Will life still suck in 2026?
Blink...it's 2026.
This year, up to now has been a REAL mother fucker as I have:
lost family members to petty drama…
lost sleep and sanity to intrusive thoughts and financial duress…
have had to essentially reprogram hard as hell just to undo the damage done to me over the years…
…and I STILL have a fuck ton of work to accomplish.
However, the strides I’ve made:
connecting with people I truly love
getting a strangle hold on my negativity and deep seated trauma
creating a few solid openings for work opportunities
…are a result of going hard with my mental state and shadow alchemy.
I am NOT satisfied with my life.
I’m not even happy RIGHT NOW…
I’m angry as fuck because I know I have to do some shit I really DON’T want to do.
YOU ARE HERE.
Maybe you don’t like ‘here’…it feels like the lows just keep coming, even when you catch a glimpse of hope.
Which I understand.
And to be quite frank…’bad days’ and inconveniences won’t fucking end…challenges will still rise…people will still be assholes (even the ones you love)…and then you’ll die.
It’s the ultimate truth in awareness.
You are here.
When you’re worried about your bills or a bad relationship or a personal regret or a workplace battle…everything around you stays the same (LITERALLY) and experiences no change outside of it’s natural life cycle.
PAY ATTENTION.
The room you are in makes NO change regardless of the mood you’re in.
The table, the phone, and anything else you can see in the room does not change.
TAKE A MOMENT…look at THINGS in the room.
Whether you are happy as can be…or deeply miserable…none of these things are affected.
A healthy reminder of where you always are…HERE.
Intuition is your guide—act on it immediately (unless it’s destructive).
Your subconscious is ALWAYS trying to talk to you.
Get you to do or say something. Get you to go somewhere. Listen to it.
It’s YOU.
You think it’s about all these huge life changing decisions…it's mostly about the small ones. The one that tells you to go on a walk or call a specific old friend.
(The very subtle course correction over time is what makes the greater changes anyway. No one got a real pump from 100 push ups. But they did with 50 push ups a day…twice a day…over a year.)
The little things count. Listen to what your INTUITION brings you.
If it brings you something negative OR DESTRUCTIVE…it’s not intuition anyway.
It’s shadow.
Shadow vs. Light Archetypes.
Shadow Archetypes (Prostitute, Child, Victim, Saboteur): Fear-driven, reactive, self-sabotaging.This is not a good-guy vs bad-guy, ‘us vs them’ scenario.
Your shadow is potential energy for great and rapid rises to power.
But if you can’t see it or recognize it…you can’t use it.
Light Archetypes (Lover, Sovereign, Warrior, Magician): Confident, proactive, visionary.This is you moving at light speed and loving it.
This is also you DOING NOTHING and loving it.
You’ve dropped the fear and excuses and find yourself fully in the moment with what you are doing and it’s a pretty good time.
Results tend to come a lot quicker as well.
YOUR JOB: Identify which archetype you’re operating from when you are triggered. (Fear, Anxiety, Stress, Etc.)
Shift to light and POWER through awareness and action.You think you need to have a perfect setup for everything to happen.
You don’t.
The setup is always the master warriors’ weapon of choice. Winning the battle before it’s even started. But when you get obsessed with some kind of perfect scenario you can bet you’re operating from shadow…hardcore procrastination. Awareness feeds you what you need to take action on next. Just take the next action and keep up the pace.
The War of ‘Wanting’.
Coveting (desperately wanting) creates emptiness.
Focus on the *process* (doing) over the *outcome* (having).I spent some time on the ten commandments and for some reason really got into the subject of coveting.
I always thought the commandment was about coveting someone’s wife or something like that.
Coveting is a desire for something that someone else has.
It’s seeing something and desiring it for yourself because someone else has it.
(FOMO if you really think about it.)
Which is crazy because we all get caught up in the game of chasing after wealth and experiences that don’t matter at all…and it just leaves us financially , physically, spiritually, and mentally weaker, still never fully satisfied.
But keeping with the subject of ‘wanting’…it’s not just the wanting, because wanting is pretty normal.
It’s when you get to the point of emotional aching because you can’t stand the idea of not having the thing you want.
You could even be wanting world peace and it creates a pain inside of you because you aren’t having that experience.
The pain…the desperate desire…the angry greed…the NEED to have it or you can never be happy…
…or you’d ‘rather die’…
…or whatever imitates THAT feeling IS THE SIN…the coveting (wanting) is the sin because it literally BECOMES PAINFUL when you can’t get what you want.
*letting go has entered the chat*
You don’t want the goal — you want the part of you that achieves it.
You don’t JUST want the stuff.
Well, maybe you do.
But you want to be someone that is capable of achieving great things and living adventures.
Maybe a feeling of safety from knowing you can make things happen when you need them to.
You want to learn skills and arts that make your life great and help move the world forward.
So feel free to get as much as you can…
…to become as much as you can…
…but don’t forget that if you GET the goal…and then LOSE it…
…you became the kind of person that can go out and get another…so who cares?
Actionable Steps
Stack Wins, Never Losses.
You need to get in line with tracking any and all successful activities.
Even if it’s minimal.
If you have a goal to read daily and all you do is glance at the cover of a book, it counts.
This activity is about the truth and mental rewiring to ACCEPT the truth.
Just like you can’t deny being HERE…you can’t deny a win if you technically made it past the finish line.
You can’t create a new mental pathway about something you don’t directly experience.
There’s a lot to say for visualization and the like…but it’s never a match for real life experiences.
A REAL WIN…even if small…IS A REAL EXPERIECE.
Use PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Adjust):
I’m sure you have goals. Simple planning is always helpful. The more frequently you visit your goals and progress the more accurate your activity becomes. Make a quick plan. Run it. Did it work? Can it work better? Change what you need to. Run it again.
‘PDCA’ OFTEN.
Brain Test:
We all want a better operating mental clarity and focus. But there’s usually no real way to tell what’s happening besides how you may feel at any given moment when asked. You could do something like regular hourly mental check-ins but that will turn into a pain in the ass real quick.
Tracking should be quick and informative…not another job.
The test links below are to be taken every 2 weeks or more often if you feel the need. The idea is to give you something you can actually TRACK your mental state with. They are quick and give you a quick snap-shot of how stable you may or may not be. My first tests were pretty rough and I scored high on all of them. (You want to score low.) I also remember at the time being really high strung and stressed all the time. Being able to see my mental state gave me something to start working with. I was able to make great strides even within my first 2 weeks just because I knew what was happening for once.
*Use your scores to track progress over 2-week intervals. You want your scores to be as low as possible.
Body & Mind Protocol:
Nutrition: Prioritize protein (30g every 3-4 hours), minimize sugar/carbs.
I hate to state the obvious. But high protein, low carb and sugar, and as close to as nature intended is the diet you want. Even then you can over eat and get fat if you’re not being active.
Dieting is boring.
There isn’t always a ton of amazing meals and spices and flavors for you to enjoy. But it’s more than 80% of your health. This is why a guy working construction can be active for 60 hours a week doing physical activity and still ‘somehow’ get fat.
(My diet can be up and down by the way…but my performance, mood, and body composition are clearly different when I eat like shit from when I eat clean.)
Our battle when we get older isn’t being more active or eating decent…it’s typically hormonal. Metabolism isn’t the same. Testosterone is lower. Muscle growth and recovery is slow, or sometimes nonexistent. Drive and motivation fade. These things need to be kept up with. Some guys just have it for a long time and can get away with pretty much any shit diet…if that’s not you…don’t worry about it…just find a way to get your advantage.
I encourage supplementation.
But I encourage working out more.
I encourage functional fitness and flexibility even more.
I encourage a clean diet and learning to not cope through food even more.
Training: Train at 80% effort to avoid cortisol spikes.
You don’t need to kill yourself every workout…it’s not your job.
(But I certainly do it because I NEED to force my body into exhaustion based on my diet and need for mental clarity and better sleep. I prefer to train more like an athlete. It let’s me slack on my diet plus my strength, energy, and muscle growth and definition are better because of it.)
Your job is to look and function better. So, if you do want to get into a long training session…push a little less hard so you can train for a long session…it’s more effective AND you avoid injury which can interrupt progress when you are forced to heal.
I don’t even do long sessions at this point because I want to heal up and really hit my flexibility. My sessions are about 45 minutes long. I hit it hard in the beginning but as soon as I start to lose a little energy…I just turn down the intensity and keep going so I can finish my session…all based on my goals and PDCA process.
Supplements: L-Theanine (calm), L-Tyrosine (focus), Omega-3s (brain health), Vitamin D/K2 (mood).
Update This May 29, 25: L-Tyrosine, Omega-3’s, Vitamin D/K2, Creatine, Pre-Workout (High Stim), Magnesium Glycinate (Calm), High CBD Low THC Flower (Calm, Focus, Pain Relief). I also use a cheap brand of muscle rub (Camphor, Menthol, Methyl Salicylate) in between workouts and before bed if I went extra hard.
I originally used AI to figure out different supplements to take for mental clarity, anxiety, calm, mental function, mood, etc. Those are listed above. I do also take sleeping pills with St. John Wort to sleep really hard.
I have experimented with sports performance supplements. Specifically ‘thermogenics’ and testosterone compounds. These are okay in short cycles like 2 months imo because it’s good to allow your body to get back to normal since a lot of these compound supplements can trigger a lot of cortisol responses and burn you out. But they’re really fun once and a while when you want a kick ass workout.
Kill the “Fear Machine”
News
Drama
Toxic media (Social, or Otherwise)
Arguments in Comments Sections
I even block and mute people here on Substack that are dropping toxic comments and posts…I used to get argumentative but I know better now.
Mental exhaustion is real. From work. From family and friends. You need to control that issue as much as possible.
If you want to have the mental space to think about more important life changing things you need to cut the fuck out of useless shit like news and anything else that spikes your cortisol that you don’t actually need.
Replace with: Cold therapy, breath work, and social micro-interactions (smiles, compliments).
Really, anything you decide you want to fill with the empty space you created removing the useless content is fine. I got caught up in doom scrolling for awhile but getting rid of that created more space for rest, exercise, and even typing practice.
I just happen to like cold therapy. I don’t use breath work much but sometimes I do. And just general small talk seems to help me, although I still avoid useless conversing about bullshit I don’t care about.
Final Thoughts:
This year is still up for grabs. My life could get way better and it could get way worse. But I know I am consistently contributing to my well being and that will go a very long way. That also means I don’t ever have to feel any regrets because I am taking action and power washing almost daily with a basic PDCA process that I currently track on AI.
So, for what it’s worth…I really hope this knowledge allows you to catapult forward with great energy, and minimal stress and distraction. And, as always, this post will stay active and change every month or so.
Happy 2026. ;)