Motivation, humor, and honesty from a man actively dodging a midlife crisis so you can too.
My book The 1-Day Method is sitting next to The Alchemist on Amazon. Number 3 in its category. Right next to a book that’s sold 150 million copies. I stared at that for a minute. Not because I think I’m Paulo Coelho. But because it reminded me why simple works. One book is about finding your purpose over a lifetime. The other is about winning today. No big theories. No overthinking. Just a simple system you can use tomorrow morning.
Our Christmas decorations.
We left the country for Christmas.
Not for a week. For weeks.
We're not coming back until the new year.
Enrolled our kids in an international program.
Working from abroad.
And creating new traditions instead of trying to recreate old ones.
A lot of people have asked why.
Here's why.
My family loved Christmas.
We had big traditions.
Pulling out boxes of decorations.
A lifetime of ornaments.
My ridiculous nutcracker collection.
Going to pick out the tree.
Decorating it together with Christmas music on.
The fireplace.
The lights.
All of it.
Christmas at our house was magic for all of us.
Especially for our twins.
And then in January, our house burned down in the wildfires.
We lost everything.
The house.
The neighborhood.
The traditions.
All of it.
So when the holidays started approaching this year, we had a choice.
Try to recreate what we lost?
Set up the same traditions in our rental home a third of the size?
Pretend everything was normal?
Or do something completely different?
We chose something different.
At first, I felt guilty.
Guilty for our kids.
They'd already lost so much this year.
Their home.
Their school.
Their routines.
And now we were taking them away from their extended family during the holiday.
But alongside the guilt, there was something else.
Fear.
Relief.
Excitement.
Here’s what we’re learning so far.
The kids are thriving.
They're not saying "I wish we were home.”
They’re not saying "I miss my school."
They wake up without alarm clocks.
The international program they're in is active learning.
No homework.
All creativity.
Hands-on projects.
Play.
It doesn't feel like school is a job.
We're seeing different versions of them.
Slower.
More present.
Less like robots.
More like kids.
As for our Christmas tree…
We have a small one here.
Artificial.
Maybe three feet tall.
It reminds me of the Charlie Brown tree.
When we first set it up, we stood there and smiled.
The kids love it.
If you put a photo of this tree next to the one we used to have - covered in ornaments, lights, and years of memories - it’s two different worlds.
And yet…
This one feels just as good.
Because it's simple.
It's ours.
And we don't take it for granted.
In Stop Living on Autopilot, I wrote:
"Don't wait for a life-altering event to start living the life you're supposed to be living."
The irony is, I waited.
It took losing our house for us to spend a month in Portugal this summer.
And to now do another month abroad.
I'm not proud of that.
But I'm also not going to waste the lesson.
Sometimes losing everything gives you permission to build differently.
The anchor is gone.
So are the excuses.
We'll be back in the States in the new year.
And one day, we'll probably have that big tree again.
The ornaments.
The familiar traditions.
But this year after the fire, we chose us.
We chose our family.
We chose to create something completely new instead of mourning what we lost.
And that Charlie Brown tree is more than enough.
Antonio
P.S. If you’re trying to recreate something that no longer exists, it might be time to let yourself build differently.
P.P.S. Felt this? Buy me a coffee.
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