When you get what you wanted.

Read time: 3 min.

I got home from Amsterdam two days ago.

A few days with friends, a concert, good conversations. The kind of trip that fills you up and empties you out at the same time.

And when I walked through the door, I noticed it immediately.

That familiar, unhurried feeling settling in. Not tiredness exactly. More like my body quietly shifting gears without asking for permission. The way the temperature drops a few degrees right before a storm, slow and inevitable and completely out of your hands.

I've felt this before. Every spring, around this time. After a long stretch of intensity, something in me just… exhales.

For most of my life, I responded to that feeling by pushing harder.

What pushing through looked like

A few years ago, I didn't have the luxury of slowing down.

I was building something from nothing, trying to make it sustainable before I'd ever have to depend on a job I didn't want. The urgency was real. The stakes were real. And so every time my body said slow down, I said not yet.

And honestly? It worked. That version of me, the one who pushed through, got me here. I don't regret a single late night or skipped rest day from that period. It was exactly what that moment required.

But that moment has passed.

The question I keep sitting with

The book comes out June 1st. The channels are growing. The coaching is going well. By almost every measure I set for myself a few years ago, things are working.

So here's the question I keep coming back to:

What am I still optimizing for?

Because the rules that served me during survival don't automatically apply now. Pushing through your body when you have no safety net is called doing what it takes. Pushing through your body when you've already built the thing is just old habits dressed up as discipline.

There's a difference. And it took me a while to see it.

When you get what you wanted

I never wanted money for the sake of it. I wanted what it makes possible. Freedom. Time. The ability to make choices without fear driving every single one of them.

That's what I was building toward.

And somewhere in the last year, quietly, without a big moment or announcement, I got there.

Which means the goal has shifted. Not the ambition, that's still very much alive. But what I'm optimizing for day to day.

Right now, that's this: feeling good in my own body. Listening when it tells me to slow down. Not sacrificing that for a deadline or a milestone or some next version of enough that keeps moving further away the closer I get.

The book will come out. The channels will keep growing. Not because I'm grinding through the spring, but because the work is good and the foundation is solid.

What I'm learning to trust

There's a version of ambition that teaches you the work is never done, the bar always needs to go higher, and rest is something you earn after the next milestone.

I understand that version. I lived it. It has its place.

But there's another version, one that most people only discover much later if they discover it at all, where you realize that the urgency you once needed is no longer the right tool for the moment you're in.

Where listening to your body isn't giving up. It's just accurate.

Yesterday I came home from Amsterdam, felt the shift, and instead of overriding it, I let it happen.

That's still new for me. But it feels exactly right.

Much love,

— Martijn

P.S. Book officially drops June 1st. If you want to be first to know when it's live, the waitlist is still open. Click here.