New Levels. New Devils

I’m a big summer guy. Warm weather is good for the soul. Winter is fine for the first month or two. But this January has dragged on. It’s been every bit of 3 months in 30 days if you ask me! I’m thinking to myself “wonder why the older I get the more I dislike winters?” Ahh, it dawns on me “because I better know the summer” If I lived through the ice age or in a year around mostly cold climate… Winters wouldn’t make much of a difference. It be all I know! But, I know the summer and I have it to compare to the winter.

It’s 2015 and I’m about to launch my first business Iron Valley Barbell. I have no money left to my name and no clue what I am getting myself into. My metric of success is: “To Break even is to win” I didn’t care to make millions or even think that’s possible. Not working a real job was success! I did this… but soon after I started to make money. And soon after that I started to make real money. It’s in this phase of making “real money” that everything changed in my mind. No longer did I think getting by was winning. No way. I need MORE. Never in my life had I felt this way about money. I went from a mindset of just needing enough… to I must make more to protect everything I have. This way I would never go back to being poor.

Ahh, I got a taste of the summer and now I hate the winter! New levels, new devils. I never hated the start up phase when I was in it. Or realized how poor I was. I LOVED IT!! The unpredictability of entrepreneurship fueled me! But now that there’s more to protect it began to cripple me. No one was teaching me how to navigate this season of life. I’m learning on the fly and cannot understand this new feeling in my body. I am ANXIOUS…! “What is this feeling?” I’m thinking to myself. I hardly ever remember being anxious. I didn’t give a shit if I lost everything. I HAD NOTHING TO LOSE! But now… there’s something to lose and I have a depth grip on controlling the weather. I go many years wrestling with this feeling in my body.

I am ambitious. I love starting businesses, helping the homies, scaling, tying new things, etc! None of this is “bad”… Don’t get it twisted. But if the reason I do these things is for the sake of MORE to feel “okay” or MORE to “protect” what I have wouldn’t the MORE I get give me the feeling I was searching for? With more shouldn’t I be less anxious? So I do that. I get more. Same feeling. More.. same feeling. I’m going nuts. THIS AINT IT!!!

I’m doing a course on Genesis and it dawns on me “aahhh, IT’S ME!! I AM ADAM* I am eating from the same Tree that Adam/Eve did. I always had enough. More than enough! But now that I’ve had a bite of MORE its all I want. No longer can I be content with what I have. Nor will I ever be if I go on this way. I’m never content with what I have … so I could never be content with what I get”

This realization that I am Adam shakes my soul. That anxious energy was like rumble strips on a highway. Telling me I am drifting off the road… What I thought would lead to contentment never did. There’s was no peace and no rest to be found in the god of more.

I reflect… “I have been deceived. I ate a lie.” What I have is more than enough! Always has been.”

“I was searching in all the wrong places. I was blind but now I can see.”

Do Hard Things