Saw a post the other week where someone said exactly that, they were vegan but still ate bacon. The comments went mental. Fraud, fake, pick a lane. They're missing the point. Be a vegan that eats bacon. Ninety five percent vegan is infinitely better than zero percent vegan because you couldn't manage the full jump. The bacon isn't the failure. Waiting until you can do it perfectly before you start at all, that's the failure. This isn't really about vegans or bacon. Be a vegan that eats bacon in every part of your life. Every single thing you've talked yourself out of because you couldn't do the whole package, apply the same rule. Be a smoker who still goes to the gym. I've heard people say they can't start training because they still smoke. So they don't train. They keep smoking, and now they're also not moving. That's worse on every measure than a smoker who trains. Go to the gym. Smoke on the way home if you have to. Deal with the smoking on its own timeline, whenever that comes. Don't let one bad habit hold a good one hostage. Be someone who trains hungover if that's the only way you'll show up. Some people won't go the gym day after a session because they think they'll be useless , so they skip it, feel worse, then drink again that night because what's the point now. Turning up half fit beats not turning up. Be someone who eats a good meal after a bad one. People won't start eating better because they had a takeaway last night so today's ruined anyway, might as well have another one. No. Eat one good meal. Then another. The takeaway doesn't erase progress, it's just a thing that happened. We've built this idea that self improvement has to be all or nothing, clean start, fresh slate, perfect discipline from day one. It doesn't. Be a vegan that eats bacon instead. Most people who've actually changed something did it messy, backwards, inconsistently, with loads of bacon along the way. Success is on the other side of embarrassment. You have to be willing to look like you're doing it wrong, be seen as inconsistent, get judged by people who've never tried to change anything themselves, in order to actually get anywhere. The people who wait until they can do it flawlessly before they start never start.

Antidepressants get treated like a moral failing. Painkillers, inhalers, and insulin don't. This chapter is about why that double standard needs to die. I used to hate the meme for pill shaming where the picture is split in half the top is picture of a pile of pills with a cross through it and underneath is beautiful picture of a path going through a forest with messages akin to "The only anti-depressant you need" I remember commenting "Bullshit!" underneath and this guy started arguing with me online as if his kids had made the meme and then died. If going for a walk surrounded by trees stopped the unstoppable pain that gnaws you away to a small nub then that would be great and mental health wouldn't exist. If you developed asthma, no one would bat an eye at you carrying an inhaler. If you had diabetes, no one would shame you for using insulin. And if you had a headache, people wouldn't say, "Have you tried just going for a walk instead of taking paracetamol?" But say you take antidepressants, and suddenly the room gets quiet. Eyes roll. People shift uncomfortably. Someone suggests a smoothie or a yoga class instead. This reaction, subtle or loud, is what's known as pill shaming. And it needs to stop. Mental illness is illness. The brain is an organ. If your body is allowed support, why not your mind? The truth is no one chooses depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or OCD. You don't "fail" your way into them, and you don't "cheerful outlook" your way out. And yet, people who take medication to help manage these conditions are often made to feel weak, broken, or somehow morally inferior. Let's be clear: that's nonsense. The Facts, Not the Fear There's a myth floating around that antidepressants turn you into a zombie. That they numb all emotion or strip away your personality. But that's not what the science says. Before any psychiatric medication reaches your pharmacy shelf, it undergoes years of development, testing, and review. The average time it takes to bring a new drug to market is 10 to 15 years, at a cost of around $1 billion USD or more. It must pass multiple stages of clinical trials, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, and be approved by regulatory bodies like the MHRA (UK) or FDA (US). This isn't guesswork. It's rigorous, disciplined science. And no, antidepressants don't work for everyone. No medication does. But for many people, they're life-changing, even lifesaving. According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, about 50–65% of people with moderate to severe depression experience significant improvement when treated with antidepressants.¹ That's not a placebo. That's not a forest walk. That's medicine.

"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." — Jim Rohn (Jim Rohn was an American entrepreneur and author whose work on personal development influenced a generation of writers and coaches, including Tony Robbins. He died in 2009.) I've read two key books on nutrition: The Magic Pill by Johann Hari and Ultra-Processed People by Dr Chris van Tulleken. Both are must-reads, and both say a similar thing: the obesity epidemic we're experiencing in the west is due to processed food in our diets. There's significant scientific evidence that exercise does little compared to a healthy diet for losing weight. This hit home for me, so I decided to try it. For a month I ate only steak and eggs, and the weight flew off me. The more I investigated it, it wasn't due to the carnivore diet, it was due to the lack of processed food. I want to be clear: I don't recommend the carnivore diet. Carbohydrates are the body's primary fuel source and cutting them out entirely isn't sustainable or necessary. What made the difference was removing processed food, not removing carbs. This changed my outlook completely. Now I aim for 80% of my diet to be made up of one-ingredient foods. There are days when you must have that Indian takeaway, or the alluring smell of Gregg's steak bake draws you into a shop, but overall, aim for 80% single ingredients: meat, fish, butter, cream, cheese, eggs, vegetables, and fruit. Don't be drawn in by the myth that fats are unhealthy. The corporate demonisation of fat is one of the most successful marketing campaigns in modern history. When flawed research in the 1970s suggested saturated fat caused heart disease, the food industry didn't just capitalise on the fear, they amplified it. Cereal giants like Kellogg's led the charge to reframe breakfast from eggs and bacon to bowls of processed grains. They funded studies that conveniently favoured their high-carb products whilst positioning themselves as the healthy alternative. These companies poured millions into marketing campaigns that painted fat as the dietary villain, plastering "heart-healthy" and "low-fat" across packets of sugar-laden flakes and loops. The result? A multi-billion-pound industry built on convincing generations that processed corn with added vitamins was somehow healthier than the eggs humans had eaten for millennia.

There's an old Japanese practice called kintsugi, which means "golden joinery." When a piece of pottery breaks, instead of discarding it, artisans repair the cracks with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The philosophy behind it is profound: rather than hiding the damage, they highlight it, making the object more beautiful precisely because of its history. Now, imagine if we treated our own failures and struggles like that. Instead of seeing them as shameful scars, what if we viewed them as golden seams, proof that we've lived, struggled, and survived? There's a saying often attributed to Richard Nixon: "Defeat is a bruise, not a tattoo." It's a reminder that failure is not permanent. A bruise heals. It may hurt, it may linger, but it eventually fades. What makes depression so insidious is that it tries to convince you otherwise, it whispers that failure is permanent, that you are broken beyond repair. But this is a lie. The truth is failure is unavoidable. It's a natural part of life, and more importantly, it's necessary. Every failure is just a step on the path. Success isn't the absence of failure; it's moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. That's what Winston Churchill said, and it's one of the most liberating truths you can accept. Why We Fear Failure The reason failure stings so much is because we're taught to fear it. From childhood, we're conditioned to believe that mistakes are shameful. Get the wrong answer in class, and you're embarrassed. Fail a test, and you feel worthless. But the most successful people in history are the ones who failed more than everyone else. The difference? They didn't let failure define them, they let it refine them. - Thomas Edison famously failed over a thousand times before inventing the light bulb. - Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. None of these people were "naturally gifted" in a way that shielded them from failure. They simply kept going. Turning Your Cracks into Gold

Depression isn't loud. Not most of the time. It's a hum, low and persistent. A dull ache in the soul that makes everything feel heavier, slower, harder. Some days it's barely noticeable. Other days, it wraps around your chest and squeezes until even breathing feels like a chore. This chapter is about those days and what to do with them. There's a a strange little Canadian superhero called Puck. You don't know him unless you're into the deeper cuts of the Marvel Universe. He's not flashy. He's short, scrappy, scarred. Not the sort of character who usually gets the spotlight. But his story says something powerful about pain and about endurance. Puck, whose real name is Eugene Judd, lives in constant physical agony. Not metaphorically, literally. His body locked in a state of suffering after trapping a dark, magical entity inside himself to save others. Every day, he wakes up in pain. Every move, every breath, hurts. But he doesn't stop moving. What makes Puck remarkable isn't a shiny superpower. It's that he fights through pain, not by ignoring it, not by numbing it, but by focusing past it. It's a form of mental discipline that's deeply human. It says: Yes, this hurts. But it does not own me. Pain Doesn't Have to Be the Enemy Mental anguish isn't so different from chronic physical pain. It drains your energy, messes with your memory, robs you of joy. Depression lies. It tells you nothing will ever change. That your thoughts are truth. That the feeling you're in right now is permanent. Learning to focus past the pain means accepting its presence without letting it control you. You don't have to fight it directly. You don't have to pretend it's not there. But you can learn to move through it. This is not toxic positivity. This isn't "just think happy thoughts." This is about developing the mental muscle to stay standing even when you're carrying weight you didn't ask for. It's choosing to take the next breath. To stand up. To reply to that text. To take a shower. To show up for the things that matter. Not because you feel great. But because you're still here and that means there's still a choice.