My Six Pack in Six Months project is, at its core, a behaviour change experiment.

I adopted this goal because, for me, it has an unusually high upside. If it works, I do not just end up looking better. I build strength, improve my health, reduce weight, and perhaps more importantly, prove to myself that I can deliberately change a behaviour that I have struggled with for years.

The urgency came in March 2026.

I caught a lung infection and had to be hospitalised. The experience was serious enough that I could no longer pretend that my health could remain somewhere at the bottom of my priority list.

But something predictable happened after I was discharged.

The urgency disappeared.

I recovered. Life became normal again. Office resumed. Responsibilities returned. And although I logically understood that I needed to exercise, actually doing it remained incredibly difficult.

There were always perfectly reasonable explanations.

I came home late in the evening, tired and hungry. An evening workout felt physically impossible.

My sleep was inconsistent, and waking up at the so-called correct time was itself a struggle.

There was always some reason why today was not the right day.

That was when I started looking at the problem differently.

Before publicly launching the Six Pack in Six Months project, I studied Behaviour Change Architecture through Coursera and completed a certification. From what I learned, I created a 15-step framework for myself.

You can download that framework here.

Although the framework has 15 steps, most of them revolve around one basic idea:

Only action changes the current state.

There is where I am today.

There is where I want to be.

And somewhere between those two points sits resistance.

Friction.

Noise.

Something prevents the action from happening.

The important shift for me was to stop treating that resistance as external.

For years, I could point towards office timings, workload, traffic, tiredness, responsibilities or circumstances. Some of these factors were obviously real. But blaming them did not help me change anything.

So I started asking a different question:

What exactly happens inside me at the moment when I am supposed to act?

That question produced a surprisingly simple answer.

My chair.

I love waking up in the morning, sitting in my chair, opening my laptop and thinking.

I brainstorm.

I write.

I analyse problems.

I create plans.

I try to think my way towards a better life.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this. Writing is almost second nature to me.

The problem was timing.

When I was supposed to go to the gym, my instinct was to sit down and think about going to the gym.

When I wanted to improve my health, I would brainstorm about improving my health.

When I had a problem, I would open my laptop and try to solve it intellectually.

Thinking itself had become a form of comfort.

I began observing that comfort more closely.

What does sitting in the chair feel like?

Where do I feel that comfort physically?

What does getting up in the morning feel like?

Sometimes my head feels heavy. Sometimes my body simply wants to remain still. There is a small but noticeable resistance to changing clothes, putting on my shoes and leaving the house.

Then I imagined the alternative.

Getting up.

Changing clothes.

Going directly to the gym.

What would have to disappear for that to happen?

The answer was uncomfortable.

I had to give up some of the identity I had built around being the person sitting with a laptop, thinking deeply and figuring things out.

I needed to become someone who sometimes acts before analysing.

That led to one of the most useful changes in this experiment:

Reduce the distance between decision and action.

Get up and go.

Do not negotiate.

Do not create an elaborate morning routine.

Do not wait until everything feels right.

If I need to brush later, I can brush later.

If I need to use the washroom, the gym has one.

The goal is simply to prevent another unnecessary decision from appearing between waking up and reaching the gym.

This does not mean I have stopped thinking.

Quite the opposite.

I still think a lot.

I still write a lot.

I still enjoy analysing problems.

I have simply started separating thinking time from action time.

During the evening, at the office, or while writing, I can think as much as I want.

But when the predetermined moment for action arrives, thinking is temporarily suspended.

I am not trying to think less in life.

I am trying to think strategically—and not think when thinking merely delays an action I have already decided to take.

Writing has also changed roles.

Earlier, I used writing primarily to brainstorm endlessly and create increasingly elaborate plans.

Now I am trying to use the same instinct to support behaviour.

I write after acting.

I record what happened.

I observe resistance.

I note what worked and what failed.

Instead of using writing as a substitute for action, I am trying to use it as feedback for the next action.

So far, this has helped.

More importantly, it has helped me adopt a behaviour that previously felt unusually difficult to sustain.

But what happens when I fail?

This is where weekly frequency became important.

My target is not to work out every single day.

My target is three workouts per week.

That means failure is already built into the system.

Missing one morning does not mean the experiment has failed.

It simply creates data.

If I miss a workout, I try to understand why.

What was the resistance that morning?

Was I tired?

Did I sleep late?

Did I sit down with my laptop?

Did I start negotiating with myself?

Did I make the workout unnecessarily complicated?

Instead of turning one missed workout into a judgement about my discipline, I try to treat it as information.

Find the resistance.

Make a small correction.

Try again the next day.

That is probably the biggest shift happening through this project.

I am no longer trying to become motivated enough to exercise.

I am trying to understand what repeatedly prevents the behaviour—and then quietly remove those obstacles one by one.

The six-pack is still the visible goal.

But the more interesting experiment is underneath it:

Can I change the way I behave when the moment for action arrives?

I have adopted Stoicism.

A philosophy practised by emperors, soldiers, statesmen, and people who had to function in environments of uncertainty and stress.

Of course, my life is not unfolding in some extraordinarily high-stakes environment. But I have found Stoicism surprisingly useful.

The biggest lesson I have taken from it is finding inner stability in a world of chaos.

The idea sounds wonderful. But what does it actually mean?

What is the point of philosophy—or, for that matter, of learning anything—if we cannot practise it when we actually need it?

Then I came across Joe Hudson’s live coaching interventions online, and something clicked.

The shift was small, but essential.

I attended my first mindfulness retreat in 2011. I am writing this in 2026. Looking back, I realise that mindfulness by itself has not helped me as much as I once expected it to during difficult moments.

It created the right environment. It taught me to observe.

But I was missing something important: letting things pass without struggling against them.

Then I watched Joe Hudson coaching people through intense emotional experiences. Again and again, I noticed a similar invitation:

Why are you running away from what you are feeling?

Let it be.

Stay with it.

The emotion itself may not be the biggest problem. Much of the suffering seems to come from our desperate struggle to get rid of it.

Anxiety arrives, and I immediately want anxiety to disappear.

Something goes wrong, and I immediately want reality to become different.

Uncertainty appears, and I start searching for certainty.

The struggle begins.

What I am learning now is to experiment with ending that struggle.

Not necessarily the anxiety.

Not necessarily the uncertainty.

Just the struggle against them.

I don’t even want to reassure myself that this too shall pass. Because perhaps it won’t pass as quickly as I want it to. Perhaps the situation will actually become worse before it becomes better.

That isn’t under my control.

But I have found immense value in simply refusing to wrestle with the moment.

Stay in the storm. Let the chaos unfold.

Don’t invite it.

Don’t poke it.

Don’t unnecessarily react to it.

And don’t exhaust yourself trying to make the storm disappear.

Just stay.

Just be.

Perhaps this is what inner stability actually means.

Not living without storms, but discovering that I don’t have to become the storm myself.

What a thought.

And, more importantly, what a feeling.

Manikagad has always felt like an obvious challenge to me.

I’ve been there twice before—once with my family, and the second time with Amu, my Golden Retriever. But this February, I decided to take on Manikagad again, consciously—as a challenge.

I carry a happy memory associated with this place. The first time I climbed this mountain, I received a call from my controller. It was a Sunday, and I was asked to get a specific task done. Without overthinking, I made a few calls and coordinated with the corporate team.

And I got it done.

The trek was tiring, no doubt. But Manikagad became a silent witness to a small success I created within my organisation that day. That memory has stayed with me.

Yet, Manikagad remains a challenge—and for good reason.

• This isn’t just a patch of trees you casually call a jungle. This is a real jungle. Dense. Enveloping. At times, it feels as if the jungle itself is trying to swallow you whole.
• The trek involves a long circular walk around the peak, which makes the journey mentally and physically exhausting.
• The straight-line distance from the starting point to the peak is roughly 6 kilometres—and every kilometre demands respect.

Manikagad doesn’t intimidate you loudly. It tests you quietly, step by step.

And that’s exactly why it matters.

This time, I decided to correct a few mistakes I had made earlier.

First—water. There are no shops along the trail, and water is non-negotiable. On both my previous treks to Manikagad, water had become a problem. This time, I didn’t leave it to chance. I bought a full box of water bottles and packed them in.

Second—energy. Knowing the trek would be long and draining, I stocked up on Parle-G biscuits. Simple, effective, and reliable fuel.

To avoid the harsh sun, we decided to start early.
The trekking party was ready by 7:00 AM.

We left Palaspe and reached Dhangarwadi by 8:00 AM, and soon after, began walking the trail.

Mornings in the mountains are beautiful. We clicked photos, shot a few videos, and simply soaked it in.

The jungle section was especially interesting. Dense, alive, and inviting. We kept talking about coming back someday just to explore the jungle itself. My energy was high, and I was unusually chirpy.

Then came the final climb—and I could feel the energy slowly draining away.

I was carrying a rucksack that weighed around 10 kg, and with all the water bottles, it felt even heavier. My feet began landing in places I hadn’t consciously intended. But I trusted my training. My muscles were strong enough to handle it.

Slowly, steadily, I made it to the top.

As we reached the summit, a large group from Pune was descending. Another enthusiastic conservation group was actively working to preserve the fort—quiet, purposeful work.

We rested at the top and drank water from the tank near the summit.

The descent was tiring.

I went quiet. Walking became mindful. Each step demanded attention.

On my previous trek, my patience had run out before the trail ended. The same thing happened this time. The sun was now high, and walking through the open stretches became difficult.

Eventually, I reached the car.

It was burning hot.

We got in.

And I came home.