When I became program manager for 150 people, my main responsibility was to understand how people face uncertainty. In the first few weeks, I heard a sentence that put everything upside down, for my approach at least.

There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

This sounded similar to countable and uncountable infinities when I heard it, but I’ll let you off the hook on that concept for now. Risk management, the primary task of a program manager, revolves around the dance with both of those unknowns. The job is simple. Find all the unknowns that people are willing to admit they don’t know how to solve, and come up with a plan to mitigate those unknowns before they turn into a disaster. The trick is that people don’t like to admit what they don’t know, and this is the better of the two.

With truly unknown unknowns, you have absolutely no idea what you’re dealing with, so you’re left with your best guess and a risk mitigation plan for when shit hits the fan, so the disaster can be tamed instead of the entire project sliding down the drain. The concepts are simple, the execution is challenging.

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But Csaba, you’re a coach now and write about human patterns. What makes these unknowns important?

When people sit uncomfortably with their current trouble and get asked a question about what could be done to solve it, the most common sentence said out loud becomes “I don’t know.” Funny, isn’t it?

When a project depends on it, people go out of their way just to not admit that they don’t know when they’ll be ready. The exact opposite happens when they willingly pay for an hour to find a solution, but when they have to face their own circumstances, they’d rather hide behind the curtain of unknowing than say out loud what feels frightening.

Now why is that?

When it comes to “I don’t know” in coaching sessions: “Always two there are, no more, no less.”

The easier of the two is a true lack of experience or education, when somebody lacks hard knowledge. One of my favorite examples is driving. The lack of hard knowledge here means they never learned how to drive, don’t know what traffic signs mean, or don’t know how to get from A to B. Absolutely no clue. This type of unknown is easy because we cannot do anything with it. I mean, they can, and if they want to drive a car, they should. But I’m not authorized to teach them, so I won’t pretend that I can help with that trouble. At that point, the decision becomes easy: sign up for a course and let’s see each other later.

The trickier of the two is the lie about the unknown, and I don’t mean to throw shade. I too still find myself regressing to this sentence when I feel too uncomfortable to say out loud what I think or feel while working through my own troubles. I mean it’s a lie because we both sense there’s something you’re hiding, something that feels too vulnerable to say to a “stranger.” When we reach that moment, one of the most wonderful things that can happen within a session happens. It means we found what was in the blind-spot.

Sticking with the driving example, driving can make fresh drivers’ knees shake nervously. Everybody’s speeding around them. There are more mirrors than eyes that could look into them, not to mention all the buttons, knobs, pedals, levers, noises, or the wheel. Do we even want to touch on driving the stick?

In this exemplary unknown, the “I don’t know” usually refers to being afraid of driving itself, then the shame of not practicing or getting over that fear. Notice how similar that is to any other example your mind is playing for you right now.

The work becomes entirely different with this unknown.

In this context, we decide to lie about the entire truth to avoid facing the full discomfort of feeling seen by someone. That moment is awkward because it’s surprising, but usually not in the best sense. What was hidden in that blind-spot is often shameful to admit, given how tiny it might feel compared to how much trouble it might have caused so far. It often feels obvious, like of course I’m afraid of driving because I never sit behind the wheel to practice. But I don’t have the time, I don’t know where to practice, or I’m afraid I’d cause damage to the car. That loop is the trap.

But that’s okay. Actually, that is the entire work. When I write about being framework-less, I mostly refer to this philosophy. In that moment of discomfort, we have the chance to catch the loop by its neck and slowly chip away its grip. While we do so, we just might awaken the antidote to some of these troubles, and that is curiosity.

The goal is never for you to be honest with me. In fact, if you don’t lie to me, I don’t do my job well enough. My job is to make you uncomfortable enough so you build up courage to hover around what has been left unsaid for months or even years. The goal is that you can start to become honest with yourself.

The next time you catch yourself regressing to “I don’t know,” don’t try to push through it. Notice it. Observe what topic made you so uncomfortable that you decided not to share something with the world, and more importantly, notice how you feel in that moment. Get curious about the gap between your existing knowledge and what stops you from putting it into practice. That will be the key.

A good coach will make you uncomfortable enough so you will reach for the sedation of “I don’t know.” A great coach will make you so comfortable around that point that you eventually find yourself saying what you didn’t want to admit.

I’ll keep writing about what interests me, the pieces I think might do something for your own growth, not just mine. My aim is that the time you spend here feels worth it. Subscribing is the safest way it reaches you without you having to go looking.

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And if these stop doing anything for you, tell me, I’d rather know and get better than guess. Unsubscribing is completely fine too. No grudges.

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This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

It takes between five and ten minutes to smoke a cigarette, half of that time when your emotions are firing on all cylinders after a prolonged meeting that could have been an email. How do I know? I smoked for fifteen years and quit seven times at least. Every time I picked it up again was due to my inability to deal with an emotional misfire, you know, like a break-up, missed promotion, or someone’s death.

The last slip happened when I became a father. Now that moment – despite being exhausting – was euphoric, so the push toward smoking wasn’t immediate. I was rigorous about passive smoking when it came to my child’s health, driving all my smoking friends mad as I wouldn’t even let them step out when they visited and asked them not to burn through one within the last thirty minutes before coming over. Yeah, I was that kind of control freak when it came to providing a healthy environment for my child.

This naturally meant that I didn’t smoke for months around that time either; I was happily free from smoking. My seven-week-long paternity leave went by fine, although sleep deprivation can make a grown man weep after he tries to find the solution to a relentless cry in the encyclopedia at 3AM.

The change happened when I got back to my high-pressure environment, emotionally dry on the surface, where adults tried their best to hide their frustration, anger, sadness, and all that jazz but couldn’t, so they acted passive-aggressively day in, day out.

On a sunny day after another sleepless night, when all the waves clashed at once, a hidden jab disguised as “constructive feedback” hit my inability to let my emotions flow, and I picked up smoking again. Not in a smoke-a-pack-a-day way, but in the silent way, where I secretly sneaked out to the balcony to slowly enjoy the smelly smoke entering my lungs in those sacred five minutes. It became my emotional escape: a chance to finally exhale all the stress I’d withheld throughout the day.

I thought I’d found the solution by holding my breath, exposing myself emotionally at only the bare minimum despite all the responsibility I had, but that was a lie I couldn’t see. As I didn’t see it, I picked up even more responsibility to find a way out of the hamster wheel and started my coaching business on the side.

Instead of one normative crisis, I ended up with at least four.

Not the smartest of my life choices, but I always thrived under pressure. The problem I didn’t see was that when I did enjoy pressure, I was a teenager and could outsource my emotional struggles to adults around me. As I became the adult others relied on, I became the ground for the emotional misfires, and I had to learn how to regulate feelings healthily, instead of destroying my lungs.

Interestingly, the toughest challenge was not the different worlds themselves, parenting and business building. When you get into rhythm, you deal with whatever is in front of you. It became tricky when I started to work remotely 100% while my child was also in their stay-at-home-all-day phase. And no, not because of how loud a child can get when they experience happiness and frustration within five seconds of each other. Thank you, innovation, for noise-cancelling headphones. No, it was when those two worlds intersected after I put down the headphones and stepped out of my home office room and had to transition from business building to being an emotionally available father.

Those don’t mix well enough.

I tried, oh I tried to “just be present and leave the other world behind.” Accumulated tension and held breath didn’t care about my mantra, and I started to pick up on signs that I wasn’t as emotionally available as I used to be. My body was in the living room with them, but my mind and emotional state were hovering between the office and the patio. I was longing for the smoke I believed I deserved, a break from holding my breath.

Back when my child was still in the fourth trimester, I was afraid I would be late for my therapist after a meeting dragged on too long, so I lit up a cigarette while I was jogging. With earbuds in, I was listening to a podcast completely unrelated to smoking, but I heard a thought I’ve never forgotten. I’m sorry if I butcher this; I couldn’t find the exact quote:

“Do you want to witness your child walking down the aisle? Then why are you still smoking?”

At the time, my child was sleeping more than my wife and me combined. I had bigger fish to fry than my child’s wedding in an unseeable future; I felt like I was fighting for survival. But the thought lingered, and I couldn’t chase it away. It wasn’t an active, in-my-face thought but a subtle, recurring one that lived rent-free in my head, ready to switch on the light when I stepped out for my five minutes.

As the light shone brightly, I saw that I was no longer in control, neither emotionally nor habitually. I felt stuck in a pattern that was not designed to make me emotionally stable or available. It was a coping mechanism that actively destroyed my health, even if there were no immediate signs. Besides, I reeked like a tavern when I reentered the house.

I’d eventually find another five minutes, just not one that came in a pack, when I quit for the last time back in January. Nobody asked me, and everybody accepted me as a smoker. It was part of my identity, one that started way back in high school. I smoked the last cigarette in that pack and haven’t bought another since, nor have I asked for one during any of those long nights out with friends who all happen to be smokers themselves. Quite the challenge that is.

The act of quitting left me with another challenge. I had no “reward” after a long day. There was no set moment to exhale all the feelings I’d collected and couldn’t let go of any other way. It created the uncomfortable demand that I recalibrate my ways of regulating emotions. Not just regulating them but letting them fly again without remaining attached to them.

You see, I have quite a number of titles myself, ones I can identify with in the past, present, and future. Underneath all those titles, I’m a human with deep feelings, just like you. When somebody crosses me, I can get angry. If somebody breaks a promise, I can feel lonely too. I believe we tend to hide behind tidy titles so as not to expose an identity that might be fragile. Those identities respond to experience universally: by feeling emotions, if we let them. For us to remain emotionally available, we have to practice the act of noticing and letting go of attachment to our emotions.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I don’t believe in frameworks; I believe in responsible actions. So, I won’t give you one for quitting smoking, or for switching emotional states between business and parenting. I quit smoking seven times, and every time I put it down, I simply stopped buying another pack or asking for a cigarette from my friends.

For the emotional switch, though, I do have a habit you can try. I first heard about this idea when the first lockdowns hit during Covid, and we all started getting familiar with permanent home-office days.

Before I leave my office after a long day, I never just walk out; I delay the exit by around five minutes. In those five minutes between switching off my PC and opening the door, I sit in stillness, often closing my eyes. I imagine myself in a doctor’s coat: a long white coat that ends around my knees and has four pockets in front, all empty. I imagine this coat to be almost tailor-made in comfort, as I’ve worn it for ages by now; it’s started to follow the shape of my entire body.

With this coat still on me, I imagine myself pirouetting. Just one turn, that’s enough. The important part is that I notice the ends of this coat lifting away from my legs as air starts to move them like sails. As the motion stops and the coat starts to settle, I start to take it off and hang it on a nearby hanger. With the coat, I imagine my unfinished tasks staying attached to it, so I can put it back on later, when I can pay real attention to them.

Then I leave the room to meet my child again, who tends to wait for me at the door with open arms and the brightest smile I’ve ever seen.

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Me being an identity coach is a cheat code for our marriage. Not my words, a recent confession by my wife. Lower your eyebrows; we aren’t perfect, nor was our relationship free from loud conversations. Especially in the beginning when we had to endure our relationship in a long-distance setup for eight months, seeing each other for stolen hours over weekends.

That didn’t help either, that our egos are fiercely independent. Our arguments sometimes ended up like we were due galli dancing around each other kicking up dust with their colorful feathers. Can look hilarious from the outside, less so from the inside.

We tried to talk through arguments after the dust settled but could never really prevent them from getting to a place of emotional hurt repeatedly. God sees our souls we tried.

The problem was never cognitive; it was always emotional.

When we danced our dusty dance, we completely shut the ears of our souls to throw empathy out through the nearest window and started to believe that our truth is the one and only truth. We completely believed the other side was negligent, careless, almost even harmful with intention.

If you’d known my wife, you would describe her as the truest person on this planet, somebody who could never cross a line without having existential dread that she crossed it. That’s how pure she is, and I know that. I, on the other hand, am someone who understands the grayness between worlds.

Morally, she is black and white; I’m the 256 gradients in between.

When the balance tipped because I might have interpreted truth a little more colorfully, she became rightfully pissed off. In those moments, a 4D chess of incongruence started. On the cognitive level, we were both right, because in our worlds, we were, and we argued against facts on the surface. But within, we felt betrayed; we felt our perception of each other collapsed because we looked at it through our own lens. As we danced like roosters, the debate spiraled. Instead of soul level connection and redemption, we turned our backs on each other.

Lately, we noticed a change in our dance. No, not those “suddenly everything has changed miraculously” facade kind. The one that takes ten years of work toward one goal, to have fun together and practice how we will grow old together kind. Our disagreements became gentler. They went from being full-blown Greek weddings to bursts of venting sessions and long hugs as aftermath.

Now, before you turn away assuming everything’s peachy, it isn’t. We believe in checks and balances and raising a beautiful soul as our child together certainly brings up questions such as how often a child should eat ice cream, or when they should start learning foreign languages. The important kind, that pressure tests the very foundation of any relationship, with the caveat, that how you handle your emotional maturity will become their entire world. Yeah, talk about pressure, not to mess things up for a tiny human.

That cannot be handled on a cognitive level either.

What will keep us together is the ever-deepening empathy toward ourselves, toward each other and toward our child, in this order. I shall tell you why in a later piece.

This empathy is the cornerstone of how we turn to one another. We try our best to understand and feel that we are allowed to have bad days, where somebody might need just a little more attention and acceptance. We allow ourselves to crumble in the presence of the other and can take turns to support the emotional rebound. We don’t rush anything.

Standing strong on the cornerstone, we act as we believe we feel we should act. We practice sharing what our souls desire and then act accordingly. When something feels off or forced, we try not to hedge and pick up passive aggressive hatchets. We try to catch those early, burying them before swinging.

Lastly, we remember whom we fell unapologetically in love with. When we met, we were still learning what being an adult with more responsibilities than washing dishes meant. There were no earthly riches, fame, status, or majestic beards in the picture. Just two souls who saw each other truly and accepted the promise, that if such a thing existed, we might have been meant for each other.

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When she mentioned the cheat code, she almost forgot that we’ve been together for ten years now and we both work hard to keep it together. Yes, a romantic relationship and a marriage are the toughest and longest work you will never receive a penny for. Nevertheless, it’s your best interest to give it everything you have. What I have learned about person-centeredness certainly helps, but without her, our marriage remains one-armed.

We remained the same people on the surface; it’s our capacities that have grown throughout the years. We shook our attitudes and stopped believing our separate truths are the only truths that we must force onto each other. Before reacting, we learned to ask questions, not to assume what’s on the other’s mind. This is tricky though, not a universal dogma, but something we build up again in each and every conversation, together, argument by argument without judging.

I use the same capacity to help others figure out which way is right for them, when they reach the edge of their known identity. When they kick rocks into the abyss only to hear their knocking echo, empathy offers them a solid handle to face what they might have been afraid of admitting. It’s unglamorous and uncomfortable work but you don’t have to do it alone.

I can’t and won’t teach you anything I wrote about here, but I can help you reconnect with what you might find when the dust settles. I also hear you say that the concepts are abstract, and you’re right. Don’t believe me without proof. Let me show you how I put most of it into practice.

I write this hoping you might feel less alone in your own life. If it accomplished that for you, consider sending it to someone you love. Thank you!

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Here’s the plan: I keep writing about what’s pulling at me. Things I think might matter for your growth, not just mine. The goal: make the time worth it. Subscribing’s the surest way it reaches you. No chasing it down.

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And if it stops working for you? Tell me. I’d rather know and get sharper than guess. Unsubscribing’s fine too. No grudges.

Disclaimer:

I’m not a psychologist but learned a lot about psychology while I was studying the role of psychology in the art of coaching at university from licensed psychologists. Coaching cannot replace therapy, but there are times when coaching fits a client better. However, there’s a solid boundary between the two; that line shall never be crossed by ethical practitioners. I wholeheartedly believe in empathy and follow a humanistic tradition with my style that’s rooted in person-centered theory, believing in the client’s autonomy at all times.

This is part 2 of our look at energy vampires. In Who Is Draining Who(m)? we started with our friend Jeff who seems to always be sapping our energy, leaving us feeling depleted and a little frustrated. He needs us all the time but never seems to have time for us when we need him.

We finished off the last article with a few questions. But how do I protect my energy? Every time I give without reciprocity, I feel drained and exhausted. I can’t just give all the time, I’ve heard there are energy vampires, and I feel Jeff might be one of them. How do you deal with them?

“It’s empty in the valley of your heart

The sun, it rises slowly as you walk

Away from all the fears

And all the faults you’ve left behind”¹

It’s important that I explain my baseline thoughts on this so that where I’m coming from will make sense. There is one energy available to us at all times. The energy of love. Not the beautiful, tender, needy, greedy, conditional human love. The love that makes the mushrooms and the trees talk. The love that creates a raindrop. This energy of love never goes anywhere. Nobody can own it.

You can’t insult it out of someone or withhold it to get what you want. Nobody can take this love from you. It’s literally who we all are underneath the often-dysfunctional programming. You can turn on this tap of love and let it run through you 24/7 and the flow will only continue getting stronger. Human relationships come with scorecards. That’s the way that we’re taught it works. Give some, get less, bad. Give some, get more, good followed immediately by, we need to even the scales.

Always giving without receiving anything in return does feel draining, we give you that, and argue your energy being drained and the bitter feeling you might feel starts with you. The tension you feel is real, not everyone out there is looking for ways not to cause harm or fill the holes in your heart.

We hear you saying submissively: “I’m tired of giving, I feel exhausted and have lost all my motivation to hold the relationship on my shoulder alone. I need this to end.”

Before jumping to conclusions, let’s exhale and take a step back. Let’s try a thought experiment and shift perspectives for 5 minutes. Try to imagine an unbothered garden that your grandmother might call neglected, almost wild. When you look at this garden, what feels out of place to you? What would you intuitively like to remove?

Under the shades of old trees with winding canopies, among lush bushes that shelter a vast animal kingdom, and right next to flowers providing a table for pollinators you might see plants that are harsh and unapologetic as they strive for the sun’s attention.

The weeds you might be thinking of have a reputation similar to energy vampires, seemingly draining valuable energy that we instinctively try to protect and keep as much as we can for ourselves. If you had an amazing childhood toddling around after your grandmother as she worked in her garden, the urge to remove every weed might feel like second nature to you. It is a projection, however.

This projection feeds on the ego’s struggle with being alone. In our minds this selective exclusion creates an environment where all the energy present could be absorbed by what we consider important: trees, bushes, flowers, and ourselves. Survival cannot happen through selfishness.

Let’s be honest. Without our sense of separation, none of us would have made it this far. “Thanks ego, for all the years of not standing in fires or launching ourselves off cliffs thinking we’re invincible. But look, things have gotten a bit out of hand.”

For most of us, we’ve let the ego take over completely and experience being separate from others as our reality. We spend our whole lives trying to figure out how to feel connected from that place.

Love, encouragement, support from others, connect us to that place in ourselves where those things exist. Our connection to the limitless energy of love is always there, regardless of what we think is given to us from outside. If we disconnect from others from anywhere but that place, we will continue to be separate. This can feel like an impossibly big ask of ourselves.

Watching Jeff ignore my calls until he needs me, talk about himself endlessly, always ask me for things, these are all examples of him suffering in his sense of separateness.

With energy, there’s nothing to protect. It is not yours, theirs, or anyone else’s.

Permaculture is based on a simple idea: grow plants only in habitats where their ecological needs can be met. If a plant dies because of a weed, it was never in the right place to begin with. In nature, everything is in balance. Trees need bushes to shelter smaller animals, which help keep the habitat in check, not letting anything dominate. Trees and shrubs need flowers to cover the ground to prevent it from drying out. In return, the trees will provide protective shade from the harsh midday sun in summer. And the weeds?

They signal that a vital nutrient is missing from the soil. Their job is to help restore that nutrient and “force” plants around them to survive their struggle. If the plants succeed, they become stronger, and the weeds eventually retreat. This can happen if the nosy gardener waits long enough and allows nature to restore its balance on its own. In this way, the energy remains where it belongs: in the soil and in every living being, no matter how small.

Something that never runs out. When we experience being separate from others and from love, we leak energy. Physical energy, mental energy. This drain can also manifest as righteousness wearing an anger suit or the frustration of unmet expectations. The obvious culprit is the other. Any other.

Take a 2-year-old throwing a tantrum at the grocery store. They’re doing this because something is challenging their sense of identity. Maybe they missed their nap, or you just put the box of sugar cereal that they swept into the cart back on the shelf. Their anger/sadness/frustration isn’t taking anything from you, it can’t, but it feels exhausting. We can show frustration, pick them up and put them in the cart, tell them to stop crying. The one thing that will determine how it goes is where the action comes from. Is it a place of love? Of embarrassment of what other people think? Of anger or frustration because kids are supposed to listen?

Getting through to them at such a time can only be done if the action comes from love. It’s the same with Jeff and it’s the same with your least favorite politician. Sometimes we need to put people out of our life, but we need to put them out with love. This is important, not put them out with human love, a love that judges and expects. Put them out with an “I see you there stuck in your skin suit and man this time around’s been a doozy. I’m not hanging around for any more of your karma, but I love you so much”.

The first step toward accepting love as a universal energy is intellectual, and it takes courage. It asks you to understand the emotional consequences of being attached to your ego’s desires and to accept that energy does not belong to anyone. It is ours to share. Within our garden, we cannot remove something without facing the consequences. There might be a small being whose entire life depends on the plant we label a weed. If we tip the scales by removing it, we might disturb a balance we never noticed.

If the idea remains vague, try this someday when you feel the pull: help someone without expecting anything in return, and mean it. Do it for the love of life. Do it with an open heart, and accept them as they are, but do not tell them what you are doing. Do not imply that you are above them, because no one is. We are one. Their struggle will resonate with you, and your alignment will inspire others.

Remember the weeds we wanted to pull. We mistook them for pests, even though the garden needed them too. If you remove them, you also remove the vitality that could contribute to further growth. Jeff might not be in a place where he can give with love, but his behavior signals something to you: you still expect something from him.

Allow your heart to break open and understand that there is nothing you can hold on to, only love.

“So come out of your cave, walking on your hands

And see the world hanging upside down

You can understand dependence

When you know the maker’s land”²

References:

^1&2: The Cave - Mumford & Sons

In Christopher Nolan’s Inception¹, each new dream layer takes the characters further down the rabbit hole to plant the idea deep down in the subconscious where Robert Fischer could no longer identify what’s false anymore. Each new layer is precisely constructed to solve a task the previous layer couldn’t handle. Within each layer there is a dreamer who creates the actual layer and a subject who provides the projections from their subconscious.

The concept rotates around the connection between the dreamer and the subject; they both need each other’s presence so they can create the dream together. Once the subject’s subconscious notices the trickery, the dream itself turns against the dreamer to restore balance.

If you’ve ever sat in meetings with your mic and video turned off, the dream layers might feel similar; you might just know them as assumptions that can turn into lies with each passing day, turning green statuses to red.

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Everyone Is Guessing

Spending a decade in tech both as a team member and a master of ceremonies taught me that nobody knows for certain what’s going to happen and when that might be. Everybody guesses based on available information, previous trends and the heat they feel under their feet. The more time you spend around a set of problems a.k.a. product, the more accurate your guesses will become. But they will never reach certainty. The entire flow rests on confident shoulders who themselves don’t know jack.

This, my fellow padawan in self-development, is our first layer within the realm of lies.

When was the last time you heard anyone saying this bluntly: “I don’t know.” Nobody can work with that, and the system needs to find somebody who dares to assume closely enough. Team members either learn quickly to stay on the safe side when asked about their progress, or face consequences that are rarely supportive after recurrence. This is how we reach the second layer: portraying confidence that’s hollow inside.

Beneath the twisted roots of handshakes that happen under pressure, the system slips to the third layer where everyone tells themselves: “This is fine, everything’s under our control.” That slight nausea before your daily status meeting is an excellent indicator of how everything is actually not fine. But you get to keep on rowing.

Everything above is important to understand why you feel desperate to throw away your keyboard after seeing another unplanned meeting reach your inbox for 4PM on Friday. Fellow’s 2024 State of Meetings Report² study concluded that the average employee spends 28% of their 40-hour work week in meetings. Combine this finding with a 91-day diary study³ that was based on participants’ self-reporting to admit how many times they lied during the day. The study was not specifically about workplace meetings, so it cannot tell us how often people lie at work, but its categories are strikingly familiar to anyone who has spent years in project and status meetings. Take it with a grain of salt in this case, but the overall mean was 2 lies per person per day, and I’d bet good money that one of those lies was told on that Friday.

If you think about the findings for a second and imagine how much time we might spend around the first and second layers by design, you might just start to blame people. Please don’t. Yes, it’s their decision after all, but the problem lies in the framework itself.

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The Cost of Pretending

The Achilles heel of the system is how performance is incentivized. Come new year and you’re tasked to hang up the carrot in front of yourself, with the entire business chain’s approval, of course. Now we’re back at the first layer, trying to guess what’s about to happen in a year in an environment where the carrot itself can become obsolete overnight. Would you dare raise your concerns?

You’re not motivated to tell the truth.

You’re motivated to achieve what you thought was possible when bears were in a state of torpor, but since then three employees left and now you must deal with their leftovers too. When asked, still assume with precision and don’t mention that you struggle with the fact that you signed up for an 8-hour workday, not 10.

As we go deeper into each other’s lies, we also descend into our own darkness. We compromise our own boundaries, letting our work creep into our nights and our managers into our decisions. Essentially accepting a new state that will make it impossible to backpedal out of. This is when the dream starts to turn, leading to complete disengagement.

Within Inception all the dreams were meant to be woken up from. We are not designed to live within the realm of lies either. Now as a coach I started to look at lies without being judgmental and see the layers through a different lens: What are people afraid would happen if they spoke honestly?

Behind each title there’s a human being who tries to get ahead in life and they probably have to provide for their family. This tension alone can create an environment where a status report is not as easy as: I don’t know. They will assume.

A Way to Wake Up

When I started to facilitate meetings, I found myself in the uncomfortable situation of asking the holy grail of all questions:

“When are you going to be ready?”

Now it has created a new world of psychological pain. I knew exactly when someone had no clue if delivery would be ready tomorrow or next week. I saw the fear in their eyes as they switched to an alert state when the question reached them. My only problem was that I didn’t ask the question for my own amusement. I brought those answers with me in front of heavier sights. I was incentivized to know what others tried to hide. I needed their honest answer; otherwise, I couldn’t be honest either.

It’s a weird feeling to stand on a rug that’s being pulled from underneath you while you try to stay in balance yourself. To trust them in becoming able to stand up for what they’ve promised but after a while, trust crumbles and isolation creeps in without a clear path forward.

Who are we to say that the world of truths is more real than the realm of lies, if we all shook hands on it?

I always believed that leadership is not to throw people under the bus if the whole motorway is rigged against their ability to deliver. So, I offered them a way out, by discovering what might have been holding them back to come through with their assumption and what has gone wrong along the way. Holding a mirror for them in a way.

The mirror had one purpose only: to question the fabric of reality, so it wouldn’t reach a point of no return. The tools were simple enough: pay close attention and dare to ask uncomfortable questions.

It would be nice to wake up one day to a world where we could all say, “I don’t know when that’s going to be ready” without having to lose sleep over the possible retaliation. The dreamy carrot you hung in front of yourself will lead to the dream turning on everyone if lying becomes second nature.

The recurring tension created fertile land for disengagement for both sides. Team members were afraid of consequences and tried to avoid social interaction, thinking they might live to fight another day. On the other hand, I was sitting with a big fat collective “I don’t know” that was not an accepted way of doing business. I depended on those people’s assumptions, hence they became the subject of my dream that we could build something together, while being honest. But the dream turned on me instead.

Here’s the plan: I keep writing about what’s pulling at me. Things I think might matter for your growth, not just mine. The goal: make the time worth it. Subscribing’s the surest way it reaches you. No chasing it down.

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And if it stops working for you? Tell me. I’d rather know and get sharper than guess. Unsubscribing’s fine too. No grudges.

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

References:

¹: Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2010.

²: Fellow. (2024). The state of meetings report 2024. https://fellow.ai/resources/state-of-meetings-2024

³: Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., & Docan-Morgan, T. (2022). Unpacking

variation in lie prevalence: Prolific liars, bad lie days, or both?

Communication Monographs, 89(3), 307–331.

https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2021.1985153

The Sydney Funnel-web Spider (Atrax robustus) is among the deadliest spiders, according to Britannica¹. They hunt by creating a funnel of web, chill in there patiently then as unsuspecting prey walks across their lair; they lunge at them to inject their venom in an instant.

Left untreated, primates can drop dead in just fifteen minutes.

Instead of a potent Atracotoxin², burnout uses time against you to slowly create a separate reality, leading to self-deconstruction that is not as straightforward as you might think.

What Sarah Saw

On a lovely evening, my wife and I had two of our friends over on our patio. As the sun was setting, we laughed and talked happily, then after a ten-second pause, Sarah – our friend – looked at me saying “I was worried about you.”

My pupils dilated as I looked at her, surprised but already guessing what she was about to say. By then I had recovered from the last relentless stretch of burnout and started to get my mojo back; my presence became light again.

“How so?” I asked.

“It was hard to witness your struggles,” Sarah told me.

That evening I felt strangely peaceful. Long gone were the days of my body feeling completely tense, shallow breaths and wonders about what’s behind the next corner.

From the outside looking in, I was successful. I married the beautiful and witty love of my life and recently became a father. We had a roof over our heads, everyone was healthy, and I received the promotion I worked hard for, becoming a tech program manager for 150 people. Safe to say, I was rolling except for early parenthood sleep deprivation; sleeping haphazardly was tough.

“What struggles do you mean?” I asked.

“Csaba, you looked like a ghost.” Sarah continued. She meant that I lost 10kgs (20lb) of weight in under a year and my figure resembled a praying mantis. My wife reassured me that I was a handsome mantis, but nonetheless scary. I pushed my mind over the threshold, and my body lost interest in keeping up with the pace. They told me, what I already knew, it felt like a torment to have a conversation with me. They warned me months ago, but I refused to listen, I became absent from my own life, and my friends were powerless to stop the decline. But it was never their job to do that.

I knew my spider very well; I escorted him to the darkness and learned to avoid his lunges. Little did I know that our little dance in front of his lair was never mine to win.

The real plot twist if you’re reading as a non-subscriber: none of my other posts have reached you. This one only did by accident. Subscribing closes that gap and you won’t see messages to subscribe.

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The Flame With Nowhere to Land

I used to be a competitor. More than a decade of playing semi-professional basketball hardened me. Pressure became a close friend I still long for sometimes. When I entered the global tech space, I felt right at home. Competition was fierce within and outside of every organization I worked for, from garage companies to global corporations. My heart was pumping with excitement every day for quite a while.

The tear in my reality started when I first said: “this is pointless” without anyone being present. That moment was sinister, because it happened in isolation, and that is a key difference. When the sentence slipped out, I realized I was playing for survival but decided to keep playing. The tough manly image didn’t let me give up; I had to push harder. That decision pulled on the tear to create total emotional detachment and eventually, apathy. I thought I had reached an elevated level of resistance.

Instead, I locked my soul in a shoebox with one tiny hole to breathe through.

By that time, I was fed up on the inside but kept smiling to not show weakness. I wanted to create the life I envisioned, and my position was key in building it. I became attached to the title and benefits that were bundled with it, putting on golden handcuffs willingly.

In the mornings I felt like I had to drag myself out of bed whereas I used to jump out, filled with energy.

There’s no ‘we’ in isolation, and if you’ve read carefully, you can recognize how self-isolation works. On the path to burnout, I believed I was alone.

The only little ray of sunshine I could hold onto came with the wished responsibility. I became the go-to guy for most of the 150 people to solve their problems. By day I fought with pointless bureaucracy, but by night, I started to help people within the organization to make their roadblocks disappear. I was so good at it that it spread like wildfire. I started to solve all those pains that had fallen through the cracks in every meeting, because they were so tedious or complex, often both. The “let’s take this offline” nonsense type.

But those were real people’s real problems. I couldn’t leave them behind, and that dedication took a toll on me.

The spider is waiting for your legs to shake and your guard to lower; then it will strike with precision, and they will.

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Regaining Myself

The trickiest part of burnout is that it starts with the flame of ambition. Ambition in its true form is a form of innovation; it will enable you to move mountains. The trouble starts when that ambition has no fertile ground to find a home. Ambition eventually leads to creation. A dead end steals that creation from your soul, then your soul will start imploding, sooner or later, if left unchecked.

We lie to each other and ourselves about our mental health. It’s still not common to admit that we might be struggling with impossible expectations, and until that happens, we leave behind those who are in dire need, who don’t dare to speak up: “I need help.”

I’m determined to change that. Your ambition and healthy mental state can live together within you. Until my mind allows me to see clearly, I’ll help those who need to cope with pressure, because it’s still no bueno to keep up with life alone.

I consider myself lucky that after I saw my distorted reflection, I dared to ask for help and let go of the idea that I could handle everything alone. I did two things to regain my former self: started to work with a coach and in parallel started to put in real effort to appreciate my achievements because, you guessed it, nobody really did that for me.

I never strived for praise, but after a while the silence became deafening, and it was mostly me who stayed silent. So, I took responsibility for my own life and started to celebrate my milestones, no matter how small. You don’t have to think about grand gestures – 20 minutes of uncontrollable dance sessions to 00s bangers with my family did the trick, to name one example. I also included my own gratitude practice, like a mantra. Saying out loud all the things that I’m grateful for. Small, big, immaterial or earthly riches, don’t matter. The only thing that’s important is that the grind for the next big thing stopped having a grip on me.

If I were you, I wouldn’t want to see what’s on the other side of the burnout. I kept telling myself I’m fine and that I can handle the shadow of bitter isolation. But I also know how stubborn we can get; I was a prime example, and now know that white-knuckling isolation is never pretty.

Please remember, even after the deadlock, there are safe hands to reach out to. But you can prevent most of what I’ve described; you don’t have to toughen up all the time. It’s okay to ask for help; it’s a strength.

Change can only be created through discomfort, such as meeting the spider in the dark that you know is waiting for you.

What would you have to admit if you dared to look the spider in the eyes?

Full disclaimer:

Coaching can and will help you address personal and work-related stress, workload, boundaries, habits, and practical changes. I do not diagnose burnout or treat depression, anxiety disorder, deeply rooted trauma, or other mental or physical health conditions. If you experience persistent hopelessness, severe anxiety, major sleep disruption, difficulty functioning in daily life, or thoughts of harming yourself, please contact a qualified healthcare or mental health professional. Coaching may continue alongside treatment when appropriate.

References:

¹: 9 of the World’s Deadliest Spiders

²: Atratoxin

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your self-development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

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If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.

Have you ever had a day where you were completely buzzing with energy? When you felt like you could work for hours without blinking? I’m having such a day. Life feels awesome! I promise I had my regular caffeine intake of two espressos only. (I used to have four of those five years ago.)

After writing my thoughts for the first collaborative article that will arrive this week, I got lost in the backend of my Substack publication and decided to flip on at least 7 different switches. Here’s what has been enabled for you.

If you read this as a non-subscriber and now your realize that my post don’t reach your inbox, this is the perfect moment to change that by subscribing.

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Technical updates:

Perks:

The first perk is ready for paid subscribers. I’ll continue to think about what I can offer to you in the paid tier, and since I don’t plan to create e-books, this is admittedly tricky. I love me a good challenge though. That helps to keep my mind fresh through innovation, so the perks might change on a dime. I’ll keep you updated.

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Referral program:

Some of you already helped in spreading the word of my work, and I’m grateful to you sincerely. To give back to you and appreciate your efforts, I enabled the referral program. When you use the share button that I’ll retroactively place within each article (36, please give me some time), and the referred person subscribes, your efforts will be counted. When you reach the required number, you should automatically receive an email letting you know of your achievement.

When you use the referral link below or the “Share” button on any post, you’ll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.

Here are the steps:

• 1 month free for 5 referrals

• 3 month free for 10 referrals

• 6 month free for 15 referrals

Refer a friend

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Leaderboard:

Building on the referral program, the leaderboard is already live, although still empty.

This is more interesting if you’re a fellow writer yourself. You can use this as a billboard for your publication, just saying. Your name will be visible on the leaderboard if you wish to share it, potentially sending curious readers your way.

Visit the leaderboard

Survey

Most of the time, our connection is rather one-sided on Substack, and that got me thinking. I don’t really know much about you or your interests. Let’s change that.

If you would like to help me understand what really struck a chord with you, this is your chance. Please take five minutes to take this survey and share what you think is valuable to you when you read my work. None of the questions are mandatory, but I’d appreciate it if you could answer all of them. Thank you for taking the time!

Survey

Please feel invited to share your thoughts privately if that feels more safe comfortable to you, I will gladly read your thoughts.

Thank you for helping get the word out about Capillary Grooves and for being here!

To learn more, check out Substack’s FAQ.

Until the next article arrives to your inbox,

Csaba

16 years ago, I was obsessed with my own personal development, completed tests like my life depended on them to precisely map my entire personality. I knew that I was an INFJ on MBTI and predominantly Green followed closely by Blue on DISC. I became confident in my ability to conquer the world because I had the private manual to myself.

If you’ve ever tried to manage your personal, business, and family life all at once while trying not to break down after hearing the question “how are you?”, you know it’s more nuanced than that.

Last week I made a breakthrough after being stuck for more than 2 years with a book because I had a 15-minute conversation with a chatbot called ‘r.’¹ Ironic, isn’t it?

We want to be witnessed

The conversation started effortlessly. I typed in my name, decided how I wanted it to accompany me, and shared the book I was currently reading. I also shared that I started to read this book two years ago and that I felt stuck with it.

Sharing with r. that I was stuck felt almost weightless. I knew it didn’t care in a way a professional could, and it enabled me to share most of my thoughts easily. When we got to a vulnerable point, I refused to answer for two reasons.

I know that what I share in a conversation like that won’t stay between “us”, having no idea who might be reading my answers. I also felt I had no human witness to share my progress with. I felt alone.

Having this brief conversation enabled me to see that reading a book pales in comparison to what else I have to work on every day. This realization showed me that I simply decided not to read it; out of stubbornness, I didn’t want to change.

I never had issues with motivation or work ethic; I could easily build my entire website alone because I wanted to. Yes, I have an affinity to technology, but I’ve never built a website before; this was my first time. I still had to sit down, learn, and then build it.

If you didn’t decide to change, then you simply won’t. No matter who you work with. That stubbornness is just a cover though, and behind that cover lives shame.

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The vulnerability of sharing

We are funny creatures like that. We can feel deeply ashamed for admitting that we struggle but really want to admit it in a caring and safe partnership. We want to feel seen and heard.

To me this has become a no brainer, to share my honest struggles with someone who has a nervous system, because when you finally decide to take the jump of sharing your most vulnerable side, it’s liberating to feel that you’re not alone anymore.

It’s frightening that a stranger might truly witness you before you become “fixed.” The ironical problem with coaching is that if you decide not to share what feels shameful, you might remain stuck in front of the door.

The excuse usually sounds like “this feels too vulnerable to share, I’m not ready to take this off my chest as it’s part of my identity.” In that case you have already made a decision about what not to change.

It sounds counterintuitive, but our struggle can define us just as well as our accomplishments. I could have a lovely conversation with my bookworm wife about my inability to read one book, for example.

If the idea works for such a minor interest, imagine how deceiving it can be when it comes to personality shifts or career advancement. Change is uncomfortable and I’m sure you get nosebleed from the comfort zone motivational quotes; I won’t give you one.

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Where sky meets the sea

After our conversation I became interested in finishing the book because my curiosity has been woken up by simply having a different perspective and being able to imagine that I was in a similar situation to the protagonist.

But just as with a real coaching session, the chatbot couldn’t finish what it started for me. After I closed the laptop, I had to pick up the book and sit down to read. Sounds simple enough but remember, I failed to do so for more than two years.

This very nature of what coaching can enable was brought up in a conversation with a colleague who I admire, thinking together about the question of what coaching can enable and how to put it concisely. This is what we got:

“Coaching will enable you to prevent days’ worth of pre-sleep overthinking. In an hour.”

But that can only work if you want to change and want to put in the work yourself, to take responsibility. Coaching can only take you to the door; you must step through it.

Are you ready to be seen?

Full disclaimer:

I’m a professional coach myself, but I can’t decide for you what to share or change, I can only take you to the door, you must step through it. I can make you feel safe doing so, however.

Or

Contact Csaba

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your self-development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

Subscribe now

If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.

References:

¹: This was not an ad; I simply became inspired by a fellow coach’s work who built an interesting piece of technology. I care for my fellow builders and coaches who build on their own, after hours when nobody’s watching, and I empathize with the feeling of lack of feedback, because I was there myself, and it can be lonely as hell.

If you have 15 minutes to spare, visit readwithr. and have a conversation about a book you might be reading or you’re currently stuck with then share your honest (and constructive!) feedback with Zoe. Receiving such feedback can reignite motivation like you cannot even imagine.

Thank you, if you do so!

Small everyday frustrations, like loading the dishwasher, often point to a deeper need for appreciation and connection. When Susan and her husband began intentionally thanking each other for the little things, their relationship started to soften, one awkward smile at a time.

It was a regular session when Susan (you sensed it right, it’s not her real name) and I started to talk about her marriage, it being in a slump. She was noticeably more fidgety than usual as she was trying to guide my attention elsewhere. You know the kind, when somebody’s explaining a point without ever touching it, throwing up a smokescreen.

She knew what she wanted to talk about, what her heart’s desire was, but she needed time to arrive safely. To become brave enough to share it with me, even though we had been working with each other for weeks now.

When we arrived at the most everyday task that she kept doing, loading the dishwasher, that is, she stopped briefly.

We arrived at the edge, but the biggest task is always the leap of faith.

The dishwasher sees frustration

Just as with parents who are doing their best to keep the family together during the first three years after a child is born, their marriage got exiled to give space for diaper changes. It is entirely noble and understandable but can slowly sit on a slippery slope of detachment. When everything becomes more important.

Chores are excellent ways to unearth tension. On the one hand, you can channel frustration into hoovering. On the other hand, you can easily become furious that your significant other is a couch potato and didn’t help you clean the floor this time either.

When Susan started to talk about the annoyance of loading the dishwasher differently than her husband, who did his best to balance his work and presence in their life, her voice started to pick up pace and grow louder. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped and started to stare at her desk.

“And you know, he never says thank you.”

Susan had told me before that she admired her husband’s efforts, so I felt contradiction. As the air became chilly, I noticed she looked at me in despair, almost beggingly. She ran out of ideas under the shadows, not knowing what to reach out for.

I told her what I saw in her eyes and asked:

“What would you need to feel better?”

“Appreciation,” she told me.

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The crumbling bridge

The problem with sitting on our slopes is that they rarely slant in the same direction, meaning that once we start sliding, the moon might feel closer than our souls. At this point, we tend to forget that there’s someone else who’s also struggling.

So, we continued.

“How would you feel appreciated?” I asked

“I need to hear him say thank you,” she admitted, almost whispering.

“Have you told him that?”

Susan’s gaze got stuck on the horizon, then she looked down again.

“I can’t remember.”

When Susan realized she was in it too and they had both lost connection to each other, that moment gave the agency back to her. She could decide not to act on the feeling and let her husband come to her first, knowing all too well that he had been hurting alone for a while now. But she didn’t.

Someone had to break the spell and start rebuilding the connection.

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Smiles and appreciation

With the session’s end arriving, I asked Susan what was going to change this week, and she told me they would sit down to talk without distractions, to create a plan of mutual appreciation.

May it sound stupidly simple, but she seemed determined to put theory into practice by carving out time to appreciate the smallest of things, once a day at least, and involve her husband in the practice. You guessed it right, loading the dishwasher, for example.

She left the session motivated.

Two weeks later, when we met again, I asked how the plan was going so far, and I saw joy in her eyes.

“There’s progress!” she told me.

It was the most awkward thing at first to stop once a day, sit down, and look at each other in the eye to say thank you for taking out the trash. But the toughest part was to remember to make an effort to break the cycle of ignorance.

“But we also started to smile more, and that surprised both of us. Well, mostly out of awkwardness,” she continued, but suddenly stopped and looked at me.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“I mean, if it works, what else would you need?” I asked while we both started to smile.

If you need someone who can help you through struggle, please feel encouraged to reach out, it’s better to go together sometimes.

My DMs are also open, always.

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your self-development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

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If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.

The right side of my headphones was slightly off; I could hear the lights switching on in the staircase behind me. It happened before, I thought nothing of it and tried to regain my focus but noticed the familiar sound of our floor squeaking as they tried not to give in under heavy weight.

I peeked over my shoulder and saw my stepfather entering my room having his shoulders closer together than I’ve ever seen them. His eyes were red and misty.

I immediately stood up, stepped in front of him and we hugged each other so firmly only men can. His voice was shaking as he whispered:

He’s gone.

I have no recollection of what exactly happened in the next twenty minutes as we drove to the hospice. When I entered the hallway, it was dim and eerily still. In my confusion walking past my family, I briefly checked on my sister who was being held by our mother, sobbing together.

My footsteps echoed between the tiles as I got closer to my grandmother standing like the only cliff against crushing waves holding her ground firmly, next to the door of his only son’s room. We held each other for a long minute and voiced our condolences, but my focus was ahead of me, already in the room behind her.

Upon entering, I instantly noticed a lit candle and eternal tranquility that enabled me to escape the constraints of time to sit with my father for one last time on this plane.

This all happened a tad over 15 years ago, before my 18th birthday. Looking back, everything happened relatively quickly, his illness prevailing over him within four short months, although he fought like hell.

Living through those months was tough enough to prepare me for the worst-case scenario, consciously. I was there with him almost every day as his body slowly stopped being able to keep up with the fight.

I thought that was enough, not realizing at the time how immature I was emotionally and that I didn’t fully comprehend just yet, how I wouldn’t be able to share my life with him.

More than a decade later, I became a father and called my stepfather to wish him a happy Father’s Day. He returned the wishes and we cherished our connection. It felt lovely yet emotionally incomplete.

You see, I’m fortunate enough that I was raised by two great fathers who are the exact opposite of each other.

My stepfather, being the biggest business mastermind I’ve ever known, turned everything he touched into financial success.

My father, on the other hand, was a true artist, who channeled his emotions into art, allowing the world to connect to his soul as a jazz saxophonist.

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Music

The irony is that I never heard him play; we both thought we’d have time, and I wasn’t into jazz back then. On the flipside, he offered me a glimpse into all the varieties of music he thought was cool.

While we travelled through the country, we kept showing each other music. He was the cassette and CD type, I brought the MP3s. Rest assured that I matured in this area as well, listening to records with my child already on my parents’ record player.

Sometimes he mentioned gently that he thought I could listen to something more complex than hip-hop, but I argued that hip-hop can be just as complex as poetry if not more sometimes. I wasn’t ready to understand why Eddie Vedder was a genius.

The thing I miss the most is that I remember he loved Nirvana, and we couldn’t yet connect on loving them together. When I first heard grunge, I thought it was random noises recorded one after another, with the occasional men’s screams thrown in.

Then in my early 20s I got properly mad and didn’t know how to let go of my feelings and started to look for something unsophisticated to play as background music that would fit my anger. Nirvana, it was. Like have you ever heard Tourette’s (Live at Reading)¹? Yeah, don’t play it if you don’t want to listen to Kurt screaming at the top of his lungs accompanied by distorted guitar and visceral drum play for 1m:52s. I warned you.

The worst part, however, is that my all-time favorite record became Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York album, with the song Lake of Fire staying closest to my heart. Another irony: this is the only album where you can hear this song, since it’s a cover. I miss having this type of cheeky conversation with my father while having this LP playing in the background, damn.

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Conversations

Another part of him I miss dearly is his capacity to listen and hold space without ever being trained to. I’ve heard rumors of men being unable to have properly emotional conversations and I just never understood that for a long while, as we were constantly conversing.

He was my go-to person when something was pulling heavily on my shoulders, and I just couldn’t figure out a way forward. Never in our time together did I see him belittle any of my struggles, or did I feel dismissed. He always found a way to listen and guide me gently.

Business books would categorize him as a Laissez-faire type of leader because he never interfered or demanded anything of me. Was it the best type of fatherhood? Probably not. Did I learn to figure it out on my own? You bet. And he always remained within arm’s reach to provide support when I needed it.

On a gloomy autumn afternoon, I was riding shotgun and told him I was thinking about quitting basketball for good after 8 years of a dry spell, not winning one single medal despite putting in the work.

He told me he got it and that it must be frustrating given the nature of team sports but also asked me this: “What would happen if you tried one last time?”. Listening to him and my intuition, I didn’t quit that autumn.

Next spring I won my first ever gold medal with a team that was not supposed to win. It also meant the one and only gold medal in my high school’s 175‑year history in the men’s league. For my continuous efforts in nurturing the team as its leader, I received the sport’s award at the high school graduation ceremony.

You know already that I sat beside his bed 2 months earlier. Even though he couldn’t witness it, he made it all possible for me with a single question. I believe he was a great coach without ever being one.

Remembrance

My father never wanted me to become anything besides happy and healthy. He never coerced me in any direction.

Instead, he offered me the choice to think with intention and to become empathetic toward others. His presence made it possible for me to become truly myself.

Time does paint a prettier picture, and I’m aware of his flaws; he had many. At the end, his inability to ride the waves of his emotions shattered him; he became too attached.

A man at his best can feel and channel all his emotions without becoming destructive, and I believe these are virtues that we should work toward.

Both being a father and being a professional coach rest on one question: how well can I quiet my ego? I couldn’t have asked myself this question 15 years ago, but the seed of it was planted way before.

I did say my goodbyes when I sat by his bed, but those goodbyes were said by someone who felt alone, feeling afraid of what he was going to do without his father. Little did I know that he had already done the work he was destined to do. Allowing me to grow bigger than him and letting go of his ego to witness his son building on the foundations he laid.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad, your presence was felt and won’t ever be forgotten.

“And now I rub my eyes, for he has returned

Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned

For he still smiles, and he’s still strong

Nothing’s changed but the surrounding bullshit that has grown

And now he’s home, and we’re laughing like we always did

My same old, same old friend”²

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Full disclosure:

Grief might require therapy instead of coaching for those experiencing severe depression, inability to function, or traumatic grief. It’s the coach’s responsibility to respect professional boundaries, not yours. Coaches are not allowed to diagnose; only licensed therapists can, but we can see the signs and are obliged to state clearly that the support of a therapist might be needed. But please do reach out. If you need support, don’t stay alone with grief.

References:

*1: Nirvana - Tourette’s (Live at Reading 1992)

*2: Pearl Jam - Off He Goes

Table of Content (ToC)

1. Why I Write at All?

   1. Why I switched off Pangram

2. Brief Origin Story - Csaba

3. Capillary Grooves

4. My Stance on Coaching

   1. Style of Coaching

5. Topics I’ll Continue to Write About

   1. The Style, Rhythm & Soul

   2. My own self-development

   3. Marriage and continuous reconnection

   4. Parenting I believe in and practice

   5. The love affair of business and burnout

   6. Professional and ethical coaching

6. Paid Options - Toss a Coin to Your Fellow Writer

   1. Paid Tier

   2. Founding Tier - Inside the Grooves

   3. Referral Program

7. What to Read First

   1. A fragment of the mirror

   2. A piece on marriage

   3. Listening, to tie them together

8. Farewell for Now

   1. Contact Csaba

9. References

Why I Write at All?

Brace yourself for impact, this is a long one. So long in fact, that you might see a shortened version via email. If that’s you, please check this article via the app for the full experience. So, let’s hit the nail on the head, shall we?

I’ve always worked internationally and I think it’s one of the best feelings in the world when you experience true connection with someone who’s a small world away from you. Writing is my vehicle to create that connection.

When I don’t listen, I tend to think deeply about the experiences that continue to shape my days. Writing helps me collect my thoughts and organize them better to reflect on them again, sometimes even months later.

But of course I’m not here to have an online journal. I’m here to find those who are in need of emotional support, to help them reconnect to their emotions and to live a fuller, more grounded life.

This publication might be for you if:

• You felt alone even when you were not alone.

• You learned how to suppress emotions but nobody helped you to express them.

• You believe that professionalism and emotional regulation can coexist.

• You want to become successful but not at the cost of your well-being.

• You’re interested in experiments instead of textbooks.

My writing offers you a glimpse into how I think and what I stand behind. It’s more of an expression than a self-help guide as you can’t replace the real work of self-development with reading. You have to put in the work yourself, but I’m here to guide you if you wish to work on your troubles.

Why I switched off Pangram

The more I work with people and am around them the more I realize how divided we are and my heart bleeds for us. I do whatever I can within my close and extended circles to rebuild connections instead of destroying them. I strongly believe the use of Pangram in general is not a step in the right direction, and I don’t support it. This is my opinion, you’re free to disagree with me, but you won’t be able to use it on my publication moving forward. Let me tell you how I write instead in the spirit of transparency, then choose for yourself.

English is my second language. I started to learn it back when I was around four or five years old by the grace of my parents. I remember hating it because I had no clue why I should bother at all. Then when I started to listen to American hip-hop I realized I didn’t understand a thing and that tension created one of the strongest wills within me, to understand what rappers had to say. I became somewhat obsessed and passed language exams one after another - partly because my mother insisted - to achieve more free time in high school. You see, in Hungary if you take language exams at C1 level, you can bypass other major exams and can collect more points toward university application. I passed the IELTS exam with a result of 8 before turning seventeen. All that way before even the idea of AI.

Fast forward a couple of years and I found myself learning economics at university in English in a completely international setting. I completed the entire program without a hiccup, writing my thesis in English too. During this time I started my international tech career that resulted in me speaking and writing more in English than in Hungarian. I’m comfortable saying that I love to communicate in English as it enables a different personality. It also opened up possibilities for me, that are out of reach for a lot of my peers and I could connect with brilliant people across the globe.

All that said, writing articles on a weekly basis is a serious effort and pressure at times. I do face the same writers block that you do and it would be a lie if I said I never thought about outsourcing “content creation“ to a chatbot. It is a low-hanging fruit after all. But I resist. Here’s my entire flow, for integrity:

1. I struggle with a blank page to get a grip on my own ideas and to make sense of them.

2. I write what I can come up with as they are, often re-editing while writing because sometimes certain ideas make sense in different parts of a given article.

3. I give the entire article to Claude and ask it to poke holes in my argument and be brutally honest with me, if something is left dangling, vague, or doesn’t make sense and such. At this stage I also ask it to suggest if I was negligent with idioms or phrases, pointing to ideas that don’t translate well between my languages. This happens more than you might think. After one or two passes I also ask it to check my grammar and punctuation and it highlights any leftover typos too.

4. I then ask it to create a three-sentence-excerpt for my blog, a two-sentence-TL;DR and SEO descriptions based on my titles.

5. If I didn’t plan it beforehand, I also ask it to go over my taxonomy file to find possible internal link opportunities. This is a rabbit hole on its own as I live in Excel.

6. When everything’s ready on the writing side, I dig up my own photographs that I take during the practice of the hobby and edit them with my own hands. Every click made by me, I don’t let algorithms touch my photography. Tried once, it was horrendous.

7. After all this, it’s “merely“ publishing and promotion across my blog/newsletter Substack, IG, Pinterest, Medium (abandoned this). During this step I also write distinct captions and what you can think of.

8. Rinse and repeat, weekly on average. The only thing that’s left is being engaged within the community, again, written by my own hands. Every. Single. Word.

If you speak more than one language, you can imagine this all takes real effort, I do put my sweat and tears into my work. I don’t expect you to give me slack, however. It was my decision to publish in English and I accept the challenge it brings. I love it actually. With this challenge I’ve learned more in one year than in some of my previous positions. I’m dedicated to getting better with every article I write, this is a promise. At the same time I believe in quality as a former Quality Assurance Analyst myself and I think you, as the reader, deserve to read something that’s worthy of your attention. If I can create better quality by asking a tool to criticize my writing before you turn away because the quality is subpar, I’ll sure as hell try at least. But the stories, images, conclusions, struggles, insights, metaphors are all mine. Always were, always will be. But until I can afford a human editor, I have to lean on technology here. I thank you for your understanding.

If you’re an editor or copywriter who’s willing to do some barter cooperation, please reach out.

I did run it to see how it fares with an article of mine that has been created with the exact flow above, here’s the result. The decision is yours, make it human:

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Brief Origin Story - Csaba

I'm Csaba, husband, father, nerd, recovering overachiever, empath, professional coach. I don't know yet what you're going through, I feel it.

I have worked in 13 different industries, always with people, solving their challenges.

Wherever I went, I became a trusted work friend for groups of people. A manager – who didn't even work with me – told me that he rarely saw such a magnetic leader who gathered people around him so effortlessly. At that time, I spent 3 days in the office – monthly.

I'm an advocate of boundaries. If a position felt off, I tried to fix what was wrong every time. When it didn't change for the better, I handed in my resignation. I have one life; I won't spend it miserably.

By training, I'm an economist, having acquired a diploma in business administration and management. I planted my flag for ethical leadership and wrote my first thesis back in 2018 about supporting leaders through professional coaching.

In 2019, I was already back at university learning how to become a professional coach. To put my knowledge to the test, I jumped back into the fastest-growing industry, tech.

Deep in my heart – forever – I'll remain a software tester as I ferociously hate when software is a pain in the butt to use for humans, and I spent 8 years making sure bugs wouldn't reach users through negligence.

In parallel, I became a release manager, scrum master, and program manager (while also testing on the side) to support teams in sustainable and predictive product delivery. At its peak, I supported 150 people across 15 teams spanning 2 product clusters. You can imagine how my calendar looked.

I lived and breathed pressure for 10 years. I burned out at least three times, the last one being a major one that slapped me in the face so hard that I decided to change dramatically.

Supporting my own self-development, I spent years in therapy and receiving coaching myself, because I believe physical capabilities are only as strong as the mental foundation beneath them.
The connection is not far-fetched – I was a semi-professional basketball player through elementary school, high school, and university.

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Capillary Grooves

When I thought of launching a coaching business, I knew I wouldn’t want to redesign everything once I got off the ground, so I decided against using my family name as the brand name.

I’m also ambitious and don’t plan to travel alone for long. Once I've found my footing, the plan is to invite other coaches who just want to help people actually reach those people without the burden of running a full-blown business. The more the merrier.

Capillary stands for the ongoing and distributed nourishment that resonates with how nature grows, slowly but confidently, without dramatic intervention. Everything’s connected and the circle of life never stops.

Grooves stands for the deep cuts we might experience through our lives but choose to accept and eventually grow around. It represents all the hardworking souls who might feel alone even when they are not, and it speaks to my motivation to lend them a helping hand and calm presence. And a nod to music that shaped who I am today.

We should try our best not to leave anyone behind and give everyone a chance to become their truest self, whatever that might mean for them. But it’s them who have to figure that out, my practice is merely a tool on this journey.

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My Stance on Coaching

You feel it and I feel it with you, there’s a disturbance in the force². The coaching industry turned itself inside out. We can argue whose fault it was, but let’s get inspired and innovate instead, let’s find what’s really behind the curtain of professional coaching.

I fully believe in the power of it, however. My own mental health, marriage, emotional availability as a father, and general success in my career are all better for it. But I also know where its usefulness ends.

Style of Coaching

I follow a humanistic style of coaching that accepts everyone as the true expert of their life while also appreciating the struggle of everyday personal and business life.

This approach makes no distinction between life coaching, business coaching, executive coaching, or any other label you might put on it. Behind every challenge there’s a person and their soul that feels lost, or even hurt. My work always remains with the person and their soul.

I also believe that we tend to limit our possibilities by thinking inside boxes or comfort zones. That’s the reason I don’t rely on arbitrary frameworks and N-step programs to put clients in another box.

Everything above wouldn’t be authentic if you couldn’t have a glimpse into my personality. That’s why I write through my experiences to give you a chance to meet me and my thinking before starting to work together.

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Topics I’ll Continue to Write About

I won’t add to all the writing that’s about frameworks and quick wins. I also try my best so you don’t feel ashamed of whatever choices you’ve made so far. Instead, I offer you an invitation to see how I see the world as a whole.

The Style, Rhythm & Soul

Sometimes serious, usually quirky, but always landing somewhere that feels authentic. I've drawn parallels from pop culture before (movies mainly) or referenced music that I love, such as lyrics from hip-hop. Great storytellers also inspire me so I try to mimic them sometimes.

I’ll also try to keep my writing on the positive side (without forcing it) because I think ranting all the time is exactly like dropping a cat that has buttered bread attached to its back, it will never land.

I’ll aim to send articles weekly that might require you to sit still for 5 minutes, sometimes less. I might become irresistibly inspired to publish one or two more, or might take a mental health break. Besides, life can also be unpredictable, so let’s stay flexible.

Stories draw from my experience, my observations and the soul behind it is constantly a work in progress, so strap in, the ride might be bumpy sometimes. I’ll give you no advice, I’m not a guru, but someone who’s doing self-work alongside you.

My own self-development

Just in the past six months, I spent more than 60 hours on my own self-development through supervision (coaching and therapy), because working on myself is what ethical coaching practice requires.

Nobody is ever “complete“ and I stand behind that, so I’ll keep on working on myself, providing new insights regularly. These new insights will be infused into my writing and reflections, sometimes deserving standalone pieces.

Marriage and continuous reconnection

My wife and I have been happily married for more than five years now and we plan to keep it that way, but it’s not always easy, we are both stubborn as hell and sometimes we let our egos get in the way. So, we both put in the effort to grow together.

Sometimes I reflect on when it’s not so dreamy to be married, always with her permission and only after we’ve buried the hatchet. Don't expect me to air our dirty laundry, but rather ideas on how we reconnected and kept it together, sharing the effort as equally as we could.

Parenting I believe in and practice

This will be the trickiest of all as we have a strict privacy policy when it comes to our child, meaning we’ll never share personal information about them until they come of age to decide for themselves, including photos, name and even gender.

Yes, it’s a struggle sometimes, but this is what we believe in.

Please don’t take offense at this if you’ve decided otherwise. You do you, and we’ll stay in our lane. I respect your decision and please respect ours.

On a different note, I do work with parents as well and I think it's important to show that I feel for them because I’m a father myself, with all the joy and responsibilities that come with it. So I might share what I learn along the way.

That will mainly include my goal to make myself gradually “redundant“ and let them learn at their own pace how to become physically, emotionally and intellectually independent. I won’t be here forever, you know. They have to figure things out on their own eventually. But I share whatever I know with them until that moment comes.

The love affair of business and burnout

Do you believe in astrology? I didn’t much, but I’m an Aries if this is important to you, which also translates into a drive in me like no other in my circle. If I set my mind to something I can run through proverbial walls. I’m wired like that and use it to achieve my dreams.

On some rare occasions it backfired though, and I’ve faced burnout from the inside at least three times already, but I always found my way back to my calmer, truer self — thankfully. With the help of coaches and therapists.

This is important because I’ve always worked in competitive markets that required me to stay hungry and to push through challenges. I also fell deeply in love with building my own business, so when someone talks to me about business struggles, I know the feeling from the inside. Did I mention I’m a parent? Yeah, burnout can find you beside the crib as well.

I can help you to prevent the next breakdown.

Professional and ethical coaching

Maybe closest to my heart. Trust me, my stomach clenches harder than yours when an advisor/salesman/website builder disguises themselves as a “coach“ to sell you their program or whatever. I get it though, the market has shifted in that direction and their idea has been validated already.

I believe professional coaching is different in so many ways.

So instead of talking about them, I’ll focus on what I think is ethical and characterizes true-to-the-bone coaching. It's a profession that sits between therapy and consultancy, guided by ethics and grounded in boundaries. Fear not, it won’t be this dry.

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Paid Options - Toss a Coin to Your Fellow Writer³

My goal with this publication is to gently challenge your thinking through my own self-reflections.

I believe in energy flowing both ways. To make that possible, I've turned on the paid tier as an option. You can opt in or out whenever you feel like it, trust me, I’ll try not to lose sleep over it. It’s okay for you to read for free.

Turning on paid will remain an option since I don’t believe in (or own) frameworks in coaching, so there is no IP to be shared on this publication besides my photographs.

Please don’t steal my photographs, thank you. 🩶

Paid Tier

• Paid subscribers will receive Supporters’ Articles at the beginning of every new month, that will reflect on my previous month.

• Paid supporters will receive a free coaching session to tackle one short trouble they might be facing currently
  (30 minute intro + 60 minute coaching)

• Paid subscribers also unlock the perk of having a continuous 20% discount on my hourly rate for coaching for anyone close to them, for the entire coaching process

Founding Tier - Inside the Grooves

• Founding members will receive everything from the free and paid tiers, but receive a full complimentary coaching process of three separate sessions instead of just one session
  (30 minute intro + 3x60 minute coaching)

I also don’t think it’d be fair to paywall articles here when I have a fully open blog⁴ (and newsletter) that I also mirror here.

That’s it and I trust your decision, please do whatever your heart says.

Referral Program:

If you think my publication could provide value to somebody you care about, you’re invited to share it with them using the share button within the articles.

I’d appreciate your efforts in sharing with the world by granting you free access to the paid tier based on the number of referrals:

• 1 month free for 5 referrals

• 3 month free for 10 referrals

• 6 month free for 15 referrals

If you’re a fellow writer yourself, you could use this for advertisement for your own publication because you’ll appear on my site under the leaderboard menu. Once you’ve reached a referral milestone, you’ll receive an email with the reward. If you are a paid subscriber already, your complimentary subscription will be applied at the end of your current billing period.

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What to Read First

A fragment of the mirror

A piece on marriage

Listening, to tie them together

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Farewell for Now

Thank you for reading through this guide to Capillary Grooves publication! 🙏

I’ll periodically revisit this page to keep it fresh, don’t get too attached to anything here.

Whether you choose to subscribe, follow, or leave me in the dust, I respect your decision. I think I’ll be here for a while, and you should follow your heart’s calling, to feel what’s right for you.

Contact Csaba

If you feel you’ve read enough self-help and now it’s time to dig into understanding what patterns and triggers block you from becoming your true self, my DMs are always open. Send me a message and we can figure out how to move forward.

Alternatively, there’s an entire booking system connected right to my calendar if you’d like to progress faster. You can book a free intro where we will have a chance to meet each other where you’re at currently and to start working, one step at a time. But if you prefer old-school like a form or email, you’ll find them below as well.

Every other contact option

Until we meet again,

Csaba

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I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your self-development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

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If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.

References

¹: Link to a restack that inspired this idea.

²: Link to YouTube from Star Wars, what else my fellow padawan in self-development.

³: Link to Spotify as further proof of me being a nerd.

⁴: Link to the blog on Capillary Grooves website.

Every relationship must end — and how you close it reveals as much about your values as how you began it. This is the story of how I said farewell to my second coaching client, and why graceful endings are the coach’s last act of care.

Memento mori means ‘remember you must die’.

Everything you start on this earth must come to an end, including every relationship you’re in right now. No cheating.

We find it uncomfortable to end relationships ourselves; it’s easier to be dumped than to dump someone. Just remember the last time you had to say no. But to do it gracefully? Unimaginable to many.

This is not a story of a love affair of mine, but a reflection on how I said farewell to my second ever client – let’s call him Tim – this week and why it’s incredibly important for independent growth. The reflection will still ring true for any other relationship, and I hope you’ll see why.

Professional coaches have several ethical responsibilities; graceful closure is one of them. Within every story, topic, and person there is a vulnerable soul we receive permission to work with, and we’re obliged to honor that trust.

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A Lack of Confidence Behind the Ask for Clarity

It was the 2nd of January, a perfectly cozy morning to sit in my office chair waiting for Tim to dial in from Thailand. As with most clients, his heart’s desire was to gain clarity on his project and what his next steps should be to launch a successful workshop in a foreign country. Quite a challenge, I immediately felt the pressure he put on himself.

As Tim started talking, his energy radiated through the monitor as I watched him speak. He was excited to share all his ideas, but the subtle hesitation was a telltale sign of dissonance.

Behind clarity lurked the lack of confidence which was understandable since this was his first time launching something so ambitious.

I asked what confidence meant to him, and Tim described his perfectionism - wanting to provide the best possible experience and wanting to put emphasis on representation, so quality could be unmistakable.

The change in focus on confidence instead of clarity made all the difference because I know nothing about how to make workshops successful in the Far East, and I don’t plan to become an expert in this field either. But I’m quite comfortable in moments when someone might feel a lack of confidence.

Talking about clarity in the beginning became permission to start our relationship, to dare to ask for help, which is a huge step. From that point onward, my job shifted to enabling Tim to reconnect to his own authority while continuously protecting his dignity.

I write this hoping you might feel less alone in your own life. If it accomplished that for you, consider sending it to someone you love. Thank you!

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Free Will to Go Together

If you ever catch yourself wondering whether a coach is for real or not, always remember the word authority and that it lies with you at all times.

Right; but what does that mean?

Tim and I formed a relationship that was open-ended from day one, and we were empowered to say we didn’t want to work with each other whenever we saw fit. To me, this is important because I believe that all relationships must be optional. Nobody should force anything on anyone; this is especially true in professional coaching that works with people when they’re in one of the most vulnerable states, week in, week out.

Tim and I decided together to keep working because we found a comfortable pace as we looked at small pieces from his childhood and previous professions to see how his past molded his confidence carried into his present, that made his future blurry.

To his surprise, it was there all along; he just lost the connection for a while.

It’s Your Job to Become Confident

Last week, around the session’s midpoint, Tim told me:

“I feel like I’m on the mountain and I see how far I’ve traveled already and see the summit is close. I know how to reach it.”

I’ve never heard him so calmly confident while talking about what he needs to do. He didn’t need me anymore but didn’t fully realize that yet. My soul was smiling at him, and I shared what I felt. He started smiling, and we sat there for what felt like a minute in silence, feeling what that meant.

As the session ended, I told him that I thought my job here was done — he had all the power he needed to reach the summit without me — but I asked him how he felt because I saw a blend of surprise and sorrow in his eyes.

Tim told me that the recognition felt good, he indeed felt the most confident he’d felt in a while but at the same time he had grown used to our sessions and couldn’t quite imagine them ending.

When we started our last session this week, I asked Tim how he imagined the session would go, and he told me that he anticipated a casual, friendly chat.

Instead, he was surprised to find that all my questions circled around his growth within the last five months, making sure he really gave himself credit for the incredible work he put into his self-development.

When we started to work together, he rarely connected to his deeper self on an emotional level to notice and appreciate all the strength he already had. His presence had always been energetic; it was natural for him to take that power for granted.

We spent the entire hour appreciating his efforts and honoring our relationship. Its predictable stability allowed him to trust the process, me, and his own progression more with each passing session, enabling him to share even vulnerable thoughts.

Even though we weren’t consciously aware that our process would come to an end, when that moment finally arrived, we were ready.

When I asked how this session was compared to the “friendly chat” he anticipated, Tim told me:

“Thank you for making this closure a soft landing for me.”

If you need someone who can help you through struggle, please feel encouraged to reach out, it’s better to go together sometimes.

My DMs are also open, always.

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your self-development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

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If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.

A stranger burned by bad coaching kept me up until sunrise, turning the tables, and forced me to face a mirror I’d been avoiding myself. A late-night confrontation, an accidental self-hug, and Fleetwood Mac revealed why honest self-reflection is the center of it all.

Two weeks ago, I had a provocative conversation until the sun came up where I wasn’t the one asking questions. After a day of cycling, I found myself in a cottage where I only knew my best friend and joined his friends’ table as they opened the summer season.

The density of intellect was intimidating: two lawyers, two neurologists, two entrepreneurs and the two of us, street kids compared to them, a financial analyst and a professional coach. I’m sure only terrible jokes start with an opening like this.

After a couple of rounds of table-top games, Emma — let’s call her that — asked what I did for a living.

I answered and thoughts froze midair; Emma put down her glass, leaning in to confirm: are you seriously a coach? I nodded, not knowing how my next two hours would unfold. One of the guys even brought some popcorn.

Cycling home, the morning breeze amplified my feeling of emptiness. I couldn’t assure Emma I’m not one of those impostors who left her burned and made her question the ethics of coaching. Rightfully, might I add.

I feel what made Emma doubtful. The noise that’s fighting for attention is maddening. You see the word coaching, only for your eyes to start twitching.

Days later, Landslide by Fleetwood Mac started to play in the car, inviting me to look into a mirror, and my self-image collapsed as I reimagined how Emma put me on the slope myself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t share my new idea with Emma:

“And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills

Till the landslide brought me down.”

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Betwixt Self-Knowledge States

Throughout my brief time on this spinning rock, I encountered five states when it came to self-development, Emma probably sitting between 2 and 3:

1. This is all witchcraft, “Begone, before somebody drops a house on you too.”

2. Self-development won’t work for me; I can’t imagine how this works

3. Trekking is exhausting, so is staying the same

4. Yeeeeah, now I have a thirst to connect to the source itself

5. I’m enlightened already, just waiting for my calling to enter Nirvana

Of course, I jest, there are many more and I mean no offense, I hope you can crack a smile. Otherwise, your reaction might have just revealed a trigger of yours, to you. I don’t know, I’m living in the future already.

What the hell?! - Thank you for asking!

To move between states, a powerful idea comes to your aid: when you look into a self-reflective mirror, you should be able to observe what might be triggering you and appreciate what makes you whole at the same time, a person worthy of being loved for being who you are. Those two coexist as long as the sun rises in the east; there’s no removal.

Good coaching should notice an unusual pattern mid-sentence such as a brief self-hug that revealed an underlying burden for my client. The realization made us both pause to recognize the hidden emotional burden they were carrying, unknowingly, released by tears.

When we noticed and named the self-hug, it offered us a brief chance to break down defenses they didn’t realize existed. It felt vulnerable and caught my client off guard to induce a slight emotional overwhelm.

That was the moment of truth when we sat silently for a minute to decide if we dared to truly look in the mirror. They thought they knew themselves and needed a moment to accept that, maybe, they didn’t. On that night with Emma, we focused on my past and credentials instead of this exact tender moment.

“Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?”

There’s one trick: if you’re not enlightened, you can’t hold the mirror for yourself. To remain objective takes so much effort, even professionals don’t rely on themselves either. They know that their mind will deceive them and won’t let them spot triggers in the mirror; they dare to ask for help too.

If something here has meant something to you, the best way to say so is passing it along to someone who might need it too. Thank you!

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Your Mind Playing Tricks on You

It’s not a jerk, it’s your biggest ally, the sole reason you’re alive. The reason it deceives you is for your own good. What your heart couldn’t handle, your mind buried to keep you going.

If you have ever seen a rug that couldn’t hold more dirt underneath, you can imagine why it’s so exhausting to keep on reacting to triggers the same way over and over again. You have to start cleaning eventually.

If your visceral reaction is that “triggers are the devil’s work”, let me offer you a hug. They’re simply proof that you’ve lived, and whoever lives, experiences. Some of those experiences cut deeper than what we can calmly handle, and that’s okay.

But Csaba, it’s not okay, I’ve had enough, please end this misery! I read books, follow gurus on social, and open your newsletter like it’s my job. When does relief come?!

Until you look honestly into the mirror, it won’t.

Do You Accept Your Reflection?

Here’s the bad news: triggers won’t get better with time and can even get calcified like snappy hags under the sun telling you to beat it because this is how they live life now. I agree it’s their business, but I’d rather be a smiling old dude who can still be in awe of how beautiful life can be, even after 90 years.

“Well I’ve been afraid of changin’

‘Cuase I’ve built my life around you”

And I know, facing ourselves can be frightening and sometimes shameful when we realize how long we’ve carried a hidden self-image. Trust me, it’s never too early or too late to lighten that luggage.

Here’s the neutral news: everyone struggles to accept what they face in the mirror, and there’s no generic remedy or fast lane toward acceptance, only the gradual practice of self-empathy, slowly accepting what is good enough.

It can also happen that finally seeing clearly what was hidden in the shadows might start this proverbial landslide leaving you feeling more overwhelmed because of how deep the rabbit hole might go, and you know, that’s okay. At least now you know what the deal is.

Great, now I feel like shit; any good news?

You bet, two actually!

For one, even though Emma left that table with her burns intact, you sat with the discomfort of what it could look like to observe yourself through the mirror. You don’t have to trust me, trust what feelings surfaced while you were reading.

Coaching offers you a chance to dare to look in the mirror and maybe start a landslide. Good coaching also promises to stay next to you while you try to stay strong against elemental forces and helps you let go of emotional burdens, surrendering safely to the slide.

On the other hand, if you recognized yourself somewhere in these lines, I’m here to help you not to face alone what might frighten your family, trained not to flinch when we tread knee-deep in the mud.

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

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Isolation is deceptively gradual: it quietly becomes the new normal before you realize it has been slowly eroding your sense of self and connection to others. The antidote is honest conversations with someone who listens.

I have a confession to make: I’m not a particularly disciplined reader, not when it comes to books. When a new year starts, I always make a promise to read just one more book than last year, which should be manageable as I hover around three/year. My excuse? I read enough already, especially since I started to read on Substack, not to mention that my previous roles demanded that I read more than I wrote.

There was a time when it was different though, when I left my parents’ house to study at university, living completely alone.

Stephen King became my go-to writer, and the first book of choice was The Shining (what else). Little did I know when I pulled it from the bookshelf that it was about extreme isolation that led to a complete psychological breakdown.

Strangely, it felt comforting to read what Jack was going through as I felt lonely too when I was left completely alone in a new city, to learn how to take care of myself on my own and also motivate myself to attend courses. Rest assured I didn’t start to have conversations with ghosts though, nor did I start to swing my axe like a maniac.

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Gradual Isolation

In the beginning, you barely notice it, if you’re an upbeat person alone, like the introvert I am. You might even feel recharged because there’s no social interaction to drain you. Listening to your own jam as loud as neighbors tolerate it. Cooking and eating whenever you like, it’s only you on the date, no one’s ever late.

But when the honeymoon phase ends after a few weeks, you might start to notice how heavy silence feels. After you turn down the background noise to think for a second or go to sleep, the absence of distraction covers the space like snow does in the garden during snowfalls.

The best perk of not having anyone around becomes a curse at the same time. When you crave the smallest of human gestures such as eye contact or a smile, there’s nobody to provide and maybe more importantly to receive them. We are natural creatures and yes, receiving is awesome, but it can only fulfill your soul so much.

What’s the point if you can’t make someone else smile?

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Disconnection Becoming Everyday

Loneliness proceeds like rivers do, steadily, indifferent to how stone tries to stand against it. It has time and the upper hand of being an immovable force of nature.

It slowly erodes the surface day-by-day until there’s nothing left to shave off. The process creates a loop that works against itself: the surface breaks; tiny particles say goodbye, and the barrier becomes thinner by the minute. Even if you felt confident being alone in the beginning, you’d start to lose reassurance because the sense of relativity stops working.

You become your own reference.

If you don’t break the cycle, it can easily spiral into a reduced trust in yourself and in others in general by staying withdrawn where your thoughts can debate with each other. With a new morning, the loop continues and arrives at complete emotional detachment. *Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010).

Even though my example revolves around living physically alone, I think it can be observed in relationships when two partners find themselves on different sides of the same coin without being able to reconnect and listen to each other.

A self-employed business owner can feel similarly, or a newly appointed manager with an increased amount of responsibility left alone without professional support. The list is pretty much endless as loneliness is universal and is one of the most devious poisons.

On another quiet evening, I decided to take ownership of the change; I didn’t want solitude to keep winning.

Emotional Reconnection

The solution arrived from an unexpected place. Months ago, before leaving for university, I met a girl in a bar, and despite being totally lame in starting conversations, she had a brief one with me. It quickly turned out that she’d attended the same high school and graduated in the same year. In the following months, I think we had no meaningful conversations whatsoever.

Jack Torrance didn’t have anyone to break the loop; we found out that we had a real chance to make each other smile again.

After graduation, however, she went to London to work for a year. There was half a continent between us, yet she felt similar to me. We started to have weekly conversations over Skype as a place of solitude for both of us to later become the foundation of our friendship. She’s the sole reason I met my wife, by the way.

During those conversations, we both felt emotionally safe and held. We found someone who listened to us despite being on the other side of the screen. It was human when we needed it the most, fitting in new communities. As we broke the loop together, we became emotionally confident, and she found her people and reconnected with reality offline, and so did I.

I think it’s safe to say we saved each other in a way.

We’ve barely talked about that time since – life carried us forward, we have other topics sitting on our plates, but I have a feeling the connection we built and how we built it inspired both of us. She later became a psychologist, and I became a professional coach for similar reasons.

Not to leave anyone behind who might feel lonely.

If you recognize yourself within these lines, please know, you’re not entirely alone. I’d suggest looking at what might be missing from your everyday life. The loop I described became natural to me, which made it scary when I finally realized what was wrong. Those Skype conversations helped us by creating space for us to be heard even though we weren’t sitting in the same room. This is what I do for a living now, to help others find their way back to connection.

Reference:

*Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Loneliness matters: A theoretical and empirical review of consequences and mechanisms. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 40(2), 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-010-9210-8

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

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New parenthood quietly erodes the connection between partners, hiding behind exhaustion and care. A simple deck of cards and the discipline to sit down together gave two sleep-deprived parents permission to feel lost — and find each other again.

Becoming a parent is not for the fainthearted. A mentor of ours told us that “there’s no manual when you bring home a child” and that’s on top of protecting your marriage. We quickly realized, surprisingly, that keeping a newborn alive and relatively happy is the easier part. Let me give you a peek behind the curtain, what was the most challenging to us.

In the early months (the fourth trimester) mother and child are basically one entity; this is how a newborn survives the arrival to our harsh reality. Mothers are real life superheroes, because they are wired to accommodate the needs of their infant and send their own needs to the sidelines. But this naturally evolves into a 24/7 shift where clocking out seems like luxury.

We were lucky enough that I could go on a 7-week-long paternity leave all at once, covering double the length of the fourth trimester by being home to support their wellbeing. Cooking, cleaning, and logistics.

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Facing Monotony

What I observed about us is that the tasks themselves were not that challenging, they were everyday tasks after all. The challenge was how monotonous they were, and that’s noticeable from a guy who used to be a software tester running day-long regressions every other week. I cope with monotony pretty well, I’d say.

Underneath the monotony lurked disconnection, however, and it’s devious because it disguises itself as care. You as a parent do care about the wellbeing of a newborn but somewhere along those sleepless nights you forget to connect to each other, running on reserve batteries for weeks, and deep conversations seem like an afterthought that would require too much energy.

When we noticed after a few weeks that we forgot to talk to each other, we felt devastated. It was not like us to just become absent from each other’s lives. Seemingly we weren’t; we were physically close to each other every day but became slowly distant emotionally.

Luckily for us, we established a marriage that keeps us accountable for showing up for each other by working together. My wife is the ‘noticer’ and vocal one as her ethics are straight as an arrow, as they say, and she’s also brave enough to say out loud what’s on her mind.

I, on the other hand, as a professional coach, am the reliable shoulder that can endure the weight of a small world on my shoulders, ours in this case. I just need a prompt to do so sometimes, as I was also heavily sleep deprived at the time.

So, she noticed and told me we have a problem and I agreed to start looking for a solution. I found the cards on the bookshelf — ones we had purchased months ago — waiting for us.

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The Deck of Solutions

The cards you see above are thematic questions targeting parents, especially in the early days of having a newborn, nothing magical on the surface. They are open-ended, and the “game” is to sit down, pull up a card and say the question out loud, taking turns answering the questions as honestly as you can.

The only trick is you have to remember to sit down. To make sure we won’t forget, we put the cards in the nursery where we had our dinners together, all of us, every evening. Usually, I was the one finishing my meal first – our newborn was last – so I started to ask the questions.

At first, it felt uncomfortable as we used to have unguided free-flowing conversations every Thursday at our dinner table talking about anything that popped into our minds. Not going to lie, the questions felt forced at times, making us skip some of them. But on the other hand, when a question hit a nerve, we were both feeling things we just hadn’t had the chance to intentionally talk about yet. We frequently ended up sobbing – trying not to wake up our peacefully sleeping bundle of joy.

Presence Helps Reconnections

During those talks we didn’t tell each other what to do or how to do it, we learned to trust each other entirely. We offered each other space to share honestly what felt emotionally heavy and helped ourselves carry those weights by lending our focused attention to each other.

Behind the tears we also saw lighthearted smiles of recognition of how awesome parenthood is as it brought out the best of both of us. It warmed our hearts to see each other in our new roles that still felt like oversized coats but let us become tender with each other in a way we couldn’t have experienced otherwise.

I think we didn’t admit it, but we looked for the missing manual between those cards, like hidden wisdom that would magically solve our problems. They offered no such relief. Instead, they gave us permission to feel the disconnect between us and gently build a new bridge between two eternally exhausted souls.

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

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Shame acts as a powerful barrier to self-development, often rooted in early experiences of criticism that become an internalized voice telling us we’re not enough. Opening up about it in a safe, non-judgmental space — however uncomfortable — is the first step toward relief.

In Ladders, Mac Miller raps about resilience and perseverance through obstacles, especially on the journey of life, supported by continuous self-development. There’s a line capturing discomfort

Hinting at the moment when you eventually have to face yourself and what your mind tried to hide from you throughout the years, usually out of shame.

No matter how many hours we put into self-development, shame stays with us. It always lingers around the pivotal moment before we admit something to our supporter – and ourselves! - acting as a barrier before a breakthrough that we must step over to eventually feel relief.

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Shame can become so towering above us, that it might prevent us from even starting our personal development journeys and making us doubt if the journey is even worth it. Just because of how uncomfortable it feels.

Reacting to shame with avoidance is completely natural and common, usually stemming from a moment (or unfortunately multiple moments) when our past self felt belittled or ashamed for who we were at that moment. * Macdonald, J., & Morley, I. (2001).

During a recent session a client mentioned that she heard the voice of her father, telling her that her ideas were worthless, and she was never going to “make it” in any part of her life. It was devastating to hear at that moment, so we can only imagine how destructive it was to her younger self.

Feeling deeply ashamed, she decided to prove her worth by thinking about ways to solve troubles before her. She spent so much time thinking that it turned into procrastination as her father’s voice kept telling her, she wasn’t going to solve it, that she’s not enough. No reassurance either, as procrastination blocked action almost entirely.

She couldn’t tell me what happened right away, as it was hidden for so long; she learned how to avoid this painful topic entirely. Shame was pulling on both of her shoulders like boulders, one side making her remember how she was seemingly not enough and the other side to say this out loud, in front of a “stranger”.

When I asked her what made her share anyway, she told me that once she realized she was holding onto it for too long, she felt exhausted and needed relief; and as we were in a non-judgmental space, she felt vulnerable but safe. So, she decided to try opening up, just this once.

As you can imagine the immediate moment after was not joyous, it was heavy with emotions, but she cracked a faint smile anyway, as she started to feel pride as well.

She reconnected to her being proud of herself for enduring all these years despite the lack of emotional support and her being brave enough to open up about a feeling that had been dragging her down, not knowing how to deal with it.

If an idea of this stayed with you, do what you'd do with a good book, hand it to someone. It might make them think too. Thank you!

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Reference:

*Macdonald, J., & Morley, I. (2001). Shame and non-disclosure: A study of the emotional isolation of people referred for psychotherapy. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 74, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1348/000711201160731

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

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Running your own business means you're the last person anyone holds accountable for rest and this is how burnout quietly builds. If you don't learn to lead yourself before you hit a wall, life will do it for you.

Being your own boss is a breath of fresh air. There’s no micromanager watching over your shoulder about how quickly you respond via Slack. There’re no pointlessly overrun meetings to choose between font families to put on a company template deck.

It’s only you and the endless possibilities of what to do next. Some of them make you jump out of bed; others make you question your existence. Welcome to showbiz.

Both need your input, and you’re the one calling the shots, all of them - every day.

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One Man Show

Working for a paycheck, it was easier to close the laptop. Nobody noticed when you clocked out 10 minutes earlier to avoid rush hour traffic. Now you’re still working at night because you got inspired by a comment and have the perfect solution to that problem. It just needs to be put in front of the right people.

So, you hop online to generate reach for your copy that you finished after a sales call that started right after the call with your client you fought hard for. There’s progress though; yesterday you ate your lunch at the dinner table while it was still warm.

When friends ask why you’re pushing so hard you answer: “I’m the only one who can do it.”

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Negligence

You’re right and not complaining; you willingly signed up for this ride and have the numbers already backing you up. Your mind and body scream to hit the brakes, and you’re almost ready to listen but keep whispering ”just one more week.”

After you switch off the lights to get your well-deserved shuteye, your mind just doesn’t want to follow. It got hung up on the last offer you sent, whether you framed the solution clearly enough. “Should I have included how adaptable I am?”

Instead of falling asleep in five, now it takes thirty and a special military-grade sleep method only to wake up exhausted.

Doubt is gentle and won’t kick in the door. As you put in 120%, it steps to the side, but when your mind tries to come down, it steps on stage with that faint smile you started to despise.

You Are In Charge

Last Monday was the third in line when you should’ve started to look out for yourself, and it’s Friday already. Every one of your deliveries gets shipped before the deadline; you’re good with outward accountability.

You misinterpreted “Leaders Eat Last”; it didn’t mean that they didn’t eat. Just as copy won’t write itself, there’s no one else to force you to sit in a sauna for 15 minutes without your phone for once. You also heard “The Body Keeps the Score” and started to wonder what that might mean.

Let me say it to you after three burnouts: it’s no bueno. Coffee won’t give your energy back, and your friend will try to have conversation with a hollow shell where once infectious joy lived, and they will keep wondering how to warn you.

I can’t emphasize this enough. If you don’t step up for yourself, there’s nobody else to do it for you. You will learn self-leadership the gradual or the sudden way, but you won’t be in the driver’s seat when it arrives unannounced.

Everyone pushes to the limit and that’s okay. You don’t have to face burnout alone on the other side to know how it truly feels.

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your personal development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

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We lose arguments because we lose connection with each other. We never learned to listen while hurting. Listening with empathy helped us and my my clients to reconnect.

Last week was the fifth anniversary of our marriage. We laughed about how childish we were five years ago (let alone ten, when our relationship started, sheesh), not knowing what marriage was going to look like. We sat down together to reflect on how we arrived at our present tense.

You see, marriage is easy. It’s natural when both of you are laughing together and some people will despise you for how easy it might seem.

On the flipside, it’s only the two of you who know how tough it is to grow and stay together sometimes. Because it’s not always sunny in California.

I won’t give you advice on marriage, but I share what might be blocking you from listening better. This is what I swear by personally and professionally. This is what kept our marriage together when it was brutal, and what allows me to make my clients feel heard even with the Atlantic Ocean between us.

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Internally Blocked Listening

Your ego is among the reasons that can prevent you from becoming a better listener. Everyone was primed to let their voices out; that’s how we all survived infancy.

As we started to grow up, we found ourselves in systems that were the opposite. We were forced to keep our mouths shut because we became part of orderly communities requiring silence. Tell that to a rapidly developing brain.

Leaving the system involved rebelling; this is how you started connecting with your own self, which meant you practiced how to articulate your ideas freely. It was you who was important, not your environment — rightfully. Finding your voice this way was vital for a healthy ego, but you were not taught how to find balance between expressing yourself and letting others be heard in the same conversation.

So, your ego did prioritize you to the detriment of others — let there be friction. Apply this to – let’s say – marriage, and you just brewed yourself an emotional storm where egos can collide.

Within those stormy moments you can recognize your internal monologue shouting what you think or – better yet – what you feel. You should listen to it, but this is where relationships break, because we didn’t learn there’s another ego that’s simultaneously hurting, one that just wants to be heard.

If an idea of this stayed with you, do what you'd do with a good book, hand it to someone. It might make them think too. Thank you!

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Listening To Respond

At the crossroads of whose ego is more important, we instinctively choose ours. Let’s stay within this single lane, shall we?

During arguments, when the internal voice gets louder, our ability to listen decreases; Gottman calls this flooding*. This can quickly spiral: we hear only what we want to hear, using it out of context to hit back. A peaceful argument can quickly turn into quicksand dragging both egos down to being hurt, and before long you’re shouting.

You see where this goes. Everyone’s right on their own terms and there’s no adult at the helm, steering the situation gently toward solving the original disagreement.

There’s a way out though, but – as with all good things – it requires effort. We have a natural superpower that can be used as a north star: our empathy.

Presence Changes Outcomes

The only thing that helped us was learning to listen to each other with empathy, sending our own hurt ego to the bench for a few minutes. In the early years this was tricky for us for different reasons; my wife was somewhat detached under pressure (avoidant) and I was an Excel guy (dismissive).

A perfectionist client brought up the same problem; they and their partner just couldn’t connect emotionally when they both got flooded. When I asked what their ego needed, they could imagine how detached they became and stopped defending. When they included how their spouse might feel, they found a crack in a wall that had seemed solid and for the first time there was space to feel hurt together.

Before responding with the full force of emotions, this is what you can also try:

Listen to your mind and be compassionate with yourself. You’re allowed to feel your feelings and have your opinion. You can take turns sharing. It helps to have pen and paper ready to write down what your partner is saying. Don’t use them as weapons; use them to ask honestly: “Did I hear correctly that you’re angry with me for not taking the trash out?”

Listen with your ears and hear how they talk. After a while you will hear the difference. A subtle shake in their voice can mean anger but can also mean uncertainty. You can always ask if you understand correctly. Again, try not to use information against them, but to paint an emotional picture.

Focus on your presence and try to imagine how they feel. You might feel something similar; you need to create space together to share those feelings safely. To start, you can imagine yourself in their position. How would you feel if you were them?

By shifting your focus onto them, your ego steps aside. If a feeling comes to mind, that’s great — you can start talking about how you feel. As you focus on each other’s feelings and let them be heard calmly, tension will ease.

We learned to recognize and name our feelings both internally before speaking, and externally to communicate assertively.

We both started to arrive at our hearts more often, which resulted in more emotional conversations where we could listen to how our egos felt, what they really needed from each other.

The way I listen to my wife is like how I listen to my clients to help them connect with their egos honestly – without shame – and becoming able to vocalize how they truly feel. The biggest difference is that they don’t have to understand my feelings. Sometimes it helps them when I name a feeling before they do.

*Gottman, J. M. (1993). The roles of conflict engagement, escalation, and avoidance in marital interaction: A longitudinal view of five types of couples. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 61(1), 6–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.61.1.6

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your personal development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

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If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.

Comparison kills willpower, but so does ignoring your own reality. When the grind stops working, you have four exits: quit with dignity, push through, get outside help, or go inward and find the voice that makes your work undeniably yours.

The honey badger (Mellivora capensis) is known to be one of the fiercest battlers in the animal kingdom, going up against predators 10x their size. One of the reasons behind their incredible willpower is the fact that they must be successful, otherwise they would face extinction.

Their lives are on the line.

You might experience the same pressure when you’re building a business or trying to stay afloat amongst the waves of capitalism. When you start out, it’s like the battle between David and Goliath and you’re never Goliath.

As days keep running forward you’ll start to doubt your abilities and circumstance to understand why results are not translated from plans (dreams?) to reality. That recurring doubt will result in a loss of willpower, no matter where your benchmark was. But that’s natural.

Hustle culture and broadcast achievements tell us we are behind. We all know that’s a lie but keep believing it anyway.

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Understand Your Benchmark

We’re all different. This sentence is so universally overused that I shouldn’t even mention it — living by it should be natural, but comparison is mischievous.

Starting out, you barely have any idea how to become successful, so you try to learn from those who made it already and you quietly make it into a comforting trap by copy-pasting their methods and trying to make it look like it’s yours.

What’s left out of this equation is seeing and feeling what it took for those who are already successful, because no behind-the-scenes metrics or vlogs can show you what it actually feels like to live the process. By now you probably know that it’s exhausting, to say the least. But that’s the point.

As long as you don’t experience it yourself, you’ll never know — and you should face harsh reality as soon as you can to see what actually makes sense for you.

Chances are your life is entirely different from those you keep measuring against. Let’s see my example. I’m a husband and a father, so I just cannot possibly hustle as hard as someone who lives a solitary life, because I try to remain as involved in my child’s life as possible. At the same time, I for sure have more “free” time compared to a family with 5 children. Night and day differences.

Disconnected Reality

The problem is that we were made to believe that success might happen fast. But is it truly others’ fault? Wasn’t it our mind all along? The answer is that we never knew. We heard stories that made us believe without the experience. And experience is usually as cold and hard as ground in winter.

There’s nothing comforting about that.

As we hit the ground, the experience will affect willpower because as our mind tries to keep us safe, it will make an effort to push us into a path that has less pushback, an easier way out. Suddenly everything that made you excited and energized before will feel like a drag. Earlier you were inspired within minutes, now you keep doomscrolling and say everyone has better ideas than you.

Please know, you’re not broken, you’ve arrived at reality.

I write this hoping you might feel less alone in your own life. If it accomplished that for you, consider sending it to someone you love. Thank you!

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Refueling Willpower

There are four things (at least!) you can try, right now, and every one of them starts the same: stop comparing yourself to others and offer yourself the grace that you’re building what you once dreamed about and it takes longer than you expected.

First path: you can always pull the plug and return to a previous safety. It might sound like failure but it’s way better than total defeat. Live to fight another day — clichés are true but unglamorous. Know that it’s okay.

Second path: endure. As established, there’s a bigger gap between building and becoming successful than most think and that makes willpower evaporate faster than water from a desert under midday sun. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The danger is not to burn yourself out in the process by neglecting your basic needs for rest, for example. It’s only you who can look out for yourself, please take care of your mental and physical health. You’ll need those on your marathon.

Third path: reach out to a consultant. Your industry is full of advisors who are selling boxed offers where they guarantee your success using their methods. You can probably and maybe should try them if you never did. It’ll offer you peace of mind but might keep you trapped within the same loop, because you’ll lack the part of building yourself and learning what truly works for you.

Fourth path: focus on your personal development instead, not neglecting your business, of course. Seems counterintuitive, right? The funny thing — you might not know yet — is that success and your willpower depend on your unique voice, the reason behind why you do what you do. Once you reconnect to yourself and become brave enough to infuse your uniqueness into whatever you do, like-minded people will see themselves in your reflection.

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your personal development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

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If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.

Fear keeps us trapped in a limited version of ourselves, just as it kept Neo fighting the Matrix on its own terms rather than transcending them. Once we stop treating our self-imposed mental boundaries as fixed reality, we unlock the ability to move through challenges with creative clarity instead of reactive force.

As Neo was waiting to be summoned before the Oracle, he heard what is, to me, one of the most important one-liners in film history - besides ‘For Frodo,’ of course.

‘There’s no spoon.’

The sentence was pivotal because he was conflicted about his own fears and the weight of potential to become The One and went there to be reassured of his part of the prophecy.

Interpreting the idea wasn’t the challenge itself; it simply meant that the physical existence of the spoon itself cannot be bent. The task was to accept how the projection didn’t exist, and the work could only begin after accepting that fact. Then it transfers to bending the projection.

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Fear, Anger, Action

Not to draw hasty conclusions, but Neo’s emotional burden was above all; the fate of what remained of humanity was dragging him. Morpheus was already convinced he finally found who can liberate them, and he used every chance to remind Neo.

This pressure combined with the presentation of how the machines will eventually seize and conquer the last thinking part of humanity created the fearful pressure.

Two reactions alternated constantly: one born from being frozen, the other from activated fight mode. In the beginning, anger pushed him into action. You could clearly see how Neo drew from his connection to his anger to act, usually hastily.

When you start connecting to and understand how anger takes place in your life and look behind what fuels that anger, you usually find fear as the primary motivator. Fear of lacking safety or tools to stand up for yourself. The reason is primal and instinctive. When you are in danger, you need force to create movement, and your anger will do it for you.

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Cloudy judgement

As fear takes lead, it will create a state of focus that shuts out judgment almost completely. Action becomes intuitive if your body has learned how to move beforehand. As Neo spent hours in virtual training, he learned all the possible ways to act when he encountered agents, the main source of imminent danger.

The encounters resulted in losing every time until the end because Neo still tried to bend the projection. He understood the concept but because he still acted out of fear, he limited his actions. He was still thinking as if he wasn’t capable, despite learning all the moves.

Becoming The One

Eventually as the film neared its end and pressure rose to boiling point, the idea clicked for Neo. He became cornered so he had no other choice than to let go and he finally gave in. Fear was replaced with intuition.

As fear couldn’t narrow possibilities anymore, every knowledge found its place in a flowing state where danger could be seen through plainly and could be solved creatively instead of forcing the solution.

As Neo let himself see danger as is, he realized he’s way more capable than he previously imagined. He started to bend the rules only he could, because he could understand the rules as a limitation and refuse to be limited by them.

I was fascinated by this idea because it portrays one empowering concept in our lives. The main limitation is our imagination and how we see ourselves in our present and future. I’m not saying you can be anything, because I didn’t become an NBA star either.

But you can certainly think outside your own box to find ways to reach your goals and change what bothers you in your life. It takes time and practice for sure and will be uncomfortable.

Let’s sit with this question for a while: wouldn’t it all be worth it if you knew that the only thing blocking you is your own belief that the spoon is real?

This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com

I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me and think might benefit you and your personal development. My aim is to make your time worthwhile to spend with the articles. The most surefire way to receive updates is by subscribing.

Subscribe now

If my articles no longer offer you value, please consider letting me know, so I can get better, learning from your feedback. It’s also completely okay, to unsubscribe, I won’t hold grudges.