Go behind the curtain as I highlight my own path back to life, using my entrepreneurial skills as the foundation.

A familiar weight hit me recently, one I haven’t carried in years. It felt like a knot tightening in my chest, and for the first time in a long time, I heard a whisper: “Maybe you don’t need to be alive.” It startled me—not because I wanted to act on it—but because it felt normal.

Four years ago, I tried to take my life. I’ve come a long way since then, but that doesn’t mean the thoughts from that time will forever disappear. The reality is, some of us may never fully escape the cycle of our worst emotions. Habits—especially emotional ones—are bred from routine. And even in those final hours back then, my routine was the same as it is today.

That’s why, when the voice crept back in, it felt normal. For me, the daily battle with suicidal thoughts had once been normal.

The harder reality I’ve had to face, though, is that I am not the same man I used to be. There was a time when my happiness was so infectious, I'd pull people in with a magnetism I didn’t even realize I had. Seeing the genuine smiles on people’s faces, just for being myself, made me feel complete. But that part of me didn’t survive. In its place, I built walls. I filled the void with defense mechanisms, convincing myself I could never be that person again.

But here’s the thing—being an entrepreneur means being wired to fix things. We’re builders. We’re problem solvers. We push through challenges, even when we don’t know how.

So what if I approached my personal battles the same way I would a business?

I started mapping out my emotional roadblocks like tasks in a startup. I examined my flaws—the habits of projecting my fears onto others, forcing people to prove themselves, creating impossible standards of loyalty. These were just a few of the issues I saw in myself. And just like with every business I’ve started there were things that had to get figure out or my business would fall flat, meaning I realized I had no idea how to fix these things—but I knew I had to learn.

In business, we learn through repetition. In relationships, it’s no different. Bad habits don’t break overnight—they break through practice, through doing it right again and again. If you’re lucky, you have a partner or someone who can help guide you through that process. Someone who will stand beside you as you stumble and slowly learn to replace your worst habits with better ones.

In my case, I don’t have that kind of person right now. But that doesn’t mean I get to say, tough shit. Instead, I demanded of myself that I fix my life—or be as dead as the 90% of all startups that inevitably fail.

My first step this morning was to figure out my mission. It’s one thing to be deliberate about your marching orders, but if you don’t know where you’re going, then what the hell are you doing? So, I figured out what I wanted: to fucking be happy again. I mean the old-version-of-me kind of happy.

Step two. Now that I know where I’m going, what’s the vehicle that gets me there? The interesting thing about entrepreneurs is that we have the capacity, the grit, and the expertise to do things we don’t want to or don’t know how to do. But we push through anyway because we love our business beyond reason or rational thought. Thinking about this, I realized I needed to love my life just as much as I love my business—something I’ve never thought of doing for myself.

As I dug further, I realized the first phase of this new startup life (v1.0) would be about me getting uncomfortable around being happy. Here’s what I mean by that: I currently spend a lot of time thinking about all the things that go wrong instead of appreciating what goes right. I fixate on the things people don’t do for me, instead of what they do.

This morning, I had one of the best cups of coffee I’ve had in a while. Instead of appreciating it, I was too busy complaining in my head about the wait time, or thinking about the endless tasks I needed to get done. Even though my day was riddled with wins, by the time I got home, I remembered none of them and felt like the day was wasted.

Looking back, I realized I’ve treated nearly everyone in my life the same way. They could do 20 great things for me in a day, but because they didn’t do that one thing I was expecting, it’s like those 20 things never existed. Not only does that push me away from the kindness of their actions, but it pushes them away from me. It kills any chance of forming a real bond.

Understanding this and practicing it are two different things, but like in every startup, if you don’t pivot, you die. If you don’t adapt, you die. If you aren’t willing to change, you die.

So, step three: Don’t die. I say this jokingly, of course, but step three is really about repeating step two over and over again until one of two things happens: I get a return on my investment (even if it’s just breaking even or taking a small loss, any return shows traction), or if it doesn’t work after a set amount of time, I go back to step two and figure out where I need to pivot.

Just being able to break down this process like this for the first time has already changed me. And yeah, I’m fucking pissed it took me this long to figure it out—mainly because I think of all the people I’ve lost in my life. People I pushed too hard by giving them only one option: leave.

My mission is to be happy again—truly happy. And for the first time in my life, I’m using my rocket-building skills and applying them to myself personally.

Wish me luck. No, fuck that. Wish me good speed, because I’m going to get to where I’m going.