How I Turned a Year of Stagnation Into a Mission to Master Change

I asked AI to summarize this long journal entry from 2016:

This 2016 journal entry reflects deep self-awareness and a strong desire for intentional change. You acknowledged that the past year lacked direction due to your own habits and mindset. Despite being an expert in career reinvention, you recognized that personal change required a different approach—one rooted in discipline, focus, and learning.

For 2017, you set a clear plan: to deeply study change, separate valuable insights from outdated advice, and create a resource to help others navigate transformation. Your method was simple but powerful—walking daily while listening to and analyzing podcasts, then sharing your learnings. This 100-day commitment would lead to a curated list of top podcasts, a book, and a structured plan to help mid-lifers embrace change.

Beyond personal growth, you realized that independence—once a strength—had become a limitation. You aimed to break out of isolation, seek collaboration, and challenge long-held beliefs. The journey was about more than knowledge; it was about overcoming pride, emotional barriers, and self-imposed stagnation.

At its core, your journal captured a turning point—a shift from drifting to deliberate action, from consuming to contributing, and from being stuck to evolving with purpose.

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THIS IS MY ORIGINAL ENTRY:

I was drowning in purpose and it was killing me.

2016 was such an unintentional year. It wandered. I had no focus. Though I say 2016 stunted me let’s lay blame at the real cause. Me. My habits. I could cite 100 excuses why I stagnated in 2016 but it all comes down to me, and I have to change.

2016 I wanted to change but I didn’t have a plan. I was a mile wide and an inch deep. 2017 needs to be an inch wide and a mile deep.

I’m a master of change. Not small change. More total reinvention.

Army sniper to globe-trotting TV cameraman to magician to online entrepreneur.

I know both the joy and pain of change.

I also know that change is happening faster than ever before and many of my friends are unprepared for it.

2016 was going to be my year where I stepped up and shared what I knew about how to change. I had already mobilised thousands of kids entertainers around the world to change their lives. I can do this with fellow mid lifers. Know what? I found out I wasn’t ready. I thought I was but there you go.

2017 is my year where I study change. I’m obsessed with understanding everything I can about change. The language of change. The science of change. The stories of change.

There is so much that we do that is based on wrong information. The only thing worse than singing the wrong note is singing it louder. I don’t want to add to the confusion.

I have walked in the same shoes as my audience. I am getting better at sorting the chaff from the wheat, the solid advice from the recycled out of date advice. There are no NEW secrets. It’s all recycled anyway. Still, I want to be very intentional about what I say and that it stands up to scrutiny.

While I am nose down working on my my argument I have plenty to get going with. Plenty of use to share.

I have been asked many times what podcasts to start listening to. I have sidestepped the question, side stepped giving a helpful answer because I didn’t know where to start. Just what is the very first podcast I would advise my best friend to listen to? 2017 is my intentional year to answer this question.

Out of the thousands I have listened to who will be the honour of number one? What are the top 100 podcasts I would want my best friend, my daughters to listen to, one a day, for a year to intentionally prepare them for unexpected life change, disruption, or planned change?

We all need to change to evolve. As much as I need to go and learn basic investment fundamentals so I can get the financial freedom I desire to allow me to fulfil my passion and purpose, there are so many out there who have money falling from overstuffed pockets who need to look for new ways, new mindsets to find fulfilment in their life, to escape the cage they have created fro themselves.

Here’s my plan.

I get up, put my headphones on, walk out the door and keep walking for an hour while I listen to a podcast. In the process, I educate myself and shrink my waistline. I write about what I have learned and post it for others. I do this for 100 days.

You get the benefit of me filtering out all the noise and the crud. At the end of the year you get a concise directory of podcasts episodes that can change your life. This is what it’s all about. Change. Intentional change. Change with purpose. Without change I am what I am right now and I’m simply not happy with that. I can do better, I can be better, I can be more than what I am now. And that is important to me. I want to give. I want to be of use.

So in 365 days from now I will have a book ready to go. A clear 100 day plan for fellow 50 somethings to follow, a day at a time, that will make change in their life too. You will open your mind to new ideas and options that are out there waiting for you in this fast changing world. Whether you agree with them or not all I want for you is to be at least willing to start a conversation. Are there benefits for you? Is there a way you can change? Can you intentionally tailor make your life for the coming 20 to 30 years?

What I can guarantee for you is your waistline will shrink. If you don’t sabotage your daily hour of walking and learning with an hour of drinking red wine and packets of crisps then you WILL shrink your waistline and grow your mind.

Did I mention all of this is free? It is.

Cancel your gym memberships that you struggle to use and that burden you with guilt. Throw out your protein shakes and take that money and invest in a decent comfortable set of headphones and a mp3 player. I just use my iPhone and the built-in podcast player.

I walked this morning. It was James Altucher's podcast. Will it make the list? Probably not but others of his will. One smart guy. In my own way I want to be as well-researched as him.

I’m studying change. I am an expert at change and reinvention when it comes to my careers but I am a novice when it comes to personal change. I have come to realise I am stunting myself, I’m my own worst enemy. I have found a set of truisms that have worked for me and like a life raft I’ve clung to them for fear of drowning if I let go and see where the current of new ideas takes me.

I’ve always been staunchly independent. I’ve always put this forward as one of my greatest strengths but now i realise it is actually a weakness. What I can achieve alone protected in my castle with the drawbridge up is nothing compared to what I can achieve with others. Though I have known this in principle to be true, in practice I put it on the back burner. That, I reason, can be done another day.

The more I look into change the more I am fascinated by it. The more I realise just how little I understand. The more I realise just how much stupid emotions are getting in the way. Pride. I have let that go unchecked for decades.

Almost all of this information has been available to me via podcasts. All the eye opening mind brightening moments that I’ve stopped mid-stride while listening to a voice in my ear from someone who drops a wisdom bomb. KaBoom! That had never occurred to me. Really? This happens so often that I now walk with a pen and notepad in my pocket. I find this far preferable to switching to Notepad on my phone and using voice dictation to type in my reminders and thoughts on this insight I have just learned.

So this is the start of a very intentional year for me to find purpose, to lose inches from my gut, for me to write my next book, for me to come out of my self-imposed cave and ask for the help of others, for me to be more than I am now, and for me to be of use to you.

That’s day 1 and it’s only 9.16am. What else does the day hold?