When I was seventeen or eighteen, I spent one particularly beautiful summer night cleaning tables inside an empty restaurant.
I remember looking outside and thinking about the kids I went to school with. I went to public school, but it was in an affluent neighborhood, so every summer, it felt like everyone disappeared to Europe.
& I had never been to Europe. So while they were somewhere in Italy or France, I was wiping down tables in a restaurant with no customers.
I felt bad for myself that night and I'm not going to rewrite the story and pretend that I was exceptionally evolved at 17, completely immune to comparison. Because I wasn’t… and I was sad.
After work, I went to the Ralphs and bought myself chocolate ice cream because I needed something to make me feel better. and I still remember this clearly… I went home & put on my favorite show and went to bed.
But then I went back to work.
Because that was the hand I had.
I didn’t have family money, and I didn’t have a dad creating stability for us or opening doors for me. I didn’t have the kind of access that allows you to spend your summers traveling while someone else quietly absorbs the cost.
What I had was time, and a positive attitude. I had a mother who had taught me how to work, and an almost irrational willingness to show up.
Those cards didn’t look especially impressive at the time.
But I played them.
We hear “play the cards you’re dealt” and interpret it as resignation.
Accept your circumstances! Make peace with what you don’t have! Learn to be grateful for less!
But no. That has never been my interpretation.
The hand you’re dealt is only your starting hand.
You aren’t sentenced to it forever, but you do have to play it before you can improve it. & You have to stop staring at someone else’s cards long enough to recognize what is sitting in front of you.
When I was young, sometimes the only card I had was a good attitude. (& I’m being serious)
I primarily worked in restaurants or frozen yogurt shops. I was shy and didn’t always know what to say, but I could ask my manager if they needed anything. I could be kind to the other employees. I could offer to cover someone’s shift. I could arrive on time. I could treat a small job as though it mattered.
When I got my first jobs: as a tutor, at Menchie’s, as a hostess…. my mom told me to treat every job like it was the most important job in the world.
It didn’t matter if I thought the job was beneath me. It wasn’t beneath me if it was teaching me how to become someone people could depend on.
So I became reliable. Reliability became trust. Trust became responsibility. Responsibility became relationships. Relationships became access.
Access eventually became opportunity, reputation and money.
But I couldn’t play the reputation card before I had a reputation. I couldn’t play the money card before I had money. I couldn’t walk into a room with the confidence and authority I have now before I had built the evidence to support it.
I could only play the cards I had. And because I kept playing them, the hand kept changing.
My mom is a gangster, shes the MVP of my life. She came to the US, held it down for me and figured things out, on her own, over and over again. My dad was not always stable; he was in and out, so his presence often created more uncertainty for the two of us.
Of course I could look around at girls who had different relationships with their fathers and wish I had been given that kind of stability. & maybe sometimes I did. But wishing for a different father could not give me a different father. So eventually, consciously or not, I started becoming the stability I was missing.
I developed the masculine qualities I had once hoped someone else would provide: structure, protection, decisiveness, consistency and the ability to create financial security.
This isn’t a pity story by the way. and it also isn’t a perfectly packaged healing story where I tell you that everything happened for a reason.
Some things simply should have been different. But they weren’t. And there is an enormous amount of power in asking:
Not in five years. Not once someone recognizes your potential. Not if your parents give you money. Not when you become prettier, more connected, more confident or more qualified.
What can you do with what is in your hand today?
Maybe all you have right now is time, so you trade time for money. Then perhaps you become more strategic and trade some of your time for access. You volunteer to help because it places you in a room you couldn’t otherwise enter. You take the less glamorous assignment because it puts you closer to the people you can learn from.
Eventually, access becomes relationships. Relationships create opportunities. Opportunities help you build skills, evidence and a reputation.
Then money comes, and you can begin reinvesting it.
You invest in your health. Your appearance. Your education. Your business. Your environment. You become more polished and more confident. Now those qualities become cards you can play too.
People love to flatten someone’s success into whatever is most visible at the end…. “She’s beautiful. She’s confident. She knows everyone. She has money.”But those may not have been the cards she started with. They may be the cards she earned by playing a much less impressive hand extremely well. (Speaking from experience, cough cough)
The internet will sell you the fantasy that one piece of information is separating you from a completely different life.
“Buy this course. Learn this secret. Adopt this morning routine. Change your energy. Become unrecognizable in thirty days.”
But in my experience, thats all bullshit. Evolution is much less cinematic.
It’s built brick by brick… Like doing a small job well before anyone important is watching. Or following up when you don’t yet have enough status for people to follow up with you. It’s being pleasant when your personality is the only form of social leverage you possess… or being reliable before you are impressive.
It’s letting one card produce the next one.
Your positive attitude may not feel like much, but perhaps it gets you invited back. & Then being invited back gives you another opportunity. & That opportunity gives you experience. Which gives you confidence. And confidence changes the way you communicate. & the way you communicate changes the rooms you can enter. And the rooms you enter change the people you meet. and the people you meet change what becomes possible.
Are you seeing it now? None of the individual moves look life-changing while you are making them.
That is why so many people stop.
They think that because the card in their hand is ordinary, it cannot produce an extraordinary life.
I think about that night in the restaurant often. at 17, I would have looked at the girls in Europe and assumed I understood where everyone stood.
They were ahead. I was behind.
But one summer can’t tell you how someone’s life will unfold. Neither can one Instagram post, one job title, one family, one relationship or one bank balance.
You don’t know how the cards will fall. You only know whether you are playing yours.
The girls I envied may have started with cards I didn’t possess. But while I was cleaning tables, covering shifts and treating each job like it mattered, I was quietly creating new ones.
I built work ethic, self-trust, the ability to make money. And most importantly, I built the stability I once wanted someone else to create for me… And then eventually, I built options.
There will always be someone with a card you don’t have.
Someone will be prettier, richer, more connected, more educated, more supported or further ahead.
Let them be. Their hand has nothing to do with your next move.
Look at your own life and ask:
What do I have right now?
Maybe you have time. Maybe you have taste. Maybe you are exceptionally warm, organized or observant. Maybe you don’t have connections, but you are willing to introduce yourself. Maybe you aren’t the most talented person in the room, but you do what you say you are going to do. Maybe you have been through enough instability that you know how to remain calm when everyone else is panicking. Maybe all you have today is a positive attitude and a little bit of reliability.
Play them.
Use what you have until what you have becomes more.
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