Me: So who’s all coming to the event?

Them: My mom and sister, some friends.

We veered off topic for a bit, but I wanted to reel it back in to get more specifics.

Me: So your mom... (insert sister’s name) ...are coming? Anyone else?

(I knew the sister’s name before I was supposed to, caught with my hand in the cookie jar.)

Them: Was that a Freudian slip?

Me: “Sigmund Freud would have a field day out here.”

They laughed!

Them: “Do you agree with Freud?”

(Probably tying it back to whether what I just said was a Freudian slip.)

Maybe. Maybe not.

But me?

This video below is the most accurate representation I can think of.

(Watch 0:33-0:49)

When someone cracks the door to psychology, you better believe I’m stepping through.

I hadn’t heard someone say Freudian slip in eleven years. But spend enough time studying psychology, and you pick up a few things.

So when someone not only knows the term but knows Freud’s work?

To double down, this video below is the most accurate representation I can think of.

(Watch all of it)

No one ever asks, so I did what needed to be done.

I started talking about the Ego, the Id, and the Superego, how the ego, if it’s not fully developed, can be checked, molded, evolved, transformed. But the person has to do the hard work themselves. No one else can do it for them.

Without skipping a beat, they shot back:

“Well, I don’t think the ego can be changed.”

Translation:

"Step into the gauntlet..."

Just watch 30 seconds of this video to get the point.

(Watch 1:30-2:02)

Or this one.

(Watch 0:08-0:15)

And so, I did step into the gauntlet.

Because some things are worth saying. It's best to speak.

Timing is Everything

People need the right lessons at the right time.

You can scream advice until you’re blue in the face, but unless someone is ready to hear it, it’s useless. Timing is everything.

• Some people have a soft shell, a gentle nudge can get them back on course.
• Others need a firm hand.
• Then there are people like me: the ones who need to be punched in the face. Full force. Pacific Rim style, guarding the breach with everything we’ve got.

Over the years, I’ve learned temperance, a Stoic philosophy of balance.

But sometimes temperance isn’t holding back; it’s releasing energy strategically.

Writing a book, a song, launching a business, applying to the same company three days in a row, finding the CEO’s email, and getting the job, but they would be sporadic bursts. Like a toy car you wind up.

This blog? It's my new form of temperance. A slow burn. Creativity on tap.

Ride the Wind, Not the Canyon

It’s like riding a bike.

But not the X-Games version where you’re doing double backflips over the Grand Canyon.

No, it’s steadier than that. Hands on the bars. Feet on the pedals. No pegs. No fancy tricks needed.

Stay in motion.

Balance on the way.

You’ll get a lot farther that way than trying to leap every canyon you see.

Or maybe a better metaphor, Bella Donna style:

You can ride high atop your pony

I know you won’t fall, 'cause the whole thing’s phony.

You can fly swinging from your trapeze,

scaring all the people, but you’ll never scare me.

Stevie Nicks saw right through the showmanship, the pomp of it all.

Eventually, she chooses herself:

You are a love wind, and I’m ready to sail.

The truth is: slow and steady, wind in the sails, not flash and fury, gets you where you need to go.

Shed the Skin

Coming out of the darkness is a slow, messy process. You meet yourself where your darkest emotions live, process them, then burn off the dead wood.

The ego is like a snake, it sheds its skin when it grows.

But here’s the trick: just when you think you’ve mastered it, it slips into a new form.

Your job? To catch it. To check it.

Over and over again.

Misconceptions About Ego

There’s a myth that ego is either good or bad. But it’s more complicated like that one person who already has it figured out.

• Small Ego: constantly begs for attention. The guy with the lifted truck, spinning rims, underglow lights, truck nuts (yeah, we’re going there). Look at me!
• Big Ego: it serves. Quietly. Powerfully. Without needing to announce itself.

Ego is necessary. Too much is toxic. Too little is dangerous. It's a balancing act, a tension you manage, not a problem you solve once and for all.

Running Backwards

Today on my run, I decided to flip the course, downhill instead of uphill. A reminder: in almost every hero’s journey, there’s no straight path.

At 16, I once dreamed of owning 200 rental units, an empire.

Today, I’m in the process of listing my entire portfolio. No new deals on the horizon.

Instead, I think more about how I can serve the people around me.

Imagine this:

Your whole life, you’ve been sprinting uphill, chasing more, chasing bigger.

Straining against gravity, against resistance.

Now?

You’re running backwards.

You’re running downhill.

You’re letting go.

And the brain is screaming: WHAT THE HELL?

Because it feels wrong.

Because it feels like giving up.

Because for so long, you equated progress with pain.

With resistance. With uphill battles.

But real paradoxes?

They’re where growth lives.

Running downhill isn’t giving up, it’s momentum.

Running backwards isn’t failure, it’s redirection.

Letting go of an empire doesn’t mean you lost, it means you won differently.

The ego says:

Keep pushing. Keep climbing. Never stop.

But the soul, the wiser voice, says:

There’s nothing at the summit you don’t already have inside you.

Money? It’s not everything. It solves problems, sure. But it never fills the tank.

Service does.

When I guide others, I’m at peace. Live to serve.

Take the Hits

Recently, I told someone close to me that I might need to step back from the direction I was headed, to avoid looking like a fool. Talk about a self punishment.

Truth? That was my ego talking.

The darkness.

The old skin that needed to be burned off.

Sometimes you’ve got to step into the gauntlet, take the punch in the mouth, to wake up.

Like Muhammad Ali said:

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

And like Rocky said:

*“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.

It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.

But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit

Check The Ego Meets The Darkness 🤝

The truth?

You never really defeat the ego.

You check it. Again. And again. And again.

It’s like shedding skin, not because you want to, but because growth demands it.

The bigger you get, in business, in life, in relationships, the more tempting it is to listen to the soft lies the ego tells you:

You’ve made it.

You’re smarter than them.

You deserve it all.

And maybe you do.

But that’s not why you’re here.

You’re here to serve.

You’re here to grow.

You’re here to burn off the dead wood so that the real stuff underneath, the good stuff can breathe.

So:

Take the hits.

Embrace them.

Come out of the darkness.

Check the ego.

Ride the wind, no stunts, no smoke, just you and the sail, steady as she goes.

The black night strips you down.

It burns off the dead wood.

It forces you to face the parts of yourself you’d rather keep hidden.

But if you stay, if you endure,

You earn the right to see what waits on the other side.

The darkness hides the Dark Beauty.

You can’t see it by avoiding the night. You have to go through it, through the blackest parts of yourself to glimpse what waits on the other side.

Only by stepping into the unknown, the hurt, the empty spaces, do you earn the sight of the beauty hidden in the dark.

I already planned on getting INVICTUS tattooed.

It’s been on my list for a while, a quiet tribute to resilience, to the moments when life swung hard and I stood anyway.

But lately, it feels heavier. Different.

Because now I see:

Invictus “unconquered” isn’t about avoiding the night.

It’s about walking through it undefeated.

The real flex isn’t resisting the dark.

It’s becoming beautiful because of it.

So yeah, the design needs work now.

It can’t just be a word on my skin.

It has to carry the story.

It has to show what was earned, the darkness, the scars, the beauty that only those who dare the night ever get to see. Once I get the design right, I still need to earn it, so I'll be immersing myself in tattoo shops. Perhaps I'll find something I like abroad.

So I’ll be immersing myself in design and tattoo shops, the real ones, the ones where stories bleed into ink.

Maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for somewhere abroad, tucked away in a little shop off a side street, where the walls smell like ink and rebellion. Awake. Arise.

Or maybe I’ll have to live a little longer first. Walk a few more nights. Earn it properly.

The World Belongs To Optimists:

With admiration,

Dalton Noah Bristow