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Have you ever done the right thing.

Gone all in.

Given everything you had.

And watched it get worse instead of better?

That is exactly where Moses was in Exodus 6.

And honestly — it is where I have been lately too.

More on that in a moment.

What I am reading. What I am watching. What I am learning. What I am writing.

👉 This week they all seem to point at the same uncomfortable truth.

Going back is not failure.

Sometimes going back is the whole job.

Let's get into it.

And it is.

But not in the way I expected.

🐯 WHAT ANIMALS KNOW THAT WE FORGOT

Levine points out something I had never really thought about.

Watch a wild animal after it escapes a predator.

It does not just run away and carry on.

It shakes.

It trembles.

It sweats.

It physically discharges whatever built up during the threat.

And then it goes back to normal.

Completely.

Like nothing happened.

Now think about what I see when an athlete comes back to the dugout after a bad at bat.

Or a costly error.

Or a strikeout with the game on the line.

🔒 They carry it.

Into the next inning.

Into the next at bat.

Into the next weekend.

Levine's argument is that humans fail to complete what animals do without thinking.

We freeze instead.

We hold the energy in.

We tell ourselves to push through.

And that stress does not go anywhere.

It sits in the nervous system.

Waiting.

To show up as tightness in the hands.

Shallowness in the breath.

Noise between the ears.

⚡ I WONDER IF THIS IS WHAT I AM REALLY SEEING

I have spent 25 years watching athletes perform below what I know they are capable of.

And I have always assumed it was a mental preparation problem.

Reading this book I am starting to think it might be more physical than that.

More biological.

The body holding onto something the athlete never had a chance to discharge.

I am still processing this.

But it is changing how I observe athletes in pressure situations.

Not what they are thinking.

🎯 What their body is still carrying.

I could not turn this one off.

Harold Reynolds sat down with Matt Barnes and Nick Swisher at MLB All-Star Weekend in Philadelphia.

And said things that most people in baseball today are too careful to say out loud.

🔥 WHAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION

Harold made an argument about analytics that I have been thinking about ever since.

He said the eye test still matters more than the analytics era wants to admit.

And what he meant — at least the way I heard it —

Is that there are things happening inside an athlete that no data point has ever captured.

What they do when it gets hard.

Whether they go back after a bad play.

Whether they compete from a clean slate.

Or whether they are still carrying the last moment into the next one.

🎯 No exit velocity metric measures that.

No launch angle stat captures it.

But anybody who has coached long enough has seen it.

THE MOMENT THAT STAYED WITH ME

Harold talked about his first broadcast on Baseball Tonight.

It went badly.

He had followed every technical note he had been given about delivery and enunciation.

And it was unwatchable.

Thirty seconds before his second broadcast went live Chris Berman pulled him aside and told him the truth.

Then gave him the only piece of advice that changed his entire career.

💥 "Be yourself. Do not do anything else."

I am not sure that is just a broadcasting lesson.

I think that is the hardest thing for any athlete to do under pressure.

To just be who they actually are.

Instead of who they think the moment demands them to be.

I keep coming back to this chapter.

Moses had already gone to Pharaoh.

He did what he was called to do.

Delivered the message.

Took the risk.

📖 And it got worse.

Not better.

Worse.

The Israelites were suffering more than before.

Their workload increased.

And they turned on Moses.

"You have made us a stench to Pharaoh."

Moses went back to God and said —

"The Israelites will not listen to me. Why would Pharaoh?"

Exodus 6:12.

And I find that honest.

Not a lack of faith.

Just a man who did the right thing.

Watched it backfire.

And asked a very reasonable question.

What is the point?

What God said back is the part I cannot stop thinking about.

Not an explanation.

Not a reason why it went badly.

Not a timeline for when it would get better.

Just this.

"Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh."

Exodus 6:1.

Go back.

That is the whole answer.

⚡ I do not know what the equivalent of Pharaoh looks like in your life right now.

But I have been sitting with the idea that sometimes the answer to things getting harder is not a new strategy.

Not a better plan.

Not more information.

Just going back.

One more time.

And seeing what happens.

What I did not fully anticipate was spending most of the year trying to make it actually happen.

Sponsorship proposals.

Partnership outreach.

Conversations that restart from the beginning.

Emails that go unanswered for weeks.

Plans that have to be rebuilt.

🇯🇵 Nobody sees that part.

And I am not writing this to complain about it.

I am writing this because I keep thinking about Moses.

He went back to Pharaoh.

Not because the first visit went well.

Not because he had a better strategy the second time.

Because the work required it.

That is where I am with Japan right now.

🎯 Going back.

Every time something does not land.

Trying again.

Because that is what this requires.

Levine says the body holds onto what we never discharged.

Harold Reynolds went back in front of a camera after a broadcast that did not work.

And just tried to be himself.

📖 Moses did what he was called to do.

Watched it make everything worse.

And heard God say —

"Now you will see what I will do."

Exodus 6:1.

I am still writing proposals for Japan.

Still going back to conversations that have not gone anywhere yet.

⚡ And I am trying to stay curious about what happens next.

Rather than frustrated by what has not happened yet.

Because if Exodus 6 teaches me anything.

It is that the hardest part of the process is almost never the beginning.

And almost never the end.

🔑 It is the middle.

Where you have already done the work.

And cannot yet see what it is building toward.

Go back anyway.

Now you will see.

Stay with it. ⚾