The One Martial Arts Principle That Will Change How You Live I used to be an adrenaline junkie. Point Break with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves Not in the Point Break way. I did not jump out of airplanes or surf big waves or rob banks. My addiction was subtler. My life was a constant roller coaster of emergencies, close calls, and running late. Always one step behind. Always putting out fires. Always reacting instead of anticipating. I did not realize what I was doing until I read a book...
2 days ago • 9 min read
The Three-Level System That Makes Life’s Chaos Manageable In some ways, I appreciate when life knocks me on my ass. And no, I do not mean on the mat this time, though that happens all the time. I mean when life itself knocks me flat. When something breaks and the schedule goes out the window and I am forced to recalibrate everything I thought I had under control. A few weeks ago, I injured my ankle. Nothing catastrophic. Just enough to keep me off the mat and on the couch, icing and rehabbing...
3 days ago • 9 min read
The Two Questions You Have to Answer Before You Set Any Goal I was watching a clip of Alex Hormozi the other day. He was reacting to a video of MrBeast, a guy whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson and who, as of 2026, is worth an estimated two and a half billion dollars. I did not know who MrBeast was before I saw the clip. I am not exactly the target demographic for a social media influencer. But the numbers got my attention, and then the words got my attention in a different way. In the clip,...
4 days ago • 11 min read
How to Build a New Identity (Without Ever Faking It) I will be honest with you. It was much easier helping my wife build her business than it is building mine. For years when she was starting out, I watched her come home drained. She had been taking the beatings all day. A prospect who seemed interested, then disappeared A client who questioned her methods A week where nobody booked A month where the numbers went backwards She would sit at the kitchen table and stare at nothing for a while....
5 days ago • 13 min read
Are You Actually a Critical Thinker, or Are You Just Lying to Yourself? I think of myself as a pretty good critical thinker. You probably do too. Most people do. There is a built-in problem with that assessment, and I will get to it in a minute. I was watching a YouTube channel recently. Not one of my martial arts channels, though if you are looking for those, Chewjitsu and the BJJ Project are two of my favorites. Chewie is a modern-day Renaissance man and Chris Burns has a snarky, no-BS...
6 days ago • 7 min read
The Most Dangerous Word Is the One That Takes Your Power Away I was talking with a buddy of mine recently. He is about twenty years younger than me, street smart and well educated. His life experience is very different than mine, but we share the same values, the same drive, the same passion. We are like brothers. He mentioned a term I had heard in passing but never really understood. Incel. He told me what it meant. "Involuntarily celibate." He told me about the subculture, the online...
7 days ago • 7 min read
The Biggest Obstacle Holding Good Men Back Is One They Never Think to Check You Just Don't Understand by Deborah Tannen I read a book by Deborah Tannen back in the 90s about how men and women communicate, You Just Don't Understand. Most of it was extremely useful for me. But one observation never left me. Men tend to be hierarchical. They hate being "one down" and prefer being "one up." I felt that sentence land. I recognized it immediately. I was the guy who loved coming in as the...
8 days ago • 6 min read
The Missing Piece That Took Me Ten Years to See "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." - Anaïs Nin There is a quote by Anaïs Nin that I read early in my life, when I was still a teenage. It made sense immediately. It landed in my head and stayed there, the way certain ideas do when you know they are true even if you cannot quite explain why. "We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are." I understood it intellectually the moment I read it. But I did not...
9 days ago • 8 min read
I was talking with a friend recently about what separates the people we love being around from the ones we would prefer not to be. We were nerding out on neural wiring, strategy, and the invisible patterns that determine whether someone becomes a person others want in their life or a person others tolerate. This friend is like a brother to me. I met him almost three years ago when I first joined Meraki. Our backgrounds could not be more different. He grew up in the rural South as a minority...
10 days ago • 7 min read