‘You're not made of steel. You just get treated like you are — mostly by yourself.’
Over my years in the building industry, I built more than just structures. I built trust and respect on the job sites, and somewhere along the way I became a bit of an unexpected counsellor too, offering a listening ear amid the noise and the dust. But I brought other things home as well: stress, resentment and exhaustion. I wore those burdens like armour. I honestly believed they were protecting me, when the whole time they were just weighing me down. That’s the quiet trap so many of us fall into. We mistake the armour for strength.
The Armour We Mistake for Strength
You know the type, because you probably are the type. The one who holds it all together. The one everyone leans on. The one who doesn’t complain, doesn’t stop, doesn’t ask, because asking feels like admitting the armour’s got a gap in it. And here’s the part that’s worth sitting with nobody demands that armour more than we demand it of ourselves. Others might expect a lot of you, sure. The harshest foreman on the site is usually the voice in your own head, the one that says you should be able to carry it all, that resting is slacking, that needing something makes you weak. You’re not made of steel. You just get treated like you are, and mostly it’s you doing the treating.
Even a Steel Bucket Runs Dry
In my book I use a picture that fits this perfectly. Imagine you’ve got a steel bucket. Each morning, after a good sleep, you wake up and the bucket is full of water and that water is your energy for the day. Now, every negative belief, every worry, every bit of everyone else’s load you’ve picked up, is like a small hole punched in that bucket. You start the day full. By three o’clock in the afternoon, through all those little holes, you’re nearly empty, and it hits your mind and your body both.
Notice the bucket in that story is made of steel, and it still runs dry. Being tough was never the thing that saved it. What saves it is repairing the holes. And in the book, that’s exactly what heading to ‘The Garden’ is: patching the leaks and letting the well-worn paths back to ‘The Tip’ slowly wither away, so you stop haemorrhaging energy you didn’t even know you were losing.
Self-Care Isn't Selfishness
I know how the next bit can land for people like us, so let me say it plainly, the way I wrote it in the book: self-care is often misunderstood as selfishness, but there can be no peace if you don’t take care of yourself first. Mental exhaustion and physical exhaustion are not so different as both need attention, both need rest, and both give you early warning signs if you’re willing to notice them. Constantly battling your own thoughts with no let-up drains the bucket as surely as a hard day’s labour does. Looking after yourself isn’t you going soft. It’s basic maintenance on the one thing you can’t replace.
Why Are You Still Carrying It?
There’s a Zen story I love and share in the book. Two monks reach a river, where a young woman is struggling to cross. One of them simply lifts her, carries her over, and sets her down on the far bank. Hours later, the second monk is still stewing on it, and finally bursts out that monks aren’t meant to go near women, so why did he do it? The first monk answers, “I put her down at the riverbank hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”
So much of the weight we treat as permanent, we’re actually choosing to keep holding onto it, long after the moment has passed, and often it was never even ours to carry. Some of the heaviest plates in your armour are made of things you could have set down years ago.
You Were Never Meant to Be Steel
You were never made of steel, and here’s the good news in that: you were never meant to be. Steel doesn’t rest, doesn’t heal, doesn’t grow. You do all three, but only if you stop pretending you don’t need to.
So this week, ask yourself: what’s one piece of armour you could finally put down, and where could you patch a hole and let your bucket fill back up?
Take the weight off your own shoulders for once. You’ve been carrying it long enough, and you were never the one who was supposed to carry it alone.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? — Navigating the Paths Between Chaos and Clarity → Get the book
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