Sit As Long As You Can. Then Stay Longer.

Prefer to listen? I recorded a full audio version for members inside Invisible World.

Heart

What’s today’s Inspo huh?

I gotchu. We good.

This time Friend, let’s start with a question, little Tuesday Inspo trivia game. Just for fun. And just one question.

No cash prize, but I promise a gold star if you get it right.

There is only one woman in all of American history who has ever lain in honor, posthumously, in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

Which woman received this extraordinary recognition?

Eleanor Roosevelt?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Mother Teresa?

Seriously great guesses. But no.

Clue? She’s a woman who sat as long as she could because she was tired of giving in. Tired of lowering the standard she already anchored in her own invisible world.

Right, it’s Rosa Parks.

Here’s your ⭐️ 

Her now famous racial segregation boycott of staying in her bus seat happened in 1955. She was not a public figure, not a leader in the movement. She was one woman. With such a simple action. Staying. Yet her passion moved an entire nation.

She lived in such high courage frequency. Focused on what’s possible. Ignited the 381‑day Montgomery Bus Boycott.

She rippled a wave, ‘If she can do it than I can’.

Key facts you should know:

• She was actually already sitting in the segregated section, legally allowed, up until the white section filled.

• The driver (James Blake) demanded she and three others move farther back.

• The others complied; she didn’t.

• Blake called the police, who arrested her. She was 42 years old at the time. She lived → 50 more years, passing in 2005.

Rosa grew up financially poor, but well educated, and more important rich with passion.

Do you remember Dr. Richards from the Thursday’s Inspo?

I feel like if Rosa sat in a therapy session with us, he’d point to her, and say Jonz, “Lean in. See Rosa. That’s core. That’s connection with your Invisible World. She knows what’s going on in there.”

Yeah, that’s 27M° ☀️ 

Rosa says it best in her words: “I had no idea history was being made. . . People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired . . . the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Instead of giving in, she stayed. It was hard.

And that’s our practice this week, you with me?

Practice → Stay With The Hard.

It’s hard for her to stay seated. But it’s also hard to give up her seat . . . again.

Often both choices are hard. We don’t always get ‘easier’ as an option. But we can » Choose Your Hard.

Sometimes Stay With The Hard, might actually mean go. Might have to leave that comfortable yet toxic relationship, that career you outgrew, exit that investment that piddled out, or that city that doesn’t speak to you any more.

Sometimes Stay With The Hard means you stay in that strained relationship and rebuild, you stay in that career until the chess pieces are in place, or you stay with that company you acquired until you smooth out the annoying integration wrinkles. Might have to stay at the gym even though you saw little results this week.

You’re gonna hate this Jonz. But guess what happens after it’s hard? Then it gets, well, hard. Maybe not always.

Just be aware of it.

So then what? Same thing → Stay With The Hard (uh, again).

In Rosa’s case? Guess what happened the next day?

None invited her to the front of the bus. None showed up with a wheelbarrow of money. None showed up and tossed her the keys to her own car.

In fact, wait for it, what was her reward? Ah, she got fired from her job. Great. That’s just great. Then her husband got fired too. Perfect. Then the death threats came.

Essentially forced out of Alabama, so they moved to Detroit to rebuild. Money was always tight.

Friend, she did the right thing, and it was still hard!

Essentially had to wait another decade for the end of segregation too. Can you see how tempting it would’ve been to fold in: ‘I got fired, I got harassed, we had to move and for what?’

Then → ‘It didn’t make a difference’ slips to ‘I don’t make a difference.’

Careful . . . careful.

Later she was a caregiver for her aging mother. That was hard too. She stayed with it.

She always lived close to the poverty line.

Somehow through it all she stayed in hard because she was tired of giving in. To me, she was so rich. What abundance in her Invisible World 💯 

The crux? Where are you going to stay longer, where will you refuse to give in again?

Hmmm?

Well good luck this week. Me too right? Stay With The Hard 💫 

Mind 🌞 

Before Parks, four other African American women had already been arrested for refusing to give up their seats:

• Claudette Colvin (15 years old)

• Aurelia Browder, mother of 6, widow, died before her arrest case closed. Her name is literally on the case that ended bus segregation, yet almost no one knows it.

• Mary Louise Smith, arrested 2 months before Parks

• Susie McDonald, partially blind, cuffed as a grandmother in her 70’s

Sometimes you can still do the right thing. And nobody celebrates. Nobody knows.

Friend, you do it for you 💯 

Soul ⚡️ 

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

— Novel, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

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