I’m writing this from an airport in Mexico. My flight home boards in a couple of hours and I have been sitting here long enough to finish a coffee I let go cold and start a second one. My passport says I’ve been here 23 times, but since this is my 3rd passport it’s clearly more than that.

But the first time. That one I remember exactly.

Nine years ago I sat in this same airport. It was an impromptu decision made in my best friend’s apartment in Chicago. I was visiting her post year abroad figuring out my next move when a fellow traveler casually invited me in the comments section on a Facebook post to come hang out in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Even the name sounded playful and adventurous, so I was in.

I arrived a few days later with only a duffle bag and an AirBnB reservation. I no plan and no idea what was waiting for me. At the time, I didn’t know this country would become the place I’d keep returning to. Costa Rica had been my go to respite before this trip and my original next stop, but the Universe had something altogether different up its sleeve.

I remember getting off the ADO in Centro and walking out into the city square and the awe that washed over me as I saw the beautiful hues of greens and blue water, the towering statue, and the feeling of electricity energy in the air. I fell in love.

I feel so blessed I got to experience it while it was a still a largely undeveloped treasure, existing in its natural state.

At the time, I didn’t know I wouldn’t leave for a year. The longest I stayed in another country before that was 3.5 months. I didn’t know about the business I was about to build, or the version of myself I was about to grow into walking those sacred sands every day, or that I would one day lose count of how many times I had made this exact trip. I just knew I had arrived somewhere new, and something in me was already starting to move.

That trip gave birth to the early version of Creation Nation. I crossed my first million in cash during one of my end of the quarter visits here. I also had all of my bank assets frozen by an old creditor during another visit (because ya know, balance). Mexico became the place I come back to when life gets loud and I need to hear myself again.

This month was one of those times. I came here with a question. I got my answer. And the answer was simple, even if living it is not: give yourself space to build a life that actually feels good.

For me, that means less.

I’ve had a habit of getting so involved with the work that my life takes a backseat, and as long as it’s functional and comfortable, I would let it ride. But as I get older, I cherish my time and my space…and my peace.

Being a Gen Xer, I got to experience both the rise of the internet and the birth of social media. Which also means I’ve had the privilege of building relationships and businesses offline…and I want to get back to that. Which means less noise, and less showing up in places that cost me more than they give back.

So here is one of the things I am changing. This is the last issue of The Reset on Substack. I am taking July off from writing, and when I come back in August this newsletter will land directly in your inbox, again, as it was originally designed. If you ever want to go back and read old issues, they will live on my website. Nothing disappears. It just moves somewhere that makes more sense for the life I’m building, disconnected from the algorithm and the analytics of it all.

It was originally designed to be an intimate conversation between me and you on Sunday mornings, but a friend suggested I bring it here to share the message and while I’m grateful for the reception I’ve received, I’m starting to feel my voice is being dictated by likes and restacks and that doesn’t feel good to me…so back to its purest form we go.

Make sure you are on the email list so you do not miss it when it returns. You can find the link at the end.

But I did not want to leave Substack without saying something worth reading. So let me tell you about resets, because that answer I got in Mexico? It came from finally being willing to do one again.

Two years ago I came here carrying something heavier than a simple question. I was newly divorced, a hundred pounds overweight, more than six figures in debt and exhausted. I had spent years pushing through something I should have let go of a long time ago. I didn’t come here looking for a reset. I came because I needed somewhere I knew how to breathe. What I found was that I had no choice but to begin again.

That reset lasted a full year. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was also the most important.

I tell you all of this because I want you to understand something before we go any further. A reset did not find me in a beautiful moment. It found me in one of the worst stretches of my life. And don’t get lost in the location, because Mexico is not the point. The reset happened inside of me, at my core. The location just gave me enough space to finally let it.

So no, you don’t need a passport for this. You do not need to go anywhere. Some of the most significant resets I know of have happened at kitchen tables, in parking lots after a hard conversation, and on a lunch break when someone finally admitted to themselves that they simply couldn’t keep going this way. Because a reset is not about where you are, it’s about what you are finally willing to face.

Here is what I know about how one actually works…and I know a lot.

Nobody begins a reset from a place of clarity. You likely begin it from a place of enough. There has been enough pretending, enough posturing and postponing. Enough looking at your life and feeling like a stranger in it. And the moment right before it happens rarely lets you know it’s coming. It’s usually just a Tuesday where something small happens and you realize you cannot continue to do this the same way for one more day.

How sweet is that. The idea that you get to begin again, to start something new and fresh that feels good and right to you, even when you can’t see what come next. You just have to trust the feeling and know that it’s time.

Most of you will talk yourself out of it right there. You will convince yourself that what you are feeling is fear or instability or just a bad week. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it is a knowing, and you owe it to yourself to find out what’s waiting for you on the other side.

Here’s the thing, the question at the start of a reset is never whether you are ready. You are not going to feel ready. Read that again. If when you feel ready, something beneath the surface will give you pause and you will want to retreat back to what’s familiar, but you won’t be able to find it…because you, my dear, are changing.

In fact, I’d argue it’s the best part of it. Because it’s where you learn who you truly are, what makes you tick, what moves you and what settles you. My reset lasted a full year in Mexico and another 6 months after I returned home. And as much as I would have liked for it to have gone faster, real change does not move in a straight line. There were months where I made real progress and months where I could barely get out of the hammock.

There were months where I lost weight, then gained some back, sat in it for a while, lost some more, gained a few back and so on. There were times when I paid down debt and then had an unexpected expense that felt like it undid everything and looking at my spreadsheet made me cry.

I had days where I felt completely different from the person I used to be and days where I couldn’t tell if anything had changed at all. Like the time I spent the week between Christmas and the New Year going back and forth with my ex-husband about a marriage that was legally over 8 months prior.

There are instead just small, repetitive decisions to keep going even when you cannot fully see the fruits of your labor. Just know, the willingness to keep showing up for yourself on the days when nothing feels different is the work. That is the reset.

If you are in the middle of something hard right now and it does not feel transformative yet, it’s ok. Transformation happens overtime. It doesn’t mean that change isn’t coming, the mess of it of all usually means something real is happening underneath, and it is asking you to hold on a little longer before you decide it is not worth it. That you are not worth it. Because you are.

Now listen, I’m not going to tell you that my reset fixed everything, because it absolutely did not. There were some things it could not touch. But here is what it did: it gave me back my own opinion of myself. And that turns out to be the thing that everything else rests on.

The debt got smaller, and now I’m totally debt free: $163k in private debt, $181k in student loan debt, all gone. The weight dropped, I’m the smallest I’ve been in a decade. The business grew, and then I shut it down and launched this completely new thing, which crossed its first 6 figures in the first 5 months of business.

I explored love again…twice…and while this second time had a bit of a false start, there’s still hope for it yet, maybe, possibly…we shall see. Ain’t life grand.

The point of this entire post is the life I have now looks nothing like the one I was stress testing my way through two years ago. But none of that happened because I found some secret or knowingly followed a perfect plan.

And then I made that decision again on the days I wanted to quit, and again on the days after that.

I did have a bit of an unfair advantage. I’ve been doing the deep personal work for more than 20 years. I have a degree in conflict resolution, multiple coaching certifications, as well as a certification in the 12 week year, so I’m really efficient understanding what’s happening internally, identifying what I want to change, setting and then meeting goals.

Execution is hands down one of my super powers…but all of it starts with a willingness to change. Without that none of my background matters and none of yours does either.

What a reset changes is not your circumstances, at least not right away. It changes what you are willing to accept. It changes what you are willing to do. And once those things change, the circumstances eventually have to move around them. Now, does this happen on some magic timeline, no. It’s different for everyone. But change does happen. It happened in my own life and in the lives of the friends I counsel and the women I work with. The reset comes first. Everything else follows.

When I was in the middle of my reset, the hardest part was not knowing what to do first. There was so much that needed to change that I kept stalling trying to figure out where to begin. What I eventually learned is that the starting point does not have to be the most important thing. It just has to be something real.

Get honest about one thing you have been avoiding. We are conditioned in society to make lists. A list in the worst thing you can do when feeling like your life has fallen apart. Instead, focus on one thing at a time and start with the one that you think about the mos. It’s the thing you already know about but have been finding reasons to leave alone. During my reset it was my health. I was prediabetic, overweight, exhausted and moving through my days in a fog I had convinced myself was just stress. The honest truth is I knew. I had looked at the numbers. I just kept putting myself last because there was always someone else who needed something first, and I had gotten very good at doing the bare minimum to survive it. You cannot reset something you keep putting at the bottom of the list. At some point, you have to become the priority.

Decide what you are no longer willing to do. Most people start a reset by making a list of what they want. I found it more useful to get clear on what I was done with. For me, that started with being last on my own list. I had spent so long taking care of everyone else that running on empty had started to feel normal. The bare minimum had become my baseline. So the decision I made was not about a diet or a plan. It was that I was no longer willing to treat my own health like it could wait. When you get clear on what you are done tolerating, especially from yourself, it changes what you are willing to do next. That is where the reset actually begins.

Find one person who can hold you to it. This person is not someone who will feel sorry for you. But instead someone who will ask you the hard questions and actually wait for your answer. My reset did not happen in isolation. It happened with accountability around me, people who knew what I was building toward and would notice if I started drifting back. I’m fortunate to have a lot of friends who did not leave me alone for the entire year after my divorce, but that is not everyone’s truth. But there are communities out there that can show up for you when you’re feeling alone.

Before you keep scrolling, sit with this: Where in your life are you still negotiating with something that already has your answer?

It might be a relationship. A job. A version of yourself you have been trying to maintain that you honestly stopped believing in a while ago.

Nine years ago I sat in this airport with no idea what was waiting for me. No plan, no map, no version of myself ready for what was coming. I just showed up. And something on the other side of that decision kept showing up for me.

I have been back 23 times since then. Maybe more. Every time I leave, I take something home I did not arrive with. This trip was no different.

See you in August. Check your inbox.

— Donteacia 💛

P.S. Here’s the link to stayed connected with us in your inbox. I don’t add you to other campaigns if you sign only sign up for the newsletter.

P.P.S. If you know your something in your life needs to change, let’s hop on a call and see if The Reset Accelerator is the right fit for you.