21. money & worthiness

a six-sentence personal manifesto

Rob.

You've spent the better part of a decade swinging back and forth between two soul-crushing beliefs about money: that you must be exceptional to be worthy of financial success, or that you have to abandon yourself and settle for mind-numbing drudgery to pay the bills.

Beneath this pattern lives a scared little boy who learned that love is conditional, that money equals worth, and that no matter how hard he tries, he's never enough.

The cost of staying stuck here isn't just a lifetime of financial fear and shame, but a betrayal of your deepest desire, which is to be a husband and dad who can be counted on to keep his family safe.

When you shift from "how can I prove I'm worthy" to "how can I use my gifts to serve others," you start a new conversation with money that leads somewhere beautiful: work that feels good, deeper connection with everyone in your life, and the kind of compounding security that money alone could never provide.

The path forward is messy and uneven—some days you'll serve effortlessly, others you'll spiral into perfectionistic unworthiness, and sometimes you'll have to do boring shit to pay the bills; it's all part of the journey.

You're building something magnificent here, but remember that you can only stack one brick at a time, and you do that by showing up with humility, gratitude, and the simple practice of asking "how can I help?"