Stop Changing Your Tactics and Deal With Your Shit
By Derek Neighbors on July 10, 2025
Authentic Optimization vs. Sophisticated Avoidance
Distinguishing genuine self-optimization from elaborate avoidance strategies
I spent years changing my diet and never lost a pound.
Low-carb, high-protein, intermittent fasting, Mediterranean, keto, paleo, I tried them all. Each time, I’d research extensively, buy the books, plan the meals, track the macros. I’d follow the system perfectly for weeks, sometimes months.
And then I’d find myself standing in front of the refrigerator at 11 PM, eating leftover pizza with my hands like some kind of feral animal.
The breaking point came when my wife found me there one night, sauce on my face, looking like I’d been caught stealing. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with this mixture of sadness and recognition.
“How long are you going to keep doing this to yourself?”
That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t struggling with willpower. I wasn’t lacking discipline. I was eating because I was avoiding something else entirely. The food was just the symptom.
The problem wasn’t the diets. The problem was that I kept changing my approach to food without ever dealing with why I was eating.
This is the most sophisticated form of avoidance I’ve ever encountered. It’s the pattern where intelligent people create elaborate systems to avoid examining the fundamental relationship that drives their behavior.
The Pattern
Here’s what I’ve learned after years of watching people (myself included) spin their wheels in every domain imaginable:
We change our methods, but we never change our relationship to the thing itself.
The person who can’t focus doesn’t need a new productivity system. They need to examine their relationship with discomfort, with boredom, with the fear of not being good enough.
The person who can’t have difficult conversations doesn’t need a new communication framework. They need to examine their relationship with conflict, with disappointing others, with being seen as the “bad guy.”
The person who can’t stick to their exercise routine doesn’t need a new workout plan. They need to examine their relationship with their body, with effort, with the gap between who they are and who they want to be.
But examining relationships is hard. Creating new systems is easy.
So we optimize our approach instead of transforming our relationship.
The Avoidance Patterns
After watching this pattern play out thousands of times, in myself, in the people I work with, in the organizations I advise, I’ve identified five ways people avoid the real work.
Pattern 1: Tactic Hopping
The Behavior: Constantly changing methods without changing mindset.
Food Example: Switching from Weight Watchers to keto to intermittent fasting, but never examining why you eat when you’re not hungry.
Focus Example: Trying Pomodoro, then time-blocking, then Getting Things Done, but never examining why you’re afraid of sustained attention.
Relationship Example: Reading communication books and attending workshops, but never examining why you’re afraid of being truly seen.
The Greek Insight: This is the absence of sophrosyne (self-control). True self-control isn’t about willpower, it’s about understanding the relationship between your desires and your values.
The Pattern: When you’re tactic hopping, you’re protecting the disease by treating the symptoms. You’re changing everything except the thing that actually needs to change.
Pattern 2: Hiding in the Weeds
The Behavior: Making it harder to avoid the real work.
Food Example: Obsessing over macros, meal timing, and supplement stacks while avoiding the simple truth that you eat emotionally.
Focus Example: Building elaborate productivity systems with multiple apps and workflows while avoiding the simple truth that you’re afraid of what you might discover about your capabilities.
Relationship Example: Studying personality types, communication styles, and conflict resolution techniques while avoiding the simple truth that you don’t trust people to handle your authentic self.
The Greek Insight: This violates phronesis (practical wisdom). Practical wisdom chooses the simplest path that addresses the core issue.
The Pattern: When you’re hiding in the weeds, you’re using sophistication as a shield. The more complex your system, the more you avoid the simple, uncomfortable truth.
Pattern 3: Clinging to Your Story
The Behavior: Maintaining the story that keeps you stuck.
Food Example: “I’m just not a thin person” or “I have a slow metabolism”, stories that protect you from having to examine your relationship with food.
Focus Example: “I’m just not a focused person” or “I have ADHD”, stories that protect you from having to examine your relationship with discomfort.
Relationship Example: “I’m just not good with people” or “I’m an introvert”, stories that protect you from having to examine your relationship with vulnerability.
The Greek Insight: This is the opposite of metanoia (transformation of mind). True transformation requires releasing the identity that no longer serves you.
The Pattern: When you’re clinging to your story, you’re choosing familiarity over growth. You’re more committed to being right about who you are than to becoming who you could be.
Pattern 4: Running From the Real Work
The Behavior: Refusing to examine the underlying dynamic.
Food Example: Focusing on “what to eat” and “when to eat” while avoiding “why you eat” and “how you feel about eating.”
Focus Example: Focusing on “what to do” and “when to do it” while avoiding “why you resist” and “how you feel about your capabilities.”
Relationship Example: Focusing on “what to say” and “how to say it” while avoiding “why you’re afraid” and “how you feel about being known.”
The Greek Insight: This violates philia (authentic friendship/relationship). You can’t have an authentic relationship with anything, food, work, people, if you refuse to examine the relationship itself.
The Pattern: When you’re running from the real work, you’re treating the thing as separate from yourself. You’re trying to manage the external while ignoring the internal.
Pattern 5: Chasing the Scoreboard
The Behavior: Focusing on results instead of process transformation.
Food Example: Obsessing over the scale, the mirror, the pants size while ignoring how your relationship with food is changing.
Focus Example: Obsessing over productivity metrics, completed tasks, and time tracked while ignoring how your relationship with attention is changing.
Relationship Example: Obsessing over whether people like you, agree with you, or respond positively while ignoring how your relationship with authenticity is changing.
The Greek Insight: This misses arete (excellence as a way of being). Excellence isn’t about outcomes, it’s about the quality of your relationship with the process.
The Pattern: When you’re chasing the scoreboard, you’re missing the transformation. You’re so focused on the destination that you’re not present for the journey.
What Finally Broke the Cycle
Here’s what I’ve learned about creating lasting change:
Stop changing your tactics and deal with your shit.
When I finally lost weight and kept it off, it wasn’t because I found the perfect diet. It was because I stopped running from why I was standing in front of the fridge at 11 PM.
When I finally developed the ability to focus for hours, it wasn’t because I found the perfect productivity system. It was because I stopped running from the discomfort of not being good enough.
When I finally learned to have difficult conversations, it wasn’t because I found the perfect communication framework. It was because I stopped running from the fear of being disliked.
The method is brutal in its simplicity:
- Stop changing your approach
- Start examining what you’re avoiding
- Deal with that first
- Watch the right approach emerge naturally
The Diagnostic Questions
Before you implement any new system, ask yourself these brutal questions:
- What am I actually running from here?
- What story am I clinging to that keeps me stuck?
- What uncomfortable truth would hit me in the face if I stopped tinkering with tactics?
- What’s the fear I refuse to name?
- How is optimization helping me hide from the real work?
The answers will tell you if you’re still bullshitting yourself.
The Ancient Wisdom Application
The Greeks understood something we’ve forgotten: sophrosyne (self-control) isn’t about controlling your behavior, it’s about understanding your relationship with your desires.
Philia (authentic friendship/relationship) isn’t just about relationships with other people, it’s about your relationship with everything in your life.
Arete (excellence) isn’t about perfect performance, it’s about the quality of your relationship with the process of becoming.
When you change your relationship, the behavior changes naturally. When you only change your behavior, the relationship stays the same, and eventually, it pulls you back.
The Business Integration
This framework has transformed how I work with leaders, entrepreneurs, and high-performers. Instead of giving them new systems and strategies, I help them examine their relationship with:
- Leadership: Are you managing people or avoiding your own authority?
- Growth: Are you scaling systems or avoiding deeper capability development?
- Innovation: Are you creating new products or avoiding the risk of meaningful change?
- Performance: Are you optimizing metrics or avoiding the discomfort of real excellence?
The transformation happens when they stop changing their approach and start changing their relationship.
The Challenge
The Challenge: Stop Bullshitting Yourself
Pick one area of your life where you keep swapping tactics but still feel stuck.
- Call out the avoidance: Which of these patterns are you caught in?
- Face the truth: What are you running from that you don’t want to admit?
- Ask the brutal questions: Stop hiding.
- Do the hard thing: What’s the one uncomfortable step you’ve been avoiding?
- Let it shift: Watch what happens when you stop running. The right approach will show up when you stop forcing it.
Don’t change your diet. Deal with why you’re eating. Don’t change your productivity system. Deal with why you’re avoiding the work. Don’t change your communication style. Deal with why you’re afraid of being seen.
Stop changing your plans. Change the part of yourself that keeps avoiding the truth.
Final Thoughts
This reveals the most sophisticated form of avoidance: using intelligence and effort to avoid the very thing that would create lasting change.
We live in a culture that sells approaches, systems, and methods. But transformation happens when you stop running from the real problem.
The person who deals with why they eat never needs another diet. The person who deals with why they avoid work never needs another productivity system. The person who deals with why they’re afraid of being seen never needs another communication framework.
They have something better: they’ve stopped bullshitting themselves.
That’s the difference between optimization and transformation. That’s the difference between sophisticated avoidance and authentic change. That’s the difference between changing your tactics and changing your life.
The pattern is always the same: we change our approach, our system, our method, but we never change our relationship to the thing itself.
And that’s why nothing really changes.
Until now.
MasteryLab.co is where people who are done running from the hard stuff go to do the work that matters.
The only thing between who you are and who you could be is the truth you keep avoiding. Stop changing tactics. Face the truth. Do the work.
