Hi Everyone, I hope you are enjoying the weekend! 😊 Just curious... What books changed your life, or at least made a big impact on you? Please share here so that we can build up our "to read one day" lists! 😁💪👍📖 Cheers! 🥂

We have had so many thoughtful contributions this week and I wanted to highlight them here in case they were missed!! Please take a look! :) I so appreciate the community that we have here--you guys aer all making this space what it is! :) Thankful for you. :) @Tyler Scott's post about books that Changed Your Life (would love to hear more!) : books-that-changed-your-life post about our approach to life:thoughtful-tuesday-your-approach-to-life @Christa Lovas post about overthinking/feeling stuck:/its-a-response-not-a-label post about low energy and motivation: youre-not-unmotivated-youre-depleted @Sofia Martinez post about habits and stress: why-old-habits-come-back-when-youre-stressed My own : Dreaming big and going all in: /dream-big Alter Ego: alter-egos-whats-yours Bucket List: bucket-list-share-your-dreams Letters of Hope: letters-of-hope-legacy-challenge-cross-community-challenge (JOIN on the 15th of every month and write letters of hope/join an ongoing call)

This post was inspired by @Georgiana D 's post here. Go check that out if you haven’t already! Really cool reading through y’alls reflections. Soooooooooo sorry for the length lol, but I wanted to synthesize all the thoughts and this community is a great place to do that 😀 Last year in 2025, I felt like I made some forward momentum. But it was REALLY tough to go back and reflect on the specifics because I wasn't tracking anything. So this year I decided to write more things down. The concept is simple. I started a google doc listing the days in January. Each day, I would add bullet points under that day. I was inspired by my family, podcasts, growing my business, etc. Every time I had a thought that felt relevant to my personal growth, I wrote it down…the good, the bad and the ugly. It wasn’t really journaling or a gratitude thing. I never forced myself to ‘make an entry’ for the day (some of the days were blank). It was just when I felt like ‘this thought COULD be helpful later’. Now that I got the explainer out of the way, here are my top 5 takeaways (some are quite personal 🫣) 1. The Jump I am going to quit my 9-5 job this year. Looking back at the last 15+ years of having a job, it’s disappointing to see how comfortable I got with trying to level up my life. Sure, I climbed the corporate ladder, that’s the path that was instilled in me since I was young. Do well in school, go to college, get a good job and keep getting promoted. I’ve done that, but I am on a real mission to find my true potential, as many of you are too. So over the last couple months, I’ve been trying to reverse engineer what would be required financially to make this jump happen. Factoring in the requirements to continue supporting my wife and kids, mortgage, etc. One day I mapped it all out and shared it with my wife as a projection to leave the job by the end of March. And while she has been super supportive, I could sense that she had the same ‘scared of risky thing’ mindset I’ve been working on overcoming myself for years. It was at that moment I was like ohhhh while my mindset has been getting more comfortable to adding positive risk, my wife hadn’t started her journey for that yet. So the plan is to continue pulling that thread

The OODA Loop I first heard about this acronym when taking a self defense class and it's something that's stuck with me--I may not always remember the acronym, but I do remember it in practice. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. That's it. It has some drawbacks but it's used in business, military, sports, self defense and other areas of decision making. OODA describes a cylcle where we observe what’s happening, orient by filtering it through experience and context, decide on a response, and act (then the loop repeats). Most missteps happen in the Orient phase. We have the tendency to rationalize red flags, freeze under social pressure, or default to familiar scripts. Type 1 thinking. Under stress, the brain narrows attention, distorts time, and favors habit over reason. If our orientation is off, every decision downstream is flawed and in some situations this can lead to not so great outcomes. In typical decision-making, improving OODA means challenging assumptions, noticing emotional reactions, and updating mental models instead of defending them. Better choices come from clearer perception. In high-stress contexts (self-defense, emergencies),threats exploit hesitation and confusion. Early recognition and decisive action (even something as simple as creating distance or leaving) can interrupt another person’s OODA loop and collapse their plan before it turns physical. When we encounter someone acting/planning to act with bad intent, they've already moved through parts of their OODA cycle and they are in the preaction phase. Our job is to be aware of potentials and interrupt this process. (vigilance/awareness is different than hypervigilance though--more on this below). OODA isn’t about being fearless or fast. It’s about being harder to manipulate, surprise, or trap psychologically. Whoever adapts first has better control of a moment. *******(A quick note: observation/orientation is NOT the same as hypervigilance)******** Awareness and hypervigilance can look similar as they both involve noticing what’s happening around us. Psychologically, though, they come from very different places and lead to very different outcomes. This is important because how we end up acting as a result matters.

Caught myself thinking about all the things that "I have" to do today. The reality is that, I don't "have to do anything". I "get to" or "I choose to" and in some cases, I even "want to". @Joshua Haag and I must have been on some kind of similar wavelength because after thinking about this and how I could incorporate it in a post, I saw his own IG post regarding 'get to' language. Notice the difference between saying “I have to do this” and “I get to do this” or “I choose to do this.” Same action, totally different internal experience. And your brain absolutely notices! What’s actually going on psychologically? “I have to” frames an action as a demand or threat. Your brain tends to interpret this as a loss of control. That can activate stress responses, especially in the amygdala, the part of the brain that scans for danger and pressure. When that happens, motivation drops and resistance increases, even if the task itself is small. ******“I get to” or “I choose to” shifts the frame to agency. Yay FREEDOM!! This engages parts of the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision-making, meaning, and long-term thinking. Instead of feeling coerced, your brain feels like it is participating. That sense of choice boosts intrinsic motivation and reduces stress.***** Choice language matters beeecause: 1)It restores a sense of autonomy, which humans are wired to crave 2) It reduces threat perception and stress hormones 3)It increases follow-through because the action feels self-directed. 4) also...It builds identity. You are someone who chooses, not someone who is pushed or coerced. *This is not about toxic positivity or pretending everything is amazing. Forget that noise. Sometimes things are annoying, boring, or genuinely hard. The shift is about acknowledging reality while also reclaiming agency. You can still dislike something and choose it at the same time! :) (the video talks about the paradox of choice---talks about how choice has made us more paralyzed as opposed to more free...I may add this video to a different topic later on but I liked that it touched on freedom and in this way it is relates to today's topic).