In my 32 years, I’ve made two decisions that changed everything.

One was to save my life; one was to save my heart.

Understanding the brain leads to happiness.

Research suggests that psychological flexibility is the key to happiness.

I would like to take this a step further; flexibility in your psychological identity is the key to happiness.

James Clear, in his best seller Atomic Habits, writes about habit formation and he stresses the importance of not identifying with your habits.

“Your habits are not you. You are not your habits. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory.”

Do not identify with your habits. Instead focus on their trajectory.

Humans are emotional creatures; our modern brains developed around the lizard brain (brainstem and basal ganglia) and the mammalian brain (limbic system i.e. amygdala, hippocampus, and parts of the thalamus).

Brain development in order:

1) The lizard brain; responsible for our primitive instincts of aggression, dominance, and survival.

2) The mammalian brain; responsible for emotion, pleasure, memory, and social belonging.

3) The prefrontal cortex; responsible for logic, reason, self-control, conscious awareness, and identity.

There are other systems at play, but base understanding informs us that our conscious identity is built off older aspects of the brain.

This fact is crucial to understanding trauma, therapy, self-awareness, and personal development.

“You are not using logic to make your decisions; you are using logic to justify your decisions, which are based in emotion.” (read that again)

We (collective science) are incredibly limited in our knowledge about the brain.

You (my reader) are incredibly limited in understanding how powerful the older parts of your brain are.

You (most likely) have no clue how much they dictate your actions.

Understanding this is incredibly helpful.

If you accept it, there are ways to work with it; best I’ve found is in your relationship to identity…

I no longer identify with behaviors that cause me concern. This does not mean I avoid accountability, quite the contrary, it liberates the shame attached and creates opportunity for solution (in therapy, this is known as problem-separation).

Instead, I identify with things greater than myself and my behavior i.e. virtues.

the 4 Foundational Virtues

• Prudence (common sense)

• Temperance (moderation in all things)

• Justice (fairness, honesty, and respect)

• Fortitude (fight for what is morally right)

This approach is significantly more holistic (it’s also easier) than identifying with your habits.

Daily focus on these virtues reduces the stress of perfection (nobody can embody these qualities all the time) and reduces our brain’s bias toward self-centered thinking.

This, my friend, is the key to happiness.

The paradox is that in surrendering identification with your behavior, you gain access to greater resource to shift and change behavior. This greater resource is recognition that your life is bigger than you, are a part of something bigger.

Therapeutic modalities back up this line of thinking; there is no better way.

Make one decision to save your life.

At 20 years old I was stuck on a hedonistic rollercoaster of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll (sorry mom). 

I made a decision that saved my life: uprooting everything to attend a wilderness therapy program.

I was a college student at the time, so I thought “this is what college students do, right?”

All the people around me (so I thought), were doing the exact same thing. It was normal (so I thought) and it was fun (it really was). 

The voice of my identity rang, “This is just who I am.”

I thought I was my behavior.

There is one thing in your life that is killing you sooner than you intend: diet, addiction, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, and/or chronic stress.

This is true of every client that I’ve ever worked with (I’ve coached 60+ men over the past 7 years and have over 2,000 clinical hours working as a therapist).

My invitation: Recognize one behavior that is killing you; create and execute on a plan to eradicate it immediately. 

There is no “I’ll start on Monday,” there is no “maybe tomorrow”, there is no “this is just who I am.”

You are not your behavior. You are more and life has more for you. 

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us” 

- Joseph Campbell 

Make one decision to save your heart.

Last April, I opened a sober-living with a dear friend of mine.

Bright eyed, bushy tailed, the excitement and possibility was real. Sober livings are considered box businesses, low entry and infinitely scalable. We raised money, found a house, and started the endeavor.

I’ve always sought to find or create a career that exists at the intersection of purpose and profit.

Undoubtedly, capitalism has its flaws, but the way to battle unethical business is to create ethical business. The way to battle unethical people (who create unethical jobs) is to be an ethical person (who creates ethical jobs).

This was the goal with our sober-living… the kicker, I hated it.

The moisture of my life began to dry out. I was putting out fires all day, dealing with very sick folk who had no interest in getting better. They were looking for ways to exploit the system and exploit the care of those whose hearts were in the right place. 

Obviously, I am generalizing, in the six months I was involved, we did help a lot of people and made some decent money in the process.

The one thing I could not ignore was a restless whisper: “this sucks, I don’t want to be doing this.” 

I was tied to this endeavor; financial investment, a long-term friendship, hours put in marketing, building furniture, building a clinical structure for our clients.

This reality was measured against my inner knowing that “this is not what I want to be doing.”

It took me three months to finally adhere to it.

Most likely, you are aware of your restless whisper; that one thing gnawing at your sleeve, begging you to listen.

There is one thing in your life that is actively working against what you know to be true in your heart: career, a broken relationship, avoidance of a difficult conversation, avoidance of pursuing a dream or creative passion.

How can you expect to become the person life intended with an empty heart?

How can you be expect to give to others if your heart isn’t full?

Many coaches talk about building your mind, but it’s better to build heart first; life is an internal game.

After three months of ignoring my heart, I finally had enough.

The pain of ignoring it became greater than the fear of uncertainty.

My invitation: Recognize the one thing that is killing your heart. Create and execute on a plan to eradicate it immediately.

The results of me leaving that business, led directly to you reading this letter.

I’m so grateful I had the intuition to hear my “restless whisper” and the courage to act it out.

Life’s too short to waste your heart, it’s too precious to let fear win.

That’s a wrap on this weeks liminal letter. If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you.

See you next week,

B