Always choose the path that hurts more right now. Difficult decisions are difficult because both options have a cost — but the cost of not choosing is always the highest. Stefano repeats it: short-term pain is almost always inversely proportional to long-term regret. Do not wait for certainty, because it will never come. Clarity arrives after the decision, not before. Move.
What the letters say
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.
I never could. Not out of courage, but out of inability.
From Letter 02 — Choosing who to be
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.
There's a precise moment when everything changes. Not when you understand what's wrong. You already know that. It changes when you decide that the old you isn't coming with you anymore. When you leave him there, with his habits, his fears, his excuses. And you start walking alone toward someone who doesn't exist yet but who you already feel inside. From that moment the game becomes something else. It becomes beautiful. Hard, but beautiful. Because the struggle finally has meaning. And like everything worth having, it takes practice
From Letter 03 — The price no one wants to pay
And every time you choose that path, you'll wake up six months later in the same place as before. With the same hunger. With the same distance from what you want to become.
The brain is programmed to always choose the second. To push away pain. To avoid immediate conflict. To survive, not to grow.