The 2025 Exit Interview (Part 2)

Imagine you are sitting in your car and you open your maps. The GPS is blinking, waiting for input. It doesn’t matter where you are starting from, the system cannot function until you answer one simple question:

Where do you want to go?

In physics, speed is simply how fast you are moving. But velocity is speed with a direction. Without a destination, all your movement is just scalar energy—noise without a signal.

Last week, we operated as archaeologists. We looked at some reflection questions to help you figure out where you are right now. To take pause, reflect on the past year, and get your bearings, so to speak, about your life. If you missed that newsletter, I invite you to check it out here!

While reflection is a wonderful tool, it is easy to get stuck in a loop of self-gratifying analysis—laughing at the memories, congratulating ourselves on survival, and collecting "a-ha" moments like souvenirs. But an insight is not a strategy.

Reflecting gives us our coordinates, but it does not give us our vector.

Every time we say, “Boy I never want to do that again,” or “Wow I’d love to do that more often,” we are honing in on a direction to orient ourselves.

To move from the past into the future, we must make a decision in the present. We have to look at the infinite horizon of possibility, drop a pin, and say, "I am going there."

Sailors and navigators of the ancient world understood this, even when the destination was obscure. Some set out seeking new continents, others hunting bounties, or even attempting to circumnavigate the globe. Regardless, they never left port without a vision.

The path wasn’t always clear. Lewis and Clark didn’t have a map of the United States when they set out to explore the west. In fact, they were making the map as they went along! They knew the end goal: to reach the western edge of the continent, and it was because they knew the destination that they were able to see the path in front of them.

2026 is coming. The timeline is moving whether you participate or not. There will be rivers you don’t know how to cross, and you may have to build a bridge to get over them. There will be lakes you have to walk around, mountains you have to climb, and sometimes you’ll get to the edge of a cliff and realize you need to change trajectories unexpectedly.

There will be interruptions regardless, but you get to decide the frequency of those interruptions. Do you want to be interrupted by dissonance and agony, or by laughter and awe?

It all starts, though, with a vision of a destination.

Keeping with the theme of last week, here are the questions I am asking myself to define my 2026. Its okay if you don’t know the how just yet — don’t worry about the how when answering these questions. We’re going to talk next week about the how…this week is strictly focused on the what.

1. What do I want to give myself more of in my every day life? Less of?

I asked a similar question last week, but it bears repeating: Your day is your life in miniature.

We often obsess over the macro-architecture (the vacations, the promotions, the eras), but we live in and experience the micro.

Maybe you want more "white space." Time to read, or simply exist in your garden without an agenda. Maybe you want less friction, less time commuting, less time in the gym, less time performing for others.

What is the feeling you want to wake up with every day? By constructing a vision for our Tuesday morning, we inadvertently construct the reality of our entire life.

2. What experiences do I want more of in 2026?

This goes beyond "travel goals." This is about the texture of your experiences.

Do you want to travel more, or to spend more time with loved ones? Do you want to have more experiences with certain people in your life, or even to just have “more fulfilling experiences?” You don’t have to know exactly what "more fulfilling experiences" looks like logically, but you maybe you feel the numbness of shallowness in your current routine and want to change it.

Experiences can also be hobbies, new ones or ones you’ve let fade away.

What do you want to do just for the sake of doing it? With no ROI attached other than the joy of the act itself?

3. If I could accomplish one thing in 2026, what would I be most proud of?

Success is not definitive, and you define what success is.

What would make you feel accomplished and proud at the end of 2026? What are you currently struggling with that you want to build competency in during 2026?

Paying off your debts, or traveling to a place you’ve always wanted to go? Reading those books you’ve been putting off, or finally getting a new job? Building a health routine that protects your physical and mental wellbeing for the long run?

You get to decide what that accomplishment and its success looks like, and you get to choose what one thing to focus your attention on.

This isn’t to say you can only accomplish one thing in 2026, but it’s much easier to focus on one than to fragment ourselves into a dozen noble pursuits.

4. What is my "Misogi" for 2026?

Jesse Itzler, creator of The Big A$$ Calendar (which is currently hanging on my wall), popularized the modern concept of the "Misogi." It comes from a Japanese tradition of purification, but in this context, it means one major, year-defining challenge that builds resilience, transforms us as a person, and gives us a memorable “year-defining” moment.

This is the scary thing you’ve been avoiding. The cave of fear usually holds the treasure you seek.

Your Misogi should be feasible, but it should push your limits to the breaking point. 2026 could be the year you convert a bus and drive to Alaska with your brother. It could be the year you learn how to play an instrument, or the year you write your book. It could be the year you reclaim your physical health, the year you move to that city you’ve been dreaming of, or the year you do the thing you’ve been putting off your whole life until now.

It’s the headline for 2026. It is the sentence you want to be true at the end of the year. It fills in this blank: "2026 was the year I finally __________."

It’s not supposed to be easy. Friction creates heat, and heat creates transformation.

5. What do I want to see when I look in a mirror?

This is not about chasing vanity or pursuing some image of a gorgeous beach babe with a smokin’ body, flowing blonde hair, and tanned skin. (Though there is nothing wrong with creating a physique image and pursuing it in a healthy way).

This question encourages you to create an identity.

When you look in the mirror, do you want to see a sack of flesh with tired, weary eyes? Do you want to see someone dreading to go to work every day or someone who begrudgingly moves through life?

Do you want to see someone who loves themselves, even with a few extra pounds? Do you want to look into the eyes of someone who feels proud of themselves every day?

Do you want to see the face of someone who respects themselves and accomplishes things, or the sullen disposition of someone who succumbs to the drudgeries of life?

6. What attributes will I embody?

We all have a spectrum of potential within us.

You can be lazy, or you can be relentless to the point of collapse. You can be gluttonous, or you can be starve your mind, body, and soul. You can be anxiety ridden, or you can be numbed into a void. In between these extremes exists a space you can occupy.

Complacency, laziness, and mediocrity are attributes, and none of them are good or bad. There is a comfort in complacency, and maybe you need some more of that in your life. I, for one, certainly do. I tend to always be pushing myself for the next thing, wanting more and more, when sometimes what I need more of is simply enjoying what is.

Here’s another way of phrasing the question: If your life were a movie, what character are you playing next year? The Victim? The Comic Relief? The Hero?

Your current disposition is not your destiny and identity is not a fixed recording. If you don’t like the song you are singing, if you don’t want to be known as the employee who works until their body crumbles, or the person who has a short fuse, or the one who is always late, you can change the narrative.

Next week, in our final newsletter of the year (WOW), we will dig into the final piece of the puzzle: the roadmap.

We will look through the myth of the "how-to" and into the intuition that guides us.

We are always exactly where we need to be, but life becomes more exhilarating when we stop drifting. We cannot control the wind (the external world), and we cannot control the waves (the chaos of life). But we have authority over the set of the sail and the grip on the rudder, and life becomes more interesting, more satisfying, and more exhilarating when we take hold and set oour sights upon the horizon.

Until next time, live uninterrupted.

~Coleman

A Note from the Workbench

I have some massive news to share that I’m VERY excited to share…

My app, Arete, is finally ready for beta testing!

(Cue fireworks and confetti cannons)

I’ll admit, I haven’t been the best at "building in public" or documenting the process. But, I’ve been quietly laboring in the background for the past two months, turning this concept into code.

It feels surreal to say it “out loud,” and I’ve spent the last few days kind of marveling at the feeling. For a long time, Arete was just a dream, a myth, a prototype in my head. But now, it has form. It has mass. It is real and it is breathing.

Arete is the tool designed to help you live a happier, healthier life every day wherever you are and whatever that means for you.

I am looking for 100 people to be the first users—my Founding Circle.

I will be sending out a separate newsletter later this week with details on how to apply for the beta and how you can get first dibs on what I believe is a truly revolutionary product.

Stay tuned!