190 - The Achilles Choice

Most people never make the choice. They tell themselves they're being patient, being strategic. But if you get honest, it's fear wearing a responsible disguise.

In this episode, I walk through the myth of Achilles and why his story maps almost perfectly onto the war most of us are fighting right now. The choice he made. The rage that pulled him off the battlefield. The friend he lost that finally moved him. And the heel he knew about his whole life that he never protected.

I also get personal about the moments I've stood at the same crossroads. Sitting at my college desk too afraid to take the classes I actually wanted. Gatekeeping running because my ego needed the edge. Throwing up every quarter mile in an Arizona ultra while Ally ran beside me and refused to let me quit. And the one weakness I already know about that I haven't fully dealt with yet.

You'll walk away with:

• A framework for recognizing when you're choosing comfort without actually choosing it
• An honest look at how pride keeps you sitting out when people around you need you in the fight
• The Achilles Audit: three questions to find your heel before it finds you
  • Where are you choosing the long quiet life without ever actually choosing it? 
  • Who are you sitting out on right now because your ego is wounded? 
  • What's your heel? 

If you've been stalling on something you know you're capable of, this one is for you.

Subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It takes 30 seconds and it genuinely helps more people find the show.

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You're not lazy. You're not lost. You just know there's a gap between the life you're living and the one you're capable of — and that gap is getting harder to ignore.

Every week, I pull apart the mental patterns that keep capable people stuck — comfort disguised as patience, avoidance disguised as strategy, mediocrity dressed up as balance. I bring in philosophy, personal stories from the trails and the trenches, and conversations with people who decided to stop waiting.

This isn't a show about hacks. It's about the harder work: getting honest with yourself, building the discipline to act on that honesty, and becoming someone you'd actually respect.

Keep getting after it.

Transcript

The Daily Choice Between Comfort

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you haven't listened to last week's episode, I would highly recommend listening to it. Because what we're talking about today plays upon that. This is almost an extra step in that process. Most people never make the choice. They call it being patient, they call it timing, they call it a strategy. And if you get honest with yourself, and I mean really honest with yourself, most of it is fear wearing a very fashionable disguise. They're saying, you know, you're being smart. And I want to start by asking you a question today. And I want you to sit with it before you jump to the answer. If you knew right now that you could have a long, quiet, comfortable life with no real legacy, no risk, nothing remarkable, or a short, intense life that costs you everything, but means something forever. Which one do you choose? That's not some hypoc hypothetical question. I want you to really answer this question. That's the choice that you're making every single day. Whether you know it or not. Welcome back to the beginning after a podcast, my friends. As always, happy to have you here. And as always, about to crack a little Diet Coke can, Diet Coke Tallboy. Cheers. Let's get this show on the road. And I'm Brett. I might have said that already, but this podcast has one goal. It's to push you out of your comfort zone, to get you to do hard things, to realize the potential that you have. And today, I thought it would be interesting and fun for us to talk about Achilles. Oh yeah. Not the Disney version of Achilles. Um, this is gonna be the darker, messier, and more honest than really any self-help framework that I've I've come across recently. When I actually sat down with this story, I realized that his life maps almost perfectly onto the internal war that most of us are fighting right now or can constantly fight. Today we're gonna walk through the myth. I'm gonna tell you where I see it in myself, and by the end, I'm gonna leave you with three questions to think about that I I genuinely think will shake something loose if if you let them. So, let's get into it. Who is Achilles? Well, I love Greek mythology. I think it's fascinating to study about all the different gods and warriors and and legends that that Greek mythology discusses. Like it's always so fun to me to learn about those things. And Achilles specifically was the greatest warrior in Greek mythology. He was born to a mortal father and to a sea goddess named uh Thetis, and the prophecy over his life is brutal and clear from the beginning. Like he will either live a long, forgettable life or a short and glorious one. There's no third option here. And from the two, you could probably choose which one I would you'd figure out which one I would choose. And I hope you can like think through this as we go on. But his mom tried to protect him. He she took her, took her child, held him up by the heel, and dunked him in the river sticks. And when she did that, basically made Achilles invulnerable. Like, couldn't die. Pretty legit, honestly. But she had to she had to hold him somewhere, so it's the heel. She hold on to the heel. And that spot never touches the water. That's the one place that he can be killed. And she knows it, and he eventually will know it too. Achilles, he chooses the short life. He chooses glory. He goes to Troy and he is everything the prophecy promised. He's unstoppable, he's feared, he's brilliant on the battlefield, the greatest fighter anyone has ever seen. And he stops fighting. Agamemnon, the Greek commander, disrespects him. So he's like, who the hell is this guy? He's literally Superman, and he decides that he's not gonna fight. Why? How come? And basically, he embarrasses Achilles in front of everybody. And so his ego gets bruised. It gets hurt at that time. And Achilles, the man who could end this war himself, he goes to his tent and he refuses to come out. He's not coming out for anything. Men die. Greeks lose battle after battle. And Achilles, he just sits there. He's hanging out in his tent. Who knows what he was doing? Maybe he's just like playing cards or counting, counting the ants that crawled into his tent. I don't know. Maybe he's just eating snacks like a good old fat Brett would. Sounds like something I would do back then. I don't know. If I was the greatest warrior in Greek mythology, I feel like I would be out on the battlefield, but who knows? His ego is bruised. His best friend, Petroclus, watches this go on long enough, and he's like, I can't stand idle while Achilles is just sitting there. And he can't take it anymore. So he goes in, he borrows Achilles' armor, and he leads the Greeks in battle, basically pretending to be Achilles, and he gets killed by Hector of all people. He's the greatest Trojan warrior. Achilles hears this news and something breaks inside of him. He is stricken with grief. He doesn't re-enter the battle for pride, he doesn't go back for glory. Achilles goes back because the person he loved most is dead. His best friend is gone. And grief moves him in a way that honor really never could. He kills Hector, the guy that killed his best friend. Goes up to Hector, they duel, boom, he's gone. And he wins the war for the Greeks. And then exactly as the prophecy said, he dies. An arrow to the heel. Which, by the way, if there's any medical students out there, I would love to know if you can die from an arrow to the heel. That is maybe infection, but other than that, I can't imagine you would die from it. But that's the one spot his mother could not protect. And that wound was always there. He knew that he that was his vulnerable spot. He never dealt with it. I don't know if he didn't take measures to protect it, but maybe he would just wore sandals onto the battlefield. Now I am no Greek warrior. I don't have a divine prophecy over my life. People didn't come up with that. But I do believe I've stood at every single one of those crossroads. And most likely you have too. Let's jump into a time in my life where I chose to play it safe because most of my life I unfortunately have played it safe. I didn't always call it that, mainly because I didn't understand what it was. I thought I was being smart. I thought I was being realistic. I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew. But there's this story where I was sitting at my desk the last year of college and I was registering for classes, and I remember distinctly that there were some classes that really piqued my interest. Things like abnormal biology or American Heritage 400, programming, things like that that I had interests in, but I chose not to not to pursue those courses for one simple reason. I guess two simple reasons. One, I wanted to protect my GPA. And two, I wanted it to be easy. I didn't care enough to do the work, which is unfortunate to say. I feel like college is uh it's a great time to learn and to discover what your interests are. And who knows? If I took one of those classes, maybe my life would be very different now. Maybe I would realize that I wanted to study psychology rather than go into business. And who knows? But it's not good to just think about the past and and talk about all the what ifs. You know, that time is gone, it's past, and so we move on. But I I honestly think it was fear, and it was dressed up well enough that I didn't I didn't have to think that it was fear. I thought, again, I was being realistic and rational. And once I graduated, that regret hit so fast. It was sitting there, and I I just I thought that I spent four years optimizing for comfort instead of growth. And that hurt. It was kind of like Achilles, like you know, his ego was bruised, but really I was more bruised with the regret that I felt from not pursuing things that I was interested in. And from that day, I remember making the decision that I was not going to do that again. My brothers and I, around this same time, we started a digital marketing agency. And there was no safety net there. That was a very risky thing. We bootstrapped the whole business, and every risk that comes with building something from nothing landed directly onto us. People probably thought we were crazy, and maybe we were. You know, three kids starting a digital marketing agency. I had no experience in marketing, but I was determined to learn it. I was determined to figure out how to run Facebook ads and do these kinds of things. But I truly learned more my first year of being part of that business than I did the entire four years of college. And I call it my MBA because to me, that's exactly what it was. It was me jumping into business and trying to build something. And if you want an education, my advice to you would be to go start something where failure is real and the stakes are yours. Here's what I've learned from living that way, though, from chasing the harder path when I'm I'm given a choice. The fear doesn't go away. The fear will not go away. But what changed for me is I stopped negotiating with it. I stopped treating it like some reason to not do the things that I was interested in. And instead look at it as a signal. Because when something scares you into stillness, that's the thing you have to move towards. Because the version of you that stays still, that takes the safe courses, that stays in the tent, that version will haunt you longer than any failure ever could. Achilles, he knew what he was choosing. He walked into it with his eyes open, he sat in that tent. And that's typically when we talk about this story, at least when I've heard people talk about this story, like they kind of skip over that part. He wasn't naive. He literally made the decision to go into his tent. There's a difference, and that difference matters. Now I want to tell you something that's pretty embarrassing for me. I hate to tell this story, but it's the truth, and I want to be honest. When I first got into running, I became one of the most insufferable people you could ever meet about running. And it wasn't anything I was saying out loud, like I wasn't posting my runs and talking about all the benefits from it, or lecturing people at parties, telling you, oh, let me tell you about zone two training or a fart lick. I'm gonna tell you all about that. It was quieter than that, and in some ways, I think it was honestly worse. Man, I hate telling this story. But at the time, running really started to do something real for me. It helped me mentally, physically, and spiritually. Like I've talked so much on this podcast about the benefits that I've received from running and how it's changed my life. And it was becoming a tool that I used to process hard things, to push myself and to find out what I was actually made of when things started to get comfortable. We've talked about that lesson before. Instead of sharing that with other people, I gatekept it. I didn't want them to know about running. I wanted it to be my own thing. And I thought if more people would get into running, they would be better than me, and my ego would be hurt. And you know, I progressed at a certain rate, and I feared that, you know, if someone wanted to get into running, they'd be able to beat me. That's really it. It's it's this it's a silly little thing, and it's dumb as hell. It's only way I can say it. It is just stupid. Stupid to think that way. To think that you're the only person that should be running, and that, you know, because you see real benefits in your life, you don't want other people to to crash your parade. I think that's the term. Crash your parade. You know what I mean. Like, you want it for yourself. And I held it close like it was some competitive advantage. Like if other people figured out what running could do for them, it would somehow take something away from me. That right there, that's Achilles in his tent. He had something the Greeks needed desperately. He had the ability to change the outcome of the entire war. And he sat on it because his ego was bruised. And men died while he sat there. And he told himself he had good reasons. I mean, I wasn't letting anybody die, so not as drastic as that. But I was withholding something I genuinely believed could change people's lives because I needed to feel like I had something that they didn't. That's pride, that's ego, that's disgusting. The flip happened slowly. I started to notice what actually started fulfilling me, and it wasn't my own performance, it was watching someone else finish their race. Gotta shout out Team Tim again because this is where I saw it full force. You know, people who didn't identify as runners, they were out here running this race. And some of them weren't the best, but they tried. And the confidence they received from finishing that race was so fun to watch. Tim Murphy's whole life, he seemed to tell Allie and and show through example that confidence comes through hard things. And I I love that because that race right there, it's such an honor to him. Because he he really did embody that that idea and recognize how how doing hard things can help you in life. Hearing from a guy who told me something I said on this podcast helped him get off the couch means so much. Or seeing a friend hit a distance that they didn't think was physically possible, that they couldn't touch, that's awesome. That's one of my favorite things to see. And pride, I believe, is it's very insidious because it never announces itself as pride. Take a swig from that. Delicious nectar. It shows up as like protection and as discernment. But if you dig underneath it, what you actually find is ego trying to stay comfortable. And ask yourself right now, where are you sitting in the tent? Where are you? What part of your life are you sitting in the tent? Who needs something that you have? And you're withholding because some part of you needs to stay special. That's your rage. That's your Achilles moment. And the people around you are paying the price for it. And so are you. Without you knowing. Let's talk about Petroclus. Uh, Achilles, like I said, he didn't move for glory in that last battle. He moved for grief. That's what brought him in. The details always get glossed over when people tell this story, and I think it's probably the most important part. All the honor, all the prophecy, all the destiny, none of it gets him off the ground. It's love that does. And the the loss of it, he lost his best friend. He was he was depressed, he was sad, and he was gonna go get his revenge on on the Trojans. He wanted to make something change. When I ran my first ultramarathon in uh Arizona in July, rough, but if you know anything about Arizona in July, it is a oven, and it's a very questionable place to decide to run uh your first ultra marathon. Um the heat is I would say a participant in every race. And this specific 50k, it was seven or well, four laps of a seven-mile loop, and you just have to do it four times, and then you were done. I finished the first lap pretty good. I was feeling good. I was I was I was keeping a really high pace. And once I crossed the finish line, I saw my family, and and I was excited to see them. I crossed the first lap and I got probably a quarter mile in, and then I lost it all. I was vomiting uncontrollably at that point. And before I even got halfway through lap two, it was like literally probably a quarter mile in to the first lap or the second lap. Didn't stop because every quarter mile I would continue throwing up and I would lose whatever was left inside me. And I I genuinely thought that I was not going to be able to finish that race. I remember standing there thinking, okay, this is where it ends. I realized it might be done. So I did what any person in distress would do and called their wife. I called Allie. She didn't hesitate, she literally came ran running up to uh up to where I was, and I want to be very clear about what that looked like. She watched me vomit into bushes every quarter mile for an entire lap, and she just kept saying, You can do this. You got this, you know who you're running for, keep going. That race specifically was special. I ran for my friend Jordan, who he passed away from stage four colon cancer, but at the time I was just trying to just trying to show him that I loved him and that I was running a race for him. And somehow, Allie was holding that in front of me, reminding me of why I was there, and it made the vomit vomiting irrelevant. Not easier. Didn't make it any easier, but it made that thought of quitting irrelevant. And there's a difference there. I finished that race, and I do not think that I could have done it without Allie by my side a lot of the time. She ran, I think, 14 miles that night with me. Insane. There's a philosopher named Seneca. I've talked about him on this podcast before, but there's a reason for it. I love what he says. And he says this he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. I think about that a lot, especially on hard days. When the performance isn't there, when the body is rejecting the effort, when every reasonable voice in your head is saying, hey, let's stop. The why has to be bigger than the how. It has to be. And sometimes the why isn't even yours. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's Allie for me. And sometimes it's the people who believe in you. And especially when you've stopped believing in yourself. Know who your petroclys is. Know who moves you before you need to be moved. Because in the moment, you won't have time to figure it out. So find that person and stay close with them. Now, here's the thing about Achilles' heel that I seem to have missed when I first read this myth. He knew about it. He knew about it. His mother knew about it. Everyone close to him knew about his heel. This weakness, it wasn't a secret. You know, it was pretty clear it was out there. It was the one vulnerability in the in the otherwise invulnerable man. And no one ever dealt with it. They just hoped it wouldn't become a problem. Well, it it became a problem, guys. He's died from it. Um and my heel, honestly, is performance. I've built a significant part of my identity on what I can do, on the results I produce, and on the progress that I make. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing. It's driven a lot of growth within me that I'm I'm proud of. It's helped me reach certain goals. But when that performance dips, something dark comes up. This is another thing I don't like about myself. I stop showing up for other people. I turn inward and in the worst kind of way. I start talking to myself in a voice that I I wouldn't use against my worst enemy. That internal monologue becomes brutal. It's it's pretty rough. I've gotten much better over the over the years, and again, a lot of it's because of Ali and other people in my life who care about me. And I have to believe that the things that they say are real. Um and underneath all of it, it's the one question that I haven't fully answered. If I don't have performance, what do I have? That question is my heel. And I know it's there. I've known it's there, and I haven't fully protected it. I'm telling you all this right now because I think a lot of you have uh the same wound or a similar wound. You've tied what you produce to who you are. And if you're a high achiever, I'm sure that's something you've gone through. Like it it's it's real. That's a real feeling. Like, as long as things are going well, you can ignore the gap between those two things. But the moment the results dip, the moment the streak ends, or the moment you fail publicly, or that gap opens up and it's it's deeper than you expected. Victor Frankel, he survived the Nazi concentration camps and wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. It's a great book, a great philosophical book, and just a great message, and such a powerful mindset to have when you're going through literal hell, watching your loved ones around you die, starving, working, seeing travesties all around you. He watched people lose everything over and over again. And what he observed was that the people who survived had a sense of identity that existed independently of their circumstances. They knew who they were when everything was taken from them. That's how a lot of them protected their heel. Knowing your worth doesn't live in your output is important. And I'm working on that. I'm being honest with you. I'm not all the way there. I wish I was. But all things take time to build, and we're making progress. Somehow, for me, naming it is how I start protecting it. Because the arrow is coming at some point in my life. That arrow could look like an injury, a sickness. Maybe my schedule doesn't allow me to do the things that I want to do. That's just life. It's inevitable. And I have to prepare somehow. You just want to know where you're exposed before it arrives. That's important for you. I promised you three questions to think about. And I want you to sit with them. Do not answer them very fast. Take time thinking about these. And I'll also put these questions in the show notes just so you have them, so you can look at them. If you want to do a journaling exercise where you write them down and then write your answers below, I think it would be helpful. But number one, where are you choosing the long, quiet life without ever actually choosing it? What are the courses you're not signing up for? What's the war you're not showing up to? And is that actually strategy or is it fear with a better story, with a better outfit? You know, you never know. Maybe fear is looking pretty good these days. But sit with that. Number two, who are you sitting out on right now because your ego's wounded? Who needs what you have and you're holding it back because some part of you needs to stay special? That person is paying a price, but so are you. Number three, what is your heel? And I mean specifically. Not, hey, I struggle with confidence or I put too much pressure on myself. What is the exact behavior that comes that comes when you take a hit? Do you withdraw? Do you destroy yourself internally? Do you stop showing up for other people who need you? You have to name it because the wound you refuse to name is the one that will take you down. Guys, Achilles, he was given two paths, and he chose the harder one. He chose, he chose to matter. He chose to be remembered and to leave a legacy. And he paid for it with everything that he had. But I am asking you to be honest about whether you're actually choosing or whether fear is choosing for you, and you're calling it wisdom. The choice is there every single morning. Not once. It is there every single morning. You get to decide who you're going to be. You get to decide whether your story is gonna be in a tent or back in the fight. Allie didn't run that lap with me because I was performing great. She ran it because she knows who I am when I'm not. And that's a real that's a real person in my corner. And that's what you can be for the people in your life. Once you stop gatekeeping and start showing up. Know your heel. Protect it by naming it, working on it, and refusing it let to l to be the thing you let and do. It's important. We all have to do internal work. That's what I never really understood that until I started growing up, but everyone has to do internal work. Everyone has weaknesses, everyone has great strengths. But it's if you let your weakness control you, then I think you have some things that you need to think about and readjust. I would say be like Achilles. Choose the harder path, even when fear's there, because you will be a better person for it. I really appreciate you guys for listening to this episode. Um, it's kind of fun doing things like this. So if if you guys liked it, please leave a comment and maybe I'll do some more uh episodes where I talk about Greek mythology or war heroes. Uh I love World War II, so I can tell you all about that. But would love to get some feedback on that. And if this show helped you at all, you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, it helps a ton. Takes 30 seconds to leave a nice little rating, uh, and your boy appreciates it. So thank you. Also, share with a friend. I don't know, maybe just put it out there, put it on social media, uh whatever. I'm asking too much of you now, but seriously appreciate your time today. I hope you learned something. And until next episode, everybody, find your heel, protect it, and keep getting after it.