What Must Be, Is

If it must be, then it is. What is in the middle is up to you.

10 years ago this month I set foot on those famous yellow footprints aboard Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego.

For anyone that knows me or has kept up with any of the work I've done on Win The Night, they know the Marine Corps is a large chapter in my life. I would say it was the most life changing chapter of my life to date. Although I suspect the chapter I’m on now will one day take that place. Becoming a Marine revolutionized what I believed about what I was capable of.

As I have mentioned on here before, my childhood wasn't exactly a pleasant one. I grew up really doubting myself and feeling inadequate at home.

I was having an internal conflict.

"Am i really just a burden to everyone?" is a question I had in the back of my mind constantly. I needed for that not to be true.

I spent plenty of time alone during the end of my high-school years.

That gave me more than enough time to wonder what I wanted to do with my life. My older sister pressured my brother and I to go to college, but no matter how much I tried to think of careers that would be worth going into debt for, I just could not see anything I enjoyed like art being worth that risk.

Mostly because I knew that art was a hobby for me and not something I could see myself fully investing my life to.

I witnessed my brother cave to the pressure and regret going into debt for a career he isn't pursuing currently. At the time I had agreed to at least attempt to complete my general education in community college since it would be covered by financial aid, but my condition was that if I did not see a future there I would leave and do something else.

The question was, what? There was a thought in the back of my mind I kept pushing away as "too unrealistic" to even consider. Like a childhood dream of mine that was too outlandish because I believed in order to do something like that i would need to be an athlete to accomplish which I wasn't. Throughout my life up until that point I had been mostly a couch potato. I wasn't in very good shape, I wasn't overweight but I was getting pretty close by the time I made up my mind. I thought "ok what if I wanted to look into going into the Marines."

I was up late one night maybe two weeks into community college after realizing I did not see a future in college for me when I gained the courage to at least find out more about Marines. I think the biggest fear i had was that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but if I did also that I would be locked into doing one thing for at least the next 4 years of my life. I was asking myself "Is that gamble worth it?" So I go on the website and discover that the Marine Corps has reserves.

That completely changes everything for me, because now I get my wish of being able to pursue multiple careers at the same time if I wanted to.

"Maybe I can now" i whispered to myself. I sat over the "request more information" button for what seemed like an eternity before I finally clicked it and immediately turned off my computer and went to sleep. The very next day I get a call from a recruiter and he asked if I was still interested in becoming a Marine. I experienced a very surreal feeling of "Me? A Marine?" I shakenly responded "yes I am".

That decision set off the greatest transformation I had experienced so far in my life.

When recruits become Marines, they are handed the Marine Corps emblem called the Eagle Globe and Anchor (EGA) by their drill instructors.

That symbol represents the transformation from recruit to Marine. For me I can say that receiving the EGA was physical proof that I was capable of far more than I was made to believe in childhood. This is important because I would meet people both in and out of the Marine Corps that would treat me how I was treated at home as a kid, and bring back those feelings of doubt in myself. Fortunately for me, I had just enough good leaders to make me want to aspire to be like them as I matured in my career.

So why am I telling you all of this?

Well, recently I found myself looking through some old paperwork for a veterans loan I am applying for, and found my EGA. In that instant I relived the moment when I was handed it and remembered that important lesson i learned that day. What you are capable of cannot be dictated by anyone else but you.

Not your parents, not your siblings, not your friends and especially not those that don't believe in you.

I am under the suspicion that your reality is created by your subconscious belief of yourself and the world around you.

If it must be, then it is. What is in the middle is up to you.

It is my belief that working on your internal monologue will change your reality, but that comes with facing what you fear.

That comes with a deep struggle that will likely be more difficult than you imagined, but then the flip side of that is that you are far more resilient than you thought. There in lies the transformations you will need to go through to get you closer to the life you envision for yourself.

Its the route there that always seems to go differently than we expected.