This Week
- My first time ever going surfing!
- Some takeaways from the Give It All speeches this week.
- Grieving an old dream that was never realized.
August 2026
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 8/1 |
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | 9/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Where In The World Was I?
- Bali, Indonesia
Metrics From The Week
Snaps From The Week
Been making my own smoothies now!
Biz
Had my second 1-1 with my biz coach, congratulating me on validating this new offer and mapping out the next stage: adding some light structure to content strategy (top of funnel reels, ads) for Instagram and YouTube, and also creating a workshop I can start testing out. Lot of ideas and help and feeling much more clear on what’s next!
I felt a little hesitant towards the idea of a webinar or workshop, but realized this was one of those decisions I speak about… where resistance is showing you the way. I had some loose belief/excuses like oh I don’t want to push people or sell to them, but I can run a webinar, give value, and still not sell but rather invite people to go deeper if they choose. It’s crazy how these little things hold use back.
Other than that, it was a big week of calls this week, managed to just stay afloat with content/reels/stories, no YouTube this week.
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
Surfing
A friend finally pressured me into going lol 😂
One of the things stopping me was trying to find a good surf place, not sure which instructor/company to use, where to go, when to go… too many decisions. But realized I was trying to over-optimize and could probably just get at least 80% there in 15 minutes. So went on to GetYouGuide, search surf lesson, picked the “top recommended,” spend 5 minutes looking at the surf forecast to make sure it wasn’t awful, then just booked it.
I arrived to the place and was chatting with my instructor, we had a couple back and forth phrases in Indonesian, the ones that I do know. And then he went “you speak bahasa ya it’s very good” and I was like “ahhh sedikit sedikit” (“a little bit”)
Then he calls over this other instructor guy and I hear him say something like “bisa berbahasa Indonesia” (“he can speak Indonesian”)
And so my instructor starts explaining how to lie down on the board, stand up, get into the right position… all in full Indonesian 😅😂
I’m thinking “bro I know like 5 phrases what are we doin right now ahahahaha”
So I ask him to speak English and I realized he knows like very little English. So he would speak in Indonesian and then say a word in English “foot… parallel ya”
I was a bit over my head but I figured it out hahaha. It wasn’t that complicated. But it just felt a little like jumping straight into the deep end and I’ve never surfed before.
We paddled out and it ended up going a lot better than I was expecting. The first wave I tried to stand up and was a little forward heavy that I just dove face first into the water.
The next one I think I lost my balance and fell off the side.
It was very humbling 😂
But then I started to get it, was able to stand up.
And over like an hour or so was able to catch maybe 6 waves or something like that. It was crazy. Just wave after wave I was able to stand up and ride it.
My instructor was like “on fire!”
But the more I thought about it… the more I started to realize something.
See there were a lot of other people out there, some mix of instructors+students and also some people on their own.
And I kept thinking, man I just keep surfing these waves it’s awesome.
Then I’d look around and see other people just kind of paddling around, waiting, waiting…
I don’t know how true it was but it felt as though I kept riding these waves and everyone else was just waiting.
And then I’d finish a wave and paddle back out, and my instructor would give me a high five and then start paddling out in some random direction. At one point there was kind of this loose group of people in a line, and my instructor is paddling out like 30 feet deeper into the ocean I’m like “bro where are we going right now 😂”
But then he’d go “turn around”
…
“okay this one this one… paddle… stand up!!”
And I’d paddle, he’d push me, and then I’d stand up and ride it.
I just kept thinking… I think about 90% of surfing is being in the right place at the right time…
And my instructor seemingly just knew where to be and when a good wave was coming.
The rest was me just paddling a bit, standing up, and keeping my balance.
And that just kind of hit me… there are so many implications to that idea…
202608221155 Thoughts from going surfing for the first time
#journal
Just went surfing for the first time with spicy surf at canggu beach
Went with Agus, knew very little English lol, was speaking bahasa Indonesia to me mostly
Some thoughts:
I surfed like 6 or 8 times? Something crazy over the about and hour out there
it's crazy how important wave selection is... Being in the right place at the right time. Agus kept paddling over to different areas, then we'd wait, then he'd look at the beach and go "crazy current ya" and then we'd paddle over to another area and wait, then he'd go "this one this one paddle" and I'd catch it and like ride it all the way in
I was just thinking, watching all the other people out there trying, sitting there, and me catching all these waves, like it was all Agus and him watching the waves and knowing where to be
There was one moment where there's like a bit of a scattered group in this place and then Agus is like wayy out and I'm like bro what are we doing out here but it's like he knows...
So most of surfing is being in the right place at the right time
And it made me think of [my biz coach] and swimming in the tide of the market
And just like putting your offer out, meeting people where they are, rather than trying to force things.
That was the biggest takeaway, I was trying to apply to something for ME and my avatar but couldn't think of anything. I'm sure there something in here
Right place. Right time.
The rest is just: paddle, stand up, balance.
Give It All Event
The final Give It All for this year! (the guy who runs it is off to Europe for a couple months)
This day was crazy, I was in 5 hours of calls and then immediately went here… I was socially hanging on by a thread 😂 I’d be smiling talking to someone, conversation would end, I’d like walk to the bathroom or something and just this weight would hit me like “fuuuuuck I’m tired holy shit ahaha”
202608210712 Takeaways from Give It All last night
#takeaways
- [name] - being a fixer, expressing that emotional vulnerability in his story
- [name] - give to other people what you're lacking, [name] with the taking a Grab driver out to dinner, [name] with singing happy birthday in a tutu and people saying 5yrs later it was the best birthday (or only) wishes they ever received.
- [name] - bodybuilding, joy on the other side of suffering, "how bad do you want it?"
- [name] - "and then something fucking crazy happened", all the stories, being impressed but not emotionally connected to all the successes, the "then we scaled that to $53m/yr", and at the end watching the dirty fuel motivation, his mom died, and instead of stopping like everyone said, he kept going, scaled to $30m, and he said something like "and so I think I made the right decision" I dunno first impression hearing that was like, this is the same as Alex Hormozi, running on dirty fuel, and there _has_ to be an emotional cost to this... but it also made me think just how powerful dirty fuel is, growing up poor, having to door knock to eat, and what that actually teaches you...
- The first guy the villain story, going to jail
- [name] - his FIRE acronym - false identity, limiting beliefs, resistance, something else. He said he did 150 market research calls in 30 days, and found every single person had these. Then took 7 people to 7 figures in less than a year without touching their marketing/strategy...
- I felt super inspired by that... _that_, being able to have this term FIRE, knowing that it's present in so many people, being able to diagnose, recognize these things, AND THEN be able to rewire them and create such powerful change... That is what I want to do. I feel like I'm starting to get there with Resistance and Beliefs, but I don't have the granularity that he has, I need to learn more. And he also mentioned SDT - self dis... theory? It's like 5 things: who you think you are, who others think you are, who you think you should be, etc... Made me think of self-determination theory but I'm pretty sure it was different.
- I _feel_ that motivation right now to learn and improve my skills. I want to become better.
- [name]'s visualization/eyes closed, like a hypnotherapy what I would guess: imagine the block, shrink it and push it infinitely far away, imagine the version of you without it, feel it, expand and turn the dial up on it.
- [name] - the best plan is not asking and being overwhelmed by "what you could do" but looking at "what you _would_ do"
- The other [name]? - AI and psychology coaching, spent 30yrs in personal dev space, AI will respond in the direction the source points it, said something like putting 30 years of transformations into it, training it on that
- and related to what [name] said, to stop hallucination, put another AI watching it
- How many of us share the same human struggles... I remember realizing this last year, then [name] old guy mentioned it again. I thought I was so unique, then realized [these patterns] are very common and well documented... and I'm like oh wow, so I'm not that unique, so there are other people that have gone through the same pain, challenge, struggle as me.
Social
Will share a little exchange from this week:
Sitting in Butter Protein next to the cashier and seeing this gorgeous girl standing there waiting to pay. I was like damn, then came the “soo what if I said something?”
Then it became real, actually thinking “what could I say here”… And then it was like “eh it’s okay she’ll leave in 2 sec then I’ll never see her again, doesn’t matter.”
And then she didn’t leave… She kept waiting there (she was waiting for a smoothie for takeaway).
Felt that discomfort, maybe caught her looking over once, so I finally spoke up and said “I like your outfit” and started a little exchange. Not my best exchange, just was the typical questions but SHE asked for my name, came over, I offered the seat, we chatted a bit, content, travels. Then she went off. Fun little experience and one of those “this could’ve not happened… but it did all because I spoke up and said like 5 words.”
And ah whatever here’s another one:
Sitting on the sun beds at Nirvana, saw this beautiful girl two down from me but didn’t have any intention of saying something. Then the girl between us leaves.
I catch some quick glances and couldn’t quite figure out where she could be from. My curiosity was piqued.
I spent probably a good 10 min back and forth in my mind thinking of what to say, finally looked over, and in that moment got hit with the genuine curiosity and spoke up, “excuse me, what’s your ethnicity, you’re very pretty.”
Asked where she’s from, she asked where I’m from, then said she’s working and nice to meet me. Little mini rejection. Felt okay after. She was Chinese/Australian mix.
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
Thoughts From The Week
I saw some drum corps shows on my YouTube in the past week, DCI finals was early/mid-August. Ended up watching the Bluecoats 2026 show.
And had some mixed feelings towards it. It brought back all the memories from around late high school early college spending hours and hours and hours watching drum corps shows during summer. Marching Spartans in 2016.
I ended up auditioning for the Bluecoats 2017 season, but didn’t make the cut.
And so I started to feel there was something still here…
I decided to take some time and dig into this, following one of the past grieving prompt structures I did last year. And ended up crying, releasing, quite a lot.
And then rewatched the Bluecoats 2015 Kinetic Noise show (one of my favorites) and just was sobbing crying all the feels and emotions coming back.
Veryyyyyy interesting that this was all stored in my body for about 10 years…
Ended up turning this process and prompts that I’ve now done twice into a bit of a structure that I can run with clients.
202608160725 Morning journaling
#journal
August 16th, 2026
Sup. Made it to Sunday. Nice impromtu date walk with [name] last night. Got a good chunk of what I wanted to do yesterday. Ah here's a thought: [name] makes Reels so easily (and stories) and they do super well. Why don't mine do well? What if I spent more time intentionally recording and improving my Reels? Like my intentional skill acquisition notes/sprints ([[202511130918 How I'll intentionally lock in over this next van life chapter]]) I made back in Denver? Would require a more consistent routine? The closest I have right now is the Money Block from [biz coach] and that is losing its pull - need to clarify this to exact actions. Then I had this flash of [name] - who was like yeah if I just had a recording day, day for this, day for that, and I'm like oh no is this the same pattern? I'm just kinda doing work as is right now, no "themes" or constraints to my day - an idea from [name] last week. I just feel like I lost time to gym, dates, etc. (maybe those ARE my constraints...) and then I end up behind and so it doesn't stick because the work doesn't get done... Bro I wish I had myself to coach me through this, it's so much harder to do/coach yourself from the inside.
Okay I'm back on the laptop, got this bit of motivation to see if I can workshop this out here.
-> [[202608160753 Making the Money Block more concrete]]
OKAY we back. What else can we unlock here?
Taking a step back, what's the priority right here and now.
I think it's that I'm in this mindset of ideation. I was gonna go to Nirvana but I'm like I would just be interrupting the flow I'm in right now... for what reason? Socialize probably. Still want to go and rest. But I'M COOKING RIGHT NOW LET ME COOK.
Okay so mindset of ideation, improvement, unlocking bottlenecks.
I'm gonna have a 1-1 call with [biz coach] this week Tuesday, we'll figure out next steps, using content, creating a webinar, he said we're gonna focus on audience building and selling. So that'll help. But regardless, looking at my actual traffic numbers... what I'm doing isn't working.
And YouTube has gone to the dumpster. My 45 min ramble video is at 9 views, 2 I think are mine. IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH haha. I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH. haha blahhhh ahhh I hate this. Gotta find this Dan Bolton line - where I can channel messages AND it clicks with the market and algorithm.
I liked the [[202608140758 Idea mining]] from two days ago. SO MANY named terms and concepts, can share these as part of my "world building." I think the answer here is actually what I told [name], and not what I started doing: make one ramble video per week, make it just completely raw no plan. But then 2-3 other youtube videos on actual named terms and concepts. 8-10 min. Things I can point people to from Instagram. That whole "I have a video on this, want the link?" The ramble video IS the Explore stage of the Content Block, helps me take concepts and ideas and extract insights, we pass those to AI for further extraction. And the weekend feels like a good time to do this ramble video, matches the reflection day of Sunday's weekly review, Life Update. All this reflection feeds content ideas for the next week as this sort of pipeline.
OKay check in... We've got:
- New content and conversation blocks created with exact actions
- Structure idea for youtube videos - ONE ramble video every weekend no script no edits, then 2-3 videos on named concepts and terms throughout the week
The gap here is not in the ideas it's in the execution OF these ideas though... Building the routine and habits.
Okay for right now, what's Priority Lock?
- Review and reflection
- I feel the desire to ideate, write, make some notes, structures. To run my content block 30 min.
- Should I do that or do weekly review and Life Update? Ideation takes more energy, can do weekly review and LU anyways after.
- Let's try a 30 min block, see how it feels, then run the review and life update.
LET'S GOOOO
[[202608160816 Morning content block]]
202608161809 How do you know if a thought is an excuse or not
#question
Maybe related or part of [[202607310923 Everything about Beliefs]]...
But how do you actually differentiate if something is an excuse or irrational or not?
I keep realizing in my life I had believed these excuses that were just protecting me from feeling something.
One example top of mind just because [...]
And I'm like brother if I had a conversation between August 2025 me and me right now in August 2026... [...]
[...]
I'm like brother that reason is just a cloud if you tried to grab onto it...
And so it makes me wonder, how many other thoughts are just excuses, how many others are just gonna turn into nothing if I actually test them...
202608170716 Morning journaling
#journal
Wassup. Slept naked last night, second night in a row. I was like ehhh I'm good now, I won't be that horny, I can control my energy now... WRONG AHAHAHA.
Last I made a change was like 2mo ago? In Kubu Gena guesthouse I think? Swallow the ego, make the sacrifice and wear the boxers.
[...]
What else?
Excited to run my new Money Block (Content Block and Conversation Block) with more clarity. Yesterday's went really well. Yeah it extended a bit, I went over time, but it was _after_ I already recorded and posted a reel! It was a bit of [[202608160949 The Pulling The Thread Loop]] in and of itself but I felt very satisfied and accomplished being able to complete that new term.
So let's see what we can get to this morning.
What else?
[...]
Call with [biz coach] tomorrow. He said we're gonna focus on audience building and webinar. I have this resistance and aversion to running a webinar. I think it's just fear of being seen to be honest.
Oh and watching Bluecoats 2026 winning show yesterday, thinking bruh what has DCI come to it looks so [...] right now. I miss the 2014-2015 shows, the clean suits, helmets that cover the eyes, fuuuuck man I used to watch and rewatch and rewatch those DCI shows on the couch in the summer in Acton.
And actually, [name] just sent me this photo from my freshman dorm room, with the Bluecoats tshirt hanging on the wall, as my dream.
And I was just thinking back to that DailyV I made in Da Nang, sharing how one of the regrets-ish that I have was not getting in to Bluecoats 2016. There's this little piece of me every time I think of the Bluecoats, see the Bluecoats, and think back to that time, there's this piece of me that actually hurts... I had this dream, watching their shows back to back to back, practicing, auditioning... and then literally not being good enough...
I actually wish I had marched a better Drum Corps...
I feel like I need to actually emotionally grieve this as a loss... Gonna try it.
[[202608170754 Grieving the Bluecoats dream]]
Well... wasn't expecting that to take 2.5 hours but here we are... Lots of tears came up. Rewatched 2015 Bluecoats, tears flowing. Did it work? Who knows... but the body needed to release something and I let it, so at least that much...
Also now that this is the second time I've gone through this process of steps and it _again_ got me tearing up and emotional... I'm like I've got to package this up.
- [[202608170948 The Grief Session Protocol]]
- [[202608170949 The Grief Session — AI Prompt]]
What’s Next?
Another week in the most incredible place on the planet