Category: arete

Have A Very Merry Christmas: Staying Strong Through the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The end of the year doesn’t mean the end of your progress. If you’ve trained hard for twelve months, Christmas isn’t a threat to your goals; it’s the reward for having them.

You don’t need perfection. You need intention.

This season is about joy, connection, celebration, and, yes, great food. Here’s how to honor your momentum while enjoying the holiday the way it’s meant to be enjoyed.

The 3 Holiday Non-Negotiables

Let’s clear one thing up immediately: December is not the month to white-knuckle your way through parties and potlucks. It’s the month to stay anchored to what matters without losing your mind, your friends, or your muscle.

1. Earned Enjoyment > Empty Indulgence

Restriction doesn’t build discipline; consistency does. One plate of your favorite Christmas dinner won’t derail anything. A month of “whatever, who cares?” absolutely will.

The difference is awareness, not anxiety.

Here’s a simple guideline that works for most people:

  • Build your plate around the foods you genuinely enjoy.
  • Eat slowly enough to taste it.
  • Stop when you’re satisfied, not stuffed.

That’s it. No food guilt. No drama. No moral judgment of anyone’s cooking.

Christmas dinner is not a metabolic emergency.

What not to do:

• Don’t “earn” your food with cardio.
• Don’t starve yourself all day to “save calories.”
• Don’t narrate your macros at the table (honestly, no one cares)

What to do:

• Move because it feels good, not because you feel guilty.
• Eat like normal leading up to the feast so you don’t binge from hunger.
• Say “yes,” “no,” or “I’m good, thanks” with zero explanation.

Food is part of the celebration. So is self-respect. You’re allowed to have both.

2. Don’t Skip Lifting, Protein, and Carbs

To channel my inner Jocko:

Traveling? Good.
Schedules scrambled? Good.
Gym hours weird? Good.

Your body doesn’t need perfect conditions; it needs the right signals and the right supply:

Signal:

  • Any resistance training at all.
  • 20 minutes of bodyweight, bands, dumbbells, hotel gym—whatever you’ve got.
  • This preserves muscle protein synthesis and keeps neuromuscular patterns active.

Supply:

  • ~30–40g protein + a moderate serving of carbohydrates per meal.
  • Protein maintains lean mass.
  • Carbs replenish glycogen and support training, sleep, and recovery.

This combo is one of the most research-supported ways to maintain muscle during chaotic schedules. Protein stimulates muscle protein synthesis for 3-5 hours post-meal, while carbohydrates replenish muscle glycogen and reduce cortisol, both critical when training volume or sleep quality drops.

Two habits. Huge return.

3. Stay Hydrated, Even in Celebration Mode

Holiday cocktails, desserts, and rich foods, enjoy them. Just don’t forget water.

A simple rule that works: One drink? Drink at least one 8 oz. glass of water.

An even better rule: Don’t drink.

Hydration directly affects recovery, digestion, appetite, performance, and whether you wake up feeling human or like you got hit by a truck.

Here’s what most people get wrong: they think the problem is too much food on Christmas. It’s not. The problem is eating like a monk for 3 days before and 4 days after, then binging because restriction always backfires. One great meal won’t hurt you. Seven days of chaos will.

Rituals > Rules

Rules restrict you. Rituals support you. A ritual says, “This is who I am, regardless of the season.”

A few reliable ones:

  • A family walk before or after the big meal
  • A 15–20 minute lift or circuit before coffee and gifts
  • Getting adequate sleep before traveling
  • A quick protein + fat snack before heading to dinner so you arrive in control, not starving

A rule says “no dessert.” A ritual says “I train before the family meal because it centers me.” One feels like punishment. The other feels like identity.

Rituals reinforce identity. And identity, not willpower, is what keeps people consistent long term.

You’re not someone who “tries to stay healthy.”
You’re someone who trains, eats with intention, and still enjoys Christmas like a sane adult.

Consistency Compounds

Your results don’t come from Christmas Day. They come from what you do the other 364 days.

If you’ve been consistent for 50 weeks and ease up for two? That’s a 94% success rate. You know what a 94% success rate means in any other domain? Elite. Professional. World-class.

But for some reason, people think two weeks of relaxed eating erases a year of work. It doesn’t.  Math doesn’t care about your guilt.

If you haven’t been consistent this year? Then let Christmas be a reset, not a regret.

Start small:

  • Take a walk
  • Get a lift in (when all else fails, do something as simple as alternating Tabata intervals of bodyweight squats (full ROM!) and sit-ups, in 8 minutes, you’ll be done, it’s really that easy)
  • Pack a protein shake for travel.
  • Decide now that January is not “starting over,” it’s continuing forward.

Momentum respects one thing: action. Preferably today.

Final Thought

Fuel your work.

Feed your life.

Let Christmas be a celebration of both. Enjoy the food, the family, the music, the lights, the peace, and the moment.

A merry, strong, and “muscular” Christmas isn’t about rigid rules; it’s about honoring the discipline that got you here and trusting yourself enough to enjoy the holiday without fear.

Merry Christmas to every one of you. Stay strong, enjoy the feast, and remember discipline isn’t what stops you from celebrating. It’s what lets you celebrate without fear.

The Art of Cyberwar | Part IX | The Army on the March

“The Army on the March” — Illustrated for The Art of Cyberwar, Part IX. This artwork evokes the visual language of classical Chinese scroll painting, capturing the essence of Sun Tzu’s Chapter IX with striking thematic fidelity. The scene unfolds in layers across a sweeping golden landscape: tightly ordered battalions march along mountain paths, supply barges cross a winding river, and distant formations assemble beneath the rising sun. Each element reflects the logistical burden, psychological tension, and environmental dependence that define an army deep into foreign territory. At the foreground, a lone commander on horseback surveys the terrain, flanked by advisors whose varied stances suggest counsel, observation, and caution. His elevated vantage mirrors Sun Tzu’s emphasis on awareness — the practice of reading fatigue, momentum, and environmental signals before they harden into irreversible consequences. The river crossing, perilous and slow, symbolizes the fragility of overextension; the distant city, shimmering beyond the horizon, represents both ambition and the looming threat of exhaustion. The overall composition blends serenity with strain, grandeur with vulnerability. In doing so, it transforms ancient military wisdom into a timeless reminder for modern strategists: every march requires vigilance, and every expansion carries its cost.

The Principle:

“When you leave your own country behind, and take your army across neighboring territory, you find yourself in a position of dependence on others. There you must watch for signs of strain.”— Sun Tzu

The Signs Before the Fall

Sun Tzu’s ninth chapter is about perception.

Here he shifts from action to awareness. It’s about how a commander reads fatigue, imbalance, and internal decay before they destroy an army from within.

This is not simply a lesson in combat, but more importantly, it’s a lesson in foresight. This is a crucial distinction that often separates a near-flawless victory from a crushing defeat.

Because every empire, every enterprise, every cyber defense effort eventually faces the same drift:

  • expansion that outruns understanding
  • momentum that hides exhaustion
  • ambition that blinds leadership
  • reach that exceeds resources

Armies break this way.
Companies implode this way.
Nations lose coherence this way.

In martial arts, this is the moment a fighter looks powerful, but their footwork is mis-aligned, the subtle tell of hand movement, the delayed return to guard, or the half-beat of hesitation that usually precedes success but this time leads to being hit.

Sun Tzu teaches us: if you can’t read the signs, you can’t survive the march.

Overreach: The Eternal Temptation

History loves proving this point.

Rome’s legions stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia until it could no longer feed its own frontiers. Britain built an empire “over all seas,” only to watch its overstretched supply lines rot from within.

The United States, victorious after World War II, constructed a global presence so vast that presence itself began replacing purpose.

Sun Tzu warned: The longer the march, the more fragile the army becomes.

Modern America has been marching for generations, militarily, economically, digitally, and each expansion has carried both pride and price.

Corporations experience the same decay. Cloud ecosystems suffer it even faster. What begins as strength, scale, reach, integration, becomes fragility when maintenance exceeds cost-tolerance.

In martial arts, overreach is the fighter who throws too many power shots, chasing a knockout rather than reading the opponent. They exhaust themselves long before the opponent is even breathing heavily.

Strength without pacing is just a longer route to collapse.

The Weight of Infinite Reach

In cybersecurity, overreach becomes complexity collapse.

Each new department adopts a new tool. Each executive demands a new dashboard. Each vendor promises a universal cure.

Suddenly:

  • no one sees the whole system
  • logs pile up unread
  • alerts become background noise
  • integrations multiply into untraceable webs
  • dependencies form faster than they can be understood

What once felt powerful becomes paralyzing.

Foreign policy suffers the same rhythm on a grander scale.

WWI.
WWII.
The Cold War.
Korea.
Vietnam.
Bosnia
Iraq.
Afghanistan.

Each began with a clean, confident objective. Most devolved into attrition, mission creep, and moral fatigue. It can confidently be argued that mission creep began with WWI, but that’s a conversation for another time.

Sun Tzu would summarize it simply: When the troops are weary and the purpose uncertain, the general has already lost.

In BJJ, this is the fighter who scrambles nonstop, burning energy on transitions without securing position. Sometimes, not even needing to scramble or change position, but hasn’t trained long enough to even know that.

In boxing, it’s the puncher throwing combinations without footwork. The fighter simply stands in place, wondering why his punches never land.

In Kali, it’s the practitioner who commits too aggressively, losing awareness of angles and openings.

The march becomes too long.
The lines become too thin.
And collapse becomes inevitable.

Business: The Corporate Empire Syndrome

Businesses suffer the same fate as empires.

Growth attracts attention. Attention fuels pressure to expand. Expansion becomes compulsive.

Suddenly, the company is chasing:

  • ten markets
  • ten products
  • ten strategies
  • ten “high-priority” initiatives

Each of these demanding its own “army.”

The parallels to national instability are perfect:

  • Expansion without integration
  • Strategy scaling faster than understanding.
  • Leaders mistaking size for stability.

Eventually, the weight becomes unsustainable.

The company can no longer “feed the army.”
Costs rise.
Culture cracks.
Purpose fades.

What killed Rome wasn’t the final battle; it was the slow erosion of balance across its territory.

Most businesses die the same way, and so do most digital ecosystems.

In Wing Chun, this is the collapse of structure, the moment you can see a fighter trying to do too much, forgetting the centerline, being everywhere except where they need to be.

Overreach is always invisible until it isn’t.

The Modern March: Cyber Empires and Digital Fatigue

Our networks are the new empires.

Every integration is a border.
Every API is a supply line.
Every vendor is an ally whose failure becomes your crisis, and you can never plan for when that crisis comes.

Cloud architecture multiplied this exponentially.

Organizations now live everywhere and nowhere at once.

Sun Tzu’s image of an army dependent on supply lines maps perfectly to modern digital infrastructure:

  • Multi-cloud systems
  • SaaS sprawl
  • CI/CD pipelines with invisible dependencies
  • Third-party integrations with inherited vulnerabilities

When visibility fades, risk multiplies. When dependencies become opaque, consequences become catastrophic.

A company that cannot trace its supply chain of code is like an army that has lost its map.

One outage.
One breach.
One geopolitical tremor.

And the entire formation can buckle.

We call this “scalability.”
Sun Tzu would call it: Marching too far from home.

Reading the Dust Clouds

Sun Tzu taught his officers to read subtle signs:

  • dust patterns revealing troop movement
  • birds startled into flight
  • soldiers’ voices around the fire
  • the speed of camp construction
  • the tone of marching feet

Modern versions of those signs are just as revealing:

  • Escalating ‘critical’ alerts no one addresses
  • Morale fading under constant pressure
  • Defensive posture maintained through inertia
  • Strategies repeated because they worked once, not because they work now
  • Partners showing hesitation before they show defection

In WWI, the Lusitania offered one of the clearest “dust clouds” in modern history.

Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare. British intelligence knew passenger liners were targets. The Lusitania was warned. The U.S. was warned. Even the ship’s cargo, which included munitions, made it a predictable target.

Yet the warnings were dismissed.
The signs were clear.
The perception failed.

And America’s reaction, too, was predictable; a “neutral nation” was pushed closer to war by a tragedy entirely foreseeable. Some might argue that certain American politicians sought to force the US into the war. Again, that’s a discussion for another time.

Sun Tzu’s maxim remains timeless: The first to lose perception always loses position.

The Cost of Endless Motion

Overextension rarely appears dramatic at first.

It looks like success:

  • revenue rising
  • troops advancing
  • dashboards expanding
  • integrations multiplying

Then the consequences arise:

  • fatigue
  • erosion
  • misalignment
  • burnout
  • doubt

You begin fighting just to justify how far you’ve marched.

In cybersecurity, this is the company chasing every vulnerability without fixing their architecture.

In foreign policy, it’s the nation fighting endless “small wars” that collectively cost more than stability ever would.

In boxing, it’s the fighter who keeps moving forward until they walk into exhaustion, not a punch.

In Kali, it’s the flow practitioner who adds complexity until their movement becomes noise rather than intent.

Sun Tzu warned: An army that has marched a thousand li must rest before battle.

Modern systems rarely rest. We only measure uptime, not wisdom.

Restraint as Renewal

The answer isn’t retreat, it’s an informed, measured rhythm.

Knowing when to:

  • advance
  • consolidate
  • recover
  • regroup
  • reconsider the terrain

Strategic restraint is not weakness. It is self-preservation.

Rome could have lasted longer by fortifying fewer borders. Corporations could thrive longer by protecting focus instead of chasing scale. Nations could endure longer by strengthening their homeland defenses before ever wasting a single dime projecting power abroad.

Sun Tzu’s art was never about conquest. It was about sustainability.

Victory without stability is just defeat on layaway.

Awareness in Motion

Awareness is the antidote to overreach.

It requires honest measurement:

  • what’s working
  • what’s weakening
  • what’s cracking
  • what’s already lost

It requires humility: no army, business, or nation can move indefinitely without rest.

In cybersecurity, awareness is visibility.
In leadership, it’s listening.
In foreign policy, it’s simply remembering.

Awareness doesn’t stop momentum. It calibrates it.

It’s the half-beat between breaths that keeps the system alive.

Bridge to Chapter X | Terrain

Sun Tzu ends this chapter by looking outward again.

Once you’ve learned to read fatigue, imbalance, and decay within, the next step is to read the environment beyond.

The internal determines how you survive the external.

Which returns us to the opening principle: When you leave your own country behind…you find yourself in a position of dependence on others.

An army on the march teaches us to see ourselves. Chapter X Terrain teaches us to read the world:

  • its obstacles
  • its openings
  • its deception
  • its opportunities
  • its traps

Awareness of self means little without awareness of landscape. That’s where the next battle begins.

Security Without the Pessimism: Cyber Hygiene, The Daily Routine You Actually Need

The Myth of the “Security Checklist”

If you believed every cybersecurity headline, you’d think staying safe online takes a PhD, three apps, and a daily ritual in front of your firewall.

The security industry profits from this complexity. Vendors want you to believe that protection requires their latest tool, their proprietary solution, their 27-step implementation guide. More complexity means more products to sell.

But real security doesn’t look like that. It’s not about chasing every threat or memorizing every acronym. It’s about simple, repeatable habits. It’s the digital version of brushing your teeth.

Here’s the truth they don’t want you to hear: You don’t need to do everything. You just need to do the right things, consistently.

That’s cyber hygiene. And it’s boring on purpose.

The Habits That Actually Matter

Most people already know the broad strokes: use strong passwords, update software, don’t click weird links.

But here’s what actually moves the needle:

  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Still, the single best defense against credential theft.
  • Software updates. Patches close the doors that attackers love to walk through.
  • Password managers. Better one secure vault than 20 weak logins.
  • Backups. One local, one in the cloud, test them once in a while.
  • Device lock and encryption. Lost phones shouldn’t equal lost data.

That’s it. No mystery. No 27-step plan. Just a few habits that, when done daily, make 95% of attacks irrelevant.

In 2017, Equifax was breached because they didn’t patch a known vulnerability for two months. 147 million records compromised. The fix? A software update they already knew about. That’s not sophisticated hacking, that’s skipped hygiene at a catastrophic scale.

The basics aren’t basic because they’re easy to remember. They’re basic because when you skip them, everything else fails.

Why We Skip Simple Stuff

It’s not that people don’t know what to do. It’s that security doesn’t feel urgent until it’s too late.

You don’t see or feel the benefits of good hygiene, but you definitely avoid the pain of neglect. No one cheers when you floss. But everyone will notice that broccoli in your teeth if you don’t.

But there’s more to it than just invisible benefits. Three psychological forces work against cyber hygiene:

Optimism bias. “It won’t happen to me” is a powerful drug. You read about breaches happening to other people, other companies, other industries. Your brain quietly files those stories under “someone else’s problem.” Until it isn’t.

Decision fatigue. You have 47 accounts, each with different password requirements, different MFA setups, and different update schedules. The sheer volume of security decisions creates paralysis. So you do nothing, or you take shortcuts, the same password everywhere, “remind me later” on every update.

The invisible threat problem. You can see a locked door. You can’t see a botnet probing your network. Physical security has visual feedback like locks, gates, cameras. Digital security is abstract until the moment it fails catastrophically. And by then, it’s too late.

Cyber hygiene fails for the same reason flossing does: it’s easy to skip, hard to see the benefit, and the consequences feel distant. But unlike cavities, breaches don’t announce themselves with pain. They’re silent, patient, and devastating.

The trick is to make it small enough that you’ll actually do it, and easy enough that you won’t skip it.

Where Good Intentions Break Down

Even security-conscious folks sometimes miss the basics. Not because they’re careless, but because these gaps accumulate slowly, invisibly:

Outdated hardware. That router you set up five years ago? It stopped receiving security patches three years ago. Old devices become permanent vulnerabilities.

Shadow data. Files saved “temporarily” on random drives, USB sticks, or that personal Dropbox you forgot you created. Every copy is another attack surface.

Forgotten accounts. That forum you joined in 2014. That trial subscription you never canceled. Dormant logins are open doors with your email and password sitting in some leaked database.

Public Wi-Fi comfort. You use a VPN at the airport but not at the coffee shop. Inconsistent protection is predictable behavior and attackers love predictability.

You don’t have to fix everything today. Just start closing one gap at a time. Audit your accounts quarterly. Replace hardware that can’t be updated. Consolidate your data.

Security isn’t perfection. It’s progress. And progress happens one boring habit at a time.

Think of it this way: cyber hygiene is like compound interest, make small deposits now, get massive protection later. Skip the deposits, and you’re borrowing against a future breach.

Make Security Boring (That’s the Point)

The goal isn’t to turn security into a project, it’s to make it routine. Boring. Automatic. The kind of thing you do without thinking, like locking your car.

Here’s a weekly checklist that actually sticks:

  • Monday: Check updates and patches. Five minutes. Coffee in hand. Start the week secure.
  • Wednesday: Backup your files. Set it, forget it, verify it works.
  • Friday: Review new apps or accounts, prune what you don’t use. Close the week by closing gaps.

That’s 10 minutes a week. Three touchpoints. No drama. No heroics.

If you can manage that, you’re already ahead of most organizations. Not because you’re doing something extraordinary because you’re doing something sustainable.

Security should be quiet. The less you think about it, the better it’s working. The moment it becomes a production, it becomes optional.

Culture Over Blame, Turning Awareness Into Habit

People don’t need more fear. They need better routines.

I’ve seen teams transform their security posture not through mandates, but through modeling. One security lead I worked with started every Monday standup by sharing what he patched over the weekend, not as a flex, just as routine. Within a month, the team was comparing notes on password managers and backup strategies. Security became a shared practice, not a compliance checkbox.

Encourage coworkers, friends, or family to treat digital hygiene like health hygiene, it’s a shared standard, not a personal burden. When one person in a household sets up MFA, others notice. When a team lead mentions their weekly backup routine, it normalizes the behavior.

When leaders model small, consistent habits, teams follow. Security doesn’t start in policy documents; it begins in daily rhythm. And rhythm spreads.

Make it normal. Make it boring. Make it easy.

Final Thought

Cyber hygiene isn’t glamorous, but it’s the backbone of every good security posture.
You don’t need to understand encryption or chase every breach headline.
You just need to do the basics, on time, every time.

The security industry wants you to believe protection is complicated because complexity sells. But the truth is simpler and cheaper: consistent habits beat expensive tools every time.

Prevention doesn’t shout. It just works.

That’s not pessimism, that’s just daily discipline. And it’s boring, and effective, on purpose.

The Art of Cyberwar | Part VIII | Variation in Tactics

The principle: “There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.” — Sun Tzu

Adaptation Over Assumption

In Maneuvering, we learned the art of movement and how to turn posture into progress. Now Sun Tzu takes the next step: variation.

Variation is the discipline of adaptation. Not improvisation for its own sake. It’s controlled flexibility and fluidity; the kind that keeps a force alive while in motion.

Sun Tzu’s warning is ruthless: Predictability is the slow death of strategy. Every organization that wins too long risks repeating itself.

Every CISO, every architect, every nation-state faces the same danger: When your patterns stabilize, your adversary’s job gets easier.

Attackers study rhythm.
They hunt repetition.
They exploit formula.

What you repeat becomes your weakness.

Static Defenses, Dynamic Threats

In cybersecurity, repetition feels like discipline:

  • the same checklists
  • the same daily, weekly or quarterly assessments
  • the same scanning cadence
  • the same unchanged playbooks

It feels stable but it’s stagnation dressed as process.

Meanwhile attackers evolve hourly.

Their payloads morph.
Their lures update.
Their timing adapts to human fatigue cycles.

They don’t overpower blue teamers; they systematically outlearn them.

Sun Tzu’s guidance, “alter your plans according to circumstances,” isn’t merely poetic.

It’s operational doctrine. Security isn’t a system. Security is a cycle.

  • Every breach teaches.
  • Every false alarm reveals.
  • Every routine day hides patterns waiting to be broken.

The teams that adapt fastest aren’t the biggest.

They’re the most fluid and adaptable.

Variation is awareness in motion.

Red Teams, Blue Teams, and the Dance of Adaptation

Variation is the heartbeat of adversarial testing. Red teams live in uncertainty: improvisation, deception, broken rhythm. Blue teams train in structure: detection, containment, resilience.

A mature organization doesn’t let them exist as siloed tribes. It merges them into purple teaming, where the creativity of offense and the rigor of defense evolve together.

  • Red exposes blind spots.
  • Blue turns discovery into discipline.
  • Together they adapt.

This is the martial logic of sparring:

  • Wing Chun’s angle changes, where the same attack comes from different entries vs simply straight lines.
  • Muay Thai’s broken rhythm, where timing destroys expectation.
  • BJJ’s transition → position → submission sequence, where variation becomes game, set, match.

Each engagement becomes rehearsal for reality. You’re not preparing for yesterday’s threat. You’re learning from tomorrow’s rehearsal. That’s Sun Tzu’s Variation: adaptation as preparation.

Cloud Security: Adaptation as Architecture

Cloud environments shift constantly:

  • APIs update
  • services deprecate
  • compliance rules revise
  • identity models evolve
  • integrations multiply

Static thinking is fatal in a fluid system. Cloud security is variation embodied.

Infrastructure-as-code lets architecture evolve at speed. Automation turns intent into consistent action, but without visibility, variation becomes drift.

Sun Tzu’s metaphor of water fits perfectly: Water adapts to its container yet always seeks its level.

Cloud engineers do the same:

  • change with the environment, without losing alignment
  • allow flexibility, without losing control
  • evolve configurations, without losing accountability

Adaptation is necessary. Principles are non-negotiable.

Foreign Policy and the Trap of Predictability

Nations decay when their doctrine ossifies.

The American foreign policy establishment has often fallen into this trap over and over again:

  • Cold War containment repeated even after the context changed.
  • counterinsurgency tactics applied to environments that defied them
  • interventions driven by reflex rather than awareness

Vietnam: A doctrine built for conventional warfare in Europe applied to guerrilla conflict in jungle terrain. The U.S. measured success through body counts and attrition, while the enemy measured it through will and time. Same playbook, wrong war. Predictable escalation met adaptive resistance.

Afghanistan: Twenty years of rotating commanders, each bringing their own tactical variation, but all operating under the same strategic assumption—that nation-building through military presence could succeed where it had failed for empires before. The tactics changed every 18 months with each new general. The doctrine never did. The enemy simply waited.

Iraq 2003: Intelligence assumptions treated as certainties. A swift conventional victory followed by the assumption that democratic institutions could be installed through force. When insurgency emerged, the U.S. applied a counterinsurgency doctrine designed for different conflicts. By the time adaptation occurred (the Surge), years of predictable responses had already created the conditions for ISIS.

But perhaps the most revealing pattern is the rhetorical one: every emerging threat becomes “the new Hitler,” every conflict the next World War II.

  • Saddam Hussein was Hitler.
  • Gaddafi was Hitler.
  • Milosevic was Hitler.
  • Assad was Hitler.

The framing never changes. The enemy is always being Chamberlain in 1939 and being “appeasers of Hitler.” The infantile argument is always to stave off the newest existential threat to humanity. This isn’t strategy, it’s intellectual predictability masquerading as moral rectitude and always sticking by the banal cliche “never again,” whether is really applies or not.

World War II was a unique conflict: a mechanized, industrial-scale war between nation-states with clear battle lines, total mobilization, and, foolishly, unconditional surrender as the objective. Applying that framework to insurgencies, civil wars, and regional conflicts doesn’t just fail tactically, it reveals a dangerous inability to see the situation as it actually is.

The Hitler analogy serves a purpose: it short-circuits debate, frames inaction as appeasement, and makes intervention seem inevitable. But it’s also the ultimate form of strategic predictability. When every threat is Hitler, every response becomes World War II, and variation dies.

Variation in statecraft means reading each situation fresh, not recycling last decade’s doctrine into a new century, and certainly not recycling a doctrine from 80 years ago. In each case, tactical adjustments happened but strategic doctrine remained rigid. That’s the opposite of Sun Tzu’s teaching: vary tactics, never principles. These conflicts varied neither.

The Global War on Terror: The Ultimate Failure of Variation

And then there’s the final, most damning example of strategic predictability: Ahmed al-Sharaa, originally known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who once led al-Qaeda’s Al-Nusra Front or Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria and spent years detained by U.S. forces as a terrorist in Iraq, was welcomed to the White House in November 2025 by President Trump.

He once had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. He founded al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch. Now he’s a partner in the Global War on Terror.

This isn’t adaptation. This is strategic incoherence dressed as pragmatism.

Twenty-four years after 9/11, after trillions spent, after Afghanistan and Iraq, after “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” became doctrine, the United States now supports the former head of the very organization we invaded multiple countries to destroy.

The justification? He helps combat ISIS. The same ISIS that emerged from the predictable chaos of the Iraq War. The same conflict where al-Sharaa himself fought as a leading al-Qaeda member against U.S. forces.

This is what happens when doctrine ossifies while reality shifts. When every threat is framed through the same lens (“the new Hitler”), when every intervention follows the same playbook, when strategic thinking atrophies into bureaucratic reflex you end up shaking hands with yesterday’s enemy because you can’t recognize that your framework has failed.

Sun Tzu’s warning rings clear: predictability invites exploitation. The GWOT’s predictable responses—invasion, occupation, counterinsurgency, withdrawal created a cycle that adversaries learned to exploit.

They adapted. We repeated.

And now, the former al-Qaeda commander who once fought U.S. forces receives a hero’s welcome at the seat of American power. Not because the threat changed. Because we ran out of variations on the same failed strategy.

Predictability in diplomacy invites miscalculation.
Predictability in force posture invites escalation.
Predictability in cyber deterrence invites probing.

Again, as an example, at the extreme end of predictability lies Pearl Harbor.

Japan didn’t strike out of pure ambition; it struck because the U.S. cut off:

  • 90% of its oil
  • vital steel
  • food
  • rubber
  • machinery
  • industrial materials

A nation deprived of resources enters what Sun Tzu called death ground, the place where maneuver becomes inevitable.

  • Predictable embargo.
  • Predictable deterioration.
  • Predictable desperation.
  • Predictable strike.

Sun Tzu understood the principle: the more rigid your doctrine, the more your opponent will shift. Nations, like networks, must evolve, or decay through repetition.

Variation Without Confusion

Adaptability is not inconsistent. Sun Tzu warned that blind variation, change for its own sake,
creates disorder.

The rule is simple: Vary your tactics. Never vary your principles.

In cybersecurity, the principles are visibility, trust, and accountability.
In cloud architecture, they are governance and clarity.
In foreign policy, they are restraint and realism.

Change how you respond.
Never change why you respond.

That’s how variation becomes strength rather than noise.

Modern Lessons in Motion

Across every domain, the real art lies in learning faster than you decay:

  • In cybersecurity, adapt playbooks to every alert, not just every quarter.
  • In cloud: treat configuration as a living organism, not a static diagram.
  • In diplomacy: update doctrine before circumstances force your hand.

Predictability invites attack.
Curiosity creates resilience.

Sun Tzu didn’t worship flexibility. He prized awareness in motion, responsiveness guided by principle.

That is how you survive modern complexity: move → learn → realign → repeat.

That’s variation.

From Variation to Awareness

Variation teaches movement. The next lesson teaches perception.

In Chapter IX, The Army on the March, Sun Tzu turns to the signals that guide a force in motion,  how to read the terrain, sense morale, detect fatigue, and recognize when momentum turns into danger.

If Variation in Tactics is about adapting to survive, The Army on the March is about understanding the signs that tell you whether your adaptation is working.

Bringing us full circle to our opening principle: “There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.”

In our next installment, we’ll discuss perception and reality in networks, in nations, in martial skill, and most critically, in ourselves.

BCAAs Are Overrated — Here’s What to Do Instead

There was a time when tossing a neon scoop of BCAAs into your shaker cup felt like a secret code, like a sign that you were truly “dialed in.” Fast forward a few years, and the science is pretty blunt: if you’re already eating enough high-quality protein, those branched-chain amino acids aren’t doing much besides lightening your wallet.

Let’s break it down.

1. You’re Already Getting Plenty

BCAAs (leucine, isoleucine, valine) are just three of the nine essential amino acids your body needs to repair and build muscle. They’re naturally found in every solid protein source: meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and even plants. In fact, most whole protein sources already contain the 2-3 grams of leucine per meal needed to maximize muscle protein synthesis, making isolated BCAA supplements redundant.

If you eat real food and hit roughly 1.6–2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, you’re already covered. Studies keep confirming it: supplementing with BCAAs doesn’t outperform simply consuming complete protein. Here’s why: muscle protein synthesis requires all nine essential amino acids to activate mTOR signaling, the metabolic pathway that triggers muscle growth. BCAAs alone can’t complete the job. Without the full amino acid lineup, your body can’t finish the muscle-building process.

Unless your diet is severely lacking protein, that fancy powder isn’t rescuing anything.

2. Pop Culture Made It Cool — But Not Useful

Let’s be honest: a lot of this stuck around because of marketing and muscle culture. The fitness industry turned hydration into a brand identity with bright colors, bold claims, and goofy influencers sipping between sets like it’s rocket fuel.

It looks serious. It feels like doing something extra. But feeling busy isn’t the same as being productive. In truth, most BCAA use today is psychological, the ritual of “recovery in a cup” more than any measurable physiological edge.

Field note: I’ve worked with hundreds of lifters and athletes and not one of them ever turned a corner in strength, body comp, or recovery because they added BCAAs. But I’ve seen countless athletes break plateaus when they fixed their sleep schedule, added 20 grams of protein to breakfast, or simply trained with more consistency. The wins come from the boring fundamentals, not the colorful supplements.

3. The Paleo/Keto Twist

Here’s where a lot of people overcomplicate it.

If you’re following Paleo or keto and already eating quality animal protein, steak, tuna, salmon, eggs, you’re getting plenty of BCAAs naturally. The supplement is redundant.

But here’s the real issue: many low-carb folks turn to BCAAs because they’re afraid strategic carbs will derail their progress. They won’t. If you’re training hard two or three times a week, your muscles need readily available fuel. Natural carb sources like fruit, bananas, berries, oranges, apples, et cetera, around your training window will do more for performance and recovery than any BCAA powder.

That’s not breaking Paleo. That’s being smart. And it’s cheaper than another tub of supplements.

4. When Supplements Actually Make Sense

To be fair, there are scenarios where amino acid supplementation has merit but even then, BCAAs aren’t your best option.

If you’re training fasted (early morning workouts before you can eat), recovering from an injury where whole food intake is compromised, or genuinely struggling to meet your protein needs through diet alone, a full EAA supplement or quality whey protein makes far more sense than BCAAs.

Why? They deliver the complete amino acid profile your body needs to rebuild tissue and trigger muscle protein synthesis, not just the marketing-friendly three. You’re getting the full toolkit, not just a hammer.

Otherwise? Eat real food, train with purpose, sleep hard, repeat. Oh, and if you’re a vegan or vegetarian, you will need to use supplements to meet your BCAA and EAA needs, but that’s a story for another time.

The Takeaway

Most people sipping BCAAs are already getting what they need from their plate.

The supplement industry thrives on making simple things feel complicated. They profit when you believe that food alone isn’t enough—that you need their powders, their timing protocols, their proprietary blends to unlock results.

But the truth is simpler and cheaper: eat quality protein, train consistently, sleep well, and your body will handle the rest. The fundamentals work. They’ve always worked. And no neon powder changes that.

Save your money for real food, a good night’s sleep, or maybe a new pair of shoes for the trail. If you’re eating enough quality protein, you’re already doing what BCAAs promise — only better, and for less.

Security Without the Pessimism: The VPN Comfort Myth

The Digital Blanket We All Love

Few tools in cybersecurity inspire more misplaced comfort than the VPN.

We picture it as an invisibility cloak or a tunnel of safety where no one can see us, track us, or touch our data. Turn it on, and suddenly you’re “secure.”

That feeling of control is powerful, especially in a world that never stops reminding you how unsafe the internet supposedly is.

But here’s the quiet truth: a VPN protects you from some things, not from everything.
It’s a tool, not a shield.

What VPNs Actually Do

At its core, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a secure server. It hides your IP address and protects your data from casual snooping, especially on public Wi-Fi.

That’s useful, but not magic.

VPNs do not:

  • Protect you from phishing or malware
  • Stop you from logging into fake sites
  • Prevent data collection once you’re signed in somewhere

If your VPN provider keeps logs or has weak security, your trust shifts from the ISP to them.

So yes, a VPN helps. But only if you understand where its power ends.

Safety Theater for the Digital Age

VPNs scratch a deep psychological itch: the need to feel safe, even when we can’t verify it.

They’re the digital equivalent of locking your front door but leaving the windows open, a visible act that soothes anxiety without addressing every risk.

That invincibility leads many to take more risks online. This risk compensation means perceived safety can spark riskier behavior.

Real security isn’t about hiding. It’s about awareness.

Where Comfort Becomes Complacency

The most significant problems with VPN use aren’t technical; they’re behavioral.

  • Blind trust in providers. Some “free” VPNs monetize your data rather than protect it.
  • Performance trade-offs. Slower speeds lead people to disable it, often forgetting to turn it back on.
  • Assumed anonymity. Logging into your personal accounts still links behavior to identity.
  • Neglected basics. Users skip updates or MFA because “I’ve got a VPN.”

The tool becomes a crutch, and that comfort can cost you more than the subscription.

Layer, Don’t Lean

A VPN should be part of a layered defense, not its foundation.

Here’s how to use it wisely:

  • Choose providers with no-log policies and independent audits
  • Keep software updated. VPNs rely on encryption protocols that age fast
  • Use MFA everywhere. A VPN won’t save a stolen password
  • Understand context. VPNs are best for travel, remote work, and untrusted networks — not daily browsing at home

Security isn’t about hiding behind one tool. It’s about stacking the right ones.

Culture Over Blame — Moving Past Security Myths

The VPN story mirrors how we approach most security advice: quick fixes over long habits.

Instead of mocking people for misunderstanding what VPNs do, we can use that comfort as a bridge: “Good start. Now let’s talk about the rest.”

Awareness grows when education feels empowering rather than condescending. The goal isn’t to shame people for feeling safe; it’s to help them feel safe for the right reasons.

Final Thought

A VPN isn’t a vault; it’s just a smaller door to the same big house. Use it, respect it, but don’t mistake a single layer for complete protection.

Real protection isn’t invisible. It’s intentional. That’s not pessimism, that’s just good sense.

Meal Prep for Real Life: How to Cook Once, Eat All Week

Meal prep isn’t just for the ultra-disciplined or Insta-famous. Sure, you’ve seen those photos: Tupperware lined up like soldiers, meals color-coded, macros counted. But let’s be real, that’s not most people’s life.

What if you could meal prep without spending eight hours every Sunday or needing a second fridge? Real meal prep isn’t about perfection; it’s about persistence and readiness. It’s about building a system that fits your training, work, and flexibility needs. When you fuel your life with intention, everything else sharpens into place.

Step One: Choose Your “Prep Style”

There are three main approaches to meal prep, and the one that’s best for you depends on your schedule and personality:

  1. Batch Prep (Traditional): Make full meals ahead of time. Roast a tray of chicken thighs, cook up a pot of rice, and steam some broccoli. Stack them, label them, done. Good for those who like structure and predictability.
  2. Buffet Prep (Modular): Prep components instead of full meals. Think proteins (ground beef, eggs), starches (sweet potatoes, oats), and fats (olive oil, avocado). Mix and match daily based on cravings or training demands.
  3. Half-Prep (Hybrid): Prep only the time-consuming tasks, like chopping vegetables or marinating proteins, so cooking during the week is more efficient but still flexible.

Step Two: Focus on Your Macro Anchors

Every meal should hit three pillars:

  • Protein: This is your building block. Prep double what you think you need. Think grilled chicken, grass-fed, slow-cooked pork shoulder, hard-boiled eggs, and Greek yogurt.
  • Smart Carbs: These are your fuel tanks. Rotate between your favorite veggies, white rice, potatoes, and fruit. Make them in bulk and store flat in zip-top bags to save space.
  • Healthy Fats: Olive oil, nuts, avocado, seeds. Never forget flavor is fuel, too. Keep these on hand for fast drizzles or topping swaps.

Make meals that tick the macro boxes without requiring a calculator. Example?

  • Ground turkey (who doesn’t love leftovers?) + sautéed kale + roasted sweet potato + a sprinkle of feta and olive oil.
  • Scrambled eggs + pepper and onions + chopped spinach + avocado.

Easily repeatable, nourishing, and delicious.

Step Three: Make Friends with Your Freezer

Your freezer isn’t just for waffles and ice cream. It’s your long-term meal prep MVP. Here’s how to make it work for you:

  • Buy bulk frozen vegetables and fruits.
  • Freeze leftover portions of chili, stew, or curry in single-serve containers.
  • Portion “smoothie” bags with fruits, nut butters, and protein powder. Blend them up and freeze them ahead of time – easy-peasy.
  • Store cooked rice or roasted veggies flat in freezer bags for quick reheats.

Pro tip: Label and date everything. No mystery meals!

Step Four: Build In the “Rescue Meals”

Life happens. You’ll miss a prep day, forget your lunch, or get stuck in traffic. That’s when “rescue meals” save the day:

  • Package tuna or salmon + cucumber and tomato slices + olive oil
  • Grilled steak + half a sweet potato with a dash of cinnamon + two slices of crispy bacon.
  • Hard-boiled eggs + fruit of your choice + handful of almonds

Not fancy. But fast, macro-friendly, and better than skipping meals or panic-ordering pizza.

Step Five: Keep it Repeatable

The secret to success isn’t variety, it’s consistency. Most people thrive on 2-3 breakfast options, 3-4 go-to lunches, and 4-5 dinner templates. Boring? Maybe. But boring builds bodies. Save your culinary creativity for the weekends if that’s your thing.

Meal prep isn’t about being a hero. It’s about staying disciplined and staying in the fight.

The win is showing up to train with fuel already in the tank. The win is making your life easier, one container at a time. Prep is something to be proud of and it’s a version of self-respect you can see every day.

Pick your style and start prepping, your future self will thank you.

The Art of Cyberwar | Part VI | Weak Points and Strong

matt shannon art of cyberware chapter VI weak points an strong

The principle:
“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.”

Strength and Weakness Are Temporary

Sun Tzu emphasized that strength and weakness are dynamic rather than static. Although this principle may seem self-evident, it is often overlooked in practice. Many individuals disregard straightforward strategies, mistakenly believing that complexity is required. This oversight often leads to the violation of previous strategic principles or “lessons learned”, indicating a lack of genuine understanding.

It is essential to recognize that what appears robust today may become fragile in the future, while seemingly vulnerable elements can become decisive with time and increased awareness.

Power, whether military or digital, shifts with context.

The critical factor is not the quantity of resources, but the ability to perceive the entire operational landscape. Vulnerabilities arise not only from an adversary’s strengths, but also from areas where situational awareness is lacking and the speed at which adaptation occurs when new realities emerge.

In contemporary contexts, both nations and security architects often neglect this fundamental principle. There is a tendency to focus on constructing increasingly formidable defenses rather than developing adaptive strategies. Regardless of the scale of these defenses, adversaries require only minor vulnerabilities to compromise their effectiveness. Always remember, your adversaries only need to find a tiny leak in the walls to bring the entire system down.

Predictability: The Modern Weakness

Even the most secure fortresses eventually become familiar terrain for attackers. Cyber adversaries do not rely on brute force; instead, they employ strategic analysis. They examine organizational habits and exploit vulnerabilities such as unpatched servers, unmanaged privileged or service accounts, unchanged passwords, and the susceptibility of executives to social engineering.

Their success depends not on force, but on the predictability of organizational behaviors.

Nations exhibit similar vulnerabilities. Bureaucratic routines solidify into doctrine, which can devolve into dogma. Adversaries exploit these predictable patterns, waiting for repetition before executing successful attacks.

Historical events, such as the Pearl Harbor attack, the September 11 attacks, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and numerous cyber intrusions, demonstrate that deficiencies in critical thinking, complacency, rigidity, and hubris significantly increase the likelihood of successful surprise attacks.

When Comfort Masquerades as Strength

Many organizations and governments allocate excessive resources to familiar areas, fostering a false sense of security. This environment allows risks to proliferate unnoticed, undermining overall resilience.

Cybersecurity teams often spend millions fortifying infrastructure while leaving users untrained.

Organizations frequently monitor technical metrics while neglecting human behavior. The most significant vulnerabilities often arise from areas presumed to be under adequate management.

System failures are typically attributable not to insufficient funding, but to misaligned priorities.

This pattern is evident at the national level as well. Large militaries and substantial budgets often obscure underlying fragilities, including slow adaptation, reliance on outdated assumptions, unstable alliances, and insufficient strategic foresight regarding emerging forms of conflict.

Historical Lessons of Misguided Strength

The First World War began with nations convinced that industrial might and rigid plans guaranteed victory. Those plans dissolved within months under the weight of modern weapons and static thinking.

During the Vietnam War, a major power misinterpreted its capacity for endurance as a guarantee of superiority. The Viet Cong’s guerrilla tactics transformed conventional advantages into significant liabilities.

Even the rapid success of Operation Desert Storm fostered complacency. Efficiency was mistaken for enduring security, and the perceived triumph was erroneously interpreted as evidence of invincibility.

Each era reaffirms the principle that the most conspicuous assets are not necessarily the most powerful.

Flexibility as True Power

Sun Tzu’s insight was to conceptualize power as dynamic movement. He advocated that a general should emulate water, seeking the path of least resistance and adapting to the terrain.

Within the cyber domain, the operational landscape evolves rapidly, with new threats, actors, and vulnerabilities emerging on a continual basis.

In this context, strength is defined by agility:

  • Rotate keys and credentials regularly.
  • Automate but verify.
  • Decentralize authority so teams can act without waiting for hierarchy.

The most effective defenders are those who demonstrate the greatest adaptability, learning and evolving more rapidly than adversaries can adjust their tactics.

Lao Tzu’s Echo

Lao Tzu put it simply:

“Water overcomes the stone not by strength, but by persistence.”

Endurance surpasses dominance. Properly understood, flexibility is not a sign of weakness but of resilience, characterized by the capacity to absorb disruption and recover to an original state.

In the digital context, resilience is reflected in recovery planning, redundancy, and organizational culture. The true measure of strength is not the infrequency of failure, but the speed of recovery following a compromise.

Turning Weakness Into Insight

All systems possess inherent flaws. Denial of these vulnerabilities allows them to remain concealed until a crisis occurs. Proactive defenders employ audits, red-team exercises, and transparent communication to identify weaknesses at an early stage.

Transparency transforms potential liabilities into opportunities for organizational learning.

Nations could use the same humility.

Public acknowledgment of mistakes enhances credibility, whereas concealment increases risk. The most resilient governments are not those without flaws, but those capable of adapting transparently before their constituents.

From Awareness to Action

Identifying vulnerabilities constitutes only part of the challenge; addressing them effectively demands both discipline and restraint.

In cybersecurity, this approach entails prioritizing remediation over self-congratulation, thorough preparation prior to disclosure, and critical evaluation before taking action.

In policy contexts, this requires deliberate prioritization, engaging only in actions where the anticipated outcomes justify the associated costs.
Misapplied strength can become a source of vulnerability, whereas a thorough understanding of weaknesses can provide strategic foresight.

The Next Step: The Flow of Force

Sun Tzu ends this chapter with motion: the strong shifting to the weak, the weak transforming to the strong.

He implies that awareness must evolve into timing. The wise general aligns his force with the moment, not against it. And that, “All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”

This concept serves as a transition to the subsequent lesson, which focuses on the dynamics of energy in motion and the strategic management of power with balance and rhythm.

We’ve learned where to stand. Next, we’ll learn how to move. As Master Tzu concludes Chapter VI:

Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.

Leading us directly back to this lesson’s seemingly simple principle: “So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.”

Feast Like a Pro: Gratitude, Gains & Turkey Day Tactics

The table is set. The family is gathered. That golden bird’s resting for its moment of glory. And you? You’re not just another guest, you’re the standard‑bearer. Training hard doesn’t hibernate because of a holiday. Neither does integrity, nor does your plate.

If you’ve spent years training in the trenches, on the mats, under the barbell, through years of high-demand cycles, you know one thing: what you do in ordinary weeks sets up your success in the extraordinary ones. Thanksgiving falls in the extraordinary category, but it doesn’t need to wreck your rhythm. It can elevate it.

Why Thanksgiving can work to your advantage

Many of those holiday staples are good food choices: turkey provides lean protein, sweet potatoes offer fiber and micronutrients, and greens contribute volume and nutrient density.

The catch isn’t the food, it’s the habits before and after that singular day that matter far more.

Let’s keep the feast, skip the fallout.

Three rules to guide you at the table

  1. Start Strong
    Don’t arrive famished. Your engine shouldn’t be at the red‑line before the first bite. A balanced breakfast, eggs and veggies, cottage cheese and berries, or Greek yogurt and nuts, all keep hunger in check and your nervous system grounded. Research confirms that skipping breakfast often triggers overeating and leaves you feeling exhausted.
  2. Always Balance Your Plate
    Picture any other day’s nutrition: lean protein to anchor (such as turkey, beef, or ham), colorful vegetables or salad for volume, and limited starchy sides unless your training week demands them. Watch the gravy and sauces, those are where the hidden (and delicious) calories hide.
  3. Mind the Velocity
    Feasting is a moment. Not a month. At the end of the meal, don’t fear choosing to eat something you love: pie, sides, or other family favorites. But just enjoy semi-reasonable portions. Experts show that a single large meal won’t derail you long‑term. So, don’t live in fear of enjoying yourself. Your habits of hard training and clean eating will remain just as they were the day before Thanksgiving. Finish the meal with water, a walk, or even a short mobility circuit. Movement after eating boosts digestion and circulation, and helps you avoid the all‑too‑familiar food coma. But don’t be weird about it!

A bit of real-life experience:

I’ve seen high-level athletes treat Turkey Day like a dead zone. They think “holiday = derail.” Instead, I coach it like any other session: first of all, your habits and discipline got you here. After that, it’s just preparation, execution, and recovery. You arrive with your baseline, you feast with intention, you leave the table with your standards intact. That same mindset built you under the barbell and in the academy; it works here, too.

This week’s actionable plan

  • Open your day with intention: Have a solid breakfast, something you’d have on a heavy training day.
  • Scan the table before loading your plate: protein first, then vegetables, and then one or two sides you love.
  • Pick one indulgence: It’s OK. But make it a choice, not a subconscious default.
  • Finish strong with movement: a 15–20 minute walk, foam roll, or light mobility work post-meal. But again, don’t be weird about it. Don’t be “that guy.”
  • Back to normal tomorrow: One meal doesn’t define you. Your pattern does.

Ultimately, it isn’t about perfection. It’s about being present with your family and friends. Celebrating with those you care about, giving thanks, and still showing up for your future self, too.

Training, eating, and living at a high level don’t pause for holidays; they simply work in harmony with them.