Mental Performance Letters

Hi friends,

When you’re born, you look like your parents.​
​When you die, you look like your decisions.

Somewhere between those two points is who you chose to become.

At the beginning, you don’t know much. You’re a mirror. You model what you see. You copy the people around you. Your parents, your family, your environment, all of it.

That’s not good or bad. That’s just how it works. You’re this blank vessel soaking everything in, trying to make sense of what the world is. Before you learn to think for yourself, you just absorb.

You take on the language, the tone, the patterns, the reactions. You learn how people handle stress, how they communicate, what they value, what they avoid.

And for a while, that’s enough. You live out what you were handed. You wear the beliefs that were passed down to you. You play out someone else’s template for what life is supposed to look like.

But at some point, and it’s different for everyone, you cross a line. A veil. A threshold where “I didn’t know better” stops being true. Where the decisions you make start to outweigh the ones that were made for you.

You begin to see the gap between who you were raised to be and who you actually want to be. And that’s the moment everything changes.

Because after that, ignorance becomes a choice. Blame becomes a choice. Staying stuck becomes a choice.

It’s easy to keep pointing back, to your upbringing, to your parents, to your environment, to whatever story you’ve been telling yourself about why life feels the way it does.

And I’m not saying those things don’t matter. They do. Some of the things that happened to you weren’t fair. Some weren’t kind. Some left scars that you didn’t ask for.

But maybe that’s the strange beauty of being human, that everyone, in their own way, has been touched by unfairness. Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people.

And if you spend your whole life trying to make sense of it, you’ll drive yourself insane.

You can’t always control what happens to you. But you can control how you interpret it. You can control how you carry it. You can control what it turns you into.

You are the architect of your inner world. You decide how the story gets told inside your own mind. And that story determines everything, your mood, your energy, your confidence, your trajectory.

That’s why perspective is everything. You don’t see reality as it is, you see it through the lens of who you are. Through your experiences, your beliefs, your filters. Reality itself doesn’t change, but your relationship to it does the moment you change your lens.

Once you understand that, you start to see how much choice you actually have. You can choose to stay small. You can choose to stay bitter. You can choose to hold on to the story that keeps you safe.

Or you can choose to rewrite it. You can decide to build something better. You can decide to make decisions faster, cleaner, more deliberately. You can start setting up the board in your favor, even if it takes time.

That’s agency. That’s radical self accountability. That’s the moment you stop being a mirror and start being a maker.

Because the truth is, every decision leaves a mark. It shapes you. It shows up in the way you talk, the way you carry yourself, the way your eyes light up or don’t.

It’s in your habits, your posture, your energy. You become a reflection of your choices, not your parents, not your environment, not your past.

So when people look at you years from now, what will they see? Will they see the echo of your upbringing? Or the evidence of your decisions?

Because when you’re born, you look like your parents. But when you die, you look like your decisions.

Make them count.

Much Love,
Calvin Trieu

​

The Calvin Trieu Podcast

121:You die looking like your decisions

​

In this episode I talk about the move to Colorado and what it really meant for me.

​

On paper it’s just a move, but it was way more than that. It was proof that I wasn’t stuck, that I could actually change things.

​

For a long time I thought I wouldn’t be able to.

​

This episode’s about how the decisions you make stack up over time, how they quietly build the life you end up living.

​

You’re born looking like your parents, but you die looking like your decisions.

​

Everything about where you are and who you are comes back to that. If you can overthink all the reasons why something won’t work, you can overthink why it can.

​

The future you want doesn’t just show up, it’s built from the choices you make right now.

Fitness App

Weekly Updates

New training cycles start today.

There are two tracks this month, both running four weeks before the next phase begins.

Sustain: Two full-body sessions per week, 30–45 minutes each. Designed for people who want the minimum effective dose for strength, muscle, and health. Short, efficient, and can be done at home or in a gym.

Build: Three full-body sessions per week, around 60–75 minutes each. For people who want to spend more time building muscle and developing strength. Can be done at home or in a gym.

Inside the community, three new spaces are now live:

• Members Hub: For updates, announcements, and program drops.
• PR Wall: A space to share wins, breakthroughs, and progress.
• Challenge Board: A place to share what you’re working toward and to hold yourself accountable. Writing it down matters—it’s like signing a contract with yourself.

Perform is now HSA and FSA eligible, meaning you can use pre-tax funds to cover your membership.

All three membership tiers include a 7-day free trial. No contracts, no strings attached.

Stay tuned for more program and app updates next week.

1:1 Behavior Coaching

Spots Available

This isn’t about following another plan. It’s about building the version of you you’ve been trying to step into.

Over 3-12 months we’ll map out your future self, define your values, and make sure your daily decisions align with who you want to become.

No more feeling stuck in the same loop of starting strong, falling off, or feeling like you’re doing everything right but still not seeing the results you know you’re capable of.

This is where that cycle ends. From fitness to nutrition to mindset and behavior, we’ll work through every layer, optimizing how you think, move, perform, and recover.

Whether your goal is to improve blood markers, rebuild energy, change body composition, or simply feel capable in your own skin again, we’ll have eyes on every detail, from movement quality to metabolic health, with coaching that’s intentional, strategic and personal.

This is about creating a sustainable system that supports who you are and who you’re becoming.

​

1:1 Performance Coaching

Spots Available

This isn’t your common one-on-one online coaching. This is for people who wants precision-level coaching from someone who’s currently receiving PhD level training in exercise physiology and human metabolism.

We’ll break down every layer of your performance. Strength, conditioning, nutrition, recovery, physiology, stress, sleep, and the mental side that drives all of it. Every variable gets tracked, measured, and refined so it lines up with what we’re trying to do. The goal is simple: solve a problem, get you results, and make it sustainable so you actually understand the why behind everything along the way.

This is a high-touch, data-driven coaching process built for people who hold themselves to a higher standard. Whether you’re chasing strength, endurance, hybrid goals, competition prep, or physical capability for your occupation like first responders, firefighters, military, or tactical athletes, every detail matters and nothing is random.

We’ll look at everything that’s either moving you forward or getting in your way. Bloodwork, nutrition, training load, recovery, mindset, and how your body’s responding week to week. You’ll receive high-touch communication and real time feedback

Mission is simple. Get the job done. And we'll do just that.

​