Nothing Will Work For You Until This Does
If you don't do this, everything else is a waste of time.
I was 59 years old, sitting in my newly rented duplex after 24 years of marriage, and I had the same exact feeling I had in high school: nobody will ever want me.
I’d built and sold two businesses for seven figures. It didn’t matter. I still believed the same lie I believed at 17.
I had sold my second business the year before, so I didn’t really have anything to work on day-to-day. My entire persona was wrapped up in being a married guy in the suburbs. When I moved out a few months before the divorce, I was pretty numb.
The duplex was furnished, and had an amazing view. I unpacked what little I’d taken with me, tried to make it feel like home.
It didn’t.
Once that was done, I sat on the couch. Just sat there.
I hadn’t lived alone in 24 years. I had no idea what to do or what that was going to be like. It felt like when you get your first place out of high school: you move out of your parents’ house and you’re on your own for the first time.
But it went deeper than that.
In high school, I was not the popular kid. I was the nerdy kid with maybe one or two friends. Teachers liked me. The football team chased me (they caught me, and hung me off a bridge by my ankles). After school, not only did I not have a girlfriend, but I’d never kissed a girl. Now clearly, I’ve been kissed since then. But having been booted out of a marriage, it put me right back in the same mental and emotional place I was in high school.
I’d read the books about low self-esteem, how to turn things around. Watched videos. Even went to some therapy. I understood intellectually what the issue was, but I couldn’t seem to fix it.
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “head knowledge vs. heart knowledge.” You can understand something intellectually, but still not truly believe it. For change to happen, it has to drop from your head down to your heart. You have to feel it.
Someone made an introduction. I ended up talking to some folks who did what they called belief work. I had cash. I had time. I thought, “What the hell.”
The program was mostly Zoom calls with different facilitators. The very first person they connected me with was a young man named Jackson Sullivan. I opened up Zoom, he appeared on camera, and I immediately thought, “Oh man, what did I just spend a bunch of money on?”
Looking back at me was a kid who couldn’t have been older than 21.
But I’d paid. So I stayed.
I had no idea where this was going or how it would go. We chatted for a few minutes, and he asked me what I’d tried, what I’d read. I said, “Yeah, I’ve read this, I’ve read that. I’ve talked to people about this thing and that thing. Basically, nothing will work with me. Nothing’s going to work for me.”
He had a very calm, curious demeanor. He just looked at me quizzically and said, “Really? So nothing will work for you ever? Nothing’s ever going to work?”
I replied, “Yeah, nothing. Nothing’s going to work for me.”
He paused for a moment and said, “Hmm. So you’re telling me you have tried every single modality on the planet, every single modality known to man, right?”
I said, “Well, no, I haven’t tried everything, obviously.”
He landed here: “So what you’re really saying is that nothing you’ve tried up until this point has worked, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So it’s possible that there are modalities out there that you haven’t even heard of or you just haven’t tried yet that could work potentially.“
Another grudging response: “Well, yeah, I suppose so.”
He pushed. “You suppose so?”
I said, “Yes, I imagine there could be another modality or therapy or some other thing out there that could work to change me.”
Then he said it: “So you believe you can change.”
I sat there – stunned for a moment.
I came into the Zoom meeting an hour earlier thinking, “No, there’s nothing that will help me change.” In the course of an hour, he helped me fundamentally change that belief, to where now I truly believed that it was possible that I could change and something could help me.
And that right there is the first belief you have to change.
If you don’t believe that you can change, if you don’t believe that there’s something out there that can help you change, everything else is a complete and utter waste of time. You can read books, you can watch videos, but it’ll all be head knowledge - and you’ll never really believe it.
Everything else flows from this.
Now does that mean that the next thing you try is going to be the thing that helps you change? Not necessarily. But if you are open to the fact that change is possible, then change is possible.
This opened the door. I tried things I’d have dismissed before. Went to retreats. Tried medicine-assisted sessions that cracked open beliefs I’d armored against for decades. Things that were true, but due to my low self-esteem armor, would bounce right off me.
It’s the same principle with God.
If you refuse the possibility that He’s real and worth trusting, you’ll dismiss every piece of evidence that points in His direction.
I know. I did it for years.
I demanded logical answers to every question. I kept the door bolted - and wondered why I couldn’t hear Him. I can’t really tell you what it was that caused me to open the door, but I did, finally.
And now my faith is the strongest it’s ever been.
The strongest belief I hold now didn’t come from winning an argument with myself. It came from stopping the argument long enough to let something true get through.
Scripture describes it this way:
“Here I am. I stand at the door and knock.”
Revelation 3:20
You don’t have to figure out what will work before you believe change is possible. You just have to stop insisting it isn’t possible.
Whatever you’ve been telling yourself is permanent: your loneliness, your weight, your anger, your failure - ask yourself this:
Have you tried everything? Or just everything that confirmed what you already believed?
One of those questions keeps you stuck. The other one opens the door.
Vic built and sold ScreenRant.com and GameRant.com, then rebuilt himself in his sixties. He writes at TheRedeemedSecondHalf.com about faith, identity, and the second act.
Jackson is still helping people change their beliefs, and their lives. You can find him here: JacksonSullivan.com.
I’m sitting in my apartment after 17 years of marriage. I sense the desire to change, and I can feel things are changing, perhaps on the margins, but I’m not sure real change is possible. I feel like my identity has vanished - ‘No one will want me.’ I can relate. You’ve given me some things to think about. Thanks so much.
It’s striking how success, money, and achievement didn’t touch the belief formed much earlier. This feels like a reminder that the work of becoming often starts far before and far beneath, what the world can see.