The masks we wear.

If you’ve read much of what I’ve shared on social media, you may have noticed that a lot of it has changed over the past couple of years.

That’s the thing about spending time building something.

Or about making anything, really.

You can’t fake it forever.

Eventually, if you spend enough time with your work, the truth starts to bleed out.

It just finds a way.

Regardless of the grand story you want to tell.

You just start blurting out the words you need someone to hear.

I used to write about winning.

About leadership.

About the business of building.

All the right words in all the right places.

The copy was clear, confident, controlled.

And if you’d visited this site, even as recently as last week, you’d have found a lot of polish.

Neat headlines.

Strong statements.

The kind of language that wants to inspire.

If you’d asked the Homepage:

I was “An adventurer driven to help others push through difficulty, lean into change, and explore what’s possible.”

And the About page said (with a poor attempt at humility) that:

“I didn’t always get to spend my days growing careers, unlocking capability, and hanging out at the ocean.”

There even was a quote from T.S. Eliot, as though that might make the whole thing feel profound.

It was barely above the footer, of all places.

If you’re smiling at the above, or even cringing a little, it’s alright.

I am too.

It was a version of me who had it all figured out.

Systems to optimise.

Frameworks to scale.

A few questions, but mainly answers.

And enough advice to fill a few notebooks.

Part of me wants to say that all of it was meant to be helpful.

That it was meant to connect.

And both of those things are probably true.

But if I’m honest with myself, it was built mostly to hide.

To project a version of me I wanted the world to see.

And protect the one I didn’t want to be.

It took a couple of close friends to help me realise just how much it was weighing me down.

Christopher White helped me put things into words.

Jet Xavier took me through an exercise at a retreat I attended a month or so ago.

Realistically, it was probably something I needed three years prior.

I’d done a lot of work by this point.

A lot of healing.

I’d learned how to open up.

But there was one exercise that hit me instantly.

It’s stayed in my mind every day since.

We each sat down, and were handed a plain white mask and a black marker.

Then, on the outside, we were told to write everything we wanted the world to see.

The way we show up.

Easy, right?

Supporter. Helpful. Kind. Hard-working. Organised. Dependable. Truthful. Giving. Business owner.

Risk taker. Builder. Thought leader. Goal-driven. Visionary. Self-aware.

And, if I’d been at this retreat three years earlier:

“An adventurer driven to explore what’s possible.”

Once we were all done, Jet had us flip the masks over.

And on the inside, he told us to write what we hid.

The marker in my hand, and many of those in my peripherals, were slower to move.

But eventually the truth started to come.

Uninspiring.

Disorganised.

Irresponsible.

Stressed.

Used.

Grief.

Worry.

Sadness.

Confusion.

Addiction.

Challenging desires.

Painful thoughts.

Loss.

Life.

It’s a strange feeling.

Staring at your own handwriting on both sides of a cheap cardboard mask.

Seeing this distance between the image you’ve curated, and the life you’ve lived so plainly.

Because the words on the outside were easy.

Probably always will be.

But the ones on the inside were still so much heavier, even years later.

They don’t roll off the tongue.

They don’t nurture the ego.

And they certainly don’t sound great in an email signature.

Again, I’d done so much work by this point.

Shared so much of the truth.

To people around me, and online too.

I was much more comfortable with myself, and who I was.

And no part of me was living in these darker states, the inside, every day.

Most of the time there weren’t even in my line of sight.

But the exercise made me realise I was still clenching my teeth.

Still silently compensating for what was on the inside of the mask,

by inflating what was on the outside.

And the subconscious effort of holding them apart,

of trying to create distance from the harder memories, was draining me.

Some time later, it also forced me to acknowledge how out of date this site was.

And, if I’m honest, how out of touch it had been from the start.

Looking back, I can see why I’d tried so hard to cover every base.

Trying to be all things at once.

A leader.

A mentor.

An explorer.

A father.

A son.

A friend.

…an adventurer.

When I’d first written all of that out, I was underwater in so many ways.

A divorce I couldn’t talk about.

A business I was struggling to hold onto.

Secrets that no child should have to keep from a parent, funneled into a life of lies.

And grief, for so many things, tucked behind bravado and work ethic.

But it was so much easier to write about leadership than loneliness.

Easier to talk about purpose than find it.

And easier to tell the world was fine, than to admit to myself that I wasn’t.

So I made the copy sound strong, because I felt weak.

But over time, the writing started to slip.

I got tired of playing the part.

The ideas changed.

They got less neat.

Less clever.

More honest.

Sometimes, uncomfortably so.

It wasn’t a planned move.

Just life, coming through.

Yet the more open I got, the more I heard from people.

Comments. Texts. Emails.

Hour-long calls from people I’d not spoken to in years.

Not about the wins.

Not about the “critical actions” or “next chapters.”

But about the messy bits.

The stuck bits.

The bits most of us are taught to hide.

Turns out, nobody’s looking for another “mentor.”

They just want something that feels relevant.

And what I’ve come to realise with all that has happened,

is that before any meaningful progression takes place, regression comes first.

So, shortly after I got back from the retreat, the old site came down.

The grandiose phrases and action verbs went first.

Then the lessons shifted.

Less “what I can teach you,”

more of what I’m still learning.

And I reuploaded a photo I once got annoyed at because there was a fly on my arm.

There’s clearly nothing heroic about any of this.

It’s just a website.

But it does feel lighter.

More honest.

More useful, in its own way.

And both it, and I, are very much still in-progress.

But then again, so is everyone I’ve ever admired.

Which is enough for me.

And if you’ve read this far,

I hope you realise you’re enough for you.