Category: Investing In Yourself

The only shortcut to getting where you want to be (success) is learning from those who have traveled there.

That said, important tip #1: Pick wisely where you want to go. Not every mountain peak elicits the same reward for every traveler. It’s best to listen to no one at this step… except yourself. And to nurture curiosity (especially from childhood) and build a clear understanding of your aptitudes and ambitions while simultaneously unlearning everything you were told to do/want. The picking must come solely from you.

Important tip #2: Pick wisely what path to take. There are endless ways to the summit. Some significantly better than others. This is where research matters. Don’t just take the easy route. Don’t just follow the first path you see. Meticulously measure the pros and cons of each path, challenge the information sources, and fight to understand fully.

Important tip #3: Pick wisely who you’ll listen to. The person who has never climbed? The person who speculates from afar? The person who climbed a completely different mountain? Or the person who has hiked your mountain numerous times?

These kinds of mountain people aren’t the easiest to come by either. They only have so much energy to give to others: they’re climbing mountains for god’s sake! And what they have to give outside of their inner circle is sparse.

Which is why important tip #4 is: Pick wisely what you’ll offer. These people have already climbed the mountain so they probably won’t need your resources. What they’ll need is something else… something personable… something interesting or inspiring… some meaning or calling to do so… something only you can offer…

…Something to reflect on.

People get the mindset they deserve through the actions they take in life.

Not from intentions…
Not from hopes or wishes…
…But from actions.

It’s hard to be optimistic when you’re constantly engaging with pessimists…
Or gritty when you always talk yourself out of doing hard things…
Or inspiring when you only ever do the bare minimum…

And that’s one of the frustratingly beautiful things about this whole process: action is the great equalizer—you can’t cheat it.

But what you can do is use those intentions, hopes, and wishes as fuel and get your butt in gear and prove you deserve that better mindset. Think:

…Becoming suddenly unavailable for the pessimist gatherings, both in-person and online, and finding a new tribe to start engaging with—one that defaults to more optimistic, healthy, exciting ways of thinking.

…Doing something hard in a large-scale way. Like doing ten minutes of exercise or meditation every day for a year. Running a half-marathon right now and then doing nothing the rest of the year won’t cut it. Large-scale smaller actions is the way to go.

…Creating and building something quietly. Like launching a side-hustle… Taking a skill-building course… signing-up for a new hobby or craft… and not making a big deal out of it publicly. Make it a big deal inwardly and talk about everything you learned after months of progress.

Incredible minds aren’t given… they’re earned.

…And every action you take is an investment into your Mindset Retirement Account.

Earn that mindset the same way you earn your retirement.

Make a deposit today.

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P.s. Do you leave bread on the hook?

With the amount of information that gets firehosed at us each day—it’s no wonder we so often rush when taking in words.

But it’s the space in between reading pieces—especially pieces that have different authors—where all the magic happens.

…Space for the words to saturate in the mind.
…Space for the mind to exhale after having taken a fresh inhale.
…Space to turn inward and see what’s been stirred up from what’s just been introduced.

Space (and time) is how we move from surface understanding towards internalization.

The image I hold in my head is like the lifecycle of rain:

1. Evaporation: The movement of words from paper or screen to the sky of my mind.
2. Condensation: The formation of those words into thought clouds… maybe even insight droplets that grow in size proportional to the space given and time they’re held.
3. Precipitation: The heat of our attention mixed with the cool vastness of our mind’s vast unconscious understanding create water droplets that eventually fall onto the surface of our mind.
4. Understanding: Depending on our attention, intention, and internal environmental condition of the space we create and hold for the rich precipitation that runs down the crevices of our mind… will determine our level of understanding, application, and internalization.

When we rush one piece to the next, the clouds in the sky of our mind move as quickly out as they came in.

Slowing down allows those clouds to linger. To plumpen up. To create a rain droplet size worthy of a rainforest.

Precisely what the environment of our mind deserves.

…Precisely what precipitation-less, fast moving clouds do nothing for.

Here’s a key insight I discovered after nearly two decades of personal development reading: it comes packaged best in the classic literature section of the bookstore.

The major difference is this: self-help books give the essential, actionable, key takeaways needed for… well… personal development. It’s the stripped down version of an insight that we attempt to push into memory from the outside-in.

Classic literature, however, tells a story. And oftentimes, a story that takes hundreds and hundreds of pages to unpack and fully digest. During which time, you’re living another life… seeing reality through another’s eyes… feeling their emotions and living out the consequences of their actions in real time—as if they are your own… and you’re nurturing an understanding that grows from the inside-out.

This difference in how we retain insight and how it affects us cannot be understated.

The insight being pushed down often gets rejected by what’s already deeply rooted and has been growing for decades within. It’s like trying to blow a tree over with your best exhale.

The insight that’s planted and is given hundreds and hundreds of pages worth of space and time to grow is able to entrench its roots and become a powerful tree in its own right. Eventually overtaking the resources from the “old-ways trees” and seesaws power into the new.

So the next time you’re at the bookstore or contemplating what you’d like to dive into next—with the intention of developing yourself personally—consider the classic literature section over the self-help isle.

The classics are called classics and have stood the test of time for good reason.

I spent about 8 hours cleaning, organizing, and preparing my house for 2026 today.

Two observations as I reflect on it:

1. Chain tasks together. Going one task to the next to the next is always easier than doing one task, stopping, and trying to start back up again. This is as true for cleaning as it is for productivity at work as it is for personal development.

2. Prepare your environment in a way that makes getting the things you gotta/wanna get done easier. Keep your workout area clean, have your workout clothes ready, write down your workout the night before, make sure the equipment you need is prepared and organized, and so on. Also: hide the bad foods in the kitchen, keep a fruit bowl out (and filled), meal plan, have healthy cravings alternatives for when you need something sweet/salty, etc.

Getting everything done that I got done today felt incredible.

If you haven’t prepped your environment like this in a while, it’d be an excellent thing to consider at the outset of 2026.

If you’re anything like me, you get more incoming emails than you can typically process day-to-day. And while I’ve actively unsubscribed from much of the fluff and pushy marketing stuff, there’s still a ton of great stuff I receive that I don’t want to unsubscribe from or delete.

As I mentioned a weekish ago, when it comes time for me to open my inbox, rather than read a hodgepodge of different authors who use different tones and speak from various backgrounds and life experiences—and try to context switch email to email… I’ve been bulk reading one email author at a time.

And lately, what I’ve been asking myself when I open my inbox is, “Who do I most want/need to hear from right now?” And after a minute or two of closed eye inward reflection… I usually know who that person is. And let me tell you, it makes reading emails SO much more effective (as far as comprehension) and enjoyable (as far as it being about what you want/need vs getting your inbox number down to a certain count).

Who do YOU most want/need to hear from right now?

Is your inbox filled with voices that serve you or annoy you? Maybe see if some of your favorite people to hear from have an email/newsletter they send out regularly that you can subscribe to? Maybe try unsubscribing from people you no longer want to hear from…

…Maybe try it when opening your inbox today?

“At his house, George [Raveling] has these big red binders filled with notes. He calls them his ‘learning journals.’ They’re his version of a commonplace book—a collection of ideas, quotes, observations, and information gathered over time. The purpose is to record and organize these gems for later use in your life and work. It’s a habit he’s kept since 1972. To this day, he told me, ‘I go back and just read through them. I’ll just get one of the binders and I’ll sit down at the kitchen table and start reading through it. Sometimes I come across stuff that is more applicable today than it was when I wrote it in there.’”

Ryan Holiday

Known as the “Godfather” in college basketball, George Raveling became the first African American basketball coach in what’s now the Pac-12, had a Hall of Fame career, and played an instrumental role in bringing Michael Jordan over to Nike—who he coached in the ’84 Olympics and knew well for decades.

…And what I love about the above quote is that it’s a breadcrumb.

Successful people might claim to have “blueprints” that’ll lead you to a duplicatable success, but what I’ve found is that it’s less about perfect schematics and more about clues.

…And it’s up to us to solve the mystery in the way that’s specifically aligned with our background, circumstances, talents, aptitudes, and aspirations.

Going back and reading through collections of insightful ideas, quotes, observations, etc… is an excellent breadcrumb to consider. One that countless successful people have left behind. One that guides me every day—just instead of being in red binders, it’s all published online for all to see.