The Thing That Made Me Stop
He said “the new you is not powerful because it makes other people stop. It’s powerful because it makes you stop.”
At that same dinner after the shoot, David said something I recorded because it was too good to lose.
He said “the new you is not powerful because it makes other people stop. It’s powerful because it makes you stop.”
I sat there for a second and thought, oh.
Then he unpacked it in my own language, which is what got me. In marketing, we’re always chasing the scroll-stopper. You want the thing that makes someone pause and click on the CTA. And why? Because a pause means emotion. Emotion means there’s a charge. And a charge is what moves someone from watching to doing. That’s the whole job.
Stop them, move them.
Then he unpacked it in my own language, which is what got me. In marketing, we’re always chasing the scroll-stopper. You want the thing that makes someone pause and click on the CTA. And why? Because a pause means emotion. Emotion means there’s a charge. And a charge is what moves someone from watching to doing. That’s the whole job. Stop them, move them.
His point was that I had just done that to myself by doing the photoshoot that day. Not AI but actually putting in the hard work to do the photoshoot with David that day. At dinner, I hadn’t even seen the pictures yet, but he already knew what was going to happen next.
And sure enough, I opened those photos and I stopped.
Then I sat in the stop for a week.
I kept opening the gallery. I’d look, close it, and open it again a few hours later like something might have changed. I showed them to my sister, my mom, my husband, and a few friends in person, just to make sure they saw what I saw. But I didn’t post a single one. I just kept checking to see whether she was still there, and whether I still felt the same thing when I looked at her.
That’s the part nobody tells you about a stopping moment. It doesn’t feel like a breakthrough while it’s happening. It kind of feels like being stuck.
But there was a charge. No doubt about that.
And then something happened where everything David said came true.
Within a week of getting the photos, I cleaned up my LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter account, which I’ve been meaning to do for years. And as you can see firsthand, I posted on this blog for the first time in over 7 years to share this experience.
I finally started building the thing I’ve built for everyone except myself: an actual system for showing up. A rhythm. Somewhere for the ideas to go. The same infrastructure I sell, pointed at me for once.
David called it starting a new cycle. Creating your own positive reinforcement. You do one thing that surprises you, it gives you a charge, the charge makes the next thing easier, and slowly you notice these positive charges stacking up, all of them stemming from being present that day.
In my first post, I asked what old titles you put on yourself. Here’s what I’ve figured out since.
I told David I wanted CEO and Boss Mom, and he photographed that woman. But a title isn’t something you announce. It’s something you start acting like until it stops feeling borrowed. Cleaning up those profiles, writing this, letting people see a version of me they haven’t seen before… that’s not me celebrating a new title. That’s me practicing one.
So I’m going to keep writing here, because I believe it’s all about the journey, not the destination. If any of this sounded familiar, I’d love for you to come along.
What would it take to make yourself stop?
