Powder day, beginner's luck, and zero of both

This week I’m taking you back to a snowy mountain, a stranger who accidentally pushed me downhill, and the question I keep asking everyone I love. Let’s start with a life story…

✦ LIFE — Pizza Pizza!

For the past five years, I have made myself a quiet promise on my birthday — do one thing I have never done before. It doesn’t have to be solo or grand. It just has to be new. Because I have always believed that if I do one new thing every year, when I am old and gray, I will have a very long list of experiences behind me. A life fully lived.

In 2023, I decided I wanted to ski.

I visited my friend Lisete in Colorado and we made our way to Breckenridge. The drive there was beautiful, but the town itself was something else entirely — magical, like one of those Christmas romantic movies where the snow falls perfectly and the streets glow warm. I had never seen a ski resort before. I didn’t know what to expect.

The evening before, we rented skis and I bought all the gear — expensive, all of it — but even standing in that shop, I knew it would be worth every dollar.

The next morning was a powder day. For those who don’t ski — powder day means it’s snowing, the slopes are fluffy, and apparently, it is harder to ski. I had booked an introductory lesson with a pro. I had full confidence going in. The mountain returned it to sender.

I fell. A lot. In ways I did not know a human body could fold. My skis had their own agenda. We were not aligned. Somewhere between fall three and fall thirty, I stopped being embarrassed and started being impressed with myself — the range of positions alone was artistic.

It was uncomfortable. Hard to control. My body was working so hard I barely felt the cold. But somewhere in the falling, it also became fun — once I finally found my balance, once something clicked.

Then came the lift. We rode up, and at the top, my instructor told me to pause before going down. I paused. I looked down the hill and couldn’t see the bottom. I didn’t know where to turn or where to go. It looked steep. For a brief moment, I genuinely contemplated getting back on the lift.

I didn’t have time to follow through on that thought.

A stranger, out of control, grabbed onto me to stop themselves. It didn’t work for either of us. Suddenly I was skiing downhill, panicking, my instructor skiing after me yelling “Pizza! Pizza!” — which, in ski language, means point your skis inward to slow down. I was doing pizza. It was not working. I kept yelling back “I am doing pizza! Help me stop, it’s not working!” — and finally, I just deliberately fell. Just to stop.

I lay there in the snow for a moment.

Then I got up.

We went up again. I fell a million more times. But each round got more fun, and even though I never stopped feeling scared of going that fast, I kept getting up and kept trying — for six hours that day.

I didn’t learn to ski in a day. But somewhere on that mountain, I realized something about myself: I have never given up on anything in my life. I have failed and failed and shown up again and again until I succeed. Lying in the snow on that slope, I felt proud — not because I skied perfectly, but because I kept getting back up.

It made my heart full.

✦ GROWTH — A Full Life

There is a thought I keep returning to — that how we live our days is how our life turns out to be.

Most people have heard some version of this. It circulates, gets nodded at, gets saved to a notes app somewhere. And yet — the actual living of it is rarer than we think. Because it is one thing to agree with an idea and another thing entirely to let it reorganize how you spend a Tuesday, or a birthday, or a year.

We are creatures of comfort by default. We return to the familiar because the familiar is easy, and easy feels safe. But a life lived only inside what’s already known is a smaller life than the one available to us. Not worse — just smaller. And I think most of us sense that, quietly, even when we don’t say it out loud.

The new experience doesn’t have to be dramatic. It doesn’t have to be a mountain in Colorado or a flight across the world. It just has to ask something of you that your ordinary routine does not. It has to put you somewhere slightly outside your edges — uncomfortable enough to wake something up.

Because that is where you find out who you are. Not in the easy days, but in the ones where you can’t see the bottom of the hill and you go anyway. Where you fall in ways you didn’t know were possible and you get back up and go again.

I ask everyone I love the same question, almost like a ritual of my own: What is one thing you have done for the first time this year?

The answers tell me everything. Not just about what someone has done — but about how they are choosing to live.

✦ ACTION — One New Thing

This week, I want to ask you that same question:

What is one thing you want to do for the first time in 2026?

Not a resolution. Not a goal. Just one experience — something you’ve been curious about, something that feels a little outside your edges. Write it down. Decide it’s yours for this year.

And then hit comment and tell me what it is. I’d love to know.