Korab Idrizi PhD Candidate & Performance Coach I accidentally went viral last week after sharing some reflections on my wife’s pregnancy, the labor process, and the early postpartum period. The video has since reached about 3.5 million views, with over 729,000 likes and 7,700 comments, not as a point of pride, but as evidence that it struck a nerve. Here’s the video if you haven’t seen it yet: Screenshot of Tiktok videohttps://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8y3qKBy/ What I described was not meant to be...
13 days ago • 3 min read
3 Choices that Define a Life This week’s newsletter is late for a good reason. My wife and I welcomed a new member to the family, and I am operating on very little sleep. Becoming a father has pushed me to think about the few decisions that shape the entire trajectory of a life. 1. Marry the person who laughs when the baby pees on you at three in the morning. If there is a single cheat code for a good life, it is choosing a partner who makes every experience better simply by being who they...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Become a High-Agency Person Last week my wife and I were sitting on the couch after dinner. She rested her hand on her stomach and said the baby was moving more than usual. She looked tired and excited at the same time, the kind of expression you only see when someone knows life is about to change in a matter of days. Then she asked me, “What is the one thing you want to instill in our daughter?” Without hesitating, I said, “I want her to be high agency.” The speed of that answer surprised...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
The Cost of Constant Stimulation A noisy life erodes the mental capacities you rely on for judgment, insight, learning, and emotional stability. This is not about being “on your phone too much.” It is about understanding what happens to your brain when you never allow it to settle. This week’s topic looks past the clichés and focuses on the actual mechanisms behind overstimulation. 1. Your cognitive load increases simply because your phone is nearby A study from the University of Texas at...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Korab Idrizi, M.S. PhD Candidate | Performance Coach Resilience Change is the only guarantee in life. People romanticize change as if it is inherently positive. Change is not positive or negative. Change is neutral. What gives it meaning is the way we respond when life hits without warning, when our foundation cracks, when the story we believed we were living suddenly ends. That is where resilience begins. Most people imagine resilience as a movie montage. Rocky gets knocked down ten times...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Assert Yourself to Become Yourself The Power of Conviction Assertiveness is one of the purest expressions of self-love. It is how you show yourself that your needs, values, and voice matter. To be assertive is to honor your worth through action. To avoid it is, in many ways, a form of self-harm. People who struggle to assert themselves often mistake kindness for silence or humility for self-erasure. But suppression always has a cost. The energy that should go into living authentically gets...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Honor the Body's Rhythms Your body runs on a biological schedule that repeats every 90–120 minutes, known as ultradian rhythms. These rhythms control how your energy, focus, and mood rise and fall throughout the day. They have been studied for decades through measurable changes in brain activity, hormone levels, blood sugar, and oxygen use. Understanding how they work gives you the ability to plan your day around your natural cycles, creating more productivity and a greater sense of ease....
3 months ago • 3 min read
The Body Keeps the Score Nietzsche once said, “Your body contains more wisdom than your deepest philosophy.” He was right. Every emotion, heartbeat, and gut feeling carries information. The problem is that most high performers have been trained to ignore it. We were taught to trust logic above all else, as if the mind alone holds the truth. When you silence the body, you lose access to the oldest form of knowing you have. We like to think of the body as the vehicle and the brain as the...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Excellence as Avoidance Avoidance doesn’t always look like fear. Sometimes it looks like discipline. In my work with high performers, I see people who seem driven but are really just terrified of stopping. They say things like “I just like staying busy” or “I feel off when I’m not productive.” But underneath that constant motion is usually the same thing: fear. Fear of losing momentum, fear of not being good enough, fear of what might surface if they slowed down long enough to feel. The Many...
3 months ago • 3 min read