Start with What

When I landed myself in a Guamanian jail cell on Thanksgiving night of 2009, I had a problem.

Actually, I had several problems. And while my being an alcoholic was clearly a serious problem at that point, my biggest problem wasn’t the boozing.

It was the moral bankruptcy.

I had no idea who I was, what I stood for, or who I wanted to be as a man. I had no idea what kind of man I wanted to be.

Without foundational principles or values to guide decisions, I wasted much of my 20s careening from one misadventure to the next based on little more than the most hedonistic guesses as to what I wanted.

I had grown up as the Soft Man described by Robert Bly in Iron John. I meant well but hadn’t learned the value of struggle or resolve. In my softness, I wanted to stay comfortable. I wanted opportunities presented to me. I wanted a certain, linear path to success.

Those are the things I wanted, even while understanding on some subconscious level that I was on the wrong path, a disconnect that resulted in chaotic, destructive behavior, the sorts of things that will get you arrested and thrown in the drunk tank on Guam.

As I described last week, that moment was my rock bottom, the point where I stopped digging the hole any deeper. Once I started putting in the work to get better, I realized very quickly that I needed to establish core values for myself.

I needed to decide:

What kind of man did I want to be?

My answer to that question was not academic, and neither is yours. How we answer—and not answering is indeed an answer—shapes our thoughts, our decisions, our actions, and the trajectories of our lives.

Once I got clear on what kind of man I wanted to be, I started making decisions accordingly.

My life has taken a dramatically different course. For the better.

Do you know what kind of man you want to be?