What's Good: Review of Yamashiro, Design District Growing Up, & This Weeks Dumb Ideas.
Plus Miami's James Beard Nominees, Fort Lauderdale Members Club & Real Estate Steal On La Gorce.
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On My Mind: Suffering is Optional
There’s a line Tony Robbins dropped on a recent podcast that’s been rattling around my head all week: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. At first it sounds like classic self-help optimism, but sit with it for a second and you will realize its way deeper. It harkens back to my favorite Viktor Frankl quote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Pain is the tiny apartment where your winter coat lives on the chair because it never really dries. Suffering is deciding that’s just “how it is” and staying there year after year. Anyone who’s done time up north knows the scene. It’s February. The snow is gray. You’re walking from your shoebox apartment to the subway, head down, shoulders tight, convincing yourself this misery is somehow noble, “if you can make it here you can make it anywhere.” That one day it’ll “pay off.” Meanwhile, there’s another version of life—sun, ocean, energy, movement, where the work is just as hard, but the baseline joy is infinitely higher. Same pain. Totally different suffering.
Miami gets misunderstood because people think choosing warmth, beauty, and ease is somehow lazy. But reframing your environment isn’t avoidance, it’s intelligence. Challenges don’t disappear here. You still grind. You still build. You still lose and learn. The difference is you’re not stacking unnecessary misery on top of it. You’re not romanticizing suffering like it’s a badge of honor.
So yeah, pain is part of the deal. Always has been. But suffering? That’s negotiable. Sometimes the most radical growth move isn’t pushing harder, it’s choosing a life that doesn’t require you to be miserable just to feel “serious.”
Once you see that clearly, it’s hard to justify staying stuck in the cold.
Beach Business
The Design District Is Growing Up
Architect David Chipperfield is designing a 26-story residential tower.
Members Club…but make it Fort Lauderdale?
h.wood Group to open a members club + restaurant in Viceroy Fort Lauderdale
This Week in Dumb Ideas: Frida Kahlo Branded Condos in Wynwood
44-unit condo / 206-office-suite hybrid where studios start at $500,000
Hospitality: Local Insider
Dining Notes: Yamashiro Miami
A close friend went. And loved it. So I went to investigate.
Quick Hits: Miami James Beard Nominees, New Best Restaurant in Town?
Whispers of a new king & queen of the city’s dining scene are getting louder.
Real Estate: Luxe Listings We Love
Gem on La Gorce: 233 Days on the Market, Steal this House
Outdoor sunken living room, heated salt water pool, and no income tax. Could life be better?
BEACH BUSINESS
The Design District Is Growing Up
For years, Miami’s Design District has been a place you visit, to shop, to gallery-hop, to stare at architecture like it’s art (because it is). Now, for the first time ever, it’s becoming a place you can actually live. And like everything else it does, it is being done with style.
Pritzker Prize–winning architect David Chipperfield is designing a 26-story residential tower at 39 NE 39th Street, officially marking the Design District’s first-ever residential development. Casual flex: this is also Chipperfield’s only active project in Florida. No pressure.
