Back in 2019, I was in the best shape of my life.

I had just started working out again after a long break.

The reason I started working out again was because I was babysitting my 5 year old niece at the time.

I was staying over their house to babysit.

I was watching some Netflix documentaries and one of them got me paranoid that someone was gonna snatch my niece while I’m with her at the mall or something and I’d be too weak and helpless to save her.

I know... dramatic.

But that got me motivated to work out again.

It’s not really the working out I had a problem with...

You know how if you haven’t worked out in a long while and start again, those first few days you’re sore like crazy?

Well, THAT’S the part of working out I dread and avoid.

But once I passed that, it was just a matter of going to their condo gym and doing the workouts.

Looking back, I didn’t realize it then, but getting started was always the hardest part. Once I was already moving, continuing barely required any convincing.

Then I got a message from my cousin in Korea and told me to fly there.

I haven’t been back in like 10+ years, so I said why not.

My cousin lived in a condo and we would go to the condo gym and work out.

Every couple weeks I would stay with him and rotate every couple weeks and stay with my mom.

When at my mom’s, my workouts were limited to a dumbbell with some weights and pushups and stuff.

But one night at my mom’s, I fell down a rabbit hole of weight loss and weight training.

This was the first time in my 15-ish years of working out I ever consulted the internet on these subjects.

And I learned so much!

When I came back from Korea, I was excited to apply what I had learned and wanted to lose some fat so that I can see all my abs for the first time.

It felt like I had finally figured it out. All I had to do was keep doing it.

I even went on Kijiji (it’s like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace) and bought myself a punching bag, a stand, and some gloves.

Since I’ve never been able to run, I couldn’t do that as cardio.

So I hit the bag for cardio instead.

That, combined with my diet of oatmeal for meal 1, tuna or salmon sandwich for meal 2, and boiled chicken breast, spinach/broccoli, and sweet potato for meal 3, I was sure to lose the fat I needed.

I had so much confidence at that time in my life, I even went on Tinder to find someone.

I went on a couple dates.

One was terrible (she forgot and rushed to meet me).

And one wasn’t that bad.

Went on a second date with her, but she wasn’t the one.

Then... I met someone.

My third.

We met somewhere neutral and public (how I always had it.)

She was 7 minutes late. 😆

Well... 6 and a half years later, we’re still together.

She’s my wife now.

Anyways... I drifted a little.

In the beginning of our relationship, I was doing great with my work outs.

My diet was on-point...

I was losing fat and gaining muscle.

And then...

It happened.

More and more, we started ordering from food delivery apps!

We ordered more and more fast food.

My healthy, home-prepared meals were slowly being replaced by greasy fast food.

At first I still thought of myself as someone who ate healthy. My behavior just hadn't caught up to that identity anymore.

I hadn’t eaten McDonald’s for like 3 years and then... just ate it again.

I didn't recognize myself...

It was just the default:

Hungry?

Too lazy to cook?

Order.

After a while, it stopped feeling like a shortcut. It just felt normal.

We weren’t really making a decision anymore. It had quietly become our first response.

And I noticed that we were getting addicted to the dopamine of waiting for something to arrive in combination with the addiction of these take-out foods.

It felt harmless because every order was just one meal. None of them felt important on their own.

The short-term rewards of eating in that moment was slowly ruining us in the long-term.

It was obvious that we were gaining weight.

But I was in a happy relationship.

It was just relationship gut.

Plus a little bit of the Quarantine 15.

This was completely the opposite of what I wanted though.

The weird part was... nothing had changed about what I wanted. I still wanted to be healthy. I still wanted to feel confident. Somehow my daily behavior had just drifted somewhere else.

My goals hadn’t changed. My daily defaults had.

By the end of about 6 years, I’d gained close to 60 lbs!

If you'd asked me at any point during those six years if I wanted to gain 60 pounds, I would've laughed. Of course not. That's what made it so strange. I never chose the outcome. I just kept repeating the behaviors that produced it.

It didn’t happen because of one terrible decision. It happened because of hundreds of ordinary ones that barely felt like decisions at all.

As you can imagine, that did a number on my identity AND my confidence.

At peak, I was 212 lbs!

Up from 155.

I didn’t recognize myself in my old clothes anymore.

Belly was sticking out more than my chest...

Jeans were too tight...

My boots were squishing my feet...

In the health/weight loss space, there’s a lot of talks about “feeling like yourself again.”

Being in digital marketing for 5+ years, I’ve used that line myself when promoting weight loss.

This was the first time I truly understood the meaning behind it.

But I also realized I hadn't just lost control of my diet. I'd been living inside a system I didn't even know I was repeating.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized this wasn't just happening with food.

I'd seen the exact same pattern show up while trying to build online too.

I thought I needed to lose weight to feel like myself again.

Looking back, I think I was really trying to rebuild the patterns that used to make me feel like that version of me.

For the longest time, I thought gaining 60 pounds was the result of losing motivation.

I wasn’t motivated enough.

I wasn’t disciplined enough.

I let myself go.

But that’s not actually what happened.

My goals never changed.

I still wanted to be healthy.

I still wanted to feel confident.

I still wanted to be the person who took care of himself.

What changed was something much quieter.

The system I repeated every day slowly became stronger than the goal I occasionally thought about.

That’s why I think so many digital builders misdiagnose themselves.

They don’t have an ambition problem.

They have a default system problem.

One of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming we’re constantly making conscious decisions.

Most of the time... we’re just following the path that’s become easiest.

It’s kinda like when ordering food stopped feeling like a decision.

“Hungry?”

“Too lazy to cook?”

“Order.”

Eventually there wasn’t any debate happening anymore.

It was just the automatic response.

The same thing happens when you’re trying to build online.

You tell yourself you’re going to publish.

Then you open YouTube “for research.”

Or save another post.

Or reorganize your notes.

Or tweak your workspace.

None of those decisions feel important.

Until they become your operating system.

What silently happens:

When I looked in the mirror 6 years later, it felt like the weight appeared out of nowhere.

It didn’t.

It arrived one food delivery at a time.

One skipped meal prep.

One “this is the last time.”

One ordinary decision that barely felt like a decision.

It's kinda like watching your healthy meals slowly get replaced by takeout until it just became normal.

That’s how identity usually changes.

Not through dramatic moments.

Through repeated evidence.

Every repeated action quietly answers the same question:

“Is this who I am?”

Your brain listens to what you repeatedly do far more than what you repeatedly promise yourself.

What silently happens:

When I came back from Korea, I knew more about training than I ever had.

I bought the punching bag.

I cleaned up my diet.

I had a plan.

Knowledge wasn’t the missing piece.

It’s kinda like saying, “All I had to do was keep doing it.”

Turns out...

“Knowing what to do” and “making it easy to keep doing it” are two completely different problems.

Digital builders run into this constantly.

We know we should write.

We know we should publish.

We know we should build assets instead of endlessly consuming content.

The problem isn’t awareness.

It’s that the current system makes everything else easier.

What silently happens:

For digital builders, this changes almost everything.

The question isn’t:

“What do I want to build?”

It’s:

“What system am I repeatedly executing when life gets noisy?”

Because that’s the system that’s already building your future.

The behavior with the lowest resistance usually wins.

When I was meal-prepping, eating healthy required almost no thought.

The food was already there.

Later...

Cooking became the harder option.

Opening an app became the easier one.

It’s kinda like when my healthy meals slowly got replaced by takeout until it just became normal.

The same thing happens online.

Opening YouTube is easier than opening a blank document.

Researching feels easier than writing.

Planning feels easier than publishing.

Tiny differences in effort don’t seem important.

Until they’re repeated hundreds of times.

Reducing friction isn’t laziness.

It’s system design.

Every repeated behavior casts another vote for your future.

One takeout order didn’t make me gain 60 lbs.

One workout didn’t make me fit either.

The outcome wasn’t hiding inside one decision.

It was hiding inside the repetition.

Behavior works the same way online.

One day of not publishing doesn’t matter.

One afternoon of endless scrolling doesn’t matter.

One unfinished draft doesn’t matter.

Individually.

Repeatedly?

That’s a completely different conversation.

Repetition is where direction becomes destiny.

Your brain trusts evidence more than intention.

For years I wanted to see myself as someone who took care of his health.

But my daily behavior was teaching my brain something else.

Eventually those repeated actions became harder to argue with.

Digital builders experience this too.

Every time we consistently publish...

We collect evidence that we’re someone who creates.

Every time we repeatedly stop at research...

We collect evidence that we’re someone who prepares.

Our identity isn’t built from what we believe.

It’s built from what our behavior keeps proving.

Visible work is delayed evidence of invisible systems.

People usually judge themselves by outcomes.

Subscribers.

Revenue.

Followers.

Body weight.

Confidence.

Those are lagging indicators.

They’re the visible result of systems that have been running for weeks, months, or years.

Which means changing the output rarely starts at the output.

It starts much earlier.

Your future isn’t built when you reach the goal. It’s built every time you repeat the system.

That’s one of the biggest lessons I took away from gaining those 60 lbs.

The weight wasn’t really the problem.

It was proof.

Proof of what my system had been rehearsing all along.

The same thing is true for digital builders.

Our newsletter...

Our audience...

Our business...

Our body of work...

They’re all delayed reflections of systems we’ve been practicing long before anyone else could see them.

That’s why I don’t ask myself,

“What future do I want?”

I try to ask,

“What system am I rehearsing today that my future self will have to live with?”

If there’s another thing gaining 60 lbs taught me...

It’s that your future rarely arrives all at once.

It sneaks in.

One repeated behavior at a time.

The same thing happens when you’re building online.

Nobody wakes up ten years later wondering how they accidentally published 500 newsletters.

Or built an audience.

Or built a library of valuable work.

Those futures are rehearsed long before they’re visible.

The scary part is...

So are the opposite ones.

Nobody plans to spend years researching instead of publishing.

Nobody wants hundreds of half-finished ideas sitting in a notes app.

Nobody intentionally chooses to become someone who always says:

“I’m almost ready.”

But if that’s the system being repeated...

That’s the future being built.

So don’t start by asking yourself,

“How do I become more disciplined?”

Start somewhere much less exciting.

Ask yourself:

What system am I already rehearsing every day?

Be painfully honest.

When you sit down to work...

What’s the first thing you actually do?

Open your draft?

Or open YouTube?

Do you build?

Or prepare to build?

Do you create assets?

Or consume someone else’s?

Those first few minutes usually tell you more about your future than your goals ever will.

Then redesign one loop.

Not your entire life.

Just one loop.

Maybe it’s:

9:00 AM → Open draft → Write for 45 minutes → Publish or improve one asset.

Or...

Before opening YouTube, spend 20 uninterrupted minutes creating something of your own.

Small enough that you’ll actually repeat it.

Clear enough that you’ll know whether you followed through.

Because every time you repeat that loop...

You’re doing more than creating another piece of content.

You’re collecting evidence.

Evidence that you’re becoming someone who builds instead of someone who prepares.

And eventually...

That evidence becomes the easiest story your brain knows how to believe.

That’s when the system stops feeling like effort.

It starts feeling like you.