2024 was a difficult year for me.

During the year, I lost a long-time client that contributed a large portion of my business income. It was the equivalent of Sterling Cooper losing Lucky Strike in the Mad Men series.

It hurt.

For months, however, I knew it was coming. And I did nothing.

It sent me into shock. And depression. But instead of rising to the occasion, I continued to do nothing.

Two days before I lost that client, my girlfriend of four years asked me to move out. Our relationship had been strained for weeks. I knew it was coming also. I did nothing about it. At least not during the window when doing anything would have worked. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too little, too late. She’d lost attraction to me months before.

I mention these events to illustrate the importance of action.

It’s easy to do life half-assed. It’s easy to do the bare minimum of the work we’re tasked with. Especially when that work is not a part of your personal identity and narrative.

It’s easy to do the bare minimum at interpersonal relationships. Especially when doing more means facing up to our character flaws and fears (mine being a tendency to do things half-assed.)

Life, at least a good life, is a verb.

It means doing something. It means doing anything until you know what the most important things are. Then doing those things. The do is the important part.

Looking back on 2024, I should have done two things with my lost client.

First, assuming I wanted to keep working with this business, I should have provided excellence. Somewhere during the 7-year relationship, however, I opted for the minimum level of service to maintain the contract.

Second, knowing that the contract was threatened, I should have taken action to replace the income before it was lost. Especially considering what a large chunk of my revenue it accounted for. It was negligence.

I should have done a lot more with my relationship also.

When we get complacent, we stop doing. We sit still. We don’t improve.

And that’s what I did. I stopped dating my girlfriend. I stopped taking her on small micro-adventures. I failed to invest in us. And I lost the attraction she had for me.

I became boring.

I say it all the time, Action Changes Everything. But sometimes, so can inaction. It’s just that the change is not the kind of change you want.

So for 2025, here are three actions to create positive change in your work and in your relationships.

Actions For Excellence at Work:

1. Regardless of what you do for work, develop a personal identity that’s based on delivering excellence no matter the task.

2. If you don’t love your work, take concrete steps toward delivering something you do love.

3. Stop planning. Start doing. Stop waiting. Start doing. Stop thinking. Start doing. It’s when you act that plans take shape, results build, and thinking gets very clear.

Actions For Excellence in your Personal Relationships:

1. Schedule at least two micro-adventures each month. They don’t need to be elaborate, but should break the monotony and routine and create shared memories.

2. Set a daily reminder to do one unexpected, thoughtful action for at least one of your personal relationships.

3. Schedule a monthly relationship check-in to openly discuss what’s working, what isn’t, and specific actions to maintain attraction and connection. For this, the Relationship Deck from Best Self can be a fun way to keep it informal, yet effective.

2024 served as a stark reminder that inaction can be as transformative as action - just not in the way we desire. Through the loss of both a major client and a significant relationship, I learned that excellence demands consistent effort and investment. The bare minimum leads to maximum loss. Life's quality is determined not by what we plan to do, but by what we actually do. Whether in business or love, the principle remains: action changes everything, creates opportunities, and maintains connections. Complacency, on the other hand, quietly erodes everything we value.

Work is your first and most fundamental act of belonging. It embodies your capacity to contribute to the world in a manner that serves others while ensuring your own well-being. If you choose not to work, or to underwork, you survive parasitically by relying on the efforts of others. However, if you embrace work, you act out your desire to be a part of your community.

Through your work, you establish your position within your community. Work is the fastest way to build status and create wealth. More importantly, work becomes the foundation for meaningful relationships - often including love - as you demonstrate your ability to cooperate with and contribute value to others' lives.

Your work is how you leave your mark on the world and build a lasting legacy. In the movie “Meet Joe Black,” Anthony Hopkins plays Bill Parrish, a media mogul who confronts Death (Brad Pitt) while contemplating his legacy. Your work becomes your mark in two ways: through the things you create and the way you create them. Parrish built a media empire, but his legacy was how he conducted himself—with integrity, wisdom, and genuine concern for others’ well-being. As he tells his daughter, “I want you to be swept away. I want you to soar. I want you to sing with ecstasy and dance like a dervish.” This is the essence of meaningful work—it’s not just about accomplishments; it’s about approaching each task with consciousness and care that inspires others to live more fully.

Yet work can also become a trap. For many, it's something we fall into without deliberation, an unconscious entry point onto life's automatic runway. David Brooks writes of this spiritual lethargy or acedia as "the quieting of passion, the getting along without care." Acedia manifests as a life that fails to arouse strong passions, instilling what Brooks calls "a sluggishness of the soul, like an oven set on warm." You might have a job and family, yet remain somehow disconnected from your own existence.

It’s like you’re playing the game of Life. You spin the wheel. You get married. You follow the path, the same path every other player follows. The only difference is who lands on which stop.

Like the Tolstoy character Ivan Ilyich, you follow society's prescribed path - marriage, career advancement, social status - believing you're winning at life while remaining blind to what makes life meaningful. In Tolstoy's story, Ivan realizes too late that his pursuit of propriety and position left him spiritually empty. He followed all the "right" moves, advanced in his career, maintained social appearances, yet never questioned whether this game was worth playing. Only in dying does he see how his life, though technically successful, lacked authentic purpose.

Jungian analyst James Hollis reports a patient once reflected: "I always sought to win whatever the game was, and only now do I realize how much I have been played by the game." This captures the moment of awakening when we realize how our pursuit of success through work has unconsciously shaped us, often leading us away from authenticity rather than toward it.

This automatic, unexamined life is what Soren Kierkegaard termed "philistinism" - the state of being a cultural automaton who does what's expected merely to fit in and get by. Ernst Becker, in The Denial of Death, expanded on this idea, describing how modern life offers us a deceptive security through its routines and limited alternatives. The philistine finds comfort in the trivial - the car, the shopping center, the predictable vacation. By keeping their gaze fixed on these daily patterns, they can live out their days with a dull security, protected from larger questions of meaning and purpose. They are outstanding at keeping up with the Joneses.

Hell, they are the Joneses.

The tragedy is not that you work - as work remains essential for meaning and connection. The tragedy is that you often let work become your unexamined master rather than your chosen path. When you unconsciously adopt society's prescribed routines and rewards, you risk becoming what Becker calls "immediate men" - those who imagine they have an identity simply by participating in culture's prescribed rituals, mistaking consumption for contribution.

The challenge, then, is to transform work from an unconscious current that carries you along into a deliberate practice that expresses your authentic contribution. This requires examining your relationship with work before it becomes what Brooks calls "a life over there" while you remain "over here."

True work - work that serves others while honoring your own nature - demands consciousness. It asks you to question whether you’re pursuing status and security at the expense of meaning, whether you’re winning at a game that slowly drains your vitality. The alternative to philistinism isn't abandoning work, but rather approaching it with awareness and intention.

How you speak about your work can reveal your relationship with it. Many choose to describe their work in verb form - "I write emails," "I keep books," "I sell cars" - because they haven't integrated their contribution into their identity. Others adopt the noun form - "I'm a physician," or “I’m a salesman”.

The key distinction isn't in the language itself, but in your conscious connection to the contribution you make. When you shift from seeing work as what you do to understanding its deeper purpose - like moving from "I write emails" to recognizing yourself as a writer sharing important ideas - your impact and satisfaction deepen.

This deeper connection to your work starts with examining your contribution - not just what you do, but why it matters. A physician trapped in philistinism might perfectly execute medical procedures racking up RVUs or revenue while missing their true role in reducing human suffering. A salesperson can hit every quota while forgetting they're helping people solve real problems.

The shift comes from consciously choosing your relationship with work rather than accepting cultural defaults. When you recognize your work as "I'm a writer sharing ideas that matter" rather than just "I write emails," you transform your contribution. This isn't about job titles or professional identity - it's about finding genuine connection to how you serve others through your work.

This consciousness helps you avoid the trap Hollis' patient described - winning at a game that plays us. Instead of being carried along life's automatic runway, you can approach work as a chosen path of meaningful contribution.

And meaningful contribution is what the world needs more of.

Courage is not limited to grand acts of heroism but is present in everyday decisions. Fear of failure and rejection often drive our choices, leading to self-preservation at the expense of growth. True courage involves confronting these fears, enduring discomfort, and developing the skills to overcome challenges.

In the summer of 1987, I was eleven years old and the youngest kid on my Little League All-Star team. Alan Slade was the coach, and he terrified me. He had a short fuse and didn’t like to lose. He wore a five-day-old handlebar mustache and a belly like he’d been pounding Budweisers since he was 12.

Coach Slade wasn’t the only one that scared me. The older boys did, too.

We were playing a team from one of the neighboring towns—a rival we don’t like losing to. Their pitcher was two years older than me, was bigger, and threw a hard fastball. Slade asked if I wanted to hit for one of the starting outfielders. I wasn’t confident I could hit the changeup, let alone the fastball. And if I couldn’t, there would be hell to pay with the older boys. I wasn’t afraid to get hit by the pitch. The physical pain didn’t worry me. It would go away. I was afraid of what the older boys would think if I didn’t hit the ball. I was afraid of failure.

I shrunk into the bench and declined—a moment of cowardice in my formative years.

Coach put Myron in to bat instead. The first pitch was a curve ball and Myron hit a slow grounder to the second baseman. The inning was over.

I stayed on the bench and didn’t get another chance to play. Coach Slade didn’t talk to me again. The tournament ended.

On the ride home my dad didn’t say a word either, except some short snark about my decision to be a cheerleader. It embarrassed him.

This is one of my first, and formative experiences with having to choose courage and risk failure, or cower in an attempt at self-preservation.

There would be more.

Most of the challenges we face in life, in one form or another, are like this. They can be reduced to either a fear of failure or a fear of rejection. And one often leads to the other. My fear of failing to hit the ball led to my rejection by the coach and team members. They couldn’t rely on me, not just to hit the ball but even to give it a try. At that point, I had no place in the group because my self-preservation instincts prevented me from contributing.

Often, when we think of courage, we envision heroic acts such as someone jumping in front of a speeding car to save a loved one or rushing into a burning building to rescue a trapped dog. We think of cops, special forces, and firefighters. And certainly, these acts all require courage to perform. But courage is much more than grandiose acts of heroism. Courage is part of almost every decision we make.

We have to meet the risk of failure and rejection with courage. That’s what courage is, actually — the meeting and tolerating the risk of failure and rejection. Risk elicits our fight or flight response in varying levels of intensity depending on the stakes of the challenge. Cortisol and adrenaline flood our system. It makes us feel uncomfortable. We want to get away from what’s making us feel this way. This is the will to self-preserve.

Courage stays in the discomfort of risk long enough to develop the skills necessary to overcome the challenge.

As an adult, what terrifies me more than anything are networking events. I’m an introvert and terribly so (this statement is a self-narrative I’ve created over the years - I’ll be writing about self-narratives more and more in the coming weeks). As an introvert, networking involves massive risk. Every interaction comes with the possibility of saying something awkward or dumb (fear of failure), or being rejected by who I’m trying to engage (fear of failure). My tendency then is to avoid networking events at all costs. This is a form of self-preservation.

But the benefits of staying in the discomfort of the event are massive. Social networks are the key to so many opportunities. Courage is the ability to stay in the discomfort until the challenge no longer feels risky.

In response to risk and fear, we have a choice. We can meet them with courage and a willingness to contribute. Or we can use our fear as a reason to not contribute and not move forward toward what is ultimately best for ourselves and others.

Stay in the discomfort of what challenges you most until you feel at home there. That is acting and living with courage.

I’ve always been interested in self development — “Improving my nick of time” — as Thoreau would say. The driving force behind this, for me, for you, for everyone, is a feeling of inferiority. . Not necessarily toward or compared to other people, but in that I am not all that I can be. So I read heaps of personal development books. I do all the things. All in an effort to overcome my feelings of inferiority. To Move from a perceived inferior to a perceived superior.

Courage is a requisite for improvement. Improvement always involves meeting one of life’s challenges.

There are two ways to face a challenge: with the courage to overcome it, or with a lack of courage, in which case one avoids the challenge and misses out on the growth it offers.

With courage, one faces the discomfort and perseveres. Meeting the discomfort of challenges develops skills that enable individuals to face subsequent similar challenges with increased confidence, knowing that they are not insurmountable. In this state of courage, we write positive internal narratives that guide our actions and form part of our identity. Confidence is a positive internal narrative. It’s the story that whatever the challenge may be, you have the skills to overcome it.

Without courage, one shies away from the discomfort of life’s challenges. In shrinking you miss the opportunity to grow. Confidence in meeting life’s next challenge is diminished leading toward further avoidance of new challenges. In this state, we concoct bad internal narratives that guide our actions and form part of our identity. But these narratives excuse and justify our lack of action.

Social life is a game of status. We each have a place on the status hierarchy in our society. Those who lack courage almost inevitably occupy the lower rungs of the hierarchy. They frequently criticize those with higher status or may criticize the status game itself as a means of excusing and justifying their own poor performance in the game. This is all driven by an internal narrative we developed to justify our gradual withdrawal from life’s challenges.

The implications are massive.

The most effective way to determine whether you approach obstacles with courage or shy away from them is to pay attention to what your internal narratives say.

Internal narratives often spill over into how we communicate with others. When I was establishing one of my businesses, I wasn’t making much money. I rented a room from a friend, so I lived there with him, his wife, and their three children. I was a few years older than this friend. To justify and downplay my less-than-ideal living conditions, I crafted the narrative that I was like this friend’s older, developmentally challenged brother. This became the running joke among us. However, I soon realized the significant impact this narrative had not only on me but also on my relationship with the friend. I was always in a lower status position because of the running joke.

That’s no joke. And it’s not something to laugh about.

Life is fleeting, and every moment brings us closer to its end. The opportunity to craft positive internal narratives lies in the present moment. The only way to transform negative narratives into positive ones is through action. By confronting our life’s challenges and persevering, we begin to write new stories about ourselves. These stories, in turn, tend to be self-fulfilling.