It gets louder
It’s usually a Thursday. Monday’s plan is in pieces. You took your attention back for about a day and a half, and then the week showed up, and the old groove looked a lot more comfortable than the new one.
Nobody tells you this part.
After you commit, it doesn’t get easier.
It gets louder.
The narrator turns up the volume
The closer I get to doing the thing, the louder he gets. And he always has a good reason. Wrong time. Not ready. Who do you think you are? Start Monday.
Remember the invisible force field from the last page? That’s Pressfield’s Resistance, and it gets louder the closer I get to the work. I used to think I had to beat it. I don’t think it ever dies.
Josh Kaufman’s book How to Fight a Hydra gave me the picture: in the myth, chop off one head and two grow back, which is exactly how my identity defends itself. The goal isn’t to win. It’s to notice it fast and keep moving.
Other people get involved
When you try to shine, people line up to help put you in your place. Some of them think they’re helping.
I call it OPOs and OPRs: other people’s opinions and other people’s rules. One of the cringiest sentences I hear is “That’s just the way things are.” Most of the time, it just means nobody’s tried.
My own wiring
My brain runs hot. I’m ultra aware of my shortcomings, maybe too aware. It’s a terrible combination. When I get obsessed with figuring something out, I lose sight of what actually matters.
That’s how I broke a promise to a dying man.
So I can’t pretend I don’t see this coming. The thing I’m trying to practice is exactly the thing that fell apart last time.
The stakes go up
A clean slate isn’t a cushion. I’m fifty, I tend bar, and the bills don’t care about my growth.
And it isn’t only me.
I’m writing this for the people I love and their children.
We’re walking into a world that’s changing faster than we can keep up with.
Over the past fifteen years, I’ve watched people I love finish degrees for jobs that may or may not exist in a few years. AI and robotics could reshape how work and money function. Or AI could turn out too expensive to scale, and the tech bubble bursts, taking the broader economy with it.
I don’t know how it plays out. I could be wrong.
But the next few years are going to move fast.
Here’s what I do believe. Technology has its own flow. If we’re not careful, we’ll fight it out of fear or chase it out of fear of missing out. Either way, fear drives us, and we lose.
The people who can slow down, look at the likely outcomes with a clear head, and align themselves with the change have a real shot at taking advantage of whatever opportunities show up next. Not only that, but if enough people take back their attention, we might be able to help create a future where abundance is part of the human experience.
We have to choose. Do we keep a confrontational relationship with reality, or build a co-creative one?
I did the first for most of my life. I choose to create.
I want to look back three or four years from now and be glad I examined and edited my own inner narrator while I had the time.
And I’d like to have something real to hand my niece and nephew if or when they ask how to do it for themselves.
The gap is the engine
Between where I am and where I want to be, there’s a space. I call it the gap. It creates tension, and tension wants to resolve. It can resolve two ways:
- I move toward what I want.
- I shrink the vision, give up, or soothe the discomfort with something nearby: food, scrolling, planning, one more course.
Most of us pick the second one without noticing. I do it all the time. Nobody told me the tension was the engine, not the enemy.
Robert Fritz, who wrote The Path of Least Resistance, calls the relationship between a vision and current reality structural tension. His method starts with two pictures: the result you want to create, and where you are right now, seen honestly, with no spin. Holding both at once creates the tension, and the tension seeks resolution.
Why it swings back
Fritz has an explanation for why it gets louder, and it isn’t that I’m weak. It’s structure.
Picture a rubber band around your waist, pulling you toward what you want. Now picture a second one, tied to the wall behind you. That second band is a belief, the one underneath everything, that you can’t have what you want. Mine says I’m worthless, incapable, and unlovable. You’ve met him. He’s the narrator.
The closer I get to what I want, the harder the second band pulls. So I snap back. Then the first band pulls again. Forward, back, forward, back. Fritz calls it structural conflict, and the back and forth is oscillation. It’s why I’ve started over so many times.
Here’s the part that set me free a little. Fritz says the usual fixes don’t change the structure. They just manage the swing:
- Playing small. Keep the goals modest so the snap back doesn’t hurt much. Don’t rock the boat.
- Scaring myself into it. Picture the disaster and use the fear for fuel. Works until the fear wears off.
- Pumping myself up. Willpower, pep talks, positive thinking. Works until I’m tired.
I’ve done all three. Professionally.
His answer isn’t to kill the belief. It’s to stop making the belief the point. Get clearer on what I want, tell the truth about where I am, and let that tension outpull the wall. The narrator can keep talking. He just doesn’t get to drive.
Which is why I never bothered rewriting my limiting beliefs. Turns out that’s not a hole in the plan. That is the plan.
Nobody’s going to hold you underwater
The one time I changed in a moment, I was underwater. I’d smoked two packs a day from fourteen to twenty-nine and tried to quit dozens of times. Then a wipeout at Trail 6 held me down so long I thought the last wave was the end. I let go. Climbing out, I went to light a cigarette, and my hands shook. I crumpled the pack and said to myself: I’m no longer the type of guy who smokes. I’m a surfer. I need better lungs.
That’s the day Tim the Smoker died.
Most days, nobody holds you under long enough. That’s the real complication. The work isn’t one big moment. It’s boring and daily, and the narrator hates it.
What I can see coming
Somewhere in the middle of this, I expect to blow it. A missed week. A money scare. A night the narrator wins. I can’t say when, and I won’t know it’s the setback until I’m in it.
So I’m writing the plan now, while I’m calm, in if-then form, because a vague plan is the first thing the narrator talks me out of. If I miss a morning, then the next morning is one page, nothing more. If I miss three days, then I tell one person and restart with two minutes of Pause and one line in the notebook. If the narrator gets loud, then five slow breaths before I do anything else. A bad day isn’t a verdict. It’s data.
Some days the whole bay goes white and there’s no way through. On those days the work is to get to shore, not to be brave. If dark thoughts come back, especially thoughts of ending your life, treat it as an emergency and tell someone you trust right away. In the U.S., you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any hour. Asking for help is a skill, not a failure.
The final push and what comes after aren’t on a page. They’ll show up in the Saturday posts. Everything I borrowed, and from whom, is in the Manifesto. Nothing here is for sale, and nothing here is original.
Love your face.
Tim
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