Stop Trying to Fill Your Void with Someone Else's Success Blueprint
Can you hear the waves crashing like thunder against jagged rocks in the darkness, knowing sailors are fighting for their lives against the fury of the ocean. It’s cold, the night sky covered in a black blanket of cloud that delivers blinding rain. The kind that stings your face as it hits you. Only the strike of electric lighting lights up the danger. You get a glimpse of what is ahead and around you, a snapshot so brief it takes all your power to remember what you saw so you can avoid the danger that lurks in the ebbs and the flows and the power that pushes and pulls you. In that chaos, there's only one thing standing between salvation and destruction—a single source of light piercing through the storm.
The lighthouse keeper, alone on his rocky outcrop, tends that light with a devotion that borders on obsession. Night after night, month after month, year after year. The isolation that would destroy most people becomes the very thing that allows him to be extraordinary at the one thing that matters most.
I was watching Alicia Vikander in this strange movie called The Assessment the other night, and it reminded me of when I first became a fan of her work—when I saw her in The Light Between Oceans years ago. I know I could watch that film again today and still cry, but it wasn't just the devastating love story that captivated me.
It was her character's desire—so powerful it consumed everything else. The desperate longing to be a mother that drove her to make choices that would forever change lives. When that opportunity presented itself, washed up on their isolated shore, she took it. The lighthouse lifestyle provided the perfect anonymity to keep this secret hidden from the world.
But it wouldn't be a lighthouse metaphor if it wasn't going to show you the truthful danger. That same isolation that made the impossible seem possible would eventually become the thing that revealed the devastating cost of her choice.
Because here's what Isabel Graysmark discovered: taking something that isn't yours and trying to make it heal what's broken inside you never ends well. Her sense of loss was so raw, so consuming, that she believed she could just replace what she didn't have with what someone else had, and it would be as if nothing had ever broken her.
As M.L. Stedman wrote: "I've learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you've got to give up hope of ever changing your past." And yet Isabel kept fighting that same war over and over, trying to get it right by taking what belonged to someone else.
There was something about that story that haunted me long after the credits rolled. The way we emulate others not out of malice, but out of a desperate hope that their path will heal our pain. How many of us are doing exactly what Isabel did, but with business instead of babies? Following someone else's blueprint and hoping that if we just replicate their success closely enough, it will finally make us feel whole?
But as Stedman reminds us, there's "no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right."
The lighthouse in that story wasn't just a setting—it was a metaphor for isolation, for the dangerous belief that you can hide from truth indefinitely. But lighthouses are meant to reveal truth, not hide it. They're meant to guide you safely home, not enable you to stay lost.
That's what sent me spiraling into lighthouse history that night. I needed to understand: what makes a lighthouse actually work? What transforms a simple light into something that can guide others through the darkest storms?
So naturally, my brain went down a rabbit hole about lighthouse history. (This is how my mind works—strange dystopian film to brilliant actress to desperate maternal desire to maritime salvation technology in five mental leaps.) And that's when I discovered something about the Fresnel lens that changed everything I thought I knew about shining bright.
Before this revolutionary invention in the 1820s, lighthouse keepers were burning through massive amounts of oil trying to create light bright enough to guide ships safely to shore. They were constantly stoking fires, adding fuel, working harder and harder to create the powerful beacon ships needed to navigate safely.
But the Fresnel lens changed everything with a simple insight: the problem wasn't that they needed more light or better focus. The problem was that they needed a better system.
The Fresnel lens didn't try to shine brighter. It just organized the light better.
And suddenly I saw my entire business philosophy reflected in a piece of 200-year-old lighthouse technology.
The Harder Work Trap
Most entrepreneurs are like those early lighthouse keepers—burning through massive amounts of energy trying to create the powerful beacon their audience needs.
Work more hours. Create more content. Launch more programs. Build bigger audiences. Make more noise.
They're constantly adding fuel to the fire, convinced that the solution to every problem is more intensity, more effort, more discipline.
But what if that's not the problem at all?
What if you already have everything you need, and the real issue is that you don't have a system to organize your natural brilliance into something that can be seen from miles away?
The Revolutionary System
The Fresnel lens was revolutionary because it understood something fundamental: you don't change the light source. You build a system that works with how light naturally behaves.
Those concentric rings of precisely angled glass didn't create new light or force the existing light to behave differently. They simply captured the light's natural tendency to scatter and organized it into a beam so powerful it could be seen from 20 miles away.
The same oil lamp that had barely illuminated the immediate area suddenly became a beacon that could guide ships across vast distances.
Not by burning brighter. Not by focusing harder. By having a better system.
Your Natural Brilliance
You already have the light. Your ideas, your insights, your unique way of making connections between seemingly unrelated concepts—that's your light source.
And if you're anything like me, with a brain that makes rapid-fire leaps from apple to weight lifting in 0.3 seconds, your light naturally scatters. That's not a bug—that's a feature. That's how brilliance works when it's not constrained by linear thinking.
But the problem isn't your scattered thinking. The problem is that you don't have a Fresnel lens—a system that captures your natural brilliance and organizes it into something so clear and powerful that your right people can see it from miles away.
The Focus Fallacy
"Just focus" is terrible advice for brains like ours. It's like telling a lighthouse to stop being so bright, or telling light to stop being light.
The lighthouse keeper didn't learn to focus the light through sheer willpower. They installed a lens system that did the organizing for them, so the light could just be itself—brilliant, powerful, naturally radiating in all directions.
You don't need to learn focus. You need to build systems that work with how your mind naturally operates, not against it.
The System Question
The Fresnel lens asks a different question than "how can I focus better?" It asks: "what system can I build that captures my natural energy and organizes it for maximum impact?"
Applied to your business, that becomes: what structures, processes, and containers can you create that let your scattered brilliance automatically organize into something transformational?
Maybe that's a content system that captures all your random insights and organizes them into coherent themes.
Maybe it's a collaboration structure that pairs your idea-generation with someone who naturally systematizes and implements.
Maybe it's a business model that turns your tendency to make unexpected connections into your signature methodology.
Maybe it's human design charts that help you understand exactly when and how your brain works best, so you can build your entire operation around your natural patterns instead of fighting them.
The Lighthouse Principle
A lighthouse doesn't try to be something it's not. It doesn't apologize for being bright, for standing tall, for naturally radiating light in all directions.
But it does have a system—the Fresnel lens—that takes that natural radiance and organizes it into something ships can navigate by.
The lighthouse is still completely itself. The light is still behaving exactly as light behaves. But the system transforms that natural energy into something that can guide others safely home.
Your business can work the same way.
The Navy Connection
There's something about lighthouses that has always fascinated me, and maybe it's because I served in the Navy. There's a deep understanding that in the vast uncertainty of the ocean, what matters isn't forcing yourself to be different—it's having systems that let you be powerfully, reliably yourself.
Sailors don't need you to change how you naturally shine. They need you to have systems that organize your natural brilliance so consistently that they can depend on it when they're trying to find their way.
The Role Model System
As a 6/2 Generator in human design, I'm designed to be a Role Model/Hermit. And thinking about it now, that's exactly what those lighthouse keepers lived—the ultimate 6/2 existence.
Long periods of hermit time for maintenance, observation, processing. Then being the crucial role model beacon when ships needed guidance. They weren't constantly "on" and visible, but when they were needed, they were absolutely essential.
That solitary lighthouse keeper life that called to me? It was my design recognizing itself. The deep retreat that allows for profound thinking, then emerging with something valuable for others.
And how perfect that my hermit fascination with their isolated existence led me down a rabbit hole that revealed the Fresnel lens—a technology that literally optimizes how brilliance gets organized and shared.
It's like my natural process in action: retreat to process and explore (lighthouse history deep dive), then emerge with insights that help others navigate (revolutionary business metaphor).
The hermit-to-role-model cycle, perfectly illustrated through lighthouse obsession.
Your System Moment
The question isn't whether you have enough brilliance. You do.
The question isn't whether you can learn to focus better. You probably can't, and you shouldn't have to.
The question is: what system can you build that captures your natural way of thinking and organizes it into something so clear and powerful that your right people can see it from miles away?
What would your business look like if you stopped trying to change how your mind works and started building containers that let your natural brilliance organize itself?
What if you became the lighthouse that your particular audience could rely on—not by forcing yourself to shine differently, but by creating systems that turn your natural radiance into something they can navigate by?
The Better System
The Fresnel lens teaches us that revolution doesn't require changing who you are. It requires building systems that work with who you are.
You don't need to create different brilliance. You need to organize the brilliance you already have.
You don't need to learn to focus like someone else. You need systems that capture your natural patterns and turn them into transformational experiences for others.
The ships aren't looking for a lighthouse that's learned to be something other than a lighthouse.
They're looking for one that's built systems so good that its natural brilliance becomes the thing that guides them safely home.
Ready to build your Fresnel lens?
Can you hear the waves crashing like thunder against jagged rocks in the darkness, knowing sailors are fighting for their lives against the fury of the ocean. It’s cold, the night sky covered in a black blanket of cloud that delivers blinding rain. The kind that stings your face as it hits you. Only the strike of electric lighting lights up the danger. You get a glimpse of what is ahead and around you, a snapshot so brief it takes all your power to remember what you saw so you can avoid the danger that lurks in the ebbs and the flows and the power that pushes and pulls you. In that chaos, there's only one thing standing between salvation and destruction—a single source of light piercing through the storm.
The lighthouse keeper, alone on his rocky outcrop, tends that light with a devotion that borders on obsession. Night after night, month after month, year after year. The isolation that would destroy most people becomes the very thing that allows him to be extraordinary at the one thing that matters most.
I was watching Alicia Vikander in this strange movie called The Assessment the other night, and it reminded me of when I first became a fan of her work—when I saw her in The Light Between Oceans years ago. I know I could watch that film again today and still cry, but it wasn't just the devastating love story that captivated me.
It was her character's desire—so powerful it consumed everything else. The desperate longing to be a mother that drove her to make choices that would forever change lives. When that opportunity presented itself, washed up on their isolated shore, she took it. The lighthouse lifestyle provided the perfect anonymity to keep this secret hidden from the world.
But it wouldn't be a lighthouse metaphor if it wasn't going to show you the truthful danger. That same isolation that made the impossible seem possible would eventually become the thing that revealed the devastating cost of her choice.
Because here's what Isabel Graysmark discovered: taking something that isn't yours and trying to make it heal what's broken inside you never ends well. Her sense of loss was so raw, so consuming, that she believed she could just replace what she didn't have with what someone else had, and it would be as if nothing had ever broken her.
As M.L. Stedman wrote: "I've learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you've got to give up hope of ever changing your past." And yet Isabel kept fighting that same war over and over, trying to get it right by taking what belonged to someone else.
There was something about that story that haunted me long after the credits rolled. The way we emulate others not out of malice, but out of a desperate hope that their path will heal our pain. How many of us are doing exactly what Isabel did, but with business instead of babies? Following someone else's blueprint and hoping that if we just replicate their success closely enough, it will finally make us feel whole?
But as Stedman reminds us, there's "no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right."
The lighthouse in that story wasn't just a setting—it was a metaphor for isolation, for the dangerous belief that you can hide from truth indefinitely. But lighthouses are meant to reveal truth, not hide it. They're meant to guide you safely home, not enable you to stay lost.
That's what sent me spiraling into lighthouse history that night. I needed to understand: what makes a lighthouse actually work? What transforms a simple light into something that can guide others through the darkest storms?
So naturally, my brain went down a rabbit hole about lighthouse history. (This is how my mind works—strange dystopian film to brilliant actress to desperate maternal desire to maritime salvation technology in five mental leaps.) And that's when I discovered something about the Fresnel lens that changed everything I thought I knew about shining bright.
Before this revolutionary invention in the 1820s, lighthouse keepers were burning through massive amounts of oil trying to create light bright enough to guide ships safely to shore. They were constantly stoking fires, adding fuel, working harder and harder to create the powerful beacon ships needed to navigate safely.
But the Fresnel lens changed everything with a simple insight: the problem wasn't that they needed more light or better focus. The problem was that they needed a better system.
The Fresnel lens didn't try to shine brighter. It just organized the light better.
And suddenly I saw my entire business philosophy reflected in a piece of 200-year-old lighthouse technology.
The Harder Work Trap
Most entrepreneurs are like those early lighthouse keepers—burning through massive amounts of energy trying to create the powerful beacon their audience needs.
Work more hours. Create more content. Launch more programs. Build bigger audiences. Make more noise.
They're constantly adding fuel to the fire, convinced that the solution to every problem is more intensity, more effort, more discipline.
But what if that's not the problem at all?
What if you already have everything you need, and the real issue is that you don't have a system to organize your natural brilliance into something that can be seen from miles away?
The Revolutionary System
The Fresnel lens was revolutionary because it understood something fundamental: you don't change the light source. You build a system that works with how light naturally behaves.
Those concentric rings of precisely angled glass didn't create new light or force the existing light to behave differently. They simply captured the light's natural tendency to scatter and organized it into a beam so powerful it could be seen from 20 miles away.
The same oil lamp that had barely illuminated the immediate area suddenly became a beacon that could guide ships across vast distances.
Not by burning brighter. Not by focusing harder. By having a better system.
Your Natural Brilliance
You already have the light. Your ideas, your insights, your unique way of making connections between seemingly unrelated concepts—that's your light source.
And if you're anything like me, with a brain that makes rapid-fire leaps from apple to weight lifting in 0.3 seconds, your light naturally scatters. That's not a bug—that's a feature. That's how brilliance works when it's not constrained by linear thinking.
But the problem isn't your scattered thinking. The problem is that you don't have a Fresnel lens—a system that captures your natural brilliance and organizes it into something so clear and powerful that your right people can see it from miles away.
The Focus Fallacy
"Just focus" is terrible advice for brains like ours. It's like telling a lighthouse to stop being so bright, or telling light to stop being light.
The lighthouse keeper didn't learn to focus the light through sheer willpower. They installed a lens system that did the organizing for them, so the light could just be itself—brilliant, powerful, naturally radiating in all directions.
You don't need to learn focus. You need to build systems that work with how your mind naturally operates, not against it.
The System Question
The Fresnel lens asks a different question than "how can I focus better?" It asks: "what system can I build that captures my natural energy and organizes it for maximum impact?"
Applied to your business, that becomes: what structures, processes, and containers can you create that let your scattered brilliance automatically organize into something transformational?
Maybe that's a content system that captures all your random insights and organizes them into coherent themes.
Maybe it's a collaboration structure that pairs your idea-generation with someone who naturally systematizes and implements.
Maybe it's a business model that turns your tendency to make unexpected connections into your signature methodology.
Maybe it's human design charts that help you understand exactly when and how your brain works best, so you can build your entire operation around your natural patterns instead of fighting them.
The Lighthouse Principle
A lighthouse doesn't try to be something it's not. It doesn't apologize for being bright, for standing tall, for naturally radiating light in all directions.
But it does have a system—the Fresnel lens—that takes that natural radiance and organizes it into something ships can navigate by.
The lighthouse is still completely itself. The light is still behaving exactly as light behaves. But the system transforms that natural energy into something that can guide others safely home.
Your business can work the same way.
The Navy Connection
There's something about lighthouses that has always fascinated me, and maybe it's because I served in the Navy. There's a deep understanding that in the vast uncertainty of the ocean, what matters isn't forcing yourself to be different—it's having systems that let you be powerfully, reliably yourself.
Sailors don't need you to change how you naturally shine. They need you to have systems that organize your natural brilliance so consistently that they can depend on it when they're trying to find their way.
The Role Model System
As a 6/2 Generator in human design, I'm designed to be a Role Model/Hermit. And thinking about it now, that's exactly what those lighthouse keepers lived—the ultimate 6/2 existence.
Long periods of hermit time for maintenance, observation, processing. Then being the crucial role model beacon when ships needed guidance. They weren't constantly "on" and visible, but when they were needed, they were absolutely essential.
That solitary lighthouse keeper life that called to me? It was my design recognizing itself. The deep retreat that allows for profound thinking, then emerging with something valuable for others.
And how perfect that my hermit fascination with their isolated existence led me down a rabbit hole that revealed the Fresnel lens—a technology that literally optimizes how brilliance gets organized and shared.
It's like my natural process in action: retreat to process and explore (lighthouse history deep dive), then emerge with insights that help others navigate (revolutionary business metaphor).
The hermit-to-role-model cycle, perfectly illustrated through lighthouse obsession.
Your System Moment
The question isn't whether you have enough brilliance. You do.
The question isn't whether you can learn to focus better. You probably can't, and you shouldn't have to.
The question is: what system can you build that captures your natural way of thinking and organizes it into something so clear and powerful that your right people can see it from miles away?
What would your business look like if you stopped trying to change how your mind works and started building containers that let your natural brilliance organize itself?
What if you became the lighthouse that your particular audience could rely on—not by forcing yourself to shine differently, but by creating systems that turn your natural radiance into something they can navigate by?
The Better System
The Fresnel lens teaches us that revolution doesn't require changing who you are. It requires building systems that work with who you are.
You don't need to create different brilliance. You need to organize the brilliance you already have.
You don't need to learn to focus like someone else. You need systems that capture your natural patterns and turn them into transformational experiences for others.
The ships aren't looking for a lighthouse that's learned to be something other than a lighthouse.
They're looking for one that's built systems so good that its natural brilliance becomes the thing that guides them safely home.
Ready to build your Fresnel lens?
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