What Wakes You Up?

Jan 13, 2026

Happy Tuesday,

There’s a defining moment early in Jerry Maguire that sets the entire story in motion.

It’s the middle of the night. Jerry wakes up — not startled, not panicked — just awake. Something has surfaced. A truth he can’t ignore. And he knows instinctively that if he rolls over and goes back to sleep, it will be gone by morning.

So he gets up.

He writes because the idea won’t wait.

Because clarity doesn’t keep office hours.

Because some thoughts only arrive when the world is quiet — and they demand to be captured immediately.

That scene has always resonated with me. Not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s familiar.

People often wake up in the middle of the night.

However, not everyone listens when a thought appears unannounced.

—

I lost a thought today.

Not a big one — not a life-altering revelation — just a spark. One of those ideas that drops into your mind like a pebble hitting water: light, simple, but enough to ripple everything around it.

I reached for it.

I tried to capture it.

And in the chaos of cutting and pasting, I accidentally erased it.

Gone.

For three full minutes, I scrambled — mentally rewinding, retracing, reconstructing — because something in that thought mattered. Not because it was profound, but because it moved something in me. It stirred the part of my brain that says, “Write this down, or it won’t come back.”

And that’s when I realized something important.

This wasn’t just frustration.

It was awareness.

It was the reminder that the moments that move us rarely arrive with fanfare. They show up quietly. In fragments. In half-formed thoughts. And they don’t wait around to see if we’re ready.

—

The older I get, the more urgent those sparks become.

There was a time when I believed I could hold everything in my head — ideas, conversations, questions, lines from movies, lyrics from the radio, random comments from my kids that somehow carried more truth than anything I’d read all week.

Back then, I assumed inspiration would wait.

It doesn’t.

It never has.

Now there’s a notebook on the nightstand.

A notes app is always open.

Voice-to-text messages that sometimes sound ridiculous — but capture the feeling anyway.

Because if I don’t grab the thought, the thought leaves.

And here’s where this stops being just personal.

Ideas are perishable — and the older you get, the more expensive they become.

We pay for the ones we don’t capture.

In lost momentum.

In a missed opportunity.

In days when we’re busy instead of building.

This isn’t just about creativity.

It’s about leadership.

It’s about business.

It’s about staying awake to your life.

—

I’ve come to accept something else, too.

The drive doesn’t arrive like lightning.

It comes in pieces — stray sentences, emotional nudges, moments that interrupt your routine.

Most people ignore them.

Leaders don’t.

Professionals don’t.

Builders don’t.

Because the things that move us personally often shape us professionally — if we’re willing to notice.

For me, drive shows up through conversations that challenge what I believe. Through books and articles that make me pause. Through movies or shows that deliver one honest line. Through agents and entrepreneurs pushing past their circumstances. Through my kids, who say something unfiltered that reframes everything. Through loss. Through responsibility.

That’s where my fire lives.

Not in perfect planning.

Not in motivation memes.

Not in resolutions.

In the sparks.

In the fragments.