Lovely Human,

You may have noticed I did not publish last week. I wanted to start by apologizing but then stopped myself. You see I am the most consistent person I know. I would show up for the marathon even if I had one leg. It’s the thing everyone counts on with me. However, I have learned over the years to be kinder to myself since life and work is a marathon and not a sprint….. I do have another 50 good years ahead of me at least;-)

I have come to accept that rest is not lack of motivation or a character flaw.

Rest is not the opposite of ambition. It is the half of ambition that lets the other half work.

So how did I rest?

I decided at the last minute to run off for Eid holidays. I was away in Singapore on a break and remained off all devices. That simple.

I don’t know why somewhere along the way we got taught that rest is the white flag. The proof that the ambition tank finally ran dry. I love me nature rests since I come back on fire literally. It’s the thing I miss the most living in the UAE. No lush green bush to roll around in, load idle walks daily and rain. OMG….I love rain;-)

There is a phrase in the Tao… All things carry yin and embrace yang. Push and pull. Move and wait. Drive and replenish. Yang is the version of you the calendar pays you for. Yin is the version of you the next ten years of your career actually depends on.

Ambition without rest you see is one-armed.

You do not become less of a leader because you took a week off.

My ask of you this week is to look at your calendar between now and the end of the year. Find the blank week or days that is not yet booked. Book it. Right now. Before you finish reading and mark them as “Moi Days”.

Tell no one why. Or tell everyone why. Both are fine…haha!

Just decide, today, that the most ambitious thing on your second half of 2026 is a week or month or more where you do nothing visible and can just disappear and rest which you get to define.

Rest is discipline.

Rested is more dangerous than burned.

Yang sells. Yin compounds.

Religious Focus of last month month- Taoism
( even though late I wanted to give you this last learning)

We explore a unusual religion each month not to convert anyone to change believe , but to open up our vision board on how we all of us process joy, suffering, peace and this incredible journey called life.

The Tai Chi Master in the Park

The morning Wei Lan met Master Chen Hai, she was carrying a folded copy of her board deck under one arm and an unfinished sentence in her chest.

She was visiting her father in Chengdu. He had asked her to come early, to walk with him through People's Park before the heat lifted off the lake. She agreed because she had not seen him properly in two years, and because she had been told all her life that a daughter visits.

Her father was already inside the gates, in the small clearing where the old men did their morning tai chi. He had been doing this for nine years. Wei Lan had never watched. She had always treated it as a thing he did instead of going to a real gym.

Master Chen Hai was sixty-two. He was small. He was not impressive. He moved like someone who had decided long ago that being impressive was a waste of effort.

He saw Wei Lan watching from the edge. He gestured her in.

She tried to wave it away. He did not lower his hand.

She stepped into the clearing.

He stood her in front of him and asked her to push him. Just her palms, flat against his palms. Push.

She pushed. Hard. She had run a marathon. She had carried two children through the Shanghai winters and a husband through a depression. She knew how to push.

He absorbed the push without moving. Then he leaned and she fell forward into the air where he used to be.

He helped her up. "You only know how to push," he said. He was not insulting her. He was reading her body. "Where is your pull? Where is your rest?"

He demonstrated. He pushed his right palm forward and she felt the energy of his pushing. But underneath the push was a pull. His left hand was already drawing her in. Both halves were in the same movement. He was doing two opposite things at once and they were not canceling each other out. They were holding each other up.

“Who is teaching you to rest while you are still standing?"

She did not have an answer.

The next morning she came back. And the morning after.

When she flew home, she did something she had not done in eleven years. She blocked off a Friday and did not fill it.

Her assistant asked what the meeting was. She said, "It is a meeting with the half of me ."

The Dao De Jing, chapter forty-two, says: All things carry yin and embrace yang, and through the blending of qi they achieve harmony. The work of a leader is not to choose. It is to hold both. To push and to rest. To drive and to replenish. In the same week, sometimes in the same day.

Guiding question:

Where in your calendar this month is the yin? And if you cannot find it, what does that tell you about the yang?