“You’re like, some kind of internet celebrity…”
My wife, Marissa, said this to me a year or so ago. At first, I didn’t really get it. Over the last few years, I’ve become more and more consistent with posts of our clients doing particularly awesome things around the studio. Then you compound that with this blog, the podcast and pictures of family, etc. It all adds up in terms of how much content is out there on the Internet and on social media.
And when you’re in the middle of it, as I am, you tend to have blinders on. I’ve honestly lost sight, in many ways, of the general impact all of this content can have.
At its core, it’s always been about promoting the hard work of those lives I get to be a part of nearly every day of every week. It’s about sharing those experiences with others and trying my best to educate myself through people far smarter than I am and bringing more of that wisdom into the world.
This, in turn, brings a lot of attention to the business. So much so, that I routinely have people ask me how it all came about and how I can even keep up with it. My answer: It’s mostly accidental and I do it because I enjoy putting good things out there.
But, what gives me the right? I mean, who the hell am I to be an authority on anything?
I’m the guy who’s a sexual abuse survivor, a recovering addict, a former drug dealer, a guy who rehab didn’t work for, a guy with one failed marriage and one good one, a guy with a past as dark and misguided as anything you might imagine.
Why in the hell should you listen to anything I’ve got to say?
I am nothing, I am no one.
At least, that was how I felt about most of my life. And it, in turn, led to a lot of bad decisions along the way.
When I watch my clients, those struggling to put the pieces together: to stop harming themselves and their bodies through neglect or self-medicating with pharmaceuticals or foods they’ve lost control over, I see people who can’t stop giving up on themselves. They keep asking, in not so subtle ways, “Who am I to be healthier, or to feel happiness, or to have the body I want?”
I’ve always been “fat”,”bullied”,”unloved”,”unattractive”,”mistreated”, etc.
“Why should I deserve to be successful at anything?”
I think it’s because even if your story does not mirror mine, we all have these stories we tell ourselves that shape the decisions we make. At any point in my life where I felt like a failure (and they’ve been numerous), if I didn’t find a way to break the cycle, I would continue to fail. That narrative would manifest itself into something uglier and more realistic all the time.
And that little voice would pick and probe at me: “You don’t deserve success. You don’t deserve happiness.”
While my own relative hardheadedness has bitten me in the ass routinely, this is one place where I finally had to tell that voice: “You’re wrong.”
And craft a new narrative.
Something that has an ending better suited for my dreams and my goals.
If you’re not currently succeeding with your goals, ask yourself what stories you allow your mind to tell.
Ask yourself why those are the words you replay over and over again in your head.
Ask yourself why you keep conversation with people who don’t help pull you out of that rut.
Because, at a certain point, no one else is going to do the work it takes for you to succeed.
That’s on you.
And the beauty of that, is that it puts you behind the wheel.
Rather than trying to find ways to convince yourself that you don’t amount to much so you don’t deserve to succeed, tell a different story.
Remind yourself that you are someone, you are something.
More often than not, you are everything to someone: a spouse, a child, a friend.
Change your story. Change your outcome.
“We Make Great People Greater”
