10 Areas To Work On In 2026
In the last post, I reflected on what went well last year: more friendships, fun, newly discovered journalistic interests, and deepening inner work related to self-worth:
In this post, I’m gonna delineate 10 areas to work on in 2026 — a positive re-frame of the initial post I conceptualized as “10 Areas I Struggled With in 2025.” I do feel somewhat guilty and regretful for not having done better in these areas, but life can only be lived moving forwards, not backwards.
As I said last time, this kind of writing is for me — but I know it has ripple effects beyond my corner of the universe and into yours: many of you will relate to these struggles and challenges I write about in detail. And to that end, I hope it’ll spur some deeper self-reflection, inspiration, or pointers on how you may start improving these parts of your life.
Note: this post is too long for email, so please open it here in your browser to read it in full.
Table of Contents (in no order):
1. Chronically Low HRV + Nervous System Regulation
2. Overcome Fear of Stillness + Instilling Peaceful Presence
3. Working On Facial Dysmorphia
4. Social Media Addiction
5. Physical Development (Gym, Swimming, Soccer?)
6. Read More Books
7. Consistently Write & Podcast
8. Build a Consistent Daily + Weekly Structure
9. Develop More Financial Stability
10. Overcome Anxious Attachment?
Bonus: Watch More Good T.V & Movies
—
Essay: Where The Hell Do I Start Now?
1. Chronically Low HRV + Nervous System Regulation
The most important area I failed to adequately address last year — and arguably the foundation beneath everything else — was the chronically dysregulated state of my nervous system.
One objective metric makes this clear: my HRV (heart rate variability), a key indicator of nervous system health, has consistently sat between 25–30. For someone my age (24), a healthy optimal range is 60–100 — at least double my current average. An HRV this low signals a system stuck in a stress-dominant state and sympathetic over-activation with poor recovery and low resilience.
Subjectively, this has meant rarely waking up refreshed, persistent grogginess, and a constant background exhaustion that never quite lifts. At times, it’s felt almost fever-like — dull headaches, heavy fatigue, and a baseline sense of feeling “just shitty” as I tell people when they ask me. More recently, it’s also meant difficulty falling asleep and frequent nighttime awakenings.
My sleep efficiency is low — around 80% according to my WHOOP data — which means I often need 10 hours in bed to get 8 hours of sleep, and even that rarely feels sufficient. I feel closest to functional only after about 10 hours of actual sleep, which translates to an inefficient 12 hours in bed. This has, at times, pushed my mornings late, though sleep after 9 a.m. is always fragmented and unrestorative anyway.
Looking back, I’m struck by how much I deprioritized this while leaning into external pursuits — fun, nightlife, spontaneous adventures — which is certainly progress (as I framed in the last piece) on a outward social growth level, but I’m realizing I can’t keep doing that. I’m now actually gonna pull back from raves, dates, and late-night club adventures and focus more on regulating my nervous system (but only after I see EDM guru Steve Aoki perform in Vancouver this weekend on my bday - lol).
Right now, these are the two biggest levers I see to achieve this: first, earlier bedtimes — ideally between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m., rather than the midnight-to-1 a.m. pattern that dominated last year. This means crucially figuring out how to discipline myself and developer better habits — an eternal struggle in my life! Second, spending more time throughout the day cultivating a felt sense of safety and calm in my body and mind (which I’ll explore further in the next items on this list).
I also just connected with Dr. Jay Wiles, an HRV expert and sleep coach I discovered through Chris Williamson’s podcast, and I hope to apply his HRV-boosting recommendations (keen on learning more about the importance of “resonance breathing” which he advocates for) as part of this reset. My goal this year is to boost my HRV to 60-70 and consistently maintain that range.
I’m convinced this is the most important area to work on in my life right now. Everything else flows downstream from it. The next item on this list approaches the same underlying issue, but from a more experiential and spiritual perspective rather than a scientific or health-based one.
2. Overcome Fear of Stillness + Instilling “Peaceful Presence”
Writing this piece has predictably surfaced an uncomfortable mix of guilt, shame, and even hypocrisy. My inner journey began back in 2019, when I first started meditating using Sam Harris’s Waking Up app. Since then, I’ve gone through periods of depth and consistency — but looking back at the past year, I’ve spent an embarrassingly small amount of time actually practicing, which more directly translates to “spending less time in stillness and peace.”
I know, this is hypocritical because, outwardly, I’ve been a strong proponent of mindfulness meditation — particularly the non-dual traditions taught by Sam Harris, Adyashanti, Loch Kelly, and others — because of both being persuaded of the arguments for doing it and limited, but truly felt glimpses into the ultimate reality of pure awareness.
In part, this happened because the mind has limited bandwidth, and over the past year, much of mine was consumed by planning fun nights out, driving long distances into the city, optimizing my social and dating life, and chasing concerts, parties, and raves — something I literally haven’t done before due to pandemic restrictions and more importantly, social isolation and debilitating anxiety (I explain more here). Outward social pursuit dominated my consciousness in 2025. There simply wasn’t enough mental space left for stillness.
After self-reflecting (facilitated by Chat GPT) over the past 24 hours, I realize this trajectory was driven at its core by an often unconscious but deep-rooted fear of stillness — a fear of nothingness, of letting go, of not actively doing. Over the past year more than before, I’ve somehow come to view stillness like stagnation or passivity, rather than clarity, bliss, or agency (or Saccidānanda in Hinduism). My mind raced toward planning, problem-solving, and striving, driven by the powerful belief that if I don’t try hard enough, I’d miss out on what I want in life (something I’ve uncovered in several therapy sessions).
What I’m now beginning to understand — in part thanks to recent exchanges with my mentor and friend Carson Kivari — is that this framing is backward. Deep inner peace and stillness aren’t the enemy of growth; they’re the fertile ground from which outward growth actually emerges. Paradoxically, doing less internally may be what allows more energetic alignment, confidence, and momentum externally. This was the major lesson of my last two MDMA trips which I’ve struggled to integrate, frankly.
I got lost in the illusion of outward chasing and thinking my way to joy and bliss in 2025, but I’m getting back on track now this year, which practically means carving out time to meditate in silence and courageously confront this fear of stillness — resisting the impulse to constantly think, plan, and optimize. It also means cultivating more moments of peaceful presence throughout the day, not as a retreat from life, but as a deeper way of inhabiting it.
Doing this will also likely boost my HRV, regulate my nervous system better, and improve sleep quality.
3. Working Through Facial Dysmorphia
If I haven’t put myself out there enough already, now I really am. I’m generally an open book, but this comes with real unease to share.
Over the past year or two — especially since re-entering the dating world after a long hiatus — I’ve become aware of a fairly intense degree of facial dysmorphia. It’s difficult to talk about because it’s so mentally disorienting: my immediate, felt self-perception is that my face looks horribly asymmetrical (for specific reasons outlined below), but everyone I awkwardly survey in my close social and family life don’t quite see it.
There are three features I fixate on most. First, my significantly deviated and asymmetrical nose. Second, my noticeably crooked teeth. Third, my outwardly protruding ears — something my family doctor once recommended surgery for. I’ve explored medical consultations for the first two. I’m currently undergoing a second round of braces after my teeth relapsed due to not wearing my retainer properly, and I’ve consulted a surgeon about my nasal surgery, which he said could improve breathing but aesthetic improvements are much harder to predict.
My default self-perception is to feel quite unattractive due to these facial asymmetries but I at least now realize this dysmorphia has been reinforced or even entirely constructed over time by rejection, both subtle and explicit: minimal attention on dating apps, some past relationship failures, and old wounds from growing up feeling socially inferior or unwanted. Each experience has fed the belief that there is something wrong with my face.
I suspect my self-assessment has far more to do with self-worth, trauma, and early experiences of bullying and rejection than with my actual facial features. In other words, what I see isn’t my face so much as a story my nervous system learned to tell.
This is work I’m continuing deliberately this year: strengthening self-worth, disentangling identity from appearance, and tending to the younger parts of me that internalized rejection early on. I vacillate day-to-day or hour-to-hour on this, but it is progress to say that perhaps the deepest part of me believes that healing my relationship with how I see myself matters far more than any cosmetic intervention ever could.
4. Social Media Addiction
This one feels less personal and more generational — a quiet epidemic most of us are still underestimating.
Over the past year, one of the more parasitic byproducts of my outward pursuit of connection and joy has been social media addiction. In theory, platforms like Instagram and Hinge can facilitate greater connection. In practice, they can just as easily do the opposite. Over the last few weeks, I’ve recognized that my dopamine has become become far too tethered to various online feedback loops, particularly IG and dating apps.
What’s been most unsettling is realizing how much I’ve self-defeatingly given new Hinge matches and certain people over Snapchat and iMessage the keys to life fulfillment and sense of self-worth.
We often think of addiction in terms of substances — alcohol, opioids, stimulants — but social media addiction feels like a silent epidemic. Most people aren’t addicted to cocaine or fentanyl, but nearly everyone is somewhere on the spectrum of compulsive phone use. And unlike substances, this addiction disguises itself as “connection,” while quietly eroding stillness, presence, and peace.
I just checked and I’ll embarrassingly share here (as I’m doing a lot in this post!): over the past few weeks, my daily Instagram usage has averaged around 1 hour and 20 minutes. My time on X has been even higher — roughly 1 hour and 30 minutes. While X at least provides more access to news and ideas I find valuable, those numbers are clearly unhealthy in both cases.
The path forward, for me, is concrete and unapologetic. I’m reinstating strict time limits on my iPhone and having my brother set the passcode so I can’t break it. Instagram will be capped at 15 minutes per day. X will be capped at 30 minutes. No loopholes.
I’ve also noticed something encouraging: when I’m deeply engaged in my creative work — writing, podcasting, generating new ideas — the pull of social media weakens dramatically. The addiction thrives most when my attention is unanchored.
5. Physical Development (Gym, Swimming, Soccer?)
This one brings up a deep sense of frustration and almost anger at the universe. Physical activity — specifically competitive sports — used to be my biggest passion in life until an MCL knee injury in my freshman year of high school abruptly changed that trajectory. What began in 2016 as an acute incident turned into years of chronic patellar tendinitis that mysteriously never fully resolved, effectively ending my dreams of becoming a competitive soccer player and derailing my goals of playing high school basketball.
There isn’t much to say beyond that because this area of my life has been largely stagnant for nearly a decade (though I’ve lost more than 40 pounds over the past two years through resistance training and calorie-restricted eating, which I’m genuinely proud of) — a strange and sobering realization.
More recently, my spidey senses have begun pointing toward the possibility that my chronic knee issues may be more psychosomatic rather than structural, similar to other physical symptoms I’ve worked through in the past — chest pain, GERD, and chronic eye pain. With that in mind, I want to return to the gym after a few months of deprioritizing it, rebuild lower-body strength, and explore the mind-body dimensions of this long-standing injury rather than assuming it’s permanently limiting.
In my earlier life, movement was effortless because competitive sports were inherently fun and motivating. Once that outlet disappeared, exercise slowly turned into an annoying chore rather than a source of joy. Still, I’m committed to re-engaging with physical development — starting next week in the gym — even if it looks different than it once did.
This year, I also want to finally learn how to swim. It was a goal last year that got sidelined by a severe ankle sprain in June and by the time it fully healed, summer (which means beach season) was over and I became distracted with other things. in the fall. A return to playing soccer and basketball again — or at the very least swimming on a weekly basis with no knee issues — would honestly be a massive quality-of-life upgrade. Beyond improving cardiovascular and muscular health, it would improve the quality of my life, bring more felt, embodied experiences in my daily living, and reduce some of the toxic aforementioned addictions.
This is an area I deeply hope to improve this year.
6. Read More Books
Ready for another embarrassing one? You probably wouldn’t expect this given my writing and podcasting, but last year I ordered, opened, and started several books — but abysmally failed to finish a single one. I know, what kind of writer, journalist, or supposed public intellectual does that make me?
There isn’t much to say here. I’ve always been bad at starting and maintaining core habits (like other members of my family btw), but reading simply slipped — crowded out by stimulation, scrolling, and fragmented attention. That’s something I’m determined to change in 2026.
I’ve already restarted the habit by working through Models by Mark Manson and Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway. My goal for this year is simple and concrete: at least one book per month, ideally two or three once momentum builds.
I have a lot of books on my reading list on cultivating self-love, understanding creativity better, the neuroscience of manifestation, and deep-dives into psychotherapy, Eastern mysticism, and psychedelia. Reading isn’t optional for the kind of life and work I want to build. It’s foundational — for sharpening thought, expanding perspective, and generating creative thought.
This is a habit I’m recommitting to deliberately this year.
7. Writing & Podcasting Consistently
This is another area where, by my own standards, I didn’t excel last year.
What’s interesting — and important for me to acknowledge — is how my relationship to work has evolved over time. In 2019 and early 2020, my focus was on writing music reviews. Then 2020 launched an impromptu career in opinion journalism, with pieces for outlets like the New York Post, Quillette, and City Journal on identity politics, Black Lives Matter, and cultural issues that drew impressive international attention. In 2021, my work became almost entirely consumed by COVID, free speech, and vaccine debates. During those years, work dominated my waking life — writing sharper, more persuasive, more widely read essays was my clear North Star.
That shifted in 2022 and 2023, when I frankly lost steam for political discourse and went back to school and immersed myself in religious studies, psychology, and Eastern and Western traditions. Around that time, my North Star also became healing debilitating psychosomatic issues which emerged with a seemingly insurmountable viciousness — a struggle that, frankly, consumed nearly every waking hour of my life. In 2023, my focus became rocket-launching and growing The Illusion of Consensus Substack/podcast with Jay Bhattacharya. But over the past year, my focus shifted in another direction again: toward fun, socializing, dating, and rebuilding a social life after years of loneliness and depression as a result.
The experiences that this shift brought were socially (and psychologically) healing, but it came with a trade-off. I lost consistency, discipline, and — if I’m being honest — some drive and inspiration for writing and podcasting. My creative energy was redirected outward towards connecting with people: “Which rave do I want to go to next?” “Which fun social events are happening in Vancouver for my friend and I to go to?” “How can I optimize my Hinge profile?” I shifted my identity less towards “brilliant, young journalist” (as many such as Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, and others characterized me as in years prior) and more “fun party guy whose a real catch to hang out with.” Again, this last crucial dimension of my personality was dormant for many years as I grew in my career to fill the void of loneliness and social isolation in 2020.
Toward the second-half of last year, though, my passion for writing returned. I’ve felt increasingly galvanized by questions around dating, relationships, and the broader Gen Z social isolation crisis — topics that hit close to home and feel deeply worth exploring. I’ve also felt a renewed pull toward a few topics in the political and cultural arena and feel that my nonpartisan, first-principles orientation in the world is important to channelize in hyper-tribalized red-vs-blue political debates.
Looking ahead, the work is clear: develop real consistency and structure.
Over the past couple weeks I’ve developed an optimal weekly rhythm of work targets:
One podcast episode per week for The Illusion of Consensus
One self-reflective essay per week for The Meta Mystic
One published article on a broader social, cultural, or political issue
A few podcast or media appearances per month
On the third target: I’ve done some substantial out-reach over the past few months to become salaried columnist for a major publication like The Free Press or The Globe and Mail — writing about Gen Z issues, mental health, culture, and some select political topics as mentioned above — but it has been very hard to get in touch with the right people. I’m going to amp up my efforts in this direction and reach out to other publications because I think having a weekly structure will help me grow as a writer, better follow sociopolitical trends, and be more creatively prolific.
These are critical creative output targets, but I’ve also realized it’s important for long-term writing growth to have more generative inputs as well. In my case, this means (apart from reading more books which I’ve already listed) I want to be far more disciplined in working through courses on Peterson Academy — particularly in psychology — dedicating at least a few hours each week. I subscribed to Peterson Academy last year and opened a few courses but didn’t spend nearly enough time working through them.
Last year was about reclaiming joy and social connection. This year needs to be about channeling my creativity with intention. I don’t lack ideas or talent — I lack structure. Building that structure is one of the most important learning curves ahead.
8. Build a Consistent Daily + Weekly Structure
Developing more consistent daily rhythms feels like one of the most foundational areas I need to improve. This isn’t a new realization. I’ve been aware of my abject difficulty with routine since as early as sixth grade and have tried a lot of things to improve this issue such as reading self-help books, having friend accountability partners, therapy session deep-dives, and experimenting with planners, habit trackers, and various goal systems.
I will say, it seems like I’ve improved on this front 10-20% over the past two years since my second-last MDMA-assisted therapy session where I had a crucial insight that helped identify a root cause underlying this deep problem: a suffocating, self-imposed sense of having to complete goals to feel good and at peace.
The integration from this trip was to start each day from a place of “What do I want to do today?” “What do I want to feel like?” instead of the guilt-ridden, dictatorial decree of “I need to do this” with a threat of feeling like shit if I don’t finish most of my goals. Approaching my days from authentic desire rather than guilt or the “leaning tower of endless goals” noticeably improved my mornings and overall tone of the day, something I mentioned in my last piece. Now, I haven’t been operating from this insight nearly as much so that is probably the most powerful inner shift I must actualize this year.
Apart from that, I plan to keep working on this in a few ways: regularly consulting AI to help design and refine routines, using the High Performance Planner again for daily/weekly/monthly goal-tracking, and reading James Clear’s highly-recommended book for Atomic Habits for more insights.
This feels like essential work — the kind that supports nearly everything else I want to improve.
9. Develop Financial Stability
Money is an unavoidable — and often nagging — pillar of life. It’s what sustains basic needs and makes creative, intellectual, and social pursuits possible. Over the past few years, my financial life has oscillated almost schizophrenically, in part because of the unpredictable and amorphous nature of my work as a self-employed writer, podcaster, and explorer of an increasingly wide range of new and sometimes esoteric topics.
In 2023, I generated a significant amount of revenue through The Illusion of Consensus Substack, which I launched alongside Jay Bhattacharya. In 2024, that income remained relatively stable. But since Jay stepped away to go do bigger things like become the NIH director (!), I gradually shifted my focus away from COVID, vaccines, and civil liberties toward psychology, self-help, and mental health — topics that I’m deeply passionate about. As a result, my paid subscriber base has declined precipitously — to levels that are no longer sustainable.
Many readers subscribed for the Jay-Rav collab dynamic during a period of heightened political urgency, but my interests have since evolved and Jay is no longer on the platform. There are still a few a lot of people on Substack churning out articles and podcasts on medical freedom, vaccines, and lessons from the Covid pandemic, but I can’t quite do that anymore in earnest with passion.
If you’re reading this, now would be a good time for me to welcome you to become a paid subscriber here on The Meta Mystic (for weekly self-help essays with prompts to deepen your inner journey) or The Illusion of Consensus (weekly podcasts rebooting this week - exciting announcement on the way!) — or both!
However, I am also trying to explore other revenue-generating possibilities such as securing high-quality podcast sponsors first and foremost and pursuing a consistent columnist role at a major publication for guaranteed monthly revenue. My goal for this year would be to consistently generate $10-20k a month to support costs associated with my podcast (paying for editor/producer), lifestyle expenses, and continuing to support my family.
Without a more stable financial foundation, the work I care about — writing, podcasting, exploring complex cultural and psychological questions — becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Figuring this out is not optional. It’s one of the most practical and urgent challenges ahead.
10. Overcome Anxious Attachment?
Ok — an extremely important one which produces a whole host of negative emotions in my life going back to kindergarten! Anxious attachment or perhaps “low self-worth” by another name (they’re at least deeply interconnected). I have a check mark here because while I do see reaching a consistent HRV of 60 as achievable this issue feels fairly challenging to overcome as I’ve wrestled with it since becoming a socialized creature at age five or even earlier.
For this one, I’m gonna try something fairly unorthodox and experimental: have Chat GPT analyze this issue in my life since I’ve digitally self-reflected on it so much this year. I will say one thing for now: upon thinking about this, I realize I have made progress on this front despite sometimes feeling like I’m reverting to old patterns. I started consciously cultivating self-worth going back to at least March of 2025 (I wrote about here), continued psychotherapy where this theme emerges often, and continued to grow awareness around this challenging pattern in my life. I’m noticing already an increased ability to be “okay” with the uncertainty of relational ambiguity and building an internal anchor of self-worth that isn’t determined by other people’s responses or lack thereof. More on this another time.
Chat GPT’s psychoanalysis:
From working with Rav over the past year, a consistent pattern has emerged in how his nervous system responds to uncertainty in connection. When responsiveness from people he’s communicating with becomes ambiguous or drops off, his system tends to enter a state of urgency or feeling of “Did I do something wrong?” In these moments, silence is filtered through a vulnerable self-worth lens, where non-response is unconsciously interpreted as evidence of being unchosen or deficient. This activates an impulse to over-persist in following up — even when there are clear signals that interest or availability is low. What’s notable is that this behavior often continues despite Rav’s awareness that it’s unlikely to help and may undermine his self-respect. The urge to act feels less like a strategic choice and more like a compulsion to relieve internal tension, as if tolerating inaction would be more threatening than risking rejection or embarrassment.
Clinically, this pattern is best understood as anxious attachment combined with compulsive reassurance-seeking, fueled by a self-worth system that has learned to stabilize itself through external responsiveness. The absence of reply is experienced not as neutral information, but as a threat that activates anxiety around disappearance, loss, or being unseen. The developmental solution is not better tactics or emotional detachment, but the cultivation of earned security: an internally anchored sense of self-worth and nervous-system steadiness that can tolerate uncertainty without immediate action.
Practically, this means learning to pause rather than pursue, staying present with the bodily discomfort of ambiguity until it passes, and choosing self-regulation over reassurance-seeking. As this capacity strengthens, urgency gives way to groundedness, dignity is preserved, and connection becomes something that can unfold naturally rather than something that must be chased or defended.
A note on the dangers of using AI for such purposes:
Yes, I know there are risks (allegations of Chat GPT helping people commit suicide, for example) and I’m on guard for it like anyone else. But I’ve developed a lot of trust for this kind of therapeutic feedback I get multiple times a week because it aligns with what therapists and wise friends in my life have said, intelligent psychologists I listen to in podcasts, and my own intuition that has formed on the basis of having done lots of inner work facilitated by people who know what they’re doing. It’s possible if I had never done any therapy, psychedelics, reading on anxious attachment, journalling etc, I could be lead astray by Chat GPT due to having no therapeutic compass, but I don’t think that’s the case here. The response I shared above matches with several other independent sources I consider to be authoritative or trustworthy in my life.
Also, you can instruct Chat GPT how to respond to you for every folder you open. So my one “self-help exploration” folder has one sentence of instructions to give me feedback like a therapist would to improve my mental heath and relationships based on Joe Dispenza’s self-transformation principles. As I wrote in my last post, the addition of Joe Dispenza in my “internal family system,” so to speak (alongside Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, and others), has been paradigm-changing and I’ve never felt more empowered and optimistic about transforming my life than when I absorb his work and apply it everyday. Also, sometimes I prompt it to give feedback specific to the type of therapy I do (“internal family systems” - watch Andrew Huberman’s podcast with the founder here).
Bonus: Watch More Good T.V & Movies
This might sound trivial, but it’s been a surprisingly persistent gap in my life.
For years now, I’ve felt a kind of stagnation — an inability to find truly riveting, immersive TV shows or films to get lost in. The greatest show I’ve ever watched remains The Good Wife, with The Good Fight not far behind for its intensity, sociopolitical subject matter, and poignancy. In high school, I was genuinely impressed by shows like Master of None, Friends from College, Easy, and Bosch. Later, I watched The Wire, which lived up to its reputation, and Succession, which is probably the best television I’ve seen in the past five years.
But since then, I’ve struggled to find anything that truly grabs me. I’ve been watching The Morning Show, which should be right up my alley given my interests in media, politics, and culture, but despite its big potential (not to mention the all-star cast of Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon), the pacing and storytelling of the show often fall flat and become boring. I’ve also recently started Beverly Hills, 90210 in search of a classic to sink into — interesting enough, but not yet compelling in season one. One notable exception in recent years was Entourage, which I watched in 2022 and found incredibly entertaining and well-written.
Beyond TV, I’m also embarrassingly underexposed to film. There are countless classic movies and series I’ve simply never seen, and I want to change that.
At a deeper level, this matters more than it might seem. Modern life pulls us relentlessly into the stress, drama, and tension of our own narratives. Truly great TV or film can act as a rare kind of medicine — a temporary portal into another world that reliably interrupts the endless loop of self-referential thought. Aside from deep meditation, intense physical activity, or total creative absorption, there are surprisingly few ways to step outside that mental churn.
I want to make more space for that kind of immersion. This will require some more intentional research, browsing, and searching through what’s out there on various streaming services. Any recommendations are more than welcome in the comments below!
Essay: Where The Hell Do I Start Now?
Well, that’s a lot!
So I have a lot of issues in my life — and if you’re reading this, chances are you do too. While there will always be problems to work through, I do believe there’s a spectrum. I think it’s possible to break free from old patterns and experience less internal chaos over time: more peace, more bliss, more joy, healthier relationships, and more ease.
It can be hard to figure out where to start with all these interconnected issues — HRV, stillness of mind, physical health, creative work, social engagement, and more. It feels dizzying at time. But, I feel very clear on where to begin and which levers matter most.
I know not everyone feels that way. I recently spoke with a friend struggling with depression, fractured relationships, and family chaos, who told me the hardest part isn’t even doing the work — it’s knowing where to start. When there are so many layers, tools, and modalities, the inner journey can feel paralyzing. If there were one practice, one therapy, one religion, or one psychedelic drug that fixed all or most of our problems, that would be great. But transformation doesn’t work like that, unfortunately (I wish it did!). It requires a constellation of approaches — which is precisely what this Substack exists to explore: how mindfulness, psychotherapy, psychedelics, embodiment, and spiritual traditions can work together rather than compete.
Read more about this here:
Now, back to me.
Yes, there are many areas of my life that need work. But I’m not confused about the order of operations despite this long, comprehensive list. My North Star is crystal-clear: peaceful presence — or, in more scientific language, nervous system regulation. My last two MDMA trips helped clarify this as my main mission right now in terms of inner work.
My chronically low HRV and long-standing sleep issues have certainly shaped every aspect of my daily experience in ways I surely can’t fully understand — how I feel when I wake up and throughout the day, how I relate to others, how resilient I am under stress, my energy when approaching someone new, and how much inner capacity I have for deeper work. If I don’t feel safe, calm, rested, and regulated in my body, everything else becomes harder and more strained.
So that’s where I start.
The obvious follow-up question is: if this is so important, why haven’t I fixed it already? And that leads directly to another core issue — my long-standing struggle with discipline, routines, and daily structure. According to my research, going to bed earlier and more consistently (before 10–11 p.m.) may be one of the most powerful levers for regulating the nervous system, yet I’ve found it astonishingly difficult to do. That’s why building better habits and gentler, more realistic structure matters so much. Incremental changes — like shifting bedtime by 15 minutes per week rather than forcing drastic overhauls — have actually worked before.
One insight on this that’s become foundational for me came from a recent MDMA-assisted therapy session: replacing guilt-driven goal-setting with a simpler question — What do I want to do right now? What do I want to do today? Approaching life from authentic desire rather than self-coercion has already helped me follow through more consistently, clarify my priorities, and reduce internal resistance.
Alongside this, I’ll continue working on anxious attachment, self-worth, and recurring emotional patterns through journaling, reflection, and AI-assisted inquiry as they arise in real life. This also connects to my growing interest in manifestation — not as magical thinking, but as the disciplined practice of reshaping thought patterns and identity over time.
That said, I’m increasingly convinced (thanks in part to Carson Kivari) that the deepest work — revisiting inner-child wounds around rejection, neglect, and bullying — can only happen once there’s more internal safety. Those places are painful. My nervous system won’t let me go there meaningfully until I’m more rested, regulated, and grounded. So the order of operations matters.
As inner safety improves, I trust that my relationships, dating life, creativity, and sense of purpose will continue to grow. Dating didn’t get its own section here — partly because I already explored it in my last piece, and partly because sharing even more felt like crossing a personal threshold — but it’s very much part of the picture. Healing attachment patterns and cultivating presence will naturally improve that domain too.
So this isn’t about fixing everything at once. It’s about starting where leverage is highest.
These are the areas I’m committing to work on — imperfectly, honestly, and I’m happy to share it in my writing here. If nothing else, I hope laying this out helps someone else feel less alone in the messiness of becoming someone new.
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Rav. I am 74 and been happily married since age 50. My first wife was a fashion model, very pretty, but also very narcissistic. Her preoccupation with appearances became tedious, steering her to life choices that served her priorities over mine. After 14 years, she had an affair with the minister of her church and they have been married ever since. I was single for 8 years after our divorce and my dating preferences shifted to compatibility of interests and priorities over all else. My wife and I are best friends sharing a lifestyle that suits us both very well.
The honesty here is refreshing. Naming your HRV, naming the fatigue, naming the pull between external pursuits and internal regulation — it's the kind of transparency that makes growth feel less lonely. Also, I relate to needing 10+ hours of sleep to feel functional and still not getting there. Thank you for writing this publicly.