Simone has spent her career walking into hard rooms.
Boardrooms. Negotiating tables. Depositions. She’s General Counsel at a major Silicon Valley brand — the kind of person companies call when the stakes are high and they need someone who won’t flinch.
She’s also someone who needs order to function. Clean space, clear mind. Always has been.
So when she lost her job — unexpectedly, after a restructuring — she came home. The plan was simple. Set up the home office. Get to work finding the next thing.
Except she couldn’t get into the office.
The Room
All her work stuff had come home with her. Files. Binders. Boxes of things that used to live somewhere else — and now lived in her office, stacked against the walls.
And every time she stood at that doorway, something stopped her. She’d freeze. Turn around. Walk back down the hall. End up on the couch, doomscrolling. Not even enjoying it. Just... there.
She couldn’t explain it.
Here’s what was actually happening.
That office wasn’t just messy. It was a monument to failure. Every box said: you lost something. Every stacked file said: you haven’t dealt with this yet. Standing in that doorway didn’t feel like going to work. It felt like going back to the worst day.
So her nervous system did what nervous systems do. It said: nope. And she listened.
That’s not weakness. That’s not laziness. That’s being human. When we feel pain, we self-soothe. Doomscrolling is one method. Avoidance is another. Simone was doing both.
But every day she stayed on that couch, the story got louder. This is what failing looks like. And the louder it got, the harder the doorway became.
What She Actually Wanted
When I asked Simone what she wanted, she said the expected thing first. I want to feel productive again.
Then she looked away. Quieter. Like she was telling me a secret.
I thought having this time off would mean more time with my family. That’s what I kept telling myself when things were hard at work. “At least if I had more time, I’d actually be present with them.”
She paused.
But that’s not what’s happening.
What IS happening?
She laughed. That dry laugh people do when they’re a little ashamed of the answer. I’m on that couch. Doomscrolling. Not even enjoying it. Just... there.
Two things she’d promised herself. Productivity and family. And she was living neither.
Those became her anchors.
Two Habits. Both Tiny.
The first one: The Office.
The goal was this. Walk in. Pick up one object. Put it away. Come back out. Pat yourself on the back. That’s it.
Simone’s reaction was immediate. Shouldn’t I do ten things? Twenty?
No. One.
Because the goal wasn’t to clean the office. The goal was to stop fearing it. And for that — one is everything. One is, in fact, productive.
She didn’t look convinced. But she said okay.
The second one: The Family.
I asked her why — with all this time at home — she still wasn’t present with them.
I feel so guilty, she said. I haven’t produced anything all day. So by the time dinner’s done I feel like I don’t deserve to just enjoy myself. We eat and then everyone disappears.
So the goal was simple. One activity. Per week. On the calendar. Not a maybe — a commitment. Something to build the week around.
She exhaled. Okay. We can do that.
What Happened Next
A week later, Simone told me she’d walked into the office every single day.
And she didn’t put away one thing. She put away ten. Twenty. Once I started, she said, I literally could not stop.
That’s momentum. The brain fights the idea of hard things. But once you’re in the middle of it? It’s just a room. Just stuff. Totally manageable. And the story — this is what failing looks like — dissolved the moment she stopped letting it run the show.
The office wasn’t done. But it was there. And she was in it.
Two weeks later she had an interview.
A few weeks after that she got the job.
And then she sent me a photo. Her office. Clean. Organized. Set up like a workspace again.
The message said: “I walked in there trying to move one object.”
One value. One tiny habit. One object.
That’s where it started.
So here’s my question for you.
What’s the room you’re not walking into? And what story is your brain telling you every time you stand at the door?
Because I promise you — it’s not the room.
It’s never the room.
⚓🎈#STORYHabits
