Five months. Different room. Smaller clothes.
I knew the weight had been creeping up. I told myself I'd deal with it. Soon. When things quietened down. You know how that goes. Things never quieten down.
The photos landed
And then the photos from BizX2026 landed in my inbox.
It had been standing room only. A session I was really proud of. The kind of day you want pictures from.
And I wanted to delete every single image.
You might know the feeling. That discomfort that sits in your chest and won't shift. You look at a photo and the person in it doesn't match the picture you carry around in your head.
It turned out to be the most useful thing that happened to me that day.
Knowing is rarely enough
Here's what I've learned about change, in business and in life. What we feel moves us far more than what we know.
Most of us already know what needs doing. The difficult conversation we keep putting off. The pricing that's too low. The habit that's quietly costing us. We know. We've known for ages. We just haven't felt it sharply enough yet.
I'd had nudges before. A year earlier, after BizX2025, I'd said out loud that I was getting back on my fitness game. I meant it, too. But a nudge is easy to talk yourself out of. A photo of yourself on a stage you're proud of is much harder to argue with.
The photos made me feel it.
Every inaction has a consequence too
I'm an ActionCOACH. I'm a long way from being a ThinkAboutItCOACH. I'm always telling people that every action has a consequence, and so does every inaction. I'd been living proof of the second one.
So I made a decision. A proper decision, with no resolution, no plan to make a plan, and no waiting for a better week. A decision, followed immediately by the first action.
That last part matters most. The first action is what makes a decision real, and it doesn't need to be big.
Five months later, here we are.
The same gap between knowing and doing shows up everywhere, well beyond weight. So what does it actually take to close it?
For me it took a feeling I couldn't ignore. You don't have to wait for yours to arrive by email. You can go looking for it on purpose. Picture where you'll be in a year if nothing changes. Work out what that inaction is costing you in money, health or time with the people you love. Make it real enough to feel.
If you want more on deciding first and acting straight after, I wrote about it in Should vs must.
So what's sitting in that gap for you right now?
