Matthew Stafford

YOU WITHHOLD YOUR TRUE SELF TO MAINTAIN CONTROL

You share vulnerability — but strategically.

You reveal pain — but only after it’s been reframed, packaged, or turned into insight.

Why?

Because full, unfiltered emotional expression would make you dependent on someone else’s safety, attunement, and care. And that feels like death.

So you:

• Offer

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You were emotionally wired early on to believe:

• Love = earned


• Safety = performance


• Vulnerability = risk

So even now, as an adult with awareness and language, your nervous system still seeks familiarity over nourishment.

As a result:

• You attract people who are emotionally unavailable — because it mirrors the conditional love you internalized as

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🧨 QUESTION 3:

“What would I create if I didn’t need it to justify my existence?”

🔍 Why this is transformative:

This destroys your entire utility-first identity.

It asks you to access pure desire — without performance, perfection, or permission.

💣 Cognitive Dissonance It Creates:

You will immediately want to adjust your answer to make it "smart,"... See more

While the rental industry overall was slow to computerize, the larger regional players were more tech-savvy.

By 1997, nearly all of them were running on software developed by a company called Wynne Systems.

This told me that the software was capable of managing hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment flowing on and off jobsites.

I bought... See more

if you want to make money in the business world, you need to get used to problems, because that's what business is.

Attachment Loop: Attract emotionally unavailable others to replicate early abandonment trauma; then attempt to "win" secure attachment through value.

success boils down to skill, agency, critical thinking, and a healthy relationship with fear, failure, and embarrassment.

You’re rejecting the "scale = staff" myth. This is artisan-level wealth.