than I thought. What I long attributed to "clarity" was actually compulsion in an undiagnosed OCD brain. Compulsion drives you to work, over think, do- beyond your normal capacity, and disguises as clarity. But clarity as it turns out, is slow, clear, quiet, and measured. Now that I'm working in slowness, I have to fight to tell my brain that everything is okay.

5. Your business will only grow to the level of your nervous system. People don't realize this until they truly just try to stick to one thing. Over and over. That's where you see just how impatient and unregulated you actually are! I am pleasantly surprised that all the work I'm doing has unearthed a patience I didn't know I had. Podcast episode here.​

6. My executive function is too strong. I override my emotions, instincts, and physical sensations. And when I'm hit with too much stress, it collapses my executive function (which I'm using to regulate anxiety) and then I have no other way to cope except to panic. The imbalance of relying on executive function at the expense of developing other functions means I'm quite imbalanced and at risk. Turns out I'm not regulating anxiety, I'm controlling it with my prefrontal cortex. And when it collapses, I've got nothing else at the ready.

7. It's going too fast to follow the crowd, you need a different way to carve your path. If you were the type to follow the trends of a particular guru, then try it and iterate, this is a problem. Too many new AI tools and ideas and it's IMPOSSIBLE to keep track of. You're going to need a new way to decide what to pursue because one trend a quarter has become 15 new trends a day.

8. If a spiritual teacher or guru bypasses repentance, it's dangerous... no matter how inspiring it sounds. Coming back into my faith has meant daily time reading my Bible and also poking around podcasts and books by known names in Christianity. And wow is there a lot of heresy, itching ears commentary, gnosticism, new age blending, and progressivism. Being out of the scene for 12 years and coming back, I'm flabbergasted.

9. No matter how many times I say summer is hard, I forget just how hard. The months of June & July are notoriously low income and despite all my post-its and warnings, by end of July, me and all my clients are breathless with "OMG is this the end". No. Quarter four is coming.

10. Writing a book is the hardest thing I've ever done but once I got over the hump of finishing the manuscript and giving it to an editor, I realized how much time I wasted worrying about how hard it was. Podcast episode here.​

And as a bonus, five unexpected animal lessons courtesy of Longwater Farm...

11. Skunk smell stays a LONG time. I got skunked trying to get a skunk out of my chicken coop.

12. Lonestar Ticks are now established in Connecticut and will give you bourbon fever.

13. Trying to merge four different aged chicken flocks meant weeks of sleep training, chicken politics, and drama. Remind me of this if I decide I want to incubate more chicks. NO.

14. Snakes will live in birdhouses if you let them.

15. If you allow the forest around you to "rewild" itself, you'll have a full on New England zoo in your backyard, including denning coyote pups, baby bobcats, baby turkeys, baby bunnies, baby bluebirds, baby frogs, turtles, and deer.

xx Julie