Motivation Monday: You've Already Survived Everything That Tried to Stop You

There is a version of this post where I tell you that hard things made me stronger and I came out the other side with a warrior mindset and a clear sense of purpose.

That is not this post.

This is the honest version. The one where I tell you I was terrified, it hurt more than I expected, I complained the whole time, and I got through it anyway. And that is the whole point.

The Time I Had No Choice

A few years ago I had open heart surgery.

I did not go into it feeling brave. I did not have some motivational moment where I decided to face it head on with my chin up. I went into it because the alternative was dying, and even then, low key, dying was looking more appealing than it usually does once I knew what had to happen.

The two weeks that followed were not comfortable. The amount of tubes and needles and other nonsense that went in and out of me was astounding. Waking up from the surgery itself felt like getting hit by a bus, and that was on a full smorgasbord of painkillers. I hated 98% of it. I complained. A lot. Give me some grace, you would have too.

But I let them do what they had to do. And eventually I got to go home.

Here is the part that took me a while to sit with: it did not feel brave. It felt like getting through something. I did not have a warrior mindset. I was just a regular guy going through something extraordinarily hard, with no option but to keep going.

And somewhere in there, without realizing it at the time, I proved something to myself.

Making Peace With the Scary Stuff

Before the surgery there were some quiet moments where I had to sit with the reality that things might not go well. I had to actually think about that.

What I figured out is that I was not really afraid of dying. It would just be a bummer. Genuinely sad. But not terrifying in the way I expected it to be.

I do not say that to sound tough. I say it because being forced to think about your own mortality takes you to some weird emotional places, and anyone who has had to actually sit with that probably knows what I mean.

What came out of it on the other side was perspective. A lot of the things I thought were scary stopped feeling so scary. Not because I became some unstoppable version of myself, only in the comics I write about myself, but because I had now seen what actually scary looked like. And regular life hard stuff did not quite measure up the same way.

Bravery Is Not What You Think It Is

There is a quote I love that I will probably say slightly wrong, but it goes something like: courage does not mean you are never afraid. It means you are afraid and you do it anyway.

I love that quote because it makes bravery feel attainable.

The version of bravery we usually get sold is that certain people just do not feel fear the way everyone else does. That the bold ones, the successful ones, the ones who made it, somehow had doubt and fear washed out of them and that is why they could do what they did.

That is not true. Everyone is afraid of something. The people you admire most are afraid of things just like you. They just learned to put it aside long enough to do the next thing. And then the next thing after that.

Just Quit Then

When someone I care about is going through something difficult, something they have worked incredibly hard for and are so close to getting through that they just need one more push, and they start spiraling into "I hate this, this is so hard, I cannot do this," I have a thought.

I consider saying: well, just quit then.

Not because I want them to quit. The opposite. I think about all the time they have put in. All the sacrifices. Everything they have already survived to get to the exact place they are standing right now. And I think about what walking away from that would actually mean.

Suddenly the pain of continuing does not seem so unreasonable compared to the cost of stopping.

If you are in the middle of something hard right now and giving up feels like the easier option, I want you to actually think about what giving up means. Think about everything you have already spent to get here. Think about how ridiculous it would be to put all of that down now.

Sometimes trying really is the easier option. You just have to do the math.

Give Yourself the Credit

Here is something I am still working on myself.

When I look back at everything I have gotten through, the surgery, the hard stretches, the stuff I navigated without a roadmap, I feel like I should give myself way more credit than I do. Not in a self-congratulatory way. Just in a quiet, honest acknowledgment that I did some hard things.

That track record matters. Not just for me. For you too.

Look back at your own life. Think about the things that felt unsurvivable at the time. The things you were not sure you were going to get through. You got through them. Maybe they left some bruises. Maybe it was not graceful. But you got through them.

That is not nothing. That is proof. Proof that you are tougher than you gave yourself credit for. Proof that when hard things came for you, you found a way.

This hard thing you are in right now? You have already done harder. You just do not always remember that when you are in the middle of it.

What Challenges Actually Do

If you think the thing ahead of you is going to suck, you are probably right. If you think it is going to be difficult, you are probably right. If you think it may require something of you that you are not sure in this moment you are actually capable of, you may be surprised.

Challenges like this tend to reveal us to ourselves. They show us who we are when the comfortable options run out. They chip away at everything that is not essential until they find the thing underneath that was there all along.

Becoming a better version of yourself is not easy. It was never supposed to be. But sometimes through the hard things we find a piece of ourselves we did not know we had.

I am sorry it is tough. I genuinely wish I could fix it for you. I cannot. All I can tell you is that you are stronger than you know, and you can find a way through this.

What I Know Right Now

I will be honest about where I am standing as I write this.

Bait Dogs Apparel is having its best month ever. We gained a hundred followers in a week. The community we are building is full of genuinely good people, the kind of people you do not usually expect to meet on the internet. After a year and a half of work, of learning lessons we did not know we needed to learn, of figuring it out as we went, it is finally starting to look like we are turning a corner.

And it is almost hard to believe.

I think I prepared myself for every outcome except success. I was ready for failure. I thought about it. I accepted it. But the idea of things actually working felt too risky to let myself imagine.

Here I am imagining it.

The only reason any of this is possible is because we kept going through the parts that were not working. And the only reason I could keep going through those parts is because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I had already done harder things than this.

You have too. Look back. It is all right there.

We are the underdogs. We don't stay down, we bite back.