In this conversation, I take time with Luke Thorkildsen of Weatherby to talk through the long, often uncomfortable process of building a life rooted in faith, family, and responsibility.

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We get into the reality of marriage—not the version people like to present, but the one that requires ownership, humility, and a willingness to work when things get difficult. Luke shares what it looked like to move from trying to fix others to taking responsibility for himself, and how that shift changed everything.

We also talk about rejection, career uncertainty, and what it means to build something meaningful without a clear path forward.

This conversation isn’t about quick answers. It’s about the slow, daily work of becoming someone who can actually carry the life they say they want.

If you’re trying to build something that lasts, this one is worth your time.

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What an uncomfortable question to face. You may be shifting or squirming in your seat as it sinks in. I hated this question. I ran from it and lied through my teeth about it for years.

Sometimes we’re lucky and well-practiced enough that we can shoot off an answer to that question with clarity and confidence.

“My name is Kyle, I’m an alcoholic.”

I have said that statement enough times that I don’t question it. It rolls off my tongue quite easily these days. Shortly after entering recovery, I began to, almost by accident, form what became five practices that helped me stay in the practice of recovery each day.

In the world of recovery, people started asking me another uncomfortable question: “What does your recovery look like?” I never knew what the hell they meant by that question. I started listening to others. Many talked of programs they were members of, activities or hobbies they picked up, or religious organizations they joined. But I noticed something early. The few people who had long-term recovery spanning numerous decades had something in common. They talked about work. They talked about breaking things down into manageable challenges they could face each day. And they talked about growth.

I followed those people. I listened, I worked, and I experimented. I found what worked and kept working those things. Slowly, the practices formed themselves. Much more than a list, they are the way I live each day. They expand well beyond the realm of addiction recovery. They are completely transferable, bound to no place or set routine. They helped us navigate the challenge of loss. They also led me to unexpectedly answer that question of “Who are you?” in a way I never anticipated.

Movement
Awe
Vision
Community
Faith

The practices are simple, yet powerful. They are approachable, but challenging. They are routine, yet boundless. They are forgiving, yet demand everything from you. They can be continually practiced, but will never be perfected.

The five practices train you daily to separate what you can control from what you must let go. Quite by accident, they allowed me to realize my true identity versus anchoring my identity to capabilities or outcomes.

Look back at that opening question again. Ask yourself how many “I am…” statements that ran through your mind ended with something you’ve accomplished with your talents, something you own, or a capability you have.

The practices unknowingly led me to realize the singular, foundational piece of identity everything is built upon. Initially, I viewed them simply as a tool to grant me daily reprieve from alcohol. It turned out that the power that lay within the daily practices was much more significant.

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Each practice will be explored in detail over the coming months. I had incorporated many of these practices in my life when I was battling alcoholism to no avail. I worked out, journaled, and searched for gratitude. But those didn’t work. We’ll explore why and highlight the subtle but required shifts that have allowed these practices to have a profound impact.

Keep showing up,

Kyle Layne

There are moments in life that split everything into a before and after.

For Kenny White, that moment came in an instant. A fall. A broken neck. A life that, by all accounts, should have ended the way it had been going.

But it didn’t.

Instead, it forced a level of clarity most people spend a lifetime avoiding.

What followed wasn’t just physical recovery — it was a complete reconstruction of identity. From addiction and chaos… to faith, family, and purpose.

This conversation explores:

• The slow drift into alcoholism (and why it never feels sudden)

• The psychological toll of trauma and recovery

• A moment of clarity that changed everything

• What it actually means to take radical ownership of your life

• And how rebuilding begins when there’s nothing left to hide behind

This isn’t a story about motivation.

It’s about what happens when you’re forced to face the truth — and choose something different.

Keep showing up,

Kyle

Now, I can’t watch a single show or bit of content without noticing the details of their lighting, background, and camera work. It’s those small learnings in life that catch you off guard and really add some flavor to your day.

The beauty of it all is how little it actually matters for the incredible conversations I’ve been blessed to have.

Grant Hankins: Taking the Harder Path and Finding Identity

Take Grant Hankins, for example. A kid raised in rural Colorado who felt destined for a hard life of alcohol, drugs, and jail. But hockey saved him. Or at least, for a time it saved him. It brought him to new places and removed him from the path that felt inevitable. But, like everything, hockey came to an end, too. We talked identity, navigating hardship, discipline, and taking the more difficult, narrow road.

Full episode with Grant is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Morgan Hampel: Transitions, Legacy, and Military Stigmas of Mental Health

I recognize how lucky I am to have a group of incredible friends doing incredible things. Very few exemplify this more than Morgan Hampel. Morgan and I became friends in undergrad, where he was a roommate of mine during an extremely lax period of time, my senior year. Morgan was destined for greatness, even then, and the number of times he would walk into our room with me sitting there (generally not yet fully dressed) watching Queen Live in Montreal is slightly embarrassing, if not for the greatness of that entire performance.

Morgan went on to navigate some truly incredible feats (and literally navigate large ships) in our time since undergrad. He worked through hardship associated with seemingly big changes in his professional life as he went on to become a Naval Officer, went through the incredibly rigorous Navy Nuke program, and then made a seemingly massive career change once again as he eyed replacing his Naval income upon leaving his active duty service.

Full episode with Morgan on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

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Tyler Moon: Second Chances, Talking with God, and Service to Others

Most recently, there was Tyler Moon, a self-described ordinary suburban dad who had an extraordinary moment in his life that changed everything. Kept alive by a group of strangers in the middle of the street in St. Paul back in 2019, Tyler recounts his road to healing, the lessons it taught him, and how he views his responsibility to share and help others.

Tyler lives authentically and unapologetically, a refreshing stance in today’s world of masks, false narratives, and self-driven amplification of personal achievements. One thing I didn’t expect to connect on was Tyler’s short, but exhausting, bout with living a life built on a web of lies.

Full episode with Tyler on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

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If you enjoyed any of these conversations, follow the show on your listening platform of choice so you never miss one. If you’re willing, rate the show, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Those seemingly small actions have big impacts and can help these stories reach the people who need them.

Through the last month or so, I have felt honored and privileged to be sitting on the receiving end of these individuals’ messages. It has humbled me and pushed me to be better, to focus on those things that truly matter in life and make an impact on others.

Lighting these days isn’t as much of a problem as when I started. Not because I mastered the art of studio lighting, but because I learned to focus on what actually matters: the conversation, the lessons, and what it means to show up for yourself so you can show up for others.

Keep showing up,

Kyle

He was 25 years old. Healthy. Three months away from his wedding day.

The memory of what happened next never came back.

What followed instead were fragments — stories told by others, moments pieced together by family, doctors, and strangers who stepped forward when it mattered most. CPR in the middle of a race. An AED. A medically induced coma. A long and uncertain path back.

But survival was only the beginning of the story.

In this conversation, Tyler reflects on what it means to wake up after a moment that nearly took your life. We talk about identity, marriage under pressure, faith in moments of uncertainty, and how experiences like this reshape the way we understand purpose.

Tyler now leads Living Proof Leadership and recently released his book More Than a Conqueror, where he reflects more deeply on the lessons that emerged from that day.

This conversation is about survival, but more than that, it’s about the question many people face after adversity:

What do you do with the life you’ve been given?

“You gotta ask Pete about the coffee.”

I looked up to see Jack, a man I had only known five days since he checked into rehab, exhale deeply and wipe the tears away that were streaming down his face as he maneuvered into a seat behind me on the bus.

Right behind him, Pete threw himself into the seat next to me. Alcohol and a life at sea had weathered Pete. He spoke with a strong stutter as a by-product of his years of drinking that often caused him to close down conversation in frustration. Through broken sentences over the past ten days Pete showed me how tough men can still have a caring heart.

I could tell something was stewing in him as he sat with his left fist clenched staring at the back of the seat in front of him.

“Go ahead, just ask.” Jack encouraged me from behind with a nudge on my back as he picked up on my hesitation.

“Pete,” I spoke reluctantly, not knowing what was to come, “how was the coffee at this meeting?”

Pete’s head snapped over and his eyes bore directly into me.

“That fu.. that… that…” Pete was growing more agitated at his failure to produce words.

He tried a different approach, “He… he… brought…”

Still the words wouldn’t come to him.

Sensing his frustration, and knowing the punchline, Jack spoke up from behind.

“The guy was walking the coffee around to give people refills mid-meeting,” he exhaled, still catching his breath, as I glanced to see Pete at a near boiling point of rage at the retelling of the tale.

“Pete extended his hand with his coffee mug in it and for some reason the guy set the hot pot of coffee directly on Pete’s extended hand like his hand was some pot holder and just rested it there.” Jack unsuccessfully held a spurt of laughter back before starting back in, “And what did you tell him when that happened Pete?”

Without hesitation Pete screamed, “GOD DAMN IT ASSHOLE THAT FUCKING HURTS!”

The words hung in the air between us all as Pete’s eyes were lit with a fire from the recent memory.

I felt something well up deep within me and come skyrocketing to the forefront of my consciousness. I controlled none of it after witnessing Pete’s outburst and beautifully perfect string of sailor approved cuss words. A burst of laughter erupted uncontrollably from us all.

Pete’s head snapped around, confused at the outburst from those of us around him who had heard the story.

“Pete.” Jack said from behind me as he wiped away new tears running down his face, “You didn’t stutter.”

In an instant Pete’s eyes changed. The confusion and anger that had been there were replaced with a sparkle as a smile cracked his saltwater-leathered face. He began to laugh. His laughter fed ours, which fed his back again. Suddenly people were gasping for air and everyone was wiping away tears. I felt a joy within me and lightness in my heart that I had not felt for years.

The bus doors closed and the engine fired up. The residual laughter would come forth quietly as each person replayed the event in their mind. Pete’s smile could not be wiped from his face.

Finally, after a deep exhale someone said the thing we were all thinking.

“Man, it feels good to be able to feel something again.”

Life moves fast. Don’t forget to laugh along the way.

Keep showing up,

Kyle Layne Zibrowski

We pulled into the dark, but familiar, parking lot in silence. Another week had passed. It was time to check in on our unborn daughter’s growth. Or so we hoped.

I don’t know if we can keep doing this.

The thought arose as I found a parking spot we had frequented and pulled our vehicle in. It had presented itself before. I knew it to be false that we would persevere and keep working through these moments.

I recognized it for what it was—fear. Fear gripped my stomach in a knot. I could sense the emotional tension rising up into my chest.

Putting the vehicle in park, I extended my hand to the seat next to me and turned to look at Alyssa. We had done this enough times that words did not need to be spoken. I saw fear in her eyes. I wondered what thoughts were running through her mind. Regardless of the cascade of thoughts and emotions, she firmly grasped my hand and we both took a breath.

“God, we selfishly want to hear Lucy’s heartbeat today. But, if that is not a part of your plan, please grant us the strength of acceptance and faith.”

Despite the number of times we had said that prayer together before each appointment, I still got choked up. Tears would be wiped away from both Alyssa and my eyes as we readied ourselves with one last kiss before stepping out of the car.

Then, with little else but faith and a willingness to do anything for our daughter who continued the fight for her life, we exited the vehicle for another visit to the specialist.

We were given fifty-seven days between leaving rehab and discovering Lucy’s health concerns. Fifty-seven days to better understand the pillars. Fifty-seven days to strengthen them, completely unaware of how much load they would have to bear once the discovery was made.

Fifty-seven days of deliberate preparation, challenged in an instant that changed the course of our lives forever.

We didn’t get to choose which pillars would be tested. All of them were subjected to the most intense pressure that I could have ever imagined.

Your body feels it, your mind almost constantly questions your limits.
Your emotions surge.
Your faith is put on trial every single day.

Through those moments, the pillars either hold or crumble. The pressure leaves no in-between.

Challenging ourselves physically, we had exposed ourselves to false limits our minds had set in an attempt to protect us. We had strengthened our ability to tolerate stress. By working through those limits, we had readied ourselves to keep showing up—to walk through doors that held answers we weren’t sure we wanted.

We routinely worked on acceptance. Emotions would hit seemingly out of nowhere, and instead of suppressing or isolating, we allowed them to run their course. We sought companionship in each other, growing in our ability to check in with ourselves and one another as we moved forward.

We prayed. We learned what it meant to bring our worries and fears to God during some of the darkest and most confusing moments of our lives. We found faith, trust, connection, and hope during a time when we could have felt chillingly abandoned. We recognized that our selfish desires might not be aligned with His plan for us. Yet we remained willing and ready to take action and walk through doors when He opened them for us.

We kept working, kept strengthening each pillar. Then came the moment where all of the unknowns, all of the questions, about Lucy’s potential life dropped away. A single door opened—one we didn’t want to walk through but knew we had no choice. A reality that every parent who has lost a child has faced and wanted to run from.

We found, once again, that we didn’t rise to any moment on this new journey of loss.
We simply stood on the foundation that we had been building.

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In quiet moments, I considered a reality where I hadn’t found recovery. Where I hadn’t built the pillars. The cost would have extended far beyond my own grief.

Alyssa and I have spoken it plainly: she would have lost two family members during that season.

Instead, we steadied ourselves on the foundation that we had built. We talked, we listened, and we prayed. We found both joy and sorrow in moments that caught us off guard. We found forgiveness and grace.

You do not get to choose when life applies pressure. When the storm hits, you rarely have the space to build. Your foundation will either hold or crumble. What you practice in calm becomes what you stand on in hardship.

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It requires the discipline to feel and experience without escaping.
It requires confronting limits and seeking truth beyond them.
It requires surrender to something greater than yourself.

Keep showing up.

Kyle Layne Zibrowski

In this conversation, I sit down with Morgan Hampel — former Navy Nuclear Surface Warfare Officer and real estate operator — to talk about the pivots that shape a life.

We cover military leadership, risk, missed signals, and the responsibility we carry for the people around us.

Morgan shares:

• What it was like growing up as the grandson of a Holocaust survivor

• The military leader who forced him to raise his standard

• The conversation he wishes he handled differently

• Why saying “sorry” isn’t always enough

• Raising $1M in 90 days on his first deal

• The discipline required to build momentum

• The upward spiral: sleep, health, testosterone, ownership

This conversation is about responsibility.

Responsibility to your legacy.
Responsibility to your friends.
Responsibility to your own potential.

The cost of inaction isn’t abstract. It’s personal.

Craig was back. His broad-shouldered frame loomed over me with his hand extended, waiting for me to respond to his demand. My eyes darted between four cards laid out before me on the floor. Fifteen minutes earlier, I had written My Marriage, Recovery, My Family, and Career on those cards, not understanding why we were being asked to list the things that mattered most to us.

My eyes stuck to the Career card. I reached for it and handed it to Craig.

“I’ll be back,” he said as he sidestepped to the person sitting next to me, who already had their index card extended and ready.

We had been at this for only fifteen minutes, but they felt agonizing, building toward this moment. Every pass Craig made required you to give away one more thing you valued in life. Though purely theoretical, I dreaded this next round from the start.

My eyes scanned the last three cards, cycling through them countless times. I hoped for a momentary flash of insight, but I was met with silence in my mind.

Suddenly, Craig appeared before me once again, his full-sleeved tattooed arm extending an open hand in front of me, demanding a choice.

“Gun to your head,” he said, quietly this time with a hint of caring support in his voice. Somehow, he seemed to sense my agony.

I reached down, picked up a card, and lifted it toward him. The word Recovery stared back at me.

“Ok,” Craig said in a fatherly tone that made me wonder if I had just caused disappointment, discouragement, or quiet anger.

I sat pondering my selection. Before his next time around the circle, Craig stopped and centered himself at the whiteboard and faced our group.

“By this point, only two of you have held onto your Recovery card over other things that you value in life,” he exclaimed, “so I think we can draw this exercise to a close.”

“Let me be clear with you,” Craig said, giving pause to ensure everyone’s attention was drawn towards him, “whatever you chose to value above your recovery, you should plan to lose.” Craig paused, giving everyone time to glance at the cards by their feet.

He took a breath and continued, “And the cornerstone of your recovery will require you to develop a real and personal relationship with God.”

Bullshit, I thought. I felt my face flush with anger. I don’t need God as a part of my recovery story.

Looking up, I met Craig’s eyes and sensed he could see the discomfort and conflict in me. Somewhere, buried in the pile of cards he held in his hand, I had handed my recovery over to him.

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That lesson stayed with me. I couldn’t reconcile the idea that I was supposed to prioritize my recovery over every other aspect, every other person, in my life. And that God was to be the center of my recovery journey.

No, I thought, it just couldn’t be true.

But things changed. They changed slowly at first, as I replayed Craig’s lesson in my mind. They continued to shift as I heard people’s stories of how finding a higher power gave them the capacity to endure hardship in recovery.

Then, all at once, it completely shifted—triggered by a simple statement from an old man I will likely never meet again.

“I don’t want a God that I can understand.”

Those words undid every defense I had built. Nearly two decades of attempting to reason and intellectualize God into a box that I could understand were completely upended. And the most shocking revelation was freedom. I finally felt the permission to approach God and begin turning things over to Him.

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The Spiritual Pillar is finding the faith to turn everything over to God: fears, worries, victories, defeats, shortcomings, and my recovery. It is finding the patience and perseverance to travel difficult roads, knowing you’re not alone. It’s finding the humility to accept that God’s plan for you might not align with your own selfish desires. It’s about building the capacity within yourself to serve others.

I finally came to understand that building my Spiritual Pillar, a real and personal relationship with God, wasn’t strictly about church attendance or adherence to a certain denomination. It’s not moral superiority, ego-driven performatives, passive faith or evangelizing with words.

It is about aligning your actions with the way that God intended and instructed you to act. It was about me finally listening, after years of pushing back.

It started simple, but these simple actions formed the bedrock upon which the Spiritual Pillar is built. I prayed. I worked on communicating with God to rebuild the relationship I had turned my back on. I didn’t memorize extensive scripture, but instead I found three simple moments each day where I could connect with God.

Every morning, “Thy will, not mine.”
To quiet my ego and trust that God had a plan.

As anxiety, stress or challenges arose, “Worry not.”
To trust His plan and release what was never mine to control.

To close each day, “Thank you.”
To remind myself that every day—whether filled with struggle, monotony, or treasure—was a gift.

The relationship grew out of these three foundational moments of connecting with God.

While the three pillars may stand in symbolic unity, I found that the Spiritual Pillar is the bedrock of a meaningful existence. If grounded and strengthened, it holds when it feels like all else has fallen apart.

After hardship, if it remains standing, life can be rebuilt around it.

Without it:
Discipline becomes ego.
Emotional awareness becomes self-absorption.
Recovery becomes fragile.

This is not built through performative action. It is built in the quiet moments. It is built in spaces where you can sense a higher power’s presence. It is, strictly between you and God.

No one else can turn your life over to Him for you. That’s the work you must do to create the bedrock all pillars are built upon—for a lifetime and beyond.

Keep showing up,

Kyle Layne Zibrowski

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Whoosh. Silence. Whoosh. Silence. Whoosh. Silence.

I can’t do this, I thought as my muscles and lungs ached. You did enough yesterday, just end it early today.

The thought entered my mind out of nowhere. A small smile crossed my face. I had faced these thoughts before in this situation and was becoming familiar with navigating through them. I wasn’t going to give them the grace to linger.

No, I can do this.

Every strain against the rower was proof my initial thoughts were wrong. I wasn’t finished. As the distance counter raced above my targeted goal, I let my body slide forward and the handle snapped back into its holding position. I breathed heavily. I noticed a gentle breeze move across my face as the rowing machine’s fan cycled down, its residual push bouncing off the walls of the tiny room.

It felt good to feel something again.

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Glancing up, I looked out the window toward the courtyard. Cigarette packs sat on tables and people milled about, waiting for the lunch hour to hit. I would go out and join my friends soon, but my pre-lunch ritual was something I looked forward to completing first each day.

My mind felt calm as I watched the scene outside. I could sense I was tolerating stress better, and I hadn’t experienced a single issue sleeping at night since starting this rowing ritual.

In my last few years of drinking, I could feel myself slipping physically. There was the obvious metric of the scale, which crept frustratingly upward every year. By the end, I stopped checking because I didn’t like the feedback it was giving me.

But there were other signs I was faltering physically. I felt a growing tightness of anxiety that seemed to always grip me. Sleep constantly evaded me, and the smallest amount of stress would send me on a wild search for alcohol to ease the burden.

Sitting on that rower as sweat ran down my face for nearly the twentieth day in a row, I was beginning to connect with the ramifications of this ritual. I was starting to realize how interconnected the mind and body are, and how ignoring one of those components became detrimental to me toward the end of my drinking days.

I smiled, thinking back on the excuses that had run through my head moments earlier as I watched sweat fall to the floor. I took a deep breath in, exhaled, and found myself laughing out loud, sitting alone on the rower.

I was laughing because I was finally seeing that the Physical Pillar is a truth seeker.

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Gliding back and forth on that rower each day became an opportunity for me to experience discomfort. When discomfort hit, the self-talk began. The self-talk looked for a way to reason with me, presenting an opportunity to choose—is the barrier I’m constructing in my head real, or is it an excuse to seek comfort? Making the choice to challenge the barrier then led to increased capacity.

As the number of encounters with this ritual increased, I was learning that the boundaries I perceived were often not true. I was working to gain the wisdom to discern between a genuine constraint and those that my mind simply created in an attempt to protect me, even though relenting meant limiting my long-term potential.

After two and a half years of lying to hide my drinking, I was committed to living my life honestly and in pursuit of the truth. The Physical Pillar became the mechanism through which I sought the truth. It gave me the repetition to encounter potential limiting beliefs every single day and to grow in my wisdom to choose to change course or to work through the discomfort.

Encountering these self-fabricated excuses daily, in a controlled setting, led to growth and improved my mental well being, self-talk, and how I perceive challenges. It’s so much more than exercise, so much deeper than the numbers on the scale or body composition. It’s real change that is grounded in the pursuit of truth.

You can find this anywhere in your life. Look for moments where your self-talk fires up strongest, and view them as chances to encounter resistance and discover growth. Face up to your self-talk and challenge your perceived limits to find out if they are real or self-fabricated.

Live life honestly and in pursuit of the truth.

Search for the wisdom required to assess whether a constraint is real, or if you’re simply giving yourself an excuse to avoid the discomfort that comes with growth.

Keep showing up.

Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)

They accept their upbringing.
They accept their environment.
They accept the quiet belief that this is just how it is.

In this conversation, Grant Hankins and I talk about what it looks like to challenge that belief — not through motivation or slogans, but through discipline, identity, and daily choices.

Grant’s story isn’t about escaping hardship.
It’s about refusing to let hardship make decisions for him.

We talk about:

• How environment shapes us — and how it doesn’t have to define us

• Discipline as a way to build confidence, not punishment

• The cost of people-pleasing and peacekeeping

• Identity after sports, career shifts, and major life changes

• Why comparison quietly sabotages growth

• Choosing the harder path when the easier one feels inevitable

If you’ve felt stuck — not dramatically, but subtly — this conversation is an invitation to examine where you may have stopped challenging the story you’re living inside.

Subscribe to More Than Capable for weekly conversations and essays on discipline, identity, and growth.

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“I’m Craig,” he said in a booming voice that produced an echoed even in the small room. “Today, I’m talking to you about emotions.”

All of us were too intimidated to laugh at the irony of a lesson on emotions from this meathead counselor. In my first five days in rehab, I had only heard rumors of Craig the counselor.

He drew three words on the board: Event, Thought, Emotion. He let them stand there in their own space as he walked back and then drew two straight arrows that connected Event to Thought and Thought to Emotion.

“Biochemically,” he said, now turning to us, “this chain lasts only ninety seconds.”

He went back up to the board and put his marker at the top of Emotion and drew one arching arrow back to Event and a second to Thought.

“Our problem,” he said, “is that we allow our emotions to carry us back into a new triggering event or thought pattern that continues feeding it.” He let silence linger in the space. “To navigate a life in recovery, you must first be aware of this chain before you can start to master it.”

I couldn’t connect with it in the moment, but that whiteboard diagram would later become the foundation of what I now call the Emotional Pillar of my life.

For years, I believed strength meant controlling emotions—or better yet, eliminating them altogether. Alcohol had been an incredibly effective solution for muting the uncomfortable emotional highs and lows. Yet, I knew it was a solution I could not go to anymore, so I needed to figure out a different way.

What I didn’t understand early in recovery is that emotional strength isn’t found in suppression or control, but in capacity. The capacity to experience life fully without fear of being overwhelmed. The capacity to stay present when emotions surge. The capacity to allow emotion to move through you without demanding that it dictate your next action. And eventually, the capacity to shape the thoughts upstream of emotion in a way that builds resolve instead of fear.

Early in recovery, I focused on being able to sit with emotions, accepting them as something I did not control. I began experiencing them rather than trying to suppress them. I challenged myself to identify emotions and carried around an emotional wheel that I would stare at during moments where my knowledge failed me. I was not studying for some never-to-be-given exam, but simply working to name the sensation I was experiencing.

I learned early how deeply the three pillars feed off one another. Strengthening my Physical pillar increased my tolerance for stress when heavy emotions hit. Strengthening my Spiritual pillar reshaped the subconscious thoughts I carry, which fundamentally altered the emotional output of the same events.

When the Emotional Pillar is weak, discipline cracks and faith falters. When it’s strengthened, both become more resilient. The work feeds off of itself and compounds.

There is still work to do. Always will be. There are components of the practices that I engage with every day with the intention of strengthening my Emotional Pillar. It’s a forever project, but one worth working on. A beauty and richness entered my life that I never anticipated when I first started working on simply sitting with an emotion early in rehab.

To live, to feel, to experience fully.

This pillar isn’t formed in an instant; it’s grown and strengthened daily.

Keep showing up,

Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)

We talk about grief, addiction recovery, emotional suppression, and why “trauma” is often misunderstood—not as an identity, but as a set of adaptations we learned to survive.

Midway through the conversation, Julian guides me through a somatic exercise after he notices I’m still holding emotion while speaking about my daughter. What unfolds is a moment of presence, connection, and relief that I didn’t expect.

This isn’t a conversation about fixing yourself.
It’s about recovering what’s already inside you.

By this time I have lost track of how many times this ritual has played out in a similar form. I wrote before rehab, really for no one other than myself. It was a practice I knew helped me calm my mind by letting me extract the swirl of thoughts in my head.

I found solace in the early mornings. The chaos of the day had yet to pick up. I also found, when it came to writing, that the critical, filter-heavy portion of my brain had yet to ramp up. It allowed me to write out a thought without holding back.

I can always clean it up later, I would think.

There has been immense value in this process. I can take experiences, ideas, and learnings and turn them, shape them, and sharpen them. It’s heavily reflective and often I use the practice to allow experiences and perspective to sit and set within me. Taking the time to write pushes me to attempt to think and perceive learnings from experiences from numerous angles, yet I know it’s incomplete.

To fully experience life, to push yourself to show up each day and progress along in your own journey, you cannot isolate and be complete. There are different methods of thinking and engaging with the world when we bring others in. Those are the conversations—the new perspective gained through someone else’s experience. Maybe it disrupts a line of thinking or way of living that I had. Maybe it strengthens it. Often, I find myself overcome with awe at the strength and learnings others have gained as they’ve walked through difficult parts of their own lives.

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Take my recent conversation with Kyle Kamp, as an example. As a young man, he embarked on a largely self-guided weight loss journey where he went from 270 pounds (on a 5’9” frame) down to 130 pounds. To look at Kyle today, you would never have guessed he was once in a position where he needed to lose 140 pounds. Yet the learnings and insights he brought out of this experience go so much further than simply numbers reducing on a scale. In this segment alone, Kyle shows perspective, resolve, and a willingness to make his objectives achievable that were the mindset he needed to carry him through his weight loss journey.

The numbers associated with Kyle’s transformation are staggering, no doubt. Yet, I walked away from my time with him thinking about things much deeper than numbers on a scale. It challenged my thinking on how to pursue structure before creativity, to cement the process that leads to the output. Kyle spoke of it in other areas of his life well beyond his weight loss journey, and I have found a similar benefit to nailing the basics and continuing to show up consistently and imperfectly.

Days later, I was having a conversation with Julian Bermudez, a therapist who specializes in guiding people through moments of discomfort from their past that hold them back in the present. He often, but not always, uses psychedelics to help him in this process. I never could have imagined the synergies between conversations from completely different perspectives and lived experiences. Julian talked of his work and guiding people towards the discomfort, showing them how they can adapt, manage, and grow through it.

There was a completely unexpected moment in my conversation with Julian. He disrupted the flow of our talk when he identified heaviness in my voice.

“Are you willing to explore this?”

That question changed everything. The practice he walked me through has lightened my heart ever since. It dropped a defensive posture that I have been walking around with and completely altered how I engage with myself and others in my life today.

This is why the conversations matter.

In today’s world of hooks, ultra-virality, and quick swipes, I’m trying to slow down. So sit with these conversations. Reflect on how a different lived experience could apply to your own.

These conversations have strengthened that quiet, secluded morning writing ritual.

It’s not about the cheap, quick fix. It’s about forging change through engagement with others and taking the personal action necessary to see the change through.

Join the conversations for the full experience.

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Keep showing up.

Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)

I gripped the three-ring binder as my knee bounced. I eyed the clock on the wall again.

Five more minutes until the first session began.

I had been invited to skip any session I wanted the first three days of rehab, but I knew it was an offer I had to reject. My stomach turned at the thought of stepping into that room for the first time.

I stared ahead, trying to calm myself, directionless and unsure how my life could possibly unfold from here. Thoughts raced through my mind as I stood to walk to my first group session.

How am I ever supposed to do this?

Session by session, I adjusted to the rhythms of rehab. I grew more comfortable sitting in those chairs for hours on end, and began developing a closeness with others through our shared struggles. I found myself drawn to people who had one of two traits—an ability to sit in present-moment observation and reflection, and those with a real, but healthy, fear of what life outside the safe walls of rehab would entail.

I knew that by the time I left rehab, my everyday life would have to change if the fragile momentum I was building was going to survive.

I had been so rule and routine driven before rehab, needing to execute my day flawlessly to avoid throwing everything out the window and going to drink. The simple act of sleeping in, getting criticized for work I was doing, or not performing as well on a workout as I desired might send me into a six-day tailspin of drunkenness, chaos, lying, and hiding from the world.

I knew I needed to find a manner of living—a new lens through which to see the world—if the twenty-eight day reset I was going through was going to stick.

As the repetitive days within rehab continued on, I slowly began discovering a way of living each day that allowed for presence, flexibility and a genuine focus on personal progress. I threw out the idea of comparing myself with others and focused only on myself today compared to who I was yesterday and trusted that if I did the work required of me today, tomorrow would yield better results.

I did away with desires of perfection and, for the first time in my life, embraced inefficiency. In doing so, I found practices that became my guiding light in each day. Practices that were easy to translate into action, that I could progress in, and that helped me believe I could face each day anew as I walked on my new path of recovery.

What I didn’t realize then was that I was beginning to build the practices that now anchor my life.

They were simple, yet held depth and significant space for exploration. They allowed me to have days where I excelled and others where simply showing up was the best I could do for the day, and that was alright. And without realizing it at the time in rehab, they extended far beyond healing from alcoholism.

These practices are not a checklist. Simply doing them does not solve a specific problem. Yet living by them and allowing them to shape the lens at which you view the world, your problems and how everything fits together has immense power.

They are practiced not to be completed, but to become integrated into who you are.

Since leaving rehab, I began shaping, honing and understanding how these practices fit together and how they could be applied beneficially to my life.

They became the source of my physical, emotional, and spiritual strengthening. Over time, five practices clearly emerged. Simple in concept. Approachable daily. Demanding in their application over time. Together, they became the framework that still holds me:

Movement
Awe
Vision
Community
Faith

Simple, not easy. Flexible, not rigid. Permitting progression, never perfection.

We’ll spend much more time investigating each later. These worked for me. They carried me when life came bearing down with all its might after rehab. They aren’t a prescription—but when you let them shape how you see the world instead of treating them like a checklist, something changes. People change.

Keep showing up.

Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)

“You do this one day at a time.”

I stared at the man standing at the front of the room who had just said those words. I felt self-conscious, hoping the blankness in my mind wasn’t written across my face.

I understood the literal words, but I didn’t get them.

I tried to rev my mind, searching for meaning. Nothing came. And just like that, he moved on. Our morning rehab session had a schedule to hit and there was more to cover.

I am a slow learner. Always have been.

Athletically. Intellectually. In most skills, really. At best, I’ve landed somewhere near average. I have brought home enough third-place finishes, C-team awards, and JV participation certificates that, if gathered, would fill a sizable trophy case.

I never stood out.
But I also rarely failed to show back up.

That persistence wasn’t something I invented. I credit my parents for it entirely. I mention it because it would become the first of two foundational characteristics behind what would eventually shape the rhythm of More Than Capable.

The second came from early in my career: learning to invite challenge.

To pressure-test ideas. To welcome pushback. To let a perspective be refined—or completely rewritten—without ego collapsing in the process.

I saw it as normal at the time because it was all that I knew. Having now spent more time in the “professional” world, I understand the richness of that lesson much more, and how rare it was to receive it at such a young age.

More Than Capable will live in that same rhythm:

Searching.
Thinking out loud.
Pressure-testing.
Refining.
And then showing up again.

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Think of the podcast as the place where ideas are born in conversation. But the work doesn’t stop there. I don’t intend to air a podcast, hope it gains traction on YouTube, and then move on.

Conversations introduce ideas.
Action stress tests them.
Writing clarifies them.
Time and repetition decide whether they’re worth keeping.

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You can follow just the writing. Or just the podcast. Each stands on its own.

But together, they tell a fuller story—not just ideas, but of how ideas change a life when applied slowly, imperfectly, and continually over time.

More Than Capable isn’t about consuming more.
It’s about staying long enough for something to change.

A few months after leaving rehab, a man with the gentlest soul and an exterior worn and hardened from years of booze, bikes, and hardships spoke up: “If you have one foot in the anxiety of tomorrow and one foot in the regret of yesterday, all you can do is shit on today.”

I finally understood what that man, months before in rehab, had meant.

If we can find faith to release anxiety and forgiveness to lay down regret, we’re free to stand fully in today—clear, grounded, and capable of taking the next right step.

Just for today.

Keep showing up.

Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)

More Than Capable is not a feed to scroll or a body of work to consume quickly. It exists for moments when life demands more of you than you feel prepared for.

If something brought you here—curiosity, struggle, loss, or the quiet sense that there must be a better way to live—this page will help you orient yourself before going any further.

I’ve put together a short guide that explains:

• What this work is (and what it isn’t)

• Who it’s for

• How to read it without rushing

• Where to begin, depending on where you are in life right now

Start here:
Read the Start Here page

If this work resonates, subscribing ensures you receive new writing as it’s published.
No noise. No algorithms.
Just writing meant to be returned to when life gets heavy.

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Take your time.
Come back to it when you need to.

— Kyle

I was falling apart physically, drinking enough in isolation to begin taking measurable and noticeable tolls on my body. I was an emotional wreck, as the everyday flow of life played out and my reactions sent me on white-knuckle rides of reactivity. I was spiritually lost, having given up on finding any purpose or meaning in my life.

Finally, after completely giving up and trying to end it all, I relented. Guided by the few in my life who hadn’t left my side, I ended up in rehab.

I decided early on in my recovery journey that I wasn’t going to spin my wheels alone anymore. I clearly understood that when action was required, I — and I alone — was the one required to vigorously take that action; but I was no longer going to retreat into isolation. I was going to listen, find ways to trust again, and work with others to find a solution to the destruction that alcoholism was bringing into my life.

I knew I had to focus on strengthening myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I had been collapsing under the strain of life and became resolved to build strength and resiliency to ready myself for life outside of the safety of rehab.

Physically, I had degraded to the point that I knew I wouldn’t be able to show up when it mattered most. I could feel my body slowing down, silently wasting away. It wasn’t a matter of having superhero strength or speed; it was about having the baseline capability to be there when life demanded it of me. I began taking simple steps to care for my body and mind and quickly started thinking more clearly and feeling better.

Emotionally, I attempted to stop or suppress any emotion from ever occurring and chastised myself when I uncomfortably felt the aftershock of an emotion coursing through my system. I strove to learn how to accept the emotions that can’t be controlled and sit, even when uncomfortable, with the natural highs and lows that they bring. I worked to ensure that those emotions didn’t carry me off as they had in the past.

Spiritually, I was empty. I had traversed from obligatory pew sitter, to atheist, to agnostic to “spiritual,” to nihilism. Confusion abounded and life had lost all meaning. I couldn’t understand. I found a way to establish a deeply personal and one-on-one relationship with God. No evangelizing. No unquestioned reliance on another human. Just a real relationship and trust in something greater than me.

It worked. I could feel it.

I didn’t realize at the time that what I was discovering and incorporating into my life would be tested again — this time at a level I could never have imagined.

For fifty-seven days, life seemed impossibly good. Fifty-seven days of envisioning a life together without the chaos of alcohol. Fifty-seven days until we had our entire world turned upside down.

Six months later we walked out of the hospital without our daughter. The burden of the loss felt too great, and we could sense immediately we did not understand the path we needed to travel.

Unexpectedly, we found progress by returning to the same language, mindset, and action I had learned after leaving rehab. It was a completely different hardship, but we found ourselves returning to the basics of our physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, just as before.

Amidst the pain of loss, it felt right. We worked on acceptance of the difficulties we had been given, focused on the progress we could make, and aimed to walk with others who had preceded us when they were open to guiding us.

The parallels of these two journeys were striking and impossible to ignore. I found that the early mindset and practices that I had established in addiction recovery were honed, sharpened, and forged into our daily lives after the loss of our daughter. What had permitted me to move forward and establish an impossibly satisfying life after addiction was also permitting us as a couple to reclaim our lives as we navigated a road no parent should have to travel.

To facilitate our healing and growth during the tumultuous months and years following my time in rehab, I grounded myself in a set of five daily practices. They were simple, repeatable, unsexy, and approachable. Yet they challenged me, kept me in line and allowed me to maintain incremental progress toward strengthening my pillars of physical, emotional and spiritual fitness each day. They kept me from slipping backward and taught me how to move forward with grace.

They were the engine that powered the progress.

As the challenges in life grew as we navigated our daughter’s life and departure from this earth, I began seeing things more clearly. I suddenly realized the importance of these three pillars I had established in early recovery.

They are how life delivers its greatest challenges to us. All of us, at both the macro and micro level, will be challenged physically, emotionally, and spiritually as we trudge the roads of our lives. Sometimes we seek that challenge ourselves, but more often life unexpectedly applies pressure in these areas.

Every stage of life will naturally bring with it new forms of these challenges, but regardless of the stage that you’re in, preparation, focus and the daily discipline to act are needed if we are to rise up to those occasions that life will demand of us.

There are no hacks, no optimization techniques and no shortcuts that will be obsessed over here.

This will be a focus on the daily art of living that builds within us the foundation to rise up and meet the physical, emotional and spiritual challenges that life will generate. It is not a defensive or passive position; it is going out to meet life on its terms, determined to show up and live the greatest life possible.

If this resonates, you’re not alone.
And if you know someone who might need these words right now, I invite you to share this with them.

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This is what More Than Capable is built on.
Not hacks. Not shortcuts. Not avoidance.
Just the daily, disciplined work of preparing ourselves — physically, emotionally, and spiritually — to meet life when it demands the most of us.

We don’t do it alone.

Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)

Those words have hung in the air between me and others on numerous occasions over the past two years. I get caught up on what to say each time. My gut response is not socially acceptable, so I hold back.

Deep down I want to grab the person by the shoulders. I want to stare them in the eyes, shake them vigorously and scream, “You don’t understand how much of a disaster I was! You are way more capable than you realize!”

It initially angers me and then saddens me to realize how little so many people think of themselves. Not in an ‘I can do anything I set my mind to’ kind of way, but in their belief in their ability to rise up when it matters most.

That comment has stayed with me, embedded deep within me as something I want to help others see in themselves. I have turned it all over in my mind, wondering how the work that I have been doing could be pointed towards dismantling this belief that ordinary individuals could not rise up to the challenges life will present us with.

That belief, that we are not capable, is the foundation of why this work is becoming More Than Capable.

And today finally feels like the day. The day to redirect and focus the messaging of this body of work from addiction recovery to something bigger. Drawing from my experience navigating the world of recovery from addiction and loss will certainly remain at the core of much of the work; it is, after all, the experiences that have shaped me the most.

But I feel a higher calling, a pull to broaden the impact of this work.

The Chapter 3 Stigma page will be rebranded to More Than Capable, an homage to that comment that so many people have made upon hearing our story.

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From the beginning, I wanted Chapter 3 Stigma to be something a person could find at their lowest point. I pictured myself curled up in our dank basement, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled tight, hiding from the world while detoxing from another bender. I was desperate for relief, but unsure where to turn or how to begin.

As the body of work has grown, I developed a real fear — that the most important conversations, the ones that could reach that person, would become buried in a long feed, harder to find when they’re needed most.

So it’s time to pause, consolidate the most impactful work, and make it easier to access, all while allowing the next chapter to begin.

Chapter 3 Stigma will remain free, accessible, and readily available for anyone who finds themselves, or a loved one, in a fight with addiction. That work is not being erased. It is being preserved intentionally and given the space it deserves.

I can’t thank you all enough for your time, attention, and trust you have given to me over the last two years. This work has impacted me more than I can properly articulate.

👉 If this work has mattered to you, the next step is simple: subscribe to the new More Than Capable podcast feed on Apple Podcast, Spotify or YouTube.

All new conversations will live there going forward.

We will all be faced with unanticipated challenges. There will be no choice but to stand up and face them or be crushed by them. You can hide from that fact, or you can prepare.

And here’s a little secret. I was never alone as we trudged through the challenges life presented over the last decade and a half. That’s the thing that so many people are missing. Understanding how hardship is endured when there is the support of community, friends, and even (often in the darkest and most isolating times) God.

If you know someone who doubts their ability to endure what life is putting in front of them — someone who feels overwhelmed, ashamed, or stuck — I hope you’ll share this with them.

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This isn’t a pivot, it’s a continuation of the work, with a clearer focus on a higher calling and broader reach.

All the best,

Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)

P.S. If you’ve been following the podcast and want to continue with this work, you’ll need to subscribe to the new podcast feed, More Than Capable. That’s where all new conversations will be published going forward. You can find the links here → Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube