your ideas are your prison, boring. brutal. better.

you might be one bad idea away from breaking through. time to clean out the attic.

hey Builder,

when is the last time you actually looked at your ideas?

I mean really looked at them…
examined them.
questioned whether they’re serving you or sabotaging you.

maybe it was yesterday.
or maybe, you’re struggling to come up with an answer.

but here’s my brutal truth…
my success has been painfully slow.
why?
because my mindset sucked.

if I could go back to my 20-year-old self, there are exactly two things I’d tell him.
two things that would have saved me years of struggle.

hang with me… this might sting a little.

first thing I’d tell him: your ideas suck.

you’re holding onto ideas that do not matter.
ideas that are actively destroying your potential.

let me paint you a picture.

in 1961, poet Donald Hall was cleaning an old New England attic.
he found a box filled with tiny pieces of string.
on the lid, an inscription in faded handwriting: “s*tring too short to be saved.”*🤔…that’s like having a box in your fridge labeled “leftovers too gross to eat.”

that box is your mind.
that box was my mind.

we’re all hoarding mental strings too short to save.

I was drowning in them:

entrepreneurship wasn’t for me
I wasn’t a marketer
success was for other types of people
I didn’t have what it takes

every single limiting belief cost me months.
sometimes years.

three months here to overcome my scarcity mindset.
six months there to believe I could actually market.
two years to stop thinking success was for “other people.”

here’s what took me way too long to learn:
if you think you can’t achieve something, that idea is probably the only thing standing in your way.

your negative beliefs about money, success, marketing, whatever…
they’re not protecting you.
they’re prison bars.

second thing I’d tell my 20-year-old self: the mind is more powerful than you think.

I’m not going woo-woo on you.
this is hard science.

2018 study.
223 participants.
researchers told them they were getting personalized health advice based on genetics.

but here’s the kicker…
the researchers lied to half of them.

people with perfectly good genes were told they had bad genes.
people with bad genes were told they had good genes.

what happened?

those told they had “bad” genes performed worse on physical tests.
even though their genetics were optimized for performance.

those told they had “good” genes performed better.
regardless of their actual genetic makeup.

the only variable that changed?
what they believed about themselves.

think about that.
people with elite genetics performed poorly because they believed a lie.

what lies are you believing about yourself?

here’s what actually works…

I’m not talking about fake-it-till-you-make-it nonsense.
I’m talking about logical, truth-based thinking:

“I am putting in work on my marketing, so I will generate more revenue."
"I am learning these skills, so I will become more capable."
"I am taking these actions, so I will get these results.”

every high performer I know has mastered this.
professional athletes.
successful entrepreneurs.
military special operators.

some were born with powerful mindsets.
others had to build them.
but they all have them.

I didn’t.
at 20, I was feeding my mind anxiety and scarcity.
I was watering weeds instead of flowers.

the bottom line…

I’m proud of what I’ve built.
but I know I could have achieved it all in half the time.

If I’d understood these two principles at 20:

let go of ideas that don’t serve you
harness the power of intentional thinking

your success doesn’t have to be as slow as mine was.
most of us have too many strings too short to save.
it’s time to clean out the attic.

the depth of your success will match the depth of your thinking.
what ideas are you ready to throw away?

try harder,