The foundation of resilience

How to create a life worth forgoing sleep for

I’ve enjoyed writing this Substack so far, but the time has come for an evolution.

Because I want more.

It’s not that I’m getting greedy (I hope not), but that I feel there’s more I could be putting into my work . . . that I’m not making the most of what opportunity I have.

Writing isn’t by any means easy, especially without coffee, and though I tend to put about 3 or 4 hours a day into my Substack, I could easily find myself putting in 6+ hours a day if I change the way I go about it all, in turn reaching a lot more people, growing a lot faster, and monetizing a lot more rapidly.

Several months ago, I wrote a partly satirical post titled “How I plan to get rich and famous” in which I detailed, you guessed it, how I’m going to get rich and famous.

I’ve sort of followed through on the plan and I’ve sort of not.

Such is the nature of trying to succeed, I suppose . . . But after returning home and settling back into a healthy routine, I feel it’s time I resume this effort.

I’m not going to change the sort of writing I’ve been doing. But I am going to start adding to my regimen.

You see, I write in the morning (which is when I tend to expend those 3-4 hours) because that’s when my brain is most creative . . . when I can most effectively explore. Because, for some reason, it becomes very difficult for me to explore once the sun is high in the sky.

I’ve realized, however, that this doesn’t mean I can’t write in the afternoons. It just means that when I do write in the afternoons, I’ve got to write what I know.

And I think this might actually be a pretty good idea. Because what I know is more valuable than what I’m exploring—because I can actually help people (meaning provide value to them) with the things I know.

Now, making money from a newsletter is not easy. Indeed, building an audience and then converting those followers and subscribers to paying members seems a near-supernatural feat. But for some friggin reason, it’s the path I’ve chosen to walk.

And really, it is in fact my best bet at getting rich and famous. So I might as well go all in.

Don’t worry—I’m not going to start selling thousand-dollar personal coaching courses on “how to start your own Substack!” . . .

. . . considering the fact that I’ve not made any significant money from my Substack yet.

But I am going to be making much more of an effort to get this off the ground. I suppose this doesn’t necessarily mean I’m always going to write in the afternoons, nor that I’ll reserve one style of writing for one particular part of the day, but that I am, in an effort to provide more value, going to be selling more things, whether that be posting more paid posts, or putting forth books, or offering some courses.

Admittedly, I feel a bit like a broken record saying this, but I don’t care. Because this is how it goes. We try and then we fail and then we try and then we fail. And we repeat this process over and over again, and then eventually, after inching ourselves closer and closer to the winning formula, we get it right.

So consider today’s post my next effort at the winning formula.

What every person needs

What I want to talk about today is really simple. What I want to talk about today is something I know, something I am absolutely certain of, something that so many people seem to be missing these days: the foundation of resilience.

And really, it’s only right I cover this topic now, seeing this is sort of a fresh start, a new foundation for myself.

So, what is the foundation of resilience? What must people do to cultivate some sort of solid ground upon which to build a meaningful life?