My most recent tattoo is of Icarus. The Italian artist who gave it to me paused after we talked through the concept and said one word: “beautiful.” Not the design. The story. And I understood exactly what he meant. There is something beautiful about a boy who flew.

Most people hear the name Icarus and think: cautionary tale. Don’t fly too high. Don’t get too close to the sun. Stay in your lane. When I look at Icarus, I see someone who actually flew. Someone who had the courage to leave the ground at all. The fall is part of the story, yes. But so is the flight.

I didn’t plan my sleeve. I built it as life gave me reasons to. But when I look at all three pieces together now, I realize they were never random. They were a conversation I was having with myself, one chapter at a time.

The first piece I got was Amor Fati. A Latin phrase that translates to “love of fate,” rooted in Stoic philosophy and later carried forward by Nietzsche. The idea is simple in principle and genuinely hard in practice: don’t just accept what happens to you. Love it. Find a way to see everything, even the painful things, as part of something necessary. It doesn’t mean pretending nothing hurts. It means refusing to let what you can’t control become the thing that controls you.

I got that tattoo about a year after one of the more significant transitions of my life. I had been running my own business and at a certain point I walked away from it to take a job. That was a complicated season. There was grief in it. There was also relief. And there was a version of me that needed a reminder that the story wasn’t over just because that chapter was.

The second piece was Memento Mori. Remember death. I know how that sounds, but it was never meant to be dark. It was meant to be honest. The Stoics carried this phrase as a daily practice because they understood something most of us spend our whole lives avoiding: time is the only resource you can’t get back. When you remember that the clock is running, trivial things stop mattering so much. The comparison. The pettiness. The time you waste waiting to feel ready. Memento Mori sits on my arm as a reminder to stay intentional. Not to create anxiety, but to create urgency. The kind of urgency that makes you stop tolerating things that don’t deserve your time.

So when I sat down to get Icarus, I already had two pieces that were really about the same thing: accepting reality and not wasting the life you have inside of it. What I didn’t have was the piece about what to actually do with that.

Here’s where I want to push back on how most people read the myth.

Icarus didn’t fail because he was ambitious. He failed because he stopped listening. His father Daedalus, the craftsman who built the wings, gave him clear instructions: don’t fly too low, the sea will weigh the feathers down. Don’t fly too high, the sun will melt the wax. Stay in the middle. Trust the craft. Icarus didn’t crash because he wanted to fly. He crashed because he forgot what made the flight possible in the first place.

I lived a version of this, and I think most people who have built something from nothing have too.

When my business was at its peak, money was coming in at a level I hadn’t experienced before. Things were clicking. I had clients, income, momentum. And for a period of time, I let that success quietly start to change something in me. I was carrying a pride I wasn’t fully aware of. A quiet sense that I had figured something out that others hadn’t. That I was above the ground in a way that made the ground feel like it was for other people.

I didn’t catch it right away. That’s the thing about ego. It doesn’t announce itself. It just slowly starts making decisions for you. Looking back, I can see exactly where the wax started to soften. It didn’t feel like arrogance at the time. It felt like confidence. It felt like I had earned the altitude.

And in some ways, I had. The flight was real. The work was real. The results were real. But the moment you start believing the wings will hold no matter what you do, no matter how you behave, no matter how far you push it, you’ve already started to fall. Not because ambition is dangerous. Because ego makes you forget the mechanics that got you off the ground.

That’s what Icarus means to me. Not a warning against reaching. A reminder to respect the craft that makes reaching possible. The discipline, the self-awareness, the willingness to stay honest about where you actually are. Those are the wings. Ego is the heat.

When I look at my arm now, the three pieces tell one story.

Amor Fati says: love what is, including the hard parts, including the parts you didn’t choose.

Memento Mori says: you don’t have unlimited time, so stop spending it on things that don’t matter.

And Icarus says: when you get the chance to fly, and you will get the chance, make sure it’s the craft keeping you in the air and not just the feeling of being high up.

I didn’t design a philosophy and then illustrate it. I lived through things, felt them, learned from them, and slowly found the words for what they taught me. The tattoos came after. They were my way of putting ink to lessons I didn’t want to forget.

The Italian artist called it beautiful. I think I understand that more now than I did sitting in the chair. The story of Icarus is beautiful not because he fell. It’s beautiful because he flew at all. Because somewhere, a boy who had never left the ground looked up at the sky and decided the attempt was worth the risk.

That’s what I want to carry with me. Not a fear of flying too high. Just enough wisdom to know what’s holding me up, and enough humility to protect it.

The flight is always worth it. The only question is whether you’re maintaining the wings.

If this one landed for you, restack it and help it find someone who needs it.

And I’ll leave you with this: where in your life right now are you flying, and where is the wax starting to soften?

PS — If you're a founder or coach who wants a Substack presence that actually reflects how you think, I help with that. Reply if you're curious.

I. The Thought That Broke My Self-Perception

This is not a normal talk today. This is something real I have struggled with over the last two years of my life. I want to be clear on the title of this post. I am not talking about a clinical issue here. I am talking about a mental and spiritual one.

There is a song I heard by Stephen Stanley that helped me begin overcoming this. It is called No Hopeless Soul. The very first line grabbed me immediately:

“Do you feel paralyzed by the things you try to hide that take place inside your mind and won’t let you go?”

That line explained something I had been carrying but could not properly articulate. Some of the heaviest wars a person will ever fight are completely invisible to everyone around them. People can see you laughing, working, joking, and functioning while internally your thoughts are dragging you through concrete.

For me, it started with a thought I had. I am not going to tell you exactly what the thought was, but I will say this: it was disgusting, sinful, and completely opposite of the type of man I believed myself to be. I remember feeling disturbed that my mind was even capable of producing something like it. What made it even worse was that the thought came true within a couple of weeks of thinking it.

That moment stained me deeply. I felt sick to the depths of my soul. It made me question my own character and everything I had built up to that point. I felt fraudulent, almost like my mind had exposed something rotten underneath everything good people believed about me. The terrifying part about dark thoughts is not always the thought itself. Sometimes it is realizing you are capable of having it at all.

The thought had jealousy attached to it, which bothered me deeply because I never considered myself a jealous person. I do not think most people who know me would describe me that way either. But the experience forced me to confront something uncomfortable: human beings are capable of more darkness than they often believe.

I have said for years that anyone is capable of almost any level of evil given enough time, compromise, bitterness, and decay. Evil rarely appears overnight. It grows slowly, often beginning with tolerated thoughts left unchecked.

That realization humbled me in a way I was not prepared for.

II. Mental Paralysis and the Weight of Guilt

Marcus Aurelius once wrote:

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

I understood that quote differently after this experience. I could not control what had happened, and I could not erase the thought from my memory. But I could decide whether I would chain myself to it forever.

For a long time afterward, I felt mentally paralyzed. I continued with everyday life, but internally I had lost a sense of self-worth. I kept asking myself the same question repeatedly:

“How do I overcome this?”

What made the situation difficult was knowing that although I did not cause what happened, there was a moment where I had wished for it. Seeing a dark thought come to life after it once passed through your mind can make you feel horrifyingly responsible, especially if you already carry a strong conscience.

But over time I had to learn something important:

A thought is not sovereign power. Your mind does not control reality. Temptation is not the same thing as devotion.

In fact, the very reason I was disturbed by the thought should have told me something important from the beginning. My conscience hated it immediately. I was resisting it, not celebrating it. The guilt I carried was evidence that something within me still recognized the difference between darkness and truth.

But mental paralysis has a way of twisting even that. It convinced me that because evil once passed through my mind, I no longer had the right to speak truth or call out evil in the world around me. I felt disqualified by my own thoughts.

And that is exactly what shame does when it is left alone too long. It does not simply make you feel guilty. It convinces you to become silent.

III. Taking Thoughts Captive

The problem with that mindset is that truth was never dependent upon my perfection to begin with.

We are commanded to speak truth and call out evil, not because we are flawless, but because truth itself comes from God. That responsibility and authority is given by Him, not earned through sinless performance. If mercy only belonged to spotless people, mercy would not exist at all.

This was the second time in my life I felt such a deep need for mercy.

One of the most dangerous lies people believe is that every thought entering their mind defines who they are. But thoughts are often invitations, temptations, fears, impulses, wounds, and reflections of the brokenness we carry as human beings. A passing thought is one thing. Feeding it, nurturing it, protecting it, and allowing it to rule your life is another.

That is why Scripture speaks about taking thoughts captive.

Keeping a thought captive means refusing to let every thought freely roam your mind unchecked. It means slowing down long enough to examine it before allowing it to shape your identity, actions, or worldview.

Not every thought deserves trust. Not every emotion deserves agreement. Some thoughts deserve resistance. Some deserve interrogation. Some deserve starvation.

The mind is a dangerous place when every thought is treated as truth. Some thoughts arrive to test you, not define you.

IV. Mercy Stronger Than Paralysis

Marcus Aurelius also wrote:

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

That quote used to terrify me. Now it motivates me. Because if thoughts can stain a man over time, disciplined thoughts can rebuild one too.

The reality is that there are people reading this right now who are mentally chained to one thought, one failure, one desire, one moment, or one secret they cannot escape. Physically they are alive, but mentally they are frozen in place by shame.

I understand that feeling more than I wish I did.

But hear me clearly: you are not every thought that enters your mind. You are what you repeatedly choose to entertain, nurture, and become.

Mercy is not pretending darkness never existed. Mercy is God refusing to let darkness have the final word.

The war in your mind is real.

But so is mercy.

And mercy is stronger than paralysis.

There’s a version of your life you had mapped out.

Maybe it was a business. Maybe it was a relationship. Maybe it was just a general sense of how things were supposed to go. And at some point, life looked at that map and went a different direction entirely.

Most people spend years resenting that. Quietly carrying around a version of themselves that didn’t get to exist. Comparing what is to what should have been.

This post is about a different way to move through that.

It’s called amor fati. It’s Latin. It translates to “love of fate.” And before you dismiss it as something a philosophy professor puts on a coffee mug, let me tell you what it actually means in practice. Because it has nothing to do with being okay with everything that happens to you.

It has everything to do with what you decide to do next.

The Phrase Nobody Gets Right

When most people hear “love your fate,” they picture someone sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, completely at peace with the universe. Passive. Zen. Unbothered.

That’s not it.

The Stoics weren’t passive people. Marcus Aurelius ran an empire. Epictetus was a former slave who built a school of thought that outlasted his captors. These weren’t people who sat still and accepted whatever came.

They were people who understood something most of us are still learning: that the energy you spend fighting what already happened is energy you can’t spend on what comes next.

Amor fati isn’t about liking the bad thing. It’s about refusing to let the bad thing own you.

It’s the difference between being stuck and being in motion.

What Failure Actually Teaches You

I’ve started a lot of businesses.

An Etsy shop that quietly faded. A clothing brand called HERO that got some traction, real sales, real excitement, and then slowly ran out of momentum. A shoe brand that got close and didn’t quite make it.

Each one felt like the one. Each one didn’t work out the way I thought it would.

At the time, it was easy to frame those as failures. And they were, in the traditional sense. But here’s what I didn’t fully understand while I was inside them: every single one of those attempts was teaching me something I couldn’t have learned any other way.

The Etsy shop taught me design. HERO taught me what it felt like to build something from scratch, the product development, the branding, the customer. The shoe brand taught me about manufacturing, about timing, about the gap between almost and actually.

None of it felt like a lesson while I was living it. It felt like falling short.

But those failed attempts, all of them stacked together, are a direct line to me eventually running an agency that brought in over $200,000 in business. You don’t get there without everything that came before it. Not because failure is magic. But because repetition builds competence, and competence builds confidence, and confidence eventually builds results.

The thing is, most of us already know this. We just don’t believe it when we’re in the middle of it.

Every time I started something new after something didn’t work, I was practicing amor fati without realizing it. Not loving the failure. Moving through it anyway. Using it.

The Difference Between Acceptance and Surrender

I want to be careful here, because this is where people misread the concept.

There are things that happen in life that you will never be fully okay with. Loss that doesn’t resolve into a lesson. Grief that doesn’t tie itself up neatly at the end. Pain that just sits there, heavy, with no clear purpose attached to it.

I lost my younger brother Daniel.

That’s not something I can frame as a stepping stone. I won’t try to. Some things just cost more than the philosophy can account for, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t actually lost anything yet.

But I will say this. In the middle of that, in the logistics and the coordination and the weight of holding things together for people who needed someone to hold things together, I found something I didn’t know I had.

Jordan Peterson has a line that’s stayed with me. He said:

It is necessary to be strong in the face of death, because death is intrinsic to life. It is for this reason that I tell my students: aim to be the person at your father’s funeral that everyone, in their grief and misery, can rely on. There’s a worthy and noble ambition: strength in the face of adversity.

It wasn’t my father. But I understood what he meant.

My parents leaned on me through all of it. To coordinate. To make sure things happened the way they needed to happen. And in being the person they needed, something in me solidified. Not because the loss was worth it. Nothing is worth that. But because I learned what I was made of when it was required of me.

That’s amor fati in its most honest form. Not gratitude for the hard thing. But the decision to become someone on the other side of it.

Fighting Your Circumstances vs. Fighting for Your Life

There’s a version of fighting your circumstances that drains you. That keeps you locked in resentment, in comparison, in the feeling that the deck was stacked against you and someone owes you something for it. That kind of fighting is exhausting because it has no real target. You’re swinging at the situation instead of building toward something.

And then there’s the other kind of fighting. The kind that costs you something but actually moves you forward.

You accept what is, and then you act anyway. Not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because the effort is yours. That distinction matters more than most people realize.

You can’t control what happens. You can control your inputs.

And if you can be better, if there’s a version of you on the other side of this that is sharper, more capable, more equipped, then you owe it to yourself to try. Not because you’re guaranteed to get there. But because the trying itself is the only thing that was ever fully in your hands.

The Ancient Formula for a Modern Problem

Nietzsche wrote about amor fati in 1882. He called it his “formula for greatness in a human being.” The idea that you could look at your life, every part of it, the good and the ugly and the confusing and the painful, and say yes to all of it. Not reluctantly. Completely.

He wasn’t soft about it. He’d spent most of his adult life in physical agony. Debilitating migraines. Near-blindness. A body that was consistently failing him. His conclusion was that the pain wasn’t a mistake. It was the source.

Viktor Frankl arrived at something similar from a completely different direction. He survived Nazi concentration camps and observed that the people who held on weren’t necessarily the strongest physically. They were the ones who had a reason to survive. Who could find meaning even inside the worst imaginable circumstances.

He wrote that suffering stops being suffering the moment it finds a meaning.

The principle scales. “Why is this happening to me” is a starting point, not a destination. The people who stay stuck are the ones who never leave it. The question that actually moves you is: what am I going to do about it?

One inch forward. That’s all it takes to start.

How to Actually Do This

I’m not going to give you a five-step framework.

But I will tell you the one sentence that functions as the whole practice for me, every time something goes sideways:

It is what it is. Now what are you going to do about it?

Just acknowledge the reality of what is, and then redirect your energy toward what you actually control.

The first half of the sentence is acceptance. The second half is agency. You need both. Acceptance without agency is resignation. Agency without acceptance is the kind of frantic, resentful effort that burns you out before you get anywhere.

Together, they move you.

When a business attempt fails, you don’t sit in it. You extract what it taught you and apply it to what comes next. You treat it as tuition, not punishment.

When a loss happens, real loss, the kind that doesn’t resolve, you let yourself feel the weight of it. In the hours after I heard about Daniel, I walked. Alone, for a while. No destination. Just moving through it, letting my mind do what it needed to do. Like a tornado had torn through a room and I was slowly, quietly putting things back in order.

But I didn’t do that alone. Not fully. My best friend flew in from New York just to be there. Not to fix anything. Just to be present. My wife was at my side through all of it. A friend of my brother’s sat with me and told me stories about who Daniel was to the people around him, how he loved people, how he showed up for them. That mattered more than I can explain.

Sometimes the “Now what?” isn’t a solo act. Sometimes it’s knowing who to call. Sometimes it’s letting someone sit with you in it. Amor fati doesn’t demand that you carry everything alone. It just asks that you keep moving, and sometimes the people around you are exactly what makes that possible.

Then, when you’re ready, you decide what kind of person you’re going to be because of it. Not despite it. Because of it.

When your circumstances aren’t what you planned, ask yourself honestly: am I fighting this because it’s wrong for me, or am I fighting this because I’m afraid? One of those fights is worth having. The other is just noise.

The One Thing Worth Remembering

Amor fati doesn’t promise you a good outcome.

It doesn’t guarantee that the business will work, or that the grief will lift, or that the circumstances will change. It isn’t magic and it isn’t naive.

What it offers is a way to move through anything without being destroyed by it. A way to stay in motion when the ground shifts. A way to be useful, to yourself and to the people around you, when things don’t go the way they were supposed to.

You are going to face things you didn’t plan for. You already have.

The question was never whether it would happen. It will. It always does.

The question is what you build while it does.

My photos app has been stopping me lately.

Not with anything urgent. Just memories. The kind that surface as a notification on my phone. A photo from three years ago, a face I haven’t seen in a while, a home I used to live in, an event I’d almost forgotten. The app just finds them and puts them in front of me whether I’m ready or not.

Most of them I swipe away without thinking.

But some of them I sit with.

The ones I stop for are usually the same kind. People or pets that are no longer in my life. Old homes. Moments from seasons that are long gone. Those ones don’t get swiped. They get a moment. Sometimes just a breath. Sometimes more.

And lately those pauses have been making me ask a question I haven’t asked in a while:

How do I actually see the past?

I took my dog out one morning recently. It was early and quiet the way Kansas mornings get, breezy and a little overcast, the sky the color of something that might become rain. I was standing in the grass, feeling the wind on my face and looking up at the sky, and the question surfaced in my mind.

How do I actually see the past?

Seven years have passed since I left home.

Seven years of moving more times than I can count. Swapping careers, building a large social following from scratch, going through a significant weight loss, building a house. Losing some of the closest people in my life. Building a marriage through all of it, my wife and I growing up together in real time, figuring it out as we went.

People tell us we seem older than we are. That the way we talk, the way we carry our stories, feels like more than our age should hold. I understand why they say that. It feels like we’ve lived a full life inside of seven years.

And the strange thing is, I haven’t really sat with any of it.

Life moved so fast and I moved with it. There was always a next thing. A next goal, a next project, a next meeting, a next version of something I was building. You often don’t pause when you’re in motion like that. You just keep going.

But standing in the grass that morning, the breeze moving around me, I realized something had shifted. Things have slowed down a little. And in that quiet, the past was finally asking for some attention.

When I was younger, I lived in the past. I couldn't stop replaying conversations, revisiting moments, turning them over looking for where things went wrong. What I should have said differently?

I spent a lot of time in that space.

I won’t say it was entirely wasted. Somewhere in all that analysis I developed an ability to read people, to notice posture, to catch what someone wasn’t saying, to understand a room. It wasn’t the most efficient way to learn that skill. But it’s where I learned it.

Still, there’s a cost to living in the past that way. You’re constantly trying to will a different outcome from something that’s already finished. And no matter how long you sit with it, you cannot change it.

I know that now in a way I didn’t then.

However, the past looks different to me these days.

The period of life that forced me to continuously be moving and building forced me out of my head and pushed me to take action rather than overthink.

After seven years of momentum, it’s become more like a logbook - something I pull from, reference, learn from, and then set back down.

When a photo surfaces and it’s someone I’ve lost, I don’t swipe it away. I let myself feel it. The past is a place to feel. A place to remember the people who shaped you, who loved you, who left before you were ready. You’re allowed to go there for that. You’re supposed to.

But when I’m dealing with something in the present, a mindset problem, a pattern I keep repeating, a reaction I don’t fully understand, I use the past differently. I go back not to find someone to blame, but to find the source. To understand it. Because understanding something gives you options. Blame just gives you somewhere to point.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung

That distinction matters more than most people realize.

Here’s the thing about blaming the past, especially blaming the people in it:

We don’t zoom out far enough.

It’s easy to look back at how you were raised and find the things that were wrong. The gaps. The moments that left a mark. And some of those things are real and worth examining.

As a child you start out completely incapable of taking care of yourself. Entirely dependent on someone else to feed you, hold you, keep you alive. And the people who do that for you, they’re just figuring it out too. Making the best decisions they can with what they have, in the circumstances they’re in, shaped by their own pasts they never fully sat with either.

And then one day, if you’re paying attention, you realize the circle closes. The people who once took care of you start to need you to take care of them.

It all comes back around.

That perspective doesn’t erase the hard things. It doesn’t mean everything was fine or excusable. But it makes it harder to stay in resentment when you understand that everyone in the story was just a person trying to navigate their own.

I don’t want to live in the past. I can’t change it and I’ve made peace with that in a way that took longer than I’d like to admit.

But I don’t want to run from it either.

The past is where my progress lives. It’s the only place I can go to see how far I’ve actually come. Not in a self-congratulatory way, but in an honest one. A look at what you’ve survived kind of way. A look at what you’ve built kind of way.

The photos app will keep surfacing memories. Some of them I’ll swipe away.

But some of them I’ll sit with.

And I’m learning that the ones worth sitting with aren’t always the ones that sting the most. Sometimes they’re just the ones that remind you how much of a life you’ve actually lived. How many people you’ve loved. How many versions of yourself you’ve already been.

The past is a reference point, not a residence.

Use it. Learn from it. Feel what it has to offer.

And then come back to today.

Because today is the only place anything can actually be built.

Somewhere along the way, gratitude became a ceiling.

A reason to stop reaching. A guilt that shows up every time you want something more than what you already have.

As if thankfulness and ambition can’t exist in the same person.

They can.

What Gratitude Actually Looks Like

I’m not consciously grateful every single day. I get frustrated. I get impatient. I’m human.

But there are moments where I catch myself looking around at my home, my wife, the life we’ve built, and something in me just goes still, and I just say thank you. Not out loud always. Just a quiet, internal thank you, God, for this.

I’m grateful for my career. For the wins and the losses equally, because both shaped me. For the family that shows up. For the experiences that cost me something, because those tend to give the most back.

That gratitude is real.

The Guilt of Wanting More

There’s a version of this conversation that makes ambition the enemy of gratitude. That says wanting more means you don’t appreciate what you have. That striving is somehow a sign of ingratitude and that if you were truly thankful, you’d be content to stay where you are.

I’ve felt that guilt and still do at times.

The voice that says: who are you to want more when you already have so much?

But here’s what I’ve come to believe:

Gratitude is about how you see what you have. Ambition is about what you’re willing to build next. They operate in completely different directions. One looks at the present and one looks at the future. There’s no rule that says you can only have one at a time.

The most grounded, purposeful people I know carry both. They’re deeply thankful for where they are. And they’re quietly, persistently hungry for where they’re going.

That’s not a contradiction. That’s wholeness.

Permission

Maybe what you actually need right now isn’t more motivation or a better strategy.

Maybe it’s just permission.

Permission to say: I am grateful for everything I have. And in the same breath: I want more, and that’s okay.

You don’t have to earn the right to want a bigger life by first proving you’re satisfied with the one you have. You don’t have to pretend you’ve arrived somewhere you haven’t. And you don’t have to feel guilty for having a vision that extends beyond your current circumstances.

Gratitude keeps you grounded. Ambition keeps you moving. You need both to build anything that lasts.

“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” - Melody Beattie

That’s the version of gratitude worth practicing. Not the kind that caps you. The kind that centers you - so that everything you reach for, you reach for from a place of enough rather than a place of lack.

You can be thankful and still want more.

What’s one thing you’re genuinely grateful for right now - and one thing you’re still reaching for? Comment and let me know. I read every one.

What I touch, I change.

This last year, I caught myself thinking something dangerous. Not loud, not dramatic, just a quiet belief that settled in. That what I say, what I do, even what I think… doesn’t really matter that much. Like I’m replaceable. Like if I disappeared from the room, the job, the conversation, nothing would really shift. And if I’m being honest, that thought carries more weight than most people admit.

Then I came across a phrase. Quod tango muto. What I touch, I change. I don’t even remember who said it, just some guy on social media. But it stuck, because it directly challenged what I had started to believe.

There is a quiet weight to this phrase. Not loud, not dramatic, just true. Quod tango muto. What I touch, I change. The fact of the matter is, most people live like this isn’t real, like their words disappear, like their actions dissolve, like their presence leaves no imprint. But everything you touch carries your fingerprint. Every room. Every conversation. Every person.

You don’t get to opt out of influence, you only get to choose what kind.

Then the next thought came. Is it really that important? And that question didn’t come from curiosity, it came from doubt. So I started mapping it out. If what I touch changes, then how far does that change go? A conversation affects a person, that person carries it into their next decision, and that decision affects someone else. And just like that, something small moves further than you can track.

Most of what we do, we never see the full result of. That doesn’t mean it didn’t matter. It just means we weren’t around long enough to see the ripple.

The truth is, you were never neutral.

The Myth of Neutral Living

We like to believe we can move through life without consequence—keep our heads down, stay out of the way, do no harm. But there is no such thing as neutral. Silence shapes outcomes, inaction reinforces direction, and absence leaves space for something else to fill it. Even neglect is a form of influence.

You didn’t say anything—that changed something. You didn’t show up—that changed something. You didn’t care—that changed something.

Neutral isn’t harmless. It’s still a direction.

The world is not waiting for your permission to be affected by you. It already is.

The Responsibility Most People Avoid

If everything you touch changes, then you are responsible for more than you’d like to admit—not just for what you do, but for how you do it. The tone in your voice, the patience you lack, the encouragement you withhold… or the opposite. The extra minute you give someone, the honesty you choose instead of comfort, the standard you refuse to lower.

You are always leaving something behind.

The question is what.

The Weight of Small Things

Most change doesn’t come from grand gestures. It comes from the unnoticed—a word that sticks with someone for years, a moment of belief when someone was ready to quit, a careless comment that echoes longer than you intended. You don’t get to decide how far your impact travels, only what you release into the world.

A man can build something in ten years and tear something down in ten seconds.

The reverse is also true.

The Discipline of Awareness

Living with this mindset sharpens you. It forces you to slow down, to think before you speak, to act with intention instead of impulse—not out of fear, but out of respect for the weight you carry. Because influence is not a gift; it’s a responsibility. And whether you acknowledge it or not, you’re exercising it every day.

Final Thought

You will leave marks—on people, on places, on moments that don’t look important at the time. The only real choice you have is this: will what you touch be better, or just different?

Quod tango muto.

Most people won’t choose. They’ll drift—and still leave a mark.

So choose carefully what your hands reach for.

Not as experts. Not as people with a blueprint. Just as two people who wanted to invite a conversation and see what happened.

Our very first guest was a mindset coach - now a TEDx speaker - and we asked him about purpose. Not because we had it figured out. Because we didn’t.

I say this because maybe the way this publication has grown lately, the subscriber count, the momentum, it could make us look like people who have figured something out. I want to reset that.

We haven’t.

We’re here to share what we’re learning as we go - and to make space for you to do the same. If you have thoughts, if something resonates or doesn’t, leave a comment. Send a message. That’s the whole point.

Lately, I’ve been pulled in a few directions.

One of them is a book.

I’ve always wanted to write one. And I know what you might be thinking - you’re 25. I get it. I’m not a gray-haired man sitting in a leather chair reflecting on decades of wisdom. I’m just someone who’s had a crazy last six years of life full of growth, heartache, and lessons learned.

But I’m not writing it as a guru. I’m writing it as someone reflecting. Honestly. On where I was, where I am, and how I got here.

And here’s the thing - I’m not going to wait 30 years to do something I’ve always wanted to do.

Neither should you.

If you want to write a book about your life and you’re not yet 40 or 50 yet, write it. If you want to start a publication about something you’re not an expert in, start it. Just be clear about where you’re starting from. That clarity isn’t weakness. That’s what makes people trust you.

Something else has been on my mind lately.

I’m a social media strategist by trade. My job is literally to be plugged in - to find ideas, trends, content worth sharing. Scrolling is part of the work.

But on a walk recently - just me and the dogs - a lesson I had forgotton came back to mind.

Inspiration doesn’t always come from the feed. Sometimes it comes from the quiet.

I’ve been reaching for my phone when I should be sitting still. Searching for creativity when I should be letting it surface. There’s a difference between looking for ideas and having them come to you.

Silence is underrated. Especially when your whole career lives on a screen.

I’m still working on this. But I think it starts with recognizing the problem.

Not every moment of silence needs to filled. Most of the time the best thing you can do is simply sit with the silence.

That walk reminded me of something bigger, too.

This publication isn’t here to teach you anything. It’s here to reflect. To share what we’re seeing, what we’re learning, what we’re still figuring out - and to ask if any of it lands for you.

If a realization I have resonates with you, I’m glad. That’s all I’m after.

We’re not the experts.

We’re still building on what we started 4 years ago.

- Isaac

I’ve been sitting with a thought lately, one that snuck up on me after a long day of moving boxes and setting up our new home.

My wife and I recently left the house we built in a small town and moved to a bigger city, closer to work. I won’t get into all the reasons why because that’s its own long story. But something about this new place is different. It’s peaceful here. There’s a stillness I didn’t realize I was missing. Less noise pulling at my focus, fewer outside influences creeping into my headspace.

And sitting on the couch one evening, tired from the day, it hit me:

This is it. This is life.

I have goals. I have things I want to accomplish. But somewhere along the way, I started treating those goals like a starting gun - like life would officially begin once I crossed some finish line. Once I got the right job, lived in the right place, became the right version of myself.

Here’s the thing, though. I’ve actually hit a lot of those goals.

Seven years ago, if I could’ve seen where I am today - doing work I genuinely love, after years of grinding through jobs I disliked - I would’ve said: that’s when my life starts. That’s the moment. But that moment came and went, and I kept moving the finish line. Life kept waiting on me to notice it.

It never stopped happening. I just stopped paying attention.

Your life isn’t on hold. It’s not sitting in a waiting room until you achieve something worthy of it. It’s been here the whole time, quietly compounding - in the daily effort, in the small decisions, in the ordinary Tuesday evenings you barely remember. Those stack up. That is the life.

The only scenario where achievement actually feels like a lightning bolt? Maybe winning the lottery. Going from broke to millionaire overnight. And even then, the research isn’t kind to that story. For the rest of us, the big milestone arrives and the world keeps spinning. You wake up the next morning and it’s still just a morning.

So don’t wait for your life to start.

It already has. It’s happening right now, in front of you.

Start living it today.

I wrote a note on Substack recently that sparked the idea for this post. The highlight of the note is that everyone’s perspective and knowledge can help you grow and get better - even if you are succeeding already.

There’s a stigma out there that asking questions makes you look unqualified. Like admitting you don’t know something somehow proves you’re not capable.

So people pretend they know what they’re doing.

They stay quiet in meetings.
They struggle through projects alone.
They wait until the very end before letting anyone see their work.

I used to do the same thing.

The Fear of Looking Incompetent

Early in my marketing career, I was hesitant to ask questions.

If I didn’t know something, I’d try to figure it out quietly. I didn’t want to signal that I was unsure or inexperienced. I didn’t want people to think I didn’t belong in the room.

So I’d grind away on projects, convinced they looked great.

Then I’d submit the work.

And suddenly the feedback would pour in.

“This could be clearer.”
“The structure needs work.”
“Have you considered approaching it this way?”

If you’ve ever been there, you know how it feels. You spend hours, sometimes days, building something, only to have it picked apart.

If your mindset isn’t right, that kind of feedback can feel crushing.

The Power of Early Feedback

When you’re knee-deep in a project, you lose perspective.

You’ve stared at the same document, design, or strategy for so long that you start to assume it’s solid. Everything feels logical in your head because you built it step by step.

But someone seeing it for the first time can spot issues instantly.

They see the blind spots you’re too close to notice.

Psychologists call this the “curse of knowledge.” Once you understand something deeply, it becomes difficult to imagine what it’s like not to know it. Your brain fills in gaps automatically - gaps that other people immediately notice.

That’s why asking for feedback early is so valuable.

Instead of waiting until the end of a project, you invite perspective while there’s still room to improve it.

And if you can learn to receive feedback - even harsh feedback - without taking it personally, your growth accelerates dramatically.

If you can learn to detach your ego from your output and allow feedback to be about the project, rather than a reflection of yourself, it becomes easier to hear.

Every Great Builder Had Mentors

The truth is, almost no one becomes excellent in isolation.

Behind nearly every successful person is a long line of teachers, mentors, editors, critics, and advisors.

Take Warren Buffett, for example. One of the most successful investors in history openly credits his mentor Benjamin Graham for shaping his entire philosophy on investing. Buffett has said many times that Graham’s influence changed the trajectory of his life.

Or consider Steve Jobs. Early in Apple’s history, Jobs sought guidance from Mike Markkula, an experienced executive who helped shape Apple’s early business strategy and marketing approach. Without that mentorship, Apple may never have become what it did.

Even Albert Einstein relied heavily on discussion and feedback from colleagues while developing his ideas. Many of his breakthroughs came through collaborative dialogue, not isolated genius.

In other words, the myth of the lone genius is mostly fiction.

Philosophers Understood This Long Ago

The idea that we grow through the perspective of others isn’t new.

Thousands of years ago, Socrates built an entire teaching method around questioning and dialogue. He believed truth was discovered through conversation, not solitary thinking.

As he famously said:

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

Acknowledging what we don’t know is the beginning of learning.

The Roman Stoic Seneca echoed a similar idea:

“We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden.”

Human beings grow through shared experience. We sharpen one another.

Even the psychologist Carl Jung understood that much of what we can’t see in ourselves becomes visible through others. Our blind spots often reveal themselves through relationships, conversations, and criticism.

The Feedback That Changed My Work

Looking back at my own career, many of the biggest improvements I’ve made came from feedback.

When I compare the things I created a year ago to the things I create today, the difference is obvious. Not because I suddenly became smarter or more talented - but because I asked for input.

I showed drafts earlier.

I asked questions.

I invited critique.

And sometimes the feedback was blunt.

But every time I listened and adjusted, the work got better.

That’s the real secret: feedback compresses the learning curve.

Instead of making the same mistake ten times, you make it once and move forward.

This Applies to Life Too

This process isn’t limited to work.

It applies to relationships, friendships, and personal growth just as much as it does to careers.

Think about how rarely people ask their partner a simple question:

“What could I be doing better in this relationship?”

Most people avoid that conversation because they’re afraid of the answer. We’d rather live in the comfort of our own assumptions than the clarity of someone else’s truth.

But the truth is, that kind of honesty is what strengthens relationships.

The same is true with friendships, leadership, parenting, and self-development. Growth almost always requires another perspective.

As the writer C.S. Lewis once observed:

“Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.”

Everyone Knows Something You Don’t

Here’s the quiet truth that changes how you approach life:

Everyone knows something you don’t.

Everyone has experiences you haven’t had.
Everyone sees certain problems more clearly than you do.

Even when you’re the expert in a room, someone else may bring insight that changes the outcome of what you’re building.

And if you’re willing to ask for it - really ask for it - the results compound.

Your work improves.

Your thinking sharpens.

Your progress accelerates.

The Real Risk Isn’t Asking

Most people think asking for help makes them look incompetent.

In reality, the opposite is true.

The people who grow the fastest are usually the ones who ask the most questions.

They’re curious. They’re open. They’re willing to expose gaps in their knowledge.

Because they understand something important:

The real risk isn’t asking for help.

The real risk is pretending you don’t need it.

I’ve been catching myself saying it is what it is a lot lately.

I know how that sounds. Like a cop-out. Like someone who’s given up and wrapped their surrender in a tidy little phrase. But that’s not what’s happening when I say it.

Lately, life has thrown a string of circumstances and unexpected events my way, situations I genuinely cannot fix, cannot control, and cannot will into a different outcome. And so the phrase keeps coming out.

But here’s the thing. Every single time I say it is what it is, my mind immediately follows up with a question: okay, so what can we do right now?

Not tomorrow.

Not once things calm down.

Right now, in this moment - what actions can I take that are going to move my life in a better direction? Because while I can’t always control what happens to me, I can always control what I do next. And that distinction is everything.

I’m not saying this from a place of theory. I’m saying it from experience.

Seven years ago, I left high school, did a year of college, got married, and entered the workforce full time. I started out driving trucks - hauling materials between warehouses and a production plant, running machines in between routes. That was my starting point.

Today, I work at a soon-to-be billion-dollar company and recently received a job offer from one of the top creative marketing agencies in the world.

No degree. No fancy qualifications on paper. What I do have is a stack of proof - built day by day - that I showed up and did the best I could in the present moment. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.

I’m a Christian, and I’m genuinely grateful for what God has placed in my life. But it wouldn’t be honest to suggest I’d be where I am if I’d just sat back and waited for it to be handed to me. Faith and effort aren’t opposites. For me, they’ve always moved together.

Here’s what I want you to take from all of this, especially if you’re sitting in the middle of something hard right now.

Time will pass no matter what you do. That’s not a threat - it’s actually the most freeing thing I know. You can spend that time consumed by the circumstances you can’t change, or you can keep moving, one day at a time, doing the best you can with what’s in front of you. Eventually, those problems will either resolve themselves or you’ll grow strong enough that they no longer have the same weight.

What I’ve realized is that the seasons of life where I’ve had the least control have given me the most clarity. I’ve thought deeper, connected more genuinely with people, and found myself sharing stories I wouldn’t have had otherwise. There’s something about pressure that sharpens you, if you let it.

Someone commented on a Substack note I shared recently, asking how to find peace when dealing with things outside of one’s control. My answer was simple: focus on the present. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. Let the rest go - not because it doesn’t matter, but because holding onto it isn’t helping you solve it. Those things will still be there when you’re ready to address them. But in the meantime, you don’t have to carry them every hour of every day.

What you’ll find, when you start living that way, is that you actually do control your peace. Not your circumstances - but your peace. And that turns out to be the thing that matters most.

It is what it is. And then - what are you going to do about it?

One Year in Sales: Encouragement Over Manipulation

Encouragement: To give support, confidence, or hope in a way that strengthens someone’s ability to make a sound decision.

Manipulation: To control or influence someone unfairly or dishonestly for personal gain.

Before I go any further, I want to say this clearly — I’m not claiming to be an expert. I’m not a sales guru. I don’t have a course. I’m not ten years deep with trophies on a shelf. These are simply things I’ve noticed after one year in the field. One year of knocking doors, sitting at kitchen tables, getting rejected, earning trust, losing deals, winning some, and learning where my own heart can drift if I’m not careful.

Sales is emotionally driven. That much is obvious once you’ve done it long enough. But emotional does not mean dishonest. It means human. And how you handle those emotions — yours and theirs — determines whether you’re encouraging the right decision or manipulating the moment.

People Are Situational

People are situational. Their mood matters. Their finances that month matter. The argument they had five minutes before you knocked matters. I’ve watched families say they couldn’t afford something and later realize they could once the real concern was clarified. I’ve had people decide within thirty seconds whether they trusted me based purely on presence. I’ve had time wasted. I’ve had expectations that were unrealistic. That’s part of it.

What I’ve noticed is this: people don’t buy products first — they respond emotionally first.

Manipulation sees emotion and presses on it. If someone seems stressed, it increases urgency. “Prices are going up.” “You don’t want this to get worse.” It leans into fear because fear can close quickly. And yes, sometimes it works. But when you corner someone emotionally, you often create regret later.

Encouragement slows down instead of speeding up. It asks questions. It repeats concerns back clearly: “So what you’re really worried about is this becoming a bigger issue later, right?” When someone feels understood, their guard lowers naturally. Encouragement calms instead of inflames.

Open Like a Human

When I first started, I had the one-liners ready. Icebreakers. Clever hooks. About eighty percent of them didn’t work. Why? Because the last ten guys used the same line. People can sense when they’re being worked.

Manipulation performs. It talks at people instead of with them. It treats the conversation like a funnel. It’s thinking about the next line instead of listening to the current sentence.

Encouragement opens simply. It matches tone and pace. If they’re quick, you’re quick. If they’re cautious, you slow down. You’re not there to impress them — you’re there to see if there’s a legitimate problem you can help solve. People decide quickly whether you’re a script or a person.

Solve the Right Problem

The product is rarely the real issue. The real issue lives in their head. Sometimes it’s trust. Sometimes it’s timing. Sometimes it’s fear of poor quality. Sometimes it’s finances.

Manipulation hears, “It’s expensive,” and immediately defends, discounts, or overwhelms with justification. It debates. But most objections aren’t logical attacks — they’re emotional hesitations. When you try to overpower them, you create resistance.

Encouragement treats objections like questions. “Compared to what?” “Is it the price or the timing?” “If the investment felt comfortable, would this solve the problem?” That’s not debating. That’s uncovering. You’re clarifying what actually needs to be solved instead of forcing your agenda.

Present as a Guide, Not a Hero

I’ve noticed something else. The temptation in sales is to flex. To exaggerate experience. To position yourself as the hero who saves the day.

Manipulation leans into that. It oversells results. It subtly communicates, “You’d be foolish not to choose me.”

Encouragement doesn’t need theatrics. It presents as a guide. “Based on what you told me, here’s what I’d recommend.” Then it lays it out clearly: here’s what I’ll do, here’s the timeline, here’s what you can expect when it’s done, and here’s the investment. Calm. Clear. No circus. Guides walk beside. Heroes perform.

Ask for the Sale Without Pressure

Asking for the sale isn’t manipulation. How you ask reveals your motive.

Manipulation corners people. It creates artificial urgency. It makes silence uncomfortable. It pushes because it needs control.

Encouragement asks plainly. “Would you like to move forward with us?” “Should I get you on the schedule?” “Does this option make sense?” If it fits, it fits. If it doesn’t, pressure won’t fix that. Calm confidence carries more weight than intensity.

Handle Objections Like Questions

Objections are usually fear wearing a mask. If you treat them like attacks, you’ll respond defensively. Now it’s a debate. And debates create winners and losers. Sales shouldn’t create losers.

Manipulation argues. It tries to win the moment.

Encouragement leans in. “Help me understand what feels off.” “Is it timing or investment?” When you uncover the real hesitation instead of fighting it, the conversation shifts. You’re guiding clarity, not dominating.

Give Two Clear Paths

People need choice to feel in control. Manipulation presents one option and pressures it. Encouragement gives two honest paths — good and better, repair or replace, now or later. Both viable. Both real.

When someone chooses, they feel ownership. When someone feels cornered, they look for an exit later. Empowered decisions stick. Forced ones unravel.

Close and Confirm

When it’s a yes, encouragement stops selling. Manipulation keeps pushing. “Are you sure?” “You’re confident, right?” That plants doubt where there wasn’t any.

Encouragement confirms next steps, sets the date, and moves forward with quiet confidence. Confidence doesn’t need repetition.

I’m still learning. I’m still refining. I’m not writing this from a pedestal. I’m writing this from experience — from noticing where my own motives can drift if I’m not careful. The truth is, manipulation might close a deal, but encouragement builds a reputation. Manipulation uses emotion. Encouragement respects it. Manipulation chases commission. Encouragement builds trust. And trust compounds longer than any single contract ever will.

Encouraging the right sale means being willing to walk away. If it’s not a fit, you say so. If the timing isn’t right, you admit it. If they don’t need it, you tell them. That’s not weakness. That’s strength. The right sale doesn’t need force. It needs clarity.

Encouragement: Giving support and confidence so someone can make a sound and empowered decision.

Manipulation: Influencing or controlling someone unfairly or dishonestly for personal benefit.

One builds something lasting. The other builds something fragile.

And after one year in sales, that difference matters more to me than any commission ever could.

It’s been a little quiet here on our publication, but not because we haven’t been writing. We have several drafts sitting open. We’ve just been refining them. Making them better before sending them out.

In truth, the last couple weeks have been busy for me with work deadlines and projects.

This month I was responsible for building a big presentation and delivering it to a team in our company.

In this post, I want to talk about it - not because the topic was groundbreaking, but because of what it forced me to confront.

Before we dive in, I want to say a quick thank you for sticking with us on this journey. And if you’re new here - welcome! It’s exciting to see this community growing.

The Presentation I Didn’t Feel Ready For

I work at a B2B company, and I was tasked with building and delivering a training on LinkedIn social selling.

I built the slide deck from scratch. Consolidated ideas from a book I was reading.

I spent hours refining it, preparing for questions, and anticipating feedback.

The presentation was set to be an hour and a half long (It took an hour).

But here’s the truth:

I like people.
I like conversation.
I like building connections.

But I am not naturally the guy who stands confidently in front of a group and presents ideas.

Not yet.

When the responsibility landed in my lap, I felt anxiety immediately:

• What if I say something wrong?

• What if I stumble?

• What if my voice shakes?

• What if they critique it?

• What if I’m not as prepared as I think?

If you lean introverted, you know this feeling.

It’s not hatred of people.

It’s an internal pressure.

A Realization Under the Stars

The night before the presentation, I went outside to let my dogs out.

I looked up at the stars.

And I had a simple realization: I just need to take this one moment at a time.

I realized how often I live in the future.

I often catch myself:

Looking forward to being done.
Looking forward to being home.
Looking forward to the next event.

More often than not, I find myself living in the future and skipping the present moment - the place where my life is actually happening.

If you’re like me, you often find yourself thinking about what may or may not happen tomorrow, or what exciting new thing you get to do later in the week.

But when I was outside looking up at the stars and contemplating the day ahead, I realized that no matter how anxious I may be about tomorrow, I have only this moment. This moment is what matters.

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Choosing Progress Over Perfection

I went into the presentation with one mindset: Be as good as you can right now.

Not perfect.
Not how my future self may give this presentation.
Not the polished version I hope to become.

Just the best version I can manage in this moment.

If I do my best in this moment, the next one improves.

If I put in the effort now, the future version of me benefits.

There is no value in running from opportunities that stretch you.

I could have said no.
I could have avoided it.
I could have stayed comfortable.

That would have hurt me far more than a shaky voice ever could.

The Evidence of Past Bravery

A few years ago I ran a small social media marketing agency.

It was just me and a couple team members.

To keep money flowing, I had to take sales calls.

I was terrified, introverted, and uncomfortable.

But I kept doing it.

Call after call and conversation after conversation.

Eventually, I became comfortable.

The same thing happened with social media videos I was creating.

The first time I put my face online, it felt unnatural.

Now?

It doesn’t bother me.

Every time I’ve leaned into discomfort instead of avoiding it, I’ve grown.

Every. Single. Time.

Just Do It

There’s something else tied to this.

On my keychain, I have a lanyard my brother bought before he passed away.

It’s a Nike keychain and it says three simple words: Just Do It.

Every time I get in my car, I see it.

And it hits differently now.

But not in some cliché motivational way.

What I have come to realize about life is:

• You won’t regret pushing yourself.

• You won’t regret stepping forward.

• You won’t regret raising your hand.

• You won’t regret trying.

You might feel uncomfortable, exposed, and anxious.

But you won’t regret growth.

Building the 10-Year Version of You

I want to speak on stages someday.

I want to build community.

I want to share ideas publicly.

But that doesn’t happen by avoiding the unfamiliar and saying no to the things that push me out of my comfort zone.

The version of myself that I desire to be, and am working toward being, says yes to the things that, ten years ago, I would have shrunken into a corner to avoid.

The reality is that this version of myself get’s built by taking one step at a time.

One moment at a time.

One presentation at a time.

If you’re facing something uncomfortable right now, whether it’s a conversation, a project, or a new opportunity, don’t run from it.

Just do it.

Take it one step at a time. Don’t focus on the future to attempt to avoid the discomfort of the now.

Just do it, because you won’t regret growth.

As someone who works in social media marketing, I want to encourage you to be careful about what you consume on social media.

Algorithms are not neutral. They can be a tool for good - or for manipulation.

They can quietly shape what you believe before you’ve fully researched it. They can influence decisions you haven’t consciously thought through. And most of the time, they do this subtly.

Over the years, I’ve watched social media platforms change.

What began as a way to share updates has slowly evolved into something else entirely. Today, most platforms function less like social spaces and more like media machines, designed to extract as much attention as possible from every user, every day.

For those unfamiliar with how this works: nearly all major social platforms are algorithm-driven.

If you engage with a type of content once, you’ll likely see more like it. Over time, your feed becomes a mirror - not of reality, but of whatever holds your attention most reliably.

For some people, this can be pretty harmless. Funny videos and mindless scrolling. It can be a brief escape.

For others, it becomes dangerous.

Engage with a political post from one side, and you’re likely to be shown more content reinforcing that same perspective. The platform isn’t interested in truth - it’s interested in retention. The result is a content bubble designed to keep you scrolling, consuming, and emotionally invested.

And that content doesn’t just inform - it can persuade.

It can nudge people toward beliefs, actions, and identities they may never have arrived at on their own - at least not consciously.

This shift didn’t happen accidentally.

I’ve seen this play out in my own life - in a way that was genuinely positive.

Before I ever started my fitness journey - before losing 60 pounds and getting in shape - my social media feeds were filled with a very specific kind of content. Young men posting workouts. Motivational clips. Vlog-style workout videos paired with voiceovers pulled from old speeches - men training alone in dim gyms, early mornings, grainy lifts - all urging discipline, effort, and relentless action.

I don’t believe my decision to change my health came only from some sudden burst of willpower. I think my algorithm played a role. It reinforced an identity I hadn’t fully stepped into yet, but was slowly being invited toward.

In that case, the algorithm worked for good. It nudged me toward healthier habits, consistency, and self-respect. The content I consumed didn’t paralyze me - it pushed me.

That experience is why I don’t believe algorithms are inherently evil. They are amplifiers. They strengthen whatever direction you’re already leaning - whether that direction leads toward growth or decay.

Early social platforms measured success by connection. Modern platforms measure success by time spent. That single shift changed everything.

Social media platforms survive by selling advertising space. The longer you stay on the platform, the more ads they can show you. The more ads they show you, the more money they make. From a business perspective, it’s efficient. From a human perspective, it’s concerning.

The incentive structure rewards whatever keeps you engaged - not whatever makes you wiser.

Something that concerns me most recently is how this intersects with modern activism.

Speaking out against injustice is necessary. Moral conviction matters. But I can’t help wondering how much of what we’re seeing today is conviction - and how much is influence.

How many people are showing up simply because a feed told them to? How many have confused participation with purpose? How many believe that volume equals truth?

It reminds me of a question my mom used to ask: “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?” I used to joke and say yes.

Lately, I’m not so sure it’s a joke anymore.

I’ve watched journalists interview people at rallies - asking basic questions about why they’re there, what they believe, what they’re advocating for. Far too often, the answers are vague. Emotional and unexamined. Loud and often unrooted.

“Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, and movements, it is the rule.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

All of this is to say: if we’re not careful about what we consume, we risk becoming misdirected.

What you watch can shape what you think.
What you engage with can shape what you believe.
What you repeat shapes who you become.

If you spend hours a day consuming the same kind of content, it will influence you - whether you want it to or not.

Attention is not passive. It is formative.

Choose carefully where you give it.

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“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

A time to build.
A time to rest.
A time to strive.
A time to simply be.

Life moves in seasons - and the longer I live, the more I realize how critical it is to honor that rhythm.

The Seasons of Life

Over the last six years, I’ve lived through a few distinct ones myself.

I graduated high school, went to college for a short time, got married, and entered the workforce.

Every chapter has come with its own pace.

Some seasons demanded relentless effort - early mornings, late nights, building foundations from the ground up.

Others required me to slow down, to breathe, to enjoy what I’d built so far.

But here’s the truth: the balance between ambition and peace is never equal.

Not if you’re truly chasing something.

The Cost of Ambition

When I was younger, I wanted what most ambitious young men want - to be a millionaire, maybe even a billionaire.

But as time passed, I started asking harder questions:

What would it actually cost?

Would I trade time with family and friends just to reach a number?

The answer was uncomfortable.

To reach ultra-wealth, you have to live an ultra-demanding life - 80-hour weeks, endless travel, constant pressure.

That level of ambition demands sacrifice. And the more honest I was with myself, the more I realized that’s not the life I want.

I want to build something meaningful - something that provides freedom, stability, and impact - without losing the people who matter most along the way.

The Value of Self-Discovery

Before you chase a dream, you have to understand why you want it.

Do you want wealth for freedom - or for validation?

Do you want to build a business - or just to be admired for it?

Self-discovery isn’t a soft skill. It’s strategy.

Because if you don’t know why you’re chasing something, you’ll wake up one day and realize you’ve built a life that doesn’t even fit you.

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
- Seneca

Ambition isn’t wrong. But ambition without clarity becomes slavery.

Choosing Your Regrets

Every path comes with sacrifice.

If you choose to chase your goals with everything you’ve got, you’ll likely sacrifice comfort and time with loved ones.

If you choose to live a slower, more balanced life, you might sacrifice a level of financial success or recognition.

Either way - you’ll regret something.

So the question becomes: which regret can you live with?

“In the end, you will not be asked why you were not Moses, but why you were not yourself.”
- Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol

That question levels everything.

You can’t live someone else’s dream without losing yourself in the process.

A Warning for the Overachiever

Look at many billionaires and industry giants - their success is undeniable, but often their relationships are fractured.

They became married to their work, and eventually, it cost them everything else.

I don’t think that’s a trade worth making.

Ambition should serve your life, not consume it.

It’s better to build a business that supports your family than a legacy that replaces them.

Finding Your Level

There’s no single “right” balance.

Some people are wired for relentless drive - and that’s okay.

Others crave rhythm, peace, and time - and that’s okay too.

What matters is intentionality.

If you choose to chase a 9-to-5 life, then make that time count. Be fully present with your family.

If you choose to chase greatness, then do it with integrity and purpose - not ego.

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.”
- The Bhagavad Gita

Whatever you do, do it fully.

Don’t limit yourself because you’re afraid of failing.

Don’t convince yourself that contentment means you’ve given up.

And don’t spend your life chasing someone else’s definition of success.

Final Thought

There is a time to work and a time to rest.

A time to build and a time to reflect.

But before you choose your next pursuit, ask yourself:

What do I actually want my life to look like?

What would success feel like - not just on paper, but in my soul?

Ambition is a gift. Rest is a gift.

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Throughout all of my relationships, there are moments where I come across that friend.

The one who has something to say about everything. Every topic. Every situation. Every conclusion already formed.

It’s not wrong to be a jack of all knowledge and it’s not wrong to be a jack of one knowledge. But what both types of people reveal is this simple reality: both can be wrong.

Truth doesn’t bend to expertise. It doesn’t submit to confidence and it certainly doesn’t care how convincing someone sounds.

The fact of the matter is, objective truth is a fundamental part of this world that cannot be changed. It exists independently of what we believe, feel, or argue.

For most of my life, I considered myself someone grounded in logic, reasoning, and data. I told myself that emotions get in the way of truth. That facts should lead and feelings should follow.

But when I looked closer, I realized something uncomfortable.

I was using emotion too.

I never wanted to accept that, because my resistance to emotion came from experiences where emotions ran wild—where feelings replaced facts and deceit followed. But rejecting emotion entirely was itself an emotional reaction. A defense mechanism shaped by past chaos.

The deeper truth is this: everyone is emotionally searching for truth. Emotion isn’t the enemy. Unchecked emotion is. When emotion runs without discipline, it distorts direction. It doesn’t just influence conclusions—it hijacks the path altogether.

Still, emotion isn’t the only method that can fail us.

Data analysis feels safe.

Objective. Reliable. But data is only as honest as the hands that collect it. Who gathered the data? What assumptions were made? What bias was present before the first number was recorded? Emotional wildness doesn’t disappear just because statistics are involved—it often shows up earlier, upstream, long before the data reaches us.

Reasoning has similar weaknesses.

We reason constantly, but we also rush. We jump to conclusions because uncertainty makes us uncomfortable. When we reason too quickly, we miss vital information. That’s how partial truths are formed—not lies, just incomplete realities presented as wholes.

Then there’s logic.

Logic is powerful, but it’s not flawless. Logic works by accepting premises and following them to a conclusion. If the premises are wrong, incomplete, or emotionally biased, logic will still work perfectly—and lead you perfectly in the wrong direction. Logic preserves consistency, not truth. It will faithfully carry bad assumptions all the way to a confident conclusion.

That’s what makes isolated logic dangerous.

You can be logical and still be wrong.

You can be consistent and still miss reality.

You can win an argument and lose the truth entirely.

History offers sobering reminders of this.

History

In the mid-1800s, a Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis noticed something deeply unsettling. Women giving birth in hospitals staffed by doctors were dying at far higher rates than those assisted by midwives. After relentless observation, he realized doctors were performing autopsies and then delivering babies without washing their hands.

Semmelweis proposed that invisible particles were being transferred—something no one could see at the time. When handwashing was introduced, death rates dropped dramatically. Yet he was mocked and dismissed. Why? Because the truth couldn’t be observed yet. There was no microscope powerful enough to prove it.

The germs didn’t care.

They existed whether anyone believed in them or not. Lives were lost regardless of medical consensus. Authority, logic, and tradition all failed because curiosity and humility were absent.

That lesson still applies.

So many things exist today that we cannot yet see. If you believe we are living at the pinnacle of understanding, history suggests otherwise. Every generation that thought it had “arrived” was later proven incomplete.

We need to refresh our minds with curiosity.

We need to humble ourselves.

And we need to remember that much of what we organize our daily lives around is still theory—useful, necessary theory, but theory nonetheless.

Truth does not care about your opinion.

It does not care about your preferred method of reasoning.

It does not care about your confidence, credentials, or certainty.

Truth simply is.

If there is a posture worth adopting, it isn’t emotionalism or cold logic alone. It’s disciplined emotion paired with examined reasoning. Logic checked by humility. Data questioned with curiosity.

Growth doesn’t come from knowing it all.

It comes from realizing how much you’re still learning.

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New year, new goals - right?

That’s what I was taught growing up in church.

New year means you sit down, write out your goals, and work on your goals.

So I did that.

As a kid. Through high school. Even into early adulthood.

I wrote goals because I was supposed to.

Not because I was ready to follow through.

They lived on paper, not in my life.

And over time, I realized something important:

Setting goals is good. But waiting for a new year to start is optional - and often dangerous.

The Moment That Changed Everything

About three years ago, I hit a breaking point.

I was borderline obese.

Uncomfortable in my body.

Ashamed of how far I’d drifted.

And I didn’t have some dramatic New Year’s epiphany.

It was early December.

I looked at myself and said, I’m done.

Not “I’ll start soon.”

Not “I’ll wait until January.”

Done.

I set one goal: get back in shape.

Specifically - I wanted a six-pack.

So I acted immediately.

I messaged a friend I trusted.

We talked.

I hired him as a coach.

We built a plan.

And then I followed it.

Action Creates Momentum - Not Dates

I cut out junk food.

Tracked calories.

Started showing up to the gym four times a week.

Not because it was a new year.

But because I was ready.

A year later, I hit the goal.

Six-pack.

Over sixty pounds gone.

A completely different relationship with discipline.

And ever since then, I cringe a little when I hear people say:

“I’ll start in the new year.”

Because most of the time, that’s just procrastination wearing a party hat.

Waiting Is a Decision

If you’re willing to wait to start, what makes you think you won’t wait again?

If “later” feels safer than “now,” that same instinct will show up when things get hard.

There is never a perfect time.

Waiting doesn’t make goals easier - it just makes quitting more familiar.

If you’ve already set goals this year and you’re slipping, don’t panic.

That’s feedback.

Cut the Fluff

Ask yourself this honestly:

Which goals actually matter - and which ones just make me feel productive?

Most people don’t fail because they lack discipline.

They fail because they overload themselves.

Ten goals sounds ambitious.

It’s usually a setup for disappointment.

In my life, the goals I’ve achieved have always been singular.

One or two at a time.

That’s it.

Focus creates follow-through.

Start Where You Are

If something keeps coming to mind - if there’s one change you know you need to make - that’s the goal.

Cut the rest.

You don’t need permission from a calendar to begin.

You can set goals when you need them.

And if you need one now, start now.

Don’t wait.

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I recently had a conversation with a friend and client of mine, Lester Sydney.

We were talking about that familiar feeling - being stuck. Feeling like an imposter. Like somehow you slipped through the cracks and ended up somewhere you don’t deserve to be.

You know the voice.

You’re not qualified.
You’re not good enough.
Any minute now, they’ll realize you don’t belong here.

And the worst part?
You start believing it.

So I asked Lester a simple question:

“How do you help someone who feels this way?”

His answer was simple.

You start by asking why.

Why do they feel stuck?
Why do they feel undeserving?
Why do they believe they’re not good enough?

And then - you get it out of their head.

Put pen to paper.

Because as long as those thoughts stay inside your mind, they echo. They grow. They rewrite your story without permission.

So you write it down.

Write out every reason you believe you don’t deserve where you are.
Every insecurity. Every doubt. Every failure you replay.

Get it out of your head and onto the page.

And then - this is the part most people skip - you do the opposite.

You write down your accomplishments.

What have you accomplished in the last year?
The last five years?
The last ten?

What roles did you earn?
What skills did you build?
What projects did you complete?
What risks did you take that paid off?

Most people forget.

Life moves fast. We’re always planning the next step, chasing the next goal, measuring ourselves against a future version we haven’t reached yet. In the process, we erase our own progress.

Most people remember their failures vividly, but treat their wins like background noise.

And here’s what almost always happens when people actually do this exercise:

The list of accomplishments dwarfs the list of doubts.

A promotion you chalked up to luck.
An internship you downplayed.
A skill you taught yourself.
A project you led.
A moment where you stepped up when it mattered.

You didn’t accidentally do those things.

You earned them.

Yet so many of us rewrite our story to make ourselves smaller - telling ourselves we were lucky, or it “wasn’t that big of a deal,” or that someone else could have done it better.

But if you step back and actually look at the evidence, the story changes.

You’ve made it further than you give yourself credit for.
You’ve done more than you remember.
You are more capable than the voice in your head allows.

And when you finally see it - written out in front of you - it becomes harder to keep believing the lie.

Because the truth is simple:

You are not where you are by accident.

And remembering that might be the first step to moving forward again.

Thanks for reading. I truly hope this was helpful. Happy New Year. I’m excited for what 2026 will bring. Keep pushing forward.

- Isaac

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When we’re young, the world feels wide open.

We’re told we can do anything - and for a while, we believe it.

But somewhere along the way, that freedom turns into pressure. So many options that we don’t know where to begin.

Some people go to college, get a degree they never use, and spend years wondering if they missed their calling.

If that’s you - you’re not alone.

Most people don’t know what they’re “supposed” to do.

We’ve been told what to do since childhood. The path was always laid out: go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a job. Then what?

When the script runs out, many of us freeze.

But here’s the truth - clarity comes from movement.

You can’t think your way into your purpose. You find it by taking the next step, however small.

Purpose isn’t a single destination. It changes with the seasons of life.

As a kid, your purpose was to learn and grow.

In adulthood, it evolves - shaped by what you care about and who you can help.

That’s the key: purpose is always tied to others.

If you’re feeling lost, look around. Who can you help right now?

In business, growth comes from solving other people’s problems. The same is true in life.

The more people you serve, the more meaning you create.

It doesn’t have to be huge. Maybe it’s mentoring someone younger, helping a friend through a rough time, or starting something small that makes life easier for others.

The point is to begin.

Because purpose rarely reveals itself in stillness - it appears through service.

The path is not something you find.
The path is something you make by walking.
- David Whyte

I’ve learned this through my own work and from people I’ve met along the way.

Every opportunity I’ve ever had came from someone I helped before.

That’s the power of your network - not as a business cliché, but as a circle of people who remember your kindness and effort.

So if you’re feeling stuck, start there.

Take one small action that helps someone else.

It may not look like “purpose” yet, but that’s how it begins.

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We aren’t guaranteed a life of highs.

Life is like climbing mountains. You reach a peak, but you can’t stay there forever. Eventually, you descend into a valley. And lately, I’ve been in one of those valleys.

I’ve been hit with bad news from multiple directions - problems I can’t immediately solve, situations outside my control. It feels like every small moment of relief is quickly followed by another weight pressing down.

I’m someone who naturally tries to see the good. I don’t dwell on the negative if I can help it. But recently, it’s felt like the negative is all there is.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

It’s easy to read that line when life is calm. It’s harder to believe it when everything feels blocked. But that’s exactly when it matters.

Not long ago, I had genuinely good news at work. A project I stepped into - one I wasn’t fully confident in at first - was evaluated by someone far more experienced than me. They confirmed I was on the right track. It was reassuring. Encouraging.

And then, almost immediately, more bad news followed.

That’s how it goes sometimes.

A heavy cloud settles in. It sits on your chest. It drains your energy. It makes everything feel harder than it should.

As uncomfortable as it is to admit, I know these periods are good for me.

They help me relate to people walking through similar seasons. They build something in me - so that when darker moments come later, I’m better equipped to face them.

Viktor Frankl understood this better than most. After surviving the camps, he wrote:

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

That line has stayed with me. Because so much of this season isn’t about fixing things quickly - it’s about who I’m becoming while things remain unresolved.

If you’re in a season like this, you probably understand.

The way I’m moving through it is simple, but not easy: one day at a time.

I remind myself that what I’m facing is temporary. That even if I can’t fix everything today, I can do the next right thing. I can show up. I can handle this day.

Dark seasons have a way of convincing you they’ll last forever. They won’t.

They also have a way of making you stronger - whether you want them to or not.

Albert Camus once wrote:

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Strength doesn’t always happen suddenly. Sometimes it’s just endurance. Sometimes it’s refusing to quit on a day when quitting would be easy.

I think of the gym. The burn hurts. The struggle is uncomfortable. But that discomfort is the signal that growth is happening. Life works the same way.

If we never struggled, we’d never become resilient. If everything came easily, we’d never develop strength.

I’ve faced loss. Financial stress. Failed relationships. Deep uncertainty. And I know I’m not alone in that. Every person alive will walk through seasons like this in one form or another.

If you’re going to live through it - and you are - you might as well grow through it.

The failed business teaches you how to build the successful one.
The strain in the gym makes you stronger.
The wrong relationships teach you what’s worth protecting.

So if you’re in one of those dark seasons right now, I just want to say this:

Take it one day at a time.
Keep going.
You are not alone.

And even if it doesn’t feel like it yet - this will make you stronger.

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Most people don’t run out of time in a dramatic moment. They run out quietly - through a thousand small delays, a thousand silent promises to deal with things “later.” One day, you look up and realize you’ve spent years living in the waiting room of your own life. You told yourself you’d begin when things calmed down, when you felt ready, when the path finally made sense.

But readiness never came. The path never announced itself. And time - patient as it is - never paused for you.

The realization lands almost physically: you’re not guaranteed “later.”

You never were.

When Time Becomes Personal

Funerals have a way of stripping illusions away.

Over the last eight years, I’ve been to more funerals than I ever expected - grandparents, loved ones, and eventually my younger brother. Each one etched something permanent into my mind. Not fear. Not panic. But clarity.

The thing that always hits hardest is the same reminder: life is brief. Not in theory. In practice. Our time here is finite, and it moves forward whether we’re paying attention or not.

Loss has a way of collapsing “someday” into now. It forces you to confront a truth most of us spend years avoiding - that the life we keep postponing is the only one we get.

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