The JD letter
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Where You Bloom Is Up to You
The JD Letter May 3, 2025 “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” - Mexican Proverb In the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happiness, Will Smith plays Chris Gardner (based on Gardner's true story). He was a man drowning in debt, abandoned by his wife, and left to raise his young son while homeless in San Francisco. He has no degree. No connections. No safety net. Just a dream of becoming a stockbroker - a job dominated by Ivy League graduates in pressed suits. At one point, he’s...
How to outlast the competition
The JD Letter April 19, 2025 "The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit."- Fabienne Fredrickson Before he was Han Solo or Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford was a carpenter. In 1964, Ford moved to Hollywood to become an actor. "But I arrived on a metaphoric bus full of people who had the same ambition," he said. So he came up with a plan to outlast his competition. As Ford spent time around other aspiring actors on the metaphoric bus, he became aware of something: most of them...
The art of being different
The JD Letter April 12, 2025 “It’s not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”— Theodore Roosevelt Famous comedian Kevin Hart heard “no” more than most people hear their own names. He was told he was too short. Too loud. Too animated. That his style was “too much” for Hollywood. "Early in my career, I was booed off stage," Hart says, "comedy clubs rejected me and TV executives didn't think I had enough talent." For the first decade of his career,...
On becoming, the power of subtraction, and focus
The JD Letter April 5, 2025 "First you must let go of who you think you are. Only then can you become who you're meant to be.” – Lao Tzu At some point in his journey, Santiago—the main character in the book The Alchemist—realized the journey wasn’t about becoming someone. It was about letting go of everything that wasn’t him. That doesn’t mean you won’t face challenges or feel lost along the way. The harsh truth is that you can't learn all the lessons beforehand. You learn a lot about what...
You're not lazy—you're out of survival mode
The JD Letter February 22, 2025 Jess @thejessdanara Unhealed trauma will have you preparing to survive a battle that ended a long time ago. 12:33 PM • Jan 28, 2025 0 Retweets 3 Likes Read 1 replies No one talks about how much rest you need when you finally feel safe. After enduring survival mode for so long, most people feel guilty or lazy when they finally slow down. But what we all fail to realize is that it's normal to feel exhausted when we no longer have to be on guard. The deep fatigue...
The #1 habit that keeps you stuck in life
The JD Letter February 15, 2025 "I'll do it tomorrow" has probably killed more dreams than anything else. When you say it, you enter an overwhelm and procrastination cycle that is hard to get out of. You start to: push work deadlines skip the doctor appointment tell yourself you'll save money next month Until you explode—because you avoided your problems so much that now you experience panic, guilt, shame, and sleepless nights. If you've ever reached that point, chances are you're stuck in...
Stop undervaluing yourself—do this instead
The JD Letter February 8, 2025 Most people are scared of: raising their prices—they think it will scare customers away asking for a salary raise—they think it will damage their relationship with their manager saying no to bad clients—they think they won’t find better ones positioning themselves as an expert—they think they need more credentials promoting their work—they think it will come off as arrogant But what if the opposite is true? What if raising your prices actually attracts better...