Kryptonite for Me, Aligned for Sam and Therese
Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash
Does everyone remember how I was losing my mind recently while Sam and I were moving? I was on high doses of hormones while simultaneously navigating three moves (from one apartment to two smaller ones for dual-city living), and the ol’ Keelster was not a shiny, radiant ball of gleeful optimism.
I’m back to feeling normal, thankfully. The Stubborn Gladness model of well-being is about the constant dance between stress and resilience, and now that the move is over and I’m off those specific hormones, my stress is lower and my resilience is higher. Therefore, I’m good.
But on the mornings when I was close to punching the wall because I couldn’t get a plug in an outlet or in tears because I accidentally smacked Sam’s butt harder than I meant to (literally one of the reasons I had a meltdown last week), that wasn’t the case.
My stress levels exceeded my resilience, and I felt like garbage.
And do you want to know the fascinating lesson I learned while going through it?
I’m going to have to try really, really hard not to stand in Therese’s way while she grows Stubborn Gladness to “wait, we earned how much this year?” revenue numbers.
Talk about a non sequitur, huh?
But here’s why that’s the lesson I’m drawing from this experience – during our moves, I got a crash course in remembering:
The things that are kryptonite for me don’t affect Sam in the slightest.
The things that are kryptonite for Sam don’t affect me in the slightest.
Sam didn’t give a flying hoot that our moves were complicated. Packing boxes day after day didn’t cost him his will to live.
But me?
My actual internal response to trying to wrestle a duvet into a duvet cover at the end of a long day was, “Is life worth living?”
Conversely, I don’t care in the slightest that our Hong Kong apartment has no room for any of our stuff. Rather, I’m delighted. When I have less stuff, I have more free time. I’m gleefully happy in our little Hong Kong shoebox because my life is so simple there.
Sam, on the other hand, had a hard time containing his misery over the teeny, tiny “no room for our stuff and oh, by the way, turns out I don’t fit in the bed” apartment. He’s in a better place about it now, but on our first night in the new place, dissatisfaction seeped out of every pore. Sam, who basically never gets unhappy, was deeply unhappy.
And here’s why that matters for what Therese and I are building: like Sam and I, Therese and I have different prosperity archetypes.
I have the simplicity prosperity archetype. True success to me is having a simple life. Where I have spaciousness and ample free time and I’m able to whirl and twirl in creative delight, not bogged down by obnoxious things like days of packing when I’d rather be living the life that delights me.
But Therese has the same prosperity archetype as Sam. They both have the celebration prosperity archetype. True success for them includes significant financial resources that are used to celebrate life. To be the person who has a home that can host the whole family. Who will pay for your surgery when you don’t have the funds. Who will organize a blowout vacation for milestone events, then foot the bill because financial abundance flows naturally to humans who have the celebration prosperity archetype.
Someone with the simplicity prosperity archetype builds a business that covers the bills and leaves them with 90% of the day free to do whatever they want.
Someone with the celebration prosperity archetype builds a big, vibrant, “the party is over here, folks!” business.
The business the person with the celebration prosperity archetype builds requires more work than the business the person with the simplicity prosperity archetype would build. It requires more tending to logistical details. Just like living in a bigger apartment requires more tending to logistical details.
But do you know what? Tending to those details doesn’t bother Sam and Therese. They happily tend to them because it’s in alignment for them. Celebration, not simplicity, is their north star.
What works for me doesn’t have to work for them. What works for them doesn’t have to work for me.
What a helpful reminder.
Sam and I will be able to find and maintain a home that works for one partner with the simplicity prosperity archetype and another with the celebration prosperity archetype.
Therese and I will be able to build a business that works for one partner with the simplicity prosperity archetype and another with the celebration prosperity archetype.
And do you know what it’ll take? Intentionally and a commitment to open-hearted, transparent communication.
Easy breezy. We all love those things.
Xo,
Your friend who can’t handle duvets. Why did anyone ever invent them?!!?!?
P.S. A Stubborn Gladness workshop exploring the six prosperity archetypes is coming sometime in March or April. It will be on a weekday from 7:30-8:30 PM EST (date TBD) and will cost between $10-25 USD. The first one will be hosted on Zoom and, in the future, we’ll also offer it in person. If you want to be notified when the dates/details are finalized, comment or sign up here: https://forms.gle/kkC9oYTdSsYGmt9S9
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Morning Musings is a delight-first writing practice where I wake up, put my fingers on the keyboard and “dance” with ideas from within a flow state. I hit publish after 30-60 minutes of writing and, like the unknown wit who came up with this quip, “I apologize for the length of my letter. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter one.” Eventually, I will likely polish and refine the ideas that are explored here and publish them in a cleaned-up way. But here — this is the raw “learning in public,” the “ugly first drafts” of contemplating life as it happens.
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