5 lessons from 2025 (not what you'd expect)

Most Year in Reviews are performance art.

Lists of accumulation designed to make the writer look successful and the reader feel behind.

I almost wrote one.

Then I realized I didn’t spend 2025 building more. I spent it Unbecoming.

I spent the last 12 months burning down the excess to find the truth.

Because here’s the secret: Success isn’t about the volume of your life. It’s about the density of it.

Here are the five lessons 2025 taught me about the power of subtraction, and the danger of waiting.

1. PORTLAND: THE TRAP OF “MORE”

(The Downsize)

For years, I bought into the default American script: Success looks like square footage.

This year, I burned that script. I decided to downsize from a standard home to 550 square feet.

Honest truth?

I almost choked.

Standing in that space, my brain rejected it. I couldn’t imagine me, the entrepreneur, the filmmaker, fitting into something that small. I was inches away from buying something bigger just to soothe my ego.

But I decided to run the test. I gave it a few months.

And what I found was startling: 550 square feet isn’t a cage. It’s a cockpit.

In university, I wrote my thesis on the near-zero correlation between happiness and material things. I knew the data. I knew the academic truth.

But standing in that small, intentional space wasn’t a new discovery, it was a visceral reminder of the depth of that truth. I had been happy with far less for a long time.

I just needed to stop performing “success” so I could start living it.

The Lesson: Without clarity on “enough,” you will spend your life chasing “more” without realizing you’re running in circles.

2. ETHIOPIA: PAIN IS A MINDSET

(The Perspective)

We often think we have it hard. We think a packed calendar or a difficult client is “tough.”

Then I went to the Omo Valley in Ethiopia.

I spent time with tribes living in conditions that would break most of us, walking hours for water in 100+ degree heat, sleeping on the ground in 10x8 huts.

I met young men, 18 years old, with raised scars across their bodies. To us, a scar is trauma. To them, it’s a language.

It’s a celebration of hunting a lion or a crocodile.

They live on the razor’s edge of survival. Yet they don’t carry the heavy, anxious energy I see in boardrooms every day.

It taught me that pain is a mindset.

You don’t avoid it.

You reframe it.

Now, whenever I feel like things are “tough,” I think of those scars. And I realize I have absolutely no idea what tough means.

The Lesson: Your perspective dictates your reality. Change the frame, change the feeling.

3. VENICE: ACT ON THE DESIRE

(The Story)

I was sitting on my couch on a Sunday, reading Christof Koch’s definitive book on consciousness.

He’s the Chief Scientist at the Allen Institute. The top of the mountain.

As I turned the pages, I had a realization: I cannot tell this story without him.

Most people would wait. They’d wait for Monday morning. They’d wait to find an agent. They’d wait for “the right time.”

I didn’t wait. I wrote the email that night. Sunday night.

I used the Science of Storytelling framework to craft a narrative he couldn’t ignore. By the end of the week, I was at the Allen Institute interviewing him.

When I wanted to deepen the story later, I didn’t ask for a Zoom call. I found out he was lecturing in Venice. I said, “Why don’t we come to you?”

That boldness led us to San Servolo, an island that used to be an insane asylum, now a university, filming one of the world’s leading minds on consciousness in a floating fortress of history.

The Lesson: The gap between where you are and where you want to be is often just the courage to hit “send” on a Sunday night.

4. KELOWNA: THE DISSOLUTION OF SELF

(The God Molecule)

I’ve never done drugs. My father battled opioid addiction, so I kept a hard line.

But we’re filming Unbecoming, a documentary that centers on 5-MeO-DMT. I knew I couldn’t tell this story honestly from the sidelines.

Here’s the truth about who I was nine months ago: Sleeping was hard. Slowing down was impossible. I thrived on conflict and control. I bought into the myth of the “tortured artist”, the idea that to create something great, I had to bleed for it. I thought if I wasn’t obsessing, I wasn’t working.

Then, I went in.

It wasn’t just a “trip.” It was a dismantling.

It broke me open. I dropped the “Patrick” mask. I dropped the filmmaker identity. I realized that the anxiety and drive I felt stemmed from the illusion of separation.

I learned, finally, that between stimulus and response lies a choice.

I’m not the same person I was before that day. My drive isn’t gone, I recently built and deployed an app in 72 hours, but the suffering attached to the drive is. I can now move with complete immersion and conviction while simultaneously releasing myself from the outcome.

The Lesson: You don’t need to be tortured to be effective. You can hold the ambition without holding the weight.

5. LONDON: THE $1,000 SIGNATURE

(The Value)

We launched Permission-Less at the Summit in Austin. The books arrived a day early, a miracle of logistics and community support.

But the real test wasn’t on stage. It was in a pub in London a few days later.

I wanted to buy a client a large beer to celebrate. I asked the bartender to fill a large jug with Guinness. I offered to pay for it.

She froze. She asked her boss. Even with a customer offering $1,000, she was trapped in the paradigm of permission. It was “impossible” because it was outside the norm.

I sensed her panic. I said, “It’s okay. Let’s stick to the pints.”

But then I did something else. I told her I was going to tip her the $1,000 anyway.

She tried to refuse. She clearly felt she hadn’t “earned” it. She felt she wasn’t enough.

I asked her to sign my receipt. Then I handed her the cash and said:

“I just paid that for your signature. So let this be a reminder of what you are worth.”

The place erupted.

But here’s what stuck with me: She couldn’t accept it because she didn’t think she’d earned it. How many of us are doing the same thing? Blocking opportunity because we haven’t given ourselves permission to receive it?

The Lesson: The world will only value you at the level you value yourself.

THE FINAL WORD FOR 2026

If 2025 taught me anything, it’s this:

You don’t find yourself by building more. You find yourself by burning the excess until only truth remains.

Simplicity gives you leverage.

Pain is just a frame.

Story bends reality.

You are not your identity.

And you are worth far more than you think.

Stop asking for permission to live that way.

Own. Align. Discuss.

- Patrick