| | | | | September 26, 2026
I just turned 40.
Now, turning forty has become synonymous with the "mid-life crisis."
I’m a firm believer that this crisis, and crises in general, is good for us. On a personal level and a societal one, things don’t generally get better until they hit rock bottom. That is, you have to suck enough before you can muster the motivation to turn it around.
So, don't make it dramatic. Crisis is necessary. You and I are sure to have many more. Turning forty (or any other age) can be our natural turn around point.
The Death Ground Strategy is how you can navigate these crises. It's a Stoic playbook for dealing with struggles, pain, and adversity. I didn't create it; I just added my thoughts to it.
The following is what I've learned over the past five years.
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| | Remember your own mortality |
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Memento Mori, right?
It's not that we die once at the end of our lives, but that we die every day. As we get older, we don't have to look very far for these reminders. The key is to learn how to use them positively. I know a lot of people who just shut down after they get physically injured, but when I broke my neck, it was like getting a second life. I could have become paralyzed. It could have been game over for me, but here is our coworker acting like their life is over because they hurt their knee. Two different perspectives. |
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The people with the most "enemies" tend to also have the most problems. Whether you were the villain or someone else was, continuing to replay these scenes in your head uses up bandwidth that steals from something positive. Forgive to forget, then go live your life properly. I'm convinced this is one of the great mind hacks. |
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You have no idea what's going to work out. We think we do, but it's all just guesses, so we must throw a lot of darts at the board and see what sticks.
By 34, I had worked twenty jobs and never managed to work more than six months for any one employer. Then somehow, miraculously, I worked five years for a university. Now I am employed in a field that I would have never put in my top 100 after graduating high school. Life is weird, man.
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The map is not the territory. The people, the places, the events — it's probably not like you imagined. Get out and experience it through your own eyes. At 37, I hadn't been anywhere. Since then, I’ve been on 9 different flights, including to trips to Japan, Costa Rica, Morocco, Spain, Texas, and a few others. I don't say this to flex, but if you continue to tell yourself that you should go to "X" (like I did for well over a decade), then make it happen before it's too late. Create the urgency. The world changes quickly. |
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Obstacles make us who we are. It's why we choose to do hard things, and it's what helps keep us motivated. The best area to add obstacles will be the area that has the fewest already, like our fitness life. As I discuss in The 5 laws of the Death Ground Strategy, it's not enough to have one obstacle. You must plan for at least 3 (at the minimum). There are psychological and physical reasons for this, one of which is that it forces you to address your limitations. Anybody can push themselves hard one time, but what do you do after your body is left broken and you now have another race in 2 weeks? Without another reason to fix yourself, it's easier to just stay broken. Always have something planned to force yourself back into the game. |
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You won't like most things your first time around. There are just too many variables. Do them anyway.
I didn't really like hunting my first two years, but I did it anyway because it was the smart thing to do (based on the future version of myself). It was boring, and it was like the adult version of eating vegetables. Fortunately, I stuck with it, and now I love it. So what's changed? I became invested (time, energy, money), and I learned how to make it interesting. Most things are like this. Some of us were told to "follow our passion" growing up, but that advice is lacking. Learning how to cultivate a passion is a more worthwhile goal. To do that, you'll have to persevere through all the beginner bullshit first. After that, you'll be able to see what things are really about and where you fit in.
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Almost everything looks less scary the more you see it up close and understand it.
I've caught and released over 20 rattlesnakes the last few years. I've also solo hunted bears in wolf and mountain lion country. The most dangerous part of either of those? The drive to get there. But driving doesn't feel scary or risky, partly because we are so habituated to it. Expose yourself to your fears to achieve the same.
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Knowing what you stand for will give you strength, but it has another benefit: knowing what you won't stand for.
When I was younger, I used to get sucked into MLM meetings (pyramid schemes). Now in these meetings, the seller would eventually ask me if I wanted to make more money or become rich. Expecting me to say yes, nothing would throw off their script faster than when I responded with, "It depends." Because if I have to sacrifice my values to get there, and possibly rip off my friends and family (which is the reality), then the answer is an easy no. In times of crisis, the questions will be a lot harder than that. Figure out your values now to make your future decisions easier.
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You can't really fake real confidence. It comes from lived experience. Build a trophy case of experiences that test your will, perseverance, and values you believe in. This photo is from the Chinese Wall Trail, a 50-mile hike in western Montana. After day 1, my feet were loaded with so many blisters that I could barely walk (bad shoes and an overloaded pack will do that). The next 4 days on that trail were extremely tough, but I hobbled along and eventually finished. This event paved the way for every physical event afterwards. Because I knew if I could do that, I could do similar feats. That's the power of doing hard things. This hike led to a 30-mile Go Ruck, which led to me seeing how far I could go and how many pushups-squats-flutter kicks I could do in the same day (42 miles and 2,550 total reps in 17 hours), which led to running a 50-km mountain race on a busted IT band. Each time, I pushed myself a little harder based on the confidence I had obtained from the previous events. |
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Your weaknesses, fears, and anxieties will follow you your whole life. That is, until you start following them back.
When I was 33, I was fed up with how I was living my life so I went into the forest to think on it. I hiked five miles into the Rocky Mountains and set up a tent to spend the night (which was a scary thing to do at the time for myself). I journaled during rest breaks and I came out of the woods with 8 things I wanted to work on, which I aptly named "The Pussy List". It was a list of stuff I knew I should be doing but wasn't (because: fears, anxieties, and weaknesses). I have spent the rest of my 30s working on that list.
People can change but when they don't, I think it's because they are not focusing on these. Own your weaknesses. |
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The magic you are looking for in life is in the work you are avoiding. So stop distracting yourself with your phone, TV, social media, sports, news, and your AI girlfriend. The more we can do this, the better off we will all be. To build the muscle to resist these, read these books. |
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After Death Ground
| | The Rise of the Alter Ego | | | | Death Ground is about manipulating your environment (external focus). It's about putting yourself in situations where your back is against the wall and you have to fight. It's signing up for events, sending those emails or making those calls, and committing to actions before your fears and anxieties have a chance to veto them. Then it's about building a system that doesn't let you wiggle out of them (like I discuss in The Man in the Arena). I've read hundreds of books on change psychology, and this idea is a large part of them. The other part of the equation is your mindset (internal focus). Both affect each other and you cannot truly separate them. I.e., your environment affects your mindset, and your mindset affects your environment. To buy into the Death Ground Strategy (or any other pragmatic philosophy), your mindset has to agree and believe in the process. At least in the beginning. To get there, it's not enough to rely on current you. If you have doubt, history of failure, and pessimism, that won't work. Your mind will look at all that baggage and shut it down before you can even begin. Instead, you'll need to tap into Future You. Future You is your "Alter Ego". It's not who you currently are, but who you are becoming or can become. An idealized version of yourself. This Alter Ego handles the parts you don't like, or don't yet believe in. People get caught up in their own interests and dislikes, but those don't matter. What matters is results. So adopt a personality and identity that gets you them. Kobe had Black Mamba, Beyoncé had Sasha Fierce, and David Goggins has simply " Goggins" because he said David was not strong enough to survive. You may hate fitness and everything that goes with it. You find it painful, boring, and maybe even intimidating. Or maybe you just have a history of quitting. To go to battle with this mindset would lead to instant loss. Instead, create a new character with a mindset that addresses these problems. Then each time you enter the gym, tap into this character. The more and more you tap into it, the more it will fuse with your other self and become your new reality. Eventually, with this, you will become Future You. We already do this with the various roles and identities we take on in our lives, so what's one more? To learn how to take this idea further, watch this video or read this book. Let me know if you found this helpful. - Levi |
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PS - Bodybuilding programs are 100% fake news, and if we are broken, the solution is not more physio, chiro, or massage. It's figuring out what the right exercises are for you and then doing them correctly. Quality over quantity; movement needs over movement wants. This is the key to fitness. The best resource for this: Ben Patrick and ATG I've been using ATG on and off (basic version) for a couple of years, and no other program even compares at the price point of $19/month. Give it a shot. |
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