Can I tell you what you’re already brilliant at?
Shopping.
I don’t mean spending money. I mean the way you move through a store. Put you in front of a rack and your face lights up. You know in about four seconds whether you love something. I’d put my money on you being able to spot a bad seam from across the aisle.
You’ll hold up a gorgeous dress, look at it for a long moment, and hang it right back because it isn’t yours. You’ll wait nine months for the right coat instead of taking the wrong one home today.
That’s a woman with standards. That’s a woman who knows exactly who she is.
And then that same woman walks out through the automatic doors and takes whatever life happens to have in stock.
Sit with that one for a second, because it stung me too.
You’d never buy a coat that doesn’t fit just because it was marked down. So how many days are you wearing that don’t fit? You’d return a broken lamp without blinking. When did you last return anything in your actual life?
You can walk away from a $420 dress you’ve wanted for a year because something in you says it isn’t right. Have you ever walked away from anything else with that same clean certainty?
It’s the same eye, the same nerve, the same instinct that’s never once let you down at a rack of clothes.
You might just be leaving her at the door of the store.
So bring her with you. Use “if I don’t know, it’s a no” on the invitation you’ve been dreading. Walk past the opportunity that’s beautiful and isn’t yours, and notice the relief that shows up an hour later.
You’ve been practicing every morning of your life in front of your closet, in the smallest, safest room you own, where the stakes were only ever a sweater.
The stakes don’t have to just be a sweater anymore.
PUT ON this morning’s outfit with your four-second knowing, then take that eye to one thing that has nothing to do with clothes. Ask what you would ask at the rack: do I love this, is it well made, is it mine?
