Time to produce. I cannot wait to get back with my tribe of brothers tonight to record a couple of podcast episodes. It has been three weeks, and I miss their dumb jokes and the way they keep me locked in on what I am actually supposed to be doing. Because here is a thing I have learned about myself. I am only really happy when I am growing. When I am learning, when I am reaching beyond myself, when I am building something.
This Was Never a Business Venture
I have been pouring into this podcast and other programs for men for the last five or six months, and I have not made a single dollar from it. This is not a business venture. This is me trying to forget myself and go to work lifting, encouraging, and hopefully inspiring the people within my reach. There is a particular kind of fuel that only shows up when you are giving something away with no invoice attached to it.
The Message That Called Me a Fraud
I got some brutal feedback recently, a message calling me a fraud and saying everything I do is completely phony. Super hateful stuff. So let me be clear about something, both for whoever sent it and for you. Just because I am public about trying to help my fellow human beings does not mean I am claiming to have it all figured out for myself. I do not. I am a flawed man with a long list of my own struggles, and I have never pretended otherwise.
The only things I have of real value are a drive to improve my own life, a desire to inspire people, and enough compassion to actually feel where they are coming from. That is it. That is the whole resume. So going forward, I want to share more openly about my own life, the things that have genuinely been hard for me, because the polished version helps no one. The highlight reel never healed a single man.
But for right now, I am setting all of that down for a couple of hours. I am getting around my brothers, and I am going to do some good in the world. That is where the growth is. And it turns out, that is exactly where the happiness is too.