Quick note before we jump in. The Optimistic Outlook book is now available on Amazon. It brings together the best posts from the last year of this newsletter. If you or someone close to you enjoys short inspirational stories, it makes a perfect Christmas gift.

Hurricane season can be brutal. In 2024, the Tampa and St. Pete area experienced Helene and Milton in back-to-back months. The storms caused extensive damage and flooding to thousands of homes. When the rebuilding started, some owners packed up and left, while others decided to stay and repair.

One of the families who chose to stay belongs to a good friend of mine. Their home took on serious flooding. The only sustainable way forward was to raise the house twelve feet. Most people would move out and prepare for years of displacement. Their architect came up with a different approach.

A small crew would come every day. They would crawl underneath the house, dig with shovels, and lift the foundation one crank at a time. Slow, manual, and definitely uncomfortable. But it was the only reliable way to rebuild something worth keeping.

As he told me the story, I could not shake the deeper lesson.

This is how you get out of any difficult season. You dig out daily.

I don’t know what difficult season you are facing, but I do know the only way up is to dig out daily. Said differently, to go up, you must dig down.

You lift your life the same way that the crew is lifting that house. Not with one big heroic moment, but with small, consistent efforts stacked daily until progress shows up. Now I can’t guarantee another hurricane won’t come; more than likely, it probably will. But if you dig out daily, I am sure you will be stronger to handle the next difficult season.

P.S. Shoutout to my friend David, our Dinner meant more than you know.

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