On Monday, I had a conversation on the podcast with Barry Ritholtz that stuck with me. We spend a massive amount of time in the financial independence space optimizing the math—the safe withdrawal rates, the tax optimization, the path to the ultimate net worth number. But the math is useless if the life waiting for you at the end of the spreadsheet is empty.
This week on Earn & Invest, I recorded a solo episode. I stepped away from the financial tactics entirely to share ten core pieces of advice I’ve gathered from sitting at the bedsides of hospice patients, interviewing hundreds of guests, and navigating my own identity shifts.
Here are the ten things:
1. Embrace pain. Pain is the admission price for living a full life, loving other human beings, and taking swings at big goals. If you spend your entire life trying to avoid pain, you will avoid living. Accept it as a signal that you are feeling deeply, trying new things, and doing what you are meant to do.
2. If you want a different outcome, do something different. You cannot expect your life, your achievements, or your feelings of security to change if you refuse to alter your daily habits. Stepping into a new outcome requires stepping out of your comfort zone and sitting with the discomfort.
3. You are already enough. You cannot “achieve” or “purpose” your way into feeling worthy. Attempts to prove your worthiness to the world through a bank account or a job title will always end up feeling hollow. When you realize you are enough right now, you can pursue your goals out of genuine excitement rather than a desperate need for validation.
4. Tell yourself a better story. You cannot change the facts of your past, but you have complete agency over how you frame them. Be the protagonist. Reframing your past as a hero’s journey rather than a victim’s narrative gives you the exact confidence required to thrive today.
5. Meet people where they are. Whether I am sitting with a hospice patient, talking to a friend, or watching my children make a financial mistake, I have learned that dragging people to where I think they ought to be never works. Be patient, meet them at their current stage, and remain available as a teacher for when they are actually ready.
6. Humility, vulnerability, and generosity are superpowers. True humility and genuine vulnerability foster deep human connection. Making generosity a daily habit will never fail to make your life richer.
7. Lead with intentions. Outcomes are almost entirely out of our control. Your intentions are the only things you truly own. If you approach relationships, writing, and projects with pure, helpful intent, you act with integrity regardless of the final result.
8. Momentum trumps skill. You have very little control over your innate talent, but you have total control over your actions. Small, consistent actions build a momentum that will carry you infinitely further than raw skill alone.
9. Remember, you are dust in the wind. In a universe billions of years old, a human lifespan is a microscopic speck. Realizing that our achievements, our podcasts, and our wealth will ultimately fade is deeply comforting. It is the ultimate permission slip to stop taking yourself so seriously.
10. Happiness is a practice, not a myth. Happiness is not a permanent state of being or a fleeting emotion you just have to hope strikes you. It is built by continuously practicing two things: meaning (narrating a positive story about your past) and purpose (taking purposeful action on what lights you up in the present).
Two Quick Updates
Today is the final day for the book pre-order raffle. My next book, The Happiness Code, comes out on March 9, 2027. If you pre-order the book and email me your receipt by midnight tonight, you will be entered to win 50 copies (a $1,000 value) to donate to your local library, share with your community, or give to your organization.
Taking Earn & Invest international. I am incredibly excited to share that I am heading to Australia and New Zealand to speak at the TribeFi event in Sydney and the upcoming KiwiFi event. If you are going to be at either event, please find me and say hello.
Which of the 10 things resonates the most with your current season of life? Let me know in the comments.