Creating Capacity

What I learned about growth during my first 36-hour fast.

Hour 28 of my first fast, and I’m sitting with a thought I’ve been trying to outrun for months:

What the f*#k am I doing? Am I really starting over?

The quiet, unsettling kind of starting over. Where you look at your peak earning years ticking past and wonder if you’re making the biggest mistake of your life. Choosing passion over paychecks. Building something that might only matter to you.

That’s the fear I’ve been carrying. The one I’ve been too scared to say out loud.

The one that makes every decision I’m making feel heavy AF.

A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with my boy Charlie. He usually calls me on his drive to work, or while at the gym, out of breath on the treadmill. You know those conversations that begin with a laugh about the last meme we shared on Instagram and end up somewhere completely different?

We were supposed to be catching up on where we were meeting the guys for dinner later that week. We ended up talking about the weight of the world we’re both carrying.

“Man, I feel like I’m wasting time. Like I don’t know if I’m building something real or just convincing myself I am,” I said.

My voice was trembling.

“I feel like I’m doing the right things to get to the life I want, but I’m afraid that none of it matters.”

Neither of us had dads who showed us how to do this. How to be men without a blueprint. How to bet on yourself when the safe move is right there, obvious, and available. There’s no manual for choosing the uncertain path while responsibility keeps piling up.

Something Charlie said near the end stayed with me:

“Bro, you HAVE to lean into that fear. Allow yourself to feel it, but don’t stay there. Use it as motivation for the work you know you have to do.” He said. “Trust that everything will work out exactly as it should.”

Maybe I added the trust part.

I felt it in my chest, and something shifted immediately.

Growth asks you to become more. To build capacity and widen your internal frame so you can hold the doubt and the vision at the same time. To build a steadiness inside yourself so you can carry what’s coming while the questions pile up unanswered.

I haven’t been able to shake that truth.

So when I decided to do my first thirty-six-hour fast this week, I thought it was about discipline. About mental clarity and shedding excess fat.

By hour 28, I knew it was about something completely different.

Sitting at my desk, trying to focus all my attention on work, my stomach growling—the kind other people could probably hear. I started negotiating with myself: “You need to eat something. It’s okay if you don’t do the full 36; it’s still the longest you’ve ever fasted.”

But when you strip away comfort, you see exactly what you’re made of.

Every excuse you tell yourself becomes visible. Every easy out presents itself. And you have to decide, in real time, who you’re becoming.

I wanted to quit. Multiple times.

The hunger was real, and there was no running from what I’d been avoiding. The fear that I’m wasting time. The doubt that this matters. The question of whether I’m building something real or running from something safe.

I stayed with it.

And somewhere around hour 30, I surrendered to it.

There’s this process called autophagy that kicks in during a fast. Your body literally starts cleaning house. Breaking down old cells, recycling what’s damaged, and letting go of what no longer serves.

Sitting there in that discomfort, I felt that metaphor land somewhere deep.

I could feel it happening, not just physically but mentally.

I am no longer interested in becoming more impressive. I am committed to becoming more aligned. A well-lived life is not built by accident or ambition alone. It’s designed, intentionally, patiently, and from the inside out.

Capacity grows this way, too. Through practice. Through training yourself to stay present when everything in you wants to close up or run back to what’s familiar. Through letting go of who you were to make room for who you need to become. Growth demands room to become who you need to be, even when you’re unsure it’ll matter. That room gets built through practice, through honest reflection, through commitment to the work nobody else sees.

I’m trying to hold all of this while also learning how to rest. Really rest. I’m allowing myself the space to look back at this year. The wins. The failures. The moments I showed up as the man I want to be, the moments I didn’t.

Planning next year feels like asking: who do I need to become to hold what I’m building? What am I missing?

I might be starting over. Maybe this whole thing only matters to me. Maybe I’m betting my peak earning years on something that won’t pay off the way a steady job would have.

But the alternative has a cost, too.

Playing it safe means becoming someone who spent the rest of his life wondering what he was capable of. It means being the guy at 60 who has everything he thought he wanted and nothing he actually needed.

I won’t pay that cost. Even if this doesn’t work the way I hope. Even if I’m wrong about all of it.

So I’m here, building the capacity to hold what I’m calling in. Staying curious and being courageous when everything feels uncertain.

If you’re standing at one of those thresholds where life is asking more of you, and you’re wondering if you’re making a mistake, you are not alone.

I’m there with you.

I’m walking this path right now. Watching my bank account shrink while I build something I believe in. Wondering some days if I’m brave or a complete idiot. Who knows? Maybe I’m both.

But this is my work. Whether it matters to anyone else, it matters to me. And right now, that has to be enough.

So if you’re in it too, if you’re building something and fear has you in a chokehold, if you’re betting on yourself when the safe move is right there, if you’re wondering if any of this will matter, keep going.

The capacity you need is being built right now through every hard choice you make. Every moment you push through when quitting would be easier, and through every challenge that forces you to become more than you were yesterday.

Even when you’re afraid.

Especially when you’re afraid.