Meet Mario. Retired General Surgeon who loves the Opera.

My front yard is showing off right now. Azaleas in full bloom. Loud. Unapologetic. Impossible to ignore. Every morning I walk outside and think, how in the hell did I get lucky enough to live here? But I’m also aware…this didn’t just happen. Someone planted these decades ago. Someone watered them when they were fragile. Someone got on their hands and knees and pulled weeds when it wasn’t pretty yet—when it didn’t look like much of anything. Long before I ever got here, someone decided this would become something beautiful. Now I get to live in the result of that kind of care. Yesterday, I sat in a room with a group of women I deeply respect. Smart. Capable. Doing work that actually matters. The founder was having a hard day. She’d gotten feedback—harsh, misinformed, maybe not even true—and you could feel it sitting on her. Not because she’s not strong. Not because she’s not clear. But because when you’re building something meaningful—especially something that hasn’t been done before—the noise gets loud. Criticism. Misunderstanding. Loud opinions from people who don’t have context or the back story. And here’s the part nobody tells you: that criticism and misunderstanding is normally proof that you’re onto something BIG. But if you let it it will send you into a spin out of overwhelm. And if you start reacting while you are in a state of overwhelm… while you’re pissed or defensive or shaken by the criticism, chances are you’ll be mad at yourself later Because we aren’t thinking clearly when we are experiencing big emotions. The overwhelmed version of ourselves shouldn’t run our life, ever. You tighten instead of trust. You focus on things you don’t want to grow. I told her something I’ve had to learn the hard way: You’re watering weeds. You’re giving your resources: attention, focus, words to the things you don’t want to grow. And the problem is—not all weeds look like weeds at first. Some look like urgency. Some look like responsibility. Some look like you wanting to justify your position to the people who misunderstand your intentions. So you start watering weeds instead of watering the seeds of impact you’ve planted. The weeds are distractions from your purpose. Because when you’re in the middle of building something big, you can’t always see clearly what’s a weed and what will be a flower. That’s why you need people. People who will hold up a mirror and say, hey—this right here? this isn’t where your energy goes. They can protect you from the things that feel overwhelming and distract you from the best next step. Your energy is the water. Your attention is the water. Your time is the water. Your voice, your strategy, your resources—that’s all water. And whatever you water will grow. The weeds will always grow faster. More urgent. More everywhere than they actually are. That’s how we’re wired. Our brains are trained to fix what’s wrong before we nurture what’s right. But if you don’t interrupt that pattern, you will spend your life growing things you never wanted. In that room, something shifted. You could feel it. Not because the problems or distractions disappeared. But because she realized she’d been pouring into the wrong places. Not out of failure—out of fatigue. And clarity doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from stepping back long enough to gain clarity. So maybe the most strategic thing you can do right now isn’t do more. It’s pause. It’s create space. It’s ask yourself, honestly— what am I watering? Because you don’t get both. You don’t get to water the weeds and expect a flower garden. And the truth is, most of us aren’t stuck because we’re incapable. We’re stuck because we’re exhausted from growing the wrong things.