Some people stay with you long after you stop working together. Travis is one of them. He used to guide me like a brother, and I still carry his advice with me. So when he mentioned that his book was released, I ordered it right away and could not wait to read it. I took it on my adventure this summer because I chose the path.
Reading it felt like conversing with him again. The book is built on one idea: Moving our everyday decisions from autopilot to intentional choice. It began with a sticky note that read “I Choose…” from his grandmother. It takes real strength to share hard chapters of your own life openly, and Travis does that, then backs it with practical tips readers can use.
2 stories in the book made the idea real for me. One is about choosing to hold back. The other is about choosing to move.
Choosing to Hold Back: The Butterfly story – Picture a butterfly inside its chrysalis, working hard to get out. It pushes, struggles, and takes time. Watching that, most of us would want to help: a small nudge, an easier way out.
As Travis tells it, that struggle has a purpose. The effort of squeezing through pushes fluid from the butterfly’s body to its wings, making them strong enough to fly. The butterflies that got help did not survive. The ones that followed their natural process, with no one stepping in, did.
The hardships in life work the same way. They are not always in our way. Sometimes they are what makes us stronger. Helping is also a choice, and this story made me see that it is not always the right one. Sometimes choosing well means choosing to wait.
Choosing to Move: The Broken Roomba – The second story was the broken Roomba. It hit home for me because it is exactly what I followed through on this year.
The line I took from it was simple: you are not a tree. A tree stays where it is planted, no matter the weather. You and I do not have to. If a situation is not contributing to my betterment, I can move. That is the other side of the same framework. Staying is a choice, and so is leaving. What matters is that I make the choice on purpose and do not stay only because I never stopped to ask.
Why This Matters? We make hundreds of decisions a day, and many of them run on habit. This book gave me a simple way to pause and ask, “Am I choosing this, or just repeating it?” Sometimes the choice is to step back and let growth happen. Sometimes it is to step out when something is not working. Both begin with the same thing: a conscious choice.
The Question I am Carrying Forward : Which of my daily decisions am I really choosing, and which am I just repeating?