Continuous Project Altered Quarterly | March 2025
Nature knows what to do.
How’s your business doing? For at least six months, mine has been slower than ever in its nearly six-year history. I’m sharing this because I’m hearing from so many friends, colleagues, and clients that they are having this same experience: Not as much money is coming in, and it costs more to cover expenses comfortably. Maybe it's helpful to hear that we're all in this together.
Clients come to me for transformational thought partnership, so my days are filled with conversations about opportunities and challenges. For months now, and with escalating volume, it’s the challenges that people are navigating, and they're more challenging than ever. What I am hearing a lot is that exhaustion, fear, anger, despair, anxiety, confusion—or all of the above—is leaving folks defeated and disempowered, stuck in an eddy of swirling questions and problems.
I came across this idea the other day: “Don’t look for answers; instead, let go of the feelings behind the question.” What the author means by this is: Connect with your emotions; feel them; interrogate their source; and let them go. The answers will then appear. “When we are finally and fully surrendered on all components [of the question or problem], the answer will be there waiting for us… When we first clear out the underlying feelings, the decisions are more realistic and wise.”
When I let go of the feelings underlying the questions and problems that I’m facing, what I see is: Wishing for things to be different can eclipse taking action.
When I let go of wishful emotions, I can see more clearly that “things” are NOT different. “Things”—the environment, the government, the economy—are beyond my direct control. The world is what it is, not what I wish it to be. It’s myself and my business that are within the sphere of my control. Right now—not the past or the future—is my one wild and precious life. Right now is the life of my business, which is my sole livelihood in an increasingly precarious moment.
Rather than avoiding the reality of the present through empty wishes—or longing for a return to “normal”—I’m emboldened by the potential inherent in the present. That the only truth is NOW is empowering. It’s up to me—and it’s up to you, it’s up to us—to get real, get fundamental, get creative, get ourselves resourced, and take action, whatever that looks like for each of us. Despite all of the challenges we face, there is so much opportunity: to be, to live, to do, to care, to help, to love.
It’s spring. For those of us who are exhausted and stuck, let’s look to the emergence and vitality of the season to find the energy we need to get unstuck from our swirling eddies of questions and problems.
The eagles known as Jackie and Shadow and their eaglets nesting high above Big Bear Lake have been constant online companions to me and thousands of others in recent weeks. We’re drawn to them because they help us remember that nature knows what to do: Feed, nurture, and protect what you love. We are nature too, and we know what to do. Jackie and Shadow remind us in this particularly demanding time that life—and business, too—truly is that simple, and also that profound.
Continuous Project
Updates
+ Registration is open through May 19 for the 2026 Guggenheim Application Cohort. California residents may be eligible for a CCI Quick Grant to cover their participation fee. Apply here by April 15 for the May 21 start date.
+ The next Group Consulting cohort will meet monthly, rather than weekly. It will run for six months starting in July. Email me with questions and to register your interest---there will be room for six participants.
+ The most recent Dear CP is an ~~~AUDIO~~~ edition! I was so pleased to broadcast a full 1-hour private consulting meeting with cherished client Kim Ye on her KCHUNG radio show, Boundary Issues. Jump to the recording here
+ The annual Growth Planning Workshop will run September-December again in 2025. In 2026, this will likely evolve into an 8- to 12-month class, so 2025 might be the last opportunity to learn the process in a compressed time period. I'll be announcing the confirmed dates in June or July so folks will have plenty of time to put funding together for the participation fee. Email me with questions.
+ The Ideas & Resources Doc is always growing. Jump in, and let me know what you find that's of interest.
+ Established clients are always welcome to book here, and I invite potential new clients to book a discovery call here.
I appreciate your business :)
