Last week was my birthday. I turned 33.
Every year Ivy interviews me for the podcast on my birthday, and every year I walk away from that conversation realizing something I didn’t know I needed to realize. This year was no different.
She asked me what feels most different between 23 and 33. And the honest answer is that at 23, I had just become a caregiver. I was 22 when Jen got sick, so by 23 I was already in it. No apartment before that, no bills, no real adult responsibilities. And then overnight it was all of it at once. Lease, medical bills, someone I loved who might not make it, and absolutely no roadmap for any of it. I remember calling my friend Sebastian one night and telling him I wanted to jump off a bridge. That’s how hard it was. And I had to toughen up so fast that I basically just forgot to loosen up again after.
I spent most of my late 20s and early 30s operating from that same survival energy. Efficient. Goal-oriented. Always building toward something. And on paper it looked great. Book launch, rebranding, clients in 20 countries, a company I’m genuinely proud of. But somewhere in there I had completely lost the version of me that used to hitchhike across the country, knock on strangers’ doors asking to sleep in their backyard, and just move through life with zero agenda and a lot of joy.
I didn’t even notice he was gone until I was standing in a room in Japan watching a sumo wrestler pick volunteers out of the crowd one by one and throw them out of the ring. And the old me, the business version, the careful version, said don’t go up there. And then I went up anyway. And I won. And I was flexing on this guy and the whole room was going crazy and Ivy was laughing and I was just completely, embarrassingly, fully myself for the first time in a long time. Something came back online in that moment. Here’s proof ;)
I’ve been sitting with a harder question this year too. The question of what success is actually costing. I had a mentor I hired because I genuinely wanted what he had. Good business, strong marriage, solid values. I modeled a lot of my thinking after his. And a few years in, he got divorced. Started seeing his kids half the time. And I know there’s always more to a story than what you see from the outside. But from where I was standing, I had been building toward an outcome using a blueprint that had just produced the exact opposite of what I wanted. That hit me harder than I expected.
Then I watched an interview Tony Robbins did with Alex Hormozi, someone a lot of people in the business world look up to, and Tony basically dismantled him live on camera. Helped him see that underneath all the success was someone who had never felt like enough and was running on that. The interview went viral and then Alex took it down. But I had already seen it. And I recognized myself in parts of it more than I wanted to admit.
I’m not sharing this to be dramatic. I’m sharing it because I know a lot of you are in that same current. Working hard, doing the right things, but running on something that isn’t quite peace. And I think it’s worth naming.
What’s changed at 33 is that the drive is still there, but it’s coming from a different place. I’m not building to prove something anymore. I’m building because I genuinely love coaching people and I want to keep doing it in a way that I can sustain for the next 30 years without burning my health or my marriage in the process. I train three times a week now instead of six. I eat well but I don’t stress about it. I take the first seven days of every month completely offline and I come back clearer every single time. I bought my parents cowboy hats in Palm Springs and watching them lose their minds with excitement, sending us photos of themselves wearing them watching Yellowstone, that was one of the proudest moments of my year. Not a business milestone. Cowboy hats.
I also have a Polaroid book that Ivy gave me four years ago. It’s from the movie Up, that scene at the beginning with the adventure book. I’ve been putting photos of our life in it ever since and I filled the whole thing this year. Two hundred something Polaroids. I carried that book out of our house when we had to evacuate during the fires because I can’t replace those photos. That book is more valuable to me than most things I own.
That’s what 33 feels like. A little slower. A lot more intentional. Still hungry, but in a way I can actually live with.
I don’t know what this year ahead holds. But I know the direction. And that’s more than I could say for most of my 20s.
Consistency compounds.
Co-Founder & CEO, Mavy Wellness Host, Forever Fit Podcast · Author, Forever Fit
PS. If you want to build a body that supports the life you actually want to live, my coaching team offers a free call where we map out exactly what that looks like for you. https://mavywellness.com/
PPS. Every month, through our coaching business I donate to support a cancer patient on their journey. This month we're supporting Judson https://gofund.me/b3af3c00e
PPPS. I release a new podcast/youtube video every week. Check it out HERE
