A friend of mine, opened a recent essay in Wander North Magazine with this line:

“I knew exactly what I should be doing. That’s the frustrating part.” - Brandon Houston

He’d done the work. Read the books. Built the routines. Had every tool sitting right there in front of him.

And then life did what life does, bringing loss, grief, and business pressure that pushed him over the edge. He lost the discipline and willpower to do the things he knew were healthy for his mind and body. He had the playbook for what worked for him, but he just couldn’t open it.

If you’ve ever been there, you know it’s a strange kind of pain. It’s not the pain of not knowing what to do. It’s the pain of knowing exactly what to do — and watching yourself not do it anyway.

Brandon called it the gap between knowing and doing. And here’s the part nobody warns you about: the more you know, or the more self-awareness you have, the heavier that gap gets. Because now there are two weights, not one. The struggle itself. And the judgment stacked on top — I’ve spent years on this…I should know better.

I know that space well. It’s actually one of the core topics of my next book (more on that in the coming months!). And it’s the space I want to talk about today because the way back is almost never what we reach for first.

Follow the signal

The first thing I told Brandon was that this wasn’t a failure.

It was a signal and something deeper asking for his attention before he rushed back to the doing.

We treat falling off our practices like a character flaw. As if it proved we were never truly disciplined in the first place. all of it, all at once.

But when your system is already overloaded, that’s the one thing it can’t absorb.

When you’re depleted, simplicity is the only thing you can actually receive.

This is where I introduced him to something I call mental nutrition. The idea is simple: what you feed your mind matters as much as what you feed your body — and when you’re running on empty, the answer usually isn’t more discipline. It’s replenishment. Positive fuel for the mind.

I think about the hardest stretch my wife and I ever went through, when a business we loved was coming apart in real time. Everything felt like it was crumbling. And our lifeline, strange as it sounds, was Seinfeld. Twenty or thirty minutes a night where we could just laugh and forget. It didn’t fix anything. But it gave us enough to get to the next morning.

When you’re depleted, the goal isn’t to force momentum. It’s to create the conditions where momentum can come back on its own.

The simplest way back

So here’s what I told Brandon, and what I’d tell anyone reading this from the bottom of one of these stretches. Don’t try to climb back to where you were. Just take the first step — and make it smaller than feels reasonable.

1. Pick one non-negotiable. Then shrink it until it’s almost embarrassing.

Not the routine. One practice. And not the impressive version of it.

For some people it’s a single morning meditation. For Brandon it was getting outside for one walk — sunlight on his face, nothing ambitious. For you it might be as small as being present for your first cup of coffee. Actually being there for it. The smell of it. The light through the kitchen window. That’s enough and it counts.

When you’ve hit the bottom of your practices, you need one true thing you can do today.

2. Feed your mind before you discipline it.

This is where mental nutrition does the heavy lifting. Before you demand anything of yourself, surround yourself with things that lift you. A biography of someone who walked through something harder than what you’re in. Music that moves you. A show like Seinfeld that makes you laugh out loud.

3. Let the momentum find you.

Here’s the magic of starting small: you start to feel a little better. And that feeling better ripples.

The coffee leads to a walk. The walk, a few days later, turns into a handful of push-ups. The push-ups remind you there’s a workout in there somewhere. And slowly — not on a schedule, not by force — you find your way back to the practices that actually work for you.

You don’t muscle your way back. You let the door open a crack, and you walk through it when it does.

And if someone you love is in that stretch right now, send them this. Be the friend who reaches out—not to be pushy, but simply to share something that resonated with you. It might be the small piece of mental nutrition that helps them find their way back.

— Marc

No Paywalls. Just Shared Growth.

All content here is free. I believe we all benefit when we reflect together, ask better questions, and build a society anchored in clarity, health, and purpose. Mental fitness shouldn't be a luxury; it’s a foundational tool for both personal and collective evolution.

That said, if you’re moved to support my work, there are a few meaningful ways to do so:

🧠 Get Your Blueprint — You Don’t Need to Try Harder. You Need to Understand the Patterns Running Your Mind.

🎤 Book me to speak — I’ve led thousands through keynotes and mental fitness workshops that help high-performing teams thrive personally and professionally. The latest three topics I’m covering:

• The Competitive Edge: The Formula for Better Questions and Better Outcomes

• AI / Human Advantage: Asking the Human Questions AI Can’t Answer

• Thriving in Change: The Formula for Clarity and Courage in Times of Massive Change

📘 Pick up a copy of Personal Socrates — A bestseller and guide to asking better questions and designing a life of clarity and meaning.

🎙️ Behind the Human (Apple | Spotify) — A top-ranked podcast that’s been running for nearly a decade, exploring what it means to live and perform with intention. Each episode features raw, insightful conversations with world-class thinkers, authors, athletes, spiritual teachers, and entrepreneurs.

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