ONE BIG THING - Misogi

What’s a Misogi?

There’s a Japanese concept called misogi.

Originally, it came from purification rituals.

Cold water. Full immersion. No warm-up, no easing in. You put yourself into something that was new and a challenge and what came out the other side was stripped of excuses. Stronger, Clearer. More honest and accomplished.

In its modern interpretation, misogi has come to mean choosing one thing per year that is mentally, or physically, or both hard enough to permanently change how you see yourself, something that builds you, effects and defines your whole year.

The first time I heard it was last year.. and lets set the sail honoring an Japanese jewel.

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Think about the year ahead, a lot of minutes and hours to vibe and get curious on something. A lot of opportunities to have fun growing your experience and learning along the way. So what do you choose, and how do you choose?

When looking for one here are a few signs that something is feels like a misogi:

If you already know you can do it, it might still be difficult, but it won’t change you. A misogi requires uncertainty, not because failure is the goal, but because certainty means you’re still playing inside familiar boundaries.

It needs to be a DEFINING MOMENT.

Most growth today is incremental. We stack habits, refine routines, and slowly improve things we already know how to do.

Over time, this produces competence and consistency. It also produces a sense of comfort.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s necessary for long stretches of life. We’ve talked about HOW necessary incremental growth is on this very newsletter.

A misogi introduces contrast on purpose.

It creates a moment that your memory can anchor to. Something you can point back to later and say, “Before that, I thought X. After that, I knew Y”

Most of us live inside limits we never consciously chose.

They come from past failures, from roles we stepped into years ago, from a version of ourselves that once made sense and was never updated. Over time, those limits start to feel like reality instead of assumptions.

A misogi challenges those limits. Once you’ve done something you were certain you couldn’t, the story can lose authority.

Last year, as a family we swam across the lake.

This year is although might not seem insanely difficult it has meaning behind it. It’s a fun one, physically difficult than most years but a challenge that aligns with our priorities, I want to get the four of us, our family, riding the same wave surfing. I am terrified of the ocean and sharks. I’m pushing myself and the family to get on a board together and have that moment.

It’s a little metaphorical as we’re really focused on lightening up our life this year, spending more time on less things. Prioritizing and streamlining our life.

This year is about choosing fewer waves and actually riding them together.

Lets double check my Misogi

This Misogi reward would be a dream come true- maybe the most epic family photo of the four of us to date….

What’s your Misogi? Wishing you success. Reply to this email and let us know :)

Inspiring, Interesting and a Tool for the toolbox from Google-click to view

UNTIL THE QUESTION IS ANSWERED THE FIGHT OR FLIGHT WILL CONTINUE

We are back with another in the Series - Eat the Rich - Part 3 - “Humans aren’t Trees, they can leave” - Jim Rohn

For decades, the idea of a wealth tax has tantalized politicians and economists alike, promising to address inequality and boost public coffers. The premise is seductively simple: if you have a vast fortune, you should contribute a larger recurring share to the state.

Yet history tells a starkly different story.

With the notable exception of Switzerland, every significant attempt to implement a wealth tax in Europe at rates exceeding 0.5% has eventually been repealed or scaled back. The reason is not ideological. It is structural. Policymakers consistently underestimate two powerful economic forces: Capital Flight and Pre-emptive Flight.

Sweden offers perhaps the most iconic example of how a wealth tax can drive away a nation’s greatest success stories. For much of the 20th century, Sweden maintained a wealth tax that eventually peaked between 1.5% and 3%. The result was a slow-motion drain of the country’s industrial backbone.

The most famous departure was Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA. In 1973, citing an “unreasonable” tax burden that threatened his ability to maintain control of his growing empire, Kamprad moved to Denmark and later to Switzerland. He did not return to live in Sweden until 2014, more than forty years later, and only after the wealth tax had been officially abolished in 2007.

Kamprad was far from alone. Hans Rausing, the billionaire behind Tetra Pak, also left Sweden, relocating to the United Kingdom. Before the tax was repealed, the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees estimated that more than 500 billion kronor, roughly $48 billion, in Swedish capital had been moved abroad.

Eventually, the Swedish government recognized an uncomfortable truth. Taxing the “rich” was, in practice, taxing investment. The wealth tax was abolished by a unanimous parliamentary vote in an effort to lure capital back home.

If Sweden is the historical warning, France and Norway provide the modern data.

France’s Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune (ISF) remains the gold standard for measurable capital flight.

Norway is now experiencing its own version of this phenomenon.

Capital flight measures those who leave. Pre-emptive flight measures those who never arrive.

In 2026, this may be the more damaging force.

Young entrepreneurs in Stockholm, Paris, and Oslo are increasingly incorporating their startups in Delaware or London. They are choosing to build their companies in jurisdictions where they are not forced to sell equity simply to pay a tax on unrealized, paper wealth before their businesses have even turned a profit.

This loss rarely appears in government data, but it compounds quietly over decades.

Switzerland is the lone exception where a wealth tax has endured and functioned effectively.

The reason is restraint. And also, drumroll, a generally balanced federal budget with strict debt-break rules.

Swiss wealth taxes are set at the local level and typically range between 0.1% and 0.3%. Because these rates sit below the average annual return on even conservative savings, the tax feels less like confiscation and more like a modest fee for political and economic stability.

The result is counterintuitive but consistent. Wealth flows into Switzerland rather than out of it. The tax has become a stable revenue stream, accounting for approximately 3.6% of total Swiss tax revenue.

Despite repeated failures, many economists continue to support wealth taxes. Their argument usually rests on social equity.

They point to the idea of r > g, where the return on capital grows faster than the broader economy, leading to natural wealth concentration at the top. From this perspective, the departure of thousands of millionaires is not evidence of a flawed policy, but of insufficient global coordination.

The solution, they argue, is a worldwide minimum wealth tax rather than national ones.

Whether such coordination is politically or practically achievable remains an open question.

Eventually, the debate over wealth taxes moves beyond spreadsheets and into philosophy.

Modern legal systems are built on the principle of equal protection under the law. We broadly agree that it is unjust to treat individuals differently based on race, sex, or class. We recognize racism and sexism as moral failures precisely because they impose different rules on people based on inherent or defining traits.

This raises a difficult question.

Is a wealth tax a form of classism discrimination in reverse?

If a just society is one in which citizens stand equal before the law, how do we justify a tax regime that creates a specific class of people, defined solely by success or accumulated assets, and governs them by a different set of rules? If it is unjust to treat people differently based on what they are born as, is it just to treat them differently based on what they have built?

As Europe’s wealthy continue boarding planes for Switzerland and Singapore, they are not merely voting with their wallets. They are forcing a deeper question into the open.

Is a fair society one that treats everyone the same, or one that treats its most productive members as a resource to be harvested?

Until that question is answered, the flight will continue.