To me, there are two types of people in this world: internalizers and externalizers. Internalizers are a rare breed. They look inward to process what happens in their lives. They take accountability for their decisions. They own their deeds. Externalizers do the opposite — they look outward to make sense of the world, their circumstances, their choices. To them, responsibility never lives within. It lives in a group of people, in circumstances, in some other individual, in chance. Anything but them.

Externalizers love it when people take pity on them. They have no idea what it really signifies.

To take pity is to feel sorrow for someone else’s suffering. Sounds harmless. It isn’t. When you accept it, you forgo responsibility and ownership for the circumstances of your life — even the ones 100% out of your control — because you are denying your own agency. And once you deny your agency, you hand the world permission to dictate your outcomes. You deny yourself the lesson the circumstance was trying to teach you: correct your decisions. Correct your behavior.

Then the confirmation loop kicks in. People pity you, and you tell yourself, “You see? It’s not me. All these people who care about me are confirming that what happened was because of—” attach whatever external factor you like. No resolution. No lesson. Just a being that goes through life taking whatever life throws at it, with no choice in the matter.

That is simply not true.

I despise pity. When someone tries to take pity on me, I put a stop to it fast. I am responsible for what happens and what doesn’t happen in my life. Right or wrong. Even when I fall into a dark hole, I know it’s up to me to dig myself out. Maybe someone comes and helps — but they do it out of love and respect, not pity. They lend a hand to get me back on my feet, knowing it’s on me to push off the ground and start walking again.

And you’re not just responsible for yourself. You’re responsible for everyone under your care, personal and professional. If you are a parent, you are the leader of your household. Anything that happens in that domain — including your children — ultimately falls on you. That’s the way I see it. When my children misbehave or make mistakes, it’s also on me. What could I have done better? What’s the lesson here? How do I prevent it from recurring? What’s the best course of action, given that parenting comes without an instruction manual? Owning what happens in your home puts you in a position of absolute agency — to self-correct as needed and become a better parent, a better spouse.

Do you work in a team? Entire books have been written about this — extreme ownership, for one. It’s all the same idea: no matter what happens, you own it. The higher you climb the leadership ladder, the more intense that ownership becomes, because leadership sets the tone from the top. Own it, and never let anyone pin the outcome on “circumstances out of your control” to let you off the hook. That’s how you preserve your agency, your chance to become a better leader, and your right to own the scars of life — instead of letting someone take them from you with a “poor you.”

There’s nothing more demoralizing than a “leader” who never owns what happens in their team. Things go wrong and they blame everything but themselves. It guts the culture, because it signals to everyone else that it’s OK not to own the process, the outcome, or the lesson. The organization loses its agency and becomes a thing floating in the abyss of whatever sector it operates in, controlled by nothing and no one — because in the end, no matter the effort, nobody owns the results.

You’d think that in 2026 this would be crystal clear. Instead, the pity train has picked up speed. More people want on board. Why own your shit when you can log into social media and feed your deceived eyes a stream of curated lives and posts of pure perfection?

So it’s up to you. “Poor you, fuck you” — or own what you do and what happens to you. Become the self-aware human being who learns from their mistakes, sets the example, and truly cares for their family and their team. The independent thinker who looks inward to correct course — and who, when they keep falling, still gets up and keeps trying. Maybe you get worn down. Maybe you fall more than most. But when you look inward and take agency over your life, no one — and I mean no one — can look down on you.

Not even yourself.

— “Mark” (XA)

Mark (not his real name) sat across from a man who spoke with confidence—too much confidence. The man claimed expertise in a subject he barely understood, speaking in broad strokes and borrowed opinions. He asked Mark about combat—wanting to discuss gunfighting. Mark listened patiently before finally cutting him off.

“We don’t get to talk about this because you haven’t paid the admission ticket. You don’t get a seat at the table.”

And just like that, in a single sentence, he articulated something I’ve been trying to describe for a long time: lived experience outranks theory, and everyone in the room knows it.

Not everyone deserves a voice in certain conversations. Some experiences can’t be understood unless you’ve lived them. Mastery of a skill or discipline cannot be faked. Some things must be earned in the fire before you can speak with authority.

Why the Price of Admission Matters

We live in a world where everyone feels entitled to an opinion, regardless of whether they’ve done the work, endured the hardship, or made the sacrifices necessary to truly understand what they’re talking about. This phenomenon has a name: the Dunning-Kruger effect. The people who know the least about a subject are the most confident in their command of it. But the reality is simple: experience is the admission ticket, and without it, your words lack weight.

Research on expert intuition points the same way: fast, high-level decisions are built on years in the field, not on books or rules. This is why the price of admission isn’t just about credibility—it’s about setting boundaries. In a world where everyone feels entitled to an opinion, experience is the filter that separates noise from wisdom.

The Difference Between Knowing and Doing

You’ve likely experienced this firsthand:

• You didn’t just start a business—you built it from the ground up, through failures and hard-earned lessons.

• You didn’t just get a degree—you survived the grueling process of earning a law, medical, or advanced degree.

• You didn’t just apply—you volunteered for selection into a special operations unit, knowing most would fail.

• You didn’t just run a marathon—you trained relentlessly, pushing for a new personal best record.

• You didn’t just aim to be healthier—you transformed your body and mind, getting clean and into peak physical shape.

Each of these demands discipline, sacrifice, and time. And here’s the hard truth: most people aren’t willing to do what it takes.

Experience is non-transferable. Enduring hardship in one area doesn’t mean you understand struggle in another. Mastering one craft doesn’t grant automatic insight into a different discipline. Hardship isn’t universal—it’s specific.

The All-or-Nothing Mindset

Earning your seat at the table isn’t just about experience—it’s about commitment. You can’t do things halfway and expect to be taken seriously. True mastery doesn’t come from balance—it comes from structured obsession and relentless, focused effort.

People ask me all the time about my morning routine—why I wake up early, why I never miss a session, why I don’t just “skip a day.”

For me, there’s no middle ground. It’s either zero or 100. Some say “all extremes are bad,” but the best in any field don’t get there through casual effort—they get there through sustained, all-in dedication.

Most people treat discipline as optional.

They tell themselves they “don’t have time” or that they’re “too busy.”

But I’ve learned one fundamental truth:

If you haven’t lived it, you won’t get it.

And that’s why not everyone deserves a voice in certain conversations—because expertise isn’t just about time spent. It’s about total commitment to the process.

Setting Boundaries on Conversation

This isn’t about shutting down curiosity or genuine interest. There’s value in thoughtful questions and respectful discussion. But there’s a crucial difference between asking to learn and claiming to know, between seeking understanding and asserting expertise you haven’t earned. The price of admission isn’t about excluding people—it’s about respecting the depth of experience that certain conversations demand.

Since adopting this perspective, I’ve stopped explaining myself to people who can’t possibly understand. Here’s why:

• Time is finite. There’s no point debating with someone who lacks firsthand experience.

• Hollow opinions don’t carry weight. Most people speak from assumptions, not experience.

• Action is the best teacher. If they don’t get it, they should live it themselves.

I could sit in front of you and try to describe what it feels like to hit the wall in a marathon, what the last grueling 10K feels like, what a full training block takes out of you. But unless you’ve lived it, you’ll only grasp a fraction of the reality.

Experience isn’t something you can borrow. It can’t be transferred, gifted, or faked. It must be earned through deliberate practice, real-world application, and often, failure.

If you haven’t earned your place, you don’t get a seat at the table. That’s not gatekeeping—that’s reality.