It takes courage to be happy

I just came back online from my monthly 7-day digital detox and I honestly wish I could be typing this on a typewriter so that I don’t have to be connected to the digital as often as I am.

I’ve been doing 7-day digital detoxes every month or two for almost four years now and it’s changed my life.

I take that time to disconnect from the online world and reconnect with myself. It gives me a “pause” on my digital life to check in with myself and see if I’m still heading in the direction I want to in life.

During this last digital detox I read the book “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” and “The Courage to Be Disliked.” Two books that complement each other very well.

I’ve been reading books like this because I’m trying to figure out the personal side of my life since I got married in 2024.

From the time I was 22 to 27, I was a caregiver so that was my whole identity, and from 27 until now business was and is a big part of my identity and how I spend my days.

It wasn’t until I got married over 2 years ago that I started to wake up from the spell and hold that business had on my head and life.

I started to be more interested in my own happiness (it’s a weird thing to say or write, I know, but I never really considered it before because I put myself on the back burner as a caregiver and it just stayed that way after).

What were the things that made me feel fulfilled, that made me feel like me again?

And honestly I had lost that. What’s been beautiful about this 3-month Asia trip that I’m currently on is that I got to reconnect with that kid inside of me who was hitchhiking the world, going with the flow and that has this childlike joy for life.

I had lost that for the past decade of my life because I had serious life obligations at 22 and was forced to “grow up fast.” Which I wouldn’t change for anything in the world, but I also realized that it was my responsibility to choose to continue to blame that chapter of my life as to why I couldn’t be fully happy.

It was my responsibility to deep dive into my own internal operating system and rewire it for happiness.

And it’s been a beautiful journey working on that rewiring. It definitely involved a whole notebook of writing, hours of “boredom” sitting with myself doing nothing, then writing, then reading, then talking with my wife Ivy.

And here is the conclusion I’ve come to so far.

I have nothing left to do.

My mind always finds tasks to do, systems to build, checkboxes to check.

I’ve already built the successful business that runs without me, I’ve already optimized Ivy’s and my life, and I’ve already built the systems for us to travel Asia for three months which we currently are and the literal only thing that is left is…

To live!

And I’ll be honest with you, I thought I was “living” too, but I’ve realized that I really wasn’t, at least to my definition.

Because I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I’m an over-optimizer. I like to learn, dive deep, build frameworks and systems around what I’ve learned in my personal and business life.

On the personal front, I realized that there were always elements missing of me actually “doing it,” of having the hard conversations, of cutting ties, of just implementing the choice to be happy now because I can and it’s a choice.

That’s why I gave the title that it takes courage to be happy, because it’s scary.

I was and am still working on not being attached to being in control in my business, in my personal life, in projects, etc. Because I had to be that guy when I was a caregiver, when I started my business, etc. But I’m also learning that the past doesn’t determine the future. Your choices determine your future regardless of your past.

And to a certain extent I knew that, but I’ll be honest, there was a part of me that was attached to being a victim a little bit because of what I’d gone through. And that’s not a healthy “driving” force to operate on.

It makes for a life that feels emptier than I want it to be.

I hope this makes sense, because many of these realizations are fresh to me and as usual my brain is still trying to conceptualize them into something concrete.

To wrap this post up, I want to say that it’s scary to choose to be happy, it’s scary to choose to live your life differently than you are now because you are not living your best life or you aren’t allowing yourself to be yourself 100%.

And I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m perfect because I’m still working on being 100% myself. A part of me is a little afraid to go back home because I feel that I’ve changed so much during this 3-month trip that there are many things I wanted that I don’t want anymore.

That is why I like traveling, because it removes the boundaries that you’ve created for yourself back home. No one knows you where you are going so you can just be fully you and that is all that those people know of you.

One big realization I had that I want to share is that I don’t want to try and get a professional basketball contract anymore to play overseas. Just in case you didn’t know, I trained my butt off last year to go compete at the Las Vegas combine in July 2025, was doing well but then got hit in the head and got a concussion, and a few months later severely injured my ankle which is still not 100% to this day.

I got back into basketball to see if I still had what it took and to show my 12-year-old self that I could make that dream happen. But the reality is that I’m older now in the basketball world, I’ve changed as a person, and I realized that it was purely driven by ego to add another accomplishment that I didn’t care about to my shelf of life accomplishments.

My body hurts way too much to continue to compete with a bunch of 18- and 19-year-olds. I’m getting to the stage of life where I value mobility, flexibility, functional strength and a normal level of stamina. Not the one that comes from training 20 hours a week.

I’ve closed that loop in my head and I’ve learned that it’s ok to cancel a goal if the intention behind it was never going to serve my best life. And I’m not one to cancel goals, which was very challenging to make that decision, but everyone I train with back home still expects me to go for it because I’ve trained one year with them and they know me as that guy.

Change is hard. It takes courage and it takes commitment to your decisions.

I’ll end on this because I don’t know who might be reading this, but if you are in a caregiver position like I was for almost 5 years, you can still be happy. That is a choice. Yes, you are going through hard times and love the person you are caring for with all your heart and presence. But choose to be happy, and that doesn’t mean to be selfish and just do what makes you happy when you want because you are in a different position. I’m saying choose to be happy regardless of how hard it is.

It won’t be easy, it won’t be perfect, but it’s better than playing the victim and playing the poor me game with yourself and others because that will leave you feeling unhappy. I can promise you that, and I’m speaking from personal experience.

Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far.

I didn’t plan on writing all this but I suppose that is what I was meant to write this week ❤️

PS. In The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, there’s a conversation between a frustrated young man and a philosopher. The young man insists the world is complicated and unfair. The philosopher disagrees. He says the world is simple, and that we’re the ones making it complicated.

To prove his point, he uses this analogy: well water stays at about the same temperature all year round, roughly 60 degrees. That number doesn’t change. But drink it in the summer and it feels cool. Drink it in the winter and it feels warm. Same water. Same temperature. Completely different experience.

The young man says it must be an illusion. The philosopher says no. It’s not an illusion. To you, in that moment, the coolness or warmth is real. That’s what it means to live in your subjective world.

The issue is not about how the world is. It’s about how you are.

Maxime Sigouin