Every morning you choose to be the small or large version of yourself. It is not a metaphor — it is the concrete mechanism by which identity is built. Stefano insists on this point in every letter: there is no single choice that changes everything. There is the repeated, daily, silent choice to behave like the person you want to become before you actually are that person. Identity does not precede behavior — it follows it.
What Stefano says about the daily choice of who to be
From Letter 01 — Here we go again
And it's not anxiety or fear. It's that silent certainty of not being in the right place wherever you are. That whatever you've done, it's not enough. That there exists a version of you that you haven't reached yet, and maybe never will.
The rest is noise in a town of a thousand inhabitants whose name, Galluccio, means nothing to you.
From Letter 02 — Choosing who to be
I showed a version of me built to survive. A pile of habits collected over time — some from childhood when I was looking for attention, some from my teenage years when I was looking for respect, others from adulthood when I was trying to prove I could make it.
If you strip away everything — the habits you didn't choose, the beliefs you accepted wholesale, the tension of being who you think you should be — and focus your energy on what you truly want, you become energy. And where to channel it is yours alone to decide.
From Letter 03 — The price no one wants to pay
Last week I told you about choosing who to be. About deliberate behaviors. About new habits that create new identity.
Faced with every important choice you always have only two: the one that costs effort today and the one that costs effort tomorrow.
From Letter 04 — Week 4 of 54 — Happiness is a habit
And like every habit, it's built one day at a time. One thought at a time. One choice at a time.
Happiness is not a destination. It's a habit.
From Letter 05 — Week 5 of 54 — The real cancer
For me it happened around seventeen. I didn't understand it right away. At first it seemed like healthy ambition. It seemed like hunger. It seemed like the engine that would take me far from a town of a thousand inhabitants.
Not because they were wise. Because they had chosen themselves. They had decided on a direction, even if small, and followed it, deaf to the rest.
From Letter 06 — Week 6 of 54 — Monkey mind
Alcohol. Substances. Nights that never ended. People I never saw again. Work until four in the morning. Cities. Flights. Buying things. Stopping buying things. Diets. The gym. Wrong loves. Sports. New business ideas every two weeks.
Because it's one thing to make wrong choices at 15, another at 20, and a completely different story at 25.