We all have a story we tell ourselves.
Hard to say where it starts. Maybe as a small fib to someone else. A lie we think isn't a big deal. We don't even call it a lie. A stretch, maybe.
What it really is, is worse. It's a failure we can't admit to ourselves. And it grows.
Everyone has one. The football player who wasn't, because of his knee. The artist who didn't, because the baby came too early.
I hear them every day if I pay attention. I was going to write a book. I was going to be a doctor. I was going to call.
So I went looking for mine. After all, I said we all have one. What's the story I tell?
The thing I gloss over with an excuse to save face. To save myself the bite of the fall.
Maybe it isn't one thing. Maybe it's a lifetime of little things. The man you claim to be, and the man you are. The one you show people. The mask you wear in public. An actor in a role.
The tycoon hiding how weak he feels. The strong man who's afraid. The quiet man screaming inside his own head to be let out. The drunk who never touches a drink.
I wrote this in Badge to Boardroom, and I still believe it:
"The heaviest things I've ever carried weren't the failures themselves. They were the failures I spent years lying to myself about instead of owning."
But were they failures?
What counts as failure if it makes us learn and grow? Maybe things just are. A set of circumstances starts, and it arrives with a consequence. Good or bad is a point of view. A place in time. A position that keeps changing.
Think about when something went really wrong.
For me, I lost a business and a home in the same year. You'd think it couldn't get worse. If someone offered me a time machine to go back and fix it, would I take it?
No.
Because my life moved from there to here, and it's better for it. What I thought was the end was the beginning.
Perception. Time. Where you stand when you look back.
Have you ever gotten down on one knee and asked God to get you out of a bind? How many times? You and I both know it's a lot. More than ten. Maybe more than a hundred.
Did He help? You're not sure, because you can't remember. How bad was it, really? Or did He step in and make it better, so well you forgot it was ever bad?
I think about these things late at night. To search yourself is to stay honest.
What am I? What do I do? What do I want? What do I stand for?
So what's the point?
You decide. It's yours to build. To design.
To live, or to lie.
— B