I’m not much of a Reddit person, but even I haven’t been able to escape one of the more viral types of posts to come out of the platform.

People post the blow-by-blow of an argument with a spouse, a coworker, a neighbor, and end with the same line: Am I overreacting? Thousands of strangers weigh in. The threads get long, the opinions get sharp (even controversial), and the original poster usually walks away with more clarity.

And you know, I find asking myself that question is much more useful before I react at all.

Every August, a new kid would show up to preseason with that look on his face — the one where he's sizing everyone up. Coach Chris included.

Twenty-five years of coaching competitive soccer, and I still caught myself wanting the new kid to like me. Not respect me. Not fear me. Like me.

For a long time, I thought it was a silly instinct. It felt beneath the job or superficial. Especially because these were kids, not my peers. I figured the wanting-to-be-liked part was a leftover from being a kid myself—something to grow out of, not lean into.

Why does it seem so hard to “eat right”?

We have great intentions in the morning but feel deprived and unsatisfied all day, until we break and run through a drive-thru for the greasy satisfaction of a burger and fries. 

When we do, that satisfaction is short-lived, replaced by guilt—even shame. It’s your fault for not trying hard enough, right? For not having the willpower to stick to healthy stuff.

That’s how most people go about it, but it’s really not a sustainable way to approach nutrition habits.

There's a concept in behavioral research called decision fatigue: the idea that the quality of your decisions degrades as the number of decisions you make in a day accumulates.

After years in your role, you start to learn the rhythm of things. That’s never a bad thing—your experience makes certain things second nature. Maybe you get to the point where you think, “man, I could do that with both hands tied behind my back!”

That kind of expertise is invaluable because it is built only through hands-on experience. You have to be in it. And these days, fewer and fewer people stick with their careers long enough to reach that level of know-how.

That’s not knocking the younger generation—work culture has changed—but I think being a “rare breed” of particularly seasoned professionals carries risks with its exclusivity.