Stop Playing Their Game
A six-minute introduction to the philosophy behind my work.
A brief introduction
Hi, my name's Daniel. I grew up around Japanese culture and have spent more than half my life in and around Japan. Growing up inbetween cultures taught me to notice the assumptions, systems, and unspoken details people often take for granted. These days I split my time between advisory work, building communities, writing, and disappearing into the mountains to practice Shugendo.
More about meSelf-improvement theater
There's a lot of genuinely useful information in the self-help and advice industry. The problem is that much of that information gets sold as the transformation instead of teaching people how to implement it. You read the books. Hire the coaches. Join the masterminds. Go to the retreats. But you have effectively paid for cheap dopamine with an expensive view. You leave with more information and a temporary feeling of progress, but eventually the same problems show back up. You can't change what you can't see, but you haven't been taught how to see. So if you're tired of staying stuck and listening to the same parroted information, you don't need another retreat - you just need to be able to see what your options are.
Learn to build recursive systems that produce the outcomes you want.
These aren't personality traits. These are trainable skills that anyone can learn.You can't intentionally build a life that works for you if you don't understand the person building it. My work breaks down self mastery into three connected practices:
Self-Awareness
Learn to see the unconscious patterns, assumptions, inputs, and behaviors that are producing your current systems. People screw this up by judging themselves and trying to change things; no. You're just learning how to make them visible enough to work with.
Self-Alignment
You can't build intentionally if you don't understand the person you're building it for, so become a student of yourself. Define your success metrics, test better choices, set your own standards, and learn what inputs create the outputs of the life you're trying to build.
Self-Actualization
Integrate and embody what you've learned through action. Build the systems, capabilities, relationships, and environment that let you intentionally create more of the life you actually want to live. I call this effortless effort.
Cross-disciplinary by design
From Tokyo panels to team floors
I speak with and advise professional with non-linear careers on adaptive resilience, and the cognitive systems that make up our identities and behaviors. This can look like starting your own business, creating an intrapreneurial role within your current company, or just learning how to make your current job facilitate your life, and not the other way around. Sessions run in Japanese, English, or Japanglish.
Stop buying other people's blueprints and learn how to build and manage your own.
Musubi Weekly is a free newsletter where you can learn more about my cross-pollinated worldview, how to apply the concepts of self mastery to what you love to do, and gain practical tips and insights on building systems that let you leverage more of what you love.