Values
The Compass
One of the most powerful questions I’ve ever been asked came from Joe Hudson:
”If you can’t go into the future or the past for proof, what ... if anything ... is broken or not enough about who you are right now?”
I heard it on one of those free live calls he runs. I couldn’t tell you who else was there, or even what the exact moment was ... but I remember sitting in silence, my brain grinding like a rusty engine as something inside me cracked open.
For years, I’d been chained to the past ... replaying old failures like they were my definition. And I’d been locked into the future ... haunted by all the alternate lives I could’ve had “if only…”
Shame in one direction ↔ Regret in the other.
Joe’s question cleaned it all away. No past. No future. Just now.
It’s like spawning into a game my boys play: an empty Minecraft world. No map. No guarantees. Just one tiny marker on the screen showing me where I stood ... and the freedom to choose a direction.
That’s what values are. They’re not a map of roads to some (promised destination). They don’t fill the potholes or sell you an outcome. But they are compass points ... consistent enough to reorient me when the noise is deafening, when the road is foggy, when life feels like chaos closing in.
I don’t live these perfectly. Not even close. But they’re the filters I return to. The anchors I grab when excuses are tempting. The reminders of who I need to be when it actually counts.
Authentic Imperfection
Perfection killed more of my work than failure ever did.
It convinced me not to start. Not to share. Not to risk looking foolish. I’ve got folders full of half-written drafts that never taught me anything. And the pieces I actually finished but never published? Those are the ones that haunt me ... not because they were bad, but because I robbed others (and myself) of what they might have sparked.
Authentic imperfection doesn’t mean lowering the bar. It means moving while I’m still rough around the edges. It means letting people see the process, not just the polish. It means risking clumsiness, because that’s the only way growth actually happens.
Progress doesn’t come from perfect.
It comes from the courage to begin ... and the willingness to keep going, even when it’s messy.
Active Wisdom
Knowledge is cheap. My phone carries more facts than I’ll ever fit in my head. But wisdom? Wisdom isn’t found - it’s forged.
For years, I hoarded other people’s insights. I built an obsidian vault packed with quotes, notes, ideas from smarter minds. Beautiful. Organized. Searchable. I’d spend hours arranging them, tagging them, curating them.
But when I tried to think, I just circled. Same loops. Same justifications. Same comfortable fog.
Writing forces the fight. You can’t hide in vague understanding when you have to choose the exact word. You can’t pretend you’ve figured something out when the sentence won’t close. The struggle with language is the struggle with truth.
I thought I knew why my marriage failed. Clean story. Clear villain. But when I tried to write it, the easy narrative collapsed. The real reasons were harder, uglier, more mine than I wanted to admit. Writing forced me to see what thinking let me avoid.
That’s where wisdom lives - not in the neat summary after understanding, but in the messy wrestling that _creates_ understanding. Not in collecting brilliant ideas, but in the deliberate battle with your own words until something true emerges.
Active wisdom means doing the hard work of making thought visible. Wrestling the hydra until clarity burns through the comfortable lies we tell ourselves.
It’s not enough to cut off the heads. You have to burn the wounds with understanding. And that only happens when you stop consuming and start confronting - word by word, sentence by sentence, until what you write finally matches what you know.
Deliberate Unlearning
Growth isn’t always about stacking more on top. Sometimes it’s about cutting loose what no longer carries you forward.
The hardest shifts in my life weren’t about learning new skills or adding more knowledge. They came from subtraction. From releasing beliefs that once served me but now keep me small. Stories about success that weren’t mine. Identities that kept me safe but suffocated me. Excuses that bought me time but stole my momentum.
I spent years believing I wasn’t good enough to write. A teacher once accused me of cheating on an essay. When I proved I’d written it myself, she gave me a C. The message landed hard: even my best effort was mediocre. That belief became identity. For decades, I didn’t write - not because I couldn’t, but because I’d internalized “not good enough” as truth rather than one person’s flawed judgment.
Deliberate unlearning means holding those tight grips up to the light and asking: Is “I can’t” really just “I won’t”? It means recognizing that the voice protecting me yesterday might be the one sabotaging me today.
Unlearning isn’t failure. It’s offloading weight. It’s clearing out the junk code so the system can run clean again. It’s dropping the baggage so you can move faster, freer, truer.
Because sometimes the next version of you isn’t built. It’s revealed ... once you let go of who you no longer are.
Meaningful Struggle
Struggle isn’t proof I’m failing. It’s proof I’m in the fight that matters.
The resistance that makes me want to quit is often the exact place I need to lean in. That’s where muscles tear so they can rebuild stronger. That’s where calluses form so the work feels lighter next time.
When I first landed in Australia, against all advice, I started a company. Everyone said: ”Get a job first. Learn how things work here. Build slowly.” But I didn’t listen. I lost a lot of money. And then one day, my wife sat me down and said the words I’ll never forget:
”It’s over.”
Divorce is brutal ... especially when you’ve got two young kids. But even in that grief, I chose something different.
I loved her enough to want her happiness, even if that happiness no longer included me. And somehow, through the mess of co-parenting and rebuilding, I discovered that endings can also be beginnings.
That’s what meaningful struggle is. It’s not chasing pain for its own sake. It’s recognizing that easy paths rarely change us. The setbacks, the friction, the heartbreak ... they’re not detours. They’re the ground where resilience and character are forged.
Meaningful struggle doesn’t make life easier. But it makes life deeper.
Present Over Potential
Potential is seductive. It whispers “someday” while today slips through our fingers.
I’ve wasted too much time imagining who I could be instead of building with what I already had. Presence is harder, but more honest. It doesn’t ask what I might do eventually. It asks what I can do now. With what’s already in my hands. With the tools and scars I already carry.
Here’s the thing: we don’t call a lottery ticket a fortune. We don’t call an acorn a forest. Yet somehow, we let kids grow up believing that their worth lies in what they might become.
They call it potential. That golden burden wrapped in praise: “Gifted.” “Special.” “Promising.” Each word another bar in an invisible cage.
Potential isn’t protection. It’s debt. A loan you take out against your future self. And the interest compounds every day you wait ... until one morning you’re staring at LinkedIn, watching others post achievements while you’re still talking about possibilities.
The truth is, potential becomes a prison if you never step out of it. And the key to freedom isn’t in “someday.” It’s in presence. In choosing to build something real with today’s bricks, however small, however imperfect.
Sometimes choosing a smaller life creates space for a bigger one. Sometimes the death of who you _could_ be makes room for who you actually are.
Because life isn’t lived in potential.
It’s lived in presence.
Smaller Better
Real change isn’t about adding more. It’s about subtraction.
Smaller Better asks the hardest question of all: _what are you willing to let die?_ Because no matter how many shiny new habits or goals you stack on top, if the old patterns stay, the new has nowhere to land. Adding “healthy” on top of toxic doesn’t create change ... it creates conflict.
I turned down ALL weekend work as my sons need me to spend more time with them. I said no when the CEO offered me any role in the company - because none of them ended at 14:30. I don’t take overtime shifts, even when the money would help, because my life runs on routine. Predictable. Steady. My boys can count on me to always be there, to always do what I say I will.
Subtraction hurts. It feels like loss. Saying no when the world tells you to grab more always does. But that ache is the price of depth. It’s the signal that something old is loosening its grip so something truer can take root.
Impact isn’t built on more. It’s built on less ... less noise, less waste, less scatter. Stripping away until what remains is clear, focused, and alive.
Smaller isn’t weakness. Smaller is freedom. It’s the discipline of choosing what matters most and letting the rest fall away. Smaller is the only path to better.
Laboratory Mindset
Religion aside: life isn’t a final exam. There’s no neat scorecard to prove we passed. No teacher to mark us right or wrong. Just choices. Consequences. And the lessons we scrape together along the way.
What we get instead is a lab. Messy. Unpredictable. Explosions, dead ends, and the occasional breakthrough.
Every failure I’ve dragged myself through, every restart I’ve had to make ... it was just data. Painful data, but data all the same. The mistake was never the verdict. The verdict was staying stuck, pretending it wasn’t an experiment all along.
The Laboratory Mindset is refusing to treat missteps as proof you’re broken. They’re just results. Results that tell you what works, what doesn’t, and where to go next. The faster you prove something wrong, the less pain you carry ... because you’re no longer worshipping what was never meant to last.
I used to spiral when things failed. The company that didn’t work. The savings that evaporated. The marriage that ended. Each one felt like evidence I was fundamentally flawed. But treating them as experiments changed everything. Not “I failed” ... “That approach failed.” Not “I’m broken” ... “That hypothesis was wrong.”
Change doesn’t come from flawless execution. It comes from bruised hands, botched attempts, and stubborn iteration. The only way forward is to keep testing, keep adapting, keep learning - even when the experiment blows up in your face. Especially then.
P.S. On the overlap between Unlearning and Smaller Better:
Yes, they overlap - but they don’t live in the same room.
Deliberate Unlearning is the inner work ... peeling back beliefs, stories, and identities that no longer serve you. It’s subtraction in the head and heart.
Smaller Better is the outer work ... pruning tasks, commitments, and distractions until what’s left is alive and focused. It’s subtraction in the hands and health.
One clears the headspace. The other clears the work. Together, they create the conditions for real growth ... lighter, sharper, truer.
Because in the end: Work + Attitude = Results.