The Day I Realized My Thoughts Were Steering the Ship

I didn’t expect that a small memory from ten years ago (November 2015) would hit me with such clarity.

Back then I had no idea where I belonged.

I had moved to a city (Gen oa) where I knew no one, following love and abandoning the ecosystem that had shaped me until I was twenty-eight. A couple of university degrees, a handful of jobs, friends, routines, certainties. All boxed up and left behind.

I had less than 1000€ in my account. I went into debt to start what would become Copy Persuasivo. And because I felt I was standing on shifting ground, I opened a folder on my laptop called Personal Planning and wrote a list of outcomes I wanted to reach over the next decades. A private manifesto, though I didn’t call it that at the time.

I wrote that I wanted to establish myself as a marketing professional and an entrepreneur in Italy.
That I wanted to marry Paola and raise two children in a stimulating cultural environment.
That I wanted the freedom to work and travel whenever and wherever I wished.
That I wanted to build investment income capable of covering my cost of living.
That I wanted to write both manuals and novels.
That I wanted full command of my mind, enough to become truly versed in meditation.
That I wanted to put an end to my neck and back pain.
And I gave myself until 2040.

The curious part is that many of those outcomes arrived far earlier than expected. Some have even been surpassed. And now, in this early version of mid-life crisis where money is no longer the primary motivator, I find myself thinking constantly. Not anxiously, simply with awareness. If my energy is finite, who deserves it? What deserves it?

One thing I’m grateful for: boredom hasn’t visited me in more than a decade. What moves me now is almost entirely creative and relational.

I’m not writing this to celebrate myself. I’m writing it because one thing keeps proving itself true. Those thoughts I wrote down at my kitchen table in a city that felt foreign didn’t just mirror my fears or hopes. They made a trajectory visible. Ten years later the evidence is almost embarrassingly clear.

Beyond the lottery of genes and geography, our thoughts are the architects of our current life.
If you want a different life, you have to become a different person.
And the entry point is almost always the same: becoming aware of what you think, and changing it when necessary.

What were the thoughts that shaped where you stand today?