Some people were pissed off.

Others agreed.

And ofc, a larger discussion about access for women emerged. Her lifestyle and access to resources were dissected. The internet erupted.

My team had a parallel discussion before our executive offsite. The team wanted to get together in Boston. I argued that we should just take the meeting remotely, used to our regular efficient work style. I ultimately lost the argument to intangibles. “It will be nice to get together,” “we can do a team event,” and on. So I conceded.

The offsite was last week. We all got there on time — as usual, we take start times seriously. But we started late — which was not usual.

We caught up. We talked about life, kids, death, dogs, and everything in between.

We chatted in a way that we can’t afford to on Zoom, where every meeting is dialed in by the minute and where talking over someone is processed as an interruption versus the livelihood of sentences running into each other in real time. Where AI recaps and eternalizes any banter about what we ate for lunch or the road rage incident we dodged, in our own personal version of the Truman Show.

When the meeting started, we easily navigated the tension of a high-accountability environment to serve the business. One leader sternly asked: “You were responsible for that goal, what happened?” A debate broke out about the importance of a priority. And many more heated conversations followed.

As a leadership team, we have always been good at cultivating psychological safety. Psychological safety is not comfort — often, our meetings are uncomfortable. I’ve never thought much about how we’ve created this space, but I know that it’s okay and easy to be wrong at Wise. Coachable is the status quo and expectation. And as long as you generally grow from mishaps, nothing is personal.

Which works well for us because we are a startup and autonomy matters. We need each person to own their output, and research reminds us that controlling environments — using intimidation, conditional regard, or isolation — create short-term compliance but undermine autonomy and long-term motivation.2 People motivated by inner drive are more engaged than those motivated by external pressure.3

When you are in a psychologically safe environment, you are not safe from challenge — you are safe to be challenged. Because you trust those around you enough to resolve conflict, commit as a team, hold each other accountable, and focus on what needs to get done.4

So much of trust is built on genuine interactions. And trust paves the way for belonging.

You can’t force belonging or bonding, but you can be authentic enough to create an environment where people feel safe enough to lower their guards and also be authentic. Once you create the space for genuine interactions, you optimize for growth because you create space for belonging. And humans function from growth and development, not fear. In Do Hard Things, Steve Magness reminds us of how this plays out via legendary NBA coach of the San Antonio Spurs, Gregg Popovich, who became known for taking his entire team out for dinner after a game to build cohesion and mental resilience over individual pursuits.5 Popovich created an environment of belonging.

And belonging matters because belonging creates trust. Trust narrows our aperture toward mastery and the greater good. When we trust, we play to win. When we are scared, we play not to lose.6

So liminal spaces, like the conference room table while everyone is unwrapping their cords before the offsite, create the realization that someone is more than their role. And in those moments, people feel belonging.

Which might be what Emma had been talking about. Emma’s framing ruffled feathers, but the mechanics of her argument hold merit. It’s hard to feel belonging behind pixels (especially with video off, come for me — I will die on this hill: turn your video on).

Which is ironically not very girl-boss, because — and I say this as an efficiency enthusiast — efficiency is the enemy of trust.

EFFICIENCY IS THE ENEMY OF TRUST

The more you optimize a team for productivity over connection, the less psychological safety you actually build. The “wasted” time is the work. And I am not arguing for a return-to-office lifestyle, I don’t even work in an office full-time. But I am arguing for the preservation and prioritization of connection, whatever that balance looks like for you.

Research reminds us that liminal spaces just do not work the same way online. In-person interaction tends to produce stronger social connection, better emotional attunement, and greater wellbeing than virtual interaction. Virtual is still beneficial and linked to wellbeing, but face-to-face wins when it comes to maximizing positive affect.7

It’s not that virtual doesn’t work — it’s that people often connect differently online than they do in person, and in-person contact is generally richer for emotional connection and social bonding.

Connection is a performance input, not a soft perk.

CONNECTION RAISES EXPECTATIONS OF YOURSELF

And the benefits don’t stop at well-being — being genuinely seen by others results in you seeing yourself differently. How you are received dictates how you see yourself. And how you see yourself directly dictates how others receive you.

We often equate controlling how we are perceived with being faked. And when we come across magnetic people, we believe they were just wired that way.

There’s no doubt that some people are just more magnetic than others. More likable. More interesting to be around in real life.

And it serves them, because likability is how to get what you want — above talent or network. The overlap between low-likability and high-effectiveness is extremely rare.8

But likability is a practice — a leadership skill, not a personality trait. You treat it like something you’re born with. It isn’t. It’s an output of how much you expect people to like you.

YOUR EXPECTATIONS ARE CONTAGIOUS

I recently learned about the acceptance prophecy through psychology educator Francesca Tighinean who said “Experiences shape your identity, leading you to think, ‘I am the kind of person who connects easily.’ And that identity becomes expectation.”

Your expectations of yourself are contagious.

You shape social interactions by predicting how you will be received. Per research by Danu Anthony Stinson, it’s called the acceptance prophecy.9 Your expectation of being accepted or rejected shapes your behavior, which other people mirror when interacting with you. If you walk into a room expecting to be dismissed, people will dismiss you. The acceptance prophecy runs in both directions — upward and downward. People meet you where you are. Which means…you kinda can control how much people like you.

This probably explains something we don’t like to admit: narcissists are magnetic too. Not because they are likable in any meaningful way, but because they walk into every room certain they deserve to be there. Their expectation of being received well is so total that people mirror it back to them — at least at first. The acceptance prophecy doesn’t differentiate the self-obsessed from the humble. It works for the generous and the delusional alike. Which tells you something important: the mechanism isn’t about being good. It’s about what you expect.

PERFORMANCE IS ALSO BASED ON EXPECTATIONS

We have established that expectations of ourselves dictate how others treat us. And we have established that connecting with people makes high expectations more manageable. So let’s talk about performance and expectations.

Do Hard Things has this formula that goes something like actual effort × expected effort = drive or performance (I gotta be honest, I was listening to the book at the gym and didn’t finish the set in time to write the formula down. If you have the actual formula, please put it in the comments). If you are putting in as much effort as expected, you are performing as expected. If you put in more effort than expected, you are an overachiever.

And I argue that the genuine interactions that create trust also lead us to trust ourselves enough to do more than expected.

SO, EMMA?

Think about the last time you performed beyond what you thought you were capable of. There was probably someone in the room who saw you as more than your role before you did. A team dinner. A slow morning before the meeting started. A conversation that had nothing to do with the agenda.

Emma’s argument got swallowed by a debate about access. And that’s a real debate — but there’s a different angle worth examining in an ever-automated and digital world. The mechanics are simpler and they apply to everyone: you cannot build high expectations of yourself in a vacuum. You need the room. The cords. The water filter you can’t figure out. Or whatever version of that exists in your world at some frequency. You need to be seen as more than your role before you can perform beyond it, which means you need to see yourself as more.

Genuine connection raises your expectations of yourself, which raises how others treat you, which raises your performance.

Hi friends! What did you think? Your comments make my day! I am knee deep in my BOOK PROPOSAL 😱😱😱 — your feedback helps me shape my own ideas and goes far

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I remember asking my mom if she was yelled at as a kid. “No. Yelling was not in our dictionary — not my mother’s, not my father’s. And I think you can bear witness that it wasn’t in our home’s culture either. Because yelling doesn’t solve anything. It just shows the kids that we’re crazy. I used to see friends whose parents, especially fathers, who’d spank and yell — and I was very traumatized by that. Why would they do that to a kid? What do they get out of it? Other than an immediate, momentary release with just seconds of relief. Nothing more than that. It’s not a problem solver.”

That tiny interaction paints such a clear picture of why my mom has always been so regulated and high capacity (stick with me). And it reflects why she parented us the way she did. Growing up in a calm environment isn’t a luxury as much as it is a neurological advantage that follows you for life. And the stakes continue to grow.

It came up when I was talking with my friend Tara recently.

“I stopped yelling at my kids,” Tara confessed. I had seen her snap at her kids often, so I was thrilled to hear it. After congratulating her for choosing kindness toward young, vulnerable humans, I continued in a different direction. “The best thing you could do for your kids in an era of AI is not being a jerk. Because you’re preparing them for boredom — and boredom is the fuel for what’s emerging as the most important skill: creativity.” It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

People think what it takes to be nasty to kids is abuse, violence, neglect. But I would argue that it takes a whole lot less to throw them off course from their potential. Often just treating them like they are annoying — yelling, nagging, rolling your eyes — will make your kids believe they are annoying. And it will tie up their nervous system. So now you’ve taken away their self-confidence and ability to be bored and create. You simply cannot install a high-performance operating system on top of hardware that is wired for fear.1

The constant yelling, aggravation, and frustration you harbor may be capping your kids potential. Or, at least, driving a wedge between them and their potential that will take a lot of time and therapy to fix.

I love this TikTok where Dr. RJ, a triple board resident/MD/PhD/MBA (and my favorite new follow), so clearly states what goes wrong in parenting.

@drrussellledetRepetition isn’t rebellion. It’s development + communication. Parents… we’ve got to stop personalizing what is neurological. #parenting #fyp #explore

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He explains that when your kid doesn’t do something, it’s not defiance — it’s developmental. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for following through, controlling impulses, and remembering instructions, is still under construction. But your kid’s emotional brain is fully online. So what you’re dealing with isn’t a disrespectful kid. It’s a kid whose feelings are loud and whose executive function hasn’t caught up yet. Kids need a lot of repetition. Parents misunderstand the defiance as disrespect instead of understanding how the brain works.

He urges parents to ask themselves: “Is it developmental? Am I expecting consistency from a brain that can’t do that yet? Is my communication clear? Did I give one instruction or did I give a paragraph? Did I build a system for them to be successful or did I just use my voice? Was my timing right? You cannot give instructions to a distracted brain and expect execution. Adjust your expectations.”

So this is what it ends up looking like: your kid is wild after school and doesn’t do homework — so you repeat yourself, and you repeat yourself, and you repeat yourself — then you explode. The kid gets scared. The response shows up as even more defiance or they are terrified of you. The kids new focus: managing your emotions, rather than developing their own. And so the dance is formed. And once a dance is formed, it’s hard to break.

So you get comfortable yelling. Like Tara. And maybe it eats away at you. Maybe you experienced yelling yourself, so it feels normal.

And that yelling, night after night, creates an environment that isn’t calm — which reinforces the cycle at much higher stakes. In Stolen Focus,2 the author discusses why children raised in chronically stressful environments are described as bear cubs in a forest where hunters are constantly firing guns. A frightened brain wires for vigilance, not concentration. And for survival, not creation.

Newton’s Third Law reminds us that all forces result from mutual interactions. In the same vein, your behavior leads to an outcome. Some people have been neurologically prepared to handle boredom and deep work through safety. Others face additional hurdles on the path to success that nobody ever names or recognizes as a result of their upbringing. Children who grow up managing chaos never get to play — and play is how they build the cognitive and social-emotional foundations for everything else. It’s a hidden inequality. Boredom acts as a psychological incubation period; when you lack external stimulation, you free your brain up to problem solve creatively and think differently. In Unequal Childhoods, the author explores this idea through class-based parenting styles — where some children are granted the safety to treat life like a playground for self-discovery, while others are conditioned by environments of constraint, forcing mental energy to be diverted away from creativity and toward navigating adult moods or environmental chaos.3

And to bring it full circle, that chaos or chronic stress can just be a parent who is mean, with a terrible tone, a loud voice, or an unpredictable attitude.

A calm nervous system leaves room for creation, ideation, and dreaming. Including dreaming up future versions of you.

Loved this. Stay delulu and dream up

“Delulu Tip for Today: Record a 1-minute voice note of your future self talking about how everything worked out. Listening to your own voice activates mirror neurons, and your brain begins to identify as that future version of you.” @amoyashante

As I make the case for boredom as a differentiator, it’s worth noting that there is nuance here — the capacity to sit with boredom and let creativity emerge requires baseline safety and stability. Children who are food insecure, housing insecure, or navigating genuinely chaotic home environments aren’t avoiding boredom — they’re surviving. Boredom will not satisfy basic human needs.

It’s also worth noting that my ask is not trivial. We are the first generation trying to parent consciously while also being the most overstimulated generation in history. You have to regulate yourself so you can regulate your child, in an era designed to keep you constantly activated. It’s not easy.

SO…AI?

Let’s jump into how this all relates to AI. The next set of thoughts are pure observation from an operator’s POV.

Today I was talking to my co-founder Chazz about a Reddit thread he’d seen. The gist was: ideas used to be cheap and implementation expensive. Now, with AI, ideas and implementation are cheap. But quality can be easily lost if the work lacks creativity and judgment. And you can’t replicate creativity.

We just saw Oracle lay off up to 30,000 people with a 6 AM email in the name of cost cutting, all while ramping up AI spend. What that might mean is they will employ AI agents for some of the jobs and functionalities that were humans. This will likely work fine in many places. And AI agents are transforming the cost of operating a business. But what Oracle and other AI can’t replicate is new ideation.

Research out of MIT explains the mechanical reason why AI fails at developing new ideas. AI models are universal approximation functions — they are built to predict the most likely next step based on historical patterns.4 I am no AI hater (unpopular opinion, I know). AI has unlocked and multiplied many parts of my creative ADHD brain. But I also understand its limits and want you to understand them too.

An HBR professor argues that while AI can demonstrate expertise and creative thinking, it lacks intrinsic motivation — the internal drive to solve new problems.5 And so the output can become slop — maybe technically correct — but devoid of the emotional resonance and quality that defines true creativity.

A crucial defense is nurturing our creativity.6 But we don’t realize how much we get in the way of our own — and our kids’ ability to create, because creation requires boredom. And the world’s most valuable social media companies also thrive on your boredom.

Society as it’s designed has built-in creativity killers everywhere. If you find yourself unlocking your phone at every stoplight and grocery line, you are just an average American who unlocks their phone 144 times a day, or every 15 minutes.7 When we instinctively scroll instead of zone out, we remove the very opportunities to get bored and ideate.

My grandpa could have managed my mom’s defiance with force. But management comes at the cost of creation. Yelling at your kids undermines their ability to grow. Your craving for control undermines your kid’s ability to grow. Research shows when humans are managed toward an answer, their neural connectivity in critical thinking regions drops by over 50%.8

I recently overheard a conversation my own kids had under my bed, while eating unsanctioned popsicles at 8 PM. I didn’t really care about the popsicles, but they didn’t know that. In the spirit of my grandpa and my mom, I pick my emotional battles judiciously. I could have yelled about the popsicles, but I have made it a practice not to — because those little releases of frustration turn into a million tiny moments that shred a kid’s self-esteem. And the conversation brought on by their tiny moment of quiet reminded me of my own mom’s moments of missing her big sister as my 4 year old confessed that she hates when her siblings are in school, because it makes her sad to miss them. Is parenting as simple as leaving kids with a safe space to love and be loved?

I can tell you for sure that calm environments build the neurological foundation for tolerating boredom — which is the foundation for mastery. If you grew up in chaos and still made it, understand you did it the hard way. The brain is ultimately plastic and you can undo the deep-seated belief that you aren’t worth it, or that you are annoying, or you can be like Tara and break the yelling habit. The bar you cleared was higher than most people will ever know.

And if you’re raising kids, the most powerful thing you can give them isn’t money. It’s a regulated nervous system.

Thanks for reading!! What did you think? I love your comments, likes, and shares. Life is good here, gearing up for a baby in a few months, time is literally flying.

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I’ll never forget my first time riding in an 18-wheel truck. We had just released our brand new mobile app to drivers as new founders. I hopped in a truck with a Fortune 500 driver at four in the morning to get feedback and walk him through the product. Pride swelling in my chest. “You made this?” he asked.

“Yes!” I beamed.

“Why the hell would you put so many pop-ups in an app for a driver?” he responded aggressively.

I froze for a second before I texted my co-founder: “Drop the pop-ups ASAP.”

“Done,” he responded shortly after.

That tiny interaction captures the startup journey — which is often glamorized and perceived as a byproduct of luck. And captures a lot of life. While portrayed as glamorous, it’s embarrassing, then it’s fixed, then you move forward. And in between that, often it’s boring.

And what you do in the boring and bad is a key determinant of luck.

THE RULE OF THIRDS

There’s a concept called the Rule of Thirds: 1/3 of your life will be boring, 1/3 will be hard, 1/3 will be great. I’ve heard it thrown around in a variety of forms, but here is my reading:

66% of the time, you won’t feel like doing something in your best state of mind.

The tricky thing about two-thirds of your life being boring or bad is that most great things are based on perception. Perception is built on your actions. If your actions follow your mood, you’re actively working against your goals two-thirds of the time.

Research shows us the impact of mood on behavior. People in negative moods make systematically different decisions than those in positive moods — often choosing short-term relief over long-term benefit. Studies show that anxious people avoid risk, which leads to missing opportunities. Bored people seek stimulation, which leads to abandoning boring but necessary work. And angry people make retaliatory choices, like damaging relationships. When decisions are mood-dependent rather than goal-dependent, goals get de-prioritized. Emotions do not just get in the way of good decision making; they are built into how we judge situations, weigh risks, and choose what to do.1

And ultimately, how people perceive you determines your influence. Your power. Your luck. And how much people trust you.

LUCK COMES FROM SURFACE AREA

Luck is a consequence of both surface area and emotional regulation. The argument above makes the case for emotional regulation. And Jason Roberts2 makes the case for surface area below.

“If there’s one thing I’ve discovered in recent years it’s this. The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life, your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you’re passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated. It’s a simple concept, but an extremely powerful one because what it implies is that you can directly control the amount of luck you receive. In other words, you make your own luck.” Jason Roberts

As Roberts says, L = D * T. Luck = doing x telling.3

I see Roberts’ theory come to fruition in my own life and through others. As a founder, there is a strong correlation between people who ask for what they want and those who get what they want.

It’s predictably the people who ask to solve something, ask to take over a responsibility, or just do the thing who are the luckiest. Because the outcome they sought after — the title, stature, skills — generally follow. And this happens in asinine ways too (I have literally asked to be upgraded to business class, just because, and had my ticket changed. More than once).

Of course, some luck is out of your control. Having emotionally regulated parents was pure luck. Being born to a family that could prioritize educating me was pure luck. But luck can be increased, with strategy.

I will share my “lucky girl syndrome” strategy: Do a lot (ship, ask, connect) + tell a lot (communicate clearly what you’re doing and what you want to the right people).

And that means doing and asking even when it’s bad or boring. As long as you can remove mood-based decisions from the two-thirds of your life that is tethered to your goals and the future emotions that will emerge when you accomplish them.

I talk about how I walked into my program director at MIT’s office — pre-admission — a lot. Because MIT wasn’t pure luck or pure talent. It was a bit of those, but mostly me making the case for what I want out loud. And I advise aspiring students of any program to call program directors during the application process to increase their luck as well (send this to anyone applying to grad school asap).

DON’T DISCOUNT THE POWER OF STRESS

This morning I was reading The Upside of Stress4 by Kelly McGonical. Honestly, phenomenal book. Everyone should read it to reframe how powerful stress can be, considering it’s an inevitable reaction to many of life’s woes. McGonical’s central claim is that believing “stress is harmful” versus “stress is helpful” changes how your body and brain respond to it. People with a stress‑is‑enhancing mindset show better health, more productivity, and greater resilience at the same stress levels than those who see stress as purely toxic. She argues you can train yourself to shift stress from a “threat response” (“I can’t do this, I’m overwhelmed; I need out”) to a “challenge response” (“I’m pushing my limits; This energy will push me”), which changes cardiovascular patterns and coping behavior. I bring this up because the 33% of your life that is bad can either work as rocket fuel or wet mud, depending on your view on stress. This paragraph is underdeveloped because I just started the book, but you can rest assured that I will reference the book many more times in upcoming articles because I am so aligned with the message.

LUCK COMES FROM WEAK TIES — NETWORK MATTERS

Recently an acquaintance asked me for an introduction. “Sure, but when I introduce you to Ahmed keep in mind that he is direct,” I started before making a few more recommendations. He recently reached back out to let me know he got the job. While it may seem like the intro was a stroke of luck, research by Mark Granovetter5 shows most job opportunities, business partnerships, and breakthrough ideas come from acquaintances rather than close friends — so from weak ties rather than strong ties. The more people who know what you’re working on, the more serendipitous connections occur. Your network size and communication about your work directly correlates with opportunity.

POWER COMES FROM ONE OF TWO PLACES

A good friend of mine was passionate and hard working. We hit a lot of life’s milestones together until our mid-twenties, when she married a mean guy. He put her down and abused her. Her home was always volatile. His emotional state was unpredictable, so rather than spending her days fulfilling her potential, she spent her days being overly-vigilant about how not to trigger him. Or she spent her days angry. He had power over her because he was mean. Meanwhile, I had the oblivious privilege of pursuing my interests in a calm environment.

He had power over her because you can build power through extreme emotional dysregulation. People are afraid of you. They comply because the alternative is unpredictable rage or punishment. But it’s the type of power that costs the people around you (and, probably yourself) a lot of joy, opportunity, and stability. And, it costs time. When you spiral, you’re burning glucose your brain needs for problem-solving on much less productive things.

Fear creates a world‑view of low control and high threat; people become vigilant, risk‑averse, and focused on avoiding punishment. In an abusive dynamic, someone spends her cognitive budget on not triggering him, instead of building skills or opportunities. Fear‑based power hijacks others’ affect so their decisions become about short‑term emotional safety, not mutual long‑term goals.6

Or you can build power through emotional regulation. People are influenced by you. They follow because they trust you. Trust‑based power comes from repeated evidence that your actions are not wildly mood‑driven — people can predict you, so they can safely attach their own goals to you.

People give you power when they are afraid of you or influenced by you.

There is a reason the influencer economy has quickly torpedoed traditional marketing. The influencer economy, a $250B+ sector, has relied on community-driven content.

The influencer economy represents a high-growth, $250+ billion sector (said to double by 2027) that often outperforms traditional advertising by leveraging authentic, community-driven content, with an average skip time of 17.8 seconds (typical branded content is 7.9 seconds).7 I heard that 61% of an audience’s market trusts the creator over a brand.

In the offline world, trust is built through a series of completed transactions. You say you’ll do something. You do it. Repeat.

But trust breaks in one of two ways: People think you’re incompetent or they think you lack integrity.

That friend eventually divorced her husband. And despite his many attempts to get her back, she witnessed his low integrity. Low integrity is generally unforgivable. But incompetence? That’s a required stage on the path to mastery.

YOU MUST BE BAD BEFORE YOU’RE GOOD

Why am I so fond of incompetence? Because you are oblivious that you’re bad at anything before you become good at anything. In the last few articles, I have talked about incompetence a few times. And have referenced the image below, I think it’s so powerful.

1. Unconscious incompetence -- you don’t know what you don’t know

2. Conscious incompetence -- you realize you’re bad at this

3. Conscious competence -- you can do it, but it takes effort

4. Unconscious competence -- it’s automatic

That second stage is where most people quit. When you don’t know you are bad at something, you don’t feel bad. As soon as you feel bad, embarrassment, shame, and anxiety surface. This is where you are most likely to quit. The moment you realize you are bad at something is when immediate negative emotion is strongest and the temptation for short‑term relief through quit, blame, and distraction is highest.

You quit because realizing you’re bad at something requires three things:

1. Space to assess yourself

2. Emotional regulation to pause instead of spiraling

3. Seeking good mentorship to show you the gap

In that truck, I had seconds to choose my response. Spiral into defensiveness? Blame the driver for not understanding? Freeze in embarrassment?

I chose: fix it immediately in the truck. While pride was my immediate emotion in the sting of criticism, I had a split second to choose defensiveness or a goal-aligned response. I chose a goal aligned response. Research reminds us that when goal-dependent reactions override short-term reactions (like the urge for emotional protection), goals are more likely.8

The lucky aren’t mood dependent. They are goal focused.

HOW YOU DEAL WITH THE BAD AND BORING IS A LEADING INDICATOR FOR YOUR FUTURE

When you realize you’re incompetent at something, where does your head go?

Fear? Anxiety? Boredom?

Or do you focus on your ability to keep pushing?

The people who win aren’t more talented. They just don’t let their mood determine their actions.

They understand that showing up when it’s hard or boring is what separates influence from irrelevance. That trust is built in the moments when you’d rather disappear.

That driver didn’t remember my pride or excitement. He remembered whether the app worked for him the next day. On my next ride-along, I chose to go with him. “How was the app?” I asked. “Way better,” he replied.

Your reputation isn’t built in the 33% when everything feels good. It’s built in the 66% when it doesn’t. Emotions are always in the decision loop. Specific emotions push decisions in predictable directions. People who build habits, environments, and relationships that stabilize their affect—and who deliberately lean on anticipated long‑term feelings over immediate moods — will, over time, look “luckier.”

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I asked him how he stayed so motivated.

“That’s a stupid question, Layla. You either do something or you don’t.”

THE RISE OF DISCIPLINE

Those words have stuck with me for years. Which is maybe why I was struck when a TikTok creator said there is a “cultural pendulum swing back to discipline and hard work.”

“I am seeing a cultural pendulum swing back to discipline and hard work. As it stands, images are editable, intelligence is performable, taste is curatable, productivity is automated. Identity is to be purchased and customized. You can buy a face, a body and audience productivity and normal career luxury goods performance. You cannot buy discipline. And so discipline is virtually the only thing we have left that we can’t fake or speed up. It’s the antithesis to our modern problem of convenience culture and fatigue of ease.”

@feelingsfactorySome thoughts on Marty Supreme, the shift back to hard-work-as-cultural-capital after years of softness + predictions for the future of luxury 💻 #discipline #curriculum #martysupreme #winterarc #hardwork

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She’s right. And it connects to something I’ve been noticing for years: the self-actualization economy has convinced us that who we are can be acquired through what we own.

Maslow’s hierarchy has a fatal flaw that marketers discovered decades ago: the higher up you climb, the easier it becomes to fake your progress.

If you lack housing or food, the signs are obvious. You can’t Instagram your way out of homelessness or tweet your way to a full stomach. The bottom of the pyramid is brutally honest.

But self-actualization? That’s where the con begins.

Watch a lifestyle influencer’s morning routine. Notice how they sell you pieces of their “actualized” identity: the $70 candle for mindfulness, the matching yoga set for wellness, the expensive coffee shop for creativity. Brands have figured out that self-actualization looks like something. And if it looks like something (or someone), it can be packaged, branded, and sold.

I recently watched Alix Earle — who runs a multi-million dollar enterprise off a party girl persona — film a “day in the life” video showing back-to-back business meetings. A stark juxtaposition (and probably more realistic view of her life) to the majority of her content which is about how much she parties. Google her name and “vomit-covered dress in closet,” and the internet will help you paint the picture. The disconnect is jarring: she’s selling aspiration through self-destruction, packaging chaos as authenticity. And she can push product to the tune of millions.

But it works. Because we’ve been taught that identity can be acquired. A shortcut to development.

A VICTIM IN MY OWN RIGHT

I was limping through the mall shortly after ACL surgery, when something caught my eye. Nike was advertising a night race. Professional lighting that made weekend joggers look like Olympians. Merchandise displaying the race name like a badge of honor. A photo booth that transformed ordinary people into athletes with a single click.

For the first time in my life, I am not an athlete. Post-op life has stolen my strength, my tone, my discipline. Standing there in Nike’s temple of aspiration, I realized something that changed everything I thought I knew about human motivation.

My old identity was for sale. And I almost bought it.

Marketing has moved from inaccessible celebrities behind a TV screen to everyday lifestyle influencers who sell you the ingredients to become them. To become a clean girl, a pilates girly, a fun mom, a sports mom, or even productive (guilty as charged). And with a slick image and some cool shoes, I could have also projected my faux-athletic prowess to the world.

The facade has one issue: you can’t buy an identity. You can’t buy self-actualization. Which is why discipline is the truest gold-standard. Discipline can’t be bought.

THE LITTLE GIRL INSIDE

A baby girl walks into a room with bows in her hair and a princess dress. “You are so pretty,” an audience instinctively coos.

What the girl is learning is that beauty is an aspiration, a title granted. Style is an aspiration — you have it or you don’t, and the validation of others cements it.

In reality, beauty and style are a skill. And skills need discipline, time, and effort as the video below discusses.

@ileana.justine@Beck Goodman, M. Ed this video changed my brain chemistry. #changedmybrainchemistry #parenting #toddlermom

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My parents had an effective approach and it was to never talk about our looks. We weren’t clumsy, ugly, beautiful, brown-eyed, green-eyed, big-eyed, tall, short, slim, fat, or anything else. We just were. As society has shifted into a world of likes, views, subs, and other vanity metrics that are hard to avoid and measure ourselves by, we need a plan B.

Because while anybody can fall victim to a lifetime of aspiration over discipline, women and girls are especially vulnerable. At different times for different reasons. Today’s soup-de-jour includes the $450b wellness industry has us convinced that bubble baths and a soft-life build the headspace for internal peace and resilience. In reality, resilience comes from hard things. Especially the hard things you don’t want to do. Your nervous system doesn’t learn strength from comfort, it learns from systematic exposure to discomfort.

THE PATH TO HELPLESSNESS IS PAVED IN GOOD INTENTION

I was at the mall recently when I saw a 4-year-old ask her parents for something. “No.” She asked something else. “No.” And a few more nos. The conversation was absolutely unremarkable, it could have been my own. Until I heard about a study that shifted my perspective.

When we fall into the habit of evergreen no’s as parents, we teach our kids dependence. When a child asks for something and the parent’s immediate response is “no” — without explanation or alternative — they learn helplessness.

Research on learned helplessness and child development reveals when parents respond with unconditional refusals without explanation, children can develop a sense that their actions don’t predict outcomes. In contrast, when parents provide structure — clear expectations with rationales and feedback — children learn that their behavior influences their world, reducing the risk of learned helplessness.1

But parents who say “Ask me after you finish X” activate the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for planning and delayed gratification. The child learns that their behavior influences their world. They learn agency.

When parents provide clear expectations with rationales and feedback, children’s own actions carry predictable consequences, making it easier for the child to see the outcomes their behavior led to, which results in less helpless kids.2 Who grow into less helpless adults.

It’s the difference between raising a child who believes they can impact their circumstances versus one who believes they’re at the mercy of forces beyond their control. It’s the secret ingredient that separates people who crumble from those who bend but don’t break.

And ultimately, we all want to raise children who take control and spiral up. To do hard things, you have to spiral up.

STRESS EXPOSES YOUR LOWEST SELF

A friend recently told me she’d been struggling with anxiety and finally got medication that helped. But when she asked for a higher dose, her doctor said: “I want you to see a therapist first. I want you to look yourself straight in the eye and confront the anxiety, not just medicate it away.”

Her doctor understood that you can buy external relief, but you cannot buy internal resolve. I am all for anti-anxiety meds and have seen them transform lives, but the doctor’s approach was more comprehensive than a chemical rebalancing alone.

Another friend learned this during her divorce. Suddenly, she was dressing differently, altering her body, desperately trying to project the image of an attractive, unfazed woman instead of the depressed person she actually was. She was buying an identity to cover the cracks in her foundation. Which ultimately shattered before she rebuilt herself.

Stress has a way of exposing everything. And if your lowest self is full of cracks, no amount of purchased identity can save you.

THE FOUR-LEVEL REALITY CHECK

Here’s how to audit whether your identity is real or rented:

Level 1 - Physical Reality: Does discipline drive you? Can you actually do the things your identity claims? If you call yourself an athlete, can you perform athletically? If you identify as creative, do you create things?

Level 2 - Internal Motivation: Do you engage in your identity’s behaviors when no one is watching? Do you write when there’s no audience? Exercise when there’s no selfie?

Level 3 - Stress Survival: Does your identity hold up under pressure? When you’re tired, broke, or criticized, do you still know who you are?

Level 4 - Independent Worth: Can you respect yourself without external validation? Would you still be proud of your work if no one ever saw it?

Most people pass Level 1 by purchasing the right accessories. They crash out at Level 2 because their motivation requires an audience. They never reach Levels 3 and 4 because their identity was never built in the first place.

YOU CAN’T BUY DISCIPLINE

You can write without the coffee shop. You can exercise without the matching yoga set. You can find peace without the expensive candle.

Real self-actualization is messy, unglamorous, and completely unsellable. It happens in the space between who you think you should be and who you actually are. It develops through the repetitive, boring work of being introspective and pushing yourself when no one is watching. And it can be embarrassing.

You can outpace embarrassment. Reps are louder than shame.

MOTIVATE YOURSELF, FOR YOU — AND IT WILL LAST

We are motivated by two fundamental drives: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. When we want to get fit to look good for others, that’s extrinsic motivation — we’re performing for an audience. When we want to get fit to reduce our diabetes risk and increase our longevity, that’s intrinsic motivation — we’re investing in ourselves.

The difference matters more than most people realize. Extrinsic motivation requires constant external validation to sustain itself. It’s fragile, dependent on others’ reactions, and often dies the moment the audience disappears. Intrinsic motivation is self-renewing. It doesn’t need applause to survive because the benefits are felt internally, daily, regardless of who’s watching.

This is why people who exercise “to look good” often burn out or quit when progress stalls, while those who exercise “to feel strong” tend to maintain their habits for decades. One motivation can be taken away by circumstances; the other lives independently of external conditions.

LOST POTENTIAL

There is a fundamental misalignment between lacking discipline and wanting to grow.

Building anything meaningful — whether it’s expertise, relationships, or genuine achievement — requires sustained focus over years.

But when you’re operating from a purchased or faked identity rather than authentic self-knowledge, you’re constantly spending time maintaining the performance instead of developing real capability.

You’re choosing outfits instead of practicing skills. You’re curating social media to present an image of a problem solver instead of solving actual problems. You’re attending networking events instead of creating work worth talking about.

Meanwhile, the people who know who they are are putting in their 10,000 hours while you’re putting in 10,000 hours of pretending.

The opportunity cost is staggering. Every moment spent propping up a fake identity is a moment not spent building the real thing. And since meaningful achievement requires deep, sustained effort over time, this misdirection doesn’t just delay your progress — it can prevent it entirely.

THE LAST IDENTITY STANDING

My uncle didn’t need motivation because he never rented his identity as an athlete. He built it. Four in the morning, decade after decade, whether anyone was watching or not.

That’s the thing about discipline: it can’t be purchased, performed, or projected. It must be built, brick by brick, through actions that connect to outcomes, choices that reflect values, and the gradual accumulation of evidence that you can trust yourself.

Your real identity can’t be sold to you. But that’s exactly what makes it worth having.

Because unlike everything else in this world, no one can take it away.

Hi friends! You made it this far! Thank you for reading along, I would love to hear what you think.

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In the last month, how many cringey, embarrassing, uncomfortable moments did you have? Because I can almost guarantee you that if you fail 50 times a month in 2026, you will be unstoppable.

ALIGN YOUR SHORT AND LONG GAME

When your short game and your long game align, you get what you want. In less sensational terms: you learn through experience.

Research shows we learn faster through failure than success.1 Not because failure builds character — because failure triggers stronger emotional responses, forcing deeper reflection and identifying flaws in our approach.

Success teaches us what works. Failure teaches us why.

When we analyze failed assumptions, our brains form new neural pathways. We don’t just learn what didn’t work. We build new capacity to think differently. Long-term potentiation strengthens synaptic connections through repeated neural activity — brain plasticity develops through practice just like muscles do.

Every workout tears muscle fibers. They grow back stronger. Every embarrassing moment tears your comfort zone. It grows back wider.

Instinctually, many of us avoid failure. We rarely push our comfort zones the way we push our bodies at the gym.

WE’RE BORN WITH TWO FEARS

We are born with only two innate fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.2 Both are primal responses to evolutionary survival instincts.

You have learned every other fear from somewhere.

Public speaking? You learned people might laugh. Going online? You learned you might be exposed. Feeling unworthy? Maybe your parent was always on their phone, never giving you attention.

Your fears come from somewhere. Often from well-intentioned sources.

I was on the phone with customer service during the holidays. Torrential rain kept my kids indoors. A glitter bomb had exploded over rice (read as: was cut over my rice as my kid was making “potion“). I was annoyed.

The agent heard my kids laughing in the background, as they are all at an age where they gravitate around mom often. I was being conscious not to snap at them and ask them to quiet down. “Such joyful children!” she exclaimed.

Her quick remark was an instant reset. They are happy kids. That’s the entire goal of parenting young kids. But I’m extremely aware of how I project annoyance — because showing them I’m frustrated with their existence could instill a fear they’ll carry for decades. I was in a mood, but I will never be the emotional bellwether that determines if my kids can laugh or walk on eggshells.

A childhood of my dysregulation could become their permanent anxiety about taking up space. A new fear, created by me.

THE MORE FAILURE YOU PLAN FOR, THE MORE YOU WIN

My biggest wins came from trampling through fear of rejection. I applied to a NASA internship meant for aero/astro students as an architecture student. Got rejected. Then a candidate dropped and they called me back with an offer. I walked into the MIT program director’s office after I’d applied to make a case for myself face-to-face. Got told I was delusional (in so many words). Then I got in. I started an enterprise software company as a green graduate in an antiquated industry — which meant cold calling seasoned execs and fighting for their business. Only when I started a company did I realize how closely tied failure is to success.

In enterprise software, you might close 20 of every 100 deals you source. Sales professionals don’t call the other 80 failures. They call it their close rate. Their pipeline management.

For every 100 people you market to, a fraction show interest. A smaller fraction buy. The best salespeople know this going in. They don’t take the 80 rejections personally. They focus on moving the 20 forward. They build failure into the system. And they are coached on how to improve. Building an enterprise software company, one of the most valuable skills I’ve learned is enterprise sales. The principles apply almost universally.

Sales is what failing 50 times a month looks like in practice — calculated exposure to rejection, discomfort, and uncertainty for a goal.

And it takes 28 days to build a habit. So after 28 days of marching towards failure, it feels normal.

WHEN FEAR IS RATIONAL

Not all fear is inherited. Some fear is rational risk assessment. But you should differentiate risk assessment from fear or anxiety.

Fear of financial ruin when you have three months of runway left? Math, not trauma. Fear of burning a bridge with your biggest client? Pattern recognition, not inadequacy.

Neuroscience research identifies fear and anxiety as functionally distinct defensive systems.3 Fear activates when threats are immediate and certain. Your amygdala fires, you freeze or flee. Anxiety activates when threats are uncertain or distant.

Fear says: “There’s a predator. Run now.” Anxiety says: “A predator might be here. Assess. Decide.” Risk assessment says: “This is a bad decision, it does not align with my goal.” Or “This is a good limit to test, let’s go for it.”

The problem isn’t that you feel all three. It’s when you can’t tell them apart.

FAILURE AND POWER

My mom has a core belief that she repeated when I was young: with every new teacher, I could afford one bad exam. The first one.

Her logic was simple. The first exam gave insight into how the teacher tested — what they valued, how they structured questions, where they set traps.

After that, it was on me to take accountability. Study the way the teacher tested. Own my power rather than stay powerless. I could put myself at the mercy of the teacher only once. Failure was a viable strategy for success.

Failure isn’t an intuitive strategy for success because your prefrontal cortex handles logical risk assessment — planning, rational decision-making, weighing facts. But when strong emotions hit, your amygdala overpowers it.

This is why every uncomfortable situation feels the same intensity. Sending a cold email feels as threatening as financial collapse. Your nervous system treats ego protection the same way it treats survival threats. Once you reframe the challenge as a problem to be solved, you gather data and solve the problem. Ego and emotions aside.

CURIOSITY VS. INADEQUACY

The biggest advantage of being able to tell fear, anxiety, and risk-assessment apart is that risk-assessment creates more space for curiosity.

A nervous system driven by inadequacy asks: “What will this failure say about me?” A nervous system driven by curiosity asks: “What will this failure teach me?”

These mindsets are due to distinct neural pathways with different outcomes.

Curiosity-driven learning activates the brain’s dopaminergic reward circuit, creating a positive feedback loop between curiosity and learning. Threat-driven learning activates defensive systems — behavioral inhibition, hyper-vigilance, avoidance.

The same rejection email can illicit different brain activation patterns and different learning outcomes.

THE 2 PATHS

So, when you fail — you will either learn. Or you will confirm your beliefs that you are inadequate and confirm your ugliest fears. Wire your brain and judgment for path one.

THE 50 FAILURES BUILD THIS DIFFERENTIATION

Systematic failure doesn’t eliminate rational fear. It eliminates the noise.

After 50 uncomfortable moments where you survived, your nervous system recalibrates. You develop actual data: “I sent 50 cold emails. 40 people ignored me. I have a 5% response rate. if I send 100 emails, 10% might respond. If 1% bites on my offer, I know how many people to contact. I’m still employed. My reputation is intact. My self-worth didn’t collapse.”

Now when you face a real risk — the partnership proposal that could actually damage your credibility — you can assess it clearly. Your prefrontal cortex can do its job because your amygdala isn’t screaming that every risk is existential.

The difference between “this is uncomfortable” and “this is dangerous” is the crucial difference here. Everything uncomfortable registers as threatening, but once you can tell a threat apart from a growth tactic, you grow.

The person who fails systematically has trained their nervous system to differentiate signal from noise.

Ask yourself: “Am I avoiding this because the downside is genuine harm, or because I’m protecting my self-image?”

If you can’t answer clearly, your nervous system may be still operating on threat rather than curiosity.

YOUR 50 FAILURES: THE IMPLEMENTATION

The most important guide in success and failure is a goal. What are you trying to improve? When I am in a rut, it’s often because I’ve lost sight of what needs to get done. Once you have a goal, here are some ideas to push your comfort zone.

Week 1: Build Your Failure Baseline

Track every moment this week where you avoided discomfort. The pitch you didn’t send. The question you didn’t ask. The conversation you dodged. The idea you kept to yourself.

Don’t judge it. Just document it. Most people never realize how much they’re protecting themselves until they start counting.

Week 2: Pick Your Failure Categories

Your 50 monthly failures could span four domains:

• Professional risks: The client outreach you’ve been postponing. The partnership proposal that feels presumptuous. The pricing increase that makes you nervous.

• Creative exposure: Posting content before it feels perfect. Sharing work that reveals your process. Publishing ideas that might be wrong.

• Social/physical discomfort: Starting conversations with strangers. Asking for what you need directly. Setting boundaries that might disappoint people. Committing to the gym schedule.

• Learning edges: Attempting skills you’re bad at publicly. Asking “dumb” questions in expert spaces. Admitting what you don’t know.

File each idea under one of the categories below as a gut-check. What’s holding you back?

• Fear

• Anxiety

• Risk

The goal is to stretch from your comfort zone into your fear zone, and beyond.

Week 3: Schedule The Discomfort

Systematic failure requires systematic planning. Like Monday mornings: 3 cold outreach messages to people you admire. Wednesday afternoons: 1 piece of imperfect content published. Friday evenings: 1 uncomfortable conversation you’ve been avoiding.

The resistance will tell you to wait until you feel ready. The calendar doesn’t care about your feelings.

Week 4: Track The Pattern

After each failure, document what you feared would happen. What actually happened. What you learned about your assumptions.

Most of your fears are inherited, not earned. Disinherit them.

THE POWER IN STRATEGIC FAILURE

Most people are optimizing for comfort. They’re waiting to feel ready. They’re protecting their ego. They’re avoiding rejections. You’re going to collect those rejections strategically and deliberately.

While they’re still planning, you’ll have 600 failures by year-end. 600 moments where you chose growth over comfort. 600 data points about what actually works versus what you imagined would work.

The person who fails 600 times while others fail zero isn’t behind. They’re unstoppable.

Be unstoppable in 2026.

Helllooo, you made it to the end!! What did you think? What are your goals for 2026? I want to write a book. So your sub (THANK YOU) and feedback go far.

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I was at a parenting workshop at my mom’s school. The facilitator asked us to write what we remembered being called as children. Then what behavior triggered those remarks. Then the setting. Then name the voice in our heads -- Critic, People Pleaser, Perfectionist, Drill Sergeant.

He ended with this: “That voice you wrote? It’s highly likely the voice in your kids’ heads right now.”

After the session, my sister and I read our papers out for our mom immediately. “I had a tough time figuring out harmful things I heard as a kid. Let me tell you what I thought of.” My sister had the same experience. She read an inner voice that repeated “love you,” “sorry,” “value education.” My form listed: smart, adventurous, friendly, generous.

We then took our mom’s paper to prove the test out: was the voice in her head as a child the voice we consistently heard growing up? What she remembers from her childhood: Kind. Smart. Sweet. Ambitious.

A resounding yes.

YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM DOESN’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

Ambition is metabolically expensive — like fear.

And fear, when left unprocessed, turns into anger.

My mom is ambitious. So is my dad. And it’s no accident. They have been through hard things. My father left his whole family, alone, to start a life in America with little previous context. They have endured hardships. Sickness. A nearly life-ending accident for their first born, and on and on. But they have it together emotionally.

Because when you’re ambitious and emotionally regulated, ambition becomes a slow drip. A force that propels you daily. Not a moment of genius that yields years of return.

And anger? Anger also microdoses.

Unresolved anger is a pressure cooker with a slow-release valve. Every simple interaction gets marked by tone, frustration, edge.

And those moments shape the world around us, and even the beliefs of those around us.

85% of communication is nonverbal. Over time, these words and actions develop our kids sense of self.

So “It’s bedtime, can you brush your teeth?” becomes “You NEVER listen. You’re ALWAYS jumping around at bedtime.”

Those statements may sound familiar. Your child’s sense of self forms in those moments. And research confirms it that self-regulation is transmitted across generations through prenatal, social, and neurobiological mechanisms including parenting behavior, stress physiology, and neural development.1

Their nervous system shuts down after being reprimanded countless times a day. Then they become “lazy” — when really, their nervous system is protecting itself.

THE METABOLIC COST: AMBITION GOES DORMANT

Ambition doesn’t disappear when your body is managing chronic dysregulation.

It goes dormant.

Because your body needs that energy elsewhere — managing cortisol, inflammation, the constant low-grade stress response.

You can’t build when you’re busy defending.

Research on emotional regulation shows that chronic anger depletes the same metabolic resources needed for executive function. The prefrontal cortex -- responsible for planning, decision-making, ambition — gets hijacked by the amygdala’s stress response.2

TL;DR: Anger and ambition compete for the same fuel.

THE BEST SURGEON KNOWS WHEN NOT TO OPERATE

Fifty years ago, my dad’s surgery chief announced to his Harvard fellowship class: “The best surgeon is the one who knows when not to operate.”

Often in life, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Self-control isn’t suppression. It’s discernment. It’s metabolic efficiency at a limited return.

The same principle applies to anger. Just because you feel it doesn’t mean you express it. Just because your child frustrates you doesn’t mean you unload.

Every time you regulate instead of react, you free up energy. Energy that can fuel ambition instead of managing fallout.

THE INHERITANCE: THREE GENERATIONS IN ONE ROOM

At the end of the workshop, my seven-year-old daughter walked in. She was sitting next to me.

Unsure of what the words meant, she asked, “Do you do that?”

I said, “Yeah, I do my best.”

Three generations in one room. My mom. Me. My daughter. All shaped by my grandparents’ choice to focus their metabolic budget on ambition, not anger.

HIDDEN GENERATIONAL WEALTH

I often talk about how the biggest generational wealth is emotional inheritance. As a founder, a resounding number of founders I encounter had stable emotional roots. Parents who didn’t shame them. A strong sense of self. And as parents, we try so hard to set our kids up for success with extracurriculars and overscheduling. But the trust fund and the real estate are less valuable with a frazzled nervous system.

When you stop spending your metabolic budget on anger, you have energy left for ambition. For building. For creating the life — and the lineage — you actually want.

The voice in your head becomes the voice in your child’s head. And the voice in your child’s head determines how easily they can access their ambition.

Hi! If you are new here, welcome and thank you! My last post brought a lot of new faces. I am Layla, a startup founder and I make a lot of content on emotional regulation, building a business, and power. Excited to have you all here! Say hi in the comments.

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I was watching a TikTok the other day when a poet stopped me mid-scroll. He was dropping bar after bar, as he put it: “abundance requires control.”

He continued to say that a full cup needs a steady hand. You can’t run with a full cup. A full cup demands focus. When you have a full cup, you can’t move like you’re carrying an empty one.

It was one of those posts that made me stop and think. Abundance is a discipline, not a desire.

ABUNDANCE IS MISUNDERSTOOD

Abundance is almost always seen as a desired state. And one that is quantifiable.

But, often, we can’t quantify the thing that would satisfy us. How much money do you need to never desire money again? What kind of relationship would keep you fully satisfied forever? How many friends? Could you quantify your desires?

It’s human nature to never accurately quantify abundance. We think we want more. We need more. When often, a version of us a decade ago would have killed for what we have today.

Whether it’s relationships, health, intellectual success, or financial success — there’s something a version of you yearned for, for a long time. And you now take it for granted. Deem it inadequate, even.

Research confirms this. The hedonic treadmill shows us that lottery winners feel euphoric highs for short periods before stabilizing and returning to their baseline state (within months to a year, btw. The high is quick).1

We adapt. We recalibrate. We want more. We live life on an ever-shifting baseline, in search of satisfaction.

And it made me realize: abundance is a discipline, not a desire.

ABUNDANCE WITHOUT DISCIPLINE IS CHAOS

I once worked with a woman who fought to be in the highest-level meetings. She wanted visibility, presence, early access to news. So she worked her way into high-level conversations. And then, she checked out.

She was distracted. Unfocused. She contributed nothing.

She wanted the abundance without the discipline. Everybody picked up on it, she never really grew in her role.

What happens when you get what you want but can’t handle it? That girl in the meetings. The promotion that breaks you. The relationship that overwhelms you because you haven’t mastered your own inner state?

Abundance without discipline is just chaos.

To want more, you have to be willing to take on more — and do it well.

THE FULL CUP PARADOX

The people I know with the most abundant lives take on the most. And they often share the most.

Their abundance is a byproduct of surface area and goodwill. They take on more socially, at work, wherever. They develop a reputation for being high-capacity.

As a result, the world continues to recognize and give.

And they know that abundance requires saying no.

Because that full cup can’t take on more liquid. Real abundance means protecting what you have. The discipline of subtraction.

Every yes to more requires a no to something else.

In short, the girls who have it all give a lot too. And they say no often.

WE ARE DROWNING IN ABUNDANCE, BUT FAILING IN DISCIPLINE

I remember my dad watching me study one day. He recalled, in awe, “when I first moved to America, if I didn’t understand a word in my training, I would have to go to the hospital library and look it up. You just have this device on you — at all times — that gives you any bit of information in any language on any topic.”

I think about that moment often.

Our parents’ success was often a byproduct of their resources. Our success is often a by-product of our parents’ success. Research shows one-third to one-half of kids who were born into poverty will remain in poverty.2 Resources play a big role in access and upward mobility.

But suddenly, the floodgates of one resource have come pouring: information. AI has given us an adequate enough answer to any question at any time.

AI is a perfect example of abundance, and what it could look like with and without discipline.

I anecdotally read that generational wealth also fades after three generations. Another consequence of abundance without discipline.

THE AI TEST

If you’re using AI to take over your creativity, your output, your cognitive ability — you lack focus. You’re running with a full cup. You’re spilling everywhere, like Lyric says in the poem above.

If you use AI to dig up resources for you to think through, work through, challenge yourself — you approach abundance with focus and discipline.

Digital devices are the same. Are you doomscrolling six hours a day?

Our phones can easily represent abundance without discipline.

We all have abundance. But we don’t have discipline.

THE STEADY HAND

Abundance isn’t about wanting more.

It’s about handling what you have with a still hand.

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Hellloo! What did you think? Drop me a comment. I hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. I took a week off, as you may have noticed I broke my regular flow. It was nice to do nothing.

I’ve been thinking about this quote for weeks. It’s the kind of statement that sounds obvious until you realize how much we’ve built our entire world to contradict it.

We worship credentials and gate-keep opportunity and demand experience before we allow experience. We convince ourselves we aren’t ready. Ready to be founders, moms, married, whatever it might be.

But McKelvey is right. And the science backs him up in a way that should make every credentialed expert uncomfortable.

TOLERANCE FOR DIFFICULTY > KNOWLEDGE

Your tolerance for discomfort will take you further than your expertise.

When you challenge your brain regularly, the brain literally rewires itself. The anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) lights up when you take on something hard. This region sits at the intersection of multiple brain networks, integrating signals about interoception, executive function, motor planning, and sensory integration.1

Doing something difficult grows the brain.

The size of your aMCC is linked to motivation, will to live, and resilience. Higher persistence. Greater meaning. Stronger emotional control.2 Your brain is stronger when challenge exceeds comfort.

Neuroscience proves that the unqualified person willing to struggle has a structural advantage over the qualified person avoiding discomfort.

THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE WEALTH GAP

Two people can have the same education. Same opportunities. Same starting point. But one was raised by parents who were emotionally regulated. The other wasn’t.

That invisible gap compounds drastically over time.

I was at an indoor play space recently, during some LA rain. One father kept scolding his son, who was probably five. “Stop jumping!” “Give that back!” He didn’t give the child time to play, process, and react out of his own volition. The dad, who was clearly investing in an elite education for his child based on his private school backpack, was likely holding his kid back.

Research shows that parents’ perceptions of their children’s behavior are among the primary determinants of parenting stress.3 When parents perceive their children as burdensome or view their misbehavior as deliberate, they’re more likely to engage in harsh parenting.4 This creates a cycle: difficult child behavior impacts parental self-efficacy and stress, which then affects parenting practices, which reinforces behavioral problems.5

The kid who grew up being told they were difficult internalized it. They became self-conscious about what’s wrong with them instead of focused on solving problems in the outside world.

The kid who grew up with emotionally regulated parents built confidence. They learned to tackle challenges instead of doubting themselves.

One becomes the innovator. The other spends years in therapy undoing the belief that they’re the problem.

THE FIRST PERSON TO DO ANYTHING IS ALWAYS UNQUALIFIED

McKelvey says it better than I can: “If you think about the first human to do anything in the world, that person is never qualified. The first time man flew a helicopter or an airplane, it was done by somebody who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. By definition, the first person to do it is always unqualified.”

This paradox should embolden us.

We demand qualifications for innovation. But innovation, by definition, can’t come from the already-qualified. The already-qualified are optimizing the existing system. They’re not breaking it.

The Wright brothers weren’t aerospace engineers. They were bicycle mechanics.

Steve Jobs wasn’t a computer scientist. He was a college dropout.

The unqualified have an advantage: they don’t know what’s impossible.

STOP WAITING TO BE READY

The credential trap tells you to prepare more. Study more. Wait until you’re qualified.

That’s a strategy for staying exactly where you are.

The person willing to be embarrassingly bad at something new -- willing to activate their aMCC through repeated challenge -- is building the neurological infrastructure for tenacity while you’re waiting to feel ready.

Progress doesn’t require permission. It requires tolerance for being unqualified.

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I was sitting with a friend who was chatting about her path to “becoming” who she wanted to be. She talked about how for every 3 steps forward, it felt like she had taken 5 back. The conversation had shifted to the biggest threat we faced as an early-stage company.

The answer is the same for any goal: momentum.

It’s in becoming versus being. And that she had described her journey as one of becoming, she was already on the right path.

In an era obsessed with protecting our peace, we need to protect our momentum at all costs. Momentum is the gas that keeps you consistent, and consistency is what makes you unstoppable.

WHAT KILLS MOMENTUM:

Unclear goals, unclear path, and disengagement are the three primary buckets. What either category can look like is:

• Unclear goals. You’re not sure what you need to do, so you do nothing.

• Distractions. Social media. Other people’s crises. That friend who always needs something.

• Lack of motivation. The will just isn’t there.

• Negative feedback loops. Internal doubt or external criticism that makes you question everything.

• Procrastination. Which is really just unclear goals and distractions in disguise.

• Fear of failure. Never wanting to be wrong, so you never try.

• Burnout. When you can’t keep pushing because you’ve been pushing in the wrong direction.

• And most importantly: people kill momentum.

Image-obsessed people don’t just waste your time — they actively destroy your forward motion. Every crisis pulls you out of your flow. Every gossip session is time spent looking backward instead of forward. Every conversation that leaves you drained is fuel taken from the engine.

WHY MOMENTUM MATTERS

Momentum is the vehicle. Consistency is the by-product.

Momentum fuels consistency, and consistency delivers everything. Consistency leads to visibility and recognition. Consistency boosts your internal confidence. Consistency builds others’ confidence in you. Consistency increases your opportunity pipeline. Consistency develops your reputation. Consistency makes you more efficient through repetition. Consistency compounds opportunities.

But you can’t be consistent if you’re constantly pulled into other people’s chaos.

You can’t build momentum when your energy is being siphoned by people who drain rather than fuel you.

MOMENTUM = HABITS ON LOOP

Most of us think our interests predict our future. We think that because we want to be successful, fit, creative, or wealthy, we’re on that path.

We’re not.

Your patterns — how you actually spend your time, not how you wish you spent it — are the most accurate crystal ball you have. Not your vision board. Not your New Year’s resolutions. Your Tuesday at 3pm.

The question isn’t “What’s your goal?” The question is: “If your current habits continue for five years, where will you end up?”

You already know the answer.

THE FIVE PERSON AUDIT

List the five people you spend the most time with. Be honest. Not who you wish you spent time with, but who actually has your hours.

For each person, ask: After spending time with them, do I feel energized or drained? Do our conversations build something or just process drama? Are they moving toward something I respect? Do they protect or kill my momentum? If I become more like this person, is that a future I want?

Track just three days of your time. All of it. Where’s the gap between your time and your goal? That gap is your future leaking away.

The wrong five people don’t just influence you. They actively sabotage your trajectory.

THE DINNER TABLE TEST

I went to a friend’s house for dinner in college. The second we sat down, her mom started asking about mutual friends. Within minutes, it turned into a full gossip session.

For the entire meal, they talked about people. Friends, enemies, acquaintances — nobody was safe. Stories about who got fired, who gained weight, whose marriage was falling apart.

What struck me wasn’t just that they were gossiping. It was how normal it was to them. They didn’t see it as embarrassing or bizarre. This was just dinner conversation. The same way another family might discuss books or ideas or travel, this family discussed people.

I realized I couldn’t remember a single instance of sitting around with my parents talking about other people like that. Likely by design.

That dinner was a fork in the road I didn’t recognize at the time. I was looking at two possible futures: one where I absorbed that pattern, and one where I didn’t.

Here’s what I understand now that I didn’t then: that dinner table wasn’t just unpleasant. It was momentum-killing.

Every minute spent dissecting someone else’s life is a minute not building your own. That family’s entire social infrastructure was built around other people’s failures. Where’s the momentum in that?

They were serving as anchors in each other’s lives.

BEHAVIOR IS CONTAGIOUS

A study tracked over a million runners across five years.1 The finding: exercise spreads through social networks like a disease. But here’s the part nobody talks about — less active runners influenced more active runners, while the reverse wasn’t true.

The people dragging behind pulled down the people with momentum. The high performers didn’t pull up the low performers.

If you’re surrounded by people with momentum-killing habits, those habits literally spread to you. Your friends’ behaviors don’t just influence you — they infect you. Drama spreads. Gossip spreads. Procrastination spreads. The pattern of looking backward instead of forward spreads.

You think you’re different. You think you’re immune. You’re not.

Social contagion works through network ties. Every hour you spend with someone is an hour of exposure. Every conversation is a transmission event. And if the people around you have low momentum, you’re not lifting them up. They’re dragging you down.

This isn’t about being a bad person or lacking willpower. It’s biology. It’s how behavior works.

The question isn’t whether you’ll be influenced. The question is: who are you letting influence you?

I recently read a quote that said: “You cant manipulate someone who isn’t desperate to be liked.” It stuck with me because, often, people who drag you down are desperate to be liked at the expense of their focus, values, and discipline.

YOU CAN’T PAUSE BECOMING

Every day you’re moving toward something. Every conversation is practice for a way of being.

Look at your five people. Look at how you spend your time. Look at what’s happening to your momentum.

It’s a trajectory, and not a snapshot.

You can lie to yourself about your goals. You can tell yourself you’re different. But your habits, your patterns, your proximity — they’re telling the truth.

The gossip at that dinner table wasn’t just about other people. It was about a way of life. One where your significance comes from other people’s failures, where your momentum dies in service of drama.

So who are you becoming?

And is that who you want to be?

Leave a comment

Thanks for making it to the end! What did you think? I have been under the weather all week, but in the spirit of momentum, I have committed to writing weekly. So I finally pushed this out.

Recently, one of my kids said they want to YouTube. I wasn’t surprised — my kid is not an exception to the 1 in 3 kids who want to be creators.1 And I said, OK, what will you do on it? My kid didn’t have an answer. So I continued by saying YouTube is a medium. If there’s something you want to teach, and you build an expertise, we can talk about it. Attention without a goal can make you spiral out of control, as you don’t have a purpose to align to and become guided by vanity metrics.

Was I buying time? Absolutely. My kid is not starting a YouTube channel anytime soon. But the undertone of the conversation is far more insidious. We are living in a world where attention is king. Attention is profitable. Attention provides momentary fame and clout. And attention and retention are often at odds with each other.

ATTENTION IS CURRENCY

I was in a conversation with someone once, and she said, “I never understood why your guests never reposted your podcast.” I don’t have a podcast now, but I did a few years back. I didn’t have much of a response, outside of thinking about how it was a weird thing to observe and honestly not even something I observed. I didn’t have requirements to be on the show. And it hit me that we were thinking about things differently. She cared about attention. I cared about retention.

In your personal life, getting attention might mean being the class clown that prefers making people laugh to deflect engaging in any conversation that might expose your inadequacies, disrupting the class. In business, retention may mean finding people who are willing to engage with your products or thought leadership rather than people who engage with inflammatory political memes for “views.”

And we have a newfound Pavlovian relationship with attention, where our eyeball-catching outtakes get people to stop, look, and increase our metrics. Our follows. Our likes. One of the most dangerous phenomena happening today is the silent undercurrent orienting us all to optimize for attention over retention.

Attention is the ability to make somebody stop and look, for whatever reason. Attention is easy. Attention doesn’t require alignment. Retention is the ability to keep somebody coming back. Over and over and over again. Retention is hard. Retention is valuable. Retention does not survive without alignment.

ATTENTION IS EASY

Cancel culture reminds us that attention is pretty easy to solicit online. The easiest way to get attention is to talk trash or spew hate online, and the data proves it. A study analyzing 4.1 million tweets found that negative messages get retweeted and spread faster than positive or neutral messages.2 Multiple studies confirm that negativity in tweets increases the probability of being retweeted.3 And Stanford research on 30 million tweets from news organizations found that biased sources leaning into negative, highly charged content achieved about 12% higher engagement rates than balanced sources.4

Negativity gets people’s attention. It always has. It always will.

The evolutionary reason is said to be because scanning for threats kept us alive. The negativity bias provides an evolutionary advantage — it is more critical for survival to avoid a harmful stimulus than to pursue a potentially helpful one.5 The amygdala shows enhanced responses to negative stimuli across multiple studies.6

The brain prioritizes negative stimuli. The amygdala and attentional systems respond more strongly and rapidly to negative information.7 Negative content spreads faster and wider. This is evolutionarily adaptive — detecting threats quickly was critical for survival. The effect is universal — it holds across cultures, political ideologies, and platforms.

Negativity is also a crass mechanism to reinforce our dominance over others. Clout is a powerful drug, but more on that below in the section on insecurity.

Retention is very different from attention, because it requires a clear goal that is generally tied to a higher purpose and is driven by accountability. Retention for my Substack is marked by those of you who keep opening my newsletter week after week. Comment if you are here!

This newsletter often feels like an echo chamber. And week after week, people ask how to be successful on Substack. The only answer is to decenter attention. Because it takes a long time to get attention on Substack, let me explain the math.

If the average American reads 15 minutes a day, they read for 91 hours per year.8

If the average American scrolls social for 2 hours and 11 minutes a day, they scroll social for 796 hours a year.9 That means social media is consumed roughly 9x more than books, minute for minute, on average.

You have to optimize for retention. Not attention. Because even when you get attention, it’s short-lived. Someone smarter, hotter, cooler will come along. You’ll get pushed off your throne.

Retention is:

• INTERNAL: Holding onto your moral compass to keep your own personality within the bounds of the values you want to remain

• EXTERNAL: Having a message that serves a greater purpose and keeping people tuned in

• FOR PROFIT: Selling a product and retaining the customer over time

Even in business terms, retention is the strongest way to grow. People who are locked in — and retained — will continue to buy your product or your thoughts. In business, attention may give you leads, but retention is what closes deals and keeps a customer valuable for a long time.

While attention is cheap, retention is expensive. Companies have campaigns to nurture existing customers to ensure retention. I spend time every week stretching the limits of my brain to ensure retention. Retention requires purging people and things that work against your goal. I don’t chase viral topics. I don’t optimize videos for rage bait. I don’t engage with trolls. And I don’t participate in internet pile-ons to prove my moral superiority at the cost of someone who is down.

Most people are optimizing for attention and not retention.

But sometimes, you are forced to play the retention game in an attention economy — you become a target. We see this most frequently with female founders. Focused on retention, people might use them to get attention. Many of us saw the rise and fall of the #girlboss. Regardless of your opinion, the women were often focused on their business. But the harsh double standards women are held to in business ensured that an audience would be eager for any exposé if the leaders tripped and fell. And, inevitably, the leaders tripped and fell. Instead of growing their brands, they focused on neutralizing the negative attention.

Attention takes a lot of time. Either the recipient is pre-occupied with optimizing for attention, correcting public views that result due to attention, or hiding from attention. All are time consuming.

I just finished Glossy by Marisa Meltzer, where she talks about the death of #girlboss: she says high-profile female founders were being publicly eviscerated in ways that male CEOs simply weren’t.10 Think about Sophia Amoruso, Jenna Lyons, and others. The media coverage was brutal, and it followed a script — accusations of mismanagement, workplace culture controversies, discrimination lawsuits.

The double standard operates on multiple levels. First, female founders are celebrated for being “nice” and “authentic” and “building community” — these stereotypically feminine traits. But the moment they exercise the same hard-nosed business decisions that male CEOs make daily, they’re torn apart. They’re difficult, cold, calculating — and most importantly — they are dethroned.

She goes on to talk about how male CEOs can be demanding perfectionists (think Steve Jobs) and they become legends. Women do the same thing and they are labeled as toxic bosses. The system that holds women back is more insidious than we often acknowledge because it punishes women whether they conform to feminine stereotypes or reject them. There’s a narrative arc that only seems to exist for women: the rise, the celebration, the whispers of trouble, the exposé, the fall. And each step is covered with this moralizing tone. When WeWork imploded, Adam Neumann was portrayed as a cautionary tale about hubris. When The Wing had problems, Audrey Gelman was portrayed as a fraud who had betrayed feminism itself.

The author talks about how the same outlets that had breathlessly celebrated these “girlboss” founders turned on them with shocking speed. It was almost like the media had built them up specifically to tear them down. Because the media seeks attention. But a business seeks retention.

Of course, the elephant in the room that must be addressed is that millennial women were offered a #girlboss philosophy as the silver bullet. Work hard, hustle, get ahead, and life will work. And there was some terrible behavior. But I am not addressing either of those angles here, only acknowledging the indisputable reality that we love a powerful female’s public reckoning.

AVOID WHO YOU DON’T WANT TO BECOME

When it comes to retention, you need a goal to retain people for. Your goal needs an end state. And that end state relies on the compounding interest of change rather than the stagnation of comfort.

If you hang with people misaligned with your goal, you will feel one of two things:

One: Like you’re betraying your goal. You know your time is not being well spent. There’s misalignment. You feel it in your chest every time you’re with them.

Two: Like your friend group has betrayed your values. Because they deviated from your initial values. Or you deviated. Either way, someone moved.

Betrayal requires proximity. In order to be betrayed, you have to have thought you were standing on the same ground. And then the ground shifts. If you feel betrayal, something has shifted. Examine it.

It’s very hard to fix things within an existing model. You have to leave the model altogether.

INTEGRITY IS INDISPUTABLE

Retention requires a promise, and a promise requires integrity. Nothing better illustrates this than Zohran Mamdani’s debate a few nights ago with opponent Andrew Cuomo. “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity. And what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience.”

My jaw dropped. Because Zohran is in the business of retention. He wants as many viewers as possible to align with his message and vote for him. Zohran brilliantly clocked that while a leap in competence is plausible and celebrated (think janitor to CEO), a leap in integrity is unlikely. A lapse in integrity can be a lifelong stain.

INSECURE PEOPLE ARE MEAN

Insecurity is one of the hidden motives behind a certain brand of attention.

We already determined that being nasty on the internet has outsized returns. A separate point is that insecure people thrive off of being mean. We see this in influencer Reddit culture all the time. The people who support you end up resenting you later. They loved you when you were at their level. Then your growth makes them uncomfortable. “I used to love her.” “She used to be so real.” Early supporters often become late-stage saboteurs.

As I was thinking about attention versus retention, attention is a game that is easier for the insecure. Because the insecure don’t believe they can retain anybody. If you experience insecurity, I urge you to dig deep. Insecurity is lethal for goals and relationships.

But also, in the quest to be above attention, you have to avoid the insecure. If you’re around somebody insecure, it’s very hard to change around them. Because they are mean.

Here’s the mechanism:

Insecurity is a threat state. When someone is insecure, their brain is constantly scanning for threats to their self-image. Your change, growth, and success register as a threat. Not because you are directly harming them, but because comparison is automatic and they clock their lack of progress.

So they become mean. Meanness is a preemptive defense. They attack before they feel attacked, because by diminishing you they don’t have to diminish themselves in comparison. And it’s easier to tear you down than build themselves up. The criticism, mockery, or dismissal is them trying to restore the status quo where they felt safe.

Your change destabilizes their reality. If you were both stuck together and you grow, they are measurably worth “less” than you in their POV, confirming their worst fears of uselessness.

They regulate through control. Insecure people regulate their emotions externally, not internally. They need the environment to stay predictable. When you change, you become unpredictable. They can’t control you anymore. So they get mean to try to control you back into the box where they understand you.

Insecure people genuinely believe your win is their loss and experience zero-sum thinking. Not metaphorically — they feel it. Mirror neurons fire. Social comparison circuits activate. Your success literally feels like their failure in their nervous system.

You cannot grow around people who need you to stay small. They will punish every step forward. Not always consciously, not always dramatically — but consistently. The punishment might look like jokes, skepticism, withdrawal, or outright hostility.

This is why you have to leave. Not because they’re bad people. But because their nervous system is organized around keeping things the same, and yours is trying to change.

ATTENTION IS NOT FREE

Attention is a currency. If attention is worth a cent, retention is worth a dollar. We are all familiar with the saying that all press is good press, when artists are trying to reveal a work they entertain negative criticism to keep their names on people’s tongues. But with retention and a goal, you may want people to stay as an artist. And that’s the hard part.

COMPLAINER OR PROBLEM SOLVER

If you see a complainer, it’s a bad sign.

If you are a complainer, here’s how you change it: You’re one step away from fixing the issue. You have to move from being a complainer to a problem solver. Because problem solvers are the most valuable people in society.

Complainers point at problems. Problem solvers hold them. There’s a difference.

Complainers optimize for attention — broadcasting their problems to get sympathy. Problem solvers optimize for retention — people come back to those who can actually help them.

Below is a series of steps to morph from complainer to problem solver, the lifecycle of a solution. It also matches up nicely with attention versus retention.

• Identify issue

• Evaluate priority

• Determine accountable parties

• Brainstorm the desired outcome

• Match outcome to potential paths forward

• Assign to appropriate owner/timeline (or delegate/handoff)

• Execute solution

Problem solvers don’t just catch peoples’ attention, they produce results.

IN CLOSING

Retention thrives in emotional regulation and lack of ego. Attention thrives in ego. Maximize for retention in an attention economy.

If you find yourself optimizing your attention (it’s not your fault, we are taught that it’s the primary metric of our time) think about your purpose. What do you want to be known for? Why? How does that align with the actions you are taking? Are you building something that lasts, or are you building something that trends?

What did you think? I love your comments, please keep them coming! Or like. Or restack. It gets more people here due to the quality of my work rather than my personal pleas for attention, as most recs happen through friends. My purpose: making opportunity accessible.

Check out last week’s post while you are here

CITATIONS

“When someone doesn’t trust you, it comes down to two things: they think you’re incompetent, or they think you lack integrity. Does she think you lack integrity or does she think you aren’t very bright?” I asked directly.

She was unsure in her reply, which led me to respond: “The real issue is you may not trust yourself. The bigger problem isn’t when others don’t trust you. It’s when you don’t trust yourself.” Stick with me.

TRUST IS AT THE FOUNDATION OF EVERYTHING

Without trust, productivity collapses. People won’t be vulnerable or honest about their struggles. They avoid conflict, which means they never truly commit to solutions. This breeds a culture where no one holds anyone accountable, and everyone prioritizes their own success over team results, as is covered in the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.

With trust? Teams lean into difficult conversations, commit with clarity, hold each other accountable, and stay laser-focused on collective goals. Trust literally changes brain chemistry and increases productivity by 50% (Zak, 2017).

There’s a foundational academic paper that breaks trust into ability, benevolence, and integrity (Mayer et al., 1995). Let’s dive in.

COMPETENCE VERSUS INTEGRITY

Competence issues are fixable. When you intend to complete a project but fail, that’s an execution gap. You can learn. You can improve. You can rebuild trust through consistent effort, strategic thinking, and progress.

The classic hero’s journey proves this: the janitor who became CEO, the immigrant who arrived with three dollars and built an empire. These stories show expertise can be developed, regardless of context. Trust based on ability can be restored through: technical expertise, proven track record, reliability in delivering results, problem-solving, and sound decision-making (Mayer et al., 1995).

Integrity issues? Devastating.

I once knew someone who used unethical business practices to climb to the top. He got the 6-figure book deal. The incredible title. When his methods were exposed in a public scandal, he lost everything overnight. The warning signs were there — he was also known for infidelity. I never made an effort to restore our professional relationship. I didn’t trust him then. I don’t trust him now.

When you repeatedly make decisions without regard for others, it becomes your operating system. What people call “karma” is the natural consequence of systematically destroying trust through lack of integrity.

Unlike competence, integrity is about character. Once someone sees you as dishonest or morally compromised, every future action gets filtered through that lens. Even if you genuinely change, the skepticism remains. The damage requires active and prolonged effort to undo.

Integrity-based trust requires: honesty and transparency, fairness in how you treat people, consistency between your values and actions, accountability for your decisions, genuine care for others’ well-being, long-term commitment to trustworthy relationships, and avoiding self-serving behavior at others’ expense (Mayer et al., 1995).

But trust and competence are broad concepts. To understand whether you — or someone else — has a trust problem, you need a more granular framework.

YOUR TRUST SCORECARD

Brené Brown created a framework that breaks down exactly what trust looks like. Think about someone you don’t trust right now. Score them on her BRAVING framework:

B - Boundaries: Did they respect what’s okay and what’s not?

R - Reliability: Did they do what they said they’d do?

A - Accountability: Did they own their mistakes?

V - Vault: Did they protect confidences, or share information that wasn’t theirs to share?

I - Integrity: Did they choose courage over comfort, or did they protect their peace over the truth?

N - Non-judgment: Could you ask them for help without feeling shame?

G - Generosity: Did they assume positive intent?

Now here’s where it gets interesting: run yourself through this framework.

DO YOU TRUST YOURSELF?

Self-trust is the first casualty of shame or betrayal. When you hurt others or fail to act with integrity, you don’t just damage external relationships — you lose trust in yourself. Arguably the most important stakeholder.

This shows up everywhere:

• Someone rebuilding sobriety is essentially rebuilding self-trust

• An athlete recovering from an ACL tear is learning to trust their body again (50% never return to sport)

• A parent snapping at their kid and ignoring the emotional fallout is creating disconnection — not just from the child, but within themselves

• Someone being afraid to drive after a car accident

• Someone getting anxious at standardized testing after performing poorly

Brown talks about how, in pursuing sobriety, the biggest reward was regaining self-trust.

But self-trust doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s shaped by how we see ourselves — and how others see us.

THE FOUR PERSPECTIVES THAT SHAPE YOU

You are always subject to 4 perspectives, per the Uffe Elbæk Model:

1. How you see yourself

2. How you’d like to see yourself

3. How others see you

4. How others would like to see you

The best way to determine where you think your gaps are, versus the public POV, is the Uffe Elbæk Model. Fill this yourself then have a partner or friend fill it. Where are the gaps?

WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE OTHERS’ PERSPECTIVE CAN CREATE OUR OWN SELF-IMAGE

I don’t have my kids online. I used to. I didn’t think it was that nefarious — I don’t profit off them and they exist. Then I realized that a narrative was taking shape for each kid. My understanding of their personality was molding a persona they’d be expected to step into, anywhere they are recognized.

I had two serious forces working against my kids via my naivety: it’s very easy to form a first impression, per the neuroscience, but very hard to form a second. Because it’s cognitively heavy for the recipient. And when you tell kids who they are, they believe you.

I was making a mold they had to step into, and live up (or down) to — depending on my impression of them.

Every good story has a hero. A villain. A muse. My kids won’t be the internet’s hero, villain, or muse.

Which brings me to a bigger problem with how we shape identity — not just for our kids, but for ourselves.

HOW WE TEACH DISCONNECTION BY ACCIDENT

A friend recently told me about her daughter having a meltdown before school, crying about being late. She started rushing her out the door, but once they got to the car and her daughter kept crying, she stopped. Nothing spectacular for any parent — we’ve all been through it. Some of us may see it every morning.

But my friend turned off the ignition. She turned around, stared her child in the eye, and kindly asked: “This isn’t about being late. What’s going on?”

Her daughter opened up: “You yelled at me on the way out.”

She had an opportunity to connect.

Parents hold all the power. Everything we do shapes our kids’ future sense of self. She could have said “calm down,” “you’re fine,” “stop crying” — which teaches kids their internal signals are wrong. This is the origin of adult self-distrust. The research on interoceptive awareness and parental invalidation shows that dismissing children’s emotions leads to poor emotional regulation and distrust of their own internal states in adulthood (Linehan, 1993).

When someone with less power (like a child) expresses pain and the person with more power responds with interest or empathy, the relationship strengthens and builds confidence.

When that disconnection is ignored? The person loses touch with their inner world. Disconnection from others becomes disconnection from self.

And nowhere is this disconnection more visible — or more dangerous — than in how we use technology.

BEING CHRONICALLY ONLINE

I was on TikTok and someone said something that caught my attention: being chronically online might be the marker of future failure.

Honestly, I agree.

Why? The first reason is math. More time online = less time doing. But also because most goals happen in alignment with others. Real connection requires presence. Connection is the energy between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued — when they can give and receive without judgment.

But we disconnect. We get online to avoid people, deadlines. We let hours melt into brain rot and avoid conversations with our kids and spouses.

The disconnection breeds further issues. Disconnection registers in your brain the same way physical pain does. Social neuroscience confirms that social pain and physical pain share the same neural pathways (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004).

There are three forms of disconnection in Brown’s book:

• Social rejection - being pushed out of a relationship or group

• Social exclusion - being left out or ignored

• Isolation - being physically or emotionally cut off

Being chronically online often results from rejection or exclusion, but its most common danger is isolation.

Here’s the paradox: to break free from isolation, you need to be future-focused. But you can’t be future-focused while drowning in consumption.

YOU HAVE TO BE FUTURE FOCUSED

There’s a lot of hype around Taylor Swift this week. She released an album and it’s getting both praised and trashed. Nobody can deny her success, and I think it’s due to one primary factor: Taylor Swift outworks most people. Taylor Swift is dream driven; she is overly invested in the future.

She performed 149 shows across 51 cities on five continents over 21 months, with each concert running over 3 hours and 15 minutes. And recording an album mid-tour. Love her or hate her, she outworks most people. And sees the results as proof.

I’m not commenting on all the things working in Taylor’s favor, her talent or team or any of the factors that play in her favor. But she works. You can’t deny that she works and she works a lot, and that she’s future focused.

I always talk about how founders have to start out naive. And I saw this model that nailed the argument for me.

As a young founder, we were optimistic and naive about the realities of a business, but we didn’t care. We trudged through the good times and bad times, bad outweighing the good. Because we were future focused. And if we were reality driven, I’m not sure we would have gotten as far as we did.

We were dream driven.

I truly believe as a founder you have to be naively optimistic — until you reach the point of the journey where the naive optimism converts into poor judgment, at which point the same optimism can kill you. This alone needs an essay.

All in all, being future focused does not align with being chronically online. Or any form of consumption. Being future focused hinges on doing, not consuming.

But here’s the twist: you can also be too disconnected.

BEING CHRONICALLY OFFLINE

A friend looked at my phone recently. “397 unread texts?!”

“And 364 unread WhatsApps,” I continued, “and who knows how many emails or notifications because I turn those off.”

We’ve all heard ramblings around the dark side of being online — 24/7 work access leading to workaholism, and other more generic points.

But the less examined angle, wholly from my perspective, is the never-ending layer of expectations we put on ourselves by thinking it’s reasonable to be a message away from any person at any time.

We know that responding to texts and answering emails leads to a disruption in focus, so I don’t prioritize them. It’s not due to a dislike of anyone, rather a mental capacity issue. I’m comfortable with having hundreds of unread messages and apologizing to a friend when I realize I hadn’t seen their birthday message til months later.

But these expectations, more often, lead to a sense of guilt. I am a good person, doing something wrong. Leading to us perpetuating disconnection because you’re worried the person on the other side thinks ill of you. Leading to...more disconnection.

I’m not here to tell you to ghost everyone. I do my best to scan messages and reply when it’s time sensitive or from someone in my inner circle. But the expectation that we can be available — always — for anyone who has the 10-digits-to-our-attention at all hours of the day is profoundly unrealistic.

This section may seem counterintuitive to my upcoming section on loneliness. Because I strongly believe connection must be fostered, and I have a rock-solid circle of friends/family that I’m grateful for every day. Most of these articles are informed by a stimulating conversation with someone I trust and hold in high regard.

It’s mostly to say that boundaries have never been more needed.

Because when we fail to set boundaries — when we’re either too online or too disconnected — we end up in the same place: profoundly alone.

THE LONELINESS EPIDEMIC

When Surgeon General Vivek Murthy referred to loneliness as an epidemic amidst a global pandemic, I saw eyes roll.

But he was onto something.

Long before him, social neuroscientist John Cacioppo described loneliness as a biological warning system — like hunger or thirst.

• Hunger signals you need food

• Pain signals tissue damage

• Thirst signals you need water

• Loneliness signals you need connection

Denying loneliness makes as much sense as denying hunger.

Research shows loneliness increases your risk of early death by 45% (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). Compare that to:

• Air pollution: 5% increased risk

• Obesity: 20% increased risk

• Excessive drinking: 30% increased risk

Loneliness isn’t about how many people you know. It’s about how meaningful those connections are.

And here’s what makes loneliness especially insidious: we often try to fix it by forgiving ourselves instead of changing our behavior.

SELF-TRUST IS NOT SELF-FORGIVENESS

Self-forgiveness without restitution is just self-trust destruction with extra steps. The power move isn’t forgiving yourself — it’s rebuilding through action. Research on moral licensing shows self-forgiveness often leads to repeated violations (Merritt et al., 2010).

The path forward isn’t avoiding shame. It’s feeling it fully. And re-orienting towards who you want to be, actionably.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You can rebuild trust lost through incompetence. Commit consistently. Learn. Improve. Prove your capability over time.

But trust lost through lack of integrity? That’s a different beast. It requires fundamental character change — and even then, skepticism lingers.

The most insidious problem isn’t others not trusting you. It’s when you can’t trust yourself. That’s when disconnection becomes isolation, isolation breeds loneliness, and loneliness literally kills you.

Stop covering up. Be ok being unsure, but trying. Trust yourself enough to be honest about your failures, own your mistakes, and build genuine connections.

Because the alternative isn’t just being untrustworthy — it’s being alone with a version of yourself you can’t even trust.

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When my friend Tahereh Mafi (buy her new book, just out!) said this over lunch a few days ago, she named why change feels so lonely. I thought about her statement for a long time.

People don’t resist your growth because they’re cruel. They resist it because your evolution destabilizes their internal world. Research on relational schemas shows we encode others in fixed templates to reduce cognitive load (Baldwin, M. W., 1992). Our brains prioritize coherence and efficiency over objectivity. Updating established beliefs is cognitively costly. When you change, their brain has to do expensive work to update the file. Most won’t bother.

Your growth is inconvenient. Laborious, even.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of cancel culture.

I once knew a writer who got accused of plagiarism years ago. When it surfaced, she owned it immediately — took down the post, apologized, moved on. Years later, as her public image grew, the story resurfaced, as it inevitably would. I’ve never witnessed a faster fall from grace. It was like watching someone climb a ladder to heaven, only for it to split in half beneath them. I am not condoning plagiarism. But also, I can’t get behind an eternal public reckoning. for someone who has actively worked towards growth.

Someone does something wrong, acknowledges it, learns, corrects, moves past it — and their online reputation cements them into that worst version. The very people demanding change enforce a static image. For years. Sometimes for decades.

People lose trust when they think you lack integrity or competence. Plagiarism is both. But what are the rules for public redemption? Can we accept that someone has the capacity for growth?

If you are nodding in agreement, take a moment to reflect. Are you quick to cement people into cancellation?

But I think the lesson stands for those of us who haven’t plagiarized. People remember the version of you they have the most power over because it was useful to them. Your smallness confirmed their bigness. Your uncertainty justified their advice. Your dependence validated their competence.

In the most innocent case: it’s not personal. Most people won’t invest that energy. Your growth isn’t worth the effort to them. The brain recruits multiple regions — dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, rostrolateral prefrontal cortex — just to process information that contradicts existing impressions (Mende-Siedlecki et al., 2013). The more rigid the belief, the harder it is to update. Weaker beliefs shift easily. Strong ones require serious cognitive work (Li et al., 2025). If someone formed a negative impression of you, getting them to “unbelieve” that impression is neurologically harder than if they’d never formed it in the first place.

A more nefarious analysis: When someone can’t control you, they control your image.

And you can’t control someone’s perception of you.

THE WORLD’S CHANGING FASTER THAN YOUR IDENTITY

Trevor Noah spoke at a conference I attended a few days ago, he talked about identity. Previous generations did lots of different things, my grandpa was a merchant but I rarely hear about him in the context of his work. Then came the era of titles: I am a lawyer. A founder. An accountant.

That era is ending. There’s no insurance in identity anymore. As AI eats jobs, we’re moving back to doing. What you can do matters more than who you are.

Insurance used to keep us safe — our belongings, our job security, our skills. But algorithms predict and replicate our behavior now.

People used to work in federal government for insurance. Or stick to a Fortune 500 that guaranteed growth. Or medicine — a stable, respected path. I couldn’t advise my kids to work in government or stick with a global megacorp for job security. Radiology jobs won’t disappear. The government works slowly. But insurance is the wrong perspective.

Identity is a powerful tool. We perform better when we identify as the thing we’re doing. But identity can limit you or grow you. The difference is whether you’re attached to who you are or what you can do.

What carries us is resilience. The belief that, despite what’s happening, we can handle it.

RESILIENCE > INSURANCE

My cofounder and I were laughing recently about startup horrors we’ve survived. Moments that made our stomachs turn, made us throw up, and lose sleep. When we stayed up all night in the early days building a product that was expected to be implemented at a Fortune 500 the next day. And I’d get up at 2 am to implement our product in semi trucks, only for it to fail mid-training. I referenced the horror of those moments, and his response flipped my thinking.

“I like those moments,” he said, “because we did them. Nobody can take away that we got through them. And we can get through them again.”

Resilience moves after chaos. Insurance is hope with a contract — a bet that something bad won’t happen, but if it does, someone else will bail you out.

In our company, insurance might have been hiring seasoned execs (which is a hit or miss because we have had wins and fails) or being more seasoned ourselves (we had no work experience). A decade in, I know I’m capable of handling what comes. Resilience provides a more predictable outcome than insurance.

Resilience is required to run a startup. For when someone leaves without redundancy. When a customer’s demands outweigh the agreement. When architecture fails and software has to be rewritten.

Resilience is the speed of acclimating to change.

Trevor Noah said it: when a ball is thrown at you, it’s change. Whether you catch it or it hits you in the face. Change is inevitable. Your response is the most consequential reaction of your life.

HOPE ISN’T A STRATEGY

Hope isn’t a strategy. Neither is the illusion of control.

Most “resilience advice” is control-seeking rebranded: meal prep, morning routines, five-year plans. That’s rigidity pretending to be preparedness. Don’t quite your meal plans because of me (meal plans are a great idea), but realize that real resilience is range of motion.

People ask how I manage being a mom, founder, content creator. I just do. Things go wrong. I manage. We plan — Eisenhower said no battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one — but when things go wrong (always), we adjust based on priorities. School events. The gym. Family functions. I don’t have a silver bullet, but I can mentally regroup in an instant.

The people who over-plan are often the least resilient. They’ve built elaborate systems that only work in stable conditions. When chaos comes, they shatter.

Over-planning keeps you in constant fight mode. Research shows anxiety impedes the ability to shift flexibly between strategies — cognitive inflexibility is a hallmark deficit associated with anxiety. Even when planning, people display surprising rigidity through “functional fixedness,” constructing simplified mental representations to avoid the cognitive cost of switching approaches. You’re so busy controlling what happens that you can’t move when it does.

Resilience comes down to the ability to regulate your nervous system.

But also, resilience is easiest with high communication.

ASTRONAUTS ARE RESILIENT

At the same conference, two astronauts talked about what matters in space: resilience. But informed resilience, which means alignment and problem-solving along the way. So that when resilience is needed, it’s built on a foundation of context and creativity. The astronauts talked about how communication, up and down rank, regardless of rank, is a crucial part of any mission. About the cost of a single miscommunication — orbital missions can run $55 million per seat. Astronauts cannot afford to let them fail. In high-stakes operations, contribution beats credentials. Your rank doesn’t matter when the mission depends on solving the problem.

One astronaut told a story about a panel on the ISS that wouldn’t fasten. An entry-level engineer on the ground suggested cufflinks to secure the panel. They spent three days planning it in orbit and executed briefly. It worked. Both the creativity and communication — across ranks — led to a favorable outcome.

YOU CAN’T BUILD RESILIENCE IN A SYSTEM THAT NEEDS YOU FROZEN

People remember the version of you they have power over because their stability depends on you not changing. You can’t become resilient in environments that need you the same.

Hope says “maybe it’ll get better.” Control says “I’ll force it to work.” Resilience says “I’ll figure it out, even if it sucks.”

Figure it out, even if it sucks.

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The short story: I had emailed the director for a program I wanted, asked for office hours, hopped on a Chinatown bus from NYC, slept on a friend’s couch, and walked into his office terrified.

I made my case for admission. He disagreed. He told me that I wasn’t a great candidate for reasons A, B, and C. I doubled down. The conversation ended uncomfortably. I walked 30 feet from his office, sat on the stairwell, and collapsed into silent tears.

I blew it.

I sent him a handwritten note a few days later.

And that embarrassing meeting had the most consequential impact on my life to date. Because I got in.

On the flight back from Boston this weekend, I was reading Atlas of the Heart when I stumbled across something counterintuitive and true. The author spent an entire chapter explaining why perfectionism is the birthplace of shame. But buried in the research was a more devastating truth: perfectionism doesn’t just make you miserable — it cyclically destroys hope.

And hope is a crucial ingredient for success. Stick with me.

THE HOPE EQUATION

The book cites researcher C.R. Snyder’s definition of hope as a cognitive process requiring three components:

1. Goals (knowing what you want)

2. Pathways (figuring out how to get there and staying flexible when you hit walls)

3. Agency (believing you can actually do it)

(Funny enough, the framework aligns with my article below on why you’re in a rut: lack of goals, lack of path, or disengagement).

Remove any one of these, and hope dies. Perfectionism kills all three.

Research by Grierson et al. (2023) found that higher levels of agency and pathways thinking were associated with less depression and less anxiety. But perfectionism destroys your sense of agency — your belief that you can influence outcomes.

If I were a perfectionist, I would never have had the guts to walk into that director’s office in the first place. Because I didn’t think I would be perceived as the perfect fit. Because I wasn’t the perfect fit.

Which is exactly why I took the Chinatown bus to make my case.

WHY PERFECTIONISTS FAIL MORE

Perfectionism guarantees failure through a predictable psychological cascade:

• Perfectionists set impossible standards

• They perceive constant failure by projecting their own impossible expectations onto others

• This perceived inadequacy triggers deep shame about their worth

• Shame breeds inaction — they stop taking risks, withdraw socially, and quit before they can “fail” again

• The avoidance reinforces the original belief that they’re inadequate

• And this ^ has a ton of ripple effects

This cycle explains why perfectionism correlates with higher rates of depression, social isolation, and chronic underachievement despite the perfectionist’s desperate desire to excel.

Research by Berends et al. (2016) at Cardiff University found that “shame and perfectionism influenced one another in a cyclical pattern, in which shame drove perfectionism and not attaining high standards led to shame.”

Perfectionism promises to shield you from shame, but the research shows that it drives shame.

You can’t succeed in hiding.

And the hiding will also encourage feelings of being an imposter. And can birth an endless cycle where your self-doubt leads to feelings of fraudulence.

THE SHAME SPECTRUM

Research by Stoeber & Otto (2006) shows perfectionism correlates positively with proneness to shame and guilt after failure. In Atlas of the Heart, the author goes deeper:

• Shame: “I am a bad person”

• Guilt: “I’m a good person who did something bad”

• Humiliation: “I didn’t deserve what happened to me”

• Embarrassment: “That was cringy, but it’s not the end of the world”

Perfectionists live in constant shame. They think they’re managing risk, but they’re actually choosing the most dangerous emotional state possible.

REGRET LESS BY DOING MORE

Daniel Pink’s World Regret Survey with 23,000 regrets from 109 countries found that as we age, we regret inaction two times more than we regret what we did do.

The thing you’re afraid to try because it might not be perfect is exactly what you’ll regret not doing.

What is stopping you? Shame, guilt, humiliation, embarrassment — or perfectionism.

THE MASTERY PARADOX

Perfectionism is self-defeating.

Mastery requires curiosity. It demands seeing mistakes as growth opportunities. It thrives on what researchers call “desirable difficulty” — the kind of effortful learning that feels uncomfortable but creates lasting change.

Perfectionism kills curiosity because it makes you wonder what people will think. It reframes mistakes as failures instead of data. It avoids discomfort, and comfortable environments are not effective for deep learning.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS ACCELERATING THE CURSE OF PERFECTIONISM

I recently saw an influencer get dragged online for something she did a decade ago. Something stupid, sure. She owned it and moved on. But the internet hasn’t. Every time she levels up, her past pulls her down.

Gen Z goes out less than previous generations. It’s partly being online, but also a generation in constant fear of being canceled for imperfection.

Mental health is declining because we expect everything to be good. Despite the reality that life is roughly one-third good, one-third boring, and one-third bad — highlight reels convince us we should aspire to a fully peaceful life with all ambitions met, wrinkle-free.

The problem isn’t just unrealistic expectations. It’s that social media creates permanent records of temporary mistakes. Every stumble becomes eternal evidence of inadequacy. Every experiment becomes potential ammunition.

This creates a generation paralyzed by the fear that their learning process will be weaponized against them. And a generation driven by external motivation rather than internal motivation. A generation that is choosing safety over growth, hiding over trying, and perfection over progress. And a generation that is self-loathing when life isn’t a series of highlight reels.

The cruelest irony? The very platforms designed to connect us are creating the most disconnected, risk-averse generation in history.

HOW TO BUILD HOPE

Back to hope. Hope is a function of struggle.

Atlas of the Heart talks about how children learn hopefulness from parents who provide:

• Relationships with clear boundaries

• Consistency in support

• Opportunities to face and overcome adversity

Kids with high levels of hope have experience with struggle. They’ve been given chances to fail, recover, and believe in their abilities.

Without failure, there is no hope. And perfectionism prevents failure.

IN CONCLUSION

Before I left MIT, I ran into an old colleague who now co-runs the department I graduated from.

“Layla, you have no idea how crucial you were to me being here,” she said.

I was honored and shocked. “How?!”

“When I was considering the program, I ran into you. You gave me advice that played a role in getting me here. Thank you for that.”

It was tough advice, but apparently useful. What struck me was that both of us had found our way to the program through hard conversations — conversations where we revealed our desires and shortcomings, where we were forced to be seen.

Your perfectionism isn’t protecting you, it’s suffocating your future. Every time you choose looking perfect over being real, you’re trading hope for the illusion of safety. You’re picking short-term comfort over long-term success.

The research is clear: the people who win aren’t the ones who avoid failure. They’re the ones who get comfortable being uncomfortable, who choose growth over glory, who understand that being seen — imperfectly — is the price of getting what you actually want.

Stop trying to look perfect. Start trying to be known as curious, agile, and quick to improve.

Your future self will thank you.

Thank you for reading ALL THE WAY TO THE END! Leave me a comment and a like if you made it this far. It makes my day. What did you think?

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When I was in grad school, I got thrown on stage after Barbara Walters — in front of thousands. My head spun. I kept repeating "Don't faint. You will be ok."

I was terrified. But I did it anyway. And it was awesome. I made a lifelong friendship with my co-panelist Ibtihaj because of that talk.

Right after, my dad called. I was running on pure adrenaline. "How was it, Baba?!"

Him: "You were amazing. Do you want to do this?"

Me: "Do what?"

Him: "Speak at big forums? A lot?"

Me: "Actually, yeah. I think I do."

Him: "Then go study it. You will never regret studying it."

That conversation shaped the next decade. My dad raised us with one rule: do what you want, but be the best at it. He saw I was playing with the big girls — untrained, but with potential. Was I fine up there? Sure. Was I the best? Sharing an audience with Ibtihaj, Hillary Clinton, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy? No.

But I wasn't afraid of taking action before I felt ready.

That experience taught me something that would shape everything that followed: the people who succeed aren't the ones who feel ready — they're the ones who act anyway. Because here's what I've learned since then: your response to stress is the most consequential thing in your life.

Your stress tolerance determines whether challenges make your body shut down in defeat or step up in performance.

YOUR FEELINGS ARE UNRELIABLE DATA

Your feelings are unreliable data. Emotions evolved for survival, not success. Feeling "ready" is your brain avoiding risk — the opposite of growth.

You don't get better by studying. You get better by sucking publicly and iterating. Every expert was once bad at their expertise.

The fundamental difference between those who succeed and those who stay stuck is the willingness to act before you feel prepared.

WHY YOU’RE IN A RUT

Call it a rut. Writers’ block. A creative block. In some circumstances, you can even call it burnout. Let’s get right into it — you're in a rut for one of three reasons:

1. Unclear goals - You don't know what you want

2. Unclear path - You don't know how to get it

3. Disengaged - You don't want to do the work

Everything else — overwhelm, burnout, fear — fits into these buckets. Either you don't know what it is, you don't know how to do it, or you don't want to do it.

ISSUE #1: UNCLEAR GOALS

Research proves people with vague goals get lost in irrelevant details instead of taking action. Specific goals beat "do your best" in 90% of studies.

When your goal is fuzzy, everything becomes fuzzy. The skills you need, the next steps to take, the progress you're making — it all becomes unclear. Flow state research shows that when the challenge level doesn't match your skill level, you fall out of optimal performance. But if your goal isn't clear, you can't even assess the challenge.

Stop being precious about "finding yourself." Pick something specific and commit. You can always course-correct later.

ISSUE #2: UNCLEAR PATH

You know what you want, but you're paralyzed because you don't know how to get there. Or worse — you do know the path, but you're waiting to "feel ready."

"Readiness" is a luxury belief. Most successful people couldn't afford to wait until they felt prepared. Only privileged people have the safety net to endlessly prepare, research, and optimize before starting.

This explains why wealthy kids often don't outperform their parents as much as kids who watched their parents build wealth from nothing. When you have resources, you can afford to wait. When you don't, you learn by doing.

Readiness isn't just a luxury — it's a trap that keeps you stuck.

ISSUE #3: DISENGAGEMENT

You're checked out because you either don't care about the goal or don't believe you're capable of achieving it. Which is it?

If you genuinely don't care, stop torturing yourself. Let it go and find something that actually matters to you.

If you think you're not good enough, that's not a reason to quit — it's a reason to start building your tolerance for being bad at things. Every expert was once a beginner who kept going despite being…a beginner.

Stop waiting for confidence. Start sucking, and get better through repetition.

THE ACTION CLARITY LOOP

Clarity doesn't lead to action — action leads to clarity. Studies in cognitive behavioral therapy show behavior change precedes mindset change in 73% of cases. You don't think your way into acting; you act your way into thinking.

The opposite of action is not inaction. It's distraction. And distraction is often an unhealthy escape from the things we know we need to do. Staying in action creates traction.

Which brings me to one of the most counterintuitive principles I've discovered: sometimes the best way to take action is to embrace being bad at something. Most people think they need to be qualified before they start. I've learned the opposite is true.

STRATEGIC INCOMPETENCE

Embrace being undertrained. Research on the Dunning-Kruger effect shows people who stay "beginners" in adjacent fields outperform experts who over-optimize in narrow domains.

My speaking example proves being undertrained was an advantage. When you're not "prepared," you're not trapped by what you think you know. You adapt faster. You innovate more. You don't have the expertise to tell you something is impossible.

Expertise makes you worse at new challenges, not better. Studies of medical professionals show that newer doctors often outperform experienced ones on certain diagnostic tasks because they haven't developed cognitive blind spots. Fresh eyes see patterns that expert eyes miss.

Let me show you exactly what this looks like in practice. It's one thing to understand these principles intellectually — it's another to see how they play out in real life.

FORCE MOMENTUM WITH ACTION

Speaking of Ibtihaj, one night in 2020, I was talking to her over a casual walk. She told this incredible story about how she prevailed in fencing — despite being on a team that excluded her. I thought about how so many people in my orbit have figured out how to do hard things. Sharing the roadmap became a personal mission.

That night I decided to do a podcast, so I texted my friend Isra Chaker. "Hey, are you free next Saturday? I'd love to have you on my podcast."

She had no idea, but I had no podcast. No mic. No clue how to make one. No software. But I knew I could figure it out. The podcast was successful and well-listened to. Both Isra and Ibtihaj were guests.

Since I had made the commitment, I had to follow through.

I lose count of how many friends seek advice each year on starting podcasts, blogs, companies. The ratio is always the same: 1 in 10 actually begins.

Why do so few people start? Because we've been conditioned to believe that comfort equals safety. But here's what the research reveals about our comfort obsession — and it's more dangerous than you think.

COMFORT WILL KILL YOU, LITERALLY

Your stress response is your success response — they're the same system

Stress is not the enemy, stagnation is.

Research shows that stress isn't inherently dangerous, but your relationship with stress determines its impact. Studies find that your mindset changes your biology when it comes to stress. If you treat stress like it’s harmful, it will damage your body. If you treat stress like training, your body treats stress as strengthening.

Changing how you think about stress literally changes your body.

Another paper found When you believe stress is preparing you for performance rather than damaging you, your cardiovascular system, hormone levels, and nervous system respond differently to the same stressor. It's like the difference between your body treating stress as:

• Poison → Fight it, shut down, protect against damage

• Medicine → Use it, adapt to it, get stronger from it

The key factor for whether stress helps or hurts you depends on two things: do you feel capable of handling it, and does it matter to you. When we are in a challenge state while managing stress (resources ≥ demands) versus a threat state (demands > resources), your cardiovascular system prepares for performance. When it detects a threat, your body goes into damage-control mode (like preparing for injury).

The longest-lived populations on Earth — the Blue Zones — share one key trait: they face regular, manageable stressors throughout their lives. Complete comfort isn't just limiting your potential; it's shortening your lifespan.

THE STRESS TOLERANCE LOTTERY

Now, you might be thinking: “This sounds great in theory, but what if I'm just not built for stress?” Fair question. The truth is, some people do start with advantages when it comes to stress tolerance, but it's not what you think.

Stress tolerance is often inherited — not genetically, but through emotionally regulated parents. Your brain is plastic, so you can develop this skill even without that advantage. But having calm parents is like starting life with a trust fund of nervous system regulation.

The biggest predictor of stress tolerance isn't your genes, it's whether you had emotionally stable parents. Neuroplasticity means you can build this skill later, but growing up with regulated parents gives you a massive head start. As a founder, an overwhelming number of successful founders that I come across were raised by with regulated parents. As you can imagine, being a founder requires extremely high stress tolerance.

Stress tolerance is generational wealth in disguise: calm parents. Your brain can learn regulation at any age, but some people start with a nervous system inheritance that others have to build from scratch.

The most underrated form of privilege? Parents who didn't pass their stress to you. Neuroplasticity means it's never too late to learn, but some people got a 20-year head start on emotional regulation.

COMPLETELY ANECDOTAL SIDE NOTE

I want to share something personal that illustrates how stress tolerance can be built through circumstance, but through another lens.

I wear hijab, and I have worn hijab since 9/11. Millennial Muslims lived through serious identity trauma — the hijacking of our identity and the reclamation that followed. In choosing to wear hijab, despite its potentially negative symbolism in certain environments, I developed a special kind of resilience and kinship with fellow hijabis. We knew how hard it was, but we prevailed anyway.

Hijab was both a personal decision and a public declaration — a way of standing our ground despite others' perceptions. As hijab became normalized in the years that followed, a stress-tolerance calcified in many of us. An identity emerged that could look anybody in the face and honestly say, "I don't care what you think about me."

I genuinely credit my decision to stick with hijab for contributing to my high stress tolerance and low external validation needs. When you've navigated the world with a visible marker of difference during one of the most challenging periods in recent history, you learn that external pressure can't define your internal worth. That resilience becomes a superpower that extends far beyond any single identity marker.

This experience taught me that real preparation isn't what most people think it is. We've been told that preparation means studying, planning, and getting ready. But I've learned something different.

THE REAL PREPARATION

This is where everything I've been saying converges into one crucial insight: We're in a comfort epidemic. Everyone's protecting their peace, avoiding hard conversations, and optimizing for ease. But the need for comfort at all costs comes with a real cost: your potential.

Research shows that moderate stress leads to resilience, better cognitive functioning, and lower risk of mental health issues. We're not just avoiding discomfort — we're avoiding the very thing that makes us stronger. Or avoiding the tools to help us cope with stress, so that hard times make us stronger rather than more brittle.

We reach for apps to escape discomfort, scrolling endlessly to keep our minds distracted from anything meaningful or challenging.

Or, we prepare and over-think to achieve comfort. But the cure for feeling unprepared is not more preparation. It's:

1. Taking action before you feel ready

2. Reframing stress as preparation for performance

3. Building systems that force you forward

4. Embracing strategic incompetence

Your ability to reframe stress, take imperfect action, and build social support systems can literally be the difference between thriving and dying.

Very few can afford to wait. The rest of us have to build while we learn, fail while we grow, and prepare by doing.

That's not a disadvantage. It's a superpower.

You made it to the end!!! Please leave a comment and a like, it makes my day. And helps more people find me! What did you think of this week’s piece?

If you enjoyed this, you may like last week’s piece

As I listened to her speak, I asked myself: do my kids expect 66% of their time to be mundane or bad? Have I prepared them to cope with 66% of their time to be mundane or bad? Or do I jam an iPad down their throats the minute I need quiet? Do they see me rushing to my phone the minute I get bored (despite literally writing articles on how crucial boredom is for success)?

This article — my most popular one — explores how a tolerance for boredom often develops in emotionally regulated environments

We're living in a world that's convinced our children that perfection is normal. With global screen time averaging 6-7 hours daily, kids consume highlight reels and mistake someone's curated Instagram for achievable reality. Most adults are guilty of this too. Meanwhile, boredom — the birthplace of creativity — has been systematically eliminated from our lives. What was once idle time has been claimed by social media companies, determined to saturate every moment of our day with stimulation in the name of reach — under the guise of connection.

THE RULE OF THIRDS

In a world where emotional regulation is mostly taught at home (only if you won the parental lottery and have parents who can regulate themselves) the rule of thirds serves as a necessary reality check. To thrive in a life that's one-third amazing, boring, and terrible, you need three specific skills.

• For the 33% that's amazing: You need discipline to capitalize on momentum and good circumstances.

• For the 33% that's boring: You need mental fortitude to stay productive — or remain comfortable while wholly unstimulated — when nothing feels exciting.

• For the 33% that's terrible: You need stress tolerance to perform under pressure and navigate adversity.

And when your emotional regulation and stress tolerance don’t meet your potential, you get in your own way.

But also, the moment your emotional regulation catches up with your potential, nothing stands in your way.

I know this because the rule of thirds applies especially well to startups. And as a founder, I’d argue the scale often skews heavily away from amazing for different stretches of time.

The mathematics are brutal. But they are simple.

NO DUMB QUESTIONS

When I was younger, I asked my (now) 87-year-old uncle how he maintained his morning workout routine despite a demanding job and abundant personal life. His response influenced how I think about discipline forever:

"When I do something, I avoid the dumb questions."

He was being cheeky, but he wasn't wrong. For most things in life, the barrier isn't difficulty level — it's the energy we waste negotiating with ourselves about whether to start.

My uncle had eliminated decision fatigue by making the decision once instead of making it every morning. He didn't wake up and debate whether to exercise. He woke up as someone who exercises. At dawn. Daily. And for decades.

Studies confirm what my uncle knew intuitively: getting started consumes more neurological resources than continuing.

Each choice is a step carving the path you’ll eventually call your story.

Discipline isn't built through grand gestures — it's constructed through a million tiny choices that compound into the story of your life.

DISCIPLINE BEATS TALENT

But in a world where talent earns clicks, likes, and views, discipline often falls by the wayside. It’s the silent hanger that holds talent in place — essential, but rarely celebrated. And like a coathanger, your work crumbles without it.

In 2002, scientists discovered that self-control predicts academic achievement better than IQ. The capacity to regulate attention, emotion, and behavior in the presence of temptation consistently outperforms raw intelligence.

When I stumbled upon the research, I recalled something my mom repeated to me as a kid. “Be resourceful with everything except paper, Layla – especially when it comes to math. There is nothing that responds better to repetition than learning math.” She was right. The most disciplined person in the room beats the smartest person in the room.

Your ability to manage yourself matters more than your natural ability. And your ability to manage yourself lies heavily on your perception of yourself.

Because consistency is your only advantage.

PROCRASTINATION IS NOT A TIME MANAGEMENT PROBLEM ITS AN EMOTIONAL REGULATION PROBLEM

Stop buying planners and downloading productivity apps and trying to manage your time better. High self-control individuals aren't born with superhuman willpower. They're simply better at managing negative emotions without avoiding the task at hand. Because most hard things are not inherently hard. Getting started is 50% of the cognitive load.

But when you’re a dopamine addict, addicted to the thrill of a hit — disguised as a Tiktok — or when there is a knowledge gap between what you need to do and where you are, you freeze. You do other things. Neuroscience reveals that procrastination is essentially poor mood regulation disguised as laziness. It's your brain choosing "feel good now" over "feel proud later."

I recently learned that scrolling lights up the same part of the brain that pulling a slot machine does. The anticipation of what’s next keeps you excited. TL;DR, we are addicts — but are gambling with our lives. And until we get a grip of it, we are cooked.

The solution isn't more willpower. It's better emotional regulation skills.

Your procrastination isn't a time management problem — it's an emotional regulation problem.

Instead of judging yourself for lacking discipline, you can develop the emotional intelligence to notice what you're avoiding and why. What’s scaring you? Do you think you’ll fail? Does the silence of boredom directly interfere with the normalcy and expectation of chaos you developed in your childhood?

YOUR BODY IS THE MOST ACCURATE REPORT CARD

If you want to see what your daily decisions really cost, look in the mirror.

New research from Finland tracked individuals from age 27 to 61, revealing something profound: cumulative behavioral patterns have far stronger health associations than current behaviors alone. Your body doesn't just reflect what you did yesterday — it's the physical manifestation of millions of tiny decisions made over decades.

Those who consistently smoked, drank heavily, and avoided exercise didn't just receive health warnings. They lived measurable consequences:

• 38% more depressive symptoms than healthier peers

• 1.5x higher metabolic risk for diabetes and heart disease

• Nearly a full point lower self-rated health on a five-point scale

• Significantly reduced psychological well-being in daily life

Bad habits don't work solo. They orchestrate together to compound your suffering.

The flip side: good habits compound the same way.

EIGHT DECISIONS THAT ADD 24 YEARS TO YOUR LIFE

Science has quantified longevity. Adopt these eight behaviors by age 40, and add 23-24 years to your lifespan:

1. Don't smoke

2. Move your body 30+ minutes daily

3. Consume alcohol moderately (My personal choice: abstain completely)

4. Eat predominantly whole foods

5. Maintain healthy body weight

6. Practice quality sleep hygiene

7. Develop effective stress management

8. Avoid opioid use

Notice something important: none of these require exceptional talent. All require consistent execution.

The gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it isn't an information problem. It's an implementation problem.

ONE MILLION TINY DECISIONS IN PRACTICE

The research on micro-habits is staggering:

• One minute of daily vigorous activity reduces mortality risk by 38% over six years.

• A 15-minute post-meal walk cuts heart attack risk by 40%.

• Even taking stairs instead of elevators measurably reduces disease risk, including cancer.

You don't need a complete life overhaul. You need faithful execution of tiny, strategic actions.

PERFECTIONISM WILL BE YOUR DOWNFALL

Sometimes you don’t start because you’re waiting for perfect. But perfectionism doesn’t push you to achieve more — it traps you into achieving less.

When perfectionists face challenging tasks, the fear of failure takes over. Instead of progress, they spiral into avoidance and disengagement.

In trying to avoid failure, perfectionism guarantees it.

Perfect becomes the enemy of done. Done becomes the enemy of started. My uncle understood this when he eliminated the "dumb questions" that keep most people stuck in the planning phase.

MAKE IT WHO YOU ARE

The research-backed hack: when goal-directed behaviors become habitual, action initiation transfers from conscious motivation to automatic response. Once behaviors become truly habitual, you no longer need motivation to maintain them. The habit becomes integrated into your identity.

Instead of "I want to exercise," you become "I am someone who moves daily."

Instead of "I should eat better," you become "I am someone who nourishes my body."

Instead of "I need more discipline," you become "I am someone who keeps commitments to myself."

The semantic word play transforms into neurological rewiring.

YOU HAVE 936 WEEKENDS

You get exactly 936 weekends with your child before they turn 18. Meaning, you might change your LED lightbulb two times before they are out of the house and off to college.

Every interaction is simultaneously ordinary and irreplaceable. Every moment you model emotional regulation, they're learning how to manage their own inner world. Every time you show them consistency over perfection, you're giving them permission to be human while still pursuing excellence. During your 66% of average and bad moments, has your reaction led to fear or growth in your children?

Your daily decisions aren't shaping your life and teaching your children what's possible for theirs.

EVERY DECISION IS AN INVESTMENT

My uncle told me what behavioral science now proves: small actions, repeated consistently, compound into extraordinary results over time.

Every decision is a penny invested. Some buy lottery tickets — instant gratification with uncertain returns. Others go into savings — delayed gratification with compound growth.

A single penny won't make you wealthy. But how you invest millions of pennies determines whether you build lasting prosperity or stay financially broke.

The same principle governs your health, relationships, career, and character.

My uncle was right: avoid the dumb questions. Make the decision once. Become the person who doesn't negotiate with themselves about doing what they said they'd do.

You don't need motivation. You need systems. You don't need perfection. You need progress. You don't need tomorrow. You need the next ten minutes.

The person you're becoming is watching every choice you make today.

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YOU READ THE WHOLE THING! Thank you 🙏 Please leave me a like and a comment. It makes my day, and I thoroughly enjoy seeing the support.

My five-year-old was holding an oil painting I'd found in my parents' storage. I painted it in college. It was beautiful.

"I don't know how," I said.

He looked at the painting. Then he looked at me. Then he looked back at the painting. He looked perplexed.

My words weren't wording.

What I couldn't explain to a five-year-old: I used to know how to paint. But somewhere between then and now, I convinced myself I'd forgotten.

And when I came across research on comfort zones, one truth hit me with the force of a cold slap: My comfort zone was shrinking.

We think comfort zones are neutral — that if you're not actively expanding them, they just stay the same. We think our capabilities remain stable until we decide to grow them.

We're wrong on both counts.

Your comfort zone isn't static. It's shrinking. Every single day you don't challenge it.

YOU’RE EITHER GROWING OR SHRINKING

There is no maintenance mode for humans.

The brain is similar to human physiology, but more brutal. When I tore my ACL, I lost years of muscle mass in months. Cardiovascular fitness research finds that after six weeks without challenge, as much as 80% of fitness can be lost.

Your psychological comfort zone is even more fragile.

When you're frequently stepping toward the edge of comfort — trying new things, stretching yourself, tolerating discomfort — your comfort zone stays flexible and expands. You build tolerance for uncertainty, for social risk, for learning curves. The same way a more muscular body can tolerate physical stress.

The moment you stop, your nervous system begins an aggressive downsizing operation.

According to the research, when you stop trying, you don't just plateau. You actively:

• Reduce your tolerance for discomfort: What once felt only mildly uncomfortable starts to feel overwhelming because you've lost practice at handling it.

• Shrink your exposure bandwidth: If you stop having difficult conversations, even small confrontations feel unbearable later. If you avoid travel, going even a short distance from home can spike anxiety.

• Narrow your identity: Comfort zones aren't just about activities — they shape how you see yourself. If you only repeat what's safe, your sense of who you are becomes restricted.

• Practice avoidance looping: Avoidance temporarily reduces stress, which reinforces the habit. Each avoidance makes the avoided stimulus seem bigger and scarier next time.

Your nervous system is designed to help you survive, not thrive. And in survival mode, the safest strategy is to make your world as small and predictable as possible.

The problem? We're no longer trying to survive. We're trying to live.

THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE OF GROWTH (AKA WHY I NEARLY LOST MY TEETH)

I was recently telling my kids about how I went into a 60mph batting cage as a kid because I was fearless. But I was also stupid. The lack of technique in that high-discomfort environment led to a bad mouth injury.

The crucial lesson: Not all discomfort is good discomfort.

The Yerkes–Dodson Law explains why my adolescent brain made such poor choices. Performance improves with moderate stress, but declines if stress is too low or too high. Being too comfortable leads to stagnation. Being terrified leads to shutdown.

Most people think comfort zones are binary. You're either in or out. You either can or can't. But comfort operates on a spectrum with three distinct zones:

• Comfort Zone: No stress, no growth

• Growth Zone: Optimal stress, maximum learning

• Panic Zone: Too much stress, system shutdown

Your goal isn't to live in panic, but to teeter on the edge between comfort and growth — uncomfortable enough to stimulate neuroplasticity, not so scary that you freeze.

The growth zone is different for everyone, and it shifts constantly based on your current capacity.

What feels like growth zone for an Olympian might be panic zone for an accountant. What feels like growth zone when you're 25 might be panic zone when you're 45 and haven't challenged yourself in years.

The key isn't finding the perfect level of discomfort. It's building your capacity to handle increasingly uncomfortable situations over time.

STRETCH YOUR BRAIN EVERY DAY

I remember reading research about how it's easier to develop a competent performer into an extraordinary one in professional environments, while going from no skill to competent is a much steeper climb with lower success rates. This aligns with Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) research, which shows that learning is most effective when tasks are just beyond the individual's capabilities but achievable with the help and guidance of someone more knowledgeable.

ZPD suggests you can more easily stretch existing skills because:

1. You have foundational knowledge to build on — existing frameworks accelerate new learning

2. Smaller cognitive leaps required — incremental progress feels manageable rather than overwhelming

3. Existing neural pathways can be expanded — the brain strengthens established connections more readily than creating entirely new ones

Learning and pushing yourself works best when it becomes a consistent state of being, not a sporadic decision you make when motivated.

BEING A FOUNDER IS EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE

I thought about discomfort in the context of my founder journey, and I realized something unsettling: Every major breakthrough in my business came from doing things that felt impossible at the time.

When we first started the business, we didn't have paychecks. That felt scary.

Then we had small paychecks.

Then pitching enterprise customers felt scary.

Flying coast to coast felt like I was stretching myself to my limits. Then speaking to audiences felt scary.

Each level of discomfort that I conquered became my new baseline. But also, the thought of anything I don't do regularly today feels viscerally uncomfortable.

I was recently advising first-time founders, telling them how they need to sacrifice everything for leads. How I once walked down a cold Boston street into an industrial zone, introducing myself to businesses, asking to see their software.

But as I described it, I cringed.

We've since built systems that expose me to less rejection. We have inbound leads now. We have a sales team. I don't have to do the uncomfortable things anymore.

And that's exactly the problem.

I talked about this last week in a post on why I make content — it's partly because when I don't create for periods of time, I experience the same anxiety at the thought of posting that I used to feel about cold-calling.

My comfort zone has contracted around my success.

YOUR PHYSIOLOGY IS CONSPIRING AGAINST YOU

Your shrinking isn't just psychological. It's biological.

Your brain loses 5% of its volume every decade after 40. Dopamine and serotonin production drops. Neural pathways you don't use literally weaken and die. Physical mobility decreases. Social circles contract. We stick to familiar routines.

Dr. Adam Gazzaley from UCSF put it bluntly: "People seeking comfort and a less demanding life unwittingly accelerate their brain's deterioration."

TL;DR: We think we're being kind to ourselves by choosing comfort. We're actually killing ourselves slowly.

Each safe choice makes the next risk feel exponentially bigger. Each avoided conversation makes the next difficult discussion feel impossible. Each familiar routine makes novelty feel threatening.

Until you're living in a prison built one comfortable choice at a time.

And it isn't laziness. This is your nervous system doing exactly what it's supposed to do — protecting you by making your world smaller and smaller.

The very mechanism designed to keep you alive is slowly suffocating the life out of you.

DISCOMFORT IS A LOTTERY TICKET

The most impactful moments of my life have been a result of being extremely uncomfortable.

I applied to NASA for an internship I didn't qualify for. Got rejected, then got in. I walked into MIT office hours where the director told me I had no place there. I handled his objections and got in. I started a company in a space I knew nothing about and became an expert.

None of this felt good. But it taught me I could survive being seen as incompetent.

Much of my success comes from my high tolerance for embarrassment. And fear. And boredom.

DISCOMFORT IS A MUSCLE

An article that has stuck with me since I read it revealed the intense fear that winter Olympic athletes face. We tend to think of bravery as a personal trait, when in reality — bravery is a muscle.

EMBARRASSMENT IS DATA (NOT PUNISHMENT)

I spent last week potty training my toddler. As I endured this torturous journey, I was struck by the vocabulary itself: "training." Which implies time to build expertise. I am systematically pushing this child out of her comfort zone.

As adults, we've forgotten that embarrassment is training. Every time you post something vulnerable, ask for a raise, or present your work, you're in embarrassment training.

The neuroscience tells us that in high emotional states — vulnerability, uncertainty, mild stress — your brain becomes more plastic. More open to reorganization.

This is why your cringiest posts teach you the most. Or worst breakup. Or hardest mistake. Each time you survive being seen in imperfection, your nervous system learns: I can handle this.

Embarrassment isn't punishment for doing something wrong. It's data that you're doing something right. You're expanding beyond your current capacity.

But most of us have been conditioned to avoid embarrassment at all costs. We've turned one of our most powerful growth mechanisms into something we flee from. So we stay mentally safe, and consequently — often — intellectually unexcited.

THE SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO CONTROLLED DISCOMFORT

Stop leaving growth to chance. Make discomfort systematic.

Not because discomfort is inherently valuable, but because it's the only way to prevent the natural contraction of your capabilities.

Track consistency, not outcomes. The goal isn't success. The goal is maintaining your tolerance for uncertainty. And motivation won’t get you there.

If your failure log is empty, your goals are too far away. Because difficult things aren't usually difficult — there's just something you're avoiding.

WHEN EMBARRASSMENT TRAINING BECOMES SELF-DESTRUCTION

But if your discomfort practice is driven by someone else's metrics, it will destroy you.

If you expect every newsletter to hit certain open rates, you'll hate writing. If you expect every video to go viral, you'll hate creating. Not everything has to be a banger. If you measure your worth by external validation, you've turned growth into performance.

Whose approval are you practicing for?

Healthy discomfort expands your internal sense of capability. Unhealthy discomfort makes you dependent on external validation.

The difference is subtle but crucial.

THE RISKS OF COMFORT

Everyone talks about the risk of failure, rejection, embarrassment.

They're focusing on the wrong risk.

The biggest risk isn't embarrassment. It's comfort.

It's waking up at 65 realizing your world became so small you can't remember who you used to be. It's waking up at 45 realizing you can't kick a soccer ball anymore. It's choosing safety so consistently that risk becomes impossible. It's letting your comfort zone shrink until it becomes a cage.

Your brain remains plastic until you die. But plasticity requires pressure.

Comfort is killing you slowly. Discomfort is the antidote. But not just any discomfort. Systematic, progressive discomfort that expands your capacity without breaking you.

The ritual changes you long before the outcomes do.

The next time you hesitate before doing something, remember: The discomfort is the entry fee to expanding your comfort zone. The embarrassment isn't resistance to overcome — it's your system processing expansion.

Most people aren't afraid of failing. They're afraid of being seen failing, being seen trying, being seen at all.

But the person who can be witnessed in imperfection, who receives criticism and celebration with equal grace, who practices embarrassment as discipline — that person is free in a way most never experience.

That person gets to keep growing while everyone else starts shrinking.

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YOU MADE IT TO THE END! Leave me a comment, please. And a like. It makes my DAY. What's one area where your comfort zone has shrunk? Tell me in the comments — I want to know if this resonates with your experience.

A friend recently asked me: "Why do you make content? You don't need to."

The answer isn't about necessity. It's about ritual. And ritual is how we develop our deepest selves. And being uncomfortable — even embarrassed — is one of my most sacred rituals. As it has served me better than most things have.

I think my friend was embarrassed for me. Maybe she watched a video that flopped. Maybe she thought my time was too valuable for social media. Maybe she thought I was too old. Either way, I have a different perspective: I want control of my own digital distribution for the rest of my life. And digital distribution can either be bought or built.

Over the years, I've been slowly building scaffolding to ensure I'm "successful" by my own definition. At my company, success is sales. For my personal brand, success is emails to access people who find my thinking interesting.

Views and likes are lagging indicators. Follows are pipeline sources to gather emails. None are the goal, but all are data.

Success doesn't happen overnight. It happens with small choices that compound. To distribute ideas for decades — my goal — I need a community that sees my value and challenges my thinking.

None of that would have happened with theory alone.

Much of my success comes from my high tolerance for embarrassment.

THEORY IS AVOIDANCE

We live in a culture obsessed with understanding rather than doing. We read about vulnerability instead of practicing it. We study success instead of failing toward it.

Theory feels productive while keeping us safely removed from where growth actually happens — in the messy, uncomfortable space of not knowing what we're doing but doing it anyway.

I learned this lesson viscerally a decade ago.

When I was in grad school, I went viral for the first time. It was for a music video I exec produced and starred in under the moniker Mipsterz (Muslim Hipsters). By 2025 standards, the video is mundane. In 2014, it was groundbreaking.

Without the accessibility of social media, Muslim women in hijab had the misfortune of big media and productions like Aladdin generating a false picture of us. And we flipped that image on its head. A million YouTube views overnight was just the start of it.

I went viral. And I hated it.

Anyone who has gone viral knows the absolute jaw-clenching, stomach-turning pain of going viral for the first time. The comments, the judgment, the exposure. It's terrifying.

I was at MIT when I walked into my professor's office. "Layla, I saw the video," he said. "It is excellent. Are you going to write about it?"

What I said: "No."

What I was thinking: Sir, I've never wanted to live under a rock more than right now.

"Layla, you will write about it. And this is how it's going to work. You are going to write something. You are going to hate it. You are going to throw it away. You are going to write it again. You are going to email it to me. I am going to email it to someone I know at The Atlantic. Please send me something by Friday. Please, claim your narrative. Don’t let a random white guy like me write it for you."

And that's exactly what happened. (Thanks, Ethan)

And as a result, I shaped my narrative. A narrative that had spiraled out of control, before it spiraled back into a cultural moment represented in museums and books across the world.

Do you remember #Mipsterz?

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I learned that only action builds character. Only ritual transforms us. And action requires believing you can control your outcomes.

TOO RICH TO SUCCEED

Dr. Sandy Pentland once shared research that stopped me: Kids who believe they can change their outcomes tend to be enterprising, regardless of socioeconomic class.

If you had wealthy parents, you may struggle more than expected. But if your parents became wealthy while you were growing up, your odds of success are higher. Because you witnessed someone actively shape their reality.

The inverse is true too. If you never saw someone run a business — whether a bodega or software company — you're less likely to build one yourself.

It's not about what you're given. It's about what you witness is possible.

When you believe you can own your outcomes, your nervous system reorganizes around agency instead of victimhood. People with internal locus of control show measurably better health outcomes. Your belief literally creates biological changes.

And to control your outcomes, you must differentiate your rituals from your outcomes.

Your rituals will produce outcomes. But rituals are not outcomes.

Understanding control is theoretical. Practicing control requires getting comfortable with discomfort.

EMBARRASSMENT IS A RITUAL

^ Update: His team said no, I am still alive.

Every time you publish something vulnerable, you participate in an ancient human practice: being witnessed.

And being witnessed inevitably means being embarrassed, because we think people care more than they do.

I've never been criticized by someone I'd want to trade lives with. People who diminish you usually struggle with their own sense of worth.

Embarrassment is your nervous system processing visibility. It's information, not resistance.

When you share that imperfect idea or vulnerable thought, you're saying: "Here I am, learning in public, imperfect but present."

The transformation doesn't happen in one post. It happens in the repetition. Each time you choose visibility over hiding, you rewire your relationship with vulnerability. You learn you can survive being seen — and that survival becomes strength. And that strength is the foundation for the belief that you control your own outcomes.

MAKE EMBARRASSMENT A SYSTEM

James Clear offers four laws to create any habit. You can apply them to anything difficult — because difficult things aren't usually difficult, you just resist doing them.

• Make it obvious: Schedule vulnerable posts. Same time, same day, no negotiation.

• Make it attractive: Track your streak of sharing something real, not likes or comments. The reward is knowing you showed up.

• Make it easy: Write thoughts in a notes app first, then copy-paste to publish. Lower friction between impulse and action. Use generative AI to coach you through resistance. My favorite prompt: Tell me 10 reasons I will never be a New York Times Bestseller. Lots of constructive feedback.

• Make it satisfying: Celebrate the internal win. Did you share something that scared you? That's success.

You can also keep a failure log. If you don’t have much to add to the log, realize that it will take you a long time to reach your goals. Because hard things aren’t usually hard. But there is something you are avoiding.

I recently heard something that stuck: "When people can't control you, they control other people's view of you."

As soon as you stop caring how others view you — and focus on your own internal compass — the less control failure has over you. So keep a failure and rejection log.

Most people optimize for external metrics and quit when dopamine fades. Focus on the system instead. Post consistently for six months and your relationship with visibility changes permanently. And the prospects for your future could change as well.

JOY IS A RITUAL

Joy operates as ritual too, though we're less comfortable with this truth.

Every positive response, every authentic connection, every "yes, this resonates" becomes part of practicing receiving goodness.

Joy isn't passive happiness — it's actively choosing to let positive experiences register.

Most of us deflect praise better than we absorb it. We process criticism better than celebration. This isn't humility; it's a nervous system that hasn't learned it's safe to be loved.

When your joy becomes dependent on metrics — likes, shares, subscriber counts — you lose access to deeper satisfaction. You're no longer practicing gratitude; you're practicing addiction.

The science explains why these practices actually rewire us.

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF BECOMING

Your brain doesn't form habits based on what feels good. It forms habits based on what you repeat.

In high emotional states — vulnerability, awe, deep presence — your brain becomes more plastic, more open to reorganization. The story you tell yourself in these moments literally shapes how your neural pathways solidify.

Emotional intensity loosens identity's architecture. In the presence of someone who sees you clearly, you reform around their gaze.

So you shouldn't avoid emotional intensity. You shouldn't avoid being seen. You shouldn't avoid rejection. Being seen will catalyze your growth.

But this same plasticity can work against you if you're not careful.

WHEN RITUALS ARE DANGEROUS

But if your rituals align with someone else's metrics, they'll destroy you.

If you expect every newsletter to get certain open rates, you'll hate writing. If you expect every video to rack up views, you'll hate creating. When embarrassment becomes about external validation, you've turned practice into performance.

The question becomes: whose approval are you practicing for?

THE CASE FOR CREATING

Creating isn't about content. It's about becoming someone who can:

• Handle visibility without self-destruction

• Process criticism without personalization

• Receive appreciation without deflection

• Take risks without guaranteed outcomes

• Be witnessed in their becoming

These skills are formative. These skills help me think, influence, persuade, and ultimately clarify my thoughts.

And building anything effectively (writing, content, software — anything) requires two skills. To create and to sell.

And they are skills that will accelerate the path to your goals.

So how do you actually build this capacity?

PRACTICE BEING HUMAN IN PUBLIC

The next time you hesitate before sharing something true, remember: you're not just posting content. You're practicing being human in public.

The embarrassment you feel isn't resistance to overcome — it's your system processing expansion.

The joy you experience when something lands isn't ego to suppress — it's nourishment to absorb.

Both are sacred. Both are necessary. Both change you at the identity level.

Schedule vulnerability like workouts. Track consistency, not applause. Celebrate showing up, not being seen.

Most people aren't afraid of failing. They're afraid of being seen failing, being seen trying, being seen at all.

And most things are an endurance test.

But the person who can be witnessed in their imperfection, who receives criticism and celebration with equal grace, who practices embarrassment and joy as disciplines. That person is free in a way most never experience.

That's why I create content when I don't need to. Because I need to become the person who can be seen.

The ritual changes you long before the outcomes do. And maybe that's the entire point.

Because nothing changes if nothing changes.

What do you think? Leave me a comment, I absolutely love your comments. They actually make my day.

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TL;DR: When you believe you can control your outcomes, you become accountable. And accountability is the foundation of all meaningful transformation. Leave a comment so others can find me. Or a like. I appreciate both.

I realized this when my friend told me her social media was in its "flop era" — down to 3,000 TikTok views from her usual 15,000-20,000. Her solution? "I've been trying to game the algorithm."

My response: Not everything has to be a banger.

Because gaming the algorithm happens in one of two ways: (1) pissing people off (engagement algorithms reward emotional extremes — research shows that content expressing outrage receives 67% more engagement than neutral posts) or (2) appealing to as many people as possible, at the cost of what makes you different.

Either way, you lose what made people interested in you in the first place.

Here's what I've learned after building a 290,000-person following: the moment you optimize for views instead of value, you begin to disappear.

THE DEATH OF INTERESTING

Every social platform follows the same lifecycle. I saw it on Instagram and TikTok. And now we're watching it play out in real-time on Substack.

Social media is very predictable. Each platform has a growth lifecycle that culminates in a flattening of taste.

Stage 1: Early adopters build audiences in unsaturated markets. Being unique matters because human curators still decide what gets seen. Human curation is crucial here. Taste and expertise matter.

Stage 2: Platform rewards pioneers with features and growth. Communities feel intimate. Quality rises to the top. Platforms begin to optimize for engagement.

Stage 3: Celebrities arrive with pre-built audiences. The game changes. Algorithms start prioritizing established engagement over emerging voices.

Stage 4: Mass adoption floods in. People see fame and dollar signs. New creators face two brutal choices: chase viral lottery tickets (where algorithmic preferences shape creative output) or grind slowly against algorithmic headwinds (where not everything has to be a banger).

Stage 5: "How to grow" creators emerge and ironically outpace actual creators because everyone wants the shortcut.

Stage 6: Those who do well continue to do well — a homophily flywheel is born. Platforms prioritize accounts that already generate high engagement, creating what economists call "preferential attachment" — the algorithmic rich-get-richer effect. Those with early momentum compound their advantages while newcomers get buried. And work brick-by-brick to build an audience.

Stage 7: With attention, previously relatable creators become famous. Their fans hate it. Scrutiny follows. Maybe they get canceled. And creators become guarded. Leading to a further flattening of identity.

We've seen this pattern destroy the interesting corners of Instagram and TikTok. Substack is currently in the early stage of the lifecycle. The window for building something unique — with reduced friction — is not closed yet.

THE AIRSPACE OF IDENTITY

As kids, we used to go to Iraq every summer. In true American fashion, we would show up in flip-flops and jeans. Our cousins would laugh at how understated their "fancy" American cousins were. We would joke about how they spent as much time getting dressed for the market as we did for a wedding. Then one summer, after Iraq got the internet — and eventually social media — I went back. Skinny jeans everywhere. My cousins sent wishlists to us that consisted of globally popular tennis shoes.

And we all dressed the same.

I experienced another version of this last summer in Istanbul. I walked into a coffee shop that felt perfectly familiar. Earth tones, jazz playlist, sans-serif fonts, plants everywhere. Before I even ordered, I was filming myself, filming the cafe, posting to my story. People loved it because it was cool and trendy. I loved it because it was cool and trendy.

Which is not surprising. Because the algorithm has trained us all to desire identical spaces. Now it's doing the same thing to our personalities.

Scroll TikTok and you'll see the same vocal patterns, the same mannerisms, the same performed vulnerability copied across millions of accounts. We've entered the era of "AirSpace" identity (Filterworld is an awesome cultural analysis, btw) — algorithmically optimized personalities that feel familiar because they're variations on the same template.

Research from the book confirms this flattening: viral content clusters around remarkably similar emotional and linguistic markers. To go viral, you must compress your complexity into algorithmic compatibility.

THE MOTIVATION PARADOX

Algorithms don't just change what gets recommended — they change what gets created.

When Spotify's algorithm favors songs with hooks in the first 15 seconds, musicians restructure their art. When Instagram rewards certain color palettes, photographers adjust their vision. When TikTok amplifies outrage, creators manufacture conflict.

This creates a motivation paradox. Real success requires intrinsic motivation. Genuine obsession with your craft. But social platforms run on extrinsic validation systems designed to corrupt that creative instinct. We can’t all optimize for popularity.

We are compressing our identities into something palatable.

Human complexity gets reduced to behavioral data points that can be replicated and scaled.

(Author’s note: I have been creating thought leadership content for long enough to say that this is especially relevant for my niche. I often get more saves on my educational content than I do likes. And my “educational thirst traps,” i.e. more visually stimulating and less dense content, tends to do better).

My friend's "flop era" wasn't actually a flop. It was her creative instinct refusing to pander to the masses. Her attempt to "hack" the algorithm is really an attempt to train herself out of what makes her interesting.

You can't train your judgment to respond to other people's expectations. Your judgment must respond to what you personally believe is good, bad, right, or wrong. Not the algorithm.

THE COST OF OPTIMIZATION

I don't optimize for bangers.

I won't hide my low-engagement posts or archive content that doesn't perform. I'm comfortable not producing bangers because I've learned something crucial: the hunger for viral moments is erasing who you are.

Every time you adjust your voice to chase metrics, you lose a piece of what made people care about your perspective. Every time you study "viral formats" instead of developing your unique voice, you become more replaceable.

The most successful creators practice what Filterworld refers to as "algorithmic resistance"— they refuse to let platform optimization override their creative instincts. This requires extraordinary discipline in systems designed to publicly reward conformity.

Because otherwise we have all been trained to compromise our individuality. Or train ourselves out of it based on likes. My friend's "flop era" is her instinct not to appeal to the general population. And her algorithm hacking was an attempt to blend in.

PROMOTION VERSUS MARKETING

Gaming the algorithm is often in the name of promotion. Marketing is not promotion. And marketing is crucial — more crucial than promotion.

But marketing requires knowing what you want to be known for. I know everyone is allergic to business jargon, but in business, or real life, or whatever, you want to be known for something. What is it? And if you want something from your audience, what is it?

The issue is when the answer to both of those questions is views. Because, undoubtedly, views will come at the expense of how interesting you are.

Better answers: to build trust so they can invest in your service, emails, the opportunity for you to learn how to communicate better.

Consider the POV below by .

THE SUBSTACK MOMENT

There's still a window. Last week on Substack showed me how different this platform remains. A plagiarism case went viral because the community still values original thought. What's more is that everyone knew (or at least, it felt like everyone knew) because the Substack community is still small. I keep discovering accounts that show up in my feed because they're genuinely interesting, not because they've gamed recommendation systems. And I keep realizing that many of the niches do not have competition, so the same accounts are recommended over and over again (nature photos, daily workouts — as an example).

But even here, I see the flattening beginning. Writers studying "viral newsletter formats" instead of finding their voice. The feedback loops that destroyed originality elsewhere are starting to form.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

So what can you do about it?

Stop optimizing for views. Start optimizing for the person you want to become.

Ask yourself: What do I want to be known for? What unique perspective do I have that no algorithm can replicate? What would I create if engagement metrics didn't exist?

The algorithm wants you accessible to everyone, which means interesting to no one. Your job is to be interesting to someone — the right someone.

The window for authentic voices won't stay open forever. Use it while you can. Be like

Not everything has to be a banger. In fact, the pressure to make everything a banger is exactly what's making everything boring.

Omg HI — thanks for making it this far! Since you are here, please leave me a like. And if you’d like, a comment too. It will help others find me. Because the algorithm really is boss. But, I won’t change myself for it. So…I need to lean on you for engagement.

Liked this? Read all my articles on productivity here.

Thanks for reading! If you like this piece, you might like

I walked into a local boxing studio — not because I cared for boxing, but because it was walkable and had classes after 7pm — and signed up. Day by day, brick by brick, I rebuilt my body and resilience. I shut down the part of my brain that reminded me how much I hated exerting energy at night, knowing anything earlier wouldn't work with our schedules. Slowly, I added activities. I joined a soccer league and hit the pitch 1-2x a week for games.

By January, three years later, I had no health resolutions. I was unstoppable. I had even recruited a skateboarding coach so I could dominate the bowl before I turned 40.

Then I tore my ACL playing soccer.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Three months post-surgery, I ran into my neighbor — an Olympian — who noticed my limp-free walk. "Your progress looks awesome!"

I'd gone from hitting the gym or a soccer game 3-4x a week to barely managing 1,000 steps. "Are you kidding?" I told her. "I have no strength. My body has transformed.."

"Isn't that the point of being an athlete, Layla? Setbacks are never barriers. They are setbacks. Then you dominate. And re-dominate. And re-dominate."

That night, she didn't give me motivation. She gave me something better — she reminded me of my identity.

I went home and had ChatGPT put together a daily lifting plan that avoided my injury. I worked up to 10,000 steps a day. A month later, I have walked 150 miles. I'm still physically far from my peak, but mentally — I feel strong.

MOTIVATION IS THE ENEMY OF ACHIEVEMENT

When I ran into my neighbor that day, I had no motivation. I was tired, lifting a scooter and corralling a toddler in a temper tantrum while ensuring I didn't bend my knee wrong.

But it reinforced my belief that motivation is the enemy of achievement.

Motivation is a feeling. Feelings are temporary. Feelings are unreliable. When you depend on motivation to drive your actions, you're essentially gambling your future on your mood.

You don't brush your teeth because you're motivated. You don't show up to work because motivation strikes. You do these things because of who you are — a person who maintains hygiene, a professional who honors commitments.

The people you admire and aspire to be aren't more motivated than you. They've made a fundamental identity shift that you haven't made yet.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND IDENTITY VERSUS MOTIVATION

A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research tested how people respond to temptation using different language. One group was told to say "I can't" when facing unhealthy choices, while another group said "I don't."

The "I don't" group showed significantly more self-control. Why? Because "I don't" implies identity ("I am the type of person who doesn't"), while "I can't" implies constraint and deprivation.

Even more compelling: research on children learning musical instruments found that those who identified as "musicians" (rather than just "taking lessons") outperformed their peers by 400% with the same amount of practice time.

The difference? Identity.

AFFIRMATION > MOTIVATION

Motivation: Stop telling yourself "you can do this."

Affirmation: Start affirming "you are this."

This is behavioral psychology. Your actions flow from your identity, not your aspirations. When you shift from hoping you can become successful to knowing you are successful due to your habits (and have a plan for your next set of goals that you can achieve, due to your discipline), your behavior automatically aligns.

I don’t want a smoke versus I am not a smoker.

I am trying to build a business versus I am an entrepreneur.

I like challenges versus I am disciplined.

Behavior is inextricably linked to identity. Change your identity, change your behavior. Change your behavior, change your results.

GET 20% MORE, TOMORROW

Planning reduces time spent on tasks by up to 20%.

Spending 10-12 minutes planning your day results in a daily time savings of almost 2 hours, a 25% improvement in performance and productivity (The Law of Planning by Brian Tracy).

The statistic should not be very shocking — think about the last time you planned dinner at home, versus going to the market with a checklist in mind. And you had to cook without a key ingredient. Think about the last time your kids decided to hop in a pool, and you didn’t have the pool stuff on you. And you had soggy little bodies to clothe. Execution is always easier and faster with preparation.

You have to plan, even if you aren’t sure of the outcome. There is a rule that every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution. The person you're becoming doesn't need perfect conditions. They don't need to "feel ready." They plan like someone who already executes consistently, because that's who they are.

When I was on crutches, I didn't plan workouts for when I "felt motivated." I planned workouts for who I am: an athlete. Athletes find ways to train, even with limitations.

LONE WOLVES STAY HUNGRY

Change is seven times more likely to happen with peer support.

Not because support makes you feel good (though it does). Because support makes you accountable to the identity you're building. When others see you as the person you're becoming, it's harder to slip back into who you were.

My Olympian neighbor didn't motivate me — she reflected back my identity when I'd forgotten it.

EXCELLENCE VERSUS MEDIOCRITY

Excellence isn't about knowing more. It's not about having better connections. It's about how you implement what you already know.

Here is an exercise — list out the difference between you and a higher achiever. Document the gap.

The gap isn't knowledge — it's implementation.

The difference between you and the image in your head is time spent.

Examples of people who put in the work every day?

• Kobe Bryant practiced at 4 AM daily, obsessed over every detail of his craft for 20 years

• Serena Williams started at 3 years old, practiced 6+ hours daily through childhood, dominated for over two decades

• Michael Jordan was cut from high school varsity team, used rejection as fuel, became famous for outworking everyone in practice

• Magnus Carlsen started at 5, studied chess 8-12 hours daily as a child, became youngest world champion at 22

• Tiger Woods started at 2 years old, practiced obsessively through childhood, revolutionized the sport through work ethic

• Yo-Yo Ma started at 4, practiced hours daily for decades, became the world's most celebrated cellist

• Michael Phelps trained 6+ hours daily, 6 days a week for 15+ years, never missed a practice day for 5 straight years

• Simone Biles trained 30+ hours per week for over a decade, redefined what's possible in the sport

The best in the world simply outworked everyone else. They didn’t get there through talent, they got there through time.

The best in the world are not made differently than you. They just execute consistently, over time.

Because mediocrity = collecting information. Excellence = executing information. Because mediocrity = waiting for perfect conditions. Excellence = creating conditions through action

Often, if you know there is something that you have to do and you aren’t doing it, it’s not because you don’t know how. It’s because you are scared about failing. Or don’t care enough. Not applying to the jobs? You may be afraid of failure. Not going above and beyond despite the gap at work? You may be fine where you are.

MOTIVATION IS KILLING YOUR DREAMS

Motivation is the enemy of success because:

• It's a feeling, and feelings are temporary — but systems and identity are permanent

• It makes you dependent on your mood instead of your habits

• It tricks you into thinking you need to feel ready before you can act

• It focuses on the outcome instead of the process that creates the outcome

• It requires constant refueling, but discipline builds compound momentum

• It makes you wait for inspiration instead of creating through action

• It's based on future fantasies rather than present realities

• It dies the moment you face real resistance, but identity persists through adversity

• It teaches you to chase the feeling of wanting instead of the satisfaction of being

• It makes you a prisoner of your emotions when you should be the architect of your actions

YOU NEED CONFIDENCE

Here is a tactical approach to build confidence like muscle.

First, start with identity. When you decide “I am a runner,” you automatically know what runners do — they run. When you see yourself running consistently, you get proof that you are who you say you are. Identity creates expectations. Expectations drive behavior. Behavior creates evidence. Evidence builds confidence.

And confidence must be built intrinsically. Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan proved what high performers already know: offering people extrinsic rewards for behavior that is intrinsically motivated undermines the intrinsic motivation as they grow less interested in it. Chase external validation — likes, praise, likes, money — and you kill your drive. Intrinsic motivation pertains to activities done "for their own sake," while extrinsic motivation aims toward outcomes external to the behavior itself. When you need others to tell you you're good, you're already losing. Build confidence from your own standards, your own progress, your own identity. That's what lasts.

YOUR ANTI-MOTIVATION OPERATING SYSTEM

1. Identity first, action second.

2. Plan like you already execute

3. Execute without emotion

IN CONCLUSION

It's July, and 95% of people have abandoned their resolutions. But you're not most people.

You're not someone who hopes to become successful — you're someone who is successful and acts accordingly.

You're not someone who waits for motivation — you're someone who executes regardless of feelings.

You're not someone who makes excuses — you're someone who finds ways.

The question isn't whether you can change.

The question is: Are you ready to become who you already are?

Ready to make the identity shift? Start with one action today that aligns with who you're becoming. Not who you hope to be—who you already are.

Separately — I hit 5,000 Subs today. I am so grateful. 5k was a goal I had set for December. Every time you send a piece to a friend, comment, like — I notice and appreciate. Thank you all <3

Today, I am going to share the 10 most valuable lessons I have learned in the last decade.

1. YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM IS YOUR MOST EXPENSIVE INVESTMENT

Fear is expensive.

The most costly thing you can own isn't a luxury car or designer clothes — it's an unregulated nervous system. When your internal state is chaotic, every opportunity becomes a threat. Every conversation becomes exhausting. Every decision becomes overwhelming. Because you inherently lack trust in your ability to solve a problem.

Start treating nervous system regulation like a non-negotiable daily practice. Accept failure. Put space between how you feel and when you respond.

When you regulate your nervous system, you stop leaving money, relationships, and opportunities on the table — because your feelings don’t thwart your plan.

2. SUCCESS IS BORING

That’s the whole message: Success is boring.

Success is marked by the highlight reel of celebrations and victories. But the acquisition and longevity of success relies on the unglamorous repetition of doing the right things when you don't feel like it. Motivation gets you started, but discipline is what makes you successful.

Stop waiting for inspiration to strike. Create systems that work regardless of how you feel. Show up when you're tired. Show up when you're uninspired. Show up especially when you don't want to. Transformation happens in the boring, consistent moments that nobody sees.

3. THE PRICE OF SUCCESS IS EMBARRASSMENT, AND THE CURRENCY IS PERSISTENCE

Amo Ama-Agyei said on Tiktok “the cost of success is embarrassment” earlier this year, and I added that the currency is persistence. You'll stumble through presentations. You'll post content that flops. You'll have conversations that make you cringe later. And that’s the way it goes.

Reframe embarrassment as tuition for the life you want. Each cringe moment is proof you're pushing beyond your comfort zone. Start collecting embarrassing moments like badges of honor. The currency of growth is persistence through discomfort, and embarrassment is just discomfort in disguise.

4. YOUR BEHAVIOR IS INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO YOUR IDENTITY

Your relationship with yourself determines everything else. The belief you have in yourself drives your perception of what's possible. Your perception shapes how others see you. And that collective perception directly impacts your performance and results.

Become obsessed with your inner dialogue. Notice when you're tearing yourself down and cut it out. And adopt your goals as an identity early on. You are not trying to get fit, you are a runner. You are not working hard, you are disciplined.

5. JUST BECAUSE THEY PRIORITIZED YOU DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO PRIORITIZE THEM

Just because someone prioritizes you — usually via gossip or backbiting — doesn’t mean you have to prioritize them with a response.

Get ruthless about where you invest your emotional energy. Ask yourself: "Is this person's opinion of me actually relevant to my goals and values?" Most of the time, the answer is no. Protect your energy like the finite resource it is.

6. NOBODY CARES AS MUCH AS YOU THINK THEY DO

The audience in your imagination isn’t real. Most people are too busy worrying about their own lives to scrutinize yours. One day you will realize you could have posted that thing, started that project, or had that conversation years ago, and the world would have barely blinked.

Act as if you're more invisible than you think you are. Post the thing. Start the business. Have the difficult conversation. The people whose opinions actually matter will support you, and everyone else is too distracted by their own drama to care as much as you think they do.

7. ACTION IS (OFTEN) THE ANTIDOTE TO ANXIETY

If you're constantly anxious, look at the gap between your ambition and your action. Ambition without action doesn't create excitement — it creates anxiety. Your nervous system knows when you're living below your potential, and it will make you uncomfortable until you do something about it.

When anxiety hits, ask yourself: "What action am I avoiding?" Then take the smallest possible step toward that thing. Anxiety often dissolves the moment you start moving toward what you actually want instead of just thinking about it.

9. MOTIVATION IS FOOL’S GOLD

Motivated may get you started, but it isn’t sustainable. Focus on discipline above motivation.

10. ABOVE ALL, BE KNOWN FOR YOUR INTEGRITY AND COMPETENCE

Trust is at the foundation of all relationships — personal, professional. And at the foundation of trust is competence and integrity. Incompetence is easy to crawl out of. But being known for low integrity is a hard story to rewrite. Don’t ever compromise your values.

These lessons came from years of making mistakes, course-correcting, and slowly learning to trust myself more than my fears. Each one represents a fundamental shift in how I see myself and the world around me.

The thing about wisdom is that it's only valuable when applied. These lessons are invitations to change how you operate. Pick one lesson that hits differently and start there. Your future self will thank you for taking action today instead of waiting for tomorrow.

What’s the most valuable thing you have learned?

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What resonates most with you? Hit reply and let me know which lesson you're ready to put into practice.