When I did intensive counseling last year, and by the way, I'm sorry for always bringing that up.

I feel like I bring it up too much, but it was just so helpful for me, and I feel like there's a lot of things I want to share with you. So I don't mean to make it about me. I really do want to be helpful for you, and I'm sorry for, you know, bringing up my own story so much. Anyway, when I was there, they said at the very beginning, I was there for two

weeks and they said at the very beginning, this is going to be really hard. But we're telling you,

if you really want to change, you have to trust the process. And whatever we ask of you,

we want you to lean in fully. And I remember one of the counselors said, if we tell you to run

around this building 10 times and you have no idea why you're doing it, you just have to trust the process and do it. And I at that point was like, okay, if this seems crazy or cheesy or uncomfortable, whatever it is, I'm just going to do it. Because I really want to change, man. If I try to be God in my own life, I'm not doing that

great. And I really want to change. I really want God to heal the broken parts of me. And so I want to

ask you to participate in a little bit of an exercise, which might feel uncomfortable or like

you've never done this before and maybe just feels out of your normal realm of something you would do.

But if you would, just trust the process. I'm hoping that it might be helpful for you now in the moment and an exercise that

you can do in the future that might be helpful for you in the days and months and years to come.

Okay, so here's what I want you to do. Hopefully you're in a spot where you're by yourself

and ideally somewhere quiet. You can do this while you're driving. Hopefully you're in a spot where you're by yourself and ideally somewhere quiet.

You can do this while you're driving if you're running or mowing the lawn or whatever you're doing

right now. Hopefully it's quiet and you can give it your full attention. I want you to picture a

container of sorts. It can be like in my garage I have those black containers from Costco with the

yellow lids. You can picture something like that. Maybe you picture a backpack or a bucket, just something

that can hold things. Okay. Now I want you to imagine all the things that you're currently carrying

in your life that might be in that bucket. You don't have to know everything that's in there.

It's kind of a junk drawer. I imagine if your brain is like mine, there's probably a million different

things that you're carrying and thinking about right now at this very moment. So just imagine that

that bucket is full of all kinds of stuff and you don't even know everything that's in there.

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