You’re So Money and You Don’t Even Know It!

“You’re so money and you don’t even know it.”

If you’ve seen the movie Swingers, you can hear it in your head. The swagger. The confidence. The ridiculous loyalty between friends who believe in each other harder than they believe in themselves.

And that line, as funny as it is, sticks.

You’re so money and you don’t even know it.

Most of us walk around with the opposite script running in our heads.

We know our flaws.

We know where we hesitate.

We know the times we froze instead of stepping forward.

We rarely walk into a room thinking, I belong here.

More often it’s, I hope I don’t screw this up.

The strange thing is that the people around us usually see something we don’t.

They see the way we show up every day.

They see the way we keep going when it would be easier to check out.

They see the quiet steadiness that feels so ordinary to us that we barely register it.

We discount our own strengths because they feel normal.

Of course I handled that.

Of course I stayed.

Of course I tried again.

But not everyone would.

There is a kind of quiet confidence that does not announce itself. It does not pound its chest. It does not post highlight reels.

It just keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

I think about the people who have told me something kind over the years. Sometimes it was small. Sometimes it was perfectly timed.

You’re good at this.

You handled that well.

I admire how you dealt with that.

My instinct has almost always been to deflect.

Ah, it wasn’t a big deal.

Anyone would have done that.

I just got lucky.

That reflex is self doubt dressed up as humility.

There is a difference between staying grounded and refusing to accept your own worth.

The first keeps you steady.

The second keeps you small.

Most of us are harder on ourselves than anyone else would ever dare to be.

We replay conversations.

We dissect decisions.

We carry mistakes long after everyone else has moved on.

But we rarely replay the quiet wins.

The times we stayed sober another day.

The times we chose patience instead of anger.

The times we told the truth when lying would have been easier.

Those count.

In poker, you do not get to choose your starting hand. Sometimes you get dealt garbage. Sometimes you get something playable if you are careful. Very rarely, you get a monster.

Most of life is not monster hands.

It is low two pairs.

Marginal spots.

Uncertain boards.

And yet you are still here.

Still playing.

Still thinking.

Still trying to make the best decision you can with the information you have.

That is not nothing.

There is something powerful about having at least one friend in your life who looks at you and says, without hesitation, you’re so money.

Not because you are perfect.

Not because you win every hand.

But because you are in the game.

And if no one has said it to you lately, let me say it in a quieter, less Vince Vaughn way.

You have survived things that would have folded other people.

You have grown in ways that are invisible to the outside world.

You are carrying more than most people realize, and you are still standing.

That is value.

That is worth.

That is quiet confidence, even if you do not feel it.

The goal is not to strut around pretending you have it all figured out.

The goal is to stop arguing with every piece of evidence that suggests you might actually be doing better than you think.

You do not need to inflate yourself.

You also do not need to shrink.

Maybe today the practice is simple.

When someone offers you a compliment, do not deflect it.

When you look back at a hard season, acknowledge that you made it through.

When the voice in your head says you are behind, gently ask, according to who?

You might not feel like the hero of your story.

You might feel like the side character just trying to keep up.

But there is a good chance that if someone else told your story, they would see a lot more strength in it than you do.

You’re so money.

You just might not know it yet.

If you’d like one thought and one question delivered each morning, I send them out quietly at sunrise.

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