Well, we made it through another year. Congratulations!

For the third year in a row, I sent out over 100 newsletters to all of you—two per week, every single week. In fact, I haven't missed a single issue since I started sending this newsletter out in May 2021.

What started as a tiny labor of love to a small group of family and friends in 2021 has grown to reach 800,000 of you around the world.

It's a diverse bunch, from 14-year-olds to at least one 100-year-old. People from all walks of life, backgrounds, and experiences. Different in many ways, but the same in one important way: Each and every one of you is active in the pursuit of growth and self-improvement.

While I find the numbers utterly mind-blowing, I'm just getting started. I believe that my purpose is to create positive ripples in the world, and I cannot wait to continue on that journey.

As you know, this newsletter is all about ideas—actionable ideas to help you build a high-performing, healthy, wealthy life.

I shared thousands of ideas here this year, but these were my 9 favorites:

Note: If you haven't already, please order my book, which comes out in one month! It's filled with questions and ideas that will spark life-changing reflection and action. Reply with your order and I'll send you a personalized video with some thoughts I'm excited about.

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The Main Character Question

This is my favorite question I asked myself in 2024:

If you were the main character in the movie of your life, what would the audience be screaming at you to do right now?

We've all been there: Watching a movie and the main character is clearly veering off course. We start to feel that internal urge to scream at them:

• "No, don't open that door!"
• "Drive to the airport, don't let her go!"
• "Don't hold yourself back, you can do it!"

The outside view on the main character's situation provides a unique vantage point—an ability to see the landscape around them and the bigger picture.

You are that main character—and your audience would be screaming something at you right now. What is it? What are they screaming at you?

Perspective is everything. Ask this question to detach yourself from your situation and see it through someone else's eyes.

(Full piece ​here​)

Taxes of Life

I came across this quote in Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic:

"All the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape." - Seneca

What are those taxes of life that we all need to embrace? What are the challenging experiences, pains, struggles, evolutions, and mindset shifts that are a necessary part of living a life of true depth and fulfillment?

Here are a few that I keep coming back to:

• Stress and anxiety are a tax on extreme ambition. Those with extreme ambition are the most prone to feelings of stress and anxiety that accompany the non-linearity of progress.
• Boredom of routine is a tax on long-term success. Most success is built on the back of long, painful periods of extremely disciplined, boring routines.
• Imposter syndrome is a tax on progress. Good things happen when you put yourself in rooms and situations where you don’t feel like you belong. That feeling of uncertainty, fear, and discomfort is usually a sign of growth.

When you embrace delayed gratification, when you embrace hard things, when you embrace these taxes of life, you’ll find your depth and fulfillment on the journey.

(Full piece ​here​)

The 2 Pillars of Strong Relationships

I have come to believe that there are two pillars of strong relationships:

1. High Expectations: The belief that the other person is capable of excellence, that their potential is only limited by their own views. The willingness to share the truth on those high expectations and the gap vs. the current level of delivery.
2. High Support: The ability and willingness to provide the love, support, and engagement to help the person meet those high expectations.

High Expectations without High Support is a recipe for resentment. We have all faced a relationship like this, where the person seems to want more from us but does not seem willing to share in the burden of reaching that more.

High Support without High Expectations is a recipe for mediocrity. It allows self-limiting beliefs to perpetuate, it says that you're fine where you are today, that growth is unnecessary.

It is the pairing of the two—High Expectations and High Support—where strong relationships are found, both personally and professionally.

Legendary American football coach Nick Saban once shared the idea of the Capability Gap:

"The Capability Gap is what you're capable of relative to what you're doing...if you understand the truth about that, you can actually take information that can help you close that gap."

A strong relationship is built upon the foundation of high expectations (pushing your belief in what you're capable of) and high support (supporting you with the information and action steps to close the gap to those high expectations).

(Full piece ​here​)

Winner's Game vs. Loser's Game

In the 1999 tennis book, Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Tennis Player, author Simon Ramo broke down the difference between amateur and professional tennis, writing that they were two different types of games:

• Amateur tennis is a Loser's Game: 80% of points are lost on unforced errors. You win by avoiding errors and waiting for your opponent to make errors.
• Professional tennis is a Winner's Game: 80% of points are won on incredible shots. You win by hitting incredible shots.

The core insight: You have to know what kind of game you're playing.

In a Loser's Game, there's no point trying to hit magnificent shots. You're better off keeping it simple and avoiding unforced errors.

In a Winner's Game, there's no point trying to play conservatively to avoid unforced errors. You're better off trying to hit the elegant, perfect shots.

Here's an important truth: Most games in life are Loser's Games.

You don't get "paid" for complex, magnificent shots. You get "paid" for consistently avoiding unforced errors. For being reliable. For figuring it out. For showing up and doing what you say you're going to do.

In most games in life, the sum of consistent, ordinary performances adds up to something extraordinary.

(Full piece ​here​)

The Stories You Tell Yourself

There is one piece of wisdom I would share with a young Sahil:

Pay close attention to the stories you tell yourself, because stories create your reality.

The Narrative Fallacy is the tendency to craft a story around data, events, and inputs. Basically, our brains like to "make sense" of the random chaos around us, so the stories provide that structure—they provide a sense of calm.

Therefore, the original stories are often the ones that gets preserved and deeply entrenched:

New information is massaged to fit that story, or rejected if it doesn't.

Your thoughts, behaviors, and actions all slowly start to fall in line with that story—to create confirmatory data to support it and avoid the conflicting information that might feel jarring.

The quality of those internal stories has a real, tangible impact on your interaction with the external world:

• If you tell yourself that you aren't capable of something, you won't try.
• If you tell yourself that you aren't worthy of something, you won't reach for it.
• If you tell yourself that you are a static entity, you won't attempt to grow.

Become aware of your original stories—shine a light on them—as their ripples extend to every corner of your life.

It's not the sheer difficulty of achieving something that stops you—it's the ease of continuing to tell yourself the story that you can't.

The stories you tell yourself can either hold you back or push you forward. There is no in between.

(Full piece ​here​)

Solomon's Paradox

In the Old Testament, King Solomon was the monarch of ancient Israel, who rose to the throne as successor to his father, King David.

King Solomon was known for his incredible wisdom. Unfortunately, this ability did not extend to heeding his own counsel.

King Solomon's personal life was something of a mess:

• Hundreds of wives and partners
• Obsession with money and wealth
• Absent relationship with son and children

In short, King Solomon was great at giving advice, but terrible at taking that same advice into account in his own life. --

When we provide clear, rational perspectives and advice to others, but are unable to provide those same quality perspectives to ourselves, we are falling victim to Solomon's Paradox.

To escape the trap:

• Create Space: Pause, reset, and engage. Our immediate reactions are almost always emotional, and we make bad decisions in the heat of emotion.
• Use Mental Time Travel: Imagine yourself in the past and consider yourself in the present. Imagine yourself in the future and consider yourself in the present.

Remember: When in doubt, zoom out.

(Full piece ​here​)

Seasons of Loneliness

Periods of loneliness are a natural byproduct of transformation.

When you start growing, changing, and developing faster than your environment, you will stop fitting into that environment.

The people you felt aligned with start to feel distant.

It's almost as if you start speaking an entirely different language. You no longer have much to talk about. They don't seem to understand your values or motivations. They say you've changed. They laugh at your ambitions. They tell you to be realistic.

But as you leave behind the old, you have yet to attract and build the new.

Remember: The season of loneliness is natural, a sign you're on the right path.

Embrace it. Use the solitude and the focus it creates to accelerate your pace of transformation.

(Full piece ​here​)

"Make the Coffee"

I can't stop thinking about this story:

A woman named Pam Kearney visits a local bakery shop to meet the owner. She tells him that a few years earlier, there was a visitation at the funeral home across the street on a bitterly cold winter day. People were lined up around the block in the cold, when a mysterious man appeared and gave them all hot coffee.

She tells the bakery shop owner that she suspects that man was him. He nods and replies, "Yes, I felt so bad for them and wanted to do something, but all I could do was make coffee, so I made coffee."

She proceeds to tell him that the visitation was for her 16-year-old son, who had sadly passed away, and thanks him for that tiny act of kindness that meant so much.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

Every single day, you will face a variety of moments, many of which will conspire to make you feel completely helpless—unable to move or create the necessary momentum to change or improve the situation.

In these moments, you have a decision to make:

• You can freeze, paralyzed by the imperfection of your options...or
• You can act. You can do what you can, with what you have, where you are. You can make the coffee.

It is the most important decision of your life.

(Full piece ​here​)

The Wealth Score

Here's a harsh truth of life: You'll never feel successful unless you create your own definition of success.

Most people subconsciously define it around financial metrics: Some arbitrary annual income level, the achievement of a net worth target, or the ownership of some item.

You're measuring your success in life based on the wrong—or at least an incomplete—thing: Money.

Money isn’t nothing— it simply can’t be the only thing.

You need a new scoreboard: A new way to measure your life, a new way to define success on your own terms.

​​The Wealth Score​​ is your new way to measure your life.

Where your old, default scoreboard was entirely based on money, this new one offers a comprehensive way to look at how you measure your life across the five key pillars that define a truly wealthy existence:

• Time Wealth: Freedom to choose how to spend your time.
• Social Wealth: Connection to others.
• Mental Wealth: Purpose, growth, space.
• Physical Wealth: Health and vitality.
• Financial Wealth: Money (and an awareness of enough).

To get you started, I have created a ​​simple quiz​​ to establish a baseline Wealth Score. Everyone should start here. This baseline will be what you measure your progress against as you build and balance your life across the seasons to come.

At the end of the quiz, you will receive your Wealth Score, along with a personalized visualization that will provide a unique, clear view to understand the strengths and weaknesses in your starting point.

The entire quiz should take no more than five minutes, though you will definitely find yourself thinking about the questions and discussing them with others in the days and weeks ahead.

Take the Wealth Score Quiz!

(Full piece ​here​)

Goodbye 2024, Hello 2025!

2024 was a transformative year in my life. I am so thankful to each and every one of you for gifting me with your precious time and attention. I hope that I have been able to bring value to your life in return.

In the year ahead, you can expect more of the same from me—actionable ideas to help you build a high-performing, healthy, wealthy life.

I have ambitious goals for 2025—including releasing a bestselling book (which you can support by ​ordering now​!)—but I'll never forget the real ones who have been there from the start.

THANK YOU!

With love and best wishes for a healthy, joyful 2024,

Sahil