The Two Problems Blocking High Performers #679

Most men know they're capable of more. So why aren't they living it?

In this episode, Lachie Stuart — men's life coach and founder of the Man That Can Project, identifies the two distinct problems that keep high-performing men stuck: the Comparison Trap and the Floating Problem. They look similar from the outside, but they need completely different solutions.

Lachie shares:

• Why the standard gratitude advice backfires (backed by a University of Colorado study)

• The 3-step framework to dismantle the comparison trap — starting today

• The 3 questions that reveal whether you're floating

• How stacking small wins (from running 58 marathons injured) creates massive momentum

• Why a 90-day push is all it takes to close the gap between who you are and who you know you could be

This isn't motivational fluff. It's a practical framework you can act on before this episode ends.

Take the free Life Performance Scorecard: https://lifeperformance.scoreapp.com/

Apply to work with Lachie: https://www.lachlanstuart.com.au/coaching

If this episode lands, share it with one man in your life who needs to hear it.

Transcript

ife By Design Setup

Lachlan Stuart 0:00

You've probably heard the term life by design thrown around a lot. Everyone talks about building a better life, but here's the thing: most people are going about it completely wrong. They're chasing someone else's version of success while sitting on untapped potential they don't even recognize. In the next few minutes, I'm going to show you two real reasons why you're not living the life that you want. And more importantly, which one is actually holding you back? Let me be clear about something. High performing men don't struggle because they lack talent or intelligence. You're reading this because you know you have more to give. The problem isn't ability, it's one of two things, and they're completely different. Here's what's interesting that inadequacy comes from two distinct sources. Problem number one, the comparison trap. And I've written about this one before, but you spend so much time focused on other people's lives that you've convinced yourself that you just what you have isn't enough. You see someone else's highlight reel and think that's the whole story. Their wins feel like your losses. Now I knew a guy successful by all measures, running a seven-figure business, married with kids, house paid off, but every day he'd scroll through social media and see someone else's vacation or someone else's achievement or someone else's else's version of success. And suddenly his own life felt small. He wasn't grateful for what he'd built. He was resentful for what he didn't have. And that is the comparison trap. Problem number two is the floating problem. You're not pushing yourself. You know you're capable of more. You know you have that feeling inside where you're leaving potential on the table, and it is one of the worst feelings to experience. And that gap between who you are and who you know you could be eats away at you every single day. Then there's a guy who's comfortable, right? He's doing fine, his job is fine, his life is fine, but fine isn't the problem. The problem is he knows he's capable of extraordinary. He's not challenged, he's not growing, he's floating. And that kills him from the inside because he knows better. So, which one are you? Are you in the comparison trap or are you floating? And you can take my life performance scorecard now, which is going to help you see where you're drifting and where you're floating in life. I want to talk to you if you feel like you're in the comparison trap. You know, the standard advice is always the same: practice gratitude. Be thankful for what you have. But here's the reason why that doesn't work for most people. Gratitude alone doesn't fix comparison. Comparison isn't really about what you have, it's about what you believe you deserve. You can build, uh you can be grateful for your house and still feel like you should have a better one. Gratitude doesn't change your standard. Sometimes it can just make you feel guilty for not meeting them. What a shit feeling. There was a study from the University of Colorado that found people who practiced forced gratitude without addressing their comparison habits actually felt worse over time. They feel grateful and resentful at the same time, which creates this cognitive dissonance, right? It's just such a weird feeling. So here's what actually works: you need to curate your inputs. So stop comparing your life to someone else's edited version. First, a nice easy one is auditing your social media. So many of us spend so much time on our phones, scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through TikTok, watching things like this. And comparison can be used in one of two ways. One, it can empower you to find what you need to do to bridge the gap to get to where you want to get to. Or alternatively, it can make you feel inadequate, right? And I'm talking to you as if you do feel inadequate. And the key is this if you notice there's social media accounts that you follow that make you feel inadequate, unfollow them, right? It's that simple because you don't need permission, or if you feel like you do hear it is, you also do not need to feel bad about it. Just remove the source of the problem. Like it's that simple. We don't need to overcomplicate these things. And secondly, you need to create a win inventory, right? Stacking evidence. And this is different from gratitude, right? Write down three wins from your week or from the day, no matter how small it is. You close a deal, you had a good conversation with one of your kids, you hit a workout. But these are proof that you are building something. You're not floating, you're moving. It is the evidence that you need to prove to yourself. Because the real shift happens when you stop measuring yourself against others and start measuring yourself against who you were yesterday. That's the only comparison that matters. And I always say, do something today to be better for tomorrow. It's a shirt you may have seen me wearing a lot over time. Now, if you're floating, the problem is in gratitude, right? So there's two different approaches here. You don't need to appreciate your life more. You actually just need to challenge yourself more. You need to close the gap between who you are and who you know you could be. And there's a difference between contentment and complacency. Contentment is knowing that you're living well. Complacency is knowing that you could live better and you're choosing not to. So the floating problem is complacency wearing a contentment mask. So here's how to know if you were floating. Ask yourself these three questions. Question number one: if I had no fear of failure, what would I attempt now that I'm avoiding? Write it down. Don't overthink it. The answer that comes to mind first is probably the one that you're avoiding that you can start acting on. Question two, what skill could I develop in the next 12 months that would change my life? Not a hobby, not something fun, something that actually moves the needle. What are you not investing in? And question three, who am I becoming by staying where I am? Because that's the real cost of floating. It's not about, you know, what you're missing out on, it's about the person you're not becoming. Like that is so freaking scary. So make sure you get very clear on what that gap is. It's something that I do with all of my clients, right? It's very easy to go, hey, this is where you feel you should be. This is where you are. What are we going to do to bridge that? Now, if you've identified yourself in the comparison trap, here's the framework to get out. And you can write this down. It has three steps and you need to do them in order. Now, step one, audit and cut. So if we're using the social media, go through your phone right now, delete the apps that make you feel inadequate, unfollow the accounts that trigger comparison. And this isn't about being weak, it's about being smart. You don't let poison sit on your kitchen counter. Why would you let it sit in your feed? And I think this is a really important one to talk about. I often say it to mates and to clients, I treat myself like an idiot. I set reminders to do things for my wife, like write her a note every month and various other things that I know that I want to do, but I also am very aware that I'm probably going to get distracted and forget about. But because it's important to me, I make sure I set a reminder. And there's no difference here. Like if you know that social media is impacting you, do something about it. It doesn't matter whether it seems weak or you're feeling like you're babying yourself. Just do it. I bought one of these things here. I don't know if you can see that, a brick, because I I was on social media all the time. And I could justify it to myself by saying, hey, it's part of my job. I generate leads and I put out content. So therefore I'm allowed to be on social media bloody 10 hours a day. Like 10 hours a day. I'm wasting my life by being on social media. So I saw an ad pop up for this, bought two, but one here and one over there, just so that I could now start tracking my use and blocking out time. So I've committed to every Sunday for the 2026 to brick my phone so that I can't use it. I also now, you know, the more I use it, the more I start to fall in love with it. But 5 a.m. till 9 a.m. every morning, and then midday till 4 p.m., my phone is bricked, so I don't have access to social media. So I'm getting eight hours back. I notice I'm not reaching for my phone. I'm not scrolling, I'm not feeling like I'm not doing enough. I'm not having that anxiety, anxious feeling because of going on social media. So it's a really cool thing that you can do and just acknowledge those things and implement on it. The second step is replace with evidence. So for every account you remove, add one that shows real people doing work, not the highlight reels. Find people who share their failures, trust their process, their actual journey, right? So follow people who are one step ahead of you, not necessarily 10. I want to quickly elaborate on that a bit more as well. Now, whether you're using the social media example that we're talking about or anywhere else in your life, you need to stack evidence that you are who you say you are. Now, initially, when you're looking to build momentum, the wins, you've got to stack the smaller wins. So for me, an example, when I was running the 58 marathons, I was injured on day or day one, but day five, it really blew up. And I remember I was out there, it was minus 12 degrees, but my ankles were the size of baseballs, and the pain was shooting up my legs. It was a horrible feeling. And I'm just in my head, you know, who are you to think you're capable of doing this? You know, you've let yourself down, you've injured yourself. All of those negative thoughts went through my mind. And I remembered in that moment that I had a choice, right? And the cool thing about that was I had a choice, and all choices have consequences. And I'm not going to dive into that now. That's a different episode in and of itself. But I then went, I got through that marathon, and the next day my mate rocked up Etienne, and Etienne introduced me or reminded me of the stacking small winds. He said, Lockie, how far do you think you can run today? And I looked at him and I said, maybe a kilometer. And he turned back to me and said, Brilliant. And I thought to myself, brilliant. What do you mean, brilliant? I still have 41 kilometers to run after that. How is running a kilometer brilliant? And he then followed up by saying, We're going to run one kilometer and we're going to walk for five minutes and we're going to continue doing that until we complete the marathon. And that reminded me the power of stacking small wins, which is what I want you to do here in step two is start stacking those small wins. So what are the small things that you can do to help get yourself back, whether it's unfollowing accounts or replacing them, it doesn't matter. But the key there as well is don't just leave gaps. Because if you leave a gap, eventually your old habits are going to fall back in. So you'll replace it with an account that maybe still makes you feel inadequate. Whereas if you look at it and you address it and then you replace it with something that's empowering and something that makes you feel better, then that time is now benefiting you. So for example, rather than scrolling on social media, you might say, Hey, I'm going to start doing audio books or I'm going to carry my Kindle with me. I've got my Kindle everywhere. So when I'm my phone's bricked, I can then continue reading a book and it's much more beneficial. But enough. We come back. Step three, we want a weekly wins review. So every Sunday or Friday, you choose a day. Spend five to ten minutes just writing down your wins and actually thinking about it. So what did you accomplish? What did you improve? What did you learn? Right? This trains your brain to see your own progress instead of everyone else's. And it's so important to track this because life goes so quickly. Now, the comparison trap doesn't end because you became perfect or you become perfect. It ends because you stop measuring yourself against others. And that's the shift. And another thing to just quickly remind you of all of these things we talk about in life, whether you're looking to build happiness, set boundaries, standards, become a better man, build a better life, are things that you need to continually work at. You can see progress, right? Even following this framework, you'll see progress. But if you stop doing those things, if you don't make them a new habit, you'll start regressing because you'll start going back to what the new default is, or you'll replace the habit of reviewing weekly wins with watching TV or watching social media, and then you'll start noticing yourself regressing. So I want to share that because I personally am not perfect at any of this. I am trying to be better at all of them, but I will still find moments where I'm sliding back down. And the best thing is you can identify, hey, what has slipped? What habit that I know is beneficial in helping me become the man that I want or designing the life that I want to design is slipping. And then we just go back to uh, these are the things that I said I would do. This is the one that I'm cruising a little bit on. Let's dial that down, let's double back in, sorry, double back on that and be a bit more intentional. So if you've identified with floating or the floating problem, the framework is different and it is more demanding. But I love this one. So if you're floating, you need a framework that builds challenge into your life systematically. This is about creating friction in the right places. And some of you, it may be physical, mental, emotional, it doesn't matter. But step one is identify that gap we spoke about and take those three questions from earlier and write them down and put your answers in there. You know, what would you attempt with no fear? What skill would change your life? Who are you becoming by staying still? These answers are leading to a map. Step two, we want to create a 90-day push. Pick one area where you're floating, one skill, one challenge, one thing you know you're capable of, but aren't doing. Commit to 90 days of focus work, not forever, but just 90 days, right? It's long enough to feel real progress. With all my clients, we work on 90-day blocks, and I've actually just developed this thing called the Experience Bank, and I'll do another episode on this. But ultimately, what I'm trying to do is something that I've done every year is a challenge. I've done the 58 marathons, road 30 marathons, 12-hour challenges, overnight walks, all of these things because they're challenges that teach me very important lessons on how to build a better life. But I have also set out to do things in different domains because life isn't just about belting myself physically. It's about improving my marriage, getting to know myself on a deep level, spending time with my mates. And so the experience bank is going to help you design some stuff there, which we'll tie back into here on how do we build a better life. Now, the University of Pennsylvania found that most people underestimate what they can accomplish in 90 days by 40%. And I see this time and time again when I suggest to my clients, hey, what is one experience or one goal we're going to set for this quarter that you feel, should you achieve it, is going to have a significant improvement in your quality of life, whether it's changing your circumstance or improving how you see yourself. And when you actually set it out, set the goal, and you map back the things that you need to do, you then go, I believe I can achieve that or I don't. And the beautiful thing about that is we look at the overall context of your life, all of the things that we have happen. So we might do a time audit or an energy audit and go, okay, well, if we could remove this or double down on this because it gives you more energy, do you then think it would be possible? Because all we are looking for is priorities, and you're either feeling overwhelmed or anxious because you don't know the path forward, or you have overcommitted to things and you just know that there's not enough time in the day. So if we can audit it to a point where we can strip it all back, make time for the priorities and the goals and the objectives, then we can move through feeling calm because you know you haven't overcommitted, or you remove the anxiety because you know what the next step is moving forward. And I want you to know this and take this away from this, that I truly believe you that you're capable of so much more than you think and you even know. And I have moments of doubt myself, but I also every year I'm trying to prove to myself that I am capable of more, and I keep knocking it out of the park. And I don't mean to say that to big note myself, but I just keep being blown away by what the body and the mind is capable of and what we can actually achieve when we go all in on something. And those are the small milestones stacked. Now, if you do one thing every 90 days, that's four things a year. Imagine what your life would look like in 12 months if you had ticked off four things. It's what I help all my clients do one-on-one. And it's, you know, I'm building another group program to help more men get involved in stuff like that because you compound that over 10 years, that's 40 things. Can you imagine how you would view yourself if you achieve 40 things over the next decade from developing skills, new experiences, new networks, challenging yourself physically? Like you will not recognize yourself. And that is exciting. But let's get back to it. The final step here is build accountability. So tell someone are you social media, join a group, hire a coach, get someone else involved so that you can quietly quit when it gets hard because it's gonna get hard. And that's the point. The floating problem gets solved when you stop choosing comfort and start choosing growth. It's not about balance, it's about direction. And man, I hate when I used to be guilty of town work-life balance, but I really just don't believe in it. So I want to know which one of you, drop a comment and tell me if you're dealing with the comparison trap or if you're floating. And be honest with yourself. If you're in the comparison trap, start with step one of the framework today. Audit your phone, delete one app or unfollow some accounts to make that make you feel inadequate, and just do it now. If you're floating, answer those three questions and write down your answers. Don't skip this. Your answers are the foundation of everything that comes next. Life by design only works when you know what life you're actually designing. Stop copying someone else's blueprint and stop settling for comfort. Pick one, choose your framework and start moving. Subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss the next video where we go deeper into building systems that actually stick. And if you want the full frameworks in the workbook, you can reference, check out a link in the description.