Sending this from the road this morning…

Good morning! If you’re new, my name is Jeremy. My wife Jessica and I moved to Iraq 15+ years ago at the height of the war. Today, our humanitarian work across 10+ countries has been covered by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera, etc.

I help peacemakers like you 10X their impact around the world through a social impact collective called HUMANITE.

I write for those who still have hope.

Jeremy Courtney
HUMANITE

The one thing we all want…

An author I read posed a question this week that I can’t stop thinking about.

“If asked what you want out of life, what would you say?”

“Who me!? Not much! I just want a great family, a great job, and great health!”

“🐂 💩!” he said.

***

✅ Great family
✅ Great job
✅ Great health

This is what everyone lists, right? But few get it. So does life just suck, making passionate death-’til-us-part marriages, great kids, meaningful work, strong muscles, and buttery joints elusive for most people?

Or is there a disconnect between the things we say we want and what we are willing to do to build that life?

Toward great marriages

Marriages that last don’t happen by accident. Indeed, even the most purposeful may struggle to survive.

Of course, everyone will say they want a good marriage. Who wouldn’t want a life partner to fill in for all of their inherent weaknesses? And two incomes are a great way to build wealth.

But in this era of personal empowerment, I haven’t found many evangelists for the gospel of mutual sacrifice and forbearance.

Any relationship can suck at some point—especially the one with the most intimacy and least boundaries.

Great marriages are not defined by the absence of discontentment, struggle, or misalignment, but by two people’s commitment to stay the course and work through it.

So we can say we want great marriages all we want, but the more and more we lean into personal satisfaction over mutuality, the more and more we are likely to see a gap grow between what we say and what we get.

Toward great work

“Great work” probably has a broader spectrum of meanings when people say it. Certainly, some people explicitly mean “the least amount of effort for the most imaginable pay on as many of my terms as possible”.

But increasingly, people seem to want that money and those margins to come with meaning. And that, like marriage, simply doesn’t happen by accident.

No matter the definition though, the work-for-reward dynamic is one of trade-offs. Want more reward—be it responsibility, position, pay, or perks? How much pain are you willing to endure today to enjoy those rewards tomorrow?

Because any clock puncher can say they want more. But there is a reason that outsized reward tends to flow to those who take more personal risks. And this is true whether you work inside an office or whether you launch out to start your own thing.

Sick of working for The Man?

Start your own thing.

Tired of work that doesn’t seem to matter?

Move to Ukraine.

But make a move.

Because “above and beyond” still matters. And it always will. Those who do whatever it takes to get the job will always be better positioned for more reward than those who stammer, saying “I could never” or those who stand around with their hands on their hips talking about “not my job”.

OK, you were passed over for a raise while you were going above and beyond. You were fired. Maybe it was even discrimination.

But if that becomes your excuse to stop going all out, make no mistake: your lack of advancement and success is on you, not them. Because you cannot know that your big moment was not right around the corner unless you just keep going.

Sure, sometimes the undeserving get a pass.

And everyone gets screwed eventually.

Big deal.

If we actually want the rewards from work that we claim to want, we cannot show up each day with our dimmers set at 50% and then complain when no one sees our shine.

Toward great health

It’s a tiny handful of people in my life who have ever imagined that they would die young. Our default setting is to assume that we make it to old age, hopefully together, with our kids, their kids, and maybe even theirs!

But short of some sunscreen, not smoking, and not being raging alcoholics, how many people truly align their lives around the things that would give them that great health they claim to want?

No one wakes up wanting cancer.

And for all the talk of bucket lists, I’ve never met anyone who dreamed of “death by linoleum”, even though the floor is probably the most dangerous threat we have as we age.

We sit too much.

We eat like jerks.

And we seem to think that back and joint pain is fundamentally linked to turning 30, 40, or 50.

All the while, muscle and mobility might be the greatest insurance policy we could ever invest in, for the low, low cost of a few hours a week.

I know. There’s that one friend who stopped drinking and then dropped dead mysteriously… Grandma smoked until she was 94. And LeBron’s son just had a heart attack on the basketball court.

So, why not just eat, drink, and be merry?

We can! But let’s not call it the same thing as wanting health. And let’s at least be sure we’re merry!

But who do you know (unless you’re 20) who eats and drinks without regard and is actually merry?!?

The gut issues…

The sleeplessness…

And the mobility restrictions that we’re constantly complaining about?

These may be common, but they are not normal.

Choose your pain wisely

As I’ve said in various ways over the last few weeks, we choose our pain. The problem is, too many of us are choosing the wrong pain.

To get a great marriage, we have to choose the pain of confrontation, the pain of drawing boundaries, the pain of forgiveness, and the pain of surrender.

Making great kids requires the pain of discipline, the pain of being uncool, and the pain of being the bad guy. We are not friends. We’re parents.

Work is no different. Of 8 billion people on the planet, how many feel passed over, under-valued, and taken advantage of? So we can put in the long hours and take the big swings until the boss sees our value, or jump ship and show the world just how easy it is to build a thriving company from scratch. Either way, it’s on us.

And about that great health… it’s a little odd, isn’t it, that we dread going to the gym because of how hard it is? As though being weak, overweight, and barely able to put on our socks or throw a carry-on into the overhead bin has been a walk in the park! So why not hurt on purpose? There is no age where “I’m sore because I hit a new personal record in the gym” doesn’t sound better than “Ohhhhhhhhhh I’m getting old!”

The other side

Yes, life is basically a minefield, and we’re all trying to get to the other side.

So, if pain is everywhere, then the only question becomes, which pain can bring about the most good?

Wouldn’t you rather lose a limb—or even your life—running toward things that matter?

I want to choose my pain wisely.

To take every step on purpose…

And welcome the outcome.

We say we want strong families, careers, and health. But if we take stock of our actions and we’re honest, what we really want is ease. And ease ain’t strong.

Have you lost a limb running toward something you love?

Are you tip-toeing along a little more than you’d like, wondering if you’ll ever find your pace again?

If so, I’m sending this note today to say: don’t give up. You deserve that marriage, that family, that meaningful work, that strong back, and that overhead press!

I’m going to need you to pull me out of a pit at some point… and I hope to be here to pull you through, too. So we need to get strong and stay strong. And to do that, we’ll need to steer into the pain. Only this time, with purpose.

On your side,

Jeremy Courtney
HUMANITE Peace Collective

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