New year, who dis?

Who's ready to make 2025 your year? I know I am.

Welcome to 2025! 🥳 I’m glad you’re here.

I’m making some changes this year. For starters, I’m renaming my newsletter. Instead of The Success Comeback, it’s now I am Michael Glenn.

I feel like doing this will free me to do what I’ve wanted to do all along: share my story of all the things I’ve been through, and how I’ve learned to overcome them, and build a life of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.

It also lets me explore all aspects of the human condition, not just the “successful” ones.

I feel like this is an important change, because I think the name The Success Comeback could mislead you into thinking that if you’re not succeeding in every endeavor, you’re somehow doing it wrong.

But let’s be real: life isn’t a neverending success party, and we shouldn’t be trying to act like it is.

Life is a struggle.

That’s how the Creator made it to be, on purpose.

Because it’s in the struggle that we learn and grow.

Success is fleeting… and without purpose and meaning, success can feel empty. Well, so can the struggle, I suppose… but the struggle is the human condition.

It’s what we were born to do… and it’s the one thing none of us can escape, no matter how hard we try.

I tried to avoid my struggle for decades, and now I’m almost 50 (when did I ever get that old?) and I kinda feel like I’m just now dealing with stuff I should’ve faced when I was 15. But I know, in this day and age, I’m not the only one who feels this way… not by a long shot.

I know what it feels like to ignore my problems, my fears, my worries, my insecurities, my goals, my dreams, my hopes for the future — all of it. I know because that’s exactly what I did for 30 years, give or take.

It really sucks.

From the time I was 15 to the time I was 45, I tried to make everything go away. I told myself I couldn’t handle life.

I hid all my problems behind addiction and anxiety. I developed PTSD, which made everything worse! I withdrew from society, and convinced myself I was better off alone… and everyone else was better off without me.

From 45 to 48, I’ve begun to challenge everything I believed.

I’ve begun to struggle to find meaning and purpose.

I’ve begun to grow.

My hope in writing this newsletter every week is that I can help you find meaning and purpose in your life, and that in so doing, you can find the confidence you need to step into your struggle, and to build the life you’ve always wanted, but never really believed you deserved.

You do deserve a life of meaning and purpose.

Whether or not that life is “successful” is ultimately up to you, and how you define “success.”

I’m not here to tell you what success is. I do hope to help you figure out what it means to you, what it looks like, and what you’re willing to do to pursue it. Not for the sake of “success” per se, but because pursuing success can be a really exciting part of the struggle.

But this newsletter isn’t about achieving success — it’s about embracing the struggle… embracing the human condition… being comfortable with who you are, regardless of where you are in the struggle.

I hope that in the coming weeks and months, I can make a case for why the struggle is the greatest gift humanity has ever been given. I know it doesn’t always look that way. But I guarantee, without it, this life wouldn’t be the same.

There’s lots of other stuff I have in mind for this year… but, true to the theme of this week’s newsletter, I’m struggling to put the rest of my thoughts into words… so I’ll leave you with this thought from marketing expert Ilise Benun:

We never know what is or isn’t achievable until we try.

I’m gonna try like you won’t believe this year to give you the tools, knowledge, and hope that you need to get back in the struggle, and to start building the life you want to live.

You can help me by leaving a comment (or send me an email or direct message) and let me know what you’re struggling with right now. I read every comment.

I’m ready to engage. How about you?

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