9h • General discussion
DON’T PULL THE TRIGGER BECOME THE DIGGER
Bury What’s Killing You. Become the Man You Needed.
I’m writing this from a couch in a trailer.
I’m 43 years old.
There was a time when I owned 15 properties and had millions of dollars. I had built the life I’d been chasing since I was 12 years old, pushing a lawnmower around the neighborhood, hustling to make money.
I came from a broken home, and somewhere along the way I created a blueprint for happiness with two things written on it:
MAKE MONEY.
BUILD A FAMILY.
I believed if I accomplished those two things, I would be happy.
I got them.
And then I lost them.
Today, I’m more than $1 million in debt after spending most of my life avoiding debt. I’ve lost money, properties, relationships, people I loved, people I respected, and pieces of the identity I spent decades creating.
I’ve been betrayed.
I’ve been spit on.
I’ve been pepper-sprayed.
I’ve been arrested.
I’ve watched people and institutions I thought would stand beside me turn their backs.
And I’ve experienced pain so deep that my human mind just wanted the pain to stop.
Yet I’m still fucking here.
This morning I woke up on this couch and asked my soul:
What do you want from me today?
And the answer became the title of this book.
DON’T PULL THE TRIGGER.
I’ve known men who aren’t here anymore.
Something happened to them that felt impossible to come back from. The pain became bigger than their ability to imagine another future.
And they made a permanent decision during a temporary chapter.
I’ve thought about the people they left behind. I’ve thought about the hole their deaths created.
And after experiencing my own darkness, I understand something I didn’t understand before:
The pain can become unbelievably real.
You can be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone.
You can have people telling you everything will be okay while knowing they have absolutely no idea what is happening inside you.
You can lose the person you thought you were.
You can lose your money.
Your relationship.
Your children.
Your reputation.
Your purpose.
Your faith.
Your plan.
And eventually you can start wondering:
What the fuck is left?
You are.
That’s what’s left.
And as long as you’re here, we have something to work with.
I’m too stubborn to pull the fucking trigger.
I’m no fucking quitter.
And neither are you.
So pick up the shovel.
We’re going to dig.
But we’re not digging your grave.
We’re digging graves for everything inside you that needs to die.
Bury the excuses.
Bury the addictions.
Bury the victim.
Bury the approval-seeking.
Bury the habits you learned from weaker men because somebody told you destruction was masculine.
Bury the belief that your bank account determines your value.
Bury the belief that losing your family means you have nothing left to live for.
Bury the boy who keeps waiting for somebody to come rescue him.
Then build.
Build discipline.
Build your body.
Build your mind.
Build your finances.
Build your relationship with God.
Build your character.
Build your ability to sit alone in darkness without destroying yourself just to escape the feeling.
And eventually:
Become the man you needed when you were a boy.
That’s why I’m writing this.
There are young men growing up in broken homes who don’t have the guidance they need. Some don’t have a father. Others technically have one but don’t have a leader, mentor, or example showing them how to navigate what adulthood is going to throw at them.
If that’s you, this book is for you.
I don’t have everything figured out.
That’s important.
I’m not writing this from a mansion after everything magically worked out.
I’m writing it from the fucking trailer.
I’m writing while I’m still fighting.
That means you don’t have to wait until you’ve conquered the mountain to help the person climbing behind you.
You can reach your hand down while you’re still climbing.
There were moments when the pain became so deep that my human nature wanted nothing more than for it to end.
But instead of asking:
Why me?
I learned to ask:
What is this teaching me?
What am I supposed to learn from this?
How can this make me stronger?
That’s a different way to suffer.
When I thought about losing the million dollars I’d spent my entire life trying to build, my first thought was:
It took me 38 years to make that.
Then I looked deeper.
No.
It didn’t.
It took me 38 years to become the man capable of making it.
The money came later.
And money can come again.
Properties can come again.
Businesses can come again.
Success can come again.
But the man capable of creating those things is worth infinitely more than the things themselves.
That’s something nobody can repossess.
There is a Japanese tradition called kintsugi.
When a piece of pottery breaks, the goal isn’t necessarily to disguise every fracture and pretend the vessel was never damaged. The broken pieces can be repaired with lacquer and highlighted with gold.
The cracks remain visible.
What once looked like evidence that the object had been destroyed becomes part of what makes it distinctive.
Think about that.
We spend half our lives trying to hide our cracks.
I’m done hiding mine.
I’m putting gold in the motherfuckers.
Every failure.
Every betrayal.
Every dollar lost.
Every night alone.
Every humiliation.
Every person who left.
Every time I was knocked down and wondered whether I could stand back up.
Gold.
Those cracks are becoming part of the man I’m building.
Yesterday my car got towed.
There was a time when another problem might have felt like proof that the universe was against me.
Instead, I smiled.
I laughed.
And I asked:
How can I have fun solving this problem?
That’s the game now.
Give me another problem.
I’ll solve it.
Give me another setback.
I’ll learn from it.
Knock me down.
I’ll study the ground while I’m there.
Because somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I wasn’t just building businesses or making money.
I was building the motherfucker who couldn’t be killed.
Not physically invincible.
Something more important.
A man who can lose what he thought defined him and still know there is another chapter.
A man who can feel unbearable pain without allowing one unbearable moment to decide the rest of his life.
A man who can break without believing he’s finished.
If you believe in God, remember that your suffering doesn’t have to be meaningless.
And if you don’t believe yet, that’s okay.
You don’t have to solve God today.
You only need to do one thing today:
Stay.
Give me 24 hours.
Don’t solve your entire life tonight.
Don’t figure out the next 20 years.
Don’t rebuild the million dollars.
Don’t fix the marriage.
Don’t solve every problem.
Don’t become the perfect man.
Just make it through today.
Then tomorrow, we do it again.
Your circumstances can change.
Money changes.
Relationships change.
Reputations change.
Careers change.
Your entire life can look unrecognizable five years from now.
But none of that can happen if you make a permanent decision because of today’s pain.
You already survived impossible odds just to exist.
Now make your existence mean something.
Get up, motherfucker.
Do it for you.
And when nobody gives a shit?
Do it anyway.
When nobody believes you?
Do it anyway.
When nobody comes to save you?
Become the man who saves himself—and then become the man who reaches back for somebody else.
You may feel broken right now.
Good.
We’ve got some gold.
Pick up the pieces.
Pick up the shovel.
We’ve got work to do.
DON’T PULL THE TRIGGER.
BECOME THE DIGGER.
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DON’T PULL THE TRIGGER BECOME THE DIGGER
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For anyone rebuilding who they are after life told them who to be. This is that space, free. #Listen2MeNow
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