Not Your Name

You are allowed to feel it. You are not allowed to become it.

You will feel frustration. Feel it fully — then set it down. Being frustrated is a weather that passes through you. Being "a frustrated man" is a house you moved into. Those are not the same thing, and the second one will cost you your whole life.

You will fail. Learn everything the failure has to teach — then leave it on the ground behind you. You failed at a thing. That is an event. You are a failure — that is an identity, and it is a lie you tell yourself so you can stop trying.

The feeling is a tool. You pick it up, you use it, you put it down. The moment you let it become your name, it stops being a tool in your hand and becomes the hand itself. Now it does not serve you. It runs you. You do not have frustration anymore — frustration has you.

So hold them, but never wear them.

Be secure enough to feel the hard things all the way through without signing your name to any of them. The frustration is real. The failure is real. Neither one is you.

You are the man who felt them, learned from them, and walked on.

Not your frustration. Not your failure.

Not your name.

"You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." — Marcus Aurelius