The Week I Got to Say Yes To

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Keep Your Cool

I am writing this from Chicago. I have been on the road since last Wednesday, and I fly home tomorrow afternoon. So this one is reaching you from the middle of the thing it is about, which feels exactly right.

The week lived in two cities and a lot of highway. I flew into Chicago, drove the three hours up to Grand Rapids, then drove back down to Chicago on Sunday. By the time I finally point the car home, I will have stamped a doctor appointment for myself, a vet appointment for Sheldon, time with family, a stack of errands that had been sitting around too long, and the thing the whole trip was actually built around: the Chicago House women's home opener.

Here is the part I want to be honest about, because it is the real subject of this episode. I could have done a week like this a few years ago. Physically. I had the license. I had the same twenty four hours in a day everybody gets. I would have still been working through all of it the way I am this time. So the difference is not that I am suddenly capable of more.

The difference is where the decisions came from.

I could have done a week like this a few years ago. What I did not have was the place those decisions came from.

Two birds, one stone

There was a version of me that let a list like that rot. Doctor, vet, family, errands, a commitment two states over. Each item on its own felt like exposure. Calling to schedule the appointment meant admitting something was wrong. Driving to see family meant being seen. Showing up for an obligation meant somebody was counting on me and I might let them down. So the old move was to not move. Let it pile up. Call the avoidance a busy season.

This time I just built the trip. Flew in, knocked out the Chicago piece, drove up, handled the Grand Rapids piece, drove back, closed the loop. Two birds, one stone, and honestly more like five birds. It was not heroic. It was a person with a calendar doing the things on the calendar. But I noticed how different it felt to stack a hard list on purpose instead of staring at it and flinching.

What I actually did there

I have been on the advisory board at Chicago House for a little over two years. For the home opener I was not on a stage and I was not the guy whose name was on anything. I ran the ticket table. I worked concessions. I helped set the place up before the gates opened and I stayed for a good chunk of the takedown after. In between I got to watch the women dominate and win four to nothing, which never gets old.

I was not the headliner. I was the guy at the ticket table, and I was happy to be him.

That last part matters more than it sounds. There was a long stretch where I could only feel okay about myself if I was the most important person in the room. Being the guy handing out wristbands and counting a cash drawer would have felt like a demotion from a life I had already lost. This time it felt like a privilege. Peter Wilt and Shannon and the rest of that crew handed me real work at a thing they care about, and I got to be useful inside it. Sunday night, after the win, a few of the players and coaches and staff just hung around, and I hung around with them. No agenda. Belonging somewhere you helped build.

Fear versus abundance

If you have been around this show you have heard me draw lines like this before. Here is the one that ran underneath the whole week. The opposite of fear is not comfort. The opposite of fear is abundance.

Fear builds a week to avoid a threat. You schedule around what you are dreading. You choose the route that keeps you from being seen. You measure the trip by what went wrong. Abundance builds the same week pointed at a fuller life. Same miles, same appointments, same cash drawer. Completely different engine. I spent years running on the first one and calling it responsibility. This one ran on the second one, and the appointments and the drive and the ticket table all felt like proof of something instead of evidence against me.

The honest part

I am not going to dress this up into something cleaner than it was. It was a full week with a hole in it. I had hoped to see my daughters while I was close, and the calls and the texts did not come back. I am not going to turn that into a storyline or say more about it than that. I will just tell you they were on my mind for most of the drive. And the people I care about most, the ones I would have wanted in the passenger seat for a week like this, were not along for it either. Both of those things rode with me the whole time.

A full week with a hole in it is still the truest kind of full I know right now. I am not waiting for the hole to close before I let the rest of it count. That is the whole practice. You let the good be good and you let the missing be missing, and you do not make either one cancel the other out.

That is what the rebuild was for. Not the dramatic comeback. The ordinary, stacked, slightly exhausting, genuinely good week that you finally get to say yes to. Empty seats in the car and all.

THIS WEEK I AM THINKING ABOUT

The opposite of fear is not comfort, it is abundance.

The rebuild is not measured by what you can afford. It is measured by where your decisions come from. The exact same trip runs completely differently depending on whether you are moving toward a fuller life or away from a threat. Watch your own engine this week. Not the to do list. The engine underneath it.

ONE THING TO TRY THIS WEEK

Find the one item on your list you keep not doing. The call, the appointment, the drive, the message. Ask yourself one question about it: am I skipping this from fear, or passing on it from abundance? Be honest. Then do the one that is fear. Just that one. Stack it onto something you were already going to do so it costs you a little less to face.

READER QUESTION

What is a week, or even a single ordinary day, that you could say yes to now that an older version of you would have found a reason to dodge? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Talk Soon,

Dan

Grace Over Guilt is real stories from the wreckage and practical lessons from the rebuild. New episodes drop Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with The Sunday Reset every Sunday morning. If a friend forwarded this to you, you can subscribe and get it in your own inbox.

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