Self-Development done this way is a Craft — the craft of Self-Design: A personal, intentional investment into our wellbeing, helping us to interact smoothly with the ecosystem in which we aim to thrive.

Now – let’s address the ‘elephant in the room’…

Why You Might Have Failed to Change… So Far

Firstly – I do realise this is harsh! We’ve just met, and I’m basically calling you a failure!

But we all fail.

Actually, we fail more than once… on the same hurdle. Even if you took the dry metaphoric expression for this: i.e. learning to run the 100m hurdles in athletics – that’s treacherous – right?

The point is that any new action we want to implement requires practice. And for your brain to learn, it requires failure/s, so it can receive feedback and self-correct, so it can get better at said action.

That’s literally what learning is.

The exciting bit about looking at your failure upfront (and why I’m jabbing you with this stick now) is that by definition, if you are here and reading this, it’s because your infinitely wise mind has intuitively signaled to you through each failure, that you need to try a different approach.

Meaning – the stuff you’ve tried so far (to make the mindset or behaviour shift you want) would have signaled you that you’ve either tried the wrong modality or solution, perhaps your timing was wrong, or you put in the wrong effort (frequency, intensity, or duration). Or you tried to solve the wrong problem (a ‘symptom’ of a root cause that remains covert). Perhaps you simply lacked insight.

Conversely, the problems you’re unlikely to have in this day and age, are lack of information, access to credible modalities, and lack of real expert (and pseudo-expert) opinions. Regardless of your budget, or interwebs access limits – there is a plethora of solutions to all of the symptoms of being a human.

The main five widely available approaches are plenty vocal and saturate the market. And of course – each works for many people (hence why they’re multi-million-dollared industries).

But no one solution is a Panacea for everyone all of the time.

And most people gravitate towards sexy-sounding solutions, the application of which makes them feel as though they’re doing something about their problem, but in reality, helps them avoid taking radical responsibility for their life’s experience.

That’s not the people’s problem, of course – we all have a bias towards avoiding discomfort – it’s part of the human condition.

But for those of us who figure out that we HAVE to take charge or we’re likely to waste our life hustling for the sake of hustle, we need to seek deeper and start to pay attention to the quality of the results we’re getting.

And also – if you’re here with me reading – still stuck in some way (sorry, I keep banging on about this), either struggling to start or to re-start – then logic dictates that you still need a different approach. And by that I mean different from A to Z.

Start With the Right Problem That’s Worth Solving, at This Moment

The solution you try next should ask you, from the very beginning, to evaluate IF the problem you’re looking to solve is even the Right Problem Worth Solving… Right Now.

(note: I capitalised the last 6 words because this is the single most important part of our conversation on this page, and I’d love you to consider etching this acronym like a tattoo somewhere in your mind – R.P.W.S.R.N.).

Every one of the 6 words is carefully chosen and critically important for the integrity of the overall principle it represents.

And with the exception of a few coach-led interventions in self-development, this is one of the most forgotten steps in business and personal problem-solving.

It’s so obvious – it remains hidden in plain sight. Yet without it, problem-solving is luck-paced. You may get a hit solution outright and long-term, but you shouldn’t fool yourself it wasn’t aided by luck.

Good problem-solving and decision-making skills are revered in business. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to personal development – we don’t take the time to discern BEFORE we expend effort, what’s the problem that’s actually worth solving. And is this the right problem to be focusing on now?

Because behaviour science shows time and time again that if you’re not ready, able to (in terms of time, money, energy, or situational context), or you’re simply not keen to, or don’t want to make a specific change – you WILL fail!

Yet – it’s such an easy question to ask yourself.

And in just this one step, you can minimise wasted time, hope, energy, self-efficacy. Possibly money, and the time of the people who want to help you.

But then there’s the second part of this: ask yourself if the problem you think you should be solving is a symptom or a root cause?

Granted sometimes you should work on both simultaneously. But most of the time the root is where you should aim to start. Or else you’re plugging holes in a leaky bucket with paper napkins…

Not to mention that while trying to solve the wrong problem (a mere symptom) you may be missing the critical window of opportunity for solving the one problem you should be working on…

A simple example of this can be someone wanting to lose weight, rushes out, and starts a fasting-centric protocol, thinking it’s the quickest way to get to his goal. But by skipping the step of understanding the real cause of his weight issues, he may be exacerbating an underlying pre-diabetic condition.

The result: 3 short months down the line he’s way slimmer, but much more diabetic and with potentially irreversible metabolic implications…

The alternative approach would have shown him the real reason for his weight issue. Which then would have given him a chance to make an informed choice about the modality for his weight loss. Which in turn would have potentially reversed his pre-diabetes and cascaded into so many other beneficial downstream effects for his overall wellbeing.

The second path holds so much more reward per unit of effort.

But taking a moment to discern the R.P.W.S.R.N., can only stem from another, even more significant piece of the Craft of self-development (which I’ll call Self-Design from now on).

You’re a System Within an Ecosystem

Ah – another popular and revered concept from the business world – systems thinking. It allows you to see your Self as one part of the context within which you live.

Now – no matter how much you want to feel like you have all the agency in the world. And no matter how much you’re told (by the people who want to sell you that self-development ‘freedom’) that you shouldn’t care or let yourself be affected by what other people think, say or do, the unavoidable reality remains:

You’re in constant interaction with your environmental and situational context. You and It and Them are continuously co-shaping and co-creating each others’ existences.

Which means two things (and I’m oversimplifying here):

1. You cannot exist in isolation – regardless of how much agency you procure.
2. The only constant that you can rely on is Change.

This then means that the smart thing to optimise for in any self-development goal is not a single change in isolation. Instead, aim to learn to deal with change effectively and in the most friction-reducing way.

You can’t beat Change — but you can learn to dance and make sweet music with it!

And you start with one change at a time.

But then you do it through a modality that teaches you skills (like when learning a craft) that feed into the longer-term goal of ‘learning how to fish AND to make a great meal out of anything you catch‘.

You learn how to approach and win at Change – your way.

In a way that doesn’t grate each time you decide to upgrade yourself. But it fortifies you with courage, builds toward your integrity, and makes you excited for the benefits this change will bring.

How does that sound for a stance toward self-design?

Although – I’m not giving you the full story here: The only way you can effectively see yourself as a system within an ecosystem and learn to dance with Change, is by first doing something Socrates suggested we do right back in the 5th century BC:

First: Know Thyself

Here, I have to let you in on a little pet peeve of mine with most of the Stoic-style interventions for self-help (and please don’t come after me with a stick for this…) I’ve found that most of us don’t have the time and mental capacity to first read through all that brilliant material, to then take time to decipher what it means individually for our context, and then to figure out how to implement the insights we’ve earned into our real world … a world that just keeps changing.

A lot of people do love the Stoics though. And a lot reap results.

Some just like the intellectual stimulation and accolades that come with being able to stay with the cognitive load of the topics. But when it comes to the genuine, experientially applicable insights – nada! That’s because it takes a lot to bridge the gap between sexy concepts and real-life results-generating action.

So – what I’m talking about here (riding on the coattails of Socrates) is a lot faster, simpler, and creates evidence for your conscious mind to ‘convince’ it that the changes are worth the effort.

You do the work once, then keep referring to the findings when you have a problem to address.

It’s what is called the M.E.D. in business — the Minimum Effective Dose of self-understanding.

This M.E.D. in my understanding and based on findings in multiple psychology fields, has 4 facets:

Your experiential understanding of who you are:

• How you see yourself from what you’ve experienced in life?
• And how you feel others see you?

You may be pretty strong here or not. But you may also be pretty misled or even lost, because your environment may have ‘pulled the wool over your eyes’ so masterfully that you’re unable to distinguish nature from nurture.

So – it’s safe to assume you need something more concrete than opinions and observations, although that’s definitely the place to start from.

Your situational context understanding:

• Where do you see yourself fit in your ecosystem?
• What value do you feel you bring to your work or social environments?
• How do you feel in your perceived Home Range?
• Or how are your physical environments arranged?

All of these environments (physical & emotional) influence how you feel, think, speak, look, and what you pay attention to. They give meaning to what you do. If you don’t feel you belong or fit well… things can go wrong.

Your epistemic understanding of how your mind works to create the reality that plays out for you each moment:

Many people lack this facet completely. As a result, they’re mistaken about the process of how they make decisions, or even how much agency or truth they have about their perceptions.

This understanding is not just important for your inner workings. It’s the best way to develop true compassion for others too. Because you get to ‘see’ why they behave the way they do in different situations.

It’s one of the most important work you can do to get along with others and to be truly able to help and hold them in the way you want.

But perhaps most significantly – having an understanding of how your mind picks what to pay attention to, how to predict what a situation means, what emotion should result in that context, and if you should take an action to respond – THAT allows you to understand how human you are too. Which tames your inner Critic. It cultivates them into an inner Guide.

And I can tell you with certainty – THAT’s the elixir to a life with less friction.

Finally – the biogenic set of ingredients you bring to the behavioural ‘table’:

There are a certain set of behavioural tendencies that we each get born with. Of course – you shouldn’t take any set of ‘dry‘ traits and live your life by them. That’s dangerous. But when you do the right/trusted set of personality traits evaluations, you get a working set of ingredients.

These traits, filtered by your experiential knowledge of your world, contextualised by your situational setup, and the epistemic understanding you have of the human condition, THAT, creates a fertile formula for insights into your automatic patterns, underlying issues, reliable Doom and Bloom loops, and most of all, gives you a fighting chance of re-wiring a behaviour or mindset in the way that most nourishes you. Specifically. Not a large broad-spectrum audience.

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All of this self-understanding may seem like too much work. But it can be done pretty quickly, and done once. Then, you keep coming back to use the knowledge as leverage for each self-design goal you set yourself. Again – like learning a craft. You learn the skills. Then, just put in the practice. Then make the music you want :o)

Leverage is your best friend in the process of change. It’s like power-ups in a game.

It’s how you get to short-cut the process AND to make it more pleasant AND longer-lasting.

In some cases, it’s literally the difference between dreading doing something and being so excited to do your new habit that you can hardly wait.

It’s self-design’s form of gamification.

Knowing how to rig the odds in your favour is worth gold. Or it can cost you the ‘win’. It can banish frustration. And it works wonders for bolstering your self-belief exponentially.

Because being afraid of change and facing it because you have to, is a very different starting stance from leaning into a challenge with excitement for the adaptation and growth the lessons you’ll learn will provide.

Studies show that when you voluntarily face a challenge (in the right dose) you don’t banish fear (which no one should claim they can do). You become more courageous. You feel more able to face life.

It’s that seismic movement towards ‘learning how to fish‘ AND ‘knowing that you can master-up a decent meal‘ regardless of the catch.

BUT – to face anything – you have to take action!

Bias Towards Action: But Work Smart, Not Just Hard

If you don’t DO – you don’t get.

quote by Me :o)

That’s the single rule for any change or progress. Sometimes the opposite is true: you may do (a lot) and not get anything in return (that’s exactly why you and I started talking here).

So, the key point is to work smarter, not just hard.

Because life is not a race from birth to grave without an opportunity to look sideways and actually enjoy the things, people, and experiences you’re meant to enjoy. The things you work hard for.

You see – this is exactly why I’m a big fan of learning to dance with Change, instead of just gritting through it.

In a way, it’s easier to drown your attention in relentless hustle. Sure, you expend energy, but you also get to numb out a lot of stuff you’d had to notice and deal with if you dared to slow down.

The voices in your head, for starters.

And the emotional demands of others.

Not to mention your own…

And what would happen if you slowed down enough and had to find something else to attach your worth to?

Don’t get me wrong, hustle is useful and appropriate as a tool for some phases in life. But it’s not a way of life. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not real. It creates a mask. It can become a numbing agent.

But how do you work smarter?

One part goes back to the leverage we spoke about earlier. One more vote for doing the preliminary work on getting to “know thyself” (the M.E.D. version).

The other part is to leverage what day and age you’re living in.

We have useful apps. We have biometric devices that can give us robust insights. One of my favorites is using the combination of genetic data in tandem with a 14-day CGM (continuous glucose monitor) experiment to shortcut the guesswork about what’s the optimal diet for you — as an N of one.

The insights from that investment would take you literally forever to figure out on your own… Now, you get to rig your nutrition so you can enjoy what you eat and thrive. Much faster.

But I mean – leverage everything today’s advancements can offer (that you can afford or can be bothered to do).

In this category, I even mean knowledge sources. The Huberman Lab podcast is one fantastic example of OMG – you can transform your physiology, psychology, AND neurology on your own terms. Good, reliable, actionable, and relevant info – in one place – dispensed by a scientist with solid integrity.

But then you should also make sure you have a methodology that focuses on efficiency.

Not one that you have to reinvent yourself for with each new habit you want to create. That methodology should help you fit the new changes into your life seamlessly – leveraging the the way you do YOU.

Preserving your attention and energy for living your life, not for coping with someone else’s notion of how you should be. Making you excited for the new enhancements you’re making to the way you show up. Leaving you to create value for the people you love and the ones you’ve chosen to help.

That’s working hard in a smarter way.

Which brings us neatly ’round full circle into our starting point of failing as a way of learning. Which is still in aid of smarter self-design. It’s still a part of learning the Craft.

What Gets Tracked, Gets Used, Not Forgotten

I can’t tell you how many people don’t even think to do this simple, zero-cost step when designing the self and life they want.

It’s understandable: self-authoring is perceived as hard work in itself. We’re happy to be able to just move through the motions, never mind tracking and writing things down. These are extras we assume we can do without (We can’t!)

Because we make assumptions liberally (but we shouldn’t):

• We feel we’ll remember everything in the right chronological and situational context… We don’t – almost ever!
• We assume the moment we think we’ve solved IT – we’ve genuinely solved it, for it to never rear its ugly head again. It can. It often does. It’s often disguised as something else… because:
• Our perceptions of the meaning of situations, and our reactions to those situations are part of the ecosystem in which we live, AND part of the system that we are internally. There are many ways a thing can show up.
• And because of how things can show up is mutative – the meaning you should take away from the seemingly familiar thing, can be totally and significantly different each time. Meaning – you often miss out on extra valuable insights because you assume, but have no way to know for certain.
• You can’t establish patterns, possible cosations, and co-relations reliably with information you’ve vaguely sketched out in your mind’s eye.
• Finally – you assume that by not tracking, you’re saving mental and physical energy. You’re wrong. You’re expanding even more cognitive ‘juice‘ this way, because you’re now having to hold all these loose pixels of info in your already over-loaded brain. By depositing externally, what you now store in memory, you clear-up space and preserve cognitive energy.

In short: when you don’t track things, you give up the benefits and hope of ever referring back to your hard-earned learning with integrity.

Yes, you get to move on, and you make some changes, but not nearly as effectively and efficiently as when you have reliable records to lean on.

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Whilst tracking should be non-negotiable, how much you track and collect as data from your efforts is highly subjective. There are (in my humble and extensive experience) bare minimums –> not less than you need to get valuable insights, and not more than you would fill in regularly to collect a useful amount of data.

• You should track chronological insights and events.
• You should run periodic self-checks (I call them tripwires) – at least bi-annually and at least for your overall wellbeing. Use what I call a Food-Sleep-Mood-Poop-Self Talk diary for a week every 6 months or so. I’m sure you don’t need my explanation for this one.
• And if you want insights that will transform you from inside out on a daily basis, have a daily tracker for the things that are dear to your wellbeing – mental, physical, spiritual, social. I track data from my Oura Ring. Breathwork, meditation, sauna, workouts, Story for Life (attribute here to Matthew Dicks for his book: Storyworthy).

You do YOU.

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Tracking completes the circular process of learning and honing your self-design craft. It helps us to integrate our learning through failure back into our ecosystem.

Now we have a way to fail faster, with intention and curiosity.

We know what we’re made of (mostly) and what we want to learn, and create our experience hypothesis accordingly. There’s no wasted energy or effort or self-belief.

You know you’re here for the journey. You learn to enjoy the ride. You play smart. Optimise each go-round so you can get the most value for your effort.

Then you go again.

A craft is something you learn through practice and dedication, but you do it just so you can do it again the next time. Better AND more and more in a way that just feels right for you.

Each lesson fortifies you for the next quest.

You get more confident, and your curiosity grows. You get good at facing the opportunities to learn. You wander into the new territory, but you’re now brave enough to also wonder. As John Vervaeke says beautifully

You wander as you wonder.

Can you see how life is a different journey that way?

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That’s the journey I wish for you.

And if that’s your desire too, I’m preparing to share the full Self-Design how-tos of everything we spoke about above.

When you sign-up to my free-newsletter, you get to walk through the whole process with me sequentially. Nothing hidden.

I’m doing this with full transparency now because I want to externalise my method so it can help people in a self-paced way – as opposed to having to wait to be able to work with me one-on-one. It will allow me to help more people get unstuck in their own style.

Come be a part of learning this Craft.

Doing the work that resonates for the context of what you need, and sharing your experience as we move through the 4 steps: Discover & Understand; Experience; Decode; Own & Internalise.

It’s free for you now for that reason – we get to co-shape and co-create our mutual experiences. You can drop out any time, I only want your input if you’re finding value in what I share.

I can guarantee you I’ll be showing up. And I can tell you this Quest will be unlike any other you may have been on in your self-design efforts.