And so we follow.

There is a moment on a mountain run when I realise I have been following someone.

Not because I chose them. Not because they know the trail better than I do. Simply

because they were ahead, and it was easier to let them lead. My pace adjusted to

match theirs. My line through the rock became their line. Somewhere in the climb,

without a decision being made, I handed over the wheel.

I notice it now. I didn't always.

Following is the path of least resistance. And the world has become

extraordinarily good at making it feel like a choice.

Scroll long enough and the algorithm decides what matters to you. Stay in the

right circles and the group decides what you believe. Work inside the right

company and the culture decides how you measure your worth. None of this is

announced. There is no moment where someone says follow us now. It simply happens.

Gradually. Quietly. In the accumulated weight of a thousand small adjustments you

barely noticed making.

And so we follow.

We follow the pace of people who look like they know where they're going. We

follow the metrics that tell us whether we're winning. We follow the version of

success that was handed to us before we were old enough to question it. Career.

Status. Appearance. Output. More.

The tragedy is not that people follow. The tragedy is that most don't know they're

doing it.

As a coach, this is where I start with everyone.

Not with goals. Not with habits. Not with the gap between where you are and where

you want to be. I start with a simpler and more uncomfortable question.

Whose direction are you actually moving in?

Because most people, when they sit with that question long enough, realise the

honest answer is: not entirely mine.

There is the direction their parents imagined. The direction their industry

rewards. The direction their social circle quietly enforces. The direction their

feed has been curating for years — building a world that feels personal but was

designed to be addictive. All of it dressed up as normal.

As just the way things are.

The word follow is everywhere right now, and not by accident.

Social media didn't invent the impulse.

But it perfected the infrastructure.

It gave following a button. A number. A dopamine loop. It made the act of choosing

your influences feel like curation, when often it is just absorption. You didn't

choose the algorithm. The algorithm chose you. And slowly, without drama, it began

to shape what felt possible, what felt desirable, what felt like you.

This bleeds into everything. How you parent. How you lead. How you define a good

day. How you measure yourself as a man, as a partner, as a person. The inputs are

so constant, so familiar, that they stop feeling like inputs at all. They just

feel like reality.

Here is what I know to be true.

The people who live with the most clarity are not the ones who followed better.

They are the ones who stopped long enough to ask whether they were

following at all.

That pause is uncomfortable. Because once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

You start to notice how many of your preferences were inherited.

How many of your ambitions were suggested. How many of your fears were installed.

And then comes the harder question. If I stripped all of that back — the noise,

the metrics, the expectations, the feed — what would I actually move toward?

Yesterday I found out.

The last three kilometres off the mountain, the terrain softened. Still rocky.

Still loose underfoot. Still hazardous enough to demand respect. But something in

the landscape eased, and something in me responded.

I opened my stride.

I didn't decide to. It just happened. The speed came. The ground beneath me

started to flow rather than fight. I stopped following the line of the person

ahead and began to find my own — through the rock, through the dust, carving

a path that was mine.

I pushed. I moved through the group. And as arrived back at the car,

I stood there breathing hard, and I felt something I want you to feel this week.

Not victory. Not ego. Something quieter than that.

The feeling of having led myself home.

This is available to you. Not on a mountain necessarily. But somewhere this week,

in some part of your life, the terrain is going to soften just enough.

When it does — don't wait for someone to follow.

Open your stride.

Find your own line because progress makes you feel alive.