I Made the Best Investment of My Life Two Weeks Ago. It Wasn't in My Business.

Two weeks ago, I went to a psychedelic retreat.

Three days after I got home, I broke my foot. Maybe.

I'm going to tell you about both, because they're connected in ways I'm still processing, and because I've built this entire brand on pulling back the curtain and letting you learn alongside me.

Let's start with why I went to the retreat in the first place.

I've done a tremendous amount of work over the last decade—especially the last few years—to heal and grow as a person.

Therapy, coaching, journaling, somatic practices. All of it. And it's helped enormously.

But I knew there was a deeper layer I was struggling to reach.

Because I'm incredibly self-aware (sometimes to a fault), and because I do tons of research and learn constantly, I've accumulated all this knowledge about how to operate differently. How to slow down. How to protect my energy. How to build sustainably.

But I was having a hard time integrating what I knew in my mind into how I felt in my body and how I showed up in my life.

Sound familiar?

This is exactly what I talk about with Element 5—Embodiment. You can have the best strategy in the world. You can know exactly what actions to take. But if you don't become the version of you who can actually live those ideas, they stay just ideas.

I was living proof of my own teaching. And not in the way I wanted to be.

The health issues I've been dealing with over the last few months—which have forced me to slow down already—created a powerful inflection point. I felt like I was at a moment where I could not longer keep white-knuckling my way through.

But still, I wanted to do ANYTHING I could to help me integrate these learnings at a deeper level.

And I knew in my freaking bones that a psychedelic retreat would help me do that.

I was right. The retreat may be the single best investment I've ever made in myself.

And then, three days later, I went to step off the back stoop of the rental house I'm staying in (we have a leak in our roof and had to move out while it's being fixed), rolled my ankle, and felt that immediate, shooting agony of more than a typical sprain.

I'll tell you more about what that means—and why it's connected to the retreat—on Sunday. For now, I want to share what's actually changing in how I'm building this business.

Because here's what I realized: knowing what to do differently isn't the same as doing it differently.

And it’s not the same as becoming the version of yourself who does it differently because that’s who they are.

And I've been given a very clear opportunity to practice.

If you've been reading my newsletters for a while, you know this isn't the first time I've learned this lesson. I've written before about how my body completely shut down when I was running my agency—making $50K a month in revenue while feeling more incompetent and miserable than I had when I was making $5K a month doing work I loved. "The Psychology Behind Self-Sabotaging Business Models"

And I’ve spoken openly on social media and my former podcast about when I almost lost my life in a dog attack and SWORE I would live my life differently in the aftermath. Or when I joined an AI startup last summer and quickly realized it was not right for me or my nervous system.

I have gone through this SO MANY TIMES before.

You'd think I'd have learned. And I did each time. But only for a while.

But here's the thing about default settings: they don't disappear just because you've had a breakthrough.

They wait.

And when you're not paying attention—when things are going well and momentum is building—they creep back in.

That's what happened with The Essentialist CEO.

This brand is only a few months old. Yes, it's built on years of work and experience, but this specific iteration is new. And the moment I started seeing results? My default programming kicked in.

Scale it. Push harder. Capture the momentum.

All while dealing with health issues that have made it crystal clear I need to be judicious with my time and energy.

I wasn't heading toward burnout. I was actually already recovering from years of burnout and relentless pushing would only guarantee my inability to heal.

So, I'm doing something about it. Not just thinking about it differently but actually changing how I operate.

Here's what I've learned about myself: I've tried to slow down before. Many times. And every single time, I've turned the slowing down into another productivity exercise.

→ Meditation became "optimizing my focus."
→ Morning routines became "hacking my energy."
→ Rest became "strategic recovery for better performance."

Even my attempts to be gentler with myself were, underneath, still about getting more out of myself.

I wrote about this pattern last summer—how smart entrepreneurs often reject wellness practices because of who's promoting them, but then when we finally adopt them, we turn them into another form of hustle. "Why Smart Entrepreneurs Resist What They Need Most"

The problem isn't the practices. The problem is the orientation.

So this time, I'm trying something different.

Instead of strict systems with measurable outcomes, I'm building rituals, practices that feel soothing rather than like another milestone to hit.

The key difference: no rigid rules about frequency or timing.

I'm not tracking how many days in a row I've meditated. I'm not gamifying my recovery. I'm not turning "slow down" into another KPI.

Instead, I'm letting the practices be invitations, not obligations.

Some of what this looks like right now:

Slow walks with slow music. I'm still recovering physically, so the walks are gentle by necessity. But I've deliberately chosen to only listen to calm, relaxing music while I walk—not podcasts, not business audiobooks, not "productive" content. Just walking. Slowly. Letting my thoughts wander without trying to capture them.

Keep in mind, I’m not really doing walking right now…I started writing this newsletter before I broke my foot. But I’ll keep this theme going as I recover.

Neurographic art. This is a drawing practice that's almost meditative. You make abstract patterns and shapes without any goal of "creating something good." It engages my hands and my visual brain while giving my analytical mind a break.

Reading for pleasure. Not business books. Not "I should read this to stay current." Just books I actually want to read.

Comfort watching. Returning to movies and shows (Hello, Heated Rivalry for the 73rd time) that feel like a warm blanket, a crackling fire, or a hot cup of cocoa.

Puzzles. Physical, tactile, slow. No optimization. No tracking how fast I complete them.

Tarot as journaling prompts. I love tarot—not as fortune-telling, but as a container for reflection. I pull a card and use it as a prompt to journal about whatever comes up. It gives me something to respond to when "just journal" feels too open-ended.

None of these are revolutionary. None of them are "hacks."

That's the point.

One thing I've had to accept—really accept, not just intellectually acknowledge—is that I can only go about 90 to 120 minutes before I need a break.

Not "I should take a break for optimal productivity."

I need a break. My brain stops working well. My body gets uncomfortable. My quality of thinking degrades.

For years, I pushed past this. I treated it as a limitation to overcome rather than information to honor.

Now I'm designing around it.

This means shorter work blocks with real transitions between them. Not "let me just finish this one thing" transitions, but actual stops. Get up. Move. Do something completely different for at least 15-20 minutes.

It feels inefficient. It feels like I'm "wasting" time.

But here's what I'm noticing: the quality of my thinking in those 90-minute blocks is significantly higher when I'm not running on fumes from the previous block.

I'm making better decisions. I'm catching things I would have missed. I'm actually present for the work instead of just grinding through it.

Here's the part that might sound counterintuitive from someone who helps entrepreneurs build predictable revenue:

I'm choosing to grow my business more slowly.

Concretely: instead of webinars where 700 people register, I'm aiming for about half that. I'm keeping sales calls to a maximum of 8 per week. I'm staying hands-on instead of scaling up and delegating everything.

This isn't forever. It's for now.

Because I realized that I was so focused on capturing the opportunity that I was about to build something I'd have to dismantle later. A machine that required more of me than I have to give. A business that would succeed in ways that would make me miserable.

I've done that before. I refuse to do it again.

Here's what I'm really working on, underneath all the tactics:

Learning to trust something deeper, truer, and more grounded than my analytical mind.

I've built my entire career on being smart. Thinking quickly. Strategizing clearly. Articulating precisely.

But my brain—as capable as it is—doesn't have access to everything I know.

My body knows things. It's been sending me signals I've been ignoring for years.

My intuition knows things. That gut sense about whether something is right or wrong, whether to move toward or away—I've overridden it so many times in favor of what "made sense logically."

My heart knows things. What I actually want. What would actually make me happy. Not what I should want based on what success is supposed to look like.

The practices I'm building into my life—the walks, the art, the tarot, the puzzles—they're not just about stress relief. They're about creating space to hear those other voices.

Because a business built only on what your brain can produce is a business with a single point of failure.

And I'm tired of being a single point of failure.

I'm not sharing this as someone who's figured it all out. I'm sharing it as someone who's in the middle of the experiment—literally immobilized, forced to practice what I preach, discovering whether I actually learned the lesson this time.

Integration has just started. I know there will be a lot of changes that come for me and for this business over the coming months. I'm going to share all of them with you.

Ask yourself:

These aren't rhetorical questions. I actually want you to sit with them.

Because the Cult of More is seductive. It promises that the answer to your problems is more—more effort, more hustle, more intensity.

But sometimes the answer is less.

Less speed. Less scale. Less proving.

More sustainability. More intention. More trust in the long game.

In love, growth, and presence,
Kasey