The moment I realised I wasn’t actually free
The night I caught myself choosing strangers on the internet over the woman sitting right in front of me.
There’s a moment from Portugal I still think about more than I want to admit.
Dinner table. Candles. Mountains in the distance.
My wife talking softly across from me.
And me?
I couldn’t stop checking my damn phone.
Not because the messages mattered…
but because every buzz felt like the universe testing me:
“Are you failing yet?”
“Did you miss something?”
“Is today the day someone realizes you’re not who they think you are?”
It’s embarrassing to say this out loud, but that night I was more afraid of disappointing strangers on the internet than disappointing the person sitting
right in front of me.
That’s how survival wiring works.
It convinces you that your worth lives out there —
in responsiveness, productivity, usefulness,
anywhere except in your own body.
I wasn’t building a business that night.
I was trying to outrun the fear that if I stopped proving myself for even five minutes, everything would collapse.
And what makes me cringe now is this:
on the outside, life looked beautiful.
Inside, I was still bracing for impact.
The real shift didn’t come from a strategy.
It came from finally telling the truth:
I wasn’t overwhelmed because I was behind.
I was overwhelmed because a younger part of me still believed my safety depended on staying alert, staying available, staying “on.”
The moment I saw that — really saw it —
something in me softened.
My breath came back.
My body stopped treating every notification like a threat.
And I realized how many founders are living the same invisible battle:
Working like they’re being chased by something no one else can see.
If you read this and your body whispered,
“That’s me,”
then you don’t need more hustle.
You need a reset —
the kind that happens at the level underneath the overwhelm.
If this landed in your chest the way that night still lands in mine,
DM me RESET.
I’ll send you details for a small, intimate 1:1 deep dive I’m running for five founders in January —
for the ones who are done surviving the very thing they once built for freedom.