She has been married for almost twenty years. She and her husband have three children, and theirs is probably the marriage I admire most closely in my own life.

At some point in our conversation, she said something very simple:

“A relationship is like a dance. At the beginning, you are clumsy. You step on each other’s toes all the time. But with practice, you get better. Eventually, it can become beautiful. It can even look effortless.

That stayed with me.

Because we spend so much time looking for the person with whom the dance will be effortless.

We talk about compatibility. Chemistry. Alignment. Attachment styles. Shared values. Love languages. Red flags. Green flags. Whether someone is “our person.”

And of course, all of these things matter. But I wonder if sometimes we look at two people who have learned to dance beautifully together and mistake what we are witnessing for luck.

We see the dance. We don’t see the practice.

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We want to skip being beginners

Think about watching two incredible dancers.

They seem to anticipate one another without speaking. One moves and the other responds. There is trust between their bodies. Neither seems to be thinking very hard about what comes next.

It looks natural.

But nobody watches them and assumes they danced like that the first time they met.

We understand instinctively that what looks effortless required enormous effort.

There were rehearsals, missed steps, frustration, corrections, probably a few bruised toes.

There were moments when one person moved left while the other moved right. Moments when someone anticipated instead of listening. Moments when they lost the music altogether.

And yet, strangely, when it comes to love, we often expect something different.

We want the beautiful dance without the awkward rehearsals.

We want to meet someone and somehow already know how to love them.

And when we get it wrong, when we misunderstand each other, trigger each other, communicate badly, retreat when the other person needs closeness, reach when they need space, we can interpret the clumsiness as evidence that something is wrong.

Maybe we are incompatible, maybe this shouldn’t be so difficult.

Maybe the right relationship wouldn’t require this much work.

Sometimes, of course, those things are true.

But sometimes I wonder whether we are simply experiencing what it feels like to be beginners.

Because loving another human being is a skill.

And loving this particular human being is an entirely new dance.

You can be an extraordinary dancer on your own

This part of the metaphor fascinates me most.

You can become an extraordinary solo dancer.

You can spend years knowing yourself.

You can go to therapy. Learn your patterns. Understand your childhood. Develop boundaries. Build a beautiful life. Become emotionally intelligent, independent, self-aware and deeply comfortable in your own company.

All of that matters.

But then somebody takes your hand.

And suddenly, there are two of you.

Two histories.

Two nervous systems.

Two sets of fears.

Two ways of giving and receiving love.

Two interpretations of silence.

Two relationships with conflict.

Two definitions of safety.

Two ideas about closeness and freedom.

And all the work you have done alone doesn’t automatically teach you how to move with another person.

A brilliant solo dancer is not automatically a brilliant ballroom dancer.

Partnership requires a different kind of intelligence. You have to feel another person while remaining connected to yourself. You have to learn when to move towards them and when to give them space.

When to lead.

When to follow.

When to hold your ground.

When to soften.

When to stop trying to perform the steps correctly and simply listen for the music again.

You can know yourself incredibly well and still discover parts of yourself that only appear when someone else is standing close enough to touch them.

Perhaps that is one of intimacy’s great gifts.

Another person doesn’t only join the dance you’ve already mastered.

They reveal movements you didn’t know were inside you.

Sometimes we step on the places that already hurt

There is another reason we step on each other’s toes.

We don’t enter relationships untouched, we arrive carrying histories, places that have been bruised before. Fears we learned long before this person existed.

One person might carry a deep fear of being abandoned.

Another might carry a fear of never being enough.

One experiences distance and reaches closer.

The other experiences that reaching as pressure and pulls away.

One steps forward.

The other steps backwards.

Suddenly, they are standing on each other’s feet.

And both are thinking:

Why are you doing this to me?

When perhaps neither is intentionally doing anything to the other.

They are dancing the steps they learned long ago.

This is where awareness matters.

Not because awareness instantly fixes everything. Knowing the choreography intellectually is very different from being able to perform it when the music is loud and your heart is racing.

But eventually, perhaps, you begin to recognise the pattern.

Ah. Here we are again.

You begin to notice the moment before the familiar step.

And maybe, one day, instead of automatically doing what you have always done, you try something slightly different.

A pause, a question, a hand extended instead of withdrawn, a softer tone, a boundary spoken before resentment takes over, a moment of remembering:

This is the person I love. We have lost the rhythm. We are not enemies.

That tiny change becomes part of the new choreography.

And you practise it. Again and again.

Until perhaps one day, it becomes instinct.

Stepping on each other’s toes isn’t the problem

I think we need to be careful here.

There is a version of “relationships take work” that has been used to justify far too much.

Love being a dance doesn’t mean tolerating cruelty. It doesn’t mean staying somewhere unsafe. It doesn’t mean accepting endless disrespect because you are supposedly “learning.” And it certainly doesn’t mean one person doing all the practising while the other refuses to learn.

A dance requires two participants.

You cannot create a beautiful partnership by dragging somebody across the floor.

So perhaps the measure of a relationship isn’t whether you ever step on each other’s toes.

You will.

The more interesting questions might be:

What happens when you do?

Can you stop? Can you notice? Can you apologise? Can you become curious about how you ended up there? Can you repair? Can you learn a different step?

And, most importantly:

Are you both interested in becoming better dancers?

Because maybe compatibility isn’t simply finding someone whose feet you never step on.

Maybe part of compatibility is finding someone who wants to learn with you.

What looks effortless may be earned

This is what I keep thinking about when I look at my sister’s marriage.

Almost twenty years.

Three children.

Different versions of themselves.

Different seasons of life.

I can’t know every moment of their marriage. Nobody outside a relationship ever really can.

But I know enough about life to know that twenty years cannot possibly be twenty uninterrupted years of perfect choreography.

There must have been exhaustion.

Misunderstandings.

Moments when one person changed before the other had caught up.

Moments when the demands of children drowned out the music.

Moments when life required something entirely different from both of them.

And yet when I look at them, there is an ease between them.

Perhaps that is what I have been admiring.

Not the absence of effort, but the result of it.

We often look at couples who have been together for decades and say things like:

“They’re so lucky.”

“They just work.”

“They’re perfect for each other.”

Maybe.

But perhaps sometimes what we are calling luck is actually thousands of tiny moments we never witnessed.

Thousands of adjustments.

Thousands of conversations.

Thousands of small acts of forgiveness.

Thousands of decisions to turn back towards one another.

Thousands of times someone thought:

That’s not quite how we do this anymore. Let’s try again.

Eventually, practice becomes muscle memory.

And what once required enormous concentration begins to look like grace.

There is no final choreography

And then there is the part of the metaphor I love most.

The music changes.

Even once you have learned how to dance together, life doesn’t keep playing the same song.

You meet as two people in your twenties or thirties. Then perhaps you build a home, someone changes careers, someone loses a parent, a child arrives, then another, money becomes abundant or frighteningly scarce, one person succeeds while the other feels lost, bodies change, desire changes, priorities change, you move countries, you get sick, you recover, children grow up, parents grow old, the people who began the relationship no longer entirely exist.

And suddenly, the dance you became so good at doesn’t quite fit the music anymore.

So you learn again.

Perhaps this is why long relationships can be so extraordinary.

You don’t just choose one person once.

You encounter version after version of them.

And they encounter version after version of you.

The dance keeps asking:

Can you meet me here too?

Not where I was ten years ago.

Not who you thought I would become.

Here, and now.

Maybe love isn’t supposed to be effortless

I don’t think the opposite of effortless love is difficult love.

I think there is a difference between a relationship that constantly drains you and a relationship that asks something of you.

Real intimacy asks something of us.

Patience.

Humility.

Courage.

Communication.

Boundaries.

Forgiveness.

Self-awareness.

The willingness to be wrong.

The willingness to be seen.

The willingness to say what we need instead of expecting another person to magically know.

The willingness to stay connected to ourselves while learning how to belong to a “we.”

And trust, so much trust.

Think about what it means to dance with someone properly. At some point, you have to stop staring at your own feet. You have to trust that you’ve practised enough to look up. To feel, to respond, to allow yourself to be led sometimes, to take the lead sometimes, to surrender a little control without surrendering yourself.

Maybe that is intimacy too.

I think we are too quick to admire the performance and forget the rehearsal

Social media probably doesn’t help.

We see anniversaries, weddings, holidays, beautiful kitchens, children laughing around a table, the hand resting casually on someone’s leg after fifteen years together.

We see couples who seem to have found that elusive thing everyone is searching for: ease.

But we don’t see the rehearsal room, and perhaps we shouldn’t. Some things are meant to remain private.

But it might help us to remember that the rehearsal room exists.

The conversation at midnight, the apology, the therapist’s office, the uncomfortable truth someone finally found the courage to say.

The boundary that initially hurt but ultimately made the relationship safer.

The moment someone chose curiosity instead of defensiveness. The hundredth attempt at communicating something that had been misunderstood ninety-nine times before.

Maybe lasting love isn’t built through grand gestures nearly as much as it is built there.

In the repetitions nobody applauds.

Find someone who wants to practise

Maybe this is what I will take from my sister’s sentence.

I don’t want to measure love only by how beautifully two people dance when everything is going well.

I want to pay attention to what happens when they lose the rhythm.

Do they blame? Do they leave the dance floor? Does one person insist the other is entirely responsible for the mistake?

Or can they look at each other and say:

Okay. That didn’t work. Again.

There is something deeply romantic to me about that.

Not perfection. Practice.

Two imperfect human beings becoming increasingly skilled at loving one another, learning each other’s rhythm without abandoning their own, learning where the tender places are, learning when to hold tighter and when to loosen their grip. Learning how to repair after a wrong step, learning that sometimes the person leading needs to follow, learning that the choreography that worked yesterday might not work tomorrow, learning, eventually, to stop watching their feet. And perhaps, after years of this, someone else looks at them and thinks:

God, it looks so effortless.

They won’t have seen the beginning.

They won’t know how many times those two people stepped on each other’s toes.

They won’t know how many times the music changed.

They won’t see all the practice hidden inside the grace.

They’ll only see two people who somehow seem to know how to move together.

And maybe that’s one of the most beautiful possibilities of a long love.

Not finding someone with whom you immediately know every step.

Finding someone who keeps taking your hand and learning the dance with you.

Again and again.

For as long as the music plays.

Celine Ivari

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Dear reader,

There is a mental framework I have been returning to for a couple of years now, and I find myself reaching for it more and more. In the middle of a difficult week, after a comment that stings, on a morning when everything feels slightly off. It is simple, almost embarrassingly so. But simple things have a way of being the most useful.

It is the 80/20 rule. Or rather, my personal version of it.

The original idea, Pareto’s principle, is about inputs and outputs. 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts, and so on. But I have started applying it much more broadly, almost as a lens for life itself. The observation that most things in this world follow a roughly 80/20 split. And that remembering this, really internalising it, makes so much feel less personal.

Here is what I mean. If, for example, I am ever anxious about what people think of me, I come back to this: 80% of people are genuinely kind. They are rooting for you, or at the very least, they are indifferent in a benign way. They have their own lives, their own worries, and they are not sitting around constructing narratives about yours. Then there is the 20%. Not evil, not even necessarily unkind at their core, but carrying something. A bad day, an old wound, a habit of projecting. When someone says something that lands badly, I am learning to simply think: oh, you are in that 20%. That makes sense. And somehow, it stops being about me. It becomes almost neutral. A category, not a verdict.

I apply the same logic to life’s rhythm. If 80% of the time things are relatively stable, peaceful mornings, work that flows, relationships that feel easy, then 20% will be chaos. It just will be. A difficult month, a plan that falls apart, a season where everything feels harder than it should. I used to experience those periods as signs that something had gone wrong, that I had somehow failed to build a life that was immune to disruption. Now I am learning to see them differently. The chaos is not a deviation. It is part of the ratio. It is expected. And when something is expected, it is so much easier to move through it without catastrophising.

Even in love, I find this useful. If your partner is 80% wonderful, present, generous, aligned with who you are, then 20% of the time they will be, frankly, a lot. Annoying, or distant, or saying exactly the wrong thing. That is not a reason to question everything. That is just the ratio. It makes sense.

The place this has mattered most for me, though, is in using my voice publicly.

A few years ago, the idea of writing openly, of sharing my thoughts and my story with people I had never met, felt genuinely terrifying. There was so much resistance. Who am I to say this? What if people disagree? What if I get it wrong? What if someone is unkind? I held back for a long time because of such questions, and I think a part of me believed that if I could just find the right words, the right moment, the right version of myself, I could avoid the discomfort entirely.

I could not, of course. No one can.

What I have found instead is that showing up publicly means you will, inevitably, encounter that 20%. A comment that misreads your intention. A message that is more about the sender than about you. A moment where you feel exposed in a way that makes you want to go quiet again. And for a while, each of those moments felt like a signal. Maybe this is not for you, maybe you should stop.

The 80/20 reframe is what changed that for me. Because if I know, going in, that 20% of responses will be difficult, not because I have done something wrong, but simply because that is the distribution of the world, then those moments stop being signs to retreat. They become the expected cost of showing up. They are not telling me anything new. They are just confirming the ratio.

And the 80%? The messages that say “this landed exactly when I needed it,” the conversations that start because of something I wrote, the feeling of having said something true and had it received with warmth. That 80% is why I keep going. It is more than enough.

I am still learning this. Some days the 20% feels louder than it should. But I keep coming back to the framework, because it gives me somewhere to put things. Not everything needs to be processed deeply or taken personally. Sometimes something is just the 20%, and you can let it be exactly that.

I hope this is useful to someone reading this today. To keep going, to stay visible, to trust that the ratio is working in your favour more than it might feel like it is.

With care,

Celine

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Dear Friends,

We are so often caught in the momentum of always thinking about the next thing. The endless list of tasks, the next goal, the horizon we are trying to reach. If you are anything like me, it is genuinely exciting to build, to challenge yourself, and to reach for new heights. There is a certain thrill in creating, in seeing visions come to life, and in pushing the boundaries of what we believe is possible.

However, I am learning that the true practice is to enjoy the journey, to be present, and not to let life pass by without having really savoured it. It is so easy to become entirely consumed by the destination, forgetting that our actual lives unfold in the spaces between our milestones. I have started calling this practice Whole Presence. The commitment to being fully where you are, with whoever you are with, including yourself.

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Our bodies cannot outrun their signals. They talk to us, subtly at first. A slight tension in the neck, a fleeting sense of fatigue, a shallow breath. I learnt that if they need to bring us to our knees to make us listen, they will. The body holds a profound wisdom, a rhythm that demands our respect. The practice, then, is to develop a skill for full presence, to listen before the whisper becomes a shout. It is about tuning into those gentle nudges and honouring what we need in the moment, rather than pushing through out of habit or obligation. When we ignore these signals, we disconnect from our most foundational anchor to the present moment.

I am coming to see that presence is a gift. The intention is to be here fully or not to do it at all. When I am with my nieces, nephews or stepdaughter, I am nowhere else. I am not thinking of the emails waiting for me, the meetings scheduled for tomorrow, or the endless to do list. My full presence, my whole presence, is my gift to them. Children have a remarkable way of sensing whether we are truly with them or if our minds are wandering elsewhere. It is the same with my team, my partner, my friends, family or in meetings. This is the work we are called to do, to be fully present in whatever is right in front of us. In an era of constant notifications, endless options, and myriad distractions, it feels almost like a heroic act to simply be where your feet are. It requires a deliberate choice to turn away from the noise and offer our undivided attention to the people and experiences that make up our days.

I once attended a philosophy talk where the speaker said something that stayed with me. Our senses take in approximately 11 million bits of information per second. Our eyes alone send about 10 million bits per second to the brain, roughly the speed of an Ethernet connection. But here is the remarkable part: our conscious mind can only process about 50 bits per second. Some recent research from Caltech puts it as low as 10 bits per second.

Many animals far surpass us in raw sensory power. Eagles see four to eight times further than we can. Dogs smell 10,000 times more acutely. Mantis shrimp perceive 16 colour channels where we see only three. And yet, what distinguishes human cognition is not how much we take in. It is our capacity to select, to filter, to choose one signal from all the noise and hold our attention there long enough to think deeply.

William James, the father of modern psychology, described attention as “the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” He believed this capacity was the very foundation of intelligence.

I think that is exactly what presence is. It is the decision to focus, fully, on what is right in front of you, when everything else is competing for your attention. It is not passive. It is an act of intelligence. And in a world that floods us with more stimulation than ever before, choosing where to place our attention may be the most important decision we make each day.

This practice has to extend to yourself as well. When you take your shower, I am learning the value of living that fully. Feeling the water, noticing the temperature, allowing it to be a moment of genuine care rather than just another routine task to rush through. When you apply an oil to your body, doing that with your entire presence changes the experience entirely. The power of that presence, that intentionality, is beyond measure. When we give ourselves our undivided attention, something switches. The power of thoughtful touch, of taking a deliberate pause, is deeply restorative. People leave such moments feeling beyond rejuvenated. I am realising that we often reserve our best attention for others, forgetting that we also require that same level of devotion. By practising whole presence with ourselves, we refill our own reserves.

I was with my friend Ben about a week ago, having dinner. He raised the point that I never checked my phone when I was with him, that I was very present. He felt it, and he expressed that he felt deeply cared for in that way, and energised after our time together. I reflected on how often we actually do this. I know I certainly do not always manage it, but his words reminded me of how profoundly our attention impacts those we care about. When we sit across from someone and give them our absolute focus, we are telling them that they matter, that they are seen, and that in this moment, nothing else is more important. It creates a space where genuine connection can flourish, where conversations can go deeper, and where both people leave feeling nourished rather than depleted.

There is a flip side to this, too. Sometimes I will go to see someone, and they receive me with complaints about how we do not see each other enough, how I do not respond fast enough, or how I do not do something they expect. I think that is also a way of not being in the now. I am learning to focus on what is, rather than what is missing. It is a beautiful thing to enjoy that the person is here now, rather than focusing on their absence even in their presence. When we dwell on what is lacking, we rob ourselves of the joy of the current moment. We miss the opportunity to connect with the person sitting right in front of us. It is a gentle reminder to anchor ourselves in gratitude for the time we do share, allowing it to be enough.

Let us take a moment of practice right now. Pause for a second. Check on your posture. Loosen your shoulders, lift your chin, sit up straight, and take a deep breath in and out. Where are you holding tension? Breathe into that space and release it. Give yourself your whole presence. By doing so, you allow life to flow through you. Ideas emerge, and a renewed excitement is felt. I am finding that these small pockets of presence throughout the day are what truly sustain us. They are not grand gestures, but rather simple, intentional returns to the present moment.

Thank you for being on this journey with me, for reading, and for sharing in these reflections. I am wishing you a week filled with moments of whole presence, both with those you love and with yourself.

With care,

Celine

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I am writing this from London, having returned earlier this week from a few deeply moving days at the Oslo Freedom Forum. The conversations I witnessed there are still with me, and I feel compelled to share them.

Throughout the forum, there was inspiring rhetoric about democracy winning and being on the right side of history. But the data presented told a very different story. According to the Freedom in the World 2026 report by Freedom House, global freedom has declined for the twentieth consecutive year. A mere 21% of the world’s population now lives in countries rated as “Free” a devastating drop from 46% just two decades ago. Over 70% of humanity currently lives under some form of autocratic rule. This is not a temporary setback. The tide is turning, and we are not winning.

What made this even more alarming was a recurring theme at the forum: the danger of what comes after regime change. Removing a dictator is only half the battle. If there is no democratic infrastructure ready to take over, the forces that fill the vacuu

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m can be even more ruthless than the regime they replaced. The possibility that liberation could lead somewhere worse was a sobering reminder that freedom requires not just courage, but architecture.

For me, none of this is abstract. I am Iranian-French, born in Paris to Iranian parents. I did not need the forum to teach me that liberty can vanish overnight. What Oslo did was reinforce, with painful clarity, what I have always known through my heritage.

My mother grew up in an Iran that feels almost mythical today: a cosmopolitan, open society where women walked the streets of Tehran in miniskirts, where the population was educated and ambitious, and where the world came to experience its culture. Then, almost overnight, the 1979 revolution replaced all of that with a rigid, closed autocracy. Today, Iran scores a mere 10 out of 100 on Freedom House’s global scale of political rights and civil liberties. I grew up understanding that it was an immense honour to have been born in Paris, that my voice, my choices, and my safety were never guaranteed, but gifted.

Living in the West, I have also witnessed how easily we take that gift for granted. I have sat at dinner tables in France and heard people argue that immigrants are ruining the country. In those moments, a chill runs through me. I look around the table and think: I would not be sitting here if France had not opened its arms to my family. This is a nuanced issue, I am not advocating for open borders without control. Security and social cohesion matter deeply. But we can design rigorous vetting processes and proper integration systems that assess a person’s intentions, education, and values before welcoming them in, without losing our humanity in the process. Behind every migration statistic is a human life seeking the very freedom we casually enjoy over dinner.

The session that hit closest to home was a talk on the future of Iran, where I heard Princess Pahlavi speak. It brought me back to an article I wrote some time ago, “A Letter to the World from a Daughter of Iran” in which I warned of a scenario I feared above all else: that the West would launch an incomplete attack on the Islamic Republic, striking enough to destabilise but not topple the regime, before retreating to the negotiating table. To my absolute devastation, this is now happening.

I remember when Donald Trump told the Iranian people he would not let them down that if they took to the streets, the international community would ensure the regime was toppled. The hard truth is that the Iranian people cannot do this alone. The asymmetry of power is too vast. External intervention was their only real hope.

To see the international community now settling for a negotiated agreement is a betrayal of the highest order. A compromised deal is worse than no action at all, because it allows the regime to survive, regroup, and return stronger, armed with renewed impunity. This is not a government you can negotiate with. This is a regime that murders its own youth, dressing up state executions as the capture of foreign spies. The killings are more frequent now than ever before.

I think of the people who flooded the streets of Iran believing a better future was finally within reach. Over 40,000 people were killed by this regime in under 24 hours during the protests. To know that those lives were lost, only for the democratic world to sit down and negotiate with their murderers, gives me chills. It leaves me with a profound, painful question: what was the point of it all?

Alongside the political and physical threats to freedom, the forum also surfaced a more insidious one. Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, issued a stark warning about the rapid demise of the free internet and the dangers of surrendering our personal data to artificial intelligence.

In democratic societies, this trade-off is often sold to us as a necessity for safety or convenience. We accept digital identity systems, age-verification checks, and the automated scanning of our private messages because we want to prevent crime or protect children. But as Durov pointed out, these measures slowly normalise a state of constant surveillance. In authoritarian regimes, this data is a weapon. Dictatorships do not need to deploy secret police to every street corner anymore.

They can use AI-driven facial recognition, predictive policing algorithms, and automated censorship to identify, track, and silence dissidents before they can even speak.

As individuals, we must become far more conscious of our digital hygiene. We can start by prioritising platforms that use genuine end-to-end encryption, limiting the personal details we share online, and resisting the urge to feed our most private thoughts and data into centralised AI systems. Convenience must not become the graveyard of our privacy, because without privacy, true freedom of expression cannot survive.

Hearing these speakers, and reflecting on the stories of others like María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who continues her relentless, courageous fight against autocracy, or seeing Richard Gere present awards to those standing up for the oppressed, it becomes clear that the struggle for human rights is a shared global responsibility.

So, how do we protect what we have?

To protect our freedom, we must first shake off this passivity. The French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville warned of a unique danger in democratic societies: “democratic despotism” or “mild despotism”. He foresaw that when citizens become entirely absorbed in their private comforts and personal success, they willingly surrender their civic duties to a centralised power. They trade their active participation in society for a peaceful, orderly life of convenience, slowly allowing their liberties to be chipped away in the name of safety and administration. To counter this, we must understand that freedom is not a passive possession; it is a practice. It is something we do, not just something we have.

First, we must cultivate active gratitude. We must wake up every day and consciously acknowledge the immense privilege of our liberty. This is about letting that gratitude drive our actions. When we value our freedom, we are far more likely to stand up and defend it when we see it threatened, even in small, everyday ways.

Second, we must practice digital vigilance. We must question the slow, creeping demands of surveillance in our daily lives. Every time we are asked to trade our privacy for convenience, we must pause and ask ourselves if the bargain is truly worth it. We must support independent journalism, protect free speech, and defend the right to dissent, even when the opinions being expressed are uncomfortable or different from our own.

Third, we must actively build and support our communities. Autocracy thrives on isolation and division. When we are disconnected from one another, we are easily controlled. By fostering open dialogue, practicing empathy, and engaging in local civic life, we strengthen the social fabric that protects us all.

Finally, we must break our silence. We must use our voices to support those on the frontlines of the struggle for liberty. We must fund human rights organisations, share the stories of those who are fighting for their lives under repressive regimes, and hold our own democratic leaders accountable when they fail to stand up for democratic values abroad.

Freedom is not something we simply possess. It is something we practise or lose.

Now, back in London, I carry these reflections forward into my daily life. The comfortable routines feel different, seen through the lens of the Oslo Freedom Forum. I look at my work, my family, and my community with a heightened sense of responsibility.

Freedom is fragile, but the desire for it can never be fully erased from the human heart. Let us not be the generation that allowed the light of liberty to dim through complacency. Let us cherish it, stand up for it, and above all, nourish it, every single day.

With warmth, care and hope,

Celine Ivari

Dear reader,

Have you ever noticed how we tend to fall into one of two camps when someone makes a mistake, crosses a line, or causes hurt?

There are those who instinctively lead with compassion. They believe everyone deserves a second chance. They know people change, grow, and evolve. To them, we should never write anyone off, because we are all beautifully fallible. They see the wounded child behind the adult's mistake.

Then there are those who lead with accountability. They believe wrongdoing needs to be owned. They value integrity, responsibility, and the clear acknowledgement of impact. They believe that without taking responsibility, there can be no true trust.

I thought these two forces were at odds. I thought you had to choose between being the soft, forgiving person or the strong, principled person. But what I have come to realise is that neither approach is inherently wrong. The insight that changed my view is this: the camp you default to is rarely an accident. It is often shaped by your childhood, and specifically by what you needed at the time.

I was born in Paris to Iranian parents. My upbringing was deeply steeped in two rich cultures. There was so much love, warmth, and community, but just like everyone, there were also complex dynamics. I grew up feeling an immense sense of responsibility for the people around me. I learned very early on how to keep the peace. I became an expert at pretending everything was fine, even when it was clearly not. I absorbed the emotional weather of the room and constantly adjusted myself to make sure the storm never broke. I believe that environment means I grew into an adult who fiercely values accountability.

When you spend your formative years managing the emotional weight of others and smoothing over unacknowledged issues, you develop a deep craving for people to simply own their actions. You want the truth to be spoken out loud. You want responsibility to be taken. You want the adults in the room to act like adults.

For a time, my default was accountability. I held myself to an incredibly high standard, and I expected the exact same of the people around me. I wanted integrity. I wanted ownership. But sometimes, I wanted it at the expense of grace. If someone messed up, my immediate internal response needed admission and ownership. I struggled to hold space for their messy, human process.

As I have grown older, and particularly as I have navigated the beautiful, complex journey of founding Wholyme, I have had to look much more closely at my own default settings. Building a natural wellness brand is not just about the products we create to soothe the body; it is about the philosophy we live by to soothe the mind and spirit. You cannot champion holistic wellbeing without looking honestly at the way you relate to yourself and to others.

What I have learned through leadership, through building a team, and through my own personal growth, is that compassion without accountability can enable. It allows unhealthy patterns to continue unchecked. It can lead to a lack of boundaries, where we accept behaviour that ultimately harms us or drains our energy. It is the kind of compassion that says everything is okay when it is actually not okay.

However, accountability without compassion can isolate. It can become rigid, cold, and punishing. It leaves no room for our shared humanity, for the reality that we are all just trying to figure things out. When we demand ownership without offering a safe space for the person to be vulnerable, we often just create defensiveness. We back people into a corner where they cannot admit their faults because the cost of doing so feels too high.

The real growth is learning to hold both. It means looking at someone who has caused hurt and saying: I see your humanity, I know you are trying, and I also need you to own your actions. It means offering grace while maintaining firm boundaries. It means giving someone the benefit of the doubt while still asking them to step up and do better.

I am still learning how to do this every single day. There are days when my inner child, the one who just wants everyone to take responsibility so she can finally rest, takes the wheel. On those days, my walls go up. I have to consciously remind myself to soften, to take a deep breath, and to look for the human being underneath the frustrating behaviour. I have to remind myself that true accountability is not about punishment or shame. It is about repair. And repair requires compassion. It requires a safe harbour where a person feels seen enough, and held enough, to admit their faults without fear of being destroyed by them.

We live in a world that often demands we pick a side. We are told to be ruthless in cutting toxic people out of our lives, or we are told to endlessly forgive and turn the other cheek.

I believe the most profound relationships, both with ourselves and with others, are built in the messy, beautiful middle ground. They are built in the tension between holding space and holding to account. When we can offer ourselves compassion for our mistakes, we are much more likely to take accountability for them. And when we can offer that same combination to the people we love, we create relationships rooted in deep, unshakeable trust.

I would love to know where you sit with this. When things go wrong, do you default to compassion or accountability?

And when you look back at your own story, can you see why?

Take a moment today to reflect on your default. You might just find that the very thing you find hardest to give is exactly what the situation needs.

With care,

Celine

I built an AI Chief of Staff. Here is the full setup.

People kept asking how I actually did it. How my AI knows my business. How it is different from ChatGPT. Why it does not need me to be at my desk.

I would start typing and realise the answer was longer than a caption. So I wrote the whole thing down.

This guide covers everything I use, in the order I would build it if I were starting from scratch today:

• The hardware (one small machine, always on)

• The software stack (open source, free to install)

• The constitutional documents that teach it who you are

• Security rules you must write before connecting anything

• What to automate first for the biggest immediate return

• Honest costs and honest timelines

No paid course. No upsell. No waitlist. Just the setup, explained for founders who are not software engineers.

The PDF is attached below. Download it, work through it, and if you build something, I would love to hear what changed for you.

Celine

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CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE GUIDE

There was a chapter on luck that really stood out for me.

I built my life and my business, Wholyme, on the principle of extreme ownership. It’s a concept I preach a lot. The idea that everything in your life is a result of your choices. That you are in the driver’s seat.

It’s an empowering belief. It means if you don’t like something, you have the agency to change it. It gives you drive and it forces you to look in the mirror.

But as I sat there, the book resting on my lap, I realised it’s not the whole story. We want to take all the credit for our successes, but we often forget the massive role that luck plays in our lives.

I thought about my own story. I was born in Paris to Iranian parents. I now live and run a business in London. The simple fact of my birthright is a series of lucky breaks. A roll of the dice. What if my parents hadn’t been able to build a life in France? What if I wasn’t born in a very entrepreneurial family? What if I hadn’t met the right people at the right time?

The investor Warren Buffett has a wonderful term for this. He calls it the “ovarian lottery.” He once said, “I was born in 1930 healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male and in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck.” He acknowledges that the circumstances of his birth gave him a monumental, unearned head start.

It’s a humbling thought.

In his book, Housel tells this incredible story about Bill Gates. We all know he is a genius. We know he worked incredibly hard. But he also had a one-in-a-million piece of luck. His high school in the 1960s was one of the only schools in the entire world with a computer. Without that access, that sheer chance, the world might not have Microsoft. As Gates himself has said, “If there had been no Lakeside, there would have been no Microsoft.”

But here is where the story gets even more profound. For every Bill Gates, there is a Kent Evans. Evans was Gates’s best friend at Lakeside. By all accounts, including from Gates, he was just as brilliant, just as driven, and just as fascinated by that computer. He could have been a co-founder of Microsoft.

But he died in a mountaineering accident before he graduated from high school. A one-in-a-million stroke of risk.

One story is about luck, the other is about risk. They are two sides of the same invisible coin. And they are powerful forces that shape our lives in ways we can’t always see or control.

There is a concept in psychology called the “headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry”. It was developed by researcher Tom Gilovich and Shai Davidai, and it describes something very human: we are acutely aware of the obstacles we overcome (the headwinds), but the factors that have helped us along the way (the tailwinds) quickly fade from our memory. Think about that for a moment.

We remember every late night, every rejection, every moment of doubt. Those are the headwinds. They are vivid and painful and we carry them with pride.

Yet the supportive friend who introduced us to a key contact? The stable home that gives us the confidence to take risk? The market conditions that happened to be perfect for our product? Those are the tailwind, they become invisible almost as soon as they pass.

This is why successful people so often feel self-made. It is not arrogance, it’s a trick of memory.

So, how do we hold these two truths together? The power of ownership and the reality of luck?

I don’t think they cancel each other out. I think they balance each other. The Roman philosopher Seneca put it perfectly around two thousand years ago: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

Our ownership, our effort, our choices… that is the preparation. It’s the work we do to build the skills, to save the money, to create the product, to be ready. It’s what puts us in the path of opportunity.

But the opportunity itself? That often comes down to chance. A random encounter, a market shift, a global event. That is the luck.

Holding this balance means when we succeed, we can be proud of our hard work, but also deeply grateful for the tailwinds that helped us along the way. It fosters a sense of humility.

And when we fail? It allows us to be kinder to ourselves. We can still take ownership of our mistakes, of course. But we can also acknowledge that sometimes, things are just not in our control. Sometimes, we face a headwind that is simply too strong.

For me, this is a more honest and whole way to look at life and leadership. It keeps the fire of ambition burning, but it grounds it in gratitude and compassion.

It reminds me to take full ownership of my choices, to prepare diligently, and to work as hard as I can. But it also reminds me to look up, to appreciate the good fortune I’ve had, and to never forget the role of luck in my journey.

What do you think? I would love to hear how you see the balance between luck and ownership in your own life.

To love a place that you also need to escape from is a complicated grief. For me, that place is Iran. It is a country that lives inside me as a series of contradictions, as two memories that feel equally true and entirely incompatible.

The first memory is of a watermelon. As a child, I spent my summers there. My family, a sprawling collection of aunts, uncles, and cousins, would hire a bus and we would all travel together into the mountains outside Tehran. We would find a spot by a cool, clear stream, and the first thing we would do is place a huge, heavy watermelon in the water, securing it with a small circle of stones. It would sit there for hours, the cold mountain stream chilling it to perfection. I remember the taste of that fruit in the warm air, the sound of my cousins laughing, the feeling of absolute belonging. That watermelon is the taste of my Iran, the one that lives in my heart.

The second memory is of a headscarf. I was a child, maybe ten or twelve years old, playing in those same mountains. My headscarf, a piece of fabric I was forced to wear, slipped down to my neck. A man, part of the morality police, saw me. The joy of the day evaporated. Fear, cold and sharp, paralysed my small body. He screamed at me, his face twisted with rage, and I trembled. My father stepped in, a wall of courage, and spoke to the man until he left me alone. But the damage was done. I had heard the stories of what happened to people, to women and girls, for less. The freedom of the mountains was gone. I sat quietly for the rest of the day, my only wish to go back home to Paris, where my hair could be free.

Watermelon and a headscarf. Joy and fear. This is the contradiction of being Iranian in the diaspora. It is the inheritance of a deep love for a homeland that is held hostage by its own government, and the constant grief of watching from afar.

The Unsilenceable People

For decades, the Iranian people have not been silent. They have risen up again and again, paying an unimaginable price each time. In 2009, the Green Movement saw millions peacefully demand their votes be counted after a blatantly stolen election. The world watched. No one acted. In November 2019, the Bloody Aban protests erupted over a fuel price hike, and the regime responded with a massacre. Over 1,500 unarmed civilians were killed in a matter of days. The internet was shut down for a week so the world could not bear witness. In 2022, the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, in the custody of the morality police ignited the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. It was a revolution led by the girls and women of Iran, who cut their hair in the streets and danced in defiance, knowing they could be killed for it. It inspired the world. And still, the regime survived, because no one came to help.

And now, in 2025 and 2026, we are witnessing the largest uprising since the 1979 revolution. Protests have erupted in over 200 cities. The government has admitted to killing over 3,000 of its own people. Human rights organizations say the real number is far higher, with some estimates reaching 36,500. This is not a protest. It is a slaughter. President Trump told the people of Iran that he would help should they be harmed. For the first time, a world leader did not just watch.

This history of courage is essential context for everything that follows.

The Nation in the Cage

To understand the tragedy of modern Iran, you must first understand the scale of its potential. This is not a small, struggling nation. This is a civilization. A country of 90 million people, where an estimated 70 percent are under the age of 30. Imagine a nation where the youth are not just numerous, but brilliantly educated. Where the literacy rate among young adults is 97 percent (for comparison, the United States sits at around 79 percent). Where university enrollment rivals that of Western Europe. Now imagine that nation locked behind walls built by its own government.

This is the reality of the Islamic Republic. For over four decades, this regime has systematically squandered the nation’s greatest assets: its people and its resources.

People sometimes say, “The Iranian people should take back their own country.” This reflects a lack of awareness about what they face. The regime kills unarmed protesters. They shut down the internet for an entire nation so the world could not see the massacres. They deploy snipers on rooftops. They arrest children. They torture families. They rape women. This is a hostage situation.

The tragedy of Iran’s human capital includes the talent that is trapped. Millions of the nation’s brightest minds are stuck inside, denied the opportunity to contribute to their own country or to the world. Their potential is suffocated by the regime. This is a loss for all of us.

And what of the country’s physical wealth? Iran sits on the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves. It is a treasure chest of energy. Yet, the people are poor. The currency is in freefall. The economy is crippled by mismanagement, corruption, and the regime’s obsession with funding foreign terror. The U.S. State Department has designated the Islamic Republic as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism since 1984, and the evidence is overwhelming. In 2025 alone, the regime funneled an estimated $1 billion to Hezbollah, according to U.S. Treasury Department estimates. It funds Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the tune of over $100 million annually, according to U.S. State Department reports. It arms and finances the Houthis in Yemen. It maintains a network of militias across Iraq and Syria. All of this, while its own people go without medicine, without adequate schools, without a future. This is money stolen from the mouths of Iranian children, diverted to fuel conflict across an entire region.

Iran’s very geography is a source of immense strategic power. It is the natural bridge between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, bordered by fifteen countries, with coastlines on both the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. A free Iran would not just be a regional economic powerhouse. It would be a global hub of trade, culture, and innovation. The economic potential of a free Iran is not theoretical. It is a matter of removing the obstacle. A stable, democratic Iran would transform the global energy market, open up new trade routes, and unleash the creative and entrepreneurial power of its 90 million people. Everyone has something to gain from a free Iran. The West gains a stable energy partner and a counter to extremism. The region gains a prosperous neighbor instead of a hostile sponsor of proxy wars. And the Iranian people gain the future that was stolen from them.

Instead, the world is held hostage by the regime’s nuclear ambitions. They have enriched uranium to 60 percent purity, a short technical step from the 90 percent needed for a weapon. A regime that murders its own children in the streets cannot be trusted with the most destructive weapon on Earth. This is not a problem for another day. It is an urgent and existential threat to global security.

A Legacy of Progress, Interrupted

It was not always this way. My mother tells me stories of the Iran she grew up in, a country that was moving towards the light. She remembers walking around in a mini skirt, ice skating, and attending a French school in Tehran. This was the Pahlavi era. It was not a perfect time. No era is. There were flaws, and the government was not a democracy. But it was a time of building. A time of progress.

The Pahlavis modernized Iran at a breathtaking pace. They built universities, hospitals, roads, and railways. The Health Corps brought modern medicine to millions in rural villages. The Literacy Corps raised the literacy rate from 26 percent to over 42 percent in just over a decade. For a time in the 1970s, Iran’s GDP per capita was on par with South Korea’s. Today, South Korea is one of the world’s leading economies. Iran, with greater natural resources and a larger population, has gone backwards. The 1979 revolution did not just overthrow a monarch; it arrested the development of a nation.

The Questions I Am Asked

When I speak about this, I am often met with questions born of goodwill, but also of misunderstanding. I want to address them with the honesty they deserve.

“But how can you support Donald Trump? He doesn’t care about the Iranian people.”

My perspective on this is pragmatic. In the world of geopolitics, every leader acts in their nation’s interest. The question is when those interests align with the cause of freedom. For years, Western leaders watched as the Iranian people suffered. They did nothing during the Green Movement. They were silent during Bloody Aban. President Trump was the first to have the courage to act, to understand that a nuclear-armed terror state is a threat to the entire world. You do not have to admire the man to recognize the strategic clarity of his actions. The goal is a free and non-nuclear Iran. I will support any leader whose actions, whatever their motive, bring us closer to that goal.

“Look at Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan. We don’t want another endless war. International interference never improved situations.”

This comparison, while born of a valid fear, is flawed. Iran is fundamentally different from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Those countries were tragically fractured by deep ethnic and sectarian divisions, with no unified national opposition for the world to support. Iran, by contrast, is a nation-state with a powerful, unified identity forged over millennia. The opposition to the regime is not a collection of warring factions, but a vast, secular, and pro-democratic majority. Surveys by independent institutions like GAMAAN have consistently shown that 80+ percent of Iranians want to move past the Islamic Republic. Iran has a massive, highly-educated diaspora of millions ready to help rebuild. It has the natural resources to fund its own reconstruction. It has existing institutions that can be restored. It has the people. Iran is not a failed state. It is a captive state.

It is also worth remembering that international interference in Iran is not without precedent. The Pahlavi era itself was born from it. And while it was not without its flaws, what followed was one of the most remarkable periods of modernization in the region. Universities, hospitals, infrastructure, women’s rights. The argument that outside involvement always leads to disaster is simply not supported by Iran’s own history.

“But there are other terrorists in the world. Why focus only on Iran?”

This is a deflection, not an argument. To speak of the fire in my own home does not mean I am blind to fires elsewhere. I speak of what I know, of the country that is my heritage. And the facts are clear: the Islamic Republic is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. This is not my opinion; it is the designation of the U.S. State Department and a reality for millions in the Middle East. To address this regime is to address the root of so much of the region’s instability.

“But surely the regime has some support? I heard 25 million people are die-hard fans.”

This is simply false. The regime’s own rigged elections tell the story. In the 2024 elections, the government was unable to prevent a mass boycott, with record-low turnout across the country. If they cannot force people to vote, how can they claim to have millions of devoted followers? The truth is that the regime’s support base is a small minority of ideological fanatics and those who benefit financially from its corrupt system. The vast majority of the Iranian people, the 80 percent, see the regime for what it is: a corrupt, incompetent, and brutal dictatorship.

To put this in perspective, in most democracies, a government can be voted out with just 51 percent of the population. 80 percent opposition is not a divided nation. It is an overwhelming consensus. And yes, every country in the world has its extremists. No society is without them. The goal is not to eliminate every radical voice. The goal is to ensure they do not run the county.

This is Not a Half-Measure

It is crucial to understand that for Iran, this is an all-or-nothing situation. There is no middle ground, no partial victory. A half-measure, where the regime is merely weakened but not removed, would be catastrophic for the Iranian people. It would embolden the regime, allowing it to exact brutal revenge on those who dared to hope for freedom. It would prolong the suffering, deepen the economic crisis, and further entrench the very forces that hold the nation captive. The damage of a failed or incomplete intervention would be severe, far worse than the current stalemate. If the world chooses to support the Iranian people, that support must be unwavering, and the goal must be clear: a complete transition to a free and democratic Iran. Anything less would be a betrayal.

How to Navigate the Weight

To watch this from afar is a heavy burden. It is a feeling of guilt for the freedom you have, and a constant ache for those who do not. I have learned that to carry this weight, you must learn how to care for yourself. This is not selfish. It is essential. Your burnout serves no one.

First, protect your energy. Outrage is a fire that will consume you if you let it. Do not doomscroll. Do not marinate in the horror. Stay informed, but do not let the news cycle dictate your emotional state. Seek out facts, not just headlines. Understand the history, the context, the nuance. This will ground you.

Second, for those of us who have been gifted with freedom, we have a duty to live fully. To create, to love, to build, to experience joy. This is not a betrayal of those who are suffering. It is an act of resistance. It is a testament to the very freedom they are fighting for. Our joy is a defiance of the regime that seeks to extinguish it.

Finally, hold onto hope. Not a blind, passive hope, but an active, defiant hope. The hope that comes from seeing the courage of the Iranian people, who continue to fight for their country against impossible odds. They have not given up. And neither can we.

Caring for Iran is not just about caring for one country. It is about caring for the world we all want to live in. A world where potential is unleashed, not buried. Where women are honored, not oppressed. Where the future is a source of hope, not fear. A free Iran is not just a dream for Iranians. It is a promise of a better, safer, and more prosperous world for us all.

As I sit here in the first week of 2026, I find myself reflecting on the last year and how pivotal it has been for me.

The greatest takeaway I carry forward is this: self-worth changes everything.

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I have come to believe that we live our lives from what we subconsciously believe we deserve. This isn’t about toxic positivity or the illusion that we control everything that happens to us. Of course, life is unpredictable, accidents happen, loss comes uninvited. Some circumstances are simply beyond our influence, and the idea that we can control every outcome is a dangerous fantasy.

But here’s what we can control: how we show up, how we interpret what happens to us, and what meaning we choose to derive from our experiences.

I have come to believe that while we can’t control what life brings us, our sense of self-worth profoundly shapes our relationship to what arrives, which doors we walk through, which we close, and which situations we allow to continue.

When we dream or “manifest” it tends to be from a place of genuine self-worth, and often the limiting beliefs are the gap between what we want to call in and what we accept. When we bring our limiting beliefs from the subconscious into conscious awareness, we create the opportunity for integration. We can finally make different choices, not from fear or conditioning, but from awareness.

This is why increasing your sense of self-worth doesn’t just improve your life it fundamentally transforms it.

The crisis of worth we are all facing

Most of us have been conditioned to tie our worth to external measures, our profession, our productivity, our performance. We have been taught how to behave to be palatable, to succeed in a world that has, until now, attributed nearly all value to what we produce.

And we are entering truly unprecedented times.

With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence and the approach of Artificial General Intelligence, expertise as we known it will become increasingly redundant. Jobs will disappear. The structures we built our identities around will shift beneath our feet. We are heading into a collective identity crisis, and the question will become urgent: Who am I if my worth is not defined by what I do?

To anchor your sense of self-worth beyond external validation is essential and it is from this foundation that the rest of your life will rise to meet you.

My own reckoning

I started 2025 in a relationship that confronted me with my deepest beliefs about love and worth.

It was a connection that mattered, it was real, meaningful, and sincere. Yet, it challenged parts of me I hadn’t fully examined before.

With time and reflection, I came to recognise that somewhere along the way I had internalized a deeply limiting belief: that love had to be hard. That it had to be earned. That unless it was painful, it wasn’t real. A belief I know I am not alone in holding.

What you subconsciously fear, you will find evidence for. What you believe you deserve, you will accept.

For months, my body sensed what my mind had not yet named. There was a restlessness, a subtle tension, a feeling of holding myself in ways that didn’t feel natural, even when things appeared fine on the surface.

I have built my company, Wholyme, on the premise that our bodies speak to us constantly, that the aches and tensions we carry are messages we need to hear. And yet, I wasn’t fully listening to my own.

I was moving forward, the way so many of us do, without pausing to ask what my body was trying to tell me.

The Shift

Everything changed when I finally stopped.

When I allowed myself the stillness to actually feel what my body had been trying to tell me. When I listened to the subtle tension, and acknowledged the cost of holding myself in ways that were not aligned.

The greatest change wasn’t external. It was in me.

I understood, that if something was costing me my peace, it wasn’t sustainable, no matter how meaningful the connection, no matter how real the care.

I anchored myself in my worth, and perhaps for the first time, clearly saw what I deserved.

From that place, I was able to set boundaries, clear, firm, loving boundaries, in every area of my life.

What I learned about boundaries

Boundaries can only truly be set once you have found your own worth. Before that, they are just wishes, easily collapsed under pressure.

Setting boundaries is uncomfortable, particularly if you are not used to it. There is often resistance from people accustomed to you being a certain way. Guilt can surface when old patterns shift. For me, learning not to collapse my boundaries under the weight of other people’s fears, not to give in to the guilt or the pushback, was a hard thing to do.

But on the other side, I found this truth: boundaries are how you protect your peace and show up sustainably for others.

Boundaries aren’t walls. They are not about withholding love or care. They are about creating the conditions in which you can care from fullness rather than depletion.

By anchoring in my worth, I learned to be unapologetic about my needs, clear about my boundaries, and secure in the understanding that the outcome might not be what I hoped for.

I might face loss, rejection, or disappointment, but I could honour myself for being true.

I knew one thing with certainty: I wanted real, not comfortable. Not seamless, not perfect, but real.

And I understood that it had to start with me.

A framework for understanding your worth

So how do you come to understand your worth? How do you anchor into it when everything in you has been conditioned to look outside yourself for validation?

Here is what I have learned:

1. Nothing changes until it is named

Self-worth begins with self-awareness. You have to understand your patterns and limiting beliefs, and bring them from your subconscious into conscious awareness. What stories are you telling yourself about what you deserve? What beliefs are running the show without your permission?

Journaling helps. Therapy helps. But sometimes, your body tells you first, pay attention to where you hold tension, where you feel tight or closed. These are clues.

2. Care teaches you what you are worthy of

You learn your worth though how you treat yourself, self-care is foundational.

For me, this means journaling, movement, and actually using the products I created, slowing down enough to massage tension from my shoulders, to breathe into tightness, to listen when my body speaks. It meant recognizing that care isn’t something I only deserved after I had earned it through exhaustion.

3. Boundaries protect your peace

This is non-negotiable. Boundaries aren’t cruel they are an act of integrity. They say: “I matter. My wellbeing matters. And I will not sacrifice myself to make others comfortable.”

4. Express your needs unapologetically

You are not wrong for having needs. If you can’t be met where you are, you are simply in the wrong place. The right people, the right circumstances, will not require you to shrink.

5. Stillness creates clarity

With stillness comes creative incubation, spaciousness, and the ability to feel guided. You cannot hear your inner knowing if you are constantly drowning it out with noise and busyness.

Make room in your life to listen to yourself both your mind and your body. They are speaking all the time. The question is whether you are willing to hear them.

The life that rises to meet you

In this new year, I hope you know your worth.

I hope you think of all the things you want to manifest for yourself and pause to ask: “Between where I am and where I want to be, there is a discrepancy. What part of me is being validated by the life I live today?”

Because here is what I have learned: life rises to meet you at your level of self-worth.

When you anchor in your worth, when you stop accepting less than you deserve, when you listen to the wisdom of your body and honor what it is telling you, everything shifts.

Not because the universe rewards you or because you have manifested correctly. But because you stopped settling, making yourself small, or accepting crumbs and calling it a feast.

When you remember your worth you build a life that actually feels like yours.

I am Celine Ivari founder of Wholyme, where we create products that help you listen to what your body is trying to tell you. This is the first of what I hope will be many reflections on care, worth, and showing up authentically. Thank you for reading.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the masculine and the feminine in relationships, particularly through the lens of partnership, family, and the environments we create together in a deeply human way.

I recently listened to a conversation with James Duigan on the Intelligent Change podcast, he describes his role in his family as the mountain, the steady presence his family can lean on, feel safe on, play on, and count on. He described his wife as the moon, the one who lights the path, especially when things feel unclear.

That stayed with me.

I find that kind of imagery powerful, because it moves us away from transactional roles and into energetic responsibility.

For me, the partnership I aspire to looks something like this:

My partner as the mountain - grounded, reliable, steady, creating safety through presence.

And myself as both the sun and the moon - the sun that brings warmth, vitality, and life-force into the family, and the moon that offers intuition, guidance, and light when things feel dark or uncertain.

Both are fundamental, and they serve different functions.

And if children grow up within this kind of environment, mountain, sun, and moon, I believe something beautiful happens. You cannot disappoint the mountain. You cannot disappoint the sun, you are held, you are safe, you are guided and adored.

You are free to become the fullest expression of who you are, not an expectation placed upon you.

That feels like a deeply healthy way to think about partnership and parenting to me.

Complementarity and polarity.

I think where many relationships unravel is when we forget that we are fundamentally different people. We come with different instincts, different strengths, different definitions of responsibility and contribution.

Often, what we fall in love with at the beginning, someone’s steadiness, ambition, sensitivity, structure, creativity, later becomes the very thing we resent, often because we expect them to operate the way we do.

Maybe one partner is exceptional at creating warmth, beauty, and emotional safety making a house feel like a home. Maybe the other is brilliant at building structure, strategy, and stability. Both carry power and both carry burden.

The work, I think, is learning to honour the difference rather than trying to redistribute it evenly out of resentment.

Recently, my partner and I began a simple practice. Each day, we share three things we appreciated about the other that day.

‘Three things you did today that I appreciate.’

It sounds small, but actually is powerful, because most of us are trained to scan for what needs fixing, not what is already working. Appreciation is recognition and what we recognise, we reinforce.

I believe relationships don’t fail because there isn’t enough love. They falter because people stop feeling seen, valued, and respected in how they naturally contribute.

These are just some thoughts I’ve been sitting with lately.

An invitation, perhaps, to return to gratitude and to polarity without hierarchy.

And to partnerships where difference is the very thing that makes the whole structure strong.

“If the path before you is clear, you are probably on someone else’s.” - Joseph Campbell

A few nights ago, I was at dinner when a friend shared something with such sincerity it drew us all in.

She spoke about how she wants to create, to build, to follow whatever her soul is trying to tell her… but she feels blocked by a chorus of doubting thoughts:

Who do you think you are?

What do you even know?

What have you ever done?

Why would anyone care?

As she spoke, I felt this deep resonance, like I was looking at an earlier version of myself speaking directly to the woman I am now. It felt tender, protective, and almost surreal because I know those voices.

I know how convincing they can be, and I learnt to recognise that none of them were mine.

They were inherited, echoes of other people’s fears, insecurities, and expectations.

For me, when you grow up in a large, loving family with strong opinions, those voices can feel like truth simply because they are loud.

Now, I believe, your truth… the felt truth… it never comes loudly, it feels more like a soft whisper or a faint knowing.

I now feel that this how is how your path speaks and it rarely makes sense to anyone else.

The first time I followed that whisper

I remember the moment I shared that I wanted to start my own company.

I felt this tiny, irrational spark, an inner knowing with no roadmap, no certainty, no promise. Just a pull.

The reactions around me were predictable:

Don’t leave the family structure. Don’t give up something that seems stable.

And it continues today:

Don’t change the brand now that people finally recognise you. Don’t date someone going through a divorce. Don’t give the same person another chance. Don’t trust your heart too much. Don’t befriend those people…

Every “don’t” came from someone who loved me.

Every warning came from someone trying to protect me.

And yet none of them could feel what I felt, that inner yes that made no sense at all and still felt truer than anything.

The day I incorporated Wholyme, my heart was racing, it felt like recognition. That hidden part of me that had been waiting for years finally got a doorway.

Something similar happened the day I met my partner. The knowing was irrational, inconvenient, and completely undeniable. The path ahead was foggy, uncertain, absolutely unclear and somehow, exactly right.

The real path is rarely visible from the entrance

When you follow your own path, you fall and you rise. You question everything, you are invited to turn back more times than you admit… Yet something keeps pulling you forward, it is that inner compass you are still learning to trust.

Slowly, the path starts to reveals itself, you meet parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. You shed versions of yourself that no longer belong.

You meet people who see you, the real you, and believe in where you are going, even when you doubt.

Eventually you develop a kind of muscle memory for courage.

You recognise the difference between someone else’s fear and your own intuition, and you learn that clarity doesn’t come before the first step, it comes because of it.

The whisper is the doorway

If you’re standing at the edge of something you can’t quite name… if you can’t articulate what you want but you feel a pull… if the path looks unclear, unreasonable, unmarked…Good.

That is the sign it is yours.

The loud voices, the warnings, the opinions, the projections, they will always be there.

However, the sacred work of your life is to follow the faint whisper beneath them.

The one only you can hear. The one that terrifies you just enough to feel alive. The one that keeps returning, even after you try to silence it.

The one that will lead you somewhere you always belonged.

We often hear, “what is meant for you comes easily.”

That if it flows without resistance, then it is right and if it is hard, it probably isn’t meant for you.

I can see how that might feel comforting, this idea that the universe will deliver what is ours with no effort, no friction, no challenge. However, I have always questioned this.

Because the things that matter most to me have rarely come easily.

Building Wholyme has been one of the most beautiful and demanding journeys of my life.

It has taken years of rejection, uncertainty, and moments where I could have walked away. There were times when I was tired, disheartened, and unsure if the vision I believed in would ever fully land in the world.

And yet, I stayed, definitely not because it was easy, but because it was aligned.

The same has been true in love.

The deepest relationship I have ever known hasn’t been effortless. It has invited me to face my edges, to hold tenderness and truth at once, to practice love as devotion rather then a fantasy.

If I used “ease” as my compass, I might have walked away from both.

What I have come to see is that difficulty sometimes is really initiation.

It asks: How much do you care?

Are you willing to stand for what you believe in, even when it tests you?

There is a kind of spirituality that can make us passive, that tells us to “trust the flow” excusing a lack of ownership, accountability, or perseverance.

I believe real trust is in staying devoted to what you value, building the structures you want to flow within, rather than letting others define the current for you.

For me, the question is never is it easy or hard?

The question is: is it aligned with my values, with how I want to live, love, and serve?

If it is, then resistance isn’t a sign to run. It’s a mirror showing where growth, skill, or courage are being called forward.

Ease has its place. There are moments when things unfold with grace, where doors open effortlessly, and I’m grateful for those. But when they don’t, I don’t assume I’m off path, I assume I’m being shaped.

Devotion has become my compass.

Importantly, it doesn’t mean chasing struggle for its own sake, but it means not fleeing from it.

It means staying, learning, adjusting, and creating the conditions for flow, even when it takes work.

I’m still building, practicing, still learning what it means to stand for something with care. At the moment I think maybe that is the point, for things to be true to me irrespective of weather they are easy or hard.

I believe that is where meaning lives, not in the absence of resistance but in devotion, in choosing, again and again, to stand for what you believe in.

With all my care,

Celine

For the past few years, I have been building Wholyme, a wellness company rooted in the simple yet radical idea that care has a ripple effect. Care for ourselves is never just for ourselves; it shapes how we love how we lead, and how we show up in the world.

This space is where I want to share more personally: reflections on what it means to love with care, the lessons I am learning as a founder, the science and philosophy that ground me, and the very human journey of navigating love, growth, and expression.

I imagine this as a journal in public. A place where thought meets feeling, and where I can offer something deeper than what fits into an Instagram caption. Thank you for being here at the beginning. I hope these words give you pause, resonance, and maybe even a sense of relief that you are not navigating it all alone.

With care,

Celine