The End

Are you ready at any given moment to fully live--or give up your life?

Special issue

Note: Please keep in your prayers the humanitarian crises around the world, especially Iran and Venezuela, Gaza and Ukraine, as well as the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti (killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis).

---

When you find out you have cancer, at least in my experience, you run.

You run to whatever you think may hold you. And if you have nothing like that, well, that would be super scary.

On January 8th, I flew to Istanbul, Turkey from my place in La Fustera, Spain. Actually first I drove 90 minutes to Valencia to spend the night at the house of some great friends. Once I got there I received a text: your flight is cancelled. I also almost cancelled.

I’m a performance coach, I teach professional athletes and leaders how to perform better than they’ve ever performed, and most importantly, how to live meaningful, fulfilling lives with amazing experiences and deep, enriching relationships.

I’m always looking to learn and grow in every way—for myself and all of you in our Inner Excellence community. Memorial Hospital in Istanbul has the most comprehensive health check-up I’ve ever seen, at a price far less than in America. Of course I had to see for myself. (Speaking of, you have to check out Project Wellbeing in Las Vegas—the best sport science training center I’ve ever experienced).

So Dorian, the personal translator they provided, took me from doctor to doctor: caridologist, dentist, dermatologist, endocrinologist, etc. for 15 hours over two days. MRI’s, ultrasound, stress test, blood test, colonoscopy 😳, endoscopy, x-rays…

It was only going to be maybe 8-10 hours, but then I realized I hadn’t had a colonoscopy in seven years and also have had some esophagus issues (constriction after eating); so a trip to see the Hagia Sofia with a side-trip checkup turned into 15 hours over two days and zero magnificent mosques or churches. Thus, I found myself in a huge, loud, whirring machine with a brace around my head, clamped down just over my nose for 25 minutes in Istanbul.

As a performance coach, I want to be the best in the world. It’s an exciting pursuit. In some ways, it was easy to start: Find out who performs the best in the world and study them. And after a year or two of research (perhaps in the desert) you’ll find that to be your best in any sport, performance, or endeavor, requires understanding human optimization—training the entire person: heart, mind, and body.

And then you’ll learn that the key training is training the heart. Your spirit. Your will—where your greatest hopes and biggest fears reside. And that training is the most important thing you’ll ever do—training your heart to love most what’s most empowering.

Last week a wonderful article in Golf Digest’s February issue came out about Inner Excellence. Here’s the editor discussing our round of golf at Winged Foot (you need to buy the magazine or be a subscriber to read the actual article).

Golf Digest February 2026

Here’s an excerpt from the Golf Digest article “You Gotta Talk To Jim.”

Golf instructor Michael Breed (host of A New Breed of Golf on Sirius XM PGA Tour Radio) read the article and immediately texted Max Adler (the editor) and said “I gotta talk to Jim,” which interestingly, is the name of the article. Michael and I had a wonderful chat on his show about excellence and living the best possible life, which has one foot in joy, and one foot in suffering—which brings me back to Istanbul.

During one of the many ultrasound exams, they found a 3cm nodule on my thyroid (I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s hypothyroid years ago) and did a biopsy. Actually they ended up doing three biopsies; the other two were from the endoscopy/colonoscopies (no news yet).

The phone call

At 8am, Monday Jan. 20th I had a video call with the doctor in Istanbul (with my amazing assistant Ryan) to hear the biopsy results. Essentially, in my mind anyway, biopsy results are binary. You either have cancer or you don’t. I looked in the mirror in front of me as I sat in my hotel room in Manhattan. The phone rang. Ok, here we go…

The doctor smiled, asked how I was doing, I said, “Good.” He said he has the results of the biopsy. I said, “Cool.” He said:

The biopsy is malignant. Papillary thyroid carcinoma.

I stared at him for a moment. I said, “That’s cancer, correct?” He said yes. The rest of the call was a bit of a blur, but he said they would need to remove my entire thyroid in the next few weeks followed by radioactive iodine treatment afterwards (where they isolate me for 48 hours).

I hung up the phone and stared at the face in the mirror. It was a moment, just God and me. A surreal moment. In these moments we find out who we’ve become and what we’ve worshipped.

I thought of telling my nieces and nephews. But as I found out the long-term survival rate (98%), I slowly started to realize… my dream is to make a difference in the lives of people around the world. And for the kind of difference I want to make, I need much more God and much less Jim. I need training. Most of my life has been basically, “What’s in it for me?” Of course I try not to be that way, but it’s the default human nature. So… training it is.

January 12 (J12)

Then I thought back on 2025. The most extraordinary year of my life. It started with mom on her death bed, business and life slow and somber, and not enough cash in my checking account to pay my credit card bills for the first time in years. Then on January 12, wandering around downtown Dallas by myself, the question arose:

Jim, would you rather own that skyscraper straight up, no debt, and have whatever hundreds of millions of dollars it’s worth, or… would you rather have written the book The Best Possible Life: How to Live WIth Deep Contentment, Joy, and Confidence—No Matter What?

(Note: Best Possible Life gets re-released March 31, 2026.)

I thought, “Nope, I wouldn’t trade it for the skyscraper.” What I learned writing that book, let alone what it’s going to do for people’s lives… I wouldn’t trade it for hundreds of millions of dollars. I thought, “Well, that’s pretty cool. At least you got that.”

A few hours later… my life changed.

AJ Brown

A camera filmed AJ Brown reading Inner Excellence on the sidelines—during the Wildcard playoff game. The book had sold 10 copies the first 11 days of January, then sold 100k that week, 200k in three weeks, and 500k for the year. It became a New York Times #1 bestseller (which I had an affirmation of on my phone for years). I signed with United Talent Agency, received a three-book deal with Hachette Book Group, met extraordinary people, did 300+ interviews…

The most amazing part of 2025? Knowing that God is with me, that he chose me (me!) to share his message of love, wisdom, and courage. That I was part of his plans. Everything else was a distant second.

When you feel the God of the universe chose you to do great things, well, there’s no greater feeling in the universe.

One thing that was so helpful to me this year was learning that it’s ALL training for me. My whole life. God is training me for eternity, and he’s using this life to do it. You know, I wish the training came in a PDF with a latte. That would be ideal.

But, we need the hard times to become strong, less self-reliant, more open, vulnerable yet powerful… I need to surrender my little strength in order to connect to the awe and wonder of the universe. So many times this year, when things were difficult, God would show me that he’s training me. And often he could have let things unfold easily and without a hitch, but he put the hitch in there to teach me to rely on him, not myself.

It’s extraordinary to realize God is training you—for the big plans he has for you. It’s what I wish for you. That you will remember in the tough times in your life, that God is training you.

The Jacket That’s Two Sizes Too Big

The times when you have no idea why something is happening, remember this from my spiritual mentor, Nick Osborne (Tofino, BC):

Sometimes in life God gives you what feels like a jacket that’s two sizes too big. You look at your life circumstances and are really uncomfortable, and things don’t seem right. Well, many times it’s because God gave that two-sizes-too-big-jacket-of-a-circumstance so you would stop trying to use your own strength, so you would learn to love him for who he is, not what he can get you.

But then, as soon as you grow into this jacket and get comfortable with it, the next jacket is two sizes too big as well!

My number one goal every day is to learn and grow, and I need discomfort for that to happen. Like a butterfly struggling to break out of it’s cocoon, I need challenges to become who I can become.

Tampa Bay, Florida

My friend Kelly and I fly to Tampa today, Feb. 2. Tomorrow, Feb. 3, God-willing, I’ll have an ultrasound on my thyroid, followed by surgery (if needed) to remove anything unnecessary in my throat. God did so many miracles last year I’ve lost count, but another one is getting sorted at Clayman Thyroid Surgery Center in Tampa, FL. Kelly (Mahoney, co-founder/partner at Hillpointe Real Estate who had a recent Inner Excellence retreat for his leadership team), organized the entire thing (so grateful!).

I believe that it will go perfectly and that I’ll be completely healed afterwards. But of course many things are possible: I could not wake up, or find out that cancer has spread and I will die soon. But that’s small potatoes.

The truth is, you’re going to die as well as me, and it may be much sooner than you think. But will you fully live? THAT is the far bigger question.

Love Jim

PS

The next Inner Excellence YWAM Homes of Hope retreat is April 9-13 in Ensenada, Mexico. Check out the ​Inner Excellence Freedom Project website​ for more information. Likely it will change your life.

YWAM (Youth With a Mission) is a non-profit organization that has a ​Homes of Hope division​ where they/we build a house for a family start to finish in two days. ​Watch a video of last November’s build here​. This is the only chance for the public to do an Inner Excellence retreat (you get both the full Inner Excellence retreat and YWAM house build) until November 2027. The spots fill fast so don’t hesitate (20 people is the cap). It’s possible we’ll build two houses (if there’s 40 of us) but that’s TBD.

Instagram ​@innerexcellencejimmurphy​

LinkedIn ​@innerexcellence​

TikTok ​@innerexcellencejimmurphy​

Facebook ​@innerexcellence​

X ​@innerexcellence​