How to Rewire Yourself

I finally had the success that I thought would make all the pain go away. I had the million-dollar business, but internally I was miserable. This success was costing me my health, my sleep, my well-being, really my mental health, right? Going to bed with a pit in my stomach, waking up with a pit in my stomach, opening my laptop to get into meetings and just feeling that tension and that anxiety in my body every single day. I hated every single day, even though I was successful. I was in so much pain that it pushed me to a point of like, I would rather not do this at all than continue to operate this way. And that's when I started looking elsewhere. I'm like, okay, if the answer isn't out there, it's not money, it's not status, it's not accolades, where could it be? Well, it's got to be internally. And I was trying everything. I was doing the meditations, I was doing the breathwork, I was doing the mind stuff, I was reading all the books, but nothing really shifted in me. Like, I understood it cognitively, but I was still operating the same way. Then it hit me. I realized stress is not the issue. Stress is a part of life. We're always going to have external stressors. It is how I was responding to stress. It was my internal ability to manage stress. That was the issue. And furthermore, I had an underlying identity that was driving all this. I had this hustler identity that I got from when I was in hockey, right? Because how do I get rewarded? I'm the hardest worker in the room. I got to hustle. I got to get appreciation. I work construction. How do you get rewarded? You're the hardest worker. You do things the quickest. So my whole identity was built on being a hustler. And our system wants to keep us in alignment with our identity. So I had to look at that identity pattern and be like, damn, I gotta switch how I see myself in order to change my actions and my behaviors. Because everything in life flows downstream of our identity. If we're just trying to change our behaviors and our tactics while we still have the identity of someone who is in stress, is anxious, has to struggle, it's like trying to swim upstream. So then I come back to business, right? Still a multimillion-dollar business. The business is the same, it's actually growing, but I am different internally. I have a different internal operating system, a different set of skills that has allowed me to manage that stress. And now I get to build that business and actually enjoy it. I get to show up and be excited for the meetings. I look at the challenges as opportunities for growth. And overall, I have that calm, clear, peaceful baseline that allows me to love building my business.