I just returned from a brutal Arctic expedition—brutal in all the necessary ways. We choose these extreme paths not because they’re there, but because the impossible reveals who we truly are. Beauty doesn’t exist despite the brutality—it exists because of it.
Break what is breakable
Tadej, who joined me on this expedition, used this line and I absolutely love it!! Break what is breakable. The Arctic doesn’t ask politely before it shatters your expectations. It takes your carefully constructed ideas of strength and survival and smashes them against reality. But this destruction isn’t tragedy—it’s illumination. It’s amazing.
In normal life, we protect what’s fragile. We bubble-wrap our comfort zones. But what if our greatest strengths are waiting on the other side of deliberately broken routines? What if we need to shatter our schedules, our habits, our patterns to see what remains standing?
You need distance from something to see what’s really going on
When you’re staring at a frozen horizon that stretches beyond comprehension, your everyday problems shrink to their true size. The space between you and your life reveals patterns invisible from inside them.
This isn’t about escape. It’s about perspective.
Sometimes you need to step so far outside your life that you can barely recognize it—only then can you see the architecture of your choices, the scaffolding of your habits. What unnecessary weight are you carrying? What invisible patterns control your days?
The heaviest thing in life is unmade decisions
In the Arctic, indecision kills. The weight of “maybe” becomes unbearable when the stakes include your next heartbeat. Every choice carries consequence, immediate and undeniable.
Your unmade decisions don’t disappear when ignored. They accumulate. They stack. They press down on your chest at 02:00 AM. What conversation are you avoiding? What path are you refusing to choose? What truth sits heavy in your throat, unspoken?
Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments
When survival depends on your team, clarity becomes oxygen. The cold has no patience for assumptions or mind-reading. Every expectation must be voiced, every need articulated.
How many relationships are you slowly poisoning with silence? How many disappointments stem from expectations you never bothered to speak aloud? The words you swallow don’t disappear—they transform into something toxic, something that corrodes from within.
You get this life, not that one
The Arctic doesn’t permit fantasies. There is only this moment, this breath, this decision. The alternative lives you imagine while lying warm in your sleeping bag don’t exist and never will.
Stop living in the shadow of the life you thought you’d have. Stop reaching for parallel universes where different choices were made. This life—the one where you’re breathing right now—is your only one. It’s not perfect. It never will be. But it’s real, and it’s yours.
More in-depth thoughts from my recent Arctic Expedition in this week’s newsletter.
It was brutal.
It was beautiful.
