INNER
Introducing TEAM
Every structure is built from resources. In the Sovereign Operating System, there are five.
Time. Where your hours actually go, not where you intend for
them to go.
Energy. What you have available, and what depletes it versus replenishes it.
Attention. What you are actually focused on, moment to moment, regardless of what is on your calendar.
Money. Where your financial resources flow, and what that flow says about your real priorities.
Movement. Your body, your physical environment, and the literal
motion of your daily life.
These five resources are your TEAM. They are not separate categories you manage independently. They are the actual material your structure is built from. Every commitment you hold, every habit you maintain, every relationship you invest in is drawing from this TEAM.
The question this month is simple, even if the answer requires honesty.
Is your TEAM currently building a structure with integrity? Or is it being spent on a design that no longer matches who you declared yourself to be?
KNOWING
The connection between your essence and your actual existence.
What's my truth?
I am healthy and I'm 25lbs heavier than my normal weight.
I am joyful and I feel an urgency to build security.
I am excited and I feel very uncertain about the next 3-6 months.
I have a beautiful home and I want my home office to have windows - it's in the basement... today.
I am wealthy and my business is not generating an acceptable ROI.
Notice I didn't say "but" or "because".
I'm practicing telling myself the truth everywhere and letting go of rationalizing and justifying. I'm simply saying what's so and seeing what opens up for my quality of life.
So...what is true for you?
There is a question I keep coming back to.
opening letter
Who am I...truly?
Right now, in my actual life. In the way I show up in the morning. In the way I talk about my work, my relationships, my body, my capacity. In the things I say without question because I have said them so many times they stopped being examined and just became... the way things are.
What am I holding to be true right now — and is it actually true?
That is the thing about truth. We treat it like something that happens to us and like it is out there, automatic, fixed, or waiting to be discovered. But the truth we are living by is what we rarely even see. Consciously or not, we're living from our experiences, our conclusions, our stories, our inherited beliefs, and the things we decided about ourselves somewhere along the way. We are choosing to live by a set of internal "truths" we've likely never even explored, much less questioned.
And that is exactly where the challenges in our life, live.
Does it resonate as real, or does it just feel familiar? Because familiar and true are not the same thing.
Because if what I "hold to be true" shapes how I see everything — myself, other people, my work, my life — then I need to know whether what I am holding is actually holding up. Does it show up consistently? Does it hold across the different areas of my life? Is there evidence for it? Does it resonate as real, or does it just feel familiar, because familiar and true are not the same thing.
This issue is an invitation to look at it all. To take honest account of the truths you are operating from and see them clearly. Some of them will hold up. Some of them will surprise you. And some of them, when you look closely, you will realize you are ready to release.
The most powerful thing a sovereign person can do is tell yourself the truth.
Let’s start there.
The Weight of the Truth
essay
There is a difference between what you hold to be true and what is actually true.
What you hold to be true are actually your beliefs. It's what you say about yourself, your life, the people around you, and what is possible. It may have come from experience, from what someone told you, or from a conclusion you drew in a moment that has long since passed. You carry it and operate from it. And in the absence of examination, it functions as truth.
But truth is something more specific. Truth is what holds up. It is accurate and congruent — across what resonates, what the evidence shows, and what reality confirms — without contradiction. It does not shift depending on who is watching or what you want to be the case. It is consistent. It stands up.
Gravity is gravity. It pulls and attracts, no matter what. Gravity is the truth.
Most of us are operating from a set of beliefs we accepted a long time ago. About who we are. What we are capable of. How life works and what is available to us. We took those things on — from experience, from other people, or from the stories we've created, and somewhere along the way they became the lens through which we see and live. These beliefs stopped being examined and started being assumed.
But are they true? What resonance, evidence, and agreement, without contradiction – do you have over time to know?
There is a phrase that my partner repeats: "there is a lie in the middle of every beLIEf." This is not to say that your beliefs are wrong, but belief does not require accuracy or congruency to exist. You can believe something that was never true. Case in point, at one point in history, people believed the world was flat. You can believe something that was true once and has since changed. You can believe something that was someone else’s truth entirely and absorb it as your own. Belief persists whether or not it holds up. Truth requires that it does.
The space between belief and truth is where growth and life resides. This is the gap between what has been driving you and what is actually so. And this gap is where you can lose the connection between who we're being and the life you're actually living. When you don't understand why certain things in your life look and feel the way they do, take the case that there's a truth you're not seeing.
When you operate in truth, you operate in sovereignty and with the power to make things real. Once you can see the gap between you and the truth, you have a choice. You can update your programming. You can release false beliefs. You can build on what genuinely holds up and stop spending energy defending what does not.
Because your beliefs about your own ability and possibility is the determining factor of what you do, and therefore what you have (Carol Dweck). So, is what you believe actually true?
The question this issue asks is not what you believe. It is what is actually true. And whether you are willing to find out.
THE FALL SHIFT
The Sovereign Life
LIVE >
FUEL >
READ >
LISTEN >
MOVE >
Pan Seared Ribeye
FUEL
- Bring the steaks to room temperature for about 30 minutes. Pat them very dry with paper towels.
- Season both sides generously with salt, black pepper, a little "Slap Yo Mama" creole seasoning, and a course steak rub.
- Heat a heavy cast-iron skillet over high heat until extremely hot. Add the olive oil.
- Place the ribeye in the pan. Sear for about 3–4 minutes without moving it, until a deep brown crust develops.
- Flip the steak and sear the other side for another 3–4 minutes.
- Reduce the heat to medium. Add the butter, garlic, rosemary and thyme.
- Once the butter melts, tilt the pan slightly and repeatedly spoon the hot garlic butter over the steak for 1–2 minutes. This is what gives it the glossy finish shown in the video.
- Remove the steak a few degrees before your target because it will continue cooking while resting.
- Transfer the steaks to a cutting board and spoon some of the garlic-herb butter over them.
- Rest for 5–10 minutes before slicing.
- Finish with chopped parsley and a little more black pepper.
The perfectly cooked steak. This meal requires nothing extra. It is exactly what it is, and it is enough. That is a kind of truth too.
- 2 thick-cut ribeye steaks, about 3–4 cm thick
- 1½ tsp course kosher salt
- 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- 5–6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 3–4 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 tsp chopped fresh parsley
The beprint
read / watch / play
My Q4 BEprint is LIT! I'm blueprinting who I am being, what I am enjoying, and what I am committing to for the last quarter of the year.
My goal is breaking through the physical block in my business and my body, flexing with pride, and witnessing my people grow and expand their level of capacity and consciousness.
My game is Enjoying the Fruit!
I've sown, watered, and cultivated...and now I'm harvesting, enjoying, and celebrating. It's time to acknowledge and appreciate how my devotion to practicing internal sovereignty has created a life of abundance.
My player is As Is.
That's how you gon' get all of this Life Changing Love this season and how I'm showing up in my game.
LISTEN/WRITE
Guy Ritchie's
The Gentlemen
Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen on Netflix is a fun watch. It's like a Kingsman version of Power. I didn't see the original movie, so I checked out the trailer. Both have great casting, but the show seems less gray and more a bit more fun.
The lead character Eddie, is trying to save his newly inherited family estate but the more he tries, the deeper he sinks into the criminal world that's literally been undermining it.
After his father passed, Eddie found out that his father was renting out an underground space on their property to cannibus dealers. Add to that a reckless sibling, a host of quirky characters....oh and Giancarlo Esposito, and you've got an enjoyable and entertaining series.
My daily flow
move
I created a well-being dashboard that I move through every day. I'm using it as accountability for my nutrition, movement, menopause symptoms, hydration, and a little daily reflection.
My body is a system and I am paying attention to it like one. Before this, you couldn't tell me that I didn't eat healthy, but when I started tracking and reviewing it the data showed me something different.
I thought my vegan protein and fiber shake with coconut milk was perfect, until I saw that it took up more than 1/3 of my fat count by 9am everyday.
This is the kind of truth that's necessary if I truly want the result, so I'm committed to it.
Giants vs commanders game
Last weekend we hit the Giants vs Commanders game. It poured raining and we had a blast!! When your teenage son requests a family activity, you say yes...even when a post hurricane downpour is in the forecast. So we went to Dick's Sporting Goods on Saturday night for gear and we came back ready for the rain.
The game was nonstop excitement all the way into overtime. At one point we were having so much fun, Calvin suggested going to the Raven's game later that night. The Fam was all in until we found out it was in Atlanta. That said, we got home around 6p and everybody was sleep by 8p. The rain, the cheering, and standing for 5 hours beat us down in the best way.
We would've never made it through that Raven's game, lol...But a good time was had by all!
LIVE
What Is the Truth?
We make it complicated because we confuse it with opinion, perspective, and belief — all of which can feel true without actually being so.
Here is the simplest way I know to say it.
Truth is what holds up. It is accurate and congruent across three dimensions: what resonates, what the evidence shows, and what has agreement. And it holds up across all three without contradiction. Remove one of those and you may have a feeling, an observation, or group think — but you do not yet have truth. All three, consistently, without contradiction — that is the closest we get to truth.
Resonance is what you feel in your spirit when something vibrates and registers in your being. When the hair on your skin stands up. It is the internal knowing that precedes explanation. You have experienced this. You walk into a room and something feels off before anyone has said a word. You hear someone speak and something in you recognizes what they are saying as true before your mind has finished processing it. Resonance is a real signal. And while I have found it to be closest to pure truth, it is also the first one to get overridden by what we want to be true.
Evidence is what you can observe. It is the pattern that shows up across time and circumstance. It is behavior repeated. Results produced. The way something consistently shows up in the world, independent of what anyone says about it. Evidence does not require a laboratory. It requires honest observation.
Agreement is what confirms and makes something show up in reality. It is what others can see, acknowledge, and corroborate. It is the moment where your internal experience and the external world align — where what you know to be true is also visible and verifiable to someone outside of you.
Does it resonate, is there consistent evidence, and would others agree?
When something holds across all three, you are standing on truth. When it holds across one or two, but falls apart at the third, there is something worth examining.
The mechanism that makes this examination possible is accountability. It is not fault, blame, or shame. It is the ability to take clear, honest account of what is actually happening and what is not. Accountability is the practice of truth. It is how you close the gap between what you say is so and what is actually so. It's where we can explore, question, challenge and ultimately grow and expand into the truth of our life experience.
Hold this lens for yourself and the people in your life. Hold it for the circumstances, events, and stories you have been carrying as facts. Apply the three dimensions, see what stands up and what does not.
Use it to see the truth to cut out the unnecessary effort, drama, and time between you and the quality and results of life you desire.
essay
Your Spirit Knows Best
FROM THE FOUNDER
I spent a long time being very good at things that were not actually good for me.
I was good at performing competence in boardrooms that aggravated every nerve in my body. I was good at considering and doing for others with no reciprocation or support. I was good at running operations without any structures or advocacy. And because I was good at it, because the results were visible and the feedback was positive, I assumed this life was my truth.
Great results can exist on top of a false premise. I produced a family, resume, body, home, car, etc. that 99% of people would agree to as successful. I was also exhausted, unfulfilled, and sick, which is absolutely unsuccessful to me. You can produce outcomes and still be operating from something that is not true. And when this happens, the outcomes cost you more — more energy, more friction, and more of the low-grade exhaustion that comes from living slightly sideways from yourself.
My mother used to say "Everybody in America knows xyz..." and it would piss me off so bad
Something in me knew then, that even "Everybody in America" knowing something or agreeing to it didn't make it true.
The truth was right there all around me. I was initiating and driving every activity in my relationship and I delivered results above and beyond my colleagues, in return for delayed and denied recognition. These things weren't happening to me. These were choices I was making showing up as clear data in the three dimensions of truth. I avoided seeing it because it was pointing at something I was unwilling to look at directly. The truth was, I valued external acceptance and approval more than my own.
Then someone I respected said to me "You are one of the most resilient people I know", and it resonated at my core. I chose not only to agree with them, but to show up aligned until it was true. That was the trifecta that brought me true success - resonance, agreement, and the evidence that I created.
Turns out, that belief of working twice as hard for half as much was not true. It actually didn't even resonate when I got quiet enough to feel it. The evidence, when I looked at it honestly, pointed to a completely different truth...that my best and biggest successes chased me down whenever I focused on few simple things, one step at a time. So that's what I did. I called the therapist and showed up for the appointments. I exercised every day. I cooked healthy food and packed my lunch. I set up a lighter schedule with time for family, for friends, and time for myself regularly.
"I am resilient", it resonated as true so I operated accordingly.
My accountability made true success available to me. Taking honest account of what was actually there, without the story around it. Simply: what is happening, and what does it tell me? What I found when I looked was not shameful. It was just true. And truth, even when it is uncomfortable at first, is always easier to work with than a fiction you have to keep maintaining.
Your life is telling you something right now. In the places that feel heavier than they should. In the undesired results that keep repeating. In the relationships that drain more than they give. In the version of yourself you show to certain rooms.
Are you ready to account for what it is saying?
I was deeply drained and I knew things were rough.
Unfortunately, I didn't change anything until my despair became so undeniable that my brain couldn't justify or rationalize it away.
Before that, my brain could argue either way about the evidence and agreement of my success. Think about it. Depending on how you look at it, was I desperate or passionate? Was I simply working twice as hard for half as much, like the "truth" I had always been taught? Is a family, house, money, etc success?
My deeply drained spirit knew the truth, but my brain chose to override it and believe in what the external world agreed to as the standard and requirements of success.
stop.
You have the lens now. Here is how to use it.
There are three places your truths are producing your life right now: how you see yourself, how you see the people in your life, and how you see the circumstances and events of your life. Each one is worth looking at directly.
The Truth About You
Start here, because everything else flows from it.
What do you hold to be true about who you are? About what you are capable of, what you deserve, what you are built for, how much you can handle, what kind of person you are in relationships, in work, under pressure?
Now run it through the three dimensions.
Does it resonate when you get quiet? Is there consistent evidence for it in your actual results and patterns over time? Would the people who know you most honestly agree?
Some of what you find will be solid. Name it. Own it. Build on it consciously. And some of what you find will be something you absorbed somewhere as a conclusion from an old experience or someone else’s assessment that you took on without questioning it. That is worth knowing too.
The Truth About the People in Your Life
We form truths about people quickly and carry them long after the evidence has shifted.
Who are the people in your life, and what do you hold to be true about them? Think about the person you find most difficult. The one you trust most. The one you have a complicated history with. The one you have written off. The one you have put on a pedestal.
Now look at the evidence. Is the person you are relating to right now the person who actually exists, or are you relating to a truth you formed about them in a different season? People change. Truths need updating.
Apply the three dimensions to the most important relationships in your life and see what is actually there versus how you've been carrying it.
The Truth About Your Life
The circumstances, events, and areas of your life — your work, your finances, your health, your home, your daily experience — are all producing data about what you hold to be true.
Where are the results congruent with what you say you want? Where is there persistent friction or repeated patterns that have never fully resolved? Where are you working hard and still not moving?
Those patterns are not random. They are the three dimensions of truth pointing at something. The evidence is in the results. The resonance is in how those areas feel when you are honest. The agreement is in what the people closest to you would observe if they were looking clearly.
What is your life actually telling you about the truths you are operating from?
Take your time with this. Let the answers emerge, don't force them or "think" them up. Sit with the questions. Let them work on you. And then bring what you find to the worksheet.
SEE.
Live True
Truth is the most sovereign thing you can own.
Everything else in your life — your results, your relationships, your sense of self, the quality of your daily experience — is downstream of what you are holding as true. Which means the moment you tell the truth about what is actually there, you get your power back. You stop fighting reality and start working with it. You stop maintaining fiction and start building on solid ground.
That is not a small thing.
Most people spend their entire lives operating from truths they never examined — inherited ones, absorbed ones, ones that were handed to them in a moment that is long past and have never been questioned since. They produce outcomes and wonder why the outcomes feel empty, or they work hard and wonder why the effort never quite compounds into the life they imagined. The gap between where they are and where they want to be is almost always a truth that needs updating.
You are doing something different.
You are looking. You are taking account. You are willing to sit with the three dimensions and let them show you what is actually so — about yourself, about the people in your life, about the circumstances you have been carrying as fixed when they were always just your interpretation.
That willingness is sovereignty in practice.
Go into this month with your eyes open. Let your spirit lead with resonance. Let your honest observation gather the evidence. Let reality confirm what is true. And where you find the gap, between what you have been holding and what actually holds up, meet it with accountability, not judgment.
That is where your next truth gets built.
Love you deep!