You don't have a discipline problem. You have an identity problem.
The real reason you keep starting over and the identity shift that fixes it permanently.
I've had the same conversation with about 40 different men this year. They DM me. They tell me they've been "trying to get in shape" for years. They've started programmes, downloaded meal plans, bought creatine that's now expired in the cupboard. And every single time, same pattern... fired up on Monday, skipping sessions by Friday, restarting the following week like the last one didn't happen.
I've gone deep on this. Behavioural neuroscience, dopamine research, identity psychology, consciousness work. And what I found completely changed how I coach. Because the thing most men blame... discipline, motivation, willpower... isn't the problem at all.
I. You've been changing the wrong thing
There's nothing wrong with wanting to transform your physique. Wanting to look in the mirror and actually respect what you see. Wanting to walk into a room and not be invisible. That's not vanity. That's a man waking up to the fact that he's been sleepwalking through his own life.
But here's what I see constantly...
A man decides he wants to change. So he downloads a programme. Maybe buys some new gym clothes. Sets his alarm for 6am. Posts something motivational on his story. And for about 72 hours, he's a different man.
Then Wednesday comes. He's tired. He slept badly because he was scrolling until 1am. He skips the session. Tells himself he'll make it up tomorrow. Thursday comes, doesn't happen either. By Sunday he's ordered a Dominos and convinced himself he'll "start fresh" next Monday.
And this isn't a one-off. This is the cycle. Every single week. Every month. Every year. The same man having the same conversation with himself, making the same promises, breaking them, and wondering what's wrong with him.
Nothing is wrong with him.
He's just trying to change the wrong thing.
Most men try to change their behaviour. "I'm going to train 4 days a week." "I'm going to eat clean." "I'm going to stop scrolling before bed."
These are behaviour goals. They live on the surface. They require willpower. And willpower is a finite resource that depletes every single day.
Your brain processes roughly 11 million bits of information every second. You're conscious of about 40. That means 99.9% of your behaviour is running on autopilot. Old programmes. Old patterns. Old identity.
You've got between 60,000 and 70,000 thoughts per day, and the vast majority of them are the same ones you had yesterday. Neurons that fire together, wire together. You've literally wired your identity into your nervous system through decades of repetition.
So when you try to "just start training"... your conscious mind says yes, but your subconscious is running a completely different programme. It's the equivalent of trying to install new software on hardware that's running an incompatible operating system.
Your body rejects it.
This is why you start strong and fade by Wednesday. Your subconscious identity hasn't changed. You've tried to bolt new behaviours onto an old version of yourself. And your nervous system pulls you right back to baseline every single time.
So the question isn't "how do I stay disciplined." The question is "how do I become someone who doesn't need discipline to do this."
II. Your brain is running someone else's programme
The goal isn't to "start training 4 days a week." It's to become the kind of man for whom not training feels wrong. Where skipping a session creates more discomfort than showing up.
That's not a behaviour change. That's an identity shift.
And here's why most men never make it. They're carrying what I call identity anchors... stories about themselves that they've never questioned. "I'm not disciplined." "I always quit." "I'm not that kind of person." They've carried these stories since school, since childhood, since some throwaway comment someone made 15 years ago that lodged itself into their subconscious and became a belief.
Maxwell Maltz wrote about this in Psycho-Cybernetics back in 1960. He was a plastic surgeon who noticed something disturbing. He'd give patients a perfect nose, a perfect jawline, exactly what they asked for. And half of them still felt ugly afterwards. The surgery changed the face. But the self-image underneath hadn't moved. They were still running the old programme.
Your self-image acts like a thermostat. Set it to 18 degrees and no matter how much you try to force the room to 25, it pulls itself back down. That's what happens every Monday when you "start again." Your thermostat hasn't changed. You've just cranked the heating up temporarily.
The gap between who you are and who you could be is filled entirely with the stories you tell yourself.
One of the lads in my community messaged me after a Space I did. He realised he hadn't been outside between 5:30am and 4:30pm for 10 years. A decade. Not even seeing what the weather looked like.
Then he connected the dots himself... 2015-2017, when he spent most days outside no matter the weather, was when he was the leanest he's ever been.
He'd never even thought about it until that moment.
That's an identity anchor. A man who'd built his entire life indoors, behind screens, under artificial light... and never once questioned why his body, his energy, his physique had declined. The answer was right there. He just couldn't see it because it was so normal to him.
One conversation. One realisation. And now he's rethinking his entire daily structure.
That's the shift. Not a new programme. A new awareness of who you've been operating as and the decision to stop.
But here's what most people don't talk about. Even when a man understands the identity piece... even when he can see the old programme running... there's a reason that programme got installed in the first place. And it's neurochemical.
III. You're depleted before your feet hit the floor
This is where it gets dark.
Dopamine is a non-infinite yet renewable resource. Every peak has a crash below baseline. Not back to baseline... below it.
There's a molecule called dynorphin... literally the opposite of endorphin... that creates physical discomfort after a dopamine spike. This is why you feel flat, empty, and unmotivated after a big high. Your body is paying for the spike.
Now think about what the average man does before he's even left his bed.
Reaches for his phone. Scrolls Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, whatever. Fires off a dopamine hit. Checks messages. Another hit. Maybe some porn. Massive hit. Processed food for breakfast. Another hit.
By 9am he's already spiked and crashed multiple times. His baseline dopamine is on the floor. And then he wonders why he can't be arsed to train. Why he can't focus. Why he has zero drive for anything that requires sustained effort.
He didn't wake up lazy. He woke up depleted.
And this is happening every single day. Stack caffeine on top of pre-workout on top of music on top of stimulants and you've created an artificial peak so high that the crash afterwards makes normal life feel unbearable. Real work... the slow, boring, unglamorous kind... can't compete with the neurochemical fireworks you've trained your brain to expect.
Your phone has become the most effective discipline-destruction tool ever invented. And you're using it voluntarily, every morning, before you've done a single thing that matters.
Now let me give you some numbers that should scare you.
The average person spends over 6.5 hours per day looking at a screen. If you're 20 right now, you will spend approximately 16 years of your life staring at screens. The vast majority of that time adds absolutely nothing to your life.
TikTok cracked the code. An infinite, personalised feed that learns what keeps your monkey brain locked in and serves you more of it, forever. No bottom to the feed. No end point. Just endless stimulation requiring zero effort from you.
And now every platform has copied it. Instagram Reels. YouTube Shorts. Twitter. Even Amazon has an infinite scroll now.
Before this, if you wanted stimulation, you had to earn it. Go somewhere. Build something. Talk to someone. Do something physical. The stimulation was tied to action.
Now it's free. Unlimited. Available in your pocket 24/7. And your ancient brain... the same hardware your ancestors used to hunt, build, and survive... sees it all the same way. It thinks it's being productive because stimulation used to mean survival.
But you're not surviving. You're sitting in bed at 1am watching a stranger dance for 8 seconds, then swiping to the next one. And your brain is paying the price.
The result is brain fog. Destroyed attention span. The inability to focus on anything that isn't instantly rewarding. Memory problems. Flatness. That feeling of watching your own life from outside your body, like you're there but you're not really there.
And then men blame discipline.
Brother, your discipline isn't broken. Your neurochemistry is cooked.
Your behaviour is surface level and gets rejected by your subconscious. Your identity was set by someone else years ago and you've never reset the thermostat. And your neurochemistry is being depleted before you do a single thing that matters each day...
IV. What you're actually avoiding
Now I need to be straight with you about something. Because even with all 4 layers explained, even with the full system in front of you... some of you still won't start.
And I know why.
It's not the training. It's not the diet. It's not the early mornings.
It's the stillness.
The moment between stimulation where you have to sit with yourself and face the truth about where you are. The moment where you can't scroll, can't numb, can't distract. Where you have to look at the gap between who you are and who you know you could be.
That gap is terrifying. So most men fill it with content, with plans, with research, with "getting ready to start." Anything to avoid actually starting.
The self-improvement industry has become the new brain rot. Men consuming 4 hours of "how to be better" content daily while doing absolutely nothing different with their lives. Saving posts about discipline while breaking every promise they've made to themselves. It's procrastination with better branding.
The man who scrolls for 3 hours looking for motivation has already used more discipline than he'd need to train for 45 minutes. It takes effort to stay on that phone. To override the guilt. To ignore the voice telling him to get up.
You're not undisciplined. You're disciplined in the wrong direction.
Fix the man. The physique follows.
The transformation you're looking for isn't in a programme, a supplement stack, or a motivational video.
It's in a decision about who you are.
Not who you're "going to become." Who you are right now. Today.
Because the man who trains doesn't negotiate with himself about whether he feels like it. The man who eats clean doesn't debate it at every meal. The man who protects his sleep doesn't "try" to get off his phone at night.
These things aren't hard for him. They're just who he is. No willpower required.
That's the shift. From forcing behaviour to embodying identity.
I built a free brotherhood for men who are done starting over. No motivation speeches. No fluff. Just men who show up, hold each other accountable, and do the work.
It's called Sons of Achilles. It's free. The link's below.
https://www.skool.com/sons-of-achilles-6467
I'll see you inside. Or I'll see you next Monday, starting over again.
Your choice.
— Achilles
