In the past two editions, I went deep on goal setting and the system I built in 2025 to hit my goals.

Today, I’m taking a different approach. I’ll share my favorite tool for thinking clearly and avoiding self-sabotage.

Avoiding Self-Sabotage

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with my friend Walt. He’s the leader of a local congregation and spends a portion of his nights and weekends helping people at his church. As we spoke, Walt shared four or five stories of people whose lives were derailed by adversity.

This got me curious. I asked Walt how many of those challenges were the result of poor decisions versus people simply facing hard circumstances. He responded without hesitation: “Oh, 90% of the challenges I deal with were self-inflicted. People usually create their own problems. Adversity doesn’t just strike through happenstance. People do dumb things and invite adversity into their lives.”

This is consistent with my experience. Of course, bad things happen to good people. But sometimes good people just act like idiots. As I wrapped up my conversation with Walt, I reflected on times when my lack of self-control got the best of me. Let me share how I almost destroyed the most important relationship in my life.

How I Almost Blew Up My Life

It was October 2007. On paper, everything was going my way. In the last 12 months, I’d moved to New York for an internship at Lehman Brothers, accepted a full-time offer, and gotten engaged to a woman who previously told me things would “never ever work out between us” (yes, she actually said that). I had two semesters left until graduation. My future wife and I would then enjoy a Summer in New York and move to Silicon Valley to start my job. Things had fallen into place far better than I could have planned.

I proposed in July 2007, and we set a date for January 2, 2008. During that 6-month window, she decided to spend a semester abroad in Jerusalem. I wasn’t excited about it, but asking her to stay wasn’t on the table. I was about to begin a grueling Wall Street career that would require her full commitment. We both wanted a marriage where we encouraged each other to pursue our dreams. I had to support her.

Her absence proved to be harder than expected. BYU can be a funny place. At the time, it seemed like there were only two groups of students—those who were married or those who were looking to get married. I didn’t fit in either group. My fiancée had a busy schedule, and a 9-hour time difference made coordinating phone calls challenging.

As time passed, I felt lonelier. Doubt started to creep in. I questioned whether she cared about me as much as I cared about her. In low moments, I told myself that if she really loved me, she wouldn’t have gone to Jerusalem. She would have stayed with me.

By mid-October, I was spiraling. Our conversations got more intense. In more than a few tear-filled phone calls, I questioned how she could have such a great experience while I was miserable. I thought about asking her to come home. But I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t fair to her. I was in a lose-lose situation.

My emotions were getting the best of me. We had many long talks that took her away from activities. I said things that damaged our relationship. I worried she might break off the engagement. I remember thinking, if I can just keep my mind straight for two more months, everything will be fine. We’ll be married and move forward with life.

My parents happened to be in town one weekend. They knew I was struggling, but they didn’t know the extent. I was feeling weak in every sense of the word.

I asked my dad if he’d say a prayer with me. During the prayer, he promised me that if I wrote down my thoughts and feelings each day, I’d find the strength to push forward. I wasn’t sure that would help, but he was my dad, and I trusted him.

I started writing in my journal every day. The first day, I wrote three pages. I had a lot on my mind and needed a place to pour my emotions. Most days, I only wrote a paragraph or two.

This exercise helped me process my feelings productively. I still missed my fiancée, but my raw emotions no longer clouded my view of the situation. I knew she loved me. It wasn’t her who needed to change. It was me. Within a few weeks, I’d grown mentally stronger.

She came home from Jerusalem a few days before Christmas. We were married on January 2. We recently celebrated our 18th anniversary. We’ve built a great life together.

And I almost blew it all up because I couldn’t keep my crap together.

The Power of Journaling

I recently re-read my journal entries from 2007. I barely recognized the person who wrote them. Some of the passages were painful to get through. I said things I know I didn’t actually believe. But that was the point.

We all need a place to process our emotions. For me, at that moment, it was a blank page. Journaling gave me a place to say everything I was thinking without consequences. Just because you think something doesn’t mean it needs to be said—especially to people you care about. Writing created distance between my emotions and my actions. It helped me see what was real and what was noise.

I often tell my clients that in our conversations, they’re allowed to say things out loud they don’t yet know if they believe. Journaling works the same way. It gives your thoughts somewhere to go so they don’t spill out in ways you can’t take back.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

• Most self-sabotage comes from unprocessed emotions, not bad intentions.
• Clear thinking rarely happens in the heat of the moment. You have to create space for it.
• Journaling gives you a place to be honest without causing harm.
• Just because a thought feels true doesn’t mean it is true—or that it deserves an audience.

Looking back, it’s clear that my raw emotions nearly cost me the most important relationship in my life. That season taught me that most self-sabotage doesn’t come from bad intentions, but from unclear thinking. Clear thinking rarely happens in the heat of the moment. Journaling gave me a place to slow down, to be honest without causing harm, and to separate what I felt from what was actually true.

The most important space you can create is the one between raw emotion and reaction.

What I’m Learning

• Over the weekend, I started reading Brad Stulberg’s new book, The Way of Excellence. I love this passage:
  • “Excellence is one of the most authentic and human experiences there is, and it must be earned. The payoff is a deep internal satisfaction, a genuine self-respect based on effort and competence, a sense of aliveness and resonance that you won’t find anywhere else.”
• There’s a lot we can learn from Sam Darnold’s journey. He went from being the No. 3 overall pick to being labeled a bust to ultimately becoming a Super Bowl champion. The lesson that stands out to me is owning your internal story.
  • Darnold was exposed to every kind of failure you can experience in the NFL. When asked about it after the Super Bowl, he said: “Those were part of my journey… there were some lows that sucked. But I learned so much from that.”
  • Lesson: The story you tell yourself and how you handle failure is far more important than any label. (Here’s the full post from Steve Magness.)
• I recently had two interesting conversations about books:
  • Friend 1: “Most authors can probably get their point across more efficiently in a long-form essay than in a book. I’ve read multiple books and later found a 45-min interview with the author that provided all the substance and would have saved me 10 hours of reading… Some people post about all the books they read as a flex. I often wonder, Was reading the whole book really the highest and best use of your time?”
  • Friend 2: “I have a goal of reading 50 books this year. For me, it’s less about the number and more about the time spent in solitude, learning from the greats. The more I read, the more stillness and peace I feel. Reading that many books creates a forcing function for me.”
  • Which friend do you resonate with?

Gratitudes

I’ve found power in regularly expressing gratitude, so I’ll continue the practice. I’m grateful for the chance I had to run with Conner Mantz. Mantz is an Olympian and the fastest American marathoner. This opportunity came at an event in Salt Lake City. We had a great conversation about the need to be a little delusional. Here’s a post I wrote about it.