A while back, deep in his rough first stretch with Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton was out at some event and a fan leaned in and said, "Remember who you are, mate." 

Not very long after, he takes his first win with Ferrari at Barcelona and the first thing he reaches for is those exact words. Posts them. Credits a stranger he met on one of his worst days.

I keep thinking about it cause the words weren't new. "Remember who you are" is the kind of thing you've heard a hundred times and let slide right off you. The fan didn't say anything Hamilton hadn't already been told by a coach, a team, somebody close to him a dozen times over. The only difference was the timing. 

Those words sat with him for months before they did anything. He wasn't ready when he heard them..and then one day he was. Right words at the wrong time go right through you, same words when you're finally open to them and they turn a season around. 

And I'm telling you this cause of the exact season I'm in right now and this newsletter is me saying the quiet part out loud while I'm still in it, not cleaned up after the fact once I know how it ends.

I've gone win to win for years. And somewhere in there came a long stretch with no major outcome, working harder than I ever have, feeling further from my goal than I have in my life.

On paper, none of that reads as a problem. I closed some incredible brands, guys begging to work with me, another speaking gig in Italy. From the outside, it looks like everything's working.

But my heart sits here and goes..why aren't you happy?

I'm in a season of reflection, and that’s genuinely uncomfortable for me to sit in. I do so much better when the course is clear, when I know what's happening and where I'm going, and I can just sprint and lead the team there. Right now, it's a new project beginning, a project winding down, and a project scaling, all at once, all at different points, different investments, different returns. 

Normally, you get to be in one of those. I'm in all three at the same time and the volatility slows me down in a way I don't love.

And underneath all of it, still trying to be there for my wife and my son and feeling like I'm probably falling short on all of it at once. Business, personal, myself. I canceled two workouts this week beating myself up over it, finally did one today, and then sat there annoyed that I didn't do the other two. 

Your mind does weird things to you in a season like this, and the reason I’m telling you instead of keeping it tidy is that this part gets skipped in public and suffered through alone in private. You see the win posts. You don't see the valley between them. So people who are in it figure they're the only ones, that something's wrong with them specifically, when the valley is just part of the climb. 

It's not a failure state you're supposed to claw your way out of as fast as you can. It's just the part nobody talks about, and that's exactly what makes it feel worse than it is.

I keep coming back to the Hamilton thing because of what it means for a season like this one. The right words are probably already out there for me. Somebody's already said the thing I need to hear..I'm just not ready for it yet, same way he wasn't for all those months he carried that line around before it clicked. So I'm not out hunting for some perfect new piece of advice. I'm just trying to stay open, coming into every conversation, every room, every relationship with the idea that this one could be the one.

He carried four words around for months before they meant anything. I figure I'm somewhere in the middle of my own version of that.

That's the season. I'll see you in the next one.

- Shack