The Renewal Layer: The Rabbit Was Never the Point #56
Week 56 reveals that the race was never about catching the rabbit—it's about the run. Dr. Goodman explores outcomes vs. process, Coach Bill Walsh reveals his machine blueprint, Peter Sage drops a classic lesson, and we break down how the new video art was hand-carved. 🧅
There's a metaphor about greyhounds that I can't stop thinking about.
The dogs chase a mechanical rabbit around the track. They run with everything they have — full speed, full heart, full focus. And the thing is, no dog ever catches the rabbit. It's not real. It was never going to be caught.
But here's what people miss about that image. The dogs aren't unhappy. They're not running because they expect to win the rabbit. They're running because running is what they were built to do. The rabbit just gives them a direction to point all that energy.
The race was never about the rabbit. It was always about the run.
The Rabbit You're Actually Chasing
Everyone is chasing something they think they want.
The number. The recognition. The moment that finally proves all the work meant something. The chance encounter, the one phone call, the breakthrough that retroactively justifies every sacrifice, every risk, every year spent building in the dark.
And there's nothing wrong with having a rabbit to chase. It points you forward. It gives the energy somewhere to go.
But at some point you have to be honest about what's actually driving you. Because if you only run to catch the rabbit, every lap without catching it feels like failure. And if you run because running — creating, building, making something from nothing — is what you actually are, then no lap is ever wasted.
That's the renewal. Not catching the thing you were chasing. Realizing the chase was never the point. The becoming was.
Nothing Wasted
There's a line I keep coming back to. Nothing is wasted in God's economy.
It's hard to believe when you're in the thick of it. The dissolved company. The years that didn't pay back the way they were supposed to. The plan that looked certain and then evaporated. From inside an ending, it all looks like loss.
But an ending only looks like loss from inside it.
The plant that dies back in winter isn't failing. It's seeding the ground for what grows next. The onion that completes its cycle leaves behind everything the next one needs to begin. What looks like a dead end is almost always the soil being prepared for something you can't see yet.
The action itself was never wasted. Every lap built the strength. Every wrong room sharpened the instinct for the right one. Every ending cleared ground.
Running is taking action. And in the action, the scenes start morphing into form — shaped by what you actually believe, mirrored back by the programs running underneath. So you adjust them. The limiting beliefs. The story that the reward is always somewhere ahead instead of already forming around you.
No more waiting to become. The becoming already happened. Now it's about being — and being handsomely rewarded for what's already real.
Place Your Order
Someone once described it like ordering at a restaurant.
You sit down. You place your order. And then — this is the part most people can't do — you let the waitress walk it back to the kitchen.
But most of us don't. We stop her halfway. We call her back to add something. We change our mind. We ask more questions. We second-guess the order we already placed. And the whole time, the meal we actually wanted never gets made — because we never let it reach the kitchen.
Renewal is placing the order and letting it go.
Trusting that what you asked for is already being prepared. Stopping the endless revisions, the constant questioning, the need to control every step of how it arrives. You did the work. You know what you want. Now let it go to the kitchen and trust it's being made.
The ending you're resisting is just the order being placed. The beginning is what comes out when you finally stop interrupting.
The Cycle Begins Again
Here's what renewal actually asks:
What needs to end — cleanly, without drama, without making it your identity — so the next thing has room to begin?
Not a dramatic ending. Not one you turn into a story you carry for years. Just a clean completion. The chapter closes. The order goes to the kitchen. The plant seeds the ground and dies back, so the next cycle can rise.
You don't have to see the beginning yet. The greyhound doesn't need to catch the rabbit to keep running. You just have to trust that the running was always the point — and maybe find what your equivalent of the running is, and start there — because what's ending is making room for what you can't see yet.
Stop chasing the rabbit. Run because it's who you are. Place the order. Let it go to the kitchen.
The cycle begins again.
Still here. Still running. Still becoming — forward now. 🧅
That was then. This is now. I let you go — and I inspire you to do the same.
Want to write through these same layers and make them your own?
The "Being Coached" Layer: The Rabbit Was Never the Prize
Dr. Goodman has a way of cutting through the noise on this one. The mechanical rabbit — the number, the recognition, the finish line you've been told to chase — was designed to keep you running, not to ever be caught. That's not a flaw in the system. That's the whole design. And the dog who finally understands this doesn't stop running. He runs harder — because now he's running for the right reason. The chase stops being about the rabbit and starts being about the gift of getting to run at all. Most people spend their whole lives angry they never caught the rabbit. The free ones realize the rabbit was never the prize. The running was.
Here's what that means practically — the goal you've attached all your worth to is probably a mechanical rabbit. It was never going to deliver what you think it will. And the moment you stop measuring your life by whether you caught it, you free up all the energy you were wasting on resentment and finally pour it into the thing you actually love doing. The work doesn't stop. The desperation does. You run because you were built to run — and that's when the running finally takes you somewhere real.
The Takeaway for You: Look honestly at what you've been chasing. Is it a real prize, or a mechanical rabbit someone else strapped to the track to keep you running in their direction? You don't have to stop running. You have to stop running for the wrong thing. Find the part of the work you'd do even if no one ever clapped, even if you never caught the rabbit, even if the finish line never came. That's your real race. Run that one — and let the rabbit go.
Bookshelf Peeled - Building the Machine
In The Score Takes Care of Itself, legendary 3x Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh outlines his "Standard of Performance." His core philosophy was revolutionary because it completely ignored the rabbit: he banned his players from talking about or focusing on winning games, making the playoffs, or holding up trophies. Instead, he forced them to obsess over the mechanical precision of the single immediate play.
Walsh proved that when an organization stops frantically staring at the scoreboard or trying to force an ultimate result, the winning happens as a natural byproduct of execution. Frantically rewriting your playbook mid-game because you aren't winning fast enough is a sophisticated form of self-sabotage. Your skills, your tools, and your momentum are the only things that belong on the field. Drop the anxiety of the final score, trust the system you’ve built, and execute the play that is live right now.
The Takeaway for You: Stop looking at the scoreboard to decide if your effort is working. When you judge the value of your day by immediate external validation, you surrender your focus to things you cannot control. Take total command of your internal standard, execute your daily disciplines with flawless precision, and let the results take care of themselves. The execution of the craft is where your true authority lives.
The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership
by Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh
Design Rebel: The Decoy is Artificial. The Drive is Human.
This week's visual was inspired by the greyhound race—the striking reality of elite runners chasing a mechanical rabbit they are never meant to catch. It’s a perfect metaphor for the human creative drive.
Turning this concept into a moving narrative doesn't happen with a single prompt. High-fidelity visual assets were generated using Leonardo.ai and Veo 3.1, while the voice layer was produced by ElevenLabs. The true breakout happens in the post-production pipeline, where everything is manually assembled and edited frame-by-frame in Wondershare Filmora. The advanced tools accelerate the execution, but the creative vision, script, and intent remain entirely hand-carved.
This Got Me Thinking:
This week's cover art and video were inspired by a story Peter Sage shared about "the curse of the white rabbit" on Lewis Howes' podcast, The School of Greatness. I’m a big fan of both guys, and it’s well worth a listen.
P.S. If this resonates with you, share it with someone. I'm dedicated to helping fellow explorers—or anyone who found this page—uncover their authentic self with humor and insight. We're all in this together, finding the courage to truly live from our core essence (or as close as we can get!).
The Depth Layer: How Far Down Are You Willing to Go?
Fridays with Goodman: A striving artist, a Good-man and the Universal Principles at Play
by Martin Casado
