Be loyal to your future, not your past

Letters From The In-Between: Be Loyal To Your Future. Not Your Past.

​Vanessa Santos

The narrative of your future lives in the privacy of your own heart. - VS

Your heart and your mind are often at odds. Your heart knows the truth, what needs to end, what no longer fits, who you're becoming. Your mind justifies why you should stay. Why it's not that bad. Why now isn't the right time.

And when you keep ignoring it, when you push through anyway, when you tell yourself it's not that bad, it doesn't go away. It lives in your body as tension, as exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, as the 3am thoughts you can't outrun.

Until your body decides it's done waiting for you to listen. That's when it catches fire.

🔥 That fire is The Shattering. And The Shattering is not punishment. It's a teacher.

If you want to listen (and hear Elvis' snoring), click here for the audio with a reflection at the end. 🎧

Last week I shared Phase 1 of your becoming - The Shattering, and invited you to try an experiment: ask AI to review your chat history and act as an audience member watching the movie of your life. The question: What would the audience be shouting at you to do?

The responses were wild. And illuminating.

Because like you, I've had seasons where I played small. Seasons where I planned and planned but didn't take action. The planning made me feel like I was making "progress."

👩🏽‍🔬 So I have another fun experiment for you:

I want to share two practices that have revealed so much about how I create, how I love, and how I move through seasons.

The first: I studied my menstrual cycle.

I tracked what days I felt low energy, what days I felt less embodied, and what days I felt creative and wildly in love with myself. Then I asked AI to review my recent cycles and help me create a schedule that optimizes for how I'm building differently this year.

What I learned: during ovulation, I feel most creative. That's when I write, create content, express, love more fully. During my luteal phase, I'm more withdrawn, so I stay gentle with myself instead of pushing through. We don't have to force. Anything built from force will inevitably collapse. I've seen it. Felt it. Lived it.

Being loyal to my future means reviewing patterns so I can do just 1% better every day.

The second: I built a dossier of my accomplishments.

I asked AI to compile everything I've achieved and I printed it. I review it when I feel less than whole. Not to fuel my ego, but to remind me of what I'm capable of when I've forgotten.

We talk about this often in Glow Up: the accomplished women who still feel like they're not doing enough. The Shattering, will have you questioning whether you've accomplished anything at all. That's the dismantling. It shows you everything. The inconsistencies, the truths, the lies, the awareness. You can't ignore what's happening. This phase won't let you.

And this is why manifestation techniques won't fix a damn thing. You'll be layering desires on top of old programming, which only creates inner resentment and adds fuel to the "am I doing enough?" spiral.

You can't fake it till you make it. (I can't stand that phrase.)

Faith it until you make it.

Trust that this season is the beginning of your becoming.

This is your season of building differently. Of reclamation. And we can do that together, here.

Next week, I'll explore Phase 2: The Descent. The actual experience of identity death and what lives in those deep waters.

Until then, I want to hear from you: How can you be loyal to your future instead of your past?

💌 Reply and let me know. It feels good to know that other accomplished humans feel what you feel.

Until the next letter,
Vanessa

P.S. The Self-Reclamation Method™ is the framework I walk clients through inside The Sovereign Architect. If you want to go deeper than these letters, reply or click here and I'll share more.

These letters are for women who refuse to erase themselves on the way to success.

But if it is, welcome to the syndicate.