be your best self now…
the imperfect practice of awakening to the life you already have.
( now… )
A few mornings ago, just before the sun was fully up, I stepped out onto my balcony with a cup of coffee and took a photo.
Nothing dramatic. Just a quiet moment overlooking the day as it was beginning.
I posted the picture on Instagram with a few simple words:
be your best self now…
#talkingtomyself
entering an exciting new chapter…
And one more thought that felt important enough to include:
this is gunna be fun!
The post wasn’t meant as a formal announcement. It was simply my way of doing something I’ve done many times over the years, putting a small stake in the ground to capture a moment when my thinking and my intention feel aligned.
Sometimes you can feel when a new chapter is beginning.
You may not know exactly where it will lead, but something inside you recognizes the shift.
That morning felt like one of those moments.
For many years, much of my work has centered around helping people better understand weight loss, body composition, metabolism, and sustainable change. That journey has been deeply meaningful to me and it will absolutely continue.
But over time I’ve come to realize something important.
The deeper conversation was never really about weight.
It was about how we live.
Because while nutrition, movement, and metabolism matter, and they do, lasting change in our physical health is influenced by something even more fundamental:
The way we think about our lives while we are living them.
That realization kept leading me back to a very simple thought:
be your best self now…
Let me be clear about something from the beginning.
This idea is not another self-help platform.
There is already an entire industry built around the belief that something about you needs to be fixed, optimized, or improved before you can truly live the life you want.
I’ve spent plenty of time in that world myself, reading the books, listening to the podcasts, searching for the answers someone else might have that I didn’t.
There’s value in that.
Sometimes we do need guidance.
Sometimes we do need perspective.
But what I’ve come to understand, especially as I find myself fully immersed in what I like to think of as the third act of my life, is something surprisingly simple.
You don’t have to wait to live your life.
You can begin right where you are.
Not when everything is perfect.
Not when you’ve solved every problem.
Not when you’ve become some improved future version of yourself.
Right now.
Because be your best self now… is not about becoming someone new.
It’s about awakening to the life that is already yours to live.
At some point, this realization became clear to me:
You don’t have to become someone else to live a meaningful life.
You only have to choose to be your best self now…
That single shift changes everything.
Because it removes the pressure to fix yourself before you begin living.
It replaces waiting with participation.
It replaces self-criticism with agency.
For much of my life, I spent a lot of time thinking about what needed to change.
What was wrong.
What was missing.
What I needed to learn.
What someone else knew that I didn’t.
Those questions can be useful for a time.
But eventually you begin to see something differently.
Where you are in life…
what you have…
what you don’t have…
what you know…
what you don’t know…
much of it is simply noise.
Because no matter how old you are, whatever life has dealt you up to this point, how you feel about yourself, or how you imagine others see you, none of those things have to control how you live this moment.
Unless you let them.
That doesn’t mean the past didn’t matter.
It did.
Every experience you’ve had, good and bad, has shaped who you are today.
But it also doesn’t mean the past has to continue writing every chapter that follows.
One of the most liberating realizations I’ve had is that two things about our lives can be true at the same time.
Truth No. 1:
Your life up to this moment is what it was.
Every success.
Every mistake.
Every detour.
Every lesson.
Those experiences are real and they shaped you.
But there is also another truth.
Truth No. 2:
In this moment, your life can begin to move in a new direction, in spite of Truth No. 1.
You don’t have to erase the past.
You don’t have to pretend it never happened.
But you also don’t have to let it define everything that comes next.
When you awaken to that possibility, something shifts.
You stop waiting for life to begin.
You start inhabiting the life you already have.
There’s a thought from Wayne Dyer that has stayed with me for many years.
He said that our lives are a parenthesis in eternity.
Think about that image for a moment.
Eternity existed before you were born.
Eternity will exist long after you’re gone.
And somewhere inside that vast span of time sits this brief parenthesis we call a life.
Your life.
My life.
Everyone’s life.
If we drew it out visually, it might look like this:
eternity ( ) eternity
Inside those parentheses is the space where your life unfolds.
Inside those parentheses is where every choice, every experience, every relationship, and every contribution takes place.
Inside those parentheses is where you live.
That’s why I often think of each day as a 16-hour gift.
The waking hours we’ve been given to experience life while we’re still inside that parenthesis.
Not someday.
Today.
And once you begin to see life that way, the questions you ask yourself start to change.
Instead of asking what still needs to be fixed about you, you begin asking something very different.
How can I experience this life more fully today?
How can I contribute?
How can I create something meaningful?
How can I leave behind something that is both timely and timeless?
Those questions invite participation rather than perfection.
There’s one more part of this philosophy that matters a lot to me.
It should be fun.
Seriously.
If living your best life feels like another stressful obligation you’re failing to meet, something has gone sideways.
Life is not meant to feel like an endless improvement project.
It’s meant to be experienced.
Celebrated.
Shared.
Enjoyed.
Not perfectly.
But fully.
That’s why when I posted that photo on my balcony that morning, I wrote something simple beneath it:
this is gunna be fun!
And I meant it.
So as I enter this new chapter in the work I’m sharing, shifting the spirit of this newsletter from Lose The Weight… Gain The World to be your best self now… that’s the lens I intend to bring to the conversation.
The work around health, body composition, and sustainable wellbeing will still be here.
In fact, I believe those conversations become even more powerful when they are grounded in a mindset that recognizes life isn’t something we eventually earn the right to live.
It’s something we awaken to while we’re living it.
And the sooner we recognize that, the more fully we can experience the extraordinary gift we’ve been given.
If life truly is
eternity ( ) eternity
then the space inside those parentheses matters more than we sometimes realize.
Because inside that space we are given an extraordinary opportunity, to live, to create, to contribute, and to experience the life we’ve been given.
And when you strip everything else away, what remains is surprisingly simple:
( now… )
You don’t have to wait to live your life.
You don’t have to become someone else first.
You can begin right where you are.
With the life you already have.
Because the best life isn’t something waiting for you somewhere in the future.
It’s something you begin experiencing the moment you decide to…
be your best self now…
…and yes, have a little fun along the way…
Before You Go…
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