The Illusion of the Self-Made Man

You might be the general contractor of your life. That doesn’t mean you quarried every stone.

I have a complicated relationship with the phrase “self-made man.”​

Part of me believes in it.

Deeply.

I believe in personal responsibility. I believe in getting up and going to work. I believe in learning skills and doing difficult things when you would rather not. I believe in taking ownership of your life instead of waiting for somebody to rescue you.

A lot of what I have today came from doing exactly that.

But the older I get, the harder it is for me to pretend I made myself entirely by myself.

Because I didn’t.

Nobody does.

Some Parts of My Childhood Were Hard

I grew up without much of a father.

When he was around, he was an alcoholic who could spend his days lying on the sofa, watching television, smoking and drinking instead of carrying his share of the load.

My mother eventually decided she wasn’t going to let him drag the rest of us down with him.

She left Los Angeles for Hawaii in 1969 to get away from him. When he followed her there, she eventually sent him packing again.

He died of emphysema at thirty-nine.

I was ten.

By then, though, he had already been gone from our daily lives for quite a while.

My mother was the one holding everything together.

And she worked.

A lot.

Twelve-hour days were normal.

Sometimes Saturdays too.

She was trying to keep a roof over our heads, food in our mouths, and somehow still send my sister and me to private school because she believed education mattered.

That meant my sister and I spent a lot of time taking care of ourselves.

Today people would probably call us latchkey kids.​

Back then it mostly meant:

Mom is working. Figure it out.

There wasn’t money for allowances.

So when I was ten, I got a paper route.

I’ve been working in one form or another for more than fifty years since.

At fifteen, my first real job was at Burger King.

At eighteen, I was working at Orson’s.

Eventually I moved back to Los Angeles and found my way into construction.

And then, very fortunately, into union construction.

That became a career.

A good wage for good work.

A trade I could become competent at.

A way to build a life.

Looking backward, it would be very easy for me to tell myself:

See? I made myself.

Nobody handed it to me.

I worked.

I learned.

I showed up.

I earned it.

All of that is true.

But it isn’t the whole truth.

The People Standing Along the Road

There were people standing along the road.

People who taught me things.

People who opened doors.

People who modeled different ways of being a man.

My mother, knowing I didn’t have much of a father around, got me a Big Brother.​

His name was Herman Ventura.

Herman was a special-education teacher.

And he introduced me to a world I would never have discovered on my own.

He taught me how to drive his stick-shift Volkswagen Beetle.

I still remember the strange license plate:

BRAHMS

I asked him, "What's a Brahms?"

Which was probably the perfect license plate for Herman.

He taught me about the three B’s of classical music:

• ​Bach​
• ​Beethoven​
• ​Brahms​

But more than that, he exposed me to another way of living.

Another way of thinking.

Another kind of adult man.

I had lost one version of masculinity early.

Herman showed me another.

Not by giving me lectures.

Just by existing near me and letting me see how he moved through the world.

That mattered.

Then there were the weirdos from my Dungeons & Dragons years.

And I use “weirdos” lovingly because I was one of them.

We would gather at George Hall at the University of Hawaii and disappear into games.

​Dungeons & Dragons.​

Miniature tabletop war games with forests, hills, roads, terrain, and all the trappings you might expect from a serious model-train layout spread across classroom tables.

​Hex wargames.​

Card games.

Games like Illuminati, where cooperation and betrayal could sit right next to each other.

Those rooms taught me things too.

Some of them had nothing to do with dragons.

I remember learning that somebody could look you in the face, tell you one thing, and then do something completely different when it served him.

You could confront him in front of everybody.

And instead of being embarrassed, he might grin and simply say:

“I lied.”

And the whole table would laugh.

That was education.

Maybe not the kind my mother was paying tuition for.

But education nonetheless.

I was learning:

• Strategy
• Negotiation
• Human behavior
• Deception
• Cooperation
• Competition
• How different people interpret rules
• How people behave when incentives change

And one of the most important lessons:

Not everybody plays by the rules you assume they are playing by.

Funny how much of adulthood turns out to be hidden inside a game table.

The Small Kid and the Bookworm

There were other difficulties.

I was small.

Usually the smallest kid around.

I was introverted.

I was a bookworm.

That combination can paint a target on you.

And I got bullied.

That experience stayed with me far longer than I ever would have expected.

I’m in my sixties now, and I can still feel something turn on inside me when I see somebody bullying somebody else.

Even when they aren’t bullying me.

There is still a part of that small kid inside me that immediately wants to take the bully down a level.

Sometimes our childhood hardships become strengths.

Sometimes they become wounds.

Usually they become some mixture of both.

The bullying probably contributed to my attraction to martial arts.

Being small probably contributed to my interest in leverage, skill, competence, and finding ways to solve problems without simply being bigger or stronger than somebody else.

The books gave me worlds I could disappear into.

The games taught me systems.

The jobs taught me responsibility.

The trade taught me competence.

Martial arts taught me discipline.

There is a coherent story I could build out of all of that.

And if I’m not careful, I could make myself the hero of every chapter.

The Problem With the Hero Story

Human beings are good at editing their autobiographies.

Especially after things work out.

We remember the nights we stayed late.

The jobs we hated but did anyway.

The risks we took.

The times we got knocked down.

The sacrifices.

The discipline.

And we should remember those things.

They matter.

But success has a way of making the supporting cast disappear.

The teacher.

The mentor.

The union.

The public road.

The customer willing to pay.

The employer willing to train you.

The school.

The library.

The stable currency.

The legal system.

The people who fought before you for working conditions you inherited.

The person who happened to mention an opportunity.

The person who vouched for you.

The timing.

The geography.

The economy.

The culture.

The pure dumb luck.

That doesn’t erase the work.

It explains why the work had somewhere to go.

I Worked Hard. And I Was Lucky.

I worked hard.

I’m comfortable saying that.

I started working at ten.

I kept working.

I learned a trade.

I tried to become good at it.

I spent decades doing difficult physical and technical work.

I earned my paycheck.

But I was also fortunate enough to enter a trade where competence could produce a respectable living.

I was fortunate enough to get into union construction.

That mattered.

Imagine the exact same work ethic in a place where skilled labor pays almost nothing.

Imagine the exact same discipline in a country without the same economic opportunities.

Imagine the exact same intelligence with no access to education.

Imagine the same kid born somewhere else, at another time, into a different family, neighborhood, economic condition, health situation, or culture.

Same character.

Different road.

Potentially very different destination.

That doesn’t mean effort doesn’t matter.

It means effort is not the only variable.

This is where discussions about success become ridiculous.

One side says:

The other says:

I don’t buy either one.

Responsibility Without Fantasy

Here is what I do believe.

You have to play the hand you were dealt.

Complaining about the cards does not improve them.

You still have to decide what you’re going to do next.

You still have to:

• Learn
• Work
• Adapt
• Ask
• Practice
• Try again
• Walk away when something is destroying you
• Take an opportunity when one appears
• Build enough capacity that when luck knocks on the door, you can actually do something with it

That is personal leadership.

But personal leadership does not require pretending the cards were dealt equally.

Some people start the game with advantages.

Some start with disadvantages.

Some inherit money.

Some inherit debt.

Some inherit connections.

Some inherit chaos.

Some inherit confidence.

Some inherit trauma.

Some have parents who know how institutions work.

Others grow up figuring out every system by trial and error.

Some children receive tutors.

Others spend afternoons alone because their mother is working twelve hours to keep the lights on.

You can acknowledge that reality without surrendering your agency.

In fact, I think mature personal leadership requires both ideas at once:

Own what is yours to own.

And:

Be honest about what was never yours to control.

No One Builds Alone

Construction probably gave me the perfect metaphor for this.

A building can have one owner.

One architect.

One general contractor.

Maybe somebody even gets his name on the building.

But nobody serious believes that one person built it.

Someone surveyed the ground.

Someone poured the concrete.

Someone erected the steel.

Someone installed the electrical.

Someone ran the plumbing.

Someone installed the HVAC.

Someone built the roads leading to the project.

Someone manufactured the tools.

Someone inspected the work.

Someone trained the workers.

Someone created the standards.

Someone came before all of them.

Success is like that.

You might be the general contractor of your life.

You are responsible for coordinating the job.

You make decisions.

You live with many of the consequences.

You have to show up.

But you did not quarry every stone, invent every tool, build every road, or train every person who helped you.

Self-directed does not mean self-created.

That distinction matters.

Gratitude Is Not Weakness

Sometimes people resist this idea because they think acknowledging help diminishes what they accomplished.

I think it does the opposite.

It makes the story more accurate.

I can be proud that I worked for more than fifty years.

And grateful that union construction existed.

I can be proud that I learned.

And grateful for Herman.

I can be proud that I developed resilience.

And grateful that my mother was strong enough to remove a destructive man from our home and keep fighting to give her kids something better.

I can acknowledge the damage caused by growing up without a father.

And acknowledge that other men stepped into parts of that empty space.

None of those truths cancel the others.

Life is rarely that clean.

What Do You Owe the Road You Traveled?

And this is where the idea becomes more than autobiography.

If you benefited from a functioning system, what do you owe it?

Not blind loyalty.

Systems can be stupid.

Corrupt.

Wasteful.

Unfair.

Every electrician knows that just because somebody designed something does not mean they designed it well.

But if you benefited from institutions, mentors, communities, and opportunities that helped turn your effort into abundance, perhaps part of leadership is maintaining and improving those systems for the people coming behind you.

If somebody taught you, teach somebody.

If somebody opened a door, hold one open.

If you benefited from a good apprenticeship, become the journeyman who takes teaching seriously.

If a union gave you bargaining power and a career, don’t pretend your paycheck came entirely from individual heroics.

If a teacher saw something in you, look for something in somebody else.

If a strong adult stepped into your life when you needed one, maybe someday you become that adult for another kid.

That is not charity in the condescending sense.

That is maintenance.

It is how functioning cultures reproduce themselves.

The Real Self-Made Man

Maybe the problem isn’t the word “made.”

Maybe it’s the word “self.”

Because you do participate in making yourself.

Every time you make a difficult decision.

Every time you practice.

Every time you develop a skill.

Every time you refuse to quit.

Every time you take responsibility instead of making excuses.

You are building something.

But you’re building with materials you did not create.

On ground you did not create.

Using tools you did not invent.

Inside circumstances you did not fully choose.

With help you may not even recognize until decades later.

So yes:

Make yourself.

Build strength.

Build competence.

Build judgment.

Build character.

Take responsibility for your life.

Just don’t become so impressed with your own craftsmanship that you forget who helped build the scaffolding.

I made myself.

But my mother helped.

Herman helped.

Teachers helped.

Friends helped.

Oddballs around gaming tables helped.

The trades helped.

The union helped.

Hawaii helped.

Los Angeles helped.

Opportunity helped.

Timing helped.

Luck helped.

And thousands of people I will never know helped create the world in which my effort could become a life.

That doesn’t make my accomplishments smaller.

It makes my gratitude bigger.

And perhaps that is part of becoming a leader.

Eventually you stop asking only:

“What did I build?”

And start asking:

“What helped me build it?”

Then, if you are fortunate enough to have built a life with some abundance, one more question follows:

“What am I doing to make sure somebody coming behind me has something solid to build on too?”

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The No-Zero Day Drill​
Before today ends, do one action that moves your life forward.

One push-up.
One email.
One page read.

📚 Leader’s Library

​James P. Carse — Finite and Infinite Games​

Why?

Carse offers a useful way to understand why two people can participate in the same activity while pursuing completely different goals.

Some games are finite: there is a winner, a rank, a score, a promotion, or some other defined outcome.

Others are more infinite: the purpose is to keep learning, participating, adapting, and continuing the game.

That distinction applies far beyond sports. It can help you understand coworkers, training partners, competitors, leaders, relationships—and yourself. Before assuming someone is playing badly, it is worth asking whether they are even playing the same game you are.

A strong addition to the library for anyone interested in leadership, perspective, relationships, lifelong learning, and becoming better at understanding what other people are actually trying to accomplish.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck