Every few years, life forces you to confront a fundamental question: what principles actually guide your decisions when everything else falls away?
For me, that moment came during a particularly challenging period when I was juggling a demanding tech career, a medically complex child, and the growing realization that the standard advice about success and happiness wasn't working for my actual life. The motivational quotes and productivity hacks felt hollow when faced with real complexity.
That's when I started distilling my approach to decision-making into something more fundamental - not rules imposed from outside, but principles that emerged from honest reflection about what actually mattered when the stakes were real.
These five tenets aren't revolutionary or unique. They're not meant to be. They're simply the operating system I've developed for navigating both professional challenges and personal growth, refined through years of testing against actual problems rather than hypothetical scenarios.