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Last night, on my fourth day in Thailand, I found myself in a situation that my 21-day training plan did not prepare me for.
I was vomiting, feeling terrible and quickly realising that I had most likely picked up food poisoning.
Anyone who has experienced it knows there is nothing glamorous about it. One moment you are contemplating tomorrow, training, schedules and what you want to achieve, and the next moment your body has entirely different plans for you.
I arrived in Phuket with an obvious purpose. I made a conscious decision that for 21 days I would train, learn, push myself and find out what I am still capable of doing as I approach my 54th birthday.
I wanted to train alongside people who come here from all over the world, many of them much younger than me, and experience this environment properly rather than observe it from the outside.
Some people come to Phuket and stay for weeks or even months just to train. They wake up, train, recover and then do it again. There is something about seeing that dedication around you every day that makes you question your standards.
My original plan was two training sessions a day, and that is what I had been doing. But when I opened my eyes the morning after being sick, suddenly the plan looked entirely unique.
I was lying in bed, and, for a moment, I started negotiating with myself.
You know that conversation because I think all of us have had it.
Maybe today I should stay here. Maybe the pain is my body telling me to stop. I was sick last night. Nobody would blame me. I can always train tomorrow.
And the intriguing thing was that every one of those statements was reasonable.
I really had been sick. I really did need to consider my health. I am almost 54, not 24, and recovery is something I take seriously.
Nobody at the gym was waiting outside my room to drag me to training, and nobody back home would have known whether I trained that morning or stayed in bed.
That is when something occurred to me.
Sometimes the most dangerous excuses we make are not lies. Sometimes they are entirely true.
You are truly exhausted. You really did have a difficult week. Your business really is struggling. Somebody really did hurt you.
You really don’t have as much time as somebody else. You really are getting older. Your circumstances really are difficult.
The problem is not necessarily whether your reason is true. The question is what you decide to do with that truth.
For me, that morning, I had three choices. I could compel myself to endure two sessions to demonstrate my resilience, which, following an episode of food poisoning, would have been unwise.
I could stay in bed all day and use what happened the night before as permission to abandon the plan completely. Or I could listen to my body, adjust the plan and still do something.
So, I got up.
I decided that instead of two training sessions, I would do one.
That might not sound particularly heroic, and that’s exactly the point.
When I arrived at training, Coach Woody said something that stayed with me. He explained that professional athletes often train twice per day and told me that what I was doing at my age was admirable.
I appreciated the compliment, but it sparked another internal dialogue about age, discipline, and especially limitations.
How do we know what our limitations are?
I’m surrounded here by young people from different parts of the world. Some are incredibly fit. Some are fighters. Some are faster, stronger and younger than me, and I’m sure many of them can recover much faster than I can.
I have absolutely no problem admitting that because I haven’t come to Thailand to pretend, I’m 24 years old again.
I came here to discover what a man approaching 54 can still do.
There is a big difference.
As we get older, I think sometimes we start creating limitations before we have even tested them. We tell ourselves that certain things are no longer for us.
Maybe we’re too old to start training.
Too old to change careers.
Too old to start a business.
Too old to travel alone.
Too old to learn something completely new.
Perhaps some limitations are genuine. Eventually all of us will encounter them.
But I would rather not invent mine.
I want to discover them.
And you cannot discover your limitations from the comfort of your bed. You need to begin something. You need to try. You need to put yourself into situations where you don’t already know the answer.
Thailand is doing that for me now, but I have experienced the same lesson in many different forms throughout my life.
When I walked the Camino, there were moments of pain, exhaustion and uncertainty in a country where I didn’t know everything around me and couldn’t control what the next day would bring.
People could encourage me and people could offer me advice, but nobody could walk those kilometres on my behalf. When your feet hurt, they are your own. When the road keeps going, eventually you have to decide whether to keep going with it.
Military training taught me another version of that lesson. War exposed me to circumstances that I would never wish on anyone. Business taught me again. Boxing continues to teach me.
Different environments, different stakes, different stages of my life, but one principle keeps returning.
Eventually, you are left with yourself.
We live in an extraordinary time because advice is everywhere. Pick up your phone and within minutes somebody will tell you how to become successful, wealthy, disciplined, confident, fit or happy.
There are coaches, gurus, motivational speakers, podcasts, books and endless short videos explaining what you should do with your life.
Some of them are excellent. I have coached myself, and I believe enormously in learning from people who have genuine experience.
But even the greatest coach on this planet cannot make your decision for you.
They can show you the door, but eventually you must walk through it.
You can watch motivational videos every morning and still change absolutely nothing. You can read fifty books about discipline and remain undisciplined. You can listen to podcasts about entrepreneurship for ten years and never start the business you’ve been talking about.
Information without action eventually becomes entertainment.
And action begins when you stop waiting for somebody else to give you permission.
That was what I was thinking about while training that morning in Phuket. Nobody could have carried me into that gym.
Nobody could make me throw another punch. Nobody could force me to keep the commitment I had made before coming to Thailand.
And there is another part of this story that perhaps makes me uncomfortable, but it needs to be said.
I could fake this entire challenge online.
I could record enough footage from a few training sessions, edit it properly, add some dramatic music and post clips every day showing everyone how hard Mario is training in Thailand.
People watching from Australia, Europe, America or anywhere else would have no idea whether I trained twice that day, once or not at all.
But I would know.
For me, that changes everything.
If I am asking people to follow these 21 days, especially men and women who may be questioning what is still possible as they get older, then I don’t want to sell them another beautifully edited fantasy from social media. There is already enough of that.
I want to show the good training sessions, but I also want to talk about food poisoning. I want to talk about recovery.
I want to talk about mornings when getting out of bed isn’t exciting. I want to show what happens when the plan needs to change because real life has arrived and doesn’t care about your schedule.
Because perhaps that is where discipline lives.
Not in the dramatic moments when everybody is watching, but in those quiet negotiations we have with ourselves when nobody would know if we gave up.
As I approach 54, I’m beginning to see discipline differently. It isn’t about destroying yourself to prove that you’re strong, and it certainly isn’t about ignoring your health. Sometimes discipline means pushing harder, but sometimes it means having enough maturity to reduce two sessions to one and still honour the bigger commitment.
More importantly, discipline isn’t one decision you make on Monday morning and then somehow possess for the rest of your life.
You must decide again tomorrow.
And then again, the next day.
There will be days when you feel strong and days when you don’t.
There will be setbacks, sickness, disappointment, fear, people who doubt you and moments when you doubt yourself.
Life will change the plan without asking for your permission.
Nobody can promise you otherwise.
But you still get to decide what happens next.
That is perhaps what Thailand is teaching me four days into this challenge. I came here thinking I would investigate training, discipline, recovery and what my body could still achieve approaching 54. Instead, I’m already discovering something much more personal.
Nobody is coming to live my life for me.
Nobody walked my Camino.
Nobody fought my battles. Nobody built my business for me.
Nobody can do my training here in Phuket, and nobody can make tomorrow morning’s decision on my behalf.
The same applies to you, whatever your battlefield happens to be.
You can give up today, and perhaps nobody will stop you. You may even have a completely legitimate reason for doing it.
But there is another side to that truth which I find incredibly powerful.
If the decision to stop belongs to you, so does the decision to continue.
Last night I was vomiting. This morning I got out of bed and went to training.
I didn’t conquer the world. I didn’t break a record. I didn’t prove that I’m indestructible, because I’m not.
I simply adjusted the plan and continued.
And maybe, in real life, that is what discipline looks like far more often than the version we see online.
No dramatic speech. No audience. No applause.
Just a decision you made for yourself – and tomorrow morning, the opportunity to make it again.
Life is the battlefield. And sooner or later, every battlefield leaves you standing in front of the same person: yourself.
