This Day (Post)

How to Start New Cycles

Inset: ‘Waterfall’ by Eduardo Calzado

If you want just the Daily Practice, not the whole post, there is a version of the essential part, read in my own voice HERE.

On Beginnings

There are moments that arrive disguised as ordinary. A new day, a turn of the calendar, a season shifting without ceremony. A change in the headlines. A shift in the moon. A conversation that begins, or ends. The world continues, but not unchanged.

This reflection is for those thresholds.

It meets the beginning of each new day, but it was written for more than mornings. It applies equally to the start of a new year, a new financial quarter, a new relationship, or a new chapter of identity. It applies to the cycle of the moon and the cycle of breath. It applies to every sincere attempt to reorient oneself to life with integrity.

Beginnings are not always chosen. Often they are revealed to us in the aftermath of something else—an ending, a reckoning, a diagnosis, a resignation, a grief. But to meet a beginning well is to meet it deliberately, not reactively.

I regard sovereignty of consciousness and will as essential to any effort I make to pursue meaning in my life, guiding my actualisation as a father, a husband, a teacher, a philosopher, and a thought leader, and as I strive to bring my devotional callings to life in this world. I call this my Sovereignty Quotient, recognising that how I show up—how I engage each unfolding moment—shapes the self that emerges afterward, and thus shapes the self I become tomorrow.

I can either live life by design, or I live it by default.

This affects everything, from how I engage with the news, to how I show up with my little family as we attempt to rewardingly process the mundane drudgery of modern life. It influences how I approach my work, dealing with the intransigence of the general public and the frequent indifference of the world toward devotional efforts. Our Sovereignty Quotient—or Sigma Quotient—is not a measure of intelligence like IQ; instead, it reflects our sense of agency: our capacity to consciously choose our own way with skill, unencumbered by inherited biases and limitations picked up through parenting, education, and social conditioning. Without conscious attention, we unconsciously pass these biases along, reinforcing patterns we might otherwise transcend.

We either live life by design, or we live it by default.

If we live it by default it means someone else chose our limits for us, and told us it was courage only if it was enduring some noble sacrifice for which there could be no true sense meaning, that it is not possible to feel authentically fulfilled and to be thought of as ‘good’.

If we do not dare to dream, we are living our lives executing a coward’s vision.

Like everyone, I wake each day with two miraculous budgets at my disposal: my energy and my attention. Time itself is not ours to spend—it moves forward regardless. Our budgets of energy and attention, however, are truly ours, to invest wisely or squander carelessly.

The triad that defines and deepens this Sovereignty Quotient comprises Presence, Discernment, and Intentionality. These are the highest core virtues we can embody precisely because they exist independently of morality, social expectation, or societal demands, all of which are emergent—meaning they shift and evolve over time. We should be cautious about relying too heavily on prescriptive virtues imposed by society, and certainly not prioritise them above the foundational practices of Presence, Discernment, and Intentionality.

For how else do we optimise our return on investment? How do we genuinely grow if we are not free to meaningfully outgrow our baselines and defaults—including the very structures from which we derive our permission? Wherever we seek permission is ultimately where we source our power. Your Sigma Quotient is fundamentally about Self-Permission, granted through Presence, Discernment, and Intentionality. This surpasses morals and philosophical virtues any day of the week, because as you grow, you naturally deepen your understanding, sharpen your judgement, and learn to trust yourself—not blindly, but with clarity about where your sense-making originates. To grow authentically, we must grant ourselves the permission to make mistakes, because genuine learning and maturity depend precisely upon this freedom.

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This piece emerged as part of that practice: not just a reflection, but a rite of reorientation, a clarifying act of inner governance.

To meet the start of a day, a story, a cycle, or a life-season as a sovereign agent, not as a passenger. To revisit the only real question worth asking: Who am I, now?
And then to appreciate that whatever answer we find will be expressed as forms of Desire about what we care for and what we choose to bring with us into the world through endings and periods of transition and transformation.

Read it aloud if it helps. Return to it as needed. It is not just a morning prayer.
It is a navigational act.

THIS DAY

Awakening again
into this world
so that 
I may grow deeper 
into life
and reach further
toward the one that beckons us.

Rising this day,
to revisit my response
to that invitation.

Awakening into this new day
let me call to prayer 
all the parts 
of the scattered wholeness
I call my self. 

Let me not be so sure,
to do this, or repeat that,
to avoid this or bow to that.
Let me sit for a moment rather,
with the question:
Who am I?
The answer of which 
is always expressed as Desire.

Let me be reminded
How deep I might grow into life 
and how far I might reach 
is determined 
by the greatness of my Desires.

This is 'The Great So That'.

Asking
How boldly can I Love today, 
if I do not face my fears?
How much can I choose my way today
if I cannot choose my stance towards adversity?
How fiercely can I choose my truth
if I cannot be first vulnerable?
As I strive to plant the flag of my intentionality 
on the crest of the hill of today
how can that not be meaningless
if I cannot accept with grace, 
the steepness of that climb.
How can I ever enjoy my triumph 
if I cannot face my defeat?
How deeply can I feel 
if I cannot be fully present?
How soundly can my routines and practices 
carry me through the day 
if I am not then also discerning?

Let me make space then
for work, for learning and for play,
so that I can make room 
for new possibility.

Let let me orient myself to reality, 
to the necessity of this season 
and let me take fresh bearings 
from the stars and the other signs,
so that I can invest today more wisely than yesterday, 
my budgets of energy and attention. 

Let me strive to honour 
the beauty and strength 
of which my body is capable.

Let me interrupt the unholy busyness of life
with moments of pause 
and be reminded of what matters most to me,
what I care for, 
what I want to see living in the world
for that is who I am,
and who I might yet become.

Rocco Jarman

This piece is not a poem. This is a prayer, and it is to no deity or saint, it is to the better, future, you. It is to the Legacy of everything you deeply value. It is powered not by naive faith, but by an appreciation for the meaning of your own life and time upon this earth.

I will post another version with just the prayer

This is a daily practice that you have to let go of at times so that you can come back to it with a renewed sense of fondness and allow it to be renewed in its potency of meaning.

Familiarity deprecates profundity. To put things down and come back to them, is to be able to pick them up, better. Space allows new appreciation. Grace makes room for new dimensions of meaning.

Familiarity impinges upon our capacity for presence because our minds naturally integrate experiences through rote association, caching them into lower-order processes similar to muscle memory. While muscle memory benefits us by freeing cognitive bandwidth, this same mechanism becomes maleficial when applied unconsciously to language, rituals, or practices. Without intermittent fasting from any repetition, we inadvertently rob these experiences of their original depth, causing them to become performative and lose fidelity as our minds and bodies instinctively collaborate at subconscious levels to conserve energy and attention.

Thus, without deliberate abstinence or renewal, familiarity can deprecate the profundity of any meaningful practice.

If we do not practice fasting from our routines and habits, we become numb. And in numbness, we grow addicted to chasing fixes, losing sight entirely of the true cure.

We find ourselves perpetually returning to social media, podcasts, or distractions, endlessly seeking new hits to replicate fading highs. Wanting to feel well is the addiction. Levelling up and skilling up as you pursue your own sense of meaning is the only real cure. And we already know that we can no longer afford to let the internet shape our sense of reality.

What we need instead is intentional rhythm—cadences that spread the load.

To spread the load, we need practices for different aspects of our conscious experience. We really want to be diversifying our portfolio of practices, and we want to be embodying them viscerally, somatically and experientially. Present, Discerning and Intentional.

To implement intentional rhythm to our lives, we must consciously give our practices their winters and summers, allowing autumns of release and rest, so that springs of renewed meaning can arrive.

Rocco

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