This Is What Happens When You Stop Negotiating With Yourself

Most people don’t fail because they lack information.

They fail because life gets busy, and they quietly decide their standards are flexible.

Training slips to when it’s convenient.

Nutrition becomes “good enough.”

Weeks turn into months, and suddenly the plan that was supposed to change everything is something they’ll restart later.

This year gave me every excuse to do that.

Work expanded. Responsibility increased. Sleep became less predictable. Life didn’t create space. It demanded structure.

So I stopped negotiating.

Not in a dramatic way. In small, boring decisions that stacked. I trained when it wasn’t ideal. I fueled my work instead of undercutting it. I treated recovery like part of the job, not something you earn after burnout.

That’s the difference most people underestimate.

Apogee Performance Nutrition grew this year. Sales increased by 10 percent. Not because of louder promises or trend chasing, but because people who value effort recognized a product built to support it.

If you’ve used Outer Limit, stuck with it, or shared it with someone who trains seriously, thank you. That kind of trust doesn’t come from marketing. It comes from alignment between what a product claims to do and what it actually supports.

Apogee Fitness Training grew as well. What began as one-on-one coaching expanded into a mobile training operation while continuing to support online clients. Men and women changed their bodies and their relationship with training by doing something deceptively simple.

They stopped looking for exceptions.

No special circumstances.

No perfect timing.

No waiting to feel ready.

Just consistent execution inside a life that wasn’t going to slow down for them.

Personally, training remained non-negotiable.

I ran close to 1,000 miles this year while maintaining strength and muscle. That didn’t happen by accident, and it didn’t happen by pushing harder every week. It happened by respecting fuel, recovery, and sustainability. By training like someone who plans to stay capable for decades, not someone trying to win a short-term validation contest.

That’s how I coach.

Most people don’t need more intensity. They need a system that works when motivation is low and time is tight.

Life tested that system this year.

My third daughter was born. That changes the stakes. You realize quickly that your kids aren’t listening to explanations. They’re watching patterns. They see whether discipline disappears when things get inconvenient or whether it stays intact.

The same thing happens in business. Starting from nothing is humbling. You fall more than you talk about. You make decisions that sting. You find out very quickly whether your standards are situational or stable.

Most people don’t quit loudly.

They loosen quietly.

This year reinforced something I wish more people understood earlier: progress is built when you remove the internal debate. When you stop asking yourself if today “counts” and start acting like it does.

Looking ahead, nothing needs to change.

The focus next year is serving more clients, producing better outcomes, and expanding Outer Limit responsibly by adding flavors and building the line as demand earns it. Training will continue to support strength and endurance performance into my 40s, because capability is something you either preserve intentionally or lose by default.

If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in the negotiation, that’s not a flaw. It’s a pattern. And patterns can be changed.

You don’t need a new identity.

You don’t need a dramatic reset.

You need standards that hold when life gets heavy.

That’s what I coach.

That’s what I build around.

If you’re reading this and feeling exposed, that’s not a problem to fix. It’s information.

Most people don’t fail because they’re incapable. They fail because they keep negotiating with themselves when life applies pressure.

You don’t need a dramatic reset or a new identity. You need standards that hold when things get busy, uncomfortable, or inconvenient.

That’s how I train. That’s how I coach. And that’s the difference between people who keep starting over and people who actually change.

If you’re ready to stop negotiating and start executing inside real life, you already know what to do next.