“Unconditional positive regard”

When I first heard those words as a trainee therapist, it struck me as one of the hardest things a person could do. To sit across from another human being and meet them as they are without judgement.

But as my training progressed and I took on practice clients I grew to understand as a therapist it’s fundamental.

More than a skill, it’s holding space that enables another to feel safe enough to let go of defences and open up and explore their wounds.

It also got me thinking that’s it’s more than just the therapist-client relationship.

Because the person who most needs your unconditional positive regard isn’t sitting across from you.

It’s you.

The foundation of personal growth

Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology put unconditional positive regard at the heart of his understanding of human growth. He believed people change not when they are shamed into becoming better versions of themselves, but when they feel safe enough to face themselves honestly.

Simple as that sounds, it cuts against much of modern life. To accept yourself as you are, flaws and all.

Most people learn very early that acceptance is conditional.

The child who learns that sadness makes people uncomfortable grows into the adult who apologises for having feelings at all. The person who discovers that anger threatens connection learns to bury it before they are even conscious of doing so.

It still sits with me the need to be quiet, to be the good boy. Getting praise when I passed a test or did well at sport, cold disapproval when I didn’t.

Whatever gets approval and a sense of belonging tends to become woven into our idea of who we are allowed to be.

It’s a tragedy that you can spend years rejecting parts of yourself without ever noticing you are doing it. The fear, dependency, loneliness, jealousy, grief, tenderness, all the messiness because they threaten the mask of conformity that’s projected out into the world.

The cost of rejecting yourself

What you refuse to face does not vanish. It seeps back indirectly: through anxiety, resentment, compulsive behaviour, exhaustion, defensiveness, and self-sabotage.

You can spend years exhausted from trying not to feel what you feel, and yet many live with the conviction that self-criticism is necessary.

The fear is without it they would become complacent, self-indulgent, or morally weak. The reality is the opposite is true.

Seeing yourself for who you are

When shame shuts you down and makes you feel small and defensive, self-honesty gets lost.

Change becomes possible only when you become capable of seeing yourself clearly without immediately recoiling from what you find.

This is why self-acceptance and growth are not opposites.

If you cannot face your fear honestly you cannot work with it. If you deny your anger you cannot understand it. It is hard to understand parts of yourself you are forcefully trying to deny.

And these parts we reject shape the way we experience other people.

The power of projection

The irony is what we don’t want to face inside we can see crystal clear in others. Carl Jung named this ‘projection’. We often react most strongly to qualities in others that we have spent years trying to suppress in ourselves. The things we judge most harshly in other people are often the things we fear most in ourselves.

The person disturbed by another’s vulnerability may have spent a lifetime armouring against their own. The person who condemns weakness mercilessly is often frightened of their own weakness.

When you start to apply unconditional positive regard to yourself something shifts. Other people become easier to tolerate. The world feels less threatening, less irritating, safer.

The first step

The truth is that most people speak to themselves in ways they would never speak to another human being. They call themselves pathetic for struggling, weak for feeling afraid, failures for falling short.

And usually they do this not because they are cruel, but because somewhere along the way they learned that love must be earned through self-rejection.

One way to notice this in yourself is to pay attention to the next time you judge yourself to have failed, feel shame, or fall short. Listen carefully to the tone of the voice that appears in your mind. Then ask yourself a simple question:

Would I speak this way to someone I loved?

Also pay attention to how you merge your identity with your behaviour in how you speak to yourself

Instead of telling yourself: “I’m lazy.” try saying “I’ve been avoiding this task.”

Instead of saying: “I’m weak.” try “Part of me feels frightened.”

Be curious as to what comes up.

Final thoughts

A lot of people spend their lives mistaking old survival strategies for who they really are. If you are serious about wanting to grow you need to start caring about you.

Practicing unconditional positive regard on yourself is not about saying, “Everything about me is wonderful.” It’s: “I can face what is true about me without needing to hide, defend, or punish myself.”

Take it slow, you are building a foundation, a capacity to be with yourself with acceptance and that is a rare and powerful gift.

Next time I’ll explore the second pillar of Carl Rogers essential conditions for human growth: Empathy.

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

There were nine of us, all third year therapy students.

The trainer, sat in silence watching us, his presence like an immovable mountain as we waited to start the lecture. Then he spoke, his deep Welsh baritone musical and warm, “How many of you, feel like a fraud?”

Silence at first, eyes scanning the circle, a sense of hesitation hung in the air. And then slowly, tentatively, one by one everyone’s hand, including mine went up.

“Good” he said with a slight nod, “now let’s check in…”

At the time I didn’t think much of it, but now knowing more about imposter syndrome I realise that was an important test.

You see, people that don’t feel like imposters when they start something new such as a job, project or skill - like becoming a therapist, are typically lacking something fundamental: basic self-awareness.

They believe themselves to be far more competent than they actually are. And the mess ups and incompetence that typically follows is painful to witness.

If you suffer from imposter syndrome that’s a good thing. It’s a sign you care about what you do. But the harsh reality is it can tie you in knots of self-doubt and angst unless you can find a way to manage it.

I want to explain why it happens and why it’s something you need to accept as part of self-growth and not a personal flaw.

Why you feel like an imposter

When you start a new job, project or skill you’re in unknown territory.

And your brain doesn’t like that as it’s a highly efficient prediction machine; it likes certainty, and when it feels threatened in any way defences kick in. And typically that involves writing a story, and your brain is prone to write “crime fiction”.

“I’m here by mistake”, “I’ll be found out”, “Why did I think I could do this?”

Your brain is frantically filling gaps, trying to explain the anxiety, the unfamiliarity, the nagging sense that everyone else knows what they’re doing.

And it looks for evidence.

Your brain becomes a detective who already knows the verdict and is working backwards.

• Blanked on a name in a meeting? Fail.

• Got a compliment? Luck.

• Finished something well? You worked three times harder than necessary and got away with it.

The story will run until something stops it.

And every time you protect that imposter belief instead of testing it, it gets a little harder to dislodge. The solution: capturing evidence of your competency.

Capture evidence

Here are the top 3 way’s that helped me tackle my own imposter feelings:

1.Clarify what good actually looks like

This is about getting clear with what you are trying to become good at.

If goals are vague you will struggle to know when you will achieve them.

Clarify what’s expected of you, ask questions of your boss, team or yourself; whoever has a stake in what you are working on. Ask questions like “What does good look like at 2 weeks?” and “What would success look like when this project is complete?”

When you are clear you have a way to measure your progress. You can then break the goals down into smaller attainable steps. It makes it easier to capture your successes.

2.The Evidence log

Your brain is biased toward what’s missing, not what’s working. the solution: get data.

Get a notebook, paper, phone, whatever works. Create two columns or lists: in one “Going well” and “Still working out” in the other and write up to five things in each, once a week.

Examples

In the first column: “Going well”

Weekly stats report sent out on time.

Have 3 stakeholders on board for my revised project plan.

Got my point across about budgets in a meeting with accounts.

Learned the new software system.

Created 10 email templates for my most common replies.

In the second column: “Still working out”

Went blank when the director asked me a question I should have known.

Let a deadline slip because I couldn’t stop tinkering with the design.

Avoided a difficult conversation for the third week running.

Spent an hour on a task that should have taken twenty minutes.

Said yes to something before I fully understood what it involved.

This is not a motivational exercise, it’s collecting objective data. The point is to stop inflating failure in your head and dismissing success as “luck”.

3. Run small experiments

Imposter syndrome feeds off untested assumptions.

And assumptions that go unchallenged can skew everything you do. So to test them, you need to nudge out of your comfort zone using small experiments. Start with one or two “slightly scary” actions that challenge assumptions you have made.

Examples:

• Ask questions about why things are done the way they are in meetings.

• Send work before it’s fully ‘perfect’ but good enough.

• Admit you don’t know something to a colleague; how do they react?

These experiments generate useful information. Compare what did you expect would happen with what actually happened. You’ll notice the story in your head of what you expected rarely matches the reality.

What actually changes

These three tools aren’t going to magically make your doubt about your capability disappear, but they will help make it manageable.

And every time you use them you are building your resilience to be with the uncomfortable feelings around being an “imposter”.

Capturing information will also help you to see more clearly what’s going well and what needs more attention. It will help build your confidence and self-worth one step at a time.

Here’s are some additional articles you might find useful.

On making assumptions: The Stories You Tell Yourself and Believe Are True

Stepping out of your comfort zone: Learning to Live at the Edge of What Feels Safe

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

RADA, Juilliard, and the Royal Academy of Music teach it.

Actors find presence with it, musicians control and dancers flow, but most people have never heard of it.

It’s called the Alexander Technique.

It’s the art of getting out of your own way by unlearning unhelpful habits of how you use your body.

I discovered it by chance, and I’ve found it to be one of the most powerful ways to get out of my head, live with more ease, and be fully present in my body.

Ideally you need a few lessons with a qualified teacher to fully ‘get it’ but I want to give you both an understanding of what it is and an experience of how it feels.

You might wonder why it isn’t more widely known.

It doesn’t shout loudly and doesn’t want to compete against the myriad of quick fix health promises, because that’s totally against its ethos. It won’t transform you in thirty days, and it’s no miracle cure.

But what I can promise is if you integrate it into your life you will experience a sense of calm presence, ease, and body awareness that is profound.

It was (re)discovered by accident

in the 1890s F.M. Alexander had a serious problem that was wrecking is acting career. Every time he went to perform he kept losing his voice on stage.

Doctors couldn’t find any reason for it so he embarked on an intense period of self observation. He spent hours watching himself in mirrors performing and speaking.

He found he unconsciously tensed his neck and pulled his head back every time he prepared to speak which was constricting his vocal cords.

From this discovery he taught himself to release his neck and balance his head to free his voice. He also realised he could help others benefit from his discovery, and so he moved to England and started teaching his technique.

Though challenged by deep scepticism from the medical profession he managed to attract famous people of the day like Aldous Huxley, John Dewey and George Bernard Shaw to the practice.

And from there awareness slowly grew especially with artists and performers who saw how it could enhance their abilities.

Where it goes wrong

The irony is in a perfect world the Alexander technique would not be necessary. Watch a cat move, or a young child run and play their movement flows in a natural co-ordinated way.

The problem is the habits we learn as we grow up.

The sad truth is children typically begin to lose their natural coordination around the time they start formal schooling; sitting at desks, being told to concentrate, learning to read and write.

And it goes down hill from there as adults more and more layers of tension and stress reduce ease of movement.

The head and neck relationship is key

Your head weighs the same as a 10-12lb bowling ball and how you use it affects every movement you make.

It sits on a pivot point at the very top of your spine. just behind your ears, and it’s designed to balance there with remarkable efficiency and minimal muscular effort as long as the neck is free.

But it all goes wrong when the startle reflex sabotages this dynamic.

When startled, every human does the same thing: the head retracts, the neck tightens, the breath stops.

Repeated frequently over time it makes many live in a state of being perpetually slightly startled.

In practice, this means the majority of people pull their head back and down, compressing the neck, loading the spine, triggering a chain of tension that runs the length of the body.

The technique among other things is about thawing that frozen reflex.

Alexander called the head-neck-spine relationship the “primary control” : a master lever for the whole neuromuscular system. When it’s free, everything else in the body has a chance to organise itself.

When it’s not, no amount of targeted strengthening or stretching will work to fix the fundamental problem if your head and neck are constricted.

My experience

I came to the Alexander Technique out of desperation. A torn muscle had developed into sciatica that was giving me constant shooting pains down my left leg making it difficult to sit, to concentrate, to get through a day.

Painkillers weren’t cutting it. the daily commute into London was hell. I was in dispair.

By chance I was recommended to try the Alexander Technique by a friend. When I met Alan my teacher I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.

The first session was a revelation. I discovered how much I was living in my head, how hunched by shoulders were from using a computer all day and how I twisted my body to compensate for the back pain.

Alan gently guided my neck, head and back in unfamiliar ways and I felt a lot of release and freedom in my body.

The most wonderful experience was in the last part of the session when I lay down on my back on a table. Alan guided me into sublime relaxation releasing tension in all my joints. I felt expanded, freer and deeply peaceful like a still clear lake on a warm sunny day.

I still enjoy seeing Alan 25 years later, and we always joke about could he just leave me on the table and come back in a couple of hours at the end of a session.

Try it for yourself

In a lesson you learn to use ‘directions’, these are mental thoughts for directing the body to do things. You don’t actively do them physically, the thoughts are enough.

The idea is that conscious intention influences the nervous system in a way that effortful doing cannot.

There are many ‘directions’ but the primary ones are: “Let the neck be free so the head can go forward and up …allowing the back to lengthen and widen.”

The purpose is to encourage the head, neck and back to align and help the body to do its thing without interference from unhelpful habits like compressing the neck.

Here’s my favourite exercise to try.

Lying down in the Semi-supine position

This is great for giving your back a rest. The Semi-supine position allows the spine to decompress and your body to gain a sense of expansion and freedom using gravity.

Here’s a simplified version you can try:

1. Find a few slim paperback books.

2. Lie on your back on a firm floor or yoga mat.

3. If you are wearing a belt take it off.

4. Place the books under your head and adjust the number so your head is supported and parallel to the floor,enough to stop your head going backwards, and not so many that your chin tucks to your chest.

5. Now bend your knees so your feet are flat on the floor with equal weight, hip width apart. Your knees should be pointing at the ceiling.

6. Place both your hands, palms open on your stomach with your elbows comfortably resting on the floor

7. Sense your back in contact with the floor, you will probably notice a lot of holding especially with the lower back, just let it go as much as you can.

8. Sense your neck relaxing and your shoulders widening away from each other. You can say the primary directions here if you find it helpful “Let the neck be free so the head can go forward and up allowing the back to lengthen and widen”

9. You are giving your spine space and permission to decompress.

10. Stay like this for 15 minutes if you can, keep your feet flat on the floor and let gravity do its work. If that feels too much start with 5 minutes and build from there.

11. When you have finished, roll over to one side and pause for a minute before sitting up.

If you do this regularly it will really help your body, especially your back let go of tension.

Some people have even reported growing an inch or more because they have decompressed their spine so much!

If you want to go deeper I’ve record a a fifteen-minute guided audio of a session where I go into a more advanced version of the lying down exercise. Give it a go, your back will thank you.

Download it here:
> Alexander Technique lying down audio(20MB)

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

Trying to get things done used to feel like having a drill sergeant in my head, barking orders, demanding more, relentlessly upping the pressure.

For a long time I thought that was how motivation was supposed to work. It felt heavy and exhausting, like trying to run up a steep hill with a heavy backpack. It took me a long time to realise I was doing things the hard way.

I read all the books I could on procrastination and motivation, and they really helped, but it still felt something was missing.

Things didn’t really click until I discovered that how I talked to myself was a fundamental part of the motivation puzzle.

Let’s try an experiment

Say this out loud:

“I should write that email today.”

Really notice what happens in your body and what thoughts come up.

Now, say this out loud:

“I choose to write that email today.”

Same task. But something is different, maybe a sense of less pressure, more ownership.

That difference you experience in changing a few words, is something most people never think to look at. And it’s one of the easiest things to change to help you feel more motivated.

The habit that kills motivation

Psychologist Albert Ellis discovered we make things harder on ourselves than they need to be because of the habit of taking a preference and hardening it into a demand:

Preference: “I’d like this to go well”

Demand: “this must go well”

When your inner voice harshly issues orders: “you must”, “you should”, “you have to”, something inside stops cooperating. The procrastination, the avoidance, the resistance toward things you actually care about makes you revolt against yourself.

Psychologists call this reactance; the instinct to push back when we feel our freedom is being threatened.

You can see it in public health campaigns that rely on heavy-handed messaging: you must do this, you have to stop that. People don’t comply, they actively resist, ignore, or do the opposite. Not because they don’t understand, but because they feel controlled.

The Autonomy effect

So how do you motivate yourself effectively? Research by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan uncovered a fundamental truth about how to improve motivation.

They found humans need autonomy. Making your own choices and deciding what to do. Instead of feeling controlled by someone or something else.

When you feel you’re choosing your actions, motivation improves. When you feel controlled, even by your own thoughts, resistance grows.

The words that work

When you start to use more open words like “could”, “can”, and “choose” the psychological energy behind motivation shifts.

The skill is knowing how to use them as each word does different things.

For example:

“Could” is for when you’re stuck.

It lowers the stakes. “I should start this” becomes “I could start with ten minutes.” The task becomes more doable, the resistance lessens. You’re just taking a small step.

“Can” is for when you’ve been telling yourself you’re not capable.

It gives you back possibility and strengthens self-belief. “I can’t handle difficult conversations” becomes “I can have this conversation.”

“Choose to” reframes tasks that feel like obligation rather than choice.

It restores ownership. “I have to finish this report” becomes “I’m choosing to finish this report.” The work is the same. But you’re no longer being pushed to do a task.

The extra step that boosts motivation

Learning to use these more open words like, “could”, “can”, and “choose” is a great first step. But there’s an extra element that will really improve motivation: a clear reason as to why you do something.

To take the previous examples and add a reason:

Action + because + reason

I could start with ten minutes because in ten minutes I can draft an outline and feel I’ve taken a good first step.

I can have this conversation because the relationship is worth the discomfort.

I’m choosing to finish this report because I want to relax later rather than fretting all evening thinking about what I haven’t done.

The because is key. It connects the action to the reason underneath it. And when you have a reason it strengthens your motivation.

How you talk yourself into doing something matters just as much as what you do. Swap a “should” for a “could”, “can’t” for a “can” and a “have to” for a “choose to” and give it a reason. Do that, and your motivation will shift in ways you won’t expect.

If you want to put this into practice, not just understand it I’ve put together a seven-day workbook that walks you through it one step at a time. It’a a fillable PDF, all you need is 10-15 minutes a day using real examples from your own life.

Download it here:
> Stop Shoulding Yourself Workbook

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

Here’s the thing with real curiosity: it’s dangerous.

It will change you.

The deeper inner kind will challenge your assumptions and beliefs, and dismantle unhelpful stories about you you’ve been carrying for years. If you use it consciously it’s one of the most powerful tools for self-development you have.

The problem is your curiosity can get easily stolen.

Outer curiosity has a hijacked version

External curiosity about understanding how the world works, learning new skills, exploring ideas is not the issue.

It’s the outer curiosity that grabs your attention and doesn’t let go.

It’s being drawn in by other people’s agendas. Screaming headlines, slick videos promising easy solutions, the latest and greatest TV shows, not to mention true-crime rabbit holes.

The thing is your information-seeking brain is doing exactly what it was built to do, just not for your benefit.

Psychologists call it the ‘information gap’ , the discomfort of noticing something missing between what you know and what you want to know. That gap makes you keep watching that latest addictive series even though it’s 1am on a work night.

That’s why the internal siren call of ‘Just one more episode…’ is so hard to resist. I know, I’ve been there!

The most effective way to deal with this isn’t resistance, it’s redirection.

When you feel the pull toward something that you know is going to distract you and eat your time, pause for ten seconds and then ask: what will I actually have after giving my time to this? Will I gain something useful or just be entertained?

If it’s clear it’s not helpful, point your attention at something more constructive.

I’ll be honest this won’t work every time but when it does you’re building your capacity to choose where you direct your attention.

The best thing to explore with curiosity? Your inner world.

Inner curiosity brings rich rewards

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. — Carl Jung

Inner curiosity points to something deeper in yourself. Your motives, emotions, patterns, assumptions, and the stories you repeat so automatically you’ve stopped noticing them.

The Difference?

• Outer curiosity asks: What happened? What’s that? How does it work? What’s next?

• Inner curiosity asks: What just happened in me? What did I assume? What am I trying to get or avoid?

Inner curiosity is less immediately rewarding than all those external things trying to grab your attention. But It’s much more valuable, if you are willing to explore.

It changes your understanding of who you are. It gives you a clearer, more honest, more informed understanding of yourself.

What changes when you turn it inward

Curiosity changes behaviour in ways that build over time.

When you’re in a genuinely curious state, your brain treats information as worth keeping. Curiosity signals to the brain that something matters. It means you can change.

More importantly for the choices you make: without inner curiosity, you’re more likely to repeat the same scripts on autopilot. The same relationships, the same destructive patterns. The same problems.

You live life on repeat.

An invitation

As an adult it took me a lot of personal work to awaken my inner curiosity again.

When I looked back at my school years I saw from the age of ten my curiosity was slowly crushed and replaced with facts, figures and logic.

I was a statistic of an education system not designed for the individual where compliance to the norm was expected. My curiosity wasn’t dead, it was just existing below the surface on life support. Waiting to be revived.

If you accept you have a right be curious about youself and actively start to explore it, you will regain a power many never use.

Here’s one of the best ways I know to help you reawaken inner curiosity.

A practical tool: the 5 Whys

When you notice yourself feeling frustrated, avoidant, impulse, repeating a behaviour you don’t understand, pause. Get curious about it.

Ask a why question and then dig deeper with the next ‘why’ based on your answer until you discover something important.

Repeat this up to 5 times or as many as you need.

For example you get a comment about your work from your boss that stung. Rather than criticise yourself use the technique:

1. Why did that comment bother me?
   Because it felt dismissive.

2. Why does that matter?
   Because I want to be taken seriously.

3. Why is that so important right now?
   Because I don’t feel confident in what I’m doing.

4. Why don’t I feel confident?
   Because I’ve been avoiding something I know I need to tackle.

5. Why have I been avoiding it?
   Because I’m afraid that if I fully commit to doing it properly and it still doesn’t work, I’ll have run out of excuses.

You start with a comment and you end with an insight. A fear you’ve been carrying that’s been buried beneath the surface. Once you make that fear conscious you can work with it rather than let it unconsciously direct your behaviour.

This is a powerful technique so if gets a little too intense, change from ‘why’ to ‘what’ questions: not ‘Why am I like this?’ but ’What situations trigger this? What do they have in common?’

That helps shift from self judgement into a more balanced perspective.

If this landed, try this today:

Notice one reaction you’d normally dismiss and follow it inward instead of outward. Ask one honest question about it. Stay with what comes up.

Explore. Here are example questions to ask yourself with curiosity to explore your inner world:

• What am I not saying that needs to be said?

• What energised me today and what drained me?

• What would have to change for this to be different?
  

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. — Albert Einstein

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

You set the goal. You feel excited, full of drive and commitment to get it done.

And then, somehow it unravels; you miss a deadline, become distracted, and end up abandoning the plan just as you start to see progress.

It isn’t weakness and it isn’t laziness.

I discovered it’s something more interesting: your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

I used to treat self-sabotage as a character flaw. My inner critic would pummel my self-worth when a goal failed; ‘you’re useless, you always mess up, why do you even bother?’

But the science tells a different story. The obstacles between you and your goals are less about willpower than wiring, and seeing that changes everything.

Your brain is not on your side

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your brain doesn’t care whether you succeed.

It cares whether you survive.

Evolution shaped it to conserve energy, avoid uncertainty, and repeat whatever kept you alive yesterday. Growth, ambition, and change are, neurologically speaking, suspicious.

The brain is always choosing between the familiar and the unknown.

There’s a path you know so well you could walk it blindfold. The terrain is flat and unremarkable. It’s safe and easy and you take it often.

Nearby a mountain trail climbs toward a summit that pulls at something deeper, the sense that the view from up there would change how you see everything below.

But the trail bends out of sight almost immediately. The climb is steep, the distance unknown.

To the nervous system, that uncertainty isn’t just a challenge it’s a warning of something that could be unsafe. And so you stay on the path you know, within sight of a mountain you never climb.

When your brain registers an unfamiliar challenge, it treats uncertainty the way it would treat physical danger; you viscerally feel resistance, sucking your motivation, dimming your focus.

The very moment you reach for something new, an ancient alarm tolls.

Your upper limits problem

Psychologist Gay Hendricks in his book, the big leap describes how you have a subconscious set level for how much success, love, and fulfilment you allow yourself.

Go beyond it, and something quietly pulls you back to earth. Procrastination, the self-doubt, the sudden crisis that demands your attention elsewhere.

These limits are often inherited.

We absorb them from our families, peers and community, the unspoken rules of the world we grew up in. Surpassing the people you love can feel unsettlingly like a kind of betrayal. It often lurks below the surface. Success starts to carry the weight of guilt and guilt is a powerful brake.

Hendricks identified four fears that typically underpin self-sabotage:

1. Fear of not being good enough.

2. Fear of outgrowing the people who matter to you.

3. Fear that more success simply means more responsibility.

4. Fear of outshining someone; a parent, a sibling or friend whose shadow you feel you shouldn’t escape.

These fears operate in the background, changing your behaviour, making you undermine yourself.

The moment your brain decides to quit

The brain also has a system that reinforces those psychological fears.

A small structure called the lateral habenula plays a critical role in encoding negative motivation, disappointment, and aversion. It fires when an outcome falls short of expectation, suppresses the reward signal, and sends a blunt instruction: don’t bother trying that again.

This is why one bad day on a new diet can feel like the end. One slip on a creative project can make the whole thing feel pointless.

The brain isn’t being dramatic; it’s running a rough calculation about wasted energy, and its conclusion is swift and ruthless: stop.

Reframing ‘giving up’ this way is important. It isn’t moral weakness. It’s a misfired instruction from a system built for survival.

Your sabotage is trying to protect you

One of the more surprising ideas in modern psychology is this: our most destructive habits aren’t malicious they’re protective.

Procrastination, perfectionism, self-deprecation; these aren’t signs that part of you wants to fail. They’re signs that part of you is frightened of what happens if you succeed.

The way through isn’t to fight these instincts but to understand they have a purpose. And to know there is a smart way to shift behaviour so they don’t have so much sway in your life.

Making change ridiculously easy

While big goals are inspiring, as I’ve explained they can also trigger the brain’s resistance. The larger and more uncertain the change, the likelihood of self-sabotage grows.

The way around this is not to abandon goals but to break them down. Goals define where you want to go; habits determine whether you actually get there.

And the easiest way to build a habit is to make the first step disarmingly small.

Think James Clear’s two-minute rule. Not ‘I’ll write for an hour every morning’ but ‘I’ll open the document and write one sentence.’ Not ‘I’ll transform my diet’ but ‘I’ll eat 1 biscuit rather than two with my mid morning coffee.’ You then build on those foundations. Taking one micro action at a time.

This is because tiny actions rarely trigger the brain’s threat response.

They slip past the defences. Each small success releases just enough reward to reinforce the behaviour. Repeated often enough, the behaviour stops feeling like effort. Through consistant repetition, it simply becomes the thing you do.

The real question

Self-sabotage isn’t a sign that you’re failed. It’s a sign that your brain is working on old behaviours that no longer serve you.

The more useful question isn’t ‘why do I keep failing?’ But ‘What part of me feels unsafe when I try something new?’ Answer that honestly, and you open new possibilities for yourself. The mountain path is there for you to climb, you just need to take the first small step.

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

Your phone buzzes. You glance down.

‘Fine’

A sinking feeling hits your stomach.

‘Damn she’s annoyed with me. I must have said something wrong’ flashes through your mind. That’s not the response you were expecting. You start to ask what did I do wrong?

But pause. What actually happened?

You received a single word. Everything else you invented. Your brain filled a gap with a story, then sold it to you as fact.

You made an assumption.

The reality? Your friend was in a busy meeting and just sent you a quick response to your text.

An assumption is a belief you’ve accepted before it’s checked. The mind makes them constantly. Most pass you by. Yet they quietly shape what you feel, what you do, and what you believe is possible.

You can’t stop making assumptions. That’s not possible. The goal is to catch them so they don’t warp your reality of what’s actually true.

‘We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.’
Stephen R. Covey

Why the mind jumps to conclusions

Your brain is a prediction engine. It doesn’t record what’s in front of you, it anticipates it.

Every moment, you’re absorbing more information than you could possibly process in full: body language, words, memories, your environment, risks, sights, sounds, smells… If you had to consciously process all of it, you’d meltdown in seconds.

So the brain relies on mental shortcuts like assumptions, quick pattern-matches drawn from your past experience to create a workable version of events fast enough to act on.

The problem is that the stories they create can be wrong.

Confirmation bias makes this worse; once you believe something, you start favouring evidence that supports it and discounting evidence that doesn’t. Which means once you’ve formed an assumption however wrong, you start collecting evidence for it.

If you believe a colleague is lazy, you’re more likely to notice instances that confirm that assumption and overlook times they work hard. This self-reinforcing loop can make assumptions very hard to shake.

How assumptions change behaviour

Assumptions don’t stay in your head. They shape your reality.

1. They create what they predict. Jane decides her draft short story isn’t good enough and stops working on it before anyone else has seen a word. She tinkers at the edges, loses heart, and quietly shelves it.
   
   The assumption of its lack of worth buried it. The same thing happens everywhere: people abandon pieces they assume won’t land, silence ideas they assume will be met with indifference.
   
   The assumption closes the door before a single reader has had the chance to decide for themselves.
   

2. They distort relationships. A friend doesn’t reply to any of your messages all day. You assume you’ve offended them somehow. You pull back, become guarded. They sense the shift the next day, and grow confused. Real distance opens from nothing.
   
   The reality? Their phone battery died and they couldn’t charge it until they got home after work.
   
   See how easy it is to misread a situation and build a story around someone else’s behaviour.
   

3. They define who you think you are. Some assumptions go deeper than opinions about others; they become opinions about yourself.
   
   ‘I’m not creative’. ‘I’m not the kind of person who is good at presenting’. These beliefs don’t describe fixed truths. They describe past experiences you use as predictions about yourself.
   
   Once you accept them as fact, they begin to limit you. You stop trying the things that would stretch you and help you grow. You make your life smaller.

What you gain when you catch assumptions early

Assumptions feel like observations. That’s what makes them hard to catch. But certain signs reliably hint that they are present.

1. Notice your leaps. Thoughts like ‘She must think I’m useless’ or ‘This will definitely fail’ sound like you have automatically judged the outcome without evidence.

2. Strong emotions are telling you something important. Anxiety, frustration, and embarrassment are often less about what happened and more about the story you’ve told yourself about what happened. When strong emotions bubbles up, ask: what am I assuming right now?

3. Split fact from interpretation. Take any situation and separate it into two parts: what happened, and what you think it means.
   
   For example:
   Fact: My manager replied with a one sentence email to my report.
   Interpretation: She thought the work was poor.
   
   Naming the interpretation gives you more objectivity. Ask yourself is the assumption fair based on past behaviour?
   

4. Look for patterns. If you frequently assume judgement, rejection, or failure, regardless of the situation you may have triggered an habitual pattern rather than a balanced reading of what actually happened.

A simple check before you react

Once you catch your thinking might be an assumption, slow down. Breathe.

Take a few seconds to question your thoughts:

The 10-second check

1. What do I actually know? State the facts only; what happened, not what it means.

2. What am I assuming? Name the assumption in simple terms.

3. What else could explain this? Come up with at least two or three alternatives.

4. What’s the easiest way to find out? Ask a question. Wait. Gather information.

What changes when you pay attention

Assumptions will always be there. They’re hardwired into you.

But when you learn to catch them sooner, you give yourself something important. The ability to pause between what happens and what you decide it means.

Your decisions become clearer, relationships are less prone to misunderstandings and you have a more balanced perspective on life.

Reflect on your day, what assumptions did you make? And ask yourself, what else could be true?

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

Your ego is not the enemy. But it probably runs your life more that it should.

For years I thought getting rid of my ego was essential for self-development.

I tried lots of different things, meditation, hypnosis, visualisation and affirmations. They all helped a bit, but I always felt I was exploring a maze with countless dead ends. I learned the hard way that I was missing something fundamental.

It wasn’t until deep into my Psychosynthesis training when a wise lecturer steeped in the arcane knowledge of psychoanalysis gave me the insight I lacked.

He explained in words of crystal clarity that seeped into by bones, the raw truth that the ego is a necessary vehicle for navigating the world. You can’t outgrow or transcend an ego you never properly built.

And without ego you would be a mess. You’d never assert yourself or stick up for your needs. You would be a doormat.

That was the aha moment. The switch from treating the ego as an enemy to vanquish to a partner to renegotiate a relationship with. It also led to the realisation I needed to build a healthy level of ego strength to make this possible.

The harsh truth is if your ego is fragile, easily threatened, overly dependent on validation, avoids discomfort, then deep personal development work is a waste of time.

What ego strength actually means

In psychology, ego means your sense of ‘I’ the mental manager that helps you navigate reality.

It’s the internal voice and organiser of your thoughts, feelings, and identity. A healthy ego is what lets you get dressed in the morning, show up to work, and say ‘Hey, I deserve to be here’.

Ego is not just ‘egoism’ or pride; it’s the everyday self that keeps you you.

Ego strength is not self-importance. It’s the anchor that keeps you stable in the storms of life.

It’s your capacity to remain together under pressure. To tolerate criticism without crumbling. To feel anger, shame, or fear without being consumed by them. To hold a boundary without aggression. To delay an impulse that would cost you.

A strong ego doesn’t inflate when praised or collapse when challenged. You can hear ‘you’re wrong’ without feeling a failure. You can be imperfect and still value who you are.

Ego, in essence is the backbone of your personality.

The risk of going too deep, too fast

Many people attempt serious psychological work like excavating old trauma and exploring their shadow sides without first building a stable ego.

When ego strength is lacking, the consequences are often self-sabotage. Self-examination turns into self-attack; spiritual practice becomes a way of avoiding difficult feelings rather than engaging with them. Relationships suffer from unresolved reactive patterns rather than being grounded in conscious awareness.

What shifts when ego strength grows

When ego strength develops, something quiet but profound changes.

You can face yourself honestly looking directly at blind spots rather than defending against them. Growth requires self-confrontation, and self-confrontation requires a self stable enough to withstand it.

You also become less ‘owned’ by your triggers. A critical comment still stings. An unanswered message still nags at you, but through being more self-aware they don’t impact as much.

Picture someone who receives a harsh review of their work by an angry boss. A fragile ego spirals, replaying the words, catastrophising.

A colleague with a stronger ego feels the sting of the same feedback, sits with it, and returns to the desk the next morning. Not because the criticism didn’t matter, but because it didn’t define them.

Five ways to build ego strength

Ego strength isn’t built through insight alone. It develops through conscious action and repetition. These five practices will help you build that strength if you work with them a little each day.

1. Expand your tolerance for discomfort

When anxiety, shame, or anger arises, stay with the feeling for a moment, even 30 seconds is enough to start.

The point is to be present with what’s going on in your body rather than immediately reaching for distraction like social media, Netflix or shopping. What you are building is your capacity to pause and then choose how you respond rather than react to challenging situations.

To help when uncomfortable feelings arise, slow your out-breath and feel your feet on the ground. Let the feeling crest and fall if you can. Be curious as to where you feel it in your body.

Each time you do this, your nervous system learns something important: I can survive this. Everything else in this list depends on this foundation.

2. Keep small promises to yourself

Build your self-belief, one action at a time. Start small and adjust as your capacity grows.

2-minutes focused work on a goal. Take proper breaks from work, away from your desk, try a short walk at lunchtime to get some air. Send an email you’ve been avoiding. The goal here is consistency of keeping your word to yourself. Self-trust is earned, repetition by repetition.

At the end of everyday remind yourself or write down 2-3 promises you kept for yourself however small.

3. Set and hold boundaries

Say no without apologising or over explaining at least once a day as long as it feels safe to do so. Allow others to be disappointed in you.

This is where ego strength becomes visible in the world. Where you discover that another person’s needs don’t have to become your responsibility. Each time you hold a boundary, your psyche absorbs a message it rarely gets: my worth is not based on approval.

For more about building boundaries see:
The Most Important Boundaries You’ll Ever Set

4. Treat mistakes as useful information

When you make a mistake, own it, correct it, learn from it and then move on.

You’re not your mistakes. There is a profound difference between ‘I did something wrong’ and ‘I am wrong.’ Treat mistakes as useful feedback not as reasons to attack your self-worth.

5. Develop witness awareness

Practice observing your reactions.

Notice when you crave validation, when your ego feels threatened, when discomfort makes you want to run. Mentally name these instances, it helps creates distance between the witness (your core identity) that observes and the ego that reacts. You are not the reaction; you are the one watching it. This is where ego strength and self-awareness work together.

A great practice to help develop this is disidentification. See:
You’re Not Your Anxiety: A 5-Minute Practice for Finding Stillness in the Storm

The long game

Building ego strength takes time, but if you are serious about self-development work it’s fundamental.

It’s staying present during discomfort. Finishing what you start. Holding a boundary without drama. Owning a mistake without letting it define you.

In short it lays the foundation for you to become the person you are meant to be, no apology needed.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are
Carl Jung

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

Do you know someone that just gets under your skin?

Maybe a friend who plays the victim…
a relative who always must be in control…
or someone at work who does the bare minimum and still gets all the praise.

I certainly do, and it wasn’t until I began my psychotherapy training that I discovered why.

In class, there was a student who triggered flashes of pure rage in me, making the volcano inside want to explode. All because he wanted to get praise for his ‘insight’. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room. Other people found him a bit annoying, sure, but nothing close to my reaction.

So, I took it to my therapist, who asked me: “what part of yourself are you denying that is asking to be heard?“

And that was my aha moment. It wasn’t about him. It was about the part of me I had buried.

The part that also wanted to be seen. To be acknowledged. To stand out. The version of me that was 5 years old, that had been made to hide, be quiet, be safe.

And this is the uncomfortable reality: the people who trigger you most often aren’t the real issue. They are holding up a mirror…to something you’re not willing to see in yourself.

This is the heart of what Carl Jung called the shadow, the hidden dark place where everything in us we’ve repressed or denied still lives. Not pushed aside consciously, but buried so deeply we no longer recognise them as our own.

Repression means unconsciously burying parts of us that feel unacceptable. We can’t see them in ourselves, but they often show up as strong emotional reactions to others.

The weight we carry

Poet Robert Bly described the shadow this way: imagine dragging an invisible bag behind you, filled with parts of yourself the world didn’t welcome.

Your anger? Into the bag. ‘Nice girls don’t get angry.’
Your ambition? In it goes. ‘Don’t be pushy.’
Your playfulness, grief, desire: all shoved in, one judgment at a time.

These parts weren’t cast off because they were wrong. They were cast off because expressing them once threatened something vital: belonging, fitting in.

And so, the shadow forms as a survival tactic. If I hide this part of me, I’ll be accepted. I’ll be safe. By adulthood, most have built a polished self, socially acceptable, well-behaved, agreeable.

But the banished parts don’t vanish. They linger in the dark, shaping your choices, your reactions, your relationships.

They leak out sideways: the supportive friend who erupts after one too many drinks or the tireless giver who quietly keeps score.

Why that person annoys you so much

The shadow makes itself known through projection.

It’s when you unconsciously give to someone else a trait or desire you’ve denied in yourself. We do it all the time, without realising it. As Jung says, we encounter the shadow almost always through projection.

How can you tell? Disproportionate emotional reaction.

Jungian psychology likens repression to holding a beach ball underwater. It takes constant psychic energy to keep it down, and eventually, it bursts to the surface.

The intensity of your reaction reveals just how much energy you’re spending keeping that trait or desire submerged.

Someone cuts you off in traffic, you’re annoyed, then it’s gone.

That’s not shadow.

But when a colleague’s very presence fills you with contempt… or when a family member makes your skin crawl just by speaking…

That’s shadow.

Take Sarah. She prides herself on selflessness; volunteers nonstop, never says no, always puts others first.

Then she meets Julia: who’s confident, assertive, unapologetic. Julia protects her time, she asks for what she wants.

Sarah feels immediate, intense resentment. “Julia is so selfish,” she mutters.

This is the shadow talking. Sarah has cut off her own capacity for healthy self-worth, the right to take up space and get her needs met. If she had integrated that part, Julia’s behaviour wouldn’t trigger her so much.

The strong emotional flare-up is the message for Sarah: ‘There’s something here I’ve denied in myself.’

The gold in your shadow

The shadow isn’t just a dark pit of shame or rage. There is the hidden gold, the unclaimed brilliance, silenced creativity, and dormant courage.

Think of someone you deeply admire. Not just someone you like, someone you think is amazing, brilliant.

Now ask yourself: is there a belief under that admiration? Maybe ‘I could never be like that.’

That’s your golden shadow. You wouldn’t see those qualities so clearly in others unless they already lived inside you.

The powerful speaker reflects your unheard voice. The gifted artist shows your stifled creativity. The confident leader mirrors your dormant courage. When you idolise others, you give away your power. When you reclaim those projections, something shifts.

You step up, you start to live as someone who owns that gold, no longer watching from the sidelines.

Beginning shadow work: The 3-2-1 practice

Shadow work is more than recognising what you’ve buried. It’s about reclaiming the lost parts of you and integrating them.

One of the most effective methods is the 3-2-1 Shadow Process, adapted from philosopher Ken Wilber.

Step 1: face it (3rd person)

Start by identifying someone who triggers a strong emotional reaction: irritation, disgust, contempt, envy, obsession. Now write what annoys you about them, in the third person (he, she, they).

Don’t edit. Be honest.

Example: “She’s so attention-seeking. Always needs to be the centre of everything. It’s pathetic how much validation she craves.”

Tip:

• Brief irritation? that’s probably just circumstantial.

• Repetitive, emotionally charged reactions? That’s shadow.
  The stronger your reaction, the deeper the repression.

Step 2: talk to it (2nd person)

Now, shift perspective to talking with this person.
Speak directly using ‘you’ language.

Ask questions like:

• “Why are you doing this?”

• “What do you want from me?”

Then imagine, and write their response, without editing.

Example: “Why do you need so much attention?”
Response: “Because being invisible feels like I don’t exist…I want to be seen. I want to know I matter.”

Step 3: be it (1st person)

Now take it further. Become the person, or more specifically the part of you they’re reflecting.

Speak from it in the first person (I, me, mine).
Example: “I need attention. I want to be seen. I matter.”

Don’t just write the words: Feel them.

This is where the alchemy begins.
You start reclaiming the parts of yourself you’ve been projecting onto others.

The Invitation

Shadow work isn’t easy. It asks you to face the parts of yourself you’ve spent years avoiding. But it is one of the most powerful ways to reveal the unconscious stories running your life.

Most of your patterns aren’t conscious; they’re inherited, absorbed, or built from early experiences. Shadow work brings these buried beliefs to light.

As Jung said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

The real problem isn’t just life’s noise. It’s losing touch with what actually deserves your attention.

You’re doom scrolling your phone at 10 PM. Again.

You’ve been busy all day, yet if someone asked what you actually achieved, you’d probably struggle to name three meaningful things you’ve done. Your brain feels like spaghetti, and a quiet nagging voice utters:

Is this really what I want to be doing?

Your focus isn’t failing because you lack discipline. It’s failing because you’re navigating without a clear sense of direction. Algorithms are engineered to monetise your attention; relying on willpower is akin to bringing a butter knife to a sword fight.

The fix isn’t another productivity hack.

It’s far more fundamental: it’s knowing what you truly value.

Why most people get values wrong

You might dismiss values like ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’ as fluffy corporate slogans or self-help platitudes. But personal values are more fundamental: they determine what matters to you and how you are when no one’s watching.

They’re the standards you use to make choices, the reasons behind your strongest convictions, and the boundaries you won’t cross.

Unlike goals or preferences, which shift with circumstances, your core values remain steady. They’re what you protect when you feel compromised, and what you lean on when a decision feels impossible.

The distinction between values, morals and needs is often a little fuzzy; for clarity, I’m defining them as:

• Values are personal, enduring beliefs. They reflect what matters to you, not the world.

• Morals are society’s shared rules; commonly shaped by culture or religion. You can internalise them, but they usually originate outside of you.

• Needs are universal: connection, autonomy, rest. We all share them; they’re human essentials.

Most of your internal conflict comes from mixing these up.

You feel guilty for disappointing your parents (morals). You’re drained from chasing a promotion you don’t care about (misaligned values). You feel hollow because you haven’t seen your friends in weeks (unmet needs).

When your brain fights itself

Your brain is wired to reward integrity between what you believe and what you do. When your goals reflect your values, you feel clear and energised.

But when you pursue what impresses others, rather than what matters to you, something feels uneasy.

And you’re not alone: according to recent research from the Human Clarity Institute (2025)1 , only 14% of people say their daily tasks are strongly aligned with their values.

This means 86% of people spend their energy on things that don’t deeply reflect what matters to them.

When you don’t feel centred enough internally, your attention defaults to what’s urgent, familiar, or socially rewarding. You’re reacting on autopilot, not choosing how to respond.

No wonder burnout is everywhere.

You stay relentlessly busy, but nothing feels truly yours.

You can paddle frantically in any direction, but if it’s not heading toward shore, you’re just going in circles.

“Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason.”
Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life

The big five: what actually drives you

A core part of coaching is helping clients identify their top personal values. Because when you know your values, your priorities get clear, goals get easier, and life flows more.

The problem? It takes time to pin down your values. Classic approaches are a little clunky, lacking a simple clear overarching framework. Which is why, when I found out about recent research from 20252 that identified core human value orientations, a light bulb went off, and I realised this is a great framework to help people quickly get clarity on their top-level values.

The five key value orientations are:

1. Individual Mastery: developing skills for their own sake

2. Social Rank: seeking recognition and achievement

3. Interpersonal Relatedness : valuing relationships and support

4. Cultural Conventionality: prioritising stability, order and tradition

5. Universal Justice: supporting fairness and collective wellbeing

Each represents a different approach to meaning.

They are all equally valid; none is superior. And most people express a combination of these, with one or two taking the lead.

A functioning society depends on all five: the inventors, the caregivers, the reformers, the stabilisers, and the achievers.

The real tension isn’t between right and wrong values, but between your true values and the ones you’ve absorbed from others.

Identify your value orientations

To help you find your value orientations try this when you have 10 minutes. Open your calendar. Scan the entries from the past 2-3 weeks.

Make a note of which ones made you feel energised and uplifted.

Now review what you found and group them under one or more of the five core human value orientations:

Individual Mastery
Social Rank
Interpersonal Relatedness
Cultural Conventionality
Universal Justice

Here are examples for each of the 5 orientations:

• Deep work on a hard problem, learning a new skill → Individual Mastery

• Leading a high-pressure project, winning recognition for your work → Social Rank

• Mentoring a colleague, supporting a friend through crisis → Interpersonal Relatedness

• Organising systems, creating clear guidelines, maintaining tradition → Cultural Conventionality

• Championing policy change, standing up for fairness → Universal Justice

After identifying your value orientations, you can start to use them as a filter for where to focus your attention.

Anchor your values with boundaries

Values without boundaries are just good intentions. Without boundaries, you’re skimming the surface of everything, jumping between tasks, never diving in far enough to find meaning.

What gives them agency is structure, a clear line that protects what matters from what’s merely urgent.

This might look like no work email after 7 PM if you value interpersonal connection or blocking mornings for creative work if you value individual mastery.

Create a Not-To-Do list

To support your boundaries create a Not-To-Do list, a list of what actively pulls you away from your values.

Such as:

• ‘I will not check social media before breakfast.’

• ‘I will not accept meetings that could be emails.’

• ‘I will not respond to work messages after 7 PM.’

⠀Every no to noise is a yes to what matters.

One action for today

There is a lot more to discover with identifying your core values but this is a good starting point. I encourage you to take 10 minutes for yourself today, look at your calendar and identify your value orientations as explained in the exercise.

This one simple action will start to give you clarity on what you value.

Want to go deeper? An email course on finding your specific values beyond the big five orientations is coming soon. Sign up to the Self Unlocked to be notified when it launches.

Footnotes

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

You set the goal, maybe even make it SMART. You’ve got the intention and momentum to make it happen.

An then…something stalls,

You get distracted, days go by and nothing moves.

Your inner critic tells you:

• I need more discipline

• I’ve lost motivation

• I just need to push harder

That story sounds reasonable. But it’s incomplete.

What actually stops most goals isn’t effort.

It’s a fear, intelligent, quiet, and often below conscious thought. In its own way, it’s trying to protect you. It’s the fear of who you’d have to become if the goal actually worked.

It’s about identity and how achieving your goal would change it.

You don’t just choose who you are

We often think identity is something we decide:

‘I’m going to be more confident.’
’I’m going to be a successful writer.’
’I’m going to be a great public speaker.’

But identity isn’t just a belief or label.

It’s a pattern, shaped by what your nervous system has learned is safe. It’s the roles, behaviours, and expressions you’ve rehearsed over time to stay accepted, protected, or invisible when needed.

When life is calm, it’s possible to experiment with being someone new. But when stress hits you get pulled back into old patterns, outdated protection that’s stuck in the past.

That’s why most people don’t fail at goals when planning them.
They fail when change threatens the identity that keeps you safe.

The Adapted Self vs the Authentic Self

Here’s where most goal-setting advice misses something crucial.

You don’t have one single ‘self.’

There’s the Authentic self, aligned with your deeper values and needs. The one you started life with; open, curious and trusting. But then you had to start protecting yourself by changing who you are to stay connected with your parents or carer to meet their approval. This is your Adapted self, which learned quickly the rules to staying safe:

• Don’t be too much

• Don’t disappoint

• Don’t draw attention

• Be useful, pleasant, reliable

It’s not bad. It’s protective.

But here’s the problem: Many goals are set by the Adapted self, not the authentic one. They sound like growth: be more confident, be more productive, be more successful.

But underneath, they’re often about staying acceptable.

When a goal starts to threaten that safety by asking you to speak up, set boundaries, be visible, or stop over working, resistance appears. Not because you don’t want the goal. But because another part of you is protecting something older like the mask that avoided conflict or the strategy that once made you feel safe.

How do you know if a goal is authentic?

Start by checking the emotional tone.

The Adapted self sets goals that feel anxious, urgent, driven by ‘shoulds’ or the need to stay liked, needed, or invisible.

The Authentic self sets goals that feel grounded, clear, and energising, even if they stretch you.

Ask yourself:

• What part of me wants this?

• What does this goal protect?

• And what might it cost me to live it?

If the cost is losing a role you’ve played to stay safe, you’re on the edge of something important and the resistance you feel is worth listening to.

The real sequence of change

Traditional goal-setting frameworks like SMART goals focus on what you’ll do, by when, and how to measure it.

Goal → Action → Outcome

Set the goal, push yourself to act, measure the result.
But they rarely ask:

• Who will I stop being if this works?

• What will I have to feel?

• What version of me no longer fits this life?

Goals don’t collapse because they’re unclear. They collapse when they threaten who you believe you need to be in order to stay safe.

When action breaks down, we assume it’s a discipline issue. But psychologically, something else happens first.

The moment a goal is set, your system runs a quiet scan: Is this safe? What will this cost me? Who will I have to stop being if this works?

Only after identity engages when it feels safe enough is a goal achievable.

This is also why willpower often breaks down. It can carry you through when your identity feels intact, but the moment a goal threatens the self you’ve learned to be, your system steps in to protect you.

Not because you’re lazy, but because you’re reaching beyond what’s historically felt safe.

In reality, the sequence looks like this:

Goal → Safety → Identity → Action → Outcome

The goal points to what you want.

Safety decides whether you’re ready to move towards your goals.

Identity determines whether the change feels authentic or like you’re pretending.

Taking action feels easier when it matches who you believe you are.

When action aligns with identity and safety, consistent effort happens and results come as a natural outcome.

If safety isn’t there, identity is challenged and the goal is sabotaged because your nervous system wants to protect you from the perceived danger, even if it isn’t real.

So the question isn’t: ‘How do I push myself harder?’
It’s: ’What version of me feels safe enough to actually achieve this goal?’

This is also where habits fit and where they don’t. A habit is a useful tool, but it can’t lead the change. If a habit threatens your sense of safety or belonging, it won’t stick no matter how small or well-designed.

Habits reinforce identity. But identity only stabilises after it feels safe to exist.

Five questions that change how you set goals

If you want goals that stick, you need to work with identity, not against it.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

1. What identity am I protecting by not changing?

   The peacemaker? The helper? The one who never rocks the boat?

2. What would this goal make unsafe?
   Approval? Belonging? Predictability?

3. What old self-image would I need to grieve?
   Growth always involves loss. Name it.

4. What small identity shift is safe enough to practise now?
   Not: ‘Confident leader.’
   Rather: ‘Someone who speaks once per meeting.
   Not: ‘An athlete.’
   Rather: ‘Someone who runs twice a week in the park.’

5. What inner state does that identity require and how will I support it?

   Calm? Grounded? Assertive?

Want to apply this right now?

I’ve distilled these five questions into a simple 5-minute worksheet.

It will help you quickly check whether your current goal is workable or needs adjustment. The worksheet focuses on three essential questions:

• What would you lose if this goal worked?

• What’s the smallest version that still counts?

• Could you do it for just 3 days?

» Download the 5 minute goal reality check

Now let me show you how this actually plays out in real life.

An example goal

Ted, a junior designer at a creative agency sets a goal: ‘I want to be more visible at work.’

He imagines speaking up in meetings. He knows he has useful things to say, even rehearses it before meetings. But when the opportunity comes, he freezes.

A thought flashes: ‘If I say this, I might be judged or no longer feel safe here.’

The surface goal is visibility but the underlying fear is loss of belonging. Because speaking up could disrupt the identity he’s long relied on: The agreeable one. The one who doesn’t make waves.

So instead of forcing confidence, he tries a small identity shift: ‘I’m someone who shares one thought per meeting.’

Ted, spots an opening in the meeting, before acting, he pauses, takes a breath and slowly exhales to ground. He then speaks his point. It’s small, but it lands with the team.

Each time he does it, he gathers evidence: I can be visible and still feel safe. That’s how identity actually changes, not by force, but by building safety into the shift.

The reframe that matters

Your goals aren’t failing because of lack of effort or desire.

They’re failing because a protective part of you is asking for safety before allowing change. When you realise that and start listening to what’s happening inside you, your goals become more attainable, because your identity is able to shift safely with them.

I invite you to choose a goal, run it through the 5 minute goal reality check and see what you discover.

» Download the 5 minute goal reality check

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

I spent years trying to teach myself a growth mindset.

I’d read the research. Take notes. Feel inspired.

Then I’d try to apply it, and nothing would change.

I’d freeze before important presentations.

Stare at an empty page when I had an urgent report to write.

Stay silent in meetings when I had something useful to say.

I understood the concepts. I wanted to change. But when the moment came, when it actually mattered I’d revert right back to my old patterns.

For a long time, I thought this was a motivation problem.

It wasn’t.

It was a body problem.

The fatal flaw in traditional mindset work

Here’s what most mindset approaches miss:

Your mindset doesn’t live in your thoughts. It lives in your nervous system.

When you’re about to do something that feels risky; give a presentation, share your work, have a difficult conversation, start something new your body reacts first.

Before you have a single conscious thought, your nervous system is already making a decision:

‘Is this safe, or is this a threat?’

If it decides ‘threat,’ your body contracts:

• Your shoulders tense

• Your chest feels tight

• Your stomach contracts

• Your breath gets shallow

I call this state Protective Mode, a temporary state in which you prioritise safety over possibility.

And then your thoughts follow:

• ‘People will judge me’

• ‘I’m not ready for this’

• ‘I’m going to mess this up’

Traditional mindset work tries to change the thoughts. But the thoughts are just the symptom. The body made the decision first.

It’s why you can intellectually understand a growth mindset but still feel stuck.

You’re trying to override a nervous system response with logic. And your nervous system will win every time.

What happens when you ignore the body

Without addressing the nervous system piece, mindset work creates a painful cycle:

You learn the ‘right’ way to think:

You try to apply it in a real moment → Your body contracts → Old thought patterns flood back → You feel like you’ve failed → You conclude you’re ‘just not a growth mindset person’

The real problem? You were never taught to work with your body’s signals.

So you experience:

• Perfectionism: You can’t move forward until it’s ‘ready’

• Imposter syndrome: No amount of success seems to fix it

• Creative blocks: The ideas are there, but access feels locked

• Invisible pressure: Even small tasks feel harder than they should

• Chronic hesitation: You know what to do, but can’t get yourself to start

You’re not lazy, you’re not unmotivated, you’re definitely not broken.

Your nervous system is doing precisely what it’s designed to do: protect you. The problem is, it’s protecting you from things that aren’t actually dangerous.

The cost of living in Protective Mode

When your nervous system stays in a state of protection, it affects everything.

In your work:

• You play it safe

• You avoid tough challenges

• You overthink simple decisions

⠀In your creative life:

• You stick with what you know

• You start projects but don’t finish them

• You keep re-editing until you feel ‘ready’

⠀In your relationships:

• You people-please to avoid conflict

• You don’t say what you actually need

• You second-guess yourself constantly

This isn’t just uncomfortable. It’s expensive.
It costs you opportunities, growth and relationships.

What changes when you work with your nervous system

When you understand how your body and mindset work together, several things change.

You notice the shift earlier. Instead of realising you’re stuck after 20 minutes of spiralling, you catch it in the first few seconds. Harsh thoughts lose their authority once you recognise them as a defensive reaction, not reality.

Mistakes stop being identity threats. A mistake becomes information, not proof that you’re inadequate.

You start to build real confidence in your worth.

Why this approach is different

The traditional ‘fixed vs. growth mindset’ approach is primarily mind oriented, focused on beliefs and thought patterns.

So it often overlooks the physiological state that underlies those beliefs. When your nervous system is in a state of protection, even the most empowering belief may not feel accessible.

I’ve built my mindset approach from the ground up. I’ve distilled this work into a free email course called:

Mindset Unlocked: From I can’t to I can
Learn the skills for an Open Mindset in 5 days.

In this course, I’m integrating both a top-down (mind) and bottom-up (nervous system) approach, recognising that mindset is shaped by how safe you feel in the moment and your thoughts. Each lesson takes about 5-10 minutes and each day gives you a practice to develop your skills. By the end you will have practical tools to help you build a more resilient, more open mindset.

You’ll learn how to stop freezing when the pressure’s on, quiet the voice of imposter syndrome and perfectionism, and finally get moving on the things you’ve been avoiding.

Sign up for the free 5-day Mindset course here

I told myself I would stop work on time.
But then my boss’s email came in.

I replied on autopilot.
Said yes to a report I didn’t want to do.

So I stayed late.
No one made me do it.
But I did it anyway.

I did this to myself, again and again.

Each time, it filled me with resentment and frustration. But I felt like I didn’t have a choice. It cost me. My relationship, my health. Nearly burned me out.

That was my life for years, until I did the work and realised the fundamental shift wasn’t learning to say no to someone else.

It was learning how to say no to me.

What most boundary advice misses

You’ve heard it before: ‘Set boundaries.’ Say no. Protect your energy. Avoid people who drain you.

But here’s what gets missed: A lot of the time, it’s you. You’re the one pushing past your limits. You’re the one breaking your own promises.

Once you start noticing that, and doing something about it, things begin to change. You begin to trust your own choices more.

Boundaries start with you

There are two kinds of boundaries.

External boundaries protect.
Internal boundaries guide your behaviour.

External boundaries

These are the invisible lines that tell other people: ‘This is where I end, and you begin.’

They’re about protecting your space, time, energy, body, and emotions.

• Saying no to going out when you’re drained

• Deciding who gets to touch you or not

• Choosing not to let someone yell at you or talk down to you

It’s your call what crosses the line.

Internal boundaries

This is the part most people miss.

Internal boundaries are the limits you set with yourself. They’re about self-respect and self-protection.

We are not talking harsh self-discipline; it’s more about being a decent parent to yourself.

It looks like:

• Stopping at two episodes on a new show like you planned, instead of watching until 2 AM on a work night

• Catching yourself catastrophising about that text they haven’t replied to and choosing to do something else

• Taking a break from work rather than powering through

• Setting a 20-minute timer for Instagram and actually closing the app when it goes off

How they work together

External and internal boundaries aren’t separate things. They’re deeply connected.

External pressure tests your internal boundaries. Your boss emails at 9 PM. That’s the external trigger. But whether you respond immediately or wait until morning? That’s an internal boundary decision.

And here’s the harder truth: weak internal boundaries sabotage your external ones.

You can tell people, ‘I don’t work weekends.’ But if you don’t have the internal boundary to actually close your laptop, or resist the urge to ‘just check email quickly,’ that external boundary is just wishful thinking. You’ve drawn a line, but you’re the first one to step over it.

This is why people struggle to hold boundaries even after they’ve clearly communicated them.

The external boundary fails because the internal one was never there.

But it works the other way too.

Strong internal boundaries make external boundaries possible. When you’ve practiced keeping promises to yourself, when you’ve built that foundation of self-trust holding the line with others becomes clearer. You stop second-guessing whether your ‘no’ is legitimate. You stop apologising for having needs.

Each time you honor an internal boundary, you’re also reinforcing an external one. Each time you hold an external boundary, you prove to yourself that you can protect what matters.

They’re not separate skills. They’re two sides of the same practice: treating yourself like someone worth showing up for.

Picture this: It’s 8 PM on a Tuesday. You promised yourself you’d stop work at 6 pm. But you’re still at your desk, telling yourself, ‘Just one more email.’ Then another. The guilt builds.

No one’s watching. No one’s going to call you out, which makes it easier to let things slide. It doesn’t blow up your life all at once. It’s more like a slow leak.

You lose trust in yourself little by little until one day, you can’t figure out why everything feels off.

The cost of self-betrayal

When you say yes without checking in with yourself, you’re betraying the one person it’s your job to protect: you.

But instead of noticing that self-betrayal, it’s easier to shift the blame outward. We get resentful. We play the martyr.

That unspoken ‘no’ turns into passive-aggression.

The fear that keeps you trapped

Here’s what’s really happening in most boundary violations: someone makes a request, and before you even consider what you want, fear kicks in.

‘If I say no, they’ll be hurt.’

‘They’ll think I’m selfish.’

‘They’ll be disappointed in me.’

So you override your own boundary to manage their potential feelings. You say yes to protect them from discomfort and yourself from their reaction.

But notice what you’re actually choosing: their comfort over your needs, every time. Being liked over being honest and avoiding short-term awkwardness over long-term resentment.

And here’s the cost: you say yes, feel resentful, then act passive-aggressive. The relationship suffers anyway. Or you set a pattern that you’re always available, so they keep asking, and saying no, it gets harder each time.

Meanwhile, you’re reinforcing to yourself that your needs don’t matter.

The other person hasn’t done anything wrong by asking. They might have handled your ‘no’ perfectly fine. But your fear made you abandon yourself.

Over time, you end up overwhelmed by things you technically agreed to, even though, deep down, you never really did.

Low self-worth and weak boundaries feed each other.

When you ignore your own needs, you’re telling yourself you don’t count. And when that happens often enough, it starts to feel true.

Building your internal boundaries

Every time you keep a boundary with yourself, you’re reinforcing that you matter.

Here’s how:

1. Notice the signals

Tune into your feelings.

Fear is often the earliest signal that your boundaries are being challenged.

That split-second panic when someone asks you for something. The thought ‘If I say no, they’ll think I’m selfish’ flashes through your mind before you even consider what you actually want.

That fear is your cue. It means you’re about to override your own boundary to manage someone else’s potential reaction.

The other ones to look out for:

• Resentment

• Guilt

• Exhaustion

That heavy feeling after saying yes when you didn’t want to.

They are clues that you may have crossed a line with yourself.

When you feel one of these, pause and ask:

What did I agree to? What did I ignore?

2. Start small

Manageable steps make it achievable.

For example:

• Pause before automatically saying yes to an ask. One quick way to ground is to feel your feet on the floor before responding

• Stop scrolling when you said you would

• Shut your laptop within five minutes of your scheduled stop time

Every time you make micro steps like these, you’re building your capacity to set your internal boundaries.

And the benefit compounds every time you make that choice.

3. Decide in advance

It’s hard to hold a boundary when you’re already overwhelmed or in people-pleasing mode.

So don’t wait until the moment you’re under pressure. Set your limits when your head is clear.

Don’t be vague, don’t say ‘I’ll work less.’ Make it concrete.

For example:

’If someone texts me after 10 PM, unless it’s truly urgent, I’ll respond in the morning,’

‘I’ll close my work email at 6:30 PM and won’t reopen it until 9 AM the next day.’

or a little tougher

‘When I sit down for lunch with a friend, my phone goes off for 30 minutes.’

Small, specific rules help you catch yourself before you slip.

Come up with three rules for yourself, then build from there.

4. Check in daily

Internal boundaries don’t come with built-in accountability. No one’s watching, which makes it easy to bend the rules, especially when you’re tired, anxious, or bored.

So, check in with yourself, a 10-second pause around mid-afternoon.

Ask: Am I keeping the promises I made to myself today?

Just notice what the answer is.

The internal boundary audit

To help you become more aware of where your internal boundaries are, take five minutes this week and ask yourself:

• What did I say yes to that didn’t feel right?

• Where did I override my own ‘no’?

• ·What promises to myself did I break?

• What would I tell a friend if they were in the same situation?

Be honest.

These answers will show you where the cracks are and where to focus.

Do this every week from now on at a set time. Create a ritual that works for you.

The line you stop crossing

Boundaries with other people matter. But the ones you keep with yourself? That’s fundamental.

Because when you stop letting yourself down, you stop living in reaction mode.

And slowly, you begin to trust yourself more. Clear boundaries are built in the consistent small actions you take, a pause, a decision, and a kept promise to yourself.

Want to take this further?

Coming February 2026; Boundaried: Build the Skills for Healthy, Sustainable Boundaries

A 7-Day Email Course. Sign up or drop me a line to find out more.

Subscribe now

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

Ever wondered why you react the way you do under pressure?

I used to hate speaking in pubic, the rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, hot cheeks and my mind going blank. I thought it would always be that way until I understood how my nervous system works. Applying this knowledge changed my relationship with stress for the better.

And you can learn it too.

Here, I’ll show you how to work with your nervous system to stay calmer, more focused, and in control.

The four ceptions

You’ve heard of the five senses. But beneath the surface are four hidden body–mind systems. They steer your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

For simplicity, I call these four systems ‘ceptions’; short for perception-based systems.

They are:

1. Neuroception: your subconscious safety scanner.

2. Interoception: your internal emotion tracker.

3. Proprioception: your body’s position in space.

4. Exteroception: your sensory anchor to the present.

Together as key parts of your nervous system, they shape how you experience life, especially under pressure.

These systems are always on, but you’ll notice them most in situations like:

• Tough conversations.

• Walking through a busy crowd.

• Managing anxiety or uncertainty.

• Making decisions, pitching ideas, or navigating pressure.

The more aware you are of these four ceptions, the more control you have over your reactions. Wherever you are, whoever you’re with.

To see how they work together, let’s walk through a common scenario.

Example: a stressful online meeting

You’re about to lead a high-stakes video call. Maybe you’re pitching a new business idea, managing a tense team issue, or presenting to senior stakeholders.

Your camera turns on. The screen fills with faces. Eyes are on you.

You want to appear confident, composed, and clear. But inside, your body has already entered “alert mode.”

What’s happening?

Here’s what each of the four ceptions is doing.

1. Neuroception: your internal security system

Before you even speak, your nervous system is scanning: Is this safe? Or threatening?

It reads subtle expressions, voice tone, micro-pauses, and even your own heart rate. This may trigger a stress response before you consciously realise it.

Why it matters: When you realise unconscious safety scans drive your reactions, you can stop blaming yourself. This awareness lets you let go of self-judgment and be kinder to yourself.

2. Interoception: your emotion radar

You feel tension in your chest, your breath goes shallow, and your mouth is dry.

Interoception is picking up these physiological shifts, the source of what you call ‘stress’ or ‘nerves.’

Why it matters: Tuning in to your body’s subtle signals is grounding, such as noticing where you’re tense or how you’re breathing. This lets you catch emotional shifts early.

That awareness helps you name what you’re feeling and respond with intention rather than react. As a practical step, ask yourself, “Where is the tension right now?”

This question can help you identify areas of stress and manage your responses more consciously.

Quick tip: Your breath reflects your state. Anxiety often shows up as rapid chest breathing. To shift this, try one or more of these:

• Focus on slowing down your exhale.

• Breathe into your belly (putting your hands on your hips helps).

• Be aware of your feet on the floor.

3. Proprioception: your body’s GPS

Even on video, your physical presence matters. You shift in your seat, align your posture, and raise your hands as you speak.

Proprioception guides these subtle movements and physical cues.

Why it matters: Proprioception gives you physical awareness. The better you sense your body, the more grounded and centred you feel. Try a quick posture scan: are your sitting bones evenly balanced, or are you leaning to one side? This simple act can prompt you to embody this awareness in the moment.

4. Exteroception: your anchor to the room

You feel the chair beneath you, the light from the screen and the background noise. These sensory inputs help orient you to your environment.

Why it matters: Exteroception processes and interprets raw data from the five senses. Feeling your feet on the ground, hearing a sound, and noticing light can anchor you when your mind starts to spin.

This simple practice of noticing sensations helps you stay in the present moment.

Why These four Systems Matter Together

These aren’t isolated functions. They’re a team, a real-time body–mind operating system that shapes:

• How you feel.

• How you move.

• How you respond to pressure, pain, or possibility.

Each ception draws from many sensory sources. Each influences the others. Unlike passive senses (like smell or hearing), the ceptions are:

• Integrative: They combine sensory data into patterns.

• Interpretive: They shape emotional and behavioural meaning.

• Trainable: You can sharpen them to improve focus, resilience, and presence.

They’re how you turn subconscious reactivity into conscious awareness.

The response reset

Next time you feel under pressure, use this practical tool.

Feel - Name - Respond

To help you see the benefit, track your tension or stress level by rating it from 1 to 10 before and after using the tool. This will help you measure the impact of this exercise on your state of mind.

1. Feel the signal

Notice what’s happening: your breath, your heartbeat, your posture, your thoughts. These are not distractions; they’re signals from your nervous system.

They’re telling you something. Start by tuning in, without judgment.

2. Name the system

Recognise which of your four ceptions is most active:

1. Is neuroception signifying a threat, real or perceived?

2. Is interoception telling you you’re overwhelmed or tense?

3. Is proprioception alerting you that your posture’s off, your body’s tight, or your movement feels awkward?

4. Is exteroception asking you to reconnect with your surroundings through the five senses?

3. Respond

Now choose a micro-action that will help you reconnect with yourself:

• Take a conscious breath and soften the exhale.

• Shift your posture.

• Soften your gaze.

• Tune into one sound or sensation around you.

These small shifts help calm you, reconnect you with your environment and bring you back to a more present state.

I invite you to try The Response Reset in moments of stress and see how it helps you stay more grounded and centred.

The more you do this, the more you will realise that you have a choice in how you respond to stressful situations.

In a world full of noise and stress, developing the skill of tuning into your ceptions is one of the most practical ways to help you manage your tension and anxiety.

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:

’ I’m anxious.’ 

’ I’m too sensitive.’

’I need to be quiet.’

For years, these were the stories I told myself. I didn’t think I could ever change them until I discovered how my nervous system worked. Understanding it was reacting to ‘perceived threats’, and in its own way, trying to protect me, was a liberating insight. I could stop blaming myself for behaviour I never consciously chose.

Don’t get me wrong, today I still get anxious, and I still blush way too easily when I get embarrassed. But now, I can work with my body’s responses rather than blaming myself. 

Knowing how the nervous system works will help you better understand why you react the way you do. And give you more choice in how you respond to life’s challenges.

Read on to learn how and why vagus nerve ‘hacks’ miss the bigger picture. And discover three practical tools to help calm your nervous system.

Your nervous system is running the show

Here’s the simplest way to understand it: Your body is constantly scanning the world, asking: ‘Am I safe?’

This happens before your thinking mind engages.

Stephen Porges, the creator of Polyvagal theory, calls it neuroception. Your body’s unconscious detection of safety or threat operates without conscious awareness.

If it senses safety, you feel calm, confident, connected.

If it senses danger, your system responds with fight, flight, or freeze. Your instinctive survival responses.

• Fight: You get angry or aggressive.

• Flight: You avoid or escape.

• Freeze/collapse: You shut down or disconnect.

Self-awareness begins in the body

Your self-worth rises or falls with how safe your nervous system feels.

It’s not just about mindset. It’s physiology.

Raja Selvam, in his book The Practice of Embodying Emotions, offers an insightful observation. When you increase your capacity to feel emotion in the body, your mind becomes clearer, calmer, and less reactive.

Here, capacity means how much emotional or physical sensation your system can handle without shutting down. When capacity is low, small things feel big. When it’s high, life feels more manageable and open.

A healthy nervous system is about regulation. The ability to return naturally to equilibrium after stress and overwhelm. Achieving this level of regulation is not a hack you can do in 5 minutes; it’s deep, sustained work.

Nervous system regulation underpins confidence, boundaries, and emotional resilience. A dysregulated nervous system creates dis-ease, distress, and an overall sense of chaos in your body and often in your life.

Why the vagus nerve isn’t a relaxation hack

That brings us to one of the most misunderstood pieces of the nervous system puzzle: the vagus nerve.

Somewhere along the way, it became a trend.

‘Hack it.’

‘Tap it.’

‘Stimulate it.’

And yes, some of that helps.

But here’s the truth: the vagus nerve, a key part of your parasympathetic nervous system (your ‘rest and digest’ branch), isn’t a switch you flip.

It influences heart rate, digestion, and emotional regulation, but not on command.

Authentic vagal tone (how well this system works) is about:

• Flexibility: shifting smoothly between states.

• Capacity:  staying present without overwhelm.

• Safety: a grounded sense of ‘I’m okay’.

It’s less ‘press here to relax,’ more ‘How well can you move between the states of activation and calm?’

Here, activation means your system is alert, not necessarily in danger, but primed to protect.

When you understand your nervous system, life makes sense

Suddenly, you get it:

• Freeze in conflict? Your body feels unsafe and shuts you down to protect you.

• Overwhelmed and numb? That’s your system going into energy-conservation mode. A deep form of withdrawal often linked to the freeze response.

• Snapping at people you love? That’s your stress response, sometimes called fight or flight, kicking in to defend you.

• Struggle to ‘think positive’ when stressed? Your thinking brain goes offline when your body feels under threat.

• Find it hard to set boundaries? Your nervous system may be stuck in survival mode, where pleasing others feels safer than standing your ground.

There’s nothing wrong with you. Your system is doing its job.

When you understand that, you stop fighting yourself and start working with yourself.

3 ways to gently help your nervous system

I want to give you three basic tools that can help you return to that more open, regulated state.

Each of these exercises may land differently for you, and you may even find that they don’t calm you; they instead stimulate you. Give them a try and see how they feel.

1. Grounding

(Adapted version of an exercise from nervous system expert Irene Lyon.)

This is useful when you are feeling overwhelmed. You can also use it in calmer moments, when stress is low, to build resilience and help you cope more effectively with stress. 

The first few times you do it, take it slow, and then find a pace that works for you. 

How to do it

1. Bring your attention to your breath without changing it, softening your face and jaw.

2. Feel your feet on the ground while continuing to be aware of your breath.

3. Now bring your attention to your hands, sensing their shape, weight and presence while still being aware of your breath.

4. Then bring your awareness to your pelvis and legs, noticing the support they provide as you breathe.

5. After a pause, take a breath in, hold for a second, then gently sigh it out.

How it helps

The purpose is to reduce overwhelm by reconnecting you with your body. Making it easier for you to process stress and emotions. The emphasis is on remaining present with intense feelings rather than avoiding them.

2. Orienting (Deb Dana)

Orienting is the simple practice of reminding your nervous system that the present moment is safe.

When you feel overwhelmed or stressed, your attention narrows. The nervous system goes on high alert, scanning for danger. This is a survival pattern. In threatening environments, it helps you focus on what’s wrong.

But in safe settings, it can trap you in a loop of hypervigilance or anxiety.

How to do it

You can try this for 30 seconds or more, whatever works best for you.

1. Turn your head slowly around your environment.

2. Let your eyes rest on objects around you, a window, a tree, a patch of sunlight…

3. Linger on what feels pleasant or neutral.

4. Notice colours, shapes, textures.

5. Let your breath settle naturally.

Why it helps 

Your nervous system uses visual cues to determine safety.

When you look around and see nothing threatening, you begin to relax. It gives your system evidence that you’re safe. This is one of the quickest ways to interrupt a stress spiral and return to the present.

3. The voo hum (Peter Levine)

When the body holds onto stress or trauma, it often gets stuck in a loop of activation.

Peter Levine is the founder of Somatic Experiencing. He discovered that certain sounds and vibrations can help release that stuck energy. One of the most effective and accessible is the Voo Hum.

This practice sends soothing vibrations through the diaphragm, chest, and throat. This stimulates the vagus nerve, which plays a central role in calming your nervous system.

It’s not about forcing yourself to relax; it’s about gently giving your body a cue of safety, using sound.

How to do it

1. Take a slow, deep breath in.

2. On the exhale, make a low, drawn-out “Voooooo” sound, deep and steady.

3. Feel the vibration move through your chest and belly.

4. Pause (If you have never done this before, do it once to see how it lands, then repeat if it feels good).

5. Repeat 3–5 times, letting your awareness rest on the physical sensation.

6. Pause after each Voo and notice any softening.

Why it helps

The vagus nerve responds especially well to vibration and resonance.

This technique indirectly stimulates it. Inviting the body out of fight-or-flight and into a more grounded, connected state. Many people report feeling calmer and clearer after just a few rounds. It’s also worth noting that some may feel slightly sleepy rather than stimulated.

What this really means

Understanding your nervous system isn’t just about learning biology.

It’s about learning about yourself, your body and your reactions. When you recognise your state, you stop identifying so much with your reaction.

‘Why am I like this?’ becomes, ‘Oh. That’s my nervous system reacting. It thinks I’m not safe.’ It helps you feel more grounded. More present. More able to respond to situations rather than react.

This is often the missing piece in self-development work. Working with your body, mind, and emotions gives you a powerful, holistic approach that works. 

There is much more to regulating the nervous system. Here, I have covered some basics. If you’re curious to know more, please reach out and let’s start a conversation.

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Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version:

You’ve probably never heard of Roberto Assagioli.

He wasn’t as famous as Jung or Freud. Still, those who knew him called him a psychological wizard, the founder of Psychosynthesis. A man who walked between science and soul. A mountaineer, mystic, and wartime rebel, Assagioli developed a deceptively simple practice: disidentification.

It teaches you how to pause in the middle of overwhelm, to recognise that your racing thoughts and tangled emotions aren’t who you are.

The idea that shifts control

Roberto Assagioli’s idea is simple: we are dominated by what we identify with. If we can dis-identify, we regain control.

• You have a body.

• You have feelings and emotions.

• You have thoughts and stories.

But you are not just those things.

Think of your thoughts and emotions as weather, fast-moving, intense, constantly changing. But you’re not the weather. You’re the sky it moves through: open, spacious, unchanged by the storm.

That’s the deeper centre in you, a quiet observer who can notice it all without being consumed. A space of warm, compassionate presence. Like the eye of the storm, it’s calm, still, and able to witness everything without being overwhelmed.

Disidentification from your body, feelings, and mind allows you to then identify with your inner observer. What Assogoli calls the ‘I’, the centre of awareness.

Don’t confuse disidentification with dissociation

Disidentification means stepping back with awareness, not numbing out or disconnecting. It’s clear to see what’s here without becoming it. Dissociation is an unconscious shut-down.

My experience of disidentification

It was the first day of my Psychosynthesis training. I was nervous, anxious, and tense, unsure what I’d signed up for, sitting in a room with sixteen strangers.

Then we did the disidentification exercise.

In just five minutes, something shifted.

• My anxiety softened.

• My body let go.

• And I touched a quiet inner calm I hadn’t felt in years.

From that day, it became a daily practice for me. Simple, steady, and gently transformative.

The disidentification exercise

There are many variations of this exercise. What I am giving you is a core, simplified version, stripped back to the essentials without losing its power. I will step you through the exercise here so you can learn it for yourself.

At the end of this post, there is a 5-minute audio version if you would like to try a guided version I have created for you.

1. Grounding

Find somewhere you can be alone.

Sit down, you can lie down, but it’s better to do it upright.

Take a breath.

Hold it in for a moment, then sigh it out. Repeat.

Then tense your shoulders by raising them towards your ears, hold for a second, then let them drop.

Pause.

2. Body

Become aware of your body.

For a moment, notice the physical sensations, don’t try to change them. Just observe with quiet attention.

The contact of your body with the chair, your feet on the ground, and your breath.

Then internally say to yourself slowly with attention, ‘I have a body, but I’m more than my body.’

Let that land. Feel it.

Pause.

3. Feelings and emotions

Become aware of your feelings.

What feelings and emotions are you experiencing right now? Feel what comes up for you.

If it helps, label them as fear, anger, love, irritation, and jealousy. Or whatever comes. Don’t judge yourself for feeling them. Just observe.

Then say to yourself slowly with attention, ‘I have feelings and emotions, but I’m more than my feelings and emotions.’

Again, let that land. Feel it.

Pause.

4. Thoughts

Now switch your attention to your thoughts.

Observe as they rise and fall. If you think you’re not having any thoughts, realise that this may be a thought too.

Watch your stream of awareness as it flows by: memories, opinions, nonsense, arguments, images.

Then say to yourself slowly with attention, ‘I have thoughts, but I’m more than my thoughts.’

Again, let that land. Feel it.

Pause.

5. The shift to the centre

Now say to yourself:

I am a centre of pure consciousness.
I am the one who watches.
I am a centre of pure consciousness.

Let that land. Feel it.

And rest in awareness, just be for a moment or as long as you need.

When you are ready, stretch your arms, move your body and open your eyes.

If you have time, write down any observations you have about the experience.

Then re-enter your day.

An invitation

You may have to repeat the exercise a few times to start with to get its full power. If you try, you’ll soon be able to do it daily from memory.

The effort is well worth it.

The more you practice, the more the influences that try to capture your attention will no longer have the same hold over you.

Give it a go, let me know what you find.

Guided audio version

Here's a standalone audio version of the 5-minute disidentification exercise.

You work hard.

Reach that goal.

Get that promotion.

Launch your idea.

Hit that personal milestone.

Yet, something is missing. Instead of satisfaction, you feel anxiety, restlessness, or the ache of imposter syndrome.

That’s the high-achiever’s paradox. No matter how much you do, it never quite feels like enough.

Why? Because success doesn’t equal self-worth.

Until you understand the difference, you’ll keep chasing validation that can never deliver what you’re looking for.

The mask of confidence

Confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth aren’t the same. You can be highly confident in your abilities and still believe, deep down, that you’re not enough.

Here’s the difference:

• Confidence is the belief in your ability to get things done.

• Self-esteem is how you judge yourself. It can be stable, rooted in values. Or fragile, tied to approval.

• Self-worth is the unshakable belief that you matter just because you exist.

For years, I didn’t know that.

In my twenties, I thought confidence was the key to success. To speak up, to be taken seriously, to stand out. So I did what many people do. I tried to ‘fix’ it with hypnosis tapes, personal development seminars and affirmations.

Some of it helped. But underneath? Same old insecurities. I still didn’t feel good enough. I still kept myself small, unable to say no, working way too hard.

One day, years later, I stumbled across The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem in a bookshop. The ideas spoke to me. I thought, 'This is it - self-esteem is the answer!’ I tried to apply the principles, but it never quite clicked. It felt like it was a key part of the puzzle, but with the last piece frustratingly still missing.

I kept searching, exploring. It took a long time, but I got there.

It really landed when I read the words of John Niland in his book ‘The Self-Worth Safari’:

It was the missing piece.

Self-worth isn’t something you earn; it’s how you treat yourself. Like a friend you value. With care, with thoughtfulness, with compassion.

Self-worth is being enough

With low self-worth, self-esteem, and confidence are brittle.

A harsh comment, a bad day, or even a small failure, and they can crumble.

When you build solid self-worth, it positively impacts self-esteem and confidence:

1. You develop stable self-esteem, because your worth doesn’t go up or down with each win or failure.

2. That fuels the courage to try, fail, and grow, building confidence.

3. And as your skills improve, your confidence reinforces your self-esteem.

But there is more. Self-worth is not only mental; it needs your body to feel safe. This is where your nervous system comes into play.

Self-worth needs safety

Feeling worthy isn’t just psychological; it’s biological.

Your nervous system decides whether you’re safe. And unless it feels secure, your mind can’t believe you are worthy.

• In a state of safety (the calm “ventral vagal” state), your brain engages in logic, empathy, and connection. Self-worth becomes possible.

• In threat (fight, flight, or freeze, etc.), your brain goes into survival mode. Worth gets tied to performance, or vanishes altogether.

Chronic stress or trauma keeps your system on alert, reinforcing the belief:

‘I’m not safe, so I must not be worthy.’

Self-worth grows through radical self-compassion

Self-worth is core for psychological wellbeing, it gives you real, tangible benefits:

• You can handle criticism more constructively; you don’t see it as an attack on your core identity.

• It’s easier to set healthy boundaries without feeling guilty.

• You become more centred, calm and collected.

• You don’t need to people-please as much.

• Mental anxiety eases.

Becoming a friend to yourself takes time. The challenge is you need to peel away layers of limiting self-beliefs, harsh judgments and survival strategies that get in the way.

I want to offer you a way that works with quiet persistence. That builds your self-worth so you can experience these benefits for yourself:

Radical self-compassion

Try these three ways to care for yourself.

1. The Friend test

For something you are dealing with right now, ask yourself:

‘If a close friend came to me with this exact struggle, what would I say?’

Now, say your response out loud (if you are not alone, do it internally). Mean it. If it helps, close your eyes and visualise yourself having this conversation.

2. Touch

A gentle touch is a way to calm your body and signal to your system that you are safe.

Use it when you need to self-soothe, specifically, when you are feeling anxious, emotionally hurt or stressed.

Place a hand over your heart, on your forehead, or on both. Another option is to gently stroke the outside of one or both of your arms with your hands (cross-arm position).

3. Forgiveness

When you mess up, feel your feet on the ground. Take a breath and sigh it out gently.

Then say to yourself:

‘I made a mistake.
It’s OK.
I forgive myself.
I am enough.’

If other words feel right, use them instead.

You’re separating your actions from your worth. That’s the shift.

Saying ‘no’ is an act of self-worth

Every time you say ‘no’ to something that drains you, you say ‘yes’ to your self-worth.

Boundaries aren’t selfish. They’re proof that you believe your time, energy, and values matter.

Use the Why Test before saying ‘yes’:

Pause, feel your feet on the ground, then ask yourself:

‘Am I doing this because I want to or because I’m scared of disapproval?’

Feel what is going on in your body.

Contraction and tension indicates no, expansion and ease indicate yes.

Respond with your answer. If you need more time to decide, say so.

From doing to being

I leave you with some thoughts to ponder. If you developed a higher level of self-worth:

• How would you treat yourself differently?

• What would you allow yourself to do?

• And how would your relationships shift?

I invite you to try one instance of radical self-compassion today. One small step.

Remember, you are enough.

Your laptop crashes halfway through writing something important...

You’re two minutes from a high-stakes meeting…

Or your boss hands you a deadline that no sane person could meet.

Your chest tightens. Your brain starts to spin. And before you know it, you’re stressing out and your breathing’s gone shallow and fast. That’s the moment to ground yourself before stress hijacks your system.

That’s where box breathing comes in.

It’s been a lifesaver for me many times; it’s one of the best breath tools I know.

The nervous system state reset

Box breathing flips your nervous system switch from fight-or-flight to rest-and-reset.

When stress hits, your breathing goes shallow and rapid, which feeds the anxiety loop. Box breathing interrupts that loop. It slows your body, steadies your mind, and tells your nervous system the threat has passed.

It’s not just breathing slower. It’s about breathing smarter.

The long exhale triggers the vagus nerve, your body’s natural braking system. That signals your heart rate to slow. The pauses after each inhale and exhale mimic the rhythm of a calm, collected person. Your brain gets the message: no danger here.

Studies back this up. Controlled breathing drops cortisol, lowers blood pressure, and steadies your heart rate.

Calm focus, not chilled out or sleepy

Box breathing gives you what high performers call ‘calm alertness.’

That’s a state where your body relaxes but your mind stays alert. You’re not spaced out, you’re composed, grounded, and ready.

Exactly what you need in a crisis, a meeting, or before replying to that infuriating email.

This is because the technique quiets your amygdala (the brain’s alarm bell). It also boosts alpha brain waves; those calm, focused ones you get in meditation or creative flow.

Even five minutes of box breathing, and I’m left with a calm body and an alert, focused mind.
Mark Divine, a former Navy SEAL commander

It rewires your brain

Use this tool enough, and it starts changing your brain. No kidding, this is straight neuroscience.

Consistent box breathing strengthens the neural circuits that handle stress. You build stress resilience the same way you build muscle, through repetition.

It also boosts Heart Rate Variability (HRV). A technical term for how adaptable your nervous system is. Higher HRV = more calm under pressure.

Ancient origins, modern simplicity

Versions of this technique have been around for centuries:

• Yogic equal breathing.

• Ancient breath control.

• Meditative focus.

The magic with box breathing is its simplicity. No apps. No props. Just your breath and some counting.

You can do it anytime, anyplace:

• Two minutes before a big presentation.

• That email that makes your blood boil.

• Late for work, stuck in traffic.

• Before that difficult call…and on.

How to do it

There are four equal parts to it. Hence the name box breath!

Do each phase for roughly four seconds:

1. Inhale through your nose, feel your belly expand.

2. Hold your breath.

3. Exhale slowly through your mouth.

4. Hold the breath out.

Repeat at least three times, keep going for 5 minutes if you can.

Here’s a simple animation to help you with the rhythm:

A few tips:

1. Try it first when you are calm to get used to it.

2. Breathe into your belly, not your chest. Placing your hands on your stomach can help cue a deep breath.

3. Navy SEALS exhale through the mouth, you can also do it through the nose if you want.

4. Don’t stress the timing. Equal length is what matters, not the exact count.

5. Straining defeats the purpose. If four seconds feels like too much, try three.

A tool for life

Box breathing isn’t only a way to manage stress. It helps you become more aware of yourself.

It creates space between what stresses you and how you respond, so you’re no longer reacting on autopilot.

You gain space. A choice.

That shift from reaction to response can be life-changing. Over time, it shapes your mental and physical wellbeing. You start moving through life with greater calm, clarity and control.

Give it a go. Let me know how it works for you.

There I was, standing in front of 200 people.

My first major project at a new job. No public speaking experience.

Cheeks burning. Heart pounding. Sweat dripping.

As I opened my mouth, my mind went blank, on the edge of meltdown. I wanted to be anywhere else but there in that moment. Somehow, I stumbled through. Tripping over my words, speaking too fast, pausing in all the wrong places. It was hell, but I made it.

From that day on, I made a vow: I would find a better way to manage stress, to grow in confidence and stretch my boundaries.

It took years, but I did it. And now, I want to share what I’ve discovered with you.

The fix isn’t forcing yourself

Here’s the secret: sustainable growth doesn’t come from pushing yourself off a cliff. It comes from gently stretching your comfort zone bit by bit.

You take a small step. Return to calm. Then take another. That’s how your nervous system learns and grows.

This is eustress: the healthy kind of stress. Literally, ‘good stress.’

It feels like:

• Nervous energy

• A pounding heart

• Racing thoughts

But the difference lies in how you interpret those sensations.

Stress is personal

You might love rollercoasters. Or hate them. Same ride, different response.

Psychologist Alia Crum found that how you think about stress changes how your body reacts to it. People who learn to see stress as helpful perform better and stay healthier.

In other words, stress isn’t the enemy; your mindset about it is.

The ‘slightly uncomfortable’ zone

You’ve heard it before: Get out of your comfort zone. But that advice is lacking psychological know-how.

Growth doesn’t happen when you go into stress overdrive. It takes place in the zone just beyond comfort, not past your limits.

The Goldilocks rule of stress

Over 100 years ago, psychologists Yerkes and Dodson found that stress can boost performance, but only up to a certain point.

Beyond that, things fall apart. This is known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law.

It’s the same principle behind classic tales like Icarus flying too close to the sun, the Three Little Pigs and of course, Goldilocks:

• Too little stress? Bored. Disengaged. (Cold porridge.)

• Too much stress? Overwhelmed. Frozen. (Hot porridge.)

• Just the right amount? You grow. You thrive. (Ahh... just right.)

Communication coach TJ Guttormsen calls this ideal stress eustress, the growth zone. It’s where you’re challenged but not crushed.

Comfort Zone: ‘This is easy.’ Calm. Regulated. Predictable. But too much comfort can lead to stagnation.

Growth Zone (Eustress): ‘This feels exciting… and scary.’ Lightly activated. Still grounded. This zone fuels motivation, creativity, and learning.

Panic Zone: ‘I can’t handle this.’ Overwhelmed. Fight/flight/freeze. The brain shuts down. No growth, just survival.

Growth needs the right dose

Growth happens when the challenge is meaningful but not paralysing.

Back to my story. Instead of jumping straight into a full-blown presentation, I could’ve rehearsed with friends. Asked for feedback. Then I would have felt more prepared and more confident.

Another example: Fear of visibility

You hate being on camera.

• Comfort Zone: Camera off. You stay silent.

• Growth Zone: Camera on. You ask a prepared question.

• Panic Zone: You are ‘volunteered’ to lead the next meeting.

Too much, too fast, and you shut down. Just enough, and you stretch.

Before you stretch, ground yourself

Here’s a quick tip: before doing anything uncomfortable:

• Pause.

• Feel your feet on the ground.

• Breathe. Lengthen and soften your exhale.

• Then act.

This grounds your nervous system.

How to build your growth capacity

Each time you stretch your edge, your nervous system adapts. It’s called stress inoculation.

Like building muscle, you expose yourself to small challenges, again and again. Eventually, what once pushed you into panic becomes easier and more manageable.

Start small.

Your 6-step stretch routine

Next time you feel the butterflies, try this:

1. Spot your edge: What excites you and scares you a little?

2. Shrink the goal: Find the micro-version. Take a 10% stretch—not a 100% leap.

3. Anchor in safety: Breathe. Ground yourself. Remind yourself: ‘I can pause if I need to.’

4. Take the step: Hit send. Speak up. Book the thing.

5. Reflect: How do you feel? What thoughts came up? Capture your progress.

6. Repeat: Small steps, consistently, expand your world.

Final thoughts

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.” , Thomas Jefferson

Growth lives just beyond the comfort zone in that slightly scary but safe space.

Achievable, sustainable growth.

So, now ask yourself: what’s one small, slightly uncomfortable step I can take today to expand my world?

Lean into it.

Then, let me know what you find.

Have you ever had the experience of thoughts pinging around your head like a pinball machine when you’ve been trying to make a decision?

I have, it’s painful, stressful and exhausting.

What if there was another way to make decisions that didn’t need that mental overload?

There is. It’s using the most advanced tech you have. Your body.

The power of inner perception

Your body has an internal felt sense called interoception.

It’s how you feel hunger, thirst, warmth and pain.

It shapes your choices more than you realise. If you become more attuned to it, it helps you recognise emotions, catch stress early and stop second-guessing your body’s needs.

• Those butterflies before a big meeting? Indicates anxiety.

• That pounding heart? It could be excitement or fear.

The body gives the signals, and the brain gives them meaning.

If you couldn’t feel warmth or cold, you wouldn’t seek shelter. If you didn’t feel pain, you wouldn’t pull your hand from the fire.

Without interoception, you would do serious harm to yourself.

When interoception is numbed, you miss early cues your nervous system is sending. You power through, ignoring the body, which can lead to exhaustion, disconnection and burnout. That’s what I did for years, existing rather than enjoying life until I finally paid attention to what my body was saying.

Every day, you will experience one or more of these interoception signals: hunger, thirst, and the need to go to the toilet. These signals shout the loudest.

There are many more that if you tune into them, will help you learn more deeply how your body communicates:

• Muscle tension~ - including shoulders, back, neck, throat and stomach.

• Hot or cold temperatures.

• Anxiety or nervousness.

• Itchy skin.

• Heartbeat.

• Pain.

Everyone’s different

People vary widely in their felt sense abilities and how they interpret them.

It’s actually two related skills. First is how often and how consciously you tune into your body’s sensations in everyday life. Too little awareness, and you miss crucial signals.

The second is interpreting what the signals mean.

Those who live with trauma, anxiety, or neurodivergence often find body signals confusing, overwhelming, or numbed. They may have trouble interpreting bodily needs, like hunger, or identifying and expressing emotions. The good news is that it’s possible to improve your ability to sense and understand them with practice.

The goal isn’t perfect awareness. It’s a balance between:

1. Paying attention without obsessing about every sensation.

and

2. Accurately interpreting the signal’s meaning.

Helping you make better choices

So now you know what interoception is. I want to give you a practical way to use it.

To help you make better decisions.

I am not saying ignore your thoughts. I am saying listen to your body as part of the process; you will be surprised at what you learn.

Try this to experience it now:

Pause. Sense your feet on the ground. Go inside, if it feels right, close your eyes:

• Remember a time you said yes to a big life choice and meant it. How did your body feel?
  
  Take a moment to reflect and feel any sensations that arise. Where do you feel them in your body? What kind of sensation are they?

Pause again, then:

• Go back and remember a time you said yes to someone when you meant no. How did your body react? Again, take a moment to reflect and feel any sensations that arise.

Those two experiences should feel different in your body.

The signals might be subtle, but they’re there if you give them attention.

Deciding with your body: Notice. Reflect. Respond

Next time you’re stuck on an issue and need to make a choice, or someone has asked you to do something. Use this technique:

1. Notice

Pause. Breathe. Take a moment to centre.

Then drop your awareness into your body and ask: ‘Where do I feel this and what do I feel?’

2. Reflect

Ask yourself, ‘Do I understand what my body is saying?’

A quiet ‘yes’ in your body will evoke a sense of ease, warmth, and a forward pull, accompanied by a feeling of expansion.

If your body says ‘no’, there will be sensations of tightness, heaviness, and a shrinking away. A sense of contraction.

3. Respond

Sense-check with your mind what your body tells you feels right. Then you can go ahead and take action based on your decision. A clear yes, a clear no.

You might find it challenging to say no to someone even when your body has clearly told you it’s the right choice. That’s about setting clear boundaries, something I will write about soon.

A personal example

A few years back, I was offered an exciting new job opportunity, but something felt off. I thought about it a lot and started to get really stressed about the offer. So, I decided to ask my body using the Notice, Reflect, Respond technique.

1. Notice: I noticed a tension in my jaw and an unease in my stomach. A sense of tightness in my lower back.

2. Reflect: I listened and asked my body what this meant. Was it fear of the challenge or something else? The answer I got back was that it didn’t match with what I actually wanted. Once I realised this, my body relaxed, the tightness eased, and I had clarity on what I needed to do.

3. Respond: I thanked the person for the offer but declined, and a better opportunity came along a few months later.

Be curious, practice and learn

Each time you bring conscious awareness to a body sensation and give yourself time to listen and act on it, you enhance your felt body sense.

Use it regularly and you will improve your self-awareness, your decisions and your confidence.

Want to take this to the next level and explore the wisdom of your body more with depth coaching? I would love to hear from you.