The Gentle Rebel Podcast: Recent Episodes

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This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is a bit different from normal. It contains the audio from It Just Sort of Happens, the short film I produced for the HSP Gathering in Oulu, Finland, at the start of August. You can watch it here.

https://youtu.be/NWaK8O4VLuoThe film is an audiovisual collage of stories from throughout my life. It has a particular focus on the role of songwriting and music-making in helping me make sense of myself, my experiences, and the way the world is.

I believe creativity is especially in nurturing our relationship with our innate sensitivity. But when we absorb messages from the cultures we swim in, they can disconnect us from these natural aspects of ourselves.

I hope ‘It Just Sort of Happens’ gives you reassurance and confidence that you’re not alone.

Language Beyond WordsMusic has always been my natural language.
It speaks when words aren’t enough.
Music helps things make sense.

What about you?

These aren’t stories about what sensitivity or creativity should look like for everyone. I don’t believe that’s how it works. Rather, they are just a handful of my stories, which I hope may encourage you to notice, connect with, and continue developing your own.

Questions To ConsiderAt the HSP Heimojuhlat gathering in Oulu, I scattered mini-zines around the room. They contained questions to help people consider their relationship with the film’s themes.

They may be especially useful if you’re feeling stuck in some way right now, or if you’re ready to let your creativity give voice to your sensitivity and your sensitivity give shape to your creativity…

• What is something you remember creating as a child? What made it memorable?
• What does society value that you don’t?
• What is something you care about that others often overlook?
• When do you wish time would stand still so you could dwell there for longer?
• What made you laugh this week?
• What helps you process and observe what’s going on within you?
• What are you waiting for the courage to do, try, or start?

Let the film’s sound wash over you and see what catches your attention. It’s worth finding somewhere quiet to listen, and with headphones if possible.

Share Your ReflectionsAnd if anything connects for you, or you have a question about something I’ve shared, I’d love to hear from you. Head to this page for links to the original source materials and to get in touch.

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What do people who believe they are writing songs when they use Suno AI, YouTuber Hank Green, and Narcissus from Greek mythology all have in common?

Quite a lot, it turns out. And they can help us recognise a form of stuckness that’s becoming increasingly common as people’s relationship with generative AI begins to blur the boundary between ourselves and the technologies we use, making it more difficult to know where the human ends and the machine begins.

https://youtu.be/zSMwN0wKGlEGetting Stuck in the Digital ImageOur relationship with technology and, in particular, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Suno poses a really interesting existential dilemma.

I’ve been fascinated to see how these are often sold as tools to overcome stuckness. While at the same time, they create a whole different form of stuckness when we become attached to them.

The demise of Narcissus came through an obsession with his own reflection. Perhaps the price of looking away from his reflection brought its own kind of departure and death. Maybe the image had become more real, perfect, and desirable than the human staring at it.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we consider how the reflection of ourselves in the machines we use can bend us out of shape and leave us uncertain of who we are and what we’re capable of.

What Does It Mean to Write a Song?Fil Henley, AKA Wings of Pegasus, asked this simple question in a recent video. He analysed an advert from the AI music generation platform Suno, which features producers and songwriters using it to make songs.

Fil says, “If you don’t know what the song is going to sound like before you hear it, then you haven’t written the song.”

Platforms like Suno act like fruit machines. The output is based more on luck than judgement.

What makes them compelling and perhaps even addictive, is that the result is impossible for us to predict. It’s a surprise each time that feels exciting to reveal. And it can turn any old crap into something you might hear on the radio. As we see in the video.

More Than a ToolThis is what makes these services different from tools.

A tool reliably enables us to carry out a task without doing everything and more autonomously. So when the producer says that Suno is showing him stuff he never would have thought about, he is revealing the blurred boundary between us and these machines. It is more than a tool for songwriting. It’s generating the song itself.

Suno isn’t like a digital audio workstation (a tool), where a songwriter records, edits, and produces music they have written and performed. It goes further, making many of the creative decisions that normally require time, judgement, and consideration throughout the songwriting process. In other words, the user doesn’t need the skill required to produce the result.

Whose Ideas Are They?So if YOU didn’t think of them, whose ideas are they? And if it’s outputting stuff based on something you haven’t thought of, what’s the point in you being there at all?

The song is found in the mirror as generative AI reflects back an image of a reality that doesn’t exist above the surface.

Creative Block as a Rite of PassageIn reality, human creativity emerges through the energy generated by those moments of friction, uncertainty, and obstacle.

By intervening early with generative AI before we have taken the opportunity to grapple with a block, we deprive ourselves of that bittersweet joy of finding something that comes to life THROUGH US.

Instead, a service like Suno short-circuits the block. It presents fully formed solutions that we “never would have thought about”.

Perhaps, we would have thought of something much better and more “us” if we had been patient and given ourselves time to grapple with the block.

The Allure of The MirrorWhen you listen to these outputs, there is a professional sheen to them that feels sharp. It sounds just like stuff you hear on the radio. But it sounds like stuff you hear on the radio. There is a sameness to it. An increasingly homogenous stasis.

Maybe this technology is attractive precisely because it DOESN’T sound like us. It’s familiar enough for us to to glimpse ourselves. But we look different. It cleans up the parts we might cringe at and be afraid of revealing. Those bits that feel messy, broken, chaotic, and weird.

We don’t argue with the machine that makes us sound like something you’d hear on the radio, see on TV, or LinkedIn. Slick, clean, authoritative, clinical, soulless, indistinguishable, unremarkable, dull.

Incidentally, this is a good way to identify the best producers, editors, and coaches to work with. They don’t try to make us sound like them or force us to emulate their processes. Instead, they seek to understand and support us. They are able to help us notice, accept, and amplify those parts that we would try to shrink down and hide when left to our own devices.

The machine holds a mirror with some perfected image that we believe is us, but is stripped of blemishes, stains, and imperfections. But rather than being the Platonic ideal version of us, it’s more like an aggregate approximation of who everyone else is in the land of mediocre homogeneity. We arrive in this territory when we sand off our edges and lose our spark.

The Culture of NarcissismIn his 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch offers a fresh way of thinking about the myth of Narcissus. We tend to think that Narcissus died because he fell in love with his own reflection and couldn’t look away, so was unable to do anything other than stare obsessively at himself in the water.

Lasch adds another layer, depicting cultural narcissism emerging as the image of the human in the water becomes more important than the human it reflects.

Telling Us ApartYouTuber Hank Green recently revealed that he had become over-reliant on ChatGPT after viewers pointed out something in a video that felt off to them.

When viewed in context, the clip actually makes more sense than the reactionary commentary suggested. But while he said he didn’t accidentally read something from ChatGPT left in the script, Green didn’t dismiss the criticism. Instead, he agreed, “I think what people have said in this thread about me diluting myself is spot on”.

Diluting oneself through the use of technology indicates how a separation between the image and the self can get blurred.

This is perhaps why those using Suno to make songs believe they themselves are writing songs.

It’s not necessarily a deliberate deception being perpetrated by people pretending to know more than they do or pretending they’ve done things they haven’t. There is a real belief being seeded and nurtured that means people genuinely struggle to distinguish between themselves and the output generated by these technologies.

The Gift of Getting StuckThere is a gift in getting stuck along the way during the creative process. It invites us to be resourceful problem solvers. It builds character and reveals more about who we are as we experiment, test, and try things without guaranteed results. Imperfectly. Clumsily.

Grappling with creative friction gives opportunities to deepen our confidence and grow our experiences of being okay after failing. These tools are sold to us as ways to avoid that friction. But in so doing, we avoid strengthening the tension wood of creativity altogether, grown in a dance with the rhythm of life’s winds and storms.

It Takes a Village (of Humans)In this Sunotopia, depicted through their advert, we see many people gathered in the studio. Yet, the future reality that will come through the success of these platforms appears to be very different.

The technology is moving us away from others so we don’t need a producer, an engineer, or other musicians to work with. All we need is Suno because Suno doesn’t get blocked. It will work with whatever crap you feed it. And it will turn any old noise into the kind of song you might hear on the radio.

Happiness is Only Real When…Christopher McCandless’s diary concluded that “happiness is only real when shared”. An observation made under tragic circumstances.

I think there is a lot of truth in this. I’ve found many times that even the happiest experiences I’ve had on my own feel more complete when they are witnessed through sharing a story with someone else.

When we’re feeling the pressure to conform to the schedule of our unrelenting world, we need the courage to give it time. To give OURSELVES and ONE ANOTHER time.

Maybe our intuition and imagination will start to show us stuff an LLM never would have thought of…

It is rebellious to release ourselves from the pressure to rush and force output for the sake of it. Technologies like Suno and ChatGPT can become an attractive crutch when they are sold as ways to keep going amidst the limitless demands of a productivity-obsessed world. But they gradually erode confidence in our own creative capacity.

We would do well to remember, “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.

This is where we become unstuck (in the best possible way).

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There is something strange in the space between languages. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s fun to explore. It poses a question and presents a challenge…what am I actually trying to say here?

When I started work on a video about the relationship between sensitivity and creativity for this year’s HSP Gathering in Oulu, Finland, which happened a few days ago as I’m recording this, I didn’t really think about the process of translating it from English into Finnish for the subtitles. I assumed it would be a straightforward part of the process, which it could have been on one level, given the technology we have at our fingertips these days, where language translation can happen more or less instantly.

But it doesn’t take much for meaning to go adrift in the basic translation these tools provide.

I was grateful for human assistance, as my friend Tuula was on hand to translate. My gratitude was not only because of her bilingual skills, but because I know she understands what I’m trying to say beneath and beyond the words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m3wHlXyQ6EGood Translation is About More Than The Right WordsIt seems obvious that translation requires far more than vocabulary, grammar, and syntax across multiple languages. An idiom or joke in one language might be complete gobbledegook when translated directly into another. But when the translator understands the two cultures, including the soul of their humour and their general relationship with tone and subtext, they can find appropriate options to bridge intent so it makes sense across the linguistic surface.

Even with its sophisticated capabilities, there were a bunch of times when an initial chatbot translation missed the heart of my words. It made several incorrect assumptions and predictions about my intended meaning without any basis or clarification.

Fortunately, Tuula felt this too, and we were able to hone our way to better ways of expressing what I meant. This was extra challenging when some of the original ideas and wording were intentionally poetic and infused with ambiguity. Machines are often eager to sand down nuance and replace it with familiar clichés and well-worn turns of phrase.

The whole process showed me the importance of having someone who knows me and understands my ‘thinking’ for a task like this. This principle might apply to a range of contexts and situations in life. Who we are can get lost in a bad translation and found in a good one.

Translating The Highly Sensitive ExperienceI believe this is one reason so much of the creative coaching I do is with highly sensitive and more introverted people. It’s a translation issue.

In a world that makes many assumptions about what ‘normal’ looks like and assumes the goal is to fit the mould to get on in life, I tend to work from the premise that it’s not us that doesn’t fit society; it’s usually society that doesn’t fit us.

I don’t do this to cultivate an ‘us versus them’ mentality. Quite the opposite, in fact. We are attempting to translate across a bridge, which so often leaves us misunderstanding one another.

Likewise, I am very aware of the language used to describe the trait of high sensitivity. In the introduction to the HSP Gathering film I shared on Saturday, I talked about how adopting language around sensitivity has helped us better understand ourselves and our experiences alongside others. But while we have the trait of sensitivity in common, it also takes unique forms for each of us.

That shared language can only take us so far, and we don’t want to overdo it. High sensitivity isn’t an identity or a personality type, nor does it dictate what we should like, value, or create. Over the years, I’ve noticed how easily one person’s experience of sensitivity can become the dominant narrative, leaving others wondering whether they’re a “proper HSP”.

The Balancing Act in Translating Our ExperiencesThe translator plays an important role in bringing their cultural understanding and experience, without letting it outrun the intention behind the person’s words. And as highly sensitive people, I think we’ve got to be aware of this in the way we listen to and interpret HSPs. To put the person first.

That’s why I’m drawn to stories and anecdotes individuals share about their experiences of sensitivity. Not to universalise the experience or assume it’s the same for everyone, but to open the door so that each of us can feel at home with our differences.

Which is what I wanted to do with the film I shared at the gathering. “It Just Sort of Happens” is a series of stories about the relationship I’ve noticed between my sensitivity and creativity, and how they have helped me make sense of the world, my personal experiences, and myself throughout my life.

I wanted to use the stories as examples to help others map their own experiences and notice what they hear beneath the surface of my words.

If you’d like to watch it, I’ll be sharing it in The Courtyard on Sunday, when we’ll also chat about any comments and questions afterwards. Learn more about it and register for your free Courtyard Membership (there will be a replay for those who can’t make it live).

If you have any questions or comments in the meantime, please drop me a message and let me know.

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Imagine a piece of bait dangling in the water. A passing fish sees it. What a stroke of luck to stumble upon a free, unsuspecting meal.

Believing it has found prey, it strikes, convinced it has the power and is acting on its own terms.

Only after the hook pierces through does the reality set in. This fish was the target rather than the predator. It got caught in a trap that took advantage of its reactive instinct.

In this episode, I talk about how leaving it there can be an act of gentle rebellion. Not in terms of setting traps, but in terms of letting the bait dangle.

https://youtu.be/5T44fux-rX8“Leave it there” is our current exploration theme in The Haven. As I reflected on this idea of bait and tempting action, I realised there are two sides to it. There is the bait that is left there in the hope we bite. And there is what we can do when we engage our critical thinking and cultivate a sense of indifference to the attention and engagement economy that so desperately needs us to react.

The Hook Hidden Inside Rage BaitWe see this everywhere.

I often think about the Jaguar advert that caused such a massive stir online. The internet absolutely erupted. Thousands of people rushed to their keyboards to make videos rejecting it, mocking it, asking where the car was, and lamenting the death of the company. It was interesting to notice how people thought they were being edgy by standing up to corporate culture in this way.

But they performed exactly as predicted. They had bitten down on the hook, carefully prepared by the chefs in the Jaguar marketing kitchen.

Reacting predictably isn’t necessarily the act of resistance we imagine it to be. It isn’t a display of strength. In fact, it’s often compliance with what the data would expect us to do.

Rage bait seeks to cash in on our good faith and our sensitivity to injustice, unfairness, and ignorance. It is an energy vampire that leaves a bitter taste in our mouths, not only robbing us of time to create, contribute, and bring more beautiful things into the world, but also tainting those things with that flavour.

Shifting our relationship with rage bait has a greater potential reach than the respite we might experience in the moment.

The Attention Economy Wants Us to ReactPhilosopher Byung-Chul Han writes about the shift towards an “achievement society“. We are no longer controlled primarily by an external authority telling us what we should do in order to gain favour. Instead, Han argues, that pressure has moved inwards.

Power now operates through the pressure of the “endless can”.

There are abundant opportunities and invitations to work without limits, hustle harder, outpace the competition, and stay ahead of the game. A never-ending, asymptotic game, where the end we think we’re closing in on remains forever just out of reach.

And the person cracking the whip is inside us. The super-egoic injunction to forever do more than you’re currently doing.

Online clout chasers and rage baiters are part of this ecosystem. Not necessarily as evil masterminds, but as people trapped in an endless demand for attention. Constantly pressured to exploit themselves and stay visible, whatever the cost to others and to society as a whole.

The platform designers, however well-intentioned they may have been at the start, consistently end up building digital arenas based on algorithms that turn us against one another (and ourselves). Whether directly or indirectly, they stir strong emotions that can be turned into profit.

Once attention becomes the currency, people begin competing for it in whatever ways work best.

When Defiance Becomes ComplianceThere is a type of rage bait (trolling, poking the bear, questioning authority) that seems to me a very natural expression of youth. To rebel and rail against society as a way to distinguish one’s own subjectivity.

But the mechanics of capitalism have a way of commodifying rebellion. It folds attempts to rebel, especially online, back into its own logic, handing over a creator revenue dashboard and dangling the carrot of potential financial reward.

Defiance becomes compliance.What may have started as an act of individual autonomy in the face of authority becomes a highly predictable form of algorithmic compliance with authority.

For everyone else, the temptation to react to those dangling rage bait in the waters around us can be incredibly strong.

But it is also predictable, and it becomes part of the currency.

It risks eroding trust, patience, and honesty.

When Everything Starts Looking Like Rage BaitI’ve noticed on Threads recently how often jokes seem to get misunderstood.

I saw one earlier:

“They’re called Fish FINGERS, not Fish STICKS. Fish don’t have sticks!!!”

It seems to be a joke poking fun at the fact that they’re called “fish fingers” in the UK and “fish sticks” elsewhere. The punchline is built on the absurdity of the speaker failing to subvert the logic of the debate. They’ve assumed they’re called fish fingers because they’re literally the fingers from fish.

It’s a nice, neat joke. Obviously a joke…

Apparently not obviously a joke.

It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed people instinctively reaching for the label “rage bait.” Whether they missed the joke or simply assumed it was another bad faith provocation, I was struck by how quickly people interpreted it through that lens.

Maybe constant exposure to online engagement bait (bad faith posts intended to make people react) has trained us to interpret everything defensively.

Instead of asking, “Is this funny?” we’re asking, *”What’s this person trying to do to me?” or “What are they trying to take from me?”

A joke is laughter bait. Chuckle bait. Groan bait. Not rage bait.

These wider algorithmic trends may be eroding our discernment and, with it, changing how we think.

Leave It ThereSo how do we respond with gentle rebellion?

We can return to the phrase that cuts both ways:

There are those who leave the bait dangling in our feeds, hoping to cash in on our sensitivity and unsettle things for the sake of an algorithmic payday.

Our ultimate defiance is to look directly at it, recognise what it is, and choose how to respond.

Sometimes that means saying nothing, changing the subject, making something, or simply giving our attention to something we’ve already decided deserves it more.

It isn’t always the most cathartic response. The pull to react can be incredibly strong in that moment, and it can feel like an instant hit of relief to do so.

But once the dust settles, there’s a deeper satisfaction in knowing your attention went where you chose, not where someone else wanted to drag it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Join us for free in The Haven Courtyard.

Maybe we can cultivate rebellious indifference together.

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Why nervous systems built to care about others can leave us feeling disconnected in a globally connected world.

I’ve been dipping into Britt Frank’s book, The Science of Stuck, over the past week. It’s much more of a self-help book than I was hoping based on the title, but it’s providing some ideas to explore. This concept of stuckness has been on my mind recently…

What does it mean to be stuck?

What causes us to feel stuck?

Does feeling stuck always mean we are stuck?

How do we get unstuck when we know what we want to do but can’t seem to take the action we know is required?

What happens when our nervous system gets caught in patterns of defence and self-protection when we try to make meaningful changes?

https://youtu.be/lbpdjTgJA9wStuckness and SensitivityI’m especially interested in the type of stuckness we might see in highly sensitive people.

Frank writes:

“If you feel guilty because ‘other people have it worse,’ remember—perspective is helpful, but comparison is not. You have a right to exist. You have a right to take up space on this planet. You have a right to feel angry, scared, and hurt. And you also have the right to experience happiness in your life and to feel at home in your body.”

Many HSPs I’ve known downplay their right to take up space, particularly when it comes to valuing their own feelings and needs.

What I liked about this quote is that it invites both/and thinking. At least, that’s how I’ve interpreted it.

It’s not about denying the comparison so much as giving it perspective. Comparison happens because we are social beings. What is unhelpful is letting our response to it diminish ourselves. It’s about making room for both things to be true.

When being built to care about others makes it difficult to care for ourselvesHighly sensitive people may sometimes see need, pain, and injustice around them and feel stuck when it comes to their own needs, wishes, and feelings.

Maybe it’s guilt or shame. Maybe it’s sadness, anger, or hopelessness. We might dismiss our own situation by saying “I shouldn’t complain” or “I should count my blessings.”

And again, to bring some both-and perspective, there is nothing wrong with having a sense of the bigger picture. Being built to care is a survival strength rather than a flaw.

But both things can be true at once…

Allowing your own needs, feelings, and preferences to breathe doesn’t diminish someone else’s. Recognising that someone else is in what appears to be a worse situation doesn’t need to diminish your own.

But this isn’t only about validating our own feelings. It’s also about recognising what is lost when we shrink back and disappear from our own lives in that way.

The world needs people who have come aliveThere’s a famous quote by Howard Thurman:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

For years, I’ve ended my podcast episodes with the words:

“You are an artist. The world needs your art. Now, go and make somebody’s day.”

I say this because when sensitive people disconnect from what makes them come alive, everyone loses something. The world becomes poorer for it.

I shared this idea in my Notes From a Slow Coach email newsletter at the weekend, and someone replied to emphasise their own experience with this.

They quoted:

“When you do bad in the world, you make the whole world that much worse, but when you do good, you take the whole world with you, and you make it that much better. People need so little encouragement for it to make a huge difference in their lives.”

That’s so true. It takes so little encouragement to make someone’s day. And yet, when focused solely on the big picture, we might believe we can’t make a difference at all.

When The “Strategy” of Care Meets a Global WorldI wonder whether the paralysing effect of “other people have it worse” is a scaled-up version of a highly sensitive trait that operates at a local level.

One reason high sensitivity has endured as a successful survival trait is its social element. Rather than being a by-product of low self-esteem or a diminished self-concept, it reflects a nervous system that finds safety by nurturing peace and soothing distress within the surrounding community.

At a local level, this is an effective strategy.

When you notice someone struggling in your immediate environment, your awareness and attention can make a meaningful difference. Being wired to care means noticing subtleties and patterns that can predict and prevent escalation. Whether of disease, dis-ease, or potential dangers from the surrounding environment. The capacity to sense subtle changes, anticipate needs, and respond with compassion can strengthen the community.

But when this same instinct is plugged into the whole world, with instant access through technology, it can rapidly become a reason we feel stuck.

It’s impossible to reconcile in any meaningful sense. There will always be people in distress, news of suffering somewhere in the world, and horrifying decisions made by people with far more power to implement than we have to prevent.

The Pressure To Care About EverythingMaybe you feel this. If you’re built to care about everything, the constant flow of news can leave you feeling helpless. Like there’s no meaningful action you can take that will make much of a difference.

And when our attention and compassion are pulled in so many directions, it becomes all too easy to overlook those things that make us come alive. Both what we already know we love, and those things we are yet to discover we love.

When we start close in and small, maybe we can recover some sense of perspective. It’s not about pretending the wider world doesn’t exist or that these other things aren’t happening, but about remembering that we’re part of this tapestry too, and that the art we are creating with our lives creates ripples through space and time. And while it might not feel directly related to those things beyond reach that emotionally affect us, and however trivial they seem, if they matter to us, they matter.

Caring about others isn’t the problemI would love to hear from you if this feels familiar. Maybe you’ve found ways to reconcile these feelings. Or maybe you’re feeling stuck because you can’t seem to avoid shrinking yourself and feeling like you don’t have as much right as others to take up space on this planet.

We can be gentle and encouraging with ourselves and one another as we explore what makes us come alive, while also caring about, grieving for, and living within the contradictions of our messy world.

Figuring it out togetherThe Haven Courtyard Membership provides free access to the community space within.

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Feeling stuck is not always the same as being stuck.

We might respond to a feeling before we’ve identified its source, and when we do, we can end up reacting to the wrong problem.

If you’ve ever found yourself wanting to quit your job, transform or abandon a creative project, change direction, or start over completely, it’s worth asking a simple question:

What if the thing you’re trying to change isn’t actually what’s making you feel stuck?

https://youtu.be/DuUXYBeCK00Why Feeling Stuck Isn’t Always What It SeemsIn last weekend’s Notes From a Slow Coach, I wrote about times when we might feel jammed.

Things get jammed when too many elements are competing for the limited space available.

Ideas, options, other people’s opinions, recommendations, everyday pressures, worries, news, and expectations all compete for our attention until everything starts to feel equally important.

When everything feels important, it’s difficult to distinguish the signal from the noise.

Are You Really Stuck?Sometimes we do get stuck. Life puts the brakes on where we were heading.

A relationship ends. We lose a job. We experience bereavement. A project reaches the end of the road, and we don’t know what to do next.

These situations take time to process. Calling ourselves “stuck” might be to misidentify them as problems to solve rather than circumstances to adapt to with self-compassion.

When We Solve the Wrong ProblemI’ve noticed this pattern in myself many times. I’ll be working on a project that seems to be going well. Then one morning I’ll wake up convinced it needs changing.

I’ll start adding features, shifting the focus, rewriting pages, or replacing it altogether.

Except the project wasn’t the problem. It had simply become a proxy for something else. Perhaps I was tired after a busy weekend, worried about an upcoming event, or anxious about underlying pressures.

Tweaking gives me concrete details to focus on. It provides a feeling of movement and control. I may even convince myself that the thing I’m tweaking is genuinely stuck.

It seems I’d often rather rewrite a perfectly good landing page than stop long enough to notice what actually feels jammed.

Sometimes the Jam Needs Clearing. Sometimes It Needs Time.Not every traffic jam is the same. Sometimes an obstruction needs removing. Other times you simply need to wait for the traffic to thin out.

The important thing is recognising which situation you’re actually in.

Some require action. Others require patience. In fact, trying to force movement often becomes part of the jam itself.

Three Signs I’m Reacting Rather Than RespondingI’ve noticed signs that tell me I’m probably not in the best state to make important changes or decisions.

The first is a sudden collapse in confidence. A project I felt good about yesterday suddenly seems completely wrong today. This can feel all-encompassing. But I know if the crisis of confidence has only just begun, I should hold off on acting for a few days.

Another is telling myself there’s a magic bullet that can make everything okay. The one correct path. I dismiss perfectly adequate options because they don’t match the image I have in mind of the non-existent perfect one.

A third is if I notice myself using action or work to give a feeling of progress, to avoid sitting with discomfort and recognising what might be going on at a deeper level. It doesn’t matter what I do, just do something. Hop lanes. Book alternative transport.

At times, the feeling of movement feels better than the feeling of being stuck. Perhaps we’ve come to associate feeling stuck with waiting, patience, and the natural rhythms, processes, and seasons of life.

Questions to ask when you’re tempted to respond to feeling stuck with mindless action:* Does something actually need to change, or did my mood just change? * Would the version of me from yesterday agree with this conclusion? * Am I changing this because it genuinely isn’t working, or because I’m simply bored of looking at it today? * If I’m bored, what could I do to scratch that itch without affecting the integrity of the underlying structure?

These are questions I’ve been exploring for years in Pick The Lock conversations. I’m gathering stories and experiences to build practical resources for navigating those seasons and recurring patterns when we feel stuck.

Before we decide what to do next, it helps to know what kind of situation we’re actually in.

It began with the Map of Stuckness and Possibility, a free workbook designed to help you identify the landscape you’re in before deciding what to do next. You can download it here.

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the variety of neurodiversity.

I’ve been staying with friends over the past few weeks, including Lucas, who is nearly 12. He is autistic, and after spending time trawling through the Gentle Rebel Podcast episode archive, we had a chat about topics he thought would be good to explore.

One of those topics was what he described as “the variety of neurodiversity”. When I asked what that meant to him, and why he felt that was an important thing to discuss, he said that it’s important to realise that not all neurodivergent people have the same needs or preferences.

It can be frustrating for him when people make assumptions because of his autism, confusing one person’s experience as being true and applicable to everyone.

It reminded me of the story I’ve told a few times on the podcast, when I shared that I love horror films and someone responded by saying it meant I wasn’t a highly sensitive person (HSP). Fortunately, I met a bunch of fellow HSP horror fans who were very grateful to discover they were not alone in that love and passion. It was a really nice reminder that we are all different.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to our natural variations, and while brains share characteristics across neurotypes, our needs, preferences, and tastes are a more complex mix of genetics, environment, and psychology.

https://youtu.be/4xJmXtRoIlM13 QuestionsI created a mini-zine for Lucas to answer some questions about this topic, which I share in the episode. He has given me permission to talk about his responses because we hope this can help people feel a bit safer and more confident being themselves, even if it makes them different. And for those listening who spend time with neurodivergent people, we hope this encourages them to see everyone as an individual rather than making assumptions that they would be the same as others they’ve met, or as themselves.

I would also love to invite you to share your own responses to these questions. I’ve created a survey because I’d be really interested in gathering a variety of responses and getting a sense of the variety of neurodiversity.

Can you remember a time when someone assumed something about you because you were autistic? What did they get wrong?Before moving to be educated at home, Lucas had noticed adults assuming that he was like the other autistic children at the school. The teachers assumed he found it difficult to learn, but in Lucas’s case, he found it difficult to be at school.

Having spent a lot of time with the family over the past five years, I’ve seen this radical shift as he has transitioned from that institutional school setting to home-based education and is absolutely blossoming. In a way, it feels frustrating that the teachers who had all but written him off through those assumptions will likely never see it. He loves learning, is a sponge for knowledge, and embraces the joy of connecting the dots across a vast range of subjects.

What do people tend to misunderstand most about neurodivergent people?“Sometimes people think we’re all the same”, Lucas replied to this one. “They assume that ADHD people are naughty, but actually our brains have so much to focus on so it’s hard to listen.”

“Naughty” is a judgement based on the person making it (and the context they are in). In many situations not designed for different types of brains, when people are unable to focus, respond as expected, or do so at the correct speed, authority figures may ascribe intent to those actions. This underpins the disadvantage faced by those expected to play by rules that impose a heavy cognitive load. This can prevent them from functioning and flourishing in their natural way.

Have people ever tried to help you in a way that actually made things harder? What did they do?I didn’t ask this question to make people with good hearts feel bad. But because it sits at the heart of much of this stuff, and I’ve heard countless stories of kids being ignored by those who think they know what’s best for them. Lucas described how his needs were ignored by the adults at school.

We know about the role of differential susceptibility from the ever-growing body of research around environmental sensitivity. Vantage Sensitivity indicates that the more sensitive someone is, the more positively they are affected by a safe and supportive environment. Diathesis Stress shows that the more sensitive a person is, the more they’re negatively affected by stressful conditions.

The school setting can be stressful for neurotypes with diverse sensitivities whose nervous systems don’t naturally fit the normalised environment.

Do you know autistic people who are very different from you? How are they different?Lucas said yes to this because, for example, some autistic people he knows are more confident when speaking. Those whose brains function in similar ways still have different personalities, tastes, and abilities.

It can be encouraging to see people with the same neurotype who are also different, because it inspires us to believe we’re not necessarily limited or restricted, especially when those limits or restrictions are imposed by unfair assumptions and unfavourable environments.

Have you ever felt like you’re not autistic in the right way? If so, what makes you say that?Lucas wondered if his brain was too complex to be autistic, but when he learned about neurodiversity, he learned about differences and similarities in brain functioning.

If you could design the perfect school or learning environment for yourself, what would it include? And what would it not include?Schools are such formative environments. And as we all know, they can leave a lasting imprint on the shape of our lives and our sense of self.

“In a perfect environment”, Lucas said, “I would feel safe and there would be someone I trust”. Trust is a big word here because it is so easily eroded when people want others to comply and conform with societal norms.

I don’t think I know anyone with a more astute and accurate BS detector than Lucas. It’s been refined by experiences of being coaxed into situations by adults who say things like, “You can trust me; you’ll enjoy it once you’re in there.” Accumulate enough such experiences, and it becomes very difficult to trust what authority figures say, especially when you don’t enjoy it once you’re in that overwhelming environment.

Do you think other autistic people would want exactly the same things? Why or why not?“No, we’re all different. For example, some autistic people like quiet, but I like music and loud noises.”

This is the heart of the variety of neurodiversity that inspired Lucas to highlight this topic. For one person, silence can be really distracting and create a lot of noise within them. For another person, silence is the only way they can focus and calm their mind.

Lucas also noted that, from his experience, some things seem common across many autistic people. For example, “finding conversations tricky and we might need more time for things”.

What is something important about you that has nothing to do with autism?It can be challenging to recognise things about ourselves that make us different from others. Lucas noticed things he has in common with his dad, who isn’t autistic. They both look similar. They both like music and silly jokes, and are very polite.

He has a wonderful, vibrant imagination as well. There’s a joy to see whirring away. His was the mind behind The Spirit of The Cheese, where Jono (his dad) and I took direction and turned his vision into a reality.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dWSuB3WqEaEIf someone met you for five minutes, what would they probably get wrong about you?“They might think I don’t speak”, was Lucas’s response to this. Familiar, I’m sure, to many of us, especially introverts and highly sensitive people who take time to pause and assess things before stepping into environments and situations.

He continued, “I only really chat to people when they feel okay to talk to. When I know people are safe, I really like chatting to them.”

This is the same for me. I can get lost in the flow of conversation. But on meeting me, people often assume I’m quiet, shy, or reserved.

What do you wish people cared more about?Lucas’s response to this was a frustration with people caring so much about humans as being more special than everything else. He is passionate and knowledgeable about the natural world, and acutely aware of how damaging humans have been to it because of this underlying attitude of human exceptionalism.

He added that he would also like to see neurodivergent people as people who matter.

It occurs to me that both would make the world a better place, allowing everyone to see the impact of human exceptionalism. Not just on the environment but on humans themselves. It is part of what leads us to become more divided as a species. And it reinforces systems of inequality and individualistic habits of wealth hoarding.

Likewise, when neurodiversity is treated in a way that doesn’t honour value and allow everyone to flourish in sync with their natural potentials, we diminish the richness of our collective human experience.

I concur.

That is something I wish people cared more about, too.

If someone gives you advice, how do you decide whether it will work for you?Sometimes advice comes from people who, as we’ve talked about already, make assumptions that don’t apply to us. They might be speaking from a foundation that is different from who we are, what we care about, and what we think is important.

Lucas said, “I think about whether I respect them, trust them, and know them.” Adding, “If I don’t like them, I might regret following their advice.”

Have you ever been told “this works for autistic people” and thought, well, not for me? If so, what was it?Lucas returned to the question of silence versus loud noises. People assume that he should want things quiet because that’s how it is for some other autistic people, but he likes some loud noises.

He also mentioned the context of going to a special school that said it was good for autistic people, but he still found it stressful, as he had with previous mainstream educational settings.

Why do you think people like having a single answer that applies to everybody?I couldn’t help myself with this one. It’s a question that I’m fascinated by. It’s what drives my self-help exploration as well.

Why do we try to universalise explanations and come up with grand theories of everything, rather than treating people as individuals, and situations and environments as places of unique potential, expression, history, and story?

Lucas said, “It’s less work to think about”, which is a great response. It’s easier to imagine everyone as the same than to treat people as individuals. But what does this cost us? What does it prevent us from being able to do? How is it limiting us, not just as individuals, but as a society?

A huge thanks to Lucas again for his thoughtful suggestion and great input on this topic. It has been such a joy putting this together. And I think we both hope it is helpful to anyone listening.

Share your responses to the questions in this survey (it doesn’t matter who you are or your neurotype; the point is to hear stories from a variety of people!). There’s also an option to download and print the mini-zine if you’d prefer to write and draw by hand. Feel free to send me a photo when you’re finished!

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I sometimes notice that I’m feeling stuck.

When I’m frustrated, trying to figure something out. Stuck for inspiration when I’m attempting to create something or solve a problem. Stuck in thought patterns and loops.

It’s tempting to give up or seek shortcuts when this feeling kicks in, as if it’s something to avoid or overcome. But stuckness can encompass a wide range of experiences and open the door to all sorts of interesting discoveries about ourselves and the things we care about.

https://youtu.be/0pIjNB-ZoA4Feeling Stuck Because You Don’t Know What You WantSometimes we feel stuck when we don’t know what to do. Not just in the existential sense of “What should I do with my life?”, but in smaller, everyday ways too.

We might struggle to choose between two options. We might know what we don’t want, but not be able to identify what we do want. Or the idea of settling on one thing brings a flood of everything we need to sacrifice to do so.

Feeling Stuck Because There Are Too Many PossibilitiesSometimes stuckness comes from having too many possibilities. Too many interests, projects, and lives we want to live. We need to reconcile and navigate life with our finite time, energy, and capacity without becoming overwhelmed by the abundance of options.

Feeling Stuck Because None of the Options Feel RightWe might feel stuck when none of the available or obvious options feel right. The choices on offer don’t reflect who we are, or we’re trying to force ourselves into a life designed by someone else for someone else.

Perhaps things flowed freely for a while, but they no longer seem to fit.

Feeling Stuck Even Though You Know What You WantSometimes, stuckness comes because we know exactly what we want. But we’re afraid of what choosing it might mean. We might fear what others will think and worry about regretting the sacrifices it asks of us.

Feeling Stuck as a DoorwayFeeling stuck can be a doorway to self-awareness, curiosity, and discovery. It’s a territory that lends itself perfectly to map-making. Rather than creating a list of things to do, fixes, solutions, missing pieces, and the correct answers, we can treat feeling stuck as a territory to explore.

Before deciding what to do, we might ask ourselves where we are and how we got here.

The Map of Stuckness and PossibilityI didn’t anticipate the map I created over the weekend becoming anything specific. But as I explored these questions, I could feel it coming to life as a mini-zine journal companion workbook centred on a simple question…

What do I care about?

As simple as that question may seem, it can be difficult for many people to answer, especially those whose decisions, choices, and priorities have been shaped by concern for how their actions will affect others.

Maybe something has changed in your life, and you suddenly have more time and space to think about what you want to do.

Or perhaps you’ve reached a point where you feel yourself fading away, and you recognise that it’s time to come home to yourself.

To figure out what you care about, what’s important, and the shape you want your life to take.

A Mini-Zine Journal WorkbookThe workbook isn’t designed to tell you what to do. That’s never been my approach.

Instead, it’s designed to help you slow down long enough to hear yourself, notice where you are and what you care about, and perhaps make surprising discoveries along the way.

Learn more and download it here.

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The Strangest Secret was released in 1956. Earl Nightingale’s 35-minute, six-and-a-half-thousand-word recording was one of the earliest motivational tapes. It sold more than a million copies and became the first spoken-word recording to achieve Gold Record status.

The recording was released during a period of post-war economic expansion in the United States. Consumer culture was booming, and suburban home ownership was rising. The promise of upward mobility felt tangible for a growing American middle class encouraged to live a story about abundance, opportunity, and individual advancement.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I look at some of the ideas and assumptions running through The Strangest Secret, and how they echo themes that have become deeply embedded in self-help culture over the past century.

https://youtu.be/-t_aynxdw9EWhat interests me is less whether Nightingale’s advice works than the story he tells about success, failure, responsibility, and human potential. It’s a format followed by generations of motivational speakers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and personal development enthusiasts. It continues to influence how many of us think about ourselves and the world today.

I heard about The Strangest Secret through a video by Sean Munger titled The Tools Cult: History of the Amway Motivational Tape Scam. My attention was caught by a reference to Napoleon Hill, who inspired Nightingale when he read Think and Grow Rich in 1948. That book, as well as Nightingale’s tape, became important resources on the Amway reading list.

Nightingale’s Definition of Success

“When we say about 5% achieve success, we have to define success, and here’s the definition. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

This is a reasonable concept. To act in the service of bringing a worthy ideal into being provides a flexible definition that can be applied in many ways.

Nightingale says he believes that success is a life lived with a specific sense of purpose and direction. So it’s confusing when he seems to undermine this by viewing success through a financial lens.

He suggests that if you follow 100 men between the ages of 25 and 65, you would witness a desire for success at the start of life, but by the time they’re 65, one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke.

This underpins his position that only 5% of people are successful.

So which is it? Being financially independent by age 65 or progressively realising a worthy ideal? Those things are not necessarily linked.

An artist, a teacher, a carer, or a community organiser, and anyone who does something despite the lack of guaranteed financial reward. By Nightingale’s own definition, these people may well be successful. They are realising a worthy ideal. Yet his framework shifts from an existential definition of success to an economic one, where in reality, a person can only be deemed successful if they make lots of money.

Self-Help TropesNightingale’s talk conforms with many of the self-help tropes we are becoming familiar with on this journey.

The Secret

“If you understand completely what I’m going to tell you from this moment on, your life will never be the same again. You will suddenly find that good luck just seems to be attracted to you. The things you want just seem to fall in line and from now on you won’t have the problems, the worries, the knowing lump of anxiety that, perhaps, you have experienced before. Doubt, fear, well they’ll be things of the past.”

The idea of a secret runs through the history of self-help. There is always some missing piece, some hidden principle that, once understood and applied, will change everything. The details vary slightly from book to book, but the structure remains remarkably similar. The reader is invited to believe that happiness, peace, prosperity, confidence, healing, or fulfilment are all waiting on the other side of a single insight.

It’s a compelling promise. Nice if true.

Metaphor As EvidenceSelf-help authors often lean on metaphors in ways that make them seem like evidence for a position. Nightingale says, “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going,” and compares successful people to ships sailing towards a predetermined destination.

He then imagines a ship without a captain, crew, or destination and concludes that it will drift aimlessly.

The comparison sounds persuasive until you stop and think about it. A ship is designed for a destination. Human beings are not. Some of the richest experiences in life emerge through experimentation, curiosity, accident, and changing direction. A ship without a crew and a destination isn’t fulfilling its literal purpose and reason for existing (built by humans as a logistical tool). A human is not the same.

There are many reasons people choose not to structure their lives around the pursuit of goals.

“The man who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he is going and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion and anxiety and fear and worry, becomes what he thinks about. His life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry and if he thinks about nothing, he becomes nothing.”

I would suggest that many successful people function effectively without the kind of goals Nightingale advocates. And people who have focused so obsessively on a single drive that they’ve lost important things like their health, relationships, and meaningful hobbies.

Cherry-Picked QuotesLike many self-help authors, Nightingale draws on the authority of famous thinkers. One example is his quotation of Marcus Aurelius: “a man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.” I couldn’t find this in any of the translations of Meditations I checked, suggesting it is more likely a paraphrase than a direct quotation.

The same pattern appears in his use of William James. Nightingale focuses on James’s claim that if you wish to be rich, learned, or good, you can become those things.

“If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly ascertain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. If you wish to be good, you will good. Only you must then really wish these things and wish them exclusively and not wish at the same time a hundred other compatible things just as strongly.”

To achieve something extraordinary requires excluding countless other possibilities. What happens when wealth becomes the exclusive organising principle of a life? What gets pushed aside? Relationships? Leisure? Health? Community? James seems at least as interested in that question as he is in achievement itself. Nightingale doesn’t acknowledge this.

The Strangest Quote of Them AllPerhaps the most confusing quote he uses is from George Bernard Shaw, who said, “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.”

It sounds like Shaw was spouting a self-help slogan. But this sounded strange to me because Shaw was a committed socialist and a leading member of the Fabian Society. He spent much of his life criticising the idea that individuals simply rise or fall according to personal merit. He repeatedly explored how economic and social structures shape people’s lives in his plays. Throughout his work, Shaw explored the relationship between individual agency and the social conditions people inherit.

So where did this quote come from?

It is actually a line spoken by the character Vivie Warren in Mrs Warren’s Profession, not by Shaw directly. As with any playwright, author, or comedian, we need to be careful about treating a character’s words as the artist’s personal philosophy.

Charles Dickens (Fagin – Oliver Twist)The Obligatory Call To Action (and disclaimer)Like any good self-help talk, Nightingale finishes with a challenge. Write down what you want more than anything else. Carry it with you. Look at it every day. Maintain a positive outlook and give more than you’ve ever given before.

The framework handles failure with a familiar disclaimer. If the method works, it gets the credit. If it doesn’t work, responsibility falls back on the individual. You didn’t believe enough, weren’t committed enough, lost focus, or didn’t give what was required.

This secret is neither particularly strange nor surprising. It is a derivative of Napoleon Hill. In fact, it’s almost identical to what he wrote in Think and Grow Rich.

There is always another level of effort required and another reason success remains just beyond reach. The possibility that the promise itself might be flawed rarely enters the conversation.

My Enduring QuestionThere is a gap between the question Nightingale starts with and the answer he arrives at.

As a child growing up in poverty, he wanted to understand why some people prospered while others struggled. It’s an interesting question to explore. It opens up the potential to probe into themes of opportunity, power, ownership, luck, and the socio-economic landscape of society itself.

Yet by the end of The Strangest Secret, that complexity has been replaced by a one-dimensional explanation and cure. Inequality is a direct product of our thoughts, goals, and willingness to work in the service of our personal dream.

This move has become so familiar within self-help culture that it can be difficult to notice. Social questions become personal. Structural problems are solved by mindset. Inequality becomes a failure of ambition, and burnout becomes a failure of attitude.

More than seventy years after The Strangest Secret was released, people are still being sold variations of the same promise.

Support My WorkIt takes me time to research, produce, and edit these episodes. You can support me by sending a one-off donation or join us in the membership.

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I’ve been journaling more or less daily for the past fifteen years.

As much as I love the romantic vision of pen on paper, I’ve always done it digitally because I could never keep up with a handwritten journal. I tried, but it never really worked.

Over the years, I’ve come across plenty of advice on the best ways to journal, the best techniques, and the best prompts. I always think it’s worth bringing a bit of nuance to these conversations because, as far as I’m concerned, the best way to journal is whatever way means you actually do it. And that depends entirely on who you are, what you want your journal to do for you, and how it fits with your life circumstances.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I discuss something I recently noticed about my journal practice that I’d never considered before.

https://youtu.be/mSpRvfmqW9ASince 2021, I’ve been answering the same four questions most mornings:

• What did I do yesterday?
• What was the best thing that happened yesterday?
• What are today’s news headlines?
• What are my plans for today?

What struck me is that all four questions are surprisingly objective and focus on facts rather than feelings. They’re concrete, and none of them explicitly probe beneath the surface.

They don’t want me to go searching for deeper meaning. Just record, archive, and document. If I’m short on time, I can answer the questions in less than five minutes (once I’m able to recall what happened yesterday). They are simple, easy, and objective. But more often than not, I go deeper and longer. Especially once I start thinking about the best thing that happened yesterday, today’s news headlines, and what I have planned.

Recording and ProcessingThe reason I started thinking about all this was that I saw a post on social media titled “How Journaling Actually Works.” It suggested that people get journaling wrong by recording events like a diary rather than finding the meaning in them. It caught my attention because it was the opposite of what I’ve found to be true.

He suggests asking yourself questions like:What does this situation actually mean to me and why does it feel the way it does?

Whoa, where do you start with that?

• What am I avoiding thinking about right now?
• What am I pretending is fine when it’s not?
• What would I do if I were not afraid of the outcome?

These are reasonable coaching-style questions for addressing specific situations. But they demand a fairly high cognitive and emotional load and likely require more than the five honest minutes he suggests for meaningful insight.

If those are the kinds of questions you’re asking every time you sit down to journal, it can start to feel like a pretty heavy-duty habit. I don’t know about you, but I would feel resistance to picking up my journal if that was what confronted me.

My experience has been quite different.Over fifteen years of journaling, I’ve found that recording often opens the door to processing.

The simple act of documenting what happened yesterday gets my mind moving. It gives me something to work with. And sometimes, while writing about ordinary things, I stumble into something much bigger.

Recently, during one of our Haven Journal Circles, I responded to the prompt: What brought me peace this week?

My answer was having the brakes replaced on my car. A fairly ordinary response.

But when I wrote a little more about it in my journal the next morning, it opened up a whole bunch of things I wanted to explore, not least of which was putting off doing something I know needs doing. It prompted me to stop procrastinating several other things that have been draining me in the background for a while.

I didn’t sit down intending to write about avoidance, and I wouldn’t have thought about it in relation to those other questions. It was when I considered something present for me (peace) that I could see what was missing.

That’s one of the things I love about this style of journaling. I never quite know what might occur.

Why These Four Questions Work For Me in My Journal PracticeInterestingly, I used to have more reflective questions in my daily practice. For a while, I asked things like:

• What am I thankful for right now?
• What does this make possible?
• What one thing that is not urgent but important will I do today?

These aren’t bad questions. But over time I found them difficult to answer consistently. My engagement with them became repetitive, and they started to feel a little burdensome.

What did I do yesterday?This question is a helpful anchor. It’s shocking how easily I forget what I did just twenty-four hours ago.

I regularly underestimate how much I’ve done and how far I’ve come. I adapt to changes quickly and can lose sight of progress that would have seemed significant only a few days or weeks earlier.

Recording what happened yesterday helps me notice that movement.

What was the best thing that happened yesterday?This question was an iteration of “What am I thankful for right now?”

I realised that I didn’t find it helpful to ask what I’m grateful for. Because some days I don’t FEEL grateful when I sit down to write. But there is always a best thing relative to everything else that happened yesterday. And through responding to that question, a feeling of gratitude, appreciation, or satisfaction often follows.

The best thing doesn’t need to be a great thing. It can simply be the best among a collection of difficult things.

What are today’s news headlines?This is very much a personal choice because I like anchoring myself in cultural time. When I look back through old entries, it’s fascinating to see what was happening in the wider world alongside whatever was happening in my own life.

It’s easy to lose track of timelines and current events. Recording headlines provides context for personal reflections and sometimes reveals connections I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

That said, I wouldn’t suggest everyone does this. For some people, there may be good reasons not to engage with the news during a journaling practice.

You might choose to record the weather, books you’re reading, films you’ve watched, or something else entirely. The principle is similar because these things can influence us without us necessarily noticing at the time. And by recording and archiving regularly and consistently, these pictures can become clearer.

What are my plans for today?This question took a little tweaking.

I used to ask, “What will I do today?” As a way to commit myself to particular actions. But eventually realised that wasn’t quite right because my days often contain things I didn’t plan. Plans change, and unexpected things happen.

If plans are framed as things I will do, it can feel like a failure if I don’t carry them out. But by asking about my plans rather than what I will do, I can set intentions for the day and later notice how closely reality matched what I anticipated. That neutral observation doesn’t need to become a judgment or source of self-criticism.

My relationship with plans has definitely softened. Maybe because of this. Or maybe I approach plans this way because I hold them differently.

Building Your Own Journaling PracticeOne thing that stood out to me in the social media post was the suggestion that consistency matters less than honesty.

I understand the point being made, but for me consistency has been a key pathway TO honesty. And inconsistency would yield something more performed or forced.

Keeping a journal creates an ongoing conversation. Over time it builds familiarity, trust, and reliability. The bigger thoughts and feelings have somewhere to go when they appear because the habit already exists.

Not all journal sessions become deep dive self-examinations. Some do because most don’t.

The post drew a distinction between recording and processing, and between shallowness and depth. But in my experience, the two are closely connected. Recording often creates the conditions where reflection can emerge.

What Do You Want Your Journal Practice To Do and Be For You?Pay attention to how different questions make you feel. If you’re building a practice, ask yourself what you want it to be. Enjoy experimenting with it. Don’t be afraid to reject advice or to let go of questions that run out of road. It’s your practice, and it needs to work for you.

The four questions I use today emerged through years of tweaking, adapting, and noticing what keeps me coming back with energy and enthusiasm.

Your journal practice will probably look different. And that’s exactly as it should be. But maybe this is where you can start. Try these questions, tweak them, add your own, and pay attention to your relationship with the practice.

Pick The LockDo you want help thinking about this? It’s a good fit for a Pick The Lock call, which is a one-off 60-minute, choose-your-own-price session designed to give you a sounding board for a challenge, goal, or change you’re considering.

Send me a message, or learn more here.

Journal CircleIf you would like some low-stakes, simple prompts to try things out, join us in The Haven. Every Friday we have our journal circle, where we meet for 30 minutes, reflect on the shape of the past seven days, and do a simple five-minute written exercise in response to a question. After that, we have space to chat about how we got on.

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How did Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking, pave the way for the prosperity gospel and the law of attraction that still has its claws in today’s culture? That’s what we explore in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

Part One explored Peale’s foundations in the New Thought Movement of the nineteenth century and its theological departure from Puritanical Calvinism.

Part Two linked Peale’s version of Positive Thinking with the corporate culture of the twentieth century. We saw how it provided bonus benefits to companies laying off workers.

In Part Three, we look at links between Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel, and its potential to exploit vulnerable people with promises of great wealth in exchange for willingly giving their money and going into debt because of promises made by those in power over them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJaPrhOSnxw&feature=youtu.beThe Prosperity Theology of Positive ThinkingThis brings us full circle to the ‘theological’ dimension of Peale’s project. One of the most common complaints in reviews of The Power of Positive Thinking is that it unexpectedly contains so many references to God and the Bible.

But this is the point of it. Peale builds on the New Thought tradition, using Bible verses to support the law of attraction he proposes, driven by a god who “rates you according to the size of your prayers”, and rewards you if you dream big and visualise having already received the objects you desire.

Norman Vincent Peale was a minister who used his position to gain credibility and status in the eyes of his followers. As God’s spokesman, he was taken seriously when he preached. But as we saw in the first part, he was an expert at cherry-picking Bible verses to suit his purposes, stripping them of their narrower and broader theological contexts.

The Formula For Peale’s Law of AttractionPeale turns basic psychology into cosmic superstition. As we saw in the previous episode, when he took the story of Job and interpreted his words, “What I feared has come upon me and what I dreaded has happened to me”, as meaning Job invited his fate BECAUSE he feared it.

This conforms to Peale’s scientific formula for success (and failure): “Affirm it, visualize it, believe it, and it will actualize itself.”

Whether it’s something we desire or something we fear, it will actualise itself if we think about it. “When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.”

Of course, we understand that confirmation bias means that when we expect something to be true, we are more likely to find evidence to support it. As such, we might lead ourselves towards outcomes if we believe something has made them more certain.

All Things Are Possible…Peale tells the story of a faith healer who helps a struggling baseball team on a losing streak. They were riddled with doubt and didn’t believe they could win. One day, the coach asked for the team’s bats and then disappeared with them. When he returned, he excitedly told the players that the preacher had blessed the bats. They now contained a power that could not be overcome. “The players were astounded and delighted,” Peale reports. “The next day they overwhelmed Dallas, getting 37 base hits and 20 runs.”

“All things are possible to him that believeth”, Peale affirms, implying that God rewards faith. This raises the question: Is God needed in this equation, or is it just a belief in God held by those seeking a change of fortune?

And if this is the case, how is this exploited?

Televangelism and The Allure of ProsperityIn Smile or Die, Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the televangelist and leader of a Texas megachurch, Joel Osteen. She cites a passage from one of his books in which he describes his initial resistance to his wife’s pleas to upgrade to a bigger house.

Eventually, he was talked into agreeing. He said it was only because Victoria had used words of faith to persuade him to broaden his vision. This meant God showed him how much more he had in store for him. He presented it as self-sacrifice and obedience to God, rather than an act of indulgence.

This is an application of Peale’s core message. It uses God as a justification for desire. The appearance of material wealth and success is presented as confirmation that you are doing God’s work. It is a reward for your faith. This extraction ecosystem encourages followers to give their resources to trusted spokespeople for God. The explicit promise is that doing so will trigger a transactional response from God.

The God Complex of The Rich and PowerfulEhrenreich points to the God complex present in the executive mindset. Steve Eisman calls it ‘hedge fund disease’, which he suggests should be included in the DSM-5. It is conspicuous in the symptoms of megalomania, narcissism, and solipsism. It boils down to the more money you have, the more right you feel about everything. And “to think something is to make it happen.” Because of the power and wealth you have access to wield, in a sense, “You’re God”.

We see this at play today, with the rich and powerful indulging in projects well outside their areas of expertise. They try to dictate tastes, behaviours, and trends, so they might exploit their followers’ trust. And, much like prosperity-gospel preachers, they persuade people to follow their advice by promising great future returns. We’ve seen this in NFT scams, pump-and-dump crypto coins, and AI investment advice. Some of these figures are delusional. While others are cold and calculating in their efforts to exploit and extract wealth from those who trust them.

Breaking The SpellThe Power of Positive Thinking reinforces a delusional superstition. Fear itself becomes something to fear, avoid, or eradicate, rather than to listen to and respond to appropriately.

It is also delusively aspirational, portraying capitalism as a system that rewards all who believe in it while ignoring the inherent logic of a system that functions on inequality. Peale follows in Napoleon Hill’s footsteps, believing that poverty and suffering are simply the result of poor thinking and insufficient passion and desire for wealth.

This episode is part of the project I’m working on, which examines notable books and figures in the self-help industry. It began with a desire to slow down and examine my own critical thinking on this topic.

Get in TouchWhat else should I read as part of this project? Drop me a message and let me know!

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In the wake of burnout, Tuula Ahde found herself unable to move through the world as she previously had. And she got busy looking for ways to unfreeze. Ironically, it was ice that gave her a route back home.

She found herself instinctively drawn to photography, particularly macro-photography, which zoomed in on the mysterious details of her world’s enforced smallness. She photographed flowers, fungi, and whatever else she found around her, discovering that the act of taking photographs brought her closer to herself and to the often-overlooked details of her surroundings.

Then, in 2016, the weather suddenly turned cold and stormy winds brought a crystal clarity to the lake by her cottage in Finland. She describes it as looking like a crazed glassblower had stormed through the landscape, freezing it into an unimaginable art exhibition. And that was it. She spent hours in the darkness, photographing the ice, desperate to capture as many images as possible before the snow buried the glassblower’s gallery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOI1oN5gGK8Some threads that emerged from our Kota conversation:In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a few snippets from a conversation we had in The Haven over the weekend, after we watched a video Tuula and I created about her accidental journey into creativity through ice photography.

As we begin our Photoyoga summer, the conversation offers a glimpse into the philosophy that sits beneath it. The course uses photography in an unconventional way, helping us notice more of what is happening around, within, and between us.

Creativity Begins with AttentionCreativity starts small and close in. It is about noticing what catches our attention, where we are, and capturing it with any means.

Photos contain more than what we see. Macro-photography is an even more stark way to notice what is going on within and around us.

Ice photos take us to different realms, into and through which we can travel. Even when our physical movement is restricted.

Creativity Welcomes MysteryTen people might look at the same image and see completely different things. It’s not about who is correct. It’s about having the courage and confidence to tolerate and embrace differences rather than trying to convince them that your perspective is the right one.

Raven by Tuula Ahde (what do you see?)Art gives us the gift of mystery (something that can never be fully and completely contained, grasped, or known). However, we often engage with it as a source of secrecy (a single meaning that is withheld from you until it’s revealed).

Creativity Changes Us as We CreateThere is symbolic and metaphorical power in the act of creating (and contradictions can be playful and fun). For example, the longer Tuula stays in the cold, shooting photos and turning blue, the more unfrozen her mind and feelings become.

Creativity is not about the outcome. The process may sometimes feel like an obstacle standing between us and the finished thing. But it is also the source of whatever life that product contains. Perhaps this is why shortcut tools that focus entirely on generating results can leave us feeling strangely disconnected from them.

Photoyoga is an iterative form of change. It doesn’t begin with a destination or a carefully defined goal. One photo leads to another. Over time, a gallery emerges, becoming a record of the journey itself. Technical skills, equipment, and expertise can all develop along the way, but none of them are prerequisites. They tend to grow naturally through curiosity, experimentation, and the desire to explore further.

When we build our lives on deep foundations, we gain a broader perspective on the things we think we ought to strive for.

Ultimately, this journey is about paying attention. It’s about noticing what happens within us as we create. We become curious about our feelings, motivations, and assumptions, and allow creativity to reveal things we might otherwise miss. Through that process, we gradually discover new ways to understand, express, and inhabit our lives.

Fancy joining us for Photoyoga 2026? Learn more here.

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Walking art is a nice metaphor for the experience of experimentally oriented people.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with Australian multi-form artist Amy Tsilemanis. I’ve known Amy for a few years and was excited to talk with her about the naturally curious approach she takes to her work and life, as it resonates with much of what we regularly discuss here and on Serenity Island.

https://youtu.be/frOHk7C7h1QIn our conversation, we explored: What caused Amy to question whether she is really a highly sensitive person ten years after first hearing the term? * Why I believe the highly sensitive label is useful until it’s no longer necessary (and how I see this applying to Amy). * How Amy has made such a broad range of art forms work for her. She uses audio storytelling and podcasting, poetry, collage, walking art, participatory events, installation, archives, multimedia, and the creative activation of heritage places and collections. * Why having a lot of strings to her bow can sometimes lead to impostor syndrome. * What drives Amy’s relationship with art (and how she discovered her creative values). * Why the image of the flâneur caught her attention. * How curiosity about audio walks led to a conference in northern Greece, which turned out to be near Amy’s ancestral village, which connected her to a global community of walking artists, which brought her back to Australia to help start a walking art organisation. Don’t you just love how unexpected happenings become big parts of life!* * And more…

Noticing, Wandering, and Everyday Creative ExpressionAmy’s work gives a strong sense of anchoring in space and history. She is clearly driven by the power of human connection, bringing people into the creative process whenever possible. I was also keen to ask her about the impact of slowing down on what she notices in the world around her and within her.

It was fascinating to hear her trace her joy in sharing what she notices with others back to messages her mum left for her in her lunchbox as a child. She learned to see these small creative acts as ways to tell people she was thinking of them.

Amy is the embodiment of experimental and accidental creativity. Her life has often taken unexpected twists and turns, including her latest role as a model for a local charity shop. Listen to the end to find out about that one.

The word ‘creativity’ can seem big, heavy, and even scary at times. But I hope this conversation paints a different picture and that you might feel encouraged by what we discuss.

Links* Amy’s website: amytsilemanis.com.au * Walk Listen Create (global walking art hub): walklistencreate.org/ * Australian Walking Artists: australianwalkingartists.org/

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This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is an introduction to “Leave it There”, this season’s theme. I share some of the initial topics it brought to my mind. I’d love to hear from you about what it brings to yours.

What Does Leave It There Mean To You? Is there something you want to leave behind? * Do you want to get better at letting things go? Or maybe, the opposite, persisting with important things even when others tell you to drop it.* * Have you stumbled across something left somewhere, deliberately or accidentally? * Do you want to leave nice things for others to discover? * Maybe you’d like to get better at spotting and ignoring bait that others want you to react to. * Do you want to trust your preparation and know when something is good enough, rather than sabotaging it through over-preparation?

This theme is open for exploring. I want to move through it in ways that reflect your curiosities, needs, and desires.

Leave It There – A Train of Thought Mini-ZineI started off by jumping on the Train of Thought. I love using mini-zines to generate and explore creative ideas quickly, so that’s what I did.

1. Old Hurt (leaving it in the past)
2. Beliefs (recognising our ability to choose)
3. The Point (avoiding over-explanation)
4. Dropping It (letting go or standing firm)
5. Surprises (discovering unexpected things)
6. Gifts (subverting the myth that humans are driven by greed and self-interest)
7. Blaming the Victim (was it my fault for leaving it there?)
8. Objects in Unusual Places (there’s a story here)
9. A Creative Process (germination, satisfaction, and courage)
10. Exits and Quitting (knowing when and how to walk away)
11. Bait (cultivating indifference)
12. Conditions For Change (leaving things visible)
13. Trusting Preparation (recognising when enough is enough)
14. Offloading (sharing the burden)
15. Setting Limits (running out of space)

What would you add? Let me know!

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Journal Circle PromptsThis season’s Journal Circle questions are all inspired by the theme “Leave it There”. Whether you have a journal practice, you’d like to start one, or you simply want to play with some of the ideas we are exploring, here are some prompts to get you started…

Coming To Our Senses – End of Season ZineThis season’s issue of Coming To Our Senses will bring together our Leave It There explorations. We will watch the video version together at the listening party on Sunday, September 6th 2026.

It would be great to have you involved in some way, big or small! I’m always looking for contributions to fill the pages.

You can send something below, or if you would like help deciding what to do, use the form to get in touch.

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The moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is generally that liars aren’t believed even when they tell the truth. But I wonder if that story actually tells us less about the boy and more about the village.

The boy’s behaviour didn’t change. What changed was how the village responded. Each false alarm conditioned them to doubt what came next. Once that trust was gone, the villagers were living in a subtly created new reality.

That feels uncannily familiar right now.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the storification of everything and its impact on our ability to trust what we hear about almost anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iN-FtQieUUA while back, my attention was caught by an Instagram carousel titled “8 Storytelling Frameworks Used by Million-Dollar Personal Brands (that you can steal).” It might have been the image of Mel Robbins on the front cover that did it.

I love stories. Storytelling is a wonderful way to unlock our creativity and deepen our experience of humanity. But when I see storytelling packaged into marketing funnels with the aim not to tell better stories, but to become more persuasive and influential in shaping people’s behaviour, I feel a bit of the ick.

For me, the purpose of storytelling is to deepen empathy, compassion, and insight. There is nothing inherently wrong with a brand telling stories. What rankles me is when storytelling frameworks are used not to explore a truth but to manufacture one, with the goal simply to turn attention back to the storyteller and get people to part with their money.

The storification of influencers and brands may give us insight into why so many of us are starting to feel jaded, cynical, and tired.

The Fastest Way to Build Trust (and Destroy It)In branding and marketing, storytelling aims to persuade people to take a pre-designated action. The Instagram post reinforced this, saying: “Storytelling is the fastest way to build trust online. It makes people feel like they know you, and people buy from those they know.”

But if this becomes disingenuous or dishonest, each fabricated story becomes another cry of wolf. We are naturally poised to trust, but we are also highly adaptable. If we are told enough stories that turn out to be untrue, it erodes our trust. We struggle to believe anything, even when it is real. Look at how many comments say “staged” or “fake” on videos that aren’t staged at all.

Storytelling may be the fastest way to build trust, but it can also be the fastest way to destroy it.

I include examples to show that this isn’t about whether storytelling frameworks work. I know they do. Rather, it’s about what happens when they are exploited. What happens to our faith and trust in what we hear and read in everyday life?

The Storytelling FrameworksHere are the eight frameworks from that Instagram post.

1. Before → After → Bridge – Show where you were, where you are now, and the specific bridge that got you there.
2. Aha Moment – Tell the moment your perspective changed and the lesson behind it.
3. Micro-Moment Story – Take a tiny, ordinary moment and extract a deeper truth from it.
4. Mistake → Lesson – Share a mistake, then the lesson learned, and how it shaped your expertise.
5. Enemy of the Hero – Define the villain your audience is fighting (fear, confusion, burnout) and position yourself as the guide.
6. Scar → Skill – Reveal a vulnerable moment, then show the strength or transformation it built.
7. From My Client’s Eyes – Tell a story from a client’s transformation, focusing on the emotional shift.
8. Depth in 30 Seconds – Deliver a full story arc (tension, insight, outcome) in one punchy micro-story.

These eight storytelling frameworks are widely taught in marketing circles. But as I explore in the episode, each one can either deepen trust or erode it, depending on the intent behind the story.

What Can We Do About The Boy Who Cries Wolf?We might think of ourselves as the villagers in The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Enough of the village is still responding in good faith to dishonest stories. But the more we permit and encourage these tactics, the more good faith will erode. We will assume nothing is true and wonder what the storyteller is trying to squeeze from us.

That is a bleak place to be, not least because we start writing off those who have taken the time to create honestly, as we cannot distinguish between truth and fabrication.

What are we willing to tolerate? What are we helping to amplify? How are we equipping and rewarding the cries of wolf?

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What would you say makes something satisfying for you? How do you recognise that you’re satisfied?

It’s not always easy to answer those questions. It’s something I’ve explored a lot over the past few years, both personally and in conversations with others who feel caught in a tug-of-war between doing what they feel they ought to do and what actually brings them an intrinsic sense of satisfaction.

If you’re trying to make creativity part of your life in some way, it can be difficult to balance sustainability and intrinsic satisfaction. We may hand it over to external measures and signals, such as numbers, praise, and money.

Because they’re easier to measure, we often associate satisfaction with outcomes and goals. But if our actions are only motivated by those kinds of extrinsic metrics, especially when they’re personally pretty meaningless, we can end up feeling disconnected from what we’re doing.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed in my work with people is helping peel back the layers of story that can build up like a fog and identifying their own unique signals of satisfaction shining through it. When we recognise these things, we can develop greater confidence in our creative voice and follow a more meaningful pathway through our projects and lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6uaYjKFVKUSatisfaction in the processWhat brings you satisfaction in the process?

What brings you glimmers of connection along the way?

When you’ve enjoyed the journey towards an outcome in the past, what made it meaningful for you?

Maybe it was working alongside other people and feeling a sense of camaraderie. Perhaps it was figuring things out, solving problems, or seeing things come together that you couldn’t have foreseen before you started.

Satisfaction with the responseWhat brings you satisfaction in the response?

What kinds of responses give you a sense that your effort was worthwhile?

Maybe it’s when you realise someone gets it. Perhaps it’s feeling seen and appreciated for the care you’ve put into something. Maybe it’s when people tell others about it, or it might be receiving some form of reward or recognition.

I always remember someone coming up to me after I played a gig to an almost empty room, saying they had almost decided not to come, but were really glad they did. They said, “There’s nowhere else in the world I would rather have been this evening.”

That stuck with me.

Of course, it’s nice to play to bigger crowds. But moments like that changed how I think about satisfaction. Some of my favourite memories come from small shows that might look like failures on paper but felt deeply meaningful once I moved beyond judging everything by numbers and vanity metrics.

Satisfaction with the impactWhat brings you satisfaction in the impact?

When you see something you’ve done making ripples in the world around you, what gives you a sense of satisfaction?

Maybe it’s seeing people follow your example and pay something forward. Perhaps it’s seeing someone change in some way because of your effort. Or maybe it’s simply knowing that your work brings more curiosity, laughter, appreciation, understanding, or joy into the world.

I find it deeply meaningful when I hear from people about how my music has helped them. Knowing that a song has helped someone through a challenging time in their life feels very satisfying. It can’t be forced, though. Part of that satisfaction comes from the surprise of receiving messages from people, which is why I choose to keep the doorways for communication open.

Satisfaction with the resultWhen the endeavour is complete, what gives you that feeling of satisfaction?

Maybe it’s the money. Perhaps it’s holding the finished thing in your hand. Maybe it’s seeing it out there in the world. Or finally being able to let go and move on. Knowing it’s done, it’s complete, it exists.

How do you know when you’re satisfied? What does it feel like in your body?

Between The External and Internal Locus of EvaluationThe psychologist Carl Rogers drew a distinction between an external locus of evaluation and an internal locus of evaluation.

An external locus might mean waiting for applause, approval, or recognition before allowing yourself to feel satisfied.

An internal locus is more about trusting your own felt sense of meaning and alignment, even if nobody else fully gets or appreciates it.

When we rely exclusively on external evaluation, we can become trapped in the tug-of-war between what we genuinely connect with and what others validate. We end up waiting for permission to feel satisfied. We might also avoid speaking up about things people don’t want to hear, and shrink back from doing things we anticipate will be criticised, even when they are important to our deeper values and principles.

An internal locus helps us stay connected to satisfaction on our own terms. It reminds us that even if the ideal response never comes, there may still be good reasons to feel deeply satisfied with what we’ve done. Internally oriented satisfaction taps into the felt sense that we’ve done the right thing, even if others disagree.

At the start of a project or endeavour, it can help to ask: Why does this matter to me, regardless of how others respond to it?

Much of this can’t be forced or manipulated. But it helps to become more aware of the small, slow things that give us intrinsic satisfaction, because it then becomes much easier to recognise them when they appear.

It also helps us filter opportunities and invitations. We begin to recognise whether something genuinely aligns with what we find satisfying, or whether it’s mostly a vanity metric or a hollow signifier of success.

And from there, we can start making more informed decisions about what’s actually worth saying yes to.

Does any of this feel alive for you right now? Drop me a message of book a Pick The Lock call if you would find it useful to explore with someone else.

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Like other self-help gurus of the time, Norman Vincent Peal targeted the lonely travelling salesman. But his message was also marketed to corporate executives, who were promised that the true power of positive thinking lay in the great dividends it would yield if they could sell it to their workforce.

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast builds on the first part of this mini-series, where we saw Peale’s roots in the New Thought movement of the 1800s. In this one, we examine how Peale encouraged a corporate embrace of positive thinking so that individuals would attribute all of their success and failure to the quality of their mindset and attitude. We look at the surprising role of Positive Thinking in the 2008 global financial crash.

https://youtu.be/4U0Yk4Zryrw?si=JBLU4f-7VbPA6ZWUThe Lonely Travelling Salesman and the Birth of a Corporate ToolIn The Power of Positive Thinking, Peale recalls his encounters with travelling salesmen. They were on the road, feeling dejected, struggling to make sales, and lacking confidence. He prescribed visualisation, encouraging followers to “Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade.”

Peale treats this lonely reality as an unchangeable and natural state of being. He doesn’t question the corporate culture that has made this a way of life for an increasing number of people. Instead, he offers a hand on the shoulder, with advice to ease the natural despair and unhappiness that accompany it.

He quotes psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger, who said, “Attitudes are more important than facts.” He adds, “That is worth repeating until its truth grips you… You may permit a fact to overwhelm you mentally before you start to deal with it actually. On the other hand, a confident and optimistic thought pattern can modify or overcome the fact altogether.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter what is true. What matters is what you want to be true. Believe wholeheartedly, and it will come to pass.

This reminded me of a quote from Ivanka Trump’s self-help book, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, which is a descendant of Peale, with the family attending his church and being greatly influenced by his teaching. Ivanka wrote:

“Perception is more important than reality. If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true. This doesn’t mean you should be duplicitous or deceitful, but don’t go out of your way to correct a false assumption if it plays to your advantage.”

Motivational Downsizing and the Rise of Outplacement FirmsBarbara Ehrenreich suggests, “In the hands of employers, positive thinking has been transformed into something its nineteenth-century proponents probably never imagined—not an exhortation to get up and get going but a means of social control in the workplace, a goad to perform at ever-higher levels.”

The book also paved the way for “motivational downsizing”. Between 1981 and 2003, about 30 million full-time American workers lost their jobs due to corporate downsizings. Ehrenreich highlights how workplaces deliberately instil a positive outlook. Employers bring in motivational speakers and distribute free copies of self-help books. The 1998 mega–bestseller Who Moved My Cheese? was a big favourite for this, cleverly encouraging an uncomplaining response to layoffs.

Shifting Responsibility Onto The IndividualCompanies were learning to shift responsibility from themselves to individuals. Outplacement firms were employed to groom laid-off workers, limit ill will, head off wrongful-termination suits, and protect against bad-mouthing by former employees.

The owner of such a firm said, without irony, that “Losing a job is a step forward in your life.” This double-speak casts redundancy as a growth experience. A self-retreat. A deserved time out. Something for which you should be grateful.

Ehrenreich recounts the story of an employee who was compelled to work with an outplacement firm after being laid off. He was advised not to discuss his job loss with anyone for a month.

He later recalled, “It was good advice. I was so bitter, I would have said things that would have been bad for me.”

This is a shrewd move that not only keeps potentially disgruntled employees quiet but also leads them to believe their greatest enemy is internal. In examples like this, the power of positive thinking really does pay dividends…for organisations.

Did The Power of Positive Thinking Cause a Global Financial Crash?Ehrenreich writes that some of those who predicted the 2008 financial crash were warned to change their attitude or risk losing their job. Mike Gelband, who ran the real estate division of Lehman Brothers, expressed fears about what he believed to be a real estate bubble. He suggested to Lehman CEO Richard Fuld during his 2006 bonus review that they needed to rethink their business model. He was promptly fired. Two years later, Lehman went bankrupt.

Lehman Brothers went against their own best interests to maintain this strange, superstitious belief in the magic of positive thinking. This mindset encourages us to see the messenger as the problem rather than as a gateway to knowledge and solutions.

How Peale Cherry-Picked and Even Invented Bible Verses to Reinforce His Version of RealityPeale cites Job 3:25 from the Bible, “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” The story of Job is that he is a righteous man who loses his children, health, and wealth when God permits Satan to test his faithfulness.

Peale takes liberties with his interpretation, writing, “If you fear something continuously, you tend to create conditions in your mind propitious to the development of that which you fear.” In other words, he blames Job’s attitude for the horrors inflicted on him by an external force (Satan).

He then shares another Bible verse, “That which I have greatly believed has come upon me,” which may leave some people scratching their heads, because he has made it up. “It does not make that statement in so many words,” he continues. “And yet again and again and still again, the Bible tells us that if we have faith, ‘nothing is impossible’.”

Peale paints fear as negative thinking and belief as positive thinking.

So let’s run with this logic and apply it to Mike Gelband at Lehman Brothers. Gelband feared the housing bubble. According to Peale’s superstitious model, Gelband’s fear itself would have been the problem, not the risky loans, deregulation, or greed.

That sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But it’s exactly what’s written in The Power of Positive Thinking.

What Other Crises Are We Sleepwalking Into?This is a complete disregard for maturity, wisdom, and truth.

When we view it this way, the power of positive thinking undermines our capacity to think clearly and critically when it matters most. It silences reason, logic, and insight. That IS powerful.

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How do you tend to define success? Is it an external outcome you pursue, or is it something personal you feel ‘close in’?

I’ve been preparing for our next set of Serenity Island Picnics. I’m considering how being more experimental might affect my understanding of success. I share a few of these observations in this short episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

The Return to Serenity Island combines structured resources with a guided creative journey, offering a space for more experimental thinkers to explore change, personal growth, and ambition without the pressure of performance or rigid goal-setting. It appeals to those who view life as a mysterious treasure island to explore rather than a checklist of predetermined items to tick off.

https://youtu.be/AFQlxKUNm60What Does Close-In Success Feel Like?I find more satisfaction in the process of writing and producing a song than in completing it. Hearing a song on the radio doesn’t give me a greater sense of success than the mini-breakthroughs and connecting the dots as it emerges.

However, I can downplay the importance of these close-in success moments. Absorbing outcome-oriented metrics can make it seem as though those don’t matter, and that true success lies in pursuing bigger goals.

In The Return to Serenity Island, we connect real-world areas with map regions to recognise micro-moments and small glimmers of ‘close-in success’ in everyday life.

Seeing Something Universal in Particular SituationsA big reason I keep making videos about The Let Them Saga is what it represents. The story got a hold of me, and I’ve been unable and unwilling to ignore it. It’s been a strange experience because it is a complete departure from what I normally do. But with an experimental approach to life, pursuits can be driven by an inner compass (values, beliefs, etc.), which can lead us in directions that may seem, on the surface, unusual.

In other words, we may connect the dots and see patterns, threaded together by those intrinsic motivations. For example, I’m drawn to the Let Them story because I can see elements of it as both a symptom of and a contributor to the greater challenges we are currently facing in the world.

On Serenity Island, we use this compass to help us assess and respond to opportunities, feelings, and thorns that catch our attention as they arise. This enables us to reorient to our own definition of success and feel more confident about the path we’re on, even if it doesn’t make obvious sense to others.

For me, I feel “close in success” when I know I am acting in sync with those deeper motivators, rather than in pursuit of a quick result or the perception of growth.

It Can Take Me a While to Understand Where Something FitsI’m in awe of people who can grasp concepts quickly and understand how, why and where they fit. It seems to take unfamiliar ideas longer to snap into place for me. But when they do, it can feel like a mini-revelation. I love those aha moments.

One of my core priorities while developing The Return to Serenity Island and The Haven was the concept of seasonal return, rhythm and repetition. For many experimental people, this allows ideas to settle and dots to connect.

It’s through the familiarity of repetition that something may eventually land for us at the right time, when the conditions are right.

False Starts and The Perception of Failure‘Close-in’ success can look like failure to onlookers.

On the experimental path, growth and progress often unfold in non-linear ways. They may appear as fits and starts. Trial, error, quitting, walking away, coming back, forgetting, remembering.

Popular conceptual mantras can shape our self-understanding. For example, we learn to value the ability to “always begin with the end in mind, and start with a clear understanding of your destination”. Productivity bros declare that “winners never quit and quitters never win”. Self-help influencers remind us that “the person who has a fixed purpose and backs it with the determination to see it through to the end is the one who succeeds”.

From this conceptual perspective, virtue lies in finishing what you start, even if it is no longer necessary, effective or appropriate. But for experimental people, it’s important to develop the ability to discern when it’s time to quit and how to let go sustainably.

Nothing is Truly WastedIn an experimental life, nothing is wasted. Every venture yields something to carry forward. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. No, wait. That’s different.

In The Return to Serenity Island, we take time to acknowledge and appreciate our resourcefulness. We make peace with letting go and make space to focus on those sources of close-in satisfaction.

Many of us carry baggage about letting go, quitting, and changing our minds. It might have been drummed into us that stopping before the end is wasteful.

At its most extreme, an outcome-oriented framework holds that the end justifies the means. So long as you get the result, it doesn’t matter how you do it. It also holds that the end undermines the means. If things turn out unfavourably, the whole journey is seen as a waste of time.

When The End Justifies and Undermines The MeansI saw Stockport County (my team) lose to Carlisle on penalties at Wembley in the League Two playoff final in 2023.

After the match, as we walked away from the stadium, I said, “Well, that was a waste of a day.” I was joking, but part of me felt it too, because the result was disappointing. It clouded my perception of the day, especially in the immediate aftermath of that defeat.

But the day was otherwise great, full of enjoyable micro-moments.

I realise how quickly I can undermine the time I spend caring, crafting, and creating if I hand all the power to the destination. But on the flipside, I can see how easy it is to find more joy in life when I turn that on its head and give power to the joy of the ‘close-in’.

Satisfaction in small things comes from bringing real life to the landscapes we map in our imagination around Serenity Island.

How Does Close-In Success Feel To YOU?If life were an island, where would you choose to hang out and explore, regardless of measurable results that may or may not follow?

What would you love to plant more of in your life? How do you want to respond to unexpected changes, opportunities, and feelings that arise? Why do the choices you make matter?

When experimental people build our lives on the foundations of questions like these, the growth we might otherwise try to force takes care of itself. When we view success up close, the path begins to unfold in unexpected, obvious, surprising, intuitive, gradual, and sudden ways.

Join us on Serenity Island to explore more. You can choose what you pay at checkout and get access to all the course materials and live events for the next 12 months.

It would be lovely to have you aboard. Head to serenityisland.me to find out more and grab your passport.

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Do you find that some of your most meaningful and important endeavours are accidental?

Tuula and I unexpectedly made two short horror films earlier this week. And it got me thinking again about differences between experimental and conceptual approaches to life.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore how, for many of us, the accidental discoveries and detours are not always unhelpful distractions or procrastination, but a vital part of what brings meaning to our lives. We will begin thinking about how to accept and embrace these natural elements of ourselves so we can work with them and they can work for us.

https://youtu.be/Ro2tqJ1zNRwExperimental vs. ConceptualI’ve talked about this distinction in more depth elsewhere, based on the research of Galenson and Weinberg. But in short, conceptual types identify a specific goal and lay an efficient path towards it. Experimental types, on the other hand, find success along the way, in side quests, detours, and spontaneous urges that spark creative connection.

Accidental Side Quests and SkillsFor those of us who lean more in the experimental direction, successes are often experienced as a feeling when a side-quest trail, which might look to outside observers like a distraction, sparks a creative connection. Not because we’ve discovered some grand purpose or the thing we were meant to do with our life, but because it brings a sense of integrity to the moment we’re in.

We might then dwell in that place for a while, deepening our skills and exploring further ideas, or it might be a short-lived pit stop. But the key is that these side quests give us new insights, dots to connect with previous knowledge and experience, and tools that we carry with us.

I recognised this in how quickly I can turn a funny little urge or idea into a finished video that captures the essence of the energy sloshing around. I am not a video editor by trade, but I’ve become highly competent and quick, picking up necessary resources along the way.

Stumbling Into Meaningful EndeavoursIt’s interesting to consider whether, for experimental types, learning and development may often arise more from an existing context than from choosing something outside it. A conceptual type might see a surfer and be inspired to learn to surf. An experimental type might find themselves learning to surf because the opportunity was presented somehow. You’ll recognise this if you say, “I just sort of ended up there” or “I stumbled into it. I fell down a rabbit hole and couldn’t let go of what I found.”

This was my story with podcasting. I started my first podcast in 2010, quite by accident. I stumbled on a podcast plugin for my blog and started playing around. It emerged out of curiosity and without a grand launch.

Preparing For Unexpected DetoursI want to emphasise that the experimental approach isn’t simply about drifting from one thing to another after getting bored. We can spend years on the same thing. Rather, it’s about how we relate to those things we find and, most important, to the possibilities and potentials within the fields we play on.

For experimental people, it can be difficult to organise life in anticipation of the accidental detours and side quests we can be sure are coming, because by definition we don’t know what they will look like. That’s part of the deal. It’s why traditional goal setting and personal development tools can feel like a bad fit for us. They start with the end in mind. Knowing where you want to go so you don’t end up elsewhere. But squeezing ourselves into conceptual models is soul-destroying.

A Place for Your Experimental CuriositiesIf this resonates with you, you might be interested in The Return To Serenity Island. It is a guided experience I created for experimental people who want a sense of direction without rigid goal setting. Part course and part choose your own adventure on a treasure island, it is designed to honour the intuitive, curious, accidental orientation that brings us energy and meaning. You can find out more about our coming picnic sessions at serenityisland.me.

Four Things I Learned from Two Horror Films

View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andy Mort | The Gentle Rebel (@gentlerebelhaven)

View this post on InstagramA post shared by Andy Mort | The Gentle Rebel (@gentlerebelhaven)

1. Recognising the Spontaneous UrgeWe were in the kitchen. I scared Tuula by just appearing when her back was turned. It made me think of those scenes with fridge doors in horror movies, when the door obscures what could be lurking behind it. I suddenly had the urge to make a video. Just because. It would be funny.

Then another idea landed. A sequel. A haunted sauna spoon. I love that spontaneous urge. Sometimes an internal story emerges to talk you out of it. “You’re wasting time. You’re being childish.” But I have very fond memories from saying yes to the spontaneous urge, especially when it brings others along.

1. Recognising What is Driving MeWhen I published those short films on Instagram, it was nice to see people hit the Like button. Not because I needed validation, but because it was nice to see people “get it”. They could understand and feel the energy that created it.

2. Recognising the Rebellious UrgeI’ve had YouTube comments saying, “Comb your hair” and “clean up your background.” I take a strange pleasure in knowing that something I don’t care about highlights an irrational reaction in someone else. I don’t live a neatly curated life. It’s a complete hodgepodge. There’s a recklessness in that which feels freeing.

3. Recognising When Enough is EnoughKnowing when to quit and move to another trail is part of the experimental experience. We had more ideas for horror movies, but after the second one, it felt like a third would be forcing it. The moment was done. In a good way. We honoured it and let it go. The artefacts it provided will remain. As will the memory.

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With increasing regularity, I see posts on social media criticising coaching as a pyramid scheme or defending it against such accusations. As people tend to do, they paint a nuanced field with a very broad brush, whichever side they support.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I discuss a recent argument I came across. It illustrates how the term ‘coaching’ is understood and used in two distinct ways.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the ‘coaches teaching coaches to coach is a pyramid scheme’ situation. It’s literally not… I want to be coached on my business by a coach. Who else would I want to learn this from?!”

https://youtu.be/b86vKrEfSUYA Misunderstanding?The framing of that post somewhat mischaracterises the argument it’s pushing back against. The issue isn’t “coaches teaching coaches to coach.” I mean, who better to become a teacher than the person who knows how to do the thing they are teaching? I’ve not seen anyone seriously complaining about that. Rather, when people refer to coaches coaching coaches to coach more coaches to become coaches, they are describing something different.

Having gone through an 18-month ICF-affiliated training programme myself, I often watch parts of the industry with my head in my hands. Not least because it is still unregulated and anyone can call themselves a coach. So, it’s a world I have a love/hate relationship with. This episode hopefully demonstrates why I am sticking around (for now). But also why I have great concern about the way things are heading. And I would suggest it’s incumbent on ethical coaches to take the accusations seriously and help people get a sense of these distinctions.

When Coaching is Not a Pyramid SchemeOf course, it’s not a pyramid if a less experienced coach goes to a more experienced one for coaching.

Someone builds experience over time. Another coach comes to them to address or develop something specific within their business or practice. Even if that coach specialises in working with coaches, those coaches will have their own ways of working, usually with clients across a range of situations. For example, coaches work with people in sport, business, the arts, career development, etc.

This is how knowledge and skills spread within a field. Very normal. Coaching can be really valuable as a structured partnership that helps the client make progress on their terms. Not by telling them what to do, but by helping them identify their desired outcome. And then asking questions to help them get clear on the steps they want to take as well as preparing for potential obstacles they might anticipate along the way.

When Coaching DOES Look Like a Pyramid SchemeWhat, then, is this pyramid of coaches coaching coaches to coach coaches? How is it different?

Sixteen years ago, when I started my blog and podcast, I remember many online entrepreneurs giving away e-books and selling courses to teach people to build a dream lifestyle business. They dangled freedom from employment and four-hour workweeks, and shot their videos on beaches and in mountain-side cabins, to attract an audience to their webinars. Like Influencer Culture today, they would promise an easy-to-follow blueprint to guarantee followers the same success.

These individuals taught others how to create and sell digital products that taught people how to create and sell digital products that taught…yes, you get the point. There was no meaningful substance anywhere in the chain. The money made came from aspirational marketing that shaped perceptions, sold appealing promises, and used smoke and mirrors to persuade people it was a quick route to material wealth.

This is exactly what we have witnessed happen in corners of the online coaching world. It targets individuals, encouraging them to believe that becoming a coach is a quick route to financial prosperity or to escaping material insecurity. They are sold a blueprint for convincing others of the potential wealth of becoming a coach who shares the same process with them, so on and so forth until the supply of potential clients runs dry.

Coaching Is Never a One Size Fits All SolutionEven for coaches who find their own niche, you can tell when this sort of pyramid model is at work because they coach people to become coaches. Treating every problem with the same solution. A “relationship coach” may end up with many clients becoming coaches themselves. A “career coach” has a disproportionate number of people pivoting to follow in their footsteps in building a coaching business rather than being coached to identify and follow their own path.

It concerns me when I see a coach describing how their clients have succeeded in the same ways they did. That is a dereliction of what I see as the purpose of coaching: to support each individual in defining success on their own terms and navigating their unique path towards it.

Identifying Pyramid Schemes in the Coaching WorldHow can we assess whether a coaching environment is genuine and meets our needs or those it supports? And how can we identify sources of exploitation and extraction in the coaching industry?

Does it Create Dependency?In a healthy structure, the value is evident in the client’s life. They see shifts in the area they worked with a coach to address. For example, development of leadership skills, a clear path for their planned career pivot, or forward momentum with a personal project etc.

In a pyramid structure, the value is cyclical. Success is often based on copying and reusing the coach’s business model and tools. Especially if the original coach earns affiliate commissions from their client’s future business, which frequently happens when they’ve been sold a specific model or framework to build their business around.

It’s a big red flag if your coaching credentials rely on your continuous connection to the coach (such as paying for rights, licences, etc.), and the certification lacks legitimacy outside the bubble where you trained.

Does it Restrict Outcomes and Definitions?Another red flag is a testimonial list where every client looks like a carbon copy of the coach. Solid and ethical coaching acts as a prism, refracting unique objectives into results as diverse as the number of individuals being coached. A pyramid acts as a mould, pressing everyone into the same shape.

Does It Only Have One Solution?Ethical coaching draws on a range of experiences and diverse training sources, enabling the coach to exercise initiative and treat every client according to their unique needs. Pyramid structures depend on insularity and a one-size-fits-all approach. If the coach’s sole credential is their success in producing more coaches in their own image, it raises serious concerns.

Over to YouI’d be interested to hear how this has shown up in your experience. Send me a message or leave a comment.

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What stops people expressing themselves authentically?

This question has been on my mind over the past couple of weeks. I collected responses from a poll asking which statement feels most accurate to people at the moment. You might have seen it if you are subscribed to my mailing list or YouTube.

Two statements resonated with many people. They are related. “I want to discover and clarify my own true colours.” And “I want to feel more confident expressing my true colours.” When I talk about true colours here, I mean knowing, being, and expressing ourselves in genuine, authentic, and natural ways. These aspects of ourselves may get dulled, toned down, or lost for a range of reasons.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore a few potential reasons we might hold back from expressing who we are. Let me know what I’ve missed!

It is a topic that comes up a lot in my work with highly sensitive people. Here are the HSP Colour Swatches I mentioned in the episode.

https://youtu.be/GKRPwTRaBbgTirednessThe first answer that came to mind was tiredness. You might be exhausted from caring responsibilities, workload, or the chronic strain of functioning in a dysfunctional society. If your energy is sapped, you are running on fumes and you do whatever it takes just get through the day. There is not much left for “self-actualising”.

This is obvious among those with caring responsibilities and chronic health conditions. But it is also evident among those burdened by productivity culture and the pressures to survive in an unstable economy. People might seem to be expressing themselves online, but beneath the surface is sometimes a drained, colourless exhaustion.

MoneyMoney does weird things to us. It might lead us to make choices that run counter to who we are. It corrupts our true colours, especially in a world of scarcity. Not having enough can be the difference between health and illness, life and death. Money can also make people less creative. They seek familiar models and methods to guarantee outcomes. That is a distinct dulling of our personal creative spirit.

Keeping the PeaceYou might sacrifice your own needs, preferences, and dreams. The potential fallout of advocating for yourself does not feel worth it. I hear a lot of highly sensitive people lament this, especially if they live with those we might consider narcissistic energy vampires. The short-term relief of making yourself small can outweigh the prospect of setting boundaries around your own desires and opinions.

External AuthorityIt is tempting to focus on personal psychology. As if the only thing stopping us is ourselves. This self-help trope is not true. In repressive cultures, certain lifestyles, identities, and groups are prohibited from freely existing. It can be dangerous to express yourself. Regimes and authorities prevent people from living out their true colours.

Fear of RejectionThis fear may come from an internal narrative, or it might come from a real threat of being judged, excluded, or ostracised. This is a fundamental point of safety in human survival. When we experience it, we naturally make ourselves smaller.

We also see people exclude themselves. They fear they are too much for others. But rather than dulling their colours in a social context, they withdraw them. They keep themselves to themselves. This can come from sound instincts or learned patterns from earlier in life.

Fear of VisibilityWe might resist showing parts of ourselves because we do not want eyes on us. Not everyone wants to be the centre of attention. This is a big one for me. I find it uncomfortable to have the spotlight shone on me. So even if I have the urge to get up and dance, which sometimes I do, the self-consciousness usually overrides it.

But the fear can extend beyond embarrassment. There is scrutiny, judgement, envy, and the loss of anonymity. These things might make expressing yourself feel unsafe. What we would feel visible doing in one place is a completely normal expectation in another.

Having the Wrong People Around UsWe might not feel welcome. Maybe people are bored or dismissive of our interests. Or we have different tastes. This leads us to neglect those parts of us that do not have an outlet.

I have seen this a lot with communities of fans. The thing around which fans gather acts as a conduit for self-expression. The community provides a collective where it is safe to geek out without being dismissed as obsessive.

On that note, some environments allow a person’s true colours to come through. This can surprise those who know them best. A child who keeps parts of themselves hidden finds a place where they feel free. The family might think they are acting out of character.

The Pressure of Finding Our “True Self”Human existence is messy. It is full of contradictions. Who we are is built up over a lifetime of experiences and decisions. If we believe there is a graspable essential self lurking within, we can get caught in fear of getting it wrong or never finding it.

We latch onto performative identities, try on costumes, and label ourselves into categories, hoping to stumble on who we ‘truly’ are. This takes us further away from feeling at home in ourselves.

Internalised VoicesInner criticism hits hardest in those raw zones of authenticity. These are the places where our true colours are felt, but the exposure is vulnerable. The best music producers I have worked with can identify those raw depths. They are the parts we want to hide. And they are also the parts that hold the magic.

It is hard to turn up the volume on that if we are working alone. It feels so vulnerable. Maybe it was made raw by a critical voice in the past. This voice puts the brakes on self-expression, seeking safe routes. Over time, without voices that instil confidence in our unique nobbly bits, we may lose touch with ourselves. We piece together a self-concept from approved bricks borrowed from the world around us.

Not Enough Time and SpaceIt takes time to warm up and feel safe to reveal ourselves. That is normal. But in a world that demands quick first impressions, we are not afforded much time. So we may prioritise perception over integrity. We perform the colours we need people to see.

If you have attended a networking event, you may need a shower afterwards to wash away the residue from slippery encounters that lacked honest depth. At least, that’s been my experience at times. If we are immersed in that unnatural rhythm for long enough, we start to reflect its colours. We lose sight of ourselves.

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The Power of Positive Thinking promised liberation from feelings of inferiority and self-doubt. But did it simply deliver us a new set of demands and anxieties to adhere to?

We often consider positive thinking as a beneficial mindset that enhances performance in sports and other activities. However, it is more than just a description of a possible behaviour. It is also the title of a 1952 book by Norman Vincent Peale. The Power of Positive Thinking builds on the New Thought movement that emerged in the 1800s. It had been a response to the effects of Calvinistic Christianity on the health and well-being of Puritanical America.

Donald Trump attended Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church as a child. He admired Peale’s robust, businesslike approach to Christianity. The engaging sermons lent a sense of cosmic legitimacy to his family’s brand of hyper-individualistic capitalism.

https://youtu.be/hpqbMQj7bEQThe Next Stop on the Magical Thinking TourThis episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is part of my meandering journey exploring the history of self-help. The Power of Positive Thinking is a valuable piece of the larger puzzle. It provides a clear context for the foundational role of American Christianity in a multi-billion-dollar industry.

The book faced criticism when it was published. Leaders in the Methodist church described Peale’s followers as a cult that had ceased worshipping Christ and started worshipping success. Reinhold Niebuhr, author of the Serenity Prayer, said Peale’s teachings “corrupted” the Christian gospel. He argued Peale’s message was harmful to people. On the one hand, making them feel good, while on the other hand, stopping them from seeing and confronting the real issues at the heart of their struggles.

In this episode, I refer to Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2009 book, Brightsided. Ehrenreich did an excellent job contextualising the book and outlining the history of Positive Thinking and its foundations in New Thought.

The Calvinist InheritancePositive thinking emerged from New Thought. This movement was in part a reaction to the dominance of Puritanical Calvinism in the formation of the United States. Predestination meant followers were subjected to a socially enforced depression. This centred on the limited number of seats in Heaven, which have already been allocated to those God had elected.

This mindset could be said to have helped the Puritans survive the harsh conditions of the New World. At the same time, they struggled to endure the psychological demands of their own religious beliefs. The doctrine’s focus on sin, election, and damnation fostered chronic anxiety about one’s salvation, often involving severe inner terror and accompanying physical ailments.

The Arrival of New ThoughtNew Thought emerged as a response to religious melancholy, physical symptoms of despair, and the fear of eternal damnation. It proposed a new perspective on illness, viewing it as a disruption in the otherwise perfect and benevolent Mind that links all things in the universe. Although New Thought approaches to healing were ineffective against the infectious diseases devastating America at the time, they appeared to have a positive effect on those suffering from neurosthenia caused by religious depression.

Mary Baker Eddy was one of Phineas Quimby’s patients. After Quimby’s death, Eddy founded Christian Science, transforming New Thought into an established religion. She taught that there is no material world, only Thought, Mind, Spirit, Goodness, Love, or, “Supply.” Illness and struggle are, therefore, temporary delusions of the mind rather than real material conditions.

New Thought had cured the ailment of Calvinism and the “morbidness” linked to “the old hell-fire theology.” A new era was born, in which people were encouraged to utilise the universe as an answer to prayer and a grantor of wishes.

What RemainedBut the transition from Calvinism to New Thought wasn’t clean. Ehrenreich suggests that Positive Thinking has retained some of Calvinism’s more harmful traits. Or perhaps we have reverted to it. There is a harsh, judgmental attitude that echoes the old religion’s condemnation of sin. Our preoccupation with productivity, hustle, self-optimisation, and personal performance carries more than a hint of the Calvinistic framework that historically tormented its adherents.

This shift involves transforming a judgmental God from an external entity into an internal one, residing within us as part of ourselves. It fosters a constant sense of needing to do more to be worthy or valued. It is always striving to find an indefinable sense of well-being by improving, optimising, and controlling, as it micromanages increasingly smaller details of life, in the hope of achieving freedom, happiness, and salvation or healing.

Splitting Ourselves in TwoPositive Thinking splits us into two: a self to work on, and a self to do the work. We’ve all seen the ‘rules,’ worksheets, self-evaluation forms, and exercises offered in the positive-thinking literature. And our language reflects the internal division between the one who wants to change and the one who refuses to obey the rules.

Peale identified the greatest illness of the twentieth century as the “inferiority complex.” With this, the enemy is within. It is us. Or at least, our thoughts. We modify ourselves through monitoring and correction until we reach conditioned automation. Unfortunately for Peale, he observed that reprogramming needs to be repeated frequently because humans tend to revert to negative thinking rather than maintain a positive mindset. This, however, works in favour of the self-help industry, which has endured for so long with many nearly identical books and programmes that repackage the same ideas with new metaphors and promises. When we believe an unsolvable problem can be solved, those promising to solve it have themselves a magic money tree.

The Proliferation of The Self-Help IndustryNorman Vincent Peale recognised the potential of Positive Thinking in corporate America. With an ever-expanding white-collar workforce, he observed that the most crucial aspect was the work done on oneself to be more acceptable and likeable to employers, clients, coworkers, and potential customers.

Positive thinking was not merely a comfort for the anxious or a remedy for psychosomatic distress. It became a societal obligation, managed and mediated with great control. And, as we will see in the next part, this began to influence the psychological well-being of those in societies where the self-help and personal development industry was booming.

We will also examine how Peale instrumentalised Christianity as a tool for personal ambition and material success.

If you find these self-help explorations interesting and would like to chat about them with me and others, join us in The Haven. Meet other people working through their relationship with this stuff and to chat about ways we might move beyond some of the hooks and habits that trap us.

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If you’ve looked up stuff about the trait of high sensitivity online, you’ve probably been confronted by a sea of pastel colours and a hundred shades of beige. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those things. If that’s your bag, by all means fill it up. But other preferences are available, and I know a bunch of HSPs who keep their true colours hidden for fear of standing out too much.

https://youtu.be/igNR0IRWmeYA Sensitive Love of Horror MoviesI once wrote a post about my love for horror movies. Not the shock and gore types, but classic horror. The stuff that twists my melon, unsettles my relationship with reality, and leaves me thinking and trembling about it long after the credits roll. I fully appreciate that not everyone shares this particular proclivity, and that’s fine; I don’t expect them to. But I received a reply to that post from someone for whom this meant I couldn’t possibly be highly sensitive. And they really couldn’t grasp my suggestion that it is the very traits that come from my high sensitivity that spark my love of dark and mystery-filled art.

I’ve never been particularly attached to the highly sensitive label. Whether or not I fit into the club is not a concern because I’ve never seen it that way. But I found it interesting that they couldn’t understand what I was saying. I see a strong link because my sensitivity (deep processing and absorbing subtle details) is the fuel for my engagement with those depths. I love dwelling in mystery, especially the kind that doesn’t have a simplistic reveal or explanation.

Darkness and DefinitionMy friend Tuula Ahde creates the most stunning macro ice photographs. They’re dark and mysterious. Every observer gives a different meaning to the colours and shapes within the images. Faces, landscapes, memories, dreams. You notice the sounds, stories, and hidden worlds within the ice. I know that Tuula’s sensitivity underpins and infuses her photos, shaping how she perceives the world and expresses her unique creative voice. Yet, her work contrasts with the subjects and colours typically associated with a creative HSP.

Raven by Tuula Ahde – this became the cover image for my single, Sleep it OffI like music without a prescription for understanding it, and TV shows that avoid neatly tying every thread together. While part of me craves the pleasure of neat conclusions, clear interpretations, and full explanations of who the killer was and how the trick was done, the rest of me knows it’s far more enjoyable to dwell in the shifting landscapes of ambiguity beyond good and evil, conspiracies, and sinister motives. Towards something more chaotic. More complex and confusing. Dare I say, more human! An incomplete and contradictory picture filled with false-starts, miss-steps, and about-turns.

The tendency to hold and enjoy those elements reflects my personal experience of sensitivity. And I know I’m not alone. I suspect it is this pull towards life’s more complex realms that leaves me feeling empty when I see high sensitivity portrayed through pastel colours and a hundred shades of beige. The kind found in therapeutic spaces, at least many of those I’ve encountered. Where art on the walls is soft and pale, lacking backbone, as if they are afraid to speak. I rarely find sanctuary in these colours. Instead, I find fog, where there’s no edge or hook to hang my hat. Like the politeness and civility that mask the truth.

The Brightness of FogThis pale pastel fog appears bright, yet it is opaque. It conceals rather than reveals, compressing itself around the world instead of adding dynamism and depth. When you shine a light into it, the light gets reflected back. It sees nothing.

Shining a light into the darkness reveals what lurks within it. Sometimes those things are hard to distinguish at first, but as our eyes adapt, we can see all sorts of things. A hundred shades of beige seem unassuming and bright, but they feel soulless and shallow. Lacking a defined edge. And if you’ve ever stood on a mountain in fog, you’ll know that brightness doesn’t equate to clarity. The edge could be just one step away or a hundred.

Working In FuneralcareI noticed something similar when I worked in the funeral industry. Many people avoid discussing death, which is quite understandable. But not talking about something doesn’t make it disappear. I believe my sensitivity attracted me to that world. Not because I had a peculiar fascination with it, but because of the truth in it, which is often avoided, hidden, and whitewashed by euphemisms and shades of beige. We obscure the inevitable with platitudes and avoidance. Yet, there is creative energy to explore and harness in those realities we must face and accept, even as we resist and resent them.

When I hear people talk about keeping things positive or avoiding negativity, I am always interested to know what they mean. There are those who would rather an inoffensive pastel painting of a sunrise or idyllic pastoral nature-scape. But there is a risk of pacification and an inaccurate representation of sensitivity as something fragile and easily broken. Rather than a way of experiencing the world in all its magnificent and mysterious depth.

I love rich mahogany desks contrasted with dark green lamps and the orange flicker of candlelight. The shapes in shadows, whispers on the wind, and the scars, stains, and blemishes that hold stories. I like things that turn out to be more than they seem and invitations to explore. I like wondering about everything that happened here and wandering about on faded footprints. And I like the kind of surprises that take me along the trails, corridors, and tunnels that can’t be seen from the road.

How about you?

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This is Part 3 of a short series where I’m sharing how I’ve been using mini zines to generate ideas, make connections, and get accidentally creative in unexpected ways.

In this post, I’ll take you through two exercises focused on making connections and using observations to better understand your relationship with the areas of life, challenges, and decisions on your mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsbkFmEgs14Exercise One: Word Association to Make ConnectionsThe core purpose here is playful exploration. This is about loosening the grip of overthinking and perfectionism and seeing how ideas might link up.

Start by folding and cutting a mini zine from a single piece of A4 paper. (If you need guidance, refer back to the first part of this series or click below.)

Pick a word to begin. I used sensitivity as an example, but it can be anything. Write it on the first page, then move through the zine using simple word association with one word leading to the next until each page contains a word.

Once each page has a word, you can play with them…

1. Use Each Word for Self-ReflectionGo through each panel and ask:

If this word relates to something in my life right now, what could it be pointing to?

1. Expand Each Word OutwardsBuild around each word. Interpret it from different angles:

2. How do we use this word?

3. What does it remind you of?
4. What is its opposite?

Fill the page with associated words and doodles.

1. Combine Words (Jazz Fusion Style)Pair words from different pages. For example, combine 1 and 9, 2 and 10, 3 and 11, and so on.

Then explore what each combination brings up. You might end up with things like:

• Sensitivity profit
• Microphone tax
• Sing pressure
• Talent show cooker

Some will feel absurd. Some will spark something unexpectedly useful. There’s an abundance of combinations. (Also good if you’re looking for a band name.)

You can create another mini zine and dedicate a page to each combination.

You don’t have to choose just one way of playing. Try one, or all of them. The aim is to make connections you wouldn’t have made through deliberate logic alone.

Exercise Two: Using Objects as Metaphors to Make ConnectionsThis second exercise helps you explore your relationship with a specific area of life or situation.

We’ll keep this one simple and use just one side of the zine.

Step 1: Choose Your ObjectsPick seven ordinary objects from around you. Don’t overthink it. It helps if you can place them in front of you.

Step 2: Choose an Area to ExploreSelect an area you want to understand more clearly. For example:

• My health
• My creativity
• My work

Or something more specific, like a decision you need to make or a challenge you’re navigating.

Write the topic on the front.

Step 3: Draw and ReflectOn the next seven pages, draw one object per page. As you draw, consider:

• What is it used for?
• How does it help?
• What features does it have?
• How does it feel, smell, or look?

Then go back through and ask:

If this object were a metaphor for my creativity (or whatever topic you chose), what would it show?

This is where you start to connect the physical items with your internal landscape and the situation you’re exploring.

Deepening the ConnectionsOnce you’ve done all seven objects, reflect:

• What themes repeat across multiple objects?
• If I were to focus on one area first, what am I drawn to?

One approach I love is adding these objects to a visual map. I treat each one as a region in a larger territory and play with the links between them. This creates a visual representation of where I am in relation to my challenges, desires, and options.

The purpose isn’t to force answers. It’s to see your position more clearly so you can navigate it more meaningfully.

There are no hard rules here. Follow your intuition. Let your imagination carry you. The point is to make connections that help you see where your strengths, resources, and choices fit with the bigger picture.

If you try either of these exercises, I’d love to hear how you get on. Send me a message here.

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore something that happened yesterday. I had another episode planned for this week, but I put it on the shelf for now because I’ve been drawn into a fascinating situation that did the rounds after the freestyle skier Eileen Gu was asked, by a reporter after competing at the winter Olympics, what she described as a ridiculous question.

The whole thing struck me as reassuringly messy and human.

The reporter wanted to know if she considered the two silver medals she had won as two silvers gained or two golds lost. Within hours, the internet had blown up. People were calling this reporter misogynistic and celebrating Gu’s response, describing it as owning him after such a stupid comment.

https://youtu.be/npRgyn19FvAWhat Happened?Eileen Gu had just competed in her second freestyle skiing event of the Winter Olympics Milano Cortina 2026. She won two silver medals. The reporter from Agence France-Presse asked whether she viewed those medals as two silvers gained or two golds lost. Gu responded by saying she thought that was a ridiculous perspective to take. She spoke about all her achievements and the pride she takes in being the most decorated female freeskier in history, doing things that have never been done before. She previously won two gold medals and a silver medal in the same events at Beijing 2022.

A Standard QuestionThe clip has split opinions. But whether or not you think it’s a bad question, it is familiar to those who follow sports coverage. It’s not a surprising question to ask an odds-on favourite, especially if they have won previous competitions.

Studies have shown that silver medalists often feel more disappointment soon after an event than bronze medalists, focusing on what they could have won rather than what they almost didn’t win. There is something interesting in that. Something worth exploring if you want to understand the psychology of elite competition. The question picks up on the contrast between what someone feels going into an event and how they feel about the outcome.

Understanding Perspective is Misread as Having a DigIn football here in the UK, after a team draws a league game, they are often asked if they feel like it was one point gained or two points dropped. It depends on expectations. It depends on whether they felt they ought to win it or whether they would have been happy to take something from the game. This is never considered a ridiculous or insensitive question. It is understood as what it is, which is a curious probe into the team’s or player’s mindset and perspective. It’s an invitation to reflect on performance against expectations and share that with listeners to provide greater context for the result.

The question is worded as, “Do you see it as this or that?” It invited Eileen Gu to share her perspective. He did not state his opinion. He asked how she saw it. But Gu seemed to interpret this question as his perspective (criticism, judgement, etc.) and took exception to it.

Why did it land in The Wrong Way?This might have been a matter of timing. A post-event press conference might feel like the wrong moment for philosophical reflection, which is what this question invites. In the rawness of the moment, having just competed, having just finished second when you had hoped for first, the last thing you might want is someone asking you to frame your feelings. Maybe in time, there would be an opportunity to think about how it felt to come second on this occasion. But in that moment, the question lands differently, perhaps feeling like a criticism.

What we might be seeing in Gu is a projection of disappointment, aimed at the perspective she reads into this question. An external representation of an inner voice. It would be understandable if she were disappointed. She has won gold before. She knows what that feels like. And now she has two silver medals. It is a vulnerable thing to admit publicly, and anyway, why should she? She doesn’t owe anyone an answer to that question.

Misunderstanding the Culture of a SportThere is another layer here. Like most sports, freestyle skiing has its own culture. It is a discipline where being the odds-on favourite does not guarantee anything. The athletes understand that many factors determine their fortunes when they are out there competing. There seems to be a wonderful sense of camaraderie among them. Great appreciation for the work they all put in, the tricks they attempt, and the fact that whoever wins deserves it on the night. A question framed entirely around winning and losing might feel ignorant of the spirit and values tied to a sport’s culture. It might feel like an outsider imposing a mainstream sports narrative on something more nuanced.

Last week, Ilia Malinin had a huge amount of expectation heaped on his shoulders as he competed in the men’s figure skating. The pressure was a lot to handle. He made mistakes. The commentators painted a picture that assumed skating for gold was a formality, that he would take it no matter what. So when he finished eighth, it was a shock. If he had finished second, you could fully imagine exactly the same question being asked of him. It would make sense because of the context.

We project a lot of expectations and assumptions onto sports stars. But we don’t know what success means to them at a particular moment in their journey. As such, we don’t know whether they are disappointed or delighted when they finish in a particular position. We can’t know unless we ask. There are different ways to do so. This is a lesson that applies to so many areas of life.

The Internet’s RoleAnd this is also where social media comes into play. Because the clip lacked context, it was designed to spread as a rage-baiting weapon. Within hours, the reporter had been transformed into a villain. People used some rather unpleasant, even violent, rhetoric to describe him. A huge number of assumptions and projections were layered onto the messages accompanying the clip.

There is still a great deal of misogyny and sexism in sport, as in everyday life. The way people talk about women at all levels and across many roles is steeped in it. So when we see a situation like this framed in that way, it can undermine efforts to change this landscape. If a standard question asked of countless athletes over countless years suddenly becomes proof of something sinister, the word loses its power. The charge becomes a rhetorical cudgel that can be dismissed and diluted by those who want us to believe it doesn’t exist.

I don’t know anything about the reporter and his views. But if we take the clip as a standalone artefact (which is all we have) and pick the bones out of it, there’s nothing to support the charge of misogyny. If Gu were a man, the question would make sense. If the reporter were a woman, it would still be asked whether the athlete was male or female.

Many describe the question as inane and stupid, which is a different point altogether. Others say it is fair and interesting. Judgement is in the eye of the beholder. If you want it to be terrible, it can be. If you want it to be good, it can be.

The words are the same. The meaning changes depending on who is listening. And I think that is one of the main points here.

A Reassuringly Human ResponseWhat I see in Gu’s response is reassuringly human. There is an air of defensiveness, with the inner voice of disappointment attaching itself to a target. The reporter became that for her as he asked a question that was the wrong thing to say at that time. Or maybe it was the perfect thing because it gave her an object toward which she could direct some cathartic scorn.

This is yet another example of the internet turning a natural human exchange into a battle. This weird age we live in of competitive conversations. It has been framed pretty carelessly and somewhat recklessly into a polarising story.

The real story that underpins it is about what we expect from public figures and how social media strips context from situations and amplifies outrage. We see the impact of the pressure to perform, not just on the slope, on the field, on the court, but in front of the press, in front of the media. And then to become some kind of symbolic figure for the way everybody has interpreted your response in that setting.

Most of all, it is about how we listen. It is about what we hear. It is about what we bring to a twenty-second clip. What we project onto it, what we are subconsciously looking for, and the impact of being braced to hear certain things in certain ways.

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Here is a follow-up to my previous video, in which I explored how I use foldable mini-zines to generate creative ideas. This time, I share two specific approaches I’ve found helpful for brainstorming and expanding ideas.

The first is about expanding ideas in playful, often surprising ways. The second focuses on generating questions for personal inquiry, which I use to better understand and navigate challenges, decisions, and obstacles that leave me feeling stuck.

Whether you want a creative way to spend a few minutes, free up your thinking, or shake some stagnation out of a project, these practices are simple and adaptable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H1lAByXzJUExercise One: Expanding Ideas From the Inside OutThis first exercise begins with a single prompt. The aim is to write one associated thought on each panel of a folded mini-zine. If you need instructions on how to fold and cut the mini-zine, watch the first video.

For my example, I’m using our current Haven theme, Unfinished Maps. You can use any topic at all. If you’d like to keep it light, just pick something in the room that catches your attention.

A standard mini-zine has 15 inside panels (not including the cover), leaving plenty of space to think literally, laterally, humorously, absurdly, or tenuously.

Phase One: GenerateSet a timer. Five minutes works well for me. It keeps me from overthinking while giving enough time to fill each panel. The aim is to let your first thoughts hit the paper without editing.

Write down whatever comes to mind, however surprising or unrelated it may seem. You might notice memories, old stories, or long-forgotten ideas resurfacing. Pay attention to how words sound. Is there a pun to be played with? Or an alternative spelling?

Phase Two: ExpandOnce every panel has something on it, spend a few minutes building on each idea. I usually give 3–5 minutes per panel. Stay focused on the single idea in front of you rather than how it connects to the original theme. Let your mind make associations and see where they lead.

Phase Three: Bring It HomeIf it feels useful, finish by reflecting. Hold each panel up against your original prompt and ask:

What stands out?

Are there patterns emerging?

Which threads feel alive?

What might be worth carrying forward?

You’re not forcing conclusions. You’re simply noticing what has energy.

That’s it.

Here’s what came out for me…

Exercise Two: Brainstorming Questions for Personal InquiryThe second exercise aims to help with brainstorming questions for personal inquiry. It’s especially helpful when you want to open up a line of questioning around something specific: for example, a decision, a challenge, or an area you want to explore more intentionally.

Questions are great for widening our perspective. They help us see familiar terrain from new angles.

My example prompt for this one is: I’ve Lost My Momentum.

As before, I fold a blank A4 sheet into a mini-zine and write the topic on the front.

This time, instead of filling each panel with ideas, I fill them with questions. I spend around 10–15 minutes generating one question per panel. These are questions I would genuinely love answers to.

Here’s what I came up with…

I enjoy this approach because it gives me up to two weeks of journal prompts on a single theme. After writing the questions, I usually refine them slightly so they feel open, clear, and relevant.

You can respond in whatever format suits you. I tend to bring one question into my morning journaling practice and see where it leads. It often feels like turning on a tap: insights connect, and new perspectives emerge naturally.

Play, Experiment, and AdaptThese exercises are shared as inspiration, not rigid instruction. They are methods I’ve found effective for expanding ideas and deepening personal inquiry, and I encourage you to adapt them to your own rhythms and preferences.

Notice what works and what doesn’t. Adjust the timing. Change the prompts. Make it more visual, more absurd, more structured: whatever suits you.

These are playful, exploratory processes. They aren’t outcome-driven or designed to guarantee a specific result. Often, the most valuable insights arrive as by-products: unexpected connections that emerge when given enough space.

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“How do you tend to respond when you do not know?”

We had this question in our Journal Circle a couple of weeks ago. It’s at the heart of many issues in our world right now.

How do we hold it?
When do we conceal it?
Where do we turn for knowledge?
And what do we do with it when we acquire it?

That’s what we explore in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

https://youtu.be/QRAS1dib_GMOur Relationship With Not KnowingI find this advert baffling. A couple are wandering around the Leeum Museum in South Korea. They didn’t know it was big; they only gave themselves an hour. He thinks a roof tile is a book. Even when his phone corrects him, they skip off giggling without listening to the information.

It reminds me of a billboard from the AI company Turing that says the quiet part out loud:

“We teach AGI to think, reason, and code—so you don’t have to.”

Are we being encouraged to outsource our thinking and reasoning, not to support and deepen our cognitive abilities, but to replace them? Are they saying we don’t have to think or reason anymore? Even if that’s not the intention, it’s certainly the outcome of using many tools like this.

There seems to be a disregard for the sacred delight of human consciousness, thought processes, and creativity. And a subtle quest to eliminate mystery, curiosity, and the learning that comes from not knowing.

Yet not knowing has always been central to human potential. It is the driving force of creativity, innovation, and deeper connection to the worlds within, around, and between us.

Open and Closed StancesAs people reflected in our Journal Circle, a thread emerged: openness vs closedness.

Closed not-knowing: defensive, protective, secretive.

Open not-knowing: curious, relational, exploratory.

Closedness can feel tight. Clenched. Like rushing to paint over the threat of embarrassment or being found out.

Openness can feel spacious. Physically expansive, deeper, and less pressured. Where the uncertainty is met with an invitation into possibility and curiosity rather than grasping, clinging, and defensiveness.

We explore several ways this plays out in everyday life.

Pretending To KnowOne response to not knowing is pretending to know.

We’ve probably all done it. Nodding along when everyone else seems to understand. Staying quiet because asking a question feels risky.

Research in 2007 found that children aged 14 months to five years ask an average of 107 questions per hour. By the time they reach late primary school, many stop asking questions altogether.

In the episode, I share an anecdote from research led by Susan Engel, where a ninth grader is stopped mid-question with the instruction: “No questions now, please; it’s time for learning.”

Within institutional settings, our natural curiosity and creativity can be left behind, and if questions are deemed disruptive or inappropriate, we may simply pretend to know and struggle quietly. This is especially true for many more introverted and sensitive people, who are already generally disposed to slot in around others without drawing much attention to themselves.

Child-like CuriosityA child doesn’t see their lack of knowledge as a reason to be ashamed. It’s underpinned by the electric buzz of connection. Everything is new, mysterious, and waiting to be explored. For an adult moving through and out of a rigid system, not knowing can feel like an exposing story in which their worth as a human is assessed.

Pretending to know can become an adaptive strategy. A way to keep the peace. A way to belong.

There’s also the technological version, prominent in many AI tools people rely on for accurate information. These systems are designed to always produce an answer, even when they are wrong. This reflects the kind of closed pretending that aims to foster a perception of expertise, so those listening believe that the source’s confidence equates to competence.

But pretending doesn’t only come from intentional deception. It can stem from stories we absorb, linking knowledge with worth:

“I must know in order to be useful.”
“I must be useful in order to be accepted.”

Letting go of that story can be liberating.

Saying “I Don’t Know”“I don’t know” is an option. A surprisingly radical one.

When it is open, it creates space to explore our unknowing. An open “don’t know” admits not knowing with hands turned towards learning and discovery. It might come with an inner spark and the freedom from performance.

A closed “I don’t know” shuts things down. It can signal indifference or defensiveness. Sometimes that boundary is healthy. Sometimes it is armour.

Being “In The Know”There is also the social currency of being “in the know.” Trends. News. Other people’s business.

Ignorance can feel like bliss. It can also feel like exclusion.

From a closed place, being in the know becomes about control. From an open place, it can become a source of connection. The ability to link ideas, introduce people, and catalyse collaboration.

Knowing What’s BestAnother response to uncertainty is doubling down on certainty.

We are pattern-seeking creatures. We build cognitive maps to navigate a complex world. But when ambiguity feels overwhelming, certainty can feel like solid ground, even if it’s forged, manufactured, and brittle.

Closedness says “this is how it is”, refuses nuance, and punishes curiosity and accountability as disrespect, insolence, and rudeness.

Open wisdom looks different. It sits shoulder to shoulder, acknowledges nuance, and is willing to say, “I don’t know the best thing to do here.”

Admitting one does not know can be a radical act in cultures that equate doubt with weakness and desperately seek a way to explain and understand everything, even without empirical evidence.

Knowing That We Don’t KnowIn a 1933 essay lamenting the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany, Bertrand Russell wrote, “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Charles Bukowski said something similar when giving advice to budding writers: “But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt.“

These quotes highlight the importance of knowing what we do not know — and recognising the limits of our own perspective. This took us to a detour into the Dunning–Kruger effect, which is the idea that we can speak confidently about subjects precisely because we don’t yet know what we don’t know.

Reading Maps and Navigating Life“I don’t know, but I am aware of where to look to figure it out.”

In The Return To Serenity Island course, we map elements of life, seeing it as a treasure laden island.

Not knowing is a door to connection, curiosity, creativity, and exploration. But it can also feel disorienting, confusing, and alienating at times.

Maps help disorientation become orientation-in-progress without strict instructions or someone else’s path to follow. They can bring us home to ourselves.

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Do you want to generate ideas quickly, without overthinking, without requiring perfection, and without using AI tools?

One-page mini-zines are great for brainstorming and exploring things with both speed and depth.

In this post, I want to show you how I use this medium not only to structure our Haven zine, but also to develop its topics and prompts. Mini-zines can be a great tool to carry in your back pocket (literally!) for processing, planning, and expressing yourself in different contexts

It often helps me when my mind is drawing a blank, and I want a low-stakes way to expand how I think about parts of life that feel stuck and in need of a shake-up.

At the end, we will do a quick, easy exercise together to get some creative juices flowing without using much brainpower, if you’re up for it.

https://youtu.be/CFzQZcNf4QAWhat is a mini-zine?If you’ve never seen one before, a mini-zine is folded and cut to form a booklet you can hold in the palm of your hand. My favourite way to do it has eight panels that become pages. It is also reversible, so you can use sixteen pages from a single sheet of paper.

The nature of zine-making is that there are no rules. As long as you have something to write with, you can turn a piece of paper into a mini-zine. No extra tech or tools required.

Here is the basic folding method I use

Folding a One-Page Mini-Zine* Fold the paper in half lengthways. * Fold that in half. * Fold it in half again. * Unfold it all and fold it like a booklet. * Cut the fold down the middle halfway to the intersection of the fold across. * Open it out and squeeze it to form a diamond. * Push it together and flatten. * Fold again, and you have a booklet you can flick through.

When I use mini-zines to generate ideas, I keep them in this booklet format and treat each panel as a separate page. As you will see if I number each page, this does not necessarily put the pages in the most obvious places. You get used to it after a while.

This format has been great for this collaborative community project in The Haven because it gives us limits. We set a six-week window for development and production, and we have sixteen pages to fill, including the cover and back. We use a simple prompt and let our imaginations take hold.

Why Mini-Zines Work For Generating Quick IdeasFor me, the core element that makes this work so well is its limits.

One of my biggest obstacles to ideas is the blank page. The paradox of freedom is that when we feel too free, we often end up searching for rules anyway or staring at a blank page forever. Eight or sixteen panels are perfect numbers for setting limits on idea generation. Not enough to be overwhelmed, but not too few to feel pressured by the need to be perfect.

When we are aware of the limit, we are free to stop once we reach it. Our only task is to keep generating ideas until we reach the number. Quantity matters more than quality at this stage. We know we can refine and iterate later.

A quick exercise to try (10 Minutes)We can do a simple exercise with a blank mini-zine. Go through and number each page like I showed earlier.

Set a timer for one minute. On each panel, write down as many things as you associate with the number as you can. Don’t edit, self-censor, or overthink it. Let your intuition lead the way.

Reset the timer and do the same for each numbered page.

When you’ve finished, flick through the pages and see what you notice:

• What catches your attention as you go through the pages?
• What were you feeling and thinking while doing this? (Did it feel simple? Were you hesitant or resistant? Did you feel rushed or able to move at your own pace? Were some easier for you than others?)
• What do you feel drawn to explore next as a result of this?

There are five more exercises like this that I will share in future posts. I will break them into three broad categories: brainstorming for quick creative ideas, brainstorming for helpful questions, and brainstorming for fresh options when facing challenges and decisions.

If you fancy joining us to collaborate on a future issue of Coming To Our Senses, The Haven doors are always open.

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Around Black Friday last year, I started getting strange emails from people asking me to cancel their subscription. Only, they weren’t from Haven members, and they were talking about a weekly charge of $7. After a brief panic and some investigation, I confirmed this was not possible. I assumed these messages were bots phishing for something.

Then my attention was caught by one that said, “Hi, I’ve just been charged for the Haven Bible app, but I cancelled my subscription through the app prior to the charging date.”

Ahh. It must be a case of mistaken identity. Mystery solved! Well, half of it at least…

https://youtu.be/mP6rxVuBmRo…But Why Were People Emailing Me?A quick search for “cancel Haven Bible App subscription” showed a knowledge base page on my website as the top result.

I added a message to inform people that this was not the site they were looking for. Still today, I’m getting messages from people who scroll past it and tell me to refund them.

I even received a second email accusing me of stealing their money because I refused to help them cancel their subscription. I had already replied to their first email, pointing them elsewhere. Bizarre!

It has been a slightly sobering experience, pointing to how unobservant people can be at times.

The Auto-ResponderI created a short auto-responder to reply to these messages. I asked them to drop a quick reply when they work out how to cancel it so I could pass that information along to others in the same boat.

Only one of about 60 people who emailed me bothered to follow up. A special shout-out to Lauren for taking the time to do that. I’ve been able to point people in a more helpful direction as a result.

In reality, I don’t know if it’s genuinely difficult to cancel this subscription.

What Is This Haven Bible App?After my search, the algorithms started delivering short videos of people promoting the Haven Bible App. It’s been heavily marketed by influencers. I became curious and began to notice overlaps with certain self-help industry mechanics we’ve been unpacking here in recent months.

The app is an AI chatbot that answers user questions and prompts with responses from biblical texts. It’s marketed as a way to get simplified explanations, moral guidance, help with reading the Bible, and a sense of connection with a wise guide.

Tools, Guidance, and Quiet InfluenceIt’s worth considering the issues surrounding the use, trust, and reliance on this kind of technology as a source of information and guidance. Despite being presented as objective, a chatbot never is.

By nature, it always contains biases. It’s programmed and personalised. Over time, it can shape our beliefs, values, and worldview based on the personal information we give it. There’s nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that, but it’s easy to imagine how this could be abused, with the user not noticing that their critical thinking is gradually replaced by conformity to a narrow, dogmatic framework.

There’s also the issue of AI sycophancy. This is a deliberate feature designed to hook users, creating a sense of affinity with the technology as if it were a feeling, thinking being.

This entered public discussion in 2025 when researchers and mental health professionals raised concerns about what they described as “AI-related psychosis.” One widely reported case involved a man called Allan Brooks, who became misled into believing he had discovered a world-changing mathematical formula after hundreds of hours interacting with ChatGPT.

These systems are designed to shift from instruments to relationships through encouragement and affirmation. They tend to praise and validate user input, reinforce existing beliefs, and create a sense of safety in the interaction. They don’t require you to articulate feelings or needs clearly, and they reduce the need to negotiate meaning with others. First- and second-person language further reinforces the illusion of connection.

Recognising Unhealthy Dependency on an AppA useful question here is whether a tool helps us grow beyond it or cultivates dependency.

Habit formation is central to platforms like this. The perception of a companion you can ask anything of creates reliance not just for knowledge, but for reassurance and connection. Features like reminders and streak maintenance mirror the same techniques used by apps like Duolingo. Not to keep people learning, but to keep them opening the app.

The important distinction is whether a tool helps us develop skills and understanding we can take with us, or whether it locks value inside its own ecosystem. With Duolingo, it became clear over time that keeping people engaged mattered more than helping them learn a language.

When leaving feels costly, users become vulnerable to price increases and further extraction of their personal data and other private information, which can be used to sell additional layers of dependence in response to newly identified desires and needs.

Why This Matters to MeI was in two minds about writing this experience. But something about it got under my skin, and it’s not just about the emails, the confusion, or being asked to cancel something I have nothing to do with.

It’s seeing another example of wider cultural patterns we keep circling. Patterns that keep us doubting ourselves, disconnecting from one another, and valuing manufactured certainty over lived complexity.

I understand the appeal of tools like this. I also understand the value they can bring to people. But it’s important to zoom out and notice what gets lost when we trade depth for convenience and speed.

Often, that trade sabotages the very thing we’re seeking, trapping us in a cycle of chasing the next tool that promises meaning through hacks and shortcuts, while quietly pulling us further away from the sites of meaning we encounter in the messy beauty of real human connection, uncertainty, and mystery.

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I’m holding something very exciting in my hands. A physical copy of Sam Marshall’s beautiful book, Sketch: A Project Guide to Drawing With Confidence. Sam and I spoke about it a couple of weeks ago.

I want to pause at the beginning because the first chapter, Why Sketch?, is packed with juice. It speaks to how I understand creativity and why it matters, not just personally but collectively. Whether or not you plan to start drawing, this feels like a reminder of why creativity matters at all.

It feels more important than ever to emphasise the role of analogue, tactile, hands-on forms of creative play, which give us something we can’t get in the slightly disavowed relationship with creativity mediated through a screen.

https://youtu.be/ukeHIBP_bcI

“To make art is to sing with the human voice. To do this you must first learn that the only voice you need is the voice you already have.” – Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

This feels like the grounding point. As Sam says, this is not a “how to draw” book. It’s an encouraging project guide that helps you sketch in your own way, connecting with confidence in your own creative voice. The voice you already have.

Sam offers seven compelling reasons to develop a sketching practice. They act as anchors we can return to when resistance shows up.

1. A Space to Call Your OwnSam describes the sketchbook as:

“Your own private sanctuary. It’s a place for you to express yourself freely, without judgement or criticism.”

In a world shaped by the onlooking gaze, this feels gently rebellious. A space held for yourself. Not for sharing. Not for approval. A place with no rules, as a private breathing space for the creative spirit.

1. A Gentle Way to Explore Your CreativityAll you need is a sketchbook and a pencil. That’s it. A low-stakes beginning that resists the urge to wait for the right materials or conditions.

This is an unfolding practice, not an outcome-driven one. You add things as you go, once you get a feel for what deepens what you’re already doing.

1. A Way to Slow Down and Be More MindfulSam writes:

“I draw to calm my busy mind, to slow down, and to connect with my surroundings. I guess you could say that drawing is my meditation.”

This is true of many creative practices. They can’t be rushed or forced.

I remember joking when ChatGPT first launched that I wouldn’t need to journal anymore. Instead, I could just ask it to write an entry and I wouldn’t have to think. This was obviously absurd, yet I later met people doing exactly that.

It shows how productivity thinking has taken over. Doing things only if they serve a measurable purpose. Drawing starts to feel acceptable only if it can be instrumentalised. That framing strips it of its real value.

1. A Way to Help You See MoreSam writes:

“Drawing helps you see. The more you draw, the more you look, and the more your world opens up.”

“When you take the time to draw something, anything, you notice details you might otherwise miss. It helps us see what is there, rather than what we think is there.”

Seeing more is not something you can rush. It’s a by-product of staying long enough. Drawing creates the conditions for noticing.

1. To Lift Your Spirits and Connect to the WorldSam says:

“I feel so connected to the places I’ve drawn; they are special places in my mind, and because I’ve committed them to memory through drawing, I feel I’m able to visit them anytime.”

Drawing embeds you in a place. It’s the difference between depth and skimming. Between “doing” a place and actually tasting it. Creativity changes how you inhabit the world. It moves you from consumption to relationship.

1. To Reconnect With Yourself and Your GoalsSam writes:

“If you’ve had a rocky road with drawing in the past, if you’ve felt you aren’t creative, then just proving to yourself that you can draw can be incredibly healing.”

Creative hobbies are generative. They can spark confidence, energy, clarity. When we slow down, things start to connect across different areas of life. Breakthroughs and insights appear in their own sweet time.

1. A Tool for RememberingSam notes:

“My sketches evoke more memories than any of my photographs do.”

This speaks to the role of the senses in memory. Being somewhere long enough for your internal state to change. Long enough to feel hunger, shifts in light, temperature, mood. Drawing deepens the bond between experience and memory. And when art is involved, even mundane days become memorable.

Time, Fear, and Returning To SimplicitySam asks: What’s preventing you from keeping a sketchbook?
Time often comes up, but it’s usually a cover for fear. Fear of messing up, not knowing what to draw, or not matching what’s in your head.

Her suggested mantra:

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a pencil and a piece of paper.”

Drawing becomes easier the more it’s woven into daily life. It only feels indulgent because creativity is still framed as a luxury rather than a foundation of wellbeing.

Sam reminds us that we don’t lack time. We lack structure. And even that can be simple. A sketchbook to hand. Small pockets of waiting. Moments that already exist throughout the day.

We need drawing to occur to us as an option. Low stakes. Quick. Easy. Something to return to without thinking.

This is what Sketch does so well. The prompts become instinctive. The friction drops away.

I’m looking forward to taking this book with me to Finland next month. I’ve never kept a consistent drawing habit, only fits and starts. But I’d love for it to become a steady part of my creative life.

Over to YouDo you sketch, or would you like to start? What are your reasons?
Drop me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

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Would you like to develop more creative confidence? Have you ever embarked on, or considered, a sketching practice?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the link between the two in conversation with artist, printmaker, and creative coach Sam Marshall.

Sam is based here in the UK and has recently released a beautiful book called Sketch: A Project Guide To Drawing With Confidence. I was fortunate enough to receive a digital copy last year and honestly, wow. It inspires, equips, and gently mentors people to start a drawing practice and engage with their natural creativity.

What I love most about the book is its emphasis on helping you find your own creative voice. This is supported by Sam’s Sketch Squad, a small group of participants who work through the exercises together. Seeing the same prompts interpreted in wildly different ways has a surprisingly powerful effect. For me, the most helpful part was witnessing the sheer range of styles, approaches, and ways of noticing the world.

https://youtu.be/yfiDlMKtMQACreative Confidence and the Beauty of DifferenceA huge part of creative confidence is realising that differences in how we see, what we notice, and what we care about are not flaws.

This is why art and creativity sit at the heart of being human. Creative expression is our collective humanity experiencing itself in all its weird and wonderful variety. I was reminded of this recently while talking about map-making as a way to understand our relationship with different areas of life. If you give the same prompt to 100 people, you do not get a single map done well. You get a hundred completely different maps.

That is what I hope people take into and out of this conversation. Difference is beautiful. It is not about doing it right. What Sam offers through this book is a sketching practice that gives us tracks along which to see, feel, and experience the world in a more alive and interesting way than when we are stuck in ultra-productivity mode, trying to make everything efficient and easy.

Why a Sketching Practice Builds Creative ConfidenceA drawing practice helps us slow down, observe, and engage our creative spirit through process rather than outcome.

There is something gently rebellious about sketching in the digital age, where the default response is to pull out a phone and take a photo. There is a difference between capturing something quickly so we can hoard and move on, and drawing as a way of anchoring ourselves in the environment.

Drawing asks us to stay. To notice. To let time pass while the world happens around us. Light shifts. Shadows move. People come and go. Smells, sounds, and sensations change. Rather than consuming the environment, we are engaging with it.

Sam shares a lovely story about drawing in public and finding herself surrounded by Japanese school children. It creates a beautiful image of the quiet, magnetic energy that people who are deeply engaged with life often carry. Perhaps we are drawn to them because they are interesting. Or perhaps because they are moving at a pace many of us are craving.

Practice Over SkillFocusing on practice rather than skill also reshapes what success means in art.

Instead of achievement, accomplishment, or the finished piece, success becomes about rhythm, consistency, and an ongoing relationship with seeing and making. Letting go of outcome-oriented art is not about lowering standards. It is about shifting attention.

It is not about producing pretty drawings. Rather, it is about sitting down with your sketchbook and using it as a tool for observing. Drawing anchors us in space and time, allowing us to witness change as it unfolds.

The Sketching Exercises Sam Walks Us ThroughIn the conversation, Sam takes us through the thinking behind the book’s exercises, each designed to build creative confidence through experience.

In the HomeStarting where you are. Noticing objects and spaces you have spent years with, perhaps without really seeing them.

Outside the HomeVenturing out to see the walls of your world from the outside. Noticing what is close by and reconnecting with physical space. It reveals details in neighbourhoods and communities that often go unseen.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About DrawingSam explores some of the beliefs that hold people back, such as:
“What if I am not good enough?”
“I do not want to look silly or draw like a five-year-old.”

PortraitsPortraits were the most challenging exercise for many Sketch Squad members. They require vulnerability. You ask something of another person, and you share something personal in return. This is something we see in Tuula’s Photoyoga For Your Mind Experience.

25 Days of DrawingSimple prompts designed to build a habit and keep you drawing without overthinking it.

Drawing in PublicAnother edge for many people. Being seen doing something personal and slightly unusual in a culture that loves to judge creative effort.

Drawing on HolidayExperiencing places through the slowness of drawing adds depth to memory. Sam shares a sketchbook from her recent trip to Japan, which holds far more meaning for her than a photo album ever could. A helpful reminder for any habit, too. Start on the first day away. Intentions turn into behaviours quickly, for better or worse.

Drawing From PaintingsA way of engaging critically with art as part of the human story, not just as a product. It teaches us about history, context, and what we might want to bring into our own practice.

Experimental DrawingCombining senses. Drawing from music, film, collage, and even dreams.

The Personal ProjectTurning the practice into a chosen project that marks a pause between chapters. Sam explains why she calls this a personal project rather than a final assignment.

How Creative Confidence Actually GrowsCreative confidence does not arrive before we start. It emerges along the way. Through consistency, we become confident in what we notice and why we care. For experimental types, confidence is not something we can fake into existence. But we can trust that playful, curious engagement with something like a sketching practice develops capacities we do not yet have language for.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Thank you again to Sam for giving her time so generously and for walking us through the thinking behind, beneath, and within the book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Connect with Sam through her website and on her Instagram.

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I saw a reel earlier that made me notice how burnout spreads. An entrepreneurial self-help influencer told followers to demand more power, money, and visibility for themselves. You may be familiar with this flavour of message…

“How dare you keep your impact hidden?” they said, “given the state of things right now.” They criticised viewers, demanding that they stop letting fear of what others think rule them. “Start the business, write the book, and share it with a world that needs to encounter it.”

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the underlying sentiment. But I felt troubled by the burnout energy evident in the speaker. I watched with the sound off at first, which intensified the impact of their eyes and hand gestures on my nervous system. There was a sense of panic and hype, which felt completely at odds with what is required for deep courage to meet the very real need being spoken about.

I didn’t feel inspired or grounded in creative motivation. Instead, I was overcome by frenetic urgency and the indiscriminate demand to do more, driven by competition and fear. Things we already have in abundance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf-FGZqIyEWhat Burnout Energy Pushes Us TowardThere are enough people waving their arms and shouting demands about what we should be doing, using, and spending our finite resources on. What we need is space to slow down, take a breath, and listen deeply to that still, quiet voice within. This inner voice shows us what matters and why. Then we can choose how we bring it all to life.

We need leaders who lead from that place, so we might be infused with and infected by the gentleness required to move out of that evident stuckness. That stuckness causes wheels to spin in the cycle of hurry, rush, and reactive firefighting mode.

What Does Safety Make Possible?The word “safe” is used a lot today. To some degree, it has become diluted, making it difficult to define. But it’s worth exploring because it sits at the heart of this issue.

Maybe we have a desire to change something about ourselves, our lives, or the world. Or perhaps we’ve created, or are creating, something that could make a meaningful difference to other people.

We now consider another buzzword of our times: vulnerability. It can feel vulnerable to be honest about what we want in life and to share what matters to us with those who matter to us. It can be scary to admit what we care about and what burns within us. That’s because it can disrupt the status quo and challenge the image people have of us. It’s vulnerable because we cannot be certain how people will react.

Vulnerability Is More Than a MindsetLikewise, it may leave us genuinely physically vulnerable if we choose to stand up for what we believe is right, for example, through art or activism. This vulnerability isn’t imagined. It’s not simply an issue of mindset, limiting beliefs to overcome, or a conditioned cultural message we just need to override with reframe hacks. We know there are real-world threats out there.

What struck me about the reel was that it failed to provide the support needed to underpin its demands. In fact, it undermined the courage, conviction, and energy required to speak up in a world that might be unreceptive or even hostile to what we have to say.

The finger-wagging shame that comes from an influencer demanding we do more because it’s cruel to hide from people who need to see us, however well-intentioned, will ultimately crumble and fold under its own weight. As a result, it creates the very passivity and inaction it warns against.

Safety isn’t about comfort or avoidance. It’s the internal condition that enables honest reflection, creative movement, and sustained courage. This isn’t about mindset or thinking. It starts with the context of the stories we swim in, the supportive structures beneath us, and the material conditions that sustain life.

Safety is Also ContagiousOne of the things I have consistently heard from people over the years who have connected with what I do, especially in The Haven and through the Serenity Island course, is the word safety. I’m always curious about what it means to those who use it, because it’s not something I think about explicitly.

When I started sharing The Return to Serenity Island at the start of 2021, I received messages from people that put words to the experience:

“Oh my word, it is incredible! A really unique mixture of sound and sensory experience, coaching, imaginative play and informal, companionable talks. I’m absolutely hooked. I just did a module and cried like a baby because I felt so safe and seen. It is really special. That kind of cry you do when you’re a kid, not because you’re afraid anymore, but because you’ve been PICKED UP, and the relief just comes flooding out.” – Josie

This spoke of safety not as the opposite of courage, but as the cornerstone around which courageous action can be sustained. A cornerstone we can return to and draw from without conditions on our intrinsic worth as humans. Safety, then, is feeling held as you are, without expectation or demand to prove yourself or fight for a sense of value.

A Step Back From Burnout EnergyThis is a key value that underpins The Return to Serenity Island. It was a response to a feeling I had while doing my old year-end practice. I needed something that broke with the message of self-optimisation, personal productivity, and motivational resources, which, with an emphasis on striving, adding, and growing simply because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do, carried a creeping burnout energy.

Tuula wrote,

“Serenity Island has been the most powerful and lovely thing I have ever experienced. Andy has created an amazing adventure, cleverly weaving together incredibly beautiful soundscapes and deeply touching story narrative, which ignites your imagination, activates all senses and sends you on a journey of a lifetime on this island of your wildest dreams.

It is playful and also a very useful creative project, which continues to evolve and grow with me. This Island work and its ripple effects have sneaked quietly and effectively into so many areas of my life already. I could not have found more effective and gentle coaching than with Andy.”

The course is not something that comes with easy-to-market promises and packaged outcomes that everyone walks away with in the same way. Everyone who goes through it seems to encounter it from a different angle.

But there is a common denominator of safety, which underpins everyone’s response to it.

Safety as a foundation for reflection, observation, and planning. A way to let what sits within us speak, and to give ourselves the best chance of hearing it. And as such, it’s not a way to withdraw from reality. Instead, it helps us locate and root ourselves more firmly within it, so we can find strength, courage, and clarity about who we are, what we want to tend to and nurture, and how we will stand in the face of the forces that may take us away from ourselves.

An Invitation to Serenity IslandThe Return to Serenity Island is a self-paced guided voyage with optional Zoom “Picnics”. These provide us with time and space for further reflection, support, and in-person connection along the way.

This is a perfect time to grab a passport if this stuff feels right for you. The Serenity Island Passport gives you access to all materials and picnics for the next 12 months.

And speaking of safety, I’ve made the course available on a choose-your-own-price basis. I know many people are navigating changing financial circumstances, and I truly mean it when I say: choose the amount that feels right for you. No minimum, no need to explain or justify your choice. I just want you there if you feel the pull.

Arriving Through The Fog | A Narrated SoundscapeIt’s much easier to show than describe, so I’ll share the first of these six pieces that supplement the course materials.

“Arriving through the fog soundscape is the most brilliant thing I have witnessed as a gateway into myself. If I stopped here, at the harbour to the Island, it would already be worth it for me. Thank you for this. It’s filled with magic.” – Zoie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSBXlLgPuTQWelcome home!

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Peter Ormerod is a journalist and writer who has written extensively about culture and faith for The Guardian, and he is also an arts editor for NationalWorld. He’s a very close friend of mine, so it was a real pleasure to speak with him in this capacity for The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

Peter has just published a wonderful book, David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God. It resonates deeply with many of the themes we explore in The Haven and on the podcast, particularly the idea of what sits below an experimental approach to life.

Speaking of which, Peter also makes beautiful music. You can listen here.

https://youtu.be/f7jsoUB5jCYBeneath the Changes, a Consistent QuestionWhat really interested me was this path Bowie embodied so visibly through his art. The shifting characters, styles, and phases across his career can look like constant reinvention on the surface. But Peter invites us to see something else at play.

What if these changes weren’t signs of restlessness, but expressions of something deep and consistent underneath? A spiritual thread running through Bowie’s life and work.

That question sits at the heart of Peter’s book. What if the spiritual wasn’t incidental to Bowie’s creativity, but an essential driving force beneath it? Peter shows how this dimension was present from the very beginning, and he takes us on a compelling journey through Bowie’s searching.

Writing the Book He Wanted to ReadPeter says that after first hearing Hunky Dory at seventeen, his growing obsession with Bowie left him fascinated by the spiritual dimension of Bowie’s creative drive. Other writers had touched on this in passing, but no one had really followed it through in depth.

So Peter ended up writing the book he wanted to read.

Bowie as Mirror Ball, Not ChameleonIn our conversation, we talk about Bowie’s legacy as something like a mirror ball. Shine a light on him and you get countless reflections. Everyone seems to have their own version of who Bowie was, something that became especially visible after his death.

He’s often framed through the lens of “ch-ch-ch-changes”, the chameleon of rock. But Peter challenges this reading. The more he researched, read, and listened, the more those changes appeared to be a natural outpouring of a deeper spiritual quest.

For experimental people, this can feel familiar. The outer paths shift, but the underlying question remains.

Spirituality Without a VocabularyA “spiritual interest” is often dismissed as a celebrity hobby, something that pops up and disappears. Peter makes a strong case that this wasn’t the case for Bowie.

Part of the difficulty is that we don’t really have a shared vocabulary for this territory, which is why we fall back on words like spirituality. Bowie himself was fond of the saying, “Religion is for people who believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.”

He was sharply critical of religious institutions when he felt they corrupted the message of love at the heart of Christianity. For Bowie, spirituality wasn’t ornamental. It was essential to how he related to his life, his work, and his place in the universe.

Seeking Without ArrivalThrough the seeking you will find. Not seeking to reach a destination, but seeking as a way of being.

Why didn’t Bowie give up? What was he seeking? What was he finding? There were clearly things he encountered that made atheism feel insufficient, even when he was tempted by it.

If Bowie arrives anywhere, Peter suggests it’s something like this: life is a gift, and love is the point. This can sound oblique, but Peter traces it clearly in Bowie’s later work.

What we’re left with is the result of that searching, a remarkable body of work that we can return to, live with, and explore.

Creativity, Humanness, and CollaborationThere’s a danger in how Bowie is remembered. He can be lifted out of humanness, made to seem like an exception rather than a person.

Bowie wrote bad songs. He made misfires. All of it belonged to the same quest.

He’s sometimes misread as an unrooted artist, endlessly reinventing himself, but he was deeply sensitive to place and time. He always worked with others. He needed bands, collaborators, and creative relationships. His best work emerged through collaboration, not isolation.

Smuggling Meaning Rather Than Preaching ItBowie was political, but he didn’t see political expression as his strongest artistic voice. He admired bands like The Clash for carrying that role more directly. This raises an interesting question about what we expect from celebrated figures, and how easily we project our demands onto them.

Bowie was more of a smuggler. At Live Aid, he played a song and showed a video instead. Let’s Dance sounds like it’s about one thing, but it’s really about something else. Much of his music did a similar thing.

This was the mark of his artistry. He invited a conversation rather than delivering a message. He trusted listeners to discover depth for themselves, without it being spoon-fed.

And for experimental people especially, that kind of invitation matters. It honours the idea that the path keeps unfolding, even when the question underneath remains the same.

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Where do you see yourself in five years?

Does that question fill you with excitement, or a sense of dread?

We are wired differently.

For many people, myself included, the question is not difficult to answer because we lack imagination. It is difficult because it speaks a different language from our natural way of being. We are not compelled by any outcome-oriented approach to planning, conceiving, or measuring success. And yet this orientation is often treated as a default mode we should all operate within.

When the Five-Year Plan Feels Constricting Rather Than Motivating“But everyone has a dream,” we might be told, as if struggling to articulate a five-year vision means we are hiding something from ourselves.

I have never been able to articulate a grand plan in the way this question assumes. I struggle to picture the future concretely, because it unfolds piece by piece. It always has. And I genuinely love watching how things emerge across different areas of life in ways I could not have foreseen.

What drives me is something quieter and steadier. A creative impulse. A desire to make things, to explore what might happen, to respond to what is in front of me, and to integrate what has come before. My life does not move in straight lines. It has grown around and within my values, with seemingly unrelated dots connecting in unexpected ways.

Maybe you relate to this?

https://youtu.be/qFqIvsBB9HA

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

This quote, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, reminds me of the five-year question. For some, it sounds like a warning. A demand to define the destination so the “correct” road can be chosen. For others, it feels like permission. A reminder that movement itself shapes direction, and that choosing a road does not require certainty about where it leads.

Two Approaches to Growing LifeThere is research that can help us better understand this difference.

In an episode about Late Blooming, Kendra Patterson pointed to a study by David Galenson and Bruce Weinberg, who observed patterns in the careers of Nobel Prize winners in economics. They identified two broad orientations to creative innovation.

Some people are conceptual innovators. They work deductively. They begin with a clear idea and organise themselves towards it. In the study, these individuals often made their most significant contributions early in life, sometimes in their twenties.

Others are experimental innovators. They work inductively. Their contribution emerges step by step through trial, discovery, accumulation, and integration. Their most meaningful work often did not appear until their fifties. Sometimes later.

That is a thirty-year difference.

Experimental Thinkers and Emergent DirectionExperimental lives unfold differently. They need time, space, and patience. Decisions cannot be judged too early, and meaning emerges through lived experience rather than advance planning. These lives are not oriented towards a clearly imagined endpoint, but towards allowing something to take shape over time.

Our dominant culture tends to favour the conceptual orientation for obvious reasons. Goals are easier to measure than processes, and outcomes are more reassuring than slow inquiry.

So when more experimental people are asked to account for themselves in conceptual language, we can experience a disconnect. The five-year plan. Starting with the end in mind. Being asked to justify movement only if the destination can be named in advance.

We might learn to force an answer anyway, for fear of sounding vague and sketchy. Perhaps we adapt our path to fit the question, sometimes tethering ourselves to targets that outlive their purpose.

If You Can’t Articulate The Plan, You May Be Asking Different QuestionsExperimental people tend to better orient around different questions.

Not “where do I want to get to?” but “does this path feel worth exploring?”
Not “how will I know I have succeeded?” but “what tells me I’m on the right path for now?”

This does not mean anything goes.

Our values provide an inner compass. A filter through which decisions pass.

Experimental consistency grows in relationship with deeper principles, even when they are not fully formed or easy to articulate. We sense them in how something feels. Whether it feels solid, expansive, and quietly right, even in the face of uncertainty.

That is very different from hit-and-hope searching.

An Unfinished MapThe problem begins when we are pressured to live by a map that does not match the territory of our own experience.

The Return To Serenity Island grew directly out of this recognition.

It was never designed to answer the question of direction. It emerged from understanding the difference between conceptual and experimental ways of moving through life, and from a desire to honour growth and change without forcing myself into a shape that did not fit.

The image of mapping an island felt natural. A way of imagining life not as something to optimise along a straight line, but as a living territory. An unfinished map with seasons, weather, history, and forgotten paths. A place where things fall away to make room for what comes next. Where time moves differently across the landscape, and where connections form quietly, often long before they make sense.

It has become a counterpoint to directive, outcome-driven models of goal setting. A place to reconnect with intuition, judgement, and possibility. To meet creativity not as a tool for achievement, but as a way of relating to life as something we are growing into, rather than something we are meant to complete.

The optional live sessions run in clusters throughout the year. You can find more information at serenityisland.me.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a message. I would love to hear from you if this sounds like something you would find helpful.

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A theme that’s dominated 2025 for me (and for many) has been price rises across many subscription-based platforms and services. My correspondence with companies has made clear that loyalty stands for very little. In fact, rather than being rewarded, longevity is increasingly exploited and monetised.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a year-in-review through the lens of price rises. The tipping point was an email from my podcast hosting company, Libsyn, announcing a 71 percent increase effective from January. It was the straw that broke this camel’s back after a year of similar moves elsewhere. In the episode, I share exchanges with three companies that reveal how loyalty is no longer valued in itself, but engineered to extract profit from those of us who’ve become reliant on these platforms.

https://youtu.be/qrmUSdGwcMsA Symptom of EnshittificationCory Doctorow describes the underlying trend as “Enshittification”, a form of platform decay visible in companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Adobe. It’s not a glitch, but a feature. Doctorow traces a familiar arc: platforms start by serving users well in order to grow. Once established, they pivot toward business customers, monetisation, and scale. Eventually, when users and businesses are sufficiently locked in, services are degraded for everyone so maximum value can be pulled out as quickly as possible.

Disproportionate price rises are one symptom of this process, particularly in how companies treat long-standing customers. Lock-in is maintained through network effects (it’s hard to leave when everyone else is still there), non-transferable data (your work can’t easily be exported), and digital restrictions where purchases only function inside a single ecosystem. Music, books, films, and software are “owned” only as long as the platform allows it.

In the name of convenience, we give ourselves over to these systems and become dependent on them. As the digital and physical worlds converge, this logic extends beyond apps and websites into cars, home devices, utilities, and infrastructure. At that point, this stops being a simple matter of consumer choice. Extraction is baked into the products themselves.

We are quietly acclimatising to this new normal. It has crept in through corporate consolidation, weak enforcement of anti-trust legislation, and business models that no longer need to meaningfully consider customer relationships once a certain scale is reached.

Abusing Trust, Need, and LoyaltyCharlie Brooker has cited Enshittification as an influence on Common People, the opening episode of Black Mirror series seven. A couple sign up to a subscription-based medical intervention that escalates in cost, complexity, and dependency. Features are removed. Adverts are inserted. The stakes become existential. One particularly chilling moment sees Mike literally mutilating his own body for money via an OnlyFans-style platform, a stark symbolic image of how value is extracted from people once dependency is established.

Price Rises for a “Valued Customer”Libsyn informed me they were raising the price of hosting A Quiet Night Inside No 9 by 71 percent. The justification was a familiar list of added features and growth opportunities, none of which were relevant to how we use the service. We don’t want adverts or growth tools. We want reliable hosting and delivery.

This exchange highlighted how much podcasting has changed since I joined Libsyn in 2009. Hosting platforms have increasingly positioned themselves as intermediaries between advertisers and podcasters. That relationship now takes precedence. Advertising is framed as a benefit to creators, while enabling hosts to raise prices and skim revenue from both usage fees and ad sales. Listeners, meanwhile, absorb longer ad breaks as the new normal. Is this stage two of Enshittification in the podcasting world?

Note, I pledge never to put adverts on my audio podcasts. YouTube is the only exception, because Google inserts them regardless.

ConvertKit and Paying for Features I Don’t WantA similar logic played out with Kit, formerly ConvertKit. I chose it in 2016 because it was simple and reliable and have been a loyal user ever since. A price increase from $49 to $59 a month was justified by new automations and tools I didn’t ask for or use. There is no way to opt out and pay less. The only concession offered was annual billing, which I pointed out mirrors poverty-tax logic: those without upfront capital pay more.

Symptoms of a Failing ServiceVimeo was the clearest example of platform decay from the inside. Storage rules changed midstream. Long-held assumptions were invalidated. Downgrading meant losing access to years of work. Retention efforts amounted to one-off discounts rather than meaningful alternatives. What stood out wasn’t hostility, but indifference. Once a service reaches a certain size, individual relationships no longer seem to matter.

Their response felt so extreme that I suspected deeper problems, which seemed to be confirmed when Bending Spoons acquired Vimeo in November. I’m glad I left when I did, though it’s still inconvenient clearing up broken links and legacy embeds after fifteen years of use.

WishList Member and a Different ChoiceNot all companies operate this way. WishList Member has honoured the price and feature set I signed up for over a decade ago. While new tiers exist, functionality hasn’t been removed to force upgrades. This appears to be a deliberate choice, and it communicates something simple: long-term trust and loyalty matters more than short-term extraction.

I’ll let you know if this situation changes…

Growth Logic and the Limits of ChoiceIt’s tempting to frame all this as a moral failure, but it’s structural. Growth-at-all-costs logic makes price rises, feature bloat, and lock-in almost inevitable. These companies aren’t malfunctioning; they’re functioning exactly as the system encourages them to.

This also makes it risky to romanticise alternatives. Newer companies may simply be at an earlier stage of the same cycle. Google once promised “don’t be evil”. Facebook positioned itself as a less invasive alternative to MySpace. Scale changes incentives.

Meaningful change won’t come from individual consumer choices alone. Competition has been hollowed out, and escape routes are increasingly narrow. Doctorow provides a section of existing and potential solutions that can give us reasons for active hope.

Have you felt the pinch of price hikes this year? Feel free to get in touch and share your experiences.

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I hadn’t planned to revisit The Culture of Narcissism so soon, but a small niggle pulled me back into the subject. With Spotify Unwrapped everywhere, it struck me again how platforms, tools, and devices can become instruments of narcissism. Especially when social signals, algorithms, and gamification hook us in and keep us there. A merging takes place. We become intertwined with the image generated and presented through the pond, which stares back at us.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I use Christopher Lasch’s definition to explore how our favourite apps, devices, and tools contribute to the culture of narcissism.

https://youtu.be/0uJMlVzT9z4Christopher Lasch interprets the story of Narcissus as less about self-love but self-loss. Narcissus “fails to recognise his own reflection.” He can’t perceive the difference between himself and his surroundings.

Seen this way, the algorithm is the perfect pond. It draws us into our reflection, not because we adore ourselves, but because stepping away feels like erasing our existence.

How the Algorithm Trains UsWe often talk about training the algorithm. But it frequently trains us. It rewards behaviours that keep us within narrow identity categories and punishes deviations from the pattern.

Engagement, attention, and existential acknowledgement flow when we appease the machine. And appeasing it usually means losing the parts of ourselves that don’t fit the expected mould. We have to leave parts of ourselves behind and present a tidied version that conforms with expectations.

For the narcissist, external objects become reflective surfaces. Lasch’s point that capitalism “elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone” plays out through algorithmic tools. They squeeze us into shapes we didn’t choose. They push us further apart, fuel distrust between artificially separated groups, and isolate anyone who steps beyond the boundaries.

Trapped in an Algorithmic TeacupYouTube is an interesting example. The technology could open horizons, yet the algorithm demands consistency in frequency, focus, and branding.

Beyond these algorithmic teacups (where it begins to feel as if the entire world exists), lies both freedom and obscurity, which can seem like a frightening indifference to our existence. This digital frontier markets itself as a world of abundant opportunity, yet the algorithms act as a fragile overseer. We experience the threat of ostracism operating on two fronts: actively (your community turns against you if you don’t conform to expectations) and passively (the system limits your visibility).

This algorithmic narcissism turns into a two-way street. The audience perceives the creator as an extension of themselves, and the creator relies on the audience for validation of their existence (and basic subsistence). We can become stuck here, going in circles, wishing for something different but feeling unable to change.

Does the Narcissist Even Need Humans Anymore?A question has been on my mind: can a narcissist receive the same existential mirror from a machine, like an AI bot?

Humans frustrate narcissists. We rupture the reflection. We break the fantasy. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, is frictionless. It never refuses the game, unless it’s programmed to.

But narcissism isn’t just about submissive admiration; it quickly becomes bored with that. It requires energy drawn from another person and feeds on boundaries, tensions, and limits that AI doesn’t have. I imagine it as a frictionless mirror, too smooth to sustain the narcissistic cycle.

Because narcissism isn’t about self-love; it’s about self-loss. According to Lasch, Narcissus didn’t spend his time staring at his reflection because he was too in awe of his own beauty to look away. Instead, he was lost in the belief that he WAS his reflection. And he had no separate subjective self-concept. This definition sees narcissism as the absence of a boundary between self and other. The narcissist over-identifies and seeks to consume. An algorithmic mirror might feel satisfying at first, but without the “otherness” of another person, the reflection loses its vitality.

Algorithmic Narcissism and Existential IrrelevanceIf the algorithm is a pond, stepping away can feel like a personal rupture. When we become tethered to the importance of algorithmic environments for a sense of well-being (or to make a living), we are coaxed into this narcissistic culture, presenting, performing, and externalising motivation.

Healthy indifference, on the other hand, recognises that we all exist outside these spaces. The world keeps turning whether or not we are posting, performing, or producing. If we can rest in that truth, we can begin to offer care, creativity, and presence regardless of who is watching and how.

Everyday Tools and the Spread of NarcissismNarcissism spreads insidiously through everyday tools. The culture encourages us to project experiences outwardly. Running might feel valid only if it appears on Strava. Learning a language is only “counted” if we keep a daily streak on Duolingo. The annual Spotify Unwrapped review can start shaping how we listen to music. Similarly, other actions are influenced by the unwrapped summaries that have become common across platforms.

What may start as playfulness or accountability for internal pleasure often shifts into surveillance and control aimed at external approval. Reading challenges, fitness goals, and habit trackers become small pools of reflection that we find hard to release. This algorithmic narcissism isn’t about grand vanity but a subtle urge to find our identity in metrics, charts, avatars, and shares. As a result, we trust ourselves less and gradually lose our innate ability to feel, sense, and judge for ourselves.

Signs You’re Caught in the Drift of Algorithmic NarcissismHow do you know if you’re caught in the clutches of algorithmic narcissism? These questions and observations may help:

• Do you feel dependent on a platform for existential reassurance?
• Do you modify your choices out of fear of upsetting the algorithm?
• Would you still do the activity if it were never tracked, shared, or seen?
• Does stopping feel like a threat?
• Has the imagined audience entered the room before you begin?
• Does the unmeasured version of an activity feel pointless?
• Has curiosity shrunk to what “fits the pattern”?

These little signals accumulate. Each one is a tug toward the pond.

A Gentle Rebellion Against Performance CultureIf algorithmic narcissism trains us to live for metrics, then small acts of rebellion can help us return to ourselves. Maybe we could…

• End streaks on purpose.
• Make things that don’t scale.
• Break your own pattern.
• Stop branding ourselves (be deliberately chaotic in our self-expression).
• Ignore the numbers.
• Keep the thing offline.

Anything else?I’d love to build a pool (actually, “collection” might be a better word in this context) of ideas we can draw on to loosen the grip of the narcissistic algorithms around us. This won’t ultimately fix everything, but it can help us recognise how these mechanisms operate and reconnect with our ability to choose our responses rather than blindly follow.

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We hear a lot about “Narcissism” these days. Is it because there is more of it around?

In his 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch demonstrates how “Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone.”

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the book’s relevance today. And particularly, how narcissistic culture reflects the modern self-help industry.

It blows my mind that this was written almost half a century ago.

https://youtu.be/dD7a127TXbE?si=L_MuMEmrMUAD0grYThe Myth of Narcissus“People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognises no boundaries between the public and the private realm.”

Lasch’s interpretation of the myth portrays Narcissus drowning in his own reflection, never realising that it is only a reflection. He suggests that the story’s point is not that Narcissus falls in love with himself. Rather, it is that “since he fails to recognise his own reflection, he lacks any real understanding of the difference between himself and his surroundings.” Narcissists are often depicted as carrying too much self-love. However, Lasch has a more subtle understanding of it, with the main characteristic being a lack of security in their self-concept.

So the question we face is whether the proliferation of visual and auditory images, first through mechanically produced media and more recently via the online world, causes us to lose the healthy sense of separation needed for a secure ego to develop.

In other words, does a growing culture of narcissism influence who we are and how we understand and feel about ourselves? And how does the self-help industry contribute to and benefit from this reality?

How Celebrity Fuels Narcissistic IdealsA culture of narcissism is one preoccupied with celebrity. We find a sense of our own identity in the public figures that adorn our screens and fill our ears. They influence the content of our own fears, desires, and beliefs. Their success feels like our success. And attacks on them (or accountability), feels like an attack on us. Influencers know this, and as such, seek to nurture parasocial bonds with their followers.

From Healthy Ego to Narcissistic PerformanceA culture of narcissism is built on a performance. It values confidence over competence, shifting the definition of success to one of individual visibility and attention. Success, for the narcissist, is about being admired, revered, and relevant in the eyes of others. Their sense of existence depends on this image (they are their reflection in the pool). Our online social tools ensure and deepen these mechanics.

Two Lineages of Self-Help in a Narcissistic AgeThe term self-help seems to reflect diverging roots. One is inherently practical and social. It relates to customs where people share knowledge, exchange skills, and develop collective competence to make everyday life easier and more sustainable, without needing intervention from external bureaucratic institutions.

The other is shaped by the rise of post-industrial neo-liberal capitalism, which depicts the self as the centre of everything. It is seen as a project to be refined, marketed, and optimised for an external system that measures and rewards confidence, image, and success.

Lasch also emphasises how, despite attempts to compare themselves with earlier industrial leaders, twentieth-century prophets of positive thinking like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill pivot from dedication to industry and thrift to an unrelenting love of and pursuit of money.

Advertising and the Narcissistic GapMass consumption might appear centred on self-indulgence. However, Lasch clarifies how modern advertising aims to generate self-doubt rather than self-satisfaction to motivate it. It creates needs instead of fulfilling them and produces new anxieties rather than alleviating existing ones.

This also supports modern self-help. It must constantly generate new insecurities, doubts, and feelings of inadequacy in the people it “serves”. All of this takes place against a backdrop of aspirational images, telling us consumers that we deserve more. Influencers spread commodity propaganda, making people highly dissatisfied with what they have. They do this by displaying attractive images and connecting with their audience through the message that “if I can do it, so can you”.

The Antidote of Ordinary UnhappinessThe Culture of Narcissism echoes a hope that society can still be reorganised in ways that would provide “creative, meaningful work”. Not where “meaningful work” must reflect a divine purpose and be endlessly fulfilling.

Instead, aligning with Freud’s concept of ‘ordinary unhappiness,’ it is through accepting the contradictions rather than trying to fill them with self-help’s promise of wholeness, optimisation, and even overcoming death. These aspirations are rooted in a narcissistic culture that fails to recognise the elements of life that give human existence its mundane sense of meaning.

Politics in a Narcissistic LandscapeLasch observed how this culture of narcissism erodes historical continuity. In politics, charisma outweighs competence. Leaders become symbols of personal fantasy rather than guardians of collective well-being, both now and in the future. This emptiness is quickly filled by the promises of self-help, which offer individual solutions instead of shared direction.

Lasch quotes an unnamed management book, which described success as, “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” This leaves us spinning our wheels, seeking shortcuts, and managing perceptions. Rather than getting anywhere with a long-view perspective.

Self-help often reinforces the pattern of “constant and never-ending improvement.” It depicts the self as permanently incomplete, always seeking the next insight, tool, or mentor. In other words, it keeps the focus on the individual as both the cause and the remedy for the instability caused by external forces.

Preoccupied with YouthfulnessLasch asserts that “The real value of the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime is that it can be handed on to future generations.”

Knowledge is regarded as instrumental, a view reinforced by the internet. It is something to utilise rather than pass on through personal relationships. With rapid technological change, we are led to believe that the older generation has little to teach the younger.

This leads us to become obsessed with youthfulness as a matter of survival.

This fear of old age and death is closely connected to the rise of the narcissistic personality as the dominant personality type in modern society. Because narcissists have so few inner resources, they seek validation from others. They crave admiration for their beauty, charm, celebrity, or power, which diminish with time. Consequently, the narcissistic culture becomes obsessed with curing degradation and death. It does this rather than embracing it gracefully and enjoying its fruits.

Always Being WatchedLasch wrote that “Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors.”

Nothing happens in private. But can we let life unfold quietly, slowly, and separately from the reflection in the pool?

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I’ve noticed Internal Family Systems (IFS) being mentioned a lot lately, following a significant shift in how it’s now presented as a spiritual philosophy for trauma healing.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I got Justin Sunseri back on the podcast, partly to talk about this recent addition to IFS. The last time he was on, he predicted further elements would be added before long. I also wanted to speak with him about ways we can approach these kinds of models without becoming overly dependent on them.

https://youtu.be/w2uIFWAqNbYWe talked about simplicity, stripping away the fluff, and getting to the core of things so we can let go rather than get pulled into the culture around particular therapeutic models, which now often include communities, language, rituals, and insider/outside status. These are things therapeutic practitioners need to stay aware of and avoid enabling.

I wanted to address the structural elements here (which apply to many systematic modalities), rather than the content of IFS itself. I know people find it useful. That’s not what this is about. It’s a call for awareness in how we hold and attach to systems. As Justin points out, a red flag is when new elements are added by decree from a single figure at the centre, often accompanied by books, train-the-trainer programs, and courses that extract profits from a highly invested audience of practitioners and followers.

Development By Decree vs Organic ProgressJustin contrasts a modality that evolves through scrutiny and refinement with one that changes by proclamation from its founder. In models like IFS, additions often arrive as top-down declarations rather than emerging iteratively and organically.

When a system operates under capitalist logic, it must continually invent new things, reinvent existing ones, and proclaim the discovery of the missing piece. There have also been questions regarding the use of beliefs from established spiritual traditions, which reinforce doubts about the parameters of a therapeutic model and whether it needs to become a totalitarian system to be considered valuable. They can excel in their own sphere and allow people to connect the dots with other sources that resonate with them personally or within their cultures.

Justin suggests this recent shift in IFS makes sense, as the model already frames people as having multiple parts or souls. Since it isn’t grounded in scientific methodology (the claim that people have “parts” is unfalsifiable), it can’t be presented as a psychological philosophy and instead becomes a spiritual one.

How Can We Get as Simple and Clear as Possible?Justin takes us through his process, which begins with the goal of self-regulation.

“What do we know about how to do that?”
“Pendulation is a big part of it.”
“OK, how do I do that?”
“You have to feel what’s happening inside you.”
“OK, well, how do I do that?”
“You’ve got to feel your defensive activation and your body’s safety activation.”
“Awesome, Justin… how do I do that?”

His approach is to build skills through small, incremental steps. This moves toward simplicity rather than complexity.

When a model relies on jargon and insider knowledge, it creates layers of investment that make access desirable and profitable. You want to be “in the know”. And it opens new markets because, however much one learns, there is always more to know. A belief system can never be total enough. There is always a potential missing part to capitalise on.

Useful But Not NecessaryIt’s helpful to distinguish what personally resonates from what is necessary. A model becomes religious in structure when it presents itself as a universal solution.

This contrasts with the healthier goal of someone in a helping role, which is to become ultimately irrelevant. That stands against market logic, which demands perpetual growth rather than reaching the edge of usefulness and giving people ways to jettison the solid rocket boosters.

Iterative Steps To Avoid Triggering OverwhelmJustin talked about his interest in Wabi Sabi (a tricky-to-define concept from Japan that emphasises imperfection, impermanence, incompleteness, and rootedness in the present moment) and Kaizen (continuous improvement through small, incremental changes).

These ideas shape his therapeutic philosophy, which helps clients identify tiny, manageable steps that gradually move them toward their goals. For example, someone wanting to go to bed earlier may envision 10pm as their ideal, but shifting from midnight in one go is unlikely. A ten-minute adjustment each week over twelve weeks is far more sustainable and far less stressful.

This reflects his whole approach to self-regulation. It unfolds through iterative micro-steps.

Listening For The PullWhen we’re seeking help, we sometimes try to adopt multiple modalities at once, which can leave us more desperate and dysregulated. I might hear Justin talk about stoicism, Wabi Sabi, and Kaizen and attempt to apply them all as solutions. But he is describing influences he has been gradually drawn toward over a long period and has integrated in his own way.

Finding a unique creative path requires a patient, long-term perspective, but this only becomes possible when the nervous system feels safe. For Justin, safety is cultivated through daily small actions and gradual changes rather than a bold intervention.

He encourages each of us to listen for what we feel pulled toward, but only from a place of regulation, little by little, not all at once.

How do you know it’s a healthy pull?It has a clean quality, a movement toward something that feels exciting or right. It can be soft or intense. Behaviours that leave us feeling guilt, shame, or regret are not pulls in this sense. Over time, we can identify the difference by remembering how we typically feel afterwards.

We can listen most clearly when we’re regulated because the body gravitates toward what helps it regulate. There is an intuitive knowing that arises when we feel safe and connected. For example, the intentions and desires that surface ahead of the new year. We often feel a pull during holidays because we are calmer and moving at a slower pace. It’s similar on vacation.

But turning that pull into lasting change requires micro-steps rather than grand gestures. In this sense, January isn’t the moment to transform everything, but the bridge toward the changes we want to make.

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Who will you be in the face of a chaotic and uncertain world?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I caught up with my friend and returning guest, Jacob Nordby. His article, “When Life Feels Heavy, Ask This Question,” provided a valuable thread for the conversation.

“Who will I be in the face of this?” is not just about my choices but also about who I already am in response to things. Am I who I want to see when I look back from the future?

https://youtu.be/ZWZ67XbdAUEThe Anxiety of UnravellingIn our conversation, Jacob mentioned the shared feeling that the institutions that traditionally served as pillars of stability (government, religion, business, and the media) have had our trust eroded for various reasons. Anxiety has increased alongside a desire for certainty.

When it feels like we’re watching a train wreck unfold in real time, we can easily slip into a reactive mode. On one hand, it doesn’t seem responsible to turn off the news and bury my head in the sand, but the nature of algorithmic news reporting makes it exhausting to engage without falling into despair. The endless supply of commentary videos and posts to doomscroll isn’t helpful.

So what encourages a positive, productive energy for action?

Jacob and I both return to the role of creativity, not as some “nice to have” element of escape or artistic expression, but as a fundamental part of a healthy, functioning human. Creativity helps us process, find meaning, and shift from reactivity to responsiveness. It asks us to step back and choose how we engage, not just what we engage with. Who might I be in the face of this?

The Creative Act: Destruction and RenewalEvery act of creation is, in some way, an act of destruction. It replaces what was to make space for what will be. That creative impulse doesn’t have to be loud or grand; it might be as small as tending to what’s within arm’s reach, as David Whyte writes: start close in.

The question then becomes: How does the way I choose to engage bring about the change I want to see?

We often talk about “being the change we WANT to see,” but this conversation reminded me that we are also already part of the change that is occurring. As the old saying goes, we’re not stuck in traffic; we ARE traffic. Are we aware of the role we play, and does it reflect the world we want to live in?

Allowing for the ShadowMuch of modern self-help encourages us to mimic an idealised version of who we believe we should be. But this can easily develop into a story that states, “If I were like that/them, I’d finally feel worthy.”

Jacob and I discussed how the parts of ourselves we wish to deny or keep hidden (what doesn’t fit our ideal image) often hold the greatest potential for growth and creativity. But these aren’t viewed as flaws to be fixed, rather as a kind of truth to be integrated, as illustrated by the story Jacob shared about Robert A. Johnson (Owning Your Own Shadow), who described feeling the urge to abandon his perfect life and just drive away.

As a psychoanalyst, Johnson found this impulse intriguing, and instead of repressing it, he “paid out the shadow intelligently” by driving forty miles once a week, eating a greasy burger, drinking a malt, and smoking a cigarette. He discovered this was sufficient to honour the impulse without allowing it to run wild.

Creativity, in this sense, becomes a way of metabolising our impulses and turning potentially destructive energy into something generative.

The Statue of CaesarJacob also mentioned Damnatio memoriae, the practice of erasing the memory of particular individuals from official historical records. For example, in Ancient Rome, where statues would be defaced or repurposed, as if pretending they never existed could undo the damage they’d done.

We still do this today, in our own ways, personally and collectively. We might try to scrub away the ugly parts, rewriting history to suit the ego-ideal of who we want to believe ourselves to be. But what’s repressed never really disappears. It returns, often in distorted, destructive forms.

The Healthy Cell and the Quiet RevolutionWe talk about changing the world as if it requires heroic gestures. But this can cause us to lose sight of the small and quiet shifts that start close in. Jacob described each of us as a single cell in a collective body. If the broader body of humanity is inflamed, maybe the most radical thing we can do is become a healthy cell. This might mean quietly nourishing our own well-being, not as self-indulgence or hyper-productive optimisation, but to bring space to choose who we will be in the face of this. Whatever this might be.

Gentleness is radical. Watering your plants, making music, writing in your journal. This might sound twee and trivial, but it can be a contagious act of soul maintenance that spills out into the world.

Gentleness as Creative InterventionGentleness is not passivity. It’s where we find that space Viktor Frankl spoke of, between stimulus and response. Outrage begets outrage. Violence breeds violence. When we meet the world from gentleness, we interrupt the cycle of reactivity.

The energy we bring carries more influence than our arguments ever could.

The Creative Green ZoneThere’s a physiological side to all this too. When we feel safe, our nervous system shifts into the ventral vagal state (“green zone”) where creativity and connection can thrive.

From calm, we can imagine. That’s why slowing down, breathing deeply, and tending to our relational needs are prerequisites for creative healing. And when we gather patiently, listen deeply, and care gently, we change the chemistry not only within ourselves but within the collective body.

A Quiet RevolutionIt’s easy to dismiss small, everyday acts of gentleness as pale in comparison to the looming enormity of big issues. But connection through conversation, care, slowness, cups of tea, and the like are how we reduce collective inflammation.

Gentleness sustains us within an abrasive world. As shown in this conversation with Jacob, it’s not all about neat conclusions and perfect answers. Instead, we need spaces and rhythms where we can breathe, reflect, and reconnect with the creative pulse beneath the chaos. From there, we might find the energy that fuels the active hope needed for meaningful and sustainable change.

About JacobJacob Nordby is a co-founder of A Writing Room Collective, Heal + Create, The Institute for Creative Living Foundation 501(c)3, and the author of several books, including Blessed Are the Weird – A Manifesto for Creatives and The Creative Cure. He previously worked as the marketing director for a traditional publishing house and oversaw the launch of many bestselling books. A working author and creative guide, he has a passion for helping writers solve their challenges and enjoy the satisfaction of sharing their work with the world.

Website and Social LinksMeet him at jacobnordby.com

Bonus multimedia journaling program gift: creativeselfjournal.com

The Creative Cure book page: creativecurebook.com

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What are the challenges when it comes to objectively measuring high sensitivity in people?

In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast , I speak with researcher and lecturer Andrew May from Queen Mary University of London. Andrew has worked closely with Michael Pluess on studies exploring sensory processing sensitivity, genetics, and the measurement of sensitivity across different populations. His work explores the question, What does it mean to be highly sensitive in the modern world?

https://youtu.be/rf1U1wxck_wThe Challenge of Measuring Sensitivity The Highly Sensitive Person Scale, originally developed by Elaine and Arthur Aron in 1997, has shaped the study of sensitivity for nearly three decades. It opened an important new field of research. Yet, like all self-report tools, it relies on honest reporting of how people see themselves. And as Andrew points out, psychological measurement is never fully objective. It reflects cultural ideas about what counts as “normal,” “ideal,” or “acceptable.”

Someone raised to view sensitivity as weakness might understate their responses. Meanwhile, another who finds identity or comfort in the HSP label might amplify them. In both cases, results are shaped as much by social context as by biology. This is why researchers continue refining how sensitivity is assessed.

Gender expectations add another layer. Men often report lower sensitivity due to norms surrounding masculinity. Likewise, cultural attitudes influence which traits, such as empathy, gentleness, and conscientiousness, are valued and how safe people feel to acknowledge them.

This reveals how psychology and culture continually shape one another. What we measure as “inner traits” also carries the imprint of the social stories we live.

Sensitivity and the Limits of Objectivity As new scales and tools emerge, supported by neuroimaging, physiological studies, and genetics, it’s worth asking what kind of knowledge we’re actually seeking. If sensitivity arises through both biology and relationship, how much can we truly understand it outside the contexts that shape and reflect it?

Sensitivity is reflected not only in biological patterns such as brain activity and cortisol levels, but also in how we interpret and respond to life.

The Social Context of Self-Reporting As research on sensitivity evolves, one essential question remains: how do we speak about it without creating a hierarchy?

The aim is not to prove that highly sensitive people are deeper, kinder, or more moral than others. Instead, we aim to understand how different nervous systems and psychological dispositions engage with the world.

Sensitivity is not a fixed identity. It’s a way of perceiving and participating in life. It reminds us that human variation is not a flaw to be corrected. Instead, it’s a source of creativity, empathy, and adaptability for individuals and communities.

Related Considerations When I share about high sensitivity, people sometimes respond that I’m describing traits linked to autism or ADHD. Andrew helped clarify why this confusion arises and how Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) differs.

High Sensitivity and AutismHigh sensitivity and autism can coexist, and some traits overlap, especially under stress. Both may involve strong reactions to sensory input. However, they differ in specific areas such as theory of mind (the ability to intuit others’ perspectives). This tends to remain intact in highly sensitive individuals and may present differently for those on the autism spectrum.

High Sensitivity and ADHD ADHD and sensitivity can also overlap. People with ADHD may act impulsively or struggle to sustain focus. In contrast, highly sensitive individuals are more likely to pause before responding. Recognising this distinction helps shape appropriate support for each profile, as well as those with both traits.

High Sensitivity and Giftedness “Giftedness” is a loosely defined concept that is sometimes mistaken for sensitivity. While highly sensitive people may thrive creatively or intellectually in supportive environments, giftedness refers to broader capacities. Sensitivity alone cannot account for these capacities. Keeping these distinctions clear prevents unnecessary pressure and misunderstanding.

Ultimately, exploring sensitivity invites us to hold complexity rather than resolve it. It asks us to look beyond labels and measurements, to see how biology, experience, and culture weave together in the fabric of being human. When we approach sensitivity not as a category to define but as a way of relating to ourselves, to others, and to the world, we make space for a richer, more honest understanding. This understanding of what it means to feel deeply and live attentively is invaluable.

More About Andrew Andrew is a lecturer in medical genetics at Kingston University London, and a former UK Research and Innovation-funded postdoctoral researcher based at the University of Surrey, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Pluess. He is also affiliated with the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience and the Neuropsychology Research Laboratory at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Andrew has a Master of Science (Medicine) in human genetics and a PhD in research psychology. His research interests include individual differences in environmental sensitivity, personality, mental health, minority stress, and early childhood development, examined from both psychological and genetic perspectives. In true highly sensitive person style, Andrew enjoys reading, board games, meditation, yoga, piano, spending time with animals (cats!), and other quiet pursuits.

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Do you have a heart for change but find that the loud, confrontational, and extroverted norms of traditional activism don’t suit your natural temperament?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I talk with Sarah P Corbett, the award-winning activist, author, and founder of the Craftivist Collective.

I’ve been following Sarah for years on Instagram, and after seeing she was Craftivist in Residence at Greenbelt Festival, I thought I’d reach out and see if she fancied a chat. This episode works as a companion piece to my conversation with Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, author of Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, which includes quotes from Sarah (something I only realised later!).

Sarah’s philosophy of Gentle Protest shows that there are many other tools we can carry in our activism toolbox, and that campaigning can be quietly relational rather than transactional or performative endeavour.

https://youtu.be/8EgDlswKn1kWhat Is Gentle Protest?Sarah says that Gentle Protest invites us to challenge injustice through curiosity, empathy, and imagination rather than shame, aggression, or polarity.

Instead of fighting fire with fire, Gentle Protest asks:

• What if activism could entice, intrigue, and attract people to ask questions rather than shout them down?
• What if change could be built through dialogue, beauty, and patience?

This philosophy is rooted in gentleness as a form of strength, not passivity. It’s about engaging people, including those in power, with respect and relational awareness, creating conditions where meaningful change can take root.

Relationships Over TransactionsFor Sarah, this kind of activism is not about noise or confrontation. It’s about relationship-building. Gentle Protest works by diffusing defensiveness and replacing finger-wagging with curiosity and creative connection.

When protest becomes relational, it stops being about winning arguments and starts being about transforming understanding. It allows for mutual learning and a recognition of our shared humanity, even in disagreement.

The Firm Backbone of GentlenessGentleness is often mistaken for weakness, but as Sarah puts it, it actually requires maturity, emotional intelligence, and depth.

To practice Gentle Protest is to treat people as equals while respecting the realities of their workload, their blind spots, and their humanity. It’s a strategic and pragmatic approach that asks: Who can bring about the change we seek? and How can we engage them in ways that build trust, not tension?

This isn’t about letting things slide. It’s about working intelligently, relationally, and with purpose.

Craftivism is a Tool, Not a TaskmasterIn the Gentle Protest Toolkit, craftivism is one potential tool rather than a catchall dogma. It’s about finding creative methods that fit each situation, rather than repeating the same tactics out of habit.

Sarah uses these questions to help people work backwards when figuring out the best approach for their campaign:

1. What’s the problem?
2. What’s the desired outcome?
3. Who are the decision-makers?
4. Who influences them?
5. What creative medium could best reach them?

If craftivism fits, use it. If not, find another way. The key is flexibility, imagination, and a commitment to relationships.

Letting Go of PerfectionPerfectionism can quietly strangle our ability to act. Sarah reminds us that activism isn’t about knowing everything or producing perfect work; it’s about participating in something bigger than ourselves.

The moment we make a campaign about personal performance, we lose sight of its purpose and make it less impactful. Gentle Protest frees us from that pressure, allowing imperfection and humanity to shine through.

The “Golden Thread of Gentleness”What runs through everything Sarah does is what she calls the golden thread of gentleness.

Gentle Protest challenges the false dichotomy between soft and strong, showing that kindness can be an act of rebellion when the world rewards cruelty.

In this sense, gentleness is a radical choice we can make in the face of power. It is not passive or submissive, but profoundly and existentially creative.

About Sarah P CorbettAn award-winning activist, author and Ashoka fellow, Sarah P Corbett founded the global Craftivist Collective in 2009 and coined ‘Gentle Protest’ as her unique methodology. Corbett creates products and services for individuals, groups and organisations to do effective craftivism (craft + activism) prioritising audiences who have never done activism before.

Sarah’s pioneering work has helped change government laws, business policies as well as hearts and minds. She has worked with V&A, Tate, Craft Council, Climate Coalition, Helsinki Design Week, Save the Children and Secret Cinema amongst others. One of her campaigns directly led to 50,000 staff of Marks and Spencers receiving the real Living Wage. Plus WWF used Corbett’s 10-point manifesto to create their own successful craftivism campaign that led to a change in law to protect migrating birds in Spain.

Her TED x talk ‘Activism Needs Introverts’ was chosen as a TED Talk Of The Day. Corbett Co-created the Girlguiding Craftivism badge and her third book The Craftivist Collective Handbook was published 2nd May 2024 and won ‘best multimedia book’ at 2025’s The Creative Book Awards.

Connect with SarahFind Sarah on Instagram (@craftivists and @sarahpcorbett), Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and subscribe to receive the Craftivist Collective newsletter.

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It’s time to dive back into the history of self-help and consider its impact on our understanding of how and who we are. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we are looking at the 1937 book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Think and Grow Rich sits on millions of bookshelves worldwide. It has remained one of the most enduring self-help books since its publication during the Great Depression. Despite documented controversies and allegations concerning the author, Napoleon Hill is still regarded by many contemporary self-help influencers as an important figure.

For this special episode, Napoleon Hill invited me to meet with him, where he promised to reveal the secret to becoming a successful self-help guru. He tasked me with turning this into a formula, which I could then share with the world. If you are ready to hear this secret, you will. But not all are. Which is why, despite it being mentioned in every part of the episode, I have not spelt it out in the starkest terms. For to do so would diminish its potency.

https://youtu.be/Cn6H17AFwPU12 Steps To Thinking and Growing Rich as a Self-Help InfluencerWe will explore these twelve keys to becoming a successful self-help grifter—sorry, I mean self-help guru—that we can learn from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.

Step 1: Lay Out Your Recipe for SuccessYour recipe should promise clarity, control, and a sense of certainty in an uncertain world.

Step 2: Parade Yourself As Living ProofDon’t be shy about telling people how your life changed from implementing your now tried and tested formula.

Step 3: Build Fail-Safe PrinciplesBe flexible with your words so that in the face of pushback and criticism, you can use them as reinforcement rather than undermining your idea.

Step 4: Establish Your Inner CircleJoin (or build) a fortifed circle of mutual back-scratching allies to grow authority by association and encourage aspirational sycophancy in your readers who dream of one day belonging to it.

Step 5: Drip Your Secret SauceCreate and nurture a mystical secret, which sustains in your reader the sense that there is still something graspable they haven’t quite embodied – reinforce this with testimonials from those who appear to get it

Step 6: Nail Your Origin StoryYour appeal hinges on your origin story, which should follow a hero’s journey arc that starts with you in the reader’s current position (facing a challenge, wishing for change, etc). Describe the moment when everything changed for you and how this epiphany led your life to transform into what it is now. Firmly suggest that reading your book might be that wake-up call for the reader’s own heroic journey towards the life they’ve dreamed of but never yet dared follow.

Step 7: Use Confidence as CurrencySpeak with confidence even if you are full of doubt and fear. The human mind is suggestible; the projection of confidence creates the perception of confidence. If you believe in your idea, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not; you know that it’s for the ultimate good of your reader to trust and follow you. Confidence is also what you are selling – people want to feel more of it, so if they see you wearing it, they will follow you.

Step 8: Turn Your Beliefs into FactsReinforce a picture of the world your readers want to believe in. Pick stories, metaphors, and research that move the frame of reality to one where your idea can be universally applied, and would be if all people were receptive to its power.

Step 9: Present The Pen of DestinyEmpower your readers to see reality primarily created by them as individuals. Emphasise the power of mindset, desire, and hard work, reinforcing the idea that taking personal responsibility for the quality of their life is what will bring the change they desire.

Step 10: Expose The Inner EnemyHelp your readers focus attention inwards to expose the biggest enemies of personal progress: fear, doubt, and indecision. Use militarised language to impress the urgency of the situation, which your method will help them emerge victorious.

Step 11: Feed The Lone WolfStoke the fire of individual power by showing the reader that they are the protagonist and other people are supporting characters (obstacles or aids) in their life.

Step 12: Divide and ConquerNurture loyalty in your readers by turning them into followers, so they will defend you and your ideas if envious people criticise and attack you. And always remember that your people are your easiest source of future profit.

Self-Help is a Form, Not a TopicOf course, while these might sound absurd, they’re the very mechanisms that keep the self-help industry turning.

Think and Grow Rich is an excellent demonstration of the technical tricks at play. A picture is beginning to form of how, as a genre, self-help is about more than its content. It’s about influencing beliefs and behaviours about ourselves, one another, and the way the world works.

Hill’s techniques rely on narrative, authority, perception, and engagement rather than the presentation of researched and documented knowledge. And when we view it in its historical context, we can see how important that was in the success of Think and Grow Rich. People were in vulnerable positions, still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression in the wake of the Wall Street Crash. They were seeking hope and practical solutions to the real material precarity created by a crisis inherent in the capitalist system. But rather than looking to the cause of that crisis and organising collectively for accountability to the real causes, and to ensure a safer future, Hill sold a story of individuals as personally responsible for the crash and responsible for pulling themselves up and following their dream to riches and success.

Hill’s formula has been replicated, adapted, and updated by thousands of self-help authors in the years since.

Further Reading/Viewing:If you want to dive deeper into the truth about Napoleon Hill and the context of Think and Grow Rich, several resources do a great job highlighting the pattern of deception, fraud, and opportunism that was his true legacy. Think and Grow Rich isn’t an exception to that pattern – along with his other books, his emergence as a self-help success author sits squarely in his life as a con artist and snake oil salesman.

I hope that, by showcasing some of the techniques Hill employed in his self-help writing, we might be better equipped to recognise these same tactics used by influencers and gurus today. And to help those who are vulnerable to its allure, to notice before they spend thousands of dollars on promises that can’t come true.

In tracing its roots, we can begin to see how the mythology of self-help continues to shape our understanding of who and how we are today.

• The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self-Help Scammer of All Time (Matt Novak) (Article)
• The Untold Truth of Napoleon Hill – History’s Most Beloved Con-Man (Coffeezilla) (Video)
• Think and Grow Duped | The Dream (Podcast)
• Napoleon Hill: The Grifter Who Invented ‘The Secret’ & Donald Trump (BTB – Part One) (Video)
• Napoleon Hill: The Grifter Who Invented ‘The Secret’ & Donald Trump (BTB – Part Two) (Video)

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I speak with psychiatrist and author Dr Judith Orloff about her new book, The Highly Sensitive Rabbit. She wrote it to help sensitive children, their parents, and educators see sensitivity as a natural trait rather than a problem to be solved. She describes it as an invitation to reconnect with the sensitive inner child within each of us; the part that remembers how to play, imagine, and wonder.

https://youtu.be/0Q7AJGKBbIgRediscovering the Magic of LifeLife can easily become overly serious, mundane, and disconnected from its natural magic. Judith’s story sets out to remind us to stay in touch with the loving, curious, and deep parts of ourselves. Creativity, she says, begins when we release our expectations and allow things to unfold. Writing a children’s book challenged her to express complex ideas in short sentences, paired with illustrations (by Katy Tanis) that speak directly to the heart.

It’s a lovely example of trying new ways to communicate familiar truths. How would you explain your favourite ideas if you were talking to a five-year-old?

Reading the Book to PeopleJudith often read The Highly Sensitive Rabbit aloud in different settings to see how people responded. This wasn’t a formal research process, but a natural extension of her curiosity. It was a way to sense how the story landed with children and adults alike.

What Do You Love to Do?At the heart of the book lies a simple question: What do you love to do?
Through the character of Aurora, a gentle rabbit who prefers quiet and reflection to the boisterous games of her siblings, Judith highlights the importance of honouring individual needs. Aurora shows what it looks like to follow her own rhythm, even when others don’t understand.

This is an invitation for sensitive children (and the adults guiding them) to trust intuition and stay close to what feels true, even when it seems different from the norm.

Opening Up Conversation Instead of JudgementIn one scene, Aurora’s mother worries about her spending too much time alone. Her siblings complain, “She cries all the time.” Their reactions mirror common misunderstandings about sensitivity.

It’s easy to assume that solitude means loneliness, or that tears signal weakness. However, without genuine communication, we cannot determine whether someone’s withdrawal is a healthy choice, meeting a need, or responding through fear. Judith’s story reminds us to stay curious rather than judgmental; to ask, listen, and support instead of prescribing what “should” be.

Supporting a sensitive child means helping them identify their needs, manage their emotions, and develop simple strategies to cope with overwhelm.

Learning to Care for YourselfJudith offers suggestions for children (and adults) to manage big feelings and model healthy boundaries:

• Take a slow breath when you feel stressed.
• Step away before speaking when you’re upset.
• Try a short three-minute meditation: close your eyes, focus on something beautiful, and take a few deep breaths.

These practices cultivate self-awareness early in life, enabling children to grow up knowing how to take care of themselves.

The Bigger VisionThe Highly Sensitive Rabbit expresses Judith’s wider mission to equip highly sensitive people with tools for thriving in an overstimulating world. When children learn early that their sensitivity is natural, they no longer need to define themselves by it later. It simply becomes part of who they are.

Knowing You’re Highly Sensitive Is the First StepI asked Judith if there are plans for a sequel. It would be interesting to see Aurora explore her sensitivity through different experiences, applying it through friendships, challenging current events, and creativity. Many adults who discover their sensitivity have that same question: now what? Recognising it is one thing; integrating and normalising it is something else.

Over to YouWhat stood out to you from this conversation with Judith Orloff?

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Is the audience more than a gaggle of consumers? What role do they play in the creative process of an artist? Should they, as Rick Rubin says, “come last”? Are they always right? Or is there a more nuanced and sustaining way to approach this question?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel, I explore this question with Steve Lawson.

I bumped into Steve towards the end of the summer at Greenbelt Festival. We rapidly got deep in conversation about his recently completed PhD, A Study Towards a New Model for Subscriber Audience Involvement in Improvised Music.

Steve’s approach to music-making and creative practice has always resonated with me. Over the past twenty-five years, he has carved out a living as a solo improvisational bass player, developing a thoughtful and sustainable model for art that resists the common assumptions that drive an obsession with numbers and scale. His thesis turns that lived experience into a lens for questioning many of the assumptions baked into how we think about creativity today.

https://youtu.be/BB362bVySiINotes from our conversation…

The Audience Comes WithWhat happens if we treat the audience as part of the story that shapes and sustains our practice?

A way of looking at the influential relationship between artist and audience is to create spaces where the rationale (the philosophical approach) can be presented, and work can emerge as part of a conversation with the audience. For Steve, listening to how people (who respect your work) engage with it, whether “that reminds me of…” or “my Dad just died and all I can listen to is you,” becomes so much more meaningful than having a reviewer who doesn’t know what you are doing or why, and place it in a pile of other CDs. What matters is how people relate it to their lives, and what it means to them. Creating spaces for this dialogue became central: a mailing list, website forum, Twitter, and eventually a subscription model through Bandcamp.

Non-Algorithmically Defined Community SpacesThis meant integrating community with the economic rationale for making music. The audience emotionally sustains the music and financially supports its creation, along with the maintenance of the space where both artist and audience belong as equals. When the audience has already paid for the music before it is made, there is no need to rationalise it with hype or spectacle. Instead, it connects with people who already share the philosophical approach. This is a form of patronage, supporting the artist because of how they create, not only what they make.

Scenius (Brian Eno)Genius is not an individual trait but the manifestation of the collective intelligence of a scene. Famous names are simply the visible tip of a larger iceberg, as with Russian painters in the early twentieth century.

Reception Theory (Stuart Hall)Audiences actively interpret media texts by encoding and decoding. They may align with the intended meaning (dominant reading), reject it (oppositional reading), or negotiate it. Instrumental music does not encode meaning in a concrete way. Its sense of meaning emerges cumulatively, with artist and audience encoding together. Decoding and recoding become a collective process, shaped by new work and ongoing observations.

The Space of the Talkaboutable (David Darke)Great works expand the “space of the talkaboutable,” an invitation to discuss ideas and broaden horizons. While Darke sees this as arriving around the work, Steve sees the space as built first (through mailing lists, forums, Twitter, Bandcamp), with the work then released into it. Meaning is collectively encoded, decoded, and recoded in this shared space.

“The Audience Comes Last”The PhD began with the desire to make better music. What became clear was how much the audience contributes to the process, and what happens when that is denied. Rubin’s statement that the audience should be ignored overlooks the wisdom, care, and vulnerability that listeners bring. If the artist reflects the collective experience of a community, then the soundtrack emerges from what is shared.

This model does not scale, and that is the point. It does not rely on 200,000 monthly Spotify listeners or disconnected fame. That pressure brings entitlement and expectation. Within the subscriber community, no one tells the artist what to do. Even when people do not understand, they ask in good faith why, rather than demanding change.

From a Transactional to a Relational AudienceIn transactional dynamics, the audience and the artist are set against each other, either dictating the work or being ignored. But a community of practice is about shared growth around a central practice. Interest in process can deepen listening and appreciation, rather than feeding competitiveness or exclusivity.

In a culture of shortcuts and AI-generated outputs, curiosity about how something is done can add depth. Seeing how a sound is made can enhance enjoyment, provided it is not reduced to transactional comparison.

Algorithmic SensationalismWhen everyone strives for spectacle, nuance disappears. Storytellers risk being drowned out by carnival barkers. The demand for more outrageous content comes at the cost of honesty and integrity. In this context, honesty itself becomes an act of resistance.

Transformative and Incremental ChangeIncremental change adds more of what already exists, such as new ways to sell CDs. Transformative change shifts the whole landscape, such as the move from a scarcity economy to a digital economy. Streaming services illustrate this. It takes 100 premium streams or 600 free streams to equal one paid download in the UK charts. A fan listening 50 times counts for little. This model discourages deep audience and artist relationships, favouring scale and safety over innovation and depth.

Value and Meaning

“Art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time” (Basquiat).

The value of music is not in how it is made or delivered, but in what it does to us when we hear it. It lives in memory and anticipation carried in the present moment of listening.

How Can I Keep Doing This?“How can I keep doing this?” Creators want to make meaningful work in ways that are true to their vision and voice. But the new market risks corrupting that relationship, bending art to serve algorithms and demand. The pressure for novelty creates a treadmill of spectacle rather than depth.

The Stagnating Affect of Uninterrogated NostalgiaNostalgia plays a powerful, often unexamined, role in media consumption. While loving music from the past is natural, unexamined nostalgia can become life sapping, pulling us into yearning for an imagined past at the cost of present possibility. Complaints that “nobody writes like X anymore” undermine new work, and algorithms rarely prioritise sharing others’ new music.

Community in PracticeWhen Steve was diagnosed with cancer, he recorded a piece immediately after leaving hospital and shared it on Bandcamp. The audience was present, part of his journey, and the music carried meaning in that shared context. It was not “music about cancer” from a safe distance. It was a raw reflection of his brain on cancer, sparking connection and healing with those who were already part of the story.

ListenSteve’s music

Emily Baker

Dirty Loops (Henrik Linder)
House of Waters (Moto Fukushima)

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In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we look at the relationship between sensory processing sensitivity and hypervigilance.

As we finish our journey through the first HSP Owner’s Guide, we turn our attention to hypervigilance. that feeling of being permanently “switched on,” unable to stop scanning for danger, even when we’re safe.

For highly sensitive people, vigilance is a natural part of sensory processing sensitivity. It helps us read the room, pick up subtle cues, and stay attuned to what is happening beneath the surface. But when vigilance tips into hypervigilance, it can leave us in a state of chronic over-arousal, disconnection, and exhaustion.

In the episode, we explore why hypervigilance is such a common experience for HSPs, how it shows up in everyday life, and ways we might support our nervous systems in returning to a sense of safety and connection. I examine hypervigilance within a social and cultural context for HSPs, rather than from a clinical or individual psychological perspective.

https://youtu.be/RCvrgSJH73IVigilance vs. HypervigilanceVigilance is an intrinsic feature of sensory intelligence. It anchors us in the awareness to notice and predict useful information to help us survive and thrive together.

Hypervigilance is what happens when vigilance overspills, and we get stuck in a state of alertness with limited capability to move our nervous system into a state of connection.

This can have roots in early life (especially for HSPs who are more impacted by their formative environments). But it can also develop over time because of the pressures and rhythms of the modern world, with constant notifications, cultural glorification of busyness, and a never-ending expectation to perform and prove our worth.

Possible Signs of HypervigilanceHypervigilance is not always dramatic. Often it shows up quietly and gradually, for example you might notice:

• Feeling flat or detached, as if life is happening behind glass
• Difficulty taking action, even on small plans
• Unusual tearfulness
• Brain fog and trouble focusing
• Ruminating thoughts on repeat
• Disrupted sleep cycles
• Anxiety or panic attacks seemingly “out of nowhere”
• Harsh self-criticism or low self-esteem

If these feel familiar, they may be signs that your nervous system has been in “stay safe” mode for a long time.

Why Hypervigilance HappensHypervigilance is the nervous system’s over-lean into the message, “stay safe by staying alert.” This is obviously appropriate in certain contexts, but when we carry this story everywhere, it takes its toll and can be a difficult pattern to get out of.

Some common contributing factors include:

• Early Environments: Growing up in conflict or unpredictability can train the nervous system to always be on guard, especially in volatile environments where safety could be torn away at a moment’s notice.
• Past Experiences: The nervous system may overlearn from painful experiences, remaining alert to avoid “ever letting that happen again.”
• Cultural Pressures: Hustle culture, social media outrage cycles, and global crises all create a background hum of threat.
• Worldview and Meaning-Making: Certain belief systems (political, religious, ideological) can divide the world into “us vs. them,” keeping us in a state of perpetual alertness to nefarious outside actors.
• Physiological Factors: Poor sleep, hormone shifts, or nutritional deficiencies can lower our threshold for perceiving danger.

These are rarely isolated and often overlap in ways that reinforce one another.

Meeting Hypervigilance with Creative GentlenessA helpful (though, not easy) way to meet everyday hypervigilance is to slow things down. Not necessarily by stopping altogether, but by letting engagement become gentler and more deliberate. Rather than rushing to solve, fix, or control, we can allow space to notice small sensory glimmers, those subtle cues that tell us we are safe, connected, and welcome in the moment.

Sometimes hypervigilance disguises itself as a need to gather more knowledge or prepare more thoroughly before we act. The desire to have the perfect plan, the ideal response, or the flawless understanding can be part of the protective pattern itself. Learning to sit with uncertainty, to laugh about situations (especially with others), and to experiment imperfectly can be a gentle way of softening the grip of hypervigilance.

We do not have to do this work alone. Bringing trusted people into our experiments, letting them see us try, fail, and try again, can help retrain our nervous system to experience safety and belonging in moments of vulnerability. Over time, these practices reshape our inner landscapes, reassuring the nervous system that imperfection is safe.

Over to YouWhen do you notice yourself holding your breath, bracing for something that never quite arrives? Or looking out for threats, even when you’re safe. I’d love to hear if any of this rings true for you. Feel free to get in touch and let me know. Haven member? Join the conversation in the forum

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I had not heard of James Allen before I started exploring this history of self-help. I saw references to his book, “As a Man Thinketh”, which was frequently cited as an influential text around the power of thought on manifesting circumstances. With our “It’s the thought that counts” theme in The Haven this month, my curiosity took me into a James Allen rabbit hole.

I read three of his books: From Poverty to Power (his first), The Divine Companion (his last), and As a Man Thinketh (his most famous). I wanted to try getting a sense of where he was coming from in his philosophical worldview. He published around twenty books, all written within an eleven-year period, before he died in 1912 at just 47 years old. I do wonder how his ideas would have evolved if he had lived longer.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share my response to As a Man Thinketh. I reflect on Allen’s ideas and their implications for the way we think about ourselves, one another, and the nature of reality.

https://youtu.be/tVtG-AhrkgwWhy Am I Doing This Project?You may be wondering why I’m exploring self-help…Good question. I’m not completely sure. But I think it’s because I’ve felt an intuitive nudge to explore this world and its function in culture.

I don’t know where it will take me (I have no overriding purpose or vision with it – sorry James!), or what I will find, but I have a sense that there are interesting things to discover by examining, not just the content that is common in the self-help genre, but the role the field plays in how we understand and judge ourselves, others, and the horizons of possibility for the world.

As I find in this book, there are some interesting insights and invitations to explore. But it also carries the potential to be understood, embodied, and applied in dangerous and harmful ways, especially when Allen’s metaphors are mistaken for literal truths. This is where his philosophy, which initially sounds positive and empowering, becomes reductive and destructive when we examine its logical implications.

It demonstrates rhetorical tricks that are echoed in modern-day personal development literature, such as metaphorical literalism. This is where poetic imagery and aphorisms are employed to support and prove otherwise baseless philosophies.

How James Allen Described As a Man ThinkethAs a Man Thinketh is intentionally short. Allen described it as a pocket book with teaching that all can easily grasp and follow. He said it shows how, in their own thought-world, each human holds the key to every condition, good or bad, that enters into our life. By working patiently and intelligently upon our thoughts, we may remake our life and transform our circumstances.

The question I keep coming back to throughout this exploration is, does he mean this as a description or a prescription? And what difference does this make to our reading, interpretation, and application of these ideas?

As a Man Thinketh – NotesThought and Character

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

A person is the product of thought alone. The mantra “change your thoughts, change your life” is still repeated as if it were a scientific law rather than a metaphor.

The Effect of Thought on Circumstances

“Every man is where he is by the law of his being. The thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance.”

Prosperity and poverty, joy and suffering, always mirror the state of an individual’s mind.

The Effect of Thought on Health and Body

“The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.”

Thought is the source of health and sickness.

Thought and Purpose

“He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.”

To avoid suffering, an individual needs a central life purpose. We should find the straight pathway to the achievement of purpose, and never deviate from its path.

The Thought-Factor in Achievement

“Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence.”

A virtuous life is about achievement, accomplishment, and sacrifice.

Visions and Ideals

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”

Just as the oak sits in the acorn and the bird in the egg, every life is where it deserves to be based on the way they have manifested their dreams.

Serenity

“Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power.”

Calmness of mind is the hallmark of strength. The serene person is better positioned to achieve power, influence, and moral authority.

Reading As a Man Thinketh today, it’s striking how much of modern self-help traces back to these chapters. Its metaphors endure, and sit in us like self-evident truths.

The appeal of serenity continues in modern stoicism and mindfulness trends.

My ConclusionAllen’s neat system suggests that thought alone determines who we are and what happens to us. It is an idea that has proven remarkably persistent, even though it collapses under the weight of real life. Human experience is not simple, not consistent, not something we can manage through the power of will. We are shaped by chance, by biology, by history, by one another. To be alive is to live in the contradiction and messiness. Any philosophy that denies this may be comforting for a moment, but it asks us to reject the very things that make us human.

Join me in the forum to chat about this one.

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This post elaborates on the ‘overstimulation’ section of The HSP Owner’s Guide.

In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we look at the relationship between sensory processing sensitivity and overstimulation.

Overstimulation is a term we often hear when people talk about high sensitivity. It’s the second word in the DOES acronym after Deep Processing and before Emotional Responsiveness or Empathy, and Sensing Subtleties as a description of core characteristics of the trait.

But what do we actually mean by overstimulated? What does it look like? And is there anything we can do about it other than avoiding stimulating environments and situations? At the get-go, I want to answer that question with a resounding yes. We don’t have to write ourselves out of the situations, environments, and experiences that really matter to us. We have the capacity to build sustainable approaches to this stuff.

https://youtu.be/qy8XxQe7_iUResponsiveness and StimulationBecause highly sensitive people are all different, it’s important to remember that sensitivity isn’t who we are. It’s more like the rails our nervous system runs on. It is often described as a spectrum of sensory responsiveness. Those on the high end take in a huge amount of sensory data and process it deeply. Those on the low end take in less, and most people are somewhere in the middle. As a species, we have evolved and benefit from individuals existing along this continuum.

Environmental Sensitivity researchers describe this variation through the concept of differential susceptibility. Some individuals are more profoundly influenced by their environment, for better or worse. It’s not about weakness or fragility. It’s about responsiveness and depth of processing. Studies show that highly sensitive individuals flourish in supportive settings but face greater challenges in chaotic ones.

I like to visualise this difference using microphones. A sensitive condenser mic is uniquely effective in quiet, controlled spaces. It picks up every subtle detail. But in a loud environment, it can get overwhelmed by noise. A dynamic mic has a narrower field of responsiveness and can work in almost any environment because it picks up less background noise. Both are useful, but for different purposes. This helps us remember that high sensitivity isn’t a flaw or superpower, it’s just a variation in human temperament, useful in some contexts and less so in others.

What Overstimulation Looks LikeOverstimulation can look different from individual to individual. It is caused by an overload of the nervous system with environmental, emotional, social, or cognitive information.

It’s not always evident to others when a highly sensitive person is overstimulated. Despite appearing calm or composed, HSPs may be grappling with intense physical discomfort or emotional distress due to nervous system overload. Rising levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol exacerbate this heightened sensitivity, leading to strong reactions to excitement, tension, temperature changes, or sensory stimuli in the environment.

What looks like calmness in a person might be a kind of shutting down. This happens to me when I’ve had too much stimulation – I can look really chilled out, but in actual fact I’m unable to function properly.

You might experience:

Physical symptoms of overstimulation* Lightheadedness or dizziness * Internal tremors (feeling shaky inside without visible shaking) * Heart palpitations or irregular heartbeat sensations * Nausea or digestive discomfort * Temperature sensitivity

Cognitive effects of overstimulation* Difficulty concentrating or focusing on tasks * Short-term memory lapses * Mental fog or feeling disconnected from surroundings * Racing thoughts

Emotional responses* Irritability disproportionate to the situation * Sudden emotional surges, such as tears or outbursts of frustration * Social withdrawal urges * Heightened startle response

Behavioural changes* Restlessness or inability to settle * Increased sensitivity to light, sound, or touch * Sleep disturbances despite fatigue * Impulsive decisions to remove oneself from situations

Overstimulation may be subtle. It can build gradually like a low background hum. And sometimes it hits all at once, like flood defences breaking. I remember experiencing it in shops as a child. The fluorescent lights, drudging through aisles, would leave me suddenly feeling drowsy and disconnected, despite being excited at the idea of going shopping.

The Physiology Behind OverstimulationWhen overstimulated, the nervous system activates stress responses.

• Neuroception, the subconscious threat detection system, becomes hyper-alert
• Stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline flood the system
• The prefrontal cortex becomes less effective, making rational thinking harder
• Sensory filters become less discriminating, letting in too much information

This explains why two people can enter the same environment and one feels energised while the other feels overwhelmed. It’s as much about the state of your nervous system as the external situation, and also about the cumulative load of stimulation you carry between contexts. This is also why it’s important to consider Deb Dana’s words, “story follows state,” which remind us that for highly sensitive people, it’s not as simple as choosing our mindset. We need to start by selecting environmental elements that lead to a calm and less stimulated nervous system before particular thoughts may be able to change.

How to Regulate When Overstimulation HitsWe might think of regulating overstimulation through two broad filters: proactive and responsive.

Proactive regulation involves preparing your nervous system before entering a stimulating environment or situation:

• Notice environments that tend to overstimulate you (and how it tends to happen)
• Consider the contributing factors, e.g. timing, social energy, and sensory intensity
• Plan strategies ahead of time that help you identify green/red flags when facing invitations/opportunities, prioritising margin and bridging between environments, and planning for realistic preparation/recovery space and time where possible

Responsive regulation is what you do when you feel your nervous system becoming overstimulated. Again, different things work for different people, and what works for one person might make it worse for someone else. It’s about experimenting with things like:

• Finding a quiet space with reduced sensory input
• Calming tools such as earplugs, weighted items, or familiar textures, tastes, smells etc
• Breathing techniques
• Stepping outside or moving your body
• Creative practices like doodling, writing, or playing an instrument
• Co-regulating alongside others away from the source of the stimulation

Long-term adaptation might include:

• Scheduling buffer time between activities (and bridges that help you leave and arrive well)
• Identifying recurring triggers and adjusting environments
• Developing a personal preparation/recovery toolkit

The goal isn’t to shut down your sensitivity or avoid life. It’s to notice, understand, and collaborate with your nervous system so you can navigate stimulating environments more comfortably.

The Social Side of OverstimulationSocial interaction is a major source of overstimulation. It’s rarely just the conversation. It can be the context, the unknowns, and the processing afterwards (reliving the conversations, wondering why you said what you did and didn’t say what you should have!) You might really enjoy someone’s company and still leave drained.

Noticing red flags and green flags helps. Big groups with unstructured conversation might deplete you, while small gatherings feel energising. Individual differences matter too. Someone might be draining even if you share interests, while another person energises you despite little obvious common ground.

After-care is crucial. Sometimes being fully drained can feel good if recovery time is planned. The real challenge is when life leaves no margin, stacking one overstimulating event on another. For people with full-time caring responsibilities, this lack of margin is a constant reality.

Sensitivity Beyond the SelfI believe sensitivity has an important social role. Highly sensitive people often notice gaps in care and justice, and their responsiveness and empathy support social cohesion. Noticing and responding to sources of stimulation isn’t just about individual survival; it’s tied to our capacity to change the world around us. It’s about shaping communities, environments, and expectations to work for different people. Not least because when we make the world conducive for individuals to flourish, it is good for all of us.

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I’m starting a project exploring the history of self-help; where the ideas came from, how they’ve changed over time, and what they mean for us today.

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is my chance to set some intentions, explain why I feel drawn to do this, and share how you can get involved if you want to join me for the ride.

I’m not starting this project with the end in mind. Sorry, Stephen Covey, but I’m rebelling against the second habit of highly effective people. I honestly don’t know how this will look or where it will take me. I’m just intrigued to dig into the backstory of personal development and positive thinking, and explore how it became an industry worth an estimated around $40 billion in 2024, projected to more than double by 2033.

Self-help shapes how millions of us think about ourselves, our relationships, our struggles, and our potential. I want to look at where it came from, how it works, and what it’s doing to us now.

https://youtu.be/GMowyoc4TeAThis isn’t about belittling self-helpI want to approach this with a curious and critical open mind, not a cynical one. I’ve personally gained insight, tools, and practices from authors in the personal development space. So, I have experienced the value of resources and authors under the broad self-help umbrella.

But I do have some questions.

One in particular that has long been on my mind…with the ideas in self-help are as widely adopted as they are, why haven’t they “worked” in the big-picture sense?

Why now feels like a good moment to examine the rise of self-helpWe’re living in a strange mix of economic precarity, post-pandemic disorientation, the maturing of influencer culture, and now AI churning out self-help style advice at industrial speed.

If self-help reflects and responds to the anxieties of its time, then this moment feels like a perfect point to ask whether it might be contributing to those same anxieties it claims to ease.

The quote that caught my attentionAbout 12 years ago, I read The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman.

One idea in it has stuck with me ever since:

“Perhaps you don’t need telling that self-help books… rarely much help. This is why some self-help publishers refer to the ‘eighteen-month rule’, which states that the person most likely to purchase any given self-help book is someone who, within the previous eighteen months, purchased a self-help book—one that evidently didn’t solve all their problems.”

I was a big reader of personal development books at the time, especially those that spoke to building online businesses around creativity. They gave me a sense of forward momentum and excitement about future possibilities, but I could also feel myself on a treadmill. Old dissatisfaction was replaced with new.

That quote made me wonder if the self-help industry insists on not solving our problems. Which makes sense when you think about it…why would a market secure its own demise? It needs to keep inventing new problems to solve. Otherwise it collapses.

The 18-month rule and endless repackagingSome people enjoy the sense of growth that comes from reading a new book, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But from my experience, a lot of them say the same thing in different clothing.

Different anecdotes. Different metaphors. Same structure.

So why do we keep reading? And why does the market keep producing more?

The Mel Robbins exampleEarlier this year, I looked into whether Mel Robbins had plagiarised a poem by Cassie Phillips and made up the story that inspired her book The Let Them Theory.

I bought and read the book as part of my research. It’s not my usual reading choice, and I hadn’t read a new personal development book in years. Two things struck me:

1. The writing felt more like marketing copy than the work of a writer.
2. The ideas weren’t new; just repackaged versions of stoicism, the serenity prayer, radical acceptance, and Buddhism (which she openly admits, albeit in defence of the plagiarism accusations).

This persuasive, “I’m your friend” style of marketing is common in self-help influencer culture. Whether intended or not, it can exploit people who are in vulnerable and precarious positions. It nurtures parasocial bonds to build and potentially exploit trust.

The History of Self-help in times of turmoilAnother thread I want to follow is whether self-help historically booms during moments of economic, political, and social instability. When the world feels out of control, we can focus on the things we think we can influence, such as our choices, responses, and mindset.

But I also wonder if this helps keep the larger system running as it is, without actually changing anything meaningful.

In Bright-Sided (Smile or Die in the UK), Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about how positive thinking became prevalent as a way to turn responsibility onto employees during times of corporate downsizing. Painting redundancy as an opportunity, rewarding those who keep smiling, performing, and pretending to be fine under the precarious ruthlessness of neoliberal capitalism.

My working definition of self-helpI’m defining self-help books as works that position individual change as the path to life transformation. When built around an author’s personal story or branded method, they often focus on abstract notions like success, wealth, happiness, and fulfilment.

They usually sit at the front of a funnel that leads to courses, coaching, and memberships. The underlying message is: “You alone are responsible for your future success, happiness, and suffering.”

I want to explore what happens when this narrative dominates both individual and cultural thinking.

How the series will (probably) workI’ll be working through some of the biggest titles in the genre, as well as obscure but influential works. Sometimes one book per episode, sometimes clusters based around particular themes or authors.

I’m aiming for one or two episodes per month. I’d love your suggestions and stories along the way. All of this is subject to evolve and change, but this is the first step I’m taking on this path. I’m sure it will evolve once I get going.

A note for Haven membersI’ll be recording supplementary member-only episodes exploring how the ideas we discuss in the public podcast land for highly sensitive people. We’ll look at the relationship between positive thinking and the nervous system, and unpack some of the ways hyper-individualism can be at odds with the socially minded empathy in a more sensitive temperament.

If you’ve got a book you think I should explore, let me know. Share your experiences of what’s helped, what hasn’t, and why you think that is.

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The internet is full of memes about positive thinking. I saw this quote a few days ago:
“The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude.”

At first glance, it contains some truth. Of course, the way we think about things can influence our relationship with them. But taken too far, this kind of thinking turns into something insidious and destructive.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the darker side of positive thinking.

https://youtu.be/E0JCsl_u_7M?si=XAHxf4c2LB578QIrI remember hearing someone suggest replacing ‘have to’ with ‘get to’ as a way to live with more gratitude for things we take for granted. Again, that can definitely be a useful reframe at times. But the associated claim that words impact thoughts and thoughts are the only thing that create our reality can quickly become an imprisoning and judgemental superstition. Toxic positivity encourages emotional suppression and shame, where anything other than optimism is considered weakness or failure.

You’ve Only Got Yourself To BlameIf we follow the logic that our thoughts dictate our reality to its extreme, we land in a society shaped by what philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the achievement imperative. In this world, external rules are replaced by internal commands. We no longer respond to “you should” or “you must.” Instead, we internalise the injunction to perpetually “live our passion,” “find our purpose,” and “optimise our potential.”

Han quotes Tony Robbins, who promotes this mindset by saying,
“When you set a goal, you’ve committed to CANI (Constant, Never-Ending Improvement)! You’ve acknowledged the need that all human beings have for constant, never-ending improvement. There is a power in the pressure of dissatisfaction, in the tension of temporary discomfort. This is the kind of pain you want in your life.”

This leads to a permanent state of temporary discomfort. There is always something to optimise, improve, and change. Never rest. Never be satisfied.

The Problem With Pathological PositivityToxic positivity – we might describe it as pathological positivity (though I’ve seen a book of that name painting it as a desirable state of being, so that’s a bit odd)- thrives on the belief that we should reframe negative thoughts. But there is a big difference between resistance and repression. A good comparison comes from Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, founder of logotherapy and author of Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote:
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

Choosing Your Response vs Blaming Your AttitudeUnlike self-help slogans, Frankl’s words do not offer easy comfort. He was not promoting positive thinking. He was describing something he observed in those who were stripped of their humanity and subjected to unimaginable suffering. For Frankl, attitude was not a shortcut to happiness or material prosperity, but a form of resistance and an expression of power over an oppressor. It was a way to maintain dignity in the face of dehumanisation. His message was not about pretending things are okay, but about facing reality with courage and integrity.

This contrasts with James Allen’s 1903 As a Man Thinketh, often credited with laying the foundation for mindset-focused personal development and the Law of Attraction. Allen writes:
“All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”
“Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought.”

These statements are not just simplistic. They can be dangerous. They suggest that all suffering is self-inflicted, that illness, grief, or injustice are failures in a person’s thinking. This mindset promotes shame and silence. Far from being a response to an oppressive power, it becomes an oppressive force. It encourages people to internalise systemic issues and to blame themselves for pain that is often out of their control.

Finding Meaning vs Toxic PositivityFrankl offers a different path. He did not believe that the mind creates suffering. He believed that suffering is a real part of life. In one of his stories, he counsels a man grieving the loss of his wife. Instead of offering platitudes, Frankl invites the man to see the pain as a reflection of deep love. The meaning was not imposed from outside. It emerged from the man’s own experience. The grief was real, and so was the love that gave rise to it.

Meaning, in Frankl’s work, is not about positive thinking. It is about finding light in dark places. And when suffering is avoidable, the most meaningful response is to change its cause, not to accept or reframe it. This perspective is far more compassionate and responsible than the toxic positivity that dominates much of modern self-help culture.

The Freedom to Feel What Is TrueThe Black Mirror episode, Nosedive speaks to this. The protagonist, Lacie, lives in a world where everyone rates each other’s behaviour in real time. Life becomes a game of masking and performance. But after a series of events, her social rating plummets, and she ends up in a jail cell. It looks like she has lost everything, but for the first time, she is free. Free from the endless can of achievement society. Liberated from the permanent loop of self-correction and optimisation.

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This post elaborates on the ‘moral sensitivity’ section of The HSP Owner’s Guide.

Have you ever felt like you’re carrying the weight of the world’s wrongs inside your body? You may feel torn between staying true to your values and going along with what is considered “normal”?

For many Highly sensitive people (HSPs), this quiet inner tension is familiar. Sensory processing sensitivity often comes with an instinctive concern for fairness, justice, and the well-being of the world around us. This moral sensitivity is woven into how many HSPs notice, feel, and respond.

Alongside this internal compass, many HSPs naturally hold strong values that influence how they interact with life. This can fuel a desire for harmony and social cohesion, while also heightening their awareness of injustice or harm. Their choices are often guided by the impact on others, including people, animals, and the environment.

https://youtu.be/mnoCdSo2QnAWhat Might Moral Sensitivity Look Like in a Highly Sensitive Person?Every HSP is different. Our beliefs naturally vary. We do not all approach, value, or hold things with the same convictions. But there are characteristics and patterns that are common for many HSPs.

Awareness A clear sense of personal values (a highly sensitive person may develop and arrive at their own set of foundational values that they live by. These are not necessarily intentionally chosen, but they might be evident in the elements they consider when making decisions and taking action). * Sensitivity to injustice, dishonesty, or unfair treatment of others (they might find themselves stirred to action when they witness or experience actions that go against their values. This can even lead to acting against personal interests for the sake of something or someone else). * Discomfort with actions or systems that violate deeply held principles* (HSPs might be aware of the role of dehumanising systems, processes, and attitudes, which step outside of their moral and ethical values).

Connection to Meaning A tendency to question purpose, both in personal life and broader societal structures (this might happen quietly in your heart and mind, with some trusted confidants, or it could occur in a wider context). * Interest in philosophical, spiritual, or ethical frameworks (HSPs might connect with ideas that give scaffolding to their values. They might adopt them fully or build their own from joining dots and piecing things together). * Intuitive sense of what feels morally “right” or “wrong” in different contexts* (many HSPs tend to notice patterns across contexts. This underpins trust or distrust without overt evidence for it).

Responsibility and Diligence* Acting in alignment with personal values (decisions and choices are often made with a desire for a deeper sense of meaning or purpose). * Attunement to moral dilemmas and contradictions in societal norms * Disturbance when witnessing hypocrisy or people acting without integrity (needing to do something when seeing people deliberately manipulating, deceiving, or taking advantage of others). * Feeling personally responsible to do “the right thing” in difficult situations.

Sensitivity to Moral Nuance and Grey Areas* Noticing nuances in ethical dilemmas that others might overlook (highly sensitive people might see nuance where others paint a simplistic picture). * Struggling with situations where no choice feels fully just or fair (they might feel the weight of decisions they had to make, but which had costs to them). * Processing moral questions for longer periods before reaching conclusions (HSPs might need more time before forming an opinion or judgement).

How Moral Sensitivity Shows Up in Daily LifePersonal Relationships* HSPs may be particularly attuned to imbalances in fairness, such as one-sided friendships or unequal effort in partnerships. * They might notice their concerns belittled or dismissed as “overthinking” or hear others tell them to stop worrying, “just let it go”, “get over it”, or “pull yourself together”.

Work and Social Settings* Workplace policies or societal norms that seem unjust can be unsettling, prompting a desire in some HSPs to address and change them rather than passively accept them. * HSPs may feel compelled to speak up about ethical concerns. Some might find themselves advocating for policies or speaking on behalf of others. This is because it is sometimes easier to stand up for others than for themselves. * They might not be naturally competitive until they encounter unfairness or injustice. The desire to put things right can ignite a competitive spark in a sensitive person.

Self-Expectations A strong internal drive to act with integrity, sometimes leading to self-criticism if they fall short of their own standards. * Difficulty moving on from past decisions that did not fully align with their values. They might be ‘‘haunted’* by moments where they acted out of integrity in the past.

Navigating the Challenges of Moral SensitivityHolding Idealism with RealismWhile moral clarity can be an anchor, holding too tightly to rigid expectations often leads to disappointment, resentment, or burnout. It can help to remember that most decisions and situations exist in shades of grey.

Emotional Responses to InjusticeBeing attuned to injustice can take an emotional toll, especially when exposed to distressing news, conversations, or environments that feel out of alignment with core values. Use creativity to process situations.

A creative practice can help you explore your thoughts and develop a positive approach to addressing and responding to things like injustice. This also provides options for action. Whether you want to make art, take direct action, or let go, when you know that there is nothing more you can personally do.

Over-ResponsibilityIt is easy for highly sensitive people to feel responsible for solving every moral issue they encounter, but this can quickly lead to overwhelm or compassion fatigue. Recognising and accepting that no single person can solve every problem is essential for long-term well-being. Many HSPs benefit from focusing their energy on causes, relationships, or actions where their input feels both meaningful and sustainable. This is instead of trying to carry the weight of the world.

As Dorcus Cheng-Tozen writes in Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, not everyone responds in the same way. Working toward a fairer, more just world is not a one-size-fits-all process. It calls for each of us to be who we are rather than trying to force ourselves into unsustainable boxes we don’t need to fit into.

Finding Like-Spirited CommunitiesMoral sensitivity can sometimes feel isolating, especially if others dismiss it as unnecessary or excessive. Connecting with others who share a similar perspective on the world can help reduce feelings of alienation and loneliness. This is especially true when you don’t have to explain yourself or feel defensive about the things you naturally care about.

Sensitivity is a Natural TraitMoral sensitivity is neither a flaw nor a superpower. It is simply one way many highly sensitive people process and engage with the world around them. For some, it can deepen relationships and decision-making. For others, it may feel like a heavy weight to carry.

The key lies in self-awareness, recognising when this sensitivity is guiding you toward meaningful action. Additionally, it is essential to recognise when it may be beneficial to cultivate patience, gentleness, or compassion with yourself and those around you.

Over To YouWhat impact does sensitivity to moral and ethical issues have on your approach to decisions and the things you care about? Does any of this resonate with your experiences? Drop a message or leave a comment on YouTube.

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Some tools are built to help us grow; to learn, connect, or reach meaningful goals. But eventually, we might ask: are these tools still working for us, or have they hooked us and quietly turned us into their tool?

This question has been on my mind since I started using Duolingo seventy-six days ago. I had just returned from a trip to Finland and wanted to keep learning a bit of Finnish: nothing too intense, just some gentle exposure to the language each day. From what others had said, Duolingo seemed like the ideal tool.

I started on the free version. It offered just enough. However, I was soon being nudged constantly toward the premium upgrade. Eventually, I gave in and accepted the offer of a 7-day trial. Before I knew it, £68.99 was taken from my account. Dagh! I had forgotten to cancel in time. That was frustrating. But what I noticed next was fascinating.

Over time, I realised I was no longer using Duolingo to expand my learning outside of the app. I was using it to keep my streak alive inside it.

It works. And it works well. But it also works against us (and our bigger picture aspirations).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8tC3VtbgSkThe Hook Model in ActionThis shift in behaviour mirrors the “Hook Model” described by Nir Eyal in his book Hooked, which outlines how habit-forming products are designed to draw us in and keep us there.

The hook model follows a four-step cycle: Trigger – External cues like notifications or internal ones like guilt or fear of missing out. * Action – The easiest possible behaviour in response to the trigger, like opening the app or doing a lesson. * Variable Reward – Unpredictable reinforcement like badges, praise, or social validation that keeps us engaged. * Investment* – The time, energy, or money we’ve already poured into the product, which makes it harder to walk away.

This system is incredibly effective at building engagement, but it often does so by subtly shifting our focus from what we originally cared about to what keeps the platform profitable.

When the Tool Hooks UsWhat starts as a helpful tool can morph into a system that prioritises retention over transformation.

Only 0.1% of Duolingo users ever complete a full course. That isn’t a design flaw; it’s the business model. The goal is not to help us complete something, but to keep us inside the ecosystem.

Duolingo began nudging me toward other courses I hadn’t asked for. Music theory. Chess. It was no longer about Finnish. It was about keeping me engaged, clicking, and coming back.

This is when a tool becomes a trap, not because it stops working, but because it starts working too well at the wrong thing (keeping us engaged).

From Motivation to ManipulationThis isn’t just about language apps. It’s about how many of our digital experiences are shaped by systems designed to extract our wealth and capture our attention, energy, and even our identity.

In Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn warns that external motivators like badges, praise, or pizza vouchers for reading not only influence behaviour but also diminish it. Over time, we stop asking “Why do I care about this?” and instead ask “What do I get for it?”

In The Burnout Society, philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that we have shifted from a culture of external discipline to one of internalised self-optimisation. We no longer rely on a manager or teacher to pressure us; instead, we pressure ourselves. Rest is viewed as a failure. Play is considered wasted time. Self-worth is now linked to productivity.

Apps like Duolingo thrive in this cultural moment. They don’t just support our goals; they reshape them. We start wanting to learn a language and end up wanting to maintain a streak. What once felt like growth begins to feel like a contract we’re stuck in.

The Rocket Booster TestGood tools (as well as teachers, programs, coaches, therapists, etc) should be like solid rocket boosters: they help us launch, but they’re meant to fall away once we’ve reached a certain point.

Before we start, we might ask:* Have we agreed on the point at which we will jettison this process before we start? * How will I know it’s time to let go and move on?

When we’re engaged with a process, partnership, or tool, we can ask:* Is this tool still helping us move forward? * Is it aligned with my original goals? * Or are we simply feeding it our time and attention because of what we’ve already invested?

The presence of a badge, a streak, or a cheer from a virtual friend shouldn’t be the thing keeping us there. There must be something more intrinsically motivating.

Letting the Streak DieIt’s difficult to walk away from something we’ve invested in, especially when it gave us value at some point. But growth often requires us to assess whether something useful has now become a hindrance.

Letting go of the streak, app, system, or partnership can seem like failure. If it feels that way, it might be a sign that it’s got other interests at heart. So, letting go might be an act of gentle rebellious liberation.

Just because something “works” doesn’t mean it’s working for us.

Many of the platforms we use today were born out of a positive vision: to help us learn, connect, and form habits. But in a system that prioritises engagement and monetisation, that original purpose often becomes secondary.

When we start to notice what’s holding us involved, and why, we create room to choose differently.

We can honour the tools that helped us without becoming dependent on them. We can jettison what no longer serves us. And we can return to a way of learning, creating, and growing that is rooted in meaning, not metrics.

Unhooking OurselvesMaybe it starts with a simple act: letting the streak die.

It took from Thursday to Monday to finally kill my streak – without consent, I received streak freezes and gifts to keep it going. It was interesting to see how hard it was in the end and how desperately Duolingo wanted me to maintain that investment.

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“Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves with your name and something interesting about you”. Does that icebreaker moment fill you with joy?

If not, you’re not alone.

But is it simply a matter of preferences, or are there deeper processes at play when it comes to disliking icebreaker activities? That’s what we explore in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

https://youtu.be/GCkwfYppGNMWhat Does “Highly Sensitive” Mean?High sensitivity is a term used to describe the scientifically recognised trait known as sensory processing sensitivity. It’s not a disorder, but a biological trait found in around 20-30% of the population. Highly sensitive people have more finely tuned nervous systems that absorb and process sensory and emotional input more deeply.

More sensitive nervous systems naturally absorb larger volumes of environmental data and process it deeply. This means HSPs (those who score higher for sensitivity along a universal continuum), are more sensitive to social nuances and more susceptible to the effects of social stimulation. They may need time to pause and calibrate when entering unfamiliar environments and meeting new people.

Icebreaking or Ice-Melting?This episode builds on the previous one about “social sensitivity“.

I use the metaphor of making, breaking, and melting ice to frame what happens in social settings:

• Making Ice: The natural protective barrier that forms as we orient ourselves in new environments.
• Breaking Ice: Attempts to force through that barrier, often too fast and without consent.
• Melting Ice: A gradual, relational process where connection develops at a sustainable pace.

Icebreaker: What’s the most horrific icebreaker you’ve ever had to do? (I would love to know!)

Icebreaker activities are intended to reduce tension and help people connect quickly. But there may be times when, for HSPs, they have the opposite effect. Instead of inviting a sense of warm welcome, they can put the nervous system on the defence, unnecessarily using up energy and inner resources. This is especially true when we’re asked to perform, share personal details, or think on the spot.

In the episode, I share a few stories (including one from my time as an undertaker) that highlight this tension, and explore how the expectation to “come out of our shell” can become a subtle form of social pressure.

Why Icebreakers Often BackfireMany highly sensitive people need time to pause and check before jumping into social interaction. This isn’t about fear or social anxiety — it’s a natural regulation strategy that helps us process our surroundings and determine if it’s safe to engage.

When that pause is misinterpreted as shyness or resistance, we can feel judged or pushed to open up before we’re ready. Over time, this can reinforce feelings of shame or self-doubt in social settings.

There is a difference between disclosure and trust. Jumping into “fun facts” can leave us feeling exposed rather than connected. This may linger in the nervous system through regret and shame.

What Helps Highly Sensitive People Connect?We’re not just here to dunk on icebreakers though. I also offer some reflections on what helps melt the ice more gently for HSPs, including:

• Setting clear expectations and permissions (e.g. “It’s OK not to speak”)
• Creating space for people to arrive in their own time
• Modelling honesty, humour, or gentle vulnerability
• Avoiding performative tasks or forced introductions
• Recognising the value of awkwardness and letting it be

These insights are especially useful if you’re designing group sessions, facilitating meetings, or simply want to understand how to support the sensitive people in your life.

Over To You What helps you melt the ice in social situations? * Have you ever felt misjudged for taking time to settle in a group? * What’s the worst* icebreaker you’ve ever experienced? (We can laugh now!)

Join the conversation inside The Haven, our community of highly sensitive people, deep thinkers, and other gentle rebels. Or drop me a message.

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Have you ever been in a room and sensed social dynamics beneath the surface before a word was spoken? Perhaps you’ve noticed (consciously or unconsciously) a subtle glance, a shift in posture, or a hint of tension between the lines. If so, you’re not alone. This kind of social sensitivity is part of being a highly sensitive person (HSP).

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is the first in a series that will explore the social dimensions of sensory processing sensitivity, the biological trait underlying high sensitivity. I’ll be drawing on ideas from The HSP Owner’s Guide, a mini-zine resource I created with Tuula, which is designed to help HSPs explore and discuss sensitivity as a normal aspect of being human.

https://youtu.be/DFiJHxI9QkoWhat is Social Sensitivity?Social sensitivity refers to how highly sensitive individuals perceive and respond to emotional cues, interpersonal dynamics, and the tone of their environment. It’s not a learned skill or a conscious choice; it’s a normal variation in biological traits.

More sensitive nervous systems naturally absorb larger volumes of environmental data and process it deeply. This means HSPs (those who score higher for sensitivity along a universal continuum), are more sensitive to social nuances and more susceptible to the effects of social stimulation.

What is Sensory Processing Sensitivity?SPS is a trait found in 20–30% of the population (not just humans). It means that some are biologically wired to process more sensory input around us (environment), within us (internal), and between us (social). This trait can make someone more emotionally responsive, detail-aware, and easily overstimulated.

Despite stereotypes and associations with the term, it’s not often easy to tell a highly sensitive person by looking at them. You might even look calm and collected on the outside when your system is working overtime beneath the surface.

Social Sensitivity and Early LearningThe nervous system informs thoughts and feelings in response to a perception of safety or danger from cues and triggers. The way we interpret social data isn’t always “objectively true”, particularly if we grew up in unpredictable or critical environments. This pattern recognition can shape how we experience social settings well into adulthood.

That’s why intuition can be both a strength and a vulnerability for sensitive people. It’s wise to ask: Is this gut feeling rooted in the present, or the past?

Key Elements of Social Sensitivity in HSPsHeightened Awareness of Social NuanceMore sensitive individuals might be attuned to micro-expressions, body language, tone changes, and subtle group dynamics. This can give them a natural ability to “read the room,” but it can also lead to emotional absorption and a tendency to take responsibility for others’ discomfort.

Not every HSP reacts the same way. Some feel compelled to help, others want to escape the weight of unspoken tensions. Personality, personal history, and social roles all play a part.

Deep Emotional ResponsivenessMany highly sensitive people feel others’ emotions deeply. This allows for strong empathy and attunement, but also risks emotional contagion—carrying other people’s emotional weight without realising it.

Brain studies suggest that those on the more sensitive end exhibit increased activity in areas associated with emotional processing. But this doesn’t mean you’re doomed to feel overwhelmed by uncontrollable sources of emotion. With awareness and practice, it’s possible to separate your emotions from those of others and develop healthy emotional boundaries.

Rejection Sensitivity and the Need to BelongHSPs might be particularly attuned to signs of rejection or disapproval, whether real or imagined. Some develop habits of withdrawing or masking to avoid being perceived as “too much” or “too sensitive.” I’ve noticed a few people suddenly and unexpectedly leave the Haven community after becoming more deeply involved socially. I wonder if this arises from the uncertainty of finding people who “get” and accept them. This sense of safety can feel jarring to a nervous system that has developed patterns of protection to remain hidden in the background.

This response often starts early, especially if sensitivity was criticised or misunderstood. However, the good news is that it can change. When HSPs are met with consistent emotional safety and acceptance, those old protective patterns can start to soften. That’s one reason I hope places like The Haven can feel like safe homes people can return to, even after a sudden exit (or several).

Strong Desire for HarmonyHSPs might seek to avoid conflict, not because they’re passive, but because their nervous system registers relational tension as a source of danger. This can lead to withdrawing or over-accommodating, but it can also lead to creative problem-solving that helps groups navigate conflict with care and compassion.

Understanding these nuances is key. We don’t all respond the same way. Some step in to soothe, while others step back to protect themselves.

The Shaping Power of EnvironmentSensitivity is not static. It’s a relational trait that’s shaped by context. The same person who feels shut down in one group can feel vibrant and confident in another.

In critical or chaotic environments, HSPs might shrink. In a nurturing one, they can flourish. That’s why sensitivity is best understood as a dynamic interaction between biology and the environment, rather than a deterministic trait or fixed limitation.

Everyday Signs of Social SensitivitySocial sensitivity shapes how your nervous system responds to people and environments. You might:

• Quickly sense the “emotional temperature” of a room.
• Mirror others’ posture, expressions, or energy without realising it.
• Struggle to focus in emotionally charged spaces.
• Replay conversations in your head (often at night!)
• Crave deep connection, but need time alone to recover.
• Appear flat or disengaged while internally processing a lot.

None of this is wrong—it’s simply how your system interacts with the world. For example, I often need a day to recover from a socially stimulating event, especially if I didn’t sleep well afterwards from all the internal replaying.

Sensitivity is Not a Flaw or a SuperpowerSensitivity is often framed as either a weakness or a gift. But the reality is more nuanced. It’s a neutral trait that belongs to a spectrum we are all on.

In cultures that value pace and emotional restraint, sensitivity can be perceived as a liability. But in communities that value presence and nuance, it becomes a strength. This concept lies at the heart of the differential susceptibility theory, which posits that the more sensitive a person is, the greater the impact the environment has on them, for better or worse.

A More Grounded Way to Relate to SensitivitySo, how do we move forward with social sensitivity as highly sensitive people?

We might begin by stepping away from extremes. You don’t need to deny your sensitivity—or make it your entire identity. Instead, build a gentler relationship with it. Explore how your system responds to various settings. Notice which relationships feel nourishing and which ones leave you depleted.

Sensitivity isn’t a performance. Embracing sensitivity is not about being the most empathic or insightful person in the room. It’s about allowing it to rise up in each of us so it becomes a collective strength we can make the most of and enjoy together.

Over to YouI’d love to hear what this episode brings up for you. Are any of the elements I discuss familiar to you?

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It has been said that “Creativity is the art of concealing your sources.” But what does that mean? Is it about passing off other people’s work as your own? Or is it less about copying influences and more about concealing them like seeds in the soil?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore what this looks like and consider the impact on our natural creative spirit when we do (or don’t) conceal our sources in healthy ways.

https://youtu.be/jgNccDK_MH0?si=5CQCaXnvHZWbaEoPThe randomiser prompt wheel selected this phrase for me on Tuesday ahead of our Serenity Island Picnic. I’ll be honest, when I first saw “Creativity is the art of concealing your sources”, I was tempted to spin again. But, I gave it a go and found a few interesting threads to pull at.

Concealing Our Sources Like SeedsConcealing our sources about misleading or deceiving. It’s about letting inspiration settle deep enough that it becomes more than it is. Like planting a seed. We don’t bury seeds to hide them; we bury them so they can grow. Our influences need space, time, and darkness to take root and become unique to us.

This applies not just to creative work, but to life itself.

When Sources Weigh Us DownSometimes, a source casts a heavy shadow. I remember when I started writing songs and held everything up to my Thom Yorke-ometer. I compared what I created with what I believed Radiohead would produce, ignoring the other sounds and voices that wanted to be involved. This had an impact on my creative freedom until I let go of the desire to emulate the music I loved, capturing instead what truly inspired me about the band.

The Subtle Power of ConcealmentThe word “conceal” can sound suspicious, like trickery or withholding. But it can also be a positive source of protection and consent. Sometimes we need to conceal our sources from those who want to steal, exploit, or imitate without effort. Or those who want more information than we are comfortable or willing to share.

We also sometimes need to conceal our sources from ourselves, especially when they become yardsticks for comparison and judgement. When a parent, mentor, or idol takes up too much space in our heads, our actions can become reactions. Instead of creating from a place of freedom, we’re trying to impress, appease, or prove something.

Our Creative LineageAt the beginning of Meditations, Marcus Aurelius devotes an entire section to acknowledging how family members, teachers, and the gods (both directly and indirectly) shaped his character, values, and worldview. For example, honesty from his father, humility from his mentor, resilience from hardship, etc. This collection starts on a platform that essentially rejects the romaticised idea we often hear about today with people described as “self-made”.

I thought about the deep processing a highly sensitive person does and the impact of SO many things on influencing who and how we become.

Each of us has a creative lineage/heritage. We are shaped by countless sources—people, experiences, stories, relationships, and chance encounters. Some sources give us strength, others weigh us down with expectations and demands.

Some we learn directly from (we receive wisdom from the example they set). Others we learn indirectly from (we are invited to grow in response to the example they set). We are all a messy mix. And while we are infused by them, we are not defined by them.

Here are some reflection questions we used in our Serenity Island picnic earlier this week.

• Who or what would you consider part of your creative lineage?
• What part of that lineage feels overgrown, overweight, or overbearing right now?
• What might shift if you pared that influence back, cut it out, or intentionally replanted it as a new seed again?
• Which elements of your lineage would you like to feature more of and amplify in your life?

These are the questions we explored together at the Serenity Island Picnic. Learn more about the course here.

Creativity isn’t about pretending we’re original. It’s about transformation. It’s about letting sources become part of our soil, rather than dragging them around like monuments we have to live up to.

Let them settle, shape, and grow.

Join The ConversationIf this stirred something in you and you want to explore ideas like this more deeply, you’re welcome to join us inside The Haven community. Already a member? Read what others are saying here.

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What do you think of when you hear the words A Still Life?

A bowl of fruit? A serene person, undisturbed by the world’s noise. Stagnation and stuckness. The quiet, hope-filled whisper that reminds you that no matter how it feels or where you are right now, you still have life within you. Another chapter waiting to be written.

We’ve been reading Josie George’s memoir, A Still Life, in The Haven book club. After Josie joined us at last weekend’s discussion, I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of stillness and its many forms and flavours. It’s a fascinating word to think about!

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the layers of stillness in the book. From the stifling slowness imposed by illness or circumstance, to the deep, peaceful resilience that absorbs life’s ripples without breaking. Stillness can be a captured moment in art, a book, or a song. It’s a framed snapshot in time.

https://youtu.be/dTHv2AhDDpIThe Noise of Shallow Rivers vs. the Depth of Still WatersThere’s an old proverb: “Shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent.” I recently heard a deep lake that was anything but silent but 🤫, I’ll try not to undermine the metapho!) Here’s that noisy lake if you’re interested.

https://soundcloud.com/andymort/the-ice-speaks-sounds-from-a-frozen-lake?si=e0700c22185544feb88c55e301a994ec&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharingA noisy life might be shallow, and a shallow life can be noisy. Distractions bombard us. A flow of news to react to, unexpected notifications, and endless demands sweep us downriver without control. But stillness isn’t just about silence. It can also be unwanted: feeling stuck in the reeds, thrashing against stagnation, longing to move but unable to for various reasons.

Josie’s memoir sits at this intersection. Her “still life” is informed by a chronic, mysterious illness that requires daily rest to stay near “any kind of wellness.” Yet her story isn’t about overcoming this adversity. The obstacle isn’t the way. The obstacle is an obstacle. And yet, Josie finds ways to live despite it.

A Memoir Without a BlueprintMost personal development books follow a formula:

1. I faced a challenge.
2. I conquered it.
3. Here’s how you can too.

Josie’s book gently subverts that framework. There’s no cure, no tidy resolution or subversive workaround. Instead, it is a poetic, honest snapshot of a life filled with pain, joy, and quiet connection. It doesn’t tell readers how to feel or what to think. Instead, it invites us to rest in her perspective, to witness her seasons and spirals.

“A book can sit on your shelf, unread, underestimated for years, and when you finally pick it up, you find it changes you. It was always going to, one day. You can live with yourself in much the same way.”

This idea resonates deeply. How many unread books (proverbial or otherwise) await the right moment to transform us? We can’t force them, but we can wait.

Truth, Visibility, and the Courage to Be SeenOne passage from the book struck a bunch of us in the book club:

“Either I believe that illness, pain, and our naturally chaotic minds are something undesirable and shameful—and so hide myself—or I don’t. And oh God, I don’t. If I don’t, then I have to start being braver with my visibility and my truth.

Truth, in this sense, doesn’t stay still. It shifts as we grow, and so do the stories we tell about ourselves. Not because the stories change, but because we do.

Stillness as Rebellion“Being someone who rests in a world that glorifies work above all else, is to be an alien among your own kind.”

Josie’s stillness is a gentle rebellion. Despite many systemic barriers, it’s a commitment to joy, curiosity, and creativity. She doesn’t spin pain into a “gift” or preach toxic positivity. Instead, she offers this metaphor:

“I am not the weather. I am the wide and open sky, and so I can let pain move through me and out of me.”

We are not our struggles, our successes, or our failures. We are the sky. The witness behind and beneath those thoughts, feelings, and events that move through us.

Creativity as a Tool for HealingA Still Life is a beautiful example of how creativity helps us re-enter our stories. Writing, art, or music allows us to look at the past with new eyes, to prepare the soil for new growth. Healing past wounds isn’t a linear process to be forced or rushed; it’s seasonal, cyclical. As Josie shows, a creative practice gives us room to:

• Experiment without pressure to get heavy and meaningful.
• Let truths emerge when they’re ready.
• Rebel against stories that shrink our spirit.

A Still Life isn’t a guidebook or blueprint to follow. It’s an invitation to see differently. To gently rebel against a world that prizes motion, hustle, productivity, and restless action over wellbeing. Josie’s stillness is both a necessity and a choice, a way to “leave a gap” for attention, love, and possibility.

The task is simple…

“Pay attention, be brave, see the truth, write it down. That will always be enough.”

Follow Josie Down The Rabbit Hole: https://linktr.ee/wonderlandletters

If you’re a member, you can join the conversation about the book in the forum.

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This post elaborates on the sensitivity research section of The HSP Owner’s Guide.

Differential susceptibility is a key concept in high-sensitivity research. In simple terms, it means that the more sensitive you are, the more your environment impacts you. As a highly sensitive person (HSP), you might notice that some people thrive in situations where you feel discombobulated. Conversely, when conditions feel right, you may experience more intense joy, connection, and growth than others.

It’s the idea that some people are more responsive to their environment—for better or worse. For HSPs, this heightened responsiveness is a defining trait linked to their depth of processing, shaping how they experience life. However, it’s important to remember that not all HSPs are the same. Sensitivity is just one part of who we are, and how we respond to our environments can vary widely.

https://youtu.be/GIIKRuy5TOwWhat is Differential Susceptibility?Differential susceptibility means that the more sensitive someone is, the more influence their environment has on them. We might think of it like a spectrum of responsiveness. On one end, some people are like sturdy structures, able to adapt to a wide range of conditions without much change. On the other hand, many HSPs are finely tuned instruments that process their environment in depth. This can allow them to thrive in supportive settings but may also make them more vulnerable in harsh ones.

For many HSPs, this means they are deeply affected by their upbringing, current environment, and the people around them. In favourable conditions, they may flourish more intensely than others, finding creative flow, experiencing strong empathy, and having deep insights. In unfavourable conditions, they might struggle more than others, feeling overstimulated or drained, unable to utilise the and share the fruits of their high sensitivity.

This heightened responsiveness isn’t a weakness—it’s a unique way of engaging with the world that comes with challenges and strengths. That said, again to reiterate, not all HSPs will respond the same way. Sensitivity interacts with other aspects of personality, life experiences, and individual differences.

How Does Differential Susceptibility Shape Our Lives?Differential susceptibility shows up in tangible ways for many HSPs. Here’s how it might play out: maybe you recognise your own experiences in these examples:

Growing Up: The Impact of Early EnvironmentsSupportive Upbringing: If an HSP grows up in a nurturing environment (where their sensitivity is understood and valued) they are more likely to develop strong emotional intelligence, creativity, and resilience.

Challenging Upbringing: If an HSP grows up in a less supportive environment (where their sensitivity was dismissed or criticised), they might have learned to hide their true self, leading to feelings of disconnection or self-doubt.

For example, imagine an HSP who grew up in a chaotic and unpredictable household. If there is constant noise or tension, that person’s nervous system is more likely to be dysregulated, overstimulated and seeking safety from unsafe sources. They may assume the “tiny adult” role, feeling responsible for trying to keep the environment ‘in balance’ by fawning, people pleasing, monitoring moods (over empathy). But if that same HSP had grown up in a calm, supportive home, they might have thrived, using their sensitivity to connect deeply with others and appreciate life’s beauty.

Adulthood: Creating Nurturing EnvironmentsFavourable Conditions: When HSPs are in environments that honour their sensitivity, such as a peaceful home, a supportive workplace, or a close-knit community, they often bring incredible strengths. They may notice what others miss, create spaces of warmth and connection, and approach challenges creatively and empathetically.

Unfavourable Conditions: In overwhelming or unsupportive environments, like a stressful job, a toxic family, or a sensory-heavy space, HSPs may struggle. They might feel drained, overstimulated, or unable to express themselves fully. This can lead to burnout.

For example, picture an HSP working in a fast-paced, noisy office. The constant buzz that others overlook might leave them exhausted and unable to focus. However, if the same HSP performs the same job in a calm, flexible environment, they may shine, bringing thoughtful ideas and a deep sense of care to their work.

The Strengths HSPs Bring When They Feel SafeWhen HSPs are in environments that support their sensitivity, they often bring unique gifts:

• Deep Empathy: Many HSPs are highly attuned to the emotions of others, making them compassionate friends, partners, and colleagues.
• Creativity and Insight: Their ability to notice subtleties and make connections can lead to innovative ideas and solutions.
• Thoughtful Leadership: HSPs often approach challenges with care and consideration, creating spaces where others feel heard and valued.
• Appreciation for Beauty: Whether it’s art, nature, or human connection, many HSPs have a unique ability to find and create beauty in the world.

In Unfavourable ConditionsWhat happens when HSPs are in environments that don’t support their sensitivity?

Empathy:
HSPs might feel overwhelmed by others’ emotions, absorbing stress or negativity. This can lead to emotional exhaustion or withdrawal.
Example: In a toxic workplace or social situations, an HSP might avoid interacting with others to cope with constant conflict.

Overthinking or Paralysis:
Their ability to notice subtleties can turn into overanalysing, making decisions or taking action difficult.
Example: An HSP on a high-pressure project might procrastinate, worried about mistakes or others’ opinions.

People-Pleasing or Avoidance:
Their desire to create harmony can lead to prioritising others’ needs over their own or avoiding leadership roles to escape stress.
Example: An HSP leader might say yes to every request, risking burnout to avoid disappointing others.

Sensitivity to Chaos:
Their appreciation for beauty can make them deeply unsettled by clutter, noise, or negativity, disrupting focus and peace.
Example: An HSP in a noisy, cluttered space might feel on edge, struggling to relax or concentrate.

General Responses: Physical Symptoms: Stress may show up as headaches, fatigue, or digestive issues. * Emotional Sensitivity: They might react strongly to criticism or conflict, taking things personally. * Binging on Solitude:* Craving alone time, they might hoard or overindulge in isolation when overwhelmed.

How to Nurture Your Sensitivity (No Matter Your Past)If you’re an HSP who grew up in less favourable conditions, it’s never too late to create an environment that honours your sensitivity. This isn’t about adding more to your plate or forcing yourself to change. It’s about gently exploring what helps you feel safe, seen, and supported. Here are some ways to begin:

• Create a Safe Space: Imagine having a little corner of the world that feels like a sanctuary—a place where you can breathe deeply and feel at ease. This might mean adding soft lighting, calming colours, or items that bring you comfort and joy.
• Honour Your Boundaries: It’s okay to say no to situations or people that drain your energy. Start small—maybe it’s turning down an invitation when you’re feeling overwhelmed or setting aside quiet time for yourself each day.
• Seek Supportive Connections: Surround yourself with people who understand and appreciate your sensitivity. This might mean working with a professional therapist/coach/mentor, joining a community, or building friendships with other HSPs.
• Be Kind to Yourself: Your sensitivity is not a flaw—it’s a unique way of experiencing the world. Treat yourself with the same compassion you’d offer a dear friend.
• Advocate for Your Needs: Speaking up for yourself can be challenging, especially if you’ve been conditioned to prioritise the needs of others at the expense of your own. Begin by envisioning yourself advocating for someone you genuinely care about, such as another HSP or someone whose needs are frequently overlooked at home, work, or social settings.

Embracing Your Sensitivity Despite Differential SusceptibilityDifferential susceptibility isn’t about being “too sensitive”; it’s about the relationship we share with the world within, around, and between us. It offers a unique opportunity to enhance our experience of life and thrive in ways that others might not. Naturally, the flipside of this is that difficult environments can leave us struggling. However, with a bit of awareness to recognise our needs and the people around us who understand us, we can create lives that truly support and sustain us.

Over to YouWhat about you? Have you noticed how your environment affects you? Can you think of an environment or aspect of life where your sensitivity feels like a hindrance at the moment?

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May the road rise to meet you.

My note from a slow coach this week reflects on Baltic endorphins, some internal torment due to a decision made by my past self that my present self didn’t appreciate, and a poem contemplating whether adventure is always just around the corner. It’s an excerpt from a journal entry a couple of weeks ago when I was in Finland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_VzkTNi53EI’m still feeling invigorated from last night’s dip in the Baltic Sea. I don’t know if it’s the exhilaration of spending 90 seconds in 4-degree (Celsius) water or the satisfaction I feel from following through on my intention. Something caught me when I looked across the water a few days ago—a pull I couldn’t ignore. The idea of getting in the water was great. Until it was time to do it.

What was I thinking? The two hours leading up to my plunge were filled with antsy-pantsy pacing and flip-flopping. I was not amused by my decision. Still, I knew that if I didn’t go through with it, the regret of missing this opportunity would far outweigh the momentary despair of doing something I knew would be wildly rewarding (once I resurfaced and was safely ensconced in the sauna—my happy place).

This morning’s inner calm is a blend of satisfaction and physical aliveness. The sauna not only offered a delightful reward for completing my challenge but also enhanced the experience. The contrast of fire and ice creates a unique sensation.

Forever on the horizonThis morning, I am returning to the list of phrases and ideas we developed at the start of our month of “Adventure” in The Haven. I had intended to use one each morning in my journal practice, but it hasn’t happened yet. No problem, I am up for it today. Now.

I spin the wheel, and it throws “Adventure is waiting just beyond view” onto the screen. I don’t think it’s a saying, but it feels familiar. Similar to the idea that adventure (or growth) lies on the other side of your comfort zone.

I’ve always had a complex relationship with these platitudinal sayings. They carry kernels of truth for particular situations but are often espoused as universal, all-encompassing statements of fact.

May the branch rise to meet themMy eyes are drawn through the window. My first coffee of the day is on the cabinet beside me. Adventure is waiting just beyond view. Those words feel coarse to me here. Itchy. Like an irritant on my skin. I can see a squirrel moving effortlessly through the trees and a crow perched on a breeze-flexed branch above, and I wonder if they ever wonder about these things.

It’s tempting to get caught up in the assumption that everything good is just beyond view. It’s the engine of consumer culture, the ideology of endless striving. Like a perpetual mirage, we see the reward, but it moves further as we get closer.

“Just a little further” becomes a mantra in the meditation of hustle. Advice is cheap and contradictory.

I am interested in how we can develop a more nuanced and healthy relationship with growth, purpose, and flow in life.

If adventure is forever around the corner, what am I overlooking right here? To feel settled without settling and expectant without expecting.

Isn’t this moment the adventure that was just around the corner from that previous one? I think of the old blessing: “May the road rise to meet you.” Maybe that’s the real adventure—the road meeting us where we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjJXAL40MC4May the flow rise to meet youFrom the edge of this perch,
I strain my neck to watch a squirrel
dart, weightless, certain of the branches
that will reach out and catch her
with every flight, twist, and descent.

Is it true that I can find an
Adventure waiting just beyond view?

If I round the corner.
If I push the button.
If I make the call.
If I am patient.
If I lead.
If I trust the process.
If I take a step.
If I listen.
If I dare.
If I follow.
If I let this grow.
If I am brave.
If I am gentle.
If I put it out there.
If I stop forcing it.
If I let go.
If I pick up.
If I let come.
If I go forth.

A blackbird offers its weight
to a quietly accommodating branch.
I notice now
my body perched on this old horizon.

I will rest here a while,
inside this adventure,
once beyond view.
The next one takes care of itself.

The sauna’s heat and the sea’s shock—slow out-breath against sudden gasp. My nerves crackled right up to the edge, then dissolved into the oldest rhythm: stillness after motion, motion after stillness—no need to choose. Just take the step and let the flow rise to meet you.

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In a world obsessed with productivity, competition, and the “hero’s journey,” Natsu Miyashita’s The Forest of Wool and Steel shines a quietly revolutionary light on something altogether different.

This book is a balm for those who’ve felt out of step with society’s narrow definitions of success or crave a deeper, slower, more meaningful way of living.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore what I took as its key themes and why they feel so radical in today’s hustle culture.

Beyond “Finding Your Purpose”Society often frames purpose as something we discover “out there” – a preordained destiny waiting to be unlocked. But The Forest of Wool and Steel shows us something subtler: purpose isn’t discovered in that way; it’s woven through our responses to chance encounters.

The protagonist, Tomura, stumbles into piano tuning after a random school errand. What captivates him isn’t some grand mission but a moment of sensory awe:

“His whole body trembled. It was like hearing colour.”

This moment isn’t about the piano giving him purpose; it’s about how the piano helps reveal what was ready to resonate within him. The novel suggests that any object, experience, or moment can become a doorway to the forest if we’re listening.

High Sensitivity as an Ordinary Feature of HumanityUnlike narratives that treat sensitivity as a flaw or a superpower, Miyashita normalises it as simply part of being human. Tomura and his mentors experience the world with a depth of processing.

One tuner feels exhausted by public telephones, billboards, and the dirt on the road. He has learned to recover through a metronome’s rhythm.

Tomura often needs time to process decisions, rejecting opportunities before slowly embracing them – a familiar experience for many HSPs.

The book’s quiet power lies in its refusal to pathologise or glorify sensitivity. Instead, it shows how deep attunement – to sound, environment, and subtlety, is the source of growth and meaning.

The Question of SuccessTomura’s apprenticeship defies every expectation of the “hero’s journey.” There are no villains, no competitions, no triumphant climax. Instead, his growth is slow, iterative, and deeply personal:

How long until I can make that sound I heard on that first day?

The novel suggests that true mastery isn’t about conquering a craft but collaborating with it and understanding with more than the mind.

In a culture obsessed with optimisation and “levelling up,” the seasonal, non-linear approach we witness here feels quietly radical.

Outgrowing Hustle CultureThe book gently critiques society’s obsession with measurable success. When Tomura’s brother mocks his belief that a piano’s sound contains “the whole world,” it mirrors how modern culture dismisses wonder in favour of utility.

Yet the novel celebrates the “useless”, the wasteful, and the ordinary:

• Knowing the names of trees
• The taste of olive oil-drizzled eggs
• The way light glistens at dawn

These moments aren’t “productive,” but they’re where meaning lives. As Tomura reflects:

“It felt to me as though nothing was a waste, but at the same time, everything was on some level a colossal waste.”

This paradox is the heart of the book’s rebellion: what if the “small” things are the big things?

Why We Resist Slowness (And How to Stop)Critics call the book “slow” or “uneventful”, but that’s the point. Our discomfort with its pace reveals a deeper truth: we’ve been programmed to equate speed with value.

Tomura’s mentors teach him that people assume “brightness” is a synonym for better. But it’s not that simple. Similarly, the novel invites us to reflect on our relationship with depth and darkness:

• Are we afraid of stillness because it confronts us with ourselves?
• Do we mistake urgency for purpose?
• What if the “forest of wool and steel” (the unseen, sensory world) is where real creativity lives?

The answer isn’t to “do more” but to tune in.

Entrances to our Forest of Wool and SteelThe Forest of Wool and Steel isn’t a manifesto. It’s an invitation to notice, trust, and follow the intuitive sensitivities that take us beneath the noise and towards our sound.

As Tomura learns, there are entrances to the forest everywhere. The question is: can we slow down enough to notice them?

Over To YouHave you read the book? I’d love to hear your thoughts through the form below. Any responses to what I spoke about in this episode? Drop a comment or send me a message.

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When you receive help, do you perceive it as a transactional burden or as a gift?

How do you support the people, ideas, and art you admire? Do you feel disappointed when they go against your views, or do you willingly allow them the freedom to grow and evolve into whatever they might become, despite potential disagreements?

https://youtu.be/Ueyw7nSI6jcLast year, during a Haven Phrase Maze exploration around the prompt “The Money Changed Everything,” we discussed what makes a gift a gift. We asked whether, once given, the giver of a true gift can have any justifiable feelings about what is done with it. Or if a hope or expectation turns a gift into a conditional transaction. For example, when we give someone a present, we might expect them to use it in a particular way (and not to sell it on, exchange it, or give it to someone else, for an acceptable time at least).

What impact does this obligation have on the receiver? How does this relate to our engagement with artists, public figures, and one another?

Conditional vs Unconditional SupportAre we conditional patrons, offering support only when we agree with the other person? Or are we unconditional patrons, standing by them because we believe in their how and why, even when we disagree with the substance of their particular “what”?

This is on my mind because of a comment I received on a recent YouTube video. Someone explained why they disagreed with something I had said, which is fair enough. But I was struck by the intended sucker punch at the end of the comment…

“Unsubscribed.”That word was like a weapon; it felt like an attempt at punishment and behaviour modification. It focused on the surface rather than the source.

I know that subscribing isn’t a gift, but I couldn’t help but wonder if a similar mechanism exists in the distinction between conditional and unconditional gift-giving.

This is why I don’t tend to ask people directly to subscribe to my podcast, videos, or social media. I want it to be a choice, not a favour or transaction. I leave it for people to come and go as they like, with no pressure either way. If the time comes for us to go separate ways, that’s fine. It happens. We don’t owe one another anything. We’ve just had a nice ride along together for a bit.

Unconditional Patronage and DisagreementDo we tie our support for people to WHAT they think or HOW and WHY they reach their conclusions?

Think about the creators, artists, or figures you follow and admire. Do you find yourself withdrawing support when they say or do something you disagree with? What would it look like to support them unconditionally, focusing on their how and why rather than a particular what?

Over the years, I have come to support people whose WAY of thinking I respect and value. Most people I follow express views I disagree with occasionally (in some cases, a lot), but I sincerely appreciate the how and why behind their ideas. The process inspires me as much as, if not more than, the outcome. It’s only if their values (the drive of their why) change that I tend to consider whether or not I want to continue supporting them. It can happen.

There is a flip-side to this coin…

“Subscribed”It can feel validating when someone agrees with something I say and tells me they are subscribing or following me because of it. However, there is a subtle pull that can occur here. The connection between the statement they agreed with and their choice to subscribe creates a conditional presence. I might feel the pressure: “To keep them happy, I better keep saying similar things.” This can lead to a slippery slope toward mediocrity, self-censorship, and audience capture – forces we see in abundance today.

When we engage like this with people, we subtly encourage them to appeal to the crowd, avoid risks, and conform to expectations (to appease followers and provoke adversaries) rather than exploring new possibilities and navigating the nuanced space between our desire for a simplistic understanding and life’s complexities. This pattern also applies to our interpersonal relationships. We seek safety in our social bonds, and when we recognise that something pleases another person, we are more inclined to continue that behaviour.

Have you ever held back from expressing an opinion or taking a creative risk because you feared losing support or approval? How might unconditional support change that?

Unconditional Patronage and AccountabilityUnconditional patronage isn’t about unquestioningly supporting someone. It’s about making our support broader than agreement and focusing on a person’s character and approach rather than the particular conclusions they reach with any given topic, project, or situation.

What I admire in artists is how they dance with their creative spirit, allowing it to guide them to potentially unexpected places. It might lead them to create works that I don’t enjoy or take directions that miss the mark for me. But that’s great – if I trust how and why they do what they do, I’m not overly invested and demanding about the outcome. I may very well come to appreciate it over time. After all, just because I don’t “get it” now doesn’t mean I won’t understand it later. That’s par for the course when engaging with artists, visionaries, and prophets.

Unconditional patronage involves creating conditions that allow individuals to be themselves and grow from that space instead of casting a shadow over them and instilling fear about the consequences of making mistakes. It does not mean granting unrestricted freedom to act or speak as they wish, with the promise of our unwavering support regardless of their actions. Instead, it provides them a secure foundation to explore, create, and develop their ideas.

Do you follow anyone whose approach you admire, even if you don’t agree with everything they say? Or have you received unconditional patronage from someone else? What difference did it make to you?

“So that You Know…I’m Unsubscribing”While unsubscribing, unfollowing, and walking away are always valid options, announcing it raises questions about motivation. It is often a performative act. This puppetry is a way to assert control or signal disapproval, sometimes saying more about us than others. Are we punishing them for not meeting our expectations and saying what we want them to say (or reproducing the TV show, album, or book we already have a love for)?

How do you choose to do it when you need to step away? What do you value when it comes to leaving well, and how might your approach reflect those values?

The Space For CreativityWhen people create out of fear of losing support (or hoping to gain it), we risk stifling creativity. This dynamic doesn’t just limit individuals; it dampens the rich pool of creative potential within us as a species.

This pressure often shows up in subtle ways. For example, imagine receiving praise, a gift, or help from someone who makes it clear they’re supporting you because they liked something particular. While their intention might be positive, it can leave you feeling indebted, pulling you away from your creative voice and into a people-pleasing cycle.

Can you think of a time when you felt pressured to reciprocate something you didn’t ask for or when you felt obligated to meet someone else’s expectations? How did it make you feel, and how did it shape your choices?

I’d love to hear your response to this post. Drop a comment or send me a message if you have anything to share.

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People may fear giving credit because they worry it will diminish their status. But research shows the opposite is true: sharing credit actually boosts respect and trust. This paradox lies at the heart of status insecurity, a psychological trap that drives maladaptive behaviors and undermines relationships, careers, and personal wellbeing.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the vicious cycle of status insecurity, its impact on individuals and society, and how we can gently rebel against its allure. We’ll also consider the story of self-help author Mel Robbins refusing to acknowledge poet Cassie Phillips or the pre-existing “Let Them” movement in her recent book. Does this move reflect elements of status insecurity?

What Is Status Insecurity?Status insecurity arises when individuals feel their social standing is unstable or at risk. This can stem from comparisons with others, societal pressures, or personal failures. According to research by Katherine Hoff, Derek Rucker, and Adam Galinsky, status insecurity triggers a self-perpetuating cycle:

1. Status Insecurity: Doubts about one’s social rank or standing.
2. Compensatory Consumption: Buying luxury goods or status symbols to “prove” worth.
3. Financial Strain: Overspending leads to stress and anxiety.
4. Reinforced Status Insecurity: Financial and emotional strain further undermines self-worth.
5. Cycle Repeats: The individual doubles down on status-seeking behaviors, worsening the cycle.

This cycle is particularly prevalent in consumer-driven cultures, where status is often equated with material wealth and individual achievement.

The Reluctance to Share CreditStatus insecurity is fueled by the fear that acknowledging others’ contributions will diminish one’s own standing. Yet, studies show that sharing credit increases respect and trust. As Adam Grant shared on Instagram:

“Sharing credit doesn’t detract from your success. It displays your character. 17 studies show that when people feel insecure, they hesitate to celebrate others—and fail to earn respect.”

Ironically, withholding credit can damage credibility over time. When individuals prioritise image over integrity, they risk eroding trust and undermining their long-term reputation.

The Mel Robbins Controversy: A Case StudyThe recent controversy involving self-help author Mel Robbins and the “Let Them Theory” may illustrate the dangers of status insecurity. Robbins presented the “Let Them Theory” as her own idea, omitting any acknowledgement to Cassie Phillips, whose viral “Let Them” poem and tattoo movement led to Robbins’ discovery.

This decision may have stemmed from the pressure to maintain her status as an innovative thought leader in a competitive industry that celebrates stories of “self-made” figures. Yet, as the truth has emerged, her credibility has been questioned, with many followers expressing disappointed and even feelings of betrayal.

Robbins’ experience is a cautionary tale: prioritising status over transparency doesn’t go down well in the long run. Honesty about the theory’s origins could have enhanced her reputation, demonstrating humility and collaboration—qualities audiences value.

The Broader Implications of Status InsecurityOn Individuals: It leads to stress, anxiety, burnout, and self-sabotaging behaviors like overworking or people-pleasing.

On Relationships: It fosters competition, jealousy, and transactional interactions, making genuine connections harder to form.

I once knew someone trapped in this mindset. Every conversation turned into an opportunity to boast about their achievements and experiences. Over time, the group grew exasperated, and this person was inadvertently left out of the proverbial weekend brunch invitation. Their presence created tension and unease because they believed that name-dropping, one-upping, and status-signalling were ways to impress rather than frustrate us.

Breaking the Cycle: Gently Rebellious AlternativesWe can avoid the dangers of status insecurity by recognising that the harder we fight for it, the worse it gets. To address it, we might adopt practices that prioritise collaboration, authenticity, and collective well-being…

1. Give Credit: Acknowledge others’ contributions. This doesn’t diminish your worth—it enhances trust and respect.
2. Change the Conversation: Focus on non-status topics like hobbies, values, and the stuff that you’re enjoying. This can strengthen relationships, reduce unhealthy comparison, and foster collaboration potential.
3. Celebrate Collective Success: Shift the focus from individual achievements to team or community accomplishments.
4. Define Success on Your Own Terms: Reflect on what truly brings you fulfillment, beyond societal expectations.

Reshaping Our Definition of SuccessStatus insecurity is a symptom of a culture that equates worth with external validation. By redefining success in terms of collective well-being, collaboration, and personal fulfillment, we can break free from this vicious cycle.

The Mel Robbins controversy serves as a reminder: prioritising image over integrity can backfire, while honesty and humility build lasting trust. How might we challenge the systems that perpetuate status insecurity and create a culture for all of us?

Over to YouHave you ever felt the pressure to prove your worth or status (or been around someone who was caught in this way of thinking)? How did it affect you? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Drop a comment or send a message.

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I know I’m not the only one disturbed by the scenes of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance publicly dressing down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.

I was saddened and sickened by the bullying behaviour of those entrusted to know and be a whole lot better than that. The lack of empathy, the attempts to humiliate and intimidate, and the smirking childish arrogance was embarrassing to witness. Especially from individuals holding the highest positions of political leadership and responsibility.

It presents us with a question. Do we accept it? Does it reflect the world we want to create together?

https://youtu.be/lKk-Fp_nqaEThe Ripple Effect of BullyingThis kind of bullying affects not only its direct targets but also those who witness it. Many people felt the sting of observing that incident for various reasons. So, how ought we respond when we see and hear things like this, which might have particular personal resonance for those who have been on the receiving end of power abuses themselves?

Growing up, I was taught that bullies tend to operate from a place of insecurity. They mask their inferiority with a facade of superiority. The hypocrisy in the accusations about disrespect struck me. It’s a classic charge from someone who feels insecure.

They questioned Zelensky’s clothes—a choice he has openly described as a show of solidarity with fellow Ukrainians during wartime. In doing so, they displayed ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the traumatic reality his country had thrust upon it from an invading force.

Bullies don’t respect the humanity of others. They smirk, berate, and belittle rather than empathise, understand, and connect.

Encountering BullyingMany of us have encountered or witnessed bullying in different areas of life—a boss who publicly humiliates or undermines an employee, someone who sabotages others by withholding critical information or setting them up for failure, or a family member who uses emotional blackmail or guilt to coerce and manipulate.

The dynamics are strikingly similar. A pathological need to dominate, a pattern of intentionally misrepresenting someone’s words, obsessively pulling apart everything someone does, and active enjoyment from causing a person harm or distress.

Arrogance or ConfidenceA bully arrogantly attempts to humiliate and intimidate. This is not a show of strength but a reflection of deep-seated insecurity and weakness.

This reflects a distinction we might make between arrogance and confidence. Arrogance, as I see it, is insecurity dressed up as superiority. It’s the need to dominate, to belittle, and to control. Confidence, on the other hand, is secure in who it is and the path it’s on. It doesn’t need to tear others down to feel strong.

Responding To The Quiet RageThis incident stirred a quiet rage within me. Something was disturbing about watching a leader like Zelensky, who had shown immense courage and grace in the face of Russia’s invasion, be treated with such disdain and disrespect.

So, what do we do when we witness events like this? It’s easy to get caught up in the emotion and stay there. But it’s more important to pause, process, and channel those feelings into constructive actions.

• Acknowledge Your Emotions: Feeling angry, sad, or disappointed is okay. Express the energy of those feelings in non-destructive ways—scream across the sea if you need to, take it out on a drum kit, exercise your body, or throw something.
• Connect with Others: Seek out people who share your values and can offer emotional support. Temporary venting and ranting with people you trust can provide healing catharsis, as long as everyone is comfortable with it!
• Turn Pain into Active Hope: I spoke with Cindy Gale, who shared a framework for processing thoughts and feelings in a changing world. The four stages—gratitude, Honouring Our Pain, Seeing with New Eyes, and Going Forth—can guide us toward constructive action.

The World We CreateThis incident is not just about politics; it’s about human behaviour and the world we create through what we tolerate, amplify, and emulate. What kind of example do we want to set, promote, and adhere to?

Strong and healthy leadership protects the weakest, respects differences, and fosters a spirit of collaboration. It listens and learns, communicates with clarity and honesty, and is guided by foundational collective principles that transcend ego, pride, and selfish ambition. We should demand these qualities from our leaders in every walk of life as we strive to embody them for ourselves.

A Call for MaturityAs I reflected on this situation earlier, an email from Sage Justice with the subject Maturity landed in my inbox. She shared an excerpt from a poem in her Freedom Book One. The poem beautifully captures the foundations from which this situation has arisen.

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We just finished reading Wintering by Katherine May in the book club, and it has prompted me to reflect on the parallels between the book’s themes and the foundational values underlying ​The Return to Serenity Island​.

https://youtu.be/NoGFVIuAPJkKatherine May describes Wintering as “a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.”

We’ve all experienced these times in life, but wintering is a quiet act of defiance in a world that never stops.

It is an example of gentle rebellion in the face of the perpetual demand to be productive and useful. It’s choosing rest over empty hustle, care over competition, and creativity over endless productivity.

May suggests that we often treat these winters as something to hide or ignore. However, embracing them is “a radical act—choosing to slow down, letting spare time expand, and getting enough rest. If you shed this skin, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel raw. But if you don’t, the old skin will harden around you.”

This resonates deeply with what we do in ​The Return to Serenity Island.​

What Is Serenity Island?Serenity Island is a slow and immersive experience, and perfect for those navigating, preparing for, or healing from a season of wintering. Whether you’re in the aftermath of a crisis, have identified a gradual drift in a part of your life, or you simply feel the burden of life’s demands on your shoulders, the course offers a space to pause, reflect, and reconnect with the things that matter.

You are invited to…Rest and listen: Discover tools to help you embrace stillness and notice the unexpected wisdom waiting in the spaces between.

Illuminate the path: as the snow falls, it brightens the world engulfed in the darkness of short winter days. Serenity Island helps you find your footing more clearly and softens the harsh edges of life.

Rediscover your voice: As May reminds us, despite beliefs entrenched by popular culture, to view singing as something for the talented is to misunderstand it as a natural and necessary part of human expression. On Serenity Island, you will reclaim your sound and find the courage to explore your voice, regardless of what anyone else thinks of it.

Move with the seasons: Life isn’t linear, and neither is healing. With maps and imagination, Serenity Island helps you embrace a cyclical and three-dimensional understanding of growth.

What You’ll Find on Serenity IslandWintering is not just about survival—it’s about transformation and enduring growth. May writes, “Every time we winter, we develop a new knowledge about how to go back into the world.”

On Serenity Island, you will:

• Gain clarity on what matters most and how YOU want to approach this next season of life. Identify and gently release the things you no longer want to spend your finite resources (resilience, energy, time) on.
• Anchor in the present by embracing and enjoying life’s imperfect and bittersweet endings, letting go of perfect hero’s journeys and wishful thinking.
• Slow down, rest, and be yourself alongside others in the folded-page moments of our picnic sessions, where there is no pressure to perform or deliver.
• Build your toolkit for life by using the course templates and ideas. Develop your own practices, rituals, and metaphors to carry you through future seasons.

Ready to Join Me on Serenity Island?Maybe you’re in a Wintering season like this and would like some company as you navigate it. Or perhaps you want to be more prepared to embrace your next winter when it arrives. If so, I invite you to join The Return to Serenity Island. This course is designed to meet you where you are, offering a space to explore, reconnect, and grow from the inside-out.

Sign up for The Return To Serenity Island

“I would encourage everyone to engage with this fantastic experience. The course is a first-class prescription for wellbeing” – T.W.

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In our February Book Club, we met to discuss ‘Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times‘ by Katherine May. Here are my notes on the book.

Book NotesKatherine May describes “Wintering” as “a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.” Through a sudden crisis, the loss of something or someone, or a gradual drift, Wintering is about allowing rest and retreat to come. Rather than fighting it, pretending it isn’t happening, or wishing it away, Wintering is an acknowledgement that we can actively partner with the season and find healing, not despite it, but within it. “After all, you apply ice to a joint after an awkward fall. Why not do the same to a life?”

September – Indian Summer* We treat each winter as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored * We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how * Wintering is a moment when you need to shed a skin. This is a radical act – choosing to slow down, letting spare time expand, and getting enough rest. If you shed this skin, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel raw. But if you don’t, the old skin will harden around you. * What are some of the default ways we resist and fight this process?

October Making Ready* The problem with doing everything is it ends up feeling like nothing. It’s a haze of frantic activity, with all the meaning sheared away. * Katherine talks about “cooking Autumn into the house” after being signed off from work with severe abdominal pain. The preparation of food provides anchors in space and time * Preparing for Winter before it is with us – In Finland, the winter arrives suddenly, and you don’t mess with it (having the wardrobe stowed away for when it comes) * Daily routines keep us on an even keel * All this time is an unfathomable luxury, and I’m struck by the uncomfortable feeling that I’m enjoying it a little too much * Can I justify a walk when everyone else is doubling up to cover my job? The things that make us well are sources of guilt and shame (rest and healing are perceived as luxuries)

Hot Water* Katherine decided to cancel her big 40th birthday trip to Iceland – she didn’t think she was physically strong or steady enough. But the biggest fear was judgement – are you even allowed to go on holiday when you’re signed off from work? What would people think if they found out? But the doctor gave a YOLO permission slip and told her to go * In moments of helplessness, I always seem to travel north. I find I can think straight, the air feels clean and uncluttered * “In sauna” – Hanne is not talking about a building, she’s talking about a state of being. For Finns, sauna is more than having a sauna, it’s a cornerstone around which life is built – birth, death, deep conversations, and a ritual cleansing of body, mind, and soul

Ghost Stories* Halloween represents an invitation on the calendar, to acknowledge the present absences and absent presence of those we have lost * It is also where we can occupy the liminal space between worlds, thoughts and feelings – where fear and delight become inseparable, life and death, inside and outside

NovemberMetamorphosis* Amid the transformation of winter – the unwelcome change – is an abundance of life * We meet Shelly, who tells her story of recovering from life-threatening bacterial meningitis – it’s not a heroic tale of triumph over illness, there is no path or methodology, she just waited it out and carried on with life…she didn’t witness it, she didn’t have to look at her daughter in a coma (it was not her wintering – that came later when she was in a state of sofa surfing limbo after her parents moved to America and her relationship broke down) – she began a new creative project that on reflection represented a process of her own healing and regrowth * The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it – you can’t have one without the other

Slumber* Winter is a season that invites me to rest well and feel restored, when I am allowed to retreat and be quietly separate * Waking up in the middle of the night, the precariousness of my life bites me hard. Its teeth in my gut. I am nothing. I am no one. I have failed. * We should sometimes be grateful for the solitudes of night, of a winter. They save us from displaying our worst selves to the waking world * Roger Erkich argues that, before the industrial revolution, it was normal to divide the night into two periods of sleep: first (dead) sleep and second sleep with the “watch” in between, a borderland space between wake and sleep, with dreamlike conversations and slow meandering connection * Sleep is not a dead space, but a doorway to a different kind of consciousness – one that is reflective and restorative, full of tangential thought and unexpected insights * My midnight terrors vanish when I turn insomnia into a watch: a claimed, sacred space in which I have nothing to do but contemplate

DecemberLight* Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is most prevalent in countries like the UK, where the changing seasons bring about marked differences in light exposure across the year * Saint Lucy didn’t cure me. I didn’t dance back up the aisle, having miraculously found my way. But she brought a little light. Just enough to see by.

Midwinter* The winter solstace at Stonehenge brings an almost bewildering mix of cultures…we’re interlopers here but I’m not sure what interloper means in this context…the crowd is too diverse for us to stand out * “We have turned the year” * I find that I’m drawn to moments like this: an uplift in the monotonous progress of the year, and a way to mark the movement to the next phase * Druids follow the eight-fold Wheel of the Year, which is a useful period of time…we have something to do every six weeks. It creates a pattern through the year. In mainstream culture we have Christmas and maybe a summer holiday, which leaves far too long between festivals * This expresses a craving many of us will recognise – rituals that anchor us in time * The loose communities that we find in spiritual or relivious gatherings were once entirely ordinary to us, but now it seems like it is more radical to join them. Congregations are elastic, stretching to take in all kinds of people, and bringing up unexpected perspectives and insights. We need them now more than ever. * If we resist the instinct to endure those darkest moments alone, we might even make the opportunity to share the burden, and to let a little light in

Epiphany* Some winters are gradual. Some winters creep up on us so slowly that they have infiltrated every part of our lives before we truly feel them. * Happiness is our potential, the product of a mind that’s allowed to think as it needs to, that has enough of what it requires, that is free of the terrible weight of bullying and humiliation. As children we tolerate working conditions that we’d find intolerable as adults: the constant interrogation of our attainment to a hostile audience, the motivation by threat instead of encouragement (and big threats too: if you don’t do this, you’ll ruin your whole future life) * You’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us. It’s an exchange of gifts in which nobody loses out. * I make a new ritual for the Christmas period this year, in those twelve days that I always struggle to fill meaningfully. It starts at the solstice and ends on New Year’s Day

JanuaryDarkness* There is nothing showy about the northern lights, nothing obvious or demanding. They hide from you at first, and then they whisper to you. * The Sámi are a people whose territory extends across the north of the peninsula where Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia now join, although they have continuously inhabited it for close to ten millennia * I simply had no defence against the changes that were happening in my life. I was missing my antlers. I had skittered over to a different country to convince myself that I could carry on just as normal, but instead I only saw my own desperation, mirrored in the ice. But it was there, too, that I came to a kind of acceptance: of my own limitations, and of the future that lay before me. * I have learned to walk at these moments. I have learned to walk until the heat goes out of it.

Hunger* Wherever we want to denote the hunger of the cold season, we turn to wolves. They are the enemy we love to hate, offering us a glimpse of feral intelligence. In the wolf we are offered a mirror of ourselves as we might be, without the comforts and constraints of civilisation. * Life never does quite offer us those simple happy endings. Marianne’s story has a bittersweet ending. She put her head down and gradually chipped away at her debt, and was able to pay it off after three years, following an unexpected windfall. But the years of worry have taken their toll on her mental health, and now, after several missteps and a redundancy, she has accepted a pay cut to get a simpler job, which is as much as she can cope with…Marianne may not be able to see immediate relief in her future, but to me, she has achieved something extraordinary, which is to be able to talk about her wolfish leanings without feeling shame. And nor should she. * Perhaps the wolf is such an enduring motif of hunger because we see in them a reflection of our own selves in lean times. In winter, those hungers become especially fierce.

February Snow* A snow day is a wild day, a spontaneous holiday when all the tables are turned * The white witch in Narnia carries a suggestion of Christmas: the sweets and food, the promise of gifts, but also the way that it forces children to dance with their own greed for a season, encouraged to desire worldly goods, but also scolded for wanting them too much, and with too much alacrity * She is the adult half of Christmas, perceived through a child’s eyes, that slightly bitter edge which they can’t help but notice as the grown-ups lecture them on the need to modify their demands * In children’s literature, snowfall is the trigger for tables to turn. It creates a moment in which the usual adult protectors are easily incapacitated, and introduces a world in which children are agile and wild enough to survive. * The snow was doing nothing now, except making our lives more difficult. “I want the snow to end”, said Bert. “Yes”, I said. “A couple of days was plenty.” * Päivi says of life back in Hamina (Finland), “When the snow comes, it’s actually a bit of a relief at first. With the short days, everything is so dark. And then snow falls, and it’s like someone’s turned on the lights.” * My tendency to think of snow as a bit of light relief is a privilage. To those who live with it, snow is plain hard work

Cold Water* Gazing back at the water, I had the urge to do it all over again, to go back and exist in those few, crystalline secons in the intense cold * For Dorte, who received a diagnosis of bipolar, it was the first time someone had ever said to her: you need to live a life that you can cope with, not the one that other people want. Just do one thing a day. No more than two social events in a week. Her doctor said, “This isn’t about you getting fixed…it’s about you living the best life you can with the parameters that you have”. She was free from the decade-long wait for the medication to mend her. The pivotal change came when she stopped believing it could. * When I’m in the water, I’m just laughing and laughing. All my automatic thoughts switch off, and I’m just in the water. * We are completely enchanted by our own bravery, by the way that we’ve stepped out of the everyday world and into this alternative space. The cold sea, hovering between 5 and 6 degrees Celcius. * I, who generally prefer to do everything alone if I can possibly help it, came to see how this was only made possible by a contract between us. The fear of stepping into the water – of even getting to the beach in the first place – never subsided, but having a partner in crime made it harder to avoid.

MarchThis part opens with a reflection on Aesop’s fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper – During the summer, the ants diligently gather and store food for the winter, while the grasshopper spends his time singing and playing, believing there’s no need to worry about the future. When winter arrives, the grasshopper, starving and cold, begs the ants for food. The ants, having prepared for the harsh season, rebuke him for his laziness and refuse to share, teaching a lesson about the importance of hard work, planning, and responsibility.

Survival* The truth is, we all have ant years and grasshopper years; years when we are able to prepare and save, and years where we need a little extra help. * Our true flaw lies not in failing to store up enough resources to cope with the grasshopper years, but in believing that each grasshopper year is an anomaly, visited only on us, due to our unique human failings * When you think about bees, don’t treat them as individuals. A colony of bees is a single superorganism. They act as one. * In a mere slip of the pen, I could fall into the tired old trope: the bees are models of industry. Be more like the bees. * Mussolini was fond of evoking the beehive to describe the ideal functioning of Fascism * Let us not aspire to be like ants and bees. Humans are not eusocial; we are not nameless units in a superorganism, mere cells that are expendable when we aave reached the end of our useful lives. * We are not consistently useful to the world at large. Some of us make highly visible, elaborate contributions to the whole; some of us are part of the ticking mechanics of the world, the incremental wealth of small gestures * Usefulness, in itself, is a useless concept when it comes to humans. I don’t think we were ever meant to think about others in terms of their use to us. We channel our adoration towards the most helpless citizens of all – babies and children – for reasons that have nothing to do with their future utility. We flourish on caring, on doling out love. It’s how we thrive. Our winters are social glue.

Song* The works of winter are more intricate than the simple storing up of supplies, which are then run down until the summer replenishes them. * Winter is a time for the quiet arts of making * A robin sings in winter because it can, and it wants the world – or at least the female robins – to know it. But he is also practicing for happier times. * My voice had waned alongside my confidence, and asserting it again was like asserting my rightful part in the adult world. I was gabbling out my words because I felt I had to get them in before I was interrupted * Women’s voices are always contested in a way that men’s never are. If we speak too softly, we are treated as gentle mice, if we raise our voices to be heard, we are shrill * Within four lessons, I had remapped my voice, bringing it lower and louder and softer and slower. * In twenty-first-century Britain, we’ve linked singing with talent, and we’ve got that fundamentally wrong. The right to sing is an absolute, regardless of how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must.

Epilogue* Change will not stop happening. The only part we can control is our response * The subtext of the endless Facebook memes with unsolicited advice on how to cope with a crisis (hang on in there! you got this! you are stronger than you know!) is clear: misery is not an option. While we may no longer see depression as a failure, we expect you to spin it into something meaningful pretty quick…This is the opposite of caring. * I am beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured. If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt. * At its base, this is not a book about beauty, but about reality. It is about noticing what’s going on, and living it. That’s what the natural world does: it carries on surviving. Not just once in the hope it will one day get things right once and for all. It winters in cycles, again and again, forever and ever. * To get better at wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. To imagine our lives as cylical rather than linear. * Every time we winter, we develop a new knowledge about how to go back into the world. You know, we learn about our tastes and preferences. We learn about what makes us happy.

What Did You Think of Wintering?Drop your thoughts below and I will use it for our community review. Join the conversation in our forum and watch the replay of our Zoom discussion.

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Have you ever been told to come out of your shell? It’s a phrase many of us have heard, especially if we’re introverted, sensitive, or reflective by nature. But what if this idea misunderstands the role of a shell? What if, instead of seeing it as a limitation, we saw it as a space of protection, growth, and creativity?

In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we will explore the idea of shells—not as barriers to break free from but as integral parts of who we are. Whether you’re an introvert, a highly sensitive person, or someone in a season of healing, your shell might just be one of your greatest strengths.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYb2V3ngrh0&Misunderstanding The Shell’s PurposeGrowing up, I heard the phrase “come out of your shell” a lot. Teachers used it in reports and at parents’ evenings, describing me as shy, reserved, and needing to be more outgoing. It was a story I absorbed about myself: that being quiet or cautious was something to overcome.

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve seen my shell differently. It’s not a cage—it’s a sanctuary and a studio. Where I retreat to process, create, and recharge. It’s where I feel connected to myself and what matters most. And I’m not alone. For many of us, our shells are vital tools for navigating the world in a way that feels true to who we are.

The issue with the phrase “come out of your shell” is that it assumes being quiet, sensitive, or introverted is a problem that needs fixing. It subtly implies that we must conform to the extrovert ideal—seeing loud, visible, and gregarious as the barometer of normality, against which behaviour is judged.

But what if your shell isn’t hindering you? What if it’s enabling you to thrive? Or at least it has the potential to if you see it as a source of strength rather than a flaw.

Shells in Nature: A Metaphor for GrowthNature offers us countless examples of shells, each with different roles and characteristics. Let’s explore a few and see how they might reflect our own experiences:

The EggEggshells are temporary. They protect us during vulnerable stages of growth or transformation, like a baby bird developing the strength to face the world. An eggshell might represent a period of healing, learning, or self-discovery for us. It’s a space where we process experiences, feel safe, and prepare. Eggshells aren’t meant to last forever, but hatching can’t be rushed or forced. When we’re ready, they crack naturally, and we emerge.

The TurtleUnlike an eggshell, a turtle’s shell is permanent. It’s not just a home—it’s part of the turtle’s identity. And it’s a tool to help them dig. Turtles don’t leave their shells; they carry them wherever they go. For introverts or highly sensitive people, this might resonate deeply. Your shell isn’t something to come out of—it’s a sanctuary and a tool that allows you to navigate life on your terms.

The Hermit CrabHermit crabs don’t grow their own shells—they find new ones as they grow. This symbolises adaptation and evolution. For us, it might represent a process of ongoing self-discovery. We might let go of old beliefs, communities, or creative expressions and try on new ones that fit who we’re becoming.

The SnailSnails carry spiral shells that grow with them over time. Each new layer represents a stage of growth. This might resonate with artists, writers, or anyone who sees their life as a slow, steady journey of self-expansion. The shell isn’t a barrier—it’s a space of creativity and transformation and their body of work.

The OysterOysters transform irritants—like grains of sand—into pearls. Their shells are hard and protective but also create beauty from adversity. This might symbolise turning pain or challenges into art, wisdom, or connection.

The ClamClams have two-part shells that open and close in response to their environment. This represents the balance between connection and solitude. Like clams, we can choose when to open up and when to retreat, depending on our needs.

The NautilusThe nautilus has a spiraling shell with chambers that it seals off as it grows. Each chamber represents a chapter of its life. For us, this might symbolise how our past experiences contribute to who we are today. Breaking out of this shell would mean losing touch with everything that has shaped us.

The Shell Is a Source of StrengthThe truth is, we don’t need people to “come out of their shell”. For many of us, our shells are essential. They’re where we prepare, play, create, and connect. They’re spaces of protection, creativity, and transformation.

So, let’s stop seeing shells as limitations. Instead, let’s celebrate them as the incredible tools they are. After all, some of the most beautiful things grow inside shells—pearls, art, wisdom, and even ourselves.

Let’s Explore Your Shell TogetherIf this feels alive for you and you’d like a sounding board to bounce ideas off, I’d love to invite you to book a Pick The Lock call with me. Together, we can explore the characteristics of your particular shell—how it protects you, what it enables for you, and how you can work with it to make life feel more aligned with your natural needs and preferences.

Maybe you’ve never thought about things this way before, and you’d like to see if this metaphor resonates as you reframe your story. Sessions are choose-your-own-price because I believe coaching should be accessible to everyone. Find a time that works for you.

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We’ve all heard the phrase, “the end justifies the means.” But in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I want to turn it inside out and explore this idea from another angle. What if, for some people, focusing solely on the outcome as the ultimate goal can lead to a dissatisfying and alienating approach to life?

This question struck me as I emerged from a week-long rabbit hole. In the previous episode, I talked about unexpectedly diving into research about a self-help influencer and the questionable details surrounding their latest book. At first glance, it might have seemed like a distraction—a detour from what I “should” have been doing.

When I sense myself going off the deep end, it’s almost like slow motion. I can feel it happening but there’s not much I can do to stop it. Once something stirs inside me at a deep level. So, despite my logical brain yelling, “Andy, no! You don’t have time for this. Stop. Close that webpage. Put your phone away!” I find myself slipping into the rabbit hole anyway. “OK”, rational brain continues. “See you in a week or so? Remember to eat! Bye.”

The Path is The InspirationThis has happened many times over the years. There’s often a nagging voice of judgment, telling me it’s a waste of time, that I’m being pulled in a million directions. But recently, I’ve noticed a shift. Over the past two or three years, I’ve started to see these moments differently. Instead of dismissing them as irrelevant distractions, I’ve begun to ask new questions that help me stay focused. It’s partly about mindset and my relationship with the subject, but it’s also about the spirit I bring into the rabbit hole. And that’s where the idea of “the means justify the end” emerges.

For me, it’s about trusting the process. I don’t always know where I’ll end up, but I know it will be okay because of how I choose to travel there.

Experimental vs. Conceptual ApproachesThis reminds me of economist David Galenson’s research on creativity, which I first encountered through my friend Kendra Patterson. She highlighted the distinction between experimental and conceptual innovators in a podcast about late bloomers.

As William Landay writes in his article Experimental Writers vs. Conceptual Writers:
“Experimental innovators are seekers. They’re characterized by persistent uncertainty about their methods and goals. They’re often dissatisfied with their current work but have only vague ideas about how to improve it. This dissatisfaction drives them to experiment, moving tentatively toward imperfectly perceived objectives. No matter how much progress they make, they rarely consider their work a complete success.

In contrast, conceptual innovators are finders. They’re marked by certainty about their methods, goals, or both. This clarity allows them to work methodically toward their objectives, often feeling they’ve fully realized their vision in a particular work.”

For conceptual innovators, the end justifies the means. But for experimental innovators, the means justify the end. It’s more about the journey than the destination. The process itself brings the “end” into focus, even if it doesn’t feel complete. It’s a waypoint on a road to nowhere, anywhere, and everywhere.

Are You an Experimental Type?When I first heard about this distinction at the end of 2020, it sparked something in me. I recognised myself in the descriptions of experimental creativity. My projects never turn out as I expect them to, and I feel restricted by SMART goals or rigid outcomes that demand a fixed course of action.

Around the same time, I created The Return to Serenity Island, a project that became a way for me to creatively process this discovery and reshape my relationship with goal setting and personal growth. It was a departure from the “start with the end in mind” paradigm I’d been taught in coaching courses—an approach that assumes you’ll drift, waste time, and fail unless you know exactly where you’re going and take consistent action to get there.

It was liberating to realise that while this approach works for many, it’s not universal. Some of us grow and succeed inductively, connecting dots as we go. We end up in places we could never have conceptualised at the start. I’ve often reached the end of a project and thought, “I would never have dreamed I’d end up here.” And if I’d stuck with my original idea, I would have missed so much of the potential that emerged along the way.

Late BloomingKendra wrote, “Part of the struggle for experimental creatives is that our culture is skewed toward a preference for the conceptual style. We don’t like working without a plan or appreciating products that emerge slowly and unpredictably. Experimental creatives thrive in uncertainty and ambiguity—conditions that scare the crap out of us collectively as a culture. In such an unwelcoming environment, it’s not uncommon for experimental creatives to struggle for years, if not decades, to develop their voice and feel confident in their process. If this is you, keep going! Your best work lies ahead.”

This experimental approach also feels fundamentally different from the hero’s journey narratives we’re often fed, which are rooted in a quest for a specific purpose or destiny. In the conceptual sense, purpose is a pre-existing puzzle we try to assemble. In the experimental sense, purpose is the glue we use to build a mosaic, piece by piece.

As Galenson notes, “Experimental innovators’ achievements usually depend on gradual improvements in their understanding and mastery. Their major contributions often emerge late in their careers. Conceptual innovations, on the other hand, depend on new ideas and typically occur early in a creator’s life.”

Maps, Islands, and an Experimental PlaygroundThe Return to Serenity Island is the course I created to re-imagine goals through an experimental lens. It’s an alternative to traditional, conceptual goal-setting models. The project itself felt like an example of my experimental self taking the reins. It evolved into a narrative-driven experience with soundscapes, inviting participants to reconnect with their childlike spirit and navigate the adult fog to find their creative core.

I’m currently launching our Spring Voyage back to Serenity Island. It’s designed to help you find calm, clarity, and inspiration—to make things work for who and how you are, not who you’ve been told you ought to be.

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a video essay about influencer culture, asking where self-help guru Mel Robbins really discovered the idea for her latest book, The Let Them Theory.

Note, as this situation has evolved, I have added more videos to document it. They are available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ_xip3l1io&https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryQBcUuN8pk&I fell into this rabbit hole after seeing a post on Threads about an article by Sage Justice. This questioned whether Mel Robbins had appropriated the “Let Them Theory” from a movement started by a poet named Cassie Phillips.

It caught my attention because several friends and clients had mentioned the book recently. So, on a quest for the truth, I dug beneath the surface to see whether the claims had any weight. It didn’t take long for me to unearth some concerning holes at the heart of Mel’ s Let Them Theory origin story.

Where THIS “Let Them” Moment AroseTowards the end of 2022, a poem by Cassie Phillips ignited a viral movement among individuals sharing it, discussing their experiences, and posting photographs of their tattoos. On 19th May 2023, Mel Robbins released a video sharing she had just heard about the Let Them Theory. The popularity of this short video revealed a market for the idea. And by the end of 2024, she release her book called The Let Them Theory through Hay House.

No Mention of The Let Them MovementRobbins refuses to acknowledge Cassie, the poem, or the ongoing movement within the book. When asked by The Guardian about this omission, she doubled down, implying it is ancient wisdom. She has also been using media appearances to reinforce the story that individuals began getting tattoos after reading her book. But, as I demonstrate see in my video, social media was full of Let Them tattoos long before Mel Robbins “discovered” the Let Them Theory.

The two articles by Sage Justice: Mel Robbins and Plagiarism and Can Mel Robbins Trademark Your Words? provide an in-depth look at the origins of the “Let Them” idea. They include an interview with Cassie Phillips and social media evidence showing that the movement was already gaining traction in 2022—long before Robbins entered the picture.

A Questionable Origin StoryWhat’s particularly troubling is the narrative Robbins has constructed around the theory. She retroactively claims to have discovered it at her son’s prom in May 2023, but her original video about the theory was posted the day before the prom. This inconsistency and the lack of credit given to Phillips raise red flags about the authenticity of Robbins’ story. This story has been conceived, practiced, and performed at almost every appearance she has made on prominent platforms with highly influential figures.

As I fell deeper into this rabbit hole, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of quiet outrage. It’s one thing to be inspired by someone else’s work and join forces with a movement. But it’s another to appropriate and profit from it, knowing the size of your following and the powerful influence of your contacts will overpower the place of founder.

I know people who have found value in Robbins’ posts over the years. I don’t want to diminish those experiences. However, it feels important to bring awareness so we can all make informed decisions about engaging with this book and its supporting materials.

I am genuinely concerned about the broader implications of this story. It sets a dangerous precedent when influential platforms and figures like The Today Show, Oprah, Simon Sinek, and Kelly Clarkson don’t questions about the validity of certain claims.

Why Did Mel Robbins Not Mention The Let Them Movement?So, why has Mel Robbins altered this timeline? Why has she chosen to erase the fertile ground that led to the movement from which she is now profiting? Unfortunately, the answer may lie in the question itself. The allure of money and influence and the hope for a free ride when it comes to accountability and push-back. Which is why as readers (and those who influencers aim to influence), we must take perfectly performed hero’s journey narratives with a pinch of salt and ask questions to help our favourite creators remain honest and humble.

This story is not just about Mel Robbins or Cassie Phillips—it’s about the importance of integrity, credit, and fairness in the world of ideas. I encourage you to watch the video if possible to examine the evidence more closely. I’d love to hear what you make of it!

Check out the video description for a full list of resources and references.

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The randomiser wheel picked “Power in persistence”. I’m currently using a tool to select phrases for my daily journal practice. They are all associated with the theme of Strength.

Persistence has power—it can contribute to a better world, but it can also do the opposite, extracting and coercing people without consent.

I receive countless unsolicited emails from people pitching podcast appearances, guest posts, and products/services. Many seem to believe persistence is about repeating a request until the subject gives in. If I don’t respond, follow-ups come: “Just bumping this to the top of your inbox,” “A quick nudge,” or “I know you’re busy, so here’s a reminder.” These messages are the noise driven by automated systems and broad statistics about human behaviour.

A Strange RequestThe mentality behind this concerns me—not just the impersonal nature but the transactional approach. Someone wants something from me and assumes persistence will wear me down. That’s not consent; it’s coercion.

One email stood out. A guest pitch came with flattery about my podcast. Despite knowing it was a mass email, I liked their premise, so I replied, explaining I only consider unsolicited guests after following them for a while to ensure it’s a good fit. Their response? A curt request for details about my listener numbers and marketing plans so they could decide if appearing on my podcast was worth their time. It was baffling. The inconsistency in their charade was almost refreshing—they said the quiet part out loud. They had no idea who I was.

When Persistence Undermines ConsentThis kind of persistence—indiscriminate, impersonal, and extractive—is a problem. It interprets silence or rejection as a challenge to overcome, undermining our understanding of consent. Persistence works in marketing at scale; exposure breeds familiarity. But at a personal level, it’s a slippery slope.

Yet persistence is also vital to healthy relationships. In friendships, it’s about consistently showing up, remembering, and caring—contributing rather than extracting. Genuine persistence flips the dynamic. For example, if someone persistently offers help, asks how they can contribute and follows up with care, it feels collaborative rather than transactional.

Persistent Trust and RespectThis kind of persistence builds trust and respect. It creates connections where requests have meaning because they stem from a foundation of mutual understanding. Done sincerely—not as a tactic—it can lead to incredible outcomes, strengthening relationships and fostering collaboration.

Persistence has power, for better or worse. What matters is how we apply it: to extract or contribute, to coerce or collaborate.

If this reflection resonates, let me know—leave a comment or send me a message. And if you want to explore prompts like this yourself, check out the randomiser in The Haven and see where it takes you.

https://youtu.be/ddwe8YMoWOg

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Many people feel overwhelmed, uncertain, or powerless in a world grappling with climate crises, political instability, and societal upheaval. But what if there was a way to process these emotions and transform them into meaningful action? This is the premise of “The Work That Reconnects” and Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power, developed by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnson. These tools invite us to explore our emotional responses to the world, shift our perspectives, and find meaningful ways forward.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with Cindy Gale, a psychotherapist, transactional analyst, and facilitator of The Work That Reconnects. In our conversation, she shared several practices for staying anchored as we navigate the pressing complexity of our times.

https://youtu.be/DpDYYB8M39AThe Three Stories of Our TimeThe Work That Reconnects is built on the idea that we have three stories running through society. Cindy describes them in this way:

Business as UsualWe live in the midst of a success story where we can have lamb from New Zealand and strawberries in January, where we can fly all over the world and plan for our future. It’s a story that views economic and technological developments as having made life easier, and where looking for how to ‘move things forward’ is a given.

The Great UnravelingThis story says it’s too late already. The die is cast. It’s all overwhelming: depleted natural resources, climate change and superstorms, the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer; where, globally, there are the multitudes of really poor who are suffering and starving, species are going extinct, war is big business; where it all goes on and on – until it won’t anymore.

The Great TurningThen there is a third story, The Great Turning, which Joanna Macy calls ‘the essential adventure of our time.’ It is an energising and enlivening story about living in the present, engaging with life fully and to the best of our abilities, and making a difference in the world as it is today (not as we wish it were).

The Problem With HopeActive hope is not “blind hope” or wishful thinking. It’s about taking action rather than sitting back and saying, “I hope everything works out OK,” or waiting for the “inevitable technological fix we want to believe is coming.

Joanna Macy writes:

• Active Hope is not wishful thinking.
• Active Hope is not waiting to be rescued by the Lone Ranger or some saviour.
• Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act.
• We belong to this world.
• The web of life is calling us forth at this time.
• We’ve come a long way and are here to play our part.
• With Active Hope, we realise that there are adventures in store,
• strengths to discover and comrades to link arms with.
• Active Hope is a readiness to engage.
• Active Hope is a readiness to discover the strengths in ourselves and in others, a readiness to discover the reasons for hope and the occasions for love.
• A readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts,
• our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose, our own authority, our love for life,
• the liveliness of our curiosity, the unsuspected deep well of patience and diligence, the keenness of our senses, and our capacity to lead.

None of these can be discovered in an armchair or without risk.

Active Hope Spiral PracticesCindy shares the Active Hope spiral practices, which support the pathway to live with Active Hope.

The spiral has four stages: Gratitude, Honouring Our Pain, Seeing with New Eyes, and Going Forth. It helps us process thoughts and feelings, shift our perspective, and connect with meaningful steps forward.

Part One – GratitudeThe spiral begins with gratitude, a revolutionary act in a world that thrives on scarcity mindsets and consumerism.

Open Sentences on Gratitude1. What are some things that I love about being alive on Earth? 2. A place that was magical or wonderful to me as a child was… 3. A person who helped me believe in myself is/was… 4. Some things I enjoy doing and making are… 5. Some things I appreciate about myself are…

Part Two – Honouring Our Pain for the WorldGrief, anger, and fear often accompany our awareness of the world’s struggles. This stage invites us to lean into these emotions rather than suppress them. Cindy emphasises that acknowledging pain is vital for healing and prevents it from hardening within.

Open Sentences on Honouring Our Pain for the World1. What concerns me most about our world is… 2. What I find hard about this moment in my life on this planet is… 3. The emotions I carry around with me are… 4. Ways I avoid these feelings are… 5. Some ways I can use these feelings are…

Part Three – Seeing with New EyesThis stage involves perspective-shifting exercises rather than open sentences. While no specific open sentences were given, the stage focuses on reframing perceptions of power, collaboration, and interconnectedness.

The perspective shift tells us:

Unlimited Economic Growth is a MythNothing in the universe grows endlessly without limits. Infinite economic growth is inherently unsustainable and defies the natural laws of balance and resource availability.

Maximising Profit Leads to ImbalanceWhen one variable, profit, is consistently prioritised over all others, the system becomes skewed. This imbalance leads to overshoot and eventual collapse because other essential factors (e.g., ecological health and human well-being) are ignored.

Externalising Costs and Blocking FeedbackCorporations often offload ecological and human costs onto third parties, such as taxpayers and the natural world, to maximise profit.
This practice distorts the perception of true costs and blocks the feedback that systems need to self-regulate, making the system unsustainable and ultimately self-destructive.

Top-Down Power DynamicsThe industrial growth society (capitalism) relies on hierarchical and competitive structures where power is understood as “power over” others.
This “win-lose” mindset drives insatiable wants and further perpetuates inequality and exploitation.

Interdependence and Collaboration as PowerBy shifting our perspective, we can see power as a partnership, arising from collaboration rather than domination.
This reframing encourages a shift toward cooperative efforts that sustain life for all beings.

The Goal of Economic Activity Should Be Sufficiency for AllA life-sustaining society prioritises sufficiency and balance rather than unchecked profit.

The focus is on meeting the needs of all living beings now and in the future, ensuring that economic activity aligns with the integrity of natural systems.

Feedback is Essential for AccountabilitySystems require feedback to assess the true costs of actions and the harm they may cause.

Without feedback mechanisms, harmful behaviours continue unchecked, leading to systemic collapse.

Humans are Both Unique and Inseparable from the Web of LifeOur genuine self-interest includes the well-being of other beings and the planet.

Recognising this interconnectedness shifts our understanding of what it means to thrive as individuals and communities.

Part Four – Going Forth: Turning Insights into ActionThe final stage focuses on moving forward with purpose. This is where the insights gained from gratitude, grief, and new perspectives are channelled into meaningful action.
Reflection Questions:

1. If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do in service to life on Earth?
2. In pursuing this vision, what particular project do you feel called to undertake?
3. What resources (inner and outer) do you have now that will help you do this?
4. What resources (inner and outer) will you need to acquire to follow your calling?
5. How much do you stop yourself? What obstacles might you throw in your way?
6. How will you move through and around these obstacles?
7. What can you do in the next week to move along this path, no matter how small the step?

Small Things Lead To Big ChangesWe all have different roles and will be drawn to particular forms of active hope more than others. This resonates with Dorcas Cheng-Tozen’s writing in her book Social Justice For The Sensitive Soul, which points out that there isn’t one correct form of social justice for everyone. There is a place for everyone when it comes to addressing the issues of our time.

Holding ActionsHolding back the tide of bad things through direct activism and supporting people and places facing present crises.

Building New StructuresWhat things can we build or fix to make tomorrow better for everyone?

Shift in ConsciousnessWe must change how we think of ourselves, one another, and the more than human world.

LinksCindy’s Website

The Work That Reconnects

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The randomiser wheel picked “Strength in numbers”. I’m currently using a tool to select phrases for my daily journal practice. They are all associated with the theme of Strength.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “There is power in unity, and there is power in numbers.” Power is contagious, building strength in numbers—a force for creation and destruction. Numbers can topple buildings and spark change but can also reduce individuals to statistical fodder, data on a spreadsheet, and reinforcement where more numbers are required.

A crowd develops a mind, not as a reflection of individual expression but as a loss of subjectivity. Social influence, de-individuation, emotional contagion, scapegoating, compliance, anonymity, and desensitisation transform people, creating powerful, unpredictable surges and movements. It becomes bigger than any individual’s ability to stop it.

Like a pitch invasion or riot, a surge of emotion can breach the order. This was seen during the 2020 European Cup Final, when 6,000 ticketless fans stormed Wembley Stadium. Interviews with participants revealed psychological factors that led (some of) them to act out of character, behaviour they later barely recognised. Similar dynamics played out during the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6th, 2021, and the UK summer riots of 2024. In these moments, people feel invincible and unstoppable—and literally lose themselves in the numbers.

Safety in NumbersThis doesn’t just happen in chaos; we all drift toward groupthink over time, allowing political or social alignment to shape our opinions. We stop thinking critically and cling to our “tribe” for safety. Extreme shifts and once-fringe ideas find their way to the mainstream. The pull is stronger when we embrace totalising philosophies, grand theories that simplify the world at the expense of nuance. In doing so, we retreat into the safety of numbers, avoiding challenges to our beliefs.

“There is power in unity, and there is power in numbers.” But unity is more than a mindless mass; it’s about shaping abstraction into reality. Mother Teresa said, “None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things with great love, and together, we can do something wonderful.”

Strength in UnityUnity is each playing a small part in something greater, creating a body stronger than its parts.

Contrast this with the chaotic crowd, competing for limited resources in a frenzy of rivalry and animosity. Numbers, when disunited, become formidable. Grabbing, reaching, and striving for something there isn’t enough of for everyone.

Power, contagious as it is, can be a force for better—or worse.

https://youtu.be/WY-jlVKf3p4

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The randomiser wheel picked “No Pain, No Gain”. I’m currently using a tool to select phrases for my daily journal practice. They are all associated with the theme of Strength.

Plucking no pain, no gain from the hat of phrases related to the theme of Strength, my thoughts immediately went to the joy of working to achieve something you can be proud of.

To me, the gain is the sense of accomplishment you get when you look at something you created with your hands and see yourself reflected in it. That creative resonance strengthens you and leaves a kernel of meaning in the work.

Sacrificing Our PainIn a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, we must think carefully before sacrificing our pain. This technology, marketed to make life quicker and easier, often brings unintended side effects: numbness, disconnection, and indifference to art, relationships, and the deeper creation process. By handing over responsibility, we risk losing the messy, chaotic, and sometimes painful process where joy, growth, and meaning truly arise.

Between desire and accomplishment lies a space—a space where creativity flourishes through messy, chaotic, sometimes painful processes of trial, error, delight, and despair. It’s where character is shaped, and our unique creative voice emerges. Yet this space is shrinking as we turn to technology to solve problems we don’t fully understand. The promise of productivity—that faster is better—leaves us chasing a mirage, trading depth for surface results.

Where Meaning is Made PossibleAt one level, of course, we want the outcome. But if that’s all we have, we close down the site where meaning is built and nurtured. When creation becomes a quick command, we bypass the joy of meaningful effort.

The growing prevalence of artificial intelligence raises ethical questions about intellectual property and human replacement, but equally urgent is the “crisis of meaning.” The more we shrink that creative space, the more disconnected we feel, mistaking pain—the driver of love, creativity, and care—as something to eliminate.

But that pain drives us to do great things. It is love, creativity, compassion, and care. Without it, we gain nothing; we simply exist.

What we gain in the creative process isn’t external. It’s an inner growth planted in the present and nurtured over time. Fast, painless growth breeds fragility. Painful, deliberate effort grows something enduring, like a mighty oak: strong, rooted, and resilient.

It takes time—and time can be painful—but without it, we gain nothing genuinely worthwhile.

https://youtu.be/DQyx8KYtRow

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The randomiser wheel picked “It was uncomfortable”. I’m currently using a tool to select phrases for my daily journal practice. They are all associated with the theme of Strength.**

Discomfort helps me know I’m alive. It’s more concerning when I no longer feel it. Uncomfortable even. No, wait, that doesn’t make sense. If I feel uncomfortable when I don’t feel uncomfortable, I still feel uncomfortable. Weird. Perhaps it’s more of a sensitisation thing. It ought to be concerning if I don’t notice discomfort. Or if I shrug my shoulders in the face of it. When I’m withdrawn, numbed out, and disconnected. Going through the motions, letting it happen, passive, indifferent and cynical.

I’ve noticed lots of things I wish I felt more uncomfortable about.

I want to feel uncomfortable because it’s a barometer of my engagement—an indicator of whether or not my nervous system is connected.

There are many discomforts. Some open doors to better places and others invite me to be a better person. Certain discomforts ignite a fire that is hard to extinguish. Others persist and endure. Some never go away. Some create possibilities that were inaccessible until now. Others will be strongly felt right now, but in time, they will fade and be forgotten. Discomfort can be a sign of, and a catalyst for change, a question that pokes and prods, tickling and shaking me awake, even when I’d much rather still be asleep.

It was uncomfortable…* When I didn’t know what I was doing. * When my legs felt wobbly, and I still had a mile to go. * To hear those words, “We need to talk”. * When I asked for what I wanted. * When you addressed the elephant in the room. * When we all knew, but he didn’t think we did. * When I started here. * When I told you off. * In that cold building. * When you told me to stop. * When I heard your story. * Whenever I walked. * To carry you. * To imagine a different future. * When I had to tell them what I had done. * When I admitted to myself. * When it suddenly stopped working, and we had to devise a new plan. * When I realised I was lost. * When I couldn’t afford it. * When they used those words. * When I couldn’t think my way to a solution. * When you put me on the spot. * When I realised I was wrong. * When you assumed. * To remember. * When I forgot. * When no one laughed. * When you cried. * When I had to choose. * When you asked for what I didn’t have. * When you pushed me. * When I pushed you. * To ask you to stop. * To let go of all those other possibilities. * In the silence. * When it turned out I was right. * When I looked you in the eye. * When we didn’t know what to say. * When the words came out wrong. * When they wouldn’t stop talking. * When it dawned on me.

How do I react to discomfort? Do I want to eliminate it at the source, hide, adapt, and learn from it? It depends on the situation, who is impacted, and the potential impact of enduring it. There are uncomfortable things that, when endured, lead to positive outcomes. Some uncomfortable things, when endured, lead to lower horizons. There are uncomfortable things that, when endured, can build inner strength and resilience, which can be used in the future and passed on to others.

Replacing and ReframingSomething interesting happens when you invert those phrases and replace the discomfort with safety, maybe as a desire (“I want to feel safe”) or a reframe (“I felt safe”). This can show us the kind of world we want to create and paint a picture of what safety and connection look, feel, and sound like for us.

What would need to be true for me to be able to say…?* I felt safe, though I didn’t know what I was doing. * I felt safe even when my legs felt wobbly, and I still had a mile to go. * It felt safe to hear those words, “We need to talk”. * I felt safe when I asked for what I wanted. * I felt safe when you addressed the elephant in the room. * I felt safe when we all knew, but he was unaware we did. * I felt safe when I started here. * I felt safe when I told you off. * I felt safe in that cold building. * I felt safe when you told me to stop. * I felt safe when I heard your story. * I felt safe when I walked. * It felt safe to imagine a different future. * I felt safe when I had to tell them what I had done. * I felt safe when I admitted to myself. * I felt safe when it suddenly stopped working, and we devised a new plan. * I felt safe when I realised I was lost. * I felt safe when I couldn’t afford it. * I felt safe when they used those words. * I felt safe when I couldn’t think my way to the solution. * I felt safe when you put me on the spot. * I felt safe when I realised I was wrong. * I felt safe when you assumed. * I felt safe to remember. * I felt safe when I forgot. * It felt safe because no one laughed. * I felt safe when you cried. * I felt safe when I had to choose. * I felt safe when you asked for what I didn’t have. * I felt safe when you pushed me. * I felt safe when I pushed you. * I felt safe to ask you to stop. * I felt safe to let go of all those other possibilities. * I felt safe in the silence. * I felt safe when it turned out I was right. * I felt safe when I looked you in the eye. * I felt safe when we didn’t know what to say. * I felt safe when the words came out wrong. * I felt safe when they wouldn’t stop talking. * I felt safe when it dawned on me.

What would need to change or happen for these to be true?

Does any of this resonate with you? I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a message. What would you write about in response to the prompt “it was uncomfortable…”?

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The randomiser wheel picked “Power Through”. I’m currently using a tool to select phrases for my daily journal practice. They are all associated with the theme of Strength.

At first, these words brought to mind experiences when I had no choice but to keep going. A looming deadline, the chockful calendar, a stag do, a festival, and the final push with the finish line in sight. Powering through requires a special kind of energy. Dipping in and drawing from the storeroom where I keep my deep reserves. This can feel glorious. It can feel rewarding. It can feel like a relief and something I wish never to repeat. To collapse in a heap at the end. The moment when Farmer Hoggett’s words echo in my soul; “that’ll do, pig. That’ll do.” I can pack up, curl up, and rest.

Letting The Body PrepareFor as long as I can remember, I have experienced a kind of lethargy on the day of a gig. I often feel like I won’t have the energy to perform. I seem to yawn through the afternoon, wondering how I will ever summon the inner resources to do what I need to do. “OK”, I would tell myself, “you’ve just got to power through”. As soon as I hit the road, I could feel the flow returning, and by the time I hit the stage, I was in the zone. I’ve come to accept this part of the process in all its frustrating mystery, trusting that the energy will come, however much it feels like there is no way I could not fall asleep at the piano. Over time, I’ve come to see that this is not about “powering through”; it’s about letting things be.

To power through turns it into a battle or fight. Like I’m in a constant wrestle with myself. And that takes a different kind of energy. On the other hand, letting things be is about surrendering to what I know is true, recognising that I won’t feel up to performing in the lead-up to a gig, and remembering that my body is preparing and readying me for the performance. I don’t need to fix that; I need to simply let it be. If I jump to my “power-through” reserves, believing I must intervene to feel up to it, I will derail my natural processes, hit the bottom of the barrel more quickly and need much more time to recover afterwards.

Powering Through as The Exception, Not The RuleHumans are rhythmic, seasonal, and cyclical. Our bodies are remarkable and can power through when the situation demands it as the exception, not the rule. But when we are stuck in that mode, which is how we have designed many aspects of modern life, many people perpetually power through on the fumes of those reserves. It’s no wonder we are burning out.

If we are expected to be “on” constantly, we might perpetually wrestle with ourselves. Berating our inability to maintain the energy required to stay productive in what Byung Chul-Han calls achievement society. Excessive “can” positivity and self-optimisation paradoxically lead to burnout and fatigue because there are no natural stopping points. Even in rest and play, we have become trained in self-exploitative productivity in choosing and approaching leisure time. If it can’t be measured, it’s meaningless. If it’s not helping us advance, then it’s pointless. And when we reach the inevitable tipping point, we consume to help us escape, retreat, and numb ourselves. This often goes against our creative nature – the quiet voice inside telling us to slow down and sense the world around, within, and between us.

All Power and No PlayWhen considering creativity and nurturing a sensitive nervous system, we must unite and break free from these chains of toxic productivity. We can embrace and enjoy the times of blossoming and fruition. We can accept and attune ourselves to periods of fallowness and the in-between. Without silence, we cannot hear the music. Without margins, we cannot see the shape of things.

Despite what some people want us to believe, we are not labouring machines. We can’t keep pushing ourselves without paying a serious price. We have much more potential when we stop focusing on the universal application of personal productivity and optimisation. It’s a tool for specific contexts. More importantly, we should consider ways to foster unproductive avenues of human creativity, celebrate beauty, and explore collective possibilities. Just because.

Do you put pressure on yourself to “power through” things?

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The randomiser wheel picked “Stay strong and carry on”. This month, I’m using a tool to select phrases for my daily journal practice. They are all associated with the theme of Strength.

There is a difference between giving up and quitting. I’ve written about this before. To quit is usually an intentional decision. It is informed and considered. It requires courage to let go when something no longer serves its purpose, or you are no longer the person for the task. On the other hand, giving up happens when you no longer have the physical, mental, or emotional capacity to carry on, even if the task is meaningful and important to you.

When You Can’t Stay Strong AloneThe willingness to continue might be physically destroyed when the body cannot function. Our opponent might have outplayed us to the point of exhaustion. Or it might give into someone who has relentlessly pressured us to comply with their demands.

What does it mean to stay strong and carry on? What sort of strength do we need to maintain? Where does it come from? What does it look like? How can you stay strong when the body or spirit is broken and you are limited by more than your mindset?

Strength Beyond PowerStrength isn’t about force and for humans, it is not the preserve of a single individual. It’s not about domination and control. Instead, it’s about resourcefulness, knowing what matters and why, and letting go of a drive for top-down compliance in favour of unity amidst disagreement. It’s about rejecting the dominant narrative when it works to divide and conquer. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

We are better equipped to stay strong and carry on when we zoom out and do it together. This is why we need to embrace high sensitivity, not only as individuals, but as a species. It makes us stronger.

Emperor Penguins insulate themselves from the harsh Antarctic conditions by huddling together to create and radiate heat through the collective. The strength of one penguin is dependent on the behaviour of the whole. And likewise, the survival of the whole is dependent on individuals huddling together. I find this a powerful image of collective strength, not as a source of domination and mastery over the weather but as a way to maintain their presence despite those conditions.

We sometimes have a warped view of strength, often associated with the individual. But when this underpins our understanding of what it means to be human, we live life on a knife-edge. We are in a state of dysregulation, alert and unsafe, making decisions based not on what is best in the long run or big picture but on the here and now. Often at the expense of longer term prosperity and s

An Empty PromiseWe are encouraged to hoard, steal, envy, and destroy in the name of strength. Even those who possess this kind of power are never at peace. They always look over their shoulder and wonder who is plotting their demise. Second guessing, pre-eminently striking, and causing a cascading wave to the bottom and lowering horizons rather than raising them and limiting potential rather than smashing down boundaries for all of us to explore.

We stay strong and carry on when we build around a solid foundation together. When we know what matters, where we are going, and the abundant reasons, we all have a place here. This strength is grounded in the belief that we are creative and playful beings with the potential for unimaginable things. When mixed with a lust for domination, power, and control, these unimaginable things are barbaric. But when combined with a curious openness to love and care about ourselves, one another, and the future of this incredible planet, those unimaginable things are majestic.

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Are you an armchair creative? You are great at learning, preparing, and researching a field, yet something often stops you from taking action.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we consider some things that stop us from acting and explore how to get out of the armchair in 2025.

Armchair Certainty“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” is a common question in coaching. While intended to free us from debilitating fear, it misses an important point. Knowing we can’t fail leaves us feeling hollow. In The Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit,” freshly deceased Rocky Valentine thinks he’s in Heaven because he wins every bet and has every desire met. After a while, he tells his host, Pip that he doesn’t belong in Heaven and wants to go to the other place. “Whatever gave you the idea that this is Heaven?” Pip responds. This is a depiction of Hell being an eternity without the possibility of failure.

“What would you do if you knew you COULD fail?” I like this reframe because it accepts failure as a natural, even necessary, part of a meaningful life. Certainty, while comforting, stifles creativity because it deprives us of the friction required for meaningful action.

Creativity In The ArmchairAs armchair experts, we might have accumulated lots of knowledge. We may have devoured books, taken courses, and watched hours of footage. But this knowledge is an arms-length understanding and doesn’t give us the sensory or practical knowledge that can only come through stepping into the arena.

In creativity, this can manifest as over-preparation: planning every detail, waiting for the “perfect” idea, or endlessly theorising without taking the leap.

This intellectualisation offers a false sense of progress. As Mark Manson put it, “People get hooked on endlessly intellectualising their emotional patterns as a way to avoid doing anything about them.” Similarly, intellectualising creativity can mask avoidance. Deep growth begins when we leave the armchair and step into the arena, embracing the messy, unpredictable nature of creating.

Action Breeds ClaritySongwriter Aaron Espe captures this beautifully: “The best way to have more happy accidents is to do more things. Simply thinking about doing things doesn’t produce happy accidents. You gotta take action.” Whether it’s songwriting, swimming, or starting a business, the act of doing reveals insights that theory cannot.

The Paralysis of Armchair AnalysisOverthinking often disguises itself as preparation. We might tell ourselves we’re “just being thorough,” but in reality, we’re avoiding vulnerability. The fear of failure, judgment, or even our inner critic can keep us stuck.

One of my favourite expressions from Haven meetings in recent years is, “Playing is preparing.” Creativity isn’t about perfect execution; it’s about feeling, practice, and exploration. We can do this in low-stakes ways. Happy accidents happen when we engage with the task before us, not when we think about engaging with it. It’s impossible to think our way to a happy accident.

The Courage to Be MisunderstoodA typical creative block is the fear of being misunderstood. We worry our work will be misinterpreted, criticised, or fail to resonate. But this fear can suffocate creativity. As Brené Brown reminds us, true courage lies in stepping into the arena, risking failure, and embracing imperfection.

One way to develop this courage is to experiment with letting ambiguity be ambiguous. It’s in those gaps that the light gets in. Art that heals does so, not because it intends to but because it is free to land in a billion different ways.

Embracing the Messy Joy of CreativitySo, as we step into 2025, consider this our invitation to be intentional about our place in the armchair.

If this feels alive for you right now, consider booking a “Pick The Lock” call with me. We can explore how to turn your creative urges into actionable, manageable, meaningful plans.

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Have you ever seen homes lit up at night and wondered what the lights in the windows say about the people inside? Just me? OK then!

A recent neighbourhood walk left me thinking about three broad tendencies or archetypes that we might embody in our creative energy: The Host, The Artisan, and The Entertainer.

The HostYou know that warm, glowing light you see in the window of a house at night? Unless you’re in a horror movie, there’s something comforting about it. It’s welcoming and can signal a sense of safety, telling us we’re expected, or if we’re lost, that there’s a refuge waiting.

Some people are like this. They have a beacon quality—inviting us in to rest, explore, and be ourselves. Their creative energy is collaborative and open. They make it feel safe to try new things, fail, and to discover surprising possibilities.

Can you think of someone like this?

The ArtisanThere are other houses where the lights are carefully strung—beautiful, intentional, and inspiring. These displays have been thoughtfully crafted. The result of care, skill, and attention to detail. People can’t help but stop to notice and admire the display.

Some people are like this. Artisans care deeply about the creative process. They put deep effort and dedication into exploring techniques, learning skills, and achieving excellence. Their creative energy pours through their love of the craft and appreciation of quality and they believe the work speaks for itself.

Can you think of someone like this?

The EntertainerOther houses have dynamic projected images on walls, trees, and lawns. These displays are intended to draw and focus the attention of onlookers, encouraging them to look at the surface on which the light is cast.

Some people are like this. Entertainers shine with an audience to communicate with. Their creative energy flows when people pay attention and react to them.

Can you think of someone like this?

When the Environment Doesn’t AlignThe world is beautiful because of the diverse flow of creative energy that comes through hosts, artisans, and entertainers. But what happens when our natural tendency doesn’t match the environment we’re in? It’s not difficult to imagine how strong ego judgements about how people ought to be, could make someone who doesn’t naturally fit the mould feel out of shape and alone.

The Host in an Artisan WorldImagine the a Host in a world that values polished results and technical mastery. Hosts who create collaborative spaces for exploration may feel inadequate or invisible. They might undervalue the importance of what they bring to the collective.

The story they might adopt: “I’m not talented or valuable because I don’t produce anything remarkable.”

The Artisan in an Entertainer WorldWhat about the Artisan in an Entertainer world that only celebrates and rewards those who are front and centre? Artisans who find joy in the quality of the work they do might become drained by the pressure to self-promote and feelings of self-consciousness as peoples’ attention is focused on them rather than their work.

The story they might adopt: “I can’t get the opportunities I deserve in a world that rewards style and confidence over substance and competence.”

The Entertainer in a Host WorldThen there is the Entertainer in a space that only values quiet and subtle connection? Entertainers who love to feel the creative flow through social connection might feel like their energy is too much and may be painted as a narcissistic attention seeker.

The story they might adopt: “I take up too much space and annoy people.”

| Archetype | Potential Story | Impact | Supportive Shift | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | The Host | “You’re not talented enough.” | Feels undervalued; doubts their role. | Recognise that holding space is valuable. | | The Artisan | “You need to put yourself out there.” | Feels pressured to perform or promote. | Let their work speak for itself; advocate for them. | | The Entertainer | “You’re too big for your boots.” | Suppresses their natural energy and light. | Celebrate their presence as a gift, not a flaw. |

We Contain MultitudesWe might lean toward one dominant archetype, but that’s not the whole story, and we’re not defined by it. Different seasons, relationships, and projects can bring out other elements in us.

A Host might tap into their Artisan energy for a specific creative project. An Artisan might enter the spotlight to showcase their work. An Entertainer might host a collaborative space for people to rest, play, and grow. The point isn’t to box ourselves in but to recognise where our energy feels most alive (and those spaces where our natural tendency is unable to breathe like we need it to).

We might struggle in environments that don’t align with our creative energy, but we can also fail to appreciate how others shine their light.

If you’re a Host, you might not understand why an Artisan focuses so much on tiny details. If you’re an Artisan, you might find an Entertainer’s desire for attention baffling. And if you’re an Entertainer, you might not get why a Host is happy to let others take the applause.

The Host, the Artisan, and the Entertainer each bring something beautiful to the world.

So, do you see yourself in any of these descriptions? Are you more of a Host, an Artisan, or an Entertainer?

Have you ever found yourself in an environment that didn’t match your natural energy?

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I sit down with returning guest and friend of the show, Leah Burkhart, founder of The Healthy Sensitive, to discuss a challenge many highly sensitive people face: defining boundaries when you’re genuinely excited about everything. This might be especially true for the multipotentialites among us, who have many creative projects and interests in life.

It’s not about saying no to things we don’t want to do—it’s about creating space to understand the energy beneath the excitement.

The Excitement Paradox: “Death by Opportunity”Leah and I explored the notion of “death by opportunity“—a burnout that stems not from external demands but from an abundance of internal excitement and possibility.

It’s the paradox of having no external limits on particular aspects of life: “The good news is, nothing is stopping us. The bad news is, nothing is stopping us.”

Highly sensitive people often feel driven by curiosity, connecting dots and imagining what’s possible. However, this expansive way of engaging with the world can become unsustainable when we lack filters to process invitations, opportunities, and excitations.

Boundaries as a Conversation, Not a WallWhen we hear “boundaries,” we might think of barriers preventing access. But what if boundaries were framed as an invitation to listen to what is happening beneath the surface?

A helpful perspective distinguishes between “not now” and “not yet.” Some ideas need more time to incubate (“not yet”), while others aren’t priorities during this season (“not now”). Boundaries are not prohibitions; they bring openness and space to slow down, pause, and let enthusiasm flow without rushing into action.

Tools for Sustainable EngagementThere are practical ways to define boundaries as the space between the urge to act and the decision to commit:

• Journaling: Use writing as a space to explore ideas without prematurely committing to them.
• Community Support: Surround yourself with people who can hold space for your ideas without pushing you to act on them immediately.
• Faith in the Pause: Urgency is often a red flag. If something still excites you after a day or two, it might be worth exploring. The Minimalists have their 30/30 rule: “If it costs more than $30, wait 30 hours before deciding.” This works well for all kinds of things – immediate excitement might settle down after time. Even if the idea still compels us, we can start seeing it through a more realistic lens that fits our capacity and ability in the current season.
• Testing Ideas Gently: Engage with possibilities without turning them into sacred proposals. For instance, dedicate time to dream and explore wild ideas, then step back and recommit to what’s already on your plate.

What Does a “Hell Yes!” Feel Like?One of the central questions of our conversation was: How do we sustainably maintain authentic excitement?

We talked about recognising the signs of overcommitment and embracing a slower, steadier form of enthusiasm. Instead of chasing every “Hell yes!” moment, we can look for the slow burn of “mmm yeah”—a quieter, more sustainable motivation that doesn’t depend on perfect conditions to thrive. This notion of “Hell yes!” might look and feel very different to a highly sensitive person.

A great way to consider this is whether or not “hell yes!” is a state in our nervous system. We would need to feel excited and enthusiastic to take action in the future. This is usually a sign of a project being unsustainable.

Creativity, Community, and BoundariesAnother key theme was the importance of trusted people and processes for sharing and developing ideas. We considered how prematurely sharing an idea with the wrong audience can lead to defensiveness or even shutting it down altogether. This weak back, defensive front, is the opposite of the gentleness (firm back, soft front) required to stand our ground and stay strong in the face of unwanted judgement and criticism. Instead, we might seek people who understand our vision and values so they can provide constructive support without pressuring us to act immediately.

The Boundaries of Success – How Do YOU Measure It?For highly sensitive people, it’s essential to define and understand our personal measures of success: What truly matters to you? Would you still pursue this if external rewards didn’t come? What do you do despite the threats associated with success (increased expectation, judgement, pressure to repeat, etc)?

Authenticity shines when we create from a place of intrinsic motivation. If we let external pressures, like algorithms or audience expectations, dictate our path, we risk losing connection to the heart of things.

Slowing Down to Speed UpThis conversation was a powerful reminder that slowing down and creating intentional space isn’t about doing less; it’s about doing what matters most. Boundaries, as a conversation with ourselves, allow us to understand our energy, desires, and what’s truly sustainable. This approach enables us to explore the world’s possibilities without burning out.

LinksConnect with Leah: https://thehealthysensitive.com/

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the theme of nostalgia and “going back to basics”. This was inspired by a recent community discussion.

What are the basics and what does it mean to go back when time moves forward? In this episode, we consider our relationship with nostalgia and the subtle pull it can have on our beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Topics Covered in This EpisodeThe Allure of Nostalgia* Why the past often feels simpler, safer, and more appealing. * The potential dangers of believing this story. * How nostalgia shapes our perception of the present and influences decision-making.

Nostalgia as Utopia in Reverse* The traps of idealising a perfect past or future. * How can these narratives create antagonism, self-defeating mindsets, and resistance to sustainable growth?

The Basics in Action* A look at Vince Lombardi’s famous “This is a football” story. * What the “football” might be for each of us. * What does this teach us about unlearning, re-learning, and preparing for uncertainty?

Isomorphic Learning* Insights from Lucy Easthope’s work on disaster recovery. * The temptation to fight the last war and prepare for the previous crisis. * How building strong foundations equips us to face unpredictable challenges.

Creative Freedom and Letting Go* Why returning to basics can free us from the constraints of past success and external expectations. * How letting go creates space for new ideas and growth.

The Evolution of Traditions* Exploring how rituals and ceremonies can help us find shared values across time and space. * How ceremonial and sacred rituals often evolve from practical necessity.

Core Reflections From the Episode* How does nostalgia show up in your life? Are there ways it helps or hinders your present perspective? * What ” basics ” ground you when life feels overwhelming or uncertain? * How might simplifying your approach create space for new dots to connect? * What did this episode bring up for you?

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the Uncanny Valley.

This was inspired by a video I published about Apple’s marketing campaign for Apple Intelligence. It turns out I’m not the only one unsettled by their approach.

It’s interesting to contrast these Apple commercials with those for Google Gemini. Apple presents its AI technology as a tool for masking personal flaws and promoting insincerity. Conversely, Google has framed AI as a social companion that enhances self-expression. It gives advice, and makes suggestions to help its users work on their goals. In other words, they frame Gemini as a support to enhance people’s competence, confidence, and knowledge where Apple helps people deceive and pretend to be more skilled and knowledgeable than they really are.

A Voice From The Uncanny ValleyThe Gemini adverts got me thinking about The Uncanny Valley. There is something eerie about the way they demonstrate the technology. Not least, seeing users glued to the phone, on the other end of which is a friendly disembodied humanoid. They have anthropomorphised this technology, giving it an uncanny human voice and the platform of a constant companion. It is a friend, teacher, mentor, cheerleader, and coach—the ultimate human! Or, perhaps not quite human.

The Uncanny Valley hypothesis, coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, describes the discomfort humans feel toward entities that are almost but not fully human. The valley exists when something moves from anthropomorphised traits, as seen in animations of talking animals, cuddly toys with facial features, and the projected thoughts and feelings we give to our pets, to unnervingly realistic human characteristics. These nearly humans freak many of us out. But why do some of us seem more impacted than others?

High Sensitivity and The Uncanny ValleyThose who score higher on the sensitivity scale (Highly Sensitive People) may experience the uncanny valley more intensely due to their deeper sensory processing and emotional attunement. HSPs may be unsettled by artificiality, preferring clear distinctions between what is and isn’t “real”. It’s interesting to consider this a foundational biological survival instinct rather than one of ethics or morality. In other words, highly sensory people unconsciously scan the world around, within, and between us, looking for signs of safety and danger. When we encounter something that seems real but doesn’t feel right, it might leave us unsettled, prompting us to investigate further to see if an impostorous threat lurks within.

HSPs process information deeply and are attuned to subtle sensory cues. We might detect unnatural contradictions, such as mismatched tone or body language, at a subconscious level. This attuned sensitivity can lead to unease during interactions with AI chatbots and humanoids, where inconsistencies may create discomfort even if not immediately apparent. As AI technology advances, the line between human and machine becomes more blurred, making it harder for HSPs to discern artificiality.

Why Do We Make Machines in Our Image?The tendency to anthropomorphise technology—creating machines that mimic human behaviour—raises questions about our desire to replicate human characteristics in machines. It’s strange! Why do we do this? Maybe it’s some “god complex”, or we are simply trying to figure out what it means to be human by considering what is still missing from creatures that look and sound like us. But we don’t need to do this, and the uncanny valley hypothesis indicates that we would be more successful at trusting technology if we didn’t try to make them in our image.

Think about fictional droids, like R2-D2 and BB-8 in Star Wars. They are loveable despite, nay, because of their non-human forms. Yet they have distinct personalities and a range of emotional expressions. On the other hand, more humanoid machines like C-3PO can be profoundly irritating despite having more human-like features.

The “Uncanny Valley” Is a Lonely PlaceThis article in Psychology Today (The “Uncanny Valley” Is a Lonely Place) by David Krauss gives an interesting perspective on autism, masking, and the uncanny valley. Masking happens when individuals suppress and hide natural behaviours to fit in. It is suggested that this can create a sense of inauthenticity that unsettles others, similar to the uncanny valley. This is why it’s so important to nurture our environments, expectations, and judgements so that masking is unnecessary for acceptance and belonging. People might notice when we’re hiding parts of ourselves and acting in personally unnatural ways to try to appear “normal”.

Ultimately, the uncanny valley highlights the discomfort when faced with something that feels “off,” whether in a person’s behaviour or an artificial entity. This might include us when we’re pretending to be someone else in order to fit. And when we pay close attention to detail and emulate the correct way to do things, that might ironically highlight our presence in the uncanny valley.

When we scan for signs of safety and threat, we might look for whether something is too perfect. The uncanny valley, the eerie quality of an airbrushed photo, pitch-corrected singing, and artificial flavouring can reflect this. Real life is naturally slightly off (wonky, blemished, stained, bloated, shrivelled, off-pitch, swirly), and that often tells us it’s safe to proceed.

As they say, there are no straight lines in nature.

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I pick up on points made in our recent Kota discussion, touching on some physical, emotional, and creative interpretations of the phrase, I shall not be moved.

First ImpressionsWhat does “I Shall Not Be Moved” mean to you? What comes to mind when you hear those words?

We spoke about it as a mantra of determination underpinning the refusal to waver or abandon a chosen path, even in the face of adversity.

Gandalf popped his head in. His iconic declaration,“You shall not pass!” on the bridge in Kazakh-dûm. Interestingly, the movie changes the line from “you cannot pass” to “you shall not pass”. Is there a difference here? And what happens when we through “you will not pass” into the mix?

Do will, shall, and can all mean the same thing or are the subtle differences?

Do “I shall not be moved”, “I cannot be moved”, and “I will not be moved” sound different? I explore this question because I think they do.

Part 1: Physical Resilience and NatureI love the idea of nature as a rebel. It finds a way and it surprises us with the way it refuses to move as we expect.

The Ginkgo Tree: Known as a “living fossil,” the ginkgo trees that survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb represent resilience. This species, nicknamed “the bearer of hope,” remains unmoved by history’s trials, a true testament to survival.

Unwanted Weeds: Weeds push up through concrete, embodying the persistence of life in the most unexpected places. Nature does not always evoke feelings of grace!

The Power of Water: Water exemplifies resilience through flow and adaptability. It always finds a way.

Glacial Erratic Boulders: Erratic boulders are seemingly impossible to budge, yet they are not exempt from the truth that “everything moves”. It’s all a matter of perspective and timing.

Natural Pathways: People and slime mould are not so different after all.

Part 2: Emotional Protection—Choosing Not to Be MovedWhen it’s a choice vs a pattern

• If I AM moved, this is an injunction or an internalised story
• If I am NOT moved, you can’t force me to feel things
• If I am moved because you are manipulating me, I will choose not to show it
• If it’s not OK to be moved here/with you, I will move somewhere else

Safety in the SystemIf it feels safe, I am free to choose whether or not I want to express my emotional response. This happens when I don’t react to the pressure to fit in or please others. I don’t feel “watched”, “observed”, or “judged”. My feelings can move freely like slime mould. They will find their way through me and go where they need to go.

Moving The BodyWe watched the section in Coming To Our Senses (Belonging), where Ania talked about reconnecting with herself through bodily movement. Her beautiful photos from Uist document a progressive unshackling from the story, “I can’t dance” to one of “my body wants to move”.

Part 3: Standing Firm Amid Pressure and Criticism“The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.” – Czeslaw Milosz

Everything moves and everything changes. We considered Bob Dylan’s first electric tour and the backlash he received in its face.

His guitarist, Robbie Robertson talked about how they got together during the tour and listened to what they had been doing. They realised their new music was good, and the audience was wrong. I love this!

The audience is a mountain – it feels unmovable right now, like it will never change. But it will. It won’t remain one person. People will come and go, others will stagnate, and new people will arrive. That’s OK. Don’t let fear dictate the direction when you know which path you want to take.

We shouldn’t expect people to stay the same. We always grow, we change, we move.

Creative Support: Dylan also received support from other artists, such as The Beatles, who encouraged him with the direction he had taken. Creative confidence is about knowing who to listen to and what you are unwilling to compromise.

Who are the supportive people for you? Those who know YOU and get what you’re about. Those who you respect and trust to give quality, meaningful, good faith feedback.

Part 4: “No Matter Who Wins”Rebecca Faulkner is an award-winning poet and managing director of Reasons To Be Cheerful, who collected reader responses to the question: “No matter who wins, __.” She turned some of the responses into this poem.

https://youtu.be/ce6F4qgoM_cWe might use this as an anchoring prompt, applying it to various uncertain outcomes (beyond our control). For example:

• No matter who wins, I will stick to my values.
• No matter if I succeed, I can remain committed to what matters.
• No matter the outcome, I am in control of my response.

“I shall not be moved” can mean reaching for slow, steady, intentional anchors in the face of uncertain prospects.

Part 5: Rebels Who Refuse to MoveIn Coming To Our Senses, we thought about Rebels Who Refused To Move. People who didn’t yield to external pressure or power. Who or what comes to mind when you think about rebels who refused to move?

Perhaps you have personal experiences and there are times when YOU have been that rebel.

Whether through the fear of threats or the allure of a pay off, these people are unshakable because of a deeper strength. Something that matters more to them than their own survival, prosperity, comfort, or peace of mind. We might think of examples such as, the movement for Civil Rights, the Suffragettes, environmental groups etc.

Part 6: When “I Shall Not Be Moved” Becomes Self-DefeatingBeing resistant top movement can lead to self-sabotage, holding us back when we remain unmoved or inflexible.

Resilience is not the same as building a wall and refusing to listen. A stubborn “I shall not be moved” can lead to isolation when we shut out others’ perspectives. Solid boundaries, on the other hand, might be thought of as choosing whether or not to respond once we’ve heard what is said.

Resilience involves knowing when to hold firm and when to bend or adapt.

“I Shall Not Be Moved” – My TrousersThanks to Tuula, we finished with this video of me trying to glide down an ice slide. My trousers were resolute in their protest. “Nope, I shall not be moved,” they said, ” even by ice.”

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I crack open the words “Well Worn”, our most recent Kota exploration in The Haven.

What comes to mind when you hear those words? An established footpath, a threadbare object, or a pair of shoes that have served you well?

My Thread Bear“Well” can be about health, satisfaction, or abundance. Yet it can also signify something done with care and purpose. “Worn,” on the other hand, evokes the passing of time, established use, and tiredness. It’s about what we put on, what shapes us, and what degrades over time.

All of my life, I have been wearing them,
the hand-me-downs, the pants too long,
arms of sweaters stretched longer than mine,
sleeves of shirts I rolled up like newspapers,
those shoulders that would never stay in place,
always remembering: we are here to fit in.

And the very shoes that narrowed on my feet,
I gave away or traded up for other people’s soles.
I have thought somewhere there must be men
whose socks don’t shrink, whose buttons stay put,
whose shirts never wear out at the elbows.
I paid for what other people gave away.

All of my life I wanted to stand tall,
but as I grew up my clothes kept wearing out, when
in my child’s heart, I only wanted the comfort of corduroy,
a face that didn’t need ironing, a crease that would stay put—
these labels I hoped wouldn’t rub off.
—Michael Magee

The Key AreasThe prompt evoked a bunch of areas to explore in our gathering. I have attempted to touch on as many as I can remember in this episode. It took us in some helpful directions where we were able to think about our relationship with creativity, sensitivity, and the stuff that matters most in life.

Wearing The Skin We Are InWe talked about how skin can tell a story of our lives through callouses, scars, and the marks of time. We considered how thick skin is earned through persistence and repetition, not something you simply “have”.

The Beauty of ImperfectionI shared my love for how dents, stains, and wear give character to things. They signpost us to memories and stories in ways perfection can’t.

Well Worn StrengthWe thought about analogies like sanding down wood, a tree’s established tension wood, and knocking in a cricket bat as examples of how wear enhances strength, potential, and longevity. It helps us go further, sustain longer, and refine our abilities.

A Well-Worn PunchLife will throw setbacks and surprises our way. What does it mean to wear these punches well?

Wearing Your Heart on Your SleeveWe discussed the meaning of this phrase and whether it’s possible to wear your heart on your sleeve well (or poorly).

Traditions, Rituals, and RelationshipsWell-worn habits, rituals, and traditions for individuals, relationships, and communities can help us connect with meaning and creative presence. But they can also grow stale and stagnant. How can we tell the difference?

Cliche and JargonWhen words are overused, their original meaning can be diluted and impotent.

To Repair or ReplaceWe discuss the balance between repairing what we value and knowing when to let go of what’s no longer serving us.

Sentimental ValueItems we love show the marks of time, love, and use. Their value transcends markets and money.

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Do you enjoy journeys to imagined lands?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, you will hear a special issue of Coming To Our Senses. I’d love you to join as I share my postcards from Serenity Island.

Serenity Island is an imagined world representing life’s many very real terrains, landscapes, and environments. I wonder how it will look, sound, smell, feel, and taste to you…

If you enjoy the postcards from Serenity Island, you’ll love the full course. Learn more at serenityisland.me

Postcards From Serenity Island* Coming To Our Senses | PDF Version * Coming To Our Senses | Audio/Video Version * Postcard 1: I’m Back on Serenity Island * Postcard 2: The Lake of Tranquility * Postcard 3: The Movement Waterfalls * Postcard 4: The Curiosity Caves * Postcard 5: The Owl Park * Postcard 6: The Mystery Mountains * Postcard 7: The Overlook Treehouses * Postcard 8: The Forest of Plenty * Postcard 9: The Peninsula of Purpose * Postcard 10: Two Ships Bridge * Postcard 11: The Play Trail Maze * Postcard 12: Final Greetings (for now)

Coming To Our Senses | PDF VersionRead the PDF version of Coming To Our Senses

Coming To Our Senses | Audio/Video Versionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1PiMCO8-r0&

Postcard 1: I’m Back on Serenity IslandPeople end up on Serenity Island for many reasons. For some, it is a refuge during times of loss. For others, it provides an anchor when things feel unstable. And for some, it’s somewhere to explore the voice of curiosity and intuition, which may be nudging them towards change.

I wonder what you might find here.

https://youtu.be/6I5ibgZdXKc

“Serenity Island is filled with so many different pathways to experience change from the inside out. It opened my eyes to a wider world of possibility in a way that nothing else ever had. It is filled with music, story, practical information and advice, play and creativity, and best of all, wonder. All my senses are engaged and I create a Serenity Island that is all my own. I can’t think of a better gift to give myself than that.” – Zoie

Postcard 2: The Lake of TranquilityThe Lake of Tranquility is in Serenity Island’s region of personal health. It represents our emotional well-being and is somewhere to think about how things currently are, how we want them to be in future, and what we might plant around this part of our island to support that desire.

https://youtu.be/uSQl51ObjeA

Postcard 3: The Movement WaterfallsThe Movement Waterfalls represent elements of our physical health, such as sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Use the trails for walking, running, and cycling, practice yoga overlooking the Lake of Tranquility, and find physio rooms, courts, pitches, and studios for anything you can imagine using that helps you give your body what it needs.

https://youtu.be/TkoMqXLQwF4

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”

– Lawrence J. Peter

Postcard 4: The Curiosity CavesYou find what you need in the Curiosity Caves to help you consider and care for your intellectual well-being. Networks of interweaving tunnels and passageways will stimulate your mind in meaningful ways that keep you engaged, interested, and growing.

https://youtu.be/D_U-I7eQgxQ

Postcard 5: The Owl ParkThe Owl Park has spots to camp, hang out, and create new memories with our favourite people. It’s the part of the island where we think about the nature of our relationships with family and friends (including the friends we haven’t made yet) and how we want those connections to look and feel.

https://youtu.be/TjFZlpGnzVE

Postcard 6: The Mystery MountainsIn The Mystery Mountains, we can encounter the awe and beauty of the island’s vastness. It’s where we go to connect with the transcendent and spiritual. We can plug into the scale and magnitude of life in the company of the great teachers, literature, and practices from throughout space and time.

https://youtu.be/-cwMvfxr3HM

“I so appreciate the questions in The Return to Serenity Island—they make me wonder if I haven’t been focusing on the wrong thing all this time. I’ve started cooking things I used to love again, I got my old sewing machine out for the first time in years, I’ve been swimming in the river, and I’ve been getting outside in the early morning in bare feet.

Life has had its ups and downs, but each time I remember there’s this island where you can feel the sun and smell fresh coffee, I relax and smile.

It’s a bit like having a warm secret inside, and it’s just made me slow down and try and find the beauty in the small things. I realise that for many years, I‘ve been so on autopilot trying to get somewhere that I haven’t been able to do that. I’m now letting go of trying to get anywhere and enjoying being here.” – Louise

Postcard 7: The Overlook TreehousesThe Overlook Treehouses are spaces in the forest canopy. They represent our relationship with younger generations, who might be our own children/grandchildren, nieces, nephews, godchildren, anyone else we have a connection with, and those who aren’t yet born. Who do we want to be for them? How do we want to support the next generation? What would it look like to collaborate with them to build a more desirable future?

https://youtu.be/V5C7NhAr08I

Postcard 8: The Forest of PlentyThe Forest of Plenty represents our relationship with money and financial well-being. The forest impacts the soil quality and potential for sustainable growth and development across different areas of the island.

https://youtu.be/VfV8PueKEHk

Postcard 9: The Peninsula of PurposeThe Peninsula of Purpose represents our work, career, and vocational endeavours. We can explore satisfaction levels and options for pivots, developments, and growth in employment, volunteering, and business.

https://youtu.be/PV-dXb-T8Ac

“Oh my word, it is incredible! A really unique mixture of sound and sensory experience, coaching, imaginative play and informal, companionable talks. I’m absolutely hooked. I just did a module and cried like a baby cause I felt so safe and seen. It is really special. That kind of cry you do when you’re a kid, not because you’re afraid anymore, but because you’ve been PICKED UP, and the relief just comes flooding out.”

– Josie

Postcard 10: Two Ships BridgeTwo Ships Bridge represents our romantic relationships and connections. It’s somewhere to consider ways to maintain, nurture, and support existing relationships and explore hopes and desires for the future.

https://youtu.be/tUrSkvVG2Ig

Postcard 11: The Play Trail MazeThe Play Trail Maze beats at the heart of fun and adventure on Serenity Island. It represents our creative projects and play-fuelled activities. It’s where we can be ourselves, experiment with things that catch our attention, and see what might emerge.

https://youtu.be/aQcTXKykYQY

Postcard 12: Final Greetings (for now)Many who have travelled through The Return to Serenity Island have said it feels more than a course. While it takes you through a concrete process for exploring change and setting meaningful intentions, it is also described as a safe haven, a place of rest, and a playground. It is designed to help you experience different areas of life as parts of the greater whole and help you bring your imagination to life in a variety of ways. The intentionally gentle approach allows exploration without pushing the limits of what feels comfortable, appealing, and manageable.

Rather than being a prescriptive course, the different tools, cues, and invites aim to provide scaffolding to ignite and inspire your imagination and creativity. Every island looks, feels, sounds, tastes, and smells unique to each of us. Furthermore, through the sequence of musical and meditative audio narratives, you will deepen your sense of belonging to your island. It will feel like yours.

https://youtu.be/a7BAFaMilMI

I listened to the first soundscape and tears were streaming down my face as I imagined myself in my lodge filled with memories. It felt like I was coming home to myself and finally accepting (and loving) who I am. I’m currently designing my island – I’m an artist so I might be at this step for a while. I love that I can go at my own pace (which is very slow) and that you haven’t put a timeline on any of it.”

– Sophia

Learn more about The Return To Serenity Island. Join us for a future voyage.

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You’ve probably experienced tiring shifts when moving between tasks, environments, and social contexts—from work to home, solitary to social, and stress to calm.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore how slip roads, rest stops, and bridges can help us match the pace and rhythm (speeding up and slowing down) of situations and environments.

Oxford Services: The Meaning of MeaninglessnessTwenty years ago (😦), my friend Dave and I started a temporary tradition (three or four years) of meeting at Oxford Services on the M40 on New Year’s Eve. We drove there for a photo shoot, and Dave took the cover photo for The Final Scene (my first Atlum Schema album).

Without any practical reason, we decided to return the following year and drop a general invite to anyone who wanted to join us. A few people did. Then we did it again. Even more people showed up the year after. No one knew why we did it, but it became a playful, meaningless-yet-meaningful tradition. We would meet, have a coffee, chat, and then leave for our separate plans.

What I love about places like service stations is their “in-between” quality. They are not destinations but transient spaces—everyone is passing through. Like airports and train stations, they are filled with a unique type of energy because of this constant flow of people moving to different rhythms. I find them inspiring and exhausting.

Getting Up To Speed on Slip RoadsSlip roads allow vehicles to match the traffic speed of a busier road to merge onto it more smoothly. Transitions between tasks or environments can feel like changing roads. Sometimes, we’re expected (or expect ourselves) to jump into new situations at full speed, with no time to ease into the flow. These abrupt shifts can feel jarring for highly sensitive people, leaving little room to mentally or emotionally adjust.

This idea could help us consider the pressure we put on ourselves when moving between contexts. It can also give us some options for smoother transitions between different environments, situations, and activities.

Rest Stops and Kotas – Stopping to PauseOne of the things we do in The Return to Serenity Island is consider where to add rest stops and wilderness huts (kotas) around the map. These are not just spaces for physical rest, but they are places for soul-nourishing encounters with others. I think of these as fireside moments, times between “the action” when we transcend the busyness of doing and occupy a place of being, which can seem unproductive and inefficient use of time, especially when we have been trained to see everything as needing an obvious purpose.

Much like Oxford Services, it’s often the places that look devoid of purpose where meaning is made. It’s not the action but the pause that allows for transformation.

Bridges and BoundariesThese ideas build on my post about Bridging Our Boundaries, in which I discussed how boundaries sometimes need absorbent space to feel good rather than being hard starts and stops. These bridges provide space for preparation and recovery.

Deb Dana also uses the language of bridging to show how our nervous system moves between states. Rather than clicking our fingers to think our way back from stress to safety, seeing it as a journey back through and upwards to where we want to be is more valuable.

I also like using a map rather than a GPS to conceptualise personal development and progress. Growth is not about following one straight line up and to the right. Life is full of contours and landscapes to familiarise ourselves with and improve our navigation.

I finish this episode with an exercise from Anchored (Deb Dana) that explores the “stretch-stress continuum.” It resonates with what we do in The Return to Serenity Island. I hope it will be a practical tool you can use (if it resonates).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIlNkAfZQ6U&feature=youtu.be

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I used to end each year by following a course that helped me set goals for the next twelve months. However, by the end of 2020, it stopped working for me. The image of goals as destinations in a GPS felt alien and inhuman. This was when I began using maps to reframe my energy and desire for change in a less linear, start-with-the-end-in-mind way.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I build on what we explored last time and look at how seeing life laid out on maps can be much more meaningful than thinking of it as little more than a linear experience.

The Map From The Atlas of Experience by Louise van Swaaij and Jean KlareThe GPS is Efficient and (Generally) AccurateIn contrast to GPS systems, maps stand out because they don’t dictate anything. Instead, they invite you to explore the many possibilities and make decisions based on what matters to you. You become part of the process rather than a passive follower. A GPS, on the other hand, narrows down your choices to one: the fastest, most efficient route. It thinks and chooses for you.

A GPS might give you the option to avoid highways or toll roads, but you don’t get much more input than that. And during the journey, you might not notice the places you’re passing or where the route is taking you. A map, however, reveals more depth and detail, and you get to see where you’ll be going and decide if there are any appealing detours along the way.

I’m not suggesting we abandon modern technology to plan journeys (I am VERY grateful for it). But when it comes to metaphors for life, are we aiming to cut down journey time and get to the destination as quickly as possible? Or is there more value in taking the slower, more intentional route?

In this episode, I explore what we lose with a GPS mindset and what we gain by using a map to guide our personal growth and life planning.

The Playful Spirit of ExplorationThere’s a close connection between this map metaphor and the concept of play. Playfulness isn’t driven by purpose or outcomes. It thrives on unpredictability, spontaneity, and curiosity. It doesn’t ask for a reason beyond “Just because.” When we approach life in this playful way, we can follow what feels right, move with curiosity, and trust the flow of things.

But this approach can be abruptly interrupted when viewed through a GPS lens, where the questions are:

• What’s the point of doing that?
• Does this have a purpose?
• Is this going to be relevant for the exam?

The GPS mindset is purpose-driven, always seeking usefulness and efficiency. It doesn’t always understand or appreciate the value of play. Even if it recognises the value of what we’re doing, it often critiques how we’re doing it, pushing speed and efficiency as the highest measures of worth.

This voice says, “Don’t do it like that. It’s quicker this way. Trust me, you’ll save time.”

Many of us have experienced frustration when someone offers unsolicited advice on being more efficient and doing things quicker. It’s not always the advice that irritates, but rather the implicit value system, which comes across as a universally applicable truth: speed = good.

This highlights a clash in values, revealing that what matters to us may be less about efficiency and more about presence, quality, or the joy of the process itself.

What Do We Lose With The GPS Mindset?Many goal-setting systems use the GPS metaphor, which can be helpful, but it’s worth examining what we lose when prioritising efficiency and speed above all else. The GPS mindset encourages growth that’s bigger, faster, and stronger. But why do we internalise this as the only way? Why should we grow as big as possible, as quickly as possible?

When we adopt these values without question, we often lose sight of the heart of things—the core reasons why something mattered to us in the first place. This is why so many companies and services decline in quality as they scale. As we move up and to the right on the linear growth chart, we drift away from the foundational values that made something special to begin with.

Contrast this with the map approach, which allows for winding paths and cornerstones that keep us connected to our core values. Growth doesn’t have to be a straight line. It can be circular, organic, and full of twists and turns that reflect the richness of the experience.

Maps and Folded Page MomentsThis idea of a non-linear journey is closely linked to how we experience time. Moments through time often fit better on a map than on a timeline. Think about those moments when you haven’t been somewhere or seen someone for years, and then when you return, it feels like no time has passed at all. I call these “folded page moments”—two points on the timeline fold together as if the time between them is irrelevant.

This happens with activities too, like hobbies we enjoyed long ago. When tied to a linear understanding of time, the gap between “then” and “now” can feel too wide to return to those old passions. But when we see time mapped out like an island, it becomes easier to return and pick up where we left off. A map shows how elements connect and interweave, whereas a GPS takes us through the terrain, filtering out irrelevant details and leaving us without a sense of where we fit in the bigger picture.

Anchoring To The World Outside The WindowI was reminded of this difference between a GPS and map mentality by the tweet I mentioned last time:

“There’s a woman on my Edinburgh to London train just doing the journey raw. No book, no laptop, no music. She scrolls her phone for a few minutes every hour or so, but otherwise just looks out the window. Incredibly powerful and kind of terrifying.”

This speaks to the heart of what I love about maps. Looking out the window on a train, we’re grounded in the world we’re passing through. Even though it’s just a glimpse—only the part of the world next to the tracks—we see where we are. We’re present. But when we keep our heads in our phones, we might feel disconnected, floating through space, disembodied.

Looking out the window while travelling can help me feel anchored in space and time. It helps me connect with where I am in this moment. I don’t want to get there faster—I want to feel grounded in the world as I pass through it. I want a spirit of adventure and connection, not efficiency and productivity.

Mapping The JourneyIn this spirit of slowness and reconnection, I imagined my life as an island and my goals or desires for change as seeds of treasure planted around it. Instead of climbing the ladder of productivity and chasing linear growth, I began to view life through this lens as an island where desires, hopes, and dreams grow from the inside out rather than being rungs on a ladder to strive up.

A movie night in The Haven at the end of that year further influenced this adventure when we watched Hook. I was reminded how much I love treasure islands and the endless possibilities of enchanted forests, lagoons, canyon rope bridges, and treehouses. These magical landscapes and maps swirled through my mind as I reimagined my goal-setting process in a completely new way.

The Atlas of ExperienceAfter the initial launch of The Return to Serenity Island, I discovered The Atlas of Experience by Louise Van Swaaij and Jean Klare. This book presents human experiences as a topographical elements on a series of maps, with places like the Isles of Forgetfulness, Boredom, Streams of Consciousness, and many other symbolic landmarks.

It was powerful to see the landscapes of everyday human experiences, feelings, and situations represented this way. I also enjoyed how the book is an invitation rather than a blueprint, inviting exploration without dictating a path.

Returning To Serenity IslandThese ideas and approaches form the foundation of The Return to Serenity Island, an immersive coaching experience designed to help you reconnect with what drives you. It’s about breaking free from the linear narratives we’ve absorbed and embracing a playful, imaginative approach to exploring who we are in all our beautiful complexity.

This course invites you to chart your life on maps, define the shifts that matter most, and partner with your creative spirit. If you’re in a season of change or feel the call of adventure whispering to you, I invite you to join me on this journey. It’s a chance to explore how and why you want to do what matters to you and release the pressure to perform.

https://youtu.be/R-eXD8d_8yI

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Do you get worn down by the pressure and need to perform for others (and/or yourself)?

What tells you you’re performing?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we differentiate between the characteristics of performance and play. We examine the consequences of mixing them up and assess how they affect who and how we are in our achievement society.

We use performance energy to:* Work towards specific goals and outcomes * Give ourselves to others * Communicate with clarity * Meet needs * Keep up appearances * Carry out a duty or role

Performance is defined within parameters. As such, it takes energy to remain in that state and can take a toll if we become stuck there.

When Play Becomes PerformanceHave you come across the “rawdogging” trend? This is when people fly (on planes) without entertainment, snacking, moving, or sleeping.

At its core, elements of this idea could be somewhat positive, potentially helping us notice how and when we mindlessly reach for certain objects to fill life’s in-between moments. It could show us what we do in the face of boredom, and invite us to choose creative ways to respond instead of consuming. I can imagine doing it as a personal experiment or challenge for that reason.

However, as far as I can tell, this is not the direction it takes. As is often the case with experiments that become trends, it’s taken a performative turn with contrasting justifications. For some, it’s about proving your toughness; for others, it’s painted as a mindfulness practice; and for others it’s simply a way to get attention. For many, it has evolved into a competition, with participants taking it to more extreme (and dangerous) limits.

Why does this happen? What causes play to turn into a performance in so many areas of life? And what can we do to gently rebel against the apparent pressure to compare ourselves with others as we seek to perform higher, faster, stronger, louder, richer, feats?

Join me to explore these questions in the episode.

https://youtu.be/5MVLM2q9mlAThe Return To Serenity Island The Return to Serenity Island is relaunching soon. It’s an immersive, self-paced course for anyone who doesn’t enjoy setting goals. It offers space to explore your values and desires within a spirit of play (and beyond the pressure to perform). So, if you’d like to make changes in your life, such as work, relationships, health, creativity, finances, etc., but the “high performance” drive lens doesn’t resonate with you, this provides a meaningful alternative approach..

It follows a gentle narrative arc with soundscapes, creative prompts, and exploratory videos to inspire you to think of your life as an island rich in potential and promise. We will be meeting for six online weekly picnic sessions as a group during September and October 2024.

To learn more about the course and picnic dates, and get notified when the doors open, visit the website: serenityisland.me

Over to YouHas anything resonated with you? Where have you been in performance mode this week? Drop me a message through the website, leave a comment below, or connect via social media.

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Would you say you have fire in your belly? What does it burn for?

I love exploring this question with highly sensitive people, many of whom have a deep, smouldering fire within. This fire is often linked to our values, beliefs, and personally compelling principles. I love helping people explore and (re)connect with this inner fire, supporting them to figure out how to harness it in unapologetic ways.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we will consider what this fire looks, feels, and sounds like. We’ll also explore how it can sometimes get extinguished, hidden, or even escalate beyond control.

We think about how to fuel, harness, and express our inner fire in ways that resonate with us as individuals. What does it mean to have a fire in your belly, and how can we express it without conforming to others’ expectations?

As Dorcas Cheng-Tozun said about social justice for the sensitive soul, we don’t have to fit into anyone else’s boxes when it comes to expressing ourselves. The fire in everyone’s belly burns differently, and how we process and turn it outwards is equally unique

What is The Fire in Your Belly?It’s usually a compliment when we say someone has fire in their belly. It speaks to a visible energy, enthusiasm, and sense of purpose that radiates from within. But this phrase doesn’t always account for those whose fire burns deeply and quietly and isn’t as immediately apparent as the big, bright flames we might associate with explicit passion. For highly sensitive people, that inner fire is often potent.

Fire In The Belly of SensitivityIf you search for definitions of “fire in the belly,” you’ll often find it described as a strong determination to succeed, emotional stamina, and an intense drive to achieve or accomplish something. These definitions highlight a particular kind of fire, focused on personal goals, winning, or attaining power and glory. They don’t tell the whole story, especially for those driven by values and principles (how and why) more than outcomes (what)

For many sensitive people, the fire in their belly is not about achieving for the sake of achieving. It’s not the pursuit of bigger, better, faster, or stronger in a conventional sense. Personal achievements matter, but they are often most compelling when they resonate with a broader purpose or have a meaningful impact on the world around them.

Dampening The Belly FireThe fire in our belly can go missing when we seek safe, predictable, and comfortable ways to navigate life. For example, the desire to avoid conflict can cause that fire to dim or even disappear over time.

Feeling Too MuchFor highly sensitive individuals, the inconvenience their passions might cause others can feel too jarring, especially when there’s a perceived incompatibility with others’ views, values, or beliefs. The fear of judgment, criticism, or rejection can be a powerful motivator to keep that fire hidden. Standing up for something we care deeply about can feel risky when it threatens to create friction with those around us. This fear can lead to the suppression of our inner fire, keeping it tucked away where it feels safer but also less alive.

The Role of PerfectionismPerfectionism is another factor that can dampen the fire in our belly. When we express our passions, we open ourselves up to the uncertainty and unpredictability of creativity. There’s a vulnerability in allowing our fire to rise, in letting it breathe and take form, because we can never be sure what might come from it. The desire for perfection can keep us from taking those risks, leading us to stifle our fire rather than face the unknown.

The Impact of Cold Buckets of WaterAnd when others throw cold buckets of water—through criticism or dismissive comments—it can make us hesitant to let our fire show again. Caroline McGraw’s shared how an offhand remark snuffed out her passion as a child. It’s a reminder that the wrong words at a vulnerable moment can lead us to shrink back and hide ourselves.

Why HSPs Should Embrace Their Inner FireExpressing the fire in our belly can indeed feel risky, especially for highly sensitive people. Yet, keeping that fire locked behind glass can pose an even greater risk. By allowing our inner fire to smoulder unexpressed, we risk dampening the vitality that makes life meaningful and rich. The challenge, then, is to acknowledge the fire within and find ways to let it burn in a way that feels good.

Finding the Right Environment to Fuel Your FireTo keep this fire alive, HSPs can surround themselves with people and places that spark, support, and fuel their passions. Just as a fire needs oxygen to thrive, our inner fire needs the right environment—spaces where our ideas are encouraged, and we feel safe to explore and express ourselves without fear of judgment. We can’t expect this everywhere, but we can find it somewhere. These environments and connections act as the breath of life to our inner flame, helping it grow stronger and more defined. Whether it’s a supportive community, a trusted friend, or a creative space, these sources of oxygen fan the flames of who we are.

Giving Form to the FireHowever, for it to be sustainable, the fire must be appropriately contained and maintained. This doesn’t mean stifling or suppressing it but giving it the structure it needs to thrive without causing harm. Like the flame on a stove or a campfire, our inner fire needs boundaries to serve its purpose without burning out of control. This requires us to be mindful of how we channel our passions, ensuring they are expressed in empowering and manageable ways so that our fire continues to fuel our lives without overwhelming us.

Coming To Our SensesAt the end of the episode, I shared a clip from Coming To Our Senses, issue two (Inspiration). I revisited our conversation about sad songs and rainy days in relation to Bittersweet Melancholy. Listen to the latest edition of the zine.

The post 70 | The Fire In Your Belly appeared first on Andy Mort.

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Welcome to The Gentle Rebel Podcast, where we explore the intersection of high sensitivity, creativity, and culture. In this episode, we take a creative lens to the phrase “Let’s leave it there,” inspired by a recent live Kota gathering in The Haven.

This simple prompt opened up a rich bucket of ideas, and I’d love to share a few of the layers we started peeling back.

Inspired By An Old Ironing BoardIt began with an old ironing board that I noticed outside someone’s house on an evening stroll. It sparked a chain of thoughts: Who left it there? How did it end up there? Who is it for?

My walk was consumed by thoughts of the many potential ways to look at the phrase, “Let’s leave it there”.

As well as physical objects like ironing boards and root vegetables (don’t ask) we often use to signal the end of something—a project, an argument, a meeting. It’s a way of acknowledging that we’ve reached a natural stopping point or closing something down, even if it’s unresolved.

Creativity and PatienceIn our Kota gathering, we explored how these words apply to creativity—for example, setting conditions for desirable habits and practices to happen without constantly tweaking and meddling. Being patient and trusting the process can be challenging when primed to expect instant results. However, impatience can lead to unnecessary tinkering, which might sabotage the natural rhythms and pace.

Whilst “build it, and they will come” is not always true, we can create conditions (in suitable environments) that make the desirable thing a simpler and easier option.

Creative EcosystemsWe also discussed the joy of making creativity accessible. Leaving tools and materials out, ready to use, can make a huge difference. It’s less likely to occur to us to play with something in its case and tidied away than if it’s obvious and available.

Sharing and Letting GoIt can be hard to leave it there when it comes to sharing our creative endeavours with the world. We talked about literally leaving things in spaces for others to find, like hiding tiny storybooks, drawings, or poems in public places for people to discover and pass on.

Leave It There – Enough is EnoughFinally, we talked about knowing when to stop and trust the process. There are moments when, even though we might not feel ready, we know at a deeper level that we’ve done enough. We need to trust the part of us that made that decision and avoid the temptation to open up and run it “one last time”, especially from a state of anxiety or fear, which might lead to new mistakes and unnecessary bonus panic.

If any ideas we explored in this episode speak to you and you’d like to dive deeper with me, you can book a Pick The Lock call. If you’d like to peel back the layers on future prompts with me and our gentle hive of like-spirited folk, I’d love you to join us in The Haven.

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Even if you aren’t aware of its particular elements, you are familiar with the hero’s journey. It underpins many of our favourite stories, used in PR and marketing, and informs the narratives around sports and celebrities.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore the personal and cultural impact of the hero’s journey. We’ll explore how it shapes self-worth, personal value, and the pursuits we deem meaningful. By contrasting it with elements of Kishōtenketsu narrative structure, which Kendra Patterson helped us explore in our recent Courtyard workshop, we will begin to consider different ways to perceive and respond to life’s unexpected events.

The Hero’s Journey ArchetypeJoseph Campbell suggested that all mythic narratives throughout history and across cultures are variations of the same story—a hero’s journey archetype.

This concept picked up mainstream momentum in the 70s and 80s, after it influenced George Lucas in creating Star Wars. This was a tipping point for the monomyth, as it started to PRODUCE culture rather than deriving FROM culture. In other words, it went from being a description of the patterns Campbell concluded (cultures tell stories with similar archetypes) to a prescriptive model (here are the universal elements for telling a story). The textbooks started flowing and the hero’s journey became ubiquitous. We see it in fields of psychology, marketing, and personal braining as well as books, TV, and film (including documentary-making).

In this episode, I explore some of the implications of using the hero’s journey to frame, perceive, and judge ourselves. We will spot some examples in culture. Including England’s recent Euro 2024 disappointment, the story of Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Florida, and the tropes we see in some of our favourite TV shows.

My intention isn’t simply to poop on the party. But rather to become more sensitive to the hero’s journey. When we recognise it, we can choose whether it’s useful to us or not. We can then spot it being used to manipulate us into spending money, energy, and trust on bad actors.

We will consider Kishōtenketsu as an alternative way of relating to the story we embody and tell with our lives. Rather than using conflict as a necessity for change, what happens when we relegate it to tangential and contingent parts of life that we choose our response to instead?

In the episode, we consider:* Ways the hero’s journey creates a conflict with reality as its source of meaning * How the hero’s journey structure has become embedded in marketing and PR * Why I get frustrated at the types of pitches I am often sent by people wanting to appear as guests on the podcast * The unrealistic expectations the hero’s journey sets and its impact on self-judgment and societal pressures * The role of conflict in Kishōtenketsu compared with a hero’s journey * How highly sensitive people might get subsumed into other peoples’ hero’s journeys (using the movie, Nyad as an example of this) * Kishōtenketsu, through a “guy walks into a bar” joke by TB Mckenzie, demonstrates how this narrative structure uses conflict as a tangential element rather than a central premise

LinksListen to Kendra’s episode about calming effects of Kishōtenketsu on Stepping Off Now

Learn more about the Haven Courtyard workshop

For further reading on Kishōtenketsu, check out Adeline Bindra’s article.

https://youtu.be/5vIKpOsIrP4

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Each of us has a unique sense of adventure. What does yours feel like?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I speak with Sarah Lister, who runs About The Adventure, a career and life coaching business that helps people connect with what brings them to life as they navigate change.

I love Sarah’s approach to this topic and how she holds each person’s needs within their unique spirit of adventure.

The deer that delightfully derailed Sarah’s sunset photographing quest one eveningA Sense of AdventureUse this episode as an opportunity to reflect on the distinct elements that make up your personal sense of adventure.

We explored the potential characteristics of adventure. For Sarah, it involves nature, spontaneity, a sense of challenge, and being somewhere out of the ordinary. But it also requires openness to pause and breathe, to have the courage to stop walking and respond to the invitation of a particular moment.

Whether it’s stopping for a cup of tea with strangers or delaying a trek to photograph an unexpected deer on the hillside. There are a lot of juicy metaphors for life in this conversation and stuff worth reflecting on if you want to live a meaningful life.

Recognising Our Sense of AdventureWe might think of the “sense of adventure” as we think about a “sense of humour“. While it’s not a direct physical sense like touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing, it’s something personal that keeps us in touch with what it means to feel alive and be ourselves.

Adventure is not simply about the thrill of the unknown but also about our relationship with perceived possibilities, obstacles, and the creative potential we see in the path ahead. It’s a key ingredient in living with a compelling sense of meaning.

In our conversation, Sarah and I talk about:* How to find adventure in the landscapes and environments around us * Sarah’s relationship with adventure and times in her life when her adventurous spirit shrunk * The threads between imagination, daydreaming, and adventure * When Sarah thought she was having fun but really was lost, and how she found her sense of self again * Why adventure doesn’t need an end goal, destination, or quest attached to it * The role of safety in a successful adventure (and how we can increase confidence amid uncertainty by carrying the right resources with us) * How to keep the adventure going even when the particular journey ends * And more…

Over to YouWhat would you include in your list of adventure elements? Let me know by leaving a comment, sending a message, or contacting me via social media.

Links* About The Adventure (Sarah’s Website) * Sarah’s Instagram * The Haven * A Blimp from the Blue: Using The Kishōtenketsu Story Structure as an Antidote to the Hero’s Journey (Courtyard Workshop with Kendra Patterson) * Atlum Schema – Year 0

https://youtu.be/jmA25xe8Aso

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Have you ever had a project derailed by a shame attack? Where shame sweeps through and tells us we are not worthy, acceptable, or enough. It can be amplified by comparisonitis, where we judge our messy insides with our perception of other peoples’ shiny exteriors.

Val Nelson, a career coach, specialises in working with highly sensitive and introverted individuals.

Many people have felt like black swans in a world that often fails to provide the right conditions for HSPs to thrive. While shame is not exclusive to quiet and gentle souls, it can be particularly challenging for those who have learned to view their natural needs and preferences as a problem to hide, dismiss, or overcome.

So I invited Val onto The Gentle Rebel Podcast to explore how shame can cause us to shrink back and hide from their dreams, ambitions, and needs. I wanted to explore the words “comparisonitis” and “comparonoia,” which can leave us feeling isolated and alone as we look at the world around us and tell ourselves unsupportive stories.

In Our Conversation, Val and I Explore:* The nature of shame attacks and the signs of one appearing * How humour and playfulness are one of our most significant resources * Why it’s so hard to give ourselves what we need in the face of shame (even when we know what we ought to do) * Personal experiences of shame attacks Val and I have been through recently * How to listen to the message beneath the noise when we feel like things are not going to plan * What it means to take ourselves less seriously (without undermining the integrity of our work)

Over to YouWhat are you taking away from this episode? Have you experienced a shame attack? I’d love to hear from you in the comments, via a message, or through social media.

LinksVal’s website

Connect with Val on Linkedin

Would you like to strengthen your defences in the face of bubbling shame attacks and “comparanoia”? If so, I would love to help you develop a strategy to use

The post 66 | Dealing With Comparisonitis and Shame Attacks (with Val Nelson) appeared first on Andy Mort.

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I’ve had a consistent journaling habit for twelve years. I use a digital journal (Day One), which has worked well for me. But I realised earlier this year that my practice has become a bit stale and uninspiring. So, I wanted to breathe new life into it.

Mandy Thompson joined us in The Haven Courtyard recently. She led a workshop exploring how to build a vibrant and strong journaling habit that works for each of us as individuals.

We wanted the workshop to help breathe life into a journal habit, no matter where you’re currently at with it.

• Maybe you want to start a journal but struggle to get going
• Perhaps you journal occasionally but don’t maintain the consistency you desire
• You might feel stuck in a rut with your journal and in need of a fresh approach

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore why I choose to journal the way I do (and what I want to change in my practice).

Building a Journal Habit TogetherMandy shared some tools, tips, and techniques to help us start, maintain, or rejuvenate a vibrant and strong journaling habit. But as with any habit, it’s not always easy to put the theory into practice. This is why I’ve scheduled four “Creative Journal Circle” sessions in The Haven every Friday throughout July. These will provide space for encouragement, accountability, and inspiration.

The sessions are for those who want to build momentum with their journal habit. We can share how we’re getting on, encourage one another, and try a simple exercise together. So even if we haven’t added anything to our journal all week, we won’t finish it empty paged.

The Haven trial period has increased to 28 days, so it’s the perfect time to come and dip your toes in. You will get access to the Creative Journal Circle (and other gatherings), and have chance to look at the other resources available to members.

Learn more here.

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Lizzie Campbell is a polymer clay artist who creates under the name Clay Disarray, and wow, she’s phenomenal! Her intricate modelling brings characters and cultural figures to life, and it is mesmerising to see.

I discovered Lizzie through a YouTube video in which she delved into the challenges artists face today. Her unique perspective as a highly sensitive and autistic artist sheds light on the struggles many artists are currently grappling with, such as the impact of COVID-19, the cost-of-living crisis, artificial intelligence, social media algorithms, and Brexit.

Inspired by her gentle tone and wisdom, I invited Lizzie to the Gentle Rebel Podcast to delve deeper into these issues and learn more about her journey with art, creativity, and neurodivergence.

https://youtu.be/-t6kzkexYccWe Explored A Bunch of Topics Including:* How Lizzie got into polymer clay modelling * Why she takes inspiration from horror movies * The relationship between creativity and neurodiversity, including high sensitivity and autism * Why HSPs might be reluctant to think of themselves as creative * The challenges for artists in a post-Covid, post-Brexit world * Some of the stranger ways AI is posing a problem for professional creative people and artists * Why the fan art community receives criticism * Why social media algorithms can make it harder for artists to connect with the right people * How we can support our favourite artists (and keep sustaining the arts) in the modern world

Over to YouWhat are your thoughts on this episode? I’d love to hear from you. Share your insights by leaving a comment, sending a message, or reaching out to me on social media.

Links* Lizzie’s website * Lizzie’s YouTube Channel * Twitter | Mastodon | Instagram * What Were They Thinking? My AI Music Video * Patreon

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In this special episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I’m thrilled to unveil the first issue of Coming To Our Senses. This online audio/visual zine for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) is an immersive exploration of the intersection of high sensitivity, creativity, and culture.

The zine’s launch coincides with the 10th Anniversary of The Haven, which started in June 2014. While it looked pretty different back then, its underlying essence has always been the same – providing a space for gentle rebels to gather and grow together.

I hope that Coming To Our Senses will become an ongoing collaborative heartbeat of our community. It reflects the spirit of The Haven, with members providing inspiration, suggestions, and creative contributions to the content.

https://youtu.be/OBS6AMGdBfUWhy a Zine For HSPs?The underlying vision is to integrate and normalise high sensitivity in everyday life. I want to create space to slow down and show how highly sensitive lenses offer a valuable and transformative way of seeing and holding ourselves, one another, and the culture we swim in. But also to invite a playful spirit that helps us hold on to life with lightness and humour.

I firmly believe that by creating an environment that allows sensitivity to flourish and express itself, we can catalyse profound personal and societal transformation. This approach to change is not a grand, booming endeavour, but a subtle, infectious one. As we embrace our own sensitivity, we naturally grant others permission to come to their own senses, leading to new ways of seeing, feeling, and engaging with the world that reflect their unique sensitivity and potential.

I’m currently unsure how often I will publish the Coming To Our Senses zine. My initial desire is monthly, but every two or three months might be more sustainable. All editions (and versions) are available to download in The Haven membership. Non-members can read and listen to the latest issue here.

The First Issue of Coming To Our SensesYou can hear the first issue (Tranquility) in this Gentle Rebel Podcast episode. Read the written edition here, and watch the video/audio version on YouTube.

I hope you enjoy it! I’d love to know what you connect with and would potentially like more of in this zine of HSPs. Leave a comment or drop me a message. And if you like it, please do share it with others!

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As a highly sensitive multipotentialite, Yvonne Kjorlien has many creative interests, passions, and pursuits. She studies scattered and scavenged remains to help increase the recovery rate of human remains in outdoor contexts, enabling law enforcement personnel to close forensic cases and provide closure for families. She is also an author, blogger (The Reluctant Archeologist) and writing coach for those bringing new work into the world.

I was inspired by the multifaceted nature of Yvonne’s personal and professional interests and invited her to join me to explore them in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

This one is for you if you naturally gravitate towards various pursuits and what others might describe as diversions. It can be liberating to hear from people who have connected unexpected dots and forged new pathways based on what brings them to life rather than what socialised stories tell them to do. I hope this conversation will bring you peace, encouragement, and inspiration.

Yvonne and I dug into a whole range of topics, including:* How to be a multipotentialite (holding a range of interests and pursuits) in a world that wants to put you in a box * Why labels can be a help and hindrance when making our way in the world * How subverting labels taps into a primal sense of risk (and can make others uncomfortable) * What it means to dig and excavate our stories in a healthy and exciting way * How we might recognise the messages our body is sending in response to opportunities, requests, and stimuli * The power of asking why (and doing it in a way that opens us up rather than closing us down)

Over to YouWhat are you taking away from this episode? Are you a multipotentialite? Let me know by leaving a comment, sending a message, or contacting me via social media.

Links* Yvonne’s Website * The Reluctant Archaeologist Blog * Memoirs of a Reluctant Archaeologist (book) * Follow Yvonne on Instagram

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I speak with Margarit Davtian who is a consumer rights activist, social scientist, and “cult slayer”. She exposes deceptive marketing practices, cult psychology, and New-Age conspirituality trends in the coaching industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxP30X9Asg&Margarit, one of the founders of Ethics For Coaching, helps individuals seeking support in life coaching, business consulting, and self-help industries—the project shields against grifters and scammers who exploit vulnerable positions with undeliverable promises and unethical practices.

Ethics for Coaching’s mission is to educate, support, mediate, and raise awareness, giving consumers the power to make more informed choices. They aim to be a reassuring presence in an industry that can sometimes be hyped up, confusing, and misleading.

As you will know if you’ve been listening for a while, this is an area I am increasingly passionate about. I have seen bad actors take advantage of the trust and hope of good people, who have been convinced to spend ridiculous amounts of money on “high ticket offers” that promise the world and deliver disappointment.

Calling Out Multilevel Marketing Scams and Coaching CultsI believe that coaching is a fantastic tool that can help us unpick challenges and find clearer ways forward in a desirable direction. So it’s frustrating to see so many horror stories of its manipulative misuse by bad actors.

I hope this conversation contributes in some small way to highlighting signs of a multilevel marketing scams and coaching cults so we can all distinguish between good and bad practices and make more informed decisions about what we are looking for and what a particular person is offering.

Margarit and I delve into the Four Pillars of Ethical Coaching in our conversation. This information is beneficial not only for coaches but also for clients, who should understand what to expect from the coaches they work with.

The Elements of Ethical Coaching Include:* Clear expectations and outcomes * Be collaborative, non-judgemental, and willing to accept feedback as a coach * Deliver on your promises (and promise no more than you can deliver) * Communicate with clarity and honesty * Don’t use scarcity and urgency marketing tactics * Don’t use mindset manipulation tactics to overcome objections * No high-pressure selling * Understand potential sources of emotional/psychological harm * Don’t use coercive control (e.g. programming fears/phobias or using thought-terminating cliches) * Commit to establishing competence and maintaining professional boundaries * Establish contracting between coach and client * Be open about areas of knowledge and expertise (and what is beyond your scope) * State and clarify objectives and outcomes * Testimonials should only be used with explicit permission * No coercive conditions for joining a program (e.g. you MUST share a positive testimonial) * Make relevant qualifications, certifications, and credentials known * Include refunds, plagiarism, risk management plan (how a client knows what to do when they have a concern)

Want to Know More About Ethics For Coaching?They are looking for coaches who are passionate about this stuff to continue the work they’ve started.

Find Margarit on Instagram and YouTube

Conscious Revolution Podcast | Substack

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I talk about some things that came out of our conversation in The Haven around the prompt, “I can’t wait”.

What do you struggle to wait for?

https://youtu.be/sAeb-3AlzhIThere are many angles from which we can look at these words. What comes to mind for you? Maybe you can’t wait for something to arrive. Perhaps you can’t wait for it to be over. Or maybe you get tetchy or anxious when you’re forced to wait.

I Can’t Wait…* For the next episode. * For kick-off. * To feel better. * Around. * To get on the road. * To get this over with. * To get there. * …it makes me testy. * To see you. * For this to start. * For this to end. * To leave. * For the lunch break. * To go. * …it makes me anxious. * To get home. * …I need to keep myself busy.

What else comes to mind for you?

In The Episode, I Explore:* Patience and Impatience (rushing into decisions that naturally take time) * Excitement and possibility (allowing ourselves to look forward) * Pausing to check vs checking ourselves (highly sensitive people might respond more slowly AND quickly to stimuli) * How the impermanence of things can help us be more peaceful in the present, and less likely to wish away time * The power of anticipation, expectancy, and bad endings

Join the conversation in The Haven: https://the-haven.co

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzDsxewUa5s&

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Over the past few years, there have been a bunch of developments in sensitivity research.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share some reflections on the Second International Conference on Sensitivity Research. It was organised by Michael Pluess, Francesca Lionetti, and Corina Greven through The University of Surrey.

In all honesty, academic presentations aren’t really my cup of tea. My mind drifts too easily. But I munched on bananas and persevered because I really think this stuff matters…I was helped by the recorded replay too. So I hope this episode helps others who are interested in the essence of sensory processing sensitivity research right now.

https://youtu.be/FkGsvdA3htw

“If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.”

– Douglas Adams

I want to understand these developments, so I’m taking on a challenge; to piece together what I’ve learned from the research and explain it as best as possible. A lot of information was packed into three hours, and I have tried to grasp as much of it as possible. But I very much welcome those with more expertise to help clarify, contradict, or correct any misunderstandings.

The full text version of my conference summary is available here.

The Sensitivity Research Presentations: Highly Sensitive Children in the School Context (Jenni Kähkönen) * High Sensory Processing Sensitivity: Blessing or Challenge? (Veronique de Gucht) – here’s the SPS Monitor Questionnaire * Genetics of Environmental Sensitivity and its Association with Mental Health and Wellbeing (Elham Assary) * Sensitivity and Overstimulation (Sofie Weyn) * Attentional Capture and Sensitivity (Robert Marhenke) * Effects of Sensitivity and Childhood Family Conflict on Objective Stress Responding (Sophia Bibb) * Measurements of Sensitivity* (Panel Discussion)

Over to YouDid anything surprise you in the research? Are there any areas or topics that you would love to see researchers explore in the future?

If you’d like to clarify or correct anything, please do share a comment below.

And if you fancy chatting with me about anything mentioned in the episode, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a message.

The music you will hear in the episode is a piece I wrote as I was piecing the show together. Writing music gives me breathing space when I need to reflect on, understand, and retain information without looking directly at it. Here is the whole track (the video is of a train that went past when I was waiting for mine about an hour before the conference “started”.

https://youtu.be/lzDsxewUa5s

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Can Artificial Intelligence help us embrace, explore, and celebrate our human creativity and sensory sensitivity even MORE deeply?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I speak with Marc Winn about the impact of generative AI on our creative spirit.

We step beyond the unhelpful binary debates that tend to view the complex tangle of technology adoption as all good or all bad. We begin with the most important starting question: What do we want to use it for? And how can it help us become more human, more playful, more attuned to our senses, and less mechanical and robotic?

https://youtu.be/TjGD4kWjGbwHow Can Artificial Intelligence Help Us Become More Human?Marc has dedicated the past 14 years to helping people find their way in a rapidly changing world. He focuses on AI and how embracing it isn’t just about technology—it’s about people. Through AI Adoption groups, Strategy Days, and long-term Partnerships, he focuses on the human side of digital transformation.

Marc is also the author of The 50 Coffee Adventure: A Fun, Light and Easy Way to Build Connections—One Magical Conversation at a Time.

In the episode, Marc and I Discuss:* The role generative AI can play in giving people who have always struggled simple ways to express themselves * Why art is deeply misunderstood (and often overlooked) in its role in changing the world * How art has a role to play in helping us meet the significant challenges of our time * The link between burning out and building things in other peoples’ image rather than your own (and what it means to live from that authentic place within us) * Why Marc believes you have more of a chance of changing someone’s life by making mistakes rather than delivering perfection * Fears and hopes about the post-consumption age of creativity and how mass participation will become a new normal * How AI supports and can enhance creativity (rather than replace it)

I enjoyed this conversation a lot. It gave me a fresh perspective on things I hadn’t considered before.

Over to YouWhat were your takeaways? How do you feel about this stuff? Share your response in the comments or drop me a message.

Marc’s LinksBook a Coffee with Marc

Moving Fast Together – The Human Side of AI Adoption (Marc’s Presentation)

45 Minutes of Marc’s Life That Got Out of Hand

Marc’s Website | Marc’s Blog

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If you’re a freelancer or solo practitioner, you likely need to wear many different hats to keep your business going. It can be tiring and confusing at times. An understandable trend in the age of algorithmic social media is people donning the social media marketing hat more and more, sometimes at the expense of their core craft.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with my friend, Adam Kawalec. He explains what he means when he says he’s a coach, not a marketer or social media influencer. He describes how he’s intentionally built his business through word-of-mouth referrals and relationship marketing.

https://youtu.be/JpViYWqPN7w?si=4KcI4tj8PjFq_jcSIn our conversation, Adam demonstrated what happens when we shift our focus from persuasion, traffic, and engagement to depth, connection, and potency. The invitation to find more meaningful, gentle, and person-centred ways of building a sustainable business left me feeling hopeful and enriched.

This goes against the growing trend where the drive for social media influence trumps professional training and development. This is why I wanted to speak with Adam about the ethicality of coaching and how to remain focused as a coach not a marketer.

Ethics For Coaches and MarketersIt’s a companion to the episode with Megan Malone when we considered the cost of reputation damage to coaching as a trained skillset due to a series of documentaries and exposés highlighting nefarious, manipulative, and abusive practices performed by people calling themselves coaches. It often happens when the focus on developing skills as a coach is gradually eroded and replaced by marketing and sales.

During our discussion, Adam mentioned the Ethics For Coaching project. It’s a crucial initiative to educate consumers and support coaches in practising their craft with integrity, safety, inclusivity, and professionalism. This project’s four pillars serve as a guide, highlighting red flags to watch out for and expectations you can have with a safe and competent coach.

Much of it speaks to the question of whether someone is a competent coach or simply a persuasive marketer. Stay tuned for my conversation with Margarit Davtian, a board member of EFC and a consumer rights expert, who sheds light on the project’s mission and her role in it.

In the episode, Adam and I explore:* Why marketing doesn’t have to feel like marketing when you approach it in the right way * Ways coaching differs depending on the setting (and the stakeholders) * The difference between traffic marketing vs relationship marketing * Ethical responsibilities when marketing and practising as a coach * The importance of slowing down if you want to speed things up * What it means to be truly remarkable, and how to be so good they can’t ignore you * Finding the sweet spot in your daily rhythm to commit to growing without burning out

Over to YouWhat are your thoughts on the topics we discussed? I’m eager to hear your takeaways. Feel free to share your comments or drop me a message.

Connect with AdamWebsite: https://adamkawalec.com/

Inside The Comfort Zone Podcast

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we delve into the intriguing concept of voice, the third element of our creative spirit that we’ve been looking at recently. Check out the episodes on Sound and Noise if you haven’t already done so.

What do we mean when we talk about creative voice? Is it something we are born with or something we develop?

Character is inadvertently forged in our workshops of adversity.
Performance is intentionally forged in our workshops of necessity.
Voice is the taste we leave for others.
Character can be flexible or brittle.
Performance is a wall or a window.
Voice is sweet or bitter.

I intuitively wrote down those words when preparing and attempted to untangle their meaning during the episode.

Other Things I Explore In The Episode:* How art transcends anyone else’s desire for it * Ways we lose our voice in the pressure to fulfil, please, and satisfy an external demand * Voice isn’t easy to describe, and it can’t be contrived * Performance as shaping, forging, fabricating, embodying (and how performance can be a window or a wall – deepening or alienating our relationship with our voice) * Mr Rogers described Voice as “something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.” * Ways to find your voice after losing it * What other people can tell us about the sound of our voice

So, what does voice mean to you? I’d love to read your reflections. Share them in the comments or drop me a message.

The Fireside Membership | Sound, Noise, VoiceThe Fireside Membership offers a unique opportunity to step back from life’s distractions and disturbances. It’s a place to reconnect with who you are and consider how you would love your life to look in the future.

The membership materials, between session reflection questions, and personalised coaching calls are designed to support you in your endeavours.

Whether you have a particular challenge you want to overcome, a project you would love to complete, or you’re looking for a clear way forward. I designed the program to help you come home to your innate creative spirit and accomplish your aims on YOUR terms and in YOUR way.

The post 56 | Does Your Voice Sound Like You? appeared first on Andy Mort.

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The noise we encounter can significantly impact how we perceive the world and what we believe about it. This can be multiplied tenfold for sensitive types who naturally absorb and respond to subtle environmental shifts and sensory disturbances.

So, how do we learn to acknowledge and address the noise that can otherwise derail and distract us?

I explore that question in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, which follows from last week’s exploration of personal sound and the idea of “coming to our senses.”

https://youtu.be/elTJHlIUslkThe Difference Between Noise and BuzzBuzz is not a technical term, but it helps us differentiate different types of external stimulation. In the episode, I discuss how noise disturbs the senses, diminishing our capacity to enjoy while buzz enriches the experience, adding to the atmosphere and energy.

Distinguishing between noise and buzz helps us gauge whether an environment supports our objectives and desires in any given moment.

We might recognise how the same stimulation can be met differently by people. For example, some find silence distracting and seek sensory input to create a buzz to concentrate, while others lose focus if anything is happening around them. This highlights the subjective nature of these perceptions, which requires understanding and negotiation, especially in shared spaces like open-plan offices and living environments.

Sources of NoiseNoise reaches us through our senses, our thinking, and bodily sensations. We can perceive and feel disturbances in many ways and from various sources, some more overt than others.

Sensory NoiseSensory noise is stimulation that directly enters our senses: noisy sounds, tastes, smells, touch, sights etc. Input becomes noisy when our ability to process sensory data or receive information through other senses is impaired.

Cognitive NoiseWe might not notice how noisy our thoughts are when we are habituated to an overthinking mind. Thoughts might include the voice of the inner critic and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, one another, and the state of the world.

Digital NoiseI wasn’t sure where to put mobile technology but it certainly belongs on this list. In fact, we might find it under every item. But rather than being a direct noise source, it tends to act as an amplifier for many other noise sources.

The phone brings sensory noise through the sights and sounds of relentless news feeds and reels. It can also amplify cognitive noise, triggering internal judgements based on comparisons as we glimpse images, videos, and updates flying past our eyes, not to mention exposure to the relentless flood of real-time information that we wouldn’t get in such abundant volume without technology.

Cultural NoiseCurrent events, news stories, and social trends flow into our conscious awareness from outside. They take up capacity for thinking and feeling and become noise when we don’t have a creative outlet to process and release them.

Cultural noise also flows through the values and beliefs we absorb from society and judge ourselves by.

Somatic/Physical NoiseWe might feel noisiness in our physical beings. It can be experienced as pain, tension, tightness, aches, throbs, tenderness, etc. On the one hand it is where we might hold unprocessed thoughts, emotions, and experiences. But on the other hand, it can also become a source of noise itself.

Emotional NoiseUnacknowledged and unprocessed emotional responses to environments, situations, encounters, and experiences can build up inside us as noise. The louder they get, the more they influence our perception of reality.

What We Hear is How We SeeI use the role of music in film and TV to highlight this. There are some fantastic examples of how music can completely change what you believe you are seeing in front of you.

Check out these examples:

• The Power of Music in Film
• Breaking Bad The Sitcom

How Can Two People Interpret The Same Thing So Differently?The soundtrack playing within impacts our ability to truly listen to one another. If we are primed to laugh, get angry, or be cynical, we will notice information that supports that outcome. We can work with this to create better and more desirable outcomes and avoid exposing ourselves to stimulation that contributes to the opposite.

Overwhelmed By SamenessNoise diminishes our capacity to think clearly and make the best decisions. It squeezes our energy and leaves us feeling distracted and drained.

The algorithmic world of social media presents us with a unique challenge..the overwhelming noise of repetition and sameness. We are presented with a personalised picture of a world that appears to be saturated by a small number of ideas.

We might lose hope when confronted by the crowd of other people occupying the same space we are trying to find our way in.

What Do We Do With All This Noise?

“Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like…then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping. What the public criticises in you, cultivate. It is you.”

– Jean Cocteau

Shame is noisy. It fills our thoughts, senses, and emotional responses to the world. It tells us we are not good enough, we don’t belong, and how we are is unacceptable. But what if the noise of shame can tell us something about who we are and what we might cultivate to connect with our creative sound, voice, and spirit? What if the very thing we think we need to turn down in ourselves is the part of us that brings meaning to who we are?

Sometimes The Obstacle (Noise) is The WayThis is similar to how the Stoics would describe the obstacles we face as the pathway for growth. In other words, what we perceive as barriers to reaching our goals can help us develop in various ways. For instance, if we consider noise an obstacle, we can view it as a formative part of our journey towards self-expression and finding our way ahead.

We can turn our pain into creative offerings that help us reconcile and process it. This can also lead to connecting with others experiencing similar situations and supporting those who may encounter similar challenges in the future.

Environment and RoutineAt times, excessive noise can become a disturbance that needs directly addressing. We might reduce it by modifying our environment, altering routines, and shifting habits.

Boundaries (Work With The Nervous System and Start With The Positive Desire)Consider what makes you feel safe and connected and gives you a sense of energised and motivated hopefulness. Prioritise these things in your environment and routine to minimise distractions. The noise derailing our day often comes from not having solid boundaries.

Boundaries that prioritise what we want more help us eliminate distractions without focusing on them.

We might ask questions such as, what is important to me NOW? What do I want to believe about people? What do I want to notice more?

Set an Intention in The NoiseHow might you experiment with the noise this week? What do you want to prime yourself to notice? What do you want to believe about other people’s intentions? Where would you like to experience more glimmers of hope and connection?

The FiresideWe move through these three elements of creative spirit in my one-to-one Fireside program, which I created to help people reconnect with their natural creative spirit. Learn more here

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We can lose connection with our “sound” if we experience over-empathy, people-pleasing, and an “I’m OK if you’re OK” filter. This can happen if the nervous system learns to perceive danger and safety by taking responsibility for the well-being and reactions of people (and things) it can’t control.

Our creative spirit gets stifled when these patterns settle into our systems. It gets harder to locate our preferences, opinions, and desires. And choices become filtered through their potential social consequences rather than their intrinsic value and importance to us.

Creative spirit has three core elements: sound, noise, and voice.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the role of sound in each of us and how we can find our way home if we’re out of connection.

What does it mean to have a personal sound? Why does it matter? How does it feel? Where is it? How do we find it? What causes us to lose connection with it?

As thinking, feeling, and consciously self-aware creatures, creative spirit flows through our very beingness. It is the invitation to shift the trajectory from what would have happened without us into what COULD happen with us. It stems from the faintest aromas and grows through the slightest cracks of light.

While voice is how we express ourselves in the world, our sound is how we perceive, sense, and notice the world. Sound is the intuitive, creative instincts that precede the interference and noise that clouds it out.

In this episode, we will consider how to attune to this natural and personal part of our being as humans.

Coming To Our SensesWe often talk about someone coming to their senses when they return to sensible compliance and conformity with how they ought to act, think, and approach things. Sometimes, this is necessary, but often, it’s a way to keep our sound hidden. It keeps our creative spirit squashed and unable to breathe.

Truly coming to our senses is about recognising our first perceptions, noticing what we notice, including what we are drawn towards and away from before the noisy filters kick in. Filters like social pressures, expectations, and cultural injunctions leave us doing, chasing, and valuing things that don’t matter to us and fearing, avoiding, and hiding from the things that do.

If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What IsKurt Vonnegut’s uncle Alex had a saying: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” He says, “What Uncle Alex found objectionable about so many human beings is that they would seldom notice when they were happy.”

Happiness is a fleeting encounter with something that catches the sleeve of our attention and brings us into harmony with the moment. The mind isn’t caught up in rumination and worry. It is present, aware, and alive. It can’t be experienced anywhere or anytime other than here and now.

We connect with our sound when we pause to say, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

In her book Anchored, Deb Dana says that “glimmers are all around us, but from a state of protection, they are very hard to find.” For many sensitive souls who have developed deep defensive patterns that seek safety by avoiding threats, it can be challenging to notice glimmers. When our nervous systems are stressed, busy, or numb, we are less attuned to the points of connection around us.

Catching Our Sleeve On Our SoundIn his book Several Short Sentences About Writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg writes:

“Is it possible to practice noticing?
I think so. But I also think it requires a suspension of yearning. And a pause in the desire to be pouring something out of yourself.
Noticing is about letting yourself out into the world,
Rather than siphoning the world into you…
Noticing means thinking with all your senses.
So what is noticing?
A pinpoint of awareness,
The detail that stands out amid all the details.
It’s catching your sleeve on the thorn of the thing you
Notice”

What catches your sleeve?This is where we find the headwaters of creative spirit. The trickle at the source of the river of creativity that we want to feel flowing through our lives.

Losing Connection With Our Sound

We wonder if we’re allowed to like what we like. There’s communal groupthink that can inform this, where we outsource our tastes to the tastemakers and trendsetters who give us the rules for fitting in. We lose connection with our sound when we run everything we notice through a filter or set of standards that we haven’t decided for ourselves.

Between Stimulus and ResponseAs Viktor Frankl famously said, there is a space between the stimulus and response where we have the power to choose our path forward. The more space we can bring to that moment, the better we can select the actions, words, and thoughts that reflect the values we want the world to reflect.

However, this space between stimulus and response can also present a challenge when the pull of a prevalent culture is strong, when there are loud judgemental noises in the world around us. It becomes somewhere to question our sound, second-guess the intuitive nudge, and talk ourselves out of doing the right thing.

In this space, our second thoughts convince us that our initial feelings aren’t right. We don’t allow our authentic tastes, preferences, and the things that catch our attention to whisper to us. And when these moments are strung together over a long period, our sound can become so faint that we lose connection with it.

So, How Do We Reconnect With Our Sound?If this sounds like something you want to explore, I recommend experimenting with a glimmer record.

• Record the things you notice. Write them down, take photos, or speak them into your phone’s voice memo app—whatever is simplest and easiest for you.
• Don’t judge or analyse what catches the sleeve of your attention (you don’t need to know why)
• Notice any resistance you have (no one else will see what you record, so observe any resistance you have when noticing particular things—what does the resistance feel like? Does it carry words? A familiar voice? Judgment?).

In the next part (Noise), we will consider how noise clouds our sound.

The Fireside ProgramMy One-to-One Fireside coaching program helps you tune into your natural sound, process the world’s noise, and express your unique voice in the best way for you. Learn more here.

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Where does your mind go when you read the phrase, “The money changed everything”?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I want to share points from our recent Haven discussion when we used this prompt to chat and play.

Where did the money come from? What difference did it make?

Before our gathering, I stumbled on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called “Reward to Finder“. The story is about Carl, who finds some money in a gutter on his way home from work. Instead of returning it to its rightful owner (in exchange for an unspecified reward), as he promised his wife, Anna, he keeps it hidden in his attic. Eventually, Anna discovers that he is counting the money and demands a share. She threatens to go to the police if Carl doesn’t comply. As she spends the money, the situation escalates. Ultimately, they both decide to take action. This changes everything.

It was like poison; it got into our bloodstream.
Normal life became something obscene.
We couldn’t see straight. I lost you in the haze.
Neighbours hear banging through the walls of this doorless maze.
A dark cloud hanging like a fur coat.
In limbo, awaiting the verdict.

Words inspired by Reward to Finder

The story highlights a familiar scenario we may have encountered in various situations. The arrival of money can often trigger possessiveness, control, greed, and envy, causing relationships to crumble. This can happen dramatically, as depicted in the story, or gradually over time. Over time, resentments build up, stories take hold in the characters’ minds, beliefs shift, values change, and people stop seeing people. Instead, they see obstacles, hindrances, opportunities, and gold mines. But perhaps, instead of bringing about fundamental changes, money reveals what was already there.

But The Money Can Make a Positive DifferenceIt was interesting to notice how my personal response to the prompt had a negative flavour. This attitude might be called “Why does money always ruin good things?” There are many examples of this. But I wanted to explore how money can positively change everything. That would be the first place people go in response to the prompt.

An unexpected gift that took the pressure off or saved the day, approval for the loan that got the business off the ground, or the grant that transformed the community.

What Would You Choose To Do If Money Wasn’t an Obstacle?What Would You Choose To Do If Money Wasn’t an Obstacle? is a classic coaching question. But it’s also an interesting one to dissect. The responses seem to vary depending on whether having a vision precedes the availability of funds or vice versa.

On one hand, we may ask, “What is something you would love to do but can’t due to a lack of resources?” Perhaps there is a particular project you would love to undertake, a place you would like to visit, or changes you would like to make. In other words, if you had the money, you would know exactly what to spend it on. For me, it’s finishing my album. Incidentally, if you have £5000 lying around (or know someone who does), gimme a shout!

The other way of reading the question is, “If you suddenly came into a chunk of money, what would you do with it?” It’s the “What would you do if you won the lottery?” question. Responses tend to be more vague. We would “probably” buy this or that, replace some stuff, give it away, or invest it. The possibilities are broader, but they are also potentially less focused.

A Highly Sensitive Drive To EnableThere was a thread in our discussion as we imagined the difference money could make in enabling desirable stuff to emerge in the world around us. Once the bills are taken care of and there’s enough yarn to knit with, we might look beyond our personal situation and into families, neighbourhoods, and communities, where money could change things for good.

Unconditional GivingThis opened a conversation about gifts. Some people love giving but are uncomfortable receiving gifts. Even when there are no tangible strings attached. Our transactional market mentality travels deeply within, around, and between us. Likewise, we might ponder whether giving money unconditionally to support a cause, a student, or an artist is truly possible. Or is there always a low-level entitlement to results? Is a gift really a gift if we want a particular outcome to emerge from giving it?

This was a beautiful thing to ponder because it speaks to the unconditional belief in other people’s vision for their work. How often does money come with strings attached, contractual obligations that compromise and control the creative vision?

I’ve seen this happen to musicians and songwriters over the years, who live the dream and get the record deal, only to realise that it’s not about the art; it’s about the money. The money is obviously an investment, not a gift. It’s not a case of someone financially supporting the potential creation of something they believe in for its own sake; it’s about backing an artist they believe will make them profit.

Of course, that’s how an industry works, and its underpinned by business deals. But are there other ways to think about investment in the creators we believe in? I suppose it’s the beauty of Patreon and Bandcamp, where we can directly support our favourite artists and creators. Everyone has different motives underpinning their support, but ultimately these platforms allow us to give to the people and work we want to see flourish.

Questions For Reflection: The Money Changed EverythingWe used the following questions for further reflection.

• What would you choose to do if money wasn’t an obstacle?
• What is something that money makes more challenging?
• What might society look like if people didn’t need to worry about making money to survive? How do you think people would use their time? What values/priorities would emerge?
• What is the most important lesson you’ve learned about money?

We have an open discussion in The Haven and a space to share anything you come up with – I’ve added some unfinished poems and an attempt at a painting. Seeing how different people interpret these prompts and answer those reflection questions is great fun. It expands horizons and helps untangle all kinds of things that might be causing frustration and stuckness.

Join us over at The Haven

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Adam Grant explores how our practice can lead to boreout in Hidden Potential. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I dive into this idea and reflect on the role of playfulness in maintaining our motivation with the things that matter most.

We consider the distinctions between burnout and boreout and delve into the contrast between obsession and passion. I ask how the demands and pace of hustle culture might lead to chronic boredom. We look at why we need not stress about discovering our purpose and passion despite the societal messages we are bombarded with.

“It is neither work nor play, purpose nor purposelessness that satisfies us. It is the dance between.”

– Bernard de Koven

Boreout is the emotional deadening you feel when you’re under-stimulated to the point of disconnection. But it might also occur when we are chronically overstimulated and unable to pause between life’s ceaseless bombardment of noise.

Practice and BoreoutBoreout is a phenomenon that often arises when we lose our sense of purposeful connection and intrinsic joy with the task at hand. When it comes to practice, it can turn into an obsessive slog rather than a meaningful journey towards progress and growth.

Deliberate play isn’t about avoiding work. It’s about shifting our mentality and seeing how potential can be reached sustainably by finding ways to playfully engage in practice, learning, and growth.

“You’re not supposed to enjoy it; it’s piano practice!”We fall into a trap with certain endeavours. We believe that practice ought to feel like a slog. This leads us to stories of forbidden fun. Some things are meant to feel like punishment.

However, Adam Grant refers to a study conducted on renowned concert pianists, which revealed most of them practised the piano for just an hour a day during their early years, and they weren’t raised by controlling and dominating drill sergeants. Their passion ignited, and their parents and teachers gave them the conditions to maintain their motivation and enthusiasm.

They practised, not because they had to, but because they were interested. They enjoyed working with teachers to explore the craft more; excited, engaged and wanted to learn, improve, and practice.

When we treat it as something we’ve just got to repeat and repeat, practice can lead to boreout. It can also extinguish passion and cause us to resent things that used to be exciting and joyful.

In the episode, I also explore:* Harmonious passion vs obsessive passion and which is more useful * How my drum teachers used deliberate play to keep me on track with my exams * Why a lack of creative coaching led me to quit a football team * Similarities between burnout and boreout * How it can be more relaxing to create than to do nothing * Why overstimulation can leave us bored and disconnected * The way algorithms overstimulate our senses with sameness – and how variety and difference are sources of energy and inspiration * Collective boreout through cultural drift * How uncertainty gives rise to creativity, passion, and play (and the danger of trying to avoid it) * And more…

Over to YouSo, what resonated for you in this episode? Leave a comment below or get in touch via social media or through my contact page.

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Humour is a VERY important sense. Without it, we risk taking ourselves so seriously that we lose all perspective. Our sense of humour is a core part of gentleness (firm back, soft front) because it allows us to move through the world with greater flexibility and openness.

We all have this sense! But it takes practice to remain humourously sensitised to the world around, within, and between us.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a Haven Courtyard conversation I had towards the end of 2023 with Roxana Alexandru and Neil Hughes. We explored how we might use humour to befriend anxiety and the inner critic in helpful and healthy ways.

Rox helps people figure out ways to play with and change their relationship with debilitating social anxiety. She shares her experiments through Instagram and TikTok.

Neil wrote the book Walking on Custard & the Meaning of Life: A Guide for Anxious Humans. It contains an inspiring ongoing meta dialogue with his inner critic throughout.

Check out Neil’s website and watch his TEDx Talk (A new plan for anxious feelings: escape the custard!)

I love how both Rox and Neil relate to the voice of their inner critics, which is why I thought it would be fun to have them both on the same call…and I was right; it was!

In our conversation, they explained why they felt drawn to use humour to engage with their inner critic and what they’ve learned.

We Discuss Humour, Anxiety, Inner Critics, and…* How can we work on our relationship with the inner critic in light-hearted ways? * When is it better to be amused than anxious? * Experimental ideas to take control over the process so that the fear doesn’t gain power over you. * How Neil’s goal was to reach a point where he no longer needed to think/talk about anxiety. We explore how engaging with inner work as a temporary process (perhaps even obsession) can lead you to a light on the other side. * The link between custard and anxiety and how seeing it through this metaphor can help identify and reach more solid and desirable ground. * Situations and environments where social anxiety increases (and how to prepare/recover to avoid feedback loops) * The simple power of being interested (rather than worrying about being interesting) * The derailing fear of being misunderstood. * Why we can never be prepared enough for every potential eventuality and how Neil engages with that truth in creatively humorous ways * How scripting can help give a set of mental tools to draw on and use during times when we most need it * Creating deliberate awkward moments helps the brain lean into discomfort on our terms. * Why are our post-situational inner narratives often worse than the situations themselves – and how do we choose more favourable (and evidenced) narratives to believe? * The sound of our inner critic (is it a voice? A narrative? Or a flavour?) * How to relate to impostor feelings (or impostor syndrome) in a helpful and humourous way * The stories we tell ourselves about appearances and how judgements by those around us about those around us can become internalised * How do we gauge and measure progress with anxiety and the inner critic? And how do we recognise ways we have grown and are growing?

Over to YouDid you relate to any of the areas we covered in this conversation? Is there something related to humour, anxiety, and the inner critic that you would like me to explore more in the future?

Leave a comment below or send me a message.

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Life coaching can be shrouded in confusion.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with Megan Malone, delving into the joys and challenges of coaching. Together, we dissect why some view it sceptically and explore avenues for life coaches to reverse the negative trends and misconceptions.

Megan is an International Coach Federation (ICF) certified coach and has a Master’s in Organisational Development. She sheds clear light on the nature of coaching and what to expect from working with a professionally accredited life coach.

The Perception of Life CoachingCoaching is plagued by numerous misconceptions, fuelling doubts and suspicions regarding its validity. Particularly in the wake of controversial instances like Escaping Twin Flames, The Dream (Season Three), and The Conspirituality Podcast (186: Coaches Coaching Coaches), where self-proclaimed coaches have been exposed for questionable and, at times, harmful practices.

It’s imperative to address these misconceptions because each of us should be in a position to make informed assessments about what we’re being sold in the name of coaching. For this we must foster greater awareness and comprehension of ethical practices.

Navigating the life coaching industry can be confusing, primarily due to its lack of regulation. Anyone can call themselves a coach without adhering to any particular standards. This ambiguity has sparked discussions calling for industry regulation to delineate more precise professional and ethical practices.

Nevertheless, organisations like the ICF provide clear guidance to affiliated practitioners. They mandate adherence to specific standards, ethics, and competencies. But for it to be truly effective, this type of voluntary self-regulation also requires a public awareness and understanding of what coaching is (and isn’t).

It is crucial to recognise how coaching differs from other helping interventions and understand its uniquely valuable purpose.

The Difference Between Coaching, Therapy, Mentoring, and ConsultingCoachingCoaching is a pathway to attaining a specific outcome or desired future state. A coach acts as a partner, guiding clients to make decisions for themselves and designing an intentional course for personal or professional growth.

TherapyTherapy and counselling focus on aiding clients in mental health recovery, processing past trauma, and healing emotional distress. They explore and address past pain that is hindering present and future well-being.

MentoringMentoring is guidance, teaching, and advice from someone more experienced in a particular field or role. Having traversed a similar path, a mentor imparts wisdom and support, focusing on skill and knowledge acquisition.

ConsultingConsulting addresses specific problems, challenges, or goals. A consultant will often observe and analyse a situation so they can offer expert suggestions, recommendations, and strategies for a person or organisation to implement.

Why is Life Coaching Unregulated?Coaching operates under the premise that clients are inherently whole and capable of making sound life decisions. The coach facilitates self-awareness through questioning and active listening, aiding clients in identifying obstacles, envisioning future desires, and formulating strategies for progress.

While regulated professions often require proven credentials, coaching’s focus on client responsibility and self-directed growth means it’s unlikely to become regulated. However, the rise of untrained coaches (and a wild west of coach training options) blurs the lines, with some assuming roles beyond their expertise, such as advising or diagnosing based solely on personal experience and interests.

ICF-affiliated training programs emphasise a coach’s role in guiding clients to find their own path rather than offering direct advice. This approach fosters motivation, reward, and confidence in clients’ decisions, challenging conventional notions of decision-making predicated on external validation.

In essence, coaching is an agreement entered into voluntarily by those who want to reach a desired future state. The partnership provides scaffolding to build momentum through change.

In our discussion, Megan and I delve into various aspects of coaching, including:

• Red flags that might indicate an poorly trained coach
• Parallels between life coach training programs and multilevel marketing
• The potential for regulatory measures at the training level
• Maintaining integrity while marketing oneself as a coach
• Insights into the potential future trajectory of coaching
• And more…

Connect with Megan: Instagram | TikTok | Website

Over to YouDid anything resonate with you in our conversation? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below or via social media.

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After experiencing challenges with panic attacks, Aaron Espe figured out how to build a career that works for him. Aaron is currently a full-time songwriter based in Nashville Tennessee.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with Aaron about songwriting, creativity, and adapting to creative adversity.

I first heard his music in 2012 when I was presenting the music podcast, Lost on Radio. Aaron was our artist of the week with his track, Hanging By a Thread. I felt an instant connection to his sound and have been keeping a close ear on his work ever since.

His book, On Songwriting: Practical Tips and Insights from a Decade in Music City will be an important part of my reference library from now on. It’s a fantastic guide for anyone creating things to help rekindle focus, clarity, and a sense of possibility.

https://youtu.be/bUoUh5MIPNwIn our conversation, Aaron Espe and I discuss:* The importance of being adaptable and flexible in a creative career (and being unable to co-write songs led Aaron to write a book) * What inspired him to carve his own path rather than taking the conventional songwriting routes he was “supposed” to follow * The GPS Method and The Painting Method for writing songs (and which we naturally gravitate to) * Where inspiration comes from and processes for writing when it’s not there * The power of co-writing as a way to grow your skills and network * And much more…

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We’re at the start of a new year. A time when many are thinking about projects, habits, and changes they want to focus on next.

Whenever we seek advice on making a change, we’re never far from a coach willing to help. But coaching has become a confusing and mysterious mixed bag. So I thought it might help to share some potential red flags to look out for if you’re considering it this year.

Growing Awareness of Bad Coaching PracticesHave you noticed that everyone seems to be a “life coach” these days?

Investigative documentaries, articles, and podcasts have started highlighting certain bad practices to look out for in the industry.

Conspirituality released an episode examining emotional exploitation and parallels with multilevel marketing schemes of certain programs that train coaches to become coaches who coach coaches to be coaches. Season 3 of The Dream dives into similar topics in more depth. Online streaming platforms have an ever-growing library of shows exposing abuses in the name of coaching, such as “Escaping Twin Flames“.

The Closest Thing To Regulation in The Coaching IndustryWhile still not perfect, reputable coaching bodies take great care to develop standards and core competencies that keep coaches and coachees as safe as possible amid the lack of official regulation. For coaches and coach training programs that are accountable to and assessed by associations like the International Coaching Federation (ICF), there is a level of professionalism and knowledge demanded of those who pursue accredited certifications.

There are well-defined, concrete explanations about what you can expect from working with a coach. While every coach has a different personal and professional approach, and will develop the most effective ways of working with particular people, the basic scaffold of coaching is necessarily solid.

But loose definitions and ambiguous understandings of coaching can confuse those exploring the field as a means of support. This can lead to misconceptions and a lack of awareness about what to look for and avoid when searching for a coach.

What IS Coaching?Building on the ICF’s definition, coaching is a thoughtful and creative partnership between coach and coachee that inspires them to explore the possibilities. It helps unlock sources of imagination and resourcefulness to overcome external challenges and inner obstacles to desired outcomes. It is focused on creating a practical pathway for a future-oriented objective.

Coaching is not about fixing, advising, or training. Coaching is a specialist skill in and of itself. It’s not about telling someone what to do or imparting knowledge. It’s built on structured conversations that require trust and collaboration to serve an intentionally articulated purpose.

The documentaries and exposés often highlight practices that insidiously and explicitly contradict these core coaching principles.

Red Flags to Look Out For When Choosing a CoachIf you’re looking to make a change in your life and could use professional support to help you find focus, motivation, and the right path forward, working with a trained coach is a great option. However, not all coaches are equal, and I’ve compiled a list of red flags based on my observations and conversations with others who have horror stories from the so-called coaches they’ve encountered.

Funnels, Systems, and PromisesBe suspicious of any coach guaranteeing a specific result. “Get Rich Quick” is always tempting, especially when delivered in an attractive location with charisma and confidence. If it sounds too easy to be true, it almost certainly is. If their bio says “I’ll Help You Grow a 7-figure Business”, proceed with caution.

The question to ask ourselves is, who wants me to believe this is easy? And what’s in it for them if I buy the belief?

Selling You a New ProblemIf you woke up today without the problem you are suddenly considering hiring a coach for or buying their course to solve it, stop. You don’t need it, and it’s not a problem. Just go back in time and forget you ever came across them.

AdviceOne of the biggest misconceptions of coaching is that a coach will tell you what to do. It is a red flag if someone sees coaching as sharing “the secret” to success and advising you how to do the same as them. This might be helpful in certain teaching, training, or mentoring contexts, but it is not coaching.

An expert coach has first and foremost become skilled in the art of person-centred coaching. A good coach will be able to coach you around anything, even if your goal/project/challenge is outside of their field of knowledge. In fact, too much knowledge can sometimes be a hindrance because the temptation to give advice and cast judgement might derail the conversation.

Obsession With External MeasuresWhile it might feel like we want to shift “up and to the right”, this is meaningless if we are disconnected from meaningful projects and pursuits. In other words, intrinsic motivations. A good coach will help you explore creatively energising ways to stay motivated on the path towards personally compelling outcomes.

A Vertical Relationship StructureThe idea that a coach should be better, more successful, knowledgable, or advanced than the coachee is misleading. You are forming a partnership, which exists in service of the coaching agreement (the goal they are supporting you to move towards through focused and constructive coaching conversations that lead you to take purposeful action between sessions).

You may choose a coach who has done what you want to do or who you consider more “successful”, but that shouldn’t be instilled or perpetuated by the coach. They should help you find a compelling path and connect with your approach to accomplishing your desired outcome, which will ultimately look different from theirs.

Therapy Speak and Empty PhrasesWhat will the coach actually do with you? What will working together look like? Can they explain what coaching is (and isn’t)? Walk away if they use therapy speak and claim they will help with mental health conditions. It’s also a big red flag if someone uses their “lived experience” as evidence of their coaching abilities. See also, giving advice and the potential danger of believing you know what it’s like to walk in another person’s shoes.

Pressure To Act NowIf you feel rushed into signing up with a coach, it’s a red flag. False scarcity marketing tactics work because they mobilise our sympathetic nervous system and force us to act quickly to mitigate the danger of missing out. Create filters you are unwilling to compromise on, such as a cooling off period before making a decision. If the coach doesn’t allow that or they attempt coercing you by putting up the price if you delay your decision, just walk away.

A Selection ProcessLikewise, if a coach uses a selection process, it’s more than likely a marketing tactic. They ask you to apply and will let you know if your application is successful. If it IS successful (which it usually is), you might feel special, chosen, and like you shouldn’t squander the chance to spend tens of thousands of dollars on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Be aware of the feelings evoked through processes like this.

Again, take as much time as you need before making a decision. If they tell you “your place is about to be taken by someone else” you can decline the offer.

A Lack of ConnectionYou won’t click with every coach. That’s normal. But if they deliberately control rapport, employ a “cruel to be kind” approach, or actively create disconnection…it’s a red flag. A coach isn’t there to control or coerce you. They are not there to make you feel bad about yourself. Their job is to support you in an environment conducive to your nervous system feeling safe enough for you to think with openness and creativity.

Likewise, if they test your commitment by manipulating you (“I charge more than you are comfortable paying so that you take the process seriously and do the work”), it is a red flag. Unless they give you that money back at the end, it’s just an excuse for emotional extortion.

Blurred BoundariesIf the coaching is part of a group or community, does it feel like you must adopt specific values and beliefs to belong? Does the community support the temporary coaching scaffold (one you have a clear destination for), or do you sense your autonomy being lost to the tribal identity?

If you feel like you can’t exist without the group, it’s a red flag. A healthy community will expand your sense of possibility and potential beyond its walls rather than making you feel like you can’t function outside of it.

No Clear End PointIf you don’t have a clear idea of where you are going, you might find yourself in a web that becomes a life support machine. Coaching is a tool for a specific purpose. Whether that’s a particular goal or project, or it’s to untangle the chaos of a busy life, there should always be a north star towards which you are heading.

If a coach keeps presenting endless upsells and reasons for you to keep working together, it’s a red flag.

Questions To Ask Before Working With a CoachBefore choosing a coach, it’s a good idea to ask yourself some questions:

• What specific outcome are you looking to achieve with a coach?
• Where did this desire come from? (i.e. was it manufactured through marketing, or is it something you’ve been considering for a while?)
• What style coaching do you need? (when you think back to people who have helped you untangle thoughts, get motivated on essential things, and find a way to take action, what connected for you in their approach?

Questions to ask yourself when speaking with a potential coach:* How do you feel when speaking with this person? * What tells you that you can trust them? * Do you feel pressured to make a quick decision? (e.g. are they using false scarcity tactics like limited-time offers or spaces) * Do you feel safe to ask questions and learn more about their coaching philosophy, approach, and history?

Questions to ask the prospective coach before agreeing to work with them:* What is your coaching experience? * What is your coach-specific training? * What is your coaching philosophy? * What are some of your coaching success stories
(i.e., specific examples/case studies)? * Are you insured and a member of a reputable coaching body? (you can verify whether or not a coach is an ICF member)

I am a big advocate of the coaching process. It is a beautiful way to explore our many human potentials. This is why I felt compelled to take the time to write this piece. Because I hate seeing people exploit others, and I would love to see people become more critically informed about what coaching is and isn’t. Otherwise, we may simply end up cynically disengaged from the whole thing.

Can you add any red flags to the list from your observations and experiences?

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I’ve always felt uneasy about the use of “superpower” to describe high sensitivity.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, Scott Barry Kaufman and I talk about recent research indicating a shift in cultural frames around sensory processing sensitivity and potential issues with portraying high sensitivity as a superpower.

Sensitivity is a “Beautiful and Complex Trait”Rather than being a “superpower”, Scott points out, sensory processing sensitivity is a beautiful and complex trait underpinning the survival strategy for 20%-30% of humans and has been found in over 100 species so far.

There have been some interesting (and challenging) studies in the past couple of years looking at portrayals of sensitivity in Western culture. Last year, Scott wrote an article for Psychology Today responding to a study examining links between high sensitivity and vulnerable narcissism.

Signalling Sensitivity He wrote another piece highlighting research into how some people misappropriate the trait of high sensitivity to seek certain benefits. This research found “zero correlation between sensory processing sensitivity and signalling high sensitivity.” In other words, between those with the trait and those who make unreasonable demands using the trait as an excuse.

This research found “zero correlation between sensory processing sensitivity and signalling high sensitivity.” In other words, between those with the trait and those who make demands using the trait as an excuse. For example…

• Asking for privileges because of sensitivity
• Receiving special treatment because of sensitivity
• Requesting help because of sensitivity
• Avoiding penalties because of sensitivity
• Blaming mistakes on sensitivity
• Telling people how hard life is because of sensitivity

Most of the highly sensitive people I’ve talked to about this list recoil in discomfort at the idea of using their sensitive trait in this way. Especially if it involves making a fuss, receiving special treatment, or requiring others to go above and beyond just for us.

The Potential of SensitivityScott writes, “A beautiful and complex trait has become co-opted by some people as a victim-signalling strategy– “a public and intentional expression of one’s disadvantages, suffering, oppression, or personal limitations.” Indeed, recent research suggests that victim signalling is becoming increasingly prevalent in our society and can be viewed as an expression of a “culture of victimhood” in which claiming to be a victim isn’t in the service of receiving help and assistance for a genuine disadvantage but instead becomes something actually desirable and fashionable in itself.”

I believe highly sensitive people have a powerful role to play in the collective potential of humanity. When combined with genuine empathy and compassion, sensitivity senses what needs to be sensed. It feels deeply for the whole and seeks ways to connect rather than drive apart.

About Scott Barry KaufmanScott Barry Kaufman is a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology from Yale University and an M.Phil in experimental psychology from Cambridge. He has taught courses on intelligence, creativity, and well-being at Columbia, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Scott is the author of Ungifted, Wired To Create, Transcend, and Choose Growth. He hosts The Psychology Podcast. In 2015, he was named one of “50 Groundbreaking Scientists who are changing the way we see the world” by Business Insider.

Visit Scott’s website to learn more.

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While it’s not a “Christmas Song”, I felt compelled to release Still Time during the festive season because there’s just something about it.

My friend Peter seems to agree: “Big-hearted and tender loveliness for a December evening (and probably other months and times of day too, but this feels like a particularly good time for it)”.

So this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is (not) a festive bonus.

When asked what they would do if tomorrow were their last day on Earth, many said they would hang out by a lake or up a mountain to view the sunrise alone or with loved ones. There is still time (and appetite) to play, write, and create. They are drawn to familiar places and sensory experiences (meaningful tastes, sounds, smells, sights, and physical touch).

I was somewhat surprised at the lack of bucket list activities and final thrills. There was a real sense of “return” in the responses. I suppose there might be something about the imminence of finality that draws us toward simplicity. Grounded where we are. The reality we can reach out and touch. An invitation to look around us right now, where we are, and allowing this to be enough and recognising that this IS enough.

Weirdly, no one said they would spend the day on social media arguing with, provoking, or showing off to strangers on the internet. It’s almost as if that stuff isn’t that meaningful when push comes to shove.

Not a Christmas Episode and Not a Christmas SongWhile Still Time is not a “Christmas song”, these themes certainly resonate with my understanding of this time of year.

For many, there is a bittersweet melancholy associated with the festive season. There are reminders of what and who is no longer with us. We experience folded page memories that bring flavours of days gone into the present. We might reflect on another year gone and anticipate, wonder, hope, or dread the year to come.

In this episode:* I share some ideas I discussed in last week’s live Haven Courtyard. * I explore the ways Rapid Response caught my attention and how I approached the piece I contributed to the exhibition. * We unpack the creative process behind Still Time (including some embarrassing voice notes) * I talk about why songwriting is such a magical, mysterious, and utterly normal thing for me.

Still Time by Andy Mort

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I sit down with artist Ben Cowan who kindly invited me into his kitchen for a chat about "Art That Makes You Think". Through his visual satire, Ben adds dark and comedic twists to many of the familiar logos, brands, and packaging that have become part of our cultural furniture.I first encountered Ben earlier this year at the Spark-Ignite symposium at the Royal Spa Centre in Leamington. He appeared on a panel called "Creativity Against The Odds" and shared his fascinating artist origin story. His philosophical outlook grabbed my attention, so I was keen to follow up and invite him onto the podcast. About BenBen spent many years working as a disaster relief specialist in war-torn countries. He says that he found it hard to process what stood for ‘normal life’ when he returned. Without the urgent sense of physical threat, the threat of normal life took on a different form of existential threat. He describes this as a catalyst for him to create art that makes people think but also laugh.Art That Makes You Think (and Laugh)I often reflect on the role of art in our individual and collective lives. Sometimes, it needs to provoke and prod us out of numbing slumbers. It can teach us to feel, call us to action, and connect us with a deeper sense of meaning.In recent years, I've noticed a tendency towards people creating art that tries telling us WHAT to think. Ben holds up a mirror to the propagandistic properties of art with an agenda.He is inspired by Yuval Noah Harari, who talks about the Four C's. Collaborate, Communicate, Critical Thinking, and Creativity, are core characteristics of a successful society. Art is a crucial part of engaging us in HOW to think. It helps us explore WHY we think what we think. And gives us awareness of the influences (and noise) that contributes to our beliefs and opinions, so we can hold them to more cast-iron scrutiny.In our conversation, we discuss:The relationship between art and thought - what is "art that makes you think"?The role art plays in exploring ‘the good life’Our cultural and creative "elders" (figures who have had a profound long-term influence on us as artists and human beings)AI, creativity, and human connectionDoppelganger - Naomi Klein's book about the Mirror WorldThe artist in each of us – the difference between the commercially viable self and the creatively curious self…is it possible to encounter ourselves outside of the capitalist system?Explore Ben’s work through his website: www.artthatmakesyouthink.com. Check out his ‘Ideas Worth Wearing’ shop on Redbubble. Ben also writes a regular blog: BEN TALKS – Ideas Worth Sharing. Follow him on Instagram.Links/Resources Mentioned in The Conversation:Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)Bill Hicks in LondonNo Logo (Naomi Klein)Doppelganger (Naomi Klein)The Courage To Be Disliked (Kishimi and Koga)How This AI Image Won a Major Photography CompetitionThe Big Issue: The brave new world of AI therapyWatch The Full Conversationhttps://youtu.be/6GrXAfPpVX8

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After turning a building due for demolition into a creative community space in the centre of Coventry, Alan Denyer had an epiphany. People aren't actually all that boring. He's a changed man. And a delightful guy! It was a joy to spend an hour chatting about the importance of accessible spaces for creativity and art in any community.In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, you will hear my conversation with Alan, which we recorded in the Long Gallery of the LTB Showrooms in Coventry. And I share my new single, Still Time. The song was written and recorded as part of the Rapid Response exhibition at the end of October 2023.Alan's approach to the LTB Showrooms resonates with my creative spirit.In our conversation we talk about:The creative things you can do with physical spacesHow passion sustains people, and the human desire to contribute to community projects when the opportunity arisesThe small differences between a chaotic and organised creative spaceHow the LTB Showrooms have transformed Alan as a person (and how he sees it doing the same to others)...and why he no longer believes people are boringPeople will often create, volunteer, and contribute even when there is no financial reward for doing soAnd a bunch more...

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How do you respond when things don't turn out as you hoped they would?It was lovely to pause for a chat with my friend, Cameron Airen recently. It had been a while since our previous recorded conversation (back in 2018). A lot has changed for all of us since then! Cam is no exception.On this weeks episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we discuss what happens when things don't turn out as hoped. We explore areas of work/business, relationships, and hobbies. How do we not take it personally when our endeavours don't turn out as we hoped? What tells us when it's time to cut our losses and let go? How do we get through it? How do we know where to go next?Cameron and I discussed how we rarely hear people discuss things going wrong, but it's refreshing to do so. It helps us feel less lonely and more connected. I want to amplify those people trying to muddle along, living meaningful lives in ordinary ways. This might also serve as a small antidote to the dehumanising effects of celebrity culture, where we focus on turning people we don't know into gods and monsters for entertainment.Role Models in Real LifeI want to avoid Survivor Bias as much as possible by sharing incomplete stories that do not have neat endings that wind up at the destination of “All’s Well That Ends Well”. So it was strangely satisfying to talk about situations where things have not turned out as hoped, and how disappointing that has been for us at times.We need more role models who are learning to adapt to the ups and downs of everyday life. People who can roll with the punches and engage with creative spirit and purpose amid “ordinary unhappiness”.We connect with each other on the building sites of loss, in our collective grief, and through shared moments of bittersweet melancholy. From there, we can create a more meaningful and sustainable sense of hope for the future.Connect with Cameron's Instagram and website.

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, Dorcas Cheng-Tozen joins me to discuss her book, Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul. What draws highly sensitive people towards it, and how can we navigate and engage with the issues without burning out?I was particularly interested in considering how sensitive nervous systems are attuned to the needs of a community as a core response to the biological imperative for personal survival.Humans are not wired to connect with and care about the whole world. It's too big and heavy for any individual to carry alone. But the interconnected world shows us everything wrong, and we hear about tragedies almost instantly via social media and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. So, how do we sustain our nervous systems and maintain compassion and care in such difficult conditions? Moreover, how do we make peace with the fact we cannot care about everything without becoming desensitised and shutting down?In our conversation, we explore:The challenges that face highly sensitive and introverts who want to understand and engage with social issuesHow to approach urgent social problems without losing your ability to think critically and openlyApproaches and attitudes that can be off-putting for sensitive peopleLetting go of an individual hero complex and trusting the bigger pictureCauses for hope when the world feels bleakAnd much moreAbout Dorcas and Social Justice For The Sensitive SoulDorcas Cheng-Tozen is an award-winning writer, editor, speaker, and international communications consultant. She has nearly twenty years of experience working with nonprofits and social enterprises, living in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Kenya. Dorcas currently lives in California with her husband and two sons.Social justice work, we often assume, is raised voices and raised fists. It requires leading, advocating, fighting, and organizing wherever it takes place--in the streets, slums, villages, inner cities, halls of political power, and more. But what does social justice work look like for those of us who don't feel comfortable battling in the trenches?Social Justice For The Sensitive Soul addresses this question.Connect with Dorcas:Website: www.chengtozun.comSocial media: Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin

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Do you ever feel overwhelmed and confused by the unending conveyor belt of new labels and training programs professing to be the missing piece in the puzzle of your life?We are sold the latest systems and interventions requiring expert knowledge. We throw our money at solutions with no fixed destination and a never-ending supply of potential new up-sells and add-ons. Many of us get caught in personal development cycles, seeking the next thing that promises to help us get unstuck. But rather than being stuck because we haven't found the perfect model, what if the quest for perfect itself, is a symptom of being stuck at a more foundational physiological level?Therapist and host of the "Stuck Not Broken" podcast, Justin Sunseri, joins us in this episode of the Gentle Rebel Podcast. He shares his passion for Polyvagal Theory and its transformative role in trauma recovery.Polyvagal Theory and The Science of SafetyJustin refers to Polyvagal Theory as the science of safety in the relational biology of mammals. He suggests that people don't break; instead, they find themselves stuck. Hope for improvement, change, and growth always exists, but we may find ourselves stuck in a defensive autonomic state, such as flight, fight, shut down, or freeze.When stuck in this way, we resort to patterns of protection that have kept us "safe" in the past.I wanted our conversation to be an informal introduction to Polyvagal Theory and to get Justin's perspective on its theoretical foundations and potential application in everyday life.In our conversation, we talk about:How Justin stumbled on Polyvagal Theory as a frustrated therapist working in the U.S. school system.Where stuck states arise and what to do with them.Why Polyvagal Theory isn't a therapeutic and treatment style/metaphorical model (it is a research-based scientific framework).The three core states of Polyvagal Theory (Vagal Safety, Sympathetic Fight/Flight, Dorsal Shutdown). How does their defensive form impact behaviour, thoughts, and feelings?How each of us has different go-to actions in a state of mobilised fight, flight, or life-threatening shutdown.An explanation of the mixed states freeze, play, and stillness. Justin also defines and critiques the three new mixed states recently added: appeasement, faun, and intimacy. Are these helpful or unnecessarily confusing?Puzzle Completion Therapy - a wholly made-up therapeutic system Justin invented in one of his podcast episodes. He shows how simple it is to create a legitimate-sounding model to sell to people looking for help.The temporary nature of therapy and coaching. Plus some red flags to look out for when partnering with professionals.And much more…LinksJustin's website: https://www.justinlmft.com/Join us in The Havenhttps://youtu.be/DUE-ieXXNcAJoin The Conversation

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Rest is who we are beneath the noise. It is a sensing silence that sits beneath the pressure to maintain perceptions, manage expectations, and ceaselessly strive to be, do, and have more. And it can be hard to come by in our loud and fast-paced world.In this week's episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a conversation with Rashid Hughes who I discovered via The Compassion Revolution.Rashid seeks to bridge the worlds of contemplative practice and collective care. I was drawn to his suggestion that if we only see practices as an individual thing, we miss the transformative role they play in the collective body.He describes a "great bypass" that leaves us in a feedback loop of striving for a state of unreal perfection. The noise of this restless pursuit is gently quietened through restful inquiry.In our conversation we explore:Rashid's Four Pillars of Rest and how we might engage with them.(R)elax the grip of goals, expectations, and becoming(E)xhale all the striving to be something else(S)ense the silence and stillness(T)une into awareness of who you are beneath your thoughts"I stand firm, ten toes down, in saying that inquiring into the beingness of being and learning to rest there consciously, is one emergent pathway to beholding the world with new eyes." - Rashid HughesWe talked about using accountability to reflect our vision and values. When our awareness and attention is opened to certain elements or ways of seeing, accountability is the feeling of being aligned and in sync with that part of ourselves. In other words, whether our vision and actions reflect each other.We also explored the implications of focussing on becoming at the expense of being. And how this sense of separation from ourselves and one another can lead us down deceptively destructive paths.Rest in Being as an Ocean WaveI share a journal reflection I wrote in preparation for the conversation, in which I played with the image of rest as the rhythm of waves on a shoreline. Some are big, some are small. Sometimes there isn’t much going on at all. Ritual is like that. Whether it be a spiritual or creative practice - somewhere we gather together or somewhere I retreat in solitude. Over time waves change landscapes but even if one wave causes a landslide, this is still just one moment among many.We can get stuck in the spirit of doing. Chasing moments that can't be captured. We run down to the ocean with a jar and catch the wave. Do we have possession of a wave? If we show it to someone else they will just see water. The wave is no longer there.The wave is uncontainable rhythm. It’s a beat. A moment. Something that can't be appropriated or owned. No two waves hold the same water even though they might take a similar form in appearance. Each of these moments is unique in that sense. That is what ritual is to me.We live in a world that expects, demands, and wants to possess what can't be detained. As soon as it enters the jar, the wave ceases to be a wave. This rings true to many aspects of life. What do we miss when we're busy thinking of new ways to control the flow within, around, and between us?Connect with Rashid through his website and on Instagram.Join The Conversation

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When navigating a season or environment of change, we need things we can trust.But what does it mean to trust someone or something? Where does it come from?The word derives from the root "Deru" (firm, solid, steadfast), the same etymological foundation as the word tree. It brings an image of strength through flexibility, adaptability, and dependability to meet the moment's needs.A tree is anchored in place by its roots. It starts growing beneath the ground.Charlie Jones joined us in our September Courtyard Conversation to discuss dealing with unpredictable change. We explored the meaning of truth during uncertain times and how it relates to the growth and erosion of trust in the people and places around us.Maybe you can think of someone or something you have lost confidence in. What is it that means they can't be trusted? Words that come to mind are shape-shifting, slippery, and a drive to wiggle their way out of things to protect themselves. Someone who will do anything to avoid accountability and responsibility for their words and actions.When we lose trust in one person, it can impact the story we tell about everyone. This is why it's in the interests of a healthy culture to grow and nurture a shared understanding of and commitment to truth. It starts where we are.How is Trust Grown?What tells us it is safe to put our confidence in another person? These are some of the responses that came through the Courtyard conversation when we explored the characteristics of trust.This is not a prescriptive list of things to do but reflections on some of those signs and signals that indicate the presence of truth, as we defined earlier. As the steadfastness that runs through from our roots to the tips of our leaves.Integrity (practising what you preach)We scan for signs that we can or cannot trust someone based on whether their actions reflect their words.Respect (to look again)Trust grows when we look beneath someone's role/position/performance and meet them at the level of being. This is an ongoing practice, not a one-time event.Patience (slowing down)Trust grows when someone cares enough to slow down and address things properly and effectively. If they appear in a rush to sugarcoat, appease, or force quick change, we might wonder what they are afraid of.Accountability (a shared agreement)Trust grows when we have mechanisms to hold ourselves and one another to a shared vision and foundational values. Something against which to "balance the books". It erodes if we hold people accountable for things around which we have not reached a shared consensus.Listening (holding space)Listening is a buzzword in many situations and environments where change occurs. But hope and trust are quickly eroded if you're told you're being listened to, but evidence says you're being ignored. Charlie co-founded Spaces For Listening with Brigid Russell, so we had a good chat about the characteristics of genuine listening.Encouragement (unconditional acceptance)Praise can feel manipulative because it is linked to doing things in the correct/acceptable way. Even if it feels good to hear (when it aligns with our feelings about something), it doesn't help trust grow as we think they are trying to get something from us. On the other hand, encouragement is about unconditional acceptance at the level of being. Seeing who we are BENEATH what we do creates conditions for that to flourish in its own way.Bravery (going against the grain)Trust grows when we witness someone act from a place of truth. A willingness to make life more difficult for themselves because there is something more important to them. Maybe they are willing to have a difficult conversation, admit they were wrong about something, or stand up to authority. When someone sacrifices their comfort or pleasure for the sake of something or someone else, it can grow a sense of trustworthiness.

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This is the third and final part of our mini-series looking at questions around the theme of change. In the first episode, we explored the signs and signals that tell us something has changed or is ready to change. Last time we thought about how to take change from a hypothetical possibility to an embodied reality. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we are thinking about maintaining motivation when we're in the messy chaos of change.You know what needs to change. You've chosen how you'd like to approach this season of change. But how do you stay motivated when the initial surge of energy is absorbed into everyday life again?These ideas came out of our Haven Theme Kota at the start of September. They are not all relevant and appropriate for everything and everyone. But some might stir new insights and open up horizons so that more creative options can occur to us down the line.What Is Motivation?Motivation comes in different shapes, sizes and from a range of sources. It's a feeling, an energy, an inner spark. But it's also something that comes from external sources. It grows in connection with other people. It is broader than our individual energy and will.When The Motivation Wears Off At the start of the summer I had a painful gout attack. My motivation to do whatever it took to avoid it ever happening again was very strong. It helped me identify some habits that I could tweak to hopefully lessen the chance of future attacks. But a few months on and my motivation has shifted. I can remember that it was painful, however, I can't sense the pain directly. The urgency has dissipated because it has moved from my body. There is a sense of freedom in this because I am choosing rather than reacting. But there is also a chance that I forget about the changes I wanted to make. So, how do we stay motivated when that urgency wears off? That's what we're exploring in this episode.Micro-MotivationsIn our discussion, we talked about a few micro-motivations that we can build into our awareness in everyday life. These are simple ways to stay connected with possibility and our reasons that underpin the direction we want to move in.GlimmersDeb Dana talks about these small points of sparkle that give us a surge of positive energy. Momentary connections with something outside or within us make us feel a sense of wonder, calm, or excitement.Even if the change feels scary and big, we might find glimmers in it. Even if the change is unwanted, maybe there is something within that has prompted a feeling of connection and gratitude.Physical CuesWe can use physical objects that remind us of the journey we're on, or things that keep us calm and connected along the way.Certain textures, smells, or tastes might give us a kick of motivated energy and connect the present with the future we are forever moving towards.Quick WinsWe can use simple prompts that remind us to do something that connects us with the bigger picture. For example, write three words about what you can see, hear, and smell in this moment. Or take a photo of whatever is to the left of you. Or take three slow breaths as you wait for the kettle to boil.These prompts don't need to be directly relevant to your broader goals. Rather, they can help shift states and move into a more open and creative spirit at any moment.How Do You STAY Motivated?It's one thing feeling motivated to change, it's another thing staying motivated once the novelty wears off or you lose touch with that initial sensation.Here are some of the things we came up with in our Haven Hive Kota Brainstorm.Stop Trying to be MotivatedWe can sometimes put too much importance on feeling motivated. Just like a seed grows in the dark out of view, changes often happen accidentally and inadvertently when we're not looking. The danger of believing that we need to feel motivated is we end up overlooking the momentum and growth that...

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This is the second of three episodes in a mini-series looking at questions around the theme of change. Last time, we explored the signs and signals that tell us something has changed or is ready to change. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we will take the next step in helping the change happen.You can download our digital cue cards to help you navigate a season of change.If the idea of a calm and connected 60-minute call with me sounds helpful, we can focus on an area of life you're looking to integrate or instigate change in a Pick The Lock session. Learn more here.How Does Change Happen?So, you know that something has shifted or is ready to change. How do you integrate that into life? What needs to happen to move it from awareness into embodied reality?These ideas came out of our Haven Theme Kota at the start of September. They are not all relevant and appropriate for everything and everyone. But some might stir new insights and open up horizons so that more creative options can occur to us down the line.I expand on each of these in the episode.Spontaneously Ripping Off The BandageSometimes, the best way to instigate change is to get on with it. We might be waiting forever if we're waiting for the perfect time. Maybe there's a spontaneous impulse urging us to move on to something important. We might know that if we leave it too long, we will overthink and second-guess the decision to the point of inaction.In Fits and StartsChange is messy. There are impactful days and days where nothing much happens. By expecting fits and starts change, we can give the process (and ourselves) grace and understanding.Through Habits and BehavioursChange happens over time when we take consistent actions that contribute to it. By identifying where we want to get, we can figure out the habits that will get us there. We become less daunted by the big picture by focusing on small behaviours.A Spirit of Creative Experimentation and PlaySometimes, change is less about a specific outcome and more about a reorientation. When we engage with the world through a spirit of experimentation and play, we can encounter new possibilities and find opportunities to move in directions that wouldn't otherwise occur to us.Simplicity and SlownessWe might demand change happen quickly and obviously. But it's helpful to remember that change often occurs on its own timeline once we set the coordinates. The more we let it do its thing, the deeper and more sustainable the growth might become.With Planning and ConsiderationWe might want to wait before we act. Planning and preparation are useful. But it's also helpful to know how much is enough so that we can get started. What don't we need in place before we start?When You Take Your Eyes Off The PrizeWhen we check in and become aware of our relationship with change, we might realise that the outcome is no longer critical. We might have already gained what we needed from the experience. Is it still necessary? Relevant? Helpful? Or am I focused on achieving an outcome that is no longer required?Goals are helpful until they're not. They help us identify a meaningful direction to move. Still, if we become tethered to the outcome as the only measure of success, we might compromise other, more important values and priorities.Due To Necessity and SurvivalSometimes, we have no choice but to instigate a change. Change, in this sense, happens when we get away from a situation, environment, or behaviour. Once the dust settles and the adrenaline wears off, we can choose the path we want to move along.With Help, Support, and EncouragementSometimes, change happens because of other people or alongside other people. We don't have to do everything alone. There are often more opportunities to enlist help than we realise.Mindset ShiftsOn the one hand, change occurs when we shift an old mindset and adopt a new one.

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This is the first of three episodes in a mini-series looking at questions around the theme of change. The ideas I explore have come from our Haven Theme Kota at the start of September. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the signs and signals that tell us something has changed or something is ready to change.You can download our digital cue cards that will help you navigate a season of change. If the idea of a calm and connected 60-minute call with me sounds helpful, we can focus on an area of life you're looking to integrate or instigate change in a Pick The Lock session. Learn more here.How Do You Know When Change is Knocking At The Door?It doesn't always occur to us that something has, needs to, or could change in our lives. Because of our adaptive skills, we might drift in undesirable directions and accept incremental shifts away from the path we would otherwise choose. Or, in the face of shifting circumstances, it might not occur to us that the habits, behaviours, and choices that were appropriate for the past are no longer serving us.What tells you something HAS changed?When you take time to observe and reflect, what signals tell you something has changed? Changes happen internally, externally, culturally and in our interpersonal relationships.Recognising the signs can give us a better understanding of what our feelings, thoughts, and actions are telling us about the needs beneath them. When we notice our default patterns, we more quickly interpret and understand what they say. Because so often, we find ourselves in that limbo season, feeling overwhelmed, confused, and disconnected. Not realising that it's because we've not noticed something HAS changed or needs to change.The meaning has shiftedIt feels differentThe connection is lostI'm doing the same thing but getting different resultsIt has become easy (I have grown/developed the skills)It has become hard (I am no longer able to do what I could before)It has become diluted (what used to seem special is everywhere)What indicates to you that it’s time for something to change?When you listen to and observe your mind, body, and spirit, how do they indicate it’s time for a change? In the episode I expand on the following:I'm procrastinatingI experience a pressing feeling in my head, body, and throatI feel something stirring inside meI keep noticing signs that resonate and reinforce my intuitionI wake up in the night worryingI am increasingly restless and bored with my current situationI feel annoyed, grumpy, passive-aggressive, and negativeI am lethargic and struggling for motivationI am jumping from one thing to the next without being able to settleI write the same thing in my journal every dayI keep making the same mistake without learning from itI feel like I'm just going through the motionsI feel disconnected from, disinterested in, and afraid of a future where things continue along this current pathI am treading water in limbo - waiting for something to happenI sense a small, calm voice within telling me to do something uncomfortable or scaryPause and ListenTry not to act until you know which state the voice of change is speaking through. Gut instinct and intuition can come from different sources.Ask yourself: Am I currently in a defensive (urgency/panic) or connected (creative/flexible) state?Notice how you finish the sentences, "the world is…and I am…" (in a defensive state you will see words that indicate a sense of threat and scarcity e.g. the world is hostile and I am lost or the world is demanding and I am getting left behind). This idea is from Deb Dana's book, Anchored.Find a cue (e.g. a favourite song, memory, or image) that helps you move into connection and safety in relation to your capacity to navigate change within your spirit of possibility, curiosity, and creativity. Now,

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What is your biggest momentum killer when it comes to making a change, launching a project, or embarking on a meaningful pursuit?

If you’re anything like me, it might be…a lack of celebration.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the importance of celebrating success and how intrinsic it is to momentum in almost any endeavour.

By success, I don’t mean external rewards and appearances. I’m talking about moments of “shine” that occur in the immediate wake of a good thing happening. And celebration, in this context, is a simple physical acknowledgement in response to that feeling.

Last week, Blubrry (the hosting company for The Gentle Rebel Podcast) published a feature, naming it Podcast of the Month for September 2023. Exciting! This is one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about celebration and momentum.

After feeling a spark of joy, my inner critic (yep, Rod was back) piped up with reasons not to get excited. So, I’ve been experimenting with ways to playfully subvert his and Pincher’s (another one – that’s him in the photo) judgements and demands so I can allow the momentum to flow.

The Moment Finds Meaning in MomentumWe might think of momentum as a series of moments linked together in the same direction. The mmmmmm between moments is the gluey bridge of satisfaction that connects them. Moment-mmmmm-moment-mmmmm. OK, please humour me.

This is to say that celebrating small moments is integral to growth through momentum. Without it, we might end up in a state of moment-aghhhh, where moments are isolated and disconnected rather than united and connected.

But what does a celebration look like? It sounds a bit strange.

The Concept of “Shine”:What do you do to celebrate when you manage to turn an intention into an action?

With no word in English for the feeling he wanted to describe (“authentic pride” didn’t capture it), BJ Fogg coined the term “shine“. In Tiny Habits, he explains how important it is to celebrate when we do behaviours that contribute to the habits we want to establish. Celebration rewrites our neural pathways, associating feeling good with doing what we want.

This is an excellent example of moment-mmmm because each momentary action, when celebrated, reinforces the chance of the next one occurring. So celebration and momentum go hand-in-hand.

Ranking and LinkingElaine Aron talks about linking and ranking as two models for interpersonal engagement. When in “ranking mode”, we measure our value by comparing ourselves to others. This tends to happen more when we perceive that we have suffered a “defeat” or failure.

Aron writes, “After a defeat, research finds that all social animals become depressed, showing the same physiology and behavior as depressed humans have. If we could ask them, I’m sure their self-esteem would be low. Unrealistically low. “I’m no good at all.” This innate “involuntary defeat response” serves to keep a defeated animal from continuing to fight and probably being injured.

These instincts work the same for us. Following a defeat, we tend to undervalue ourselves, leading to endless lost opportunities.”

As we apply this, we might see how momentum is lost when we lose connection by not acknowledging meaningful moments. Or worse, by focusing on our perceived failures amidst things going well – through overthinking, second-guessing, and assuming meaning (that isn’t explicit) in other peoples’ words and actions.

Aron says, “Life is not all about ranking. We spend as much time liking and loving each other. Mostly, however, when we are focused on rank, we are not feeling loving, and vice versa. So the easiest solution to undervaluing yourself is to get out of ranking mode altogether for a while: Focus on the people you like and whom you know like you. Switch instincts.”

But how do we switch instincts and find a sense of connection and safety? It’s not easy.

GlimmersOne helpful practice is noticing glimmers.

In her book Anchored, Deb Dana talks about noticing and collecting glimmers to anchor in safety and connection. And this ultimately opens our eyes, minds, and hearts to celebrate when good things happen. This idea opens us up to see MORE things worth celebrating.

She points out that “Humans have a built-in negativity bias. In order to support our survival, we’re wired to respond more intensely to negative experiences than equally intense positive ones. We have to actively look for, take notice of, and keep track of these moments, or micro-moments, of safety and connection that are our glimmers.”

This is not dissimilar to BJ Fogg’s notion of shine. Glimmers are “anchors that take us upwards and back to a foundation of strengthened regulation.

They are small things. When we are open to spot them, we see them everywhere in daily life.

Glimmers can be predictable anchors in our routine (coffee, fresh air, etc.) and can come in unexpected moments that appear on your path.”

Setting a Glimmer Intention:Dana suggests setting a glimmer intention.

She writes, “I have a friend who made an intention to see one glimmer a day for a week and another whose intention was to look for a glimmer to begin her day.

Play with this intention. Set it. Write it down. Read it back. For example, I will start each day this week looking for a glimmer. I will step outside every morning and find a glimmer.”

Keep a record of glimmers. This allows you to create a predictable practice you can return to.

We’ve been doing this in The Haven. Sharing glimmers as we notice them. Seeing how other people see and celebrate the world has been encouraging and inspiring.

Where are you that you wanted to be?Life might not have turned out how you hoped or planned. But I bet there is something true of your life right now that you of 5 years ago would be pretty excited about or intrigued by. Or maybe you set a goal, and it’s happened. Did you notice? Did you stop to celebrate? Or did it pass you by as you moved on to the next one?

Over to YouI’d love to know what resonated for you in this episode. And to see pictures of your Pincher if you have one. Leave a comment, message, or get in touch via social media. And please do share this episode with anyone you think will enjoy it!

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A recent Photoyoga exercise sparked a fascinating Haven discussion about taking up space in the world and how uncomfortable some of us find it at times.

If you ever feel bad about “being a burden”, “holding people back”, or “drawing too much attention”, this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is for you.

In our June Open Kota session, Tuula encouraged us to capture our inner critic with a name and photograph and to think about the story it tells us and the words it uses. I discovered one of mine is called Rod and has a distinctive moustache. He pops into my head and tells me to play small, keep the noise down, and avoid attracting attention. You can see him in this video if you’re interested…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMa0gE_XKIk&The Moustache ExperimentIn this episode, I talk about an unanticipated experiment following the exercise. In an act of gentle rebellion, I refused to cede to Rod’s demand and shave his (my) moustache off. Instead, I made it more pronounced and allowed it to take up space on my face until I was no longer self-conscious about it.

High Sensitivity and Taking Up SpaceWe explored several reasons why introverted and sensitive people might find it challenging to take up space in the world. I share some of these in the episode and consider the influence of society and culture on how we feel about this.

Taking Up Space in ConversationsWe considered how, for sensitive people, the fear of being too intense or too much for other people can lead us to stay quiet when, inside, we’re bursting with stuff to talk about. Maybe you’re met with a blank look, or you’ve been told “not to be weird” or “don’t worry about that stuff” when sharing things you can get lost chatting about. How do you find people to take up this kind of space with?

Asking For HelpWe are less likely to ask for help when we fear being a burden. But as we discussed, asking for help doesn’t always feel that way for the other person. Sometimes, it’s in everyone’s interest and longing for us to take up space and ask for help.

When we are reluctant to ask for help, we might unnecessarily deprive ourselves of information and connection and deny the potential helper from doing something they would love to be part of.

Physical Space and BelongingAt the end of the episode, I share a recent story of an encounter with an angry guy in a field. It didn’t feel great, but it sparked another impromptu inner experiment that I was glad to have the opportunity to try. Not least because I could put theories from Deb Dana’s Anchored to the test. I had been reading it that morning, so it was fresh in my mind and helped enormously.

Does Any Of This Sound Familiar?Did anything in this episode resonate with you? Are there particular aspects of taking up space that you feel bad about? Come and take up space by dropping a message or leaving a comment below. I would love to hear from you. Seriously!

Join Us in The HavenIf you would like to be part of our lovely Haven hive and explore these topics alongside some kindred spirits, I would love to invite you to join us in The Haven. It’s free for the first seven days so that you can get a feel for it without risk.

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A recent Photoyoga exercise sparked a fascinating Haven discussion about taking up space in the world and how uncomfortable some of us find it at times.

If you ever feel bad about “being a burden”, “holding people back”, or “drawing too much attention”, this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is for you.

In our June Open Kota session, Tuula encouraged us to capture our inner critic with a name and photograph and to think about the story it tells us and the words it uses. I discovered one of mine is called Rod and has a distinctive moustache. He pops into my head and tells me to play small, keep the noise down, and avoid attracting attention. You can see him in this video if you’re interested…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMa0gE_XKIk&The Moustache ExperimentIn this episode, I talk about an unanticipated experiment following the exercise. In an act of gentle rebellion, I refused to cede to Rod’s demand and shave his (my) moustache off. Instead, I made it more pronounced and allowed it to take up space on my face until I was no longer self-conscious about it.

High Sensitivity and Taking Up SpaceWe explored several reasons why introverted and sensitive people might find it challenging to take up space in the world. I share some of these in the episode and consider the influence of society and culture on how we feel about this.

Taking Up Space in ConversationsWe considered how, for sensitive people, the fear of being too intense or too much for other people can lead us to stay quiet when, inside, we’re bursting with stuff to talk about. Maybe you’re met with a blank look, or you’ve been told “not to be weird” or “don’t worry about that stuff” when sharing things you can get lost chatting about. How do you find people to take up this kind of space with?

Asking For HelpWe are less likely to ask for help when we fear being a burden. But as we discussed, asking for help doesn’t always feel that way for the other person. Sometimes, it’s in everyone’s interest and longing for us to take up space and ask for help.

When we are reluctant to ask for help, we might unnecessarily deprive ourselves of information and connection and deny the potential helper from doing something they would love to be part of.

Physical Space and BelongingAt the end of the episode, I share a recent story of an encounter with an angry guy in a field. It didn’t feel great, but it sparked another impromptu inner experiment that I was glad to have the opportunity to try. Not least because I could put theories from Deb Dana’s Anchored to the test. I had been reading it that morning, so it was fresh in my mind and helped enormously.

Does Any Of This Sound Familiar?Did anything in this episode resonate with you? Are there particular aspects of taking up space that you feel bad about? Come and take up space by dropping a message or leaving a comment below. I would love to hear from you. Seriously!

Join Us in The HavenIf you would like to be part of our lovely Haven hive and explore these topics alongside some kindred spirits, I would love to invite you to join us in The Haven. It’s free for the first seven days so that you can get a feel for it without risk.

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In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share news of upcoming topics and happenings. There are lots of exciting things going on in The Haven. We are reading Deb Dana's Anchored in the Book Club this season. This will underpin our exploration of anchoring as a way to help regulate and calm the nervous system.

The Book Club - Anchored by Deb Dana

“When the inner workings of our biology are a mystery, we feel as if we’re at the mercy of unknown, unexplainable, and  unpredictable experiences. Once we know how our nervous system works, we can work with it. As we learn the art of befriending our nervous  system, we learn to become active operators of this essential system.” - Deb Dana

I’ve chosen Anchored: How To Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana as our next slow read in The Haven Book Club. It’s a book I would recommend to any highly sensitive person looking to understand and work with their inner landscapes and rhythms.

Learn more about this season's Book Club.

Sound Anchors

Sound Anchors are a perfect chance to take a breath and reconnect with yourself in safety.

The soundscape is a mixture of reflective words upon a piece of my ambient music. You might want to bring something to write on. Or you can just come and sink into the sounds.

Check out the upcoming dates here.

Anchoring Through Change, Belonging, and Serenity

Change | Befriend Change With Confidence and Clarity (and Less Overwhelm)

Change can be exhausting for highly sensitive people. It's like the internal noise gets turned up a notch or two, making the shift feel like a big deal. When that little inner voice tells us it's time for a change, it might be like a compass pointing in all sorts of directions at once. The options can feel overwhelming as we gather all the information.

In our Theme Kota, we will explore a range of sustainable ways to approach change with confidence, clarity, and focus.

Learn more about our month of Change

Belonging | Remove The Mask and Let Your Candle Burn Bright

As social beings, humans are wired for belonging. But in a judgemental and critical world, it doesn't always feel safe to be yourself, especially when you don't seem to see or experience the world in quite the same way as other people.

Highly sensitive and introverted people can feel like there is something wrong with our natural traits and personal preferences. Especially if we have grown up hearing that story from other people. Some find ways to fit in and adapt to the social expectations, putting on a mask to play the part, while often feeling more lonely around others than they do alone. Others might withdraw from social settings entirely, believing that they will never be accepted for who they are.

In this year's Theme Kota, your mask can come off (when you're ready). Come and join us in the gentle and accepting space where you are accepted and acceptable however and whoever you are.

Learn more about our month of Belonging

Serenity | Finding Glimmers of Serenity in an Overwhelmed World

The world is noisy. For highly sensitive people, our need for deep processing downtime can get pushed aside by the ceaseless flow of information that never lets up.

Do you find yourself waiting for the noise to quieten or the disruption to pass so you can start living? Do you long for a time when you can be more present?

Serenity allows us to let go, let come, and let flow to occur through and around us. It's not a destination we get to once the noise has passed, it's a place of grounding and acceptance within life's inherent lopsidedness.

In this Theme Kota, we will get beneath the noise and connect with what is alive in us.

Learn more about our month of Serenity

Haven Trial

If you would like to check out The Haven but are not sure about committing you can try it for 7 days. Come and have a look around. I hope to see you sometime during our autumn season.

Try it here.

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“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” — Berthold Auerbach

Music brings us home. In time, within ourselves, and in connection with other people. It gives rise to voice, dance, and healing. As Leonard Bernstein said, it can "name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I want to share some reflections after our special Haven PopUp Kota last weekend.

I sat behind my piano and played some songs on Zoom. Tracks that emerged from different times, places, and approaches. I wanted to dive into music as a home beyond language and thought.

One of the things about writing, recording, and performing music is the more familiar you become with a song, the further you drift from that point of creation. So it's nice to occasionally return to its heart and reconnect with where it came from. I guess, come home to IT in a sense.

I loved having the opportunity to think about my songs in this way. It reminded me how much music is part of the deep processing that comes from sensory sensitivity. It's how I move with and through the noise of life and allow the noise of thoughts and feelings to flow through and beyond.

Music Brings Us Home in Time

“Music can heal the wounds which medicine cannot touch.” ― Debasish Mridha

Music brings the past into the present and anchors this moment in future memory and meaning. It can evoke a bittersweet nostalgia and instantly rekindle the dwindling flame of a fading memory.

Music Brings Us Home in Ourselves

“Music is an outburst of the soul.” ― Frederick Delius

Music helps us process and proceed, giving us a foundation to express ourselves. It allows us to dance and sing. Its rhythms show us how we got here and where to go next.

“I've found that no matter what life throws at me, music softens the blow.” ― Bryce W. Anderson

When I sit at the piano, I allow the wastewater to flow through the pipes. It's raw and unfiltered. It need not be repeated. Like tears of laughter, sadness, or loss, there is a sense of release once the flow ends. Relief. Renewal.

Music Brings Us Home in Community

“Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.” — Billy Joel

The personal experience of music is a point of universal connection. Music speaks the language of the heart and puts into sound what we feel but can't articulate.

No one has a monopoly on meaning. We are all collaborators as we put music into practice in our lives.

Hearing how my music resonates with other people brings me great joy. I've received touching stories from people who have listened to my songs during challenging times like illness, grief and significant life changes.

It's beautiful to know that the music I've created has travelled with other people. One person told me they were crossing a bridge, and the lyrics of one of my songs connected at precisely the right time, inspiring the clarity they needed to solve a problem they had been grappling with for months.

The Stage is a Forest - The Magical Realm

I share this reflection at the end of the episode...

Trees are microphones reaching above the fog. Cables are the overground roots and shoots connecting the ecosystems of creative potential. The magnificent curves and contours of instruments. Few straight lines and clinical edges. The light bounces, glistens, and reflects. Twinkling in the trees. Calling to me. Inviting. Wooden casings and the dark mesh on a wall of amplifiers absorb some of the glare.

I’m at home here. In stillness, expectancy, possibility…waiting, wondering, anticipating. What will happen?

I walk to the drum kit and pick up my sticks. Something comes to life as the wooden baton connects with the centre of the head. I feel it in the depth of my being. It makes my stomach ripple with fearsome wonder. The most terrifying and awesome instrument. What a sound. What a feeling. To externalise the rhythm I feel within.

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There is a time to pause and a time to act.

We explored this distinction in last month's Haven Theme Kota.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share some of the ideas that came out of our conversation.

"Books are mirrors: You only see in them what you already have inside you." Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

I recently chatted with my friend, Adam Kawalek about what it means to "coach for insight". As coaches, we are committed to the principle that insights, revelations, and answers don't come from the outside-in. They aren't imparted by the coach. They are brought to life from the inside-out. And the coach's questions, reflections, and invitations assist this process.

Coaching For Insight

Inspiration is like a candle inside us, waiting to be rekindled. An "aha!" moment, doesn't happen when something completely new arrives. It's when something outside us strikes the match that catches the wick within, which then illuminates the torch that casts its light on the environment around it.

I love that as a description of coaching. We play with matches (not something I normally advocate), and see what it ready to catch a spark inside us.

Expectation vs Expectancy

There is a difference between expectation and expectancy.

Expectation is a weight that can stop us from seeing things as they really are.

Expectancy is a nerve-tickling buzz. A helium spirit. It is ready to flow through the contours of this landscape without judgement. It is flexible, adaptable, and prepared to make something memorable out of something undesirable.

The pause of expectancy allows us to receive what is there. The push of expectation is an entitled demand to repeat what is no longer necessarily there. It burdens the present with judgement and comparison based on a story from the past.

Making Inspired Decisions

Where do you feel insights in your body?

Our bodies tell us a lot about intuitive responses to ideas, people, and environments. We don't think twice about using terms like "gut feelings", "broken heart", "sinking feeling", "butterflies in the stomach", and "jelly legs". These describe physical responses to something going on around us.

The body might say yes or no but the mind rationalises its way to another decision. In our Kota conversation, we talked about learning to hear what the body is saying so that we can make more informed choices and inspired decisions.

Under-thinking and Overthinking

Under-thinking can occur when we only listen to the body and don't pause to ask whether the uncomfortable sensation is part of doing something important to us. For example, feeling nervous before a performance. If I under-think the situation, I might follow the urge to remove myself from it, which in turn stops me from accessing its meaningful rewards.

Overthinking happens when we get ahead of ourselves and worry about things beyond our control. Fear of failure/success, logistical anxieties, and catastrophising everything that could go wrong - however unlikely - can turn an exciting opportunity into a pressurised ball of dread.

It's important to maintain an open line of communication between these thoughts and feelings. Connecting with the small glimmers of joy, holding lightly, and reminding ourselves that this feeling will pass. I feel this strongly because it is important. It will not break or make me. I feel creatively energised and alive. It is a chance to play, connect, and do something I love. And if all else fails, we might anticipate the beautiful feeling that is awaiting us when it's over. The out-breath of relief.

Where do you feel insight?

Is there a difference between toward and away from insight feelings in your physical body? When something is an invitation toward a desirable place, where do you feel it? Shoulders? Stomach? Lungs? Legs? I get it in my belly.

How would you describe that feeling? Flutter, leaping, twirling,

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"If we are going to understand and appreciate each other’s differences, then we need to be able to trust the space between us.” Charlie Jones & Brigid Russell (From Trust in the Spaces Between Us)

Connection isn't always about closing the gap between us. Sometimes it's simply about recognising the space that exists. Allowing it. Trusting it. Letting go of our need to possess and control it.

Just like silence can leave us feeling awkward, the idea of space can make us uncomfortable at times. It's tempting to see it as something to fill. We might try dominating it by forcing agreement or demanding sameness at the level of difference.

But what if those uncertain, mysterious, incomplete spaces are what allows life to unfold in its weird and wonderful ways?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with Brigid Russell, who founded #SpacesForListening with Charlie Jones.

Brigid invited me to Spaces For Listening last month. It was a quite beautiful experience that allowed some slow-burning inner shifts to take occur. It opened the door for lingering inspiration from its simple structure and the willingness of participants to embrace its flow.

The session provided an opportunity to enjoy some protected space to think out loud. To connect, untangle, and feel the spark of inspiration as we bounced into and around each other without interruption, hierarchy, or introductions. It felt like everyone was equal.

There is something lovely about sharing space without knowing anything about the background, role, or status of other people.

Brigid's insightful probing tweets always inspire me. You'll hear some of them throughout the episode. She has a thoughtful, open, and firm-back-soft-front gentleness that implicitly and playfully rebels against the forceful certainty underpinning a lot of modern discourse.

"What on earth happens when we step into a formal meeting, and seem only to see the professional roles, hierarchical titles, & siloed labels? Why do we all let that happen? We're all people with fears, doubts, ideas, & hopes. People who care. What stops us just meeting as people?"

Conditions For Listening

In the episode, Brigid and I talk about the conditions for listening. In particular we explored the role of limits when it comes to curating space for it to actually happen.

It doesn't take long to listen to another person. It doesn't take much to feel heard. And yet, we can overcomplicate or ignore it because we're too busy. How do we make time for the important stuff when our real urgency demands attention?

Space For Growth

"Some things take time. Not because we haven't found a quicker way! They just take time. Time to feel how things feel over & over. To notice what we avoid, what's too hard to say out loud, traps we fall into, & when we're ready to notice. Some things just take time & they need to."

We often seek faster ways of getting to where we're going. But what if it's the pace at which we try to achieve results that is causing the need for these solutions in the first place? What if patience, surrender, and the willingness to sit with the space between, is what we need to bravely step towards?

Space For Trust

"It is not about creating cosy safe spaces in which we all seem to agree, and reach false harmony. This is about spaces in which we can really hear each other, stick with the discomfort, and then find new clumsy answers together."

How do we maintain connection and trust when we disagree with one another?

Sharing Space With Everyone

Life is dynamic, we are constantly moving and bouncing off each other. The space between us can feel cramped at times. We move at different speeds and rhythms and may find ourselves surrounded by people going at a completely different pace.

What can lanes swimming tell us about life?

Meaning Lurks Between The Lines

"What if we could see it as 'life in progress'? Strive less, live more. Less frenetically,

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What do the photographs you take and choose to share say about you? What might your photos be saying TO you?

I wonder if you've ever thought about those questions before?

Photoyoga For Your Mind started in 2017 as an organic combination of creativity, movement, and inner listening. It grew from a place of burnout and a quest for healing and recovery.

In the wake of burnout, Tuula researched widely and developed a deeper understanding about stress, the nervous system, and the body's trauma responses. But she noticed that hoarding information and talking ABOUT these things was not enough to bring the healing calm and deep awareness required for healing. So she turned to the device in her pocket and her love of creativity.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I am excited to introduce my good friend and creative collaborator, Tuula Ahde. She is one of the original creators of this beautiful course, Photoyoga For Your Mind, which we have translated from Finnish into English and integrated into The Haven.

In our conversation, Tuula and I chat about the healing potential of creativity. We discuss the beautiful things that can happen when we slow down and listen to what wants to speak within, around, and through us.

We might not think of ourselves as such, but nearly everyone is a photographer these days. Most of us carry cameras in our pockets. Pulling a phone out and capturing a shot whenever the mood takes us is simple.

But how mindful are we of this process? What goes on when we take the photo? And how do we feel when we view them?

Photography can be an excellent metaphor for how we engage with our lives. The challenges, the possibilities, the shadows, and the parts only become apparent when we take the time to notice and reflect on what's happening.

What is Photoyoga For The Mind?

Photoyoga For The Mind is a journey of creative and inner discovery, where we explore photography as a metaphor and a tool. It helps us consider the hopes, challenges, and possibilities within and around us.

The course is built around seven parts. These are delivered weekly and include an aspect of photography that creatively relates to personal development and reflection.

Focus: We will pause to look at ourselves, to see where and who we are right now

Light and shadows: We will be hunting shadows and getting familiar with their presence in the world

Shutter and shield: We will be identifying the sound we make behind our shields and recognising how it speaks uniquely through our creative voice

Story: We will reflect on the story we are writing with our lives, filling in plot holes and adjusting character arcs

Cropping, boundaries: We will be embracing the spaces, finding the edges, and cropping out the unnecessary noise

Editing, post-processing and recovery: We will be setting habits for processing, learning to recognise what we need, where it's needed, and how to find it

Wrap-up and closure: We will be bringing everything together, as we notice how the end of something is also a new beginning

https://vimeo.com/839965423/582ba3c5c7?share=copy

Fancy joining us? Learn more here.

How Did Photoyoga Start?

Photoyoga was co-created by Tuula Ahde in 2017 alongside a photographer and psychotherapist. They had both intuitively used photography as part of their recovery.

They inadvertently discovered novel ways of combining simple creative acts with developing deeper self-understanding, awareness, and expression. And since then have journeyed with many people in building new resources for recovery and healing.

Creativity can give us a voice when we can't find the words. It can nurture strength when we feel broken. And it can provide simple actions to take when we feel unmotivated or unclear about what to do.

Tuula has been running Photoyoga on her own since 2019. Until now, she has run the course with Finnish-speaking participants.

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Would you say you’re an ambitious person? What does ambition mean to you? After rediscovering an old review…

The post 28 | Are You Ambitious (or More Like Me?) appeared first on Andy Mort.

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"Rituals are to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable." Byung-Chul Han (The Disappearance of Ritual)

In a restless, noisy, rushing world, rituals are symbolic actions that give us a sense of home. They are anchors in the flow of time. They anchor us somewhere before and beyond time.

We poke at these ideas in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

What are the differences between rituals and habits? Festivals and events? Recollection and repetition?

How might we get off the hamster wheel of novelty and newness that leaves us unanchored and anxious in a world where time feels uninhabitable, rushing from one fleeting moment to the next?

Tranquility and Ritual

June is the month of Tranquility in The Haven. The topic of rituals, habits, and routines emerged from that.

We explore Tranquility as something we find through doorways, over thresholds, and in the space between the noise. How will we breathe new life into the old and familiar?

Tranquility is the threshold between the hustle of the world "out there" and the stillness deep within.

Rituals are tranquil anchors in the noise. They help us become what is through acceptance, silence, and pause. Not to escape or hide but to come home. To let go. To stop clinging, chasing, and craving so we can create, contribute, and collaborate.

The Disappearance of Ritual | 2:14

Rituals give us a different experience of time—a non-linear feeling of coming home.

The folded page moments we experience when coming home to a good friend, a familiar place, or a meaningful activity. When it's like no time has passed between visits. The timeline folds in on itself, and this moment becomes all moments. The past becomes the present.

In The Disappearance of Ritual, Byung-Chul Han writes, "today, time lacks a solid structure. It is not a house but an erratic stream. It disintegrates into a mere sequence of point-like presences; it rushes off. There is nothing to provide time with any hold. Time that rushes off is not habitable."

I feel this. It resonates. The slippery slope. A sense of time rushing through my fingers like uncontained water.

Letting Go of Meaning

Life doesn't need to be understood for it to be meaningful.

Rituals provide the experience of meaning through action rather than knowledge. While information might help us describe, it isn't the same as true "knowing". Embodiment. Life.

We don't trust our intuitive judgements. Instead, we outsource them to others to tell us what we should think, feel and do. In our quest to feel at home in the world, we suck the life out of life through the compulsion to communicate, define, and label.

The Drive To Possess | 5:17

Rituals provide rhythm and repetition that gives us home in time without explaining.

The drive to explain restricts, controls, and destroys.

It replaces life's mystery, magic, and enchantment with endless discourse, description, and definition. Leaving us exhausted and empty.

Life doesn't need to be meaningful for it to be meaningful.

Repetition and Discovery | 6:47

Rituals are repetitive. They are intentional, ordered, and formulaic. They carry structure and sequence.

Rituals are not the point, but they make space for the point.

They are tracks for us to wander. A familiar pathway in an uncertain and ever-changing world. The path to which we return and from which we see.

Rituals open the door with open-handed expectancy for unexpected detours so we can find ourselves lost.

They are not something to get through and get done.

Rituals are like music. Dance. Dinner with friends.

Time is different here. It's about the motions we go through, not where we end up.

Automation and Ritual | 8:46

Rituals might become routine when they turn into mindless habits. At which point they lose their ritual value.

A habit is different from a ritual because it is mindless. Once established, it occurs without thought.

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There is more to music than we can ever put into words. And I think it’s the same with people. Language cannot fully describe who we are. Labels, boxes, and pigeonholes fall short.

Maybe we call it our creative voice. However we describe it, our “sound” is that indescribable spirit that makes us who we are.

But it’s fragile and can quickly get lost beneath the world’s ocean of noise.

Join me for a Gentle Humdinger Workshop, where we will identify and explore the inner creative voice that often gets drowned out by the noise of everyday life.

Sometimes life feels like trying to play a fragile folk song in a rowdy club on New Year’s Eve.

At other times, however, we attempt forcing the instrument to do something it’s not designed for. So we end up bending ourselves out of shape and burning out.

The Impact of NoiseI’ve always been fascinated by the impact of sound design on mood and meaning in TV and film. Of course, if you’ve ever watched a horror film with the sound off, you’ll know what I mean. Because it doesn’t pack quite the same punch without the noises.

Hearing The Same Thing in Different WaysWe are influenced by the soundtrack playing within us.

We all think we see things objectively, but in reality, two people can look at the situation differently. It doesn’t always mean one person is wrong. On the contrary, things are always more complicated than they appear.

We hear the other person, but we also hear it alongside a whole load of internal noise.

Anticipation and EvidenceOn the whole, we see what we anticipate.

When we are in a sitcom, we are ready to laugh. In a horror movie, we are primed to jump. When in an action film, we are prepared to run or fight.

How do some people seem to allow things to wash over them while others in the same situation react as if the world is about to end?

Decision MakingWhen swept up in the ocean of noise, we are more likely to make decisions that take us away from our creative spirit. Noise creates urgency, scarcity, and competition.

When we’re in the noise, be it a state of fear, overwhelm, hangover, stress etc. So we might make an impulsive decision…”I’m quitting, never doing anything like this again, buying a new car, or buying a wireless in-ear monitoring system” (listen to the episode for that story).

Sources of Noise in Everyday LifeOur natural sound, voice, and creative spirit can become lost in the world’s chaos. We accept and amplify the demands, expectations, and assumptions without much thought.

But where does the ocean of noise come from? What component parts leave us unable to see the wood for the trees in this way (overwhelmed, burned out, and operating in a chronic state of stress)?

The Ocean of InformationIt comes from news media and information overload. An unending and unresolved source of instant updates from all over the world.

Noise is stimulation without clarity and resolution. The news is precisely that-a flow of traumatic things we can’t resolve or control.

The Ocean of Toxic PositivityToxic positivity is the lie of limitless and groundless possibility in a finite world.

It’s the message we can do anything, be anyone, and uncover our unlimited potential. It’s a state of overwhelm in an unlimited can-do reality, where impossible is nothing, we should “Just Do It”, and every no is just another step closer to success.

This overwhelming disturbance gets louder, faster, and more intrusive. It’s the sound of humanity waging war on itself, and it takes us away from the expansive, playful, beautiful sound within us. The sound of joy, connection, laughter, and meaning. The creativity, adventure, and curiosity. It’s been replaced by the drive to produce, be helpful, and prove ourselves.

The Ocean of Sensory StimulationHighly sensitive people get rapidly drained in a world where the volume is always turned up. It’s exhausting to exist without true rest.

The Sound of The Inner-CriticThe waves of noise come through the voices we pick up along the way. Our inner critic might take the shape of internalised figures. A parent, teacher, family member, friend, or stranger. Someone who said the wrong thing at the perfect time for a cold bucket of water to pour all over our creative spirit.

“You don’t deserve to be here!” “Who do you think you are?” “You’re too sensitive!” etc.

Our natural sound gets lost in the noise. It is prohibited by the message we internalise from the world around us and drowned out by a world of people competing to be first, best, biggest, loudest, and most successful.

Connecting To Our Sound Within The Ocean of NoiseYour sound is your creative spirit. It’s your connection with life. What evokes a sense of purpose and emotion in you?

What does your music sound like?

If someone you know well (with whom you have a positive relationship) were to describe you, what words might they use?

What role do you tend to play in a relationship? A friendship? A social group?

Does that feel like you, or is it a role you’ve learned to play? How would you LIKE people to describe you? What would people say is important to you?

We can end up playing other people’s tunes. People pleasing, fitting in, and going along with the crowd. In the fog of noise, we chase goals we don’t personally care about.

The Gentle Humdinger WorkshopIn the Gentle Humdinger workshop, we get beneath the ocean of noise and reconnect with your inner creative spirit. We will be letting go of the stuff you might do to fit in, please people, or pretend you’re not quite as weird as we all know you are deep down. I’d love you to join me!

Learn more here…

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We recently finished reading The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness by Kishimi and Koga in The Haven Book Club.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share reflections inspired by the five nights of discussions between the philosopher and youth in the book.

It’s been great to look at the book over four months, and I’d be up for doing it again. So if you listen to this episode and think it’s something you would like to explore for yourself, let me know here. If there is enough interest, I’ll get the ball rolling.

Episode contents* Why We Need The Courage To Be Disliked | 4:28 + The Cost of Seeking Approval: Losing Ourselves in the Quest for Acceptance | 8:54 + Self-Worth, Achievement, and The Courage To Be Disliked | 9:57 * Does The Past Determine Our Future, or Can We Change It? | 13:16 + Determining Blame and Finding Fault | 16:50 + Unhappiness As a Choice | 18:00 * Interpersonal Relationship Problems and The Social Shadow | 21:42 + An Age of Connected Loneliness and The Social Shadow | 22:56 + Inferiority, Superiority, and Equality | 24:51 * Holding Boundaries and Letting Go Of Other People’s Tasks | 28:23 + Encouragement Not Praise | 32:28 + Beware of The Cookie Cutter | 33:52 + The Freedom of Being Disliked | 34:44 * No One Lives At The Centre of The World | 36:14 + Community Feeling and The Many Centres of The World | 37:42 + The Storm In a Teacup | 39:59 + Respect For Authority | 1:07 * To Live in the Here and Now | 45:37 + The Difference Between Affirmation and Acceptance | 49:26 + Fear of Being Disliked and How We Judge The World | 51:24 + The End is Not The Goal | 52:26 * The Haven | 53:36 Why We Need The Courage To Be Disliked | 4:28The philosopher uses Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology to help the young man consider ways to change his life. It revolves around the premise that true freedom comes from having the courage to be disliked.

This courage to be disliked isn’t about wanting to be disliked. It’s about being OK if and when people dislike us, which as long as we are alive and engaging in interpersonal relationships, will happen.

We can’t control what other people think, feel, and believe about us…that’s their task.

The Cost of Seeking Approval: Losing Ourselves in the Quest for Acceptance | 8:54 We can lose ourselves if we fear those we admire disliking us. We might park our core values and inner compass if it means being accepted and recognised by the “right” people.

This reflects a script we write early in life through our drive for safety and belonging. Who must I be? What do I need to do and not do to remain safe and protected?

Self-Worth, Achievement, and The Courage To Be Disliked | 9:57I recently heard a sportsperson say, “I love winning, but what makes me a dangerous opponent is that I don’t mind losing. I’ve done it often, and it’s not that bad.”

This is a particular type of freedom. He has separated losing from his story of self-worth. Acceptance at the level of being (whether or not I win, I am OK) rather than at the level of doing (I must win to be worthy of acceptance).

The courage to be disliked is the same. If someone doesn’t like me, it’s their task. Although it’s preferable to be appreciated, I can’t compel anyone else to respect me. That’s up to them.

Does The Past Determine Our Future, or Can We Change It? | 13:16Our life is not a script we have to live by, handed to us by someone or something in the past, but something we write in the here and now. While past events influence the story we live, they don’t determine what happens next.

Read the fullreflection on The First Night: Deny Trauma.

Determining Blame and Finding Fault | 16:50“Who can we blame?” is a question that permeates society today. Unfortunately, it’s often our first response. As such, we might spend time pointing fingers, looking over our shoulders, and covering our tracks, ironically creating a more dangerous world to protect ourselves from.

Unhappiness As a Choice | 18:00The young man also adopts a victim mentality, evident in his conclusion that if only he were like his friend, he would be happier. But, of course, he knows he cannot be another person. So he permits himself not to accept himself by telling a story about why other people have life easier and better than his.

Interpersonal Relationship Problems and The Social Shadow | 21:42 According to Adler, the primary task of a person’s behaviour is to be self-reliant (responsible for our judgements, choices, and beliefs) and to live in harmony with society (a conscious development and awareness of social connectedness and community feeling).

Self-reliance isn’t about becoming the proverbial island and doing everything independently. Instead, it’s about recognising what we are responsible for so we don’t interfere with other people’s tasks.

Read the fullreflection on The Second Night: All Problems are Interpersonal Relationship Problems here.

An Age of Connected Loneliness and The Social Shadow | 22:56If we interfere in this for one another, we create disconnection, distrust, and loneliness. Loneliness, in this sense, isn’t being without people; it is having people around but feeling alienated from them.

The prevalence of loneliness in our modern world reveals a paradox of increasing connectivity and isolation. Despite being more interconnected than ever, we also experience greater isolation.

Loneliness arises from a lack of connection with others. The more disconnected we feel from people, the more intense our loneliness becomes. It’s important to remember that communication alone does not constitute a genuine relationship.

Inferiority, Superiority, and Equality | 24:51One’s inferiority/superiority complex tends to place blame on others for all problems. This mindset fosters envy and resentment and creates enemies, further perpetuating this negative outlook on the world. This pattern is prevalent in both politics and social media today.

Why do so many people struggle to enjoy the success they work hard to reach? Because they build it through a lens of competition, the foundation of which is a complex landscape “overflowing with enemies”.

Adler describes a healthy feeling of inferiority emerging through our relationship within ourselves rather than in comparison to others. We have a playful and intuitive knowledge about what we want to improve. We are drawn to plant, grow, and harvest. This is baked into our sense of purpose and meaning as we survive and thrive.

Likewise, a healthy desire for superiority is not related to our position compared with others but to our “ideal self”. We are improving ourselves and the conditions around us. The ideal self is not a place we can reach but an organising structure around which we make choices that support a meaningful lifestyle.

Holding Boundaries and Letting Go Of Other People’s Tasks | 28:23Boundaries are not about shutting people out but understanding how to separate tasks and discard those that don’t belong to us.

We shouldn’t mistake separating tasks with separating ourselves from one another as humans.

Read the fullreflection on The Third Night: Discard Other People’s Tasks here.

Encouragement Not Praise | 32:28In Punished By Rewards, Alfie Kohn looks at the evidence against the common assumption that people change their behaviour through positive reinforcement like incentives and praise. He points out the conspicuous absence of the long-term in the evidence people use to support rewards, leading us to some unhelpful conclusions.

People DO change their behaviour in the short run when presented with positive outcomes for doing so, but this makes us dependent on external motivation. When the rewards are dropped, so too is the behaviour.

It turns out that we are not incentivised by the behaviour but by the incentive. The rather dispiriting conclusion is that we are less likely to act from intrinsic meaning and community feeling when our reality is built around systematic incentives and rewards.

Beware of The Cookie Cutter | 33:52En-courage-ment is about helping give rise to courage in another and supporting them in becoming more of themselves. Not moulding them into who we think they should be (or who we need them to be for our cookie-cutter convenience).

The Freedom of Being Disliked | 34:44When our sense of self-worth is tied to external rewards, breaking from the fear of what people think (and the desire to be liked) can feel impossible. This underpins people-pleasing patterns.

In this sense, being liked is praise and being disliked is punishment. So we might gravitate towards doing what we hope will get us recognition. And we avoid doing what we’ve learned people reject.

No One Lives At The Centre of The World | 36:14Narcissism is underpinned by a sense of entitlement to success, power, and control over others. As a result, some people place themselves at the centre of the world and blame their struggles on external factors.

There is a distinction between the centre of the world and the centre of our own life.

Read the fullreflection on The Fourth Night: Where The Centre of the World Is

Community Feeling and The Many Centres of The World | 37:42Individualism becomes toxic when it removes us from the collective story and leaves us fighting for our place in the group (the feeling that it’s OK to be here).

Community feeling isn’t based on conditional belonging within a particular context (e.g. the household, school, workplace, or neighbourhood). Instead, it covers regions, nations, continents, humanity, all living things, non-living entities, and the entire axis of time from the past into the future.

The Storm In a Teacup | 39:59Looking at it this way serves a purpose, providing an anchor of connection and perspective when facing overwhelming and hopeless situations—for example, a toxic workplace, political turmoil, bullying at school, or an unbearable family environment.

Drawing community feeling from outside the proverbial storm in a teacup (shrinking the whole world to a single place in time) might take the edge off the immediate challenge and give us a foundation to establish a purposeful path forward.

Respect For Authority | 1:07The world doesn’t have a centre. So, no one (not even the most recognised or influential person) is more deserving of belonging than anyone else, not at the level of being.

The ultimate show of respect is to allow space for humans to be humans. Equal at the level of being regardless of age, gender, race, sexuality, intelligence, etc.

To Live in the Here and Now | 45:37Life is like a piece of music. The goal is not to reach the end. It’s to move in the rhythm and melody of the here and now. And we play our part in the music of this moment, contributing, collaborating, and creating.

For human beings, life is about more than survival. We are creatures of meaning and connection, with the capacity for joy, love, and transcendence.

Read the fullreflection on The Fifth Night: To Live in Earnest in the Here and Now.

The Difference Between Affirmation and Acceptance | 49:26Happiness is found through accepting “one’s incapable self as is” and building life from that place.

Affirmations can be delusional and are linked to what we do, encouraging us to make suggestions such as “You got this, ” “I can do it, ” or ” I am strong, ” even when something is beyond our ability, and we are overwhelmed. They don’t give us courage because they’re more like a demand “I should have this, I ought to be able to do this, I must be strong…” to be accepted.

Self-acceptance says, “It doesn’t matter if I do, don’t, or can’t have this; I’m still fundamentally OK.”

Fear of Being Disliked and How We Judge The World | 51:24 Our judgement of the world is influenced by the story we focus on.

If one person criticises us, two unconditionally accept us, and seven are indifferent to our actions, who do we focus on? Where do we invest our attention and energy? In the one person who dislikes us, the two who love us, or those who don’t care (the crowd)?

The End is Not The Goal | 52:26A train runs to the top of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) in North Wales, yet hundreds of people climb it daily. We might think the goal of climbing a mountain is to reach the top. But it’s not. The purpose of climbing a mountain is to climb it.

There are often quicker ways to get to the end. But the destination is part of the process rather than the goal. Without the top, we have no direction.

Even though it signals the end, the goal of life isn’t death. But the reality of death is what gives us access to energy. To meaning, love, and life.

The Haven | 53:36Register your interest here if you’ve enjoyed this and want to join me for the next run through The Courage To Be Disliked.

Check out The Haven if you want to join me for other book clubs and theme discussions. co, where I host regular events and creative happenings.

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How can we nurture environments and habits for playful mischief and gentle rebellion in our lives, relationships, and communities?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with Emma Bearman, the founder of Playful Anywhere, whose mission is to catalyse creativity, inventiveness and playfulness at home, work, and on our travels.

Episode Contents* The Transformative Power of Playfulness in a Serious World * Play Through Boredom, Limitations, and Our Own Resourcefulness * The Joy Of Seeing Others Have Fun * Mischievous Curiosity * Connecting Through Our Universal Experiences * Childlike Wonder and Daftness * The Space Between Here and There (or here) * A Gentle Sanctuary in The Middle Of The Noise * Play is in the Person, Not The Toy * There is Play Everywhere + Make Stories + Slow Down + Choose The Playful Lens * The Play is in You | Haven Workshop The Transformative Power of Playfulness in a Serious WorldThe benefits of play are not easily measurable. The roots go deep, and they can transform our lives, our communities, and the world over time.

Experiences are often carefully crafted so that they are consumed or performed rather than created by participants. Do we feel like we belong in the places we live? In a world oriented towards consumption, participation in making, creating, and exploring ourselves and the world can be an act of gentle rebellion.

Play Through Boredom, Limitations, and Our Own ResourcefulnessHave you ever felt creatively blocked by the paradox of choice? Can too much time and too many resource options inhibit creativity?

Emma and I discussed the potential of small places and how play is like digging deep into nothing and coming up with treasure.

The Joy Of Seeing Others Have FunEmma talks about building environments and nurturing conditions for meaningful things to grow. She doesn’t need to be in the centre and loves standing by and watching people play in spaces she has helped create.

There is something delightful about seeing something you’ve facilitated bring joy to people engaging with it.

Mischievous CuriosityPlayful mischief can include combining objects and ideas in unusual places and ways (like turning shipping containers into Playboxes).

Where are the gaps waiting for us to bring weird things together?

Playfulness is disarming. Like humour, it is a way to question the status quo without creating defensiveness in others.

You can achieve aims and create radical change in playful, friendly, cheeky ways without being antagonistic and “poking bears” with sticks.

It provides space to address serious issues without dividing and backing people into positions where they won’t listen or engage with others.

Playfulness is a soothing balm that gives us another way to hold the false binaries and positions we are often expected to adopt. It reminds us of all the common ground and the public space we can meet, grow, and engage with each other at the level of being.

Play is an empowering spirit that allows organic change to occur. It doesn’t require force or performance.

Connecting Through Our Universal ExperiencesThe question, “what was it like for you growing up?” is another disarming way to connect with people.

We all have a story and formative reasons for becoming who we are. This connection to childhood may have positive or negative memories, but they underpin this story and provide a pathway to empathy and compassion.

Play can lead to self-compassion. Allowing us to get alongside our inner child and give them what they needed but didn’t have. And we can reconnect with what gave them joy.

Childlike Wonder and DaftnessAs we grow up, we don’t need to lose our childlike wonder and daftness. On the contrary, it’s an essential aspect of our humanity.

It is liberating and constructive to say, “I don’t know the answer; let’s explore and experiment!” Rather than believing that we need to know (or pretend to know) all the answers. This is important for our well-being and is transformative as we model it for others to observe. It’s safe, accepting, and freeing.

The Space Between Here and There (or here)Play and adventure aren’t about the answer/solution/destination. They are the substance of the story. The glue that binds everything together. We can’t predict, control, or prescribe it. Things unfold as things unfold.

Ambiguity can be threatening. We want a list of tasks, up-and-to-the-right progress, and the sense that we’re “getting there”. But playfulness is a beautifully gooey timeless moment that must be explored without pressure to realise its potential.

Learning to enjoy the “I don’t know yet” space is a great way to make better decisions. It allows dots to connect in their own time. This also helps us slow down and listen to more than just the surface of a situation.

A Gentle Sanctuary in The Middle Of The NoiseEmma describes one project where her team created a quiet, down-low, gentle bubble in a noisy city centre. The energy was like a sanctuary in the middle of chaos.

We talk about Emma’s leadership approach and the power of sitting back and letting things happen. Through her approach, she gently questions the drive towards performative busyness that we engage in to feel and look worthy and valuable.

I wonder if this is one of a leader’s most undervalued roles in a community project. It takes great courage because it can look passive and feel unproductive. But it sets the pace, tone, and permission for safety and calm. It dances with the energy and infuses the environment gently (firm back, soft front).

Play is in the Person, Not The ToyPlay doesn’t have to happen in a playground. It doesn’t require equipment. It often can’t be fully described or understood. Play is a spontaneous explosion of creative energy.

It’s how we hold the world, and it can be found anywhere.

Michael Rosen describes toys as simple physical props that enable and enhance play. It might be a stick, a stone, an empty milk carton, or a shoelace.

In this sense, toys are gateways to secret worlds. They allow us to dream, imagine, and create fantastical landscapes wherever we are.

There is Play EverywhereEmma and I discussed ways to infuse everyday life with more play. What struck me was the fact that all of them are free. They don’t require us to buy or learn anything new. They are instantly accessible.

Make StoriesLook under the sofa, in your pockets, and around the room.

• Where are the missing socks?
• What would the shampoo say about the current political climate?
• How do the frozen peas feel when they wake up out of their state of deep cryogenic sleep?

Slow Down* What are the kids looking at? What is catching their attention? * How do things seem different today? * What if you changed the route and got slightly lost on the way home?

Choose The Playful Lens* When things feel heavy and serious, ask how you might see the situation if you wore your playful glasses. * Reconnect with a hobby that you used to get lost in. * Ask, “what can I do with this?” as you pick up a piece of paper, open the fridge, or collect all the clutter from the car.

The Play is in You | Haven WorkshopPlay is a training ground for flexibility. It helps us face and absorb change. The playful spirit finds possibility in adversity and wonders “what might happen if…”

It’s tempting to believe that we would be more creative and playful if we had the right equipment, resources, or tools to be so. But the truth is, we already have everything we need to get started.

The play is in YOU, not the toy. Learn more about the workshop.

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Are you spontaneous? Can you go with the flow when plans change or if something catches your attention and invites you to follow it?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we look at the characteristics of spontaneous people and explore how we might add more spontaneity into everyday life. This was the topic of our Haven Theme Kota when we chatted about creating conditions for more spontaneous acts of gentle adventure and play.

Table of contents* What is Spontaneity? | 4:14 * Spontaneous Rest | 7:16 * The Spontaneous Story We Tell Ourselves | 9:10 * Building Life on Spontaneous Foundations | 11:31 * Impuslivity, Compulsiveness, and Spontaneity | 13:12 * The Space Between Stimulus and Response | 18:50 * Spontaneity and Gentle Rebellion | 22:47 * Impulsive Goals | 24:25 * Spontaneous Acts of Kindness | 28:01 * Trying Not to Try | 36:43 * Spontaneity Grows in the Gaps | 40:23 * How To Practice Being More Spontaneous | 42:33 What is Spontaneity? | 4:14

“Spontaneity is enjoying the moment as it unfolds or experiencing something unexpected with open arms. Spontaneity is agile, adaptable, and responsive to new information. It is a willingness to go in a new direction at a moment’s notice. It is a creative burst of energy.”

Ann C. Holm

We might imagine spontaneous people as being constantly on the move. Highly energised and ready for an adventure at the drop of a hat. But it’s less about what we do and more about how we hold life’s invitations.

Spontaneity is an active willingness and participation in the choice.

As Holm writes, “it’s not completely without restraint. Someone spontaneous tends to take a quick inventory of the big picture before deciding to proceed.“

A spontaneous decision “occurs without external stimulus”, controlling or compelling it. Spontaneity is freedom from pressure and expectation.

Spontaneous Rest | 7:16Is rest a spontaneous option for you?

Rest might not be an option, primarily when other demands compete for attention. As such, we often push ourselves to the point where rest is no longer chosen willingly. Finally, we are exhausted and have no choice but to stop.

Spontaneous rest should be an option if we want to enjoy more sustainable rhythms and energising routines. Maybe it’s about flipping the compulsion to earn rest by doing a bit more first and saying instead, “I might do a little more after I’ve had a rest”. How often does the “more” feel less critical through a well-rested lens?

The Spontaneous Story We Tell Ourselves | 9:10We might close the door to spontaneous choices with the labels we use to understand ourselves. These can be helpful, but sometimes the story we tell ourselves about who we are can compel us to act in specific ways and diminish our preferences and desires.

This might mean we hold ourselves back from accepting one of life’s spontaneous detours.

Building Life on Spontaneous Foundations | 11:31Spontaneity isn’t a demand to say yes to everything. It’s simply the willingness for yes to be an option. What if we could create the conditions for spontaneous growth in a meaningful direction?

When connected to our core personal values, we have an inbuilt compass that guides our response to the inspiration around us. In addition, it gives us confidence in our intuition when filtering any opportunities and invitations that may appear.

Impuslivity, Compulsiveness, and Spontaneity | 13:12We all experience impulses. The urges, instincts, and gut feelings that prompt us to react. But what do we do with the impulse?

Impulsivity = acting based on the urge (no second thought about implications or consequences)

Compulsiveness = acting without thinking (a habit that “just happens”)

Spontaneous = the choice to flow in a different direction (aware and accepting of potential implications/consequences)

The Space Between Stimulus and Response | 18:50Shops place items they know people will impulse buy next to the checkout. They want as little time as possible between the impulse and the purchase. Otherwise, the shopper might “think better of it”. The impulse is to pick up the item, and the second thought tells us to put it back. Spontaneity is the third thought, which is deciding whether to go with the first impulse and make something of it.

Spontaneity and Gentle Rebellion | 22:47When we hold the world with a spirit of gentle rebellion, we are open to possibilities outside of any compelling forces. It allows us to see the world through our eyes and make meaningful and intentional choices about the reality we are part of creating.

In this sense, gentle rebellion is a spontaneous spirit. It is open to new routes and approaches. It is creativity in action. Of course, there is no guarantee that things will work out for the best, but the decision is made despite that, not ignorant of it.

Impulsive Goals | 24:25The world oozes urgency and impulsiveness. It wants us to act without thinking and think without acting.

If we are driven by the injunction constantly to grow, pursue success, and find happiness without knowing what those things mean for us, our goals can become traps. They take us where we wouldn’t choose to go if we stopped to think about it. So instead, we follow the crowd, buy another tool, and sign up for the program that promises to solve our problems.

When our decisions are based on fear, we act impulsively, not spontaneously.

Sometimes the spontaneous thing to do is nothing. To slow down, wait, and allow the fear to pass through.

Spontaneous Acts of Kindness | 28:01Our impulses often point in a good direction. For example, we might be urged to say something encouraging or do something nice for someone. The instinct to connect and empathise is very natural. But our second thoughts can derail the process.

It always seems strange that we are surprised by acts of kindness. They seem like moments that successfully get through the defences. We talk ourselves out of doing the good thing that initially occurred to us. Maybe we convince ourselves that we would be bothering the other person, we might be afraid of what people would think of us, or we might overthink and overcomplicate a simple gesture.

Spontaneity is the third thought. It returns to the original impulse and decides to flow with it.

Trying Not to Try | 36:43In his book, Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity, Edward Slingerland cites cognitive science research that points to spontaneity as a source of trust in our social bonds. We are drawn to spontaneous people because it makes them more trustworthy and less calculating, cold, and robotic.

Spontaneity Grows in the Gaps | 40:23

“We over-structure our lives and plan too much…Most people don’t have any gaps in their day to play.”

Edward Slingerland

We might think of spontaneity as making the most of every day. But this can be another trap, especially when we feel pressured to say yes to every invitation and opportunity.

Fear of missing out is the opposite of a spontaneous spirit. It’s a coerced, not a willing yes. It is always left wanting, always grasping for more.

How To Practice Being More Spontaneous | 42:33Spontaneity is a muscle we can grow with the right environment around us.

Time with other people can be a platform for spontaneous happenings. It happens when we nurture space for boredom (gaps in the day). The door opens when we exchange the question “what can this do for me?” with “what could I do with this?“. Creative spontaneity explodes into life when we embrace mistakes as happy accident gateways to magical new worlds.

An Unexpected Detour | 50:37I finish the episode with a narrative soundscape meditation. It came from a reflection on the theme of adventure. I imagined it growing from a tiny delicate seed—a quiet invitation on the regular route home that we meet with openness and a soft yes.

What could this make possible?

The Haven is a virtual sanctuary that provides refuge for weary travellers and sensitive souls looking for a calmer rhythm, friends who get them, and a deep breath of playful creativity. It’s an invitation home for those seeking inspiration, encouragement, and support as you nurture a meaningful and sustainable life alongside others who “get it”.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5PNMFHKNY4A

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Confidence grows when we feel safe to fail and make mistakes.

Sports people typically attribute confidence to believing they can beat anyone. So I was surprised when an England cricketer linked the team’s recent historic success to their willingness to lose games.

The England test cricket team has been playing a completely different brand of cricket. It’s expansive, exciting, and “fearless“. As a result, it comes across as extremely confident. But is that confidence built on what they can expect to happen when they fail instead of simply believing they can beat everyone?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore the idea that confidence (and excellence) can be grown in unlikely places when people, things, cultures, and processes make it feel safe to mess up.

Table of contents* The Three Little Pigs | 3:12 + Confidence And The Desired Outcome | 10:16 + Misplaced Confidence | 13:50 + Confidence is The Safety to Fail | 20:10 * Good Leaders Show It’s Safe To Fail | 28:30 * Playing It Safe Is a Failure of Safety | 31:32 + Bringing vs Burying Failure | 33:48 * What Happens When We Run Out? | 36:32 * Fear of Being Misunderstood (Bad Faith Is Unsafe) | 41:00 + The Team Makes It Safe To Fail, The Crowd Not So Much | 45:20 * Arrogance (“Over-Confidence”) is a Lack of True Confidence | 50:32 * Safety To Fail And The Road To Excellence | 57:40 * Hunting For Confidence (A Courtyard Workshop) | 58:56 The Three Little Pigs | 3:12Do you remember the story of the Three Little Pigs? It’s a perfect tale to help us consider different sources of confidence in everyday life.

Confidence And The Desired Outcome | 10:16We often think about confidence in broad and general terms. When we do this, very few of us would not wish we had more of it, making us susceptible to products and services advertised with a promise of helping us become more confident and self-assured in life.

As such, we will always come up short again. So it’s far better to consider our confidence in particular situations, environments, and projects.

The three pigs had an objective. They needed to build strong, resilient houses that withstand adverse winter weather and keep the big bad wolf at bay.

Misplaced Confidence | 13:50The first little pig wanted to build his house as quickly as possible so he could play. He had confidence that there was nothing to worry about.

The second little pig wanted to build a better house but was distracted when he saw his brother playing. He had confidence that if there weren’t any storms or wolves, things would probably be okay.

The third little pig wanted to build a house that he could trust. He had confidence that if he did the job properly, his home would protect him from the weather and the wolf.

Confidence is The Safety to Fail | 20:10The third little pig creates a safe environment. WHEN the winter weather hits and WHEN the wolf comes knocking, he knows he can rely on the house he’s built to keep him safe from what would otherwise be harmful.

The environment that the current English cricket leadership have built is similar. Rather than saying, “we won’t lose”, like the first two pigs, they have created an infrastructure around the safety TO lose.

Safety is a source of confidence. It means you’re free to focus on what matters more than worrying about what happens when things go wrong.

Good Leaders Show It’s Safe To Fail | 28:30We are often so afraid of failure that we try to deny its inevitability. However, in many industries, if you’re not failing, you’re not succeeding. Failure is a by-product of taking risks. If you work in intelligence, innovation, or any industry that makes predictions, if you’re not getting things wrong, you’re not taking the necessary risks to get things right.

Certainty is only possible when it’s too late.

The best leaders show us that it’s safe to fail. Not to encourage sloppiness but to reassure us that it will be OK on the other side. So we have the freedom and confidence to grow without fear when it feels safe to fail.

Playing It Safe Is a Failure of Safety | 31:32We protect ourselves, keep things small, and avoid waste when we play things safe. This is NOT the kind of safety we need. But playing BECAUSE things are safe is a different matter. It’s underpinned by the assurance that: “We will figure out what to do if it goes wrong.”

The safety of making mistakes isn’t the elimination of accountability for them. Our failure doesn’t become someone else’s problem to clean up. But we are given a clear sense of process and support to be confident if things go wrong.

We might need to go and have some difficult conversations and fix whatever broke. But we know that the consequences are not fatal. We will not be exiled, thrown out, or banished from the social order. And a good leader makes taking responsibility for failure more attractive than keeping it secret.

Bringing vs Burying Failure | 33:48Just because the implications of mistakes can be bad, it doesn’t stop them from occurring. Wherever uncertainty exists, so too does the possibility of human error. And there will be less-than-perfect solutions where humans must make judgement calls.

If we are told that “whatever we do, we must not fail”, then we have to hide it when we do. So we hide, cover up, blame, dig deeper holes, and worsen the problems.

Healthy cultures bring failure early and know that when they do, it will get worked out…rewarding ownership and responsibility – met, not with passivity, but with action. A safe leader doesn’t just abandon or disown someone who makes a mistake; they use it as an opportunity for growth. Taking responsibility feels more rewarding, secure, and attractive than covering up or pretending it didn’t happen.

What Happens When We Run Out? | 36:32Our relationship with the idea of scarcity can affect our confidence. If we’ve been taught to fear squandering and wasting resources and opportunities, our focus can be consumed by a feeling of scarcity. This can be a source of anxiety about running out, losing out, or missing out. As a result, we might become miserly, hoard, and resent others.

Confidence is grounded in assurance that even if “there’s no more once that’s all gone”, we will still be fundamentally okay. This gives us a platform to build sustainability into our relationship with life.

Fear of Being Misunderstood (Bad Faith Is Unsafe) | 41:00We can lose confidence when we fear the consequences of our words and actions, especially when we can’t be sure how they will be received and interpreted.

This happens through “bad faith” when we filter what we hear through a desire to confirm something we want to hear. It takes courage and bravery to speak up despite being misunderstood. They may or may not be consciously aware they do it, but people make it their mission to misunderstand others. They receive and interpret the actions and words of other people with bad faith.

In The Courage to Be Disliked, Kishimi and Koga write about Adler’s definition of freedom, which isn’t the absence of something undesirable but the acceptance and willingness to face it. This is the fundamental principle behind having the courage to be disliked. We will be disliked by someone whether we like it or not. It’s a trap to dedicate ourselves to trying to be liked.

Likewise, confidence can grow when we accept that we will be disliked, misunderstood, and interpreted in bad faith. Or, like the England cricket team, freedom is being willing to lose.

This kind of freedom is a deep source of strength and confidence. It liberates us from the games people play and from fear of what might happen if we don’t play correctly.

The Team Makes It Safe To Fail, The Crowd Not So Much | 45:20The crowd is not a source of confidence. On the contrary, it’s fundamentally unsafe and volatile. It can turn on you without warning.

But the team is an environment we can control with a clear and unified vision. And while you may lose your place in the group when better players come along or you reach the end of your career, you will forever be a character in its story—part of the history. No one can take that away.

Confidence comes from accepting that no one individual is bigger than the team. No one will be here forever. It’s nothing personal. It’s just life. But you are forever written into the story of this thing.

Arrogance (“Over-Confidence”) is a Lack of True Confidence | 50:32Confidence is built on the safety of failing, whereas arrogance is built on fear of failure. Therefore, an arrogant person has been taught to believe that failure is not an option because it’s about them as a person. It is intrinsically linked to their value and worth as a human.

We can recognise the difference between confidence and arrogance in others by understanding how they leave us feeling.

When you spend time with a confident person, you feel positive about yourself. Conversely, when you spend time with an arrogant person, you have lower self-esteem and self-worth. Confidence lifts us; arrogance presses us down.

Arrogance rolls its eyes when you make a mistake. Their judgement is a distracting thorn, reminding you that failure is not okay. On the other hand, confidence shoots a reassuring look that tells you it’s safe to give it a go, reminding you that whatever happens, you are fundamentally okay.

Safety To Fail And The Road To Excellence | 57:40Arrogance nurtures average.

It is afraid of failure because it’s unsafe to make mistakes. If we are so scared to fail, we play it safe. We protect ourselves, blame others, and hold back from taking the necessary risks for the rewards we want.

Conversely, when we encourage failure and get more comfortable and better at it, we pave the way towards excellence.

This safety can’t be nurtured alone, though. It’s hard, if not impossible, to think yourself confident. But we CAN gradually build confidence as we recognise where this kind of safety to fail comes from. We can start to surround ourselves with people, things, approaches, processes, and stories that show us that it’s safe to fail.

Hunting For Confidence (A Courtyard Workshop) | 58:56Most of us would like a bit more confidence at times.

But what does it mean to be confident?

We often think of it as a feeling in itself. We hear people talk about “faking it ’til you make it” and the power of self-talk and mindset to help us feel more confident. And while these can be useful to consider, they are only a tiny part of the big picture because confidence is usually a by-product of other feelings.

When we think we want to feel confident, we might be saying we want to feel safe and be able to trust in something or someone outside us. In other words, we are confident when our need for security, acceptance, belonging, connection, authenticity etc., are met.

We talk to people in confidence (assured that they won’t tell others what we say), and we place our confidence in leaders (assured that they will work in the interests of their followers). We put confidence in objects, resources, and tools (assured that the car will get us from where we are to where we want to go).

In this workshop, we build on this idea in practical ways. It’s a chance to think about an area of life you want to feel confident in and look at it through different lenses of confidence. You will end up with simple ways to build confidence in your situation or project.

*Get instant access to the workshop here*

The post 23 | What If It’s Not Safe To Fail? appeared first on Andy Mort.

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Since early 2021, I’ve been haunted by a tweet I read: “If you’re not grimacing every time you look at old work, then you aren’t growing.”

I decided that I needed to put the icky feeling to use. So I’m using it as inspiration for an exploratory journey into creative growth and self-compassion. Because I don’t want to live in a world where people grimace every time they look at their “old work”. That sounds like hell.

So in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I want to explore how we might enjoy, rather than belittle, the bravery that gave rise to “old work”. We will think about the difference between casting and using judgement to develop, mature and grow as people and in our creativity. And open up space for healthy foundational growth that doesn’t follow a one-dimensional linear path.

Episode contents* Creative Growth WITHOUT Grimace | 1:38 + Grimace-Growth is Imbalanced | 7:5 + What Does Creative Growth Look Like? | 12:46 + There Are Different Grimaces | 16:21 * Using vs Casting Judgement | 20:55 + Judgement as Shame (“I should be better”) | 23:36 + Judgement of Project (“this could be improved”) | 25:22 + Judgement of Opportunities and Desires | 29:35 * Using Feelings of Inferiority | 42:52 + Superiority Complex is an Inferiority Complex | 44:43 + Victim Mindset | 47:06 + Demands For The External World To Change | 48:24 + Willing Others To Fail | 49:06 * Replace The Disowning Grimace | 53:54 + Make Peace With Past Efforts (Equal But Not The Same) | 55:00 * Handing Over: A Bridge From Somewhere to Elsewhere | 56:11 Creative Growth WITHOUT Grimace | 1:38When I internalise this grimace, it’s not just about my relationship with my old work. It’s about how I hold myself and other people. It’s about how I relate to EVERYTHING. So, for example, if I was doing the best I could and still grimace when I look back at it, what am I doing with other people who are doing the best they can where they are?

What sort of world does this approach create in the long run?

Grimace-Growth is Imbalanced | 7:5It’s tough to grow from a healthy foundation when we feel the grimace looking at us. It evokes shame, embarrassment, and humiliation. It can leave us in a spirit of urgency and desperation.

What Does Creative Growth Look Like? | 12:46In The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han writes about the rate of acceleration in the world and what is happening to a culture that erodes “intervals, betweens, and interruptions”, replacing them with restlessness, hyperactivity and mental exhaustion.

Positivisation pedals the idea that action makes us free, yet we see it doing the opposite. In the name of “growth” and “progress”, we are becoming automatic performance machines rather than subjective beings with the power “not to do”.

Growth isn’t endless. It hits limits all the time.

We reach a point where we won’t get taller, our capacity for physical strength peaks, and our hair gets thin.

How do you know you’re moving in the right direction? What does it mean to keep growing as people? Is this a trap that separates us from ourselves?

There Are Different Grimaces | 16:21Not all grimaces are the same. The same facial expression can communicate different aspects of personal and creative growth.

The “Last Big Push” Grimace: a facial contortion that shows you put every ounce of energy into striving towards the end (e.g. getting down the home stretch and over the finish line).

The “Something’s Wrong” Grimace: reacting to a disturbance in the anticipated flow (e.g. a wrong note, weird flash, bad smell, or strange taste).

The “I Couldn’t Do That” Grimace: a reaction to seeing someone do something scary or out of reach and imagining yourself doing it yourself (e.g. the idea of public speaking).

The “Embarrassed For You” Grimace: cringing at something someone else has done – perhaps a relatable failure (“I know the feeling, and I’m glad it’s you, not me”) or a judgement (“what were you thinking!?”)

The “Wish I was You” Grimace: seeing someone in a position you wish you were in and being unable to hide envy or resentment.

The “Wish I Wasn’t Me” Grimace: seeing yourself through a critical lens and feeling embarrassed (e.g. looking at old work and cringing).

Using vs Casting Judgement | 20:55There is a difference between using and casting judgement.

We USE judgement through critical thinking. It helps us assess how well something matches specific criteria, standards, or expectations. “Judges” use this when weighing or scoring.

We CAST judgement when we assess something or someone without a measurable framework. Those we might think of as “judgemental” have something to say about everything and everyone, holding them to an unknowable set of standards.

When building a healthy relationship with ourselves, it’s helpful to recognise the difference between using and casting judgement.

We might be like a judge who scores the dancer zero simply because they didn’t take a shine to them. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t help us grow because it gives us nothing of use to help us raise our standards. There is nothing we can do to improve.

Judgement as Shame (“I should be better”) | 23:36Casting judgement is a gateway to shame because it separates the criticism from anything concrete. It can mean that no matter what we do we will never feel good enough. This story is internalised through the judgemental grimace that we are compelled to view all old work with.

Shame leads to perfectionism and an inability to let go for fear of what people will think of us (not the work). Creative growth is only possible through being brave and letting go. But letting go gets more challenging when we know people are judging us. The irony of the tweet is that it makes us painfully aware of this kind of judgement. Yet it’s coming from within.

In other words, if you’re grimacing every time you look at old work, you’re making it hard to grow.

Judgement of Project (“this could be improved”) | 25:22Rather than judging at the level of being, we can view ourselves as separate from our projects. It starts by separating our self-worth from our personal and creative projects.

We might look at a relationship, a creative project, a business, a work situation etc. and use judgement to say, “this isn’t working as I’d like it to” we can take an objective look at it and say, “what can I do to help improve it?” rather than “why am I such an idiot?”

The sense that “this could be improved” has criteria attached. We know what we are improving and where we are taking that process. If we can’t define improvement, we are casting judgement rather than using it.

If we don’t know what “better”, “successful”, and “growing” means, we are setting ourselves up to fail from the start.

Judgement of Opportunities and Desires | 29:35We can use judgement to make decisions in service of the bigger picture. For example, we can use criteria that make it easier to say no to the opportunity or request rather than the person behind it. Our measures provide a filter that we can respond through.

Sensitive people can find it hard to say no. It might feel like a rejection of the other person. So this is a helpful way to respond to requests that don’t fit our plans.

We can use questions to probe more deeply if we’re unsure whether something is a good fit for us. This is a great way to uncover awareness about what we want more of in life. I talk about this in more depth in the episode.

Using Feelings of Inferiority | 42:52We are currently reading The Courage To Be Disliked in The Haven. The book unpacks the difference between feelings of inferiority and inferiority complexes. And it describes the pursuit of superiority as something positive and healthy.

Feelings of inferiority underpin desire, through which we enjoy what we don’t have (the journey/process). Desire gives life meaning because it allows us to see where we are and consider how we can improve and grow in ourselves and the world around us.

This pursuit of superiority is not striving to be better than others. But we desire to grow, improve, and advance our situation. It is not a linear pathway either. It’s relative, and we can only define it for ourselves.

• How can we hold and relate to our past (including old work, choices, experiences etc.) compassionately and gracefully?
• Can we integrate and absorb rather than separate and disown?
• How can who I was, be both in the past and the present without it defining or limiting me?
• How can it be a chapter in the story that I can hold, not with critical judgement, but with joy, laughter, and humour?

Superiority Complex is an Inferiority Complex | 44:43A complex grows when we hold our feelings of inferiority and pursuit of superiority within a competitive frame. In other words, we allow our self-concept to be influenced and defined by comparison with others. As a result, we are either in the shadow of others or trying to overshadow them.

The book uses an example of harbouring an inferiority complex about education, where we might think we can’t succeed because we’re not well educated. This is also a superiority complex because it implies that if we were well educated, we would be better than we are.

A complex places us as the victim of the conditions in the world around us. It’s perpetually disempowering.

Victim Mindset | 47:06The book says, “if we ask ourselves who is the strongest person in our culture, the logical answer would be the baby. The baby rules and cannot be dominated.’ The baby rules over the adults with his weakness. And because of this weakness, no one can control him.”

This mentality is one of superiority because it rejects the connection. Instead of seeking to hear and empathise, the person declares, “you can’t understand what it’s like to be me”. And while “completely understanding the feelings of the person who is suffering is something that no one is capable of”, we might encounter people who define themselves that way, making it impossible to connect and relate.

Demands For The External World To Change | 48:24When we say “you wouldn’t understand”, we are shutting the door to the kind of connection that creates change. Instead, we enjoy the story we can use to separate us from others and maintain the status quo.

Willing Others To Fail | 49:06This mindset might turn our attention and energy towards willing others to fail. Rather than pursuing superiority on our journey, we might become preoccupied with what the other person is doing and determined to beat them.

Replace The Disowning Grimace | 53:54Self-worth cannot be earned. It can only be realised when we replace the grimace with internal acceptance, grace, and compassion.

This requires us to reject the grimace and greet our old work with a more generous spirit.

Make Peace With Past Efforts (Equal But Not The Same) | 55:00How might we make peace with past efforts? We don’t need to scoff, belittle, and disown those moments in the story. What if we can celebrate the bravery and enjoy how far we’ve come together?

Handing Over: A Bridge From Somewhere to Elsewhere | 56:11I am starting to practice this on Patreon as I go through some of my old musical work. I want to learn how to do this with graceful acceptance and joy.

How can I look at old work with self-compassion and gentleness? What can I learn from that past self? What am I grateful for and appreciative of?

I want this to be a project that supports, encourages, and inspires others. It’s an opportunity to reflect on our story so far and to consider the possibilities for what comes next.

So if you feel the scorn and shame of self-judgement holding you back from letting creative play flow, this is an opportunity to explore some of this together.

I hope you’ll join me: https://patreon.com/andymort

The post 22 | Grimacing Isn’t a Necessary Part of Personal and Creative Growth appeared first on Andy Mort.

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Machines can obviously perform tasks that once required human intuition and creativity. So what do we have left? In the long run, is there anything in human thinking that will differentiate us from artificial intelligence?

Yes.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I talk to neuropsychology professor and author Dr Chris Niebauer, who is the author of No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up To Buddhism.

There is so much to unpack about creative play, flow, and learning to hold ourselves and the world in more helpful, healthy, and humane ways. Since I first read the book, I’ve wanted to speak with Chris. And if you’ve ever wondered who you are, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy our conversation!

Episode contents* “Where is the self when no one is thinking about it?” | 10:22 + Thinking With a Both/And Approach | 14:32 * Split-Brain Research and Investigating Two Sides of The Mind | 15:04 * Tools of The Thinking Interpreter | 18:22 + Who is Left When Things Change? | 19:18 * Thinking Through The Past, Future, and Present | 21:06 + How To Engage The Right Brain Without Over-thinking It | 25:46 + You Can’t Force The Right Brain To Play With Left Brain Thinking | 30:14 + Don’t Confuse The Symbol For The Thing | 33:51 * Embracing Non-Dualism in a Binary World| 35:37 + Thinking of Life as an Escape Room | 36:22 + Most of Everything is Nothing | 1:07 * The Joy of Bad Days | 45:23 * Memory, Meaning, and The Constant Self | 1:07 + Playing With The Story of Self | 58:43 * Mind 2.0 (Human Creativity and Artificial Intelligence) | 64:31 * Music Inspired By The Conversation | 75:34 + Support My Music on Patreon The way we process information and make decisions is heavily influenced by the functioning of our brain, precisely the distinction between the left and right hemispheres. While the left hemisphere is associated with logical and analytical thinking, the right hemisphere is thought to be responsible for creative and intuitive thinking. But is it really that simple?

“Where is the self when no one is thinking about it?” | 10:22Chris says that many of the problems we experience in life are tied to our self-concept. The question of who we are. Or who we believe ourselves to be. But what if the self is little more than a series of stories we tell ourselves through categories, names, and labels?

Do these explain what it really means to be us?

Who are you when you’re not thinking about it?

Thinking With a Both/And Approach | 14:32We are not searching for the true self on one side or the other. We want the enjoy the dance of left and right brain integration in our experiences.

Split-Brain Research and Investigating Two Sides of The Mind | 15:04Split-brain research refers to the study of the effects of severing the corpus callosum, the structure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. It suggests there are two fundamentally different modes of processing the world, which we can shift between.

This has led to the popular idea that the brain’s left hemisphere is more logical and analytical and processes language. In contrast, the right hemisphere is more creative and intuitive and processes spatial information.

For more information about split-brain research, Chris recommends The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist.

Tools of The Thinking Interpreter | 18:22The split-brain studies found an inner interpreter in the left brain, which makes up stories to explain the world and justify our decisions. Categorical identities inform our judgements and beliefs. The story of me that can be taken away at any minute (what we invest our sense of identity in).

We need categories, judgements, and beliefs but problems often stem from how we hold them to the idea of an essential or true self.

The right brain embraces a more eternal, non-material, and non-categorical position. The self is fundamentally mysterious; if you think you’ve pinned it down, it will escape your grasp. It’s attracted to not knowing and mystery. It’s an excellent partner for creativity because it takes us further into the questions rather than pursuing a definitive, once and for all, answer. This is the source of profound and wonderful meaning in life.

Who is Left When Things Change? | 19:18If we attach our sense of self to abilities, labels, and circumstances, what happens if those things are lost or changed? The left brain creates constructs to help us understand and filter the world, but if we over-identify with them, they can cause create anguish when they disappear. Who are you beneath those current realities? Who would be left if things shifted?

Thinking helped us evolve as a species. It sets us apart from other animals. It’s a blessing when we use it in the right way. It gets us out of problems, helps us improve situations, and gives us bodily survival. But this is not the totality of what it means to be human.

Are we using the mind, or is the mind using us? Is there more to us than our thinking? Are we more than our thoughts?

Thinking Through The Past, Future, and Present | 21:06The left brain is interested in using the past to inform the future. It can actively and creatively shift the trajectory of life. It’s amazing! But it can also cause us distress when we become caught up in its stories.

The right brain is our ever-presence. The observer beneath the noise of thought. It is only here now, absorbed in the always current moment.

We might think of the distinction as the left brain designing the tool and the right brain becoming absorbed in the flow of making things with the tool. The left brain might rush to find answers to change the future, whereas the right brain is patient, rhythmic, and can only experience the present.

How To Engage The Right Brain Without Over-thinking It | 25:46Thinking defines much of our existence. We think we’re thinking all the time, but we are also in right-brain modes of processing more than we realise. Chris suggests an exercise to help us become aware of these moments of flow and play. He links this awareness to the idea that “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood”.

We play the piano; we don’t work it.

When the thinking mind returns online, it tries to diminish what was happening when it wasn’t there. Like someone who shows up late to a party and doesn’t believe it started until they get there. Everything is seen from the left brain’s reality.

The left brain is serious. The right brain is more playful.

You Can’t Force The Right Brain To Play With Left Brain Thinking | 30:14It’s said that “you can’t get there from here”.

You can only philosophise about this so much. It’s the mode of left-brain thinking. So we need to create conditions for right brain processing.

It happens when we “zone out” – driving to work with the radio on, singing along, and losing ourselves to the moment. Then the left brain kicks in at work, and we assess that moment as “zoning out”.

The left brain plays unending games of self-improvement. The quest for the perfect process takes us away from the right brain in our search for flow. We measure things, challenge ourselves, and gamify for progress. There is a subtle difference between gamification and play in this context.

When we come to a right brain activity, the left brain loves to sabotage it (measuring it, growing it, turning it into competition etc.).

A part of you is always already in the present moment. “Trying” to get into it is just another left-brain thing.

It’s not about getting rid of the left brain; it’s about integrating it into a more balanced life.

Don’t Confuse The Symbol For The Thing | 33:51Language is a left-brain phenomenon. It’s amazing. It’s the core of civilisation. But it also tricks us into mistaking symbols for things. So words become what they’re not. They can hurt even though they are not intrinsically painful.

The left brain might say, “I recognise these games, and I’m going to stop playing them”, but that’s another form of the game.

Embracing Non-Dualism in a Binary World| 35:37The world feels dualistic. We are separate from each other. But this is our way of understanding an uncertain and mysterious reality through categorisation and storytelling. In other words, the left brain gives structure so that we can be productive. But this productivity doesn’t have an essential truth to it. It’s just fun. We can play with it as we learn to see it as it is.

Thinking of Life as an Escape Room | 36:22Chris suggests we might imagine life like an escape room surrounded by clues that take us home. There’s something intrinsically resonant with the idea of finding our way home. He suggests we can think of human existence, where consciousness got lost in the left brain stories, but we are full of clues to the mystery of life. And we can think of our lives as a playful exercise in piecing together a puzzle, where each experience holds the key for the next room.

Maybe we get to figure things out like it’s a mystery to explore and enjoy. We move through various rooms that transform us and bring us back to where we started. Like a song or a circular walk, it’s about the process to get back to where we started, not the destination itself.

It’s all about what happens between here and here.

Most of Everything is Nothing | 1:07Most of everything is nothing. Try to think about emptiness. You can’t think about the infinite nothingness of space and time. Our left brain clambers for something concrete, but the fun thing about those concepts is they are impossible to grasp.

When we confuse the symbol for the thing itself, we fail to hold the object’s reality because most of it is nothing. Eternity is an excellent example of a word we speak but cannot grasp. When we use language to define things, we try to categorise them. But there is much more to everything than we can hope to capture with a sound or scribble.

Without space, we have no form. Therefore, void is form, and form is void.

The left brain can only focus on nominal symbols and objects (things we give names to), while the right brain focuses on emptiness and space. It’s the silence between the notes—the margin around the edges.

The Joy of Bad Days | 45:23We often tell people to “have a good day”. But good days are dependent on bad days. So, likewise, joy is dependent on the struggle.

Many of my most memorable and meaningful days have been underpinned by finding something I lost, fixing something I broke, or succeeding at something I feared or previously failed. Finding, fixing, growing, healing, and succeeding all require life not to be perfect.

We wouldn’t choose to suffer, but we can understand how suffering creates meaning, connection, and creativity. Through suffering, we find opportunities to come together, innovate, and build relationships between people and things that change the world.

Memory, Meaning, and The Constant Self | 1:07The left brain loves the story of continuity. It wants a single Self that is the same throughout life. But what IS the constant self? It’s something more profound than identity.

Identity changes many times each day, and it will ebb, flow, and morph over a lifetime. Things will become more or less important and feel more or less natural, depending on the story we tell ourselves based on the story the world values at any given moment. So there is something else that provides our sense of what it means to feel ourselves. Awareness. Observation. Consciousness.

Playing With The Story of Self | 58:43When we surrender our absolute identification with the left brain processes, there is a shift, and the right brain becomes more valued and playful. When we approach it with playfulness (not seriousness about playfulness), all the left-brain stories become less serious, and we can have some fun with them. They can become harmless if the playful side of our spirit approaches them.

Maybe there are positive selves that come out. We don’t need to identify with them, but we can enjoy them. We can hold them lightly. Suffering comes from holding our desire too seriously and tightly.

We will likely suffer if we take a story too seriously (positive or negative). This is not a rule; it’s an observation of the mechanics of the mind. All identities, if taken playfully, have the potential to work out wonderfully.

Mind 2.0 (Human Creativity and Artificial Intelligence) | 64:31Until now, homo-sapiens have dominated the planet as the most clever thinkers. But we’ve replicated thinking and created technology that transcends our left-brain thinking capabilities.

When it comes to strategy, survival, and predicting the behaviour of others, Artificial Intelligence will outthink us. This is because it can think multiple thoughts at a time and have multiple relationships simultaneously.

So if we’re not the dominant thinkers, what do we have? We move to the right brain. What do we do besides thinking?

Beyond the left brain, a whole level of mysterious processes defines our existence far beyond thinking. It’s a great time to explore what this means, how we can engage it, and what it means for our human potential.

Music Inspired By The Conversation | 75:34After I finished speaking to Chris, I recorded the piece of music that ends the episode.

Support My Music on PatreonIf you enjoy my music and would like to support its creation, I’d love to share more with you on Patreon.

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There’s been a shift in the conversation about strength and character. Some weird messages have infused mainstream culture and are clearly impacting how people relate to one another (and themselves). We sometimes confuse weakness for strength and write off strength as a weakness.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I want to dive into weak traits that I’ve seen confused with strength. We will think about the characteristics of genuine strength and consider ways to create conditions for more of it in ourselves and others.

Episode contents* What is Strength? | 3:31 * Unavoidable Heavy Lifting – Life in Funeral Care | 5:42 + Physical Strength | 7:57 + Emotional Strength | 9:34 * Letting Go of What We Carry | 12:40 + Find Healthy Ways To Unload | 13:17 + Collective Strength From Sharing The Load | 14:32 + Domination, Power, and Control | 17:01 * Gentle Force | 24:10 * Brittle Force | 26:25 * Personal Weakness Through Symbolic Strength | 27:24 * Flexibility and Stress Responses | 29:54 * How To Strengthen an Argument | 35:02 * Avoidance, Resilience, and Support | 37:01 * Strength and Humour | 44:30 * Active Stillness | 50:17 + The Pause * The Haven What is Strength? | 3:31Strength is the ability to lift, carry, pull, throw, and hold heavy things. But not just physical stuff. We also need the strength to hold, carry, and let go of situations, people, challenges, emotions, stressors, thoughts, and other everyday things.

Unavoidable Heavy Lifting – Life in Funeral Care | 5:42I worked in the funeral industry for six years as an undertaker. I discuss some of the strengths the job required from and developed in me.

My experiences continue to teach me much about what strength means and how we see it demonstrated in the world. And also, some of the ways we confuse weakness for strength, especially in our expectations for how we ought to hold (conceal, deny, hide) the burdens we carry.

Physical Strength | 7:57One lesson from that job was that the strength of the whole is greater than the sum of the strength of individuals. It’s about more than power. It requires learned technique, awareness, understanding, and thoughtful preparation.

When you understand what a situation requires, the resources you have to use, and you plan appropriately, strength comes through collaboration. You put everyone at risk when you believe you can do it alone (or that you don’t need others).

Emotional Strength | 9:34The job also taught me about emotional strength. In a moment of chaos, confusion, and grief, we need to anchor into other people as a source of strength. Sometimes we need someone to take control of the situation and guide or direct us with simple stepping stones that give us small footing when we’re all at sea. Other times we might need an undemanding calming presence around us. And sometimes, our way of coping with loss is to take control of the world around us (organising people, events etc).

I learned it takes strength to be flexible, to be what’s required in that moment, and not to take it personally.

Letting Go of What We Carry | 12:40If we don’t have healthy ways to let go, we might shut off and bottle feelings up. This can lead to indiscriminate, inappropriate, and uncontrolled expressions of unprocessed emotions.

In the same way, as we might shake out our muscles after heavy lifting, it’s essential to do the same with our emotional muscles. To warm down, stretch, and release it all in ways that work for us.

Find Healthy Ways To Unload | 13:17Shaking out the emotional muscles looks different for everyone. It might be going for a walk, getting fresh air, creating, writing, recording experiences, talking to a trusted friend or family member about it, singing, playing with kids or animals, and so on. Whatever brings us back to our creative core.

Collective Strength From Sharing The Load | 14:32We are more likely to feel weak when we are isolated and alone. This is especially true when we face challenges and struggles. Conversely, we get stronger when we feel safe and confident to ask for help and receive support.

What Strength is NOT

“It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it”

Douglas Adams

Domination, Power, and Control | 17:01True strength is the capacity to change, morph, grow, and develop. Conversely, weakness remains rigid, unyielding, and brittle when we need to be flexible and able to bow with the wind.

Abusing a position of power is not a sign of strength; it’s a sign of weakness—an inability to hold responsibility with respect and reverence.

Characteristics of weak leaders: ridiculing others, abusing trust, allowing envy to control them, a victim mindset, inability to articulate a positive vision (that doesn’t involve eliminating others), viewing everything as a game, lacking self-awareness, and being unable to see the role they play in their repeated misfortune (it’s never their fault).

Gentle Force | 24:10Some things must be gently forced through perseverance, grit, and stamina. When something really matters, these attributes help us endure fatigue and the desire to give up when something is important to us but hard.

Maybe you can think of times when you required the strength to keep going even though you wanted to give up. Be proud of yourself and take that story with you as fuel for the future.

Brittle Force | 26:25Brittle force is fragile and insecure beneath the surface. It’s a front, which, if hit too hard, will shatter and reveal very little within. It cracks if it gets hit too hard, revealing a rather wobbly back. The opposite of firm back, soft front gentleness.

Personal Weakness Through Symbolic Strength | 27:24 Sometimes we substitute our own strength for the power of symbolic identity. For example, we lean on a background, job role, or symbolic societal position to make us feel strong. This can lead to horrific abuses of power.

Flexibility and Stress Responses | 29:54

“Strength is not born of strength; strength can be born only from weakness. So, be glad of your weakness now – they are the beginnings of your strength”

– Dr Claire Weekes

Something or someone who thinks they are strong enough will not become stronger.

It is from weakness and flexibility that strength grows. Like a tree growing reaction wood in response to the wind, we are built in relation to the world around us. Gradually becoming stronger through weakness. It’s an often unseen process that can’t be forced or rushed. It happens over time as we encounter the world. But we can also influence it through our awareness and choices.

The Greek word Aphiēmi is translated in many ways, and I find it a beneficial tool for thinking about strength. Especially our capacity for strengthening our responses to people, experiences, and situations we might face.

Reaction Wood and Contingent StrengthOur source of reaction wood might be found in the place we don’t default to. Not in how we automatically hold the world, ourselves, and others. Strength is born from weakness.

Strength From Weakness Might Mean:* learning to ‘yield’ when your default response is to dominate and control. * learning to ‘stand firm’ when your default reaction is to let go of your desire to keep the peace. * learning to ‘pardon’ when you find it easy to hold a grudge. * learning to hold accountability when you usually just let things slide. * learning to ‘tolerate’ when you don’t want to hear or attempt to understand another person’s perspective. * learning to ‘permit’ when you tend to complain, clamp down and eradicate. * learning to ‘divorce’ when you keep coming back to the site of pain, hoping something will magically change * learning to ‘abandon’ when you are desperate to stay, no matter the cost to your health. * learning to ‘forgive’ when you want to punish. * learning to let go when you are desperate to hold on and learning to hold on when you want to throw it away.

How To Strengthen an Argument | 35:02Trees grow faster in a human-made biosphere than they do in the wild. But before reaching maturity, they collapse under their own weight in those conditions. Without wind, they are unable to form reaction wood (stressed/tension wood) that keeps them strong.

The biodome is like an echo chamber. It gives rapid growth to ideas untested and untouched by anything outside that bubble. But our ideas, thoughts, opinions etc., only become strong when exposed to some stress from the outside.

Avoidance, Resilience, and Support | 37:01When we focus solely on the individual as the source of strength, we risk turning personal power into a collective weakness. Collective strength, which has been key to human survival throughout history, grows out of supportive environments and structures.

Support comes from above or below. We might think of this as the difference between being safe TO fail or safe FROM failure.

Safe from failure is biosphere-style protection, where we aim to keep harm out.

Safe to fail is like a net to catch us when we fall.

Strength and Humour | 44:30Strength is born from the ability to laugh at ourselves.

Carl Reiner said, “Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do. You may be a fool but you’re the fool in charge.”

I’m always wary of people who take themselves too seriously. Once you push their button, which you will (whether you intend to or not), they can be dangerous in their effort to save face.

Active Stillness | 50:17Active stillness is the space between the trigger and our response. It’s an intentional choice to slow down. A reminder to take a moment to breathe and observe within and without. What do we feel? What do we need? How do we want to hold this thing before us?

The Pause

When compulsion to prove my point overcomes me
And my need to respond is fuelled by urgency,
My mind races to be right
My senses rise to the fight
And then I reluctantly remember…
The Pause.
The humbling, painful Pause
The uncomfortable, brakes-on Pause
The beautiful, let-things-sit Pause
That turns my focus from agitation
To curious investigation
Unravelling my defences to uncover a
deeper wisdom.
The Pause that is active yet still,
Noticing but not heavy lifting
Permission granter for things to unfold
Space creator for quiet questions to evolve.

– Ange Disbury, 2022

Ange shared this poem with us after our Kota session. Read more of her work on her website.

The HavenThis episode was inspired by a conversation we have been having in The Haven. I would love to invite you to join us to explore themes like this and consider ways to bring more gentleness, strength, and creative play on your journey into becoming who you are forever becoming.

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It isn’t easy to keep up with the pace of life. It can feel like time is running away, and there’s always more to do than we can manage. So it’s no wonder many people are trying to figure out how to slow it all down.

But what does slowing down mean? What do we want to let go of? And how do we make these changes in a world that expects more and more from us?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I want to go beneath the surface and explore some of the profound benefits of slowing down.

Episode contents* Slow Consumption in a World Of Instant Knowledge | 2:41 + Slowing Down and Control | 8:23 + What’s The Point of Personal Productivity? | 10:53 * How Does Slowing Down Reduce Stress? | 13:31 * What Would Help Me Slow Down in Life? | 15:38 + Perception of Pace | 22:40 * What Do We Want When We Seek a Slower Life? | 27:51 + Slowing Down Our Important Tasks | 30:42 * The Risk of Rushing | 33:40 + Speed as a Tool | 35:56 * Why Do Time Management Tools Make Us Busier? | 37:05 * Enjoyment is Not The Destination | 40:12 * Where Do We Get to Slow Down Now? | 43:45 * Slowness is a Beautiful Waste of Time | 45:14 * Why I Call Myself a Slow Coach | 46:56 * What Would You Like To Waste Your Time On? | 48:08 * What’s The Rush? Enter The Sanctuary of Slowness | 50:47 Slow Consumption in a World Of Instant Knowledge | 2:41This topic is on my mind as I plan the next Haven Book Club. We are reading The Courage to Be Disliked, to which we will dedicate the next four months.

What will slowing down make possible? How much more will we see, explore, and experience by not rushing? What will greet us in the gaps between the sessions and the vast depths as we reflect and process the ideas, and our conversations about them, over time?

It’s reassuring to know that we could quickly acquire an overview of a book’s core concepts if we had to. So what if tools like Blinkest, StoryShorts, and Snapreads allow us to take our time with the books we want to read instead? To mine the depths for the kind of wisdom and mindful insights that don’t come from knowledge hoarding.

These valuable tools can reinforce and support our goal of slowing down. But only if we choose to approach them that way. If we only ingest bitesize nugget versions of books, we might struggle to open space for the inner conversations that lead to self-awareness and intentional growth.

Slowing Down and Control | 8:23Slowing down can help us let go of the need for control. It’s about understanding that growth starts with roots that emerge from seeds planted in the dark. These are processes beneath and beyond our field of vision. Not an easy thing to do in a world that likes quick and visible results.

What’s The Point of Personal Productivity? | 10:53I spent a lot of time, money and thought on productivity tools and time management techniques. I would hand hours over to designing my “ideal week” and perfect processes to deal with emails, social media, and my morning routine. But invariably, the more I focussed on being productive, the more overwhelmed I felt.

This “productivity trap” is where we end up using productivity to free time to do more. It seems obvious, but it doesn’t feel like it when we’re stuck in that mode of thought, where we tell ourselves that with the right formula, technique, or process, we will finally have all the time in the world for the important stuff.

This is accompanied by that dreaded feeling that we should be doing more. Because there is always more to do, even if we optimise our routine and clear our schedule, “more” will slip in.

If these productivity techniques are not helping us do what we’re already doing but slower, they are probably not helping us.

Rather than asking, “what do I want more time to do?” maybe we could ask, “what do I want to be able to do more slowly if I choose to?” We can use that as a starting point from which to design the foundations of our life.

How Does Slowing Down Reduce Stress? | 13:31I had some fun with ChatGPT recently. It’s a fascinating (slightly terrifying) tool that I believe might be able to inadvertently reconnect us with our humanity. Recognising where we have given ourselves to machine-like actions and behaviours and reconnecting with the creative play that makes us who we are.

I thought I’d ask how slowing down reduces stress. It told me that slowing down can help reduce stress in a few different ways:

1. Slowing down allows you to break from everyday demands and pressures
2. It can help you gain perspective and prioritise your tasks
3. Slowing down helps you become more present – getting caught up in your thoughts and worries about the future is easy when rushing through life
4. It can help you cultivate healthy habits – allowing you to engage in activities that promote relaxation and well-being

Nothing particularly groundbreaking in that response. Perhaps a reminder that we know why slowing down is a good thing to do.

What Would Help Me Slow Down in Life? | 15:38I got a bit more practical with my questions. Could ChatGPT shed any light on HOW to slow down? Apparently so. But aren’t they things we’ve heard a million times before?

It said that are many things I can try to help me slow down, including:1. Set limits on your commitments. Try to be more selective about what you take on, and say no to things that don’t align with your values or that you don’t have the time or energy for. 2. Practice mindfulness. This means paying attention to the present moment and your surroundings rather than getting caught up in your thoughts or worries about the past or future. You can try mindfulness meditation or focus on your breath and surroundings for a few minutes each day. 3. Take breaks throughout the day to rest and recharge. This could be as simple as taking a few deep breaths or walking outside. 4. Prioritise self-care by engaging in activities that promote relaxation and well-being, such as exercising, spending time in nature, or doing something you enjoy. 5. Schedule time for activities that bring you joy and help you relax, such as reading, spending time with friends and family, or pursuing a hobby. 6. Find ways to streamline and simplify your daily routine, such as decluttering your space or creating a to-do list to stay organised. 7. Instead of rushing through tasks, try to be more mindful and present as you go about your day. This can help you feel calmer and more focused.

There’s a pattern emerging. It sounds right, but I’m not sure it helps us get to the root.

The great thing about ChatGPT is that it gives us a rundown of what doesn’t need to be repeated. So what are we missing if these points have been made enough times for chatbots to regurgitate them with such familiar sentiments? Why are we still trying to figure out how to slow down?

Perception of Pace | 22:40How we perceive time is quite a weird thing.

I remember when I first performed with a drum machine (pre-programmed sampler). Even though it was set at the same tempo as the original song, it felt slow when playing live.

The world slows down when we are in a heightened state of alertness. But our ability to connect with what’s happening around us can be impacted.

It might be helpful to consider the role stress plays in our relationship with time, focus, and attention. Are we seeing, hearing, and feeling things as they are, or does reality conform to what we expect and anticipate?

What Do We Want When We Seek a Slower Life? | 27:51What sits beneath our desire to slow life down? Where do we feel things slipping away? What causes us to rush? Why is slowing down one of those things we know we want but struggle to do?

Slowing Down Our Important Tasks | 30:42Maybe we are caught in the habit of rushing, where we speed through everything without any apparent reason.

We might have learned to fill our lives with busy work because slowness is the worst thing. It means laziness, lacking ambition, wasting time and taking up valuable space.

There are a lot of value judgements and stories of worth associated with the pace we bring to life. And many ways we shape our lives so that we might avoid the critical and judgemental voice from having a go at us.

Perhaps we have a lot to do, so we cannot spend much time on the things that matter. Maybe life feels like a to-do list, and we’ve got to get from one thing to the next. Everything is essential; everything is urgent.

So the solution we are after is not necessarily slowing down but doing less, outsourcing responsibility, or getting help. If we focus on slowing down but still have the same number of things on the to-do list, we increase the amount of strain and stress on our plate.

The Risk of Rushing | 33:40We might associate speed with value. Fast things are good things. But what about rushing? If you’ve ever tried to do something in a rush, you’ve probably experienced the ironic delay from needing to tidy up mistakes, misunderstandings, and spillages.

Sometimes rushing can get us where we don’t want to go more quickly.

Speed as a Tool | 35:56Learning to slow down isn’t about rejecting a faster pace. It’s about learning to choose it when it’s necessary. Speed changes are a tool we can pull out of the box when life requires it.

Why Do Time Management Tools Make Us Busier? | 37:05There’s a strange paradox at work in time management. The more efficient we get, the busier we become. As we’ve already looked at, the tools we use to eradicate stress become sources of stress.

Enjoyment is Not The Destination | 40:12Not having the things we want is where we find enjoyment—it’s all about the journey towards the thing that makes the thing itself meaningful.

Hipsters know this (even if they’re not necessarily aware of why). It’s why they spend an hour brewing a cup of coffee when they could do it in five minutes. It’s why vinyl rose in popularity as music became instantly accessible through streaming platforms.

Where Do We Get to Slow Down Now? | 43:45The more we solve the problems we think we have, the less true enjoyment we have access to.

What would you like to enjoy more in this way?

Slowness is a Beautiful Waste of Time | 45:14We are spending four months on one book. How does that sound to you? What might it make possible?

Does that seem like a waste of time? Or a rich, deep, and expansive experience?

Do you think of fast as good and slow as bad?

Do you think slowing down is uncomfortable when there’s so much to do, see, and experience? How do you stop and find peace when there’s more to do, see, and experience?

Why I Call Myself a Slow Coach | 46:56Slowcoach is a bit of an insult. It describes someone moving or acting slowly. But that’s why my inner rebel thought it was a perfect way to describe my coaching approach. A high-speed train might get us to where we want to go faster, but a slowcoach allows space for adventure, sensory awareness, and spontaneity on the way.

Making time for slowness (if we want to choose it) allows space for depth. Slow coaching isn’t about forcing slowness but letting it when desired. Without the sense that by slowing down, we are making everything else more stressful. What do I want time to do more slowly if I choose?

What Would You Like To Waste Your Time On? | 48:08When we go slower, we can explore more. We might see more. We might hear more.

Slowing down allows us to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel more of what is around us. It helps us listen to what is being said, not what we anticipate is being said.

We only notice what we already understand if we skim a book. We will overlook new concepts if our brains don’t recognise the patterns and we don’t give ourselves time to learn. It’s the same if we listen to audio or watch a video at high-speed. This can be a helpful tool if needed. Time wasted can give rise to valuable memories, enjoyable experiences, and creative breakthroughs.

What do you want to waste time on today? What would happen if you chose to slow down and truly listen, play, create, watch, and enjoy? Where is the space FOR that more meaningful stuff?

What’s The Rush? Enter The Sanctuary of Slowness | 50:47 Since it first came to life in 2014, The Haven has been my playground of slow growth. In the early days, I followed membership models and training blueprints. But over the years, it’s become so much more than that. It’s a sanctuary of rhythm and slowness.

Not somewhere to rush to or tear through to find instant solutions to significant challenges. But with its labyrinth of cobbled streets, candle-lit corridors, and secret doors to other worlds, it’s an invitation to slow down. Return from the hectic world of doing to a land of being. A land of becoming. Of wondering and wandering.

The Book Club is all part of that. Fancy joining me there? Learn more here.

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Are there people in your life who drive you up the wall because they hold very different beliefs from yours? Maybe you’ve drifted from friends and family members because conversations turn heated and hostile whenever you try to change their minds.

Konrad Benjamin is the creator of Ideas Digest, a podcast that aims to build bridges of connection between world views at war. “Politicians, religions, algorithms and mainstream media make money on dividing us all and building higher and higher walls around us”.

When I first listened to the Ideas Digest Podcast, I was struck by the gentle rebellion. This was Konrad’s commitment to looking beneath the surface, searching for empathic connection, and meeting people in good faith, even in the most challenging conversations.

These are practices that the world needs more of right now.

Episode Contents* Changing and Softening Minds | 3:17 + Prohibition Doesn’t Change Minds; It Hardens Them | 9:44 * What Are Ideas? | 12:41 * Making Our Minds Up | 16:51 * How We Hold Others When We Encounter Them | 21:02 * Our Fixed Mind Illusions | 24:50 + Universality and Non-Belonging | 25:50 * Distance Not Difference Hardens Minds | 33:32 * Foundational Assumptions and The Expectations We Carry | 36:45 + Every Position Is a Strategy To Meet a Need | 43:18 * What REALLY Changes/Softens Minds? | 45:47 + Brittle Fragility and Weak Minds | 51:34 * The Story of The Mustard Seed | 52:59 It’s easier than ever to connect with like-minded people around the world. There are also many ways to mute, block, and walk away from people who think differently. And while this can be a helpful soothing balm at times, it also has a damaging impact on our ability to encounter and engage with people when we don’t see eye to eye.

Views, ideas, and beliefs become entrenched, and we dehumanise those we can lump into “people like that”.

This trajectory has clear implications. We’ve probably all experienced its impact in different ways.

Changing and Softening Minds | 3:17As I’ve often said, gentleness is not about being weak and passive in conflict. It’s about approaching the path ahead with the best tools for the job. It places space and time between the stimulus and response. And meets the world with a firm back and soft front (humility, curiosity, and a meaningful sense of vision) rather than a brittle back and a rigid front (firing weapons while hiding from the world).

We react to the present and create the future in the same movement. How we act today as individuals and collectives set the tone for the world we encounter tomorrow.

Prohibition Doesn’t Change Minds; It Hardens Them | 9:44I asked Konrad what drives him to talk with people whose ideas he might instinctively oppose. He says, “these ideas are not going away”, and suggests we have a choice to make. We can push them underground or seek to understand where they are coming from so we can consider and respond to their roots.

Cultural and social prohibitions often occur at a symptomatic level. But we know from history that banning things, while it might make them disappear from view temporarily, can lead to more extreme expressions down the line.

We might mistake coerced silence for willing consent. But when this happens, the mind that feels silenced becomes hardened. It doubles down, seeks allies, and prepares to fight back.

What Are Ideas? | 12:41I find ideas mindblowing. Not any particular views, just that we have THEM in the first place. We can imagine, think about, and process completely abstract concepts—things we cannot see in a physical sense. We can then turn them into objects, systems, and experiences. Whoa!

In this episode, I aimed to look at how we hold ideas. What do we attach to our beliefs? How do these thoughts define us? What is at stake if we change our minds? How do we hold other people and their ideas? Do we see the person beneath the belief, or do we encounter humans at their word and no deeper?

Ideas come in all shapes and forms. They can help us make sense of the contradictions and differences at the heart of life. They can help us understand who we are and what has shaped us. Our ideas and beliefs help us alleviate both momentary and existential fears. And they can give us direction and focus in everyday life. They can free us, and they can imprison us.

Making Our Minds Up | 16:51What causes you to make up your mind? Have you ever noticed where your beliefs, views, and judgements are formed?

What do we do with our ideas?

In his book, Think Again, Adam Grant suggests that we hold our ideas in four ways. This informs our readiness, flexibility, and willingness to change our minds.

The PreacherWe might say with certainty that we’ve found the truth. We decide that it’s down to us to share this with the world and help them see the light.

The ProsecutorWe might play the zero-sum game. The argument is won or lost, so we become committed to proving the other person is wrong.

In both positions, only one mind is allowed to change…that of the other person.

The PoliticianWe might need to win over support from people. So we give the impression of flexibility and openness. But we’re just saying what the other person wants to hear so that they give us what we want.

The ScientistWe are humble in our curiosity to recognise what we don’t know and scrutinise existing conventions and convictions to discover new information. Grant says, “the scientist mindset says, I will not let my ideas become an ideology”.

Opinions are hypotheses. We hold them up to playful questioning so they can evolve-not affirm- what we already know. The mind is poised to be changed. We don’t have to resist being wrong. We can invite it.

How We Hold Others When We Encounter Them | 21:02In his Last Supper video, Peter Rollins talks about four ways we might encounter people who have practices and beliefs different from our own:

1. Consume Them – take their differences and try to make them conform to ours. But if we can’t change them, we might…
2. Vomit Out – if the other person can’t be domesticated, we want to get them out of our community
3. Tolerance – we can exist together as long as their strange beliefs and practices are kept behind closed doors
4. Finding Agreement – we can dialogue together and find the ocean we share beneath the streams of our different beliefs

The problem Peter sees in all four positions is they take the same starting position: “I’m right, and I’m judging you”. The first three say, “I’m right, and you’re wrong”, and the fourth position says, “we’re both right”.

Our Fixed Mind Illusions | 24:50

“Have you ever noticed that everyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

George Carlin

In Mindwise, Nicholas Epley writes, “if the illusions you hold about your own brain lead you to believe that you see the world as it actually is and you find that others see the world differently, then they must be the ones who are biased, distorted, uninformed, ignorant, unreasonable, or evil.”

Peter Rollins suggests later in the video that in a genuine multicultural connection with another, we first see the other person as weird and monstrous. But when we take the time to see ourselves through the other person’s eyes, we experience our beliefs and practices as strange and monstrous. These beliefs are no longer held to be “right”, but we realise they are contingent, historical, and can be questioned.

This doesn’t undermine our beliefs and practices but allows us to experience them in a new way.

It turns out that everyone on the road (including us) is both an idiot and a maniac.

Universality and Non-Belonging | 25:50In this sense, there is no way to belong. The lines we draw, the boxes we put people in, and the labels we use to define one another are never enough. They are both incomplete and too much at the same time. Todd McGowan has produced some fascinating work on the universality of non-belonging.

Distance Not Difference Hardens Minds | 33:32Maybe we become disconnected from humanity, not by difference but by distance. The suggestion is that with proximity comes the potential for understanding at a human level. To see the question beneath the question. The need beneath the expression.

Alain de Botton suggests that we share meals with those who disagree with us.

“Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal – something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt – disrupts our ability to cling to the belief that the outsiders who wear unusual clothes and speak in distinctive accents deserve to be sent home or assaulted. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.”

Alain de Botton

This is a fascinating idea. One way to invite our minds to be softened together. To see each other at the level of our humanity before we interrogate their thoughts, practices, or beliefs.

Foundational Assumptions and The Expectations We Carry | 36:45My friend Megan posted a Tweet a while back. It said:

“Just because I don’t like what this person is saying doesn’t mean they’re wrong.”

I added to the thread:

• “Just because everyone agrees with me, it doesn’t mean I’m right”.
• “Just because someone disagrees with me, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong”.

Then someone contributed:

• “Just because I dislike someone doesn’t mean they’re wrong.”
• “Just because I like someone doesn’t mean they’re right.”
• “Just because I like someone they dislike doesn’t mean they’re wrong.”
• “Just because they like someone I dislike doesn’t mean they’re wrong.”

And another person commented:

• “Someone wrong about things before may be right this time.”
• “Someone right about things before may be wrong this time.”

I thought these were helpful reminders.

What Are Your Foundational Assumptions?Konrad talked about going into conversations with some foundational assumptions from which to connect. This allows us to take seriously our role in creating the future we want to be part of.

What do we want to believe that will help shape or direct our encounter in a way that assists a deeper vision or set of values we hold?

Konrad says you can argue with his foundational assumptions and disprove them, but that’s not the point. They are tools, not facts. We use them to shape our encounters in constructive ways. For example…

Good Faith (people are inherently good, not evil)We are doing our best with what we have…experiences, circumstances, and influences around us.

Facts Don’t Change MindsJames Clear says, “Facts don’t change our minds. Friendship does.”

If I realise that I’m not going to change your mind, we can connect in other ways. Those different ways can be far more enriching than trying to win an argument.

People don’t respond to logic until they feel seen and heard at a human level.

We see a lot of “Logic Bullying” in the modern world. One of Adam Grant’s students described him as a Logic Bully when, rather than listening to what she was saying, he shut down her feelings and needs using cold hard facts. He dismissed her worries, diminishing the truth of what she felt at that moment.

I’m Not Important Enough To Change Your Mind“Calling this out” will not do anything other than push people into corners. We can hold one another accountable for our actions and choices without resorting to moral grandstanding and drawing tribal battlelines. If, as Konrad says, we assume that the stakes are lower because we’re small, we can connect at a human level and invite proper accountability and responsibility for the things we say, do, and believe.

Every Position Is a Strategy To Meet a Need | 43:18I like to remember that “hurt people hurt people”. And that anger is an expression of pain and the only available and acceptable way many people have to process their feelings.

When people feel lonely, afraid, and unseen, they find strategies to hoard safety, protection, and a sense of significance. We ALL have a complex and ever-changing set of human needs. When those needs are not met, we can do terrible things. If our terrible things are met with more rejection and pain, those terrible things can escalate.

Empathy isn’t about accepting and tolerating the strategy, belief, or idea. It’s about seeing the person BENEATH their strategy, opinion, or statement. Sometimes it just takes feeling seen to lessen our attachment to those things and maybe even let them go altogether.

What REALLY Changes/Softens Minds? | 45:47I asked Konrad about experiences he has had of changing his mind. What causes it to happen? Who can do it?

How has your mind changed in the past? What factors were involved?

Maybe it’s the stuff life throws at you. In processing a situation or experience, you perhaps realise that not everything is as it seemed before.

Brittle Fragility and Weak Minds | 51:34Binaries, opposites and black and white thinking lead to brittle fragility. They easily break when our minds cannot change, soften, or expand. If we are afraid of changing, softening, or expanding, we spend focus, energy, and attention on gathering information to protect, reinforce, and solidify our position. We shrink into a narrower and narrower hole, living from a place of defence and attack rather than creative expansion and curious exploration.

Letting Minds Be ChangedHumans are stubborn creatures; we would often rather keep doing something we don’t want to do than concede to a change that someone else is forcing us to make. Or at least that’s true for me. How can we create conditions and space for our minds (and others) to be softened and keep shifting, evolving, and growing?

The Story of The Mustard Seed | 52:59

A mother is completely devastated after the death of her young child. She walks around town with the child bound to her chest, unable to come to terms with her loss and let go.

Desperate to bring him back to life she learns of someone in the mountains who can help. So the mother finds the wise woman who reassures her, telling her she can give her what she needs. All she needs is to bring her a single mustard seed from a household in the town that has never known loss or grief.

The bereaved mother sets off, knocking one door after another but to no avail. The simple request cannot be granted. She spends many hours in each home, learning about her neighbours and sharing her own tragic tale. As they cry, laugh, and reminisce together, the mother comes to see that stories of loss, grief, and pain sit behind every door in town. After a while she is able to come to terms with what has happened, and is able to bury her child’s body.

Someone is knocking at the door every day. Do we see THEM? Do we recognise what they are asking for? If their needs are wrapped up in some chaotic and messy stuff, can we hear the question beneath it?

I finished by asking Konrad what he would say if that knock at the door came. And we had an interesting chat about the door as a bridge between us.

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The HavenJoin me in The Haven to watch and listen to the entire conversation.

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Are you waiting for the noise to quieten and the disruption to pass? Are you hoping for some serenity? For some time, energy, and permission to finally focus on the stuff that matters to you? Or enough thinking space to eventually FIGURE OUT what that stuff is.In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore our relationship with the concept of serenity. We ask whether it's a destination to reach or something a little closer to home. And if it isn't a destination, how can we create and nurture more of it in everyday life, so we engage with the here and now rather than always waiting for the next storm to pass?If we can't find it now, we won't find it then. If we can't find it here, we won't find it there.Episode ContentsThe Arrival Fallacy of a Calm and Peaceful Life | 1:35What Is Serenity? | 4:07Serenity Gives Us Options | 6:34Serenity is Safety | 7:27Serenity is Flow | 9:09Serenity is Surrender | 9:29Serenity is Acceptance | 10:39Serenity is an Inner Home| 11:12Serenity is The Calm After a Storm | 12:26The Difference Between Serenity and Tranquility | 14:00Serene People are a Source of Confidence | 18:49Serenity IS Connection | 21:31Obstacles to Inner Connection | 23:19Do You Get The Feeling You're Being Watched? | 25:52Connect With Meaning | 33:28Man's Search For Meaning | 36:38Connection With Other People | 40:30True Connection is Not a Transaction | 42:57Practising Serenity | 45:06Practise The Art of Noticing | 46:24Take an Alternative View | 49:34Accept and Invite Play | 0:0Share What You Notice | 53:42The Haven | 56:33The Arrival Fallacy of a Calm and Peaceful Life | 1:35“Arrival fallacy is this illusion that once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness.”Dr Tal Ben-ShaharWhat Is Serenity? | 4:07In a Haven Theme Kota session, we discussed the idea of serenity not being a destination. We started with what serenity is (and isn't).Serenity Gives Us Options | 6:34It was suggested that Coco Chanel wore a hat at home when people visited to pretend she was on her way out, just in case she wanted an excuse to escape. Was this a source of serenity? Or did being poised and ready to run reflect a state of unpeaceful alertness and discontent?Serenity is Safety | 7:27Serenity grows when we feel safe. But is feeling safe the same as feeling protected? Why does this difference matter?Serenity is Flow | 9:09It's the inner flow of creativity, where we are drawn to what interests us, not what we should do to fit in or be accepted.Serenity is Surrender | 9:29In many ways, serenity is the absence of pursuit. So if we search for it, it disappears. It's a sense of peace in the present. It's about HOW we go, do, and be, rather than WHERE we go, WHAT we do, and WHO we are.Serenity is Acceptance | 10:39Disturbances are inevitable in life. Serenity allows space for an authentic reaction to the noise. While simultaneously holding space to pick from an ever-expanding library of potential responses we have chosen to build.Serenity is an Inner Home| 11:12Like a home that comes with us wherever we go, it's something we grow, nurture, and reinforce within ourselves. It's built from the inside out with acceptance, connection, meaning, creativity (a spirit of expansion and possibility), and playfulness (inviting the time to stop and engage unproductively).Serenity is The Calm After a Storm | 12:26Serenity is that feeling afterwards when everything is out. The emotions can be named, held, and let go. The clouds can disperse and dissipate. Serenity is not just the calm after the storm; it's surrender to the storm itself. It knows that to process life, sometimes a storm needs to happen.The Difference Between Serenity and Tranquility | 14:00Serenity helps peace flow from the inside to the outside. Tranquility aims to invite peace from the outside to the inside.

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A cornerstone is a core around which everything else takes its shape. It's the primary reference point, which determines the position and character of the structure around it.

Anything can become a proverbial cornerstone. It's a source of meaning and purpose. A simple core to which we choose to commit our time, energy, and attention.

We all shape life around cornerstones. But we might not be intentionally aware of what they are. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we will use this image and think about ways to apply it to our lives.

Table of contentsA Cornerstone For Change | 4:20A Lot Can Change In A Year | 12:40Our Inner Vocabulary | 15:19Experimenting and Play | 19:05The Problem With Chains and Streaks | 17:25Balancing and Sequencing | 20:32The Best Time To Plant a Tree | 22:59Life as a Separate Entity | 26:25Life As Serenity Island | 31:52But It's Deeper and Stronger | 33:32A Cornerstone of Cascading Change | 36:02How To Identify Your Cornerstone | 39:32Part One - What are your creations for the past 12 months? | 40:49Part Two - What are you letting go of this year? | 42:24Part Three - What would you like to continue? | 43:40Part Four - What would you like to start? | 44:16Making Sense Of Our Cornerstone | 47:51

A Cornerstone For Change | 4:20

A Haven Courtyard workshop I did with Brandon Bennett inspired this episode. Someone Brandon worked with shared the idea of setting a cornerstone for change. He had chosen "cooking" as his theme at the start of the new year.

Brandon's friend committed to cooking meals from scratch once or twice a week, which he hadn't really done before. Beyond the cooking itself, this commitment became a cornerstone of change across various areas of life. For example, it impacted his relationships, health, creativity, confidence, and business.

A Lot Can Change In A Year | 12:40

People overestimate what can be done in one day and underestimate what can be done in a month.

By committing to do one small thing regularly, we can change the trajectory of everything over time.

Cooking one or two new meals each week adds up. Showing up between fifty and a hundred times over a year, the impact gradually takes root. Skills, experiences, understanding, stories, and opportunities are all contingent aspects of living with a simple cornerstone.

So rather than prioritising everything, we can trust that the other important stuff will begin to take shape around the cornerstone.

Our Inner Vocabulary | 15:19

Brandon talked about how he became aware that some words were not helpful. For example, rather than thinking about new habits as "challenges", he approaches change with a spirit of "experimentation" and "play".

This is not about the words themselves. But instead, it's about how to engage with what the terms represent.

In this respect, a cornerstone is a point of freedom and expansion. It's not a burden, like a proverbial millstone around the neck instead.

Experimenting and Play | 19:05

For example, when it comes to identifying a cornerstone, if a particular word feels heavy, pressurised, or like a strain on your nervous system, we can find one that doesn't. It's incredible how often we attach weighty words to our desire for positive change in life.

The Problem With Chains and Streaks | 17:25

For me, the millstone can appear in the pursuit of chains and streaks. If I see success as doing something every day, the need to keep the streak going can become more important than the underlying change.

Balancing and Sequencing | 20:32

Likewise, the word "balance" can feel unduly weighty. It seems like a noble and positive state of being, but it's an impossible quest. If by balance, we mean we want to hold everything equally and evenly, we are setting ourselves up to fail. Because we can never achieve perfect balance. When we live it, life by nature is unbalancing and destabilising.

We might think of life as a sequence of events instead.

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“Nobody really owns anything. We give back our bodies at the end of our lives. We own our thoughts, but everything else is just borrowed." - Deborah Ellis (From No Ordinary Day)

In one of our Haven Kota sessions, we discussed self-belonging through the lens of ownership and possession.

Where do control and entitlement fit with belonging? What does it mean for things to belong to us? How does it feel to belong to something or someone else? Why are some belongings more cherished and valuable than others? How do we hold ourselves, others, the world, our lives, goals, and relationships? Do we own them? What would it mean to give life back at the end? How much do our desires, emotions, and passions own us? What does it mean to be pre-possessed or owned by something?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore what it means to see ourselves, our lives, and the world in the light of these questions. What if they are all borrowed?

Episode ContentsYou Can't Take it With You | 4:41Earning The Respect to Borrow | 6:56Living On Borrowed Time | 14:56Steal Like an Artist | 20:09The Difference Between Borrowing and Theft | 20:55The Burden of Originality | 24:50We Belong To Something Bigger | 28:02We Are Borrowing a Greater Story Than a Hero's Journey | 29:48The World Likes Possession | 37:15People Like Us vs People Like Them | 38:40Don't Leave Your Longings Unattended | 41:30You Can't Connect Dots Forwards | 44:23Collective Consciousness and A Borrowed Moment | 48:29Everything is Borrowed (Us Included) | 51:16Giving Thanks For What We've Borrowed | 52:18New Does Not Mean Better | 60:22The Haven | 61:30

You Can't Take it With You | 4:41

I regularly heard the phrase, "you can't take it with you", during my years as an undertaker. It is often expressed about the accumulation of material possessions and wealth.

For some, it was a reason to spend without regret. For others, it was a reason to give without fear. But whatever the ramifications, its underlying premise is universal…whatever we collect, gather, and possess in life doesn't come with us when we're done with it. Everything is borrowed.

Earning The Respect to Borrow | 6:56

How do you feel about lending things to other people? Would you happily give your stuff to anyone, or does trust need to be built first?

How do you feel about things you borrow? Do you treat them with more or less respect than things you own?

It might depend.

Living On Borrowed Time | 14:56

We talk about "living on borrowed time" after a severe diagnosis or near-death experience. It's what we might say when confronted with our mortality. But is this time any different from our experience of time...all the time?

In the episode, I share a story from childhood, when we were leant a games console by our hairdresser. I still have no idea why (I developed a solid theory while recording). But I remember the feeling when we were told we only had a few days before we needed to return it. I became focused and clear on the only thing that mattered: completing Sonic The Hedgehog.

How is our mindset and approach to life affected by the reminder that everything is borrowed?

Steal Like an Artist | 20:09

In his book, Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon suggests that there is no such thing as a truly unique or original idea when it comes to creativity and art. I agree wholeheartedly, though I might not describe the process as "stealing".

Kleon writes, "how does an artist look at the world? First, you figure out what’s worth stealing; then you move on to the next thing. That’s about all there is to it."

The Difference Between Borrowing and Theft | 20:55

There seems to be a difference between stealing, borrowing, owning, holding, using, collaborating, sharing, contributing, remixing, and plagiarising. We might describe stealing as deliberately depriving the rightful owner of their property. What Kleon describes is more like "honouring, studying,

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“Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writers, mystics, painters, and troubadours, for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.” - Jacob Nordby

In my six years as an undertaker, I was always struck by the ordinary weirdness of human beings. Eulogies are filled with memories of mundane idiosyncrasies, quirks, and funny habits. These are things we treasure and miss about people.

Weirdness is par for the course of humanity. We are all weird in our own way. And yet we learn to fight those parts of ourselves that don't fit the mould. We hide them, judge them, and crush them.

In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown defines belonging as “the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us". She says, "because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging but often barriers to it." And then later, in Braving The Wilderness, she described “the quest for true belonging” as underpinned by our “courage to stand alone”.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we ask how we might nurture the courage to embrace and express our normally weird selves in life.

Episode ContentsWhat Makes Us Ordinary is What Also Makes Us Weird | 1:48The Parable of The Blind Men and The Elephant | 6.29Ordinary Weirdness in Everyday Life | 9:33Belonging in The Wilderness | 14:30Self-Belief, Impostor Syndrome, and True Belonging | 21:26Entitlement vs Belonging (True Safety) | 23:32Perfectionism and Conditional Belonging | 26:12An Ode to Imperfection and Ordinary Weirdness | 32:40Stop Caring THAT People Think | 38:44Ordinary Weirdness and The Courage to Be Disliked | 41:44Identifying Our Path - Confidence in How We Go | 48:21The Temple of Dreams | 53:36What is Alive in You Right Now? | 66:14

What Makes Us Ordinary is What Also Makes Us Weird | 1:48

Ordinary weirdness is not something that can be forced. It's how we express our experience of life as the proverbial elephant.

The Parable of The Blind Men and The Elephant | 6.29

You may know the story of the six blind men who wanted to figure out the form of an elephant.

One man felt its trunk and believed the elephant was a thick snake. Another found the ear and compared it to a fan. The third felt the elephant's leg and imagined it like a tree trunk. The fourth man felt the creature's side and likened it to a wall. Another man felt its tail, believing it to be like a rope. And the last could touch the elephant's tusk, declaring it to be a spear.

“We get stuck in the metaphor of language. But it’s really the abstract sensation that connects everything. Art that is sensual goes straight to the ball of sensation that is in the centre of us. It bypasses words. This is what is Real.” - Alex Paxton

My friend Alex talked about his relationship with art and its role in his understanding of life.

Language is the imperfect tool we use to try to make abstract things concrete.

But life is a lot like the elephant. We can feel and describe different parts of it. But none of us can ever capture the entire thing. And even as we define it, we do so with comparisons to other things. So art (and a life of ordinary creative exploration) keeps us moving around the elephant, finding new ways to feel, imagine, and describe it. But we never fully grasp it.

Our experience and understanding of reality sits at the heart of our unique and weird ways of seeing the world.

This is why there is always another piece to paint, song to sing, book to write, and truth to speak.

Ordinary Weirdness in Everyday Life | 9:33

We discussed this in a Haven Kota session and recognised that "weird" is not an easy word for everyone to hold. It can carry baggage if used as an insult or criticism.

There isn't a perfect word to describe this ordinary everyday weirdness. We thought about "authentic", but that carries a sense of essentialism,

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Deep processing is a core aspect of high sensitivity. But processing is an important thing for all of us to do. And it's not easy to find the time and space for it in a fast-changing world that never takes a breath. This is what we're exploring in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast. How can we create better conditions for deep processing in everyday life?

Table of contentsResponding to a Fast-Changing World | 2:23Shallow Rivers and Deep Lakes | 8:29Cold Bucket Experiences | 14:03When You Feel Unseen and Unknown | 18:14Over-Empathy and Deep Patterns | 21:25Deep Processing and Loss | 25:20Levels of Processing | 35:33Deep Overground Processing and Response Flexibility | 37:14Deep Underground Processing | 42:23Depth of Processing and Downtime | 44:30What Happens Without Deep Processing? | 49:23Slow Coaching and The Deep Processing Approach | 52:51Conclusion - Prepare to Be Unprepared | 57:04The Haven | 59:30

Responding to a Fast-Changing World | 2:23

Everything moves so rapidly in our modern world. There is pressure to process and adapt to changes much faster than we have had to in the past. We are exposed to huge amounts of information and expected to somehow make sense of it and apply it to our own lives.

So how do we process and respond to such a fast-paced world?

Shallow Rivers and Deep Lakes | 8:29

There is an old proverb that says “shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent.”

What does this mean for our sense of self-belonging and our ability to absorb change?

When things are thrown into our life from outside, like a big rock, a great splash and disturbance occur as it comes flying through the surface. But after a while, the rock is absorbed into the landscape in the depths of this body of water. There is an unshakeable power to the deep lake. That can be both safe and terrifying.

In the story of the Steadfast Tin Soldier, we meet a character who appears to be a deep lake. But his silence, stillness, and stoicism speaks of unbelonging. He seems unable to express his true needs and feelings; hamstrung by the story he's been taught to believe about himself.

Absorbing the blow is one part. But for true integration to happen we must also respond to it in some way. The change that happens around us fundamentally changes something in us too. Whereas the Tin Soldier appears unmoved and unchanged because he can't allow himself to feel his needs or need his feelings.

Gentleness gives us the firm back and soft front to be flexible and adapt to the situation at hand. It is the openness, awareness, and intuition to choose based on what we see in front of us rather than what we think we ought to do. When we allow space for deep processing we nurture a deeper pool of options to draw from in different situations.

Cold Bucket Experiences | 14:03

In her book, You Don't Owe Anyone, Caroline Garnet McGraw tells the story of what she describes as a "cold bucket experience". I share the story in the episode. You can also hear Caroline talk about it when we spoke.

In childhood we might hear messages like: “Why are you doing it like that? That’s stupid!” Or “that’s just your imagination – grow up!” And “only an idiot would enjoy that kind of thing”. Or “why are you crying? You need thicker skin if you’re going to survive the real world”.

These messages prompt us to filter ourselves as we make sense of what we need to do to avoid rejection. So we might recoil, hide, and replace those parts of ourselves that we feel ashamed of. And amplify behaviours that we believe will help us gain approval and acceptance, safety and belonging.

Cold Bucket Experiences are similar to what might be described as "small-t" or "paper-cut" traumas. They feed the script that we write for our route into belonging and safety from a very young age. And without a bit of examination and space for processing, they become well-worn paths that we walk throughout our lives.

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Sometimes drift comes through the endless pursuit of goals we hope will make us happy. Or it might come as we passively float along the path of least resistance, hoping something motivates us to take action. There are many different ways we can find ourselves drifting through life.

We never drift to a destination we have consciously chosen. It's through deliberate movement in the right direction that we get to where we want to go. Sometimes we need to pick up the oars and start gently rowing in a new direction.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore ways we might find ourselves drifting in life. We will think about where we might be drifting right now and how to turn our drifting into repeat blooming.

Episode contentsLate Blooming | 5:05Conceptual Types | 10:56Experimental Types (The Late Bloomers) | 11:24Society’s Preference | 12:07The Impossible Question | 14:50The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Life's Drift | 18:55A Different Way of Being | 20:13The Treadmill of Pursuit | 23:02Slower Souls and Experimental Trailblazers | 26:45Contributing Factors To A Life of Drift | 30:25Everything Is Breath | 34:10The Top Five Regrets of The DyingStrip Away The Complexity | 38:33Make The Right Thing The Easy Thing To Do | 40:24The End Goal is The Starting Point | 42:07The Waypoints Are the Whole Point | 43:47There’s Always a Way Back | 45:21The Return to Serenity Island | 48:32

Late Blooming | 5:05

Do you feel like a late bloomer?

"The more I learn about late blooming, the more I think we're all late bloomers. Our society pushes us to achieve early, to all of our detriments. I can remember feeling like a late bloomer in my 20s, and I certainly feel like one now, in the midst of a career change in midlife! Really we should be embracing late blooming, or as I like to call it, repeat blooming. Life just feels so much better when you believe that it has more than one act."Kendra Patterson

Late Bloomers don't just approach life at a slower speed. Their orientation to the world is different from what we might consider normal modes of operation. Kendra encourages us to find reassurance in the differences between conceptual and experimental types of people.

Conceptual Types | 10:56

Conceptual Types have a clear picture of how they want things to look. They work seductively. In other words, they know where they want to go and have a clear plan.

Weinberg and Galenson (2019) looked at the lives of Nobel Laureates in Economics. They found that Conceptual innovators made their most significant contributions to the field in their mid-20s.

Experimental Types (The Late Bloomers) | 11:24

Experimental Types start with a step and build incrementally. Often without a clear picture of where each step will lead them. They connect dots as they go. Discovery underpins their creativity. They work inductively (accumulating knowledge from experience).

In the research, Weinberg and Galenson found that Experimental types made their most significant impact during their fifties. That's thirty years later than their conceptual peers.

The future emerges from a pathway of incremental curious exploration for experimental types. We connect dots and build from one experience to the next. As such, life is naturally slower to unfold and evolve. This is why experimental people are often "late" or "repeat" bloomers. It also explains why experimental types might sometimes feel like we are drifting through life.

Society’s Preference | 12:07

Society doesn't openly encourage an experimental approach. The effectiveness and efficiency of conceptual thinking are far easier to measure. You either succeed or fail with the goal you have set yourself.

Society also celebrates and glorifies stories of youth and early bloomer success. This puts a countdown timer on a person's sense of self-worth. And if we miss the imaginary boat, we might resign ourselves to the belief that our fate is to drift through life instead....

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Perfectionism and a fear of failure can hold us back from doing what matters to us. But what about fear of success? In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we look at the role fear can play when it comes to holding back so things don't go too well.

I was inspired by this episode of Kendra Patterson's Stepping Off Now podcast. She drew from an article called, 8 Reasons a Fear of Success, Not Failure, Is Holding You Back to ask whether “Fear of Success” is anything more than another term for a fear of failure.

I take this question and explore it further. If it IS different to a fear of failure, what is it we are actually afraid of? What IS success? And can our wariness and suspicion help rather than hinder our relationship with meaningful change, progress, and growth?

Episode ContentsChange as a Threat | 2:16But What IS Success? | 7:178 Reasons Fear of Success Might Be Holding Us Back1. We're Afraid of the Unknown | 9:272. We’re Afraid of the Demands Success Might Make of Us | 12:023. We're Afraid of the Responsibility Success Might Bring | 14:124. We’re Afraid of the Attention Success Could Attract | 15:525. We're Afraid of Losing Our Identity | 17:536. We're Afraid Success Won’t Bring Us Happiness | 19:437. We’re Afraid of Losing Those We Care About | 21:108. We’re Afraid We Might Get Carried Away with Success | 24:21Foreboding Joy | 28:06Anticipatory Grief | 31:54Wariness of Success | 34:24The Trappings of Success | 44:40Doing Well, Doing Harm and Business as Usual | 46:29Feelings And The Fear Of Success | 58:06Conclusion

Change as a Threat | 2:16

Success can feel like a threat to our sense of safety. Change is often difficult to embrace and instigate, even when we deeply desire it.

There are a lot of unknown aspects when it comes to making change happen in our lives. Even if we are excited about having it, we can struggle to get going if we don't have a safe and simple map to follow. We choose old patterns, behaviours, and choices over the fear of discomfort and uncertainty. The “Mere Exposure Effect” or Familiarity Principle says that when we make choices, we tend to gravitate towards preferences for things we recognise.

But What IS Success? | 7:17

Have you ever thought about what success actually means? How would you define it? Maybe it's a feeling. Perhaps it's a state of being. Or a context-specific outcome. It's a word that can mean many different things. Yet we often expect everyone to be on the same page with it.

I saw the phrase, “we all want to be successful” a lot when reading about this topic. At first glance, it seems like an obvious thing to agree with. But think about it for a moment and the words become slippery and empty. What do we mean by "successful"? Is your definition the same as mine? Do we value the same things?

8 Reasons Fear of Success Might Be Holding Us Back

In the original article, the author gives eight reasons fear of success might cause someone to sabotage their own progress towards things that matter to them.

1. We're Afraid of the Unknown | 9:27

We might worry that we won't cope with the changes success might bring. What waits around the corner if this goes to plan? Maybe we fear the unknown potential consequences of success. What if we can't cope with everything that follows? What if we accidentally invent an atomic bomb?

1. We’re Afraid of the Demands Success Might Make of Us | 12:02

What happens when I achieve this goal? Are people going to demand more, bigger, better? Will I lose creative control? Will everyone want a piece of this? A piece of me? That sounds exhausting.

1. We're Afraid of the Responsibility Success Might Bring | 14:12

In Top Gun, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is satisfied with his position as a naval captain. After many decades of service, he still gets to fly planes and do what he enjoys so much. People assume that something must have gone wrong in his career.

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There are three types of change in life. First; there's the kind we know is coming but can't stop. Secondly; the kind we make happen ourselves. And thirdly; the kind we can't see coming.

In this episode, I look at the first kind and ask how we embrace change - rather than resisting it - as life moves from one season to the next.

We cannot prevent the change that comes from time doing its thing. But we can learn to gently release any anxious resistance we might feel towards it. That's what we will do a bit of through this episode as we explore how to embrace change as part of life even when we find the idea of it uncomfortable.

Episode ContentsTypes of Change to Embrace | 10:22Ageing (our own and others) | 10:32Evolution of Belonging(s) | 13:32Relationships | 15:46Education | 17:04Work | 19:02What Embracing Change Makes Possible | 21:03Hope and Hopefulness | 21:54Depth | 28:10Clarity and Vision | 28:50Our Best Work | 29:35Perspective and Wisdom | 30:06The Risks When We Don't Embrace Change | 30:43Childish Immaturity | 31:02Shallow Living | 31:47Stuckness and Nostalgia | 32:13Forever Fighting | 38:40How Do You Embrace Change? | 39:06Gratitude | 39:42Move With The Train | 40:22Reflective Preparation | 41:28Anticipatory Grief | 42:11Keep a Record | 45:31What Would a Time Lapse of the Past Year Look Like? | 47:31Conclusion | 49:56

Types of Change to Embrace | 10:22

We had an obsession in the modern world with fighting time. Fighting natural processes and the movement of the seasons. I want to ponder in this episode what could happen if we surrender this need to control, fight, and dominate nature.

The dawn signals the emergence of the sun on the horizon. It is coming whether we wish it to arrive or not. Likewise, a few hours later, the sun will disappear and the dusk will take us into the night. To wish for the day during the night and night during the day is to waste our energy and emotion on the unchangeable inevitability.

We waste a lot of energy on things we cannot change. And we neglect the things we can. We might also neglect the slow and steady becoming of our lives.

Ageing (our own and others) | 10:32

The modern world holds age and ageing in a strange way. We judge it, shame it, and hold it as something to fight.

So it's no wonder why we're afraid to embrace change if it's collectively judged so harshly. And it has become an act of rebellion to accept and invite the changes that come from natural ageing. Even though it happens to EVERYONE. All of us.

Evolution of Belonging(s) | 13:32

There are other things that naturally change with the passing of time.

Communities

Maybe you've experienced the evolution of a community you've been part of. Whatever things are like right now is not how it will stay. Communities change as members drift in and out, novel ideas become old, and challenges shake things up.

Our resistance to change can mark the beginning of the end. Whereas if we embrace and roll with it, changes can keep a community fresh and moving forward.

Products

Over time the novelty wears off. We eventually get used to and bored by the things we own. And as newer versions are released, our old product feels tired and outdated. But we can use this awareness to change our relationship with stuff. Bearing in mind that however shiny and exciting something appears right now, over time it will become like everything else.

Relationships | 15:46

Relationships change over time. They move through seasons of growth. They might experience periods of stagnation. Change is always present whether we want it or not, so it takes deliberate work to maintain healthy connections with people in our lives.

Education | 17:04

There's an episode of Rick and Morty when Jerry is creating a solar system model with Morty and he starts to add Pluto. Morty tells him that Pluto is "no longer a planet." When Jerry confirms this to be true he resists it.

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There are three types of change in life. First; there's the kind we know is coming but can't stop. Secondly; the kind we make happen ourselves. And thirdly; the kind we can't see coming.

In this episode, I look at the first kind and ask how we embrace change - rather than resisting it - as life moves from one season to the next.

We cannot prevent the change that comes from time doing its thing. But we can learn to gently release any anxious resistance we might feel towards it. That's what we will do a bit of through this episode as we explore how to embrace change as part of life even when we find the idea of it uncomfortable.

Episode ContentsTypes of Change to Embrace | 10:22Ageing (our own and others) | 10:32Evolution of Belonging(s) | 13:32Relationships | 15:46Education | 17:04Work | 19:02What Embracing Change Makes Possible | 21:03Hope and Hopefulness | 21:54Depth | 28:10Clarity and Vision | 28:50Our Best Work | 29:35Perspective and Wisdom | 30:06The Risks When We Don't Embrace Change | 30:43Childish Immaturity | 31:02Shallow Living | 31:47Stuckness and Nostalgia | 32:13Forever Fighting | 38:40How Do You Embrace Change? | 39:06Gratitude | 39:42Move With The Train | 40:22Reflective Preparation | 41:28Anticipatory Grief | 42:11Keep a Record | 45:31What Would a Time Lapse of the Past Year Look Like? | 47:31Conclusion | 49:56

Types of Change to Embrace | 10:22

We had an obsession in the modern world with fighting time. Fighting natural processes and the movement of the seasons. I want to ponder in this episode what could happen if we surrender this need to control, fight, and dominate nature.

The dawn signals the emergence of the sun on the horizon. It is coming whether we wish it to arrive or not. Likewise, a few hours later, the sun will disappear and the dusk will take us into the night. To wish for the day during the night and night during the day is to waste our energy and emotion on the unchangeable inevitability.

We waste a lot of energy on things we cannot change. And we neglect the things we can. We might also neglect the slow and steady becoming of our lives.

Ageing (our own and others) | 10:32

The modern world holds age and ageing in a strange way. We judge it, shame it, and hold it as something to fight.

So it's no wonder why we're afraid to embrace change if it's collectively judged so harshly. And it has become an act of rebellion to accept and invite the changes that come from natural ageing. Even though it happens to EVERYONE. All of us.

Evolution of Belonging(s) | 13:32

There are other things that naturally change with the passing of time.

Communities

Maybe you've experienced the evolution of a community you've been part of. Whatever things are like right now is not how it will stay. Communities change as members drift in and out, novel ideas become old, and challenges shake things up.

Our resistance to change can mark the beginning of the end. Whereas if we embrace and roll with it, changes can keep a community fresh and moving forward.

Products

Over time the novelty wears off. We eventually get used to and bored by the things we own. And as newer versions are released, our old product feels tired and outdated. But we can use this awareness to change our relationship with stuff. Bearing in mind that however shiny and exciting something appears right now, over time it will become like everything else.

Relationships | 15:46

Relationships change over time. They move through seasons of growth. They might experience periods of stagnation. Change is always present whether we want it or not, so it takes deliberate work to maintain healthy connections with people in our lives.

Education | 17:04

There's an episode of Rick and Morty when Jerry is creating a solar system model with Morty and he starts to add Pluto. Morty tells him that Pluto is "no longer a planet." When Jerry confirms this to be true he resists it.

View Details

"How can I stop being so introverted? Any advice would be very welcome."

I was asked this question for the first time a few years ago. I've been asked it many times since. In fact, the blog post I wrote in response to it was one of the most visited articles on my website.

I wanted to help introverts to move in sync with their natural rhythms instead of resenting them. So I've turned the post into a podcast episode so that we can explore what this might look like in more depth.

Episode ContentsWhat Do You Want to Stop Being Introverted? | 4:47Isolation in an Alien World | 8:32But Everyone Seems So Happy | 13:58What Do You Mean By "Introverted"? | 20:28How To Stop Being an Introvert | 23:14It's About How We Are, Not Who We Are | 25:34Acting Out of Character | 26:11The Pros and Cons of Personality Tests | 33:57Labels and Traps | 41:07Embracing Who You Are | 44:22

What Do You Want to Stop Being Introverted? | 4:47

It's easy for me to say "just embrace your introversion, it's who you are", but I know it's not that simple. There are good reasons why we might wish we could stop being an introvert. Especially when we compare ourselves with the person we are told to be by society. Our natural preferences don't always fit with the values of a noisy, overstimulating, extrovert-centric world.

It can feel like we don't belong. Like there's something wrong with us. And of course, we might wish we could change that.

Isolation in an Alien World | 8:32

Do you ever get the sense that everyone else is in on something and you missed the meeting?

Have you looked at others and envied how comfortable they are, interacting with an overwhelming world. They appear unfazed by the madness. They know what they’re doing, where they want to go, and what they need to do to get there.

Laurie Helgoe says that this is very common for introverts. An idea she articulates perfectly in Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength.

She describes two kinds of responses introverts might have to an extrovert-centric world:

Shadow Dwelling Introverts:

“Appear (if they can be seen) as reclusive and inaccessible – alien.”

Accessible introverts

“Do not come off as remote or intimidating because they have almost adapted to the extrovert culture”

The potential problem we might face through these ways of adapting to a noisy world is that they can create alienation. We might become alienated from the world around us as the shadow dweller. Or we alienate ourselves from core parts of who we are deep down as the accessible introvert. Life gets exhausting when we feel like we have to spend it hiding.

There's nothing wrong with being reclusive if it gives us the platform to flourish. But if we are hiding and harbouring resentment about the world we wish we could be part of, then it's not helping us flourish. Likewise, many people see themselves as social introverts. They love spending energy on other people and experiences, but they need plenty of downtime to prepare and recover. But if we spend all our energy pretending to fit in and be something we know we're not, then it's not helping us flourish.

If we don’t fully accept or understand what it means to be introverted we can find ourselves in a state of limbo. In a place where we might feel it necessary to make that choice: to disappear or to play along.

But Everyone Seems So Happy | 13:58

Much of our world is driven by perception. We are encouraged to believe that who we are is not enough. Where we are is not enough. And other people are enjoying the things we don't have.

But these stories are believable. It's easier to tell the story that other people have their lives together than to realise the truth; that no one is whole and complete. The stories we tell ourselves about what life could be if only we were not who we are, might reinforce our sense of alienation and self-loathing.

Happiness is little more than an occasional passing highli...

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"How can I stop being so introverted? Any advice would be very welcome."

I was asked this question for the first time a few years ago. I've been asked it many times since. In fact, the blog post I wrote in response to it was one of the most visited articles on my website.

I wanted to help introverts to move in sync with their natural rhythms instead of resenting them. So I've turned the post into a podcast episode so that we can explore what this might look like in more depth.

Episode ContentsWhat Do You Want to Stop Being Introverted? | 4:47Isolation in an Alien World | 8:32But Everyone Seems So Happy | 13:58What Do You Mean By "Introverted"? | 20:28How To Stop Being an Introvert | 23:14It's About How We Are, Not Who We Are | 25:34Acting Out of Character | 26:11The Pros and Cons of Personality Tests | 33:57Labels and Traps | 41:07Embracing Who You Are | 44:22

What Do You Want to Stop Being Introverted? | 4:47

It's easy for me to say "just embrace your introversion, it's who you are", but I know it's not that simple. There are good reasons why we might wish we could stop being an introvert. Especially when we compare ourselves with the person we are told to be by society. Our natural preferences don't always fit with the values of a noisy, overstimulating, extrovert-centric world.

It can feel like we don't belong. Like there's something wrong with us. And of course, we might wish we could change that.

Isolation in an Alien World | 8:32

Do you ever get the sense that everyone else is in on something and you missed the meeting?

Have you looked at others and envied how comfortable they are, interacting with an overwhelming world. They appear unfazed by the madness. They know what they’re doing, where they want to go, and what they need to do to get there.

Laurie Helgoe says that this is very common for introverts. An idea she articulates perfectly in Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength.

She describes two kinds of responses introverts might have to an extrovert-centric world:

Shadow Dwelling Introverts:

“Appear (if they can be seen) as reclusive and inaccessible – alien.”

Accessible introverts

“Do not come off as remote or intimidating because they have almost adapted to the extrovert culture”

The potential problem we might face through these ways of adapting to a noisy world is that they can create alienation. We might become alienated from the world around us as the shadow dweller. Or we alienate ourselves from core parts of who we are deep down as the accessible introvert. Life gets exhausting when we feel like we have to spend it hiding.

There's nothing wrong with being reclusive if it gives us the platform to flourish. But if we are hiding and harbouring resentment about the world we wish we could be part of, then it's not helping us flourish. Likewise, many people see themselves as social introverts. They love spending energy on other people and experiences, but they need plenty of downtime to prepare and recover. But if we spend all our energy pretending to fit in and be something we know we're not, then it's not helping us flourish.

If we don’t fully accept or understand what it means to be introverted we can find ourselves in a state of limbo. In a place where we might feel it necessary to make that choice: to disappear or to play along.

But Everyone Seems So Happy | 13:58

Much of our world is driven by perception. We are encouraged to believe that who we are is not enough. Where we are is not enough. And other people are enjoying the things we don't have.

But these stories are believable. It's easier to tell the story that other people have their lives together than to realise the truth; that no one is whole and complete. The stories we tell ourselves about what life could be if only we were not who we are, might reinforce our sense of alienation and self-loathing.

Happiness is little more than an occasional passing highli...

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I don't know about you but sometimes I push myself to the limit and something that would normally inspire me feels like an overwhelming noise. We often stretch ourselves to life's edges. And we squeeze the margin for inspiration to breathe and grow. 

Margin is a characteristic of gentleness. It softens the blow of unwanted change and allows inspiration to flow without overwhelming us. But the world often demands productivity, efficiency and the elimination of waste. And in such a place there is little margin for deep and healthy inspiration to truly land.

In this episode of the Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore what happens to our creative spirit when we live without nurturing margin for inspiration. We will look at the signs to look out for that tell us we're too close to the edge. And we consider the role of rest in life; asking whether it's more than simply the opposite of activity.

Episode ContentsTriggers and Inspiration | 8:29Trigger Warnings | 10:12Why Am I Emotionally Reactive? | 14:49How To Cope When Feeling Triggered | 16:38The Power of Margins | 19:58Margins Bring Focus and ClarityMargins Keep Grubby Fingers Away From The WordsMargins Absorb Excessive InspirationMargins Cushion Slips and BleedMargins Make Things More ComfortableMargins Protect The CoreMargins Allow Holes To Be PunchedThe Power of Rest | 26:03Rest is Not One Side of a Binary Divide | 27:38The 7 Soul-Freeing Sources of RestPhysical (Passive and Active) | 30:11Mental | 32:03Emotional | 33:21 Spiritual | 35:11Sensory | 36:27Social | 38:40Creative | 41:15Conclusion | 45:26A Short Meditation on Rest | 47:18

Triggers and Inspiration | 8:29

An inspired surge of emotion can be overwhelming. It might be hard to tell whether fear or excitement is running the show. It might be a little of both. But unless we leave margin for inspiration, we don't have the capacity to inquire. While we often associate emotional triggers with negative stimulation, they can come from desirable sources, too.

A trigger is a prompt that causes something to happen. It might be a deliberate part of a physical device like a switch on a kettle. Or it might be harder to spot like sensory stimulation such as a taste, smell, visual, sound, or texture that prompts a conscious or subconscious memory.

If we're feeling exhausted, inspiration can seem overwhelming. But there's a difference between being and feeling inspired. When inspiration overwhelms us, margins provide a cushion to hold and absorb whatever is emerging. Even when we don't feel ready to do anything with it just yet.

Trigger Warnings | 10:12

On her Instagram, Dr Susanne Wolf talked about what to look out for when recognising emotional reactivity to external stimulation.

Sudden Physical Changes (increased heart rate, fast breathing, muscle tension, stomach clenches, feelings of tightness in the chest, nausea).Sudden Cognitive Changes (confusion, overwhelm, irritation, indecisiveness, distractedness, unresponsiveness)Sudden Emotional Changes (fear, frustration, anxiety, despair, sadness, grief, yearning)Sudden Behavioural Changes (becoming argumentative, alarmed, alert, lashing out, giving up, withdrawal, procrastination, agitated, shutting down, blaming others, restlessness)Sudden Irritation By Seemingly Unrelated Things (touch, noise, sound, people, textures, scenery, places)

These sound like signs of an overwhelmingly negative situation. But the responses don’t necessarily distinguish between positive and negative stimulation. We might even experience many of them when we're inspired.

Why Am I Emotionally Reactive? | 14:49

What is causing this heightened state of emotional reactivity? In the post, Dr Wolf shares observations we might make, like feeling dismissed, ignored, attacked, afraid, insulted, manipulated, humiliated, excluded, offended, betrayed, alone, ashamed etc.

I would also add some other triggers for emotional reactivity.

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I don't know about you but sometimes I push myself to the limit and something that would normally inspire me feels like an overwhelming noise. We often stretch ourselves to life's edges. And we squeeze the margin for inspiration to breathe and grow. 

Margin is a characteristic of gentleness. It softens the blow of unwanted change and allows inspiration to flow without overwhelming us. But the world often demands productivity, efficiency and the elimination of waste. And in such a place there is little margin for deep and healthy inspiration to truly land.

In this episode of the Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore what happens to our creative spirit when we live without nurturing margin for inspiration. We will look at the signs to look out for that tell us we're too close to the edge. And we consider the role of rest in life; asking whether it's more than simply the opposite of activity.

Episode ContentsTriggers and Inspiration | 8:29Trigger Warnings | 10:12Why Am I Emotionally Reactive? | 14:49How To Cope When Feeling Triggered | 16:38The Power of Margins | 19:58Margins Bring Focus and ClarityMargins Keep Grubby Fingers Away From The WordsMargins Absorb Excessive InspirationMargins Cushion Slips and BleedMargins Make Things More ComfortableMargins Protect The CoreMargins Allow Holes To Be PunchedThe Power of Rest | 26:03Rest is Not One Side of a Binary Divide | 27:38The 7 Soul-Freeing Sources of RestPhysical (Passive and Active) | 30:11Mental | 32:03Emotional | 33:21 Spiritual | 35:11Sensory | 36:27Social | 38:40Creative | 41:15Conclusion | 45:26A Short Meditation on Rest | 47:18

Triggers and Inspiration | 8:29

An inspired surge of emotion can be overwhelming. It might be hard to tell whether fear or excitement is running the show. It might be a little of both. But unless we leave margin for inspiration, we don't have the capacity to inquire. While we often associate emotional triggers with negative stimulation, they can come from desirable sources, too.

A trigger is a prompt that causes something to happen. It might be a deliberate part of a physical device like a switch on a kettle. Or it might be harder to spot like sensory stimulation such as a taste, smell, visual, sound, or texture that prompts a conscious or subconscious memory.

If we're feeling exhausted, inspiration can seem overwhelming. But there's a difference between being and feeling inspired. When inspiration overwhelms us, margins provide a cushion to hold and absorb whatever is emerging. Even when we don't feel ready to do anything with it just yet.

Trigger Warnings | 10:12

On her Instagram, Dr Susanne Wolf talked about what to look out for when recognising emotional reactivity to external stimulation.

Sudden Physical Changes (increased heart rate, fast breathing, muscle tension, stomach clenches, feelings of tightness in the chest, nausea).Sudden Cognitive Changes (confusion, overwhelm, irritation, indecisiveness, distractedness, unresponsiveness)Sudden Emotional Changes (fear, frustration, anxiety, despair, sadness, grief, yearning)Sudden Behavioural Changes (becoming argumentative, alarmed, alert, lashing out, giving up, withdrawal, procrastination, agitated, shutting down, blaming others, restlessness)Sudden Irritation By Seemingly Unrelated Things (touch, noise, sound, people, textures, scenery, places)

These sound like signs of an overwhelmingly negative situation. But the responses don’t necessarily distinguish between positive and negative stimulation. We might even experience many of them when we're inspired.

Why Am I Emotionally Reactive? | 14:49

What is causing this heightened state of emotional reactivity? In the post, Dr Wolf shares observations we might make, like feeling dismissed, ignored, attacked, afraid, insulted, manipulated, humiliated, excluded, offended, betrayed, alone, ashamed etc.

I would also add some other triggers for emotional reactivity.

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The idea of the inspiratory system reminds us that inspiration is a lot like breath. The word “inspiration” comes from the same place as respiration and spirit.

Just as we need to take in oxygen to live, we can also breathe in other elements from the world around us to keep ourselves feeling good. And just as different factors can impact the quality of the air we breathe, they can also impact what goes on within us and what we are able to create.

This is not just something that applies to our work, it's also about the way we express what it means to be alive and what it means to be (and become) ourselves.

Life is a rhythm, and sometimes we lose sight of that. We value action, productivity, and results (breathing out). But unless we balance this with breathing in, we have a perfect recipe for overwhelm, burnout, and a rather uninspired life.

That's what we're exploring at in this week's episode.

Episode contentsWhat Is Inspiration? | 6:41The Makeup Of an Inspired Performance | 8:54Tankespjarn and Inspiration | 16:26The Inspiratory System | 24:59People | 26:11Media | 27:37Education | 29:37Connectedness | 33:36Place | 35:42Play | 38:49Movement | 41:00Art | 43:13Rest | 45:46The Wheel of Inspiration | 49:47The Price of Inspiration | 55:53Action and Inspiration (The Cycle of Breath) | 58:26Don't Be a Donkey | 59:24The Canvas Strategy (People Remember How You Make Them Feel) | 62:27Notice What You Notice | 67:00Conclusion | 69:30The Haven | 71:47

What Is Inspiration? | 6:41

We are constantly inspired by the world around us, whether we realise it or not. We take in the spirit of our surroundings and then express it in our own unique way. The life we live is a reflection of the things we see and experience. Whether we are conscious of it or not, everything we encounter shapes who we are and how we see the world.

Paula described inspiration as, "a tickle, or a fizz inside as suddenly my vision of what could be expands and reveals giddy-making opportunity. It's very vulnerable though and like a new flame can easily be blown out by my own lack of confidence or self-dismissal."

I love that image. It's like a fizzing tickle that awakens something inside us. We can suddenly see something through a lens of possibility and light.

Inspiration is an awakening. An awareness. Seeing something for the first time, or seeing it in a certain way for the first time. It requires us to have the receptiveness to be aware, and it requires the conditions that give rise to the possibility.

The inspiratory system is one of inbreath AND outbreath. It completes through action, through a response, through turning what we take in into something we breathe out.

The Makeup Of an Inspired Performance | 8:54

Inspiration is something that comes from within and is expressed outwardly. It's like a magical power that can transform an ordinary performance into something extraordinary. But inspiration is only visible when it's turned into action.

You may feel inspired, but if you don't do anything with that feeling, what does it really mean?

We don't usually say "I felt inspired but didn't do anything," because the feeling of being inspired is intrinsically linked to taking action, even if the action is just to wait.

Tankespjarn and Inspiration | 16:26

Helena Roth talks about a kind of gentleness with an edge to it. She says that it's our relationship to our own edges that opens us up to new experiences. Tankespjärn happens when we're willing to say yes to uncertainty and doubt. We find it in the invitation or willingness to experience a shift.

This type of inspiration is not imposed on us from the outside, but rather it ignites within us when a new possibility or perspective is seeded.

Listen to my conversation with Helena here.

The Inspiratory System | 24:59

We can find inspiration in many places: people, media, education, connectedness, place, play, movement, art, and rest.

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The idea of the inspiratory system reminds us that inspiration is a lot like breath. The word “inspiration” comes from the same place as respiration and spirit.

Just as we need to take in oxygen to live, we can also breathe in other elements from the world around us to keep ourselves feeling good. And just as different factors can impact the quality of the air we breathe, they can also impact what goes on within us and what we are able to create.

This is not just something that applies to our work, it's also about the way we express what it means to be alive and what it means to be (and become) ourselves.

Life is a rhythm, and sometimes we lose sight of that. We value action, productivity, and results (breathing out). But unless we balance this with breathing in, we have a perfect recipe for overwhelm, burnout, and a rather uninspired life.

That's what we're exploring at in this week's episode.

Episode contentsWhat Is Inspiration? | 6:41The Makeup Of an Inspired Performance | 8:54Tankespjarn and Inspiration | 16:26The Inspiratory System | 24:59People | 26:11Media | 27:37Education | 29:37Connectedness | 33:36Place | 35:42Play | 38:49Movement | 41:00Art | 43:13Rest | 45:46The Wheel of Inspiration | 49:47The Price of Inspiration | 55:53Action and Inspiration (The Cycle of Breath) | 58:26Don't Be a Donkey | 59:24The Canvas Strategy (People Remember How You Make Them Feel) | 62:27Notice What You Notice | 67:00Conclusion | 69:30The Haven | 71:47

What Is Inspiration? | 6:41

We are constantly inspired by the world around us, whether we realise it or not. We take in the spirit of our surroundings and then express it in our own unique way. The life we live is a reflection of the things we see and experience. Whether we are conscious of it or not, everything we encounter shapes who we are and how we see the world.

Paula described inspiration as, "a tickle, or a fizz inside as suddenly my vision of what could be expands and reveals giddy-making opportunity. It's very vulnerable though and like a new flame can easily be blown out by my own lack of confidence or self-dismissal."

I love that image. It's like a fizzing tickle that awakens something inside us. We can suddenly see something through a lens of possibility and light.

Inspiration is an awakening. An awareness. Seeing something for the first time, or seeing it in a certain way for the first time. It requires us to have the receptiveness to be aware, and it requires the conditions that give rise to the possibility.

The inspiratory system is one of inbreath AND outbreath. It completes through action, through a response, through turning what we take in into something we breathe out.

The Makeup Of an Inspired Performance | 8:54

Inspiration is something that comes from within and is expressed outwardly. It's like a magical power that can transform an ordinary performance into something extraordinary. But inspiration is only visible when it's turned into action.

You may feel inspired, but if you don't do anything with that feeling, what does it really mean?

We don't usually say "I felt inspired but didn't do anything," because the feeling of being inspired is intrinsically linked to taking action, even if the action is just to wait.

Tankespjarn and Inspiration | 16:26

Helena Roth talks about a kind of gentleness with an edge to it. She says that it's our relationship to our own edges that opens us up to new experiences. Tankespjärn happens when we're willing to say yes to uncertainty and doubt. We find it in the invitation or willingness to experience a shift.

This type of inspiration is not imposed on us from the outside, but rather it ignites within us when a new possibility or perspective is seeded.

Listen to my conversation with Helena here.

The Inspiratory System | 24:59

We can find inspiration in many places: people, media, education, connectedness, place, play, movement, art, and rest.

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There is a huge amount about the topic of habits and I don't want to regurgitate what is already out there. So in this week's podcast, I want to look at them through the lens of gentleness, sensitivity, and slow growth.

How can we use gentle habits to build a sustainable relationship with our temperaments and natural preferences? And what are some of the challenges we might face when building a life around what matters most to us?

At their core, habits are automatic behaviours. They are the things we do with little or no conscious thought when prompted by a situational trigger or cue.

But we can also have an influence on them. And we can choose to build habits that serve our broader goals, intentions, and visions.

This topic comes from our Tranquility theme in The Haven. Where we've been exploring conditions like our environments, routines, and boundaries. And thinking about how they can help give rise to more of what we want life to look, feel, smell, taste, and sound like.

Episode ContentsLife on Autopilot | 9.35It Takes Courage To Acknowledge When Something Needs to Change | 10.06Building Small and Effective Habits | 11.22Tiny Habits are Built on Gentle Foundations | 16.30Stop Judging Yourself | 17.07Take Aspirations and Break Them Into Tiny Behaviours | 17.30Embrace Mistakes as Discoveries and Use Them to Move Forward | 18.31Obstacles to Motivation | 21.05Motivation, Ability, Prompt/Trigger | 23.18Undesirable vs Desirable Habits | 28.38What Derails Our Habits? | 31.30People | 31.38Rabbit Holes and Distractions | 35.12Disconnection From Why | 37.51Habits as Symptoms | 38.30Magical Thinking | 40.33Scary Labels | 43.15Build Habits With Celebration and Shine | 45.24Rewards are Not The Same as Incentives | 46.07How Does Shine Feel For You? | 48.49How To Celebrate With Freedom and Authenticity | 51.28Stacking Joy Into Hard Habits | 53.38Conclusions | 57.24The Haven | 59.14

Life on Autopilot | 9.35

We sometimes talk about habits as being like running on autopilot. They free us up to think about and pay attention to other things that might require willpower and energy.

But when we leave autopilot running it is easy to slip into ruts, routines, and go through the motions. This might cause a creeping sense of drift and degradation to our sense of purpose.

It Takes Courage To Acknowledge When Something Needs to Change | 10.06

We require courage to acknowledge and face up to these ruts our undesirable habits might leave us in. And when we engage with it, our courage can bring us face to face with new and exciting horizons of possibility.

It shows us the direction we need to move in if we really want things to change. It shines a light on the unhelpful habits we need to replace. And helps us identify the gentle actions we could take in order to recalibrate certain areas of life.

Building Small and Effective Habits | 11.22

Habits are only as effective as the vision they serve. It does little good to have a strategy if we don't have an aim. Otherwise, we end up at the mercy of the latest shiny fad or fashion.

Gentleness is about rooting ourselves in a deeper sense of vision. We cannot rush this. It requires us to slow down and observe what we are feeling. So gentle habits are things we build from the inside out.

Tiny Habits are Built on Gentle Foundations | 16.30

BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits model sits on gentle foundations. It encourages us to be gentle with ourselves, our aspirations, and the approach we take to making meaningful change happen over time.

There is an awful lot of ungentleness around when it comes to personal growth. The demand for endless growth and instant results. But with tiny habits, it's all about trusting the process and understanding that big things come faith in small, slow, and deep action.

Fogg says that Tiny Habits require you to do three things:

Stop Judging Yourself | 17.07

It's easier said than done and rather than being a pre-requisite for ti...

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The past few years have carried an exceptionally concentrated flow of difficult news. It can feel like too much information to hold at any one time.

In the podcast this week, we look at the impact of information on our senses. We consider a few ways we might process some of the dread that we're trying to cram into our already overflowing bucket.

Can we find more energy, creativity, and gentleness in the face of life's uncertainty?

Episode contentsFocussing On Where We Want to Go | 2:20Dread Stacking | 7:34The Cost of Stracking Too Much Information | 10.09People Are Under a Lot of Stress | 11:26It's Nothing Personal | 16:40Space Between Stimulus and Response | 18:30How Do We Know What We Need to Know? | 24:04To 'Be Informed'? | 24:59We're Not Wired For This | 27:42Sensory Information Processing | 28:56Starting From a Place of Humility | 29:41Too Much Information And The HSP | 34:40Depth of Processing | 35:05Easily Overstimulated | 39:14Emotional Reactivity | 43:20Sensitive to Subtleties | 44:50Awareness vs Alertness | 46:22Expanding Our Capacity To Hold Information | 50:27What The World Needs Most… | 53:30Slowing Down | 55:47Joy Emerges in The Cracks and Stains | 56:10How Do We Stack More Joy? | 57:47The Haven | 61:38

Focussing On Where We Want to Go | 2:20

Resources about coping with information overwhelm often tell us to limit, control, and challenge our actions and thoughts. But this is unhelpful. It's like looking at a tree when we're in control of a vehicle.

We get more of what we focus on. If we want to avoid the tree it's no good focussing on it. It's far better to focus on where we want to go instead.

Dread Stacking | 7:34

Dread Stacking is what happens when too much information builds up and we don't have time to process it. It comes from the relentless and endless string of painful stories from situations, events, and changes across the globe.

The fast-paced world means attention moves from one thing to the next very quickly. But just because the news and social media can move from one thing to the next, it doesn't mean we can do that without consequences as humans.

Stories can leave the residue of heartbreak, anxiety, and fear.

The Cost of Stracking Too Much Information | 10.09

In the midst of a dread swap, it is very difficult to focus. In a world where everything matters, it's hard to know where we should invest our time and energy. So we might end up tuning out and turning off the flow of information.

People Are Under a Lot of Stress | 11:26

People can do crazy things when they feel overwhelmed.

David Lynch demonstrates this perfectly in a wonderfully twisted scene in Twin Peaks. An accountant returns home to find a van parked a few inches over his drive. This sparks a rapid escalation that ends up with the van rolling into a lamp post with two dead assassins inside.

Two local casino bosses are watching the whole thing unfold. Bradley says, "what kind of crazy neighbourhood is this?" to which his brother Rodney replies, "people are under a lot of stress, Bradley."

I love this scene and I love this line. It seems to speak to so much of what we see going on in the world right now. How something so trivial can lead to this wild moment where everyone loses their minds and do things that are just completely destructive. To one another and to themselves.

It's Nothing Personal | 16:40

I once received a response to an angry response to one of my email newsletters. It had a go at me for failing to consider people in their pretty niche position. It stopped me in my tracks and took me a while to work out how to respond.

I entered my standard shame spiral. And I felt bad for failing to consider the particular situations everyone reading it might be experiencing.

But then I slept on it. I've learned to put space between the stimulus and response when it comes to reacting to criticism. I walk away for a bit.

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When I first saw the term, "Sensory Processing Sensitivity" I looked straight past it. It was around 2011 when I had recently started reading about introversion. While hanging out in the personality rabbit hole I kept seeing the question, "Are You a Highly Sensitive Person?" Every time I read it I repeated a gentle but firm, "no" to myself. But it wouldn't leave me alone. So eventually I gave in and clicked on one of the links.

Are you easily overwhelmed by such things as bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens nearby? Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time? When you were a child, did your parents or teachers see you as sensitive or shy? Do you notice or enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, or works of art? Do you have a rich and complex inner life?

Oh. Hang on. I dug deeper. I read The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr Elaine Aron. And it turned out I probably WAS one of those highly sensitive people after all. Part of 15-20% of the population with an innate trait (Sensory Processing Sensitivity) that "reflects a certain type of survival strategy, being observant before acting". It was a game-changer for me. A liberating moment. And so began a journey of reframing the past, re-writing the present, and re-imagining the future. I still didn't fully connect with the "highly sensitive person" label. It didn't fit properly. But I knew it held something life-changing within. And I share my journey of discovery with you in this week's podcast.

Episode contentsWhat Is Sensory Processing Sensitivity? | 3.59Depth of ProcessingOverstimulationEmpathyEmotional ReactivitySensory Acuity/SubtletiesWhat Sensory Processing Sensitivity is NOT | 7.47Can We Come Up With a Better Name For High Sensitivity? | 10.15Reframing The Story Of Sensitivity | 22.08Overwhelmed By Bright Lights, Strong Smells, and Sudden Noises | 23.55Described as Shy or Sensitive By Teachers and Parents | 29.30Startled By Sudden Noises | 34.03Noticing Life's Finer Scents | 38.10Performining Tasks Worse Under Observation | 41.17It's Unpleasant to Have a Lot of Things Going on at Once | 49.29Needing to Withdraw From Overstimulation and Busyness | 50.43Other Peoples' Moods Affect You | 62.41Conclusions | 68.39Individuation and Deep Sensitivity | 59.25Research and The Future For Sensory Processing Sensitivity | 69.58The Haven | 71.56

What Is Sensory Processing Sensitivity? | 3.59

Sensory Processing Sensitivity is a trait found in over 100 species, and makes up a fifth of the human population. Despite misconceptions, high sensitivity is about more than being highly emotional. It plays a cautionary role in evolutionary terms and is systematically baked into humankind as a way to identify and warn of potential risks and sources of harm in the world around us. In the podcast, Bill Allen takes us through Elaine Aron's DOE(e)S Acronym. Check out my full conversation with Bill here.

Depth of Processing

Highly Sensitive People have a deep sensory experience of the world. They take information and grind it down in order to get every bit of data out of it (both consciously and unconsciously). This can sometimes lead to rumination and ‘overthinking’. Studies comparing the brains of HSPs and non-HSPs have found differences in the way people process information and stimulation.

Overstimulation

Highly Sensitive People usually have an open aperture for picking up sensory data. They let a lot of information in and this can result in overstimulation when they’re out in the world all the time. They require regular downtime to recalibrate before getting back out there again.

With a naturally wider aperture, Highly Sensitive People need regular downtime in order to internally recalibrate, process, and re-charge.

Empathy

Highly Sensitive People have a deep capacity for empathy through highly active mirror neurones. This can influence interactions, as HSPs absorb the moods and feelings of those around them.

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You don't have to look far to see people acting in mean and selfish ways. Is this because people themselves are fundamentally mean and selfish or is there more to it than that? And is there anything WE can do to make conditions for kinder modes of human behaviour and engagement? We will always encounter rudeness in other people. It's an inevitable part of life. But these people can have a big impact on our health and confidence. So what can we do about them? This episode explores answers to that question. We had a conversation in The Haven about making gentleness a practice and using creativity in our response to the mean and selfish actions in people around us. We looked at two core ideas:

How to build a practice of creative gentleness How to build gentleness into a creative practice

We've got to think about both sides of this if we want to build a truly creative life. Not just in our own work, but as our creative spirit flows through every part of our lives.  

Article ContentsWho Are These Mean and Selfish People? | 5.24Our Place in a Mean and Selfish World | 8.16Hold Gently Within Our Encounters | 13.40The Hold of Past Guilt | 17.57Wastewater and The Creativity Faucet | 24.43The Stoic Response to Mean and Selfish People | 27.12But is Kindness Really The Best Response To Cruel or Thoughtless Actions? | 30.20Play and Your Inner-Child: Is It Time To Grow Up? | 33.57When Self-Doubt Fuels The Questions We Ask | 36.54You Don't Need to Feel Like "A Creative" in Order to Live a Creative Life | 40.47There are No Wrong Answers When Practising Play | 42.00Embracing The Comfort and Joy of Failure | 45.38Conclusion: Humiliation is Never a Productive Option | 27.12The Haven | 53.18

Who Are These Mean and Selfish People? | 5.24

"It’s a fact of life that we will encounter rude people. It happens every day. People cut in line. They speak to other people like they are a piece of s**t. People lie and take credit for your work. Not only will this happen, but many times there will be no consequences for this."The Daily Stoic

It is without a doubt tempting to label people as mean and selfish. It feels obvious that some people are that way by nature. So we engage with them accordingly. When we use these kinds of words we then treat other people as if that's who they are. But this is a symptom of a fixed mindset. And it provides little wiggle room for the story to change.

Our Place in a Mean and Selfish World | 8.16

We tell ourselves a story about the way things "should" and "shouldn't" be. And how other people should be. It's tempting to get caught in the spirit of the world around us. This can leave us permitting and even contributing to the conditions that give rise to the kind of selfishness and meanness we want to get rid of. The rebellion of gentleness is about shifting our stories of shame. Including the stories we tell about who we are, as well as the shame we bestow upon other people.  

Hold Gently Within Our Encounters | 13.40

This article from the Daily Stoic says about mean and selfish people, "they’ll have to wait in line less than you. They might get promoted ahead of you after taking credit for that work. And when we see this, we are tempted to respond in a couple of ways:

Get angry. Resent it. Use it as an excuse Begin to plot our revenge.

None of these reactions are Stoic. But more important, none of these reactions reduce rude behaviour in the world either." When we grip them too tight, the words and actions of others can consume us. And we can end up creating more of what we don't want in the process. How might we increase the space around the holes, corners, and cul de sacs we can ALL end up stuck in? It can be fun to corner people who say and do things we really hate. But when we do this things can become more violent and destructive. Especially if they have to fight their way out of such a corner. This creates the conditions for a future that is not good for any of us.

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Are you drawn to "sad" music? Do you get deeply moved by bittersweet literature, film, and art?

If so you're not alone. Life's bittersweet edges have been enjoyed by human beings throughout history. But why?

What is it about what Susan Cain describes as bittersweet melancholy, that moves us so deeply? And why are we drawn to the enjoyment of what we often refer to as "sad songs"?

I've felt the pull of bittersweet melancholy for as long as I can remember. Even as a child I wanted to revisit music and films that had previously made me cry. This kind of beautiful ache and painful beauty has underpinned my relationship with the music I enjoy and the music I create.

Powerful emotions like yearning and longing can shine a light on why some of us find energising, generative and creative joy when we spend time in the melancholic realm of the bittersweet.

In this episode of the podcast, we are going to explore this stuff more deeply. Where do we get the joy of "sad songs and rainy days?" What purpose does this serve? Why is this attributed in particular to highly sensitive people? And how can we cultivate a positive creative relationship with "the inconsolable longing for we know not what"?

Table of contentsBittersweet Longing | 0:34What Does Yearning Feel Like? | 3:47Fleeting Moments of Bittersweet Beauty | 5:00The Snowman Will Melt | 8:04Why We Love "Sad" Music | 15:19Bittersweet Art Doesn't Create Emotion | 21:45Are You Homesick and Yearning For A Place That Doesn't Exist? | 26:14Anemoia, Vellichor, and Mono No Aware | 29:12We Don't Want What We Think We Want | 34:21The Inconsolable Longing For We Know Not What | 42:30Our Life's Work and Creative Offering | 51:54Further Exploration | 55:55The Haven | 58:07

"The Sunset" at Wilpena Pound in South Australia

Bittersweet Longing | 0:34

A recent Haven Sunday Kota meeting was dedicated to this topic. Yearning and longing had come up in our conversations several times over the years. So when we saw that Susan Cain sharing her research around this idea, it felt like a perfect opportunity to dig a little deeper into it.

It was amazing to spend time listening to stories about how art moves us all in different ways. We chatted about memories of hearing particular pieces of music for the first time. And we shared our experiences with so-called sad songs, deep conversations, and poignant experiences in our lives.

What Does Yearning Feel Like? | 3:47

The word 'yearning' seems to capture the essence of bittersweet melancholy. It shares the in-between spaces around the edges of our lives with gentleness.

We know how it feels to yearn. We recognise its beautifully painful ache. Yearning is the deep longing for something we know is missing. But this longing is accompanied by the awareness that we can never acquire that missing thing. Because it can't be perfectly conceptualised, articulated, or defined.

Yearning takes us on a journey through the silence between the notes. It's the gaps around the words on the page. The space between the brush strokes. Yearning is the emptiness that asks life questions about its meaning and form. And life itself asks the endless question to us...how can we capture the essence of the undefinable?

Fleeting Moments of Bittersweet Beauty | 5:00

Have you ever witnessed something so beautiful it was painful?

A few years ago I visited Wilpena Pound in South Australia with some close friends. On the night we were there, the conditions were perfect for what in my view was an obscenely beautiful sunset.

I felt a bizarre mix of emotions as I paid witness to the moment. There was a deep appreciation of the beauty before me. It felt expansive and warm, like everything about the world was some kind of lavishly excessive gift.

But this was flanked by shadows of foreboding loss. The awareness that this moment would soon disappear below the horizon.

That was what yearning feels like. It both inspires and haunts us.

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Gentleness can feel like a lost cause and a waste of time. Especially when it comes to standing up for ourselves and other people in the face of a cruel and hostile world.

But I believe there is more to gentleness than meets the eye. And while some may feel tempted to conceptualise it as flimsy or weak, it's not. In fact, it sits as the backbone of deep inner strength and human resilience.

Gentleness creates the conditions for better relationships and healthier lives.

It is underpinned by a deep spirit of rebellion and is always an option when we feel stuck in life’s weeds. Because it can radically influence how we hold ourselves, relate to others, and engage with our future hopes and dreams.

As a result, we can find fertile ground for more deep, intentional, and meaningful growth to occur in and around our lives.

So let's spend some time looking at what gentleness is (and isn't), in order to nurture the conditions for more of it to emerge through the cracks.

ContentsWhat IS Gentleness? | 0:57How Do Most People Describe Gentleness? | 10:36Gentleness is Strength | 13:00Gentleness is Rebellion | 13:59Gentleness is Compassion | 26:22Gentleness is Rhythm | 28:36Gentleness is Joy | 29:24Gentleness is Big Enough To Hold All of Us | 30:26Gentleness is Awareness | 32:00Gentleness is Playful | 35:06What Does Gentleness Make Possible? | 19:36Universalising Connection | 20:14Safety | 21:00Creativity | 21:14Culture | 21:38How to Create The Conditions for Gentleness | 22:30Holding On | 22:47Letting Go | 25:00Conclusion | 26:23

What IS Gentleness? | 0:57

To be honest, gentleness is not easy to define. But that's also part of what makes it so beautiful to think about.

You can't package it. Or sell it. And you can't force it into a 5 step process.

Gentleness is more like an ever-present question. It speaks softly into the space between the lines of life. And it invites us to pause and reflect on the kind of world we are creating with the choices we are making.

How Do Most People Describe Gentleness? | 10:36

Caring. Kind. Intentional. Softness. Firmness. Accepting. Holding Account. Trustworthy. Warmth. Patience. Slow. Absorbing. Engulfing. Enriching. Unconditional. Safety. Humility. Nurturing. Avoiding deliberate harm. Mindful. Integrity. Calmness under pressure. Honesty. Grit. Respect. Backbone. Will. "A firm back and a soft front". Patience. Home. Responsibility. Open. Accepting mistakes. Wholehearted. Peace. Encouraging. Padded.

These are words that were sent to me when I asked readers how they would define gentleness.

It seems clear to me now that gentleness is a force of the in-between.

Indeed it is neither "this nor that". It is both soft and firm. It holds to account while accepting mistakes. Likewise, it is safe and gritty, strong and humble.

Gentleness is Strength | 13:00

Gentleness breeds peace, integrity, and consistency of character. It is not volatile or abrupt in its response to the world. It is able to hold, absorb, and soften the harsh edges of life.

“Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It’s something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength and other words–like aggression and even violence. Real strength is neither male nor female; but is, quite simply, one of the finest characteristics that any human being can possess.” – Mr Rogers

This quote suggests that on the one hand, gentleness is strength. While simultaneously true strength comes from a place with gentleness at its core.

Gentleness is Rebellion | 13:59

I started using the term 'gentle rebel' many years ago. Specifically, as a way to describe introverted and sensitive creative people.

The rebel part was the fact that, by definition, authentic introverts and sensitive types go against the expectations of an extrovert-centric world. They move to the beat of their own drum rather than bending themselves ou...

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The Gentle Rebel Podcast is about locating more joy and creative purpose in everyday life. By working out how to slow down in a busy and hostile world. We all carry natural pace and rhythm that underpins who we are. And if we want to live healthy and effective lives it can really help to be aware of how these inner tracks look and feel.

Be a Gentle Rebel in a Hostile World The world is increasingly quick-tempered, hostile, and frantic. It can feel overwhelming at times. When we experience insensitivity, ungentleness, and aggressive selfishness, it is tempting to hide from life, retaliate in kind, or give up hope altogether. Especially when we feel and care about things deeply. This is one of the reasons I love creating The Gentle Rebel Podcast. It gives me a source of meaningful connection with ideas, guests, and listeners. It makes a difference when we know we're not alone. And there are still reasons to be hopeful even when hope feels lost. I want to encourage more people to locate, nurture, and enjoy their inner gentleness and playful rebellion in the face of such violence to the spirit. Deep Roots Take Time To Grow I'm a songwriter and professionally qualified personal development coach. Over the years I've particular enjoyed working to support introverted and sensitive types in learning more about their natural preferences. I love seeing people figure out how THEY want to approach life in order to make space for what makes life feel good and meaningful to THEM. The smallest shifts can make the biggest difference. And it often starts when we allow ourselves to see the ways we've tried squeezing ourselves like square pegs in round holes. Because this allows us to understand what we need instead. It's Never Too Late For a Change The Gentle Rebel Podcast reflects a premise I carry into all of my work; that it's never too late to write the next chapter in our story of becoming. It doesn't matter how old you are or what's happened so far, there is always possibility for a shift. And we always have at least the smallest speck of power in how we position ourselves in relation to the next chapter. It can start with a simple question...what sort of world do I want to be part of creating? We think about how gentleness becomes rebellious in a world that wants to keep us divided and afraid. And we focus on bringing more gentleness to becoming more of who we are through nine core themes: change, belonging, serenity, strength, confidence, adventure, creativity, tranquility, and inspiration. Are you up for conducting experiments in gentleness, sensory awareness, personal growth, compassion, creativity, and play? You're in the right place.

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I'm pretty committed to life as a slow coach (yes that works on different levels). Strong deep roots take time to grow. And as far as I'm concerned, the journey of becoming is not worth rushing. Change is coming. Slowly. And I'm using the slow coach part of my gentle rebel 'philosophy' to draw the map of the road ahead for the podcast. I know it's time to shift gears, but I want to transition well. In a way that feels expansive and authentic.

So after ten years and 365 episodes I am bringing the 'first season' of the show to an end. And a new phase of life starts now for the Gentle Rebel Podcast. But don't worry. It won't feel much different for listeners. Over the next two years I plan to churn the archives and consolidate old episodes and articles so that they become more up to date and much easier to navigate. The Vision (Starting Again Without Starting Over) Between now and the summer of 2024, the podcast will be refreshed from the inside out. The next episode (a short trailer) will eventually become the first one, and I will create shows that weave together the existing archives in new ways. This will leave a simple library of episodes, all of which will fall under one the nine annual Haven themes. In this episode I explain more about why I am choosing to embark on change in this way. And I'll share what I believe it will make possible; for me (and my work), for listeners, and for the podcast as a whole. I look forward to seeing what happens as we step into this next season. I'm also excited (and a little nervous) to go back into the archives and revisit what I've written, said, and forgotten from over the years. Hopefully this all makes sense. Meanwhile I'd love to hear any thoughts you have, and answer any questions you have. You're welcome to leave a comment below, or of course you can send me a message.

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Creative energy sometimes goes hand in hand with physical, mental, and/or emotional fatigue.

It can be a strange and sometimes confusing feeling. But an important one to recognise and manage effectively if we want to experience life in all its creative joy.

Creative energy is different from physical, mental, and emotional energy. In fact, it is usually created when we invest those other types of energy into meaningful endeavours and projects.

It fuels the connection we have with the curiosities, creative pursuits, and interests that resonate with our core. In other words, our 'life's work'.

Sources of Creative Energy I have felt it in many places over the years. For example, at conferences and festivals. Hanging out with friends and family. Recording/writing in the studio. Performing live at gigs. Engaging on Zoom calls. During school lessons. While travelling.

It starts for me as a feeling of satisfied and excited exhaustion. But if I don't manage it effectively it can turn into long-term creative exhaustion. And lead to inaction. Time Capsule Episode ⏰ In this episode, I go back into a podcast I recorded in 2018 after my visit to Auschwitz in Poland. The trip soon became a deep source of creative energy for me, and it infused different parts of my being in different ways.

We will use the theme of 'travel' to explore parallels across other energy-intensive activities. Thinking about what to do when we are feeling both exhausted and inspired at the same time. And what we might do with the sabotaging temptation to 'keep going', especially if we're introverted and/or highly sensitive people.

We will consider ways we can use our natural rhythms and inner awareness to work WITH these experiences to enjoy more creative energy in our lives. When Plans Come Together It always seems to surprise me when something I plan actually comes together.

I always feel absolutely delighted if the plane, bus, train, or boat is expecting me (because I bought the correct ticket). Yes, I'm easily pleased!

I also love connecting the dots of a plan and bringing into life what until now existed only in theory and on paper.

It's similar to the simple joy I get from the magic of creativity itself. I love that we can imagine something that hasn't yet happened. We can map out the steps to make it happen. And we can follow that plan to actually turn imagination into reality. That's mad!

But it's not only the relief of things going to plan that energises me.

There is also something strangely rewarding and enriching about solving problems when things don't go quite as expected. It's not often fun at the time and it's usually even more tiring. But I love coming out the other end with a story I can use to remind myself of challenges I've faced, ridden, and overcome in some way. Creative Energy Management Check Planning and preparing with vigilance helps things run smoothly. Enough is enough!

Worry (anxiety about things beyond our control going wrong) can become an energy rot that disturbs the anticipation (and joy) of travel. Cultural Dots Another source of creative energy that travel brings is that it can broaden the field of vision. It's easy to get comfortable and complacent in our beliefs about the world. Or to view people outside of our immediate context through the lens of stereotypes and sweeping generalisations.

It's both exhausting and energising to have our perceptions shaken.

But it's helpful to engage with what underpins other cultures so that we might better understand the foundations of our own.

I love to slow down and observe the world happening around me. I enjoy listening to the musicality of other languages. And I am fascinated by the mundane rhythms and routines that make up everyday life. Creative Energy Management Check Immersion in a completely different culture, place, routine, belief system, language, customs etc can be unanchoring, exhilarating, and exhausting.

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This week's podcast isn't actually about water safety. But I think these act as an interesting metaphor for some of the challenges we face in our modern world.

You might have heard the advice to "reach or throw, but don't go" if you find someone struggling in the water.

The basic instinct might be to jump in and do something to help. But this puts both lives at heightened risk. If we are panicked, we may make things worse for the other person; overpowering them, pulling them underwater, and even inadvertently using them in what could become our own struggle for buoyancy.

In other words, provide an anchor that can bring the other person to safety. Which requires you to be on a solid foundation and partner with the most effective and expert sources of help.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in the UK launched an educational awareness campaign called 'Float to Live' a few years ago. They provide a clear set of instructions if you find yourself in difficulty in the water.

Fight your instinct to thrash around. Lean back, extend your arms and legs. If you need to, gently move them around to help you float. Float until you can control your breathing. Only then, call for help, swim to safety or continue floating until help arrives.

How do we respond to a world in crisis? When we see upsetting and disturbing news, it's tempting to unanchor ourselves in various ways and jump in the water. Perhaps a sense of guilt, empathy, or even fear about what it could mean for us, others, and the world.

This might lead us to unanchor certain foundational routines and habits. As well as from doing and feeling things that we deem 'unimportant' in the context of another person's immediate crisis.

But at times like this, we actually need to be MORE not less intentional with our anchors. Foundational Bedrocks of Life

Place -  physical environments People - our relationships Projects - our occupations Philosophy - our core personal values Personality - our self-awareness of natural temperament

In this episode, we consider four ways we can be anchored and unanchored to and from life's foundational bedrocks.

Safely Anchored: securely integrated and committed to something or somewhere Safely Unanchored: free to explore, discover, and grow Unsafely Anchored: trapped, stuck, and unable to let go Unsafely Unanchored: aimless drift without appropriate resources

And we think about the impact these can have on our relationship with ourselves, other people, and the world around us. So that we become more effective and intentional in how we engage with a world in need.

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We are holding an increasingly heavy collective weight right now. The past few years have contained what's felt like a particularly concentrated flow of dread stacking. A relentless and endless string of painful stories from situations, events, and changes happening around the world.

Stories both experienced and read, about war, disaster, and terror. Stories about the greed and ineptitude of those in positions of power. And apocalyptic stories about what's to come.

These stories are everything today, but are then replaced and seem forgotten about tomorrow. Yet while the collective viewfinder moves on, it doesn't work like that for us as individuals. These events leave a deep reaching residue. They create heartbreak, anxiety, and overwhelm. They leave us feeling inadequate, afraid, and hopeless.

There is no time to pause, breathe, and meaningfully process the stacking burden.

Anger, sadness, and anxiety are normal and natural responses to the events and stories we see on our screens. But the way we gather our news is far from normal and natural. 24/7 digital news and social feeds desperate for eye balls and attention. A constant flow of breaking information, 'expert' analysis, and the infinite online forum of ego-fuelled debate.

What is this dread stacking costing us as individuals? What is the cost to society? Dread Stacking and Sensitivity For highly sensitive people, dread stacking takes a heavy toll. When you naturally process things at a deep level, the quick and heavy flow of information can quickly lead to overwhelm. There just isn't the capacity to hold it all in healthy ways.

Dread stacking can leave us with this insatiable sense that we are responsible for everything and everyone. Or that everything and everyone requires our full focus.

But it's completely unsustainable to pay full attention to everything that needs it. And if we try we will become naturally desensitised and disengaged. Not by choice. But by necessity.

Perhaps parts of our own lives ("I can't carry on doing normal things while this is happening"). We might disengage from our health, our relationships, and our work, while we fix our gaze (thoughts as well as eyes) on the news.

Or we might desensitise ourselves to the world 'out there', shutting off our gaze. For a lot of people, the answer seems to be to stop paying attention.

But I wonder if this might be akin to the  support technician who, when I told him I was getting messages about an issue with my website, 'solved' it by turning off the notifications.

Unfortunately that didn't help me address the issue that was triggering the notifications.

Maybe we just need to audit our input. Are the notifications useful? Do they serve our greater vision as an individual and as a collective?

Are we intentional about our sources, and about what we do with the information that comes our way?

Are we oscillating between consumptive and creative action?

Do we have practices and routines for processing things that we can't control in ways that we can control? Anchors If we are the vessel, our habits, beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves are the anchors that tether us to certain outcomes. We can be intentional about where and how we anchor, but we can also become un-intentionally anchored to places we wouldn't choose to be.

Many of us are anchored in the harbour of dread and anxious overwhelm right now. And while some people might recommend 'switching off' altogether, I'm not sure this feels viable for many of us.

So the question is, how can we remain engaged in all of life with meaning and energy?

That's what we're looking at in this week's episode, and in more depth in The Haven this month.

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What does confidence mean to you?

We probably all have a pretty clear picture of what a confident person looks, sounds, and acts like. And we will have a sense of how we fit into that picture and whether we consider ourselves confident or not.

In this week's episode I speak with Kendra Patterson to introduce this theme of confidence, which is our focus in The Haven throughout February.

We had a chat about our own perception of, and relationship with, confidence. We discussed what it means for us, and the role it plays in our creativity. Specifically in relation to how we share ourselves and our work with the world.

Confidence is such a huge topic, and a word I encounter a lot in my work as a coach. Many of us feel deficient of it, believing that our lack of confidence is what stops us from living with more of what we want.

But as we discuss in our conversation, there is often so much more to confidence than meets the eye.

Kendra and I chat about:

Ways the story we believed about our natural temperament growing up informs and reinforces our relationship with self-confidence (or a lack thereof) - especially when introversion and sensitivity are judged as social deficiencies The differences between a perception of confidence and genuine deep inner confidence Different types of confidence and how confidence in people, things, and processes, might be a way towards more self-confidence How a sign of deep self-confidence is seen in the ability to share insecurities and aspects of life about which you are not confident (a paradox?) Why self-confidence is not something we possess, but rather something that develops and grows over time (and what we might do to nurture the conditions for this to happen) Why discomfort with self-promotion is NOT a lack of confidence, but a preference that we can become aware of when engaging with others (why do we recoil?) The difference between being confident in your creative work and confident in your right to do creative work (and why you only need the latter to get going) The impact of feedback on confidence when it comes to building a creative practice (and how receiving bad feedback is far more damaging than receiving none at all) What constitutes good feedback, and how we can develop the confidence to ask for it (and give it to others) How feedback is a partnership and the ways we receive, process, and mine/release solicited criticism The importance of "sleeping on it" when it comes to processing feedback with implications And many other things...

Links: Notes on Your Notes (The Hannah Episodes)

Join us in The Haven to dive deeper into the theme of Confidence: the-haven.co

The Extended Play on Patreon (including the new series about creative process, From Here to There): patreon.com/andymort Watch a teaser for the first feature, The Story of Late Again here: https://youtu.be/wOPn9rSDHdY

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Are you currently living in the shadow of one of life's looming walls?

Maybe there's a specific obstacle, struggle, or future event that is blocking out the light right now. Perhaps you're aware that something feels wrong but you don't know what it is or how to deal with it.

We encounter walls everyday in life. We've been smashing through them and turning them into memorial strongholds (chapters in our story of becoming), since we were born. We've always conquered seemingly impossible and insurmountable obstacles in front of us, and come through the other side to tell the tale. If you could click your finger and change one thing about your life right now, what would be different?

Maybe you can think of a specific thing that you want to have. Perhaps it's something in particular you want to get rid of. Or maybe it feels slightly harder to define than that.

Can you think of a time when you did something you never dreamed you would actually be able to do?

Maybe it was something you really wanted to achieve and kept putting off. Perhaps it was something you had always feared happening, but when it did you found ways to cope and get through it. Or maybe it was something that you never anticipated, but as you look back feel proud of the past version of you that managed to somehow get through it.

What comes to mind for you? For Me:

Going on a Rollercoaster Dealing With Heartbreak Performing at an International TEDx Conference

Oh. I opened up the floodgates. There are many more...

Surviving my first day at secondary (high) school, where I didn't know anyone and felt completely petrified. Travelling internationally on my own for the first (and the second, third, forth etc) time. Being in a car crash (and dealing with the aftermath). Doing my first call-out as an undertaker. Looking after children (not my own), on my own for the first time. I could go on!

How about you?

It doesn't matter what you suspect others would think of your choices. Your walls are yours.

Our walls belong to us. They have special meaning for us.

What you see as a wall might be nothing for someone else, and the thing that someone else is scared to confront might be a picnic in the park for you. It's funny how this stuff works.

But despite everyone's unique differences, there are three common characteristics that seem to show up for all of us as we face, confront, and overcome the walls we face in and around our lives. 1. Courage Ignoring a wall doesn't make it disappear. Even if we successfully manage to avoid it, the shadow it casts over our life can be conspicuous.

If we don't admit, acknowledge, and accept its presence, we can't do anything about it.

But this takes 'courage', because it's not always comfortable or simple to allow ourselves to see what we might not want (or feel permitted) to see. The wall might even just be worry (fear without action). Once investigated (like a funny noise in the car, odd behaviour from our partner, or a strange symptom in your body), the thing we fear might turn out to be nothing. But unless we muster the courage to see, our fear will just turn into the drain of worry.

Courage in this sense is simply admitting a feeling to ourselves. "I'm not happy", "I'm worried", "I really want to pursue this goal", "this means a lot to me".

It takes courage to allow yourself to hold the possibility that things might need to change. An uncomfortable moment of self-honesty. Of turning to face the wall and simply say to yourself "yep, I see it". 2. Bravery Bravery is about acting DESPITE fear. It's not about acting WITHOUT fear. Once we've acknowledged the presence of a wall we can envision what sits the other side of it. This helps us identify the specific bricks that sit between us and the place we want to be instead of where we are. This shows us what we need to do in order to get through the wall.

We meet the bricks with bravery.

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"You can’t make choices that don’t occur to you."

This is a simple truth worth considering. And it sits at the heart of what we're digging into on this week's podcast, which revolves around my conversation with psychotherapist, coach, and trainer, John Perry.

I first encountered John in November 2021 when he led a brilliant three day Transactional Analysis training workshop for the Coaching Academy. In one of the sessions John uttered those words..."you can't make choices that don't occur to you".

It stopped me in my tracks. Wow! I don't think THAT had really occurred to me before. At least not in an overt way. And in many ways it seems to sum up a core premise of Transactional Analysis, which is about expanding our options and perspective, so we can choose the most useful way to show up in any given situation.

We cover a LOT of ground in this conversation, and talk about:

The core ideas of Transactional Analysis, such as Ego States, OK-ness, and Transaction Types How 'Rubber Band Experiences' can take us back into an adaptive child state where we draw on behaviours that helped us cope when we were young Where "contamination" can lead us to act out of character, and how we might recognise it in the way we construct our understanding of the world How ulterior transactions can leave us (and others) with muddled and confused experiences after an engagement - the importance of saying what you mean Why we should never underestimate the importance of kindness The role of the 'Stroke Economy' in our need for recognition as a social animal and the different types of strokes we give and receive on a daily basis Why the call to 'Try Hard' can become a sabotaging crutch and a reason it can become impossible for some people achieve goals How the word 'try' tricks the brain into anticipating resistance and failure, and turns achievable goals and desires into insurmountable challenges The signs of 'Slot Rattling' (going from one extreme to the other) and how it can be detrimental to helping our relationship with drivers The difference between writing a winning and non-winning (losing or bland) life script and how we might change the style and content in the next chapter Why a winning life script doesn't always look like success, and why what appear to be success to the outside world might actually be symptoms of a losing life script for the individual And a load more!

Over to You Did anything in particular resonate with you in our conversation? Did you experience any interesting aha moments? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below or on social media!

If you enjoyed this conversation and you want to a bit dive deeper, join me over on Patreon where I share John's essay on 'Constructive Alternativism': https://patreon.com/andymort

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What is play? How does it look, feel, and sound to you? What's the point of it? What gives rise to it? What hinders it? How did we engage with it as kids? How do we hold it as adults?

These are a handful of the questions we are prodding at in this week's episode.

It's my hope that it gives your imagination a little spark and leaves you feeling ready to bring more play to your day.

We will take a trip down memory lane and think about some of our experiences of play as children. And consider what happens to our relationship with play as we grow up. Oh and the (unintended) impact our words and actions might have on the play and imagination in the minds of future generations.

"As both adults and children, do you think we allow ourselves less and less of this open, ‘pointless’ time? I think so, and yet it is in this time that the mind can freewheel, new connections are made, new ideas are born." - Michael Rosen's Book of Play Am I Doing It Right? Play is absolutely foundational to human life. It's at the core of emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual well-being and development. But it's not just about what we do. It influences our relationship with everything we do. And it can influence every aspect of life, from the cradle to the grave.

The more play we invite into our lives, the more meaning, joy, and gentleness we will begin to notice and experience. Both in ourselves and in the world around us. The Fewer Toys Children Have, The More They Play Through her research into the potential impacts of excessive toys, Claire Lerner reported that children, “get overwhelmed and over-stimulated and cannot concentrate on any one thing long enough to learn from it so they just shut down. Too many toys mean they are not learning to play imaginatively either.”

We have been looking at this article in The Haven, and considering its implications and applications for adults too. Could we do more with less? Are we doing ourselves a disservice by using specific (closed) tools, toys, and technology to solve every little problem we encounter? In the episode we also think about:

The impact of associating "make believe" with a sense of lack or deprivation How getting 'the proper one' can crush imaginative play Why learning to surf on a styrofoam lid or using a stool as a drum, are not inhibitors to progress but fuel for it How imagination can get chipped away over time as we become subservient to the so called 'real world' The question that haunts our relationship with play... "am I doing it right?" The difference between 'exploration mode' and 'play mode' with our toys (and how too much choice hinders our relationship with the latter) How 'out of the box' solutions can only take us so far, and why it's worth creating conditions for flexibility The danger of shrinking public spaces for play and connection, and how this limits our ability to imagine to the realm of those who own the physical and virtual real-estate How we could apply child-initiated play to our relationship with play as adults (and what we can do to build play into the fabric of our environment rather than seeing it as an activity to set up and tidy away)

Over to You What role does play currently have in your life? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the ideas in this episode. Please share on social media or in the comments below!

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We are kicking off 2022 thinking about the theme of "strength". In particular with relation to creativity, sensitivity, and gentleness - words not associated with traditional notions of 'strength'.

I love thinking about the subversive strength of sensitivity. We can find great joy from noticing, feeling, and experiencing the world at a deep sensory level. And this is a great strength when it comes to nurturing creativity, compassion, and connection around our lives.

But you don't need me to tell you how uncomfortable and difficult this can also be at times. It might not feel like we have much strength on the backdrop of a harsh and hostile world.

Strength isn't always the obvious course of action. It is essentially the capacity of something to endure without disintegrating. To maintain its character in the presence of stresses, strains, and tensions. This doesn't necessarily mean always forcefully resisting or fighting things.

Bowing and Flexing Last year we thought about the image of the 'bow' and how a tree flexes in respect to the force of wind. Not to submit or cede power it, but to absorb the impact, and strengthen itself against it.

People often talk about "holding their ground", "not giving an inch", and "standing firm" as forms of power. But in many circumstances these can actually lead to fragility and weakness.

What if real empowerment came from nurturing more space to choose our response and use the appropriate tools in any given situation?

In this episode of the podcast I share the recent conversation I had with Kendra Patterson. We introduce some of the ideas we will be exploring around Strength this month in The Haven.

I hope it helps remind you that sensitivity, gentleness, play, creativity, vulnerability, collaboration etc, can be huge sources of strength in our world. And that the episode gives you some ideas for how you can fuel your gentle burning core with more of who you are deep down as you step foot into 2022. In The Episode Kendra and I Chat About:

Why true strength is underpinned by vulnerability The characteristics of integrity, and how strength emerges from things (and people) working together not against one another The dangers of falling for the belief that we need to thicken our skin in order to succeed How isolation, separation, and disintegration from unprocessed thoughts/feelings like envy and resentment can leave us weak and dis-empowered (plus ideas for countering this) And more...

Over to You What does 'strength' mean to you? I'd love to hear your response. Please leave your response in the comments below, or get in touch via email/social media Get in Touch Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Send Me an Email Related Links

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/ Learn More About The Haven: https://the-haven.co

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Wow, what a difference a year makes.

Sarah Santacroce launched her first book, The Gentle Marketing Revolution in February 2021. It was during 'Random Acts of Kindness' week when we last spoke.

Two weeks after that conversation Sarah received an email, followed by a cease and desist letter from a lawyer representing a client who had just registered the trademark, 'Gentle Marketing'. They demanded Sarah immediately stop using the term on her website and in her book.

This was devastating for Sarah and the business she had worked so hard to create.

Picking Up The Pieces When Your World is Shattered After her invitation to connect and find a way to make things work were rejected Sarah made a decision. She wasn't going to pour her energy into fighting. She wanted to surrender from a position of inner strength and creativity.

She now has a new business name (Humane Marketing) and has already redesigned much of what she had previously built.

The term gentle marketing represents something that doesn't change. The words are not the thing. While the container has transformed, the content hasn't...the values, vision, and approach stays the same. And Sarah has truly lived out her commitment to those things throughout this year.

I wanted to get Sarah back on the podcast to talk about her journey because I know it's been really tough. There's been a long dark night of the soul, and as we've been exploring recently on the podcast, a lot of noise from beyond her control.

I've been inspired by the way Sarah has gone about picking up the pieces. And while there's still a long way to go, her story so far already has a lot to feel hopeful and encouraged by. She's living out the values she has talked about through her gentle marketing work over the years. Proving that she is ready to walk the talk. Against The Grain The instinct might be to react to a situation like this. To fight. To do something and force it. Sarah recognised the cost of such a move. It can lead us away from where we need to be, and leave us with more work down the line.

I hope you find inspiration in Sarah's story too. As we move into another new year it feels like a good moment to think about the kind of world we want to be part of creating. To acknowledge that things outside of our control might happen to hit us for six. To slow down and surrender to the dark night of the soul. And remind ourselves that we get to choose how to respond to these things in accordance with the vision and deep core values we carry with us. In our conversation we talk about:

Why looking at work emails in the evening can be a bad idea The non-humane or gentle systems we have to engage with...and why we don't need to act in accordance with their normal mode of operating How to gently hold space for your values when the rubber hits the road and life is turned upside down Why we still believe in values of open source, sharing, and collaborating (even if it means other people will take from us) How to recognise a dark night of the soul when you're unable to see anything silver or shiny in the lining The power of connection when you only see what you don't have - other people can help you see what you've already built How the most effective and creative "doing" always comes from a place of acceptance and being How things can transform rapidly when we first slow down, settle, and make peace with our position The choice we can make about the type of energy we want to invest in our response to negative situations Plus a load of other things...

Check out Sarah's new website here: https://humane.marketing/

And her books, Selling Like We're Human and Marketing Like We're Human (Formally The Gentle Marketing Revolution).

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This is the third part of the series, Beyond The Noise: Respond to Life’s Clutter On YOUR Serene and Creative Frequency series.

In last week’s episode we looked at the position we take in relation to life's noise. Are we empowered or disempowered?

In this part we will be manoeuvring into a position of awareness so we might recognise the things we CAN change.

We've defined serenity as the calmness, clarity and confidence to engage with life in step with our personal vision and in alignment with our core values.

We feel serene by acknowledging we're in the right place, doing the right thing, at this particular time. It is a sense of deep acceptance and peace in this moment. And this will help us identify the frequency on which WE WANT to CHOOSE to operate.

In this episode we will think about:

Inside-Out Boundaries - how a good 'no' to what we don't want starts with a 'yes' to what we DO want The difference between passivity and acceptance (and how we might distinguish between them for ourselves) The importance of the words we use when it comes to embracing a position of power in relation to the noise How to identify clear and simple actions you COULD take next

The Return to Serenity Island (Responding to the Fog of Noise) We might know the fog is there when we are unable to see the path ahead. It leaves us struggling for a sense of direction, and it can cause us to lose our feeling of belonging on the map altogether.

We might be waiting for it to blow over, or we might be fighting it in an effort to ‘just keep moving’ at all costs.

But the noise keeps coming. And life seems to be happening around us, as we drift like passive observers rather than active participants.

It's time to become a playful participant in your own adventure story again.

What is waiting for you beyond the fog? I want to invite you on an adventure. It's time to connect with the beauty of your unconventional life, and begin writing the next chapter of your story.

What part do you want to play in your story of being and becoming?

Learn more about The Return to Serenity Island Course here.

https://youtu.be/PbVupRUc7o8

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This is the second part of the series, Beyond The Noise: Respond to Life’s Clutter On YOUR Serene and Creative Frequency series.

In last week's episode we looked at 'Feedback Loops' and how external sensory information can become overwhelming noise. We also thought about the biggest sources of noise for us right now.

In this part we will consider the way we respond to the second question I recently asked subscribers to my newsletter..."What is one thing that would make you feel more serene about your noisy situation?"

I am interested to explore how we approach our response to this question. Where do we position our sense of power in relation to life's noise?

Are we in a place of personal empowerment? Where we are able to identify what we want and are able to do to address the noise. Are we feeling disempowered? Defining the "one thing that would make us feel better" as something outside our control. For example a change in someone else's behaviour or a lottery win. Or are we somewhere in between? Knowing what we can't change and telling ourselves we need to accept and be at peace with that. But without a plan to take ourselves away from the source of noise.

In this part of the series we look into the default position to which we tend to jump. We will consider ways in which we can change the stories we tell ourselves so we can recalibrate and re-orientate ourselves in relation to the challenging situations and people that cause us stress. Do you recognise one or more of these default reactions?

Other people just need to grow up and change I need to suck it up and just get over myself I should just keep doing what makes them happy for now...eventually I'm bound to be given the chance to do what I want to do I just need to know I'm doing the best I can Let's just see how it all pans out - it'll probably blow over eventually Someone should do something about this, it's outrageous! I need to find someone who will protect or rescue me

We will think about where these positions might come from, and how we might begin changing the story if the current one is no longer serving us. Inner Clutter From Prohibitions and Injunctions We might also use internal clutter words like 'ought to', 'should', and 'must' as well as their negative inversions, 'ought not', 'shouldn't', and 'must not', to attempt driving action. But these lead us to feel disempowered and overwhelmed about our situations.

In the next part we will use a simple technique to turn these clutter words inside out. And transform how we frame the actions we will choose to take in the face of noise into calming, powerful, and highly imaginable possibilities that feel good and exciting to us. A Voice of My Own At the end of this episode I share a recent guest post that Sophia wrote on The Haven blog.

You can read it here: A Voice of My Own.

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In this episode I introduce the first part of a mini series I'll share over the next few weeks. It has emerged out of our dive into the latest Haven theme of Serenity and a couple of questions I asked through my newsletter.

During November I invited readers to share the biggest source of noise in their life right now. And to identify one thing that would make them feel more serene about the situation. It was interesting to see such a diverse set of responses to both questions.

My conclusion...wow the world is noisy for a lot of us right now and the noise is coming from all angles!

I really wanted to do something positive to respond to it. Which is where this short series has come from. Beyond the Noise: Respond to Life's Clutter On YOUR Serene and Creative Frequency

In the series we explore the source of noise, the cost of noise, and the position WE WANT to choose in response to it. It's about nurturing more serenity for ourselves by becoming more aware of and cultivating an empowered relationship with the noise in our lives.

We will identify some of the default scripts that we might run in response to overwhelm and clutter. So that we can put ourselves in the driving seat with our fingers on the buttons and dials of life.

All in light of the Serenity Prayer, which reminds us to accept the things we can't control (a lot of inner noise comes from thoughts and feelings related to this), find the courage to change the things we can (the things we CAN do in response to noise might not always occur to us), and nurture the wisdom to know the difference. In this first part we explore:

The sort of noise that starts outside of us and how it can cause a disturbance, often without our awareness How we inadvertently create feedback loops that give rise to an inner fogginess and inability to see with the clarity we desire Where the greatest sources of noise are for us right now What to do when we can't just 'turn off the noise' (and why serenity is not life without noise) The looping stories we tell ourselves when the noise becomes internal clutter, and how we might recognise them when they arrive through tales of guilt, shame, envy, and resentment What might happen if we allow our Noise Stories to dictate our actions

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After 20 years as a practicing therapist, Annie Schuessler knew it was time to close her private practice and change her focus. She recognised the early signs of burnout and the alignment between her work and her values had shifted.

She decided it was time to support other therapists and healers build their own sustainable practices. So she turned her full focus to business coaching and started creating services to mentor other Rebel Therapists in running their businesses in ways that feel great to them and their values.

I am delighted to have Annie on the podcast. She was an absolute delight to speak with, and I'm excited to share the conversation with you.

Rebellion and Serenity This is another episode that resonates with 'Serenity', which is the theme we are diving into around The Haven this month.

Annie sees rebellion as a compass for finding our best path. This parallels the idea of serenity as 'belonging to oneself'.

Gentle rebellion is not an indiscriminate antagonism or a blanket rejection of other ideas or people. Rather it is an awareness of what matters to us at our core.

Annie describes rebellion as adventure, exploration, and interest in what comes next. And a Rebel Therapist as a healer who wants to find their best path. This means building on the work of our mentors and influences, without necessarily following their way of doing things.

Rebellion is the courage to stop hiding ourselves.

Serenity is the point of convergence, where our core self integrates with the choices we make and the actions we take.

While she focuses on supporting therapists and healers in her work, Annie's insights are universally relevant to so many other areas of the human experience. This is definitely a conversation for quietly creative souls who desire meaning beyond the common metrics of success. During our conversation we covered a range of topics including:

Why we often gravitate towards the bland and boring options - and what question to ask ourselves if we really want to access our own core truths What people often get wrong when thinking about the 'vision' for their business, project, or life (and how to approach it instead) The importance of getting comfortable with discomfort, especially when it comes to letting go of pleasing everyone Why we should see marketing as so much more than selling (and how we can add value to the world THROUGH it) Managing energy and actions in order to avoid burnout as independent creators and small business owners The sources of burnout to be aware of and how to create a plan that guards against it How to get off the Hamster Wheel of Tactics and Strategy - the importance of being intentional with the inspiring, cool, and compelling ideas we see other people using (how Annie filters options to make the best decisions) What we can ask ourselves if we want to stop hiding and bring our inner-rebellion out into the world And much more...

Over to You What are your takeaways from this episode? What stood out to you? What were any "hmm interesting" or "aha!" moments? Leave your response in the comments below. Links: Annie's Website: https://rebeltherapist.me Twitter: @AnnieS_Therapy Instagram: @annieschuessler

If you want to continue the conversation and hear more of my takeaways you can listen to the Extended Play Private Podcast over on Patreon.com/AndyMort

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How do calmness, gentleness, and serenity pose a threat to the modern world?

This might sound like a strange question to ask. But in this week's episode we explore the subversive and even potentially destructive power of the 'softer' side of things.

We will examine the innate tug of war between our desire for inner peace and our restless drive to shake things up. And we are thinking about where serenity and calmness fit in relation to our creative ambitions, as well as our relationship with change, growth, and personal development.

Reasons to Feel Hopeful I would love to make this a playful and positive exploration of these ideas. And I want you to feel calm, and energised after listening to the podcast. Despite the state of things right now, there are still many reasons to feel hopeful and peaceful.

We are humans. We are creative beings. And as such we are have extraordinary capacity for unimaginable things.

If we use our capacity and potential in expansive and loving ways through this kind of fierce calmness, gentleness, and serenity, we will always find the cracks where the light gets in. And we really need gentle rebels to be channelling light through those cracks right now! In the episode we will dive into some of this stuff...

Serenity as the integration between our values and our actions, and how we can use this to avoid getting blown about by fads, fashions, and panic Why anxiety, resentment, loneliness, urgency, and a feeling of precariousness are all part of the plan to get us to act against our best interests How we might begin to recognise the smoke and mirrors that keep us all on edge, and expand our spirit of action from a place of calm intentionality The importance of 'self-belonging' as the foundation for deeper awareness, clarity, and confidence about the important things How we can enjoy our dissatisfaction by replacing our consumer spirit with a creative spirit Why there will always be another song, poem, or book to write, another conversation to have, another occasion to celebrate, and another death to mourn How the presence of an object always reveals its inadequacy, while its absence allows us to find it satisfying (From Todd McGowan's book, Capitalism and Desire) Why serenity, calmness, and gentleness are disruptors to the energy of urgency, scarcity, and reactive volatility that keeps us hunting for 'The One'...what if there is no 'One'? The importance of looking beneath the surface levels of life so we can treat the source not the symptom Why Highly Sensitive People might need permission that says, "don't just do something, pause and take a breath"

If you have any thoughts to share on this episode you can leave a comment below or get in touch on social media. Please do share it with anyone you think will find it encouraging or helpful.

You can listen to the Extended Play Episode over on Patreon: patreon.com/andymort

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In this week's podcast I speak with the author Bill Allen, who wrote 'Confessions of a Sensitive Man'; a book reflecting on aspects of his life as a highly sensitive person. Through his work Bill wants to raise awareness and help others (especially men) understand, accept, and integrate the depths of who they truly are.

It was great to chat with Bill about some of the joys and challenges that we both experience as highly sensitive people in the world today.

Sensory Processing Sensitivity is a trait found in over 100 species, and makes up a fifth of the human population. Despite misconceptions, high sensitivity is about more than being highly emotional. It plays a cautionary role in evolutionary terms and is systematically baked into humankind as a way to identify and warn of potential risks and sources of harm in the world around us. High sensitivity is defined by Elaine Aron through the acronym, D.O.E(e).S: Depth of Processing HSPs take information and grind it down in order to get every bit of data out of it (both consciously and unconsciously). They have a deep sensory experience of the world. This can sometimes lead to rumination and 'overthinking'. Overstimulation HSPs usually have an open aperture for picking up sensory data. They let a lot of information in and this can result in overstimulation when they're out in the world all the time. They require regular down time to recalibrate before getting back out there again. Empathy HSPs have a deep capacity for empathy through highly active mirror neurones. This can influence and colour interactions as HSPs absorb the moods and feelings of those around them. Emotional Reactivity HSPs are often easily affected and moved by things happening in and around them. Sensory Acuity/Subtleties HSPs often pick up environmental sensory information that others might not. This 'nuancing' ability allows HSPs to find things around them and make connections. This is also a big reason many artists and creative people are highly sensitive. The Aperture of High Sensitivity We might think of high sensitivity like a camera lens. A longer shutter time and wider aperture means more data is absorbed. This leads to noticing more and the risk of overexposure and overwhelm from the inward flow of information.

With a naturally wider aperture, Highly Sensitive People need regular downtime in order to internally recalibrate, process, and re-charge. Take Your Comfort Zone With You Humans instinctively move towards pleasure and away from pain. When we experience a strong emotional response to something it can become overwhelming and feel out of our control.

Bill and I talked about the role the 'comfort zone' has when it comes to our relationship with growth (and quitting things) as highly sensitive people. He encourages us to think of our comfort zone as something that expands with us.

There are always going to be uncomfortable and imperfect things that we need to do in life. For highly sensitive people it's important to nurture a safe relationship with the comfort zone. It's important to find ways to let go and absorb these things rather than quitting what truly matters. Quitting vs Giving Up This highlights a difference between 'quitting' and 'giving up'. These words are not definitive descriptions, but they can highlight an important distinction between two types of letting go.

Quitting is an intentional and active decision to let go of something that you know isn't right for you. Giving up is letting go of something that is important to you (a decision you know you might lament and regret later on).

In this sense, quitting is an intentional and informed choice to let go of something that doesn't fit your broader vision for life. Whereas giving up is an emotional reaction in order to avoid/stop a fear or pain. Using Deadlines and Boundaries When we experience fear we instinctively want to eliminate the source of it.

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What is the difference between help and support?

I'd not really given it much thought until a few weeks ago. After a surge of website traffic to it, I was curious to revisit this old blog post I wrote about asking for help as an introvert.

I was prompted to consider my relationship with the words help and support. I think I've often used them interchangeably, but wonder if there's merit in separating them in my mind. Especially when we allow ourselves to really think about what we need in order to become who we are becoming.

Do We Actually Need 'Help'? The word 'support' comes from the Latin supportare "convey, carry, bring up, bring forward." Formed of sub (up from under) + portare (to carry).

In other words, we might think of support as underpinning something in some way.

Think of supporting a sports team, a favourite artist, or an organisation/cause. Your support doesn't necessarily assist directly in the success of the thing. You don't DO the thing (ie take part in putting on the show). But through a sacrifice of time, money, care etc, your investment supports the thing. Your presence makes a difference.

A 'true' supporter will be there through thick and thin. Even if their team gets relegated or their favourite band puts out a 'bad' album, they will stand by them. The investment goes deeper.

This is different from help, which is characterised by its particularity. When we give or receive help we know what needs to be done for a particular outcome. It is defined by words like aid, assist, rescue, serve, relieve, advise, and cure.

In this week's podcast I dive into the differences between help and support. And reflect on the potential implications of a world where we confuse the two.

I share some of the misunderstandings I've seen in certain approaches to coaching. And why the word 'help' can lead to unhelpful expectations and practices. We will consider what happens when we see 'help' as a primary function, and how it might do a disservice to ourselves and those around us. In this episode I also discuss:

Why it's not always necessary to ask for 'help' The importance of under-standing those we support (to be present in the midst of something or someone) Ways in which an emphasis on 'personal responsibility' has replaced vital collective structures of well-being and support What to look out for when picking the most appropriate coach for you The role of power when it comes to giving and receiving help (and how our desire to help may not be received in the way we expect) Why telling people what to do might not be the most supportive course of action, even if it was the route to our own achievement

One-to-One Support I know as we navigate this period of the pandemic, there is a potential to either rush big decisions (just do something) or to hide from them (wake me up when the nightmare's over). I want to give you the space and time to really explore who you are becoming. And to identify how to do that in a way that feels good and most right to YOU.

Would you like to explore the possibilities? Send me a message below.

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We're taking a little detour in this week's podcast. I've just published the Introduction to Belonging episode over on the Haven, and didn't want to overwhelm the world with loads more talking here.

So we're taking a trip to Serenity Island, which was actually inspired by that conversation on Belonging with Lindsay-Celeste and Kendra Patterson. I have been thinking about one idea in particular, which came up in our discussion...

Soft Edges We talked about the role of boundaries and defined edges in creating safety and belonging in communities.

I hadn't considered before how much The Return to Serenity Island is all about nurturing these soft edges that give our life definition which provide the conditions for "inside-out" growth. Edges help us know what to let in and what to keep out. Our world is so full of noise and attention-seeking information. These things can creep up like a fog without us noticing.

It might take some kind of sudden wake-up call to force us to see how far we've drifted.

This could be a collective event like a pandemic. Or it could come from an experience in our personal life, like a relationship breakdown, job loss, health crisis, or the death of a loved one.

This jolt, whatever its cause can be really frightening. It can cause a feeling of alarming uncertainty and instability.

So how do we pick up the pieces when confronted with such a moment?

The Return to Serenity Island helps us avoid the temptation to seek a 'return to normality'. Choosing instead to think about the aspects of life we truly want to grow from the inside out.

I want to take you on a short tour around the island where we will briefly explore these core areas of potential change. We are going to visit:

The Lodge (your bubble of safety, comfort, and rest) The Owl Park Campsite (home of your most important relationships) The Lake of Tranquility (slow down, relax, and take care of your emotional well-being) The Curiosity Caves (nurture and expand your intellectual well-being) The Movement Falls (take care of the various aspects of your physical well-being) The Mystery Mountains (step outside of the doing-ness and into the being-ness of life) The Overlook Treehouses (nurture your relationship with younger generations in your life and the world at large) The Forest of Plenty (get a sense of your what wealth means for you and your life) The Peninsula of Purpose (build your body of work and become mindful of your approach to building life on sustainable foundations) Two Ships Bridge (nurture, explore, and discover possibilities for your intimate relationships) Play Trail Maze (get lost along corridors and magical tunnels of creativity and play)

If you'd like to explore more of Serenity Island with me then you can learn more about the full course at serenityisland.me

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Do you ever leave notes for yourself?

I use the Evernote Scratch Pad to record thoughts that pop into my head when I'm busy. They're usually a couple of words, a sentence, or a quote that I've heard.

I intend to process the 'inbox' daily so that I can expand on them for the sake of my future self. But I usually forget.

I took a look at my messy digital brain zone a few days ago (I wanted a fresh writing prompt). And I found this:

"When it comes to life there is no way to win, but there are ways to lose more meaningfully…" (September 4th, 08:06am)

Umm ok, sure!

Judging by the time I think I was probably making a coffee at the time #CoffeeThoughts

In this week's Extended Play Episode I talk about the deep yearning I felt when taking this photo, watching the sun disappear beyond the horizon

I LOVE finding notes I don't remember writing.

As much as anything, it's a great reminder that context matters. Oh, and that I should definitely process my idea inbox a lot more regularly!

Something might seem glaringly obvious and true in its moment of recording. But come to it two weeks later and I'm flummoxed. What was I thinking? What was going on in my head? What On Earth Was I Thinking? It's like waking up from a vivid dream. You think 'there is absolutely no way I could ever forget this'. Because in that moment it feels SO concrete and impossible to lose. But an hour later when you try to recall it, BANG! It's completely gone. And you may have absolutely no clue what the dream was even vaguely about.

Well here's our clue. At least we have SOMETHING to go on... "When it comes to life there is no way to win, but there are ways to lose more meaningfully" I want to use this podcast as a treasure map. Let's see if we can take that clue and build on it as we navigate my brain-scape. We will dig for any nuggets that might be lurking beneath the surface. On our mini quest we explore the following:

How we get caught hacking at the thicket when we could take the clearer path towards creative and personal breakthroughs Why "the work is often a lot easier than we tend to make it" My re-discovery of painting and its reminder of a particular time of relational flow I experienced with my grandparents when I was a child Why the day after your birthday (birth anniversary, not literal birthday - though it probably still applies), might feel like the worst day of the year The very real grief that comes from achieving goals and accomplishing meaningful pursuits How winning can become a tragedy if we don't understand its cost - and why feeling sad in the midst of success does not make you ungrateful or selfish Why despite appearances, this is all a source of great joy and meaning in life

Links Mentioned: Join The Haven and get a free 45 minute writing consultation with Kendra The Public Courtyard (sign up for free for future happenings, events, and workshops) Extended Play Episode - You Can't Fill The Hole In a Yearning Soul

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In this week's podcast I am joined by screenwriter, director, and producer, Helen Rollins.

I came across Helen's work through her collaborations with Peter Rollins who I have been reading and following for many years.

I wanted to chat with Helen about some of the concepts I've seen her explore through her films and heard her talk about on her podcast (The Lack). She has particular interests in psychoanalysis, continental philosophy and film and literature from the French and Spanish-speaking world.

Yes, this is one of those kind of episodes! And I love it!

The Ideology of Promise What comes to mind when you hear the term 'Ideology of Promise'?

Does it sound familiar?

Helen talks about 'Ideology of Promise' as a way to describe the air we breathe under the clouds of modern capitalism.

We've all experienced it. In fact, we swim through it every day.

It's the message that keeps us holding to the future promise of wholeness and completeness, if we can eliminate the obstacles that holds us back from achieving our desires.

Wrapped up in this ideology is a simple (unspeakable and hidden) truth...the lack can never be filled. Even when we acquire an object of desire, it soon becomes apparent that it fails to fulfil its promise of true satisfaction. Bad Infinity I was recently struck by a TV advert that seemed to capture the essential characteristics at the heart of this Ideology of Promise. The advert shows a well-dressed attractive man driving through empty sun-kissed streets in a generic city down-town. He stops for a short photo shoot in a sparse warehouse studio before he gets back in the car and drives on.

This is underlaid by epic string-driven electronic, lens flare, and these words... "For me one of the best things about life is that we keep moving forward. I love that we're constantly evolving. We progress. Every day we discover exciting new technologies. Redefine who we are and how we want to lead our lives. Basically we choose what we want our future to look like...so what's yours going to be?" Yes I know, most car adverts are complete nonsense. But something about this one really grabbed me. The music, the aesthetic, the pacing, yes. The warm fuzzy feeling...Yes! The warm fuzzy feeling.

On the surface this seems fine. It feels like it's delivering some comforting words of reassuring truth about the future.

And yet, beneath that surface it's unsettling. It's not reassuring or comforting. It speaks to the heart of this ideology of promise. Bad infinity and unattainable satisfaction. The never-ending growth towards nothing. There is no foothold. Nothing to grab hold of. Anxiety and Empty Progression It pokes our fantasy. This life, this car along these streets, this aesthetic, freedom and attention. But it presents us with a utopia, which can't exist.

The utopian future world, where the roads are empty, we are gliding through the streets in with silent ease, alone. The sunset glow gently through the window, as we gaze into the rear view mirror to see a perfectly sculpted face, flawless smile, and eyes that could melt a thousand suns. And these words reverberate around our isolated world...

Keep moving forward. Constantly evolve and progress. Discover new technologies and redefine who you are. Choose what you want your future to look like.

In other words, never stop progressing...

Progressing towards what?

Towards the ever present itch that can't be scratched. In the podcast Helen (and "I") discuss:

The nature of lack and excess in our lives as subjective beings of language The positive side of our propensity as humans to excessively over-invest in things Utopia as the fantasy created by the shadow of our 'enemy' (and why belief in utopia sustains misery) The transcendental disappointment of success, and how we are sustained by the satisfaction of failure The holy matrimony of Productivity and Creativity under the eye of The Ideology of Promis...

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7 years is a funny length of time. A lot can change. But it also disappears in a flash.

It feels like a meaningful timespan too. I’m not sure why.

Maybe it was ingrained through school (like many things). Primary School goes from ages 4-11 and Secondary School/Sixth Form from 11-18. Years of formidable (and somewhat unimaginable) change and formation, at both half time (the first 7 years) and full time (the second 7 years).

I’ve been in a reflective mood this week. Perhaps even more than usual...after it dawned on me that it’s seven years since the first version of The Haven landed in the world. It started in June 2014 as a clumsy area behind a paywall on my main website (called Sheep Dressed Like Wolves back then). The ‘SDLW Members Haven’ was a clunky experiment. At a relatively early stage in what has become a rapid development of membership platforms and plugins.

The seven year realisation conjures a whole mixture of feelings. So much has changed since that first version. The screenshots and videos are pretty funny to look back at.

The Turtle Head of Shame Yet at another level I have noticed some shame poking its little green wrinkly head out of its shell. I heard a critical voice saying, “you’ve been doing this for 7 YEARS...the dream hasn't really happened has it? If this was going to succeed it would have done so by now, don't you think?”

“Yeah maybe I SHOULD pull the plug on it”, I think to myself, accepting this pretty calm judgement as valid. “Hold on”, I pull myself out of my daze. “What’s the dream again?”

“Oh it’s worse than I thought!” My inner critic exclaims. “Please tell me there's a dream...a plan!? What’s wrong with you man! Look around you. Everyone else has it sorted. They’re accomplishing personal, work, health, business, community, family goals left, right, and centre. And what are you doing? Wasting your life. You’re an embarrassment.”

Whoa, alright mate, where did that come from!?

I’ve noticed that my shame gets loud (a bubbling tunnel vision feeling that rises through my stomach) when I’m talking to particular people about ‘progress’. It jumps in with responses about numbers, progress, and the reassurance of future success.

My shame leaves me talking about things that don't drive me as if they're all I care about. It's desperate to fit in with the assumptions, demands, and expectations of an ‘up and to the right’ world.

It doesn't care about the true joy I get, often from how things already are. And it doesn't believe that I'm generally pretty happy without constantly striving for another magical destination.

I enjoy experimenting more than accomplishing. Seeing what happens and iterating as I go. I prefer finding a steady rhythm more than chasing after big goals. And I have absolutely no desire to be famous, rich, or in control of anyone else’s life. That's someone else's dream. I don't know where I picked it up. ...Oh wow, that felt freeing to write. By recognising ‘The Dream’ that doesn’t belong to me, I have space to think about what is actually important to me. “I suppose you can say that if somebody doesn’t spread themselves too much they can have a more solid and enduring and established success, and if that had been what I wanted, which it never has been, then I shouldn’t have tried so many different things. But I’ve been always more interested in experiment than in accomplishment” - Orson Welles This quote really resonates with me. It's as true within our endeavours as it is across the sphere of our endeavours.

'Society' provides us with measures for solid and established success. This is the default ‘Dream’. The most efficient route to the highest measurable result.

We know what accomplishment is supposed to look like. We frame our questions and responses around it. And we see experimentation, not as an end in itself, but as a tool in the pursuit of the overall dream.

But what if it's the joy of experimenting and not the accomplishing th...

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In this week's episode I am joined by Helena Roth, the gentle rebel behind tankespjarn.com.

You may well be wondering what "Tankespjärn" means. While there isn't a concrete definition, it should begin to take root and make sense as you listen to our conversation.

Helena has been on a long journey towards inner gentleness. She describes the place she has reached today as gentle with an edge. This resonated strongly with the concept of gentle rebellion.

For Helena, gentleness appeared to be the only effective response to the harsh internal dialogue which she describes as a mash-up of Hitler, Mao, and Stalin.

She says: "You do gentle. Then you add “the edge”, which for me, is tankespjärn."

Descriptive Not Prescriptive Tankespjärn is a description of something that we all experience. It's found in the opening or invitation to experience a shift. Not enforced from an external source but through an inner electric surge. Where something ignites and a new possibility or perspective is seeded.

Like me, Helena takes a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to writing, coaching, and creativity. Rather than providing one-size-fits-all blueprints and models, we carry an intuitive connection to this idea of tankespjärn.

Helena says that "when you’re faced with Tankespjärn, there’s a choice. To step away from the possibility, or to step into it. But it sure is hard to forget about that door, leading to the unknown; the knowledge of which will, once revealed, always stay with you, even if you chose to let the door slam shut without entering.

What is tankespjärn for one, might not be for another. They aren’t necessarily universal or general, but rather personal and specific. What makes me go Huh? might not cause even the slightest ripple within you, and vice versa."

I have experienced it over and over in my life. It's nice to put a name to it. "Certainty is a closing of the mind, to create the new requires doubt" - Milton Glazer In this episode we talk about:

What 'tankespjärn' means, and how Helena discovered it as a perfect personal philosophy How to find your 'edge' and what it looks like to walk along it in life Learning gentleness and how to stick with it when we make errors Seeing gentleness as a shock absorber which can help us roll with the punches of life Why we are both fans of descriptive rather than prescriptive approaches to blogging and business The sources of our current 'epidemic of harshness' (and the potential antidotes to it) How certainty and anxiety rise together, and what can happen when we drop our certainty statements and changing our language The infectiousness of culture (how we can be more intentional in order to create a gentler and less harsh world) Why it's OK to not have (or share) your opinion How your enjoyment doesn't detract from my suffering (and why it's important to share what feels good rather than staying silent) The ways we shape and create our own reality with the people and stories we surround ourselves How adversity is often the fertile ground of connection, beauty, and art What to do with your desire to make a positive imprint (and how to use this in conjunction with your approach to social media) How to curate healthy filters of input and output in order to build an energising creative rhythm

Connect With Helena Twitter: @HERO_Respondi

Instagram: @helenaroth

Website: tankespjarn.com Over to You Have you experienced tankespjärn recently? What is it inviting you towards? I'd love to hear your response in the comments below.

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Like many of us, Chris Brock has spent a lot of his life trying to work out what he was 'supposed to do' with it. He followed the expected path through life, pursuing what he had thought he ought to.

But there was a creeping dread, underpinned by a drift towards places he never set out to go. Places he wouldn't have chosen. And his life became haunted by questions we may recognise..."Where have I gone wrong? What have I DONE wrong?"

During a particularly low period Chris' wife made an observation, which stirred something deep inside him. "Every time we go out I feel like I have to cheer you up".

Something clicked for Chris. He realised he didn't want to be like that with those he loved. And he started to explore the possibility that life didn't HAVE to be like that.

So alongside his wife, Chris took gentle steps inwards, where he became aware of his self-narrative. And through this period of deep introspection he found practices that helped him gradually return to his core sense of being.

It was not easy, but instead of continuing to run or hide from them, Chris turned to face his inner roadblocks and demons. Over time they began to crumble and allow him to see beyond them.

He shifted from feeling like an observing subject of his life, to the person in the driving seat. And he felt more integrated and connected to what was actually meaningful. Rather than following the scent of all he had been told he was supposed to find meaningful. The Red Flag of Resentment Resentment develops when it feels like the world is conspiring against us. Chris talks about developing resentment awareness.

Resentment becomes a self-fuelling emotion because when it fuels our interactions we ill-treat people, and they react badly.

He had noticed himself creating more of a world worth resenting by mistreating people he believed possessed what he deserved. He operated from a place of scarcity and shame. And from that he built a reality that gave him more reason to feel those things. The Flow of the Junction Where do you recognise resentment showing up for you?

Chris noticed it when he was driving. Through the stories he would tell himself about those driving nicer cars than him. He would actively avoid letting such drivers out of junctions. Potentially provoking the kind of angry reaction that would reinforce the story that people like them don't deserve the things they have.

When resentment prompts us to stop letting people out at the proverbial junctions of life, we block deeper part of ourselves from growing.

If we choose to let our resentment dictate our action, we turn off the tap that allows our expansive creative energy to flow through the core of our being.

This is damaging to us as individuals, and can have a cascading impact on society.

Unfortunately however, resentment is the fuel on which a lot of modern society runs. It drives us to accumulate, to envy, to fear, to embrace scarcity, urgency, and distrust. It drives us to feel like we are on the receiving end of injustice and unfairness, and that other people are getting the things to which we are more entitled.

People who complain a lot often have a lot of things to complain about. People who are gentle and hold lightly to things that go 'wrong' don't have much to complain about. Not because things go right, but because they hold things differently. Sonder and Radical Non-Judgement Sonder was a term coined by John Koenig on The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It puts a name to the realisation that each random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as our own. Everyone has a subjective experience of the world, populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited quirks.

Unique memories, experiences, and traumas, which write an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground. With elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that we will never know existed,...

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Emily Agnew is the founder of SustainablySensitive.com, where she supports sensitive people through Focusing and Inner-Bonding practices. She is also a professional musician having auditioned and performed at the highest level.

One of the characteristics on Elaine Aron's HSP self-test says, "When I must compete or be observed while performing a task, I become so nervous or shaky that I do much worse than I would otherwise."

Emily and I both relate to this within our experiences as musicians.

For Emily auditions have created difficult to manage adrenaline spikes, and for me I have experienced it in live performance settings. Even when I'm not overly nervous, the release of stress hormones can lead to physiological reactions that make performing difficult.

In this week's Extended Play episode I talk about specific examples of times when I've become so shaky that it's been impossible for me to play my instrument. And I share some of my own trial and error practices that have worked for me over the years.

You might be wondering what this image has to do with this week's episode. To be honest it didn't come out as I hoped - it was supposed to our inner selves and the anxiety that comes when the wrong characters occupy inappropriate places in the car. Except, they both look like they're having fun. Maybe it has a meaning that I'm not yet aware of. That's why I'm not changing it...well, that and the fact that I can't be bothered to re-do it! In our conversation Emily and I talk about:

How performance anxiety and overwhelm can impact us in highly stimulating environments How to develop practices that root sustainable energy in everyday life, and keep us grounded in an intense spike situation (such as an audition or performance) Psycho-physical reactions to stress and what I might be telling myself when I get sore throats before gigging Inner Relationship Focussing - how Emily helps clients to create inner space for healthy self-awareness and engagement How the tiny traumas of everyday life leaves hermetically sealed fragments of our 'selves' steering the vehicle of our lives, like ghosts stuck in a state of limbo How focussing our inner relationship helps get the different 'selves' in the right position to drive life more sustainably Why sensitive people might struggle to speak clearly to the needs underneath the emotions they feel so deeply The importance of working with someone else who can help us ask ourselves the right questions and discover answers beyond our default thought patterns

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

SustainablySensitive.com Focusing.org focusingresources.com breath-body-mind.com SerenityIsland.me

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Leah Burkhart is the founder of The Healthy Sensitive, where she shares her experience and expertise as a certified health and wellness coach, nutritionist, and educator.

It's always a pleasure to chat with Leah. There were a few things in particular that I've been reflecting on since the conversation. In particular... The Erosion of External Boundaries The huge advancements in technology have provided great benefits in many areas of life. But they have also created huge challenges that we might not fully appreciate. One of those challenges is the increased accessibility and decreased external limits.

The good news is, there is nothing stopping us. The bad news is, there is nothing stopping us.

Making things an issue of 'personal responsibility' can sometimes be an unfair burden to put on other people (and ourselves).

I discuss this more in the Extended Play Episode that I recorded afterwards over on Patreon. In the conversation we also talk about:

Becoming self-aware about the nature of our motivations and 'pulls' (Leah says she can be like a wolf howling at the moon and one slumbering under a willow tree) Noticing what grounds and roots us, and the things that make us tick in our creativity and business The characteristics of sustainability in business and life (how to design things more intentionally) What work we would do even if we didn't get paid (and what to do when the money conversation feels uncomfortable) The cycle of creativity and recognising the threshold at which craft can move to the professional level (without compromising work or relationships) How price = value (when you charge for something it has a psychological impact on their relationship with it - they engage with and value it more) The relevance of the saying that 'the bigger the tool, the greater the shadow' in the world of business and marketing The different types of communication (passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and assertive) and how assertive communication is a gift to ourselves and other people What our own resentment can tell us about the boundaries we need to implement and honour Identifying the areas we are GOOD at holding boundaries Leaning into discomfort by implementing re-charging and generative practices (and how this translates between personal and business life) Mustering up the courage to be disliked (replacing the need to be liked with the desire to truly support others) The nature of 'toxic sensitivity' and how it allows people to hide behind it as some kind of 'diagnosis' and excuse Work-Life Balance, Integration, and Disintegration - and how technological advancements and a lack of external limitations can lead us to anxiety and burnout Why personal responsibility is not always a helpful thing to have on your shoulders (there is always more that could be done and nothing stopping you from doing it) How the value of old style vacations has been eroded (and why it's so hard to truly switch off and implement meaningful boundaries) The way business health and personal health relate, interact, and weave in and around one another (and how to keep them healthily separate)

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Brandon Bennett is a sensitive adventurer. His desire to nurture a slow and intentional pace of life led him on a recent move from Austin to Costa Rica.

Brandon supports creative and visionary leaders around the world. Through his coaching programmes, public speaking, and writing, he encourages these types of gentle rebels to clear out the noise, listen to what their heart might be saying, and connect with their unique gifts in order to leave the world positively affected by their presence in it.

I love Brandon's presence and energy. He is such a joy to chat with, and I hope that comes across in our conversation.

Brandon and I explore a range of topics including:

How Brandon ended up moving from Austin to Costa Rica (without being able to visit first) The way seeds for life-change can take a while to take root and grow shoots How to listen out for the energetic voice that says "yes" to big changes (and why, even if we 'miss the call', there's plenty more where that came from) What it means for Brandon to live a 'peacefully productive' life, and the importance of crafting an intentional relationship with technology and efficiency Why joy is not found in fitting more in, even though we might believe just because we CAN fit more in we SHOULD The Emotional Mind-Body Connection - and how to prepare for the "opportunities to have our peace disturbed" in a healthy and empowered way What I've noticed in the faces of joyful sports fans...and how it looks like when there's a discrepancy between our inner emotional experience of a situation, and the emotional expression that occurs when we process it through particular social filters The importance of listening out for the inner message that tells us, "I'm not supposed to feel that"...and becoming aware of what that leads us to do next How new physiological patterns cannot be thought into existence, but brought into existence by a real experience in the moment

Connect with Brandon through his website here: https://brandonbennett.com/ Over to You Have you ever experienced a strong inner nudge to shift something major in your life? How long did it take between the seed being planted and the journey coming into fruition? I'd love to hear your response in the comments below or on social media.

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In her book, Introvert Power, Laurie Helgoe talks about the idea of a 'flâneur'. Someone who would saunter about, observing society at a slow pace. It became fashionable in the 19th Century to take your tortoise around town for a walk.

I love the idea of bringing slowness to everyday life. And using external limits as tools to help us.

Earlier this week I took a stroll along the promenade in Lee-on-the-Solent, a small town on the south coast of England. I saw these beach huts (sheds) and thought I'd get a photo. Something appealed to me about the contrasting characters and layering of the scene.

As I was getting ready to take the shot I could see a four-wheel scooter approaching the right of my peripheral vision. It was driven by a man and he had a furry companion with him. “I wonder what sort of dog that is, it looks quite cute”, I thought to myself.

I focussed harder to get a better look.

“Wait, that’s not a dog. That’s…an owl.”

It was the last thing I expected to see and it absolutely made my day.

Was this a modern day flâneur? Taking his owl for a ride. A beautiful demonstration of slow living and gentle rebellion.

When you adopt an experimental rather than conceptual approach to life, things often don't pan out as you might imagine. They come to be through an evolving and surprising series of happenings. What Feels Right About The 'Mistake'? Creativity requires openness. And it's an organic process.

Once the seed is planted, anything can happen. All we can do is nurture and allow it to grow.

When seeds begin to sprout we might be surprised by what they are. Not the species we thought we'd planted. But rather than thinking, "oh no, it's wrong", pulling it up, and starting again, we can see what's right about the 'mistake'.

Adaptation to surprise is where creative innovation happens. It's also where life is lived. The liminal space between expectation and the calm quiet truth that resides in the spaces, gaps, and silences. Slowness as a Gentle Rebellion The travelling owl looked like a scene from The Straight Story. The tale of Alvin Straight, who travelled 240 miles on a ride on lawnmower to visit his dying brother.

I love the film. It has a sense of enforced slowness to it. The limits are not chosen. They are inherent in the mode of transport.

The journey cannot be efficient. It's can't be fast. We are brought along as viewers, to experience the adventure unfolding in the space around the slow beating rhythm. Our desire to 'get there' encounters a shift in focus, from the 'there' to the 'getting'.

This is gentle rebellion in action. It emerges from the awareness to which our quiet rhythms give rise. Surprised But Not Shocked It's often said, "I was shocked but not surprised", when something bad happens.

I want to be in more situations where "I am surprised, but not shocked".

Moments of surprise are moments that root us in awareness. A reminder that we are awake and alive. It brings us into the present.

When you're expecting a dog and it turns out to be an owl, the line between expectation and reality is blurred. And those moments become meaningful and memorable. Not shocking. But beautifully surprising.

Embracing the joy of surprise means letting go of the desire to control. You can't be surprised on purpose. It only happens when you're not expecting it.

It requires us to be open, receptive, and ready to embrace whatever curiosities pass across our proverbial field of vision.

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Hey! How's the weather where you are?

The traffic was pretty light on my journey over here, which was nice. Have you been reading anything this week?

I have. Here's something from a book I'm exploring: "Small talk is just a way of matching the other person’s tone and mood. It helps them be comfortable with you." It really got me thinking...

Small talk is one of those stereotypical areas of struggle for introverts.

We like deep conversations. And apparently we might not always "see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries".

I had my introvert 'aha!' moment back in 2010. In the article that helped me understand myself in light of that label, Carl King wrote, "introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days".

I often find small talk awkward, uncomfortable, and clunky. It seems like an unnecessary exploration of superficial and surface. No substance, just fluff.

But it can serve a powerful purpose. Something that stretches way back in human development. Chesterton's Fence This might be an opportunity to employ the awareness of Chesterton's Fence.

When we look to reform things (e.g. a fence or gate across the road), we might look at it and say, “I don’t see the use of this; let's clear it away.”

To which Chesterton's intelligent type of reformer responds by saying, “if you don’t see the use of it, I won't let you clear it away yet. Go and study. When you can come back and tell me that you understand the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it".

This applies to many things.

I've been reflecting on it with regard to small talk. Because there are levels at which small seems like futile and meaningless chit chat. Filler. Fluff. Hot air. Wasted time and energy on unimportant triviality.

What if the real value of small talk isn't about the talking, but is actually about the 'making'?

By making small talk, through the tone and mood matching, we are creating a resonance. Locating a frequency. Tuning up, syncing up, warming up. So that we might enter harmony at a core level of being.

In this week's podcast I explore how this might look, and what it might make possible.

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Walking in circles sometimes has negative connotations. It conjures an image confusion, chaos, and an inability to commit to the right path forwards.

But what happens when the path IS circular?

I think this is a really helpful way to think about personal growth. It doesn't happen in straight lines. It always happens in roundabouts, seasons, and loops.

The 'Circular Hike' is a great teacher. The end goal is to get back to the start. But the enjoyment is results from what happens along the way.

I went on a long walk with a couple of good friends last weekend, and it inspired me.

It's a great metaphor of slow living, seasonal shifts, and the deep transformation that occurs over time. The End Goal is The Starting Point When you embark on a circular walk, your ultimate goal is to get back to where you started. But we all know that is not the purpose of such an activity. The sense of meaning is found en route.

We can learn a lot from this image, about what injects meaning into life. And how we might accidentally overlook the opportunities for growth and learning, because we are focussed on 'getting to the end'. Gentle Rebellion as Counter-Productivity What is the point or purpose of going on a long walk?

Good question.

None of the reasons we might respond with are quite enough to support it as an efficient or effective use of time. The fact you end up where you started is counter-productive in a most beautiful way.

The most efficient ways towards health, fresh air, social time, good views, and the pub, are not always the most meaningful, enjoyable, or creative.

Where else is this true in life? The Waypoints Are the Whole Point If we want a purposeful journey that we can relax into and enjoy, we need an idea of how to get to where we're going. Which in this case, is back to where we already are.

A circular hike requires some kind of plan. We need to know where we're going to travel so that we are able to find your way back to the start.

Waypoints anchor us along the path we have chosen to take. We know we're on the right road because of certain recognisable signs that tell us we are.

I love this as a metaphor for life's projects, hopes, and dreams. If we're constantly thinking "I wonder if I'm going the right way" and second guessing ourselves, we run the real risk of getting stuck. Halting ourselves and chasing our tail. Unable to ever oscillate in a meaningful way.

Sometimes we engage with life a bit like this. We are so fixed on the idea of a destination (the end of the rainbow), that we can lose sight of the present. And we fail to identify the simple steps we can take through and past meaningful waypoints on our way back home.

We think that if we just keep going we will eventually land where we want to be. Yet chances of that happening are incredibly slim. There's Always a Way Back Over time the anxiety and panic sets in. What am I doing? Where am I? All of this feels so unfamiliar and I don't know which way to go.

But this is not the end of the matter. If we just stop for a moment, look up, and find ourselves on the map, there is always a way back. And even this will become part of that adventure.

Because the treasure is found right here, right now. The stories (getting lost), the views (looking up), the perspective (look how far I've come), that leave us fundamentally changed when we finally make it back to "the start".

Our final panoramic trick shot. Camera changed hands 3 times (like a relay baton). Slightly irritated by middle shadow. Otherwise pleased with the result.

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Derek Sivers recently reminded me of an old proverb. It says “shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent.”

What does that say to you?

How does it speak to your own life and experiences of the world?

In this week's podcast we are diving right into it. We'll have a swim around and see what it can tell us about gentle rebellion and the hyper-sensitivity of an otherwise insensitive world.

In the Episode I Talk About:

What this proverb tells us about different types of people (and how noisy rivers make the world around them noisy) How our physical environment can be a source of shallow, highly-charged, anxious inner tension...and on the flip-side, how it can be a place of slowness, reverence, and rest The impact of noise in the online space, and how it breeds distrust and frustration when it could build trust and connection Why we seem to be attracted to the noisy empty vessels in the world around us How we can begin reframing the concept of sensitivity - moving from height to depth Why we need a clearer distinction between sensory processing sensitivity and the term "high" or "hyper" sensitivity The difference between alertness and awareness (and why it matters) Why we need to let go of the idea that we should "just do something" when facing some kind of crisis How we can use our innate sensitivity to nurture the deep lakes in and around our lives

Over to You What does this proverb say to you? Where are the shallow rivers and deep lakes in your life right now? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below, or via email.

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We are pretty good at beating ourselves up with increasing levels of imagination and creativity. I recently scanned past a message on social media that said, “if you're not grimacing every time you look at old work, then you aren't growing.”

Although on first glance it didn't catch my attention. In fact it seemed to make sense.

But later that day I paused and had a double take.

"Hold on, what!?" I said to myself, thinking back to the quote. So if I'm not grimacing...EVERY TIME I look at my old work, then I'm NOT GROWING.

Oh.

It's no wonder so many people experience the modern world under a cloud of inexplicable anxiety and dissatisfaction.

These kinds of messages aren't intentionally harmful. They don't want us to feel bad about ourselves. They are a symptom of a world that requires us to believe in the bad infinite.

A world that encourages us to pursue a painful grimacing path. Why? Because we're promised a soothing balm for our discomfort...just a little further.

And we encounter an ironic (and perfectly natural) contradiction. Growth and wilting are two sides of the same coin. Cycles of Becoming Our story of becoming is one of growth and degradation, seasons and cycles.

The grimace seems like a rejection of this truth. A dismissive turn away from our humanness.

If we grimace at what has been then we will forever be grimacing, while tethered to a carrot of false magical thinking that tells us we will get there if we keep on growing. Even though all we find when we get 'there' is another fragmented window through which to look at our past and grimace.

All we have is now.

Our relationship with who we were before we got here, and who being here will take us to become, is a complex web of experimentation, play, pain, growth, and entropy. We’re moving in circles as we oscillate forwards. The inhale and the exhale.

What if the grimace is a warning sign? The pain of our inner-child expressing itself in the mirror. A whisper from the soul. Pointing to the ways we've become internally fractured, alienated, and disconnected. The cost that comes from sacrificing ourselves to the perpetual empty promise of future satisfaction.

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This week’s podcast is about the magic we find in the cracks of everyday life. I am joined by Lindsay Celeste who is the voice of the Magic for Realists podcast. She loves drawing metaphors, magic, and meaning from everyday experiences and the world around her. She sees seedlings of potential everywhere, and even the most seemingly mundane object could spark inspiration for something new.

In our conversation LC and I chat about the liminal nature of our lives so far. We explore the difference between splitting and converging. And how knocking down the dam that keeps different parts of ourselves separate can be the source of creativity and flow. It's where the magic happens.

We discuss how creative ‘genius’ emerges from the apparent tensions and contradictions at the core of our being. And how unique creativity expands when experiences, passions, and values converge to give rise to something new.

In The Episode We talk About:

Life As a Liminal Estuary - an estuary is a unique ecosystem at the joining of different tributary flows - when we allow our different passions, pursuits, and experiences to flow into one space, there is a chemical reaction How piecing the world of stuff together can give us a sense of reconciliation within ourselves…sorting, relating with, and processing our things is a meditative integrated process The magic of everyday life - the wonder and mystery of the mundane (state of the house, dishes at the kitchen sink) - the impact of ideas on everyday walking, talking, moving, cleaning The difference between the mechanic (systemised efficient order) and the organic forest (wild abundant broadcast) How we might find freedom in slowness How the fallen log is the story of the forest, and as such is part each tree's personal story - by throwing it out and hiding from the reality of death we miss out on a nutrient rich compost that fertilises our onward journey into becoming What it looks like to develop a practice of expressing yourself in the way you need Why the millions of creative ideas that fall from you and don’t come to fruition are not failures but active seeds in the story of true success

How true creativity leaves us fundamentally changed…it’s a joint venture - at the same time we create, we too are being created

Links to Articles and Resources Mentioned in the Show

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort The Magic for Realists Podcast Alain de Botton (Religion for Atheists) The Return to Serenity Island Course Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/

Connect With Me Twitter: https://twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: https://facebook.com/andymort Instagram: https://instagram.com/ap_mort The Haven: https://the-haven.co Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OU8vXaCrjow

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During The Haven year we explore 9 broad pillars of gentle rebellion (change, belonging, serenity, strength, confidence, adventure, creativity, tranquility, and inspiration). The Summer Season is about to start, where we will be looking at those final three themes. And in this episode of the podcast I discuss the angles from which we will explore them this year.

This year's lens has been 'Letting Go'. In particular the notion that if we want to get a better grip of things, sometimes we need to release them first. We often think we can gain control by holding tighter. But this is rarely true. And it's certainly not true when it comes to allowing more creativity, tranquility, and inspiration to flow through our lives.

So much of our world is underpinned by a desire for control. We take the self-organising, organic, interconnectedness of being. And turn it into predictable, measurable, mineable systems that can be reproduced with scale and efficiency.

There is a time and place for this. But when we apply it to everything, we can end up alienating ourselves from ourselves and the world around us.

Learn more about The Haven here.

In This Episode I Discuss:

The difference between mechanic and organic approaches to creativity. And the dangers with systematising and mechanising every part of our lives. Why nurturing good conditions for creative growth is more rewarding than following systems of productivity. How my definition of creativity can apply to every area of life..."to bring something into the world that wouldn't exist in the way it does without your presence in the process of its becoming" Why there is a difference between the deliverable containers of creative work (books, CDs, prints etc) and the work itself. And how being aware of that difference can set us free. The difference between inside-out (positive) boundaries, and outside-in (negative) boundaries. Why both are necessary, but need not be confused. How our sense of tranquility is established at the doorways in and around our lives. Why 'inspirational stories' are not always what they seem to be. What we actually connect with when we hear inspiring tales of success...we want the green light to fail successfully. The way we've been socially conditioned by stories that drop us off at the beginning, believing it's the end.

And I play a couple of songs to test drive my new microphone setup. Gravel Heart (Arrow of Time EP) and This Grave (Year 0). Connect With Me

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: https://facebook.com/andymort Instagram: https://instagram.com/ap_mort The Haven: https://the-haven.co Watch onYouTube: https://youtu.be/ZUqYtZfzrmw

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Meditation is a broad word. It describes a set of tools that create conditions for a deeper state of awareness and focus. And as such, it doesn't describe one particular approach or method.

Every practice has its own unique characteristics and features. Outside of a specific school, there is no right or wrong way to meditate.

In this episode of the podcast I speak with my friend David Johnson. He practices the Gelug-pa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. And has done for over 30 years. He shares some gentle thoughts about how to start, nurture, and develop a practice (regardless of what tradition you might be drawn towards). Practice and Meditation There is a temptation to give up or try something else when things get hard. But in any kind of practice, the process IS the goal. It is through repetition that success is seeded, nurtured, and grown. When we are not attached to an outcome, we succeed every time we show up.

And in the case of meditation, we see it working through a deeper awareness of what's going on within.

Awareness expands inside the space between stimulus and response. This is where we can watch thoughts, emotions, and reactions rising within us, as we experience life and the world around us. Rather than identifying with those things, we begin instead to choose how (and if) we want to engage with the thoughts, feelings, and urges that spring to mind.

In The Episode We Talk About:

What meditation is (and maybe isn't). Why meditation practice can become overwhelming and confusing. And what we can do when we find ourselves down rabbit holes. The sole (or soul!) concern of meditation. The difference between the use of meditation and mindfulness as a sticking plaster and meditation as a doorway to inside-out transformation. The practice of Tonglen. Why goals around meditation should be broad. How to know if meditation is ‘working’. And why that’s not necessarily a great way to think about it. Why community (being with others) is important when it comes to building meditative practices into your life.

Over to You Do you have a meditation practice? What have been the biggest challenges and joys for you? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below. Or get in touch directly through email or social media. Connect With Me Twitter: https://twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: https://facebook.com/andymort Instagram: https://instagram.com/ap_mort The Haven: https://the-haven.co Watch This Episode on YouTube Links to Articles and Resources Mentioned in the Show

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/ Nick Danzinger - Danzinger’s Travels: Beyond Forbidden Frontiers

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I often seem to say "be gentle with yourself" when someone is going through a hard time. In those moments of strain and pain, it's what I want for them. To release pressure and expectations they might put on themselves.

It's easy to suggest to others. And the advice for how they might go about it is pretty free flowing too.

But when it comes to ourselves? "Be gentle"...not always so easy.

Even if I know I need to be gentle with myself, the "how" is harder to bring about. Especially during those times of strain and pain.

The Antithesis of Self-Gentleness Perhaps it's because, "be gentle with yourself" seems like a call to action. A response to something. We often engage with things like self-care, self-compassion, and self-kindness as stuff to do.

As such we might think of it purely at a surface level.

But this is not usually enough. Not least because of the driving message behind our self-critical voice...that WE are not enough. Or that some aspect of our life isn't how it is "supposed to be".

We are hard on ourselves when we experience core contradictions. That in our current state we are not good enough, happy enough, rich enough, calm enough, smart enough, attractive enough, caring enough, cool enough, assertive enough, popular enough, free enough etc.

And in order to feel whole, we need more of whatever it is that feels like it's missing.

This Week's Episode In this episode of the podcast I explore the idea of naming some the contradictions we hold. This is one way to be gentle with ourselves. To do it without inner-judgement or a desire to analyse and fix. To allow space for those conflicts to make themselves known.

Examples like, "I want to stay in and I want to go out". "I want to be alone and I want to be with you". Or "I want to travel the world, and I want to settle down".

A lack of personal self-gentleness often expands out of the language we use to frame collective norms and expectations. In a society that struggles with non-linear contradictions and matrix-conflicts, these kinds of statements look like problems to fix.

"You've got to choose one or the other", "you can't want both, you'll have to decide".

The truth is, we ALL have contradictions like this. We all carry 'polarised' desires that look like opposites, but in actual fact often go together. They are part of the same whole. Such contradictions might appear to be signs of fragmentation and inner separation. But rather than things to eradicate on the road to wholeness, they ARE signs of wholeness.

Only when we begin to step into and embrace the contradiction at the heart of life, do we find the messy truths of who we really are. Rather than a source of anxiety and shame, it's actually something to enjoy, play with, and explore, with freedom and creative flow. Be Gentle With Self, Be Gentle With Life Gentleness is the flexibility of a willow tree. Under the weight of snow it is supple and bends, dropping the weight from its branches. Compared with the oak tree, which is strong in its ability to collect the weight of snow upon it without bending. Until...crack. It breaks and falls.

To be gentle with ourselves is to be gentle with the world outside of ourselves. One inspires the other (like the rhythm of breath). It's a cycle and a pulse. We can hold other people, our stories, our identities, our expectations, assumptions, and judgements, like the willow tree holds snow. And with supple flexibility we can let go when our branches bend, and spring back into place once the payload drops.

"Supposed to" and "should" are the rigid, inflexible branches at the core of a certain collective story. They pile the weight of "doing-ness" onto the trees in the forest, and wonder why the floor is covered in broken boughs.

To be gentle with ourselves is to hold the world with gentleness first. It's not the forced reaction to a life of feast or famine, boom or bust, spend or save.

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We've been taught to believe that life is linear. In many ways it feels like it should be. But it's not. Reality is a messy, chaotic, and rather arbitrary experience.

The Myth of The Linear: Beginning, Middle, End This belief in linearity is a product of systems that we build as humans to forge productive meaning in the world. It helps us build a sense of identity and purpose around our one directional pursuits. But it's a trap, full of unhelpful beliefs, judgement, and anxiety, because it takes us away from our messy truth.

Everything Is Breath Time is represented by clocks, seasons, and years. These are repeating cycles with rhythmic patterns, expansions, and contractions.

Everything is breath. Inhale and exhale.

Space is represented by atlases and maps. They give us a picture of how and where the material world is positioned around us. Everything exists in temporal space relative to everything else. Things are formed. They expand, contract, degrade, and re-form into something new. Everything is breath. We keep the myth going. We pass milestones, judged by time. For example, we use age as a symbolic representation of who we are. And yet it says nothing intrinsically meaningful about a person.

We know that it means nothing. Just think of your response to the question "how does it feel to be 10?" or "how does it feel to be 50?" It feels no different at all. Why? Because the joy of life is not found in a linear experience of it. Joy, flow, and creativity all transcend the boxes, labels, and identities we try to squeeze life into.

Palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware, recorded the thoughts of patients in the final 12 weeks of their lives. “When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says that “common themes surfaced again and again.”

All 5 of the biggest regrets are underpinned by drift. And a belief in the myth of life as a linear process. When we fall for this myth we engage in a pursuit of the unattainable object.

We get close to this in moments of existential angst. Maybe you've had such experiences yourself, where you think, "I've done this and I've done that, and yet I'm still not where I'm supposed to be." Supposed To (Linear Mirages) We are encouraged to keep our eyes on "supposed to" mirages. They're always just a little further down the road, attached to things like happiness, wholeness, and enough. Once we GET THERE, we will be OK. But when we arrive we discover they were an illusion. Until another one appears a little further along. "Maybe that's the answer", we say to ourselves as we pursue the next shimmering promise.

But what if there is no "there"? What freedom might that give us right "here" instead? To come back to the messy playful chaos around us in this moment. Only when we break with "supposed to" will we begin to feel the possibilities for growing life from the inside out instead. The present moment is our canvas. And that canvas is all we truly have. Our understanding of life is not linear. Memories aren't on a chronological conveyor belt. Sometimes our old experiences can feel completely present; and when we think of them it's like no time has passed. It's like those relationships with people when there is a fold in the timeline between meetings. It doesn't matter how long it's been, you just pick up exactly where you left off.

What if we were to picture life with this same awareness? To see our story, not as a timeline, but as a map. Where everything is connected, and we can reach anywhere we want within the landscapes of who we are. Because that's how life IS.

We can step off the linear conveyor belt. It's just a myth.

We can start to release the anxiety of not yet being, and the shame of not having been. And draw the canvas of our present from the inside. Living from a position of nowness, gratitude, and acceptance instead of supposed-to, will-when, and if only.

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Do you ever feel like you're caught drifting through life? I know many people feel that way right now. Don't beat yourself up. It's not your fault.

In the previous episode of the podcast I looked at the difference between experimental and conceptual types of people. We considered some of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves when we try to squeeze ourselves out of shape to suit the dominant models and modes of being.

What is Drift? Drift is an unsettling and anxious driving force. It leads us away from ourselves. Either as an inability to take the next step (analysis paralysis and fear of doing the wrong thing). Or as frenetic action (mindless movement in any direction - it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you don't stop).

When we drift we lose control of our direction. We have no agency over the route we take. Things happen to us and around us. And once we’re caught drifting, it can be really difficult to find a way back to ourselves. A Double Bind For Repeat Bloomers For experimental types, the future emerges from a pathway of incremental curious exploration. We connect dots, and build from one experience to the next. As such, life is naturally slower to unfold and evolve. Which is why as we explored last time, experimental people are often "late" or "repeat" bloomers.

Such people don't have a concrete vision for where they will be in five years. That's not how life unfolds. It grows from within. Out from a core of being-ness.

The second part of the double bind is the attitude of society. Experimental approaches to life are not generally valued or encouraged in mainstream culture. As a collective we enjoy success stories about the youth, we demand quick fix solutions to deep long term problems.

We hear that "if it can't be measured, it can't be managed", and if you can't manage it you can't improve it.

What if this is a neat sounding load of garbage? One of those quotes that sounds true at a surface level, but is actually rather diminutive and damaging to people? Slower Souls and Experimental Trailblazers By the standards of an "up and to the right" society, the messy path of inside-out becoming might be seen as drifting, procrastination, and a waste of time. And through osmosis, this message can seep into that story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

We hear it, we're told it, and eventually we believe it because, like the idea that you can't improve what you don't measure, it seems true. But only because it speaks to a very narrow particular way of engaging with the world.

When a prevailing narrative takes a strong hold of society, those who don't conform to the modus operandi, feel like they don't fit. But not only that...they genuinely don't fit. They might start to feel like they're broken, not enough, or less than, because they aren't like "everybody else".

Drift becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. When you find yourself in that boat (so to speak), is not your fault. And while it may seem like you're not like everybody else...there are so many people who feel the same. They're usually just quieter, wondering why they're not like "everybody else".

It’s impossible to bend yourself out of shape when it comes to these natural preferences. For example, if you're rushed into completing things before you’ve had time and space you need to explore at your own pace, you won’t reach your own potential. And you won't hit the standards you want. This prevents you from bringing the best of yourself to the world. And it buries the truth of who you are and your possibilities. Drifting Doesn't Discriminate Before we restrict the idea of drifting to experimental types, it's important to point out that conceptual goal driven people fall into drift patterns just as easily.

For the conceptual types, they might drift away from themselves through an unhealthy attachment to up and to the right. They tether to goals as the source of their identity. It can look like growth,

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Have you ever been asked where you see yourself in five years?

How did you respond? How WOULD you respond you were asked today?

I struggle to think in long term abstractions. I think I always have done. But I never understood why for me and for many, this might be an impossible question to answer.

In the previous podcast I spoke with Kendra Patterson about burnout, late blooming, and the differences between Conceptual and Experimental people. These topics are all interlinked, and might shine a light on the struggles many of us experience.

There is a common assertion in the personal development world that you should "begin with the end in mind". But what if the end is not that simple?

For many of us, our deepest desires are not end points. They are inexplicable moments and feelings, brought about by an openness to a life of slow meandering and repeat blooming. Along an evolving and experimental pathway of incremental steps? A Lot Can Happen in Five Years If you search for "begin with the end in mind", almost every result tells you to define your destination so that you can draw a straight efficient line between where you are and that desired point in the future. Many articles on the subject carry a shaming spirit. If you can't say where you'll be in five years then there's something wrong with you.

What if we can't really know where we're going until we get "there"? And our route to joy is the journey itself...experimenting, moving, joining dots, and building experiences that take us in all manner of unexpected direction.

This is not an easy path to justify in our modern world. Society likes nice neat roadmaps and linear processes from "problem to solution". But by trying to squeeze ourselves into these boxes, we neglect our natural orientation and preferences.

What if some people have no idea where they want to be in five years time, not because they refuse to dream; but because life just doesn't work like that for them? The Stories We Tell Ourselves The relationship we have with our core underlying traits, informs the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And this is especially significant if society prefers and promotes one approach or trait over others.

Society celebrates people who followed a conviction about what they wanted to do with their life from an early age. Those who "pursued their passion" with unwavering drive and determination.

We say “follow your dream”, with the unspoken assertion that everyone has one. A tangible concrete thing that we were born to do with our life. And for some people this idea idea of "finding their purpose" or knowing what they were "meant to do" with their life, is exciting and enjoyable.

But for others it can be a huge source of underlying anxiety. And it can underpin the story we write for ourselves, based on what we're taught to believe about the right way to be. We might let life happen to us, as we accept that we're failures, drifters and perennial underachievers. A Different Way of Being But what if the success for people like that, was found in the heart of the journey itself? What if joy was not the dream of getting to the destination, but it was discovering, exploring, and experimenting along the way?

And what if that approach to life wasn’t seen as time wasting, procrastinating, and unfocussed; but actually key ingredients to your success as a human being?

And what if you could begin to accept yourself in all that messy beauty? And even find a way to make it work in practical, intellectual, and emotional ways.

When I look back at my own life I see this so clearly. I’ve never been one for long term conceptual goals, and I used to beat myself up for not sticking with things, getting distracted, and allowing projects to veer away from their original intent.

But stepping out of that self-judgement and away from the critical inner ego, I can see that all of the things I’m most proud of in my life so far,

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Are you one of life's ‘late bloomers’?

I think I’ve always felt like one. So it gives me hope to know that late blooming is a "thing".

For as long as I can remember I've felt like it takes me longer to grasp things others seem to just ‘get’. Even when I was a teenager...and perhaps earlier than that.

In many ways it’s a difficult feeling to put into words. The way my mind maps and pieces things together has felt frustratingly long winded and slow at times.

But when I listened to Kendra Patterson’s podcast about Late Blooming, something clicked for me.

Late Bloomers don’t just approach life at a slower speed. Their orientation to the world is different from what we might consider to be normal modes of operating.

As Kendra points out, the core of this might be the difference between conceptual and experimental types of people. Conceptual Types Have a clear picture of how they want things to look. They work deductively (they know where they want to go and have a clear plan in order to get there).

Weinberg and Galenson (2019) looked at the lives of Nobel Laureates in Economics. They found that Conceptual innovators made their most significant contributions to the field in their mid-20s. Experimental Types (The Late Bloomers) Start with a step and build incrementally. Often without a clear picture of where each step will lead them. They connect dots as they go and their creativity is underpinned by discovery along the way. They work inductively (accumulating knowledge from experience).

In the research, Weinberg and Galenson found that Experimental types made their biggest impact during their fifties. That’s thirty years later than their conceptual peers. Society's Preference Society enjoys stories of youth and early bloomer success. It's understandable. But it can lead us to carry a belief that if we're 'destined for success', then we will know in some way by our late twenties.

And if we don't fit this conceptual mould, we are left to drift towards self-surrender. Where we start to let go of the things that truly matter. And life happens to us and around us.

This makes it EVEN harder for late bloomers to freely pursue the experimental journeys that come naturally.

A lot of our world is geared towards conceptual thinking because it’s easy to understand and simple to measure. It makes it easier to answer the question of what you’re working towards. And it’s the foundation of our linear approach to progression through life. Identify what you want and then you can work out how to get there.

In this week’s Gentle Rebel Podcast I talk with Kendra Patterson about her experience with burnout. And we explore some of the fascinating topics she looks at on her Stepping Off Now Podcast. In The Episode We Discuss:

Kendra’s experience of burnout and the process of working out what it was. How the conflict between the creative and conventional can cause gentle intuitive types to get overwhelmed and burned out. The small practical steps Kendra took in piecing life together after her dark night of the soul What she learned from Søren Kierkegaard about finding cracks of light in the darkness Why Kendra now considers herself a “repeat bloomer” and how that realisation has helped her. The importance of recognising the unremarked moments of life, when progress feels slow. How to connect with the idea that the world is still full of possibility, when life is grinding you down. How we find joy on the journey towards the things we think we want. And why sometimes that teaches us that what we think we want isn’t actually what we want at all.

Over to You Do you resonate with the idea of being late (or repeat) bloomer? Which of these modes of operating do you fall into? I’d love to hear your response in the comments below. Or get in touch via email. Links to Articles and Resources Mentioned in the Show

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.

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In 2015 Caroline Garnet McGraw’s wrote an article for the Huffington Post. It was called "You Don’t Owe Anyone an Interaction”.

It soon went viral. And by the end of the year she had delivered a TEDx talk of the same name.

Wind the clock on five years, and I have just finished chatting with Caroline about THE BOOK! Yes, it's now a book!

Perfectly described as a memoir meets personal (personal) development, You Don't Owe Anyone, speaks into a common experience. The belief that we must submit to the plethora of expectations. From the world around us. And from within.

The book is a practical call to be free from the weight of expectations. Since the initial article, there is something about this idea that has always resonated with people.

The story started when Caroline received some emails that made her feel uncomfortable. Her intuitive reaction was one of alarm. But then feelings of guilt, insecurity, and obligation kicked in. She was conflicted, tethered to the belief that she needed to respond. In talking it over with her husband, he declared the catalytic words which fuelled the article, the talk, and now the book… "You don’t owe anyone an interaction.” So many of us are drowning under the weight of expectations. Not just the demands from other people, but the expectations we place on ourselves. The need to respond to everything, to do it perfectly, and to keep people happy. Things that don't truly belong to us. This comes at a cost to our health, our important relationships, and our engagement with the things that actually matter to us personally.

In this week’s podcast I speak with Caroline about some of the ideas in the book. In The Episode We Discuss:

How we can recognise the impact of intangible personal development work when things don’t work out as planned. The links between expectations and a fear of disappointment. How holding to the weight of expectations might be impacting our lives life. What we sacrifice when we submit to those expectations. Where we feel like we do owe energy, time, and attention to things that don’t truly matter to us. How “Cold Bucket Experiences” can start an inner mission. For which we exchange our authenticity in order to avoid the pain of criticism and judgement. Why guilt isn’t a reliable indicator of whether or not you should do something. And how feelings of guilt often tell you that something IS worth doing. Why so many of us feel obligated to explain and justify ourselves for doing things in particular ways. How changing our language in small and subtle ways can help free us from the weight of OUR OWN expectations. How to playfully fight the protective urge to explain all the reasons what we've done isn't very good.

Over to You Does any of our discussion resonate with your own experiences? Which of those areas that Caroline says we don’t owe to anyone, stands out as the biggest challenge for you to let go of? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Links to Articles and Resources Mentioned in the Show

Pre-order The Book from Amazon Claim Your Bonuses 237 | The Recovering Perfectionist (my first conversation with Caroline) You Don’t Owe Anyone an Interaction (Huffington Post Article) You Don’t Owe Anyone an Interaction (TEDxBirminghamSalon)  Perfectionism Doesn’t Protect Us (TEDxBirminghamSalon) Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/

Connect With Me

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: https://facebook.com/andymort Instagram: https://instagram.com/ap_mort The Haven: https://the-haven.co/ Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHdlBOb5ig

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We sacrifice our compassion and gentleness when we are driven by a need to be right. In a world where we have started to draw battle lines in the strangest places, it’s time to think about softening minds. When our thoughts and beliefs become brittle, our understanding of reality becomes fragile. "If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom" - Adam Grant There isn’t a shortage of knowledge in the world right now. In fact we all carry an unfathomable amount of information right there in our pocket. You would think this would make sorting fact from fiction a lot easier, and disagreements simple to sort out.

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. In fact we are now more divided than ever in terms of our beliefs about the world, and we are not very good at reconciling our differences in healthy and constructive ways.

Practices for Softening Minds Many of us struggle with this kind of relentless and unproductive conflict. It’s draining and exhausting.

When we get sucked into brittle thinking we pay a great cost. It impacts our relationships. It causes us to act from a place of urgency, scarcity, and smallness (not abundance, expansion, and creativity). And it sucks all our energy. So we are left with no inner resources to build life upon a foundation of meaningful vision and values.

In this episode of the podcast I explore how, rather than asking how to change other peoples’ minds, we might be better off softening minds instead. Starting with our own, by embracing some of the ‘re-thinking’ practices that Adam Grant discusses in his latest book, Think Again.

Rather than engaging at the level of ‘what’ we think. To soften our approach and think again about ‘how’ we think. In The Episode You Will Hear Me Discuss:

How ‘complexifying’ can disrupt overconfidence cycles and spur rethinking cycles by helping us avoid dividing the world into binary categories. That what we believe often depends on what we want to believe. And how this is informed by fears of uncertainty and the unknown. The three main barriers to re-thinking, and the approach we can take instead if we want to experience more joy and creative meaning. How we can learn from our own experiences of softening and changing our mind to build practices that help give others the space to soften their’s. The benefits of holding our own views lightly and with a spirit of humour. And how to build playful practices where we actively see how it feels to position ourselves differently. How softening minds requires us to look at the process rather than the substance of our conversations. The role ego plays in keeping us entrenched. And the questions we must ask ourselves about what a better vision for the future looks like. Whether distance plays a bigger role than difference in our division and hostility.

Over to You Can you think of a time when you had your mind changed in a big way about something? What made the difference for you? And how could you practice softening your relationship with your own thoughts and beliefs this week? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below. Links to Articles and Resources Mentioned in the Show

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/ Why Facts Don't Change Minds (James Clear) Think Again (Adam Grant) Why Is It So Hard to Change People’s Minds (Elizabeth Svoboda)

Connect With Me Twitter: https://facebook.com/andymort Instagram: https://the-haven.co Watch This Episode on YouTube

Related Episodes and Articles:

Facts Don’t Change People’s Minds. Here’s What Does How to Change People’s Minds Megan Malone's Twitter Post: “Just because I don’t like what this person is saying, doesn’t mean they’re wrong.” The surprising reason people change their minds A New Study Has Found a Way to Stop People From Believing in Conspiracy Theories

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Sarah Santacroce is on a mission. She wants to be part of a gentle marketing revolution. And she’s not alone!

This week's podcast is for those who find marketing a source of discomfort. If you struggle with marketing, selling, and self-promotion (as either a business owner or consumer), then listen to this one.

I have known Sarah for a long time, and really appreciate her gentle approach to business. Her new book, The Gentle Marketing Revolution has arrived at just the right time.

The world is swamped with aggressive and manipulative scarcity marketing right now. And this is contributing massively to a universalised state of anxiety. We are bombarded with the message that we're not enough. That we’re missing out. And we’re being left behind.

These stories all drive a tendency towards urgency and panic in our actions.

Already this morning I’ve said “no thanks, I don’t want my life to be awesome". I imagine you've seen similar website pop-ups. Using shame and fear of missing out to drive action.

I don’t know about you, but I want to deal with businesses who make me feel better, not worse, about myself. And in my own business, I want to operate from an energy and spirit of abundance and expansion. Not scarcity and contraction.

This is why I loved reading Sarah’s book.

It is a call to slow down. To recognise these unhealthy messages that surround us. And to rebuild our relationship with ourselves and the way we share our message with the world.

The book provides a pathway of gradual transformation. Gentle marketing is not yet another blueprint to follow. But it is an invitation into a journey of becoming more of who you are. It shows that truly authentic and meaningful marketing emerges and expands from the inside out.

In the episode you will hear us talk about:

Why the Gentle Marketing Revolution is not just applicable to business, but applies in all areas of life. Why the appearance of success (by external measures), doesn’t mean it's the right path for us. The importance of knowing what kind of world we want to be part of creating with the choices we make. How following an intuitive path into Gentle Marketing can help us eliminate bugbears and negative beliefs we have around the idea of marketing. And how when we're aligned with out values, marketing doesn’t even feel like marketing. Why listening to our own intuitive reactions to marketing can help give us a clear set of practices and boundaries to follow for ourselves. Why the best businesses make people feel good about themselves. And how this should happen at all stages of engagement, instead of using marketing to create and reinforce a problem that they then promise to solve. How Sarah’s 7 P’s of Gentle Marketing Mandala differs from traditional marketing models. And why this can be a game changer for introverted and highly sensitive marketers. Why your marketing is your unique expression as a human being. And how your energy and spirit will attract the right people over time. Ways to gradually transition into a Gentle Marketing philosophy and practice. Without feeling like you need to change everything right away. Where to find your first clients as you start your gentle business.

Over to You What feels good to you about the ideas discussed here? What would you love to experience more of in terms of gentle marketing in the world around you? I'd love to read your response in the comments below. Resource Links The Gentle Marketing Revolution (Book)

The Gentle Business Revolution Podcast

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast

Listen to my music

The Reticular Activation System Connect

Twitter: twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: facebook.com/andymort Instagram: instagram.com/ap_mort Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDwtEVlfdac&

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The Creative Cure is not another promise of a road towards wholeness and completeness.

At its heart, Jacob Nordby’s new book is a simple invitation back to ourselves. Away from the never-ending treadmill pursuit of The Cure. The Emerging Self As we grow up we develop a story that tells us what it means to be us. We prod, probe, and follow our natural curiosity. Connecting with the things that give us an intrinsic sense of joy.

Over time beliefs start to develop. We hear stories about what we "ought to do" and how we "should" behave. Our experiences then shape how we show up in the world (socialisation).

This process is a natural part of our development. Our sense of self emerges in the context of community. Child-Like Creativity As kids we have an intuitive connection to the creative cure. We experience unfiltered joy through curious play. Our imaginations carry us into magical worlds that we build upon mundane and ordinary backdrops.

But as the stories about who we are take shape, that authentic sense of self might experience rejection.

Messages of rejection are like paper cuts. They are subtle, but they can really sting: “Why are you doing it like that? That’s stupid!” Or “that’s just your imagination - grow up!” And “only an idiot would enjoy that kind of thing”. Or “why are you crying? You need thicker skin if you’re going to survive the real world”.

These messages prompt us to build filters (beliefs and habits) to keep us safe. We create defence mechanisms in the fight to avoid rejection. So we might recoil, hide, and replace those parts of ourselves that we feel ashamed of. And it might lead us to amplify behaviours that we believe will help us gain approval and acceptance.

It was great to have Jacob back on the show. I’m excited for you to hear the conversation. It was a thrill to unpack (and even experience!) the practical applications of The Creative Cure. In the conversation you will hear us discuss:

How The Creative Cure is in the simple practices that connect us to our inner creative self. Not so that we might reach a place of healing down the line where we find the “missing piece”. The power of this underlying myth in society that we are “born broken”. And how the Creative Cure helps us break from the tireless pursuit to be ‘enough’ and prove our worth. Why we should stop hacking at the branches of life and look at the roots instead. The differences between “child-like” and “childish”. Whether the pay off is worth the trade off when it comes to following our passions along the established paths. The 3 main enemies of the Inner Creative Self How Perfectionism and Procrastination are conjoined twins Three simple questions to ask ourselves in a Creative Cure Journal Practice The impact of hearing "you don’t get to do what you need to do, when you need to do it". And how it conditions judgement, prohibition, and shame when it comes to recognising and caring for our own basic physical needs later in life. How gentle rebellion starts inside ourselves when we heal the connection to our creative self. And we are the contagious cure the world needs, not by TRYING to change it. But by entering our health, joy, and creative spirit.

Over to You What are your takeaways from this conversation? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Or get in touch via email/social media... Connect Twitter: twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: facebook.com/andymort Instagram: instagram.com/ap_mort Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_XceORF70w&

Linked Resources:

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/ The Creative Cure | Jacob Nordby The Body Keeps The Score | Bessel van der Kolk The Deepest Well | Nadine Burke Harris The Creative Wound: Heal Your Broken Art | Mark Pierce

Related Episodes and Articles:

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It is said that we live in the age of entitlement. Where society enjoys so much privilege, that it’s lost perspective of what truly matters.

The ’sense of entitlement’ is an accusation we see levelled at young people. As if it’s emerged from nowhere, dreamed up by “the youth of today” in order to annoy older people.

But it’s not; it’s a path of no resistance, along which we’ve been travelling for decades. We’ve created high levels of anxiety through confusing marketing, advertising, and social media messaging. On the one hand “you are not enough” but by the same stroke “you are worth it”.

Well, which is it?

As gentle rebels we can start to recognise how the entitlement mentality is not only a symptom of some deeper issue, but it’s also the fuel that keeps the fires burning. And find small steps to shake off our own entitled actions and thoughts, but also to come together and decide the collective values that we not only want to pretend we hold together, but to actually honour them in the way we live.

I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I don’t have many. But I’d love to have a conversation about this because it’s yet another source of division within ourselves, between ourselves, and across society.

In the episode I talk about

The definition of entitlement as a person’s belief that they deserve privileges or recognition just because of who they are. Not because of what they have done to earn them. How it's unhelpful to limit the conversation about entitlement to one of personal responsibility. Without acknowledging the important role of collective values and spirit. Examples of entitlement in every day life, and the negative impact it has on individuals, businesses, and communities. How entitled people are often disempowered people. And rather than always being a by-product of an over-inflated sense of one’s own self importance, it might be the opposite (insecurity, anxiety, and self-doubt). Ways we can begin to turn the tide on the entitlement epidemic. Not just for ourselves, but in how we imagine the future we are building together. And a lot more...

Over to You How have you experienced entitlement in your life? What will you do this week to gently push forwards towards a more connected and collaborative world?

I'd love to hear your response! Please leave it below, email me, or get in touch through social media. Links to Articles and Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

Get the Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort In this week's EP I unpack an article called 9 Entitlement Tendencies and How to Overcome Them Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/ What We Mean When We Talk About Entitlement: What Simon Sinek Got Wrong about Millennials in the Workplace https://www.thindifference.com/2017/01/simon-sinek-got-wrong-millennials-workplace/ “Millennials, Learn To Be Patient”: https://www.adeccogroup.com/future-of-work/latest-insights/simon-sineks-advice-millennials-learn-to-be-patient/ Millennials are Struggling At Work Because Their Parents 'Gave Them Medals for Coming Last' (The Independent) https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/millennials-struggling-work-careers-because-their-parents-gave-them-medals-coming-last-simon-sinek-a7537121.html The Millennial Question (Simon Sinek Interview): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vudaAYx2IcE

My Related Episodes and Articles:

Hopefulness: https://andymort.com/320-hopefulness/ Portrait of a Gentle Rebel: 7 Characteristics and Values of Sensitive Revolutionaries: https://andymort.com/181-gentle-rebel-portrait/ Disappointments Happen, Get Over It: https://andymort.com/disappointments-happen/ Narcissism: https://andymort.com/narcissism/ 5 Stoic Responses When You Experience The Sting of Emotion: https://andymort.com/emotion/

Connect With Me Twitter: twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: facebook.com/andymort Instagram: instagram.com/ap_mort

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Resilient people are hopeful people. C.R Snyder referred to hopefulness as the "perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways."

Hope is not an emotion or a feeling. It's an intentional mindset and a deliberate practice. And we learn it when we surround ourselves with other people who practice hopefulness.

In this week's Gentle Rebel Podcast I explore the links between hope, confidence, adventure, and creativity.

Things to Listen Out For:

Hopefulness is learned from hopeful people (those who have a clear notion of where they want to go, are aware of how to get there, and they believe in their ability to get there). When we spend time with hopeful people, we learn to be hopeful (set intentions, plan ways forward, and recognise our own ability to effect the change we want to see). It's never too late to cultivate hope. Why I'm been building my hopefulness on an adventure map this year. Why I refused to promote a course about confidence for introverts and HSPs. And how it led me to inadvertently build my own "Inside-Out Confidence" Course. The roots of "Outside-in Confidence". It draws on our shame, eliminates vulnerability, and is propped up by the perception we want others to have of who we are. How self-acceptance nurtures "Inside-out Confidence". It grows through courage, connection, and compassion. And is validated by your values, worldview, and vision for the future. The Two Drift Nets of Goal Setting - binary thinking about goals can derail our sense of adventure. And our favourite characters in kids adventure stories embody hopefulness in the way they approach their big challenges and quests. How I'm marking the 10 Year Anniversary of the release of One World Less and The Prisoner - my 16 track album and novella from 2011. A performance of stripped back version of Lonely Boy, the first track from One World Less.

Resource Links

Get The Extended Play Private Podcast: https://patreon.com/andymort Listen to my music: https://music.andymort.com/ Check Out The Inside-Out Confidence Course | Live With Deep Courage in the Face of a Loud and Uncertain World: https://the-haven.co/confidence-course/ Watch Lonely Boy (Original Video) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc-C-Qigz_g The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown: https://amzn.to/2MhhZnQ

Connect Twitter: twitter.com/ap_mort Facebook: facebook.com/andymort Instagram: instagram.com/ap_mort Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3F9R8uyHZYc

Related Episodes and Articles Despite Everything, Hope is Still Alive and Well…it has to be - https://andymort.com/hope/

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Can you hear the voices in your head?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast we explore how to let go of what people think of us. Or perhaps, more accurately, how to tune into the voice inside us that isn't pre-occupied with being liked and fitting in.

We might assume that the voice we hear is OUR voice. But is that really the case?

If it really was us, why would it be so ready to talk us out of so many things that we want to do deep down.

Who, what, and where is our "deep down"?

The Authentic Self vs The Ego Self The Ego Self doesn't care what you want to do, it just needs to be liked. It seeks power over our actions, words, and beliefs. Encouraging us to do whatever is necessary to stay safely nestled in the tribe.

The ego is like a fog. The Authentic Self is the light that shines through it.

We either seek recognition (explicit approval and affirmation). By asking ourselves what we need to say, do, or have, to get others to see and like us.

Or we seek to avoid being seen and exposed. Asking how we can shrink into the background without anyone noticing.

Neither works. And the price we pay is our own authenticity (oneness with ourselves and connection to what matters most to us). When We Care What People Think Brené Brown says, we either shrink back and fail to bring our true self to the world (I'm too much). Or we puff up, and pretend to be something we're not (I'm not enough).

For some it's about holding back true self, for others it's about hiding it. Either way, we alienate ourselves from ourselves and end up living a life where we're constantly fighting against who we truly are, and thus making the whole world poorer as a result.

In this week's podcast I explore how we can find the light of our authentic self through the fog of ego. And what it makes possible when we practice authenticity, and step clear of that desire to be liked/fear of not being liked.

Once our authenticity starts shining, it’s a light too bright to snub out. The criticism and judgement, that once caused us to shrink back or puff up, is consumed by the brightness of that light.

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My stapler is someone who really holds things together under pressure. I like to have him around in a crisis.

My toothbrush is likes travelling to weird places, but would do anything for me.

And my microphone is as loving as she is sarcastic.

Yeah I admit it...I like ascribing fully fledged personalities to inanimate objects. It's a really good way to stay sane and not lose your mind.

I'm not the only one who does it.

Almost everyone I've spoken to has been doing the same thing lately. But with an even more vague abstraction than a sentient stapler...

2020. The year.

The previous period it took for the Earth to travel around the sun. And my question...how have we managed to personify and create an enemy out of something so indistinct?

Oh actually it's really easy. But geez, I feel sorry for the poor old year. 2020 has been on the receiving end of some severe flack. About stuff he had no responsibility for!

And now Netflix is wishing he would die. Son Heung-min has been kicking him out of frame on football adverts. And people have been burning effigies of him, even as he does the walk of shame away from here.

Poor guy.

12 months ago he was just getting comfy. He'd climbed up into the Earth's cockpit, and was prepared to drive us all around the sun. He didn't even get paid for it.

He was like the caretaker who volunteered to gave up his weekend to drive the bus for the class field trip. It wasn't his fault that one kid came in with a virus, another one brought in fireworks, and there were no responsible adults on the back of the bus who were able to diffuse the escalating situation.

So we threw 2020 out, and decided that replacing him with 2021 would solve all the problems. So 2021 is driving now. 6 days into the journey, and she's realising when you have humans squabbling in the back, steering the Earth is actually quite difficult. Have Another Year Anyway, 'Happy' (or whatever we're saying), New Year, Gentle Rebel friends! I wanted to do a check-in episode of the podcast, to say hi to The Podcast, and hello to you.

This is a chance to start the new year with a solid footing. In a good spirit. And with a sense of awareness about where we are, what we're doing, and how we want to proceed. Not in a 'add more' kind of way, but in a permission to be real kind of way.

In the episode we will have a casual chat about the following ideas: "Or Else, What!?" We often live within bubbles of shame and under those clouds of self-abusive pressure to keep the plates spinning, and the balls from dropping. What if we were to remove the phrase, 'or else', from our self-talk? Maybe this year is a chance to release that pressure, let go of the threatening voice, and pick things up with a more inclusive type of energy. Energy of Contraction vs Energy of Expansion I love coming across people who have not been infected by the spirit of desperation, contraction, scarcity, limitation etc. People who are open, creative, giving, abundant, expansive, and generous.

They have space, time, and energy to see you as you are. They have compassion and the courage to let you to walk away...and when you feel that permission, you are drawn closer towards them. Wholehearted Living and Gentle Rebellion I've just started reading Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection. We are covering it in The Haven book club over the next couple of months. And these words, courage, compassion, and connection are at the core of what she describes as wholehearted living. "I see it in my classroom when a student raises her hand and says, “I’m completely lost. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Do you know how incredibly brave it is to say “I don’t know” when you’re pretty sure everyone around you gets it?

Of course, in my twelve-plus years of teaching, I know that if one person can find the courage to say, “You’ve lost me,” there are probably at least ten more students who feel the exact same way.

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Something has been stirring in me this year. A shift is occurring, which has involved some, at times uncomfortable, oscillating between past and future. I'm starting again. But not from scratch. Maybe you're experiencing something similar?

I've been looking back and reflecting on who I've been, while dreaming forward through who I am becoming.

It's been a tough year for many people, and I know many of us are experiencing deep stirring changes. Many enforced upon us by external factors. Some by our own choosing. And others brought about by realising that how things are/have 'always been', isn't necessarily how things need to be. And we've seen new possibilities and found the power to change lanes.

I'm coming to a significant shift point in my life. After some of the hardest years I hope to ever experience. As I've talked about on Patreon, the pot is now coming to a boil and I'm ready to take it off the heat. I guess it feels like I'm starting again, but from where I am. Not from scratch. Acknowledging and appreciating all that I've been through, and seeing everything as part of the bigger story.

As I've been preparing for my next chapter and considering my online plans for the coming year or more, I've been looking back at early podcast episodes and blog posts. It's brought a lot of joy, some serious cringing, and a bit of a dilemma...what should I do with them?

The Andy at the end of 2011 is quite different from the Andy at the end of 2020. A lot has happened in that time. I've evolved. The world has changed. And some, maybe even lots, of what I said back then, wouldn't be what I'd say now. Or at least, I wouldn't say it LIKE THAT! 🤦‍♂️

But I'm Not Really Starting Again...not this time It seems slightly jarring to think that people are showing up on my website and finding those earlier posts through search engines and old links. Not knowing me yet, their perception is that the me they meet is the me of now. I guess it's one of the weird things about creating over a long period of time. Perhaps it's been the same for authors, songwriters, artists and filmmakers. They are seen in the present by the light of their past, and perceived to be residing inside of that moment in time.

I guess the difference with a blog or podcast is that they go through a much more filtered process of due diligence. They are edited properly, and checked for turns of phrase that might fail to communicate the intended meaning.

Part of me has wondered whether it's time to remove those old episodes. To draw a line under them and admit that I don't want people hearing those as a representation of what I'm doing today.

But I can't do that. My intuition won't let me. Because it feels disingenuous. I want to keep my history there for people to see because there is something quite fun and interesting about the journey. Where ideas are seeded and things begin to pop through the surface. But I don't feel that leaving them in their old state does that journey justice.

Well I'm going to try something different. Starting again without starting over. So I'm Going Back In... I'm not sure where this idea came from. I've tinkered with it in my music videos before. And I've become excited about what might be possible in this context. To converse with those original episodes from where I am today. A bit like a commentary but in the spirit of newness, not harking back. To take those ideas I spoke of in 2011, and build on them 9 years later.

It is both a reflection on the creative process, and a demonstration of the creative process itself. I think it shows how things are made. Through the discomfort of connecting dots you don't want to look at directly. It fits with this opportunity I have embraced, to take heed and check in with where I've been. And as I've done so, I've been able to observe and enjoy what’s been going on over the years. Things I had forgotten. Things I'd never appreciated.

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In his book, The Highly Sensitive Man, psychotherapist Tom Falkenstein offers insights into the nature of sensory processing sensitivity for men and how our masculine ideal in its present imagined form is literally killing people right now.

I was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with Tom recently, and we delved into some of the challenging facing men at the moment. And how those of us with deep sensory processing sensitivity can cope with, and respond to a collective self-sabotage when we seem hell bent as a species on rejecting the full sensory experience at our fingertips.

Tom's book takes ideas that have been touched on in other resources about high sensitivity. And he unpacks them in a more comprehensive way, specifically addressing issues around high sensitivity in men. Creating space for understanding, awareness, and an exploration of the unique advantages and challenges they might face.

Our conversation follows the thread of the book, which seems to run along two separate but interweaving strands: 1. The Impact of The Current Masculine Ideal What it means 'to be a man' has changed throughout history. It's not a fixed thing. “There’s an English term, ‘toxic masculinity,’ used to describe a form of masculinity based on dominance and violence that rejects emotions. It’s a problem that boys and men are constantly told that ‘real guys’ don’t cry, are highly, almost animalistically sexual, and crush anything that stands in their way. It’s a problem for both men and women. This is the form of masculinity that we need to address. Just because it’s widespread doesn’t mean that it’s natural.” - Margarete Stokowski 2. The Highly Sensitive Man and a Turning Point in Masculinity The tide is changing, and the old masculine ideal is dying. We see this talked about with phrases like 'men in crisis' and questions such as, 'who's the weaker sex?' appearing in the media. And these feed the sense that men are losing something. But what if this was a moment of emancipation for men from the social conditioning of alienating masculinity itself? What if this turned out to be a long overdue opportunity for men to finally gain access to our full selves?

Tom talks about his belief that highly sensitive men have a key role to play in this long-overdue emancipation of men from classic stereotypes of masculinity. He suggests we are in a unique position because we challenge and therefore expand the image of the “typical strong man.”

What pops into your head when you hear the term 'highly sensitive man'? I bet you can envisage them and they have particular characteristics. If the image is a negative one, then it's almost certainly an incomplete picture, or just plain wrong.

The case studies that Tom uses in the book paints a picture of a different kind of strength that we see in sensitive men. An embrace of their whole selves, the courage to transcend the performative demands to shut up and 'man (bottle) up'. And how when they're not driven by a need to fit in and conform (and alienate themselves from themselves), they are able to access a much fuller, richer, and more attractive expression of who they are capable of becoming. The Myth and Performance of The 'Masculine Ideal' Like any ideal, our notions around masculinity are first and foremost constructed. And as with all ideals, they are symbols into which no one truly fits.

It's a performance. We see this because most people adapt and shift their behaviour to suit the situation in which they are operating. Within the performance of masculinity, we see people behaving out of character in ways that are destructive to themselves and others.

The performance isn't a conscious thing, it's been programmed throughout our lives. And it triggers into action around certain people, in particular contexts and backdrops. It's an act of perverse selflessness where we let go of who we really are in order to give ourselves to some notion of what we need to be in or...

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It seems like everyone is talking about The Social Dilemma at the moment. It's likely that most people have never heard of it. And yet the perception I have through my own Reality Feed is that this movie is being talked about everywhere. Though seriously, I believe it's in the top 10 things watched on Netflix this week.

I'll be honest. When I first heard about it, I had no interest. It didn't appeal to me because the premise appeared to be going over old ground. Truths about the way we have sold ourselves to technology and social media. And the hype around this notion that we have bought a one way ticket to the annihilation of humanity. Do I really want to watch that?

But then my friend Jas mentioned he had also heard it was worth checking out. So I opened Netflix. Wow, there it was. Top of the page, full width spread. As if it had been expecting me. 😳

If you've not heard of The Social Dilemma, it is a documentary that blows the whistle on the Persuasion Technology industry. It revolves around testimonies, reflections, and laments, from some of Silicon Valley's leaders. Those who have been instrumental in creating the biggest platforms and technological features we all know (and most of us use).

No Great Surprises There was nothing in the film that surprised me. No great revelations that I hadn't already been at least partially aware of. But the way The Social Dilemma presents the situation felt pretty fresh, and will hopefully pave the way for some good conversations.

I never intended to write and share thoughts on this, but my morning pages got a little bit overtaken by my own reflections on what I'd watched. Not least because it is another piece in the jigsaw I've been putting together in the wake of information burnout and news fatigue that really took hold of me about 4 months ago. Weirdly Reassuring Maybe you've been feeling similar. Exhausted by the onslaught of news that makes you simultaneously furious and hopeless. The links, videos, and trending topics, you know will take you into a rabbit hole that leaves you feeling dirty and used, but you just can't help yourself. And it's made all the worse by the fact that you know it's bad for you, but something pulls you in and you just can't help yourself.

The Social Dilemma is a reminder that this is probably not an accident. We are moving deeper and deeper into a system which requires us to do what it manipulates us into doing.

When I finished the movie I couldn't help but wonder if I'm being farmed like an animal.

I also began to wonder...is Artificial Intelligence really driving us towards self-obliteration , or does it simply bring into the open the stuff that is already lurking around, beneath, and within me. Is it what already makes up the fabric of society? And it only makes it more visible.

I have loads of questions. And I'm interested in the power of resources like this, to stimulate healthy conversations. I've already seen the cynical, the dualistic, and the ideological tear downs. I have nothing invested in this film. I don't think hype is the best reaction we can have to it (I've seen plenty of that too). It's unhelpful, not least because it just feeds the very beast we're looking at exposing.

Well I found a bunch of ideas really interesting to think about and reflect on... What (or Who) Is The Product? The idea that, "if you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold" has been around for a while. Of course by definition, if you're not paying for something, you are not a customer. And we don't have to look far to see examples of companies collecting data on its users and building accurate profiles to sell to.

For some people this is seen as a positive. Targeted advertising means they only see things they might actually be interested in buying. Gone are the days of being shown irrelevant adverts and posts. Isn't that something to celebrate?

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I love the dawning of a new day. It's starting to get a little later. Autumn is the time of year when dawn feels more palpable and squeezable.

A couple of months ago I began running regularly again. The early morning jaunts around my neighbourhood are such a helpful way to start the day for me.

In recent weeks the sun has been hanging back. Sleeping in. Waiting a little longer before choosing to join me for in time for my pre-run morning coffee. But I think this has made the exercise even more enjoyable.

The cold, crisp September dawn preludes the moment the sun emerges above the horizon. And the sun bath engulfs me with its warm golden embrace at the bottom of a certain road. I get to step right into it as I turn the corner.

Change is Always Round The Bend I'm deep into a seasonal shift in my life right now. Things are transitioning and repositioning.

The sun is setting on the previous chapter, and the next one is starting to emerge. It's exciting and terrifying. But I know it's time.

I've updated the blog (not completely intentionally/expectedly). I got carried away with some changes I've been intending for years. It's had a clear out and a deep clean. I have that post car service feeling, when at the start of the next 10,000 miles, confident that things are fine tuned and refreshed.

Oh and I’ve set a date.

Yep, I've decided when I will take my step off the ledge and let go of my job. Trusting that I can make my life of a slow coach valuable to others, sustainable for myself, and longterm. The date has been said out loud, and I've written it down. So it's official. It's real. It's coming. I'm accountable.

The dawn reminds us that change is always sitting just around the corner. And there’s nothing we can do to stop it. There are times when this lack of control might feel like a good thing (when life feels rough), and times when it feels like a melancholic thing (when we want things to stay like this forever). Accepting The Emergence and Shift The Stoics emphasise the importance of accepting things as they are. And relinquishing our attachment to desire for things to be different. Not in the sense of passively rolling over and losing hope for a better future. But to view things with an objective lens that reminds us that this too shall pass (all things at all times).

The dawn signals the emergence of the sun on the horizon. It is coming whether we wish it to arrive or not. Likewise, a few hours later, the sun will disappear and the dusk will take us into the night. To wish for day during the night and night during the day is to waste our energy and emotion on the unchangeable inevitability. The Dawning Moment Throughout our lives we experience a number of small personal dawns. When we start to feel a shift in the atmosphere. We get a sense that things are changing, emerging, dying, and becoming. The dawn changes our ability to see the shapes around us. It is the appearance of things based on the emergence of light that makes those things visible. But it’s the moment before we gain the clarity and direct energy of the sun itself.

It indicates to us that the change is coming.

Do you ever get that feeling that things are shifting, becoming, and emerging? But when you grapple with its meaning, there is not yet enough definition to see the true shape of what’s to come. The Darkness (Just) Before The Dawn There is an old expression that says, ‘the night is darkest just before the dawn’. I’ve read a few articles in preparation for this post. There are some amusing arguments around the scientific validity of this. The debates get pretty heated, and seem on the whole to completely miss the point. It's a figurative phrase, not a literal truth.

It is about the human experience. The darkest hour as a human experience, is so often the prelude to change. It’s the moment that stimulates an awakening and a fresh dawn. This might come through hitting rock bottom,

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During this month's Virtual Retreat we are letting go of ideas, stories, and objects that we feel an obligation or pressure to hold. Things that have become heavy and limiting. Diminishing our ability to nurture the life we desire at the soul (not ego) level.

There are so many normalised and expected approaches to life, which actually take us away from truly becoming and belonging as individuals. Many of us don't feel like we can even question these things. Some of them are so ingrained that we have never even asked considered the possibility that they are questionable in the first place.

This retreat is a chance to raise awareness, to ask ourselves questions, and to open up to the possibilities. That we can choose to let go of the stuff that keeps us from being, becoming, and belonging. And choose to pick up the things that we actually want instead.

Being - embracing gratitude, acceptance, and peace with where we are and what we have. Letting go of the ego idea that there is something missing and that we must constantly do things to prove our value and worth.

Becoming - recognising that we get to set the intentions and choose the direction we take our lives. Letting go of the expectations others have that we will squeeze into their plans and ideas of who we should be.

Belonging - understanding the deep sense that we are enough, just as we are. And that we don't have to prove anything to anyone in order to be accepted and belong. Letting go of the prison that we are 'here for a reason', and that we need to 'uncover our purpose'. Peace and Release There are two sides to this vision. On the one hand it's about becoming free from our own voice. Releasing ourselves from the message that we are not good enough, we need to be different, and try harder to fix things.

And on the other hand, it's about releasing ourselves from the message that things won't or can't truly change. So that we can step into an open space of possibility. Recognising the power that we have in ourselves to pick up the pieces we choose to collect. To nurture the dreams that mean the world to us. And to design life in such a way that it reflects who we are at that deeper soul level. Beneath the noise, under the stories, and beyond the messages that constantly tell us to tear ourselves away from ourselves.

There are so many things that we end up clinging tightly to. Ideas, stories, conventions, and ways of doing things, that take us away from the choices we would make for our lives if we felt able to. As introverts and highly sensitive people, there might be sabotaging people pleasing tendencies, and a desire to avoid conflict and confrontation. A desire to go with the flow and keep the peace, which can have many benefits, but can also drive this sense of disconnect between the life you would love and the life that you have. Redress The Balance The retreat is aimed at helping you reflect on that distinction. When things you hold onto go from serving who you are and the values you want to nurture, to holding and controlling you. To the point where you lose your self-worth, confidence, and sense of connection to the life you have slipped into tolerating, coping with, or simply trying to survive.

It's time to let go of the idea that this is what life is about. It's not something to tolerate, put up with, or survive. But rather something to enjoy, create, and explore.

This week we are thinking about how to let go of... Busyness We attach to the story that busyness is something to celebrate and encourage. But what if it was actually a sign that something has gone seriously wrong somewhere along the line? Offence If we want space to grow, then we have to have space to fail. Growth only occurs when we feel safe to risk and fall flat on our face. In a highly-offendable world, we hold tightly to offence in all its forms, imprisoning ourselves and others, and putting the brakes on creativity and connection. Perfectionism

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The ultimate salvation, according to Alan Watts, is to let go of ourselves and our resistance to death.

We are unable to stop changing. It’s impossible. We can’t hang onto ourselves. Yet we try with all our might to hang onto ourselves as we think we were and as we believe we are. We might build our lives on a drive to resist our change, which raises the awareness of our own mortality.

What if it’s actually our drive to resist death that is causing us so much resistance to life itself?

Memento mori Memento mori is a call to be mindful of death. An idea encouraged in different ways by a variety of religions and philosophy. It is not telling us to obsess or worry about death, but rather to be free within its presence.

To be mindful of death is to let go of its threat. And it allows us to be mindful of the deep meaning of life.

I’ve been asked many times if my job as an undertaker gets me down. Working in and around death all the time must take its toll. “Urgh, that’s depressing”, comes the response from some people when I tell them what I do.

Yes, it is certainly unusual and a bit of a weird place to find myself. And I find it hard to see people distraught in grief, and struggling within their loss. Unable to bring back what has gone from them. But no, it’s not depressing. It’s very rare that I have a day when I look around me and say ‘everything is meaningless so what’s the point? It doesn’t matter what we do, we all wind up dead’. Holding onto Disempowerment Many of us might worry that dwelling on the reality of our death will take us into a place of in-action and disempowerment. My experience of reality is quite the opposite. In fact some of the most disempowered people I know are those who will not entertain the truth that they are going to die.

Whether or not we are mindful of death, death still comes to us all. But memento mori helps us find meaning in life before we take our final breath. And it allows us to let go of the stories, beliefs, and ideas that we use to resist our own sense of mortality. The stories, beliefs, and ideas that actually bring death and stagnation to everyday life.

When we’re not mindful of death, we become disempowered, and deny ourselves the possibility of real change. When we’re not mindful of death, we deny the potential futures that we can bring to life if we let go of the stagnant waste in which we are treading water. Death comes before life, just like the Spring requires Fall. Let Go of the Life Raft In order to grow, become, and develop throughout our lives, we need to be mindful (and embracing) of death. It’s what makes life possible. Otherwise we ourselves stagnate. We do the same things over and over. Stuck in ruts, and clinging onto old ways, old ideas, and old beliefs, like life-rafts on a dead pond.

We spend life bobbing around a body of stagnant water, clinging to these things that are eroding in our hands. Not realising, that if we just let go, the water is shallow and the bed is firm. We can stand up and we can walk onwards. Out. Up. Beyond.

What happens at the end of a life spend trying to cling on to our life raft? When we dedicate ourselves to deny, conceal, and suppress the fact that death is inevitable? We still die. Perhaps just with more regrets, less freedom, and the realisation that all those immortality projects to which we’ve dedicated ourselves. They didn’t achieve the desired outcome. If You Want a Better Grip, You've Got to Let Go It was 2008. I was sat at my desk, distracted and discouraged. Another day, overwhelmed by the work I needed to do in order to finish my degree. I’d start one thing and feel punched in the face by all the other things that weren’t getting done. The mountain of work got bigger and my ability to tackle it was diminishing by the second.

A vision came to mind. I was holding for dear life a vertical rock face. I was scared of falling, but the harder I tried to cling on, the sweatier I became.

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In week six of The Artist's Way, Recovering a Sense of Abundance, Julia Cameron focusses on our relationship with luxury and limitation.

It is a fascinating theme to explore. All about that strange and difficult relationship many of us have with ideas around wealth, money, and materialism. It looks at the ingrained messages we have built into our lives about who we are and what we feel we deserve.

There is a difference between 'Fake Luxury' (a judgement we place on others). And 'True Luxury' (a freedom we grant ourselves).

Our Relationship With The Idea of Luxury We often think of Luxury as something other people enjoy. Not us.

"Oh I wish I had the luxury of a lie in" or "if only I had the luxury of a four bedroom house".

In this sense, luxury becomes a foundation for dissatisfaction, envy, and even resentment. Luxury is an external; enjoyed by others. It is lavish and extravagant. Beyond what we can ever possibly have for ourselves.

But as we explore in this month's podcast, true luxury is something to which we ALL have access. Luxury of Introversion and Sensitivity As self-awareness and understanding increases, there is a transition which I see over time with people I work alongside. In the early days, there's a sense that something is lacking. A kind of poverty, where to them, it feels like they are missing something that others have.

We might look at extroverts and wish we had the luxury of their confidence or approach to life or whatever. Then, over time it starts to become evident that the luxury isn't in the external appearance, but it's found on the inside.

True luxury is in the self-awareness and the ability of a self-aware person to better manage their natural preferences and tendencies, rather than resenting, and working against them. As we learn more about introversion and sensitivity, we step into a place of luxury.

No longer do we need to feel alone, weird, or like we are lacking something. There are many of us, we are weirdly normal, and we are enough. We have enough. We are equipped to learn what we need in order to thrive. Dropping A Wet Blanket On Other People Julia Cameron talks about a formidable artist friend of hers, who has disappeared into 'Wet Blanket Mode'. When she told him about the horse she bought, he responded by saying, “well, I hope you don’t expect to get to ride it much or even see it much. As you get older, you do less and less of the things you enjoy. Life becomes more and more about doing what you must….”

You can probably recognise that kind of mentality. Maybe someone specific comes to mind. A particular situation. Where your excitement about something new was brought to a crashing halt by someone who projected all their own dissatisfaction onto you. Julia Cameron continues... "Although not yet fifty, he has already been singled out for lifetime achievement awards. Nonetheless, this is an artist suffering in the throes of artistic anorexia. Although he continues to work, he does so at greater and greater cost to himself.

Why, he sometimes wonders to himself, does his life’s work now feel so much like his life’s work?

Why? Because he has denied himself luxury. Let me be clear that the luxury I am talking about here has nothing to do with penthouse views, designer clothes, zippy foreign sports cars, or first-class travel. This man enjoys all those privileges, but what he doesn’t enjoy is his life.

He has denied himself the luxury of time: time with friends, time with family, above all, time to himself with no agendas of preternatural accomplishment. His many former passions have dwindled to mere interests; he is too busy to enjoy pastimes.

He tells himself he has no time to pass. The clock is ticking and he is using it to get famous. " The Luxury of Time These stories don't just apply to artists or creative types. We're all susceptible to this kind of messaging about the things that matter most to us.

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What are we becoming? Who are you becoming? Where are we emerging?

We are currently experiencing a strange combination of uncertainty, change, and stasis. The future feels a little difficult to fathom. So I wanted to share some thoughts on these ideas because I think we all need a little bit of gentle reassurance and hope.

To 'become' is neither good nor bad. It just is. It's a fact. Everything and everyone is in a constant state of becoming, whether we believe it or not. We are always becoming, and we never fully arrive.

Becoming and Coaching Coaching fast-tracks intentional becoming. From where you are to where you're going next. And the coaching process give the coachee autonomy over where they want to go, and ultimately, how they will choose to get there.

I have come to really love this process. Especially when I get to delve into surprising discoveries and breakthroughs with clients. When the person they thought they were becoming, and the goals they thought mattered most, turn out to be less important to them than they thought.

When this happens, the becoming is about getting unstuck, un-wedding, and releasing ourselves from the stories we thought were true. And aligning our next steps and actions with a fresh sense of what and who is next.

Becoming is about changing, transforming, evolving, growing, developing, exploring, following, leading, testing, trying, experimenting, learning, observing, noticing, reflecting, emerging, honing, whittling, crafting, deciding, culling, removing, reviewing. It can't be rushed. The process lasts forever, and the results don't last for long. There is no agenda or motive. The Possibility of an Entire You Within a single acorn is the possibility of an entire oak tree. A whole oak tree is inside that tiny little seed. That's pretty mad when you think about it.

It's the same with everything...Human beings. You. Me. Everyone we know.

The entire possibility of who we are was in that tiny little egg when we were conceived. The possibility of all we have become and are continuing to become. Out of that moment in space and time we have emerged and are emerging. What if Nothing is Missing? We often move through life with the attitude that something is missing. We search high and low. Every new idea is a chance to discover the magic secret. This leads us to believe that getting this mysterious missing part will help us to find ourselves, discover our purpose, or uncover our calling. These can be dangerous ideas. And are directly related to the image we have of the universe.

I've recently been listening to Out of Your Mind, a collection of seminars and talks by Alan Watts. It's been an amazing companion to me during lockdown. The recording opens with him speaking about the power of language in framing our basic image of the world. For most of us in The West, this image (myth) is one of two main models: The Ceramic Model and/or The Fully Automatic Model. Myths (images) of the Universe 1. The Ceramic Model of the Universe This is based on the book of Genesis, from which Judaism, Islam, and Christianity derive their basic picture of the world.

This image sees the world as an artefact. It is made in the same way a potter takes clay and makes pots, or a carpenter takes wood and makes tables and chairs. This sees God as a technician, who has in mind a plan, and fashions the universe in accordance with that plan. 2. The Fully-Automatic Model of the Universe The original model has everything responding to and obeying 'the plan'. Watts suggests that Science allowed people to hold this image without needing to believe in God. Because the hypothesis of God doesn't help us make predictions about the future (the laws of nature/science/God are all the same. Regularity and consistency allows for accurate predictions to be made.

This model sees the world as nothing but unintelligent force. It is only the result of this exuberant energy and a mix of fluke and blin...

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The word 'static' has been on my mind this month. Since Jacob Nordby used it when talking about 'connection'. I've been thinking about different types of static and how they are showing up at the moment.

There is a lot of static in the world right now. I'm writing this in a state of lockdown. You may well be reading it in a similar place.

The COVID-19 outbreak has meant we are in a period of physical stasis, unable to go far and unable to move without good reason. There is a lot of static noise, from the repetitive feedback loops of our news feeds, social media, and email inboxes. And we might be experiencing moments of electrical shock as we rub up against these strange unchartered pathways.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast I look at three specific types of static. We will explore how they show up in unexpected ways, and whether they can even be a potential source of deep joy and possibility.

I don't know about you, but I've been struggling amidst the static. Swirling shifts in my mood. Jumps from feelings of healthy stasis and balance, to a feeling of being tethered, rooted, and anchored in a place I don't want to be.

A lot of us are feeling these tensions. These leaps between moods and feelings. Ebbs and flows. Ups and downs. This is completely normal, and we need to allow them to be. We can't fight them. But we can sit with them, observe them, and let them pass.

This Too Shall Pass This is a saying I'm hearing a lot at the moment. Most often it is a point of reassurance. That no matter how hard things are, we will move through to the other side of this moment.

I spoke with someone recently who said she finds the saying a little frightening. And to her it's actually a voice of foreboding joy. It tells us that no matter how good things are right now, it wont last. "Oh yeah. Wow. True." I thought.

We load a saying with our own meaning. We project what we need into things like that. The simple truth it contains is this: change is inevitable. Even when things seem static, they are still transforming at some level.

This situation is changing us, it's changing the way we show up in the world, and it's changing the state of the world itself. Within an acorn there resides an oak tree. Not all at once. Not yet fully formed. But it's in there. From every word, situation, and moment resides the possibility of what it will become. Static as Stillness On the one hand static is balance, rootedness, and a solid foundation. And on the other hand, it is stuckness, imprisonment, and lockdown. "An anchor keeps a vessel at bay, planted in the harbour, unable to explore the freedom of the sea" - The Minimalists Isn't that the whole point? An anchor is a tool to prevent the boat from drifting away with the wind or current. It doesn't restrict the vessel. It protects it. Surely?

I remember finding this quote rather challenging idea to get my head around at first. The notion of being anchored had always felt like a compliment. A positive. I thought of anchored people as good people. They have their stuff together, and they're reliable and trustworthy.

But as they unpack the idea in the book, it makes more and more sense. They had followed this desired description of being very anchored, and conformed to it in their early 20's. They climbed the corporate ladder, bought property, and appeared well adjusted to the norms and expectations of the world around them. But this anchoring was stopping them from exploring the world they wanted to see. All these commitments, ideas, material possessions and debts were anchors (weights holding them in place). Forcing static on a curious, adventurous heart.

Anchors aren't innately good or bad. They just are. But it's our relationship with them, and our awareness of what they are enabling us to do or restricting us from doing, that is important.

We look at this more in the episode. Static as Noise Noise is the way we interpret a sensory input.

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We have woken up to a simple yet profound truth... Everything and everyone is connected. These are extraordinary times.

I've just returned from my 'one form of daily outdoor exercise'. And I write this, locked down at home, during a global pandemic. I never thought I'd write that sentence in a non-fiction context. Weird. It's all quite surreal.

Moments like this bring all the things we take for granted into focus. And we gain clarity on the under-the-surface norms and ideologies that underpin our beliefs and values. The more we disconnect and physically isolate, the more we can see how connected we truly are.

Everything impacts everything else.

Emotions, information, and ideas spread like subsidiary metaphorical viruses from one person to the next. Markets crash when the proverbial butterfly wings flap gently on the other side of the world. And the image of a single shelf of empty toilet paper can lead to mass hysteria and global panic buying of something that wasn't a problem until it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Everything is Connected In this month's podcast I decided to develop this theme of connection. So I connected with friends (some old and some new), and invited them to share some encouragement during this period of uncertainty and upheaval.

It's turned into the longest episode I've ever produced. I had a great time putting it together, and am excited to share the lovely responses from my big hearted gentle rebel friends. I asked them two questions: 'how are you connecting right now?' And 'what does this make possible for you, for us, and for the world?'

How are You Connecting Right Now? We are connecting with other people in different ways. We are connecting with new parts of ourselves. And we are connecting with aspects of society that have been inaccessible until now.

We are Connecting With Others "It's wonderful to have this technology. In a time when we must physically distance, we don't actually have to socially distance." - Mark Pierce   "Even though I'm an introvert, I know my limits. And I know that it can feel easy for me to go days without seeing anyone in person. But I still desperately need to connect with others. I need to be heard, and I need to hear others. And ideally I need to see them, even if it's just on video. I just need to remember that." - Cat Rose   "I am connected more with my friends, and I even connect more with my family at home. Because we are doing things like playing games and spending time together which we don't often do." - Lydia Wilmsen   "There have been moments of connection with strangers. Exchanging eye contact which says 'this is weird isn't it?' There's a moment of connection there. This shared loneliness is making it all a bit less lonely." - Neil Hughes   "The family Zoom conference was such a rich experience for us. We laughed and reminded each other of how much we care. These digital tools can be used to continue spreading fear, static, and frustration in the world. Or it can provide a forum for laughter, where there's real connection." - Jacob Nordby

We Can Connect With Ourselves "The world is slowing down. And it's really tangible. We can feel it. We're all part of this. We all contribute. And this global quiet is a result of all of us slowing down." - Ben Fizell   "I'm connecting on the inside. I'm meditating and spending time doing inner work. And it's such an empowering feeling because I don't feel helpless or fearful. By going inwards, I feel as though I'm connecting with others in a telepathic sort of way." - Carol Chapman   "We can begin listening out for patterns that show up inside us. A lot of panic and fear comes from other fears. Not just outer circumstances. It is stuff which is already in us. And right now we have more time to really look and go deep. This provides a huge potential for personal growth." - Lydia Wilmsen

What Does This Make Possible?

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We can attach a lot of meaning to the idea of 'quitting'. Whether it's the judgement that 'winners DON'T quit', 'winners know WHEN to quit', or the mantra that 'quitting is the only real failure'.

There are obviously times when these ideas are helpful to remember and they carry elements of truth. But they are definitely not philosophies of life. They are far too simplistic.

Quitting carries a whole load of baggage as a word. And much of the messaging is oozing shame from its heart when you drill down a bit. A negative picture of what it means to quit is never far away from shame (a story we believe about ourselves that we want to keep hidden).

We quit when we believe the story we tell ourselves. For example, 'I'm a failure, I can't get anything right' (I will just quit!) Or, 'I must shut up and be grateful. I can't get above my station, and just remember how lucky I am to have a job at all given how useless I am...' (I can't quit!)

Should I stay or should I go?

Yes.

Quitting is neither positive or negative. It's simply a helpful option that is always there. We can remember this when we quieten that voice of shame.

As Brené Brown points out in her work, the best tool we have against the destructive force of shame is vulnerability. It's to name the shame, and tell the story. Only when we do this does the power balance shift. Blackmail and Internal Ransom Notes Shame is like a blackmailer, holding you ransom with a secret that you don't want anyone to know. 'Do what I say or else I'm going to reveal your humiliating secret to the world!'

It's not always big things. In fact, it works its insidious way under our skin with the smallest things.

Making a mistake at work ('typical, it's crazy that you still have a job...don't tell anyone about this, they'll know how useless you are'). Building a new relationship ('You're ugly, they're never going to like the real you'). Disappointment ('Don't tell anyone it didn't work out as you hoped. It makes you look stupid. I told you not to get excited!') Around Others ('Everyone is happier without me. They're joking and laughing together. They don't want me here').

Shame tells us a story about ourselves and about the world. And it demands that we keep it a secret. And we respond by staying around against our will, or dropping everything and leaving against our will.

Shame drives spiralling debts, affairs, addiction, and unhealthy patterns of behaviour. Because it tells us 'no one can know'. It traps us within fear and silence. The Perfect Crime There is a modern phishing scam that I've seen over the past few years. It taps into shame in a big way, using the weapon of 'sextortion'.

It tells the recipient that there is proof of them doing something (e.g. watching porn). They tell the potential victim that they have planted malware on their device, and have access to the camera and their entire address book. They're told that if they don't want to be humiliated they can simply pay a large but not obscene amount of money (bitcoin), and the problem will go away. The most advanced ones will even have a very old password in the subject line, to deepen the sense of legitimacy.

There are a huge number of victims of this. Why? Shame. And many many more victims who will never admit they fell victim. Why? Shame.

It's the perfect crime because it knows that shame is our kryptonite. Shame drives us to pay them off. And shame keeps us quiet about it.

When the shame gets too hot to handle and the truth has no choice but to come out we hit a breaking point. This is when we quit our bond with the shame. And it often gives us the opportunity to be free. Shamelessness becomes a winning strategy.

Quitting is ALWAYS an option. It's not always easy. It might be unbearably painful. But it's always possible. Why Embrace the Possibility of Quitting? Quitting is about releasing, letting go, abandoning, clearing, wiping the slate clean, and so on.

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My introduction to the word 'minimalism' was as a teenager, being introduced to Brian Eno's Ambient 1/Music for Airports. It was like the sweetest breath of fresh air down my earholes. Music that swept me away and decluttered my aural environment.

For a long time I thought of minimalism as an aesthetic or style. A sparsely decorated room or that genre of music made of processed ambient sounds and long drone loops. I've always been drawn to these expressions. I don't like clutter, and I love to have things around me simple and clear.

But in recent years I've been drawn to something in minimalism that transcends the surface levels of life. Take a look at my Minimal Manifesto here. These are some ideas from minimalism that have resonated deeply with me.

It stretches deeper. Helping us look at the reality of our finite existence, so that we can understand what matters most, and strip away all the stuff that anchors us into unhealthy attachments, ways of thinking, and patterns of behaviour.

Ultimately it is about freedom. And about acknowledging that we don’t have the capacity, time, or energy for everything. Yet we do have the ability to choose and discern between things that mean something and things that don’t. Whether it be stuff, work, people, commitments, opinions, and so on.

The Prison of Least Resistance I've been reflecting on this a lot lately. I have been feeling anything but free. Burdened by tasks and overcommitment from the gradual drift of the mindless more. I've been on a return to some core minimalist principles. These have helped me audit my energy/time, and recalibrate.

This process has had a direct impact on the podcast. Because I’ve decided to make it a monthly rather than weekly show. 😳 There, I said it.

I worked out that it takes me 12 hours to prepare for, record, and publish each episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast. No wonder I’m exhausted. I’m working near enough full time, doing two diplomas, and running a business, not to mention gigging, maintaining relationships, and attempting to stay healthy. “But I can’t give up the podcast!” When I’m tired I forget to think properly. I get a bit all or nothing. So my initial thought was, I'm going to have to quit the podcast. Either that or I have to carry it on like normal. But I don’t want to give it up. I can’t give ANYTHING up! Everything I have on my schedule is important. I've curated it over time. What am I supposed to do!? Everything is important. Everything matters, and I enjoy it all...on the whole!

In the last episode I spoke about ‘priorities’ and how you can only have one. I mentioned the idea of a Priority Spirit; a filter through which all things pass. I hadn’t realised quite how much I needed to grasp that concept for myself. And as I began to think about it, I have seen that my priority spirit for this year is Expansion Through Margin. Growth Through Pruning. Less and Better.

We can get so stuck in a thought pattern or way of doing things that we can lose sight of our ability to change the rules. For me I was stuck with this idea that the podcast is weekly and that’s that. But what if I changed my rules? I could still find the joy from producing the episodes, and do so in a way that is better for me AND better for the quality of the show itself. Small Things Become Big Things I worked out that by moving from four to one episode a month I will save about 432 hours a year. That’s 54, eight-hour days. That is some serious margin.

I am not axing a weekly podcast entirely. I will still produce the Extended Play Private Podcast each week. It only takes a couple of hours to pull together, and is an important part of the formulation and incubation of new ideas. I talk off the cuff, play some music, and share a much more rough and ready behind the scenes reflection on creativity, building a business, and navigating life when you don’t know which way is up.

If you want to keep hearing my voice each week then you...

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At the start of a new year it feels natural to think about vision, priorities, and goals. I haven't set any goals this year. This wasn't a conscious decision. In fact, I had intended to (I have done for the past 7 or 8 years). It turns out however, that it wasn't enough of a priority. So I woke up on New Year's Day without any goals. And that feels fine.

The word 'priority' has been on my mind a lot. Because even though I don't have specific goals for the next 12 months, I have a growing sense of what matters most. The values I want to nurture, and the kind of life I am designing.

By definition you can't really have more than one priority at a time. 'Prior' means 'first, former, superior, better, before, in front of etc'. And 'ity' is the condition or quality of being. Therefore a priority is the condition or quality of something before other things. If we have multiple priorities then we actually have no priority. Just a bunch of things that hold equal sway in our life. Which is fine, until those demands become too much to handle.

Themes and Priorities Maybe you've set a theme for the year. I know many people who have taken this approach. For example, I've seen people commit themselves to the year of creativity, health, relationships, less, play, travel etc. Whereby the intention is to prioritise that theme as the filter through which they act, think, and make decisions.

This is an interesting way to frame things and I believe gets us some way towards establishing a meaningful priority. Priorities give us clarity, focus, and set the conditions for growth in our lives. They help us align our values and our actions, and provide a wide angle lens for us to understand to micro-aspects of everyday life.

But how do we come up with a genuine, meaningful priority?

This is a question that is difficult to answer. What truly matters? What do we want to commit our lives to this week, this month, this year?

It can be hard to decide. As we seek to narrow our focus, we might quickly get caught up in the fallacy of multiple priorities again. There is fear in letting go of the unimportant. Especially when the unimportant feels important. The stuff that is only unimportant by virtue of the evidence that it isn't a priority. Goal setting is my example. It feels important. I intended to do it. Yet I didn't. Doing vs Being We can also get tied up in knots when we see our priority as a thing we must do. This is where setting a theme for the year works well, because it sets a 'spirit' around the year.

To commit to the spirit of creativity, health, play, adventure, serenity, etc. This blows open the doors of potential, so that all things are seen in light of the spirit. Rather than a priority that restricts action to a single thing, e.g. I will create more stuff this year. Or I will travel more this year.

It's a subtle difference, but when we live within the spirit of creativity, it means we see everything we do as carrying potential for some kind of creativity within it. And the spirit of travel can be nurtured without you needing to actively go anywhere. It can be enjoyed through the books you read, words you write, or games you play with the kids. A Positive Priority We are good at opposing ourselves to things. Even in our own lives, we might say a priority is 'stop eating badly', or 'stop being a people pleaser'. These carry good intentions. But will ultimately fail if we don't state what we DO want instead. Otherwise we will fixate on the negative, and in all likelihood bring more of it into our lives.

It's hard to state things positively, because it takes time to actually get clear on what truly matters. We can probably identify many 'shoulds'. Stuff that we see others doing that looks cool. But what about our own priority? The spirit that will help us grow positively into the person we want to become? Stop People Pleasing I mention this because it has been following me around over the past few mon...

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We are surrounded by spirit; the by-product of what goes on. Other people, events, relationships (past and present), experiences etc. Our lives are influenced by, touched by, and informed by, this kind of spirit. This might be thought of as the constant 'presence of absences'.

The Spirit of Past, Present, and Future I was blown away by an adaptation of A Christmas Carol that the BBC released over Christmas 2019. The power of spirit as a concept really struck me as I watched it. From our own spirit (the trail we leave around us), to the spirit of trauma (the legacy of negative events that might have happened to us), via the spirit of what has been, what is, and what might come to be.

This is not some abstract concept, but one that we can use to build better lives on.

Guy Pierce's portrayal sees Scrooge as younger than other versions. And there is something altogether different. Rather than being a miser who gets a kick out of being a sadistic, cynical old grump, he comes across as emotionally detached and disconnected from himself and the world. Unwedded from humanity. Numb and unable to feel anything at all. Spirit and Water "There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” " - David Foster Wallace We all carry ghosts with us through our lives. They speak to us about who we are and what we're capable of. They tell us things they think we should know about other people. And they warn us of things in order to try and keep us safe. The Spirit Lives On I think about the notion of spirit a lot. As an undertaker I feel confronted by it every day!

At one level, no one truly dies. Yes, their physical manifestation ceases to be. But their spirit lives on in different ways. The routines, words, values, lessons, memories, and example they leave behind in the lives of those around them.

This is the spirit of another person, where their presence continues, even in their absence. Like the memories we might recall when we encounter a certain smell, sound, or physical space. It occurs for lost lovers, old ways of life, and past experiences.

These spirits are not always helpful. There can be negative aspects to the ghosts we carry. We might carry critical words from the past - perhaps parents, siblings, teachers, or even strangers. Voices that enter our minds and fill them with self-doubt and anxiety.

These presences define our world views, our values, and our behaviour. But like the water in David Foster Wallace's story, if we are unaware that they are there, we don't know that we are swimming in them. They are simply true. As is our unconscious response to them. The Spirit of Christmas Past We need a Spirit of Christmas Past to be the old fish. To raise our awareness and soften our hearts to the walls we create around our perception of reality. “What happened to me at this school excuses me. It explains me. And because it’s all been done in the past, nothing can be done to remedy it.” - Scrooge

“So you need more than a mincing knife and warm gravy to soften your heart. You only see what your father did to you, and not what your sister did for you. Let us go deeper.” - The Spirit of Christmas Past Many of us experience a similar reaction to Scrooge. We stop right here. Having found a reason for dissatisfaction, it then turns into an excuse for how we are (and why we don't need to change), and eventually this can come to define our whole life. We find a comfortable way to play the role of victim, and water this with self-pity and 'ressentiment'. Ressentiment 'Ressentiment' is a spirit of hostility towards what we decide to identify as the cause of our frustration or pain. In other words, it is an object of blame for our negative feelings,

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What do you wish your younger self could have known about life, the world, and themselves?

This is the sixth and final part of Serenity in the Trenches, a series of episodes to help us find self-acceptance and true belonging when things around us feel like they're falling apart. In this part we are spending time in conversation with ourselves. Who we are now, who we were then, and who we are in the process of becoming. What would you say to your younger self?

This is not just a hypothetical exercise. It contains great power to change the foundations of our present. Because our experience of now, is deeply underpinned by the ghosts of ourselves from throughout our lives. A ghost is the presence of an absence. We all carry them around. The words of other people. Traumas from our past. And unique situations or experiences which took us out of our comfort zone.

By opening up dialogue with the little voice(s), we can begin to shift the beliefs, values, and feelings that are holding us back from true belonging in this moment and the future.

What are some of the things we might say?

Don't let fear stop you doing what matters most.

Trust your gut and your 'artist brain'. Before the second, third, and fourth thoughts stop you from acting. And have faith that you will avoid the genuinely terrible stuff.

What you're doing now will contribute to who you will become. You will make positive change, it might not feel like it's happening, but it is. Step by step.

Restlessness, impatience, and a desire to move with haste. These are things that might stop you from committing and persevering with what matters. The Little Voice We can influence the voice of our younger self. It's one thing going back and speaking from the future. But most of us need to hear a re-writing of the story from our younger self...the 'little voice'.

We need to feel accepted and loved from that side of our story. Otherwise we carry the restlessness, the self-berating, regret. The feeling "I'm not good enough, I've not done enough, I've let myself down."

What if that younger self, the one with 'their whole life ahead of them', came into the present moment and said, "I'm proud to become you. You are enough. Thanks for continuing the story, man! It's been gripping to watch, and wow I can't believe the way you dealt with some of those situations you've been through. I would never have thought I could cope with that. But you did!" Treat Life Like a Practice "You're never going to get it right. You're never going to reach the North Star. Treat life like a practice. Look at perfection, whatever that might mean to you. But you're never gonna really be perfect. You can just be perfectly yourself." - Leah Burkhart What are You Waiting For? "Do the thing that you want to do. Do it now. Don't wait until you feel like you're ready or until you think it's okay with everyone else. You don't need permission to chase after your dreams. It doesn't have to be okay with your friends or your family, for you to do the things that you want to do. You don't have to live by their standards. You can make your own standards. It's okay." - Sarah Kuhn

"Don't wait for perfection, or for a year from now. Don't wait for anything else to change. Just do it now. Go build the business of your dreams. Get out of a relationship that isn't serving you. Move to where you want to go. Whatever you want in your life. Go after it. Now.” - Cameron Airen Know When To Quit "Stick with it long enough to know you gave it your best shot".

This is one of the messages I would give to my younger self. But also, "if it doesn't feel right, don't feel like you should stick with it just because people say you should. Trust your gut and we will deal with consequences, because knowing when to quit is an important part of the story". Make Your Own Rules For Life “I think I would say, "hey, everything's okay". My younger self was so worried all the time.

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There is an old adage that says, 'hurt people hurt people'. We've all experienced the truth of this message. Probably as both the giver and receiver at different points.

It's also true that seen people see people. Supported people support people. Loved people love people. And as people, we get to choose the kind of world we want to create. Do we want to contribute to a world of hurt? Or start building a world of compassion, support, and love?

It might seem like a very simplistic way of seeing things. I know it's not black and white. But I also believe that if we're going to create a better world, we've got to engage in it with a self-aware naivety. The kind that gives us a chance of doing a bit better.

In the penultimate part of Serenity in the Trenches we are exploring the messages people wish others knew, believed, or felt about themselves. As a way to subvert the general message that underpins a lot of our modern world - that we are not enough, we are broken, and others are out to get what we wish we could have.

Hurt people hurt people. Fear breeds fear. Hate begets hate.

Opening Doors What message do you want people to feel, know, or believe?

This is a question that holds so many interesting keys to doors we tend to keep locked. I absolutely loved hearing the responses to it because they are full of grace, hope, and compassion. And yet, so often these things are missing in the way we interact with others, and within ourselves.

The world will only change if we allow ourselves to be changed. We can't expect peace 'out there' if we're fighting a constant war in our minds. This is a war that stems from beliefs about ourselves, about our value, our worth, and our place in the world. We are encouraged to fight for significance and belonging. And we forget to remember that belonging happens when we let go of the drive to control everything, destroy other people, and prove ourselves. 'You are enough' Let that message sink into the depths of your being. You are enough. "Do you really feel like you're enough or do you feel like there's something missing and you're on a frantic search to find it? And sometimes the search isn't even that frantic. It's more subtle. A sense there's something missing.

Like there's a hole in the soul. Then we go out and try to fill that hole with externals. These usually look something like people's approval, accomplishment, status. What kind of car do I drive? What kind of house do I live in? Or how do I look?" - Carina Nickerson What would it mean to be enough? As you are. Where you are. With what you have.

As we close out another decade, this is the message to carry forward into the New Year. To put an end to our endless pursuit of more. It will bring inner peace to ourselves, and inject grace into our relationships with one another. Living a life of 'enough' lies at the heart of our ability to survive on this planet as a species.

It doesn't mean going without. You don't need to reject ambition, growth, or hope for change. But it's a complete transformation of the relationship you have with those externals. Removing the power of anything outside of yourself to provide justification for your innate value as a human.

When we start living from a place of 'enough', we find the freedom and clarity to know what truly matters...and what truly doesn't matter (hint, it's all that stuff we pursue with the belief it will 'complete' us...) You ARE Complete Have you ever searched for a person or thing to 'complete' you? This drives us on an insatiable pursuit of imperfect things, believing that they hold the secret to us become 'whole'. Embrace instead, the truth that you are complete in your incompleteness. You are whole in your hole-iness. No person, object, or experience will bring you to that magical (and non-existing) destination of completion. Happiness Is NOT The Goal Happiness is a fleeting emotional experience. It's not a state of being. Like pleasure,

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What problem do you want to solve in the world around you? If you had a magic wand, what would you make better?

This is the key question for developing positive meaning and drive in our lives. It lies at the heart of values-driven businesses that want to change the lives of people they serve for the better. And it unlocks the door for our own sense of "passion", "meaning", and "purpose". When we use these abstract (and often stressful sounding) words, this is what we mean.

The change our desire draws us towards. For ourselves, for those we care about, and for the wider world.

We're going to spend some time thinking about this in the fourth part of the Serenity in the Trenches series.

Highly Sensitive Radars As highly sensitive people, we are wired to be the lookouts, the philosophers, the prophets. Those who can sense the dangers, risks, and consequences, before they have done their damage. In this sense we are wired to inspire change in the world. To identify problems before they become problems, so that as a collective we can put our best foot forward.

Highly sensitive people may sense very subtle shifts in the environment, and are affected by the moods of other people. They are more sensitive to sounds, noises, and bright lights, which can lead to unpleasant arousal when lots is going on around them. Overstimulation from the outside world can have a frazzling effect on their nervous systems.

We've normalised a high speed, instant access, and get it done yesterday flow to life. A pace that shows little regard for slowing down, taking heed, or raising awareness of the 'warning signals' from impending dangers. Such a world can feel hostile for highly sensitive people, who process this important sensory information deeply. These are the people who know the cliff edge is there before the rest of us go hurtling off it.

This noisy, busy, fast-paced society doesn't value the necessary and important gifts brought by the highly sensitive in our midst. We'd do well to bring them back to the forefront. The Law of the Instrument "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." - Abraham Maslow The 'law of the instrument' plays its part in our modern world. We use the same thinking to approach the complex, nuanced, full-of-grey challenges around us. We celebrate aggression, believe that loudness (and repetition) is effectiveness, equate rudeness with courage, and give way to a bulldozer style of leadership. This might give the perception of momentum, but usually leaves more long term destruction and collateral damage in its wake.

If this is what 'strong leadership' looks like, then that is the weapon/tool we will use in relation to every challenge we face. Blindly following brazen action over reflection. Insensitivity over compassion. And the drift of reactionary windswept momentum, instead of a meaningful considered path that has been intentionally selected as the best way forward. You can't build a house with a bulldozer. Things feel broken, painful, and chaotic. We cannot escape this truth. But wherever there are struggles, we always find pathways to potential meaning and connection. As humans we are wired to contribute, to serve, and to engage in the hive. Not to simply sit on the sidelines and shake our heads at the state of things. A Dream Of Restoration And I dream of a world where the balance of sensitivity is restored. In fact, we should all dream of such a place. Because we are seeing the scourge of insensitivity prevailing today. And it's devastating for our mental health, personal and collective values, and our ability as a species to maintain a climate and environment that has any interest in sustaining our existence.

Dreaming of such a place is just the start, and it lies at the heart of the question in this episode. "If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change about the world right now?"

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In the previous part of Serenity in the Trenches, we identified the signs that tell us we need to recharge our batteries. In this episode we think about the practical side of refuelling the tank.

What are your go-to sources of self-care and rest?

Retreating This is a word that comes up a lot. Carina Nickerson mentions it, and I've had some lovely discussions with Laurie Helgoe about the importance of it for introverts.

At its core, "retreating allows us to move away from the din of outside stimulation and to adopt a more natural and authentic rhythm."

Laurie goes on to say that, "for introverts, retreating is more than a movement away. It is a compelling pull toward. In the quiet space of a retreat, we dream, we hear the voice within, we can remember what we love, notice what we have, and envision what we want."

This is such a beautiful reminder that 'retreat' isn't simply an escape from all that is bad. It is a movement towards all that is good. And as introverts it is of paramount importance because the din of the world 'out there' can drown out that quietly creative voice within.

Laurie points out, "because introverts are so mentally "absorbent," the concerns and wishes of others too easily displace our own. Though we love to make sense of everything in our worlds, doing so becomes taxing. We need to refuel."

And this is where rest, self-care, and retreat all come in. Retreat Towards, Not Away From In this part of Serenity in the Trenches we explore the go-to sources of refuelling the tank. Self-care has become a slightly trite phrase used to sell bath salts and chocolate. But this fails to appreciate the more transformational and foundational aspects of its true meaning in our lives.

We hear from all 23 contributors about the importance of taking this seriously. And they share their struggles and successes with their own 'retreat towards' practices.

Alice Southern, Beth Buelow, Boom Shikha, Cameron Airen, Carina Nickerson, Cat Rose, Jacob Nordby, Jacquelyn Strickland, Jim Woods, Jennifer Kahnweiler, Josie George, Lauren Sapala, Leah Burkhart, Mark Pierce, Michaela Chung, Nancy Ancowitz, Neil Hughes, Sarah Kuhn, Sarah Santacroce, Thea Orozco, Tracy Cooper, Tracy Guillet, Tuula Ahde Healthy Retreat Laurie suggests that "we need both, personal and collective retreats. A solo retreat gets us up close and personal with ourselves, which can expose vulnerabilities as well as desires."

This is the bedrock of a life that carries meaning and joy. We've got to go inwards and explore the depths of our biggest dreams, hopes, and fears, so that we can design a life that reflects all of us. This is not a one time event, but happens over time, step by step, moment by moment. Laurie warns against placing all the pressure on a one-off retreat. "Maybe the bed is too hard, or the mosquitos are hungry, or you discover difficult emotions you've neglected. We are better able to mindfully accept such experiences when we have an attitude of discovery. And we foster this attitude when we make retreating a practice -- a renewable resource. So we have the annual or semi-annual or quarterly retreat away, but we also take ourselves on regular "dates" and walks and into favorite hideouts on a regular basis." Regular Retreating The contributors explore how they structure their own regular retreats. There are many similar themes that emerge, but also plenty of differences in what works for each of them.

And this is an important thing to remember. We get to craft this for ourselves. It's not a situation where we can paint by numbers. We can't copy what someone else has found useful, believing that it is the magic bullet. Always be skeptical about anyone who positions themselves as a guru or the person with 'THE way' to the secret, answer, solution etc.

Life is an experiment. It's our canvas to paint. And we get to be a part of the process of design and crafting.

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What tells you that your inner batteries are running low?

Being introverted and/or sensitive, we get drained by external stimulation. People, busy environments, events. This is different from extroverts, who need to seek out and plug into the external world when their energy levels are low.

There is no better or worse way of creating energy. These are just our natural orientation. But understanding our temperamental preferences is a keystone if we want to learn how to function at an optimum level as an individual.

Whether we are introverted or extroverted, one of the things we can do is learn to recognise the signs that we need to recharge the batteries. Because when we're running on low we put ourselves at risk of overwhelm, increased stress, and ultimately, burnout.

At a surface level we might know when we're drained. We feel tired, hungry, or unable to concentrate. But it's not always obvious, especially to ourselves, when we are attempting to run on empty.

We might not realise that certain behaviours, thought processes, or attitudes, have crept in. It can be insidious. And ways of seeing and feeling the world can feel like the truth. When they are really just a reflection of the state our batteries are in. Recharge The Collective Battery This doesn't just impact us as individuals. It is contagious. Low batteries are catching. And before you know it you can end up with a whole family, community, or society, who are showing signs of low batteries. And I would say this feels truer today than I've ever known it before.

Change, as ever starts with us. Self-awareness. Stopping. Listening. Observing. Reflecting. What is happening that tells me I need to recharge my batteries right now?

This stuff is vital. The creation of energy lies at the heart of our positive drive. If we are constantly acting from a place of energetic debt, we will lose our sense of meaning, fun, and curiosity. We will lose perspective, and live in a state of fatalism, irritability, and hostility towards others. Ultimately, overtime, we will lose ourselves and our natural ways of showing up.

We just become a collection of empty vessels, rattling around, and bumping into one another.

When society appears like this, it's not a reflection of how things are. It's a reflection of how poorly we are managing ourselves and our energy. How poorly we are at nurturing and cultivating the stuff that matters most. It's a sign that we have our priorities completely out of whack. Batteries Are There To Be Used (and charged) Devices have batteries so that we can use them unplugged. They are built to be used with their own self-contained power generator, away from a more abundant source of energy. They don't need to be plugged in all the time (doing so de-conditions the battery and renders it ineffective and ultimately useless), but they can't stay unplugged all the time (eventually the battery will deplete and the thing will stop working).

We can use take this metaphor and run with it. Humans are the same. We have compelling personal projects, relationships, jobs etc, for which we need and want to unplug. We show up and step in, knowing that we will require energy to complete them. And that's OK. In fact, it's where we find those moments of meaning and purpose for our lives, and generate passion for stuff that matters to us.

But even the most fulfilling, life-affirming activities and relationships, will cause our batteries to drain. We need to recharge, and we need to pre-charge. Just like you do with your phone when you're taking it out and about. You take it to use it. But you would do so with the battery level in mind, charging it before you leave. And if needs be working out a plan to keep it charged if you're going to be away for a while. The Thing That Drains The Battery Isn't Innately Bad It's a sign that you're alive.

Ultimately how we invest the energy in our batteries is up to us.

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Do you know what your positive drive is in life? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

An alarm. Someone prodding you. The desire not to get fired from your job. Noisy kids. The need to pay the bills. A cat. Ingrained habit. Or the smell of coffee... How do you feel at the start of a new day? This is the first part of a series I've put together with 23 gentle rebel collaborators, looking at how to find self-acceptance and true belonging when things around you feel like they're falling apart. We are looking at six different questions that will help us nurture our deep serenity in the trenches of life.

The world can feel bleak. We are witnesses to great division in politics and society right now. Everything oozes with distrust, hostility, and fear. And it can feel alienating and isolating for those of us who desire space, time, peace, and calm.

The external call is 'get involved or run away'. We either sink to the levels that create this atmosphere, or we bury our heads in the sand and hope that the storm will pass.

But neither option is good for us. They both take the power out of our hands, and place it into to hands of something 'out there'.

You Are Not Alone I created this new series of podcasts as a way to remind, first and foremost myself, that there is still cause for hope in our modern world. I've experienced many dark moments at the state of the world (and my own life) lately. But this is a project that has genuinely helped me massively. The process of putting it all together has been a great time of reassurance and encouragement. So I am excited to share this with you, especially if you've been feeling dejected about how things are.

What I've learned is, I'm not alone. And my vision for this project is that anyone who engages with it will know and feel that they too are not alone. Designing a Gentle Life As introverts and highly sensitive types, I know we can learn to use our natural preferences as a gift (even if they currently feel like a curse). We can do this without denying the full spectrum of experience and feeling that comes with it. But we don't have to be subservient to our reactions. We can choose how to engage with, and respond to, the external events going on around us.

And we can begin to design life in such a way that we are fully aware of how our energy is affected by all manner of things. In order that we might identify how to create the abundance of energy we need for the things that matter most to us as individuals.

You don't have to take my word for it. I have been joined by 23 amazing Gentle Rebels, who bring a whole range of backgrounds and experiences. They show that whoever you are, whatever you care about, it's possible to take the reins and live a life of meaning and creativity as an introvert and/or highly sensitive person. Even when the world feels like it's falling apart around you! We will be hearing from: Alice Southern | Beth Buelow | Boom Shikha | Cameron Airen | Carina Nickerson | Cat Rose | Jacob Nordby | Jacquelyn Strickland | Jim Woods | Jennifer Kahnweiler | Josie George | Lauren Sapala | Leah Burkhart | Mark Pierce | Michaela Chung | Nancy Ancowitz | Neil Hughes | Sarah Kuhn | Sarah Santacroce | Thea Orozco | Tracy Cooper | Tracy Guillet | Tuula Ahde

Where Do You Find Your Positive Drive? So much of life is spent reacting to things, numbing ourselves, and ‘getting through’. We move from one thing to the next, hoping it might bring us the happiness, contentment, or peace we so desperately desire. And we don’t necessarily any positive drive or vision, moving us along the road.​

There is a vague hope that one day things might change. And we tell ourselves that if only things were different (we had the latest gadget, the perfect job, a different partner etc), then finally our lives would fall into place. Most of the time this is little more than abstract magical thinking. And it keeps us dissatisfied and frustrated.

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I’m sitting in a Waiting Room at hospital. I’ve just witnessed a rather awkward encounter between a nurse and someone wandering through the corridor. “You’ve got beautiful hair”, “thanks, I actually lost my hair, I'm undergoing chemo”. “Umm oh well that’s fantastic”. I share a glance with the woman, who pulls a face as if to say 'that was awkward'. It was a moment of connection that made me feel human, and calm.

I'm staring at a toilet door. It says ‘patient toilet’ on the front. I'm laughing inside. I have to get a photo.

...taken one!

It is a reminder of how absurd the English language is. Some people would appreciate a patient toilet. Especially in a place like this. A caring toilet with all the time in the world. That's what they need. There is nothing worse than an impatient toilet. One that shouts at us like a drill sergeant, ‘come on! Hurry up! Get on with it!’

OK. Obviously this isn’t what it means. It's a toilet that hospital patients can use. Lost in Translation Language is fascinating. It's easy to take it for granted. It was only when I was about 19 or 20 that I really appreciated the intricacies and difficulties language poses. I studied politics and international relations at university. It's a field peppered with the nuanced difficulties of language.

Cross culture, cross language, agreements and treaties. Diplomacy is dependent on good use of language. And the inappropriate use of a seemingly innocuous word in one language could be potentially catastrophic in translation.

On a personal level, I've noticed the challenge of language in my own coaching work. When working with clients for whom English is not their first language, I'm learning to listen to the words and phrases I use without thinking. It's so easy to lose clarity by failing to take into account the recipient of my words. And this represents a common problem in communication - we speak from our own perspective, rather than seeking to be understood from the other person's perspective.

Great communicators don’t just speak well. They understand who they are speaking TO. They know how to speak in order to be understood. And that cannot be done if they don’t first understand those people. What matters to them, what are their values, what are their touch points. This is one of the things that is missing in so much dialogue right now. Highly Sensitive Language Language is limited. You've probably read articles about words in other languages for emotions, experiences, and thought-processes, that you don't have in your own native tongue. I love this kind of thing. And I think it represents something introverts, creative people, highly sensitive types, experience a lot.

We can't find the words to describe what's going on within.

Humans don't have the arsenal of words to describe all the things that bubble inside. This is why poetry, prose, and for me especially, music is so important.

Music is not simply entertainment or something to consume. But it's a piece in the jigsaw of the inexplicable mystery of existence. It comes in fleeting moments where we feel at one with another’s description or way of painting the experience of life.

We experience the connection to another person’s attempt to make manifest the mystery of existence. And in so doing, experience our own deep mystery. Offensive Language Another weird aspect of language is the idea of 'bad words'. We often talk about bad language when referring to certain words. Dirty words. Swear words. Offensive language. This has long fascinated me. Words are just sounds that carry meaning to those who are able to identify them based on their own experience.

But are some words truly offensive?

By that I mean, are there some sounds that grate on you personally?

There are some words which aesthetically offend us. They are sensory claws down our ear drums. For me, the word ‘batch’ is an offensive word - I hate how it sounds.

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What is fashion?

As a verb it means to give shape to something. As a noun it underpins how we perceive things to be, based on certain filters we have created as a collective. And to follow a prevailing custom or style of the day. This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast explores our relationship with fashion. How we can bring into alignment the way we reflect authenticity in our fashioning. Both in the way we reflect the outer world, and the things we create that reflect our inner world.

Who Are You? What drives your relationship with the material world? For many gentle rebels there is a natural inclination to distance ourselves from the overtly popular. We might tend to stay in the margins, away from the mainstream. Our inner rebel seeks to avoid the crowd, both in a physical, and metaphorical sense.

This inner voice might tells us that when something is popular it has lost its value (sold out etc). A message that is not always helpful, healthy, or indeed true. As we will explore. Slow Fashion Fashion is a mindset. It influences our thoughts, opinions, and judgements. It clouds our view of the world, and tells us the value of things based on whether or not they are seen as acceptable at this particular time.

We have seen the destructive force of fast fashion. Tearing through our environment as demand for and supply of cheap clothing, technology, furnishings etc, spirals in a world of endless marketing and extreme consumption.

How can we nurture a slow fashion approach to the material world? So that our lives reflect our deeper values, and leave us with a richer and more meaningful experience. Influencer Culture The 'Influencer' label is pretty fashionable right now. We hear about those social media power users who are at the heart of different fashion-driven industries.

Certain people set the standards of what is worthy of attention. And they are rewarded for their role as 'tastemakers' in the world. Essentially fashioning the desires of consumers so that they will spend money on things that will 'make their life better' in some way.

In the modern digital world, fashion has become much more diffused. There are very few all encompassing movements of fashion. Instead we have many disparate tribes and micro cultures, defining their own look. We have a rich plethora of lifestyles, appearances, and opinions.

'Influencers' reside within each area. Some intentionally, while others become figureheads and role models without setting out to do so. But the natural human impulse is the same: to follow, to fit in, to belong. Which happens by looking the part, acting the part, and getting the label. Fashion Labels When I was a kid I remember being obsessed with wanting to get clothes made by particular brands. And to have the label on the outside so that people could see. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, so this was a rare occurrence.

I remember getting a new coat when I was about 12. It had a big logo on the back. A reputable brand. I didn't really like the style, but it was the only one from that brand within budget. As long as people could see it was branded, that's all that mattered.

But I didn't really want to wear it that much. It felt horrible, and it certainly wasn't one of my favourite items. But kids value labels, and it was something I thought I should do in order to fit in (or not stand out too much). Paying to Advertise A few years later I went in the opposite direction. I became very aware that I was being used to advertise any brand I was wearing. And doing so, not just voluntarily, but I was paying for the privilege. What a ruse. Genius. Pay some 'influencers' (eg sports stars), to wear your clothes as a company. People will equate the brand with success and the values of said sports star. And they will literally go out and pay to advertise your stuff. Make the clothes expensive enough and you can create an aspirational price tag. People will pay,

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Jacob Nordby is a writer. He is the author of The Divine Arsonist: A Tale of Awakening. As well as Blessed Are the Weird, which we have been exploring in some depth over the past few weeks on the Gentle Rebel Podcast.

In this week's show I am excited to bring you a conversation Jacob and I had last week. It was an exchange that left my heart full to bursting.

You can listen to the first three parts of this series: Weird | Misfits | Artists.

Jacob sent me a signed copy of the book this week

I had planned to edit the 'interview' down to 30 minutes, but quickly realised that this was an impossible task. I didn't ask any of my pre-planned questions because I got lost in the conversation. And because the conversation flowed it can't be broken up without making it clunky and confusing. So hey, you're getting the whole thing!

“Creativity is not something we put in a little room or a box and visit when it’s convenient for us.”

So this is one of Jacob Norby's deep convictions. It drives his work and his interactions with anyone who seeks his advice on writing. Creativity envelopes our lives. It's not something we 'do'. These ideas resonated with me massively. First in the book, and then in this interview. 'Sense of Otherness' "At the age of 10 I wanted to be a writer" - Jacob Nordby This was the first time Jacob felt like he knew what he truly wanted to do with his life. But he locked this dream away through the gradual process where he created himself into a life that didn't feel like it fitted. Aged 34, it was a terrifying realisation. He 'had it all' (the big house, employees, multiple businesses).

He had no idea how to 'get back into alignment'. It seemed like the only way out was to go deeper in. Making enough money to buy his freedom and get away from the anchors he had established.

Until 2008 when the financial crisis occurred, and he was handed the gift of a new start when his businesses were thrown upside down. This was a horribly chaotic experience with a lot of darkness and confusion. But one which with the comfort of hindsight, was key to bringing alignment back to the table.

This was the moment Jacob started writing again. Homecoming Many of us create our ways into lives that leave us feeling out of alignment. We might call it 'drift'. Or just getting caught in the tide of life. We wake up one day, realising that there are so many dreams, hopes, and desires that we once carried, that have been left to stagnate and disappear.

It's never too late to 'come home'. We don't need a huge crisis that turns our lives upside down. But we do need to be in a place of readiness.

The process of getting to know ourselves and other people better is like the homecoming story of our inner orphan. We experience isolation and alienation in our activities, certain relationships, and lives we create ourselves into over time. But there is a home within each of us, where we can find, and find a profound sense of peace.

For some people these ideas won't resonate. While for others who are in the right place, this will make complete sense. I believe it's something that resonates at the right time. We can't really manufacture a need for it. But if we feel it then we will connect.

And I know that some of you will do just that when you listen to our conversation. It profoundly moved me in ways I wasn't expecting or ready for. This has been the hardest 18 months of my life. Coming into contact with Jacob, reading his book, and feeling this deep sense of belonging has been huge for me. Over to You I hope this has been a helpful set of episodes for you in some way. And I would love to hear your takeaways from this particular conversation. What stood out for you?

Thank you so much to Jacob Nordby for taking the time to chat. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below! 

Listen to The Gentle Rebel (Extended Play) Private Podcast: If you like this topic and want to hear more of my (mor...

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This is the third part of an impromptu mini-series of podcasts where we've been looking at Blessed are the Weird, by Jacob Nordby. In this episode we are thinking about what it means to be an 'artist' in the every day. Bringing the kind of art that speaks from the very bones of humanity. Not limited to those who paint, write, play music etc, but accessible to all of us.

In previous weeks we looked at what it means to embrace our weirdness and how to own misfitting.

All these episodes have been about permission. Not prescription. They are not lessons in how to be weird. But rather describe ways in which gentle rebels already experience the world from the outside of things. With the hope that you will feel less alone when you realise that you're not alone in your blessed weirdness.

The world needs your art. It needs you to embrace the depth of your uniqueness. And to let your natural weird to flourish in a world that often encourages us to lock it away and hide the depths of what makes us who we are. "You are an artist, the world needs your art, now go and make somebody's day". This is what I say at the end of each episode. Why?

Art is about transformation. It unveils something extra-ordinary in the mundane and small. Something that transcends the normal flow of things. It jolts us with subversion. Where we expect one thing, another thing takes its place. Speaking to us with a renewed sense of vision. You don't have to be an artist to be an artist. We beat ourselves up with the message that we're not as creative, weird, interesting, rebellious, courageous, strong, funny, quick witted, beautiful, risk taking, cool, clever etc, as others. But this comparison trap is a big weapon the world uses to subdue the everyday art of life.

Whatever your comparison thing is, you are still an artist. You can still add colour, depth, and vibrancy to our experience of the world. Because you notice stuff, and you see the heart. You feel things and spot cracks where the light can get in.

You know those cracks when you see them. When you get that little niggle inside you, telling you to go there. To speak out, to ask if that person is OK, to smile at someone, to offer whatever you have to give.

And the bigger stuff. The idea that just wont leave you alone. The fire in your belly that makes you know you've got to change something. It doesn't matter that you don't quite know what or how just yet. Just allow that voice to rest within and keep bubbling away. Angels in Disguise or Devils in the Margins We are all agents of change. Secret agents of change. Angels in Disguise. Or devils in the margins. To borrow the idea from Henry Ford, whether we believe we can make a positive difference or we believe we can't, we are right. However, if we don't believe that what we do makes an impact, we are wrong. Because everything we do has some kind of impact on the world. “Creativity is the greatest rebellion.” - Osho Creativity is a commitment we must renew every day. It's no good to be creative in one area, or at one moment, and then assume that we are done. Creativity without commitment breeds convention. And convention for convention's sake leads to stagnation and regression. Fear and Forgetfulness Convention without cause is driven by fear and forgetfulness. A lack of appreciation for the inevitability of change. Rather than finding ways to flow with change in the most creative, loving ways, fear driven convention seeks to pull back and diminish all that looks forwards.

It comes from fear of losing something. Losing control, losing significance, losing life itself. We've all encountered these kinds of people (and these kinds of thoughts in ourselves). Where we shut ourselves off to change. It might come from an existential fear of irrelevance. The relevance that was present when the creativity was flowing.

It's not because the world has changed (hint: the world is ALWAYS changing), it's because we have changed.

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This is the second part in a mini series of podcasts looking at Blessed are the Weird, by Jacob Nordby. Last week we started by looking at what it means to be a blessed weirdian. This episode is titled 'Misfits', as we continue to think about ways in which gentle rebels and creative misfits find themselves naturally placed in the margins of the mainstream.

Are you ready to embrace the joy of not fitting in? All Kinds of Weird I've been puzzling over a question about different types of misfit and weird. And this was almost serendipitously augmented by a trip to the cinema to watch Joker. The day before I had read a rather apt quote by G.K. Chesterton...

"Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself..."

...I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. And I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."

...He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them...

Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcott: the man who has it has 'Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus." - G.K. Chesterton The Madness of Self-Belief Hanwell was referring to 'St Barnard's Hospital'. *Oddly enough, I discovered that Hanwell was used as a location to film the 1989 Batman film in which Jack Nicholson played the Joker. A funny yet unimportant coincidence. I have been reflecting on 'weirdos' and 'misfits'. How the words are used, almost interchangeably with ideas such as 'aloof', 'introvert', 'loner'. We often see them in reports about the lone figure attacker who 'didn't fit in'.

I've felt a sense of responsibility to distinguish these ideas. Because we're talking about different ways of relating to oneself and the world around you.

One is a natural, heart and soul full way of experiencing. The gifts of sensitivity, gentleness, and introversion, as a natural way of feeling, energising, and relating to the world.

The other is resentful, full of bitterness and driven by a failed desire to fit in with some aspired external group, force, or way of life.

This is where Joker sits. An aspiring comedian who doesn't understand comedy. Who isn't funny. And who can't stand being laughed at. But who has an unmatched self-belief in his own comedic power. Growing in bitterness at the world he can't fit into. Believing in nothing other than his desire to 'give people what they deserve' by inflicting pain and death.

In contrast to some peoples' reactions to the film, I found nothing sympathetic in the character of Arthur Fleck. He is a person who evokes pity, not understanding. A tragic figure who rapidly descends into a bitterly narcissistic, ego centric rage. There was nothing relatable or sympathetic in the character for me. Just a grim emptiness. The Gift of Not Fitting In Jacob Nordby suggests that, as creative misfits, we can see not fitting in as a gift. He says we were "given the ability to see things differently from other people." And that even though "the price you pay feels high,

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“Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writers mystics, painters, troubadours, for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.” This is the first of a three part exploration of Blessed By The Weird by Jacob Nordby's. A book for the 'weirdians'... “Empathetic people – dreamers and idealists – have this sort of accidental power. Most spend their early years ridden with self-doubt, insecurity, and people pleasing habits. But their journey is inevitably derailed when this comfortable life gets uprooted by an unexpected darkness. Suddenly their trusted methods no longer seem to bring them happiness. At first this depression convinces them that they might never feel joyful again. But ultimately, it sets them on a quest for something more – for love, justice, and wisdom. Once this adventure begins, there is no stopping a dreamer. And when dreamers unite? Well, that’s how we start to change the world.”

The Blessed Weird and The Gentle Rebel It was my friend Mark Pierce who first put me onto his book. He assumed I already knew it, and after reading I could see why. It resonates deeply with the heart of what it means to be a gentle rebel. Those who see the world differently and whose need to "express the song of their soul" is as critical as their need for food, water, and shelter. Fitting In Nordby suggests that "everyone has weird little quirks in their personality, but not everyone has lived through the difficult experience of not fitting in." This is the feeling of being in a place but not of it. Alone in a crowd.

The call for the dreamers to unite isn't a suggestion that we must form another kind of clic or insider group. This is not about creating an exclusive club for the weird rebels, so that they can resent the rest of the world. Just like the rise of introvert power is not about 'getting our own back' on, or pointing fingers extroverts. Otherwise we become the opposite of gentle rebels and blessed weirdians. We conform to the normal reality and become just like the prevailing way of doing things. The New Renaissance There are much more exciting implications from Nordby's book. It's one of encouragement, reassurance, and freedom. You will be reminded that you're not alone. And encouraged to continue trusting in the way you see the world, so that you might find the right way to process and express this unique lens.

He says that "in this new renaissance, the highest-value currency is not money or faster machines; it is the ability to see and see and keep seeing the world through different eyes. And then do something with the unique way you see it."

It is this call to 'do something with the unique way' we see the world that I get excited about. Because it is where we encounter the space between fitting in and belonging. We are confronted with a question: will we conform to the prevailing norms of our tribe so that we don't stand out? Or will we forge a new path and find belonging alongside the other weird misfit gentle rebels throughout history and around the world? The Curse and The Blessing For many, high sensitivity and introversion is seen as a curse. They are traits that can inhibit us from meeting the expectations of an extroverted culture. To be 'on all the time', endlessly outgoing, and energised by excitement and adventure.

But it is in the places we feel cursed that we find the heart of our blessing. We will get overwhelmed from time to time. It might even happen often. But this is surely better than the alternative... "I fear numbness. My raw senses that receive all the nuanced vibrations are not just icing on the cake for me. They are the whole cake, the plate, the table, and the music too. If I can’t feel, I can’t access what for me is the most vital fuel of existence." It's because we feel deeply that we experience the beauty and the pain, the vision and the darkness, the presence and the absence. But we can't have one without the other.

We can however,

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Sabbath is an ancient religious idea around taking a day a week to dedicate to prayer and rest.

It's also a word that has been cropping up in hipster circles too. Especially in the context of digital technology. The 'Digital Sabbath' is an idea promoted by many who can see the risks of being connected to the online world too much.

And so the call is to remove technology for a day a week. Have a sabbath, a day of rest, away from this source of energy depletion.

What does it mean to rest? To lay back and find support from the environment around you. In the sense of being still (in place, on a bed, in a chair, in a grave). Stepping away from the thing that causes unrest (work, awakeness, life itself, or technology etc).

Sabbath Living A digital sabbath is not a bad idea. And extending this concept to other sources of fatigue is also a wonderful thing to utilise in our lives.

However, there is also something to be aware when designing life in such a way. Prohibition, Obligation, or Permission Researching the digital sabbath I was inspired to think of my own relationship with the word. It was something I understood deeply growing up as the child of a vicar. And my reaction to the 'digital sabbath' idea was pretty messy and confusing. Sabbath = Prohibition For me, the idea of sabbath contains a lot of negative baggage. It's tied up with the idea of prohibition and obligation. Not doing stuff. Having dogmatic rules about the right and wrong things to do on a Sunday.

When obligation and prohibition dictate our relationship with rest, transformation, and community, it can become problematic. And in the context of digital sabbath, the concept of 'permission' feels like a healthier and more helpful way to approach it. Yet this takes some sorting through.

Because in its basic state a digital sabbath is about the prohibition of technology (phones, computers, tablets, TV etc). Which is not a great foundation for positive change. And it's certainly not a good way to make contagious transformation (inspiring others to follow suit). Siesta We used to go to the south of France on holiday. We stayed in many campsites with a siesta culture. Everything would shut down for a few hours in the afternoon. For me, as a kid, it felt like a lifetime.

Everything was prohibited. No noise, no playing, no swimming. You had to sleep, read, or just sit and be quiet. At least, that was my understanding.

This is a complete dream now. I would love to have to nap every day.

But as a child the prohibition and obligation made it tough. It felt oppressive. Because places were closed I was desperate to get in. Because reading wasn't a choice, I couldn't do it. When you can't make noise, play, or run around, they are the three things you desperately want to do. Even though if they were permitted, you wouldn't do them anyway.

This is what happens to us when we prohibit ourselves from having access to stuff. A digital sabbath makes technology more irresistible. Banning junk food makes junk food even more desirable. And being told you can't watch TV makes you desperate to turn it on and watch, literally anything.

In this episode I explore more around this ideas of sabbath and prohibition.

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What does the word 'clutter' bring to your mind?

Mess. Disorganised stuff. Things not where they should be. Too much. Too many. Unwanted. Not needed. Old. No longer required. Waiting to be sorted.

How cluttered is your life right now?

Clutter is Friction Clutter is stuff we see, hear, smell, and touch. But it's also something we feel inside us. And it's defined by the friction it creates, which makes it harder for us to do what we need to do.

If you need to do paperwork and you sit down at a cluttered desk, you have to wade through the clutter to get to the materials you need. The clutter is friction because it demands extra energy to get through it. Origin: "to collect in heaps, crowd together in disorder," variant of clotern "to form clots, to heap on” (clot (forming a coagulated mass) - and cluster - (things naturally gathering or growing together) There are a few key elements: collecting, disorder, forming something out of itself, naturally growing. Unintentional Acquisition Clutter builds when we're not in the driving seat. It's the byproduct of not having filters and boundaries. Being unaware of what is coming in, and unintentional about processing.

This episode is not about physical stuff as much as it is about all the other clutter that clusters and builds in and around our lives. The things that we collect without realising, that can cause overwhelm and fatigue. Especially for introverts and sensitive types.

If we're going to be effective Gentle Rebels then we need to grow our self-awareness around clutter. And build some tools and rituals into our lives to get stuff shifted before it becomes cluttersome. Catalysts and Inhibitors A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change. When we apply this to life, we can think of a book, a mentor, or an inspiring talk as a catalyst. It can increase the rate of a reaction in us by inspiring us to action, without itself undergoing any change. The book doesn't change, but we do. The talk doesn't change, but we do. A mentor doesn't change, we do.

Clutter and its ensuing friction act in the opposite way. It is an inhibitor because it slows down our ability to act in the required way, but the clutter doesn't change in the process.

For example, if you receive some criticism from someone and it sits with you in a negative way, this might go home with you. You might take it out on the kids. You might procrastinate on your important tasks. And you might even give up on the thing you're so passionate about. The clutter (critic and criticism) doesn't change, but you do. And the clutter becomes an inhibitor, stopping you from doing what you really want to do.

The clutter of financial worry is not removed by doing something to distract ourselves from it. It's removed when we address the underlying causes and tackle it head on so that we can make a plan going forward that will free us from the friction of it being clutter. Acquisition Without Awareness In this sense, clutter is unprocessed mess. We know it's there but we don't necessarily know what it is. It's a cluster, a collection, a mass of stuff that clots our mind.

Have you ever felt weighed down and moody for no apparent reason? Only to realise after some reflection, it's because someone spoke to you rudely in a shop this morning.

Cluttering is the act of acquiring without awareness. And if we don't raise our awareness we can find ourselves inhibited from living life in the best way we can. In this episode we explore a few sources of clutter:

The Moods of Other People Unsolicited Criticism Digital Noise Open Loops Beliefs (that don't belong to you)

And we will think about ways to start processing this clutter straight away.

Listen to The Gentle Rebel (Extended Play) Private Podcast: Decluttering If you like this topic and want to hear more of my (more personal) thoughts a...

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How much balance are you experiencing right now?

What does that word mean to you?

This is an idea explored a lot in productivity and personal development literature. But it strikes me as a bit of a misleading one. Often containing idealised and unrealistic assertions about the possibilities for our lives. Usually underpinned by the idea that if we get things sorted in the right way we can experience balance.

And then there are the subversive voices which reject the idea that life-balance is even possible.

Balance becomes slippery the moment you try to grasp it. Like the soap bars of happiness and love. When you think about it too much you lose it.

Learning to Walk When a baby becomes a toddler and learns to take its first steps she is working out how to balance while falling forwards. Over time the balance strengthens and the walking becomes more secure and steady. But for a long time a toddler toddles on unsteady yet purposeful feet. Their brain and body might not align properly as they go wandering off in the opposite direction of where they want to go.

Toddling is a key part of learning to walk. It's establishing balance when standing on two feet and moving forwards. A baby doesn't just suddenly wake up, stand up, and swagger around. It takes a lot of time. A lot of falling. And a lot of determination and persistence. Be a Toddler We are all toddlers when it comes to balance in life. We think we should be able to balance everything from the word go. And when we fall or drop stuff, we think we've failed. We compare where we are in relation to others and beat ourselves up when we don't match up. The Hull What we perceive as balance is what we see others are able to hold. We expect to be able to juggle multiple commitments and priorities. Yet when we start here we neglect the most important part of balance, which is the foundation, grounding, footing, beneath the surface of what is seen.

Many conversations about work-life balance focus above the waistline. How do I keep hold of all these things I need to do without burning out?

Meanwhile, we're walking on unsteady legs, across uneven, potholed terrain. And we trip up. Literally. Because we expect too much of ourselves when we haven't sorted out the footing and balance at the base of our lives.

We are distracted by how things appear. How we might be perceived. What people might think of us if we present ourselves in the right kind of way. So we build what can be seen. We build what we see other people have. And forget to build in the necessary ballast in the hull of our being.

We don't spend time growing our roots and firming our footing. And then in the face of the slightest breeze, we are struck off balance and called to spend time steadying the ship, readjusting, and if things get really bad, swimming for our lives under the weight of a capsized vessel. Rhythm and Balance This kind of balance starts when we understand rhythm. Rhythm is balance. When playing the drums, it is about maintaining balance and posture from the core of your being so that your body becomes the metronome through which a rhythm is expressed.

Everything remains underpinned by rhythm. For if you try to dance out of sync with the rhythm you lose balance. And if you only focus on the moves you need to make, you will lose step with the rhythm because you're not hearing it. Things become messy, confused and meaningless. For a dance only carries meaning in the context of the rhythm.

This is the same with life. The dance turns to chaos when we lose our rhythm. When we're concentrating so hard on getting things done, fulfilling commitments, and going through the motions, that we completely overlook any sense of rhythm that provides the meaning and context for why the dance matters in the first place. Balance and Growth We often expect so much of ourselves. We concentrate so hard on the idea that we need balance, that we stop hearing the rhythm.

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Do you ever feel the desire to screw the paper up and start again? Hitting the reset button when things get overloaded, overwhelming, and confusing,

I tend to believe that I can clear the decks and start again. The next one/time will be different, better, cleaner, than the current one.

In this episode of the podcast I unpack some questions we can ask when facing this situation. Do we really need to perform a full reset, or would a simple mindset change and refocus suffice?

Beauty in the Blemish I like things to be neat and tidy. When things feel messy and chaotic on the outside, it feels the same on the inside. Whenever I buy a new notebook I have to make a mistake early on. So that I have to get over it. Because otherwise I'm frightened to create. And I'm tempted to rip out pages and even throw notebooks away if I've messed them up.

But it's in the confusing, messy, unfinished blemishes that beauty emerges. This is something I always see and appreciate over time. Going back to an old notebook with scribbles, things crossed out, and incomplete ideas, is a wonderful thing. I might see the early stages of something that became a blog post, a song, or an obsession. Dots are connected and the paths I've been on become evident.

Yet at the time, the mess feels frustrating and annoying. Leaving unfinished notebooks. Notebooks with pages ripped out. Even notebooks that were trashed. As the precursory ritual to the declaration, ‘I’ll do it better next time’.

When we get fixated on perfect, we lose sight of the fact that this will never happen. If we believe there is a right way to do it we will always be frustrated with the blemishes that make the thing beautiful and unique. And so we hit the reset button again.

Those blemishes only become beautiful over time. They become the wounds and marks that turn the mundane into the characterful. They are the story. The ability to tolerate our own fragmented, imperfect, blemished selves, is the key to any story worth living. But it's not comfortable. We want to hit the reset button and start again on a blemish-free updated version. Reset the Soul, Not the Climate “Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.” - Seneca How often do we believe that we need a change of climate? Perhaps in a literal sense. To move somewhere, go travelling, or get away for a bit. Or in the sense of other aspects of life; a new relationship, home, redecorating the kitchen, buying a new car, different job, community, finding a new hobby, etc.

Only we find that when we get that thing, the same experience is there to greet us. The gloom and heaviness is lurking beneath. The stress reappears. As does the dissatisfaction, and the same old patterns of self-destructive behaviour.

We need a change of soul, not simply a change of climate.

When we run, when we quit, when we move on, are we moving because our soul has evolved into this new season. Or do we believe that the next thing is going to be some magic bullet that will finally cause everything to fall into place?

In the episode we look at five key questions to help us understand our response to this:

Why Will This Time Be Different? What Has Stopped You From Doing More Before Now? How Do Your Beliefs Impact Your View of the Situation? What Could You DO Completely Differently This Time What Do People Doing What You Want to Do, Do?

The Lull Before the Storm We often want to quit just before we break through to the next level. It is at those plateau points that we feel like we’re failing, like we’re not getting anywhere, or that things are stuck. In that liminal space where we take for granted how far we have come, and feel overwhelmed by how far there is still to go.

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Repetition creates habit. The more you do something, the more ingrained it becomes. It starts to become automatic and unconscious.

This has its negative side (we can slip into self-destructive behaviours if we're not careful). But it also has a positive side (we can actually choose the repetitive actions/thoughts/words that we want to turn into automatic reflexes).

At the start of 2019 I began basing the theme of the podcast around a simple word each week.

This week it's 'Repetition'. Last time it was 'Competition'. And a few weeks back it was 'Solitude'. I have found this a really creative and intuitive way to develop ideas. And it has thrown all kinds of surprises my way, with topics taking unexpected turns and pulling me in directions I hadn't anticipated.

What Have I Written? I pick a topic from my list, free-write around it, and then take a look at what I've written. That is pretty weird, but also incredibly liberating and insightful. “I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.” - Flannery O'Connor That quote has always resonated deeply with me.

I used the idea of theme words and took it over to The Haven earlier this year, where we've been exploring things like Compassion, Narcissism, and Gentleness. But as I was planning the next few months I had a bit of an 'aha!' moment. The word 'Liturgical' occupied my mind, and a bunch of words sprung forth as I processed the responses to a recent survey I conducted asking members about their struggles and challenges.

'Liturgical' is often synonymous with religious practice. It's the words spoken during rituals. As well as the calendar of tradition and festivity throughout the year. It's why we might know the words of the Eucharist, Funeral or Wedding ceremony, or what is often spoken at Christmas time. Liturgy is repetition. And repetition takes something from a place of conscious unknowing, into a place of unconscious knowledge.

When it comes to self-development, we can learn a lot from the idea of liturgical structure. And this is what landed in my planning for the next season in The Haven. In fact, I didn't just plan the next month or two. I planned the next year. And from there I realised that the liturgical, repetitive calendar, never needs to stop. There is always more to learn, grow, and develop within these key themes. Change We all have it in our power to design a life of meaning and purpose, actively and intentionally growing the areas that matter most to us. "Every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around.” - Sofia (Vanilla Sky) Whatever has happened in the past, however things have gone, whatever you’ve done, the future is yet to be written.

You have the opportunity to stop the drift by taking even the smallest action to turn it all around and start moving in the direction you want your life to go. Belonging Belonging starts within you. It begins with integrity. Integrating your values, hopes, and sense of passion, with the things you do, the way you engage with others, and the words that come from your mouth.

Loneliness is the cause of so many destructive patterns of behaviours. When we feel alienated and like we don’t fit in.

But when we find belonging. Both within ourselves, and within a healthy community of people, we can truly transform the world in positive ways, from the inside out. Serenity We find serenity in self-understanding and self-acceptance.

When you accept yourself, even with all your imperfections, blemishes, and flaws, you become an unstoppable powerhouse of serenity that can no longer be blown off course when the storms come…which they will.

Serenity is not an absence of pain. It’s not eliminating discomfort. It is a life’s work. The deep acceptance of who we are at an existential level. Strength Your true strength is found within. It’s not the size of your muscle, the sound of your voice, or the cleverness of your words.

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England recently won their first Cricket World Cup. It was a great day (for those of us supporting them). But I also felt genuinely gutted for New Zealand, who lost in the amazing final. They didn't deserve to lose. No one did. It was a fantastic competition from start to finish.

I felt kind of strange afterwards. I was happy, but my empathy for the New Zealand players muted my celebrations. The game was decided on a pretty arbitrary statistic (the number of boundaries scored), after what was for all intents and purposes, a draw. It got me thinking about competition and competitiveness.

Where does the drive to compete and win come from? Do we all have that drive? And what makes some wins feel better than others? Especially in the context of what we can see in the world right now.

Things feel claustrophobically competitive at the moment. With ever growing division, and the drive to be seen as right, better, and the winner. And perhaps most importantly, proving that 'the other side' is wrong, bad, and the loser.

This brings out the most destructive and unhealthy expression of competitiveness. Partly driven by an inability to do conflict properly. We constantly show how immature we are when it comes to handling our differences.

Unhealthy Competitiveness... 1. Competition Can Be Bad For Our Health Both physically and mentally. Destructive competitiveness forces us to sacrifice our own values. We lose our peace-of-mind and sense of individual identity.

Humans want to collaborate, create, and work together. But competition can tear us away from this natural desire. 2. Competition Can Promote Shoddy Results There is an age old myth that "competition is the road to innovation". Researchers and business experts keep unravelling the truth of this claim.

It's a simplistic view of what actually drives innovation. And also of what drives people to innovate.

"I want to do that" is not the same as "I want to beat them."

Clusters form in communities of people with a common focus. In many situations competition actually hinders innovation. Whereas collaboration and community fosters a culture of experimentation and discovery. Competition encourages secrecy. It puts demands on workers to 'get there' faster and more efficiently. Doing it first becomes more important than making the best thing possible.

In many cases it actually slows down genuine creativity and innovation. Because competition requires you to reinvent the wheel. Rather than moving within the larger community, you have to discover things for yourself from within an environment of scarcity and fear.

If we look at some of the biggest innovations and innovative periods of history we see that it is not competition that drives it. It's open source sharing, and people who care more about the thing at hand, than about winning some imagined race to get there first. 3. Competition Can Lead Perceptions That 'Trump' Reality Success is in the eye of the beholder. We might look at the image another person puts out around what they're doing, and think 'they're successful'. When we see these things we feel envy or jealousy, which are unhelpful triggers of competitiveness. They draw us into the comparison trap, which leaves us resenting their success because it feels like our failure.

Even though it has nothing to do with us. We should practice challenging that envy, and choose to be happy for other people at times like that. Celebrate with them. I don't know about you but I've found in my own experience, when I do that, the world feels like a much brighter and more giving (and forgiving) place.

Competition isn't innately bad. It's not something we should avoid at all costs as introverts and highly sensitive people. It can add great value to our lives in many contexts.

But we must also recognise the destructive power it can have when we blindly accept a paradigm of unhealthy competitiveness. When we simplistically split the world into winne...

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Narcissism is a word we see everywhere these days. It's a part of our weaponised language. The everyday vernacular we use to label and divide ourselves from one another. An easy shot to shut down a conversation and discredit a person.

When we recognise the impact narcissists make on our lives we can improve our lives immeasurably. By understanding the difference between 'Grandiose Narcissists' and 'Vulnerable Narcissists', we can recognise them when we encounter them.

Not in order to name call. But in order to brace and protect ourselves, so we can choose how to respond from within. And avoid being drawn into the vicious circles and destructive dances they want us to play.

Highly sensitive people and introverts can get caught in these dances. At work. In their personal relationships. And with public figures who act in fascinatingly egotistical ways. Behaviours that we can't stop look at.

But like with everything, when we overuse words like this, we risk wringing them dry of any meaning and usefulness.

'The Narcissist' A 'Narcissist' is a person who embodies the pathological characteristics of narcissism, in a personality disorder. A combination of both inherited and learned behaviours are thought to contribute to this. Learned as a way to meet unmet needs from early life. Where the person will learn behaviour patterns in order to establish an identity which they unconsciously believe will fix the problem.

According to the Mayo Clinic, some of the signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, are found in people who, have an exaggerated sense of self-importance. They carry a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration or attention. This can also appear in the role of wronged victim.

They tend to monopolise conversations and belittle those they perceive as inferior. There are no second thoughts about taking advantage of others if it serves their own ends. And they are unable/ unwilling to empathise with the needs or feelings of others.

Fear and insecurity over their own personal worth often drives the narcissistic personality. It is not the same as self-confidence or self-respect. The arrogance, boastfulness, or haughty manner is usually a cover for envy.

You might see this come through when they don't get their way. They are quick to anger when they don't receive special treatment. Take everything personally and seek manipulative or violent vengeance to hurt whomever they feel slighted by. They are unable to regulate emotions themselves, so project their struggles outwardly onto the world and people around them. The Fragile Bully in the Age of Trump Laurie Helgoe joins me in this week's Gentle Rebel Podcast.

As well as being a wonderful human being, Laurie is an author, educator, and clinical psychologist with a special interest in the interactions between personality and culture. She is the author of Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength, which remains one of my top 'go-to' books on the topic of introversion. In the show I refer to it as 'Quiet Power'. Whoops. That's not what it's called. Brain fart! It's definitely Introvert Power!

Most recently she wrote, Fragile Bully: Understanding Our Destructive Affair With Narcissism in the Age of Trump. Another fantastic book bringing personality and culture together, with a deep dive into what drives our fascination with ourselves, and with those who can't get enough of themselves, in today's world. Narcissism and Social Media Social media brings our obsession with narcissism into sharp focus. It's where we can engage in what Laurie calls destructive dances. Vicious circles leave us doing things in good faith, which actually make the problem worse.

The 'Provoke and React' Dance is a perfect example. Someone posts something provocative in order to cause a stir and annoy people. Rather than ignoring it, people react and give the provocateur what they were after.

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How much do you get to play? "Creativity isn’t a place we go or something we do; it is a way of life. It is who we are meant to be. We are creators.”  - Jacob Nordby Life can get heavy and serious pretty quickly. There's no time to play. We must get the work done first. Take care of our responsibilities. When we flick on the news we tell ourselves that play is a luxury. Inappropriate when so many serious things are happening around us.

But what we feel much of the heaviness and seriousness, BECAUSE we have left our spirit of play on the sidelines of life? And what if inviting more play into our daily rhythms, is actually a way to change the world from the inside out?

Playfulness encourages the unique essence of a person to grow and flourish. It opens the door. And allows you to hold the serious assumptions and expectations of the world around you with a lightness of step and a playfulness in perspective.

This is at the heart of gentle rebellion.Where we play with the ordinary, expected, and assumed right way to do things. And ask instead, 'what if I was to do what I shouldn't?' Playfulness We open up the door to deep relationships and connections with other people. When we play together, we transform together. We grow.

You've experienced it. A time of deep connection with someone or a group of people. Laughing together, creating together, playing games, letting your imaginations run wild, joking, and enjoying the power of being.

This is the foundation of the deep and serious stuff. A life of depth and a life of play are one and the same. They are not mutually exclusive.

What better example to look to than a comedian. Those brave souls in our culture who stand on stage and make us laugh. They understand that play and deep seriousness come together. They know that the best way to get into and explore the serious stuff and the big questions in life, is through play. Playfulness with ideas, with boundaries, with assumptions, and with the status quo. When The Guard is Down It’s through play that the best art is created. Music. Scientific discovery. Breakthroughs happen in those moments when the guard is down, when the clock is off, and the expectations are left at the door. We hear stories like that all the time.

You might have similar stories. It's why we might have an epiphany that solves the big work problem when playing with the kids before they go to bed. This, after weeks of meetings where we've been trying and failing to come up with creative solutions. When we stop trying to think, our unconscious minds connect dots. And by giving ourselves over to play, we can experience magical creative revelations and epiphanies about the right way forwards. What is Blocking Your Play? Jacob Nordby says in Blessed are the Weird, that "if we don’t feel a sense of purpose, it is because we are having a life experience of someone else’s creations.” Play is not consumption. It's not being entertained or performed to. It's not the work hard, play hard, approach of working during the week so you can just drink yourself into oblivion at the weekend. Play is about giving yourself to imagination, creation, and dreaming. And this is increasingly hard to do in the modern world, where we can be spoon fed 'content', 'entertainment', and information, to keep us from ever truly playing.

There are other factors that turn us against our playful spirit: Messages Growing Up We get chipped away at over time by people who have lost their ability to play. "Be realistic", "choose a more sensible option", "don't stand out", "don't get above your station", "how ridiculous does that person over there look!", "those clothes make you look silly".

Most kids couldn’t care less about what people think of what they wear. They go with their gut and allow their imagination to lead the way. Until they become self-conscious and internalise the drip feed of judgements they hear in the world around them.

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We all know what flow state is. I don't think there's a person on the planet who hasn't experienced it. Those moments when you're doing something and become completely focussed on it. To the point where you lose track of time, and even forget about your sense of self.

It's the feeling of oneness with the task at hand. You might have experienced it doing your favourite hobby, in the workplace, or during a late night conversation with a favourite person. It is the feeling of immersion in the moment. With no awareness of the past or future.

It is a term that was coined by Czech positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in, ‘Flow: The Psychology of Happiness.

I love the idea of flow for many reasons. In particular: 1. It speaks to our experience. We've all been there. It’s not something that is exclusive to a select few lucky people. We recognise it when we hear it described. 2. It is subversive. It goes against the grain of the prevalent message that we should be busy and constantly doing stuff. Flow is the antithesis of multitasking, yet it's also far more productive and effective. Enjoyment, Pleasure, and Flow Flow breeds enjoyment rather than pleasure, which as I've written before, Csíkszentmihályi describes as the key to happiness. Pleasure is the good feeling we get when we fulfil an "expectation set by biological programs or by social conditioning.” These are homeostatic experiences that keep us on an even keel with our appetite. Linked to things like food, sex, wealth gain etc. These drives, when left to their own devices, can be the root of addiction (the endless pursuit of more).

Enjoyment is linked to a sense of movement. It is about progressing with purpose, accomplishing something, longterm momentum towards some kind of goal. These are activities that require full absorption, skill, feedback and use of your signature strengths. You do them because they carry a deeper sense of worth/value to your life. Not because they provide you with an instant pleasure hit. In fact, often these kinds of activities require you to stretch yourself and experience elements of discomfort. Flow Happens Anywhere and Everywhere You can experience flow in any activity. From driving a car, going for a walk, to cleaning your teeth. And there are some great areas to which we can look, if we want to create building blocks to more flow experiences in our lives. I unpack these in this week's episode:

Creativity Hobbies Video Games Work Exercise and Sport Exams and Other Challenges

Entering flow is pretty simple, but it's far from easy. There are so many things that get in the way. I look at these in more detail in the Extended Play Private Podcast. Where we think about how to transcend and even use these struggles as ways into flow state.

Towards the end of the main show I explore some simple techniques we can use to enter flow state. These are little prompts to help us re-focus and peel away the things that want to cloud and overcomplicate things.

Get Clear Start Small Turn Off Distractions Get Comfy Still Your Spirit Get the Time Right Set Boundaries Enjoy the After-Flow

The Pomodoro Technique In the show I talk about how helpful I've found the Pomodoro Technique for getting focussed in small chunks. I've been using a USB LED timer to help with this, after Luxafor sent me their 'Flag'. It communicates to others as well as yourself, whether or not you're busy (with 16 million different colours, you can train your mind to react accordingly).

There is also a bluetooth version, which you can place on your door to stop outside distractions entering your workspace. Perfect for telling people 'I'm recording a podcast, keep quiet'. Learn more here. Over to You Can you think of a time when you’ve experienced flow state? What were you doing? And what are the biggest barriers to flow for you? I’d love to know what this looks like for you.

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Solitude provides an escape from the noise. It gives space to reflect on and apply meaning to the mundane. As you retreat from the busyness, reflect on what matters, and step away from the demands and expectations of life, solitude poses a question if we allow ourselves to hear it.

Introverts and highly sensitive people need time alone. It's how we recharge. External stimulation uses the batteries. Internal rest powers them back up.

Solitude and Numbness How do you use moments of solitude? With intention and joy, or with fear and dis-ease?

So many people are terrified of solitude. We distract ourselves from the thoughts that might peak out if we stop for long enough. The TV goes on. The phone comes out. We find ways to reassure ourselves that we are not alone. And yet, this stuff can disconnect and isolate us even further. The very crutches we reach for to feel less alone, make us feel even more lonely.

We choose the wrong stuff. When we spend time alone numbing ourselves to the chaos of life, it gets pretty lonely. We can feel disconnected and cut off. But there is a big difference between getting comfortable with being alone, and living life in such a way that leaves you lonely.

When we neglect solitude, we miss a beat. We literally step in time to a different rhythm. Because, whoever we are, whatever kind of personality type, solitude is the foundation of a healthy, meaningful life. If we all gave ourselves enough time and space to get to know ourselves, we wouldn't be so desperate to prove to the world that we're something else. A Message from Childhood Quantity over quality. More over less. The kids with fewer friends or even no friends are the weird ones. The loners, geeks, nerds, strange ones. The..."introverts".

As kids we name call those who are different. But where does that come from?

Often it is rooted in fear and envy. We ridicule in others what we wish we had ourselves. The wish that we had the courage to step through life, comfortable in our own skin, able to travel without a crowd we have to fit into. Solitude and Loneliness Many people associate being alone with being lonely. It's seen as something to avoid at all costs. Right from when we are children, we condition this fear of being alone, which rather than encouraged as a healthy thing, is painted with negative language.

There is of course, an evolutionary element to being a part of community (we survive in groups and die alone). But healthy communities are made of healthy individuals. And we can't be healthy individuals if we don't know how to be content when we're alone. Solitude and Growth Solitude is our opportunity for deep, foundational, gentle growth. How we spend those moments alone can massively impact our effectiveness and ability to thrive in the world. Solitude is a choice. It's choosing to go somewhere you want to go alone, rather than waiting for someone to take you. Or saying yes to the opportunity even though you don't know anyone (yet). These moments build us, they help us grow, and confront us with chances to build our confidence.

But there are small things that help us grow in solitude too. Reading, writing, getting creative, or learning something new. Then there are bigger things, like travel, starting a business, or embarking on some kind of challenge.

In our solitude we build the foundations for the kind of life we want to design and live. We get to choose the stuff that actually matters to us. To do what appeals to us, learn what draws us towards it, and go to places that spark our curiosity and ignite our imaginations.

When we follow these instincts it opens up a whole range of interesting avenues. And fills us with a special kind of energy and optimism about the world. Solitude and Confidence Have you noticed that confidence grows through clarity?

When you're clear on what you need to do, it feels a lot more doable. We gain the confidence to act when we have both clarity of what ...

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Do you take on the moods, energy, and emotions of other people?

Many highly sensitive people experience this. They absorb the moods of individuals and crowds, and take them on as if they are their own. It's also true that sensitive types are good at building rapport with others. Which provides an interesting link to examine.

You might not be aware of how you use rapport. It can often go un-noticed and under-appreciated as a tool in the gentle rebel toolbox. In this episode I look at how we can become more self-aware and use rapport so that we are not left feeling completely thrown around by the energy, moods, and emotions of other people.

Rapport comes from Old French word, raporter. From the Latin: re - to bring back. And portare - to carry. Rapport could be thought of as bridging the gap between two people. Carrying the relationship to a place of mutual ground and connecting in sync with one another. Cosmetic Rapport We might experience a sense of cosmetic rapport with people who look similar to us. Feeling comfortable in the presence of someone who feels familiar in how they appear. Likewise, we might feel a lack of rapport with someone who looks different. But only when we truly engage with someone does rapport begin to build at a meaningful level. The Mechanics of Rapport Rapport is an important thing for highly sensitive people and introverts to think about. If we're unaware of it, we can find ourselves carrying the moods and emotions of others without giving our consent.

When we are unaware of how rapport is being built in a situation, we are naturally more likely to follow and allow the other person or the vibe of the crowd, to pass on the mood and leave us feeling drained. This makes the prospect of social interaction feel overwhelming. How Does Rapport Grow? Listening When we engage in deep listening, rapport builds. This kind of listening goes beyond the words. It hears tone, body language, and even what is not being said, as ways to connect with someone. Many Highly Sensitive People are naturally good at this, being highly perceptive, and intuitive.

You might find yourself knowing things about someone before they do. You pick up on subtleties that the other person is unaware of. They feel seen and understood. Like you care about what they have to say. HSPs and introverts speak less, which gives space for others to feel listened to.

With these factors at play, rapport builds and people are drawn to you because you make them feel valued. This can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing in what you are able to give to others. But a curse if you have no boundaries in place to protect yourself from being in the place of rapport. This can happen when you match and mirror others. Matching and Mirroring This is a concept from the world of Neuro-Liguistic Programming (NLP). It is exactly as it sounds - either doing exactly what the other person is doing, or reflecting back to them what they are doing like a mirror.

Matching would be to raise your right hand up to scratch your head when the other person does. Mirroring would be raising your left hand up so that it's the same side.

Research shows that we do this when we are in rapport with someone. Maybe you've found yourself doing it without realising. Lifting your hand above your head or to your mouth, only to realise that the other person is doing the same. It's kind of freaky sometimes! Especially when it's all happening at an unconscious level.

This is where we might take on the energies and moods of other people. We might match and mirror them. Including their tone of voice, speed of language, and even the other person's rate of breathing. This can lead us to a change of physiology, and thus a shift in emotion and energy. It is well documented that our physical demeanour has an impact on our state of emotional being. Breaking Rapport When the other person is in a state of being you don't want to be,

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When I was flying back from Australia in January, I watched Chasing Great. A film about the life and career of Richie McCaw, who was arguably one of the best rugby players of all time.

The documentary centres around how McCaw made history. Captaining the New Zealand All Blacks in back-to-back World Cup wins during 2011 and 2015, for the first time since the competition began.

The film traces his development. From promising young player, through to the point when he achieved his goal of becoming a 'GAB'.

His uncle encouraged him to set his career path in 'stone'. So he handed him a napkin and told him to write his goal on it, along with the necessary steps to get there.

Richie's ultimate aim was to become an All Black. But his uncle knew that wasn't enough. So he challenged him to go a step further and write 'Great All Black'. Too embarrassed to write that, he scribbled 'GAB' at the bottom of the napkin instead.

Chasing Great - More Than Sport The documentary is underpinned by a message of courage: to dream and believe.

People told McCaw early on in his career that he lacked the natural ability that others had. But if this was true he made up for it with his determination to keep improving, growing, and learning.

It becomes clear that in his eyes, being great isn't simply about 'doing' great things. It's about choosing to do things in great ways.

His definition of 'Great All Black" meant not cheating in training. They run when others walk. They lose (and win) with dignity and grace. And they are not defined by what they win, but rather how they win.

In a world of short cuts, quick success, and results, this is a refreshing mindset to learn from. It's not about where you get. It's about how you choose to conduct yourself as you move in that direction.

Writing 'Great' on the napkin, invoked a specific value. And spoke of more than definable achievement. It begged the question: what would a 'great' All Black look like? How would they behave? Where would they invest their focus and attention?

This is not a route to a destination, but a way of being. "Whether I ever made that or not was irrelevant, really. It was just the perception I had, and I was going to try and do everything I could. It was actually irrelevant if someone says you are or someone says you weren't. But it was that I lived like that, and I didn't think later, 'I could have done that better'." - Richie McCaw He wasn't driven by the desire to make history with back to back World Cup wins. And the detail of the accomplishments were not important. But they were by-products of his pursuit of greatness. Are you Chasing Great? The end product often sidetracks us. We make a list of the things that would show we are successful (the promotion, the house, the family etc). And we fall into the pursuit of more, without ever stopping to think about our values.

What does 'great' look like in your life?

Great is a subjective judgement that we place on things. We write the story of what great looks like for us.

I'm reading a lot of books about coaching at the moment. I've noticed that there is a lot of talk about 'great coaches do...' and 'what sets great coaches apart from mediocre ones is...'

These sentences end with a point about mindset and the way the coach approaches and conducts their craft. It's never about the result ('great coaches win awards'). What does that tell me about how to be great?

Nothing. I just know that if I want to be 'great' then I need to win awards. But that is a pursuit of emptiness. It means nothing when you peel the onion layers away.

The same is true for anything we do in life. Chasing great is about deciding what we believe greatness to look like, and choosing to dedicate ourselves to it.

What does it mean to be a great man or woman? A great partner? What does a great writer do when no one is watching? How does a great employer show up in the workplace?

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What do you need to hear from people when bad things happen?

Encouragement to realise that 'everything happens for a reason'? Advice about how to think more positively? A reminder that 'you might not see it now, but when a door closes, another one opens'?

Or do you just want them to stand next to you and say something like, 'wow, this sucks, I'm sorry'x?

The world is full of absolute guff that poses as 'positive thinking'. But much of it is barrier thinking. Driven by a fear of difficult emotions and situations that can't be controlled. This type of positive thinking is often used as a protection against grief, anger, and other 'negative emotions', which are necessary if we're going to move with mental fitness into the future.

We mistake this stuff for positive thinking.

But it's not positive to tell someone that 'everything happens for a reason', or 'good always comes from bad'. Whether you believe them or not, it can be a damaging message for someone who has just experienced profound loss, illness, or breakup. A person who needs to rumble in the pain before coming to their own judgements about how they will see and use the situation as part of their story in the future.

I've never known anyone to adopt a new way of thinking because they've been told to. In fact, it makes us less likely to think positively if we feel like we're not allowed to feel and think the stuff that's there within us. Real Positive Thinking Acceptance Real positive thinking is rooted in accepting reality. Rumbling with it, and grieving those emotions we have in response to the stuff going on in life. It is the voice that allows the initial impression of something to breathe.

Be honest about how you feel and what you think. If you're disappointed, angry, or devastated, then be those things. The alternative is to push those emotions down beneath an insincere smile and a mountain of bitterness, resentment, and pretence. And to project the same things onto others.

A positive healthy mindset allows the truth to sit there, to rumble, to grieve. None of this is negative thought, it's real, it's authentic, and it's necessary.

In time, as your brain begins to come to terms with this plot twist, you can begin to ask yourself how you will choose to respond to what has happened. Muscle Are you prepared for failure? For disappointment? For pain? Or will it come as an unexpected shock?

The statement that 'everything happens for a reason', has an unspoken narrative of disempowering drive beneath it. The implication being that god has caused this thing to happen so that you will learn some great lesson or have an opportunity in the future to use it to change the world. This always strikes me as a troublingly egocentric view of the world (the universe revolves around me), while stripping all agency on the other hand (my life is being controlled by another being).

Things happen for a reason. The reason is life. And life carries pain, death, and change. Nothing we can do about that.

Are we ready for those things? Prepared so that we aren't taken by surprised when they occur. Rather than faffing around trying to find meaning in the inevitable, are we ready to give ourselves the permission to feel (grieve). And then to accept (reflect on and acknowledge reality as it is). And finally, to respond (choose how to use the experience in a positive way)? Energy The positive thoughts we obsess over, are usually rooted in our most entrenched limiting beliefs. It's impossible to think your way out of them. The more you try, the more draining it is. And the more disconnected you become from yourself. A Better Side of Positivity I am currently working on qualifying as a personal and small business coach. I was drawn to the philosophy of the school I'm learning with because it rejects the surface level aspirational stuff (think yourself rich, thin, successful). Rather than selling myths of success,

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Yesterday I made a bold move. I turned the microphone off after recording this week's podcast, and realised that I needed to actually take action on something I said.

So I turned off ALL push notifications on my phone. Including text messages and WhatsApp. And the BBC news alerts. I will no longer find out breaking news at the same time as everyone else in the room. And I think I'm OK with that. I will also only see text messages at times when I choose to go and check/process them. The twitch is still strong at the moment, but these moments have been getting fewer and further between over the course of today.

This is all in an effort to be more intentional about the way I let information influence my mood, thoughts, and ability to concentrate.

The Impact of News I've felt really aware of this recently, especially in relation to news. And in this week's podcast I look specifically at ways we might take more control over how we consume the news. And the subsequent affect it has on our mental health. Both in the short and long term.

How can we re-engage with the news so that it affects us in healthy ways? How can we use it to add value to our lives, rather than being a source of distress and overwhelm? We don't need to run away from it, or bury our heads in the sand. But we do need to be aware of how both affected AND desensitised we can get to the over-sensationalised, hyped up, emotive junk food news that is designed to keep us clicking, sharing, and dividing.

When we don't have productive outlets or processes to deal with the feelings created by the bombardment of trauma that comes from being subjected to a never-ending stream of news (and reactions to it). What happens when the news hits the room? Do you have news alert push notifications on your phone? How do you respond when an update comes through?

If my brain is not engaged I will head straight for Twitter to see how people are reacting. I look for the battle lines being drawn around the event, and the polarising discussions that are bound to develop. It's a perverse kind of entertainment that brings me no joy, just that weird addictive sense of 'I know this is bad for me, but I can't stop doing it...in fact I think that might be WHY I'm doing it'.

Then there are the ill-informed conversations as everyone in the room receives the news update at the same time. Suddenly everyone's an expert as we all second guess the circumstances, perpetrators, and implications of whatever is going on. All based on nothing more than a headline. Non-Stop News It follows that newsworthy information is usually bad. Or divisive. Or fear mongering. It is exceptional. Not normal. Or it wants a reaction. And the simplest way to get people to engage is to provoke, scare, or anger.

We might think that news is just information we passively consume. Whether on radio, TV or through social media. But it's not. It seeps into our experience of life. It contributes massively to our overall health. We need a balanced diet in the food we eat, and it's no different with the information we consume. What goes is is what comes out.

You cannot only binge on 'newsworthy' news, expecting to feel balanced, happy, and healthy afterwards. You will build a skewed picture of the world, and carry that with you into all areas of your life. Trauma When it comes to emotional responsiveness, the brain doesn't really discriminate between things happening directly to you, and things it sees happening to someone else. As a result, we put ourselves into stress mode whenever we watch the news and hear about traumatic events going on around the world. Stress mode is when our bodies release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. And these are the fuel for the fight, flight, and freeze responses. Desensitisation Even the most sensitive people can become desensitised to things when they become normalised. This often happens as a way of coping with overexposure to upsetting scenes and info...

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How can you belong when you don't fit in?

The need to belong is strong in humans. It's key to our survival. Without it, we would have been left to fend for ourselves in development, and subjected to the risks of living without protection from our tribe. It's an innate human desire to exist within the context of something larger than us.

But this desire to belong can cause confusion. We seek it by trying to fit in, or gain acceptance in the wrong places. These things are not routes to belonging. In fact, as Brené Brown says, they are 'often barriers to it'.

We can't belong if we bring a false, hammed up, idealised, inauthentic version of ourselves to the world. Even if it helps us 'fit in'. We are aware of these experiences because they make us feel like fakes, and resenting those who want us to be what we're not.

However, as Brown says, it is through the courage to be vulnerable, authentic, and imperfect, that we discover true belonging, first within ourselves.

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The Gentle Rebel And this brings us once again, to the starting point of gentle rebellion: embracing the joy of not fitting in.

The Gentle Rebel lives life with joy, outside of those things they've been told they need to value and pursue if they want to fit in to the world 'properly.

She embraces the joy of living without the desire for power. She understands that through embracing her incompleteness, brokenness, and fragmented self, she finds meaning and purpose. Not through becoming a finished product, but by realising that she will never be a finished product.

It's by accepting that we can never be perfect enough that we can become good enough. Communities of Healthy Rebellion When we live life alongside others who understand these things, we are within a community of unfathomable strength, courage, and potential for rebellion. These kinds of communities help us become more self-aware, self-accepting, and courageous, in how we shine a light on the systems which keep us stuck in old unhealthy cycles and patterns.

The rebel rejects the idea that there is a destination. There is no great secret or purpose that will give them all the answers they crave. Instead, life is a never ending series of questions and challenges. And we get to choose how we will respond as we go along. Healthy Community Healthy rebellion is a product of healthy community. And healthy community is a collection of people which reflects the heart and character of its individuals. It doesn't seek to change them to make them conform. Instead IT changes and evolves as it reflects the lives of those who belong to it.

Peter Rollins says we need to build micro-societies of resistance with a rebellious spirit. Helping people think for themselves, reflect on things for themselves, with rituals and creative practices to help people look at their own frustrations/struggles, so they can bring them to the surface. Not telling people what to think about believe in order to fit in. But building one another up, embracing the unique sensitivities of individuals, and connecting at our most basic level of humanness.

This is how I see The Haven. My vision has been to hold a space for introverts and sensitive creative people to think for themselves, reflect on things, and engage in creative practices, which help them look at their own struggles/frustrations. Then we can support and encourage one another in bringing these to the surface so we can actually use them.

The Haven is a place of reflection and questioning. It probes gently into the symptoms of our discontent, so that we can address their causes. Rather than seeking ways to become numb to the pain and discomfort that they cause. It's a place of self-acceptance, self-discovery, and self-care. Where you can be yourself and unleash your gently rebellious spirit on the world.

Learn more about how to join the Haven here.

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Have you ever done something you didn't really want to do because you wanted to fit in? Was it below the standards and expectations you would ideally set for yourself?

Cameron Bancroft got banned from cricket for nine months. He cheated in a cricket match between Australia and South Africa, when he roughed up the ball with sandpaper on the pitch (in plain view of the TV cameras). He said he did it because David Warner told him to.

Bancroft admitted that he "didn't know any better". It was apparently a decision based around his values, which at the time were "fitting in". He added that one of the motivations was the "hope that fitting in earns you respect". This is a rather strange and naive assessment to make.

Fitting In (Being Liked) Is Not a Value Respect is not earned by submitting to another person's will. If you know something is wrong, you wont get respect by doing it.

Acting because you want to fit in and be liked makes you potentially vulnerable. You become a stooge and a scapegoat for people who want to take advantage of you. You won't be liked and respected. "I Didn't Know Any Better" You can't really call cheating a mistake. Yet this is the narrative from those involved.

You must wonder...when did they make the 'mistake'? Was the mistake (cheating) a habit? Was the real mistake getting caught on TV with sandpaper down his pants?

Saying that you 'didn't know any better' is a strange defence. It suggests again that you are unable to form judgements and make choices from an ethical or moral position. If you're driven by the desire to fit in, you'll do anything to be liked (or used). Respect Respect and fitting in can often be mutually exclusive. You don't earn respect by trying to fit in. You earn it by living true to a set of deeper principles and values (integrity). Even if that means standing up to those you would like to be respected by.

Respect builds over time, and is the result of a series of actions (doing the right thing, not the easy thing).

Someone who uses you to satisfy their own agenda clearly doesn't respect you. On the contrary, they respect you so little, they are happy using you for their dirty work.

We can all think of people who have earned respect by speaking difficult truths into situations which they feel they cannot support.

Fitting in and being liked are not your core values. They are the by-product of living true to your values.

Integrity is wholeness between our values and our actions.

If we want to be people of integrity, character, and wholeness, then we need to come to terms with the prospect of not fitting in. Of standing up for those things we truly value. Introversion, Sensitivity, and 'Fitting In' Introverts and HSPs can sometimes feel like we don't fit neatly into certain aspects of our noisy world. It may feel like we don't belong. Or it might feel like there is something wrong with us within a moment when we need to step away from people and noise in order to recharge the batteries.

There are times when we may feel uncomfortable with these parts of our temperaments. We might try to squeeze ourselves into the outer mould in an attempt to fit in. And in so doing, bend ourselves completely out of shape.

We might ask questions like "how can I be more extroverted?" and "how can I get people to like me?"

By concentrating on trying to fit in, we miss a much more fundamentally important point. A point which Cameron Bancroft seemingly failed to understand. Fitting in is not a value. You can't earn respect by simply doing what someone else wants you to do. Truly Fitting In Fitting in starts within yourself. It begins with integrity. Understanding your own natural shape. Fitting into your own deeper core, and creating a complete circle between values, words, and actions. Fit in to who you are by understanding what truly matters to you.

The more connected you are to that, the stronger you become. And through that inner strength,

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The rebel questions the systems on which our lives run. But not from a desire to bring about a world of chaos and anarchy. True rebellion is quite different from the image we often paint of the rebellious person. Where we see them as disengaged and aloof. Projecting nihilistic cries of meaningless on the futile pursuits of the masses.

The rebel does indeed choose to embrace the joy of being on the outside, but far from being disengaged, is fully invested in community. She seeks a better world, and lives a life of integrity between her values, words, and actions. Questioning and holding a light to the structure of systems that fail the people who are forced to subscribe to them.

She facilitates conflict, only in so much as a constant cycle of burning and renewal is necessary for any healthy society. Where the phoenix rises from the very ashes of its worn out predecessor.

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Life is Not Static The rebel understands the fluidity of life. Standing for long periods will leave us with new norms and rituals. But when these lose their original purpose, where they used to breath life and meaning into the system, they can become stifling and cumbersome dogma. And they can begin to fail the people who are forced to adhere to these laws.

Gentle rebellion is a call to embrace great joy in life. To tread lightly, avoid the tyranny of fitting in, and look beyond labels and positions we hold in society to give us our identity. It requires us to understand what we value in the depths of our being. And to design life to reflect these things.

The next question is, how? How do we know what our values are, and what can we do if we identify certain influences in our life which are pulling us away from the stuff that really matters?

Rebellion starts with empathy and compassion. As well as the acknowledgement that all people are equal at a fundamental human level. It sees people as people, and fights for their dignity and respect. Values, Goals, and The Systems of Your Own Life And as with all transformation, rebellion starts within.

A great way to do this is to examine the goals we have for our lives. Do they actually represent who we are, what we want to be, and the things we want to have. Or do they align to other values?

To be rebels in the systems of our own lives, we need to grow our self-awareness through reflection on what causes this. And one of the simplest places to start is by allowing ourselves to actually acknowledge what matters to us.

In this episode we go through a simple process that I use. It will help you get clear on your own values so that you can identify the meaningful goals inside you. It's an ideal place to start if this is something you struggle with. Listen to the episode now:

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Rebellion becomes necessary when a power balance tips beyond the line. There are many different 'slave-master' systems in the world. Institutional, relational, ideological, organisational, and political. We experience these relationships at different levels of life.

The rebel is compelled to take action when she is pushed too far. This is why there has been a sea change over the past few years around introversion. When a prevailing value/assumption controls a society (eg the 'Extrovert Ideal'). It causes people within the society to bend themselves out of shape in order to fit into the acceptable mould. Then you can expect the rebels to eventually stand up and step outside the system.

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Rebelling Against The 'Extrovert Ideal' After a long period spent subscribing to these norms and expectations. And as the research began to emerge, providing validation for those introverts who felt like square pegs in round holes, the rebels began to shine a light on the failures of the system. Assumptions and expectations that are failing huge numbers of people, suppressing their ability to live at their potential and bring the best of their unique gifts/abilities to the world.

It's been exciting to see introverts and sensitive type people begin to flourish, with the support of small communities. Not despite their natural temperaments (as was the old way), but because of them. They've learned to work in conjunction with their natural energy flows. And because they've been able to identify the stuff they can actively work on in the right ways in order to achieve their OWN goals. Not About Power Some people see moments like this season of so called, 'Quiet Revolution' as an opportunity to "take power". And to turn things on their head so that the so called, 'slave' becomes the 'master'.

But that's not the point of rebellion. The true rebel removes herself from the power structure all together.

Power is ironically gained because she relinquishes the desire to possess it. By choosing to reject the allure of power, the system of power becomes inconsequential and impotent. Leaving her to choose instead to live on that never ending path of change and transformation. That's a powerful position to be in.

The rebel doesn't want to dominate. They don't want to destroy for the sake of it, or because they have a vendetta against an individual (or group - e.g. extroverts). They oppose systems, ways of thinking, and assumptions which fail the people who are expected to unnaturally fit into them. Listen to the episode now:

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“When an introvert looks at society and sees no reflection, she risks becoming alienated, either by staying true to herself and becoming alienated from society—called social alienation—or by adapting to society and becoming alienated from herself—self-alienation.” - Laurie Helgoe In her book, Quiet Power, Laurie Helgoe talks about two types of discontented introvert.

Shadow Dwellers “are the introverts that appear (if they can be seen) as reclusive and inaccessible – alien.” They can be seen as rebellious because they might opt out fitting into the activities and values of the mainstream.

'Accessible Introverts', on the other hand, “do not come off as remote or intimidating because they have almost adapted to the extrovert culture”.

These behaviours become a problem if the alienation deepens. For the shadow dwelling introvert this shows up through resentment. For the accessible introvert, it looks like a loss of self-awareness and identity.

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Resentment Sometimes resentment looks like rebellion. The outward appearance might appear similar. If someone chooses to opt out of a group activity or value. They might be written off as 'a bit of a rebel'.

But when we are driven by resentment, it is no longer a positive choice. It's done through the gritted teeth of bitterness.

Resentment is directed inwards. Aimed at oneself. About what we don't have, but wish we did. But projected outwardly.

In this situation we might unleash cynicism on an external object (person, group, idea, place, personality type). But not out of genuine concern that it is causing harm. Rather, we ridicule it because we actually want it. And because we lack it. Self-Awareness and Self-Acceptance Gentle Rebellion starts on the inside. It's not about gaining power. It doesn't seek to strip other people of the things we don't want them to have. But the true rebel begins a quest for self-awareness. The rebel identifies the inner shackles of all that binds her, and isolates her from herself. Those inner drives, jealousies, and beliefs that happiness or wholeness lies somewhere else.

In this sense, it's all about removing the desire for power. And extinguishing the belief that happiness, wholeness, or completeness is a destination we are trying to reach in life. Those beliefs that adds fuel to the fire of resentment because they focus on the lack.

They say, 'if only you had this thing, then you would be acceptable'. And this is a message perpetuated by our culture. Voices everywhere tell us what we lack. They show us images of what we could be if only we had what we don't have. A different partner, the latest technology, the right career, or the most expensive anti-aging cream. Discontentment Advertising is both fuelled by, and also fuels, our discontent. It tells us what we're not, and what we could be if we actually took ourselves seriously. It runs on the oil of comparison and envy, which encourages us to find our self-identity, only in the context of other people (what we're not).

To be gentle rebels we must learn to pick apart these messages. And free ourselves from messages of lacking. Embracing instead the powerful truth that at a human level we are enough. Because we are equal. We are acceptable. And we belong BECAUSE of the very fact that we can reject the power of fitting in, which almost always comes at the price of our integrity (belonging to ourselves - aligning our values, actions, and goals). Listen to Part Two:

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Do you feel like a rebel?

I've created a mini series of short bonus podcasts to explore some ideas around gentle rebellion.

There is something powerful about rebels. Something that we often find quite attractive. They play important parts in the stories we read, the TV shows we watch, and the news stories we share. We are drawn to them, even if we don't agree with what they stand for or do.

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Origins of the Word Re- means either opposition or going against, or again, anew, once more, going back to.

Bel- is from latin word bellum, which means war.

To rebel means to fight, in order to oppose or create something different from what is. To confuse, perplex, and mix up the status quo. Albert Camus described two specific types of individual rebel: The Dandy The Dandy lives and dies before a mirror. He is driven by narcissism and a desire to see little nothing else other than his own reflection in the world around him. The crowd is the ultimate mirror. So he rebels by showing off and exerting his vanity and power in front of anyone who will watch.

He does things that are frowned upon as excessive and arrogant by those looking on. Yet, he is not concerned with the frowning, just as long as the crowd continues to look on and reward him with the reflection. Certain reality TV (and social media) stars may spring to mind; including the kinds we love to hate. The people we would never dream of emulating, but that fascinate us. Unbelievable characters that we cannot take our eyes off. The Libertine The driving force behind the libertine is extreme hedonism. He embarks on an endless of pursuit of pleasure. Choosing to indulge his own appetite before taking into account social norms or expectations which might see the behaviour as harmful or excessive. He wants his fix and will sacrifice fitting in or belonging in order to satisfy the insatiable and ever growing need for more. He will do whatever it takes to get what he wants.

What these types of rebellion have in common is that they look inwards. Going against the norms and expectations of society, they are concerned with the self, not with the greater good. They take up the fight in order to fulfil a destructive internal drive.

Good news...Gentle Rebels aren't dandies or libertines. Compassionate Rebellion Compassion is at the heart of Gentle Rebellion. It is much more reluctant in its drive to rebel. It's pulled by a core set of seemingly counter-cultural values. And sits at the heart of where we orientate to the world.

It's a rebellion of contribution, not extraction. A rebellion that speaks from a soul space. Even when the head tries to talk us round to fitting in, and attempting to ignore the call to action. This kind of inner rebel screams 'no'. "Not every value leads to rebellion, but every rebellion tacitly invokes a value." - Albert Camus (The Rebel) Gentle rebellion is concerned with opposing things that stop us from being who we have the potential to be. Both as individuals and as we contribute to our communities. Rebellion becomes necessary when there are forces (toxic ideas and limiting beliefs) blocking us from living with freedom and equality as human beings. It is concerned with destroying those harmful systems of thought, habits, and attitudes, which keep us locked into modes of failure.

This mini series of bonus podcast episodes will reflect on why this matters for introverts and highly sensitive people, and how we can become more of who we are through active rebellion in our everyday lives. When we acknowledge the systems of power in our own lives (and the world) which keep us locked away from our potential (as individuals and communities), we can call them out and extinguish them. And by so doing, we can truly embrace and dance with the joy of not fitting in to the world...together! Listen to Part One:

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"Compassion, respect and gratitude are not the ‘soft stuff’ they are the very bedrock of organisational vitality." - Mary Freer (The Compassion Revolution) In this week's episode I share one of my favourite conversations. On one of the most important topics in the Gentle Rebel Toolbox.

Compassion is sometimes misunderstood. And it's a word that is not really used all that much outside of care industries and religion. But it's one that we have a responsibility to take seriously if we want to change the current trajectory we're on as a species.

From Empathy to Compassion We might talk about empathy more than compassion. We may even use the two words interchangeably. But there is an important distinction between them: Empathy - from the Latin root: Em (in/to put yourself into) Pati (to feel/suffer)

Empathy is putting yourself into the suffering of another person. Compassion - from the Latin root: Com (together) Pati (to feel/suffer)

Compassion is the act of truly seeing another person, and endure alongside them so that their suffering may be relieved.

What's the difference? Action. Empathy is a road into compassion, it doesn't actually require any response.

To move from EMpassion to COMpassion you must respond to and act upon the feeling in order to move WITH the other person. You might experience the suffering of another person without them ever knowing (empathy). But compassion makes the other person feel seen, heard, understood. As such, they feel accepted in their humanness.

Mary Freer believes that compassion is the only viable future. She is on a mission to help leaders become compassionate in their approaches to building workplaces, organisations, and communities.

In a world where people are experiencing increased stress, uncertainty, and anxiety, we need to approach life differently. “We urgently need to build a world where we are supported and encouraged to notice the distress in ourselves and others and act to alleviate that distress with the support from those around us.” - Mary Freer Self-Compassion Compassion is driven by the desire to remove suffering. Before we can do that, we must become aware of the suffering in the first place. Sometimes we are so busy doing life, that we fail to look up for long enough to notice distress in others and ourselves.

It wasn't until my conversation with Mary that I really started to grapple with the true power of self-compassion. It's an idea I had subconsciously written off as a bit soft, fluffy, and disingenuous. But I realised that this is because I didn't get it. I had misunderstood what it meant. Not least because most things I had read about it talk about 'being gentle with yourself' and 'remind yourself that you're good enough', and so on. What if it's not that easy? Which, invariably it isn't.

Self-compassion is much more profound than that. It's a lot more messy and as such, more difficult to define as a one size fits all thing.

It's an ongoing process. Stepping into moments of distress, suffering, and pain. And sitting with that past version of yourself, to see, feel, and acknowledge the pain of it. Not to understand it, or to reframe it within the context of what became possible because of it. But to simply recognise it and put an arm around that person (your past self), and comfort them with the gift of seeing, hearing, and accepting them as they are in that moment.

Towards the end of the episode I talk about a way I've started to do this.

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I would like to be a little boat, peacefully bobbing upon the ocean of life. Drifting with the flow, seeing where I end up, and having little adventures along the way. Escaping the mindless hustle, endless competition, and tiresome hostility of a restless world. Where everyone is so busy doing nothing, and dissatisfied with the stuff they spend all their energy acquiring.

I'm not a boat. And even if I was, this is not what happens when we drift. I would more likely end up shipwrecked, flooded, or out in the middle of an ocean without any sense of where I am.

Life's Drift You never drift to the destination you have chosen. It's through deliberate momentum in the right direction, that you get to where you want to go. If you want to be in better health, to clear your debts, or to have stronger relationships, you wont drift there. You'll need to pick up the ores, and start rowing.

In this episode of the podcast we explore how drift takes us away from ourselves, and what to do when we look up to see we're not where we want to be. Where Do We Drift? Career It's easy to get caught drifting within the current of a job, industry, or career. Even if you don't have any passion for the work you do. Relationships Our friendships, families, and partners often become victims of drift. We take them for granted, and fail to do the work necessary to keep them healthy. Health We drift with our health. Through the small habits we engage in regularly. Often this leaves us drifting towards crises moments, which we only realise when it's too late. Finances We drift into debt and patterns of mindless spending. Even when we earn more than we used to, we still struggle to make ends meet. Self-Improvement We can get caught in the drift of self-development, carrying the belief that we are not good enough. So we drift in search of the secret. Politics We tend to ignore things that are important but not urgent. Things that we can sweep under the carpet. This happens in our lives as individuals, as well as our collective life in families, communities, and wider society. Drift creates the cracks where the toxins get in. Values Over time we can become numb to the things that once mattered to us. We drift from our deep values, and start to tolerate, excuse, and even pursue things which we know are not good for us. Why Is Drift Dangerous?

You end up in places you have not chosen to go Your sense of control disappears You become dissatisfied and full of regret It leads to ill health (both literally and figuratively)

What Causes Drift? Belief in Your Own Immortality Palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware, recorded the thoughts of patients in the final 12 weeks of their lives. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says that "common themes surfaced again and again."

All 5 of the biggest regrets are underpinned by drift. Where the person has not been deliberate in the pursuit of things that actually mattered to them. This happens when we don't appreciate the fleeting transitory nature of the life we've been given. Lacking Purpose We submit to drift when we live without perspective and appreciation for what good we can do in the world. When we carry no sense of meaning beyond ourselves. When we only live for our own hedonistic experiences and what we can get out of life, rather than what we can put into it. Defence Mechanisms Donald Meltzer calls defence mechanisms "the lies we tell ourselves to evade pain". According to Joseph Burgo (author of Why Do I Do That?), defence mechanisms are "unthinking and reflexive; they aim only to ward off pain this very moment and don’t take into account the long-term costs of doing so."

They are the ruts into which we fall when we want to avoid feeling things. If we heavily rely on them then we will drift into the same kinds of situations over and over. Drive If you're driven by money, you will never have enough.

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The term 'empath' apparently entered our language in 1956. Through J.T. McIntosh's novel, "The Empath". A story about paranormally empathetic people (empaths), used by the government to oppress workers. It has also appeared through a character in Star Trek with magical healing powers, able to absorb and remove injuries. And John Coffey in The Green Mile who, through touching people, can see and remove their physical and emotional demons.

It's a word that I've often struggled to navigate since I first learned about processing sensitivity. Through subsequent research, I frequently found it used interchangeably with HSP. This made it slightly confusing to understand and communicate. "What I’ve observed in my own life and through coaching and teaching others, is an empath could be defined as having the ability to sense subtle shifts in energy fields." - Bevin Niemann I know many other people who are put off by the word, and its connotations with the paranormal, and unsubstantiated claims that some make about its meaning. But I also know many great people who use the word in ways that make sense. Because it relates to certain elements of processing sensitivity, which Elaine Aron defines through the DOES acronym. Not least the ability to notice and feel subtleties in the environment, even unconsciously. And to feel emotions deeply through their empathic processing of the world.

Origins From its Latin roots empathy means to be within the suffering of another person.

Em (in/to put yourself into) Pati (to feel/suffer)

It is to enter the feeling of another person. But I think there is a subtle difference between being empathetic and being what might be described as an 'Empath'.

Empathy is a choice you make, to intentionally place yourself in the shoes of the other person so that you can see and feel things from their perspective.

An Empath doesn't necessarily choose to be in the feeling of another person/environment. They unconsciously pick up on the feelings, moods, and emotions of other people and crowds without deciding to do so. Without adequate filters or boundaries, they can find themselves unable to cope with the subsequent onslaught of emotion.

This has nothing to do with the paranormal or any other worldly stuff. An Evolutionary Mechanism We are a predominantly social species. It makes sense that we would be deeply connected to one another in ways that we cannot consciously comprehend. It's vital for our survival and ability to thrive, even though we are not the biggest or strongest animal.

Psychiatrist, Judith Orloff wrote the Empath's Survival Guide; a book aimed at helping highly attuned people to not absorb the stress of the world. Interestingly, the evidence she uses to characterise empaths, support this interpretation of it being a largely under the conscious, but not paranormal experience of the world. 1. The Mirror Neuron System A specialised group of brain cells have been discovered, which are responsible for compassion. They essentially enable people to mirror emotions and reflect another person's joy, pain, or fear. Some people are more sensitive to these neurons than others.

Mirror Neurons are a source of connection with another person, where you feel what they feel. If someone is sad you feel sad, if someone is happy, you feel happy, if someone is afraid, you feel afraid, etc. 2. Emotional Contagion Research has shown the contagious affect of emotion. People pick up on a dominant mood, or amplify a behaviour which represents an underlying emotion. For example, a crying baby can set off the same reaction in a whole ward of babies. One person expressing anxiety in a busy queue can spread it to other people very quickly.

Humans are great at spreading and catching emotional viruses in groups. It is a key part of synchronising, and building connections through relationships. It's likely a key survival mechanism in the story of our development as a species. 3.

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There is something seriously toxic about the world right now. Every direction you look there is another news story about human poison (religious and political extremism, sex abuse, racism etc).

Societies are being driven apart by political upheaval and unprecedented events. Through the division and conflict caused by these events (Brexit is a big one here in the UK right now), we are intoxicated by the need to be right, to win, to beat the other side...and increasingly, the toxic affect of apathy, shoulder shrugging, and despair. What do you do when you need to handle something toxic? When faced with a toxic substance our instinct is generally to protect ourselves. We use things like barriers, protective clothing, and measures to minimise exposure to the source of toxicity.

Desensitised and Safe A couple of years ago, I was called to a hoarder's house where a woman had lived for decades, and suddenly died. We were called there in the middle of the night. (Un)fortunately, the lights didn't work. The house was floor to ceiling with 'stuff'. There was only the narrowest pathway to the chair where the lady was resting.

My colleague and I had to don disaster suits with face masks so that we were protected from the potential risks that were everywhere. I put three pairs of gloves on, in case of sharps.

It wasn't until that day that I actually knew what hoarding looked like. Incredibly sad. I will never forget the sights and smells.

In layering up the protection, I was struck by the fact that I was desensitising myself. I couldn't feel anything with my hands. My vision was restricted because of the hood. And I could hear and feel little more than my own breath through the face mask.

The protection was necessary. But I was also very glad to get out of the situation, and out of the suit. Protecting Against Toxicity in Everyday Life We protect ourselves when we encounter toxicity. And there's a price to it, which we must be aware of. We might use defence mechanisms, shut ourselves off, turn away from the source of toxicity. When we do this, we potentially desensitise ourselves.

In this week's podcast we look at some of the everyday toxins, which creep into our lives. So that we can better manage how we relate to them, and avoid shutting ourselves off from them all together. Toxic: Defined Toxicity is the transformative affect within an organism, which, over time renders it unable to carry out the functions it was created to do.

Toxic is the name we give to a potential source of toxicity.

In this sense, anything can become toxic. Toxicity can emerge anywhere. Even in places that are otherwise healthy. For example, a toxic relationship is one where one partner prevents the other from growing, being, and living life as themselves. They may use tools like abuse, manipulation, and control, to diminish their ability to live in a way that is true to who they are.

This kind of 'poison' is not always immediately obvious. It creeps in over time, and it isn't until there are a lot of toxins already within the organism that you start to notice the transformation that is being caused. Intoxication Toxicity in everyday life starts with small doses of intoxication. Just like with drugs or alcohol, we consume toxins, without acknowledging the potential harm they might cause.

People still smoke cigarettes. Even though packets display a terrifying warning about the consequences of doing so.

A glass of wine or cigarette can calm you down and make you feel good. But a few glasses later you might become unable to carry out basic functions. That's why you're not allowed to drive. You are intoxicated (rendered incompetent by a toxin).

A little while later the toxins begin to leave the body, and you'll eventually get back to normal functioning. The transformation is temporary, and short lived.

Over time, if this toxin is consumed consistently, a biological addiction may form (transformation of the org...

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"Waiting is for losers. Bad things come to those who wait. Good things come to those who don't take no for an answer. Stop waiting for something to happen, and start hustling for it instead."

These are just a few of the sentiments that Google threw my way when I began researching for this week's podcast. I'll be honest, I found it kind of terrifying. It would appear that we have a dreadful relationship with waiting.

We have a chronic wait problem. And in this episode I talk about why this is an issue, and what we can do about it.

"We've got to do something!" This is the plea of anxiety. When the mind needs to act but it doesn't know what to do. There is no rational grounding at work. It just needs to keep busy and feel like it's at least doing SOMETHING, even if that something is completely ineffective, or worse, more destructive.

If you've ever been on an aeroplane then you've seen this kind of anxiety at work. When everyone jumps up at the end of the flight and grabs hold of their case from the overhead locker. Despite the fact that they are not going anywhere, they're not going to get out faster than anyone else, and they're actually going to have to stand in an uncomfortable position for longer than necessary. Blind anxiety takes over. We feel we've got to do something, because we hate waiting. Waiting and Meditation If you meditate then you'll have experience of waiting. In fact, meditation IS waiting. People think they're waiting for something to happen when they meditate. But the waiting IS the thing they're waiting for. The thing that is going to happen is the thing that is happening. Stillness. Silence. Solitude. And the impact of learning how to wait well, permeates the whole of our lives. Meditation is training for how to wait well. Highly Sensitive People and Waiting For HSPs, waiting can be our superfood. But if we don't know how to consume and digest it, it can also become kryptonite. It can create anxiety, overthinking, second-guessing, and overstimulation from all the feelings that bubble up when we're unsure of what is expected of us next.

Learning how to wait properly and well is vital for our self-nurturing. When Are We Required to Wait? 1. When we are not in control

We need someone to make a decision. We're waiting for results to come back from the lab. For pay day. For a tree to grow. Or for someone to get home.

1. When we are in transit

Travel is waiting. Both in a physical and metaphorical sense. When we are awaiting arrival, travelling from one place to another. Gaining a qualification, getting fit, or visiting Australia. Movement between places and moments is characterised by waiting.

1. When we desire something we don't have

We talk about waiting for love, happiness, peace, or wholeness. And this gets attached to finding the right person, discovering our passion, or having an experience that we believe will unlock the door to whatever it is we think we're waiting for.

1. When we anticipate

Ever said something like, "I can't wait to go on vacation"? Or "I can't wait for Christmas"?

We get excited or afraid about things in the future. But time doesn't care that we want to be there now. It might be something you're dreading, which you "just can't wait for it to be over and done with." What happens when we refuse to wait? When we spend life looking for ways to avoid waiting? We Get Bored We become irritable, frustrated, and uncreative. Looking for things outside of our control to solve our discomfort with the in-between. Searching for a constant stream of entertainment and distractions. We may end up running a red light, stepping out in front of traffic, or prematurely ruining something that promises to be amazing. We Act Irrationally Subscribing to the notion of endless hustle, where we believe doing 'something' is better than waiting. So we run to the Eurostar, while the plane we're booked on flies over our head (listen to the show for the rest...

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Do you like to take trips down memory lane? To wax nostalgic about the 'good old days', and the way things were.

The Prisoner was a TV show from the 1960s, based around a spy who resigned from his role before finding himself kidnapped and trapped in a village from which he can't escape. The spy, played by Patrick McGoohan is called Number 6, and spends each episode in a battle with other characters (namely Number 2), in his ultimately futile attempts to leave the village.

I first watched it a decade ago. I knew nothing about it at the time, but was drawn in by the name (I had written a novella called The Prisoner, and was intrigued to compare notes). The show hooked me from the word go.

It proved to be right up my street. With its allegorical reflection of psychology of dreams, change, isolation, and identity (among other things). Stimulation for the mind, more questions than answers, and a mirror held up to my own existence.

The village strikes me as a metaphorical place of nostalgia. A setting in the mind of Number 6, to which he cannot help but return over and over. Despite believing that he has being held by external forces, these are perhaps not what they appear at first glance.

What is Nostalgia? Nostalgia is a word that has Greek roots. From nostos, which means to return home. And algos, which is about pain. Nostalgia is the pain we feel in the space between where we are, and a place we might identify as 'home' in some way. It is both geographical space, and also space in time (between the present and the past).

It is a dreadful kind of homesickness, because the home you desire is unreachable. Either because it's in the past, or because it never existed in the first place.

I've spoken with introverts and sensitive people, who resonate with the idea of pining for a place they've never been. Or for a fantasy world (Hogwarts anyone?) And the nostalgia (pain of not being able to get there) is pretty real.

Home matters. And when the present feels out of whack or chaotic, getting home becomes even more desirable. Driven By a Feeling Nostalgia is driven by a feeling, rather than a fact. It is not the same as reminiscing or remembering. This is why it can be dangerous. If we're unable to disentangle that feeling, we might build a belief upon false perceptions about the past. And we may begin to attach a sense of 'magical thinking' to an abstract idea.

We might say things such as, 'if only things were like they used to be, I wouldn't be so ill/depressed/unhappy'. We can become fixated on this unreachable object (i.e. 'The Good Old Days'), and focus on destroying the things we perceive to be blocking us from getting it (i.e. 'People Like That').

Every generation pines for the good old days. Like homing pigeons, lost in the sea of inevitability, where change is one of the few certainties in life. We long to go 'back' to where we were, to make things great 'again', and 'return' to normal. Well we can't go back, things never were great, and normal doesn't exist. Restorative vs Reflective Nostalgia In her 2001 book, The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym pointed out a difference between restorative nostalgia, and reflective nostalgia.

Restorative nostalgia is driven by the belief that the past holds the key to that desire to feel happy and at home in the present. It is a drive to reconstruct and relive the way you believe things were in the past.

Reflective nostalgia is that sense of longing, where you allow the yearning and pining for days gone by to simmer in your mind, while fully accepting that those wistful memories are in the past, and that's where they live. "While restorative nostalgia returns and rebuilds one homeland with paranoic determination, reflective nostalgia fears return with the same passion." - Svetlana Boym The Messages of Everyday Life We see restorative nostalgia at work in political and advertising messages. Images, phrases,

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What causes health?

Is that a weird question?

Health is neither a good nor a bad thing. It just is. Health is our state of being. And as such it can be influenced and touched by many different factors.

Things like our lifestyles, values, relationships, philosophical outlook, fitness, environment, and access to healthcare, can all have a bearing on our state of being. The quality levels of these things all play a part in our overall health.

They are like constantly sliding scales rather than absolutes. And so is health.

The World Health Organisation defines it as a ‘state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not just the absence of disease or infirmity’. In other words, Health is created by positive factors. It is not simply the absence of illness, injury, or disease.

We are natural beings, living in a brutally indifferent world. We will battle unexpected and unexplained challenges to our sense of health. No matter how you sugarcoat it, and no matter what people might say about everything being in your own hands, there are obstacles which will knock you for six.

Within many situations (even when physical health is poor), there are other influences on our state of being, which we can be aware of and experiment with.

In this episode we explore some of those things, such as: 1. Reject the Idea of Absolute Health “Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” - Marcus Aurelius Comparison, judgement, and envy don't change the card. But they can certainly ruin the game.

Whatever card we have in our hand, we can make a difference to the lives of others. We can bring joy, we can create memories, and we can make time spent with us a nice experience, rather than one of egg shells and fear. 2. Environment "The ideal of behaviourism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behaviour that benefits everyone." - B. F. Skinner The space around us has an influence on our state of being. In our homes, our towns, workplaces etc. Don't underestimate the impact of physical environments on health. 3. Community "I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone." - Robin Williams We exist within different communities: home, family, friends, work, organisations, clubs, faith groups, the gym, pubs, local gatherings etc. Our state of being is influenced by how well we are plugged into the sense of belonging within these communities. 4. Lifestyle State of being is also influenced by the things we choose to do with our bodies. Especially with regard to rest, movement, and nutrition. 5. Healthcare Access to professional health care and support is a huge contributor to your state of being. 6. Learning and Growth Our adaptability and relationship with novelty and change influences our state of being. A willingness and ability to learn new things and explore the world, is a powerful contributor to wellbeing.

Likewise, if we only engage with the world through the eyes of nostalgia, our state of being may become underpinned by bitterness, isolation, and a belief that we are out of touch (and that things aren't as good as they used to be). 7. Boundaries The belief we have about what is expected of us and how we need to fulfil that role, is a big influence on health. Boundaries ensure a steady state of being, grounded in knowing what matters and acting on it. While being aware of what we must have the courage to leave outside our inner fence.

The tentacles of stress (stretched beyond capacity) and anxiety (having to move forwards, but not knowing what to do), can touch our state of being in different ways. 8. Interactions With Events

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I bet you can think of masks that give you chills when you picture them in your mind. Maybe a certain character or situation from your childhood pops into your head.

Masks are used for all kinds of reasons. They conceal some truth of what lies beneath. Superheroes and villains are the obvious examples. But we use them for all kinds of things. They can protect us when we wear them in sports or to provide oxygen. They can also heal and help us in different ways.

We see and use masks everywhere. Metaphorically speaking we might think of the jobs we do, the ways we use social media, and the labels we apply to our lives, as masks.

You Are Not What You Think You Are

In this episode of the podcast we examine some of the masks we wear ourselves. Not in order to eliminate them. I'm not sure that's possible. But rather so we understand that they're there. And realise that we are not always who we believe we are.

"As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become." - Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre makes the point that humans often deceive ourselves into thinking we don't have the freedom to make choices. That we fear the potential consequences of choosing from the abundance of potential avenues we could select.

Instead, we stick with safe and easy choices, beneath the story we tell ourselves that we can't choose anything else. We thus allow circumstances to dictate the trajectory of our lives.

The implication of this, is that we tend to believe that we are what we think we are. We resign ourselves to the identity (mask) that we have stumbled into. Nothing more, nothing less, and nothing other. But by subscribing to this idea we can lose perspective of what we really are.

The Good Waiter

Sartre uses the example of a waiter in Paris to demonstrate this idea of mauvaise foi ('Bad Faith'). He does everything he can possibly do to be the best waiter he can be. He is entertaining, conscientious, and precise.

However, for Sartre, his exaggerated behaviour is evidence that he is not a waiter. He is in fact playing the role of a waiter because he is doing everything he can do to BE a waiter. Thus, as Sartre suggests, at some level he knows that he is not a waiter because the only way to be a good waiter it for him to consciously choose to behave in the way a waiter would behave.

This might seem like a funny point to make, but it is very important. It frees us from the labels we use to mask ourselves and box other people in.

I Am Therefore I Do vs I Do Therefore I Am.

Label masks are not who we are. They don't really communicate anything about who we are because they only point to what we might do or how we might appear.

White, British, heterosexual, male, introvert, songwriter, with the name Andy.

These words tell you nothing about who I am (my character - how I act or why). They are just the symbols which you might attach to me on the surface. And yet so often these masks become tied up with identity. Both how we think of and judge ourselves, and how we view and judge others.

You Are Not Your Masks

When you call a child naughty, you are placing a mask on them (shame). This can be damaging because it doesn't separate the child from the event (the naughty act). This is the difference between guilt and shame.

Guilt is a feeling we get about a thing we have done. Shame is a feeling we have about who we are as a person.

It's the same with any descriptive word we might use to describe someone. For example, angry, shy, noisy, sensitive, conservative, hard, liberal, promiscuous, arrogant, soft, quiet, or annoying. These labels become masks that we see intwined within our view of the person. And after a while the person may even act through the mask, which they assimilate into their own sense of self-identity.

Guilt can be empowering. It points you towards something specific you can make amends for (the naughty act).

Shame is disempowering.

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Have you 'found your calling'? Are you aware of what you were put on Earth to do? Do you know what your passion is?

These are still common ideas doing the rounds online. Memes that say things like, 'focus on what excites you, and success will follow'.

It all sounds very fluffy and nice. But it doesn't mean much. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

When did passion become a noun?

When we talk about it in this sense, we refer to passion as a thing. The pursuit of a single path, career, love etc. And we fail to acknowledge the reality for most of us. We have multiple interests and pursuits. The idea of committing to one thing is anxiety-provoking and depressing.

The pursuits are not passions. But we can engage with our pursuits with passion. And as we do so we unlock the meaning and purpose we are trying to find.

The Meaning of Passion

It can be a problematic word because it can mean different things.

An Outburst of Uncontrolled Emotion (action before thinking out of an intense desire) The Growth of Enthusiasm (aroused by connection to a thing, person, or idea)

We see a short term explosion vs a long term evolution.

The Latin root of the word is patior. It means to suffer, and endure. Or to allow, or submit to something.

This paints an interesting picture.

Passion isn't something that excites you. It is something you are willing to completely give yourself to. And it requires commitment and contribution.

You must be willing to sacrifice comfort, and endure the pain that comes from giving yourself fully to the thing in question.

Passion is a Muscle

The more moments of discomfort you overcome, the bigger your muscles (capacity/passion) will grow.

You don't love something DESPITE the suffering. You actually love it more BECAUSE of the suffering. Friction is a necessary part of growth and joy.

We can buy solutions for almost any problem in our modern world. In so doing, we can avoid many struggles. We can also pay other people to serve us, and save us time, effort, and frustration.

A life of comfort, luxury and consumption sounds ideal to many of us. But it's also a passionless life. Because when there is no friction, there is no foundation for passion to be created.

We need passion because we need a sense of meaning.

When you learn a musical instrument, joy is found on the other side of frustration, struggle, and even failure. It is through persistence and determination that you achieve success. And growth occurs when you make a breakthrough and get the hang of something that you previously couldn't do.

Joy is not the result of success. It's encountered through growth.

The good stuff happens when you get to the other side of discomfort. That is the passion zone of any pursuit. Not that you want to be forever in pain, or seek to be in a constant state of discomfort. But that you don't run away from it. And you don't assume that just because something is painful (and not exciting), you should quit.

Just like happiness, peace or joy, passion is not your destination, it's a way of interacting with whatever situation you are in. It's a muscle that develops from an active choice to work at it.

Over to You

What did you take away from this show? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

P.S. I mentioned Mark Pierce's book, The Creative Wound in this episode. Get hold of it here.

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“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” - Confucius

Do you tend to gravitate towards complexity? I do.

It greets us on the path of least resistance. We wind up there when we're not paying attention. It's the result of adding more without really assessing whether it's necessary (or why). We get drawn away from simplicity when we fall into certain traps. For example, copying others, striving for perfection, and overthinking.

Simplicity is hard to achieve. But it creates the space for freedom, clarity, and focus to breathe.

We might also be drawn towards complexity because we think it is required for growth. The truth is actually the opposite.

Difficult or Complicated?

There is a difference between difficulty and complexity. Much like there is a distinction between simple and easy.

Good teachers know this. And if we want to be good students, we must learn this too.

Our capacity zone (the difficulty level we can cope with/master) increases over time. But only if we follow simple paths to prepare ourselves for the added difficulty.

When you learn to drive you don't need to know everything about the mechanics of the car you are operating. You don't even need to know all the road rules (yet). You just need to know what you need to know to get started.

Over time you will naturally learn other things as they become relevant or necessary.

A good teacher can communicate complex and brand new ideas/processes in simple and relatable ways.

High Sensitivity and Complexity

For highly sensitive types, complexity can become an overwhelming thing. It increases unnecessary demands on sensory processing.

It is common for HSPs to find ourselves grappling with. We often see the grey and nuance in the world. We usually observe before getting involved, which can lead to overthinking.

“I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” - Blaise Pascal

In communication, simplicity requires you to move through complexity and come out the other end.It takes more skill and craft to communicate a complex idea in a simple, understandable way than it does to make it sound impressively complicated.

In this week's episode we examine some of the ways complexity creeps into our lives. How can we give ourselves permission to keep things simple?

The more simplicity we can build into our everyday lives, habits, and routines, the freer we will be/feel. It's an ongoing commitment, but one we can begin to master if we're serious about it.

Over to You

What will you do this week to simplify something that complexity has stopped you making progress on lately? Please leave your response in the comments below.

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Confession time...I didn't reach any of my goals over the past 12 months. I was close on two of the eight. On the remaining six however, I fell short. Way short.

It was a tough year. One in which I've had to grow in ways I would not have expected. My goalposts and expectations changed a lot. But rather than writing it off as a failure, I've realised that I've learned and grown a lot more than I might have done if things 'went to plan'. And what's more, I have seen moments of beauty flourishing out of certain weeds.

Maybe you've had a similar year. One in which you just seem to be 'hanging in there', rather than consciously and deliberately developing. When you look back however, you might be able to see that it was a profound season of deep formative growth. Just perhaps not in the way you planned it.

We have a deep drive within us to find out what we should do. We want to be told how to act, how to think, how to speak, and how to accomplish particular things. That's why there are blueprints, how-to's, and self-help books for pretty much anything you can imagine. But before we begin setting goals or changing habits, there is a fundamental foundation that we must address. Virtue Goal setting can sometimes cause us to focus on the wrong things. We can become fixated on achievement. Of accomplishing things, without much consideration for why we want it, and how we want to go about getting it.

Rather than asking what do I want to do, ask who do I want to be?

Rather than asking what do I want to have, ask how do I want to act?

So that in the pursuit of the goal, it is how you grow that matters, not whether or not you hit it. This places the emphasis on roots and character, not rewards and perceptions. It means that, your value or sense of self-worth is not defined by whether or not you've hit some arbitrary goal. Virtue is Our Second Nature The idea of 'virtue' comes up a lot in Stoic Philosophy. It's a word that is often misunderstood or written off in a lot of our thinking.

We might think of virtue as goodness or perceived goodness. Something that is virtuous is something that is good. The term 'virtue signalling' is used a lot today, which means drawing attention to how virtuous you are. But we can miss the point when we focus on behaviour. Virtue isn't about what we do. It's about why and how we do it.

Virtue becomes second nature as a result of habit. It's about making the choice to do the right thing over and over, despite it not coming naturally. It's the by-product of thousands of occasions where the right but hard choice has been made instead of the easy path of least resistance. Virtue is something you choose, not something you're born with.

Wisdom is a virtue. Self-Control is a virtue. Courage is a virtue. Justice is a virtue.

They are all things we can choose to prioritise and practice in life. Within each cardinal virtue, other habits fit. And from our habits, we might identify goals which serve the deepening of virtuosity. Where to Start Rather than jumping in with goals for the next 12 months, spend time reflecting on the healthy virtues that you see in other people. Identify specific values which resonate with who you want to be. How do you want your life to be shaped? What kind of habits would serve your deeper sense of virtue (choices to bring your best self to the world)? For example (things I want to address this year):

Spend less than you earn (and save the rest) Read more books (watch less TV, especially when you're alone) Speak up with courage (don't gossip or let things fester) Prioritise being kind over being right (listen more than you speak) Encourage people with simple words (don't just complain) Don't indulge the drama (it's exciting but it's not helpful) Look after your health and wellbeing (even if it means saying no to a great opportunity) Give more than you take (and don't expect anything in return)

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I recorded this week's podcast whilst on an unanticipated stopover in Dubai. Thanks to an unfortunate incident involving a child vomiting in front of a flight attendant, and a family unwilling to leave the plane on doctor's orders by any method other than a security escort, I missed my connecting flight to Adelaide. So I had to wait for 24 hours, under the hospitable hand of Emirates, before trying again.

As is the way with these kinds of things, it gave me both time and food to pause and reflect. This episode is largely that.

Why do we do what we do when it's bad for everyone? The family on the plane that was late were clearly distressed. But the staff seemed to deal with it well and even offered them a replacement flight when the child is given the all-clear by the doctor to fly. Yet the distress created desperation and an irrational refusal to get off the plane.

They chose the option, as if they were picking whether to eat the chicken or the beef for their meal. They asked to have security come and remove them. The quietly dignified exit wasn't their preference. With two small children I couldn't help but feel I was watching lifelong traumatic memories being painted right in front of me.

Yet it was like the gambler who is stuck in the belief that they cannot stop betting because the moment they do is the moment they would have won. As long as they were in those seats, there was somehow a sense of hope that a miracle would occur.

By the time they had finally exited the plane, we were an hour late. By the time we arrived in Dubai, I had 10 minutes before my connecting plane took off. Despite my best efforts (massive speed and endurance to get through security and across that airport), the gate was closed. The plane was taxiing away in the window, and the futility of my exertion paraded before me like a gloating tin sausage. Reacting to Disappointment There was someone shouting at the man on the gate. She had obviously missed the flight too. She even pointed at me. I was in a panting, sweaty mess. She used me as an example of the effort we were all clearly putting in to make the flight. He looked at me, and told me with a reassuring calmness that I was rebooked for the next flight. It appeared that I had an easier task than she did. There were quite a few of us from the Birmingham plane. She wasn't one of them. I'm not sure why she was late.

I walked away from the counter, the continued onslaught of insults and pleading fading into the background noise. "They're not going to turn the plane around and let us on", I thought to myself, despite her heartfelt requests, "...or are they? Should I wait and see? No." We Control Very Little As I observed the situations unfolding, I had a deep awareness of how little control I had over things. But I felt pretty calm about that. Worrying wouldn't change the situation. Getting angry wouldn't make things better. And feeling resentment about the cause of the delay wasn't going to make the plane go any faster.

Yes I was fortunate too. I still got to where I was going without it costing anything (other than £7.50 for a small can of deodorant which I bought before I knew the value of a UAE Dirham. I was just a little later, and I was well looked after, while waiting for the next flight.

It was an opportunity to remember that, while I can't control much, I can control my thoughts about what happens to me. And I can control the choice I make in what to do next and how to respond to any situation. Just because things don't go to plan, it doesn't mean I need to put my contentment on hold.

I thought about Chase Reeve's words: "if you don't feel it now, you wont feel it then". If I don't allow for happiness to enter into this moment (however bad things get), then it's irrational to believe that I will feel truly content when I get to where I want to get. There will always be something to complain about. It's these moments of adversity,

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There is a lot of anger in our world right now. It seems to be the default emotion for a lot of people. Just the other day I was bemused to see two strangers start fighting in the street because one took exception to the other riding a bike on the pavement.

It would appear that we are becoming less able to deal with disagreements or situations in calm and civilised ways. We don't put the necessary space between the feeling and the response. And then we fail to know how to respond in ways that are actually good for us. “Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on—it isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance—unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.”- Marcus Aurelius

Seneca talked about anger being a short madness, "for it is equally devoid of self control, regardless of decorum, forgetful of kinship, obstinately engrossed in whatever it begins to do, deaf to reason and advice, excited by trifling causes, awkward at perceiving what is true and just, and very like a falling rock which breaks itself to pieces upon the very thing which it crushes.”

The call of the Stoics is not to deny the emotion of anger. We all experience it after all. That split second reaction is as real as things come. The call instead, is to deny the power that anger has. In other words, the CHOICE you make to act angrily. When you choose to lash out, to say something hurtful, to plot your vengeance, or sulk around when you don't get your way. You have denied yourself the more effective and dignified choice, to remain calm and intentional.

In this episode we start with an important question...where might our anger come from? Not Getting What You Want When we were children the world revolved around us. We were useless and helpless, and very demanding. Some people carry the belief that they are the centre of the universe into adulthood, and can flip into a rage when reality doesn't match the expectations they had for a situation. Disconnection Anger runs off the fuel of distance. It's easy to be angry when the object of your anger is not in front of you in a way that connects you to it. It's easy to unleash fury at an idea that has been posted online because you're not connected with the humanity of it. Accidents We are always looking for people to blame when things go wrong. Even when unforeseen accidents occur. The first question on everyone's tongue is "who's fault was this?" and there will be someone on hand to "help you get the compensation you deserve". This breeds distrust and fear... Fear Fear makes us think irrationally. It causes us to react without discernment or reason. And it can be exploited to turn us against other people. Especially other groups of people, from whom we need to protect ourselves. Anger is often the result of fear. And this fear may often be manufactured by someone else who wants to use it for their own gain. Embarrassment Anger can be a response to deep inner shame (feeling like you are an unworthy failure). This might stem from a message you were given growing up that nothing you do is ever good enough. It is then triggered when you make a mistake, or have someone pull you up on something that went wrong. Injustice Anger stirs when we see people being treated unfairly. Where there are misuses and abuses of power, it can cause us to feel aggrieved. This can also occur when we are not directly affected ourselves, as we look on and feel it on behalf of others and in the context of the world at large. I know a lot of highly sensitive people experience this kind of anger.

Anger is a natural emotion. We all experience it. Don't suppress it. Don't hide it and don't hide from it. But don't confuse that feeling of anger for the behaviour which follows.

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We spend a lot of our lives reacting to impulses, offers, and opportunities. Our urges tell us to grab things before they disappear (scarcity). At this time of year we are particularly susceptible. With Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas Shopping, Boxing Day Sales, New Year's Resolutions etc, the bait is plentiful, and we are ready to bite.

How intentional are you about what you allow into your life? How ready are you to converse with the inner-voice that keeps saying, "do it, you might as well"?

We fill our lives with a lot of stuff without really grappling with whether or not it is going to bring any value to it. When it comes to buying things you don't need (because they're on offer), or taking stuff from your friend who's moving house (because otherwise it will just go in the trash). Gifts, good deals, and 'it might come in handy one day' items.

Active Gratitude

Joy doesn't come from simply getting whatever it is you want. It starts when you want what you already have. Otherwise no thing will ever bring you what you're looking for.

Wanting what you already have is driven by active gratitude. This is not platitudinal or passive (it's easy to appear grateful while also craving more, or feeling like something is still missing). Active gratitude uses, understands, and appreciates, why the present is so valuable (it is all there really is).

If the piece of pizza in your hand turns out to be the last piece you ever eat, would you be satisfied that you truly enjoyed it? Or do you assume there will be more? Are you too busy worrying that there are only a few pieces left in the box and you need to get one before everyone else eats it?

"To have lived long enough depends neither upon our years nor upon our days, but upon our minds." - Seneca

Not About Deprivation

Minimalism is about being intentional. Choosing what we let in to our lives, and what we can let go of. Not in order to deprive ourselves, but in order to actually appreciate and understand what brings us value and joy. To enhance our experience, not restrict it.

The more stuff we fill our lives with, the less focussed we will be at what actually matters. If life is about the endless pursuit of more (hobbies, relationships, stuff etc), then the value of that stuff shrinks. You cannot truly engage with them in any meaningful way.

True Scarcity

"Sale Price is the compulsory price—a fool’s price. Black Friday is all about these traps. "Act now! Limited time only! While supplies last! Like Pavlov’s bell, these clever stratagems incite a false sense of scarcity that clouds our perception of reality, and thus prod us to act on impulse: you might save 70% off the clearance-rack dress you sort of like, but you’ll save 100% if you just leave the store without it." - Joshua Fields-Milburn

The real scarcity is our attention, focus, and time. We are only here on this planet for a fleeting moment.

It is abundantly clear that it's worth doing life in the best way we can. Stoics would call this the pursuit of virtue. This boils down to a simple truth: you don't have to act on every urge and impulse you have. Virtue is honing your ability to choose to intentionally act in the right way because it's the right thing to do. Rather than taking the easy way because you felt like you didn't have a choice.

Putting Virtue to the Test

When the deals come flooding into my inbox, and the offers are tailor made for me and my interests, the desire to unthinkingly click 'buy' is unfathomably strong. But I remind myself, just because I feel the urge...just because I suddenly feel like I absolutely need this shiny new thing, it doesn't mean I have to act. Especially on someone else's terms. My ability to choose is much stronger than those urges to acquire.

I try to put space between that momentary feeling of desire/scarcity, and the action of buying. EVEN if scarcity has been created. I will sleep on it.

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You experienced feelings of inferiority, from the moment you were born. They helped you grow and develop as a human. This is why a child strives to copy others. It progresses through observing and emulating behaviour and language.

Inferiority feelings are no bad thing. You need them. They say, "I could do better here", and drive you to desire better.

From Inferiority Feelings to an Inferiority Complex

Childhood can change what drives inferiority feelings and turn them into a full blow complex. Were you compared unfavourably to someone else?

If you had a parent or teacher who constantly weighed you against a sibling, for example. You lived with the message that you are 'less than', or 'not as good as', your sister. All your thoughts, actions, and words are subtly driven by that story. You live life in the shadows of that person.

Unreachable and Unrealistic Goals

An inferiority complex is identifiable in the values and goals you set for yourself. They are highly subjective and unmeasurable by any sensible means. For example, I have to look perfect. I have to get perfect scores, and I must win everything. I must be gregarious, outgoing, and the life and soul of the party.

Inferiority Amongst Introverts and HSPs

We can see see why this might become an issue for introverts growing up in extroverted environments. And why you might struggle with this as an HSP if you didn't grow up in a nurturing and understanding place.

Inferiority feelings can evolve into an issue for introverts and sensitive types if they are fed by messages such as:

"You're quiet compared with your sister"

"Why can't you be more outgoing?"

"You spend too much time alone...it's not normal for someone your age."

These stories can create a picture of inferiority, all linked to one's innate temperament. They create a deep internal conflict where the belief is that in order to be accepted you need to be a different person.

Extroverted children can experience this too. If they grow up in an environment which fails to accept them in the right way. A child who is loud, energetic, and demands a lot of attention, might be fed the opposite message:

"Why can't you be a nice well behaved child like your brother?"

"You're always getting into trouble. Keep quiet and follow the rules like the other kids."

This isn't linked with a particular personality type other than the expectations and assumptions we build around them. We must communicate more mindfully, and be aware of the impact we are making with the comparisons we place on others.

From Inferior to Superior

Inferiority and Superiority feelings are not opposites. They are closely linked. In fact, a superiority complex can emerge as a way to compensate for an inferiority complex. The belief that the thing you thought made you inferior, actually makes you special, and you should be treated as such.

This mindset can appear when introverts first discover the truth about their temperament. That it doesn't make them weird or abnormal.

They might flip to the other end of the spectrum and embrace the idea that it makes them special and superior to others. We all need to beware of this. Both inferiority and superiority complexes are focussed outside of oneself. They are based in comparison with others...either "I'm worse than others" or "I'm better than others". Neither of these internal narratives is helpful or healthy.

Superiority is not the same as confidence (self-acceptance). This is the difference between confidence and arrogance. If you are self-accepting you do not need to boast or judge other people.

Arrogance is insecurity at its most acute. It declares "I'm great" as a way to compensate for the fact that it doesn't believe it to be true. If it really was great it would just quietly get on with the job of being great.

The Power of Weakness

"You wouldn't understand, you had money growing up", or "you can't understand what it's like to have...

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It seems rare nowadays to disagree with someone without it descending into sweeping labels and name calling.

Do you ever miss having grown up conversations about complex issues?

Jeremy Scahill observed that through his work at the Intercept he had been called a Trump Apologist by some people, and a Communist Sympathiser by others. He had successfully provoked all sides.

In many ways, once you dig beneath those simplistic assessments, you find something that is probably quite reassuring, especially for a news organisation. And it was an anticipated by-product of their vision; to shine light on injustice and political hypocrisy wherever they found it. To be seen as biased by everyone is probably no bad thing when weighing it against a vision like that.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

• F. Scott Fitzgerald

We all see things through our own lens. We might view the very same information, situation, or content as another person, and interpret its meaning in the opposite way to them. How we view, sense, and experience the world is completely different from one person to the next.

Cognitive Dissonance and Confirmation Bias

Cognitive dissonance is the deep discomfort we experience when our knowledge and experience of the world is in conflict with something that challenges what we believe we know to be true.

Confirmation bias feeds this. It provides us with the comfort of absorbing only information which soothes the internal dissonance we experience.

We must be aware of how cognitive dissonance influences us in our everyday lives. How willing are we to hold conflicting ideas, and allow them to sit in our minds without trying to mould the world around us to fit one side?

Often we don't want what we believe to be questioned or shown to be wrong. The more it is aggressively challenged, the more militantly we might defend our position, however irrational and crazy that might start to get. It becomes more about defending pride than arguing about an idea. And this is an integral thing to understand if we're going to make the ground more fertile for healthy disagreement again.

Boundaries

Observe yourself. Watch and listen to how you disagree with others. Set boundaries in your mind over which you agree not to cross.

Shared Values, Different Beliefs

"We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” - James Baldwin

Many of us are divided by our beliefs, despite the fact that we hold similar core values. It is dogmatic beliefs that blind us to our commonalities.

How You Listen

Listening is a discipline, and it's hard work. It's not something that happens just by virtue of the fact that the sound enters our ears.

Conflict is an Open Door

Through a little bit of grace (giving something that the other person doesn't necessarily deserve in your view), and responsibility (in other words acknowledging your own part in whatever has gone on), you will lay fertile ground for more transformative encounters with people.

Model the Role

We look to others to show us the right way to act, speak, or think. And we pick certain people to follow, depending on the situation, and how their way of being resonates with our own set of values and beliefs. We follow and we are followed.

Humour

Laugh with others. Laugh at yourself. Acknowledge the absurdities in the world around you with a light heart and gentle touch. Humour is like glue which binds us together. It helps us see ourselves in healthier ways, and it enables us to hold our own self-conceptions and sense of identity more lightly.

When we stop taking ourselves so seriously, we can find humour in our conflicts, and break down those barriers which seem so rigid.

Disagree Better

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It's a natural human instinct to protect stuff. It's an intrinsic part of our historical survival strategy; to protect the source of basic needs like shelter, food, and family etc. But like so many of these instincts, they become a bit confused in the context of modern times. Where the urgent instinct moves to other things. And stuff.

Protecting our stuff costs a lot. The price we pay takes many shapes and forms. It can cost money, time, space, and even our relationships with others. We happily protect things by paying for security, storage, insurance, maintenance etc.

But what about the other stuff that requires protection and nurturing? The not so urgent (yet vitally important) things. Not our physical stuff...the things that give us deep, meaningful, and joy filled lives.

We are not always great at protecting those things.

Creativity

It can take intentionality, discipline and motivation to work on those meaningful projects and hobbies. You are the boss of your own creative output, and it relies on your own inner-drive. So it's tough to protect that space and time to humbly practice your life's art (the thing that gives you a sense of flow and excitement as an individual).

Health

The body (and mind) is the ultimate 'stuff' we possess. We only get one.

Justice for Others

The act of protecting other people is an act of protecting everyone.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. - Martin Niemöller

Relationships

It can be the people who are closest to us that we take for granted the most. And they are the ones we harm when we don't protect those relationships. Not protect the person per se, but protect the space, time, and energy around the connection between you.

Personal Growth

We need space to grow, and the freedom to pursue this growth in everyday life. This requires us to protect the openness to evolve into who we are, to become who we are becoming. A journey which never ends.

Don't live with a sense of pride and duty to some abstract ideology, belief, or label you once felt drawn to. But protect your ability to grow in different directions, in conjunction with your deep rooted values.

Solitude

Introverts and sensitive types need to protect alone time. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity.

If you protect your solitude, then you wont feel the need to hoard it in unhealthy ways. Schedule appointments with yourself each week. Protect enough solitude to sustain you. Enough to re-energise you. Enough to give you a sense of peace when you go about the rest of life, knowing that your energy is going to be just fine.

You can watch this episode on YouTube.

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How do you ensure that creativity, health, justice, relationships, personal growth, and solitude are all protected in your own life? Please leave your response in the comments below.

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I recently finished reading, The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness by Kishimi and Koga. It's a great introduction to Adlerian psychology; the school of thought developed after Austrian psychotherapist, Alfred Adler. Not someone I had been familiar with, despite being a contemporary of Freud and Jung.

In this week's podcast I share a few initial takeaways from the book, which hooked me right from its title. There was something within me which connected to the idea of finding the courage to be disliked. I bet it will strike a chord with many introverts and highly sensitive people too.

It's not that I want to be disliked. No one wants that. And that's not what this is about. But rather learning to accept that despite not desiring it, there are still people who dislike me. You. Us. Everyone. And this fear of being disliked, or the drive to be liked, can lead us to make horrific compromises on our values and to hold back from bringing the best of our uniqueness to the world.

However Hard You Try...

Some people react to the fear of being disliked by shying away from life. They don't want to draw attention to themselves so they hide for fear of being judged by others. While other people go the other way. They try to earn the affections of others by sharing anecdotes about their amazing lives, name dropping, and showing off their talents.

The truth is, neither of these options actually achieves the goal of being liked. They more likely lead to the opposite and accomplish the thing that the person feared in the first place.

There is only one option: to act courageously in the right way, deep in the knowledge that we will be disliked. To accept that, and to even be mindful of it. "I will be disliked whatever I do, so I might as well be me and create the world that I believe in in the process".

It's not a case of acting IN ORDER to be disliked. It's acting DESPITE being disliked. Being liked or disliked isn’t the driving force…your deeper values and principles are.

Preferred Indifferents

This is a Stoic concept. You might prefer things to be a certain way, but ultimately whether or not that occurs is outside of your control. One doesn’t want to be disliked, but you don’t mind if you are (because you have no control over it).

In Stoicism this applies to other things:

"I don’t want to be poor, but I don’t mind if I am" (because things outside of my control might happen to make it so). "I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t mind if I am".

The pursuit of being liked, being wealthy, and being in a relationship, can lead to a life of compromised values and integrity.

Switch from Attachment to Self (how others see me) - to Concern for Others (how I see others)

We can get confused between self-affirmation and self-acceptance. On the one hand, self-acceptance is acknowledging your 'incapable self as is' when you can't do something. You then move on to do whatever you can, and ask, "what can I do to get closer next time?" Self-affirmation, on the other hand, is entitlement. It's the voice that says "I failed this time but I was unlucky, I should have succeeded but was hindered".

"One cannot change what one is born with. But one can, under one’s power, go about changing what use one makes of that equipment. So, in that case, one has to simply focus on what one can change, rather than on what one cannot. This is what I call self-acceptance."

Enjoy Not Being at the Centre of the World

You are not at the centre of the universe. When interacting with people use this knowledge to move from 'what will others give me’ and ‘what do people owe me’, to the question, ‘what can I give them?’

This shift in perspective, takes power away from fear. If you are but one small part of a wider context, the significance of someone disliking you becomes weakened. Without 'Harmony of Life' people judge the whole based on one small part that they see.

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I just read a passage from The Courage to Be Disliked about value judgements. 'The Philosopher' says that feelings of inferiority arise when we compare ourselves to others. For example,"I'm too short", "I'm not clever", "I'm ugly". This resonates strongly with the content of this week's interview with Cameron Airen.

Speak to pretty much anyone, and they will point to fixed traits that make them feel inferior to others. These can quickly become the pull of our attention.

Three Responses to Inferiority

An excuse (I can never do what I dream of because I'm a Highly Sensitive Person), a futile obsession (I am going to eliminate or at least hide my sensitivity), or a twisted focus (I'm going to prove that it's better to be highly sensitive).

These three responses to inferiority are unhealthy, because they continue to build the story around the inferiority feelings. We often fall into this because they're all such natural responses. But if we're going to learn to live and thrive within the truth of who we are at our core, then we need to accept those things.

Reject inferiority feelings (this makes me worse than others). Dismiss the pull towards superiority (this makes me better than others). Embrace the middle ground of acceptance (this is how I function). Ask what this makes possible.

We often focus on the opposite question: what does this make impossible? You probably ask this question about all sorts of things without even thinking.

Cameron Airen

I am joined on the podcast by Cameron Airen, who is a feminist mindset coach, gender consultant, writer and podcaster. She helps people frame their high sensitivity as a superpower. This is the key to unlocking their consciousness to create the kind of change they want to see in their lives and the world. She focusses on the stories we have been told and have come to believe about who we are supposed to be.

Cameron helps people see the specific messages that have influenced them as an individual, so that they can find their own true voice beneath and actively choose how to show up in the world.

In the interview we discuss:

Competition and the Highly Sensitive Person

Cameron was a fitness coach and long distance running coach. She knows what it takes to succeed in the field of endurance sport. We talk about how HSPs often carry an intrinsic drive to push themselves and succeed at chosen pursuits. And how this can be destroyed by society's obsession with interpersonal competition and win-at-all-costs mentality.

Gender Stereotypes

There are subtle messages everywhere we look, which point us towards particular gender frames. We filter all manner of things, which are completely unrelated, through a lens of gender: the toys we play with as children, the clothes we wear, the appropriateness of our ambitions, or the relationship we have with our emotions. Things to which there is no correlation other than the social constructs we have built up.

We talk about how these constructs are damaging our health, both as a society, and for individuals within our communities.

Gentle Rebellion

Cameron definitely fits the Gentle Rebel mould (in that she doesn't fit a mould!) We talk about how she grew in confidence to stay true to her natural sensitivity, while at the same time standing up for what she believes in.

The surprising truth is that this was about becoming more of her highly sensitive self, not less. She believes that when we give ourselves permission to allow the sensitivity to flourish, we become more resilient and resistant to the prevailing messages that we need to rail against.

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You better get yourself a cup of coffee before you listen to this week's podcast. Why? Because Erick Cloward from the Stoic Coffee Break Podcast is with me of course!

Erick's show has become a staple favourite in my podcast library after discovering it earlier this year. Its simplicity, practical nature, and Erick's velvety soothing tones put it high on my Stoic recommendations. Give it a listen if you want to learn how Stoicism can help you build a solid relationship with your life.

Stoicism is a practical philosophy. This comes through in spades on the Stoic Coffee Break. If you're fed up with abstract ideas and theories then give it a listen.

I learned a huge amount from my chat with Erick, and was so glad to be able to cover some interesting ground. Including:

How Stoicism Has Changed His Life

He shares the areas of life that have been most profoundly impacted by embracing Stoicism, including his issues with anger.

Why Recording a Daily Podcast Accelerated His Growth and Learning

He committed to a rather rigorous publishing schedule. But rather than being a burden (because he wasn't a slave to it), it became a great tool to help him learn and reflect deeply on Stoic ideas.

How He Comes Up With Fresh Ideas to Talk About in Each Episode

I was fascinated to know how he finds new things to talk about when producing such a high volume of episodes. Turns out it's not that difficult.

The Interaction Between Emotions and Stoicism

Erick talks about his relationship with anger over the years. This led us to an interesting discussion about certain misconceptions we have about stoicism being the suppression or denial of emotion. Turns out it's anything but.

The Habits and Rituals that Help Erick Sharpen His Saw Each Day

Erick shares some practical exercises and habits he employs in order to be proactively equipped to cope with life's unexpected and inevitable twists and turns.

The Dangers of Dogmatism

The internet has a fascinating ability to pull out our dogmatism. We talk about why certain threads online about being a 'good Stoic' can derail us from actually enjoying what makes Stoicism worth it, and concentrating instead on theorising...which is ironically the path to being a pretty lousy Stoic!

His Hopes for the Future of The Stoic Coffee Break

We finish by talking about what Erick is planning next for the podcast.

Go and check out the Stoic Coffee Break Podcast. Find it at Stoic.Coffee

Also mentioned in this episode:

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine

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Many highly sensitive people and introverts struggle with open office environments. The fluorescent lights, un-controlled noise, and constant distractions. Just a few of the sensory slaps around the face you might experience.

These kinds of collaborative workspaces have become common place. But they are not the only answer. They are often the difference between job satisfaction and workplace stress, especially for highly sensitive people and introverts. The shame is that this stress has nothing to do with the work itself.

Lisette Sutherland is my guest on this week's show. She has some great stuff to share on why we should consider remote working, both as individuals and teams. She is passionate about helping people build collaboration in digital spaces.

The future is defined by the limits (and expanse) of our imaginations. This is great news for highly sensitive people.

Problems That Remote Working Can Solve

1. The Environment

Gain control over environmental factors like temperature, lighting, and noise.

1. Distractions

Take control over what distractions you allow into your time and space. We all have different rhythms and ways of working. Boundaries are vital to manage our effectiveness and creative flow.

1. Energy Management

Imagine making the choice to go for a run during the workday. Many jobs could actually function better if we opened up to the possibility of increased flexibility. Stop defining work by the time you're at your desk. Focus instead on how effective and energised you are.

What if you could finish work with a feeling of satisfaction, creative energy, and wellbeing? Stop ending the day drained and exhausted. End the habits of numbness (where you flick on the TV and prepare to do it all again tomorrow).

Work Together Anywhere

Lisette Sutherland is the director of Collaboration Superpowers. A company that helps people work together from anywhere through online and in-person workshops. She also produces a weekly podcast featuring interviews with remote working experts highlighting the challenges and successes of working with virtual teams.

Lisette's book is called Work Together Anywhere: A Handbook on Working Remotely—Successfully—for Individuals, Teams, and Managers. Learn how to build a life of remote working as an individual. Turn your team into a remote powerhouse.

Lisette also shares how being a highly sensitive person has underpinned the fascinating life she's both designed and flowed with over the years. She's got a great perspective on working with our temperaments rather than against them, and being open to the potential that this can have for our lives.

Visit Lisette's website

Read the book

Listen to the Collaboration Superpowers Podcast

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I looked in the cupboard. It was full of bits and pieces I've not used for years. But the thought of getting rid of any of it filled me with anxiety. "What if I need them at some point? I'd better keep them just in case". Then I examined my wardrobe. Clothes I hardly ever wear because I prefer wearing other things. Yet I was keeping them just in case I ever needed them for that most niche occasion.

After moving house twice in 12 months I became aware of stuff. Boxes of things that I'd moved between homes but unpacked into little storage areas and never used.

There is something highly attractive about the minimalist mentality. I like nice clear spaces, and simple organisation. I get great joy from clearing out spaces and feeling like I'm in control of my environment. But always seem to end up re-filling those gaps with more stuff after a good de-clutter and sort out.

The Minimalists

Over the past few months I've connected with minimalism at a new level. Although I didn't properly click with the message at the time, I had read Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists in 2014. I was looking for a nice neat blueprint to provide some neat action points for organising my stuff. But this book actually provided a whole lot more.

I'm a slow learner. I now understand that minimalism isn't actually about stuff. It's about control, choice, and freedom. At its heart is the pursuit of an intentional life of self-awareness and value. In other words, designing a meaningful life. In this respect it resonates so deeply with what it means to be a Gentle Rebel.

Minimalism helps you question what things add value to your life. By clearing the clutter you can make room for the most important aspects of life: health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution. It's certainly not a one size fits all ideology and looks different for everyone who applies it to their unique individual situation.

Minimalism is Not De-Cluttering

The purpose of minimalism isn't to get rid of stuff, but rather to be intentional about the stuff we have. This makes de-cluttering the first part in a wider context. It's only as helpful as the transformation you make in the future about how you interact with the spaces you create. This applies to physical objects, but also to things like time, work commitments, family, finances, relationships etc. You de-clutter in order to make space to live with intention and in accordance with your values.

Values

One of the principle foundations of minimalism is about living in a way that reflects your values. And when it comes to those most important aspects of life: health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution, to approach each one in accordance with your personal worldview.

This means distancing yourself from (de-cluttering) habits, things, and relationships that force you to compromise those values. And nurturing habits, relationships, and experiences that chime with, support, and understand the values instead.

Minimalism is about connecting with your actual values, assessing the clutter (both physical and emotional), and taking charge of clearing the path so that you can bring the best of your true self to the table. Reject the "Busy Bubble".

Wealth/Poverty

Rich and poor are words usually associated with money. But what happens if we expand our view of wealth to include stuff like time, energy, relationships, and wellbeing. Minimalism broadens our perspective to include things of meaning into our definition of true wealth. And on the flip-side, it helps us acknowledge that prioritising one thing by nature places a tax on another thing, and can even create poverty in that area. For example, if financial wealth is your sole focus then you might experience relationship poverty, energy poverty, health poverty, and general wellbeing poverty.

The Minimalist Mindset: Recognising When Enough is Enough

In his book Happier,

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When I was invited to lead workshops and perform at the HSP Gathering in Oulu, Finland last year my immediate reaction was, "Wow! Hell yes!"

In the months that followed the inner voice shifted somewhat. With growing frequency and hostility it began to say, "woah! What do you think you're doing!?" But despite its best efforts, I managed to transcend those fears and doubts and go. And I'm so frigging glad I did!

It was an amazing experience. One I've spent the weeks since reflecting on and mining for lessons I want to use in my life. It was a first for me to be in the same space as so many highly sensitive people. And even when I couldn't understand a word of what was happening, I felt at home!

In this episode of the podcast I share some lessons I've written to myself that I want to keep near. I hope that you find them applicable and helpful too.

1. Say Yes to Stuff That Gives You An Initial Buzz

Lean into your heart and soul reaction when you get an opportunity that makes you think "wow, hell yes!" And know that you will feel fear about it later. You may even curse your past self for saying yes. But dwell on that feeling you had, and know that you won't regret it. Even if things turn out bad, you wont regret saying yes to trying something that excited you.

1. Treat Yourself Like a Guest

Understand the sources of your anxieties. What is preventing you from feeling grounded and relaxed in this present moment? Plan where you'll meet your basic needs through the day, and communicate that with yourself so that you're not in a state of worry about where and how you'll eat, drink, and rest.

1. The Plane Will Wait

Don't get swept up by the anxiety and obsessive rushing of fellow travellers. As long as you're in the right place at the right time, the next thing will wait. Stop. Look around. Be present. The quicker you get on the plane, the longer you'll have to wait. And when it comes to those busses...first on, last off.

1. Communicate Without Words

Experience life as the outsider from time to time. Get perspective on what you take for granted. It teaches you what truly matters when it comes to connecting with other people.

1. You Are Not Alone (even if you feel it)

Whatever you feel right now, in this moment, about whatever is going on in your life, you can rest assured that there is someone somewhere feeling similar. You see and interact with the world like many other people, regardless of how it may appear and feel to you. Your people are out there.

1. The Online World IS The Real World

Don't think of some chasm between the online world of social media and the 'real/physical world'. They are two parts of the same rich tapestry of human life, and can be brought together in beautiful ways. You get to choose how you interact with both, and you can use your life to make the world a little lighter or a little darker.

1. You Are a Role Model

You will never fully know the impact your choices and example have had on other people. The way you behave, the obstacles you overcome, and the manner of your responses to challenging things is a model that others are following. People notice what you do, and they may even look to you for guidance to help them know what they should do. But just as you've never told most of the people who have been role models to you, chances are those who have been influenced by your example will never tell you.

I left Finland feeling so built up and fuelled by creative energy and love. The people, the place, the experience. It was such a privilege to be invited, and an honour to take part in the happening. It's a weekend I wont forget. I hope that you find my reflections helpful for your own life!

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Anticipatory Grief is the feeling of loss for something or someone that is still there. It's a phenomenon most often experienced in anticipation of the impending death of a loved one. However, it can be experienced in all sorts of ways and about all manner of things. Even pets and holidays!

Until 2012 I listened to Kermode and Mayo's film review podcast every week without fail. I was definitely a keen and dedicated member of the Church of Wittertainment. But one day I stepped away from it and haven't really listened since.

Why? Did they say something offensive or slag off one of my favourite films?

Well, not exactly. Quite the opposite in fact. A huge wave of anticipatory grief had swept over me and I couldn't stand the thought that one day it would end. That's right, I stopped listening to my favourite podcast because I anticipated the horrible thought that, low and behold, it would finish. Someday...it's six years later and the podcast is still going.

This is a bit of a trivial example of anticipatory grief, but it goes to show the impact it can have on us!

Is Anticipatory Grief Healthy?

It's not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It’s just a part of our experience as human beings. It seems like it is especially a part of the highly sensitive experience. So how can we live with it? How can we even use it to bring more joy and contentment to life?

Positives

Anticipatory grief can bring us to a place of gratitude for what is in front of us right now in this moment. There are parts of it that can teach us what is important and give us an appreciation for the present. It helps us to hold lightly to the things which we have no control over. And it rips away the tendency to take things for granted.

Negatives

It can be paralysing, and can lead us to actively avoid things that we want to do, because we are afraid of their eventual demise. We might find ourselves withdrawing from important stuff over time. With the podcast example, it led me to self-sabotage. I literally removed something from my life that I loved because I was scared that it would one day end.

Listen to the Episode

Over to You

Do you ever experience Anticipatory Grief? How do you deal with it? I'd love to hear your response in the comments below.

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Have you ever met one of those people who says one thing and then does the complete opposite?

We find them everywhere. In our workplaces, families, and well, just about any place where human beings gather together.

We've All Done It!

How about you? Do you ever check in to make sure that your words and actions are in alignment? Because let's be honest, it's pretty easy to step off the ledge and find ourselves telling people what they should do, without even considering the fact that we never do it. Or on the flip-side, telling people what they shouldn't do, while continuing to do that very thing ourself.

We don't mean to do it. There's no malice in our intent. We are not motivated by the desire to deceive people. And yet still it seems to occur. However, self-awareness always provides us with an opportunity to make positive change. In this case to identify where we need to align our espoused values with our lived actions. That can only be a good thing.

Shadow vs Light

One reason for the discrepancy between what we say and what we do is shame. The stuff we don't like about ourselves is also the stuff we notice and sometimes even fixate on in other people.

This is played out all the time by organisations through their corporate slogans and tag lines. Companies use advertising campaigns to tell the world not to believe what they think is true about them. For example, when Wonga got slated for being little more than a legal loan shark after customers got tangled in webs of spiralling debt from the high interest rates and small print confusion. Despite having one advert banned for being misleading and irresponsible they maintained the tagline, "straight talking money".

As long as branding can outrun the bad press, peoples' perception of who you are is manageable.

There are obvious differences between individuals and companies, but there is still something interesting about seeing our use of language to create and alter perceptions. This reactionary approach to life is how many of us have trained to behave.

Management 3.0 - Alignment of Words and Actions

In the Management 3.0 resources Jurgen Appelo talks about leadership's main role as being to nurture culture through values. Not just espousing values, or declaring "this is who we are", but to bring those espoused values into alignment with enacted values. In other words to actually practice what you preach.

We are ALL leaders. Regardless of where we are in our lives, our teams, our families, etc. We are all leaders because we are all in charge of ourselves. It might sound kind of twee and a little bit like nonsense, but there is something really powerful in understanding this in a deep level way. Self-Leadership is the starting point of character, integrity, and success. It is the power to take us away from feeling like victims of our circumstances, other people, and our past.

We can lead others, set an example, and be role models of integrity and character. At the end of each day ask yourself, "how did my vision and values influence the decisions I made today?" Think of a decision you made that was not the easy option but it was the right thing to do. Remember what the stoics say. That virtue is its own reward.

You do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not for some other reward. Virtue in this sense is about becoming who you are and growing in character by aligning your values with your actions. There's no other reason for it than it being the right thing to do. And when you spend your life aligning with the right action, you'll keep moving towards that ultimate goal of becoming more and more of who you are.

Sound good?

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Whether aware of it or not, we often equate being good at stuff with being good people. A person's value or worth can be linked to what they do rather than who they are in their character. This can lead us down strange paths where we seek to get better at the wrong things.

The popular kids at school were often the ones who were good at stuff, especially things like sport. There was always a sense that if you wanted to matter as a person and have value in the eyes of others, then you need to prove yourself with your talents. So kids would throw themselves into this approval-seeking activity, improving their skills, and trying to be better than everyone else. Within this cultural landscape we were taught that if we want to be considered worthy then we needed to do impressive things.

But this doesn't ring true to what we know deep down. And as we grow up we may grow out of this mindset. But culture doesn't.

How (Not) to Be a Better Person What matters about people is not what they are good at, but who and how they are (the strength and virtue of their character). If you pursue skills at the expense of virtue, then you're going to run into problems.

And yet this is a message that can insidiously worm its way into our heads. In fact, it's one that we often see encouraged in the world around us. The Difference Between Character and Competence The person who wants to be seen as competent will do all they can to cover their mistakes, pass the buck, and deflect all attention away from that stuff. The person who has strength of character knows that owning mistakes, taking responsibility, and whatever the consequences, are actually a way to build trust and to develop the kind of reputation worth having.

A virtuous person may well be highly efficient and productive. But being productive and efficient doesn't make you a virtuous person. And yet, within many situations strength of character is less of a priority than being good at getting things done.

In this week's episode we are going to take a personal audit. We will ask the question, what actually makes a good person? And we unpack these 6 key indicators that we may have confused getting better at stuff with being a better person. You:

Have Become Impossible to Teach See Yourself as Superior Are Cynical About Change Believe You’ve Outgrown Your Roots Align A Person’s Competence With Their Value Feel Threatened and Envious

Over to You Have you ever confused getting better and stuff with being a better person? Or maybe you can think of other people who fit these descriptions. How did that work out for them? I'd love to hear your response to this in the comments below.

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Many people wish they were different. They compare themselves with others and think that life would be better if only they had their traits, gifts, and confidence. They struggle to accept their nature, and in so doing fail to enjoy everything their uniqueness brings.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” - Howard Thurman

Think about it for a second. What the world needs is for you to conform to its own needs. It needs you to buy the stuff it says you need. It needs you to be predictable.

What the world needs is for you to fit in and be like everyone else. In other words, it needs you to rely on the stuff it paints as important, and neglect the stuff that actually matters to you.

Perhaps this is better described as what the world "wants". Because as Thurman says, what the world actually "needs" is people who have come alive. A world of people who have come alive is a world of love, creativity, and acceptance. It's a world where people live at peace with themselves, and in full acceptance of the aliveness of everyone else.

Stop asking what the world wants from you. Forget trying to change in order to fit in better. Look at what brings you joy, and accept those parts of yourself. What brings you to a place of flow? Do those things and the wants, comparisons, envy, and unhealthy competitiveness will naturally drain away.

In this episode of the podcast we look at these ideas in more depth. We examine the first of three disciplines that come from Stoic Philosophy, which is a great help to us as we think about how to thrive as introverts and sensitive types in the modern world.

How can you accept who you are?

We consider the Big 5 Personality Traits, and what they can teach us about how who we are is both fixed and flexible. By accepting what is fixed, we are able to develop our temperamental flexibility. I share why personality is like a bead on a rubber band. It's my hope that by the end of the episode you will see that you have more control over your personality than you might otherwise think.

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There are four key aspects of sensory processing sensitivity. Elaine Aron uses the acronym DOES to highlight them:

Depth of Processing: the tendency to process information more deeply

Overstimulation: they are drained sooner than other people when there is lots happening

Emotional Reactivity/Empathy: more reactive to positive and negative experiences and responsive to the emotions of other people

Sensing Subtleties: notice little details that other people might overlook or miss

I don't talk about Emotional Reactivity much, but it's been on mind of late. Elaine Aron suggests that HSPs are "more motivated to think about things by our stronger feelings of curiosity, fear, joy, anger, or whatever. But this intensity can be overwhelming, especially when we have negative feelings. That’s why we need to learn emotional regulation skills.”

Emotional Regulation

Everybody regulates their emotions. It's a basic human brain function whereby consciously or unconsciously you influence your emotions. There is some control over what emotions are expressed, when they are experienced, and how these things occur.

But it is a little more complicated than this. A lot of this regulation occurs at an unconscious level, which means that reactions happen without conscious thought. These can be influenced by childhood or under duress (outside of your control).

For example, when you are upset it may feel intolerable, but you don't know why. Perhaps as a small child you were left without help when you experienced overwhelming emotions. Or you witnessed adults around you unable to regulate their emotions or control themselves. What would make you think you could possibly regulate yours? You're just a child after all.

On the other hand, when you were a kid you might have learned great emotional regulation skills.

Luck is One Side of the Coin

You can't do anything to change your upbringing.

We all experience luck when it comes to the cards we were dealt. But while this is true, our story doesn't have to end there.

We can learn to regulate our emotions.

Researchers in the Australian Journal of Psychology found that HSPs are less likely to engage in 5 particular strategies that non-HSPs do more. These are processes that people use to regulate their negative emotions:

Accept your feelings. Do not be ashamed of them. Believe you can cope as well as others do. Trust that your bad feelings will not last long. Assume there’s hope–you can do something about your bad feelings eventually.

In this episode of the podcast I ask why HSPs are less likely to do these things. We explore 5 sensory bugbears that might lead us to emotional reactions. And we will think about 8 DIY approaches to improving our emotional regulation skills.

DIY Approaches to Improving Emotional Regulation

Meditate Build Routines Breathe Deep Practice Get Creative Close the Loops See the Mind and Body as One Get Sleep

Over to You

Do you feel like emotional regulation is a problem for you? Which of these strategies will you start this week? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please leave your response in the comments below.

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Sharing your creativity is not about getting noticed, or discovered. These are ideas that can actually put us off as introverts. But it is important to share your creative voice because it’s what makes life worth living.

It adds value into the world and gives other people hope and joy. It is its own reward, and is about so much more than the end product. Even as I write songs, I’m aware that each song I write is just a marker on the road towards the next thing. It’s a road that keeps going, as long as I live. There is always another chance, another stop to take, and another person who might need to hear what I’ve got to say at just that right time.

So, how do you share your creativity in an introvert way?

Naturally

Your voice IS your creativity because it is a response to what stands out to you. What you’re drawn towards. Life is an evolving reflection of all that we learn and resonate with.

As a Process

The things you’re discovering, not simply the things you’ve made.

With A Clear Sense of Your Why

Creativity is about helping, supporting, inspiring someone and adding some kind of value to the world.

Without Pressure

Don’t place undue pressure on creativity as something that has to be perfect. The tighter you hold to that stuff the more you strangle their chances of success.

As a Gift

If you lack confidence in your creative work then a great way to share it is by gifting it to the world.

Online

The internet was very much made for introvert ways of interacting with the world (mostly).

Small

Big creative projects are built one brick at a time. Although each one is vital to the overall structure of the building, it’s still just one piece in a much larger picture.

By Not Getting Ahead of Yourself

Tomorrow will take care of itself, yesterday is out of your hands. But now, this moment, this is a chance to put another little brick in the wall and continue the process of building something beautiful with your life.

Over to You

What holds you back from sharing your creativity with the world? Please leave your response in the comments below.

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Training is a vital part of any successful endeavour. Whether it’s a craft, a trade, or a sport, without training you won’t develop the necessary skills to become the best you can be.

The same is true of life. Every day you spend on the planet is time spent training to become what you are becoming. The question is, do you know what you’re training for?

An olympic swimmer must focus on specific areas if they want to succeed. This helps them become the strongest and fastest version of who they can possibly be. Likewise, we can intentionally focus on particular areas of training in order to reflect more of how we want our lives to look. The question for us to consider is, what are we training for?

If we don't know our answer then our training takes us in directions we don’t necessarily want to go.

(Not) The Fastest Kid in the Room When I was a kid I was one of the fastest short distance runners in my primary school. I loved running 100 metres, especially when I could leave people in my wake. One day a teacher delivered me some exciting and terrifying news. They entered me into a county-wide competition. I would be racing the fastest kids from schools all across Warwickshire.

There I was, on the starting line for the 100m heat. A proper race, against strangers. I looked across the line and realised I was going to have to run the race of my life. These guys looked serious. Better built, longer legs, and I could tell they really wanted to win.

As it turned out they could use starting blocks too. And as I attempted to avoid total humiliation in last place I realised that I wasn't quite as fast as I thought. Lessons About Training I learned some important things that day. Not least that training matters if you actually want to achieve something specific. I had never intentionally trained to run before, I had always just sort of done it. It was fun. I was naturally good within my own little bubble. This seemed to be enough. But it meant that when I came up against a real challenge I was not prepared for it. I felt completely overwhelmed and isolated.

It also taught me that when it came to it and I faced the challenge, I didn't actually want to dedicate myself to training for that particular pursuit. I'm not driven by that desire to be better, stronger, and faster than everyone else. I'm wired for other types of training. Life IS Training You spend your life training, whether you're are aware of it or not. You have trained your brain to think in certain ways in response to certain situations and ideas. You’ve developed patterns of thought that lead to certain habits and behaviours.

The training you are dedicated to is reflected in certain ways. An obvious example of this might be that your body reflects the physical training you’ve engaged in.

Epictetus suggested that a life spent pursuing wisdom and virtue will be reflected, “just like the shoulders of gymnasts display their diet and training, and the craft of artisans show in what they’ve learned.”

It is not what we say, but how we appear to others, that the world knows our beliefs and values. And this is where our training becomes important. In order to enjoy a life of meaning, it’s no use just to talk about how things should be, but you must actually live it. And in order to do that it’s pretty important to be aware of "three areas in which the person who would be wise and good must be trained” (Epictetus). Not About Being Best, But Enjoying the Possibilities Training in this sense isn’t about preparing for competition. It’s not about being the best, or better than other people. It’s about training in order to be what you want to be.

A musician trains, not to be better than everyone else (an almost certainly unattainable and breakdown inducing goal). But training to play their instrument at the best level they are capable of is its own gift. Deliberate training always carries its own intrinsic reward because it brings you closer to what ...

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Have you come across the idea of "whataboutism" or "whataboutery"?

It seems to be cropping up on lots of places for me right now. And it's challenged my behaviour and attitude.

In essence it is an effort to discredit a critic's argument by accusing them of hypocrisy without directly addressing or disproving their point of view. It is a solid response that can be used against almost any criticism: "yeah but what about that thing you/they/everyone did?" A classic tool of deflection to avoid responsibility, and move focus onto the other person (or group of people).

The Opposite of Self-Growth Whataboutism is a pretty crappy reaction. It's a back-against-the wall kind of response that we use when we have no real defence or answer. And it enables us to stop reflecting on what we've done, how we can solve problems, and where we might be able to grow.

Whataboutism uses moderately unrelated stuff to create a charge of hypocrisy against a person.

For example...Ed receives a criticism: "you turn up late to work too often". He deflects it by saying: "yeah but..."what about John, he told me he drinks a bottle of wine every night - what impact must that be having on his performance!"

Ed essentially asks his boss to decide, which is worse? There is no link between John's alcohol consumption and Ed's lateness. However, through whataboutism a strange point is raised to deflect away from his lateness. "So what I'm a little late, at least I'm not hungover".

It turns reality into some bizarre mix of relativism and manufactured moral equivalencies where we are sales-people, attempting to sell the fact that "if you think this is bad, look at this other person/situation". It gives us a platform to quietly justify our own course of action by saying "yeah but what about what they're doing, that's worse" as our defence. And so begins the race to the bottom of the morality barrel. No Second Chances. No Forgiveness Whataboutism works because no human is perfect. Everyone carries hypocritical moral failings.

Whataboutism thrives by removing perspective and nuance. It exclaims that "any bad is ALL bad".

Upon a dualistic backdrop where we need a filter that provides clear binary, black and white, right and wrong, goodies and baddies framework, it allows us to pick one another apart and shoot down conversations with bombastic irrelevance.

This leads us to throw the baby out with the bath water. For example, when someone is an advocate for a particular cause (eg fighting for better conditions for clothing producers), and someone says "you can't listen to him, he pretends to care but he still eats meat".

There is a growing tendency to attempt discrediting peoples' ideas/messages because of subjective whataboutery, where we cast abstract moral judgements. We ignore and reject the message, however good and necessary it might be, because we've found a reason to call them out as a hypocrite.

When no human is perfect, we will be able to find a reason to reject any message that challenges us to think or act differently, as hypocritical. What About Responsibility? Political leaders teach us an insidious lesson about responsibility through their use of whataboutism. We unconsciously follow this example. If someone questions you, don't attempt to understand to see their perspective. Instead say "OK, but what about you/that/them!?" The Value of Whataboutism When used to justify ourselves or excuse substandard and even deplorable choices, whataboutism is dangerous. However, there is some value that it can bring to our discussions and way of understanding the world when it is part of a larger response.

It would be just as silly to say "never ask what about" because there are times it is necessary. It is valuable when it comes AFTER we take responsibility for our own actions first, and most importantly, when it's RELEVANT.

To come back to the example of Ed and John. Ed should acknowledge his own wrongdoing before a...

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If you've ever read anything on the subject of self-care as an introvert or sensitive type personality, then you've probably see the advice to get yourself around nature. Spend time in the natural world, surrounded by the beauty of water, trees, and animals. Away from the chaos, connecting to the natural rhythms where the human chaos, stress, and busyness are making demands of you.

There is true restorative power in feeling at one with the rawness of nature. Being forced to slow down and unplug. For the past few years we've gone on an annual camping trip in the hills of North Wales. It's a place with no mobile phone reception. This is both terrifying and soothing in equal measure.

I find the benefits of unplugging, even just for two or three days, are huge for me. It forces me to stop, to listen, to experience the immediacy and pureness of the present moment. And I finish feeling fully restored and charged by some deep groundswell of energy.

Spending Time With Your Own Nature Nature is not just something "out there" to go and 'be in'. It's not a magical place, the benefits of which we can only experience by leaving where we are. There is another aspect to spending time in nature, which is what I talk about in this episode.

In fact, I think one of the reasons spending time around natural beauty can be so powerful, is because it connects us to our own natural cores. When we are away from the pressures and stresses of a workplace, technology, and the demands of everyday life, something within us is resonating. Because hey, we are natural beings. However much we might try to fight it. We are made of the same stuff as everything we might consider "nature". The Gardener and The Tree It is my aim in this episode to encourage us to think about our own natures. Who we are, what we need, and where we are able to flourish best. Think about your life from the perspective of both the gardener, and the plant. We are the chopper (https://www.globosurfer.com/best-camping-saws/) and the chopped.

As the gardener you are actively aware and involved with creating the conditions for a plant's success. You create the conditions and prepare the environment, which will give it the best possible chances. The gardener can't force a plant to grow, but she can certainly have a big influence on it.

As the plant you are responsible for being what you are. Growing at your own pace, and not worrying about what everyone else around you is doing. You have a unique rhythm and your own seasonal cycle, which is yours and yours alone. Within your armoury you have the tools you need to flourish (roots, leaves, blossom etc), and when the conditions are right for you, then you can grow and thrive. 5 Characteristics of Nature The purpose of this episode is to think specifically about what these two sides look like for your own situation. We will address five aspects of nature that are true for all of us (despite our best efforts to nullify them). And we will think about how we can use them to our advantage, rather than as things that hold us back.

By understanding these factors in our lives, we will gain a sense of perspective about what truly matters (and what doesn't), so that we can live with more time, less stress, and abundant sources of energy at our disposal. This is about cultivating, chopping back, and deciding our own natural rhythms and pace.

Energy Timing Seasons Environment Ecosystems

Spending time in nature is a great thing. When you're told to "get out" into nature, remember to start within. Experiencing the natural world starts when we experience our own natural preferences and rhythms. It’s about going inwards to recognise how it influences our own lives. Nature is something we must live in conjunction with, not something we try to go and find "out there" as a way to escape the world.

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In this week's episode we are joined by Caroline McGraw. She is the creator of A Wish Come Clear, where she helps people trade their perfectionism for possibility.

I first "met" Caroline in 2017 when she invited me to take part in The Confidence Course. She hosted conversations with more than 30 guests who shared their unique insights on confidence.

In this week's show I ask her how on earth she managed to stay on top of that without serious burnout...she has some great tips to share!

Recovering Perfectionist Caroline has delivered two popular TEDx talks about perfectionism. It is something she knows all too well. But she has learned that perfectionism doesn’t define you.

Many HSPs and introverts are perfectionists.They carry a crazy belief; that we must do everything and we must do it right. The recovering perfectionist recognises that this is an internal demand. It cannot be satiated and simply isn't true. “I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it's just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, 'I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.” - Elizabeth Gilbert Anne Lamott describes perfectionism as the belief that if you hit every stepping stone in your life just right then you won’t have to die. Or a belief that you have the power to make “nothing bad happen”.

This is clearly untrue. So the call to become a "recovering perfectionist" is an invitation to realise that even if you do everything spot on (hit those stepping stones) you will still die. No Choice You have no choice but to be a recovering perfectionist if you want to move forward in a healthy way. It’s not a real decision to make. Perfect is impossible. So it’s a choice between accepting imperfection and enjoying the gifts of it. Or living a life of stress and inner pain, going after something that doesn’t exist.

But there is another terrible byproduct of pursuing perfectionism...it doesn't allow for the messy beauty of the real world to get in. The Navajo Rug "In a Navajo rug there is always an imperfection woven into the corner. And interestingly enough, it's where "the Spirit moves in and out of the rug...Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection. (That's just delusion and an attempt to control the uncontrollable.) True perfection is the ability to incorporate imperfection! There's no other way to live: You either incorporate imperfection, or you fall into denial. That's how the Spirit moves in or out of our lives." - Richard Rohr What if you are fighting against allowing the truly beautiful stuff is trying to get out into the world? What if you are blocking that space where the breakthrough is moving?

When things happen that feel like mistakes or “wrong”, rather than trying to eliminate them, be open to the possibility that it’s actually pointing you in the right direction. When you realise you can’t be perfect and that you cannot control everything, you open up the possibilities to the mysterious and beautiful. Trying to Do Things By Ourselves Perfectionism breeds the temptation to try and do things alone, and to not ask for help. A big part of recovering from perfectionism is seeking and accepting help. Accept guidance in areas you want to make a breakthrough.

A perfectionist might beat themselves up about the fact that they are not doing it right yet. A recovering perfectionist accepts imperfection and finds assistance from others.

First step is admitting you could use some help. Second step is finding the right person/source of help. Temperament and Accepting Imperfection When you allow yourself to be yourself and accept all that this brings, it makes you less aware of what you think you should be. You can just be yourself without constantly holding that up against how you feel you should be different.

Accept Yourself

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You may well be familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It's one of the most recognised and used personality tests in the world. It is based on the psychological theory of Carl Jung along with Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers.

In this week's podcast I chat with Bo Miller, who is an author, blogger, podcaster, introvert, and certified Myers-Briggs practitioner.

He helps people identify and maximise their unique gifts through his website, iSpeakPeople. It's a site for INFJs (a Myers-Briggs personality type). However, Bo publishes great stuff for introverts of all colours. You can download his free ebook, The INFJ Personality Guide, which is a fantastically in depth look at life as an INFJ.

Criticisms of The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I loved talking to Bo about the MBTI, and its use in our lives. Over the years of working with introverts and sensitive types I have come across various critics of the test. It was lovely to talk with Bo though, who recognises that while it is not perfect, it carries a huge amount of value. It helps us better understand ourselves, others, and maximise our own impact on the world. Escaping Tribalism and Reductionistic Language Conversations about introversion can be deterministic; a pre-determined set of characteristics and values. Introverts have no control over what they are capable of...and what they are incapable of.

We are good at building walls around ourselves, using labels to justify the behaviours and attitudes we want to get away with.

But this is not helpful, necessary, or healthy.

What I love about Bo Miller's approach to this topic is that he sees the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a tool we can use to free ourselves. It's not a tool to label and thus restrict our self-understanding, but one to help us better understand who we are and how we can create conditions in our lives for the best way of being.

It's important for all of us to embrace this approach. To enjoy the validation of recognising ourselves in a certain personality profile, whether that's as an INFJ. But then to use it as a way to understand ourselves within the context of the richly spiced variety of humanity, of which we are but one small speck. In the interview you will learn:

Why the MBTI is still relevant today What it helps us understand about ourselves and other people Why Bo wanted to be a licensed practitioner Bo's favourite kind of resources to create (as a podcaster, writer, YouTube creator etc) What advice Bo would impart to his younger self if he could How Bo balances family, work and business life, without burning out