31/05/2026
🔥❤️🔥
https://www.facebook.com/share/1Eo1NPhJ7v/
Last Monday I posted something that got us A LOT of inboxes to the page.
Most saying roughly the same thing:
“This is me… but how do I stop slipping back into old patterns?”
And honestly, that’s the hardest part.
Because when you start changing your life, your mind will often try to pull you back toward what’s familiar. Even if what’s familiar is making you miserable.
Not because you’re weak.
Not because you secretly want to fail.
Because the brain likes certainty.
And old habits, unhealthy as they are, can still feel safe.
So one of the best things you can do is learn to recognise the little ways we accidentally keep ourselves stuck.
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Life isn't about the "life."
It is about the "living."
And a lot of people avoid living by unconsciously protecting what I would call a compensatory identity.
The masculine version is often built around:
- imagined potential
- future greatness
- being "meant for more"
- endless possibility
- the life they could live someday
The feminine version of themselves built around:
- fixation on beauty/youth as identity
- fear of becoming ordinary, maternal, domestic, aging, or fully adult
- endlessly curating an idealised self-image
- serial reinvention through aesthetics, spirituality, relationships, or lifestyle
- living through anticipation rather than participation
- craving rescue, recognition, or transformative romance
- avoiding commitments that collapse fantasy into reality
- intense sensitivity to disillusionment, someone attacking the fantasy
- identifying with potential rather than grounded capability
Because the compensatory identity protects them from something far more painful:
- being ordinary
- being a beginner
- being seen trying
- being seen failing
- being less than
- being old, ugly, small
- confronting limitation
- accepting how much time has passed
So eventually reality starts demanding change.
The pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change.
And you start taking responsibility.
Start building. Start being honest. Start acting.
And suddenly your mind begins talking you out of it.
Not with obviously destructive thoughts.
With reasonable ones.
But it isn't about whether it is right or not.
It is about the OUTCOME of that thought.
Does it make you continue to act, grow and do the work?
Or does it protect your compensatory identity?
"I'll pick it back up once life settles down."
"I need to plan first."
"This shouldn't feel this difficult."
"It doesn't feel right."
"I don't want to make the wrong choice."
"Maybe this just isn't for me."
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Why?
How?
Because action creates clarity.
Clarity does not create action.
And once you act, reality starts replacing imagination.
You realise:
- progress is repetitive
- growth feels ordinary
- mastery is slow
- discipline is rarely cinematic
- meaningful lives are built through unremarkable Tuesdays
- self acceptance is pushing a stone up a hill forever
That confrontation is psychologically difficult.
Especially in a world where comparison constantly feeds the image of who we think we should already be.
So people retreat.
Into:
- planning
- optimisation
- self-improvement loops
- spirituality and their "healing journey"
- cosmetic surgery
- emotional reasoning
- waiting for certainty
- preserving optionality
Movement without going anywhere.
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Undoubtedly, someone will ask. "But how? What do I DO when my mind tries to go back?"
It is important to note that list individual ones would literally be naming 50% of all known psychiatry 🤣
Example:
If you don't act because you need the perfect plan, shoes, app and only commit to those after reading reviews on Amazon and Reddit...
If you are preoccupied with the fantasy of how others see you...
If you are waiting to start when you feel confident, calm, motivated..
When you're in the right headspace, mood, mode...
When life slows down, is fair, works out...
If you tell yourself you "should have started 5 years ago..."
If you can't meet your unrealistic standard, and you won't try at all...
If you start performing poorly at work because it isn't what you were "made for..."
If you are so consumed by self development you become highly involved with your issues and underexposed to the consequences of life...
If you want recognition, promotion, specialness and resent when you don't get it...
If a "hair in the soup" or 5% imperfection means total contamination...
And it leads you to going back to the compensatory identity and life you never wanted...
A good question to ask yourself is:
“What is this thought helping me avoid?”
Or
"What did that thought just protect?"
Did it move you toward reality?
Or back toward the identity that keeps you safe, comfortable and stuck?
Because eventually there comes a point where adulthood means:
mourning unrealised selves, sacrificing endless possibility and learning to build a life slowly without certainty.
Not the imagined life.
The lived one.
Where small honest steps, repeated consistently, change lives far more than dramatic breakthroughs ever do.
When you notice your brain serving you thoughts that protect the person you never wanted to be, question them.
We can do this.
Regards,
Barry from Support 💙
If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out:
📞 Lifeline: 13 11 14
📞 Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
📞 MensLine Australia: 1300 78 99 78
You’re not alone.
