Your brain is obsessed with the future.

It’s not your fault—it's built that way.
It loves to guess.
It loves to build worlds that don't exist yet.
It loves to conclude, and then over-conclude.

This is Prospective Bias at work—the itch to leave the moment you're in and live somewhere else.

You imagine the next disaster.
Replay the last mistake.
Rehearse a conversation that hasn’t happened yet.

And in the process, you lose the only thing that's real: 
Now.

It feels useful, all this mental forecasti...

A question I’ve been asking clients lately:
Who are your heroes? And why?

Is it their income?
Their impact?
The way others see them?

Or is it something deeper—
The quality of their relationships?
Their courage?
Their character when no one’s watching?

We’re shaped by more than we think.
Availability bias says we gravitate toward what we see most.
Mere exposure effect says we prefer what’s familiar.
Memetic theory says we want what others want—because they want it.

Which means:
A lot of our dr...

Who decides?

Your coach?
Your boss?
The GM?
The board?
The transfer portal?

Feels like they do.

They hold the pen.
Call the shots.
Dictate the path.

But they don’t.

The trajectory of your life has less to do with your circumstances—and everything to do with your character.

You’ve met someone like this.

Someone who, no matter the situation—bad boss, market crash, unfair treatment—you just knew they were going to make it.

What do they have?

Unshakable belief?
Remarkable skill?
More talent?

Maybe...

There’s a fallacy we fall for when a door closes. 
That this was it.

The best shot.
The one path.
The only version of success that mattered.

But here’s the deeper fallacy: Believing there isn’t something better ahead.

Not just a better opportunity.
A better YOU.

The truth is, the future didn’t shrink when that door closed.
It got more specific.

It eliminated a path that wasn’t meant for the person you’re still becoming.
That’s not a dead end. It’s a clearing.

The best doors don’t swing open.
They’re built....

Convention is comfortable.

It tells you to wait your turn.
Follow the proven path.
Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Blend in, improve slightly, and repeat. It rewards predictability. It protects the system. It keeps things running—until the system stops working.

Unconvention, on the other hand, is rarely comfortable.

It’s messy.
Uncertain.
Often invisible at first.

It doesn’t wait for permission. It doesn’t ask, “What’s allowed?” It asks, “Why is this the only way?”

“What problem are we actually s...

ONE STORY

Jean-Dominique Bauby had it all.

Editor-in-chief of Elle magazine in Paris. Cultural maven. Fashionable. Connected. At 44, he’d mastered the game most of us are still trying to figure out how to play. His first book deal was just the beginning.

Then suddenly, the rules changed: A stroke.

Bauby awoke in a hospital bed—fully conscious but completely paralyzed. Locked-in syndrome trapped his sharp mind and vivid memories inside an unresponsive body. He couldn't speak, move, or even no...

The best athletes I’ve worked with all have one thing in common:

They believed before anyone else did.

That belief converted directly into action.
Not performance—preparation.

Extra work no one assigned.
Pilates. Recovery routines.
Massages. Mental reps.
Road habits. Food discipline.
Books. Self-talk. Silence.

What’s remarkable isn’t the work itself—it’s this:

No one asked them to do it.

They didn’t wait for coaching approval.
They didn’t seek team validation.

They carried an unshakable b...

Your real work begins the moment you stop asking for permission.

Let me be clear: Doing your work is not the same as going to work.

Your work is personal.
It matters more—and costs more.
It’s the thing only you can give the world.

Let me be clear again: permission is the obstacle.

It’s the invisible barrier most people never question.
We wait for someone to notice us. To pick us.
To validate our idea, our calling, our gut instinct.

But that moment rarely comes.

The truth is—and no one tell...

The fastest way to feel smart is to decide who’s not.
Label. Dismiss. Move on.

He’s lazy.
She’s entitled.
They’re arrogant.
Karen.
Woke.
MAGA.
Liberal.
Uneducated.
Out of touch.

Sorted. Boxed. Gone.

Why do we do this?

Kierkegaard said, “You label me so you can negate me.”

Also…It saves us time. Nuance takes effort. Curiosity requires humility.

The fallacy in it all?

What we label, we stop learning from.
What we dismiss, we can’t understand.
What we reduce, we never fully see.

If your job is to grow—y...

 Limits feel real—right up until someone proves they aren’t.

Take the four-minute mile.

For decades, it was considered impossible.
Physiologically unsafe.
A boundary too bold for the human body.

Experts said the human heart and lungs couldn’t sustain the effort needed for that speed.
They said the strain on muscles and joints could lead to breakdown or injury.
That it was at the very edge of human capability—if not beyond it.

But Roger Bannister didn’t buy it.

Bannister wasn’t paid.
He trained d...

The world tells us what to do. But it doesn’t tell us why.

Day after day, we get stuck in the grind—meetings, deadlines, reports, training. It’s easy to forget what really matters.

And as the world gets louder, our voice gets lost.

Sadly, no one’s checking to see if we've defined our purpose, our values, our path.

Yet, these are the very compass we need to navigate the noise.
Without them, we're not just drifting—we're wasting time.

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Here're a few prompts to help you reconnect with yours...

One Story

A Company Built by Following Your Values

Yvon Chouinard never set out to build a company. He just needed better gear.

In the 1950s, Chouinard taught himself blacksmithing and started forging his own climbing pitons—metal spikes climbers hammer into rock faces for support. The ones on the market weren’t strong enough for the kind of climbing he wanted to do.

So he made his own. By hand. Tested them himself. And when his climbing partners saw what he was using, they wanted some too.

Think about writer’s block. Someone says, “I don’t have any good ideas.” The best response? “Okay, but do you hav...