Every founder I know makes some version of this bargain:

I’ll feel good when I hit the number. I’ll relax when the deal closes. I’ll rest when the team is solid. I’ll stop pushing when I’m sure it’ll work.

But we’re not just postponing feeling good.

We’re also practicing a way of being.

What You Practice

If I spend decades stressed, anxious, and controlling, I don’t become peaceful the day a number appears in my bank account.

I become what I practice, even if I’m practicing something I don’t actually want.

I achieved many of the external results I worked for, but they came with a price. 

I became someone who felt guilty when she wasn’t working. 

Someone who couldn’t tell the difference between commitment and compulsion, even when it came to something simple like a garden or a dinner party.

I became wealthier and still didn’t feel secure. I finally had free time, yet I couldn’t relax. 

I got the outcomes, but not the feelings I thought would come with them.

The Price of Getting There

I assumed success required working too much, worrying too much, missing things I wanted to do, and feeling like there was never enough time.

I told myself the sacrifice was temporary. The vacations I didn’t take. The holidays with my phone glued to my ear and my place at the table empty.

Temporary lasted almost 20 years.

What I didn’t see was that the more I sacrificed for the future, the more I needed that future to justify the sacrifice. I had given up too much for it not to work.

And that made me tighten my grip even more.

I pushed and tried to force things because I needed to make sure all those sacrifices paid off.

I treated the life I was actually living like something I just had to get through.

I kept thinking my real life would start later. But all those years I was trying to get through were my life.

Almost everything I was working for could be created again. More money. Another opportunity. Another business.

But not those 20 years.

You don’t have to take that long to realize what you’re practicing.

Notice the feelings you experience most often. They’ll tell you.

What I Practice Now

I’m looking forward to the next 20 years. And this time, I’m living them, not just trying to get through them.

I still care deeply about doing meaningful work.

I also care about the person I’m becoming while I do it.

If I want to enjoy my life, I have to practice enjoying it now.

For me, that means stopping work when there’s still more I could do. 

Letting something remain unresolved overnight. 

Taking a walk without turning it into thinking time. 

Being at dinner instead of mentally somewhere else.

These ordinary moments are the practice.

And I’m more careful about what I practice now.