It's easy to spend so much time staring at the cracks in the windshield that we forget to look through it at the road ahead.

America has its flaws. Every nation does. We should never stop working to make it better. But perspective matters. By sheer chance, most of us were born into a country that offers freedoms, opportunities, and possibilities that billions of people throughout history (and many still today) could only dream about.

That doesn't mean life is always easy. It doesn't mean every problem is small. It simply means gratitude and ambition can exist at the same time.

As we celebrated this weekend, I hope you took a moment to appreciate not only what still needs improving, but also the extraordinary privilege of calling this country home.

Now let’s have a week -

If you recently watched the US Open over Father’s Day weekend, then you are familiar with the winner Wyndham Clark. If you paid more attention than just the four days of golf shots, then you are also probably aware of the baggage - both mental and physical - that Wyndham ceremoniously carried into the week. Certainly some self-inflicted wounds over the last couple of years you can deep dive on if you’d like.

After watching Wyndham win, I got an ad for his mental coach Julie Elion’s new book “Mastering Your Mental Game.” (How fortuitous for her that the book launched in sequence with his second major victory).

Julie works with a number of PGA Tour players on their mental game, and while the book is packed with actionable ideas, one stood out to me for this newsletter’s purpose - writing a personal mission statement.

Julie coaches people of all walks of life, and lays the foundation for this activity by pointing out that businesses spend enormous amounts of time defining why they exist. They write mission statements to guide decisions, align teams, and keep everyone moving in the same direction. Then she asks an obvious question that most of us have never considered:

Why wouldn't you do the same for your own life?

It's easy to drift. We say yes to opportunities that don't really matter. We chase goals because they're impressive, not because they're ours. We fill our calendars before we ever decide what deserves to be on them.

A personal mission statement creates a filter. Instead of asking, Is this a good opportunity? you start asking, Does this move me toward the person I'm trying to become?

That small shift is a good barometer for all of our decision making processes.

Psychologists have long found that people are more likely to persist through setbacks when their actions are connected to a clear sense of purpose rather than short-term motivation. Motivation comes and goes. Identity is much harder to shake. A mission statement becomes a reminder of that identity. It gives you something to return to when life gets noisy.

This week, let’s steal the exercise.

Don't worry about writing something perfect. Nobody else has to read it.

Start by asking yourself three questions:

Then write 3–5 sentences that answer those questions. Keep it simple enough that you could memorize it. Read it each morning for a week. Better yet, put it somewhere you'll see it before opening your email or social media.

We spend a lot of time setting goals. We spend far less time deciding who those goals are meant to build.

That might be the more important question. And when we are faced with pressure moments in our lives, this can be something easy to lean back on and remind ourselves where our north star lies.

Most diets don't fail because they're ineffective. Most diets fail because they're exhausting and the planning overwhelms the person eventually as life gets inevitably busy.

Tracking every calorie gets old. Meal prepping the exact same lunch five days in a row gets old. Eventually life gets busy, you miss a day, and the whole system falls apart.

I love a simpler approach that gives you structure without making you feel trapped. I call it The Fours.

The idea is simple. Instead of planning every meal, plan your ingredients.

Choose four protein sources, four carbohydrate sources, and four healthy fats that you'll eat throughout the week. Those become your defaults. Every meal is simply a mix-and-match combination from those lists.

You remove hundreds of tiny food decisions while keeping enough variety that you don't get bored. Your grocery shopping gets easier. Your calories become more predictable. And if dinner plans change, you're still operating inside a framework instead of starting from scratch.

Here's the template:

My Four Proteins

My Four Carbs

My Four Fats

For example, mine might look like this:

Proteins: Chicken breast, lean ground beef, Greek yogurt, eggs

Carbs: Rice, potatoes, oats, fruit

Fats: Avocado, natural peanut butter, olive oil, mixed nuts

From there, almost every meal builds itself. Greek yogurt, oats, and berries for breakfast. Chicken, rice, and avocado for lunch. Beef, potatoes, and olive oil with vegetables for dinner.

Simple. Flexible. Repeatable. The best nutrition plan isn't the one with the most rules. It's the one you'll still be following three months from now.

I'm about halfway through Matt Haig's The Midnight Train, and these hundred odd pages have already reminded me why I keep returning to his books despite the fact that they sit well outside the genres I usually reach for.

On paper, Haig writes stories. In practice, he writes about people. He’s an amazing writer in that regard.

His novels always seem to begin with an intriguing premise, but somewhere along the way you realize the story is simply the delivery mechanism. Beneath it is something much more recognizable: regret, hope, identity, grief, second chances, or the quiet questions we all carry around but rarely stop to examine. He has a rare ability to make those ideas feel personal without ever sounding preachy.

The Midnight Train feels no different. I'm still discovering where it's headed, but I've already found myself pausing after chapters, and not because of a plot twist, but because a sentence here and there reinforce a message that is very applicable to most of our lives.

It's also been a good reminder that some of the best books you'll read aren't in your favorite section of the bookstore.

Most of us develop reading habits the same way we develop music tastes. We find something we like, then keep reaching for more of it. There's nothing wrong with that. But if every book reinforces the same patterns of thinking, we miss the chance to see the world through a different lens.

Some of the books that have stayed with me the longest were ones I almost didn't pick up because they weren't "my kind of book."

So here's my challenge this week: choose one book that feels slightly outside your comfort zone. If you read business, pick up fiction. If you live in fantasy, try memoir. If you're always reading history, grab a novel.

You may not find a new favorite genre. But you just might find a new way of looking at your own life.