Ever put your face through one of those “fun walls”?
For a moment, you become the strong man. The superhero. The version of yourself that looks confident, powerful, impressive.
It’s a convincing image. But it’s only the surface.
In How To Adult: A Psychological Guide, you come face-to-face with a confronting idea:
The biggest obstacle to reaching your potential is not your circumstances. It’s you.
Self-sabotage doesn’t announce itself. It hides in plain sight.
It looks like perfectionism.
It looks like procrastination.
It looks like defensiveness when challenged.
It looks like protecting your image at all costs.
Underneath all of that is something quieter and harder to admit: a fragile ego.
We don’t just want to succeed. We want to look like we’re succeeding. We want to maintain an identity that feels safe, even if it holds us back.
That’s where the real problem begins.
My upcoming book explores how people swing between two modes:
Inferiority, where you hold back, avoid, second-guess and play small.
Superiority, where you push, dominate, overcompensate and try to stay on top.
· Both come from the same place.
· Both distort your decisions.
· Both quietly sabotage your progress.
And both are ways of protecting an identity instead of developing a stronger psychology.
The hard truth is this:
You can’t grow if you’re more committed to the image of who you are than the reality of who you could become.
At some point, you have to step out from behind the “fun wall” version of yourself and look at what’s actually driving your behaviour.
That’s where the real work begins.