(1) Play your game

You have to be playing the right game. The game that you are uniquely qualified to play.

If you aren’t playing your game, no amount of will or skill will get you to the promised land. You can’t compete with people who are having fun. Your job is to figure out which game makes time disappear for you.

The most empowering thing I can tell you is that you can play whatever game you want. You get to choose the ruleset that is an exact match for your zone of genius. No one has the set of life experiences that you do. Billions of permutations of events happened creating the being you are today. No one can outcompete you at being you.

Now, I agree with you that you aren’t going to win at being a professional baseball player, that ship has sailed. Neither am I (sorry 10 year old me). But could you make a living creating the best data model for first basemen? Could you build an audience being a youtuber documenting Mexican baseball league stadium experiences? You can if your heart desires. And who are you competing against? Who is crazy enough to bring your unique dream to reality?

(2) Believe you are destined to win

Imagine that you get to play in the MLB except you could choose the rules. My rules are that any contact from a wasian bald bro is a home run. You don’t think I could win that game? That’s how unfair life is in your favor. You get to cheat. Choose the right game and the game will be rigged in your favor.

So believe you are destined to win. Believe in your path. Believe in yourself. Take a leap of faith.

(3) View failure as progress

People like to say progress isn’t linear. I disagree. Output isn’t linear, but progress is.

Whatever your end goal is, with every attempt, your output either gets closer to it, or your failure teaches you something that builds you up better for your next attempt.

You strike out. Cool. Now you know what that pitch looks like. You know exactly where your swing broke down. That information didn’t exist in your head five minutes ago. You got rejected from the job. Great, now you know which part of your story isn’t landing. You launched the thing and crickets. No problem. Now you know what the market cares about instead of what you assumed.

Win or learn. Either way it’s progress. It is impossible to go backwards if you are paying attention.

(4) Maximize your at bats

Once you are in the right game and mentally ready for the journey ahead of you, the obvious strategy is to maximize your at bats. Enough thinking, start swinging.

The hard part is that you have no idea whether you’re 10 or 1,000 swings away from winning. Somewhere along the way, the voice in your head starts whispering that maybe you’re not good enough.

At that moment, the only difference between winners and losers is whether you have the courage to keep going. Keep failing. Keep learning. Keep stepping up to the plate knowing you are one step closer to destiny. Your dream is on the other side of 1,000 failures.

Find your game. Take your swings.

Life is a series of events without inherent meaning. Events are not good or bad or frustrating or empowering. These are simply the interpretations of events that we create in our minds. And since events are neutral, we can create whatever meaning we want. So you have a choice in this, and the only way to lose in life is if you choose the wrong narrative.

The bad news is that you are fighting an uphill battle. Your brain is wired to feed you stories that will avoid doing the hard thing that you know you should do. By definition, the hard thing is uncomfortable and takes effort, so your brain invents stories to steer you away from it. We all have this internal demon: a whisper in your ear urging shortcuts, convincing you you’re a victim, and telling you that you just aren’t meant for it so that you don’t have to put in the work. This is the noble battle you are fighting every day.

The good news is that you have the power to choose which stories to believe. For example, if you are fired from your job, you can see yourself as a victim of a bad manager, or you can take this experience as training you to do better the next time. Same event, different interpretation. You may say that some events are so bad that there is no escaping suffering. That is true; but suffering is part of the journey and every struggle is raw material that will make you stronger in your next chapter. Ultimately, the quality of the stories you believe determines the quality of your life.

The losing story is giving into the demon in your head. It is believing you are a victim of life. That you failed. The winning story is simple: every event either moves you closer to your goals or teaches you a lesson that helps you move closer to them the next time. Every event is a positive step on the hero’s journey of your life. You must fight the demon daily, replacing the self-defeating narrative with one that empowers you.

Winning the battle against the voice in your head is your duty. When you feel bad for yourself, ask whether you failed or whether you are grateful to be given a lesson of experience. No matter how many voices surround you, the only story that matters is the one you tell yourself. The story is up to you. Choose it wisely. Until death, all defeat is psychological.

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Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

- Lao Tzu

Most people don’t embrace their uniqueness. They tell themselves they are just easygoing: professional at work, agreeable with friends, silent around family. But it’s not flexibility, it’s fear. Consciously or not, running away from fear is cowardice. They don’t even notice when it starts. A little silence here, a fake laugh there. With every compromise, they lose a part of themselves. Soon enough, they don’t stand for anything. A spiritual black hole. And that’s the trap to avoid.

You’re not meant to be a shape that fits someone else’s mold. You are the result of a one-in-a-trillion combination of events. Your value is the sum of it all: your proudest moments, your instincts, your pain, your weirdness, your spirit. Real freedom is living congruently with these parts of you: thinking, feeling, and acting in alignment. If you are willing to throw that away, you betray the only thing you ever truly own, yourself. And for what? The approval of people whose principles you don’t even share!

But authenticity doesn’t come for free. It means telling your friend they’re betraying themselves for not chasing their dreams and being okay with them getting upset. It means quitting the job to pursue your passion. It means risking embarrassment asking for help. Living in alignment is expensive but avoiding it costs even more. What you feel internally has to match how you act outwardly. You can bury that incongruence for a while, but it will always surface, and usually in ways you’ll regret.

Living authentically begins with knowing, defining, and holding yourself accountable to what you stand for. Your values, your voice, your principles. It ends with sharing those core parts of yourself freely, even when it is costly. It will feel scary to face that cost, and that’s when you know you are headed the right direction. Use fear as your compass.

When you live authentically, your magic returns. All the splintered energy wasted on pretending gets reclaimed. No hiding. No personas to manage. Play, joy, presence all return naturally to you. Just you being you. It becomes intoxicating to be alive. Outwardly, people will gravitate towards you when you have a clear line around who you are. Ironically, the best way to build connection is by being disagreeable for things you stand for. The people who stay are exactly the people you need.

Beyond your inner peace, it is about what you owe the world. Without you, the person you could’ve inspired stays stuck. The idea that could’ve changed everything dies in your drafts. When you hide, you deprive others of what only you could offer. No one can compete with you at being you. Hiding is a dereliction of duty.

Life will offer you immediate comfort in exchange for your soul. Most take the deal, not realizing they will pay either way: discomfort now or discomfort later. That choice determines not only the quality of your own life, but the lives of those around you. It determines whether your gift ever reaches the world.

The world doesn’t need more copies. It needs you.

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Si vis pacem, para bellum
- Vegetius, 4th century Roman writer

If you want peace, prepare for war. This wisdom was independently derived across many cultures, from Roman generals to Sun Tzu, all reaching the same conclusion: as a head of state, the goal is to create peace so your people can thrive. The best way to do that is to deter your enemies with preparation for war. Thus, in order to thrive, you need to first prepare to survive.

The paradox is that to get something you want, you must prepare for the opposite. There are two reasons for this:

• External benefits: The common interpretation — peace through deterrence. No one wants to go to war with a nuclear power because the cost is mass death and destruction of their own people. No one attacks an MMA fighter because they will get their ass kicked. Strength changes the calculus for parties considering an attack.

• Internal benefits: The second, less-obvious reason is that having a weakness to external events is paralyzing, whether conscious or subconscious. If you are not confident you can handle the worst that life throws you, then you will never be able to take the risks required to become the best. Whatever you are fearful of will eat you alive until — or unless — you face it, silently guiding all of your decision making.

While this concept originated in the context of societal warfare and zero-sum games, the wisdom holds true in modern times too for a slightly different reason. External deterrence is still valuable today, but the real insight is that our modern world is largely positive sum and thus our battles are overwhelmingly internal. The war we must prepare for isn't a fight to the death, but a fight against our own doubts, fears, and limitations that prevent us from thriving in a world of abundance. Whatever your dream is, if you are not prepared for the failure scenario, then you’ll never be able to take the risk required to have a chance of your dreams. Thriving requires risk taking. And risk brings failure. It may not come today, or this year or next, but at some point you will be tested. Are you able to manage that battle? The solution is simple: prepare for war.

The way to prepare is through discipline — repeatedly practice until your failure case is not scary anymore. If you are worried that you can’t find a job if your business fails, develop so many skills that you don’t need a job. If you are scared of being criticized by others, speak publicly until it’s a habit. To achieve any dream, you must prepare yourself for what happens when things don’t go according to plan. Discipline can be physical or mental — in either case it is the preparation that creates belief in yourself for when things go wrong.

Over the long term, the person who wins is the person who knows they are ready for adversity — whether that is a high-pressure situation or the bouncing back from being fired from your job. It doesn’t mean you will win in any given moment, but it does mean that you’ll win over the course of a lifetime of moments. The bad news is that there is no shortcut to building your survival muscle. The good news is that your survival muscle is a function of one thing: your will to build it. The world will throw you curveballs. When that time comes, it can be your first swing or your millionth repetition. To truly thrive, you must know you will always survive. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

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I must admit, I have never been a very spiritual person. I have been an atheist (a fairly militant one at that) for most of my life. I prided myself on logic and reason, yet as I began to read more, I realized every philosophical school of thought pointed to something greater. God, the Universe, logos, Fate, the list goes on. As I sat with some of the ideas about higher powers, an obvious question arose — what do I know that the wisest people in history didn’t? It dawned on me that the core beliefs that governed my life may be worth re-litigating. Specifically, why was I so sure that there is not a higher power? After tons of reading, soul-searching, and some personal experience, I have come to believe that there is a higher power that gives us all a unique path, the ability to find it, and the agency to walk it.

Consider the remarkable journey that led to our existence — billions of years of dependent events, the formation of our planet, the emergence of life, and countless generations of ancestors. After all of this, we possess consciousness and self-awareness that allow us to conceptualize our existence. For me, this gift of consciousness transcends random occurrence and leads me to believe we are part of something greater than ourselves - that our journey is a manifestation of deeper design. If this is true, we are all an expression of the divine.

Whether you are ready to believe or not, the option is there for you. And once you take the leap of faith, you’ll feel unstoppable. You will have access to a superpower you have never dreamed of. At the height of Muhammad Ali’s career, one of the most resilient athletes of all time, the world turned against him. He faced prison, the stripping of his heavyweight title, and the hatred of millions of his countrymen. Most people would have buckled. But his faith gave him unshakeable clarity in his path:

“I strongly believe God will take care of everything ... My faith makes me fearless.”

This is the superpower of belief. Your worries float away. Purpose fills your bones. The exhaustion from trying to control every variable subsides. The comparisons to others fade into the periphery. The doubts in your head become laughably fake. As life throws you off course and sends you in different directions, belief is the North Star that always brings you back to your path.

This begs the question: does agency exist if you are surrendering to a higher power? I hold very dear that anything you want in life is achievable. It may seem contradictory to believe both in a higher power and in full agency. In reality, belief doesn't reduce agency, it amplifies the impact of it — the difference being wasting your god-given gifts on an unfulfilling life or using them to get everything you want out of life.

Consider this analogy, which illustrates how belief and agency can work together: Believing is like being given a map and a compass to climb a mountain. Having these resources doesn't diminish the challenge or your role in the journey. Agency is simply whether you have the courage to take the next step forward on the path, to keep moving when the path gets steep, and to trust your inner compass when you reach a fork in the road. Sometimes the trail is clearly marked and you just have to have the courage to walk it. Sometimes the fog rolls in and you need to find your bearings again. In the compass of your heart, you know when you're on the right path and when you need to change direction. The map and compass are divine gifts, but it is your responsibility, your agency, to use them to find and walk your path.

You may not be ready to believe today, but just consider the possibility because it may change your life. Belief is trusting that God has given you everything you need to find your unique path. Agency is exercising your choice to walk down that path. Combine the two, and your hero’s journey begins. The choice is yours.

Amor fati.

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The best defense is a good offense.

4th quarter. 2 minutes left. Your team is up a touchdown. The defense has dominated the entire game - attacking the quarterback, aggressive blitzing, and the like - and now it just needs one last stop to win the game. Then all-of-a-sudden, the strategy changes. Your defense starts playing Prevent1. Sure enough, it gets picked apart and gives up the game-tying touchdown. You had all the momentum, and then decided to concede some ground. What happened? In the football example, there is certainly some nuanced strategy involved. But the point is that something much more insidious happens with this strategy change: the mindset changes from playing to-win to playing not-to-lose.

You may be wondering what this has to do with you. It’s not about football. It is about approaching life as an opportunity to improve. And the only way to get your brain in that state is by collecting wins. That starts with winning the day today. What exactly does it mean to win the day? Simply, it means you got closer to the person you want to be. The specifics will differ for everybody, but you know in your soul whether you had the courage to do the hard thing or whether you made an excuse.

The human brain is funny, it has no steady state. You are either getting closer to where you want to be or further from it. When you are winning, your brain starts thinking how do I win more. When you are losing (or even just trying to maintain), your brain starts thinking how do I lose less. That’s it. There’s only two states of mind.

To further the point, think about some simple math for a second. If your goal is to prevent decay, no matter how successful you are, in the long term you are approaching 0. If your goal is to win each day, even only a single percent a day2, in one year you're 37x better than where you started. On any y-axis you care about, you either approach 0 or you get to orders of magnitude higher than what you are capable of today. Grim or empowering, your choice.

The stakes are so high because changing from one state to the other is very hard. I’m sure you can think of a rut you have been in and how difficult it is to get out. Momentum, for better or worse, is a powerful drug. When you have positive momentum, keep pushing. Ride the momentum knowing that you have a superpower at your back. When you have momentum in the wrong direction, use every ounce of willpower to get a win. That voice telling you to wait for motivation or the perfect moment? It's lying. The perfect moment is now. Remind yourself that the hardest part of changing course is the first step. It won’t be easy but take solace knowing better days are ahead.

Every day is an opportunity to take a step towards the person you want to be, there are no neutral days. But it is not about just winning a single day per se. It is about what that win does to your brain. It is about getting your brain into a state of attack and building momentum. Over the long term, this is the difference between mediocre and extraordinary. And mediocrity is poison for the soul. So when you wake up tomorrow, repeat until you are obsessed: Win the day. Win the day. Win the day.

Not because you don’t have time, you do (you are alive). But every day, your time bank account drains 24 hours. Days, weeks, and months slip by, but no closer to a life well lived. Did anything of significance happen in the past day? Week? Month? Why does it feel like you’re not fully living?

Because you aren’t fully living. You fast-forward the only part of the human experience that matters: the present moment. Presence-maxxing—choosing to engage fully in each moment—is the only way out. Spend your time in the moment and experience that nagging, subconscious life-clock fade away.

What are we all doing here?

We all want to live a happy life. Every resource you have should be used in service of that goal. But like money and other resources, we too often get trapped optimizing for the resource itself, rather than figuring out how to use the resource to live a better life.

If you are paying attention, this is obvious: happiness doesn’t correlate strongly with youth. But using time correctly — with presence — does correlate with happiness. Without it, no other factors really matter. Seneca made a similar observation about the preoccupations of our mind robbing us of the moment if we let them:

There will always be causes for anxiety, whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. Life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it.

What is a good use of time?

The best heuristic is the simplest: Are you present while doing X? If yes, it is a good use of time. If no, something needs to change.

Our brains are so gigafried by the amount of stimuli modern life comes with: 17 notifications about nothing, loud horns in the street, boss calling you, and a thousand other things placing bids in the attention marketplace. Over time, we’ve trained ourselves to escape rather than engage. The result? You may feel dread about the inevitable passage of time as you get older. But the dread you feel is not because you are losing time, but rather that you are losing time without trading it for fulfilling moments.

How to be more present?

The common solution is to escape by burying the present moment with doomscrolling and the like. But that throws the baby out with the bathwater.

The better solution is presence-maxxing. Optimize your presence by removing these escapes, these fast-forwards of your time. The best example of is how AirPods are used today. Of course, AirPods are useful when augmenting your reality is your intention (like on a video call), but the dangerous usage is the mind-numbing slop that allows you to turn your brain off and escape — music, podcasts, etc. that you aren’t even listening to. AirPods make mindless stimuli so frictionless that you forget you are even using them. I recommend you give those headphones your best Little League impression and throw them into the ocean.

More broadly, there are many examples of distractions — phone notifications, ruminations of the past or future, and anything else that takes up your brainspace, preventing you from being in the here and now. These tools can be useful, but only if used deliberately. If it’s mindless, it needs to go.

You will start to notice that you have been zooming through the best parts of life. The unplanned chats with strangers. The rustling of leaves in a light breeze. The beautiful silence. The deep conversations with friends. There are so many moments, both big and small, that if you truly engage with have meaning to last a lifetime. Don’t miss living these moments with clarity.

There’s no path to a fulfilling life without presence. Fortunately, you already have enough time — you just need to use it wisely. So next time you feel the existential dread creeping in, remember that all you need is now. Slow down, remove the noise, and rediscover the feeling of being alive. Godspeed.

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The unfortunate truth is that life beats the dreams out of most of us. You get an average SAT score and don’t believe you are smart enough to be a lawyer. You get rejected by a few pretty girls and believe you’ll never have the charm of the other guys. You get a few data points that you don’t have what it takes to achieve your dreams, then admit defeat and settle for the life that is handed to you, rather than the life you want. The fortunate truth is that you aren’t most people. You are uncommon. To be the best, be delusional.

Think of life as a video game. For simplicity, let’s say there are 10 levels representing the potential of your life. We all begin life dreaming of beating the level 10 final boss - becoming an astronaut or becoming the president or changing the world - but then you collect a few negative life experiences and soon enough, you are content with the level you are at. You concede that the folks who have slain the final boss are intrinsically “built different” without a critical second thought.

You believe you are cooked and you are right. However, you are not cooked in the way you think. It is not because you don’t have some “it” factor that only certain people were born with. You are cooked because you believe you are cooked. Once you stopped believing in yourself, your dreams died. Perception becomes reality. Our brains are great at finding data points that confirm our beliefs, so your current level becomes your terminal level. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Everything that you want is in your grasp. You just have to change how you think of yourself. The way out is delusional self belief.

The dilemma is that we have a chicken-and-egg problem - you need belief to create evidence and you need evidence to create belief. If you don’t believe in yourself, then you won’t create evidence that you can achieve more than your current level. So unfortunately, you either decide to be delusional and believe in yourself or you never break the loop and get stuck at at your current level. For some people that is fine - is it fine for you?

Now that we understand the challenge, let’s break down our escape plan. Being delusional comes down to believing three things:

1. The world is malleable: In other words, you have agency over your life and the outcomes of your life. You are the main character crafting the world, not a passive bystander getting dragged around by life.

2. You lack nothing intrinsically: You may lack skills or experience or ability, but everything you need is learnable or out-sourceable. Nothing about the way you were born is an unsolvable blocker.

3. There is light on the other side of the leap of faith: This is the delusion - the leap of faith that is required to build evidence. On level 1, there is no logic, pure belief - you have never deluded yourself successfully before. For level 2, remember that you took a leap of faith for level 1 and came out of the other side as the victor. With each entrance to the next level, remember the delusion it took to get there. Each uplevelling will require a different belief without evidence - maybe level 1 is believing you can learn to swim, level 2 is making the high school swim team, and so on - what is common is that you have to be believe in yourself with no evidence. Build that habit of delusional self belief.

Whether you like it or not, life will make you question yourself. The good news is when that doubt starts to creep in you have a choice - give in or get going. This is when 99% of people quit. Use this as fuel to keep going in that decisive moment. Greatness is in the palm of your hands. All you have to do is keep believing when others give up. You may not see it yet, but I promise you there is light at the end of the tunnel - your untapped potential is sitting there, waiting to be claimed. Believe in something. Believe in you.

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“He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.” - Marcus Aurelius

Self-love determines the quality of your life. Not controversial.

More interestingly, how do you achieve self-love? Your thoughts and your actions. By themselves, useless. Together, the secret to happiness. Clear the mental roadblocks that hold you back, and then go out and prove to yourself that you are capable of greatness.

Thinking

Step one: think your way out of roadblocks. Before you can really love yourself, you have to rid yourself of negative self beliefs. You cannot actualize until you really, truly believe that you are enough. That your flaws are a part of your story and an integral part of your character. That you can’t be the best everything to everyone, but you sure as hell can be the best you. Sit with that and be honest - do you believe it in your bones? If not, you need to retrain your mind until you believe it. There’s two fundamental steps to do so:

1. Identify negative beliefs

2. Replace negative beliefs with empowering ones

For example, you don’t believe you are a smart person because you weren’t good at math in grade school. As an adult, every objective reality will be viewed through that lens. The promotion you got? That must have been because the worthier person quit the company recently. How you see yourself is how you see the world.

Instead, a more empowering belief is that you worked extremely hard to overcome not being naturally gifted in math. Your will and resilience to learn will allow you to achieve anything that you set your mind to. The world is your oyster. Again, how you see yourself is how you see the world.

You can win this mental battle with the help of therapy, psychedelics, or a plethora of other solutions, but you must do it one way or another. You must love the person you are becoming before any amount of self-discovery is useful. By winning the battle against your own limiting beliefs, you remove the roadblocks. Once you’ve addressed these mental blocks, you can move on to step two: taking action.

Doing

Step two: take action. Imagine you’ve always wanted to run a marathon, but you always come up with some excuse why the timing is not right. The biggest shame in this is you aren’t even giving yourself a chance to discover your greatness. You must take action, however small. You must start training. If you really want something, you must push past the point where you want to stop (I wrote more about this in It's you against you). Just when you want to quit, that is the exact moment when you must continue. Prove to yourself you have more in you. With each day that you lace up your running shoes and take steps toward your goal, you build discipline which translates into evidence that strengthens your new empowering beliefs.

Thinking and doing

To illustrate why you need thinking and doing, let’s use an analogy. Your dream is to become a NASCAR driver. You have a top-tier racecar, but it has a governor limiting the speed to 100 mph. That governor is like your limiting beliefs. No matter how much potential you have, you won’t be able to perform at your best until you remove it. In the same way, your self-doubt and negative thoughts create a ceiling on your happiness. Once you’ve removed those mental limits, you can finally test your skills. Now, it’s not about what was holding you back—it’s about how hard you’re willing to push yourself forward. Self-love comes from this self-discovery. Every day that you drive faster or accomplish more, you prove to yourself what you’re capable of. That’s where true confidence and self-love emerge.

We get into trouble when we think OR act, not think AND act. I’m sure you know a few people who fall into both extremes. On one side, you have the therapy enjoooyers who can’t make a decision without consulting their therapist. They have been in therapy for years and still don’t seem very happy. On the other side, you have the bro-science influencers who tell you to deadlift your way out of depression. They may have impressive resumes, accomplishments, and stories, but they aren’t happy either.

Both extremes are limiting. There is real value in both thinking and acting, and there is also real danger in getting addicted to one without the other. Thinking without action creates self-doubt - you eventually run out of real roadblocks so your mind makes up fake ones. Action without thinking also creates self-doubt - you have achievements, but don’t understand the negative beliefs that still make you unhappy with yourself.

In the end, self-love is not a destination, but a journey that requires both mental clarity and deliberate action. In this journey, only by freeing your mind and pushing to discover how powerful you are can you experience the inner harmony that you deserve. So everyday you have an option: one step closer or one step further from self-love. What is your choice today?

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“Here is a rule to remember, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ‘This is misfortune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’” - Marcus Aurelius

The past year has been a rollercoaster. The good times are fun. The bad times suck. But the hardships create growth that I would have never had and made me a better person that I would have never been. For that, I am grateful. Here are the top things I learned in the past twelve months:

1. Seek hardship

   1. Struggle is the price of growth - the only way to consistently and repeatably grow is to put yourself in uncomfortable positions consistently and repeatably

   2. In the darkest moment, always remember you are harvesting the seeds of a new you

   3. A great clip of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unironically wishing pain and suffering on his audience

2. Ruthlessly unblock yourself

   1. Find the root cause of your problem

      1. The things that plague us mentally are often symptoms not root causes

         1. The physical analog is if you get sick all the time, you can treat each sickness with DayQuil or you can fix your immune system - only one is sustainable

         2. Playing whack-a-mole solving symptoms is a never ending goose chase that will drive you insane

      2. Ask yourself “why?” until you get to the root cause of your problem - be honest with yourself

         1. For example, why do you struggle with public speaking? Is it because other people have some intrinsic skill that you don’t or did you experience something in your past that you are holding onto?

         2. Understand the things from your past that affect who you are

   2. Attack the root cause ruthlessly

      1. Once you understand the root cause, it is a simple (not easy) problem solving exercise

      2. Iterate over and over until you find out how to solve that root problem

      3. Be open to trying new ways of getting unstuck (eg. psychedelics1). There are a lot of awesome tools out there that have the power to change your life

3. Sustain a habit by making it embarrassingly easy

   1. For example, set a 1 minute meditation daily goal

      1. It is embarrassing not to succeed at this goal

      2. Eventually the habit becomes a non-negotiable part of your routine

      3. You can increase duration later, just get your mind used to the consistency first

   2. Excellence is a habit, you have to prove it every day

4. Increase the slope of your line

   1. Your starting place is unrelated to the outcomes you achieve

   2. Where you are now doesn’t change the action you can take today

   3. All you can do is increase the slope of your line

      1. Focus on increasing your growth rate and consistency. Be 1% better today and let compound interest work for you, to the tune of 37x improvement in a year

      2. If you 37x yourself every year, you won’t even remember where you started

5. Push past what you think is possible

   1. You are (two and a half times more) powerful than you think

      1. David Goggins has a concept called the 40% percent rule: When your mind tells you that you are done and can't go any further, you are only at about 40 percent of your actual capacity

      2. When you think you are done, you are just getting started

   2. I wrote more about pushing your mind in it’s you against you

      Hi Bocaj

      It's you against you

      You just finished a long run. You feel great—runner’s high in full effect. 5 minutes pass, and you’re still riding that wave. But an hour later, as the endorphins wear off, you start analyzing your slower-than-expected mile splits. Suddenly, that high fades, and you’re left wondering if you really gave it your all. Did you push through your limits, or d…

      Read more

      2 years ago · Bocaj

As I reflect on my own lessons of the past year, I can’t help but appreciate that life’s toughest moments are the ones that shape you the most. In fact, these moments are the first steps toward becoming the person you want to be. It’s the start of a beautiful cycle: hardship, self-awareness, and rebirth. So next time you’re feeling down, remember — you’re in the process of forging a new you. Embrace it, and emerge as a champion.

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We do this all the time in life. In the moment, things are hard and we just want the pain to go away: physical, mental, emotional, whatever it may be. But when it’s over and your heart is still beating, you start to wonder: Did you really give it your all? Could you have given more? Could you have achieved your PR if you pushed on the last sprint?

The counterintuitive truth is that the real path to greatness isn’t in outdoing others but in consistently outdoing yourself. While it’s easy to seek validation from beating others, the real challenge—and reward—comes from setting and meeting your own standards. That’s why endurance sports are such a powerful testing ground—they strip away the noise and put you face to face with your own limits. Before you can conquer others, you need to conquer yourself. Look no further than the greats: Kobe, Brady, Jordan. They were only satisfied becoming the best versions of themselves, constantly raising their own bar. Winning is just a byproduct of those personal standards.

Competing with others is also often a coward’s way out. If you were to beat a 10 year old 1:1 in pickup basketball, would you be proud of yourself? Hopefully not. You still won? Who cares. The point is that it is so easy to pat yourself on the back when you compare yourself to average. In reality, you didn’t compete with yourself, you didn’t push yourself to be great. You have so much more to give. You just have to decide to be great.

So you have decided to be great, but how do you actually make it happen?

Simply, use discomfort as your way-finder. Our monkey brains are wired for comfort (we once needed to preserve energy to run from lions). But your mind is now getting in the way of achieving your dreams. So pursuing and feeling discomfort is validation that you are pushing yourself towards your potential. You are taking a step closer to greatness.

This is a small but powerful reframing of discomfort. Most people tolerate discomfort reluctantly, and would run as far as possible from it if they could. But you run towards discomfort, because you know that a fulfilling life is earned, not given. In today’s world, you may be able to stay alive in the comfort zone, but you aren’t living until you leave it.

We often celebrate competition, but too often, we are focused on the wrong opponent. The only competition that matters is with yourself and that outcome is 100% in your control. Remember, every decision has a price: you either decide to be great and pay with discomfort now, or you choose comfort now and pay with regret later. I know the life I want to live. Do you? In the end, it is you against you.

You got picked last for kickball every recess. The school bully threw food at you in the cafeteria, your boss told you your presentation sucked. Those events happened and are very real. But … your demons are not those events. Your demons are the self-beliefs you took away from the events, the armor you built to prevent those events from happening again. As an example, it’s not that you got bullied, but that you internalized that you were a loser. Now you see the world through the lens of not being good enough. You become introverted and stay in your room to avoid the possibility of ridicule (a totally rational thing for a child to do by the way). The problem is those beliefs - the ones that actually kept us physically and emotionally safe as children - turn into the demons that follow up and hold us back into adulthood.

Everyone is born with a unique gift. As a child, you embody the gift. The innocence of childhood is not immaturity but rather the purity of being human. Over time we grow up, we get challenged by life, and we build up layers of armor that hide our purity from the world. What once served to protect us becomes the very armor that weighs us down in adulthood. It is how we lose track of ourselves. You know the feeling that you are living well but intuitively something isn’t right, like there is more to life? Those are the internalized self beliefs that are preventing you from living true to your gift. You only have two options: continue living life shackled by your armor, or build the courage to unshackle yourself.

The most empowering insight of all is that the layers of armor - the insecurities, lack of confidence public speaking, avoiding public failure, whatever it is for you - are just beliefs, and you are free to believe whatever you want. The reward for shedding your armor is re-gaining access to that unique superpower that makes you, you.

How do you do that? You have to convince yourself that your negative beliefs are not inherent flaws, but just layers of defense that you don’t need anymore. Start by questioning your beliefs: Are they objective truths, or are they assumptions rooted in past experiences? Then every time that you notice a negative self-belief, in that moment, you must decide whether you win or your demons win.

Life is hard. Shit happens. We build walls to prevent things. But the way back to your true self is clear. First, understand the events that shaped your negative core beliefs. Second, embrace that you are fully in control of how you interpret those events. Sit with that for a second and really believe it. Finally, you are ready for the fun part. You can let your demons dictate your path. Or you can tell those demons to go fuck themselves, each and every day. It’s up to you.

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

- Nelson Mandela

Who were your idols growing up? The president, an astronaut, maybe a superstar athlete? I often imagined my idols, courageous people of the past and present, as possessing some otherworldly talent. Somehow they didn’t feel fear and were just “built different” as the memelords like to say.

For one reason or another, as a kid I had internalized that fear equals bad and bad things should be avoided. Safety was the goal and I was successful at it. My idols may as well have been a different species, they didn’t have fear and I did. It is what it is.

Over time, I realized there is no innate difference between my idols and I, just our relationship to fear. They ran to fear and I ran away from it. In fact, repressing the fear (or any emotion) actually made its power stronger, and ultimately was preventing me from achieving my potential.

I started to ask myself: what if fear, instead of being a shackle, could be reframed as not just something to manage, but a positive guiding force? What if fear could became a tool for self discovery, fulfillment, and love? By noticing, embracing, and understanding fear, I realized it could be that and much more.

Ready? Strap in.

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What is fear?

Fear is a biological, emotional response to perceived danger or threat. Over the course of thousands of years, fear evolved as a valuable tool for humans, in fact commonly the difference between life and death. The lion is trying to feed its family. The neighboring tribe is trying to conquer territory. Nature is brutal. But fear kept you alive. Psychologically, fear manifests as anxiety, worry, or apprehension about the future.

However, in today’s modern world, surviving is not the goal. We have (largely) conquered survival as a given in the developed world. Instead, thriving is the goal. We want to become the best versions of ourselves. Today’s fears - the board meeting presentation, the job interview, the talking to a cute stranger - are not life threatening. Unfortunately, our primal fear makes it feel that they are.

Fear as a Compass

So is fear useless? No. In fact, fear is invaluable as a guiding compass. It is a natural and necessary part of life, signaling to us when something important is at stake. Fear can alert us to the choices that really matter in life, prompting us to consider our actions more carefully and make more informed choices.

In past times, what was important was surviving. Today, what is important is thriving, improving ourselves, pushing past our self-imposed limits. The implication is that fear used to be valuable as a signal to run away from it. Today, fear is a beacon for something to run towards(!). In fact, feeling fear and going forward anyway is the ultimate form of self love - the reward is discovery of who you are and what you truly are capable of. Everything meaningful in life is on the other side of that fear.

Turning threat into companion

I had always understood fear as a negative emotion to avoid and thus repressed it. My repressed fears didn’t go away, just subconsciously dictated my life’s decisions. Reframing fear from a negative emotion to a healthy companion takes time, but is worth the effort. Below is how to manage fear, followed by specific tactics to train this muscle in the next section.

1. Notice

   1. The first step in transforming fear is to notice it and make the subconscious, conscious

      1. Noticing fear allows us to confront it and remove its power, rather than letting it subconsciously run our lives

      2. This is something that is really hard to do for people who have repressed fear for years or decades (me!)

      3. To start, try to notice when you were fearful in your nightly journal (see below). Over time, you can make the feedback loop shorter and shorter until you are noticing fear before you act (and can then modify your action)

2. Feel

   1. Visualize the fear and sit with it until you are observing unemotionally. Where do you feel fear in your body?

3. Understand

   1. Understand what it is that triggers our fear. This can range from something obvious to something deeply personal and subconscious (eg. childhood experiences). Understanding the root cause helps demystify and oust fear of its stranglehold on us

4. Walk towards it anyway

   1. Now that you can see fear clearly, it is time to take a leap of faith. Know that to see the light, you have to take a leap of faith into the darkness. This is obviously easier said than done

   2. Once you show your brain that you can jump into the darkness, and come out on the other side, it becomes easier with every iteration

Quick start guide

I have tried a lot of different things to change my relationship with fear to be more healthy. Below is what works for me, although I recommend you experiment until you find what works for you.

1. [Daily] Journaling

   1. Morning

      1. Write 1-3 bullets answering: What am I fearful of today?

      2. Do those things today

   2. Night

      1. Reflect on the fears you wanted to overcome today

      2. Notice and reflect on unanticipated fears

         1. Did you notice them in the moment?

         2. How did you react?

      3. Understand what triggered that fear

         1. A helpful exercise is to ask “Why?” until you get down to a root fear

2. [Daily] Meditation

   1. Meditate to help feel the emotion

      1. You will be able to notice and just sit with fear

      2. If you have trouble keeping with the habit, start with literally 1 minute a day. Momentum is a powerful drug

3. [Quarterly] Fear-setting

   1. Rather than drafting goals, draft the things you are scared of doing

   2. In practice, I have found that this exercise forces self-honesty in a way that traditional goal setting does not

   3. If you aren’t scared of your goals, then your journey will never be fulfilling anyways (even if you achieve your goals). It’s the hero’s journey that is fulfilling1

4. [Continuously] Be compassionate with yourself

   1. None of this is easy. You will fail many times. It is important to be compassionate with yourself and view your step back as a learning, rather than a failure

   2. Give yourself a hug when things go wrong. Beating yourself up will only make things harder

   3. Celebrate the small wins. The fact that you are standing up to your fears is progress itself. It takes immense courage to do so

Moving forward

Fear doesn’t have to hold us back, but rather can serve as a useful companion and guiding light in our lives. And you can start today: notice fear; feel fear; understand fear; then push through fear.

Over the history of humankind, fear has saved countless lives from the literal jaws of death. But there are no lions hunting us anymore. The challenge of our lives is the battle with our own minds. Can you overcome your self-imposed limitations? Can you use fear to your advantage? Fear is a powerful emotion. Don’t let it go to waste.

This post was partially inspired by Tim Ferriss’s fear-setting blog2

Last updated: July 2024

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Life is hard.

We make 35,0001 decisions every day that ultimately decide the outcomes of our lives. That’s a decision every two and a half seconds(!). Rather than let our subconscious mind make those decisions and run our lives, it is important that we deliberately decide how we make decisions. In doing so, we can live more coherently, and ultimately reach the outcomes we want. Guiding principles are the guardrails that make decision making more coherent, and life less-hard.

My guiding principles

1. Let the truth guide you

2. Do the thing that scares you

3. Exude love

4. Optimize for the long-term

Let the truth guide you

• Rationale

  • You can’t see the world clearly until you see yourself clearly

  • Truth leads to coherence leads to fulfillment. Repressing the truth leads to incoherences leads to feeling stuck or incomplete

  • Sincerity builds trust - you don't actually trust someone who is always painting rosy pictures

  • Authenticity is the north star

• Examples

  • Impose your true self on the world courageously, even at personal cost

    • Hiding your true self is taking out a debt that will be repaid in the future one way or another

  • Connect spiritually, with yourself and a higher power

  • Find the truth within

    • Figure out what you must do in life - the hard conversation, the hard decision - and then have the courage to execute on it

  • Bring awareness to your feelings. Do NOT let things simmer

    • Understand the things that affect you

    • Understand why they affect you

    • Re-teach yourself new beliefs to overcome the negative belief

  • Lead with honesty, vulnerability, and sincerity. Be radically candid.

  • Maniacally focus on what you can control. Surrender to all else.

  • Have the difficult Level 32 conversations early and often

  • Share feedback compassionately and directly

  • Say the thing you think cannot be said

  • Embrace reality and then figure out the best path forward

  • Remember all the solutions are within you, which is extremely empowering

  • Avoid victim thinking

Do the thing that scares you

• Rationale

  • Fear is a powerful guiding light

    • Anything worthwhile is on the other side of fear or difficulty (if it wasn’t hard, you would already have done it!)

  • Nothing great happens in the comfort zone

  • The only way out is through

• Examples

  • Take a leap of faith into fear

    • Feeling fear and going forward anyway is the ultimate form of self love - the reward is discovery of who you are and what you are capable of

    • Remember there is light on the other side of the darkness

  • Don’t just be reactive to opportunities, make opportunities happen

  • Decide what you want, understand the world is malleable, and then impose yourself until you get it

  • Have the courage to trust your internal compass, your gut instincts

  • Choose your races wisely. Do less, but better

Exude love

• Rationale

  • You never know the battles someone else is facing, but they are facing them

    • See sonder: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own

  • Humans are social creates and are meant to do good to one another

  • We are all connected by a higher power. What benefits the individual benefits the whole

  • Compassion does not come at the cost of fairness. Often the most compassionate thing to do, is helping others see their blindspots

  • Fairness prioritizes the truth, which is the only way to healthily navigate a world of distraction

• Examples

  • Share compassion to self and others as much as you can

  • Treat people fairly in all situations

  • Even when someone wrongs you, be compassionate. Their misstep is not about you but something they are dealing with

  • Keep a high bar for yourself and others

  • Win and help others win

  • Lead with kindness. It is often the most courageous thing you can do

  • Do right upon family, friends, and everyone beyond. Remember what injures the hive injures the bee

  • Take in inputs, make decisions rationally

Optimize for the long-term

• Rationale

  • Everything worthwhile in life compounds

  • Consistency is the most underrated superpower. Ordinary people achieve extraordinary results with consistency

• Examples

  • Be inpatient with input, patient with output

  • Set clear direction (mission, guiding principles, okrs). Then make progress every day

  • Be excellent morally and civically everyday

  • Avoid autopilot, reflect constantly on direction and iterate as needed

  • Prioritize relationships

  • Prioritize personal health

“Decision-making is the heartbeat of life, pulsating through every moment. Each choice shapes our journey, guiding us toward our goals or diverting us from our path.”

This quote is a bit dramatic, but it does get the point across. Decisions determine our individual/company/societal outcomes. Also true: speed is the currency of startups.

How to reconcile diligence and speed?

Well, it depends. Below is a practice guide to making the right decisions, by modifying your approach to the decision at hand.

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Quick start guide

1. Decide what you are deciding

   1. You know that feeling when everyone in a meeting is looking around knowing that no-one knows what we are talking about anymore? Don’t be the guy leading that presentation. Say the decision out loud

2. Decide what approach is needed

   1. I use different approaches for different kinds of decisions, based on how consequential and irreversible they are

   2. Spend the most time on decisions that are both consequential, materially impact company outcomes, and irreversible, cannot easily be walked back

   3. For these consequential and irreversible decisions, use a consultative decision making approach

      1. Consultative decisions empowers decisions makers to own their final decision while gathering all the relevant information from subject matter experts

      2. This helps focus your time on what matters. We make 35,000 decisions every day, but a tiny fraction of them are consequential enough to determine your outcomes

   4. If less consequential or irreversible, decision maker should make faster decisions (eg. unilaterally or with one of the approaches below)1

      1. Note: I will focus the rest of this article on consequential and irreversible decisions as they disproportionately drive outcomes

         

3. Assign roles and responsibilities

   1. Use the RAPID2 framework

      1. Recommend: Develops recommendation for decision, and owns 80% of the work

      2. Agree: Ensures recommendation meets specific mandatory requirements (eg. legal/regulatory)

      3. P: Executes decision once make

      4. Input: Provides perspective that should be considered before making a decision. This usually comes from people who are the most knowledgeable about a given subject

      5. Decide: Makes the decision. Takes inputs from others, evaluates inputs with their own ideas, and then makes the most informed decision possible

   2. At minimum, you need a single (D)ecision maker (important it is a single person) and folks to provide (I)nput. That is enough for most decisions, although you may want to incorporate more roles with more complexity (eg. more consequential decision, more risk, etc.)

4. Drive the decision

   1. Decisions don’t just get made in a vacuum. In order to drive real progress, it is important to bring along and get buy-in from stakeholders, which serves two purposes:

      1. Sharpen your ideas and get to the best decision possible

         1. We want the best ideas to win, and the best way to do that is put your thoughts in front of others

         2. In short, create an idea meritocracy

      2. Bring others along in the decision making process

         1. Even if you think you already have the optimal decision, taking a few minutes to bring stakeholders along with your thinking will increase buy in and friction

         2. When you inevitably hit a road block during execution, having buy-in early prevents the “I told you so” whispers from creeping in from stakeholders, and ultimately preventing progress

         3. Lots of times people will disagree with your decision, but knowing that you considered their input allows them to “disagree and commit”

   2. How?

      1. Early low-fidelity alignment

         1. Goal: Get stakeholders bought into high level direction

         2. Early in the decision making process, align on the high level goals, decision, impact, scope, and approach

         3. This will ensure key stakeholders are pushing in the right direction, and any misalignment is inexpensive (ie. caught before too much work is done)

      2. High fidelity alignment meeting

         1. Goal: Get stakeholders bought into the specifics of the decision

         2. Later in the project, align on all the most important details

         3. At this point, the decision maker should have thought through the options, highlighted the tradeoffs, and proposed the recommended path forward

   3. Misconceptions

      1. One misconception of gathering input/feedback is that you as the decision maker must take and incorporate all feedback

         1. It can feel disempowering if approached like that

            1. Consider re-framing as “I am sharpening my thoughts to make the optimal decision, whether that agrees or disagrees with the feedback” vs. “I am taking orders from X person”

         2. Furthermore, it can be stifling to feel like you need to wait for input from everyone

            1. Instead, take ownership of the decision

            2. A great tool is the I intend to ..3 framework

               1. Say what you are planning to do by when, unless there is blocking feedback from others before a certain deadline

               2. Allows decision maker to ship quickly and own the decision, while still giving others a chance to provide feedback

Now step into the arena and make it happen. Godspeed.

Template

Inspired by Matt Mochary’s RAPID framework template4

• Decision to be made

• Goal(s)

• [Optional] Other notes

  • Context

  • Impact

  • Scope

• Roles

  • Recommend:

  • Agree:

  • Perform:

  • Input:

  • Decide:

• Options

  • [Recommendation] Option 1

    • Pros:

    • Cons:

  • Option 2

    • Pros:

    • Cons:

  • Option 3

    • Pros:

    • Cons:

• Feedback

I was sitting in a meeting recently wondering why I was drawn to some and tuning out others. Why is it that some people can speak about any topic and get to the important insights and questions? How is it that a product designer can have the most insightful things to say about marketing strategy? I had assumed that clear thinking comes from deep subject matter expertise, which it does, but instinctually knew I was missing a second component. Over time, I noticed the common denominator of clear thinkers was a low ego.

Simply put, having a low ego means you seek the truth in yourself. It means you have confronted and accepted the deeply held beliefs you have about yourself. And only then - once you can seek the truth in yourself - can you seek the truth in the world around you.

Think of a ship trying to set sail with an anchor down. It obviously doesn’t work because the anchor is preventing the ship from moving. The purpose of the anchor is to keep you in place, not help you move. The purpose of your ego is to protect your ego, not help you see the truth. They are conflicting goals. Low ego allows you to focus on the external world. High ego makes you protect your internal world.

Consider the last time you got harsh feedback. Let’s say it’s from Tommy, a director on your team who you don’t like and find his feedback overly critical. Here he comes again with feedback that your designs are confusing and require another iteration.

Were you able to think clearly? Were you able to parse out the emotions and take the parts of feedback that were useful? Did you even hear his feedback? Or have you written everything he says off because he is a jerk who activates you?

It is not to say, you shouldn’t feel emotions or get activated. That is normal and a part of being human. What is important is whether you have the tools to notice the feeling, let it pass and address it. If you can do that, you will be that much closer to clear thinking.

So next time you are feeling a lack of clarity, pause and ask yourself - is my ego getting in the way of the truth?

P.S.

I sometimes still find it uncomfortable to talk about ego and feelings and the touchy-feely stuff. It is a helpful reminder that the best in the world are talking about these things, just avoiding saying so.

Examples:

1. There is still some stigma around therapists for leaders, so the therapists got rebranded as executive coaches

2. How to be in tune with your feelings is not a sexy name for a leadership program, so it is named Leaders in Tech instead

The most capable people in the world are investing in emotional intelligence, and you should be too.