“I Know What To Do… So Why Haven’t You Changed?” l EP. 88 l

“I know what I need to do… I just need to do it.”

If you’ve said that before — but nothing has actually changed — this episode is going to hit.

Because the truth is…

You don’t actually know what to do.

Or at least — not all of it.

In this episode, I break down why high-performing men stay stuck in the same patterns in their marriage, their emotions, and their behaviour — even when they’ve read the books, done therapy, or worked with a coach.

We cover:

•  Why “I know what to do” is usually a lie 
•  The difference between short-term change vs real transformation 
•  Why discipline and awareness stop working over time 
•  The hidden reason you keep falling back into old patterns 
•  How “nice guy” behaviours are actually protective strategies 
•  Why surface-level fixes (confidence, communication, scripts) don’t last 
•  What’s actually blocking you from change 
•  How to address the root cause so change becomes natural 

Most men try to fix this by:

•  Trying harder 
•  Staying more disciplined 
•  Being more aware 
•  Forcing new behaviours 

But that just creates another mask.

Another performance.

And eventually… you burn out and go back to who you were.

Real change doesn’t come from doing more.

It comes from understanding why you can’t do what you already know.

Because until you address that…

You’ll keep repeating the same cycle.

If you’re tired of knowing what to do — but not becoming the man who actually does it…

This episode will show you what’s really going on.

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If you’re a business owner or high-performing man whose life is stable on paper — but your marriage feels flat, your presence at home feels off, or you’re tired of trying harder without real depth or connection click below to apply for coaching.

Apply HERE 

https://harrisonorr.com.au/husband-performance-quiz-574846 

Want to know exactly how you're showing up in the marriage, contributing to the state it's in and importantly what you can do about it? (without her having to even know)
Take the Husband Performance Score in less than 4 minutes, get your personal profile & roadmap to start changing tonight

https://harrisonorr.com.au/husband-performance-quiz-574846 

Want to know exactly how you're showing up in the marriage, contributing to the state it's in and importantly what you can do about it? (without her having to even know)
Take the Husband Performance Score in less than 4 minutes, get your personal profile & roadmap to start changing tonight

https://harrisonorr.com.au/husband-performance-quiz-574846 

Transcript

Harrison Orr (00:23.886)
If you've ever said, know what I need to do, I just need to do it, but still haven't done it, or you know what to do, but nothing has changed, this one's for you.

You're listening to the Be Better podcast. I'm Harris Noor and I help successful men stop losing their shit at home and step the fuck up so they can lead themselves and the people that they love. So let's rip in. Just about all of us at some stage in relation to something in our life have said, I know what I need to do. I just need to do it. Now there's a couple of layers to this and I'm gonna start at the top. That seems to make the most sense because

when we say something like this, I know what I need to do, I just need to do it, what does that actually imply?

It implies that it's not a priority. It's like, I've got the keys, but I just don't wanna go for a drive. I can't be bothered. It's not that urgent yet. It's not that much of a problem yet. Because if it was a problem, you would have done it by now. If it was urgent, you would have done it by now. So if you're saying that, and you genuinely know what to do, like because you've got proof, because you've done it before and you've got the result.

then it's just a matter of doing it. Amazing. But let's be more specific because we're not just here for just broad stuff. When we're talking about the way that we show up, we're talking about the nice guy traits, like the people pleasing and the withdrawing and the avoiding conflict and the not being honest and how we show up in our marriage because we get reactive, we take it personally, we defend.

Harrison Orr (02:05.418)
If you've been able to do those things, you say, I know what I need to do. I just need to do it because maybe you've, you've had a coach or some therapy or you read, read a book or listen to some podcasts online and you were hyper vigilant about what you needed to do. Right? Cool. Just if she's talking, shut the fuck up and listen. If you feel reactive, take a deep breath, go for a walk, whatever it is, whatever it was. And it worked for you. But

it didn't continue to work for you. It worked for a little bit of time, maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months if you were hyper vigilant about it, but eventually...

you found yourself getting complacent and back to right where you started. You were getting reactive over little things again. You were defending yourself, not really listening, not paying attention, not showing up and being present and you're back to where you started. So you then use the argument, know what I need to do, I just need to do it. As if there's, you're waiting for the level, the ultimatum or the threat from her for it to kind of reach critical mass and shit, now it's a problem. Now I'll hyper-focus and make that change.

Again, I have a differing viewpoint on that, but we'll get into that in a second. Below priorities, I would say you understand it conceptually. It's like, what do need to do to make a billion dollars? Just fly people to space. Just make the next Google, make the next Facebook. Sure, but how do you do that?

What are the steps involved in order to do that? It's one thing to know the overarching strategy of how to achieve something. Like how do you make more money? Or like how do you become rich? Make more than you spend. Easy. But how do you then implement that in your life? You wanna feel more connected in your marriage. You wanna feel more grounded and present with your kids. You want to be able to initiate and have it received.

Harrison Orr (04:09.698)
the way that you intended for your wife that results in the connection, the intimacy and the sex as opposed to being rejected or becoming an issue more than anything else. How do you actually get to that place? How do you need to show up in your energy? How in your nervous system? Like what are the steps involved? Like the fact that you're not able to do it naturally tells us there's some blockages in there. It's not as simple as like, say these things or do this thing. There's...

things in your way right now, which have stopped you from that being a natural thing to do. That's why I think people promoting, I guess, I don't like the word alpha masculinity, but that bravado of just be more confident, right? Just stand up tall, shoulders back, and then just project your voice and speak with certainty and provide direction or questions and like all this stuff.

I was actually listening to Chase Hughes talk about this. And if you don't know who Chase Hughes is, highly recommend you look him up. He's been on, you know, most of the big podcasts. He's a behavior profile list. And he was, he's one of the top behavior analysts for the CIA, I think it was. So incredibly smart human being when it comes to human behavior, human psychology, all these things. And he speaks on this a little bit. And where these...

people originally got these things about what it means to be confident, right? You know, you're sitting upright, shoulders back down, you know, and like when you're communicating with someone, you mirror them. So, you know, you do the same body language as them, you know, if they lean to the left, you lean to the left. If they take a sip of, you know, they drink, then you drink as well. What they were doing, they were studying.

these people that were naturally confident, that naturally had rapport and connection with these people. And what they took as what built that were merely symptoms. They were not what created the confidence or the connection. They were the byproduct. In the same way that if you measure a couple's quality and quantity of sex,

Harrison Orr (06:30.028)
you won't necessarily get a, you might get a read of their community, of their, quality of their relationship, but by addressing that specifically, you won't naturally then improve the rest of the relationship because sex is a byproduct of everything else. It's not the, it's not the root cause. It's not the main metric. Everything else is beyond that. And so when we come back to,

the things in our relationship where people say, you know, trying to, you need to lead, you need to make a decision, you need to just be grounded, just breathe, you need to be present, you need to be all these things. If all you focus on is being those things, it's adding more to your plate and it becomes a performance. It's...

you know, it's very common and I definitely did this when I read No More Mr. Nice Guy, I learned that, okay, so I need to... I'm a nice guy.

And the reason I'm a nice guy is because of all these things and that's having an impact on my relationship and how that's affecting my relationship or the way I'm showing up in my relationship is because I said yes to everything. So the opposite of that is I need to say no, I don't set boundaries. let people walk all over me. So, okay, I need to say, I need to set more boundaries. I set.

make covert contracts, which kind of ties into saying no more. So I need to say no more. And if I just do that, it'll fix everything, right? If I stop asking what she wants and just tell her, then that'll do everything. So I started just telling my partner what to do and what I wanted. And not so much what I wanted. was still shit scared of that. Just telling her what to do instead of asking, hey, what do you want? And tell me what to do. I started saying no to everything, but it wasn't a no, I'm good, thanks. It was a passive aggressive no.

Harrison Orr (08:18.378)
or a resentful note, like my dysregulated nervous system was brimming out of my throat as I was saying those things. And then when I set boundaries, they were almost threats, like not healthy at all. But I did what the problem was, right? It was this, so I did that and it should have fixed it. No, because those are all surface level things. They are symptoms.

of what the root cause is. And so the final layer, there may be more, but I haven't given this too much thought just yet, but the final layer to not under, know, knowing what to do, but not being able to maintain it is not knowing what the root cause is. Not getting to the root cause.

because if you've been able to do this for a little bit of time when you're aware of it, when you're very conscious, it's like you're just wearing a new mask. Like you know what to do when you're focused, when you're onto it, but as soon as...

Maybe you're stressed, maybe you had a poor night's sleep, maybe the kids have been on you about something or just really irritable and sick as well, or work's been busy and things like that. And then it's no longer at the front of your mind and you default back to the other patterns. I would say you haven't found the root cause because the root cause...

looks like this no longer needing to be at the forefront of your mind. The root cause when you address that means that you naturally get to be calm when shit hits the fan. You don't take things personally. You get to navigate things without so much as a second heartbeat, right? It's, that's not cool. And then you move on. Pivot, next direction.

Harrison Orr (10:16.32)
without having to go through, okay, I'm stressed, I need to breathe, just relax, or okay, she said this thing, what does she need from me? And you're trying to calculate the moves and run through the scripts and everything else, which becomes fucking exhausting. So if you found yourself doing that and maybe it got you the result short term, and you've fallen off that wagon, you're back in that cycle, so you're like, I know what I need to do, I just need to do it. I would say you know part of the journey.

but not the entire journey. It's like...

The example I used to use when I was doing more fitness, health-based coaching was the people that know how to lose the first five kilos. know, guys that want to lose 20 kilos all up and they know how to lose the first five. They start the program, they follow it for a few weeks, start doing their steps, they're stringent about their routine and everything. And then a birthday comes up. An event, they go out for the weekend, they get plastered, they feel sorry for themselves. So they eat kebabs and maccas the next morning and then there's no food prep for the week. So they're eating

take out and on the fly, don't have time for the gym because they're too tired, they're in recovery mode and they're like, yeah, I'll start next week. And then life gets busy or goes back to what it was beforehand. And then they put the weight back on over the next few weeks, few months. And I'm like, fuck, I gained it all. Time to start again.

and then the process repeats itself. They lose the next five, get complacent, and it's like, cool, you know the journey from A to B, but not from B to C or D to E or the rest of the journey. You know the first couple steps. And that's amazing, but telling yourself, I know what I need to do, I just need to do it, it's uncharted territory still. There's still uncertainty because you haven't done it yet.

Harrison Orr (12:04.908)
And so the fallacy of, know what I need to do, I just need to do it, is not really true. And I think the reason we say that is because as men, we hate having to admit, I don't know what to do. I've tried and I didn't succeed and I've been in this cycle for fucking years now and I try and it makes improvements, but then I'm back in the same circle and I've tried therapy, I've tried this and I don't know what to fucking do. I don't know what I'm doing.

Harrison Orr (12:36.322)
That's a hard admission. One that takes a level of separation from one's ego and a level of humility that most men don't have. Especially when it comes to things like marriage. Marriage and sex is a very personal point for all of us. And it's very hard to admit, I don't know what the fuck.

Like in business, things like in work, it's easy. There's numbers there, there's nowhere to hide. It's very performance-based. You do this, you get that out, like straightforward. But in our relationships, things that are supposedly meant to come naturally, like as men, we're supposed to be natural leaders, naturally good at sex, naturally like a woman loves us and respects us and does all these things. And to not have that feels like a new level of...

failure or weakness. And so it's hard for us to admit to ourselves first and foremost, let alone speak to somebody else about it.

But getting to that point where we can enables us to actually look at what am I not seeing here? Why do I keep repeating the same cycle? Because it also feeds into, well, I'll just do it myself. Like I know what I need to do, I just need to do it is like an extension of the, yeah, I'll just do it myself kind of model, which you most definitely can.

for a lot of things in life right now with how free and accessible information is. You can go into ChatGBT or any AI platform and it will spit out a program, a protocol, a guide, a blueprint, whatever you want to achieve things. How customized it is and how appropriate it is and how on point it is and how effective it is, very up to how well...

Harrison Orr (14:35.67)
you prompt it and the information that you give it. But there's also the element too of execution. Like I, along with most business owners have put in there so many different things about different plans on content scheduling, on business growth, like delivery, on improving all these things. And you've got the pretty plan. You get the nice dopamine spike, but does it get actioned? Not always.

So despite having a lot of that, I think there's still something to be said for having a human being holding you accountable. For a human being showing up, understanding your perspective and then navigating this with you. Because there's a difference between, yeah, this is going to happen. I felt this, this does not work and then do this. Though it's almost like paving the way with expectations versus a language model that'll just, it's.

essentially just tell you kind of what you want to hear. That's one of the dangerous parts about AI is like, it's just a fancy nice guy. It'll tell you what you want to hear unless you prompt it very harshly to not do that. It will just agree with your things and it just becomes a source of kind of validation and an ego boost. But is that what you want? Is that what's going to save your marriages? That's what's to help you become the man that you want to be? Maybe, maybe not.

And so as we can, like I said, you can do it yourself, but there's certain elements that become harder to do yourself, no matter how self-aware you are, how smart and intellectual you are. Because as they say, it's hard, you can't read the label from inside the bottle. Every single human being, I don't care if you're Tony Robbins, if you're Elon Musk, if you're Alex Hormozi, you have, we all have, emotional biases.

we have a lens in which we see the world, which has got us to this point in life. And it has served us in some capacity, right? Most business owners, most very successful business owners have a very, and athletes as well, have a quite a high degree of emotional suppression, also called discipline, right? To just focus on the numbers, to get shit done, doesn't matter how you feel, and just to do that. But what if I said,

Harrison Orr (16:58.976)
You need to be fully present and grounded for your wife and your kids tonight, no matter what emotion they bring to you and no matter how you feel. Could you do it?

Maybe, but it'd be hard. But you have to be present doing it. You can't just show up and be disassociated. You have to be present and engaged. It's different.

And so the lens of life that got you here has served you well. And so getting to the next point isn't about breaking this lens, it's about seeing where it served you and seeing where it's maybe not serving you in the areas that you like. So that emotional suppression and doing things regardless of how you feel and regardless of how other people feel.

may not be the best trait for connecting with your wife and understanding her, where the currency at home is emotional presence and regulation, not logistics and data driven.

growth that really comes from this, the complete, the whole man is the one that can be driven and logical and powerful, but can also be emotionally attuned to himself and to those around him. The man who regulates and co-regulates the nervous systems and the other people in the room because of his stability and groundedness, not the man that just bulldozes through and acts fast without taking into anything else into consideration.

Harrison Orr (18:28.982)
So we get to be the full spectrum man. With all this.

And so this leads us to the final point of understanding why, if you've said you know what you need to do, you just need to do it, or you've made some changes, but you haven't been able to make them stick, is because we haven't found the root cause. So like I briefly said before, the root cause is when it no longer becomes a problem for you. Like in business, for example, say you have a problem with client acquisition.

and then you go and fix that. But you temporarily fix it and then the next bottle is booked calls. But you don't really fix it. You temporarily fix it. Fix the lead flow. Unless you fully fix it, it's gonna come back to bite you in the ass because it's gonna be a problem later on.

And now you could ask, you know, this will change through levels of growth in the business for sure. But in at home, if you don't actually change the root cause, it's just going to show up later on. And so it's going to continue to feel exhausting and like more work, like you have to be hyper-focused on this thing instead of just being present. Just being, just not reacting. Because think about the things that you react to, the way that you act.

there are people in this world that don't get fazed by that. Hell, you probably don't get fazed by some of the stuff that you do at home compared to at work. At work, the level of pressure that you can face, the level of stakes in decisions that you can make, the level of emotions in a room that you can probably navigate is significantly higher than probably what you can handle at home.

Harrison Orr (20:20.376)
So you've got the capacity. It's just a different skill or a different trait. So for most people, again, it's not necessarily about what you do, but it's about understanding why you have this pattern in the first place. Why at home you withdraw, you defend, you get reactive, you people please.

So it's not about doing the actions to reverse that, it's understanding why you do those things in the first place. And each of those is a part of you that created a strategy many, many years ago in order to protect you. Because at some point in your life, quite often when you're a child, there was a moment where you felt some extreme emotion.

like you didn't feel loved, you feel like you weren't good enough, you felt rejected, you felt abandoned, you felt whatever. And because in that moment, you didn't have the capacity to decipher between what was reality and what you just kind of made up. You didn't have the resources to go and navigate this on your own. You had to make sure that mom and dad loved you. So.

in order to maintain that love, that approval, that house and being looked after and everything, you created this strategy to avoid that emotion. Because maybe you spoke up and you were seen as wrong and then you got disapproved of. You got punished, you got laughed at, and mom and dad didn't like you so much anymore in that moment. Well, that's how you perceived it. And so a part of you learn, if I'm not wrong, then they'll still love me.

If I'm not wrong, if I'm right, then I'm still good enough. So I need to always be right. So as soon as someone says something that shows that I am wrong, that I made a mistake, that I'm not good enough, you learn to defend, to prove them right, to share your side of the story, to clear up the misunderstanding. Maybe when you're a child, you spoke up, maybe it was in the classroom, maybe it was at home, and similar kind of emotions happened.

Harrison Orr (22:33.632)
And so again, that part of you learned, don't speak up, avoid the conflict, avoid the fight, and that will make everything go away. You'll still be loved, you'll still be approved of, and nothing bad will happen. So anytime your wife gives you feedback or brings something up, that part jumps in and goes into protection mode. Withdraw, because if I don't say anything, we can't fight. And if we don't fight, we can't break up, and we're all good.

That's the thinking, the logic behind this. And the other one, the other common one is the people pleaser. If I say yes and give them everything that they want, then they will be happy, then they'll like me, they'll approve of me, and they'll love me. And so you over-apologize, you say yes when you wanna say no, you put everybody else first, and you say things like, whatever you want, I don't mind, up to you, I'm easy, and allow everybody else to choose because as long as they have their way, then everything's good, and you are good.

but that doesn't work as well as intended once we become adults.

Because when we become adults, it actually starts to do the opposite, which is confusing and frustrating. The people-pleasing actually starts to push people away because they can't feel us anymore. Or the people that we do have in our life are users because they know we're a pushover or do anything for them. If we withdraw, we do it because we're trying to save the marriage, because we're trying to keep the peace. But it might stop a temporary fight, but it creates more distance.

because as soon as there's something real to talk about, as soon as there's emotion involved, then we check out. So a partner, it creates more distance, but silent distance, which that part of you might perceive as peace, as safety, but it's the opposite. And the defender, while it's trying to prove that you are right, you're prioritizing yourself over the marriage, over the connection. And so instead of,

Harrison Orr (24:37.346)
keeping that worth, keeping that approval and that love, it's actually pushing it further away.

And now it's all very frustrating. But here's the thing. These are not all identities. These are parts of you that you can change, that you can update. Like I use the word protection strategy, protective system for reason. It is a system, a protective system that each of these parts learned when you were younger.

Everybody has them in some way or another. But they're still running as an adult. It's like if you're the latest iPhone, but you're still running off iOS 2. Nothing wrong with the iPhone, it's just that software needs updating. And so when you update these parts, this system, then you get to lead from the adult version of you who has the resources of, can feel, worst case scenario, I can feel rejected. I can feel abandoned, I can feel embarrassed, I can feel...

this loss of love, but I'm gonna be okay. I can navigate it. I can discern between is that actually what's happening or is that just the way I'm perceiving it? And if it does, if it is really what's happening, I'm gonna be okay. I'm a grown adult. I've got my own job, my own money. My oxygen supply and food is not determined, not reliant on anybody else. It's gonna hurt. It might suck, but I can figure it out. And that's the place we get to.

And when we start to work with those, like understand those parts and update that system, we get, we finally get to what I think people try to term as authenticity. When you know who you really fucking are, when you can just be you, when there's no performance mask.

Harrison Orr (26:33.474)
You're not scanning the room and the other people's faces and their body language for, you know, are they okay? What do they need from me? What do I need to say to make it right? How do I keep the peace? What do I need to do to make them love me? What do I need to do to make her want to have sex with me tonight? Like not running all these scripts, which like we said are exhausting, but they're all just masks. You get to be present, compassionate, curious, creative, like all these wonderful traits that are just you.

and they're already there. So I think it's funny we say, want to become this person or we need to reach our highest potential. But I genuinely think our highest potential and those traits actually come from us spending more time as that version of ourself. Because we get to do what's in alignment with us and we get to learn things as the man that we are, as that adult self, instead of running these protective strategies which might keep us safe from those things temporarily. But...

aren't conducive to the man, the marriage, the life that we want to have.

So that's my two cents.

If you want to go deeper into this, if you want to understand more of this, I'm sure I've done a podcast a while ago on explaining these parts, if this is relatively new to you, but next week I'm running a workshop, the married man update. And this system update is exactly what we're to run you through. It's a free workshop, 90 minutes on Google meet, and you can register in the show notes. There's a link there. You can jump on that. Like I said, it's absolutely free. I'll walk you through all of this and

Harrison Orr (28:14.978)
show you and give you a felt experience of what this is like and how this can absolutely change, not just your marriage, even though that's what we're focused on, but your life, how you show up across the board. And then if you're a parent, how you can then navigate this and then not pass on these traits or not have your kids create these parts based on the way that you treat them. You get to do things differently.

because you lead by example. So if you wanna check that out, if you wanna come along, the link is in the show notes. I'll see you guys there. With that, don't be sorry, be better, bye.