A few days ago, a fellow coach sent me a possible referral.
The guy sounded like a pretty good fit for the kind of stuff I’ve been writing about lately. Things like identity and fatherhood and that weird stretch in midlife where you've built a functioning life but there's something that just doesn't feel the same anymore for some reason.
I read the message and thought about it and then told myself I’d respond later.
Then I didn’t.
And I kept not responding.
My first thought was that this was just anxiety and I needed to get the hell over it and just respond.
But the longer I waited, the more I knew that that answer was probably bullshit.
Because, the more I thought about it, the reality was that I wasn’t afraid of talking to him. I wasn’t even afraid I wouldn’t be able to help.
The part that made my stomach tighten was imagining that I did help.
Makes no sense right? Because then what?
Maybe the conversation turns into a paid session. And then maybe that paid session turns into another one. And then there’s more people, more scheduling, more messages, more responsibility, and a calendar slowly filling up with all the things I wanted.
So why would that make my stomach turn?
It's because when I actually stopped long enough to picture that future, I didn't feel excited like I thought I would. Instead I felt trapped.
A few years ago that would have bothered me a lot more than it does now because I always thought that knowing when to give up on a goal meant admitting that you couldn't do it. What I hadn't considered was that getting what you want might actually end up being the thing that shows you that the goal was wrong to begin with.
That was the part I didn't want to admit to myself or anyone else.
And why would I? I spent so much time building the coaching side of this website: building the offers and creating a structured program, building that path from recognition into more diagnostic work.
And the whole time I was doing it I told myself it was because now I had finally figured out how to take the lessons that I've learned all my life and turn them into something that might be useful for other guys.
And it's not like that part was fake. The reason I even started it to begin with is because I genuinely love helping people see patterns and solutions that they couldn't see before. I love being the person that has the sentence that makes everything click. I know I've made a lot of mistakes in my life that have helped me develop a lot of useful lessons and tools that I want to keep building and sharing
But when I finally digested that text, I had the stark realization that helping people and running a formal coaching business are definitely not the same thing.
Helping people energizes me and genuinely fills my tank but being tied down to a static business that doesn't change much? Having to repeat the same kind of emotional labor every day on a schedule, whether I'm feeling curious that day or not?
Not my cup of tea.
The irony is that I’ve written about the difference between wanting an identity and wanting its daily reality. Apparently I needed to watch that idea show up on my own calendar before I actually understood it.
**I don’t think I want to build a conventional 1:1 coaching practice. Period.**
I think I want to write. I want to discover things, see patterns, build tools, test ideas, make videos, improve this website, and put the work somewhere other people can find it.
It sounds harsh but I want to help people through the things I make without turning their progress into my recurring responsibility.
There’s more than a little embarrassment in admitting that. I already said the coaching thing out loud, in public. It’s on the website. I built the program. I made it look like the next obvious step.
As I mentioned, part of me wants to call this another failure. Another thing I started, announced, and then walked away from.
Researchers call part of this goal adjustment, which sounds a lot more obvious than it feels. A recent review of 235 studies linked reengaging with different goals to lower stress, anxiety, and depression. In real life, it can look like ignoring a referral because your body figured something out before your ego did.
I tested a story.
The story was that formal coaching was what my useful experience had been waiting for. A real referral gave me a chance to confront that story. Instead of feeling relief, I felt the walls closing in.
That doesn’t make everything a waste. It just means the process was wrong.
The useful parts like The Reality Check and Wake Up Week are still here, but I’m taking them out of the coaching ladder and making them what they should’ve been all along, serious self-guided tools for finding one repeating story and working past it.
I still love the writing and I'm creating and making more than ever. The board is still active. The only thing that's different is I'm not going to try to defend an identity just because it’s on the website.
And interestingly enough, that in itself is some real midlife shit right there: Paying close enough attention to notice when the thing that you wanted was about to turn you into something that you didn't want to become.
If you ever got close enough to a goal to realize that you didn't want it, hit reply and tell me about it.
I got the referral I wanted and then I couldn't make myself answer and that's the kind of internal feedback I make sure to listen to nowadays.