Why I Stopped Running From My Exes (And Started Learning From Them)

Say the word "ex" out loud.

Notice what happens in your body. Your jaw tightens a little. Maybe your shoulders shift. There is a charge to that word, and it is almost never positive.

Ex-spouse. Ex-boss. Ex-friend. Ex-career. We hear "ex" and our brain files it under "things that fell short." Damage. Regret. Chapters we would prefer to skip.

I spent years doing the same thing. Treating my past like a junkyard instead of a library.

Then something shifted.

I started noticing that every word beginning with "ex" carries motion. Something leaving, transforming, or being redefined. Exclusion. Exaltation. Exhaustion. Excitement. These are active words. They describe movement.

That realization became the foundation of my book, The Book EXs. And it changed how I approach every experience I have ever had — good, bad, or somewhere in between.

We Treat Our Past Like Damage. That Is the First Mistake.

Think about how people talk about their past.

"I am still recovering from that job." "I wasted five years in that relationship." "That failure set me back."

We frame our history like something happened to us. Like we were passengers in our own story, and the ride just happened to go off a cliff.

The phrase "my ex" is rarely associated with anything positive. And yet, it holds the potential to provide clarity and peace of mind — if we let it.

Here is what I have observed over 30 years of leading people: the ones who stay stuck are the ones who never figured out what the experience was trying to teach them.

We often relate exes to problems instead of progression. We carry them like weight instead of wisdom. And in doing so, we miss the entire point.

Every experience — whether it was a relationship, a role, or a season of failure — served a purpose. It showed up, it taught something, and then it moved on. The question is whether you moved on with the lesson or just the scar.

I have five children. Two distinct generations. They have yet to face the depth of family loss I experienced when I was young. But what I can give them is the framework to process it when it comes. To know what to do with pain when it arrives. Because avoiding it is never the option. Learning from it always is.

Your Exes Are the Curriculum. The Obstacle Is Ignoring Them.

I wrote The Book EXs to offer a renewed perspective on the exes in our lives. To see them as self-starting growth opportunities instead of burdens we carry.

Think about it this way. Every "ex" in your life — the ex-job, the ex-mentor, the ex-city you lived in — is a classroom you already attended. You already paid the tuition. The pain, the time, the emotional cost. That was the price of admission.

The only waste is walking away without the degree.

We grow and outgrow so many elements. That is how human beings are designed to function. The outgrowing part is just as important as the growing part.

Experiences should be selfless acts to help us overcome our character flaws. When we flip the lens and see our exes as episodes that helped us grow, something changes. The weight lifts. The experience finally has a place. It has meaning.

And meaning is the thing that turns pain into direction.

The AER Model: A Simple System That Works for Any Experience

After years of processing my own history, I developed a framework that I use for everything. Career decisions. Parenting. Leadership. Grief. It works because it is simple enough to remember and honest enough to produce results.

I call it the AER Model: Action, Experience, Reflection. It works like a loop. Each piece feeds the next, and the cycle keeps going.

Let me show you how it played out in my own life.

Action. Leaving New York to join the Navy was a bold step driven by my desire to transform potential into purpose. I had no guarantee it would work. I had no roadmap or a mentor who had done the same thing standing next to me saying, "This is the right call." I had a belief that standing still was more dangerous than moving forward into the unknown. That was the action — the decision that disrupted my comfort and forced me into a version of myself I had yet to meet.

Experience. The discipline and challenges I faced in service became the living classroom where my parents' lessons were tested and proven. Everything my mother taught me about self-love and self-discipline, everything my father modeled through his own struggles — it all got pressure-tested in that environment. The Navy revealed the character that was already forming.

Reflection. Looking back, every sacrifice made — both theirs and mine — revealed that growth is earned through accountable choices and meaningful direction. Reflection is where the lesson crystallizes. Without it, experience is just something that happened. With it, experience becomes something that shaped you. This is the step most people skip because it requires honesty. The kind where you sit with what actually happened and ask, "What role did I play in this outcome?"

The loop then continues. Reflection feeds the next action. The next action creates a new experience. And the cycle keeps building.

That model, applied with discipline and commitment over decades, led to 30 years of honorable service, a pension, lifelong medical care, educational benefits for my family, and something money can never buy: enduring respect.

Where Most People Get Stuck

Here is the honest part. Most people only do one or two of the three. And that is why they stay in loops that lead nowhere.

Some people are all action. They make bold moves constantly but skip the processing. They collect experiences without extracting lessons. Ten years go by, and they have a long resume but zero clarity about what it all means.

Other people are all reflection. They journal, they think, they analyze. But they never take the next step. They understand their past perfectly but remain paralyzed when it comes to the future. Reflection without action is just nostalgia with better vocabulary.

And then there are people who skip reflection entirely. They go from action to experience to the next action without ever pausing. They are productive but stagnant. Moving but failing to progress.

The AER loop only works when all three are in motion. Action without reflection is reckless. Reflection without action is stalling. And experience without either is just time passing.

I lost my mother — a strong, healthy woman — to COVID-19. Her strength was worn down by years of caring for my father through his relentless medical battles. Her passing revealed the depth of her sacrifices, and also the quiet foundation she built beneath us.

That was an experience I never asked for. But reflection taught me something I carry every day: the people who pour into us often do it so quietly that we only understand the weight of it after they are gone. And the action that came from that reflection is the work I do now — mentoring young men through the Lambda D-R-E-A-M Academy — because what my mother built in me should continue beyond me.

That is the loop in action. Even grief, when processed through AER, becomes direction.

Try This Today

Pick one "ex" from your life. It could be a job you left, a friendship that ended, a city you moved away from, or a version of yourself you outgrew. Now run it through the loop.

Write it down. On paper, on a screen, somewhere outside of your own thoughts. The act of writing forces clarity that thinking alone can never produce.

I have done this exercise hundreds of times. With my own experiences. With people I have mentored. With young men in the Lambda D-R-E-A-M Academy who are just starting to process their own chapters. Every single time, the same thing happens — the experience they thought was a waste turns out to be the thing that prepared them for where they are going.

You might be surprised. The experience you have been carrying as a failure may turn out to be the most valuable classroom you ever attended.

Your Exes Are Fuel — If You Use Them Right

The setback itself is never the real problem. Refusing to extract wisdom from it is.

Every experience carries motion. Something leaving, transforming, or being redefined. The question is whether you are sitting in the wreckage or using it as building material.

I have done foolish things. I have been senseless in protecting myself from others and even from myself. But experiences should be selfless acts to help us overcome our character flaws. That is what I believe.

Perseverance, adaptability, and principle are the keys to navigating adversity and seizing new opportunities. I learned that from living through chapters I never chose — and then choosing what to do with them.

The exes in your life — every single one — are evidence that you lived fully enough to outgrow something. And outgrowing is the whole point.

Are you in the driver's seat of your exes, or are they outmaneuvering you?

If the answer is honest, the next action will be clear. That is the loop. And it is always available to you.