There was a show on TV a while back—maybe it’s still on—called Hoarders.

I never watched a full episode, but I caught enough previews to understand the premise. They’d go into someone’s home—usually someone who had reached a breaking point—and what they’d find wasn’t just a mess. 

It was chaos.

Piles of newspapers, broken appliances, towers of old boxes, garbage bags full of who knows what stacked from floor to ceiling. 

Sometimes there wasn’t even a clear path to walk through the house.

But here’s the thing.

The stuff was never just stuff.

The show would always reveal some deeper story: 

• A traumatic loss
• A deep sense of shame
• A moment in time when life stopped moving forward—and the clutter started piling up. 

The junk they were holding onto was just a symptom of something internal that had never been dealt with.

And that stuck with me.

Because you don’t have to be on a reality show or identified as a hoarder to be carrying around excess baggage.

• Some people carry it in their body—extra weight they can’t seem to shake. A workout program or diet they just can’t stick to.
• Others carry it in their energy levels, struggling just to get through their day or their week. They’re living for the weekend, for the next vacation, telling themselves they just ‘need a break’.
• For others it’s in their short temper, their scattered mind, or anything they use to escape from the responsibilities of life.

Life can be hard, but that doesn’t mean your off the hook.

There’s no escaping your God given assignment and responsibility of being a man.

Just like the hoarders, what’s visible on the outside often points to what’s been buried on the inside.

Whatever it is—it shows up somewhere.

It certainly did for me for many years.

Relatively healthy on the outside, I was complacent on the inside.

I was struggling with…

• Fear and a lack of confidence - do I have what it takes?
• Comfort - I don’t want to give up the food I run to when life gets hard. Then I would really have to face the very reason I’m running to begin with
• A lack of self-worth - deep down I believe I can do it, but do I deserve it? What will people think if I really go for it?

Until I addressed these deeper roots — no amount of willpower, no new diet or exercise program, no new year’s resolutions — nothing was going to change on the outside.

I can’t think of a single client I’ve worked with, struggling with something physically, that didn’t tie back to something deeper.

And this doesn’t just apply to your body — any area you want to see change will require you to let go.

The thing you keep holding onto might be the one thing holding you back.

If you’re stuck in a cycle, and you’re actually ready to get out of it, you need to understand it won’t be easy to just step out of.

Like a rip current, you’ll have to put forth some effort to get out of it —like your life actually depends on it.

Because it does.

And like a rip current, it might require you to do something different.

Because sometimes more effort in the wrong direction, or doing the same thing over and over, won’t get the result you want.

It will just leave you exhausted, overwhelmed, and stuck in the same spot.

What are you holding onto that needs to go?

Hoarding a little here and a little there seems harmless until it begins to affect every area of your life.

Don’t wait for things to get bad to do something about it.

Dave