Welcome to the Blooming Mindset, a weekly dose of clarity, mindset, and practical wisdom to help you stay consistent, think more deeply, and build a life aligned with your identity and purpose. I’m Ruth Rieckehoff, and I’m so glad you’re here. Please share this newsletter with a friend!
Beloved Architect of Identity,
I used to be the queen of overplanning.
Every trip had a tight schedule.
Every hour was accounted for.
Every minute had a mission.
And if something didn’t go according to plan?
Cue the drama.
Missed train? Panic.
Closed museum? Frustration.
Flight delay? The end of the world.
Because in my mind, if I planned well enough, nothing should go wrong.
(Spoiler: some things still went wrong.)
Then, I met this group of travelers on a trip.
After 17 glorious days in Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro, we were flying back home to California.
In a shuttle bus at the London airport, we met three travelers: a woman, her mom, and her cousin. They’d found this “amazing deal” to London. A perfect birthday trip for her mom.
The problem?
She’d just started a new job.
Her boss told her, “You can go, but you have to be back by Monday. No excuses.” So she squeezed the trip into a weekend. No buffer, no backup plan.
Then, chaos.
They miss their flight back home.
Their budget airline marked them as no-shows.
They spent hours arguing, then gave up and bought new tickets, except there were no seats left to Spain.
To make things worse, she lost her wallet (and all her IDs).
By the time they found it, they were stuck booking a hotel for the night.
That “amazing deal”? It tripled in cost.
And I couldn’t stop thinking: This was me.
I used to run my life this way: tight schedules, zero margin, full control.
I thought efficiency meant success.
But watching her unravel, I realized something simple yet powerful:
Every system, whether it’s travel, work, or life, needs buffer time and emotional bandwidth.
Without them, even small disruptions turn into disasters.
Her boss’s rigidity.
The airline’s lack of flexibility.
Her over-optimized itinerary.
It all collided.
And that’s what so many of us do in our own lives, isn’t it?
We optimize everything, our schedules, our goals, even our self-improvement routines, until there’s no room for the unexpected.
Then, when something goes wrong, we call it “failure” instead of what it really is: life doing its thing.
But here’s the truth:
Healthy systems absorb stress.
Rigid systems amplify it.
Your mind, your habits, your business, they all need margin to breathe.
Because growth doesn’t come from perfect execution.
It comes from flexibility, self-trust, and space to recover.
So next time you plan a week, a launch, or a trip, leave some room for the unexpected. Not everything needs to run on schedule to work out beautifully.
Sometimes, the most peaceful progress happens when you give life permission to move at its own pace.
Here’s to building systems that bend, not break.
Ruth
Reflect
- Where in your life or business have you eliminated every ounce of breathing room?
- What would happen if you created a little more margin instead of chasing perfect efficiency?
Reframe
Old belief: “If I plan tightly, things won’t fall apart.”
New belief: “If I build with margin, I can handle what comes.”
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s resilience. Flexibility is not a sign of weakness. It’s a system’s hidden strength.
Actionable Transformation
- Add time buffers: For every major task or project, schedule 10–20% more time than you think you’ll need. The breathing room will save your focus when life shifts.
- Build emotional bandwidth: Before each week, note where your energy is already committed. Don’t fill every gap. Leave space for recovery and reflection.
- Test for stress: Look at your current systems, content, routines, or workflows. Ask, “What happens if one part fails?” Then adjust until a single disruption doesn’t collapse everything.
Products & Resources
Trust Yourself Again: A self-guided journey to rebuild self-trust from the inside out, so you can stop second-guessing and start showing up with quiet confidence.
Bounce Back Blueprint (Free): Feel like you’ve fallen off track? This powerful reset guide helps you regroup with compassion and get back into aligned momentum your way.
From Reactive to Rooted (Free): Tired of putting out fires? This mindset and action guide helps you shift from scattered to strategic, so your days flow from clarity, not chaos.
P.S. A system that breathes is a system that lasts. Tight systems break. Flexible ones evolve. And that’s how real growth, quiet, steady, sustainable, actually happens.
If you want more of these bite-sized lessons and mindset shifts, I share daily over on X. Come hang out with me there → Follow me on X.
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