What It Really Means to Thrive: My Approach to Lasting Transformation

Two years ago, if you'd told me I'd be running a website about meditation, visualization, and "becoming your future self," I would have assumed you'd confused me with someone who owns more crystals than spreadsheets.

I'm a senior executive. I've led international M&A deals worth hundreds of millions. I've been a CFO, advisor, and coach to C-suite leaders around the world. My job is strategy, numbers, and measurable outcomes. The idea that sitting quietly and imagining a better future could actually change anything? That sounded like the kind of advice you'd get from someone who's never had to deliver quarterly earnings.

But here's what happened: I got curious enough to actually test it.

And what I discovered fundamentally changed not just how I approach business, but how I manage my type 1 diabetes (bringing my A1c to 5.5 after 40+ years), how I lead teams, and how I experience being alive. I became more effective professionally, healthier physically, and more aligned with what I actually want from life.

The reason? I wasn't doing what I thought I was doing.

I wasn't practicing positive thinking or spiritual manifestation. I was systematically reprogramming my subconscious operating system using principles that neuroscience can measure and explain.

What "Thriving" Actually Means (And Why Most People Get It Wrong)

We live in a world that equates thriving with achieving more—more revenue, more recognition, more boxes checked on an ever-expanding to-do list.

But here's what I've learned working with executives at the highest levels: Achievement without internal alignment is just expensive exhaustion.

I've seen CFOs managing billion-dollar portfolios who can't sleep at night. Leaders closing transformational deals who feel hollow at the celebration dinner. People checking every box on the success checklist while quietly wondering if this is actually what they wanted.

Real thriving isn't about accomplishing more from the same identity. It's about becoming a different person—one who naturally thinks, feels, and acts in ways that create the life you actually want.

Not through force. Through alignment.

The Problem: You're Fighting Your Own Operating System

Here's why most goal-setting fails, even when you're genuinely motivated:

You set a goal. You create a plan. You might even take action for a while. Then, subtly or suddenly, you're back to your old patterns. The gym membership goes unused. The strategic initiative loses momentum. The confidence you practiced in front of the mirror somehow doesn't show up in the actual meeting.

What happened? Your conscious mind set a goal, but your subconscious wasn't reprogrammed.

Your conscious mind operates in beta brainwave state (13-30 Hz)—analytical, focused, planning. This is you setting goals and making strategic decisions. But your behavior isn't primarily driven by your conscious mind. It's driven by your subconscious, which operates below your awareness and runs most of your automatic patterns, beliefs, and reactions.

Think of it this way: Your conscious mind is typing commands into a computer, but your subconscious is holding the mouse. When these two aren't aligned, guess which one wins? The autopilot. Every single time.

Traditional achievement strategies—work harder, be more disciplined, push through resistance—fight against your own programming. It's exhausting, and it doesn't last.

The Alternative: Reprogram the Autopilot

The approach I teach here works differently. Instead of fighting your programming through willpower, you change the programming itself.

You access specific brain states—particularly alpha (8-13 Hz)—where your conscious intentions and subconscious patterns can actually communicate. In this state, your critical faculty softens, and new programming can be installed. You're not overriding the autopilot anymore; you're giving it new flight coordinates.

This isn't spiritual. It's neurological.

When Jim Carrey drove up to Mulholland Drive and visualized his success, he wasn't manifesting through cosmic energy. He was accessing the alpha state to install new neural pathways. When Michael Phelps mentally rehearsed his races every night, he was using the same mechanism that makes his brain unable to distinguish between a vividly imagined experience and an actual one. Read more about what these high performers actually did here.

Neuroimaging studies confirm this: mental rehearsal in relaxed states creates measurable structural changes in the brain. Neurons that fire together, wire together. Repetition creates myelin around neural pathways, making new patterns faster and more automatic.

This is how you transform identity. Not through belief. Through biology.

My Framework: Five Steps From Goal to Operating System

Over the past two years of experimenting with these practices—and synthesizing everything from the Silva Method to Joe Dispenza's work to various meditation traditions—I've refined what works into five systematic steps. You can read the complete framework here.

Here's the condensed version:

1. Think From the End: Don't visualize trying to achieve your goal. Visualize having already achieved it, and look backward. Your brain needs a clear destination, not a vague hope. This isn't daydreaming—it's establishing the neural endpoint that will guide everything else.

2. Harmonize Your Energy: Your nervous system has to believe the vision is safe and achievable, not threatening. Use breathwork, meditation, or relaxation techniques to shift from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) dominance. Neuroplasticity only happens when your nervous system feels safe enough to learn.

3. Rehearse the Vision: Enter alpha state through meditation or visualization, then rehearse your desired reality in vivid, multisensory detail. See it, feel it, hear it. Each rehearsal strengthens the neural pathways. You're not imagining—you're installing. The more you repeat this, the more your brain accepts this version of you as familiar and normal.

4. Integrate the Identity: Throughout your day, make choices aligned with your new identity. Ask yourself: "What would the version of me who already has this choose to do right now?" Small, consistent choices bridge the gap between who you're rehearsing in alpha state and who you actually are. Your brain continuously updates its model of "who you are" based on your actions.

5. Embody the Reality: Eventually, it becomes automatic. You're not trying to be different anymore—you simply are. The thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that once required effort now happen naturally. Your reticular activating system has reprogrammed, filtering reality for opportunities aligned with your new identity.

Why This Works When Positive Thinking Doesn't

Here's the crucial distinction most people miss:

Positive thinking is you trying to convince yourself of something while your subconscious remains skeptical. Alpha state reprogramming is you actually changing the subconscious programming itself.

Positive thinking happens in the beta state—your conscious mind arguing with your autopilot. Alpha-state work occurs when the autopilot can actually receive new instructions.

The difference is like the difference between telling a computer what you wish it would do versus actually rewriting the code.

My Personal Proof of Concept

I don't ask you to believe any of this. I'm asking you to consider it as a hypothesis worth testing.

My own results over the past two years:

• A1c of 5.5 with type 1 diabetes after 40+ years (most endocrinologists consider this exceptional)

• More strategic clarity in business decisions than I've had in my entire career

• Better sleep, lower stress, higher energy—all measurable

• Projects and opportunities appearing that align precisely with what I rehearsed

Is this causation or correlation? I honestly don't care. The mechanism makes scientific sense, the practices are low-risk, and the results speak for themselves.

The Invitation: Experiment, Don't Believe

This blog exists to share what I've learned—tools, frameworks, and reflections on thriving mentally, physically, and professionally. But I'm not asking you to adopt a belief system.

I'm inviting you to run an experiment.

Try this for 30 days:

1. Pick one specific desired outcome

2. Spend 10-15 minutes daily in a relaxed state, vividly imagining that outcome as already real

3. Throughout your day, ask: "What would the version of me who already has this do right now?"

4. Notice what shifts

Don't force anything. Don't judge yourself. Just observe.

The practices I explore here—meditation, visualization, breathwork, sound technologies—are all different doorways to the same room: the alpha state where your conscious intentions and subconscious programming can align.

Find what resonates. Be eclectic. Be a seeker, not a believer.

Because thriving isn't about achieving more through sheer force of will. It's about reprogramming your operating system so that the person you want to become is who you naturally are.

And then letting everything else flow from that.

Ready to explore? Start with the complete framework or see what Carrey, Oprah, and Phelps actually did (hint: it wasn't magic).