{"slowly-then-all-at-once":"“Alex! How’s it been man? I heard you moved to California and have been crushing it. What’s new?!”\n\n_Hmm. Where do I even start with that?_\n\nI guess I should start by saying things _are not good._\n\n_Things_ are _really really not good._\n\nAs someone who has always characteristically been _good_ this is even a weird thing to hear myself say. I was the oldest of four growing up, and I’d always been the child who had it figured out — straight A’s, captain of the basketball team, number one recruit to Johns Hopkins, computer science wiz, and now startup founder.\n\nBut the reality was, in that moment, I was _very very lost_, and still trying to understand where it all went wrong. Just a month before, I had been accepted into Y Combinator — the startup accelerator which produced Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Coinbase, Instacart, and the founder of OpenAI. It came along with a $500,000 investment and a good chance to build the next $1B company.\n\nThe acceptance rate was <1%, and I was one of the youngest solo founders funded. I was ecstatic. It was a life dream of mine, and I felt I had really earned it after my 3rd startup attempt left me with a taste of everything I ever dreamed of, only to flame out due to a breakup with my co-founder.\n\n![IMG_4366.jpg](https://d3e0luujhwn38u.cloudfront.net/resized/7XIVpUdhM1JJ_SwiHX9oTcGM561a7wIkeXtEbMdMiCg/s:3200/plain/s3://typefully-user-uploads/img/original/59092/3c8951ae-1a60-4328-b41c-b05c51035eb7.png)\n\nBut two weeks into the batch, I dropped out because I literally thought it would kill me. _And maybe I wasn't wrong._\n\nI had entered a wicked spiral of chronic stress and anxiety that was starting to affect critical biomarkers like ApoB, Homocysteine, and hs-CRP. I was sending myself down a path of chronic gut issues, autoimmune disorders, and early heart disease — or literal heart attack.\n\nAnd a heart attack is what I thought I was having two months earlier while on a walk with my Dad.\n\nI remember the moment vividly — my heart beat sped up uncontrollably, and I then found myself on the ground with the ER paramedics shoveling me into an ambulance. Once the episode passed, my only thought was _how the hell did I get here._\n\nThe answer was _slowly…then all at once._\n\nI had ignored many warning signs. I pushed through over and over again because I thought that was the way to win. No matter what I was doing, it wasn't enough. I never gave myself space to listen because that would be wasting precious time that could be allocated towards winning.\n\n_And I was a winner right?_\n\nI remember thinking, _wow my rate of doing is actually outpacing my rate of thinking._ And I was proud of that. I wanted to become a machine for growth, and I became one. I engineered viral social media posts every week, collecting hundreds of millions of views, a response from Elon Musk, and nearly 1 million users for my AI startup. I raised millions of dollars from top Silicon Valley investors and it seemed I was well on my way to running a $1B company.\n\nIn my spare time, I started a cold plunge community with thousands of members, and added in Ironman training because that meant I really cared about \"taking care of my body\". In retrospect, regular cold plunging makes sense as the only way I could maintain this completely ridiculous way of life. _I was literally numbing my body twice a week_.\n\nIt all came crashing down when my co-founder informed me during an all hands meeting that he would be running our company as a dictatorship going forward.\n\n_The next day I went to ER with chest pains._\n\n![IMG_4366.jpg](https://d3e0luujhwn38u.cloudfront.net/resized/awR6hWIVN0CEtUuZ2KIXDup1Zwpsuo03PCHrOXVoQmc/s:3200/plain/s3://typefully-user-uploads/img/original/59092/5e24451a-e0c3-4a28-8f6b-58e057239adf.png)\n\nIf you died tomorrow would you be satisfied with how you lived today? And what does _winning_ mean anyway? As I lay in a hospital bed, these questions were suddenly not theoretical for me.\n\nWhen I very seriously asked myself, I found two voices answered.\n\n\n_The first voice_\n _\"Trust the process. Once you sell your company you'll be completely free to live however you want.\"_\n\n_The second voice_\n _\"I know I've won when it is undeniable that this is exactly the life I was meant to live. I know why I am alive, I'm where I'm supposed to be, with the people I'm meant to be with, doing what I'm meant to do. I feel like my life has so much meaning. Of course, I wouldn't want to die right now, but I would rest easy because I'd feel like I fulfilled my purpose for living.\"_\n\nI've always had both of these voices competing for the driver's seat of my life. The first one seems totally sensible and harmless on the surface, _I mean you have to make money to live right_? In reality it was one of the most dangerous, insidious beliefs that I could uncover.\n\nFor startup founders this shows up as imagining the day you sell your company, and for employees it is working and imagining retirement. In both cases, people waste years of their lives _waiting or running as fast as they can to escape_. Both are sides of the same coin; avoidance and procrastination from _actually living the life you are meant to live._\n\nIn my case, I always been the kind of person who wanted more. And you can always have more. _More money, status, achievements. It becomes an addiction._\n\nA few days into writing this book I was stopped by a successful venture capitalist in a New York City cafe. He asked about the Y Combinator sticker on my laptop, and proceeded with the standard questions.\n\n _\"What do you do?\"_\n _\"Where did you go to college?\"_\n _\"How much did you raise for your startup?\"_\n _\"How many employees do you have?\"_\n\nYou've probably heard a version of this; the typical questions a busy, high value person asks to evaluate if you are worth their time. I replied that I was writing a book called The Anthropology of You. I told him about my time at Founders Inc, YC, my health scare, and how I never wanted to write a book, it just poured out of me as a cathartic experience. \n\nThen something funny happened. He responsed:\n\n \"You know when you first told me you were writing a book, I didn't get it. Here's a kid who obviously has some skills, and you're wasting it on a book?\n\n But I guess you're right. I'm 40 years old and spent my 20s and 30s hustling in San Francisco to do deals. Once I realized I wasn't really connected to what I was doing, I started listening to other voices.\n\n _Just wait until you get that promotion!_\n _Wait until you can get that new car!_\n _Wait until you get that corner office!_\n _Wait until you can get that new house…_\n\n Of course, I found it never really did it for me. It was never enough.\"\n\n\nThere is always a bigger room you can be in. This is the hedonic treadmill. It's an illusion that these things will fill the void we are running from.\n\n_We are lying to ourselves._\n\nBefore YC, I booked a one-way ticket to San Francisco thinking I’d stay a few weeks. I ended up staying almost three years because I was fortunate enough to apprentice Furqan Rydhan, founder of the accelerator and venture capital firm Founders Inc, and previously the founding CTO of AppLovin.\n\nHe was the first person to really take a bet on me, and I’ll always be grateful for the lessons he shared. The most valuable lesson I learned from the years with Furqan was not what he knew, but how he asked questions.\n\nWeek after week, I sat on the leather couch in his library, overlooking the entire San Francisco Bay, and observed how he carefully deconstructed a business with simple questions. After getting _mind-fucked_ more times than I can count and seeing this interaction play out with the hundreds of other founders, there was an obvious pattern.\n\n\n_Furqan_\n “How are things going?”\n_Founder_\n “Good! We just launched and seeing lots of traction with early users. The feedback has been great so far.”\n_Furqan_\n “How many people are using it specifically?”\n_Founder_\n “We’ve been keeping it small to make sure the product is perfect before we show it too many people. We haven’t set up analytics yet but we have around 100 users so far. We’re planning to ramp up growth soon.”\n_Furqan_\n “Who are the people and how did you get them to use it?”\n_Founder_\n “Mostly friends and family. They said it’s been awesome and they’ve been using it daily.”\n_Furqan_\n “Check the logs. They’re probably lying to you.”\n\n\nThen in almost every case, once they looked at the server logs which told them who actually logged in and what they did with the product, they found most of the people just logged in once — or never tried it at all.\n\n_These founders had fooled themselves._\n\nMost founders who haven’t launched their product or are just a few weeks post-launch live in delusion that they have the next great product on their hands, without ever gaining contact with reality. It isn’t necessarily their fault, it is extremely scary to launch your creation into the world, only to be told it isn’t special.\n\nThere is a saying that _no founder wants to be told their baby is ugly_. It is easier to live in delusion then it is to accept the fact that you do not have the next Facebook on your hands.\n\nThis doesn’t just happen with launching a product; there was a line that Furqan repeated over and over in our sessions which has stuck with me, _“Humans are constantly lying to themselves”._\n\n**\"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.\" — Richard Feynman**\n\n\n“I see, so you had fooled yourself into living solely for the exit of your company?”\n _Well it didn’t start that way, I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I started. And once I was in the game, it was hard to get out._\n\n“But wait, you started your own company — doesn’t that mean you get to do what you want.”\n _No. It’s actually the opposite. As a business owner, you are the ultimate servant to your customers, your employees, and investors if you have them._\n\nYou are always the limit to the business. This means you are on call to your stakeholders 24/7, usually for years of your life. Doing well in the game just earns you more responsibility; more people depending on you to run the machine. If you have a business that is your life’s work, then this is exactly what you want — to be fully engaged and fulfilling your purpose. That is not the case for most entrepreneurs.\n\nSo what happens when you realize you don’t want to be running the show anymore? You’ve created a prison of your own making. You become really good at something that you don’t want to spend any time doing. The irony is that people start to offer you more and more money to do it.\n\n\nThe day I announced I was leaving my startup, I was known as _the growth guy_ for developer tools in SF. I got dozens of calls and messages from people all trying to recruit me for a role I no longer wanted to play.\n\n“That’s great! You’re moving up in the world!”\n _Did you forget already? That is the lie you are being sold. It’s a weird kind of prison huh?_\n\nThe good news is you are both the prisoner and the prison guard. _You can free yourself._ The bad news is that you will have to face the _you_ who created this prison, and evicting them is no small task.\n\nThe real question is **_who do you want to be?_**\n\nAsk yourself and you might hear a whisper…\n _Be yourself fully, everyday. Not just a little bit. All in. Unapologetically._\n\n\"What?? What do you mean be myself? I am already myself, who else could I be?\"\n _Playing a character._\n _Wearing a mask._\n _Pretending to be someone._\n\n\"What kind of character?\"\n _The character you thought you had to be to win the game._\n \nMost of us are playing the character we received the most money or status to be. The one that put our dreams on hold to pay the bills. The one that says \"focus on something else\" when we feel the subtle nudges that we are not where we should be in our life. The one that puts our feelings far far away and reaches for some addiction to fill the void.\n\nWe take on personas or characters in our lives because we believe a lie, listen to other voices over our own, or play a game that asks us to be in this role.\n\n\n_Performing is fine, but eventually any act becomes exhausting._\n\nIf you play the character more than you play the role of yourself, you lose yourself in the character. You burn out. You will hear the signals from your body when this happens. Then perhaps you’ll realize you don’t want to play that character anymore, so you might find a new one to play.\n\nThere is a long list of performers who have allowed this pattern to spiral out of control and become deadly. From to Elvis, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Heath Leger, Robin Williams, Mac Miller and many others. In the modern era, the trope is that Disney stars go from toddler-to-trainwreck.\n\n_When the character has no boundary, you forget about you. First it happens slowly…then all at once._\n\nThis disconnection can cause a nasty downwards spiral, one I was experiencing first-hand with health issues ranging from heart palpitations, nerve pain down the left side of my body, blurry vision, dizziness, and more.\n\nWhen this started, I was like _what the fuck is going on._ I’ve never had any major health issues in my life, I was a former college athlete, and I was only 24. I went to many doctors and had multiple visits to the emergency room, and each time I heard the same thing:\n\n\n _\"Nothing is wrong with you\"_\n\nBut I knew something was deeply wrong. After a few months, I decided to do take the investigation into my own hands and ordered my own bloodwork through the concierge medical service Function Health, a service that measures 100+ critical biomarkers. What I saw was data that confirmed how I felt:\n\n Homocysteine, a marker of methylation dysfunction and cardiovascular risk\n _DANGEROUSLY ELEVATED_\n\n hs-CRP, the leading marker of inflammation in my body\n _CLEAR INFLAMMATION_\n\n ApoB, the leading biomarker for cardiovascular disease\n _TRENDING UPWARDS_\n\n\nThe symptoms weren't stopping, and the more I tried to dull them, the more they showed up. Eventually it became a _runaway train_, peaking at exactly the worst time — right as I began achieving all of the things I had always dreamed of — a business with explosive growth, getting into Y Combinator solo, and at the peak of my skills in the greatest time to start a technology business in the last decade.\n\nThe mere thought of my deteriorating health caused my body to release cortisol, which caused more inflammation and stress, which caused more symptoms, which caused more thoughts of doom. This was viciously powerful negative feedback loop. Since my own thoughts were becoming triggers for a stress response in my body, doing nothing, even simply resting, was not enough, I needed to actively reverse the loop. _The train was already in motion._\n\nMany legendary founders who I met over three years in Silicon Valley told me similar horror stories of stress and anxiety spirals, chronic health issues, and post-company depression once they finally exit the game. And it isn’t their fault — that seems to simply the cost of admission.\n\nAs my health spiral was peaking I was offered one final glimpse into the road the lie ahead for the character I was playing. One of my investors graciously offered me three tickets to sit courtside at the Golden State Warriors basketball game.\n\nAt the game, I saw many of these same Silicon Valley legends, the biggest investors and founders in the world. One of the most well known founders in the world happened to sit next to me — and I don’t think they saw more than one possession of the game. They were glued to their phone. This is someone that made it by every account and was the ultimate poster child of _success_.\n\n_If this was the reward for winning, I didn’t want it._\n\nConveniently, my body was completely shutting down, so really, I had no choice. I saw that the win-at-all-costs character I had created was becoming a cancer turning against me. I had to kill the character, or the character would kill me.\n\nIf you find yourself in this lucky position, I have a clear message: _there is the way out_. We are all playing some character, and our lives become spiraling mirrors of this character. Playing anything other than _you_ for too long is like building the foundation for your life on sand; when a storm comes, the entire house will blow over.\n\n**Matthew 7:24-27 - the wise man built his house on rock, the foolish man built his house on sand.**\n\n\nSo you might ask then, \"what does it mean to be myself?\" or \"who am I really?\"\n _You already know who you are._\n _You probably forgot that you know, but it is you. The real you._\n _Buried under lies, the racing mind-activity telling you to be productive, conditioning from your environment, parents, peers, colleagues, the emotions that scare you._\n _This is a book about digging through all of this, extracting the clues that are already there, and practically re-aligning your life to be who you are meant to be._\n\n“Of course I want to be myself, but what about my existing life? What about making money?”\n _You’ve likely already tried playing by the rules of the game…go to school, go to college, get a good job, climb the ladder, win the game…where has it led?_\n _It never ends._\n _You don’t just arrive at the good life you were promised. You have to intentionally build it. Most people continue avoiding this truth by believing the lie that retirement or a financial outcome will bring you freedom. Then they find they are just facing the same question, but are older and have much less energy to answer it._\n\nThis approach will require actually doing things, dealing with people, and making money. And there is no amount of manifestation that will magically solve your practical life problems. How you make a living, where you live, who you are spending your life with are all things that you will need to face. Depending on how far you have drifted from what actually aligns with your true self, you may have a lot of cleaning up to do.\n\nBut the funny thing is that if you take one step, another one will always reveal itself.\n\nYou don't need know the whole path ahead of time. And that’s not the point anyway. If you did, you would have nothing to learn, you would be bored all of the time, you would have no purpose.\n\n_With each next step you take, you will have new information. You will be in a different place. You can make a different decision._\n\nYou aren’t being asked to have all of the answers. You are being asked to have _curiosity and faith._ Curiosity to reveal the next step to you, and faith to take it, even when you cannot see the entire path.\n\n**“How do you know that you are on your path – because it disappears.” — David Whyte**\n\n“Hmm, I do see how the idea of _being yourself all of the time_ could be very powerful.”\n _Yes. In fact it is through authenticity that you escape competition altogether._\n\nI don't mean a little bit of yourself. I mean fully, all in, unapologetically. \n\n_Your authenticity compounded is the only moat._\n\nMore specifically, when you full send your unique superpowers, who you really are at your core, there is no competition. \n\nWhen you are always being you — your natural curiosity will lead you to do things in the world that only you can do. Your curiosity will also lead you to understand what the world needs.\n\nLive in that intersection long enough and you will be completely differentiated. N-of-1.\n\nNo one is able to compete with you at being yourself. There is no blueprint.\n\nThink of Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and many others who were unapologetically themselves. Who can compete?\n\nThe best businesses in the world have the same property. They have no competition. They are monopolies.\n\n**\"Competition is for losers.\" — Peter Thiel**\n\nNaturally, the result of your authenticity compounded is that you become a personal monopoly.\n\nBut there is a catch. Authenticity comes at the risk of being disliked or vilified. Your most unapologetic _you_ is polarizing — people either love it or hate it. And that is exactly the point.\n\nThe world operates on bets and leverage. In startups, investors often say making a _contrarian bet_ or having a _unique insight_ into your business is the starting point for a great company. The way to get the greatest returns is to not to do what every other team is doing, but to bet against what other smart people believe, with lots of leverage — and be right.\n\nThe same goes for the business of _you_. Betting on your own unqiue superpowers may seem foolish to other smart people, but will result in the greatest returns if you are right.\n\n_This means being yourself isn’t just a good idea. It is a good business strategy._\n\nBut to win with this strategy, you need to play _your infinite game_ — the game that you are uniquely positioned to play for a long time. The only way to play an infinite game is to be yourself unapologetically, otherwise you will burn out. To be yourself unapologetically, you need to know yourself. And to know yourself, you need to become _the Anthropologist of You._ \n\nAnd yes, there will definitely be parts along the way that suck. But frankly, what is the alternative? Avoiding it forever? Living out of alignment? Ignoring signals until you have a health scare and realize you are going to die so none of this shit you think matters anyway???\n\nThere’s a saying that everything is hard, you just get to pick your type of hard. It is hard to be the CEO of $1B company. It is also hard to be the janitor. You only have one life. _Wake the fuck up._ Stop living it for other people. Remind yourself that you are going to die. Commit to being who you were meant to be or face the consequences.\n\n“Shit...I thought I was just reading a book. This is a lot of pressure. I need some time to digest and think about this.”\n\n _Good. This is your first real test. It will teach you more about the process of being yourself than anything I could ever tell you._\n\n _Decide if you are in or out._\n \n _You do not need to consult anyone else about this. No one can decide this for you. You already have everything you need. You already know. Simply make space to sit quietly and ask yourself, “am I ready to actually BE myself fully? Not just a little. Unapologetically, all in.”_\n\n _Imagine it._\n\n _If it scares you, that’s because it should. If you feel something in your gut, listen to it. Trust yourself to take the first step. Be curious. It is my firm belief that life will continue to present you the opportunity to answer this call with increasingly higher stakes. Consider this your call. Do not wait until you are in a hospital bed to answer the call._\n\n _If you decide you are in, welcome to the ride of your life. If you are out, immediately stop reading and come back when you decide you are in. Information without action is just more avoidance._\n\n\n\n“Wow…I guess I do feel a quiet smile inside of me when I imagine it. And maybe also slight butterflies in my stomach? It’s exhilarating. I’m not used to this.”\n\n _Yes, that is the feeling of being alive. Actually alive._\n _If you continue this process, this feeling won’t become foreign. It will become second nature._\n _It will happen slowly…then all at once._\n\n“Alright, I guess this is crazy. Let’s do it.”\n\n_Great. Welcome to your first day of your new job — being fully yourself. All in. Unapologetically. You._\n\nPractically speaking, in order to really be yourself, you first have to know yourself. Luckily you don’t have to go very far, _it is already in you_.\n\n_Anthropology_ is the study of humans and their ancestors. The job of an anthropologist involves collecting human artifacts, analyzing them, extracting meaning, and understanding how they fit into the greater picture. You are already the subject, now you will become _the Anthropologist of You._\n\nEven after leaving Silicon Valley it took me months to fully embrace this job; to observe my thoughts, triggers, and patterns of being. Everything around me reinforced my old _you_; the people, the places, the conversations, the media I consumed. \n\nI realized I needed to replace all of these triggers with new ones that reinforce the _you_ that I actually wanted to be. To do this, I wrote this note as a reminder of my new job:\n\n _“I commit to being myself full time. I listen to myself. I don’t allow others to manipulate my attention. I feel my life revealing more meaning and purpose than I could ever imagine.”_\n\nI recorded this as a voice memo to listen to throughout the day. You can make it your phone screen background, put it on your bathroom mirror, in your wallet, on your desk, or whatever works for you to have a consistent reminder of this moment of inspiration.\n\nIt will be hard. Embrace the call. Do not let yourself forget, or you will wake up years later when the call is higher stakes. And if you have forgotten, this will show you how to remember. It is always available to you when you commit to it.\n\n“So this isn’t a story about the tragic downfall of kid with lots of potential?”\n _No. Quite the opposite — this is a story about how our greatest challenges can give our life its greatest meaning. This is about knowing yourself and practically building the life meant for you by being yourself._\n\nIn the following chapters, I will document how despite many measures of success externally, I had strayed far far off course; and _how I brought myself back by becoming my own anthropologist — digging into the clues already inside of me_ — my patterns, my obsessions _from childhood, my true gifts_.\n\nIn the process, I was able to _make being myself my full time job_. I overcame chronic health issues, including overwhelming stress, anxiety, and depression. I stopped competing, and found a sense of purpose so strong that it is undeniable. And I’m willing to bet, by the time you read this, it may just pay financially more than any other job could. \n\nThis is not just theory, but a practical guide on how you can follow the same process.\n\n_This is the anthropology of you._\n\n","thinking-fast-and-slow":"During my time in San Francisco, everyone praised speed as the ultimate. Go fast all of the time. Execute execute execute. If you watch Steph Curry, Messi, or any great athlete — you see a different lesson; the hardest people to guard are the ones that master changing speeds.\n\n_Slow. Fast. Stop. Speed up._\n\nOne speed is too predictable, and you may end going fast in the wrong direction. The mark of a master is someone who can stop on a dime and speed back up to 100 mph. _Thinking fast and slow._\n\nI was convinced I was on _the right track_ because I was going very fast all of the time. It was only when my body started to shut down that I realized I was going in the wrong direction. I was on a high speed train that passed its stop a _long time_ ago.\n\n_The moment I knew I had really lost myself was the week after Y Combinator kicked off._\n\nIt was late at night and I was playing music with friend of mine, let's call him James. James and I tended to get into very spiritual conversations, and him being a musical artist, a few times a month our routine was to jam, write songs, and talk life. We were catching up on things after I left my last startup.\n\n\n\"So you left your last startup, and then started another company? All in 10 days??\"\n _Yeah, I wanted to capitalize on the momentum I had._\n _I have so many learnings, and with AI it took me 10 days to literally build the product and launch on Twitter. The launch tweet has 500k views and I did $5k in revenue in 3 days. I was able to do it all solo. Pretty wild._\n\n _The batch kickoff was last week too, and I got to hear from all the legends — Michael Seibel (Founder of Twitch), John Collison (Founder of Stripe), the founders of Anthropic, and Brian Chesky (Founder of Airbnb) talking about Founder Mode. It literally couldn't get any more Silicon Valley than this._\n\nThen the hard questions came.\n\n![IMG_4366.jpg](https://d3e0luujhwn38u.cloudfront.net/resized/DXKabvubuwwl3O-hdroFMt3e0KVx4aHydCn3zrVfawM/s:3200/plain/s3://typefully-user-uploads/img/original/59092/3bb58a09-d8dc-4b41-8f40-f041e918793a.jpg)\n\n\"So why are you doing YC? I thought you wanted to do music after you sold your company\" he asked me.\n _Well, it's a great opportunity. And I'm seeing if I can do it on my terms._\n _But I'm kinda worried, I've been experiencing some really weird body symptoms — burning in my stomach, blurry vision, rushes of adrenaline or fatigue randomly, chest pains, dissociation. It's really really weird._\n\n\"That doesn't sound normal. Let me ask you a different question, what are you willing to die for?\"\n _That's a really good question. Well, I guess based on my actions I'm willing to die for startup success._\n _But it feels like in the process I'm killing my soul._\n\n\"That's because you are\".\n\nI was literally shaking when he said that.\n\nIt was a very weird experience, but I was feeling more and more like I was in the body of someone else, living the life of someone else. It was a perfectly good life; in fact it was a great life for someone who wanted to build a tech startup. But for me, it was more like someone foreign had moved into my childhood home and then moved all of their shit in, and I had just came home and realized _who is this person and what the hell is all their shit doing here._\n\nIt was that second that I realized _I was very much not where I should be._\n\n_This is not good. This is really not good._\n\nSo right then and there, in the middle of that conversation, mostly out of fear that the trajectory I was on would actually kill me, I booked a one way ticket _home_ for following afternoon, my real home in New Jersey. Then I texted my YC partner asking to chat in the morning.\n\n_Hey Dave, can you chat? It's time sensitive._\n\nThe morning came, and the conversation went something like this:\n\n\"Hey Alex, what's up?\"\n _Hey Dave, yeah this is tough news but I realized I shouldn't do YC right now. I need to be able to give it 110% and I can't do that right now._\n\"Woah. Okay, you know yourself best. If you can't do it, you can't do it.\"\n _Yeah, I was looking forward to working with you. Sorry man._\n\"Out of curiosity why didn't you know this earlier?\"\n _I thought I'd be able to push through the stuff I was dealing with. I can't. I think it's literally killing me._\n\"Alright man, thanks for telling me.\"\n\nThis was my body's way of forcing me to slow down; it made me stop entirely. Once I had stopped, I came back to my home and found a stranger living there. That freaked me out enough to start doing the hard part; evicting them and moving all of their shit out as soon as I could. I wanted to waste no time with the shit-moving process, and for me there was a lot of shit to move.\n\n_What uncomfortable conversations have you been avoiding? What you resist will persist._\n\nOver the past year, I've had more of these uncomfortable conversations than I can count. Not that you need any advice on having difficult conversations, but these are the refreshers I wish I had.\n\n_Handle them with care, but be direct, firm, and act swiftly._\n_You cannot let fear of these conversations stop you from moving forward._\n_The longer you delay them, the more they fester, the more they grow. The hardest part of clearing the space you need is sending the initial message — this is what sets the tone._\n\nAn exercise that worked for me is first writing them a letter, either in my Apple notes or with pen and paper and then following the simple flow chart below depending on the situation.\n\n\n_Dear person I've been avoiding, I need to tell you [thing you need to express]._\n _Do you need a response from them?_\n _No._\n _Great, text or send them an adapted version of the letter and tell them that you don't expect a response. Let any emotions come up and move on. You are clearing space for your true self._\n _Yes._\n _Can you talk to them in person or call them in the next 3 days?_\n _Yes._\n _Schedule time to chat with them asap._\n _Hey, can we chat? It's time-sensitive._\n _On the call_\n _Hey, thanks for agreeing to talk. I don't want to waste your time, so I'll just tell you directly [thing you need to express]. As part of that, I need [thing you need from them] from you. I would really appreciate if you can do that and respect that._\n _No._\n _Hey, I would have loved to do this in person, but I need to tell you [thing you need to express]. We should talk about it. I'm free to call or meet if you'd prefer._\n\n\nAgain, this book is not about giving you any answers, but reminding you of what you already know. _You know yourself best._\n\nThis is your second invitation — find a piece of paper or pull out your notes app and write down a list of conversations or people you've been avoiding.\n\nChoose someone you've been avoiding the most and _ask yourself what needs to be expressed that hasn't been. What needs to be said? Ask yourself how you should handle it. Type or write whatever comes out first, without thinking. It is instinctive. Your gut will know best._\n\nWrite at least one name down, then continue reading.\n\n_For certain conversations, like break ups or firing a team member, be careful about looking for permission or the opinion of the person you are talking to. These situations call for you to be firm in your decisions. After you ask yourself, listen to your gut, and decide, remember you are informing them the decision is made, not asking for their opinion._\n\nIn almost every case after I had a difficult conversation, the person respected me more for it. It takes awareness to know yourself and it takes guts to have the conviction to act on it. In fact, I caught up with my YC partner a few months later. We talked about my health issues and potential career pivot (at that time, I thought it would be music). Here's what he had to say:\n\n _Hey Alex, I'm really glad your health scare turned out ok._\n _You know my advice: do what interests you and what your gut says. The nice thing about \"career decisions\" is that you can change them anytime._\n _Would like to hear some of your music someday_\n\nNot all of my difficult conversations had this resolution. That's okay. If the person is meant to be part of your life, then they will be. And if not, let them go. You are resetting space that is needed to be yourself. You are evicting the stranger in your home, and moving their things out. You may slow down, or stop altogether in order to speed back up again _in the right direction_. As my roommate and I always say, _you have to clean up to make a mess._\n\nSo, where were we? Ah yes, I had just quit YC and was on a 747 heading back to the east coast.\n","home-is-where-the-heart-is":"“What makes a place a home?”\n\nThis was a question I only stopped to consider once I was back in my childhood home but still felt like someone foreign was in my body.\n\n“Shaq I had no idea. Props to you for listening to yourself on YC. That’s a hard decision, it must have been a big relief.”\n\n*Unfortunately not yet, the train I was on was moving very fast in the wrong direction, and an object in motion stays in motion.* \n\nLeaving was just the start. I technically still had a company going, customers, investors, and prospective candidates I was going to hire waiting on my response to their emails. \n\n_So I was home, but not really._\n\nTo no surprise, my health was not improving. Two or three times I almost had another panic attack or episode. I literally didn’t know how I should spend my time away from work. Work was my life. Everything became a stimulus for my body to release cortisol. \n\nQuick practical biology lesson — your nervous system has two states. The sympathic state turns on your fight or flight, and your parasympathetic turns it off. \n\nYou need both, but your brain tells your nervous system when there is a threat and then that cues it to respond accordingly. The way this is supposed to work is that you see a Saber Tooth Tiger, your flight or fight gets triggered, and you get a release of cortisol that let’s you act accordingly.\n\nThe problem is in modern day work, every slack message, twitter notification, email, etc. can trigger this state, and no organism can live in chronic stress.\n\nI talked to lots of people about this, hired a therapist, read countless books — including the Bible, Quran, teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Power of Now, tried EMDR on myself, tried transcendental meditation, did Jungian dream analysis. \n\nNone of that was the silver bullet I was looking for. One thing did stick out to me after reading Carl Jung’s Red Book:\n\n*If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing.\nThe image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its images possesses only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images. He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothing. But hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.*\n\n*“God is where you are not”.*\n\n*Meaning — if you are focused too internally (on Being, meditation, silence, etc) then you will find God externally (interacting w the world, doing, achievement).*\n\n*Then when your focus becomes too external, you will find God is internal*\n\n*That is the dance basically. Internal to external back to internal back to external. Yin and Yang*\n\nEventually, I had a thought, if I couldn’t trust the external world to solve this problem for me, maybe the answers were literally inside of me.\n\nSo I just started writing stream of consciousness on an 8x11 piece of printer paper. \n\n*I got many answers.* \n\n**You can’t know yourself if your attention is always external**\n\nLife is a single player game. Most of the time when we don’t know what to do, we frantically look for the answers externally, and immediately. We distract ourselves with work, friends, family.\n\nWrong.\n\nTake out a blank page and give yourself space to focus internally.\n\nYou almost always get the most important answers from yourself.\n\n**the answers are always simple, and they come in the silence.** \n\nyou are never presented the whole path, you are just presented the next step; occum’s razor. answers come when you get really quiet\n\nSomething I became acutely aware of during my time in Silicon Valley — most startups die by suicide; there are many very smart people in startups that think too much, and as a result, produce complicated systems that may prove their own intellect, at the expense of the companies success.\n\n\"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”.\n\nElon Musk engineering principles\n\nThe greatest secret is that the answers you seek are actually very simple. \n\nSome examples of this thinking:\n\n*if I just add one more feature, my app will blow up.* \n\nReality: *one simple core loop or feature that just works is what actually drives usage*\n\n*The reason I can’t raise money is that my idea is not presented in a way that sounds smart enough*\n\n*Reality: simple, direct language is what works (Mom test, YC advice)*\n\n*We need to hire an executive with tons of experience to run our sales/marketing*\n\n*Reality: you cannot outsource finding product-market fit; talk to your customers and write code for what they want*\n\nThe secret is I learned this by watching one of my dumber friends get to $1m ARR in 3 months while most founders with PhD’s didn’t ever get around to generating any revenue. \n\nThis also applies to your life. \n\nThe answers are simple — just typically uncertain and fear-inducing.","mushrooms-in-vermont":"","faith-in-costa-rica":"Chapter content coming soon...","all-you-need-is-love":"Chapter content coming soon...","new-deals":"Chapter content coming soon...","leaving-silicon-valley":"Chapter content coming soon...","you-are-a-program":"Chapter content coming soon...","you-are-the-programmer":"Chapter content coming soon...","the-anthropology-of-you":"Chapter content coming soon...","authenticity-is-the-only-moat":"_hello_","choosing-your-thing":"Chapter content coming soon...","dont-try":"Chapter content coming soon...","to-play-is-to-win":"Chapter content coming soon...","your-lifes-work":"Chapter content coming soon...","a-strong-why-can-bear-any-how":"Chapter content coming soon...","ai-and-the-meaning-crisis":"Chapter content coming soon...","directing-and-starring-in-your-life":"Chapter content coming soon...","cosmic-jokes":"Chapter content coming soon...","there-and-back-again":"Chapter content coming soon..."}