I had two years as a professional cricketer.

I should have had more.

People told me I was going to play for England.

I believed them.

But I didn’t do what was required.

The habits weren’t there.

The preparation wasn’t there.

The work ethic wasn’t there.

And when it ended, I spent two years blaming everyone else.

The coaches.

The selectors.

The system.

Anyone but me.

Then something shifted.

I’m not sure exactly when.

But the moment I stopped pointing outward and started looking inward, everything changed.

I call it a failed professional cricket career.

And I mean that in the most positive way I know.

Because that failure, once I owned it completely, became the most powerful catalyst of my life.

It gave me energy.

It gave me focus.

It gave me a direction I wouldn’t have found any other way.

I understood something in that moment that I now try to pass on to every player I work with.

If you want to take 60 wickets this season instead of 25, you have to become a different player.

Because if you were already that player, you’d already have the wickets.

The goal doesn’t change you.

The decision to become someone different does.

I set my sights on coaching at international level.

And I knew immediately that to get there, I had to become a different coach.

Different habits.

Different standards.

Different people around me.

Different questions I was asking myself.

That journey took me to some remarkable places and some remarkable people.

And right now I’m in another moment of becoming.

We’ve just moved out of Birmingham after three and a half years.

A city I loved.

A role at Warwickshire I’m proud of.

A chapter that shaped me enormously.

And now a new one is beginning.

I’m coaching again at the level where it all started for me.

Five year olds finding a cricket ball for the first time.

Adult club cricketers trying to get better at something they love.

The same place I began 27 years ago.

But I’m not the same person who started.

And somewhere in between coaching pathway cricketers and building something online that might reach people I haven’t even met yet, I’m finding that the discomfort of rebuilding feels less like uncertainty and more like direction.

It doesn’t feel like stepping into the unknown.

It feels like stepping into something I haven’t fully become yet.

And I’ve learned to trust that feeling.

Because every time I’ve leaned into it rather than away from it, something better has come from it.

So if you’re sitting with a goal right now that feels out of reach.

Or a version of yourself that feels a long way from where you are today.

Ask yourself one honest question.

What do I need to become in order to get there?

Not what do I need to do.

Who do I need to become.

Because you won’t achieve a new goal as the person you are right now.

You’ll achieve it as the person you decide to become.

That decision is always yours.

And it’s always available.