Let Go of the ‘Right Way’ Trap
Stop chasing someone else’s path. Start building what actually works for you.
Back when I worked in game development, there was constant pressure to always get things right, often on the first try.
Tight deadlines. High expectations. Always behind schedule. Always putting out fires. If something wasn’t right—if the system didn’t hold, if the user experience broke, if the gameplay loop fell flat—it didn’t just slow things down. It came back to bite you. Hard.
That mindset bled into everything. You couldn’t afford to guess. You had to get it ‘right.’ And for years, I carried that same pressure into my training, my habits, and every part of my life. I kept trying to find the perfect formulas. The perfect plans. The ‘right way’ to do anything.
Because if I didn’t, I thought I’d fall behind. Waste time. Get it wrong and have to start over. And deep down, it felt like failure. Like I wasn’t who I said I was. I was supposed to be the systems guy—the one who figured things out. If I couldn’t get it right, what did that say about me?
It felt shameful. Embarrassing. Like I was faking competence and hoping nobody would notice.
Now, as a coach, I see just how slippery that idea is.
Because for most people, there is no single ‘right way.’ There’s your energy, your schedule, your stress, your priorities—and a dozen other variables that shift from season to season. Trying to fit into some perfect plan usually doesn’t make things better. It just makes you feel like you’re doing it wrong.
It’s not about doing less or lowering your standards. It’s about letting go of some perfect blueprint—and finally building a way of doing things that’s actually yours.
“If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.” — Lily Tomlin
The Illusion of the ‘Right Way’
There’s a trap a lot of people fall into when they’re trying to get serious about training or lifestyle change.
They don’t start with clarity. They start with advice.
The internet is full of plans, protocols, must-do habits, and ‘non-negotiables.’ Scroll long enough and you’ll find ten different experts telling you ten different things are the key to success. The right way to train. The right way to recover. The right way to live.
Even this article could be taken that way if you're not careful—just another voice saying, this is how it should be done.
But that’s not the point. The point is: you’ve probably already absorbed a dozen “shoulds” that don’t actually belong to you.
And even if no one says it directly, the message is clear: if you’re not doing it their way, you’re doing it wrong.
So you start collecting systems. You stack rules on top of routines. You mix and match plans, methods, and philosophies that are supposed to be ‘right’—without really understanding how to apply them, or whether they even belong together. You’re not evaluating or adapting. You’re just copying. And when it doesn’t work, you assume the problem is you.
But the more you chase someone else’s version of ‘right,’ the more disconnected you get from your own reality.
You lose sight of your preferences, your rhythm, your needs. You stop listening to your own feedback. You stop building something that actually fits—and start chasing a version of ‘right’ you’ve pieced together from everyone else.
A patchwork of rules that don’t reflect your life, but still hold all the pressure. And even when it’s clearly not working, you feel like you have to keep forcing it—because it’s the ‘right way’.
Why It Doesn’t Work
It seems obvious: what works for one person might not work for another. But in practice, most people still try to follow someone else’s plan exactly.
They train like their favorite pro. They try to mimic a friend’s routine. They copy the race plan, the nutrition strategy, the mindset tools—assuming if it worked for someone else, it’ll work for them too.
But what works for one body, schedule, or goal won’t automatically transfer to yours. Copy-paste plans rarely account for your current stress, energy levels, responsibilities, or life outside of training. They don’t factor in your background, your experience level, your injuries, your sleep, your job, or your priorities.
One of the best examples of this was the Andrew Huberman morning protocol craze.
Last year, it seemed like everyone online was trying to copy it. The cold exposure. The sunlight. The breathwork. The supplements. The non-negotiables.
But if you actually listened to a few of Huberman’s interviews, you’d notice something really quick: the protocol was different every time he explained it. Because it wasn’t a rigid checklist—he was just describing what he was personally doing at the time.
He wasn’t pushing it as a one-size-fits-all routine. He was sharing what worked for him—and evolving it as his life, research, and needs shifted. As it should.
But when people turned it into dogma, they missed the point completely. They weren’t adapting—they were imitating. And that’s where things start to break down.
Rigid systems—especially ones you didn’t create—almost always fail when life gets unpredictable.
Because they leave no room for variation, for energy dips, for the reality that your needs change. The more pressure you feel to follow the plan perfectly, the faster it falls apart when you can’t.
And instead of adjusting, you end up quitting—because you think the plan was right, and you were the problem.
Own Your Way of Doing Things
At some point, you have to stop asking, What should I be doing?
And start asking, What actually works for me?
That shift changes everything.
Because most people don’t fail from lack of effort—they fail from trying to follow a system that doesn’t actually fit their life. And when that system breaks down, they blame themselves instead of the mismatch.
Your goal isn’t to find the perfect routine. It’s to build something you can refine as you change and grow.
That means treating your routines, habits, and systems like experiments. Try new things. Stay curious. Don’t assume something will work just because it worked for someone else—or because it worked for past you.
Run the experiment. Every new habit, routine, or mindset shift is just a test—try it, observe it, and refine it.
Track what matters. Pay attention to what energizes you, not just what looks good on paper.
Adjust without guilt. Changing the plan doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’re paying attention.
Instead of blindly following advice, treat it like a hypothesis. Test it over a few weeks. Reflect on what stuck, what drained you, and what made your life feel more aligned.
You don’t need a plan that checks all the ‘right’ boxes. You need one that’s yours—because that’s the kind that lasts, works, and actually feels good to live inside.
Letting go of the ‘right way’ doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It means choosing them for yourself.
It’s not aimless—it’s intentional.
There’s power in owning your style, your rhythm, your reasons. Because the more honest your plan is, the more likely it is to last—and the more likely it is to be successful, enjoyable, and fulfilling along the way.
What would change if you stopped chasing the perfect plan—and started designing one that actually feels like yours?