Emotions that don’t drive action are pointless. They just drain your energy.
In this episode, Itamar opens up about a challenging year and the lessons learned when his old playbook stopped working, how small integrity compromises create massive energy drains and lessons to move forward.
Topics covered:
- Why unexercised emotions are the worst of both worlds
- How identity can trap you when you need mobility
- The real price of exceptional results nobody talks about
- Why he turned down money to prioritize family time
If you have read the book, Elite Performance, and would be open to leaving an honest review, you can do so here.
00:00:00:07 - 00:00:22:00
Itamar Marani
October 13th was a weird day. I kept feeling tears welling up behind my eyes, but despite almost craving the release, I couldn't cry. It was the day the final 20 living hostages were released from Gaza. And that's when it hit me that I had been all for the past three years. Initially, I thought I had compartmentalized it well.
00:00:22:04 - 00:00:46:30
Itamar Marani
I had accepted that I couldn't join the October 7th counter-attacks because I was out of the country and I begrudgingly accepted being aged out of reserve duty for the entire operation. And it also resisted the guilt status signaling games that were very common back home. But standing there, unable to cry, I kind of realized how much the situation had been quietly draining me all along.
00:00:46:35 - 00:01:07:16
Itamar Marani
I had also finished writing my book during this period, a book about my experience in Special and Israeli Special Operations, and I released it during the biggest wave of antisemitism I've experienced in my lifetime. It was, to put it mildly, a very interesting experience. Now, overall, I believe it took the right actions and did mostly the right things.
00:01:07:20 - 00:01:29:04
Itamar Marani
But after a three week break to end the year and really digest everything, I see valuable lessons I can use to improve my performance and my character. This debrief covers three main categories. Six Lessons I Learned three ways I'll implement those lessons in 2026 and two mindset issues I still struggle with. I also share a little bit of my biggest wins at the bottom.
00:01:29:09 - 00:01:52:41
Itamar Marani
So before I start, I want to say thank you to everyone who was a part of this year. Now, before we start, though, a cautionary note about what I'm about to talk about in my clients. And most people didn't know any of this was happening beneath the surface. And there's a popular narrative right now that vulnerability is inherently brave, inherently good, that sharing your struggles openly makes you authentic and relatable.
00:01:52:46 - 00:02:13:46
Itamar Marani
As a realist, I think it's naive, and in most spaces it's simply ineffective. And even harmful. The reality is that in professional settings, broadcasting your struggles in real time usually just makes you look weak and not up for the job. It's an uncomfortable truth, but it is what it is. People lose confidence in you, and it's not cynicism.
00:02:14:00 - 00:02:46:21
Itamar Marani
It's just how it works. Harsh, but true. Now, during this period, I had a very small circle. I was completely open with close friends, my wife and a mentor. They got the unfiltered version. Everyone else got someone who showed up strong and fully focused on them. Now, some may think that's being fake. I think it's being strategic. So I'm sharing this now because it's behind me and because it might be useful to you not as a real time confession, but as process lessons from the other side.
00:02:46:26 - 00:03:14:53
Itamar Marani
That sort of believe effective vulnerability looks like selective, intentional and shared from a position of strength rather than need. So let's get started. Six Lessons Learned. Emotions that don't drive effective action are pointless. Our emotions carry primal wisdom. They often signal when you take action and guide us on what to do. But sometimes an emotion gets trapped inside you because you have no way to exercise it.
00:03:14:58 - 00:03:41:35
Itamar Marani
For me, these past two years, that emotion was guilt. Guilt could have been useful if it had driven me to help people I care about. But taking action in the way I was trained was no longer an option. So instead of serving a purpose, the emotion just kept bouncing around inside me, needlessly draining my energy. I saw the extreme version of this and people back home, they were so beside themselves after October 7th, not knowing what to do.
00:03:41:40 - 00:04:05:58
Itamar Marani
So they took up erratic behaviors that clearly didn't actually serve them or anyone else. As my mother put it, everybody's just looking to do something with themselves to feel like they're doing something. And while I was rational enough to avoid that extreme, I still felt the fatigue that harboring Unexercised emotions can cause. So I took two surf trips this year, but worked during both of them.
00:04:06:03 - 00:04:28:12
Itamar Marani
Looking back, I didn't do this because it's logically what the business needed. I did it because I didn't feel comfortable fully taking time off while people were on the front lines or held hostage in tunnels. And nothing me doing that actually helped anyone. During my end of year break, I read the Splendor in the Veil about Winston Churchill's leadership during the first year of World War Two.
00:04:28:17 - 00:04:49:34
Itamar Marani
And what struck me most was that economy. On one side, he had the crushing burden of leading the free world while London was being bombed on a nightly basis. And on the other hand, he had a habit of taking almost every weekend off at his country estate to freshen up and do that while drinking, having fine cigars and eating great food.
00:04:49:39 - 00:05:11:33
Itamar Marani
Now, when I look at it, those strategic retreats are probably what enabled him to stay at his best and serve people at his best. He had a power where he didn't let guilt pull him into ineffective patterns and needlessly exhaust him and admire Beau ability, especially during those times. Now, moving forward, I accept that life will throw more challenges in the future.
00:05:11:33 - 00:05:41:01
Itamar Marani
My way, my parents will pass. Things may happen to my wife or son and other difficulties will come. The lesson I'm thinking forward is that guilt isn't a badge of honor and unexercised emotions simply aren't helpful if they lead to action. Great. If not, I need the emotional maturity to let them go and put them aside. They don't serve me and they don't serve anyone else to even the slightest integrity crap can have massive consequences.
00:05:41:06 - 00:06:03:54
Itamar Marani
The problem isn't keeping someone in your life who shouldn't be there and having to deal with them. The real problem is that you're making a choice, perhaps unknowingly, to live out of integrity, and that will slowly but surely derail your sense of self. This year an old friend and I cut ties. The unfortunate part is that it should have happened several years ago when I first noticed we were no longer fit.
00:06:03:58 - 00:06:28:05
Itamar Marani
Instead, certain life circumstances caused me to wait until the relationship came to a bit of an unpleasant end. Fortunately, in the postmortem, we were able to work together well, but it was unnecessary for that and for what was once a very positive relationship. Then on a sour note and for the past three years, I had to carry a feeling of being out of integrity, of having someone in my life who didn't align with my values.
00:06:28:10 - 00:06:51:43
Itamar Marani
While deep down knowing I'm not being clear about my own boundaries now we like to tell ourselves that we're good at compartmentalizing, that we can keep someone misaligned with our values and a neat little box that won't affect the rest of our lives. But the reality is that it doesn't work that way. When I'm not being true to myself, a 30 minute interaction drains far more than 30 minutes of energy.
00:06:51:48 - 00:07:15:18
Itamar Marani
There's a ripple effect. And yes, it is harder to hold the line on integrity when you're already facing challenges on multiple fronts. But that's exactly what matters most. Small compromises left unaddressed, become really big energy drains. So the lesson I'm thinking forward is this being true to myself is most crucial during challenging times. The real world sometimes requires tradeoffs.
00:07:15:23 - 00:07:42:57
Itamar Marani
I recognize that, but I need to also recognize how deep those tradeoffs can cut, even when they seem small. Three. Life without physical passion is dull, so not being in love anymore is awkward. You know, like, I still like Brazilian jiu jitsu, but I can't say I'm in love with it anymore. And after more than a decade of having a physical practice, I loved simply running, working out and doing calisthenics and swimming.
00:07:43:06 - 00:08:04:40
Itamar Marani
It kind of felt dull. I missed something physically immersive and intellectually stimulating with a light social component. And this past year and a half, as you might have noticed from my emails, I dove into surfing, having something that completely detaches you from the day to day and gives you a genuine thrill has been amazing for me. It's a physical passion, actually.
00:08:04:40 - 00:08:27:33
Itamar Marani
Love and even better is something I get to share with my wife now, oddly, swimming in the ocean, especially when it's wild and stormy as always, call me. There's just something about being in that chaotic and immersive environment that requires a focus that quiets everything else and now being able to experience the ocean in a different way with the speed of a surfboard has been a fun to experience.
00:08:27:34 - 00:08:50:31
Itamar Marani
I'm very excited to also be passing on to my son. Now serving while I'm no longer a cook and I'm probably just a blue bell at surfing, but I'm loving it. I'm still very far from my goal of getting barreled at Waipahu, but we're making progress. So the lesson I'm taking forward is to prioritize physical passion. Life without it is simply don't.
00:08:50:36 - 00:09:11:24
Itamar Marani
For the price of exceptional results is always higher than you expect, and it's paid in ways you don't see. So I first thought about writing the book at a performance about five and a half years ago when I just started my business. But I quickly realized I wasn't ready, as Nouvel said, to write a great book, you have to become the book.
00:09:11:29 - 00:09:33:06
Itamar Marani
Now, after that, all of the work with clients and gotten all the results, I still knew that exceptional work would cost money and require help from others. What I didn't realize was how else I'd have to pay. So yes, I paid in money over $60,000 learning I'd hired the wrong people for various roles because I didn't understand the field and I didn't know the right questions to ask.
00:09:33:10 - 00:09:57:18
Itamar Marani
But I also paid an ego. Watching my year over year growth flatlined while I poured myself to something that didn't immediately show financial returns. And I also paid in discomfort of being seen as difficult because I refused to accept work that fell below my standards. And what I wanted this project to be. The real cost of exceptional isn't just time and money, it's the ignorance that you pay through false starts.
00:09:57:23 - 00:10:26:24
Itamar Marani
It's feeling stupid. It's sacrificing good things to make room for great ones, and it's holding the line on standards even when people think you're an asshole for it. So the lesson I'm taking forward is that whenever I start something new and I want it to be exceptional, I need to preemptively accept the financial cost, the ego cost of mistakes and of setbacks and the toll of holding standards and people's resistance to that, that these are just the costs that excellence requires.
00:10:26:29 - 00:10:51:09
Itamar Marani
Five. Identity can be a trap when you need mobility. If you can't be that special ops guy anymore and fight, what's your new identity? So we were sitting in a circle on a small island off the coast of Spain. A dozen successful entrepreneurs at a mastermind sun on our faces. The Mediterranean stretched out behind us and there was stumped by a powerful question that I hadn't seen coming.
00:10:51:14 - 00:11:12:26
Itamar Marani
I just shared my challenge of not being able to join the fight back home, and the question hung in the air. After a long pause, I surprised myself with my own answer. I think the real thing I need to do is not have an identity to be more fluid. You see, identity can be powerful, but it can also hurt you in turbulent times.
00:11:12:27 - 00:11:35:22
Itamar Marani
It can ruin you in who you are and keep you on course. But sometimes when all the options aren't available, you need mobility instead of routes. And stability and mobility are often mutually exclusive. In short, being fixed on who you are and what you do, even if it seems positive and virtuous, can be ineffective and frustrating as times change.
00:11:35:27 - 00:12:04:59
Itamar Marani
So the lesson I'm taking forward is that when I feel friction in life, instead of asking who am I and what should I do, I'll ask, Who can I be here and who would it be effective for me to transform into? Lesson number six Family over more financial growth. It's unfortunate when someone who worth tens or hundreds of millions loses their family, goes to divorce and becomes disconnected from their kids because they chased more money and success way past the point of marginal returns.
00:12:05:04 - 00:12:25:30
Itamar Marani
Now I never experienced anything close to that. I'm still not worth tens or hundreds of billions, but I did take on a massive pain speaking toward the end of this year to help promote the book. It was 21 days 13 series, Good money, and a compelling justification that this will help the book launch really strong. By various external measures, it was a success.
00:12:25:35 - 00:12:45:36
Itamar Marani
I met phenomenal people. I received messages about the genuine impact I made on entrepreneurs and got great feedback scores from all the talks and workshops they did. But by day eight, I cared more about the time with my wife and my son than adding dollars to the bank account, signing more books, shaking more hands, or having lunch with more billionaires.
00:12:45:41 - 00:13:04:52
Itamar Marani
When I came home and I put my hand on the top of my five year old's head, we were at the airport. He was noticeably taller. And it was a feeling that I didn't enjoy like a dismissed out a part of his life, and I felt like I made the wrong trade. Now there will always be time to make more money, but my son's childhood is fleeting.
00:13:04:57 - 00:13:26:10
Itamar Marani
So the lesson I'm taking forward is that I love growth and I will keep pursuing it. But I need better guardrails. I need more time in Israel with my parents and extended family. And no more than a week apart from my wife and son for workshops. Now, three ways I'm going to actually implement these lessons in 2026. One.
00:13:26:15 - 00:13:52:34
Itamar Marani
Hiring more so I can claim I value my time with my family more than money. If I'm willing to hire people to free up my time this year, I want to hire and lead people, not manage them, but lead them to become the best version of themselves so that we can all create something much bigger together. I feel like often this is an issue of the shoemaker walking barefoot, where I help lead my clients and even teach them how to lead their teams and they get these amazing results.
00:13:52:39 - 00:14:17:21
Itamar Marani
And I don't have as good of a team or as big of a team as I should have. And this is something that I definitely want to change and I'm excited to change and create a massive team of really successful people that does big stuff in the world to family surf trips. So this is simple, but I want to have at least two proper family surf trips this year, fully off, no calls and three no unexercised emotions.
00:14:17:25 - 00:14:40:57
Itamar Marani
The guilt I've been carrying nearly all melted away the day the remaining living hostages came home on October. But I want to stay mindful of this lesson as the cost was heavy. When I feel an emotion, either act on it or let it go completely feeling it without doing something about it is the worst of both worlds. Now two mindset issues I still struggle with.
00:14:41:02 - 00:15:06:22
Itamar Marani
The first is control. So I still crave too much control and clarity. Maybe personality. Maybe it's because in special operations, a lack of control could mean life or death. But regardless, it doesn't matter why. If I want the life, I want, I have to let go of more control and move with less clarity. And also on a deeper level, I want to provide a better example for my son to live by.
00:15:06:27 - 00:15:37:09
Itamar Marani
Two Perfectionism. Perfectionism is Control's cousin. I used to tell myself it was about high standards. The truth is, I don't always trust that the A20 will be good enough for me to succeed. A part of it comes from starting entrepreneurship late in life, and a part of it is simply the natural insecurity that all human beings feel. Now I'm getting better at going for good enough instead of perfect party through frameworks like the minimum effective dose, but mostly because I'm tired of paying the unnecessary price.
00:15:37:13 - 00:15:59:55
Itamar Marani
This year I'm excited to push myself on this front with our YouTube channel to build a team and create a level of output that focuses on macro results, not micro perfection. Now, this is funny because those closest to me don't agree with this being an issue of mine, but I feel like there's still more I can grow here and let go of and move to the next level.
00:16:00:00 - 00:16:19:55
Itamar Marani
And finally, I want to share a couple of wins worth celebrating. So this year, I foolishly avoided celebrating wins throughout the year, but I am proud of them and I greatly appreciate everyone that's a part of the podcast and the newsletter and all the clients. So there's something I want to share with you guys. First thing after years in the making, we finally launched the performance.
00:16:19:55 - 00:16:44:58
Itamar Marani
The book and the reviews have been genuinely amazing and I'm so proud of the product that we've put out. It's a system that actually gets results and it's a book that's easy for people to read and implement. And I genuinely thought it was worth all the effort. Second, I secured some very high end speaking engagements and multiple regional tours with 9.5 and above NPS scores.
00:16:45:03 - 00:17:07:28
Itamar Marani
Now, the fun part here is that five years ago I was giving free talks in coffee shops to digital nomads, and today I'm being flown out to run paid workshops for rooms where the entry point is being a millionaire and there are many billionaires in there as well, and that progress in just five short years is something that I'm generally proud of.
00:17:07:33 - 00:17:29:48
Itamar Marani
I also got to get much better at surfing and push my son onto his first wave recently. I've helped clients achieve the biggest results yet, from closing acquisitions to growing by hundreds of millions of dollars and multiple exits. I also earned the ability to say no to lucrative five figure opportunities because they simply didn't align with my vision, not for my business or for my life.
00:17:29:52 - 00:18:05:26
Itamar Marani
And on top of that, on a personal level, my relationship with my wife has been as strong as has ever been. And my son knows that his mother and I love him unconditionally. And at the same time that a great life required accepting fear and discomfort rather than running away from them. Basically, I'm closing out this year, feeling more calm and clear than I have in years, with nothing in my life that isn't aligned with where I want to go and having the time and energy to take my son to weekly ice cream, bouncy castles and Sunset Beach sessions and be fully present with them is something I really appreciative for.
00:18:05:31 - 00:18:30:33
Itamar Marani
So for Final Thoughts, there's a concept called the hundred year Storm, something so destructive. We don't think it's possible because we haven't experienced it in our lifetime. But these storms exist. The situation with the hostages showed me how much room for growth I still have. My mental ballast, honestly simply wasn't where it needed to be when the old playbook was no longer an option.
00:18:30:37 - 00:18:49:48
Itamar Marani
But that's the beauty of mindset work. It's an infinite game. There's always another level, and I'm grateful for the people, friends, mentors and clients I had around me during this time, and I'm comfortable. Reality is that you don't build your support system during a crisis. You earn it in the years before, and I'm glad I did that work.
00:18:49:53 - 00:19:17:27
Itamar Marani
But more importantly, here's how I hope my reflections might be able to help you. Extremes create clarity, deaths, hidden gift. And you're probably not wrestling with guilt about a war, but maybe you are carrying something else. You haven't dealt with frustration, anxiety, shame, or ambition. You've been sitting on too long. Here's the thing Feeling an emotion without acting on it is the worst of both worlds.
00:19:17:29 - 00:19:37:12
Itamar Marani
It just eats at you. So act on it or let it go. But don't stay in the middle. Dare to move because a better reality is waiting for you on either side. I'm wishing you guys a great 2026. And as an aside, if you have read the book Ali performance, it would be open to leaving an honest review.
00:19:37:17 - 00:19:54:01
Itamar Marani
It really would mean a lot to me. We're going to share a link in the show notes here and how you can do that. And yes, the audio book with some special bonuses is coming out very, very soon. So, again, if I could ask you one thing. If you've been enjoying this to leave an honest review, it really would mean a lot to me.
00:19:54:06 - 00:19:57:00
Itamar Marani
From that, I wish everyone a great 2026.
