by Paulo Coelho
Short riffs on work, life, and the patterns that shape both.
On a long drive today, old ideas bubbled up.
Problems I’d shelved, questions I’d stopped asking.
Without trying, answers formed. Connections appeared.
It’s funny how the mind works when you stop pushing.
Brute force rarely builds clarity.
Sometimes you just need to give your subconscious room to run.
Everyone’s waiting for the big shift.
The lightning bolt. The breakthrough. The sign that everything’s changed.
But real change moves slower.
It grinds and presses beneath the surface, quiet but unstoppable.
The tectonic plates of your life shifting one small decision at a time.
Transformation doesn’t need fireworks.
It just needs persistence.
Every time I go to Coles, the mirror spider appears.
Different days. Different hours. Always there when I am.
It feels like we move on the same thread.
Some quiet pull that says, now.
Maybe it’s nothing.
Or maybe we’re both part of the same web, sensing each other’s signal.
Some things are only magic if you’re present to catch them.
I saw a sticker on a crossing pole. Just two words: thrive together.
It made me think how rare that is in practice. We chase independence like it’s the goal. But most things that grow do it in clusters. Trees. Ideas. People.
The strongest roots are often the ones intertwined.
You see something small. A car creeping out too far. A friend’s tone slightly off. A gut feeling that flickers, then fades.
You tell yourself it’s nothing. You move on.
Then what you feared happens. And deep down, you knew.
Intuition doesn’t shout. It whispers once and waits.
Where are you holding back when you already know?
Two mornings in a row, my side mirror spider has come out to say hello.
The same one that built a web on the glass months ago, steady through rain and wind.
Spiders are weavers. Connectors. Patient builders of invisible lines that hold more than they seem.
Lately I’ve been dreaming of them too.
Maybe it’s not coincidence. Maybe it’s a reminder.
To keep building quietly, to trust what’s unseen.
My car is at the mechanic, so I’ve been catching public transport.
It takes longer. It’s less direct. Normally that would frustrate me.
But the extra minutes are a gift. Time to read. To think. To just sit without a wheel in my hands.
The trip is slower, but I arrive lighter.
Not all delays are setbacks. Some are invitations to be present.
It’s easy to stare at the past.
To measure where you were, what you didn’t know, and all the mistakes along the way.
But the point is not where you were. It’s how far you’ve come.
The steps you’ve taken, the ground you’ve covered, the growth that carried you here.
The story isn’t in the past. It’s in the change along the way.
Some habits last longer in silence. No posts, no updates, no audience. Just the practice itself.
The Stoics treated silence as strength. A way to guard energy and let what matters take root.
I’ve noticed the same. The habits I kept quiet outlasted every one I talked about. Without the noise of expectation, they became steadier.
Silence doesn’t hide the work. It protects it. And when the results arrive, they speak for themselves.
We often know when it’s time to move on. A quiet sense in the body. A flicker of boredom. A hunch that the work is finished.
But instead of acting, we reason ourselves out of it. We say it pays the bills. We tell ourselves we might lose everything. We wait for a certainty that never comes.
And so we stay too long. Not because the work still matters, but because insecurity whispers that leaving is dangerous.
Leaving early carries risks. But so does waiting. Because fear doesn’t fade with time, it just trades places with regret.
Fear doesn’t vanish the moment we decide. But acting in spite of it is the only way to avoid looking back and wishing we’d listened to our intuition.
