Book

You are accessing the beta version of the book. It will still be refined, but the core ideas are already here.
Start Here: The Frango Test.
Frango is Brazilian gym slang for the guy going through the motions. Half reps, phone between sets, the weight he knows he can handle. He's there. He just isn't doing the real work. Twelve questions, one score, and an honest answer to how much of him is in you. Start here, then read the rest. Read more...
What is DIESTRONG?
DIESTRONG is a philosophy of life for living with strength until your very last breath, and it uses death to sharpen clarity, urgency, and action. It started as a manifesto I wrote for myself, turned into principles I try to live by, then into a framework. Here's where the name came from, why strength came first and death came later, and the enemy this whole thing was built to fight. Read more...
The DIESTRONG Manifesto
The DIESTRONG Manifesto is a standard to live by, written to be read out loud and earned every single day. It's the whole philosophy on one page: build yourself strong, build your life with intent, build others up, and keep building after you're gone. Print it, put it where you'll see it, keep what resonates and rewrite what doesn't. I wrote it for me. It works better if you make it yours. Read more...
The DIESTRONG Framework
The DIESTRONG framework is how you build a life with strength from the inside out: 3 layers, 9 pillars, 27 practices, 81 principles, 243 actions. The nine pillars: body, mind, spirit, identity, values, mission, family, work, citizenship. Here's how it was designed, how the layers stack from Foundation to Legacy, why there's no Financial or Relationships pillar, and how to make it yours. Read more...
Foundation: Body, Mind, Spirit
Updated: July 12, 2026. Health is not one priority among many. It is the condition that makes all other priorities possible. Everything in DIESTRONG is built on three foundational pillars: Body, Mind, and Spirit. They build your capacity to execute every day and in life's hardest moments. What you build here reaches further than you. That foundation is what lets you actually show up for the people and the work that matter. The energy you bring home, the composure you carry into hard conversations, the reliability people stop questioning because... Read more...
Foundation: Body
🎧 Listen to this chapter (37 min) Beta version. AI-narrated while the author's recording is in production. Full chapter (36:54) Story (11:14) Introduction (4:39) Recovery (6:54) Nutrition (6:49) Training (7:14) As I climbed the narrow staircase to the second floor of an old two-story building, the clang of iron plates hitting each other got louder with every step, like I was walking into a construction site. At the top was a tiny old school gym above a bakery, where the smell of rubber mats and sweat mixed with freshly made... Read more...
Foundation: Mind
🎧 Listen to this chapter (33 min) Beta version. AI-narrated while the author's recording is in production. "Those guys suck," my friend vents. "Yeah, I can play better than that," I reply as we're watching a soccer match of the recently formed Major League Soccer in the US. I was killing time at my friend's house waiting for my parents to go to bed. Whenever tension was high at home, I'd avoid being there and escape to my friend's place. His room felt like a window to the US. On... Read more...
Foundation: Spirit
🎧 Listen to this chapter (35 min) Beta version. AI-narrated while the author's recording is in production. Full chapter (35:23) Story (13:06) Introduction (3:20) Anchor (6:36) Integrity (4:50) Meaning (7:32) I'm shopping with my mother when she gets a call from my father. "The US is being attacked! Go check the news." People gather around the TVs at the store. The news channels show a tall building with a lot of smoke coming out of it. I recognize it as the Twin Towers in New York but no one understands... Read more...
Foundation: Money and Relationships
Updated: July 13th, 2026. How Money Relates to Your Foundation At the beginning of this book, I told you there's no Financial pillar in DIESTRONG. Money is a tool. It creates options, it buys stability, it allows you to take care of your loved ones, but it makes a terrible north star. And underneath that sits a deeper mistake: we treat money as the goal and people as the tool. It's exactly backward. Money is the tool. People are the point. That's why this note and the next one about... Read more...
Foundation: Summary
You've just laid the base that everything in your life gets built on. Foundation is the layer that gives you capacity: a body with energy to spend, a mind that governs itself, and a spirit that holds when outcomes don't cooperate. This page is the map. Come back to it whenever you need to see the whole layer at once. The three pillars work together Body, Mind, and Spirit run as one loop. Training feeds your discipline, and discipline gets you training on the days motivation doesn't show up. Sleep... Read more...
Compass: Identity, Values, Mission
Updated: July 17, 2026. Decide who you are, or the world will decide for you. The Foundation makes you someone who can execute. A body that performs, a mind that governs, a spirit that holds. None of that tells you what to execute, or for whom, or why. A strong, disciplined, anchored person without a compass is the most dangerous kind of drift, because all that capacity gets poured into whatever showed up instead of what was actually worth it. The Foundation builds your capacity. The Compass aims it. Identity... Read more...
Compass: Identity
"Clean haircut, well-put-together, fair skin...you know, if you don't open your mouth, you can almost pass for an American. You can work here, but don't get your hopes too high." That was a manager at one of my first jobs in the US. When I arrived, the world had already decided who I was. I was the poor immigrant just trying to get by. The one who should be grateful for any job, any opportunity, any small foothold in this country. That was the identity waiting for me. All I... Read more...
Compass: Values
Coming soon Read more...
Compass: Mission
Coming soon Read more...
Compass: Money and Relationships
Coming soon Read more...
Compass: Summary
Coming soon Read more...
Arenas: Family, Work, Citizenship
Coming soon Read more...
Arenas: Family
Coming soon Read more...
Arenas: Work
Coming soon Read more...
Arenas: Citizenship
Coming soon Read more...
Arenas: Money and Relationships
Coming soon Read more...
Arenas: Summary
Coming soon Read more...
Legacy
Coming soon Read more...
DIESTRONG Glossary
Key distinctions in the DIESTRONG framework. Each entry defines a term precisely and shows how it differs from the words people usually confuse it with. Purpose = Meaning + Mission Have you found your purpose? Probably not. I didn't either. And if I had followed the usual "find your purpose" advice, I'd probably still be looking for it. That's because purpose is not something you find. It's something you build. And it's built out of two things: Meaning and Mission. Meaning is the why. It's the answer to a single... Read more...