Think Like a KID

Man, I thought the weather in Ohio was moody this time of year. Texas is acting like a teenage girl who just got her cell phone taken away today. Dark, windy as shit, big old fat rain (Forrest Gump voice). But…gotta make the best of it. Got the raised beds ready for spring planting this weekend, and the rain will hopefully help produce some green beans, tomatoes, and peppers. That is, if I can finally figure out how to grow anything down here. So far, not so good. But every failure is a lesson, and I’m feeling much more confident this time around.

The Game-Changer: Journaling

Kallie and I have been having a shit ton of fun lately, and it all started with my daily journaling.

I’ve tried journaling on and off for years. I kept hearing how wildly successful people do it, so I figured there must be something to it. But every time, I'd go strong for a bit, feel no real difference, and give it up. Then a few weeks or months later, I’d pick it back up, try a different approach (morning instead of night, using prompts, free-styling)—still nothing. Rinse and repeat…until last fall.

After an incredible summer where my mindset was iron-clad and my fitness was dialed in, I hit a mental brick wall in early September. I kept grinding through workouts and got back on the jiu-jitsu mats, but I was just going through the motions. Better than doing nothing, sure. But nowhere near where I wanted to be. I needed to figure out what the fuck was going on.

So I started asking myself: Why?

Why did I fall off track? What was I doing differently from April to September, when I felt like I could rip the nuts off a bull with my bare hands and run up a mountain barefoot with them draped around my neck? (Got carried away there, but also made myself chuckle—deal with it).

Then it hit me. It was the content I was creating.

Staying in Alignment

I had spent months talking about my alignment values daily—guiding every decision I made:

Simplicity
Creativity
Fun
Experience

But when I burned out? I wasn’t talking about my values anymore. I was making garbage political content designed to trigger people instead of creating things that actually aligned with what mattered to me.

By constantly talking about my values, I had built mental muscle memory. Decisions were automatic. Any new opportunity or piece of content? I could instantly check:

Does this create more simplicity?
Does this allow me to be creative?
Does this increase the amount of fun I have?
Is this an experience I want to have?
Will this provide me time to be present with Kallie?

If the answer was no, then it was a hard FUCK NO.
If the answer was yes, it was an exuberant FUCK YES.

But as soon as I stopped reinforcing my values daily? I lost that clarity. My actions were no longer aligned, and my mindset felt like a wet fart.

The Fix: Daily Alignment Journaling

I picked up my journal again and committed to writing out my alignment values every single day. First, I just wrote them down. Then I started journaling about how I lived them the day before—or how I didn’t.

Simplicity and Creativity? Easy. Those come naturally to me.
Presence? Improved by setting phone boundaries.
Fun and Experiences? Struggling with those.

That’s when I realized—I needed to have more damn fun. But I didn’t want to drop hundreds of bucks every weekend to do it. So I went to Kallie and asked, What should we do?

She hit me with some simple yet fucking brilliant advice: Think like kids.

Bringing Back Childlike Fun

As kids, having fun was easy. And we were broke as hell, so everything was simple yet epic. So we started doing exactly that:

Built a fort (loose definition of fort) and watched Major Payne from it.
Spent hours scrolling through old pictures from when we started dating.
Hit the range with Kallie’s mom (bit pricier, but much-needed practice).
Bought a 180-piece sidewalk chalk set and made driveway art. The neighbors loved it.
Went to Artechouse Houston—a cool, immersive art exhibit (not crazy expensive).

The Results: Everything Got Better

This shift back to fun changed everything—

My relationship with Kallie improved (crazy how much better you interact when you’re actually having fun together, huh?)
Content creation felt light and exciting again—I wasn’t forcing topics just to stir shit up.
Kallie got more involved in my content, which made it even more fun.
My mood improved, which made everything better—workouts, jiu-jitsu, sleep, productivity, relationships.

This Week’s Takeaways

If you don’t know your alignment values, figure them out ASAP. (Need help? Just ask.)
If you’re feeling like a miserable dick wagon, have some fun.
If you don’t know where to start, think like a kid.

Alright, enough from me. Enjoy your Sunday, have an incredible week, and as always—thanks for reading.

Best,
Kyle

Song & Book

If I Were The Devil - Colby Acuff: Friend of mine shared this with me a while back because it reminded him of me and my beliefs…he nailed it.

The Game of Life and How to Play It - Florence Scovel Shinn: Only 50 pages in to this one but it’s been incredible from a mindset perspective. It is about manifestation and how what we put out to the universe is returned to us.