A Message For Men Ready To Give Up

So for a long time, I have received messages from men who have been thinking about giving up. And in a recent conversation with a buddy, he said, you know, what do you say to guys that are really thinking about giving up? Whether. Whether they're thinking about giving up a career, a job, you know, a relationship, or they're really at the end of their rope and they're thinking about just giving up altogether. And I said, you know, this is. This is a tough one because I get messages all the time from men who are really struggling and who say that they're kind of at the end of the rope. And so I wanted to create a little video that was for any man that feels like he's at the end of what's possible. And I hope that you share this with any man that you know or you think is struggling, that is thinking about giving up and sort of throwing in the towel. And this isn't really a plea for you as a man. If you're watching this and you feel like you're at the end and you feel like it's like you want to give up, this isn't really a plea or a bargain to try and get you to stay.

It's not even really a motivational speech or video to try and convince you that life is worth living or anything as cliche as that. If. If anything, it's more of a reminder that you. You might have more choice in life than you think. And I say that because out of all the men that I've ever worked with, out of all the men that I've spoken to and all the men who have been right at the very edge, what seems to stand out the most is that it seems like the final, irreducible choice. You know, I'm at the very end. I feel like I'm just going to give up. And that feels like in that moment. And I've been there, by the way. There was a moment in my life where I lived out of the back of my car for a few weeks, and I had destroyed. I had imploded my entire life. My career, my relationship, friends, friendships, family. I mean, I really had blown things up. I'd been lying and cheating and, you know, drinking and just doing stupid shit for years. And it seemed like I had gotten myself there because I felt like I didn't have choice for such a long time. And I didn't feel like I had choice over my actions. I didn't feel like I had choices over my decisions. I felt completely out of control. I felt like external circumstances were just so overwhelming that I didn't have any real say in how my fucking life looked. And I see this with so many men. You know, I used to work for a man who way back in the day when I was working construction, and he was a mentor of mine, and he went on to create his own construction business. And I found out years later that that construction business had grown and he had, you know, 50 to 100 employees. And then I found out a couple years after that, you know, my stepfather called me because he knew him and communicated to me that he had taken his own life and that this man had taken his life because the company that he built had gone so far into debt that he was going to be bankrupt, his family was going to be bankrupt, he couldn't pay any employees. And, you know, he had really felt like he had no other choice but to do what he did.

And it's such a funny thing that choice plays such an incredible role in our life. And it's almost like the more mentally healthy we are, the more flexible we are in. Within our psychology and our mindset. But I think that that flexibility comes with being able to feel like we can choose. And I think I see so many men who have their kids taken away from them and they didn't have a choice in it, or the marriage ends and they didn't have a choice in it, or, you know, their girlfriend or their partner decides to abort a child that they really want and they didn't have a choice in it. They get fired from the job and they didn't have a choice in it, or something happens externally and, you know, causes their business to collapse and they didn't have a choice in it. And I see so many men personalizing this in. In a way where it's almost like I should have been able to do something about that. And my inability to do something about that means that the, you know, there's either something wrong with me or the only way for me to re empower myself is to take back some last vestige of choice, Some last remaining hint of being able to take matters into my own hands. And I think that the therapeutic industry vastly and wildly underestimates and misses how much men in culture and society often have their choice redacted, taken away, disintegrated or diminished within our modern culture. You know, there's this perspective that men hold all the power, that the patriarchy holds all the power. But when you look at the men who oftentimes make this choice to call it in, to Say, I'm done. You know, I'm at the end and I don't want to do this anymore. Oftentimes, those men's lives, their sense of choice has been so constricted and so restricted that they used words like useless. You know, that the world would be better off without them, that the people around them would be better off without them. And that is so much indicative of this notion of I don't have a choice in how my life is going. And I know that for many of you watching this and listening to this, whether you're the one that's struggling, you're the one that feels like you're at the end, or you have people in your life that are there or have been there, regardless of what choice they made. It's so challenging because I know that so many of you really have circumstances in your life where it feels like there's this massive constriction on you daily where things haven't gone the way that you expected and you really have felt like things are maybe out of your control and that you don't have much of a choice. And. And that this sort of last effort of just like, well, but I can choose this, you know, I can choose to vacate. I can choose to disappear. I can choose to not be here anymore. And there is a kind of.

I don't want to say potency or power in that. There's a kind of intoxication, I think, that comes along with that notion when we're desperate. And that's not to judge anybody, that's not to shame anybody. That's actually to just say, I get it. You know, I get it. I've been there and had those thoughts of saying it would almost feel more.

Reasonable, logical.

It would feel like something that I can control. That's what it is. It feels like it's something that I can control. And, you know, I think I'm reminded of Nietzsche, who had this notion that your suffering is really the kind of forge of your becoming. And I've seen this in my own life, that my suffering and the pain that I've gone through, the terrible circumstances, the shitty decisions that I've made, the moments in my life where I haven't felt like I've had any choice. It's in those deep moments of suffering that is a kind of forge for how we could become the kind of man that we want to be. And so in this notion, you know, what you're feeling is a kind of crucible. It's a kind of notion that this is the place where truly great men can be formed. And that there's not much difference between somebody who is an addict, somebody who is lost, somebody who is completely confused, somebody who maybe like you, feels beaten down, feels like you have no choice, feels like you have no direction, feels like you have no meaning and purpose. The difference between where you are at and somebody who has built mastery and built greatness is simply that they likely started where you were. Now, yes, some people started, you know, with an advantage. And I don't want to discount that by any means, by any way, shape or form. But many, many, many people who move towards mastery and greatness are the ones who started at the bottom. They let suffering be the forge of their future, becoming. They let their suffering and their pain and the feeling like I don't have a choice become the forge for something different. And it's almost like a spiritual quest. And that's the power that you get to take back. That is the choice that instead of saying, I have no choice in the suffering, there's a kind of reclamation of the choice of saying I do have a choice. Not that I have a choice in everything that happens to me, but I have a choice in understanding that some of these things are actually happening for. For me, and they're happening for me to move, shape, transform, become, evolve. And I think the other thing is that when. When a man cannot change his circumstances, because some of you, I know, are in circumstances that feel unsurmountable, you know, completely impossible to overcome. When you are faced with circumstances that you cannot change. That's when you're faced to change yourself. That is when you are forced to look within and start to alter or start to change, start to work, start to develop, start to explore the depths of who you are. And you might feel like giving up because things just seem meaningless, things seem hollow, things seem empty. But meaning is something that you can create. Meaning is something that you can sculpt, that you can craft, that you can build. And it's something that so many people that I talk to who are at the very bottom have lost a hold of along the way. It's this kind of notion of like, everything's meaningless, everything is absolutely empty, right? And. And so instead of looking for where there's no meaning, being able to ask yourself, what is life asking of me right now? Right? Because suffering ceases to be suffering.

When you start to find meaning in the moment when you choose to find some type of meaning in your life, instead of saying, this is all a kind of nihilistic doesn't matter, doesn't mean anything. Adventure and I have no control over, over it. So we have to be able to reclaim a sense of meaning and choice. And that in itself is your choice. It is your choice at the end of the day, whatever you decide to do, whatever anybody in your life decides to do. If you're watching this because of somebody that you know who's suffering, and by the way, it's the hardest thing. It is the hardest thing to be, be the person who is drowning in alcoholism, drowning in shame, drowning in self pity, just wants the show to be over. And the person who's watching that happen to somebody that they love. It is so brutal. And I get asked all the time by people, you know, my brother is suffering, he's got suicidal ideation. My best friend is really struggling with deep depression. I'm worried that he's going to take his own life. And the truth is, is that so many people who are around people that are suffering and struggling try and take responsibility for saving that person. And that's why I said at the very beginning of this video, this video is not about trying to talk anybody off of a ledge. It's not about trying to make the world seem better and easier because life is hard and the world is challenging. And I get why so many people look out at the dating world and the economy and politics and social media and they say, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I don't want to be involved in this. I get it, I understand. And so this, again, this video is not about trying to convince you to do anything. It's simply acting as a reminder that you have have choice. And as. As much as maybe your life feels like the circumstances have taken away your choice in so much of your life, which I understand again, courts, legal systems, family members, friends, trauma from your childhood where you feel like you didn't have a choice in how things unfolded or what happened to you. I understand all of those things and I still sit here as a reminder that choice is something that no one can ultimately take from you. No one can ultimately remove that part of your life. They can constrict and restrict and take away so much of your freedom. But how you choose to respond in any given moment is ultimately what matters. And it's not until we give away that notion that we have any choice at all, or that we have any meaning at all, when we give away that to others, life, circumstances, etcetera, that's when we start to find ourselves in this place of Contemplation. So.

I don't really have an ending to this outside of. I hope that despite the odds in your life of whatever it is that you are going through, and I don't know your circumstance, I don't know, you know, what you've gone through. You know, I'm. I'm assuming that if you're watching this and you've made it this far, it's like your life has probably been pretty hard. You know, it has probably been brutal at times. And I've seen brutal. I've worked with some men who, man, like, their lives have just been absolutely brutal. And it breaks my heart when I hear their stories, and I hold that with them and for them. But this is just me saying.

You have choice. And I remember, I'll. Here's how I'll end this. My mom struggled with addiction for a long time. I've never talked about this on the show.

And it was the hardest thing to watch her battle with alcohol, you know, literally drinking herself to death and. And to stand by no matter what I did. And this is a classic Al Anon thing, right? The children of alcoholics trying to get her sober, trying to get her to go to rehab, trying to get her clean, trying to just, like, get her to help herself and support herself, and she just wouldn't do it. And nothing shifted until I moved out of this place of trying to force her to get clean. And instead, I remember having a conversation with her where I said, you know, no matter what happens, whether you decide to drink yourself to death, you decide to drink yourself, you know, drink for the rest of your life, whether you decide to get clean and sober, whatever it is that you do, just know that I choose to love you. And I. I don't like what you're choosing, but I will respect your choice, and I will love you no matter what you choose. I will love you no matter what you choose. And it was so hard to have that conversation, but it really shifted because up until that point, I was operating from this place of, you don't have a choice because you have to go get clean and sober, and I don't have a choice about how I feel until you go get clean and sober. And. And I think when people are suffering and they're really going through a hard time, and men are at this place of contemplation, of, I just want to give up, man. I just want to throw in the towel. So many people do what is antithetical to helping, and they try and convince you. They try and tell you, this is why you should stay. This is why you shouldn't do that. And they try and convince you of what choice you should make instead of you coming to that choice on your own. And so this video really is a kind of honoring of the remembrance that you do have a choice. And as tough as it is to say this, I just want you to know that if there's no one else in the world that will say this to you, no matter what you choose, I'll still love you. And those are the words that my mom needed to hear to. Those are the words that I needed to hear. And it's hard because I think so many people will hear that and say, how could you do that? You're letting somebody off the hook, or, you know, you're giving them permission to drink or do drugs or, you know, to end their life. No, no. It is simply a declaration of remembering that everyone has their own choice. And you cannot take that away from them. You cannot take it away from them. And in fact, in order for people to move, change, heal, you know, whatever, however you want to describe that, it's actually that they need more choice reinforced with usually some structure and some grounding and some boundaries. So thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that you've man it forward and you share this podcast episode with somebody that you know could use it or needs to hear it. Maybe this was just for you because you know that somebody in your life is struggling in this way, or maybe this is for you because you are that person that's struggling in that way. And I hope that something in this video I hope that you found something in this video that was useful and meaningful, because I know that so many men who are considering calling it quits feel useless. And so I hope that you found something useful in this video. Take care.