Why Your Life Keeps Going Around in Circles

You might be listening to the wrong people. Or asking the right people the wrong questions.

Picture yourself five years from now.

Same job you were trying to leave, or a new one that feels exactly like it. Same money worries you keep meaning to solve. Same vague goal you have restarted four times. Same arguments with yourself about which direction is the right one.

Because everybody has an opinion about your life, and the opinions do not agree.

One person tells you to play it safe. Another tells you to bet on yourself. Your uncle says buy real estate. A guy at the gym says start a business. A podcast says follow your passion. A friend says passion is how you go broke.

So you change direction again. You take the advice that sounded most confident in the moment. You make some progress, then stall, then doubt it, then trade it for the next confident-sounding answer.

The engine is running. You are burning fuel. You are exhausted from all the activity.

And you are still in the same stretch of ocean.

I know that place. I have spent real time in it. And I know people who are still there, moving hard and going nowhere, because they handed the wheel to whoever was talking loudest that week.

The Brickmaker Who Knew About Bricks

One of my favorite self-help books is George S. Clason’s The Richest Man in Babylon.​

I love the format. It’s a collection of short fictional tales set in ancient Babylon, offering lessons you might receive from a good mentor, in language that hasn’t gone stale.

There’s a story in it that did something to me the first time I read it, because I already knew the principle. I’d lived it. I just didn’t have a clean way to say it.

A man named Arkad has worked hard and saved some money. Wanting to grow his savings, he entrusts them to a brickmaker named Azmur, who is traveling overseas and agrees to buy precious jewels that can be resold at a profit.

There’s just one problem.

The brickmaker doesn’t know the jewel business.

He comes back with worthless glass.

Arkad’s savings are gone.

When Arkad’s mentor, a moneylender named Algamish, hears what happened, he asks the question that cuts to the center of it:

Later, Algamish asks whether Arkad still takes advice from brickmakers.

Arkad answers simply:

I love that line.

The brickmaker may be excellent at making bricks. He might know more about them than anyone else in Babylon.

But that doesn’t make him qualified to evaluate precious jewels.

That one distinction can save you an enormous amount of trouble.

And once I recognized it, I began seeing it everywhere.

The Jobsite Taught Me the Same Thing

I had a reasonably happy and successful career as a union electrician, and I saw this pattern constantly.

Tradespeople confidently advising one another outside their own trade.

A carpenter explaining to an electrician how the electrical work should be done. A plumber weighing in on framing. Somebody who has never pulled wire telling you exactly how long your part of the job should take.

The strange part is that these are often smart, capable people.

That’s what makes the pattern easy to miss.

They’re genuinely good at their own craft, so their confidence sounds earned. It just doesn’t necessarily transfer to the subject they’re discussing.

Different trades require different bodies of knowledge, even when everybody is building the same building.

An electrician and a carpenter both show up to the same jobsite. Both want the same finished project. But what each one understands is specific to the work they’ve learned to perform.

And here’s the nuance, because it matters.

Every once in a while, an outsider notices something useful. A fresh set of eyes catches what the people deep in the work have stopped seeing.

A wise electrician considers the observation.

But he also considers whether the person offering advice actually understands the work.

Confidence is not the same as competence.

Recognizing that difference can keep you out of a lot of trouble.

From the Sidelines It Looks Easy

The martial arts mat taught me the same lesson from another direction.

I’ve watched lower belts standing along the edge of the mat while two advanced practitioners sparred, explaining what one of them should have done differently.

They could see the answer.

From where they stood, the escape was obvious.

What they couldn’t feel was the timing. The pressure. The hundred small adjustments someone makes while another trained person is actively trying to stop them.

Distance. Resistance. Weight. Fatigue.

An opponent’s reaction changing the problem in an instant.

Watching, understanding, and performing are three different things.

They’re related, but they aren’t the same.

And this connects directly to your life.

There are people who can tell you, with total confidence, what you should have done with your career, your money, your marriage, your body, or your business.

And some of them have never spent a single round inside the kind of problem you’re actually living.

That doesn’t make them bad people.

It means they may be spectators to your situation.

And spectators often think the escape is obvious.

Everyone You Love Has an Opinion

This is the hard part.

A lot of the advice I’ve received over the years came from people I love.

Family. Friends. People who genuinely wanted the best for me.

Some suggestions were helpful. Some weren’t. Much of it was well-intentioned.

Here’s what I had to sort out.

Affection and expertise are both valuable.

But they aren’t interchangeable.

Someone can love you completely and still know very little about the decision you’re trying to make.

Their concern for you is real.

Their understanding of your field, your goals, or your circumstances may be limited.

And because you love them back, their opinion can carry tremendous weight.

Sometimes more weight than the evidence behind it deserves.

You can end up surrounded by people who genuinely care about you and disagree about everything you should do.

One thinks you should stay where you are.

Another thinks you should leave.

Someone tells you to take the risk.

Someone else warns you that you’ll regret it.

You listen to everybody.

You second-guess yourself.

You keep changing your plans.

And before long, you’re no closer to making a decision.

That’s a difficult situation.

But eventually, you have to decide who’s responsible for steering your life.

Even the People Who Taught Me Had Limits

One of the most important teachers in my life was Grandmaster Bong Soo Han.​

I studied Hapkido under him for roughly twenty years.

He was one of the most remarkable martial artists I’ve ever known, and he shaped me in ways I’m still discovering.

I’ll be grateful to him for the rest of my life.

Part of growing as a student, though, was recognizing something important about expertise.

Being extraordinary in one area doesn’t automatically make someone extraordinary in every other area.

Grandmaster Han possessed deep knowledge and skill in Hapkido. That’s why I valued the opportunity to study under him.

His expertise was genuine and deserved respect.

But like any human being, even an exceptional teacher has a finite range of knowledge and experience.

That doesn’t diminish the expertise he possessed.

It simply reminds us that mastery is specific.

Respecting someone’s accomplishments doesn’t require assuming they possess equally developed expertise in every subject.

The same applies to people with advanced academic credentials.

I’ve met individuals with Ph.D.s who possessed remarkable knowledge within their specialties.

But ask them questions outside those fields, and sometimes they were as uncertain as anyone else.

That makes sense.

Deep specialization is expensive.

It requires years of study, practice, mistakes, and sustained attention.

Every hour spent developing one capability is an hour unavailable for something else.

Expertise has an opportunity cost.

That’s a human limitation, rather than a criticism of education or experts.

We all have finite bandwidth.

And the same rule applies to you.

Becoming genuinely good at something requires sustained investment.

Which means you have to choose where to put yours.

The Cost of Another Lap

So what does it actually cost to keep going in circles?

Years.

That’s the currency.

You try a direction. It doesn’t immediately work.

You ask for advice.

You receive four conflicting answers.

You pick the one that sounds most convincing.

You change direction.

You stall.

You ask again.

And the cycle repeats.

Meanwhile, the months keep passing.

The career change never happens.

The business never gets tested.

The skill you wanted to master remains something you’ll get around to someday.

And somewhere beneath all that activity, a quiet belief begins taking shape.

Maybe I’m just not capable of doing this.

Maybe change isn’t possible for me.

Maybe this is simply how my life is supposed to be.

That’s the real danger.

Going in circles can cost you more than time.

It can slowly erode your confidence in your own judgment.

There’s another book I keep returning to that offers a useful perspective on this problem.

And it comes from a place you might never expect.

The Submarine That Almost Couldn’t Turn

L. David Marquet commanded the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered attack submarine.

When he took command, he encountered the limitations of a traditional leader-follower model.

The captain gave orders.

The crew followed them.

That structure has an important place in military operations, but Marquet discovered what could happen when following orders became a substitute for thinking.

In a pivotal incident, he ordered an increase in propulsion speed that wasn’t available in the way he expected on that submarine.

The officer responsible passed the order along, although the crew knew it couldn’t be carried out as directed.

When Marquet investigated why the order had been repeated, the explanation was essentially:

Think about that.

These were trained professionals operating an extraordinarily sophisticated machine.

Yet their established habits encouraged passing along an impossible instruction because it came from the captain.

Marquet recognized that something needed to change.

He began developing what he called a leader-leader model.

People learned their responsibilities deeply.

They understood the mission.

They developed competence and exercised judgment within their legitimate authority.

The captain remained accountable, but leadership no longer meant that every useful decision had to originate with him.

There’s an important personal lesson here.

How many decisions have you made because someone else told you to?

Because your parents expected it?

Because a respected teacher recommended it?

Because a friend sounded confident?

Because someone with a title or impressive credentials said it was the right thing to do?

Sometimes those people are right.

Sometimes they understand something you don’t.

But their advice still deserves consideration rather than automatic obedience.

You need to ask:

• Who actually knows this territory?
• What evidence supports the recommendation?
• Does their experience apply to my situation?
• Or am I asking a brickmaker about jewels?

Developing that judgment is part of becoming responsible for your own life.

Listen Closely, Because This Is the Counterweight

There’s another side to this lesson that deserves equal attention.

Someone without credentials can still be right.

A beginner can notice something an expert has overlooked.

Someone you dislike can tell you something true.

And an expert can make a mistake.

So dividing the world into people who are qualified to speak and people you should ignore creates another problem.

You might miss genuinely valuable information.

The better approach is to evaluate the claim itself.

Consider the evidence.

Consider the person’s experience.

Ask whether their advice fits your circumstances.

And remain willing to examine your own assumptions.

You can respect someone without agreeing with everything they say.

You can value another person’s concern without following their recommendations.

You can disagree with someone while still learning from them.

And you can appreciate expert guidance while accepting responsibility for your final decision.

That’s discernment.

The Life You Can Steer Toward

Now imagine the alternative to going around in circles.

You know what direction you’re heading because you’ve chosen it deliberately.

You recognize whose advice deserves particular weight in different areas.

You understand that expertise has boundaries.

And you’ve developed enough confidence to consider the evidence and make thoughtful decisions.

You’ll still make mistakes.

Everybody does.

But you’ll have a better chance of learning from them instead of repeatedly changing course whenever another confident voice enters the conversation.

You can make steady progress.

You can spend more time developing capabilities you actually value.

And you can stop allowing other people’s expectations to consume so much of your limited time and attention.

That’s what discernment can give you.

Greater confidence.

More meaningful progress.

And the satisfaction of knowing that you’re making decisions about a life you’ve deliberately chosen.

⚔️ The Dojo Drill: Who Gets a Vote?

Here are three questions to consider this week.

1. Direction

Is this genuinely my goal, or am I following someone else’s expectations for my life?

2. Expertise

Whose advice am I following, and what relevant experience or evidence supports it?

3. Investment

Am I prepared to devote the time and attention required to develop the capability I actually want?

That last question matters.

Becoming genuinely good at something takes time. And every commitment you make means choosing how to use part of your limited life.

Then identify one small, responsible move toward a direction you’ve chosen.

You don’t have to figure out your entire life this week.

You can listen to a hundred people tell you where to steer.

But you’re the one who has to live with where your ship ends up.

📚 From the Leader’s Library

​Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders — L. David Marquet​

Why?

Most people spend their lives waiting for instructions, following expectations, or repeating habits they’ve never questioned. But Marquet challenges us to think differently: stop being a passive follower and start taking responsibility for the direction of our own lives.

Turn the Ship Around! tells the remarkable story of how a Navy captain transformed the culture of a struggling submarine by replacing blind obedience with initiative, competence, and shared responsibility. Through the simple but powerful phrase “I intend to…”, Marquet shows how leadership can develop at every level.

It’s a reminder that personal leadership isn’t about having all the answers or holding a position of authority. It’s about learning to think for yourself, making deliberate decisions, and developing the courage and competence to steer your own course.