Fortitude Fridays

Vol. 138: Finding Your Misogi, A Familiar Hell & More

Welcome to Fortitude Fridays—part mindset training, part field notes from real life. I share what I’m learning, testing, and using to help you take better care of yourself, strengthen your mindset, and keep showing up—week after week.

Here are a few ideas as you head into the weekend.

Read time: 7 mins

This Week’s Snapshot:

• Quote: Next Move
• Tactic: Find Your Misogi
• Small Thought: Hell vs. Heaven

Worth Sitting With: You don't have to make it back the way that you lost it. -Warren Buffet You don't have to fight your way back the same road you came down. Just find the next right move from where you are.

Tactic: Find Your Misogi

One thing so hard it changes the other 364 days.

Let me tell you something about running.

I hate it.

Not in a casual, "I'd rather be on the couch" kind of way. In a this-feels-like-legalized-torture, why-do-people-do-this-voluntarily kind of way. I have started and quit becoming a runner more times than I can count. I always wanted to be a runner, but I never got to a place I felt confident I could.

And yet. Here I am. Running.

Because I found something that finally made the discomfort feel worth it.

It is called Misogi.

The concept comes from an ancient Japanese purification ritual rooted in water cleansing. Traditionally, it involves standing beneath a frigid waterfall as icy water pours over the body — a kind of reset for the mind and spirit. One writer described it as a "Control-Alt-Delete" for the body. It symbolizes the clearing of what no longer serves you and a return to something more essential.

I stumbled onto the modern interpretation through Jesse Itzler, who described it to Joe Rogan as:

That landed differently than most things I read about challenge and growth.

Not a habit. Not a system. Not a thirty-day program.

One thing. So hard it leaves a mark.

Dr. Marcus Elliot, a Harvard-trained physician and sports performance expert, lays out the framework in Michael Easter's book The Comfort Crisis:

His litmus test: does it make your jaw drop?

If yes, it might be your Misogi.

I looked back at the last decade and found examples of my own.

Nursing school. Becoming a first-time parent. Starting a business. Completing 75 Hard. Each one challenging. Each one leaving a mark. The years without those moments? They blur together. The years with them? They are clear and memorable.

That told me something.

I do not want a life full of blur. I want a life full of moments I can still feel when I am old.

And I think a lot of us can get behind that.

We are busy. We are productive. We are checking things off. But at the end of the year, when someone asks what we did, we struggle to answer. Not because nothing happened — but because nothing marked us.

That is what Misogi is really about. Not suffering. Not proving something. Just refusing to let another year pass without something in it that changed you.

So this year, mine is running.

Not because I love it. Because I do not. Because my daughter wants to become a runner. Because my husband is a seasoned trail runner and I want in on what they are doing. Because every time I have tried before, I quit — and I am tired of quitting this particular thing.

But honestly? There is something else underneath it.

I am at the age where I am starting to understand, in a way I could not before, that this body is not permanent. That someday I am going to wish it moved the way it moves right now. That the window for certain things does not stay open forever.

I do not want to look back and realize I sat out the years when I still could have shown up.

So I am showing up, already doing it. Even when it feels like torture.

That is exactly why it qualifies.

A Misogi is not supposed to be the thing that comes easily. It is supposed to be the thing that has a real chance of not working. The thing that changes you in the trying, not just the finishing.

But I am still out there.

The Rules of Misogi

Make it really hard. You should have a fifty-fifty chance of success. Not a stretch goal. Not something uncomfortable but manageable. Something that genuinely might not work — and you do it anyway. That fifty-fifty matters because it forces you to enter with a sense of adventure rather than a plan. You have to be okay with the possibility of failing. The whole point is to tap into something you didn't know for sure you were capable of. The point is not to check a box. The point is to emerge changed.

Don't die. This is self-explanatory. Fear is part of it. Recklessness is not. Plan it, prepare for it, execute it safely. The cost of failure should never be permanent.

A few more guidelines worth keeping:

It should scare you a little. Whatever you choose should create some unease — the kind that rattles your nerves when you think about it. Starting a business. Running a marathon. Going for that promotion. Each of those things carried real anxiety. But here's what I've found: that fear tends to break down once you actually commit. The decision to leap is usually the hardest part.

Make it yours. This is not about what looks impressive to anyone else. The traditional Misogi ritual was deeply personal — a private purification of mind and body. The modern version is no different. Even if you do it alongside someone else or a group, the experience is still your own. If you're doing it for external validation, you'll miss the point entirely.

Keep it quiet. It does not need an audience. It does not need to be documented. It just needs to be done.

Bringing it home

Think back over the last five to ten years. Which ones stand out? Which ones blur?

The ones you remember had something hard in them. Something that asked more of you than you were sure you had. That is not a coincidence. That is how meaning gets made — not in the comfortable years, but in the ones that cost you something.

Most of us are not lazy. We are busy. We are showing up. We are doing the work. But busy is not the same as marked. And at the end of another year, when someone asks what you did — you want to have an answer that means something to you, even if you never say it out loud.

So here is the question worth sitting with:

What is your Misogi this year?

Not ten things. One. Hard enough that failure is genuinely possible. Personal enough that no one else needs to understand it. Big enough that trying it — whether you finish or not — leaves a mark.

You still have time. And you are more ready than you think.

Small But Mighty: Your nervous system will often choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. That line stopped me — because it explains so much about why change is hard, even when we genuinely want something better. Familiar stress. Familiar chaos. Familiar self-doubt. These things feel safer simply because we know how to survive them. They're not good for us, but they're known — and the nervous system prefers known. Even good change can feel threatening at first, because the body doesn't yet have evidence that this new place is safe. So maybe the work isn't judging ourselves for resisting. Maybe it's something quieter — gently showing our nervous system, again and again, that something new can also be safe.

Look For This Tonight:

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Thanks for reading. I'll be out there running. Now go find your hard thing. Until next time…

You got this,

P.S. I am grateful for every single one of you. Truly. If something in this issue landed for you, consider forwarding it to someone who might need it today. You probably already know who that person is.

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