I started playing the violin when I was nine years old. I went to college for it. I taught music for many years. I lived the artist’s life through and through. And I didn’t do it well.
Several years ago, after living through financial hell, depression, fatigue, a broken immune system, developing OCD, experiencing pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week for ten years, and nightmares every night for two years, getting my life together, taking responsibility for myself and becoming the man I wanted to be, getting my health back, stepping out of poverty, and putting myself on a direction in life that gave me hope, purpose, meaning, and excitement,
I decided to set my violin down so I could focus on writing words and helping people figure out the direction they wanted to go with their lives.
And I still wake up sometimes from a nightmare that I’m in my last semester of college, I’ve figured out what gives me joy, and I’m so focused on it that I’ve forgotten to attend my violin lessons, and will have to attend another year to graduate and go many thousands of dollars more in debt.
I can still feel the nerve damage some days in my fingers from when I applied myself to my studies incorrectly. In moments of stress, I can still feel ghost pains from healed ulcers I developed from the anorexia and workaholism I lived through during that time in my life.
I don’t share a lot about my life. Because I’m more excited by the future than the past. There are so many important things to talk about and I’m more excited about what I learned than what I went through. And because I’m more excited about helping people now than dwelling on me.
But I think it’s worth describing this to say that it can take a long time to heal. Your life can go very wrong, you can turn it around to make it go very right, and just because you have those things haunting you doesn’t mean you can’t win today.
My life is awesome now but I still have worries. And it’s fine. I’m extremely proud of the man I am now, the future ahead of me, what I do, and the people I help.
My life is good and it keeps getting better. And every once in a while I wake up and remember how bad it used to be.
And maybe things will get worse again, and that’s fine. Because life is hard and you are a person who was bred for thousands of years to overcome struggle. You can do it. You can suffer and experience joy and meaning and make a lot of money and do a lot of cool things.
The world is available for you to experience and make the best of.
You just have to take tiny steps to make it happen, there are a lot of struggles along the way, and you might wake up in cold sweats someday thinking about mistakes you made or would have made.
But you can persevere, you can create a life that is beyond your wildest dreams, you can affect millions of people, you can love and laugh and play and win.
You just have to start living the life that works for you to do it.
You have to take logical steps to live a life that makes it logical that you can win.
You have to take responsibility for yourself like a parent takes care of a child and put yourself in situations where you can thrive, tap into your natural advantages and grow where it’s healthy.
And if you do this you will become unstoppable, because you will never stop growing.
You will become an animal, in the best sense of the word. Because you’ll be tapped into the most natural version of yourself where your instincts align with your conscious actions.
You will become inevitable (like a good Thanos ;), like the force of nature you are, because you aren’t fighting who you are, you’re living it.
Take a look at yourself and learn your strengths and weaknesses. Face up to reality. Do what you can do that will naturally make you win. And you’ll start winning.
And you’ll begin producing status chemicals in a way that makes you know you’re a winner deep in your bones.
It will put you on a cycle of success that would feel impossible to your past self. But completely natural to who you are today. And no matter what comes your way. You will be able to grow beyond it.
So go take the next reasonable best step for you. Big or small. Take the one that makes you better.
Life is hard. And you can do it. So go take a small step and go win.
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