Instagram story viewer> @theexitstrategynetwork> Tagged

theexitstrategynetwork

@theexitstrategynetwork

undefined

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

PLAY YOUR GAME.

Not the game, YOUR game.

Everybody wants the outcome...the championship, money, career, relationship, the platform, the impact.

And while inspiration, coaches and best practices matter, at some point you have to stop studying everybody else's game long enough to learn your own.

That's the season I'm in.

I was a point guard.

My job wasn't simply to dribble well or memorize plays. I had to read the floor, recognize patterns, know my pace and capacity, anticipate movement and trust that feeling when the play needed to change, sometimes before I could fully explain why.

When I played, my intuition was my MVP...my Most Valuable Partner.

Basketball taught me that mastery isn't only technical, there's an inner practice happening simultaneously.

Athletes call it being in the zone.
Artists call it being in flow.
Wellness spaces call it grounding.
Some spiritual spaces call it catching the Holy Ghost.

Different vocabulary, familiar experience.

It's that place where the noise gets quieter, you tap back in and can read the floor again.

Basketball was one of the first places life taught me how to hear myself. It was a hell of a training ground because the game, the players and the scoreboard were always changing.

Sometimes the coach called one play while the experience on the court told you something else you misread completely.

I now know intuition doesn't mean you'll never make the wrong call, but when you've spent enough time learning yourself, you can recognize when you're out of rhythm and find your way back.

That's especially important right now.

Algorithms, experts, institutions, trends, timelines and endless “best practices” are constantly competing for our attention, our MVP.

Someone will always have another formula for what you should build, earn, want, prioritize or become.

Learn from them, ask for help, and build relationships that offer wisdom, accountability, inspiration and community, but don't outsource the final decision about your life.

Bruce Lee said it beautifully:

Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.

That's not a rejection of teachers, that's what it looks like to become your

3

0

I recorded this video a few months ago while I was still trying to find language for what The Exit Strategy Network could be.

Earlier this year, I was exploring a potential Creator-in-Residence relationship with an international dating and matchmaking platform expanding in the U.S.

And the question I kept returning to wasn't really about dating technology, it was:

What happens after the match?

What good is creating greater access to connection if people haven't necessarily been given the tools, practices, environments or support to sustain healthy relationships once they find one?

At the time, I thought I was developing a proposition for someone else's company.

Months later, I realized I had been circling one of the central questions of my own work, and the question kept getting bigger.

As an educator, I have spent much of my career noticing the things people are expected to know how to navigate including relationships, work, money, identity, health, change, community without necessarily having spaces to learn, practice or make sense of them.

So my question has gradually shifted from:

How do we help people build healthier relationships?

to:

What are we actually preparing people for?

And now:

What kinds of media, learning experiences, communities and technology could help people become more equipped to navigate human life, not simply more efficient at consuming information about it?

I don't have all of the language yet and that's actually part of why I'm sharing this.

My own personal and professional transition has become a place where I'm testing ideas, revisiting assumptions and watching the work reveal itself in real time.

The Exit Strategy Network looks different to me today than it did when I recorded this.

But the question underneath it was already there.

And sometimes, I've learned, founding looks less like inventing the perfect idea and more like paying close enough attention to recognize the one that keeps following you.

I unpacked an earlier version of this thinking in my Thoughts Leadership corner 🔗 in bio!

The language continues to evolve...and so does the work.

#founder

3

3

I asked David, “What story are you rewriting about your life right now?”

To me, his answer wasn’t really about abandoning ambition, but realizing how much of himself had been organized around it.

Career, goals, progress, and achievement, but then dating surfaced harder questions:

Who are you when work isn’t the subject?
What do you enjoy?
What are you curious about?
What stories do you have that aren’t tied to productivity?

I felt this one.

I'm learning transition isn’t only about changing jobs or roles, but realizing your professional identity has taken up so much space that other parts of you haven’t had the same room to develop.

Self-authorship isn’t only about building a new career, but building a fuller life and I wrote more about this conversation on the Please, BARE With Me site along with David's interview.

Read the full reflection: “Who Are You When Work Isn’t the Subject?” 🔗 link in bio.

#ambition #storytelling #relationships #vulnerability #interview

4

0

Sometimes an interview gives you an answer and other times it gives you a new question to consider.

When I met Katie at Union Station in Los Angeles, I asked:

What is a story you are currently rewriting about your life right now?

Her answer took us to the land.

She spoke about Black farmers, agriculture, the history and economic contribution tied to that work, and her desire for more of us to understand and preserve those stories.

I hear this conversation differently today than I did when I recorded it.

At the time, I was following my curiosity and asking strangers real human questions.

Now, as I more intentionally formalize my interdisciplinary artistic practice after transitioning from my role in education, I can see that these interviews have also been teaching me how I make meaning of my life not just what I create professionally.

I notice what’s happening around me. I pause before forcing a resolution. I interpret what an encounter/experience may be surfacing. I express what is becoming clearer. I encounter another person’s perspective. Then I reconsider what’s possible or what I thought I knew.

And sometimes what is shared changes what I know to look for (or do) next.

Nature has been doing something similar in my life. Walking, gardening, observing cycles, and learning not to demand immediate resolution have helped me reconsider my relationship with pace, progress, and the roles I thought I was supposed to play.

And perhaps that is the role for art and media. These aren't intended to simply tell us who we should be, but to preserve experiences, recover histories, complicate what we think we know, and help us see ourselves and one another more clearly.

Katie unknowingly gave me more than an interview that day.

She gave me another doorway into understanding my own process and next steps in my life's endeavors.

I wrote more about what this conversation taught me about land, storytelling, media, pace, and the way returning to an old conversation (or part of your journey) can reveal something new.

Read the full reflection on the Please, BARE With Me site

🔗 in bio

12

5

The hardest part of choosing a nontraditional path is resisting the urge to make uncertainty mean you're doing something wrong. We're used to hearing people's stories backward…once every strange decision has acquired context, capital, and every detour has been assigned meaning.

Living a story forward is different.

You don't always know which experiment becomes important, which relationship becomes a bridge, which skill becomes a practice, which “wrong turn” becomes source material, or which season that looked like nothing was happening was actually rearranging everything.

I'm giving the present version of myself the grace we usually reserve for hindsight.

Keep walking. Keep noticing. Keep documenting.

The meaning of your vision doesn't arrive before the movement, it arrives because you decided to move.

I wrote the longer download I received during my morning walk that prompted this thought:

“There Is No Syllabus for This Part: A Morning Download on Self-Authorship, Old Rubrics & Learning to Trust a Path Still Being Paved” 🔗 in bio

3

3

Bamboo doesn't apologize for growing underground first.

I've been thinking about that more often as I rebuild my life, my work, and my public identity in a digital culture that keeps asking for visible proof and polish before my inner process has finished rooting.

Many of us are trying to become whole inside systems designed to keep us performing.

The digital world rewards immediacy, but nature teaches timing. And for those of us who are exiting old identities, extractive work patterns, survival roles, or outdated versions of success, that distinction matters.

There is a difference between hiding and rooting.

And that's the space I find myself in now.

I don't want to keep disappearing. I am interested in emerging, but this time, without self-erasure.

There's often a pressure to be visible all the time and that can sometimes tempt us into performing identities that aren't a complete representation of who we are or who we're becoming.

My practice now is not to rush the bloom, but to create the conditions that make honest emergence possible.

So I will leave you with this:

What part of your growth has been happening underground?

And what conditions would help it become visible without asking you to abandon yourself on the way up?

I dive deeper into how I'm thinking about and navigating this on my Thought Leadership Corner: Digital Urgency vs Natural Emergence: What Bamboo Can Teach Us About Becoming Visible in a Culture that Keeps Rushing the Bloom 🔗 in bio

3

1

Where do you go when you need to hear yourself more clearly?

That was one of the questions @elgabesanchez navigatee during this Please, BARE With Me field conversation.

His answer included vocal rooms, movement, performance and creativity, practices that help him clear his mind, move what doesn't need to stay in his body and reconnect with himself.

It made me think about my answer too.

Mine includes nature, movement, solitude, but also people. I make sense of a lot of life through honest conversation with others (even if I don't know them)!

There is something about sitting (or apparently standing on a sidewalk) with another human and asking a real question that gives both people permission to hear, feel, and see themselves differently.

That's one of the takeaways I'm learning as I formalize my artistic practice. Conversation isn't simply something I do before ‘the art’ happens. Conversation IS the material for me.

The street is the studio, the participant is a co-creator, and the answers can change both the guest and the interviewer too.

This is what I meant in my recent (pinned📌) post: Recognizing the Art in How I Had Always Worked.

The people, places, practices and environments around us can either make it easier to hear (and be) ourselves or train us to override ourselves.

So I'll leave Gabriel's question with you:

Where do you go or what practices do you engage in when you need to hear, feel, or see yourself more clearly? And what tends to surface when you finally get quiet enough to listen?

🦋 Please, BARE With Me

More street interviews and other elements to expand the series is coming. Stay close @please_barewithme

#vulnerability #streetinterview #art #socialimpact #practice

3

0

A compatibility check, but for work 😅

I'm open to different professional pathways right now:

Aligned salaried roles, freelance projects, artist residencies, Creator-in-Residence partnerships, and creative collaborations.

BUT

I'm much clearer about the conditions that produce my best work. I value:

🎯 human questions

🎯 messy patterns

🎯 cross-disciplinary ideas

🎯 people who are actually invited to participate

🎯 stories and strategies that lead somewhere

🎯 metrics that matter without pretending humans don't

🎯 clear agreements

🎯 and room for what we learn to change what we make together.

If you're simply looking for content production, posting, or somebody to quietly execute a predetermined idea, I may not be your girl.

If you're genuinely trying to understand something about your teams, community, clients/customers, and want to turn that insight into meaningful media, learning resources, live or virtual experiences or a loyal community, now we're talking.

For slide 3 people, brands, organizations…my inbox is open. 😉

Need more info to gauge compatibility?!

Check my pinned post: Recognizing the Art in How I Had Always Worked + the companion blog 🔗 in bio!

3

1

3

8

3

0

Threads is just better.

1. When a Sag locks in 🏹
2. Kinda like The Exit Strategy Network 🎯
3. What are we talkin...a week? 90 days? 📆
4. Somethin new every minute of every day 🙄
5. Doesn't really make sense 🤷🏾‍♀️
6. The more you know ♀️

#threads #randomthoughts #truth #youfeelme #personality

3

0

3

1