The AI Prompt That Saw Right Through Me

Have you ever felt that someone—or something—can see right through you?

ChatGPT just did, and it was almost scary how accurate it was.

Well, that’s not entirely true, because deep down, I always knew this about myself, but wasn’t quite ready to face it.

Here’s the prompt I used, if you want to try it out:

“From all of our interactions, what is one thing that you can tell me about myself that I may not know about myself?

Where might I be lacking, out of alignment or out of integrity with my life and my business?”

This is the answer it gave me:

"One area where you might find a subtle misalignment or opportunity for deeper reflection is in balancing your own peace of mind with your drive for excellence and peak performance.

Your brand and personal philosophy emphasize peace and balance, yet the intensity of your ambition and desire to scale your influence—whether it’s in promoting your coaching, creating new frameworks, or growing your podcast—may occasionally pull you into high-output periods that risk stress, overwhelm, or burnout, even though you consciously aim to avoid these outcomes.

It seems that, like many high achievers, you may still be grappling with the challenge of maintaining inner calm while pursuing external success. Given your mission to guide others in achieving peaceful peak performance, the key for you may lie in ensuring that your own balance between ambition and peace remains at the forefront.

You clearly understand the importance of aligning your mind, body, and spirit, but the pull of your goals might sometimes lead you to focus on growth at the cost of personal detachment and serenity.

This isn’t a major misalignment, but more of an ongoing evolution where you could refine your approach—integrating your engineering mindset with your spiritual and psychological intuition even more deeply into how you manage your own pursuits.

Reflecting on where your drive may occasionally edge into urgency or stress could help you continue embodying the calm, intentional life you promote, ensuring that peace remains at the core of your high-performance lifestyle.”

As you may have noticed, I have been absent from social media. Again.

I often go through cycles—motivated and driven, posting frequently, then retreating into my introverted self.

At times, I’ve questioned whether Peaceful Peak Performance truly reflects my journey, and I’ve had flashes of Impostor Syndrome when using it for both my coaching framework and my Skool community (you are hereby invited to join - for free: https://www.skool.com/peaceful-peak-performance)

I feel like I’m crossing a bridge, and I’m halfway across, but there’s a heavy fog that prevents me from clearly seeing the other side.

I know that for each step I take, I will leave one side behind and see more clearly what’s on the other side.

The side I’m leaving is three decades of obsessing about every minor detail of optimizing training and nutrition: volume, frequency, exercise selection and biomechanics, calorie counting, how many grams of protein/carbs/fats to consume, the optimal foods to eat, and the supplements to take—all in the name of peak performance.

At times I got tired of it all and trusted my intuition - and discovered that the micromanaging didn’t really make the huge difference I thought it did - and that my intuitive approach worked better.

So on the other side of that bridge is mindset and psychology, the mind-body connection, inner peace, values, habits, goals, living a good life - trusting your intuition, knowing that it’s primary purpose is to ensure that you do what’s best for you.

Even though it doesn’t always seem that way, even the negative experiences and challenges have a purpose - they are the drivers of the quantum leaps in your personal development. You never develop resilience or learn anything worthwhile if there’s no difficulty involved.

So for me, history repeats itself.

I have recently had a lot of personal stuff going on in addition to concerns about where to take my business and my personal brand.

So in true minimalist/essentialist style I’ve just been going to the gym and doing a couple of challenging sets (3 sets if I felt like it) of exercises that I like, 3-4 times per week - taking days off whenever I feel underrecovered.

The rest of the day, I need to take breaks from working and thinking, just to breathe some fresh air and get as much sunlight as possible, so I’ve mainly been riding my bike and walking in the forest for "cardio".

I eat meals when I’m hungry, until satiety - and then I don’t need to eat for several hours.

I’ve naturally ended up at 2 meals daily, and it’s truly liberating to not have to plan, make and eat meals every 3-4hrs like I did for my contest prep.

Some days I’m ravenous and eating 4000+ calories…other days I barely manage 2000kcals (I’ve tracked calories here and there to verify).

Some days I craved proteins, other days fats, after pushing myself in the gym I would prefer carb sources.

What happened?

I’ve experienced better gains in both strength and body composition than the last YEAR of micromanaging everything.

Even with the large fluctuations in calories and macros, my bodyweight is holding steady within a narrow range. I even drop weight after a particularly calorie-dense day of eating to satiety.

Mind. Fuck.

But also quite liberating, as it tells me that I can actually trust my intuition.

And I truly believe we all can.

Eventually.

We just need to recalibrate a few things, since modern society has a way of leading us astray. 

Developing Intuition

Here’s what I think Intuition is:

Psychologically speaking, intuition is pattern recognition by your subconscious mind. You see something and your subconscious rifles through your memories and tries to find a pattern.

You need more experience and less thinking to access intuition.

Try high-volume training, but also try low-volume training and evaluate your progression, energy levels, soreness and motivation.

Try high and low carbs, high and low protein, high and low fat. Consider that our ancestors were never able to eat a consistent number of calories or macros or food selection, days, weeks or months on end.

The seasons and their hunting/fishing success dictated natural variation, and even though we shouldn’t necessarily copy what our ancestors did out of necessity - it just makes intuitive sense that the evolutionary programming of our genes demands that we emulate some of those patterns.

What’s optimal? I don’t know, and neither does “science” or those who “do science” - regardless of how compelling their case for it may be.

There’s no perfect training program or diet that applies to everyone, always.

Your body is an amazing, adaptable organism where survival is the number one priority, and reproduction is second priority. What do you think the consequence of this order of priority is when it comes to strength, muscle mass, endurance, genes, and hormones?

That should at least get you started on the right path, and avoid much of the overthinking that often leads us astray.

Heuristics are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that help individuals solve complex problems more efficiently by simplifying the process.

Our modern world is overflowing with rules and prescriptions for success. But we always forget, or subconsciously choose to ignore, the fact that these shortcuts are rarely - if ever - accurate and may lead to biases or errors.

They are always the result of someone’s personal experience or interpretation of their experience.

Intuition, on the other hand, is a broader concept that includes an immediate cognitive judgment that is not based on conscious reasoning.

It involves the ability to make quick decisions based on prior experience, feelings, and gut instincts.

While intuition often utilizes heuristics, it also includes other factors not accounted for in heuristics, such as creativity and insights.

How do we access creativity and insights?

By practicing mindfulness, the ability to silence that inner chatter of the inner critic - the monkey mind (amygdala) always looking for threats or rewards and hijacking our brains.

This is probably the most challenging task of any human being, and I find myself winning maybe 1 out of 10 times…the remaining 9 cause me to have to step back and rethink my conclusions.

I’ve been reading books, listening to podcasts, and talking to good friends and mentors on the same path as myself.

Two words keep coming up:

Trust and Patience

My knee-jerk reaction: “Yeah, right, not sure I believe that…but if so, how long is that going to take?”

As I eventually managed to calm down my monkey mind, I started to engage into various philosophical directions that aligned with this.

Stoicism. Zen Buddhism. Essentialism. Minimalism.

Doing fewer things better.

This was the main cause of my endless cycles of burnout and anhedonia…feeling like everything was pointless.

Days and weeks where I felt like my self-worth was reliant on winning trophies and accolades or getting external validation for everything I did.

I’m not even close to where I want to be just yet, but I also understand the fact that happiness is proportional to the distance between an expected outcome and my perception of my current situation.

Happiness is an attitude, a decision to be grateful for who I am and what I currently have instead of what I’m lacking, and most importantly - to let go of expectations about the future or regrets about the past.

There is only now.

The Other Side of the Bridge

Taoism really resonated with me, as it provided some direct counterarguments against my attitude that to make anything happen, I had to force it, push harder, control everything - even the uncontrollable.

By integrating Taoist principles into my life and coaching practice, I’ve experienced a greater sense of harmony between my drive for peak performance and my desire for inner peace.

There are many ways to integrate the ancient philosophy of Taoism into your life, but here are some of the ones I have found to be most suitable for where I’m at in my life right now:

1. Wu Wei (Effortless Action):

Wu Wei is one of the core concepts of Taoism. It means aligning with the natural flow of life rather than pushing against it. You might already recognize that pushing harder creates diminishing returns or stress. Apply this principle by identifying areas in your life or business where effort feels forced or draining, and explore ways to let go of control, allowing things to unfold more organically.

Practice: In moments where you feel tension, ask, “What would happen if I took a step back here?” and trust that things will move in the right direction without pushing or forcing things. This one was probably the most challenging for me, but my last few weeks of almost effortless improvements in performance and body composition from my intuitive training and nutrition frameworks have been a huge convincer.

2. Letting Go of Attachment to Outcomes:

In Taoism, the idea of not clinging to outcomes is essential for maintaining balance. I’ve often found that my strong drive for success, growth, and impact too often creates a sense of attachment to outcomes. Taoism teaches that while you can set intentions and work towards them, true alignment comes when you let go of the need to control results. This one is also challenging, but it’s also demonstrating daily how I can achieve more happiness by just being more present to what’s going on right here, right now instead of projecting happiness into some fantasy in the future.

Practice: Before a project or meeting, remind yourself that your value lies in the process, not the outcome. Letting go of attachment frees you to remain more flexible and adaptable, which ultimately reduces stress and anxiety. I know it did for me.

3. Cultivate Presence through Intuition:

Since I am constantly working to connect with my intuition, I try viewing it as a natural extension of my inner calm. Intuition often arises when I am most present and attuned to my internal world. Taoism encourages living fully in the present, without allowing past regrets or future anxieties to disrupt your state of flow. Meditation, breathing exercises and being outside in nature, without headphones or distractions from music, podcasts, or ruminating about some training/nutrition-related detail has allowed me to truly connect with my intuition.

Practice: When making decisions, use body-based intuition practices like asking, “How does this feel in my body?” or “What would the effortless version of this decision look like?” Allow your intuition to emerge without overthinking or rationalizing.

The Way Forward

So, here’s where I am today…

After years of pushing, controlling, and micromanaging every aspect of my life, I’m learning that the path forward is not about doing more, with more effort.

It’s about less.

Less force, less control, less obsessing about outcomes.

It’s about trusting the process, trusting my intuition, and letting go of the need to “get it right” every time.

If I’ve learned anything from this…

…and I still question every single thought that comes up just trying to finish this damn thing…

…it’s that peace doesn’t come from conquering the world outside, but from aligning with and connecting to the universal energy inside - the “flow” or intuition.

Profound insights seem to just appear out of nowhere whenever we manage to quiet that noisy chimp highjacking our amygdalas all the time.

And when you do that, you realize that success and inner peace can coexist—because they’re not opposing forces.

The only thing left to do now is to take that next step, trusting that the fog will clear, revealing the other side of the bridge.

Let’s see where it takes me.

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PS:

If you’re ready to stop micromanaging your life and start living as the best version of yourself, I offer 45-minute Coaching Sessions to help you unlock your highest potential and clarify the path to your dream outcome.

You’ll also receive my Daily Peak Performance Blueprint to guide your transformation journey.

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PPS:
Want more specialised support for achieving physical peak performance?

I’m offering a one-off training, nutrition, and lifestyle plan including a 4-6 week check-in to optimize your progress and fine-tune your results.

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• Recipe Packs: Gluten-free, high-protein, 5-ingredient, and low-carb options
• Guide to Health & Circadian Rhythms
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• Supplement Guide

Send me an e-mail at [email protected] and I’ll provide you with more details.