The Nova Effect: The Tragedy of Good Luck

Happy Sunday! This weekend I stepped into a new arena. Inspired by friends who have been pushing the limits physically and mentally, I competed in my first Hyrox. It's a race starting with a 1 km run, followed by 1 functional fitness movement, repeating 8 times.

I got to compete in it with one of my dearest friends, Braydon.

My biggest takeaway from the race was the compartmentalization of pain. Going into the weekend, my calf was not playing favorable. It had tightened up and standing was painful. I was fearful for how it'll impact me for the competition but on race day the nerves settled and I was able to store it away for a while.

However, after the fourth event: Burpee Broad Jumps, where you have to burpee jump 80 meters, my calf was not in a good place. The pain started taking over and my leg started stiffening up. At first, I was able to keep pushing and as it got further and it was getting worse, I had to shift my mind towards an external pain: the pain of not completing the race in a "respectable" time. This pain sounded far worse than the pain my calf was feeling in the moment. Giving myself 2/3rds of a km with the thought of this pain brought me back on track.Today, I'm writing this while dealing with a slight limp and some nagging pain, but rejoicing in that I fought away from feeling the pain of regret.

I hope this newsletter has equipped you with new tools that you are able to put to use in turning your dreams to reality.

If you have liked this newsletter and believe others will benefit from it, forward it to the other dreamers and builders.

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3 TOOLS

This week’s three dream builders are:

1. FitnessAI: Generate personalized workouts based on logging your progress from the week prior. I'll be using this to track my workouts to perform better at my next Hyrox event.

2. TrySalient: Had a friend on my podcast who mentioned how outbound systems have helped him scale his business from $10k/mo to $30k/mo. Salient is your AI sales development representative that generates human-quality outbound in your tone of voice.

3. Supernormal: Meeting notes without you have to focus on taking them. Stay focused on being present while remote and this tool will capture all notes for you and break them into action items.

2 VIDEOS

The Nova Effect: The Tragedy of Good Luck

A thought provoking video that combines two philosophical ideas

1. The Butterfly Effect: The idea that a small change in an initial condition can cause drastic variations in the long run.

2. Optimistic nihilism: The idea that life is meaningless and purposeless and one gets the opportunity to create their own meaning.

A tangent from Serendipity: The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Tyler The Creator - How To Succeed Creatively

In a prior newsletter, I shared how the Surface Area of Luck is equivalent to action taken towards passion MULTIPLIED by the number of people you effectively communicate it with. Tyler echos this message and how he pours that into the music he creates. An insightful look into raw expression of emotion and the art that gets constituted from it.

1 IDEA

The WHY to my mission in life is JOY. Joy is what drives me.

I have often fallen into the trap of being happy with where I am in life and what I'm doing yet getting sucked deep into the cycle of wanting more. The idea that doing more would end up constituting "more happiness" is a slippery slope I have fallen down plenty of times in the past.

This is a great reminder to always revisit when I feel like wanting to do more.

You can read more about this on my friend Noah's blog, where he articulates this idea A LOT better.