The Greatest Project You Will Ever Work On Is Yourself

By chance, I happened on a quote and a perspective-changing interview on the same day. The quote is in the picture above, and I think it has a stronger, hidden message to it which I want to focus on for this post. Same with the interview, with actor Mickey Rourke. If you don’t know the story, Rourke was to be the next James Dean. He was the hottest actor in Hollywood and was asked to play the lead role in Platoon, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Rain Man, The Silence of the Lambs, and Pulp Fiction. Yep, he turned them all down, and aggressively shunned and attacked the Hollywood elite, thus canceling his own career. He became a professional boxer.

What’s the message in the quote? What was wrong with Rourke’s decision-making? It hinges on our past selves, because who we are today is a product of our past. We have all suffered in our past. Some may have deep trauma that is obvious. The loss of a child or spouse. There is a scale for this called the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory, and these two sit at the top. There’s also a similar one for non-adults, which I include below. Note that getting accepted to your college of choice is on the list. It is, indeed, a stressful life change, and I include it because for many of my firm’s clients I have seen this.

But it isn’t just what is on this list that impacts us as both teenagers and adults. It is all of the things that have happened to us as children that are significantly less than nurturing. That, in my opinion, is the best definition of trauma. And we all have many of these lower class traumas. Where do they go? Straight to our subconscious. We do not as children have any other skill-set to handle them. How could we?

Which is exactly what you will see in that Mickey Rourke interview. Rourke, like you and me, had unresolved trauma from his past. When not addressed, these manifest in the worst kinds of ways. Per best-selling author (In the Realm Of Hungry Ghosts) and renowned doctor and speaker Gabor Maté, they come out as addictions. Per Maté, we are all addicts, as anything that brings us temporary relief — that has an anesthetic effect — but that causes long-term negative consequences, and that we can’t quit, is an addiction. Note he says “anything”— it doesn’t have to be alcohol or drug dependence, although that was one of Rourke’s addictions. Another, quite plausibly, could have been getting bashed in the head for 1-15 rounds in the ring. Why do I think this? Because I can relate. I could easily argue that running is an addiction of mine. It certainly provides short-term relief. When I am running I am liberated. That word comes to mind time and time again on beautiful trail runs high in the Colorado mountains. But I have also run through injuries only to injure myself more severely. I recently had to go to the ER from running. Yet what did I do yesterday and what will I likely do today? Run. It can manifest in the form of workaholism, internet usage, checking your cell phone every 6 seconds (according to figures collected by a screen lock app, the average user actually checks their phone around 110 times day. During peak times this equates to once every six or seven seconds, with some users unlocking their devices up to 900 times over the course of a day, which is around 18 hours.), gambling, power, relevance, etc. Anything that takes our current stress levels, including for certain the college and graduate school admission process, and provides a temporary anesthetic escape.

Here, then, is the crux of the quote and the hidden message. There is a way out. Yesterday when I ran and I felt the very beginning of an injury, I stopped. I walked home and, more importantly, I was perfectly content with my decision. In just about all areas of my life, I am no longer hinged on external events happening to me. I can’t control them. I can’t control how others treat me — even those who are the very closest to me. I can’t know their inner minds. I can’t know what days they are having really rough times and express them in different ways. I couldn’t control if a school admitted me or not, even with all of my adult life admissions experience. The ultimate decision rests with them, not me.

All I can control is my mind. And the narrative it says is so much more healthy today than ever before. How did I get here? The same way Rourke turned his life around for the better. He looked into his past and found that he was damaged. We all are. And once you accept that you have some damage, that entirely isn’t your fault, you are on your way to becoming at peace with it. It’s a journey, for sure. I’ve used all of COVID and the year prior to accept myself, flaws and strengths, and to quiet my mind. To live in the present and live knowing that I can control myself and nothing else. It is truly liberating. Much more so than any deep mountain trail run I have done in Colorado.

I’ll quote another actor to end this blog. On the Joe Rogan Show, Matthew McConaughey noted when he is doing best in life. He said it is when every morning, when he wakes up, he “checks in on himself before he checks in with the world.” Simple and true. The world is waiting for you. It is waiting with beauty and cruelty. You can control not once which it will throw your way. What you can control, though, is much more important. You can control how you handle these moments. What you will make of them. And because of this, you can love, without a shadow of a doubt, what will come by loving what has come. I hope you embrace the journey.