Above Average

It’s So F#@king Easy to Be Above Average

I keep coming back to this idea: it’s so fucking easy to be above average.

Not because life is easy. Not because everyone who struggles is lazy. But because when you actually look at some of the behaviours we’ve accepted as normal, the bar is surprisingly fucking low.

Think about 100 people. If most of them are doing roughly the same thing, we start looking at that behaviour as normal. And once something becomes normal, something weird happens. We start treating it like it must also be acceptable.

That distinction matters.

Normal Doesn’t Automatically Mean Healthy

Take sleep.

Poor sleep is incredibly common. In a 2026 Sleep Health Foundation survey, 54.2% of Australians said they don’t sleep well at least three nights a week.

More than half.

So when everyone around you is tired, running on caffeine and treating bad sleep like it’s just part of life, it starts to feel normal. But normal doesn’t mean good.

If poor sleep is affecting your mood, energy, motivation, training, food choices, concentration, relationships and ability to get shit done, why would we use “everyone else is tired too” as the benchmark?

That’s the problem. We’ve normalised behaviours that have a shit return simply because lots of other people are doing them too.

Look at Exercise

This is where the idea gets even harder to ignore.

Australian adults are recommended to get regular aerobic activity and strength train at least twice a week. How many adults aged 18 to 64 actually met the overall physical activity guidelines in the ABS data?

Basically 22 people out of 100.

And only 26.6% did strength or toning exercise on two or more days that week. So roughly three quarters of adults weren’t even hitting the two-day strength benchmark.

Two fucking sessions.

Not six days a week. Not bodybuilding. Not waking up at 4:30am to do burpees while David Goggins screams at you.

Two days.

And doing that consistently already puts your behaviour somewhere the majority of adults aren’t.

Then There’s Food

This one is ridiculous.

According to the ABS, only 4.2% of Australian adults met both the fruit and vegetable recommendations.

Four people out of 100.

Only 44.1% met the fruit recommendation. And vegetable intake was even worse.

I’m not talking about weighing every grain of rice. I’m not talking about meal prepping seven identical containers of chicken and broccoli.

I’m talking about eating the recommended amount of fucking fruit and vegetables. That alone is apparently uncommon behaviour.

And Then We Say We Don’t Have Time

This is probably my favourite one.

ABS time-use data found 62% of Australians recorded watching television or streaming on their diary day. Among the people who did, they averaged 2 hours and 55 minutes.

Nearly three hours.

Another 25% recorded checking emails, using social media or browsing online as a free-time activity, averaging 1 hour and 23 minutes among those who did it.

So when someone tells me, “I just don’t have time to exercise,” sometimes that’s completely true. People have kids, caring responsibilities, huge workloads, health problems and genuinely chaotic lives.

But sometimes?

This Is What I Mean by Above Average

You don’t need to become elite. That’s the whole fucking point.

You don’t need to:

• Wake up at 4am.
• Train seven days a week.
• Have 8% body fat.
• Never eat takeaway.
• Become a millionaire by 30.
• Meditate for two hours.
• Read 100 books a year.
• Optimise every second of your life.

You could literally just start stacking behaviours like:

• Sleep reasonably well.
• Lift weights twice a week.
• Move your body.
• Eat some fruit and vegetables.
• Control your spending.
• Save some money.
• Invest consistently.
• Don’t smoke.
• Put your phone down occasionally.
• Learn useful shit.
• Look after your relationships.
• When you fuck up, get back on track.

None of that is elite.

That’s the crazy part.

We Have Normalised Some Pretty Low-Brow Behaviour

Look around.

And because millions of other people are doing it, we stop questioning it.

That’s what I mean by low-brow behaviour. Not that the person is beneath anyone. The behaviour itself has a shit return.

It takes from your health, energy, motivation, mood, finances, routine, relationships or future and gives you very little back. Yet because it’s common, we shrug and call it life.

Being Above Average Isn’t About One Thing

There’s another important point here.

You don’t become “above average” because you tick one box.

For example, only 5.6% of Australians aged 14 and over smoked daily in 2025. So not smoking doesn’t suddenly make you exceptional. Most people already don’t smoke daily.

That’s why this isn’t about finding one stat where you beat everyone else. It’s about what happens when you stack decent behaviours across multiple areas of your life.

You Don’t Need to Be Amazing at Anything

Imagine someone who is just pretty fucking solid.

They sleep well most nights. They train. They move. They eat reasonably well. They control their drinking. They don’t smoke. They save money. They invest. They keep improving their skills. They look after the people around them. They control their attention more often than their attention controls them.

They aren’t perfect in any of those areas. They’re just consistently decent across most of them.

That’s where I think things get interesting. Because those behaviours don’t operate independently. They start stacking.

One Better Decision Bleeds Into Another

One small behaviour can start touching five other areas of your life.

And the negative version works exactly the same way.

And suddenly one tiny decision has started pushing half your life in the wrong direction.

That’s the drift.

The Bar Is Lower Than You Think

So when I say:

I’m not saying everyone’s circumstances are easy.

I’m saying the behavioural standard required to start separating yourself from common behaviour is often far less extreme than people imagine.

Only 22.4% of adults aged 18 to 64 met the physical activity guidelines. Only 26.6% strength trained twice a week. Only 4.2% met both fruit and vegetable recommendations. More than half of Australians in one recent survey reported poor sleep at least three nights a week. And among Australians who recorded watching TV or streaming on their diary day, nearly three hours was completely normal.

None of the alternative behaviours require you to become elite.

That’s the point.

You don’t have to be extraordinary.

You just have to stop automatically accepting “normal” as the standard you’re aiming for.

Because common doesn’t mean good.

Normal doesn’t mean optimal.

And average sure as fuck doesn’t have to be your target.

The Domino Effect

How One Small Decision Can Derail Your Day

Let me show you how quickly one small decision can bleed into every other area of your life.

It’s 6pm.

You get home from work. The plan is simple: gym, home, dinner.

Instead, you sit on the couch.

You start scrolling. Maybe chuck Netflix on.

“I’ll get up in a minute.”

You look at the clock.

It’s 8pm.

Two hours gone.

And now the dominoes start falling.

Fitness

You’ve missed the gym.

You’ve spent the last two hours sitting around, you haven’t burned off any energy, and there’s a good chance your sleep takes a hit too.

Food

Now it’s 8pm and cooking feels like way too much effort.

So you order Uber Eats.

$40 later, dinner is sitting at your door.

Money

That’s $40 you didn’t need to spend.

Health

You eat a massive, high-calorie, salty meal late at night.

Not the end of the world.

But now it affects the next thing.

Preparation

Because you didn’t cook, there are no leftovers.

No lunch ready for tomorrow.

So tomorrow, you’re buying lunch too.

Then you go to bed feeling full, you haven’t trained, and your sleep is average.

You wake up tired.

Sleep

Poor.

Energy

Poor.

Focus

Poor.

Now you drag yourself into work.

You’ve got an important meeting with senior people.

Maybe there’s a promotion coming up. Maybe there’s an opportunity you don’t even know exists yet.

But today you’re not sharp.

You’re tired. Distracted. Flat.

You don’t perform as well as you normally would.

Maybe nothing happens.

Or maybe you just missed an opportunity that could have changed your income, career or future.

Then you get home exhausted.

You’re meant to train.

But now you’re wrecked.

So you skip it again.

And the cycle keeps going.

One night on the couch has now touched all of them.

And sometimes it takes another 36 to 48 hours before you finally feel like you’ve got your shit together again.

Here’s what most people miss.

Nobody wakes up and thinks:

“Today I’m going to make six shit decisions and mess with my health, money, fitness and career.”

That’s not how it happens.

It happens quietly.

• I’ll sit down for five minutes.
• I’ll just check my phone.
• I’ll order dinner tonight.
• I’ll train tomorrow.
• I’ll buy lunch today.
• I’ll catch up on sleep later.

None of those decisions look particularly dangerous on their own.

But stack enough of them together and they compound.

That’s why telling someone to eat better, train more, save money or get more sleep isn’t enough.

You need pattern recognition.

You need to catch yourself and go:

That’s a massive part of what this course is designed to teach you.

Not just food.

Not just fitness.

Not just money.

Not just habits.

Awareness.

Being able to catch the tiny decisions while they’re happening and understand where they’re taking you.

Because once you can see the pattern, you can interrupt it.

You don’t need to completely reinvent your life at 6pm.

Sometimes you just need to get off the fucking couch.

Change the first domino.

That one decision changes the entire chain.

You train.

You come home.

You cook.

You’ve got leftovers.

You keep the $40.

You sleep better.

You wake up with more energy.

You’re sharper at work.

You’re more likely to train again tomorrow.

Same person. Same day.

Different first domino.

Your habits don’t live in separate little boxes.

It all feeds into everything else.

The goal isn’t perfection.

The goal is catching the chain early enough to change where it ends.

Big decisions can change your life.

But most of the time, your life is being shaped by the tiny decisions you make when you think they don’t really matter.

Why I Ask Why

Why I Ask Why

I’ve always had a habit of asking why. Not in an overly philosophical way, but in a practical one. Why does that keep happening? Why does that behaviour keep producing the same outcome? Why are we telling someone to do something without properly explaining why it matters?

I think we’re given a lot of instructions in life without much context. Eat better. Exercise. Save money. Get more sleep. Stop wasting time. Don’t gamble. Make better decisions. Most of that advice is probably right, but I’m usually more interested in what sits behind it. What does that decision actually do? What does it cost you? What does it make easier later? What does it make harder? And probably the question I come back to more than anything is, what happens next?

Because most decisions don’t just stop at the point where you make them. They lead somewhere.

The advice usually isn’t the interesting part

Most people already know they should probably exercise. They know spending everything they earn isn’t a great financial strategy. They know staying up scrolling until 1am probably isn’t helping them. The information itself usually isn’t that groundbreaking.

What I find more interesting is understanding why the behaviour keeps happening and what comes after it.

Take something as simple as getting home from work and sitting on the couch instead of going to the gym. You tell yourself you’ll sit down for five minutes, start scrolling, maybe put Netflix on, and suddenly two hours are gone.

Now it’s late, so you skip the gym. You can’t be bothered cooking anymore, so you order $40 worth of takeaway. Because you’ve stayed up later, you sleep worse. You wake up tired the next morning and realise you didn’t prepare lunch, so you buy that too.

One pretty ordinary decision has now affected your training, food, spending, sleep, energy and potentially how well you perform at work the next day.

That’s the part I’m interested in. Not just what you did, but what happened because you did it.

We’re not always good at seeing the next consequence

Most of us are reasonably good at seeing the immediate result of a decision. If you spend $40, you have $40 less. If you skip the gym, you miss one workout. If you go to bed late, you’ll probably be tired tomorrow.

What we’re not always as good at seeing is the second or third consequence.

Missing one workout obviously isn’t going to ruin your life. Neither is one takeaway or one night of bad sleep. But if the same little sequence keeps repeating three or four times a week for years, the outcome starts looking very different.

The same thing works in a positive direction too. You go to the gym, come home and cook dinner, and now you’ve got lunch sorted for tomorrow. That saves you money. You get to bed at a decent time, sleep better and have more energy the next day. None of those decisions look particularly impressive on their own, but over time they start stacking on top of each other.

A lot of the things that improve your life are actually pretty boring when you look at them individually. Their value shows up when you repeat them long enough.

I think we’re too quick to dismiss people

Asking why also changes how you listen to other people.

I think we’ve become pretty quick to decide whether someone is worth listening to. You see one opinion you disagree with, something about their lifestyle, their politics, their background or a mistake they’ve made, and suddenly everything they say gets written off.

I don’t think that makes much sense.

You can completely disagree with someone on nine things and still learn something useful from the tenth. You don’t need to adopt someone’s entire worldview because they made one good point, and you don’t need to reject a useful idea just because you don’t particularly like the person who said it.

That’s where discernment matters. Listen to the idea, think about it, question it, see whether it actually stacks up and then make your own mind up.

I’d rather hear a range of perspectives and work through them myself than only listen to people who already agree with me about everything.

Understanding the why changes the decision

Being told what to do can feel like just another rule. Understanding why something matters gives you context.

Instead of thinking, I probably shouldn’t do this, you start noticing, Every time I do this, it seems to lead to this, then this, then this.

That is a much more useful way of looking at your behaviour because now you can actually see the pattern.

You start noticing where your time disappears. You see why your spending keeps getting away from you. You recognise what keeps wrecking your sleep or why you’re constantly telling yourself you’ll start again next week.

It doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to make the perfect decision every time. You won’t, and neither will I. But at least you understand the trade-off you’re making instead of pretending the decision exists in isolation.

Ask what happens next

That’s probably the simplest way I can explain how I look at a lot of things.

When you’re making a decision, don’t only look at what happens immediately afterwards. Ask what happens next, and then what happens after that.

Sometimes you’ll realise the decision in front of you really isn’t that important. Other times you’ll realise it’s the first domino in a pattern you’ve repeated a hundred times before.

That awareness is useful because most lives aren’t completely changed by one massive decision made on a random Monday. They’re usually shaped by hundreds of smaller decisions that keep pointing in roughly the same direction.

So for me, the goal isn’t perfection.

It’s understanding the why, recognising the pattern and getting a little better at seeing where your decisions are actually taking you.