Entitlement Leads to Disaster [Raw Session]

00:00 — Watching someone you love struggle

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds. So lately, I've been thinking a lot about entitlement. And I don't really mean the internet version of entitlement, where somebody thinks they deserve a nice car or they're mad because they didn't get something they wanted. I'm thinking about something a lot deeper than that.

I've talked about a situation in one of my other videos, and right now we're watching someone we all love go through a really difficult period of their life. Things are being lost: housing, income, relationship, family, opportunity, stability.

And when you care about somebody and you see that happening, obviously your instinct is to help. You want to protect them. You want to soften the landing. You want to make sure that when they finally decide to get better, there's still something waiting for them.

But what I've been struggling with is this: what happens when almost everything that goes wrong is still viewed as something someone else did to them? "They're taking this from me. They're not giving me this. They won't let me have that. No one's helping me."

And eventually you start wondering where helping someone ends and enabling them begins.

01:23 — When everything has always been provided

I think some of this comes from what you learn throughout your life. If things have always somehow been provided, you can lose the connection between having something and what someone had to do to create it.

Housing is just there. Food is always there. Someone has a vehicle. Someone will drive you. If you get in trouble, someone will probably help you out.

Even work can have a completely different meaning. If your income has never really been necessary to survive, then having a job might just feel like something you do. You go there, you meet people. It's your socialization. You make some money, you spend it. It's almost an experience rather than a requirement.

But the paycheck isn't keeping the lights on. It's not paying for the mortgage, buying the groceries. It isn't the difference between having somewhere to sleep and not having somewhere to sleep. And then suddenly life changes, and those things actually matter, and you're expected to understand all of that.

I think that's where entitlement can become extremely dangerous. Because if you've always been protected from the relationship between decisions and consequences, consequences probably feel like someone attacking you when they finally arrive.

02:46 — You can't learn while someone always holds you up

This reminds me of another thing I've talked about before: learning how to ride a bike. Someone can buy you a bike. They can put the helmet on you. They can hold your seat. They can run alongside you. They can stop you from falling every five seconds. That's helping.

But eventually they have to let go. Because if they never let go, you didn't actually learn how to ride a bike. You learned how to ride while someone held you up, kept you from falling.

And I think we do this with people in life too, especially when it's someone we love. We start planning the recovery for them before they've even started recovering, or even asked for help.

"We'll keep this because when they get better, they'll want it. Don't get rid of that because they'll need it when everything gets straightened out. When they're back on their feet, when they come to their senses, we'll make sure this is waiting. We'll make sure that door stays open. We'll protect this for them."

And I completely understand why it's done and why we do it. It's done out of love. It's done out of not wanting to see suffering. It's not done as being like a prize at the end. It's not a rainbow. There's a rain cloud, then there's a rainbow, and then there's the pot of gold. So we're in the rain cloud.

You're picturing this person coming back. You want this person you know back. So you're almost preparing their old life for their return. But lately I've been wondering if we're accidentally allowing them to skip part of the journey they need to go through.

04:19 — The boat and the life preserver

The picture I've had in my head is someone falling out of a boat. And obviously, if someone is literally drowning, you help them. I'm not talking about abandoning someone in actual danger. I'm thinking about it more as someone trying to rebuild their life.

I don't know if you can constantly have a life preserver sitting right beside you, because if they know it's there, they don't really have to learn how to swim. They don't have to suffer. They know there's a rope. They know someone's eventually going to pull them back into the boat. They don't have to do anything. All they've got to do is stay in there, stay where they are, and they will be saved.

Maybe all they have to do is say the right thing. "I'm ready to change. I'm going to get better. I know I made mistakes. I'm done with this life. I want to come home."

And everyone gets excited because that's exactly what they've been waiting to hear. "Okay, great. Here's your stuff. Here's this opportunity. Here's that thing we've been keeping for you. Here's the old life again."

And technically they've gone from the water back into the boat without really having to cross the distance themselves. That's the part I've been thinking about, that distance. Maybe you don't remove the boat. Maybe you don't turn the light off. Maybe they can still see you. They can hear you. They know where you are. They know you're there. They know you're waiting. They know you're a little bit out of arm's length, basically. But they know you're still waiting.

But the rope might need to be farther away than they want it to be. The life preserver, they've got to swim a little extra hard to get there. They've got to tread some water. They might actually have to swim through the current, through the storm. They might have to get tired. They might have to struggle. They might swallow some water.

And it's not because you want them to suffer, but because there are parts of that journey that no one else can do for them.

06:15 — When consequences become real

And that's where this idea of rock bottom becomes difficult. I don't think someone needs to lose everything just for the sake of losing everything. And I'm not cheering for someone I love to suffer. But there does have to be some point where consequences become real. There has to eventually be a point where someone else's guilt isn't the escape route.

Because families are really easy to pull on those strings. That's what makes it so difficult. They love you.

They don't want to see you hurting. So maybe Mom will eventually do this. Dad will do that. Your brother will fix something. Your sister will give you some money. Someone will give you food. Someone will give you a place to sleep or stay. Someone will clean up after your mess.

And every individual decision can look like compassion. That's the trap, because taken together, you might be preventing the one moment that actually has to happen. The person saying, "This is where I am. Whatever anyone else did wrong, whatever happened before, these are my circumstances now. What am I going to do about it?"

I don't know how real change happens before someone reaches that point, before they ask for that help, before they know there's no other option, before they know they're the ones who have to get themselves out of it. Or at least ask for help and put in the work.

07:36 — Why earning things matters

And this is probably why I think earning things matters so much. Not everyone needs to struggle. I don't believe that. I've had help in my life. I've had opportunities. I've been very fortunate. There are absolutely things that have gone my way. But I've also put a lot of work into everything I've done.

And I have relatives and friends and people around me throughout my life that look at things that worked out for me and basically say I was lucky. Things were handed to me. Things just seem to work out for him. And sometimes maybe they're right about the luck. Luck is real. But people normally see the result. They don't see what happened before the result.

08:17 — The work behind this YouTube channel

This YouTube channel, it's actually a pretty good example right now. I'm putting a lot of work into this thing, and right now it's basically going nowhere. I'm glad for the people that follow. I'm glad I get the watches. I love it dearly. But it's going slow, and that's just reality.

I'm making videos. I'm showing up. I'm thinking through my ideas. I'm experimenting. I'm learning how to talk through things better, I hope. I'm trying thumbnails. I'm trying Shorts, Reels. I'm using AI to help me build everything. I'm having fun, basically. And maybe nothing ever really happens with this. That's possible.

Well, let's say I keep doing this for the next five years. Let's say there are hundreds and hundreds of videos sitting there, and then something catches. One video gets picked up. People watch another one. Then they find the back catalogue, and suddenly the channel starts growing. If that ever happens, it's going to be awesome. I'm going to love it.

Somebody's actually going to look at this and say, "You got lucky." And maybe I did. Maybe one lucky video was the thing that opens the door. But that lucky moment wouldn't tell the story of the four or five years before it. And that's the part people don't normally see.

09:28 — Luck and work aren't opposites

I think I've slowly learned that luck and work aren't opposites. You can get lucky and still have done the work. You have to do the work to get lucky, in my mind. You can have people help you and still carry your own weight. You've still got to put the work in, and people have got to be willing to help you. So they're not going to be willing to help someone who doesn't want to do the work.

You don't need to come from absolutely nothing for something to have value. But I do think you need some connection to the process, because the process teaches you what things cost. Money, time, stress. Getting up when you don't feel like doing something. Doing something repeatedly while seeing almost no results. Failing, starting again, making stupid decisions and then having to fix them. Saving for something instead of just getting it. Waiting. Learning.

There's value in that. Because when you finally get somewhere, you understand what went into getting there. And I think that's where some of the gratitude comes from. You don't casually want to go back to zero because you remember what zero felt like. You remember what the struggles were. You remember how long it took to move away from zero and start adding up and building up.

10:39 — Helping without restoring everything

And so I think that's what watching this situation in the family right now is teaching me. Helping someone doesn't always mean restoring everything they've lost or keeping that there for when they're ready. Helping doesn't necessarily mean preserving that old life so it's waiting for them whenever they decide they want the help and they're ready to get it.

But helping doesn't mean abandoning them either. There's somewhere in between. Keeping the light on, letting them know where you are. Help them see the direction they need to go. If they're genuinely swimming towards something better, encourage them.

But maybe you don't swim every part for them. Maybe you don't keep throwing another rope every time the water gets uncomfortable. Because at some point they need to know they can swim. And probably more importantly, they need to understand that they're responsible for swimming.

That's the part I'm still trying to figure out. Because when you love someone, pulling them into the boat feels like the kind of thing you're supposed to do. But I'm starting to wonder if constantly pulling someone back into the boat can sometimes be the exact thing that keeps them from ever learning how to get there themselves.

11:52 — Learning enough to stop repeating the cycle

I hope the message landed on this one. It's a shorter video. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about there. You've got to go through the journey, because you've got to understand where you came from. You need to know how you got to where you were. You need to know the things you lost.

Because if you don't lose anything and you don't have to fight to get things back and re-earn them and rebuild them, then what's to stop you from doing it again? What's to stop you from just repeating the cycle? Like, "Okay, well, I did that. Caused a lot of trouble. But I'm back to where I was, and I don't feel any different."

So, you can throw out a life preserver, but don't... make them swim a little harder for it. But you can't just keep doing that over and over again. At some point they've got to learn how to get to the boat themselves. They've got to learn how to swim. They've got to get stronger. They've got to get more resilient. They've got to learn how not to fall off the boat.

13:03 — Not every adventure is fun

I hope this resonates. I hope someone listens to this. You don't have to comment on it. These are personal stories that we all go through. We all have families. We all have situations. We all have friends.

And life is an adventure. That's what I say. But not every adventure has... Adventure is a great word, and it always sounds like fun, but not every adventure is fun. Adventures give you lessons. They help you learn. And that's the way you've got to look at everything.

My life's been a disaster forever, but we're always happy. We get through it. We move forward, and we learn from it. It can always be worse, and the sun's always coming out.

So have a great one. Thanks for watching. Bye.