I read a lot of simple advice. Influencers. Thought leaders.
Coaches with clean lighting, white teeth, perfect habits, and a morning routine that apparently begins three hours before the rest of us have found our slippers.
And the older I get, the more I notice the same thing.
Half the script is missing.
Take fitness advice.
Discipline. Diet. Their programme.
That’s the whole recipe, apparently.
Do that, and you’ll get the body you think you want.
And before someone says, “Yes, well, this is exactly what unfit people always say,” let me get that out of the way.
I know what it takes to be fit.
I’ve been lean.
I’ve been strong (still am).
I’ve trained hard (still do).
I’ve eaten clean.
I’ve been disciplined.
I’ve done the early mornings, the weighing, the tracking, the programmes, the boring meals, and the pushing through when I didn’t feel like it.
The photos exist.
The NZ masters track-and-field records and belts in BJJ also.
And I did that without drugs.
Just sheer willpower, drive, discipline, and effort.
So I’m not taking cheap shots from the couch with a packet of chips on my chest.
I know discipline matters.
But I also know discipline is not the whole story.
Because if you are a man in your late 40s or 50s, massively muscular, ripped, lean all year round, recovering like a machine, and selling that as the simple result of discipline and effort, then I’m sorry, but half the story is missing.
In most cases.
Maybe you are genetically lucky.
Maybe you have exceptional time, money, support, knowledge, recovery, and structure.
Maybe you are on TRT. And yes, even when medically prescribed, that changes the equation. You’re no longer ‘natural.’
Maybe there are other performance-enhancing drugs involved.
Maybe it is a combination of all of it.
But please, whatever it is, and I don’t have an issue with what you use to feel better about how you look… just don’t sell an enhanced or unusually privileged equation to normal men as if they are failing because they lack character or discipline.
Because that’s the part I struggle with.
Deceit, sold as the solution.
Ommittance, used to chastise or induce guilt.
Not the training.
Not the effort.
Not the discipline.
The shaming.
The pretending.
The quiet editing out of everything else. The real ingredients behind the success.
Because getting fit in your 30s is one thing.
I know, as I’ve been there and done that.
Trying to stay lean, muscular, strong, mobile, injury-free, healthy, emotionally sane, and consistent in your late 40s and beyond is a completely different game.
Your joints have a say now.
Recovery sends invoices that you struggle to afford.
Sleep matters more.
Stress matters more.
Injuries don’t just disappear because you watched a motivational reel.
And sometimes, even when you do many of the right things, life still throws a curveball.
In fact, sometimes it’s a ball of shit, plain and simple… I know. I’ve experienced that too.
A few weeks before I turned 43, I had a heart attack.
Very healthy….according to my bloodwork and diet of chicken and vegetables.
Training hard.
Eating well.
Doing the ‘right’ things.
And then suddenly I was in the hospital trying to understand how that could possibly be real.
I didn’t even have time to get out of my BJJ rashguard from training that morning.
Some doctors had one theory.
Some had another.
Maybe it was years of LDL.
Maybe it was bad luck.
Maybe it was something else.
Who knows?
The other arteries were clean. One wasn’t.
That was enough. Same result.
Same discipline. Different outcome.
That’s the part that many online gurus or influencers’ formula never mention.
You cannot out-diet, out-train, out-plan, or out-discipline the hand you are dealt.
You can play it well. You should.
I still believe in effort. I still believe in responsibility.
I still believe in showing up when you would rather hide under a blanket and eat toast.
But you don’t (always) choose all your cards.
And here’s the word we are all a little too proud to say out loud.
Luck.
We massively undersell it.
Being the right person, in the right place, at the right time.
Having the right temperament.
The right body.
The right parents.
The right opportunity.
The right mentor.
The right economy.
The right partner.
The right break at exactly the right moment.
Yes, you worked. You showed up. You took the shot. You made choices.
But not all of it was you.
Some of it was fortune. Not determined by you.
And luck or good fortune doesn’t hand out receipts.
That is where so much advice becomes quietly cruel.
We overestimate ourselves and underestimate our good luck, and then we make other people feel like failures for not producing our results with their completely different lives.
And I need to be honest here.
I’ve done this too.
As a minister, as a personal development trainer, as someone who genuinely wanted to help people, I handed out my share of tidy formulas.
Do these things, and you’ll get this outcome.
Follow these steps, and you’ll fix the problem.
Choose better. Think better. Try harder. Be more intentional.
I believed it. I taught it. Some of it was useful.
But some of it also left out the same half of the script I now struggle to stomach in other people.
Age has a way of showing you the seams.
So this is not me standing on a hill, pointing down at everyone else.
This is me, older and slightly more suspicious of anyone selling certainty in a neat little package, calling out the easy answers I used to give as much as the ones I now scroll past.
And nowhere do I see this more than in relationship advice.
Especially from those who aren’t or have never been parents.
And no, dogs don’t count.
Now, hear me carefully…
This is not about who has children and who doesn’t.
Some of the strongest, kindest, most emotionally mature people I know do not have children.
Some wanted them and couldn’t.
Some chose a different road and built beautiful, steady, generous lives.
So, I’m not talking about them, and I will never shame anyone for not wanting kids.
But I AM talking about a certain kind of advice…
The kind that takes a low-load situation, turns it into a brand, and then sells it as a universal law.
Because let’s be honest.
When it is just the two of you, and the biggest questions in your week are where to go, how to spend your time, and what to do with your money, connection has a different texture.
It still matters. It still takes care. People can still wound each other. Loneliness can exist in any house.
But the load is different.
Make no mistake about it.
Now add a child.
Or two.
Or five.
Each with their own genes, temperament, fears, moods, needs, learning curves, illnesses, crises, friendships, hormones, disappointments, noise, mess, timing, and uncanny ability to need you most urgently the moment you finally sit down.
Watch how quickly “just connect daily” becomes a mountain.
Emotionally. Energetically. Practically. Financially. Physically. Spiritually. Every way in between.
You can still choose each other.
You must.
But it is not the same thing.
And let’s not soften the truth about this either…
Children do not only reveal marriages. They also put pressure on them.
Sometimes beautiful pressure. Sometimes meaningful pressure.
Sometimes pressure that grows you up, softens you, humbles you, and gives your life a kind of depth you could never have imagined.
But pressure is still pressure.
Research has said for years what many parents, especially mothers, already know in their bones: the transition to parenthood is often linked with a decline in marital satisfaction, especially in the first year after birth, and the number of children has also been found to negatively predict marital satisfaction, particularly among women.
Not because children are a mistake.
Not because parents love them less.
Not because family life is some tragic trap.
But because love does not remove the load.
And the load is real.
The sleep deprivation is real.
The financial pressure is real.
The loss of freedom is real.
The invisible mental list is real.
The resentment that creeps in when one person becomes the default parent is real.
And the way mothers so often carry more of the emotional, practical, bodily, and mental cost is real.
I’ve watched it up close.
I’ve lived close enough to it to know that many women do not simply become “less romantic” or “less fun” after children.
They become tired.
Touched out.
Responsible for too much.
Expected to remember too much.
Interrupted too often.
Needed by everyone.
And then, somehow, still expected to be soft, available, attractive, emotionally regulated, sexually interested, and grateful.
Good luck with that.
So yes, children can bring joy.
They can bring meaning.
They can crack your heart open in ways nothing else can.
But they also change the marriage.
They test the marriage.
They can strain the marriage.
And in some cases, they absolutely can help break what was already under-supported, under-repaired, or unfairly carried.
That is not cruel to say.
What is cruel, is NOT to say it, and then sell exhausted couples a slogan about date nights and daily connection as if they are failing because they lack commitment.
A relationship under load reveals different truths.
Pressure does that.
It exposes what is strong.
It exposes what is fragile.
It exposes what has been avoided.
It exposes who carries what, who disappears, who softens, who hardens, who repairs, and who keeps score.
So no, many of us are not all the same.
And I won’t pretend we are, just to make a tidy formula sound more inspiring.
That is the whole point.
If you’re beating yourself up right now because you don’t live up to the internet’s idea of ‘success’, stop it!
You are comparing your full, unedited reality to someone else’s cropped one, and then blaming yourself for the gap.
You are comparing your tired Thursday afternoon to their polished Tuesday morning.
Your bills, your nervous system, your children, your grief, your body, your history, your ageing parents, your work pressure, your marriage, your ADHD, your hormones, your health scare, your business, your impossible week to someone else’s caption.
No wonder you feel behind.
No wonder you feel like crap about yourself.
You are not failing because their three-step formula does not fit your real life.
The formula is too small.
So here is the reflection for the rest of us who don’t live through or in front of a camera lens…
For the parents and the non-parents.
For the couples, still choosing each other on hard days.
For the people trying to get a bit fitter, a bit healthier, a bit kinder, a bit braver, a bit more themselves, while carrying things they will never post about.
Give yourself some slack.
Not excuses.
Slack.
There is a difference.
Excuses keep you stuck.
Slack gives you room to breathe, recover, and try again.
Do what you can, with what you have, from where you actually are.
Three workouts instead of six is still three workouts.
A hard conversation that goes slightly better than last time is still progress.
A good-enough week is still a week where you showed up.
A marriage that repairs slowly is not a failure because someone online said repair should be easy.
Or worse, happy couples have easy relationships.
A family that is messy and loving is not automatically broken.
A life that does not photograph is most likely still deeply worth living, perhaps even more so.
60% you can sustain will always beat a perfect plan you never start OR you quit.
Consistency carried through real life compounds.
That is the flex.
Not the highlight reel.
Not the clean kitchen.
Not the abs.
Not the couple who never seem to argue.
Not the three easy steps.
The real flex is the quiet, unglamorous, unsponsored work of building a good life with the load on.
And having enough honesty to admit that effort matters, but so does luck.
Discipline matters, but so does context.
Love matters, but so does capacity.
Choice matters, but so do the cards.
So if someone is selling you the whole answer in three easy steps, hold onto your wallet.
Not because all advice is useless.
Some advice is gold.
But good advice tells the truth about the load.
Bad advice edits out half the script and then charges you for the ending.
And that is where I call BS and get off the bus.
