The 40,000-Foot Pivot: How The Mandala Experience Went from Book to Scroll Mid-Flight

Stephen Montgomery

Let me set the scene:

I’m on a plane, hurtling through the sky at 40,000 feet, surrounded by strangers who are all blissfully unaware that I’m having a full-blown existential crisis over a mandala kit pamphlet.

For weeks — weeks — I’d been carefully piecing together the design for a sleek, elegant booklet to accompany The Mandala Experience. It was going to be classy. Informative. A little mystical, but neat and professional. A book. Solid. Dependable. The kind of thing that says, “Hey, this is a serious product from a serious person who definitely doesn’t make major business decisions based on sudden gut feelings.”

And then — somewhere over the Atlantic, as the seatbelt sign blinked off — a thought hit me like a slap to the back of the head:

“This should be a scroll.”

I could almost hear the imaginary sound of all those carefully designed booklet pages whooshing into a metaphorical bonfire.

A scroll.
Unfurling like an ancient map.
Something tactile — something that feels like an old traveler’s guide, a whispered secret passed down through the ages.

It wasn’t just about aesthetics — it was about ritual.

A book feels modern — but a scroll? A scroll feels like you're opening a gateway, rolling out the first step of a journey. It adds ceremony to the process. It transforms reading into an act.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The mandala itself is a circle — a symbol of eternity, of movement without end. A book has a beginning and an end, but a scroll? It has continuity.

So there I was, thousands of feet above the ocean, furiously typing notes into my phone like some kind of possessed scribe. The book was out. The scroll was in.

The Creative Chaos Spiral

This isn’t the first time I’ve pulled a last-minute pivot — and it won’t be the last.

In fact, I think there’s a weird kind of magic in these chaotic moments. They remind me of something important:

Creativity doesn’t care about your timelines.

It doesn’t care if you’ve already spent three weeks designing a booklet. It doesn’t care if you’ve lined up a printer or mapped out your page flow. Creativity shows up when it wants to — usually at the most inconvenient times — and drops an idea so heavy, you can’t ignore it.

The trick isn’t fighting these moments — it’s trusting them.

Because here’s the thing:

  • The booklet was good.

  • But the scroll? The scroll is right.

The Takeaway

So what’s the point of all this?

It’s this:

➡️ Your first idea is rarely your best one — and that’s okay.

Creativity is a spiral, not a straight line. Sometimes, you have to walk halfway across the ocean before you realize you need to change direction.

The work you did wasn’t wasted — it was part of the path. Even the discarded ideas, the abandoned booklets, and the scrapped designs were stepping stones to something better.

If you're building something — a business, a piece of art, a project that means something to you — be open to the wild pivots. The uncomfortable shifts. The moments when you realize what you thought was finished… isn’t.

That’s not failure. That’s the process.

The scroll is proof of that.

And honestly? It’s a hell of a lot more fun this way.

So yeah — next time you feel like throwing your whole plan out the window at 40,000 feet? Maybe go with it.

Your best ideas might be waiting just beyond the clouds.

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