The suitcases are by the door

THE PROSPEROUS CONSULTANT

Turn your decades of expertise into a premium consulting practice built around the life you want.

Issue #38

The suitcases are by the door as I write this.

By the time you read it, Tabbi and I won’t even be in Europe yet. We’ll be somewhere over the Atlantic. I’ll be asleep, or reading a book... not a business book this time. At least not yet.

We planned this trip for the better part of a year. We have a peace about it, both of us. And still, for weeks now, the noise starts up every time I walk past those bags. The family. The dogs. The farm. The business. Some of it whispers. Some of it yells. And all of it says the same thing: this isn’t the right time.

That racket started months ago, about the time we booked the flights. And in all these months, not once has it ever said “now’s good.”

In this issue:

• Where the voice saying “not yet” actually comes from (your brain is doing it on purpose)
• The two piles: what you can control, and what you can’t
• The tree question that settles it

You’ve got your own version of that noise. I’d bet on it.

Maybe it runs about the practice you haven’t launched. The outreach you’ll start once the current project wraps. The rates you’ll raise after you land one more client. The trip you’ve been talking about for ten years.

Whatever it is, the self-talk sounds responsible. That’s what makes it dangerous. It doesn’t say “never.” It says “not yet.” Cash flow’s a little tight. A client might need you. Somebody you love is having a hard year. Wait until things settle down.

I wrote about that phrase back in August. Things are not going to settle down. You’ve known that longer than I have.

I got curious about where all that noise comes from, and it turns out the scientists have been mapping it for years.

Your brain makes thoughts the way a field makes weeds. Researchers at Queen’s University measured it... about six thousand separate thoughts a day, every day. And a Harvard study that pinged 2,250 people on their phones found our minds are somewhere else almost half of our waking hours. Replaying. Rehearsing. Worrying a thing that hasn’t happened yet.

Two pieces of old machinery drive most of it. The first is the alarm system, the fight-or-flight response, wired in long before calendars. It doesn’t check whether the change it spotted is a threat or a gift. New is enough. Different is enough. Two weeks away from everything familiar? The alarm doesn’t care that you won the trip.

The second runs while the first one rests. Brain scientists call it the default mode network... it’s what your brain does when it idles, and its favorite subject is you. It replays, it rehearses, it criticizes. That’s the inner critic you’ve been mistaking for wisdom.

So when the voice says “this isn’t the right time,” remember what’s talking. Machinery. Old, loyal, doing exactly its job... and not qualified to run your calendar.

It is never going to be the right time. Not for the trip, not for the launch, not for the ask. “The right time” is a story we tell ourselves so we don’t have to decide. Wait for perfect conditions... everybody in your circle healthy, happy, and flourishing, every account padded, every risk retired... and the machinery will keep you waiting until the wanting itself wears out.

There’s an old saying about planting a tree. The best time to plant one was thirty years ago. The next best time is today.

Notice what the saying doesn’t do. There’s no scolding in it for the thirty years... it just hands you a shovel.

I’ve planted enough trees to tell you the rest of it. You plant in the spring you’ve got, not the spring you wanted. Too wet, too dry, frost coming, equipment down. There’s always a reason to leave the sapling in the bucket. The tree doesn’t care about any of that once it’s in the ground. It just starts growing, on the only schedule that was ever real.

But here’s what I finally noticed about my own noise.

The loudest voices weren’t protecting the family, or the dogs, or the business. All of those have good people looking after them, and arrangements I made months ago. The loudest voices were protecting me... from the discomfort of being unreachable, unnecessary, and un-busy for two weeks.

And not every voice comes from inside your own head.

Last week, a man I care about, walking through a hard season of his own, told me it made him angry to see us packing for Europe. He wasn’t wrong to feel it, and I didn’t argue with him. In his season, I might have felt the same. But somewhere under the sting of it, I knew the answer wasn’t to stay home. You can’t serve anybody from an empty tank. Taking care of yourself... your body, your mind, your marriage... is part of what you owe the people who count on you. A worn-down version of me is no gift to anybody.

So what do you do with all that noise? You don’t argue with it. You sort it. Two piles.

Pile one: the things you can control. Fix them before you go. We arranged care for the animals. The team knows the plan for every client. The letter you’re reading came off my kitchen table before we left, coffee going cold next to the laptop. That’s what controlling the controllables looks like... nothing glamorous, just a list, worked to the bottom.

Pile two: the things you can’t. The economy. Other people’s choices. Whether everybody you love will be healthy and happy on the day you leave. You can’t fix these by staying home. You never could. Set them down.

And whatever’s left after the sorting, take a hard look at it. Nine times out of ten it’s the old “not yet,” wearing a new coat. Go anyway.

Now let me tell you what the noise almost talked me out of.

We didn’t buy this trip. We won it... in a contest Tabbi entered without telling me. I found out we were going to Europe at about the same moment I found out she’d entered us. The last time I set foot over there was 1989, on a work assignment... somebody else’s schedule, somebody else’s reasons. Tabbi has never been at all. This one is ours, and in thirty-seven years the “right time” never showed up once. Then a gift did.

If we’d kept waiting for the right time, that gift would have expired unopened.

I wrote to you last week that rest is a rhythm, not a reward. Keeping that rhythm is a constant effort for me, and I don’t hit the standard every week. This trip is me practicing what I preached to you, and my hands aren’t perfectly steady on it. But the bags are by the door, and we’re going.

P.S. About that book. The one in my lap over the Atlantic is called The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery, by W. Lee Warren, a working brain surgeon who takes both the neuroscience and the faith seriously. I told you it wasn’t a business book, and it isn’t. It’s about the noise. Warren’s point, coming from a man who has held actual brains in his hands, is that your automatic thoughts aren’t orders... the mind can change the very brain that made them. He puts it in one line: “Perception immobilizes, but perspective empowers.” He opens with the true story of a surgeon stationed in Antarctica who had to take out his own appendix, because nobody else could. Some operations, only you can do. Hit reply and tell me the reason you’ve been giving yourself... not the thing you’ve put off, just the reason you tell yourself. I read every note myself, and for the next two weeks I’ll be reading them slower than usual, probably with jet lag and a cup of coffee. That’s the trade I’m making, and I’m at peace with it.

Want to dive deeper? Check out these related articles:

👉 The Prosperous Consultant | Issue #37
👉 The Prosperous Consultant | Issue #36

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