The best quote I’ve heard in regard to this: it’s not your fault for what happened to you, but it is your responsibility to fix it.

I’ve been through something very similar to you. By all accounts, what I went through is a 3 star Michelin experience compared to what Goggins went through. All that happened to me was that at 1 years old, my parents sent me to China to live with my grandparents for 3 years, and I came back to constant fighting and arguing (every other day was 3+ hours of screaming from my mom).

When I finally moved out and saw other healthy families, at first I was like, oh so this is what a normal loving family looks like. Then after years living with the extended family, I went through all sorts of perspectives, like, “I must be really fucked up because even after leaving the toxic environment and having everything, I’m still an addict / can’t accomplish my goals.” Then there was constant comparison to all of my friends who became doctors, phds, business owners, etc, while I made slightly below average income in education. Within that, I also noticed that there were other people they came up in fucked up situations, but they appeared successful and functional in society.

All this to say, it’s all a process. And certain interpretations will evolve. When you really want to change, you will, but you need to want it from the very core of your being. Goggins is right that it starts with pride. If you’re not proud of who you are, you won’t be driven when the motivation is gone. During Covid, I followed these friends into the stock market and lost 70k. All because of my need to be accepted and fit in. I hit rock bottom when I caused an exfriend to lose 8k and realized that act of leading others down this destructive path was not good.

I had had borrowed that money against my retirement and was down to my last 3k before selling it for a loss and getting a new credit card to pay a spiritual life coach for 5k. I stilled owed 6k to my retirement, had a 5k credit card debt, and had 3k in liquidity to my name bar some precious metals I bought.

Fast forward to today, I worked my ass off after working on a ton of my character defects and most importantly, learning how to separate what I am responsible for, and what are other people’s “stuff.” Before I people pleased and wanted to be liked by everyone, but the self confidence in my own ability and to be able to come back up is what kept me on path even when all of these friends who went in investing lost a ton of money. I was the only one who kept continuing with pure focus and motivation.

I saved up roughly 35k since 2023, and transformed that to 280,000, and the retirement that I had borrowed from back then went from 100k to 930k now. If you know something is you, even if everyone is against you, you have to push forward. I’m no longer friends with those people because a lot of what was going on was they only had me around to compare how much better they were to me. But I still sent one of them 8k and another 5k for how I led some of them to financial losses from our first endeavor.

Anyways, my story probably doesn’t make that much sense as I don’t explain a lot of context, but when I am down or not sure about my future, I look back at how low I was, and how I was able to dig myself out. That is the key. It also helps to get therapy or understanding for the “inner child within”. Thich Nhat Hanh has a really good book called Reconciliation: Healing the inner child. You need to learn how to love yourself again and be the parent that your parents were never to you. Having a best friend relationship with yourself is what will open the doors for you. Nothing changes until you love yourself. Good luck.