Chapter 1: Mic Drop

November 25, 2024. It’s my father-in-law’s birthday. I’m on Thanksgiving break after another whirlwind of what is fall at a New England boarding school. Up until this moment, my morning was as follows: 30 minutes of meditation, walk the dog, play with the kids, go to the gym, shower, walk the dog, order a hot black coffee from Dunki’s (where they truly make the hottest coffee on Earth), pick up my new prescription (as in the last 90 days, a script I never imagined I’d be picking up), get a library card in the town where I’m now a first-time homeowner, and sit down to type these words, 3 years since my dad told me he had lung cancer, nearly 9 months after his death.

I’ll start at the top and do my best to tell the story, one that is very much still unfolding. And I promise to keep it brief. After all, none of us has a moment to squander. Right around Thanksgiving, 2021, my dad and mom let my wife and me know that they had to give us some news. We had finished eating dinner after putting our infant daughter to bed, who was approaching 7 months and still what I’ll call a selective sleeper. My dad told us he had just received a stage 3 lung cancer diagnosis. He had a hard time getting to that final point. He took a circuitous path that did not have a happy ending. I remember staring straight ahead, expressionless, getting the sense that something big and not good was happening, waiting for the mic to drop, as if I was expecting it all along, and feeling numb.

I began preparing for my dad’s death. At first, it wasn’t clear that he was going to die, at least not imminently. There was always that sliver of hope. Your dad is a fighter, people would say. Maybe he could beat this thing. My dad did fight. He fought hard. He had a lung removed. He endured multiyear treatments that left him in constant pain. He did his best to stomach this unexpected turn, though it was clear he was suffering, physically and mentally. Needless to say, this wasn’t the retirement he had planned for. And as we were raising my daughter and anticipating the birth of my son, I tried not to feel disappointed and heartbroken that he would miss the rest of their lives. Like I said, there was always hope. Even when, on more than one occasion, his doctor told him he only had a few months to live, he never closed the door on life.

Though I wouldn’t say it out loud, I believed the cancer would kill him, and while I rode the rollercoaster of hope and despair, it was mostly in hopes of having a little more time, which, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and the unquantifiable efforts of cancer research, I got. I had more time than most to prepare for my dad’s death. I had time to be supportive, and I was determined to be present. Admittedly, I struggled with guilt, with not feeling supportive or present enough, yet, on the whole, I had a generous heads up, and I thought I was ready. I thought I was strong. I wanted to be a rock for the rest of my family. I wanted to be at peace, to radiate peace.

Looking back on it, I realize I was lost in the future. Of course my dad was going to die. There was nothing I could do to stop that. I should have spent less energy preparing for that inevitability, and more energy living with him, being with him, expressing gratitude and compassion. In those final months, he would tell me not to break my cadence. He didn’t want to be a burden. He didn’t want me to interrupt my life for him. But, depending on how you look at it, life is an endless stream of interruptions. It cares nothing for our personal agendas. It’s not until we drop our preferences and plans that we can flow with the river of life. I didn’t know this at the time. I wish I had. I was swimming upstream, and in the days ahead I would try to swim harder, or the current got fiercer, or both.

I titled this “Zen and the Art of Grief: A Brief Note on Shadow and Light.” I had grieved before — with pets, relatives, friends — but never so intimately. This was my first real dog fight. I’ll put it this way: when I speak of “the art of grief,” I am not calling myself an artist. I actually mean that grief generates art. I’m tempted to deploy some word play about finding the light in dark places, but I’m going to refrain. Grief is hard. No bones about it. It is definitely the most challenging human feeling I have ever grappled with, and while I do not look forward to the next time grief comes knocking, it has also been the most transformative experience of my life. I’ll get to the Zen part in a bit, but grief is a bit like a pressure cooker. It’s intense, and you aren’t coming out the way you went in.

Chapter 2: The Room

It took me 7 months after the first chapter to start writing this one: The Room. It’s the toughest bit for me to describe, and I know I could never do the memory justice with words. It’s the kind of experience you have to live, like seeing the sunset over the mountains, skiing fresh powder, or the birth of a child. Except it probably won’t make your top 5 experiences of all time. Nevertheless, I’m going to talk about the room where I watched my dad take his final breath, where, to this summer day, I sometimes feel stuck.

It was the end of February, 2024, and I had just over a week before the start of spring vacation at school. I was in the midst of my first year in a new professional role, dean of students at a grade 6–9 boys boarding school, the most challenging job I’d ever had, one that left me spent. I was counting down the days to a ski trip at Steamboat with my hometown friends. It was dumping snow there, and between the stress of work and my dad’s ongoing battle with cancer, I had never felt more ready for a break.

I got the call that my dad was sick and was being hospitalized. He was having trouble breathing. It seemed like he caught whatever respiratory illness was going around Massachusetts. I was worried, but initially everyone thought there was a good chance he would recover after a few days at the hospital. To complicate matters, I was coming down with an end-of-trimester cold. Whatever was going around our campus of middle school boys, I had that. Runny nose, cough, fatigue, stuff I didn’t want to pass onto my dad. For me, the worst case scenario was that I would be the one to kill him.

So I stayed at school and kept plugging away. My dad seemed to be in good spirits, and he kept telling me not to break cadence. From what I was hearing, it sounded like he would likely be discharged by the end of the week. As I’m sure you have already deduced, that isn’t what happened. His breathing got worse, and he was becoming more reliant on a machine to get him the oxygen he needed. The doctor explained that he had pneumonitis (likely triggered by his medications), and if he didn’t start improving soon, we would want to start considering end-of-life care. I shared my concerns about my symptoms, and the doctor said if the time came, that should not prevent me from going to the hospital.

In the early morning hours of March 2nd, the day my school would start spring break, I woke up to a call from my mom. It was time to go. I threw a bag together, got in my car, and drove to the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care at Mass General. It was a surreal and emotional two-hour ride that culminated with a couple of illegal maneuvers before pulling up to the valet at a hotel where my dad used to be buddies with the doorman. I was having trouble finding a place to park because the garage was closed for construction, so I told the man working the valet parking that my dad was dying and I needed to get into the hospital. He parked my car, and I hustled to find my dad’s room.

I don’t want to draw this out, so I’ll stick to some of the highlights, if you could call them that. There were the visitors, my dad’s sister, two of his childhood friends, his face scrunching up in sadness, teary goodbyes, squeezing hands, bonds brewed as thick as blood after a lifetime of memories, laughs, hardships, vulnerability, knowing. A few times he said, “I’m in a real pickle.” There were my final moments with him. Sending a few last messages to people for him from his phone, talking with him about my brother and my mom, helping him shave his face. Him saying he hoped this wouldn’t mess up my ski trip and apologizing to me for checking out early. I told him it wasn’t early. It was just time. He didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want him to leave, but I didn’t know what else to say.

I still don’t know what to say. I could write this a thousand times, and each time it would be a little bit different. There are so many details to remember, so many details I have tried not to forget. I can’t tell you how often I have replayed scenes from the room in my mind. My dad saying he was ready to go off the breathing machine. Him asking to FaceTime my wife and kids and watching them say goodbye, hearing my daughter’s voice as she spoke to Papa Tom for the last time. My brother, my mom, and I sitting with my dad on his bed, my brother telling my dad how much we loved him, then asking me to sing a song, and me choking through “I’ll Fly Away,” just as I had years before at my grandmother’s death bed, my dad’s mom.

After my dad drifted into sleep, I watched him breathe for hours. The nurses said he would pass in about 30 minutes once they removed the oxygen, but he just kept breathing. It sounds awful to say, but I wished he would stop. I was scared that he would wake up and be confused or in pain. I wanted him to be at peace. I found myself saying, “Love you, Pops” to the rhythm of his breathing, thinking of me on his shoulders, body surfing together, him standing on the sidelines. His breathing got slower over the hours, and then it stopped.

Nothing can capture the silence between life and death, the stillness, the true emptiness of that space in time. He was gone.

His body began to transform. I’ll spare you the specifics, but that was one of the toughest parts for all of us in the room I think — seeing the body that was my dad become almost unrecognizable. No matter how many times we tell ourselves that we will die one day, it’s hard to come to grips with the fact that our body, everything about us, is impermanent. We are always changing. Nothing will ever be the same. There is no going back. The present moment is always in motion, and no amount of effort or strength can keep it in our grasp.

My dad, as I knew him, was gone. And I remained. I packed up his things. His glasses, his clothes, his shoes, and we left the hospital around 4:00 AM on March 3, 2024. Though I have grown a lot since then, I would be lying if I said a piece of me isn’t still there — in that room. While there were beautiful moments that I am grateful for, and most people would consider themselves fortunate to die surrounded by loved ones, it is waves of sadness, regret, and guilt that still hit me from time to time. In the immediate shadow of my dad’s passing, I remember thinking, something like this will happen in the future, maybe something worse, and I don’t know if I can do it again.

Surely, there are daffodils and sunshine ahead. Let’s move on to the next chapter.

Chapter 3: Dead Flowers

I can summarize the week following my dad’s death as exhausting. Between the memorial service, the effort to be gracious and thankful, my lingering illness that lasted the entire month, and the endless, unexpected, and overcomplicated logistics of settling up with death, I was drained. I only want to emphasize two points.

One. The support I received was inspiring. Whether it was someone showing up for the services, a heartfelt letter, a phone call, or a quick check in, so many people showed me and my family compassion when we were in desperate need of it. I was moved, and I told myself that I would try to pay the debt I owed. I would show up with compassion whenever possible, to ease the suffering of another, or, at least, to share a small piece of it.

In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014), Bessel van der Kolk says, “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” He goes on to explain the following:

Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love.

That’s powerful stuff that we should never take for granted, though sometimes it takes a calamity to remind us.

Two, and this one requires a more lengthy explanation: there is beauty in dead flowers. To be clear, that was not my initial conclusion. Far from it. In the case of my dad, we received lots of flowers at my mom’s house. The place was literally blooming. The funny thing with flower arrangements is that they die. I am sometimes — perhaps more than sometimes — guilty of having a dark sense of humor. As the mourners left and the sympathy stopped flowing, so too did the flowers wither and brown.

How funny, I thought, that our grieving family, in particular my mom, was left with a giant mess to clean up, an overwhelming reminder that we were cloaked by the shadow of death. I remember the massive wreath on the front door. What was once a ring of bright white flowers now felt like, I don’t know, a big dead halo, some haunting specter. I piled it all into the car with the other trash from feeding visitors and drove it to the transfer station.

In those gray days, I couldn’t see that the flowers were natural, that they still possessed their original beauty. They were a part of the earth, a part of the universe, and they could resume their connection. They could return to the dirt from which they came. They could carry on and give life to more flowers. Instead, I saw it all as trash, rather than compost. I threw out everything and tried to plow forward. I think that’s what most of us do, especially in these situations. I was fixated on the suffering, blind to the truth.

For the remainder of the spring, I wanted to heal. After the school year ended, I spent three weeks working at summer camp instead of my usual nine (I’ve been going to the same camp since I was 11 and have been on staff since 2008), using the remaining six to be with my family. I participated in the Pan Mass Challenge to support cancer treatment and research with some close camp friends. A chills-down-your-spine kind of event. Team name: Seek the Joy. My kids were happy and healthy, and I was getting a priceless opportunity to focus on being a dad. This was also the most time I had with my mom in years. I had so many reasons, every reason, to feel happy. But I wasn’t.

I couldn’t figure it out, and the fact that I knew I should be happy only made me feel worse. The end of the summer came around, and I was terrified that another school year would break me. I was supposed to be done grieving. Instead, I felt like I was constantly falling into holes and trying to claw my way out. I talked to my wife about how I was feeling. She was worried about me, and she told me I needed to get help. I also met with two longtime camp friends who experienced the death of their fathers, and we shared our struggles with grief and healing. I could feel I was at the head of a steep trail, and I had people who loved me encouraging me onward.

Chapter 4: Seamless

I started by reaching out to my primary care physician to talk about how I was feeling. After describing my anxiety and despair, my doctor prescribed me with an anti-depressant, Prozac, and I scheduled meetings with a behavioral therapist. These were two big steps for me that, with affirmation from family and friends, helped me to raise my baseline so that I could develop a more positive outlook. The prospect of “finding myself” no longer seemed out of reach.

Soon thereafter, I started going to a local Zen center, as in Zen Buddhism. I was raised a Catholic, and though spirituality had played an important role in my life, I was spiritually disconnected during the ordeal with my dad. Even prior to his disease, I had grown distant from the Church for my own reasons, and it was no longer an anchor for me. There was a void, and I had been practicing meditation for a couple of years without any bearing. I knew I liked meditation. It was a game changer in terms of my composure, presence, and peace of mind. Nonetheless, I was looking for something more, a community with a dedicated practice and clear purpose. So I decided to give Zen Buddhism a try.

I’ll admit, by the time I located the center, which is in the basement of a “museum” displaying what I can only describe as weird, unwanted, and oddly alluring stuff, I was questioning whether or not I belonged in such an unfamiliar space. The chanting and bowing and walking in circles didn’t help my confidence at first either. I was a beginner again, a student, there to listen, practice, and learn. My Zen teacher coincidentally lost his father as well, at a much younger age than me. I studied Zen texts and Buddhist teachings. I learned about the interdependence of things, about no birth or death, about transformation and continuation.

In time, I realized that my dad wasn’t gone after all, that he was still with me, that I actually knew him better than before, that life goes on, and though he is no longer limited to his body, he exists. I understood that there will always be suffering, as well as the end of suffering, especially if we are aware and skillful in our ways. For a Catholic boy raised in the suburbs of Mass, I found inspiration in a place I never expected, and the fire was burning bright.

There was a short time where I thought my grieving and anxiety were coming to an end. A very short time. I continued to struggle. There were stretches during the 2024–2025 academic year where I wanted to quit my job and run off to a little cabin in the woods. Several stretches. And though no one can stop the days from growing dark, certainly not during a New Hampshire winter, I found a path. I found a practice. When you practice consistently, day after day, no matter how slow you go, no matter how little progress you seem to make in a single effort, you will grow stronger, wiser, closer to your true self.

Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind observed that when someone believes in a particular religion, often “his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In [Zen] the point of the angle is always towards ourselves” (2020) After months and months of searching, through practice and more practice, I felt I was going back to myself, a sensation I was familiar with because of my experience returning to camp each summer. And to camp I returned once again for the full 2025 season.

What a journey it has been, yet I can only speak for myself. My story is nothing special. Compared to most people, it’s been pretty cushy. I know many of you reading this have dealt with loss and grief. Many of you are dealing with it right now, and I hope you know there are people who will listen to you and support you. When I learn about the suffering of others around the world, it doesn’t take long to realize that I have little to complain about.

Still, life is a journey. Everything has led to this moment, and this moment would not exist if everything before had not happened. We cannot understand how the stars aligned to bring us together, here and now. You can try to be all-knowing, but then you will be forever searching for answers you will only find in your heart. Any divisions we perceive separating us are a figment of our imaginations. Our shared awareness is seamless, like the ocean, like space. Endlessly flowing. This gives me great comfort, a sense of liberation. If I just keep practicing, if I just keep doing my best, I will always return home.

Thich Nhat Hanh said this:

The moment of awakening is marked by an outburst of laughter. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who, after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat. (1995)

I smile every time I read that. I hope the promise of what rests in your pocket fills you with joy as well.

But before I finish, a warning about practice! This one from Meido Moore:

If you are going to put work into living your daily life differently, being present during your activities—which is hard work, yes, doing those things — then please just be sure you do it all for a reason. Do it as part of a practice that has a chance to succeed. Do not be what have been called ‘mosquito students’ or ‘mosquito practitioners’; there are a lot of them, and they’re very strong for a certain time or season, but after a few months pass, all seem to disappear. No consistency. Maybe they come back the following year! But the thread of practice continuity and penetration is not there. (2018)

What we learn in this life is not meant to stay secret. It’s not Vegas. Our practices should not be exclusive or self-serving. We are no better than anyone else. We are a part of this universe, and we ought to value it. While we are here, we have to decide what we will practice, each and every day. How fortunate we are to travel the path. What a miraculous gift, one that I can only aspire to pay forward in this lifetime. If anything I said sounded useful to you, please put it into practice.

Date of completion: July 17, 2025

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Epilogue

It’s just after 9:00 PM on a Saturday night, April 25, 2026, my last duty weekend at boarding school, and I get a message from a faculty on the duty phone reporting that a 7th-grade student has lost his wallet during the Target trip. The poor guy thinks he dropped it in the parking lot and is already back on campus 30 minutes away.

I call Target, and they take my information but explain they don’t have the staff to send anyone outside. I call the Chili’s in the same complex, and a super nice hostess sends a manager out to look in the lot. While on hold, I learn that Chili’s made 47 margaritas per minute last year, and then I get a call back from Target. They let me know that an unseen good samaritan has put a wallet on their service desk.

The store closer texts me pictures of the wallet. I go to the student’s room, and he is on the phone with his mom who is on the other side of the world. He confirms that the wallet is his, looking more shocked than relieved. I thank the Target employee who will put the wallet in the safe for the night, and I call back the Chili’s hostess to let her know about the happy ending, and she thanks me.

This is compassion. This is interconnectedness and the goodness of ordinary people. Of course, it doesn’t always happen this way. Bad things happen too, but ill fortune does not confirm an evil design. If we believe the universe is out to get us, we will always be at war with it. The only way to live in peace is the way of the heart, the way of compassion. Without the heart, the whole scene above does not occur. Understanding this, we see how much our choices matter. We can imagine the consequences of closing our hearts.

After 13 years, I am in my final month working at boarding school, at least for the foreseeable future. Professionally, I don’t know what I will be doing next. The US is at war with Iran. Going to the grocery store and pumping gas are financially unsettling. The job search has reintroduced me to rejection, and I struggle with questions about the future.

Am I making the right decision?

Did I make a silly mistake?

Will my family suffer because of me?

Will I find a job that is a good fit?

Do people think I’m a loser?

Is there something else I should be doing?

What could I be doing right this very moment to set myself up for success?

This is the panicked voice of my ego. I have become more aware of it, and though it still carries me away from time to time, I don’t get so far gone before I notice I have strayed from the path. I attribute this to the practice of Zen.

Nine months after finishing “Zen and the Art of Grief,” I sat down to write this epilogue late into the night. This is not a boast. While I found this path in my delusion, which I am grateful for, I have not emerged as some enlightened being. It has become increasingly clear that I am nothing special, and I should not expect any special treatment or outcomes. I include this brief addendum to my brief note so that I might express my enduring appreciation of the practice.

If you told me in the fall of 2024 that I would suddenly go cold turkey from all intoxicants because the Zen precepts motivate me to maintain a clear mind, I would have said something like, “Yeah, I don’t see that being realistic for me.”

I don’t know what my dad would say about me taking formal vows at the Zen center, or chanting the Heart Sutra, or bowing. But I think he would like the discipline of it, and he would be proud.

Most people who know me will see that who I used to be is different from who I have become. It’s true that you can never step in the same river twice. Everything is always changing, and if we do not accept that, if we do not open our heart to the unfolding presentation of life, we cannot live.

I can be a self-centered, arrogant, judgmental fool, and also a kind and loving friend. I am studying to learn more about the mental prison I have constructed in my lifetime. I am practicing to grow stronger and wiser — as a father and a man — so that I can take the long journey beyond the walls I have built. I know that I have my ancestors to thank for giving me the strength to take this journey, and it is my responsibility to travel on.

Outside, a loon calls for the first time this spring. There are no words for it. Its song is the perfect epilogue.

Works Cited

Hanh, T. N. (1995). Zen keys: A guide to Zen practice. Harmony Books.

Moore, M. (2018). The Rinzai Zen way: A guide to the practice of Rinzai Zen. Shambhala Publications.

Suzuki, S. (2020). Zen mind, beginner’s mind (50th anniversary ed.). Shambhala Publications.

van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

After 11 years working at a junior boarding school for boys (grades 6-9), I am moving on to the next chapter of my professional career (whatever that means).

What follows is a brief reflection on my experience and some of the key lessons that rise to the top for me.

The Magic

The guy who convinced me to start working at a junior boarding school for boys was a mentor from summer camp, where I first felt the magic. He explained that this was the closest thing to camp he had experienced in a school. I was sold.

When you take a group of boys and plop them together in an intimate setting, magic happens. Sometimes it is dark magic, but it is magic nonetheless.

Over the years, whenever faculty candidates asked me why I kept coming back, I’d say it was because of the magic of working with boys, seeing them drop their guard, put their arms around one another, sing and dance on stage, struggle together, say tear-filled goodbyes at the end of a proper adventure.

Whoever thinks it’s a bad idea to organize a group of young men together has yet to experience when boys are at their best—and at their best because they are together. Boys need these kinds of spaces. To grow, they need to be vulnerable, and an all-boys setting makes that distinctly possible.

Good Times, Bad Times

There will be good and bad days. That goes for weeks, months, and years as well. We should not expect otherwise.

When we expect boys to always be good, they will disappoint us. When we expect them to always be bad, they will surprise us. The key is not to grow attached to either expectation but to help boys find their way through their current experience.

Unsurprisingly, I found that we struggled the most as a school community with the bad times. When we rejected behavior or circumstances that did not meet expectations, we traded compassion for anger.

Anger is ineffective. It makes connection impossible. It makes people separate themselves from others because they are drawing a bright line of division: that is wrong, and I do not accept it.

The bad times do not need to be as miserable as we make them. With the right mindset, we should see challenges as opportunities to grow. And it’s because of the bad times that we appreciate the good. If things never went poorly, it would only be a matter of time until we discovered that circumstances were not good enough.

But don’t worry, you can count on things going poorly.

We don’t need to overcomplicate our approach. In fact, we’re better off forgetting about good and bad days altogether and embracing whatever is falling from the sky. Face challenges with compassion. Celebrate success with compassion. The problems arise when we are inconsistent, when we are OK with rain on one day and upset with it on another.

If we can’t be consistent in our own practice working with boys, we will always be at war and never at peace.

Know the Boys, Love the Boys

The first head of school I worked for offered a signature promise to families:

This has always stuck with me. It’s so simple and so spot on.

First, you must know the boys. Learning, discipline, and inspiration will follow. This critical step gets skipped far too often, not just in education but in life.

We presume that people will listen to us, perhaps show us deference, before we get to know them. Sometimes, especially with kids, we tell others what to do and expect them to comply with the proper respect, even before we learn their names. This is teaching without connection. It does not work.

To truly connect with boys, we have to show them we love them. Again, this is simple. Or it should be. Because of well-intentioned sensitivity, I have been told not to mention that we will “love your boys.” I disagree with this timidity. Boys are deserving of and benefit from the care of loving adults, and we should be courageous in that love.

So many men fear vulnerability because they were not taught how to love and be loved as boys. We cannot withhold our love for fear that it might weaken young men, or us for that matter.

Where this gets the most challenging is with “unlikable” boys. We often have a difficult time treating misbehaving and misguided young men with compassion, and they are the ones who need it most.

Finally, we will not indulge your boys. What a beautiful way to finish that vow, for this too is a form of love. When we indulge someone, we do so out of fear. We are worried that they will suffer or not love us back if we do not satisfy their desires.

Love is not about preventing someone from suffering, and it is not about exchange. It is unconditionally helping someone in the face of suffering without any expectation of exchange.

Walking the Line Between Tradition and Change

Boys benefit from routines and rituals—this is something that I have written about before—but these need to make sense to them. They need to be relevant. It’s nice when a tradition gives us a sense of connection to the people who came before us, yet traditions become irrelevant when they demand us to be stagnant.

People grow. Study any time in history when authority has tried to prevent that and you will see rancor, rebellion, and ruin. You cannot freeze time.

On the other hand, I’m far from advocating that tradition is oppression. That line of thinking is disconnected from reality. We are the past just as much as we are the future, and when we cut off our roots, we grow weak.

This can be a tricky line to walk with boys, but it’s one worth walking with focus and precision. Boys benefit from a sense of grounding. They flounder without any guidance. They become angry and anxious when they are boxed in, and they become who they truly are when they are given agency. They deserve formal traditions that recognize their passage to manhood, and they need fun traditions that celebrate their identity as boys.

In short: keep boys grounded and let them grow.

Boys Learn from People They Love, Including Their Peers

I’ve already talked about the importance of love...and I have a bit more to add. Boys learn the most from mentors they love. They also learn valuable lessons from adults they don’t get along with, but these aren’t the people who they will go to when their world comes crashing down.

And we cannot underestimate the importance of their peer relationships. These matter to boys. To our dismay, they often matter more than their relationships with adults, but adults should lean into that.

I come back to the magic of working at an all-boys school. We should celebrate how much these young men love each other.

It sounds weird to say this, but it shouldn’t: I have had the good fortune of crying with my male peers throughout my life, namely at the close of soccer seasons and summer camp. These are defining moments in my life, capstones to transformative experiences and a kind of glue between me and my closest friends.

I’ve also had the good fortune, working in an all-boys setting, of seeing countless young men share their own teary farewells. Boys learn so much from these relationships. As adults, we should be cultivating the strength that exists in those bonds to help boys grow.

Boys Should Experience Their Youth

There’s a line from Kevin Wilson’s novel Nothing To See Here that I adore:

There will be disagreement on that score. I suspect/know during the time I served as a dean of students that there were some folks who weren’t psyched when I tossed this quote into a presentation on behavior management. But, I did, and I don’t take it back.

It’s OK for a boy to be a boy. Which adult among us did not participate in some healthy mischief that ignored the wishes of the elders? Who in the days of the undeveloped frontal lobe did not make a foolish mistake and learn from it? And which grown-up doesn’t look back upon those immature days with the slightest hint of a smile? I don’t need to tell you the answer is nobody.

Boys will do silly things. They will cause offense and do wrong. And, with support, they will grow through it all.

Boys are dependents in every way, and they depend upon skillful guidance and mentorship. They are not yet men. If they don’t experience their youth, they will arrive at manhood lacking any real foundation of strength.

How many men are still struggling with issues they did not resolve in childhood? I know I am.

It’s not a race to manhood, or adulthood, or enlightenment. Life is an endless journey of learning, and cutting corners always results in a flimsy infrastructure. We build from the ground up for a reason.

What’s Next in the World of Boys

No clue. I’ll try to stay in the loop. I’m going on 25 years at an all-boys summer camp, and I will continue to advocate for the well-being of boys and men. I’ll say this:

Can we all just relax a little? Boys can sense the anxious energy of everyone around them, and it’s not productive.

After an article I wrote about men and belonging, I received a scathing comment because I suggested that people should feel compassion for men. First, thanks for reading. Second, it is my sincere aspiration that as a society we feel compassion for men.

The more we recognize that the suffering of others is our own suffering, the less angry we will be. Healing someone else is self-healing. Of course, we want men to internalize this insight as much as anyone.

There will always be both positive and negative influences. That’s life. We need to stop getting so upset by the bad actors. Our rage feeds theirs. Boys and men really do just want to belong. May we build communities where they are known, loved, not indulged, and nurtured to grow into ethical men.

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For the past decade, America has been at war with itself. Despite a relatively incredible quality of life, Americans are getting sadder, and as our faith in public institutions (and the country) has eroded, we have become more and more self-centered. The toll on mental health and life satisfaction has been heavy.

offers a thoughtful explanation for the causes of American sadness:

American sadness this decade has been forged by the fact of, and the feeling of, a permanent unrelenting economic crisis, amplified by a uniquely negative news and media environment, and exacerbated by the rise of solitude and the declining centrality of trusted institutions.

I think he’s spot on, and his thesis also gives us a solid jumping-off point as we contemplate what guideposts might anchor us moving forward. Here’s what I believe will differentiate successful organizations from collapsing ones.

Organizations that build and prioritize trust

Successful organizations will do this by:

• Maintaining reasonable transparency and regularly giving the public a look under the hood to verify ethical conduct.

  • Example: Patagonia publishes “The Footprint Chronicles” so that consumers can trace their supply chain.

• Providing a visible purpose statement and demonstrating proof of mission-alignment with measurable, documented outcomes.

  • Example: Ben & Jerry’s is loud and clear about organizational values and activism on their website.

• Publicly acknowledging mistakes and explaining deliberate decisions to grow from them.

  • Example: 80,000 Hours has a whole page on their website dedicated to explaining their mistakes.

• Gathering feedback from various stakeholders and using it as evidence to drive cultural responsiveness.

  • Example: Airbnb engaged civil rights leaders and activists to help them create their Community Commitment and address discrimination.

• Reducing “sludge”: excessive or unjustified friction that makes it difficult for people to achieve their goals, access benefits, or cross a finish line—such as redundant paperwork, complex forms, and bureaucratic hurdles (Sunstein & Thaler, 2021).

  • Example: The UK Government Digital Service is dedicated to removing “sludge” from government websites.

• Improving the lives of others and sharing a quantifiable commitment to community service.

  • Example: Salesforce created the 1-1-1 model, or the 1% Pledge, which “provides a simple, flexible framework for setting aside a percentage of staff time, product, profit, and/or equity for social impact.”

Organizations that connect people through real-life experiences

Successful organizations will do this by:

• Facilitating real-life experiences rather than making them less likely to occur.

  • Example: Meetup “creates possibilities to find and build local communities,” moving people from their online platform to in-person gatherings.

• Making people feel more connected and less isolated, and measuring this sentiment.

  • Example: The AARP Foundation and its Connect2Affect initiative, which offers tools to overcome social isolation while sharing relevant research.

• Not seeking to profit on the manipulation of people.

  • Example: Signal is a noteworthy non-profit that honors privacy without using people’s information to control and exploit them.

• Not permitting incivility and antisocial behavior.

  • Example: Pixar fosters a culture of psychological safety to promote innovation and collaboration.

• Prioritizing relationships, fostering a relational workspace and way of doing business.

  • Example: Southwest Airlines distinguished themselves by focusing on relationships and cultivating a positive experience for everyone involved.

Organizations that cultivate peace and optimism

Successful organizations will do this by:

• Not operating with righteous anger.

  • Example: Kindness.org conducts research and develops programs and products “which lead to better outcomes in people’s personal lives, at work, and in society at large,” rather than blaming bad actors.

• Not seeking to spark outrage.

  • Example: The Pew Research Center consistently offers empirical, transparent data without relying on sensationalism.

• Being mindful of economic hardship and other insecurities and showing compassion to those experiencing them.

  • Example: Ally Bank eliminated overdraft fees during the COVID-19 pandemic to support those who were most financially vulnerable.

• Investing in professional, personal, and communal development, dedicating time and resources to positive growth.

  • Example: The Starbucks College Achievement Plan provides 100% upfront tuition coverage to partners seeking a first-time bachelor’s degree through Arizona State University’s online program.

• Responding to local, national, and international crises within reason and with the intention of easing suffering.

  • Example: Chobani regularly supports communities in times of need (such as the 2024 LA fires and the pandemic) and has a history of hiring refugees.

• Setting and maintaining high standards for ethical conduct while providing both support and accountability.

  • Example: Johnson & Johnson took responsibility for tampered Tylenol bottles, setting the bar for taking extreme ownership while putting the public interest first.

My sincere hope is that organizational leaders see the qualities on this list as transformative opportunities to connect and do meaningful business. This is not a catalog of social compliance burdens. On the consumer end, this should be the kind of behavior we expect from organizations, at least the ones we choose to do business with. For all of us, the marriage of peace and prosperity depend upon mindful interactions with one another.

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The Problem with Banning Social Media Is That It’s Social

This article reviews valuable (but not very surprising) data about the Australian social media ban. uses the evidence to explain why efforts like this won’t work—and what strategies have a better chance. This is an important read for educators, parents, and anyone else who is trying to figure out how to address social media concerns with young people. Spoiler alert, here are his recommendations (still read the full piece):

• Complying to social media restrictions without being pushed to the social periphery.

• Recruiting high‑status early movers.

• Providing alternative social infrastructure (sports, clubs, online and offline spaces) that fills the time and connection the platforms used to fill.

• Pairing all of this with friction at the device level (defaults, screen‑time controls, age‑gating at operating‑system level).

Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better

Full transparency, I’m still reading this one. Nonetheless, I feel it’s worth sharing. ’s newest book explains “why limits are the key to stimulating creativity, innovation, collaboration, and personal contentment.” You’ve likely experienced this yourself without realizing it. I’m excited to put what I have learned so far into practice. For those of you looking for a tool you can use immediately, here’s a downloadable workbook from IDEO via ReMarkable that uses constraints to promote innovative thinking.

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

Dr. Lenny Wiersma recommended this book, so I gave it a shot, and it did not disappoint. It’s a quick read that weaves research and case studies into an understandable argument. By the end, you walk away with a toolbox of practical skills to harness your inner voice and better manage your response to life’s challenges. Being skilled with the voice in your head will transform your daily experience.

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1. What irks you? A baby screaming when you wake? A dishwasher that needs unloading? A load of laundry to be folded? A dog barking at the door? Your partner asking you questions? The day of work ahead? The ant on the counter? The toy on the floor? The hangover? Back pain? Life has no sympathy for your objections to it, no recourse for injustice. Think of the tick looking for a warm, safe place. There is no safe harbor. There will always be a storm and the attitude with which we face it.

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2. There’s a reason momma keeps the cookies on the top shelf. Beware the vendors who want to live in your pocket, selling their yummy snacks or giving them away with fervor. They aren’t concerned with how your story ends. Whether it be food or tech or some other guilty pleasure, keep your sweet treats further than arm’s reach. Place them somewhere where the work you put in to retrieve them is always the more significant part of the journey. See how much sweeter life is then.

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3. If you have been wronged by someone, if they have caused you pain, slighted you, undervalued you, stabbed you in the back, fooled you, embarrassed you, shattered your world into a zillion unfixable pieces, then you are deceiving yourself. These things can only happen to a victim, and you are not that. You are a liver of life. You are suffering, and joy. The more experience you embrace, the stronger you become—if you have the will to expand beyond, and leave behind, your tiny shelter at the center of the universe.

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4. We drink alcohol because we cannot stand how we feel without it, because we believe something external will make us feel better, because we became convinced that what we are looking for is beyond our capacity, but there is a greater fear in that separation we need to face. In Buddhism, they say the difference between heaven and earth is a hair’s breadth of separation. Alcohol—and any other toxin that clouds the mind and is objectively detrimental to health—increases that separation.

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5. Try for a day, even an hour, to do one thing at a time. You take pride in your productivity and your hustle, yet you avoid the more challenging feat. Amidst the ceaseless barrage of colored dots on screens, the mad shouting of lost souls, and the impatient ticking of machines, it is only this—your pure, undivided attention—that makes you human. One thing at a time. This is how you save your life.

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6. “A wicked child is the most beautiful thing in the world” (from Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson). What makes a wicked child ugly? Is it that she does not understand how our rules apply to her? Is it that he does not submit to the embrace of our authority? Or is it that we would prefer this child to share our desires, that in this child we hope to find the acceptance and belonging that we demand? A wicked child challenges the notion that we are in control. A wicked child shows us our true reflection and invites us to see life with them, if we could only reach out and hold that little hand.

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7. Is pornography not a form of sexual misconduct because it does not suit the legal jargon? Is the world sexual confusing? Or misconduct? Can we speak plainly? Or is it ethical to kill a woman for adultery because the law says you may do so? Were any number of atrocities in the course of history moral because of a shortsighted and timid law? You cannot live in the gray areas any more than you can live on the extreme precipices. A path is plain enough. Life is a journey toward clarity. If, like Lao Tzu says, you “have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear,” then these questions will not be so perplexing, and you may finally stop making excuses and start giving your best effort to discover the truth.

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8. Look! There is a man. His name is Quintin. Quintin is making a fool of himself. He has had too much to drink, and he is saying mean things that he thinks are funny. Judging by the eye rolls and the awkward laughter and the squirming, his audience wants to escape him—you among them. Yet, you hold your tongue. You let him charge along without a word of counsel. Does this man not deserve your help? Is it inconceivable that he too may be writhing in some unspoken pain? You might say, “Quintin, I believe you are intoxicated, and your jokes sound mean. I thought you ought to know about it, and I’d like to help if I can.” You could be smoother, but, regardless, would it hurt you? Would it hurt him? Does it hurt to reset a dislocated shoulder? Of course it does, and of course you should, unless, of course, you lack the skill or the courage.

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9. Arrogance. When you perseverate over the need to be right. When you imagine someone apologizing to you, or when you refuse to forgive a perceived betrayal. Arrogance is denial and delusion. You are arrogant, when you judge, when you grow impatient with incompetence, when you believe someone is wasting your time, when you believe the present circumstances do not meet your standards. You are arrogant more often than you would ever care to admit. Can you see it? Or have you censored the truth of the matter? You must discern the knot before you can begin untie it.

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10. You check your email, your stats, your likes, your follows. You hope for subscribers and followers and acceptance. You study the analytics. You comment. You play the game as they tell you to play it. You know the right thing to do: don’t check the messages, don’t pick up the device, don’t pull down on glass that can’t be pulled. And you do it all anyway, again and again, until you find yourself, once again, fuming. And still you go on like this. What earthquake will it take for you to realize the beauty of rejection? You don’t need any more permission than this to go forth and live your life. It’s true. You don’t belong to a fleeting digital maelstrom. You belong to the web of lost and hopeless wanderers. It is there you will find the liberation you seek.

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Is Claude Mythos “Terrifying”? | AI Reality Check

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s work, including his podcast. After Anthropic announced, to the world’s horror, that its new AI model Claude Mythos was too dangerous to release to the public, Newport researched the issue and put together this 25-minute reality check (just over a week later). It’s fantastic. He reminds us to dig deeper, to practice healthy skepticism, to discover the truth through critical thinking. How many of us took the bait and formed our conclusions based on headlines alone? As someone who is interested in AI but has a hard time with the technical jargon, I know I did. I too went up to someone and asked, “Did you hear?!”

While there are lots of reasons to be concerned about AI, that does not absolve us from gathering and analyzing information to understand the issues we face as a society. This is one of my major concerns with AI and education. I worry that students won’t learn how to think critically and conduct research because AI can think for them. I asked Gemini, “Can you find expert analysis that gives me a real picture of whether or not I should be concerned about Anthropic’s Mythos?” This is better than nothing, but I didn’t get this podcast pushed to me.

This made me stop because it convinced me that we need to be mindful of how we curate our stream of information in the age of the algorithm. If we take the easy path to knowledge, we are destined for shallow thinking at best and mindless regurgitation at worst.

Men’s Health Isn’t Just Personal—It’s Structural

I’d rate my interest in the well-being of boys and men as above average, so I was excited to find a new voice in the work of . This made me stop because I think his argument is a really important one that is easily missed: paradigm shifts require system-level thinking.

This makes me think of a diagram from Making Learning Whole by David Perkins. It illustrates three responses to “trouble spots” of teaching.

The more I look at it, the illustration isn’t great. It seems like you will end up at “trouble spots” no matter what you do, but I digress. If a student fails a test, and our instinct is to blame the student—quick and easy and ineffective—then we teach the same and likely get a similar outcome. On the other hand, if a student fails a test and we try to find an explanation for that failure, perhaps a breakdown in the system (learning, practicing, studying, test-taking, review), we are less likely to end up experiencing the same trouble spots.

If you have no interest in learning more about how social systems are contributing to the “masculinity crisis” people are talking about, that’s fine. It’s not why I included this piece. Maybe Paul Gorski’s “Avoiding Racial Equity Detours” or Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow or Douglas Murray’s The War on the West speaks to you. Regardless of the system du jour, my point is the same. If we don’t like the outcomes—and if we want different ones—we can’t just blame the individual.

Build Mental Toughness & Perform Under Pressure

For those of you who are interested in fitness and human performance, I highly recommend Dr. Andy Galpin’s podcast Perform. His episode with Dr. Lenny Wiersma might be my favorite so far. They discuss sports psychology and performing in high-stakes situations.

Here are two highlights that really made me stop and think:

• Self-talk, especially done in the second or third person—weird, I know—is an accessible and effective way to coach yourself. When you are looking for guidance, imagine someone you really admire, someone who has given you valuable feedback in the past, and think of what that person would say to you. This voice sounds much different than “I,” and it is a lot more helpful.

• Emotional control is an impossible goal, while emotional regulation (the ability to respond to emotional situations effectively) and emotional co-regulation (the ability to regulate someone else’s emotions) are underrated skills for both player and coach. We have all seen an expert implode due to emotional dysregulation, and we have all been saved by a composed soul who has lowered our temperature. These are invaluable human assets that I don’t see AI replacing any time soon.

Whether you are interested in athletic performance or professional competency, this podcast offers powerful and practical tools.

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Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share this work if you think a friend would enjoy it. To receive more insights on principled leadership, performance, and the well-being of boys and men, subscribe to my Substack or visit nicholasnowak.com.

Cheers,

Nick

This article is dedicated to building social health for boys and men. While both men and women are increasingly lonely (particularly those from low income backgrounds), men are less likely to reach out for help. Men are in need of intimate male friendships, yet they sense a paradoxical obligation for self-reliance. As a society, we generally see all-female spaces as more positive than all-male spaces, which doesn’t help men who have an easier time connecting through group or shoulder-to-shoulder activities. For a slew of reasons, people generally spend less time fostering friendships as they get older, and social circles shrink for men as they age.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Men can give and get help with shared challenges, connecting with the guys who have their back. I propose the following pillars for supporting the social health of boys and men.

Celebrate being a boy

It’s OK to be boys, as in close friends who would do anything for one another. Resilient bonds are a staple of a positive masculine identity. We shouldn’t scoff at these relationships as “bromances.” We should celebrate them. More on the value of these friendships when we talk about connection.

It is important to begin with this structural pillar so that we build around a framework of affirmation.

We are trending in the right direction here (see the image below for Americans’ views of “masculine” men), but I’ll say it anyway: it’s OK to be a boy. Each boy born into this world is not complicit in some original sin. Boys are good.

The negative narrative about boys and men is misleading. says that it is mostly untrue that young men are turning “en masse to the right, adopting misogynistic outdated views about gender, masculinity and gender roles.” He explains how recent research (2025) indicates that young men rank “being wealthier than those around you,” “winning and being the best” and “being sexually active” as the lowest-ranking attributes for men. Also, a high share of young men describe caring for kids as manly.

We’ll look at the values people think we should place more emphasis on soon.

As we consider the rites of passage to manhood, let’s remember that boys also deserve joyful traditions that celebrate their identity as boys and their commitment to one another.

Optimism is a virtue

American optimism is sinking. A recent Gallup poll suggests that we are just about as low as the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.

While there are some compelling specimens to raise doubt about the future success of men, I urge us to avoid the generalization instinct. Most men are not touting their supremacy, hurling insults, or abusing their power over others. Men who do so will undoubtedly suffer with regards to their social health.

For the ordinary man, we should continue to emphasize growth and strengths, rather than foundering and deficits. We should be suspicious of anyone who requires fame, and we should honor wisdom over charm.

Optimism is simply confidence in the future, and the future is simple in the sense that it does not exist. We can best generate optimism by creating the conditions that are most likely to lead to future success. Focusing on conditions that cultivate peace of mind will chart a brighter path.

Connection is essential

Boys and men are less likely to reach out to a friend for support. Nonetheless, I believe this may be our best entry point for prompting men to connect and get the help they need. With mindful community building and a little nudging, friends will step up.

argues that men’s health outcomes are shaped by systems as much as choices. I agree that we should “leverage trusted spaces and relationships.” It’s in the third spaces—community/social organizations, athletic and recreational activities—where men often feel like they can be themselves.

At the same time, I think men don’t want to taint those feel-good spaces with their baggage. However, outside of family, it’s these spaces that offer the most connection. It’s these people who are best positioned to listen, relate, and help.

There is a lot of ground to be gained in the market of connection. The demand is high. I have this silly idea of starting a “garage hopping” movement where groups of men get together in garages and talk about challenges and whatnot. I’ll keep you posted.

(When I was a kid—I did not do this—garage hopping was the term for driving around and looking for an open garage that you could steal beer from. Apparently, it’s still a thing, though it would not be an approved activity in the next section.)

Ethical confidence is inspiring

When it comes to supporting men’s mental and social health, I think we’ll actually be more effective if we talk with boys and men about practicing ethical strength rather than self-care. From my experience as a teacher, I don’t see the mental health language landing with boys.

Boys want to feel respected and worthy, and I believe the yoking of self-confidence and ethical judgment can offer just that. Ethical confidence shifts the focus from what is wrong with you to who you want to be, a more purpose-driven narrative. While boys view mental health as something you have or lack, ethical confidence is a project that requires work.

I’m not suggesting we abandon mental health support or self-care. Rather, I encourage us to recognize the existing barriers to help-seeking behavior and brainstorm innovative ways to incentivize character development, which includes elevating mental health and peace of mind.

A 2025 Harvard study links “strong moral character” with reduced risk for depression, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease (a reduction of 21–51%). This is new data telling an ancient story.

We are still getting tangled in this search for a “healthier masculinity,” in the deconstruction and reconstruction of man. We aren’t going to cook up an enlightened state of masculinity with some academic breakthrough. It’s time to call off the hunt and reconnect with our human nature as caregivers:

Many threads from many traditions weaving the same pattern for thousands of years.

We don’t need a new playbook for men. In our efforts to reconstruct masculinity we have uprooted men and abandoned the wisdom of our ancestors for snake oil. It’s not my prerogative to play the missionary. Still, when it comes to developing an ethical framework that fosters connection and purpose, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Vulnerability is courageous

Speaking of ethical confidence, we ought to recognize vulnerability as an act of courage. By seeking help and being open with others, we strengthen our relationships and grow more resilient. Take a look at the male characteristics people think we don’t place enough value on:

Caring, open about emotions, soft-spoken, affectionate—these are the traits of a person who is willing to be vulnerable. If you are a man, and you feel pressure to subdue these qualities, the data is giving you permission to notice that pressure…and to let it dissipate amidst the dreamworld in which it was imagined.

As I’ve said before, the characteristics of vulnerability don’t come at the expense of confidence, assertiveness, risk-taking, or physical strength. They complement them.

Dads matter

A boy looks to his father’s example. Pew found that 66% of men say their father has been “highly influential in shaping their views about what it means to be a man.”

This is pretty striking. It confirms that helping men become good fathers is worth the investment. And the data would suggest that dads are indeed getting better. Men are more involved as parents. Instead of limiting the scope of their caregiving to financial contributions, they want to be present in their kids’ lives.

As I charge through my 30’s, I find myself talking with more and more friends about being a dad. It’s helpful to discuss the challenges of fatherhood with a buddy. These conversations keep us connected and feeling less isolated. They are reassuring and heartening, genuine and joyful.

Recommendations

With all that said, here are my closing recommendations:

• Where all-boys communities exist, ensure they include ceremonies and rituals that celebrate a boy’s growth into a caring young man.

• Place a high value on close male friendships.

• Avoid generalizing and catastrophizing the state of men. Instead of pouring gasoline on the flames of a “masculinity crisis,” create conditions for optimism and invite men to join a positive human project.

• Develop ethical confidence through a consistent practice rooted in ancestral wisdom.

• Make space for and encourage vulnerability.

• Facilitate conversations about fatherhood.

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Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share this work if you think a friend would enjoy it. To receive more insights on principled leadership, performance, and the well-being of boys and men, subscribe to my Substack or visit goodmenders.com.

Cheers,

Nick

What is this?

Work I came across that made me stop and think. If I find something I feel is worth sharing—no more than 3-5 sources—I’ll include it in these posts. Here’s the first edition. Let me know what you think, and feel free to send me any recommendations. I’m always looking for curated content that gets to the heart of the matter.

The Substack-ification of American Religion

“Why young men aren’t really going back to church, why liberals are sadder than conservatives, and how ‘Substack-ification’ is transforming the future of Christianity, media, and politics.”

interviews about the state of American religion. The general takeaway is that what we perceive to be a spiritual resurgence in America is an illusion. Whether it be for political or cultural reasons, people are claiming to “practice” spirituality, but the reality is that on the whole we are moving away from traditional spiritual institutions.

Here’s my favorite line from Burge:

You can’t just pick and choose. It’s like a three-legged stool. You need all three legs. If you pull one out, it falls apart. A lot of people are doing that with religion right now. They’re walking down the buffet line, picking one piece, putting it on their plate, and calling it a spiritual life. That doesn’t endure.

This interview made me stop and think about how we have (collectively) fallen for the buffet line in America. Sure, we all “get what we want,” but this comes at a cost:

• Slow-moving and congested lines.

• The first eat first. The last eat last. Never together.

• Cost and waste are both higher.

• Quality is generally lower.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good buffet as much as the next person, but this is food for thought. What is our spiritual practice? And does it sustain and connect us?

Leadership Trends That Will Dominate in 2026

• Human-Centered Leadership

• Purpose-Driven Cultures

• Agility and Change Management

• Continuous Upskilling

• Leadership at Every Level

Is it just me, or is it a little sad that these might be considered revolutionary ideas? I don’t disagree with the Center for Leadership Studies’ assessment that these will be important initiatives in 2026, and I included this short article in my roundup because these really should be standard practices.

We are living the consequences of disconnected leadership and digital lives lacking purpose. Our technology is changing at hyperspeed. We can’t keep up, and we aren’t willing to move slow. At the same time, we seem more willing to accept incivility as the status quo.

These predicted trends are noble goal posts. I only hope that “human-centered” does not translate to “more selfish.” As it stands, we seem to be abdicating our responsibility for easing the suffering of future generations.

Chromebook Remorse

I came across this article in The New York Times after writing A “Truth” Campaign Against Big Tech: How to Give Kids Agency and Purpose. I hope more schools like McPherson Middle School are brave enough to go back to the “old ways” while continuing to help students grow by offering them insightful experiences and valuable knowledge.

Supporting kids with tech use includes mindful guardrails. Lots of schools are afraid to deprive kids of their “tools,” especially given the flood of AI-based innovations that promise to improve learning. I’m not sure which way it will go, but I am convinced of this: humans, especially children, are not built to spend the majority of their day “connecting” with a screen. None of us will live to see the day when screen-based learning satisfies our hunger for meaning.

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Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share this work if you think a friend would enjoy it. To receive more insights on principled leadership, performance, and the well-being of boys and men, subscribe to my Substack or visit nicholasnowak.com.

Cheers,

Nick

The American Institute of Boys and Men recently published The Landscape of Pornography Use by Men in the United States. The report shared the following results:

• More than 80% (many estimates exceeding 90%) of adult men in the US report exposure to pornography in their lifetime, and 40-70% within the year.

• About half of men aged 25 and under report weekly viewing, and usage generally declines with age.

• One US study reported 95% of male university students view pornography at least weekly and 62% at least several times a week.

• Rates are highest among younger men, and the trend line is moving upward. The mean age of first exposure to pornography in the US is 12.

David Sasaki articulates the issue with precision:

“Pornography use is a near-universal feature of male development in the digital age, but the effects of that exposure are varied and insufficiently studied.”

That’s where we are at. While I appreciate the call for additional research, I’m not holding my breath to learn more about the impact of pornography. I have seen enough to be concerned with porn being a staple of male-development.

As a man, I don’t think we should settle for this dirty little secret. I assume most of the men in these studies would prefer to remain anonymous. To be clear, I’m not suggesting we ride in on our high horses and strike down the wrongdoers. There wouldn’t be many of us left standing.

What I am suggesting is that we call pornography what it is: sexual misconduct.

What percentage of men truly believe that using pornography is a demonstration of ethical conduct? How many men believe the industry makes the world a better place? How many think this is a skillful allocation of resources? We can pose lots of questions, and we can always finish by asking, “Is it the right thing to do?”

I’m going to bet the majority of men share a common, perhaps near-universal answer. My question for men is this: how do we close the gap between what we know to be right and what we believe will make us happy?

First, we need to understand our relationship with pornography. Why do we crave it? What is the motivation for this desire? How does using it—before, during, and after—make us feel?

Next, we need to believe that using pornography is indeed a form of sexual misconduct. We have to recognize that sexual craving is different from love. We have to acknowledge that using pornography is an expression of sexual activity, and this activity does not honor a long-term, loving commitment to another person. We must accept the fact that our use of pornography is a reflection of our sexual energy, how we care for it, and how we care for the sexuality of others.

Finally, we will need to decide if we are willing to make a vow to refrain from sexual misconduct. If we come to terms with pornography being a form of sexual misconduct, and if we gain the insight that our lives are better without it, this decision is a natural one.

Making a vow to refrain from sexual misconduct has become particularly muddied for young men. Because of the many instances of sexual misconduct perpetrated by religious and other institutional leaders, pornography can seem like a better “alternative.” I don’t buy this.

As a society, as institutions and traditions, secular and spiritual, we can be stronger. We can care more about our ethical consistency, not by becoming more judgmental, but by becoming more disciplined.

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Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share this work if you think a friend would enjoy it. To receive more insights on principled leadership, performance, and the well-being of boys and men, subscribe to my Substack or visit nicholasnowak.com.

Cheers,

Nick

I said if I ever opened a gym (2025), I’d put a version of this quote on the front door:

We need to be upset.... Don’t come to this center to feel better; that’s not what this place is about. What I want are lives that get bigger so that they can take care of more things, more people. (Charlotte Joko Beck, American Zen Teacher)

Still no gym, but I have reworked the philosophy of GoodMenders using Beck’s insight. I’m designing peak performance training and leadership development for boys and men to help them grow stronger.

I founded GoodMenders in 2020 to build moral masculinity, principled leadership, and better culture. Those are still important pillars for me, and this evolution reflects a sharpened focus based on my personal experience and skillset.

Here’s the updated mission:

Broken down further, it looks like this:

1. Build a foundation of principled leadership.

2. Establish a practice of ethical discipline.

3. Multiply that base by strength—in body, mind, and spirit.

4. Cultivate sustainable, measurable, inspiring, difference-making performance.

I’m excited to blend my professional experience in education and leadership with my knowledge as an athlete, coach, and NSCA Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist® (CSCS). I’ll be integrating scientific, evidence-based best practices for sport performance with ethical discipline and leadership training to help athletes, teams, and professionals grow stronger so that they can handle more.

Going on six years, GoodMenders maintains a commitment to helping boys and men find their way. I’ll continue to advocate for their well-being and success, encouraging them to have a positive impact on their communities.

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Principled Leadership

Below are a few highlighted points from an article I wrote two years ago defining principled leadership:

• Principled leadership is a philosophy of leading based on sound moral judgment and an alignment with the greater good.

• Leadership has become a commodity. Another badge of honor we can obtain if we read the right books, do the right training, spend enough money. Principled leadership is none of the above. It is a continuous practice.

• Principled leadership is not carved in stone. Even our principles grow with us.

Principled leadership is your foundation, and I believe everyone has the capacity for it. Leadership is a skill worth practicing. It’s the vehicle for influencing the lives of others. When it is paired with quality principles...well, you can run the logic on that one.

Not everyone is a leader, but everyone can be. The world needs good leaders who model courage, confidence, composure, concentration, and compassion (the Five C’s of principled leadership, a framework for consistency under pressure). I’m not blowing smoke here. With training, practice, and experience, everyone can learn to lead.

A commitment to principled leadership is the first step to high-impact performance.

Ethical Discipline

The framework continues with ethical discipline. Here, the compounding interest of countless, proper decisions pays dividends. As Robert Collier famously said, “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” Life will have its ups and downs, achievements and setbacks, but consistent, ethical discipline will keep you on the path. Though we will wander, whether high or low, we regress to the mean.

Ethical discipline is hard work. The idea of it sounds nice. However, when we are faced with friction, we often take the path of least resistance. Ethical discipline is not that. It is:

• Doing what is right, no matter the difficulty, and no matter our unwillingness to do it.

• Maintaining a consistent practice that generates positive growth.

• Always paying attention. Being mindful of distraction, concentrating on relevant experience, and differentiating between the two.

I believe ethical discipline is the most challenging variable in this equation to master—and the most important. It is the throughline of peak performance. Yet, all too often, we abandon the rigors of our code for the comfort of our desires. We take the extra drink, stream the next episode, check for notifications, skip the exercise. In essence, we lose our way as we submit to our insatiable hunger for a more pleasant experience.

We do not stumble upon our best and remain in a blissful state of supremacy for the rest of our lives. We should never stop practicing. We should never stop learning. The moment we think we are the best is the moment we stop growing. Ethical discipline is a commitment to growing stronger so that you can be of use.

It is with ethical discipline that we grow through pain. Charlotte Joko Beck says, “The discomfort and pain are not the cause of our problems. The cause is that we don’t know what to do about them.” By practicing moral conduct, we stop trying to escape our discomfort and start facing it. This is critical as we prepare to build strength.

Strength

We multiply the value of principled leadership and ethical discipline by developing physical, mental, and spiritual strength. Strength is good. There is nothing wrong with being strong. With strength, we are capable of carrying more weight, embracing more pain, and not collapsing under either. And, as principled leaders, we use our strength to help the team.

As an athlete and coach, I have always been enthusiastic about sport performance and fitness. For several months, I channeled that enthusiasm to become a CSCS. I loved learning how to use evidence-based practices to achieve peak performance. Through this journey, I studied the many factors that go into developing strength, and I adapted a four-step approach from the NSCA to guide future training:

1. Needs Analysis: identify context-specific training targets.

2. Program Design: design a program that will meet specific training needs for desired outcomes.

3. Practice and Training: execute the program to build strength and improve performance.

4. Testing and Evaluation: measure growth, evaluate progress, and adapt.

Like everything else we have covered, getting stronger is a practice and a progression. We go from off-season to in-season to post-season and back again. We build endurance to build strength to build power, and we rest along the way (for the right amount of time). We understand what kind of exercise to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why we do it. We learn how to stay focused on what matters, how to handle pressure, how to meet the moment. To perform well, we need to eat well, drink well, train well, and recover well.

It all adds up. The stronger you are, the higher the coefficient, the greater the growth. The more you grow, the more you can handle. And remember, if you don’t use it, you lose it, especially with age. The older you get, the more the world dumps on your shoulders, without notice. Don’t skip leg day.

Finally, a note on spiritual strength. The soul needs feeding. This is where people sometimes get tripped up and wonder, “How do I train my spirit?” Though fewer people participate in organized religion, many still consider themselves spiritual. The spirit has power over the mind and body. In Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, he discusses the importance of spirit while reflecting on his experience in the Nazi concentration camps:

Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful. (1946)

Most of us will never live through the same horrors as Frankl, and many will never discover spiritual freedom as he did. Because he did, he was able to choose his attitude despite his nightmare of a reality. He was able to love when he had every reason to hate. While the Nazis tried to break down his body and his mind, he continued to exercise his soul. He recognized that “the salvation of man is through love and in love.”

While the body, mind, and spirit are interconnected, spiritual strength transcends the limitations of the mind and body. If spiritual practice is a gap in your training regimen, you’re leaving much of your strength on the table.

I’d suggest figuring out what feeds your soul. Then, sow those seeds.

High-Impact Performance

Through this blend of training and practice, we cultivate sustainable, measurable, inspiring, difference-making performance, what I call high-impact performance. Not only do you perform well, but that performance adds value. People want you in the room. They grow stronger with you there, more confident and competent. You are someone they can count on, and you are someone who leads with compassion.

Albert Einstein said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” When principled and disciplined leaders who are strong in body, mind, and spirit consistently and unconditionally practice compassion, they lead with purpose. Purpose has a gravitational pull. Without it, we have the feeling of being lost in space.

In popular culture, we conflate peak performance with anger, but this is not a sustainable approach. The samurai were taught to never draw their sword in anger, as they knew this led to reckless violence—wasted energy. To have a high-impact, we cannot waste our energy. Instead, through sound moral judgment, awareness, and consistency, we direct our energy to be whatever we are in the moment, and to love that moment.

Whether it be a workout or the locker room or game day, a high-impact performer sees the job that needs doing and gets it done, with joy and without complaint. High-impact performers do not wish that the circumstances were less challenging (if they do—because they are human—they observe those thoughts but do not perseverate). They do not waste their energy hoping that life will be any different than it is. They just deal with it as it is. They can handle more.

Now, to address the question a lot of people might be asking: why does GoodMenders focus on training for guys? It’s not that I think men are more equipped to be high-impact performers (women are outperforming men in significant ways, particularly in education). It’s that I am more prepared—based on my experience working with boys and men in education, leadership development, and athletics—to help male athletes have a positive impact. This is a landscape I know well, and I’d be selling you snake oil if I said I specialize in everything.

While I feel a bit like answering “Why boys and men?”, I do believe that many male athletes are struggling—between school, work, family life, mental health, and connection—even if it doesn’t seem that way on the surface. I also believe they play important roles in their communities as influencers and leaders. This is a space I’m excited to step into because the potential for good is through the roof.

So that’s what I’m cooking up at the moment. I’m a father, husband, and educator trying to have a positive impact while maintaining a beginner’s mindset—always studying to learn and grow. I believe in the cultivation of confidence, belonging, humility, and vulnerability, and I am seeking the joy of doing meaningful work. This philosophy is the latest progression in that effort. From here, it grows.

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Building a stronger community starts with a single connection. If this framework resonated with you, please consider sharing it with a coach, teammate, or friend who is all about impact.

To stay updated on this work and to receive more insights on principled leadership and performance, subscribe to my Substack or visit goodmenders.com. I am grateful for your support!

Despite some encouraging momentum in the battle to reclaim childhood from screens, adults are still failing to convince kids to hop on the less-tech bandwagon. As a teacher, here’s my take on the situation (and from speaking with my colleagues, they share similar concerns). We know that lots of screen time and social media are crippling for young people, and we are trying to do something about it. The elders are telling the juniors that they need protection from their evil screens, and the youth aren’t buying it. They think we’re freaking out, overreacting, dramatizing. They also see us using all the tools we demonize. In short, we haven’t figured out how to reach them.

To their credit, young people actually are paying attention to the news. According to a 2025 Pew Research Center study, 48% of teens say social media harms people their age, up from 32% in 2022. Still, parents are significantly more concerned, with 55% being extremely or very concerned about teen mental health compared to 35% of teens. According to the study, 74% of teens say social media makes them feel more connected to their friends, and only 14% think social media negatively affects them personally. Meanwhile, social media is the top reason parents give when asked about what most negatively impacts teens (44% say social media has the biggest negative impact).

Adults and kids aren’t on the same page regarding a major health concern. At this juncture, we are faced with two possibilities.

1. Big Tech and their products have become too powerful. We are too late. There is no going back, and we will continue to grow more dependent on devices and less capable of functioning on our own. Screens win.

2. We have yet to outsmart Big Tech and their products. We know we have a societal affliction, and we just need to put our heads together and figure out the cure. The ultimate comeback story.

Ever an optimist, I’m going with option two, and an analogy to the battle against Big Tobacco gives me hope. It wasn’t so many moons ago that everyone knew cigarettes were bad for you, and they smoked them anyway. Young people were motivated to rebel against authority, but not the tobacco companies. Instead, they rebelled against the well-intentioned adults who told them to stop smoking. Eventually, the truth® campaign flipped the script and convinced the youth that companies were exploiting them (and killing them), and that same rebel spirit was directed toward manipulative corporations. Checkmate.

Aside: The tobacco industry has continued to shake its stubborn fist. Big Tech will be no different. That’s fine. As I like to tell my own kids, that’s just the way it goes.

Moral of the story: we are still at the stage where kids are rebelling against parents and teachers (uncool authority figures) telling them to get off their screens. They aren’t worried about the long-term health effects that we’re shouting about. They aren’t upset with the Big Tech villains.

To me, they mostly seem frustrated that we are treating them like incompetent fools rather than competent decision makers. And until we offer them some agency around this issue, which seems fair enough considering we don’t plan to drop our own phones down the well, we shouldn’t expect to have much, if any, success.

Apart from flipping the script on Big Tech companies, I think there are a few key messages for parents, educators, and youth advocates to rally behind.

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Collective Relevance

Rather than scolding kids for their dependency, adults need to convince young people that developing agency is relevant to their future success. This will likely take a collective effort from people who are far more successful and influential than me. Unfortunately, many of the cultural icons kids look up to incentivize hyper connectivity. We need people with social capital in business and athletics, not just academia, to advocate for moderate screen time and social media use. Until that happens en masse, parents and teachers will have to do their best.

Jonathan Haidt has already made the argument for a collective approach in The Anxious Generation (and we’ve seen a promising response). Without a collective effort, we will fail. If we only offer case-sensitive solutions to deal with the heavy users, we will die by a thousand cuts.

There should be a clear understanding between schools, families, and students prior to communal participation. Families should not be surprised by their kid’s access to technology and the internet after they join a community. I think this should hold true for all youth organizations—sports, camps, etc.

There should be a common message about the relevance of modest screen time for developing agency:

Less dependence on screens and media leads to greater personal agency and the likelihood of achieving one’s goals.

Adults need to frame this message positively, not with threats nor scare tactics. This might look like a coaching staff forbidding their players to take out phones during practice times (collective effort) while emphasizing the need for optimal focus to improve performance (relevance). A negative approach would be having an unclear phone policy and then chirping at a player who checks Instagram between drills: “And you wonder why you’re on the bench?”

This all sounds easy peasy as I write it. The truth is that achieving collective relevance will be difficult. Getting kids to believe that putting their devices away is relevant to their well-being and success will suck.

No Pain, No Gain

Any serious effort to limit screen time will come with challenges, and adults will need to embrace them. Kids will be bored. They will act out. They will get into real-life mischief instead of online mischief. When you remove the pacifier, they will scream, and parents and educators will bear the brunt of their outcry. All that said, just as you shouldn’t treat a crying baby with anger and judgment, we will need to approach kids with compassion and empathy.

This, I have found, is where the rubber doesn’t meet the road. We love the idea of unplugging our kids until we have to entertain them all day and keep them out of trouble. It is easier to cook dinner while your kids watch Encanto for the fifth time than it is to cook dinner while they scream at you and play another round of Destroy the House. But when you say no to watching Encanto for the sixth time, there will be blood.

And so we build the walls of our cells.

There’s really no way around this one. Being tech dependent is a bit like sitting comfortably in the eye of a hurricane. To leave the shelter of the digital bubble is to risk extreme discomfort—excommunication from the world. Between freedom and imprisonment, there is a violent storm to endure. What allows us to take the plunge toward freedom, to endure the storm, is agency.

Agency, the vehicle to freedom, is the best incentive we have to lose our attachment to our devices. We cannot have real agency when our phones and tablets and laptops steal our focus, when they tap into our wiring and influence our thoughts, which influence our feelings and actions, which define the brief experience we call life.

Here’s where we are really up against it. Young people (and, let’s face it, people of all ages) enjoy the experience that their devices construct. The strategy then is not to lecture kids about the relevance of agency. The strategy is to create conditions for agency so they can experience its relevance.

Insight Through Experience

As a kid, I was fortunate to go to summer camp. There, I gained the insight that I enjoyed life more without a screen. I didn’t have classes with someone lecturing me about digital citizenship. Digital what? No thanks. Instead, I got dropped off at the lake without screens and had the time of my life. I had proof, real-life experience, that hanging out in the woods with my friends, unplugged, was way more fun than any alternative.

You can’t force a kid to practice digital wellness (take it from someone who has tried to teach it), or whatever you want to call it. Kids do what they enjoy. Without an enjoyable alternative to their screens, they will choose the screens every time. Adults are the same. People working with kids must understand this. You can tell me I should cut my right hand off until you’re blue in the face. I won’t do it. I’m convinced that life with my right hand is more enjoyable than life without it.

As adults, we are responsible for creating conditions for young people to gain the insight, through direct experience, that they are better off spending less time plugged into their devices and more time practicing agency.

Summer camps do a pretty good job with this—if they don’t allow campers to bring their personal electronics. Schools are trying, and parents can do their best, but I suspect other third spaces—physical locations outside of the home (first place) or workplace/school (second place) that facilitate social interaction, community building, and social support—will have a greater impact. I’d recommend parents identify good ones and get their kids involved early.

The Path to Purpose

It won’t be social media bans or digital citizenship courses or even phone-free schools that reverse the “great rewiring” of the youth. It will be the collective understanding that developing agency and detaching from screens offers a better experience that is purpose relevant. We all have a purpose that motivates us. You cannot tell someone what their purpose is. It is discovered. As adults working with young people, the best we can do is to nudge and encourage that discovery as skillfully as possible.

To finish up, I’ll resurface four paraphrased tips from David Yeager’s 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People (2024):

1. Ask, don’t tell. Respect young people by treating them as adultlike. Adults are asked; children are told.

2. Find ways to honor the young person’s status — for example, point out their competence and expertise — rather than pointing out your own authority. Avoid an I-know-better-than-you attitude.

3. Validate whatever negative experiences young people may have had. Treat their feelings as real and legitimate. Then look for a way forward.

4. Presume agency. Acknowledge that the young person can make up their own mind, and then make it clear that you are rooting for them to make a good choice. Also, explain how their actions have broader consequences in the world.

When adults use a “mentor mindset” (high expectations, high support) rather than an “enforcer mindset” (high expectations, low support) (Yeager, 2024), they will be far more likely to help kids find a genuine path to purpose.

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This post originally appeared on Medium with The Good Men Project.

Every so often, an idea clicks into place like a puzzle coming together. It’s nice when it happens (e.g., the concept of sustaining alignment instead of juggling the unworkable “work-life balance”). This idea doesn’t have so many puzzle pieces. No complaints from me on that score.

Initially, I was thinking about a progression of skills for boys to practice in an effort to develop a positive masculine identity, and the Five C’s—courage, confidence, composure, consciousness, and compassion—clicked. I still teach the skills to boys, and, the more I have thought about them, the more I believe the Five C’s are essential for principled leadership.

This framework has evolved since I originally introduced it in 2024. Since then, I have replaced consciousness with concentration, and I have revised the language to reflect my current thinking. I also updated the visuals, including a beautiful sketch on a piece of construction paper I stole from my kids’ craft closet because I was displeased with the AI slop. We’ll discuss the benefits of deliberate training with these five skills, as well as the downward slide—and eventual spiral—that occurs when selfishness, distraction, volatility, timidness, and panic rule the day.

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Courage

We begin with courage.

As Maya Angelou said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” Every person has the capacity for courage: the will to act, despite the fear that those actions will bring painful consequences.

How does one practice the skill of courage? By doing scary things. Once done, and you realize, like Sanka Coffie, that you aren’t dead yet, things are less scary.

Confidence

Confidence follows courage. When people are confident, they shed self-doubt. They are honest and vulnerable. They find their voice and use their full potential to make a positive impact.

Leaders should be confident, not arrogant.

Confidence is believing you belong, that you are a part of the greater good. Arrogance is believing you are better than everyone else, that you are above and thus entitled to good fortune.

How does confidence become a skill? Reps. Countless, mindful reps. While courage deals with the unknown, confidence, built upon many successful reps, is a result of knowing.

Composure

Confidence leads to composure. Leaders who develop composure will be more effective critical thinkers and problem solvers. Without the ability to practice composure and self-discipline, selfish and non-critical thinking will follow.

The discomposed leader is doomed to an endless game of Whac-A-Mole.

There are lots of ways to practice the skill of composure (mindfulness, meditation, journaling, yoga, etc.). Whatever training you choose to invest in, it could make all the difference when the world goads you with some irresistible bait.

And here I feel obligated to include a link to Zidane’s infamous headbutt, a timeless cautionary tale of what happens when we take the bait.

Concentration

The skill of composure allows for concentration. Awareness is the first step to doing good in the world, which, I argue, is each person’s responsibility.

However, it is easy to get distracted, and it is difficult for leaders to resist the pressure to constantly innovate, produce, perform, profit, repeat. With this pressure comes a barrage of bottomless productivity rabbit holes riddled with detours (more distraction).

I have written previously about the leadership fundamentals for achieving peak performance, the psychology of success. To lead at our best, we need to focus on what is task relevant while letting go of the irrelevant.

Becoming skillful in concentration—the ability to do one thing at a time, to see things as they are, to be still—is the key to perceiving suffering, learning from it, and growing stronger. As someone who routinely fails to avoid distraction, I realize how much more mental training I ought to do (the same kind that generates composure) if I want to lead from a state of awareness and focus.

Compassion

We arrive at the tip of the arrow. The point. Once you internalize the progression—and with consistent practice—the Five C’s framework works more like a self-sustaining cycle of interrelated skills.

Albert Einstein said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” Compassion training isn’t all that complicated (if it is, consider that a red flag). Be kind as a habit. Automate giving. Put others first. Water a plant. Write a nice letter.

When leaders practice the altruistic skill of consistently and unconditionally showing compassion, without any thought of exchange, they lead with purpose. Purpose has a gravitational pull. Without it, we have the feeling of being lost in space.

Aim with compassion at your purpose, and you’ll likely hit the target.

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Beware the panic slide/spiral

Now that I know the Five C’s, am I all set? Will I be a principled leader now and forever? Nope. Not really. Actually, never. What goes up must come down.

In 2021, I wrote Are you a riser or a sinker? Summary: teams do better with positive people (risers) than negative ones (sinkers), even the biggest optimists will have spells of sinking, and there is value to be gained from both risers and sinkers.

Now we add the “or” to our positive framework. Put the Five C’s into an upward arrow, flip it, and you get—the panic slide! If we observe the characteristics of sinking, we can reverse the slide before it becomes a downward spiral.

To be clear, you don’t want to ride the panic slide. Nevertheless, despite your tremendous leadership prowess, one day you will discover—to your surprise and dismay—that you are indeed sliding. Here are the features of the panic slide:

1. Selfishness: Burdened by constant self-centeredness.

• Example: King Louis XIV of France who said, “I am the state.” His selfish rule set the stage for the French Revolution.

2. Distraction: Avoiding reality and living in the imagination.

• Example: Nicholas II of Russia ignored the suffering of the Russian people and instead focused on his personal affairs, leading to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty and the rise of the Russian Revolution.

3. Volatility: Triggered by challenges to the ego.

• Example: Emperor Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator. He was an erratic and ego-driven leader who left Rome in chaos.

4. Timidness: Crippled by the fear of being hurt.

• Example: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was known for his appeasement of Hitler. His fear of painful consequences contributed to one of the greatest catastrophes in history.

5. Panic: Frantically escaping, a complete resistance to reality.

• Example: Adolf Hitler epitomized this stage in the final weeks of WWII when he went ballistic in his bunker and ultimately killed himself, unable to face reality closing in on him.

Do not fear. If you’ve trained well, you can stop the slide before you come crashing down on the panic button.

Leaders who practice the Five C’s will spend more time rising than sinking. Because they concentrate, they will observe their own thinking and behavior. They will identify selfishness, distraction, volatility, timidness, and panic, understanding the roots of their self-induced spiraling.

They will know the more skillful alternative, and they will not get stuck in a downward spiral.

Final notes on training

First, there are a few important questions about training to consider:

1. What do you prioritize when training your team (especially during onboarding)? What do people learn first? If these skills/topics aren’t the most essential things for people to know with regards to your team’s purpose and culture, you have more questions to ask.

2. What does your team think about previous training you have done? How do you know? And how does that inform the decisions you make about future training?

3. When does your team do “soft skills” training (like the Five C’s)? What proactive culture training do you do? What signals do you look for that might indicate a need for reactive training? What percentage of your training is proactive vs. reactive? I’d strive for roughly 80% proactive and 20% reactive.

And the final note. There are very few trainings that have a lasting impact. Sometimes, it’s because the training isn’t so great. Most of the time, regardless of quality, no matter how high or low we feel post training, somewhere down the road of our busy lives, whether it be a subtle drift or full blown panic slide, we return to baseline.

The trick to effective training is this: it is repeated over time, like all good practice, building upon shared values, reminding us of that light above the clouds, the same light within each of us that supplies the energy to push forward with this exciting human project.

At my current school, we have a tradition called the sunset climb. It’s my personal favorite (and there are definitely a few C’s involved). Our graduating students hike the local mountain at sunset and, one at a time, express their gratitude for their peers and mentors. It’s an emotional moment where kids and teachers feel the weight of close friends parting ways at the end of a hard-fought journey.

This tradition reminds me why I teach, and I know that if there were more “sunset climbs” sprinkled throughout the year, I’d feel even better about my chosen profession. When you think about training, instead of going through the motions, think about creating these sunset moments.

Remember the tip of the arrow: compassion. Concentrate on the point.

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Question for the club

What helpful tools, graphics, mnemonics, etc. have been useful leadership guides for you?

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I’m going to kick things off with a BIG quote from Kobe Bryant. Big in length, sure, but significant because it describes the “ideal performance state” for an athlete (Haff & Triplett, 2016, p. 156), which I will argue is transferable to any profession:

When you get in that zone it’s just a supreme confidence that you know it’s going in. It’s not a matter of if or this [or] that. It’s going in. Things just slow down. Everything slows down and you just have supreme confidence. When that happens, you really do not try to focus on what’s going on because ... you could lose it in a second. Everything becomes one noise—you don’t hear this or that; everything’s just one noise—you’re not paying attention to one or the other. ... You just really try to stay in the present and not let anything break that rhythm. Again, as long as you just kind of stay there, you become oblivious to everything that’s going on. You don’t think about your surroundings or what’s going on with the crowd or the team. You’re kind of locked in. ... You have to really try to stay in the present and not let anything break that rhythm.

Anyone who has watched Kobe Bryant play knows what the ideal performance state looks like, at least on a basketball court:

• Absence of fear

• Automatic motor skills, no thought or analysis necessary

• Undisturbed concentration on the activity

• A sense of effortlessness and control

• The slowing of time and space

He understood sport psychology, and he put it into practice. He understood that by using selective attention, one reduces distraction, narrowing focus instead on what is task-relevant.

High-level athletes can access the ideal performance state that Kobe describes—and so can everyone else. Today, (using the Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, Fourth Edition as my reference) I want to talk a little bit about how you can do that, and about how leaders can facilitate the ideal performance state, rather than obstructing it.

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The Psychology of High Performance

First, let’s acknowledge a simple truth. Each one of us, even the pros, only has so much energy to give. We have to practice psychological and physiological efficiency, which is giving no more than what is required to perform a mental or physical task. The psychology of success is not to work harder than everyone else all of the time. That’s a reliable recipe for burnout.

A key component of efficiency is practicing task-relevant focus. To perform at our best, we can’t waste attention on worrying and catastrophizing. These imagined concerns are task-irrelevant. Many well-intentioned coaches and leaders make a lot of task-irrelevant noise. More on this soon.

Athletes will lack energy when it matters most if they spend it on worry, anger, frustration, or anxiety. They will also perform with less confidence and less focus. Instead, if the athlete learns how to use her emotions to elevate energy and concentration, she is more likely to find that ideal performance state.

When does having the proper energy matter most? When we are faced with complex or new tasks, high pressure situations, and activities that demand deliberate focus. In these moments, there are a few recommended techniques for athletes—diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscular relaxation, autogenic training, routines, and systematic desensitization (feel free to pick up Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, Fourth Edition for your next pleasure read). I want to offer three rules to remember:

1. Make it simple.

2. Get skilled.

3. Stay calm when facing complex decisions/tasks.

If you can do these three things, you will reduce the chances of experiencing a total meltdown when you find yourself in a dogfight. If you can’t remember these three things, remember this one:

1. Nothing inspires performance better than self-confidence.

In a world bursting with high performers, skill is never enough. You need to believe you can perform. Self-belief leads to heightened work ethic and determination. Of course, confidence isn’t necessarily enough either, but it’s what we’ve got. So before you call yourself a talentless loser, remember that no one gets far without self-confidence. Negative self-talk is akin to self-inflicted hamstringing.

Next, we’ll consider the fundamentals of psychology that all leaders should know so that they can motivate rather than demoralize.

How Leaders Facilitate or Derail High Performance

This might be the more important part. Well-intentioned leaders who misunderstand the psychology of performance may unwittingly pave the road to hell for their athletes (I’ll use “athlete” for consistency, but you can substitute it with whatever teacher-student model you want). Let’s circle back to the concepts of physical and psychological efficiency, both of which are compromised by:

• the athlete perceiving a threat to self-esteem

• the belief that one cannot meet the demands for success

• a fear of the consequences of failure

As a leader, if you contribute to any one of these perceptions, odds are you will decrease your athlete’s performance. The goal is not to mess with the athlete’s mind. Many leaders go wrong here in their attempts to motivate, pushing their athletes over the wrong edge of the Inverted-U Theory with too much arousal (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908).

People need to feel senses of competence and self-determination in order to succeed. There are some basic practices that can generate those feelings, which takes us to a question as old as Hamlet: to punish undesirable behavior, or to reinforce desirable behavior?

Wherever you look—school, sports, the workplace—the results all point to the same answer: to improve performance, use punishment sparingly and reinforce with positive feedback often. With punishment, athletes focus on what they are doing incorrectly, the task-irrelevant stimuli we talked about avoiding earlier.

Reinforcement is the opposite. It leads to athletes focusing on what they should do, what is task-relevant. They also “build long-term memories of success, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and confidence” (Haff & Triplett, 2016, p. 163), all key components of peak performance. It’s no exaggeration to say that positive feedback goes a long way.

There are a few nuances worth understanding in terms of helping people learn new skills. In stressful and competitive environments, providing clear directives concurrent with the activity is beneficial. However, when someone is learning a complex skill, the more effective strategy is to offer delayed feedback, at first frequently, but decreasing over time as the person masters the skill.

Starting with instruction is good, but in order for someone to gain self-confidence and self-efficacy, a leader needs to transition to discovery, allowing the learner to perform without immediate feedback. In essence, it’s harder to learn with someone breathing down your neck.

Practice the Mental Game

Against my better judgment, I put together summarized bullets to appease the scannability algorithm. It will look great on your refrigerator. Jokes aside, if you don’t practice the mental game, as Danny Devito said in a Jersey Mike’s commercial, fuggedaboudit!

• Develop automatic confidence.

• Don’t waste your energy. Use it for what matters most.

• Become aware of task-irrelevant distractions and practice task-relevant concentration.

• Make tasks simple and get skilled.

• Reinforce the good before punishing the bad.

• Learning is a process, not a prescription. Let it happen.

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Question for the club:

If positive reinforcement builds long-term success and punishment causes athletes to focus on task-irrelevant errors, why do many leaders still default to high-pressure, fear-based motivation? How can a leader maintain high standards without triggering the threat to self-esteem that derails the ideal performance state?

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References:

Haff, G. G., & Triplett, N. T. (Eds.). (2016). Essentials of strength training and conditioning (4th ed.). Human Kinetics.

Wells, N. (2021, March 12). Inverted-U theory. Sport Science Insider. https://sportscienceinsider.com/inverted-u-theory/

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482. https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.920180503

After reading one of my posts, a colleague asked, “So, do you just write about whatever you are reading?” My answer: sort of. It doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough there is a collision between a book and my experience, and I feel like writing about it. The book now is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by . He argues that generalists, people who develop range through diverse experiences, thrive in a wicked world (wicked being unpredictable, ever-changing, unclear, misleading). It’s a well-researched and engaging book, and as a person who leans generalist, I found it reassuring that I might not be a hopeless wanderer after all.

The collision. I work at a summer camp, and we recently lost another fantastic counselor to the college internship, an unsettling trend. The pressure on young people to take the “next step” toward a successful career is rising. For many, working at a summer camp has become the wrong step, at least not the best one. If your goal is to have a higher-paying job out of college, you have a point. Data do seem to favor the internship on that score (though, I bet there are some other variables we aren’t controlling for that explain those outcomes).

However, Epstein also sites a 2017 study published by four economists that found “people who got narrow, career-focused education were more likely to be employed right out of school and earned more right away, but over time both advantages evaporated; decades later, they had spent less overall time in the labor market and had lower lifetime earnings than workers who received general educations.” Adam Grant agrees that “generalists excel over time” sharing a 2025 Science article, “Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance,” which concluded, “Across domains, world-class performers, compared with peers performing just below this level, engaged in more multidisciplinary practice and showed more gradual performance progress through their early years.”

I believe the majority of our discontent—our envy, contempt, greed, longing, anxiety, hostility—comes from our conviction that we are (or should be) more than who we are. Somewhere along the way, we are convinced that we have not arrived at our destination, that there are grander things in store for us, more that we are destined to achieve. We forget that people on their death beds wish they hadn’t worked their life away, too busy to be present, too consumed by expectations that took precedence over love and happiness and relationships. It’s so easy to fool ourselves into thinking, later, there will be time.

Epstein argues that young people, instead of specializing early, should diversify their experiences as they try to find “match quality,” which he says is more likely to happen later in life. One could use that reasoning to justify seeking a variety of internship experiences. I can get on board with that. However, the rationale I hear most often is along the lines of needing a head start or a foot in the door to avoid falling behind on a specific track. This logic runs out of runway. While it increases your chances of the higher paying job after college, it neglects a basic, inevitable truth: who you are now is different from who you will be after college, and who you will be then is different from who you will be 5 years later, and so on and so forth, should you live long and prosper.

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Obviously, I think young people should choose the camp counselor job before the college internship (and if you search “skip the internship, go to summer camp,” you’ll see I’m not alone). I’m biased, but hear me out. Epstein proposes that “you don’t commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that give you the most promising range of options afterward.” Working as a camp counselor offers tremendous range, especially when it comes to leadership and management. With all due respect (love that loaded phrase) to internships, here’s why I recommend camp counseling instead:

1. Life happens now

When working with kids, this couldn’t be more true. Lots of people feel guilty about doing what they enjoy, even more so if it gets in the way of “growing up.” If you enjoy the work of a camp counselor and you have the energy to do it, now is the time. You won’t have that same energy as you age, and you have the rest of your life to frolic with spreadsheets and cubicles and emails and all the other perks of a “real job.”

And keep in mind, Epstein notes, “Big innovation most often happens when an outsider who may be far away from the surface of the problem reframes the problem in a way that unlocks the solution.” What seems off-track now may end up being the key to success—and camp counselors spend all day problem-solving.

2. It’s the healthy choice

As a camp counselor, you spend the summer outside, in nature, running around, laughing, playing, unplugged. In essence, you get to be a kid, and you are paid to do it with people you love like family. Talk about the ultimate reset before diving into another academic year or even your first full-time job.

Does the internship give you this gift? Years from now, maybe with kids of your own, will you daydream of the beloved internship that you posted about on LinkedIn?

3. The network is broader

Not only will you develop range in your leadership, but you will expand the range of your network. It’s very likely that someone working at the camp has a connection in the area of the internship you are considering, and it is likely that connection also went to camp. If you prove to be a great camp counselor, this connection is gold.

The internship network will be narrower, as well as the skills you develop.

4. You will learn antifragile skills

Being antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder) is a step beyond resilience. It isn’t just about enduring through challenges, but growing because of them. Antifragile people don’t break under pressure or uncertainty. They thrive. Becoming harder can be useful in difficult circumstances. Becoming stronger and more skillful is far more functional. Building human muscle with heavy resistance is a good representation of antifragility. Though the stress of the weight initially damages the muscle fibers, they repair and adapt, becoming bigger and stronger than before.

What antifragile skills do camp counselors build? They learn how to care for others under variable conditions and how to maintain safety by dealing with risk. They adapt to unpredictable problems. They manage different conflicts with different strategies at different times. They lead through crises, engage small and large groups, inspire a child to face his fears and be himself. The list is endless—and wonderfully general.

5. You will learn to lead

If you run a cabin of campers, you are learning to lead a team and build a culture. If you run a division of campers and other counselors, you are the mayor of a small town, a CEO if that sounds better on the resume. There are few roles where you can have so much responsibility at such a young age.

We learn the most through experience, in practice rather than theory (as Epstein says repeatedly), and the leadership experience you get as a camp counselor, particularly if it includes the management of larger groups, far exceeds that of the intern.

6. Without camp counselors, there are no camps for kids

Let’s face it. It’s not all about you (I hope you agree). Kids need camps, especially boys (I will restrain myself from going further on that point in this post). agrees in Notes on Being a Man, describing summer camps as necessary “third spaces” (a social environment separate from home and work/school) for kids to connect and mature. And Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, says, “Summer camp is the best way for a child to detox from smartphones and social media. All the activities and camaraderie are a substitute for the drama of virtual life, so not just a denial of something, but a substitution with something healthier.”

If there are no camp counselors, there are no camps. No camps means fewer spaces for kids to play outside and discover who they are. Fewer communities where they belong. Fewer places where they learn to be independent and responsible, making choices and practicing self-discipline. Fewer opportunities to receive mentorship from a role model they can relate to. Fewer doors opened to new experiences and new people. Fewer moments to fail, try again, find success, and gain confidence. If I needed to filibuster something in a pinch, I’d talk about the value of summer camps.

The important point I want to emphasize here is that I hope young people take impact into consideration when weighing the value of working at a summer camp compared to landing an internship. The kids you work with will remember you forever, and there is no way to quantify the ripple effects of the good you are doing. It is limitless.

General closing thoughts on deciding what to do with your life and career

With all that said, I do recognize that not everyone has the opportunity, interest, or match quality to work as a camp counselor. There’s also a financial privilege variable. Some people may need to make more money than a camp salary can offer. That’s legit. And for those young adults who want to test the waters by trying out various internships—bonus points for those that have a positive impact on the welfare of others—go for it.

Internships aside, there are infinite experiences to choose from that don’t include camp counselor, and any one of them may very well be the right choice. I’m just a camp guy defending the honor of a position with diminishing status. Pity me. Ultimately, the choice is yours. Whatever you decide as a young person and aspiring leader, I encourage you to keep the following thoughts in mind.

Epstein says, “It is difficult to accept that the best learning road is slow, and that doing poorly now is essential for better performance later.” Finding a career with high match quality takes time, and match changes as we grow. For example, if you threw me back into a cabin of 10 kids as their counselor, it wouldn’t be the same experience, and certainly not the optimal situation for anyone involved. I can only imagine their wide-eyed horror, and my monotoned enthusiasm falling flat with the dust between the floor boards. There’s a younger, more relatable, more energetic person for the job, and it’s OK that I’m not that person anymore.

Most people, even if they don’t want to admit it, even if they don’t like it, know the road to high performance is slow. It’s the “doing poorly” part that really freaks us out. Waiting makes people antsy. Failing, just the prospect of it, terrifies people enough that they don’t even try (initially, I wanted to say makes them quit, but sometimes one of the best things we can do is quit and move on).

When we aren’t put in situations where we are likely to hear tough feedback, we miss precisely what we need to hear to increase our range and perform at our best. Here’s a thought-provoking and unreserved white paper on how this applies to college career services helping students with low social capital.

I remember a high school classmate explaining how he was taking an easier science offering despite qualifying for a popular physics course with one of the school’s best teachers. His rationale was that he would definitely get an A in the unchallenging class, which would be better for his GPA, which would be better for his college prospects. He had it all mapped out. I don’t know the degree to which that decision impacted his future, but I took that physics class.

It was hard. I stayed after school a lot to do practice problems. There were times that I did poorly. There was maybe one other class in my high school career that demanded more from me. To this day, I still draw from that experience—the reasoning skills, the importance of practice and retrieval, the wonder of solving problems, the value of a strong relationship with a teacher who also looked like a mad scientist—and I have no clue what my grade was. My guess is no one cares.

I said I don’t know how things worked out for that guy who took the easy science class, so naturally I did a quick search, and he has letters next to his name that suggest he is doing great. Good to hear. Was I hoping he was involved in a massive scandal or bankrupt to prove my point? Of course not. I still maintain my argument. In my case, I may not have gotten the best grade, but I experienced the most growth.

And I have this to add about his plans, and my plans, and everyone’s plans. In Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, says, “If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.” I love this line. It’s so dark. Our plans are just plans, irrelevant to reality. I suggest we invest in our present before our plans.

I also believe there is more to be gained from vigorous observation than overplanning. I’ll turn to Lamott again (exercising range, nice), as what she says about writing plot can teach us about living life:

In lieu of a plot you may find that you have a sort of temporary destination, perhaps a scene that you envision is the climax. So you write toward this scene, but when you get there, or close, you see that because of all you’ve learned about your characters along the way, it no longer works. The scene may have triggered the confidence that got you to work on your piece, but now it does not make the final cut.

This is a reasonable and effective way to approach decisions about your future. Life does not follow a script. It unfolds, and we do not know what comes next. Such is the nature of good stories.

With the specifics behind us, and for the readers who skipped straight to the end, I come now to my grand, generalist crescendo. Range is a wonderful thing, and every person is capable of doing something wonderful. Like a kid at a summer camp, we should do something that cultivates a sense of wonder, for ourselves and others.

We need not be afraid of taking the slow road, for time is excruciatingly short. Rushing to achieve match quality will only lower our odds of discovering it, and what one does now, especially what one does poorly now, is the real learning that will get us to wherever we are going. Godspeed.

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Question for the club: I’m interested in hearing what questions young people have about all of this, and I bet young people are interested in hearing the thoughts of potential employers and not just some rando named Nowak. Not a question, but fire away.

Though I hesitate to call myself a leader, I am comfortable being called quiet. I’m an introvert, no bones about it. This probably doesn’t surprise some of my readers. For me, small talk in big crowds is a test of fortitude. I prefer to exercise alone. I’ve never considered myself popular, nor have I been praised for being the life of the party—and I don’t foresee that happening any time soon. Recently, I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by . No lie, I was silently fist pumping. This is a book I could have used sooner. Then again, the topic is as important as ever.

The world favors extroverts, particularly when it comes to leadership. I don’t think extroverts are bad, but a lack of introverts is. My take is that leadership teams should aim for a relative balance of introverted and extroverted contributors, and introverts should feel confident that their quiet style brings high value. The common problem is that introverts are not taken seriously as leaders. There is considerable evidence to suggest that a diversity of perspectives leads to better decision-making, and the analysis that comes with quiet leadership is critical.

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I don’t want to cherry pick Cain’s ideas and present them as my own, so I’ll focus on my experience as a quiet person. In cultures where the loudest voice wins, everyone loses. The quiet voice depends on the quality of its content. As a quiet person, you know you have to make your words count. And others have to be paying attention and thinking critically to hear the sense in the words.

We should be listening for quiet voices and elevating them into leadership positions. The key to navigating a loud world is not to get louder, just as it is unwise to panic in the face of crisis. To focus on task-relevant action, you need to reduce task-irrelevant stimuli. Quiet leaders generally aren’t overstimulating (though they can get overstimulated). They are good people to turn to when the volume or the temperature is climbing to harmful levels. You can be sure they want to cool things down.

Notes to Quiet Leaders (Advice for Introverts)

• You can learn how to lead, quietly.

• Introversion is not an excuse for inaction. It’s a reason to act.

• Figure out what percentage of your day you can sustain being more extroverted (mine is about 10–20%, or 1.6 to 3.2 hours in a 16-hour waking day).

• Schedule quiet time every day.

• Hold your communication to a high standard and practice it (listening, writing, speaking, etc.).

• You can be another quiet person’s hero.

• Team up with extroverts who know when to call on you.

• If there are no extroverts who know when to call on you, help them understand why they should. Just avoid going full Milton Waddams from Office Space.

• Try not to shrink when it gets loud. Soak it in and grow bigger.

Steps for Teams to Elevate Quiet Leaders

1. Identify who they are. Once you know that, you can stop forcing them to be a different kind of person and start playing to their natural strengths.

2. Transform your team’s culture of feedback and decision-making to ensure fair process and an accurate representation of perspectives (for example, before you start a group discussion, survey the entire group and display the data so the team can see the balance of perspectives, rather than letting the first voice steer the ship).

3. Empower quiet leaders in quiet ways. They probably aren’t hoping for grand gestures. A thoughtful letter or one-on-one conversation will likely be more meaningful, and you can communicate confidence by giving them uninterrupted time for focused work that matters to the success of the whole.

I’m quiet, and I approve this message.

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Question for the club: What is one piece of advice or encouragement you would give to a young, quiet professional starting their career?

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I keep a list of one-sentence ideas that might be worth expanding on later. Here’s one that bubbled up for me recently: Welcome suffering and learn how to end it. This is a daunting challenge, easier said than done, I assume for everyone reading this. Yet, if we can meet this challenge, even a little bit, then we have a priceless gift to share. For me, the late Charlotte Joko Beck, an American Zen teacher, offered clear insight to size up this feat.

Let’s start with what may be one of the most baller statements of all time. If I ever open a gym or something, I’m putting a version of this on the front door. She said that if we are fixated on feeling good, blissful, or enlightened, then “we need to be disturbed. We need to be upset.... Don’t come to this [Zen] center to feel better; that’s not what this place is about. What I want are lives that get bigger so that they can take care of more things, more people.” This sentiment applies to leadership. Don’t come to leadership if you want to feel better. Come to grow bigger. Anyone who believes leadership will make them feel better, or that it is about the self, will be sorely disappointed.

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Disappointment brings us to our next piece of wisdom from Beck. She said that our “problems arise because we separate ourselves from our experience. The discomfort and pain are not the cause of our problems. The cause is that we don’t know what to do about them.” Leadership requires a shift in mindset. It is not about evading problems, but embracing them. The more we run from discomfort, the smaller we become, and the smaller our world becomes. The more we understand pain, the bigger we grow, and the more expansive our leadership.

What might this look like in the context of leadership?

• Facilitating a dialogue about a controversial policy

• Listening to feedback about an unpopular executive decision

• Debriefing an organizational failure

• Tackling a difficult or undesirable project

• Mediating a conflict between colleagues or sharing one’s own feelings of frustration

• Doing the right thing, despite there being a more profitable option

And now back to the original thought of welcoming suffering and learning how to end it. All too often we reject suffering wholesale. By rejecting it, we cannot learn from it. Instead, we anxiously and hopelessly construct a small and fragile world where everything must go right. When things don’t go right, we get incredulous, upset, angry. When something goes wrong, which it will, here are some alternative responses:

1. While it may be hard, don’t freak out. Observe the difficult experience and try to identify what is hard about it.

2. Don’t blame anyone. Instead, explain what happened as a matter of fact without making it personal.

3. Ask, is there anything to learn from the difficult experience? How can this be viewed as a test, and how would one pass the test if a similar event happened again?

4. Identify a fresh, replicable practice that would end future suffering and is of value to others.

As a society, we have become obsessed with reducing friction. We want to make things easier, to remove barriers. We want everyone to have an open road with endless opportunities. But this isn’t life, and it certainly isn’t the landscape in which leaders emerge. Principled leaders take their shape from friction. They feel most alive when life pushes against them, knocks them around a bit, and they roll with it. We’re not here to feel better. We’re here to get bigger.

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Question for the club: Do you have any effective practices when it comes to growing through friction?

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How about this for a novel idea? Instead of another speech including “so I asked AI...” what if we led with “these words are 100% my own and not AI-generated”?

The rumors are true: AI saves you tons of time. It is a powerful tool that improves efficiency and increases one’s output. It’s going to become as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi, and, as we delegate our thinking to it more freely, people are going to be crippled by its absence. I’m going to focus on how leaders need to be wary of eroding human connection through AI over-reliance. The majority of workplace dissatisfaction boils down to poor communication, and we don’t want AI to compound the issue. Before we obsess over upskilling in AI, we should prioritize good communication.

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First, more on the claim that poor communication is the primary cause of the workplace blues. I could rattle off some findings that support my statement—from Gallup, McKinsey, Deloitte, peer reviewed journals—but I’ll speak from the heart instead. Here’s why poor communication is the root of dissatisfaction:

It misses the point.

The point is the raison d’etre. When a leader is vague and beats around the bush, he misses the point. When a supervisor does not listen to the direct report who disagrees with a policy, she misses the point. When people are unhappy with their existence at work...and then don’t converse with their feelings, they miss the point. You may be thinking that I have recklessly broadened the definition of communication. I say, nay! “The successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings” can happen in a variety of modalities, including self communication. It is how we connect, and we are creatures of connection.

This is why I believe communication is so essential. I worry that if we forget how to do it, or we don’t develop the skills in the first place, we don’t just lose our human connection to one another and the cosmos, but to ourselves. Outsourcing the labor of connecting will render us unfeeling.

I am currently reading Make Something Wonderful, a posthumous collection of writings, speeches, interviews, and correspondence from Steve Jobs. It’s hard to imagine Jobs composing his emails with AI, and I’d love to hear his take on AI in general. He once said, “Creativity is just connecting things.” He also said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” To have a hope of connecting things, the beautiful process of being in the world, we cannot turn to a chatbot every time we have a question. To have a voice, we have to speak—with vulnerability, uncertainty, courage.

These words are 100% my own. They are nothing special, but I know that in the absence of my breath, they would not exist, and that is pretty neat. These thoughts could only come from me, and they have the chance of connecting with someone else, and that connection will be the result of our shared thinking, heartfelt communication—even if just for a moment—a nod from afar, above the fray.

Great leaders are great communicators. Communication is a skill they practice and do their best to perfect. And it is a responsibility they cannot abdicate.

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Question for the club: How do you develop strong communication skills and avoid poor communication that demotivates?

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This past weekend was my second time riding the Pan-Mass Challenge. It's a massive undertaking with a lot of build up, raising more money for charity than any other single event in the country (specifically for cancer research and treatment). Between the fundraising and the logistics that go into a two-day bike-a-thon, it's a heavy lift. As PMC folks like to say, "The ride is the reward." This couldn't be more true. The experience gives you chills. It is visceral proof of our intimate connection to others. We depend on one another, and we are at our best when we are supporting one another.

With the PMC, there are a lot of leadership lessons I could harp on – the compounding interest of daily effort, why we should take leaps of the heart, the infinite returns of generosity. What I want to highlight is the power of small gestures.

On the final stretch of the ride, I passed a woman who was standing and smiling next to a life-sized cutout of a man cheering in a lawn chair. This struck a chord with me. I crafted this woman's story in my mind, and here I was, a part of it, some stranger pedaling a bicycle. During the ride, you pass a lot of supporters, young and old, but you don't see everyone. You don't see all of the people who have donated to the cause, those who have participated in the past, the countless lives that cancer has touched and connected. Untold shared suffering, and an even greater wave of compassion to ease that suffering.

I thought of my dad, who was always on the sidelines of my games, my biggest fan. I remember him standing on a median in Boston and yelling to me at the final sprint of my first half marathon. If he hadn't passed from cancer, I know he would have been there to support me – but this cutout in a lawn chair... In most contexts, I’d probably consider it a silly use of materials, but this small gesture reminded me that my dad was out there. I don't know the woman or the man or what their relationship was, but I thank them for their encouragement.

Small gestures have a big impact. Moving forward, I want to challenge myself to make at least one small gesture of compassion each day. Ideally, I'll exceed that minimum, but I want to hold myself to the one, whether it be a handwritten note, a passing favor, supporting someone's cause, giving a compliment, whatever. I wouldn't suggest thinking of this as a problem to solve or a box on the to-do list to check. Rather, small gestures, giving in general, should be viewed more like little pieces of chocolate, a modest reward, sweet to the senses, warming to the soul, leaving you wanting more.

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Five free ideas to make small gestures easy:

• Carry a little notebook or notecards that can fit in your pocket. I've seen someone who does this with sticky notes. You'll always be ready to write a quick note that will brighten someone's day.

• Think of your small gesture for the next day before you go to bed. Write it down and recall it in the morning. This gives you an evening ritual that feels good and keeps you accountable.

• Use a threshold reminder. When you walk through the threshold of a room where you interact with others, tell yourself to make one small gesture of compassion before you leave.

• Automate it. Give at least $1 a day to a high-impact charity (here are some ideas). If you give $31 a month, you can set a daily reminder that you gave $1 to help others today.

• Ask someone what they have to do on any given day, and then offer to help with one of those tasks. Even if they say no, that's a small gesture of compassion.

Question for the club: Do you have any small gestures of compassion that you would recommend?

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If you only read the first sentence of this post, let it be this: 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People (2024) by David Yeager, PhD is an indispensable book.

Why? you ask. Yeager describes the effect of applying a mentor mindset: "This is a mindset in which young people are held to high standards, but they are also given the support they need to meet those high standards." This is instead of an "enforcer mindset" (high expectations, low support) or a "protector mindset" (low expectations, high support). I believe boys need role models with mentor mindsets, rather than enforcers or protectors. And, in case you were wondering, low expectations and low support – AKA neglect – is another ill-suited alternative.

Enforcers rely on dominance, and though they have followers who fear them, those followers will gladly find greener pastures when the opportunity presents itself. Protectors rely on comfort, and their followers may freely frolic in fields of flowers, but they will not grow into their full potential, and they will be unprepared for the harsher seasons to come. Meanwhile, the mentor mindset:

• Upholds high standards

• Maintains order and avoids chaos

• Conveys care

• Takes young people seriously

Yeager says that "status and respect" are core needs for young people, and that if we honor those needs, we'll be much more effective in helping them make "important contributions to our organizations, families, schools, and society." In short, we help them "find motivation to do the right thing."

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Like any good theory, it is easier said than done, and Yeager isn't the first person to proclaim the effectiveness of high expectations and high support. Whether it be culturally responsive teaching, growth mindset, the warm demander stance, or restorative practices, there is a lot of scholarly chatter circling around similar conclusions. If everyone could read a book and become an effective mentor, that would be sweet. Alas, being a mentor is hard work, and you don't build rapport by regurgitating leadership philosophy. Once you get off the page and onto the pavement, things get real. Life isn't scripted. Including a mentor mindset, I would ask for the following requirements on a role model application:

• Leads by example, modeling ethical behavior and respect for all

• Practices self care, care for others, and care for the environment

• Believes in reintegration and collaborates to repair harm

• Cultivates compassion in all interactions

• Is open to viewpoints that differ from one's own

• Listens with the sole purpose of helping the speaker and avoids judgment and interruption

• Values humility, interdependence, and reciprocity

Apply today! These are the kind of role models we need, across the map. I'll take the selfless, patient, kind, and skillful before the uncompromising egomaniacs who force their insight on others. The person who thinks they are no better than anyone else is wiser than the one who thinks they are the best.

We've been told that boys and men are clamoring for prestige with no regard for anyone else, yet, every day, I see boys who want to be good. I see boys who want to make a positive impact on the world, boys who want to create and experience a sense of belonging. I'm growing more certain that my eyes are not deceiving me – and rather that certain media is deceiving us all.

As adults, it is our responsibility to help pair the youth with good role models. To be clear, I am not advocating for the intensification of cancel culture. I've never been keen on ordering kids to stop hanging out with "bad" influences. That has always felt akin to an arranged marriage. Young people should exercise their critical thinking to decide who they spend their time with, forming close friendships based on mutual respect. Adults are essential in this process because they help kids, through modeling and conversation, identify the qualities of healthy relationships and honorable people.

Yeager discusses the power of creating a "stuggle-success-status positive feedback loop." He thinks summer camps are especially good at this: "At camp, you struggle at first to do hard, scary things (e.g., climb a ropes course, learn to water-ski, make friends with strangers) in the care of supportive adults. Then you get lauded with status and respect for overcoming your fears." As a long-time camp guy, I can attest to the impact of this feedback loop. No place has ever made me feel more confident, more like I belong, than camp.

The struggle-success-status feedback loop is a game changer for boys, especially in a world that often seems less interested in helping them overcome their fears, and more invested in communicating that they are the ones to be feared. As I've said before, we should not be teaching young men that it is inherently better to be a boy, that they possess a higher status because of their manhood. Instead, boys need role models who show them it's OK to be boys. It's OK for them to struggle, to earn success, and to be respected for the right reasons – and for who they are.

To get started as a mentor, I really like these paraphrased tips from Yeager:

1. Ask, don't tell. Respect young people by treating them as adultlike. Adults are asked; children are told.

2. Find ways to honor the young person's status – for example, point out their competence and expertise – rather than pointing out your own authority. Avoid an I-know-better-than-you attitude.

3. Validate whatever negative experiences young people may have had. Treat their feelings as real and legitimate. Then look for a way forward.

4. Presume agency. Acknowledge that the young person can make up their own mind, and then make it clear that you are rooting for them to make a good choice. Also, explain how their actions have broader consequences in the world.

Bill Milliken (Founder and Vice Chairman of Communities In Schools, Inc.) said, “It's relationships, not programs, that change children. A great program simply creates the environment for healthy relationships to form between adults and children. Young people thrive when adults care about them on a one-to-one level and when they also have a sense of belonging to a caring a community." And just as important as the adults, are the peer role models. Children learn from people they love, and boys love each other. It is my sincere hope that every boy gets to experience a caring community filled with role models where they develop loving friendships. I wish every boy will feel confident saying, "I love you," to a brother.

My Man: It’s OK to be boys (Part I – Introduction)

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Question for the club: Do you have a helpful case study to share that illustrates the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of one of the mindsets above? And, theory aside, do you have any strategies for building rapport?

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Are independent schools defensible? Do they serve a noble purpose in the scheme of greater education, or does their reach only extend as far as their private interests? It's easy for this to feel like an exercise in self-assurance, an opportunity to explore the ways in which one can argue that independent schools are more than businesses with a basic priority: remain financially strong. How often do you hear of a school, like Jhamtse Gatsal in the 2014 film Tashi and the Monk, that gives up one meal a week to feed impoverished people in the local area? How often do you hear of an athletics program that advertises its modest facilities and equipment? How often do you hear of a school that deliberately goes without so that a community with less can go with?

What I am going to suggest is simple. Many will call it idealistic or naive. And I assume many more will think it a horrifying and foolish concept altogether. I believe independent schools should give people a look under the hood. I hesitate to use the expression "see how the sausage is made"–it implies something gross is happening, something that is better left unseen. However, with the exception of information that should remain confidential to ensure privacy, I don't think schools, institutions designed to educate children, should have anything to hide when it comes to the way in which they operate.

What does this look like in practice? In my role, it might look something like this:

• My interactions with students are appropriate and professional, and I would be comfortable with any student's family observing the way I speak to or treat their child.

• My approach, as it pertains to behavior management, student motivation, and culture building, is based on educational research and evidence.

• Anyone who is interested can better understand my educational philosophy because I articulate it clearly in writing and demonstrate it in practice.

• My educational philosophy is open to analysis and revision when new information prompts a need for growth or change.

• I collect data that demonstrates the effectiveness of my educational approach that I can share with the public, while maintaining privacy.

• I collect data that demonstrates the fair and equitable treatment of students (or lack thereof), regardless of their background, status, or identity.

• My work with students promotes the public good, including community outreach and a commitment to engaged and responsible citizenship.

This may not be a comprehensive list, but it's a start. I'm going out on a limb here, but I imagine prospective families and potential donors would be excited to work with a school that expresses values of transparency and integrity. And if school leadership or the board or alumni or parents want a school that offers a "best-in-class" experience with all the bells and whistles, go ahead and sell that product. There's a market for it. However, if we are going to talk seriously about independent schools communicating their public purpose, then we need to begin where the rubber hits the road.

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Take the admissions office, the development team, the academics and athletics and student life departments, and decide what it means to look under the hood. If you see a rusted part, a fluid leak, or some frayed wires, consider addressing those trouble spots first. Schools should not be in the business of luring families into faulty vehicles. In that scenario, the value of independent schools is exclusive at best, harmful (and sometimes traumatizing) at worst. And for what? For the selfish practice of "dream hoarding" (more on this later)? For a tradition of "excellence"? For the endowment of the school's lineage, rather than the greater good?

Forgive me if I sound sarcastic or cynical. I've had that problem most of my life. I'm trying to be honest, not negative, as I too believe in the value of independent schools. Concurrently, I also believe it is imperative that we understand, especially in the private sector, that we do not exist without the public. Just like public schools, independent schools depend on the success of democratic principles and nations, they depend on global cooperation and peace, and they depend on independent people having the financial independence to fund them. This question of the value to the public is existential. And I imagine schools that don't have a good answer, or instead have a deceptive one, will not stand the test of time.

There is a place for independent schools, but it must be alongside public schools, rather than above them. For if the public fails, the foundation, not just of education, but of society, crumbles. There is a divide in desperate need of a bridge, one that is most clearly measured by wealth. I wonder if we shouldn't be a touch more critical, or skeptical, of the word choice "independent." Should independent schools be planting their flags in their dissociation? Might we consider referring to them as "partner schools" or "associate schools" or anything that doesn't emphasize a disconnectedness from public life?

Again, I am not arguing that all independent schools, when you look under the hood, are hotbeds of corruption, deception, and greed. It's easy to generalize, and perhaps a little pleasurable to write off everyone involved in these institutions as ivy-dripping, ivory-towering, and, while we’re at it, rhino-poaching elitists. We know that's not the truth, and we also know independent schools are not dependent on lots of things, such as teaching certifications, an obligation to serve the public, and shared curriculum standards. That's not to say these things don't exist at independent schools, just that they aren't required to.

If we want to talk about values, let's talk–with the hood wide open. If we want to tell the stories of independent schools, let's tell them–with the good and the bad and the commitment to improvement. Let's do it with integrity. Independent schools, like everything else, are impermanent. And if they are not connected to the public, they are increasingly at risk of becoming meaningless in the grand scheme. Independent schools face the challenge of proving their relevance through their actions. Proving that they are capable of being accessible. Proving that their missions are bold, transformative, and aimed at liberating living beings around the world, rather than advancing a selective us and peering down their noses at them.

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Shall we devise a plan of action then? Here are some potential phases to get the ball rolling.

Phase 1: Values Alignment

• Define the "public good" as a school and identify how your institution contributes to it.

• Review the existing mission and school values to determine if contributing to the public good is a strategic outcome.

• Gather input from stakeholders (board of trustees, school leadership, faculty and staff, students, families, alumni) to better understand how the school community wishes to engage with public issues.

• Develop a vision statement that articulates the school's commitment to the public good.

Phase 2: Strategic Planning

• Develop achievable and measurable standards addressing the value added to society.

• Have the various school departments articulate how they will align their practices with institutional standards.

• Develop and implement core curriculum that promotes critical thinking, ethical decision-making, and civic engagement, including community outreach and service learning.

• Build community partnerships with local organizations, nonprofits, and schools that share a commitment to the public good.

• Collect and share data to demonstrate an effort to build an inclusive culture.

• Display an annual financial statement of operations that is transparent, accountable, and aligned with the school's dedication to the public good.

Phase 3: Evaluation, Communication, and Growth

• Collect data on student outcomes and community impact.

• Implement tools to measure improvement in community engagement and ethical decision-making.

• Communicate the school's commitment to the public good and share evidence of action and progress. This includes being transparent about the school's finances, operations, and impact.

• Identify areas for improvement and adjust the school's approach and evaluation process as necessary.

• Stay connected to local issues and foster a culture of learning and problem-solving.

• Share stories from external public figures, in addition to internal stakeholders, who have experienced the positive impact of the school in the greater community.

In ' 2017 book Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, he explains that it is not "just the top 1 percent pulling away, but the top 20 percent" (p. 22). He attributes this to "opportunity hoarding...when valuable, scarce opportunities are allocated in an anticompetitive manner: that is, influenced by factors unrelated to an individual's performance" (p. 102). To prevent the U.S. from becoming a more unequal and less mobile society, he urges the upper middle class (which he self-identifies with), the top 20 percent, to rezone neighborhoods to favor some higher density housing; to be less exclusive about the kind of kids their children go to school with; to eradicate legacy preferences in admissions; to democratize internships; and, wait for it, to pay "a bit more tax" to fund more opportunities for less fortunate children (p. 154).

This talk generally makes people uncomfortable, as most of us are more inclined to rally behind the idea that the top one percent is to blame for all of the inequality in the world. I suspect that discomfort, and perhaps a little incredulity, earned Reeves' book its 3.7 rating on Goodreads. However, I believe it is this discomfort, this dirty little possibility that more than one percent of us might be complicit in perpetuating inequality and injustice, where we need to plant our flags.

Alas, can independent schools, free from bureaucratic hoops and politicized mandates, declare, with confidence and honesty, that their value to society is more than worth the cost? Is the investment of time and resources and energy and money not better spent elsewhere? Are the public schoolers out there, the vast majority of people, getting a bad deal? Is it not in their best interests to demand the policy makers to do something about this highway robbery? After all, imagine, for example, what the country could do with Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment alone (an AI analysis suggests a targeted investment of this magnitude could build a nationwide electric vehicle charging network or modernize the water infrastructure; for context, the Manhattan Project cost about $2 billion, or roughly $30 billion today, and Taylor Swift's net worth is about $1.6 billion). Consider my interest piqued. I'd love to hear the answers to these questions.

I'll offer this. When it comes to their value added to society, independent schools have an undeniable advantage: they have the ability to prioritize the public good. In the way they partner with local schools and organizations, in the way they emphasize community service and civic engagement, in the way they share their resources and expertise, they can choose to be of value. They can choose to be yoked together with the public. As Reeves says, "I guess we'll find out."

Question for the club: You have any bright ideas?

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