Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

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I wrote this because I needed to read it too.

You cannot commit.

Not to a business idea, not to a partner, not even to how you want to spend your weekend.

A new option shows up. A better idea appears.

You start from scratch again.

And somewhere along the way you begin to wonder why you cannot simply stick to anything.

This is not a character flaw. It is a trap.

Four weeks for one hotel

In September I am spending a month in Bali. Two weeks working, two weeks on holiday. I started planning early because I love having everything organized before I arrive. When the groundwork is done, I can simply show up and enjoy the experience without making too many decisions on the ground.

Usually it runs smoothly.

This time I ran into a problem I recognized immediately but could not find my way out of.

I already knew I wanted three different locations on the island.

Two working weeks somewhere I could keep my habits intact.

One week near the rice fields in Ubud.

One final week somewhere beautiful for a proper holiday.

The first two came together without much difficulty.

For the working location I had precise criteria: gym, pool, yoga studio, supermarket nearby, beach access, strong wifi, excellent reviews. A bit of research around Denpasar and I found the right place in Kuta quickly.

Ubud followed the same pattern. I knew exactly what I needed, and the search reflected that clarity.

Then came the last week.

I spent four weeks searching for that final accommodation.

Four weeks. For one week of holiday.

Bali has an almost overwhelming number of beautiful, affordable options. I scrolled Booking.com, switched to Airbnb, went back to Booking. Beautiful. Beautiful. Another beautiful one. I felt stuck and increasingly frustrated with myself. I knew exactly what Barry Schwartz described in The Paradox of Choice. But understanding the name of the problem did not help me escape it.

My criteria for the final week?

Nice. Paradise. Meaningless words that guaranteed failure from the very beginning.

And every time I found something promising, I immediately went digging for negative reviews. One complaint about the breakfast and the property was eliminated. Noise from a nearby road. Rejected. I was searching for the perfect option, which meant I was effectively searching forever.

After four weeks I finally stepped back and looked at what I was actually doing.

I chose one area of the island where I could run, which already eliminated the vast majority of options. On Bali, running is genuinely difficult because of how the roads and traffic are structured, so Sanur became the obvious starting point. I committed to Booking.com only and closed Airbnb entirely. I filtered for breakfast included, gym access, a beachfront location, and a review score above 9. That left me with three properties.

I made my decision in about ten minutes.

Restriction was the only thing that could solve it. But I want to be honest here. Even after that very deliberate process, my brain continued whispering that I might have missed a better villa or a more interesting property somewhere.

I stayed with my decision, but those voices were there for at least another two days.

The optionality trap does not let go immediately. It has to be outlasted.

The people who understood this

Mark Manson had a book deadline but found himself completely unable to sit down and write with any consistency. Too many distractions, too many alternative ways to spend his time. So he rented a cabin in the woods with a friend who also had a demanding project to complete. No internet. No entertainment. Just boredom or the work in front of him. The first two days were genuinely painful. By day three, something shifted. With no other options available, his mind settled and he simply wrote. He accomplished more in that one week than he had managed in months.

Steve Jobs applied the same principle deliberately. When he returned to Apple in 1997, the company had over 350 products and was weeks away from bankruptcy. Jobs eliminated all but ten. He told his team that deciding what not to do was just as important as deciding what to do. The focus that followed produced the iMac, the iPod, and eventually the iPhone. The restriction was not a compromise. It was the strategy.

Henry David Thoreau chose restriction on his own terms. In 1845 he moved into a small cabin on Walden Pond, stripped his life to its essentials, and spent two years there deliberately. No excess, no unnecessary obligations, no noise. He wanted to experience what life actually felt like when everything inessential was removed. The result was Walden, one of the most influential works in American literature.

Buddha left his wealth, his comfort, and every material option he had ever known, and walked into the forest. He understood that if he wanted to learn something true about life, he would need to remove everything competing for his attention first.

The pattern across all of them is identical.

Remove the alternatives. Find the focus. Do the work.

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It goes much further than accommodation

Think about the gym. You could go. You could also watch something, scroll through your phone, meet someone for dinner, or do any number of things that feel easier and more immediately rewarding. With that range of alternatives available, the gym loses almost every time unless you have already made going a firm, non-negotiable decision.

The same applies to building anything meaningful on the side. An online project, a creative practice, a new skill. The sheer volume of things competing for your attention today is extraordinary. The alternatives do not even need to be related to what you are trying to do. They simply need to exist.

Dating apps are perhaps the most transparent example of this trap in action. Endless profiles, always the possibility of someone more interesting further down the list, and almost zero tolerance for anything imperfect. I once dismissed someone because she mentioned she did not enjoy going to the cinema. How irrational is that, honestly?

Recently I matched with a woman who lived ninety minutes away. My first thought was to skip her. Too far, too complicated. Then I caught myself, I was doing exactly what I had done with the hotels.

I have spoken to people who refuse to match with anyone who lives more than four miles from them. We are searching for the perfect partner in exactly the same way I searched for that hotel. Applying a zero-tolerance policy to anything that looks like a negative review.

When did we become so reluctant to make anything work?

I notice this in professional environments as well. The company I work at is constantly searching for new tools. The tool everyone is looking for is one you purchase and it immediately resolves all your problems. But nobody wants to invest the time in making the tool genuinely useful once it is purchased. Nobody reads the documentation, contacts customer support, or thinks seriously about how to adapt it to their specific situation. They simply move on to the next one.

It is the same mindset people bring to relationships, to careers, to anything that requires patience.

We want to find the thing that already works perfectly.

We have little interest in doing the work of making something good.

Why this is happening

There are two underlying reasons worth examining.

The first is instant gratification.

A decade of food delivery, streaming services, social media, and frictionless online shopping has conditioned our brains to expect immediate returns on almost everything.

Commitment rarely offers that.

It brings boredom, setbacks, doubt, and the persistent feeling that perhaps you made the wrong choice. Most people today interpret that friction as a clear signal they should keep searching.

That friction is not a warning signal.

It is simply what commitment feels like in the early stages, before it becomes part of who you are.

The second is a lack of self-knowledge.

My first two Bali accommodations came together quickly because I had a precise understanding of what I actually needed.

The third consumed four weeks because I abandoned that clarity and chased a vague, external image of what a perfect holiday should look like.

Even though I consider myself someone with good self-awareness, I stepped directly into the trap without noticing.

When you search without knowing what you actually need, no number of options will lead you anywhere useful. You will either never commit, or commit to something wrong and blame the decision rather than the search itself.

Knowing yourself is where the commitment process actually begins.

How to escape the trap

If you recognize this pattern in your own life, here are the things that genuinely help.

1. Define your criteria before you start searching, not during it. Vague intentions like “nice” or “the right person” are not criteria. Know what you actually need, based on who you actually are, before you open a single tab or swipe in any direction.

2. Limit your sources deliberately. One platform, not five. One channel of information, not all of them. The moment you start cross-referencing endlessly, you are no longer searching. You are postponing the decision.

3. Set a hard deadline and honor it. Give yourself until a specific date to decide. When that date arrives, you decide with the best option available to you. The search closes. This single rule eliminates weeks of unnecessary paralysis.

4. Accept that every real option has a negative review. No hotel, no relationship, no job is flawless. The negative reviews are not information that will save you from making a mistake. They are noise. You are not looking for perfect. You are looking for right enough.

5. Learn to distinguish friction from wrongness. The discomfort you feel after committing is almost always the discomfort of commitment itself, not evidence that you chose wrong. Give it time before you conclude anything. My brain was still whispering for two days after I booked that hotel.

The irony of too much freedom

We spend enormous energy pursuing freedom and then struggle to understand why we feel so disoriented inside it.

Freedom without self-knowledge is not really freedom. It is paralysis dressed in more attractive clothing. The people who thrive when surrounded by many options are the ones who understand themselves clearly enough to filter decisively.

They restrict their own options deliberately. Everyone else gets lost in the scroll.

I removed Instagram from my life two years ago. Almost immediately I began executing my own plans with far greater consistency. There was no comparison pulling my attention sideways, no fear of missing out, no endless alternative competing with whatever I was actually doing.

The restriction produced the focus.

Most people are not equipped to navigate total freedom. They function better within structure, clear constraints, and deliberate limitations. Not because they lack strength of character, but because the human brain was never designed to process infinite choice.

The perfect option does not exist before you choose it.

It is made, through commitment, through investment, through the decision to work something out rather than start the search again.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

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Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

If this resonates, Subscribe and join 600 readers.

I watched a lot of videos about discipline before I figured any of this out. Most of them told me to wake up at 4am, take cold showers, and embrace suffering. None of it stuck. What actually worked was almost embarrassingly simple, and I kept waiting for someone else to say it.

Motivation is great to have.

The problem is that it is unreliable.

You never know when it shows up and you never know when it disappears. One bad night’s sleep and it is gone.

A stressful day at work and it is gone.

And then you feel guilty because there is a goal you set for yourself and the days keep passing without action. This is the cycle most people live in.

High motivation on good days, nothing on bad ones. Go hard when you feel it, crash when you do not.

The problem is that building a business, getting fit, or learning a skill all require consistent effort over a long period of time.

You cannot build anything serious based on emotions you have no control over. That is where discipline comes in.

Before you scroll past, I know what you are thinking.

Discipline sounds like David Goggins yelling at you.

It sounds like military, punishment, suffering, and giving up everything enjoyable.

And yes, it has a cost.

But it is far less brutal than most people imagine. Because once you have built real discipline, it stops feeling like effort.

It becomes part of who you are. And here is what happens when it does.

The small, invisible work you put in every day starts compounding. From the outside it looks like nothing is happening.

Then one day someone asks you for advice about your training.

Someone wants to know how you built a business on the side.

Someone says, wow, you already have so many subscribers.

That is discipline showing its results. Slow, invisible, then suddenly undeniable.

What discipline actually feels like

Here is how you know you have it: you stop negotiating with yourself.

Think about brushing your teeth.

You do it when you are tired, sick, late, or depressed.

You do it because it is simply something you do.

There is no internal conflict, no motivation required. That is exactly what real discipline feels like about the thing you have committed to.

In my case: when I have a training run scheduled and I look outside to see rain, cold, and wind, I do not think about skipping. I think, okay, it will be harder today, and I go anyway. There is no decision to make.

That is discipline from the inside.

Not suffering but certainty.

How to build it

This is my own approach, based on what actually worked for me.

Adjust your expectations before you start

Most people fail to develop discipline because they cannot accept what the process actually looks like.

It is not glamorous.

It is repetitive, slow, and takes far longer than anyone wants to admit.

When I set goals, I try not to attach a finish date to them. Running a marathon is not a temporary project.

After each race I take one week to recover and then I am back out again because it is part of my life, not a box to tick.

When I started writing on Substack I told myself I would not measure success for at least two years. Most people quit after two weeks.

If you accept from the start that this will take longer than you want and remove the expectation of quick results, you remove the main source of disappointment.

You just show up.

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Start with something you already like

It is very hard to build discipline around something completely unfamiliar. It is much easier to start with something you already enjoy a little.

For me it was running. I had always done it casually but never seriously.

Turning something familiar into a discipline practice was far easier than starting from scratch with something new.

Sport in general is a great starting point because it requires no special talent and there are countless options: cycling, swimming, martial arts, tennis, whatever feels natural.

At this stage the activity matters less than the mindset you are building. You are learning to show up regardless of how you feel. That skill transfers to everything else later.

Create a real commitment

The mechanism is simple: attach your practice to something external with a real deadline and real stakes.

When showing up stops being optional, something shifts.

You start taking yourself seriously in a different way.

For me it was signing up for my first race.

Suddenly it was not jogging anymore. It was training.

I had a date in my calendar, a plan to follow, and something to lose. I bought proper shoes, studied technique, built a schedule.

After that first race there was no going back. I signed up for another one immediately, and another after that.

Find your version.

A tournament, a writing challenge, a public commitment, a deadline you have told someone about.

The form does not matter. The point is to make it real enough that showing up stops being a choice.

Transfer it everywhere else

After two years of consistent training I noticed I had changed.

I was not just disciplined about running. I had become someone who does things regardless of how they feel.

So when I decided to write seriously on Substack I approached it the same way.

No expectations for at least two years. No checking numbers daily. Just show up, the same way I show up for training when the weather is bad and I am tired.

I have now written over 60 articles without once seriously thinking about quitting. Subscribers have left. Some notes got no engagement. I did not care. I was working with discipline, not with emotion.

From there I applied the same approach to reading every day, quitting alcohol, going to the gym, and performing well at work. I only needed one area to start, something I already liked, and from there the discipline spread naturally.

You do not need to overhaul your entire life at once.

You need one activity, one commitment, one race to sign up for.

Build discipline there first.

Then watch it transfer to everything else.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

Subscribe now

Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

If this resonates, Subscribe and join 500 readers.

Two years sober and I still have more questions than answers. This is my honest version of the story.

Last week I told you the story of why alcohol and I became best friends for more than twenty years, and what led to our ultimate breakup.

But the story did not end there.

After quitting, I had to face a completely new reality I had never experienced as an adult: living without alcohol.

Thousands of people search every month for questions like how to stay social without drinking, how to maintain friendships after getting sober, or whether quitting changes your social life.

I am not surprised.

If someone had asked me to quit ten years ago, I would have laughed in their face.

Drinking was simply too much fun and I wanted to keep it in my life. But as you read last week, the negative effects slowly outweighed the positive ones and I made my choice to leave that life behind.

The First Thing I Noticed

A few years ago I did Sober January with friends a few times, mostly to prove to ourselves that we did not have a problem if we could go a whole month without drinking.

We met on a Friday night after work and ordered non-alcoholic beers, but the conversations were noticeably different. It felt more like quickly updating each other on the week and nothing more. We admitted quickly that it made no sense to buy another non-alcoholic beer just to sit there in silence, so we called it a night early, around ten.

We literally spent the whole month counting the days until we could drink again.

I tried it once with an ex-girlfriend too, but she gave up after two weeks. She said life was too boring without drinks. Tough statement, if you think about it.

But now I do not have a date I am counting down to. I simply do not drink anymore.

And it changed my social life and how people pigeonhole me.

At the beginning I tried to believe I could keep up my old lifestyle.

In my mind I had pictured myself like those people at college parties who danced around with a Coke Light in their hands, perfectly at ease.

So I hung out with friends as before, but this time I stuck to non-alcoholic drinks. With my closest friends it was not a problem to spend time together, but just like during those sober January months, the night was always much shorter.

When strangers joined us, I went quiet again. I did not feel bad around them, but I did not open up the way I used to with alcohol.

The difference this time was that I had already figured out I was introverted, and that it was completely normal for me not to get into deep conversations with people I did not know. I saw that part of myself less as a problem now, which was a genuine improvement compared to the old days when I believed something was fundamentally wrong with me.

Once the strangers left, I started talking more again with my friends.

But something was still different. The mood no longer built the way it used to after three beers and two hours of drinking.

Instead it sort of plateaued and then quietly descended. Not into anything bad, but it felt like there was an end somewhere on the horizon that had not been there before.

We still laughed sometimes, but it was contained, nothing like the free flow that used to come after a few rounds.

I also started saying no to work related events.

A room full of people wanting to network did not sound like something I wanted to be part of anymore.

Before, I would have arrived already loosened up by a drink or two, ready to jump straight into small talk, crack some jokes, and feel like I belonged.

Sober, those events felt completely different. I felt like a white mark on a dark background that had ended up there by accident. I had to be honest with myself: I genuinely do not like those events.

Because I stopped showing up and started saying no to after-work pizza and beer gatherings, people at work began to label me boring.

Nobody said it out loud, but I could see it in their eyes. They were polite, but they stopped asking me to join them.

After about a year of not drinking, I stopped receiving any invitations to company dinners or parties at all. I only found out about them by accidentally seeing them in someone else’s calendar. They had simply stopped considering me.

That hit me sometimes, because at previous workplaces I had been one of the people who organized those evenings. The one everyone counted on to make it fun.

Then there was our yearly big company event where people came from different countries for workshops and a party. We had dinner together and that part went fine, because I work with these people every day and we had enough to talk about. But when dinner ended, someone suggested going to the bars. Every single person went except me. I knew it made no sense for me to go. I would not drink and I would not enjoy it. So I said a quick, slightly awkward goodbye to everyone and disappeared into the evening.

The next morning I saw the photos from the night I had not been part of. A few years ago I would have been there. I might have felt rough the next day, but I would have been in those photos. I would have had those memories and those new connections too.

This happened not only at work but with almost everyone I used to drink with.

Everyone tried to be polite and understanding about my decision, but I immediately felt they did not see the point of hanging out anymore.

For what, exactly? To sit silently next to each other? I am not exaggerating. That is genuinely how it would have gone.

Quitting alcohol worked like a filter.

Many of the people I used to spend time with got stuck on it. Only a handful came through on the other side, friends who still wanted to see me without drinking, but in a different way.

I have to be honest here. These changes made me sad sometimes. I know this transformation is a process, and I know I was gaining things I could never have had while drinking. But losing things you used to enjoy is still a certain kind of grieving, even when the decision was right.

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What Happened to My Dating Life

I updated my dating profile to say I was sober. I quickly noticed fewer matches after that. Some women wrote to ask whether it was true that I did not drink, or whether it would bother me if they did. I always said it did not bother me, but most of them stopped replying anyway.

Maybe that was not the reason. But I think it played a part.

In my last relationship, when I mentioned I was thinking about quitting, my girlfriend became genuinely upset. She said alcohol played such an important role in her life that she could not imagine being with someone who did not drink. That surprised me, but it also showed me how deeply intertwined drinking is with the way most people connect.

Outside of dating apps, I also rarely end up in situations where meeting someone new is even possible anymore. Almost every girlfriend I ever had I met at a party, after work, during a day-drinking session, or at some kind of event where alcohol was present and lowering everyone’s guard including mine.

Those unpredictable, unplanned moments have gone quiet.

This is something Scott Galloway talks about in almost every podcast appearance, that Gen Z is drinking less and as a result meeting less, having less sex, getting into less trouble. The percentage of single and sexless men and women is rising and he sees a strong connection to the decline in drinking.

I think about that more than I expected to.

Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, also quit alcohol for a few years and recently started again.

He said that despite all the benefits, something was still missing. He did not enjoy music the way he used to. His marriage became a little flat because even on vacation with his wife they ended up going to bed at nine without doing anything wild or memorable.

I completely understand that. And when I see people I respect making that decision to go back, it sometimes makes me question my own.

But when I am completely honest with myself, I know I do not miss the alcohol.

What I miss is the novelty, the adventure, and the fun moments that alcohol used to help create. That is exactly what Manson missed too. He just admitted he had not found another way to generate those moments without it, partly because he discovered he was far more introverted than he had realized before quitting.

For now I have accepted that those things are missing, without forcing myself toward any particular solution.

That patience is also something new. The old version of me would have tried to escape this feeling immediately rather than just sitting with it.

What I Actually Gained

Quitting alcohol and doing serious work on myself has produced results. Small ones, but real ones.

I can now hold a conversation when I run into someone on the street, someone from my gym or a previous job. I feel comfortable in my own skin in a way I genuinely never did before.

Quitting made it possible to do hard things consistently, like training for marathons. Being sober helped me sleep well, perform better at work, and walk into difficult conversations without falling apart.

Those things built something in me over time.

During the years I was drinking, I was an insecure, shy person with low self-esteem on top of being introverted.

That has changed.

Today I have simply accepted that I am introverted, and when I find myself in a social situation, even with fewer of them than before, I no longer panic or feel the need to perform. I stay, I make eye contact, I ask genuine questions, I listen, and sometimes I am even funny without anything in my glass.

That is something I had genuinely never experienced before in my life.

I also notice that people seem to respect the decision. Friends tell me they admire it. Some say they want to do it too but are not ready, or are still enjoying the advantages I used to enjoy. I do not judge anyone for that. I have been there, and I honestly do not know where I will be in five years.

The Honest Closing

Most people do not actually want to drink.

They want what drinking gives them: the uninhibited conversations, the courage to talk to a stranger, the feeling of being the funniest person at the table. As I wrote last week, those things drove me for over twenty years.

Wanting to be more relaxed, open, and brave is completely human, and having those desires without alcohol does not mean something is wrong with you.

Alcohol is simply a shortcut. It lends you those qualities for an evening without requiring years of slow, uncomfortable work to build them for real. And because life is short, most people would rather borrow them tonight than earn them over years.

I am not going to say I will never drink again. I might.

But I am feeling too good right now mentally and physically to consider it, and I wonder whether starting again after forty even makes sense for me.

If I do drink again, I will write about that too.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

Subscribe now

Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

If this resonates, Subscribe and join 500 readers.

Most people don't drink because they love alcohol. They drink because they love who they become when they drink.

To understand what happens when you quit alcohol, you need to understand what it was giving you in the first place.

This is that story.

The whole journey splits into three chapters:

1. Before I touched alcohol.

2. The years I drank.

3. Life after becoming sober.

This article covers the first two.

Next week, I’ll cover the third.

I’ve also written about the health side of quitting and how to do it. If you’re interested, check them out:

Alcohol in my life before I had my first glass

I grew up in a family where alcohol was always present. Both of my grandfathers died from its consequences and my father followed the same path, misusing it as often as possible. My mother never drank, only a glass of wine at Christmas, because she had the opposite reaction to her husband’s alcoholism. She hated it. But because it was familiar, she tolerated it.

Both of my parents suffered from anxiety in their own ways. My mother lived in a constant state of worry, a kind of self-generated terror. My father fought feelings of not being good, strong, or valuable enough. He was deeply jealous, and alcohol amplified everything.

Fights, yelling, broken glasses, and worse were simply part of everyday life.

This made it impossible to have friends over because the situation was always too unpredictable.

My parents never had friends.

Growing up in that house, I learned quickly not to invite anyone either. My brother was six years older than me and always out with his friends. I stayed home, managing my mother’s misery and waiting for my drunk father to return so our daily tradition could begin.

Why am I telling you about my broken family?

Because those circumstances shaped my relationship with alcohol before I ever took a sip. Due to constant isolation, I developed social anxiety early. I turned red the moment I had to speak in front of a handful of people I already knew because I felt so insecure.

My mother’s constant criticism gave me the sense that I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes or just be myself, because that would embarrass her. She had a narcissistic personality, she needed constant attention and often withdrew her love when I didn’t do something right.

Her behavior made me feel like everything was my fault.

I became a child who worried constantly. I couldn’t measure my cortisol levels back then, but I was running on chronic anxiety. I didn’t know what I wanted because I was never encouraged to explore my own interests and nobody asked me about that either. My parents never knew what music or movies I liked, which kids I was hanging out with at school, nothing. My only job was to manage my mother’s emotional needs. When other kids’ parents asked why I was so quiet, I said I didn’t know, smiled, and shrugged my shoulders.

I had nothing to say, or at least nothing I believed was worth saying.

At school, I was one of the best students because failing would embarrass my mother. But socially, I was lost. We never had guests at home, so I never learned how to be around other people.

I declined every birthday party invitation because if I went, I’d have to invite them back, and I had no birthday party to give. I lied constantly. Made up reasons why I couldn’t come. Pretended we had vacations we never took.

I hated it, because deep down I wanted what they had. Cool parents. A normal house. To be the kid who made everyone laugh.

Instead, I carried years of unexpressed anger, unmet wishes, and the feeling that I simply wasn’t built the same way as everyone else.

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Alcohol gave me the life I always wanted

I was 14 when a friend suggested we drink together. He already had experience with alcohol once or twice but for me, it was the first time. Maybe at home I had licked some from my father’s beer once but that was all. We went to a supermarket and bought cherry liquor and mixed it with Coke.

After the third plastic cup, it kicked in.

We laughed. I tried to walk to a tree to pee and couldn’t go straight. We laughed more at ourselves and finished all four small bottles we had. That night we went to a teenage disco, running down the middle of the street on a Saturday evening. My eyes were almost closed and I was cheering loudly, stumbling from side to side.

It felt like Andy Dufresne walking out of Shawshank.

Except instead of a physical prison, I had just escaped the mental one I’d been locked in for the first 14 years of my life. I didn’t feel worried anymore. I didn’t care what other people might think about me. We were in another city anyway, and the alcohol made me feel free.

After that night, I knew I had found the solution for my anxiety and being socially awkward: alcohol.

Drinking and partying became my regular escape. I went to parties every weekend, not because I wanted to enjoy the music or because I was interested in those people. That was also part of it, but I simply needed to get out.

I danced carelessly and also started smoking as a small symbol of freedom.

Honestly, I became cooler. I talked to strangers, told jokes. They laughed and patted me on the back. My social circle grew for the first time in my life.

You can imagine what that meant to a kid who had spent years believing he wasn’t good enough.

Hangovers became familiar but I was more than ready to pay that small price for my new, enhanced life.

Sundays were for lying in bed and suffering a little. Sometimes I went out on Sunday too and drank a beer or two.

At university, I moved as far from my parents as I could. I chose the school by distance.

And it worked.

By that time, I was an experienced drinker. I quickly found new connections with people who shared my admiration for the booze and we drank almost every day, skipping seminars, heading to the bar at 1pm for table soccer and gin tonics.

Those people didn’t know my background. After a few beers, I talked like I belonged.

I organized my first birthday parties. One night I kissed one girl in one corner of the bar and another in the other corner. The first found out and poured half a liter of wine in my face.

My friends said I was so cool and I was so proud.

Looking back, I was still an insecure kid. Just also an asshole. But I didn’t care. I was catching up on everything I had missed.

Alcohol helped.

After graduating, came work.

I never drank during office hours, that much discipline I had. But I lived for the moment someone said “drinks after work?” The answer was always yes. I remember one evening when colleagues from headquarters were visiting. I arrived late. About ten people were sitting almost silently at a table. Then one of them spotted me and said: “David! Finally. It’s been so boring. When you’re here it’s always fun.”

I’ll never forget that. Someone was happy I walked in the room. I ordered a beer, lit a cigarette, and started talking.

I was proud, again.

What they didn’t know was that I had already drunk three beers at home before I left.

I always did. I sat on the balcony, had beers or a gin tonic, smoked, put on music until I felt right, and then I left.

Without that ritual, I was nervous.

Because no matter how many good experiences I collected, no matter how much positive feedback I got over the years, inside I was still the kid from elementary school who didn’t know how to be in a room with people.

I didn’t get better with people. I got better at drinking.

There were moments it was obvious.

Meeting a girlfriend’s parents sober, sitting quietly at the table while everyone wondered what was wrong with me. But the moment the first drinks came out and her father asked me outside for a cigarette, I knew what to do. I drank as fast as I could without looking like I was doing it.

Two drinks in, I started talking. Asking questions. Making them laugh.

My girlfriend looked over with that look in her eyes, proud of the funny guy she had brought home.

Every man on earth wants that look from his girl.

And finally, I got it too.

Alcohol helped again.

After 20 years of moments like these, I think it’s understandable why I kept going.

At least I have empathy for my own behavior.

And I’m sure many of you recognize something here. The deep underlying need to be liked. To feel cool at least once. The feeling of belonging. The courage that doesn’t come naturally.

The mental prison with a liquid key.

But as we all know, nothing lasts forever.

When alcohol stopped working

You know how a hangover gets worse as you get older.

If not, don’t worry, you will learn it.

Your body starts sending different signals. It started for me around 32 but I held on until 35.

By then it had become bad. If I drank heavily on a Saturday, I still felt wrecked by Wednesday. I wanted to throw up in the gym five days later. The social benefits started disappearing too. I drank and felt a little more relaxed, but that free, euphoric mode was gone.

After a few beers my body was a mess while my mind stayed sober, watching.

During drinking, my mind would wander to the next day, thinking about the consequences of the next beer we had just ordered. I knew I wanted to open my eyes on Sunday feeling fresh, not that feeling you probably also know, when your eyes open in the morning and you know immediately that you’re screwed and it will be a day about survival.

Just thinking about that made me not want the beer sitting in front of me.

Then one evening, after I had drunk a bit more again, I caught my reflection and saw my father.

That image didn’t leave me. Without the social benefits, and with my body rejecting it, I felt disgusted. I couldn’t walk straight and when the waitress came with the bill I couldn’t express myself properly. My words mixed up.

So I started reducing more and more. Sometimes I’d nurse a single beer for hours and sometimes leave it on the table unfinished. My only wish was to wake up fresh in the morning.

Slowly, I moved from drinking to belong to just enduring it to fit in.

Until one day I was done.

Two years ago, I stopped completely and I haven’t had a drink since.

Many people are scared to stop because they don’t want to lose exactly what I described above. They search online about how it feels to be completely sober. Some of them want confirmation that quitting makes life miserable so they can continue drinking, or that quitting makes life better without losing the version of themselves that only exists when they drink.

That’s the question I couldn’t answer for 20 years either.

But you’ll find an honest answer here soon.

Because that’s the story I’m telling next week.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

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This one took longer to write than usual, mostly because it meant admitting things about my younger self I'm not proud of.

I didn’t expect a hot afternoon in the south of France to teach me anything about myself, but it did.

We were in Nice, on vacation with my ex-girlfriend. We had dropped her car off for a service appointment and had to walk back to the train station afterward. It was around noon, the kind of heat where every step feels like walking into a wall. One side of the street was sunlit, the other shaded by the buildings. We were walking on the sunny side when she said we should cross to the other one. I looked at her, confused, and asked why. She looked back at me, equally confused, and said we were burning alive over here.

That was the moment I realized I hadn’t noticed I was sweating through my shirt and that my skin was starting to sting from the sun. My first thought, once I caught up with what she meant, was that crossing the street would be better for her. It took a second longer to register that it would also be better for me.

Without her, I would have walked the entire way on the sunny side without a second thought, not because I preferred it, but because paying attention to my own needs had never been something I learned to do. After that day, I kept turning the question over: in how many other situations had I been ignoring what I actually needed, without ever noticing?

At that point in my life, I had already encountered ideas like awareness and self-improvement, but I was still a beginner. That walk in Nice is one of the clearest examples I have of what self-improvement actually gave me: the simple ability to notice that I exist, and that what happens to me matters too.

What changed in how I love people

A friend of mine has a demanding life, and there are stretches where she goes quiet for weeks. Years ago, her silence used to feel like a verdict. I would tell myself the friendship was over, that she had quietly moved on, and I would wait, almost daring her to prove me wrong by reaching out first. If she didn’t, I took it personally, sometimes even resentfully, as though her busy life was something done to me.

I never once considered messaging her first. Reaching out felt like an admission that I needed her more than she needed me, and somewhere underneath that was the belief that if I wasn’t the one being chased, I wasn’t really wanted at all.

Today, when a few weeks pass without a word from her, I’m the one who reaches out. I send a message, ask how she’s doing, and I mean it without any quiet test attached to it. She always replies warmly, and I’ve come to understand that her silence was never a verdict on us. It was just her life being full. The difference isn’t that she changed. I did.

That same period cost me a different friendship entirely. I had a friend who, whenever something didn’t go the way he wanted, would shift into manipulation rather than conversation. He never once looked at his own part in anything. If I didn’t meet some expectation he’d never actually stated out loud, the fault was automatically mine. For years I absorbed that, because ending the friendship felt like proof that I was the difficult one, the one who couldn’t keep people around.

Eventually I did end it, and I felt no guilt afterward, which surprised me almost as much as the decision itself. The old version of me believed that removing someone from my life meant I had failed at being a good enough friend, and that whatever someone gave me, however unbalanced, I was obligated to accept it gratefully.

What changed wasn’t that I stopped caring about people. It was that I stopped needing something from them to feel secure in the relationship. Before, every connection ran on a quiet transaction: their attention proved my worth, their silence threatened it. Today I can let someone be unavailable without reading it as rejection, and I can let someone go without reading it as my own failure. I’m genuinely happy these people exist in my life, but I no longer need them to in order to feel okay.

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Why I take self-improvement seriously

Self-improvement gets demonized by one group and worshipped by another, and most of the public conversation happens at those two extremes. I’ve spent the last two decades watching both camps, and I think the truth lives in a quieter, less talked-about middle.

I don’t believe the people who reject self-improvement and choose instead to “just be themselves” arrived there without doing any inner work at all. Some of them did grow up in homes where they learned, early and without effort, how to be at peace with themselves. I think that group is small. In my experience, the people who say they don’t need self-improvement usually fall into one of two categories. Either they did the work quietly, without naming it as such, or they are avoiding something they’re afraid to face, and rejecting the entire idea of self-improvement is easier than admitting that.

That second pattern is familiar to me. It’s a bit like disliking people who own cars because you can’t afford one yourself, while never quite admitting that earning more money is the actual answer. The same logic shows up around self-improvement. People who avoid it often aren’t rejecting the concept. They’re rejecting what they suspect they’d find if they looked closely at themselves, and I understand that completely, because the work itself is rarely pleasant. It means sitting with your weaknesses, naming your trauma out loud, having uncomfortable conversations with yourself and occasionally with a therapist, and slowly letting go of a version of yourself you’ve known your entire life in exchange for one you’ve never met.

So is self-improvement a good thing? In my case, the answer is an easy yes, and I only need to look at where I started to explain why.

I grew up in a difficult household, where I became my mother’s primary emotional caretaker starting around age five. At that age I was already absorbing things no child should have to carry: financial stress, marital conflict, addiction. I never learned to notice my own needs, let alone voice them. I became someone who served. I grew up believing I wasn’t good enough, shaped by the fighting between my parents, by my mother telling me she’d been disappointed I wasn’t born a girl, and by her repeated threats to take her own life. I internalized all of it as my fault.

I’m not telling you this for sympathy. I’m telling you because it explains where the journey started. Those early experiences built an adult who needed constant approval, who felt jealous easily because he never felt good enough, and who used alcohol and nicotine to numb what he couldn’t name. None of that was a good foundation for an adult life, and the walk in Nice is just one small, almost embarrassing example of how deep that pattern ran.

Without self-improvement, I don’t think I would have built the awareness, the boundaries, the confidence, or the physical health I have today. I quit drinking. I quit smoking. I’ve never felt more capable in my own body. I’m comfortable being alone without being lonely, and I set goals that genuinely make my life feel richer, because for the first time I actually know what I want from it.

I think most people are carrying something similar from their own upbringing, often without realizing it. And if you’re one of the rare ones who isn’t, genuinely, I’m glad for you. But in my experience, that’s the exception rather than the rule.

So if you ask me whether self-improvement is worth it, my answer is yes, but only when you’re doing it for yourself and not for an audience. Which brings me to the other side of this.

When self-improvement becomes a problem

Self-improvement starts to work against you the moment it stops being about your own peace and starts being about performance. I’ve watched people adopt rigid five a.m. routines, follow extreme diets, and journal by candlelight at three in the morning, not because any of it serves them, but because it photographs well and travels well online. That kind of self-improvement is dishonest at its core, and honesty is the one ingredient the whole process actually depends on.

I don’t run an intense early morning routine, because my own body doesn’t ask for one. I wake up around seven thirty without an alarm, and I’ve made peace with the fact that this is simply how my body operates. Forcing myself into someone else’s four a.m. ritual would mean fighting my own nature for the sake of appearances, and I’d rather build a life that fits the person I actually am.

The other failure mode is when self-improvement quietly swallows everything else in your life. A walk becomes a step count. A conversation becomes networking. A hobby becomes a project with metrics attached. People lose track of why they started in the first place, and the practice itself becomes the addiction, not so different from the substances some of us used it to replace.

This is why knowing when to stop matters as much as knowing how to start. I spent years in therapy, and at some point my sessions had turned into casual updates about my week rather than real work. I told my therapist I wanted to stop coming, and she simply said: good choice, go enjoy the results. That sentence stuck with me, because it gave me permission to treat the work as something with an actual finish line rather than a lifestyle to maintain forever.

A few honest signals tell me the work has done its job, at least for now. The problem I set out to solve is actually solved, not managed, not white-knuckled, solved. The habits I built no longer take willpower; they’ve become how I simply live. Continuing to push on that particular area stops producing any noticeable change. I start losing presence and joy in the process itself, more focused on optimizing than on living. And the sense of who I am starts to feel solid enough that I’m not constantly trying to fix or prove it.

If you don’t have some version of a finish line, self-improvement can quietly become obsessive. Taken far enough, it can erode your relationships and your ability to simply accept yourself, because there’s no longer a self left to accept, only an ongoing project.

Growth and acceptance were never opposites

I think self-improvement and self-acceptance can coexist, and honestly, I think they’re supposed to. In my own life, it felt worth spending a few real years, three or five, deep in the work: cutting distractions, facing the things I’d been carrying without noticing, and figuring out who I actually was underneath everything my parents, teachers, friends, and culture had layered onto me. That kind of focused period lets you understand your past clearly enough to choose your direction without simply inheriting someone else’s.

But that season isn’t meant to last forever. At some point the work shifts from discovery to maintenance, and the goal stops being to keep improving and starts being to actually live the life you built. Self-improvement, done honestly, isn’t a permanent identity. It’s a season you walk through so you can come out the other side and finally just be there.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

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I am writing this thinking about all the years I spent in that space between stimulus and response, frozen, not knowing I had a choice.

Once I ordered food and a soda from a delivery service and the guy who brought my food forgot the drink.

He told me he would come back the next day. I accepted but deep inside I knew I would never see him again.

The next day I sat on my balcony feeling dumb.

It was a small amount of money and I knew my parents would have simply accepted the loss and moved on.

For most people the solution is obvious.

But I sat there with a pressure in my chest that came from the weight of the unfairness, not knowing how to act.

I wanted to solve the problem but I had never learned how to take back control when something went wrong.

It took hours of internal conversation before I came up with the idea of contacting customer support.

Their response was quick.

They sent back the money and gave me a voucher for my next order.

That relief was unlike anything I had felt before.

It was as if the world had been spinning in the wrong direction and I had finally pushed it back.

I felt strong in a way I had not experienced before.

That was the first time I realized I did not have to accept everything that happened to me and that I was not as helpless as I had always believed.

This story might sound trivial.

But for me it was the end of one era and the beginning of another.

What helplessness actually is

Helplessness is the belief that you cannot influence or change a situation even if you try.

And because you believe that, you stop trying.

You stay in the job that makes you miserable because the market feels hopeless and you feel unqualified.

You give up on finding a relationship because you believe the circumstances are working against you.

The belief that you have no control leads directly to the behavior of someone who has given up.

The critical thing to understand is that this is a feeling, not a fixed character trait.

It is something most of us learned early, usually at home, from people who were also helpless and had no other way to show us.

A friend of mine told me a story about his childhood.

He had ingrown toenails that caused him pain and embarrassment for years.

His mother would look at his foot, say it was a shame, and do nothing.

She genuinely believed there was nothing she could do.

My friend was twelve years old when he walked to the doctor alone, explained his problem, and eventually got the surgery he needed.

A twelve year old solved in one afternoon what his mother could not solve across years of watching him suffer.

The helplessness was not about the situation.

It was about the belief.

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Why you have to start smaller than you think

Most people who try to escape helplessness start with something too large.

They decide they are going to change their career, fix their relationship, or transform their body all at once.

When it does not work immediately they take it as confirmation that they were right all along.

Nothing changes for people like them.

The way out is not through a dramatic leap.

It is through small repeated experiences of control that slowly rewrite the belief that you have none.

Start with your environment.

Clean your apartment.

Sort out the things you no longer need.

These feel almost too small to matter but they are not.

When you decide that your space will look the way you want it to look, and then you make that happen, you send your brain a message it has not received in a long time.

You are someone who can change things.

From there the steps get slightly bigger.

Unfollow the accounts that make you feel behind or anxious.

You have been tolerating them for months telling yourself that is just how social media feels.

It does not have to.

Removing them is a small act of control that costs nothing and pays immediately.

Then practice it in the world.

When a colleague takes credit for your work in a meeting, say something.

When a friend cancels on you for the third time, tell them it bothers you instead of pretending it is fine.

When a shop charges you incorrectly, ask them to fix it instead of walking away quietly.

When someone interrupts you mid-sentence, finish your thought.

Each of these moments is a rehearsal.

Each one adds evidence to a new belief that is slowly replacing the old one.

What changes when the belief shifts

Once you have enough evidence that you can influence your circumstances, the belief begins to change.

Not overnight.

Over months of small repeated actions.

When that shift happens, the job you have been tolerating for years stops feeling like something you have to endure and starts feeling like something you can change.

You update your CV.

You talk to people.

You send applications.

You realize that the help you were waiting for was always something only you could provide.

You start to apply the same logic to your relationships, your health, your finances.

Everywhere you have been passive, you begin to look for the thing you can actually do.

After a while this becomes part of who you are.

You stop being the person who waits for something to change and become the person who changes things.

That shift is not dramatic.

It happens quietly, one small act at a time, until one day you look around and realize you are living a completely different life.

You will have a choice.

That is when everything starts.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

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Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

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I am writing this after running an unfamiliar track in a part of the city I had never explored before.

Do you know those people who talk about flying from LA to London like it is the most natural thing in the world?

Or who sign up for an Ironman without a second thought?

Meanwhile you get nervous a week before meeting friends at a local bar or trying a new sport class for the first time.

We are all human beings living in the same world but some people operate in a completely different reality than others.

I know this because people regularly tell me I am crazy for signing up for marathons on the other side of the world as casually as buying chocolate at the corner shop.

My plans feel completely normal to me.

And I have spent a lot of time thinking about why.

Part of it is courage. Part of it is deliberate practice.

But most of it comes down to one thing: I refuse to let my world get smaller.

Your Reality Is Not Fixed

Psychology calls this moving your reference point.

Reference dependence theory says that how you perceive any situation depends entirely on what you compare it to.

If you have already navigated alone through the chaos of an Indian city, traveling to structured, quiet Denmark feels easy. But if you have not left your apartment in a year, going out with new people feels overwhelming because your reference point is the comfort zone inside your four walls.

This is how we evaluate everything before we act.

And here is the important part: those walls move in both directions. Push against them and they expand. Stop pushing and they contract. Your reality is far more malleable than you think.

When I read my first 500 page book it felt like climbing a mountain. After finishing it, every 300 page book felt like a short read I could knock out in a weekend. When I flew to New Zealand alone with limited travel experience, it felt like the edge of the world. After that, booking a flight to Australia felt straightforward. It is not that far. I had already been further.

This is not just confidence. It is your brain recalibrating what normal looks like.

But like any muscle, it needs maintenance.

Stop using it and the recalibration slowly reverses.

How Life Gets Smaller Without You Noticing

The process always starts the same way.

You stop doing something you used to do.

Not dramatically. Just quietly, gradually, with a good excuse each time.

• You stop going to the gym because you are busy.

• You stop traveling because prices are high.

• You stop reading long books because you do not have the focus anymore.

• You stop trying new things because the last time did not go well.

Each individual decision feels reasonable.

But together they add up to a life operating in an increasingly smaller space.

I wrote about this recently with my own broken bike that sat in my apartment for five months while I kept finding reasons not to fix it. That moment could have been the start of a shrinking I would not have noticed until much later.

If that resonates, you can read the full story here:

The comfort zone does not announce itself. It just quietly reduces the exposure.

It feels easier to stay on the couch.

It feels easier to drive the car instead of walking.

It feels easier to watch a television show than to start a book you are not sure about.

And because each of these choices feels natural and justified in the moment, the shrinking stays invisible until you look around one day and realize how small everything has become.

The people who end up grumpy, nervous, and unsatisfied in the second half of their lives are not that way because of age. They are that way because they stopped pushing the walls and the walls moved inward without them noticing.

You might think those people are simply the ones who went through hardship, loss, or failure, and that is why they became grumpy. That is true in a sense, but not in the way most people assume. It is not the hardship itself that shrinks their world.

It is what they decided that hardship meant.

Imagine my first solo trip had gone wrong. Something stolen, a scam, a bad experience. It would have been easy to label travel as dangerous based on that single moment and never try again. That is how one setback can quietly close a door for good. Being aware of these moments, and refusing to let one experience write the story for everything that comes after, is part of what keeps the walls from closing in.

The Four Stages Your Brain Goes Through Every Time You Push

The mechanism behind reality stretching follows four stages.

Exposure. You do something new and slightly uncomfortable. Sign up for a 5k. Write your first article. Book a solo trip somewhere that feels slightly out of reach. Speak up in a meeting when you would normally stay silent.

Adaptation. Your brain flags the activity as unfamiliar and uncomfortable. The first time you go to a new gym class you feel anxious. The second time less so. By the fifth time it is just something you do. The anxiety does not disappear overnight but it shrinks with each repetition.

Recalibration. After repeated exposure your brain updates its baseline. What once felt big and unachievable starts feeling normal. Your reference point has moved and it takes the whole landscape with it.

Identity shift. Over time you stop seeing the activity as a challenge and start seeing it as part of who you are. You are not someone trying to become a runner. You are a runner. You are not someone who wants to travel more. You are someone who travels.

Identity follows exposure, not intention.

And there is a side effect to all of this. Everything that used to feel hard but was smaller than your new limit now feels almost easy by comparison.

This is why the order matters. Most people wait until they feel ready or confident before they act. But confidence does not come before the exposure. It comes after. You do not think your way into a bigger reality.

You act your way into one.

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Why You Talk Yourself Out of It Before You Even Start

Two things keep people in a shrinking reality.

The first is overestimating discomfort.

We imagine the anxiety of the first exposure will be unbearable and use that imagined discomfort as a reason not to start. Research on exposure therapy consistently shows that we overestimate how bad the first experience will feel and underestimate how quickly adaptation follows. The discomfort is almost always smaller than the anticipation of it.

The second is social reinforcement.

Growing up I regularly heard that certain things, travel, challenges, ambition, were for other kinds of people. Not for us. That belief restricts your reality before you even try anything. You rule yourself out of experiences based on an identity that was handed to you rather than one you chose. Recognizing that story as a story rather than a fact is the first step out of it.

There is also the trap of waiting for the right moment. The right moment does not arrive. You create it by starting before you feel ready and letting the adaptation process do its work.

Where to Start When Everything Feels Too Big

You do not go from zero to one hundred. Pushing too hard too fast tears the walls rather than stretching them and you end up disappointed and back where you started.

Instead aim for ten to thirty percent beyond your current comfort level. Psychologists call this the zone of proximal development, the sweet spot between what feels easy and what feels impossible. That is where growth happens.

If you want to become a runner, start with a 5k not a marathon. If you want to be more social, join a running club or a class where interaction is possible but not forced, rather than throwing yourself into a networking event with strangers. If you want to read more, choose a book that is slightly longer than what you would normally pick up.

Repetition matters more than intensity. One big push means very little without consistency behind it. Your brain needs repeated exposure to recalibrate, not a single heroic effort followed by months of nothing.

And you do not have to focus on only one area at a time. You can be pushing your fitness limits during the week while taking your first solo weekend trip. The expansions reinforce each other. A person who does hard things in one area of their life finds it easier to do hard things in other areas too.

The goal is not to become someone who does extraordinary things. The goal is to keep moving the walls outward so that things which once felt impossible become simply part of how you live.

The Direction Is Up To You

Life does not shrink by accident.

It shrinks by non-use.

The activities you once loved, the challenges you once took on, the version of yourself that felt alive and curious, none of that has to become a memory. But keeping it requires deliberate pushing against the natural pull toward comfort and routine.

Your reality is not fixed.

It expands when you push and contracts when you stop.

That is not a motivation speech. It is simply how the mechanism works.

The direction it moves from here is entirely up to you.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

Subscribe now

Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

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I am writing this exactly one year after I made a deal with myself not to quit again.

This is not really about Substack.

It is about accepting a part of yourself and finally letting it live, even when it comes with no financial promise and no guarantee of anything.

Before I started writing on Substack, I had launched at least five different blogs and websites.

A travel blog because I love traveling. An online marketing site despite having no expertise in online marketing.

A personal blog about my life that I abandoned before anyone could read it.

I purchased domains from multiple providers, set up WordPress sites, created Pinterest and Instagram accounts, and cancelled almost everything before it had a chance to become anything.

The pattern always ended the same way. Frustration, disappointment, and a quiet reinforcement of the belief that I was someone who quits.

Those moments did not feel like lessons at the time. They just felt like failure.

But something was happening underneath all of it that I could not see yet.

The last time I found myself on GoDaddy about to purchase another domain, I laughed out loud.

Not because it was funny but because I finally recognized what was happening.

Here we are again, I thought. The same idea, the same impulse, the same pull toward putting something out into the world.

It had come back five times already.

Maybe six. I had lost count.

That was the moment something shifted.

I had read enough about patterns and awareness to know that life repeats the same lesson until you learn it.

And standing there on a domain registration page for the fifth or sixth time, I finally understood what the lesson was.

This interest was not going away. It had never gone away. Every time I abandoned it, it simply waited and came back.

So I made a deal with myself.

I would purchase this domain one last time.

I would set up the account.

And whatever happened, I would not cancel it.

Not because I expected it to succeed quickly but because I finally accepted that I would end up here again anyway.

Quitting no longer made sense.

I set up Substack, linked my custom domain, and started writing without a plan, a niche, or any clear direction.

I just wrote what was on my mind.

In the first few months almost nothing happened.

A handful of subscribers, one or two likes, no viral moments.

And for the first time that did not bother me because the goal was not a result.

The goal was not to abandon the thing again.

That single shift changed everything.

When you stop trying to control the outcome and focus only on showing up and doing the work, the pressure disappears.

You cannot control how people respond to what you put out.

You can only control whether you keep putting it out.

So I defined a schedule, developed a routine, and kept going even when the ideas were slow and the weeks felt quiet.

One year later I have more than 500 subscribers, over 50 articles published, and a daily content practice that I maintained even on vacation.

But the number that matters most to me is not any of those.

It is the fact that for the first time in my life I did not walk away.

I am genuinely proud of that.

Not because of what the numbers look like but because I finally let something in.

An interest that had been knocking on the door for years, that I had turned away every single time, is now part of my daily life.

It makes me feel more complete than I expected.

If you have an interest that keeps coming back, something you have started and abandoned more than once, something you tell yourself is not important enough or practical enough or realistic enough, I want to say something directly.

It is coming back for a reason.

You do not have to make it your career or your identity or your income stream.

You just have to stop making it wait.

One year in, I feel like I have barely started.

But I am still here.

And that is everything.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

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I am writing this the same day I finally walked into that bike store, five months later than I should have, and more relieved than I expected.

When I came out of the bike store with the collection slip in my hand, I was smiling.

In the last five months I looked at my broken bike in my apartment every single day and told myself I should go to the bike store. Somehow I never did. There was always an excuse. No time because of work, running, writing. Bad weather so I would not need it anyway. But it bothered me because I knew it was never really about the bike.

It was about my life. The bike was a symbol sitting in my apartment every day, waiting for me to be honest about what it represented.

During those five months dust started to collect on the seat and the wheel. I looked at it daily and the answer in my mind was always the same. Yes, I am going to go to the bike store. Soon.

This is how shrinking starts.

There is always a last time you do something, accompanied by the quiet assumption that you will do it again. You stop going to the gym because you need new shoes first, and then somehow you never go back. You stop seeing the friends you used to see every week because life got busy, and you keep meaning to message them, but a year and a half passes and the closeness you remember is now just a memory you have not updated.

One thing stops, then another follows, and then you look around and realize the dust is sitting everywhere. Your life has become so small it is mostly just work and television in the evening. But when someone at work asks how you spend your time, you still tell them about the gym, the travel, the friends. Because in your mind that is still who you are.

For five months I was still the guy who rides a bike. The fit one who cycles to the gym instead of taking the bus. I told people I love cycling with a small uncomfortable thought in the back of my mind that I really should go to the bike store.

The truth is I had started lying to myself.

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I practice enough awareness in my daily life to eventually notice the unspoken conflict. Something felt off and I felt uncomfortable enough that I had to look at it honestly. When I did, I knew it was about procrastination and about what happens when you let procrastination make your decisions for you.

You might think I am being dramatic about a bicycle. But this is always how it starts. You stop doing something in your thirties or forties, you blink, and suddenly you are sixty seven and have not ridden a bike in decades but still think of yourself as someone who just needs to go to the bike store.

Many people lose themselves exactly this way. A small problem becomes a blocker, the well-oiled system stops, one hobby disappears then another, and life gets smaller and smaller until everything they loved exists only as a memory of who they used to be. It really bothers me because it is completely avoidable, which is exactly why looking at that bike every day made me so uncomfortable. The weather was beautiful outside and I could have been the person I remembered.

When I came out of the bike store smiling, it was not because the bike would be fixed. It was because I had said no to the shrinking. I had noticed the drift, named it, and done something about it before it became permanent. They also need to fix the brakes which will cost more than I expected. I did not hesitate for a second because that cost felt like nothing compared to what it represented.

On Monday I get the bike back and my life will be a little richer for it.

Awareness is not about grand transformations. It is about noticing the small shifts before they become irreversible. The dust collecting, the excuses multiplying, the gap between who you are and who you keep telling yourself you will be again soon.

What in your life is broken and collecting dust right now?

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

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I wrote this after realizing how long I spent asking for permission I could only ever give myself.

Most people think they ask for other people’s opinions because they want information.

But in most cases that is not what they are looking for.

They want permission.

When I told my parents I wanted to travel the world, including countries they had only ever seen covered negatively on the news, they told me not to go.

They were genuinely concerned.

But they had never left the country themselves.

Their opinion was not based on experience.

It was based on fear, and they projected that fear directly onto my decision.

Their answer did not make me happy because I did not get the permission I was hoping for. A motivating response like “Yes, that sounds amazing, go for it” was what I was actually looking for. But my parents did not really reply to me. They replied to themselves, answering how they would decide in the same situation. That is not useful information for anyone but them.

I did the same thing once to a friend. She asked whether she should do a yoga teacher training. Without any expertise in that area, I told her the market was too saturated and she probably should not bother. She looked deflated but said I was probably right.

I went home that evening feeling terrible. The next day I found her and told her to ignore everything I had said and go for it. She did. Today she has fully booked sessions every week, spent months in India, and came home a different person.

What I had given her was not advice. It was my own insecurity dressed up as an opinion.

There is a difference between gathering expertise and outsourcing your thinking. Most people do the second one without realizing it. And it costs them more than they know.

The real cost of asking everyone

When you constantly outsource your decisions to others, three things happen that quietly undermine your life.

You lose alignment with yourself. Imagine you have realized you want a slower, calmer life and are thinking about leaving a big city. But your friends tell you that you would regret it, that cities have more opportunities, that you would be throwing something away. So you stay, because of a fear they gave you, without them ever understanding your real priorities. You live with the consequences. They do not.

Your confidence shrinks. Every time you hand a decision to someone else, you send yourself a message: I cannot trust my own judgment. Over time that message becomes louder. You start asking for opinions on smaller and smaller decisions. The muscle weakens from lack of use.

Responsibility gets diluted. When something goes wrong, you can always say you just followed someone else’s advice. That might feel like relief in the moment but it means you never fully learn. You stay dependent.

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When asking for opinions actually helps

There are situations where other people’s input is genuinely valuable. The difference is expertise versus opinion.

Ask people who have done the specific thing you are considering. If you are thinking about running your first marathon, ask a marathon runner. If you are thinking about going solo in your career, ask someone who has actually done it.

Even then, apply a filter. Someone who built a business with wealthy parents and a safety net will give you different advice than someone who did it from scratch. Their experience is real but it is not your situation. Take the information, not the conclusion.

The simple rule: ask for facts and experience, not for permission or validation.

How to make better decisions on your own

Use your long term vision as the filter

Every significant decision I face I run through the same question: does this bring me closer to the life I am building or further from it?

I know I want to keep traveling, stay active, and maintain my freedom. So when the question of buying a car comes up, the answer is straightforward. A car means less walking, more expense, less money for experiences, and a daily cost that does not serve anything I actually value. Decision made in two minutes without asking anyone.

Your vision does not have to be elaborate. It just has to be yours. Once you know what you are building, most decisions answer themselves.

Limit who you ask and why

If you do ask someone, be specific about what you need. You are not looking for their overall verdict. You are looking for one piece of information they have that you do not.

Ask one or two people maximum. More than that and you will end up more confused than when you started, trying to reconcile perspectives that were never designed to work together.

Never ask someone whose opinion comes from fear rather than experience. You can usually tell the difference quickly.

Build the decision muscle with small choices

Start where the stakes are low. Choose the restaurant without consulting anyone. Pick the film for the evening on your own. Decide on the route for your run without asking which way is better.

These decisions feel trivial but they are practice. Every time you make one and it turns out fine, you collect evidence that your judgment works. Over time that evidence becomes confidence and confidence makes the bigger decisions easier.

Accept that discomfort is part of the process

Making a decision alone will always carry some uncertainty. That discomfort does not mean you are doing it wrong. It means you are taking responsibility for your own life, which is uncomfortable by definition.

The alternative is a life where every major choice has been filtered through other people’s fears and limitations before it reaches you. That might feel safer. But it is not your life. It is a version of their lives applied to your circumstances.

The thing nobody tells you

The people whose opinions you are asking will not live with the consequences of your decision. You will.

Your parents who told you not to travel will not be the ones sitting at home wondering what those places were actually like. Your friends who told you to stay in the city will not feel the weight of a life that never matched what you actually wanted.

Only you carry the result. So the decision should start and end with you.

Ask for expertise when you need it. Listen to people who have genuinely done the thing. But stop handing your choices to people who are simply nearby and willing to have an opinion.

Your judgment is not perfect. Neither is anyone else’s. The difference is that yours is calibrated to your life, your values, and your vision.

Start trusting it.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

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Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

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I am writing this on a quiet Sunday morning, thinking about all the years I spent running from things that were simply trying to get my attention.

We all know that situation.

We are sitting in a meeting with a good idea or a solution we believe in, but we stay silent.

We want to avoid the moment when we break the silence and draw attention to ourselves.

Just thinking about it makes us nervous, so we say nothing.

At home, we feel the urge to turn on a podcast the moment we walk through the door.

The silence of an empty apartment is the thing we cannot face.

Avoidance is a coping mechanism.

It protects us from discomfort and runs our life quietly in the background, often without us even noticing.

The mechanism is efficient. That is exactly what makes it a problem.

Because avoidance is more than protection.

It hides information about ourselves that we need to know.

In the meeting it is not really about the attention.

It is about the fear of being exposed as not good enough.

At home it is not really about the silence.

It is about the loneliness or sadness waiting underneath it that we are not ready to sit with yet.

The pattern is always the same. The avoidance is never really about the thing on the surface.

In my own life I often did not send job applications.

Not because I was lazy but because I wanted to avoid the interview where it might turn out I was not good enough for the role.

In my relationships I stayed silent when something bothered me or when I wanted something for myself because I was afraid that showing my real needs would risk the harmony and eventually cost me the relationship.

The hidden information underneath both was the same belief: I am not good enough, and if people see that, they will leave.

Nobody wants to face that about themselves.

But that belief, once you can name it, is actually valuable information. It is the starting point of everything that can change.

As long as you stay in avoidance mode you keep that information hidden.

You never get the chance to question it, challenge it, or collect evidence that it is wrong.

You never find out that the thing you feared was never as dangerous as the avoidance itself.

What happens when you stop avoiding

The first thing you will experience is discomfort.

There is no way around it and no shortcut.

That is something you have to get through.

But on the other side of that discomfort, your energy improves.

Avoidance is exhausting in ways you do not notice until you stop.

The internal dialogue loops, the constant low level stress, the bad sleep.

When you stop feeding the avoidance, that weight lifts.

More importantly, you start collecting real information about yourself.

What you are actually capable of.

Where you genuinely need to grow.

The picture of yourself becomes clearer and more honest, which makes every future decision easier and faster.

You also lose something.

The short term relief that avoidance gave you disappears.

But what replaces it is something more durable: the quiet confidence of someone who shows up instead of hiding.

How to quit the avoidance loop

You do not have to go from zero to one hundred.

The best approach is to shrink the avoided thing down to its smallest possible version.

If you fear silence, start with short walks without music or earbuds.

If you avoid writing because you believe you are not good enough, open the document and write one deliberately bad sentence.

The goal is not to complete the task.

It is to put one foot in the room, stay for two minutes, then leave.

Then do it again the next day.

Tell yourself before you start that it will feel uncomfortable.

That single step adjusts your expectations and almost always leads to the same realization: it was not as bad as you thought.

Remove the escape routes.

No phone on the desk when you sit down to write.

No earbuds when you walk.

And when you finally speak about something real, do not soften it with humor.

If you do not take the conversation seriously, neither will anyone else.

What I found when I stopped running

Silence was one of my biggest enemies.

I lived in constant noise so I would not have to hear what was happening inside.

When I finally started walking without distraction, I felt the discomfort immediately.

But I also found the man I had been neglecting for 35 years.

Someone who had many interests but never got the attention he needed.

I found warm memories from my childhood I could finally use as a compass.

I found things that needed work, my lack of confidence, the belief that I was not enough.

And in meetings, when I finally spoke up, I found that people appreciated what I said.

Nobody laughed.

Nobody judged the out of the box ideas.

My words mattered more than I had ever allowed myself to believe.

That is what was waiting on the other side of the avoidance.

Not the catastrophe I feared.

Just myself.

What Was Always Waiting

Avoidance feels like protection.

And for a while it is.

But it is a short term strategy with a long term cost, because everything you are hiding from yourself is also everything you need to grow.

The courage to face it does not have to be dramatic.

It starts with two minutes in the room, one honest sentence, one walk without noise.

That is the lowest price you will ever pay for the life waiting on the other side.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

Subscribe now

Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

If this resonates, Subscribe and join 450 readers.

I'm writing this from Hamburg, a week after returning from Tenerife where I hiked volcanoes, trained daily, and came home feeling better than when I left.

A note before you start reading

This article is for people who have built habits they care about and want to keep them alive while traveling. If you prefer to fully switch off on vacation, that is completely valid. But if you have ever come home from a trip feeling sluggish and frustrated with yourself, this is for you.

We all know how it starts.

You book the early flight because it is cheaper. You leave the house before your body has woken up properly and arrive at the airport with your stomach growling. So you grab a croissant and an orange juice at the gate, things you never eat at home, just to get through the morning. On the flight you order an overpriced panini and another coffee. By the time you land you are hungry again and the first place you see is a Burger King. You tell yourself it is just this once.

You arrive at the hotel and the fridge is full of minibar alcohol. There is no kitchen. The gym has two treadmills and a broken elliptical. You forgot your running shoes. And somewhere in the back of your mind you already know: the next two weeks are going to be a write-off.

You tell yourself you will make up for it when you get home.

I lived this many times. Then I got serious about changing it.

Before my four week trip to Australia in 2025 and again before Tenerife this year, I sat down and made a proper plan. Not a vague intention to eat well and exercise but a real preparation process that made keeping my habits the path of least resistance rather than the exception.

The result was that I maintained every single one of my habits for the entire trip. Running, weight training, stretching, supplements, sleep, reading, writing. The same way I do at home, just in a different environment, with the hours I would normally spend working now free to explore.

Here is exactly how I did it.

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Why most people fail before they even leave

Habits do not break on vacation because of temptation or weak willpower.

They break because of poor preparation.

When the environment is not set up to support your habits, the default becomes whatever is easiest in the moment.

No kitchen means you eat out for every meal.

No gym means you do not train for two weeks.

No running shoes means no running.

No yoga mat means no stretching.

The environment wins every time. The solution is to control the environment before you arrive.

The preparation starts way before your vacation

Step 1: Visualize your day from the moment you wake up

This is the most important step and the one I always underestimated. Before booking anything, I sit down and mentally walk through a full day of my vacation as if I am already there.

I wake up. I want to make my own breakfast. That means I need a kitchen with a stove, basic utensils, and a fridge. I need a supermarket within reasonable walking distance that carries oats, yoghurt, berries, and eggs.

After breakfast I want to write for an hour or two. That means I need a reliable internet connection and a comfortable place to sit with my laptop.

Around 11am I want to train. That means I need a gym with at least enough equipment for a proper session. Not two treadmills. Actual weights.

After training I want my protein shake and a snack. That means I need to either bring my supplements or find a nutrition shop nearby.

Lunch and dinner I cook myself. That means the kitchen and supermarket matter again.

In the evening I want to stretch or do yoga. That means I need a yoga mat and enough space to use it, indoors if the weather is bad.

At 10pm I want the lights off and to sleep well. That means I need a quiet area, a comfortable bed, blackout curtains, and working air conditioning.

Going through this exercise makes your actual needs completely visible. Most people skip it and end up improvising on arrival.

Step 2: Research the location

Once you know what you need, you can research intelligently rather than just booking whatever looks nice.

Start with the supermarket. This is non-negotiable. I check which major supermarket chains exist at my destination and find their locations on Google Maps before I choose where to stay. In Tenerife that was Mercadona. I chose Los Cristianos specifically because there was one within walking distance.

Small grocery stores are not enough. They rarely carry everything you need and the prices are significantly higher. A proper supermarket within 30 minutes on foot is the minimum.

Then find your accommodation around the supermarket, not the other way around. The kitchen is the most important feature. It needs a stove, pots, pans, a fridge, and basic utensils. Read the listing carefully and check photos. If it is unclear, message the host directly.

For the gym, photos in listings are almost useless because hotels always photograph the one corner that looks good. Instead I search through reviews specifically for comments from other people who actually use the gym. A small gym with proper weights is better than a large one with only cardio machines. If the hotel gym is not good enough, search for a nearby commercial gym. Just make sure it is close. A gym that requires a 40 minute commute will not get used after a long day.

Check the neighborhood for noise. If the hotel is in the middle of the nightlife district your sleep will suffer regardless of how well you planned everything else. Read reviews that mention noise specifically.

Finally, if you rely on supplements, search for a nutrition or fitness shop near your accommodation. I do not travel with large bags of protein powder if I can avoid it. One search on Google Maps before I leave tells me whether I can buy what I need on arrival.

Step 3: Pack with intention

This is the easiest step because most things can be bought at your destination if needed. But bringing the right things eliminates unnecessary spending and the risk of arriving unprepared.

My non-negotiables: running shoes, sport and gym clothes, chest strap for heart rate monitoring, running cap and sunglasses, stainless water bottle, a shaker for protein, one or two physical books, laptop, and my dental care kit. Everything else I can source locally.

The deeper reason this matters

You could read all of this and still ask: why bother?

Is the whole point of vacation not to escape your normal life?

That is exactly the question worth sitting with.

If your habits feel like obligations you need a break from, then yes, vacation becomes an escape from them. But if you have built habits that genuinely serve you, that make you feel strong, clear, and like yourself, then you do not want a break from them.

You want to take them with you.

In the last four years I built a life at home that I genuinely enjoy. My habits are not a burden. They are the reason I feel good every single day. When I travel I do not leave them behind because they are part of who I am, not just part of my routine.

I came home from Tenerife feeling better than when I left. Stronger, clearer, more energized. Not despite keeping my habits but because of it.

That is what good preparation makes possible.

The right habits do not need a holiday.

Build the life first.

Then take it with you wherever you go.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

Subscribe now

Welcome and thank you for being here. Running Home is a weekly newsletter about awareness, self-reliance, health, and freedom. Real stories, honest struggles, and the hard-won lessons from someone who chose to change his life completely.

If this resonates, Subscribe and join 450 readers.

I am writing this from Tenerife, a day after hiking Montana Blanca alone in strong wind with nobody around for miles. I have not stopped smiling since.

There was only one free slot in the parking place at Montana Blanca so I took it as a sign of invitation.

I got out of the car, put on my hiking boots and windbreaker.

The moment I walked away from the road the silence hit me.

There was no wind at that moment and at more than 2000 meters above sea level on the side of a volcano there was no sound of nature either.

I stopped for a second because it felt uncomfortable.

It had been a while since I experienced such silence around me.

On both sides, rocky hills rose with their desert orange color. I looked up and there were small caves in those walls.

Before me, just a dusty endless path with some spots covered with snow.

My first thought was that I was on Mars. Or in Star Wars when C-3PO and R2-D2 head toward Jabba’s palace to rescue Han Solo. I smiled thinking about how little fuzzy creatures might be watching me from above waiting for the right moment to catch me.

Having these thoughts eased the discomfort I felt in those first minutes so I continued walking.

Since I rarely wear earbuds to listen to music or podcasts, the only option was to spend time with my own thoughts. Fortunately, years of marathon training and enough time spent alone had prepared me for these situations and I didn’t panic knowing that the next few hours were going to be between me and myself.

I heard the crunch of my steps and as I gained elevation the wind woke up, cold enough to keep patches of snow frozen on the ground despite the sun burning overhead.

The wind came in waves, each one announcing itself before it hit. When it arrived fully it was a deep constant roar that filled everything around me, and my hood vibrated against my head like it was trying to tear loose.

This was the moment I started smiling more. In my mind I stepped outside myself for a second, seeing the scene from above — a guy walking his own way on a volcano, feeling great about it.

I felt proud about the decision I had made to go on another adventure without asking for permission or waiting for somebody to join me. The feeling of being alive, of freedom, of living deliberately. Exactly the things I write about, lived out in reality, with me as the author of my own life.

I remember when I was 27, green and insecure, and decided to go on my first adventure alone. Back then I had no clear idea about what mattered to me, but there was one strong thought in the back of my head:

If you don’t do it, it won’t happen.

I knew I had to go alone. I couldn’t wait for other people to join me, for the next summer, the next year, or the next decade.

But don’t get me wrong. It was never about wanting to be alone on these journeys.

It was about going on them regardless of the company.

After an hour of ascending I reached 2500 meters and the wind turned into a roaring invisible force that pushed my legs sideways with every step. But at that point turning back was not something I could consider.

I was smiling even more. Because now I wasn’t only a guy hiking alone on a volcano.

In my head I was on a mission, like Indiana Jones facing danger and risk without hesitation.

So I kept going.

There is a guy at the gym where I show up two or three times a week.

He is the same age as me, 39.

We usually exchange a few words when we see each other before focusing on our workouts.

Last time we ended up sitting next to each other after the sauna, I asked him about his vacation plans for this year.

“Do you have any plans for this summer?” I asked.

“It depends,” he said.

“Depends on what?”

“On whether I meet a girl or not.”

I looked at him for a second. “Why does your vacation plan depend on that?”

“Well, I don’t like doing all the travel stuff alone. Cooking, buying groceries, booking hotels. It’s better to share it with someone so I don’t have to do everything by myself.”

“Have you met anyone recently? Are you dating?”

“I’m trying,” he said. “The last date didn’t work out so I keep trying.”

I accepted what he said and we moved on.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterward.

He is waiting to meet someone in order to start living the life he wants. And maybe traveling is not even his biggest dream.

Maybe it is something else entirely.

But the pattern is the same.

He has decided that whatever he wants requires another person to be possible first.

That is not a travel problem.

That is a life problem.

And I kept asking myself the same two questions on the way home.

What if he never meets her?

And what if he does, but she doesn’t want to travel or do the things he loves?

After almost two hours I arrived at a crossing on the path.

One way leading to the peak of the volcano was closed due to stormy weather conditions but the other was only a 300 meter walk to the end of my hiking route.

Without hesitation I turned left and walked that short distance to the finish.

A few jumps and balancing acts over a deep snow patch and I was there.

Standing there I started laughing.

Even now, writing about it, I am smiling because it was such a strong moment of aliveness.

Up there in that windstorm, able to see far in almost every direction, with nobody around to validate the moment for me.

As you can probably guess, I didn’t need that.

I will never forget this experience.

The hike was not difficult and it was never about doing the hardest thing possible.

It was about proving to myself again that it does not matter where I came from, how good my genetics are, how handsome I am, or how rich my parents are.

If I make a plan, follow my interests, and stop waiting for permission from others or from society, I can achieve almost anything.

What I felt was pride.

Because I know how many people refuse to get off the couch and do something about their life.

They are waiting like the guy from my gym.

For a girl, a man, a Monday, next year, the lottery, a new job, the approval of friends and parents.

Meanwhile their whole life passes waiting for the right moment.

I encourage you to start living deliberately.

Life is too short to spend it waiting.

So the next time you have something on your mind that you really want to do, make a plan and do it without hesitation.

Never once have I regretted a decision I made to make myself feel alive and go after what I want.

You won’t either.

Thank you for reading.

It means a lot that you spent your time here.

If this resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs to read it. A comment or a like also means more than you think, it tells me that this kind of writing is worth continuing.

And if you are not yet subscribed, you are welcome to join the journey below.

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It’s not exaggerating to say that I’m happy.

In the last three years I broke free and started to live deliberately.

I don’t complain or blame others anymore.

I’ve done and achieved a lot of things I always wanted to. I’ve seen all my favorite bands live, I visited countries I always wanted to, I built the body I’ve never had, I started to write, I got promoted at work and got a raise, I dealt with all my mental and physical issues.

Today, I’m dancing across my apartment, laugh a lot, sleep well and look positively into the future.

But this wasn’t always the like that.

The whole foundation of everything I mentioned above goes back to one sentence I didn’t understand when I’ve heard for the first time.

Take responsibility for your life.

That is what people told me when I was 20 and complaining about my poor childhood, my parents, and feeling like a victim.

How could I do anything about how my parents behaved? - I asked.

I was simply there, I suffered, and now?

I had to live with the consequences. The only thing I could do was blame them for my shortcomings.

Then my girlfriend left me. She was so superficial, and I had done everything right.

What could I do? If she had been different, we would still be together.

And when the government finally did something about inflation, then I would have the money to go to the gym and travel the world.

But they only support the rich, so what could I do about that?

I literally lived my life like this. Leaned back and blamed everything and everyone for my own misery.

Taking responsibility wasn’t my strength but my creativity for creating excuses for everything was something I already mastered very early in my life.

As a result, I felt stuck and helpless for years until I understood what it actually means taking responsibility and how to take control over my life which led to something I could never imagine before, I broke free.

This might sound dramatic and honestly, it really felt epic.

Once you get into the right mindset, you feel unstoppable.

You think differently and ask different questions.

Instead of “Why me again,” “Why not,” or “Why them.” it becomes about “What can I do?” and “How can I move forward?”.

Taking responsibility sets you free and puts you in the position of control.

But then why are there so many people who live their whole life staying helpless and blaming?

Well, there is a good reason for that.

Blame Feels Good but Keeps You Stuck

People love complaining and blaming others because it is emotionally comfortable.

If the job is bad, the boss is the problem, not you.

If the relationship fails, the partner is the problem, not you.

If life feels unfair, the world is the problem, not you.

If money is short, the government is the problem, not you.

There are many problems, but they have nothing to do with you.

What a convenient situation.

But here is the important part you might not realize.

Blame protects your ego, yes, but it also removes your power.

If everything is someone else’s fault, nothing is under your control.

You are completely dependent on external circumstances.

Your life is controlled by luck, fate, chance, and powerful other people, but not by you.

It is the opposite of freedom. It is like being kept in a cage while someone else holds the key.

Helpless.

Many people operate in this helpless mode by default, without even noticing.

Let me give you an example I have heard countless times, one that will probably feel familiar.

Some people complain about their job for years. The work is meaningless, the money is not enough, and the boss is terrible.

When I listen to this, my problem-solving mind immediately asks:

How many job applications have you sent in the last 12 months?

Do you know what you would rather do instead of your current job?

When did you last learn a skill that could help you move forward?

The answer is usually that they do not even have a CV. They do not know how or where to apply for a new job.

By this point, they often already dislike me for asking and want to shut down the conversation quickly with something like:

“David, it is not as simple as you think.”

I show understanding, nod, and accept that they do not want to discuss it further.

The truth is, many people live their whole lives waiting for a miracle and blaming others for their situation while doing nothing that could change it.

They tell themselves the story that it’s not as simple as the situation of others.

Their problem is unique.

This comfort of blame feels good in the moment, but it keeps them stuck indefinitely.

Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly. Thank you. — David

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Why Most People Avoid Responsibility at All Costs

If you accept responsibility, you cannot hide anymore.

It removes the excuses you have been using for years.

And yes, it can hurt at the beginning.

Let me give you an example from my personal life that hopefully helps you understand what taking responsibility really means and why it can be painful at first.

After my last relationship ended, I decided to seriously change my life and started asking the right questions.

One of the first questions I asked myself was:

Why did almost all my relationships end in a similar way to the last one?

Note: At this point, I was already at a different level than when I was 20. The question came from a place of reflection and honesty with myself.

Mark Manson once said:

“Between all the problems and difficulties you have experienced, there is one common factor, and that is you.”

I loved this. It helped me stop blaming my ex-girlfriends for my unsuccessful relationships and start asking the most feared question out loud:

What did I do wrong?

Then I sat down and typed a long list into a note on my phone of things I messed up:

1. I behaved jealously several times without reason, mostly because of my own insecurities.

2. I did not support her in the things she wanted me to because I decided they were silly. In reality, I was jealous of her hobbies, mostly because I did not have any of my own.

3. I reacted by withdrawing love when she did not do something the way I wanted. I used the same pattern my mother used when she treated me as a child.

When I wrote down these things I got a heart rush, got red and started sweating. But this honest moment changed the way how I looked at situations in my life because there was nothing between me and the truth anymore.

There could be other examples regarding your financial problems, job, friendships, parents, or health.

You might blame your job for a low wage for not being able to save money while constantly buying the newest iPhone and never trying to find a new job or learn new skills.

Or you might wish for a beautiful partner and blame others for being superficial, while you complain constantly, neglect hygiene, and never make an effort to improve yourself.

Being radically honest with yourself can be extremely humbling and it hurts at first.

But after you face the truth, admit that not the whole world is against you, and acknowledge your own baggage, something important happens.

You start taking responsibility.

Owning your past behaviors also means that you can act differently in the future.

You are no longer a victim but you are in control.

Why Responsibility is Valuable: Lessons from Literature and Philosophy

The idea that taking responsibility sets you free is not something I discovered alone. Thinkers, writers, and leaders across centuries have arrived at the same conclusion from completely different directions, which tells you something about how fundamental this is.

Psychology: Internal Locus of Control and Self-Determination

Research consistently shows that people who believe they can influence their own outcomes report higher wellbeing, resilience, and life satisfaction. Psychologists call this an internal locus of control. People on the opposite end of the spectrum, those who believe life simply happens to them, tend to feel more like victims and less capable of changing their situation. Self-Determination Theory adds another layer to this: autonomy is a core psychological need. You feel fulfilled when you act as the author of your own life rather than handing that authorship over to circumstances or other people.

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin: Extreme Ownership

In Extreme Ownership, Willink and Babin make the case that every outcome, success or failure, is ultimately your responsibility. Leaders who genuinely internalize this stop wasting energy on blame. They analyze what happened, adapt, and move. The argument runs deeper than leadership though. Discipline and accountability are not constraints on freedom, they are what create it.

Stoicism: The Dichotomy of Control

Epictetus divided life into two categories: what is within your control and what is not. Your actions, your attitude, your judgments, those are yours. Other people’s behavior, external events, outcomes, those are not. Suffering, according to the Stoics, comes largely from confusing the two. Responsibility starts exactly here: owning what is genuinely yours to own and releasing what never was.

Viktor Frankl: Choosing How You Respond

Man’s Search for Meaning is one of those books that is difficult to argue with. Frankl survived Nazi concentration camps and came out with a conclusion that has stayed with me since I first read it: the last human freedom is the choice of how you respond to any situation. If someone in those circumstances could hold onto that, the excuses most of us carry around start to feel a lot less solid.

My Take

My life changed significantly once I stopped waiting for external circumstances to improve and started owning everything I could. That does not mean I blame myself for things outside my control, it means I focus my energy on what I can actually do something about and let go of the rest. What followed was not just more productivity or better habits. It was a genuine sense of freedom. There are very few situations now where I hit a wall and feel completely helpless, because there is almost always something on my side I can adjust, try differently, or let go of entirely. That feeling of having options, even in difficult moments, is what freedom actually feels like to me.

A Framework for Taking Responsibility and Gaining Freedom

Enough theory.

The point of understanding why something works is to use it. What follows are the practical steps and examples that can help you actually start living this way rather than just finding it interesting.

Step 1: Identify What Is Truly Yours

This mental model helps you split your life into three categories so your brain stops wasting energy on the wrong things.

The Circle of Control

These are the things you directly control. This is where your responsibility truly lies.

How you prepare for important moments. Whether you show up on time, dress well, plan ahead, schedule your training, or prepare what you want to say. Before a date you can make sure you look presentable, smell good, arrive on time, and have a plan for the evening. Nobody else is responsible for that.

The effort you put into your work. Starting the task even when you do not feel like it, finishing what you committed to, improving your skills over time. When writing an article you can sit down, write a draft, edit it, and ask for feedback. That part is entirely yours.

How you treat other people. Listening attentively, speaking honestly, keeping your promises. In any conversation you can choose to be curious and respectful, even when the other person is not.

Your attitude when things go wrong. Staying constructive instead of looking for someone to blame. Choosing to learn from a mistake rather than defending yourself against it.

The Circle of Influence

These are things you cannot fully control but can meaningfully influence through your actions and preparation.

You cannot control whether someone feels chemistry on a date, but you can show up present and engaged. You cannot control whether readers love your article, but you can research well, write carefully, and edit thoroughly. You cannot control the final hiring decision, but you can prepare well, communicate clearly, and present your experience honestly.

Your effort matters here. The outcome is shared.

The Circle of Concern

These are the things you care about but cannot control or meaningfully influence. Other people’s opinions of you. The economy. Market conditions. The weather on race day. The past.

Most people spend the majority of their mental energy here. That is where the helplessness comes from.

A simple way to remember it: focus your energy in the Circle of Control, do your best in the Circle of Influence, and notice the Circle of Concern without letting it run your life.

Step 2: Radical Honesty

I already gave you a taste of what this looks like with my relationship example. The bad news is that it can be painful to go through. The good news is that once you lay everything out on the table there is nothing left to hide, and the next time you do this it will be significantly easier than the first. You also do not need to share any of it with anyone. This is between you and yourself.

The rule is simple. Every sentence starts with “I” and it ends the moment you start explaining why it was not really your fault. The words “but,” “because,” “since,” and “if only” are usually the signal that you are sliding back into excuse territory. Stop there.

There is one exception. “Because” is allowed when it points back toward you, your feelings, your patterns, your choices. The test is simple: does the “because” lead back to you or away from you? If it leads away, stop. If it leads back, keep going.

Being jealous in a relationship

Instead of: I was jealous because she went out a lot and gave me enough reasons.

Radical honesty version: I was jealous because I felt insecure and thought she would leave me for someone better.

The first “because” points outward toward her behavior. The second points inward toward your own insecurity. That is the difference. Her going out belongs to the Circle of Concern. Your jealousy and what is driving it belong to the Circle of Control.

Drinking despite your goals

Instead of: I drank last weekend because it was my friend’s birthday.

Radical honesty version: I drank even though I had committed to staying sober.

The birthday belongs to the Circle of Concern. The choice belongs to you.

Diet

Instead of: I ate the pizza because my coworkers brought it to the office.

Radical honesty version: I chose to eat the pizza even though I knew it did not fit my nutrition plan.

Other people offering food is not your responsibility. What you put in your body is.

Finances

Instead of: I cannot save because I do not make enough money.

Radical honesty version: I did not prioritize saving or look for ways to improve my financial habits.

Income level is partly outside your control. How you plan and use what you have is not.

You can do this for every area of your life where you are unsatisfied and have been telling yourself you have no control. In most cases you have more room than you think.

Step 3: Adopting the Mindset in Everyday Life

Once you have been through the first two steps you can start applying this awareness in real time.

The shift is simple: you stop asking “why is this happening to me” and start asking “what can I do about this.”

If your realization is: I did not prioritize saving money. The question becomes: How can I prioritize saving from now on?

If your realization is: I chose to eat the pizza despite my plan. The question becomes: How do I handle that situation differently next time?

If your realization is: My life feels boring because I never plan anything for myself. The question becomes: What could I plan for this weekend?

The Circle of Concern disappears from the equation. You focus entirely on what you can control and move straight to solutions. That one shift, from “why” to “how”, is what separates people who feel stuck from people who feel free.

This works like a muscle. The more you use it the more automatic it becomes. Today this is my default mode. When something in my life is not where I want it to be, I go straight to the how. I rarely waste energy on things outside my control, and the part of my life where I have genuine influence has expanded far beyond what I once thought possible.

You can get there too.

Step 4: Use AI as a Sparring Partner

After you have adopted the mindset of responsibility, AI can be an incredible tool to support you on the journey.

It helps not only to identify where your responsibility lies but also to ask the right questions about solutions and give you inspiration on how to approach them.

If you want to make your life more exciting because you realized you had been blaming the world for your boredom, tools like ChatGPT can give you a long list of options to bring novelty back into your life.

If you have admitted honestly that you have been avoiding your finances, AI can help you build a starting plan.

The key is to use it to look inward and move forward, not to outsource the thinking you need to do yourself.

Freedom Was Always Yours

Most people spend their lives waiting.

Waiting for the right moment, the right circumstances, the right person to finally make things easier.

What they do not realize is that the waiting is the cage.

Freedom is not something that happens to you when conditions improve.

It is something you build, decision by decision, by owning your life completely.

The mess, the failures, the patterns you are not proud of, and the next step forward.

When I was 20 and someone told me to take responsibility for my life I had no idea what that meant.

Now I do.

It meant stop waiting.

It meant that nobody was coming to save me, and that this was not a tragedy but the most liberating truth I had ever heard.

That truth is available to you too.

Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David

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I haven’t caught a cold or the flu in over three years.

That’s not a coincidence.

It’s the result of three things working together: consistent exercise, proper sleep, and a diet I completely rebuilt from scratch. This article is about the diet part.

I’m not a nutritionist. I’m someone who used to have heartburn, bloating, bad skin, and felt heavy after almost every meal. I was getting sick regularly.

Today I eat clean, spend less money on food than I ever did, and my body feels like it’s finally working with me instead of against me.

Here’s the system I built.

What I Removed First

Before adding anything new, I cut what was quietly draining me. This is where most people need to start because addition without removal doesn’t work.

Meat. Replaced with fish, legumes, tofu, and plant proteins.

Added sugar. Including the hidden sugar inside most packaged food.

Alcohol. Gone completely. There’s a separate article about that journey.

Soda and sweetened drinks. Replaced with water and unsweetened tea.

Ultra-processed food. If it comes in plastic packaging with a long ingredient list, I don’t buy it.

A practical rule I use when shopping: if it has more than five ingredients or contains added sugar, I leave it on the shelf. Fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes, and nuts need no label check at all.

This one filter eliminated most of the problem.

One thing worth saying: this is my list. You don’t have to cut meat completely or quit alcohol to improve your diet. But it’s worth paying attention to how your body actually feels after eating certain things. Build your own removal list from that.

What I Eat Instead

My diet is what most people would call boring but I think of it as a system.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with nuts, seeds, and fruit like blueberries. Almost the same every day so I don’t spend mental energy on it.

Lunch and Lunch 2: Steamed colorful vegetables with rice, quinoa, lentils, or sweet potatoes. Protein comes from tofu or fish. I cook once and eat the same meal twice.

Shakes: Protein powder with almond milk, chia seeds, nuts, raw cacao, cinnamon, oats, and fruit. One shake at around 10:30am and another as my last meal, no later than 7pm.

Five meals a day, and I try to finish my last solid meal as early as possible so it doesn’t interfere with sleep. That detail alone made a noticeable difference.

The principle behind all of this is consistency over variety. Your body adapts well to routine. Decision fatigue around food is a real drain and it leads to bad choices. Eating reliable meals removes that friction.

How I Stay Hydrated

Most people are mildly dehydrated most of the time and never connect it to their low energy, poor focus, or bad skin. Hydration is one of the most underrated things you can fix quickly.

My routine is simple. I start every morning with two cups of sencha green tea. During the day I drink around two liters of rooibos tea, no sugar, nothing added.

No juice, no soda, no sweetened anything. Green tea in particular gives you hydration plus antioxidants and a calm, steady energy that coffee doesn’t always give you.

If you want to change one thing this week, replace one coffee or soda with an unsweetened tea and increase your water intake. The effect on focus and energy shows up faster than most people expect.

Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly. Thank you. — David

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The Supplements I Take Daily

Food first, supplements second. But there are real gaps that diet alone doesn’t always cover, especially if you train hard or live somewhere with limited sunlight.

Here is what I take every day:

Omega-3 because it’s anti-inflammatory and supports brain and heart health.

Vitamin D3 with K2 because it’s essential if you don’t get regular direct sunlight. D3 supports immunity and mood, K2 makes sure calcium goes where it should.

Magnesium because it supports sleep quality and muscle recovery.

Zinc because it supports recovery and immune function.

Creatine because it’s one of the most researched supplements available for muscle strength and cognitive function.

Ashwagandha because it’s an adaptogen that helps manage stress and cortisol levels.

Algae-based supplements as a plant-based source of key micronutrients I don’t always get from food alone.

None of these replace a clean diet. But together with good food they close the gaps.

How I Solved the “What Should I Cook?” Problem

This was my biggest barrier for years. Standing in a supermarket with no plan, buying random things, wasting food, spending more than I needed to.

AI fixed it almost overnight.

I use this prompt in ChatGPT every few days:

“I need three vegetarian recipes for today’s lunch and dinner. I’m trying to save time and electricity, so I only want to cook once a day. The recipes should work for both lunch and dinner, meaning I cook at midday and eat the same meal again in the evening. The recipes should be as healthy as possible and support muscle building, recovery and sleep. First suggest the options, then I’ll choose and you can describe them with a shopping list and the preparation. Consider that I work out every day and do intense and long running sessions.”

I adjust until I get three options I actually want to cook. Then I have an exact shopping list with quantities. No waste, no guessing, lower cost.

I also use a shopping list app (Bring) which helps me avoid impulse buying entirely. You can adapt the prompt to your own diet, vegetarian, keto, whatever. The principle is the same: go to the supermarket with a plan.

Where to Start: A 4 Month Plan

You don’t need to change everything at once. That’s exactly how most diet attempts fail. Too much, too soon, and you quit by week two.

Month 1: Remove the worst offenders. Soda, energy drinks, sweetened drinks, obvious junk food. Replace with water and unsweetened tea. Just get used to this first. Once you cut what your body doesn’t need, your sleep and energy will already shift.

Month 2: Fix your shopping. Use the AI prompt before you go to the supermarket. Try not to buy anything on impulse. It’s better for your health and your wallet.

One practical rule: never shop when you’re hungry. In that state you can’t think clearly and you’ll buy things based on how you feel in that moment, not what you actually need.

Month 3: Build your boring routine. Pick one breakfast you can eat every day without thinking. Oatmeal, eggs, yoghurt with fruit, whatever fits you. Remove the decision entirely. Set fixed times for your meals and shakes. If you want to improve your sleep specifically, try to finish your main meals before 6pm so your body has time to digest before bed.

Month 4: Add one supplement. Start with Vitamin D3 with K2 if you live somewhere with limited sun, or Omega-3 if your diet is low in fish. If you train regularly, consider adding a protein powder, ashwagandha, and zinc on top of that.

After four months you’ll have a foundation that actually holds.

The Bigger Picture

I didn’t change my diet in isolation. It came by getting serious about running, fixing my sleep, and quitting alcohol. Each change made the next one easier.

But here’s what I didn’t expect: when your body works properly, everything else opens up.

You have energy to do the things you actually want to do. You don’t lose days to feeling heavy, foggy, or sick. You show up to your work, your training, your relationships without your body being the obstacle. That’s not a small thing. That’s the difference between living reactively and living deliberately.

Health is not the goal. It’s what makes the goal possible.

The plan above is not a blueprint. It’s a starting point. With time you’ll figure out what works for you specifically. Pay attention to the small signals: how you sleep, how your skin looks, how your mood shifts, how your energy holds through the day.

I started thinking about food differently somewhere along the way. Less as something to enjoy in the moment and more as something that either supports or undermines the life I’m trying to build.

When you’re healthy, you’re free.

That’s the whole point.

Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David

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Your phone rings.

It’s your mother.

“We’re having a family dinner on Sunday. You need to come.”

You’re exhausted. You had a hard week at work. You desperately need a weekend alone to recover.

You want to say no.

But you can already feel the guilt creeping in. The disappointment in her voice if you decline. The family talking about you behind your back.

“He couldn’t even show up for one dinner.”

So you say yes.

You hang up, and immediately feel resentful. Not at her. At yourself.

Because you just gave away your Sunday. The one day you needed for yourself.

This is what life without boundaries looks like.

It’s not dramatic.

It’s small moments like this, again and again, until you realize your time, your energy, your entire life belongs to everyone except you.

Or maybe it’s your coworker.

“Hey, can you quickly take a look at this? It’ll only take a minute.”

It’s 5:45pm. You’re about to leave. You want to say no.

But you say yes anyway. Because saying no feels risky. What if they think you’re not a team player? What if it affects your reputation?

So you stay. Again.

“Hey, can you quickly take a look at this? It’ll only take a minute,” asks the coworker.

“I really need you right now,” says the friend who only reaches out when they need something.

“You’re really not coming? That’s disappointing,” says the family, adding pressure.

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” when social pressure kicks in.

“Wait, one more thing…” when you actually want to leave the conversation.

“You’re too sensitive,” when someone disrespects you again.

Sounds familiar?

These are everyday situations that happen to all of us. Sometimes you’re not even aware of them because you’ve become used to having no boundaries in your life.

You start to think it’s normal.

But that also means you’ve become used to the consequences.

The Cost of Having No Boundaries

Constant exhaustion because you keep saying yes when you actually need rest.

Hidden resentment because you agree to things you don’t want, but feel annoyed or even angry inside.

Loss of self-respect because every time you ignore your own needs, a part of you notices.

People take more and more because you don’t set limits.

Feeling out of control because your time and energy feel like they belong to everyone else.

Emotional overload because you absorb other people’s stress and problems.

Disconnection from yourself because you get so used to adjusting to others that you stop asking what you actually want or need.

And you repeat this pattern again and again because setting a boundary would trigger the emotion you want to avoid at all costs: guilt.

I know this because I’ve felt guilty many times in my life when I dared to say no to someone important to me. It felt like I had done something wrong just because I chose myself over others.

But the worst thing about guilt is that people can use it to get what they want.

They know you feel bad when they ask for another favor.

They know you struggle to say no while looking them in the eyes.

Guilt is an absolutely justified social emotion, and it’s linked to our need for belonging.

Saying no can feel like risking rejection, which means that you might end up being alone. From an evolutionary perspective, being alone was equal to a death sentence. But in today’s world, being alone doesn’t necessarily mean the worst thing that can happen to you. Plus, you’re able to survive because you work and earn, which means you can take care of yourself.

Tip: One way to reduce the power of guilt is to learn how to be happy alone.

So we can say that guilt, in modern life, often shows up at the wrong moments, especially when you try to protect your own time and energy.

Fortunately, this is not something you need to live with forever.

You just need to rewire your body and mind so that saying no and prioritizing yourself and your wellbeing feels absolutely fine and even necessary. You have to collect evidence for yourself that declining another favor won’t end up in a social catastrophe. And of course, people around you might be surprised at the beginning of your journey since you’ve taught them that you’re somebody who always says yes.

Change is never an easy process.

But before we can discuss the strategies of building healthy boundaries, we need to take a look at what kind of boundaries we’re talking about.

5 types of boundaries

1. Physical Boundaries

Physical boundaries protect your personal space, body, and physical comfort.

They’re about what you allow or don’t allow when it comes to touch, proximity, or physical presence.

Examples of when to use them:

• Someone stands too close

• Someone touches you without asking

• Someone enters your space without permission

This happens more frequently than we might think. For example, when I’m standing in line at the supermarket and someone stands so close I can feel their breath, I turn and say: ‘Could you give me a bit more space, please?’ Earlier in my life, I would have stayed silent and felt uncomfortable. Now I address it immediately.

2. Emotional Boundaries

Emotional boundaries protect your mental wellbeing and emotional energy.

They prevent you from becoming responsible for other people’s emotions, drama, or manipulation.

Examples of when to use them:

• Someone constantly complains but never changes

• Someone tries to guilt trip you

• Someone expects you to solve their emotional problems

My mother used to call me during my college years and dump all her problems on me without asking how I was doing. Every single day. I felt exhausted after every call, but I didn’t know how to stop it. Today, when someone tries to make me responsible for their emotional problems, I disengage from the conversation.

3. Time Boundaries

Time boundaries protect how your time is used.

Many people lose control of their time because they automatically say yes to requests.

Examples of when to use them:

• Too many meetings

• Last-minute requests

• People interrupting your schedule

For me, Sunday is non-negotiable alone time. Reading, writing, slow day. When people ask me to meet on Sunday, I simply say I’m not available. I don’t explain why or justify myself. Sunday is mine, and I protect it.

4. Energy Boundaries

Energy boundaries protect your mental focus and personal capacity.

Even if you technically have time, some activities drain your energy so much that they affect everything else.

Examples of when to use them:

• Spending time with people who constantly drain you

• Taking on projects that exhaust you mentally

• Being constantly available to everyone

After a hard week at work, I’m exhausted. When someone invites me to after-work drinks or a party, my default answer is no. If I want to see them, I suggest another day when I have more energy. I used to force myself to go and then regret it. Now I protect my energy without guilt.

5. Financial Boundaries

Financial boundaries protect how your money is used and shared.

Without boundaries here, people can feel pressured to lend, give, or spend money in ways that don’t align with their priorities.

Examples of when to use them:

• Friends asking to borrow money

• Family expecting financial help

• Social pressure to spend more than you want

Years ago, my ex-girlfriend wanted me to sell my ETFs to buy furniture she liked because she wasn’t patient enough to save for it. I said no. It would have been stupid to sell my investments just to buy furniture. I don’t compromise on my financial decisions, even when people push emotionally.

Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly.

Subscribe now

How to Recognize Your Own Boundaries

Before you can enforce your boundaries, the first step is to become aware of your own limits.

1. Identify Your Non-Negotiables

For me personally, sleep, gym, and Sunday only for myself are non-negotiable boundaries.

I know that if I don’t sleep well and early enough, my next day will be bad. Gym session with sauna is very important to me for my physical and mental balance. And on Sunday, I love to spend the day alone.

But you might have different ones that help you stay balanced in your daily life.

Take some time to think about them and make some notes on your phone.

2. Track Your Energy and Mood

This strategy is one of the best ways to find and define your own limits.

For example, you notice that after two hours of meetings, you feel mentally drained. This shows your “meeting limit” before you need a break.

I figured out for myself that I can’t go out on two days directly after each other because I feel exhausted. Or after work, I don’t do more than one activity. For example, if I go to the gym, then I don’t meet friends after that. So my boundary is work + maximum one activity.

Pay attention to your mood and energy so you can make notes about your own boundaries.

3. Notice Physical Signals

This is another important one that helped me understand my limits.

After an over-scheduled day (work + 2+ activities), I sleep poorly. Or if you have back pain, tight shoulders, or shaking hands, you need to pay attention.

What are the causes behind these symptoms?

Sometimes the things you thought were normal are the most important, but you ignored them your whole life because people said “it’s normal.”

But being dead tired around 10am and drinking 10 coffees to stay awake is not normal. I had panic attacks because I worked so much and didn’t pay attention.

4. Reflect on Emotional Responses

Are you angry? Or do you feel annoyed by somebody again?

When a friend constantly asks for favors without offering support in return, your limit is being over-committed emotionally.

I felt tremendous guilt all the time when my mother called me during my college years and dumped all her problems on me without asking how I was doing. Every single day.

That was a strong emotional response I could have avoided if I had set that boundary. But I didn’t, and the consequence was that I couldn’t enjoy myself - my mind was full of my mother’s problems all the time.

Fortunately, I recognized the pattern, and I set that boundary for myself.

My life improved drastically.

How to enforce boundaries without feeling guilty

Once you have a better understanding of your limits, you can start implementing small changes in your life.

It’s not about doing a hard cut but taking step-by-step subtle changes that don’t overwhelm others but help you become more balanced physically and mentally.

Level 1: Start with Non-Negotiables (Easiest)

This is the easiest step to implement because you don’t necessarily need to say that hard “no” to everyone. You can simply say that you’re busy at that time.

People have more understanding for that than for getting a plain no.

Plan your days in advance as well as possible and fill in things that you want to have in your life without compromises.

For example, when your non-negotiable is to go to a Pilates session, put it into the calendar and book the session. Or if you’re like me and want to be alone on Sunday, you can simply say to people that on Sunday you can’t.

Important note: you don’t need to start explaining yourself if somebody asks about your Sunday. Simply saying that it’s a day for yourself is absolutely enough.

After this experiment and saying no a couple of times, you’ll gain more experience with how you feel about saying no. That’s exactly what we want.

Example phrases:

• “I’m not available on Sundays.”

• “That’s my gym time.”

• “I have plans.” (Even if the plan is resting alone.)

Level 2: Time and Space Boundaries

With this new confidence, you can also start setting time or space boundaries because they’re less emotionally loaded.

For example, you don’t answer messages after 7pm, or you don’t open the door after 9pm.

You can also apply this at work: truly stop working at 6pm because you know that working longer leads to diminishing returns and you don’t have enough time for yourself to wind down after the day.

I used to answer work slack messages until 9pm or 10pm. Then I decided: no more work communication after 6pm.

The first week, I felt anxious. What if something urgent came up? What if my boss needed me?

But nothing catastrophic happened. A few colleagues sent me messages at 7pm or 8pm. I didn’t answer. The next morning, everything was fine. They learned I wasn’t available after 6pm, and they adjusted.

Now, when someone sends me something at 8pm, I don’t even feel guilty about not responding.

My evenings are mine.

This is still the lower difficulty level. Sometimes you don’t even need to say anything - you just stop doing it, like I did with slack messages. But other times, people will ask directly, and you’ll need to decline out loud.

When you need to say it:

• “I can’t commit to that right now.”

• “My schedule is full this week.”

• “I can help next week, not today.”

Level 3: Small “No” Boundaries in Low-Stakes Situations

Here is where the process gets more serious, but don’t worry, we’re not in the hot zone yet.

There are many less relevant situations where people don’t set boundaries but still feel the pain afterwards.

For example, when people who want to sell something ring my doorbell, and once I open the door, they start talking for minutes without a pause.

Earlier in my life, I listened to the end, answered all their questions, and got red, had a heart rush, and started sweating because I felt trapped. I knew that I didn’t want anything from them, but I couldn’t say no.

Today, I interrupt them very quickly and say that I’m not interested. Most of them take it better than we might think.

This is exactly a low-stakes situation because there are no real consequences for saying no.

Or for example, when people from the office ask you to pick up their package at the packet shop, which is a mile away in the other direction. You can say politely no because it’s not on your way. It’s not being rude and not about not wanting to help, but simply protecting your own boundaries.

Example phrases for low-stakes situations:

• “I’m not interested, thanks.”

• “That’s not on my way, sorry.”

• “I can’t help with that.”

• “No, thank you.”

• “That doesn’t work for me.”

Level 4: Emotional Boundaries (Harder)

This is where most people start to feel the guilt I mentioned above.

In my life, my mother regularly crossed my emotional boundaries while using me as her emotional caretaker.

She loaded all her problems on me. She felt better; I felt worse.

Many people have friends too who complain all the time, and you have to listen to them, otherwise you’re not a good friend.

Unfortunately, the guilt part is known for many people, and they often use it as part of their manipulation repertoire.

In these cases, the same applies: notice first. If you feel overwhelmed by others, or you don’t have the capacity to process problems of others, then it’s time to set that boundary.

When I finally set a boundary with my mother about the daily problem-dumping calls, it was one of the hardest things I’ve done.

One day, she called and immediately started unloading about her problems. After five minutes, I interrupted:

“Sorry, I can’t have this conversation right now. I need to go.”

There was silence. Then:

“Who should I talk to about these things then?”

The guilt hit me, but I stayed firm:

“You have a husband, and I can’t listen to these things all the time because I feel bad too.”

She was upset. The call ended awkwardly, and she didn’t call me for a week. She reacted as usual: withdrawal of love, attention, and care.

The next time she called, I kept the boundary. If she started dumping, I said I had to go.

But after a few weeks, something changed. She stopped calling every day. When she did call, the conversations were shorter. My emotional wellbeing, my mood improved drastically.

The guilt faded. The relief stayed.

Example phrases:

• “I understand how you feel, but I can’t fix this for you.”

• “I’m not able to have this conversation right now.”

• “I need to step back from this topic.”

• “I can’t discuss this right now; it’s too much for me today.”

• “Can we talk about this another time? I need a bit of space right now.”

• “This topic isn’t something I can handle today.”

In these situations, you need to keep in mind that it’s about your own boundaries and protecting yourself. You don’t explain too much, you don’t justify yourself, and you don’t apologize for having a limit.

Level 5: Social Boundaries with Close People (Hardest)

Setting boundaries in a social context with close people is the hardest because the pushback at the beginning is stronger, and the guilt you will feel can be overwhelming.

This includes:

• Telling your family you won’t attend every Sunday dinner

• Declining a close friend’s birthday party because you need rest

• Saying no to your parents’ request to visit for a holiday

• Not joining friends on a weekend trip because you need alone time

• Telling your partner you need an evening to yourself

• Skipping a family gathering without a “good excuse”

A close friend messaged me on Friday afternoon.

“Hey, we’re going out for food and drinks. You coming?”

I was exhausted. All I wanted was to stay home, cook something simple, and watch a movie alone.

Old me would have said yes immediately. I would have forced myself to go, spent the whole evening drained, drinking and regretted it the next day.

This time, I said: “I can’t tonight. I need to rest.”

“Come on, man. Just for a couple of hours. It’ll be fun!”

I felt the pressure. The guilt. They’d think I was boring. Antisocial. Not a good friend.

But I stayed firm: “I’m exhausted. I need to rest tonight. Let’s do something next week instead.”

There was a pause until the next message came.

Then: “Alright, no worries. Next week then.”

That was it. No drama. No friendship ending. He understood.

I spent that Friday night alone, and felt no guilt.

The next week, we met for coffee. Everything was fine.

That moment taught me: most people respect your boundaries if you’re direct and calm. The ones who don’t aren’t the ones you want in your life anyway.

Example phrases:

• “I need this weekend to rest.”

• “I can’t make it, but I hope you have a great time.”

• “I’m not up for it today.”

• “I need some time alone right now.”

• “Let’s do something next week instead.”

Level 6: Values and Lifestyle Boundaries

This is something I had to enforce more recently in my life. Since I stopped drinking alcohol, people wanted to cross my new boundary regarding drinking.

Last year at a company event, someone kept insisting I have a beer.

“David, come on! We only live once!”

I said: “I don’t drink. I’m good with water.”

“Come on, just one beer! You don’t have to go crazy, just one!”

Old me would have caved. Taken the beer and felt weak for not sticking to my boundary.

This time, I said calmly: “I don’t drink but thanks”

“You’re being too serious! Loosen up a bit!”

I didn’t get defensive. I didn’t explain.

I just said: “I’m loose enough.” And changed the subject.

They dropped it.

Most people do once they see you’re not budging.

Fortunately, I don’t miss alcohol at all, so pushing back isn’t difficult for me, but it might be hard for you in the same or similar situations.

These boundaries are about protecting your larger life vision, health, and priorities.

I protect my vision that I want to live healthy. You might want to protect your mental wellbeing by not participating in family drama again. Or you choose to stick to your fitness routine even if people mock you for that.

Boundary maintenance

Once you’ve become more familiar with the boundary-setting process, it’s worth reviewing it regularly.

This process goes back to the awareness part.

Ask yourself regularly: How did I feel today?

When you feel exhausted, find the reason for that.

When you feel guilt or emotionally overwhelmed, ask why.

Based on the new information, you can rethink your boundaries, the non-negotiables, and you can update them easily.

Don’t forget: it’s a long-running process without a finish line, with the goal to get better and better at it.

Final Words

Setting boundaries is not something only you need to learn, but also your environment needs to learn the new version of yourself.

If they only knew you as someone who always said yes, then your change might be a surprise.

But it’s okay.

This is part of the process.

I’m not going to lie: there will be people who won’t be happy about it.

You might lose people who were always part of your life. They might blame you for setting your boundaries.

I’m telling you this because it happened to me, and I want you to be prepared.

Usually, people who truly love you for being who you are, are the ones who take it easily.

Or the ones who also have their own boundaries. I have friends who often tell me no or set time and space boundaries, and I respect them for that. They don’t complain a word when I say no to them.

In order to not overwhelm your environment, you should start slowly.

First with the non-negotiable ones, and then you can experiment with the more emotionally loaded situations.

The goal is that you achieve a state in your life where you’re in charge of your own wellbeing, you don’t feel guilt for being yourself, and you can live free and deliberately.

Good luck on your journey!

Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David

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Do you remember what you did yesterday and why?

And what did you do today?

And why?

Surprisingly, a lot of people struggle to answer these questions, especially the why part.

I remember three years ago when I wanted to buy a Christmas tree only for myself, but I stopped before I could leave my apartment because a question came into my mind:

Why am I doing this at all?

The only thing I could tell myself was: because I’ve always done it.

I spent money every year on a Christmas tree just to have it for two weeks in my apartment and throw it out after the short holiday season.

After I realized that, I asked myself whether I really needed it.

Funnily, the answer was a straightforward no.

This wasn’t the first moment in my life that I questioned recurring things, and the more I realized how powerful the question actually was, the more I adapted this new way of being: living deliberately.

It feels like taking over the wheel on a road where I was only a passenger before. The car had been operating in autopilot mode. Now I’m able to push the brake, slow down, look at the map, and ask myself where I actually want to go.

It’s freedom.

Over the years, I developed the habit of awareness, which helps me not to slip back into the passenger seat.

Most of the things I do today have their purpose in my life. Either they carry me toward my goals or give me space and time to rest or entertain myself.

And I can tell that this way of living highly contributes to the fact that I feel really happy, well-balanced, and content with everything I do.

Now, having this experience, I want to help you wake up and gain control over your life - control that you might never have had, or that you lost by falling into sleepwalking without even noticing it.

You might feel frustrated, weak, bored, angry, or exhausted without knowing what the reason could be.

If you’re interested, stay with me through the following sections. I’m going to give you a simple framework for how to start living deliberately and free so you can be the leader of your own life again.

Understanding Autopilot: Your Brain's Default Mode

Autopilot is when your behavior runs automatically based on habits, routines, or learned patterns.

It’s like the brain executing a stored program that we or somebody else installed.

There’s no active decision or evaluation about whether the program is needed or useful, but it still gets executed on a regular basis.

For example, when you wake up and reach for your phone as your first move in the morning, or when you make coffee.

You don’t think about these things before you do them.

Autopilot is actually a helpful feature of the brain. It frees up mental energy for other things, and you don’t need to think about what you should do next because the brain simply runs the familiar program again and again.

It helps to avoid decision fatigue and also helps us become better at things we’re learning.

The Problem: When Autopilot Controls Your Life

The problem is that this state of mind reduces our awareness.

If we’re not aware of our actions, we don’t question them either.

We simply do them.

For example, if you’ve been driving the same route to a destination for a long time, you’ll probably never ask whether there’s a better way to get there.

Or even why you’re driving there at all.

That’s the most interesting part of autopilot mode.

Not the feature itself, but what program has been put into it and by whom.

Some of these programs are installed slowly by our environment.

Parents, teachers, friends, partners, or social media.

Habits we picked up from other people, or routines we never consciously questioned, can quietly turn into default behavior. Over time they become so familiar that we execute them without noticing.

This can turn into a problem because we’re running habits on autopilot that might work against our goals, happiness, physical and mental health.

For example, when you’re a smoker just because your parents were smokers too.

Or you picked up the social drinking habit after work, but you don’t even know why you’re drinking and suffer from the consequences.

Other programs, however, can be installed intentionally.

Someone might decide to read every morning, go for a short walk after work, or spend a few minutes reflecting at the end of the day.

At first these actions require effort, but after a while they become automatic as well.

In both cases, the same mechanism is at work. The brain simply runs the program it has learned.

The difference is not autopilot itself.

The difference is who wrote the program.

And that raises an important question:

If autopilot quietly runs so much of our daily life, how can we tell when it’s taking over in a way that no longer serves us?

There are several small signals that suggest someone might be living mostly on unconscious autopilot.

Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly. Thank you. — David

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10 Signs You're Living on Autopilot

1. Every Day Feels Exactly the Same

If you look back at the last week and can’t remember anything specific that stood out, life may be running on autopilot.

This happens because routines repeat without reflection. The brain simply executes the same schedule every day without questioning it.

The problem is that when days blend together, time starts to feel like it’s passing very quickly.

Example: You wake up, go to work, come home, watch something, sleep, and repeat the same pattern every day. Months later you feel like the year disappeared but nothing happened.

2. Reaching for the Phone Without Thinking

One of the most common modern autopilot habits is grabbing the phone immediately after waking up or whenever there’s a moment of boredom.

This is autopilot because the action happens before any conscious thought. The habit is triggered automatically without looking for anything specific.

The problem is that it allows external input to control the start of the day.

Example: Someone is waiting in line at a store or sitting on the train for a few minutes. Instead of simply observing their surroundings or letting their mind rest, their hand immediately reaches for the phone. They unlock it, open social media, and start scrolling without even thinking about why they picked it up in the first place.

3. Saying Yes to Things Automatically

People on autopilot often accept invitations, responsibilities, or requests without asking themselves if they actually want them.

The response becomes a default reaction.

The danger is that life slowly fills with obligations that were never consciously chosen.

Example: I was one of those people who always said yes to everyone. Party? Yes. Poker? Yes. Day-drinking? Yes. Then I ended up with exhaustion and shaking hands because I didn’t choose how to spend my time - other people chose for me.

4. Complaining About the Same Problems for Years

When you keep repeating the same complaints but never take action, it often means you’re stuck in an autopilot pattern.

Your mind keeps replaying the same story instead of looking for change.

Example: A person complains about their job every week but never explores other options or develops new skills.

5. Living According to Other People’s Expectations

Autopilot can also come from social pressure.

Instead of asking what they truly want, someone simply follows the path that seems expected by family, culture, or society.

Example: Choosing a career, lifestyle, or goals mainly because it’s considered the “normal” path. The problem is that years later the person may realize they built a life that doesn’t actually feel like their own.

6. Avoiding Quiet Moments

People who live on autopilot often keep themselves constantly distracted.

Silence creates space for reflection, and reflection can challenge existing routines.

Example: Whenever there’s a free moment, someone immediately opens social media, plays a video, or fills the silence with noise. Without quiet moments, it becomes difficult to notice whether life is moving in the right direction.

7. Acting from Habits Instead of Values

Autopilot behavior usually comes from habits that were formed long ago.

The person may no longer ask whether those habits still match their current values.

Example: Someone continues spending evenings the same way they did ten years ago, even though their goals and priorities have changed.

8. Never Trying Anything New

Autopilot keeps people inside familiar routines.

Trying new experiences requires awareness and a conscious decision.

Example: Going to the same places, eating the same food, watching the same types of content, and never experimenting with something different. Over time this can lead to a feeling of stagnation.

9. Feeling Busy but Not Progressing

Many people on autopilot are actually very busy.

However, their actions aren’t connected to a clear direction.

Example: A person spends the entire day responding to emails, notifications, and small tasks but never works on things that truly move their life forward. The activity feels productive but doesn’t create meaningful progress.

10. Never Asking the Bigger Questions

The clearest sign of autopilot is when someone rarely stops to ask fundamental questions about their life.

Questions like:

Why am I doing this?

Is this the direction I want?

What would I change if I started again?

Example: Someone keeps following the same path for years simply because they started it earlier. Without reflection, autopilot can keep a person moving in a direction they never consciously chose.

How to Take Control of Your Autopilot

Once you decide to review your life and the habits that are running on autopilot, you have already taken the first step in the right direction.

It means you are aware of the existence of this feature. And believe me, many people spend their whole lives without even noticing that their entire life runs on autopilot with the wrong software.

But now you can go further than that and start designing your own life the way you want from scratch by following a few basic steps.

Daily Self-Checks: The 5-Minute Habit That Changed My Life

This very simple, almost laughable daily habit changed my life.

And I’m not exaggerating.

I usually start my day with a coffee (which I drink intentionally), and then before I do anything else, I sit down awkwardly at the kitchen table and ask myself loudly:

What’s the plan for today?

It takes only a few minutes to think through and adjust if necessary.

The goal is that everything I do, I do with intention.

I work because I need money to pay the rent, to invest, and to build my side projects.

I exercise because I pay attention to my health.

I read every day, at least one page of my book, because reading is important to me.

I also doomscroll, but with intention. I know that it helps me distance myself from work, so I don’t remove it completely from my life, but I do it with intention within a time frame (20 minutes).

I stretch in the evening because I want to stay flexible, it helps prevent injuries, and I sleep better.

Everything on the list is chosen by me. All the activities support at least one of the most important areas in my life that I want to pay the most attention to.

At the end of the day, I do the same review but in a more reflective way.

I ask myself loudly, usually at the kitchen table again:

How was my day?

I go through, one by one, all the things I’ve accomplished or spent my time with and think about whether I could do something differently the next day.

For example, when I realize that I was emotionally involved at work too much and that made me feel annoyed or angry, then I think about the strategy for how to approach the next day if it happens again.

When I feel too exhausted after my training, then I ask myself if I should do a bit less the next day so I can avoid being too tired again.

Think about this like a conversation with your best friend. In this case, you’re both, and the friend has the intention to support you as well as possible. It might feel weird at the beginning and it requires a bit more effort, but after a while this habit will end up in your autopilot mode, and that’s exactly what you want.

The Habit Audit: Aligning Your Actions with Your Goals

The daily checking is great to review your days and bring more awareness into them, but you can go one step further by auditing your habits.

This exercise requires more time and thinking because you not only need to review your habits but also your goals. The habits carry you toward your goals if you put the right habits into autopilot mode.

Ask yourself: What do you want to achieve? What are your goals?

Write them down and write your daily habits next to them without judging them.

This makes mismatches and contradictions visible.

For example, if you say that you want to have a six-pack but you start the day with a Frappuccino and a doughnut, then it won’t work out easily.

Or maybe you want to have a wonderful romantic relationship, but you’re chasing one-night stands every weekend in cheap clubs, you’re broke, and you can’t even say what you’re interested in except partying. (And yes, that is also a habit even if it doesn’t look like it.)

Ask yourself loudly:

Why are you doing these habits?

What purpose do they serve?

If your answer is “I don’t know,” then it can be a sign of an installed program by somebody else.

Once you’ve figured out what you want, then you can think about the habits that bring you toward your goals and put them into your autopilot program.

These changes will make you really content with your own life because you'll know what and why things are happening and who's in charge of those habits: YOU.

Track Your Energy: Finding the Habits That Drain You

If you always feel tired, then there’s probably a reason for that. Many people have poor sleep habits and they truly believe that sleeping 6 hours and drinking 10 coffees in the office just to survive the day is normal.

It’s not normal.

Normal is that you wake up in the morning well-rested and ready for the day.

Tracking your energy level is a great indicator to find blind spots regarding your habits in autopilot mode.

You can ask yourself the following questions while sitting down and being completely honest with yourself:

In the morning: How do I feel? How much energy do I have? Do I need the coffee because otherwise I would fall asleep, or do I just like how it tastes?

After work: How do I feel? Did the day drain my energy, or do I feel alright? Did I have fun, or did I just do the regular chore I hate?

After social events: How do I feel? Do I need a weekend alone after I spent an evening out, or do I feel energized by that?

Every single answer will help you understand your life better and identify if there’s something in your autopilot mode that shouldn’t be there because it doesn’t serve you but drains you.

Do Hard Things: Building Awareness Through Discomfort

This is something you read everywhere nowadays, especially where people talk about self-help a lot. Michael Easter wrote a book called The Comfort Crisis. Andrew Huberman talks on his podcast Huberman Lab about how doing hard things regularly grows the part of your brain called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, and it helps you deal with future challenges more easily.

There are plenty of arguments for doing hard things regularly, and there’s another one that’s relevant if you want to adjust your autopilot.

Doing hard things increases awareness drastically. When I run my interval sprints, I’m so deeply present in the moment that I exclude everything else from my consciousness.

These difficult tasks remind you that you can influence your life through effort. When you push through a hard workout, learn a difficult skill, or finish challenging work, you experience direct proof that your actions matter.

This shifts the mindset from passive to active.

Easy routines fade into the background of memory.

Hard experiences stand out.

The hard trainings, the marathon, the article I wrote, the yoga session that really challenged me are the things I won’t forget easily.

Your Life, Your Programs

Living on autopilot isn’t inherently bad. The brain uses it to save energy and make life easier.

But when autopilot runs programs you never chose, or programs that no longer serve you, it becomes a problem.

You’ll be frustrated and unsatisfied with your own life without knowing the reason for that.

The difference between sleepwalking through life and living deliberately is awareness.

Awareness that you’re on autopilot.

Awareness of who installed the programs.

Awareness of whether those programs still work for you.

Once you have that awareness, you can make a choice.

You can keep the helpful programs and delete the harmful ones. You can install new programs that carry you toward your actual goals.

You can take control.

The exercises in this article - daily self-checks, habit audits, energy tracking, doing hard things - are tools to build that awareness.

They won’t work overnight. I’ve been practicing them for three years, and I still catch myself slipping back into autopilot sometimes.

But the difference is, now I notice. And when I notice, I can choose.

That’s freedom.

Not living perfectly. Not never making mistakes. But having the awareness to see what’s happening and the power to change it.

So start small. Pick one exercise. Try it for a week.

Ask yourself the questions. Notice the patterns. See what’s running in the background.

Then decide: Is this the program I want?

If the answer is yes, keep it.

If the answer is no, rewrite it.

Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David

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I’ve never experienced a blackout before, but when I stood at the airport in Auckland, New Zealand after flying more than 24 hours, I simply forgot the PIN code of my debit card.

After entering the four-digit number wrong twice, I had one more try before my card would be automatically locked.

I took a short walk, hoping movement would bring more blood to my brain so I could remember the code I used almost every day at the supermarket.

It didn’t help.

My bank locked my card. They didn’t give me any support via phone because I didn’t know my identification code either. The customer support told me there was no way to unlock my debit card.

I stood there, 18,000 km away from home, alone, with limited cash in my pocket and no return flight ticket.

You can imagine that on that day, I learned a lot. I was naive and unprepared.

And this is just one weird moment from the last 15 years of traveling the world, mostly alone.

I made many mistakes along the way. I lost money, lost personal belongings, stepped on a sea urchin on the first day of a vacation in Tanzania.

But I never questioned whether I should book the next flight to a place I’d never been before.

In my childhood, when my father wasn’t drunk, he liked to show me places in the atlas. We looked at the Himalayas, the Mariana Trench, Antarctica, Siberia. We played a quiz where he asked me the capitals of countries.

I grew up with an explorer mindset without seeing anything of the world because my family never went on vacation. Ever.

When I finally got my life together, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

My girlfriend at the time didn’t share the same interest, but I convinced her to do some traveling together. A week in Côte d’Azur in France. Another week in Amsterdam with another couple.

It was great, but I wanted more.

Once I ended that relationship and moved to another country, there was nothing standing between me and the world.

I was so motivated to catch up on everything I’d missed that in 2017, I traveled to 16 countries in one year.

I’d planned for 44. That’s how naive I was.

But that naivety made it possible to see more than most people I know and become the man I am today.

The naivety developed into careful planning.

The hesitant traveler became confident.

In this article, I want to share what solo travel taught me about confidence, self-reliance, and becoming comfortable anywhere in the world.

You’re Forced to Make Decisions

Most people traveling together look at each other and ask, “What do you want to do? Where should we eat?”

When you’re traveling alone, you can’t turn to anyone. You have to decide on your own.

For most people, it’s difficult as hell because they don’t know what they want.

It’s something you learn with time, but only if you’re in a situation where you’re forced to think about it, to make wrong decisions so next time you’ll know better.

I remember when I first flew to Lisbon, Portugal. I sat in my Airbnb with no idea what I wanted to do for the next five days in that city.

It was difficult, and I almost spent my first day only in this tiny room I rented. I thought everyone else in that situation would think it’d be nice to discuss this with someone and decide together.

But I didn’t want to be dependent on others, so I forced myself to do something. The easiest way to create a plan is to look for the highlights of the place, even if it sounds way too tourisistic. The top 10 must-haves are always available on the internet, which can give you structure.

I started organizing day trips in Lisbon. I reserved a table at a restaurant only for myself and booked a ticket for the aquarium because I love watching animals and underwater life. I sat on the main square and watched people. I tried some local food and specialties, and after four days, I’d experienced quite a lot on my own.

It felt great because in the end, I’d made a lot of decisions for myself. I didn’t decide perfectly, but at least I made up my mind and went out. At that time, this was a huge success for me.

Today, I know much more about what I love, and it makes it easy to spend my time wherever I am in the world. Making decisions feels more intuitive and less forced by the urge to do something at all.

This is something you can learn too. But only by doing it scared. Only by sitting alone in that Airbnb, forcing yourself to choose.

The confidence doesn’t come from knowing what to do. It comes from deciding anyway.

You’re Forced to Solve Problems Alone

As you read in the introduction, when you’re traveling alone, you face problems you need to solve alone.

Even after I forgot my PIN code completely, I spent three weeks in New Zealand. But I got ripped off many times in other countries. I lost personal belongings, missed flights and trains, lost an expensive train ticket in Japan (the nice Japanese people gave it back), had food poisoning in Sri Lanka, stepped on a sea urchin in Africa.

In those moments, yes, I was very annoyed. But these problems also taught me that I’m capable of surviving alone and can solve more problems than I thought.

The best way of learning is always when you don’t have a plan B. You can’t call mom and dad to help you out. You can’t turn to a girlfriend, wife, boyfriend, husband, or friends to ask what to do now. You’re locked in a room with the problem like being with a grizzly bear in a honeymoon suite, and there’s no way out.

Your brain starts working differently. It goes from a problem-oriented mindset where you might lose yourself in some kind of victim mode to a solution-oriented Indiana Jones mindset.

And believe it or not, 99% of the time, there is a solution, and you will find it.

With time, you become more relaxed. You plan better, which reduces the probability of problems because you know what to pay attention to.

And this is not only something you can profit from during your trips, but this is a skill, the problem-solving skill, you can apply in your everyday life as well.

That problem at work that seemed impossible? You’ve already navigated a foreign city with food poisoning and no working phone. You can handle a difficult client.

That conflict with a friend? You’ve already negotiated with a taxi driver who didn’t speak your language and was trying to overcharge you. You can have an honest conversation.

Solo travel doesn’t just teach you to solve travel problems.

It teaches you that you can solve problems.

You Learn What You Actually Like

When you’re with others, you compromise. You go to restaurants you don’t care about. You visit museums you’re not interested in. You say yes to things because someone else wants to do them.

When you’re alone, there’s no one to compromise with.

You discover what you actually enjoy. Not what you think you should enjoy. Not what impresses others. What genuinely interests you.

I learned I love silence. I learned I prefer hiking to nightlife. I learned I’d rather sit in a quiet café for two hours than rush through ten tourist attractions.

These weren’t things I knew before. I thought I knew myself, but I was performing a version of myself I thought others expected.

Traveling alone stripped that away.

Now, in everyday life, I know what I want. I don’t say yes to social events I don’t want to attend. I don’t pretend to enjoy things I don’t. I don’t shape my life around other people’s expectations.

That confidence to know yourself and live accordingly? That’s what solo travel gives you.

Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly. Thank you. — David

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Your Worldview Changes Completely

I know many people who are afraid of traveling. They project everything they see in the news or on social media onto the whole world. They can’t differentiate people from their political leaders and believe the world is a very bad place. There are bad places for sure, but you shouldn’t judge nations based on the news on television.

Earlier in my life, I was one of these judgmental people.

My parents’ worldview was very limited and extremely negative. They judged all of humanity based on what they saw in the news or heard on the radio. They told me which countries were very bad and where I should never travel to.

The best thing was to simply stay at home so you could be safe. They did that their entire lives.

I couldn’t accept that. The courage to go to places grew in me, so I went to find out using my own two eyes whether a place was bad or not at all.

I can tell you that in 99% of cases, I was surprised in a positive way.

People I met during my travels were welcoming, nice, and friendly. I rarely experienced rude or offensive behavior. And even when I did, I didn’t project it onto the whole population of the country.

When I traveled to China, people told me I was making a mistake. “They will put you in jail,” they told me.

When I was in China, I felt amazing. Elderly people did tai chi in front of my hotel in the morning. The people at reception stood up every time I arrived. They were nice, friendly, and supportive.

I never felt in danger or experienced any sketchy situations.

Since I’ve been traveling alone, my view of the world has changed a lot. I know that horrible things happen everywhere, but the black-and-white view turned into a more optimistic, less judgmental view. Most people on earth simply want to have a good life, laugh, and experience great moments, just as I do.

We’re not that different as we might think.

This changed how I live at home too. I’m less critical and fearful but more open and trusting.

You Learn Things You Never Planned to Learn

I know what to do when a snake bites me. I know what wild animals you can see in Albania in the mountains when you’re hiking and what to do when a bear stands before you. I learned about the boiling frog analogy in Seattle from a family I lived with for two weeks. I know that if you step on a sea urchin, you can use papaya leaves to heal it.

These aren’t essential things people usually learn, but this is also something I love about traveling.

You become a person with unexpected knowledge. Random skills. Stories no one else has.

And this makes you confident in a different way. You realize you can learn anything. Adapt to anything. Figure anything out.

These skills don’t disappear when you land back home. They become part of how you approach everything.

You Realize How Little You Actually Need

I think this is something most travelers learn with time.

Back when I flew to Mexico, I had huge baggage with me plus my backpack, just to hang a bunch of clothes in the closet in the hotel room and bring them back home without even wearing them once.

Today, I travel with a backpack or a small trolley bag. And still, every time I think I could have carried less stuff.

I got familiar with washing clothes abroad, checking out laundry services or booking Airbnbs with washing machines. I stopped carrying a lot of gear because I don’t really take a lot of photos, and definitely not professional ones.

When I traveled to Iceland with a good friend, I remember having a small bag with my Canon camera, GoPro Hero, selfie stick, various adapters and cables. Then I had clothes for almost a year and half my bathroom.

Over the years, I understood that I don’t need a lot. Most of my needs fit in a backpack, and if I need any services, I go out and find a solution wherever I am.

This realization also led to my current minimalistic lifestyle. I don’t buy stuff anymore, only if I really need something. I focus on quality instead of quantity, and I ask myself 1,000 times before I order something whether I really need it or not.

It’s good for my bank account, and it’s easier to move as well.

The Moments You’ll Never Forget

When I arrived in Tromsø, Norway, it was late, around 11pm. People waited in lines for cabs, but there weren’t many. I did the same, stayed patient.

After half an hour, it was my turn. I jumped in the cab and showed the driver where my Airbnb was. He drove me to that street and stopped somewhere in the middle.

I didn’t know where my apartment was, but I paid and got out of the car. The cab disappeared in the darkness, and I stood there in the middle of the street. It was snowing, but with really huge snowflakes.

There was no soul around, only those dark houses on both sides of the street. I stayed for a while because I rarely experienced such incredible silence. I heard the snow falling. Everyone was sleeping in those houses, and they didn’t know that this weirdo was standing in the middle of the street and listening. It was spectacular.

That moment is one of the many great experiences I will never forget.

I was alone. I didn’t share it with anybody. But I also believe it wouldn’t have been so powerful if I wasn’t alone in that moment.

Here’s another one: When I was in Osaka, Japan, I spent a day exploring the city. Late afternoon, I went back to my hostel, which had an outdoor terrace. Back then, I smoked, and I bought a few beers so I could sit outside after the day.

The receptionist came out, a French girl who also smoked a cigarette. We didn’t talk, but after a few minutes, she said to me: “You look so happy.”

I was surprised and didn’t understand why she thought that because I looked terrible in my opinion. I wore a t-shirt with toothpaste spots on it. My hair looked like a bird’s nest. I was smoking and drinking beer from a can like a homeless guy.

Still, she said I looked really happy in that moment. When she went back inside, I needed to think about what she just said.

Until that moment, I didn’t realize that I was actually happy. That was a time between changing jobs, having enough money in my pocket, free for a couple of months, and traveling in Asia.

I was living my dream and hadn’t taken the time to realize it.

Thanks to her, from that moment I started to appreciate my life even more.

These moments might seem irrelevant to you, not a big deal. But for me, these moments were and stayed very important until today.

I learned about myself that I love enjoying silence, wherever I am, and that traveling the world is something that truly makes me happy. Even other people can notice that.

I could write more about these moments, but I wanted to highlight two of my favorites to demonstrate the power of traveling alone.

Once you start exploring the world on your own, you will also have your own stories that don’t mean anything to others but mean the world to you.

The Confidence That Follows You Home

Here’s what people don’t tell you about solo travel: the confidence doesn’t stay at the airport.

It follows you home:

• When you have navigated a foreign city without speaking the language, office politics seem far less intimidating.

• When you have solved problems alone in countries where you know no one, asking for help at home becomes much easier.

• When you have walked into restaurants alone on the other side of the world, sitting by yourself at home no longer feels uncomfortable.

• When you have started conversations with strangers while traveling, meeting new people in everyday life feels natural.

• When you have made decisions on your own again and again, you begin to trust your judgment more.

• When you have gotten lost in unfamiliar places and still found your way back, small problems in daily life feel manageable.

• When you have carried everything you need in one backpack, you realize how little you actually need to live well.

• When you have experienced beautiful moments alone, you stop believing that happiness always depends on other people.

• When you have adapted to different cultures and situations, change in your normal life feels less threatening.

• When you have discovered that you can handle the unknown, many everyday fears lose their power.

The man I am today was built in those moments. Not in one big transformation, but in a thousand small decisions made alone.

Each moment taught me: I can handle this. I can handle myself. I don’t need anyone to validate my choices or hold my hand through life.

That’s the real gift of solo travel. Not the stamps in your passport. Not the photos. Not the stories you tell at parties.

You learn to enjoy your own company. To make decisions without external validation. To solve problems without asking for permission.

That’s why I still travel alone. Not because I can’t find people to go with. Because the person I become when I’m alone is the person I want to be all the time.

Confident. Self-reliant. Comfortable anywhere.

If you lack confidence, don’t wait to feel ready. Book the ticket. Go alone. The confidence comes from doing it scared, not before.

I’ll see you out there.

Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David

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People who are into self-improvement have probably read the story of the Mexican fisherman, but if you haven’t, here it is:

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while.” The American then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish. The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15 to 20 years.”

“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions!”

“Millions. Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Author Unknown

This story tells an unteachable lesson about life that the fisherman already knew but the businessman needed to learn his own way. Sometimes what we’re seeking is something we already possess, but we have to learn how to see it while taking our own, sometimes difficult journey.

I collected 15 other unteachable lessons about life that I wanted to share. You can reflect on them and embrace them earlier in your own life.

1. Money Does Not Create Happiness

People without money believe it will fix everything. People who make a lot of money realize it only removes some problems and creates new ones.

This is common wisdom. Everyone knows it. Still, most people seek money even when they already have enough, hoping that more money in the bank will make them happier.

But the truth is, if you’re not happy with less money, you won’t be happier with a lot of money either.

It’s important to note that money can solve problems, and those problems can make you unhappy. That’s true. But buying cars, designer clothes, or eating in the most expensive restaurants won’t increase your happiness baseline ever.

2. No One Is Coming to Save You

Another common wisdom from the self-help world. What does this say? Advice helps, support helps, but responsibility is yours. This usually hits after waiting too long for change.

I fell into this trap too many times.

I hoped that a relationship would help me deal with my own demons.

I hoped that somebody would call me and give me the job I really wanted.

I hoped that somebody would solve my problems.

The truth is, if I don’t get up and do something about these things, nothing will happen.

It can be really hard, especially when you hit rock bottom, to stand up again. But if you don’t do it, you can’t expect improvement either.

Taking responsibility is one of the most important characteristics of being a mature adult. Start today with it. Try not to learn it the way I learned it.

3. Trying Harder Is Not Always the Answer

Sometimes the problem is not effort but direction. You learn this after burning out.

If you become the unstoppable force and push against the unmovable object, at some point you’ll give up and you’ll have wasted all your valuable energy on the wrong thing.

I tried too hard to convince women to love me. I tried too hard to get a raise while working more and more. Then I didn’t understand why the other guy got the promotion even though he worked less but smarter.

It’s always important to question the direction and intensity of your effort. Sometimes you just need to pivot a little bit or even do less to get the same or better results.

Don’t try too hard.

4. Being Liked Is Expensive

People pleasing costs energy, authenticity, and self-respect. Most people learn this only after exhaustion.

This unteachable lesson describes my 20s completely. I wanted to fit into the community around me so badly that I said yes to everyone. I helped people move. I said yes to every drink. I played the clown so they’d like me a bit more.

These behaviors ended up in shaking hands, panic attacks, and the realization that people didn’t like me at all but my performances and service.

Not a great way to learn this. Fortunately, today I don’t want to be liked anymore. And funnily, more people like me now than when I tried so badly.

5. Comfort Slowly Kills Ambition

Nothing dramatic happens. You just wake up years later wondering where your drive went.

I know a lot of people who started to settle around 40. They don’t exercise anymore and are never cold. The fridge is always full, and cuddling on the couch became the symbol of well-being.

On the other hand, they complain. No energy. Back pain. Fear of change. Belly fat. Bad sleep. Feeling sluggish all the time.

They think it’s aging, but it’s lifestyle.

Comfort doesn’t only kill your ambition. It kills you literally, way earlier than you want.

Having goals, being active, doing hard stuff regularly are key elements of a longer life while feeling alive.

6. You Cannot Change People

You can explain, help, and push, but people only change when they want to.

This is learned through frustration.

And how frustrated I was when I wanted my girlfriends to be different human beings than what they were.

I forced people to do things

I wanted them to do.

To behave differently.

Be more like me.

It never worked.

People got frustrated because I pushed, and I got frustrated because it didn’t work.

A lose-lose situation that led to bad endings of relationships.

The same applied to my parents. I spent years trying to fix them. Sending them articles about alcoholism. Offering to pay for therapy. Explaining how their behavior affected me.

Nothing changed. Not because they didn’t understand.

Because they didn’t want to change.

7. Time Is More Valuable Than Money

You only understand this when time starts to feel limited.

The realization comes at the same time as the problem with too much comfort.

The perception of time changes drastically around 40.

In our 20s, we feel like we have all the time in the world, and we waste it recklessly while dreaming about a lot of money.

Then we age, and the view of our life gets different.

Around 40, we realize we’ve passed halftime.

Free weekends or free days become more valuable. Money is still nice, but I wouldn’t exchange two weeks of vacation for a Gucci sweater.

Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly.

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8. Freedom Matters More Than Status

Titles, recognition, and admiration feel good briefly. Freedom feels good every day.

At work, sometimes I check my boss’s calendar. He has around 20 minutes of “free” time besides his lunch break, and he works on weekends as well.

He has a great salary, but honestly, I wouldn’t do his job for a second.

Knowing every day that I can close my laptop and go to the gym is extremely valuable to me. Being able to work from anywhere, not being disturbed on my vacation, are much more important than any level of status.

9. Avoiding Pain Creates More Pain

Distraction works short term. Long term, everything comes back stronger.

I spent years avoiding my childhood pain. I drank. I smoked. I worked constantly. I dated four times a week.

But the pain didn’t disappear. It accumulated. It grew.

When I finally stopped running and faced it in therapy, it was much harder than if I’d dealt with it earlier. The years of avoidance just made the reckoning more brutal.

The thing you’re avoiding today will still be there tomorrow. Except tomorrow it will be bigger, and you’ll be more tired.

10. Consistency Beats Intensity

Most people learn this after failing with motivation-based bursts of effort.

I used to go hard at the gym for three weeks, then quit for six months. I’d write five articles in a week, then nothing for two months. I’d save aggressively for a month, then spend it all.

Nothing stuck. Nothing grew.

Now I run five times a week. Not because I’m motivated. Because it’s Tuesday, and I run on Tuesdays. I write every week. Not when inspiration strikes. Every week.

The intensity of a single session doesn’t matter. The boring repetition over years creates everything.

11. Loneliness and Being Alone Are Not the Same

You can feel lonely in a relationship and peaceful alone. This usually comes after heartbreak.

I felt lonelier in some of my relationships than I ever felt living alone.

Sitting next to someone who doesn’t understand you is worse than sitting alone understanding yourself.

Being alone is a state.

Loneliness is a feeling.

You can be alone without being lonely. You can be surrounded by people and feel completely isolated.

I’m alone most of the time now. I’m rarely lonely.

12. Your Body Keeps the Score

You can ignore sleep, stress, and health for years. Eventually, the bill arrives.

I ignored everything in my 20s. Two cans of energy drinks for breakfast. Four cigarettes. Pizza for lunch. Alcohol every night. No exercise. No sleep.

I thought I was invincible.

At 35, the bill arrived. Panic attacks. Hair loss. Dry skin. Constant fatigue. My body had been keeping score the whole time, and I hadn’t been paying attention.

Now I sleep 8 hours. I exercise. I don’t drink. I eat well. Not because I’m disciplined. Because I learned what happens when you don’t.

Your body will forgive you for a while. Then it stops forgiving.

13. Most Fears Never Happen

But the fear still steals years of life before you realize that.

I was terrified of going no contact with my parents. I thought I’d regret it. I thought I’d feel guilty forever. I thought something terrible would happen.

None of it happened. I felt relief. I felt free. Nothing terrible occurred.

I wasted years afraid of a consequence that never came.

Most of what you’re afraid of is fiction. But the time you spend afraid is real.

14. Not Choosing Is Also a Choice

Staying stuck feels safe until you realize time moved on without you.

I stayed in wrong relationships because I was afraid to choose to leave. I stayed in wrong jobs because I was afraid to choose to quit. I stayed in wrong cities because I was afraid to choose to move.

I thought not choosing was neutral. It’s not. Not choosing is choosing the default. And the default is usually whatever you already have.

Time doesn’t wait for you to feel ready.

It moves.

And if you don’t choose, life chooses for you.

15. Self-Respect Is Built, Not Given

No amount of validation replaces living in alignment with yourself.

I chased validation for years. From women. From employers. From friends. From my parents.

It never worked. Even when I got it, it didn’t fill anything.

Self-respect only came when I started living according to my own values, not other people’s expectations. When I quit drinking even though my friends thought I was boring. When I went no contact even though society said I owed my parents. When I chose my life over approval.

You can’t earn self-respect through other people’s opinions.

You build it through your own actions.

The Thing About Unteachable Lessons

I wish I’d believed these things when people first told me.

I would have saved years.

But that’s not how it works.

Some lessons require living.

The pain teaches what words cannot.

The time wasted teaches what urgency cannot.

The mistakes teach what advice cannot.

You’re probably reading this and nodding at some, skeptical of others.

That’s normal.

I did the same thing at 25.

The ones you resist the most are usually the ones you need to learn.

I can’t teach you these. But maybe I can save you a few years of finding out.

Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David

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A recruiter contacted me last week about a role at a tech startup. I opened the email, scanned the first paragraph, and saw two words: “fast-paced environment.”

I deleted it immediately.

At 25, I would have responded within an hour, excited about the opportunity.

At 38, I knew within 30 seconds it wasn’t for me. Wrong culture. Wrong pace. Wrong life.

I know exactly what I want now.

And that’s becoming a problem.

Open to Everything, Wanted Nothing

In my 20s, I didn’t know what I wanted.

At that age, that’s usually normal.

There were only a few people around who knew what they wanted at that young age. They studied medicine or architecture to follow their parents, or they always dreamed about a specific professional path like saving the world as a scientist. They had strong opinions about life, politics, and social problems.

But the majority of people were more like me. I had no clue what I wanted. Not only professionally but in general in my life. I didn’t have my own opinions. I ordered the same drinks and food that other people ordered and just followed the crowd.

Most of the time, I sat at the table with others and listened without forming my own opinion.

I nodded frequently. When people asked me, I agreed with someone at the table because that was an easy way out.

I wasn’t selective at all and said yes to almost everything because I didn’t have any preferences. House party, rave party, day drinking, road trip, vodka, whiskey, soda, steak, burger, sushi.

Yes, yes, and yes.

I was open to everything. But I wanted nothing specific.

That openness felt like freedom, but it was actually confusion.

I wasted time on things that didn’t matter because I couldn’t tell what mattered. Time wasn’t as precious a resource as it is in adult life, so wasted time on poor choices didn’t seem like a huge problem.

But then, after graduating and starting adult life, the pressure and expectations started to grow.

Learning to Order Like James Bond

I heard from many people that I should figure out what I want. I got older, and in online dating apps, I saw that women put into their descriptions: “Only men who know what they want.”

Not just women.

Family, friends, and the whole society gave me this feeling that I had to figure out what I wanted. I read a lot of dating advice for men where people said that women expect me to decide. If they ask whether we sit outside the restaurant or inside, I have to have an answer even if it doesn’t matter to me at all.

I started learning how to order a drink properly like James Bond did. When the waiter asked me which vodka I wanted in my cocktail, I had an immediate answer. People nodded approvingly around me, and I felt great. I pretended to be the guy who knows what he wants, even if I didn’t care about the sort of vodka in my drink.

But knowing what I want wasn’t just something I learned to pretend.

It’s part of maturing. An inevitable process of pattern recognition we acquire based on positive and negative experiences.

Something bad happens, so we decide differently next time. The number of options decreases, and we collect a bunch of emotional associations in the back of our minds.

We get choosier and decide faster.

At a certain age, we’re able to answer more confidently about what we like and want.

We start saying no more often.

We stop considering the unknown as an option because we don’t feel we need it anymore.

Life becomes safer. Novelty turns into predictability and stability.

We order the same food in the restaurant. We drink the same cocktail. We travel to the same place every single year.

Everything that doesn’t fit into the things we know we want gets filtered out automatically.

I get a job opportunity via email and delete it immediately when I spot one keyword that implies something I know I don’t want.

This is efficiency. This is clarity. This is knowing what I want.

But what if this knowing (or believing to know) what I want keeps me stuck?

Quick favor: If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you subscribed to Running Home. I share more stories like this about growth, awareness, and the messy journey back to yourself. It’s free, and it helps me keep writing honestly.

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When Knowing What You Want Becomes a Prison

I believe that knowing what we want can expire without us noticing it.

We change during our life, and something we thought we wanted can become something different today. But if we don’t give ourselves the chance to try, we’ll never figure it out.

At some point, knowing what we want turns into rigidity and fear.

We start saying no automatically to new and unknown opportunities while claiming we know what we want and this isn’t part of it.

For example, if somebody asks me if I want to try acro yoga, I say no automatically.

That’s not what I like. Without knowing exactly how it feels to actually do that kind of yoga practice.

I’ve had the situation so many times where I had the choice to watch a movie and I chose one I’d already watched 100 times over a new movie I’d never seen before. Just for safety reasons. The movie I’ve watched so many times, I know I’ll like it again. But the new movie can be bad, and then I’d waste my Sunday evening watching something I don’t enjoy.

I also like to book single rooms for myself in hostels or surf camps. I don’t sleep in a room with other people anymore. Not even giving it a chance.

So while living with the belief that I’ve figured out what I want, I’ve also started making my life smaller and smaller. I only repeat the well-known things I truly like and try to exclude novelty at all costs because it can be risky.

And there’s a self-strengthening process that makes it even worse.

We’ve all had that situation when somebody convinced us to do something we didn’t want to, because we already knew it wasn’t what we liked. And it turned out we were right. The experience was bad, and we say: “Never again. I knew it would be bad.” These moments lead us deeper into a less flexible and more rigid life.

And there are hidden costs to that rigidity:

What if the job I deleted had a culture I’d actually love, just described badly in the email?

What if the person who doesn’t fit my “type” could become someone important in my life?

What if the movie I skip becomes my new favorite film?

What if the shared room leads to a friendship that changes my perspective?

I’ve become so good at knowing what I want that I’ve stopped discovering what I might want.

The Narrowing: Age 20 vs. Age 38

Here’s what happens with age and clarity:

At 20:

• Open to everything

• No preferences

• Said yes constantly

• Tried everything

• Confused, but flexible

At 38:

• Clear about what I want

• Strong preferences

• Say no constantly

• Try only familiar things

• Decisive, but rigid

Neither is better. Both have costs.

At 20, I wasted time on things that didn’t fit me because I couldn’t tell what fit.

At 38, I miss opportunities that could fit me because I’ve decided in advance they don’t.

The filter that protects my time also blocks my growth.

The Grumpy Old Man Problem

If I don’t pay attention to these behaviors, I’ll end up as a grumpy old man who complains about everything that’s different from what I want and what I’ve gotten used to along the way.

This is obviously something I don’t want.

So I started including new experiences into my life, going against what my mind says in autopilot mode.

I went on a date with someone who didn’t fit the picture of what I want. The date was better than I thought. We didn’t date again, but we had a great time talking about life and sharing experiences about our dating lives.

When I went to a surf camp, I booked a shared room with one other person. It turned out great. There was a guy from the UK. We talked about movies and life, and it was fun.

In restaurants, I try to order something I’ve never tried before. Otherwise, I’d always eat the same thing and never expand my experiences.

I also say yes to social invitations I’d normally decline. I travel to places that don’t fit my “type” or try hobbies that seem unappealing at first.

Not because I’m confused about what I want.

But because rigidity masquerading as clarity is just fear.

Finding the Balance

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not something I push all the time.

It’s about balance.

I keep the clarity:

• I know my core non-negotiables

• I protect my boundaries

• I stay decisive on obvious mismatches

• I don’t waste time on things I know won’t work

But I rebuild flexibility:

• When I realize I haven’t tried anything different in a couple of months, I do it consciously

• I tell myself: this weekend is about trying something new

• Then next time, I can stay in my comfort zone

• But maybe my comfort zone changed or expanded from that last new experience

The goal isn’t to go back to my confused 20-year-old self who said yes to everything.

The goal is to hold both: knowing what I want while staying open to what I don’t yet know I need.

Why?

Because life is beautiful.

Experiences are the things we’ll never forget. They shape us and make our time here richer. Believing that we know what we want is not the same as truly knowing what we want. That’s why it might be worth challenging that belief from time to time.

The Paradox Remains

At 20, I was open but lost.

At 40, I’ll be clear but rigid.

The work isn’t choosing between them. It’s managing the tension.

Knowing what you want is power. But knowing what you want and refusing everything else is prison.

The real maturity isn’t just knowing what you want. It’s knowing what you want while remaining flexible about how it might show up.

Maybe the person who doesn’t fit your type teaches you something your type never could.

Maybe the experience outside your comfort zone expands what comfortable means.

Maybe the opportunity you delete contains exactly what you’re looking for, just packaged differently.

I still know what I want. But I’m learning to question my automatic nos.

Because clarity without curiosity is just another way to stay stuck.

Thanks for sticking with me through this one. If you’re going through something similar, or have your own experience with this, drop a comment. I read every one. — David

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