Teaching what I've learned from the hood, the ring, and everything in between. Join 35k other readers to learn how to manage risk, build relationships, and confront reality.
The Universe Sends Signs
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You are the worst person to assess your strengths and weaknesses because you have the worst perspective of your actions. Everything you do or say, you can only judge its impact by how others respond to it, and that response will be influenced by the recipient's current state of mind, relationship with you, and what they want—or don’t want—from you. It can be impossible to get honest feedback about yourself from people. Even when a person gives you a complete assessment without regard to your potential negative reaction, there’s a strong possibility that you won’t understand or accept the assessment because you’re in denial (for negative feedback) or have self-esteem issues (for positive feedback). There are a host of other reasons you’re bad at judging yourself. You don’t like the sound of your voice because you’re used to hearing it from your perspective, which is a combination of sound waves traveling through the air and sound waves reverberating through your skull. You don’t like how you look, not only because you aren’t used to seeing yourself but also because you’re already self-conscious about something. Maybe it’s your thinning hair, double chin, or your ears that kids made fun when you were in school, You’ll never seriously be able to take a compliment about your appearance or voice because you don’t believe it to be true. It’s the reality you’ve chosen, and choices like this prevent many people from ever feeling attractive and deserving of someone attractive. So, between people’s reactions to you, which may have nothing to do with you, and your inability to accurately assess yourself, you can end up with all types of counterproductive, self-destructive beliefs about yourself—and they will hold you back. It happens to the best of us. You may find this hard to believe, but I struggle with the problem of inaccurate limiting self-beliefs. Now, to be fair, this has been a positive in many ways. One of the reasons I push myself to learn different things, many of them to a higher-than-hobbyist level, is because I never feel like I am enough. I recognize that there is a bit of dysfunction in that statement, but the drive that comes from that insecurity led me into boxing, physics, writing, and—ironically enough—sobriety. Once my brain was free from the poison of alcohol, it drove me to become a better friend, brother, and spouse, and I’m sure it will drive me to be the best father I can be. I could not imagine my life if I ever accepted myself as being enough. Through the years, I’ve learned to be driven by the selflessness of love rather than the fear of loss, but I think my life could be a lot worse if I hadn’t learned to harness my low self-image and work tirelessly to prove myself wrong. On the flipside, my inherently low self-image has nearly cost me relationships and opportunities. During the first few weeks of dating my wife, I was convinced she didn’t like me. I didn’t think she hated me, but I didn’t think she liked me that much. And this has nothing to do with her behavior toward me. I just had a twisted perception of myself and what I offered. My distorted self-image almost cost me my book deal as well. The first book I wrote a proposal for was more about boxing and less about me. I didn’t think anyone would care about my life, what I’ve been through, and what I’ve learned, so I focused on the boxing angle. My agent looked at the proposal and said that this was not the book I needed to be writing, and he based that on the following I’d built and the coverage I had received. In my interviews, speaking gigs, and even on my social media, no one really focused on my boxing in a vacuum. It was always how I used it to accomplish other things. You think that would be enough, but when I wrote the first draft, the feedback from the editor said, “There isn’t enough you” in this. Now, I fixed that and produced a fantastic book (in my humble, biased opinion). However, it didn’t end there. I started taking my YouTube channel seriously, and it was not going well. My videos would get a few hundred views—at best. Until one day, I finally got fed up with the time it took to make a video—the scripting, the editing, the music selection, and the uploading—and just said, “fuck it,” and spoke from the heart about why men need to learn how to fight. That seems like a strange topic to “speak from the heart” on, but people responded to it. Right now, the video has over 95k views. That gave me confidence that my stories and perspective were enough, and it’s how I’ve been doing YouTube ever since. It’s probably weird to read, seeing as how you’re subscribed to my newsletter because you feel I offer something, but I tell you this so that you know you aren’t crazy if you ever feel inadequate despite seemingly having no reason to. We have the worst perspective of ourselves because we can never step outside of ourselves and see ourselves how the world sees us. But the universe sends you signs. And it will keep sending you signs until you believe. Hopefully, you will get the message before you resign to conformity or normalcy. P.S., Also, I've figured out the date and format of the Zero-Edit YouTube Workshop. If you’re new here, the Zero-Edit YouTube Workshop is where I will teach you how I’ve grown my YouTube channel by over 20k subscribers in the past 90 days, and am making $100-200/day in ad revenue. It will be broken down into three 90-120 minute workshops. Part 1: Technicals and set-up. I’ll cover the Zero-YouTube method, the equipment and software you’ll need, an overview of the important stats, and some strongly suggested best practices for your channel. A bonus lesson on using AI to create thumbnails will also be included. This may or may not be a live workshop. The start date will be Feb 24th, and I plan it to run for one week. If you can’t make the live dates, the videos will be available as a private link to anyone who registers. I’m still undecided about the price. I will announce that when I start sending information to the waitlist. So, sign up to the waitlist below.
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Stoic Street Smarts
Teaching what I've learned from the hood, the ring, and everything in between. Join 35k other readers to learn how to manage risk, build relationships, and confront reality.
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