The Anchor

Hey Reader, I am going to be completely honest with you today: grief sucks. Life has taught me that grief comes in different shapes, forms, and fashions. It rarely hits in a predictable line. Instead, it comes in unpredictable waves. The first time I remember feeling its weight was in 1999 when I lost my grandfather at 16. A few short years later, my grandmother passed away. Over the years, like many of you, I have grieved lost loved ones, lost jobs, lost friendships, and lost seasons....

Hey Reader, Last week I told you action is one of my real antidotes to regret and shame, to that spiral of trying to figure it all out in my head instead of moving. Taking action is a big deal for me. It's how I get unstuck. Sitting in church yesterday, our pastor was talking about performance, and something in me sat up. Because I think for me, that performance mindset is really rooted in people-pleasing. I'm a recovering people-pleaser, and the more I sat with it, the more I realized...

Hey Reader,Over the last few days, we’ve covered a lot of deep emotional territory. We’ve talked about sitting in the sting of a hard choice, how regret’s first cousin is shame, and how we have to redefine success as collecting daily breadcrumbs rather than chasing a trophy. Today, I want to talk about what actually gets us out of our heads and back into our lives: action. As a high-achieving, recovering overachiever, the hardest place for me to exist is in the space between one win and the...

Hey Reader, If you look up the literal, dictionary definition of success, you’ll find words like favorable outcome, attainment of wealth, position, or honors. For a long time, that was my baseline. Having served as a VP at a Fortune 50 company, I knew how to measure success by corporate standards: titles, compensation, visibility, and performance metrics. Now, three years post-corporate, I’m in a completely different season. I’m building Anchored by LCJ, creating content, doing gig work, and...

Hey Reader, Yesterday, we talked about sitting in the sting of a decision's aftermath. I ended that note with a reminder: trust the decision you made in the light, even when the aftermath feels heavy in the dark. When you sit in that heavy space for too long, you realize that regret has a first cousin. That cousin is shame. Regret says, "I wish I had made a different choice." Shame whispers, "You should have known better, and you're a failure because you didn't." If we aren't careful, the...

Hey Reader, I have been having thinking a lot about regret lately. It could have possibly stemmed from a conversation I recently had with a friend or just life happenings. More than likely, its both of them. Regret is a funny—and often complex—thing. It's not always as simple as we make it out to be. There are times when you don't regret a decision itself, but the aftermath? The byproduct? It can still hurt like hell. You know with complete certainty that walking away was the right choice for...

Hey Reader, I want to be honest about something: building new systems takes time, and the middle part is usually messy. As someone with ADHD, breaking in a new routine or navigating a sudden schedule shift can throw you off completely. It is so easy to look at everyone else’s polished Instagram highlights and start judging myself because my laundry pile is high or I'm searching for matching socks every morning. That last one is the BANE of my existence. Yet, still low on the priority board. I...

Hey Reader, It isn't always that our lives get wildly busier. Sometimes, our demands simply shift. Right now, my family is in a season of major shifts. My husband works two jobs. I take on gig work alongside my business. My oldest is navigating her senior year of high school, and my youngest—who is on the spectrum—is preparing for a big transition into school alongside his ABA therapy. On top of all of that, there is the invisible, day-to-day work: laundry, meal planning, managing schedules,...

Hey Reader, Not everything that is important carries the exact same weight. For a long time, I treated every request, every opportunity, and every expectation as if it had the exact same urgency. If someone asked for my time or attention, I said yes—mostly out of a fear of disappointing people or hurting feelings. The reality is, when you operate that way, you end up yes-ing your way out of your own life. Slowly yet surely, I’ve had to use extreme prejudice when deciding what gets a "yes" and...

Hey Reader, We talk a lot about time management, but lately, I’ve been thinking about something far more valuable: capacity. If I had to define capacity in my own words, it’s our total bandwidth to operate from day to day. It isn't just about how many open hours you have on a clock. It is a real-time combination of your spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical well-being. The reality is that our capacity is finite. Yet, so many of us—especially the overachievers, the Type-As, and the women...