The Few

When was the last time you felt genuinely good?

In your own skin, for no reason at all, without a drink or a screen or a long weekend doing the work. Just glad to be alive that day.

If you had to stop and think about it, or can't even remember, I know that place. I lived there for a long time.

On paper, my life worked. I ran a business. People respected me, asked for my advice, wanted my time. I was the reliable one. Then I'd walk through my own front door and feel like a piece of furniture that pays the mortgage.

I've been married twice. When my first marriage ended, I had a good story about why. We grew apart. She changed. It ran its course. Every version of that story had one thing in common. None of it was about me.

Then, years into my second marriage, I watched it start happening again. A different woman, and the same distance. The same quiet house. The same feeling of being useful to everyone and wanted by no one. And this time I couldn't tell myself it was her, because the only thing those two marriages had in common was me.

That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to admit. Somewhere along the way I had stopped living my life and become a function. The provider. The fixer. The steady one. I'd let my body go. I'd pushed down what I felt for so long that I didn't know what I felt anymore. There wasn't much of me left for anyone to want. Including me.

I'm guessing some of that sounds familiar.

You do what you're supposed to do. You provide. You show up. You handle it. If someone asks, you're fine, and you'd mostly mean it. But there's a tiredness in you that you just can't shake, no matter how much you sleep, or how much you run from it. 

Functions get thanked, sometimes. Nobody asks a function how it's doing.

So I'll ask. How are you actually doing?

Maybe nobody has asked you that in years. Maybe you stopped asking yourself, because some part of you already knows the answer.

Some nights, driving home, there's a question that starts to form in your chest, and you swallow it before it finishes. When is it my turn? When do I get to matter for who I am, and not for everything I carry? When is someone going to notice how much I give, and start giving back to me?

When is someone going to care? 

I waited years for someone to notice and ask me that. Nobody did. I held it together too well for anyone to know there was anything that could possibly be wrong. I'd made myself un-helpable. The strong ones usually do. And I could see exactly how my story would end if nothing changed: eighty years of holding it all together, and the word "reliable" on my headstone.

What finally changed things was owning it. I stopped blaming her, I stopped beating myself up, and I looked honestly at what I had done. Every mistake. Every place I'd checked out and called it keeping the peace. Every year I'd spent waiting for someone else to make me feel like I mattered.

It was humbling. It was also the best news of my life. If I had built this mess, one decision at a time, then I could take it apart.

I had made a bunch of choices, in succession, for a very long time. And those choices had led me to this place. My life wasn't broken, I had just buried myself. 

You're not broken either. You're buried. You don't need to fix anything about yourself or your life. You just need to dig yourself out. The real you hasn't been here for a while. 

So back to that first question. When was the last time you felt genuinely good? Happy? Joyful? You can actually feel that good every day. All the time. When you've done that digging and reclaimed the man who felt that way.

I never knew that was an option. But it is. 

The pressure you've carried so long you stopped noticing? It comes off. You stop bracing. You stop managing yourself. You stop needing the drink or the scroll or the garage to get an hour of peace, because the peace is just there.

And you start to matter, first to yourself, which turns out to be the one that was missing. Then to everyone else, in a way that being useful never got you. My wife looks at me now with more desire than she did when we first met, because there's finally someone here for her to see.

I couldn't do this alone, and I tried for years. The moment the work gets real is the moment every part of you wants to run, or disappear into your head, or into a plan you start and never finish. I know this well. I did all three many times.

The men around you right now know the "fine" version of you. Every conversation with them quietly keeps that version in place. I think often about the quote by Jim Rohn, who said "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." 

What if you surrounded yourself with a group of men who won't settle for fine?

This is what I've built. It's what I wish I would have had ten years ago for myself, but didn't.

It's called The Few. Ten men, going deep together for six months, live with me.

Very few men ever go this far into themselves. Very few men ever do this digging to reclaim their true nature. The ones who do carry a quiet, humble confidence, and the kind of gentleness only real strength can afford. That's where the name comes from.

I make one promise to every man who joins. There will be a week you feel like this is too much. Where you want to disappear. Go quiet, skip a call, avoid the practice, hope nobody notices.

In The Few, we notice. If you go quiet, you'll hear from me and from the other nine men until you're back. Every man makes a commitment to himself on day one, and every man in the room promises to help the others keep theirs.

If part of you feels pulled toward this, and another part is flinching, pay attention to both. Joseph Campbell said this: "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." In my experience, the flinch points straight at what's worth going after.

You've shown up for everyone your whole life. This is a chance to show up for yourself.

Put your name on the waitlist, and you'll hear first when the ten seats open on December 1.

I hope you'll care enough about yourself to say yes.

In Devotion,
Andrew

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