The Faith Edge: Why Metacognition + Meaning Fuels Your Best Work
It’s not just mindset. It’s what you believe about yourself, the world, and your purpose that determines your performance.
In This Issue
New Deep Dive: Why your thoughts need a higher source
Live Deep Dive This Wednesday: Finding Your Ikigai
Two recommendations worth your time
Opportunities to Explore
Live Coaching — This Wednesday, June 25 at Noon CST
Finding Your IKIGAI — Your Sweet Spot of Peak Performance and Service to Others
Because of your response to last weeks Pulse Check: a 45-minute Live Deep Dive for newsletter subscribers. We’ll explore how to identify your true edge and build a brand, career, or calling around it.
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Bruno Genovese on the XE Pod
My friend Bruno left a successful corporate career to build a personal brand more than once. In this conversation, he shares the doubts, obstacles, and wins on the other sideWhat the AI Revolution Means for You
This Gary V video unpacks why what we talk about here—identity, purpose, and deep human advantage—is your best move in a world of accelerating tech.
Watch here →If you missed last week’s pod. I unpack how my father approached integrating work with family and what I am doing for my three daughters. Watch here
The Faith Edge: Why Metacognition + Meaning Fuels Your Best Work
It’s not just mindset. It’s what you believe about yourself, the world, and your purpose that determines your performance.
It’s remarkable how something as subjective as a spiritual practice can be objectively linked to our happiness, health, and success.
The Harvard Happiness Study—spanning more than 80 years and multiple generations—points to one conclusion: people with a deep spiritual practice thrive longer and live better.
I’m a bit of a case study.
I grew up in a hermetically sealed atheist ecosystem. My parents were Marxists. I spent my formative years in socialist countries where belief in anything beyond the State was not only discouraged—it was suspect.
And for a long time, I did just fine.
I had talent. Drive. A career that kept evolving upward.
But eventually… I plateaued.
I couldn’t quite explain it at the time, but the inner game started to fray. No matter how many hours I worked, how many goals I hit—there was this faint echo of emptiness I couldn’t drown out with achievement.
Then I found faith.
Not religion-as-ritual. But a deep, guiding spiritual alignment that reorganized everything in my life—starting with how I thought about everything else.
That shift led to a creative surge.
A richer marriage.
A more peaceful mind.
More impact. More joy.
My theory? When we orient our lives around something bigger than ourselves, we begin to think and act in a way that reflects reality.
We realize we’re not the center.
We’re part of something.
And that lens—zooming out—produces what’s called metacognition.
Metacognition: The Baseline of Transformation
"Until you make the subconscious conscious, it will control your life and you will call it fate."
— Carl Jung
Most people never stop to examine their thought patterns.
They react, repeat, and rerun the same inner scripts without ever asking: Is this even mine?
Is this belief, ambition, fear, goal—something I chose?
Or something I inherited from culture, my parents, my pain?
Metacognition is thinking about your thinking.
It’s the root of all intentional change.
When we don’t develop it, we drift into default patterns.
But when we do, we start to catch ourselves in the act—of sabotaging, settling, or shrinking.
Metacognition gives us back the controls.
But faith? Faith gives us the map.
Pulse Check
Spiritual Alignment = Performance Fuel
You can push hard without spiritual grounding.
But you will never sustain greatness without it.
That’s not just my opinion. That’s the echo of nearly every peak performer who’s built something meaningful and long-lasting—without burning out or blowing up.
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."
— Romans 12:2
It’s not just a nice idea. It’s a blueprint:
Notice the patterns of the world.
Step outside of them.
Let your mind be made new.
Discover the plan you were meant for.
That’s what we help people do in Xponential Life.
One of my clients—a successful tech executive—joined the program during a painful divorce. He’d grown up in a Christian tradition but had long since drifted. The coaching wasn’t faith-based per se, but I do quote ancient wisdom now and then.
Something in it lit a spark.
That spark became a flame.
He sobered up. Found emotional clarity. Reconnected to God.
And within months, landed a dream job—higher income, equity, freedom.
Most importantly? He’s finally living with peace and alignment.
That’s not luck.
That’s the power of finding your true edge—and it starts inside.
A Few Questions for You:
What patterns of this world have you conformed to?
Whose dreams are you living—culture’s, your parents’, your peers’?
What would a “good, pleasing, and perfect” plan uncover for you?
If this has spoken to you on a particularly deep level and you’d like to talk about a strategy to incorporate it into your life - setup a call.
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