Second Act, First Draft

aka, life, when you finally stop pretending you know everything

There is something I have learned about myself in this second act, and it is simply this — I am most alive when I am learning something I didn’t know yesterday.

I’m not learning because I have a degree to finish or a certification to earn, but because the moment I assume my experience is the whole story, I stop growing. A coach who has stopped growing has very little to offer the woman sitting across from her.

For me, learning doesn’t always look the way I thought it would. It might look like reading another author’s work and noticing what moves me and why. Maybe it’s researching a topic I thought I already understood because my client’s experience is not the same as mine, and assuming otherwise would be doing her a disservice. Sometimes, it looks like figuring out a new publishing system at 10 pm because the steps changed again, and I want to serve my authors well. None of that is glamorous, but all of it is necessary, and it reminds me that there is always something worth knowing that I don’t know yet.

Lifelong learning is not about collecting knowledge so much as it is about staying humble enough to believe that the next conversation, the next book, or the next person you meet might change something in you that needs changing.

I spent a long time believing that if I could just figure out the right career, the right title, or the right lane to stay in, I would finally feel like I was living out my calling. I was looking for it out there somewhere, in a job description, on a business card, or in the next thing I decided to do with my time. What I’m beginning to understand is that my calling doesn’t have to mean my career… it can simply be who I am meant to be.

The thread that runs through everything I have done — the gym, the books, the coaching, the podcasts, the early mornings, and the hard conversations — was never about the title. It was always about the message, and the message has followed me into every single season without asking permission, which makes me think God was never as confused about my calling as I was.

My second act is not about finding the right thing to do so much as it is about becoming more fully who God already made me to be, and that is a different kind of blank page than I expected, because His mercies really are new every morning… and so is the invitation to keep becoming.

I don’t want to settle for what I already know or assume that my experience is the whole story. I want to stay curious, humble, and open because the next thing I learn might be exactly what the woman sitting across from me needs me to know.

What is one thing you are learning or trying for the first time in this season of your life?

Be happy 🧡