What happens when everything in your life is going pretty well, but you still know you have more to give?
That's the conversation I had with Gabriel.
He's a father of one and runs a property development business. When we started working together, his business was going really well. He had a really good marriage. He was enjoying being a new father. He had great friends and great family.
There wasn't some massive crisis he was trying to fix.
As he put it:
"Everything in my life was going pretty well… but I just felt like I needed someone to come in and look at my life and provide a bit of oversight from a high-level point of view and identify gaps that were missing."
He knew he had more to give.
His energy was a bit low. Life felt a bit robotic and monotonous. He wanted to light the fire underneath himself again, but he didn't know what that looked like.
And that, to me, is what made this conversation so interesting.
Becoming a more well-rounded man
Gabriel had been following my journey for a couple of years, particularly the 58 marathons in 58 days.
He wasn't looking for the typical business coach. He wanted someone to look at the different aspects of his life and help him identify where he could improve.
Fitness was one of those areas, but it wasn't the only one.
It was business. Family. Friends. Marriage. Fitness. Time for himself.
It was about becoming a more balanced, well-rounded man.
Becoming a father had changed the way he looked at that as well.
He told me that when his wife was pregnant, he started thinking about his own childhood and the kind of man he wanted to be as a father.
At first, it was simple: he wanted to be present for his wife and child.
Then it became more than that.
"As he gets older, I want him to look up to me as a man that he wants to be. I want to be a role model."
He didn't want to be successful in one aspect of his life at the cost of another.
He wanted his son to be proud of the man he is. He wanted his wife to be proud of the man, husband and dad he is.
I love hearing that because so many people talk about balance without really defining what it looks like for them.
For Gabriel, it wasn't about giving every area of life equal time. It was about having intention behind it.
And as he said to me, making it work requires two things:
"It requires discipline and it requires structure."
What does that structure actually look like?
Work is a big part of Gabriel's life. He runs a business and wants to perform as well as he can in it.
But he also wants to structure work in a way that allows him to be present with his family.
Most afternoons he likes to finish around 4:30 or 5:00 and go to the park with his wife and child. That might happen three or four afternoons a week.
Every Friday morning, he does swimming lessons with his child. Everyone knows that's where he is. It's a non-negotiable.
He's also built four or five workouts into his week as meetings with himself that he wants to hit.
There are breaks throughout the year, time with friends and family, and something he had never really done before: time in solitude to reflect and make sure he's in the best headspace for the other aspects of his life.
Family. Fitness. Business. Friends. Looking after himself.
Not equal time. Intention behind the time.
From not being able to run 5 km to a half marathon in New York
One of the biggest physical changes came from a pretty simple conversation.
When Gabriel first came to me, he said he couldn't run 5 km.
In one of our early meetings I said, "You love travelling. Why don't we tie in a big fitness goal to travel?"
That was it.
He went home that night and booked a half marathon in New York, about six months away.
No flights booked. Just the race ticket and a goal that sounded a little bit crazy to him.
Then we set a plan.
The training block was unlike anything he'd done before, but halfway through it something started to change.
"It was the first time I was like, 'Wow, I think I can actually do this.'"
Before that, he'd felt like life was repetitious. Things were going well, but he was in a bit of a lull and wanted some energy and some fire beneath him.
Now he had something different to work towards.
Something he never thought he could do.
And the training itself became part of the reward.
Then he got sick
The half marathon was only a couple of days after Gabriel and his family arrived in America.
They'd travelled with a little baby, crossed time zones and then the family got sick.
The day before the race, Gabriel couldn't eat. He was throwing up and didn't think he could do it.
He messaged me sounding like he was fully busted.
Then I went to sleep.
When I woke up, I asked how he was feeling.
He'd finished the race.
He'd decided to at least give it a shot.
What I loved about that moment was how much he'd invested in the goal by then.
It was international. He'd told people he was doing it. He'd taken his family. He'd done the training block, and that training had required sacrifice.
There were a lot of reasons behind that goal.
That's what I think people sometimes underestimate. When you really put something into a goal, it becomes much harder to simply pull the plug when things don't go perfectly.
For Gabriel, completing that first half marathon did something else as well.
"That's really got me believing that physically I can achieve a lot more than I think. And that was the first step."
He's done another half marathon since, and he's still chasing his goal of going under two hours.
The journey isn't finished.
That's the point.
"These goals keep me accountable"
Before we started working together, Gabriel said he'd never really set goals.
He'd always tried his hardest, but putting a goal out there was different.
"When you say those goals out loud, something that I've learned from you is you say it, and then you start to believe it."
It applied to running, but it also started showing up elsewhere.
A business target. A physical goal. Something specific to work towards.
Going to the gym just to work out wasn't working for him. Having goals and structure gave the work a reason.
And, importantly, he was enjoying the journey as well.
Looking forward, but also looking back
Goal setting wasn't the only change Gabriel spoke about.
The other was gratitude and reflection.
When you're ambitious, it's easy to just go, go, go. You hit something and immediately start looking at what's next.
Gabriel said he'd never really practised gratitude before.
Now he's learning to look forward at where he wants to go while also looking back at how far he's come.
"I really am living a life that I dreamt of."
Physically. In business. With his child and family. In becoming more balanced.
That's a pretty powerful thing to be able to stop and acknowledge.
Can you grow a business, stay fit and still be a present husband and dad?
I asked Gabriel exactly that.
His answer was pretty clear.
"You can do it all."
But he also made an important point: things need to change.
For him, that meant being open and honest about what his day-to-day life actually looked like. Then we could look at the gaps.
He likes being in control and admitted that letting go can be difficult.
So part of the process became looking at what could be delegated or outsourced so he could spend more time where he actually wanted to spend it.
Sometimes the changes were really simple.
Instead of spending time meal prepping lunches on the weekend, he could use a meal preparation service, have lunch delivered to the office and get those hours back.
He delegated more. Outsourced more. Became more intentional about where his time was going.
Even sleep became something he put more structure around. He'd never had a bedtime. Now he pays attention to his sleep, physical stress and when he may need to get to bed earlier.
It's not perfect. Life with a child can be all over the shop.
But structure compounds over time.
As Gabriel put it:
"It is possible, but it just requires change and then discipline to upkeep it as well."
Life is a journey of becoming
This is why I've loved working with Gabriel.
He wasn't trying to repair a life that had fallen apart.
He looked at a life that was already going well and asked, "Where can I be better?"
He wanted to be a present father and husband. He wanted to grow his business. He wanted to improve physically. He wanted time with his friends and family. He wanted time for himself.
And he was willing to be open enough to look at where things needed to change.
I say it often: life is a journey of becoming.
We're never at the destination. There are milestones, lessons and pivots, and then we get to keep becoming.
Gabriel's story is a great reminder of that.
Everything can be going well and you can still know you have more to give.
Sometimes it's not about blowing your life up and starting again.
Sometimes it's finding the one-percenters, creating some structure and proving to yourself what else you're capable of.
Know you've got more to give?
If Gabriel's story sounds familiar, that's what The Life Locked In Blueprint is built for. Thirteen weeks, private 1:1, for high-performing men who aren't in crisis but know there's another level.