Everyone tells you to set big goals because the reward is worth it. That's the boring half of the truth. The real reason is that a goal big enough rewrites what failure even means — fail at something small and you're pathetic, fail at something enormous and you've accidentally become someone worth knowing. Set the goal so big that winning is winning and losing is winning. Then you can't lose.

Five years ago I got into an argument with a girl I was dating, felt bad about it, and booked a ten-day silent meditation retreat eight months out. By the time the confirmation email arrived I'd forgotten I'd done it.

Twelve hours a day of sitting. No phone, no books, no conversation, no eye contact. Nothing coming in.

And my mood still swung from depression to elation, day after day, with no external input to blame it on. That was the first thing the retreat took from me — the story that circumstances were running the show.

The second thing was smaller and worse. The man scheduled before me ran late for the shower. I got angry. Then I ran late for the man after me, saw the same look on his face, and understood exactly how pain gets handed down the line — and how the apology I wanted to give him would have been for me, not for him.

This episode is what ten days alone with yourself actually shows you: that you fluctuate for no reason, that you pass on what was done to you, that the confident stories you build about strangers are wrong without exception, and that pain becomes sensation right up until the next sit, when it doesn't.

Ten days that destroyed me. Some of the most meaningful I've been through.

Enter The Black Box: https://blackboxpod.com

Inquiries: contact@blackboxpod.com

"He who has a why can bear any how." Frankl was almost right. In this episode, I break down the one flaw in Man's Search for Meaning: placing your why on anything outside yourself — a person, a job, a future — is signing a contract with the universe that includes terms you don't control. There is exactly one why that can't be taken from you. I take you through the two experiences that taught me this: losing my best friend at 18, and the 40 minutes I spent in a riptide certain I was going to die. From there: why how you conduct yourself during the worst moments of your life determines what they cost you afterward, what I got right in the ocean and wrong after the funeral, and the inbox theory of processing — why losing someone dumps 30,000 unread emails into your mind, and the excruciatingly simple protocol for clearing them.

Enter The Black Box: https://blackboxpod.com

Inquiries: contact@blackboxpod.com