How to Build Antifragile Mental Health

Struggling to take control of your mental health? This guide offers science-backed tools, personal insights, and vulnerable stories to help you build emotional resilience and become truly antifragile—so you can face life with strength, purpose, and clarity.

Today’s article is a little different from my usual pieces focused on sex, relationships, and D/s dynamics. However, one could argue that today’s topic pertains to the most important relationship you’ll ever have—the relationship with yourself. I’m a little late in publishing this, having missed Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, but the truth is these tools apply to anyone with a mind (psst… that’s you), and mental health deserves our attention all the time—not just for one month.

If you’ve ever met me in person, you’ll know I’m calm, friendly, and inviting—overall, pretty happy. That’s because I genuinely love my life. I really am happy and content most of the time. But I wasn’t always that way.

I remember being younger, walking along the sidewalk, and wondering what it would be like to step in front of oncoming traffic. I remember lying on my dorm room bed, staring at the ceiling with tears rolling down my face, drowning in thoughts of existential dread. I recall the pain, anguish, and despair I felt sitting in traffic on my way home from my first career job, feeling like the work I had done that day meant nothing. That I meant nothing.

Mental illness runs through my family. Nearly everyone in it deals with anxiety or severe depression. I watched my father attempt suicide when I was young. I saw my mother struggle with severe PTSD, mental breakdowns, and suicidal tendencies. As a young adult in my early twenties, I realized that if I didn’t take responsibility for my mental health, the likelihood of falling into the same patterns was high. I feared that one day it might grip me so tightly that I wouldn’t be able to bear my own existence.

Today, I want to share the tools I’ve used over the last decade to build not just stable mental health, but one that’s antifragile—meaning, the more it faces, the stronger it becomes.

I’ll present these tools in the order I discovered them, sharing openly how they helped me and why they matter. Some may not be right for you. Lord knows I tried many that just didn’t land. That said, I invite you to seriously consider each one as if it’s the first time you’ve encountered it—even if you’ve seen the concept before. You never know which one might set you free from the grip of those dark places.

Stop Being a Victim

I’m starting this list with the most confrontational tool you’ll have to face if you want to improve your mental health.

Consider this: two people can experience the exact same potentially traumatic event, yet one may be debilitated by it—suffering depression or long-term mental health struggles—while the other comes through still smiling. What’s the difference between these two people? The meaning they assign to the event, especially in relation to themselves.

Trauma is an emotional response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. All of us have experienced varying degrees of trauma as a natural result of coming into contact with the harsh realities of life. The problem arises when we allow that trauma to take away our power—when we feel like we have no control over our own lives and become victims of circumstances outside our sphere of influence. That’s when we begin to devalue our agency and, ultimately, erode our self-esteem. We start asking, “Why is this happening to me?” and fall into the trap of believing it’s because we’re somehow less worthy or less human.

Look, I get it. Everyone is dealt a shitty hand in life. Some people have it harder than others. Some systems are built to put you at a disadvantage. Life is unfair and unpredictable. Sometimes, terrible, ungodly things happen to good people.

I’ll spare you the details of my childhood for the sake of brevity (though you might already be painting a picture based on the intro). But here’s the truth: the details aren’t that relevant—and that’s the point. There are people who had it far worse than me, and people who had it far better. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about comparing traumas, because everyone has their own problems. Even if someone else might manage them easily, those problems can still feel insurmountable to the person experiencing them.

We all know what it’s like to face that kind of darkness—regardless of what it looks like.

So here’s the only question that matters: What are you going to do about it?

You can either let your circumstances control you, or you can rise above them. Your road to becoming the person you want to be might be longer, harder, and more painful than someone else’s. That doesn’t matter. You still have to walk it.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

• Some things in life are completely out of your control. You wish they hadn’t happened—but they did. They happened regardless of your presence. That means you didn’t cause them. Your existence wasn’t the reason they occurred.
• Even when someone hurt you directly, that harm was about them and their problems—not because you’re bad or unworthy. You are not less of a human being.
• As for the things that are in your control: you either directly contributed to your problems, or you were complicit in creating the conditions you claim you don’t want. This is where your agency lives. This is where your power resides. This is where you begin to reclaim your mental health.
  

If you can recognize even the smallest places where you have power, and take action within those places, your sphere of influence will start to grow. You’ll begin to identify and seek out the levers of power that give you greater control over your life.

I put this step first because if you continue to see yourself as a victim, you’ll always try to change other people or your circumstances. But you can’t—not really. The problems will persist. There is only one person you have the power to change: yourself. No matter what happens to you, you still have to stand back up, plant your feet beneath you, and walk the path.

Every tool I list from here on out builds on this mindset.

Exercise

I believe exercise is one of the best places to start when building better mental health. Not because of the powerful cocktail of feel-good hormones it releases (though those are great), but because it’s a visceral demonstration of reclaiming control—with tangible results you can see with your own eyes.

Growing up in poverty, you can probably imagine the kind of diet I had as a kid. As a result, I was overweight and had a poor self-image. I hated taking my shirt off. I was active—riding bikes and playing games with friends outside—but never engaged in any kind of structured exercise. That didn’t happen until I started playing football and lifting weights in high school. Only then did I discover how good it felt to really move my body.

When I no longer had access to a gym later in high school, I’d take long walks—great for thinking—and head to a nearby playground where I’d try to do pull-ups. Try being the key word, because I couldn’t even manage one at the time.

Things changed in college when I finally had access to a gym I could use regularly. What became empowering for me was designing my own workout routines, going to the gym 4-5 days a week, and seeing real progress in strength. I didn’t understand much about diet yet, so fat loss was slow—but building my squat up to 425 pounds did wonders for my confidence. It showed me that putting effort into solving my problems could lead to real outcomes, regardless of the circumstances I came from. I was making change happen—with my own hands.

I’ve now been working out for over a decade—strength training, cardio, mobility, conditioning. Whether it’s putting my body through the intense stress of lifting heavy weights or running up the side of a mountain, I’ve done it, and I’m confident I can do it again. Mentally, this translates into deep self-assurance: no matter the physical environment or its demands, I know I’ll be able to perform. These days, I go to the gym mostly for maintenance—and, of course, for those feel-good hormones.

If you’re looking for a simple but effective routine, I recommend StrongLifts 5x5. It covers the essentials of progressive overload and compound lifts, it’s easy to follow, and it’s free. It’s how I got started, and I’ve led two partners through the program—each of us saw real results. Despite how simple it is, I still return to it periodically to continue mastering the fundamentals.

Meditation

After graduating from college, I became aware of the overwhelming number of anxiety-inducing thoughts I was having. I used to be a big fidgeter—constantly bouncing my leg, biting my nails, and dealing with trembling hands. My thoughts were loud, invasive, and far from friendly. They were always worse at night, often keeping me up for hours. I would spiral and spiral with no end in sight.

I had never meditated before, but Headspace and similar apps were starting to gain traction around that time. So, I gave Headspace a try as a structured way to learn meditation. The onboarding sequence taught me the basics, and I remember feeling a surprising amount of relief during the first few sessions—mainly because I was breathing more deeply and learning to shift my body into a parasympathetic state.

After the initial 30 days, I stopped using Headspace and transitioned to Zazen, a form of Zen meditation. It helped me observe mental chatter and calm my mind, creating space between thoughts. More importantly, it helped me understand what not feeling anxious actually felt like—something I’d never experienced before. I kept up this practice, meditating just 10 minutes each morning for years. It had a profound effect on reducing anxiety and gave me a real sense of groundedness and calm. It showed me that I was okay, no matter what thoughts were running through my head.

Here’s the thing about thoughts: they’re probably what you identify with the most. You have a thought, and you instinctively believe it’s true—that it’s you saying it, and that it defines who you are.

But we have hundreds of thoughts every day. Many contradict one another. Some are helpful, others irrelevant. Some are uplifting, others harsh. When you start observing your thoughts with a bit more objectivity—not giving them so much emotional weight or tying them to your identity—you’ll begin to notice that a lot of them aren’t even yours. They’re echoes of programming you picked up from parents, family, friends, media, and society.

Your thoughts are no more a reflection of you than a slogan on a billboard in the middle of Wyoming.

The problem is, we often cling to our thoughts like they’re gold. That attachment prevents us from experiencing reality—where the truth of what’s actually happening resides. When you’re caught up in your thoughts, you misunderstand people, misconstrue situations, misread emotions, and misinterpret speech and body language. You create misery for yourself simply because the world doesn’t match the version in your head.

But the world doesn’t exist in your head.

Meditation teaches you to focus on the present moment and to stop grasping at thoughts. Many people try meditating and give up, thinking they’re “failing” because they can’t quiet their minds.

The goal of meditation is not to quiet the mind (though, eventually, that may happen to some degree), but rather to help you see that your thoughts are irrelevant to everything else happening in your awareness—that they do not need to be clung to.

Simple Breath-Focused Meditation

• You can do this anywhere, in any position—but if you want to make it a daily habit, choose a consistent spot where you can sit with your feet flat on the floor or with your legs crossed.
• Begin by briefly bringing to mind why you’re doing this practice. Why do you want to cultivate more awareness in yourself? Then, notice that desire—and let it go. You don’t need to hold onto it. You’ve set your intention. Now release it.
• Set a timer for 10 minutes. (Use a gentle alarm, not a blaring fire truck siren.)
• Close your eyes.
• Focus your attention on your breath. You can do this by feeling the air fill your belly or by concentrating on the bridge of your nose, noticing the air flowing in and out.
• As you breathe, you’ll likely notice thoughts flooding your mind—like football fans pouring into a stadium. You don’t need to fight them. Just notice them, and let them pass.
• If that’s difficult, intensify your focus by counting. Inhale, count 1. Exhale, count 2. Inhale, count 3. Exhale, count 4—up to 10. Then start again at 1.
• If you lose count, don’t worry—just return to 1. This counting technique helps shift your attention away from thought spirals and back to your breath.
  Over time, your mind will become less distracted. Eventually, you won’t need to count at all. You’ll simply notice a thought, and let it go.

Meditation is a powerful example of how a small daily practice—something fully within your control—can have a profound impact on your overall well-being. Pairing exercise and meditation was exactly what I needed to start gaining back my agency. With those foundations in place, I had the confidence to begin tackling the bigger issues.

Clean Your Diet

Diet is an incredibly sensitive subject. The sheer amount of contradictory information out there, combined with the emotional attachments we form with food—and the belief that we all know how to eat because, hey, we all eat—makes this one of the most complex areas to address.

I’m not going to tell you what the “best” diet is. You know why? Because that would take your agency away from you. I can’t fully express the immense sense of empowerment you feel when you finally discover what foods work best for your body—foods that leave you feeling strong, healthy, and proud of the way you look.

Yes, you’ll have to sift through an overwhelming amount of crap. And yes, personal experimentation will be frustrating at times. But it’s entirely worth it.

I first started paying attention to my diet when I left home for college. For the first time, I had control over what was being bought and brought into the house. I immediately stopped eating sweets and drinking soda—those were obvious choices that didn’t align with my goals. But it was college, so I also did my fair share of dirty bulking with poor food choices and wrecked my liver with alcohol.

It wasn’t until after college that I really started taking the concept of calories in vs. calories out seriously. I began tracking and weighing my food and, for the first time, actually learned what I was putting into my body. And it worked—I started losing weight. Over a couple of years, I went from 200 pounds to a shredded 145. I finally understood what people meant when they said, “Abs are made in the kitchen.” As you can imagine, this did wonders for my self-image and confidence. Before that, I had never considered myself attractive.

But then came the harder lessons—specifically, the deep connection between food, gut health, and mental health.

I began having severe abdominal pain due to a damaged microbiome—pain so bad that I’d sometimes be bedridden, curled up and clutching my stomach. That’s when I started exploring elimination diets. First, I cut out processed foods. Then I eliminated gluten, nightshades, FODMAPs—you name it. Eventually, I had to strip it all the way down to eating strictly meat.

And during that phase? My gut healed. My acne and eczema cleared up. My body ached less. My seasonal allergies all but disappeared. And, most shockingly, my mood significantly improved. I was amazed.

Over the course of a few years, I began reintroducing foods one by one while slowly bulking back up to 170 pounds. Through that process, I became deeply attuned to how each food affected my body—how it felt, how it looked, and how it influenced my mood.

If you want a quick primer on how your mental health and diet are linked, I recommend reading Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health.

Talk Therapy

Traditionally, talk therapy is done with a licensed therapist. But at its core, it’s simply about speaking with someone skilled enough to reflect your thoughts and beliefs back to you—so you can check your own self-awareness against what they see. The truth is, we’re often blind to how irrational, negative, or self-destructive our own thinking can be. But with the right person, this kind of work can be done outside a clinical setting.

I’ve completed two ICF certification programs—one grounded in positive psychology, and the other in neuroscience. As part of those programs, I did countless practice sessions, much like therapy students do clinical hours. I spent a lot of time coaching and being coached, essentially engaging in talk therapy with my peers. Those sessions helped me examine my own beliefs and compare how I saw myself with how others perceived me.

I bring this up because I believe it’s far more powerful to learn and embody the skills of a therapist than to rely entirely on one. Doing so gives you the ability to meet your own emotional needs and maintain your mental health independently. Of course, having an experienced outside perspective can be incredibly helpful—but you can meet that need in other ways, too.

Even during a six-month stint of traditional therapy, I found that the tools and theories my therapist recommended were ones I was already deeply familiar with. What I truly needed was validation that I was on the right track.

Just like with food and your body, I believe it’s worth your time to study subjects like psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, biology, and sociology—anything that helps you understand how your mind works. Yes, it’s a lot of dense material. But if you want to be free from your mind’s unconscious control over you, it’s worth learning the manual.

And if you’re not up for diving into that material yourself, then yes—consider finding a therapist.

CBT

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that helps individuals identify and change negative or unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. It’s a structured, goal-oriented approach that’s been shown to be effective for a wide range of mental health concerns—including depression, anxiety, stress, and grief.

What’s fascinating about CBT is how closely it aligns with the principles of Stoicism and the Socratic method. All three emphasize the power of thought in shaping our emotions and actions, and all use questioning as a tool to examine—and potentially change—those thoughts.

After years of practicing meditation and mindfulness, I began to clearly recognize negative thought patterns. CBT gave me a practical framework to reframe those patterns and create more constructive ones. I even became hyper-aware of the language I used in daily conversation, editing words that reinforced negative thinking. There was a phase where I’d stop myself mid-sentence and deliberately change how I was going to express something. I called it “mental jiu-jitsu.”

A great place to begin this kind of work is Byron Katie’s The Work—a simple, self-inquiry process using four powerful questions to challenge stressful thoughts and beliefs:

1. Is it true?
   This question invites you to examine the validity of the thought causing your stress.
   
2. Can you absolutely know it’s true?
   This challenges the certainty of your belief and opens the door to doubt.
3. How do you react—what happens—when you believe that thought?
   This explores how the thought impacts your emotions, behaviors, and relationships.
4. Who would you be without that thought?
   This helps you imagine yourself free from the belief, often revealing a more peaceful and empowered perspective.

The Work also includes a “turnaround” process, where you explore the opposite of the original thought and examine how that might also be true—or even truer—in your life. By repeatedly questioning and turning around stressful beliefs, The Work helps cultivate greater peace of mind and freedom from suffering.

This was all incredibly effective for me—until I hit a deeper insight: I could use reframing to make myself believe anything. For intelligent and introspective people, that realization eventually emerges. Your mind won’t just accept new beliefs forever—not without evidence and validation from the outside world that those beliefs are actually “true.”

Bright Lines & Building Habits

I was first introduced to the concept of Bright Lines by Tom Bilyeu in 2018. The idea is simple but powerful: create clear, unambiguous boundaries with yourself around the habits that support the person you want to become. This approach places internal motivation front and center, giving you a solid reason for continuing the behavior while making it obvious whether you did it or not.

For example, you might set a boundary with yourself: I will work out three days a week, no matter what. Now, sure—that’s a little extreme. Sometimes you need rest days. But the power of a “bright line” lies in its clarity. You either did the thing or you didn’t. There’s no wiggle room, and that can be incredibly effective for holding yourself accountable.

What makes this really powerful is pairing it with identity. The key phrase is: “I’m the kind of person who…” followed by the habit you’re trying to form.

So, continuing our workout example: “I’m the kind of person who goes to the gym three times a week.” That single shift turns a behavior into a part of who you are. Once you adopt the identity of someone who works out regularly, your brain begins filling in the gaps: What else would that person do? Maybe they eat clean. Maybe they don’t drink much. Maybe they prioritize sleep.

Over time, when a temptation or obstacle comes up—say, you’re thinking about skipping a workout—your brain pushes back: That’s not who we are. And more often than not, you’ll follow through.

This identity shift is especially important when your mental health is struggling. In those low places, your internal identity may be rooted in being a victim, a screw-up, or someone who can never overcome depression. Bright lines and identity-based habits help rewire that. You start showing your brain, through consistent action, that there are other ways of being—and that you’re becoming someone new.

Gender-Specific Groups

Of all the tools on this list, creating a men’s group was probably the most impactful.

A men’s group is a space where men gather on a regular schedule to share life experiences, express emotions, grow personally, and support one another in brotherhood. It’s a container for honesty, reflection, and presence—often rare in male friendships.

About seven years ago, while hosting my podcast, I interviewed a guest who told me he’d been part of a men’s group for years and said it was the best thing he’d ever done. That struck a chord. I thought, I want that. So I started searching for something like it in my city. Nothing. The results were minuscule. But I was determined—so I decided to create my own, using some basic starter materials from the EVRYMAN model. The only problem? I had no idea who would want to join. I figured any guy I asked would think it was weird.

Around that time, I met a fellow entrepreneur on a plane during a business conference. We connected instantly through our shared interest in personal development. Taking a leap of vulnerability, I asked if he’d want to join me in starting this thing. Turns out, he’d also been looking for a sense of brotherhood. Our first meeting was just the two of us, sitting in a reserved room at the public library. And it was powerful. We were both amazed at how cathartic, humbling, and empowering it was to open up about our inner worlds—especially to another man we barely knew.

The next week, I invited another guy I’d met during a business course the year before. The library was closed, so we met at a nearby coffee shop. At the start of every men’s group, we’d begin with 10 minutes of meditation to transition from daily life into the sacred space we were creating together. I remember feeling anxious—three guys sitting in the middle of a café, eyes closed in silence. We probably looked strange. But it didn’t matter. We were in it together.

One by one, I invited more men. Over the years, we met weekly for 2–3 hours, sharing everything—fears, insecurities, goals, dreams, relationships, wins, and failures. Most importantly, we explored what it truly meant to be a man. That group lasted seven years. Many men came and went, but a few stayed from the beginning. These were the men who stood by me through dozens of life events: my mother’s disappearance and breakdowns, my marriage and divorce, quitting my career to become an entrepreneur (and repeatedly failing), buying a home, moving across the country, starting a nonprofit, exploring my sexuality through kink, and more.

To this day, I could call any one of them—and I have—and they’d drop everything to help however they could. I brought together strangers and turned them into brothers.

We often think we’re alone in our struggles. That our pain is unique. That no one else could understand what we’re going through. When we’re depressed or overwhelmed, our instinct is to isolate. But the best thing you can do—especially when you feel like turning away from the world—is to turn toward someone. To be vulnerable. Especially with those who can relate.

As an only child with limited time around my father, I didn’t grow up with a strong sense of masculinity. But being in a group with other men—each grappling with their own ideas of manhood—gave us a space to challenge, reflect, and grow together. We’d try on values and behaviors, test them in the real world, and report back the next week. The greatest validation we got? It almost always came from our partners saying something like, “I don’t know what you’re doing in that men’s group, but keep doing it.”

So many of my emotional, social, and leadership skills were forged in that group. It fundamentally changed the way I show up as a man.

And just because it’s called a men’s group doesn’t mean this type of space isn’t just as powerful for other genders. One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we got from women was how much they wished they had something like it—a sisterhood. A few years ago, I encouraged a partner at the time to start one. Like me, she invited women she admired. Today, that sisterhood is thriving. Every time I see her IG stories filled with love and support from her circle, I smile.

You don’t have to bear this life alone.

Metta or Loving-Kindness Meditation

If it’s not obvious by now, I’m no stranger to doing the work required to become the person I want to be. But like many people, the driving force behind that work wasn’t always pure. Too many people approach personal development from a place of self-hatred. I was no different.

What’s interesting is that as you work on yourself, you’re likely becoming someone you can be proud of. But pride and love are not the same thing. Loving yourself isn’t about what you accomplish or the circumstances you find yourself in—it’s about recognizing and embracing the immutable part of yourself that remains worthy of love, no matter what.

If you don’t learn to love yourself as you are, no amount of achievements will ever be enough. You’ll reach milestone after milestone, change countless things about yourself, and still find flaws to fix—endlessly trying to fill an ever-expanding void with more “personal development.” While I wholeheartedly advocate learning new skills and becoming more effective in life, I do not advocate self-loathing as your driving force

For me, struggling to overcome my deepest insecurities—believing I wasn’t enough and that I didn’t matter—led me to a powerful shortcut to self-love: loving others first.

Specifically, I trained myself to stop judging people—for anything.

There’s a crucial difference between judgment and discernment:

• Judgment is based on moral or social norms, labeling people or actions as “good” or “bad.”
• Discernment is about assessing the effectiveness of someone or something in achieving a specific outcome.

The way you judge others is the same way you’ll inadvertently judge yourself. If you go around labeling people as bad, evil, or unlovable for their actions, at some point, you’ll apply those same labels to yourself. But if you start seeing people as simply less skillful at navigating life’s challenges, you create space to separate who they are from what they do.

And this is massively important.

When you stop judging others, you eventually stop judging yourself. You begin to see yourself as a human being, deserving of love just like anyone else—no matter what you do or don’t accomplish.

You are enough, just as you are, to be loved.

What’s funny is that the more you extend love and understanding to others, the more they’ll reflect it back to you. This external affirmation will reinforce the most important love of all—the love you have for yourself. 

That said, this shift isn’t always easy. So one powerful practice to begin this journey is Metta meditation, also known as loving-kindness meditation. It’s a simple but profound exercise in training the heart to open.

The practice involves silently repeating phrases of goodwill—first toward yourself, then toward others, and eventually toward all beings.

For example:
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be safe.
May I live with ease.

Once you’ve extended those wishes to yourself, you move outward:

• First to someone you love
• Then to someone you feel neutral about
• Then to someone you find difficult
• And finally, to all beings everywhere
  

Metta meditation gently shifts your emotional baseline. Over time, it replaces judgment with compassion, resentment with understanding, and disconnection with a sense of shared humanity.

Minimal Media Consumption

One of the decisions I made when I first went to college was to stop watching TV. It was an easy choice—I didn’t want to pay for cable like I had at home. Of course, that didn’t stop the force that was my phone, packed with social media apps that flooded me with media far more effectively than any TV ever could.

The effects of social media on neurohormonal balance are constantly being discussed. What’s talked about less, however, is how social media amplifies mimesis—the imitation of desires.

Mimetic desire, a concept developed by René Girard, describes how human desire is fundamentally social and imitative. Rather than having purely innate wants, people tend to desire what others desire. This makes desire a copied behavior, often modeled after someone else's cues. As a result, people end up in competition and rivalry as they chase the same goals or objects as their “models.”

Social media supercharges mimetic desire. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok flood your awareness with curated, idealized snapshots of life. This constant exposure can cause you to unconsciously compare yourself to others and adopt their desires, creating a cycle of dissatisfaction and a lingering sense of lack.

During one of my failed attempts at entrepreneurship, I spent a significant amount of time on social media—and I noticed how awful it made me feel. It almost never brought me joy. So, I deleted all of my accounts and vowed never to build a business that relied heavily on social media presence or short-form content.

Looking back, I realize social media had stunted my ability to think critically for myself. It had subtly driven me to adopt the beliefs, views, and goals of others. I was caught in constant comparison, not realizing how unnatural it is to be bombarded with a 24/7 highlight reel of hundreds of other people’s lives. I saw how desperately I’d been seeking validation from people whose opinions didn’t actually matter to me—yet the illusion that they did was powerful.

I stayed off social media for about three years. It was incredibly peaceful. Sure, I got some strange looks when people asked for my Instagram and I told them I didn’t have one. But the clarity and stillness it brought to my mind were more than worth it.

Eventually, I came back to the platforms, mostly because it’s incredibly difficult to navigate modern social life or build certain professional networks without them. But I returned with a bright line: I am a creator, not a consumer. I only create what I want—content that reflects my values and voice—not what’s mimetically driven or algorithm-approved.

These days, I access social media only on my computer. I don’t have any of the apps downloaded on my phone. If I need an app temporarily for a specific task, I install it, do what I need, and then delete it again. I focus almost exclusively on creating long-form content—work that takes time to consume, invites reflection, and delivers meaningful value. I want my content to nourish, not offer empty calories.

Of course, I’m not perfect. These platforms have teams of engineers working to keep us addicted—and sometimes I get caught in the doom scroll. And when I do, I’m reminded, once again, just how awful I feel afterward.

Defining Your Values

When you finally quiet the noise of everyone else telling you what you should want in life, you create space for one of the perennial questions to emerge with clarity:

What do you want?

Simple to ask. Hard to answer.

Why? Because:

• You’ve been oblivious to who you really are.
• You’ve been doing what others expect of you.
• You’ve been afraid to admit what you want because the gap between where you are and where you want to be seems insurmountable.
• You’ve been avoiding the responsibility of doing the work.

There have been several moments in my life when I’ve intentionally cut myself off from outside influences in order to silence the noise and start listening to the faint but persistent answer to that question. Some of these moments include quitting my job, cutting ties with disruptive family members, deleting social media, moving across the country, getting divorced, and selling all my belongings to travel in a van.

Starting in 2019, I created a document outlining everything I wanted in life across its various domains. As time went on and I learned more about my true desires, I returned to that document again and again to update it. Anytime I felt destabilized, lost, or hopeless, I’d open it and use it to reorient myself.

After a few iterations, I realized that defining what I wanted wasn’t enough—I also needed to define who I wanted to become in the process of pursuing those desires. That’s when I started clarifying my values.

Values are the fundamental beliefs that guide your behavior and choices. They are the principles you hold as important—your internal compass—and they shape your decisions and actions.

Let’s consider something simple: money.

There are countless ways to acquire it. For example:

• Employment
• Entrepreneurship
• Investing
• Stealing
• Extortion
• Selling kidneys on the black market...

Some of those options probably resonated with you more than others. That resonance is a clue—a signpost pointing to your values.

Values determine which strategies you’re willing to use to achieve your vision. Your actions are always downstream of your values. If you don’t consciously know what your values are, you may end up choosing strategies that conflict with them—and that internal dissonance will create problems sooner or later.

How to Define Your Values

1. Use a website like personalvalu.es (or any similar tool) to brainstorm values that resonate with you.
2. Narrow your list to fewer than ten—ideally five to seven.
3. Rank them from most important to least important. This will help you when values come into conflict.
4. Clearly define each value in your own words. What does it actually look like in action?
5. Let your list sit for a few days, then revisit it. Do these values still ring true? Adjust if necessary.

What’s fascinating about defining your values is that, once you’ve done it, you stop caring what most people think about you. Their measuring sticks no longer apply—because you’re not playing the same game. You’re not chasing the same goals. You’ve opted out of the constant comparison trap.

Instead, you realize the only person you’re ever truly competing with is the idealized version of yourself you’ve created in your own mind.

(Which, one day, you’ll have to let go of too—but we’ll get to that later.)

Safeguarding Your Sleep

Sleep and mental health have a bidirectional relationship—meaning changes in one will affect the other. If you're getting poor sleep, your ability to regulate mood, think clearly, and manage stress becomes significantly impaired. Those poor mental states then feed back into even worse sleep, and the cycle continues.

If you want to learn more about the connection between sleep and mental health, I highly recommend Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker.

I used to have horrendous sleep patterns. It would take me an hour or two just to fall asleep. I’d finally drift off, only to wake up an hour later—then spend another couple of hours trying to fall back asleep. I was constantly groggy, tired, and living in a cloud of brain fog during the day.

And I’ve seen firsthand how devastating poor sleep can be over time. Because of my mother’s PTSD, she sometimes goes days without being able to sleep. In extreme cases, she’s experienced sleep-deprivation-induced psychosis. It’s terrifying, and it’s shown me just how critical sleep is for our mental stability.

Over the years, I had to learn proper sleep hygiene through trial and error. The habits that made the biggest difference for me were:

• Using dim or red lights in the evening
• Staying off my phone and social media a couple of hours before bed
• Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day
• Avoiding food for at least three hours before bed
• Keeping the room cool—between 65–68°F
• Using cooling pad technology like Chilipad
• Sleeping alone, and not letting the dog on the bed

I like to joke with people in my local scene that I’m an old man who loves getting to bed early. I rarely go to late-night events—not because I don’t enjoy them, but because I know how impaired I’ll be the next day. Of course, there are exceptions—special occasions, meaningful connections—but when it comes down to a choice between social ridicule or restorative sleep, I’ll pick sleep every time.

Journaling

Journaling helped me build a deep sense of self-awareness. I didn’t use prompts—I just free-wrote every morning after breathwork and meditation. I also carried a small Moleskine notebook with me to jot down ideas and thoughts throughout the day.

What I noticed was this: writing my thoughts down helped me see them more clearly—and helped me realize how often I was thinking the same things over and over again. Patterns became obvious. Beliefs I hadn’t questioned revealed themselves. Journaling gave me a mirror.

I journaled consistently every day for 3–4 years. Eventually, though, I stopped because I noticed that journaling in the morning would often spark thought spirals for the rest of the day. I’d end up ruminating on what I had uncovered.

Still, I carry a Moleskine notebook to this day. It’s one of my favorite tools. If I catch myself looping on a thought—or obsessing over what seems like a great idea—I write it down. Sometimes the idea really is great. Other times, once I’ve written it out, I realize it’s not that good and the thought loses its grip. This is especially useful for intrusive thoughts that try to hijack your mind right before bed.

Sunshine

I grew up in Washington State, where it’s dark and gray for much of the year. I didn’t realize how much seasonal affective disorder (SAD) had impacted me until I moved to Texas—where there are about 300 days of sunshine each year.

Within the first week of moving, I noticed a subtle but consistent shift in my mood. It was as if my emotional baseline had bumped up a notch. Nothing huge—just a steady, noticeable lift.

It seems like such a small thing, but the effect was significant.

Now I try to spend as much time outdoors as possible. I eat most of my meals on the porch. I work outside when I can. I go shirtless in the sun whenever possible.

If you’re looking for the quickest and easiest ROI for your mental health: Go outside. Get some sunshine.

Exposure Therapy & Doing Hard Shit

Here’s where the rubber meets the road in making your mental health antifragile. The truth is: life will give you challenges—some universal, others unique to you. No one escapes this. When those challenges come, you have two choices: be debilitated by them or overcome them and become more confident in yourself.

I’m absolutely an advocate for mental health care and doing what you need for self-care. But I’m not an advocate for coddling yourself or avoiding life’s difficulties. In fact, I believe in measured and deliberate exposure to hard situations to build strength, resilience, and courage. In other words: do hard shit.

One tool for this is exposure therapy—a form of cognitive behavioral therapy designed to help you confront and overcome your fears. The idea is simple: gradually and repeatedly expose yourself to what causes anxiety in a safe, controlled way.

Let’s say you have social anxiety. You could work your way up using a ladder like this:

1. Sit alone in a large park where others are nearby.
2. Sit there with one friend.
3. Sit there with a group of friends.
4. Sit alone in a busy, crowded space.
5. Sit there with one friend.
6. Sit there with a group of friends.
7. Talk to one stranger in that crowded place.
8. Talk to a group of people.
   Go to a high-energy social event—like a concert—and strike up conversations with strangers.

Each step is a small exposure. You face your fear, discover you survived, integrate that learning, and build confidence for the next rung. The power in this approach is that you control the pace and intensity. Contrast that with when life throws you into the deep end unexpectedly—you might not be ready.

And this doesn’t just apply to specific anxieties like social fear. You can use it to train for life in general.

For example, I used to take 10-minute cold showers every morning. In Washington winters, that water is brutal. But that was the point—it made me anxious, and I didn’t want to do it. I trained myself to do it anyway and stay calm in the process. I did the same in saunas, staying until I reached the edge of my comfort threshold—then forcing myself to stay a little longer. Over time, these physical practices of calming my nervous system translated into real-world situations with much higher stakes:

• Having hard conversations
• Making high-leverage decisions
• Exploring vulnerable parts of myself
• Trying things that scared me

By desensitizing your fear response in low-stakes settings, you build readiness for higher-risk moments.

That said, this isn’t about punishing yourself or proving you're not weak. You’re not degrading yourself. Think of this as training like an athlete: Athletes push themselves hard in practice to grow their capacity—then they recover. You can’t go 100% all the time. So, as you expose yourself to discomfort, take the necessary downtime to recover and integrate. It’s the balance of stress and rest that builds true strength.

At this point, I’ve conditioned myself so thoroughly that when difficult situations arise, I often feel calm and clearheaded. I’m more likely to lean into fear-inducing tasks than to shy away. That doesn’t mean I take reckless risks—it means I assess the fear response with discernment and choose whether to heed its warning or act with courage.

Every challenge life throws at me now is an opportunity to reinforce this practice. Every time I rise to meet it, I become more confident in who I am.

Having Difficult Conversations

This could easily fall under “doing hard shit,” but because we must communicate with others to get many of our needs met, difficult conversations are likely to make up the bulk of the challenges you’ll face in life.

These conversations are hard because of what they require:

• Each person must be secure in themselves and able to manage their emotions.
• Each person must have communication tools that ensure both feel seen, heard, and understood.

But often, the biggest obstacle isn’t the conversation itself—it’s the story we tell ourselves about the conversation before it even happens. Those stories create anxiety.

Other reasons difficult conversations may feel hard for you:

• You’re prone to anxiety—especially social anxiety.
• You’ve had poor past experiences with insecure or reactive partners.
• You don’t yet have effective communication tools.
• You grew up with caregivers who didn’t model healthy conflict resolution.
• You fear conflict or rejection.
• You have a tendency to people-please or avoid rocking the boat.
• You struggle to manage emotions under pressure.
• You shut down when overwhelmed.
• You’re afraid the other person will leave if you speak your truth.

Because of this, it’s common to avoid the conversation—either by procrastinating or by convincing yourself it’s not that important.

The internal narrative often sounds like: “If I have this conversation with my partner, something bad will happen.” That thought triggers anxiety, and your body responds by avoiding the anxiety-inducing activity. While avoidance provides temporary relief, it prevents you from developing the coping skills needed to face what’s causing the anxiety in the first place.

The truth is, these fears are usually catastrophized or exaggerated—and are unlikely to play out the way you imagine.

If you do have the conversation, you’ll likely discover:

• What you expected wasn’t accurate.
• Your partner didn’t react the way you feared.
• You misunderstood them more than you realized.
  These conversations can actually bring you closer.

The more you practice difficult conversations, the less anxiety you’ll feel—and the more skilled and confident you’ll become.

One conversation that always stands out for me was with my father, long after I was grown.

He had always struggled with financial literacy. Growing up, he would regularly ask my mother for money—even though they were divorced and he was supposed to be paying child support. When I got older and began my career, he started doing the same with me.

The first few times, I thought it was okay to help. But deep down, it felt off. The dynamic felt backward.

One day, he asked to borrow $300. When he came over to the house, I had the cash sitting on the counter—right next to a copy of The Richest Man in Babylon.

I told him he could have the money only if he read the book and told me what he learned. I told him plainly that he had poor financial literacy, and it was not okay to keep borrowing money from me. He needed to take responsibility.

That day, he took the book—but not the money. And he’s never asked me for money since.

I was absolutely terrified to say that. My throat was tight. I was anxious the entire time I waited for him to arrive. But confronting that fear completely changed our relationship. It spared me years of resentment and allowed us to relate to each other with more respect and clarity.

Every time you successfully navigate a difficult conversation, life gets exponentially better.

You get your needs met.

You dissolve patterns of miscommunication.

You grow in your ability to lead and connect.

You feel free—because you finally spoke your truth.

A difficult conversation is always worth having.

Facing Your Shadow

Each of us has parts of ourselves we repress or turn away from—casting them into the shadows of our psyche, hidden not just from others, but often from ourselves.

When I talk about the Shadow, I’m drawing on Carl Jung’s model of the Self, which includes the Shadow, Ego, and Persona (among other archetypes). To cooperate and connect with others, we construct a Persona—a kind of social mask made up of the parts of ourselves we choose to show the world in order to gain acceptance, validation, or status. This mask is consciously crafted. It’s the version of ourselves we believe will be seen as worthy.

Behind that mask lies the Ego, which includes the stories and mental frameworks (or schemas) we use to define who we are—our self-image. Unlike the Persona, the Ego includes parts we deliberately hide, even if we consciously recognize them. But the Ego still isn’t the whole picture. It leaves out the parts of us we don’t want to admit exist, even to ourselves.

That’s where the Shadow comes in. The Shadow contains the disowned parts of ourselves that still exist, but that we avoid acknowledging—let alone expressing. Jung believed that psychological health requires integrating all aspects of the Self, not just the socially acceptable ones. The Shadow isn’t inherently bad—it’s simply the parts we’ve rejected or pushed away. And only by facing and including those parts can we move toward wholeness.

A fallacy we often make is believing that we are entirely good, while others, particularly when they do something to us that causes harm, must be evil. What we fail to recognize is the entirety of both ourselves and of the other person, realizing that all of us contain “good” and “evil”.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously wrote:

‍“The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

The danger in pretending otherwise is twofold: either we become naive and weak, vulnerable to these forces being used on us, or we remain unaware when we use them on others—and we will. The Self wants to be fully expressed. And if we don’t consciously integrate the parts of ourselves we’d rather ignore, they will emerge anyway—often in unconscious, distorted, and harmful ways.

A powerful exercise I did years ago was reading The Gulag Archipelago and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—and imagining myself not as the victims in the camps, but as the guards. I tried to understand the motivations, the emotional justifications, the parts of myself I’d have to activate to commit such atrocities—and the parts I’d have to suppress to carry them out.

It was deeply uncomfortable. It forced me to ask whether, in subtle ways, I might be causing harm to others even now.

But it also gave me unexpected compassion—for myself and for those who had caused me harm.

I could see that both of us were only ever completely human.

Logotherapy and Cultivating Purpose

One of the greatest challenges I faced in my mental health journey was finding a sense of meaning. When adversity struck, I often found myself wondering: What’s the point? I had long since stopped asking why things happened to me, but I was still haunted by the question of why I kept enduring them.

Fortunately, I was exposed early on to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and the powerful ideas behind Logotherapy.

Logotherapy is a form of psychotherapy that helps you find meaning and purpose in your life—even in the face of suffering and adversity. It emphasizes your freedom to choose your attitude and response to any circumstance.

According to Frankl, the primary human motivation is not pleasure or power, but meaning. Yet, in our modern world, much of what we do feels hollow—stripped of substance. Many of us want to live a life of purpose, yet rates of anxiety, depression, and despair are on the rise. Suicide is now one of the leading causes of death in the U.S.

I remember sitting at my desk at my first architecture job after college, staring at my own lifeless reflection on a black computer screen. It felt like someone had poured concrete down my throat. I was just drawing lines in CAD software, slowly eroding in a fluorescent-lit office—and for what? 

I cried all the way home. I remember asking myself, Is this it?

I promise you—it’s not.

There is so much more to life. But meaning is something you must create, not stumble upon.

In my despair, I did what I always do when I feel lost: I dove deep into research. What I discovered is that purpose has a surprisingly clear structure.

Purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is both meaningful to you and consequential to the world. — William Damon, scholar of human development

In short: Purpose = Meaningful to Self + Consequential to Others

Purpose isn’t just another goal. It has specific characteristics:

• It’s long-term, enduring beyond short-term desires or circumstances.
• It may contribute to personal meaning but reaches beyond the self.
• It involves a desire to make a difference—to have an impact.
• It can be vast and ambitious (solve malaria in Africa), or humble and intimate (raise a kind, resilient family).
• It can evolve over time and may not be achievable in your lifetime.
• It’s a powerful motivator, associated with less stress, greater resilience, increased motivation, and better well-being.
• At its deepest level, it becomes an ultimate concern—an answer to life’s biggest “why?”

What I learned was that to bring more purpose into my life, I needed to choose actions that were meaningful to me and that created positive outcomes for others.

That “and” is everything.

A common trap is believing that motivations must be completely selfless to be pure—and that doing something for yourself is selfish or invalid. But doing things only for others can feel empty, just as doing things only for yourself can feel hollow.

You need both.

But to accept that, you must confront your Shadow. You must understand that no one has entirely pure motivations—and that’s okay. Most of our actions come from a mix of personal and collective concerns.

Take this article as an example. One of my deepest motivations is for you to benefit from these tools—because they’ve helped me, and I hope they help you. At the same time, this article improves my SEO, brings more readers to my work, and may lead to sales of my products and services. Some might label that greedy or “selling out,” but I know both motivations are valid. In fact, this article wouldn’t even exist or reach as many people without that additional motivation.

Almost everything I do now has multiple drivers—some personal, some collective—and that blend makes my life far more meaningful and fulfilling.

I invite you to reflect on your own life.

Ask yourself:

• Where are you doing things that are neither meaningful to you nor impactful for others?
• Where are you doing things only for yourself, with no real effect on others?
• Where are you doing things only for others, but they don’t mean much to you?

If you need more meaning, start with your interests, curiosities, and micro-motives—the things you do naturally when no one is watching. Follow that internal pull. Learn about it. Practice it. Share it. Everything I teach began as a personal curiosity I chose to pursue.

If you need to be more consequential, take responsibility where others avoid it. Use your internal passions to solve other people’s problems. Start with your closest relationships—your partners, your family, your friends. Then expand outward: work, community, culture, government. Step by step, grow your capacity to care for others without overreaching. Don’t take on what you can’t truly tend to. Half-hearted responsibility helps no one.

You can create a life full of meaning and impact. But it’s not waiting out there somewhere—it’s waiting in you, to be acted on.

Attachment Therapy

One of the most powerful influences on mental health is our intimate relationships. That’s because they become the primary source for meeting many of our emotional needs.

We first learn that we are imperfect beings with needs that must be fulfilled by others in early childhood. How our caregivers respond to those needs lays the foundation for how we relate to others—and ourselves—for the rest of our lives.

If our caregivers were attuned, responsive, and nurturing, we’re likely to develop secure attachment. Roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population fall into this category.

But if our caregivers were inconsistent, unavailable, or abusive, we may develop insecure attachment. One-third of Americans experience some form of attachment disturbance—often without even realizing it.

The behaviors we learn as children become internalized patterns that shape our adult relationships. If we learned maladaptive responses, we’re likely to repeat them. Insecurity in childhood often becomes insecurity in love, friendship, or even work dynamics.

Personally, I observed both anxious and avoidant behaviors in myself—classic signs of insecure attachment. It wasn’t until I began practicing the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, a form of attachment therapy, that I started to feel secure in myself and my relationships. I also continued to develop the three parts of the Self I write about in How to Be a Dom and How to Be a Sub: self-image, self-efficacy, and self-esteem.

Developed by Dr. Dan Brown and Dr. David Elliott at Harvard, the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol is the central pillar of the Three Pillar Method—the most comprehensive treatment available for adult attachment issues.

I practiced this visualization-based meditation daily for several months. Over time, I felt a profound shift in my internal sense of security.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell: You revisit formative childhood memories where you felt unmet needs or insecurity. Through guided visualization, you imagine ideal parents who meet those needs, respond with warmth and care, and make you feel safe. After enough repetitions, your brain begins to favor these more secure internal “memories” over the insecure ones. It’s not magic—it’s neuroplasticity. The secure pattern simply feels better, so your brain adopts it.

While there are trained therapists who can guide this process, I adapted it on my own using Brown’s textbook Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair.

Now, when a relationship touches on something that would have triggered insecurity in the past, I find myself remaining calm, grounded, and responsive rather than reactive. Over time, that reinforces secure attachment patterns—and strengthens my relationships with others and myself.

Spirituality

Let’s return to the idea from the very beginning of this article: the difference between a traumatic experience and an empowering one is the meaning you assign to it.

Humans are meaning-making machines. We create stories—often centered around ourselves—about things that don’t inherently need a story at all.

Through logotherapy, I gave my life meaning—a purpose I could hold onto when things felt unbearable. Through attachment work, I rewrote some of the painful stories I’d internalized about my worth. 

But ultimately, I came to a deeper realization: I didn’t actually need any of the stories.

That’s where spirituality comes in.

I don’t mean religion—although it can be a vessel for spirituality. I’m talking about the expansive awareness that transcends ego, identity, and narrative altogether. Spirituality helps dissolve the very stories we pour endless energy into maintaining—especially the ones that feel threatened when someone challenges how we see ourselves.

My own journey with spirituality began with a curiosity about Buddhist philosophy while studying temple architecture in college. Over the years, I read dozens of books, but two stood out: Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation and Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition. I now practice Non-dual Shaiva Tantra, which has given me more peace, clarity, and contentment than anything else.

The most powerful spiritual realization I’ve ever had is this:

You’re not special.

Not in the sense that you’re better than anyone else.

But you are rare and unique—your personality, biology, and life experiences will never be replicated.

And yet, those differences are so minuscule compared to what makes you the same as everyone else.

The single belief that helped me feel secure, no matter what, was this: All humans share the same essence.

We may look, act, or speak differently—but we all carry the same core needs, fears, joys, longings, and capacity for suffering. Realizing this helps you separate your worth from your performance. From your appearance. From the stories you tell yourself. You have intrinsic value simply because you exist—just like everyone else.

That doesn’t mean what you do doesn’t matter—it does, within the context of social dynamics and collective storytelling. But those stories are like costumes you wear. They’re not who you are.

Your skills, your accomplishments, your body—they can change. You can learn new things, forget old ones, fail and succeed and reinvent yourself entirely. But you remain.

And that brings us to another realization:

Life has no inherent meaning.

It simply is.

It’s us, as humans, who assign meaning to things.

That’s incredibly freeing. It means there are no “wrong” meanings. You get to choose the story you tell yourself—or choose none at all and simply experience life directly.

It also means no one is objectively more “successful” than anyone else. There are only the games we choose to play—and the stories we choose to believe.

When you sit with that awareness long enough, you realize something profound:

Everything is okay.

It has always been okay.

It will continue to be okay—even in your greatest fear.

Even in death.

Becoming Antifragile

If there’s one message I hope you carry with you after reading this, it’s this: you are not broken, and you are not powerless. Life will throw challenges your way—it already has, and it will again. But you don’t have to live as a victim of your circumstances.

Instead, you can choose to become antifragile—to grow stronger because of the pressure, more whole because of the pain, and more grounded because of what you’ve faced and overcome.

There are more tools, practices, and resources available to you than ever before. You are living in a time of immense possibility. Whether it’s therapy, spiritual practice, nervous system regulation, purpose-building, or meaningful connection—there are so many paths to healing. And you get to choose the ones that resonate with your truth.

You don’t need to fix everything all at once. You don’t need to be perfect. But you do need to show up—for yourself. Because this matters. Your life depends on it. The quality of your experience, the depth of your relationships, your ability to navigate the highs and lows with grace and strength—all of it rests on your willingness to take ownership of your inner world.

Thank you, truly, for the time, attention, and vulnerability it took to read this. That alone is an act of courage. You could’ve numbed out, distracted yourself, or avoided this conversation entirely. But you didn’t.

You showed up.

And for that, I honor you.

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope you keep going. I hope you remember you have choices, tools, and strength inside you—even if it doesn’t always feel that way. And in your darkest moments, may you find just one spark of light to help you take the next step forward.

Wishing you the light in your darkness.

With care and respect,
Your friend
Brandon