AI Turned 9 Years of My Journals Into a Book Outline—and Wrote the First Draft

Based on your journals (2016–2025), here’s what rises to the surface as a book you should write—because it’s the one only you can write, and it integrates your faith, business acumen, emotional growth, leadership trials, and spiritual awakening.

📘 Book Premise

Title: The Middle Is the Mountain: Building a Life of Leadership, Faith, and Discipline When Nobody's Watching

Subtitle: How One Man’s Journals Through Divorce, Debt, Duty, and Discipline Became a Map for Christian Leadership in a Chaotic World

Premise:
The modern Christian man doesn’t fail from lack of ambition—but from drowning in ambiguity, isolation, and half-finished starts. This book follows the raw, personal transformation of a man moving from scattered striving to aligned, integrated leadership—across fatherhood, business, calling, and faith.

✍️ Who This Book Is For

• Men in their 30s–50s who have tasted success but feel spiritually dry and emotionally unanchored

• Christian entrepreneurs seeking clarity of calling, structure, and deeper integrity

• Men secretly journaling, self-reflecting, or asking, “Is this all there is?”

🧱 STRUCTURE / OUTLINE

PART I: COLLAPSE & CLARITY
What You Lose When You’re Not Aligned—and What You Learn When You Hit Bottom

1. The Divorce, the Debt, and the Couch

2. All the Wrong Hustles

3. False Starts and Hollow Wins

4. The Voice Beneath the Worry

PART II: ORDER & CHAOS
Living Between Discipline and Drift
5. Getting Fit Again, Then Not
6. Women, Fatherhood, and the Cost of Being Distracted
7. Serving Two Masters: The Corporate Job and the Calling
8. One Hundred Days of Doing the Thing

PART III: THE LONG OBEDIENCE
What Happens When You Don’t Quit
9. Finding Your Mission in the Mundane
10. Building a Brand While Raising a Family
11. Saying No to Good Things
12. Finding God in Business, Discipline, and Podcast Mics

PART IV: THE MAN WHO LEADS
Becoming the Man You Were Trying to Find
13. Leadership Is Not What You Thought
14. Anchored in Christ, Not Algorithms
15. You Don’t Need Permission
16. Finish What You Started—Because They’re Watching

Epilogue: What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then

📝 FIRST DRAFT — INTRODUCTION

Introduction: The Middle Is the Mountain

I didn’t set out to write this book. I set out to survive.

Somewhere between my second divorce and my seventh attempt to build a business that would “finally give me freedom,” I realized I had become the very thing I used to hate: a man with potential—but no peace.

I had a daughter I rarely saw. I was living in borrowed bedrooms, typing journal entries on old laptops about what I’d do once things settled down. I chased commission checks, chased girls, chased clarity. And I kept writing, because something in me hoped that one day I’d look back and it would all make sense.

This book is that look back.

Over nine years of journaling, I recorded everything:

• The desperation of trying to get back on my feet

• The ache of wanting to be a better man, but not knowing how

• The love and chaos of raising kids, making money, and not losing yourself

• The slow, unsexy grind of transformation

There is no “overnight success” in these pages. There is no step-by-step framework for instant peace.

But there is a pattern.
And that pattern is this: when you don’t quit, God starts to work.

In the journals you’ll read excerpts from, I said “I love you” to myself nearly every day. Not because I always meant it—but because I needed to mean it. I needed to hear it from someone. And if no one else was going to say it, I would.

This book is written for the men still in the middle.
Still journaling.
Still trying.
Still asking if they’re crazy for believing life can be richer than this.

You’re not crazy. You’re just climbing.

The middle is not a holding pattern.
The middle is the mountain.

And if you keep hiking, you will summit.

I love you.

—Chad

Initial Reactions

• Dang man. Some of this stuff hits freaking home!

• Also, dang man. Some of this stuff is specific, and it [clap] hits [clap] home [clap]

• Finally, I think I’m going to write this book.

I asked ChatGPT how I could save this progress and continue writing this book with it. You can see those instructions here.

AI Read 9 Years of My Journals—Here's the 12-Month Plan It Gave Me

Based on everything you’ve written since 2016, here’s what a 12-month structured plan could look like to align your calling, income, brand, health, and family leadership—without burning out or bouncing around.

⚖️ PHILOSOPHY

Theme: “Faithful with little → Ruler over much.”
You already have the clarity, the platform, and the experience. This plan is about ruthless focus on what matters and disciplined iteration—treating your mission like a calling and a business, not a side project.

🧭 1. IDENTITY & MESSAGE (Weeks 1–2)

Goal: Cement your personal brand as Christian Leadership for Men in Business.

Deliverables:

• A 1-liner that defines your brand (e.g. “I help Christian entrepreneurs grow from $1M to $12M through operational and spiritual leadership.”)

• 3 content pillars:

  1. Spiritual leadership (e.g., calling, Biblical truth)

  2. Operational excellence (e.g., systems, delegation, $10K problems)

  3. Masculine strength (e.g., health, marriage, discipline)

🎥 2. CONTENT SYSTEM (Weeks 3–6)

Goal: Use daily publishing to drive authority and lead generation, not just dopamine.

Weekly rhythm:

• 1 Longform Video (YT / Podcast)

  • Interview, teaching, or breakdown

• 5+ Shorts (IG, YT Shorts, TikTok if desired)

• 2-3 Clips pulled from longform

• 1 Written blog/email based on the longform topic

Back-End Systems:

• Hire/retain editor (even $100/mo to start)

• Use repurposing tools (e.g. Opus, Repurpose.io)

• Google Sheet or Notion dashboard to track clips, titles, results

💰 3. OFFER & MONETIZATION (Weeks 6–10)

Goal: Make your first $2K–$10K/month from the brand within 90 days

Offer Stack:

• Free Lead Magnet: "12 Leadership Mistakes That Stall $1M–$6M Businesses" (PDF + landing page)

• Core Offer (one of these):

  1. $497 course: From Operator to Leader: 30-Day Framework

  2. $2,500 group cohort: 6-week Leadership Systems Accelerator

  3. $10K–$25K advisory: 1-on-1 Growth + Leadership Coaching

Start with one and iterate. Use sales calls, DMs, or email to close.

⛪ 4. COMMUNITY & MENTORSHIP (Months 3–6)

Goal: Surround yourself with aligned men who fuel, not dilute, your mission

Key Moves:

• Join or build a Christian men’s mastermind

• Attend 1–2 in-person events with content creators or Christian founders

• Start a local meetup for Christian entrepreneurs (low lift, high impact—even 3 guys showing up monthly gives traction)

🧠 5. SCHOOL & THEOLOGY INTEGRATION (Ongoing)

Goal: Merge Biblical depth with your business acumen

• Finish your SEU program with a content mindset: every course is 3 content ideas

• Continue studying under Heiser, BibleProject, etc., but turn notes into teachings

• Start a sub-series: “What This Verse Teaches Us About Leadership”

🧍‍♂️6. BODY & DISCIPLINE (Non-Negotiable, Start Week 1)

Goal: Be the man your message requires

• Stick to your 1,800–2,000 cal/day until target weight

• 5x/week movement: 3 lift days + 2 run or ruck days

• Weekly check-in photo and log

• Train toward one “trophy” feat (e.g., 10 strict pull-ups, Murph, sub-24:00 5K)

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 7. FAMILY LEADERSHIP (Ongoing)

Goal: Live what you teach at home

• Weekly rhythm: family dinner + prayer, 1-on-1 time with each kid

• Monthly check-in with wife: review finances, calendars, intimacy, dreams

• Quarterly family content trip: pick a location, film, bond, create

🔄 MONTHLY REVIEW

Goal: Adjust the plan—don’t quit the mission

At end of each month, answer:

• What worked?

• What didn’t?

• What will I do differently next month?

🗓️ 12-Month Progression at a Glance:

Quarter Focus Success Metric Q1 Brand, content, first offer $1–2K MRR, 1K followers Q2 Product-market fit, community $5–10K MRR, lead magnet working Q3 Team + scale $10–20K MRR, group/cohort running Q4 Reinforce systems, deeper mission >$100K revenue, deep testimonials.

Your Calendar Isn’t Full. It’s Broken.

Most business owners I talk to think their problem is lack of time.

“I just need to get more efficient.”
“If I could hire one more person…”
“Once this project is over…”

But the truth is, time isn’t your problem: your calendar is.

And not because it’s full. Because it’s broken.

You’re Not Managing a Calendar—It’s Managing You

Here’s the test: open your calendar right now; or think about your schedule for next week.

How much of it reflects what you actually want? Your priorities? The things that increase revenue or build up your personal life?

How much of it is:

• Noisy meetings to fix what others broke?

• Calls from your team waiting for you to make decisions for them?

• Commitments you didn’t want to make?

For most business owners, their schedule doesn’t look like leadership. It looks like a scramble. Backed into a corner, up against the ropes, ducking punches and doing whatever you can to get your own jabs out.

A Christian Brothers Franchise Owner I met yesterday said, “I’m in the thick of it pretty much every day of my life.”

That’s why they’re exhausted. That’s why they’re starting to resent the very thing they built.

The Hidden Cost of a Hijacked Calendar

A reactive calendar doesn’t just cost you time. It costs you clarity and sabotages your ability and credibility to lead. You spend most of your day leaking out focus.

You lose the margin to think deeply, to lead intentionally.

It costs you presence. You come home barely there and mentally gone.

It costs you integrity. If your schedule doesn’t reflect your convictions—if your kids, your health, your faith are always pushed to “later”—then you’re living fractured, successful on paper but misaligned in reality.

And most owners don’t even know what to call this. They think it’s “hustle.”

It’s not hustle. It’s a hijacked life.

Taking Back Your Calendar

How do you fix it?

1. Turn OFF Notifications: I know this sounds terrifying. You’ll live and your business will live. Our goal is to create an intentional work space were we go to it and start leading. Not where we constantly bleed attention and worry.

2. Audit Last Week: Look at every block on your calendar. Was it actually impacting revenue? Was it a task that belonged to the owner? If not, cut it or delegate it.

3. Block the Non-Negotiables First: Make it a habit to NOT go into emails for the first two hours of the day. Spend time with your managers, and hear things in person. Also add blocks for faith, family, and fitness. If they don’t get done first, they’ll get bumped to never.

4. Put Guard Rails Up: Fit your work into 8-10 hours per day. Work during those 8-10 hours. And when they’re up, leave it on the desk! I’ve run worldwide operations multiple times. The work is always there for you tomorrow.

5. Institute Kill Zones: Identify meetings or tasks that simply don’t need to exist. Say no. Cancel them. Tell your senior leaders to work out get-well plans and present them to you in batches.

Unexpected Truth: The more you decline tasks and meetings as an owner, the more your teams get done...without you gripping hold of it.

This isn’t about squeezing more into your days. It’s about building a week that actually reflects who you are and what matters.

If your days feel out of control, you don’t need more hours.
You need ownership.

Because until you take back your calendar, you’re not leading a business.
You’re being dragged behind one.

Want to take control of this again? Start your Leadership Reset today.

What AI Found in 9 Years of My Private Journals

Using nine years of journal entries in Google Docs, I exported them as TXT files, uploaded the files to ChatGPT, and asked AI:

“What do you make of these journal entries l I've kept since 2016? What are things I might not realize about myself, or goals that it seems like I want but aren't achieving?”

Some of the observations were gut checks!

I pasted the whole reply below, maintaining AI’s emoji formatting. My reaction is at the bottom.

Some stuff that felt too personal was censored with brackets, as in [you’ll never know what this one said] 😉

ChatGPT’s Initial Assessment

Thank you for sharing your journals. After reviewing entries from 2016 through 2025, I’ve pulled together key patterns and insights—some of which may be things you already know, but others you may not have explicitly noticed or connected.

🔍 1. You Have a Deep Desire for Alignment Between Mission, Work, and Spiritual Calling

Across nearly all the years:

• You regularly express discontent with work that feels misaligned or mediocre (e.g., [Company Name], [Military Position]).

• You crave “your own thing” and a sense of mission. In 2025, that centers around Christian leadership and a personal brand. In 2019, it was eBay/Amazon listings, sales, or real estate.

• You often write things like:

  "How can I be so blessed and feel so lost?"
  "I don’t feel like I’m entirely aligned with the correct mission."

🟨 What you may not fully realize:

You’ve already defined your mission multiple times—what’s missing is consistent long-term commitment to seeing it through.

You write with clarity about wanting to lead, teach, and build—yet return to conventional work out of necessity or lack of traction. There’s an unresolved tension between calling and comfort.

🧱 2. You Are Consistently Building, But Often Shift Tracks

From eBay and car sales in 2019 to the 4x4 Recall brand in 2024–2025, you constantly generate ideas and execute with discipline:

• “Day 100 of publishing short-form content”

• “Sold seven cars this month”

• “Paid off both cars, planning rental investment, publishing daily”

🟨 But:

You often hit the "slog" phase—when initial excitement fades—and either pivot or stall.

You write extensively about the middle of the marathon, yet still sound surprised when the feelings of funk or stagnation arrive (e.g., July 2025).

❤️ 3. You Are Highly Motivated by Relationships and Legacy

You repeatedly express:

• A desire to be a better father to [Daughter’s Name]—even noticing when she doesn’t appear on your practical goal lists

• Passion and tension around romantic relationships (e.g., [Woman’s Name]) with deep emotional and practical consideration

• Gratitude for your wife, kids, and the life you’ve built

🟨 Yet:

You sometimes feel guilty or uncertain about how much to sacrifice your personal mission in the name of those relationships—and vice versa. That creates ambivalence and cycles of burnout.

📉 4. Your Health and Energy Correlate with Clarity and Execution

When you feel in shape, you write about clarity, optimism, and drive. When you fall off track:

• You write things like “I found the bottom” or note feeling “tired, groggy, overweight”

• You admit using food or drink as escapism

• There are moments of re-commitment to diet and discipline, but they tend to be short bursts

🟨 This means:

Your body is a feedback system for your mental and emotional state—and discipline here affects every area of your life.

🎯 5. Your True Goals Are Crystal Clear—and Still Unfulfilled

Across the journals, you repeatedly name the same vision:

• Run your own mission-driven business

• Serve a real community (specifically, men and leaders)

• Generate income through value and wisdom

• Lead from Christian principles

• Achieve financial independence with time and space for family and purpose

🟨 What you might not realize:

You’re already capable of the future you want. The challenge isn’t clarity, talent, or insight—it’s persistent execution through the woods, not around them. You crave freedom, but freedom only comes after prolonged captivity to your mission.

🚩 Potential Blind Spots

1. You often chase structure (school, [military], corporate) when you feel unclear—but structure may be the very thing suffocating your deeper drive.

2. You want mentorship and brotherhood, but rarely talk about specific efforts to find it beyond journaling.

3. You delay revenue creation in your own brand, even when traffic and consistency are improving—this blocks your breakout from corporate dependence.

🧭 Summary: Who You Seem to Be

You’re a deeply intentional man with sharp intellect, emotional range, and spiritual awareness. You have lived many lives—and often try to live them simultaneously. You’re seeking integration of fatherhood, faith, calling, and financial freedom. You’ve made enormous progress—and still often feel like you’re behind.

Would you like a structured plan to align your brand, calling, income, and health over the next 12 months based on these insights?

My Response

First off, heck yeah I asked to see what that 12-month Structured Plan looked like! 😉

After I saw its plan, I asked it to create the outline and first draft of the 12-point Lead Magnet it mentioned in that plan.

And then I asked it to outline and draft a book for me based on these nine years of entries, because why not? 🤷‍♂️

Main Take-Aways

1. Overall, I spent about two hours with ChatGPT on 7-23-2025. The output was this full assessment, a 12-month action plan, an outline and sample drafts of a book idea, and instructions on how to continue on the book work.

   1. It’s almost too easy to just say that: “I spent two hours.” That’s really mind-blowing when you consider it. That is almost six months of deliverables by any standard. I’ve done similar work with companies, teams, and other men looking for perspective…this kind of output does not come in TWO hours.

2. In hindsight, many of the observations are obvious. I often look back on my entries over the years, and I too can see the trends and patterns. In fact, that in itself is my number one reason for journaling (besides the immediate clarity effects).

   1. The real power here is that AI did it in 30 seconds. I mean literally. It took all four files, thousands of rows of text, 9 years of driveling, and pulled out concise trends and actionable items to work on.

3. It comes in HIGH volumes of output.

   1. Even as a guy that considers himself “high-performance,” it’s a lot. It’s easy to see it all and then just want to drink a Diet Coke and take a nap.

   2. My advice here is to pause. Stop work at a certain point. The computer can keep going, but YOU need to digest it and let it assimilate. Go pick two key action items from it all and put them in place!

Follow-Ups

Yesterday, I had already build the new landing page from its prompts, and settled on the new direction of the Personal Brand.

AI delivers a huge amount of output. Pick two and got them done.

Today’s main output focuses:

1. Document, draft all these outputs as posts that I can video from [that’s already done, so this action item is sort of a gimme].

2. Organize the Book Folders per ChatGPTs instructions, and get the outline in place. Type the first 250 words of that.

3. Clarify the Lead Magnet delivery and get that in place. Right now, I’m pretty sure it’s just going to be a blog post, and then I’ll let people opt-in if they want to see the polished version I ended up with from all that work.

Conclusion

This is useful and high-powered. It’s leverage.

I recently listened to Dr. Roman Yampolskiy on The Joe Rogan Experience talk through his view of Super Intelligence / AI destroying humanity within 2-5 years. Honestly, he’s got some STRONG points. I’ve been in technology for 20 years. What we built here, we don’t fully fathom.

Still, AI is extremely useful. I tell my employees now it’s like a tractor. If you told me you plowed your 20 acre field by hand, I would not be impressed. We have tractors.

While we still live, breathe, and make our own decisions. I’m still using this.

For a more optimistic view on the doomsday idea, see Dr. Roman Yampolskiy on Lex Friedman’s podcast. That conversation was much more productive, in my opinion.

Overall, this exercise was useful and I got the clarity that would have previously come from reviewing a few fiscal years with a full board of advisors. I’ll continue to lean into this.

Why I Focus on High-Capacity Christian Men—and Not Everyone Else

Journal Excerpt from 7-23-2025:

Why do I focus on high-capacity Christian men—and not everyone else? That question’s been rattling around in my head for months.

I sat in a Men’s Group this morning, listening to a solid talk—good stories, a well-structured message, a guy who genuinely cares about making stronger men.

But as I took down some notes, I couldn’t shake a thought: most of us settle for the shallow end of Scripture and call it growth. We quote verses like “iron sharpens iron” without ever asking, what does that actually look like in a man’s life?

That’s when it hit me—these men need help, and my work isn’t for everyone.

When I looked around that room, I saw a couple hundred men’s lives being improved. I looked around that room and realized that’s what I’m after. 

I guess I’ve always known that’s what I’m after, but when I started talking about “Strength, Love, and Authenticity” in 2015, which evolved into today’s “Strength, Courage, and Authenticity,” I meant it. And I still mean it.

Ten years later, I can honestly say that those core values are what drive my missions, and what have fueled my success in business and life.

I’ve been talking about leadership, essentially, since it mattered to me.

The brand over the years has shifted from various brand names to a “personal brand,”. Today I’m still talking about the same things, I’m just making it more obviously “Chad Tabary,” as the brand. From that, any various offers can take different names, like Forward Facing Business, Forward Facing Church, or Lead Present.

ALSO, the clarity of narrowing my demographic helped me settle on one offer. That was the most useful part of the ChatGPT exercise yesterday. I already knew I needed just one offer, but processing 9 years of journal data through ChatGPT helped me align on: 

“I help high-capacity Christian men regain clarity, strength, and conviction without burning their business to the ground.”

That’s accurate. The only significant change in that mission over the last year has been to clarify that I’m helping “Christian” men. 

But why “Christian Men”? Doesn’t God help anyone and everyone? Isn’t the calling of a Christian Man to go out and make disciples and onboard more Christian Men?

Honestly, the qualifier shouldn’t be over analyzed.

My business clients run businesses that are between $1M - $6M and they want to grow between $10M - $12.

Does that mean I won’t help a business making $250K - $500K that wants to grow to $5M? No. This is the same problem modern readers have when they get caught up in the book of Leviticus.

Focusing my marketing on “Christian Men” helps clarify where I’m coming from and what kind of “guide” I am.

Generally speaking, I’m helping high-performance men, I’ve always known that, and I’m doing it from core principles first, and within the discipline-framework of Christianity.

To support that mission, I’m focusing on long-form content, running PPC ads, and probably won’t see a strong return to short-form until I hire someone to sift through the long and break this into shorts.

This gives me five more months in the year (almost two quarters) to double down on that pivot and to build the foundational pieces of that brand and business.

I love you.