One morning, I woke up on my living room couch with an empty half bottle of tequila right next to me. My eight year old son was staring down at me, asking what was wrong with his daddy. What he did not know was that for the past six months I had been drinking half a bottle of tequila every single night. I was using alcohol to sedate the intense stress, anxiety, and absolute fear that comes with being an entrepreneur.
Three years before that morning, the 2008 financial crisis hit. I was heavily over leveraged in real estate and watched millions of dollars vanish. It got so bad that I had to sit down with my wife and decide whether we were going to pay our home mortgage or pay our office staff. I convinced myself she would leave me, take our children, and tell me I was a failure. Instead, she looked me in the eye and said she would live under a bridge with me if she had to, because she knew it would not be forever. She challenged me to go out there and fix it.
I accepted her challenge. Over the next few years, I found a hidden niche in the real estate market and made millions of dollars. Yet, even with money back in the bank, a beautiful family, and outward success, I was still completely empty inside. I was operating entirely from fear and scarcity. I was not facing a financial crisis anymore, I was facing a purpose crisis and a total loss of identity.
I spent half a million dollars trying to fix myself. I had severe stress pains that doctors told me were entirely in my head. Eventually, I found myself having dinner with John Paul DeJoria, the billionaire founder of Tequila Patron. I confessed that I was his biggest consumer because I used his product nightly to numb my stress. He told me I needed to try meditation.
I do nothing half assed, so my wife and I went straight to India. By pure chance, the Dalai Lama was staying at our hotel under heavy armed guard. I tried bribing the guards for a meeting, but it failed. Finally, I managed to get his schedule from a guard during a shift change.
At 11:59 PM, I watched through the peephole of my door. As the Dalai Lama walked past, I stepped out and asked for five minutes. After the guards searched me, he granted me the time. I asked him how to heal my pain. He gave me a truth that changed my life. He said the reason I had pain was because I refused to find the gift inside it. He told me that pain is necessary for growth, but suffering is a choice.
I took that insight into a intensive meditation retreat. The monk told me to look into my past and ask my mind to show me what I was refusing to see.
When I closed my eyes, a memory from when I was eight years old hit me. I woke up to see my parents packing their bags for the United States. They told me they would come back for me, but my biggest fear of abandonment was coming true. After dropping them at the airport, I went into my mother’s bedroom, held her pillow to smell her perfume, and sobbed. When my five year old brother walked in, I did not want him to see me cry, so I bottled that grief and pushed it deep down inside.
That exact emotional blockage was where my adult physical stress pain lived. The adult version of me understood why my parents left, but the child inside had never healed.
After processing this breakthrough, I realized a profound pattern. Successful men rarely heal from their past blockages. They chase external success thinking it will bring happiness, but they end up wealthy and completely empty. We are taught how to pursue money, but nobody teaches us how to pursue purpose.
Your past hardships are both a gift and a curse. They give you the fire to achieve far more than the average person, but they ensure you will never experience fulfillment until you heal the version of you that drives that hunger.
I made a promise that once I found my light in the darkness, I would dedicate my life to helping other men find theirs. You are not broken. You just need to uncover the root of what you are sedating so you can claim your true purpose as a father, a leader, and a man.
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