‘m 55, living in New York. I did the dance for decades. You put your head down, do the work, and tell yourself you’re building something. Then you look up, and somehow some MFer from accounting, who wouldn’t know strategy if it bit him on the ass, is getting the title you bled for. Twenty years I watched it happen and I was sick of this grinding rage and the feeling of being invisible while lesser men (and yeah, mostly men) got the nod
You start thinking, maybe this is it…. maybe this respectable coffin is the best you can get
I was dead, just hadn’t stopped breathing yet. You swallow the bitterness, tell yourself you have good benefits and it’s too late to change the game. The cost of staying the same? Another decade of this? Unthinkable. F*ck that sh*t
But what’s the alternative? More rah-rah self-help garbage? Robbins telling me to unleash the power within? Please. Tried ’em all. Read the pile. Highlighted the passages. Felt good for five minutes, then Monday morning hits and you’re the same damn cog in the same damn machine. Mental masturbation, that’s what Taylor calls this. It feels productive and changes absolutely nothing.
Then, maybe three months back, I saw an ad. Don’t ask me where. It just… landed. Said something about making people trust you. Part of me scoffed. The other part leaned in. The ad worked on me. It wasn’t pushy, just… precise. It poked a bruise I didn’t know I had. I figured, if they can sell me this effectively, maybe the book actually knows something.