Wherever You Go, There You Are
There’s a famous saying we’ve all heard: wherever you go, there you are. And here I am in a [music] storage cupboard.
What are you doing in there?
I’m filming a YouTube video.
In a storage cupboard? Why?
It’s unorthodox.
Okay. Well, we had a whole box of Uncrustables. Have you seen them?
No. No, I don’t think I haven’t seen them. Sorry. Is there something I can do for you? Because I’m trying to…
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Here is a summary of the transcript from YouTube, slightly edited with AI.
You Can’t Escape Yourself
Look, you can move to a new country, change your friendship circle, date a new person, get a new job, hide away in a storage cupboard—but who you are didn’t change.
So the moment you get triggered again in the old [music] way, you’re back to where you started, feeling out of control of your mind and your emotions, and stuck [music] with the one person you can never get away from: yourself.
These are my Uncrustables.
The Feeling of Being Stuck With Yourself
Have you ever felt like no matter what you do, you are stuck with you? This can make us feel hopeless, like wishing that one day life is going to be different for us is futile.
That we will always struggle to feel like we are in the driver’s seat in our dating lives, because we are always just a few hours away from feeling uncertain and anxious again when someone doesn’t text us back.
Or we know from past experience that in our dealings with people in general, we are always just one [expletive] moment away from being ashamed at our inability to stick up for ourselves and wishing that we had said something different in the moment—something a more confident person would have said.
Introduction: Experience, Coaching, and Change
I am Matthew Hussey and I have been a coach for tens of thousands of people in the last 18 years of my life, millions online.
And when you have coached people for that long, you become humbled by how hard and how scary real change actually is.
Over time, you learn to become allergic to the kind of language that suggests someone who is anxious is going to learn one special technique and they’ll never be anxious again—for real this time.
But there is a rule that I have been coaching and using for myself for the last few years of my life that has been one of the simplest ways I’ve found that any of us can genuinely evolve from the person we used to be to a version of ourselves who is having a better experience of life while creating more of the opportunities we want.
I call it the 5% rule.
The Wall: What You Focus On Grows
Before we learn what this rule is and how we apply it, we need to talk about the wall.
Mario Andretti famously said of Formula 1 driving that if you don’t want to crash the car, don’t focus on the wall—because your car goes where your eyes go.
This is a concept used in self-development for a long time, but it has become so cliché that it has lost its potency. And yet it is one of the most important concepts there is.
All of us learned at some point in our lives that life is a certain way. If we grew up with parents who could turn at any moment, our nervous system became programmed for that reality.
We may later second-guess every move of our partner, try to make them happy, and intermittently ask, “Are you mad at me?” anytime they go a little quiet.
We might struggle to ever truly relax into safety in a relationship.
The Client and the Pattern of Abandonment
Or you could be like my client who learned through her experiences that people always wind up abandoning you. So, in order to protect herself from getting hurt, she pushed people away before they could deliver the final blow of rejection.
This manifested clearly when a guy she was seeing, who by all accounts things were going well with, arranged a small get-together with friends and didn’t invite her.
This moment of feeling left out ignited all of her fears that he didn’t feel the same way she did. So she sent him an abrupt and angry message while he was with his friends, saying, “Why didn’t you invite me?”
He responded that it was just an overdue get-together with old friends, and asked if he could call her later. She shot back, “Don’t bother.”
When he didn’t call over the next couple of days, her belief was confirmed: everyone would always eventually wind up hurting her.
The Booknook: Staring at the Wall
There’s a phenomenon at play here best explained in the booknook.
Welcome friends to the booknook with me, Matthew Hussey. I did happen to write an entire piece on staring at the wall in this book.
I talk about an experience I had one evening out with my brothers where I almost got into an altercation with someone I perceived as a threatening presence.
Luckily, someone with my best interests at heart stopped anything from happening.
But afterwards I felt angry at my brothers because I thought: why am I the only one who sees what was about to happen?
I used to wonder how my brothers survived without me around. Then I realized they didn’t find themselves in situations like this.
For me, historically, these situations were everywhere. For them, they weren’t.
Why? Because I was staring at the wall, and they were not—at least not the wall I kept staring at.
And when there was no wall in sight, I still unconsciously scanned for it.
What I didn’t realize was I wasn’t just experiencing a different reality—I was creating it.
Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it. And sooner or later, you’ll think the wall is just life.
We must be careful about the normal we create for ourselves.
Don’t let your wall become your world.
My wall was constant vigilance—always scanning for danger, always looking for threat.
And that becomes a problem because there is always someone in a room who could be dangerous. But I was filtering reality through that lens everywhere I went.
When You Don’t Know Your Wall
What if you don’t even know what your wall is?
What if there is a subconscious belief system directing your dating life that keeps leading you to crash into the same wall, but you don’t know what it is?
We just know that every time we go out there and try to find love, it never seems to go our way.
The Destructive Narrative
What you’re really talking about is having a destructive narrative in your love life, but you may not even know what it is.
My guess is it leads to overinvesting too quickly, and getting attracted to the wrong qualities in someone, only realizing it when you are already emotionally invested.
You’re reading me like a book.
Anyone who relates to this—I need you to go and watch something called Dating with Results at datingwithres.com.
The Wall Becomes the Worldview
Whatever wall you’re looking for, you’ll find it—even where it doesn’t exist.
Like my client who wasn’t invited to a gathering and interpreted it as rejection.
The wall costs us other versions of life we could be living if we widened our gaze.
We crash into the same wall so many times that we stop believing anything else is possible.
Beliefs and Limitations
There are two things tied into the wall: what we believe the world is like, and what we believe about our own limitations.
This is where the 5% rule comes in.
Change is hard. I cannot just magically become a different person. But I can do something slightly different than I normally would.
The 5% Shift in Action
Take my client on the day of the gathering she wasn’t invited to.
Her nervous system was fully activated. A fight-or-flight response took over, releasing adrenaline and cortisol.
She asked abruptly, “Why didn’t you invite me?”—a fight response.
Then she moved to flight: “Don’t bother.”
She rejected him before he could hurt her further.
But what if she had done something just 5% different?
Not radically different—just slightly.
Maybe instead of “don’t bother,” she said “sure.” Not perfect, but different.
Or later she could have said, “Hey, I’d like to talk if you’re still free.”
5% Different Thinking
Your reality is not the only reality. It is just the track you’ve been on.
You can do something different—and different leads to different.
When overwhelmed, instead of catastrophizing, remind yourself: not everything is urgent.
Some things take days, months, even years.
The 5% Rule in Daily Life
When people don’t reply, instead of assuming the worst, send one more message, make one call, or consider another interpretation.
Be 5% more generous. 5% less reactive. 5% more open.
That small shift doesn’t just change the moment—it changes your trajectory.
Like two motorcycles diverging by just a few degrees, the destination becomes completely different over time.
Conclusion
A 5% shift in how you show up can change your entire life trajectory.
Thank you for watching.
Leave a comment about one situation where you could act 5% differently.
I’ll see you next week.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
Blog → https://www.howtogettheguy.com/blog/ Facebook → https://facebook.com/CoachMatthewHussey Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/thematthewh… Twitter → https://twitter.com/matthewhussey ▼ Connect with Stephen ▼ Youtube → https://bit.ly/StephenHusseyYoutube Instagram → http://bit.ly/StephenHusseyIG
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