​I am preparing to deliver a keynote at the Unlimited Potential Recovery Gala in Lynchburg next week. In doing so, I've been spending some time thinking about the world of self-help we seem to be living in.

For the longest time, I have frowned upon the idea of self-help. Mainly because I have witnessed very few people make meaningful changes in their lives all by themselves. Further, I myself have tried repeatedly to make big changes in my life relying totally on self and willpower only to repeatedly fail.

But the reality is, as I've been thinking about it—all big changes DO start with self. No personal change happens without one first deciding I want some area of my life to change. However, almost always, success in making that change is fueled by the support one has surrounding them.

The decision is mine. The success of the decision becomes ours.

There may be no community in the world that understands this tension better than the recovery community.

No one else can decide to pursue recovery for another person. We can plead. We can encourage. We can offer treatment. We can open doors and sometimes desperately wish someone would walk through them. But at some point, recovery requires an individual to say, I want something different for my life.

That part is self.

But what happens after that decision is very rarely self-help. Because deciding you want a different life and knowing how to build one are two very different things. That's where other people come in.

Seth Godin says, "All help is self-help, multiplied by the expectations, support and compassion of the people around you."

Expectations. Someone needs to believe there is more to your story than the chapter you're currently living. Not expectations as pressure—don't screw this up—but expectations rooted in hope: I believe there is a life available to you that maybe you can't see yet.

Support. Recovery requires more than believing in someone from a distance. Sometimes support looks like treatment. Sometimes transportation. A meeting. A recovery coach. Employment. Housing. A phone call at the right moment. Someone sitting beside you when the old way of surviving starts looking attractive again.

Compassion. Compassion changes the question from "Why would you keep doing this?" to "What has this been doing for you?" From "What's wrong with you?" to "What's happened, and what do you need now?" Compassion doesn't eliminate accountability. It creates a relationship in which accountability doesn't have to be confused with shame.

There is something powerful about deciding to do something different in life.

But not nearly as powerful as be surrounded by people who say let me help you with that.

​There's a myth I used to believe. And that myth is that failure and mistakes equal growth. Like the big silver lining one can cling to after making a big mistake is knowing some big growth is on the way.

That is a myth.

Because growth doesn't naturally follow mistakes. If it did, my life would have skipped a whole lot of hardships that I ultimately experienced.

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life that have invited me to grow, and yet, time and time again, I responded, "no thank you."

For that is ultimately what mistakes are. What our hardships are. What our lowest of lows are. They are invitations to make adjustments to our lives that begin to look and feel like growth.

I often say many people need a rock bottom to grow. That's not because there's some magic dust coating the floor of the rock bottom pit. It's because when you are lying there in rock bottom, you can see easier than you ever have that the only way out now is to adjust.

It is where you are most likely to feel that you must stop crawling and start climbing.

I have experienced that pit.

The problem is, in my experience, we let a lot of our mistakes define us. We let them tell us who we are instead of hearing them invite us to become someone new. It's hard to make the adjustment to winner when you've let your mistakes convince you you're a loser.

Hard times do not build character. Doing the hard things required in hard times to make the hard times not so hard is what builds character. Even while acknowledging some of what is required is REALLY hard.

Growth is not some silver lining that beautifully covers the hardships of our mistakes and failures.

Growth is an adjustment.

A decision.

And quite honestly, sometimes it feels easier to keep making the same old mistakes than it does to make the decision to adjust. Which is why one can make a lot of mistakes and never grow at all.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Adjust.

​It's Georgia Jewel weekend. Which means I have a lot of memories popping up. It's hard to believe it's been 8 years since I first attempted to conquer that monster.

Attempted I say.

And failed....

In 2018, I signed up to run the 35-mile Georgia Jewel Trail Race course through the mountains of northern Georgia. My friends Donna and Anthony were so sure I'd finish it that they made me a plaque beforehand to honor the completion of my first ultramarathon.

Eighteen miles into the race that day, it became clear they'd given me the award quite prematurely.

At least that's how I looked at it back then.

Two years after that failed attempt, in the year of 2020 (we all remember THAT year), during one of the darkest periods of my life, I returned to Georgia. And I completed that 35-mile race.

There is a scripture from the bible on the plaque my friends made me:

"Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith."

I look back on that 2018 race and remember that nothing in me believed I could keep going that day. I had no perseverance.

So, I quit.

To be honest, when I returned to Georgia in 2020, I don't know that I had any more belief that I could keep going then than I did in 2018. But I felt this sense of urgency—this desire and desperate need to keep going—that I didn't have two years prior.

Maybe because my battle to keep going was as intense outside of those woods as it was inside them on that rugged trail. And just maybe my friends' plaque wasn't two years early after all, but right on time.

"Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us...."

We all have a race to run. And sometimes memories that pop up from segments of the race already run aren't memories at all.

They are reminders.

Reminders that the strength that lived within us to do what once felt impossible still lives within us.

And so I feel compelled to remind you. If you are reading this, you have memories of overcoming some hard stories in your life. You have crossed some finish lines—be it in the woods or outside of them—that would make me marvel at your strength and perseverance.

So please, take a moment and YOU marvel at your strength.

You marvel and be reminded you can and will absolutely keep going.

The race is not over.

Together, we must all keep going.

​Yesterday, I was blessed with the opportunity to speak at the 2026 Community Coalitions of Virginia Annual Summit. The title of my presentation was "Trauma Sensitive Leadership in Uncertain Times."

My presentation pointed out that many leaders can be tempted to lead toward certainty.

The CEO can be tempted to lead toward certain financial outcomes.

The parent can be tempted to lead their children toward certain happiness.

The pastor can be tempted to lead toward beliefs the congregation is certain to hold.

But as I told the audience yesterday, I've now lived long enough to know the only real certainty in life is there are no certainties.

No leader can lead toward certainty.

But here's the thing—one thing all leaders can do is provide safe spaces to navigate uncertainty. And in the end, isn't that what we're all looking for? Someone who will be with us in the midst of our deepest uncertainties.

I shared a story yesterday about my experience as a youth counselor many years ago. And I confessed that in my early years in that role, I was not the best leader of young people. Mainly because when these young people started exhibiting stormy behaviors, I would come at them with a stormy response.

Not one of them had a thunderstorm I couldn't turn into a category 5 hurricane.

I look back on that experience and realize that's because I was intent on controlling their behaviors. Insistent that I would eventually become certain about the way they would act and speak.

Until I eventually realized that was never going to happen.

When I eventually became a good leader of young people, it was after realizing most young people's stormiest behaviors came when they were struggling to make sense of life's stormiest moments. And that what they needed most from me in those moments was a willingness to show up and listen to the depths of their storms without feeling some sense of pressure to make all their storms go away.

Maybe there is no lesson I am more grateful for learning before becoming a father.

I have lived through some uncertain times in my life. But maybe as a society times have never been more uncertain than they are today.

Political uncertainties. AI uncertainties. Climate uncertainties. Financial and employment uncertainties. Not to mention the uncertainties so many face in their own personal relationships. And it's true that all of those uncertainties need a little of our fight and our attention.

But it's also more important than ever to know that within all of those uncertainties are people who simply long to know someone has their back in the middle of them. There are people who long to know someone is going to show up and ride their storm out with them, even if that someone can't promise the storm will go away.

We all have the capacity to do that for one another.

Which gives us all the capacity to be leaders.

Leaders who may not be able to promise certainty, but who most certainly can promise to be there when the certain uncertainties come our way.

​"Don't trip over something behind you." ~Seneca

I think that's the essence of healing. Finding a way to keep the past from tripping you up today.

The challenge, I believe—and have experienced—is letting go of the idea that healing is erasing the past—just forget it ever happened. But the past is never erased. It is never gone. In many cases, it's hard to make the past even a distant memory.

But the past is not standing in the way of my future unless I put it there. I can't trip over a rock behind me unless I physically turn around and re-engage that rock.

Which I have done.

Many times.

I recently wrote an essay about The Odyssey, where I admitted that home in the later years of my life has felt more like a question than an address. It was meant as a healthy reflection. But if every new relationship or opportunity I have is evaluated through the lens of old definitions of home, yesterday can become today's map.

Yesterday can trip me up on my way to tomorrow.

Our past will always have a voice in our lives. It's inescapable. The challenge is to keep it from having the loudest voice.

Tomorrow is calling.

Walk toward it.

When the rocks of yesterday want to trip you up, stop, pick them up, toss them to the side, and keep on walking. It's not easy—I get it—but neither is letting the same rock trip us up over and over again.

​Jim Abbott recently received the Jimmy V Award, presented to a sports figure who overcame incredible odds to achieve success.

Abbott was born without a right hand, but managed to play major league baseball. In fact, in 1993, he pitched a no-hitter while playing for the New York Yankees. He also won an Olympic gold medal with Team USA in 1988.

During his acceptance speech, Abbott said, "Overcoming obstacles on the mound was my way of showing what is possible when you refuse to give up."

There have been many days the last several years when I've had no idea what the next best step to take in my life was, but I've kept this mantra stashed away for just such days:

"I refuse to stop taking a next step."

Confusion about what to do next will never stop us from getting where we want to go nearly as fast as quitting will.

I learned that in my ultramarathon running days. There were many times when I lost complete sight of the finish line; I had no clue how, in my current condition, I would ever get there. But I did know how to take one more step.

I wasn't completely sure how to get to the end of the race, but I always knew how to get to the end of one more step.

I've experienced it in writing a book. There are days I have no idea how to finish up this project. But more than two decades of writing have taught me plenty about how to refuse to quit writing.

May people forget, when Abbott threw his no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians in 1993, just six days earlier that very same Indians team had rocked him. He gave up 10 hits and 7 runs in just 3 innings to them.

Many wondered if he was done.

Abbott didn't wonder. Abbott had long ago mastered the art of refusing to quit.

Maybe you have dreams today. Goals. A vision of where you want to go. And yet, the journey feels slow. Impossible. Like, what's the point?

Well, as I have learned, often through quite painful lessons, sometimes the point is to teach you the value of refusing to quit. Because it turns out there are indeed a lot of valuable answers in life, but maybe none more important than this one.

Question: What on earth do I do now?

Answer: Refuse to quit.

When you run out of ideas for what's next, start with the one thing you know how to do.

Refuse to quit.

​When given a safe place to talk about hard stories, people will often choose to tell their hardest stories.

Yesterday, I wrote about an experience I participated in at a training I helped lead last week. The participants were given a prompt to share a hard story in their life with a partner. It's important to note that at this point we'd spent 16 hours together.

There was a strong sense of safety and bonding amongst us.

I've participated in this particular experience in this training several times. And it always amazes me that when prompted to share a hard story, people often reach for their hardest story. Quite often a story they've never or rarely ever shared before.

Why is that?

Arthur Brooks says that in large groups of people, you find that when you ask them about the meaning of their life, they always talk about their more challenging times.

Our identity is largely influenced by what we've been through, what we've been able to navigate ourselves through. We often learn much more about who we are not by what comes our way, but by the things we overcome that are standing in our way.

Achievements are good at answering what we've done. But suffering is always asking me who I am becoming.

The promotion, the championship, the degree, the award—they become nice chapters in my life story. But divorce, addiction, betrayal, the diagnosis, the loss of a loved one—these moments are always the ones that ask the most important questions.

Who am I now?

What becomes of me when everything I've depended on is no longer dependable?

Is there any way possible to make anything good of this?

I think this is why people reach for their hardest moments when asked to simply share a hard moment. Not because it's the most painful moment, but because it's the moment that taught them the most.

The most about life. The most about themselves.

It is a great irony in many ways. We spend so much of our lives trying to avoid suffering, and yet, when we're asked to look for meaning in our lives we instinctively turn to our stories of suffering. The stories we are often most afraid to tell are often the stories that taught us who we are.

The magical part of life is that when we find the safe place to share them, the people to share them with, those places are filled with learning far beyond self.

The meaning of life is found in our shared sufferings.

I have experienced this time and time again.

I'm afraid I have lived long enough to know that pain is never going away. And I have also lived long enough to know that was never the plan in the first place.

Without pain, there is not meaning.

​Recently, Kelsey Pfendler set out to become the first American woman to row a boat solo across the mid-Pacific ocean. She left Monterey, California, in May—and 44 days and 2,400 miles later—she arrived in Hawaii.

In doing so, not only did she become the first American woman to accomplish this journey, she did it faster than any other woman OR man had ever done it. (The previous fastest female took 86 days. Talk about blowing a record out of the water)!!

After completing the journey, Pfendler offered a challenge. She said, "Think about finding your own big scary thing. You might not think that you are strong enough to finish it right now. But you're definitely strong enough to start it, and you'll find everything else along the way."

I followed bits of her journey online. Some days she looked really rough; like, I was wondering how on earth is she going to make it?

Turns out, in those rough moments she likely wasn't thinking about "making it"— she was simply looking within for something to help her start again.

It's amazing how often we hear this same advice from people who accomplish seemingly impossible things. They tell us, don't think about the end, just focus on the next step.

ChatGPT estimates that Pfendler used between 750,000 and 1,000,000 strokes crossing the Pacific. That's a lot of strokes; an intimidating amount if you allow yourself to think about it.

That's why it's always healthier to think about the next stroke and not ALL of them. I can't figure out 1,000,00—Dear Lord, I'd surely quit if I had to—but I think even I can figure out ONE.

And then another one....

I don't want to oversimplify this into believing I or you could row a boat from California to Hawaii. I don't think that was Pfendler's message either.

But I do believe there are things you and me have come to believe we can't do because we've stood for so long looking at the end game thinking - 'too far' - instead of looking with belief that we'll figure it out as we go.

I am working to finish a book. I am almost there. And when I'm done, it won't be because I had a finished book in mind when I started.

It will be a finished book because I got up one morning many years ago and started writing. And then, I found a way to get up and write again the next day.

Pfendler knew how to row; she figured out Hawaii.

I knew how to write; I am figuring out a book.

What do you know how to do that doesn't quite look like the finish line, but enough of it might just lead you there?

You don't know how to get there, and that can be scary. But I'm pretty sure you know how to start.

So, my friend, start.

Just start.

​The past and the future have something in common: they don't require us to act right now.

The past invites us to replay. The future invites us to imagine. The present invites us to participate.

And participation is often the hardest of the three.

Regrets can be strangely comforting because they allow us to believe life would be different if only we had done something else. Dreams can be comforting because they allow us to believe life will be different once something else happens. And both can pull us away from the uncomfortable reality of today.

The irony is that yesterday can't be changed and tomorrow can't be lived. Only today can be influenced.

I think this is why so much writing, psychology, and even Jesus' teaching keeps bringing us back to the present moment.

Jesus says not to worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Jesus isn't saying tomorrow isn't a thing, he simply says worrying about it will rob us of today's energy.

My work in trauma has taught me something similar. People become trapped in stories about what happened. Anxiety often traps people in stories about what might happen again. And healing frequently begins when someone starts to hold the truth today that because it happened doesn't mean it will happen again.

I've written a lot lately about mattering. The here and now is where mattering is actually experienced. Not yesterday. Not someday. Right now.

I can tell someone I mattered ten years ago and feel a little warmth.
I can hope I will matter ten years from now and feel a little hope. But what most feeds my heart is knowing I matter today.

Perhaps that's why the here and now feels so difficult. It's the only place where life is actually happening. The past is memory. The future is imagination. The present is reality. And reality asks something of us.

It asks us to forgive today.

To love today.

To make the phone call today.

To take the walk today.

To begin today.

The future is built in the here and now, but because the future looks bigger and more exciting, we often stare at "there" while neglecting "here."

Too often we want to get there without tackling the here and now. Because "there" is a destination, and the here and now is a decision.

Decisions are harder than destinations. But we aren't getting there without making them.

And sticking to them.

Decide - don't skip now.

​For the last two days, I have been immersed in stories.

I spoke at a problem gambling forum. I spoke to an audience about trauma. And yesterday afternoon, I had the privilege of speaking at an event where I shared the stage with Nic Sheff, whose journey through addiction and recovery was documented in the film Beautiful Boy.

At each event, the presentations eventually gave way to conversations. Conversations with people young and old. Black and white. People from different professions, different neighborhoods, different backgrounds, different struggles.

And yet, beneath all those differences, I kept hearing the same thing:

Stories of transformation.

People told me about addictions they had overcome. Relationships they had repaired. Trauma they had survived. Losses they had endured. Lives they had rebuilt.

And every time I find myself in spaces like these, I leave with the same thought:

Transformation is beautiful. In fact, I think transformation is far more beautiful than having it all together. Maybe that's because I've spent enough years trying to have it all together to realize that none of us actually do.

Or maybe it's because some of the most meaningful things in my own life have not come from my strengths, but from my struggles. Not from the parts of me that were polished, but from the parts of me that were broken and rebuilt.

A dear friend recently shared words with me that seem divinely fitting for this moment:

"Our imperfections are not our failures. They are the very fingerprints of our humanity. They are not meant to be fixed or hidden—they are meant to be seen and still chosen."

There is something deeply sacred in that idea. Because most of us spend our lives trying to hide the evidence that we are human.

We hide the scars. We hide the mistakes. We hide the addictions, the fears, the grief, the regrets, the failures.

We imagine that if people could see those things, they would see less of us. But what if the opposite is true? What if the things we spend so much energy hiding are often the places where our greatest beauty resides?

Not the wound itself. Not the pain itself. But the transformation. The healing. The becoming.

Over the last two days, I saw countless examples of that beauty. People who once felt trapped but now live free. People who once felt unseen but now help others feel seen. People who once carried shame but now carry wisdom.

The world often celebrates perfection. God seems to celebrate transformation. Perfection creates distance. Transformation creates connection.

Perfection says, "Look how flawless I am."

Transformation says, "Look what is possible."

And maybe that is why stories of recovery, healing, redemption, and second chances move me so deeply. Because somewhere inside, I recognize myself in them.

I know what it is to fall.

I know what it is to struggle.

And I live with an undying belief that change is ALWAYS possible.

For me, transformation has become one of the clearest pieces of evidence that God is still at work in the world. Not always in dramatic ways. Not always in visible ways. But in powerful ways.

Quietly. Patiently. Person by person. Story by story. Life by life.

I cannot always explain it. But I have seen it too many times to ignore it. The beauty of transformation. The beauty of a life that did not stay stuck.

The beauty of a beautiful boy.

And the beauty of all the beautiful people still becoming who they were meant to be.

You are a gift to me.