Good morning Reader—

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And welcome to the 21st issue of The FAM.

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We all play games we didn’t design.

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They start early—the game of success, the game of image, the game of being right. We learn the rules before we even know we’re playing: work harder, get ahead, defend your worth. And before long, we’re measuring our lives by a scoreboard we never agreed to.

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A few days ago, I collided with someone caught deep in that game. We were in our coworking space, and after some small talk, he said, almost exasperated, “My wife’s on me again—says I can’t do anything right.”

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The frustration—even despair—in his voice was thick, like a weight he’d been carrying for a long time. I asked if he wanted to talk about it. He did.

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What followed was raw. He spoke about how no one understood him—not his wife, not his coworkers, not even other drivers on the road. He admitted he drinks too much, that he’s unhappy at work, that he’s angry most of the time. But as he talked, it was clear that in his eyes, the problem was always somewhere else. The world had conspired against him. He was losing a game he didn’t even like, but he wasn’t ready to stop playing it—because the game gave him someone to blame.

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At one point, I asked him a question that caught him off guard: “Is there a shred of truth in what your wife says?”

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He paused—not long, but long enough for the truth to flicker across his face. Then came the same line I’ve heard from so many who feel trapped: “I don’t know anymore.”

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That’s the tragedy of the game—it convinces us that life is happening to us, not through us. It teaches us to focus on what’s wrong with everyone else instead of asking who we are becoming in response. The longer we play by those rules, the smaller our world gets—until all we can see is the scoreboard of resentment, frustration, and unmet expectations.

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This man was losing himself in the game; he was building his entire identity around it. An identity he didn’t like but resigned to being. He had made anger, blame, and resistance his strategy for survival. And like so many of us, he was waiting for validation—for someone to tell him that his pain was justified, that the game of life really was rigged against him.

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But truth is, the game itself was never designed to make us whole. It rewards defense, not discovery. It fuels judgment, not joy. It asks us to keep score instead of keeping faith.

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We can spend a lifetime playing for meaning, waiting for someone else to change the rules, never realizing that the game we’re playing isn’t the one that leads to aliveness. It was built for mere existence and survival, not for the vitality of the soul.

The Truth: The Game Wasn’t Designed for Aliveness

After that conversation, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many of us are caught in the same loop — living by the world’s rules, trying to win a game that can’t make us whole.

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And it’s not just a cultural trap. Even some of the most noble philosophies reinforce it.

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When my coach, Brian Johnson, begins a year-long coaching program, he starts with a question he calls the absolute starting point, “What is the ultimate game we are playing?” To provide the foundation of self-mastery, he points to Aristotle’s answer—Eudaimonia, the “good soul.” Then, rapidly to prove the point, he also shares how the founder of The Positive Psychology movement, Martin Seligman echoes with his definition of human flourishing.

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They’re both right. These are worthy ideals. But the problem isn’t the destination—it’s where we begin.

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Because when we start by asking what the ultimate game is, we immediately frame life as something to be won. We start scanning for strategies, outcomes, and metrics—ways to win the game that society is telling us we are playing. A good soul becomes another goal. Flourishing becomes another finish line. The inner life quietly turns into a new competition—the spiritualized version of achievement.

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That’s the subtle danger of the “ultimate game” mindset: it keeps us focused on an outcome. And once life becomes about winning—on the final destination—we lose the deeper question that actually makes us alive.

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That other question —the one of I have come to believe is foundational to the self-empowered life, to living fully alive: “How do I want to live my life?”​
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Because there’s a world of difference between asking “What’s the ultimate game we are playing?” and asking “How do I want to live my life?”

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“What’s the ultimate game?” is about external rules—about the field, outcomes, approval.

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“How do I want to live my life?” is about internal alignment—about integrity, intention, and authorship. The first demands a scoreboard. The second invites a compass.

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The man I met at the coworking space was chasing Eudaimonia as if it were a trophy—something to prove, something he was entitled to—not realizing it was meant to be a practice, a way of being. That’s what happens when we begin with the wrong question. We stop living and start performing our way through a game that’s not ours.

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Because life was never designed to be won and done.

It was designed to awaken your best self.

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And that awakening doesn’t begin by defining the game.

It begins by defining how you want to live your life.

If no one was watching, how would you choose to live?

The Shift: From Playing to Creating

Too often we stop living and start performing our way through a game that’s not ours.

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But some people reach a point where the performance collapses. The script no longer fits. And something inside them whispers, There must be more than this.

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That’s when the shift begins.

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This week, a message landed in my Instagram inbox from a member of The FAM. She wrote to tell me she had finally made the decision to leave her corporate job—the one that paid well and was well within the rules of the game—to move abroad to teach English for at least a year. She started listening to the calling—that inner voice wanting more.

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She said, “I’ve always dreamed of living in Europe. I’m scared, but I’m doing it anyway.”

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That’s what it looks like when someone stops playing the game and starts creating a life.

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She’s not escaping. She’s answering something ancient—a call to adventure that has echoed in every human heart since the beginning of time.

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Joseph Campbell called it the hero’s journey—that universal pattern of leaving the familiar world to step into the unknown, not to abandon life, but to find a truer version of it. You don’t need to know Campbell’s work to feel it. You’ve lived it any time you’ve followed that pull toward something uncertain but alive. It’s that mix of fear and freedom that tells you you’re on the right path.

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Because let’s be honest—when we say the “ultimate game” is happiness, flourishing, or a good soul, that can become a gravitational pull away from adventure. It’s easier to talk about happiness than to risk the discomfort that comes with growth. It’s safer to study the map than to take the first step. The call to live differently is thrilling—until it demands courage.

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But courage is where the shift happens.

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When we stop asking “What’s the ultimate game?” and start asking “How do I want to live my life?” we trade the illusion of control for the reality of creation.

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That’s what still another member of The FAM recently discovered. She told me this week that she joined our 75-Day Self-Empowerment Challenge because she realized she’d been living entirely out of obligation—a job, kids, organizations, expectations. She said, “I’ve been doing what’s required. Now I want to do what’s right for me.”

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Her courage is quieter but no less revolutionary. She’s not quitting her job or buying a one-way ticket. She’s choosing herself in the middle of her real, demanding life. She’s beginning to ask a different kind of question: What does living fully alive look like for me, here, now?

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Both of these individuals show us that the moment we stop chasing outcomes and start shaping our days around values, and our answer to the question “How do I want to live my life,” our lives stop feeling like games—and start feeling like creations.

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And that, I believe, is the work of becoming fully alive.

So How Do You Want To Live Your Life?

The man at the coworking space, the woman who’s leaving for Europe, and the one choosing herself amid obligations—three different people, three different lives, all standing at the same crossroads. Each is being invited to ask a deeper question: How do I want to live my life?

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That’s the question that changes everything.

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Because once you start asking it, you can’t hide behind the game anymore. You can’t keep blaming, performing, or deferring your own becoming. You begin to see that life isn’t waiting for permission—it’s waiting for participation.

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The game the world hands you will always offer the same reward: validation without fulfillment. But the life you consciously choose—the one built around your values, rhythms, and inner truth—offers something far better: peace without permission.

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So I want to leave you with this:

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The Fully Alive life begins when you stop trying to win the game you were handed and start living the one you were made for.

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You don’t need a new year or a fresh start. You don’t need to earn your right to begin. You just need the courage to ask the right question—How do I want to live my life?—and to let your answer become your practice.

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Take a breath. Step off the field. Put down the scoreboard.

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Your compass is waiting.

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And when you start shaping your days around what matters most to you—when your actions align with your truth—something inside you will whisper the words we all long to believe:

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I’m living fully alive and that’s like me.

This week’s tool is simple—but powerful. ​ It’s a short reflection to help you pause, look at the “rules” you’ve been living by, and decide which ones are truly yours. ​ Take a few minutes to fill it out and let the final question—“How do I want to live my life?”—become your new starting point. ​ Because the life you want isn’t something to win. ​ It’s something to live. ​ ​

DOWNLOAD THE LIFE DESIGN DECLARATION

Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been thinking about this idea of choosing how we live, I found this note in one of my journals.

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It captured something I was only beginning to understand then—that self-empowerment isn’t about doing more; it’s about coming into alignment with who we already are.​
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“Self-empowerment isn’t just about action, it’s about alignment. It’s about seeing clearly who I am and what I want. And then using tools like journaling, reflection, stillness, and visioning to bring that inner truth into outer reality. This is becoming. This is living fully alive.​
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Self-empowerment is not passive dreaming. It’s an active decision to become. It’s not about willpower but about inner rewiring. I’m no longer chasing outcomes. I’m manifesting how I want to live my life.”​
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When I read those words now, I see how they connect everything we’ve explored this week.

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The real work isn’t found in mastering the ultimate game—it’s in aligning our inner truth with the way we move through each day.

That’s where freedom lives.

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So as you close this issue, take a quiet moment with your own journal—or the Rules for the Life I Choose tool—and write your answer to one simple question:

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How do I want to live my life?​
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Let that question guide your next decision, your next morning, your next act of becoming the person you were born to be.

P.S. If this message stirred something in you, there’s a good chance someone you care about is quietly carrying the same questions. Forward this their way. It might be the invitation they didn’t know they needed.
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And if you’re sitting with something after reading—an insight, a shift, a moment of truth—I’d love to hear it. Just hit reply. I read every message, and I’m honored to be in this with you.

We’re on a mission to empower one million people to live Fully Alive, and you’re one of them!