We had a fascinating conversation with Ryan Levesque this week, and it inspired me to write you this essay.
At the end of September he’s launching his book, Return to Real, and he spoke to so many of the cravings I feel most of us are carrying right now. Returning to real touches every area of our lives, our relationships, how we build a business, how we eat, how we serve, how we write, how we live.
The internet and technology made our lives easier in so many ways. But little by little, they were also taking us far from what real is.
At some point Ryan spoke about his craving for nature, for his hands in the dirt, and I felt it in my own body. I am tuning in to that same desire as I sense the next chapter of my business and my life wanting to be born.
And it made me wonder…
What would a healthier, more real relationship with building a business online even look like? How can I feel more of what I feel in nature, even when I am not in it?
Technology is great in so many ways. It’s what lets me sit here in Brazil and reach someone in England and share a tea together, eye to eye across the world. That’s a gift. So the question for me isn’t whether to leave. The question is how to return to real without abandoning the good.
As with many things in life, the problem is never the problem. As I sat with what returning to real means to me, I realized that the wound underneath so many of these cravings is our relationship with time.
Technology made us tap into an illusion that things should be faster than they really are.
Life is not a click, and it shouldn’t be.
The go-go-go that never ends. It doesn’t matter how much you run, it’s never enough, and you’re always late.
In a click you get food. In a click you buy something. And now, with AI, in almost a click you get a sales page, robust in features, empty in energy.
Maybe just returning to the idea of divine timing could give us a healthier, more fulfilling relationship with all of it. We are losing our ability to wait, to gestate. We are being led to believe the world is fast, and maybe all of our disconnection comes from exactly that.
What if part of returning to real is to rescue the sacredness of gestating something? Of waiting, even being bored, expecting something we don’t know when it will come. And sitting longer in the unknown?!
A few weeks ago my son brought home a bean wrapped in a piece of cotton, something he’d planted at school. Day after day, we watched that bean grow and transform. New leaves came. And weeks later, something that looked like a whole new bean emerged.
We were in awe of the process. And not once did he ask me, “Mom, shouldn’t the bean be bigger by now? Why is it taking so long?”
Children don’t carry the illusion of being late for life. They don’t fear missing out. Their sense of urgency is a different creature entirely. They crave the now, and when we are pulled out of it, they scream to bring us back!
I remember when I was a kid, my dad had a camera, and we only had 24 shots. Sometimes 36. We had to really pause and choose the pictures we would take. And then it could take months before I finally held the photo in my hands.
But the wait was full of joy and expectation. It was fun to imagine how the pictures would turn out.
Now? The same object gets 25 shots. I press the button as fast as I can, I move without even thinking, and I see the picture instantly on the screen of my phone.
Where is the care? Where is the attention?
As I share this, I am reflecting because I am not standing on the other side of it. I am right there in the very middle. A few cravings are very loud in me now, and I am learning that they carry gold: they are inviting me back to my real.
The more I read about AI, the more I catch my thoughts telling me I should be somewhere I’m not. I should write faster. I should have a team of 50 agents working for me. I should produce more. More, more, more. Argh.
I don’t think the answer is to ignore it. But I do think we could be more thoughtful. Fast for what? Optimized for what?
A baby isn’t born before nine months. Good things take time, and there is joy in the process. I read once that the universe is so perfect it created time in this dimension to keep us alive — imagine if everything you thought manifested in a click; with all the thoughts we have, we’d all be dead by now.
There is a gift in the wait. And for me, returning to real has everything to do with that.
I love watching nature, reconnecting with the divine rhythm of things. Everything feels slower, and yet everything gets done. So much happens at once, and there is an order inside what I would sometimes call chaos.
I don’t have the answer, but maybe healing our relationship with time is part of it, part of how we hold the life in person and the life online, the life in nature and the life in the city; the life that sometimes asks us to move faster, and the life that also invites us to slow down and notice.
These are the questions I want to keep exploring… What does returning to real mean for me? How do I use technology in a way that supports my own way home? What are the small, daily choices that keep the real in me alive?
Ryan shared something that I resonate with a lot, and I would call myself lucky to be already choosing that for me and the people who get attracted to my work. He said we may be moving from a dopamine era into an oxytocin one.
It made me believe, more than ever, that a business worth building can only be built from love. From connection. From listening to the voice in you that points toward a path no one around you is walking, because that is the way to your own version of real.
For me, building a business was never a fast food project, and it shouldn’t be treated like one… even if we’re often led to believe it is. That it’s about moving fast, about more, about shortcuts, about optimizing all the time.
It isn’t. It’s sacred. It’s an expression of who you are. It matures, it evolves, it reveals itself to you as you walk. It has its own divine timing.
A delicious process of discovery, of adventure, of returning home, a process of listening to what God wants to bring into this world through me.
So why rush? No rush, and no pause either.
I am building, I am active, I am being and doing in my business but I am not running on a hamster wheel. My business supports the real in me, and, interestingly, it keeps inviting me to become more and more real.
The overnight successes you see are years of work no one witnessed. The money that seems to flow easily was built on a foundation of giving without receiving, for a long time. The clarity you hear in someone’s voice was gestated through years of trying, refining, listening. The thousands of followers came after years of no claps at all.
Like a seed. You plant, you care, you water — every day — and in its own time it grows, it becomes visible.
Real is what makes us feel whole. A conversation without a filter, eye to eye. A breath that fills the entire body. A business that supports the life you want to live. A meal you take the time to enjoy.
The problem is never the problem. Behind everything we call fake and disconnected, there is a deeper wound: in the illusion that we must rush because we are losing time, we lose the only thing that makes us real — the present moment.
Everything meaningful takes time. Real is how much we can enjoy the process.
With Love,
Carolina
Who we’re celebrating: Ryan Levesque
Ryan Levesque has spent years helping entrepreneurs listen more closely to the people they serve.
His Ask Method changed how many of us think about understanding a market.
Now, he is asking a different question:
How do we remain fully human in an age of artificial everything?
Ryan’s new book, Return to Real, launches September 29.
This week, we sat down with him to explore real connection, trust, AI, and the tension between listening to the market and what he calls:
“The contrarian voice of your heart.”
That conversation inspired Carolina’s essay this week and gave language to something many of us have been feeling: the future may not belong to whoever creates the most.
It may belong to those who create what feels most human.
Ryan has once again found language for a shift many people can feel but cannot yet name.
We are grateful for the conversation and excited to share his work with you.
Happenings
The Clarity Compass began as a simple spreadsheet we used with clients who were carrying too many good ideas and struggling to choose what deserved their attention now.
It worked.
People began leaving with one clear focus, what could wait, and their next three actions.
So we released the spreadsheet version publicly.
Then we listened.
The feedback confirmed that the underlying process was strong, while showing us how much more useful the experience could become.
So we custom vibe-coded a massive upgrade.
The new Clarity Compass guides you through the entire decision, helps you compare what your business needs with what your heart wants, brings in your Harmony Map results, tests your decision, and turns your choice into three dated actions.
The short video below shows you some of what we built, but not all of it.
Because this is how we believe useful things become real:
You begin with something simple.
You place it in people’s hands.
You listen.
Then you build the next version from what the work reveals.
The Weekly Highlights
If you’re building toward a revenue goal without asking what happens when it works, read this. Phil shares why he shut down a $100,000-a-month business and the question that can keep success from quietly building you a life you never wanted.
Memorable Quote by Oliver Burkeman
So much good stuff in here!
The older I get, the more right-on-time I feel.
Tho I have often said, if you'd told my 34-year old self "how long things would take," I'm not sure she would have accepted the assignment. 😉
Good thing, then, that she didn't know.