Why Do I Keep Starting Over? What 10 Years of Falling Off Taught Me

Adapted from the Command Podcast episode “I Kept Starting Over for 10 Years. Here’s What I Was Missing.” Watch the full episode above.

Why do I keep starting over every year?

Why do you keep starting over from scratch every year, even though you know what to do?

You have spurts where you’re getting in the best shape of your life, following through on your business, or moving up in your career. Then you fall off and crash all the way back down to the baseline you started from.

I spent the past decade doing the same thing.

Hitting a pain threshold gives you a shot of motivation, and that can get you quite a ways. But you need something else to stay consistent and keep growing without falling back to your baseline.

Basically every year, I’d get really good at something. Usually it was my physical fitness. I’ve stood on top of Mount Rainier twice, Mount Shasta twice, and a bunch of 14ers in the Sierras. For about six months I was running 60 to 70 miles a week, and I ran a 50K ultramarathon. I was always trying to prove myself to myself.

I grew up a fat kid, and I easily get fat. I’ve been lifting weights for 15 years. But every year I’d fall off and go back to the baseline I started from. At least four or five times in my life I put on 40 to 60 pounds.

It was usually a mirror that woke me up. I spent 200 nights a year in a hotel, and I’d catch a glimpse of myself shirtless and realize I’d been avoiding that mirror for six, seven, eight months. I’d been avoiding the honest reality of where I actually was.

I had this seed of potential in me telling me I was meant to be successful. But my consistent actions on a daily basis were not backing up what I was telling myself in my head. And I numbed it by avoiding the mirror.

Then I’d get disappointed and say, “Okay, that’s it. I’m going to make a change starting right now.” Going into the winter I’d hammer down, start running, eat healthy, and get in really good shape. Then the same thing kept happening over and over. A roller coaster for a decade.

Breaking promises to yourself destroys your self-trust

I proved to myself that I could do hard things. I proved to myself that I could be disciplined. But I didn’t prove it long enough to know I could do it when life gets busy and work goes sideways.

What I did prove was that I got really good at breaking the promises I made to myself.

That gets really painful. If another man tells you he’s going to do something and doesn’t follow through on his word, you lose trust in him. You lose respect for him. But so many of us don’t turn that mirror around and realize we’re lying to ourselves every single day.

I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll start again on Monday. But how many Mondays and how many New Year’s are you going to have until it’s too late? Until you look back and realize you squandered your life and you’re out of tomorrows?

Break your own word enough times and you start looking in the mirror saying, “Maybe I don’t want those things enough, because my actions are not giving me the evidence.”

When you realize you’re lying to yourself, that’s when you can start making the change. Self-reflection and honesty with yourself are the catalyst. But that feeling will pass. So you have to have standards to hold yourself to every single day.

Goals aren’t enough. You need standards.

Goals are great. Goals are required. But goals aren’t enough on their own.

I want to get in shape. I want to start a business. Those are goals. How you’re going to achieve them is the more important question, and the answer is by setting standards.

A standard is one action you’re going to do every single day to move toward your goals, regardless of how you feel.

How to stay consistent on bad days: set a floor

You’re still going to have off days. Work goes sideways. You and your wife get in an argument. Somebody passes away. There are always going to be things in life that set you back.

You’ll have days where you feel great and think, “I’m finally the man I’ve always said I could be.” Then the very next day is the worst day ever.

First, realize those hard days are part of the process, and stop beating yourself up over them. Negative self-talk is one of the biggest things that will hold you back. Tell yourself the off day is actually more important than the good days, because you learn more from your failures and setbacks than you do from your wins.

Then you need a floor: the minimum viable standard you hold to still move forward on the days everything hits the fan.

Maybe your standard is to work out for 45 minutes a day. On the day the workout gets pushed off, you still do 50 push-ups or go on a 15-minute walk. Maybe you usually make 50 cold calls a day for your business. On that day you make five or ten. Enough that you’re still holding some type of standard and moving forward, but you’re not completely dropping the ball.

I used to use white-knuckle discipline. If you don’t sit down and do it, you’re going to fail. You’re lazy. I’d basically beat the crap out of myself verbally. That wires it into your identity that you’re worthless.

Now, on an off day, instead of forcing myself through the cold calls for my real estate business, I shift gears. I’ll work on The Command Project, or I’ll go work out. Something that’s still productive and that I enjoy, but not the thing creating all the resistance.

Sometimes those days come up because you’re putting off personal responsibilities. Cleaning your house. Doing the dishes. Getting your oil changed. Those things subconsciously stack up and drag you down. Get them done so you have more bandwidth.

Put your most important work first, and run toward your fears

I had no problem executing on the physical things. So why did I have such a hard time executing on my businesses?

I was always putting them last, because they’re usually the most uncomfortable things.

So I stopped putting my physical stuff first. I still work out pretty much every day, but my number one priority going into the day is my business, because that’s the most important thing in this phase of my life.

And you need to run toward your fears. If you run at them and chase them, your fears will run away. If you run away, your fears will chase you.

I’ve almost died on mountains. I was a big, bad heavy equipment operator working 80 hours a week. But making a cold call was the most uncomfortable thing possible, because it was new to me.

The only way I got over that was by making the calls and realizing that when somebody yells at you, it’s not that big of a deal. You survive. I’m still here. Now it’s no thing.

Break through the ceiling of your identity

Your identity is what allows you to grow bigger, but it’s also what can constrain you from reaching the next level.

The whole thing holding me back the past decade was that I never broke through my identity. I used white-knuckle discipline to get myself up, then I’d bounce off the ceiling and fall back to the bottom. I never raised the floor.

Think of it like an office cubicle. That’s your identity, and you can only grow as big as that cubicle. To break out, you do a lot of work in a short amount of time. You keep your promises to yourself and stack up evidence. You work through the negative self-talk and the limiting beliefs. And you keep doing that work through the hard times, when you’re bouncing off that ceiling and want to quit.

Then you break out and realize you’re in a giant office building, with the whole office to grow into.

One more thing: never miss twice. If you miss a day, don’t beat yourself up, but say, “I’m not going to miss twice,” and carry on the next day. You might fall off a little bit, but you catch yourself and keep going up.

What am I leaving on the table?

Most men know they’re meant for more. They have this little seed of potential, but over the years it got quiet.

That’s what made me change. I realized that thread was about to snap and I was going to settle for average.

Our world needs more strong men leading by example with integrity. And that all starts with self-reflection and honesty in the mirror.

So go look at yourself in the mirror and ask: What am I leaving on the table? If I live the next 5 or 10 years the way I lived the last 5 or 10 years, am I going to be able to look in the mirror and be proud of myself?

Or am I going to feel like I squandered my life?