new direction

Discipline: The Muscle You’re Not Using (But Can Start Today)

By Laura Berman Fortgang on April 12, 2026

I’m going to be honest with you. I fell off the wagon.

Last fall, I built a workout habit from absolute zero. Not “I used to work out and got lazy” — I mean nothing. I made the ten-minute deal with myself: all I had to commit to was just ten minutes. Ten minutes turned into twenty. Twenty turned into thirty. Thirty turned into forty. Before long, I was working out five to seven days a week, and it felt incredible. I had done it. I had built the muscle — literally and figuratively.

Then winter came. The cold crept in, the days got shorter, and somewhere between the gray skies and the warm blankets, I lost it. The streak broke. The habit unraveled. I found myself doing exactly what I tell other people not to do, which is waiting to feel like it again.

I’m sharing this because discipline isn’t a destination you arrive at and stay forever. It’s something you build, lose, and build again. And right now, I’m building back. I’m back to making the ten-minute deal with myself, back to starting embarrassingly small, and reminding myself that the version of me who showed up every day last fall? She’s still in here!

If you’ve fallen off something too — a workout routine, a business goal, a creative project — this one’s for you.

When most people hear the word “discipline,” they picture someone waking up at 5 am to hit the gym, turning down junk food without a second thought, or staying clean and sober through sheer willpower. We tend to assume those people were just born that way.

They weren’t. Discipline is a muscle, and like any muscle, you can build it.

First, let’s kill a myth.

Discipline has nothing to do with motivation. Stop searching for the right playlist, the right podcast, or the right inspirational speech. When you’re hunting for motivation, you’re really just trying to change your mood – that’s backwards. Mood follows action, not the other way around. Stop waiting to feel like it. Do the thing, and the feeling will follow. Discipline is a decision — ideally one you make once, though sometimes you have to make it every single day.

Four Ways to Build the Muscle

Schedule it.
It’s not “when I can get to it.” It goes in the calendar, and you treat it like any other commitment. Do the hard thing first.
Start embarrassingly small.
Five pushups count. Seriously. The goal isn’t volume; it’s telling your brain, this is who I am. I’m someone who moves daily. I’m someone who works on their business. You’re building an identity, not just a habit.
Design your environment to support it.
This isn’t about willpower; it’s about removing friction. Don’t keep foods in the house you’re trying to avoid. Put fruit on the counter. Lay out your gym clothes. If you know you won’t drive to a gym, collect what you need, even if it’s used equipment to build one at home. Make the right choice the easy choice.
Track your progress visibly.
Make a chart. Old-school, simple, visible. You won’t want to break the chain, and that instinct is powerful.

When You Just Don’t Feel Like It

The 5-4-3-2-1 method (from Mel Robbins)
Count down from five and physically move your body. Change rooms. Get up. Just move.
The 10-minute deal
Tell yourself you only have to do it for ten minutes. You can stop when the timer goes off, but odds are your mood will shift and you’ll keep going.
Identity anchoring
Instead of asking “How do I feel about this?,” ask “What would a disciplined person do?” Then do that.
Pre-decide for your future self
Pack a healthy lunch the night before. Put a sticky note on your laptop. Set yourself up so future-you doesn’t have to negotiate.
Zoom out
Ask yourself, Will I regret not doing this? The answer is almost always Yes.

How to Sustain It

Discipline isn’t about perfection; it’s about consistency. Progress over perfection, every time. The real reframe is this: Discipline is choosing your future self over your present self. Not What do I need to do today? but Who do I want to become? A healthy person does this. A writer does that. A strong business owner shows up like this.

Invest in who you’re becoming. Start imperfectly. Just start!

You Are Not Your Story — But Your Story Is Running Your Life

By Laura Berman Fortgang on April 5, 2026

Most of us hear the word “storytelling” and think of campfires, children’s books, or maybe a TEDx Talk. But veteran coach and one of my early mentors, Jay Perry, has spent decades thinking about something far more fundamental: the stories that are already running inside you, whether you chose them or not.

Perry calls it the “story sphere,” a term he coined to describe the invisible atmosphere of narratives surrounding us at all times: interior stories, media stories, family stories, political stories. According to Perry, AI estimates there may be as many as a trillion stories operating at any given moment. “Like the atmosphere,” he says, “we don’t necessarily see everything that’s going on, but we know if we didn’t have oxygen and hydrogen and all those things, we couldn’t survive. We don’t survive without story. Story actually is what human is.”

This isn’t a metaphor; it’s neuroscience. Our brains are literally wired to function through story — seeking patterns, confirming what they already believe, and above all, protecting us from perceived threat.

The Squatter Stories

That protective function is where things get complicated. Over the course of our lives, we accumulate what Perry calls “squatter stories,” which are narratives that took up residence in the brain and refuse to leave. Things like I’ll never finish anything; I’m always behind; or Just when things get going, everything falls apart. Many people Perry works with are neurodivergent, and for them these stories often coalesce into a single punishing belief: There’s something wrong with me.

The brain doesn’t mean harm. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do — protecting you based on patterns it has recognized. But the problem is confirmation bias. “Every time something shows up that confirms that I’m stupid, or whatever that story is,” Perry explains, “the brain digs deeper and deeper into it.” The story becomes identity. It becomes the lens through which you see everything.

Simply telling yourself to “change your story” doesn’t work. As Perry puts it: “Easy conceptually, but to actually do that requires lessening the power of those foundational stories and increasing our narrative intelligence.” Trying to override a deep story with sheer logic, he says, is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

The Intelligence We’ve Been Ignoring

Here’s where Perry’s work gets truly provocative. He distinguishes between two modes of thinking. Logical thinking works on data, and AI does that better than any human ever will. But there’s another kind of thinking, what he calls Narrative Intelligence, that operates on something entirely different: imagination, intuition, emotion, wonder, common sense.

“Narrative intelligence works on no data,” Perry says. “Logic works really well when the future is likely to be like the present and the past.” In a world changing as rapidly as ours, that’s a liability. The people who will navigate what’s ahead are those who can think in story and can imagine outcomes not yet in evidence, hold multiple possibilities at once, and pivot when the plan stops working.

We’ve been rewarded our whole lives for getting the right answer. That rewired us toward the logical, computational mode of thinking. Now that machines are taking over that function, the undervalued skill — narrative intelligence — suddenly becomes essential.

How Fascinating

What do you actually do when a squatter story shows up? Perry was inspired by conductor and author Benjamin Zander, who teaches a deceptively simple practice: When something goes wrong, say “how fascinating,” and mean it fully, physically, emotionally.

It sounds almost too simple, but the point is precise. You can’t fight a foundational story with a cognitive argument, because the story has far more emotional force than any counterargument you can muster. What you can do is interrupt the pattern with enough energy and presence to actually stop the loop. “How fascinating” isn’t just words. It’s a full-bodied shift in stance that says: I see you, story. And I’m curious about you, not imprisoned by you.

Perry calls this approach “playful story catching.” The goal isn’t to eliminate the stories or shame yourself for having them. It’s to notice them, to create distance from them, and remember that you are the author, not the character.

One powerful technique is shifting your narrative perspective. Our brains are conditioned to protect “I.” But if you can catch yourself in an “I story” and reframe it, such as Laura is having trouble with this instead of I am having trouble with this — the brain relaxes its grip. The protective mechanism doesn’t guard “Laura” the same way it guards “I.”

The Power of We

Perhaps the most striking idea Perry offers is the shift from “I stories” to “we stories.” No one has ever done anything entirely alone, yet we insist on framing our lives as solo narratives. When you expand your story to include others — a community, a collaborator, an idea, even a place — possibilities open that the I story simply cannot access. “The I story is chained by that protective mechanism,” Perry says. “When we start thinking in we stories, things become possible that aren’t possible for the I story.”

He built his community, Story Sphere Central, around exactly this principle. For $22 a month, members from Thailand to Europe gather for group coaching, co-working sessions, creative workshops, and a course called Heroes of the Story Sphere — a name Perry chose deliberately. “I think it takes bravery,” he says. “It takes heroism to show up and actually look for the truth about what the stories are.”

Be Open to the Plot Twist

Perry closes with what may be his most powerful invitation. In a study by researcher Angus Fletcher, veterans with PTSD were given access to every conventional healing modality available including massage, meditation, and yoga. Only one person in the group made a full recovery. What set them apart? They had experienced a plot twist.

A plot twist isn’t something you manufacture. It’s something you receive — a bankruptcy, a loss, an unexpected phone call, an idea that comes from nowhere. What you can do is stay open to one. “If we can open our consciousness to seeing the gifts that are given to us,” Perry says, “that’s why it’s so important to have we stories — because that multiplies the number of opportunities we have for plot twists.”

You are swimming in a story sphere right now.
The question is whether you’re authoring the story or being authored by it.

Jay Perry’s community, Story Sphere Central, can be found at StorySphereCentral.com.
This article is a synthesis of an interview conducted on March 27, 2026

You Can’t Go Back to Before — And That’s the Point

By Laura Berman Fortgang on March 15, 2026

In the musical Ragtime, there’s a character simply called Mother. When her husband leaves for a year-long expedition, she transforms. She takes in a Black couple and champions them — scandalous in early 1900s upper-crust New York society. She makes decisions, finds her voice, and becomes someone new. When her husband returns and tries to fit her back in the box she once occupied, she can’t do it. She sings a song called “Back to Before,” and it’s all about how you simply cannot return to who you were.

I think we can all relate to that tension.

We long for the past.
We long for that thing that was.

There’s actually a psychological term for it — rosy retrospection — which is our tendency to remember the past as kinder and gentler than it may have actually been. We don’t remember the anxiety of that “easier” chapter. We remember the feeling of being less burdened.

I know that feeling personally. My son has epilepsy. I can remember a time when they were petit mals — frightening, yes, but something our family had learned to navigate. Something that had become, in its own difficult way, our normal. Then came the grand mals, and everything shifted. I remember thinking if I could just get back to before that happened, we could handle this. What I didn’t realize at the time was that “before” wasn’t waiting for me. It had already closed.

That’s the thing about “before.” Even if you could somehow return to that exact moment in time, you would bring this version of yourself with you. You’ve grown. You’ve changed. So you truly can’t go back. What Mother’s song captures so beautifully is that the “before” she mourns was also a version of herself that was smaller, quieter, and less fully alive. Growth and loss are often the same door.

When we spend our energy facing the rearview mirror, we risk getting stuck there. Nostalgia in small doses is sweet, warm, and deeply human. But when we move in there, it becomes a form of grief that never resolves. It keeps us comparing the present to an idealized past that didn’t quite exist, and the present always loses that competition. We can become so loyal to who we were that we become strangers to who we’re becoming.

Here are four things that can help you move forward:

Honor it, then set it down. You are absolutely allowed to miss what was. Grief is real, and grief is authentic. But there’s a difference between visiting the past and moving in there. Acknowledge what you’ve lost, feel it fully – then deliberately turn toward what remains.

Ask: What does this make possible? Every ending carries a hidden opening. The question can’t only be “what did I lose?” It has to become “what is this new chapter calling forth in me? Who am I becoming?” That’s where the real focus belongs. Not on the closing door, but on the one that’s beginning to open.

Trade nostalgia for gratitude. Nostalgia looks backward. Gratitude — real appreciation — lives in the present. Instead of wishing you could return to a good moment, practice being grateful it happened at all. That single reframe moves you out of longing and into appreciation. And appreciation puts you right back in the present, where your life is actually happening.

Build something to move toward. The pull of the past is strongest when the future feels empty — when there’s nothing on the horizon you’re looking forward to. So put something there. It doesn’t have to be grand; even something small gives forward motion a direction. Once you start moving forward, it becomes easier to keep going. Mother doesn’t end her song with any kind of tidy resolution. She can’t get back to the past, but she stands in the truth of her own change. I think that is actually the bravest thing any of us can do. Not pretending the past didn’t matter and not letting it hold us hostage either. Just standing in who we’ve become.

I still have moments where I’d give anything to go back to before. But I’ve also learned that the version of me who came through what came next is more capable, more compassionate, and more present than I ever was before.

You can’t go back to before.
But you can decide, right now, what you’re moving toward and allow the next chapter to begin.

Visibility – Make This Your Year to Be Visible

By Laura Berman Fortgang on February 22, 2026

Visibility creates opportunity. It’s that simple.

When you show up consistently – whether in meetings, on social media, or at networking events – you put yourself in the right place at the right time. Those “lucky breaks” people talk about? They happen because someone chose to be visible.

Why Visibility Matters

Visibility builds trust and credibility over time. When people see you regularly, they begin to recognize your expertise and value. And here’s the thing: visibility compounds. The more you show up, the more opportunities find their way to you. Careers are built on this foundation.

How to Build Visibility as an Employee

If you work in a company, visibility starts with speaking up. Make sure you get credit for your great work. Contribute thoughtfully in meetings – not just to be heard, but to add real value.

Volunteer for high-visibility projects. Not the ones nobody else wants, but the strategic initiatives that will showcase your skills and get you noticed by decision-makers. Build relationships across departments and levels. Your network inside your organization is just as important as the one outside it.

How to Build Visibility as an Entrepreneur

Show up on platforms where your ideal clients are, but don’t stop there.
Get involved in your community.
Volunteer for opportunities that put you in front of the right people.

Make it easy for people to understand exactly what you do. I recently worked with a new coach who attended one networking meeting, made themselves visible to the group’s leader, and landed a speaking engagement that will put them in front of hundreds of potential clients. That’s the power of visibility.

Remember:
There’s visibility on a small scale (one-on-one relationships) and visibility on a larger scale (platforms and speaking).
Both matter.

For Those Who Hate Being Visible

Let me be honest: Being self-conscious is a little egotistical.
You’re assuming everyone is judging you probably because you’re judging yourself and others.
Get straight with yourself.
Stop judging yourself.
Stop judging other people.

You need to adopt a healthy “I don’t care” attitude. Not that you don’t care enough to do good work, but you can’t care so much about what others think that you hide your light.

Here’s the key: You need a mission bigger than you.
When you focus on the impact you want to make and the people you want to serve, visibility becomes about that mission, not about you.

And introverts, I don’t want to hear that you can’t be visible.
You just need to know yourself, do things your way, and stay connected to your bigger purpose.

Common Visibility Mistakes

Assuming good work speaks for itself.
It doesn’t. You need to share your wins, whether you’re presenting results to your boss or sharing client success stories on LinkedIn.

Confusing visibility with bragging.
They’re not the same thing. Sharing your accomplishments and expertise is not bragging; it’s informing people about what you can do and who you can help.

Being inconsistent.
Disappearing for long periods and then showing up only when you need something (a sale, a favor, a promotion) doesn’t work. Consistency builds trust.

Your Action Step

We’re still in the energy of a new year. Make this your year to be visible.
Be consistent.
Put yourself forward.
Don’t be afraid to be vocal about your accomplishments.

Visibility creates opportunity, and opportunity is what you’re after.

When the Storm Hits: Your Guide to Weathering What Comes and Emerging Stronger

By Laura Berman Fortgang on February 1, 2026

The meteorologists saw it coming days in advance. The grocery stores emptied of bread and milk. Batteries flew off the shelves. Everyone knew the storm was approaching, yet when it finally arrived, many still found themselves unprepared for its full force.

Life’s storms work the same way. Sometimes we see them gathering on the horizon – a organizational restructuring, a relationship reaching its breaking point, a business model that’s clearly running out of road. Other times, they hit without warning, leaving us scrambling to find our footing while everything we counted on gets rearranged.

The question isn’t whether storms will come. They will.
The question is: How will you prepare, how will you weather them, and how will you use what they teach you?

Before the Storm: The Art of Strategic Preparation

Here’s what most people get wrong about preparation:
They stockpile supplies, but they forget to strengthen their foundation.

When I work with leaders and entrepreneurs facing major transitions, I ask them a simple question: “What are you anchoring to?” When everything else is moving, you need something solid to hold onto. For some, it’s their core values. For others, it’s their sense of purpose or their commitment to the people they serve.

The coaches I work with who navigate industry changes most successfully aren’t the ones with the biggest emergency funds (though those help). They’re the ones who’ve built what I call “foundational flexibility,” which is a clear sense of who they are and what they stand for, combined with the agility to adapt their methods without compromising their mission.

Practical preparation looks like this:

Know your non-negotiables.
What absolutely must be protected?
What defines you at your core?
When you’re clear on this, you can let go of everything else with much less anxiety.

Build your support system before you need it.
The middle of a crisis is not the time to start looking for allies.
Invest in relationships during the calm, so you have people to call when the winds pick up.

Create options, not just plans.
Plans assume a predictable future.
Options give you choices when the unexpected arrives.
What are three different ways you could respond if X happens?
What resources could you access if Y occurs?

When You’re In It: Weathering the Storm

There’s a moment in every storm when you realize – this is happening.
The preparation phase is over.
Now you’re just trying to stay upright.

This is when your previous work pays off, or when you discover what you missed.

The most important skill for weathering a storm isn’t strength; it’s presence.
The ability to stay aware, stay responsive, and resist the temptation to panic-react your way into worse problems.

I’ve watched brilliant people make terrible decisions in the middle of storms because they were so desperate to make the discomfort stop that they grabbed at the first solution that presented itself.
They pivoted their entire business model after one bad quarter.
They blew up a relationship because they couldn’t tolerate the tension of uncertainty.
They abandoned their vision because it got hard.

Weathering a storm means accepting that some things are out of your control while staying active in the things that aren’t.

You can’t stop the storm, but you can:

Protect your energy.
This is not the time to take on new commitments or push yourself to maintain “business as usual.”
Give yourself permission to focus on essentials.

Stay connected.
Isolation is the enemy of resilience. Reach out. Ask for help. Let people know you’re struggling.
The vulnerability you show now will deepen your relationships later.

Look for the small wins.
You don’t need to solve everything today.
You need to take one right action, then another, then another.
Progress compounds.

After the Storm: Mining the Meaning

Every storm deposits something. Sometimes it’s wreckage that needs clearing. Sometimes it’s nutrients that will feed next season’s growth. Your job is to examine what’s been left behind.

The entrepreneurs I know who’ve built the strongest businesses didn’t do it by avoiding failure. They did it by getting exceptionally good at learning from it. Each setback became data. Each crisis revealed something they didn’t know about themselves, their market, or their model.

The question isn’t “Why did this happen to me?”
The question is “What does this make possible that wasn’t possible before?”

Maybe the storm cleared out deadwood – projects that were draining energy without producing results, relationships that had run their course, assumptions that were holding you back. Maybe it revealed strengths you didn’t know you had. Maybe it showed you who really has your back.

Coming out positive doesn’t mean pretending the storm didn’t hurt.
It means refusing to let the hurt be the only thing that defines what happened.

The storms will come. They always do.

The only real question is: When the next one arrives, who will you be?
Someone who merely survives it, or someone who uses it to become more of who you’re meant to be?

Start preparing now. Not because you’re pessimistic, but because you’re committed to staying in the game no matter what the weather brings.

Before You Do, Remember Who You’re Becoming

By Laura Berman Fortgang on January 25, 2026

Every January, millions of people launch into action. They join gyms, open blank documents for that novel they’ve been meaning to write, or register their LLC for the side hustle that’s going to change everything.

By February, most have stopped.

The problem isn’t lack of willpower or poor planning. It’s that they’re trying to change their actions without first transforming their identity.

The Identity-Action Gap

Here’s what typically happens: You decide you want to lose 30 pounds, so you buy meal prep containers and download a fitness app. You want to write a novel, so you block out time on your calendar and create the perfect workspace. You’re ready to launch that consulting business, so you design business cards and build a website.

These are all smart actions.
But they’re built on a foundation of sand.

When you take action without first shifting who you believe yourself to be, every choice becomes an internal negotiation. The alarm goes off at 5:30 AM for your workout, and you have to convince yourself – again – that you’re the kind of person who does this. You sit down to write, but that blank page mocks you because you don’t yet believe you’re actually a writer. You need to make sales calls for your new business, but impostor syndrome screams that you’re just pretending to be an entrepreneur.

This exhausting internal debate is why most ambitious goals fail. You’re constantly fighting against your own self-concept.

The Power of Identity-First Change

Consider weight loss. Most people approach it as a behavior problem: “I need to eat less and move more.” But sustainable transformation happens when you shift from “I’m trying to lose weight” to “I’m someone who takes care of my body.”

That subtle shift changes everything. When you’re someone who takes care of your body, choosing the salad isn’t deprivation; it’s consistency with who you are. Missing a workout creates genuine discomfort because it conflicts with your identity, not because you’re failing at a resolution.

The same principle applies to writing your novel. You don’t need to wait until you’re published to be a writer. You become a writer the moment you decide that’s who you are. Real writers write on days they don’t feel inspired. They protect their writing time. They study this craft. Once you embody that identity, sitting down to write becomes natural rather than forced.

And for your side hustle? Stop “trying to start a business” and start being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs solve problems. They learn from failure. They show up consistently even when results are slow. When that’s who you are – not what you’re attempting – the difficult actions become expressions of identity rather than items on a to-do list.

How to Shift Your Beingness

This isn’t about positive thinking or affirmations. It’s about genuine identity transformation.

1. Define the identity clearly.
Don’t just say “I want to be healthy.” Get specific: “I’m someone who honors my body’s needs, makes conscious food choices, and moves daily because it feels good.”

2. Find your evidence.
Your brain needs proof. Identify any moment (no matter how small) when you’ve already been this person. That time you took the stairs? That counts. The paragraph you wrote last Tuesday? Evidence. The helpful advice you gave a friend? Entrepreneurial.

3. Make identity-consistent choices.
Ask yourself throughout the day: “What would the person I’m becoming do right now?” Then do that thing, even when it’s small, especially when it’s small.

4. Speak it into existence.
Change your language. Not “I’m trying to lose weight,” but “I take care of my body.” Not “I want to write a book,” but “I’m writing a book.” Not “I’m thinking about starting a business,” but “I’m an entrepreneur building my business.”

The Truth About Tough Actions

Yes, losing weight requires tough choices. Writing a novel demands discipline and vulnerability. Building a business means facing rejection and uncertainty.

Here’s what makes those tough actions infinitely easier: Alignment.

When your actions flow from a clear sense of who you are, they stop feeling like obligations and start feeling like integrity. You’re not forcing yourself to do hard things; you’re simply being consistent with who you’ve become.

The action is still challenging, but it’s no longer a battle with yourself.

Before you revise your goals or create your action plan, pause.
Get clear on who you’re becoming.
Let that identity settle into your bones.

Then watch how naturally the right actions follow.