I’ve started my book

Here’s the first draft of the preface

Twenty minutes into the biggest game of my life, I got sent off. For the next sixty, I sat on the sideline watching the game unravel as we lost 41–19, and the once in a lifetime series against the British & Irish Lions was over. The next morning on the team bus, I broke down in tears. I cried so hard, a teammate asked if someone had died. When I got home, I didn’t leave the house for a week. For the next ten years, that game haunted me. Every day, I replayed it in my mind, asking the same question: “What could I have done differently?”. I even thought about it on the morning of my wedding. Standing there about to get married, and still… thinking about that game. Thinking that I’d always been remembered as the bloke who got sent off. The bloke who let his nation down.

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I never really enjoyed rugby again after that. From the outside, nothing had changed. My teammates and coaches hadn’t blamed me, and I was still playing at the highest level. But internally, everything was different. When I played well, I felt on top of the world. When I didn’t, I felt like something was wrong with me. My rise through the professional ranks had been meteoric, and somewhere along the way, I’d stopped being “Ben who played rugby”… and became “Ben the footballer”.

Once that happened, every performance dictated how I felt about myself. So I did what has always worked. I tried harder. Extra gym sessions. Endless thinking about upcoming games. Never taking a full day off mentally. Not because it helped. Because I wasn’t trying to improve. I was trying to feel better. But I never did. And when I retired, that feeling stayed with me. I told myself I’d had a good career. But it felt empty. I hadn’t won a big trophy. And was terrified that’s how I’d be remembered. So I went looking for something to replace it. Something big. Something that would prove I was more than that.

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After the Lions loss, I built an app to help people lose weight. But when I retired, it stopped being about helping people, and became about proving I wasn’t a failure. I worked nights. Weekends. Even Christmas. We also sold our home to fund it, as I told myself it will work. But it didn’t. By the end of the pandemic, the money had run out. And this time, I hadn’t let my country down. I let down my family. I’d put our secure future in jeopardy. And I hit rock bottom.

I had no energy and no hope it would come back. I even thought about taking my life. I broke down in tears in my bedroom sobbing as my daughters came in and wondering what was wrong with Daddy? I couldn’t hide it anymore.

“I’m not in a good way. What have I done?” I said to my wife.

“Call your Dad”

So I did (he was in Switzerland with my sister) and convinced me to call a friend. That friend convinced me to call the Brumbies (my old employer), who got me in with a sports psychologist. And for the first time, I started to see it. I thought I’d been doing everything right. Exercising. Eating well. Sleeping. But I was still pushing hard. Still trying to prove myself. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had fun. Everything needed to have a work related purpose. Even rest. That’s when it clicked. I didn’t have a performance problem. I had an identity problem. And I was trying to fix it with effort.

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Six months later, I was on a run with a mate, when the Lions game came up. I’d never spoken about it with anyone. He shared how he remembers watching it in a bar in Singapore with mates. But he got all the details about the game wrong. He didn’t even remember me getting sent off. Then I thought: “he doesn’t see me as a failure at all. No one does.” Which meant that weight I’d been carrying for 10 years… was all mine. I was trying to outrun something I’d never faced. That the weight wasn’t from the loss. It was what I made it mean about me. And that had been driving everything. What I did. How I trained. How hard I pushed. That’s when I saw the pattern.

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Early in life, when something doesn’t work, you try harder. It works and you get rewarded for it. Then slowly, you build your identity around it. The one who can handle more. The one who can “push through”. But then the game changes. Pressure and complexity go up. And effort stops working the same way. But you don’t change your approach. You double down. “Just get through this week.” “Once this is done, I’ll be fine.” This probably feels normal. You’re busy. Getting things done. But you can’t switch off. You don’t enjoy wins. Then performance dips. So you push harder. You get more tired. More reactive. Less clear. So you push harder again. Now from the outside, this looks like discipline. But underneath, you’re feeling worse. That’s the spiral.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. Because it’s everywhere. Founders. Leaders. People in transition. All doing the right things. But quietly getting worse. Even when results come, it doesn’t feel how they thought it would. So they push harder.

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This book is for them. It’s also for my daughters. So they don’t grow up believing their worth comes from what they achieve. Because what I didn’t understand is that performance isn’t driven by effort alone. It’s driven by my “state”. And when your state drops, more effort doesn’t fix it. It makes it worse. In the pages that follow, I’ll show you how to spot the spiral early. And what to do when effort stops working. Because if you can see it… you can change it. And save yourself a lot of pain.

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Thanks for reading. I’m yet to decide on a title, but been to know: Did anything resonate for you? Anything not make sense? And what would you want to read more of?