The Day After The Mountain From the Moonshots newsletter In a previous edition of Moonshots, I talked about the idea of Misogi. The concept is simple. Once a year, you should attempt something so difficult that there’s a 50% chance you fail. It's not a comfortable goal. It's not something you know you can complete. Something that forces you to confront the edge of who you think you are. Run the ultra. Climb the mountain. Launch the thing you’ve been avoiding. The purpose isn’t achievement. It’s confrontation. You confront your limits. You confront your excuses. You confront the quiet voice that says you can’t. And if you push through it, something strange happens. For a moment… you become someone else. But here’s the part people rarely talk about. The Misogi isn’t the hard part. The day after is. The Post-Challenge Void You imagine the finish line will feel different. Clarity. Confidence. A permanent sense of accomplishment. Instead, life resumes. The emails are still there. Your routine returns. The world moves on. And inside, a strange thought appears: Now what? Most people treat a Misogi like an event They celebrate it. Post about it. Tell the story. Then slowly… They drift back into the same patterns that existed before. This means the challenge becomes nothing more than a good memory. But that was never the point. My Version of a Misogi Recently, mine was HYROX. HYROX is an indoor fitness race where competitors alternate between 1 km runs and functional workout stations like sled pushes, rowing, lunges, and wall balls. I entered the doubles race with a good friend of mine. We had a target time to beat: 1 hour and 15 minutes. For six months, we trained for it. Early mornings. Hard sessions. Days where motivation was nowhere to be found. Race day came. Long story short — we beat our time. I was genuinely happy about it. But not long after finishing, a familiar thought crept in: What’s next? Should we sign up for another race? Train for something harder? But after sitting with it, I realized something important.

Life is a fight, so fight for your life Life, my friends, is a fight.The moment you are born, you make your entrance into the arena. The lights come on, the crowd begins to murmur, and before you even throw a punch, people are already watching some to cheer you, some to boo you and some to judge you without ever knowing your story. The ring is your world. Its ropes are the boundaries of your circumstances. Inside those ropes, it’s just you and the challenges of life. No excuses, no shortcuts, just heart, courage, and will. The referee is life’s rules. The judges are the world, scoring you whether you like it or not. And the fans, they are the people who believe in you. The boos? Those are your doubters. But here’s the truth: neither cheers nor boos will win the fight for you. Only you can. Every day you’ll throw jabs, small efforts, daily habits, and tiny victories. They don’t look powerful, but they set up everything else. Then comes the right cross that bold decision, that step of courage, that one moment that can change everything. The hooks are your creativity, attacking life from different angles, while the uppercut is your comeback the shot you throw when you’re cornered, proving you can rise when life tries to bury you. Not every punch will land. You’ll have missed swings opportunities lost, mistakes made, doors closed. But those misses teach you more than your clean shots ever could. That’s why you learn to bob and weave, to adapt, to move, to avoid the blows you don’t need to take. Balance your offense and defense. Chase your dreams, but protect your peace. Don’t forget the real fight isn’t won under the lights. It’s won in the dark. It’s won in the lonely mornings of road work, in the sweat of training, in the lessons of sparring. It’s shaped by your coach, the mentors who speak wisdom into you and pushed forward by the promoters of life, those who open doors, even if for their own reasons. Life demands timing knowing when to act when to wait. It demands strategy, not just strength. It demands distance knowing when to draw close and when to step back. It even demands feints the art of thinking smarter, not just fighting harder.

Powerful Native American Prayer No matter how cheery of a person you may be, it’s not always easy to keep your spirits up 100% of the time... we all have “one of those days.” This is where a mindfulness prayer can really come in handy. This short Native American prayer is a reminder of the beauty and wonders of the world. Its few short lines speak to our most basic, human concerns. It manifests joy, love, and peace. and most importantly, it reminds us to express thanks and gratitude. After all, no matter our circumstances, there is always something to be grateful for. Take a deep breath and let your mind pore over the ancient words below: Dear Great Spirit, You are inside of me, within my very breath, within each bird, each mighty mountain. Your sweet touch reaches everything, and I am well protected. Thank you for this beautiful day before me. May joy, love, peace, and compassion be part of my life and all those around me on this day. I am healing, and I am healed. Sometimes, when the world outside feels heavy, all we need to do is look within ourselves for that soul spark of joy and beauty!

https://youtube.com/shorts/XHM6GMtKEeo?si=d86FXUC-5DeFJrOt

Something interesting happens when you start paying attention to how people explain their lives. You begin hearing the same sentence everywhere. I have heard it a thousand times.... Different people. Different situations. Different problems. But the same conclusion. 😪“I can’t.” I can’t stop. I can’t change this pattern. I can’t leave this relationship. I can’t control this habit. I can’t help the way I am. And after a while it starts sounding less like an observation… and more like a belief. Because if you slow down and really look at what’s happening, something slightly uncomfortable begins to appear. 🤔Most of the time the thing that supposedly has power over someone’s life… doesn’t actually have power at all. It’s just an assumption. And assumptions have a strange quality. Once they settle into the mind, they start behaving like reality. Not because they are necessarily true. But because nobody questions them anymore. ➡️Take something simple.... A person says they can’t stop drinking. Yet the bottle is sitting quietly in the fridge. For the drink to happen, a whole chain of things must occur. 🚶‍♂️ They walk into the kitchen. 🥶 They open the fridge. 🍾 They take out the bottle. 🥃 They pour the drink. 🥤 They lift the glass. At every step something small is happening. A decision....Even when you hesitate, you are deciding..... But the story running in the background says something very different. “The bottle has power over me.” But the bottle has no power. It’s glass and liquid sitting on a shelf. What actually has power is the belief. 🤔And once that belief settles in, it begins quietly organizing how a person sees themselves. You start hearing the same phrases everywhere. ⏳ Change takes years. 🧠 Patterns run deep. 🩹 Trauma permanently shapes who we become. 🔒 Addiction never really leaves. Now sometimes there is truth inside these statements. 💫Human experience is complex. But something subtle also happens when these ideas repeat long enough.