2024 was by far one of my best/ hardest years.
It’s the year I made the most money but also the year I struggled the most. So many growing pains. New fires. New devils.
Tons of wins this year:
- bought my parents a house
- bought both of my sisters super cars
- took care of a lot of other things in my life
- companies grew massively
- biggest trading year of my life (8 fig year)
- evolved in a better leader/ operator
- learned tons of things about myself
Also tons of losses/ struggles this year:
- developing into new roles for myself
- struggled with some of the fires
- mental exhaustion from context switching and keeping up
- growing pains in professional life that I needed help navigating through
- felt defeated at most times
- health struggles
- trading + running multiple businesses has been extremely difficult
Still feel lost some days and unsure. It’s what comes with the territory of growth.
You break through new glass ceilings which look “cool” but have a lot of struggle behind them.
As the bar keeps getting raised, priorities should start changing and that’s the best way to “raise the bar”.
Raising the bar doesn’t mean you go from wanting $50m to $100m. After a certain dollar number, you stop caring about the financial success.
You start to care to work on things that matter to you. That could be a company or doing personal things. You idea of how you want your life start to shift.
At first it’s about making money which is needed for everyone. Once money is made, the priorities should naturally shift to the type of life you want that brings you fulfillment. Which once again, is different for everyone. For some it’s working 80+ hours a week on something they enjoy, for others it’s about slowing life down.
Also as you get older, the things you want now and your pace of life will 100% change. It starts shifting with most people around 25-28 if they started young, such as yourself and myself.
Enjoy the current pace and hustle of life. 🤝
- The Freedom of Now - 11/30/2024
Every day, we wake up and step into a battle, a quiet, relentless war waged in the corners of our minds. It’s not a fight against time or circumstance, but against ourselves. Against the nagging voice that whispers, You should be doing more.
You could be working harder. You could be more productive. You could be better. And so we push, endlessly, caught in a loop of striving for some imaginary “better” version of ourselves. But no matter how hard we try, the finish line keeps moving. The to-do list grows longer. The guilt deepens.
This isn’t living. It’s survival. And the cruelest part? The very thing we’re chasing; a sense of fulfillment, peace, or accomplishment, becomes impossible to grasp. We mistake endless thought for progress, as though thinking harder, faster, or more often could somehow close the gap between who we are and who we believe we should be.
But here’s the truth: the battle is a lie. The idea that you should always be doing something “more productive” is a trap—a self-perpetuating cycle that pulls you further and further away from what you’re truly seeking. And the only way to win? Stop fighting altogether. Let go of “should.” Let go of striving. Step off the hamster wheel of endless self-critique and into the radical freedom of simply being.
Because what if I told you that everything you’re looking for isn’t out there, in the next achievement or the next task crossed off your list? What if it’s already here, waiting for you to notice?
We’ve been sold a lie: that the more we think, the more we accomplish. Endless mental effort feels productive, even responsible. But the buzz of constant thought isn’t progress—it’s noise. And noise has a cost: it drowns out the now.
Pause for a moment. Really pause. Can you feel this moment, exactly as it is? Not the lingering shadow of yesterday or the imagined light of tomorrow—this very moment? Most of us can’t. We’re so entangled in the ghosts of the past and the anxieties of the future that we miss the profound simplicity of what is.
We treat peace as something to be earned. Finish the project. Check the box. Reach the goal. Then, finally, we’ll find peace. But here’s the paradox: peace isn’t the reward at the end of a marathon. It’s the calm step you take in the middle of the race. It isn’t something you find, it’s something you allow. And it starts here, now, in the only moment that exists.
Imagine your mind as a mountain and your thoughts as a river. The river flows constantly carrying worries, plans, memories, and fears. But you? You’re not the river. You’re the mountain. The river may carve paths and stir up sediment, but the mountain remains steady, unshaken.
When you realize this, you stop mistaking the rushing currents of “what if” and “why me” for your identity. You see the thoughts for what they are: fleeting. And in their fleeting nature lies freedom.
Gratitude is the key to unlocking this freedom. Not the surface-level gratitude of to-do lists or affirmations, but something deeper. Real gratitude isn’t something you think—it’s something you feel. It’s raw. Visceral. It’s the wave that crashes into you when you stop, breathe, and notice the miracle of being alive.
Picture this: you’re walking on a crisp morning. The air is cool, the leaves crunch underfoot, the horizon stretches endlessly before you. Instead of replaying tomorrow’s to-do list or yesterday’s regrets, you notice. You feel the texture of the air, the rhythm of your steps, the life humming all around you. In that moment, you’re not chasing anything. You’re simply here. And here is everything.
The shift from striving to being is both subtle and profound. Striving feels noble—it’s what we’ve been taught to do. Push harder. Want more. Achieve. But striving is noise, the endless chase of a horizon that recedes as you approach. Being is different. Being realizing the horizon isn’t the point; the point is the step you’re taking right now.
This doesn’t mean you stop dreaming or planning. It means your plans no longer own you. It means you can think about tomorrow without losing today. The present is the only real thing you’ll ever have, and when you embrace it fully, you find that the life you’ve been chasing was here all along.
Wayne Dyer once said, “Be an otter.” At first, it sounds whimsical, even strange. But the wisdom is profound. An otter doesn’t agonize over its existence. It doesn’t wonder if it’s swimming correctly or achieving enough. It just swims. It plays. It rests. It lives in harmony with its nature, not through effort but through being.
You try so hard to be you that you forget how to just be. Life isn’t a problem to solve or a race to win. It’s an experience to surrender to. The harder you fight it, the more it pulls you under. But when you let go, when you allow yourself to float in its current, you discover something extraordinary: you were never meant to fight it. You were meant to flow with it.
The life you want isn’t waiting at some distant checkpoint. It’s not hiding in the next accomplishment or the next stage of personal growth. It’s here, in this moment, in the quiet, steady rhythm of simply being. When you stop striving and start arriving, you realize something profound: you were always enough. Not someday. Not after you’ve fixed yourself. Now. Right now.
This is life. It’s happening. And it’s yours to live, not tomorrow, not five minutes from now, but here. Step out of the noise. Feel the stillness. Trust the flow. Welcome home.
-JW