Now What?

Finding Purpose After the Climb

For most of my life, I was hard charging. Goals weren’t ideas. They were carved in stone. Family, sons, career, fitness, homes, businesses, wealth that buys toys and freedom. I went after every one of them hard. Full speed. There were failures along the way that knocked me on my ass more times than I can count. But I got back up, dusted myself off, and kept moving forward.

And then one day, I arrived. The money’s in the bank. My wife of thirty years by my side. My sons are raised, happy, and building lives of their own. Everything I set out to accomplish is done.

Now what?

That’s the question that hit me. I can’t be the only one. Every book, every mentor, every voice in me was about making it. Get there. Provide. Build. Win. Not one of them tells you what to do the morning after you arrive.

The discipline, the early mornings, the failures I ate and never talked about. That experience was the entire point. It’s my life’s journey. The house and the bank account are just the receipt.

So, I am where I want to be. Now what? I’m not the guy that climbs into his recliner and sits out the last bit. I recently wrote a book and tried to get my life on paper. The shoot-outs, the stress, the failures, the wins, the love and the life I lived. Fully. In the writing I found the next step. My purpose.

The purpose shifts from building my life to helping the next man build his.

The Case for Passing It Down

There is a generation of young men right now with too much social media. Colored pill philosophies to manhood. No real mentors.

I can teach from the real world. My failures, my wins, and the hard things I had to endure alone. Almost everything learned, I learned by walking into it blind because there was no one there to offer advice. Every one of those scars is now a piece of information that I can offer to better equip the next guy.

I’m not going to pretend I have this fully built. I don’t. I’m at the beginning of this chapter. What I know is the direction. I’m going to write here, consistently, about what the climb actually cost and what I’d do differently. The failures more than the wins, because those are the parts that transfer. And I’m going to work directly with men who want it, in whatever form turns out to serve them best.

So, if you’re a younger man in the middle of the climb and something here landed, reply and tell me where you’re stuck. If you’re a man my age standing on your own summit asking the same question I was, I’d like to hear that too. I suspect there are more of us.

I’m not selling you anything today. I’m telling you my door is open.

The Ascent

I still think in terms of goals. But the goal has moved outside of me, and that changes what a good day looks like.

If sharing what I’ve learned can spare even one man some of the unnecessary pain I went through, then that becomes my new mission.

The climb was for me. The descent is for you.

— B