My ex-wife sent me an email recently.
She was forwarding me a copy of our stamped divorce decree.
At the end she added five words. . . I hope you find yourself.
I know her well enough to know that it wasn't entirely a benediction.
It bothered me.
But then, it did something much more useful.
It made me think.
I've spent a lot of my life "finding myself."
Shit. . . I've been looking everywhere.
Different cities.
Different relationships.
Different ambitions.
Different careers.
Different versions of myself.
For longer than I’d care to admit, being lost wasn't merely something I was experiencing.
Being lost became part of my identity.
Worse, I romanticized it.
There was something almost interesting about being the complicated guy still trying to figure it all out.
It generated concern.
Concern generated attention.
Attention felt like love.
I've written before about the currency of concern.
At many points, I was rich in it.
I can see that now.
I'm embarrassed by it.
Good.
Some things should embarrass us.
Not so we can spend the rest of our lives beating the shit out of ourselves, but because embarrassment is sometimes the appropriate response to finally seeing something clearly.
And here's what I finally saw with a clarity that is new. . .
You will never find yourself.
So stop looking.
"Finding yourself" might be one of the greatest marketing ideas the personal-development industry ever stumbled upon.
There are gurus, teenagers on social media, and charlatans with remarkably white teeth lining up to help you do it.
Take the course.
Read the book.
Go to Bali.
Say the affirmation.
Buy the journal.
Attend the retreat.
Heal your inner whatever.
Keep digging because somewhere underneath all that confusion is the magnificent, authentic, fully realized YOU just waiting to be discovered.
Except there's one small problem.
He doesn't exist. . .
. . .not yet.
There are things about yourself worth discovering.
Your values. Your wounds. Your talents. Your desires.
The things you learned to suppress because somebody once told you along the way that they were unacceptable.
Absolutely investigate those.
But the man you desperately want to become?
He isn't hiding. He isn’t lost.
He simply hasn't been built yet.
That's considerably less marketable.
Because "finding yourself" requires introspection.
Building yourself requires work.
You were born unfinished.
You got some raw materials.
A body. A brain. Parents.
Genetics. Geography.
Money or no money.
Trauma or stability.
Natural talent.
Maybe good looks.
. . .or maybe shitty eyesight and crooked teeth.
The distribution isn't fair.
But nobody gets handed the finished man.
You build that part.
And if you want to know what you've built so far, don't ask yourself who you think you are.
Look around.
Your life has receipts.
Look at your calendar.
Look at what you spend money on.
Look at your relationships.
Look at what you repeatedly tolerate.
Look at what you repeatedly avoid.
Look at the promises you make and how often you keep them.
Look at what you do when nobody is watching.
Look at the condition of the things entrusted to your care.
None of those things individually defines you.
Collectively?
There's your autobiography.
I didn't particularly like parts of mine.
At 51, there are areas of my life where I'm behind other men my age.
There are consequences I'm living with that aren't bad luck, childhood trauma, my divorce, Hollywood, the economy, or anybody else's fault.
They're mine.
I built them too.
That's the part nobody wants embroidered on a pillow. . .
You are already building yourself.
You always have been.
The only question is whether you're building deliberately.
When my ex-wife told me she hoped I'd find myself, what initially felt like a wound became a weapon.
It made me look at the man I had spent too much time being.
And something surprising happened.
I didn't hate him.
I looked at him the way I imagine a good father looks at his struggling son.
I don't really know what that looks like, but I think it includes kindness without rescue. . .
I understand how you got here.
I understand why you made those choices.
I love you.
And you're not driving anymore.
So how do you build the next guy?
Simple.
Tuesday.
You don't make up for ten years on your first day back at the gym.
You go Tuesday. . .
. . .then Thursday.
Then Saturday.
You write the page.
Make the meal.
Pay down the debt.
Clean the house.
Make the uncomfortable phone call.
Keep the promise.
Go to bed.
Wake up.
Repeat.
Not because you're inspired.
Because this is what you do now.
Treat your first day like it's an ordinary Tuesday and you're going to be doing this for the next 10,000 days.
Ten thousand days is about 27 years.
Do I have that many left?
If I'm lucky.
Do you?
If you're lucky.
So settle in for the boring repetitions.
Because somewhere along the way, something extraordinary happens.
You accumulate evidence.
Enough days keeping promises and you become trustworthy.
Enough workouts and you become strong.
Enough pages and you become a writer.
Enough responsible decisions and you become responsible.
Enough moments choosing peace over chaos and eventually you become a peaceful man.
You don't announce the identity.
You produce the evidence.
And eventually you may look up and realize you've met the man you spent all those years trying to find.
Except you didn't find him.
You built him.
There is nobody missing.
There is somebody unfinished.
Build. Him.
