I wanted to share something that’s been on my mind recently, particularly with the amount of personal change that's occurred for me in the last few months.

This is super personal to me, but when I found out I was pregnant, the first thought was not immediate excitement or joy. It was actually, "Oh shit, I just planned my entire year and the first part of 2027. What does this mean?"

I spent the first week just trying to wrap my head around all the changes that I would have to make and the people I would potentially let down. At that time I didn't really know what it meant for me and what it would be like to be pregnant and move on with the plans that I had for the year, which - those plans were BIG and already intimidating from a bandwidth standpoint.

As the weeks went on, I felt like I was constantly fighting natural inertia. I was incredibly sick, exhausted, and just trying to make sure that I could do the things I had been doing prior, let alone the things I'd committed to starting or Q2 and Q3.

That's when I realized that the lesson for me in this situation was not how to try harder. The lesson for me was when to say no, when to release myself from expectations, and when to CHANGE the plan.

The lesson was flexibility over rigidity.

And I don't mean flexible in a spineless, “do whatever you want and be a lazy POS” way. I mean flexible in the way that actually determines who wins: the most flexible system wins.

In systems theory and also in life, the person or entity with the most options available to it at any given moment has the most control over outcomes. Not the strongest person, not the loudest person, not the smartest person, but the most adaptable person.

Most people have it backwards, and I know this as someone who has to constantly catch myself in the ‘try harder and FYM FTP’ cycle.

It’s thinking resilience means being tough. Holding the line. And sometimes that's right and absolutely the call.

But a lot of the time, what's actually happening is someone is rigid and calling it strength and commitment.

And especially when you're ALREADY somebody who tries really hard (as many here are) you are actually being rigid and thinking that it is strength.

Which reminded me of this quote: "The wind does not break a tree that bends." When I heard that quote, it made me think a lot about myself and who I was as a person many years ago.

I watched this play out at Gym Launch. When things were going well, everyone was great. When things got hard, when leads dropped, when a campaign tanked, when something just didn't work, people either got more locked in or they just tried harder to make a broken ‘thing’ work.

And what I noticed was: the people who crumbled were not weak, they were just insanely committed to plans that no longer served us given changes in circumstances. They were just wired to conditions.

Give me good circumstances, I perform. Give me bad ones, I freak out/complain/etc.

Real resilience isn't about your circumstances. It's about your character.

It's about whether you've decided in advance who you're going to be when it's hard. Because when it's hard, you don't have time to figure that out.

So here's the question I want you to sit with this week: Are you flexible in the right ways and rigid in the right ways?

Flexible on: the approach, the method, the timeline, the plan. When new information comes in, move. Adapt. Don't die on the hill of "but this is how we said we'd do it." Fuck that.

Rigid on: your standard. Your character. What you're willing to accept from yourself. That should be non-negotiable regardless of how messy it gets.

The tree that bends survives.

Love you guys 🚀

– Leila

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