Reading time: 5 min
Happy New Year! 🎉🥳
I missed my space, and I wanted to send one very last message for the year, and the 10th message I owed as part of the “10 newsletters experiment” (80% success rate for my experiment, which counts as a success if we think Pareto, haha).
For this last post, I am only talking about my highlight of December: crewing Date with Destiny, Tony Robbins’ event in Palm Beach. I also picked 10 ideas from the event that can inspire you toward a great and purposeful 2026.
10 lessons for a 2026 lived with purpose
1. Life runs on patterns. Once you see them, you can change them.
Most of our reactions are not random. They are habits of focus, language, and interpretation. The real flex is to become self-aware and honest with ourselves (though honesty is painful).
2. Meaning comes before emotion. And language trains the nervous system.
The body often feels excitement and stress in the same way. The word we choose decides the experience. Call it stress, and you get tension. Call it excitement, and you get energy.
3. Focus is rarely neutral. We tend to generalize and distort events just to be faithful to the story we tell ourselves.
When one area feels off, the mind loves to turn it into “my whole life is a mess”. Fair focus brings emotional balance back. And training the muscle to see the situation from a different angle, from a different state, is key.
4. Questions shape states and self-perception.
“What is wrong with me?” leads to shame and freeze. “What is the good in this?” or “How can I improve this?” leads to movement. Better questions create better inner chemistry.
5. Pain is part of life. Suffering is optional.
Pain shows up no matter what. Suffering appears when we resist it or turn it into an identity (often because it feeds hidden needs). The only way out is through.
6. Some problems survive because they meet our needs.
Problems can provide certainty, significance, or even comfort. When that happens, we protect them without realizing it. Growth starts when we ask what a problem is giving us.
7. Change yourself before changing the relationship.
We do not solve relationship problems in our heads. Relationship issues are not thinking problems. They are state problems. Change happens in the heart, through presence, self-awareness, and how we meet our own needs. When we learn to judge less and stop trying to control outcomes, relationships have space to unfold and help us grow.
8. Judgment kills presence.
Judging ourselves or others pulls us out of the moment and makes us freeze. Progress does not require perfection, and “the lowest standard is perfection, because perfect doesn’t exist”.
9. Your quality of life depends on your tolerance for uncertainty.
We crave certainty, but growth lives in the unknown. Humans move away from pain faster than toward pleasure.
10. All behavior is driven by human needs.
Certainty, uncertainty, significance, growth, love & connection, and contribution. We are always trying to meet at least one of them. When we understand which need is driving us, patterns start becoming something we can work on.
The proof I was there 😁
How the experience looked for me personally
I loved the community. It is deeply self-growth driven. Conversations are meaningful, honest, and often go straight to the core.
As a crew, the main purpose is service. You contribute to the participants’ experience while taking in the lessons that come with responsibility, and surprisingly, you find joy in that. You do not experience the event like a participant, there is constant movement and work to do. There is a saying among the crew that you are always exactly where you need to be, at the right moment. It landed as a lesson in surrendering to life while still doing your part fully.
Seeing the behind-the-scenes of such a large event is incredible. I don’t have photos of the production, but it’s massive for both the in-person and virtual events. The music is exactly timed to support real emotional moments. The culture values mission, teamwork, respect, and one clear principle: always overdeliver. That really stayed with me.
One moment or idea that best captures the experience (out of everything I witnessed and felt)
It is hard to pick a single moment. There were many. But what Tony said about courage stayed with me.
Courage is a value I have been nurturing for a while, but one insight reframed it for me.
Courage makes all other values possible. Love, gratitude, vulnerability, and grace all depend on it. Courage allows us to stay open without guarantees. Life constantly moves between what we desire most and what we fear most. And we need courage to navigate it.
I wish you a wonderful 2026, filled with joy, purpose, self-awareness, inspiring people and beautiful memories.
And always remember: you will never be as young as you are in the present moment, so make it count.
See you next time!
Silvia
