The Power of a Kept Promise

It's an agonizing pain to love your family deeply, but yet simultaneously watch them suffer from the promises that you failed to keep. And the fact that you have not kept your word as a man, that your behaviors are not in alignment with the man that you claim to be. Feeling like a fraud every single day, like an impostor, because I know I'm not living in alignment. And the only way I can protect myself from that reality is to deflect, project, deny, defend, and to pretend on the outside like I got it all figured out. To go back into my mindset where my ego is dominated by stories of, well, I got this figured out and I don't need help. See, it's the pride that that takes us down to the bottomless pit. And the story that accompanies that pride is a story where I believe that there's nothing that I have to fix, that it's not my fault. But see, the reality is, it is my responsibility. Because I know you're an action taker. I know you're an action taker. And action takers like us guys that solve problems, we need to take ownership. We understand that taking ownership is the only pathway towards something new. This isn't about you or her. This isn't about your marriage. It's about patterns. It's about cycles. It's about programming. It's about habits. It's about dynamics, things that have gone on, cycles that you're still in. And it's time for you, my brother, to break out of the matrix. In working with thousands of guys inside and outside the clinical setting, I can tell you one thing, that so many guys, they try to— they struggle because they're fighting against what? People, places, things. And they're not rising above to recognize the cycles, the patterns, the dysfunction that they continue to enroll themselves in, giving away their power to the external world. But here's the beautiful thing, man. When you actually step into a place in your life where you really recognize that the pain that you feel is really a result of the fact that people misunderstand how you really feel. I know that you got love for your family. I know that you got love for your wife despite the situation you're probably in with her. I know you got love for yourself, but here's the reality. When our behaviors don't reflect that and people perceive our behaviors and our actions as something other than what they actually are, there's a frustration there. Like, your wife thinks you're a liar. She thinks you're a manipulator. She thinks you're a deceiver. But on the inside, you know that your behaviors aren't because of anybody else, that your behaviors don't reflect how you feel about somebody else, something else, and what's going on in your life, that your behaviors are a direct result of how you really think and feel about yourself. Behavior never lies. If you ever want to know how you think and feel about yourself, just look in the mirror and watch the way that you act. See, and when our actions aren't in direct alignment with who we want to be, we can't respect ourselves. And then we get frustrated that people don't respect us. But the reality is, is my disdain and my frustration about people not respecting me, or is it the fact that I haven't respected myself and people have seen and observed that? My brother, your growth and your evolution is upon you now. And the paradigm shift inside your life is when you finally get into alignment with the man that you want to be, the man that you respect, where you can walk in confidence. Not arrogance, not ego, not deflection, not overcompensating, not trying to be somebody that you're not, but walking in direct alignment with the will of God, knowing that your word is bond, knowing that you are who you say you are, knowing that you are proud of how you handle situations, you're proud of how you deal with conflict, you're proud of how you carry yourself even when nobody's looking.