Turning Lived Experience into a Year-Long System

The messy, honest beginning of building a 365-day guided journal.

You never get clarity before you start.
You get it once you’re in motion.
Today proved that.

Last week’s announcement felt like the beginning but today is when the project actually became real. Not glamorous-real, not polished-real, but the kind where you sit with a blank page, start pulling on threads from your own life, and watch an entire vision begin to form.

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What Today Looked Like

Today is only my second real day of working on this journal, and I’m still finding my rhythm; still figuring out how I want to shape this thing and what direction feels honest.

Most of today wasn’t “writing a book.” It was uncovering.

I went back through almost everything that’s helped me grow over the last three years:

• the books I’ve read (close to a hundred)—in case you are interested, I will include at the bottom of the article :)

• three full notebooks of daily journaling since July 14, 2022

• quotes I’ve saved

• notes I’ve written in airports, coffee shops, and random side streets

• the 3-month letters I write to my future self

• every Substack article I’ve published in the last nine months (over 45,000 words)

Cataloged all the Substack articles I have written so far—was fun to do this!

Today was mostly about retrieval; pulling all of that into one place, realizing how much raw material already exists, and seeing how it might all come together.

I also drafted the Editor’s Note and an early mission statement for the journal, trying to clarify what this book is supposed to feel like:

Not pressure.
Not perfection.
A steady companion in a loud world.
A place to slow down, breathe, and hear your own voice again.

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The Hardest Part So Far

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I hit the first real “oh wow” moment of the project.

It’s one thing to grow privately—to fill notebooks, write letters to yourself, experiment with habits, and publish essays as you go. It’s another thing entirely to turn that lived experience into a clear, simple system someone else can actually use.

That’s the part I’m wrestling with right now.

This is my first “book”. My first project at this scale. And I feel a real responsibility to do it well. I don’t want this to be another journal full of random prompts or vague positivity. I think there’s a gap for something that weaves together the themes that have actually mattered in my life: presence, awareness, identity, stability, discipline, money, joy, resilience, purpose.

Right now, I’m exploring a 12-month structure that reflects that journey. Something like:

• Presence & Awareness

• Understanding Yourself

• Past & Core Beliefs

• Stability & Foundations

• Habits & Discipline

• Identity & Values

• Self-Talk & Self-Respect

• Connection & Community

• Happiness & Simple Joys

• Resilience & Discomfort

• Systems & Intentional Living

• Future Self & Purpose

None of this is final yet, just the themes that keep rising to the surface as I sift through the past few years.

The breakthrough today wasn’t “figuring it all out.”
It was accepting that my job isn’t to force everything into a perfect structure.
It’s to take what’s been meaningful in my own growth and translate it into a year-long roadmap that genuinely helps someone else.

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Three Things Worth Sharing

1. What I Worked On (Building the Foundation of a 12-Month Transformation Journal)

I spent today assembling the foundational pieces of the journal: reviewing nearly 100 books, three years of daily journaling, 45,000+ words of Substack writing, personal letters, saved quotes, and notes. I drafted the Editor’s Note, shaped the early mission, and started mapping the 12-month arc that will guide the entire book.

2. What I Learned (The Real Challenge of Creating a Growth System)

The hardest part isn’t writing, it’s distilling. Turning lived experience into a clear, practical system forces you to ask, “What actually helped me move forward?” Today reminded me that clarity comes through action: by sorting, refining, and repeatedly showing up.

3. A Recommendation for You (Start Your Own 30-Day Growth System)

If you want to improve your life, here’s a simple framework to use right now:

• Pick a theme for this month (presence, discipline, clarity, stability).

• Choose one daily anchor habit (5–10 minutes: journal, walk, stretch, read a page).

• Do a weekly check-in:

  • What moved me forward?

  • What held me back?

  • What one small adjustment will help next week?

Simple systems create real change. You don’t need a full blueprint to start; you just need a direction.

A Quick Question for You

If you had a year-long journal designed to help you become someone you’re proud of…

What’s one theme you’d want it to spend more time on?
Reply to this E-Mail. I’m building this in public for a reason. Your answers genuinely shape where this goes.

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I Almost Forgot!

Here’s the list of books I have read in the last few years :)

A

• The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — Eric Jorgenson

• Atomic Habits — James Clear

• As a Man Thinketh — James Allen

• The Art of Spending Money — Morgan Housel

• The Art of War — Sun Tzu

B

• Broke Millennial — Erin Lowry

• Bounce Back — Travis Mills

• Building a Second Brain — Tiago Forte

• Breaking Free From Broke — George Kamel

• The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk

C

• The Comfort Crisis — Michael Easter

D

• Deep Work — Cal Newport

• The Defining Decade — Meg Jay

• Die With Zero — Bill Perkins

• Discipline Is Destiny — Ryan Holiday

• Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff — Richard Carlson

E

• Ego Is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday

• Endurance — Alfred Lansing

• The Energy Bus — Jon Gordon

• The Emotion Code — Bradley Nelson

• Everything Is F*cked — Mark Manson

• The 48 Laws of Power — Robert Greene

• The Four Agreements — Don Miguel Ruiz

• The 4-Hour Workweek — Tim Ferriss

• Feel-Good Productivity — Ali Abdaal

• Failing Forward — John C. Maxwell

• FIRE for Dummies — Michael J. Withey

F

• First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete Playbook — Scott Trench & Mindy Jensen

• Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman

G

• Good to Great — Jim Collins

• Greenlights — Matthew McConaughey

• GRIT — Angela Duckworth

• The Go-Giver — Bob Burg & John David Mann

H

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz

• The House Hacking Strategy — Craig Curelop

• How to Win Friends & Influence People — Dale Carnegie

• The Happiness Advantage — Shawn Achor

I

• Ikigai — Héctor García & Francesc Miralles

• I Will Teach You to Be Rich — Ramit Sethi

• Into the Wild — Jon Krakauer

L

• Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek

• Living a Non-Anxious Life — John Mark Comer

• The Last Lecture — Randy Pausch

M

• Meditations — Marcus Aurelius

• The Millionaire Next Door — Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko

• The Millionaire Real Estate Investor — Gary Keller

• The Millionaire Fastlane — MJ DeMarco

• Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl

• The Magic of Thinking Big — David Schwartz

• The Most Important Thing — Howard Marks

• Notes on Being a Man — Scott Galloway

N

• Nowhere for Very Long — Brianna Madia

• Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks — Yuval Noah Harari

• Never Finished — David Goggins

O

• The Obstacle Is the Way — Ryan Holiday

• Outlive — Peter Attia

P

• Plan Your Prosperity — Ken Fisher

• The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel

• The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle

• The Pathless Path — Paul Millerd

• The Power of Your Subconscious Mind — Joseph Murphy

R

• Range — David Epstein

• Real Estate Investing for Dummies — Eric Tyson & Robert S. Griswold

• The Richest Man in Babylon — George S. Clason

• Right Thing, Right Now — Ryan Holiday

• The 5 Types of Wealth — Sahil Bloom

S

• Same As Ever — Morgan Housel

• Set Boundaries, Find Peace — Nedra Glover Tawwab

• Stillness Is the Key — Ryan Holiday

• Stop Working & Start Investing — Logan Allec

• Set for Life — Scott Trench

• The Simple Path to Wealth — JL Collins

• Start With Why — Simon Sinek

• Strangers to Temptation — Scott Gould

• Shoe Dog — Phil Knight

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — Mark Manson

• The Surrender Experiment — Michael A. Singer

T

• Think Again — Adam Grant

• Think & Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill

• The Tipping Point — Malcolm Gladwell

• To Shake the Sleeping Self — Jedidiah Jenkins

• The Three Questions — Don Miguel Ruiz

• Tuesdays With Morrie — Mitch Albom

• 10% Happier — Dan Harris

• The 80/20 Principle — Richard Koch

• The 5AM Club — Robin Sharma

U

• The Untethered Soul — Michael A. Singer

V

• Vagabonding — Rolf Potts

W

• Wealth Your Way — Wealth Your Way Insights

• What Makes Sammy Run? — Budd Schulberg

• Why We Sleep — Matthew Walker

• The Wisdom of Insecurity — Alan Watts

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Thank You

Thanks for being here.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for following along as I build this thing from the ground up.

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