Live Vividly With Your Superpowers
It's 11:11 on Wednesday, make a wish ✨
Since 2026 began, I’ve been working.
I spent 8 months of last year shedding the marketing business I had, and exploring what to build next. This edition covers a personal update and a few compelling ideas keeping me focused recently.
“Beliefs are decisions.”
This one is by David Bayer, a coach and author somewhat reminiscent of Tony Robbins. I’ve been going through one of his courses, which covers the basics:
Rate your satisfaction in 10 areas of the wheel of life.
In areas that are lower than 7, identify everything you believe or assume about that area of life.
For the assumptions that hold you back, create a new assumption that serves you.
Start finding evidence every day for that new assumption.
For example, in 2024-’25, I switched an assumption that ‘my body is fragile’ to ‘my body is capable.’ I spent a year finding evidence for that new belief, and now, even when things come up, they don’t alarm me.
“Shape your life around your superpowers.”
This one admittedly came from reading a few fantasy books over the past few months. I’ve read four-ish since Thanksgiving, two different series.
In fantasy, ‘magic powers’ are usually extrapolations of natural human capabilities. They can act as a way to dramatize and personify strengths and weaknesses. A typical story arc for a magical character goes something like this:
My powers are liabilities, I am outcast →
I’m thrust into using my powers helpfully →
I work with others who complement them →
My powers are now strengths that make me hugely successful.
Once I was personally open to starting from scratch with my career, I started to think: What comes easily to me? How can I leverage it as a strength?
That sounds obvious, but I haven’t been leading with my top unconscious competencies in my career. What if I could monetize listening, synthesis, magnetism, and adaptability (over routines) in my career?
How would I introduce myself not as a single skillset, but as a whole-person expert?
My professional hard skills
My personality and unconscious competencies
My driving belief of mission
This sort of thinking has had me assess how to make areas of life suit the way I am instead of forcing myself to fit into the frames available to me: the 9-5 worker, the hustler, the wife or mother, the linear thinker, the individualist… etc.
“What are your most socially relevant and least AI-replaceable characteristics?”
This question came from being a fine artist and writer, and wondering if my relevance will be extinct soon.
As I’ve ruminated, my own unique value seems to be in the synthesis of several traits, including the emotional connections and experiences I can create.
What is the Venn diagram of my nice-to-have but non-commodity skills (art, throwing parties, self-expression, good conversations) and my commodifiable skills? Since we’re making things up here, what models are there to provide value through their overlap?
I found a few models. And I’ve been working on them.
More on that in the next few weeks.
I mostly wanted to share these thought experiments, so your 2026 can be full of non-linear, more interesting questions. Those questions lead to fuller self-expression, which makes a far more interesting story, in my opinion, than completing a linear set of preconceived goals.
Run a 24-Minute Experiment
What does the Venn diagram of your hard skills, unconscious competencies, and why look like?