 the path of mastery, this great constrictor of people's opinions to my potential and other people's potential. I'm not immune to it. I am better at it than I've ever been, because I work at it, I train it. But when I was young, this was a real thing for me. And when I was 15 and a half, or 16, I should say, I just got my driver's license. I saved up for a couple summers to get a car. And I remember I was driving and there was a car passing me. And this was like week one or two of having my driver's license. They were passing me going in the same direction. And I sat up, I grabbed the steering wheel with a cool kid lean, and I just wanted to look cool. And I looked over just in that kind of way, as they're passing by, and they didn't fucking look at me. They had no interest in what was happening in my world in my car. And in that moment, as a 16-year-old kid, I thought, what am I doing? And I was embarrassed by it. There was no one else in my car, but I was embarrassed by myself, like I'm just trying to look cool. I'm like a phony. And it stuck with me. And I didn't know how to change it. I didn't know how to shift it. And it just kind of was quiet, but I knew it was underneath there. And I knew it got in the way of me potentially going pro and surfing. And I knew it got in the way of a lot of things. And then sure enough, here I am working with the best in the world. My mentor says to me there was a, we're walking, it was an MMA fight. And it was early, it was like, I don't know, MMA 43 or something like that. And the fighter asked me, he says, hey, will you be at the fight with me? I was like, yeah. He says, will you corner the fight with me? I was like, oh my, yeah, okay. That sounds cool. Let's have a game plan. So we worked out a game plan. We did a lot of work to prepare for that. And we rehearsed everything on how I was gonna support him while he was in a cage. Except we didn't rehearse where I was supposed to walk when he went into the cage. So I just followed the head coach and he didn't know where he was gonna walk either. And so we just kind of had to make our way to the spot. And so there I am kind of in front of the camera. We're all kind of in front of the camera walking on the outside of the cage as the fighters walking into the cage. My mentor calls me afterwards, the fighter did a really nice job. And my mentor called me on the way home as I was driving. And he's like, congrats. Like that looked pretty amazing. He says, why don't you stay out of the camera though, dude? And I was like, oh my God. I thought you're gonna say like, congratulations is cool. I know how much you love the MMA game, blah, blah, blah. And he shot me, you know, like right in the heart. And he's like, stay out of the camera. That's not where you're supposed to be. And I was like, oh man, I did something. I did something wrong here. Like I was not a good custodian of this beautiful science. And I let him down. I let like other, I don't know. And it just stayed with me for better part of a decade. And I never confronted him. I was again embarrassed by it and I never, I didn't know what to do with it. Coming to find out, he didn't really, it was just kind of a little comment. It was a monster that I grew. And it was because I was afraid of what he was gonna say to me. And I was afraid of what would happen because like I liked the moment where I walked on and like it was caught that I was part of something. I liked it, but we weren't supposed to do that. We're supposed to be behind the scenes. But I liked being part of something electric and fun. And I know that I was supposed to just be behind the scenes. And I wasn't, to be clear, I wasn't trying to hog the spotlight or anything, but so it was really kind of confusing for me as an early professional in my career. And coming to find out, he really, it just wasn't a big deal to him as it was for me, but I made it a big deal. So I got scar tissue, I got stuff that I've worked through as well. And I'll tell you, it is much better on the other side of doing this work. I'm thankful that I've got people in my life that hold me to task. And I hope that everybody has that in their life. And if they don't, you can pay somebody. In some respects, that's what psychologists do. They don't say, oh, it's okay, sweetie. It's okay, honey, oh, okay, it's not that. It's like, oh, is this the person you wanna be? No? All right, well, let's go to work. Yeah, for those in our audience who feel in that solitude, like they're strengthening their frame and their resolve and they're working towards mastery, those opinions on their own, especially without a supportive community who can help you unpack it and see the opinion for what it is and assess it truly to recognize. And then you had the opportunity, I'm assuming, based on that story to share with your mentor and frame to say, listen, it was just an off-the-cuff statement. I wasn't holding you to that and certainly wanting to feed that monster for you. But oftentimes, if all we do is tuck that in, we avoid community, we avoid working in the professional, we avoid actually understanding the opinion, the impact it's having on ourselves. It can steer us away from the performance that we want and it can take us off track from even finding our passion or purpose.