This week, Ernest Lee Woods delves into the uncomfortable truth about loyalty, alignment, and what it truly costs to build the life you claim to want.

Loyalty Will Ruin Your Build If You Let It

There's a difficult truth most people don't realise until they're already halfway down the wrong path: you can't build your vision while trying to rescue people from theirs.

When Loyalty Becomes a Trap

Too often, we mistake loyalty for alignment. We stay connected to people like old friends, partners, and family out of obligation, history, or emotional ties, even when it's become painfully clear that we're no longer moving in the same direction.

When that happens, something subtle but devastating starts to occur. Your energy leaks, your focus blurs, and the foundation you've been trying to lay starts to crack under the weight of divided attention.

You think you're helping by being loyal and loving, but what's really happening is that you're compromising on the very thing you said you wanted to create.

You're watering someone else's garden while your own seeds sit in the soil, waiting for the care and consistency they need to grow.

They're Not the Enemy—But They're Not Your Co-Builder Either

Here's where it gets tricky, and why this is so hard to navigate: they're not trying to sabotage you. Neither are they villains in your story, plotting your downfall or rooting against your success. They're just trying to survive, caught in loops of their own, searching for stability, support, someone to hand them a brick or a plan because they lost theirs long ago, or maybe never had one to begin with.

If you're wired like many builders and visionaries are, if you've got even an ounce of empathy or a history of being the person people lean on, you'll want to help.

You'll probably think you can carry them and your dream at the same time, that maybe your shoulders are strong enough, that love means sacrifice, and devotion means staying even when everything in you is screaming to move forward.

Except you can't, not without paying for it with your peace, progress, and your purpose.

Co-Creation Requires Alignment, Not Just Affection

True co-creation, the kind that actually builds something lasting, only works when both parties are aligned and actively contributing. It takes both people who are committed to the vision itself, not just clinging to each other in crisis or out of fear of being alone.

It requires two individuals who show up with their tools ready, who've done their own inner work, who understand that partnership means pulling weight, not just holding on.

Loyalty without alignment is just co-dependency with better branding.

The Reminder You Might Not Want to Hear

So this is the reminder, the one that might sting a little but needs to be said: loyalty is beautiful, it's one of the most human things we're capable of, but it's not more important than alignment. Saving someone else, no matter how much you love them, cannot come at the cost of abandoning yourself.

You're not here to rescue. You're here to create. The ones who are truly meant to build with you—the people who actually belong in your corner—will never require you to lose yourself to remain faithful.

They'll be busy constructing their own foundation right beside you, and when your paths intersect, it'll be because you're both moving in the same direction, not because one of you stopped moving altogether.

"When you light a candle for another, you do not diminish your own light—but first, your own candle must be lit." — Kabbalistic teaching.

Written by Ernest Lee Woods
Edited by Lisa Precious