Why You Need a Tribe, Part One: The Signal

 

You’ve felt it.

That quiet, gnawing ache beneath the surface. Not loneliness exactly. More like... misrecognition. Like walking through life with the wrong name pinned to your chest.

You show up. You try. You play nice. But no matter where you go, the same static fills the room:

“Too much.”
 “Too serious.”
 “Too intense.”
 “Too damn honest.”

Maybe you believed them for a while. Maybe you bent your fire into their comfort zones.
But your nervous system knew the truth.

You weren’t in the wrong.You were just in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time. You’re not too much. You’re just not where your fire belongs.

This is how it starts. Not with a grand vision. Not with a manifesto. But with that quiet moment in the dark when you realize: There’s no one coming. I have to find what I’ve been searching for. You weren’t meant to fit in. You were meant to burn with those who remember.

The Roots

You weren’t designed to do this alone. Not your grief. Not your joy. You were shaped by firelight, not fluorescent bulbs.Generations ago, your tribe was your survival.

Your nervous system still waits for a signal that no longer comes:

• The crackling of a nearby flame
• The voice of an elder telling a story you already knew by heart
• The circle
• The rhythm
• The memory carried in others' eyes

We are not just social animals. We are tribal animals. It's biology. We evolved this way. And that drive still lives in your bones.

Psychologist Michael Morris named three core instincts that form the tribal code written into our DNA.

The Peer Instinct
Your nervous system calibrates to those around you. Acceptance = safety. Mirroring = identity. Without it, you begin to lose form.
No firelight means no reflection. No reflection means no self.

The Hero Instinct
You want to do something hard and be seen doing it. Not praised. Witnessed. That’s the instinct that built warriors, midwives, scouts, and shamans.
It’s not ego. It’s legacy coding.

The Ancestor Instinct
You carry stories that may never have been told. And yet, somehow… you know them. This might show up as:

• A pull toward certain traditions
• A responsibility to future generations
• A strange reverence for ancient symbols, rites, or patterns of beauty
• A longing to build something that will outlast you

This instinct whispers:
“Protect the sacred.
 Remember the way.
 Build something that matters.”

And here’s the problem: Modern life starves all three.

Crowds don’t activate tribal circuitry. Notifications don’t satisfy the ancestral pulse. “Likes” aren’t the same as being lit by another human’s presence.

We live surrounded by people… but our bodies register it as exile. We are not wired for a crowd. We are wired for a circle.

That’s why you ache. That’s why no amount of “self-work” has made it go away. Because this was never just about self. It was about:
 

Place. 

People.

Pattern.

Pulse.

And if no one around you moves in rhythm with your soul? Don’t shrink. Build the drum.

What Real Belonging Feels Like

You’ve been seen. At work. In school. Even in the relationships that almost fit.

People clock you. They know what you do. Some even get what you want. But being seen is not the same as being recognized. Real belonging doesn’t nod. It reflects.

It says:
“I saw the moment you almost gave up. And I saw the fire you held onto anyway. I see you, still burning.”

Belonging isn’t softness. It’s resonance. It’s walking into a circle and feeling your entire nervous system unclench. Not because you’re performing, But because you’ve finally stopped.

Stopped hiding. 

Stopped pretending.

Stopped shaping yourself into someone else’s comfort.

Because in this circle? They want your edges.They need your wild. They’ve been waiting for you to remember who you are.

Belonging isn’t about being accepted. It’s about being recognized.

In a real tribe:

• You speak half a truth, someone finishes the sentence you didn’t know you were trying to say.
• You fail, and they step closer.
• You burn, and they bring wood, not water.

You’re not a project. You’re a mirror. And real tribe? They polish the reflection until you remember the shape of your own flame.

If THIS Fire, my Fire, doesn’t speak your language, find the one that does. And if you can’t? Maybe you’re meant to build it.

We'll talk about that in part two.

 

~Jason

 

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Maybe We Don’t Fear Failure. Maybe We Fear Success That Traps Us

 

In the last post, I revealed a major shift in my perspective. In this post, I dig into the psychology of that shift.

There’s a strange contradiction I’ve lived with most of my adult life:
I am both deeply capable of commitment, and secretly terrified of it.

I’ve run 100-mile ultramarathons. I’ve trained in jiu jitsu for over a decade. I’ve stayed married for 21 years. I’ve written books, fought in a cage, and rebuilt myself more times than I can count.

But when it comes to launching something like The Tribe, something communal, mythic, and deeply personal, I hesitate.

Not because I doubt the vision.
Not because I fear failure.

But because I fear abandoning it once I succeed.

I’ve noticed a pattern in myself:
I immerse fully into a new world, whether it be barefoot running, fighting, magic, writing, even entire careers. I go deep, fast. I master it quickly. And then, eventually, I see through it. I start to notice the flaws, the cracks in the foundation, the political underbelly, the limits. And once I see those things, it becomes easy to walk away.

I rationalize the exit.

I tell myself, “I outgrew it.” Or, “Staying in this world is bad for me.”
And sometimes that’s true.
But sometimes, I think I just didn’t build a structure that could grow with me.

Recently, I came face-to-face with the deeper truth:

I didn’t walk away because I changed. I walked away because the thing couldn’t.

And that’s what I’ve feared about launching The Tribe.
Not that it would fail.
But that I would one day outgrow it, feel trapped inside it, and leave people behind in the fallout.

Because that would be a betrayal, not just of the others, but of myself.

But here’s the revelation:
What if I could build The Tribe to evolve with me?

What if commitment didn’t mean freezing myself in time, but designing something alive enough to shed skins with me?

What Burns Me Out

When I look back at the times I’ve walked away, I see three common threads:

• Obligation without renewal: When I’m doing it because I have to, not because it’s still making me.
• Lack of creative agency: When I feel like a manager instead of a creator.
• Misalignment: When the thing no longer reflects who I am, and there’s no way to change it without blowing it up.

It’s not that I can’t stay.
It’s that I can’t stay in something that won’t evolve.

So What Does Sustainable Commitment Look Like?

It doesn’t look like forever.
It doesn’t look like obligation.
It doesn’t look like being trapped by my own creation.

It looks like ritualized renewal.

Here’s what I’m building into The Tribe:

Seasonal Presence: I lead in seasons. Intensity followed by retreat. Like a warrior returning to the mountain.

Creative Sovereignty: I have the power to reshape the structure. The Tribe isn’t special because it never changes. It’s special because it knows how to change.

The Council: A circle of trusted co-leaders who can carry the mission when I step back. Not as replacements, but as reflections.

Mythic Evolution: The Tribe will have its own life cycle. Every few years, it will enter a new age. We will mark it. Shed skins. Tell new stories.

The Drift Signal: A way for me (and others) to name misalignment before it becomes resentment. To say, "I feel something shifting," without shame.

I no longer want to be afraid of commitment.
I want to live inside a commitment designed for someone like me (and maybe you): someone who evolves, questions, shifts, pauses, returns.

The man who used to build beautiful things and walk away?
He wasn’t broken.
He was scouting for a place worthy of staying.

I think I’ve finally built it.
Not a system. Not a brand. Not a platform.
Something living.

One that sheds skins.
One that welcomes the man I’ll become.
One that creates a real community for others to do the same.

This is how I stay.
Not forever.
But for as long as it remains true.

And this time, I’m designing it so it always can be.

 

~Jason 

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When the Fire Grows Too Big to Walk Away

 

 

Have you ever poured your heart into something, only to feel the inevitable pull to walk away?

There’s a story I’ve told myself for a long time. One that kept me from launching the most important thing I’ve ever built.

The story goes like this: I’m the kind of man who burns hot, immerses fully, then walks away.

There’s truth in it. I’ve done it countless times: diving headfirst into barefoot running, ultramarathons, careers, hobbies, each with fervent intensity, only to eventually step away when the initial spark faded.

It became a pattern: Dive in. Learn. Master. Spot the flaws. Leave.

I told myself it was just how I’m wired. That it’s an ENTP trait. Serial hobbyist. That I needed the freedom to evolve, to roam. And while there’s some truth in that, I’ve recently realized something deeper, something I need to remember and say aloud:

I didn’t walk away because I changed. I walked away because the thing couldn’t.

And that changes everything.

Because I’m not afraid of failure. Not really. I’ve failed before. A LOT. I flunked out of a college. I’ve bled on the mats. I’ve quit races. I’ve the reviews Amazon reviews for my crap. I once turned down an mma fight in the locker room. I can't sing OR dance.

What I’ve been afraid of isn’t failure. It’s betrayal. Self-betrayal. This fear of outgrowing my creation extended to the people who would invest their trust and belief in it.

I’m afraid that if I build something meaningful, and then grow beyond it, or worse, begin to resent it, I’ll betray the very people who believed in it. I’ll become the ghost at the center of a temple I can’t live in anymore.

That fear has kept me from launching this idea. "The Tribe", I call it.

Because The Tribe isn’t just a project. It’s not a brand. It’s not a community. It’s a myth made real. An ancient architecture for something I know could change lives, including my own.

And that’s why I’ve hesitated. Not out of laziness. Not out of doubt. But because I’ve been waiting for the thing to feel as alive and evolving as I am.

This week, something clicked. A voice... call it truth, call it memory... whatever. It rose up inside me:

“You kept waiting for something big enough to hold your evolution. But maybe what you needed was something built to evolve.”

And that’s the shift.

The Tribe won’t be something I outgrow. It will be something that sheds skin with me.

It will have ritual renewal points. Seasonal pulses. A core that burns but doesn’t calcify. It won’t demand I stay the same; it will ask me to stay present, to keep showing up in truth.

I don’t have to fear becoming trapped.

I just have to keep the fire moving.

And so, this is my offering, not as a marketing post or a launch tease, but as a mirror.

If you’re someone who’s started and left, who’s built and burned out, who’s hesitated to go all in because you’re afraid of what happens after the passion fades, I see you.

Maybe you weren’t wrong to walk away.

Maybe the thing just couldn’t breathe as you changed.

But maybe, now, you can build something that does.

I know I am.

And that’s why I’m finally ready to launch The Tribe.

Not as a finished product.

But as a living fire.

And I’m not walking away.

Not this time.

In the next post, I'll explain why it's safe to walk away. 

~Jason