The StoWicks Conversations
by
Carolyn and Seth Wicks
Today's Key Points:
- Systems For Each Season
- Protect Your Principles
- Small Habits Are Your Anchors
Carolyn: I’ll be the first to admit it, I hate change, probably more than most people. I like consistency. I like repetition. I like patterns. I like knowing what’s coming. I’ll watch the same movie a hundred times, eat the same meal every day, and happily stick to a routine that works.
But life doesn’t care about your routine. Sometimes it throws a curveball, and you’re forced to look at the systems that built your old life and ask whether they’re sabotaging your new one. Having a newborn has made this real for me. I loved my morning routine. I loved my workouts. I loved my job and the rhythm of our marriage and overnight, everything shifted. Not because anything was wrong, but because the season changed.
Throughout life, we move through different stages, different energy levels, different life phases. Just because something worked for someone else (or even worked for you six months ago) doesn’t mean it’s built for who you are right now. Systems are tools, and tools must change as the job changes. If you’re struggling to hit your old systems, it’s not because you suddenly lack discipline. Most of the time, we’re not failing because we’re weak, we’re failing because we’re refusing to adjust.
Seth: One system you all know about is our weekly 1v1. We do this every Sunday without fail, even with Leto now in the picture. The reason we can still do this is because it only takes 30 minutes to review the past week, discuss the upcoming week, and figure out how we can best support one another.
A system that no longer serves us is 5:00 AM workouts. Not only is Carolyn recovering from major surgery and unable to go to the gym, but we both can't go to the gym together anyway. Who would watch Leto?! It's also hard for me to wake up that early if I've been helping with him during the night. So we made a change to the system. Carolyn is now doing light, at-home workouts while she recovers, and I’ve shifted to a loose training plan that I fit in whenever the window opens during the week.
The important question we asked ourselves was this: What actually matters enough to keep? We’re not blindly assuming that the systems we built before Leto will work now. Instead, we’re adjusting the systems so the priorities remain. So remember: Your systems are meant to support your life. And when life changes, the systems must change with it.
Carolyn: When your previous systems start to fail, it can feel defeating. You think, “I’ve done this before…why can’t I do it now?” That’s usually when guilt and shame creep in. But if a system keeps failing over and over, it’s probably not a discipline problem, it’s a signal to pause and reevaluate. Maybe you keep hitting snooze because you’re going to bed too late. But maybe you’re hitting snooze because you got three hours of sleep thanks to a newborn. That’s where honesty becomes important. You have to ask yourself whether the breakdown is within your control or simply a reflection of the season you’re in.
I like to think about life in phases: a building season, a maintaining season, a healing season, and sometimes a surviving season. Right now, I’m physically in a healing season and, with the sleep deprivation, a little bit of a survival season too. And that’s okay. But you can’t expect the systems designed for a building season to work during a survival season. Life changes. Promotions happen. Loss happens. Marriage happens. Parenthood happens. Health challenges happen. The key is having the self-awareness to recognize the season you’re in and the grace to adjust your systems so they support you instead of working against you.
Seth: Something that stays consistent over every season is Minimum Viable Habits. This is basically just a fancy way of talking about what James Clear has made famous: Atomic Habits.
I thought about what principles we will keep regardless of season, and they're worth mentioning here:
- Daily physical movement - if you don't use it, you'll lose it.
- Investing in relationships - social connection is vital and one of the biggest indicators of longevity.
- Daily learning - self-help emails, books, podcasts, whatever helps us gain a little bit of wisdom each day.
- Doing hard things - having a newborn isn't easy!
- Contributing to society - personal optimization is great, but it must be used for the greater good.
The systems we use to accomplish these may change as life evolves, but the principles never will.
Carolyn: So where do you start if you realize your systems aren’t working anymore? The first step is to audit your current season. Ask yourself a few honest questions:
What phase am I in right now?
Am I building, maintaining, healing, or simply surviving?
What is my real capacity at the moment?
Where is my energy actually highest during the day?
Once you understand your season, the next step is to identify the principle behind the system. Ask yourself what you actually care about. Is it your health? Your marriage? Your faith? Your business? Then separate the principle from the tactic. For example, the principle might be protecting your health, but the tactic doesn’t have to be a 5:00 AM gym session.
Next, define your Minimum Viable Habits. If everything fell apart and life became chaotic, what are the two or three habits you would still protect because they matter most? Maybe it’s a 20-minute walk, a 10-minute conversation with your spouse, or prioritizing protein at every meal. The key is to make these habits almost too easy to maintain.
After that, build flexibility into your systems. Decide in advance what a “good enough” day looks like and create two versions of your plan: a Plan A for high-energy days and a Plan B for low-energy days. This is really cool because even if you don't hit your Plan A, you still feel accomplished for hitting your Plan B.
Finally, revisit your systems every 30–60 days. Life changes, and your systems should evolve with it. Take time to ask yourself what’s working, what feels forced, and what needs adjusting. The goal is to create systems that continue to support your life as it grows and changes.
Seth: Your life is constantly changing. You have new responsibilities, priorities shift, and the seasons of your life will move faster than you anticipated. The key is to remain rooted in your principles but adjust where it makes sense. Change is inevitable, so be ready to adapt and take action.
Carolyn: Take five minutes today and ask yourself three questions:
- What system in my life feels forced right now?
- What principle actually matters behind that system?
- What would that look like in my current season?
Seth: Identify three non-negotiable habits you will stick with in every season of life. Then hit each one every day this week. That’s 21 actions reinforcing the person you are becoming. Start today.
Both: What’s one system you’ve had to adjust recently because your season changed?
Reply to this email and let us know. We read every response, and some of your stories may even shape future StoWicks Conversations.
See you next week,
Carolyn & Seth
The StoWicks
Quote of the Week:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
Charles Darwin
