Most of us already know what we should be doing.
Exercise more. Eat better. Sleep longer. Put the phone down. Spend more time with the people we love. Stop procrastinating. Finally change the habit we’ve been promising ourselves we’ll change.
Yet knowing rarely seems to be the problem.
So why do we keep getting stuck?
That question opened our latest Crackin’ Backs Podcast conversation with identity coach Daniel Schuler, and it quickly led somewhere deeper than motivation, discipline, or another self-help strategy.
Daniel believes many of our behaviors are driven by something we rarely examine: The story we’ve built about who we are.
The Story Running in the Background
Think about how you describe yourself.
“I’m not disciplined.”
“I’m terrible with money.”
“I avoid conflict.”
“I’ve never been confident.”
“I’m just not that kind of person.”
At some point, a belief can stop feeling like something we learned and start feeling like who we are.
Daniel calls that identity—the story we carry about who we think we are and who we believe other people think we are. That story can quietly influence the goals we chase, the relationships we choose, how we respond to failure and what we believe is possible for our future.
Which leads to a surprisingly powerful question:
Where did I learn that?
Instead of immediately trying to fix a behavior, Daniel encourages people to look for the belief underneath it.
Where did you learn that you weren’t good enough? That failure was embarrassing? That success meant making a certain amount of money? That your value came from winning, looking good or making other people happy?
Sometimes changing your future starts with discovering which parts of your past are still making decisions for you.
What If Your Goals Aren’t Really Yours?
We hear constantly that we need to find our purpose or find our why.
Daniel pushes back on that.
Before finding your “why,” he believes you need to understand your who.
Otherwise, you can spend years successfully pursuing a goal that came from someone else’s expectations—or from an outdated version of yourself.
You get the promotion, money, body, recognition or relationship you thought would finally make you feel successful.
Then you get there.
And somehow, it still doesn’t feel like enough.
Before setting your next goal, ask yourself: If nobody knew I accomplished this, would I still want it?
That question can tell you a lot.
We’ve Become Very Good at Seeming
Social media has made this even harder.
Every day we're surrounded by people who appear successful, confident, wealthy, fit and happy. We compare their carefully selected moments with the unedited reality of our own lives.
Daniel describes the difference as being versus seeming.
The more energy we put into seeming successful, happy or confident, the easier it becomes to lose touch with whether we actually feel that way.
And eventually, a strange question appears:
If people like the version of me I’m projecting, do they actually know me?
That conversation becomes even more important as AI enters nearly every part of our lives.
AI Can Give You an Answer. But Should It Tell You Who You Are?
We can now ask AI what to eat, how to exercise, what career to pursue, how to handle an argument, how to parent and what our next goal should be.
That's powerful.
But what happens when we stop using technology to help us think and start allowing it to think for us?
Daniel believes some of our most valuable skills in the AI era may be distinctly human ones: intuition, empathy, curiosity, reading another person's emotions, tolerating uncertainty and simply being present long enough to have a meaningful conversation.
At one point, he summed it up beautifully:
We don't only need accuracy. We need intimacy.
Sometimes the value of a conversation isn't getting the answer faster. It's what happens between two people while trying to find it.
What Are We Teaching Our Kids About Identity?
That idea becomes especially important for parents.
A child scores three goals, wins a tournament or brings home straight A's. Naturally, we celebrate.
But Daniel suggests celebrating something else too.
Tell them you noticed how hard they worked. How they treated their teammates. How they responded after making a mistake. How they helped someone when nobody was watching.
Because eventually every athlete becomes an ex-athlete. Grades stop. Careers change. Bodies age. Money comes and goes.
If a child's confidence depends entirely on performance, appearance, popularity or achievement, what happens when that thing disappears?
The same question applies to adults.
If your identity is your career, who are you when you retire?
If it's your body, who are you when your body changes?
If it's your money, who are you when business gets difficult?
Real confidence may have much less to do with what you've accomplished and much more to do with knowing who you are when those accomplishments are stripped away.
One Question to Ask Tomorrow Morning
Daniel leaves us with a simple exercise.
Imagine nothing meaningful changes in your life for the next ten years.
Same habits. Same thinking. Same relationships. Same excuses. Same patterns.
Now ask yourself:
If I continue on my current path, am I becoming the person I actually want to become?
If the answer makes you uncomfortable, don't immediately reach for another book, podcast, Google search or AI prompt.
Stay with the question for a minute.
Ask yourself what needs to change, whether you've known for a while that it needs to change and what belief keeps pulling you back into the same pattern.
Then ask:
Where did I learn that belief—and is it still true?
That is only the beginning of our conversation with Daniel Schuler.
In the full episode, we go much deeper into identity, confidence, behavior change, childhood beliefs, social media, AI and mental health, parenting, youth sports, boundaries, relationships, resilience and why knowing what to do is completely different from actually doing it.
If you've ever said, “I know what I need to do. Why can't I just do it?” this conversation is worth your time.
Watch the full episode on the Crackin’ Backs YouTube channel or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
And if someone came to mind while reading this, send them the episode.
Sometimes changing your life doesn't begin with finding another answer. It begins with finally asking yourself the right question.