This year, I turned 30. It was fantastic.

First, it felt great to be done with my 20s. Second, I was excited because I thought the social pressure, the anxiety, the people-pleasing, and the insecurity would all go out the window.

But then I began looking around at the other 30 year-olds. And some, not all of them, seemed to really have their stuff together.

Some were bankers, some were consultants, and others were drop-shipping gurus making good money while hustling and enjoying the grind.

But, to my surprise, that didn’t happen to me.

Sure, I traveled a lot and I started dating an amazing woman. Yes, I nailed a stellar internship and a full-time role. Moreover, I also finished the first year of my full-time MBA program at IESE Business School. …

Comparison is the self-esteem destroyer of our 20s and 30s. For high achievers, like myself, we constantly keep our minds running, reading things, obsessively thinking, and comparing ourselves to other people’s success.

Add to this a society that has glorified million-dollar success stories of entrepreneurship, and you have a recipe for a life of unhappiness until you make your first million.

But it does not have to be this way.

We can make the effort to not beat the sh*t out of ourselves for not quitting a great job in search of an “amazing job”.

We can stop comparing ourselves based on arbitrary metrics or status games. …

Your prefrontal cortex is not fully operational until age 30, which means your decision-making function (that wonderful CEO in your forehead) wasn’t 100 percent functioning in your 20s.

All those times your emotions overwhelmed you? All those moments where you could not think clearly? It was your 20-something-year-old brain operating at a C+.

As if these biological hindrances weren’t making life complicated enough, life has changed significantly in the last decade (2009 to 2019). …

Think about your life for a minute. What are those moments where you were truly happy?

If you had to describe the quality of this moment, you will probably realize it’s simply because you felt like yourself.

This seems like a stupid observation, but the key to this realization is that last little word — self.

Today, we always talk about making an impact, by we rarely talking about becoming an “impact maker.” …

The past month on Medium, I’ve watched article after article pop-up on my phone’s notifications. They have ranged from productivity secrets to sex talk to people sharing wonderful vignettes (I particularly enjoyed Rolli’s The Fate of Imaginative Children and Molly Henderson’s Jeff Bezos Lazy Saturday Morning Routine).

Eventually, after a month of seeing feeds, I began to see a lot of the same styled titles.
- “The One Secret to X,”
- “The Two Ways to Y,” and
- “15 Things You Need to Unlearn to be Z Person”.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these titles. In fact, it’s nice that they provide clear structure and make content digestible. …

In 2014 I finished my 3rd year in the U.S. military (my 7th if you include the U.S. Military Academy), and I had just received a negative review that spelled the end of my career.

I was devastated because after 7 years of commitment to the organization, the leadership decided in a matter of 2 months that my career was over.

After 7 years of training and service with great performance reviews, I suddenly was no longer valuable to the organization.

Five Years Later

Tuesday, talking with my mom on our drive home from the airport, I realized that it had been more than 5 years since my career-ending mistake. …

How one of my favorite authors changed my faith forever

In 2016, I left the U.S. Army to go on an adventure. The program, called the World Race, was a volunteer-based journey to 11 countries in 11 months.

After watching the two-year decline of my career, I needed to get away, rediscover what mattered, and find out if I still had faith in God.

Then our volunteer team’s coach introduced me to an author that would forever change my life. His name was Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest from Albuquerque.

On The Threshold of Transformation

The first book I read by Richard Rohr was titled, “On The Threshold of Transformation.” …

TABOO TOPICS

Every time I came home from my Christian non-profit work, I struggle with the same problems. I’m a single guy, my dream has always been to have a family, and southern women in the summer are beautiful.

Moreover, in November 2016 I made the decision to be abstinent.

It was not an easy (or fun) choice, especially considering I was in codependent relationship.

Still, I chose to clean up my act because I knew I needed to go on the World Race (you can read about that process here).

But, I’m a man. I find women attractive. And I, similar to many other people, like sex. So at moments, I get frustrated and want to throw my Bible at the wall. …