For years I've been asking myself the same question — and actually talking to myself out loud when I'm alone.
Why do I keep falling back into the same patterns I know aren't helping me?
I know what I should be doing. I've read enough, listened to enough, lived enough to understand the mechanisms. And I still find myself, regularly, doing the same things I said I wouldn't do. Not starting the thing I said I'd start. Stopping again without finishing. The constant stoplight effect, haunting me my whole life.
I'm constantly giving myself a hard time for not performing — and because of it I can never fully relax. Always a feeling of unexplained pressure. Constantly in conflict with myself, only seeing the wrong habits and missing the positive wins.
To most people's view — even my own — I'm living the dream. I live in paradise. I have a beautiful sailing catamaran, a villa I rent out, a unique partly-bamboo house I built with some really good friends in four months, surrounded by nature, a creek running into a small lake right in front of my house, and just four minutes' walk to one of the most beautiful beaches in Phuket where I keep my boat during the high season. I have two beautiful daughters — one I'm raising here on my own. By most measures, I'm living the dream.
And still there's a quiet tension that doesn't go away. Not unhappiness exactly. More like an inability to actually stop, relax, and take in the beauty of life — because there's always a pull. Keep moving, keep doing, keep going. Even when there's nothing urgent.
I've spoken to enough men to know I'm not unusual in this. The man who has the career, the house, the family, and still wakes up at 3am with a low-level anxiety he can't name. The man who knows he should exercise, sleep better, drink less — and doesn't. Not because he's lazy. Because something underneath keeps pulling him back to the pattern he already knows.
What I've started to understand — slowly, through reading, through conversations, through testing it on myself — is that the pattern isn't really about the habits. It's about identity. Who you believe you are at the level underneath the decisions. A man who believes he's someone who "struggles with consistency" will keep struggling, regardless of the system or the plan or the willpower he brings to it. Because the behaviour will always find its way back to the identity.
That's the thing I didn't know I needed to fix first.
Not the diet. Not the exercise programme. Not the morning routine. The story I was telling myself about who I actually am.
I'm 51. I don't have this figured out yet. But what I do have is a clearer picture of why the previous attempts didn't stick — and a different question to ask at the start. Instead of "what should I be doing?" the question that actually changes things is: who do I want to be?
Not what results do I want. Who.
That's what this is about. That's why I started this journey — and why I want to share it with others so they can improve themselves too.
I'm not at the end. I'm probably never going to be at the end. I'm at the beginning — which means if you're asking the same questions, you can follow along as I figure it out. The things I learn, I'll share here. The tools I build and the processes, I'll make available. The moments where it works, and the ones where I fall back into the old bad habits — I'll share those too.
If that sounds useful, you're in the right place.