you have a good life. things are good and you are grateful AF.

and yet, there’s this nagging feeling you can’t quite shake that there’s something more for you.

more money. more love. more friends. more joy. more rest. more reach. more impact

and most of the time, you can talk yourself off the ledge.

you remind yourself that you don’t need more money or more success. you don’t need more freedom. or to do the big thing you’re dreaming about. your life is already good.

shouldn’t you just learn how to be satisfied with what you have?

it really helps when you start thinking about what “going after more” might cost you.

because when you imagine a bigger business, you imagine being busier.

when you imagine more success, you imagine burnout.

when you imagine doing something you’re deeply passionate about, you start worrying about financial stability.

you don’t want to end up busy, broke or burnt out.

and you arrive at the very reasonable conclusion: life is fine the way it is. more or bigger… doesn’t mean better.

but then, sometimes your untapped potential becomes acutely painful

the discomfort of untapped potential…

every so often, something happens that makes the gap between the life you have and the life that is calling you impossible to ignore.

an opportunity comes up that you really want to say yes to... but you have to say not because you can’t afford it. and you hate that feeling.

you don’t want money to be the reason you say no to things.

or maybe you meet someone who is a giant expander for you.

they’re living bigger. freer. more joyfully. doing something (effortlessly) that you’ve spent years telling yourself isn’t realistic.

and suddenly, all those limiting stories you’ve been telling yourself become a little harder to believe. because the way they are living is essentially dangling your unexpressed potential right in front of your face.

or maybe you have an experience like one of my clients recently did. she went to a creative retreat and enjoyed it, but at the end she had this realization:

i could have done that.

the person hosting it didn’t have any more qualifications or skills than she did. the difference was simply that this person had gone for it. she hosted the retreat.

those are the moments when it’s harder to sideline your desires.

it’s harder to squeeze your ideas and passion projects into whatever leftover spaces you can find.

it’s harder to keep perpetually delaying action. eventually, you have to admit: i want this. i want to do more. have more. be more. create more. give more. rest more.

and i want to do it without ending up burnt out.without packing my calendar. without being busy all the time. without becoming financially unstable.

but is that even possible?

why you need to become diabolical

how can you pursue more without it costing you more?

my current answer?

you become diabolical. but let me explain what i mean by that…

earlier this year, i went pretty deep into learning about some of the political things happening, the epstein files, the billionaire class, the way certain groups fund and influence politicians.

i was reading a lot. listening to podcasts. going down rabbit holes.and some of what i was learning was rocking my world.

there were situations where it seemed like these people were thinking 25 steps ahead. there was coordination. plotting. strategy. puppet-mastery.

and the word that kept coming to me was… this is straight-up diabolical.

i did not approve of what they were doing. it was clearly causing harm. but i could recognize something about how they were doing it.

the cunningness. the ingenuity. the strategy. the orchestration.
it was undoubtedly evil. but it was also genius.

it reminded me of the scene in harry potter when ollivander gives harry his wand. the wand is made from the tail feather of the same Phoenix as voldemort’s wand.

olivander says:

”I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter.... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things- terrible, yes, but great.”

terrible. but great.

evil. but genius.

so i started wondering:

is there a way to channel evil genius for good?

can you be diabolical for good?

to be clear, this doesn’t mean that you achieve good by any means necessary.

it doesn’t mean you do horrible things but it doesn’t count because your heart is in the right place.

no. that’s not what we are talking about here.

its more like:

what if we elevated our game?

because it feels like the people who are up to no good are ten steps ahead. they’re playing chess. and we’re over here playing tic-tac-toe wondering why the world is going to hell.

what if some qualities we’ve labeled “bad” aren’t inherently bad?

this became the question i couldn’t stop thinking about:

what if we can channel certain traits that we’ve been taught are “bad”, but aren’t inherently evil, and use them to do good?

and as i’ve explored this idea, i had a surprising realization.

the need to be seen as a good person, might be the exact thing preventing us from feeling good and doing good.

and learning to use some of the qualities we’ve been taught are “evil” is actually necessary for doing good in a way that doesn’t leave us depleted.

diabolical enters the chat

when i looked it up, basically every definition of diabolical was “bad”, “evil” or “of the devil”

but then i started getting curious about… what does “the devil” represent. what characteristics have historically been associated with the devil? and who decided those characteristics were inherently evil? (i can nerd out pretty hard on some etymology)

religion has played a massive role in how many cultures have constructed ideas about morality. what is right and wrong, good and evil.

so using examples of “the devil” in the bible- i started deconstructing the true meaning of diabolical.

one example most people know is the story of adam and eve, where the role of “the devil” is played by the serpent.

in genesis, the serpent approaches eve in the garden of eden and ultimately gets her to “disobey” god by eating fruit from a forbidden tree.

when i looked specifically at the characteristics being demonstrated, i saw three things.

1. the serpent is cunning and strategic af

there’s craftiness. cunningness. psychological leverage. the serpent has an agenda-and figures out how to get eve to willingly advance his agenda.

in this story, the strategy is being deployed through manipulation an deception.

but strategy and influence aren’t inherently evil. we can use sophisticated coordination for good.

the anti-ICE efforts in minnesota are a great example of this. from what i saw, there was a wildly coordinated effort. there were groups communicating with each other, symbols and codes, people watching what was happening and activating networks.

there was strategy. coordination. subversion. people working together. thinking ahead. because they care about helping their neighbors.

being strategic and. cunning isn’t inherently evil.

2. the serpent questions.

“did god really say that?”

the serpent challenges the absolute nature of god’s authority. he questions the premise that eve has been blindly accepting. is that actually true? how do you know?

within the biblical story, this questioning is being used as part of the manipulation. so it’s not great.

but questioning authority isn’t inherently evil. journalists do it. thought leaders do it. people who expose injustice do it.

they look at the accepted explanation and ask: is this really true? they look at authority figures with skepticism and ask… what biases or ulterior motives are at play here?

they don’t blindly accept things. they think for themselves.

3. the serpent appeals to desire.

the serpent essentially offers eve a new possibility.

what if you could have more? what if you could eat the fruit and be as knowledgable as god.

what if the restriction you’ve accepted isn’t the only possibility available to you?

this is what visionaries and activists and civil rights leaders do.

they can see a possibility beyond current reality and invite other people to see it too. almost every movement toward meaningful change begins there. someone looks at what currently exists and says:

it have to be the way it is. there are new possibilities we can imagine. we can have more.

martin luther king jr.’s “i have a dream” speech is an obvious example.

it’s an appeal to a collective desire for something different. something better. something that doesn’t exist yet.

and suddenly, this whole idea started to have legs.

strategy isn’t inherently evil.

questioning isn’t inherently evil.

desire isn’t inherently evil.

the same characteristic can create radically different outcomes depending on how we use it.

diabolical doesn’t have to mean evil.

because here’s the problem with being a “good person”

most people in my world want two things.

you want to do good.

make an impact. help people. leave the world better than you found it. have a positive, uplifting influence.

and you also want to feel good.

you want energy. time. freedom. money. rest. space to enjoy your life. you don’t want to spend your entire existence in survival mode.

but those two things feel incompatible. like it’s impossible to have both at same time.

and i think i’ve finally figured out why….

good vs diabolical

it is really hard to FEEL good and DO good when you also need people to see you as a good person. when you are still still operating from your good girl conditioining.

or what i’ve started calling:

good girl OS.

i’ve distilled it down to six primary characteristics. so lets break down what it looks like to be GOOD vs DIABOLICAL.

1. obedient vs challenging

we’ve been taught that GOOD means being obedient. following the rules. trusting authority. doing what’s expected of you.

becoming diabolical means challenging the status quo. asking questions like who says? according to whom? is that actually true?

you stop assuming that something is correct simply because it’s the way things have always been done. you search for your own truth.

2. agreeable vs honest

we’ve been taught that GOOD means being agreeable.
keeping the peace. avoiding conflict.not rocking the boat.

vs.

becoming diabolical means being ruthlessly honest.

being willing to rock the boat if the boat needs a-rockin’. to have difficult conversations. to lean into conflict instead of maintaining fake peace while turmoil exists underneath the surface.

3. likeable vs authentic

we’ve been taught that GOOD means being likeable . you pay attention to what makes you pleasant. palatable. well-received. you read facial expressions. you monitor how people experience you. and then contort yourself accordingly.

becoming diabolical means becoming authentic.

not intentionally disliked. but willing to be disliked. willing to follow your own path even if someone thinks you’re selfish, greedy, difficult, or too much. unwilling to organize your life around someone else’s perception of you.

4. self-sacrificing vs. well resourced

we’ve been taught that GOOD means being self sacrificing .be considerate.don’t leave anybody out.don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. prioritize everybody else. manage everyone else’s discomfort. give more than you receive. don’t want too much.don’t take too much.

apparently, you need to be depleted and bleeding to maintain your membership in the good girl club.

becoming diabolical means becoming well-resourced.

allowing yourself to want things.receiving. having needs and being okay with having them.accumulating the resources required to support you and the size of your dreams. not bleeding yourself dry to make the world a better place.

5. small vs. seen.

we’ve been taught that GOOD means being small. don’t be too loud. too visible. too opinionated.too ambitious. don’t be too big for your britches.don’t take up too much space.

becoming diabolical means becoming seen. taking up space.claiming your seat at the table. saying the thing. letting yourself be visible. claiming space without feeling like you first need to earn the right to occupy it.

6. chosen vs. powerful

we’ve been taught that GOOD means being chosen. so we wait for somebody else to validate us. pick us. give us permission. determine our results.it’s the ultimate outsourcing of our power. and when someone else holds the power, of course we start to feel helpless.

becoming diabolical means becoming powerful.you’re not sitting around hoping you eventually get what you want. you know you have the ability to create what you want. you know where to put your time and energy to move results forward. when there’s a problem, you focus your power on creating a solution.

you stop waiting to be chosen. and you start choosing and creating the life you want.

this is why success feels so expensive.

when you try to create a bigger life while still running good girl OS… it feels too expensive.

more clients? means more people to please.

more visibility? means more perceptions to manage.

more money? means more hustle. more work. more sacrifice.

more enjoyment? means more guilt that you’re somehow receiving more than your fair share.

of course you keep talking yourself out of wanting more. that version of more sounds fucking exhausting.

if you pursue more while continuing to operate from obedience, agreeableness, likability, self-sacrifice, smallness, and waiting to be chosen...

more really is expensive. you aren’t imagining it.

under good girl OS, success will cost you.but that’s not the only operating system available.

the diabolical OS changes the economics of more.

when you become diabolical you are challenging. honest. authentic. well-resourced. seen. powerful. and suddenly, the equation changes.

more visibility doesn’t have to mean becoming hypervigilant about everyone’s opinion of you. you can be seen without constantly managing other people’s perceptions.

more income doesn’t have to mean depletion.

more success doesn’t have to mean packing your schedule until you can’t function. because you’re no longer creating success through self-sacrifice. more success can actually mean more resources to support you.

and doing work you’re passionate about doesn’t have to mean being broke. because you’re no longer waiting around hoping somebody chooses you.you’re learning how to access your own power.you’re becoming the source of your own income. you’re creating work you enjoy and learning how to make money from it.

this is why i don’t think you need to become better at talking yourself out of your desires.

because that thing you can’t stop thinking about?

that idea you keep putting off?

that level of impact you know you’re capable of?

that life you occasionally see reflected back to you through somebody else and think...

i want that.

the answer isn’t to make yourself stop wanting it.

because leaving all of that potential sitting there, untapped, will ultimately come at a higher cost than following the pull toward something more.

the real answer is to dismantle the operating system that makes more so expensive. and become a little more diabolical

become a diabolical force for good.

on thursday, september 3rd at 11am eastern, i’m teaching a live masterclass called becoming a diabolical force for good.

we’re going deeper into how to dismantle your good girl operating system and pursue your something more without ending up burnt out, busy, or broke.

my goal? to help you pursue your something more without becoming less.

save your spot

do you ever feel like no matter how much you get done, you’re still somehow behind?

after weeks of being sick and out of my normal rhythm, i finally had my energy back—but instead of feeling excited, i found myself carrying this constant pressure to catch up. the funny thing? i hadn’t even defined what i was behind on.

so i decided: i’m not catching up anymore.

in this episode, i’m sharing:

• the “factory reset” i’m using to start every week with a blank slate

• why i chose to spend an entire afternoon reflecting + integrating instead of getting more done

• how that seemingly “unproductive” time led to some of my biggest breakthroughs

• why your highest-yield work might look completely different from someone else’s

head to the podcast for this week’s matcha monday and start your week from a blank slate—because there is no such thing as behind.

if you want my full start the week from a blank slate protocol, upgrade to the $100k catalyst

Subscribe now

we don’t think of reality the same way

when I publicly announced my plans to quit my career as a doctor to become a travel blogger, most people begged me to “be realistic.”

but here’s the thing,

anyone who uses “reality” as an argument for why you should shrink your dreams must not understand how the brain works.

because when you say the word “reality” as if that should convince me to shrink my dreams. what I hear is: you are currently perceiving reality through a set of unhelpful limitations.

because here’s what I know to be true:

you have WAY more influence over what becomes your reality than you probably realize.

you have the ability to shape your reality.
to co-create your reality.

and teaching people how to do that
waking them up to their own co-creative power
is one of my absolute favorite things to share.

last year, I taught my co-creation method inside a manifestation journaling program called Script Your Freedom.

recently, I asked the people who did the program to go back and look at what they wrote one year ago.

and I loved seeing how surprised they were to notice that...

the things they wrote down.
the big dreams they named.
the desires they longed for.

are, in fact, becoming their reality.

and here’s the thing.

I’m not claiming that the sole act of writing down your desires in a journal magically makes them appear.

I mean, yes. I think there’s a bit of magic to it.

and at the same time...

the manifestation journaling method I teach (my co-creation method) actually makes a LOT of sense from a psychological perspective.here are three of the psychological mechanisms behind the magic:

1. attentional prioritization: aka letting your brain know what’s important.

naming your desires forces you to clarify what you want AND brings it to the forefront of your mind.

essentially the act of writing it down primes your brain. creating the signal that “this is important. pay attention!!”

consequently, you become more likely to notice information, ideas, people, and opportunities connected to your desires that you might otherwise filter out.

2. state based cognition

when you are thinking from the headspace:
nothing is working.
I don’t know how I’m going to make money.
I need to figure this out.

your brain has access to a VERY different set of thoughts and behaviors than when you are thinking from the headspace:
there are so many possibilities here. wouldn’t it be cool if….? what would happen if we tried it like this. what would be fun to try?

you feel the difference right?

the journaling process I teach is NOT about writing down positive affirmations that feel like you are lying to yourself.

it helps you enter a state of possibility, creativity, confidence, abundance, curiosity, etc.

and because cognition is state-dependent, different states give you access to different thoughts, associations, and ideas.

you literally think differently from possibility than you do from fear, pessimism or scarcity.

3. less self-doubt →more confidence → more action

this is where the internal work starts producing external consequences. within my journaling process we don’t just write sentences about what we want.

we also work through all the “yea, buts…”
all the voices of doubt and fear trying to talk you out of your desires.

the process helps decrease self-doubt and increase confidence and expectancy.

and when something feels possible and YOU feel more confident. you are much more likely to shoot your shot.

to send the message
go to the event
make the offer
share the idea
ask for the opportunity.

the actions might look small, but all of these micro risks add up over time. they create an entirely new chain of events.

after all, yes lives in the land of no. you can’t receive a yes if you never make the ask.

and i guess here’s what i’m really saying:

journaling itself doesn’t change reality.
journaling changes the person interacting with reality.

it changes what you notice.
it changes what ideas come to you
it changes what you’re willing to do.

and then reality has no choice but to respond to the change.

but also… magic

and then there’s the part I can’t fully explain. the synchronicities that feel like there are greater forces orchestrating things in your favor

walking into a cafe at the right time.
striking up a conversation with someone who “know’s a guy” selling a villa.
and a few weeks later picking the linen colors for your new home.

you know… things like that.

because while so much of the process truly does makes sense from a psychological perspective.

there is also that sprinkle of magic that we may never be able to understand.which is why I call it co-creation.

you do your part.
you name what you want.
you shift what you believe is possible.
you follow the ideas.
you take the action.

and then you leave a little room for life to surprise you.

so the first step?

open your journal. and answer the question:

what do I want?

write it down.
shift into a state of possibility
and then start taking action as if you have the power to make it happen.

and if you want to learn the full co-creation process, that’s exactly what teach inside my program….

co-create your income: a21 day journaling challenge to unlock million-dollar ideas, open the floodgates to opportunity, and create income doing what you love.

learn more

last week, i took the week off work to heal

i canceled my client calls. i wasn’t in my client telegram. i wasn’t posting or even signing on to social media.

i was very intentionally not “working.”

and yet… wanna know how i spent my time?

i coached one of my friends on nervous system regulation.

i coached another friend on inner leadership and holding standards in relationships.

i coached another friend on meditation and business.

my friends are probably glad i’m back to work so i can stop coaching them 😂

i went to a cafe and started reading a hafiz poem, then decided i wanted to analyze it. so suddenly i’m going deep into sufi symbolism and thinking, “i want to be the david ghiyam of sufi poetry.”

i came up with new business ideas and podcast ideas and wrote down pages and pages of thoughts.

i went to a meetup to talk about big dreams and hold visions for each other.

i had conversations by the pool about purpose.

i also accidentally joined an indonesian dance crew for independence day. unrelated, but a fun side note.

and yes. i also slept a lot. i went to see a specialist doctor in another city. i created a recovery plan and started actively following it.

but once i had that plan in place and had a little more space, i had to actively hold myself back from creating content, getting on social media, and signing into telegram to support my clients.

at one point i even thought, i could probably reinstate my calls this week.

and it made me realize something.

the things i do for my business are exactly how i would want to spend my time. even if no one was paying me for it.

coaching people. thinking about business. talking about purpose. writing. creating. learning about things i’m fascinated by and then immediately wanting to teach people about them.

my work feels like an extension of me.

and that’s why i keep saying:

you couldn’t pay me to quit my business.

because if you paid me to quit my business…

i’d apparently just keep doing my business for free.

i’m unavailable to dance for dollars.

a year and a half ago, i was at an entrepreneur retreat outside of mexico city.

we were going around introducing ourselves when one of the women described that trying to make money in her business sometimes felt like dancing for dollars.

meaning she felt like she needed to perform, or check a series of boxes just to make money.

people around the room were nodding because they understood exactly what she meant.

and i understand why people feel that way.
i just don’t relate. i don’t feel that way about my business.

my to-do list genuinely feels more like a get-to-do than a “have to-do”

which i’m sure can be annoying to hear. it feels annoying to even say it.
and its also true.

i don’t feel like i’m performing for money.
i don’t feel trapped by my business.
i don’t feel like i’m doing things i don’t want to do- so that i can grow my business.

someone messaged me on linkedin recently asking if i knew my “retirement number.”

i responded with something unhinged like:

“i’m already living the life i would live if i was retired, so that’s not a relevant concept for me.”

i’m not waiting for retirement. i’m not dancing for dollars. i’m spending my days how i want to.

when i started looking closely at HOW i’ve done this. I noticed a few patterns.

there are three things i’ve gotten really good at that i don’t hear many people talk about. so i want to share with you my top 3 “rules” for building a business you couldn’t pay me to quit.

1. dismiss whatever insults your soul.

there’s a walt whitman poem that says:

since i started my business, i had a very clear line in the sand. i didn’t leave medicine to build a business i hate.

this is something i would regularly say to myself whenever business started to feel like stress or pressure. “i didn’t leave medicine for this”

i didn’t leave medicine to dread my work.
i didn’t leave medicine to feel trapped.

i didn’t make this radical decision to follow my intuition and create a different life for myself just to fall back into the exact same patterns in a different outfit.

i’m stubbornly committed to finding a way to make money- that doesn’t feel like sacrifice.

if a marketing strategy makes me resent my business, i don’t optimize it. i replace it.
i’ve taken months off instagram without it impacting my income.

i refuse to accept that something that insults my soul is somehow required for me to build a successful business.

2. understand first principles

as much as i can, i try to understand business and approach business from a first principles lens.

if you don’t know what “first principles” is, there’s an old zen story that I think explains it well

they had been so accustomed to tying the cat to the pole before meditating, they felt that they needed to do it in order to meditate.

they forgot the real reason they tied the cat to the pole, was to reduce disruptions. (and if there is no cat to tie to a pole, there is also no cat to create disruptions)

first principles vs strategies

ok so how does this relate to first principles.

first principles: a basic, foundational truth that cannot be broken down or deduced any further.

they are what remain when you break concepts down to their fundamental irreducible truth. its the thing the behind the thing. the deeper level of why something works. usually they are so simple you can put them in equation form.

strategies: specific methods for deploying the first principles. or ways that people do things.

when a strategy works. its because they followed first principles.

for this example the first principle might be: less disruptions → more zen. or that disruptions and zen have an inverse relationship.

tying the cat to the pole was one strategy for reducing disruptions. but overtime “tying the cat to the pole” became conflated with “experiencing zen”.

this is why listening to online business gurus can feel so confusing. especially when they are directly contradicting each other.

trial reels are how you grow on IG. carousels are how you grow IG

email lists are dead. email lists your #1 priority.

everyone is hyping up their strategy as if the strategy itself creates the outcome.
when its never the strategy that creates the outcome.
its the first principle that explains the outcome.

and until you understand the first principles of why certain strategies works, the best you can do is copy-paste someone else’s strategy.

i don’t want to know the exact hook someone uses in their subject line to improve open rates.

i want to understand the principles of how to capture attention. ( and they i can study examples to make it concrete)

i don’t want to know whether i’m supposed to make a yap reel or an educational reel.

i want to understand how to create content that makes my people feel seen.

once you understand the thing behind the thing, you can stop blindly following someone else’s method and start figuring out how to best apply the principles for your business.

3. tap into your own co-creative power.

i’ve dismissed everything that insults my soul. i understand that i don’t have to copy-paste other people’s strategies.

I’ve figured out what i DON’T need to do. so now the question is… what DO i do?

this is where my journaling practice comes in.

whenever my income feels stagnant or my business feels off, i don’t immediately reach for another course. i don’t go hunting for another strategy.

i go to my journal.

over the years, i’ve developed this co-creation process where i essentially treat my intuition as my co-founder and god, source, the universe, creator (whatever language works for you) as the board of directors.

it’s how i access my own inner wisdom. it’s how i release self doubt and limiting beliefs. its how i unlock new ideas and income streams.

give me an hour with my journal when i’m overwhelmed, confused, stressed, or unsure what to do next, and i can always find my next step and feel at peace about it.

first principles tell you WHY something works.
co-creation helps you discover what YOUR version of it looks like.

these top 3 “rules” are how i’ve “cracked the code” for making money online without turning my business into a job that i hate.

i dismiss what insults my soul.
i understand first principles
i use my co-creative process to decide how i want to apply them.

that’s how i’ve built a business that feels like an extension of me.

a business that doesn’t feel like dancing for dollars.

a business that genuinely feels like my happy place.

a business you couldn’t pay me to quit.

and i’m teaching you my “co-creation process” inside my 21 day journaling challenge “co-create your income.

learn more

i low key want to get an A in therapy.

i feel uncomfortable sharing problems unaccompanied by a profound insight or intelligent question. i still struggle to let myself cry during a session. on some level i want my therapist to be impressed with how self aware i am and how well i integrate our lessons.

when i listened to Brene Brown’s viral TED talk back in 2010, i felt SO seen when she shared her initial reaction to the concept of vulnerability. "

and the thing that makes me feel more vulnerable than anything else:
when i’m not functioning at a 10/10
when i don’t “got it”
when i’m in over my head
when it feels like i’m falling apart.

because normally, i’m the person who can be the rock for everyone else.
the one who
handles it all. gets it all done. holds it all together

the person who “seems fine” even when I have alot going on behind the scenes.
not because i’m faking it, or putting on a happy face.
but because i’m used to functioning at such a high capacity that no one (including me) realizes just how much i’m carrying until i start to crack.

if you relate to any of that..

A. you are my people, and

B. you probably agree- one of the hardest things to say out loud is “i’m not ok”.

and unfortunately for us, over these past few weeks i’ve realized one of the most important thing we can learn to say is “i’m not ok”

because it wasn’t until I admitted, “I’m not okay,” that my recovery could properly start.

for the past few weeks i’ve been sharing about my health journey.
(if you want to catch up, you can read the articles below)

and today i finally feel well enough to give you the latest update. i just sat down and recorded a 35 min podcast where i share:

• the breaking point that made me want to go home for the first time in 7.5 years of traveling

• why saying “i’m not okay” became the turning point in my recovery

• the emotional wound this illness unexpectedly brought to the surface

• what i had to let go of to find peace in the middle of an uncertain recovery

press play to learn the power and importance of saying “i’m not ok”.

if you have a high functioning, overachiever in your life who may need a permission slip to say “i’m not ok” click “share” and send it their way!

Share

grab your fav beverage (matcha optional) and lets start the week together.

last week i shared that i’d been sick.

but what i didn’t realize at the time was that i wasn’t actually getting better.

the infection itself had mostly passed, but my stomach never really came back online.

every time i tried to eat, i’d immediately get nauseous. i kept assuming it would resolve itself in another day or two, so i didn’t think much of it.

i was feeling better in other ways, so i started easing back into normal life. i even went to dance class because i was so ready to get out of the house after being cooped up for a week.

looking back, it seems so obvious.

but at the time, i didn’t realize that i had gone almost a week without eating much of anything. and to be more specific- i had been eating no more than 500 calories a day for 8 days in a row. i’m talking: crackers. broth. rice.

it wasn’t until my monday morning dance class that i noticed something was off. it wasn’t that my body couldn’t do the choreography—it was that my brain couldn’t process it. i couldn’t remember combinations or pick up movements the way i normally would. over the next few days i just felt... floaty. lightheaded. like my brain wasn’t fully online.

in some ways it was kind of fun. i felt high on life. but also i knew this wasn’t normal or sustainable.

i kept trying to feed myself.

i’d take a few bites of something, immediately feel nauseous, take medication, lie down for hours, feel a little better, and then avoid eating again because i didn’t want to repeat the experience.

by wednesday night, my body hit a breaking point.

the nausea became unbearable. i had intense reflux that gave me a burning sensation. i felt like my whole digestive system was on fire.

plus after a week+ of being undernourished i was so weak. i could barely muster the energy to kick the kickstand on my motorbike.

that night i had to cancel a client call because i knew i couldn’t hold a proper coaching space.

at that point it was 10:30 pm. i knew it wasn’t urgent enough to seek emergent medical care. i would wait until morning. but i didn’t realize just how long that night would feel.

for hours I laid in my bed. too weak to move. too uncomfortable to fall asleep.

how did i get here? my mind ran a post game analysis of the past week.

turns out i had been overriding my body without even realizing i was doing it. it’s something the culture of medicine taught me very well.

in 1000 implicit ways. but also explicitly too.
my very first week of intern year, one of my 4th years said something to the effect of

translation: you are either in the hospital working your shift + pushing through. or you get so sick you need to be hospitalized.

as a shining example of this ethos one of our MIS fellows was performing a surgery, when she started noticing drops of blood on the floor in the OR.

the blood was coming from a concerning looking lesion on her back. one that she kept meaning to get checked out at the dermatologist. but when you’re in medical training working 80+ hrs a week who has the time?

from what i remember the lesion turned out to be some kind of skin cancer. maybe even a melanoma? I just remember the cautionary email she sent out to the list-serv as a reminder to take care of ourselves.

but the problem is, without a culture that reinforces and rewards caring for yourself, all reminders to do so are just lip service.

and the other problem is, that apparently even when you leave the culture, it still lingers in your internal operating system.

whether you’ve done medical training or not, the way most of us have learned to be successful is by pressing the OVERRIDE button.

keep pushing through. keep negotiating with your body’s signals.
keep squeezing every last ounce of resource out of yourself.
because if you aren’t on EMPTY…. you haven’t given enough yet.

the floaty heady feeling. override.
the full body weakness. override.
the inability to feed yourself for days. override.

there’s a part of me that is SO practiced at overriding my own needs, i don’t always recognize when i’m doing it.

and here’s the hard part.
this approach works.

you can drink some coffee and make up for a lack of sleep.
you can grind out a 14hr work day when you’ve got a deadline.
you can take some ibuprofen to erase your headache and get back in the game.
you can go for a few days without food and pretend like you are just fasting.

the override button works.
… until it doesn’t

there’s a point where you’ve gone SO far outside your capacity that it feels like the button got jammed.
you can’t switch yourself back on. no matter how hard you try.
and when you hit that point, it’s usually pretty dire.


sooo…

that’s exactly where i found myself on wednesday night. it was the moment where my override button was malfunctioning.

by that point, i’d gone more than eight days with super minimal calories and i was essentially decompensating.

i fully realized i couldn’t keep trying to handle this on my own. i needed someone else to take over because i couldn’t take care of myself anymore.

at 6am, i reached out to my friend and former client (who also happens to be a GI doctor!) and sent her this message.

she called me at 7am and we made a plan. my housekeeper would take me to the clinic and she would meet me there.

even in my state of complete depletion and exhaustion: asking someone point blank “can you help me”

felt terrifying and uncomfortable. no wonder i waited until i was absolutely desperate to make the call.

and actually- when i go back to that moment, the word that. comes to me is “embarrassing”.

i felt embarrassed to ask for help.
which means somewhere underneath that is shame.

shame for not being able to figure it out on my own.
shame for failing to take care of myself.
shame for needing someone.

but here’s the thing about shame: its a scam. the moment it meets the light of day it has nothing to hold onto.

as soon as i asked for help. and experienced people showing up for me. the shame disappeared.

i was left with.
relief
gratitude
connectedness.

after fluids, medication, and finally getting some food into my body, things slowly started moving in the right direction.

medically speaking I have post infectious gastroparesis. which means my stomach essentially stopped working after my GI bug last week.

i’m still recovering and honestly just taking it one day at a time.

my main focus right now is getting enough calories into my body so that i stop losing weight (i’ve lost at least 5kgs since this started)

my days revolve around a few simple questions:

1. how do i get calories in?

the struggle to feed myself is real as i figure out what to eat that won’t trigger immediate nausea.

right now i’m rocking a blands diet of papaya. watermelon. bone broth. rice.
sometimes i can add in a poached egg if i’m feeling crazy.
and then i’ll also try to subsidize my calories by drinking gatorade and snacking on crackers.

i’ve been getting around 1200 calories a day for the past few days. still not ideal, but significant improvement.

2. is this worth spending my calories on?

with so few calories in, i have to be super careful about energy expenditure. every social event, every work task, every physical action has to justify itself as “worth the cost”.

i can’t just go to a meetup to check it out- because i’ll be depleted for other things that really matter.
i can’t spend 5 or 6 hrs a day working- because i don’t have that bandwidth right now.

i have to be diabolically precise with where i choose to spend my calories.

(so the fact that i’m writing this substack means- it has made it through the energy filter!)

and as i was preparing for my “energy conservation era", I remembered there’s an animal with a similar approach to life.

sloths.

have you ever wondered why sloths move so slow? they are chronically undernourished because of their diet.

so they’ve adapted by becoming absolute masters of energy conservation. they lower their metabolic rate. they move slowly. and they don’t waste energy on things that aren’t essential.

so lately they have become my mentor and my muse.

what would a sloth do? has been my constant mantra and refrain over the past few days.

and living in a calorie deficit is teaching me about the power of constraint. it forces us to become more intentional

there’s a quote that i believe leila hormozi said:

“frugality drives innovation.”

usually she’s talking about money. but it also applies with energy.

what happens when energy becomes your most limited resource? you have to get creative and find a way to work within that constraint.

you stop doing things that don’t matter.
you look for simpler ways to work.
you delegate more.
you become incredibly intentional with every ounce of effort you spend.

and as much as i’m learning and growing during this time I also don’t want to gaslight myself for having my human experience.

because it has been really difficult.

there are moments where i feel sad that my world has shrunk to calories in and calories out. i miss walking, dancing, and moving my body the way i normally do. those things are such a big part of how i take care of my mental health.

i cry. i video chat friends. i journal. i let myself feel all of that without bypassing it.

and then i come back to the question that’s been guiding me lately:

how is this good?

not because i want to pretend this experience isn’t difficult.

it is difficult.

but i can also see how it’s teaching me things i probably wouldn’t have learned any other way.

for now, i’m slowing things down. simplifying. getting rid of everything not essential.
i’m learning how to listen to my body, ask for help, and let myself be taken care of.

and in this moment. that’s all i can do.

(but also… if anyone knows how i can get some caffeine in my body without destroying my GI tract, send recs my way. 2 weeks without coffee is not a good look for me.)

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grab your fav beverage (matcha optional) and let’s start the week together.

the week i got sick x3

there’s that saying “if you wanna make God laugh, all you have to do is tell him your plans”.
and honestly, at this point i must be one of the running jokes to the forces of the universe 😂. hopefully they are enjoying all the LOLs.

last week i got hit with what i’m calling the trifecta. or maybe it’s a triple threat. (i mean, i did feel pretty threatened)

a stomach bug.
a cold.
and my period.

all on the same day.

it was… not delightful.

here’s how it all went down.

the cold hit first. along with some low key nausea. and i decided that chugging jamu would be the perfect solution.

there’s this traditional indonesian healing drink called jamu. i’ve had it before whenever i’ve felt a cold coming on. it’s basically a blend of herbs like ginger and turmeric.

but i didn’t think a glass of jamu was going to be enough for my illness. I needed a whole bottle.

my train of thought was pretty logical:
if a little Jamu helped me feel better before.
MORE jamu should help me feel EVEN BETTER.
more is more. obviously.

i went to get a giant bottle. (one liter)

as i was buying it, i asked the women an unhinged question. “can i overdose on this?. like is there too much jamu?”.

they looked at me and said. “maybe half. half.”
ok cool. I’ll drink half today. half tomorrow.

so i spent the evening sitting outside with my villa mates, sipping jamu from the bottle while the sun was setting. i think a few times i even said out loud “it’s working. i’m feeling better already.”

fast forward a few hours. and i spent the entire night throwing it back up.

and if you want to understand just how unpleasant that was, let me paint the picture for you.

you don’t really drink jamu for the taste. you drink it because you know its good for you. many of my friends wrinkle their nose at it and say… “uggh. i can’t drink that”. it is a very potent herbal concoction. sometimes it even burns a bit while you drink it.

so when you are puking your guts out. it is very much NOT ideal if the contents of those guts includes mostly an orange radioactive liquid, that calls itself jamu.

(when i told one of my friends this story she said “you reverse Jamu’d” so maybe that gets to be our new code word for a situation that is diabolically unpleasant. a reverse jamu moment)

surrender into rest

once i could finally keep fluids down, i thought, I could spend the rest of the week working from bed. i was still nauseas. still had a cold. but figured i could still keep up with everything- just horizontally.

but my brain would not cooperate. it felt like absolute mush. i opened up my “edits” app to just make some minor edits to a reel i’d already filmed.

nope. my body immediately shut it down. i couldn’t even look at the screen.

i thought I could be productive in some other way. watch an online course, or read a business book.

also nope. i couldn’t bring myself to do literally anything.

i couldn’t work. i couldn’t learn. my brain just wasn’t available for functioning.

i kept waking up thinking,

“today’s the day i’ll feel better.”

“maybe today i can get a little work done.”

but it just wasn’t happening.

and finally i stopped fighting it and surrendered to rest.
i slept... a lot.
i read two memoirs
and i stopped trying to rush my recovery.

i woke up on Friday. and my brain was working again.
as of today. i’m much better, but still needing to go slow and pace myself.

the stories we tell ourselves

there’s a concept called “narrative therapy” that i teach my clients. and i kept coming back to it while i was lying in bed.

within narrative therapy there are two types of stories:
contamination stories and redemption stories.

contamination stories are contaminated with blame, shame, and heaps of victim/villain energy.

redemption stories have an arc of growth, expansion, overcoming. more of a hero’s journey vibe.

we aren’t just telling stories about the past. most of us are creating stories in real time. as events are unfolding.

we don’t just experience what happens.
we tell ourselves stories about what happens. as it’s happening.

and in every situation, we have two choices.

we can tell a contamination story.

the story that says,

“i’m behind.”

“why is this happening?”

“i shouldn’t have gotten sick.”

“i did something wrong.”

no one would fault you for telling a contamination story. in fact most of the time people agree with you. validate you. make you feel justified for holding onto the contamination.

but then what…?
what happens after that?
you’re a person with bad luck? or the world is unfair? or you are a rotten person who keeps messing up?

contamination stories don’t do it for me because the ending is SO unsatisfying.
i can’t just hang out inside of a contamination story indefinitely.
it makes me squirmy just thinking about it.

that’s why i’ve chosen to tell redemption stories.
exclusively.
every story is a redemption story.
every moment is part of a redemption story.

the underlying premise i hold is that no matter what happens: this is good.

it may not feel good. it may not look good. but ultimately. cosmically. zoomed out. it IS good.

and in this instance what that looks like:
is not pretending to enjoy being sick.
is not avoiding the pain and discomfort i feel.
but it’s believing that there is something here for me.
within this experience.

so instead of lamenting

“why is this happening?”

i just start asking.

“how is this good?”

its more than just “finding the silver lining” or looking on the bright side. its deciding the entire thing IS the bright side. its all bright. its good.

i got to spend more time at home and actually feel settled in my new villa.

i got to know my villa mates better.

i got to prioritize sleep and surrender into rest.

plus I have a feeling, that this sickness was more than just a physical illness. I honestly think it was more of a big energetic purge and cleansing.
preparing my entire body on a cellular level for all kinds of upgrades that are coming down the pipeline.

time will tell.
right now. I don’t know exactly WHY it’s good.
but i do know: this is good.

your invitation this week...

whatever you’re moving through right now...

notice the story you’re telling yourself about it.

is that story helping you?

or is it contaminating an already difficult situation? (one of those reverse jamu moments 😉)

and here’s the thing.
you are allowed to keep your contamination stories.
i will never take them away from you.
the question is… do you WANT to keep them?

Thanks for reading The $100K Healer. if you found this post helpful— share it with one of your friends who may enjoy it.

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grab your fav beverage (matcha optional) and let’s start the week together.

i accidentally disappeared from social media for almost 2 weeks.

not intentionally. i wasn’t on a social media detox. i didn’t decide i needed to step away from my business.

life just... happened.

i had a launch.
i traveled.
i had some personal things going on.
i got tired.

and before i knew it, almost two weeks had gone by without really showing up.

i wanted to share this because i know its not just me who has a whoopsie doodle every now and then. i’m sure you can relate to it.

you miss a few days.
then a few more.
then suddenly getting back into it starts to feel weirdly overwhelming.
like there’s SO much to catch up on because you are SO behind on everything.

not because posting itself is hard...

but because now your brain is telling you that you need to figure everything out before you can open up the app again.

the real problem is decision fatigue

so why did i have my little consistency lapse? what’s the post mortem here on what actually happened? with a little reflection i realized:

i wasn’t actually avoiding posting. i was avoiding making decisions.

after my launch, i didn’t know what i was selling next. and since my content usually is created in relation to the offer i’m selling, i didn’t know what to share.

suddenly, posting one piece of content felt like i needed to make twenty decisions first. hence why it never occurred.

make the decisions once.

one thing i’m experimenting with now is making as many decisions as possible ahead of time. inventing the wheel once. and letting it be. no reinvention required.

instead of waking up every day asking,

“what should i post today?”

i’m asking,

“what decisions can i make once that my future self can simply follow through on?”

i want systems. rhythms. simple structures that remove friction.

because showing up consistently is less about motivation and more about making it easy on yourself to do the next right thing.

so here’s my plan.
i’m not going to create content based on what i’m launching and selling.
i’m to create content in more of a standard weekly rhythm.
talking about one of my “content pillars” every week.
a week of

offers
messaging
identity/ inner leadership
flow systems.

the “freemium fridays” will be my anchor point for the topic.
my IG and LI content will generally be repurposed tidbits of that.

then whenver i’m launching something I can just sprinkle in some additional
stories
emails
feed posts
about that specific thing.

but overall it doesn’t disrupt my cadence of content.

it feels nice and simple right now.
i’ll let you know how it goes.

your invitation this week...

if you’ve fallen out of rhythm lately. first take a moment a give yourself grace.

don’t make it mean anything.
unsubscribe from any stories about what it means.

just ask yourself:

how can i make showing up easier?
how can i remove friction instead of relying on motivation?

because consistency isn’t about becoming more disciplined.

it’s about removing friction points, making decisions ahead of time and letting things be more simple.

ok my loves. have a beautiful week. see you friday.

ok you know how much I usually cringe when marketers start talking about the ONE thing.

The ONE strategy. The ONE missing piece. The ONE secret standing between you and the business you want.

Mostly because you and I both know it’s not usually that simple. I don’t think business needs to be complicated…. but there’s usually more going on than just one singular missing piece.

Most problems are multi-factorial.Most struggles are messy. Most breakthroughs happen because a dozen small things start working together to add up.

So whenever someone says:“This ONE thing is the answer.”

I’m the first one to give them the side eye.

which is why i feel a little weird sharing this. but also… i kinda, sorta, think I might have found something that feels like the answer.
its the closest thing i’ve ever found to a “cure-all” strategy.

but not because the strategy itself is the answer. because the strategy itself addresses the root of so many of the problems that new coaches face.
it solves them- at the core.

for example…

#1 the messaging problem
a new coach comes to me with what they think is a messaging problem.
they know their work helps people.
but are struggling to communicate the value of it.

it goes something like this:
how do i communicate the value of what i help people do, in a way that keeps me in integrity.
aka how do i make sure i’m talking about results people want + while staying true to what i can actually deliver on.

they think it’s a messaging problem combined with an “integrity” issue.
but that’s not the REAL problem.

#2: the imposter problem

another coach comes to me because they’re struggling with “imposter syndrome”.
they worry they aren’t qualified enough to charge money for their work. what if its not good enough yet. what if someone doesn’t get results.

maybe they should keep doing free clients. maybe they should get another certification.

they think its a skills issue. or a mindset issue.
but that’s not the REAL problem.

#3: the sales problem
another coach is struggling to sign clients. admittedly they tell me they hate selling in their content. they don’t want to be salesy. they don’t want to bother people. i

or maybe they are selling in their content- way more than feels comfortable. and still. no takers. people can’t afford it. no one wants what they are putting out there.

maybe they have the wrong niche or the wrong offer. maybe their audience isn’t big enough?

they think its a sales problem or a marketing problem.
but that’s not the REAL problem.

now, it may seem like all of these problems are quite different. messaging. mindset. sales. etc.

but really these are all facets of the SAME problem which is:

you are not fully sold on your own offer yet.
meaning… you don’t have that “cure for cancer” conviction in the RESULTS of your offer.

here’s what i’m realizing.

the fastest way to improve your messaging.
create results for people and talk about it.

the fastest way to build confidence in your work.
create results for people + generate endless testimonials.

the fastest way to get comfortable selling
create results for people so selling feels like service.

it all comes down to creating results for people.
and the fastest way to start creating results for people?

welp. that’s my new “cure all” solution.
introducing… the micro offer.

recently, my clients have been using the micro offer and seeing fantastic results:

• launching an offer + having clients sign up the same day

• clients reaching out asking to work with them

• increased excitement + traction in their business.

and we are just getting started over here!

in this article, I want to share everything I am teaching my clients about micro offers. it will be my manifesto of sorts- of the micro offer method. it’s something I plan to add to over time, as I develop all the ins and outs of the the micro offer method.

here’s what we cover:

⚠️ why the micro offer is NOT the same thing as any ol “low ticket offer”. there is one key difference.

🔑 the 3 key components of any successful micro offer.

🩷 why i’m SO obsessed with micro offers (and why you should be too!). the 7 main benefits for YOU and your clients

👀 micro offers in action:
→ 2 in-depth client case studies
→ 33 micro offer ideas for a variety of niches

💻 the step by step guide to creating YOUR first micro offer.

⚠️ why the micro offer is NOT the same thing as any ol “low ticket offer”.

a micro offer does not mean “low price point” or “low ticket entry point” into your offer suite. these are not the same thing.

a micro offer does tend to be lower priced than other offerings, but that is not the main differentiator.

because the ethos of the micro offer is not about giving someone a small, sampler way to enter your world. it’s about helping someone create one tiny, tangible transformation.

over the past 7 years of running an online business, I’ve created an endless amount of offers.

1x sessions:
reasonably priced at $97/hr. insanely priced at $555/ hr. (people STILL bought this!)
structured sessions. (the offer oracle). unstructured sessions (you can just pay to talk to me)

digital products:
$7 meditations. $19 PDFs. $37 GPT for career clarity tool. $47 mini course.

group workshops:
free ones. paid ones. free to join live, pay to access the replay ones. multiday workshops. workshops with a workbook.

literally. i have created a ridiculous amount of “low ticket” offers. (i should probably count this up at some point)

I love the variety and the experimentation. I've seen benefits of all of these different types of offers. even if for no other reason than the creative process of making them.

however… for my new coaches especially. I do NOT recommend starting with 1x sessions, digital products or group programs. for one main reason:

they are too far away from the result.

let me explain.

upgrade to $100k catalyst

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oh hey, welcome to our first ever matcha mondays

I decided, I want us to start and end the week together. bookend style.

so on Monday’s we’ve got a nice little check-in entrepreneur to entrepreneur. almost like a coffee chat with your biz besties. and on Friday’s we’ve got freemium fridays. podcast episodes that double as premium trainings- and are so valuable its actually kinda wild that they are free.

its all on the podcast too. if you are more of an audio person. you can click below to listen

but i get ahead of myself. because right now, it’s monday. so lets start here. grab your fav beverage (matcha optional) and let’s start the week together.

you think you’re building your business. but really, your business is building you.

There’s a perspective that’s been so helpful for me on this journey. helpful because it gives me a frame for making sense of it everything. a context that turns every challenge from a “why me?” into a “i’ve got this”.

the frame is this ⤵️

the moment i stopped demanding anything from my business, and started to see it as a vehicle for healing… my whole approach changed. I surrendered a bit. into the pain. into the shadow work. into the growth process.

building a business brings things to the surface I never would have looked at or healed otherwise. and looking at it this way… makes the whole thing feel like a spiritual evolution. it gives me more space to hold all of the ups and downs.

earth school for entrepreneurs…

another version of this is the “earth school for entrepreneurs” perspective.

its asking the question “what if everything happening in your business is part of a curriculum?”

What if your business is giving you exactly the experiences you need in order to become the person who can hold the business you desire?

I am always inviting my clients to try on this perspective. mainly because it’s been such a game changer for me.

here’s the practical way i do it.

Whatever is happening in your business, I look at it and say. “this is good”.

Even (and especially) the things that seem “bad.”

A client says no to working together. this is good.

Someone asks for a refund. this is good.

Your engagement is down. this is good.

anything that doesn’t go according to the plan or preferences of your ego. you look at it and say “This is good.”

not because you are gaslighting yourself. or dismissing your very real lived experience.
in fact, let’s add something here.

”this doesn’t feel good. AND. this is good. “

ok yes. i think that’s better. because we aren’t ignoring the pain. we aren’t pretending like its a fun time. but we are saying- from a higher perspective- there must be something good in this for me.

There’s something being revealed. Something being built. Something being strengthened.

And maybe the experience is giving you exactly what you need right now.

sometimes the breaking is part of the building

At the start of 2025, I was feeling this desire for expansion. I wanted a million-dollar business. I wanted a quantum leap. I wanted more.

I started my “million dollar year” project, and went full speed ahead. barreling into my expansion. and… the universe kinda wrecked me in the process.

i kept hitting walls.
kept experiencing setbacks. failures. disappointments.
kept thinking “this is it” then going full speed ahead. only to realize…. no its not this.

when I look back at what unfolded, i can see how the universe was breaking me. on purpose.

because the business I was building at that time wasn’t the business I was actually here to scale. Certain things needed to break so I could reconnect to the business I was truly here to build.

That’s the cosmic joke of it all.

When we ask for something bigger, we’re also asking to become someone who can hold it.

one of my favorite teachers David Ghiyam uses the metaphor of a light bulb. he says

If you’re currently a 60-watt bulb and you’re asking for a million watts to come through you, your 60-watt bulb self can’t handle that kinda light. its going to break you. in order to hold all the light you want- you have to upgrade your bulb. so you can hold more watts.

the same process works for business.
we say we want to grow our business. but our current self can only hold the business we currently have.

if we want our business to grow, we must embrace the process of upgrading our bulb. of becoming the person who can hold more.

your invitation this week..

this week your invitation is to try on this perspective

anything that is happening in your business. pause and ask yourself:

How is this building me?
How is this good?
What if this challenge is preparing me for the business I say I want?
What if this is exactly the lesson I need right now?

Because maybe you aren’t really building your business after all.

Maybe your business is building you.

your income is not reflecting how good you are at what you do, and its frustrating AF.

you have frameworks and processes and tools that could change people’s lives.
you want to start sharing them and helping people.

but, you’ve posted “consistently” for a month and still don’t have a single discovery call booked.

so then you start to overthink every piece of content. writing and rewriting it wondering,

"is this specific enough? is this tangible enough? have a i followed all the marketing rules? will this land with my people?”

you care deeply about your work.
you show up consistently (ish)

and yet somehow the income still isn’t where you want it to be.
after coaching clinicians becoming. entrepreneurs for years, here’s what i’ve noticed:

when your income isn’t growing, the problem almost always falls into one of three categories.

1. you’re still wishing, waiting, hoping instead of deciding.

most of you are working on your business, while acting like John Mayer . you keep waiting. waiting on the world to change.

you may read this, and immediately protest that you aren’t waiting. you are working.
because in many ways you are working.
you are posting content.
you are working on your sales pages.
you are hosting workshops.

but the energy behind it all is…
I hope this works.
I hope the algorithim likes my content.
I hope people sign up for my program.
I hope I can make enough money to do this full-time.”

and underneath all of that is a belief that ultimately… its not up to you.
that someone else gets to decide your future.

which makes perfect sense, if you’ve spent your life living inside of a permission paradigm where someone else holds your fate. most of us have been conditioned to give your power over to schools, workplaces, and institutions. and it didn’t even feel like “giving your power”. it just felt like… thats how life works.

you interview for the job. you apply for the dream school. you request a raise.
waiting.
hoping.
wishing.

to get picked.
to get accepted.
to get promoted.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t play by the rules of the old permission paradigm.

at some point, the entrepreneurs who create income leaps stop asking if it’s going to work and start deciding that they’re going to make it work.

they don’t wait for results.
they create results.

they don’t wish for people to choose them
they choose themselves and watch as people follow their lead.

they don’t hope it works.
they decide it’s working.

the shift is from desperation and doubt
to DECIDED.

that’s the identity of the entrepreneur who creates six and multi-six figures in their business.

its’ the entrepreneur who has decided it is inevitable.
and makes it a practice to shift back into the state of “it is done.”
over and over again.
100x a day if they need to.

2. selling still feels uncomfortable.

businesses make money by selling things. products. services. offers. etc.

which means your relationship with selling will determine your income potential.

if you are uncomfortable selling. if you feel like selling is wrong. if you think you can only sell AFTER giving free value for a month. if you feel like selling is bother people. if you think you are selling, but really you are just meekly mentioning your offer….

your income will reflect that.

no matter how much free value you provide, eventually people need to know how to work with you.

but here’s the thing. for people like me and you.

we are absolutely allergic to selling in a way that feels unethical. there is no bone in our body that can be the sleazy used car salesman.

the only way we can show up and sell something is if we believe in it with our whole heart.

no amount of “six-figure identity” work (as i mentioned in the prev section), will help you to consistently sell more- if you aren’t fully sold on your own offer.

which means…
its not a confidence problem.
its an offer problem.

here’s where it gets tricky. you can absolutely KNOW that your work is valuable. that you have powerful tools. that you can change peoples lives…

But if you cannot point to specific, tangible results. if you don’t know exactly HOW it changes someones life. and what they will experience on the other side of it.

until you have physical evidence of the results of your offer
you will always feel uncomfortable selling it.
you will always feel like you are bothering people
you will always feel like your income is capped.

and i’m not talking about the “feel better” results.

i’m talking about the
“I reclaimed 2hrs a week for ME time”
”I woke up excited for my day, instead of exhausted”
”I got my kid to put the ipad down without a fight”

those kinds of results.

When you see the way your offer is creating tangible, external change in people’s lives, selling starts to feel very different.

you stop feeling like you’re taking something from people.
you start feeling like you’re helping them access something valuable.

I call this “cure for cancer conviction.”

Not because any offer is literally the cure for cancer. (obvi)

But because if you truly had the cure for cancer… would you feel like you “i don’t want to bother you by curing your cancer”.

absolutely not.
you wouldn’t feel guilty telling them about it.
you wouldn’t whisper about it.
you wouldn’t apologize for it.

you’d want to shout it from the rooftops.

when your offer is designed to produce tangible results.
you naturally build cure for cancer conviction.
and selling feels like serving.

that’s the path to your income leap.

3. you don’t know how to communicate the value of your work.

usually this comes down to 2 issues:

1. your clients ARE getting results, but you aren’t noticing it. (yupp this happens)

2. your work is valuable, but your offers are not designed to produce results.

now, here’s something else that could be happening.
even if your offer IS designed to produce results.

lets unpack each of these.

your clients ARE getting results, but you aren’t noticing it.

this one is wild, but i’ve seen it happen SO often, especially with perfectionist clients.
its like you don’t recognize results or even give yourself an opportunity to recognize results.

maybe you don’t have a system for testimonials in place, or your testimonial request is not results focused.

maybe your clients are sharing wins:
”my sleep score has improved”
”i turned in my notice”
”i went to a happy hour sober and had a great time.”

but you aren’t internalizing these wins as the results of your work together.

maybe you even teach your clients a life changing process, but then end your program before they really implement it or experience the results of the process.
and you never follow up or know what happened to them….?

trust me…. i’ve seen some wacky stuff here.

the easiest way to communicate the value of the work you are doing with your people.
is to observe the real life impact of the work you are doing with your people. but you have to learn to see the value before you can communicate the value.

your offer isn’t anchored to a specific result

the second issue is that sometimes the offer itself isn’t designed around a clear result.

your work is valuable. that is never the question.

But if the offer isn’t anchored to a specific external, tangible result… messaging becomes incredibly difficult.

You end up trying to explain something that feels vague (because it is)
You cringe when marketing people tell you to speak to the results not the method (because you don’t have results. you only have method)
You feel like you can’t ethically claim a result (because you can’t)

the offer itself is designed for process not result.

but here’s the hard truth:
if you don’t want to design an offer that gets people tangible, external results, you shouldn’t expect to get paid as a coach.

just as you can’t put lipstick on a pig.
you can’t create strong messaging around an offer that makes people “feel better”.

the 3 core pillars of a six figure coaching business

if you want to start signing paid clients. if you want your coaching business to replace your clinical income and reflect how valuable your work is... we need to master these 3 pillars.

1. six figure identity

2. six figure offer

3. six figure messaging

when your identity is locked in, you stop waiting and start deciding.

when your offer is consistently producing results for your people, selling feels like service.

when your messaging communicates the value of your offer, people finally understand why they should pay you!

and when those three things come together?

income leaps stop feeling mysterious and become inevitable. because you’ve removed the actual bottlenecks getting in the way of being well paid for your work,

when we lock in these 3 pillars. your income gets to take off. and fast.
because the fastest way to grow your income isn’t doing more.
it’s identifying which of these three areas is quietly holding you back.

i’d love to hear from you. which pillar is missing for you? comment below and share!

and btw… this is the work we are doing inside the mid year income leap. a 4 day workshop to 10x your income for the 2nd half of the year. not too late to join.

join now

I believe in wealth consciousness.
I believe in abundance mindset.
I believe in manifestation.

I’ve seen these principles work in my own life over and over again.

I’ve watched opportunities appear seemingly out of nowhere. I’ve seen people transform circumstances they were told were impossible to escape. I’ve met people who started with very little and created extraordinary lives for themselves through vision, persistence, belief, and action.

last year, I befriended someone who grew up in a village in Namibia. He started listening to Napoleon Hill. He read Think and Grow Rich. He applied the principles. He started a business. Eventually he left the village and earned a scholarship to a master’s program in Germany.

Manifestation works.
Abundance is real.
There are very few actual limitations in this world.

And yet...

there’s a tension i’ve been sitting with for months.

Earlier this year I listened to this podcast about billionaires and wealth concentration that completely rocked my worldview.

it made me question the meaning of abundance and forced me to ask questions like…

If I believe abundance is real, why does extreme wealth accumulation feel so deeply misaligned to me?

For a while those beliefs felt contradictory. I wondered… if i am anti-billionaire. am i anti- abundance?

Now, i realize… my beliefs are not contradictory at all.

why? because abundance and accumulation of wealth are not the same thing.

In fact, they’re often opposites.

billionaires and trillionaire are NOT role models for abundance… they are representations of scarcity

this is probably the biggest shift in my thinking.

for years, my understanding of abundance culture was that that wealth accumulation is evidence of abundance consciousness. that more is more is more.

I’m no longer convinced that’s true.

because, now i see that abundance is not about how much you can accumulate.

It’s about your relationship with enough.

If someone has $10 million but still worries they could lose it all and become homeless, are they abundant?

If someone has $100 million and still feels like needs more, are they abundant?

If someone has $1 billion and still wakes up trying to extract another billion, what exactly are they demonstrating?

Abundance?
Or fear?

Because once a single individual has accumulated more wealth than 50% of Americans combined, you have to ask yourself:

Where is the drive for more coming from?
What is the energy underneath the pursuit?

Is it creativity? Service? the desire to build something meaningful?

Or is it coming from a bottomless pit of never-enoughness?

Because abundance and accumulation are not the same thing.

Abundance says: “there is more than enough.”
Accumulation says: “i need more. more. more.”

Because a person who genuinely trusted there was more than enough would not need to personally possess a disproportionate share of the world’s resources.

real wealth vs “meta” wealth

something else that shifted for me was realizing there is a difference between real wealth and abstract wealth or “meta” wealth.

real wealth changes your lived day to day experience.

It’s food on the table. A safe home.Time freedom. A meaningful experience.
the ability to care for the people you love, pursue your purpose, rest, create.

it buys you things and experiences you can see. taste. touch. feel.

but there comes a point where financial wealth becomes almost entirely abstract.

an extra billion dollars isn’t another house. It isn’t another vacation. It isn’t another meal. It’s a number attached to a balance sheet or a stock portfolio. a net worth calculation.

instead of providing anything meaningful or tangible… its a number on a screen somewhere.

at some point, wealth stops representing human flourishing and starts representing the collapse of what makes us human.

hoarding is not abundance. It’s scarcity in disguise.

the ultimate expression of abundance is circulation. the ultimate expression of scarcity is hoarding.

Abundance trusts that resources continue flowing. Scarcity clings.

Abundance shares. Scarcity accumulates.

Abundance says:“There is enough.”

Scarcity says: “Just a little more.”

And then a little more.

And then a little more.

And then a trillion dollars later, it is somehow still not enough.

So when I look at the world’s first trillionaire, I don’t see the pinnacle of abundance consciousness. I don’t see a role model of success.

I see something else.

I see a culture that has confused accumulation with abundance.

I still believe in manifestation.

I still believe people can create extraordinary lives.

I still believe in wealth consciousness.

But I do not believe the highest expression of abundance is accumulating as much as possible.

I think the highest expression of abundance is knowing you already have enough.

And using your resources to create more life, more opportunity, more freedom, and more wellbeing for other people.

That’s the kind of wealth that actually feels abundant to me.

Subscribe now

“People don’t really do level 3. Usually they do level 1 and 2 and that’s enough for them.”

That’s what the 16 yo Kosovo boy guiding me on a high ropes course told me.

my friend and i had just finished levels 1 and 2. level 1 was easy peasy. level 2 was a bit more challenging. naturally, I wanted to keep going, but he looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

apparently, most people don’t do level 3.
unfortunately, I’m not most people.

and if you’re reading this, neither are you.

Because entrepreneurship is very similar to level 3 of the high ropes course.

Most people don’t even consider it. Most who consider it don’t do it. And even fewer see it all the way through.

Saying YES to entrepreneurship is saying YES to the level most people opt out of it.

So it is worth pausing to ask: why? why do most people NOT do it.

The simple answer: it’s not easy.

Level 3 requires you to confront things about yourself that most people would rather avoid: you know… extreme uncertainty, fear, discomfort, and the loss of control.

At some point in every entrepreneurial journey, what starts as a leap turns into a trust fall. You have to accept the feeling of being suspended in mid-air.

Breaking into a new income level is one of those moments.

Whether it’s making your first sale, signing your first client, or hitting consistent $5k, $10k, or $20k months, there’s a reason you haven’t broken through yet.

Not because you can’t do it, or because its not possible. But because something about the way you’re currently approaching your business needs to break, so you can move through to the next income level.

break. through.

and inside that breaking, there are two inner qualities you must cultivate.

There’s an Amelia Earhart quote I first encountered when I was dropping out of residency. I keep coming back to it:

so what exactly is tenacity?

two definitions i found:

• the quality of being determined, persistent, and refusing to give up, especially when facing obstacles or difficult challenges.

• the psychological drive to "hold fast" to a goal and keep going even when things are not easy.

I love this quote. and here’s how i would modify it, based on my own experience.

1. There is nothing merely about tenacity. It’s equally as difficult as the initial decision to act.

2. Tenacity alone isn’t enough. its not just “keep going and it will workout”. your tenacity also needs a specific quality alongside it. certainty beyond logic. the unshakeable knowing that your tenacity isn’t a fool’s errand. certainty that your persistence has the power to create the reality you want, even when the evidence hasn’t shown up yet.

these are the two inner qualities you must cultivate to break through to your next income level:

Tenacity.
Certainty beyond logic.

so lets talk about how I cultivated both of these qualities while hanging three stories above the ground on a set of metal monkey bars.

meanwhile… back at the ropes course:

As soon as we reached the second obstacle of level 3, I understood why most people don’t do it.

It was something straight out of American Ninja Warrior: a series of metal monkey bars, three stories up, with three shaky trapeze bars to rest your feet on. four monkey bars between each one.

the only way across was to jump, hang by your hands, and swing your way to the next trapeze far.

I watched my friend freeze at the edge of the platform. From where I stood, it looked scary, but I hadn’t yet faced the moment myself, so I felt calm. Confident. Come on, you’ve got this.

She decided it was a no. She unhooked and stepped aside.

It was my turn.

I walked to the edge. Hands on the bars. Leaning forward. Measuring the distance with my eyes.

The first trapeze was close. almost reachable from the platform if i really stretched my feet out. but still, I would have to jump.

I would be hanging by only my hands for a few seconds before my feet could find it. And then I’d have to repeat that process three more times to reach the other side.

My hands were sweating. The bars were hot — it was August. Would my grip hold? Am I strong enough to do this?

I almost jumped a few times. Fear pulled me back. But I know how to work through fear. I’ve done it before. When I got back in the water during my dive certification after a panic attack. When I stayed in my tent alone on my first solo camping trip, terrified.

I know how to feel fear and keep moving anyway.

Finally, I jumped.

Hands shaking. Swinging bar to bar. I made it to the first trapeze and looked back at my friend cheering me on. Pride surged through me. I reached for the next set of bars and jumped again.

This stretch was much longer. At one point, I felt my hands starting to slip — I reached for the trapeze with my feet but couldn’t quite touch it. One more burst of strength. I made it to the second trapeze.

Halfway through.

And then, standing there catching my breath, fear flooded in with a vengence.

I looked ahead at what was left and felt the distinct, humbling sensation of regret. Why did I do this? Why am I like this?

Because now, the only real way out was through.

the defining moment of your leap

Here’s what I want you to understand about that moment.

The initial decision to leap is hard. But for me, the hardest part always comes after. It’s the part where you’ve jumped, you’re suspended in mid-air, and you realize what’s actually required to reach the other side. It’s not just one leap. It’s leap after leap after leap — while shaking, while your hands are bleeding, while every part of you wants out.

Standing on that second trapeze, I had two choices:

• Ask the guide to bail me out.

• Keep moving forward.

Collapse or grow. choose fear or choose to rise.

and fear was making some very compelling arguments.

What if you lose your grip? How far would you fall before the harness catches you? And even if you make it to the next platform — you still have five or six more obstacles before you’re done.

Fear was trying to pull me into panic.

I realized my only point of power was what I chose to focus on.

I had to stop fixating on the outcome I didn’t want and channel every bit of attention toward the one I did. I had to stop future tripping and get insanely present in this moment. focusing on making it to the the next monkey bar. the next trapeze. the next platform.

one hand in front of the other.

after what felt like an eternity (but was, according to the video footage, exactly 3 minutes and 7 seconds), I landed on the next platform. Full body shaking. Blisters forming on my palms.

The hardest part was over. But the course wasn’t done.

I kept leading myself. one shaky step at a time. the blisters started bleeding. My phone fell out of my pocket, three stories down. I yelled to my guide more than once, asking if I could come down. He said no. The only way down is through.

Fear kept threatening to send me into a spiral. I kept choosing to rise.

Finally, I reached the end and zip lined down to solid ground. and yes, I definitely cried. partly from relief, partly from pride.

I had led myself through the thing most people don’t do. I chose growth over collapse, over and over again.

what it takes to break through to your next income level…

Do you see what a perfect metaphor this is for breaking into your next income level?

let’s unpack it a little bit more, to make sure it really hits home for you.

1. The decision to act is just the beginning.

Amelia is right that the decision to act is difficult. of course it is. but the hardest part is not just the moment you decide to leap. its every moment after that.

it’s looking around part way through the trust fall and and realizing… this is just the beginning. you still have at least 3 more leaps to make before you’re even close to something resembling stable ground.

its having the tenacity to stay focused on the outcome you WANT instead of the outcome you DON’t while you are suspended in mid air.

2. You don’t have to get rid of the fear. You just have to stop letting it drive.

I was scared the entire time. I kept moving anyway.

There will always be a part of you that doubts, fears, and questions whether your business will ever work. That part isn’t going away. But leadership begins the moment you decide that part isn’t in charge. You don’t have to silence it. You don’t have to fix it. You just don’t hand it the wheel.

Love it. Reassure it. Sometimes put it in time-out. And then lead yourself anyway.

3. you can’t do it alone.

I wouldn’t have jumped in the first place without my resources: a helmet, a harness, and a personal track record of doing scary things and surviving them.

I wouldn’t have finished without my 16-year-old guide.

he reassured me that the harness would work and i wouldn’t fall to my death.

he kept reminding me I was strong and capable.“ i really think you can do it. you’ve got this”

he yelled up instructions when i looked lost about where to place my hands or my feet.

and most importantly… he didn’t believe me for a second when i argued for my limitations. when i told him i was too scared to finish. that i was shaking and i wanted to come down. he listened to me.

he scrambled to the top without any harness to bring me water. and then he simply told me: i had to keep going. he said the only way for me to get down was to keep moving forward.

i’m not sure if this was true. i think he could have pulled a rescue mission. but he wasn’t going to let me off the hook. he wasn’t going to let me give up. he forced me to stay committed to the vision. which was exactly the support i needed in that moment.

I didn’t need coddling. i didn’t need someone to offer me an easy easy way out. I needed someone to say… i know you can do this, and i’m not going to let you quit on yourself. i needed someone to have certainty beyond logic, and to lend it to me when i started spiraling.

and honestly, thats the part that makes breaking through to your next income level inevitable. when you have someone in your corner who refuses to see your limitations. who lends you their certainty.

who doesn’t let you back down the moment you get scared or want to give up. and instead sends you on your way towards greatness.

and that’s how i help you break through to your next income level. yes i help you create an offer you love selling. yes i help you clarify your messaging so that it moves people.

but most importantly, i don’t let you give up on your own greatness. i refuse to believe in your limitations. i see you in your power. i see you all that you are capable of. and i support you as you rise.

so if you said 2026 would be your year. but it’s already June and not much has changed.

here’s what i want you to know:

it doesn’t matter what the first 5 months of the year have looked like. income wise. business wise. confidence wise. visibility wise. consistency wise.

at any moment, you. can hit the reset button. you can turn it around. you can 10x your income in a single month., and then 10x it again the next month.

i’ve had client who started her business in august, hit $5k months by decemeber and by the following june left her job to take her business full time.

i’ve had another client who signed 3 clients in her first month of business and kept growing every month afterwards.

results don’t HAVE to happen that fast if you’d prefer slow and steady. but they CAN happen so fast the moment you decide to leap.

if you want to 10x your income in the second half of the year, come join us for

mid year income leap
a 4 day workshop for coaches ready to go ALL in on their business.
june 15- 18

this is for you if you want:

• a game plan that makes your income leap something real you can work towards instead of something you cross your fingers and hope for.

• to still make 2026 YOUR YEAR even if the first half has been looking a little grim.

• to start signing clients at your FULL rate, without hearing price objections.

• zoom rooms filled with clients that you love supporting

• to say PEACE out to your clinical job and go ALL in on your coaching business.

• to stop WAITING for your business to take off, and start creating a business that has no choice but to succeed.

  save your spot

  
  oh and if you haven’t subscribed yet, now is your chance silly goose. if you want to replace your clinical income with a coaching business that helps and heals, the $100k healer is the space where we make that happen.
  

  Subscribe now

  
  

”its time for your mid year income leap”

this is what I told my create your six figure offer group on today’s coaching call.

the energy in that space has been SO electric recently.

we’ve been celebrating:

linked in posts popping off
clients signing up
collab opportunities coming through
successful in-person workshops

they are rising up big time.
so I decided its time to walk them through my fav manifestation process

it’s the process I’ve used on repeat before every major income leap
its how I created
my first $10k launch
my first $18k week
my first $34k month

its actually kinda silly I don’t use this process MORE often, because whenever I commit to it…. the results are wild.

these are the 5 core steps of my go-to manifestation process.

1. connect to your desire.

normally i ask myself “what desire feels most alive right now”, in today’s call I got a bit more specific.

I asked them…

what do you want your “mid year income leap “to look like?

it could be straight cash money. It could be about opportunities rolling in. It could be clients coming in.

whatever feels the most alive for you.

and something that came up with my clients… this is NOT a SMART goal.

we aren’t out here trying to be realistic or reverse engineering stuff. We are just connecting to desire.

the only thing you are asking yourself here is ….What do you WANT?

2. What’s coming up for you around receiving the desire?

this is where we free write stream of consciousness style to see what’s happening under the surface. the good. the bad. the ugly.

our brain may be super stoked about the desire, or there may be some strange ideas floating around.

anything from

“well how in the world would THAT happen?”

to

“you aren’t qualified enough to do that”

to

“you can’t handle having that kind of success. It’s going to burn you out.”

we don’t judge the thoughts coming up. we don’t try to censor them. we just take a good look at what narratives our mind is creating around receiving the desire.

usually within those narratives, there are some deeper worldviews and perspectives that are limiting us.

for example underneath “you can’t handle having that kind of success” could be the deeper belief that… “success comes at a price” or “you can’t have career success AND a happy life”

you may not know the deeper belief right now, and thats totally fine. we work with with what we got. but when you can address the deepest level of the belief, you have the biggest shifts.

3. We release the “crazy mad ideas”.

this is the part that is the most difficult to fully walk you through in a substack post, but i’m going to do my best.

here is the gist of it.

everything that tells us our desires are out reach… is a “crazy mad idea”

this language is inspired from a course in miracles which refers to “tiny mad ideas”

from my understanding, a tiny mad idea is any thought that comes from believing in separation.

any thought not rooted in love
any thought based in lack
any thought that forgets we are one with the creator of all things.

in this part of the manifestation process, I take my people through a remembering and a releasing.

we release the crazy mad ideas
and we remember how powerful we are.

sometimes the crazy mad ideas get lodged so deep in our psyche, we feel them in our body.

they cause feelings of heaviness, tightness.

sometimes there is somatic work to be done, which is why I’m so grateful to be trained in both somatic release processes, and EFT/ tapping.

these are two of my fav ways to personally release, and help my clients release some of these crazy mad ideas.

4. we become an energetic match

once we release the CMIs and remember our power, the fun part begins.
now our work is about becoming an energetic match for our desire.

and its actually a lot easier than it sounds.

all it takes it a little bit of imagination.

And the good news is, if you’ve ever worried about something… you know how to use your imagination.

most of us use our imaginations to picture unfavorable outcomes and call it “being practical”.

in my world, we use our imaginations to picture favorable outcomes and call it creating the life we want.

so that’s all we do.

we just pretend for a moment… that the desire you wrote down in step 1 already happened.

if you already HAD the desire you wrote down in step 1.

if you already experienced your mid year income leap.

what would be thinking?
what would you know to be true?
what would you be saying to your friends? To your clients? To your mentor?
what would you be doing?
what would you be feeling?

there’s no right or wrong way to answer these questions. the goal is simply connecting to the experience of already HAVING your desire.

some of the things my clients wrote in our session today.

“I would be so proud of myself.”
“I would be thinking of all the ways I could help my people”
“omg its actually working!”
“people want me to help them!”

5. You create the energetic signature.

this is the part where we tie it all in a bow so it’s easy to recall as you go throughout your days.

you take everything that you wrote in part 4 and condense it into

one feeling
one mantra/phrase.

it doesn’t need to be an executive summary. It doesn’t need to include everything you wrote in part 4. It’s more about capturing the essence. or even selecting the most powerful part of what you wrote that stands out to you.

it could be:

buzzing. There’s so many people I get to help.

or

excited+ proud. Its working its working its working.

or

appreciation. Blessed by opportunities flowing in around me.

what is the energetic signature of your desire?

and as a bonus, I like to pick a song that matches the energetic signature.

I’ll ask myself… what song makes me feel this way. Sometimes I’ll even create a playlist around it.

one time I was doing this process around the desire of $1000k days every day and I realized the energetic signature felt like having a crush.

one of those crushes where it’s SO obvious the person is into you, and you are flattered and a bit giggly because you’re into them too.

I created a playlist called “money chooses me” and put a bunch of songs that capture that new crush energy.

you can listen to the playlist here.

( its now become my catchall abundance playlist, but it still has the OG crush songs on there too)

following those 5 steps everyday.

and coming back to my energetic signature as often as I can throughout the day
is the mindset part of the equation behind every income leap in my business.

obviously, there is strategy and action involved too. i’m not claiming to write in my journal all day and magically make money.
I’m hosting live events. Creating content. finetuning my messaging, Running launches, etc. etc.

but I believe it’s THIS process that makes all the other actions add up.

which is why, I’m committing to doing this every single day for the month of June.

and because I don’t always want to do an intense journal process, I created a simple custom GPT for myself that walks me through the whole process step by step.

That way all I have to do is open my GPT and click “Go” and it automatically takes me through the rest of it.
I shared the custom GPT with my clients after our session, and i can’t wait to hear from them about how much easier it makes this whole process.

if you are feeling this mid year income leap energy, I’ve got a a few ways I can support you (beyond the free stuff in this post)

1. The DIY mid year income leap

Script your freedom: the 21 day journaling process will clear the self doubt keeping your coaching income stuck, so you can finally replace your clinical income.

join now and save $150

2. The group mid year income leap

Create Your Six Figure Offer + Visionary Messaging
join before July 1st to get VM + 6 mo of CY6FO for a special price of $5k

join now

3. The 1:1 mid year income leap
you and I going all in to create your income leap.
more info coming soon. message me for details.

one of my least favorite feelings is getting to the end of a week and feeling like i wasted it. or even worse, feeling like i was busy all week, but i can’t remember what I did.

it’s not that i need to be endlessly productive. it’s that i want the things i’m spending time on and the effort i’m putting in to count.

if you’re building a coaching business to replace your clinical income and you feel like the weeks are passing by but aren’t adding up to new clients, new leads, new audience growth, this post is for you.

the nepal night that changed how i think about time

two years ago i was in nepal preparing to take two weeks fully off the grid. i was in the middle of a launch and i had one night to get everything done before going dark.

something really interesting happened that night: everything came into focus.it became so clear, what needed to be prioritized and what didn’t matter. what things i needed to focus on and what i could more easily delegate.

i got off the meeting with my VA that night feeling on a high. I had just completed 2 weeks of work in 5 hrs.

why don’t i always operate like this?

the answer? parkinson’s law aka the idea that work expands to fill the time you give it.

when i had 2 weeks to finish everything, it took the entire two weeks because it could.
but once I introduced a constraint, suddenly I had more clarity.

sometimes constraints create clarity, sometimes they create pressure.

you might hear this and struggle to relate.

you always have limited pockets of time 2 hours here, 3 hours there to work on your business, but it doesn’t bring everything into focus.

you still aren’t sure what to focus on, and what’s just wasted effort.

and here’s the difference:

when i was in that hotel room in nepal, i had 5 years of entrepreneurial discernment to draw from. i already knew what mattered and what didn’t. i’d been asking myself every single week for years: what produced an ROI this week? what actions actually moved the needle?

so when I was faced with a constraint, I could rise to meet the challenge.

but if you don’t have that discernment yet, because you are still new to business the constraint doesn’t automatically create clarity. it just adds pressure.

but discernment isn’t something you HAVE or DON’T HAVE. its something you can learn.

so i’m going to share my 3 step system to focus your efforts on what actually grows your coaching business.

step one: priority. NOT priorities.

did you know the word “priority” used to only exist as a singular word? (I read this in the book Essentialism, and it has stuck with me.)

for 100s of years “priority “ did not have a plural form. aka“priorities” was not a word. you would never speak about more than one priority because by the very definition of the word it could only be one.

wild.

but then at some point during the industrial revolution we decided we could have multiple most important things. and not only that we COULD, but we SHOULD.

and hence… hustle culture was born.

but if we want to truly be effective, we need to go back to the good old days before “priorities” was a word.

we have to stop trying to juggle 10 diff priorities in our business, and choose ONE. ONE offer we are selling. ONE platform we are growing. ONE goal we are working towards.

we overestimate our ability to multitask and deeply underestimate the power of focus. we’re unwilling to make choices, because we don’t think we need to. choices are for lazy, non ambitious people who can’t juggle 5 things at once.

we have some deranged idea we can do it all, despite all evidence to the contrary.

this picture from Essentialism illustrates the power of focused energy vs scattered energy. if we are willing to make choices. cut things away and focus on one thing, we can make SO MUCH progress in growing our business (even with limited time)

in your business right now: what is the ONE goal you're working towards?

the time horizon i love to use here is three years / one year/ one month.
what’s my 3 year goal? my one year goal? my goal this month?

then during my weekly planning sesh, I ask what is the ONE thing I’m doing to move the needle (towards my monthly goal). it forces me to think strategically and intentionally about where i’m spending my effort.

step two: identify your catalyst actions

catalyst actions are basically the 80/20 of your business. if you aren’t familiar, the 80/20 is a common productivity term referring to the pareto principle: the 20% of the effort that yields 80% of the results.

for years now i’ve been seeking out the 80/20 of my business. in my weekly review I answer the Q “what marketing actions produced the most ROI this week”

anytime a new client signs up with me, I ask how they found me. I’m always looking for what’s moving the needle. over time, that builds pattern recognition.

recently i was working with a client to build her weekly template aka the recurring catalyst actions specific to her business that keep it growing.

she came to me with a lot of logistical questions:
how often should i post,
which platform,
should i focus on email?

but instead of starting in the weeds, we zoomed out:

we looked at what results she could point to over the past month:
new clients, market research calls, workshop sign ups, etc.

then we asked… what actions led to those results?

one catalyst action we uncovered: posting on business share day in a paid community

she’d made one post. on one day. that brought multiple people to a paid workshop and multiple people to a market research call.

super simple action. BIG RESULTS.

now she has a catalyst action to add to her weekly template.

you don’t always know your catalyst actions when you are just starting out. you’ll need to experiment ofc. but if you make it your mission to FIND the catalyst actions and PRIORITIZE them, your business growth is SO inevitable.

step three: build a cadence of consistency you can actually sustain

i’m the first to admit that consistency is HARD. my ADHD resists consistency, my perfectionism beats me up for inconsistency. its a fun combo.

the conversation around consistency is not “you have to be perfect, you can never miss a day, you can never take time off.”

no. the conversation is:

find a baseline level of effort you can commit to in even in your busiest seasons.

and the reason I will never stop talking about how important it is to establish consistency…. the law of inertia + the compound effect.

when i talk to my entrepreneur friends who have also built six figure businesses, we always come to the same conclusion. the difference between those who quit their business and those who take their business full time is only, always consistency.

there is something that happens when you show up consistently like its your job. when you publish every single week on a podcast. when you post 4x a week on FB, IG, or LI. AND when your messaging is consistent. the momentum begins to create its own kind of magic. it adds up. it builds. it compounds.

the pattern that costs you dearly in early entrepreneurship is the start-stop cycle.

being consistent for a few weeks, then either getting frustrated, getting busy, or getting overwhelmed and then ghosting your business for weeks at a time. you come back a few weeks later with a new content plan and renewed motivation. start again. stop again.

every time you stop you break the compound effect.
your momentum never gets the chance to snowball into magic.

it’s not about never missing a week or spending all your time creating content.
its finding the cadence of consistency you can commit to.
and locking in.

and thats the 3 step system:

1. focus on ONE goal

2. take catalyst actions

3. find a cadence of consistency you can sustain.

that’s how you stop getting to friday feeling like you wasted the week. that’s how you make your time and effort count. that’s how you grow your business steadily, without your whole life revolving around it.

we put these 3 steps into practice inside the $100k catalyst

the $100k catalyst: your weekly touchpoint for creating sustained business growth… without wasting time and effort.

join now

I shared that quote it in the very first episode of my podcast because hearing those words, helped me to finally press publish.

It was July of 2021. I was my apartment in Florianopolis, Brazil trying to record the first episode. Starting and scrapping and starting again, watching myself spiral into compulsive perfectionism and thinking: this is exactly what I tell my clients NOT to do.

I had just niched into healthcare professionals. I still wasn’t sure any of this was going to work.

Five years and six podcast covers later — here we are.

and before we get into it, if you want to build a coaching business that replaces your clinical income… the $100K Healer is your new home.

Subscribe now

I want this post to be your permission slip. To start before you’re ready. To show up imperfectly. To let yourself be seen while figuring it out.

Because… frankly, there’s just no other choice. If you keep waiting until you have it all figured out. You will quite literally never begin.

I didn’t wait until I figured it out to start building my business. I built it by showing up as the messy, in-progress, version of myself. publicly, repeatedly, and long before I felt ready.

Recently I was updating my podcast cover art and I realized… the journey of my business can be told through the evolution of my podcast covers.

Every single cover tells a story and marks a pivotal moment in the journey.

and I want take you bts. to show you what it looks like to build a business while you're figuring things out.

what it looks to build a business while you’re finding yourself (and sometimes losing yourself)

so you can realize… its not only safe to start before you're ready, but it's the only way you can actually make an impact.

girl shares her heart online (2021)

life after medicine v1.

my first instinct is to cringe at the horrific design, but i’ll save my canva critique for another day.

because the truth is: I am SO proud of this little baby chelsea.

she was scared. she was not making much money yet. she had no clue if this podcast thing was going to work. but she felt this pull to buy a mic from a random electronics shop in brazil, and start sharing her heart online.

for months i had felt this nagging pull to start a podcast. when I sat down to give it a proper brainstorm the idea for “life after medicine” dropped it like a vision. I immediately knew this was bigger than me.

even though I had doubts and insecurities, when I get a pull like that… I listen.

its like the Audre Lorde quote says:

“when I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

girl hits six figures (2022)

ok… can you already see the massive shift’

the letters are bolder. the font is bigger. the colors are brighter. i’m taking up more space. both on the cover and in my business as a whole.

this is the era where i first hit my stride. my confidence was growing. my income was growing. it was all finally working. you can see it in the photo too. i’m smiling in my full Enneagram 7 exuberance. pure joy.

this is when my business hit six figures (2022)…. and then it hit six figures again (2023)

so yes, I was feeling more confident and successful, but also behind the scenes, i was starting to get scared.

I took two weeks off to go on Nomad Cruise, had my lowest sales month, and panicked.
I took 2 weeks off my business at the end of 2023 to go on nomad cruise, and had my lowest sales month in almost 2 years.

I started to feel a bit freaked out. Like the success was built on shaky ground and could all disappear at any moment. Which was kind of true.

my business had no real systems for reliably generating income. it was running because I was running it, and the moment I stepped away, revenue dried up.

I def had some work to do to stabilize my business. So thats what brought me into my next era..

girl loses herself to copy-paste bro marketing strategies (2024)

this is the only cover without me in it…. which is a perfect metaphor for what was happening inside my business at that point.

At the start of 2024, I went into what I can only describe as med student controlling mode.

I started outsourcing the strategy. Following other people’s playbooks. I wanted someone else to give me the exact play by play.

And somewhere in that process, I stopped trusting myself entirely. It happened slowly overtime. Little by little, I stopped looking inward. I looked everywhere else for the answers.

The result? A podcast cover with a stock photo of a doctor on it.

I learned a lot in that phase, and at the end of the day I’m grateful for it. Because it grew my discernment. Now I’m much more skilled at learning from someone else’s strategy, but putting it through the filter of my own intuition.

girl says YES to jumping into limbo (2025)

the good news is, I eventually found myself again. which then led me to what felt like the most chaotic, messiest, rebrand of all times.

June of 2025 I hosted a virtual summit called Pivot Potentials: a career reimagining summit.

and it ended up sparking a “brand reimagining”. By the end of June I was feeling a big shift coming on.
In July I hosted “July Re-align” where I wrote to my intuition every single day for 31 days.

Somewhere during that time, the vision for spiritually ambitious entrepreneur started to form.

It wasn’t fully fleshed out. I didn’t fully know what I wtf i was doing, but I knew I was moving in the right direction. Mainly because…. I wasn’t following someone else’s playbook anymore. I was trusting myself again.

i didn’t really know it at the time, but this cover was really me saying YES to being in limbo for a while. I said goodbye to Life After Medicine, and started The Spiritually Ambitious Entrepreneur podcast.

… which spoiler alert didn’t last too long.

girl says YES to leadership (also 2025)

I had literally just rebranded to the Spiritually Ambitious Entrepreneur months before, which was a big deal for me. Changing the name of the podcast felt SO permanent.

But after just a few months, I started to feel this pull towards a new name. The $100K healer. It started off as a free training I did. Then I rebranded the paid tier of my substack to that name. Every time I shared the name with someone there was an “oooh” reaction.

The $100K healer felt clearer, more specific, more activating, and really just more aligned with where I wanted my business to go.

But, you’re not supposed to change your podcast name 2x in one year. That’s insane.

I put a message in my client Telegram and floated the idea: what do you think of spiritually ambitious entrepreneur vs $100k healer.

Unanimously, they said: “We prefer Spiritually Ambitious.”

But as I read through their responses I knew… I have to change it to the 100K Healer.

Partially because…. the reasons they preferred “spiritually ambitious entrepreneur” were rooted in money mindset issues. Which was exactly the work I wanted to lead them through.

But also because hearing their definitive responses, created a definitive response within me. It suddenly felt clear: if I don’t change it, I’m actively holding myself back.

Listening to the market is obviously important, it’s something I teach and fully believe in. But you don’t listen so that you can react to the market. You listen so you can LEAD the market.

I wasn’t going to name my podcast from other people’s limitations, I was going to name it from my vision.

I wanted to change the name of the podcast immediately…so I whipped together a “good enough” cover while sitting in a café in Namibia. But I always knew it was just a placeholder.

girl has quantum leaped from the inside out (2026)

when I look at this cover I just feel…. LFG energy. I’m looking straight at the camera like “come at me breh”

And the coolest part is…. this version of me only exists because I was willing to show up as every version before her.

The baby entrepreneur in the jean jacket. The copy-paste girl who lost herself trying to scale. The dancing sparkly rebrand that didn’t have it all figured out but committed anyway. The good-enough placeholder made in a café in Namibia.

If I had waited until I was ready…. none of this would exist.

what i’ve been releasing to get here

There’s a Hafiz poem that has been guiding my inner work over the past year:

“The wind and I could come by and carry
you the last part of your journey
if you become light enough,

by just letting go of a few more things
you are clinging to
that still believe in gravity.”

The phrase “things that still believe in gravity” keeps playing in my head over and over again. Like a refrain.

Its become my inquiry.
What within me still believes in gravity?
What am I clinging to that’s weighing me down?

And little by little
I let it go.
Everything that feels heavy.
Every part of me that believes in limitation, in lack, in not good enough.
Every pattern that holds me down.
Every story that keeps me from taking flight.

That’s what you’re seeing in this new cover.
That’s what’s shaping this new era.
Its the defying gravity era.

Where the only thing I’m interested in, is experiencing my infinite potential. And holding the vision for YOU to experience yours as well.

And none of this came from waiting until I had it all figured out. It came from showing up messy, again and again, and letting each version of me exist long enough to become the next one.

the oak tree and the acorn

There’s a Zen Buddhist concept I first heard in Eat Pray Love that I keep coming back to:

“The Zen Buddhists say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that.

But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well — the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.”

Many of us feel that longing from our future oak tree. The version of us that wants SO badly to exist.

We feel the pull to launch the offer, start the podcast, show up more consistently. The pull to go ALL in on our business, and finally quit our day job.

But we ignore the pull because we’re not “ready”. Because we haven’t figured out exactly what it means yet.

But when you refuse to show up until you’re ready, your acorn never has the chance to grow into the oak tree.

The only reason my current oak tree self exists is because I let my acorn be messy af (idk if this analogy is holding up, but just go with it)

I followed the pull of my oak tree.
I showed up before I was ready
I let myself be seen as a work in progress.

So here’s the reflection I’ll leave you with:

What is your future oak tree self pulling you towards right now?
What could be possible be if you stopped trying to figure it all out first?

 if you gave yourself permission to honor the pull of your oak tree?
if you showed up messy and let yourself be a work in progress all along the way?
if you let yourself be seen — messy, evolving, figuring it out as you go?

I pinky promise you.
Doing it messy. Doing it imperfect. Doing it scared.
is infinitely better than never doing it at all.

if you are reading this and you know your oak tree is pulling you to take your coaching business full-time, I’m opening up some 1:1 coaching spaces to support you. send me a message at hello@coachchelseamd.com or find me on instagram @coachchelseamd.

oh and stay tuned… next week the inner circle (substack paid tier) becomes the $100k catalyst. a weekly audio drop for clinicians building a coaching business to turn overwhelm into focused action that moves the needle.

if you are more of a podcast person, you can listen on The $100K Healer podcast.

you implemented the content plan to a T . so why tf isn’t it working?

you’re posting. you’re following the formulas. you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do. and still crickets. no responses, no calls, no clients.

and when things aren’t working, the doubt creeps in faster than you’d like to admit.

maybe i’m not cut out for this. maybe it’s never going to work.

eventually you pick yourself back up... but you lose days, weeks sometimes in these doubt spirals. plus it is zero fun. like 0/10 recommend.

so how do hold yourself steady-BEFORE it starts working? that’s exactly what i want to talk about today.

in today’s episode you’ll learn

• the question I ask myself to snap out of doubt spirals and get back to showing up for my purpose.

• the inner shift clinicians can make so the strategy actually starts to work

• how to access your beginners mind- so you can grow from feedback, instead of collapsing.

press play if you’re ready to stop dithering in doubt and start consistently + powerfully showing up for your coaching business.

**visionary messaging enrollment closes saturday May 9

this is your 8 week virtual coworking space to nail your messaging. together we build the system for marketing your offers that turns the right people into hype-girl clients.

join here.

the doubt spiral is normal but not useful.

here’s what the spiral looks like in practice.

you spend time on a post. you put it out there. nobody responds. or you get someone on a call, you follow the script, you do everything right — and they don’t sign. or a client starts to waver mid-program and suddenly you’re questioning your ability to get anyone results at all.

there are so many moments in entrepreneurship where you could doubt yourself. and you will. that’s not the problem.

the problem is what happens next — when you go into your head to try to think your way out of it. you strain. you spin. you look for certainty in your mind and it’s just not there. and so you either collapse under the doubt or you go looking for a new strategy, a new formula, a new content plan that will finally make it click.

but chasing someone else’s strategy won’t provide the certainty that you are after.

i promise. I’ve done it. i’ve tried them all.

the only thing that actually snaps me out of a doubt spiral, is this simple practice.

what do you know for sure?

there’s a question i return to anytime i start to spiral. i got it from Oprah, many moons ago, and i come back to it over and over.

the question:

what do i know for sure?

i’m not asking my head. i direct the question into my body.

sometimes the answer comes in words. sometimes it’s just a feeling — a calm knowing, a visceral certainty that doesn’t need language to be real.

i think of it as your beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt place. it’s like your absolute zero — the kelvin of certainty. it exists inside you. and when you’re connected to it, doubt ceases to exist.

i lived from that place when i made the decision to leave residency almost eight years ago. i had no guarantees. i hadn’t done it before. i had no idea how it would work out. but i was so connected to what i knew for sure that i barely doubted myself at all during that time. i was anchored.

that’s what we’re building toward — not certainty about outcomes, but certainty about yourself.

you’re too good to be this fragile

here’s something i’ve been sitting with as i work with clinicians building coaching businesses.

anytime you’re resistant to feedback, you’re fragile. anytime you don’t want someone to give you objective information about what’s working and what could be improved — you are running your business from fragility. and we cannot grow from that place.

i know this intimately because i am this way too. i started back in ashtanga yoga recently, and every time my teacher comes to adjust me in a pose, my first thought is oh, dang it. i didn’t do it good enough. she adjusted me, which means i messed up. there’s a part of me that just wants her to stand there and say “great job, you’re nailing it” every single time. (i know. i know.)

i’ve done this with business coaches too. i show them my sales page copy and i want them to say “wow, that’s amazing.” if they give me “feedback” instead, my brain goes straight to i failed.

this is why so many of us try to figure things out alone. we are scared for someone to witness us in the struggle.

beginner’s mind changes everything

beginner’s mind is the antidote to fragility.

when you approach your business like an experiment — not a performance review — something shifts. you stop taking feedback personally. you stop needing everything to work perfectly the first time. you start being curious instead of terrified.

and on top of that, when you’re connected to the convicted core of your message. that beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt knowing inside you — you’re not fragile anymore. you’re not worried about the feedback because you have conviction underneath it.

your only real concern becomes: how do i get this to more people? the ego steps aside. you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about the work. you become a vehicle for it.

that’s the place where strategy actually lands. where feedback becomes useful instead of crushing. where you can show up with consistency because you’re not losing days and weeks dithering in doubt.

find your anchor phrase

sometimes your certainty wraps itself into language. sometimes it’s just a felt sense.

for me, in my career coaching days, i would come back to this when i doubted almost the entire premise of my work: the world is a better place when people are doing work they love. i would say that phrase and feel the truth of it in my body. and that was enough to send me back out there.

for the $100K Healer, my anchor is: becoming your own source of income is the path to your greatest potential and your greatest impact. i know that for sure. everything i create is built around that belief.

try this

everything i do is based on the belief that…

fill in that blank from your gut, not your head. if you feel it in your body — if it gives you that calm, settled knowing — that’s your anchor. return to it every time the doubt creeps in.

there will always be things you don’t know. there will always be moments where the post flops, the call doesn’t convert, the client wavers. uncertainty is part of this.

but certainty is always available too. most of us are just so practiced at spinning in doubt that we’ve forgotten how to live from the other place.

**visionary messaging enrollment closes saturday May 9

this is your 8 week virtual coworking space to nail your messaging. together we build the system for marketing your offers that turns the right people into hype-girl clients.

join here.

learn more

The Client Inflow Fix: learn the messaging framework that opens up the floodgates to clients.

the client inflow fix

if you are more of a podcast person, you can listen on The $100K Healer podcast.

people aren’t responding to your calls to action. and you know it’s because your messaging isn’t landing.

you’ve been trying to get specific yet every time you do, you either spiral into fomo (i don’t want to limit myself) or imposter syndrome (who am i to say that?).

nothing you come up with ever feels good enough. and so you stay vague. you keep circling it. looking for the next strategy to figure it out.

but the thing is… it’s not a strategy problem. at least not entirely.

your brain is keeping your messaging vague on purpose to protect you. and until we address that part- you’ll keep spinning.

and before we get into it, if you want to build a coaching business that replaces your clinical income… the $100K Healer is the space for you. subscribe now.

Subscribe now

from fomo to imposter syndrome

every time you try to hone in your message and make it more specific, more targeted, there’s this emotional response. your stomach drops. there’s a fear, a resistance, an unsettling kind of feeling. sometimes it’s almost like a tunnel vision, a dissociation. you feel dizzy.

or maybe it doesn’t feel like fear at all. it feels logical. i don’t want to limit myself. i don’t want to close any doors.

somebody tells you to niche down . just talk about burnout, stop trying to cover everything. and it genuinely feels like a wrong business decision, not a fear response.

that’s the fomo end of the spectrum.

then there’s the imposter syndrome end.

there are other people more qualified to say that. i don’t have enough results around this yet. i can’t guarantee this.

either way, it ends the same: that’s not it. this message isn’t good enough. i can’t figure it out.

you’re circling it, close to it, but it’s just not it.

then you go into your head to try to think your way out, spinning in circles with chat gpt, going through another worksheet.

you either stay vague and keep putting out content that feels adjacent but not quite right, or you stop putting anything out at all because you know it’s not it yet.

if this loop feels familiar, lets unpack what’s happening on a deeper psychological level.

your brain thinks vague = safe

here’s what’s happening psyhologically

perfectionism sits on a spectrum. the higher you identify as perfectionistic, the more your brain is wired to experience negative feedback as a genuine threat — not a mild discomfort, but a nervous system event.

there’s research on this: perfectionists show greater emotional dysregulation, higher cognitive disruption (rumination, decreased working memory), and stronger physiological stress responses (elevated heart rate, blood pressure) in response to negative feedback compared to non-perfectionists.

and the icing on the cake? the reward from positive feedback isn’t big enough to compensate for the risk of negative feedback.

so the perfectionist wants to avoid situations where feedback can occur- unless it’s certain the feedback will be positive.

what negative feedback in residency did to my nervous system

when i was reading these research studies i had this flashback to a moment in residency.

it was my intern year. i was on the labor suite, maybe my third or fourth week. there was an attending who pulled me out to the courtyard to give me “feedback” on my performance.

before that moment i wasn’t used to experiencing anything other than praise in an academic context.

but what she told me in that courtyard, completely crushed me.

she said something to the effect of: your clinical knowledge is significantly lower than it should be for where you are.

it felt like a stab in the heart. my stomach dropped. i dissociated. i was floating above the conversation and had and aerial, drone view of the two figures in scrubs sitting in the courtyard.

i don’t remember a single word she said after that. when the conversation was over. i nodded, said thank you for the feedback, walked to the bathroom, and broke down. like on the floor ugly crying.

that’s what negative feedback does to a perfectionistic brain. it sounds so dramatic, but now i realize thats how its wired.

and your brain will do everything it can to make sure it never experiences that kind of negative feedback again.

the three ways vague messaging feels safer

vague messaging is actually a risk mitigation strategy.

here’s how it works:

1. it keeps your options open

if you get specific, you’re making a definitive choice. definitive choices can be wrong choices. wrong choices invite negative feedback.

so instead you keep all the doors open and avoid making the wrong choice.

2. it makes evaluation impossible

if you say my coaching will help you feel better, no one can definitively say it doesn’t do that.

if you don’t take a stand, no one can disagree with you. if you don’t make a claim it can’t be picked apart. keeping it intangible, vague, and unclear helps you avoid judgement, retaliation, disagreement.

3. it reduces accountability.

the more tangible your claims, the more you take on accountability to deliver. which can be a good thing. it could be a sense of responsibility that activates you. but perfectionists usually internalize it as a pressure that causes collapse.

when you have an all-or-nothing relationship with results, more accountability just means more potential for failure. so the brain quietly keeps things intangible to avoid ever feeling like it fell short.

we’re not making our messaging unclear on purpose. but we struggle to clarify it because on some level, staying vague, intangible and unclear creates safety.

what actually helps

awareness is step one. when you understand the psychological mechanism at play.

a threat detection system trying to protect you.

you stop fighting yourself for not being able to “just get clear” and start working with yourself.

but awareness alone doesn’t get you there. you also need a context that makes specificity feel safe.

basically you need a way to clarify your messaging without activating your threat detection system.

some of the ways I approach this with my clients:

• separating the internal positioning from the external positioning

• titrating your specificity little by little. nervous systems do well with titration.

• framing the messaging as a playful experiment that we are running. when there are no permanent choices, the threat goes down.

because here’s what i want you to know:
you DO have a tangible message.
you DO have the ability to say something that moves people.

and once we create the conditions where your brain feels safe enough… the message that brings your vision to life will pour out of you.

how to get my support on crafting a message that moves people:

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“I wanted to press a pause button on my life.”

That’s what I told myself when I landed in Kuala Lumpur on January 31st.

The plan? to post up in a city where I didn’t know anyone for 90 days.
I just knew I needed to disappear for a while, and couldn’t fully explain why.

The pull had been there since August.

This strange, almost antisocial desire to cocoon, to hermit, to get away. And for months I talked myself out of it. I’m a social creature. I love people. I need community. This is probably not healthy.

But finally, the pull got too strong to ignore. So at the end of January I made my move.

I thought I was just craving lots of spacious, uninterruped time to get things done.
To have weeks on end with no expectations or social obligations, so I could build my empire.

But it turned into something a bit different.

I’ve spent the last 90 days in what I call the #getwrecked healing phase.

The kind of inner work that fundamentally rearranges your insides while humbling you in the process. Where you release triggers and cry tears at a rate that feels unreasonable. It’s the “there’s no way my life experiences have been traumatic enough to warrant the pain I seem to be processing”.

Where you don’t always know what’s shifting until you’re already on the other side of it.

I came in to these 90 days seeking relief. I left with something I didn’t even know to ask for.

A completely upgraded self.

A more rooted, more expanded, more whole version of me.

In this week’s Inner Circle, I take you behind the scenes of what those 90 days actually looked like: the real depths of the inner work I share:

• The exact moment I quantum leaped my emotional intelligence and how its made me diabolically fearless.

• The lesson about proximity and environment I keep coming back to (and the practical ways I’m rigging mine in my favor)

• Why I needed to disappear to heal — and the final week in KL that showed me I don’t have to anymore

This episode is straight from my the depths of my inner process, and I’m so happy to share it with you.

(p.s. this is the final week that the inner circle will be $9/ month. next week we are launching it’s new format and increasing the price! subscribe now to save )

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