Self-help

A Drop in an Ocean

/ nicholasjinfante / Leave a comment

Have you ever been getting your shit together and making consistent progress in the key areas of life you know you need to be doing better in, but then hit a bump in the road, have a setback, or start repeating old self-sabotaging behaviors and think to yourself, “Why am I like this? What in the actual fuck is wrong with me?”

As someone who’s changed a lot in (mostly) beneficial ways over the past decade, I can tell you that it happens to me pretty frequently. I haven’t had much time to sit down and write lately, so I want to take this opportunity to talk a bit about the darkside of self-improvement. You know… the hard parts. The I-feel-like-shit-even-though-I’m-doing-everything-”right” parts. The parts that most social media influencers don’t talk about because it doesn’t get enough likes or because they’re out of touch with reality. 

I want to reiterate that something I still believe is an absolute truth is that your life cannot be better spent on anything other than becoming the best version of yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be loaded with money, it doesn’t mean you have to have a six pack and fuck like a porn star, and it damn sure doesn’t mean you have to pretend like you’re having the best time of your life at Disney World with your spouse and three kids on Instagram… the bags under your eyes are telling a different story, Becca. 

It doesn’t mean any of those things. It just means that you should strive to become the best version of you – whatever that means to you. Forget the conventional and societal constructs of what you “ShOuLd dO.” Sit down and ask yourself honestly, “what does a life that I would love to have look like and what do I [realistically] have to do to get it?” Then do those things… and don’t expect it to be easy. 

Now that we’ve covered the process in a nutshell, the rest is mainly execution. This is where you realize you’ve got a dream and a goal in mind, but you don’t actually know jack shit about how to attain it. If you like learning, you’re in luck because that’s what you need to do a lot of. Especially in the beginning. Start bridging the gap between the lack of skills and knowledge you currently have and the level of skills and knowledge you need to attain your goal as soon as possible. 

If you don’t like learning, well… this is all about changing yourself for the better. So start there. You need to think, act, and behave like the person deserving of the life you want. Don’t get caught up in the information gathering stage and start overthinking everything, but do gather information and think about it. (Everything in moderation, they say).

Embrace the journey and the process of growing into a new, better version of yourself and start taking action towards that end immediately. Putting off until tomorrow what you could be doing today is stacking the odds against you. It’s putting the start of a new, better life on hold. It’s pushing what you want further and further off into the distance and therefore, perpetually out of reach. 

See, evolution is not just something we undergo biologically over large periods of time as a species. The process of evolution is also available to each of us as individuals. The evolution of character. The evolution of spirit. The evolution of identity. The caveat is that Nature is unending and so that form of evolution will never cease to exist, whereas our personal evolution is limited by our impermanence.

The second you’re born, the clock starts ticking and we don’t know how much time we actually have. I really can’t stress enough that it’s never too late to get started, but the sooner you do get started, the sooner you will be able to experience the empowerment that comes from owning your full potential. Fortune favors the bold and results favor those who take action.

Once you’re solidly on the path of personal development, you will see how fast you can truly accelerate your life. The rewards you get from challenging yourself, overcoming obstacles, and actualizing your dreams will reinforce and invigorate you to never stop trying to improve. After all, if we are in control of choosing what meaning we bestow on our own lives, what could be a more worthy pursuit?

Again, it’s really important to subjectively decide what the best version of you looks like in your own mind because that will heavily dictate where you focus your time and energy. If you break yourself trying to fit the mold of someone else’s dream or someone else’s best version of you, you will still feel empty inside even if you succeed. Do it for you. 

Imagine if you can make the never-ending pursuit of your own personal excellence your main objective and then apply that motivation daily over the course of your remaining life. Is that 60+ years? 50+? 40+? Most people reading this still have a lot of time on the clock. Most people also know what things they should be doing (that they currently aren’t) in order to move themselves in the direction they want to go… if they’re being honest with themselves.

The problem is that few people have the level of patience required to operationalize that knowledge. In the age of TikTok, dating apps, and instacart, humans and chipmunks are competing for the shortest attention span in the animal kingdom. Luckily, patience is a skill that you can acquire and strengthen over time… and you’re really going to need it.

The type of progress we’re after when we start to prioritize our personal growth must be measured in years and decades, not weeks and months. We live in a world that thrives on instant gratification nowadays, but it is a trap. Play the long game, always. 

As cliche as it sounds, getting started really is the hard part. Once you build a little confidence in your ability to work through problems and find the next piece of the puzzle, it starts to feel a bit more like a game you want to keep playing. For better or worse, people really are just over complicated monkeys. The positive reinforcement you gain from overcoming challenges will encourage you to keep seeking new challenges and the continual progress you make each step of the way will stack up over time and can quickly reach mind blowing proportions. Never underestimate the value of momentum in your life.

My personal introduction to all of this began about five years ago in the winter of 2018. By July of 2019, I really started to take a more introspective approach to bettering myself and trying to change my life. I was about seven months into building my current business and had just returned from backpacking around Europe for a month on a solo adventure. I met tons of cool people from all over the world, saw a lot of cool shit, and had to deal with some not so cool shit. I even learned a bit of Spanish and German. 

I also got really fucked up. A lot. 

Having partied in NYC, Las Vegas, and Miami before, I really didn’t expect to be impressed by the party scenes in Madrid, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris, but I was wrong. Europeans are fucking nuts…. but I digress. Something interesting occurred on this trip that would create an ever expanding ripple effect across all areas of my life. I had left home simply excited to see things I had never seen before, but it actually turned out to be the blazing glory ending of a difficult chapter of my life. 

When I returned home, nothing felt the same. I hit the local bars in my neighborhood in NYC I used to bounce at and tried resuming my usual routine and habits… but I realized I wasn’t actually enjoying myself. I wasn’t having fun anymore. I started wondering if I ever had been in the first place.

This startling realization made me confront a whole host of internal issues I had been suppressing for many years. My identity as the no-fucks-given party boy was shattered and replaced by the clearer image of a 25-year-old manchild with no direction living with his mom and drinking heavily to distract himself from uncomfortable truths. I wasn’t drinking because I was having a good time, I was drinking because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. 

It was then that I decided to try something different. Something radical. Something terrifying. I decided to try living life sober. 

If you’ve never dealt with addiction or breaking a cycle of unhealthy habits before, let’s just say that it is not a small mountain to climb. Life is hard for everyone and we all develop our own ways of coping with the hardship of that. Some ways are better than others – drugs and alcohol are an objectively bad way.

To be fully transparent, I got drunk and smoked weed for the first time when I was 13 years old. By the time I was 14, I had tried cocaine and things quickly went off the rails from there. I stopped going to school, I started getting into fights fairly often, and I started selling drugs so that I could do them as much as possible without going broke.

As I descended deeper into the cycle of addiction, I experimented with other drugs and became increasingly dependent on cocaine and alcohol just to function in my everyday life. “Only on the weekends” became a daily habit and my ability to feel good without the use of mind-altering substances was more or less nonexistent by the time I was 17 years old.

I really haven’t spoken much about this phase of my life and the toll it took on my physical, mental, and emotional health… but this behavior lasted in some capacity until I was 25. I’ve since made peace with all of my mistakes and have been working on accepting the parts of me I had tried to suppress with drugs and alcohol for so long. I realize now that what had felt rebellious and cool at the time was really a teenager’s desperate attempt to self-medicate his depression and anxiety because he was too embarrassed and ashamed to ask for help.

Once you’re dependent on drugs and alcohol to function, taking them away feels like a kind of identity suicide. As an addict, giving up these substances is essentially giving up your invisibility cloak. It’s like walking out from cover straight into the gunfire of life. Bullets start to hit you and you have no way of numbing the pain anymore. You start to feel everything fully again and at first it seems almost unbearable. You start to remember why you were hiding and running from it in the first place. 

But then a funny thing happens – you realize the hundredth bullet doesn’t hurt as much as the first few. If you can maintain your sobriety through the worst of it, you eventually become desensitized to the pain and rise above it. You develop a new set of coping skills that are constructive and propel you forward rather than returning to the destructive habits that had been keeping you stuck in a vicious cycle of self-pity and desperation. You cultivate a special kind of resiliency that makes you dangerously powerful and you start to reach acceptance and find peace with yourself and your life. It is a slow and grueling process, but also incredibly rewarding. 


Sometimes your perceived weaknesses are also your superpower in disguise. I’ve thought a lot about this recently when considering how to deliver the message within this blog entry, and here’s what I realized: I’m still the same person who was addicted to cocaine and vodka nine years ago. I’m still very much an addict right now. The difference is, I’m not getting high off of drugs anymore – I’m getting high off of my own progress. Sure, I don’t always feel like waking up and tackling a huge to-do list in the morning and I might feel really overwhelmed in my day-to-day reality on occasion, but when I break through a plateau – when I figure out how to ascend to the next level – I experience the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life. In other words, I didn’t overcome my addiction, I channeled it into something useful instead.

I don’t let it show, but some days are nothing short of a battle. Showing up for myself and the people who rely on me to perform at a high level every single day isn’t as automatic as a Steph Curry three pointer. Sometimes I just feel mentally exhausted and depleted, but I find a way to push through it because I know that what I want from life demands it. I am constantly trying to choose behaviors that are going to move me closer to my dreams and my ultimate goals. It’s far from a linear process – some days are downright dog shit. Sometimes a slump lasts weeks or months. But I still give it my best, and sometimes my best is just staying sober that day, and that’s perfectly fine.

I fully recognize that the separation between achieving my dreams and not achieving them may solely reside in whether I can handle the pain, the setbacks, and the failures of life without self-imploding or quitting on myself. Do I feel certain that I will always find a way forward even if I come up short? When I look in the mirror, do I see somebody that I can count on to do the right thing? These are the questions you need to ask yourself. The external results you want in your life are going to emerge from the relationship you cultivate within yourself, not the million other factors you have no control over.

When shit gets hard, I ask myself what the 85-year-old me would be proud to say I did in this moment – then I do that. I think the worst thing in life would be reaching the end of it and realizing you didn’t leave it all on the field. That you could have done a lot of things better and wish you had. To feel regret for the choices you made and realize you have no time left. I envision what I can do with 56 more years of focus and hard work from the present moment. Those thoughts help me minimize my current problems and align my present day self with my long-term goals. I’m not going to lie, it energizes the fuck out of me. 

Because here’s the thing… We all have shit that we go through. A single mom with 2 kids who wants to start a business, someone who is readjusting to life after a physically and emotionally abusive relationship, someone with a chronic injury or illness who wants to get in shape – we all have shit we have to deal with and contend with. We all have reasons why we can’t or why it’s so much easier for someone else to do it. Some of these things might be worse than others and many are completely legitimate factually speaking, but here’s another secret… it doesn’t fucking matter. 

The cards you have in your hand are the cards you have to play with. Period. You can cry about your cards and tell everybody else at the table that your cards aren’t fair, but it won’t change them. Which means you essentially only have two options. Option 1) Try to figure out how to win despite your shitty hand or Option 2) You can fold. That’s the game of life. (Tough, I know). I hope you choose the first of those two options, but that is a decision we all have to make as individuals. 

There is a particular mentality and perspective I use to help me stay mostly in this frame of mind in my own personal life. It’s far from perfect and I have to really make a concerted effort to keep it at the forefront of my thoughts, but it is more or less a subconscious belief now that permeates my behaviors. This is not to say that this is how you should think about life or that this is the “right” way to think. This is just what I use to help me get outside of my own head and move the ball forward in the direction of what I want most daily. It is, in my opinion, the biggest reason for my ability to generate results that others struggle to obtain. 

Most of us convince ourselves that the struggles and adversities we face are unique to us. They may feel unique to us because we live in a small town or because we don’t personally know anybody else going through it, but the chances of us encountering a really unique issue that no one else has experienced is pretty much zero. The idea that your problems are unique to you only serves to create a perception that there may be no solutions to them. As you might have guessed, this is wholly unhelpful to making beneficial improvements in your life. You cannot outperform what you think is possible. You must internalize the idea that you can do it, have it, and be it before you can actually experience it in real life. It’s the basic idea behind manifesting, which is why that practice actually has legitimate utility (even if it is a little woo woo). 

It helps to realize that the world is a crazy and chaotic place full of people just as fucked up and confused as you are. As I write this, a new conflict has recently reignited in the Middle East and we have been reminded of the cruelty and inhumanity that exists and has always existed. You can choose to submerge yourself into it… keeping track of every headline… every disaster… every evil deed… you can force yourself to try to reason with the unreasonable… you can force yourself to have an opinion about everything… you can try to figure out the right things to say to appease others… you can drive yourself absolutely mad….

Or you can “zoom out.” 

I won’t say I do this every single day because that would be a lie, but I do this most mornings before I start my day. I do several minutes of breathwork and meditation where I just focus on being present in the moment. I listen to the sounds around me, I focus on how my body feels, and I try to silence my mind. As I focus on my breath I visualize myself sitting in my bedroom at the end of my bed. I put my hands together in my lap, cradling the back of my right hand in the palm of my left and touching my thumbs together. I then begin the process of “zooming out” by imagining that I’m rising above myself and above my apartment building and over the entire city of Charlotte. I go further and see the state of North Carolina, then the entirety of the United States… then North America… then the whole earth. 

At this point, I begin to speed things up. The planets in our solar system and the sun whiz by. Everything starts blurring together. The Earth where I began my journey becomes imperceptible and the stars and vastness of space stretch infinitely into darkness. The reality of my reality starts to reveal itself. I see and recognize the truth in all of it. I realize that I am just a microscopic dot in the universe. 

All human beings collectively at once on this space rock floating through the abyss are nothing more than a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. We are merely a drop in an ocean. Maybe this thought gives you anxiety at first, but I hope you really ruminate on it and allow it to give you strength. You can choose to be anything in this life. Choose to be free. Free from judgment (from yourself and others), free from expectation, and most of all free from the torment you put yourself through when you allow the outside world to dictate who and what you think you should be. 

Some may view this as a reason to feel that nothing matters and so then why bother trying, but I would argue to the contrary. If nothing matters anyway, why play it safe? Why try to limit yourself and the size of your dreams? Why not find a reason to attempt the most audacious thing you can think of? Why not try to live the most exceptional life that you are capable of? That makes a lot more sense to me than just sitting on my ass waiting to die. Regardless of whether or not our lives mean anything in the big picture or whether the constructs we create in our minds hold any true value, how we feel is real. To be happy or to be void of happiness is a real condition.

The reality is that you and every single person alive right now to form an opinion of you and whatever you do or don’t do with your temporary time on this planet will be dead 150 years from now. In three generations, the most influential people of our time will have been forgotten except for honorable mentions in history classes. So unless you’re Elon Musk, you’re probably not getting much airtime after you expire. What’s actually holding you back from taking risks and going for it isn’t any logical reason, it’s simply fear. It is a figment of your imagination. After all, this human experience is really only good for one thing… chasing whatever gives it the most meaning and purpose while we have it.

If you can tune out the noise and the distractions of the external world around you and focus on what is actually important, it is unlikely that you will fail in the long run. Zoom out and find true perspective. Consider what you really are and what you are a part of. The substance that comprises the vastness of the universe is alive within you. The fact that you are alive right now is almost unbelievable, from both a mathematical and critical thinking point of view. Life is truly a gift and you are capable of great things because you were given the opportunity to pursue them.

Find a way to think and act from a place of love despite the hate and vitriol that exists around you. Do the best you can each day no matter what that looks like. Do the greatest amount of good that you can with the limited amount of time you have left. Try to live each day without taking it for granted. Remember that it is a waste of time to be outraged, especially if you aren’t helping to make a difference. It is an even greater disservice to the world to allow yourself to be paralyzed by fear when you know that the full potential of your life requires action. 

First zoom out… then look inward.

Finding Fulfillment

/ nicholasjinfante / Leave a comment

I just returned home from an eventful two weeks in NYC. I ate too much food at many great restaurants, saw a broadway show, got trapped in the most toxic air mass recorded in over half a century, and was able to spend some much needed time with friends and family I don’t get to see often. I visited my old neighborhood, embraced being a tourist in my former home, dodged some freakishly large rats, was accosted on at least three separate occasions, and nearly shit my pants once because trying to find a public restroom in New York City is akin to trying to find the fountain of youth. I also went to a Yankee game, but we’re not going to talk about them until they get their fucking act together. 

Anyway… while I was hanging out with one of my best friends one day in the city, we ended up having a bit of a heart to heart. The subject matter touched on something I’ve spoken about before, but I feel it is such a prevalent issue and there can never be too much said about its importance. I am drawing on memory several weeks old (and I may or may not have taken a hit of a joint before this conversation occurred), but we were speaking about how great it feels to watch other people succeed and find happiness in their lives, and then he said something along the lines of, “But it can be really hard sometimes because I haven’t found my thing / I don’t know what it is.” 

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that this person is one of the most intelligent people I know. He has overcome so much in his life already to be where he is today. He has a good job and he’s living with his fiance in a great part of Manhattan and they’re both under 30 – he’s objectively killing it right now. I have seen this person demonstrate his determination and discipline in the form of grueling physical activity that most Americans wouldn’t even want to attempt, let alone be able to execute. I doubt he’s aware of this, but I truly admire his ability to dedicate himself completely to something and not stop until he’s accomplished it. And yet, deep down, he feels that there is something missing – he feels unfulfilled.

We spoke of the importance of trying new things and he mentioned that his job offers him an ideal work/life balance. He also conceded that he should be trying new things more often, but he appreciates his downtime and never actually gets around to it. I think I have to make a concession myself here – up until now I have felt strongly that everyone should seek meaningful work in their life. I felt that it was absolutely necessary for human fulfillment. Although I still believe that this form of finding fulfillment is under the most direct control of the individual, my stance has recently changed in that it is not necessary to experience fulfillment through work, granted that you can find it from some other means.

I just finished reading Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and in this book he states that there are indeed three different ways a human being can derive meaning from their existence. They are: (1) By creating a work or accomplishing some task, (2) By experiencing something fully or loving somebody (aw), and (3) By the attitude that one adopts toward unavoidable suffering (the keyword here being unavoidable). I find myself fully accepting this theory. I still believe that human beings by design are created to solve problems, help each other, and contribute to the greater good and should therefore find their unique way of accomplishing these things through meaningful work. BUT, I also recognize that this is not realistic for everyone and therefore it would only stand to reason that there are other ways of meeting this human need.

Aside from meaningful work, the next option you have for finding fulfillment in your life is through experiencing love. When someone finds meaning in their life through loving someone else, I think it is more often a child rather than a spouse or partner. I’m sure some people have found a way to happily live their lives for their significant other, but I personally find that to be a recipe for disaster because most relationships based on a high level of codependency tend to be pretty…. troublesome. However, although I have no plans for children of my own, I can (and have) seen how bringing a human life into this world can absolutely alter the essence of one’s own existence. Those who take responsibility for their children and rise to the occasion to help them learn and grow and thrive in this challenging world suddenly find their own well-being coming in second place, behind that of their child’s. It becomes their mission to protect and provide. In this way, they are given a purpose to live for. 

The third way… by the attitude that one adopts toward unavoidable suffering – I believe means the way someone can interpret a meaning in their pain. It is difficult to speculate what might go through the mind of someone who has been given a terminal diagnosis, someone who has lost a loved one in a car accident, or someone who has been wrongfully convicted of a crime – but these are instances of unavoidable suffering. Should your suffering be avoidable, you should do everything in your power to alleviate yourself of it. But when the source of your suffering is unavoidable, it becomes an opportunity to find meaning in that pain. Probably the best and most recent personal experience I can draw upon is having spent the worst months of the pandemic in the epicenter of the world. Though the various sorts of suffering experienced were unavoidable, I developed a greater sense of empathy, compassion, gratitude and genuine appreciation for life itself because of it. I found meaning in that suffering. 

As it relates to my friend, I think having found an occupation that provides him an agreeable way of life financially and creates a desired work/life balance is excellent. Many people would do anything to have that, but it still doesn’t fill the uniquely human need we all have – the need for fulfillment. Perhaps his need for fulfillment can be quenched by something else he can pursue as a hobby… or maybe he is simply going to wait until he has children and find a greater meaning to his life that way. All I can say is that when one is unsure of their purpose and is searching for meaning, it is incumbent on that person to continuously seek out new experiences and to stay patient. To have found so much meaning early on in my life through my work is somewhat paradoxical because the most unfortunate event of my life turned out to also be the most fortunate. A “blessing in disguise,” if you will. Without having understood the mission that I was being called to during the depths of the lockdowns in NYC, I very well may have lost my mind. I leaned into my work and the value I was creating for others in their time of need became more important to me than my own struggles. That gave me purpose. 

That being said, I don’t expect everyone to take a philosophical stance to life and pull a highly rewarding job out of their ass like a cruise line magician. But I do expect people to be reasonable. And a reasonable stance to take is to understand that you do not have to be sure of the meaning of your life so early on. Some people don’t find it until their 50’s or 60’s or even longer. Unfortunately, many never find it at all – these are the people who refuse to try new things. The ones who accept apathy as a cure for longing. At some point you have to accept that this human experience we’re all a part of is as unique to each of us as our fingerprint or DNA. Putting emphasis on some imaginary destination or subscribing to the idea that your life “should be” some particular way is to miss the point of life itself – it’s the journey and the evolution of your being that you’re here for. It’s overcoming challenges, solving problems, and developing into the best version of yourself along the way that you’re supposed to be focused on. If you don’t find a way to go all in on that, then you’re just sitting around waiting to die. 

Maybe the most striking interpretation in Man’s Search For Meaning was the idea that we all believe we are asking what the meaning to our life is when in reality we are the ones who are being asked. This simple shift in your psychological orientation towards this dilemma can set you free. Rather than feeling like some hopelessly lost soul meandering around wondering why the world won’t show you the way, you can take full control of your situation and instead show the world what your life stands for. See, you can have/do just about anything you want in life if you have the audacity to believe in yourself enough and have the balls to go for it. Many like to think that there is some fatalistic predetermined order to the universe, but I don’t think so. I think that we are all here for a reason and that everything conceivable is available to each of us. It is our free will and how we make use of it that will ultimately determine the quality of our life. That’s the X factor in all of this. You’re here for something, but can you find it? Can you become the person you need to be to actualize it? 

Essentially, this means that there are myriad different paths each of us can take in life. It is up to us, based on the decisions we make and the actions we take, to influence and construct the path we want for ourselves. What tends to trip people up is the fear of choosing incorrectly. The crippling anxiety that stems from understanding each major decision we make can dramatically alter the trajectory of our life for better or worse causes a lot of people to freeze. However, I’d like to point out again that if you stand still, time continues to move along with or without your cooperation. To not embrace the power of making these decisions is still a decision. It is to voluntarily be swept away with time – to just sit around and wait to die. The finiteness and impermanence of your life should be all you need to discard this anxiety and hop into the driver’s seat. Time is going to carry you forward regardless, so you may as well steer the damn thing. 

If you’re stuck in the I-have-no-fucking-clue-what-I’m-doing-here stage or if you’ve made a series of bad decisions and just want to change direction in your life – then I think this simple equation can help. I’m speaking from personal experience here. My free will used to prioritize doing a lot of cocaine and guzzling cheap vodka instead of seeking out new opportunities and becoming a better person (more on that at another time). It wasn’t until I decided to really start doing what was best for me that my life began to open up in ways I never thought possible. If you’re feeling lost right now, I firmly believe you should focus on these two things: 

  1. Discovering what you like to do 
  1. Discovering what you’re good at  

The beauty here is that finding out what you like to do and what you’re good at involves the same process. The process of trying new shit. You have to be willing to try new things or you’re pretty much shit out of luck. This is where I’m going to lose a lot of people. Too often no one wants to put themselves out there and go through the elimination phase of figuring out what they don’t like and what they’re not good at – they don’t want to “waste their time.” The irony is that by not putting yourself out there and trying new things and exposing yourself to new ideas and new possibilities, wasting your time is exactly what you’re doing. Finding meaning and fulfillment in your life is not going to come to you – you must go out in the world and look for it. This is easier than it’s ever been because you don’t even have to leave the house anymore. Try new things online. It doesn’t matter how you do it, it just matters that you do actually do it. 

Once you’ve figured out what you like to do and what you’re good at, it becomes a matter of creativity. How creatively can you merge these two things together to give yourself a solid starting point on a new chapter of your life? In a perfect world you would be able to find a job opening with a lit up runway that was an exact 50/50 mash-up of these two things. The reality is that you might have to create the job or path you need to be on. It might not exist yet. You’re going to have to make compromises and deal with things that suck along the way. When it comes to life, dealing with bullshit is the price of admission. Just don’t stop trying new things until you have identified what you like to do and what you are good at. If you find and combine those two things together, you will swing the odds of being successful in whatever way is most meaningful to you and of finding fulfillment in your life solidly in your favor. On the other hand, if your willingness to try new things is contingent on knowing whether or not you will succeed, you’ve already failed. 

It should be liberating rather than worrisome to hear that your life and what you make of it is entirely in your hands, but it is an unfortunate reality that people want to believe this less and less nowadays. It is far easier to blame the conditions of your childhood, your parents, the government, the economy, the rich, your health, or whatever other reasons you can think of to avoid looking in the mirror and asking yourself the hard questions. Are you actually trying your best? Are you working on building better habits and destroying self-sabotaging behaviors? Are you seeking new knowledge and opportunities? Are you taking consistent action? If the answer is yes, then you’re dealing with a case of impatience. I, nor anyone else can make you any guarantees in life, but if you are truly doing all of the above things to the best of your ability and being consistent – you are as close to guaranteed as you can get to having a better life than if you are not doing those things. If the answer is no, then those are the questions you need to examine closely and interrogate yourself on. Why are you not doing them and what is getting in your way?

Another thing I want to stress here is that if you’re struggling to find fulfillment right now, you are not alone. There is a rampant issue of severe unfulfillment in our modern society. This is particularly true in the United States. If you look at the discontentment of the masses – suicide rates, substance abuse (especially opiates like fentanyl) and the epidemic of mass shootings, there is a common thread amongst them. All, most likely, can be traced back to an underlying feeling of meaninglessness. I’m aware that this is a gross oversimplification of these issues, but at their core, are we not dealing with a large population of people who are struggling to recognize the value of their life? Maybe the real epidemic we’re facing is a lack of purpose. It’s good to have ambition and to want your life to be better, but don’t allow that feeling to manifest itself as hatred for your life the way that it is at this moment. Don’t want to be different so badly that it hurts your self-esteem about being who you are right now. If things aren’t going well, judging your life in its totality when there’s still time on the clock does nothing to help you. It just demoralizes you and sucks the wind out of your sails. You’re supposed to fuck up. You’re supposed to be frustrated. Angry. Sad. Worried. You’re supposed to feel all of these things because you’re a human being. What you’re also supposed to do is find whatever gives your life meaning and chase it ferociously – in spite of it all. 

There is good news here. Human beings are blessed with an internal navigation system. Not in location, but in life. If you’re feeling lost, consult your mind and your heart (in that order) and follow what you know to be right. Rely on this system to find your True North and never stop walking in that direction. No one else can do this for you. You can have people who love and support you along the way, but at the end of the day, your life is solely your responsibility. No one knows what you need better than you do. Don’t shy away from the challenge of finding fulfillment in your life – it’s supposed to be difficult. Life is this uncertain, complex, chaotic and mysterious thing. It’s somehow irrational and logical, and dysfunctional and organized, all at the same time. I think the beauty of it is that there’s really no “right” answer. There’s only the answer that you provide. Once you’ve given an answer, you get to determine whether or not it’s the right answer for you. If it’s not, you can change your answer as many times as you need to. Because you are not the one that is asking what the meaning of your life is… you are the one that is being asked.

Passion is Purpose

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It’s important to know where the line exists between practicality and wishful thinking. It’s equally important to have the capacity to do things you don’t necessarily want to do in order to provide for yourself when need be. I’ve had my fair share of jobs that I wholeheartedly despised in my life already and I’m prepared to have one again if push comes to shove. It’s an unfortunate part of life, but the fact is that sometimes you just have to suck it up and pay your dues so that you can pay your bills. That being said, if you hate your job and the work you do, you have got to put yourself in the mindset of understanding that it is temporary. I don’t know what it is about human nature that allows people to accept unending misery in the form of unfulfilling and understimulating work, but it literally pains me when I see people letting that happen to themselves. Sometimes I feel like people end up taking a job out of desperation and over time become comfortable with their pay, schedule, coworkers, etc. and end up trying to fit their life around those circumstances. “Good enough” becomes the mantra of the masses as you hit adulthood. It’s sad. We spend way too much of our lives working to give up on chasing our dreams and making a living doing what we love. 

No matter what job I had – whether it was pushing wheelbarrows full of rocks up the side of a hill in the sweltering heat, splitting wood outside in the frigid cold, or standing for seventeen hours straight in the corner of a dingy bar waiting to jump in the middle of two idiots boxing each other – not once did I ever think to myself that I was going to make them work for me in the long-term. Not once. On the contrary, I always felt more capable than anybody gave me credit for. I felt so underutilized, unappreciated and disrespected by the jobs I worked that it pissed me off. I didn’t even think I had to prove anything because I felt like it should have been obvious to the people I worked for that I could do much more if given the opportunity. Now I realize that most people in all industries are content with doing the bare minimum and are basically Stevie Wonder when it comes to spotting good workers in their businesses. Being in the position I’m in now where I run a company and have a hand in the hiring/firing process, it is unbelievable to me the amount of people in management positions who have their heads fully lodged up their asses. I used to suspect it, but now I know. Most of the jobs I’ve had in my life, I would have been more efficient running the whole business than whatever task-related position I was performing in. 

That might sound egotistical, but truth be told, we all have talents. Some people can sing, some people can draw. I can write and build businesses. In fact, I’m able to successfully leverage the first talent to bolster the second. But here’s the thing – it’s not just what I’m good at… it’s what I love to do. I’m currently working seven days a week and I’m sitting here writing this blog post at midnight hoping it offers something of value to one of the people who read it in the future and I’m doing it because I love to write and I want to help people however I can. I know that years from now, the fact that this blog was written and that it still exists will mean more to me than anything else I could be spending my time on right now. Similarly, the only reason I’m able to stomach working seven days a week is because I love what I do. It’s not just monotonous emails and stale meetings. It’s building something from the ground up. It’s learning how to combine the best of myself with the best of others to produce the greatest outcomes consistently. It’s strategizing. It’s problem solving. It’s taking risks. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life. Waking up in the morning knowing that I live or die by how accountable I am to myself is like breathing oxygen to me. Everything being my fault is the ultimate liberation. I don’t accept that other people have the ability to decide whether I win or lose anymore. In my mind, that power solely resides with me. If I accomplish great things, it’s because I earned them. If I end up broke and picking up the pieces again – at least I earned that too. I push myself every day because I know it influences the probability of me ending up on the side of those two options I want to be on. I show the fuck up for myself and my team because I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else – even when it’s hard.  

This is why I want to discuss passion with you. When you find that thing that really lights you up inside to the point that everything outside of working towards being the absolute best you can be at it becomes blurry to you, it’s like something just clicks into place. It ignites your passion and your passion becomes your purpose. It turns into a legitimate obsession – an internal driving force that sustains itself through the inevitable ups and downs. No matter what you want to be successful at, it’s going to require a lot of hard work. Not to state the obvious here, but you will be much more likely to work hard when you enjoy your job than if you hate it. That’s why pursuing your passion is so important. You can turn it into fuel. When you’re driven only by arbitrary accomplishments like money and a big house/dream car, you fizzle out eventually. That’s why most people never achieve those things even though they sincerely want them. But if you feel like you’re doing what you were created for – like you found the thing you were placed on this earth to do with your life – then you’re able to transcend your limits and those things end up falling in your lap as a natural byproduct of your efforts. When you encounter difficulties, you either go over, around, or straight through anything that gets in your way. Desire, especially if it’s directed purely towards material things, is a finite resource. It can only take you so far when things get hard. Purpose, however, is renewable. If you continuously dig deeper, you will always find more of it to carry you forward.

I see a lot of “success gurus” and social media influencers shitting on the idea of pursuing your passion lately. They make it seem silly or childish to think it’s possible to make a life worth living that way. They go so far in treating it with contempt as if to paint prioritizing your own joy as emasculating for men or purely stupid for anyone to believe it can be done. You have to be mindful of the role money plays in your life and how it factors into providing the life you ultimately want to live, but if you don’t prioritize enjoying how you obtain that money, you’re really missing out on a key component of living a fantastic life. There are plenty of people out in the world selling their souls for dollars and then drowning themselves in the empty things that money can buy. It’s another form of gluttony that our modern day society perpetuates, and in many cases, celebrates. Don’t be fooled into thinking that’s the answer. There’s a quote from Aristotle that I really love that goes, “Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” If someone offers you life advice that conflicts with that statement, make sure you believe they’re smarter than one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived before you act on it. It’s likely that they are not and that they are probably leading you down the wrong path. Don’t fall for it. 

Instead, explore your passions and choose a direction in life that is fulfilling to YOU. You can still desire material wealth, but challenge yourself to earn your way there by providing value to others and improving their lives and the world around you. Give your work meaning and make it something that feels good, keeps your conscience clear, and allows you to sleep well at night and look into the mirror without shame or disgust. The world wants you to give up on yourself and believe you can’t have success and genuine happiness. It wants you to believe the only people getting to the bag are the selfish, ruthless people who do it the wrong way. It’s bullshit. Success isn’t an either or and you don’t have to engage in shady shit, lie, cheat, steal, etc. to make it. You don’t have to compromise on your personal values to excel in life. You just have to do the work. If you understand the true nature of free enterprise, you’ll embrace the fact that it’s designed to create things that solve problems, reduce pain, increase convenience, and otherwise improve the lives of other people. If you love something and are passionate about it, I promise you there’s a way to tie it to one of those objectives and monetize it in today’s world. As an added plus, you will have to embark on a journey of personal self-discovery by pursuing it. A little creativity and determination goes a long way. 

Another point of emphasis when choosing your direction in life is this: if something doesn’t feel right, it’s not. No loopholes, no gray areas. There is right and wrong and you get to define them for yourself. Many people just don’t like their jobs, but many more work in companies or industries that make them engage in activities they don’t agree with. I know people who work in marketing and finance who try to justify their role in deceiving and exploiting others by claiming they’re just a cog in the machine. But guess what? No cogs, no machines. They’re there by choice because changing jobs, hitting the job market and facing pay instability is scary. People like to think they can deal in filth without becoming the thing they touch. But once you’ve made the conscious decision to do something wrong, you’re complicit in it. Corporate America takes many good people and compromises them against their own values. There is nothing admirable about a person who is smart enough to see wrongdoing, but too much of a coward to take a stand against it. It’s even worse when they rush into doing wrong willingly for personal gain. You can make a lot of money doing the wrong thing and buy lots of nice stuff with it, but you’ll always lack integrity. Just remember that we are all going to die one day, and the way you maintain your character will matter more in the end than the amount of money you accrue over your lifetime. 

The bottom line? When you don’t have meaning – when you don’t have purpose – the unhappiness it creates readily permeates through many other areas of your life. Think of your life as a canvas you get to paint. Unhappiness is like black water color on a paint brush being pressed firmly into the center of that canvas – it expands outward from its actual cause and bleeds into everything else. Happiness, on the other hand, inspires you and guides you in the right direction. It allows you to fall in love with the process of painting that canvas exactly the way you want it to be. You don’t feel rushed and you don’t care very much if other people see the beauty in your creation or not because it’s not for them. It’s for you. The best way to foster that kind of happiness within yourself, in my opinion, is by finding purposeful work first. Search for that thing that makes every moment you work on it feel intentional. The thing that makes you feel like what you’re doing really matters and is having a positive impact on other people and the world. If you find that, you will find the foundation to your happiness that you can then build something really beautiful on top of. Avoid being misdirected down the path that leads to nowhere. Follow your passion to your purpose and then walk that path wherever it may lead. You’ll thank yourself for it later.  

Focus on What’s Right

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I’ve been so busy with work and travel lately that I’ve been making a lot of excuses for not dedicating time to write. In fact, as I write this, I’m currently sitting seaside on the island of Maui in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, listening to the sound of white-crested waves race across the open water and crash against the black volcanic rocks that litter the coastline. Being here is an incredible feeling. It’s one of those places I’ve always dreamt of visiting and I think most people have that dream. To actualize it and not only be here, but to be here for a full month, traversing multiple islands, and celebrating Thanksgiving Hawaiian style is amazing. Best of all, I’m here with my mom. Being able to share this bucket list trip with her after spending my childhood watching her work her ass off as a single parent to keep a roof over our heads is charged with so many positive emotions that truly outweigh everything else about the experience. But there’s another feeling I contended with the first few days on the island.

That other feeling, tucked way down in the back of my mind behind all the amazing feelings stemming from being in this moment where nearly half a decade of hard work has culminated in a real-life dream coming true is – “Is this it?” I’m not sure what the best way to articulate that feeling is, but I couldn’t help but hear whispers of that question echoing through the corridors of my mind. Is this it? Is this what I’ve been pushing myself so hard for? Is this all there is on the other side of sacrifice and patience? Is this everything I thought it would be? Am I really happy right now or are other areas of my life that need improvement more important? Are all of my troubles bigger than my triumphs?

Don’t get me wrong, when confronted between the choice of being my former broke and angry self and being me now with a level of meaningful success and the freedom to choose where I go and when, it’s not even close. I’d rather be thinking through this issue on a tropical island any day of the week than washing dishes, shoveling horse shit, or putting some drunk asshole into a headlock to pay the bills. But my expectation of how I was going to feel being here is way different than the reality. I thought there would be more clarity that came along with getting to this point. I thought I could at least hit the pause button on the stressful shit in my life and feel more at peace. The truth is, my life and my circumstances have changed dramatically, but I still feel the same. That truth carries over for when I change physical locations as well, no matter how wonderful or exotic those locations may be. Things that had bothered me in New York City followed me to Charlotte and they continue to bother me when I’m sitting in this tropical paradise. Maybe it was silly to believe that there’s a breakthrough point where certain troubles just vanish into thin air, but I think anyone who really goes 100% in on chasing success and a dream has just a little bit of hope in that possibility. It’s unrealistic.

I have so much to be proud of myself for and so much to celebrate in my life right now, but it’s as if my brain insists on clinging to the things that aren’t the way I’d like them to be. Without intentionally focusing on all the good – on all that’s going right in our lives – our minds will default into concentrating on where we feel dissatisfied or where we’re underperforming. The point of this blog post is to help you realize where this is happening in your own life, because if you trick yourself into believing that a big bank account or achieving whatever your idea of success is changes a lot about the inner strife you face as a human being, you’re going to be sorely disappointed even if you get it. I’m not going to lie – there was an element of shame involved when I realized how ridiculous it was to be feeling sorry for myself while on a trip of a lifetime. I’m not particularly proud of the fact that I allowed myself to feel bad while sitting in Hawaii, but I am proud of the fact that I caught myself and course corrected and that although it occurred, it was short lived. If nothing else, it’s a testament to how true happiness must come from within first and foremost. If you’re not happy where you are now, you won’t be truly happy on a tropical island. If you’re not happy by yourself, you won’t be truly happy with other people. If you aren’t happy with what you have, you won’t be truly happy once you get the things you want. The key isn’t to never slip into a bad mood or feel like shit – that’s just part of being human. The goal should be to reach a level of self-awareness that allows you to catch yourself and shift your way of thinking back into a positive and optimistic frame of mind as quickly as possible when you feel like that. Sometimes when you overlook all the blessings in your life and focus solely on the things you perceive to be undesirable, you just have to take a minute and ask yourself… Am I nuts?

This is a good time to remind you that if you live in the United States (or really any first world country) it is an undeniable fact that most other human beings on the planet would switch places with you in a heartbeat. As I write this and as you read this, there are millions upon millions of people like you and I who are facing famine, battling diseases and ailments that could be prevented or treated if they had access to the same resources we have, or they live in constant chaos while trying to keep themselves and their families alive in an active warzone. Billions of others lack reliable access to safe drinking water. I deal with a lot of pressure now that I’m leading a team of people, and I have to take full responsibility for everything that’s happening in our company – that’s my biggest source of stress and anxiety. How’s that stack up in the grand scheme of things? It’s really not shit. Whatever you’re going through right now, put it into context because perspective is everything. The fact that I was able to catch myself slipping into that negative mindset – focusing on all the bad and letting the days pass me by without enjoying the beauty of the moment – allowed me to center myself and lean back into the genuine appreciation for everything wonderful happening in my life despite any issues I’m currently working through. Yes, there are things I’m not thrilled about that I have to face and other things that I wish were going a different way in my life, but right now I’m enveloped in the warmth of the sun, the birds are singing all around me, and palm trees are gently swaying in the wind. It is peaceful. Only my thoughts are capable of removing me from this reality and it’s ultimately my responsibility to reject them when they try.

As human beings, our minds are programmed to look for what’s wrong, and it can steal the joy from even the greatest moments in our lives. One of my favorite quotes I’ve ever read is, “Everything that’s wrong is always available, but so is what’s right.” I wanted to take the time to write this post to remind everyone who reads it to take inventory of themselves and their lives in a truly objective way. You’re always going to have something you feel is lacking. You’re always going to want something to be different about yourself or your existence. Don’t focus on that. Although there may be some truth to these thoughts, they are often distorted in ways that make us feel negative emotions based on a bigger picture that we’re filling in the blanks of with completely imaginary misconceptions. Or worse, you bring yourself down by drawing comparisons to other people when there’s literally zero value in doing so. That means you’re often feeling like shit for real because of something that’s only a half-truth at best. Instead, focus your mind on everything that’s going right and then build on the psychological momentum it gives you. Celebrate your wins, soak them in fully, and tell any conflicting thoughts that try to pull you down from that high to fuck off. That’s how you can find happiness and sustain it. That’s when the external gratifications like working for that big check and then digging your toes in the sand on a beach in Maui become the special moments they’re meant to be.

I needed this reminder to snap myself out of a funky headspace that was making me feel dissatisfied with being in Hawaii. Can you imagine that? Go ahead and roll your eyes at me because I’m still rolling my eyes at myself. Not only is that dumb at face value, but I know better. This is all rooted in mental disciplines that I have studied and understood for a while now. It just goes to show you that the work is never done. You must constantly provide your mind and spirit with nourishing thoughts and not allow your uncontrolled mind to direct itself in unwanted and negative ways. Once thoughts like that establish themselves it is much more difficult to rid yourself of them – so make it a practice to be mindful of choosing the healthiest, most positive thoughts about yourself and your life every day. Life is too short not to find appreciation in every moment, and the extreme of where I just was earlier this week in my own head is a shining example of how much power the quality of your thoughts have over the quality of your life. Choosing what thoughts inhabit your mind on a daily basis is critical to your overall happiness – and your ability to take control of shaping your life to be what you truly want it to be.

Too many people think that the answer to a great life is to change their external circumstances – their finances, their appearance, their location, etc. All of those things can add value to your life, but they are extremely limited – and they won’t make a difference at all if you’re fundamentally unhappy. The foundation of a great life has to begin by looking inward. It is built on your internal conditions – your level of self-love, your appreciation for life itself, and the quality of the relationships you have with the people you love and who love you back. Everything else is just icing on the cake and although you can make a shitty cake look good with a colorful exterior and sprinkles, eventually the truth comes out when you take a bite and realize it belongs in the trash. A lot of the curated versions of other people’s lives we see on social media that we think are so great are really just shitty cakes decorated well in a display case. If you were able to taste them, you’d discover you don’t actually want them that bad after all. Everybody has problems, and if you fall into the comparison trap – you’re measuring yourself up against 1% of what’s actually going on in other people’s lives. You’re extrapolating from that very small sample size to make assumptions about the other 99% of that person’s life and then comparing it against the 100% of your own life that you have to live every day. You don’t know what shit they’re dealing with, but you know your own shit inside and out. Comparing your life with an incomplete picture of someone else’s is apples to oranges – and that’s a recipe for lifelong unhappiness – not making a great cake.

When faced with your imperfections and the parts of yourself and your life that you don’t like, be careful not to overvalue the negatives in relation to the positives. When we play that trick on ourselves, it causes us to prioritize the things that don’t really matter much at the expense of the things that matter most. A goal like “I need to make as much money as possible” can replace a much better goal like “I need to make as many joyful memories as possible with the people I love” real quick if you aren’t paying attention. You need to be intentional about hyping yourself up and appreciating everything you already have and all you’ve already accomplished because life is a marathon, and it is way too difficult to sustain yourself on the climb if you’re knocking yourself down inside your own head. Lean into what you’re doing right, what’s going right, and fucking celebrate yourself. Don’t let other people, circumstances, or unrealistic expectations detract from how special where you are right now actually is. Expectations and desires are often much different than the reality of meeting or achieving them and if you aren’t careful, they can ruin something truly great by messing with your perception of it. Be rooted in reality, always. Do the work to reprogram your brain to find the good in every situation or moment.

If you really feel like things aren’t good enough as they are right now, or you struggle to find what to be grateful for – I would keep it simple. I could have just as easily snapped myself out of my mental funk by thinking to myself, “I’m healthy and able to travel – so many people can’t say that and wish they could be here right now.” Or “My family and all of my good friends are alive and well today – so many people can’t say that and would give anything to trade places with me because I can.” There is literally ALWAYS something to focus on that you can be grateful for that can put whatever is attempting to eat away at your happiness into perspective. If you don’t learn this truth about life and how to master it, no amount of money or things will be able to stop you from feeling lousy about yourself and your place in the world. You will just be rich and sad, in the best-case scenario. That might sound better, but you’ll quickly find out that being able to do and have more shit loses its significance quickly and being truly happy every day of your life is the most meaningful goal you can ever pursue as a human being. People who try to convince you otherwise are empty inside and fighting bigger battles within themselves that you can’t see – and they’re losing.

Like everything I write, I hope this added value to your life if you took the time to read it. I am going to try to be more consistent with this project again and will continue to provide my unvarnished thoughts and opinions that have helped me get to where I am and that I am going to keep using to get to where I want to go. If you take away nothing else from this, remember to focus on what’s going right at all times. Life will continuously challenge you and give you reasons to question yourself and the path you’re on. There will be times when it becomes easy to entertain thoughts that serve no purpose other than to prevent you from reaching your full potential. You have power over whether or not you accept them. You have the ability to choose the thoughts that flourish in your mind, and they will either help you or hurt you. They will either make you or break you. Choose them wisely. Always look for the ones that build you up and give you courage. Cultivate the self-confidence to keep moving forward in the face of adversity. Don’t give up on yourself or your dreams just because you fall into a temporary moment of despair. Making it to the other side of those difficult times will give you strength. The narrative you create for yourself and about yourself inside your own head is much more important than most people realize. Try not to compare yourself to anybody – only who you were yesterday, last week, last month, and last year. Don’t worry about how far you must go or what still needs to be done but look at how far you’ve come already and all that you’ve overcame to get to this moment instead. Don’t try to see far into the future – focus solely on the step that is directly in front of you so that things don’t feel overwhelming and cripple your ability to act. Remember what you’re capable of doing and who you are. Remember that nothing is impossible, and that the only thing that can stop you, is you. It may sound cliché, but the further I progress on my own journey, the more I realize that these are not meaningless sayings to make us feel better about ourselves – they are the core beliefs and building blocks we need to build an extraordinary life. Focus on what’s right.

Do Well by Doing Good

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I think it’s safe to say that all of us would like to improve ourselves and our circumstances. Our idea of what that may look like or ultimately what that means is unique to each of us, but the fundamental truth is that you and everyone you see is on a journey to achieve progress in some form or another. Some people may be trying to lose weight so that they can improve their confidence and their health. Others may be pursuing financial gains to improve their standard of living. Others may be trying to work on their emotional intelligence and mindfulness to improve their happiness and relationships with others. The ability to objectively audit ourselves, identify an area we feel needs to be improved, and then find a sustained motivation to change who we are is a special trait that only human beings have and are capable of utilizing. Dale Carnegie once wrote, “The desire to be great is what separates us from the animals and created civilization.” Whether it’s the desire to be great, desire to be important, or the desire to be better matters little. The point is that all of us have something within us that hungers for achievement. Monkeys do not sit around and chastise themselves for being lazy any more than your dog will develop depression over not looking as good as the neighbor’s dog.

This obsessive self-analysis can sometimes create unhealthy habits or destructive behaviors, but if channeled correctly they can provide the catalyst to great changes. The problem is that most of our ideas for self-improvement are entirely self-serving. From the examples I gave above, the motivation and the outcome are both rooted in a self-centered objective. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve a facet of your life by and for yourself, but I have noticed over the past few years that what you do for others without expectation of receiving anything in return actually has the biggest benefit to you. It seems void of logic and perhaps a bit counter intuitive, but it has nevertheless proven itself true over and over again in my life. It is my belief that through civic duty and charitable donations – through taking an active beneficial role in the world around you and assisting those who need help – you feed your self-esteem and find purpose beyond your own selfish desires that can carry you much, much further in life than your ordinary individual goals ever could.

This concept of “doing well by doing good” was first embedded in my mind through reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Funny enough, while still in lockdown in NYC during the height of the pandemic, I was sitting in my room one day, holding a hundred-dollar bill in my hand and studying the face of the man on it intently. It occurred to me that I knew a bit about Benjamin Franklin, but not enough to understand why he was chosen as one of only two non-presidents to be featured on American bills – and of all the notable figures in American history, he was chosen to be put on the most valuable piece of currency in the world. I knew he was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and I remembered the infamous kite story from grade school – but I had no idea that he was also a brilliant inventor at the level I soon discovered, as well as an accomplished author and businessman, and statesman.

I wanted to know why he was chosen to grace the front of that c-note in my hand and that was the only impetus I had for ordering the book. What I discovered in the pages was an awe-inspiring story of a man who came from practically nothing and journeyed to America before the thought of a sovereign nation on this continent was ever conceptualized and who went on to become one of the most important and influential human beings to have ever lived. Benjamin Franklin invented everything from bifocal lenses to the lightning rod to public libraries to the fire department. As astonishing as it was to think a man who lived over 250 years ago invented so many things we still use and take for granted today, by far his most important accomplishment was his contribution to drafting the Declaration of Independence. Every American alive today who possesses the chance to improve their circumstances through their own free will owes a debt of gratitude to him and his relentlessly determined mind. He accomplished much more in his personal life as well, and as I read about this brilliant man, I realized that if someone living so long ago with much less opportunity and resources at his disposal could contribute so much to civilization and permeate history with his ideas and inventions, then I could at least hold myself to building a very suitable life by my own individual standards.

What really stood out about him though was that he championed his active citizenship above all else. His ingenuity was nothing more than a product of his genuine curiousness and ability to transform his findings into useful and practical ideas that could benefit humanity. He built schools for the poor, fed the hungry, and went out of his way to make purposeful positions to those in his community that were otherwise forgotten or looked down on. Benjamin Franklin believed that our interior wellness can and should be connected to our actions aimed at bettering the world around us. He believed in capitalism and free enterprise and was a successful man in his time – but believed that the beauty of free enterprise is that it allows every individual to add to his own happiness while also adding to the happiness of others. By being free to provide as much value to other people as you possibly can, you can make money when others voluntarily pay for that value. He believed that this pursuit of building wealth through true entrepreneurship is a fundamental human freedom and that those who enjoy the riches of their successful endeavors should then take on a larger responsibility to give back to those less fortunate in meaningful ways. My favorite quote of his from that autobiography that has reshaped my way of thinking is, “I would rather it be said ‘He lived usefully’ than ‘He died rich.’”

It is important to note, however, that you do not need to have excessive financial means to contribute to your community or to help others in meaningful ways. Nor do you need to make a massive impact for a large amount of people right away in order to experience the benefits of giving or to make a real difference in the world. Your time is more valuable than money ever will be, and thus, giving it to worthy causes is (and always should be) looked at as the most generous gift of all. It is necessary to support organizations that are doing good work on the ground financially, but from the perspective of healing yourself – of feeling intertwined with the world around you – then there is no substitute to being actively involved in that work in some capacity. To see is to believe – and to meet those who need your help and the ones who have dedicated their lives to helping them will be a much more powerful experience for you. Writing a check or clicking a few buttons will not have the ability to alter your perspective or develop your awareness in the same way… though it is always better than nothing. I recommend a combination of both, but always start with in-person volunteerism when you feel you don’t have enough yet to give by way of money.

Also, helping other people needs to be its own reward in order to work as I am outlining here. If you view it as putting yourself out or detracting from your own goals, then you haven’t figured out who you’re really helping yet. There’s a particular benefit I feel strongly about that can radically improve everybody’s life that directly results from committing to a role of active citizenship. This is the benefit of building your self-esteem and making yourself impervious to outside influences. Getting involved in your immediate community and helping other people who are struggling in an intentional way has the miraculous side effect of completely reshaping the way you view yourself. If you have a poor self-image or think particularly lowly about your personal worth, this is something I highly encourage you to think about. Whether it be a philanthropic endeavor or an environmental one (or perhaps something creative that you think up yourself) it will present a potential turning point to start anew by contributing to a better world around you. Why you ask? Because when you put yourself in a position to wake up in the morning and know that the world is a better place because you’re in it, you take away the ability of other people to damage your self-esteem.

Once you realize that other people can think whatever they like about you and you are capable of remaining whole and staying grounded despite it, the world becomes a lot easier to navigate. Suddenly you free yourself from the mental anguish of living to appease the opinions of other people. You start to feel like there is purpose in your existence and you discover that a large part of the best we can ever do as human beings in the pursuit of lasting happiness is to put effort towards alleviating the suffering of other human beings. Once you are able to move forward with this newfound confidence, it has a funny way of accelerating your success in other avenues of life which then translate to your ability to do even more good for the world. That is a ripple effect I recommend initiating and the only thing required from you in order to drop the first domino is to get out into the world and look for people who are hurting or a problem that is in need of fixing. I assure you that neither is in short supply.

Since being inspired by Benjamin Franklin, I have been able to accomplish more than I ever thought possible on my own path and rather than setting me back from attaining personal milestones, I feel incredibly confident that my philanthropy has propelled me forward. In 2019, before the pandemic started, I made less than $45,000. The following year when the world went to shit and I saw people who had suddenly lost their jobs and been flung into a sea of uncertainty lined up for food and basic necessities, I resolved to start making a difference the best I could. I knew I wouldn’t change the circumstances that led to all the suffering taking place, and I knew that whatever I could do would pale in comparison to the need that existed – but I also knew that allowing those truths to discourage me from taking action would be unacceptable. People needed help and many of those in positions of power who were supposed to be helping them were doing too little too late… or nothing at all. Through generating income with my business and donating money to Feeding America through the first two years of the pandemic, I was able to feed over 150,000 people. That is a significant number for me. It’s only the beginning, and I have a lot of time ahead of me to help many more people, but please understand that you are capable of doing big things when you recognize the pain of other people and decide to do something about it. The best part is that I hurt less myself because of what I did for those people. I also increased my earning potential inexplicably just because I felt I had other people relying on me to keep up and increase my rate of contribution, and the only way to do that without taking food out of my own mouth was to find ways to increase my income – and I did.

Since moving to Charlotte, NC in April of last year, I have started volunteering with an organization called The Relatives that seeks to feed, clothe, and empower children and young adults in underserved communities. I started out with the same mission to feed them by creating “snack packs” which were just one gallon Ziplock bags filled with various imperishable food items like chips, protein bars, fruit snacks, and cookies. I would create the packs in bulk and walk them over to the organization’s resource center and hand deliver them. It allowed me to ingratiate myself with the staff over time and sort of get a feel for what they were doing. In each pack, I would handwrite little notes of encouragement for the recipients, and it added a really personal element to the whole thing. It wasn’t until a year later that I met one of those recipients face-to-face at an event for the organization and she identified me by the snacks I was donating through the program. She looked at me with a big smile and said, “Oh yeah, I know who you are! You always put the fruit snacks in them. It’s a big help to have food I can take home with me. I really appreciate that.” Very few things I have done in my life have brought me more joy than that brief exchange.

I have also started attending mentor events for the young adults aged 17-24 that the organization works with. These are kids that have grown up impoverished, many of whom are actively experiencing homelessness. They come from environments that are dominated by gang violence and hard drug use and void of many opportunities that the rest of us take for granted. Similarly to what I hope to accomplish with this blog for you, dear reader, I am hoping to accomplish with this mentorship program – instill a new mindset shift in some of these young people and spark a desire within them to get out in the world and not accept less than what they’re truly capable of. To see and experience their own worth and to construct a life for themselves using their minds and their willpower. Working hands-on with these kids and hearing their stories sends me home with such a deep appreciation for all I have in my life, all I’ve been able to overcome personally, and allows me to tap into a sense of gratitude that had been absent for the first several decades of my life. It is through this renewed perspective that I empower myself to continue finding ways to have a positive impact on the lives of others and the world around me.

As you can see, although these activities and donations are considered acts of service on my part, they are returning to me the fuel and the inspiration I need to keep progressing in my own life. I hope some of you reading this recognize the truth and the power in this concept and put it to good use for yourself and for all those who need your assistance. Everything you can possibly achieve in your life starts with you, so it only stands to reason that dedicating time and energy to feeding your self-esteem is a very smart thing to do. Self-esteem should not be confused with arrogance or hubris – the delusional self-worth of those who think highly of themselves for having done nothing. Healthy self-esteem is earned, and the only way I’ve discovered that you can actively build it up with your own two hands is by helping other people and doing good things for the world. Little acts of kindness create big changes over time. They also plant seeds of hope in other people and inspire them to amplify the impact. The world can be ugly, but there is no excuse for feeling so demoralized by the situations around us that we absolve our individual responsibility to act towards change and setting things right. Look inward, dig deeper, and find the courage to move forward in the direction you need to go in order to live in a world that you are proud of. Know that there is still good in the world by becoming your own source of proof. Understand that there is nothing wrong with wanting to succeed in life, but that the dominating throughline amongst the most successful and admirable people in history is most often rooted in the desire to give and not to get. Do well by doing good.  

The Freedom in Failure

/ nicholasjinfante / Leave a comment

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word, “failure”? If you’re like most people, it’s probably other words that carry extremely negative connotations. Defeat, disappointment, losing – things that make us feel inadequate or deficient in the eyes of the world and as a result, our own eyes. But what if you could train your brain to feel indifferent towards failure? To recognize it for what it truly is – something that is neither good nor bad by itself. Experiencing failure is necessary for us to gather data so that the next time we attempt something, we do it with a better, more informed approach. We try again and do it slightly better, but if our goals are worthwhile ones – then we’ll most likely fail again. You repeat that process over and over again knowing that each time you analyze what went wrong or what could have been done better, you get to regroup and come at it again with a different and improved strategy. When you take the time to examine yourself, your shortcomings, and your process – it enables you to seek new opportunities with confidence that the next try will be a success because of what your prior failures have taught you. In that way, the act of failing has an important purpose. Each failure, viewed through the proper lens, contains a lesson that gives you another piece of the puzzle you need to assemble your ideal life. This hopefully leads you to the goals you envisioned, but if not, it is guaranteed to lead you to other alternatives that will still leave you better off than when you began your journey towards achievement. Failure is an inextricable component of progress – and continuous progress is the whole game. Therefore, fearing failure is not only wholly irrational, but it is also holding you back from moving your life in the right direction.

I happen to think a lot of people end up settling into a level of comfort with their lives and never trying to achieve what they really want because of their fear of failure. People love to mask that fear with the guise of “practicality” or “realistic expectations.” But if we really dig a little bit below the surface, most people don’t push themselves towards their dreams because there’s always uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to doubt. They doubt their ability to succeed in the undertaking and the idea of putting 110% of their effort into something and having it not work out scares the shit out of them. As a result, most people end up living a life that requires 50% of their best effort but that offers them what they consider a safe place to be. Nothing glamorous, but enough – and that’s fine. The only time I think it’s not fine is if you’re suffering through the monotony of life not enjoying what you do every day. If your intuition is really sending you constant signals that you’re not where you’re meant to be – or that life could be so much better and that there is so much more out there waiting for you – then it’s a problem to settle for less than pursuing that possibility. You’re going to die one day and win or lose, succeed or fail… you’ll be happy later on that you had the courage and audacity to try. Unfortunately, people often sully their childhood dreams for a paycheck. As life goes on, responsibilities pile up and it becomes a necessity to establish financial security for themselves and their families. That’s why it’s particularly important for younger people to recognize how important it is to try new things and allow themselves to fail as much as possible without giving a fuck. The beauty here is that you are capable of redefining failure for yourself the same way you redefine success. Find the courage to tell society to take its idea of what your life should look like and shove it – and never let your decisions or actions be dictated by other people’s opinions of you.

When I think back to my younger self, I have a lot of regrets, but my biggest one is confidently that I didn’t let myself fail enough. I was always very self-conscious – I cared way too much about how I looked and what people would think of me. It stopped me from giving new things an earnest chance and who knows what kind of memorable life experiences I missed out on because of that. I’m fortunate to have fallen into a situation early in my life that put me in the driver’s seat of my destiny. I’m also fortunate that at 25 years old I was smart enough to see it that way and really sink my teeth into it. But when I go over what it took to get to this point in my life, I realize that it was a never-ending series of failures that paved the way to this moment. No matter how bruised my ego was or how low I felt about all my failed attempts to start making a life for myself or trying to be successful out in the world, I eventually healed enough to gain the courage to go and do it again. If you’re reading this blog right now, this is a perfect example of me going for it without being concerned with the outcome. Your relationship with, and perspective of, failure, will permeate every aspect of your life. If it’s a relationship and perspective characterized by fear, you won’t be able to make a move on anything you want to do. You will remain frozen in a state of inaction. If it’s one of indifference or the acceptance of failure as a vital part of success, you will free yourself up to take your shots in life – and some of them will eventually hit the mark. I want to walk you through how failing repeatedly created the path forward for me in my own life.

A little over seven years ago I was living in a one-bedroom apartment with two of my friends in Boulder, Colorado. I worked as a dishwasher and a fry cook for $10.50 an hour and slept on a couch that we got for free on Craigslist that multiple people had vomited on during house parties. The neighborhood squirrels found a way in and out of the apartment so I would frequently be woken up by the sound of a frantically panting tree mouse scurrying around the living room. One of my roommates worked as a line cook at the same restaurant I did and lived in a crawl space under the stairs like Harry Potter. It was a mess. After my stint in the restaurant biz, I went back to my roots in manual labor as a landscaper and mover. As I write this, I am overwhelmed with gratitude that in order to live I no longer have to push wheelbarrows full of rocks up steep inclines in sweltering heat or carry refrigerators down six flights of narrow stairs. I’m going to resolve not to complain about anything work-related from this point forward. Anyway, the whole reason I lived like this for a year was because I took a chance and dropped out of college to move to Colorado where I was absolutely certain my future was going to unfold as a successful marijuana grower and that I would become known as the “King of Cannabis” – it’s okay, you can laugh. It was goofy.

When I turned 21, I immediately got my paperwork done to work in the recreational cannabis industry. I was over the moon excited, beaming with optimism, and super fucking naïve about what was waiting for me. In no way is my personal experience with the industry indicative of all experiences (or even most) working in it or reflective of the industry as a whole. I still fully support the industry and have met wonderful people through pursuing that career path – but there’s a lot of bullshit too. With no prior experience, I ended up encountering the same issues I had in any other line of work I applied for as a college drop-out with no real discernible skills to speak of. I was offered $10-$15 an hour to sit in a chair for 8 to 10 hours a day and trim weed. So, it ended up sucking just as bad – and quite honestly even worse – than the other jobs I had been working. The only difference was that I got to hold, and smell weed all day… and I cannot tell you how quickly the novelty of that wore off. I wanted a shot to prove myself and after gritting my teeth through three months of working menial jobs for numerous dispensaries – no one seemed interested in giving me one. In true 2015 Nicholas fashion, my impatience led me to going a more unconventional route.

I ended up working for a large grow operation in the southern part of Colorado. I got hands-on experience with growing the plants and was able to learn first-hand the entire process that goes into producing cannabis for wholesale. There was only one catch… it wasn’t exactly legal. It started off great and I was trying to ingratiate myself with the crew and do my part to bring value to the operation as much as possible. I even got the chance to be fully responsible for 16 plants of my own from start to finish in the outdoor season to see what I could do. The problem was that I was young and stupid and broke. Growing cannabis properly costs a considerable amount of money, and I didn’t have enough to cover the resources I needed (soil, pots, nutrients, materials for a greenhouse, etc.) for the growing season. I ended up making a deal that was terrible for me just so I could get a solo grow under my belt and after all the sweat and months of demanding work I put into my plants, when I had to give up what I owed – I realized I had been taken advantage of. I got screwed. It wasn’t nefariously done per se, but they used my lack of experience and knowledge against me, and I paid the price for it. It really fractured my trust with the group of people I was involved with, and I wasn’t emotionally capable of looking at it the way I do now. At the time, I was pissed off and was confronted with making $10 an hour again and not being able to pay my bills or moving back to the East Coast to cool off and collect myself and try something new. I ended up choosing the latter. Now, after reflecting on the whole situation in hindsight, I realize that was my first crash course in the art of negotiation – and I failed badly at it. That has turned out to be one of the best lessons I have ever learned.

When I got back to New York I felt defeated. I was despondent to the point that I really thought my whole existence was defined by moving out to Colorado and having my dreams trounced and ending up back near my hometown in upstate New York looking for work. I felt like a complete and total failure – and I really believed life was never going to get better again. I split wood outside in the middle of winter and worked as a farm hand literally shoveling shit for a living. I was sleeping on a different couch, this one in my grandparent’s basement, and waking up at 5am every day to work tough jobs just so I could make enough to afford gas, cigarettes, and booze. I was physically exhausting myself and getting nowhere at the same time. When they say life is a series of ups and downs – I was halfway to China at this point.

The following spring, I had the opportunity to move to New York City. I really didn’t think of myself as a city person, and the proposition seemed daunting – but when I looked around me and observed my life in its present form – it made the decision pretty easy for me. What the hell did I have to lose? It turns out that that decision ended up being one of the best I ever made… and it still took about half a decade for the ROI from it to materialize. I absolutely loved NYC (particularly my neighborhood on the Upper West Side), I got to reconnect with several of my closest childhood friends who were also living there, and it ended up leading me to the job opportunity that has evolved into a total transformation of my professional and financial circumstances. But it was a grind to get there. When I first got to the city, I was still broke as shit. Being broke anywhere is tough – being broke in Manhattan is torture.

I went all over the city turning in resumés hoping to get a shot to bartend because I knew the pay was relatively good and I knew there were other perks to the lifestyle that I was still interested in at the time. I don’t drink anymore, but when I first got to NYC, I was like a kid in a candy shop… or an alcoholic in a sea of endless bars, clubs, and taverns. I offered to start as a barback with the possibility of working up, offered to take expensive classes I couldn’t really afford to get up to speed on how to make specialty drinks, and followed-up with every place I applied to – and I got a whopping zero calls back. As it turns out, people aren’t particularly interested in a 6’7” 250+ pound barback or bartender. As in most instances in my life when my back was against the wall and I really needed to find work, I relied on my size advantage to get employment. I applied as a bouncer at numerous bars and was hired quickly.

As you can probably imagine, bouncing in New York City gave me a lot of stories and a unique experience. I met tons of people I liked that I worked with or that were regulars at our establishments. I worked for a company that owned eight different bars around Manhattan, so I was shipped around different neighborhoods and really got all the bang for my buck out of the job. Truthfully, I’m glad I did it because it eventually led to me getting sober – even though it initially led me to being worse than I was originally (because free booze). But spending 50+ hours a week standing on your feet in bars and being the designated confronter of assholes really weighs on your spirit after a while. People threaten you, call you names, spit at you, and try to fight you. You have to escort people out who are vomiting all over the place. You have to deal with people selling drugs. You have to break into bathroom stalls while people are actively fucking. I had someone take a shit on the floor once. Trying to maintain a level of decency in New York City’s nightlife scene is like trying to be a sheriff in the wild west – you just end up settling for not having dead bodies everywhere. You couple all of this good stuff with the ever-present possibility that you might get shot, stabbed, or jumped by a group of people for the cost of a corner bodega sandwich with chips and a drink per hour and it starts making you think that you should close this chapter of your life sooner rather than later.

I’m still not ready to divulge the details of my current job for numerous reasons, but the gist of it is that I ended up buying into someone else’s vision for an intellectual product they had created. I believed that I was savvy enough in business and had the intuitive skills to leverage along with teaching myself the operational ins and outs of an online enterprise to help them really ramp up what they were doing. When I first came up with the idea to work together, they couldn’t even pay me $500 a week – so I started by helping to write copy for newsletters, website edits, and miscellaneous things for a few hundred dollars here and there on the side of my bouncing schedule. I would get home at 5am, wake up at noon, do some work, and then get ready to go back out on sheriff duty. Eventually, I leaned into my lesson from my failed negotiation in Colorado to help me present an offer that I felt was fair to both of us. It allowed me to put my fulltime focus and effort on this business venture while also working around their inability to guarantee me income. I put myself in a position where I was either going to deliver results that greatly benefited both of us, or I was going to fail and have to hit the job market again. I rolled the dice on myself once more despite the unfavorable outcomes of the past – I tried again without fearing the possibility of failure.

Needless to say, that decision did work out for me this time and continues to do so. But even that was a series of failed attempts before it really got going. My revenue target for the business the first month I started working full-time on it missed the mark by 80%. It was demoralizing and I questioned myself after bringing in way less than the minimum requirement I needed to support myself financially. But I felt conviction that I would get it right – so instead of dwelling on that failure I analyzed what went wrong, poured over information I found on Google, YouTube, and in books – and then I tried again. I committed to studying and applying simultaneously and sure enough, things started improving month over month, and year over year. To this day, I am always trying to teach myself something useful to do my job better. I try to learn something beneficial that can be used in my personal or professional life every single day. It sucks when an idea doesn’t work, but I no longer let it discourage me at all because I understand now that failure is another way of learning what I need to know to do things better the next time I try. I am all-in on making progress continuously and never worrying about anything being perfect. That’s been the secret sauce to this whole transformation. In fact, most of the best performing aspects of our business today are pieces of other things we tried that flopped initially and that we spliced together or came up with more inventive ways to deploy.

My point is this – if you dig into the self-help sphere or study any admirable businessperson who has found success in life in an honest way, you will undoubtedly hear something about the importance of failure. Some say, “Failure is the mother of all success” and others say, “Fail forward.” This blog post is essentially me using my life story to try to illustrate that same premise. If you fear failure, you fear success. Because you are never going to get one without the other. If you can internalize that truth and find the courage to reframe your mindset around failure so that you can experience it with indifference and channel your intelligence to use it to create a better opportunity to succeed on the next attempt, you will find yourself getting closer to your goals. Little wins compound over time into big wins, and when you approach life with the right attitude, your losses can actually set you up for much bigger wins down the road. There is freedom in failure when we recognize it as a temporary setback to learn from, rather than something final that crushes us. It can be painful, but all forms of growth are painful. Accept it, embrace it, utilize it. If failing is the worst outcome, realize that you can’t lose because failing doesn’t really mean anything. It only has as much power over you as you choose to give it. You have the ability to take every obstacle, every challenge, and every setback in your life and turn it into raw material that you can use to achieve your wildest dreams.

Remember: Failure is an inextricable component of progress – and continuous progress is the whole game.

Be Your Own Best Friend

/ nicholasjinfante / Leave a comment

I don’t think any of us can understate the value of genuine friendship. It’s one of the great joys of life and something we should always cherish when we find it. But relocating across the country away from my existing social network and not having the time (or frankly the desire) to create a new one has taught me an enormous lesson about the value of being emotionally self-reliant – or “being your own best friend.” I’m extremely fortunate to know I have some of the greatest friends in the world living in other cities and make every effort to see them when my schedule permits. I get that needed interaction with them in spread out blocks of time now since we can’t just meet up whenever after work these days. There’s a mutual respect there that, no matter how much time elapses between seeing each other, it feels just like yesterday and nothing changes.

A lot of us are still readjusting to the nuances of socialization as covid-related things seem to cool off or just become less concerning to us. I for one know I did everything possible to make my life fit within the dynamics of pandemic living and I’ve been finding it difficult to break that routine – mostly because it’s highly effective for me. My day to day is literally curated for maximum output and productivity while avoiding physical and mental burnout. It’s a balancing act – one that I’ve gotten particularly good at the last ten months. However, I couldn’t incorporate everything I would have liked into this approach, and as a result, had to make some difficult choices along the way. The easiest thing to give up in order to make more time so that I could sustain my work schedule while still prioritizing physical exercise and seven to eight hours of sleep each day was my social life.

I don’t expect other people to forfeit their entire social lives to build a business with the type of fervor I have. I think it would be unappealing at best for most people. I also don’t think it’s particularly healthy or sustainable in the long-term. But I want to be as straightforward as possible about the process of ascension in the entrepreneurial landscape and with the stage that we’re at with our company, that is what’s required of me right now if we want to go the distance. Since March 2020, I have been working like a man possessed by the devil himself – and results don’t lie. I have an awesome group of people around me (virtually) that has grown larger this past year and helps me move the ball forward consistently. That is what keeps me energized and makes it all possible – seeing my long-term ambitions in the distance and understanding the sacrifices I have to make right now in order to attain them. I’m voluntarily trading near-sighted pleasure for long-term freedom. Nevertheless, I’m human, and this lifestyle can be difficult to maintain and some days the voluntary solitude feels like it might be slipping into isolation territory – and that can be a heavy feeling. So, I want to talk about loneliness and how to overcome it.

I’ve had a tendency to isolate myself throughout periods of my life, particularly when I was abusing drugs and alcohol in my teens and early twenties. Although what I do now somewhat shadows those moments, I find that they’re related but quite different. See, this is the first time I’ve been able to forego regular socialization for a purpose – not because I feel like shit or because I’m sad, but because I have a goal. A goal that’s going to require me to role my sleeves up and work harder and more diligently than many other intelligent and talented people in the world if I want to have a shot at reaching it. A goal that has to be top of mind every single day and cannot be secondary to anything else if I want it to become reality. A goal that has given me purpose, and that I give back my attention, energy, and heart to in return. I’m so determined to accomplish this goal that it prevents me from falling into a depression where I then feel the need to self-medicate with substances or search for other forms of escapism – I’ve been alcohol free for over three years now and I’ll take a hit of a joint every so often but haven’t touched anything more than that in even longer. That’s the power of purpose. I plan on covering substance abuse (alcohol in particular) at some point, but today I want to stick with this idea of learning how to be your own best friend. It’s something I’m still learning how to do, and some days I really suck at it – but it’s an important relationship to develop and foster over time if you want to have a chance to pursue your passions and change the trajectory of your life in a meaningful way. It’s been a central component of my ability to push through the toughest times in my life psychologically.  

I love all of my closest friends dearly. Asking me who my best friend is feels like you’re asking me which one I love more. I really don’t want to answer that question, and I’m proud to say that I legitimately don’t think I could…. so, I’m my best friend instead. I know you’re thinking this is probably going to be a big ego thing and are rolling your eyes already, but bear with me here. I’m not talking about having a grandiose sense of self or being a jackass. I just mean being fully comfortable with yourself – being able to relax and think positive thoughts about yourself when you’re alone. Genuinely loving yourself. I have humility and I don’t think I have the right to judge anyone else… but I also realized that I can’t be so quick to judge myself either. If you think it’s acceptable to talk badly about somebody else’s way of life or judge them for their current position without knowing their story or ever walking a day in their shoes, then you need to stop right there because you have another step to complete before getting to what we’re discussing next. You need to unpack whatever part of you is so unhappy or insecure that it makes you want to pull other people down into that dark place with you.

But here’s the deal – you can’t be the best version of yourself until you reach a real level of self-acceptance and self-love that far too many of us are neglecting. If you’re a good person, you know exactly how leniently and nonjudgmentally you approach other people’s problems. You’re empathetic and you never want to exacerbate anybody’s negative feelings about themselves – and from the outside looking in, you know most of the time it’s way worse in their head than it is in reality. You probably approach these situations in a gentle manner and offer support to those people. But when it comes to yourself, do you offer that same kind of grace in your way of thinking? I know I didn’t.

Somewhere along the line I noticed that I was having a lot more patience and understanding for everybody else, but if I screwed things up or had an off day where I didn’t produce at the level I’d like for whatever reason – I would judge myself really harshly and beat myself up about it. I would kick myself when I was already down, and it would make course-correcting and getting back on track all the more difficult to accomplish. I was handicapping myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about success thus far in my journey, it’s that it doesn’t matter how many times you get punched in the gut – but how fast you can recover from the hardest hits you take impacts your chances a lot. Just keep moving forward has to be your mantra, and I promise you that no solution exists that involves beating yourself up. It took me a long time to identify this fault in my way of thinking and behavior, but I’m really glad I did because ever since I shifted my perspective on my own humanity, I’m able to push myself just as hard each day but also cut myself a break when things don’t go according to plan. Because the reality is that if you hate on yourself, you’ve got no shot at achieving anything in life. That’s just the truth. It’s game over before you even lace up your cleats.

If you struggle with this internal hardship too, I want to give you a new way to approach your faults and flaws: Start asking yourself what you would do if a stranger or one of your closest friends came up to you and told you they were feeling the way you feel right now about whatever it is that’s causing you pain or distress. Whether it’s shit that happened recently that’s causing you acute pain, or if it’s stuff you don’t like about yourself or your past that you’ve been carrying around for a long time – ask yourself that, answer it honestly, and then have that same level of consideration for yourself. Give yourself that gift because you’ll find that it’s an extremely practical and effective method of processing your troubles and coming to terms with them. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to turn the page and make forward progress – and the ability to do that is essential if you want to have success doing anything in life.

We tend to be our own worst critic and judge ourselves unfairly in ways we wouldn’t dream of doing to other people – so start looking at yourself and the things that are weighing down on you right now from an objective standpoint. You’re too close to them and you need to step outside of yourself and look at them from another angle. Other people are going to judge you throughout your entire life, and it’s really important to understand that that doesn’t matter. At all. You have to realize that nothing that goes on in anybody else’s mind can hurt you, but what goes on in your own mind absolutely can. You need to build up your self-esteem and see your best friend when you’re looking in the mirror so that you can have a gentle, supportive approach with yourself when things go awry and so you can find peace and strength when you need it most. Otherwise, it leaves you vulnerable to the bullshit negativity other people impose on you – and trust me, they will.

The funny thing is that judgmental people are actually showing you how they feel about themselves. They’re deflecting attention from their own flaws and insecurities because they live in fear of being exposed for who they truly are (or how they perceive themselves). Once you know that, you realize it doesn’t matter what they think, say, or do anymore – and that opens the path to an extraordinary life for you to pursue your passions without being held back by anybody else. It creates tranquility. The second you hear someone start talking shit about somebody else’s life or dragging them through the mud for their problems, understand what that is telling you about the person speaking and immediately stop listening to them. Chances are that if they’re saying it to you about somebody else, they probably say it about you to somebody else too. Tune those people out and limit your interactions with them. Do things that feed your self-esteem instead. If you do, you’ll find that you’ll be way more interested in building other people up than tearing them down – and that’s just a better way to live.

You don’t necessarily have to be dealing with feelings of loneliness to experience the benefits of being your own best friend either. You can have a great support system and I would still say this is worth your time to understand and work on. People are finicky creatures full of irrational and finicky emotions… and even the people who love you most won’t always see eye to eye with you or understand what ignites your passion. Also, success by definition is excelling others in some area of life and some people can’t handle it when they see you excelling them. It may be a hard pill to swallow, but if you’re serious about changing your life for the better you need to be prepared to see your circle get smaller, at least initially. Success can be lonely, and not everyone you start your journey with will stand with you as you continue to climb. Whether it’s a forced situation or not, you need to be comfortable walking alone if you really want to reach your full potential and live your truth. Happiness is an inside job no matter what, so understand that you’re not pushing anybody away by becoming self-reliant – you’re just developing an invaluable internal environment that can help you weather any storm.

You also don’t have to be pursuing financial success or want to be great at business in order to gain a lot of value from this approach. Success is a subjective term to me, and I think it’s imperative that you define it for yourself, so you know what you’re aiming at when you start moving towards it. That helps you dictate where your energy is best expended and what actions and habits are going to be most beneficial to helping you get there. Regardless of what success means to you, it’s going to be an arduous journey to achieve it. If it were easy, everybody would be successful… and all great or worthwhile things should be hard. The more difficult it is, the more you’ll savor the process of getting to your goals. You’re going to need to be your own best friend to make that trek because as you encounter adversity, obstacles, and challenges – you’ll be confronted with the desire to quit and give up on things. If you can’t look within yourself and find that inner hype man or cheerleader to pull you up out of that mental funk, you’re not going to be celebrating many victories along the way. Nobody has ever accomplished anything difficult if they didn’t believe in themselves to do it first. So please start cultivating a healthy and supportive relationship with yourself today – it will carry you to great heights and there’s really no better feeling than knowing you don’t have to rely on anybody else to get the motivation needed to keep going and to keep pushing forward when things get tough.

In Summary:

“You don’t gotta fuck with me, I fuck with me.” – Russ, Utah Freestyle