Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 317 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

If you read my Weekly Spark #242: What I Learned from Nate, you’ll know that the decision to ultimately be named “Nathan” carried some indecision since the day I was born. In my 28 years since then, I’ve realized that indecision is just perfectionism in disguise. Believing that every decision has to be a right decision (or that every decision even has a right answer) is “normal” and something that many of us likely do. This is something that I’m consciously working on. In my experience, when I actually execute, accelerating the path to making a decision, recognizing that there is no perfect one, and avoiding the trapping feeling of trying to make every decision a “right” decision has led to a happier life and dare I say… better decision making. Today I’ll share a few thoughts and reflections that are hopefully helpful to our relationship with decision-making.

As I wrote above, indecision led to a delay in my naming. Others know the story of my college decision: another example of indecision dragging on. Flashback to May 1st 2016. College decisions are due at midnight. To prepare for the big decision of where I’m going to spend the next 4 years of my life, I had followed a less than robust process of analyzing, evaluating, and eliminating schools. I was down to Penn State and Saint Joseph’s University (by this point, I had turned down full rides to Princeton, Harvard, and Yale). Believing that my pros and cons list led both schools to be equal, I resorted to everyone’s favorite tool when they reach a stalemate: flipping coins. Logic states that when the coin is in the air your gut will wish for one answer and if you get another or don’t like the outcome, you’ll know which one you really want. When I say I felt nothing in the air I mean it. I don’t know if I’ve ever cared less about a decision or outcome. I had a tennis match the next day and that’s what I was focused on. Finally, as the clock approached midnight, I was ready for bed and I did the absolute worst thing you can do when you need to make a decision: I didn’t make one. I put deposits down at both schools (everyone will tell you can’t do that and you’ll be “blacklisted,” but I’m living proof you can). No decision was my decision and we kicked the can down the road.

As you are teetering on the absolute edge of your seat, I’m going to take a detour to acknowledge a few important lessons. First, my process of evaluating and eliminating schools to this point was, as I said, less than robust and contained no thorough analysis. I knocked Pitt off the list because the tennis courts were too far of a walk from campus. Loyola went down because I didn’t like the gym. Villanova got knocked off because I deemed it too expensive (fair point, one of my better analyses). When comparing choices and evaluating decisions, having some form of pillars or framework that you use to guide your decision, then systematically analyzing options off of that drives more data-oriented and supportable decisions. Oftentimes, we run to others’ opinions. “What do you think?” is a common question. Gathering data and information from others can be very helpful, but oftentimes their advice will be anchored to their experience. One man or woman’s experience. When it’s people you really trust and feel aligned in values with, it can carry more weight. But at the end of the day, it’s still just one person’s experience and perspective. Second, and I had not done this up to this point: visualize yourself in each of your situations. Which one seems more vivid and aligned with who you are? Which one do you see yourself being happy with? Which decision would result in the least regret? As you play through the movie of yourself living out any number of lives as a result of decisions you make, which seems most like YOU. These are helpful questions and exercises when making any decision. Lastly, I actually did make a decision. No decision is a decision. Emerging with no concrete outcome was a choice I made to buy me extra time. Oftentimes, we crumble under the weight of making a decision and don’t even make one. No decision is a decision. At times, it’s the right one, but we need to remind ourselves that it is always a decision that we are consciously making.

Push came to shove, and I chose Saint Joe’s over Penn State. The next 16 days leading up to my decision were actually far more logical and sound than everything that came before. For one, I made a more robust pros and cons list. Secondly, I actually did more visualizations of myself in each place. What were the types of people I would meet? What were the things I would get involved in? What would facilitate the most growth as a person? Now of course, you would meet amazing people at PSU (my dad, brother, and tons of friends went there), get involved in meaningful activities, and grow a ton. Not the point of this piece. We were playing a game of margins and what suited me best. My mom helped prompt some of this visualization and ultimately, between those two, I made the choice that worked well for me in the process. This reality is also true: there’s never a perfect decision. Parts of PSU I came to enjoy much more during my college time (mainly football games). Parts of SJU I came to enjoy much more (mainly campus ministry, service, and the smaller campus/class sizes where you could be more of an individual). Sometimes, there truly is no wrong answer. We are competitive and like to have winners, losers, and things being right or wrong, but sometimes that’s not possible. When faced between two options, acknowledging that you would do very well with either choice is a blessed position to be, but one we need to acknowledge to take the pressure off.

Some other thoughts on decision making:

• Accelerate your timeline whenever possible - Giving yourself extra time to make a decision usually only causes more stress, analysis paralysis, and second guessing. If you can, go with your gut and force yourself to make a quicker decision. Our perfectionist tendencies are uncomfortable with that, but being stressed is also uncomfortable. Choose your discomfort.

• Acknowledge the difference between one way doors and two way doors - I have to give full credit to my buddy Sean Pyne for this one. This reframe helped me understand in a new way. One way doors are those that you really can’t reverse or walk back through. For example, if I decide to chop my arm off because it’s sore from a workout, I will never be able to go back and have a fully functioning arm. You can extrapolate that to other more realistic spaces if you’d like. Conversely, some decisions are reversible. If I decide that I want to try out a new On shoe instead of my trusty New Balances, I can always return them and go back to what I enjoy if I don’t like them. Again, extrapolate that to a more serious space if you’d like. This helps you understand the weight of decisions and when you are facing decisions that are truly irreversible. Those obviously deserve more weight and analysis.

• Decide and commit, reroute if necessary - This is more of a mindset shift after you’ve made your decision. Making a mental commitment to a course of action is the only way to determine if it’s right for you. Being halfway in or out isn’t gathering true data. Once you’ve gone down a path and gathered data, you can always pivot (as long as it’s not a one way door) to something else. In college, I was deciding between medical school and a career in business. I chose a career in business, pursued that for 5 years, and am now in business school for two years. I’m content with my decision. However, if I was working in business but shadowing doctors, studying for the MCAT, and spending half of my workdays watching surgeries on YouTube, I never would have committed fully enough to the business path to even know it was right or wrong for me. If I had concluded that I didn’t like it and wanted to do something else, only I would know the answer of if I gave it a fair shake. We do that often. Halfway in is already out.

• Get away! At times, when I have to make decisions, I’ll simply go for a long walk or hike by myself with no tech. Asking for other people’s opinions can be helpful, but as I’ve said, the buck stops with you. Sometimes that’s just extra noise. When you step away from your standard day to day environment, it’s amazing all of the ways that nature and the world can speak to you. When you return, you often have a clearer head, new perspective, and better ability to make decisions.

I’m no expert on decision making. I’d love to hear your thoughts, perspectives, and what works for you. I’ve made many right decisions. I’ve made many wrong decisions. In my experience, establishing a framework, going with your gut, and accelerating the decision making timeline has always proven more helpful than not. Eliminate the noise. Get away. Decide and commit in order to gather meaningful data along the way. And lastly, ask yourself something very simple: what’s the WORST thing that happens if I choose X, Y, or Z? Our minds make mountains out of mole hills. Sometimes it’s our job to bring them back to reality, one decision at a time.

Substack added a new feature to “Scan for AI text.” As you can see above, somehow it missed that this entire post was all written by Claude, as you could probably tell. Could you imagine if LinkedIn had this feature with stats associated with each post? The “brands” of our nation’s brightest “thought leaders” might decline faster than Enron back in the day!

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Quote of the Week:

“An undecided man is like a person who is cold and can’t decide which piece of clothing to put on; meanwhile, he freezes." — Søren Kierkegaard

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 316 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Recently I finished reading “Pound the Stone” by Joshua Medcalf, an interesting fable that follows Jason, its main character, through his high school trials and tribulations, including ups and downs in basketball, 3 summers selling books door to door, interpersonal challenges with a girl he likes, and other typical high school experiences. After being kicked off the basketball team for fighting an opposing player, his only hope of returning is by traveling door to door selling books for the summer. As part of his assignment, he stays with Russ and his wife Jan, a grounded couple that teaches him the importance of authenticity, grit, and resilience, among other things. By “pounding the stone” and consistently working hard on self-improvement and growth, be transforms from an immature freshman to a wise and driven senior throughout the story. It’s a well-written and thoughtful book that I chose to read because a trusted friend characterized it as “every book you have read wrapped into one” including “Grit, Mindset, Goggins, and the Bible,” which I found to be a fitting description and a testament to this book’s quality synthesis. I’ll share a few of my biggest takeaways, favorite quotes, and reflection questions below.

Play to your strengths - Given that many themes of the book drew from basketball lessons (one of my favorite sports to play/train for growing up), I found it relatable. Oftentimes, we are counseled to “work on our weaknesses until they became strengths.” While helpful to close a gap that may be preventing us from elite performance, this book reinforced the importance of playing to your strengths. Our strengths are what make us unique and create an individualized unique edge. In life, you will be promoted and placed into rooms because of your strengths, the things that people associate you with. These strengths make you unique that no one else can replicate. Spending the time making them as good as they can be possibly be will only increase your value. Let’s say you are in the top 1% of writers in the world. When faced with a decision to work on your writing or work on your drawing, the most effective use of your time is to continue working on writing. Someone else can solve for what you lack in the drawing department. Making your writing even more elite and unique is time best spent. Oftentimes, your “weakness” (again so long as it is not detracting from your personal and professional effectiveness) can simply be filled by someone else. As the book said, “find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others.”

Be aware of the crab mentality - Medcalf described a phenomenon that we are all aware of yet have probably never heard articulated with a name. He called it the Crab Mentality. Imagine having a group of crabs stuck in a bucket. If you’ve ever seen the crab cases at restaurants or grocery stores, you can imagine what I’m talking about. If you have simply one crab in a bucket, it will crawl out. If you put multiple crabs in a bucket, something strange happens when one tries to escape. The other crabs will pull each other down each time one tries to crawl out. And if one persistent crab tries to escape its current reality by repeatedly trying to crawl out of the bucket, the other crabs will break its leg so that it can’t escape. The direct parallel here is how people hamstring others when they outgrow their current situations. In the book, it was Jason choosing his own personal growth, training for basketball, and pursuing meaningful relationships vs. getting high and drinking with his friends from his past life. They lamented the loss of “Fun Jason” as he resolutely and confidently focused on his new priorities, indisputably a better path for him. We see this often. People are judged, criticized, and made fun of for choosing to better themselves. It’s 100% of the time a reflection of the criticizer’s own insecurities and not a reason for the grower to change courses. Depending on age, snakes shed their skin 4-12 times a year; oftentimes, that’s necessary for humans on the path to growth. If you are pursuing growth and becoming the best, most true version of yourself, don’t let other crabby, jealous, and insecure people break your legs. Choose growth.

Pursue YOU - Oftentimes, we, in combination with insight from others, whether consciously or subconsciously, create this vision of what life “should” look like. We have a distinct choice whether to listen to this “should” fallacy. When we go against what we think we “should” be doing, doubts creep in. We have a choice whether to listen to these doubts. Are you going to pursue what sets your soul on fire and when you feel the truest version of yourself, or proceed down a path of what you think you “should” be doing? I liked this quote from the book: “Something corrodes and dies inside of you when you refuse to pursue what sets your soul on fire in order to play it safe. You weren’t created to play it safe. The greatest risk of all is playing it safe, and I refuse to believe the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.” There are a lot of shoulds in life. You should get this job before you do that, you should get married at X age and have kids at Y, you should be prioritizing this over that. Anytime someone says something to me that I “should” be doing, internally I ask myself: “who says?” Who says I should do that, care about that, or act this certain way? Aside from adhering to basic manners and principles of respect and not harming others, the only thing you should be doing is what sets your soul on fire. To that, I cite this quote from the book: “Our greatest fear in life should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” Life’s too short. People are going to try to talk you out of your dreams and encourage you to pursue things that seem attainable. Pursue what matters to you, what sets your soul on fire. To the endless “shoulds” that others project onto you, ask yourself: “who says?”

As I’ve read and written about business books, I’ve posed the question: how can we create businesses that generate lasting value where employees feel motivated, inspired, and empowered to thrive and do their best work? As I read non-business books more focused on life, the question changes slightly: how can we create an environment that promotes intentionality and growth where people feel motivated, inspired, and empowered to thrive and live their best lives? Same threads, slightly different applications. Just as important. This book moved me closer to answers. If you’re serious about creating a high-performing culture in your own life, I highly recommend this book.

Quotes:

• “Everyone wants to be great, until it’s time to do what greatness requires.”

• “Life and basketball are determined by inches. Lots of small, seemingly insignificant things that added up and compounded over time will determine the trajectory of your life. Most people focus on all the big stuff, failing to realize it is the little stuff that makes all the difference.”

• “We often miss the power in doing the unremarkable with incredible consistency.”

• “The chains of habit are too light to feel until they are too heavy to be broken.”

• “Perspective is the only thing that can dramatically change the results without changing any of the facts.”

Reflection questions:

• At the end of the day, ask yourself a few questions: what are you grateful for? What was the best failure you had today? What did you do well if you could do today over again, what would you do differently?

• What are some of your strengths as a person? Whether personally or professionally, how can you find ways to continue honing them, and using them in service of others?

• What is holding you back from pursuing a path that is more true to you, that sets your soul on fire?

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Book of the Week: Pound the Stone: 7 Lessons to Develop Grit on the Path to Mastery by Joshua Medcalf

Quote of the Week:

“Everyone wants to be great, until it’s time to do what greatness requires.”

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 315 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Think about how a child views the world. Endless curiosity, excitement, and exploration. Everything they receive is received at face value, without much prior thought or knowledge to inform it. They’re eager to try new things and experiment even when mom and dad are worried about what might happen. As someone who isn’t a parent, and has mainly spent time with my brother’s 2 year old daughter and 2 month old son, I think a lot about childlike curiosity. Being a child is pretty awesome. At one age, you just eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and look around. As you progress, the sleep decreases slightly and is filled with more exploration and play. Everything is new. Endless curiosity and newness.

Somewhere along the road of life, that once exponential curve of newness begins to flatten. I’ve seen this before. Nothing really surprises me anymore. Every day is the same. It’s called “getting older” or “growing up.” We think we’ve seen it all. Settling into predictability has its benefits (security is one key component of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs), but also has clear downsides, most notably for our soul. That’s why Vrabel’s House of Wellness has exploration! As I think about what makes the experience of being a child so unique is that they have no reference point. They have nothing to compare everything that they’re doing, seeing, and learning to, and perhaps that’s where the beauty lies.

Over time, people become jaded and lose that sense of enthusiasm for newness and the world in general. I remember early in my career all the energy and excitement about learning and trying new things. I could feel more senior people thinking to themselves: just wait until the world conditions him. I always hoped that would never happen. I sought to consciously avoid places where I thought it might. That transition from excited to jaded is one that I hope I don’t experience. I’ve seen it in people that I never thought I would, and it’s always a sad experience. Once you look inside the souls of people who have crossed that threshold, it’s really hard to come back.

Think about what a reference point really does for you. It’s an artificial marker of establishing some sense of order and hierarchy. How do you like this compared compared to that? Well both sucked, but this one was marginally better. This place is awesome. It reminds me of X. Cool. Nice. Yeah he was a really nice guy! He reminds me of Y. Again, what is the significance of him reminding you of someone else? And for reference, I’ve said all of these lines that I’m saying are pointless in the last month, probably week. I’m catching things that I find myself saying and even asking and I’m truly wondering what’s the point? What does the reference point matter?

I was wondering how did we possibly get here? Why is there this incessant need for comparing and contrasting? We did these venn diagrams growing up, but this is every day all the time. Then I remembered: some extremely intelligent people have manufactured technologies that have completely rewired the way that we think about ourselves, others, and the world around us. These systems lead to record levels of depression, anxiety, and loss of enthusiasm for one’s own life, the only one they have. Could you imagine telling yourself as a child climbing on the couch playing with action heroes: hey, I know it might not make sense right now, but in 10 years, you’re going to spend hours a day looking at posts from people you don’t even know about what they’re doing and thinking that day and it’s going to make you feel depressed, lose confidence in yourself, and have less enthusiasm for life, yet you’re going to justify this endless scrolling as a means of “relaxing?” Hell no! Matthew McConaughey always says his hero is him in 10 years. I promise, in that instance, your younger self does not feel that way; he/she is sorely disappointed. Yet we have billions of users on the slot slot machines of comparison today (IG, FB, and I can’t even say LinkedIn anymore because that’s just turned into an AI slop compost of people aspiring to be thoughtful). It’s crazy.

If I really wanted to know what new bird was sitting outside Aunt Betty’s grandma’s fish pond (Facebook), I’d just go see it for myself! If I wanted to see who just got engaged or who is on vacation (IG), I’d just ask them myself, assuming they were a true friend! And if I wanted to see who just went golfing with their daughters, yet is somehow trying to tie it to beating sales metrics or peacock about how much family matters to them to try to create a “presence” that people want to do business with, yet they couldn’t even bring themselves to write the 5 paragraph post themselves so they outsourced it to ChatGPT (LinkedIn), well. Ok. Yeah. There isn’t a world that I would care, but I do hope to be a more thoughtful dad than that someday! But Nathan, the AI has gotten so good, it sounds exactly like me! I give up 🤣 When pursuing more newness and novelty, it’s easy to want to add, but there’s one clear area of subtraction that can stop stunting our curiosity and excitement.

Back to ridding ourselves of reference points. Approaching things at face value retains the beauty in them. No two things are ever alike. It forces presence. It forces awareness. It forces us to see the beauty in simplicity. That flower field might look the same as yesterday, but the bees are flying differently, the light might be reflecting off the flower pot differently, and there’s new life in it. There’s a calmness and serenity that comes with life sans comparisons. You just take it all in.

This is me questioning how our brain categorizes and thinks about the world, but also a plea: embrace a childlike wonder and curiosity. It’s so special. Our soul needs it. Life is too short to be boring. People don’t like boring people. Be curious but be someone that people would be curious about. Childhood is something that we ALL experienced at one point in our lives. From the jaded and worn down 70 year old, to the 22 year old fresh college graduate who the world is waiting to wear down, to the 18 year old starting college for the first time, we ALL can embrace childlike curiosity in all that we do and all that we see. With a clean slate without the reference points. It’ll be more fun. We’ll be more fun. A new world awaits. Go explore it.

As I write this, I am making a commitment to stop comparing and establishing unnecessary reference points. My intent is to take life at face value and enjoy all it has to offer. One simple quote from The Creative Act by Rick Rubin inspired this: “As children, we experience much less interference between receiving ideas and internalizing them. We accept new information with delight instead of making comparisons to what we already believe; we live in the moment rather than worrying about the future consequences; we are spontaneous more than analytical; we are curious, not jaded. Even the most ordinary experiences in life are met with a sense of awe.”

Note: I’m currently reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. A few friends have told me this is the most important book they’ve ever read. Aspects of this post were inspired by that, supplemented with my own thoughts. If you’ve read or are interested in reading it, we are putting together a book conversation to discuss it at the end of this month. Let me know if interested.

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Quote of the Week:

“As children, we experience much less interference between receiving ideas and internalizing them. We accept new information with delight instead of making comparisons to what we already believe; we live in the moment rather than worrying about the future consequences; we are spontaneous more than analytical; we are curious, not jaded. Even the most ordinary experiences in life are met with a sense of awe.” - Rick Rubin

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 314 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

There’s something satisfying about doing hard things. Whether it’s physical or mental, lining up to do something that you know will challenge you is intrinsically fulfilling. If it’s easy, it’s not as fun. Psychology shows that. When it’s hard, you have to work for it, and maybe even struggle, or think you’re going to fail, pulling through and emerging victorious is even more rewarding. From Goggins to Kobe to Phelps and others that I look up to, they built their lives around challenge and doing hard things.

A few summers ago, I read “The Comfort Crisis” by Michael Easter, a book I think is worth reading multiple times in a lifetime. It’s a humbling reminder about how good we have it, and how we should step out of the comforts of our day to day lives at times. His premise is that over time, despite evolving towards more comfort (safety, shelter, warmth, extra food, minimal effort), this human evolution has stunted the pursuit of top tier performance. Even with this comfort, which should help us, we are not at our best. Research shows that people are at their best (physically, mentally and spiritually) when they experience something closer to the level of discomfort our ancestors lived with.

In the book, he toggles between documenting his 33 day solo trip into the Alaskan wild to hunt caribou, and digging into the research on how comfortable modern life has become, and why that comfort isn’t serving us the way we think it is. As I was refreshing myself on some notes I took, I remembered a concept he shared that has always stuck with me: Misogi.

Misogi is originally a Japanese Shinto purification ritual revolving around people making a pilgrimage to a sacred waterfall and standing beneath the freezing water until they’d pushed past what they thought they could endure. Old time cold plunge. Easter applied the principles in a different way revolving around intense physical challenges. Pursuing challenges with a 50/50 shot of success, governed by two rules: make it really hard, don’t die. One example is a runner who has only ever run 10 miles, thinks 15 would be challenging, considers 20, but does 25. They have 3 parts:

1. Separation: leaving the society you normally live in and heading into the wild

2. Transition: the middle stretch where you’re fighting the terrain and your own mind telling you to quit

3. Incorporation: finishing the challenge and returning to normal life changed

At its core the question Misogi asks is simple: what are you mentally, physically, and spiritually willing to put yourself through to become a better human? It’s an exploration and expansion of your own comfort zone. You vs. you.

I love it. Misogis give us perspective. They ground us. They turn us into better people. Not pursuing them, contrary to the way fixed mindset people think, is a detriment to ourselves, the world, and everyone around us. If everyone did a Misogi once per year, like Easter talks about, the world would be a better place. A few other key thoughts I took from the book on why they are so important:

• Grounding stress - Statistically, humans are more stressed now than at any point in history. Our ancestors dealt with real hunger, exhaustion, exposure to the elements, not knowing where the next meal was coming from, predators, and health problems with no cure. Thanks to technological advancements, we don’t face any of that, yet our stress levels are through the roof. Now, people stress about social media likes, the news, money, etc. Don’t get me wrong, being healthy and able to provide for yourself and family is extremely important, but so much of today’s stress is manufactured and blown out of proportion, particularly when most haven’t built the tools to handle and mitigate stress. In comparing our times to our ancestor’s times, it continuously raises the question: what actually matters?

• Problem creep - As we experience fewer real problems, we don’t become more satisfied. Instead, we lower the threshold for what counts as a problem. What used to never be a problem now is as more legitimate problems have become solved. I actually noticed this at school. People were so used to having something to stress about (from working competitive jobs, striving to get into Stanford, etc.) that when there was a period that could’ve been lower stress (exams over, internship solved, etc.), we were so used to having something to stress over that we had to search and find something. Like no bro, Costco not having 12 packs of mixed berries for smoothies isn’t the end of the world! Resist the urge to move the goalposts. Enjoy the peace and serenity that comes from intentionally solving challenges that you once dealt with.

• Humans and stress - Easter points to research suggesting we’re wired for a certain dose of stress. Stanford researchers found that young squirrel monkeys periodically separated from their families grew into the more resilient, capable leaders of the group compared to their sheltered siblings. Facing a challenge with a real chance of failure seems to trigger a “toughening” effect that expands your capacity to handle future stress, which is vitally important.

It’s more than physical. It’s perhaps most straightforward to pursue a Misogi in physical form (long hike, marathon, Ironman, etc.) but it works on you just as much mentally as it does physically. Generally done solo, they force you to sit in your solitude. Research shows that leaning into solitude and building the capacity to be alone actually makes your relationships with others richer. It also promotes boredom, which counters the overstimulation and junk food for the mind that much of our modern daily life promotes. Real silence gives your brain the space to think, process, and get more comfortable with itself. By confronting challenge, perhaps even the slight chance of mortality, we recognize our impermanence and small role in the world, also a helpful grounding mechanism.

You can pursue your own Misogi. On whatever scale you’d like. Whether it’s mental, physical, or spiritual, it’s simply about once question: what are you mentally, physically, and spiritually willing to put yourself through to become a better human?

Ask yourself: What’s the hardest thing you’ve voluntarily chosen to do in the past year? If you had to pick one Misogi before 2026 ends, what would it be? Book it!

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Quote of the Week:

“Callus your mind the same way you callus your hands.” - David Goggins

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 313 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Far beyond Squid Games and Stranger Things, Netflix is known for having a special company culture. Its famous Culture Deck is handed out to potential hires prior to interviewing with the company, used as a guiding light within the company, and revered in the business world. It’s epic. I took a flip through to refresh myself on the concepts and it really has laid the framework for an aspirational culture. I know no company is every perfect, but the very act of even creating a document like this showcases its commitment to its employees and creating a winning environment. They pay top of market, not skimping on salary to attract the best people. They create a culture of autonomy, where people are focused on solving meaningful problems with clear direction on where the company wants to go. They pride themselves on openness, radical honesty, and healthy productive debate. There’s a lot to like about the culture they’ve built, at least from the outside looking in. Recently, I finished reading “Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom & Responsibility” by Patty McCord, Chief Talent Officer of 14 years, who also helped create the Netflix Culture Deck. As someone who’s been fascinated with building high-performance teams, had front row seats to amazing and inspiring cultures, as well as absolutely horrendous low-performance cultures, this book provided a lot of insights for the type of culture I want to build. I’ll share a few of my key takeaways and insights below.

The Power of Recruiting the Right Way

Of anything I read in the book, their approaches to recruiting and handling prospective candidates as well as current and departing employees resonated most with me. I’ve observed companies who take pride in making the recruiting process a pain for incoming employees, almost to discourage candidates and “see what they’re made of.” On recruiting, McCord talked about how “candidates are evaluating you just as you are evaluating them.” So, they created the goal of welcoming and having multiple touchpoints with new candidates when they visited the office, talking with anyone and everyone, and ensuring they felt welcome. She stated that their goal was “for every single person who came in for an interview to walk away wanting the job, even if we hated them.” Curate an experience for prospective hires, get to know them deeply, and decide if they are the right fit to contribute to your high-performing culture.

With recruiting as a differentiator of the company, the built their own internal recruiting firm to have more control of the process in house. I’ve seen a lot of companies outsource hiring to expensive consultants and search firms, or online advertising. It’s extremely expensive and when using an external recruiter, they are incentivized to fill your open role with ANY body, not the RIGHT body. If your brand carries the right prestige (like Netflix does), you can do away with all of that overhead and excess cost, both tangibly and intangibly, by just creating the function in house. Done right, it would pay for itself a million times over. Another idea that I had in conjunction with the internal recruiting firm is having an internal placement firm to work the opposite direction: as people leave or are managed out of the company, help provide opportunities for them to land happily in their next job. McCord talked about how they had great relationships with other companies in Silicon Valley, so even if someone wasn’t right to progress at Netflix, they could help place them at another company and provide a strong endorsement for their candidacy. As a human being, it’s the right thing to do, whether for performance reasons or other, to treat people the right way on their way out the door. Leave them, even in difficult circumstances, with a positive view of the company and you never know what happens. After all, even if they aren’t a fit, their neighbor or best friend might be…

Netflix is known to pay top dollar for candidates. On paying people what they’re worth, McCord said: “we didn’t want to use a system where people had to leave to get paid what they’re worth.” I’ve observed companies who take pride in paying their employees below market rate and providing minimal raises, essentially driving them to leave and saying “yeah, we never really cared about you anyway.” It never made sense to me and McCord captured it best: “what if, by paying top of market, you could bring in one supremely talented and experienced person who could do the job of two people, or even add more value than that?” If you view employees as a cost and trying to “cut costs” too tightly in that department will lead to an even bigger cost in lack of engagement, buy-in, and ultimately, performance. Being fair is extremely important too. I’ve watched cultures underpay high performers and lavishly reward poor performers; whether nepotism, personal relationships, or other factors drive those decisions, you very quickly lose the trust of employees who rightly acknowledge that it’s a low performing culture. What are you losing out on in terms of upside and unlocked performance by not appropriately valuing and compensating employees?

All Levels Understand the Business

Building a great culture starts with everyone in the business truly understanding the business. Every employee, regardless of rank, title, or department, should understand how the business is fundamentally run. I’ve often seen where people siloed in certain departments are so focused on their corner of the company (which is ok) that they don’t understand how other corners of the company truly work. You don’t have to be an expert, but you should be competent and relatively literate. One thing I’ve thought about is mandating people do rotations from time to time. If you’re on the finance team, spend a day with the sales team, the engineering team, the operations team, etc. and shadow/work with people in those roles every now and then. That would foster a new level of empathy and understanding, as well as a new approach to solving problems. Like I always said in my first job working at the grocery store, it would be hard to be an executive or manager if you didn’t bag groceries or walk the floor from time to time. Similar to just understanding how the business works, everyone in the company should understand what the business’ priorities are at any given time. That starts with clear communication from the top down, but also ownership at the lowest levels of the organization. One thing McCord shared in the book which I found interesting: you should be able to stop ANY employee at any given time and ask them what the 5 most important things in the company are at that given time. If they can articulate it clearly and quickly, then the company is doing a good job establishing the direction it wants the boat to row. If not, the heartbeat is still not there.

Open Feedback

I wrote about feedback the other week and am a strong proponent for giving real, frequent feedback of a means of driving championship-level performance. McCord provided a new perspective on managers giving poor feedback and not being truly honest in “performance reviews” (more on those later). By withholding the truth or sugarcoating it, managers actually end up putting themselves in a tough spot because they end up having to cover for and vouch for their employees, while also robbing the employee of a chance to improve. To combat cookie-cutter and unhelpful feedback, Netflix ran an exercise called Start, Stop, Continue. In this exercise, they would share, in open conversations, one thing that someone should start doing, one thing that someone should stop doing, and one thing that someone should continue doing. Essentially, to help drive someone’s performance: what could they do that they’re not doing, what could they stop doing that they are doing, and what should they continue doing that they’re doing well. Love that. Applicable in many areas of life. They created a culture where people aren’t just giving feedback to one or two people, but a wide range. Speaking open and honestly is a muscle that needs exercise for growth; it can be uncomfortable, but you get used to it after a while. Balancing that with not being a prick is also an art, not one that I’ve mastered in all scenarios 😊 There are serious consequences to not speaking up and not being honest. A study at Deloitte revealed that 70% of employees admit remaining silent about issues that might compromise performance. Think about all of the value that could be unlocked in the world with more purposeful, open, and constructive feedback…

The Power of Debate

As part of that culture of openness, Netflix fostered a culture where open debate among disagreeing parties is welcomed and encouraged. The key is that it’s not about who’s right or preserving someone’s ego (like we often see), but about what’s best for the company and the customer. When you establish a North Star as a reason for discussion, it makes it much more productive. Debating for debate’s sake is another corporate black hole: lost time and value that people will never get back in service of no higher outcome. McCord shared an epic story about how there was a disagreement among the Head of Marketing and Head of Content about how they should address a certain customer issue, so Reed Hastings (CEO and Co-Founder) set up a debate in front of the company. The catch: each had to argue the other person’s point of view, which helped with perspective taking and generating a more informed argument. Debates and productive conversation can also get totally derailed (often by people’s ego, again), but also by lack of clarity. Keep debates on track by avoiding sidebars and asking “what problem are we trying to solve here?” That will ensure that anything being discussed is in service of that mission. Using debates and informative conversations to learn about the organization are also helpful: ask people “can you help me understand what leads you to believe that’s true?” to create “bridges of understanding between parties.

Identify Targeted Behaviors, Not Rules

As part of Netflix’s Culture Deck, they talk about modeled behaviors, not rules. Rather than being prescriptive and telling people precisely what to do and not to do, they talk about the types of actions that they believe will build the culture. A few examples are below, which I think are relevant to many businesses:

• We wanted open, clear, and constant communication about the work being done and the challenges being faced, not only for a manager’s own team but for the company as a whole

• We wanted people to practice radical honesty: telling one another, and us, the truth in a timely fashion and ideally face to face

• We wanted people to have strong, fact-based opinions and debate them avidly and test them rigorously

• We wanted people to base their actions on what was best for the customer and the company, not on attempts to prove themselves right.

• We wanted hiring managers to take the lead in preparing their teams for the future by making sure they had high performers with the right skills in every position

I’m continuing to learn from the greats and study this question: how can we create businesses that generate lasting value where employees feel motivated, inspired, and empowered to thrive and do their best work? This book and a deep-dive on the Netflix culture has moved me closer to answers. If you’re serious about creating a high-performing culture, I couldn’t recommend this book more.

Insightful Quotes:

• “A business leader’s job is to create great teams that do amazing work on time” – Patty McCord

• “If your people aren’t informed by you, there’s a good chance they’ll be misinformed by others.” – Patty McCord

• “Failing to tell people the truth about problems in their performance leads to an undue burden being shouldered by managers and other team members” – Patty McCord

• “One of the great dangers in business is people who are great at winning an argument due to their powers of persuasion rather than the merits of their case.” – Patty McCord

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Netflix Culture Deck

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Attaching a version of the Netflix Culture Deck. Worth taking a spin and seeing what resonates

Book of the Week: Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord

Quote of the Week:

“True and abiding happiness in work comes from being deeply engaged in solving a problem with talented people you know are also deeply engaged in solving it, and from knowing that the customer loves the product or service you have all worked so hard to make.” - Patty McCord

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 312 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

There is so much power in books. Research from Mariah Evans talks about how having books in the home had more of an impact on a child’s educational attainment than parents’ educational level or the country’s GDP. A home with 500+ books pushed kids 3.2 years further in education on average. They coined the term the “radiation effect,” stating the idea that kids benefit from growing up around books even if they aren’t reading them, with positive effects showing up in reading, math, and other skills later in life. Just being around books, even without reading them, is powerful. Reading them, however, is far more powerful. Warren Buffett claims to read 500 pages+ a day and dedicates 80% of his workday to reading. Charlie Munger said he never met a wise person who didn’t read consistently. Patrick Bet-David talks about how reading an hour a day is 4% of your day, and doing that for a decade will put you at the top of your field, no matter the field. Strong endorsements.

Recently I spent some time around my collection of books. Can’t say I felt instantly smarter, but I felt inspired. Books (similar to music, pictures, and other artifacts) are reminders of different stages of life and the roles that they played at the time that you read them. Like the feeling of hearing a song and instantly being taken back to a time period or memory associated with it. If it’s books you’ve read, there’s memories and knowledge to be gained from them. If it’s books you haven’t read, there’s excitement and pending inspiration/knowledge whenever you get the chance.

One thing I love doing on calls, listening to speakers, or at people’s houses is checking out their book shelves. The books people read and have laying around, let alone on prominent display, reveal a lot about who they are. I always thought the organized bookshelves looked cool, so I decided to organize mine…

Recently someone asked me my prized possession. It would be this.

As I scan that bookshelf, I’m reminded of different versions of myself. Notably, I see the first books that were added to the collection: Mind Gym, You vs. You, and Wooden on Leadership, all of which were gifted to me by my friend Sean Cochran, who I first met when I was five years old as he coached me at a soccer camp. In middle school, he gifted me those three books, ones that I devoured and have enjoyed referencing ever since. Before school, I used to talk to him about leadership, those books, and recite all that I had learned from SportsCenter that morning. I’m sure he didn’t know it at the time, but simply gifting me those few books were priceless investments in me that would compound and stay with me forever. That started my awareness of the power of books.

As I wrote this fall in Weekly Spark #268: Rediscovering an Old Passion, my reading journey re-kickstarted this past fall. During and post-Covid, I was close to 50 books a year, then steadily declined as work ramped up and nearly stopped as I prepared for testing and applications to business school. This fall, I refell in love with something I once loved and it’s been a true joy. One of my 2026 resolutions was to read 10 pages a day, which I’ve done every day thus far and frankly will probably do for the rest of my life. Some nights it’s 10 pages right before I go to sleep and that’s all I do for the day. Others, and some of the most exciting ones, are when I can read, have all the free space and time to explore and relax without the time pressure of a schedule. Little doses of good things can compound to great things. No comparison, but Warren is 50x as productive reading as me; the compound effects of that are insane.

What’s been most fascinating about the power of books is their power to deepen connection. There is nothing like talking to someone about a good book that you both read. Some of my best conversations have come from concepts, questions, ideas that stem from wrestling with the contents of a book and having it serve as your centerpiece for a meaningful conversation with someone. There’s a shared bond even when you name the title and someone goes “oh I’ve read that!” Instant connection. Recently, I was traveling with some classmates and there were maybe 20 of us sitting around a table talking about our favorite books, the things we learned, and recommendations for each other. Slightly nerdy sure, but super fun.

Another power of books is intentionally gifting books or receiving books as gifts. It’s powerful, and it’s super thoughtful. As I wrote above, Sean gifting me a few books 15 years ago has stuck with me forever. It will always serve as a reminder of the strength of our friendship and the knowledge that you can gain from reading. Quite a few of us have enjoyed gifting books and even writing a handwritten note on the inside cover, which is truly a priceless gift. It not only gifts knowledge, but is thoughtful and provides an experience for people. For people who are into it, it’s priceless.

Books change lives. The joys of reading, learning, and sharing them in community are timeless and can’t be replaced…

The inside cover of my cherished books…

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Quote of the Week:

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 311 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Feedback is one of the most powerful gifts you can give to someone. While at times it can be uncomfortable and this discomfort leads people to give what I call softball or cake feedback (not sharing any of the actual constructive, helpful stuff, just focused on disguising it to make the other person feel good), giving quality feedback is the right thing to do. The best leaders give the best feedback that helps you grow as a person. The weakest leaders give the weakest feedback that does nothing for you.

I’ve had experiences with both, but one instance of the latter has stuck with me throughout my career. I was a winter intern at a big 4 public accounting firm during my junior year of college in busy season of 2019. I served on my first client for 2 weeks, so a short amount of time to establish camaraderie, learn (ideally), and get evaluated/establish a game plan for the remainder of my 10 weeks with the firm. To also set the scene, I was in data gathering mode. I had just taken Organic Chemistry during fall semester and was pursuing two paths: taking the pre-reqs for medical school, as well as the classes necessary to pursue a career in business. I entered college as an accounting major, my dad was a partner at two firms throughout his career, and I was doing really well with it in school, so logically, I had to test whether the career would actually fit what I wanted. What an exercise this was. I’ll share stories from here that reflect my experience with specific individuals. To be clear, I think KPMG is a quality firm and met many great people during my time there; I’m grateful to have started my career there.

I remember being shocked when I showed up my first day. I walked into a depressing room sequestered to the side of the client’s office, even worse than playing right field in little league baseball. Absolutely no one wanted you there. Neither the client nor my coworkers had any desire to have the auditors in that room. After brief interactions, I disappeared into the isolation of my chair at the table, feet away from my team, hardly spoken to until it was time to order coffee and lunch for the team. You would’ve thought I was speaking Mandarin when I asked “Hey is there anything I can help you with?” I listened to my manager and the rest of the team moan and groan the entire day about how much they hated their jobs. I could share more but you wouldn’t believe it anyway, so I’ll stop there. As a motivated, intellectual individual, I was confused. Is this what the real world is like?

But I had a game plan. As Bob Bowman (Michael Phelps’ swim coach) always said: “Champions need a menu of things to work on on a daily basis.” Mine was established: gather data on whether I could envision myself working this job for 2 years max on my step to something more and gather data on how I showed up as a professional. Having spent my working days to that point being a cashier at a grocery store and an intern at a law firm, this was a big step up. I could learn transferable principles about working in a professional setting that I could take anywhere. Oh, I also had another key part of my game plan, what I always told myself: do not lose yourself in this company. Find the best people, embrace them, but do not let the intense levels of dispassionate views towards work, boring surface level conversations, and lack of creativity change you. The antithesis of those things are what have made you great, don’t let it steamroll the personality out of you. Slightly arrogant for a 21 year-old. Not the slightest bit inaccurate.

As far as my data gathering exercise was concerned, I had gathered a lot of data on the first part. When working any job, look up and look around. If you aren’t inspired and want to live the life of the people above you, and aren’t inspired / enjoy the people around you, your days are numbered, if you’re smart. I’ve seen people stick at jobs for years too long failing both of those tests for a couple of happy hours and team dinners. Their career progression has suffered immensely as a result. Making friends and growing as a professional are two different things; I met a ton of amazing people, ones I still talk to to this day, but I wasn’t going to let my career suffer in service of that. From people that I worked directly with on teams, to friends that I started with, to others who my dad and I still keep in touch with today, I’m grateful for the relationships I built there. By product of “Trush” and “Vrabel” being seated at the same table on day 1 of the internship, I met one of my best friends for life. That alone makes it all worth it. I do remember calling my mom after the first day at the client asking how in the hell I was going to make it through this internship. I was bored out of my mind and everyone hated what they were doing. With all that I pushed myself, got 4.0s, and wanted to challenge myself, it led to this. I felt like a waste of talent and that I was letting myself and everyone around me down.

But I still needed to gather data on myself as a professional, which was where performance reviews came in. If you asked someone how you were doing on the day to day, you probably wouldn’t hear much, unless you totally messed up. But performance reviews, especially as an intern “gunning for” a return offer, you needed something documented. So when I sat down with my Senior Manager after finishing my first engagement, I was excited to get some codified feedback. I never cared much about the strengths, I was always focused on points of improvement. Champions need things to work on. I’ll never forget. We walked down through the review top to, what I thought was bottom, and he basically stopped when we got to the “points to work on” section. Was it empty? “Thank you for the feedback and the time. Is there anything that I can do to improve on for my next client? I like having things to aim for and work on.” He shook his head dismissively, then put the paper off to the side. Never showed it to me nor sent it to me. I should’ve known something was up.

Fast forward a few weeks, I was well onto my second client, which actually helped me establish some inspiration and career goals. Working at a private equity firm office every day was quite cool. From that point forward, my goal was to get into private equity in some way, shape, or form (a goal I achieved 3 years later). I was on the 15th floor of the building and got a call from my People Management Leader (we don’t need to make fun of the title, but we can, if you want to) asking for the PDFs from my reviews to date. So I reached back out to the Senior Manager who had delivered my review a few weeks prior. He finally, after 2 follow ups, sent me the PDF with my first review, copying my PML. This was the first time I had seen it. 80% of it was predictable but the bottom section, the one he implied was blank. Oh fuck. There was a lot more there than I had come to expect. I laughed when I forgot one part of someone’s very large dinner order (I’ll reserve the jokes for who it was), I was arrogant, I needed to understand the concept of stepping stones and that I was an intern who would be doing lower level work, not the strategic more interesting work (which I learned when I’d started full time, actually doesn’t exist). I remember calling my PML apologizing profusely and working with him on establishing a game plan for the remainder of the internship. At this point, I was well over halfway and still wanted to get a return offer. Concerned it was too late, I had to step up my game even more.

The rest went quite smooth. I got my return offer. I passed the CPA exams before I started full-time. I worked there 20 months, had top performance reviews, had local and national leadership positions within the firm, and eventually got into private equity. Now Stanford. All is well that ends well, but among many major lessons from this experience, one stuck out: the power of feedback.

Many of us have been that Senior Manager in the room with me. We have the opportunities to deliver feedback to other people. We can either take it or leave it. But here’s the thing: not delivering constructive feedback to others is a selfish act. Not speaking openly and honestly about the things they do and the way it makes you feel is a selfish act. It’s uncomfortable. It can lead to some challenging conversations. I get that. But what type of relationship is that, personal or professional, if it can’t sustain itself through raw, real, and candid conversation? To me, it’s not a relationship at that point. I’m not going to call that guy a weak leader globally, but in that instance, he was a VERY weak leader. He had a chance on a silver platter to deliver constructive feedback: an intern was in his office for a scheduled meeting practically begging for it.

So what are steps we can take to deliver more effective feedback? We don’t have to act like weak leaders, afraid to share what’s true and can help others. Whether a friend, a partner, a coworker, or someone else we care about, delivering real feedback is the greatest gift you can give someone on their growth journey.

• Get real - People appreciate raw and open feedback more than we imagine. We imagine the worst case discomfort, but I’ve found that rarely happens. After the initial wave of potential defensiveness, people see the bigger picture. It’s not personal, it’s about growth.

• Depersonalize it - “You’re so selfish” is not constructive feedback. “When you do X, it can make me feel Y and at times, appear like you have selfish motives in those instances” is constructive feedback. It focuses on how someone’s actions make you feel, doesn’t attack their global character, and gives them specific instances and areas to reflect and improve.

• Forget the fluff - If you are in a position to give feedback and make it fluffy and non actionable, just don’t even bother doing it. It’s not helpful and not worth it.

• Feedback sandwich - In a longer form conversation, start with something positive, fit in the constructive comments in the middle, and end with something positive. The bookends will dictate people’s feelings, and they’ll be better able to process the middle.

How can we better receive feedback?

• Resist the defensive instinct - At first, when someone delivers feedback we perceive to be harsh, the initial instinct is to go on defense. Explain yourself. Tell them why they’re wrong. It never helps. Listen with open eyes, ears, hearts. Let them speak even after they’ve paused for the first time. Digest it. Think about where they may be coming from. It will lead to a far more productive conversation

• Seek their perspective - Ask questions and learn as much as you can about what you did and how it made them feel. That’s the most constructive way to deliver feedback, but not everyone does it. Sometimes we need to guide them so it’s specific, actionable, and something we can do something with.

Feedback is a gift. It’s fuel to the fire of growth. Give it. Seek it. Do your part in making yourself and those around you better. Each and every day…

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Quote of the Week:

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions." - Ken Blanchard

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 310 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

I recently finished reading “The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success” by Will Thorndike. Will is a graduate of Stanford GSB and private equity investor; he started and served as Managing General Partner at Housatonic Partners. The story of the book is quite fascinating: it initially grew out of a talk he prepared for portfolio company CEOs on Henry Singleton, the capital allocator who built Teledyne. In partnership with researchers at Harvard, he spent 8 years working on the book and was also able to interview all of the CEOs that he included in his book, including Warren Buffett. Warren provided high praise for the book: “An outstanding book about CEOs who excelled at capital allocation.” These CEOs shared a rare discipline around deploying cash for profitable projects rather than just how they run day to day operations, hence the title “The Outsiders.” I’ll share some of my broader takeaways below.

Thorndike profiled 8 businesses, many of which I had never heard of. In sharing the stories of these companies in a wide variety of industries, from cable to newspapers, to large industrial companies, the CEOs shared remarkably similar philosophies and mindsets. He benchmarks the success of CEOs by comparing their company’s compound annual return to shareholders during his/her tenure vs. return of peer companies during the same period vs. the broader market (S&P 500). These CEOs outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 20x during their tenures.

Thematically, these CEOs excelled at two major things and the company benefited downstream: run their operations efficiently to generate cash and efficiently deploy that cash generated for its highest returning uses. Today, many leaders are obsessed with “size of company,” while these individuals were focused on per share value (not overall growth or size) and how to generate the most cash flow. When their stock was cheap, they would buy it back. When it was expensive, they would use it to purchase other companies or raise capital to fund future growth. There were no bells and whistles, just a relentless focus on disciplined operations and investing.

Without detailing each company and CEO, there are a few stories that stuck out. Tom Murphy took over Capital Cities Broadcasting in 1966 running a handful of small-market TV and radio stations. He grew the company almost entirely through patient acquisitions driven by longer term relationships that he had fostered while keeping overhead lean. Eventually, he acquired ABC, the big whale itself (4x the size of Capital Cities at the time). As he grew the combined company, he ultimately sold to Disney for $19B in 1996, generating significant returns for its shareholders.

One story stuck out. A bartender at one of the company’s corporate events in the 1970s bought a ton of stock and ended up making a significant return. When asked why he did it: “I’ve worked a lot of corporate events over the years, but Capital Cities was the only company where you couldn’t tell who the bosses were.” Not only did they have a shrewd culture in investing and operating, but it was run with a humility that attracted employees and investors alike. As Tom Murphy put it: “The goal is not to have the longest train, but to arrive at the station first using the least fuel.” During Murphy’s 29 year tenure, a dollar invested grew to $204, a 19.9% internal rate of return, well ahead of the S&P 500's 10.1% and a media-industry index's 13.2% over the same stretch.

Bill Anders took over General Dynamics 1991 as the end of the Cold War left the company and the broader defense industry bloated with excess capacity. His rivals chose to diversify, while he stripped the company down, exiting businesses that weren’t clear market leaders. His path to that seat was quite unconventional. He was an astronaut on 1968 Apollo 8 mission, which led him to take more risk in his career. One person close to him remarked: “After orbiting the moon, mundane business problems did not faze him.” That perspective led to a very successful turnaround of a legacy industrial company. Over Anders' 17 year stretch at General Dynamics, the company delivered a 23.3% compound annual return versus 8.9% for the S&P 500.

John Malone, CEO of TCI, took a small cable operator in 1973 and built it into the dominant U.S. cable company through heavy debt and hundreds of acquisitions. He was known for structuring deals and using tax strategies to minimize reported earnings while maximizing reinvestable cash flow. Through this, he never paid a dividend, while focusing on financial engineering and tax optimization instead. Supposedly, he is the one who coined the term EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization), the North Star in many investing circles today. On leverage, he said: “better to pay interest than taxes.” In his deals, he sought a target leverage ratio (debt:EBITDA) of 5x and used stock deals to maintain tax efficiency, allowing investors to defer capital gains taxes. From 1973 to 1998, TCI generated a 30.3% annual return versus 14.3% for the S&P 500 and 20.4% for publicly traded cable peers; a dollar invested at the start was worth $900 by 1998.

Lastly, Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha. He recently stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a business that he took control of in 1965. He inherited it as a failing New England textile mill, partnered with Charlie Munger, and shifted its strategy from buying cheap mediocre businesses to acquiring high quality ones with durable moats, funded largely by insurance float. He viewed the insurance premium income that his insurance businesses generated as cash with opportunities to invest and generate a higher return, before insurance losses and expenses hit. He limited meetings and preferred to spend time in his office reading, thinking, and focusing on how he could best generate capital for shareholders. I’d say he did ok.

One thing that made Warren unique, especially in comparison to the modern day public company board is that his board members were insiders with significant personal investments in the company. This was in contrast to the recommendations of Sarbanes-Oxley, implemented in 2002 after the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals, which pushed for more independent board members. Of course, it’s import to comply with mandates, such as having an independent audit committee (otherwise would be a conflict of interest), but it makes sense to want people that are on the board to care, be invested, and want the business to succeed vs. just being there to collect an annual check (like some public company directors today). I’d compose a board with people I like, trust, and have a vested interest in my business succeeding too. From 1965 to just before the book’s publishing in 2011, Berkshire Hathaway compounded at 20.7% annually against 9.3% for the S&P 500, turning a dollar into $6,265, roughly 100 times the S&P’s result. Given that Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway don’t have a distinct peer benchmark, there is no comparison to peers featured in the book, but the comparison to the broader market tells a pretty clear story.

A few other lessons/takeaways:

• Bill Stiritz (Ralston Purina)

  • Spinoffs highlight the value of small business units, allow for better alignment of management incentives, and defer capital gains taxes. In some cases, they allow for more true valuation of separate business units.

  • Focus diligence on key questions and one page of assumptions: market growth, competition, potential operating improvements, and cash generation. It’s ok to do more, but focus on what you are learning and how it informs the actual investment.

• Dick Smith (General Cinema)

  • Build investments in an industry around a platform company + smaller or minority investments with involvement

  • Make executives and employees feel like owners

The CEOs in this book, despite their broad range of industries and timelines, followed similar blueprints. They recognized the inefficiencies of dividends, made disciplined (and sometimes bold) acquisitions, used leverage tactfully and selectively, took advantage of the efficiencies of stock buybacks when appropriate, minimized tax burdens, ran predominantly decentralized organizations with centralized investing decisions, and focused on true cash flow over reported net income.

In my last post, I contemplated this question: how can we create businesses that generate lasting value where employees feel motivated, inspired, and empowered to thrive and do their best work? This book also moved me closer to answers. If you’re curious about capital allocation, building better businesses, or just studying greatness, I highly recommend this book.

Quotes:

• “It is impossible to produce superior performance unless you do something different.” - John Templeton

• On concentration: “We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.” - Warren Buffett

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Book of the Week: The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by Will Thorndike

Quote of the Week:

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” - Warren Buffett

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 309 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

As I wrote last week, I’ve been learning a lot from Brad Jacobs. I just finished his book and also recently listened to a podcast by him. Now you might be wondering: who is Brad Jacobs and why should I care? He’s an accomplished businessman and serial entrepreneur who has founded 7 billion-dollar companies (including spinoffs). In his book and podcast, he shares meaningful lessons on life, starting at the base psychological level, and expands into themes and principles that we can all apply. Whether you care about business, living a more meaningful life, or broadening your worldview, a guy like that has a lot to teach. I’ll share my biggest themes and takeaways below.

He starts out the book with a section titled “how to rearrange your brain” focused on psychology and mental models. How you think is critical to anything you do, so it’s worth spending significant time continuing to refine and enhance the power of your mind. Successful people think differently than nearly everyone else. A few prevailing mindset themes that I found helpful:

• Accept the world as it is, not as you wish it should be - We often have this idealistic view of the world and the way it should be, which while inspiring, can delude ourselves of what it actually is. Get real. Get raw. Once you have understood and analyzed the world and your role in it as close to reality as possible, without wishful thinking, you are better prepared to act.

• Our insignificance - I’ve written about this before but he talked about the Cosmic Insignificance Theory and how we are merely ants on a floating rock. The world has been around for millions of years and we are here for what, max of 100? Sometimes, we need a reminder that the world doesn’t revolve around us. We are rounding errors in the broader span of the universe. While sobering, stepping outside of the day to day and getting real on the bigger picture can help us live more intentionally and meaningfully.

In the process of founding multiple billion-dollar companies, he’s completed around 500 acquisitions and raised roughly $60 billion in institutional capital. In the process of buying companies, it’s critical to do deep research and get the major trend right. In today’s day and age, understanding technology and how AI could impact the business in the future is critical. He had a hot take that AI will eventually replace CEOs, which I respectfully disagree with, but it will certainly change the business landscape (and particularly make things more efficient). His key to successful purchases: respect the seller. Have a few terms that you need (price and certain terms), then try to say yes to other seller requests, so that they feel good about the process. In my negotiations class at Stanford GSB, we talked about how a successful negotiation is both parties walking away with positive emotions and feeling like they got what they wanted out of the deal. The key to a good deal is the opportunity to do another. I’ve observed many in the dealmaking world who are clearly out to screw the other party and take advantage of them. They don’t win in the long run. The world has its own way of rewarding decent people (the bar isn’t even that high nowadays). Play the long game.

Integrations are challenging. Combining multiple company cultures and operations into one is never easy. Like getting married, you are merging two different families, ways of doing things, and mindsets. It can take time to adjust but messing up the integration is a recipe for a very unhappy marriage, both in business and in life. I’ll continue with the business examples, but the parallels are real. While there are differences and you’d like to operate as once efficient unit, you can’t force cultural change. This is where feedback and taking time to truly get to know the other side is critical. Brad talked about going on a listening tour and really trying to understand answers to the following questions when he first buys a company:

1. What would you do to improve the company?

2. What’s the business doing well, that we’d be crazy to change?

3. What’s the business not doing well, that we’d be crazy not to change?

4. What’s your best idea to change the business?

Once you gather that, you can think about improvements to make to make the culture and operations better for everyone, not just the buyer’s economics. Done right, 1 + 1 can really equal 3!

Having the right people in the right seats at the right time is critical to success for any business. Messing up any one of those parts of the equation means it’s not functioning at full capacity. Brad talked about screening candidates for 4 key traits: intelligence, hunger, integrity, and collegiality. That last piece is critical. I firmly believe you can teach people above a certain intelligence threshold nearly anything. So the question is less about can they do it vs. do I want to do it with them? Are they pleasant to be around? Inspiring? Kind? His companies also take a unique approach to interviewing candidates. Instead of your standard first round interview for them to get to know you, they ask candidates to fill out a form answering 45 questions before their first interview. From there, the team can learn how the candidate thinks, devise thoughtful questions, and spend interview time focused on diving deeper and scanning for fit. I really like that idea and will plan to implement someday. In the process of employee management, he shared 2 frameworks that I found very unique and valuable:

• Supermarket test - When interviewing, hiring, firing, and handling people in general, don’t create a scenario where a decade from now, you’d feel awkward if you ran into them in the supermarket. I’ve never seen that or thought about things that way, but think about it. We all have people where that would be awkward. I know I do. We probably treated them in a way that we feel bad, guilty, or unsettled about. Or they did the same to us. You can’t control how other people approach you, but you can control how you treat them. This is a new way to approach people and one that I really like.

• A, B, C players - We all know we should surround ourselves with and build organizations around A players. Sounds easy in theory, but what about practice? He offered a simple mental test that can help you identify whether you’re dealing with an A, B, or C player. Applies in both business and life. Imagine the employee walking into your office saying they’re leaving with no option to stay, how do you feel in response?

  • C player - Relieved. Removes the burden of you having to fire them anyway.

  • B player - Not happy about it, but can live with it. Won’t fight too hard.

  • A player - Distraught and upset. Would do a lot to try to change their mind and keep them. We need to value and keep A players happy! Pay them well, treat them well, make sure they are motivated and incentivized to do their best work and they will reward you and your organization handsomely for a long time to come.

Organizations have a vested organization in keeping their employees motivated, inspired, and incentivized to do their best work. Some consciously create cultures where that is not the case. Others prioritize that and turn employees into the greatest assets the company has. Brad talked about the importance of gathering and acting on employee feedback in a consistent and meaningful way. Every quarter, they send a survey to all employees asking for feedback and straightforward questions like “what’s your best idea to improve the company?” and “what’s the stupid thing we’re doing as a company?” Then, the management team will review each survey and share key findings with the company, including bad ones, in their raw format. I’ve taken employee surveys before and it’s usually a bunch of BS; companies will do it then distribute sanitized outcomes to make themselves look good. See, look how happy everyone is! Meanwhile, on the ground, everyone knows what’s going on. Brad and his team seek to act on the feedback, which he put well: “When leadership listens to an idea from an employee and follows up to fix it, employees know they have a voice.”

We live in a world that values activity over achievement. Focusing on looking busy and productive vs. actually being productive. I’ve seen that in many (but not all) organizations that I’ve worked at and studied. Meeting culture plays a huge role in that. In some instances, people hold a meeting to talk about the meeting to talk about the meeting. In others, headcount boosts to an unbelievable degree. But others foster productive conversations and lead to effective and efficient decisions. My own metric for determining the effectiveness and efficiency of meetings: Meeting Cost, the total time cost to the organization. If you have a 2-hour meeting with 50 people, that’s 100 hours of Meeting Cost to the organization. More than likely, 20% of people are even listening or adding value, so what’s the point? If you cut that meeting by an hour or keep the meeting to 2 hours but “only” include 25 people, you’ve cut the Meeting Cost to 50 hours. With one change, you’ve generated 50 free hours for the organization that people can spend adding value rather than sitting in a meeting. If we are focused on returns and efficiency, that’s a metric worth considering.

Brad Jacobs has his own ideas for running effective meetings and some that I found extremely thoughtful. He agrees with me that we waste and unbelievable amount of time in meetings that don’t move the ball downfield. For him, there are 3 ingredients to a successful meeting: right people (no more, no less), crowdsourced agenda (everyone contributes to the topics of discussion), space where everyone feels safe to respectfully disagree (everyone has a voice). He had one particular idea that I find helpful:

• Ahead of meetings, have the team prepare the materials well in advance and distribute to the attendees early (a few days before the meeting). This allows attendees to read them, process them, and come up with key takeaways/questions. From there, each attendees sends 1-2 key takeaways and 1-2 key questions the group should discuss. Then, someone compiles a digital survey and sends to all attendees asking them to rank the takeaways and questions from 1-10 with 10 being “discussing this should be the highest priority.” By starting the meeting reading the takeaways 7 or higher, and focusing on the highest average ranked questions, they can ensure the discussion is focused on the most important topics.

Ever since I first read Adam Grant summer after my freshman year of college, I’ve been curious about the following question: how can we create businesses that generate lasting value where employees feel motivated, inspired, and empowered to thrive and do their best work? This book moved me closer to answers. If you’re serious about flourishing, either from a business or personal standpoint, I couldn’t recommend this book more.

Insightful Quotes:

• “It’s actually about finding problems, embracing and even enjoying them - because each problem is an opportunity to remove an obstacle and get closer to success.” - Ludwig Jesselson

• “If you can find a big, hairy deal with solvable problems, that’s where the real money is.” - Brad Jacobs

• “Radical acceptance quiets the noise created by yesterday’s decisions and today’s wishful thinking.” - Brad Jacobs

• On talent: “An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit.” - Brad Jacobs

• On meetings: “In every meeting, take a moment to appreciate how that precise constellation of people and circumstances has never existed before and will never exist again. Don’t waste the precious time that you have together.” - Brad Jacobs

• “Bad news is a reality; hiding it is just a waste of time.” - Brad Jacobs

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Book of the Week: How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs

Podcast of the Week: Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy: Think Big and Move Fast with Brad Jacobs

Very insightful podcast that builds on ideas from the book. I didn’t weave in much to the newsletter, but my raw notes are below:

• Scalability

• If want to build a business with billions in revenue, need to find an industry with hundred billion in revenue

• Focused on single digit multiples

• Integrity of seller is important - reflected in senior leadership team and team in general

• What has to go right for this to succeed?

• What could go wrong that would cause our thesis to not happen?

• Really focused on 1:1:1 (ERP, accounting, etc) and integrating across entities

• Grow price, volume, and improve margins

• What’s Return on Invested Capital of project?

• Divided XPO into 3 smaller businesses to more accurately value on a multiple level

• Took opportunity to buy back stock

• “Time is not something to waste on frivolous things” - BJ

• Diligence questions - how do you make money? Whats different about you and next guy? Advantages? Disadvantages? If you were CEO, what would you do differently? What should I change? What should I definitely not change? What’s your best idea you have to make the company better? What would you do if you had my job?

• Acknowledgements section of book - one mentor and one sentence learned from them

• Ask employees - If you had a wishlist, what would make your job easier? Could please customer more? 10 minute task to 10 seconds?

• Shareholder value comes from problems - identify them and fix them!

• Meditate 2x a day since 16 - did TM for decades!

• Create a space for respectful disagreement

• What are questions that are worth going around the room and discussing as a team? Rate questions for importance then use that to create an agenda

• Laser focus on the things that matter

Quote of the Week:

“We have it in our own hands to either make life meaningful or just pass the time until we die. We’re not at the mercy of others in terms of experiencing how enriching life can be. That’s up to us, and it depends on how much we’re willing to work at it” - Brad Jacobs

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 308 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Continuing the theme of thoughtful questions from last week, I’ve found another that I find quite valuable. We are past the generic, dispassionate “how are you?” Recently, I’ve been reading Brad Jacobs’ book “How to Make a Few Billion Dollars” (as much as I dislike the title, it had a lot of good tidbits and more on this in few weeks). He talked about how him and his wife became bored with asking their kids “how was your day?” Let’s face it, when you ask someone that, what do you usually hear? Good how was yours? That’s a good convo starter! So they switched it up, simply asking: what was the happiest part of your day? A simple reframe that narrows to good, instead of opening the door to the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s important to discuss the bad and the ugly, but it’s also important to frame and prime for the good. Whether it’s in conversation with yourself or others, see what happens when you ask: what was the happiest part of your day? Between a mindset shift and lights of positivity, I think you’ll like what you find.

As Brad and his wife asked the question, they found that their kids “kept their antennas up” all day knowing that the question was coming. Kind of like when you look for a yellow car on the road, you find that they’re everywhere. Our minds are so unbelievably powerful. Seek out the negative, reasons to be unhappy, reasons to dislike a person or a situation, or something to complain out and I PROMISE you will find them. Seek out the positive, reasons to be happy, reasons to like a person or a situation, or something to praise/be grateful for, and I PROMISE you will find them!

In business, they talk a lot about Key Performance Indicators and “what gets measured gets managed.” On the subject of antenna, it’s the same mechanism. When you know that you are going to have to account for what made you happiest at the end of your day, you’ll start to subconsciously scan for it. This is such a low effort hack and it’s most certainly not manufacturing happiness. It’s noticing it in the simple moments that already exist in your life.

As with anything, data over time becomes extremely valuable. Right now, everyone is obsessed with data. If I can track my entire life, eventually I can put it into AI, and learn a lot about myself! Ideally yes, but these things aren’t as thoughtful and can’t make sense of YOUR life the way you can. I don’t believe that, I know that. The value of this data over time is simple: you have a dataset of what makes you happy over weeks, months, and years. From there, you establish a simple blueprint for how you want to live your life. I’ve learned that mine is building my days around Vrabel’s House of Wellness, aka Vrabel’s House of Happiness. What’s in your House of Happiness? I’d love to hear!

Once you have your House made, whether you choose to act on it is entirely up to you. One goal of this entire exercise is a mindset shift. You start to pivot away from the negativity, complaining, and “woe is me” situations. Of course, it’s not guaranteed, but life feels too short to hang around that hoop. Not happy about your situation but haven’t acted on it? You’re clearly happy enough, or you’d have moved in a different direction.

I also see this prompt as an extremely powerful way to connect with others. Recently, I was curious and after I read this passage, I asked a friend what the happiest part of his day was. As we reflected, it was fun to play through the day like a movie, and see him recount a conversation that he is grateful for. Nothing drives deeper connection than seeing people light up about things they are happy and passionate about. Not only can this prompt deepen connection with yourself, but drive it in a more thoughtful way with others. Adjust it to days, weeks, months, or years depending on how frequently you are connecting with people. Sounds like a good conversation starter with someone you haven’t seen in a while!

What was the happiest part of your day? Ask yourself this daily at the end of each day, write it down, and you’ll be AMAZED at what you find. Simple, repeatable, costs nothing. Oftentimes, one of the biggest barriers to our happiness is ourselves. This isn’t about ignoring hard days, but refusing to let them be the only thing you catalog. Ask others what the happiest part of their days. You’ll be amazed at what you find and the deeper connection than follows…

I guess I’ve been on a kick of asking thoughtful questions. LinkedIn is full of absolute trashy self-promotion, but luckily I caught this post from Colby Kultgen: 20 hard questions that will transform your life. Can’t promise transformation, but definitely some interesting reflections.

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Quote of the Week:

“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” - Dalai Lama

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 307 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

At the end of every day, there are a few questions I ask myself:

1. What brought me energy today?

2. What drained me of energy today?

3. What was inspiring to me today?

4. What did I struggle with today?

These questions, as part of my journaling routine, are designed to give me space to expand more thoughtfully on what I just experienced, rather than just summarizing my day and writing like a diary.

One question, above all, is the most impactful: are you better now than you were when you woke up? Straight up. Every night, there’s one simple reality: you just traded 24 hours of your life to get to where you are right now. Was it a worthwhile trade?

You probably (maybe spent 8 sleeping), so consider you have 16 waking hours. I’m not going to break down the pie chart that outlines how our time funnels from there and how little we have. I agree life is short and it goes fast, but I’ve actually been realizing more and more lately: 16 hours is a hell of a lot of time. Used wisely, I think it’s enough to get better every single day. No, I know it’s enough to get better every single day. Time expands when you use it wisely. Some will call me crazy (and call TM a cult!), but after doing that meditation practice for 4.5 months, I’ve seen time expand significantly. These days can be long, and full of things you love, if you have the courage to pursue them.

Philosophically, this emphasis on growth, improvement, and being “better” could be confusing. Here’s why I feel the way I do, and many of us can relate: my parents, God, mentors, teachers, coaches, and so many people have invested in me. They’ve given me gifts, opportunities, and encouragement to be who I am. If I show up on a daily basis and lay an egg, get lazy, waste time, waste my life, not only will I be unhappy, but I’ll be letting every single one of them down. Sounds like a waste and an awful trade! I fear there’s confusion at times, like pursuing the art of improvement or “getting better” is torture or not fun. Some elements aren’t, but when you fall in love with the process, I have more fun than most things I can imagine. Pursuing the person you’re called to be is a very worthwhile pursuit, and I think this pursuit is something we’re called to do. Taking this seriously is actually fun and intrinsically rewarding.

It’s funny, because a common retort I’ve heard is “oh you’re no fun, you gotta loosen up a little bit.” We might be wired differently! And that’s ok. Because this is fun as hell! I don’t expect you to do or like the things that I do, so I couldn’t understand why you would want me to do the ones that you do. They say “stay in your lane” for a reason! And for your reference, what’s no fun to me is spending time with dull and uninspiring people doing dull and uninspiring things. I would actually rather watch paint dry (because if I watch paint dry, I can sit in silence). I’ve been that way since middle school and I’m glad I never lost it!

It ALL comes down to people and environment. Liv and I talk about this all the time, and I know others around me probably get sick of it too, but this broken record is worth playing. Who is around you, who is in your ear, who is influencing the way that you think, and how are they affecting your answer to The Golden Question? Where are you spending your time and how is that environment affecting the answers to The Golden Question? Is that environment steering you and helping you create the systems to be a better you, or a more comfortable, complacent you? There’s a very big difference, and a lot of that environment is the difference between what I call vanity growth (a space where we delude ourselves into thinking we’re improving) and real growth (a space where we are actually getting better every. single. day.) When I think about who I’m around, what I’m listening to, reading, who I’m consciously taking the opportunity to see and go deep with, I see it as very binary. There is nothing neutral about anything or anyone. It’s either good for you or not good for you. Pursuing as much of the former and limiting as much of the latter gives you a significant edge in life, your happiness, and your ultimate growth.

It’s sobering. It’s natural to want to avoid these truths. And none of us are perfect. With the right level of self-awareness and honest assessment of who you are, there are probably days where you can’t answer that question positively. There are days when I feel frustrated by how I spent it.

So yeah, take a long long long look in the mirror. Think about the systems, environments, and people that you subject yourself to. They will dictate 100% of your happiness, growth, and the quality of life that you live. Life is so short. Don’t spend it living someone else’s life. Make some people happy along the way, but you better make yourself happy first. In 80 years (or less), we’ll all be gone. Make it count.

And maybe, as the day winds down, ask yourself: I traded 24 hours for what I just experienced. Was it a worthwhile trade??? If not, we always get another chance tomorrow…

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Quote of the Week:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” - Steve Jobs

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 306 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Every year on Father’s Day, I enjoy writing a post about my dad and reflecting on the lessons that he’s taught us over the years. Similar to how I did with my mom on Mother’s Day, this year I wanted to ask 7 thoughtful reflection questions and hear his answers. I’ll share a few relevant lessons and takeaways from our conversation below.

1. What were you like at my age?

When my dad was 28 years and 5 months old, it was March of 1988. That year, he had been promoted to senior manager at EY, working in audit, and was in the midst of busy season working towards partner. He was in the 2nd year of his marriage to my mom and they were spending their first year living in their new house together. New role, new marriage, new house. He was a hard worker focused on doing the best in his career and trying to advance within the company. For fun, he played basketball, some tennis, and even golfed back then!

2. Is there a different version of your life that you almost lived?

After 23 years at EY working at the Harrisburg office, the company decided to close the office and transfer my dad to Baltimore. He worked in that role for 9 months commuting back and forth to Baltimore, but ultimately decided it wasn’t sustainable, and he wasn’t going to move our family there. In his words, this crossroads was the “biggest intersection of what are you going to do?” Instead of moving our family, he opted to join a regional firm and stay in central PA. This decision would have made different lives for all of us!

3. What’s a memory with me as a child that you’ve never told me about?

According to my dad, the first day I was born, they moved me to a light under a table to treat some form of medical condition. Neither of us know the details, but my dad said that he looked at me under the lamp and it seemed like I was going with the flow, not crying or anything, and seemed to be pleasant. In his words: “This feeling came over me that he’s doing to do well. He’s adaptable and resilient on day 1.” I’ve tried!

4. What’s the best advice your dad gave you?

Work hard and do your best. His dad always told him: “Focus on your studies. Do your best. Get the best grades possible so that you can have a good job.” His parents weren’t well off, and my dad got some grants and scholarships for school, but they still wanted to make sure he didn’t worry about how he was going to pay for college, so they tried to help however they could. At one point during college, he started working 2 jobs during the summer (one in a textile factory and at night at a department store) to try to make ends meet. Four weeks in, he decided he didn’t want to continue with the factory job. This was motivating in multiple ways, but one thing resonated with him: working in that factory solidified that he did not want to do that for his career, so he worked even harder in school.

5. When did you first feel like an adult?

My dad lived at home during his first 2 years of college commuting to Penn State Schuykill, so when he transitioned to University Park campus during his junior year, that was his first time living away from home for a prolonged period of time. He enjoyed that feeling of independence like he was out on his own building something.

6. What’s the toughest thing you’ve been through that I don’t know about?

He talked a bit about challenging decisions when my grandma had 2 strokes towards the end of her life or the emotional toll of switching firms and rebuilding after 23 years at one company, but I’m choosing to hone in on his youth sports experience. Growing up playing little league baseball and CYO basketball, he was not selected for all star teams in both. Even though he thought he did well enough to make the all star baseball team, he was not chosen. While disappointed, he ended up having a game playing against one of the coaches who made the decision. With extra motivation, he had a great game with multiple hits and really wanted to show him the mistake he made. In basketball, he wasn’t chosen for the all star team in 8th grade barely played his freshman year of high school. He took sophomore year off, trained really hard, and ended up having breakout performances during his junior and senior years, eventually being selected for the all star team. Now I see even more where his most notable lesson came from: DO YOUR TALKING ON THE SCOREBOARD!

7. If you could go back 30 years and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

Without hesitation, he said: “Try not to worry too much about what could happen and the future. Trust your judgement and don’t hesitate. Don’t wait. Take advantage of opportunities. You could still think ahead to different scenarios.If you don’t make the call or take the chance, they may never happen.” There’s a lot there, but he’s right. Becoming too preoccupied with the future (which I’ve experienced before) only detracts from the present and gives you less of a chance of achieving the future you even want. Oftentimes, it makes it less enjoyable too. Take chances. Put yourself out there. Be bold. Believe that good things are going to happen and they probably will. As he’s told me multiple times: SWING THE BAT or TAKE THE SHOT!

As he thinks about motivations and life, it all comes from wanting the best for his family and working hard to make sure that me, Colin, and Evan were provided with the opportunities so that we weren’t worried about things and could focus on school, career, and building our lives. We always appreciate it. He always communicates the importance of family and sticking together, which we as a family, always try to do.

Happy Father’s Day to all! What are some of the most important lessons that your dad taught you? Perhaps Father’s Day is a great time to reflect on these things, and the best way to honor him is to live them out and stay true to his teachings.

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Quote of the Week:

“Do your talking on the scoreboard.” - Jeff Vrabel

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 305 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

If someone offered you better sleep, less anxiety, less stress, and more presence for 2% of your day, would you make that trade? Most of us rational thinkers would say yes. In my experience, the simplest way to achieve those outcomes, and many more, is through meditation. Today I’ll share a bit about my meditation journey over the last 13 years and how the new technique I’ve been practicing is a game changer.

I first learned meditation as an anxious, stressed, and perfectionist high schooler. My therapist taught me a range of meditation techniques that would ease my anxiety on the way to sports games, before school, and other times when I needed it. I still remember sitting on the bus on my way to sports games doing visualization and breathing exercises, pretending I was sinking in my chair, tying a string to my finger and lifting it up, and counting in my head. These various techniques were extremely beneficial, but I practiced inconsistently. In college, I hardly meditated. After school, once I heard about Yoga Nidra from Andrew Huberman and how it was the gold standard, I began practicing it daily. As I’ve written extensively in the past, I realized significant benefits from these practices.

Recently, a classmate introduced me to Transcendental Meditation (TM). With my old practices I felt good, but since practicing TM, I feel great. Once you feel great, you never want to turn back to feeling good. TM is a much different form of meditation. It’s much easier, simpler, and more relaxing. It’s more restful and mindless. Essentially, you repeat a mantra in your head, a sound with no meaning, for about 20 minutes. That’s it. As thoughts come in, you don’t stress or press, you just let them work their way through and leave the body. Those thoughts are merely stress leaving the body, not enemies of a quality meditation, but a sign of a productive one. For 20 minutes twice a day, you press a button that essentially turns the body and mind off, and return a better you. It’s incredible.

Contrast that with other styles that I’ve done which, while relaxing, forced me to always be “on” in some way. During body scans, you’re consciously thinking of the part of the body you’re focused on. In breathing and counting, you’re focused on the breath or numbers. In TM, your mind can truly rest and just be. It’s simple and so relaxing. As David Lynch said: “the thing about meditation is: you become more and more you.”

When I first heard Tim Ferriss speak about TM on a podcast, it sounded interesting. 20 minutes twice a day. Much more relaxed, rested and focused. Hmm, I’d like to try that! Finally, I trained with a legendary teacher in the Silicon Valley region, who is building a community around it at Stanford and beyond. He’s been training students for 50+ years, so I knew I was with the best. It’s been really cool to experience with 15+ classmates, including a retreat we had a few weeks ago where we, you guessed it, meditated most of the day!

There’s an ease I’ve noticed among seasoned meditators. Relaxed. Better listeners. Few complaints. Big dreams. Small worries. Perspective. Mindfulness. I can only aspire to be them.

Part of my protocol of Vrabel’s House of Well-Being is constant reassessment of best practices. In the realm of meditation, I know I’ve found it. Whether you begin with TM, or simply meditate with box breathing for 2 minutes a day, that vision of a world where people are calmer, better rested, less stressed, listen to each other, and exude positive vibes is fully possible. If Oprah, Chris Martin, and Jerry Seinfeld swear by something, it’s worth looking into. If you have questions or are interested in joining the TM community, I’d love to hear from you 🙏

Similar to my post on anxiety, I recently recorded a speech in a class at Stanford on “Why You Should Meditate.” If you are interested in my fulsome thoughts, I have shared the link to the 5 minute speech on YouTube here. Enjoy!

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Quote of the Week:

“In meditation, I can let go of everything. I’m not huge Jackman. I’m not a dad. I’m not a husband. I’m just dipping into the most powerful source that creates everything.” - Hugh Jackman

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 304 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Last month, I attended “Well-Being with Woz” where Steve and Jane Wozniak spoke at Stanford. Steve is best known as the inventor and the brains behind Apple, which he built alongside Steve Jobs. Together, the Wozniaks are known for their philanthropic efforts and investment in youth education. Over the years, they have invested in at-risk youth, teaching them computer and life skills, where many have turned their lives around as a result. Steve is fun. And he owns his quirks. We’re talking about a guy who somehow found a way to legally purchase uncut sheets of real $2 bills from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing and work with a print shop to bind them into pads. After Apple, he went back to Berkeley to finish his degree but in order to remain anonymous, used a different name; even his diploma reads “Rocky Raccoon Clark,” then taught computing to elementary and middle school students. My dad had heard him speak at another event and told me he’s a character and a lot of fun. I was certainly not disappointed. Sharing a few lessons and takeaways below.

On being good to others

What happens when someone does you wrong? It’s natural to want to hold a grudge, get even with them, or find a way to punish them for the way that they treated you. It’s tempting and can even feel good, in the short-term. Another tactic is to be passive and turn the other cheek; act like it didn’t happen and move on. It’s better to be non-confrontational and just let it slide. There’s a third tactic, which Steve advocates for. By many accounts and standards, he was not treated well by Steve Jobs. In one illustrative example, Jobs tasked Wozniak with creating a game for Atari (Breakout) with a tight four-day deadline using as few chips as possible. Turns out the deadline was arbitrary so that Jobs could pursue his own interests; after working tirelessly while working another job, Wozniak was rewarded with $350 of the $5,000 bonus (a bonus that Jobs initially didn’t even tell Wozniak about), leaving Jobs to collect the rest for work Wozniak performed. There were many instances of public disagreement and times where Jobs undermined what Wozniak did. “If someone is bad to you, be good to them.” Treat them well. Be kind to them. Wish them well. This approach takes significant strength but puts good vibes out into the universe. Meeting injustice and poor treatment with kindness can be puzzling, even stifling to the other party. Whatever strength they attempted to derive by mistreating you is now completely neutralized; it hasn’t fazed or affected you. As I like to say, kill them with kindness and bury them with a smile.

Smiles - Frowns = Happiness

In a theme that continues to build, Steve decided early on that his life goals were going to center around happiness, not accomplishment or money. This ran counter to many of his peers in the technology industry (then and now), where many are motivated by money for the sake of money, power, status, fame, etc. His formula for happiness is quite simple: Smiles - Frowns = Happiness. To him, smiles are things that bring joy like friends, concerts, jokes, meaningful connections. Reducing frowns means not holding anger, making situations constructive rather than destructive, and avoiding arguments. Sounds simple, but if you were to take an audit of your day: how much time do you spend smiling and how much time do you spend frowning? Doesn’t need to be taken literally, but think about your posture, feelings, and energy. How much of it are you feeling positive, optimistic, energized, and content? How much of it are you feeling negative, rundown, upset about something, or complaining? It’s not rocket science: increasing the frequency and pervasiveness of the former and decreasing the latter will lead to a happier life.

Steve’s stance on money

Clearly, money wasn’t going to buy Steve’s happiness. He had decided that from a young age. It would be so easy for him to sit back and say that, but his actions during his tenure with Apple reveal that. He truly was not motivated by money.

Starting out, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak each owned equal stakes in Apple. Over time, after a divorce and other distributions, Wozniak’s stake fell to ~8-9% of the company (figures vary based on source). Just before the IPO, as a result of Steve Jobs being unwilling to grant employees stock options, even early employees that build the foundation that Apple stands on today, Steve Wozniak established his “Woz Plan.” The Woz plan was a distribution of his shares, up to $10M per employee who he felt deserved recognition and participation in the great wealth creation of Apple. Extremely generous and thoughtful. In 1985, while owning roughly 7% of the company, he deemed that Apple was “going in the wrong direction for the last five years” and sold his remaining shares. Today, these shares would be worth north of $250B. This story illustrates how he wasn’t driven by money and even more so, wanted to make sure that the people that actually did the work were rewarded, could make a lot of money, buy houses, and feel good about the outcome. As Steve said, money doesn’t change people, it reveals who they really are. These events and how he has handled money throughout his lifetime have revealed a lot about him.

“On the day I die, I want to be laughing with my friends about a prank we played.” This is a dude who loves his life and has inspired so many others to take a humorous, light-hearted approach to life and business. I’m lucky to be one of those people and can only aspire to be as down-to-earth as Steve and his wife Janet. Legends.

I really wish I took one in the first ten minutes of the talk when he still had his sunglasses on, but here’s a glimpse. Absolute legend.

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Quote of the Week:

“On the day I die, I want to be laughing with my friends about a prank we played.” - Steve Wozniak

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 303 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

What’s the most important thing you learned about yourself this year? Last night, a few friends and I reflected on that question. As we wrapped up year 1 at Stanford, we came together for one final meal, which turned out to be an impromptu deep reflection. Some I had hardly spoken to all year, others I met as early as admit weekend. We came from all walks of life and corners of the world for an amazing conversation. At first, I didn’t even process the answer for myself. Then it clicked.

I learned to be comfortable not striving. As I think through the past 15+ years of my life, I had always been striving for something. In middle school, it was trying to be the best basketball player I could be. In high school, it was trying to be the best soccer, basketball, and tennis player I could be, while getting good grades, and also cracking as many jokes as possible along the way. In college, it was getting 4.0s while trying to climb the recovery mountain after hip and knee surgery. Post college, it was passing the CPA exam and making the rarely-charted pivot from KPMG audit to private equity. Then it was getting into Stanford. Through ALL of that, it was striving to keep my mental and physical health in a position to perform at the highest level, and ensuring that my once-crippling anxiety would remain at bay. Oh and enjoying people. Lots of them. That’s A LOT of striving.

Did I love it? Absolutely. I wouldn’t be who I am without it. But as I wrote in Weekly Spark #366, the Come Down Effect is real. When I first got into Stanford, I remember the next day. Couldn’t get out of bed. Motivated to do nothing. What the hell? This is where you should ramp it up! A billion new doors just opened. You can’t work this hard and come this far to stop now. Come on Nathan. The next few months were challenging. I didn’t know how to process that or even discuss with anyone around me. Who was I to be getting cold feet after getting into the most exclusive business school in the world? The number of people that would feel bad for me: a grand total of zero. Rightfully so. My heart told me to defer a year, but my mind wouldn’t let me. Thank God I didn’t.

That internal strife continued until my perspective shifted. On October 3rd, I was sharing with a classmate about how I’d felt and they asked me a simple question: what if your new challenge is to just be present as you possibly can and that’s what you’re striving towards? Hmm. Fighting the initial defensiveness of “but I thought I am present. I meditate, journal, and really try to focus on living in the moment,” I realized they were right. That sounds cool! Let’s do it! It’s almost impossible to be fully present when your mind is focused on the next thing.

What happens when you stop striving? Unconfined to any path or direction, you become open to possibilities. You see things you wouldn’t otherwise see. For some, you stop and smell the roses. For others, you engage in conversations you otherwise wouldn’t have. There’s a levity and ease about you. You can just be. Notice I never said you don’t work hard. That part doesn’t leave you. I worked extremely hard this year and will do so as long as I live, but there was a difference: I wasn’t focused on a destination. I couldn’t imagine having waited another year to learn this mindset shift.

Today, I don’t have that “next thing.” I have a couple of things that I’m working on and ways that I will prioritize my time, but with no clear goal in sight, I’m embracing that feeling.

Who are you when you have nothing to work towards? That’s a question we can all stand to sit with more often.

As I write this, I sit in the back of an uber while the driver plays Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World.” Usually, as soon as I get in the car I tell drivers I prefer quiet and no conversation. It’s my one time to be to myself and relax in this seemingly never-ending transit of life. Today, I don’t need to strive for that. And I think to myself… what a wonderful world… 🙏

A couple of additional notes on striving: it can come from multiple sources. For some, it’s driven by insecurity and incompleteness with themselves believing that external validation will make them whole. You see this and hear this from people. Lines like “if only I can get that internship at this big company, I’d be X.” To have a life driven by insecurity is empty. Striving for money, status, power, external validation will never make anyone feel whole. Insecurity is the most dangerous trait, as I wrote in Weekly Spark #287. Then there’s the striving out of enjoyment and trying to do things for yourself. I’ve erred towards the latter in most of my pursuits; I’m sure in my early years (teens), it was driven by validation from coaches and others, but transitioning away from that is extremely liberating. Pursuits driven by this and internal motivation are incredibly fun, but they’re still pursuits, and can take a toll.

If your goal is achievement, I actually think you can achieve far more with this mindset because you’re more open. Without openness, you can rush past some of the greatest opportunities in the world. I’ve seen that firsthand.

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Mental Diet

Book of the Week: Nothing to Prove: Why We Can Stop Trying So Hard by Jennie Allen

Quote of the Week:

“Striving is stealing our joy.” - Jennie Allen

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 302 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

There is a gap between the life people are living and the life they want to live. I call that the Intention-Action Gap. I’ve spent the last few months (and indirectly, the last decade+) studying this gap, the frictions that cause it, and the short/medium/long term costs associated with it. Dating back to middle school sports, specifically basketball when I was introduced to more formal training and working out, I became obsessed with the idea of engineering discipline. I began tracking all of my workouts, shots taken in the driveway, and constantly studying athletes and coaches who embodied this discipline (Roger Federer, Michael Phelps, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, etc.). While my obsession with training yielded decent results in high school soccer, basketball, and tennis, it ultimately led me to overtrain and have hip and knee surgeries during my freshman and sophomore years of college. I worked extremely hard to close the gap between the athlete I was and the athlete I wanted to be, but working smart was missing from the equation. Working smarter on a path to happier, healthier, more fulfilled lives is where I hope this research leads.

As part of my research, I ran a survey among 72 Stanford MBA students. The results were about what I expected and confirmed what BJ Fogg, founder of Stanford Behavior Design Lab, notes: “there is a painful gap between what people want and what they actually do.” 80% of respondents identified a clear gap in their lives between who they are and who they want to be. If some of the most driven, resourced, and hard-working people on the planet feel this gap, it certainly exists, and it’s also probably not a discipline or knowledge problem. Are we designing the systems and environments that enable people to thrive? A few other notable statistics from the study: the top 3 areas that people sought to close a gap were health/fitness, sleep/recovery, and deep work/focus. As far as the main causes of the gap, 39% attributed it to scheduling, while 20% said that they “start strong but lose motivation after a few weeks.” Motivation is fickle, which has been confirmed by multiple conversations and research. As far as what would be most helpful to bridge the gap, 32% said accountability partners/groups, while 20% said “something that fits into my existing routine.” James Clear calls these latter points habit stacking, like watching Netflix while you ride a stationary bike. Lastly, in a preview of a potential idea I am exploring, 90% expressed interests in building accountability cohorts around habit formation and behavior change, an encouraging number and one that I plan to explore more. While these data may seem like they come from a self-selecting group of students (and it probably does), I believe the trends are relevant, if not even more pronounced, for a more general population.

This is a problem area that I’ve seen pop up time and time again, so when presented the opportunity to research any topic in my “Research Driven Inspiration” class with Scott Brady and Brett Jordan, I knew what I wanted to track. The class focuses on going extremely deep on the problem, aggregating primary and secondary research and going deep on a space. Unconventionally, many focus on solutions first and reverse engineer to try to better understand problems. This course and way of thinking flips that on its head in a much more logical fashion. By going deep on the problem and understanding it on a fundamental level, solutions may present themselves, but they may look far different than if you started with the solution in mind and sought to reverse engineer into the problem. Throughout this research, I engaged in many, many interesting conversations. A few specific ones that I’d like to highlight:

• John Bright: My Transcendental Meditation teacher who has been practicing since the age of 16, and teaching for the last 60+ years

• Michael Susi: Director of Global Wellness at LinkedIn, also from Central PA!

• Dylan Gambardella: Founder of Different Health and NextGenHQ

• Newton Cheng: Former Director of Health and Performance at Google, world champion powerlifter, speaker

• Austin Gunder: Navy SEAL, former Stanford football player, current MBA classmate, also from Central PA!

• Jennifer Aaker: Stanford GSB professor studying meaning, purpose, and flourishing, teaches class called “AI for Human Flourishing”

• Jon Ward: Founder of The Assembly, building meaningful and intentional community for founders

From these conversations and many others, I gained a deeper understanding of the problem across very different contexts: meditation as a foundational practice, organizational wellness at LinkedIn and Google, the discipline instilled in Navy SEALs, academic research on meaning and flourishing, and community-building among founders. I also drew from foundational books and videos on the subject, which I’ll share more about later.

There are a few books and researchers who I consider foremost experts in the space. James Clear (author of “Atomic Habits”), BJ Fogg (author of “Tiny Habits” and founder of Stanford Behavior Design Lab), Katy Milkman (author of “How to Change”) and Charles Duhigg (author of “The Power of Habit”). They have ran extensive research and authored books that are independently helpful for people to understand their behavior and the levers for behavior change. Having read and taken notes on all 4 over time, they are an example of 1+1+1+1 = a million. All four acknowledge that behavior change is not a knowledge or willpower problem, it’s a design and environment problem. Environment will always matter more than motivation and say so in their own ways. All four also advocate for starting small and building habits at the “tiny” (BJ Fogg) or “atomic” (James Clear) levels. Lastly, identity and systems matter more than goals. If you say “I don’t drink alcohol,” you will be far more successful than someone who says “I am trying to drink less.” In my own life, I have seen that to be very true among myself and others.

While these four experts emphasize similar points in some ways, there are others where they take a more nuanced approach. For example, how fast do habits form? BJ Fogg would contend that habits, if scaffolded correctly, can form almost instantly. Think about it: when someone gets a new phone and installs social media, the habit of constantly checking it forms within a day. On the other hand, research by Phillippa Lally at UCL suggests it takes an average of 66 days for a behavior to become automatic, and even that varies widely depending on the person and the behavior. The commonly cited “21 days” is actually a myth from the 1960s. We also talked above about varying levels of the impact of motivation; BJ Fogg is most aggressive against it, while Charles Duhigg talks about craving being the engine of habit formation. The key point is where each emphasizes matters MOST in habit formation:

• BJ Fogg: Make the behavior so tiny and so easy that you don’t need motivation to do it, then let success grow from there.

• James Clear: Decide who you want to become, then build systems that cast small daily votes for that identity.

• Charles Duhigg: Find the one keystone habit that triggers a cascade, and rewire it by keeping the cue and reward but changing the routine.

• Katy Milkman: Structure your environment, your commitments, and the people around you so that following through becomes harder to avoid than not.

All four authors used together in combination form a more complete toolkit than any one alone. In addition to these books, I also used notes from a habit formation workshop that Graham Weaver led, “The Characteristics of Champions” youtube video that Bob Bowman (Michael Phelps’ swim coach) led, and a podcast with James Clear & Andrew Huberman on habit formation. They added additional paint to the canvas in helping understand the problem, which I’ll weave into my synthesis. For now, I’d like to discuss a few themes that my conversations revealed.

The gap is not a knowledge or capability problem

As I mentioned above, It’s clear that people know what they should be doing to live better lives. From a health standpoint, it’s focusing on sleep, diet, exercise. From a work standpoint, it’s giving yourself space to engage in deep and meaningful work where you feel like you are adding value to others’ lives. From a community standpoint, it’s spending more time with and prioritizing people you love, and minimizing time with people that are draining. We all know the things we need to do on a daily basis to improve. Whether we choose to do them or follow the science is not from lack of knowledge. That said, capability is also not the variable. Austin Gunder talked about 226 of 250 in his Navy SEAL training program not making it past the 4 week hell week mark. All were physically capable, but something deeper gave out: the psychological weight of sustained discomfort, the absence of a strong enough identity anchoring them to the process, or simply not having a reason compelling enough to override the pain. As Austin said: “If the thought of quitting ever even crosses your mind, you’re done.” As James Clear said, “the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.”

Most solutions only address one layer of a multi-layer problem

At the surface level, we have awareness. Most people know what they should be doing. Below that is environment and systems: the structures, routines, and physical spaces that either support or undermine our intentions. Deeper still is identity: how we think about who we are in the context of what we do. And at the deepest layer is purpose, meaning, and consciousness, or as Graham Weaver puts it, our “second voice.”

Many “solutions” that exist today only touch the surface. Whoop will remind you that you should go to sleep. Apple Watch will tell you to stand after sitting for too long. Reminders and nudges help, but they don’t reach the deeper layers of friction. The environment and systems layer is where things get more practical. As James Clear says, make good habits visible and bad ones invisible. If you want to stop eating potato chips, don’t buy them from the grocery store. If you don’t want to check your phone first thing in the morning, leave it in a different room while you sleep. Newton Cheng described this as the elephant and rider: you can coach the rider all you want, but if the elephant, the system around you, isn’t moving in the same direction, nothing happens. But even the best systems won’t hold if the deeper layers aren’t addressed. With identity and purpose at the forefront, real change happens when people get clear on WHY they are doing what they are doing and what their actions say about the type of person they are becoming. James Clear puts it simply: every action you take is a vote for the person you want to become. Getting clear on the why of each decision, sometimes asking five whys, and then aligning your actions with the identity of the person you want to be is where the real magic happens.

Identity shifts are most powerful

“I could either call my family on a Tuesday and tell them that I quit because the water was too cold and the process was too hard or I could call them on Friday and say I was a Navy SEAL.” Austin Gunder talks about the power of identity shifts and why he does what he does. It’s who he is. He is the person who works out every day at 6 am. Bob Bowman talks similarly about what champions do: “champions make a habit of doing things that failures don’t want to do.” The moment you stop trying to change behavior and fundamentally change who you believe you are is where real change happens.

You change by feeling good about yourself, not bad

Shame, guilt, and insecurity are all feelings that people have that sometimes drive behavior change. If I feel like I’m fat and out of shape, I’m going to approach the gym with a different mindset. If I miss a workout and am extremely hard on myself, my confidence and mindset is going to shift unproductively. Even though, as Graham Weaver talks about, bad habits feel good first and cost later, while good habits are hard at first but ultimately produce more dopamine later, there’s an intrinsic “good feeling” when you do things that are good for you. Too many times I’ll see people who beat themselves up over not meeting goals or sticking to their programs; that only compounds the problem and decreases the likelihood of success.

The costs are compounding and no one is stopping them

In an era of technological advancement, we are now capable of doing more than ever before, but are people happier, healthier, or more fulfilled? Do they feel a sense of creativity, connection, and purpose? We have clear metrics for measuring business performance, but few are paying attention to the regression of human connectedness and happiness. This goes beyond organizational problems and reflects personal problems. Stresses accumulate over time and impact everyone: impatience, anxiety, fear of failure, lack of clarity. The cost of the gap presents over time as a slow erosion of self trust from small betrayals of even the best intentions. Skipped workouts, broken commitments, or slides in relationships compound over time. Eventually, the bill comes due.

Given everything I’ve heard, read, and experienced, I’ve landed on what I’d consider my Integrated Framework for Meaningful Behavior Change. Of course, this will be a continuously iterative process, but there are 5 steps:

1. Why before what

2. Start small with Anchor Habits, change your identity, and schedule them

3. Don’t do it alone

4. Track your progress

5. As momentum builds, celebrate!

1. Why before what: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” - Friedrich Nietzsche. As Dylan Gambardella works on unlocking high performance individuals’ full capabilities both inside and outside of work, he talks about the importance of understanding why you are subjecting yourself to multiple tests, baselines, and training plans. Take someone who has a genetic history of heart disease and has a father who passed of a heart attack at 52. Taking a VO2 max test may seem pointless at first, until they realize it’s assessing risk and establishing a baseline and training plan so that they too don’t succumb to the same genetic doomsday. Digging deep into the why is extremely important. It’s great to say that you want to lose weight. Why do you want to lose weight? I learned about someone’s client said she wanted to lose weight. After she became frustrated 3 weeks into the journey, he realized she didn’t really care about losing weight; her husband wanted her to lose weight. The real issue was she had a two-hour commute each way, neither she nor her husband cooked, they ate takeout every night, and her job was crushing her. It was less about the weight and more about a life balance problem, so when she asked her manager to work from home one day a week, she could free up time for grocery shopping and cooking. She took those steps, reduced fast food from seven nights to two, and ended up losing weight, but for reasons that became clearer over time: because she addressed what was actually making her unhappy, not because she “needed” a weight loss plan. Getting clear on WHY you want to make a behavior change is a prerequisite to actually making meaningful change. For illustrative purposes, we’ll walk through the example of habit formation for a man who wants to get better sleep so that he can have more energy to be a better partner, father, and coworker. That’s his why.

2. Start small with Anchor Habits, change your identity, and schedule them: The question isn’t “what habit should I build?” It’s “what is the one habit that, if I got it right, would make everything else easier?” It’s ambitious and audacious to want to climb the highest mountain and tackle the biggest problem right away. Just pick one thing. Pick one or a few inputs. Get really clear on what the inputs are, as they will lead to the ultimate outcome. After people find their why, the reason they struggle to translate to execution is they get lost in the options paralysis of what steps to actually take. Continuing on the sleep example for the man who wants better sleep to have more energy. Now that he’s established his why, he should focus on the inputs: no meals within 3 hours of bedtime, no screens within 30 minutes of bedtime, and in bed by 10 PM. Those are things that he can control on a daily basis; when done right, the sleep will take care of itself. These are Anchor Habits. From these Anchor Habits, like focusing on sleep inputs for example, he might see that other areas start to tidy up as well. By getting better sleep, his cravings and eating habits will improve, desire to exercise may as well if he has more energy. Focus on the highest ROI inputs that you can, and let the impact cascade from there. By scheduling and ensuring that you have built time and space to perform on the actions that he wants to, he can ensure they happen. In the sleep example: bedtime is 10 PM, so final meal is done by 7PM, phone and screens are away by 9:30 PM. This follows a rigid and scheduled progression, but by controlling the inputs, the outcome of better sleep leading to higher energy is more likely to happen. If they aren’t scheduled, they can easily be skipped and never happen. But start small, don’t try to boil the ocean, because that will only lead you to crash. As you build these habits into your routine, change your identity around them. You are no longer someone who is “trying to get better sleep.” You are someone who finishes eating by 7PM, puts phone and screens away by 9:30 PM, and is in bed by 10PM. That’s not a goal anymore. That’s who you are. That identity shift, from aspiration to identity, is what makes the habit stick long after the initial motivation fades.

3. Don’t do it alone: The most discouraging part about behavior change is believing that it’s a solo journey. In my survey, 33% of respondents (the majority category) said that having accountability partners/groups would be helpful in behavior change and 89% said that they’d be interested in actually following through and forming them. That’s clear. Community is a key cornerstone of behavioral change. Katy Milkman talks about soft commitments and I’ve seen them be extremely useful in my life. Once you decide the changes you want to make, telling someone establishes an accountability partner and someone to hold you to your word. Assuming it’s someone you care about, you care about how they feel about you and don’t want to break their trust. By going public with your intentions, your reputation is then on the line. In the sleep example, if our subject tells a friend that he: will finish eating 3 hours before bed, put phone and screens away 30 minutes before bed, and be in bed by 10 PM, the answers are binary and easy to report. He either did it or he didn’t. By focusing on growth in community, we have people to hold us accountable and keep us true to our word. This accountability component has worked in the Navy SEALs, professional sports teams, and some of the highest-performing organizations as well. Join groups where desired behavior change is the norm; if you want to give up drinking, you probably won’t meet the people that will support you in that at the bar. Stick to your program and maintain their trust.

4. Track your progress: It sounds simple, but it’s one of the most consistently reinforced findings across everything I’ve read and everyone I’ve spoken with. James Clear talks about how every action is a vote for the type of person you want to become. Tracking is how you see the votes accumulating. In the sleep example, as our subject works on building these behavioral changes into his life, there are very clear and binary markers for whether he’s kept up his end of the bargain or not. He could make a simple grid for each day with 3 behaviors: meals done by 7 PM, phone and screens away by 9:30 PM, and in bed by 10 PM. For every single day, did he do it or not? Tracking has a two-fold benefit. For one, if you know you are going to be tracking yourself and ultimately reporting out on what you do, similar to reporting to another person in the example above, you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable. Secondly, and this brings me to my next point, as you see progress start to accumulate, that becomes motivating in itself. If you hit your goals 30 days in a row, you’re not going to want to give up on day 31! If getting started is the hardest part, the most gut-wrenching is halting progress when you’ve made it so far. Without this feedback loop, people can drift. Whether it’s a journal, a habit tracker, a coach, or just a simple check mark on your calendar, the act of making your progress visible to yourself reinforces the identity you’re building. You can’t see compound interest in real time, but you can track your daily deposits and watch them grow into a mountain.

5. As momentum builds, celebrate! If our subject hits 30 straight days of putting screens away by 9:30, finishing meals by 7, and being in bed by 10, that’s a cause to celebrate. Maybe it’s a nice dinner out, a new book, whatever feels like a genuine reward. BJ Fogg emphasizes celebrating small wins immediately because that positive emotion is what wires the habit into your brain. He ends his entire Tiny Habits method with what he calls “Shine,” an immediate moment of positive emotion right after completing a behavior. He argues that we change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad. That positive emotion is literally what tells your brain to encode the behavior and repeat it. Most people do the opposite. They set a massive goal, fall short, beat themselves up, and quit. Fogg would say the self criticism is actively counterproductive because it teaches your brain to associate the behavior with pain. Graham Weaver made a similar point: good habits are hard at first but produce more dopamine over time, while bad habits feel good immediately but cost you later. The celebration is what gets you through the early part of that curve, the bridge between the effort and the eventual reward your brain hasn’t learned to expect yet. When you finish a workout, meditate, or do something you’re proud of, don’t skip the celebration. That feeling is part of the habit formation mechanism.

While this seems like a viable framework for driving behavior change, I still have many more questions. What’s the best actual way to implement and apply these to drive behavior change? Coaching? An app? Accountability cohorts? Is this gap solvable at scale, or only on an individual level? What are technologies, resources, or ways to help people bridge the gaps? How is technology harmful or helpful in the process of bridging this gap?

I plan to continue this conversation as I think more about the processes and systems that I’d like to build. I’m also planning to build accountability cohorts for folks that are looking to drive behavioral change. Rest assured, I will continue writing and sharing out about all that I continue to learn. With that said, here’s my invitation to you. If you have thoughts, comments, questions, or feedback on anything that I’ve written or shared above, I’d love to hear from you. If you find this interesting or would like to speak more on the subject, I’d love to do so. If there’s people that you suggest I speak with, I’d be grateful for an introduction and would make you proud in the conversation. This is a continuous, evolving dialogue, not a monologue, like The Weekly Spark and any project that I do has always been. Thank you for your support.

AI Disclaimer: I’m a writer. These words are those of Nathan Vrabel. In an era of “Thought Leaders” posting newsletters and on social media that are nothing more than AI slop, I maintain my commitment to authenticity, creativity, and the integrity of what it means to be thoughtful, as I’ve done with this newsletter for almost 6+ years. Clearly, I used AI to generate the image above. My writing is my art, however; I’ll gladly outsource the painting and creative imagery to more talented tools.

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• 📘 Atomic Habits — James Clear

• 📘 Tiny Habits — BJ Fogg

• 📘 How to Change — Katy Milkman

• 📘 The Power of Habit — Charles Duhigg

• 🎥 Bob Bowman: Characteristics of Champions (YouTube)

• 🎙️ Huberman Lab × James Clear: Best Ways to Build Better Habits & Break Bad Ones

These have been some of the most influential resources on behavior change and habit formation over the years. Independently, they are incredibly valuable. Together, they’re gold.

Quote of the Week:

“You'll learn that making hard things seem fun is a much better strategy than making hard things seem important.” - Katy Milkman

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 301 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Why do you do what you do? Who are you living for? While loaded, confusing, and challenging at times, the answers to these questions dictate more about your direction than anything else. And establishing them as a compass can drive future decisions. Many times, we run around, keeping ourselves “busy,” “optimizing,” or “achieving” in certain domains. Whatever that means. I’m guilty. I’ve spent a lot of years doing it. Similar to my question last week: what’s it all for? There’s another important question to contemplate on this journey: who really matters? If you don’t take the time to figure that out, you could end up living the wrong life for the wrong people. To prevent that, identify whose opinions matter and in what proportion: enter the Mindshare Allocation Framework.

I’ve tried to be super conscious of who has mindshare for me. I’ve been accused of being too ruthless about it. I’ve been praised for being intentional about it. Here’s what I know: only you can decide these things for yourself. I also know that deleting social media has been the most rapid and highest returning activity to ground myself in the true and authentic answers to these questions (and many other areas of life happiness), but many are resistant to that for reasons I’ll never know. It does suck living in real life and not being faced with endless social comparison or engagements of people that I sat next to in 10th grade social studies class, really a tough life. I’m missing out. Recently, I was at a talk where a close mentor of mine shared his perspective on the subject. He is a high-level executive who has faced significant scrutiny from the media over the years (he would want to remain anonymous) and was asked how he deals with people’s opinions on social media and in society at large. His response inspired this framework.

“My wife and I are really close. We’ve been together 25 years, we’ve been married 25 years. I really care what she thinks about me. Like super duper care. And so she gets like, I don’t know, 60 or 70% of what I care about. And my kids, I kind of care, but they’re kind of young. But like we’ll give them like 5% each or something, right? Like that’s 90. I got four kids, that’s 90%.

The whole other 8 billion people gotta fit in the last 10%, right? My parents get some, my friends get some, my colleagues get some. Like very quickly after like 100 or 200 people, the whole rest of the planet doesn’t even get a basis point. And most of them get zero, get absolute zero into like how I think about myself.

And like, to me, I think if you like, think of, if you actually think about this stranger who I will never meet loves me or hates me, like, doesn’t matter. The point is the people that know you best love you most, right? And focus on those two or those 20 or those 200 if you’re super lucky. That’s the thing that really matters. Everything else is totally the job.”

90% for five people. 9.9999% for the other close friends and family. Not even a shred of a basis point for the other 8 billion. That’s clarity and direction. Past the people who you’re close to, the ones that really matter, people get 0. Zippo. Nada. Part of the misallocation that I see is that people live for the “they.” What will they think of me? Who the hell is they? Can you actually name them? Similarly, our generation has been conditioned to drive endless a slot machine of social comparison: what is this person doing, how does this person look, what job does this person have, where did this person go on vacation? As soon as I stopped willfully subjecting myself to the slot machine of social comparison, I saw how pronounced this became. People end up living and making decisions for how they’ll appear for other people, as opposed to the satisfaction that it brings them and their close people internally. Strangers feel louder than they should, making them seem like they deserve basis points in our mindshare that they don’t deserve. We perform for an audience we’ve never met and never even will. Likes and follows create a fake scoreboard that substitutes the real one, scored by the few people that actually know and care for you. Sad!

While getting clear on who matters is important, it’s just as important how you treat the people who don’t have any mindshare. While they “don’t matter” in the sense that they don’t affect a thing about how you think or act, there are still standards of excellence to maintain. At work, you still have to do a good job and treat people well. At school, you still have to do a good job and treat people well. In life, you still have to do a good job and treat people well. Over the years, I’ve run into people all the time that I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what they think of me. They’ll never have a shred of influence on how I live my life. Personally or professionally. I got my people. Does that mean I treat them poorly? Does that mean I’m unkind, don’t help them, and don’t treat them like a human being? Absolutely not! The standard of excellence still calls us to treat people with kindness, add value to their lives when we can, and just be a good person. That’s distinctly different from the mindshare discussion, and one that’s worth pointing out. Not caring what the overwhelming majority of people on this earth think of you (8 billion+) doesn’t give you free reign to be a jerk, or lack the self dignity to carry yourself in a respectable way. It just liberates you from the shackles of feeling like you are performing for an audience. It’s a wonderful thing.

A few years, I did an exercise I deem “The People T.” Very simply, I made a list of the personal and professional contacts that I felt I shared a values-based connection with. This was who I was going to war with. This was the list that really mattered to me. It helped guide decisions as far as who I talked to, who I spent time with, and who could affect decisions that I made. I was of course not perfect, got out of balance, and placed too much of a weight on what people outside of that thought, but it was a good starting place. It’s worth reading and considering as you be more intentional on your journey.

Start with yourself. When you trace the why behind certain behaviors, whether it’s the urge to do something or position yourself a certain way, ask why. Why? Why? Why? As you peel back the layers of the onion, it’s helpful to get real and clear with yourself about why you do what you do. Secondly, it’s helpful to get real and clear with who is behind what you do. It’s not bad at all to do things in the spirit of other people. If you’re going to act for other people, at least make sure they’re the right ones.

• Am I living for the right people?

• Have I ever actually written down who they are?

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Weekly Sparks I’m Revisiting:

Quote of the Week:

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” Lao Tzu

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 300 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

For some reason, writing Weekly Spark #300 feels different than 299. It’s arbitrary, kind of like when the gym is repulsive on December 31st but when you flip the calendar to January 1st, it’s gym time! Either way, it prompted some reflection. At #100, I launched Nathan Notes: my way of converting knowledge from books into tangible action, using the simple framework of “Learn, Reflect, Direct.” Fun pet project that didn’t last all that long. At #200, I wrote a really fun piece about consistency. Often I’m asked, how do you write every single week? What happens when you don’t have anything to write about? That almost never happens, especially now. The pipeline of posts that I have to write are currently 10+ long and it seems every time I go to class or for a walk, I could add one (or 10) more. Writing weekly for me is the same as putting on shoes before the day; it wouldn’t feel right without it. The better question at this point is why? What’s it all for? That’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about, but I think I’ve found it. I’ll continue below, but first I wanted to say thank you. Whether this is your first newsletter or your 300th with me, thanks as always for all of the support and inspiration! I hope you’ve been enjoying The Weekly Spark!

A why that I have established this year during one of Graham Weaver’s reflection sessions is simple: I want to create space for myself and others to live happier, healthier, more fulfilled lives. Writing this is one component and core tenet of that. When I started writing, I wanted to provide a weekly dose of positivity and intentionality to start off the week. I used to publish Monday mornings at 6:55 to do so but somewhere along the way changed that. Publishing my thoughts publicly allows me to invite others into the conversation. Weekly is the right cadence as it provides some food for thought at a balanced interval, allowing time for digestion and implementation. The Spark portion is merely that these writings are supposed to give some pause and opportunity for reflection to think about how we are living; I’m sure you are already living very intentionally, but with reading this, if it makes you stop and think for even just a few seconds and incrementally change how you’re doing / thinking about something, even to one degree, that’s a success. For me, all writing has already been successful the moment I hit publish because I’ve processed it, so if others benefit from it and enjoy reading it, that’s gravy.

As I think about other opportunities and ways to use my time, I keep that North Star in mind. For all of us, I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to think: what is my North Star? Why do I do what I do? When you find it, align your hours, priorities, and people with it. I was listening to a podcast recently where James Clear (the king of habits) was talking about his weekly audit of how he’s spent his time: am I pursuing the highest value highest return usages of my time? It’s a worthwhile question, particularly as we can find every which way to be busy. The question is, busy doing what? What’s it all for?

Business school has given me lots of time to tackle that question. It’s also brought more opportunities to find things that feed that North Star. I’ve started tinkering with a bunch of projects and ideas of things I may want to pursue. Who knows where I take them, but I figured I’d share below and see if anyone has any thoughts, feedback, or things that seem most interesting:

1. Candlelight Conversations Podcast reboot - I haven’t recorded an episode for my show since February of 2023. Frankly, I regret not keeping it going and not recording more episodes early on. Now with an archive of 300 newsletters, I see the value in creating a library, so long as quality remains. I’ve been toying with the idea of rebooting the podcast and trying to do episodes with high performers in a variety of domains just having deeper conversations that we can all learn from.

2. Life MD - I’ve always talked about how it would be super helpful to have a tool to help you organize your relationships and conversations to be more intentional about it. Think about it. You go out and have a really interesting conversation with someone and if you don’t write down notes or ways to remember what you talked about, you forget. Then the next time you talk you try to grasp at things you talked about, saying things like “I think I remember you saying x” but in many instances, you have to rehash things you already talked about. Seems inefficient. If you’re moving the ball down the field (like football) and in one conversation you move from the 0 to the 40, it would be a shame to have to pick up next conversation backtracked to the 20 and have to re-advance before you can actually progress your relationship. Last week, at the AI@GSB Hackathon, a few friends and I built a tool called Life MD that sought to address this very issue, essentially creating a space to track your friendships and conversations so that you can be more intentional and prepared for them. Whether business or personal, it would be a super useful tool when properly managed. We only had about 8 hours to build it, but this is something we feel a lot of people could benefit from.

3. Project Strata - Books have been dominating conversations lately. It’s been pretty cool. Ever since the fall when I “refell” in love with reading, a thing that I used to be obsessed with, I’ve loved diving into books on a daily basis. Many of my peers and friends have felt the same way. Since college, I’ve had a rudimentary system of taking notes and tracking books that I’ve read in a Google doc, but I’ve always felt like there was a better way. Imagine if Goodreads was actually good? Or imagine if we harnessed the power of books we’ve read, friends we have and books they read, all of the data we had, in order to personalize recommendations and curate space to discuss with people around the globe? That would be sick. A friend and I have began toying with this idea and is something that would be really fun.

4. Business Newsletter - No name for this as I just came up with the idea the other day. I’ve loved diving into case studies and studying businesses that I find interesting, particularly as part of assignments for school, but also as I meet interesting people who are using business to tackle meaningful challenges. Just the other day, I was talking with Dylan Gambardella from Different Health who is providing high-performing individuals a new standard of care by treating health as a foundation for achievement. Pretty awesome and something I admire. I think it would be fun to have a place to highlight these people and businesses outside of The Weekly Spark. Whether that’s a separate newsletter, a podcast, or some other forum, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us all to learn there.

5. Intention-Action Gap Research - As part of one of the courses I’m taking, Research Driven Inspiration, I chose to research something I’ve thought a lot about: the Intention-Action Gap. Simply put, there is a gap between the lives that we want to live and the lives that we live. There are frictions that cause this gap, and there are short term, medium term, and long term costs/regrets associated with this gap. For example, if I don’t workout today, I might not realize it. But if I spend 10 years not working out, I’ll probably pay for it. Other feedback loops are more immediate. If I don’t sleep today, I’ll definitely realize it. The ultimate goal is to come up with some practical thesis on habit formation, which we can use to again: create space to live happier, healthier, more fulfilled lives. Maybe this looks like a habits group with people that are trying to institute new, better habits in their lives, or drop destructive ones. I’ve been speaking with people around this space, from professors, to researchers, to practitioners, authors, businesspeople, etc. I’ve been reading books, listening to podcasts, etc. with the goal of publishing my first piece on the subject next week. This process will continuously iterate, but it’s been really fun to dive deeper on something I find interesting.

6. Building community around these things - Still, there’s so much opportunity for this. Whether it’s people reading the same book, people reading books in general, talking about mental health, creating reunions and focus groups of people talking about the same subjects, people crave spending time with and speaking people about topics of shared interest. There is so much opportunity to create these spaces. If what you’re looking for doesn’t exist, go out and build it. It may feel hard at first, but others will thank you for it.

As you can see, there’s a lot that I’m thinking about, but only so much time. We’ll see what directions these all go.

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Weekly Sparks I’m Revisiting:

One tool that has definitely helped with habit formation and just lifestyle in general has been Whoop. It’s helped me buckle down on sleep (which is the foundational habit) and it has helped many people become aware of the effects of drinking alcohol, eating large meals too close to bedtime, and other habits to promote the key part to growth: recovery.

Quote of the Week:

“If your schedule is filled with Time Debts, then it doesn't matter how hard you work. Your choices will constantly put you in a productivity hole. However, if you strategically build Time Assets day after day, then you multiply your time exponentially." - James Clear

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 299 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

A few weeks ago, Stanford GSB hosted its 13th annual Sports Innovation Conference. They had an all star cast of characters in a variety of panels and keynotes. This year, I’ve taken 2 sports management classes and been able to hear from legends in the sports, media, and entertainment spaces, and it’s been fun to dive into a space that I’ve always been passionate about. My 4 or 5 year-old self who swapped cartoons for Sportscenter, studied athletes and coaches, and walked around elementary and middle school reciting all that I had learned would be happy that I’m having these experiences. I’ll share a few of my biggest life takeaways from the conference, as well as more extensive specific notes/summaries on each of the panels below:

1. Spending time on your why, servant leadership, and nurturing your whole self

John Donahoe, current Athletic Director at Stanford and former CEO of Nike, talked about these 3 things in his opening keynote. First, he talked about how we should spend serious time on our why. Why do you do what you do? What’s your underlying motivation behind it? For him, he talked about being motivated by servant leadership and nurturing his whole self. These are the values that he sought to live by as he went from career to career. By optimizing for those values, as opposed to what’s trendy, he was able to transpose these values across multiple roles, as CEO at Bain, eBay, ServiceNow, and Nike. Of course, this is not a one-time exercise. Values and principles that you live by generally remain aligned throughout your entire life, but your why could potentially change. By spending serious deep work and time on it, you can make more informed choices that are aligned with the person you are, want to be, and likely live a happier life as a result. He shared one quote which resonated with me: “Think about what resonates with you, what inspires you, and what excites you.” Pursuing these avenues will take you far in life.

2. Striving for greatness in multiple domains

In one of the panels, Mia Bhuta, current player on the Stanford Women’s Soccer team, talked about striving for greatness in multiple domains. She is certainly a decorated athlete, earning All-American, All-ACC, and All-Pac-12 honors throughout her time here. As a student, she finished her undergrad degree as a sophomore and masters as a junior. Currently, she has founded a startup, Neila, which aims to help automate parts of the athlete brand-building and NIL process. She’s another great example: you can pursue greatness in multiple areas of your life. She said one thing that stuck with me: “I kind of treat pursuing one thing as a break from the other.” Compartmentalization is key. If you have multiple irons in the fire and find passion in multiple things, pursue them all! You often hear that you have to specialize and focus on one thing in order to be mega-successful. I don’t believe that to be true. Of course, you have to be intentional with how you spend your time and energy and can’t waste it on unworthy pursuits. However, you can spread that energy across multiple domains and it’s amazing that by pursuing things you love, you actually gain, as opposed to drain, your energy reserves. Her story shows that as long as you are genuinely interested and put the right investment of energy behind your pursuits, you can be successful in multiple areas. Mindset and approach are the differentiators between those that are and those that aren’t.

Opening Keynote: The Future of College Athletics John Donahoe, Stanford Athletic Director and former CEO of Nike, in conversation with Ben Gumpert (Chief Strategy & Growth Officer, Elevate)

The conference kicked off with Stanford Athletic Director John Donahoe (former CEO at Bain, ServiceNow, and Nike) having a candid discussion about the state of college athletics. I had heard him speak on the subject before in my Sports Business Management class, but with how rapidly the college sports environment is changing, it’s always good to hear the latest. College sports is operating in a “lawless” environment, where athletes are being paid exorbitant sums of money, with no commitment to anything while transferring at will. He talked about how many college leaders would like to see better structure and system, with rational eligibility rules and a sensible transfer system to prevent the current chaos. Stanford runs a very unique athletic program; 97% of student-athletes graduate and Stanford maintains the same standards as students to be accepted into the school (no backdoor entry for athletes, like many schools). He framed college sports as increasingly three distinct businesses: football (professionalizing), basketball (semi-pro), and Olympic sports (Stanford’s crown jewel). He closed with one important reminder: sports are more important than ever in a polarized society. Regardless of where you come from and your background, sports can unite people who otherwise may not see eye to eye; we need to use that to our advantage and keep bringing people together!

The College Athlete Experience Mia Bhuta (Stanford Women’s Soccer), Jenna Brown (former Stanford & Notre Dame Women’s Basketball), Ernest Cooper (Stanford Football), moderated by Shayne Skov (Executive Associate AD, Stanford)

This panel featured two current/one former Stanford athletes who talked about what it’s like to be a college athlete in the NIL and revenue sharing era. Ernest Cooper highlighted Stanford football’s relative stability in a chaotic transfer portal era, crediting the program’s focus on recruiting players who want to build something rather than chase short-term gains. He also talked about the benefits of using NIL money to invest wisely and build something for the future, which I found encouraging. All athletes reflected on how the constant churn of transfers makes long-term planning harder and how some teams (around college sports in general) have evolved to be more individualistic than team oriented. All three echoed a call for more accessible NIL opportunities across Olympic and women’s sports, while also reminding us that athletes still want to be seen as people rather than just performers.

Disrupting the Existing Ecosystem: Venture Capital in Sports Ben Gardner (Will Ventures), Jay Adya (Elysian Park Ventures), Paul Hourigan (Ryan Sports Ventures), moderated by Yash Gupta (Will Ventures)

Three venture capital (VC) investors broke down how investment in sports is changing the ecosystem. Like John Donahoe talked about, sports is a uniting factor, and one that can be more consistent in durable, creating attractive opportunities for investment. VC is approaching one of the most competitive and constrained asset classes in finance. As AI reshapes lots of businesses, live events aren’t going anywhere. If anything, people crave them more as they become more disconnected or reliant on technology. Despite its attractiveness, they did acknowledge the structural challenges of the space, including a small addressable market of roughly 150 pro teams and the slow pace at which leagues actually adopt new technology. One panelist spoke on how sports tech companies are continuously popping up, but in order to be attractive, they need to show a viable secondary market beyond pro sports teams. At conference after conference, I continue to hear about the success of Oura, who has marketed their ring brilliantly among consumers as an example. They covered a range of topics including the competitiveness of emerging leagues and why so few survive, prediction markets, wearables, teams investing in real estate, and how the content business is continuing to change the evolving sports landscape, but all present unique investment opportunities.

Building a Women’s Franchise: What It Takes to Win Steph Martin (President, LOVB San Francisco), Lauren Esrig (Chief of Staff, Golden State Valkyries), Ryann Greenberg (VP, Guest Experience & Venue Ops, Bay FC), moderated by Tiggy Valen (Co-President, Stanford GSB Sports Management Club)

This panel brought together three operators building women’s sports franchises the Bay Area. For starters, the Golden State Valkyries (WNBA team) were purchased for $50M in 2023 and were recently valued at $850M, which represents an incredible 17x spike in valuation in 3 years. One of their representatives spoke in my Sports Business Management class about how they’ve innovated to capture significant fandom in the area, making the experience at the Chase Center a fun and captivating one. To exemplify this, Lauren Esrig shared how the Valkyries sold out all 22 home games in their inaugural season, set the all-time WNBA attendance record, and built distinct fan personas to guide their growth strategy. In Bay FC’s case (NWSL women’s soccer team), Ryann Greenberg spoke about Bay FC drawing 40,000+ fans to Oracle Park and how it has competed to pushed back on the assumption that women’s sports fans are demographically different, arguing the real work is understanding behavioral patterns and making sure broadcast deals are actually accessible to fans. Steph Martin previewed LOVB San Francisco’s 2027 debut, the league’s only women-led ownership group, and made the case that volleyball’s young, social-first, female-led audience represents the future of fan building. One cool part about these different leagues speaking together is that they aren’t in competition of one another; with minimal season overlap between leagues, the three franchises are actively cross-promoting each other, building a 365-day women’s sports calendar, which other cities around the country can emulate.

Closing Keynote | Building the Biggest Stage in Sport: LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games John Slusher (CEO, U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Properties), moderated by Peter Hutton (Board Director: Pro Triathlon, Rugby League, Saudi Pro League)

To wrap, John Slusher walked the audience through the business of staging what he called the biggest sporting event in the history of the world, the LA28 Olympics. After 26 years at Nike, Slusher took on LA28 in part because the opportunity to deliver a once-in-a-lifetime Games in his hometown was too compelling to pass up. The financial stakes are enormous, with a publicly disclosed target north of $7 billion that he expects to significantly exceed. He broke down the three main revenue engines (sponsorship, ticketing, and hospitality) and explained how LA28 plans to supersede these markets with innovation. He credited the team and the Paris Games’ success for the dramatic uptick in commercial momentum. As tickets are continuously released and demand is sky-high, he talked about various price points and how they want to make the games accessible (10% of tickets will be priced at $28, 50% will be below $200), but that they need to make a profit in order to create a sustainable business. The conversation also touched on the complexities of navigating politics across city, state, and federal governments and the importance of NBC’s broadcast partnership in reaching new and younger fans in order to make these games a success. I’m pumped for the Olympics in 2 summers and hope to be able to catch some live, in what will probably be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

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Mental Diet

Weekly Sparks I’m Revisiting:

Spending time around sports made me think of the athletes that I look up to, with Kobe being one of the main ones. He left a quote that has always stuck with me: “I have nothing in common with lazy people who blame others for their lack of success. Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”

Quote of the Week:

“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living." — Sir David Attenborough

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast

Welcome to The Weekly Spark, my weekly+ newsletter featuring insights on mental and physical wellness, intentional living, and personal growth. Since September 2020, I’ve published 298 reflections hoping to motivate myself and others to live more thoughtful, purpose-driven lives.

Every year on Mother’s Day, I enjoy honoring my mom and reflecting on all that she has done for me, Colin, and Evan. I find myself reflecting on her most impactful teachings and how grateful I am for her. In the past, I’ve written about some of her core lessons: do good things, be kind, be content, and life is all about the people. Last night, I stumbled across a LinkedIn post with 7 thoughtful reflection questions to discuss on Mother’s Day, so spur of the moment, I decided to ask my mom these on Facetime today. After all, who doesn’t want to celebrate Mother’s Day being ambushed by reflective questions? I’ll share a few relevant lessons and takeaways from our conversation below.

1. What were you like at my age?

At 28, my mom had been married to my dad for 2 years and was living in Camp Hill, PA working. They were building the foundation for what was to come.

2. Is there a different version of your life that you almost lived?

Early into her relationship with my dad, my mom had a job offer that would take her to Norfolk, VA. With that being a 10-hour drive from her parents and 5 hours from my dad, she decided it wasn’t worth it. Thankfully she did, because we’re here today!

3. What’s a memory with me as a child that you’ve never told me about?

I remember these days well. In my mom’s words, “you liked balls all the time.” Thank you mom. I would pick up basketballs, baseballs, bouncy balls, super balls, footballs, really anything that I could throw around the house. Yes, we had 2 broken windows from baseballs that I misfired at the house. My mom would always confiscate them and hide them from me. Supposedly, they are still uncovering hidden stashes of balls around the house.

4. What’s the best advice your mom gave you?

I never met my grandma. She passed away just a few months before my mom got married, but my mom talked about how she was very resourceful. She was handy, could sew, knit, and crochet (I don’t know what that means). Given that her and my grandfather lived through the Great Depression, as blue-collar workers, they knew that they had to be smart with money. Those lessons percolated through the family tree and are things that my mom always tried to instill in us.

5. When did you first feel like an adult?

When she graduated college and moved to Harrisburg, PA, where she lived in her own apartment, paid rent and utilities, and had to build a life for herself, adulthood felt real. She actually liked this independence and feeling like she was building something for herself, which I can also relate to.

6. What’s the toughest thing you’ve been through that I don’t know about?

This one is tough to answer on the spot, but she did provide thoughtful words on dealing with challenges and supporting others through them. Everyone goes through tough times. My mom always instilled in us is to say something and to support people experiencing these. If someone loses a job, loses a parent or grandparent, or is having a really tough time, it can feel easy and more comfortable to not address it. But inevitably the next time you talk, until you acknowledge it, that elephant is always going to be in the room. Pop the elephant right away. Put your arm around someone, say something, and be there for them. Even if it feels uncomfortable. If you can be there for people during tough times, that’s the sign of a true friend.

7. If you could go back 30 years and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

In 1996, they were raising Colin and Evan. Other than, “don’t have a third child,” she talked about how fast life goes. “Life goes fast. Remember what’s important.” She has hammered into my head the fact that success looks different for everyone. There is no one definition of success. For some, it may be having a simple job, living stress free, and being able to coach kid’s baseball teams. For others, it means making a lot of money, having power, and status. YOU make the decision on what it means for you. She also talked about the importance of people in your life and enjoying moments with them; life is all about the people.

One thing that stuck with me, when my dad talked about her raising Colin, Evan, and me, is when she simply said: “Thankful for you guys. Proud of you guys.” We are working hard to make you proud, mom! Thanks for all that you do!

Happy Mother’s Day to all! What are some of the most important lessons that your mom taught you? Perhaps Mother’s Day is a great time to reflect on these things, and the best way to honor her is to live them out and stay true to her teachings.

If this resonated with you, send it to someone who needs to read it.

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Mental Diet

Weekly Sparks I’m Revisiting:

My first Mother’s Day post back from 2021, including my podcast that I did with my mom and a few timeless lessons.

Quote of the Week:

“Life goes fast. Remember what’s important.” - Sharon Vrabel

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing; if you have thoughts, comments, or feedback, please reply to this email and share them. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan

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Candlelight Conversations Podcast