Happy 2025 all.
Welcome back to another newsletter.
In the upcoming year, consider asking yourself the following question, over and over again as you elevate to each new level:
“What got me here, but won’t get me to the next place?”
It’s easy to spot negative behaviours, patterns, environments, inputs, etc.
But the magic lies in identifying the many “good” things that subtly hold you back from greatness.
Good is the enemy of great. And what got you here will not get you where you want to go.
If you want to reach an entirely new level and unprecedented growth, it will take letting go of almost all the good things that got you here to make room for greatness.
For the average person, this is quite daunting, hard and challenging. They cling to what they know and resist dropping what’s become comfortable — especially the “good”.
But when you integrate releasing into the fold alongside this principle, it can become an effortless process that occurs as life unfolds.
The old and outdated inessentials naturally fall away, while the essentials remain.
After all, the default of life is transformation and letting go.
The mind just complicates life by holding on, holding back, and resisting the flow that is the way.
So as you go throughout the year, I highly encourage you to continuously ask yourself this question & release as you reach new levels in whatever you’re focused on improving.
It’s helped me immensely and I believe it can be deeply valuable for you too.
What’s new
Content is on a bit of a hold at the moment as I focus on the coaching re-launch, coming soon. Exciting things are on the horizon. Free guides and resources are coming soon as well.
Since we last talked however, I posted the reaction to my 2024 Spotify Wrapped on the second channel, if you were curious about what was in my ears throughout the year.
Some more ideas I’ve been thinking about
Wanting to change and improve things isn’t always the positive thing that it seems. Self improvement — along with almost every other industry — thrives on this illusion: you are not enough, the thing is not enough, and reality itself, is not enough. But what if things were good enough, and all the illusions of our mind of everything that apparently “needs” to be done, “needs” to be changed, “needs” to be fixed, was all a mind-created trap to keep us stuck, not shipping, not launching, not appreciating life as it is? Many stay in an uncontrollable loop of wanting to change things, fixing things that needn’t be changed or fixed, because they haven’t dealt with the root cause and insecurity that runs the show. Nothing is enough to that mind and it’s a form of hell on earth. This isn’t to say you can’t fix, change or improve things. But rather, when that pattern runs your life, you will be a slave to it. The mind lies and says it’s trying to avoid being complacent. It’s bullshit. When you dissolve the magnetic pull from this, you will fix, change and improve what matters, while that which doesn’t matter and was a fictional reality generated by the mind will calmly and freely dissolve — the illusion subsides. This is the most effective place to operate from.
You are more ready and enough than you could possibly imagine. The unfree mind claims otherwise to keep you trapped, stuck, limited — but it’s an illusion. And as real as that illusion sometimes appears, you are free to allow it to dissolve and stop holding onto it at any given moment, for good. Because the identification with it, the holding onto it, the wanting the illusion to be real — is what makes it appear real.
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” —Marcus Aurelius.
You don’t need to save everyone. And you don’t have a responsibility to, either. As great as it is to want to help apparent others, people are free to do and think as they wish. Instead of wanting to control people’s lives, allowing them to live their lives as they do is not only the path to peace, but it also frees up the potential for them to listen more and potentially change in the way you prefer. But ultimately, life itself is already working with them, so it’s not up to you to play God, but rather be an instrument when intuitively called (beyond the mind). (P.S. this is a work in progress for me, as I’ve really wanted to help people over the years to a fault lol)
The real path to knowledge and wisdom is not through the 5 senses, but beyond the 5 senses. I can show you how to achieve this soon enough, if you are open to experimenting with a completely new paradigm. But for now, just consider this as a possibility: once you cross a certain place, you do not need to read another book, listen to another course or go through another course, unless you want to or it is essential. There is an ever-flowing, unlimited source of intelligence, far greater than the mind could possibly imagine. You and every other apparent being on this planet already have full access to this, but you have forgotten and have orchestrated a dam to block this free flow. But with some adjustments, you can perceive it in full again. More on this soon.
Shares you might find valuable
Chess. After putting it off for years, I felt the pull to begin learning chess on December 10th, 2024. And my god, has it ever been addicting. Especially for an OCD-esque mind, it’s like crack. I’m still very much a rook-ie (this was so bad wow), but this game has been very useful for self awareness of the mind’s behaviours, mental stimulation, and a practice of depth of vision and awareness, strategy, and more. I began at 100 ELO, currently hovering around 350. You can lurk my progress on chess.com here.
Air fryer. This came up in my Q4 and 2024 reflections multiple times as one of the biggest quality-of-life upgrades. As someone who eats ground beef patties, bacon & potatoes practically daily, this is a must for me. There are many good models on the market and each reflects a different use case, but I’ve been very satisfied with the Ninja Air Fryer Pro XL 6-in-1 (6.5 QT). It’s been incredible over the past 3 months.
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That’s all for now.
Happy 2025. Talk soon.
—Josh
