“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
How it all started - A part of a bigger journey of being
As I trace back to what ultimately led me to start Nivationist, I would say it’s when I took the biggest wager against myself.
Perhaps it’s because I have been managing my family’s finances, medical, and travels since I was a kid, I understand that every decision I make, and every word I say carries considerable weight as the only English speaker in my family.
If I ever make a mistake, it will be big.
Over time, memories of my wins have been filled by the more urgent need to adopt others’ strengths in hopes of patching and correcting my own flaws to better help my loved ones settle down.
It’s unsettlingly easy how something that starts as “wanting to be better” can quietly turn into self-hate, the more you care.
It reached a point where I could no longer accept living my life this way…unless I break myself a new one.
For the first time in my life, I stepped outside the mold to carve myself a new way to be.
It’s a matter of survival.
For the sake of my family who hugs me tight despite the odds.
For the sake of my friends who wait for me at the end of the tunnel.
For the sake of the people who put me down, so I can prove them wrong.
For the sake of myself who wants to believe that there’s a better way to be, even at my lowest.
So ask yourself: Who are you becoming in the process? And who do you want to laugh, cry, and joke about the mistakes and wins you made along the way?
Because the failures or mistakes we put ourselves down in the moment could turn out to be hidden wins and opportunities that we laugh at ourselves in retrospect.
In a nutshell, that’s how Nivationist stumbled into existence.
To you, below is my lived-in proof that our imperfections may be the very thing that makes our dreams possible. A reminder that it’s okay to start, even when you feel like you’re not enough.
Where each setback in the making of Nivationist in turn becomes a layer of solution that best supports you in starting and building your own career from scratch with more confidence, clarity, and peace.
Table of Contents (Lessons in Time)
2020 - Started blank
Give abstract goals the grounds to take action
The goal of reinventing myself instead of staying stagnant gives me hope. But it also left me feeling lost about what I should do next because my goal is too open-ended and abstract.
Without action, hope fades into an empty promise.
This led me to ground my abstract goal into something I can act on: A series of self-directed projects that built me up to later starting Nivationist, regardless of how ready I may feel.
Ask yourself: Are you having trouble starting because your goal is motivational, but too open-ended and abstract to take action?
What is something that can contain your goal into what you can act on?
How my journey benefits you: My self-directed projects over the years, including Nivationist itself, have become the “experimental sandbox” of how I continuously test and iterate the strategies I publish.
So you can have:
- An updated stream of case studies to turn your motivational, yet ambiguous goals into actionable, structured plans.
- Real, tested excerpts and demonstrations in my career that you can draw parallels and use as examples to replicate or adapt to your own unique path easily.
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2021 - New doubts arose
Work with what makes us human > Fixing what’s natural
I’ve created my own opportunities to grow into who I wish to be in life. But it led me back to the same self-doubt that had started this journey. It made me question if all my effort was worth it.
Sometimes it matters not how perfect your plan is, but the extent of how far your human tendencies can take you.
This led me to the idea of “taking care of the human in us”: Taking into account my own habits and human tendencies within my plans.
Ask yourself: Can you imagine a “flaw” you have that could be your strength if placed in a different context?
What if it’s about finding the context that makes who you are shine the most?
How my journey benefits you: I know how mentally draining it is to outwit your own mind just to build what you care about.
And I also know that learning to work with who you are today, so you don’t have to feel “perfect enough” to begin, is easier said than done…unless there’s a structure to engrain this mindset with every step you take.
That’s why every piece of content is designed to help you build a sustainable infrastructure that supports who you are now, so you can take the next step to become who you want to be.
2022 - The Nivationist idea took hold
Filling in the gap that the experts left out
The idea of Nivationist grew out of the need to retain authorship over my work and my life in the great scare of “how to be” in the age of AI automation, overflow of expert advice, and rapid obsolescence.
Because I’ve wasted time, energy, and money on “life-changing” tools so I can rest assured in “doing it right” at something I’ve never done before.
Instead, I was stuck learning the tools and bloated my workflow rather than making progress.
Because I’ve tried to force expert advice into my life in fear of being “left behind” as a novice at success.
Instead, I wondered if I was never meant to be or already too outdated to follow through.
Ask yourself: Would you rather own your process or let AI take you over?
Do you want to live your life to the fullest or live in other people’s lives to the fullest?
How my journey benefits you: Instead of creating another distraction that pulls you away from what matters or contorts you into a mold, Nivationist is designed to be a starting point, an anchor, and a tool that helps you discover, translate, shape, retain, and realign back to the purpose that brought you here when you need it.
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2023 - The Nivationist website took shape
Translate what we do into what will bring value to others
It took me 3-4 years to build a track record of self-directed projects, jobs, and hard-won wisdom that made me believe I wasn’t as small as I initially made myself out to be.
I had proven to myself firsthand that it’s okay to start, even if you feel “not enough,” because you will always grow in ways you may not originally expect. Now, it’s time for me to prove it to others like us.
But the truth is: Nobody owes me their attention when they’re preoccupied with their own challenges in life, just because it means something to me.
This led me to a critical milestone that’s vital to building any successful career: Learning to define and advocate my value in ways that truly resonate with my audience.
Ask yourself: If someone asked, “why you do what you do?”, would you be able to answer clearly and confidently? Do your audience or clients see and value your work the same way you do?
How my journey benefits you: My end-to-end process of transforming Nivationist from an abstract idea into a value-driven experience is the most well-documented collection of case study series ever to be released on this platform.
So you can have:
The most coherent guides that build you up from ideation and planning to copywriting and brand design seamlessly.
The most flexibility in picking the strategies, tools used, and apprehend for risks over a demonstrated timeline that’s most useful to your own career.
2024 - Nivationist placed on hold
Knowing when to stop in order to continue
The logical next step after completing the website is to launch it. But the relief that I’ve finally made something out of nothing opened the floodgates to years’ worth of stress, burnout, and poor health that hit me in one go.
Being stressed has quietly become my new normal after working nonstop, seven days a week, for five years. Taking a break felt like a sin.
- Because if everyone else is busy hustling, am I weak for not being able to do the same? It was self-competence.
- Because it meant I wasn’t serious enough about something I wanted to do. It was self-betrayal.
- And do I deserve to help others when I can’t even practice what I preach? It was existential.
But the purpose of Nivationist isn’t to train myself to be the perfect saint, but to work with what makes me human. A reminder that still anchors me to this day.
My unveiled blind spots led me to this conclusion: Those who’ve already started are afraid to lose their momentum if they stop, while those who haven’t started fear they can’t freely leave once they begin.
Ask yourself: Are you afraid that you will never bounce back after you break your momentum? How would it feel to pause, reflect, and still move forward without guilt?
How my journey benefits you: Your work to overcome inner friction begins long before you click on my website, which is why I take it as my responsibility to bring my support closer to you.
The Nivationist newsletter is designed to email you low-pressure prompts that act as reminders to keep your momentum alive when life pulls you away and help you get started for the first time, or build from where you left off.
2025 - Content workflow revamped
Practicing what Nivationist preach with firsthand results
I became the first adopter and tester of Nivationist since its philosophy and frameworks were fully defined.
It was a humbling, yet rewarding experience to see the solutions hidden all around me after I followed my own advice and stepped back to see the bigger picture of what I had actually built over the years.
Simplified content production workflow + Adopt 5 years’ worth of raw “in-the-moment” notes into content writing leads to:
- 240% increase in total content pages written
- 300% increase in completed blog series written
- 200% increase in blog posts written
as of November 2025 in comparison to my first content writing attempt in 2023.
Ask yourself: What if starting small was enough to create real progress in your work? What simple solutions do you already have that you’re underutilizing?
How my journey benefits you: Nivationist gives you insights and strategies drawn from two distinct timelines that are designed to work in the moment and hold up over time.
Newsletter with Raw Notes: Raw, unfiltered snapshots of the messy, overlooked details in real time that are often difficult for experts to reconstruct later, but make all the difference in helping you where you are now.
Case Studies: Interlinked, multi-series guides built from examining patterns, decisions, and outcomes captured within the raw notes over time to reveal hard-won insights that would otherwise go unnoticed without deliberate reflection.
Giving you the proof, you don’t need a perfect start because you will be inclined to iterate and adjust regardless.
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2026 - Nivationist's official launch
Make a living from what you do, unapologetically.
Seven years ago, I forcibly pressed “play” on a life at a standstill in hopes of becoming someone I could live with in self-acceptance.
Seven years later, I’ve come to see I was never as small as I made myself out to be. Not through blind faith, but by becoming my own solution and proof to the point where I can extend my value in helping others.
But I also feel awkwardly self-conscious when I try to monetize what I do.
Because I’ve struggled with the idea of charging people when they’re at critical crossroads of their lives.
I also questioned whether I could truly deliver at a reasonable price, given that my results have only ever been self-tested, never proven with others.
But all of those points led to a single truth: whether people are willing to pay for my work depends on what they believe is valuable and reasonable. Instead of getting lost in the hypotheticals on whether or not you’re enough, it’s even more critical to have a starting baseline and let the results speak for themselves.
So ask yourself: How do you know when something is good enough to be paid for? What makes you hesitant to charge for something you know could help someone else?
How my journey benefits you: The Nivationist website has been revamped to give you the most transparency when deciding whether a free or paid service or product is what you really need for your next breakthrough.
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