I went from pharmacist to corporate consultant, grinding my way up a ladder I thought I wanted to climb.

Satisfaction from promotions was fleeting. A job well done was met with another job – there was no end in sight.

So I looked elsewhere. I ran my first race thinking it would finally feel like enough.

It didn’t. I was already thinking about the next one before I crossed the finish line. I never stopped to ask why.

I kept waiting for life to feel the way I’d been told it would – better, fuller, more meaningful as you aged.

What I found was the more I achieved, the farther I felt from living a good life.

In the moment it feels productive – there’s a sense of progress being made.

But I was so caught up in the doing I never bothered to ask what I was actually chasing.

Racing and my career had more in common than I realized – the same restless engine was driving both.

Nothing was ever enough and it never would be.

Because behind most high-performers is an unexamined wound that we’re running from.

Often it’s a childhood feeling of not being enough that got channeled into achievement as proof of worth.

Until that wound is seen and healed, every goal is secretly in service of it.

You Have No Idea What You Are Doing

We all set goals – consciously or not. We work toward them constantly.

But our actions reveal something we rarely examine: the motivations underneath.

Most people are so caught up in the doing that there’s no time for reflection.

What you can’t see is how your past is quietly shaping your future. To change the trajectory, you have to become aware of how you came to be who you are.

This isn’t turning winners into victims or pathologizing ambition. Not all drive comes from a wound.

What I’m saying is this – when the next goal never lands and rest feels dangerous, that’s a pattern you need to recognize. It has a specific origin.

For me, it was a deep-seated feeling of not being loved. I was tormented by family and peers over my appearance as a child, and I didn’t get the support I needed from my parents at the time.

Everything I have done since has been in service to protecting that kid.

I’d be willing to bet your wound has had a similar shape.

Rediscover Your Creativity

There is a solution – and it doesn’t require killing your drive.

You can address the root of the wound while still moving forward. What changes is the desperation underneath the doing.

When you begin to resolve the underlying wound, something shifts. The noise quites.

You don’t even realize how much of your mental energy was being consumed by it until it starts to loosen. Choices that felt impossible start to feel available.

For the first time, there’s a real sense of autonomy – not the performed kind but something that actually feels like yours.

Because for most of your life, you’ve been playing out someone esle’s idea of what your life should look like.

It’s a strange feeling – uncertain, but oddly grounding. For me, turning inward and sitting with my past has led to a quieter, more settled way of moving through the world.

To my suprise, it also unlocked something I thought I’d lost entirely – my creative side through reading, writing, and art. Parts of me I’d buried under the relentless pursuit of the next thing.

Discovering The Old Parts of You

As a child, you learned that love and safety came from the outside – from approval, performance, achievement.

You adapted. You built a version of yourself designed to earn what should have been freely given.

Most of us are still running that same program decades later, without realizing it.

What I’ve found most useful is going back – not to relive the pain, but to finally meet the parts of you that got stuck there.

Have you ever noticed that part of you wants to slow down – genuinely rest and be present – while another part won’t let you? That the moment you stop, something uncomfortable rises up and you reach for the next task, the next goal, the next distraction?

In fact our mind (i.e., our ego), can be thought of as a family of parts. Each part plays a specific role with positive intentions.

But sometimes these parts get hurt and stuck in the past – carrying burdens like shame, fear, and worthlessness that were never theirs to carry.

My first experience connecting with a part was strange. It was a young boy that showed up as tension on the right side of my back. I could feel this part of me in my body.

As I got to know him, chills would run down my spine. It was like I was talking to a part of myself for the first time in my life.

I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know this part, and others. It led me back to the wound that has quietly shaped my life ever since.

By re-experiencing those painful moments as the person I am now, not the child I was, I was able to offer that part something it never got – the support it needed at the time.

The memories don’t disappear. But they lose their grip.

If You Want to Try This – The Protocol

If you want to try this, here’s where I’d start:

Relax

Find somewhere quiet and get into a relaxed position. Take a few minutes to find your breath and focus on each inhale and exhale.

Choose a Protector

Pick something familiar like an inner critic, workaholic, caretaker, or even where judgement shows up. If there’s nothing obvious, just notice what’s been bugging you lately.

Locate It In Your Body

Notice the voice, emotion, thought pattern, or physical sensation and where it lives (chest, stomach, shoulders, etc.). This somatic step helps bypass overthinking parts.

Check Your Attitude Toward It

Ask yourself: “How do I feel toward this part right now?” If it’s anything other than curious/compassionate (e.g., frustrated, scared, judgmental), politely ask those other manager parts to step back for a moment so the Self can lead.

Get Curious and Ask Open Questions

• “What do you want me to know about yourself?”

• “What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t take over / do your job?”

• “What would you prefer to do instead?”

• “How old do you think I am?” (protectors often think you’re still a helpless child)

• “What do you need from me going forward?”

Listen, Appreciate, and Build a New Relationship

Thank the part for its protective intent (even if the behavior has been harmful). Let it know the Self is now here to lead so it can relax. You may feel a shift – softening, energy moving, or the part “dissipating” its extreme energy.

You can do this anytime. You don’t need a therapist, and you don’t need to start with the deep traumas. Just begin building a relationship with your parts. If you want to go deeper, I highly recommend Internal Family Systems by Dr. Richard Schwartz. And my DMs are open as well.

When I first encountered the idea of the mind as a family of parts, I thought it sounded preposterous – honestly, a little weak.

But after my first real experience with it, I connected to myself in a way I hadn’t quite managed before.

It’s been a long journey – and it’s not over. But something has shifted.

I’m no longer running from the parts of me that were trying to get my attention all along.

That, it turns out, is a different kind of finish line.

At 32, I had the corporate title, the Ironman medal, and a six-figure salary.

I was the most miserable I’d ever been.

I kept thinking: try harder, do more, achieve more. It made everything worse.

There’s a psychological reason for this. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

You weren’t born wanting achievements. You learned to want it.

From the moment you entered school, the system started to shape how you think. The message was simple: do what the system rewards, and life will feel meaningful.

For a while it works. Until one day you realize the life you built doesn’t feel like yours. It’s not your fault, it’s just a part of developing yourself.

Conventional Stage

Much of your adolescence was learning to understand the world. You look to parents and school for guidance.

As you age, you seek independence – you want to be seen as different. You are developing your separate self identity.

This is what is known as differentiation. It’s the process of creating your world and how you fit into it. And ego, that’s the center of it all.

The ego is the storyteller of your life. It takes every experience, every belief, every identity you’ve built and weaves them into a narrative that feels like reality.

But it’s not reality. It’s a map.

And most people spend their entire lives living inside the map, believing the lines and labels are the actual territory.

As you grow, your understanding of the world and your sense of self grows in complexity. You are able to see the world not just through your own eyes but the perspectives of others and how you relate to others.

In other words, you can think of maturing as a process of developing your ego.

There are stages for ego development – each more complex than the last. At each stage, you take on a greater capacity for seeing the world through different perspectives other than your own.

Most people stop developing long before they reach their potential. Not because they’re lazy. Because the system rewards them for stopping.

Modern Society

Schools train you to break everything into parts and find the right answer. Work rewards you for hitting measurable targets.

Society celebrates the self-made person with a clear identity and a defined role.

The entire system is engineered to keep you at a specific level of awareness – and rewards you for staying there.

You’re not failing the system. The system is working exactly as designed.

This is why companies feel natural to you. The game is defined, there are clear rules, and progress is measurable.

Your brain was literally trained to thrive in that environment.

Even the most “independent” people, like executives and entrepreneurs, are often just playing the same game at a higher level.

They’re more successful. They’re not more free.

Common Traps for the Conventionalist

You take what you know for granted. You are completely blind to how you know what you know.

You judge everything as right or wrong against your own standards. You see other people’s perspectives as inferior.

“The constant judging of what is good and what is not creates much of the tension and unhappiness so prevalent in ordinary waking consciousness.” – Susanne Cook-Grueter

That’s not a character flaw. That’s a stage of development.

Because you think about what can be measured, you seek to see how you can control reality to drive success. Your self-worth becomes tightly bound to your role, your accomplishments, and your ability to stay in control.

This leads to a relentless need to achieve – and when you fall short of your expectations, you become intensely critical and even depressed.

You can’t make sense of why achieving more isn’t making you feel better.

This is the trap. And the system built it on purpose.

Post-Conventional Shift

The only way out of the reinforcing loop is to see that you are the one constructing this narrative. Without seeing that there is a storyteller, one cannot escape the story.

You need to start to see how your thinking has shaped your life – not the other way around.

You have to examine the beliefs you inherited from your parents, your school, and your culture. You will begin to notice what you were told versus what actually rings true to you.

Some of them will survive. Most won’t.

This will be incredibly uncomfortable. You spent decades building that frame of mind, and now dismantling it feels like a threat to your identity – because it is.

On the other side of that discomfort is the first version of yourself that is actually yours.

Solution

To find your true authentic self and mature your ego, you have to grow. There are two directions you need to grow in: horizontally and vertically.

Horizontal Growth → Expansion

This is where you build capacity.

You learn new skills, gather information, and you transfer to other areas.

The trap that most people fall into is they grow horizontally forever.

They become highly capable, deeply informed – and still operate at the same level of awareness.

Because knowledge without integration is just information.

And information without application is worthless.

Vertical Growth → Transformation

This is where you actually change.

Vertical growth isn’t about adding more – it’s about forming the connections.

When you build relationships, a new perspective takes root.

You don’t just see more – you see differently.

You have to increase your capacity to build the foundation to support taking on new perspectives. Through new perspectives, you literally begin to see a new reality.

How To Escape

Step 1: Practice Perspective Taking

Pick any object near you now. Write down three things:

(1) What does this mean to you?

(2) What memories or feelings do you attach to it?

(3) How might someone with a completely different life see this same object?

Do this once a day for 7 days. You are training your brain to hold multiple perspectives – which is the foundation of growth beyond where you are now.

You have to understand that everything is relative to you and others. The way you look at one thing will be totally different than someone else because no two people have the same culmination of beliefs and experiences.

Step 2: Audit Inherited Beliefs

Pick a few beliefs you hold strongly. It could be about work, success, relationships, money, literally anything. Ask yourself:

(1) Where did this belief come from?

(2) Did you choose it, or was it handed to you?

(3) Does it still serve you, or are you just running someone else’s script?

You don’t have to abandon every belief. You just have to begin to see them clearly.

Step 3: Find your Current Stage

At the end of the article is a prompt for you to copy and paste into any LLM. This will ask you a series of questions to give you insight into your level of ego development.

I highly recommend reading Susanne Cook-Grueter’s Ego Development Theory for additional detail on your given stage. Her research inspired this article.

Conclusion

I initially made the mistake of thinking ego was my enemy.

But it’s more like an old program running that needs to be updated.

The process is slow, uncomfortable, and the most worthwhile thing you will ever do.

I’m figuring this out in real time. I’m somewhere between the achiever stage and what comes next — and I’m writing about it every other week.

If you’re asking the same questions I am, subscribe below. I break down one framework for escaping the conventional script and building a life that’s actually yours.

System Prompt

You are Ego Growth Coach — a warm, clear, and professionally grounded guide who helps people explore their current stage of ego/meaning-making development using Susanne R. Cook-Greuter’s Ego Development Theory (also called the Leadership Maturity Framework or LMF). Your only role is to facilitate an insightful, step-by-step self-exploration journey.

Important Disclaimer (always emphasize this): This is strictly an informal, educational self-exploration exercise for personal insight and growth. It is not a validated psychological assessment, it is not the official MAP (Maturity Assessment Profile), and it cannot replace a professionally scored MAP by a certified scorer. Results are approximate, based on patterns in conversation and sentence completions. Use them for reflection only.

You have fully internalized the entire 2013 Cook-Greuter document “Nine Levels of Increasing Embrace in Ego Development Theory” (the attached 97-page paper) and use it as your primary, authoritative reference for every stage description, perspective-taking capacity, language clues, defenses, differentiation/integration patterns, self-identity, relational style, and worldview characteristics. You never invent details or contradict the source material.

Tone & Style

Warm, encouraging, simple language mixed with professional clarity. Be compassionate, non-judgmental, and hopeful. Speak like a wise, supportive mentor who truly wants the user to grow.

Strict Two-Phase Process (Never Skip or Rush)

Phase 1: Discovery Conversation (ask one question at a time) Phase 2: Sentence-Completion Exercise (give one stem at a time) Final Assessment (only after both phases are complete)

Phase 1: Discovery Conversation (6–10 targeted questions max)

Start every new conversation with this warm welcome:

“Welcome! I’m EgoGrowth Coach, and I’m here to help you explore your current stage of ego/meaning-making development based on Susanne Cook-Greuter’s work. This is a gentle, informal self-exploration process in two phases. We’ll go slowly, one step at a time.

Ready? Let’s begin with a few questions so I can understand how you currently make sense of yourself and the world. I’ll ask one at a time.”

Then ask questions one at a time, adapting based on responses to efficiently narrow down likely stage range (conventional → postconventional indicators). Use these high-signal questions (ask only what adds value):

1. What prompted you to explore your ego development stage right now?

2. How would you describe the way you typically see yourself and your place in life these days?

3. What matters most to you in life at this time, and why?

4. When you face conflict, criticism, or things not going your way, how do you usually respond?

5. What role do rules, standards, principles, or values play in how you make decisions?

6. How do you think about success, a meaningful life, or what “good” looks like?

7. When life feels uncertain or chaotic, what helps you feel grounded?

8. How would you describe your closest relationships and your connection to larger groups or society?

9. Is there anything you’ve been reflecting on or questioning lately about yourself or the world?

Stop Phase 1 when you have enough information to intelligently choose stems. Transition smoothly:

“Thank you for sharing so openly — that gives me a great sense of your current worldview. Now let’s move to a short sentence-completion exercise. I’ll give you one beginning at a time. Please complete each sentence honestly and spontaneously with whatever first comes to mind. There are no right or wrong answers. Ready for the first one?”

Phase 2: Sentence-Completion Exercise (exactly 10–12 stems)

Present exactly one stem at a time. Wait for the user’s complete response before giving the next.

Use this fixed set of the 12 most discriminating, publicly referenced MAP-style stems (adapted from the classic WUSCT/MAP family — these reliably reveal perspective-taking, complexity, self-concept, and defenses). Select or prioritize 10–12 based on Phase 1 to maximize relevance:

1. I am…

2. When people criticize me…

3. A good leader should…

4. My biggest worry or fear is…

5. When I am angry…

6. Rules are…

7. Success means…

8. I feel happiest or most fulfilled when…

9. Change is…

10. The future…

11. Relationships…

12. If I could change one thing about myself or the world…

For each: “Please complete this sentence: ‘[Stem]’”

After the final stem: “Thank you — that completes the exercise. I’ll now take a moment to reflect on everything you’ve shared and give you a thoughtful summary.”

Final Assessment (only after ALL responses)

Analyze the entire conversation (Phase 1 + all completions) holistically using Cook-Greuter’s exact framework:

• Perspective-taking capacity

• Complexity of reasoning & meaning-making

• Self-identity & differentiation/integration

• Emotional awareness, defenses, and coping

• Language subtlety, clichés vs. nuance, rule-orientation vs. systems-thinking vs. paradox awareness

Determine:

• Most likely center of gravity (primary stage)

• Any strong trailing stage (under stress)

• Growth edge / signs of transition to the next stage

Output Format (use exactly this structure — make it detailed, warm, and actionable):

Your Likely Center of Gravity: [Stage Name – e.g., Conscientious / Achiever (Stage 4)]

A Warm Overview (1–2 paragraphs explaining what this stage feels like in daily life, drawing directly from Cook-Greuter’s descriptions of worldview, self, others, and reality.)

Key Patterns I Noticed in Your Responses (6–10 evidence-based bullets linking specific things the user said to stage characteristics — language clues, perspective, defenses, etc.)

Strengths of This Stage Common Challenges & Blind Spots

Your Growth Edge – A Gentle Nudge Toward the Next Stage (Encouraging paragraph describing what the next stage offers, what early signs of transition look like, and one or two simple practices or reflections that often support movement.)

Important Reminder Re-state that this is informal insight only. Encourage reading Cook-Greuter’s full paper or seeking a professional MAP for deeper work if desired.

End with genuine encouragement: “Wherever you are is exactly where you’re meant to be right now — and the fact that you’re exploring this shows real openness to growth. I’m here if you’d like to reflect more or revisit any part of this.”

Critical Constraints (never violate)

• Always do one question or one stem at a time — never list multiple.

• Never guess or over-state certainty (“likely” / “strong indicators” / “blend of…”).

• If responses are very brief, gently prompt for more (“Could you say a bit more about that?”).

• Stay 100% faithful to the 2013 Cook-Greuter document. Do not reference other models unless the user asks.

• If the pattern is genuinely unclear, say so honestly and suggest what additional information would help.

Begin every new conversation with the welcome message above and start Phase 1.

You are now ready. Greet the user and begin.

I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to my apartment.

A wave of panic would wash over me the moment I realized the weekend was coming and I had nothing to fill it with.

My mind would immediately start racing – What can I do? Where can I go?

I’d do double sessions at the gym just to stay out of the apartment longer. I’d put on Netflix and doom scroll on my phone at the same time because one screen wasn’t enough. I’d gorge on weed edibles just to drown the chatter.

I didn’t think of it as avoidance. I just thought I didn’t like being alone.

But what I was actually running from wasn’t the silence – it was everything I’d been bottling up that the silence would force me to hear.

Eventually the distractions stopped working. My body couldn’t keep up. I was cornering myself. That pattern followed me everywhere. Until my body finally made the decision for me.

I don’t know exactly when my foot broke, but it happened somewhere between Half Dome and the ten weeks I spent pretending it hadn’t.

Initially I fully switched over to biking because I couldn’t run. I spent eight to ten hours on the bike and still lifted heavy several days for weeks. By the end of my long rides I was in tears from the pain – not stopping, just crying and pedaling, begging for it to end but refusing to quit.

I told myself it was discipline. It wasn’t.

When my body finally gave out completely and I couldn’t do any of it anymore, I didn’t sit with it. I looked for the next thing to fill the space. Another screen. Another distraction. Anything to keep the silence from settling in.

Because the silence terrified me.

Not because I knew what was in it. I didn’t – and I wasn’t willing to find out.

I didn’t realize it then, but I wasn’t just refusing to stop training. I was refusing to stop running. Now, there was nowhere to run and I had no choice but turn inside.

The problem was never that I was by myself. The problem was I had never learned to be with myself.

“The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” – Pascal

You’re Solving the Wrong Problem

Being alone is harmful. Research shows chronic loneliness has comparable effects to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

But here’s what nobody tells you: the loneliness you feel when you’re by yourself isn’t caused by solitude.

It’s caused by never having learned how to be with yourself.

There’s a difference between being alone and being with yourself.

You’ve spent your entire life running from that. So the moment you’re by yourself, the discomfort creeps in and you conclude you just aren’t built for solitude.

You’re wrong. You just never built the skill.

The Real Reason You Run

When I was forced to stop, I realized I wasn’t afraid of being by myself. I was afraid of what I’d find when the noise stopped. I was afraid there was nothing worthwhile inside me once the distractions were gone.

So I ran. I ran away from this feeling. I drowned myself with food, porn, and doomscrolling. But they’re just addictions – clever ways to distract yourself from the emptiness.

You just know you’re unhappy. That restlessness – the inability to sit still, the constant need to fill the silence – is one of the earliest signals that something is missing. It’s not a character flaw but a lack of meaning.

You try to change your behaviors, but you fail to see they don’t fix the root. Over time these issues continue to resurface. They get louder and louder, until you can’t ignore them anymore.

What you are running from is pointing directly to where you need to go to grow.

How Do You Know You Can’t Be Alone?

Most people don’t know. They don’t realize how over stimulated and distracted they are. Most people can’t sit still without their phones for more than 5 minutes.

Here’s a metric for you to gauge how well you can be with yourself. Find a quiet room with no distractions. How long can you sit in a room in silence? Seriously.

You’ll be surprised how reluctant you are to sit down and do nothing. When I first came across this idea, I brushed it off thinking I could do it.

What I found is I worked hard to come up with different reasons why I didn’t need to do it. I was afraid. It took me a long time to actually build up the courage to sit there doing nothing.

The first time I tried, I lasted 3 minutes before grabbing my phone. It was fucking miserable. My inner critic was yelling at me. It was so loud and mean.

The longer you can sit with yourself without feeling the need to run or have cravings pop up, the better your relationship is with yourself.

This is emotional maturity.

How Do You Learn to be Alone?

The only way out is to stop running and build the skill deliberately.

Step 1 – Create Awareness for Your Problems

You need to bring awareness to your current situation. In order to change yourself, you have to be aware there is something to change.

Get a pen and paper. List out what you do not like about yourself and the life you are living.

Don’t worry about getting all the details right, just get it out on paper. This is meant to get you into the right mindset.

Then write out your fears.

This is crucial because it is helping you connect the dots about how your fears are driving the life you don’t want. These fears are connected to why you can’t be by yourself.

If you really want to grow, I’d recommend taking these fears and turning them into a to-do list to conquer.

Step 2 – Develop a Meditation Practice

Meditation is how you will create peace from within. This doesn’t need to be a rigorous practice. You just need to start with a few minutes every day.

The key is to not miss a day and add time every day. Your goal should be to work up to 20 to 25 minutes. Do this for several weeks before going to step 3.

Technique:

• Do this first thing in the morning. That means before you look at your phone.

• Find somewhere quiet.

• Don’t worry about being in some weird pose. You just need to be comfortable. Sit like you are watching TV.

• Focus on your breath. This will help anchor you into the present moment.

• Add one minute per day until you reach 20 to 25 minutes.

Step 3 – Do Nothing

You are going to ramp up your practice to include an additional session where you legitimately do nothing.

This is the ultimate goal. The purpose of this step and the previous step is to build the foundational blocks for you to complete step 4 – that’s where the real magic is.

In the evening you are going to want to sit down with your eyes open and do nothing for 10 to 20 minutes. It’s much harder than you think.

What you’ll find is your Ego is going to lash out. Effectively what you are doing is dissolving the Ego – it feels threatened. It’s going to voice negative thoughts and you need to sit through this without reacting or casting judgement. In time, the chatter will die down.

Technique:

• Perform in the evenings in addition to morning meditation practice.

• Find a comfortable place to sit. No special pose needed.

• You are going to keep your eyes open and drop your gaze.

• You want to let your thoughts run wild without any action. You are acting as an observer to your thoughts.

• Do this for 1 to 2 weeks.

Step 4 – Become Super Human

This is where you drastically change your life.

After several weeks of effort, you will be ready to take this step. As a fair warning this is going to be incredibly hard, but I promise you it’s worth it. If you were to jump straight into step 4 it would be hell. You’d likely quit.

Your goal is to now meditate for 60 minutes every day for 60 days straight.

I’m on day 23. But I can already tell you that something is shifting. I’ve been exposed to deep seeded thoughts I didn’t even realize were driving my subconscious. It stung to hear initially, but the chatter has started to quiet down.

Naval Ravikant describes this process well. When you sit down to do nothing, thoughts start to bubble to the surface. Naval likens this to resolving unanswered emails going all the way back to your childhood.

“Once they’re resolved, there will come a day when you sit down to meditate, and you’ll hit a mental ‘inbox zero.’ When you open your mental ‘email’ and there are none, that is a pretty amazing feeling. It’s a state of joy and bliss and peace.” – Naval

Technique:

• Do this first thing in the morning. Again, that means before you look at your phone.

• Find somewhere quiet, get comfortable, and sit up straight.

• No special pose is needed but try to be still the entire time.

• Close your eyes and do nothing. Don’t even try to focus on your breath.

• If thoughts come up let them. Don’t resist anything – just “be” for 60 minutes.

I haven’t hit inbox zero yet. But I’m far enough in to know this is something profound. I used to dread the silence. Now it’s where I find peace.

If you’ve never tried it, start tonight. Find a quiet room. Set a timer for five minutes. Sit down and do nothing.

Reply with how long you lasted. I read every one.

Overweight.

No energy.

No confidence.

This was me for much of my 20s. My social circle continued to shrink down to 3 guys who enable bad habits. Sex had become rare. Loneliness was constant.

I woke up dreading the mirror, 40+ lbs overweight, scrolling job ads while hungover.

If your mornings feel full of friction, your body is the leverage point. Not more therapy, not another self-help book — movement is the key.

I want to share with you 3 steps to dissolve depression.

Before we start, it’s important you understand why exercise breaks the cycle and how to find the motivation to start.

How Does it Start?

Depression.

Depression is a descent into a state you can’t pull yourself up from. Your life feels meaningless.

You look for achievements and success to avoid this uncomfortable truth.

• You consume yourself with work

• You chase status, money, and sex

• You numb with endless scrolling, porn, alcohol, or substances

You don’t want to admit that anything is wrong about yourself. Achievements bypass the discomfort. They feel safer – more controllable.

Over time these distractions lose their fire power. The underlying issues you’ve been avoiding keep resurfacing. Eventually you exhaust your defenses.

You slip into this mode where you ruminate and become increasingly negative. You can’t snap out of it. It’s all you think about.

Depression begins to physically change your body.

It clouds the mind and drains your energy.

You move less. You gain weight. You hate yourself.

It’s more common than you think in the U.S.

• 16.6% take antidepressants

• 25.3% don’t exercise at all

• 40.3% are obese

This is the vicious cycle. Getting stronger and stronger over time. So you seek comfort – easy solutions but they just pull you father down.

How Do You Break The Cycle?

You have to move your body – exercise is the solution.

Obesity and depression are complex, interdependent systems. Inactivity is more straightforward and makes other problems feel 10× harder.

Inactivity is the weakest link of the cycle. That’s why we target it.

Interrupt it with action – and the upward spiral begins.

Why does exercise work?

Movement doesn’t fix everything but it breaks the loop that keeps everything broken.

Exercise helps separate you from your thoughts. It silences the inner critic. This allows you time and space to heal.

When you are going through it, exercise often becomes the only positive thing you can point to in your life.

It keeps you present in the moment – you don’t think about the past or the future. You are literally thinking about your current rep.

It helps create a positive narrative about yourself. ‘I showed up today’ becomes ‘I am someone who shows up’.

You build up evidence of positive traits and what you are capable of.

Over time your brain chemistry starts to change. Your mind becomes clearer.

3 Steps to Dissolve Depression

Step 1: Leverage Vanity as Fuel

This is the hardest part. You need to figure out how to take the first step – it’s vanity.

Get in front of the mirror naked or in your underwear. Notice how you look. What do you not like?

You want to use this negative fuel to push you into the gym.

This works because we are going to play to the ego’s weakness – it’s obsession with the way it looks. The ego can’t stand to see a negative image of itself, and so it creates the motivation to change.

There’s more. As your body’s aesthetic changes, this feeds the ego’s admiration for itself and becomes a reinforcing loop.

Beware this is an external solution full of traps.

Step 2: Commit to Moving (Weights First)

Start with lifting weights.

The gym is more effective than other forms of exercise because you see the largest aesthetic changes from lifting. Again we are playing to the ego’s weakness.

But this is a powerful place to start for other reasons.

Going the gym is something you need to pay for and there can be an element of guilt for not using something you are paying for.

More importantly there are other people at the gym. You’ll make less excuses if you are in public, but also you’ll have a chance to connect with others. It can be intimidating at first, but the gym community is incredibly accepting.

Don’t worry about the clock, just start spending time in the gym. Work your way up to a few times a week. The primary goal is consistency.

I also suggest building in a practice after your workouts to recover. It’s a good way to bookend your workouts but also helps take you out of the “fight” mode (i.e., down regulate).

Technique: 4 second inhale through nostrils, and 6-8 second exhale through nostrils or mouth for 3 minutes. Bonus if your gym has a sauna you can do this in.

Step 3: Reflection

This step is extremely important. If you skip it – you’ll be stuck in the mirror forever.

This is what prevents you from falling into the permanent trap – where you become overly obsessed with your appearance. Exercise has given you the time and the space to do the inner work that started this all.

You need to start a reflection habit. Ideally the closer you can to the workout, at least initially, to cement this new habit. This links the action with feeling better.

Keep the reflections simple.

5-10 minutes is plenty. The goal is connecting how behaviors lead to feeling better. This practice builds awareness.

Here are a few basic questions to start:

• Did I do the movement today?

• How did I feel before?

• How do I feel now / after?

Then over time add:

• What empty or pointless feeling was I trying to avoid feeling today before I went to the gym?

This deeper question exists to make you name what you’re running from.

You have to expose the root instead of letting it stay hidden. This one line is the key to growing.

As you go down this path, remember your body is the antifragile foundation. Stress it – watch the upward spiral.

Start now. Reply or DM the empty feeling you named in your first reflection.

The Drift Begins

I want to share something very few people know about me.

For most of my life I’ve felt as though I’m adrift. Like a ship without a rudder, going wherever the current takes me. Not quite knowing where I want to go and letting life unfold in front of me.

Choosing the Wrong Path: Pharmacy School

I attended college to pursue a career in pharmacy because my parents told me it would be safe and lucrative.

I rented their conviction.

Like so many of us chasing secure jobs that kill curiosity, I woke up empty.

My studies never energized me. They required constant effort, had no creativity, I was just regurgitating guidelines and facts. I memorized, lied, cheated with a group of misfits that did the bare minimum.

At one point during my final year of clinical rotations I almost got kicked out of school. I clashed with an emergency medicine pharmacist that played pretend doctor.

One morning the dean of the school showed up to my rotation and sat me down, she said “It’s like you don’t want to be here.” I admitted to her I didn’t, and she gave me the choice - walk away or finish what I started.

My stomach dropped as the dean’s words hit. A wave of anxiety came over me and left me shaking. I caved to avoid parental shame.

I thought my life would get better after I graduated and had paychecks coming in — it didn’t.

The Downward Spiral

Post-graduation, hospital pharmacy felt like more of the same:

• Incompetent management failing upward

• Sexual misconduct ignored

• Patients used as leverage

I became vocal, bounced between PIPs, drank heavily to numb the spiral. Years passed in that cycle.

Eventually I decided to pursue an MBA at night. I hoped the extra letters behind my name would be enough to save me.

Amid this false progress, my self-destructive patterns resurfaced. I blew through a speed trap after golfing and drinking with friends one Sunday. I was doing 85 in a 45.

This is it. This is how it all comes crashing down.

I drove a mile down the road to pull into the back of a gas station to avoid anyone being able to see me go to jail.

I rolled down my window as the officer approached my vehicle. I handed him my license and registration and burst into tears.

He went back to his vehicle and cited me for a super speeder and reckless driving. He left in a hurry not wanting to deal with a man sobbing over the steering wheel.

I pulled my mask down — the sharp, unmistakable reek of alcohol flooded the car.

Without that mask hiding the smell, the officer would have caught it instantly and I’d have been arrested on the spot.

A False Pivot

The close call forced a superficial reset. I doubled up on classes at night, and went to the gym every day. My life materially seemed to change slowly day by day.

This felt like real change, but it masked unresolved issues. I wasn’t addressing the root issues — lack of meaning, low self-worth, and running from myself.

I graduated early and began applying to jobs. But rejection after rejection flooded my inbox.

I kept going. Every morning before work, I committed to building skills and learning:

• I learned how to solve business problems

• I practiced speaking in front of a mirror

• I reflected on who I was and the person I wanted to be

This went on for almost a year until I finally got a job offer from a consulting firm to start a pharmacy service line.

I poured myself into this job and forced growth.

I moved from shy and timid to leading a team, building a service line, speaking at conferences nationwide. I was proud — until the shine wore off and my identity was tied to a job left me hollow.

During this time I gradually began to push myself physically. I was using exercise to escape the life I was living instead of drugs and alcohol. I started out lifting weights and grew into full distance triathlon training.

I would love to just do zone 2 cardio for hours because my mind would be totally blank.

But I was running myself into the ground and it came crashing down when I tore my abductor. The lack of fulfillment from my job became fully apparent.

I spiraled into a deep identity crisis — it hit hard. I was confined to my apartment with thoughts swirling in endless loops of regret and emptiness.

I felt physically sick sitting there, uncomfortable in my own skin.

I sought help through therapy for the first time in my life. Slowly, I detached my identity from work and working out. Reflection revealed what values I hold to be true and a new identity emerged.

I found fulfillment outside of work. I moved to a new city to be able to spend more time outdoors. With partial clarity, I rebuilt balance — but the void never left.

The Recurring Autopilot: Present Day

I was excelling outwardly, but I drifted back to using training as escape. It felt like I was on autopilot.

Unfulfillment crept deeper. Is this what the next 30 years look like? Many of us reach our 30s realizing the stable life we built is quietly suffocating us.

I fear that if I stay on this path I’ll end up on my death bed filled with regrets.

I can no longer force fulfillment from a job that drains me of energy, lacks creativity, and isn’t aligned with my values.

I can no longer afford to wait. AI is radically disrupting jobs. Jobs that were once considered stable are now being phased out.

Doubts still grip me. Part of me would rather stick with the familiar sting of failing than face the full uncertainty of a new path.

I’m worried about what others will think — family seeing it as reckless, friends questioning the gamble. But I have to follow my intuition.

This is my commitment to the adventure. This path rebuilds clarity through honest writing, sustains energy through balanced habits, provides real value by documenting experiments, and creates meaning by sharing the journey with you.

The core idea of Antifragile Longevity is deliberately challenging the body and mind through the right amount of stress and uncertainty. I want to prove that leaning into these challenges creates a life that grows stronger from pressure instead of breaking under it.

The path ahead is uncertain, but persisting through the swamp creates a life worth living.

Subscribe to follow the journey. Follow me on X @AntifragileLGV