A Deliberate Life Manifesto

I was 30 years old, stopped on a bike ride for water, and I realized I was so tired of being me. My career was fine. The problem was that I felt like I was watching my life through a window. I had these powerful brakes on all the time that no amount of vodka could turn off. I felt deeply inadequate, an outsider pretending to know how to be with other people.

Right there feeling defeated, I made a decision. I was going to use the one tool I had, my mind, the thing I normally only used for work, to figure a way out of this painful mess. Whatever it took.

This is where most stories about transformation gloss over the actual work. They skip to the results. Here's what it actually looked like: two years of intense daily work and weekly coaching sessions. One hour of meditation per day was often painful. Dense reading I could barely get through. Journaling that was excruciatingly difficult because I was seeing all the ways my upbringing was messing up my life and how many years of joy I'd lost. I cried while journaling. There was one meditation session where I just wept.

I'm telling you this because living deliberately isn't some elegant practice of morning routines and strategic choices. It's about being willing to look at the parts of yourself you've been avoiding and doing something about them. It's about recognizing that the life you're living might not be the one you actually want, and having the courage to rebuild it.

During those two years, everything changed. Relocating to be closer to real friends. Intense conversations with my parents and my best friend that fundamentally altered those relationships. Cutting ties with other friends. Changing my relationship with work, moving from fear and scarcity to possibilities. Getting in shape. But more than any of that, I became someone who could actually be present in his own life.

I learned that you can have anything you want, but you can't have everything. Not all at once. And strategic life decisions are more about recognizing what not to pursue. This is harder than it sounds because we live in a world that tells us we should want it all. Deliberate living requires making thoughtful choices and trade-offs about what matters and letting the rest go.

I also experienced the power of compounding. The daily incremental gains felt trivial in the short term. But looking back after two years, those daily decisions to show up, to journal, to sit with discomfort accumulated into a completely different me and life. This is why habits and systems are critical to support consistency when motivation fails you.

Another key insight is that while prioritizing the long term is wise, tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Sometimes you need to eat dessert first. I'm still learning this balance. My instinct is to defer, to wait, to build toward some future version of myself. Enjoying what you have while working toward what you want is a great approach when you can make it happen, but it's an active practice, not a destination.

Starting with a vision of the end in mind was key for me, even if it's blurry. And I've had multiple cycles of envisioning and achieving it since. Having one gives direction and becomes a north star. The vision becomes clearer as you move toward it. Our minds are incredible at finding a way and our subconscious plays a big part here. Moving, experimenting and learning is key over overthinking and analysis paralysis. With the vision running in the background, suddenly your mind starts recognizing opportunities you would have missed before.

I still don't know how much I healed that lonely, scared 30-year-old versus just built someone stronger around him. Probably an imperfect mix of both. And that's okay. Transformation isn't about becoming someone completely different. It's about becoming more fully yourself. The person you would be without all the conditioning, fear, and limiting beliefs you've accumulated.

I'm now 50-something, financially secure, living in Portugal, running businesses remotely, advising people and companies I respect. By conventional measures, I'm successful... and I'm still figuring the latest versions of this out. I tasted blissful peace in my process however went on to build my identity around learning, moving fast, achieving, solving problems. Now I'm trying to figure out how to slow down without losing momentum. My most fulfilling moments came from surrendering control, but my instinct is still to grip the wheel harder.

The work doesn't end. The goal isn't to arrive at some perfect state of deliberate living. The goal is to keep aligning your actions with your values, to keep questioning whether the life you're living is the one you actually want. It's to fully reject deferred living: the idea that someday, when you've achieved enough, saved enough, accomplished enough, then you'll start really living.

Seth Godin said, "Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from." That's the north star. But getting there isn't smooth. It's messy. It involves difficult conversations and cutting ties and admitting that being robbed at gunpoint twice and carjacked may have influenced your need for control in ways you're still unpacking decades later. It means recognizing that being a lonely teenager who felt like an outsider created drives that may never fully go away, but can get redirected.

Don't wait. Start.

Living deliberately means understanding who you are. Your personality, values, strengths, weaknesses. And using that knowledge to navigate a world of endless possibilities to design what you really want. It means embracing change when it's necessary for growth. It means challenging the limiting beliefs and societal expectations that keep you trapped in someone else's template. It means continuous learning and being willing to sit with uncertainty.

It's a journey of aligning your everyday existence with your deepest values, not chasing occasional high points or waiting for some future version of yourself to emerge. It's about designing a life that's vibrant and thriving and fully yours: unencumbered by limiting beliefs, fully aligned with your personal vision.

Start now. Not someday. Now. Take one action today that moves you closer to the life you actually want. Journal about what's not working. Have that difficult conversation. Hire a coach. Cut out what's draining you. Add what energizes you. It doesn't have to be dramatic. It just has to be deliberate.

The best version of your life is one fully aligned with your values and beliefs. But you have to be willing to do the work to get there. And you have to start before you're ready.