I opened my inbox and saw an article from someone I normally love reading.
And my whole body went:
I just can't.
Not one more thing.
Lately, I've been in a season of intense growth.
A lot of trying to figure out what comes next.
A lot of inner work, too.
And somewhere inside all of that, my attention got hijacked.
Toward what was missing. What still needed to happen before I could feel like a “success.”
That's the Prover, by the way. The pressure to measure myself against some outside benchmark or future milestone.
I don't think I realized how much pressure had entered my system. I just knew I was feeling preoccupied, so I kept doubling down on work projects to try to focus and feel better.
Then my cousin Liz came to visit.
We drove to the coast with the family. Big waves crashing against the rocks, people out on their Sunday walks, the kind of afternoon where nobody seemed in a rush to get anywhere.
Just people living their lives.
Later that night, we all had dinner together. My daughters introducing themselves to Liz, soaking up her attention. Liz is one of those deeply generous people who makes you feel like a million bucks when you're with her.
Then, the next morning we drove up to a restaurant in the redwoods.
Just the two of us.
We ate outside at a picnic table with no rush to be anywhere else.
And underneath all of it was this quiet feeling:
We are so lucky.
Lucky to be here. Lucky to have these conversations. Lucky to sit under redwood trees on a Monday morning talking about life.
After she left for the airport, I came home, watered plants, and laid in my backyard hammock for a long time.
I looked up at the trees and felt the breeze.
Didn’t reach for my phone.
And slowly, I could feel my attention widening again.
I forgot how regulating ordinary human life is.
Conversation. Nature. Shared experience.
Highly productive people rarely notice when work starts taking up too much psychological space.
Because the habits that make us effective can also quietly disconnect us from our actual lives — from our bodies, from other people, from the present moment.
And over time, a tunnel vision takes over:
What's next.
What's missing.
What still needs fixing.
Inside this week's Ritual, I'm sharing the practice that pulled me out of that myopia, and the questions that made me realize how mentally consumed I'd become.