Hayley dropped the mic moments in, saying “if you’re not dancing offline, you shouldn’t be dancing online”. Ooof. Manufacturing authenticity is not the same as actually inhabiting it.

We talked about the fine line between real generosity in business and the kind of generosity that comes from a lack of sense worth, or the need to release pressure - “I’ll just drop my prices so people will buy, so I don’t have to feel this discomfort”, for example.

We talked about the dance between surrendering and allowing life to flow through you - and knowing that you are ALSO a sovereign presence in your life - both being the creator, and being created by the bigger cosmic order.

We’d love to hear how this lands with you!

This series of conversations is leading up to a gorgous experience I’m creating - The Sacred Limelight. 21 days to express the creative spirit within you.

Three live calls. Daily activations. A sacred circle.

My intention is that by taking part in this, you remember yourself as a creator, not just a “content creator”. That you will:

• Release the pressure you have been feeling to “post” on social media

• Start seeing your life’s work as art, not a machine that has to be constantly fed

• Start making things that activate people not just “inspire” them

• Gain more confidence in your expression

• Feel more creative energy return, and reconnect to a sense that life is good

I have found that all these things connect people to more life force energy and sustainable power to bring themselves and their work into the world - without all the forcing and cringy strategies that put you off even opening up a social media platform.

If you you decide to join, your place also opens a full year inside my Substack world - future seasonal experiences, my Magnetic Voice series (coming soon), and our weekly subscriber chat - all bundled into one payment of just £66. The price will rise to £222 later #nobrainer 😘

You can find all the details below - I’d LOVE to have you inside 👇🏼

Join the Sacred Limelight

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There’s so much emphasis on visibility in the online world. We’ve been told we need more of it to have more impact, more income, more reach; that if we could just get in front of more eyeballs, everything would open up.

But I think we’ve confused visibility with exposure. We’ve confused really being seen with being looked at. Because do you actually want thousands - millions! - of people looking at you?

Maybe 😂

But I suspect what most of us really want is something more nuanced than that. We want to be experienced. We want someone to encounter our work and understand something about us, or themselves, that they couldn’t quite see before. And, for me at least, I want something even more than that. I want what I create to make you want to create.

The best art makes you want to make something

One of my core philosophies is that the best art doesn’t simply inspire you. It’s catalytic. You read the book and desperately want to write. You leave the exhibition and suddenly feel like digging out your sketchbook. You hear someone speak and an idea that’s been germinating inside you for six months starts hissing “Just. Make. Me”.

THIS is the kind of visibility I’m interested in. And I think it comes from being so inside your own creative life that there is actually something alive for people to be activated by.

How self-surveillance blocks visibility

This creative absorption is almost the opposite of what can happen when we’re trying very hard to be visible. Because the more conscious I become of people looking at me, the easier it is to start looking at myself too. Perhaps a touch obsessively.

How am I coming across? Does this sound intelligent enough? Is this too weird? Am I posting enough? Am I posting too much? Does this make me look successful? Will people think I’m selling too hard? Am I being inspiring? Do I look like I know what I’m doing?

Before long, I’m no longer making the thing. I’m standing outside myself, watching myself make the thing. I’ve become the spectator of my own creativity.

Here’s one of the places I’ve done this: I really, really didn’t want people to think I’m pushy.

I didn’t want to be one of “those people” who only reaches out when they want something. I said this to a group of women recently and pretty much every one of them had the same hang-up - or a variation of it - about reaching out to people who already knew them or their work.

So I started getting curious about it. What do I actually believe about “pushy” people? Somewhere in me, pushy means self-serving, transactional, using the relationship. And that belief didn’t come from nowhere. I’ve watched plenty of marketing that does feel manipulative and transactional, and I’ve rightly recoiled from it, thanks very much.

The problem was when that recoil stopped me seeing the difference between manipulation and simply telling someone the truth about something I’ve made that I think they might want. And underneath THAT, if I’m really honest, was a fear of rejection.

If I don’t send the message, nobody gets to say no to me. Phew. Unfortunately, nobody gets to say yes either. Damn 😂

And this is what interests me about self-surveillance. It looks like we’re paying attention to other people, but actually it makes us incredibly self-focused. I’m no longer absorbed in what I’ve created, why I created it, who it might help, or what it might wake up in someone. I’m absorbed in how I look while I’m sharing it.

And creativity really doesn’t flourish under that kind of scrutiny.

It doesn’t mean the answer is to stop caring about being seen, disappear into a creative cave and decide we don’t need anyone else. Sometimes we need to be seen very, very much. Just by the right eyes.

The power of believing eyes

Sonia Choquette has this beautiful phrase, “believing eyes.” In Trust Your Vibes, she writes about how much easier it becomes to trust ourselves when we’re surrounded by loving, believing eyes and ears, and how important it can be to seek out kindred spirits while that trust is still developing. I love this because there is such a profound difference between millions of eyeballs and a few believing eyes.

One makes me think about exposure. The other makes me think about being witnessed as we evolve.

There have been people in my life who could see something in me before I had enough evidence to see it myself - and I had to actively seek them out in communities and programmes that were right for me. Their belief gave me just enough room to experiment, to speak, to make things, to be a bit ridiculous, to change my mind, and eventually to develop more belief of my own.

I really think that’s part of what healthy visibility actually requires. Places where our creativity can be witnessed while it is still in it’s messy old process. Where we can feel more alive - because we become more visible when we become more alive in what we’re creating.

This is really the heart of why I’ve created The Sacred Limelight.

Let your creativity come alive and be witnessed

For twenty-one days, I want to create a space where we remember ourselves as creators. Not “content creators” - just creators. Somewhere we explore what changes when we move out of comparison, competition and self-surveillance and back towards the Creator’s Heart; when we start listening for the voice that actually wants to be expressed through us, and when we’re surrounded by other people doing the same.

I don’t want you to leave merely “inspired”. I want to make you want to make something. Become more willing to let other people encounter the genius that’s dying to come out of you!

And perhaps that is what makes the limelight sacred. Not more eyeballs. More aliveness.

We begin September 11th. I’d love to see you inside 💚 Comment or DM me if you have any questions at all.

Founding Sacred Limelight Circle membership is £66/year in the UK (60% off forever ✨). If you're reading in the Substack app, open the link in your browser to make sure your Founding Circle discount is applied.

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In this week’s episode of The Changes, we explore the remarkable geology of Jade - a metamorphic crystal formed deep within the Earth through immense heat and pressure. Unlike igneous rocks, born from fire, or sedimentary rocks, shaped by layers of time and memory, metamorphic rocks begin as something else entirely before being transformed into a new substance. The way they’re formed shapes the qualities they carry.

What if the same is true for us?

Together, we’ll contemplate Gate 59 and its movement from dishonesty to intimacy to transparency, asking what it really means to become deeply honest with ourselves. Are the dreams we’re pursuing truly our own? Or have they been inherited from a world that tells us what success should look like?

Jade has long been associated with dreams, abundance and inner transformation. Rather than seeing dreams as distant goals to strive towards, this episode offers a different possibility: perhaps your life has been artfully preparing you for a dream that already exists within you.

Along the way, we’ll explore what abundance feels like when it begins with intimacy rather than acquisition, and how even the smallest acts of beauty, gratitude and presence might be expressions of the life you’re already here to live.

So this week... listen. Contemplate. Create.

The doors are open to my upcoming 21 day challenge “Sacred Limelight” - it’s going to be a beautiful journey to unlock your creative expression and new levels of visibility that actually feel good. We start 11th September.

Join Sacred Limelight

This one’s about commitment - but not the version of commitment that gets sold to us as never giving up, never wavering, picking a “lane” and gritting your teeth through it until the bitter end. I’m talking about a kind of commitment that is wise about when to stay, and when to go. When to embrace change, and when to stick around a bit longer…

Leaky energy

The current transit is Gate 29, which in the Gene Keys moves from half-heartedness, through commitment, into devotion. For me, the pressure that shows up around this theme is this: don’t be flaky, don’t flit from thing to thing, stay the course.

But I don’t think that’s actually what commitment is asking of us. The deeper version isn’t commitment to one thing. It’s commitment to yourself, in the present moment, whatever life happens to be asking of you right now. Whether the direction is staying or changing…can you stay with yourself either way?

Gil Fronsdal, a Zen teacher I love, once said one of the best ways to simulate life in a Monastery is to just do one thing at a time. Making tea, you make tea. Writing an email, you write the email. Eating an apple, you eat the apple. Richard Rudd makes a related point about this Gene Key: real commitment can only ever be commitment to the present, because you can’t actually know what you’ll be committed to in the future. So the pushy energy of forcing yourself to stick with something because you said you would? That’s leaky. It’s a different frequency entirely from committing because you’re grounded enough to stay with yourself, no matter whether the cycle ends or continues.

The whole rainbow, not just the best bits

This week’s crystal is Turquoise, and one of its central themes is wholeness. Naisha Ahsian writes, in The Book of Stones: you can’t have a rainbow with just the colour purple. I love that image. A rainbow needs the whole spectrum, not just its highest frequency colour.

So much of the self-improvement instinct is a purifying instinct. If I could just get rid of the half-heartedness. If I could just get rid of the way I jump from thing to thing, get rid of the inner critic, then I’d be higher vibration, better at calling in what I want. But is wholeness really about filtering yourself down to the best parts? I think not. I think it’s the capacity to hold the full spectrum of who you are, and let the wisdom of when to stay and when to change come from that fuller place.

Because what actually makes you want to jump ship too early? Usually discomfort. Not wanting to feel a thing you’re already feeling. And what makes you stay too long? Often the same discomfort, just facing the other direction, not wanting to feel what leaving would require. I have a lot of third line energy in my own profile - I’m always exploring, always drawn to new experiences, so I’ve had to build a litmus test for myself: am I changing because I’m bracing against reality, or because something has genuinely come to a natural end? Either way, the real question underneath is the same. How do I not abandon myself, whether I stay or whether I change?

A traveler’s stone

Turquoise is traditionally a protector of travellers, which makes sense, because aren’t we all on a journey somewhere? I want to be careful with the idea of protection here, though. It can tip into superstition, into a fear that without the right talisman you’re somehow unsafe.

What I mean by it is closer to this: what helps you not abandon yourself while you’re moving through uncertainty? Maybe it’s a practice. Maybe it’s a person. Maybe it’s simply the decision that you won’t abandon yourself, whatever happens. A strong back and a soft front, as Roshi Joan Halifax says. What if the ultimate protection isn’t surrounding yourself with an energetic, but being rooted in love?

Luck comes from going all in

Turquoise has one more association I couldn’t leave out: it’s traditionally linked to cloud-busting, to calling rain. And Gene Key 29 carries a teaching that luck comes from commitment, from going all in, heart-centered rather than white-knuckled, rather than keeping one foot out of the door.

Maybe you will recognise where this connects: Gene Key 46 carries the story of the rainmaker. His secret was never that he could make it rain - he simply knew where it was already about to rain, and he went there. That’s the same wisdom turquoise is pointing at here. Alberto Villoldo’s line always stays with me: Information is knowing water is H2O. Wisdom is knowing how to make it rain. Commitment to the present, and devotion to how life is actually unfolding is the road toward that kind of wisdom. And wholeness is what emerges along the way. Not a rainbow that’s only purple, but one with every frequency present.

If you have turquoise, give it a cleanse and carry it with you this week, or wear it if it’s set in jewellery. I’ll be doing the same, and I’ll let you know what it brings up.

Here’s my question to you in the meantime:

If you were handed a traveler’s stone right now, what would you want it to carry for you?

Not Art with a capital A. Not “am I creative enough to earn this word.” More like a living weaving you’re making, one thread at a time, that’s allowed to have its own mind.

A few things surfaced that are worth sharing even if you weren’t in the room.

The metaphors you use are already shaping your actions. There’s a Stanford study I keep coming back to - 482 students read one of two reports about crime in a city. One described crime as “a wild beast preying on the city,” the other as “a virus infecting the city.” Same statistics, different metaphor. The beast group reached for enforcement - more jails, more policing, some even said call in the military. The virus group reached for social reform - fix the economy, the schools, the healthcare system. The metaphor shaped the proposed action.

So…how are you seeing your business right now? If it’s a machine, you become its mechanic: tightening, fixing, optimising. If it’s a garden, you become its gardener: tending, seasonal, patient. If it’s a work of art, you become its creator. And that’s the real question underneath the question. Not “what happens if I see my business as art,” but what does it mean to see yourself as a creator?

The Gene Keys open with a creation myth for a reason. Gate 1 begins with the story of Shiva’s dance and the turtle whose shell patterns became the I Ching - humanity’s original tool for reading the universe. I love that the whole transmission starts here, because it makes a claim before it teaches anything else: every act of creation, a business, a painting, a life, is a small repetition of the first one. Unseen becoming seen. Potential taking form.

Missing the muse is thinking you have to do it all yourself. Modern business culture is very good at turning us into operators: optimise, produce, measure, repeat - and very good at severing us from the relationship a muse actually offers: the sense that some of what moves through you isn’t only coming from you. Steven Pressfield puts it better than I can - he describes the Kabbalists’ idea of an angel above every blade of grass crying “Grow!”, and then goes further: one super-angel above the whole human race crying “Evolve!” Whatever your version of that is - a historical figure, an archetype, a spiritual guide, or just a way of relating to the unseen, the invitation is the same. Ask who’s helping you build this.

We got properly practical too! I ran through several concrete shifts for actually running a business like a creative practice rather than a content machine. My favourite, prompted by a question from Kristina in my subscriber chat: swap your goals for creative briefs. Artists don’t work in the absence of structure, the constraint is often what makes the creativity possible in the first place. “Write a weekly newsletter to nurture my audience” becomes something more like: create a strange little weekly dispatch that makes the reader see one ordinary part of their life differently, takes under four minutes to read, and leaves them with a question they can’t stop turning over. Make six and see what emerges.

We also went into embracing melancholy as part of the creative cycle rather than a sign something’s wrong, learning to tolerate uncertainty the way artists have to, and why loading your life with meaning - the way Chanel was obsessed with the number 5 - changes what your manifestations actually mean to you.

The full replay is above! I’d love to hear how it landed.

Where in your business have you been acting as the mechanic, when what’s actually missing is the muse? Tell me in the comments - I’d love to know what this brings up for you XCX

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Why did I almost not do this? Because it didn’t feel “neat”.

I’ve been preparing to launch a new programme and crystallising the way I talk about the work I’m here to do - or rather the work I am here to make.

The core is EXPRESSION. Tapping back into your creativity and life force because nothing becomes income, impact, or recognition until it becomes expressed. This requires us to have the courage to own our multi-faceted natures. Do you think you could turn to the energy of the divine feminine and ask her to summarise what she does in a 2 sentence bio?

Of course not. So why should you? Don’t you want permission in your life to actually love things and bring parts of you into your business that previously felt off limits? I know I do.

Subscribe now

So, in the spirit of walking the sacred walk, I’m making a podcast for the sheer pleasure of it. It’s a series that brings together two of my favourite things: the Gene Keys transits, and crystal energy. When I discovered that the Gene Keys has a list of crystals corresponding to each of the 64 frequencies, I wanted to DRIBBLE it was so exciting.

These are two passions I’ve been keeping in separate little compartments for some time, but here I am being offered the opportunity to bring them together.

The fact is, I can’t point to this on a content calendar and say this serves the funnel. It’s just something I wanted to express through my heart. And not putting it out, because it doesn’t “make sense” just feels stingy to my soul.

7th Gene Key & Galena

Right now we’re in the seventh Gene Key, and its crystal is Galena. A dark grey, heavy, shining stone that looks solid and dense but is, underneath, surprisingly soft.

Moody shot of my Galena in the sunlight 👆🏻

Maybe that’s the whole teaching in one object. The duality we all carry, and the duality inside every Gene Key: something that looks hard-edged is often a portal to gentleness. Something that looks soft is often full of strength.

The seventh Gene Key moves from division to guidance to virtue, and it has everything to do with listening. Not the guidance where you, as the leader or coach or guide, arrive with the answer. The guidance where you sit back and listen so deeply that a person’s own inner knowing surfaces on its own.

Now that’s what I would love to happen with this podcast.

What it means to keep beginning

Galena is known as the stone of alchemical transformation. It carries the vibrational pattern of lead, and lead is the beginner’s metal in alchemy. So the question the crystal hands you is: what does it mean to be a beginner? What does it mean to move from beginning towards mastery, and do you ever actually want to arrive?

I don’t think we do. Because the beginner’s mind and the listening quality the 7th Gene Key invokes are the same thing. When you become truly present with someone, really see them, really listen instead of just hearing, aren’t you beginning again? Empty, receptive, starting from scratch. Every time you resist the urge to reach for advice too quickly, yours or anyone else’s, you’re choosing that beginner’s mind on purpose.

Robert Simmons and Naisha Ahsian write, in The Book of Stones, that Galena “places within your field the restless desire of the seeker who won’t stop until the journey to enlightenment is complete.”

So: as leaders of the new earth, when do we stop seeking? I’d suggest never, and that this is good news. We’re always expanding, always getting to listen more deeply, to ourselves and to our people. That restlessness can look like lack, like craving. But I think it depends entirely on the energy underneath it. There’s a seeking that grasps. And there’s a seeking that’s childlike, pure, alchemical - asking what what might happen next

I’ve started thinking of it this way: when I feel like a beginner, like a novice, like I don’t have enough experience yet, I try to remember I’m not a beginner, I’m just beginning. Again.

A grounding note

Galena also has a cubic internal lattice, which makes it deeply stabilising. Meditate with it and it anchors you straight into the earth, which matters more than it sounds, because none of the above works if you’re not grounded enough to actually listen.

You cannot listen while distracted, absent, floating off somewhere else. My own litmus test for how healthy my whole system is this: Am I allowing time to actually listen to the people I love most? When the answer is no, I know I need to reground before anything else.

Galena is reminding me that I’m always beginning. That I’m always turning lead to gold. And that listening more deeply is what makes the alchemy possible at all.

Thank you for listening and I would love to know how this landed for you.

Then I took two courses in reading the Akashic Records, did countless readings to hone my skills, and the whole premise was the opposite of everything I’d trained in. I had to completely surrender to becoming a channel. Here’s the tea:

Learning to speak before the meaning arrives

I would close my eyes and, through prayer, connect to the Akashic Records. My way of connecting to this energy tends to be very visual, so I would see in my mind’s eye a series of images. And then I’d just have to speak them.

Whaaaaat!? Just speak?

Yes. The practice was to simply describe what I was seeing to the person in front of me, and keep describing, before I had any idea what it meant - until some meaning emerged and it started to make sense.

If you come from a background of logic, I can tell you: this is deeply unnerving. It’s a kind of cosmic catchphrase - you say what you see, out loud, with no evidence yet that it means anything at all. Every academic instinct in me wanted to check for the facts first - to verify the source. But here, there was no source to check - there was just the seeing, and the saying.

I believe I was called into that work specifically because I needed to put my ego and my logical brain aside, and let myself become a channel. It was training for everything I am now doing to help people unlock the genius in their own voice, through the lens of Human Design.

The gate behind it

All this made a lot more sense later, when I found one particular gate I have activated in my Human Design: 20.2, known as the Spontaneous Speaker. It sits in my Venus, which is about values, about integrity - and it’s the gate of speaking freely, letting truth flow through without being overly scripted or overly prepared. The key to this is presence. Pure presence. And that is what connecting to the Akashic field taught me - to be so anchored in the energy of the moment, in universal love, that nothing blocked my inner vision. And my voice was just a vehicle for that energy.

Look at the archetypal voices in your throat centre and you start to understand you’re not just speaking, you’re speaking in a very particular way that’s already encoded. It can radically reframe past experiences - like mine, coming out of a world built on citation and “fact” - and it opens up what’s possible now.

I have 6 gates activated in my throat, so the Spontaneous Speaker is only one voice among several. But I know it’s essential for me to speak off the cuff. That’s where I find the pockets of genius in the coaching, in the energy work, in my business itself - if I let myself be present enough to let it happen.

There’s still plenty I prepare carefully. But I’ve learned to let myself be a channel in the moments that call for it, rather than scripting my way through everything out of fear.

If this gate is activated in you too, learning to trust your spontaneity rather than over-preparing can be one of the most powerful shifts available to you.

Logic will only get you so far

This is really the heart of it: if you’re a leader who’s built your credibility on logic - on research, on getting it right, on having the receipts - your voice will eventually ask more of you than that. I’m not asking you to throw the logical baby out of the logical bathwater! It’s an AND. The Akashic Records didn’t erase my academic training, but they did give me a second instrument to play, and it’s NOT an instrument that gathers the facts before it plays.

That’s one of the leadership voices this era actually needs.

Where to go from here

If you want to know what’s sitting in your own throat centre - which of the eleven archetypal voices you carry, and how to draw on them to sharpen your message and communicate in a way that’s genuinely magnetic - come and do my Magnetic Voice Experience 🔥 It works from your actual genetic blueprint rather than a communication skills framework. It’s uncannily revealing, and one of my favourite processes to guide someone through.

Magnetise your voice

Let me know what questions you have, or if you’d like me to reach out.

The jealousy imprint. The competition wound.

I believe there’s unbelievable freedom on the other side of this, and alchemising it is one of my soul-level purposes. In my Gene Keys Radiance sphere, I carry the 45, which moves from the shadow of Dominance to the gift of Synergy, to its highest frequency of Communion. Yum.

It’s about what happens when we see life through a hierarchical lens. Where does that put us in our businesses, our projects and our calling?

When we think we have to be at the top of the pecking order to be safe or loved, everything constricts. I want to help you see this differently, so it stops dampening the edge of your brilliance.

Your subconscious will always agree

I learned from Sonia Chouquette that the subconscious will always agree with you. It is, therefore - VERY important to know what’s going on down there.

Here’s how it works in the context of jealousy. When someone else is doing well and you feel that pang - how come they’re there and I’m not - and you’re not happy for them, you’re teaching your own subconscious something very specific:

This is how people react when you succeed too.

So of course it doesn’t feel safe to shine. Of course it doesn’t feel good to share what you’re building. You hide your brilliance, your genius, where you’re going because you’re afraid people will judge you exactly the way you just judged them.

And this is where we need a shitload of self-compassion.

There can be lots of shame around even having these feelings, sometimes toward people you like and admire. Loving someone and being jealous of them at the same time is a hard thing to hold. But give yourself grace, my friend - it’s just what happens when you’ve been taught to see life through the paradigm of hierarchy, where you need some kind of advantage over other people to be safe, worthy, or loved.

That’s exactly what Gene Key 45 invites us to look at. When we view reality as a pecking order, we keep ourselves separate from the oneness of all life, believing we’re not valuable in the system, that we don’t have our place, when actually everyone has their own perfect spot in the bigger cosmic order.

Even at the subtlest level, we find ourselves wanting to climb the ladder, the community, the company, or the group. Until we realise that ladder isn’t even something worth climbing.

Hiding my homework

I felt this energy young, way before I had language for it.

At school, I used to hide the fact that I worked hard on my homework. If people saw how much effort I put in, I was afraid they’d start putting in that effort too - and then they’d have the only advantage I had (e.g. working hard). If I showed I was passionate about something, they might get passionate about it too, and I’d lose my edge.

Thing was, every way I found to protect my advantage kept me separate from the people around me.

That pattern can show up in adult life too - in business, in creative work, in leadership. Holding back in a group because you don’t want people to run with your ideas. Hiding what you know so nobody advances past you. Harbouring envy when someone else does well because their rise feels like it pins you lower in the order. Every time, you’re chipping away at your own sense of connection and reinforcing the idea that your worth is a function of rank.

It isn’t. Your self-worth sits underneath every achievement, every accolade, every position you’ll ever hold. Underneath all of it is the truth that you are deserving of unconditional love. That you are not as separate from other people as you think. That love and acceptance are not something you have to earn by being at an advantage.

Your presence alone is enough

You get to be loved. Period.

Can you drop into that? I get to be loved. I get to be included. I get to belong. I get to be accepted just for my presence alone, because I AM love, I am not separate.

Now imagine what happens once that’s actually true for you. You stop needing to compete with anyone, because their success becomes YOUR success.

Try this the next time envy flickers: Oh my god - I just succeeded when she succeeded. I just expanded when she expanded. I just grew when she grew. I became more wealthy when she became more wealthy.

I’ll be real - this might not happen overnight. I still catch these pangs to this day. BUT - I can intervene differently now.

I remind myself I am safe, I am loved, I do not have to be at an advantage. That’s an old-era paradigm. It’s learned conditioning, it’s not the truth.

I am safe. Good for her.

It’s a completely different energy - and it’s deeply liberating.

And by the way, when you catch yourself judging your own jealousy on top of the jealousy - that’s not helpful either. So you get to say: I feel this, and I love myself anyway. Sometimes I’ll even breathe it in, like I’m doing the Buddhist Tonglen practice - not trying to get rid of it, not shaming myself for having it.

Just: yes. I learned to see the world through a hierarchical lens. I thought I had to be at the top of the pecking order to be loved, included, to belong. That it not true.

Then I watch what it’s like to see someone else succeed. Their success doesn’t put me lower down in the pecking order, because there IS no order.

If this activated something in you about the hiding, the constricting, the belief that your worth is tied to your place in the order, that’s exactly the terrain I work in with clients. Using Gene Keys, Human Design and energy work, I help leaders alchemise the emotional and energetic blocks standing between them and their next level of freedom, wealth, and impact.

Book a Prosperity Pivot Call - a complimentary 45-minute session to help you lead, receive, and prosper in energetic alignment - with the option to explore your Human Design for deeper clarity.

Book your free call

I also want to say a big thanks to who taught me this! It’s about speaking yourself into a state change, so that whatever you’re doing to bring more money into your life, you get to do it from a place of receptivity and positivity, rather than striving or fear.

Since I brought this into my own energy toolkit, I’ve felt so much more ease and expansion in generating money, receiving it, and investing it. It’s already showing up as incredible opportunities, better products, easier sales, and more aligned pricing, without the shame that used to come with asking for what I’m worth.

If you keep scrolling, I’m sharing my own full, unfiltered money riff below for you to listen to on repeat 🔥

This is not spiritual bypassing

Something really important I want you to know - riffing (or any other abundance work you’ll hear me share) is not about ignoring financial fear, trauma, or the real demands going on in your life.

Pain around money can be real, valid, and deeply rooted, whether it’s personal, ancestral, social, or collective. You don’t need to suppress fear or shame to practice this. The riff can sit alongside deeper work: coaching, therapy, financial planning, energetics, Human Design or Gene Keys, nervous-system work, practical business action. All of it.

The purpose of this is simply to bring some expansion, lightness, and possibility while you’re doing that deeper alchemy. Money work can get heavy, but playfulness can make it more sustainable 💚 And as I say in the video…

You don’t have to choose between honouring your wounds and raising your state. Both can be true.

How to create your own riff

• Set an intention to riff on money and abundance.

• Set a timer for at least five minutes.

• Begin with one starter sentence.

• Keep speaking about your amazing relationship with money - without stopping, correcting, or judging yourself.

• Don’t worry about repetition. It can help maintain momentum and deepen the feeling.

• Let your voice, body, and imagination get involved. Go wild. Let your energy build up. The aim is state change - do NOT worry about perfection or eloquence.

• Record it on your phone if you want to listen back. I HIGHLY recommend!!!

Starter sentences to try:

• Money is flowing to me every single day.

• I can’t believe how much money is in my life.

• My feeling of abundance is off the charts.

Anchor phrases for when you get stuck:

• I love money and money loves me.

• I am infinite abundance.

• I always have more than enough.

And one important note: this is not a performance! Nobody else needs to hear the recording. It doesn’t have to be posted, polished, or shared. It doesn’t have to sound intelligent, spiritual, or convincing - it’s your own private space for experimentation. You’re allowed to sound exaggerated, ridiculous, repetitive, or completely unlike your everyday self, thanks very much. Giving yourself that permission is part of what creates a new sense of liberation.

Below is my personal money riff to download and listen to on repeat.

I got SO excited about one of my riffs, I decided to share it with some gorgeously uplifting music so you can immerse yourself in an abundance energy as you’re trying this for yourself.

Download it here 👇🏼

A quick note - listening to mine can prime your own state before you begin, but the real magic happens when you do this yourself!

A few things worth knowing before you start:

Your words might not feel believable or realistic at first. You might feel THE CRINGE. Your analytical mind might immediately contradict what you’re saying, or you might just run out of language. This is all perfectly normal and fine - it’s just showing you where your get to pour a little more love and attention into your life.

In fact, I loved how this riffing acted as a diagnostic tool. When I did this same exercise around relationships, it felt noticeably more tricky than the money riff. It was just a bit - “awkward”. That told me that attending to love and relationships is an important part of my bigger picture abundance journey.

If you practice this daily, the effect will compound. You’ll end up sounding like a bloody money Ninja if you keep going long enough 😂 It will NOT mean you don’t have tough days, but your overall baseline will shift.

So…try this as an experiment:

Before you begin, give your current state a number from one to ten. Then riff for five minutes. Check in again. Notice what shifted. If nothing did, no problem. Try it for 7 days, and then see.

I’d love to hear in the comments: what changed in your body, which phrases surprised you, where you got stuck, which area of life flowed most easily, and what actions or ideas emerged afterward.

If this practice has shown you how powerful your voice can be as a manifestation tool, my Magnetic Voice Activation is designed to help you go further.

It’s an experience informed by Human Design, where we work together to activate the uniqueness of your throat centre. You’ll walk away with your own voice declaration statement, which is priceless - as well as some profound inner shifts. Also priceless.

This is for anyone who wants to feel freer, more expressive, and more magnetic when they speak,

not only on camera, but in your work, your relationships, and your everyday life.

Activate your Magentic Voice

Darlene works with women in long-term relationships who feel disconnected from their own truth and the intimacy they want. I work with leaders learning to trust their voice as an instrument of manifestation. Different rooms yes, but so much overlapping material. So we put her chart on screen and went looking.

A few things surfaced worth sharing even if you weren’t there.

Her throat centre is undefined, which means it’s not fixed, it’s fluid. It learns communication style from whoever and whatever is around it. That’s a gift (Darlene reads a room and adjusts in real time, mid-session, mid-class) and it’s a possible vulnerability (it’s easy to absorb someone else’s voice and mistake it for your own).

Three of her four throat activations sit on the unconscious side, which tracks with what she told me: people are often the ones who reflect her gifts back to her before she sees them herself.

Then we got to gate 20.2, which we share. Same gate, same line, same placement - Venus, the seat of values and integrity - in both of our charts. That’s not something we’d planned or expected to find.

Gate 20 is the archetype of the Spontaneous Speaker. In the Gene Keys, its highest expression is presence. Not confidence or charisma - just sheer presence. And it turns out presence is the literal foundation of Darlene’s entire methodology: her work begins with becoming present in the body before anything else can happen. It’s also, she told me, the one thing her clients say they crave most from their partners. I got chills. You can’t make stuff up up.

We also touched her 35.2 the Limitless Adventurer, the voice that expands through curiosity and turns lived experience into wisdom for others. Darlene’s first coaching container, years ago, was literally shaped around a caravan heading out on the road!

This is what I love about this work. You get to make sense of and affirm what you’ve been exploring all along - and see a new kind of map of your potential at the same time.

The full conversation is above, including how the throat centre works as a manifestation centre (not just a communication one), what it means when your voice skews toward story over logic, and why the moments you don’t say something can carry as much charge as the moments you do.

If this stirs something about your own voice - where it’s yours, where it’s borrowed, where it’s been waiting for permission - that’s exactly the terrain of my Magnetic Voice Activation experience. Details are linked below.

And go find Darlene. Her work on presence and polarity is the real thing.

Activate Your Magnetic Voice is a personalised 1:1 experience to uncover
how your voice is uniquely designed to express, connect, and attract.

Here’s what a wonderful client, Conny, said about her recent experience:

I always had this feeling there was something inside of me that wanted to be
expressed & shared, but I could not figure out what it really was. I now know what I
am here to share with others and, most importantly, how to share it. It gave me
the confidence to stand up for me in my unique way of communicating. I will now
challenge my fear of being seen - there is no need to be afraid of the power of my
voice and the message I am here to share.

Book your experience

The funny thing about truth is that different versions of it can coexist.

And nowhere is this more obvious than in the world of manifestation. Many teachings in this realm invite us to suspend disbelief, live in the “wish fulfilled”, and focus with great gusto and determination on the reality we want to inhabit. We’re invited to cultivate the elevated emotions that come with these future imaginaries as if they’re present experiences.

As Joe Dispenza teaches - our thoughts can go out like metal antennas, projecting our desires into the unified field. Our elevated emotions can act like magnets and pull our desired reality back to us.

I love what this has opened up in me. Since I began playing with manifestation around six years ago, I have become a different person. My baseline frequency is more glass-half-full than glass-half-empty - and that was NOT always the case.

But something about manifestation teachings has always bugged me. It’s a paradox bubbling away under the surface that sometimes pisses on my manifestation fire.

If we don’t address it, we can easily slip into gaslighting our own suffering and sweeping over the structural inequalities of the world - and that blocks abundance too.

So let’s clear it up 💅🏻

A scale of truth

Manifestation teachings emphasise that we create our reality with our thoughts and the energy we inhabit. I used to think this held a contradiction:

• Truth 1: Your consciousness creates your reality.

• Truth 2: Not everything in your reality is created by your consciousness.

But I’ve realised it’s less a contradiction, and more of a scale. You have full authorship over your actions, but partial authorship, at best, over your external circumstances.

Saying your reality is exclusively a product of your consciousness gets sticky because it can easily become: illness is your creation, poverty is your creation, abuse is your creation, conflict is your creation.

I don’t think that’s a compassionate or accurate worldview.

If a tool that was meant to be deeply empowering becomes a tool for self-blame and disempowerment, it totally blocks manifesting energy. Which we don’t want.

Manifestation teachings also invite us to “ignore the 3D” - to focus exclusively on what we want, not what we don’t.

But this can also get sticky.

“Ignoring the 3D” - turning away from apparent evidence that things aren’t working - is useful in one very specific context.

Let’s say you’ve started a business and nobody has bought from you yet. If you constantly check your sales and conclude “this is pointless,” you’ll likely lose confidence, stop creating, and fulfil your own fear (which, by the way, in Human Design is held in gate 47).

In that situation, refusing to let present circumstances dictate your identity and actions is incredibly powerful.

But that principle becomes problematic without context and nuance. Sometimes our circumstances are telling us something essential. Rest is needed. Trauma needs to be processed. We need to change our environment.

And sometimes it’s not personal at all - it’s structural, and no amount of vibration-raising was ever going to override it on its own.

Humans live in shared realities

We don’t exist in isolated bubbles. We’re born into economies, families, cultures, histories, governments, ecosystems.

A child born into famine didn’t individually “manifest” famine. Someone living in an active war zone didn’t create that because they were in a low vibration, and they may not be able to directly affect their circumstances by thought alone. The capacity just may not be available. Those realities emerge from enormous collective systems.

That doesn’t mean individuals are powerless - Viktor Frankl taught us all that. It just means their agency exists within conditions, not outside them.

Which brings me to the part of this I actually think is the most useful reframe I’ve landed on.

Manifesting is collective not individual

Here’s the piece that finally made this click for me: manifestation isn’t only an individual game. It’s also collective.

You have real authority over your nervous system, your perception, your next decision. Perhaps your family or closest relationship has real authority over its patterns across a generation or two.

But a global conflict is not a family-scale or individual-scale event. It’s the residue of centuries of collective consciousness - historical trauma, greed, fear, power and fault lines nobody currently alive chose. No single person inside that system created it, and no single person inside it can think their way out of it alone. The problem is operating at a scale beyond individual consciousness.

Think of one cell in a body. It has real agency - it can be healthy or stressed, it does its job well or badly. But it didn’t create the illness in the whole body, and it can’t cure that illness by itself. It can only do its own part, faithfully, at its own scale.

So: someone in a war zone is not failing to manifest peace. They are living inside a scale of consciousness - collective, historical, structural - that no individual’s mindset can override. That’s not their failure. Full stop.

But at a collective level? When hundreds of thousands of us do this work?

That’s a different story.

And this is exactly what Dispenza means when he says: “The current problems of the world must be resolved from a greater level of consciousness than the consciousness that has created them.”

We’re not going to fix civilisational-scale suffering by manifesting harder as individual people.

We’re going to fix it by enough individual cells - enough of us - doing our scale of the work, until it adds up to a different collective field.

Individual manifestation isn’t the solution to society’s problems, but it is one of the units the solution is made of.

Invent the 3D

Instead of “ignore the 3D,” I prefer “invent the 3D”.

Love on it, go beyond it, make it more vivid.

Every moment you spend raising your vibration and expanding your compassion is a moment you’re adding to a collective of people living in gratitude and peace. That can have a big ripple effect.

This doesn’t deny today, but it also doesn’t assume today is the whole story. It doesn’t deny pain, but it doesn’t let pain become the only imaginary available. That feels psychologically healthy to me.

We can grieve, be angry, fight injustice, volunteer, donate, campaign. And still spend part of every day inhabiting a future worth moving toward. History is full of people who changed the world precisely because they could imagine realities that didn’t yet exist.

If this is landing - if you’re a leader wanting to work on yourself so you can have a bigger and more positive impact on the collective, this is the work I support.

Come book a powerful Prosperity Pivot Call to help you lead, receive, and prosper in energetic alignment - with the option to explore your Human Design for deeper clarity.

Book a complimentary call

I’ve never seen myself as a witch.

That archetype never really felt like me. But last weekend I went to a 7-figure spell-casting workshop with Mia Magik - and quite frankly, I might be entering a New Era Witch... well, era 😂

More on the spell casting later. But first I want to share something else it awakened in me.

A big part of my journey as a leader of New Earth has involved exploring - in the deepest, most nuanced way I know how - the energy of money and abundance. Much of my success on YouTube came from these explorations, and what they unlocked in people. One of the deepest threads in that work is something we can trace right back to “witches”.

What if the reason you’re not calling in the wealth and abundance you want isn’t just about “limiting beliefs”?

What if it’s tied to a collective imprint older than capitalism itself - one that makes abundance feel dangerous, and subtly encourages you to play small?

My relationship to money changed when I realised wealth blocks don’t only operate at the level of the mind. They also live in the collective psyche, in ancestral patterns, in karmic imprints. The moment I started working at that deeper level, things shifted energetically - for me, and for people who came into contact with me.

The witch wound (and what it has to do with money)

So what is this collective imprint, and why do I think it touches our abundance?

It’s sometimes called the witch wound, or the persecution imprint. Imagine living in a world where your gifts could get you killed. That was the reality for thousands of people accused of witchcraft or sorcery throughout history.

A few facts worth sitting with:

• Kimberley Jones, an authority on this wound, describes the witch wound as “a past life scar, an ancestral wound and a collective trauma - a deep cellular memory carried down through generations and perpetuated in our patriarchal society.”

• Under Scotland’s Witchcraft Act of 1563, nearly 4,000 people were accused of witchcraft before the law was repealed in 1736.

• It wasn’t only Europe. In the Americas and Arctic, shamans were targeted, imprisoned and condemned to death. These were not only women - it happened to medicine men as well.

And you didn’t have to be an actual witch. You could be accused for being a midwife, practising herbalism, holding spiritual or indigenous knowledge, being argumentative, expressing creativity or sexuality, having a birthmark or a mole - some say even for having red hair.

I won’t go into the graphic details of how so-called witches were punished. It’s genuinely sickening, and if it’s time for you to confront that history in more depth, you’ll go looking for it yourself. I raise it because my understanding is that this imprint still shapes how we express ourselves, how worthy we feel, and how much abundance we let ourselves receive.

How it shows up

Collective trauma doesn’t just disappear. It can travel through generations, often in very subtle ways. In life and in business, it can look like:

• Fear of anything in you that deviates from the norm

• Fear of being seen, standing out, speaking up

• Hiding or suppressing your gifts in case you get stepped on or ostracised

• A lack of trust in your own intuition - or in the people closest to you

• People-pleasing, to avoid rocking the boat

• Downplaying your abilities, or hesitating to share your ideas

• Avoiding charging what you’re worth, or promoting your work at all

• Staying inside systems and relationships that don’t ask you to shine

• A felt sense that your connection to nature has been severed

If your inner knowing is starting to stir as you read this, pay attention. Give yourself some love. Disconnection from divine feminine energy keeps you in scarcity - attached to metrics, numbers, outcomes. Reclaiming it means reconnecting with your soul’s purpose, and stepping into the kind of power that may once have been punished. It might sound trite, but awareness really is the lever here: spotting the pattern or wound is the first step in breaking it.

What it’s got to do with money

If you make your living with your voice - if your business requires you to put yourself out there - the story that being “too much” will make you a target is a real obstacle, not a metaphorical one.

If you identify as any kind of lightworker, Edward Mannix’s observation lands hard: you often feel you’ve been here before. Ostracised. Watching loved ones punished. Persecuted in a past life.

Do I believe I was a witch in a past life? Honestly, I don’t know - but I’m open to it. Do I believe we carry these collective imprints regardless? Yes. Even if it’s “just” an archetypal story, it’s one that helps us make sense of the present. And even if it isn’t literally imprinted on your soul, it’s entirely possible to feel it moving through the collective field.

A few caveats

• This isn’t about ignoring the shame or self-worth issues you’ve picked up in this lifetime.

• I think of healing as a ladder we move up and down - from the mind, to the subconscious, to the energetic, ancestral and karmic. This is one rung of many.

• But there’s something in acknowledging these older currents that taps us into a collective healing process bigger than any one of us.

• This also isn’t a permission slip to go expose yourself in ways that don’t feel safe. It’s your journey, and there are real situations where speaking out in the exact way you want simply isn’t safe right now.

• Don’t punish yourself for feeling fear. Sometimes you push through it. Sometimes you have compassion for all the ways it hasn’t been safe before, and you give yourself time to heal.

How to start healing it

This is sensitive, layered work, and it’s something I support clients with directly if you’d like a guide.

It’s not a quick fix - it’s cyclical and deep. In the meantime, here are some things you might explore:

• Reconnect with nature. The persecution imprint comes from a system that wanted to sever us from nature. So gently rebel: tend a houseplant, hug a tree (with permission), feel your feet on the earth. Attune to the truth that you are nature.

• Tap gently into your intuition. The wound trains you to override your inner guidance in favour of logic - an overly masculine, dare I say patriarchal, default. Learning to trust yourself again is everything.

• Explore your fears, gently. If something from the list above stood out, follow it — through journaling, or with a guide or therapist. There are 20 fears mapped in the Human Design body graph, and working through them is powerful work I offer too.

• Connect with your people. Finding others who don’t think you’re strange helps normalise all of it.

Finally - back to my spell.

I’m not going to share the exact words I crafted. Not because I’m still refining them (though I am, a little), but because I believe spells are personal. Mine might not work for you. Crafting your own almost certainly will.

What I will tell you is that I turned my spell into a “Summer House Banger” using an AI music app, and it was possibly the most fun I’ve had all year 🔥😂

I’ll be listening to that on repeat, alongside the mirror work and water infusion Mia Magik taught me.

And - I’ll be running an Abundance Challenge soon. Message me if you want in.

If you’d like to explore working 1:1 together, book a complimentary Prosperity Pivot Call - a powerful 45-minute session to help you lead, receive, and prosper in energetic alignment - with the option to explore your Human Design voice for deeper clarity. Let’s shift from overgiving to overflow!

Book Your Call 💚

References:

Kimberley Jones - What is the Witch Wound? - https://www.kimberleyjones.co.uk/post/what-is-the-witch-wound

University of Edinburgh - Introduction to Scottish Witchcraft - https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk/introduction

Four Winds Society - Laika and the Conquest - https://thefourwinds.com/the-laika-and-the-conquest/

They have a special knack for being in the right place at the right time. Opportunities find them, fortuitous introductions happen, and as for money…well, they just seem to have an easy pass with that.

It can look enviable from the outside - almost unfair, I dare say!

But really, the luck these people seem to carry is a natural consequence of them accepting life as it is, not taking things too seriously, and letting good fortune come to them rather than chasing it down.

That’s available to you too. I want to share what I’ve been learning about the energy behind this and keep scrolling for a guided meditation to anchor this in your being.

Subscribe now

A science of luck

In the Gene Keys system, each of the 64 Gene Keys carries its own archetypal journey through a shadow frequency, a gift, and a higher potential beyond that. One of them, the 46th, is sometimes described as a science of luck. Its journey runs from Seriousness, through Delight, into Ecstasy. Yum.

I’ve been contemplating this particular Gene Key recently, and it’s reframed something I’d never quite been able to put my finger on: why good fortune seems to flow easily for some people, and more - let’s say - reluctantly for others.

The Rainmaker

Richard Rudd’s writing on this gene key starts with the story of a rainmaker.

A village is in the grip of a long drought, so they send for a rainmaker - an old man with a reputation for ending droughts wherever he goes. When he arrives, the villagers offer him anything he needs. Their lives depend on it, after all. But all he asks for is a hut, and to be left alone for a few days.

The villagers watch him closely as he sets up various instruments (possibly for show, since he knows he is being observed).

After a few days, if he’s genuine, it will rain - as has been the case in the other places he has visited. But the rainmaker has a secret that nobody else knows…

In truth, he has no special powers over the weather. His secret is that he has discovered his true purpose in life - he is a rainmaker, and wherever he goes it happens to rain. He doesn’t make it rain; he is simply attuned to places where it is about to rain. This is why he doesn’t have to do anything other than show up wherever he feels like going

Isn’t that DELIGHTFUL!?

And isn’t this what alignment actually looks like? An inner accuracy that puts you in the right place, at the right time, with nothing left to force.

As Rudd puts it: luck is what happens when you stop interfering with life.

Why so serious!?

The shadow of this Gene Key is Seriousness, described in the text as one of the most widespread diseases on the planet, and a primary cause of bad fortune.

Rudd writes that living from this shadow is like carrying a proverbial black cloud above your head wherever you go. It rains when you don’t want it to, because you’re out of sync with the whole. You create your own obstacles by gripping too tightly to the future or the past, rather than relaxing into the present moment.

But the gift! The gift is Delight. It’s the lightness that comes from surfing reality with a smile.

Delight comes from accepting what is, feeling alive in your body and attuning to a deep inner knowing that nothing really matters (not in a pessimistic or nihilistic way - in a delightful way)

This is the part I find most useful as a New Era leader: good fortune isn’t a reward I’m ever going to earn through more striving. It’s going to come to me in buckets as long as I remember to lighten up.

Holding your goals lightly

None of this means giving up our goals. It just means holding them differently.

Picture a pencil. Grip it tightly in your fist, right up close to your eyes, and you can barely make out what it is - you’ve lost all perspective.

Now rest that same pencil in the open palm of your hand. Suddenly you can see the whole thing clearly, along with everything around it.

That’s the difference between gripping a goal and holding it lightly. Holding it lightly means you stay clear-eyed, and open enough that the universe has room to surprise you with something that may be way better than what you planned.

A meditation for you

Since we’re really talking about energy here, I’ve recorded a meditation to go with this piece - a chance to actually feel this frequency of delight rather than just read about it.

Get yourself comfy and listen here 👇🏼

If you give it a try, I’d love to hear what shifted for you. And if you’ve felt your own version of “the rainmaker” - one of those moments where you smiled to yourself and let it rain - reply and tell me about it.

I read every comment.

What on earth has a crocheted blanket got to do with AI?

Let me tell you a story about my Grandmother, Liz.

Liz was a true artist and craftswoman. My most vivid memory of her was watching her gather wool from the sheep in the local field, stuffing it into clear plastic bags.

She then spun the wool on a wooden spinning wheel, like some earth witch in a fairytale. Next, she dyed the yarn herself with homemade dyes - onion skins, nettles, coffee grounds, and turmeric created a palette of rustic greens, browns and yellows.

From there, she crocheted away until she had created a beautiful blanket, which I - to my delight - inherited when she passed on.

This is an enduring memory - in part because Liz created the blanket from scratch. From the earth. She even made her own materials.

It seems a far cry from where we are now, where even starting an article from a blank page is becoming more and more alien.

So, how does the blanket connect with AI? Bear with me…

I’m not a luddite, and I’m not here to overly romanticise the past. I LOVE the creative potential of AI, but there’s something going on at the collective level that I think needs to be named.

In a recent study, scientists ran an experiment about the role of generative AI in story writing.1

Some writers were given story ideas generated by an AI. Others worked alone. The stories produced with AI help were rated as more creative, better written, and more enjoyable, so by most metrics, the AI-assisted writers won.

BUT…the AI-assisted stories were significantly more similar to each other than the human-only stories were.

Individual creativity went up, but overall novelty went down. In other words, each writer appeared to get better, but the stories started sounding the same.

I’ve been pondering this all week, because it maps eerily well onto what I believe is happening in our culture right now.

AI is a consensus machine

You may know by now that I talk a lot about the shift from the Old Era (in Human Design, known as the Era of Planning) to the New Era (or the Era of the Individual).

The Era of Planning which is ending (albeit slowly), was built on external authority. The doctor knows best. The institution decides. This or that “trusted framework” tells you what to do.

When I first started thinking about AI through this lens, the proverbial penny dropped.

The large language models most of us use every day are trained on the collective output of human expression. They don’t create from nowhere. They predict from what already exists, scanning the statistical centre of what humanity has written, said and published, and generating what is most probable.

AI is, in a very real sense, a consensus machine.

It naturally gravitates toward common patterns, structures, narratives and solutions - and this is why AI can make everyone’s work more polished while simultaneously making it more homogenous.

Anyway, consensus and homogeneity are quite literally, defining characteristics of the Old Era.

So, for all its bells and whistles, and its incredibly forward thinking nature, AI can remain an Old Era technology if we’re not careful.

The Struggle Is the Mechanism

There are lots of reasons why creating and learning with our own intelligence is beneficial. To take just one example…

There’s a concept from learning science called “desirable difficulty.” The idea is that certain forms of struggle actually improve long-term learning. When something is slightly harder - when you have to generate the answer before you’re given it, wrestle with a problem before seeing the solution, write a first draft from nothing - you encode it more deeply, and develop more robust thinking.

The struggle is actually a mechanism for growth, not an obstacle to be optimised out of our life.

So that ache of the blank page may very well be helping you, as difficult as it feels.

That wrong turn, or the strange train of thought that doesn’t go anywhere obvious, or the circling and discarding and starting again that feels like wasted time…actually good for you.

Because surely the blank page is where creativity begins, and where discernment develops. Where inner authority is forged. The moment when we don’t know what to write, what decision to make, which direction to take, is the moment we are forced into genuine conversation with ourselves.

We have to trust something that isn’t coming from outside, and that process, repeated over time, is how we develop the capacity to trust our own knowing.

That capacity, which Human Design calls inner authority, is precisely what the New Era, the era of the Individual, is asking us to develop.

Two sides of the same coin

I’ve made 2 points so far.

One - AI is a consensus machine (and that smacks of the Old Era). It may very well improve the perceived quality of your writing, but it will make you sound more like other people.

Two - the ache of creativity sucks but it’s really powerful and good for keeping our mind and soul alive and kicking.

How are these related? They’re aspects of the same problem:

AI bypasses the productive struggle, so you don’t develop your own voice, so your work drifts toward the consensus, so you become more similar to everyone else.

The solution that addresses both: BE. YOURSELF. BE CREATIVE. BE IMPERFECT. Let yourself feel the ache of creation.

Infinite polish means nothing.

If AI can generate infinite polished content, then polished content stops being valuable.

If every website sounds good, every sales page is competent, every story is well-crafted, then what actually stands out?

Isn’t it just simply our weird and wonderful uniqueness? The fact that we stayed the course while we let the creativity flow? Isn’t it the way we rebelled against the productivity impulse and reconnected with the wild woman energy that wanted us to MAKE something for ourselves?

The differentiator becomes your lived experience, your particular flavour of hard-won wisdom, the things that cannot be scraped from a dataset or reproduced by a language model, no matter how sophisticated.

It’s hard to trust your own brilliance and embrace the struggle when there are so many tools at our fingertips, but I believe that the heights AI can take us need to be anchored with the depths of our own spiritual connection. The more we can generate, the more we must anchor.

The more cognitive and creative offloading that’s dropped in our laps, the more we must return to ourselves.

Think back to Liz. The “input” to the blanket were the raw materials of nature. Animals, vegetables, wood, physical energy.

She didn’t have to try to be original. Her originality came from bringing her own essence to raw materials, and the same logic applies to AI. It can be your raw material, but originality still requires you to bring yourself to it.

I believe you can make totally original art with AI. I really do. But that is a CRAFT. Individual style and flair is a precious commodity to be cultivated like a pearl at the centre of an oyster.

Human Design is the Science of Differentiation. Let’s not allow AI to take that difference away.

What This Means for You

New Era leaders - the ones who bring AI through their lives and work in a powerful and masterful way, won’t just be asking “how do I use AI well?” - though that matters.

But “what am I actively protecting and cultivating that cannot come from anywhere other than me?”

The practices that preserve that source - the journalling, the sketching, the singing, the contemplation, the creative wandering, the discomfort of sitting with not-knowing - are not inefficiencies to be optimised away. In the AI era, they are becoming acts of genuine distinctiveness.

Almost like intellectual and spiritual resistance training.

The more capable AI becomes at generating average excellence, the more valuable uniquely human differentiation becomes.

Some questions to sit with:

What creative or intellectual practices do I currently reach for AI to resolve, and what might I be bypassing in that?

Where in my leadership or work is my genuine, irreplaceable perspective most visible? Where has it contracted?

If polished content becomes the floor rather than the ceiling, what does the ceiling look like for me specifically?

I work with leaders who are ready to develop the kind of inner authority that no system can replicate. If that’s you, I’d love to have a conversation.

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I keep coming back to a story about Carl Jung.

He had a client whose psychotherapy was going nowhere. He was on the verge of giving up on her. She came in one day and described a dream she’d had the night before, in which she encountered a scarab beetle. As she was speaking, there was a tapping at the window beside him.

Jung opened the window and, in his hand, caught a beetle. The closest species to a scarab beetle found in that part of the world.

He presented it to her without a word - and something unlocked.

The process that had been stalled for months began shifting. This inexplicable meeting of inner world and outer reality became one of the most paradigmatic examples of what Jung called synchronicity.

Cause and effect isn’t the only game in town

We have been taught, deeply, thoroughly, for many years, that cause and effect governs reality.

A causes B.

B causes C.

This is the matrix we operate within, in business especially.

I must do X to achieve Y.

If I take these steps in the right order, I will get this result.

Nothing happens unless I make it happen.

But synchronicity offers a completely different lens. The beetle didn’t fly through the window because the woman was talking about her dream. There was no causal chain. What connected them was meaning. A meaningful relationship existed between the inner and the outer, and that’s a different kind of matrix entirely.

Jung’s radical claim is that meaning, not just mechanics, can be a governing principle of reality.

If we take that seriously - and I think new era leaders must - it changes a good deal about how we work.

Synchronicity mode

When we’re in cause-and-effect mode, we are operating from a kind of rigidity. A relentless sequencing of inputs and outputs. It can get things done. But it has a cost.

When we shift into synchronicity mode, something else becomes possible. We start to trust that meaningful connections are occurring in the field of our activity. The right people show up. The right opportunities come. Moments of confirmation appear, almost as if the universe is winking at us.

There’s a quality to synchronicity mode that is genuinely different. Energetically. Somatically. Experientially.

It’s frankly more delicious. It’s more delightful. It’s more magical.

I experienced one of these moments with a client recently. We were talking deeply about her Human Design and her role in the new era. She wanted to dig into the underlying principles the system is built on. I found myself in a deep flow state, talking about the 64 hexagrams of the iChing, when the light on the shelf behind me started flashing. It had never happened before. It has never happened since.

I didn’t “cause” that light to flash with my words. But the meaningful connection between those two events - the conversation we were in, the light that “responded” - felt undeniable.

I’m not suggesting we abandon discernment. I’m saying there is a layer of intelligence available to us that most conventional business thinking doesn’t even acknowledge, and that tapping into it is one of the most powerful things a new era leader can do.

The throat chakra: becoming the author of your own life

In the teachings of Alberto Villoldo, there is one energy centre responsible for governing our access to synchronicity. It’s not the heart or the third eye as one might think.

It’s the throat chakra.

And this aligns exactly with what Human Design teaches: the throat is the centre of manifestation.

From Villoldo’s perspective, the throat is where we become the authors of our own life. It’s where we start to articulate our experience through the lens of the hero’s journey. We see ourselves as being on a meaningful quest, where we’re naturally expected to move through challenges, to find allies, to face obstacles, to struggle and eventually reach a kind of zenith.

When we speak and live like this, we are taking full ownership of our lives. We are not relating to life as something that is happening to us. We are the co-creators of our reality.

And when we speak this way to ourselves and to the world, we are speaking the language of the universe.

What is the language of the universe? Yep, you guessed it. Synchronicity.

When we take this kind of authorial authorship of our lives, the universe starts speaking back. Signs appear. Guidance arrives. Things that couldn’t logically have known to show up, show up.

The Gene Keys litmus test

Richard Rudd’s second Gene Key speaks directly to this. The shadow frequency is dislocation - the feeling of being lost, disconnected from nature, separate from the web of all things. Like you’re operating in a void of your own making. Here’s how he describes it:

“If you allow it, the 2nd Shadow will affect every decision you make, pulling you into an interference frequency. This means that you don’t appear to be in synchronicity with life, so you miss opportunities that would serve you and end up in repetitive patterns that can be very draining for all concerned”

Thankfully, the gift frequency is orientation. A felt sense that you have a place in the greater whole. That you belong somewhere in the pattern.

And here’s the piece that I find genuinely extraordinary: no matter which Gene Key we’re talking about, one of the reliable indicators that you’re operating at gift frequency is the appearance of increased synchronicities in your life.

So if you ever want an energetic litmus test, just pay attention to how many synchronicities are showing up for you. How often are things connected by meaning, not just cause and effect?

That alone will tell you whether you’re in dislocation or orientation. In the shadow or the gift. This makes synchronicity not just a poetic phenomenon, but a practical diagnostic tool.

The paradox: it’s not “just flow, babe”

Here’s where I want to be real though, because I think the conversation about synchronicity can tip into something unhelpful.

There’s a version of the manifestation world that has sold us a seductive half-truth: tap into the right frequency, trust the flow, let things be easy, and your business will take off.

I think that’s BS. Or at least, it’s incomplete in a way that’s actually harmful.

Because creating anything of significance is inherently challenging. Showing up consistently for your dream, for your business, for your clients - day after day, especially when it’s hard - is a genuine discipline. When we forget that, we set ourselves up to interpret every moment of difficulty as evidence of failure. I must be in the wrong frequency. I must be a bad manifestor. Things should be easier than this.

That’s a trap that keeps a lot of genuinely gifted people second-guessing themselves out of the game.

But - and this is where the other edge of the paradox lives - we are also conditioned to believe that work is only meaningful if it’s hard. That nothing of value comes without struggle. That ease is somehow cheating. This is equally untrue, and in its own way just as damaging. Because if we believe that forcing and grinding is the only respectable way to operate, we close ourselves off to the very quality of ease, magic, and feminine frequency that synchronicity brings.

New era leadership holds both.

It says: yes, this takes real commitment and real consistency. And also: there is a cosmic web available to me, and when I learn to trust it, it takes some of the weight.

What a relief. And how fun.

Synchronicity is a frequency you can cultivate

The thing about synchronicities is that they tend to increase the more you attend to them. Not because attention creates them out of nothing, but because you start to recognise them. You start to register that Universal wink. You start to build the kind of trust that allows you to act on them.

That trust, or that orientation, in Gene Keys language, is available to all of us. But most of us were never taught to cultivate it. We were taught to trust the spreadsheet, roadmap, or five-year plan.

Those tools have their place. But if that’s all we’re navigating by, we’re missing a layer.

And as a New Era leader, that missing layer might be the most important layer there is.

If something in this landed for you, it might be the beginning of a new synchronicity!

I work with leaders who are ready to stop operating purely in cause-and-effect mode and start trusting the field of synchronocity. If that’s you, I’d love to talk.

Book a complimentary Prosperity Pivot Call - 45 mins of juicy human-design informed conversation about your path to new era prosperity, what’s in the way and how I can help you tap your own leadership potential to get there.

As New Era leaders, we so often focus on “unleashing” our voices - coming into alignment so we can resonate more clearly, attract the right people, and be truly heard.

But there’s a subtler aspect of communication I’ve been contemplating, one that I think holds deep and under-explored potential.

I’m calling it the tantra of communication.

Now, I will be honest here. I am not an expert in Tantra - a deep and complex set of ancient spiritual philosophies and practices. I’m using the term as a (clumsy) proxy for the idea that there is power in the sacred use of restraint.

Aside: when researching for this article I found a delightful translation of the word tantra...“to transform poison into nectar”. Ultimately, that’s what this publication and my life’s work is all about…

Anyway, the tantra of communication is about the things we leave unsaid. The words we keep just for us. And when we do - when we resist the impulse to release - they create an incredibly potent energy within us.

I’m not talking about suppressing ourselves or staying quiet through fear. Not at all. I’m talking about the artfulness that can be found in silence, pausing, waiting, finding the right time, and letting our speech reverberate within.

When no one needs to know

One of my earliest encounters with this was years ago, at the Insight Meditation Centre in London. A Buddhist friend had seen that I was carrying a lot of emotional weight, and she knew, as good friends sometimes do, that a meditation practice might help.

I sat very awkwardly in a chair for my first-ever class. The teaching that evening was on generosity. And it triggered something in me. Because there was a part of me that felt frankly ungenerous. That felt like giving without receiving was somehow out of reach, like I was cold-hearted in some way. It was NOT a comfortable mirror to sit in front of.

The homework we were given was simple: go out and perform an act of generosity where the recipient would never know it was you.

I wrote an anonymous thank-you card to the receptionists at my local GP surgery. I really did appreciate them, because they were always kind and helpful, always managing a thankless volume of need with grace. I left it for them and told no one.

The next time I went in, I saw the card pinned to the wall behind the desk. My stomach did a fizzy flip of recognition and pride. And I smiled to myself. I did that. That was me.

It was heard, and felt - and no one needed to know it came from me. Somehow that feeling of cold-heartedness melted, and the experience has never left me.

We crave recognition so deeply because of what we learned - as children who needed approval, as members of a society that rewards visible good behaviour. We want to confirm the goodness of our own hearts. We want to be seen.

And yet. There’s something profoundly magical about the deed done for its own sake. About tapping into the power of invisibility.

This can seem paradoxical in an environment of radical visibility, especially for those of us actively reclaiming our identity - building personal brands, expressing our voices and working on showing up more fully as ourselves.

And yet there’s a flip side.

The voice is a powerful energetic “battery”. Sometimes it needs to be recharged. And the docking station might be that period where you go into ghost mode. Where you take time to retreat. When you hold back - in a way that actually feels powerful, not problematic.

A Human Design perspective

And if you want to understand why this pattern of over-speaking exists in the first place, Human Design offers a remarkably precise map.

Human Design understands the throat not only as the locus of speaking and listening. It’s also understood as a manifestation centre, where energy becomes form through word, action and presence. It’s a place where expression bridges our internal energy and our outer results.

Whether your throat is “defined” or “undefined”, it has a particular flavour of challenge when it comes to silence.

If you have an undefined or open Throat Centre, you may feel an almost constant pull to speak. It can feel like pressure to talk and be seen - only to feel insecure or misunderstood when you do so. On the other side of the coin, there can be an anxiety that silence means being invisible, ignored, or irrelevant. The wisdom here is striking: the growth path for an open throat is actually comfort with silence as a natural state.

Imagine the relief. Just being able to be quiet. Seeing that talking less and listening more isn’t a failure of expression, it’s one of the highest expressions of that design.

If you (like me) have a defined Throat Center, the temptation is different but equally real. A defined throat brings consistent expression, but consistency can tip into compulsion. The distinction that matters here is one I find quite beautiful: you are designed to speak in a way that is consistent, not constant. Those are not the same thing. Constant speaking - from momentum, from pressure, from the need to manifest outcomes through words is actually working against your design.

In both cases, the shadow pattern belies a deeper belief: if I stop speaking, I disappear. If I explain more, I’ll be understood. If I stay visible, I stay safe.

This is especially alive for leaders, entrepreneurs, coaches, creators - people whose identity and impact are bound up in their voice and their visibility. Talking becomes an unconscious attempt to prove worth, and avoid rejection.

Which is precisely why learning the tantra of your own communication - your version of restraint - is such profound work.

If you want to explore what your Human Design chart reveals about your voice patterns, I would love to invite you to a complimentary Magnetic Voice Activation Call.

Vocal homeopathy

What does all this look like in practice?

I’ve been practising noticing when I’m talking for the sake of it. To fill a gap. To connect verbally when a silent connection might actually be richer. Just letting things be and biding my time. Waiting and watching the ripples of my actions move through the world without announcing them.

It’s remarkably powerful.

I think of it as vocal homeopathy.

Sometimes saying very little, or nothing at all, can carry the weight of a thousand words. The meaning isn’t always in the statement. Sometimes it lives in the gap - that little pregnant pause.

I witnessed this in one of my tutors back when I was doing my PhD. He was a delightful man, wise, kind of “crinkly” in the nicest way. And he’d sit in patiently on discussions, not saying much. Then, he’d chime in right at the end with a sentence or two. And they always cut through complexity like a knife through butter.

Small but deeply impactful.

I’ve felt it myself too. In a recent client meeting I held back from speaking too much, let the conversation flow - made space for my team mates to do their thing. And the client thanked me at the end for my calm presence. Just presence alone doing its thing.

When silence is noisy

The composer John Cage understood this. He was fascinated by the idea of true silence.

His famous 1952 composition 4’33” requires the performer/s to sit in utter silence for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds, divided into three movements

Silence performed as orchestral music was radical at the time precisely because it didn’t ask people to listen to nothing. It asked them to listen to everything. The breath of the person beside them. A cough from fifteen rows back. Floorboards settling. A bird outside.

Silence, it turned out, was full of signal.

Great composers, great negotiators, great coaches, healers or guides - they all know that what you don’t say creates the space for truth to emerge.

Maybe you know this well? Allowing the cringe of waiting that little bit longer…and then the relief when it’s the exact key someone needed to have their own breakthrough.

In the end, New Era leadership doesn’t only reverberate because of what it says. It also reverberates because of what it doesn’t.

My practice this week is exploring those silences - allowing them to become full of life, full of joy, full of goodness.

And my invitation to you is the same. Try it. See where it takes you.