I come batteries included.
I spent thirty years as the one people counted on: a graphic designer building the things other people put their names on, and a salesman who was number one in the building. Then I ran down. I lost the work, the house, and two years of having a place to live, and I learned the difference between being needed and being valued on the way back.
Christmas morning. My daughter was seven, maybe eight, and the big present that year was a dollhouse. I'd built it the night before. It lit up, it made sounds, and it ran on batteries.
The batteries weren't in the box.
There's nothing worse on Christmas morning than a toy that won't turn on. So I got in the car. I was the one who left the house when the family needed something, and the only store open was Walgreens. I stood in that aisle reading the backs of packages, making sure I had the right size and enough of them, and I made myself a promise. From now on, whatever I buy, the batteries come included.
That's what I made myself into.
I showed up charged, so nobody ever had to think about my charge. Not the people I worked for. Not my family. Not my friends. Not my church. Not me. So I ran down, in every one of those rooms. I went from the front of the room to the back, and nobody noticed. I didn't notice either.
That came after two years of losing nearly everything. The house. The daily nearness of my children. I live a thousand miles away now, in Colorado. Not because I picked this place. Because this was the only couch in the country I could lie on.
Nothing worked until I started walking. Twenty-five to thirty-five thousand steps a day, seven days a week. A lot of people find a way to hide from the pain. I walked mine out, and I talked it into my phone. The lessons took ten years. The words came on those walks. Every word of the book was dictated on foot, spoken into a phone one mile at a time before it was ever typed.
This isn't self-help. It's self-inspection.
I speak to companies and churches about keeping their most dependable people without wearing them out. I grew up between Kansas City and Chicago and now live in Fort Collins, Colorado. I'm the father of two.