A Sandwich Epiphany

There is a particular kind of madness currently circulating through the digital ether, often filed under the glossy label of "delusion."

You see it in the manifestation circles: the advice to walk through the world with a blindfold of curated ignorance, insisting that everything is perfect until the psyche eventually surrenders to the claim.

I’ve taken issue with this stance more than a few times because as wide-eyed and dreamy as I am, I am also a pragmatic person and I care about finding what works in reality.

So today, I want to talk about a different frequency: the quiet, steady conviction that everything always works out. 

This is not the same as relentless optimism. In fact, there is a distinct shadow side to "staying positive" that I find increasingly exhausting. To hold only an optimistic viewpoint often requires a violent suppression of the present moment; it demands we ignore the very real textures of our struggles. I am not suggesting we paint over the cracks in the foundation or put a metaphorical band-aid on our problems (even if it is a cute one with a smiley face).

I am suggesting that the cracks themselves are often the very conduits through which the light finally arrives.

The question isn't whether we are being "delusional." The question is one of evidence. We are, by nature, investigative creatures. We wake up every morning and begin a silent deposition of the world. We look for proof of our standing, and psychology continues to reinforce that we see what we look for. Are we looking for evidence that the world is a predatory, scarcity-driven wasteland? Or are we looking for evidence that the universe is, in its own cryptic way, conspiring for our good?

The universe is a mirror; what we search for, we are eventually shown.

The Sandwich Epiphany

Last week, I found myself caught in the gears of my own ambition. I have been pouring into Arete, an app I’ve built to help people reclaim their identity (which has an exciting update below!). The code is finished. The architecture is solid. But I have reached that narrow, claustrophobic hallway of development where I must move the product from my private world into the public App Stores, which involves opaque rules and steep learning curves.

I had been fighting a specific technical ghost for three days. By Tuesday afternoon, I was frayed. I felt the familiar weight of scarcity, like time is running out and resources are thin. I went to the gym to sweat out the frustration, but my mind was already three steps ahead, worrying about the mundane.

I hadn't meal prepped.

I had no food in the house.

I was convinced I needed to rush to the grocery store before heading to a networking event, or I would find myself hungry and depleted by midnight. Or buying food on the way home again, which isn’t the most supportive for my health or wallet!

Trying to cram it all into just a few short hours, I was running late, stressed, and operating from a place of "not enough."

The event was Lifelong Learners, a monthly gathering centered around human flourishing. You can check out the next event, themed “Mind & Body” on May 19, 2026! There are tickets for in person and virtual depending on how close you are to Tampa.

Read more about Lifelong Learners here!

I met the founder, Adam Peters, a few months ago and this was my second Lifelong Learners event I attended. And the evening was objectively beautiful—three speakers dissecting the marriage of curiosity and creativity. Professionally, it was also a triumph with five new beta testers signed up.

And then, the universe threw me a bone.

As a “thank you” to the volunteers, Adam provided sandwiches and encouraged me, and all who attended, to take some home with them. In the bag were dozens of sandwiches and I realized I didn’t even need the grocery store. I took two, and it was exactly what I needed.

It is a small, perhaps even "silly" example, but it illustrates a profound metabolic truth: Worry is almost always a tax we pay on a future that never arrives. 

I had spent four hours of my emotional currency desperately trying to fit everything into my schedule for the day, fretting over a meal that the universe had already prepared for me. When we are on the right path, the universe delights in leaving breadcrumbs. It looks at our labor, our sincerity, and our exhaustion, and it whispers, Let me take care of dinner tonight.

This is also a great example of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. This psychological principle is known as the frequency illusion, and is the cognitive bias where after you notice something new, you begin to see it everywhere. You buy a red car, and now suddenly everybody on the road has a red car.

Selective attention is your subconscious highlighting information it deems relevant, making you notice things that previously slipped through your filters. While this can lead to confirmation bias, which is a danger to be avoided, we can train our minds to look for the frequency of evidence that confirms a belief that is helpful for moving us towards who we want to become.

The Eight-Month Void

We often mistake "control" for "safety." We believe that if we can see the paycheck, if we can map the route, if we can verify the outcome, then, and only then, are we secure.

I haven’t had a paycheck since August.

By any conventional metric of "responsible adulthood," I should be in a state of perpetual panic. I have spent the last eight months in a financial wilderness, building a dream from scratch, trying to construct a plane while free-falling.

And yet, I have not gone hungry.

I have not lost my car.

I have not been stranded, destitute, or homeless.

Every time the cliff edge seemed to approach, the ground extended itself by another few inches.

We are afraid to let the universe take care of us because we have been conditioned to believe that self-reliance is the only virtue. There is an entire cultural ethos—particularly here in the US—built on the pride of the "self-made" individual. We treat the need for help as a moral failing.

But look at the paradox of existence. We are in control of so little that our insistence on "commanding" our lives is almost laughable.

We do not control our heartbeat, the rotation of the planet, or the cellular mitosis keeping us alive. To believe we have total influence over the world around us is not strength; it is a form of high-functioning negligence.

Epictetus puts it so succinctly: “Some things are up to us and some are not.”

Even the extreme cases offer a lesson. Early Buddhist monks owned nothing but a bowl. They moved from town to town, trusting that their basic needs would be met for that single day. They didn't worry about next week’s harvest; they were concerned only with the presence of today. While most of us are not called to that level of asceticism, the underlying mechanics are the same. Whether you are a CEO or a monk, the universe is the ultimate provider.

The paycheck is just the conduit, not the source.

The Identity of the Uninterrupted

I struggle with sharing my own story. There is a deeply ingrained Southern humility in me that recoils at the idea of being "full of myself." But I share these instances because I believe there is a specific frequency of living that we are all invited to join.

When you choose to listen to your intuition—the "uninterrupted self" that exists beneath the noise of societal expectations—the universe rewards that authenticity.

I am painfully aware that Arete might not become a billion-dollar unicorn. It might never land me on a Forbes "Under 40" list (I missed the Forbes “30 under 30” unfortunately). It could, in the eyes of a venture capitalist, be nothing more than a temporary passion project.

But I am not building it for the accolades. I am building it because I saw a need in the world that matched a need in my own soul. I wanted a tool that helped people answer the question: Who would I be if I were uninterrupted?

If we can live from that place of radical trust, the stakes of our daily decisions change. We often treat every career move or creative risk or every daily operation as a life-or-death scenario.

It’s not.

The worst thing that can happen to you is that you die—and guess what? You’re going to do that anyway.

I don’t say that to be morbid, though perhaps a bit hyperbolic. I don’t say it to imply that any amount of suffering preceding death is meaningless, but I say it to be free. If the "worst-case scenario" is an inevitable appointment we all have with the infinite, then the fear of a failed app or a missed grocery trip loses its teeth.

We are here to explore, to grow, and to see what kind of meaning we can carve out of the pebble of our existence.

Riding the Flow

Every time I hit a wall, every time I feel I am about to mentally break under the pressure of the "how," the universe throws me a bone. It might be a free sandwich. It might be a new connection at a networking event. It might be the unexpected grace of a bill being delayed or a friend reaching out at the exact moment of despair.

These might seem like coincidences, but as one of my favorite movies (Kung Fu Panda) reminds us,

If you are looking for evidence that you are failing, the world will gladly provide a mountain of it.

But if you look for the breadcrumbs—the small, rhythmic signs that you are being supported—you will find that you are being carried by a current much stronger than your own effort.

There’s a term I’ve recently come across coined by Fred Goldner in the 1980s called “pronoia.” This is the belief that the universe, including the people around you, are all conspiring to support, bless, and work in your favor.

I offer you an invitation to approach your work and your life from this place of inherent trust, from a place of pronoia. Stop fighting the flow and start riding it. When we relinquish the pride of total control, we gain the peace of total provision.

Say it with me:

Everything is working out for me. It always has. It always will.

Until next time, live uninterrupted.

~Coleman

After months of building, today is finally the day:

Arete is ready for you! 🎉

Thank you for your patience and belief in this vision. You can be among first people to use this app, and I genuinely can’t wait to see what it does for your life. 

Here's how you can download and start using the app:

Testing on iOS devices:

1. Download the TestFlight app in the App Store (testflight.apple.com)

2. Once TestFlight is installed, click this link to download Arete:
   https://testflight.apple.com/join/thzY8D8v

3. Enter the invite code BETA2026 to activate your membership

Testing on Android devices:

1. Send an email to [email protected] with the Gmail address associated with your Google Play Store account so I can add you to the beta tester list. 

2. Once I confirm you’ve been added, click this link to opt in:
   https://play.google.com/apps/internaltest/4701518762112507871

3. Click “Become a tester,” then install Arete directly from the Play Store.

4. Enter the invite code BETA2026 to activate your membership

It has been a long, sometimes grueling, but definitely rewarding path to get to this part. The work is not done, and there is much more to do in turning this from a side project into a living, breathing engine. But, I am proud of taking Arete this far and I am excited to see how it continues to grow!