I'm not the advice friend you think I am

I’m the person my friends call when they’re teetering on a pivot in life. I've taken this call so many times I could give the advice in my sleep.

I have lived so many lives that it makes sense to be the pivot friend. I’ve taken career risks in pursuit of dream jobs. I’ve moved across the country and back and then again. In my 20s, I had a long-term relationship but in that same decade I went 4 years single without maybe 1 date a year.

I kind of experienced the full spectrum you could ever ask for in your 20s.

You could say I know a thing or two about pivoting to the point where, from afar, it looks like something I do fearlessly and risk-free.

People act like you get one or two chances in life to pivot. I missed that memo. For me, I’ve always seen pivoting as a necessary step for expansion.

But first let’s let one thing be clear. In my head there’s a distinction between growth and expansion.

Growth is the thing that we all do pretty passively just as the years pass and as we experience life. You’ll grow in a job you hate and you’ll grow in a job you love.

Nothing really ever keeps you from growing even if you don’t feel it.

Expansion, however, that’s where you uncover new versions of yourself and of life. It’s where you experience things you didn’t know existed, yet feel so at home and comfortable for you.

And in my experience, I can never plan it, but it does always come as a result of a pivot.

And this takes me back to the text from a friend that says, “Hey, do you have 10 minutes to talk I need to talk through something”

No matter who the friend is, no matter how close we are or if we’re new friends, I know what this call is going to be about.

It’s going to be about the potential of a pivot.

This is when you’re thinking, " Cool, we know what you’re going to say, you’re going to tell them to go for it. Make the pivot and don’t look back.

But that isn’t it.

There’s more to the pivot than just going for it. Sometimes the pivot is when logic says say yes to the new thing you choose to actually stay put.

I know as doers that it feels counter-intuitive to stay put when you’re ready for something new.

But here’s the thing - you cannot expand from a place of running away from something.

I also know when I take this call that I’m not actually going to give them advice.

I will never be the friend that tells you what to do.

But I will be the friend that asks you all the questions that make you unveil what you’re intuition knows you need to do.

Not your logic brain. Not what is easier to explain to others.

The thing that only your intuition knows.

The thing that after the fact, two years later people stop and tell you how in awe they are of the things you’ve done lately and how did you know it was going to pan out in the way it did?

When the truth is that you didn’t know how it was going to pan out, but you just knew you couldn’t afford to not listen to your intuition.

What I’ve realized is that I’m not just the pivot friend. I’m the intuition friend.

Somewhere decades ago, I realized that my life is exponentially better when I listen to that feeling that’s in my bones that I can’t let go even if it makes sense to no one else.

I remember in middle school having these intuition pings that I just couldn’t shake but had no way of articulating them to my parents.

And then in high school, I got better at explaining it to my parents and they would let me have a looser leash and let me take these risks and as they did that they trusted me and how I experienced life a little bit more.

That is truly one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever had from my parents is they’re willingness to support me through things that don’t make sense on paper as hard as it may be for them to compute at times.

I was also lucky enough to attend a prep school that encouraged you to beat to your own drum. At my school, the “cool popular jocks” were also the ones timing themselves on the Rubik's Cube or competing on who read the most books on 16th-century literature over the summer break.

Somewhere between college and my mid-twenties, I defaulted to feeling like I had to make decisions that were good on paper, and then I would feel this push and pull of not being able to shake the direction I wanted to go in. It always lingered even if I ignored it.

But the me who knew the power of pivoting and expansion was always there and when I would prioritize her, man did that open doors I never knew would open.

It was never networking or the right LinkedIn message.

It was being open to unpredictable steps that would still guide me to where I was trying to go.

And that’s another thing that I would ask my friends on our pivot call.

What is it that you really want? Not the thing though - the life experience, and feelings. And does that get you closer to it in a way that isn’t settling?

Because pivoting cannot mean settling.

Pivoting can be not the end goal but it cannot set you backwards.

The easiest example is a relationship.

If you want the marriage and family, settling for a relationship that drains you isn’t going to get you closer to the marriage and family.

But being single for 4 years after ending that relationship to get to a point where you have the utmost clarity on what you need from yourself and from a partner for an expansive relationship, that is what will expand you even if in the moment it sounds like a stand still. Like you’re frozen in time and everyone is moving but you.

TikTok loves to scream advice at you. They have 1% of context to your experience and tell you this is the only way you can experience life.

There is not a single Substack I’ve ever written where I would say THIS IS THE ADVICE YOU NEED TO FOLLOW OR ELSE.

The best way I know to support you is to share my experiences so you feel less alone. Or give you ideas on what could be or what you don’t want (because that’s ok too if I say something and you’re like, " Wow, that’s really not it for me - clarity is clarity).

I’m here to just say ok, but what if…and then you fill in the blank of what you really want.

this is a free post for everyone who’s ready to join the ok, but what if journey. if this is the start of your own “ok but what if” journey, the rest of it lives behind the subscribe - life, relationships, career, the parts of building a life that don't fit in one essay