Quiet Clarity is a 2x/week newsletter and podcast for people who want to build a life of presence, depth, and deliberate intention.
You ever wish you could send a message back to your younger self?
Those late nights wondering if you're on the right path.
The mistakes you could've avoided if someone just told you.
That lost feeling when everyone else seems to have it figured out.
But you keep stumbling forward.
You keep making the same mistakes.
You keep learning everything the hard way.
You keep wishing someone would just tell you what to do.
So what if the letter you need isn't from the future, but from right now?
Where It Showed Up in My Life
Picture 18-year-old me: drinking soda at 2am, hanging with that old drunkard Tommy, watching TV while scrolling my phone in the world's most mindless double-screen zombie state.
I was living on complete autopilot. Sleeping until noon, repeating the same pointless loop every single day.
My calendar? Nonexistent. Unless you count mom's dental appointments on the wall calendar.
My friends knew me as the "yes" guy. Yes to another night out. Yes to another distraction. Yes to anything that kept me from actually thinking about my life.
The worst part? I thought I was living. Really, I was just killing time until... what? I had no idea.
Fast forward to me trying to build a business. I'd reach out to people with this desperate energy, like I needed them to validate my existence. Every conversation felt forced because I was trying to be whoever I thought they wanted me to be.
I remember one particularly painful networking call where I pretended to know about things I'd never heard of, nodding along like an idiot. The other person could smell the desperation through the screen.
That's when it hit me: I was still that 18-year-old kid, just in a 20-something body. Still on autopilot. Still saying yes to everything. Still having no idea who I actually was beneath all the performance.
What advice would I give that lost kid if I could reach back through time?
What the Wisdom Reveals
This brings me to a story about a young monk who approached his master with a problem.
"Master, I've been following all the teachings perfectly. I wake at 4am, meditate for hours, study the texts, serve others selflessly. Yet I feel more lost than when I began. What am I doing wrong?"
The master smiled and handed him a cup of tea that was already full to the brim.
Then he began pouring more tea into it.
The tea overflowed, spilling across the table and onto the floor. The young monk jumped back in alarm.
"Master! The cup is already full! No more will go in!"
"Exactly," said the master, still pouring. "You come to me overflowing with others' ideas of who you should be. Their schedules. Their goals. Their definitions of success. How can you discover your true nature when you're already full of everyone else's?"
The monk protested: "But I need guidance! I need to know the right path!"
The master finally stopped pouring.
"The only guidance you need is this: Empty your cup. Stop filling yourself with others' expectations. Sit with the discomfort of not knowing. Only in that emptiness will you discover what's truly yours."
That night, the monk threw away his rigid schedule. Stopped trying to be the perfect student. Started listening to what actually called to him rather than what he thought he should do.
And in that space - that terrifying, empty space - he began to discover who he really was beneath all the borrowed ideas.
The master's teaching was simple: You can't pour new understanding into a cup that's already full of old patterns.
How I'm Trying to Live Now
What happened when I started emptying my cup?
First, I made a "to-don't" list. Not another productivity hack to cram more into my day, but a commitment to remove what wasn't mine:
Stop drinking to fit in
Stop scrolling to avoid thinking
Stop saying yes when I mean no
The withdrawals were real. Who was I without these crutches?
Then came the calendar. Not mom's dental appointment tracker, but an actual reflection of my priorities. Every "no" to random hangouts was a "yes" to figuring out who I actually was.
I started journaling four things:
Fears (way more than I thought)
Frustrations (mostly with myself)
Goals (that were actually mine)
Future self (who looked nothing like current me)
The anti-vision exercise wrecked me.
Five years forward without changes: Still drinking with Tommy, still in the same loops, still wondering when life would "start."
That image haunts me more than any motivational poster ever could.
For the business side, I experimented for a month with content creation. Not because someone said I should, but because something in me was curious.
The difference in energy was night and day.
But here's the real shift: I stopped reaching out to people from desperation. Started connecting from genuine curiosity.
No more pretending to know things. No more trying to be impressive.
Just: "Hey, I'm figuring this out. What's your experience been?"
The response was shocking. People actually wanted to help when I wasn't performing for them.
You know that moment when you realize you've been living someone else's life in your own body?
When your daily routine could belong to anyone.
When your goals sound like a copy-paste from social media.
When you can't remember the last choice that was truly yours.
When you finally understand why everything feels so empty.
That's not failure. That's the beginning of actually living.
The small changes compound. Waking up 30 minutes earlier becomes morning clarity. One genuine conversation becomes a real connection. One "no" becomes self-respect.
You don't need to quit everything tomorrow. Just start emptying the cup, one borrowed idea at a time.
So try this:
Tonight, write a letter to yourself five years ago.
Don't give advice. Just ask: "What defaults was I living that I've now escaped?"
Then look at your current life and ask: "What defaults am I still living that future me will shake his head at?"
Pick one. Just one. And start emptying that part of your cup.
Because Einstein was right when he said:
"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."
But first, you have to see them. And you can't see them when your cup is overflowing with everyone else's tea.
