It's amazing how things that happened to us as children can have lasting, unexpected effects on us in adulthood. At the extremes, we know about the impact of crazy childhood trauma on adult life outcomes. For example, you're 11x more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol if you have more than four adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). ACEs require an entire post, but they’re specific traumatic events a child experiences. Abuse of all types, neglect, witnessing domestic violence—stuff on that...
16 days ago • 7 min read
6 Ancient Samurai Principles For Mastering Any Skill Are you tired of hearing about prodigy stories and people who achieve massive success before 25? Have the “40 under 40” lists started making you nervous as you creep closer to the big 4-0, feeling no closer to extraordinary achievement than when you graduated high school? What if I told you that by following the lessons from an ancient book of swordsmanship, anyone could master any skill—not just to catch up, but to surpass everyone else?...
22 days ago • 4 min read
Watch this essay here: What do recovering alcoholics, boxing champions, and criminal masterminds all have in common? Before I tell you that, think about the following quote: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." That's an almost 3000-year-old quote from the Bible, specifically the Book of Ecclesiastes, and it sums up a truth about the world and everything in it. Circumstances change, but people don't. Humans are animals. We...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
If you don’t think highly of yourself, why would anyone else? Some people think their self-esteem and self-confidence are trash because others don’t treat them well, but consider the problem with this thinking. First, it’s called self-esteem. It comes from you! It’s in the name. If you let how the world treats you dictate how you should feel about yourself, you’re in for a rough ride in this thing called life. People are mean, nasty, and ruthless, and often, it has nothing to do with you or...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
The cool thing about boxing—compared to other sports and even other combat sports—is that there's only one way out of a boxing match. Assuming you or your opponent aren't disqualified, you have to take a lot of damage. It's the most significant scoring criteria in a fight. If the match doesn't end in a knockout—you took so much damage that you were unable to continue—then the winner of the fight is typically the one who caused the most damage to his opponent. And—even if you win, you're going...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Let's start this newsletter with a brief summary of my past. I started amateur boxing at 22. By 26, I had won a state and national amateur boxing championship, earned a sponsorship worth $100k a year, and was ranked 4th in the United States in the 201+ weight class. I turned professional three weeks before my 29th birthday. By 30, I was signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation Sports. At 31, I suffered my first professional loss by an embarrassing first-round knockout. I took a year off to finish my...
3 months ago • 12 min read
This is a short newsletter about some of the happenings around the book, along with great free resources for fathers. Excerpts, research, and community For this book, I can confidently say that I've written over 250k words and compiled A LOT of research around family dynamics, social interactions, game theory, learning science, addiction, and physical training. The book in its (nearly) final form will contain none of this research and essays. It will be much more of a memoir telling my story...
4 months ago • 3 min read
No matter how much of a free thinker you believe yourself to be, the people around you heavily influence you—even if you aren't aware of this influence. Humans don't exist in a vacuum. Unless you live "off the grid," in which case you wouldn't even be reading this, this also applies to you. Social influence is a powerful, often invisible force that shapes our behaviors, decisions, and perceptions in countless ways, even though we tend to underestimate its impact on ourselves. Each member of...
6 months ago • 8 min read
This past week, I submitted my first manuscript, "Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business." This is a tremendous occasion because now I get feedback directly from the person who will sign off on my book. I celebrated by having tacos and reflecting on the challenges of writing this book over the past year. I've already talked about those challenges, but for people new to the newsletter, the abridged version is "new baby and moving." I made it happen, and most importantly, I made it happen without...
6 months ago • 8 min read
