The Surrender Layer: Stop Fighting the Current. #62
When you stop fighting the current, the giants stop looking like obstacles and start revealing your path. Week 62 breaks down surrender, leading with love over lectures, and finding purpose in the flow of life.
This wasn't the layer I planned to write this week.
But some layers you don't get to plan. Life hands them to you, mid-week, when you're already carrying something heavy — and the honest thing is to write the one you're actually standing in, not the one on the schedule. So here's where I actually am.
The Real Current
I've spent years fighting a current I couldn't name. This week I finally named it.
It's not money. It's not my father. It's not any one problem I could point at. The current I've been paddling against my whole adult life is the need to figure it all out. The books, the audiobooks, the podcasts — "not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers," so I read everything, looking for the one insight that would unlock the "a KEY answer", the blocks, the next level. And all it did was build a beautiful-mind wall of string and push pins in my head, connecting dots until I was too paralyzed by the map to take a single simple step.
Here's what nobody tells you about figuring it all out: the prize gives you nothing. You crack the code and the same restless feeling is still there, waiting — now with a bigger number attached to it. I've watched it in every biography of every man who forced his way to the top. The forcing never satisfies. It just moves the goalpost and hands you the same hunger in a nicer suit.
That's the current. And I've been paddling against it so hard for so long I forgot you're allowed to put the paddle down.
He Didn't Hand Him a Crown
There's a line about David that reframed many years for me now. When God wanted to make a king out of David, He didn't hand him a crown. He handed him Goliath.
Sit with that. The giant wasn't the punishment. The giant was the making. The training for a crown that hadn't come yet.
I've spent a lot of time calling the hard years failures. Walking away from the family business. The tech company that came apart. The bank account runs low, like it has more times than I can count — and somehow, every time, life gets paid. The bills get covered. We're still here. But standing here now, I don't think those were failures at all. I think they were giants. Each one made me into someone the easy version of my life never could have. If I'd stayed where it was safe, I'd have stayed a man boy — comfortable, provided for, never fully grown up. Instead, I got giants. And I'm only now realizing that's not what happens to you. It's what happens for you. Life is on the way, not in the way.
Devotion Instead of Manifestation
I heard something recently that named the shift: live by devotion instead of manifestation. Devotion is trusting the plan the Creator has for you. — Nicolas Cannon, follow him on Instagram, he's so good.
That undid me a little, because manifestation is my whole operating system. Force the vision. Will the outcome. One decision, one client, one good year away. And manifestation got me here — it's not nothing. But I've hit the edge of what force can move. The next stretch isn't a code to crack. It's a current to trust.
So now, even on the mornings I don't want to, I stand out by the beach — sun in my face, defiant, grateful I'm even here — and I pray. I give thanks. I ask for health and a clear mind for a father I love and can't fix. I wish love toward the people I'm at odds with. I ask the pendulum to swing back toward the bold and the devoted, because the dark, bitter version of me is always right there, easy to reach. And I choose the prayer instead. That's not giving up. Giving up is quitting the fight. This is putting down the wrong fight so I have strength for the right one — being present, protecting what matters, loving people through things I can't control.
Drone Up
There's a version of my life I planned, and this current keeps pulling me off it. My father. My family. A creative dream coming full circle instead of a linear line I mapped.
But there's a reason I want this so badly — and it isn't the money, though I'm working every day to solve that too. It's my son. There's an old Jesuit line that stuck with me: give me the child for the first seven years. I want those years. I want to be present, not off somewhere still trying to crack the code while they pass. I'd rather be the only dad at the library on a Tuesday morning — and I am, when we go, the lone father in a room full of moms — than the guy who figured out everything except how to be there.
Maybe I've just been too close to the ground. Too far down in the trees to see the forest. I need to drone up — rise above the day-to-day and look at how far I've actually come.
And from up there, I can see it. With devotion instead of force, I'm not behind.
I'm just getting started.
Still here — paddle down, current trusted. Same peel, hands open now. Let's build from here. 🧅
Want to write through these same layers and make them your own?
The "Being Coached" Layer: What Would Love Do?
I read Dr. Goodman this week, and he cut straight to it: "You're exactly where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing — and you're teaching your son the whole time. Because it's not what you do. It's how you do it." Then he gave me the question he says he runs everything through: What would love do? "Look at your life through those eyes," he said, "the ones asking who God wants you to become — take the steps that answer points you to, and then you can trust the outcome. That's what lets you trust the process. And that's how you become the role model your son grows toward. Not by forcing him into it. By living it in front of him."
And here's where it got me. I told him what I've been told since I was a teenager — that I talk down to people, that I lecture. My father heard it too. But sitting there I finally saw it: I learned it from him. My dad lectured me into who he wanted me to be before he ever asked who I wanted to become — and I've been doing the same thing to the people I love, running my father's playbook without knowing it. Aiming it at my own brother and sister from the father's chair, when I was only ever supposed to be their brother.
The Takeaway for You: If you want to change how people receive you, change the spirit behind the words. Stop trying to lecture people into who you think they should be. Ask what would love do — lead by living it, not announcing it. Being present and coming from love will always move people further than being right ever could. And if you inherited the lecture from someone, you're the one who gets to set it down.
Bookshelf Peeled - The Advantage of the Unfavorable
In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell dismantles the myth that giants are invincible and that hardships are purely destructive. He shows that what we perceive as a disadvantage—a setback, a failure, or a grueling obstacle—is often the very thing that forces us to develop strengths we would have otherwise never possessed. Giant-killing isn't about matching strength with strength or trying to overpower a situation using traditional force; it is about changing the rules of engagement entirely. When David faced Goliath, he didn't put on heavy armor or carry a sword. He used what was native to him: agility, speed, and trust.
When you reframe your hardest years, you realize the giants weren't there to destroy you—they were the training ground. For years, I treated walking away, financial strains, and failed ventures as marks against my record. But as Gladwell points out, the "easy" path leaves you soft and unprepared. The giants forced a level of resilience, adaptability, and presence that comfort never could have produced. The hard seasons weren't pulling you off course; they were giving you the exact weapon you needed to put the paddle down, trust the process, and step onto real ground.
The Takeaway for You: Stop looking at your current obstacle, financial pressure, or detours as proof that you are losing. Goliath wasn't a punishment for David; he was his opportunity to step into his purpose. What looks like a setback in your life or career may actually be the exact force building the resilience you need for what's next. Stop wishing for an easier path, use what is already in your hands, and let the giant make you.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. by Malcolm Gladwell
Design Rebel: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" Meets David vs. Goliath
This week’s visual was born from a sudden realization: life isn't about forcing your way upstream—it’s about finding the flow and having the faith to trust it. We blended the simple truth of Row, Row, Row Your Boat with the epic scale of David vs. Goliath to reflect exactly where I stand right now, both personally and creatively.
Behind the Build: Bringing this sequence to life required far more than a single prompt. While Leonardo.ai, Veo 3.1, and ElevenLabs accelerated our raw assets, the real breakout happened in post-production. Everything was manually edited, structured, and synchronized frame-by-frame in Wondershare Filmora to protect the creative vision.
Stop Fighting the Current: The David & Goliath Metaphor #62
This Got Me Thinking:
"When a person rises in power and wealth there is supposed to be an awakening of the nobility of their soul that makes it possible for them to see ways of serving other people rather than being only in service of their own sense of self." —Michael Meade
P.S. If this resonates with you, share it with someone. I'm dedicated to helping fellow explorers—or anyone who found this page—uncover their authentic self with humor and insight. We're all in this together, finding the courage to truly live from our core essence (or as close as we can get!).
The Root-Gift Layer: Roots That Feed the Ground Around Them
Fridays with Goodman: A striving artist, a Good-man and the Universal Principles at Play. by Martin Casado
