10/10 Living
a framework for happiness and success
Estimated Read Time: 8 minutes, 35 seconds
I’ve shared some of my 10/10 philosophy when I wrote why I ran The Hennepin Hundred. Now I’m ready to launch ‘how to live a 10/10 life’ as a 1:1 coaching offer.
The framework is the backbone of how I’ve been designing my own life and coaching practice. Before I get into how it works, I’d like to share more of my backstory.
Some parts of this post might be triggering, but it’s important to share what I had to overcome to get here, how I came up with this idea, and how it ties into the end game.
My long term-vision is to continue refining my process through 1:1 coaching, then scale it out in wider formats with the #1 goal of being my own best case study.
In today’s post, we’ll cover:
Growing Pains: How I overcame an addictive personality rooted in self-loathing.
Finding 10/10: How I found inspiration using a 0-10 scale to measure happiness.
10/10 Living: How I’m applying my journey to 1:1 coaching for other people.
Growing Pains
I’ve struggled with mental health for as long as I can remember, going as far back as 5-years-old. I remember feeling a lot of self-hatred and insecurity even as a kid.
When I was in middle school, I took a white-out marker and covered my face in my elementary school year book. I remember hating the way I looked — my lifeless eyes, my awkward smile, my dumb glasses.
Eventually I scraped it off, but the memory of self-rejection stuck with me. Years later, as I dug into inner child work, I remembered the destruction went beyond pictures.
There were times in elementary school, when I must have been 7ish-years-old, where I’d scrape my knuckles against the walls in gym class until my skin would peel off. In class I’d dig sharp pencil tips into my forearms until they became red and puffy.
Self-harm was my way of bringing out my inner feelings. The physical pain I inflicted on myself was tangible, which felt easier to manage than whatever was happening inside. I didn’t know how to express myself and channel my energy in a healthy way.
The maladaptive coping behaviors evolved into other forms of self-sabotage as I grew older: Isolation. Drinking. Video Games. Movies. TV Shows. Overeating. Social Media.
I once went 3 weeks without talking to anyone except slack messages from my boss, trapped in a negative spiral of vices to distract from my mental suffering.
I became such a functional drunk at parties people couldn’t even tell I was blacked out. I had full conversations with people I had zero memory of.
Some days I’d go on video game binges, only moving to go to the bathroom and to stuff food into my mouth. Nearly 16 hours straight of clicking on a computer.
The stories range from almost stealing a taxi in front of all of the top performers at my company in Mexico after a night of drinking to doom scrolling for hours after work because my stock wouldn’t vest for another 4 months and I didn’t want to quit.
I’m still refining my addictive personality to channel it into productive habits and thought loops like running, writing, and connecting with others. I’ve done a complete 180, and while it’s not perfect, things are moving in a great direction.
Finding 10/10
The first idea for measuring life using a numerical scale came from my friend Ramon. I met him when I was a recruiter in NYC in 2017 when I was ~24 years old.
We got hot chocolate in a Dunkin Donuts after work and a meeting meant to help him find a new job turned into him offering his friendship and mentorship.
Ramon taught me about Christian embodiment, how to find ‘Level 10 Friends’, and how unstable my emotions were (with love of course).
One day he flipped through our texts and said he wasn’t sure which version of me he was going to get.
No one ever pointed out my mood swings before and I was grateful and fascinated by his observation.
He said there were a 1 or 2 moments in his life when he felt down, but for the most part, he was happy. He even drew a picture of a graph than went up and to the right with a small dip down.
I struggled to believe what he was saying. I found it hard to believe people could be so happy all the time and I wondered if Ramon was lying to himself. My graph looked like more like heartbeat monitor at a hospital.
I could be ecstatic on Monday, depressed on Tuesday and apathetic on Wednesday. I felt erratic, unpredictable, and generally down most of the time. My highs were situational, meaning I was doing well when I was in the right environment and achieving a certain amount of success. In the wrong environment, and when I was struggling to hit my goals, I became a reverted back to hold, unhealthy, patterns.
Life got busy and we grew apart but I remember and cherish our connection to this day. I learned a lot from him and he planted the seeds of what it mean to be Level 10.
Years later I stumbled upon the Almanack of Naval Ravikant where a section titled Happiness is Learned showed me someone who went from being unhappy to happy.
Naval used a 1-10 scale to measure happiness and admitted happiness was not something he valued — it was a skill he had to learn.
I didn’t know what to do with this at the time, but, I stored it in the back of my head and kept it as evidence that one day I could be happy too.
Then in 2023, when I was in the middle of therapy, coaching, and deep in my quest to live a 10/10 life, I began tracking my mood everyday.
By then I had been 5 years deep into my tech sales career where every single activity and minute was accounted for.
I was a successful top performer because of this metrics-driven approach so I wanted to translate these frameworks to my personal life.
I used a 0-10 scale to measure my mood and overlayed it with a feelings chart my friend showed me. Combining the two was a big unlock.
A big part of my inner work has been creating precise language around what I’ve been feeling to become more aware of my emotions.
Through consistent tracking, both a numerical value and a set of emotions, I could soon describe my feelings with ease — and it was less painful than punching walls.
10/10 Living
Eventually I combined this 0-10 system with several other frameworks I adored, The Wheel of Life, OKR’s (Objectives and Key Results), Sales Funnels and KPIs, etc.
10/10 Coaching is a mixture of tools from sales, business, coaching, and therapy — a personal operating system I developed through a lifetime of trial and error.
You could say it’s a way to be happy and successful in all parts of life — all at the same time. Needless to say it’s an ambitious goal and a system I’ll be refining forever.
I’ve spent every ounce of money, time, and energy to heal the 5-year-old version of myself who grew up hating himself.
I know what it’s like to raise my baseline mood from a 3/10 to a 7/10 because that’s what my data shows over the past 2 years.
4 points might not sound like a lot, but it’s a 133% increase. A complete turnaround after 30 years of unhappiness — a radical transformation.
Even going from a 7 to an 8 at this point is a 14% jump. If you’re making $200K a year and tracking progress from a purely financial standpoint, that’s $28K in value.
My mood in 2024 hasn’t changed much since 2023. Context matters and I did a lot more than adopt a puppy, sit on the couch with my feelings, and write on LinkedIn.
I put myself out there more, online and in-person, experienced many more set-backs, worked out for over 425 hours, and launched my coaching practice.
Despite all of that, my mood has stayed relatively high, which I consider a win since my overall output has increased ten fold since last year.
I still have a long way to go. Two years of happiness is not enough data to erase 30 years of unhappiness (or toxic happiness) — my goal is to get closer to a 10/10 anyway.
I want to continue this tracking process to move my baseline mood to an 8/10 and above, and create more external wins which I’ll share later in an end of year recap and 2025 look ahead.
The purpose of 10/10 Coaching is to help others achieve similar outcomes in a more cost-effective, efficient, and energizing way — to win in all parts of life. Things like:
How to make $150K+ in tech sales while creating healthier fitness habits and managing an active social calendar
How to improve your baseline mood from a 4/10 to a 6/10 (a 50% increase) while building a new business and training for an ultra-endurance event
How to reverse years of toxic patterns and reinvent yourself while performing at a high level and discovering new hobbies that bring you joy
The point is the outcomes are personalized to each individual. My role is to help people find clarity, build confidence, and create real change using proven systems, quantifiable metrics and outcomes, and a healthy blend of intuition and feelings.
I have many transferable skills as a top performing sales rep, except, instead of selling business leaders on cost and time savings, I’m selling you on them. The version of you who is more efficient, more productive, happier, and has better relationships.
The same way I drove adoption (usage of the platform), implementation (executing new systems) and iteration (regular reviews of progress to improve) — I’ll be applying these same skill sets to people’s lives — including my own.
I’m also adding a guarantee, with regular opportunities to give me feedback, and quantifiable outcomes we can use to measure our success together. I have not seen many, if any, Life Coaches offer these — which I find unacceptable and mediocre.
I can say with 100% confidence I am happier, and more successful than I have ever been — not because of any external markers of success, like running 100-miles, or biking across the US, or winning a seat at President’s Club — but because I’ve learned to fall in love with the process of achieving at a high level across many domains.
While the traditional external markers of success have been lower than I’d like them to be, I also know they’re the lagging indicators of a strong focus on inputs. I’ve been rebuilding my foundation from the ground up, for the past 2 years.
For the first time in my life, I know how to get to a 10/10 level in all parts of life, and I have the tools, confidence, and support to do so. I’m also surrounded by other top performers and entrepreneurs on the same mission.
Achieving external milestones has always brought me a temporary moment of joy. Learning how to love myself has been the true path to bliss. The exuberance I have these days feels more sustainable, different than past experiences of manic joy.
In greek mythology, Icarus is given wings made of wax and feathers by his father Daedalus to escape the island of Crete. He’s warned to not to fly too high, or the sun will melt the wax, or too low because the sea water would weigh down his feathers.
Icarus, caught up with the excitement of flying ignores his father. He soars too close to the sun and dies. The moral of the story is to stay even keeled, a good reminder that even exhilaration can be dangerous.
I’d love to be your Daedalus and guide you on your journey of flying — not too high, and not too low — so you can achieve success without sacrificing happiness.
Dan, I came across your linkedIn and then read your newsletter! I love this and the way that you are taking what is most time intangible, internal games, (the infinite game) to make it data-driven is actually incredible!
Would love to talk with you one day. New subscriber, and congrats on your journey!!!