70: Movement as Growth

Greetings from Naples!

I drafted this email on a flight to Salt Lake City last week, and it was ready-to-go for our normal-ish Thursday delivery.

But then, I got locked out of Mailchimp.

My two-factor authentication code was only deliverable to my UK phone number, which I turned off last week to enable a new US number.

It's taken me almost a week to sort through it with customer service, which leads us nicely to the topic of today's letter: Movement as Growth.

Movement as Growth

If you asked me how I’m doing since moving to the US four weeks ago, you’d get a different answer every day of the week.

Some days I’ve woken up feeling energized and enthusiastic, other days I’ve woken up feeling depleted and raw.

I oscillate between feelings of gratitude and confidence for this adventure we’re on, to straight up anxiety and bewilderment.

All in all, it’s been an exciting—and exhausting—past two weeks.

Despite the challenges, I'm slowly recognizing that this is the process of growth.

I've moved countries before, and it's been easy to see the benefits of those transitions while looking in the rearview mirror. But it's never quite so easy when you're in the middle of it.

Here’s a taste of what we’ve been up to the past few weeks.

• Moved countries
• Set up American phone numbers
• Rented a car (and also failed to rent a car because I picked the wrong dates online)
• Found and joined a coworking space, yoga studio, and gym in Naples
• Delivered Make Time workshops to clients in NYC, France, and Sweden
• Went to Park City, Utah for a family trip
• Finished training a Make Time facilitator who delivered her debut workshop last week
• Ate a lot of unhealthy American snacks
• Completed the third training module of a new mental resilience program I'm becoming certified to teach called Mixed Mental Arts
• Watched a ton of Florida sunsets :)

And when I saw “we”, I mean that Claire is officially onboard in the business.

As many of you know, Claire quit PwC and joined full-time as a co-founder as of February 1st.

Since Feb 2020, I’ve been mainly running my business as a company-of-one, trading under my own name (www.connorswenson.com) and delivering third-party programs and content like Make Time and Search Inside Yourself.

This year, it’s all about evolving into a fully-fledged company, and I’m pumped to be able to do it alongside my wife and my life partner. She’s running point on our teacher training and a new online course we’re planning to launch this year, plus leading all things finance and operations.

Which brings us back to the idea of movement as growth.

There has been a lot of movement the past few weeks, and much more to come.

We leave for Arizona on Saturday, then a long drive to our final destination of Austin.

In-the-moment, it's not always as fun or cool as it looks on Instagram. But the process of putting yourself into new situations, adapting to unfamiliar circumstances, and navigating unchartered terrain will surely pay us dividends in the long run.

But you don't have to move countries to gain this growth. Maybe you can simply do something uncomfortable this weekend, something new, something out-of-the-ordinary.

Life is as much about embracing the obstacles as it is about overcoming them.

Thanks for reading.