To open up this substack, I’m transferring articles from a LinkedIn newsletter I started called “Rhythm & Resolve.” Have a read.
Everyone is part of a tribe.
Not always a literal group of people, but a set of loyalties. A way of thinking. A rhythm of habits. A quiet agreement about what matters, what is allowed, and what must be protected.
Some help us grow. Others keep us bent.
We can spend years arranging our lives around comfort, control, approval, avoidance, resentment, distraction, or fear. And after a while, those things stop feeling like choices. They start feeling like “just the way life is.”
But they are not.
They are systems and groups we have built, joined, tolerated, or inherited. Or all of the above.
The hard part is that unhealthy systems and social connections often protect something we do not want to lose. They protect our ego. Our convenience. Our excuses. Our sense of importance. Our right to stay unchanged.
Growth begins when we are willing to ask a better question:
“Is this way of living helping me become whole, or is it keeping me bent?”
It’s important to remember that the rhythms we have are the rhythms we’ve chosen. We do well to evaluate whether they are keeping us bent or are straightening us out over time.
Make no mistake; our rhythms are changing us steadily. Do we like the change?
If not, you can still choose differently.