You Were Never the Jacket

For almost thirty years I wore a jacket I never picked out.

The ambitious one. The performer. The tough kid from the wrestling room who never lost the stance. It got me a career in medical devices, a reputation, a number to hit — and a version of me that walked through my own front door every night still wearing it.

Nobody fitted me for it out of malice. I want to be careful with that, because it's true of your jacket too: it was handed down with love, by people who were never taught either. Look better, be better, appear better. We were dressed for the performance before we could choose.

Here's what the jacket promises: safety. Here's what it actually delivers: survival. And surviving is not stepping.

A couple of years ago, I hung it up. Not the career — the costume. I still carry a bag. I still sell for a living. What I found underneath has been the calmest, strangest, most effective stretch of my life: work with meaning instead of performance, rooms I get to experience instead of manage, and a morning practice that keeps it all standing.

People kept asking me what changed. The Next Frame is the honest answer — not a self-help book, just the story of a regular guy taking the jacket off, and the practice that made it stay off.

You were never the jacket, friend. You were the one wearing it. And that difference — seen clearly, practiced daily — changes everything.

The Next Frame: The Practice of Living Life on Purpose is available now on Amazon.