This is not the beginning of my journey, but it is the foundation for everything else I will tell you. First let me tell you that I am not a tech blogger, and I am not any type of guru. I am an eager technologist who has stumbled upon what I believe is a fundamental truth that we all need to hear right now. It will take me some time to get where I want to go, but I am hoping you will understand the value of each step in this story.
Earlier in my life, I was very active. I loved being outdoors and challenging myself trail running, climbing, and spending time in the ocean. To be clear, I was born with almost zero natural athletic ability. I was never particularly good, but I could get out there and have some fun. About 10 years ago, when I was in my early 40s, something changed. I became overweight, very stressed out, and just unhealthy. I noticed over a couple of years that I had aged unnaturally fast. I looked like I was in my 50s, had dark bags under my eyes, and worse, I just felt old and frail…and incapable. But my discomfort and dissatisfaction were largely limited to just these observations. I had not yet fully recognized what I had lost, or why.
The Comfortable Lies
Looking back, I can see clearly, that I had created a very elaborate set of justifications for why I was the way I was. To sum them up, there were essentially three lies that I droned out like a mantra.
Lie 1: I'm doing the best I can. I had a newborn child, and stressful job, money was tight, etc. So I constantly told myself—yes, things are not how I want them to be, but under the circumstances, I'm doing the best I can. Anyone in my shoes would be doing the same things I am doing.
Lie 2: Physical and mental decline is natural and unavoidable. This one was the most dangerous lie I told myself. I didn't view it as fatalistic nonsense. I framed this as wisdom. I accepted it as absolute truth, and told myself that to accept this truth was not only healthy, but mature—and wise. This was pure wisdom, and believing this lie was something I thought made me better.
Lie 3: The stress I was under made all of my unhealthy choices and behaviors justified. The catch all statement. Anything I was doing, like over-eating, choosing a sedentary life, never prioritizing myself—anything that did not get captured in my first two lies could conveniently get folded into this third lie.
These three lies formed a very sophisticated and almost undeniable framework that made challenging them at all seem immature, unwise, and pathetic. I built these up in so many ways, and when I was done, they were no longer lies. They were a philosophy. They were wisdom. They were inescapable and impossible to challenge.
The Costs that I Could Not Ignore
Nothing dramatic happened. There was no rock bottom moment, where the error of my ways became clear. It was more insidious than that. I didn't lose my job, or lose friends, or end up in the hospital with physical or mental breakdowns. It was more primal than that. I woke up one day and noticed that I had lost personal capability. Things that used to be easy, like getting up early and going on a run, were impossible. I was used to trail runs in the mountains. Now, walking across the room or up a short flight of stairs made my hear rate jump and took away my breath. I remembered a time, not very long ago, when I was capable. And I was no longer capable.
I reached out for myself—the me I was used to being—and I gradually found less and less to grab on to. My comfortable lies could not completely explain this complete loss of what I thought was "me". It was no longer a vague notion of decline. It felt absolute. And the loss felt profound. I was at a loss to answer basic questions about who I was—about what it meant to be me.
The First of Many Tests
Again, there was no moment of epiphany. No rock bottom moment. For days I just sat with this sense of grief and loss. But I was not ready to challenge the lies. I was still convinced that this was inevitable. I didn't have a breakdown or meditate my way through it. My turning point, if you can call it that, was much simpler and more subtle.
One day, I just asked a couple of questions. Wait…am I sure I can't do this? And then…what would happen if I try. My elaborate cage was specifically designed to make these questions feel absurd and almost immature. But the questions were there anyway. I didn't tell anyone about them, and I didn't suddenly conquer a 10 mile run. I started small—I got up and went on a walk. And I could. A week later, I went on a short run. And I could. I was still about 50 pounds over my desired weight, and I felt horrible. But I could do some small accomplishment. I saw right then, that I had agency. I had the power to test my beliefs.
The Lab Opens
Nothing changed overnight, from a capabilities standpoint. What did change overnight is my mental framework. I was still telling myself the same stories. I'm doing the best I can…I'm just getting older and decline is natural…and I'm so stressed out. All of these things still felt very true. But now there was a fourth idea floating around with them. If I could start to test my so-called limitations—I had a way to see in objective terms if they were true or not.
My body became the lab in which I would spend the next several years testing every limit I could see or say. And here is the reason—you can't lie in physical performance. You can either do the thing or you can't. Saying you can do a thing is very different from actually doing the thing. By choosing to use my body as the lab, I created a new framework. One where self-deception became impossible. I would identify a belief—e.g. I can't run anymore because I am too old. I would test it, over and over again, until I understood what was true. It wasn't always good news. I would probably never run a 6 minute mile (remember—no real athletic ability, even in my 20s). That was true. But I COULD run. And after 4 or 5 successful runs, I could not longer tell myself I couldn't do it. So it wasn't always good news or bad, but it was TRUE.
The Bleed
This part was really unexpected. Once my body lab was open, I couldn't stop testing my limits. But I noticed over time that my tests started migrating out of physical limits to other parts of my life. This new system of thinking started to show up in how I worked, how I showed up for my family and friends. In how much attention I devoted to my relationships. And once I learned the value of testing limits, I started to understand that the honesty that comes from this type of system made every dishonest connection and belief impossible to tolerate.
Where I am Now
As I will explain in later articles, there was no finish line for me. I didn't reach a day where everything simply became easy again. It is hard every day. But this new personal operating system gave me the ability to begin to dismantle my cage. Of course, I still have pieces of it around me, and I often see limitations pop up out of nowhere. But I no longer blindly believe them. I have spent the last several years in my lab. And while I still do have limitations, I have a body of evidence that has shown me, in no uncertain terms, that most of the limits in my life were invented—by me—and that I can do far more than I think I can. I have the proof. Most importantly, I have learned how to see my truths and lies, and exactly how to differentiate the two. There is no room in my life for lies. Only truth. Only what I can prove.
The Question I Can't Stop Asking
Here is the part I didn't expect.
Once I learned to see my own comfortable lies, I started seeing them everywhere. In how we work. In how we connect. In how we talk about progress. I realized that I was not alone in my cage. What I was doing to myself is exactly the same thing we are doing to ourselves as a civilization.
I build AI applications for a living. I use AI tools every day. I am NOT a skeptic. But I see something happening that looks very familiar to me. We are handing over our struggles—one small, reasonable concession at a time—to machines that make everything easy. And we are calling it inevitable "progress" in the same way I called my surrender wisdom and maturity. Because the comfortable options feel so obviously right that questioning it seems absurd.
But not all struggle should be erased. We do not need to eliminate every discomfort.
This is what InDeepShift is about. Not rejecting the tools. Not going backward. But asking the question—the same question that dismantled my cage—before every concession: Am I sure this is a struggle I don't need? What happens if I keep it?
The lab is still open.