--- title: "The Circumstance Will Lie To You" description: "Mile 18 of an Ironman taught me something that carried straight into building Blue Goat: a bad moment is weather, not a verdict. Hold the vision, walk through…" lang: en json-ld: | [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Person", "@id": "https://christianespinosa.com/#person", "name": "Christian Espinosa", "url": "https://christianespinosa.com/", "image": "https://christianespinosa.com/__l5e/assets-v1/de07e44b-a8e0-4bcc-bcb0-13aec15421f1/headshot-front.jpg", "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/christian.espinosa.official", "https://x.com/Ironracer", "https://www.instagram.com/christian.espinosa.official/", "https://www.youtube.com/@ChristianEspinosaOfficial", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianespinosa/" ], "jobTitle": "Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker, Entrepreneur", "worksFor": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Blue Goat Cyber", "url": "https://bluegoatcyber.com/" } }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://christianespinosa.com/#website", "name": "Christian Espinosa", "url": "https://christianespinosa.com/", "publisher": { "@id": "https://christianespinosa.com/#organization" }, "inLanguage": "en-US" }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://christianespinosa.com/#organization", "name": "Christian Espinosa", "url": "https://christianespinosa.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://christianespinosa.com/logo.svg" }, "founder": { "@id": "https://christianespinosa.com/#person" }, "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/christian.espinosa.official", "https://x.com/Ironracer", "https://www.instagram.com/christian.espinosa.official/", "https://www.youtube.com/@ChristianEspinosaOfficial", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianespinosa/" ] }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Circumstance Will Lie To You | Christian Espinosa", "description": "Mile 18 of an Ironman taught me something that carried straight into building Blue Goat: a bad moment is weather, not a verdict. Hold the vision, walk through it, finish what you started.", "image": "https://christianespinosa.com/__l5e/assets-v1/44c7cf92-cd70-47c3-94e2-c5378badb4d2/ironman-kona-shaka-vision.jpg", "datePublished": "2026-06-23T14:00:00Z", "dateModified": "2026-06-23T14:00:00Z", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://christianespinosa.com/blog/the-circumstance-will-lie-to-you" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christian Espinosa", "url": "https://christianespinosa.com/about" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Christian Espinosa", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://christianespinosa.com/logo.svg" } } }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "What is the core idea behind \"The Circumstance Will Lie To You\"?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "At mile 18 of an Ironman marathon, my legs are gone, my stomach is in revolt, and everything in me says stop. That is the circumstance. It is real. It is also a liar" } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Who is this post for?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Honestly, leaders, founders, and anyone running a team who is tired of the sanitized version of leadership advice. If you want a listicle, this is not that. If you want the honest version of what I have actually lived and worked through, keep reading." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How do I actually apply this, not just nod along?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Pick the single line in the post that made you flinch or look away, and change one thing in your week because of it. One choice this week beats a whole framework you never touch." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How does this connect to More on the long game?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "The In-Between is the book I wrote about the space between the decision and the finish; the place where most people quit and a few people keep walking. If the post landed, that is the natural next step; the get the book link at the bottom of the page goes straight there." } } ] } ] --- [Skip to content](#main) [](/) [About](/about)[Speaking](/speaking)[Cybersecurity](/cybersecurity)[Programs](/programs)[Books](/books)[Media](/media) Writing Search Ctrl K[Connect](/connect) [Leadership](/blog/category/leadership) # The Circumstance Will Lie To You June 23, 2026 4 min read 889 words At mile 18 of an Ironman marathon, my legs are gone, my stomach is in revolt, and everything in me says stop. That is the circumstance. It is real. It is also a liar ![](/__l5e/assets-v1/44c7cf92-cd70-47c3-94e2-c5378badb4d2/ironman-kona-shaka-vision.jpg) Published June 23, 2026 Read time 4 min In this essay 1. [01 The Lie The Moment Tells You ](#the-lie-the-moment-tells-you) 2. [02 What Twenty-Four Ironmans Actually Teach You ](#what-twenty-four-ironmans-actually-teach-you) 3. [03 The Same Lesson, In A Different Uniform ](#the-same-lesson-in-a-different-uniform) 4. [04 What To Do In The Middle Of The Bad Hour ](#what-to-do-in-the-middle-of-the-bad-hour) 5. [05 Hold The Vision ](#hold-the-vision) Jump to 1. [01 The Lie The Moment Tells You ](#the-lie-the-moment-tells-you) 2. [02 What Twenty-Four Ironmans Actually Teach You ](#what-twenty-four-ironmans-actually-teach-you) 3. [03 The Same Lesson, In A Different Uniform ](#the-same-lesson-in-a-different-uniform) 4. [04 What To Do In The Middle Of The Bad Hour ](#what-to-do-in-the-middle-of-the-bad-hour) 5. [05 Hold The Vision ](#hold-the-vision) The takeaways 1. 01 A bad moment is information about the moment, not a verdict on the decision that put you there. What to do next Pause for five minutes today, then name the one place in your week where moment is playing out and you have been avoiding naming it. 2. 02 Endurance is the refusal to let a tired version of you renegotiate what a clear-headed version of you committed to. What to do next Write down the last three decisions you made about endurance and mark which ones you would repeat. 3. 03 Building a company runs on the same mechanic as finishing an Ironman: protect the vision from the worst hour. What to do next Have one direct conversation about building with the person on your team who most needs to hear it. 4. 04 Treat hard moments as weather you walk through, not signals to change direction. What to do next Pick one meeting on this week's calendar where treat is actually the underlying issue, and put that on the agenda by name. 5. 05 The people who finish are not the ones who felt best in the middle; they are the ones who kept moving anyway. What to do next Have one direct conversation about people with the person on your team who most needs to hear it. ## The Lie The Moment Tells You The circumstance will always lie to me. At mile 18 of an Ironman marathon, my legs are gone, my stomach is in revolt, and everything in me says stop. That is the circumstance. It is real. It is also a liar. It is telling me that the decision I made six months ago, sitting at my kitchen table with a training plan and a clear head, was wrong. It was not wrong. It is just expensive right now. The vision is the thing I committed to when I was clear-headed. The circumstance is the thing trying to renegotiate that commitment using the worst version of me as the negotiator. That is the whole game. Recognizing which voice is talking. ## What Twenty-Four Ironmans Actually Teach You Twenty-four Ironmans taught me something that carried straight into building a company: the people who finish are the ones who refuse to let a bad moment renegotiate a clear decision. The finish line is not a function of who felt the best at mile 18. Almost nobody feels good at mile 18. The finish line is a function of who treated mile 18 as exactly what it was; a hard mile in a long day, not a referendum on whether the whole thing was a mistake. The first few Ironmans, I argued with the bad miles. I tried to fix them. I bargained. I told myself stories about why this one might be the exception, why pulling off might actually be the smart, mature thing to do. By the twenty-fourth one, I had stopped negotiating. The bad hour shows up. You acknowledge it. You keep moving. It passes. It always passes. Every single time, without exception, it passes; and the only people who learn that are the ones who stayed on the course long enough to find out. That is the lesson the body teaches the mind, and you cannot get it from a book. You have to be inside the hard hour, deciding not to quit, to ever really trust that the hard hour ends. ## The Same Lesson, In A Different Uniform Building Blue Goat has been that same lesson on repeat, just dressed differently. A deal that was supposed to close this quarter stalls. The market shifts under you and a category that was hot six months ago is suddenly suspect. Someone you counted on walks out the door, and you are left handling the personnel fallout, rebuilding trust with the rest of the team, and still shipping the work that was already on the calendar. A regulatory expectation moves and a submission you thought was a layup becomes a three-month rewrite. Every one of those is a circumstance screaming for a reaction. Every one of them is mile 18 in a button-down shirt. Not one of them changes where the company is going. The trap is treating a rough moment like a verdict. It is not. It is weather. You walk through it. ![A bad moment is information about the moment, not a verdict on the decision that put you there. Pull quote from the essay.](/__l5e/assets-v1/5fc35343-667d-409f-a190-7ec2c2d6a54a/circumstance-will-lie-pullquote.png) ## What To Do In The Middle Of The Bad Hour Holding the vision is not a feeling. It is a set of small, almost boring behaviors you run when the circumstance is loudest. **Name the circumstance out loud.** Just say what is actually happening. The deal slipped. The hire did not work out. The submission needs another round. Naming it strips the drama out of it and turns it back into a problem, which is something you know how to work on. **Separate the moment from the decision.** Ask: did anything I just learned change the reason I started this? Almost always, no. The reason you started is still intact. Only the path got harder. **Shorten the horizon.** At mile 18 you do not think about mile 26. You think about the next aid station. In a hard quarter you do not stare at the year. You decide what gets your next two hours. **Refuse to make permanent decisions from a temporary state.** No quitting, no firing, no pivoting the whole company at the bottom of a bad week. If the decision still looks right on a clear morning, fine. If it only looks right inside the bad hour, it is the bad hour talking. **Move.** Action is the antidote. Not motion for its own sake; the next real, useful thing. One call. One paragraph. One mile. The bad hour loses most of its power the second you stop staring at it and start working through it. None of that is glamorous. None of it makes a good highlight reel. It is just the work the finishers do while everyone else is busy explaining why this time is different. ## Hold The Vision The vision is the contract your clear-headed self signed. The circumstance is your tired self trying to wriggle out of it. Your job, in the bad hour, is to honor the contract. Hold the vision. Let the circumstance be what it is. Then go finish what you started. > “The trap is treating a rough moment like a verdict. It is not. It is weather. You walk through it.” Sit with this - What decision did your clear-headed self make that your tired self is currently trying to renegotiate? - Which recent setback have you been treating as a verdict when it was really just weather? - If you imagined yourself at the finish line of what you are building, what would you tell yourself about today? Frequently asked ### What is the core idea behind "The Circumstance Will Lie To You"? ### Who is this post for? ### How do I actually apply this, not just nod along? ### How does this connect to More on the long game? ### More on the long game The In-Between is the book I wrote about the space between the decision and the finish; the place where most people quit and a few people keep walking. [Get the book](/books) Share this essay [X ](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchristianespinosa.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-circumstance-will-lie-to-you&text=The%20Circumstance%20Will%20Lie%20To%20You) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchristianespinosa.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-circumstance-will-lie-to-you) [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fchristianespinosa.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-circumstance-will-lie-to-you) [Email](mailto:?subject=The%20Circumstance%20Will%20Lie%20To%20You&body=https%3A%2F%2Fchristianespinosa.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-circumstance-will-lie-to-you)Copy link ![Christian Espinosa, headshot](/__l5e/assets-v1/de07e44b-a8e0-4bcc-bcb0-13aec15421f1/headshot-front.jpg) About the author [Christian Espinosa](/about) · Founder & CEO, Blue Goat Cyber I'm the founder and CEO of Blue Goat Cyber, a medical device cybersecurity firm where my team has supported 250+ FDA submissions with zero failing to clear on cybersecurity. I previously founded and sold Alpine Security. I host The Med Device Cyber Podcast and wrote The Smartest Person in the Room and The In-Between: Life in the Micro, with Medical Device Cybersecurity: An In-Depth Guide out in 2026. Air Force Academy grad, 24x Ironman, climber of two of the Seven Summits. Keep reading - [ ### What Ozzy and Zakk Taught Me About Not Getting Sanded Down | Christian Espinosa Same thread: leadership. Read essay → ](/blog/what-ozzy-and-zakk-taught-me-about-not-getting-sanded-down) - [ ### The Hard Part Is The Bar, Not The Fall | Christian Espinosa Same thread: leadership. Read essay → ](/blog/the-hard-part-is-the-bar-not-the-fall) - [ ### The Long Walk, The Marathon, And The Friendship You Get To Keep For A Few Days Related take on something, ironman. Read essay → ](/blog/the-long-walk-friendship-and-this-moment-matters) [← Previous essay Wet Tires At COTA: When The Conditions Change | Christian Espinosa ](/blog/wet-tires-at-cota-when-the-conditions-change)[Next essay → Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast | Christian Espinosa ](/blog/slow-is-smooth-and-smooth-is-fast) Related, The In-Between ### Live in the In-Between Christian's philosophy on micro vs. macro, awareness, and intentional living, explored in talks, essays, and his books. [Connect with Christian](/connect) Christian Espinosa Bestselling author, keynote speaker, and Founding CEO of [Blue Goat Cyber](https://bluegoatcyber.com/). Helping technical leaders develop the soft skills that turn brilliance into impact. 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