Happy JULY & thank you for opening the first #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter in just over a year!

Missed me? I sure have missed you. It’s been a whole year without this medium of reflection for myself, and while I’ve made it through relatively okay, I definitely look back at the past 12 months with a bit of regret and even grief at the stories that could have been but never were.

Lots has happened in the past year though, like Sweat & Salty Run Club hosting our first international run in NYC, and me passing 10K followers on my personal Instagram PLUS landing a bunch of brand deals in the process, making this journey all the more fulfilling.

But let’s jump right into what’s on my heart that brought me back to you today. 👉️ 

Do you actively close tabs on your internet browser?

If you take a look at my laptop right now, I have over 50 tabs open on Google Chrome. Every time I open my laptop, I have at least 5 different topics and 5 different sub-topics staring at me, and honestly, I get lost trying to find things sometimes.

What’s worse is that sometimes my laptop will reset and then Chrome will ask me if I want to “RE-LoAd TAbS fRoM mY LAsT sEsSiOn” and instead of starting over from scratch, here comes all of the fluff from the last time I was on my laptop - despite the universe blatantly trying to give me the chance to clear my plate for once.

All the times that I’ve actually decided to start my browser over from scratch, I’ve actually felt a real sense of calm as I get to gradually ease back into the chaos rather than be thrown back into it all at once. And of course, you know me - I found a teachable moment there.

Your energy is limited, despite having infinite destinations

Obviously I keep the tabs open so that I can return to them later, but the truth is that a lot of them don’t get returned to, and if they do, it’s weeks later and I realized that what’s in them wasn’t actually that important.

I keep things open like websites I want to visit, things I want to buy, documents I don’t want to have to search for again, or videos that I want to come back to later, and all it does in reality is make me feel like I’m going insane. 🤯 

When I get into Chrome, the thoughts go left, right and center and I can’t focus on what I actually opened my laptop to do. There’s so many things coming at me at one time, and so many places that seemingly require my attention that — at the end of it all — nothing really gets done.

I’ll scroll the Nike website for a minute, then remember that I wanted to watch Bad Bunny's Tiny Desk again, then go into meeting minutes that I was supposed to review, and then over to Canva to edit a graphic. 5 minutes on each, rather than 20 minutes on one, and so nothing actually got meaningful attention.

Your energy in life functions the same way as your attention. It can go to so many places, but it has its limits. Sure, you can do multiple things, but do too many things at a time, and you’ll quickly realize that you’re burnt out and have no energy to do others. We can try, but we can’t do it all.

Close the tabs in real life. Pick a task and do it.

While it might seem like this article is about the downsides of multi-tasking, it’s not. I more wanted to discuss the downside of yes, doing too much at one time, but on a larger scale.

On a personal level, I oftentimes think I do way too much. I work full-time, create content, manage a community run club, play steelpan professionally etc. etc. all while also going out and trying to have a social life and nurture friendships. It’s funny because I thought I was doing it all and balancing it all really well, but in retrospect I haven’t played my steelpan in a couple weeks now. More than that, it’s hard to go out on a Friday night when I have to host a run early Saturday morning. It’s hard to dive head first into content creation (that oftentimes requires daytime shoots) while working a full-time job.

I’ve had success in each of these areas, yes, but not as much success as I know I could have had if I devoted all my energy to one or the other rather than try to nurture every single one at the same time.

So a lesson I’m learning is to listen to my mind and my body as to when I’m doing too much and when something has to give, because the truth is that something will give, whether it’s what you decide to let go of, or what buckles and goes on its own under the pressure.

Conclusion

Now I’m not saying that you can’t do more than one thing in your life. The concept of a “multipotentialite” is very real and I also think very possible. However, what’s increasingly hard to do, is to do everything at the same time.

You don’t have to be writing a book at the same time you’re training for your first marathon or starting up at the gym while you’re applying to your next job. I’m learning to give things in life space, and give each pursuit its own season.

For me, music had a huge season in my life during the pandemic, and I’m sure will return at some point, but it has unfortunately taken a back seat to an extent for right now. And that’s a reality that happened without my consent. Writing this newsletter has taken a back seat too. But these things taking a back seat gave space for a beautiful community of runners in Jamaica to take shape. And it’s also given space for my thriving lifestyle social media presence to emerge with @thelifeofjlowe as well.

More than allowing things to have their season, though, I think my main lesson in closing my tabs is to not beat myself up for pursuing a certain endeavour at a given point in time, and to allow myself to remember that though one passion of mine may be in its season now, it doesn’t mean that another passion is any less of my identity or any less important to me as a person either.

It’s allowing myself to remember that there’s power in being able to close the tabs and clear my headspace to focus on something at a specific moment in time. And the beauty in it is that not only do you get clarity and the ability to thrive in your current pursuit, but closing a tab doesn’t mean it has to stay closed forever.

You can always re-open closed tabs. Focus doesn’t have to mean deletion of other passions or ideas. It just means channeling your energy to what’s important to you right here and right now, and giving your all to something in front of you, knowing that your energy is finite, and that it will be given to other things that are important to you in due time too.

So do yourself a favour. Close some tabs.

Until next time,

Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Did you realize that you didn’t receive my newsletter this morning? Maybe so, maybe not - but I decided that I’d send this week’s newsletter at 9:00 PM instead, just to run a little thought experiment.

Even if you’re a routine reader of my newsletter like quite a few of you have told me you are, you probably still didn’t notice that you didn’t receive the newsletter at 9:00 AM today. Maybe you thought it went to spam, or you just didn’t get it, but I’m curious whether you felt like it was missing from your routine.

In any case, the point of the thought experiment is simple: there are things in our life that we take for granted — often times things that are done by other people — and we only recognize that they’re a part of our own routine when they’re gone or not there anymore.

Building Routine in a Community

There are personal routines in our lives that are fully dependent on ourselves, such as waking up in the morning and brushing your teeth or making yourself a cup of coffee in the mornings.

But then, there are also those routines that depend on other people.

Maybe it’s going to the same breakfast sandwich stand on the side of the street for a croissant every morning and saying hello to the chef who knows your name and order by heart (this was my own routine when I worked in Manhattan), or maybe it’s having the garbage in your office taken out by the same lady every morning at the same time.

It could even be as simple as saying “good morning” to the same co-workers everyday, or even just driving past someone who you never speak to but they’re always there on your way to work.

There’s things we get used to happening around us that are being done by the people around us. There’s a routine that we get used to subconsciously, because of the community in which we live.

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Appreciating the community routine

As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, however, you probably don’t notice the roles that other people play in your own life’s routine until they’re gone. You don’t fully recognize how important a person is in your life — whether or not you even interact with them — until there’s some absence of that person for whatever reason (maybe they’re on vacation or moved somewhere else).

So in the same way that maybe you didn’t recognize that my newsletter is a part of your routine until it’s not in your inbox at 9:00 AM on a Sunday, there’s other things in your life that are curated by people who put them there unbeknownst to you too.

Think about how you go about your day, and I bet you can find at least one person that makes up a part of your routine.

When you think about this person, if it’s someone you interact with, the next time you see them during your routine, acknowledge (whether to yourself or outwardly to them) that you appreciate their role in your life’s routine. The intertwining of our daily lives and daily routines in community is something that I think is incredibly powerful in social connections for humans.

Acknowledging it makes you appreciate that there’s some beauty in the way your routine is intertwined with someone else’s.

You’re Part of Someone Else’s Routine, Too

We spend so much time trying to optimize our own routines that we forget — we are the routine for someone else. You might be the person someone sees every day on their commute. You might be the first reply someone gets on their weekly post. You might be the person who always holds the door, always nods hello, always remembers their name.

And they notice.

Even if you never hear it, even if they never say anything, your presence offers predictability in a world that often feels chaotic. You become a fixed point in someone else’s orbit. A sign that things are moving the way they’re supposed to. That there’s order. That someone is showing up — even if it’s just by standing in line at the same time, in the same place, with the same expression.

And the truth is: you don’t need to do anything dramatic to matter. You just have to be there.

That’s what community often looks like.
Not grand gestures — just consistent ones.

The Beauty of Unspoken Community

There’s something beautiful about the quiet, unspoken rhythm that develops between people who simply show up in the same spaces, day after day. These aren’t necessarily your close friends. You may not even know their names. But their presence becomes part of the background music of your life.

It’s the guy who runs past you every morning on your jog — the one who gives a half-nod but never says anything. It’s the woman who walks her dog past your building like clockwork. The couple who always arrives 10 minutes late to the workout class.

You don’t know them. But you do.

And when they’re not there, it feels like something is slightly off. Like the timing of the world is just a little bit out of sync. That’s the power of quiet community. Of social connection without conversation. Of sharing space and time, and unknowingly anchoring one another.

It’s easy to take that for granted — until it’s disrupted.

Conclusion

The routines that connect us — the ones built silently, over time, by people simply showing up — are one of the most underrated forms of human connection. They don’t ask for attention. They don’t require deep conversation. But they create rhythm, safety, and structure in a world that can feel anything but.

And the wild part is: we’re all building that for someone else, just by being who we are, where we are, with some regularity and care.

So if you take anything from this week’s letter, let it be this:
Even your smallest patterns matter.
Even your unnoticed consistency might be holding something up for someone else.
And that’s not a burden — it’s a quiet kind of privilege.

We don’t always know the roles we play in other people’s lives.
But we’re playing them, every day.

Acknowledge other’s roles in your life where you can, and know that you matter to the fine fabric holding up this world too.

Until next Sunday,
Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there reading today too!

This week, I’ve been thinking about how slow real change can feel. We often expect progress to look like a straight line — quick, measurable, and satisfying. But most of the time, it’s a slow climb. Barely visible. Quiet. Even frustrating.

And yet, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

The Illusion of Quick Change

We live in a world that rewards speed — fast money, instant results, same-day delivery. If you can’t see something change immediately, you start to question whether it’s working at all.

But the truth is: most meaningful change happens in silence.

• The entrepreneur grinding for 3 years before their business catches fire.

• The person working out 4x a week for 8 months before seeing visible abs.

• The writer showing up every day writing a book that feels impossible to finish.

We love overnight success stories, but we rarely look at the months — sometimes years — of effort that came before the “big break.”

And I’ll be honest: I’ve fallen into that trap too. Expecting quick results. Getting discouraged when I don’t see them. Wondering if I’m even moving in the right direction.

But here’s what I’ve learned: if you’re only chasing fast change, you’re not giving yourself the gift of deep change.

Small Steps That Don’t Feel Like Progress (But Are)

Sometimes you’re in a season where you’re doing everything right — you’re showing up, putting in the work, being intentional — but nothing is moving on the surface. It feels like you’re stuck.

But a lot of growth happens underground, like roots forming before a plant breaks through the soil.

In my own life, some of the biggest breakthroughs came months after I made the decision to start something. Not immediately. Not when I wanted. But when I was ready — and when the timing was right.

Why Patience Is an Underrated Superpower

In a world built for speed, patience is rebellious.

When you’re patient:

• You stop rushing decisions and start making better ones.

• You stop comparing your timeline to others and focus on your own.

• You start trusting your process — even when it’s not performing yet.

Patience isn’t just waiting. It’s how you wait.

It’s the mindset of trusting that the seed you planted will grow — not because you’re forcing it, but because you’re watering it, tending to it, and giving it space to rise.

It’s active. It’s powerful. It’s hard.

But it’s also what separates people who burn out from people who build something real.

What patience looks like in real life:

• Releasing your 4th product or project even if the last 3 didn’t “take off”

• Continuing your creative work even when it feels like no one is watching

• Saying no to shortcuts in favour of sustainability

• Checking in with yourself regularly without needing instant external feedback

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My Personal Reminder This Week

This week, I caught myself feeling restless.

I looked at some personal goals I set for myself earlier this year — creative, fitness, lifestyle — and realized I was nowhere near where I thought I’d be by now. The voice of impatience started creeping in:

“What are you doing wrong?”
“Why isn’t this moving faster?”
“Should you pivot?”

But instead of acting on that impulse, I paused. I pulled up a journal entry from January and realized: I’ve actually done a lot since then.

It’s just that the changes haven’t finished unfolding yet.

And that’s the reminder I needed: change is happening, even if I can’t always measure it by the week.

The Compound Effect of Patience

If you’re feeling stuck or behind, ask yourself this:

Because the people who stick with it — through the slow seasons, the quiet weeks, the awkward beginnings — they’re the ones who wake up one day and realize they’ve built something meaningful.

Momentum builds slowly.
Breakthroughs happen suddenly.

But both are connected by one thing: patience.

Conclusion

So, here’s the truth:

Change is happening. It’s just slow. And slow doesn’t mean broken.

It means real.

Stay patient with your path, even if it doesn’t look like progress yet.

Keep watering your goals. Keep trusting your process. Keep showing up for the future version of yourself — the one who will thank you for not giving up too soon.

Because the truth is:

Until next Sunday,
Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

What if I stopped writing this newsletter? What if it grew exponentially?

What if I took that risk on myself? What if everything goes wrong? What if everything goes right?

The Power we give “What if”

Too often, we take the question of “What if?” and give it too much power. The hypotheticals cause paralysis.

I’ve been doing some introspection recently to understand what it is that makes me consistently ask the question “what if?” and also reflecting on whether or not I’m asking the right kind of “what if?“.

There’s a “what if?” that paralyzes you because you overthink and come up with all the reasons why not to do something, but there’s also the alternative of asking “what if” as an optimist. The amount of power and energy you give to either alternative determines the decision that you make in your life.

For me, it doesn’t mean not asking the question, but it means ensuring that I’m always asking myself both in a balanced way. If you fail to do that, you’ll end up overthinking yourself either into a rut or into an unrealistic version of reality.

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The Danger of “What If?”

The Danger of “What If?” — and the Power of Optimism

The danger isn’t in asking “What if?” itself — it’s in letting it control your story with fear and doubt. When “what if” becomes a source of worry, it traps you in hesitation and keeps you from moving forward.

But here’s the flip side: “What if?” can also be a powerful tool for optimism and growth. The same question that scares you can also inspire you.

Ask yourself:

• What if this actually works out better than I imagine?

• What if I surprise myself and succeed?

• What if this challenge opens a door I never expected?

That optimistic spin on “what if” can motivate you to take chances, explore possibilities, and expand your horizons.

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Balancing the Two

For me, it’s not about ignoring the scary “what ifs” — those are real and deserve attention. But it’s about balancing them with hopeful “what ifs” that push me toward action instead of paralysis.

If you only listen to the fearful “what if,” you’ll stay stuck. But if you also ask the optimistic “what if,” you invite new opportunities and growth.

Taking the Leap

Growth happens when you lean into uncertainty, even when “what if” makes you nervous. The question is: which “what if” will you give more power to?

So this week, I challenge you to notice your “what if” moments — and try flipping them into optimistic possibilities. Let your “what if” inspire you to take the leap instead of holding you back.

Conclusion

“What if” is a powerful question. It can either paralyze you with fear or propel you forward with hope. The choice is yours.

Next time you feel stuck, ask: Is this “what if” helping me grow, or keeping me small?

Because sometimes, the best “what if” is the one that changes everything.

Until next Sunday,
Justin

Happy Sunday and HAPPY JUNE! 😯 Wake up - it’s the first of the month! (iykyk)

It’s a beautiful day here in Jamaica, and this morning my run club joined a local gym for a 5K, which has me so grateful for the ability to build community and bring people together through fitness and wellness.

This past month was also a big month for a lot of people because it was graduation season, which means the end of one chapter and the start of another — my own little brother included. Although the commencement ceremonies are long, I enjoy the atmosphere being surrounded by people about to step into their next chapter of life because it forces them to be reflective.

As a very reflective person myself, listening to speakers and hearing people’s plans for their lives post-college is inspiring because you can tell that they’re delving into an unknown which is scary but also exciting.

Even the graduation Instagram posts that I see are inspiring, because oftentimes the captions are filled with gratitude from the graduates sharing their growth between the years that they were in college, from when they started to where they are now.

What’s on your map?

Speaking of Instagram captions, I read one the other day in which a graduate thanked her university for turning the little dots and shapes on the world map into countries because of the diverse people that she met from all over the world, from countries she had never even heard of.

You know me, when I like something - I write it down.

And you better bet I wrote that down. ✍️ 

For me, though, what stood out wasn’t just that being in a community of people from all over the world was important to her, but more so the fact that she called the map little dots and shapes.

When I thought about that, I recognized two things:
1. My world geography could use some work 😅 
2. There’s still a bunch of little dots and shapes on my world map 🤔 

By #2 I mean that there’s a bunch of places in the world that I don’t know anything about. They’re really and truly just shapes on a map, probably with names I can’t pronounce, and it’s so cool that there’s whole communities of people that live there with cultures that I haven’t experienced that are completely different from my own.

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This isn’t only about the world map…

I saw a statistic yesterday that was a little jarring:

2-4% of the GLOBAL population flies INTERNATIONALLY each year.

Of course I know that travelling is an incredible privilege, but that percentage was a bit shocking, because that means that 96% of the world won’t leave their home country in a given year, and about 80% of the world has never flown — which doesn’t mean they haven’t travelled internationally but it does mean they have never gone from one hemisphere to the other, which is where you would find that stark difference in cultures.

For me, it put into perspective the reality that if for me — someone who has travelled quite a bit in my short time on earth — there are still so many little dots and shapes, for the average person on the globe, there must be so many more dots and shapes on the map!

But as I said above, this isn’t just about the map. 

This is also about opportunities, knowing what you’re capable of as a human and pushing the real upper limit of your human experience.

Most people don’t know how to set a goal that’s truly ambitious, because their ambition may be limited by what’s on their ‘map’.

Expand your ‘map’ and elevate your ambitions

When I started putting together my list of 300 before 30 that I love to talk about, the idea was to list a bunch of things that I wanted to do before I turned 30, some being outlandish or hard to achieve.

I still haven’t even listed 300 things on the list (I have about 170), but most of my list consists of visiting new countries and having new experiences.

However, a lesson that I learnt from compiling that list is that it’s hard to dream big when you don’t know how big your dreams can really get. 

Read that again.

What do I mean?

When I put together the list a few years ago, one of my goals was to reach 10,000 followers on TikTok so that I could monetise. Meaning, I wanted to reach 10,000 followers by the time I turned 30 years old.

I’m 24, and there’s over 42,000 followers on my TikTok. So now I have to push that goal post.

As another example - one of my goals was to get my PADI Open Water Scuba Diving Certification by the time I turned 30. I didn’t know anything about scuba diving, and after getting certified I realized it was something I loved and so I subsequently spent a month in Honduras and became a PADI Divemaster.

With our limited knowledge of the world, it’s hard to dream big. We can only dream within the little dots and shapes that we know on the map.

How can you dream to go to Tuvalu if you didn’t even know it existed?

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Conclusion

As humans, we will always be limited. Whether it’s limited by geography, by our ability to move, by our own knowledge about a certain topic or by other constraints like family, money or whatever it may be —

— the reality is that we’ll always be limited by something.

However, as an exercise for my own personal growth, one of the things I’ve made a habit out of is pushing those limits.

Recognize where there’s a little dot or shape on your map, and do some research. Explore what can be pursued and accomplished in this life, and learn more about things that you’re curious about.

When the adults told you to dream big as a kid, they didn’t realize that how big you can dream is a direct consequence of what you’ve experienced.

They didn’t realize that in order for you to want something, you have to know it exists. 

So dream big. Unlock new places on your own world map, and explore the opportunities that you’re curious about so you can set your goals as big as they can get. Don’t become complacent with your limits.

You can always push them even a little bit further.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Some time last year August, I ordered a limited edition Chronixx vinyl record because he released new renditions of some of my favourite songs only on vinyl. I didn’t even have a record player at the time, and I had no idea what the renditions even sounded like, but something about the possibility of having exclusive access to my favourite artiste’s music compelled me to buy the vinyl on the spot.

Two weeks ago, I finally got a record player to listen to my limited edition Chronology vinyl and it was worth the wait. It was also my first time ever using a record player for myself, and heck is it cool! There’s something about the analog nature of this media form that really intrigues me and makes the music feel more real.

What’s so special about a vinyl record?

Have you ever used a record player before?

It’s pretty fascinating actually — to see how such an old piece of technology has become relevant again in this day and age where we can consume hours and hours of music with just one click (and for a monthly subscription fee less than half the price of a single vinyl record.)

Now having my own record player though, and last week upping my collection to three (3) vinyl records, I get it.

There’s something special about the tangibility of the music that is communicated through purchasing the vinyl. Something about having 4-5 songs on one side of the vinyl record each, and having to be present when listening to the music is also super engaging. There’s something special about having to place and remove the record player needle and flip the vinyl to listen to more songs that makes owning a vinyl record of your favourite album all worth it.

To me, what’s communicated is that there’s something special about having something tangible. Something not only physical, but something also something fragile and permanent, rather than tons of music on a streaming platform.

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Being limited, tangible and permanent make a vinyl special

My options to listen on vinyl are limited to three albums - Chronology by Chronixx, In Search of Zion by Protoje and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Ms. Lauryn Hill.

The first two I’d listened to tons of times before, but if I’m being honest, I hadn’t fully sat down and listened to the third album I listed from start to finish yet. I know most of the songs from the album (as we all subconsciously do, I believe), but I’d never actually given it the time it deserved in a good listening session. Now I have.

And guess what?

On the vinyl cover sleeves, Lauryn Hill printed all the lyrics for each of the songs on the record so you would be able to follow along. Reading all those lyrics as I listened to the songs made me a much more attentive and appreciative audience, and I felt like I was actually appreciating the music.

And before you say it, of course you can do this with digital music. AND, it’s 10x easier to follow along the lyrics tab as you do as well.

But after you listen to that album, it’s done and the next album starts to play.

When the vinyl finishes though, that’s it - silence. You either put down another record or you’ll be listening to the needle scratching.

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What can we takeaway from the vinyl resurgence?

I want to be clear that I don’t say all of this to sound like a music snob or audiophile. I love listening to Spotify music through my earphones and speakers just as much.

However, I do think there’s something to be taken away from this, and that is to remember that music itself is a creative art.

It’s funny how all my newsletters treat with the same underlying topics, but I wrote about this a few weeks ago in a piece called “Sometimes I don’t play music in my Airpods”.

Essentially though, for me, collecting vinyl records breathes new life into music as a creative art, because it has been so commercialised to the point where we often don’t appreciate it for what it really is and can be — a release, a stress-reliever, an emotional experience.

Live music does this same thing for me, but as a musician myself, it’s cool to [finally] encounter another form of music media (not a new form) that allows me to re-connect with music as an art form and not just a hobby.

Conclusion

It’s curious to think about, but when music only existed in analog formats, listening to it was a privilege. You had to have enough money to buy the records or mixtapes from your favourite artistes, and you had to have the device to listen to them too.

Digitisation of music has largely meant the democratization of music too, but to some extent, it has also devalued the art form because of how accessible it has become.

Curiously enough, music isn’t the only thing that’s undergone this process.

For some reason, the more we have access to things, the less we appreciate them. Think about that age-old quote — “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. The less you interact with someone or something, the more you appreciate the times when you do interact with them.

So for me, the takeaway from my record player and vinyls — which in this day and age are now once again becoming a privilege to own — is to reflect on the things in my life that I’m taking for granted by having too much access to.

Whether it’s people in your life, simple comforts in your life like Wi-Fi, streamable music or other forms of media, consider what you have unfettered access to, and consider what your life would be like without it.

Then, just take a small moment to appreciate it, and express your gratitude — especially if it’s a person or relationship. Nothing is really permanent. 😊 

Until next Sunday,
Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

I’m back in Jamaica after celebrating my brother’s graduation in Orlando last weekend, and I’m thinking about how much time has passed since I moved back home last year. Can you believe it’s already been 6 months!

Being back in the US, especially back in Miami and being able to reconnect with friends from my old job, it definitely gave me a reason to reflect on that time in my life when I was about to quit my first job out of college. 

It always feels impossible in the moment

Like many big decisions in life, leaving my first job out of college was something that took a multiplicity of reasons, a lot of going back and forth on, and a lot of courage. It was a decision that took months to make, maybe even years if you consider how I felt during the internship that I got the job offer from, but it was certainly not easy.

In fact, it almost felt impossible.

When I first thought about leaving my job, people made it feel like there was no good reason to — everything was comfortable and I had a great set up in life and I was poised for success. (Well, someone else’s definition of success at least)

It felt like people would talk badly about me (which I’m sure they did, but that’s never stopped me from living my own life), and it felt like I was doing something that was life-altering (which in a sense it was, but in a good way, not the bad way that so many people tried to push upon me).

In the moment, it was one of those challenges that seemed almost insurmountable. How was I going to have the conversation with my boss to tell him I’m outtie? How was I going to take on the criticism I’d face in every conversation about my career after?

Yet I did it.

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It doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

Almost a year later since leaving my first job, and 6 months since moving back to Jamaica, all those feelings have gone away.

I still get questions about my career that are “leading” - meaning I can obviously tell that they’re coming from a place of judgement about my decision to quit a big job at JPMorganChase, but I’ve learnt to deal with those conversations with a response that looks to the future more than to the past.

I look back on the decision that I made, and I recognize that my life has changed drastically and I don’t feel trapped in a toxic work environment anymore, but more so, I now recognize that everyone else has had no choice but to move on too.

What might have seemed like THE forefront topic to talk to me about — “why did you quit?” “what are you going to do with your life now?” — is no longer a topic that people feel compelled to bring up to me, and more importantly, it’s no longer a topic or conversation that I feel compelled to avoid.

Sometimes it was necessary to avoid those conversations because of the headspace that I was in. When you’re at a place in your life when you’re figuring everything out, the last thing you need someone to ask you is whether you’ve figured it out yet.

Life goes on, and that means everyone’s life will

When you face a big decision in your life, a piece of advice you might hear is, “In a couple years all of this won’t even matter anymore”.

In some ways that’s true (however, a lot of the times it will still matter, albeit less so), but the main takeaway from my reflection isn’t necessarily that it doesn’t matter to me anymore, but rather that it doesn’t matter to anyone else anymore .

I think that’s important to clarify, because a big part of the reason why big decisions seem so big and so impossible is because we worry an outsized amount about what other people will think or say about us, and for what the social implications are within your social circles such as your family and friends.

The truth is though, that as much as people will talk, in the grand scheme of things - they don’t really care.

They have their own lives to worry about as you deal with the repercussions of your life decisions, so even though it may seem like people will always talk about you - the reality is that people care a lot less than you think, and here’s the kicker:

You’re the only person that has to live with the decisions that you make in your life.

Of course your decisions may affect other people — which is when you should be cognisant of those outside opinions — but in your heart, when you make a decision, you become responsible for the consequences, and as much as people may empathise with you from an external point of view, you have to be ready to internally and personally cope with the repercussions of any big life decisions that you make, ignoring all outside influences on that decision.

Conclusion

So after reflecting on the time away from my first job, and catching up with friends and past co-workers, my takeaway is that the time from a big decision will pass, and as it passes, the number of people that you have to contend with about your decision will dwindle down to just one — you.

At the end of the day, you’re the only one that you can hold accountable for your own decisions in your life, no matter how you want to push blame onto others or find justification from external sources.

And I’ll add here as a reminder: what you’re not changing in your life, you’re choosing.

So don’t worry about what anyone has to say about what you do with your life. Worry about the stakeholders in your decision, be it your close friends or family, but not the people that you see in passing or that you’re forced to interact with based on circumstance.

Do it for you, because you have to live with the consequences. Nobody else.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms reading today’s newsletter, and especially to my own mummy and grandmas who I’m so incredibly lucky to have around to celebrate them another year. 💝 

Today my (not-so-little) brother also graduates from college (he doesn’t read my newsletter) so congrats to him and to all the other readers out there who are graduating this 2025 grad season too! 🎓

Emotional maturity doesn’t mean emotional immunity

Recently I went on a walk and the quote above came to mind — emotional maturity doesn’t mean emotional immunity.

I talked a bit about something similar in my newsletter a few weeks ago, but didn’t have the words to summarise succinctly exactly what I was feeling. It was this feeling of frustration from being unable to connect your own emotional growth with someone else’s emotional stagnancy, and I discussed ensuring that you only give of yourself to others what they’re ready to receive.

For me, although it’s now pretty self-explanatory, the quote above means that just because you’ve done the work to be able to process your emotions, regulate your emotions and your responses to various emotions, it doesn’t make you immune to actually feeling them.

If someone pisses you off, gets on your nerves or even intentionally tries to provoke you, with a certain level of emotional maturity, you’re able to regulate your response and not lash out, argue or express the reaction that they’re trying to illicit.

You’re able to emotionally regulate yourself in the moment, whether through deep breaths or even just walking away from the situation altogether, but you might not be able to actually get the feeling off your chest right away.

And that’s because you’re not immune to feeling. You’re not immune to your emotions. And you never will be.

It’s not about never getting upset, but rather about handling yourself when you actually do.

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Lack of Emotional Immunity is a Blessing in Disguise

Honestly though, that’s what I think the whole point of emotional intelligence is. It’s to be able to live life and experience every human emotion fully and give each one space. It’s to not live in fear of sadness, anger or grief, but to live in the fullness of our ability to experience those different states of being despite what negative or positive connotations society has placed on them.

When I think about the fact that we’re not immune to our emotions, I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I can be pissed off, annoyed, sad, happy, excited, full of love and everything in between.

I’m grateful too, for the fact that I can learn how to handle each of those emotions and respond to them in a way that doesn’t set me back but helps me to grow, despite still having to — at times — endure through them. 

There’s a ton of power in being able to be present in how you’re feeling, whether you’re feeling a “positive” or “negative'“ emotion, so that you can later reflect on why you were feeling that way, and to evaluate your responses (and potential responses) in any given situation.

It allows you to accept where you went wrong and subsequently approach others (and yourself) with more compassion in future interactions. It allows you to take each experience of an emotion as a lesson and as a tool to understanding how to build better human interactions with one another.

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Conclusion

Feeling your emotions fully is a fundamental part of being human. No matter how well you learn to respond to different emotions, you’ll never be immune from actually feeling them. 

Emotional maturity doesn’t mean never getting upset. Emotional maturity doesn’t mean never feeling sad.

Emotional maturity doesn’t mean always feeling happy and it doesn’t mean being able to brush your emotions off whenever they come up.

It means not being afraid to feel. It means being able to regulate your responses when they arise. 

Emotional maturity doesn’t mean emotional immunity. And that’s a blessing in disguise not to be forgotten.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Happy MAY! In fact, May the Fourth be with you (if you’re into Star Wars 😂 ). If you’ve been keeping up with the weekly newsletter, you’d know that April was a huge month for me, because I went to the gym at least 4 times a week every week and really stayed consistent in my routine of doing yoga in the mornings and gym in the evenings.

Consistency really is the key to success, but being in the gym has taught me to tweak that message slightly, adding that you have to be consistent with small added increases to your routine for growth. For the gym, it means adding a little weight every week to what I lift, so that over a longer time horizon the amount of weight I’m pushing is a lot higher than where I started.

It’s interesting, because I often think about adding that little bit of weight as being similar to what it takes to building a habitual routine. To do that, you can gradually add activities using a technique called “habit stacking”, where you start out with something that you already do and just keep adding to it.

The point of today’s newsletter however, isn’t to talk about habits — I wanted to talk about the blessing of being able to choose a challenge.

The blessing of being able to choose a challenge

After completing the past 6 weeks in the gym I came across a thought that stuck with me. It’s the simple question: “How beautiful and blessed are we that we can choose our own challenges?”

In this world, where things are unfair from the second you’re born into it, there are challenges that each of us will face just by the very nature of our existence. Whether it’s the society you’re born into, the colour of your skin, a physically disability or even something invisible to the naked eye, each of us has a challenge that we face on a personal level that was just handed to us at birth.

On the other hand though, there’s something super beautiful about the fact that as humans, we constantly are taking up additional challenges onto ourselves.

Think about the things in your life that you might be doing that are completely of your own volition. Not work and nothing that you do to make money or exist in this capitalistic society/economy. The things that nobody’s forcing you to do. For example, nobody’s forcing me to go to the gym every day, do yoga every morning or write my newsletter every week.

But for some reason, there’s still something that pushes us to take on personal challenges that lead to our own improvement, despite everything that we already have on our plates.

The beauty of a chosen personal challenge

This week I wanted to highlight the privilege of choosing a personal challenge because I think it’s something that we don’t celebrate ourselves enough for. We oftentimes confuse our achievements with necessities in our lives, and lose the joy in celebrating our accomplishments because of it.

So as I do my best to stay consistent in the gym, I’m also trying to stay consistent in celebrating myself every time I show up. Every time I’m on the ground doing sit ups and they burn like hell, I’m thinking to myself that I’m the one putting myself through the challenge for myself so I should push right through.

For me, that mentality really comes from running. When you run any distance, you realize that you always have the choice whether to slow down and walk when you’re on the route. But then it was you who decided to take up the challenge of a 5K, so why not push to the end and show yourself that you can do it?

It’s such a blessing to be able to choose a challenge and overcome it.

Conclusion

If there’s a challenge that you’re facing in your life right now of your own choosing - whether it’s studying for an exam, staying consistent in the gym, training for a marathon, staying on a diet or whatever the case may be, take a moment to give yourself some grace and to celebrate yourself for what you’re doing.

Remind yourself of your why and give yourself a pat on the shoulder for taking up the challenge in the first place.

Then, push through.

Remember what a blessing it is to be able to take up a challenge to improve yourself, and thank yourself for keeping future you in mind.

You’ll get through it. You were strong enough to start it, and you’re more than capable of finishing it.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

I’ve said this before, multiple times, but writing a newsletter every week is hard. Why? Because it’s not like you guys interact with me much - I don’t get comments, likes, shares or anything recurring and visible to motivate me to keep writing more, although I know that there’s quite a few people out there who look forward to my newsletter every week. (Send me a text or dm if that’s you haha 😋 @thelifeofjlowe)

This week, I was really considering whether or not I should write my newsletter, and whether or not it’s really worth the time and effort I put into it week after week.

That’s when I realized that I think my purpose for writing this newsletter — at some point, I don’t know when — transitioned from being for myself to being for you, the audience.

When I look back at my newsletter from 2 years ago, I was sharing personal stories and recounting experiences that taught me important life lessons in pretty great detail, but now as it’s grown to more than just a few family members and close friends reading, it’s become more impersonal and very centered on how I can help you week over week.

What is this newsletter anwyays?

That’s not a problem, because I enjoy writing stories to inspire and motivate, but at the same time, #TheLifeofJLOWE is meant to be my newsletter, not a generic come-take-a-word-of-inspiration-and-leave weekly e-mail.

That being said, I also think I’m at a point where a lot of the lessons that I’ve shared in the past are re-surfacing, because life really just is a series of events with recurring themes, and I'm by no means re-inventing the wheel on how to handle these events, but rather just sharing a perspective that may or may not be useful to you, the reader.

At the end of the day, though, the coolest thing about sharing with you week over week is that a lot of the times when I get feedback, it’s like playing cinderella with you. Some of you explain to me how the perspectives that I share fit the various situations in your lives, and it really is eye-opening as to how my own experiences can inform your similar-but-not-exactly-the-same experiences too.

That for me is fulfilling.

Share, care but only so much and so far

What I’ve realized as a part of my own emotional growth journey, however, is that you can share as much as you want with people, but they’re still going to do what they want to do no matter what you tell them. It might be what you tell them, but it’s going to be because they decided they want to do it, not because you told them.

You can give so much of yourself to others, but it’s really only effective insofar as they want to receive.

The growth that you might have personally isn’t the same growth that others will have in the same time period — and that could even mean yours is more or less — but what’s important is that none of us are really in the same place in our life timelines at any given point in time.

So I’m learning to find peace in offering of myself, and not expecting anything.

I’m learning to find peace in accepting that other people won’t understand me, and sometimes even themselves, despite how you might help or want them to.

You can’t force someone else to grow. It has to come from them. Your own growth doesn’t affect other people, and it can get frustrating to try to extend it to others.

So find peace in not expecting anything from others. Zero expectations? Zero disappointment.

Conclusion

I keep talking about protecting your peace. How do you do that?

Recognize that you don’t owe anything to anybody.

Recognize that you don’t have to change anybody or save anybody but yourself.

Give of yourself yes, but only insofar as people will receive.

Don’t make your journey any harder than it needs to be. Help others, love on others, but never ever forget that love starts with yourself, so learn to love yourself first.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Happy Easter Sunday to you as well if you celebrate! I hope this Easter season is full of blessings and peace for you! 🐰 

Catching up with an old friend

This past week, I had the opportunity to catch up with an old friend from my childhood, who I haven’t seen in years. We talked about what we’re both doing in life, and the conversation was reflective and allowed us to look back at how far we’ve come from when we were kids on the playground, and even to discuss what our futures could look like going forward.

Conversations like those are like therapy for me, because they allow me to reflect through a particular lens, and ask real questions about my life from a growth perspective looking back at how far I’ve come.

When you get a chance to catch up with an old friend, you automatically step back into the person that you were all those years ago in order to revive the context of your friendship to be able to bond over the differences between now and back when you knew each other.

It’s incredibly powerful, because it forces you to actually consider whether you’re happy with the changes that you’ve seen in your life, and oftentimes also to evaluate for yourself whether “the old you would be proud of you today”.

Considering who you are today, and how that differs from who you were a few years ago

Something we always hear is “change is the only constant”, which means simply that change is inevitable. Maybe the changes that you’ve experienced are small and you have to dig deep to discover what they are, but there’s a 100% chance that the person you were 10 years ago isn’t the same person that you are today.

After I finished my undergrad and started working my first job, the question I kept asking myself is “Would 15 year old Justin be proud of where I am in life today?”.

Oftentimes, the answer would be - “well, it depends on how you look at it…”, and as that answer slowly morphed into a “No", that’s when I began to recognize that it was time to make drastic changes in my life and leave that job.

Asking yourself that question is a good way to measure up where you are, because the answer to that question is flexible, and can often change based on where you are at any given point in your life. For example, for me, when I was at Cornell, and I asked myself that question the answer was always “Yes”. I was proud of where I was and happy that the decisions and actions in my life had taken me to an Ivy League university.

But then, that answer changed when I found myself working at a bank, almost on auto-pilot, chasing someone else’s definition of success after graduating.

I don’t know where I’m going but I know I’m going somewhere

They always say hindsight is 20/20, and when I look back at the events of my life it appears that there has been a cohesive story throughout my life that has somehow found its way together. In fact, when you think about someone’s career, oftentimes it seems like they had it figured out from the very start - gaining experience in something that would lead to something bigger until they eventually got to the level of success that they’re at.

In reality though, when you talk to those people, you realize that life kinda just happened to them, and one thing led to the other so they ended up where they are. And it’s funny, because retrospectively everything can seem so intentional, but in reality, as much as you might try to plan your life out, you can never adequately account for the millions of different situations that life can potentially throw at you.

So, as much as you plan, just be content with the fact that you’re going somewhere. You might be studying to be a lawyer and later become a content creator, or graduate as a veterinarian and become a motivational speaker. (Those are two real-life examples, btw).

Going somewhere is enough, so long as you go with intention and don’t allow life to just happen to you. Sit in the driver’s seat, even if you don’t know what your final destination is.

Conclusion

Catching up with an old friend is a blessing, because oftentimes we don’t get to see people from our distant past in contexts where you’re able to have a conversation at great length. For me, it allowed me to delve into reflection about where I’ve come from and where I’m going, and to re-examine where I’m at.

Without constant evaluation of your present, past and current state in life, you set yourself up to become stagnant, and let life happen to you. You end up in a position where you feel helpless, and like life is driving you instead of the other way around.

Checking in with myself at various intervals has always been the most important aspect of my own personal growth and maturing, and having the bias to action to actually make changes is the secret to affecting real growth.

Are you proud of yourself today?

Would the you from 5-10 years ago be proud of where you are today?

If you were to catch up with an old friend right now, would you be excited and passionate about telling them how your life is going for you now, after all those years?

Consider your answers to those questions, and reflect on where you are today. Look back at how far you’ve come, and if you haven’t moved as far as you would have hoped, put your foot back on the gas pedal and drive.

You’re in the driver’s seat. And don’t you ever forget that.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

April is flying by just as quickly as the rest of the year has so far, and for me this month has already been quite a fun ride, especially as Jamaica enters its 2025 Carnival season. 🇯🇲 

One of the things that I love to do with my newsletter is to re-visit my articles from months ago, to re-assess my feelings in past moments and to determine whether there’s more I can build on or another perspective I can take.

In this past week, an article I re-visited was this one: Learn how to tune in and out of the opinions of others.

In that article, I talked about what it means to value others’ opinions of you, but to simultaneously know when to ignore external opinions because people may lack context or a real understanding of your situation to count their opinions as valid.

Today, I wanted to expand a bit on the concept of being disconnected from someone else’s context, and to indicate how that can be problematic.

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What I meant by taking someone else’s opinion with a grain of salt

When I talked about not always validating others’ opinions, it came from a personal place of other people not understanding the decisions that I’ve made in my own life - like moving back to Jamaica after resigning from my big job in finance - and from people asking me a lot of questions, passing judgements and making sly comments or remarks with their opinions on my life decisions.

A lot of the times, these people make these comments from a good place, trying to tell you what they think is best for you based on their own life experiences.

It’s frustrating, because you will never fully know or understand someone else’s life, no matter how close you are to them, so you will never be able to fully know or understand all the reasons behind their decisions. And at the end of the day, you’re not the one living that person’s life.

So frankly, most of the time, despite whichever place of love you’re coming from, it’s usually best to just say nothing and show love and support to those people in your life who make decisions that you don’t understand. I promise you, most of the time, when we pass our judgements in the form of “well-intentioned advice”, it comes off as arrogant, especially when not coupled with a reasonably well-founded attempt at understanding what led them to those decisions.

So, with all that said, take others’ opinions with a grain of salt, because most of the time, people are not as well-intentioned as they seem. If you haven’t had multiple long judgement-free conversations with those people, and it’s a passing comment at a dinner table or small gathering, chances are, they just want their opinions to be heard, rather than to actually be productive for you.

How disconnection from context plays a role in ill-informed opinions

Most times, people are short-sighted when they project their opinions onto other people. For example, say you - as an American or Western-minded person - visit another country and they’re eating food while sitting on the floor.

“How odd!” may be your first reaction.

Or more close to home for me, as an employer in Jamaica, there’s a stark difference in lifestyle when it comes to myself, who was privileged enough to go to an Ivy League university and work at a Fortune 500 company by age 24, and the average worker that we employ who dropped out of high school and is working in Jamaica at age 24.

For me, being able to sit and talk to those employees has made me so much more attuned to my own privilege and to this aforementioned disconnection from others and subsequent inability to understand others’ contexts that can exist as close to you as in your own place of work.

I think it’s important to share because these conversations need to be had so that we can give attention to the dualism of experiences that exist within our day-to-day lives, and how this disconnection affects - in a very real way - our ability to bond and form valid opinions of the people around us.

How, without sitting and having multiple in-depth conversations with those employees, would I ever be able to understand the context and environment that they come from? And then, as a manager, how do you handle employees’ behaviours, personalities and work ethics, when they too are not a monolith, yet also come from a vast variety of contexts and backgrounds - all of which are different from my own experiences too?

Conclusion

It’s interesting to me - the capitalism construct - and the way it wants to be able to group everyone in terms of productivity; while simultaneously dehumanising people for deriving from contexts and backgrounds which have not done the same work as US colleges for example to build perfect workers who can fit seamlessly in a system designed to oppress and limit innovation and creativity.

It indicates to me a larger lesson about the world which is to stop making the assumption that people will understand you (or that you understand people).

Stop assuming that when you meet a new person, they’re socially engineered the same way as you. Fine, the small talk of “Hi, how are you”, “Good, and you?”, “I’m good too haha!” goes a long way in terms of initial conversation, but think about how diverse and varied your own experiences are, then multiply that exponentially for every person and social circle that you enter.

There’s no way that what you have experienced will apply to every person around you, and so as you navigate the world, always keep in mind that you probably don’t understand 90% of what informs other people’s decisions, motivations and interests.

You are bound by the limitations of your own experiences, and to peacefully and lovingly navigate this world, I think it’s imperative that we drop assumptions and opinions, be open-minded, and stop trying to project our own opinions onto other people - especially when you know deep down that it’s not coming from a place of love.

To put it short and sweet for you to take away this week - take your own point of view with a grain of salt.

Until next Sunday,
Justin

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! It was a rough week for me, but there were a lot of moments for reflection and growth that I’m excited to share from with you today.

A few weeks ago, I talked about cultivating emotional intelligence and how peace is the mission. Some time last year, before quitting my corporate job at J.P. Morgan (who btw, are predicting a U.S. Recession 😨 ), I wrote about advocating for yourself, because nobody else will.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been telling you how it’s been great to be back in the gym consistently, and how I’ve been feeling great physically and mentally because of it. And as I spoke about last week, you have to appreciate when it’s all going right, because at any moment, it can start going wrong.

Well, this past week taught me that in the moments when it’s all going right, yes you have to appreciate it and soak it in, but you also have to build boundaries to ensure that the place you’re in is protected. You have to protect your peace.

Before we get any further, let’s take a moment for you to click the link to contribute to #TheLifeofJLOWE. It’s crazy that every week y’all see this and just ignore it! It’s free for you!

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Try thinking of “peace” like a plant

Remember a couple months ago when I told you about what it’s like to be a plant dad? You know, you plant a few seeds, then you take care of it week over week, month over month, and eventually they grow - but only with consistent love and attention?

What if we thought about “peace” like that?

Oftentimes, it has to start small, like by planting tiny seeds. Maybe you turn off notifications on the social media apps on your phone. Or maybe you start a meditation practice once a week. Usually, it begins with making a small change that you can think of as planting the seeds.

Just like any plant, now that you’re a plant mom or dad, you have to give it attention. I think about the concept of being a parent, and I always joke with my friends about the fact that once you have a child, it almost never goes away. You’re stuck with that thing for the rest of your life.

Well, same thing with your peace.

If you don’t take care of it, water it, feed it and love it, it’s not gonna grow properly, and it might even die. You have to keep nurturing it, and more importantly, you have to protect it.

Protecting your peace like it’s a garden

As my plants were growing, I wouldn’t dare put any of them somewhere that the elements or some animal could destroy them. I’d oftentimes put them in my backyard, which was gated off and sometimes even under a shade where they would have a bit of extra protection.

And why did I do that?

Because they’re fragile things, and without protection they can easily be stolen or worse, destroyed.

And I know you know what I’m gonna say now:

It’s the same thing with your peace.

How to protect your peace

Recently, I listened to a friend’s podcast called “Contemplations”, where she talked about the importance of setting boundaries. And simply put, that’s the way to protect your peace.

Set your boundaries, and respect them.

When you discover what it is that brings you peace - whether that be going to the gym, taking a morning walk or even just hanging out with friends - protect it. Block time in your life for those things, and make it non-negotiable.

If you want to go to the gym, nothing else can compromise on that time. If you want to hang out with your friends, make plans and stick to them. Set those boundaries on your time in such a way that you are able to control how consistent you are with the things that you value, and ensure that you prioritise those things too.

It’s incredibly important, then, to enforce those boundaries. Because as my friend said in her podcast, once you compromise on your boundaries - even if it’s one time - you’ll find that it becomes incredibly difficult to reset them. If you fail to respect them even once, you open Pandora’s box to violating them again.

Boundaries are the way to protecting your peace, and respecting your boundaries is the way to defending your peace from other people (the animals and the elements that we talked about 😆 ).

Conclusion

Once you’ve built your peace, it needs protecting.

The unfortunate thing about the world that we live in, is that you can do SO much work on yourself - taking care of your mental health, learning emotional intelligence and regulation or learning self-love - but that doesn’t mean that the people around you are doing that too.

Just because you have found your peace doesn’t mean that others have found theirs. So as a result, your peace is always at threat to being disturbed. The surrounding lack of peace is a threat to your inner peace.

There will always be people or scenarios in which you feel like the growth that you’ve had is being challenged. There will be scenarios where you will have to emotionally regulate like crazy, and scenarios where you might even lose your cool. Trust me, I got there last week.

But in those moments, you have to remember to protect your peace. Whether that means avoiding and cutting out certain people, limiting your exposure to a certain environment or blocking off time for certain activities, the boundaries that you set are the castle walls that protect your peace.

So if you’re on a journey of pursuing peace, think about what boundaries you need to put up, and make sure that you protect your peace. It’s not easy to defend, so understanding and maybe even writing down what your people limits, non-negotiables and other boundaries are helps so incredibly much in knowing when it’s time to be aggressive and intentional about enforcing your boundaries and protecting your peace.

Until next Sunday,

JLOWE

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

I can’t believe March is basically over already, especially after how slowly January moved! This year has definitely begun to pick up the pace, but for me it’s been a blessing to be able to settle down into a routine and get to a place where I feel physically and mentally good about myself as a result.

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Appreciate when it’s all going right

Let’s face it, things often don’t go right all the time. In fact, more often than not something goes wrong. Actually, let’s be honest with ourselves, it almost never all goes right, not within a day, worse a week, and even worse a month.

However, all things considered, despite what you could consider to be small/minor inconveniences throughout your day or week, things could at some point, be generally going alright. Everything in your life might be just fine.

And somehow, every time that happens, sh*t hits the fan. It all starts going wrong. And it doesn’t have to be in your own life, but maybe things from someone else’s life start to affect you disproportionately.

Either way, somehow, something always happens.

The crazy part about all this is that most of the time, we don’t even notice those periods in our life when everything is going right because we take those times for granted. Most people don’t stop and think about those times, and we don’t appreciate them until our lives are all of a sudden shaken up.

What do you do when it’s all going right?

Take for example when you’re sick versus healthy. If you’re in good health right now, take a DEEP breath in through your nose, ________ hold it… __________ and let it out through your mouth (ahhhh 😌).

Now think about when you were last sick, and how you couldn’t do that. Think about how hard it was to get half a breath in through your nose because it was so stuffy and how you just wish it would go away.

It’s little things like that - just being able to breathe normally - that we often take for granted. In turn, it also ends up making those sudden negative events seem all the more sudden.

It’s like “I was just over here minding my own business and then all of a sudden here comes this storm to mess things up”.

But that’s why for me, what I’ve begun to do as a mindfulness practice, is give space to appreciating those moments in which everything is going right. Give yourself some time to actually think about where you are in that current period of you life, and then appreciate the fact that you’re there. Simple.

Okay, so I’ve thought about where I am in life … now what?

The first step to appreciating that everything is going alright is to think about it, and then the second step is to actually be present in it.

For me, I find that when I actually bring myself to the thought “hey, I’m enjoying this right now”, whether it’s at a hang out with friends, at dinner with family or a live music concert, I become super intentional about things like putting away my phone, closing my eyes and taking in a moment or just greeting every moment with positivity and a smile.

And the reason?

Because everything in life is temporary.

Recognising that every happy moment is temporary - whether it’s at a concert, or an entire week of feeling great in the gym - allows you to appreciate them more when they happen.

And that’s the same principle that I apply to a period in life where it feels like everything is going alright.

Has it all been smooth sailing for you recently?

If you haven’t had a major disruption to your life in the past few days, and you’ve just been getting into a routine, pause.

Stop for a second, and think about how nice it is that you can do that.

Pause one moment, and just appreciate the fact that, you know what? Everything’s generally okay right now.

Trust me, I know there’s people reading this that have had major things happen to them maybe as recently as this morning or last night. And I bet you didn’t appreciate when everything was okay - when it all was just smooth sailing.

It’s funny, that metaphor, “smooth sailing”. Have you ever been in the back seat of a long car ride? Or maybe actually on a boat that was sailing smoothly? Be honest, what did you do?

You probably fell asleep. 💤 

It was so nice and smooth, that you could just relax and fall asleep, because you knew everything would be okay and that you’d get to your destination eventually.

Conclusion

Today, my message I want to get across to you is this: don’t fall asleep.

You’re gonna get to your destination, but it’s not going to be smooth sailing. You may have moments where you start to doze off because everything’s going just fine, but then you’re gonna hit a pothole. Or who knows, maybe something good even happens like a job promotion or unexpected college acceptance and you feel a positive disruption to your life.

The point is, on this life journey that we’re on together, you have to appreciate the good times.

You have to be intentional about appreciating the smooth sailing, because life is not one of those long car rides on a nice highway.

But that’s what makes it so exciting; the fact that it’s not smooth sailing but sometimes it is. The fact that you can appreciate it when it’s all going right, and find happiness in appreciating it because you know that it won’t always go right.

My friends, this week, appreciate the little things, the little moments and the short periods in life where you feel like everything is going okay. Give it space. Give it time. Allow yourself to be present.

It’ll make the next battle you face that much easier, and it’ll make you so much more grateful and content to be in the place that you currently are.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Last week I talked a bit about consistency, and this week I’m happy to report that I made it the full week once again going to the gym everyday! 🥳 

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Do you do Spring Cleaning?

This past week at work, I started doing a bit of spring cleaning and threw away a bunch of old items that had been hoarded over the past couple years at our business place. Like cleaning your room, it feels great to throw away old things that are creating clutter, and it’s a whole new breath of fresh air when you realize how much space you really had that’s been under-utilized.

There’s this idea of “spring cleaning” that floats around every year around this time of the year, and I think it’s such a great thing to practice every year, starting first with your immediate physical space.

Do you do that every year?

I can’t say for sure whether I do at Spring time every year, but I definitely almost always have a moment where I’m like “yup, time to de-clutter” and go on an insane throwing-things-away bout.

The Mental Resistance to Spring Cleaning

A lot of people have built up clutter because they’ve hoarded things over time for one reason or another, and so practicing something like a “spring cleaning” is incredibly difficult for them.

There’s this emotional connection to physical things that exists - whether it’s the memories that you hold with them, how they remind you of a certain person or place, or maybe just the imaginary idea that you’ll one day use them again even though they’re covered in a layer of 10-year-old dust.

I think it’s perfectly human to become attached to things, and to hold onto things that remind you of happy moments in your life, or that you might find useful later on.

However, at the same time, there’s a threshold.

There’s a thin line between recognising sentimental value and hoarding, and it’s a line that we often need a push ourselves to get across. That’s why having an “event” like a spring cleaning allows us to create the time and space to actually push across that line of procrastination, illogical thinking and subsequent hoarding.

You can apply those same thoughts to your mind

In that same vein, a few months ago, I started back my consistent routine of mindfulness and yoga in the mornings, as a way to begin my very own mental spring cleaning.

In the same way that you can hoard physical things, it’s also really easy to subconsciously hoard intangible things like tasks, emotional baggage or even relationships.

For me, I think it’s equally as important to conduct a mental spring cleaning as it is to do a physical one. You should certainly start with your physical space to create an environment of peace, but the next step to take is to clear your mind of the things that you’ve been hoarding for one reason or the other.

How do I conduct a mental spring cleaning?

To get this done, it’s a similar challenge to pushing past the thin line between hoarding and sentimental value, except in this case you’re pushing past your mind’s tendency to procrastinate.

What do I mean by that?

I bet there’s something that you’ve been meaning to do for a really long time that you just haven’t gotten around to doing. Maybe it’s even something so simple that you could do it in 30 minutes. Maybe it’s as simple as sending someone a text to check in on them. Or maybe it’s something as difficult as starting to get back into the gym.

Start with the small, easy tasks that you’ve been thinking about for a long time first, then start to tackle the more time-consuming ones after.

What you’ll realize is that the mental space that those thoughts took up will become vacant, and you can begin then to start thinking new thoughts.

Seems kinda obvious, and also kinda cliche too right? Like just do the damn thing then you can do something else!

That’s the whole point of spring cleaning

The truth is - it is obvious! But so is throwing away that toy truck from when you were 6 years old that’s missing 3 wheels and has been sitting in the corner for a decade.

It’s the simple concept of just being intentional about clearing your mind that allows you to have more mental capacity to take on new challenges, projects or set new goals.

Spring cleaning isn’t a scientific marvel like SpaceX catching rocket ships. It’s literally just reminding yourself to take care of yourself and the space that you live in. And news flash - you live in your own head 100% of the time. 🗞️ 

Conclusion

If you feel like you’re burnt out, on your absolute last straw or maybe just tired all the time on a day to day basis, maybe it’s time to do a mental spring cleaning.

It’s time to prioritise your mental space in the same way that you should your physical space and to take care of it too. Clean that space by getting things done, then build wellness routines in like reading, going to the gym or meditation to keep that space clean.

So this week - send that friend a text to say you want to catch up. Throw away that old sauce jar in your fridge. Write down your goals for the year (yes, it’s March but maybe you procrastinated that task this far).

Whatever little thing you’ve been putting off, get it done this week, and watch how all of a sudden you begin to think about the possibilities of new things and can finally start to progress in the direction that you want your life to go.

Until next Sunday,

JLOWE

Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Guess what? This week, for the first time in months, I went to the gym every single day. Although I’ve been pretty consistently exercising in the past few months, it hasn’t necessarily been everyday, so I’m publicly giving myself kudos for this little achievement, as a way to motivate myself to do it all over again next week.

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My new challenge to myself

After starting my run club last year, I decided that the challenge that I would put to myself this year is consistency.

For me, success in this challenge doesn’t mean necessarily going “hard” at everything I do - whether a workout, a run or even my morning yoga - but it means physically showing up for myself in a consistent way.

It means getting out of bed and onto the yoga mat, even if its 5 minutes of stretches instead of 20. Or it means showing up to the gym, even if it’s to do just one workout instead of a full hour program. Building a habit requires me to show up, despite how I feel about showing up.

To some extent, my run club requires me to show up, and so it forces me to be consistent. We’ve already hosted over 12 weekly Saturday runs, and I’ve already begun to see the payoff from being consistent.

I already feel better when I run, and we’ve managed to secure some pretty great sponsorships/partnerships with local brands to provide for our runners week over week. It’s through those little wins that I’ve recognised that the way to win and the way to succeed is to keep showing up in whatever way I can.

It’s tiring as hell - don’t let social media fool you

One condition of consistency, however, means that you have to show up even when you might not want to. As I said, it doesn’t necessarily mean always giving 100% when you do show up, but it definitely means showing up at the bare minimum.

And let me be honest with you - there have been weeks where I really question why I write this newsletter. There have been weeks where I consider sending an email to you all to say that it will be the final #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter for the foreseeable future. Yet for some reason, I keep sitting down to write to you.

If you didn’t know, I now work Monday to Saturday, and so my previous routine of spending a leisurely Saturday in a cafe to write my newsletter for Sunday has been absolutely thrown out the window.

Instead of waking up late on a Saturday and having a nice coffee and while I gather my thoughts to write my newsletter, almost every week for the past few weeks has been an absolute draining sh*t show and chaos on Saturday for me as I wake up at 4:00am, run with Sweat & Salty Run Club, work until 3:30/4pm, and then sit to find the time to write my newsletter, frantically before any social outing that I might partake in on Saturday night (my only real “non-work” night, which if I stay out late on, will inevitably result in me being awake for almost 24 hours straight).

My routine that existed when I started my newsletter back in 2023 when I was in college no longer exists. And when people ask me how I do it all, I laugh and smile and tell them there’s so much time in the day, but in reality I’m just as tired as you might feel too, and juggling so many things is very hard.

So why keep doing it?

This is exactly the question I keep asking myself.

Maybe It’s like being on Duolingo for 350 days straight. Or maybe it’s like keeping a streak on Snapchat with your best friend. Or maybe, it’s more like showing up to the gym even when you don’t want to because you’ll feel better after you leave even if the workout sucks.

The real reason I stress myself out to write ~1000 words a week to you is because I’ve learnt so much about myself and about the world through taking the time to reflect once a week. And even more so than learning about myself, I’ve learnt a ton about the power of consistency.

What #TheLifeofJLOWE means to me today

Because of my newsletter, I can go back to reflect on where my mind was when I was completing my first corporate internship in New York city. Then, I can follow my life’s journey to graduating from college, starting my first job, loving it, hating it, running a marathon, ultimately quitting that job, then moving back to Jamaica to live with my family.

I can follow where my mentality was when I failed an exam, what I thought about living in Honduras for a month or even something as simple as how I felt when I serviced my car for the first time.

Again, however, more than just following along my own life’s journey, I’ve learnt about the power of consistency.

Conclusion

The power of consistency is that you can actually become hardwired to do something that’s good for yourself. You can actually build a good habit that you feel bad about breaking.

The reason I haven’t stopped writing this newsletter is because I would feel terrible about myself for not doing it, and I would miss the feeling that I get from spending the time to sit and document my reflections.

For me, my brain reacts in a similar way when I miss out keeping up a good habit as it does when I indulge in a bad habit. Breaking consistency hurts. The power of being consistent - even showing up for yourself in a small way - is that you avoid that “hurt” feeling by doing something good for yourself.

It takes a while, of course to build a habit - to really get yourself into a routine that you would really kick yourself for missing.

But trust me when I say this: unlocking the power of consistency, and leveraging it to accomplish a big goal in tiny steps is really one of the most foolproof ways to find your way to success. Go start building that habit today. 👊 

Until next Sunday,

JLOWE

As someone who’s travelled the world quite extensively, I often find myself thinking about how big it is, and how easy it is to feel like a small drop in a big ocean. I also oftentimes find myself in the incredibly privileged position of feeling overwhelmed by the possibility of living a thousand lives in a thousand different places across the world.

But somehow, in a world full of opportunity, at this moment, I find myself back at home. Back in the place where I’ve already spent over 20 years of my life and the place where I know the best. I currently find myself back where I grew up instead of in a new place halfway across the globe that sparked my imagination.

After a week of showing my home country, Jamaica 🇯🇲 , to a friend from Germany 🇩🇪 , I’m reflecting on what it means to be just a small human in a big world.

Happy Sunday, my friends. Thanks for being here and for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter.

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To be a small human in a big world

We are all small parts of this incredibly large world. Although the media may make it seem like some people make up larger parts of the world, whether through their power, money or influence, the reality at hand is that we all take up relatively equal spaces here.

More than that, each of us also has relatively the same amount of time on this earth. Again, while it may seem like some people may “accomplish” more than others in the same amount of time, the reality at hand is that we also occupy relatively equal amounts of time here too.

For me, thinking about that temporality is incredibly harrowing. It’s frightening to think that everything we do, see, hear and experience is temporary, and even more harrowing than it being temporary is the fact that it’s also individual.

The things you feel, hear, experience, love, hate and create are all unique to your own experience of the world, no matter how much you try to share it with other people. Nobody else will be able to experience the world in the same way that you have.

You and I are small humans in a big world, separated by the uniqueness of our experiences and simultaneously united by our shared experiences of similar events.

Be empowered by the individuality of life

To me, one of the most beautiful things in life is to be able to share your experiences with others. It’s amazing to be able to relate to one another, learn from one another and build relationships through shared interests and similar past experiences.

Our societies are built on these shared experiences - through conversations and human interactions that bring us closer to one another because of our ability to communicate about them.

In that same vein, however, it’s easy to lose the individuality of your experiences that I described earlier because of this societal bond that we create by sharing them. It’s easy to do things because other people think they’re interesting, or pursue goals that other people have set for themselves independently of you.

You should never be doing something in your life solely because someone else said you should be. Yes, you can do things that other people advise you to do, but do them because you want to, not because someone chose that path for you. Don’t give yourself anyone to blame or credit for your life journey other than yourself.

As I’ve discussed many times before, it’s easy to lose your own definition of success in life by following what others have defined success as. Sometimes that means chasing an elite or societally praised career path or maybe just a “good” grade in a class, but in those moments, you have to remember to follow your own interests and your own heart, and that will help you to get back onto your own personal journey towards success.

In fact, when you begin to navigate life in that way - following your passions, your heart or maybe just a little gut feeling that tells you which direction to point your life compass in - your relationships with other people become so much more rich, because you’re able to communicate with other people from a genuine place of self and individuality.

Conclusion

As I said, it’s a harrowing thought to be a small human in a big world.

Additionally, it’s incredibly difficult to appreciate your individuality in a world that has so many pulls in so many different directions. It’s hard to know what your passion is, what your own identity is and what you really want to do in life.

Full disclosure - I don’t know either, and I will never pretend to have it all figured out.

Something that has helped to guide me on my journey, however, is this quote that I’ll leave you with for the rest of the week:

As I said earlier, your time here is limited, and your experiences are yours. So whatever you set out to do, do it for you and only you. Let that guide you as you choose where you go, and how you take up space as a small human in this big world.

Until next Sunday,

JLOWE

Happy Sunday and thanks for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

I’m gonna let you guys in on a little secret about last week’s newsletter: I finished it at around 6:30am, after coming home from a soca party on Saturday night a bit buzzed and knocking out on my friend’s couch. I locked in after the party, and finished writing and editing so that the newsletter would be out at 9:00 AM BAU (business as usual, thanks corporate America for the lingo 🤣 🤮 ).

To you, though, you got that newsletter in your inbox no problem as you do every week. You had no clue about the process that went into it, what time I started writing or what time I hit publish - and frankly the truth is, you don’t care.

The Behind-The-Scenes Sneak Peek

As I thought about the insane work that went into ensuring that last week’s newsletter went out on time, I began to think about the fact that there’s so many things in this world that we don’t know the story behind. We live in a world of finished products, of polished goods and of fully baked cakes, so unless it’s really important to us personally, the process of getting to what we actually see 👀 doesn’t really matter to us.

We’ve been conditioned to expect certain things in life, not remembering the processes and work that goes into them. I think even more importantly than that, though, is the fact that not every finished product has the same behind-the-scenes.

Just like in mathematics or computer science, there’s different ways to get to the same answer in everything in life, and when you begin to appreciate that, you can begin to appreciate that life itself is about the processes and not actual achievements themselves.

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Appreciating the behind-the-scenes (BTS)

Recently on social media there’s been an surge in the popularity of “BTS” videos where you get to see how your favourite influencers actually make the content that they publish. I think that kind of content goes viral because it’s exactly what we’re looking for when we look at social media influencers.

We’re looking for someone to relate to, someone that shows us this idea of “you-can-do-it-too” and it feels a lot more real when you can see someone’s process. Behind the scenes content is so engaging because we’re used to having just one BTS pass - the pass to our own lives - so seeing that vulnerability and hard work instead of just a finished product really catches and holds our attention.

For me, beginning to appreciate that the only all-access pass that I have is to my own life has been so eye-opening, because I can recognize that if there’s THAT much that goes into my own life that people don’t see, just imagine how much happens in every single person you know’s life too.

It helps me to give others grace. It helps me to understand things from the perspective that I can only see the tip of the iceberg, and if you’ve ever seen those graphics with the tip of the iceberg, you’ll know that even if what you see seems like a lot, there can be so much more beneath the surface that you don’t see too.

“The tip of the iceberg”

The Tip of the Iceberg

In reality, we are all walking around as icebergs. We see each other’s highlights, the parts that are visible above the water, but the reality is that 90% of what makes up a person’s journey, struggles, hard work, and sacrifices remain unseen beneath the surface.

When you consider this, you start to view people differently. The person who seems to have it all together might be barely hanging on. The one who appears to be an overnight success might have been grinding for years in the shadows. That polished final product you admire had countless revisions, setbacks, and struggles before it ever saw the light of day.

The realization that everyone has a behind-the-scenes story should inspire both empathy and gratitude. Empathy because you’ll understand that no one’s journey is as easy as it looks, and gratitude because you’ll begin to appreciate your own journey even more, knowing that everything you’re going through is shaping you into your best self.

Conclusion

One of the best pieces of advice that I love to share is “don’t make fun of someone for trying”. When you see someone failing in public - whether it’s trying out a new career path, learning a new workout in the gym or learning a new instrument - lift them up instead of laughing at their ability to try.

This, for me, falls in the same vein as appreciating the concept of the back-stage pass to your own life.

That person that you saw who just struggled to do 1 pull-up in the gym? Maybe he’s been trying to get to complete his first one and that was a celebratory moment rather than an embarrassing moment. That new artiste whose new song you just listened to and thought it wasn’t your favourite? Maybe she’ll be winning Best New Artiste at the Grammy’s one year.

In the same way that you expect others to somehow give you grace when you’re having a bad day, or to have patience with you because of whatever situation you’re in at any given moment, you should also consider that other people are going through something too at any given moment - sometimes even at the same time as you.

Consider that everyone that you meet is putting on a performance, and that they’re the only one with a backstage pass to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Some have less behind the scenes than others, but you still can’t take for granted that they don’t have a lot going on.

Learning that, appreciating that and treating people you interact with in life with that idea in mind is tantamount to building relationships founded on emotional understanding, that I truly think is missing in this day and age and is something that we should all strive for as we live through our shared human experience.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeOfJLOWE newsletter!

Last week I talked a bit about how to break and build a new habit, and throughout the week I tried to implement my own wisdom that I shared about what to do after a day of work.

To report a bit on my efforts - I still did yoga every morning, and went to the gym Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I told you that you’d likely fail at breaking your habit the first time, and it seems like I did Wednesday, Friday and Saturday because I still lay in my bed and rot after work.

However, as I said last week, you have to give yourself the kudos for trying, and when you fail, you have to try again.

So here’s to the week ahead and trying again!

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Helping my memory through writing

On the days that I didn’t workout after work, however, I indulged myself in art and reading and actually started a drawing of a Lignum Vitae flower (Jamaica’s national flower).

I continued to read “Sapiens”, and the chapter I’m reading focuses on the memory of humans and how writing things down has incredibly supplemented our memory throughout history.

I’ve written about this before in a past newsletter but I think writing things down really is a life hack that has been a form of therapy for me as well. Journalling, writing this newsletter and just keeping written records of things generally in life - like having a real tangible bucket list - has helped me tremendously to cope and progress through life.

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Drawing as a form of record keeping *to change

As I mentioned earlier, this week I spent some time drawing a Lignum Vitae.

I started drawing it because I read a magazine called Magazine Name and it talked about the history of the Lignum Vitae and how it came to be Jamaica’s national flower, and I realized I wasn’t 100% sure what it even looked like.

As I drew it throughout the week, as you would expect, I became more and more familiar with the reference picture I was using, and now I bet I could spot a Lignum Vitae flower a mile away. Drawing, like writing, was a helpful memory aid for me to learn this new thing.

How to use drawing as a memory aid too

Of course this isn’t a new discovery, but I wanted to share that with you this week because as a writer, I often encourage you to write things down. Whether it’s your 300 before 30 list or your goals for the new year, I feel like we’re always encouraged in the media to write things down.

But what if you draw things to remember them instead? What if that’s how your brain is wired to recall things?

I remember one of my friends (s/o to Isaiah) told me about a girl he knew that would take her notes by drawing pictures in class instead of writing notes. That made me recognize that it’s so easy to forget that not all our brains function the same, and so not all conventional advice may be applicable to you.

Conclusion

If you want to build a habit of writing things down, like journalling or starting a newsletter but maybe have had problems with consistency or idea generation, maybe try drawing.

Or try some other form of documentation - whether it be painting, using physical items to count or any technique you can think of.

Throughout history (according to the book I’m reading, Sapiens, of course), humans have used a plethora of means to document things. Writing and lettered-languages have seemed to be the most efficient for communication, but for something like self introspection or reflection, maybe another form of art could resonate more for you.

There’s no way that the same techniques work perfectly well for all of us, despite them being widely regarded, so tap into your own creativity, use your free will, and see what you can come up with to help in your habit building process and in your daily reflections if that’s something you’re interested in doing.

Until next Sunday,

Justin

Hey! Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Let’s face it, we’ve all been there - stuck in a rut with the same old habit that you know you ought to break but for some reason can’t bring yourself to pull a Nike and just do it.

For me, something I’ve been trying to break out of in the past few weeks has been dragging myself out of bed right into my day. I hate the idea of getting out the door groggy and half-asleep, so I’ve been adding a 10-minute yoga flow every day as soon as I wake up to feel better about how I start my day.

The next thing I want to break out of is the insatiable desire to rot in bed after I come home from work, tired from the work day. But how??

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How’d I get in this rut in the first place?

Let’s face it, if you work anything resembling a 9-5, it’s really easy to feel drained after work, regardless of what your job entails. You come home, and all you wanna do is just relax and do nothing.

Go to the gym? Read a book? Do something else productive? No way! How can I do anything else after work when I’m oh… sooo… tired…??

It’s funny to me, because I’m in this rut myself, so I’m publicly teasing myself for feeling like this, but I know many of you share the same sentiment. And we got here because of a lack of routine.

We got here because we didn’t give ourselves anything to do after work, so obviously your brain is not going to want to do anything.

How I got out of my morning routine rut

While I’m still in the process of building the habit of doing yoga every morning (I’ve been pretty consistent the past 3 weeks), it wasn’t super hard to make an immediate change from rolling out of bed miserably to starting my mornings with intentional movement.

The first step was acknowledging that I had a problem with it. I outwardly expressed to myself and others that I was unhappy with my morning routine. I’ve known since high school that I didn’t like the feeling of rolling out of bed and going straight to class half-asleep, so once I started feeling like that’s what I was doing to go to work, I caught myself and acknowledged that there’s a problem.

Then, to solve the problem, it was as simple as building in a reason to wake up earlier. The only things I had to do in the morning before leaving the house were brush my teeth and get dressed, so why would I wake up more than 10 minutes before I had to leave?

To that morning routine of brushing my teeth and getting dressed though, I stacked on the habit of a 10 minute yoga practice, which essentially forced me to wake up in time to do it. Now, when I wake up, I know that my routine entails the added activity of yoga, so I need more time and therefore have to get up a bit earlier. It’s that simple.

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Is it really that simple?

Now I’m never going to be the one to lie to you and make it seem like reality is perfect. It’s not that simple. There’s still going to be many days where you fall back into the same habits.

You’ll hear that alarm go off 15 minutes earlier than it used to, hit snooze, roll over and skip the yoga. You’ll see it raining outside, and decide “well, rain means sleep more” and the whole morning routine goes out the window into the rain.

What it’s all about though - is trying. And trying again. And again. And again. 

In the process of building a new habit (or breaking an old habit), it’s inevitable that you will fail. You’ll be a victim of your old self - the person and mentality that you’re trying to overcome - and that’s completely okay.

You might lose a couple battles, but you have to remember that you’re trying to win a war.

So how do you get out of the rut?

The after-work tiredness is such a serious disease to fight, but as I said, the way to do it is to build something into your routine so that you have something to do.

For me, I’m thinking maybe I’ll hop in the gym, go for a walk, or just stay out of my bedroom altogether (where all the magical, amazing, post-work sleep happens).

The way to get out of that rut is to study what your routine is, and find out where you can stack a new habit onto it.

So if you get home from work and the first that you do is go upstairs and put your bag down and changing into comfy “house clothes” (this is my exact routine), well - the next thing that you should be doing instead of putting on house clothes is putting on your workout clothes.

Even if you don’t workout after putting on those clothes, hey, you’ve already begun the process of building the habit that will get you into the gym. It just got 1% easier to stack the next habit of actually going to workout.

Conclusion

My challenge to myself for the next few weeks is to get off my phone after work and get in the gym or get moving somehow. And how I’ll start to do it is exactly what I said above. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes.

But as for yourself - if you’re like me and you’re in that rut too - study your daily routine, and figure out where you’ve subconsciously built a habit.

Once you’ve pinpointed a habit, whether a good one or a bad one, stack a new easy to do activity onto it that's a first step to the goal you want to achieve.

Then, keep adding until you get out of the rut!

By the way, this process takes weeks - months even - so be patient with yourself. As usual, give yourself grace, allow yourself to fail, and fight each battle knowing that you’re in it to win the war.

Until next Sunday,

JLOWE