The Life You Love Starts With One Honest Moment

Blueprint Deep Dive #1

May 18, 2025

Ever feel like you're living the same Tuesday... over and over again?
Same alarm. Same coffee. Same conversations that feel like a loop, not a life.

Welcome to Better Days, a space where clarity, mindset, and daily action meet to break that loop and help you build a life you don't just tolerate...
but love waking up to.

When life starts feeling like Groundhog Day, it's not your schedule, it's your system.

I wake up to the same alarm, scroll the same feed, drink the same coffee from the same mug. I sit through back-to-back Teams calls, say the right things, nod in the right places, mute myself while someone snappy takes their bad mood out on the team. Same voice, same tone, same old nonsense.
I respond to emails I forget five minutes later, tick off tasks from a list that never ends, and somehow still feel behind.

That’s life pulling me off track and into the endless whirlwind of motion without meaning, where I’m busy all day, yet quietly drifting further from myself.

No matter how well you plan, how consistent or disciplined you are with your direction in life, there are moments when life will quietly pull you off track, and you don’t even notice.

And now, here you are, half present, half fulfilled, stuck in half-lived days with half-built dreams, half-hearted friendships and a version of life that only scratches the surface.

Half-built dreams will always leave you with half-lived days.

It’s not that you don’t like your life. You’ve worked hard to get here. You’re grateful but lately, something feels off. Like you’ve built a house but never fully moved into it. From the outside, it’s a very nice house but deep down, it doesn’t feel like home.

Then one day, in the middle of all the noise, there's this quiet moment. And in that stillness, you hear a voice deep inside whispering: “This isn’t working”.

That whisper? It's your life asking for a plot twist.

If that’s where you are, know that nothing is wrong with you. You’re not broken, or behind, or ungrateful, even if it sometimes feels that way. What you’re experiencing is simply the quiet recognition that there’s more in you than the life you’re currently living, and the hard part is not knowing where to begin. And that’s okay. It really is.

That tiny voice whispering ‘this isn’t working’?
That’s your life sending you a push notification.

I get it. I’ve been there too, slowly drifting, navigating life on autopilot. Every day looked the same and deep down I knew I was made for more. And yet, I let this feeling pass me by more times than I can remember.

But last year, hitting rock bottom forced me to face the truth. I looked myself up in this unforgiving mirror, seeing not only the fine lines time had left behind but also the deeper marks inside, carved by years of navigating the carrot and stick way of living.

Carrying the tension of being yourself while constantly editing who that is, toning it down, smoothing the edges, making yourself smaller just so others stay comfortable, it’s exhausting.

In less than I year I hit reset and started living a life that feels more aligned with my authentic self.

No more performing. No more shrinking.
No more living by rules that never felt like mine.

We Fall To Our Systems. Every. Single. Time.

I didn’t have it all figured out, but I knew I couldn’t keep moving through life disconnected from who I really was. So I stopped pretending things were fine and started making space for change, even when it felt messy and uncertain. Looking back now, that messy middle was a beautiful part, the part when things began to shift.

It wasn’t easy and I’m not here with a magic formula. I’m here to tell you the truth: it’s hard. Harder than you expect. When your mind is messy, your energy is gone, and everything feels too much, hitting reset can feel impossible. But it’s not. And that’s what matters.

When you realise you can begin again, you give yourself a real chance not just at starting over, but at building something better.

We all know life isn’t a straight line, but whatever success looks like to you, it demands more than effort, enthusiasm or passion. It requires a resilient mindset and the ability to keep going when nothing makes sense.

But my mindset was solid most of the time and still, over the past few years, I kept feeling like I was running in circles. Something was clearly missing.

Not drive. Not vision. Not motivation. Just… structure.

For a while, I searched for solutions in all the wrong places, trying to shift the weight, share the heaviness, or blame it on my circumstances. At one point, I even wondered if it all came down to an undiagnosed ADHD.

Moment by moment, struggle by struggle I came to understand what it was:
I wasn’t missing motivation, what I was missing was a system. A process I could return to when life felt heavy or where life pulls me off track.

I need something that didn’t rely solely on willpower but on clarity.

And that changed everything.

That was the moment the Better Days Blueprint began to take shape. It wasn’t perfect, just a simple framework that evolved into a system. A repeatable way of living that helped me get clear, take action, and move forward when nothing made sense.

More than anything, it built a bridge between mindset and momentum, how I think and how I move. And that bridge starts right at the heart of Phase One: Accept & Reset. Because before I could build anything, I had to get brutally honest about where I was, what wasn’t working and what I’d been avoiding.

That’s the truth most people skip, and it's the reason they stay stuck in loops instead of moving forward with clarity. once I had that bridge, I stopped moving in circles. I started building.

We do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems.
– James Clear, Atomic Habits

This is the first post in a deep-dive series where I’ll walk you through exactly how you can create your own system and start building a life you actually love. Today, we start with Phase One: Accept & Reset, the most uncomfortable, but most important phase of the Blueprint.

The Inner Bridge To Better Days

When we feel stuck, it’s rarely the situation that holds us, it’s what’s happening in our own heads. We loop the same thoughts, doubts, and stories until they become walls. And when burnout hits, it’s often not from doing too much, but from moving without clarity, acting just to feel progress, without knowing what we’re really aiming for. You can blame the circumstances, the job, the people around you. I did too. But it doesn’t change a thing.

Last year, I saw the pattern clearly: at any point in my life, I was doing one of two things:

Overthinking myself into paralysis, or
Rushing into action just to feel progress.

And trust me, I had a solid excuse for both.

I’d tell myself I was a reflective person, that real success takes careful planning.
Or I’d swing the other way, convincing myself that successful people didn’t overthink, they just jumped in and figured it out later.

Overthinking is like sitting at a green light, waiting for permission to move.

It became a vicious cycle: stuck between fear disguised as strategy, and movement without meaning.

That’s when I knew I needed a system.
Something to help me slow down, see clearly, and make decisions I could trust.

I needed a bridge, a way to connect my thoughts with action.

Mindset is the spark. Momentum is the engine.You need both,
or you’ll be sitting in the driveway forever.

Mindset is how you think, is the lens through which you see yourself and the world. It shapes what you believe is possible, what you feel you deserve, and how you respond when things get hard.

Momentum, on the other hand, is how you move, is the consistent action that turns intention into reality. It’s not about speed or intensity; it’s about showing up, especially when it’s inconvenient.

Mindset and momentum don’t work in isolation, they need each other.
One gives you clarity, the other gives you motion. You need both, because thinking without movement keeps you stuck in your head, and moving without clarity keeps you spinning in circles.

The neuroscience explains clearly that lasting behaviour change requires both cognitive shifts (mindset) and behavioural activation (momentum).

It sounds simple, right?

But me and you both know that simple doesn’t mean easy.

Linking thought and action takes practice. It takes structure. It takes discipline.

It takes catching yourself in those moments when you’re either overthinking yourself into a standstill… or rushing into action just to feel like you’re doing something.

The real shift begins when your thoughts and actions stop pulling in opposite directions and start working like a team.

And that’s the core of the Better Days Blueprint. The blueprint helps you build a system where your mindset fuels movement and your movement reinforces the mindset.

Here’s a little example of how this worked in action for me this year.

I used to get so triggered by assholes, those inconsiderate human beings who have stopped engaging the brain when they speak or act. For a long time they were the main characters in my life. One sharp comment, one inconsiderate move, and I’d be off track for days, weeks, sometimes months. If I count the days or measure the space I freely gave those people, the time lost licking my wounds, mentally replaying what happened, blaming them for everything… oh, my… I’d get old and probably die counting.

Every time one of those people showed up in my life, it would send me back in a loop of misery.

But not anymore.

Now, I stay calm. Not performative calm, actual calm. The kind that rattles people who expect a reaction.

The other day, a close friend got more triggered than I did when I was on the receiving end of someone’s bad behaviour.

And the truth is, it’s not that I’ve become numb or passive, it’s that I’ve trained for this. I’ve been rewiring who gets my energy, and why. That’s not personality. That’s the Blueprint doing its job. And I must say I am cheering a little whilst I write this, because every little moment is a breakthrough in itself. And I still remember the struggle, the endless spinning before the blueprint came into play.

There’s an entire section about people and I’m itching to write a whole deep dive about this. But I’ll hold for now because that deserves its own deep dive.

Bottom line is, life has a way of pulling us off track from time to time and it’s important to have a system that give us the confidence that we could face things head on and move past fear and regret in more elegant manner.

Once I had that system mapped out, something shifted. For the first time in my life I felt a kind of calm because I finally had a way to work through what wasn’t working.

That’s the bridge the blueprint helps you create.

Better Days Blueprint isn’t just another tool. It’s your bridge out of the loop. A simple, no-fluff, step-by-step system to help you reset with clarity, take action you can trust, and build momentum that doesn’t fizzle out.

What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There

This always hits home. If you want more, you need to become more.

The actions, habits, mindsets, and coping mechanisms that got you this far, they may have helped you survive. But they won’t help you grow. Not into who you’re becoming.

That’s why Phase One is Accept & Reset.

This is where it begins. Not with a plan. Not with a vision board.

With the uncomfortable truth, the kind most people spend years avoiding.

Self-awareness is not just a feel-good concept, it's the foundation for lasting change. Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are more confident and more creative. Yet, research also shows that while 95% of people think they are self-aware, only 10-15% actually are.1

This gap between how we see ourselves and how we truly show up is exactly why this phase matters. You can't skip this part, it's where all sustainable transformation begins.

And this is the hardest part. Is the phase most people skip because it asks you to stop, look straight at what’s not working, and tell yourself the truth.

It’s messy.
It’s confronting.
It feels like failure.

But this moment is where real change finally begins.

And most of the time, you only arrive here when things already feel like they’re falling apart.

That’s why I originally called it the Bounce Back Blueprint, because I created it while climbing out of rock bottom. But over time, I realised that you don’t have to wait for everything to fall apart.

Knowing Yourself Is The Beginning

Growth asks something simple but uncomfortable: the courage to meet yourself fully, exactly as you are, without flinching or fleeing. That moment of raw self-awareness is not weakness, it’s the birthplace of everything real.

At the centre of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. –Lao Tzu

There’s a pattern repeated by some of the most inspiring transformations of our time, people who didn’t start with perfect conditions or certainty. They all started with a moment of truth.

Andre Agassi – Tennis icon who secretly hated the game

In his memoir Open, Agassi revealed that for most of his career he hated tennis, despite being one of the greatest players of all time. He was burned out, addicted to performance, and hiding a deep identity crisis.
His turning point came not on the court, but in therapy and deep introspection, when he finally admitted to himself that he had no idea who he was outside of tennis. That admission changed everything. He began rebuilding from the inside, finding purpose in education, advocacy, and being a father.

Martha Beck – From Harvard professor to spiritual guide

Martha Beck had it all on paper: Harvard PhD, successful career, family. But her inner life was crumbling. It wasn’t until she confronted the truth that she was living a life completely out of alignment – hiding her sexuality, masking depression, forcing productivity – that she began her real transformation.
Her journey required stripping away all external validation and admitting: “This isn’t working. And I can’t lie to myself anymore.”
That moment birthed her work in integrity, radical honesty, and her book The Way of Integrity.

Rich Roll – Lawyer, alcoholic, broken at 40

On the outside, Rich Roll was a successful attorney. On the inside, he was addicted, disconnected, and emotionally numb. It wasn’t willpower that changed him, it was a moment of brutal honesty the night before his 40th birthday when he couldn’t walk up the stairs without gasping for air.
He looked at himself and saw the gap between who he’d become and who he was meant to be.
That moment didn’t just lead to sobriety. It led to becoming an ultra-endurance athlete, podcaster, and wellness thought leader who helps millions embrace personal transformation.

Maya Shankar – Violin prodigy turned cognitive scientist

Maya was on track to be one of the world’s greatest violinists. But a hand injury shattered that path overnight. For a while, she was lost—her entire identity tied to her talent. Her turning point? Owning the truth that who she was had nothing to do with what she did.
That raw self-awareness didn’t weaken her—it redefined her. She went on to become a cognitive scientist at Yale and Stanford, senior advisor in the Obama White House, and the host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, where she explores exactly these moments.

Nelson Mandela – From political prisoner to architect of reconciliation

He didn’t transform after prison. He transformed in it.
Locked away for 27 years, Mandela stripped everything down anger, ego, vengeance, and rebuilt his identity in silence and self-reflection.
His moment of truth wasn’t loud. It was the quiet decision to choose forgiveness over fury, vision over victimhood.
That internal clarity became the foundation for something the world had never seen: a peaceful revolution led by a man who had every reason to stay bitter, but chose to lead with grace.
Radical transformation doesn’t get more real than that.

Real transformation doesn’t start when the world sees you differently.
It starts when you finally stop running from yourself.

In Your Next Five Moves, Patrick Bet-David recounts a pivotal moment in his life when he sat alone one a beach for seven hours with a list of questions, allowing the emotions to flood whilst he was seeking his answers. He describes how intense the moment was, how frustration and disappointment were circling like predators, clawing at his spirit. That reflection moment completely changed his life. In the end, he got the clarity he needed and a feeling of relief because he knew that all the answers where inside him.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because this is where everyone starts. Not at the finish line. Not with a flawless plan. But right here, in the stillness, in the discomfort, in the honest moment of asking, "Who am I, and what do I actually want?"

You have to give yourself permission to stop running from those questions and to sit with them long enough that the answers start to reveal themselves.

You have to be willing to look closely, name what’s no longer working, and listen to the truth that’s been whispering under the noise.

That’s how my reset started, it started in this place. I did not need my performance, more effort, more discipline. All I needed to get started was more truth.

If I could hit reset, if Patrick could sit on that beach, if others you admire could make the hard choice to face themselves, then so can you. No one started with certainty. They started with discomfort and a choice to listen.

This week, I joined a Financial Independence meet-up, mainly because I wanted my brain to click into the fact that the couple presenting were real, humble, modest people who started just like me and you. You need that sense of relatedness to get started, to build momentum, and to prove to your mind that change is possible.

Meet the Donegans—a grounded, generous young couple who reached financial independence and chose not to disappear into comfort, but to give back. Through their work with the Rebel Finance School, they’re teaching others how to find freedom, agency, and clarity around money, so the path to a better life feels accessible, not impossible.

They’ve recently been awarded the British Empire Medal for services to financial education, not because they followed the conventional path, but because they built their own and then opened it up for others to walk.

What struck me most is how real and relatable they are. No polished façade, no inflated ego, just two people who started where most of us do: unsure, curious, and determined to live life on their terms.

Their story is proof that building an extraordinary life doesn’t start with money.
It starts with clarity, conscious choices, a resilient mindset, and the courage to live in alignment with who you really are.

And if you ever needed a reminder that it’s possible—this is it.

If money is one of your moments of truth, honour it, just don’t do it alone. Get expert guidance from people who’ve walked the path and are willing to light the way.

There’s a new round of Rebel Finance School starting on 2 June 2025. It’s completely free, and I have no hidden agenda in sharing it, just deep alignment with their work. Because like me, they’re committed to helping you build a life you actually want to wake up to.

Now, back to our sheep.

The world we live in is addicted to speed. Everything is louder, faster, always-on, and somewhere in the rush, we’ve forgotten how to be still. That quiet moment where you meet yourself without distraction? It’s become a rare event, almost a rebellion. We’re flooded with push notifications, reels, TikToks, endless scrolls telling us who to be, what to chase, and how fast we’re falling behind.

We live in a world that sells us the idea of an extraordinary life, but often through standards more imprisoning than the traditional ones we grew up with. Where once the pressure came from family or close community, now it comes from an audience of strangers, an invisible crowd watching, judging, and applauding a version of life that often isn’t even ours.

I see so many people drowning in the anxiety of missing out, consumed by a quiet panic that they’re falling behind in a world sprinting toward some undefined version of success. But for what? And more importantly, for whom? Why should any of that noise dictate your pace, your worth, your path?

You need to build your own system not just to move forward, but to keep yourself grounded when the world tries to pull you off course. You need a way to catch yourself when you fall, to pull yourself back when you drift, to stand firm in your own lane even when everything around you is racing by.

So what if society, or social media, wants you on a specific track? Does that really matter to you? And if it does, ask yourself why? Why is fitting into someone else’s vision more important than honouring your own truth?

The real game isn’t out there. It’s in here.

And the only push notification you truly need is the one your life keeps sending, the whisper that says: “Slow down. Something isn’t right. Pay attention.”

The life you love starts here, with Better Days, one at a time, built with clarity and intention.

Next time, we’ll go deeper into Phase One: Accept & Reset—with a series of exercises and micro-practices to help you break the cycle, rebuild trust with yourself, and reset with clarity.

And if this part already hit home, I’m building a guided workshop that walks you through this exact phase, step by step, truth by truth.

Want in? Drop a comment saying "I'm in" or hit subscribe, and I’ll send you the invite when is ready.

Postscript

Whether you’re rebuilding, realigning, or just ready to begin again, you’re in the right place.

The Better Days Blueprint is a subscriber-only tool, a step-by-step system to help you reset with clarity, take action you can trust, and build real momentum.

New here? Hit ❤️ and subscribe. I drop one lesson per week, built for people who are ready to take life seriously, but not too seriously.

If this resonated in any way, drop a comment or just say, “I’ve been there.”
Sometimes the simplest shares are the most powerful.