As some of you know I am doing The 75 HARD Challenge. I am currently on day 12. However, yesterday I had a major breakthrough. My previous PR for running the stairs was 20 sets. These are stairs deep in the woods that take you from the forest floor trail in the ravine up to the high level trail. The 20 sets are the equivalent of running about 68 floors. I had a story that my knee was going to be my excuse for not being able to match even my previous 20. But something happened as I pushed through. I realized my knee was not the issue that I thought it would be, and my conditioning had me feeling strong and capable. My previous record of 20 sets came up quite quickly. So the next step was to keep going. I knew I could crush 25 Sets about 78 floors, but as I got to the 25th set, my mind immediately went to...You guessed it! "Dwayne, you know...you could make it to 30 sets." Hearing myself say this was the part that got me because that would mean 100 floors! I have done stairs before but I have never done 100 floors in my life! I'm just 2 weeks away from my 61st birthday and I feel more alive and capable than at any other time in my life...other than the 2 other times I did the 75HARD Challenge. Soon I found myself at the top of the stairs with 30 sets done at the 100 floor target hit!! I share this because I am most likely not going to push beyond this because it takes about an hour and the days are getting shorter. It took me 11 days to build up to it. I thought 10 was impressive...until it wasn't. I then hit 15 and was so impressed. As I was with hitting 20 sets. Each time it felt a crazy level of fortitude. However, after hitting the next milestone, the previous benchmark seemed so easy. The mind will quit long before the body. There are so many levels you are capable of, yet we often allow the bigness of the goal to overwhelm us to the point we don't take action or push beyond our preconceived limitations. Life is indeed a mental mastery game. It's going to always ask you if you are ready to play...and go to the next level.

This question is captured from The Remarkable Man Newsletter on LinkedIn And Substack. The Question: "My son is in his early 20s now. We've been estranged for eight years. His mother had an affair, and instead of being accountable, through the courts, I was painted as dangerous and blocked from seeing him and his sister. She poisoned them against me while I fought to rebuild my life from nothing as she got everything in the divorce. Now that he's an adult, I've reached out to reconnect, but he won't respond. How do I heal this so he knows the truth, and I can be the father and role model he actually needs?" - Jackson P. Prince George BC. Coach's Answer: Brother, first, the fact that you're still reaching out after eight years of silence and a false narrative tells me everything I need to know about the father you actually are. Here's the reframe that matters most: your son's silence right now is not a verdict on the truth. It's a symptom of the story he was raised with after he last saw you. For eight years, his understanding of you was shaped almost entirely by one source (an angry, bitter and vindictive source) during the years he had the least ability to question it. That's not a character flaw in him, that's what happens to a child's mind when it only has one narrator. Trying to correct the story head-on, right now, will likely backfire. He hasn't asked for the truth yet, he's not ready to hold it, because holding it means re-examining his entire childhood and a parent he still depends on emotionally. Pushing the truth on him before he's asked for it can read as an attack on his mother, and he will protect the parent who raised him, even against his own curiosity. Instead: - Lead with consistency, not trying to rush to correcting it. Low-pressure, no-strings contact like a birthday message, a short note, slowly becomes an open door. When it is sustained over time, it does more than any single conversation of, "Here's what really happened." - Let him come to the questions. When he's ready, he will start wondering why the story doesn't fully add up. That's when the truth will land. It does not happen when it's delivered on your timeline, but when it's sought by his.