What the Mountain Top Actually Looks Like

What an intense first post as my new personal board on substack as “Ma Vie”

Life has its own ways of teaching you lessons and in the past 7+ weeks of traveling Asia across the Philippines islands, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore... I’ve had the hard blessing of being confronted with many of them.

I’ll start with this. When I was growing up I always had dreams of being able to be free. Free of location, time and being able to do what I wanted.

I saw people live the laptop lifestyle and I thought to myself I want that. I want to be able to work for myself, from anywhere in the world doing work I love but I just didn’t know what that would look like.

I was also a rebellious child and wasn’t the easiest to raise. I hated rules, constraints, I didn’t understand why things were done a “certain way” or why it had to be done a certain way. A lot of things didn’t make sense to me and why I had to live a “normal” life. So when I was old enough I went on my own path, I started traveling the world with no money, hitchhiking for car rides, sleeping in my tent in the woods and living life differently.

I just wanted to have freedom, I hated being stuck somewhere so for 2-3 years straight I moved every 2-3 months and I was able to get to beautiful places like Milan, Italy where I worked as a high fashion model, I traveled to Germany, New York, etc. At one point I lived in a van with a friend I made at a hostel in Banff, Alberta Canada and we traveled all of British Columbia together for over a month. I’m still very good friends with Florian to this day over a decade later and we make it a point to try and meet once a year or two.

I was living my definition of free back then.

Fast forward to when I was 21 about to turn 22 years old I met my late partner Jennifer and she gets diagnosed with breast cancer after 3 months of us dating. At that time I was sleeping on a couch at a friend’s place in Vancouver.

I had a hard decision to make and I loved her so I stayed by her side. I got my shit together, got a job, got an apartment for the first time in my life and took care of her for over 4.5 years before she passed away when I was about to turn 27 years old.

I went from dedicating all my time to caring for her to now being alone. At that point I was already one year into building my coaching business and had a good bit of success so I decided to head over to Merida, Mexico to spread her ashes as it was her favorite place in the world that she wanted to bring me and since I could work from anywhere I decided to go there and extend my trip, move to Tulum and got rid of my apartment in Coquitlam, BC while I was down in Mexico.

I’m sharing this to set the context for you, from then I traveled a bit, went to Los Angeles, met this beautiful woman called Ivy, we fell in love and we’ve been together for over 4 years and have been happily married for over two years now ❤️ She was just like an angel coming into my life and I’m grateful to have her by my side.

So now coming to this current timeline I’ve started my coaching business officially 6 years ago on April 1st 2026 which is completely wild.

And the blessings that came out of that hard journey was that I was able to build the company to a point where I can travel the world, work from anywhere, I have the most incredible team, we are debt free and have access to great resources.

Which is why I was confused when I started to get a bit depressed and anxious as we were progressing on this trip. I’m 7+ weeks into the Asia tour and in the past week I’ve been mentally having a hard time.

I’ve been realizing that getting to “my” mountain top that I had dreamed of as a kid wasn’t all that I thought it would be.

I’m human too, I’ve definitely played the comparison game, I’ve definitely played the materialistic game also and as we are traveling I’m realizing more and more what I care about.

Because there are levels to this, we have taken over 9 flights in the past 7 weeks and there is a level where you can fly all of them business class or economy. There is a level where you stay at the Shangri-La or the Holiday Inn.

Ivy and I have been modest on this trip, because I’m realizing more and more as we travel and as we meet new people of the trap people get stuck in.

You can play the “rich life” and always be chasing money and the next luxury or you can be ok with a “simple life” and not have that stress.

There was one moment when we were heading down to Oslob, Philippines and we were driving through the local villages where I saw their simple house, with an outdoor covered kitchen with the jungle as their backyard. I wrote this note on my phone with the photo and I wanted to share it with you.

This trip has really forced me to face myself and be honest with myself about what I truly want for my life. Before we left I had this whole plan mapped out for the next chapter of the company. I knew exactly where I wanted to take it and I was ready to go all in on that vision.

But the more I sat with what it would actually take to get there, the stress, the complexity, the anxiety, the weight that comes with building something of that size... it’s overwhelming.

I always thought that if anyone could do it, it was me.

But now the question I’ve been confronting myself with is: “Maybe I can do it. Does it mean I have to? Do I want the negatives that also come with the positive I’m trying to create?”

I have many friends in the business world that are on their 2nd or 3rd wife, that are overweight, unhealthy and some that have passed away at a young age but had an incredible business resume.

I’m not saying that these things come from building something massive but if I’m being honest with myself I’m not built like that. And I don’t think I want to be.

The online era is what is helping shape the minds of entrepreneurs like me, but the more we progress the more I’m realizing that everyone is traumatized and letting that be their driving force. They are trying to succeed to feel enough.

And I’ve been on that path for a while now and I’m tired.

I just want to feel enough right now without having a multi-million dollar exit.

That line made me tear up writing it. And I think that’s how I know it’s true.

I feel that I am on this beautiful mission to help people reduce their risk of dealing with chronic illness via exercise and whole food plant-based eating so no one has to go through cancer like my late partner did and also so no partner has to suffer like I did. To see someone you love suffer and to feel the most powerless you’ve ever felt in your life... it completely destroyed me for a long time. It took me years to heal from that.

But I feel that amidst that big mission, some cogs of the wheels weren’t set properly. I forgot about the personal side of my life, business was everything.

Being married realized that it can’t be that way. Traveling and seeing how people less fortunate and more fortunate than me live is also making me realize how I want to live.

I can’t grow a company out of trying to feel a need for feeling “enough.” Impacting more lives won’t change the fact that I wasn’t able to save my late partner’s life. Being more successful financially won’t make me happier. It might make me less stressed but only if my wants don’t increase. Because you can be rich but have such a high lifestyle that you are actually struggling financially.

Man am I nervous to post this because this is the most I’ve ever shared online.

But if there is one thing I’ve learned from being in the public’s eye for 6 years now is that a lot of people go through similar things. There is no way that I’m the only one having these thoughts and realizations so I know I’m not alone in this.

I know many of my readers are a bit older than me, I’m turning 33 in a few months and some of you might have already learned some of these lessons. But I feel that reaching this mountain top I had set for myself gave me this odd “pause” on life to reflect on the whole journey and what the next mountain top should be.

And right now, I don’t have it all figured out. I’m not sure I’m supposed to yet. But writing this helped, even if it was messy.

I’ll see you next week.

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin