The holidays are the very best time to be grateful for all of our blessings, family, and friends. The holidays can also trigger stress, anxiety, and depression. It’s easy to appreciate the joy of the food, presents, lights, fables, traditions, and pageantry, but many dread the swirl of family drama, high expectations, and the demands of our consumer economy.

During the holidays, I make extra efforts to enjoy the festivities, while not losing myself and my own desires and lifestyle in the season. In the holiday seasons of 1999 and 2000, my wife Angie and I juggled the holidays with our two families and groups of friends, and we felt like we missed out on enjoying the true essence of the holidays: peace. We knew we didn’t want our life together to include feeling the stress of constantly being pulled in multiple directions. For two years, we missed out on the joy of the season, and we agreed that raising a family during the holidays would be easier without the tug of extended family.

I used to think I needed to know everything to be valuable. I couldn’t answer “I don’t know” or even give the appearance that I didn’t know something. I needed to know everything all the time in my professional role, as a husband, as a father, and even as a friend. I tried to maintain a mask of an all-knowing, wise man. It was pure chaos.

I remember when my children were young, and we had gatherings of friends at our house. We worked hard to teach our children to respect our space and time when adults were gathered together. Often our children were guided to be in a different room, especially when we were playing certain games or having specific discussions. My little girls were brilliant and mature for their ages, but we never deemed them mature enough to be in a room with adults. As they grew up, they honored this more and more without resistance, and I thought this was powerful parenting. I demonstrated that I could teach my kids and that my kids were disciplined. 

Do you create your life, or does life happen to you? When my life was most chaotic, I would wake up with minimal time to get ready for work. I was working for a company that selected me from a pool of executive candidates and I felt privileged to work there—not because it was a great environment, but because I was the candidate whom they selected. I felt “lucky” to be there. As I learned about the job expectations of the new position and was “trained” into the role, and I would shoe-horn my talents, skills, and gifts to fit, instead of fitting the job around my abilities. 

Nice things are, well, nice! I love nice things just as much as everyone else. My most favorite place is my house, and after growing up in a small lower-middle class row home in Baltimore, I fully appreciate the space and comfort that my home offers. In fact, my family has lived together in three time zones, and each time we’ve moved, we purchased a larger house. I’ll repeat that: nice things are nice!

I was an enabler for most of my marriage until I learned how to say no. My wife Angie and I were chemically dependent — my drug of choice was alcohol and hers were prescription opioids, benzos, and amphetamines. We were both in over our heads, and upside down with our health, relationship, family, and life in general. 

During a significant portion of our time together from 1999 to 2016, Angie was in bed sleeping while I was a functioning alcoholic who managed my career, our household, and our kids. A lot fell on my shoulders, and Angie carried very little responsibility.  Angie had a lot of mishaps with her drug addiction in Portland, Oregon, where we lived from 2002 to 2012. She was responsible for numerous break-ins, endured shoplifting charges, and had car accidents all induced by chemical psychosis. She was in and out of rehab centers and mental hospitals. 

The most basic concepts create the biggest shifts and results in our human experience. Overlooking the basics eventually result in pain and suffering. I learned this the hard way. 

“How much water do you drink?” my coach asked me on our first coaching call. I had hired him because my life had fallen apart. I had just lost my second six-figure executive position in 20 months. Besides that, I was close to 300 pounds, suicidal, in active alcoholism, and my marriage and family were teetering on the verge of collapse. I had a wife and two daughters who depended on me. I wanted desperately to take care of them and provide the highest quality of life, but I couldn’t take care of myself. I’m not sure how I ever thought I could take care of anyone when I couldn’t even take care of myself. 

When I was in a corporate setting, I feared making mistakes. My identity was so wrapped up in the ideal, perfectionist view I had created for myself that I procrastinated on everything. I would coach my teams to “not let perfect get in the way of better,” but I wouldn’t always practice this myself. I feared judgement, criticism, and most of all being terminated because I was imperfect. This didn’t just show up in my career. My inadequacy and insecurity often paralyzed me and held me back in so many dimensions of my life. 

There are a few professions in which self-sacrifice is expected. Servant roles such as law enforcement, firefighting, and the military are some, and when one joins these professions they expect and even embrace a certain amount of sacrifice. There are few other reasons to ever sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others.

When I was a child I learned sacrifice and saw it everywhere. My parents demonstrated and preached it constantly, and I was also taught that it was the only way to be a “good person” through religion and religious education. It was taught in a very forceful way that appreciating yourself, accepting yourself, and desiring things for yourself was selfish. Because what we’re taught during our childhood creates our beliefs, I lived these beliefs daily, and they created a lot of pain in my life. 

Personality tools have a key place in my coaching practice. With my higher end clients I spend up to a full-day just diving into key aspects of their personality in order to help them understand themselves at a level that they might have previously thought impossible. 

Through personality tools and assessments, we affirm their talents and gifts, and key challenges they will encounter in their unique design. In most cases, during our session we can confirm and identify what they really desire to create in their life compared to where they are in their current circumstances. Oftentimes, there’s a wide gap. 

My family has always been blessed financially. After I exited the United States Marine Corps, I immediately found a position that paid plenty to provide me an above average quality of life. Over the next 20 years, I continued to ascend in roles and responsibilities as well as income. When my corporate journey ended in 2016, our net-worth was strong, and our savings provided years’ worth of buffer to allow us to get our own business off the ground. But it didn’t feel like it. 

The months following the loss of my job were filled with panic and anxiety fueled by thoughts of poverty and homelessness. I lost sleep because of the dread I felt that my kids would not be able to eat, or that they would never have Christmas again after being spoiled since they were born. I was worried that I would need to sell our cars and our house, scrape by just to pay the rent of a small apartment, and hit food shelters to eat.

“I’m going to start a coaching business,” I said to my wife Angie after a period of looking for another executive position after my most recent termination. 

“A what kind of business?” Angie said, almost laughing. “So we’re just going to lose everything because you can’t find a job?”  

Although Angie initially had trouble believing in my dream to build a coaching business, the only thing I ever enjoyed in my almost 20 years in a corporate environment was coaching and developing people and teams. The rest of my responsibilities were just activities that I felt I needed to endure in order to continue doing what I loved—coaching. I could spot talent and develop people with the best of them.

I’ve coached doctors, lawyers, and millionaires. I’ve coached seasoned and newly minted Fortune 500 executives, as well as struggling and successful entrepreneurs. They all have one thing in common. 

They all have blind spots. Every single one of them. Not one person on a planet of 7.7 billion people can see through the smokescreen of fear, doubt, anxiety, and mind-made illusion with absolute clarity. We tend to think things are harder than they are, and there are times when we pick the path of most resistance. It’s pretty common to lack the self-awareness to overcome challenges in the easiest, most effective manner without support. 

“What’s keeping you from enjoying your life?” I asked Jason in a direct and intense manner.

We were sitting in a conference room at my coworking space, holding our kick-off meeting for a six-month journey toward creating new outcomes in his life. Jason was a high-powered business leader, and he had wealth and materials in abundance—but he also had an abundance of self-doubt and self-esteem issues. 

“It’s never enough. I always push for more. And I’m tired,” Jason replied. 

“Why do you believe it’s never enough?” I asked, digging a little deeper.

“I always feel like I’ve got to prove myself to people. I feel like I’m just always looking to make sure people know that I matter,” he said with glossy eyes. 

Bryan Schroeder became a very good friend of mine in a short period of time. I had been unemployed for about a year, hired a professional coach, and was about 12 months into the journey of rebuilding my life. I’d just gained two clients in my own coaching practice and was coaching on a very small scale.

Bryan was a business owner. Over the past 15 years, he had built a real estate investment business which purchased, rehabilitated, and sold 160 houses a year. They owned about 130 rental properties, and had built a hard money lending business that loaned money to other real estate investors. We were friends and I looked up to Bryan as a powerful business owner. I enjoyed being in his presence because I always learned a lot from him. 

I’ve got it all, but I’ve got nothing.

I’ve heard this same story over and over. Millionaires who thought money would make them happy. Business owners who created successful businesses but lost their families in the process. Professionals moving closer to goals that they are not passionate about. People who set big goals only because the “grind gurus” and “hustle whores” convinced them they were less-than without.

Everyone has a different path, a different direction, and a different end in mind. There is no one way.

By unapologetically and unconditionally creating the path and the destination that YOU desire – regardless of other influences – you give yourself permission to actually do what you desire and find happiness in the outcome.

It’s nearing three years since I’ve learned to resolve challenges to power outcomes through a process of self-mastery.

After my second executive level termination in less than 20 months I sat in my home office at 300 lbs, with declining physical health. In active alcoholism, I had no income and a marriage and family on the brink of collapse. Rock bottom. I looked to revert back to the old process I had effectively used over and over: work harder, work more, and try to change myself, my story, and my behavior to fit the needs of everyone around me.

“I have too many thoughts to meditate.” This is exactly why I so highly recommend meditation. Meditation is a gift from the heavens – so simple and so easy.

Yet rejected by so many.

For my first meditation session I walked into my home office feeling like everyone was going to laugh at me. I was afraid of judgement and criticism more than the mental chaos I experienced daily. What I didn’t realize is that the fear of judgement was directly because of the mental chaos.

Sitting on my floor, I opened my timer app, set the timer for 3 minutes, hit the ‘start’ button, focused on my breathing, then felt frustrated as I noticed a thousand thoughts swirling in my head.

It was one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever experienced. I’m glad I didn’t stop that day. Because I didn’t stop and I built a solid meditation practice, I feel increased calm, confidence, courage, and clarity daily.

My growing business was built on the foundation of meditation.

I have radically changed my habits through self-mastery. I don’t show up the same way in the world the way I once did, and my days look much different than they did before I decided to make healthier shifts in my life. The way I approached my journey and transformation is not the norm, but the exception. I went all-in. But I’ve since learned that going all-in is not the only way to successfully bring self-mastery to your life.

A Bit About My Story

I was nearly 300 lbs,, an alcoholic, abusive to my wife and children, with zero self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth. I lacked confidence and courage so I attacked others out of fear.

On April 1, 2016, I felt lost, alone, and suicidal. I had no source of income after losing my second 6-figure income in 20 months. Sitting in the same recliner in which I had once bottle-fed my baby girls, I put down the book I was reading, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, slowly got up from the chair and headed to my basement to get on my treadmill.

I hadn’t used the treadmill in over 3 years. In fact, I hadn’t read a book in about the same amount of time.

It was December, 2010 – about 6 years before I would begin my self-mastery journey. The Kitko Family was in Cancun, Mexico again. Our daughters, Katie (then 8) and Meagan (then 6) had been in Mexico 6 times. International excursions were just a regular part of their lives. So was pain, anger, suffering, alcoholic rage, chaos, and mental, emotional, and physical abuse inflicted on them by my wife Angie and me.

From the outside, it looked like we had it all. That’s what we wanted everyone to see. It worked for a while. But inside, we were each dying a little more daily.