Stop Asking How and Start Asking Who

Hi there,

Every time I catch myself trying to fit in, I open my Notes app and read this:

Normal consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar per day.
Normal has $104,755 in debt.
Normal is 30lbs overweight.
Normal averages less than 4,000 steps each day.
Normal stays indoors for 22.3 hours per day.
Normal spends more time on the toilet than exercising.
Normal hasn't finished a book in the last 12 months.
Normal experiences less than 10 minutes of silence per day.
Normal gets 55% of their diet from ultra-processed foods.
Normal will spend 20 years of their life watching TV or scrolling social media.

Take a second to sit with that.

And yet most of us spend our entire lives trying to fit in and be “normal.”

The question nobody asks is: how does normal happen to smart, ambitious people who know better?

I got an answer from a mentor I'll never forget.

The Best Advice I Ever Got

I was a baby attorney. Fresh out of law school, still figuring out which end was up.

My mentor took me to observe oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.

Standing on those marble steps afterward, still buzzing from what I'd just witnessed inside: the arguments, the robes, the weight of it all, I looked up at those towering columns and said:

"Wow. How cool would it be to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court someday."

He looked at me and said:

"Anything you want is possible for you. Don't get caught in the how. Follow the who."

What he meant was: stop trying to reverse engineer the path from scratch. Someone has already walked it. Find them. Study them. Copy everything they do until you get where they are.

Most people who want more (more health, more money, more freedom, more life) get trapped in the tyranny of how.

They know what they want.

They get caught up in the details of how to get there.

So they google it, read about it, buy courses, pay coaches, make plans, and consume content. Mired in the perfectionist trap, they over-plan and under-execute.

And that’s how they stay stuck.

Because the how is a trap.

It keeps you in your head: theorizing, planning, waiting until you feel ready while someone else is already living the result you want, their daily habits and decisions sitting right in front of you like a blueprint you could follow.

Don't ask how.

Ask who.

Success Leaves Clues

Every result you want already exists somewhere, in someone else's daily habits, decisions, and choices.

The map is already out there. You just have to find the person living it and study them obsessively.

When I decided I wanted to transform my body, I didn't google workout plans or piece together advice from fifteen different sources.

I got brutally specific about what I actually wanted taking into account my frame, my body type, the exact result I was after.

Then I found a trainer who had already achieved that specific result, for someone who looked like me.

And then I did something most people won't do. I copied everything.

If they ate more food than felt comfortable, I ate more.
If they slept nine hours to optimize recovery, I slept nine hours.
If they took rest days seriously, so did I.

If I didn't understand something, I did it anyway, because they had the result and I didn't.

I didn't negotiate with the process. I didn't pick the parts that felt convenient. I trusted the who completely.

And it worked. Faster than I ever would have figured out alone.

Finding the right who is someone whose destination matches your destination — not just anyone winning, but the right person winning at the right thing, in the right way that actually aligns with what you're after.

Which means getting ruthlessly honest about what you actually want.

Not what sounds impressive. Not what your parents expect. Not what Susan or Fred next door is doing.

What you want.

The Trap of Normal

Which brings me to the hardest “who” I ever had to find: myself.

I was there once. Fully inside normal.

Married. Traditional corporate career. Every milestone hit in the correct order, on schedule, like a good girl.

And then one day I had a sudden suffocating awareness that the life closing in around me was getting smaller by the day.

That I didn't want kids. That the man I was married to was a good man, but I did not want to be married to him for the rest of my life.

And that the version of myself forming inside that life was someone I didn't recognize and didn't want to become.

So I made the hardest decision I've ever made.

I left.

The marriage. The career. The suburban script. All of it.

And I rebuilt from scratch. I went overseas, lived and worked internationally, on my own terms, and built a life in ways that looked nothing like what anyone around me was doing.

Now years later, I've worked across cultures, built a worldview that doesn't begin and end at the neighborhood fence, and created a life that, even on my worst day, still feels like mine.

Dostoevsky said it better than I ever could:

Who Is Your Who?

I bet you already know what you want.

You've known for a while.

Stop overthinking the how.

Find the person already living your answer and study them like your life depends on it, because in a way, it does.

Get ruthlessly specific.

Match their habits, their mindset, their unglamorous daily decisions.

Trust the who completely, even when the process feels uncomfortable.

Because here's what that mentor on the Supreme Court steps gave me that day:

You don't have to figure it out from scratch. Someone has already walked the path and found the way through.

The world is full of people who have already done what you're trying to do, who are proof that it's possible, that the path exists, that you're not crazy for wanting it.

Find them. Learn from them. Become them.

And then one day, if you're lucky, you'll be standing on some metaphorical set of steps with someone younger, hungrier, and full of wonder.

And you'll get to pass it on.

See you next week,

Shakila

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