A message for those going through hell...

I'm just "wet" (a message for those going through hell...)

My buddy Ryan and I were partway up the Pillbox hike above Lanikai when the sky turned on us.

Red clay going straight up the ridge, the ocean opening wider behind you with every switchback, two old concrete pillboxes at the top that somebody poured in 1943 and never came back for.

The first drops hit my forearm and I did what everybody does.

Looked up.

Told myself it was nothing, just a cell blowing through, this is Hawaii and it rains for four minutes and quits.

But it didn't quit.

So we ducked under the thickest tree we could find and waited.

And while we waited, my brain did the thing it loves to do: create anxiety:

How long is this going to last?

Is it getting worse?

Why didn't I check the radar?

How slick does this clay get on the way down?

Am I going to be soaked the rest of the day? I don't have a change of clothes.

That wasn't rain I was feeling. That was the idea of rain, and it had me long before the water did.

Then the tree stopped working. I mean... of course it was always going to stop working. The leaves filled up and started dumping fat drops instead of little ones, and a cold line of water found the back of my neck and ran the whole length of my spine, and I shifted two feet left to a spot that looked drier and was not, and then I shifted back.

At some point I looked over at Ryan. Two grown men, hunched under a bush, negotiating with weather that did not know we were there.

So we made a decision.

With a deep breathe filled with fear and anxiety - we stepped out from the branches, onto the open trail, into the rain.

Four seconds later I was soaked to the bone.

And it was fine.

I was just wet.

That's the part nobody warns you about. I was wet, completely and with no way back, and it turned out that's all "wet" ever was.

Shoulders dropped.

Jaw unclenched.

We hiked on faster than we'd moved on the way up (and laughing, the way you do once you finally give in), because there was nothing left to protect.

In fact, it made the hike even more fun - and a memory we'll never forget.

And here's the thing: I was never afraid of the water.

I was afraid of the moment I'd have to accept it.

You've stood under that tree

Not on my trail. On yours.

Maybe it was the sky opening up at Disney World with a stroller and a nine-dollar poncho. A soccer sideline in October. Six blocks from the car after dinner. Somewhere in your life you have stood under an awning doing math on the weather.

Do you remember the moment you gave up and walked into it?

And what happened to your shoulders the second you did? How the thing you'd been bracing against for twenty minutes turned out to be about four seconds long?

Hold onto that thought... you're going to need it for something much bigger than rain.

The other tree

This one doesn't involve weather, and you're standing under it today.

It might be a business that isn't working the way you promised everyone it would. A number in a spreadsheet you've quit opening. A conversation you owe somebody. A diagnosis. A marriage that went quiet a while back and neither of you has said so out loud.

And you're not in it yet. You're managing it, monitoring it, refreshing it, telling yourself that if you can hold on a few more weeks the weather will turn.

How do you know? Check yourself against these:

You're rehearsing. Driving somewhere, running an imaginary argument with somebody who isn't in the car. That's not thinking. That's bracing.

You keep opening the same app to look at the same number that hasn't moved since the last time you looked at it.

You've said "let's see how next quarter goes" for three quarters straight.

Your plan requires the weather to cooperate.

And somebody deserves to know what's happening, and you haven't told them, because telling them makes it real.

Count the hours you burn on that in a week. Not fixing anything. Just staying dry. That's the tax nobody puts on your balance sheet, and you're paying it in the only currency you can't make more of.

Mine was Texas

I bought a lot of multifamily in Texas over the last six years. Then that market fell apart, and deals that penciled beautifully stopped penciling at all.

In public, too. There's a particular sound the internet makes when a guy who wrote books about this stuff runs into trouble. The videos. The threads from people who've never bought anything explaining exactly where I went wrong. It hurt more than I want to admit in writing.

And for a long stretch, I stood under the tree, afraid of the rain.

What will people think?

What happens to my reputation?

What if my investors lose money?

What if I lose all of it and start over with a family watching?

Those aren't small questions, and I never found a trick that made them stop mattering. A few still keep me up.

But at some point I stepped out. The market does what the market does. It doesn't know my name, it didn't read my books, and it isn't checking with me on timing.

Did I buy at the wrong time? Knowing what I know now, obviously. Looking at the data I actually had then, I'd make most of the same calls again. And I can't change the past, only plan for the future.

So - I'm just wet.

And the strange gift buried in that sentence is that I'm okay.

Acceptance isn't surrender

I want to be careful here, because "just accept it" turns into a bumper sticker fast, and bumper stickers don't pay anybody's mortgage.

Stepping into the rain doesn't mean sitting down in the mud. You still walk out. You still call the lender, restructure the deal, tell your investors the truth on a Tuesday instead of hiding until Friday.

Acceptance is only this: refusing to spend one more calorie on the fantasy that it isn't happening.

And what you get back the second you quit protecting yourself is enormous. All that energy you were burning on dread and image management comes back online at once, and you can aim it at the actual problem instead of the shadow version that lives in your head at two in the morning.

It costs you, so let me put the price on the table: you have to let people see you soaked. You have to say "this one hurt me" out loud, and a few of them will think less of you for it. You're giving up the story where nobody ever finds out it got hard. Best trade available in a bad season, I think.

But it is a trade.

Go get wet

You already know which tree.

Say your sentence out loud this week. The deal is bad. The market turned. My business is shrinking. I don't know how this ends and I'm scared. Say it plainly, with none of the softeners you've been packing around it for months.

Then notice that the floor holds.

Tell one person the true version. Not the managed version you hand out at dinner parties. Your chest will loosen halfway through the sentence, and that feeling is the entire point of this article.

Then take the step you've been avoiding because of how it would look. Make the call. Send the email you've drafted four times. Open the spreadsheet you closed in October.

You'll be soaked in about four seconds. And you'll be amazed how much faster you can walk once you've got nothing left to protect.

Your rain isn't going to stop just because you'd prefer it to. Mine didn't. But you can quit standing there negotiating with a sky that doesn't know your name.

The rain was never the problem, friend. The tree was.

To your Better Life,

Brandon

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