Lovely Human,

Last Sunday I sat with my friend Lisa over a glass of wine. She has built a consulting practice over 22 years that people line up for. She told me, almost embarrassed, that a 28 year old founder had just told her she was 'over-experienced' for a project she wanted.

We laughed.Then we did not laugh.

I have been hearing this from a lot of people I love this year. Is your experience an asset or a liability?

It is the wrong question.

Experience is the raw material. It is neither asset nor liability until you decide what to do with it. The leaders pulling ahead at our stage right now are the ones treating their experience the way a sculptor treats a block of marble. Most of the value is in what gets cut away.

Most of us were taught the opposite. We were taught to accumulate. Our LinkedIn pages look like museums.The problem is that the AI era does not reward museums. It rewards beginners.

The most valuable person in the room right now is the one with 25 years of judgment who is willing to be 25 years old again in front of a new tool, a new market, a new conversation.

Here is what I am noticing in our community.

The members who are struggling are the ones whose first line is still their title. The market has not stopped valuing your experience. It has stopped letting you lead with it.

There is a Taoist idea I keep returning to lately. Pu, the uncarved block. The belief that your truest self is the version of you that existed before the world told you who to be.

For a leader at our stage, this is a strange permission slip. It says the next chapter does not get written by adding more carving to a block that is already over-carved. It gets written by remembering the raw material.

So this week, do this thing.

Open your LinkedIn page. Read your headline as if you have never met yourself. If your headline tells a stranger what you have done, rewrite it to tell them what you are curious about now.

Experience is not the product.

It is the raw material. And what you carve out of it next is the only thing that matters.

The market has not stopped valuing your experience. It has stopped letting you lead with it.

Experience is the raw material, not the product.

The most valuable person in the room is the one with 25 years of judgment who is willing to be 25 years old again.

Religious Focus this month- Taoism

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.

In a small alley behind the tea district in Hangzhou, a man named Ji Hao runs a wood carving studio so quiet you could miss it.

He carves Buddhist statues, but only when commissioned. He turns down four out of five requests.

A young executive named Zhao arrives one afternoon. She has flown in from Shanghai. She wants to commission a Guan Yin statue, the Goddess of Mercy, for the new lobby of her firm. She has a design brief. She has measured the alcove. She wants the face 'approachable but powerful.'

Ji Hao listens. He pours her tea. He says, 'I cannot help you.'

Zhao is confused. She is paying. She is the buyer. The brief is clear.

'You are asking me to carve what is in your head,' Ji Hao says. 'You should hire a designer. I am a wood carver. My job is to ask the wood what it already is and remove what does not belong.'

She watches him work the rest of the afternoon. He picks up a piece of camphor wood from his pile. He turns it. He listens to it. He marks it with a pencil. He sets it down. He picks up another.

When she finally asks what he is doing, he says, 'I am looking for the statue inside the wood. Then I will only remove the parts that are not the statue.'

He hands her a small carved sparrow he made last month. The grain is still visible. The wing has a knot in it that he did not smooth out.

'This is pu,' he says. 'The uncarved block. I did not impose a sparrow on this wood. The wood was already a sparrow. I just listened.'

Then he tells her about the bell stand maker in Zhuangzi.

Zhuangzi told the story of a master craftsman who could make bell stands so perfect, people thought he had supernatural powers. When asked his secret, he said there was no secret. He fasted for seven days before every piece. After three days, he forgot reward and praise. After five, criticism and skill. After seven, he forgot his own body and the court he was building it for. Only then did he go into the forest. The bell stand revealed itself in a particular tree.

This is pu, the uncarved block.

Taoism insists that your truest self is the version of you that existed before the world told you who to be. Before the title. Before the report card. Before the comparison. Before the brand strategy.

There is a you that is unshaped. The work of a life is not to add more carving. It is to listen for what was already there.

For the leader, this asks a strange question. Where in your life are you trying to impose a statue on the wood? Where are you forcing what you have already decided someone or something should be, instead of listening to what is already underneath?

Zhao did not commission the statue that day. She went back to Shanghai and resigned from her role two weeks later. She has not told anyone yet. She is figuring out what was already there.

Guiding question: Where are you trying to carve the statue you imagined, instead of listening for the one already in the wood?