37, the year of descent.
Today I blow out 37 candles.
This has been the most intense, challenging, and meaningful year of my life.
If I had to choose one word that best characterizes this year, I choose descent.
It was a year in which I chose to descend. I would have liked to climb back up too, but it feels good to be down as well. And the bottom never ends - the bottom of frustration, the bottom of repressed anger, the bottom of shame, and the bottom of others’ judgment.
This year, I learned to choose. I learned to modulate emotions too big to keep inside yet too painful to express. And sometimes I expressed them, perhaps too often for others, and too little for myself.
When you go down, you learn to see others’ suffering, to understand what true wealth is. Yet, I still feel too full of myself to distinguish well.
In these words, I therefore want to gather what this year has brought me. I write it for myself, but I make it public in case there might be even just one person who would like to know something about this year where I changed quite a bit and about the motivations that drive me.
February 21, 2024
A rather bizarre group of people enters the Covered Market of Ravenna. Apparently, in the evening, the stalls close and only restaurants remain open, so it’s my birthday and we decide to stop and eat at a large table in the center of the building, eating fish. The fish is excellent, but maneuvering between two dogs, 2 young daughters, and a mother in a wheelchair isn’t exactly easy.
I didn’t digest well Emma’s tantrums about wanting a piadina at the restaurant, and fortunately finding the piadina restaurant open at the covered market. But I didn’t enjoy the wine much, I enjoyed the food little, albeit excellent, and the wonderful atmosphere.
I will carry with me the memories of these two days of madness, taking mom to Ravenna with my family, to let her taste the life of a family too bizarre to describe.
But these days made my pain explode, a pain I had been carrying inside and that wasn’t letting me think clearly, so much that at one point I went into complete shutdown, sitting on a concrete barrier in Piazza del Popolo, while the world around went on and I was in some sort of trance. With Sara holding two dogs that could easily pull Santa’s sleigh, with the girls watching, and with my mother suffering from my same pain.
I still didn’t know what would happen and how I would heal my suffering, but that day I understood that I had to do something.
Spring Air and Cleaning Closets
It’s in the following spring that the most important event of my life, both professional and personal, manifests itself. In April, I announce to my uncle, the main partner of the family business where I was also CEO of one of the companies, my willingness to “make myself available,” meaning to resign from my position and leave it in their hands to decide. And immediately after, that I had understood I wouldn’t go back on this decision.
There are many reasons for this choice, where that hint of depression I was falling into, or maybe it was just heavy burnout, and which I had started to treat, certainly represents the engine for action.
I gave a lot and learned a lot in these 10 years of working in the family business. A high-level company that existed before me and will exist after, because it has a valid product and solid leadership. In that same company where I tried to build my story, and that at the same time tried to modify my essence, making me believe I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t what I should have been. Surely, this suffering is mine alone, in the sense that only I can feel a mix between family affection, professional commitment, and desire to build something that goes beyond centuries, so much as to suffer so much. Probably what I feel could be contradicted and explained in many ways, I was used to receiving many, generous, frequent, gratuitous explanations.
But when the company must go through profound changes, I, who teach change management, know that first of all, you need to create a strong coalition. And nothing makes a coalition stronger than having to face a change at the top. This is the main reason why, by mutual agreement, we decided that a sacrifice was necessary to take a decisive step in one direction or another.
During spring, my role changed from Chief Executive Officer to Equity Partner. I haven’t found a better name to define my being a partner, finally, albeit without any privilege, a role I had pursued for many years and that was met with such indifference by the social structure that it made me understand that in all this I would always be the indigestible organ that was annoying. And not even perceived as valuable.
That’s where the vase broke, in a meeting room more worried than decided, in congratulations never arrived and in the sense of loss that family vicissitudes would give us in the following months. Because our family has suffered silent pain, shouted and silent again. It has suffered the end of a life that has fought the waltz of life for a long time and right there, in that suffering, fundamental values emerged. Like using critical thinking, like building reasoning on data, and like managing with a look at evolution and one at concreteness. I haven’t accepted derision, I haven’t accepted pruning. Or I swallowed it and it allowed me to start over.
It’s in this precarious situation that just 3 days after that moment on the barrier in Ravenna, we discover that we’re expecting, again, a child. It’s a spark I can’t forget, and a compass for the decisions I made afterwards.
As the sole source of income for the family, with a certainly not flourishing situation, on March 26th I open my VAT number. And I cross off one of my life’s goals. I had always thought of managing the two worlds together, but it wasn’t meant to be and so I push in the direction of the new reality: consulting. I move to the other side of the barricade, as one of the new and important people I met this year will tell me. I choose to become self-employed for flexibility. Going to work elsewhere, continuing to be the person who comes from outside to fix companies after many years, wouldn’t have cured my illness, so I refuse some proposals and decide to reset everything.
I make a list of people who would help me and ask to leave a testimonial, I tell in advance what I would do and I feel listening and curiosity. I get a sort of fizzy will to feel the push I receive, people who appreciate me for what they have known. And at the same time, I hear a voice pulling me by the jacket, telling me that I haven’t achieved anything and that they surely only see the good part but not how incompetent I am.
I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the deep darkness of the soul, the fear of the father who doesn’t know if he can guarantee bread for his family.
I have to start over, but I’m afraid.
Beyond the Threshold
Many months have passed since those moments, months that lasted more than a year in my spirit, months that have taught me many things.
And it’s today that with this message I launch a new brand and make public the journey, an aspect I avoided doing for a long time for fear of showing myself too fragile.
Today begins the era of Ad Limen Consulting, the new consulting project I developed four-handed with a friend I was fortunate to cross paths with years ago, Alexia.
Ad limen means “towards the threshold”. The complete name would be Ex limine, ad limen. Our “Ad” tells of crossing a new threshold. The threshold is a symbol that has remained very present in our professional history. The threshold of knowledge, an invisible limit that often doesn’t allow us to understand the limit of what is true and what our brain “shows” us as true. The threshold understood as an obstacle to overcome, to mean all those obstacles that limit the company’s growth that need to be resolved or managed, aiming to choose and understand those truly important. The threshold at which a company plateaus. So we push it from one threshold towards and through a new threshold, scalable.
And I waited so long because I wanted a brand, I wanted websites where to tell the brand’s story.
That’s why today I officially launch the “new” matteocervelli.com, which is my space and my blog, finally in Italian after many years of English only. A new newsletter is born with this message, in Italian and English, which will find space on the site and with which I want to tell after having made public the transition.
And I launch adlimen.com, the site where we will convey our knowledge base and our services and products. The adlimen site is still in an embryonic state, but at least whoever reads my professional email and wants to snoop around will find something existing.
And these sites represent a rebirth. Because I wrote them myself, from scratch, in every single page and code. To know how I did it, you can explore this page and to know how I use AI, you can read this page.
I’m rewriting the old articles in English, slowly, and they will come back to light, translated, in the coming weeks.
What I Learned, What Comes
This year I learned to have courage. Courage to decide and move without having a ready parachute, the courage to descend and face judgment without defenses.
I learned how difficult it is to stand alone. Alone is ugly. But it’s also freedom to choose every day. I missed the emails from collaborators, which in dark moments gave me meaning, urgency, and action and which probably kept me together with tape for longer than I understood.
I opened a VAT number, and I experienced what precariousness means. Taxes to pay and managing fragile accounts. In this, I found great help in trusting not the usual circle, but a partner like Fiscozen who at a spectacular price gave me a platform to manage my simplified VAT number saving me lots of time, with continuous consultations and alleviating complexity. Small advertisement they deserve, really. In my life as a consultant, I learned to live with a different frustration. And it’s beautiful when trust is granted and projects start. If you’re interested, this is my invitation link.
I left my family’s company. A medium-large company with much to build. I learned how family relationships change in front of a family that revolves around a business, I heard important words and changed roles. And despite everything, I think I can say lucidly that I’m fortunate to live in this family that has known how to lick its wounds with great transparency. A big thank you in this I must make to my uncle who showed great stoicism and from whom I can say I have been able to learn and observe and it’s a privilege.
I did psychological therapy and understood it wasn’t nonsense. I did it especially thanks to Serenis, which allowed me to choose, gave me a wonderful platform and led me to Francesca, my psychotherapist who taught me so much about my relationships, made me see and if today I stand on my feet it’s thanks to her patience and her scientific approach. In the link you find my invitation, which gives you two free sessions. Everyone has something to tell and needs someone who listens. Psychology is incredible, try it.
I learned to use artificial intelligence, I went deep and found my way. If you’re not using it yet, you don’t know what you’re missing and you’re no longer up to date. For sure. Here’s how I use it in this blog. And other things will come. If you don’t know where to start, let’s talk about it.
I invested in a company and organized events, like those of the Business Angel Club in Pisa. Now I am Matteo Cervelli, engineer and consultant for business scalability. I also gave meaning to my Engineer title. And I learned to manage money, to invest. In this, I must give great credit, among many sources, to Giorgio’s channel, alias Mr. RIP who helped me understand many things.
I learned to better distinguish the nonsense that is said, the competencies that aren’t there, and empty models. I met a long list of people, some valuable, others less so who in the end helped me understand that I’m not really the stupidest of all and that my mission and what I believe in have value. Critical thinking and doubt were my medicines. Without this leap into the void, I wouldn’t have really understood.
I organized many training sessions and lessons and here too I understood that academic knowledge, deep knowledge, is worth much more than what the social media wave wants us to believe. Invest, always, in deep knowledge. Do research, doubt, discover the causes and go deep.
And in an era of great changes and a crazy geopolitical situation, with leaders who go to shoot propaganda and hide from criticism with absolutist behavior, I understood that the only absolute that has the power to guide me and that I need is God. In him I trust. We met again. Or rather, I returned to listening to him in my heart. And he is my consolation.
What Matters
In this year of change, the strongest thing is that I had the privilege of being a father again, from the start, and of experiencing my daughter that I didn’t experience (Covid aside) Emma and Maria. Anna was the greatest gift I could have in this year, because in her simple presence everything becomes light. Emma, Maria and Anna are light. A light that sometimes dims and I apologize to them for all the ugly they have seen of me. For the stomach aches I gave them, for the times they saw me cry and not get up, leaning on the furniture in the kitchen or on the floor like a capricious child.
They supported me with their differences, because they gave me rhythm. They made me think I didn’t know how to be a father and in this I learned that one isn’t a parent by competence, but only thanks to the relationship that binds us every day, that grows, evolves.
Emma turned 6, and for the first time I felt the weight of time. She will go to school and I already feel she’s no longer “mine”, I don’t control her. The same will happen, God willing, with Maria and Anna.
And I love them, with all my heart. And I hope I can be a father for them.
In this year I experienced the tragedy of my mom’s illness. A tragedy that starts from far away, or perhaps from too close, in time. I experienced the rejection she experienced, the difficulty of being yourself, friends who forget you. And those who stay. I experienced how many can’t talk to a person who can’t talk and tell you this as a justification. I understand them, because one is naked in front of illness.
But illness is a personal thing, a backwash of terror that grows inside you, always being with the fear of the end, of a story that can’t be beautiful again. But only because beautiful is what we define as such. Because in this illness I understood that the only life worth living is that of descent, of the Cross. Even if God didn’t exist, something I find difficult to doubt, even in that case the best life to live would be that of mockery, of judgment, of the look of superiority, of forgetting yourself. Because it’s down there at the bottom that we can discover our brother’s needs. And make ourselves servants, disciples of Love, the only true engine that gathers us in its arms and accompanies us towards True Joy.
God give me the Cross and help me carry it.
I rediscovered in my mom’s illness what it means to be a son. What it means to feel dull pain and the value of time. And I hope I can be a shoulder for her, in a new relationship where sometimes I am father to her who has been mother to me. There is a strong light in the darkness, in the temptation to give up everything and believe that the devil dominates the world. And he does, it’s His world, because our world is hidden. The essential lies in the heart of the relationship, of feeling unique. And I feel unique. For my mom, I am unique in the world.
I am for her, I am for my daughters.
And I am for my wife. She who is the beginning and end of my story. In her whom I chose to bind my existence to 10 years ago (anniversary also of this year) and whom I pray that the Lord grants me as wife for eternity. The love that devours, that consumes. That has consumed our relationship with many breaking points, and that teaches us the ability to bend and always start over, to rebuild, to tell each other the secrets of the heart and to be there. As friends. As lovers. As beloved. Unique, together, in God.
Sara, I love you and everything good that my life gives me comes with you who have supported me. In everything, this year I learned the most important lesson. That you are breath of life for me, and that all I really need is your love. Imperfect and fragile, but that draws source from the Love of he who chose us before ourselves.
May our love preserve us.
May our love be beauty, beauty that changes the world and makes it a better place.
