A Balinese farmer. A pot of Marmite and the psychological reason why most people quit before they ever find out what they were capable of building.

We are all a product of our environment. Moulded by it. Shaped by it. And if we're paying close enough attention, we're quietly educated by it.

Psychologists call this 'environmental determinism', the idea that the context we inhabit shapes our behaviours, beliefs, and ultimately our outcomes more than almost any internal trait we possess. The research on this is overwhelming. A Harvard study found that where you live and who you spend time with predicts long-term behavioural patterns more reliably than personality alone. Your environment isn't just background noise. It is the curriculum. Which is why I've made a deliberate habit, everywhere I travel, of collecting people.

The man I met in Canggu.

In the UK or the US, striking up a conversation with a stranger is practically a social crime. In Southeast Asia, Bali, Thailand, and Vietnam, people stop. They smile. They sit down. They want to talk.

I've exchanged numbers with dozens of them. I've sent Spurs shirts to people I met on street corners in exchange for the privilege of hearing their stories. Some people collect souvenirs. I collect perspectives.

In Canggu, I met Wayan.

For almost two months, I saw him practically every day. We had dinner a few times. Coffee more than a few times. At some point I gave him a pot of Marmite; he was fascinated by it in the way that only a man who has never tasted Marmite can be. He remains the only person I've met who looked genuinely moved by yeast extract.

Wayan is a rice farmer. Has been his whole life. His family has worked the same paddy field outside Canggu for generations, a small, immaculate stretch of terraced green that looks like something off a postcard but is, to Wayan, simply where he goes every morning and every evening without exception.

The question I asked him

One morning, sitting with our coffee, I said, half-joking, 'Wayan, I see you out here every single day. You got any other hobbies?"

He looked at me. "Noooooooooo." "But what happens if you miss a day?" I pressed. "Just one day."

He shook his head slowly, like I'd asked him something genuinely confusing.

"No. Without me, my crop dies. My family doesn't eat."

"Do you sell it?" I asked. "No. Not for selling. For family. My wife. Her sisters. My brothers."

That was it. That was the whole answer. No philosophy degree required. No productivity system. No morning routine podcast. Just an unbroken line between his daily actions and the people those actions were for.

"Without me here every single day they have nothing. So, I am here every single day. There is nothing else to decide."

I've thought about that sentence almost every day since.

What psychology actually says about consistency is that we talk about consistency like it's a character trait. Like some people are just built for it and others aren't. This is one of the most damaging myths in self-development.

Self-determination theory developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan identified three core human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When our actions are connected to something or someone beyond ourselves, the research shows we sustain those actions dramatically longer and with far less internal resistance.

The power of purpose-driven motivation is that people who link their daily habits to a clear external purpose (family, community, legacy) are up to three times more likely to maintain those habits long-term than people motivated by personal gain alone (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).

Wayan wasn't drawing on willpower. He wasn't hacking his habits. He wasn't using a streak tracker on his phone. He had simply, completely eliminated the decision. His crop, his family, his identity as a provider: all of it collapsed into a single daily action. Show up. Tend the field.

Psychologists call this identity-based behaviour. When an action becomes part of who you are rather than something you're trying to do, the friction disappears. James Clear popularised this in Atomic Habits, but the underlying research goes back decades to William James in 1890, who wrote that the goal of habit formation is to "make our nervous system our ally, not our enemy".

Wayan had done this not through any deliberate framework. He'd done it through a lifetime of purpose so clear it left no room for the question. The real enemy is motivational ambiguity.

I see this destroy more coaches, consultants and online business owners than any strategy failure, algorithm change or bad launch.

They don't know why they're doing it.

Not really. They know the surface answer: "I want more freedom," "I want to help people," and "I want to replace my salary." But that's not the purpose. That's an aspiration. Purpose is what remains when the aspiration starts to feel distant, when the post gets twelve views, and when a month goes by and the numbers haven't moved.

Psychologists distinguish between intrinsic motivation (doing something because it is inherently meaningful) and extrinsic motivation (doing it for an external reward). The research is consistent: extrinsic motivation creates fast starts and faster burnout. Intrinsic motivation, especially when anchored to relationships and values, is what keeps people going through the long, invisible middle.

Goals connected to others matter more. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that 92% of people who set goals connected to other people's wellbeing, not just personal success, reported sustained motivation even after early setbacks, versus 35% of those with purely self-focused goals.

Wayan had zero motivational ambiguity. He didn't need to journal about his why. He didn't need to revisit his vision board. His why was eating dinner with his family. It was as concrete and daily as the rice itself.

He who has a way to live can bear almost any how.

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning, spent his career documenting what separates the people who endure from the people who don't. His conclusion, drawn from the most extreme human conditions imaginable, was startlingly simple: it was always meaning. It was always the people they were still living for.

The uncomfortable mirror is that I left that conversation and went for a walk, which, if you know me, is where most things get processed.

I sat with an uncomfortable question: Can I say the same?

I started building my personal brand on this platform, The Coach Trap; everything that's followed is for a very specific reason. A better life for me and my wife, Laura. Not an abstract better life. A specific one. Morning walks without checking whether I can afford the week. Dinners where the conversation isn't quietly edged with financial anxiety. The freedom to choose the work instead of chasing it. That's my rice field.

Some days I treat LinkedIn like a content treadmill. Like something I'm supposed to do. On those days I feel the friction, the blank cursor, the low engagement, and the "What's the point of this?" that creeps in around 11pm when the post has forty views and you haven't had an enquiry in two weeks.

But the best days? I treat it like Wayan treats that paddy field. I'm not posting for the algorithm. I'm not optimising for reach. I'm showing up for Laura. For the version of our life I'm trying to build. The field doesn't care how I feel about it today. It just needs tending.

Purpose isn't motivational. It's structural. It doesn't make the work feel easier; it makes the question of whether to do the work irrelevant.

What this means for you. If you're building a coaching business, a personal brand and a practice and you're struggling with consistency, I'd gently suggest the problem is rarely tactical.

It's not that you need a better content calendar. It's not that you need to post at a different time or use different hashtags or repurpose your content into seventeen formats.

It's that you haven't found your rice field yet. You haven't made the connection between the daily unglamorous action of writing the post, sending the email, and showing up on the call and the specific people whose lives get better because you did.

Neuroscience supports this. Implementation intentions, a concept developed by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, show that when we explicitly link a behaviour to a specific "when-then" context, follow-through rates jump from roughly 35% to over 90%. But there's a deeper version of this: when we link behaviour not just to a trigger but also to a person, when we can see someone's face when we think about why we're doing this, the effect is even stronger. We are wired for social accountability. We are wired to show up for other people even when we won't show up for ourselves.

Implementation intentions work. Gollwitzer's research across 94 independent studies found that forming specific "when-then" plans linked to meaningful outcomes raised goal achievement rates to over 91%. The effect was strongest when goals were tied to other people.

Wayan has never heard of implementation intentions. He doesn't know who Peter Gollwitzer is. He's never read a book about habit stacking or identity-based change. He just knows that his family eats because he shows up. Every day. Without deciding whether to. That's not a productivity system.

That's a life well built. You don't need a bigger strategy.

You don't need a better funnel. You need to know clearly, specifically, uncomfortably clearly, who you are tending the field for.

And then you need to show up for them. Morning and night. Not when it feels inspired. Not when the metrics are good. Not when you've had enough coffee and the algorithm is being kind.

Every day. Because the alternative is unthinkable. Find your rice field. Tenth it.