You Can Only Delay Your Destiny So Long
How to break out of the loop of unfulfilled potential
Quick announcement (creator event in June)
This June, I will be speaking at the “Future Proof Creator Summit” alongside 15 other speakers. It will be a great learning experience for anyone who comes, and also a fun time hanging out and masterminding with other creators around the world. A good number of my friends from the creator space are going, so if you want to hang out with us in Vancouver from June 5-7, you can find tickets and details here.
The deadline to book a discounted hotel with your ticket purchase is 7 days from now, so this is the time to decide whether you’re attending. If you are interested or have questions, you can join this Telegram group to chat with me, the event organizers, and speakers.
Now, let’s dive into the article:
If you’re anything like me, you have big visions for your life.
A stable job, a nice paycheck, and a defined career trajectory never spoke to you. Living at your edge did. Chasing your potential has always mattered more to you than being comfortable.
Most people in your life probably don’t understand you. Why embark on some heroic quest to discover your potential when you could make $100k a year working a good job like everyone else in your town? What they don’t understand is that normalcy means failure to the ambitious spirit. It’s almost as if you have no other option but to think big. It’s simply how you’re wired.
We’ve been blessed with the ability to dream. But we are also cursed. Our dreams inspire us, but also haunt us. We can’t forget the visions we’ve seen, but we also constantly feel we’re not living up to that image. Who we could become is beautiful and inspiring, but when we compare it to our current circumstances, we can’t help but feel we are far, far behind. We repeatedly have to come face-to-face with ourselves and the world when we realize we aren’t living up to our potential, and doing so is a deeply sobering, emotionally challenging experience.
We spend our years waiting. Waiting to step into that next version of ourselves. Waiting for the visions we’ve had in deep meditations or psychedelic journeys to materialize. Waiting for the day we finally transcend our limiting beliefs, our behavioral flaws, and our destructive habits and fully embody our “higher selves.”
Why does it seem this day never comes? Why do we tap into this higher self for a day, only to come crashing down just a few weeks later and end up right where we started? How can we reside permanently in our next evolution and break this looping cycle of progress and regress?
This is what I intend to explore in this article. I will start with a personal story about a vision I had around what I was destined to build a few years ago, in 2024. I’ll also explain why I fell off the path, the sidequests that pulled my attention away from the mission, and the tipping point that finally, after years of circling the vision, has allowed me to fully step into the mission with zero apprehension or second-guessing. We’ll finish with some practical advice on how to break out of self-defeating loops and fully step into your next evolution.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in:
The Original Vision
2 and a half years ago, in 2024, I had an incredibly profound experience during a kundalini activation session in Thailand to build a creator community to unite the conscious creator space into a positive-sum, decentralized networking platform and information hub.
If you don’t know what a kundalini activation session is, it’s essentially a consciousness-expanding experience that unlocks higher energy levels in your system, similar to a very deep meditation or psychedelic experience.
The vision that downloaded into my mind was immense. My body activated in a way I’d never experienced before. It was like 1,000 volts had just been injected into my mind and body. From this elevated state, clarity around the community and movement clicked in my imagination at levels I’d never seen before.
I rode the high from the session into a 2-week burst of action as I’d never experienced before. I worked 12-16 hours a day, stayed up until 8 am creating and building, and didn’t need more than a few hours of sleep to feel well-rested and supercharged. I’d found my “moonshot vision” Tony Robbins so often talks about, and it was pulling me at a rapid speed and intensity to bring it into reality.
However, I was not embodied enough or ready to hold the vision in my nervous system long enough for it to materialize. This is the potential issue with these mystical or psychedelic experiences. You see the “Kingdom of Heaven” or your “higher self” for a few hours, but then you come back to earth, in the same body, with the same nervous system, and the same skillset, and have to walk the path of integration every day to actually embody what you realized.
A lot of people think just because they’ve seen a big vision for their life means they’re destined to have it, but they bypass the fact that they have to integrate the vision into every fiber of their being through daily practice and holding the frequency as a devoted practice. Just because you have the potential for something does not mean it’s destined. It is called a “potential” for a reason. I have sobered up to this lesson the hard way over the past few years.
Once I left Thailand, I fell out of the voltage and frequency that matched the clarity and action with the community vision. I came back to Chicago, was no longer riding moterbikes around, going to psytrance raves every night (as my break from working / creative ideation session), and feeling infinitely free and expansive. Other projects moved to the forefront (because I needed cash), I fell into scarcity and practicality, I fell back into some old habits and patterns, and I slowly stopped working on the community.
A month later, I went to the Amazon to sit with ayahuasca for 10 days. I haven’t had a plant medicine experience since then (about 18 months later) because I am still integrating the lessons from that journey (to continue my thread of bringing “heavenly insights down to earth.”)
During that retreat, I contemplated the vision, the community, my path, and my life’s purpose for hours upon hours in the jungle with no phone, no wifi, and nothing to do except think and be. What I arrived at was that my destiny was waiting for me. I didn’t have to rush into it. I was going to be writing and building community for the rest of my life, and I didn’t have to try to take it all on now. I came to the fact that I was 23, I should allow myself to be 23, and it was okay to give myself some time to be a kid before taking on what felt like a Herculean task in my mind. And so I did.
A 1-Year Sidequest
I left the jungle with the decision to go back to college for all of 2025 and play football one last time. It was a complete 180 compared to what I imagined I’d come to before I went into the retreat. I realized everything I wanted to do with my life was still going to be there when I left, but spending the year close to family, being with my grandma near the end of her life, and having my dad and grandpa be able to see me play quarterback one last time were more important to me than building a business and traveling the world — for that season of life.
I enrolled in school at the beginning of 2025 and began training for football. It was, in all honesty, a very challenging year. I was constantly trying to dance between two words. I often felt I was wasting my time. I felt out of place and like I had no one who understood me or could see the world like I did. I wanted to write, create, and build, but I was stuck in class, listening to lectures with a bunch of 18-to-20-year-olds, or getting yelled at by a coach for my feet being shit or going through my reads incorrectly lol.
It was a lotttt to juggle. I would literally be launching a cohort, planning a retreat, or doing content strategy for Aubrey Marcus, and then going to a psychology lecture or practice right after. It was a strange season, a liminal period between worlds. But looking back, I realized how much the year increased my capacity and the weight and responsibilities of what I could hold.
Even though it was challenging, the year was extremely formative and fruitful for me. I reactivated my inner warrior by battling through multiple injuries in the arena. We had a few incredibly magical games that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. I remembered how important sports and play were to my overall health and well-being (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual). I met some amazing human beings on my team, in school, and in my community.
But by the time the final game came to an end and I turned in my final paper, I was itching to get on a flight back to Thailand and go full-time creator again. So in January, I booked a one-way ticket to Bangkok, and the adventure started again, and the remembrance of the original vision I had back in 2026 came with it.
Elevating My Frequency in Thailand
Within the first two weeks of leaving the frigid Chicago weather and arriving at a beach town in Koh Phangan, Thailand, I was back in the feeling of 2024.
Freedom. Electricity. Infinite potential. Purpose. Alignment. Psytrance music. Moterbikes. James Bond. Jack Sparrow.
It is no coincidence that my content began to pop off the moment I arrived back in Thailand.
The elevated frequency I dropped back into preceded the ideas that were coming through, and I began to go mega viral on X for the first time since before I went to play football in 2025.
The virality had nothing to do with my content system or workflow (I basically had none) and everything to do with the frequency I entered. Frequency precedes ideas, and ideas are the golden egg of content creation.
From that frequency, clarity around my ecosystem slowly started to reemerge. A writing retreat in Europe. A 6-week writing cohort in May. And coming full circle, beginning to restart momentum in the Transcendence Community.
However, just as I began to find my flow and things began to click into place, I once again was hit with more delays.
More Delays
After a month of ripping around the island solo, things changed.
Friends visiting Koh Phangan in February. Helping with other projects while, once again, putting my own on hold. Convincing myself I should wait to fully step into my own vision because “I’m young” or “I don’t have to rush.”
But inside me, a subtle burning rage began to stir - the feeling that I was once again delaying my own destiny. And so after weeks of this anger brewing, I went through a week of intense anger transmutation.
I’d sprint on the beach. Thrash around in the ocean. Work out hard as f*ck. Scream as I was driving my moterbike. Start barking and yelling out of nowhere (my friends can attest to this). My solar plexus was activating, and I was moving the stuck energy.
It sounds quite manic or insane if you have not done shadow work yourself. But if you want to alchemize anger specifically, you are going to have to move it in ways that look crazy to the average person (which is why I recommend doing so in private).
I was pissed at the lack of clarity in my mind, the lack of sovereignty over my direction, and the fact that I had once again delayed what I knew was destined for me.
But as I would allow the anger to come through, move the energy, and transmute it into action, new levels of clarity and direction would emerge.
Anger is unexpressed desire. When you do not express your fullest self to the world and suppress your desires for a long enough time, it will brew inside you to the point where it bursts out in a fit of passionate rage. You get so angry at yourself, your circumstances, and the world that the energy fuels you into a massive transformation, as long as you allow it to come through and don’t suppress it.
Anger is not a sign something is wrong. It is actually a sign you are moving in the right direction (transcending the map of consciousness and rising above shame, fear, and apathy). You are accessing a higher energy level, and channeling anger into intense action propels you towards greater courage and deeper embodiment of your destiny.
The depth at which you step into your destiny is equally proportional to the amount of courage you can summon within your own spirit. Courage is the doorway to your mission, and moving out of apathy (non-action) by transmuting anger into action is the key to unlocking it.
Fully Stepping In
After a month or so of this intense shadow work, I’m fully stepping into the vision after years of circling it.
The Transcendence Community is the north star — for this season of life. That’s it. Nothing is pulling me off the path. The constant feeling of waiting and delaying has gotten to a point where there is no other option if I want to feel fully alive.
If you’re still reading this, I’m sure you’ve experienced a similar arc in your own way. A vision that came through clearly once, that keeps finding you no matter how many times you walk away from it, but that you continue to delay in favor of fear, doubt, rationality, or stepping on toes.
The truth is that you will never feel fully alive until you fully step into your mission with zero hedging, negotiation, and outside influence.
Stepping into the mission is an inside-out game. You have to embody the energy and identity of the person who would live out the mission before you have the capacity to hold it.
How?
It all comes down to shadow work and identity work.
Take some time to actually think/feel through these questions, as they are the catalyst to fully stepping into your calling:
What are you scared of?
Who would you have to be to fully step into your vision?
What would you have to give up?
What emotions are you avoiding feeling if you were to fully step into this path?
Whose voice (or voices) are keeping you small and living in fear?
What old habits, emotions, and traits do you have to let go of?
What behavior cycle or pattern do you have to break out of?
What area of transformation have you been avoiding?
These questions, if you sit deeply with them and act on the insights you arrive at, are the doorway to break the cycle of self-limitation and step into a new cycle of self-transcendence.
Breaking the Cycle
To step into your destiny fully, you have to break your old timeline and step into an entirely new tone.
How do you break out of the cycle, end the karmic loop, and shed the old self and step into the new?
Here are some ideas:
Shake things up drastically. It’s extremely difficult to change when your enviroment is reinforcing every part of the old identity you want to shed. Take a weekend and go on your own solo retreat. Book a one-way ticket to a new place where no one knows you. Quit the job that’s draining your spirit and trust in your ability to figure things out. To step into the next level of your destiny, you need to enter a new timeline, and taking a leap to completely reinvent yourself is the fastest way to do so.
Look the fear directly in the eye and walk straight towards it. Don’t know how you’re going to make enough money to support yourself? Need to have a difficult conversation that you’re scared will let someone down? Scared of looking at yourself in the mirror and taking an objective analysis of your life? Good. Bring on the challenge. You can almost maniacally psyop yourself into loving fear and moving towards it. When you don’t back down, the fear naturally fades. It only grows when you continuously avoid it. Walk straight into the fear knowing you are protected by God, and you can never be hurt.
Prioritize capacity expansion and internal alignment above all else. Your mission can only scale to the level of your internal capacity to hold it and your ability to stay devoted to it. How do you increase your capacity? Letting go / shadow work. Going outside your comfort zone as a ritual. Throwing yourself into situations where you feel over your head. Every time you sit down and release something, or put yourself into a situation beyond your current capacity, you expand. How do you stay aligned? Daily check-in points. Meditation. Yoga. Prayer. Reflective journaling. Real conversations with real friends who want to see your highest potential as much as you do. If you don’t intentionally recalibrate often, you slowly drift off course, where you then need more willpower and conscious reorientation to get yourself back on track.
Holding the Frequency
When you decide to step into your mission, it may feel like sunshine and rainbows for a day or two as you’re riding the high of new energy and clarity.
But this will not last. You will be tested by the mirror of reality on your level of devotion to the new frequency. Trials and tests will come up. Fears and patterns you thought you had left behind will reemerge. Old parts of your identity will try to cling on. Situations will arise that test whether you will stay coherent to your new level or fall back into your old ways.
This is not a sign that anything is off. It is a sign you are on the path of your own hero’s journey - and every hero is destined to face challenges on the path to his or her destiny.
The Hero’s Journey is a pattern of soul development and the course of your personal adventure.
Notice how the graphic matches the shape of the ourobouros (the snake eating its tail, the loop of karma).
As you ascend towards higher levels of your destiny, you loop around the map of the hero’s journey. You are the hero of your own story. You are here to live out your own myth. The sooner you internalize that your life is supposed to be an adventure, the more exciting (and also challenging) it will become.
As you go through the arc of full identity transformation as depicted in this graphic, you will reach a new point of internal stability at your new level, where you are then again called to adventure and start the cycle again.
Chances are, if you’re resonating with this, you are experiencing your own call to adventure right now.
If your life were a movie, what move would you make?
If you were the main character, what is the most courageous action to take?
And most importantly, who do you have to let go of being to step into this next version of yourself?
Sit with that, and I’ll see you in the next article.
Thanks for reading,
~ Jack
Btw, the One of One Writer Cohort begins Monday, May 4. Our first call is at 1pm EST. You can join us for a 6-week writing, brand-building, and audience-growth sprint here.
If that is out of your price range, you can also join 82+ creators in Transcendence University (the community I talked about in this article) as an intro step and access to our knowledge hub, group calls, and extensive network.
There are also 3 spots open for the Lake Como Writing Retreat this July. You can check out the details and apply here.
The most real words I’ve ever read
God is truly speaking through you, Jack! I am currently living the answers to the questions in your self-assessment section. They are similar to Dan Koe's questions for coming up with an anti-vision. I need to devote some time to make more sense of them, and will do so with an article of my own, sooner than later. The title really caught my attention as well. I read this article while in line with my mom to see BTS! I tend to escape during live events like these. To answer your questions about being the main character in my life's movie: I'm in a scene where I've got to re-realize the dream that got me so far. I'm risking what has kept me comfortable for a chance at even greater success (which I'm faithful I'll receive).