You Are the Source of ALL Your Problems

There comes a point in your life where you realise, the only thing holding you back… is you.

You see that the thing that is limiting you most, is the story that goes on in our own mind.

If you haven't seen that yet, that's ok.

You'll get there soon enough.

Maybe you are still blaming others, blaming your life conditions or blaming society.

That's a game we all play for a period of time.

But when you are ready to wake up, to be an adult, to take responsibility for your life, you will see that the only thing that is really in your way, is you.

My Story: Growing Up with Hidden Narratives

It took me a long time to see this in my own life.

I had a lot of stories that I believed about myself and about life that I never stopped to question.

The most limiting one for me was that I didn't feel like I was enough.

I felt like I had to earn my worth or prove my worth by achievement.

I grew up in a family of runners. Running was everything. And in my mind, being good at running meant being seen.

It meant being good enough

So I trained four, five, sometimes six times a week for over a decade.

I did enjoy it, but if I’m honest… a lot of the drive wasn’t coming from passion. It was coming from the need to prove myself.

Scarcity and the Money Story

At the same time, I was carrying another story: scarcity.

I grew up in a family where money was always tight. Somewhere along the way, I decided that people like me didn’t have nice things. That money would always be hard.

For a while I fought against it. I remember getting my first job at 15, working part-time in a sports shop. I saved every penny. Eighteen months later, I had £2000 in my bank account. At the time, I felt like the richest kid in the world.

But it didn’t last.

After years of spending nothing, I decided to treat myself and I bought one of the original iPods for £200.

Then as soon as I turned 17, I blew the rest on a car. And from that moment on… I was broke again.

When I went to university, being broke almost became part of my identity.

I fully embraced being the brokest person out of all my friends.

Everyone expected students to be broke, but I wore it like a badge of honour.

So I had these two stories running side by side:

“I have to earn my worth.”

And, “I’ll never have much anyway.”

Looking back, it’s no surprise that life felt hard and unfair.

Like no matter how much effort I put in, I’d never get ahead.

Self-Sabotaging Myself

From 18 to 22, I basically opted out. I wasn’t chasing goals anymore. My worth came from fitting in, partying, being fun to be around. Running stayed in my life, but now it was an excuse for underperforming.

I’ll never forget one of my lowest points: the National University Championships. I’d been out clubbing three times that week, including the night before the event. I told myself if I could just get through the qualifying heat on Saturday, I’d recover in time for the final. Surprise, surprise… I didn’t even make it through my heat.

It was the ultimate form of self-sabotage. I wanted to be good enough, but at least if I failed, I now had an excuse. I could say, “If I tried I could’ve done it.”

Poker and the Harsh Wake-Up Call

Fast forward a few years and I was in Bali, living in a poker grinding house with two of my close friends.

We’d started out playing the lowest stakes and we had slowly worked our way up to playing some of the highest stakes games.

For the first time in my life, I was making what felt like serious money.

I was playing poker 10 hours most days, having regular 5 figure months and I was on track for my first 6 figure year.

By the end of the year, I couldn’t wait to see my new net worth. I was convinced I’d be loaded.

But when I did the accounting, reality hit me like a brick.

After cashing in all my rake back, which is like cash back that the poker sites give you for grinding a lot, I had $38k in my online poker wallet.

I assumed I must have some extra money somewhere, so I started to check all my accounts.

To my surprise they were all almost empty, just a few thousand to cover living costs.

I thought maybe there were some transfers I had sent my housemates that haven't been sent back.

Nope.

And it was about to get a whole lot worse.

At the start of the year I’d agreed to do a deal with my two housemates as a way to lower variance.

We agreed we would cover each others variance and split any run good/run bad 3-way.

My housemate then sent me his graph to show me he had ran $85k under his expected value (EV) and that I owed him close to $30k.

I couldn’t believe it. A whole year of grinding. Six figures of profit. And I had nothing to show for it.

All those old stories came flooding back.

“You’ll never get ahead.”

“You don’t deserve it.”

“You’re not enough.”

For a few days, I played the victim. Blamed variance. Blamed the deal. Blamed everything.

But eventually, a new thought hit me.

What if I’m the problem?

What if the reason I never have money… is because of how I think about money?

That was the spark. The start of a completely different journey.

What I Learnt

I don't know where this came from, but I decided I had to go deeper.

I got the book Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins and I started to learn about the power of the stories that we tell ourselves.

I soon discovered that my past experiences had lead me to form very fixed and limiting views around money, coming from scarcity.

And that I was likely self-sabotaging myself because I didn't feel like I deserved more.

This started my 12 year journey and obsession with understanding the mind on a deeper level.

What I came to realise would change everything about how I live my life.

There is a part of the mind, which we can call the personal mind, that is deeply programmed by your past experiences.

In your formative early years, generally before 6 years old, you create stories or beliefs about yourself and the world,

These beliefs are to help you make sense of the world, but also to protect you and to allow you to know what you need to do to be loved and accepted.

For a 6 year old, this is your survival tool kit.

What you don't realise, is that you then carry these stories into your adult life.

And most of the thoughts you have are coming from this personal mind that wants you to feel safe and accepted.

If you don't question these thoughts, they run quietly in the background, shaping every choice you make.

That’s why I felt like I was running in circles.

Because I wasn’t living my life — I was living my stories.

How to Rewrite Your Inner Game

To work through this, you need to develop a very deep and powerful skill: which is self-awareness.

You need to learn to look at your inner world and the narratives you are living in.

You need to bring your beliefs that operate subconsciously, outside of your awareness, into your conscious awareness.

You need to examine them, see which ones are still functional, and which ones are holding you back.

It's like lifting up an old rug and seeing all the shit that's gathered underneath.

You can choose to put the rug back down, like most people do, of you can start to clean up the mess that's underneath.

This is where all personal growth work begins.

Here’s the Work

The way I started to break free was simple, but powerful.

I began by examining the stories I told myself in the key areas of my life:

• What do I believe about money?

• What do I believe about relationships?

• What do I believe about success?

• What do I believe about health?

• What do I believe about the future? About the past?

When you do this, patterns start to emerge. You begin to see the stories that have been quietly limiting you.

The next step is to question them.

• Are they really true?

• What evidence supports them?

• What evidence do I have that they’re not true?

For me, it became clear very quickly: most of these beliefs weren’t facts at all. They were just old stories I’d picked up when I was younger — stories that no longer served me.

And once you see that, something shifts. The narrative loses its power.

That’s when you can ask the most important question: “What’s actually true?”

And, “what’s a better, more empowering story I want to live by?”

This process — examining, questioning, and rewriting the stories you live by — is the foundation of real change.

The Key Takeaway

We all live inside a story.

The problem is, most people never stop to ask if that story is actually true — or if it even aligns with the life they want to live.

They just keep running the old narrative on repeat.

But the moment you step back, examine the stories you’ve been carrying, and choose new ones consciously… everything changes.

Because your story shapes your reality. And if you want to live differently, you have to start by telling yourself a different story.

Adam