Tomorrow, I'll be driving for 8 hours and 20 minutes from Kalispell, Montana, back to my home in Kelowna, British Columbia.

I've been out of town for exactly 3 weeks, stopping first at my business partner Matthew's hometown of Rossland, BC to visit his parents, and play with chainsaws and axes as we cleared trees, cleaned up the land, cut logs, and collected firewood for their next two cold Canadian winters.

After that, I zipped over to see my friend Lyssa in Montana, who's an entrepreneur as hectic and creative as I am, to lift weights, cook each other food, snort-laugh at ridiculous stories about each others' lives, and make some more in-person memories. I got to meet one of the QX team members, Max, who was a former client, and a young man who I have a deep affection and inclination towards "older brother" style mentorship for. It was a great trip.

My intentions for while I was away were to keep my habits, sleep schedule, work output, and focus dialed in the entire time.

This did not happen at all.

I was exhausted from buckin' and huckin' wood all week in Rossland, got really sick when I landed in Montana, was hit with mega waves of grief about things I'd been compartmentalizing because I was "too busy" to feel them, and generally felt my focus start to fragment and fizzle to a fraction of my typical capacity.

I fell several weeks behind a development timeline I'd set for myself, and while I still managed to train every day for the "100 Days of Discipline Challenge" (even when sick), the rest of my habit tracker has more holes in it than cartoon swiss cheese. I did not meditate, read, or write daily. I missed big chunks of work that I was certain I'd get done. My last newsletter even was not a new original piece of writing, but was a reworked old (excellent, but old) article I'd written nearly a year ago.

There was a time where I would've looked at this as a massive failure and made a big story about it. I would've beat myself up, suffered from massive cognitive dissonance, and condemned myself as an ineffectual, out of integrity piece of crap.

I know a lot of people who have high standards for themselves default to a deprecating self narrative when they "mess up" or the results of their actions aren't what they wanted to be, getting themselves jacked up on shame like junkies chasing the last line of self-loathing on a bathroom mirror.

One of the best (and most scientifically robust) maps of human development I ever learned about is called the STAGES matrix. Developed by Terri O’Fallon and further elaborated by Pacific Integral, it is a developmental framework that maps out the evolution of human consciousness — how perspective, meaning-making, and self-identity unfold through time.

In essence, it charts how the “I” grows, moves, and integrates across the lifespan — from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to "kosmocentric" (yes, with a 'k') awareness.

Many people who find themselves fascinated with personal development find themselves on the 3.5 stage of the map called "The Achiever". I lived most of my adult life here, striving away my life without taking a moment to stop and smell the literal and proverbial roses.

Tier 3.5 is where people finally grab the pen and start writing their own damn story (self-authorship). They’ve tasted enough chaos to realize they need a map, so they build one. They’ve got a vision now, a story about who they want to be (and could be), usually flavored with self-improvement jargon, half-digested Stoicism, and a Pinterest board of future-self aesthetics. It works. It gives them purpose. It’s also the first time they confuse direction with salvation.

This mindset saved my ass, no exaggeration. It got me out of the padded cell of depression, anxiety, and whatever cocktail of mental nonsense was trying to bury me alive. But it also built me a shiny new cage — handcrafted, artisanal self-flagellation bars forged from idealism and high standards.

When I first read about the “core confusions” of the 3.5 stage, I felt personally attacked:

• Belief in the perfectibility of the human condition
• Trapped in their ‘vision of the future’
• Oblivious to plagiarism — “borrowing” ideas like it’s a victimless crime
• Convinced they’re the only enlightened one in the room

Yeah. Oof.

For me, the myth of the ideal self became both mentor and abuser — a kind of split-personality coach who alternated between whispering, “You can be more,” and screaming, “You’ll never be enough.” The seed was planted in the gym as I lost 100 lbs. I became the meme of the guy who had a "meathead dunning kruger effect" thing: the more fit I got, the more dysmorphic and twisted my body image became.

If I could just train harder, eat cleaner, sleep better, take the right alchemy of supplements — maybe then I’d become the sculpted demi-god I was promised.

The weight room became the ultimate metaphor for the rest of my life. Discipline. Balance. Responsibility. “Work smarter and harder.” Earn it. Keep earning it. Never stop. Each rep was a prayer to some future version of myself who might finally be lovable.

Eventually, all those self-help sermons metastasized into my psyche’s operating system. Hustle culture became my theology. Optimization became my liturgy.

And here’s the nuance: idealism isn’t evil. It’s premium jet fuel when channeled correctly. It’s devotion to the Highest Expression, the thing that kept me alive when I didn’t see a point. It gave me faith — not in God, yet — but in the possibility that I wasn’t doomed to stay broken. Without it, I probably would’ve checked out early.

But idealism turns poisonous fast if you don’t lace it with humility — if you forget life’s an Infinite Game and start believing there’s a finish line. That’s when the dream becomes a cudgel. For every time my ideal self saved me, it’s also whipped me bloody for falling short. The same sword that cut my chains also kept slicing me open — because no matter how close you get to the image, the bastard always moves the goalpost.

Frankly, the Achiever state of consciousness has served me immeasurably well, and driven inordinate amounts of growth. Self-authoring has been the process I’ve used to:

• Go from over 280 lbs at my heaviest, to a lean, athletic, healthy body capable of all kinds of dope athletic shit
• Go from drug addicted, isolated suicidal schizoid lunatic to self-responsible, focused, emotionally intelligent, communicative, loving, capable human being, healing swathes of trauma and building beautiful relationships with his family and friends
• Go from a chronic habitant of the ‘friend zone’ and not understanding attraction at all, to dating some of the most beautiful, intelligent, interesting, wonderful, women that I could’ve imagined meeting, and having a sex life that my innocent, horny teenage self wouldn’t have imagined possible
• Go from broke and homeless to building businesses online that made me multiple 6 figures per year, while helping many people do the same
• Go from chronic procrastinator and diagnosed “ADHD” to being able to sit and do deep, focused work for hours at a time, implementing disciplined systems of self management in all areas of my life
• Synthesize systems, ideas, and perspectives to build incredible maps for fitness/biomechanics, nutrition, holistic health, online business/marketing, meditation, social skills, relationship dynamics/attraction, to name a few

But the high of these achievements never lasted long as I set the next echelon to reach for. Better was never enough.

The most mentally healthy shift I’ve made — and yeah, I mean this year, 2025, not some monk-like enlightenment decades in the making — has been giving up on the fantasy that there’s a “final form” of me waiting at the end of this mess. No more mythical ideal self with abs of moral perfection and a color-coded morning routine. I’ve started to see life as what it actually is — a dance that doesn’t stop until you’re in the dirt.

When I screw up (and I will, repeatedly, like it’s my part-time job), it doesn’t have to mean anything cosmic. It’s not an omen. It’s not the tragic sequel to my old trauma. It’s just… life. A little bump in the choreography. The music keeps playing, and so do I.

Now, instead of feeling like I was living out a Greek tragedy every time I drop the ball, I treat it like data. Iteration material. The world doesn’t stop spinning because I sent the wrong text, missed the deadline, or ate an entire jar of peanut butter at 2 a.m. There’s always another rep.

Once, I let down an ex girlfriend — the kind of moment where old me would’ve spiraled into a shame bender. She just sighed and said, “Look, babe, you’re not a disappointment… that was just disappointing.” My brain short-circuited. Turns out one fuck-up doesn’t revoke your membership in the “good human” club. You can apologize, clear the air, and go back to being a decent person. Simple. But back then, it felt like discovering fire.

Life gets a hell of a lot more enjoyable — and way less like a one-man inquisition — when you finally realize it’s an infinite game. There’s no finish line, no gold medal ceremony, no perfect self waiting to hand you a trophy for “finally being enough.” It’s just you, the chaos, and the next experiment.

You form a hypothesis, fuck around, find out, and run it back. That’s it. You get results — not proof of your value or lack thereof — just data. Something to work with. Something to run again.

It’s wild how much more effective you become when you stop publicly executing yourself every time you double-book a call or forget to call your mom. The shame static clears, and suddenly you can think again. You stop operating from the cramped, sweaty cockpit of self-hatred and start flying from curiosity — operating from resourcefulness, humor, and “let’s see what happens.”

You get bolder. You experiment. You stop treating failure like a moral crime. You start asking, “How’s this working for me?” and — miracle of miracles — you can actually answer honestly without your inner shame gremlin biting at your ankles.

That’s when your real individual sense of taste starts to emerge — not the one cobbled together from hustle-guru slogans, but the one that’s yours. You start to breathe again. Your soul gets to unclench. The iron-fisted Spartan commander in your head — the one shouting about optimization and worthiness — finally shuts the hell up long enough for you to notice you were already human the whole time.

The “magic trick,” if there is one, comes down to two brutally simple practices:

1. Tell yourself (and others) the truth, relentlessly.
2. Don’t turn that truth into a hit piece about your character. Just treat it as data for the next round.

That’s it. Radical honesty without the self-flagellation. It’s the cheapest form of therapy on earth and twice as effective. You start to flow. The cognitive dissonance quiets. The abusive narrator loses his contract. And suddenly, the brick walls in front of you start looking more like puzzles than prisons.

Take action. Take data. Make iterations. I'll scream that from mountaintops until my vocal chords blow, or I'm six feet under after a long, long life of fucking around and finding out.

Music I'm Using to Pump My State:

I've been really digging using music to change my energy and put me in flow. This playlist has me both making stink-faces with how dirty the bass is, as well as drops me right into a place where I'm really feeling myself and my work:

GET THE BEATS

Scripture Gnawing at Me:

Matthew 5:29 (ESV):

Convicted the heck out of me. If you're an alcoholic, the best place to hang out isn't the bar. If you're getting over your ex, her Instagram stories isn't the best place to be sneaking peeks. If you're struggling with anything, create the conditions where the BS isn't possible at all.

Love you,

A