***Newborn brain scheduled today for 8 PM 🙂 ***

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes. So applicable to all challenging endeavors in life. And especially helpful in the early mornings and late nights since welcoming our son into the world this week. It’s no secret to any new parent that this s*** will be hard. Yet I approach this stretch of my life understanding how quickly the things you wanted become the things that stretch you. How easy it is to pray for a blessing, then feel frustrated when the responsibility shows up attached. I control my mindset during this period, not the other way around - and it will be easy for that internal dialogue to quickly change.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? The work, the fatigue, the uncertainty - none of it is punishment. It’s the consequence of getting what we asked for.

So as you and I trudge through the hard parts of new parenthood, career shifts, and personal growth, try to remind ourselves this is the privilege. This is the proof. This is the life we created on purpose.

And moving forward, I want to hold onto that perspective, especially when it’s inconvenient. Because wanting is easy. Showing up for the reality of the thing you wanted is where the meaning lives.

Every January in the Superset, I like to revisit a concept from Jesse Itzler that has quietly become one of my favorite frameworks for the new year: the Misogi.

If you haven’t heard Itzler describe it, here’s the gist in his own words: “Once a year, do something so hard that you don’t know if you can finish, or that when you look back, can be a singular defining point of your year.”

His criteria are simple: pick something with a 50% chance of completion, that pushes you way outside your comfort zone, and that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. And importantly, it shouldn’t require you to uproot your entire life. It should fit within your life, but stretch the edges of what you believe is possible.

Itzler has done a bunch of these. One year he ran 100 miles around a high school track - no big production, no optimal conditions, just loops around a track until he either finished or didn’t. Another year he did 100 pull-ups every day for 30 days. He’s done extreme cold plunges, endurance efforts, and memorable “impossible-by-design” physical tests. None of these were guaranteed. That uncertainty is the point.

What makes the Misogi so powerful is that it forces a real confrontation with your identity. You don’t go into it as the person who can already do the thing. You go in as someone who might fail. And by engaging with that coin-flip probability - by being willing to put yourself at the edge - you learn something you simply can’t get from normal goals or resolutions.

Itzler calls that the “year-defining moment.” One thing so difficult and so untraditional by your own normal metrics that it creates a memory, reshapes your confidence, and recalibrates what counts as “hard” for everything else in your life.

The magic happens when you do this year after year. One Misogi is a cool story. Five or ten of them becomes an identity. You start collecting experiences that become proof points: I do hard things. I take big swings. That translates into careers, relationships, parenting, fitness, creativity - because once you’ve pushed your limit on purpose, regular difficulty feels manageable.

If you’ve been reading The Superset, you’ll also know that your Misogi does not have to be physical, but it should feel like a 50/50 proposition. It should require courage, not just effort. It should be something that if someone asked you what you accomplished in 2026, five years down the road, that you would immediately refer to.

So for 2026, Pick your Misogi. Define that one big thing that, if you complete it, you’ll carry forever. If you fail, even better - you’ll learn exactly where your edge is.

Take 5 minutes this week and ask yourself what is one challenge you could take on this year that you would be proud of telling the story of for years to come.

There’s a universal truth about the gym: everyone in there was once intimidated by it. Nobody walks in knowing what to do. We all learn by showing up, screwing up, and slowly getting better. If you’re new, the goal isn’t to be perfect, just to start. If you’ve been in the game for a while, the goal is to refine the details that make training more effective.

As we collectively step into the gym this year to tackle our 2026 ambitions, here are seven weightlifting tips I wish I knew earlier - simple, actionable, and useful whether you’re on day one or year ten.

Most of the progress you make in the gym comes from the lowering part of the movement, not from slinging the weight up. If you drop into the bottom of a squat or let the dumbbells crash down on bench, you’re missing the good stuff.

Try this:
Lower the weight for 2–3 seconds on every rep.
This forces control, creates tension, and builds more muscle. You’ll likely need to use lighter weight, and that’s the point. Ego-lifting looks impressive, but controlled eccentrics produce results you can actually see.

The biggest shift in my own training came from improving mind-muscle connection. Before your working sets, use your warm-up sets to physically touch the muscle you’re trying to train - hand on chest during flyes, fingers on lats during rows, etc.

It sounds odd, but your brain literally learns what to recruit. It keeps surrounding muscles from hijacking the movement and helps you feel the exercise where you’re supposed to feel it.

Back exercises get messy fast because most people "curl the weight" with their arms rather than pulling with their back.

Here are two easy cues:

Shifting attention to the elbow changes the whole movement. You’ll feel your lats light up instead of your forearms doing all the work.

If your goal is round, defined shoulders, the lateral raise is king. You don’t need a million variations - just learn to do this one well.

Technical cues that matter:
• Slight bend in the elbow
• Raise the arm out to the side (not forward)
• Imagine your pinky tilting up at the top

Dumbbells or cables both work. Control the rep, keep it strict, and don’t chase heavy weight here. This is a finesse movement.

Most of us are flat-bench dominant, but the upper chest is what gives that full, athletic look. For non-bodybuilders, it’s almost always the most underdeveloped area.

Simple fix: bias pressing toward incline. That could mean:
• Incline dumbbell press
• Incline machine press
• Low-to-high cable fly variations

You don’t have to abandon flat bench, just tilt more of your chest volume upward. I have been doing almost exclusively incline for 6+ months now.

If you’re busy (like the rest of us), supersets are the cheat code: do two exercises back-to-back with little to no rest between.

Examples:
• Bicep curls → tricep pushdowns
• Bench press → push-ups
• Rows → rear-delt flyes

Supersets keep intensity high, increase total training volume, and compress your workout. Great for lunch breaks, travel gyms, or days you only have 30 minutes.

A huge part of gym success is simply not wasting time. Scrolling your phone for five minutes between sets won’t make you stronger.

Use this rule of thumb:
• Heavy compound sets: ≤ 2 minutes rest
• All other sets: 45–60 seconds rest

Efficiency matters. Get in, work with intention, get out. You’ll feel way better about your training—and your results will show it.

If you’re new, remember: nobody in the gym is watching you as closely as you think. If you’re experienced, remember that small cues separate “working out” from actually training.

Show up, apply the basics, and you’ll be shocked how far it takes you.

Most of us wake up already behind. Emails buzzing, calendars full, and a mind sprinting before our feet hit the floor. The difference between a frantic day and a productive one usually isn’t willpower or caffeine… it’s mindset.

That’s why I keep coming back to The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. It’s not a book you read once and shelve - it’s a tool you use. A daily reader with 366 short meditations pulled from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and other Stoic thinkers, paired with modern commentary that makes them usable in real life. One page per day. No major request for a large chunk of your time. Just a quick hitting insight to prime your mind.

I keep my copy on my desk and read it almost every morning. Not because it’s some profound ritual, but because I’ve found that it shifts my center of gravity before the rest of the work day tries to pull me off balance. It helps me start with the right mindset, which in turn helps me manage my emotions and optimize my output, especially on days where stress, schedule, or anxiety want to steer.

This excerpt from above is today’s entry and is a great sales pitch for the book. “This morning, remind yourself what is in your control and what is not in your control.” For me, that simple reminder can be a nice reframing to take the day as it comes, and to understand that many things will happen that I have no control of, and those are the things I cannot afford to waste energy on.

That’s the book in a nutshell: clear wisdom, simple language, immediate application.

If you’re looking for a way to start your morning with intention, without needing an hour-long routine, The Daily Stoic is an easy win. One page, one idea, and you’ll carry it throughout the day.