If people like what we do, we'll be successful. If people don't, then we'll change. It's been a principle Hostile Sheep has embodied since I founded it. For years my identity was tied to Hostile Sheep; Hostile Sheep was Jordan, and Jordan was Hostile Sheep. So, without realizing it, I adopted the same measure of my success personally. If people like me, I'm successful. If they don't, I'll change. 

Well, the past couple years has been a rollercoaster for me professionally. In the past two years I went from owning and managing a shop, to merging it with another shop, to practicing independently. It's been this last year of re-establishing an independent practice that has been eye opening in a major way. It's made me recognize the heavy burden owning a shop for a decade is; something I didn't realize when I was in it. I got used to doing it and telling myself it feels amazing; I got to admit it was painful and isolating just as much as rewarding and energizing. 

Suffice it to say, I've been redirecting much of my energy toward myself. I'll save those reflections for another time but I feel more healed and open to opportunity and in resonance with the world than ever. The more I learned about myself, the clearer the direction of my life became. 

Ok, stay with me. You may have seen a diagram like this in grade 3 biology. An apple tree draws nutrients from the soil and produces fruit. We all understand the basic model. Well, where do the nutrients in the soil come from? Well, they come from all kinds of events; a bird that drops a feather to the ground will eventually decay and release nitrogen back into the dirt. Fallen leaves decompose into rich compost. But the reverse is just as real: dump motor oil or over-till the ground, and you strip the earth barren.

In life and business, decisions do the exact same thing as those environmental events. Every single choice... the investor you accept, the toxic client you tolerate, the boundary you refuse to compromise... tells the story of the event. It either deposits vital organic matter into the topsoil, or it leaches the ground dry.

And the nutrients of life are just as important to us as those found in soil are important to trees. It gives us the capacity to live, adapt and hold together. We get nutrients every time we establish an honest boundary, engage in meaningful work, or choose to work with peers who respect our reality. These choices inject agency, patience, safety and trust directly into our ground. Conversely, we give them up every time we compromise our integrity for a quick payoff, tolerate a transactional relationship, or surrender our voice to endless urgency. Each compromise acts as a slow drain, quietly exhausting the soil's natural capacity to recover.

The question I had to ask myself is what guides my decision-making process? 

For years, I had it backwards. If you look at standard business advice, it's basically a commercialized version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We are told we must start at the bottom, focusing entirely on financial survival, scale, and capital. Those transactional "nutrients." Only after we’ve secured that, can we afford to think about self-actualization, ethics, and peace. We treat money as the primary input, thinking we can buy back our alignment later.

It is easy to start evaluating decisions as financial trades. I will buy this at one dollar if I can sell it for two. I will hire this person if I can charge more than she costs. I will win this pitch even if it kills a competitor. This kind of thinking inevitably spills into our personal lives: my relaxation time is more valuable than time with my family; I worked all day, so someone else should do the dishes; if I am on vacation, I need to extract the absolute maximum utility out of every hour.

What I missed for years was the direct connection between how I make a decision and the condition of my soil. Decisions are not isolated commercial moves. They are the literal delivery mechanism for specific nutrients.

This is where the danger of misalignment happens.

When I would zoom in on any single choice, there was often a gap between what the situation provides and what your soil actually requires. I might be starving for psychological safety but the decision only delivers revenue, or prestige, or a positive reference. 

When I chronically make decisions that are not aligned with what I really need, I risk creating produce that will leave me malnourished.

If I compromise on integrity to close a lucrative deal, the damage is immediate. I might walk away with a signed contract, but I have deprived my ground of the one nutrient it needed to stay clean. That compromise sits heavily in my gut. It weighs on my mind on the drive home. It distracts me when I should be present with my family, and it forces me to spend precious mental bandwidth managing paranoia, keeping stories straight, or rationalizing why I cut the corner.

Suddenly, I cannot show up as my authentic self. I am showing up guarded, divided, and exhausted.

The fruit my tree bears is directly dictated by what sits in the dirt. You cannot harvest genuine peace, clarity, or creative resonance from ground that is being fed counterfeit nutrients. If I want the harvest to be healthy, I have to ensure that every decision feeds the specific, honest needs of my soil rather than just chasing an appetizing substitute.

"For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself." - Viktor E. Frankl

For a long time I operated using traditional business logic. I felt entitled to dictate exactly what the harvest had to look like. I demanded specific fruits on a strict timetable: an arbitrary revenue milestone, a certain client roster, or a financial windfall that justified all the grinding. If the tree did not produce the exact outcome I had storyboarded in my head, I treated the entire season as an operational failure.

As much as I wanted it, the tree of life doesn't answer to me. It responds to the nutrients. 

When I finally shifted my decisions toward protecting my integrity and peace, the tree continued to bear fruit, but it rarely arrived in the glossy packaging I had envisioned. If I was expecting an apple, I might wind up with a pear or a banana. The moment I stopped clinging to a rigid script, I could finally see the value of what was actually in front of me.

One year, after holding firm boundaries and focusing on work I believed in, I did not receive the massive financial bonus I had been banking on. Instead, my projects wrapped up cleanly, and I suddenly found myself with four uninterrupted days at home with my family. Because I missed that windfall, I could not take them to the extravagant vacation I had spent late nights daydreaming about.

Instead, we packed up the car, drove a few hours down the highway, and pitched a tent by a lake. We cooked dinner over an open fire, got completely soaked in an afternoon downpour, and stayed up late telling stories in the dark.

That trip would never register as a luxury achievement. Yet when I looked closely at what was actually hanging from the branches of my life, the harvest was undeniable. Navigating the storm still brought genuine adventure. Exploring the shoreline with my brother still sparked curiosity. Sitting quietly by the water without the phantom anxiety of work emails gave me deep connection.

Most importantly, it brought me peace.

I had spent years feeling cheated by outcomes simply because they did not match the rigid script in my head. I was routinely overlooking rich nourishment because I was holding out for a counterfeit version of success. When decisions are rooted in existential alignment, the tree will always give you what is truly sustaining. The real discipline is not about forcing the crop to look like someone else’s orchard; it is about learning to recognize, and receive, the peace that is already in your hands.