I’m Not Saying Anything Other Than What I’m Saying

And that goes for everyone and everything from here on out.

This morning, 9:03 a.m., I’m sitting on a rock by the river, reflecting on what has passed and what’s ahead. To my left, the faint hum of bridge traffic. To my right, the steady drop of a waterfall. In front of me, the faint mist and a choir of birds filling the air. That’s the backdrop of this thought.

I share it with you because I want you to feel some of what I feel in this exact moment, this landed in me. I don’t write these blogs just to document… I write them to offer you a piece of that experience too.

I’m not saying anything other than what I’m saying.

If you know me… or even if you don’t but you’ve read enough of these, you probably figured out I like to talk. I could go eight hours straight without a pause for breath. And when I talk, most of what comes out is story-based. That’s just who I am.

I used to try to fix that, to cut the “long-winded” part of me down, but I realized I was stripping away something that was uniquely mine. The older I get, the more I learn that the best version of me is simply… me. Whenever I forget that, I remind myself to reset back to my default.

The default is where your strength is.

Now, here’s the part that matters: I’ve said things before that I was going to stop doing. We all have. And nine times out of ten, we circle back into those very same habits. But I’ve been working on that, for real. And progress doesn’t come all at once… it stacks.

I’ve made boundaries with social media and phones that I’ve kept for over three years. I take daily walks or rides to clear my head. I’ve committed to keeping certain promises to myself, And though it gets lonely sometimes, especially when people don’t understand why I do what I do… I know it’s worth it.

The loneliness isn’t failure. It’s just proof you’re doing something others might not understand yet.

Here’s the teachable part: we spend so much energy trying to get people to understand us. Explaining. Re-explaining. Circling back. But why? We have sayings like, “What’s understood doesn’t need to be explained.” Yet we rarely apply that when it comes to how we deal with people. We’ll tie ourselves in knots trying to justify, trying to convince, trying to reframe until they finally “get it.”

But the truth is: if someone is really listening, they’ll get it the first time. If they don’t, maybe it wasn’t for them. Say it, mean it, and let it live there.

That’s not cold. That’s clarity.

And clarity is the very thing that protects your peace.

Because at the end of the day, you get what you give and you give what you get…right?. Call it standards, call it boundaries, call it self-respect…it’s all the same.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking…

“Alright Brandon, what’s the point? This blog is supposed to be inspiration, tips, motivation… not just diary dumps with sprinkles of wisdom.”

Fair. But here’s the truth: sometimes the inspiration isn’t in a list of tips. Sometimes it’s in the raw processing of real life. Because if you’re still reading this…following me through the river, the birds, the rambling, the self-checks, it means you and I are both tapped into the same frequency. And that means you got what you needed from this, even if it wasn’t dressed up as a “how-to.”

So here’s the takeaway…

Say what you mean, mean what you say, and stop breaking your back to be understood by people who weren’t tuned into you in the first place.

I’m not saying anything other than what I’m saying.

Hope this helps,

– B