Listen to this story, one of the more embarrassing moments of my adult life. And yet it revealed an ancient-old aspect of human nature.

I was walking my dog on a lovely early-fall afternoon in New Mexico. The best time of the year: no wind, no rain, and the sun has finally lost its teeth it used to chew at you for three months straight.

I didn’t even listen to music, just enjoyed the walk.

As I walked down the sidewalk in my neighborhood, I heard someone approaching from behind, hollering, “On your right!”

It may appear as a simple enough situation. Someone’s coming from the right, so I should keep to my left.

But when’s it ever simple when humans are involved?!

Three things collided in that moment that laid the groundwork for the unfortunate events ahead.

First, it startled me. I had been sure there was no one behind me. I had looked a few minutes before, and no one in sight. How did they get here so fast?!

Second, I’m directionally challenged. I can’t tell easily what’s left and what’s right. Apparently, it’s genetic. There’s always a delay before I know for sure. I first have to think which hand I’m writing with because I have learned I am right-handed, so the hand I pick up the pen with is on the right.

And third, coming toward me on my left-hand side was a man with a dog. A real big, hairy, mean-looking one at that. As I started stepping towards my left, I immediately doubted that decision and stepped back.

“On your right!” I heard again, now really close.

Apparently, this was the day for a perfect storm.

The person behind me yelling “On your right!” was an elderly gentleman on a bike, approaching fast. And to make this storm perfect, he was walking his big dog while riding that bike.

He crashed into me from behind, fell off the bike, and somehow the dogs got tangled in the middle of it all. The approaching dog lost its cool and was dragged by its owner in an impressive arc away from us.

That heavenly afternoon turned into a reality created by dogs.

When he was back on his bike, he turned around to raise his voice: “You need to watch where you’re going. [Which I clearly had failed to do] Take those damn earphones off. [Which I didn’t have] Get your damn dog away from my dog! [Which I had already done]”

I had options. I could’ve apologized, or I could’ve laughed, or better yet, I could’ve simply walked away. I had an opportunity here to rise above and de-escalate.

I didn’t take it.

Instead, I puffed my chest out and got all self-righteous about it:

“You crashed into me! Is this how you treat other humans? You call yourself a man? [Yes, I said that] There’s a bike path right next to the sidewalk!”

He did not appreciate my commentary.

Just like that, on a beautiful suburban afternoon, there were two adults screaming at each other on the sidewalk because they had to take their dogs for a walk.

And the dogs? Way better behaved than their owners.

The ancient-old aspect of human nature I mentioned at the beginning? The need to be right. The need to blame someone else.

You see, he started it. That’s how it goes in my head. And I’m pretty sure I know how it goes in his head. She started it. As if that’s the only permission we need to be an asshole.

This is one of the less proud moments of my life. The most unfortunate part about this incident is that I often run into this man with his bike and dog. As we pass each other during our daily strolls, I don’t know if he looks at me because I pretend like he’s not there, even though I am painfully aware of his presence.

Every time our paths cross, I have an opportunity to rise to the occasion and choose differently. Say hello, smile. And I don’t, because he started it.

But right as I pass him, I’m reminded of what humility is – being willing to stop needing to prove that you’re right.

It’s what I was not on that day.

This is a small moment, and the ridiculousness of it makes me smile and shake my head in disbelief.

Yet it poses a bigger question. How often do we let someone starting it ruin our afternoons? Our days? Our plans, careers, businesses, relationships? Is there a more triggering of a trigger for humans than you started this? Entire civilizations have died for this.

It’s all it takes for us to give our humanity away.

I want to leave you and me with this.

What if just because someone started something does not mean they get to decide how it ends?

Next time I see this man and his dog, I just might say ‘hi’ …

Last Wednesday, as I pulled into the gym parking lot at 5:30 pm, I was exhausted. But not physically, hence my being in the gym parking lot.

Not all exhaustion is physical. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, even though nothing really exhausting happened that day.

Other than one thing that happens to most of us.

I had been everyone.

We have so many different roles we need to play every day, and let me give you my Wednesday rundown:

First, a wife, then Mom. Then a fellow citizen trying to keep her cool in the morning traffic with other fellow citizens trying to keep theirs. Then trainer and employee. Also, a leader, support person for a co-worker, cook, and cleaner. In addition, a salesperson, caretaker of plants and pets. Mom again. Advocate for health (not mine), writer, trainer, and just a simple co-worker.

That almost covers it, but only for one day.

Each of these roles comes with a personality and a collection of characteristics that differ slightly from the previous. Each role has its own demands and regulations. As a Mom, to keep teenagers alive, I can be straightforward and a hard-ass, but caring for my plants like that? They would die.

We talk about multitasking and how it is really just switch-tasking, really, and how exhausting it is for the brain. Your brain isn’t doing five things at once. It is constantly switching from one task to another, and it comes at a cost.

Our daily roles work the same way. We think we are multi-role-ing, but in reality, we’re switching between roles, and it exhausts the brain and nervous system, leaving our emotional and mental bodies gasping for air.

I hear you – just be yourself, be authentic.

Well, I am authentic in my roles, but not always. Not everyone needs to see my authentic self all the time. For example, on that Wednesday, my authentic self would’ve been an ungroomed individual with a couch pillow glued to her face. So I needed to present a modified persona to represent myself and my family as functioning members of society.

My point.

Playing many different roles keeps your nervous system constantly shifting, which can lead to stress, fatigue, and a sense of losing your true self.

So many suppressed emotions. Something people don’t realize, and yet it happens. Let’s take a closer look at what went down on that day.

What Happens to Your Nervous System

Activation of the Stress Response: Every time we shift roles, something small happens inside us. How did I speak here? What is expected of me? How much of myself can I show here? Do I need to be warm? Firm? Patient? Funny? Professional? How do I get what I need?

Oh … did I mess that up?

None of these shifts are problematic, but doing it all day long? You can get lost in that.

Chronic Overstimulation: Staying in a high-alert state for too long puts your body into survival mode. It’s inevitable. You may feel “tired but wired” at the end of the day, just like I did.

Role Strain and Fatigue: Constantly editing how you speak, act, and react drains your mental energy. Your brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, works overtime to manage social rules for each specific environment.

It makes you feel like you ran a marathon when you haven’t even left the office.

Loss of Identity: When you spend all day adjusting yourself to different people, situations, and expectations, it can become increasingly difficult to hear your own internal voice.

This creates inner tension and emotional numbness – exactly how I felt in that gym parking lot.

The worst part is that in the middle of it all, it’s hard to stay connected to who you really are. And nowhere is this more true than when you’re building something new. When you’re starting a business, changing careers, creating something, becoming a different version of yourself, there’s no established role to step into yet.

You’re the boss, the beginner, the salesperson, the visionary, the person still doing the dishes, and the analyst who needs to speculate whether any of this is going to work out.

So you keep adjusting.

How Can We Re-Calibrate to Who We Really Are?

Create Buffer Zones

Take five deep breaths in your car before walking into the house after work. Give your brain a minute to switch gears. I, for example, sat in the gym parking lot on that Wednesday for an extra 10 minutes, silently, just to hear myself breathing.

Drop the Performance

Remind yourself that you do not need to be the “perfect” version of every role all the time. I honestly don’t know how to do that, but I’m getting better with each decade.

Find a “Root” Anchor

Spend 10 minutes a day doing something that belongs to no one else, just for you, without a title or a job attached.

My fave is taking the dog for a walk when the day is done. It’s just us and the horizon. I even leave the AirPods and phone at home.

Physical Discharge

Shake your hands, stretch, or take a short walk to signal your body that one role has ended and you are safe to relax.

My go-to is headstands, but it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. My friend jumps up and down for a minute and swears by it. Sometimes she does it in the bathroom at work.

When you’ve lost yourself completely, here’s a way to find your way back, to remind yourself who you truly are.

What’s the essence of you? What does it feel like to be you?

The person you are in the first 30 seconds when you wake up - that’s you. The real you. Before you check anything, before you remember who you are supposed to be, before your responsibilities announce themselves.

That person is the closest thing to your real self there is.

That 30-second version of you before the world loads. Take measure of how that person feels, thinks, senses life, and greets the beginning of the day. What is your first emotional response to being alive that morning?

Just fucking love that person for at least 30 seconds of your day, right then and there.

A word on disappointment, a frequent companion to new beginnings. Read till the end for a poem that helps.

Whenever I’m disappointed, my most prevalent feeling is that I’m somehow special in my disappointment. That it happens to me more than it happens to anyone else.

I talked about it with my mentor, a successful author and trainer with an impressive track record of leading and making money.

“I struggle with disappointment,” I explained as she counseled me on my latest project I had started. “My expectations clearly exceed my skills and influence.”

To my surprise, she laughed.

“Even if skill and influence are there,” she said, “so is disappointment. It’s constant.”

She continued, “Just the other day, a very accomplished friend of mine, Mark, submitted some writings that had won the highest awards in another competition. He was so convinced he had first place in the bag. He didn’t even get past the first round.”

The relief from my own disappointment was immediate. I don’t really like the fact that I find comfort in others’ suffering, but that’s what happened.

Ever since that casual conversation, I’ve been thinking about disappointment. How casually we use the word throughout the day.

The grocery store was out of the yogurt brand we prefer, and we were disappointed. The school informs us that our child is talking back at school, and as parents, we are so disappointed. We were hoping to win a lottery, and disappointment sets in again.

It’s a daily experience, I would say.

But then there’s another level of disappointment. The kind that cuts really deep because you brought the best you had, hoped for a big reward, and it never arrived.

The deep-cutting disappointment is a complex emotional response driven by the gap between what we expect and what actually happens. It is not just a sad mood, but a powerful biological and psychological signal that reshapes how we think, feel, and interact with the world.

The consequences can be rather significant. Here’s what’s happening in your body:

The Brain and Expectations

The Dopamine Dip

Dopamine does not spike when you get a reward. It surges when you anticipate one. When reality falls short, dopamine levels drop sharply, creating that physical sense of a crash. That’s what we experience as disappointment. You know the feeling.

The worst part is we can create these sensations in our heads without any external validation. That dopamine yo-yo happens when our internal conversation goes something like this “I’ll get it! Maybe not … I know I will! I might not … “

Reward-Prediction Error

The brain constantly runs a background calculation comparing expectations to outcomes. It’s like a judge with a gavel, informing us with a bang when reality falls short. Disappointment is the literal neural error message generated when reality loses the comparison game.

Neurobiological Pessimism

Disappointment can have real consequences for our lives. Too many letdowns teach the brain that striving equals pain. This can lead to learned helplessness, where the nervous system shuts down its desire for rewards as a way of protecting itself.

Grieving an Imagined Future

When you wait for an important outcome, you mentally move into the future you want. You vividly imagine living it, and your brain cannot tell the difference between imagined and reality. Not getting it feels painful because you are mourning a future you already built in your head. The grief is real, for the life you never had. Yet.

The Success Trap

Past success raises the baseline for future expectations. If you over-deliver once, people or even your own brain treat that high mark as the new normal. That makes future disappointment much sharper.

The last made me realize that disappointment has a hierarchy. The more successful you are, the harder it must be. My mentor’s friend Mark was suffering disappointment that, on paper, was probably much bigger than mine. And yet, he apparently had a laugh about it, and within a few days, he had submitted his work to a different competition.

Of course, we don’t know what really happens in someone’s head, but positive actions help us move through our emotions rather than becoming stuck inside them.

There is good news about disappointment, too.

According to psychological insights shared by the Greater Good Science Center, disappointment acts as hidden fuel. It exposes what you truly value and forces your mind to adapt when old assumptions fail. This ignites the brain’s creative centers, and we can actually level up our creativity.

In other words, disappointment can hurt and still be useful. But only if it doesn’t cripple us.

Here are a few ways to deal with the discomfort of disappointment so creativity can take root

If you’re intrigued, or would like to read the beautiful poem/prayer by Laura Jean Truman, read the full article on my website at evafanari.com.

Image by AI: Reality

When building something new, thoughts of quitting cannot be ignored. They hover around like mosquitoes over stale waters.

When it comes to quitting, we have heard every possible piece of advice. Half the people support the struggle.

Never quit. Push through. Don’t give up.

And the other half doesn’t believe in white-knuckling.

If it’s always hard, maybe it’s not meant for you.
Know when to quit. It’s the smartest decision you can make.

So which is it?

More importantly, if you quit, does that make you weak and a loser?

And who wants to be that? Worse yet, who wants to live with regret?

The real question isn’t whether quitting is good or bad. The real question is: how do you quit without regret?

I stumbled into an answer by accident, thanks to my daughter.

A Sport Called Negotiation

When my daughter was in competitive gymnastics, the topic of quitting surfaced regularly, with the dependable rhythm of a tax bill.

Every level in gymnastics comes with new skills. Some arrive easily, some require work, and some feel downright impossible for a while.

For a child to whom most things in school and life come easily, encountering a skill that refuses to cooperate can be deeply frustrating. That’s when the negative self-talk creeps in and begins to take over the entire mindset. Maybe I’m not good enough? Maybe it’s not for me? Maybe I don’t even like it?

Several times a season, my daughter would come to me and announce that she was ready to quit gymnastics. Interestingly, the timing was always the same: right in the middle of struggling with a skill.

“Gymnastics may not be for me,” she would say thoughtfully.
“I don’t think I’m passionate about it,” she’d start at another time.

And if she really wanted to play on my emotions, she would add:

“It’s also really expensive, and I don’t want to worry you and Dad.”

Which, I must admit, was both true and impressively strategic. You can probably tell that the skill of negotiation comes naturally to her.

The Quitting Dilemma

Making the decision to quit something yourself is one thing. You carry the responsibility and the consequences.

But when you are raising children, every decision becomes an internal debate: should I make them push through, or should I let them walk away? Which is the better parenting decision?

Am I teaching resilience or laziness?

I’ve heard every possible version of parental wisdom.

“At some point you have to make them stick with it, even when it’s uncomfortable.”

“I would be a complete slob if my parents hadn’t forced me to push through.”

“If you let them quit, you’re raising quitters who will never learn how to handle hard things.”

And I understand all of those perspectives.

But I also know something else. When I genuinely don’t enjoy something, when it brings absolutely no spark of meaning or interest, it slowly drains my soul. I have done things in life that brought me no joy at all, and they didn’t build character; they simply made me smaller.

Needless to say, there’s a completely different school of thought:

“We only live once. Do what brings you joy.”
“There’s no shame in quitting.”
“Brad Pitt had many jobs before acting. Quitting is often the smartest business decision you can make.”

And those arguments make sense too. Which brings us back to the real question:

If quitting is an option, when is the right time to do it without regret setting in?

The Back Handspring Crisis

The third time my daughter came to me with her carefully crafted arguments about quitting, the culprit was a back handspring.

She just couldn’t get it.

She explained that gymnastics probably wasn’t the right sport for her. Running might be better. Also, one of her friends had quit, and apparently, her friend’s mother had said gymnastics was “very dangerous.”

Nice touch.

After two previous rounds of stumbling through uninspired parental speeches about “we are not quitters,” “you finish what you started,” and “we already paid for this”, I finally paused long enough to hear what was really happening underneath her request.

The real fear was this:

I’m not good enough at this, and can never be.

And that broke my heart. On that day, I told her something that, in hindsight, turned out to be pure gold.

“Once you master the skill, you can quit.”

We paid for private lessons until she nailed that back handspring. Do you think she wanted to quit after that? Not even close.

You should have seen the pride on her face. The confidence of someone who pushed through something difficult and came out stronger on the other side.

The Rule That Changed Everything

That moment became a rule in our household.

You don’t quit on a bad day.

Bad days are noisy. They are full of frustration, fatigue, embarrassment, comparison, self-doubt, and fear. What feels like a carefully considered decision is really just our nervous system begging for relief.

That doesn’t mean bad days are meaningless; we learn a lot from them. But they are terrible places from which to make permanent decisions.

So sit this one out. Get through the frustration and master the thing if you can. Take the temperature when the emotional storm has passed.

If, in the middle of success, when the skill finally works, when the joy returns, when everything clicks, you can still calmly say, “This isn’t for me,” then you know you’re not quitting out of fear or frustration.

You quit on the best day.

You’re choosing a different path, and that decision comes from true understanding of yourself.

The Day She Actually Quit

Years later, my daughter quit gymnastics. She quit on the day she became a state champion on bars and placed third overall.

You should’ve seen her face that day. There was no frustration, sadness, or regret. She was as content in her decision as one can be.

She had pushed through when it mattered. She had proven to herself that she could do it. And now she knew, with complete clarity, that it wasn’t the path she wanted to keep walking.

So she walked away, on the best day ever, without a single ounce of regret.

The Art of Quitting Well

I don’t think quitting is a failure. Staying can be at times the bigger mistake. But quitting always comes with the threat of regret. But it’s guaranteed when quitting on a bad day.

There is a difference between quitting because something is hard and leaving because you've honestly decided it's no longer yours. Quitting after you’ve given something your best, after you’ve learned what it had to teach you, after you’ve proven to yourself that you are capable.

So if you’re wondering whether to walk away from something in your life - a job, a hobby, a project, a dream, a new life - ask yourself one simple question:

Would I still want to quit on my best day?

If the answer is yes, walk away peacefully. You don’t have to stay somewhere just to prove you can endure it.

The bravest thing you can do is finish the lesson, take what it gave you, and walk away without regret. As long as it’s on a good day;)

Image by Eva Fanari & AI: Difficult Decisions

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Ancient Egyptians had a surprisingly healthy relationship with chaos.

Their entire civilization depended on the River Nile for its survival and thriving. Every summer, from roughly June through October, the river overflowed its banks. Water covered the dry fields, villages held their breath, and no one knew exactly how the season would end.

When the water finally receded, it usually left behind a thick layer of dark, fertile silt. It fed the families, and the kingdom prospered.

But the same flood that fed the land could also destroy it. Entire villages could be washed away, and thousands of lives could be lost.

That chaos that brought success, prosperity, and food could also take it away.

So every year at the same time, ancient Egyptians lived in a place of the unknown; a place of uncertainty. The chaos was inevitable, but the outcome – prosperity or destruction - was up in the air. Most of the time, it worked out great. But on a rare occasion, the destruction was devastating.

Yet they never decided the answer was to avoid the river. They prepared, adapted, hoped, and planted the following season again. They didn’t stop working and appreciating the chaos the next time around.

We may not live on the banks of an unpredictable river, but we live on the edge of unpredictability whenever we begin something that matters.

The chaos is coming, you can bet on it. And if you’re anything like me, your brain doesn’t spend much time imagining the fertile soil. It jumps straight to the village burning down.

That’s what brains do.

Our wonderful crazy brains have been conditioned to sink their mighty teeth into the slightest chance of failure and discomfort. Add this fear to chaos, and it’s enough to paralyze an elephant.

If we knew with absolute certainty that every difficult season would end in success, we’d tolerate chaos just fine. Instead, our minds grab onto the least possibility of failure and treat it like a guarantee.

Add uncertainty to a nervous system that’s wired to keep you alive, and suddenly your brain is preparing for an apocalypse because you sent an email.

Dr. Rue Wilson, a psychologist at Harvard’s Counseling and Mental Health Services, calls this “toxic time travel.”

“We try to feel more in control by imagining different outcomes,” Dr. Wilson explains. “But anxiety is such a powerful emotion that our thinking often becomes catastrophic. We get stuck ruminating, overwhelmed by what-ifs, and disconnected from the present where we actually have the most certainty.”

Thus, we leave the only place where we actually have influence, the present moment, and start living inside imaginary disasters.

Neuroscientist Dr. Sarah McKay points out that „fear of the unknown sits underneath many of our anxieties. Some people naturally tolerate uncertainty better than others. Those with a lower tolerance often experience much higher emotional distress.“

Tolerance for uncertainty, however, is a skill. Like any skill, it gets stronger through repetition. The goal should never be eliminating uncertainty. That would be impossible. The goal is to get comfortable with uncertainty by spending time inside it without letting your imagination take over.

How do you calm your brain down enough that the brain won’t tear down the house altogether, with the goal of preventing the tiniest chance of destruction from happening?

The good news?

From Fear to Curiosity

Name excitement before fear.

Your body responds remarkably similarly to excitement and anxiety. A racing heart isn’t automatically a warning sign. It could be that your nervous system is preparing for something meaningful.

Give your brain structure.

You can’t control the future, but you can control today.

One of the simplest ways to calm an anxious mind is to follow a predictable daily rhythm. We do this naturally for children because routines create safety.

Adults need that same anchor. A schedule reminds your brain that not everything is out of control.

Practice tiny doses of uncertainty.

You build resilience by taking small, intentional risks. Order something you’ve never tried. Call the person you’ve been avoiding. Take a different route home. Start the project before you feel ready.

Each small act teaches your brain something incredibly important:

“I survived not knowing the outcome.”

Move your body.

Stress is physical before it’s psychological. Walking, running, lifting weights, dancing in the kitchen – all work wonders.

A brain swimming in fresh oxygen and post-workout dopamine almost always tells a kinder story about the future than one that’s been sitting at a desk for eight hours.

Breathe like you believe you’re safe.

Your breath is one of the few direct conversations you can have with your nervous system. Fast, shallow breathing tells your brain danger is nearby. Slow, steady breathing delivers a different message:

“We’re okay. Stay here.”

Celebrate small wins like big victories.

We have a tendency to celebrate big stuff. Graduations, birthdays, promotions, first places, and so on. All worthy. I invite you to train your brain to celebrate small achievements as well. It creates safety around the unknown and tells your brain that it’s rewarding to look forward to life's unpredictability.

What I’m telling you now is to be like the ancient Egyptians and embrace the chaos to its fullest. Yes, there’s a tiny chance that everything will go up in flames, and most of us spend an incredible amount of energy trying to avoid chaos.

The ancient Egyptians knew what we often forget.

Chaos is where opportunity and growth begin. The flood and the fertile soil arrive together, and you don’t get one without the other. The next time life feels uncertain, resist the urge to predict the ending.

Because what if this flood is leaving behind exactly the soil I’ll need for whatever comes next?

Image by Eva Fanri & AI: Chaos

Last Friday, I woke up wishing the day was already over.

To start with, I forgot to set my alarm and slept much longer than I should’ve. That meant my writing goals and yoga class had to be pushed to an already crammed evening. On top of that, my shower took longer than usual because my monkey brain was preoccupied with figuring out how to squeeze that missed yoga class between a coaching sesh and a mastermind meeting.

On my way to work, I needed to stop by the grocery store to pick up drinks for work. Then came a full day of prepping, training, following up, and solving problems.

Meanwhile, in the background, my mind was juggling dinner plans, the gym, travel, family, a few personal projects, and an argument I’d had with a friend that just wouldn’t stop replaying itself.

You know how it goes … That’s the perfect recipe for overwhelm.

One of the things psychologists have known for decades is that our brains don’t like unfinished business. Whether it’s an email you haven’t answered or a difficult conversation that feels unresolved, your brain keeps treating it as important. It keeps bringing it back to your attention with what feels like a doorbell ringing in your head because, from its perspective, the task is still open.

Researchers sometimes refer to this as the Zeigarnik effect: unfinished tasks tend to stick in our minds far more than completed ones.

It seems to my personal logic that the brain should prioritize the task at hand. It should know that’s all we can focus on. But the problem is that the brain, while focusing on the task at hand, keeps sounding that “doorbell” to make sure you don’t forget any of it. And now the brain, while consuming limited resources, twists itself into a pretzel.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was surprisingly simple:

Get everything out of your head and onto paper.

Of course, writing things down itself doesn’t get stuff done. But it creates an illusion in your brain that someone else is taking care of the safe filing. (And yes, it’s an illusion because who would trust some piece of paper? Apparently your brain does!)

The moment your brain sees that the information has been stored somewhere reliable, it no longer has to keep rehearsing it every few minutes. You’ve essentially told your nervous system, “I’ve got this. You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

That’s exactly what I did before leaving the house. I grabbed a notebook and wrote down every single thing competing for space in my head. Work tasks, errands, personal reminders, timelines, brainstorming, texting that friend – because calling felt too raw.

A complete brain-dump before leaving the house.

As I crossed items off the list throughout the day, I noticed I was thinking more clearly. I wasn’t constantly trying to remember what came next because my brain wasn’t carrying the entire list anymore. It was free to focus on the task right in front of me.

I got most of my tasks done that day. When I finally crashed on the couch, I felt exhausted. I get it; the best option would’ve been to set the alarm for that Friday morning. The second best thing to do, however, was to write it all out and check tasks off.

I know this is such a simple tip and you’ve already heard it a million times. But the simplest tasks are the hardest to implement. There has to be more to it, right?! That’s what the exhausted brain will tell you.

So take this post as a sign (and a permission slip) to give it a try - it’ll make your life simpler.

Image by Eva Fanari & AI: Getting Ready

It’s easier to spot other people’s problems than my own. So I’ll start with my daughter.

She’s 16, and if she somehow became the leader of the entire world tomorrow, I’d sleep just fine.

She’s a powerhouse in the way only teenage girls know how to be.

Sure, she’s not perfect. She inherited my runny mouth and sharp wit, and that combination occasionally trips her into an attitude that gets her in trouble. I consider this both a gift and a public service announcement. You’ve been warned.

But things get done in her world.

She swims on two teams. She’s committed to her spiritual practice and youth leadership. She’s passionate about health and wellness, and together we obsess over our next viral salad recipe. She works at a fast-food restaurant she deeply dislikes, yet she shows up to every shift without complaining and gives it her all. She’s an A+ student and a steady rock in a very large circle of friends.

But even powerhouses have limits.

At the end of May, on a Wednesday morning, she was still home at 8:30.

“I’ve been so tired,” she said. “I skipped swim practice this morning. I went to bed at eight last night, and I’m still exhausted. I should be rested. What’s happening?”

I’ll tell you what’s happening.

Here’s what almost nobody tells us.

There isn’t just one kind of rest.

There are seven.

Physical. Mental. Emotional. Sensory. Creative. Social. Spiritual.

That’s why you can sleep for eight hours and still wake up exhausted - the kind of rest you needed wasn’t sleep.

In my daughter’s case, her body had rested. The rest of her hadn’t. She’d simply run out of social energy after months of school, sports, work, leadership, and constantly being “on.”

For you, dear reader, I know this sounds like one more list of things you’re now supposed to monitor, optimize, and probably buy a planner for.

That’s not the point. The point is actually the opposite.

When you know what kind of fatigue you’re dealing with, you stop trying to fix everything with more sleep. You support yourself in the way you actually need.

Here are the seven types of fatigue, and one simple way to respond to each

1. Physical Fatigue

Move before you collapse.

Ironically, gentle movement—a 10-minute walk, stretching, or even a few deep breaths—often restores energy better than another hour on the couch. Your body needs circulation as much as it needs sleep. Movement gives a boost to circulation, which brings nutrition and oxygen to every nook in your body.

2. Mental Fatigue

Empty your mind onto paper.

When your brain keeps juggling unfinished tasks, it never truly rests. Spend five minutes writing everything down. Your brain can finally stop trying to remember it all. This practice has many names - rage on page, stream of consciousness, paper therapy, etc. Pick your fave and let it rip.

3. Emotional Fatigue

Stop pretending you’re okay.

You don’t have to process every emotion immediately, but you do have to acknowledge it. Simply saying, “I’m disappointed,” “I’m anxious,” or “I’m hurt,” reduces the load on your nervous system. Even “I’m depressed” makes the whole experience lighter, especially when combined with point 2 above.

4. Sensory Fatigue

Give your senses a timeout.

Turn off notifications. Lower the lights. Sit in silence. Step outside without your phone. Even ten minutes of less stimulation can calm an overloaded nervous system. Lie face down on grass. Lie face up on grass. It’s liberating, I promise.

5. Creative Fatigue

Consume beauty without producing anything.

Listen to music. Watch a sunset. Wander through a bookstore. Visit a museum. Creativity often returns when you stop demanding output from yourself. Stare at the sunset while your dog takes you for a walk. Just as you set a time for creating, set a time for non-creating.

6. Social Fatigue

Spend time with people who require less performance.

Choose conversations where you don’t have to impress, explain, or entertain. The right people don’t drain your battery; they recharge it. If possible, retreat from the world. I have a set day in the week when I will not interact with people outside my household. Do the same.

7. Spiritual Fatigue

Reconnect with something larger than yourself.

Whether it’s prayer, meditation, nature, gratitude, or simply sitting quietly, spiritual rest comes from remembering you don’t have to carry everything alone. You’re spiritual even if there’s a break in your spiritual practice.

As it turns out, I’m not much different from my daughter.

In June, I suddenly needed ten or eleven hours of sleep every night. Even then, I woke up exhausted.

Naturally, I scheduled a doctor’s appointment because...well...surely something had to be wrong.

Here’s the tricky part.

When we’re depleted, the body tries to help. And one of the ways it helps is by making us sleep more. That makes it easy to assume we’re physically exhausted, when physical fatigue may not be the problem at all.

For me, the real culprit was May.

I had launched three brand-new projects, all with steep learning curves. My brain had been creating, learning, solving, and adapting nonstop.

I wasn’t physically tired; I had creative fatigue. No amount of sleeping could solve a problem that wasn’t caused by a lack of sleep. What actually helped was doing less.

Taking walks. Spending time in nature. Basically, giving my creative brain permission to be off duty for a while.

Sometimes we’re trying to solve the wrong problem. Not every kind of exhaustion asks for a pillow. Silence and beauty, or perhaps honesty and other people, might be better solutions.

And sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop trying to be productive long enough to discover what part of you is actually tired.

Image: Eva Fanari & AI - The Wrong Rest

My kids had an elementary school teacher who became seriously ill in the middle of the school year. She was out for several months, and the school brought in a substitute teacher.

The substitute struggled.

The classroom became chaotic. The kids were talking over her, ignoring instructions, and pushing boundaries. It was hard to believe these were the same children who had done just fine only weeks before. The substitute teacher was a good teacher. They were good kids. Yet somehow, together, they couldn’t make it work.

Eventually, the principal stepped in.

When she asked the students what was going on, the overwhelming response was surprisingly simple:

“She’s not our teacher.”

It wasn’t really about classroom management, but about the kids not accepting her because they missed their “real” teacher. And because they hadn’t accepted her, they couldn’t respect her.

The principal did something brilliant. She canceled the lessons for a day. Instead of trying to force more discipline, she focused on building a relationship.

For an entire day, the class played games, had a pizza party, and talked about what they loved most about their regular teacher. They made her a collage. They sat in a circle and had an honest conversation about what was working and what wasn’t.

One student shared that they didn’t like how the substitute chose the classroom helper each day. Their regular teacher had a system based on the order of their cubbies, and everyone knew when their turn was coming.

Simple, reasonable, and mostly, it was safe.

Nobody had ever asked the kids how they were doing with all this because why ask a bunch of 6-year-olds?!.

By the end of the day, something had shifted. The teacher felt seen and supported, and the kids felt heard and safe.

Acceptance led to respect. And respect brought order back to the classroom.

I have thought about that story many times because I think we treat our emotions exactly the same way those children treated their substitute teacher.

We ignore them. We discipline them. We wish they weren’t here. We tell ourselves we shouldn’t be anxious, we shouldn’t still be sad, we shouldn’t be angry, and we shouldn’t care so much. We feel guilty even for standing up for our emotion by setting boundaries.

And then we wonder why everything inside feels chaotic.

Our inner world isn’t so different from that classroom. When we refuse to acknowledge what’s already there, we create resistance. It creates a life of constant fight, and that’s exhausting.

Acceptance, however, is often misunderstood. People hear the word and think it means giving up.

“If I accept my anxiety, won’t I become an anxious person?”

“If I accept my anger, won’t it take over?”

Not at all. Acceptance doesn’t mean succumbing to life and abandoning self-mastery. It doesn’t mean every emotion deserves to make your decisions. Accepting and respecting emotions means recognizing reality before trying to change it; before shame and guilt hijack your relationship with your own emotions.

I actually think accepting our emotions is an act of self-respect. Every emotion deserves to be acknowledged. Did you notice I didn’t say “acted upon?”

Respect isn’t obedience.

Think about the people you respect most. You don’t necessarily agree with everything they say. You don’t do everything they ask. But you listen before you decide. You respect their time, their presence, and their opinion.

Your emotions deserve the same courtesy. They are part of you.

When you stop treating them like unwanted intruders and start treating them like visitors with something to say, everything changes. As I often tell people,

“Emotions are terrible leaders, but they are excellent messengers.”

So what does accepting an emotion actually look like?

It’s learning to stay with the feeling long enough for it to do what it came to do. Here are four practices that have helped me.

1. Separate the Feeling From the Story

Think about something that’s upsetting you. Notice how quickly your mind begins telling a story, with memories and visuals and opinions.

They shouldn’t have said that.

What if this happens?

This always happens to me.

Now imagine the situation disappears completely. The story is gone, and only the feeling remains. Can you simply sit with that feeling?

Where do you notice it in your body?

Is it tight?

Heavy?

Warm?

Moving?

Still?

Most emotions don’t last nearly as long as the stories we attach to them. We often suffer far longer from the narrative than from the feeling itself.

The full article and all 4 practices can be found on my website: The Emotions You Resist Are the Ones That Stay

Emotions are energetic processes, and they’re designed to move. When we interrupt them with thinking, scrolling, eating, working, explaining, or solving, we freeze them halfway through their natural cycle.

Peace is knowing that whatever walks into the classroom of your mind, you have the capacity to welcome it, listen to it, and gently guide it back to its seat.

If this resonated with you...

Every Thursday, I publish practical field guides on emotional regulation, difficult people, psychology, spirituality, and staying grounded as you build a meaningful life. Share with people who you think might benefit from this:)

Two weeks after creating my Instagram account, I finally posted my first video. It had taken me far longer than I’d like to admit. I rewrote the script. Recorded it multiple times. Then slept on it for eons. Wondered whether I looked awkward (which I did). Debated deleting it before anyone saw it.

Hitting “Post” felt oddly vulnerable.

Later that day, a colleague stopped me in the hallway.

“Great video,” he said.

Then came the rest.

“Just don’t hold your camera like that. It covered part of your face. It’s really not a good look.” He emphasized his point with a shake of his head and a scrunched-up face.

Nice.

I can take unsolicited advice when it comes to speaking, training, my writing, guiding meditations, filling out contracts, negotiating, and doing yoga. But when I start something new? Gosh, it lands differently. As if the place where it lands is flesh without skin.

How do you deal with this so you can keep moving forward without letting someone else’s words become your self-appointed brand?

I know it doesn’t crush everyone’s soul. But some souls are more crushable.

Here’s what you do.

Step 1. Let it land.

Allow the words to move through you. Sit with them.

Our knee-jerk reaction is usually to block them out and ignore. But if they already landed, blocking them out is just another form of suppression. And you’ll know they landed because you felt the sting.

So let that energy move within you – notice it, sit with it, allow yourself to feel what you feel.

Where do you feel it in your body?

What does it feel like? Does it make you want to disappear? Does it make you feel small? Angry? Ashamed? Paralyzed?

Give it space and a voice. Say to yourself, quietly or out loud, “I see you.”

You have to see what is separate from you.

For some reason, you’ve allowed these words to become yours. They’ve become tangled with your own energy; you’ve allowed them to mesh. Sitting with them begins the process of separation.

Sitting with it, acknowledging its existence, allows the separation of someone else’s energy to begin. And you need to untangle before you can let it go.

Step 2. Breathe into it.

Breath untangles even the thinnest threads that want to hold onto you like weeds. Tiny roots reach into the most remote corners of your being, ready to start growing again even after you’ve pulled out the thickest part.

Breathing is a skill.

Just because we’re alive doesn’t mean we’re actually good at it.

Start by relaxing your lower abdomen, the base of your spine, and the entire space between your legs. Tension there holds everything in, almost like a bowl. Let’s air it out, almost literally.

Now bring your attention to the place where those words landed. Breathe into that space.

Inhale for a count of four. Exhale for a count of four.

Stay there until you notice something beginning to soften: the tension, the tightness, the sting.

Step 3. Give it back.

With your next exhale, imagine those words leaving your body like a trail of smoke. With your next inhale, imagine a bright golden light rising from the Earth, entering through the base of your spine and filling the space those words occupied.

Why from the Earth?

Because you are grounding yourself back into you: into your own voice, your own knowing, your own sense of Self.

The sooner you do this, the better.

Now close the energetic loop.

From your heart, send a beam of light back to the person those words belong to. In your mind’s eye, see them surrounded by that light.

They need it, for their words of hurt came from hurt, a wound they have not dealt with yet. And those words belong to them, not to you.

A BONUS TIP for Unsolicited Advice

I’m saying this not because I think feedback is awful. Feedback helps us grow, and judgment simply leaves bruises. If you’re the one giving feedback, ask first.

“Are you open to a suggestion?”

It’s a simple question, but it gives the other person a chance to prepare instead of defend. We never really know how much courage it took someone just to begin.

Let’s not become the reason they stop.

One question comes up over and over again in my trainings:

“Eva, what do I do about family members or close friends who have such a negative impact on me?”

It’s a difficult question because we’re not talking about strangers on the internet. We’re talking about parents, siblings, lifelong friends, and people we genuinely love.

We’ve all heard the saying that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Whether the number is exactly five isn’t really the point. The people around us shape our thinking, our expectations, our habits, and ultimately our future.

That’s why, especially when you’re starting something new- a business, a healthier lifestyle, a spiritual practice, or simply becoming a different version of yourself- you have to protect your energy, your stamina, and your dreams.

“But Eva,” people tell me almost every week, “what about family members?”

I understand.

Years ago, I came across a quote from Jim Rohn that didn’t fully make sense to me until I committed to serious personal growth.

“Nurture like a mother. Protect like a father.”

The longer I have worked with people and experienced my own transformation, the more I understand what he meant.

Growth changes your relationships. Not because you’re becoming better than anyone else, but because you’re becoming different.

Maybe you’ve decided to stop criticizing yourself. Suddenly, you notice that one of the things bonding you and a friend together was constant negative self-talk. They complain about themselves. You join in about yourself, and before you know it, you’re having a full-blown Olympics of tearing yourselves down. It became your shared language.

Or perhaps you’ve started a business. Now you notice someone who constantly tells you how business owners never succeed, how it’s too risky, or how you’re probably wasting your time. Worst part? When you share a small victory, they don’t celebrate. Sometimes they change the subject or minimize it, or even seem... disappointed.

I’ve watched this happen in my own life more than once. Every time I level up, the criticism levels up too. Very few of us are immune to that.

Why?

Because every person around us carries a mental picture of who we are. You’re “the funny one.”

“The responsible one.”

“The quiet one.”

“The one who never takes risks.”

The moment you begin changing, you step outside the box they’ve unconsciously placed you in. Your transformation requires everyone around you to update their picture of you. Not everyone wants to do that because the familiar feels safer than the unknown.

Keeping you where you’ve always been requires less adjustment than accepting who you’re becoming.

Most people do this without realizing it. They’re protecting their own sense of stability. They could grow alongside you, but they may not be ready. As a result, some relationships will become more distant. Some friendships will naturally fade. Some people will quietly drift away.

Don’t take this as a failure. It’s part of growth - new energy lets go of old energy. The good news is the new energy attracts people who naturally align with who you’re becoming.

Who you spend time with has an enormous impact on your dreams, your resilience, and the person you’ll become over the next few years. That’s clear.

But what if you can’t simply remove these people from your life?

What if they’re family?

Protect your peace without starting a war.

You don’t have to cut people off to protect yourself. Sometimes you simply need healthier boundaries. Here are a few strategies I’ve found incredibly helpful.

1. Become a Grey Rock.

When conversations become emotionally draining, respond politely but without emotional fuel. Keep your answers short. Avoid defending yourself. Don’t volunteer personal information. The less there is to grab onto, the quicker the conversation loses momentum.

2. Put people on an information diet.

Not everyone has earned access to your dreams. You don’t owe anyone updates on every new project, business idea, or personal goal. Share those with people who genuinely cheer for your growth.

3. Announce your boundaries early.

“I only have ten minutes today.” Then leave after ten minutes. If you break your boundaries, they won’t see why they can’t.

4. Control when communication happens.

You don’t have to answer every phone call. You don’t have to reply immediately to every text. Sometimes scheduling one regular conversation each month is healthier than living in constant interruption.

Preparation protects peace.

5. Replace “but” with “and.”

This tiny word changes everything. “I understand why you feel that way, and I’m going to do what works best for my life.” You acknowledge their perspective without surrendering your own.

6. Master the graceful exit.

Negative conversations don’t have to last until someone wins. “I have another commitment.” “I need to leave.” “I have to get back to work.”

It’s simple, polite, and you’re done.

7. Practice your scripts before you need them.

Boundaries are difficult when we improvise. They’re much easier when we’ve already decided what we’ll say. “I love you, and I’m no longer willing to discuss this topic.”

Keep it short and respectful, and really clear.

8. Accept that it may feel uncomfortable.

People may notice something has changed and push back. They may accuse you of becoming different, and they’re right. You’re allowed to grieve relationships that no longer fit your life. Don’t mistake grief for making the wrong decision. It simply means something meaningful is changing.

9. A bonus phone trick.

If someone calls simply to vent for forty-five uninterrupted minutes, remember that listening is different from absorbing. Sometimes you can literally set the phone down while they continue their monologue. Every so often, pick it back up and say, “Mm-hmm.”

You’d be surprised how little they notice.

10. Lead with gratitude.

“Thank you for sharing.” “I appreciate your concern.” Then leave, no debate required. As you’re reading this, some of these suggestions may feel a little harsh. That’s okay.

Don’t try all of them.

Pick one and practice it. See how it feels. Boundaries, like muscles, become stronger with repetition.

There’s one final thing I hope you remember.

Your boundaries are your responsibility. To build and to maintain. When someone crosses a boundary, it doesn’t automatically make them a terrible person. Often, it simply means they found an opening. It’s our job to gently close it.

Protecting your peace is one of the kindest things you can do for the future version of yourself. Let go of the relationships that become a weight.

I want to talk about relationships.

One of the easiest places to spot unresolved trauma is in our relationships. The obvious ones are our intimate relationships and our children. But trauma doesn’t limit itself to the people closest to us. It affects friendships, work relationships, and even casual interactions with people we genuinely care about.

Recently, I went on a weekend getaway with a close friend and our young adult children. We rented an Airbnb in the mountains and spent a few days enjoying cooler weather, beautiful scenery, and the conversations that only happen when nobody is in a rush.

A few days into the trip, my daughter and I were sitting on the front porch, taking in the birds and discussing lunch plans. We had settled on a salad and were both looking forward to using a particularly delicious dressing we had picked up on the drive up.

I walked into the house to get started when my friend’s wonderful daughter came rushing over.

“Eva, I’m so sorry. I opened the fridge, and your salad dressing fell out and splattered all over the floor. Don’t worry, I cleaned it up.”

“It happens,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Not a big deal.” Besides, there was still plenty left for one lunch.

Ten minutes later, she apologized again.

And then again.

Each time, I reassured her that everything was fine. “It’s just salad dressing. All is well, my dear.”

Later that afternoon, my friend told me her daughter had been genuinely worried that I would be upset.

“Why?” I asked.

“That’s exactly what I said,” my friend replied. “I told her that if Eva gets really upset over spilled salad dressing, then she’s not our people and she’s not our friend.”

We laughed.

But something about that statement stayed with me. You see, underneath it was an interesting assumption. If one of us gets upset over something as trivial as spilled salad dressing, then the friendship is over. I mean, we travel together, we laugh and cry together, we fix the world together, and all that could be over because of salad dressing?

How about, “Wow, that’s a strong reaction. Are you okay?” or, “Let’s talk about it.”

Just immediate disqualification, and it rattled me.

The more I thought about it, the more I recognized myself in that response. I myself am a recovering bridge burner.

I’ve ended budding friendships because someone was late and didn’t apologize. I’ve mentally “beheaded” people because my child felt hurt by something their child did. Once. I’ve cut people off over offenses that, looking back, probably deserved a conversation rather than an execution.

I suspect many of us have.

The beheading method feels protective. It feels strong. It feels like having standards. But most of the time, it’s fear wearing armor.

Part of that fear is obvious. You hurt me once, and therefore you’ll probably hurt me again. Therefore, I must leave first in order not to get hurt again. It feels logical and safe. It feels like self-protection, right?! But I suspect there is often something deeper happening underneath.

Either way, somebody is about to discover that one of us isn’t perfect. And many of us learned very early in life that being imperfect was dangerous. Maybe Mom withdrew affection when emotions became inconvenient. Maybe Dad exploded when needs were expressed.

Maybe disappointment, frustration, anger, or disagreement created tension that felt unbearable. As children, we quietly came to the conclusion that bad things happen when negative emotions arise.

So we learned to fear them.

When someone else gets upset, we want to run. When we get upset, we feel shame and want to run. Either way, we’re running.

The underlying belief sounds something like this:

If people see my anger, frustration, disappointment, hurt feelings, expectations, boundaries, demands, or imperfections, they won’t love me. And if somebody else is showing those emotions, then something bad is about to happen.

The nervous system doesn’t care that we’re adults now. It learned these lessons a long time ago and continues to apply them long after they’ve stopped being useful.

This creates a generation of emotional beheaders.

You upset me.

You disappoint me.

You make me uncomfortable.

Off with your head.

Not literally, of course. Just emotionally, and we have many axes to do this.

A slow fade.

An unanswered text.

A friendship quietly abandoned.

A relationship that never gets the chance to repair itself.

These sound familiar, don’t they?! The problem is that every human being has bad days. Some days we’re patient, grounded, wise, and generous. Other days, we’re tired, stressed, overwhelmed, grieving, hormonal, frustrated, scared, or simply acting like imperfect humans.

If our standard for connection is that nobody is ever allowed to have a messy moment, we eventually create a very lonely life.

I’ve tried it. I’ve watched others try it. I’ve done it to some wonderful people, and wonderful people have done it to me. It’s not the way to live; it’s time for me to do better – evolve past this pattern.

So I responded to my friend’s comment of her being ready to chuck me out of her life over salad dressing panic:

“No, my dear! We are worth way more than that. Our friendship is worth way more than that.”

“If one of us gets upset over something stupid, we don’t immediately decide the relationship is over. We ask, ‘Are you okay?’ We express our frustration when necessary. We talk about it. We work through it. We owe that to ourselves.”

Healthy, regulated people don’t usually lose their minds over spilled salad dressing. Stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted, hurting people do. You know it, I know it. And when I’m stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted, or hurting, that’s when I need my friends the most.

My dear friend paused, then smiled. “That’s right.”

And we ended up talking about all the times the beheading method had hurt us far more than the original offense ever did. Since that conversation, I’ve seen versions of it with many other people. The pattern is everywhere.

The breakthrough is surprisingly simple. The next time someone says or does something that genuinely irritates you, try this.

1. First, wait 24 hours. This is non-negotiable.

Your nervous system needs time to settle. Your rational brain needs time to come back online. There is a reason lawyers ask for breaks during difficult negotiations. It’s not because they’re confused or need water. It’s because emotional intensity clouds judgment.

Regulate first, respond later.

2. Second, decide whether it still matters.

If it doesn’t bother you 24 hours later, let it go. Not everything deserves a conversation.

But if it still bothers you, address it. Choose your words carefully. Speak calmly. Have the conversation face-to-face or voice-to-voice whenever possible. Provide empty space for response.

And please don’t sweep it under the rug. Avoidance will not give you peace. What it will give you is resentment. 100% guaranteed.

3. Third, remind them they matter.

End with gratitude and genuine connection. Something as simple as: “Our relationship is important to me. Thank you for hearing me out.”

People often hear criticism as rejection. Your job is to remind them that the relationship is bigger than the disagreement.

The beheading method works, by the way. You can eliminate conflict very efficiently. You can also eliminate most meaningful relationships. And it’s difficult to build a life alone. It’s difficult to build a business alone. It’s difficult to build a community alone.

Relationships require maintenance, repair, and uncomfortable conversations. Most importantly, they require enough emotional maturity to distinguish between a real threat and a spilled bottle of salad dressing.

For your own sanity, get really good at putting out small fires. Start by saving your friendships one irritated moment at a time.

Building something new requires a skill nobody talks about: learning to feel safe in the space between here and there.

A few years ago, I was at a networking event, making my way across the room and collecting conversations like a kid collects shells on the beach. You know the kind of event: people balancing drinks, scanning name tags, and trying to look relaxed while secretly wondering where they belong.

At one point, I landed next to a dear colleague and friend, Amanda. We started talking about the awkwardness of networking events and why some people find them so intimidating.

I loved what she said.

“It’s like you’re in the middle of the ocean with life rafts floating all around you. Every little group of people chatting is a raft. When you’re standing on one, you’re safe. You belong someplace and you can catch your breath.”

“But when you leave that group, you’ve stepped off the raft and back into the ocean. Now you’re swimming again, hoping another raft will pull you aboard.”

“And if they don’t? You’re just floating out there.”

We laughed because it was true. Anyone who has ever wandered around a room full of strangers knows exactly what she meant. There is a strange vulnerability in leaving one conversation before you’ve secured the next.

But her words stayed with me.

Over time, I realized that building something new in life feels exactly like that. The only difference is that instead of floating in an ocean, you’re drifting through space. Like in outer space.

Whenever we create something new, whether it’s a business, a career, a relationship, or a healthier version of ourselves, we have to leave something behind. The old life can no longer contain who we’re becoming.

The trouble is that the new life isn’t here yet.

We don’t know how far away it is. We don’t know what it will look like when we get there. Most days, we don’t even know if we’re moving in the right direction. We simply know that we can no longer stay where we were.

And so we leave. At first, that can feel exhilarating. There’s energy in the decision. We feel the momentum. And as a bonus, there’s so much hope and possibility in the air.

Then reality arrives.

You realize you’ve left the planet you knew, but you haven’t yet landed on the next one. The familiar routines are gone. The old identity no longer fits. The certainty you once relied on has quietly slipped away.

The most troublesome part yet? For some time, there’s a safety net: your old planet, your old identity. But you know you’ll only land on it scarred. And if the vision and commitment are there, you’ll cut the ties. With no safety net, there is no ground beneath your feet.

You’ll end up in a place with no landmarks. No guarantees. No proof that this whole thing is working.

Just you, suspended somewhere between what was and what will be.

This is what psychologists call a liminal space: the space between worlds, the threshold between one chapter and the next. Most of us spend far more time here than we expect, and we need to accept it instead of fighting it.

It’s uncomfortable because humans are built for certainty. We like maps. We like plans. We like knowing where we’re headed and how long it will take to get there. Growth, unfortunately, offers none of those things.

The entrepreneur knows this feeling when the business isn’t quite established yet, but can no longer remain a side project. The newly divorced person knows it when the old life has ended, and the new one hasn’t taken shape. The recent graduate, the grieving parent, the spiritual seeker, the person recovering from illness or heartbreak … they all know this territory.

Anyone becoming someone new knows this feeling.

The mistake most people make is waiting for the new planet to appear before they allow themselves to feel safe. But that isn’t how it works.

The distance is often too great. You cannot see the next landing place from where you are. Sometimes you won’t even catch a glimpse of it until you’re much closer than you think. In an eggshell – you must jump before you have clarity.

Which means safety and grounding are your responsibilities, and you must create safety before certainty arrives.

Not once in a while. Not when you have time. Not after the project launches, the kids leave home, or life finally settles down.

You must create a sense of safety every single day.

You need to build little rafts in the middle of the vastness. Places where your tired mind can rest for a moment. Places where your nervous system can remember that you are safe, even when the future remains unclear.

Places where your soul can catch its breath before stepping back into the unknown.

In the full article, I share the five tiny rafts that help me stay grounded whenever I’m building something new and can’t yet see the shore.

Continue reading here →

A quick test:

If someone offered you:

1. A free vacation to Hawaii, or

2. Three days alone in your house with nobody asking you for anything...

...and you had to think about it, you’ve landed in the right place.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard people say they dream about being alone, can’t wait for bedtime, or wish everyone would just leave them alone for a while, even the people they deeply love.

And to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with that. We all need solitude, rest, and space to just be.

But when withdrawal becomes more appealing than life itself, it’s often a signal worth paying attention to. Not because something is wrong with you, but because some part of you may be carrying more than it was designed to carry.

It seems the world is full of adults whose souls are tired.

Cognitive overload has been much covered in the media and in conversations across psychology, business circles, and personal development. Makes sense – it’s brain psychology and physiology. “My brain is full.”

But what about spiritual overload? That conversation happens behind closed doors. To this day, in mainstream, it’s too “woo-woo.” Yet your soul and spiritual space can feel saturated, too. “My soul is full.”

Yet a pantsuit and a meditation mat are not mutually exclusive.

When cognitive overload requires more bandwidth, then spiritual overload often requires more grounding.

To know if that’s you, I created a cognitive overload test, and it’s time for the spiritual overload test. Let’s get to it!

Spiritual Overload Test

Scoring

Yes = 2 points
Sometimes = 1 point
No = 0 points

Keep a running score as you go. Below each question is an explanation of what it really means. Have fun!

Q1. Healing Fatigue

Question: Do you feel emotionally exhausted even though you’ve been doing “the work” and trying to heal?

Growth requires energy. Reflection, therapy, journaling, shadow work, forgiveness, and emotional processing all consume internal resources. Sometimes you’re not exhausted because you’re broken or because you’re dealing with cognitive overload. You’re exhausted because you’ve been renovating your inner world for too long without taking a break to live in it.

Q2. Spiritual Information Overload

Question: Have you found yourself consuming more spiritual content than actually practicing what you already know?

There comes a point when more books, podcasts, videos, and teachings stop creating wisdom and start creating noise. Knowledge becomes overwhelming when it isn’t integrated. Growth happens through application and daily practice, not accumulation. What’s your ROA ( rate of application) for what you know?

Q3. Energetic Boundary Erosion

Question: Do you feel responsible for helping, saving, fixing, or carrying other people’s emotions?

Compassion is healthy. That doesn’t mean you need to carry another person’s emotional burden. When boundaries weaken, empathy turns into exhaustion because you begin treating someone else’s problems as your responsibility. Remember, other people are not yours to fix. They are their own pet projects in this life.

Q4. Disconnection from Reality

Question: Have you become less interested in ordinary life while becoming more focused on personal growth, spirituality, or self-improvement?

Spiritual growth should deepen your participation in life, not pull you away from it. If spirituality makes you disengage from relationships, responsibilities, or simple pleasures, it may have become an escape rather than a support. Take inventory of your weeks. How much do you engage in your life, and how much do you avoid it?

Q5. Performance-Based Spirituality

Question: Do you feel guilty when you rest instead of working on yourself?

Many people unknowingly turn personal growth into another achievement system. Rest begins to feel irresponsible. But growth isn’t a performance review. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is stop trying to improve yourself for a moment. Take an entire day without reading, practicing, cooking, cleaning, working, worrying. How do you feel even thinking about it?

Q6. Existential Fatigue

Question: Have you experienced periods where nothing feels meaningful, even though your life is objectively okay?

This often happens during periods of transition. Old sources of meaning no longer fit, but new ones haven’t fully emerged. It can feel unsettling, but it is often a sign of transformation rather than failure. You need to flow with it and allow yourself to feel the world, minute by minute.

Q7. Identity Expansion Pressure

Question: Do you feel like you’ve outgrown parts of your life but aren’t sure what comes next?

Growth frequently creates a gap between who you were and who you’re becoming. That gap can feel lonely and disorienting. You’re no longer comfortable in the old identity, but the new one isn’t even starting to materialize yet; it’s only in the thought form. It’s like the old shell has detached, but you’re still in it. A detached shell is a lonely, disconnected place. The best antidote is to lean into relationships.

Q8. Energetic Saturation

Question: Have you become highly sensitive to other people’s moods, energy, or emotional states?

Sensitivity increases awareness, but without boundaries, it can become overwhelming. When you’re spiritually overloaded, your emotional filters weaken, and everything starts feeling personal. You may react to other people more strongly than usual. You’re exhausted from interactions with strangers. Create practices to protect your energy.

Q9. Spiritual Perfectionism

Question: Do you feel pressure to remain positive, grateful, or spiritually evolved even when you’re struggling?

Growth does not eliminate difficult emotions. Trying to stay positive all the time can become a form of self-rejection. Authentic spirituality makes room for grief, anger, fear, and uncertainty. Your soul is here to experience all of it. Greet the “bad” feelings with gratitude and curiosity. Sit with them. Ask them questions. What are you here for?

Q10. The Seeker’s Trap

Question: Do you find yourself constantly searching for the next breakthrough, teacher, modality, book, or answer?

The belief that the next insight will finally fix everything keeps many people trapped in perpetual seeking. This place carries hopelessness. As if nothing is ever good enough. Sometimes it’s living what you’ve already learned that takes you to the top of the mountain. Practicing staying in the present is gold here.

Q11. Growth Imbalance

Question: Have you lost touch with simple joy because you’re always trying to become a better version of yourself?

Personal growth is meant to enhance life, not replace it. If every moment becomes a project for improvement, joy quietly disappears. The soul grows through delight, connection, and play, not just discipline. You may even notice that you’re demanding it from others as well. It’s a signal that you’re rushing the process of becoming. Every day, with intention, seek to be grateful for what is already here.

Q12. Soul Fatigue

Question: Do you secretly feel tired of carrying the responsibility of your own transformation?

There is a season for effort and a season for surrender. Soul fatigue often appears when you’ve spent too long trying to force growth instead of allowing it. Often, the secret key is trusting more, allowing life’s flow to surprise you. Relax, Franky😉

Interpreting Your Score

0–6
You’re growing, but you’re still grounded. Your spiritual practices appear to be supporting your life rather than replacing it.

7–14
You’re carrying significant spiritual and emotional weight. It may be time to spend less energy seeking and more energy integrating.

15–24
You may be experiencing spiritual overload. Your soul is asking for rest, embodiment, play, community, simplicity, or trust instead of more effort.

I especially like Q12 because this is something so many people rarely admit.

“I’m tired of working on myself.”

This is really a sign that the soul wants integration, not another assignment. Anchor into what has worked the best up to this point. Just one practice that helps you ride out the storm.

Contemplate your results. Let it sink in with acceptance and compassion. Next week, let’s discuss what to do about it.

Before You Take The Test

How do you know you’re operating from a place of cognitive overload?

Right now, I’m teaching a group of brand-new real estate business owners. We’re only three weeks into the program, but the amount of information they’re expected to learn, retain, and apply is already putting a significant load on their brains.

The interesting thing is that I can see the signs, but they often can’t.

Take Sally.

Sally spent 30 years as an elementary school teacher. She’s warm, capable, intelligent, and wonderful with people. Today, she was staring at her computer screen, trying to figure out how to resize a shape she had created.

She had three options in front of her:

Edit Shape
Remove Shape
Zoom In

And she had absolutely no idea which one to click.

Now, you and I both know she knows how to solve a problem like this. She’s spent three decades teaching children. She is smart.

But in that moment, she couldn’t access what she knew. She was frustrated and flustered. Disappointed in herself.

You see, when cognitive overload shows up, it rarely registers as overload. It registers as, “Maybe I’m not as capable as I thought I was.”

Three weeks into the program, and a few of my wonderful new entrepreneurs are already wondering whether this business is for them.

And that’s simply not true. What’s happening is that their brains are just working overtime.

That’s why I created this quick self-assessment.

Keep a running score as you go. At the end, you’ll find a cheat sheet that explains what each question actually measures and why it matters.

And if you’re wondering how Sally scored on Question #4 about rereading things because they don’t sink in the first time?

Let’s just say she somehow managed to score a 10 on a question with a maximum score of 2.

The Deep Cognitive Load Self-Test (12 Questions)

Scoring:

• Yes = 2 points

• Sometimes = 1 point

• No = 0 points

Jot your points on a piece of paper, and let’s see how you’re really doing. (In parentheses below each question is a fancy name for each problem.)

The Test

1. Have you been avoiding small tasks (email replies, bills, scheduling) even when they take only a few minutes? 2 / 1 / 0

(Executive function strain)

2. Do you feel annoyed when someone asks you a simple question that normally wouldn’t bother you? 2 / 1 / 0

(Emotional bandwidth collapse)

3. Have you been procrastinating about making decisions — even pleasant ones, like picking a restaurant, movie, or outfit? 2 / 1 / 0

(Decision fatigue)

4. Do you catch yourself re-reading things (instructions, texts, posts) because they don’t sink in the first time? 2 / 1 / 0

(Working memory overload)

5. Have you been buying or eating the same thing repeatedly because you don’t have the mental space to choose something different? 2 / 1 / 0

(Subtle habit-loop regression)

6. Do you find yourself scrolling, wandering, or “zoning out” to escape instead of choosing your next task? 2 / 1 / 0

(Avoidance + brain freeze)

7. Does noise, mess, or clutter bother you more than usual, or feel harder to tolerate?

(Decreased sensory threshold) 2 / 1 / 0

8. Have you been more forgetful — names, items, appointments, where you put things, or why you walked into a room? 2 / 1 / 0

(Short-term memory interference)

9. Do you feel like you’re constantly “switching tabs” mentally, even when nothing is actually happening? 2 / 1 / 0

(Mental load saturation)

10. Has it been harder to articulate what you’re feeling or what you need — even to yourself? 2 / 1 / 0

(Language + emotional processing fatigue)

11. Have normally enjoyable things felt like work (socializing, hobbies, small talk, planning ahead)? 2 / 1 / 0

(Motivation system disruption)

12. Do you feel pressure to “push through” even when you know you’re running on empty? 2 / 1 / 0

(Self-regulation + boundary failure)

Interpreting Your Score (Total out of 24)

0–6:

You’re managing well, but stay aware.
Your brain is operating with a good margin.

7–14:

You’re stretched thin.
This is the zone where people start making mistakes, feeling emotional, and losing clarity.
Mitigation now will prevent overload later.

15–24:

You’re in cognitive overload or standing at the edge of it.
Your brain is signaling for recovery, rest, simplification, or support.
Don’t think of this as a weakness. It’s neurobiology.

Cognitive Load Indicators’ Cheat Sheet

Q 1. Executive Function Strain

This is when the prefrontal cortex is overloaded and can’t efficiently organize, plan, or choose. Small decisions suddenly feel huge because your brain doesn’t have enough processing power to evaluate options. Furthermore, simple decisions feel weirdly hard. When your executive function is overloaded, the prefrontal cortex loses processing bandwidth. This makes even small choices feel cognitively expensive. The brain treats minor decisions as major ones.

Q 2. Emotional Regulation & Bandwidth Depletion

When cognitive load is high, the brain reallocates resources from emotional control to survival tasks. This leads to irritability, snapping, tearfulness, and a shorter fuse overall. Your patience is thinner than usual. When cognitive resources run low, emotional regulation becomes harder. Irritability is often a sign of depleted cognitive reserves, not personality or attitude.

Q 3. Cognitive Avoidance Response

The brain tries to conserve remaining bandwidth by steering away from cognitively expensive tasks. This avoidance is a self-protection mechanism, not procrastination. Your brain starts dodging anything that requires focus. This isn’t laziness; it’s your nervous system saying, “I can’t afford any more demands,” and pushing you toward less cognitively expensive tasks. You avoid tasks that require concentration.

Q 4. Working Memory Breakdown

Attention and working memory are the first to falter under overload. Your eyes read the words, but the information never moves from sensory memory into working memory. This is classic cognitive saturation. Your brain can’t hold information long enough to use it. You read the same sentence repeatedly because attention is fragmented and memory buffers are full. You reread things and still don’t absorb them.

Q 5. Loss of Automaticity

Automaticity breaks down when the load exceeds the capacity. Tasks that used to be “muscle memory” now require conscious processing, further draining mental energy. Tasks that used to be mindless (sending an email, cooking, driving a familiar route) now require conscious effort. When the brain is overloaded, automatic behaviors revert back to manual mode, which is exhausting. Normal tasks suddenly require step-by-step thinking.

Q 6. Cognitive Fatigue

Mental fatigue doesn’t resolve with physical rest alone. Overload keeps the nervous system activated and consumes cognitive energy even when you’re not “doing” anything. You feel tired even after rest because mental load drains internal resources. Sleep restores the body, but an overloaded brain keeps “running” even when you’re unconscious. You feel tired even after sleeping.

Q 7. Sensory Processing Overload

Sensory processing becomes less efficient under strain. Inputs that were once filtered out now hit the brain at full volume, creating irritability or agitation. Your brain’s filters get weaker, so sound, clutter, conversations, or movement feel louder, sharper, or more intrusive. This does not make you sensitive. It’s the inability to screen out non-essential input. You’re overly sensitive to noise, interruptions, or mess.

Q 8. Episodic Memory Slippage

This happens when the brain is too taxed to store “where I put things” moments. Misplacing keys, phones, and glasses can seem as carelessness, but they are really signs that your memory systems are running on fumes. Spatial and episodic memory suffer when the brain is overtaxed. You’re failing to register where you put things in the first place. Therefore, you misplace objects constantly.

Also, cognitive overload disrupts working-memory sequencing. The pathway between forming a thought and expressing it becomes unstable, so you “drop the thread.” Losing your train of thought mid-sentence is a working-memory dropout. Your brain can’t keep the sequence active long enough to complete the idea. And so you lose your train of thought mid-sentence.

Q 9. Elevated Error Rate

Error rates spike when cognitive resources are depleted. The brain rapidly switches between tasks but fails to maintain accuracy. This is the “too many tabs open” effect in action. When processing power runs low, accuracy drops. Typos, misclicks, sending the wrong email, and simple mistakes multiply because the brain is operating in a lagging, overloaded state. As a result, you make more small mistakes than usual.

Q 10. Encoding Failure

Working memory collapses under too many simultaneous demands. The brain cannot encode new information while juggling competing tasks, so details evaporate immediately. This is not “forgetting.” It’s the brain being too overwhelmed to record new information in the first place. What’s not encoded can’t be recalled. You forget things the moment after you hear them.

Q 11. Perceived Demand Amplification

Requests feel bigger than they are because your brain interprets every new input as a competing demand for resources. Even small asks can feel like someone just handed you a ton of bricks. Perceived load increases when internal bandwidth shrinks. Even small requests can feel intrusive or overwhelming because the brain interprets them as additional demand. You feel like people are asking too much of you (even when they’re not).

Q 12. Self Regulation & Boundary Failure

One of the last abilities to weaken under cognitive overload is self-awareness. People often recognize they’re depleted but keep pushing anyway, ignoring the signals that they need to recover. Sometimes, when the brain is overloaded, it postpones not only tasks but also conversations, decisions, and emotions. Delaying important matters is often a sign that your cognitive capacity has been exceeded.

I understand there’s deep brain science and psychology behind cognitive and emotional overload. It’s all about what happens to the brain.

And caring for the brain matters.

But we are not just brain, tissue, carbon, hydrogen, and matter.

We are spiritual beings.

We are souls with the primary purpose of expansion and growth. And if growth is so essential to the soul, why is it still painful? Why does it take so long and feel so much?

Why do we begin with so much momentum and excitement, only to stall out or quit?

If you know me, you know I will always look for a deeper meaning behind physical occurrences. Nothing is ever “just a coincidence.” Our lives are so much deeper.

So I asked the why?

And here’s what I found.

From a spiritual perspective, emotional overload during transitions is not a sign of failure. It is the energetic friction of your soul expanding. When you learn, begin something new, or make a life shift, you alter your personal vibration and break down old ego structures.

This is hard work, the hardest there is. It gets intense – energetically, emotionally, and physically.

To make sense of all of this, let me break it down for you, my friend.

1. The Death and Rebirth Cycle

Spiritual growth follows the natural law of transformation: a continuous cycle of death and rebirth. To step into a new version of yourself, your old identity must dissolve. That dissolution creates a massive identity crisis.

Even a seemingly superficial change triggers this.

And this is good. The old identity is dying and signaling a crisis mode for your nervous system. The new is born, and birth is … well, birth.

The birth of the new identity faces two major challenges:

• Ego Resistance

Your ego thrives on predictability. It wants to be in control to keep you safe. Change, any change, threatens the ego’s control, triggering a survival response of anxiety, fear, or grief. Even though the ego is ever-present, we truly feel the strength of its resistance when we try to grow.

The more paramount the change for our soul’s growth, the more panicked the ego.

Like a cornered animal, the ego fights until it feels safe inside the new identity.

To anchor into your new identity, you need support for your soul and energy, as well as for your ego.

We understand the soul part. We forget about the ego.

• The “Void” Space

Moving from the known to the unknown forces you into a spiritual liminal, the in-between space. Feeling overwhelmed is often the emotional weight of standing in this empty, unformed territory. We are not sure what the next steps could be; the certainty is missing.

2. Energetic Upgrades and Calibration

Your energetic body carries a specific frequency based on your past habits, beliefs, and environments. It’s your vibe. To become someone new, you need to become someone new energetically. Your vibe requires an upgrade.

That creates friction. Like warm air colliding with cold air creates lightning.

• Frequency Clashes: New knowledge and new beginnings introduce a higher vibrational frequency to your field. Your energetic system stretches to meet that higher frequency, creating “growing pains” as you upgrade.

• Purging Old Energy: To hold new information or a new life path, your body must release old, stagnant energy; the stuff that no longer matches. This spiritual detoxification often manifests as an overwhelming wave of suppressed emotions you cannot explain, fatigue, or mood swings.

Your lovely ego perceives this as an existential threat and mobilizes all its forces to pull you back to the old ways.

3. Soul Contracts and Ancestral Patterns

This gets especially intense when we are breaking old financial patterns, shifting self-worth, or healing family abuse cycles. Major life changes rarely affect just your current, conscious self. They often ripple across your entire spiritual lineage.

• Breaking Karma: Starting something new often requires breaking old cycles: ancestral patterns, family expectations, or past-life conditioning. The energetic pull is substantial.

• Collective Weight: The emotional overload you feel might not even be yours alone. You may be processing the collective fear of the unknown carried by your ancestors who were unable to make major shifts in their own lifetimes.

4. Overstimulated Intuition and Spiritual Senses

Your intuition is the doorway to your soul. Your soul wants to help you out. It’s pulling for you. When you enter a new phase of life, your spiritual antennas go into overdrive, scanning the new environment.

• Third Eye & Heart Overdrive: Change forces your Third Eye (intuition) to open rapidly to absorb new insights. Your heart center needs to analyze the intake, and your brain needs to weed out what’s not important. This is additional work on top of your everyday life.

• Empathic Absorption: Without strong energetic boundaries, this heightened spiritual openness causes you to absorb the stress, doubts, and energies of the people and environments around you. More often than not, you are not only feeling your own load but also some of other people’s.

When you are starting something new, it’s not just cognitive and mental overload you’re experiencing, but also spiritual and energetic load. You’re not carrying only your path, but the echoes of your lineage.

And that alone is a reason enough to keep going.

So pay attention. Notice the signs. Prepare.

Allow yourself to grow.

If asking for help feels like failure, you’re probably a high-functioning, competent, exhausted human. And this is for you. That feeling of failure is your nervous system trying to protect you. The question is: protect you from what?

In my trainings, I do everything I can to help new entrepreneurs succeed. I give them processes, tools, scripts, practices, checklists – the whole Swiss-army-knife-for-your-success starter kit. I stay available, answer questions, and brainstorm with them.

And still, I often hear:

“I’ll read these and see what works for me.”

Translation: I will now ignore the instructions of people with decades of expertise and hope the universe sends me a miracle instead.

Every time, a tiny part of me wants to stand up and scream:

“Why won’t you just ask for help?”

But underneath my frustration is a better question I should be asking:

“Why won’t they accept the help?” You see, people come to my trainings because they know they need help. So they get it. But why not accept it?

This is an infinity loop. People avoid asking for help not because they’re scared to ask, but because they struggle receiving help. And kindness. And support. And things being easy.

That’s a fear that thinks it’s keeping us safe when it actually shoots us in the foot and makes us stagnant in our goals and progress.

We have this strange belief that we’re only worthy of success if we white-knuckle our way through the chaos alone. If we stumble and suffer alone, maybe we’ll finally be allowed to win.

And I’m no exception.

Why Asking for Help Feels Dangerous

When I got into real estate, I believed that if I didn’t figure everything out on my own, I’d be seen as a failure.

That belief wasn’t so much my own creation, but it came from generational conditioning, and it’s embedded in the story of my people.

I grew up in the Soviet Union, where mistrust floated in the air like spring pollen. You didn’t know who was safe, who was listening, or who would be the snitch. Depending on other people could easily be a liability.

Self-sufficiency became the trademark of survival and a quality to be revered. That leads inevitably to hard work, and now that was to be admired.

People who never complained, never asked, never borrowed – these were the heroes.

As a child, I watched the adults around me praise these qualities. Naturally, I became a self-sufficient kid. The kid who didn’t ask for much, didn’t need extra, and didn’t burden.

It wasn’t as if I was raised by the cold-hearted wolves. Of course, we helped family and friends. But people who leaned on others were never praised or looked up to.

But a person who could do it on their own, who worked from sunup to sundown all on their own – now those people were held in high esteem.

And as a child, I picked up on it, as children always do. How can I feel the most loved and accepted by the adults around me? The answer was evident: to get by on my own. Not complain, not whine, not ask for much.

You didn’t have to grow up behind the Iron Curtain to know this pattern. Almost every culture has some version of it.

We saw the kids who stayed after school for extra help – they didn’t get a certificate of achievement. The ones who had to repeat a grade. The ones who always forgot their lunch or notebooks. They were the “not-quite-together” kids. And children are expert anthropologists – they learn fast what earns acceptance.

And so we learn early that “needing help” equals “being weak.”

But Everyone Sucks at the Beginning

When you start something new, we all need help. Because we suck. Everyone sucks at the beginning.

There are only two ways to get better.

1. You figure it out yourself – takes time, exhausting, trial-and-error with many errors.

2. You ask for help – fast, accurate, and usually much less painful.

Like most people, I chose number one. The slow and exhausting one. All in the name of appearing strong.

It was my biggest mistake.

Because the truth is, no one gets anywhere alone. The shortcut to success is other people. Help is the shortcut. But we’re never taught how to ask for help.

But – and this is important – there is an art to asking for help.

If your inner overachiever is getting curious, “Fine, but how do I actually do this?”
I’ve got you.
The rest, including my two rules and three practical methods, lives on my website.
I’d love for you to read it there - Asking for Help: A Love Story Between You & Your Nervous System

When your brain cannot take it anymore, it doesn’t always announce itself with fireworks. More often than not, it sneaks in wearing normal clothes, blending into your day.

Your business is your dream. And reaching dreams is not as dreamy as it sounds in our heads.

I learned this the hard way.

The Day I Arrived in America and When My Brain Clocked Out

When I came to study in the United States many moons ago, I arrived three weeks after the semester had already started. Which, you can imagine, was a fantastic strategy for feeling instantly behind in every possible way.

My English was great (that’s what I thought), but not on an academic level. While everyone else had the better English, syllabi, color-coded binders, social circles, and that terrifying American confidence that makes 19-year-olds speak like CEOs.

And I? I had one jet-lagged brain and three weeks of missed writing assignments. I didn’t know the campus. I had no phone. No computer. No friends. I didn’t even have a pillow yet. Just the enthusiasm of someone who had stepped into her dream - to study abroad.

It kept piling. Culture shock, new city, new social norms, new academic system, new everything.
And then the new, delightful realization that my brain, which had always been reliable, sharp, “on it,” had mysteriously stopped working.

A month into the semester, I had developed the constant feeling that I was one confusing instruction away from bursting into tears. My head hurt every time I had to read in English, which was all the time.

To study abroad had been my dream for years. I was living my dream. How could this be my reality?

We often don’t register it as an overload, but as self-criticism: What is wrong with me?

This was cognitive load in its pure, uncut form.

Suddenly, everything required conscious processing.

How to buy groceries.

Why strangers said “How are you?” and then kept walking.

Oh, and why on earth would someone use Fahrenheits when there’s a way more logical metric system available?!

I was simply overloaded, my cognitive bandwidth was cooked, and I wish someone had given me a pamphlet explaining this. Because my knee-jerk reaction was to blame myself: I’m not cut out for this; I’m not as strong as I thought; I should leave.

My brain tried. It really did. And at some point, it just gave up. And I almost did as well. In my head, I made peace with the fact that I was never coming back after the first semester.

Every tiny activity produced a micro-shock to the nervous system. And because I didn’t know to look for the early signs of overload, I didn’t notice how quickly they stacked.
When we ignore it long enough, we crumble. Until something small becomes the thing that breaks us.

To your brain, a way out will look safer than a way forward.

It Happens in Business, Too

Two decades later, as a real estate trainer, I see the same look on new brokers’ faces all the time, the one I recognize from my own student days.
Still a few months ago, a broker five months into the business came into my office, contract in hand, and asked:

“My clients are submitting a counteroffer. Do they need to only initial here, or sign as well?”

Now, the answer is literally printed in the contract. Plain as day. In capital letters.
So instead of telling her, I showed her where to read it. This is what it says:

IF THE CLIENT COUNTERS, THE CLIENT DOES NOT SIGN THE CONTRACT. ONLY INITIALS HERE.

She read it out loud, slowly and carefully. Then she blinked three times, and looked at me, “So what do I do then? Sign or initial?”

That’s cognitive overload.

That’s a brain that has reached its bandwidth and is starting to drop files under the table behind your back. Even the most basic tasks can become a challenge under that sort of pressure.

This did not happen because she was lazy.
Not because she didn’t care.
Not because she “wasn’t cut out for real estate.”

She had to deal with a new career, new contracts, new pressure, new identity, and new everything.

Her brain simply couldn’t hold one more piece of information, even if it was printed right in front of her. When you’re overloaded, things don’t stick. You become forgetful, foggy, slow, and insecure. Like a computer with too many tabs open, you start glitching.

I watched her lips move. Then stop. Then move again.

And then she whispered, half-horrified, half relieved,
“Oh my god… It says it right here. I’ve read this paragraph ten times before, and it never made sense.”

And then there are the overloads we don’t expect — the ones life surprises us with.

Cognitive load is, of course, about newness.
But it’s also about change, uncertainty, and the emotional labor of navigating whatever life just threw at you.

An unexpected argument.
A death.
A newborn.
A blended family.
A job you loved ending.

A job you love starting.
A job you didn’t want beginning.
A bad economy.
A chaotic news cycle.
A world that feels increasingly unstable.

A double-booked schedule

A sick kid, sick partner, sick self.

A traffic accident on your tight calendar and commute

Sometimes it’s the slow drip of everyday stress that eventually becomes a flood.

I once knew a successful businesswoman. She was sharp, accomplished, widely respected. Suddenly started missing appointments. Forgetting deadlines. Misplacing her keys. Misplacing her phone. Misplacing her sense of who she’d always been.

People whispered, “She’s slipping.”

What they didn’t see was that she was drowning in the details of a life transition she hadn’t told anyone about. Her husband’s elderly parents had moved in with her and their three teenagers. Her performance didn’t collapse because she failed. It collapsed because her brain had no more internal shelf space left.

When cognitive overload takes full hold, it can slow you down, and it can also incapacitate you. And sometimes, overload is just a regular Tuesday.

Begin to notice it early so you can help yourself early.

Tell yourself a different story.

The truer story.

That it’s part of growth. It’s part of the brain building new neural pathways and re-aligning your identity. That it’s something to celebrate, not dread.

Then give yourself a break.

When you begin building something new, the initial steps are straightforward.

“It’s simple,” Shannon told me. “I have the name, the LLC, I’ll build a simple website that takes payments, post on social media, and clients will come.”

There was so much conviction in Shannon’s tone. Yes, this sounded like a 1-day job, and the money would pour in.

But there’s a curious shift that happens when you decide to turn your life towards something better. It could be a new business, a new career, a lifestyle change, or a new relationship. Perhaps all of them at once, because why not?!

And nobody warns you about the moment. It doesn’t come at the beginning when everything is exciting and fresh. The start part is easy with so much momentum.

It comes later. When initial momentum and excitement have worn off.

As you’re rolling up your sleeves, so does the reality. You’re building your website, and you cannot get it to look the way you imagined. The payment link breaks for no clear reason. The product photos look like they were taken through a sock. Your marketing efforts are greeted by serenading crickets.

And you realize, this isn’t a sprint. Not even a marathon. It’s a pilgrimage across foreign terrains, smooth landscapes, unstable nations, and gated communities with secret handshakes to get in.

That’s what happened to Shannon.

When clients, money, expectations, reputation, and responsibility are involved, your decisions start to have consequences.

That’s when the moment hits, and you’ll find yourself thinking:

“Maybe that’s not for me?” which is but another version of “I might not be cut out for this …” or “Everyone else seems to have figured this out except me.”

That question is the entry point into an odd space between who you just used to be and who you said you wanted to become. Even though you left the ‘old place,’ you feel as if you are still stuck to it by a leash. The ‘new you’ hasn’t arrived to anchor you.

This is where your identity begins to blur under pressure.

At first, it’s small.

You reread emails three times before sending them. The brain starts the thought loops. Decisions you once made in seconds feel heavy. Your focus scatters. And “getting a thick skin,” as they tell you to? The opposite. Your emotional skin gets thinner.

From the outside, nothing looks wrong, and that’s what makes it confusing.

Because if nothing is wrong…, why do you feel like you’re slowly disappearing inside your own life?

Every entrepreneur I know hits that phase. A friend of mine calls it “the first year funk,” that psychological identity fog almost everyone goes through while building something real.

What’s actually happening

When you start building something meaningful, you’re not just adding tasks and a few new responsibilities to your week.

You’re increasing cognitive load - the amount of mental, emotional, and energetic bandwidth required to learn, decide, stretch, and hold a new vision. And there will come a moment (I promise you) when that load becomes bigger than what your current brain can comfortably hold.

To make space for new skills, your brain needs to throw some stuff overboard. It’s a bit like your closet: once it’s full, you can’t just keep adding more clothes without tossing out a few old items.

Well, technically, you can. Just look at my closet. It’s packed to the brim, and let me tell you, it’s painful to find anything in there. It’s like a hostage situation in there. I can’t find the right stuff, stuff’s wrinkled, and a mere thought of having to go in there stresses me out.

That’s how a brain feels when overstuffed, like it’s being held hostage to stuff.

Of course, you can expand your “closet” over time, but in the beginning, you’re throwing in ten new outfits at once, and your brain starts pushing random old things out, simply because it’s under pressure to keep up.

Cognitive load, in short, is the total bandwidth it takes to learn new skills, make decisions, self-regulate, take risks, manage uncertainty, and hold your vision. All at the same time.

And when starting something new, you double or triple that load overnight.

How Do You Know You’re Carrying Too Much?

It doesn’t look terribly dramatic. If it did, you’d intervene immediately. It’s more like a slow burn that never fully burns out. But there are tiny signals that something inside you is overstretched.

· Micro-hesitations everywhere.

· Decision fatigue.

· Reactivity where you used to have patience.

· Memory glitches, shortened attention span, and emotional exhaustion.

· A creeping tendency to micromanage because your brain is too overloaded for strategy.

From an energetic perspective:

· Questioning your own worth.

· Losing confidence in yourself.

· Self-criticism turns up its volume

· You’re intimidated to ask for help

· Sense of loneliness that surprises you

· Wondering, “Does my existence even have a purpose?”

If you answered “yes” to 3 or more, your brain is overloaded.

I want you to really absorb this part:

There’s nothing wrong with you. Your brain is just trying to make space for all of it. That stage is a sign that you’re growing, and fast. Your “closet” is stuffed, and the brain is hauling in the heavy building equipment. It’s building, reorganizing, and helping you out.

And you?

You are right where you need to be, so don’t quit. The only thing required of you is to support your brain and yourself.

Welcome! I’m glad you’re here.

Years ago, in my second year in real estate, I found myself in a transaction so intense it nearly ended my career. Lawyers were involved, police were called to the plumbing inspection, and everyone, including me, was completely emotionally unhinged.

That was the moment I realized something important:

Success isn’t decided by skill alone.
It’s decided by your ability to stay emotionally steady and energetically intact when so much around you gets crazy and goes sideways.

Most people don’t fail because they lack talent or discipline. They fail because the pressure of building something scrambles their emotional and energetic systems. And no one teaches them what to do when that happens.

I will.

If you are building a career, business, or life of your own, you already know the pressure to perform, deliver, and measure up isn’t present just once in a while. It becomes the environment.

Yet there is far more public, accessible information about how to make money than there is about how the human nervous system actually works under pressure. Financial advice is a massive industry. Understanding ourselves is not.

So we end up with strategies for money, but very few strategies for our internal system that is trying to execute them. But our beliefs, emotional patterns, and unprocessed experiences are deeply linked to how we relate to money, pressure, and success.

It’s sort of an oxymoron, if you think about it. Trying to build something substantial without the internal tools to carry the weight. Like lifting boulders with tweezers, and wondering why your hands are shaking.

While most info out there focuses on strategy, productivity, performance, and sales, very few address what it actually feels like to live inside all of it: reactivity, doubt, exhaustion, and internal noise. It’s easy to lose your identity in the chaos.

That’s what this publication is for.

Every week, I’ll break down what happens inside you when you’re building under pressure. I’ll give tips on how to stay clear, grounded, and intact while you do it.

Think of this as an emotional and energetic compass for real life; your Field Guide.

Here you’ll find:

• Psychology and emotional regulation in practical form

• Grounded spirituality (applied, not abstract)

• Tools for staying regulated and aligned when expectations and uncertainty build

• Straight talk on human behavior under stress

• Real stories from high-pressure environments

This is for people who don’t mind the grind, as long as they don’t lose their sanity or sense of self in the process.

Coming up next

The basics, like what “stability under pressure” actually means, how to recognize when you’re drifting out of alignment, and the three early signs that your system is overloaded.

And then into emotional and energetic stabilization, and why it matters more in business than most people realize.

If this resonates and you know someone who could use support, feel free to share this publication with them. I’d genuinely appreciate it.

The more grounded humans we have around us, the better everything works.

I’m glad you’re here.

This year, I picked up a habit I had dropped in 2023. A habit I had kept for over a decade.
Yes, I am talking about gratitude journaling.

The first time I heard about gratitude journaling was back in September 2013. Up until then, I was your standard “appropriate thank you” person, the kind who can muster a polite “thanks so much!” when needed, but who also grumbles endlessly about the bizarre American ritual of sending thank you notes after kiddie birthday parties.

I mean, honestly. You feed, entertain, and host people, and then you’re supposed to thank them for showing up? As an Estonian-turned-American-in-training, I was deeply suspicious.

But writing a thank-you note to yourself every morning …
Now that was peak absurdity.

Yet that’s essentially what gratitude journaling is: every morning you write down three things you’re grateful for. It doesn’t need to be a fancy leather notebook from Barnes & Noble. It can be the torn corner of yesterday’s grocery list, a paper plate, or the foggy bathroom mirror. Just write:

“I am grateful for…”

Sounds simple, right? A breezy 30-second exercise.

Ha.
No.

Because the brain, bless its lazy little heart, wants to coast. So it immediately trots out the Big Three:

• I’m grateful for my family.

• I’m grateful for my friends.

• I’m grateful for my health.

Lovely sentiments. Very wholesome. Very Hallmark. And then the brain wants to stop there.
By Day 3, the Big 3 are very useless, because here’s the rule of the game: YOU CANNOT REPEAT YOURSELF.

If you can’t repeat yourself, your brain is forced to actually think. At first, it will fight you like a toddler forced to wear pants. Suddenly, your 30-second gratitude practice turns into a 30-minute existential crisis. And who has that kind of time at 6:45 am? Literally no one.

So something magical happens.

Your brain starts planning ahead. It begins scanning your day for something, anything, to be grateful for tomorrow morning. Before you know it, you’re living your days as a scavenger hunt for tiny joys: the way the sun hits the coffee mug, the sound your dog makes when he sighs, the fact that the stoplight turned green just when you needed it.

You are rewiring your brain to look for what’s good in this world.

I didn’t love this idea at first. Back in 2013, I was very comfortable being a sarcastic, self-important Euro-intellectual. Why be positive when you can complain with style? But then… I read the research.

Why Gratitude Works (and No, It’s Not Woo)

Turns out, gratitude isn’t just “nice.” It isn’t spiritual fluff or self-help frosting. It has receipts.

1. Gratitude rewires your brain for positivity.
Studies from UC Davis and UC Berkeley show that people who practice gratitude strengthen neural pathways associated with optimism and well-being.

2. Gratitude improves physical health.
Research shows grateful people sleep better, have fewer headaches, less inflammation, and even faster recovery.

3. Gratitude strengthens social bonds.
Expressing gratitude increases connection, trust, and relationship satisfaction.

4. Gratitude reduces anxiety and depression.
Gratitude practices reduce activity in the amygdala — the brain’s fear center.

In short: gratitude isn’t magic. It’s maintenance. Brain maintenance. Soul maintenance. And honestly, body maintenance too.

I was convinced. I started my gratitude journal in November 2013. By 2016, one of my favorite morning activities was flipping through old journals to see what mattered to me “this week last year.” It brought me joy in a way that felt both tender and grounding.

But eventually, it became mechanical, and I quit.

Why?
I felt good. And when humans feel good, we tend to say, “Wow, everything is working! I should stop whatever caused it.”

Genius.

For about six months, I was fine. Which led me to believe that gratitude journaling had been more of a habit than a help.

But then it happened.

The darker thoughts crept in. The morning anxiety slithered back. My mind felt heavier. I started waking up negative. Not just a little whiny, but full-on critical. And by late 2024, I needed gratitudes like my soul needed hydration.

I started again. Not because research told me to, but because my entire being was begging for it.

Now, I write down a long list of people, events, places, and things that I am grateful for every morning. I write from a place of deep, genuine need. Gratitude is the daily nutrition my mind and soul ask for.

How to Keep Gratitude Interesting (So You Don’t Quit As I Did)

1. The Alphabet Game
Each week, your gratitudes must start with a letter of the alphabet.
Week 1: A.
Week 2: B.
Wait till you hit Q. That’s when you discover what your brain is really made of.

2. The Category Game
Pick a theme each week:

• Foods

• Red things

• Nature

• Things I see during my commute

• My spouse

• My favorite people who are alive

• My favorite people who are dead (surprisingly delightful)

3. The Self Game
Every day, the last gratitude must be something about you.
Not what you have.
Not what you see.
Something you are.
This one is truly transformative.

Give it a shot. Give your brain a chance. Give your soul the love it’s been waiting for.

P.S.

Some of my favorite gratitudes over the years:

• The way real fur feels on the skin

• My left fingernail that opens the vitamin bottle

• The way a leaf falls from a tree with no wind because it just knows it’s time

• That yesterday is over

• The moment you submerge into a warm bath when you’re absolutely freezing

• The smell of lemon-thyme tea

• A kind stranger at the grocery store

• The way my dog looks at me like I’m a Marvel superhero

• The sting of cold air on my cheeks

• The sound of snow falling

• That I didn’t fart in yoga class after eating beans

• My AirPods 2 and their noise-canceling superpowers

• Finding peace in my heart whenever I go looking for it

What are yours? Leave it in the comments for me 😊

This piece is also part of my longer writing archive on my website, where I explore human behavior, psychology, spirituality, and everyday life in more depth.

Full collection here.