You've heard this before: "You just need to do the work."

Your coach says it. The self-help books say it. The podcasts say it. So do your ambitious friends. Set goals. Build habits. Change your mindset. Push through resistance. Do. The. Work.

You've tried. Of course you've tried. You're not lazy. You're not afraid of hard things. You've built a career, raised a family, earned respect. You know how to execute.

So why doesn't it stick?

You do the journaling for three weeks, then stop. You set the bold goals, then quietly abandon them. You have the breakthrough in a coaching session on Tuesday, and by Friday it's faded. You read the book, feel inspired, and six months later you can't remember what it said.

The world has one explanation for this: you didn't want it enough.

That explanation is wrong.

Years ago, I wrote a piece about an old saying you've probably heard: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

I said the saying was wrong.

When a person is starving, that's not the time to fill their head with knowledge. A starving person can't absorb a fishing lesson. Their hands are shaking. Their thoughts are scattered. Their nervous system is screaming. You have to feed them first. Banish the hunger. Let their body settle. And then—once their ears, heart, and mind open—you can teach them something.

It took me years to understand how deeply this applies to something far beyond hunger.

Here is what I believe to be true after fourteen years of weekly conversations with entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and leaders.

Most people are starving for something they can't name. They have the career. They have the income. They have the respect. And underneath all of it, they are running a brutal, invisible program that says: you are not enough. You have not arrived. You need to be better. You need to do more.

This program is so old and so familiar that they don't even hear it anymore. It's the water they swim in. It's the voice that drives them to set another goal, hire another coach, optimize another habit.

And every time someone says "do the work," they're feeding that program. They're telling a starving person to take a fishing lesson.

Here's what I mean.

The "work" everyone talks about requires you to know who is doing the work.

Dumping limiting beliefs, building new habits, getting clarity, finding purpose… is impossible when you have hidden your true self away.

Forget about your title, your resume, and the person your friends and colleagues think you are.

I’m talking about the actual person underneath decades of armor.

Most people have no idea who that person is. You’ve probably spent years, perhaps your whole adult life, building a persona that works. The competent one. The strong one. The one who has it together. That persona got you promoted. It earned you respect. It kept you safe.

It also kept parts of you invisible. To others, and to yourself.

So when someone says "do the work," they're asking a person trapped inside a suit of armor to change. You try. You set new goals (from inside the armor). You adopt new habits (from inside the armor). You try to "be vulnerable" (from inside the armor).

I know. It took me years to realize that somewhere around age three, I locked my heart into a protective case to protect myself from pain. But I grew, and the protective case didn’t. It became a restrictive cage that limited my ability to feel… for most of my life.

Nothing moves. Nothing deep, anyway. And we blame ourselves.

I spent two years studying one of the most successful coaches in the world. His clients include the upper echelon of entrepreneurs. I asked him what makes a great coach.

He didn't mention frameworks. He didn't mention certifications. He didn't mention accountability systems or habit tracking.

He said: you see each client—flaws and scars and demons and all—and you unconditionally love them. Then you help them clear out their limiting beliefs. But without the love, nothing else works.

I sat with that for a long time.

And then it dawned on me.

The practitioner's love is not the point.

It's the mirror.

When someone sees you that completely and they don't flinch, something happens inside you. You feel something you may have never felt before.

It's not "someone loves me."

It's: Whoa. This is what it's like to be fully known and still be okay.

That feeling? That's self-acceptance. And you didn't generate it through willpower or a worksheet. You experienced it because someone held the mirror steady enough for you to finally look at yourself without the armor. Maybe for the first time.

Now here's the part that changes everything.

Once you've felt that… once you know what it's like to see yourself clearly and discover that the whole picture is not just acceptable but magnificent… the "work" transforms.

The limiting beliefs that used to feel like concrete walls? They start falling. Not because you white-knuckled your way through them. Because you now have something to return to. You know what "clean" feels like. You can feel the difference between the armored self and the real one. And when the self-criticism, the fear, the not-enough narrative drift back, you notice them. You clear them. Not as a chore. As an act of self-preservation. Because you're protecting something precious.

The work stops being work.

It becomes what I can only describe as grateful acts of joy.

This is the sequence everyone gets wrong.

The entire professional development industry—coaching, self-help, leadership programs, all of it—starts with "here's what you need to change" and "here's the work you need to do."

It skips the only step that makes the work possible.

You cannot ask a person buried under decades of limiting beliefs to do meaningful inner work. Asking someone to transform while they are weighed down by a lifetime wearing armor is sadistic.

Feed your soul first.

Let someone see who you actually are. Not the persona. Not the polished version. The real person underneath all of it. Feel, maybe for the first time, what self-acceptance is.

And then watch what happens.

No one will have to tell you to do the work. You’ll already be racing to do it. Because you finally know what you’re working toward… and it's not a goal on a whiteboard. It's your true essence.

The Awakening program

The Awakening is a six-week program that immediately shifts you towards radical heart-opening. I created it specifically to speed up the process of dropping your armor and remembering who you are.

Here’s how it works…

Session 1 (60 minutes): We meet via Zoom. I listen. I begin to see you in all your complexity and wonder. At the end, I give you an Ikigai self-discovery prompt you run on Claude.ai. It will ask you 80 questions or more. You go do it on your own time… no social performance, no one watching, just you and the questions.

Between sessions: You send me the completed Ikigai transcript. I read it. I’m not just reading your answers; my role is to see the person in the answers. The patterns. The contradictions. The things you said that you don't (yet) realize are extraordinary. I walk into Session 2 knowing you in a way few have ever known you.

Session 2 (60 minutes, ~2 weeks later): I tell you what I see. I help you put words to emotions and reactions you have never been able to articulate. The armor cracks. You feel what self-acceptance is.

Session 3 (60 minutes, ~2 weeks later): I check in. What are you feeling? Where are you drawn? I’m not directing. I’m witnessing the first moves of a person who just discovered yourself. I’m making sure the recognition is holding.

In the vast majority of cases, you are now ready to “do the work” as an act of joy and fulfillment, rather than as an exercise in frustration.

If this calls to you, please reach out to me and I’ll send you the details regarding scheduling, pricing, etc.