Very bad advice you hear every day

What it looks like to “show up every day”

A lot of friends and subscribers tell me that my boyfriend Sahil Bloom emails too often and they don’t think the newsletter is as good as I make it sound.

But frequently he writes an extraordinary sentence that I can’t stop thinking about, so I keep reading.

I don’t even care that he switched to sending 5x a week*  because his emails go to a segmented inbox in Superhuman (← that's an affiliate link that gets us both a free month).

The good subject lines get opened, the boring ones don’t. 

It’s not molecular physics. 

Today Sahil’s newsletter was about tolerance for uncertainty. He wrote:

“Most people are so afraid of uncertainty that they leap at the chance to avoid it.”

Y’know, like…

  You call your mean ex-girlfriend just to avoid going on a date with someone who could possibly smell weird and look nothing like their picture.

  You dream of building a giant treehouse where you lead song circles for online business dropouts, but instead you sell coaching hours because the money’s predictable.

  You keep clothes you never wear because it’s easier than admitting tube tops don’t look good on you and not even a $149 viral Lululemon dress can fix that.

Ever done anything like that? 

(Me neither.)

((But in case you did, please oh please hit “reply” and tell me all about your version of the treehouse fantasy.))

Sahil posited that most people prefer to walk a clean, linear path to moderate, predictable success rather than take the twisty path to greatness because it is so goddamn uncomfortable and risky.

“The real rewards in life go to those who can show up every single day when the rewards are uncertain,” he wrote. 

It made me want to wrap my arms around his chiselled waist and whine, “DO I HAAAVE TO, BABY? Stop making me do hard stuff when I just want to lay around listening to Eddie Vedder and eating sriracha-flavoured Doritos!”

The world is uncertain enough without any of us piling on. 

But I know he’s right. 

I also know our brains are wired to prevent us from deliberately creating uncertainty. The body literally says, “No fkcn way are we doing that.”

You’ve felt this, I know it.

…you sit down to research treehouse rentals but can’t fight the sudden urge to research if the Sriracha-Doritos partnership is long-term, or if it’s a flavour you should stock up on now.

…you open a fresh Google Sheet to estimate the budget and twenty minutes later you find yourself alphabetizing your spice rack, with no memory of how you got there.

…instead of sending a casual “would you be interested in this” email to a few perfect-fit past clients, you spend four hours applying for an off-grid land grant while watching TikToks on how to build a rope bridge. 

Ugh, bodies can be so annoying sometimes.

But a simple reframe of the oh-so-common advice to simply “show up every day” can go a long way, and help you move your vision forward in the face of uncertainty that seems to be mounting daily. 

Showing up every day doesn’t mean pushing through even on the days when you wake up wearing lead boots. 

Sometimes showing up means the opposite—it means taking a day off.** 

Sometimes it looks like taking a single baby step, followed by seven minutes of Tapping with Brad so your body knows you’re safe.

Sometimes it looks like laying down and listening to a song that makes you feel exactly the way you want the treehouse retreat to make people feel, before even thinking about the damn budget.

Sometimes it looks like joining an online program to learn an essential skill for your future life; other times it means asking for a refund on something you bought when you were panicking and trying to make something happen. (Forgive yourself either way. We’ve all been there.) 

Showing up can look like a lot of things. 

For me right now, it means consistent daily practice tending to my nervous system, and sitting on my hands until the proverbial treehouse vision becomes more clear. 

(I just made that up twenty minutes ago—it’s not my actual dream. Unless maybe it is? Click here if you would go to my treehouse retreat.)

Fighting against your body’s “no” is a recipe for long-term unhappiness. 

It’s those tiny yet consistent betrayals of self that lead people to eventually quit businesses that were successful beyond their wildest dreams but didn’t actually make them any happier.

Most business advice ignores the fact that you have a body. Don’t even get me started on mindset work. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad advice, you just have to add a little asterisk after it. 

Because you do have a body. 

And it’s giving you subtle cues all day long about how you’re meant to show up today—what to work on, who to buy from and which offer to create next. We live in a world where showing up is measured by how many hours you put in and how many boxes you checked. But our bodies know this is only a small part of the story. 

My challenge to you today is to measure “showing up” by how well you listened to yourself, the moments you remembered to sit on your hands, or how you responded to the feelings in your body when you sat down at your desk this morning. 

Listen to those cues and you will end up with a business that’s worth fighting for, no matter what the economy is doing. 

And with that, I have to go take a nap now. 

‘Till next week

Tarzan

Tarzan Kalryzian [she/they]
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*On emailing 5x per week: The lesson here is, “Write as often and as much as you feel inspired to do.” LET SUBSCRIBERS MANAGE THEIR OWN INBOXES, YOU’RE NOT THEIR DAD.

**On taking a day off: As they say in Al-Anon, “Don’t just do something, sit there.”

 

A Photo, Just Because

Taking my brother Quentin’s binocs on a tour of the Ontario backcountry. So far we’ve been to the Algonquin Highlands and the Kawarthas. Where should we go next?