Yesterday, I accidentally knocked over my second grande Americano of the day (yes, I’ve discovered that drinking two of these before writing my newsletter transforms me into some kind of caffeinated oracle who types at the speed of revelation, and somehow it WORKS). 

As I watched the coffee spread across my desk, pooling around notebooks and flowing dangerously close to my laptop, I had this absurd moment of clarity.

The coffee wasn’t destroying anything. It was just finding its level. Also, it was definitely a sign I should switch to decaf. (I won’t.)

It also made me think about a conversation I overheard outside at Starbucks. Usually, I see the same locals, but yesterday, two men sitting together having an extremely serious discussion about “market corrections” and nervously checking their phones every twelve seconds. One of them kept saying something that sounded like “healthy rebalancing” in the same tone you’d use to convince yourself that your ex getting engaged is “actually really great news.”

But they weren’t wrong. We ARE in a massive rebalancing. It’s just happening on so many levels simultaneously that our poor human brains are completely overwhelmed trying to process it all.

Last month, I tried to reorganize my entire house while doing a new juice cleanse, starting a new workout routine, and processing three years of delayed emotional maintenance. Everything moved at once, nothing was where I expected it to be, and for about five days, I couldn’t find anything, including my sanity.

But then everything actually WAS better organized. Once the chaos settled and once I stopped trying to control every moving piece, the new configuration made infinitely more sense than the old one.

That’s this week. Except it’s not just your home, it’s everything.

THE WEEK’S ENERGY

Okay, so imagine you’re at one of those Japanese restaurants where the chef is juggling knives and eggs and making the onion volcano, and suddenly five more chefs appear and they’re ALL doing the trick simultaneously, and you’re trying to watch everything at once and also somehow eating your meal and having a conversation and pretending this is totally normal. That’s the energetic signature of this week.

The Fed is doing its knife-juggling act with interest rates, and even from up here in the True North, we’re all holding our breath because when America’s economic weather changes, everybody gets wet. China is trying to make an onion volcano while their economy deflates like a soufflé someone opened the oven on too early. AI is casually flipping our entire employment model like it’s a shrimp tail, aimed directly at the traditional career path’s face. And somewhere in the background, your iPhone is getting thinner because apparently that’s what we needed in 2025: phones that could slip through the gap in your couch cushions even easier. 🤦‍♀️

But in all this performative chaos, something else is happening. It’s like when you’re doing one of those thousand-piece puzzles and you’ve been working on different sections separately, and suddenly you realize they all connect. The economic section connects to the technology section, which connects to the geopolitical section, which connects to the personal transformation section which, – oh look, it’s actually all one picture.

The picture is of everything changing at once. Not in the scary apocalyptic way, but in the way your body changes when you finally stop holding your breath. A massive systemic exhale that’s been about eighteen months in the making.

WHAT IT MIGHT FEEL LIKE

You might wake up Tuesday morning with that feeling you get when you’re on a boat and can’t tell if you’re moving or if it’s the water. Except the boat is your life, and the water is… also your life. Very zen, very nauseating.

There’s a good chance you’ll have at least one conversation this week where someone says something that completely reframes a situation you’ve been looking at the same way for months. Like when someone points out that you’ve been holding the map upside down the entire time and suddenly the route makes sense.

You might find yourself laughing at inappropriate moments because the absurdity of trying to maintain normalcy while everything reconfigures itself becomes suddenly apparent. It’s the laugh of recognition, like when you realize everyone else is also just pretending to understand what’s happening.

Some of you will experience emotional whiplash, feeling victorious and defeated in the same time, crystal clear and completely confused in the same conversation, absolutely certain and utterly lost in the same breath. This is normal. Well, normal for this week. Which is not normal at all. You get it.

SOUL PERSPECTIVE

From the soul’s point of view, this is hilarious. I mean that literally. If souls could laugh (maybe they can?), they’d be absolutely cackling right now watching us try to figure out this with our human logic and spreadsheets and five-year plans.

Because what’s actually happening is that reality is becoming more… real. All the artificial structures we’ve built to avoid dealing with what IS are all reaching their expiration date. It’s like the universe sent out a group text: “Hey everyone, time’s up on pretending. Synchronize your watches. On three… one… two…”

We’ve been working so hard to maintain these elaborate fictions. The fiction that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet. The fiction that we can keep doing things the way we’ve always done them and expect different results. The fiction that we can postpone the future indefinitely.

This week, the future arrives. Not THE future, like flying cars and meals in pill form (though, again, apparently our phones will be thin enough to use as bookmarks). But the future we’ve been simultaneously creating and avoiding, the one where all our choices come home to roost at the exact same time.

HOW TO BE WITH IT

First, stop trying to track everything. You can’t. It’s like trying to count raindrops in a storm. Pick maybe three things that actually matter to you and let the rest be background noise. The news will still happen whether you refresh your feed every thirty seconds or not.

When you feel the overwhelm rising (and it will), remember my coffee incident. Things are just finding their level. The mess is temporary and the rebalancing is necessary.

Practice selective gravity. Choose what to take seriously and what to let float. Your husband’s conspiracy theory about why the coffee machine keeps breaking? Let that one float away like a beautiful, unhinged balloon. (I did.)

If you find yourself in a conversation where someone is panicking about everything changing, nod sympathetically, then ask them what they had for breakfast. When they look confused, explain that you’re just checking if ALL the constants have changed or if toast still exists. It won’t help them, but it’ll amuse you, and sometimes that’s enough.

YOUR WEEK IN ONE SENTENCE

“This week, I surf the chaos like I know what I’m doing (I don’t, but neither does anyone else).”

MINI PRACTICE FOR FINDING YOUR LEVEL

Every morning this week, fill a glass of water exactly halfway. Watch how the water finds its perfect level no matter how you tilt the glass. Then drink it while contemplating how you too are mostly water, finding your level in a tilting world.

If that’s too metaphorical for you, just drink the water. Hydration is its own form of resistance to chaos.

Then write down one thing that’s rebalancing in your life. Just one. Don’t try to fix it, solve it, or even understand it. Just acknowledge it like you’d acknowledge a cat that’s decided to sit on your keyboard – with mild annoyance but ultimate acceptance.

We’re all water this week. We’re all finding our level in a world that someone definitely tilted while we weren’t looking. The beautiful thing is that water always knows where to go, even when we don’t.

Trust the flow. And maybe keep some paper towels handy.

Just in case.

Jonni

PS: Speaking of finding your level while everything rebalances, my Fall container “Get Caught Up With Your Soul: UNLIMITED for Fall” starts today and I’m like that person at the airport gate who’s technically closed the door but sees you running with your coffee and makes eye contact like “okay but HURRY.” One spot. That’s it. Let me know if you need someone to hold space while you and your soul have that overdue conversation about what’s actually happening here. Because your soul has been trying to text you, and the read receipts are getting awkward.

PPS: Real question though – do you think the two grande Americanos make these newsletters better or just… faster? Like, am I just my barista’s retirement fund? Hit reply with your verdict. I’m genuinely curious if you can taste the caffeine through the words.