One thing about resilience — and where I’m going with my next book is — owning your choices and actions allows you to change them. It’s a foundational ballast of resilience and happiness. Both occur at this intersection. You can’t bounce back without a firm floor. If you’re not honest about how you failed or you’re not honest about how you arrived at that loss, you’re not going to be able to create a firm foundation upon which to build.

After the dissolution of the organization, it took me 18 months divesting myself from that identity as founder. It was a process — a very protracted process of sifting and sorting — both keeping and discarding elements of who I was versus who I was becoming. By way of example, imagine taking your fingers and meshing them together like gears, that’s what I visualize when I make life changes. That intersecting and meshing of gears is something that helps move you forward. Those meshing of gears also produces friction. As you keep moving forward, some of those gears in the wheel go on without you and you move on to another gear.

You move on to another wheel.

Part of that transition process requires radical self-honesty.

• What do I really want?
• What do I need?
• What’s going to be left behind?
• What am I picking up as I move forward?

Understand this: you’re always going to be in a state of leaving something behind. I tweeted this concept two or three days ago (sometimes I tweet something out because it’s a way for me to get the thought out of my brain and onto something that I can see).

The tweet said, “Don’t worry about the people who leave you; they’re not your people. Be willing to let things go so that the things that are ready for you and that you’re ready for are able to fit into your life.” This process begins by being able to state what it is that you really want.

Be willing to let go of what no longer serves you to make room for what does.

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