Happy Friday,

As many of us are going into a holiday weekend, I thought I'd give you something to think about for a minute.

At various points in our careers, we make some decisions about what we believe in that shape who we are professionally. Often these decisions happen after stressful, exciting, or peculiar incidents that provided some shock to how we previously viewed things.

That means that right now, everyone reading this has a set of things they believe about who they are professional, how companies work, how leaders work, and how things actually happen.

The idea is to identify what you've come to believe intentionally. Give those beliefs a phrase or sentence that captures that belief, and write it down somewhere.

Some of these beliefs will be ones you're proud to have. Some won't be. Don't shy away from the beliefs you aren't proud of.

I'll save a lot of people some time and write one that many leaders struggle with.

• People need urgency to get things done.

It's ok if this is you too. It's a lot of folks. The point of this exercise isn't shame but acknowledgment.

If you can write it down as something you believe, you can decide where that belief fits in your future. You might feel embarrassed, justified, adamant, inspired, or a mixture of these emotions and more.

That's why we write them down, to get to a point where we can look at what we've come to believe so we can then start the work on strengthening who we desire to be.

So that's the exercise: Write down phrases or short sentences over the holiday weekend that capture what you've come to believe professionally. For bonus points, tell me what effect it had on you.

Sincerely,

Ryan