You belong here.

If you’re still figuring out
what overwhelms you,
what settles you,
what your body is telling you,
or what actually helps…

You belong here.

You don’t need to have it figured out before you start.
That’s what discovery is for. 💙

Welcome to the free Empower GRIT community.

Trying to do it all isn’t the answer.

When everything feels urgent, your brain can start treating everything like a priority.

So make your world smaller.

Not the whole assignment.
Open the book.

Not the whole day.
Do the next thing.

Not everything you should do.
What needs you right now?

Then take one ridiculously small step.

You don’t have to carry everything at once to keep moving forward. 💙

Notice. Understand. Choose.

Apparently, the original 1891 toilet paper patent shows the roll hanging over.

As someone who will absolutely adjust a toilet paper roll when I encounter it hanging under, I found this information deeply satisfying. 😂

I have spent an unreasonable amount of time discussing this with people who insist the under method is superior.

Apparently, all along, we could have just looked at the patent.

Except… does the patent actually settle the debate?

It gives us information we didn’t have before. It shows us how the inventor depicted the original design.

That’s useful.

It doesn’t tell us that someone can’t prefer the other orientation. Maybe people discovered benefits the inventor never considered. Maybe toilet paper, holders, bathrooms, or circumstances have changed. Maybe both methods accomplish the actual job perfectly well.

The original information can be valuable without being the only information that matters.

There’s another part of this I find even more interesting:

The resource was there the entire time. We just never thought to look for it.

How often does that happen elsewhere?

We debate what something means based on what we’ve experienced, what someone told us, what we assume is true, or what has always seemed “normal.”

Meanwhile, useful information may already exist somewhere else.

Finding it can change our understanding.

Sometimes it might change our choice.

Sometimes we may understand the new information perfectly well and decide:

Nope. I still prefer my way.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we ignored the information. It may mean we understood what the information could—and couldn’t—tell us and decided how relevant it was to our own circumstances.

That’s a distinction I think matters far beyond toilet paper.

So here’s today’s completely unserious example with a surprisingly serious question:

Where in your life might you be relying on a rule, assumption, preference, or “this is just how it’s done” without knowing where it originally came from?

What information might already exist that you’ve never thought to look for?

And if you found it…

would it actually change what you choose?

Notice. Understand. Choose. 💙

P.S. I have considered the additional information and will continue correcting under-hanging toilet paper rolls wherever I encounter them. Some choices have been made. 😂