Tomorrow, I'm turning 42.
I spent my 41st year becoming a new person.
The headline was getting cancer, which will rearrange your perspective quickly.
So I'm just really feeling grateful for 42.
Here's what 42 means:
More.
And when I say "more," I don't mean more motion or more noise — because I've already spilled so much ink trying to deprogram the obsession with excess out of everyone in my orbit.
I mean more signal, more depth.
More of the things that make a life feel lived.
More world. More creating. More writing and coaching. More time at JPMorgan where I get to build new things. More love for my wife because she's my favorite place on earth. More travel. More wonder. More study. More teaching.
I already have the best jobs on the planet: I get paid to help leaders be more human, and I get to write things that thousands of people have actually read. That still messes with my head in the best way.
I've lived so many lives already.
The kid in East Harlem, the runaway at the Days Inn. The marketer, the coach. The author. The facilitator. The person who beat fear long enough to stand on stages and talk about empathy like it's a power move — because it is.
I believe magic is just science we haven't understood yet.
And imagination is simply your brain practicing for a reality it hasn't had the courage to meet.
Harvard Health, HeartMath, the University of Colorado Boulder — they all agree: the brain fires almost identically whether you do the thing or imagine it.
That means we are all walking around rehearsing futures — whether we realize it or not.
So this year, I'm rehearsing a bold one.
To being awake to my own life. To using whatever time I have left like it's sacred. To building more impact inside and outside corporate walls. To loving harder. To teaching louder. To choosing magic on purpose.
42 is for expansion of all timelines and possibilities, and expulsion of all limits.
Let's go.