The Tsunami – A Personal Reflection
I didn’t see it coming. Or maybe I did, but I was too busy moving, working, and pushing forward to pay attention to the warning signs. That’s the thing about a tsunami—it doesn’t announce itself with fanfare. The water pulls back, deceptively calm, and for a moment, you think you’re safe. And then it hits. Hard.
My tsunami didn’t arrive as one single event. It came in waves, each one dragging me deeper.
First, the breakup. It had technically happened earlier in the year, but we kept circling back, holding onto the idea that maybe we could work it out. Maybe love was enough. I ignored red flags—like the way she was uncomfortable with my relationship with my ex-wife, the way trust never quite settled between us. I told myself it would get better, that with time we’d figure it out. But deep down, I knew we were trying to force something that wasn’t working. And when it finally ended for good, it left a gap I wasn’t sure how to fill.
Then, the business. I had spent years building it, sacrificing time, sleep, relationships—convinced that hard work would eventually lead to something stable, something lasting. But as I stood at the crossroads, I knew what I had to do. I had to walk away. I had to choose my family over my business, my health over the constant grind. It wasn’t failure—it was a reckoning. And still, the loss stung.
And then, the final blow—cancer. The word landed heavy, like a weight pressing down on my chest. I wasn’t scared in the way I expected to be—no immediate panic, no tears. Just a cold, sinking feeling. A realisation that no matter how much control I thought I had over my life, my body had other plans.
For the first time in years, I was forced to stop. To sit with the weight of everything I had been running from. And let me tell you—stillness can be terrifying when you’ve spent your whole life moving.
Drowning Before You Learn to Swim
I didn’t grow up without. We had enough. But what we had was unstable. My father’s anger, his violence, made home a place of tension, not safety. It taught me early on that survival wasn’t just about having food on the table—it was about knowing how to navigate unpredictable moments, when silence could turn into shouting, when calm could become chaos in an instant.
That does something to you. It wires you to always be on edge, to anticipate, to work hard to stay ahead of danger—real or imagined. So, I worked. Hard. I built businesses, took on more projects than I could handle, sacrificed sleep, relationships, and my own peace—all in the name of “getting ahead.” Because deep down, I was scared. Scared of slipping into struggle. Scared of failing the people who depended on me. Scared of being seen as anything less than capable.
But here’s the thing about fear—it doesn’t just push you forward, it also blinds you. It makes you ignore the signs that something is off. It makes you justify exhaustion, distance, and even your own unhappiness. And before you know it, you’re drowning in a life you built with your own hands.
I didn’t realise how much of myself I had lost until I was forced to face it. The breakup, the business, the diagnosis—it all stripped me down to nothing. And when you’re left with nothing, you finally see what was real and what was just noise.
The Moment I Knew I Had to Change
Three days after surgery, I sat alone in the quiet of my flat, unable to ignore the questions bubbling up inside me. Who am I? Why am I here? For the first time, I realised that I had built my life on habits that weren’t serving me. The long hours, the grind, the distractions—they had been my coping mechanisms, but they no longer felt like enough. They were part of the storm I had created around me.
In that stillness, I knew I couldn’t keep going the way I had. I had to break free from the habits that had kept me trapped, the ones that no longer made sense for the person I wanted to become. I needed to change.
And that’s why The Work exists.
Transformation isn’t about waiting for life to level you—it’s about recognising when the waves are coming and learning how to swim. It’s about showing up, rebuilding, and redefining what strength really means.
For me, The Work is about more than just physical resilience. It’s about mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. It’s about men coming together to challenge the old narratives we’ve been handed and step into something more powerful.
I didn’t want to just survive the tsunami—I wanted to learn how to swim.
And now, I want to help other men do the same.
