Growing up, I didn't have much. That's not a pity statement. It's context.

The gym was my place. Not because it gave me wealth, status, or any of the things people chase today. It gave me something I couldn't find anywhere else: control. When everything outside those four walls felt chaotic and uncertain, I could walk in, put weight on the bar, and decide something. I was in charge of whether I succeeded or failed. Nobody could take that from me.

Training was my haven because everything else had too many variables for me to handle. The gym had one variable. Me.

I was a skinny, awkward kid who had no business being in a weight room. I didn't fit anywhere in a traditional sense. School wasn't my thing. The social infrastructure most kids navigate without thinking, I was on the outside looking in. But under the bar? I belonged there. I had something to say.

What was out there didn't matter. What was in front of me did. That's the first version of the Marcus Aurelius lesson, though I wouldn't have called it that back then.

In 1998, Traci and I started elitefts on a $1,000 loan. Not investment capital. Not a business plan from a consultant. Not a five-year roadmap. A thousand dollars and a simple idea: there were coaches and athletes looking for real training information, and most of what was out there was garbage.

I set up a Q&A forum. Started writing articles. Louie Simmons told Traci, "Why don't you sell my products?" — and that was the spark.

For a long time, we operated on fumes. Building a company while also training at Westside Barbell and competing in powerlifting is not a recipe for financial comfort. There were years where I look back and cannot figure out how we kept the lights on. The most valuable thing we had wasn't money. It was Louie's knowledge, the relationships inside that gym, and the understanding that if you kept doing the right things, eventually you'd have something real.

We didn't have more. We had what we had. And what we had was enough to build on.

The products, the content library, the equipment, the community — none of it would exist if I'd been too busy envying what bigger companies had instead of doing the work right in front of me.

I competed in powerlifting from 1983 to 2004. By the time I stopped competing, my body had accumulated a list of injuries that reads like a trauma ward intake form. Multiple surgeries. Joints that don't move the way they're supposed to. A body that required daily negotiation just to function at a reasonable level.

There were moments — more than a few — where I looked at what I could no longer do and felt the weight of it. The gap between what I was at my peak and what my body allows now can feel like a long fall if you let yourself think about it that way.

But that's the wrong lens.

• The right question: What do I have now that I would've been desperate to protect if I'd had even less?
• The honest answer: I can still train. For a lot of the people I know who went as hard as I did, for as long as I did, that isn't guaranteed. Some of them can't. Some of them are done permanently.
• The reminder: Some of them are gone entirely.

I think about John Meadows. One of the best training minds I've ever known. A man who gave everything to this sport and to the people around him. He's not here anymore. And I promise you that John deeply understood what it meant to be grateful for every session you have. He fought for every one of them.

When I'm in the S5, and my knees are talking, and my shoulder is asking questions, and my lower back has its own opinion about today's program — I remember what it would look like if I couldn't be here at all. That changes everything.

There's a layer to the Marcus Aurelius quote that most people skip over. He's not just talking about financial wealth. He's talking about everything. Your health. Your relationships. Your ability to do the thing you love. Your community.

The strength community can be brutal about this. We're wired to compare. Totals, lifts, physiques, accomplishments. The scorecard never stops running. And I've been guilty of it. At different points, I've sat in a room with lifters I respected and felt the sting of comparison — even when I had no logical reason to.

What we've built at elitefts — the Q&As, the articles, the videos, the seminars, the equipment — that library of knowledge exists because I focused on what I could give, not what I didn't have. Making educational content free and accessible stemmed from one simple belief: premium information was being sold to people who could afford it, and we wanted to side with the masses instead.

That decision cost us short-term revenue. We left money on the table for years. But it built something worth far more than money: a community, real relationships, and a reason to keep showing up every day that goes beyond a quarterly number.

If I'd spent those years envying the revenue model of larger companies instead of building the thing I believed in, there is no elitefts. There's just a guy who wanted what someone else had and never figured out what he was actually capable of.

I'm not going to give you a list of gratitude journaling tips. That's not who I am, and it's not why you're here. But I will tell you what I actually do.

When I walk into the S5 and see the equipment on those walls — the bars, the racks, the cables, the history hanging in every corner — I don't take it for granted. I built this. Traci and I built this. The people who came through those doors, trained here, and contributed to what elitefts became built this.

I started in a cinder block room with borrowed equipment. I've trained in commercial gyms that smelled like broken dreams and bad music. I've worked out in basements, garages, and spaces that had no business being called training facilities. Every compound from S1 through S5 was a step forward from something smaller. And standing in S5 now, if I ever feel like it's not enough, I remember S1. I remember what it was like to not have this.

• When you're frustrated you can't hit a PR — remember when you couldn't load the bar without pain.
• When you're annoyed at your progress, remember what it felt like to have no direction at all.
• When you're looking at what someone else has — ask yourself what you'd give to keep what you currently have if it were all at risk.

Usually, that question answers itself.

I've been in this sport since 1983. Over 40 years. I've trained with some of the best powerlifters who ever lived, built a company in an industry that most people told me was too small to matter, coached athletes I'm genuinely proud of, and lost people I wish were still here.

What I know now is that the richest version of any of this isn't the number on the bar or the number in the bank account. It's the access you still have.

• Access to the platform.
• Access to the gym.
• Access to the people who make it worth doing.
• Access to your own body, however imperfect and beat up it may be.

The people who truly understand what they have are the people who stay in this the longest. They train smarter. They coach better. They build things that outlast them. The people who chase what others have never figure out what they're actually working with.

Marcus Aurelius ran an empire and still sat down to write about not envying wealth. That's not accidental. That's someone who had thought hard about what actually matters and landed on something most people with far less never figure out.