I’m asking women who don’t entirely trust themselves to trust themselves enough to choose themselves. And for some of them, making that decision consciously might be the first time they’ve done it in a very long time.

When I made my first promise, I had absolutely no idea I was standing on the first day of the rest of my life. I thought I was promising to move my body every day. That was it. I didn’t know that one tiny decision would eventually lead to 172,000 women following me. I didn’t know I’d be doing a podcast. I didn’t know I’d apply for a grant from Drop Dead Generous and become part of the largest kindness experiment. I didn’t know I’d eventually trust myself enough to turn opportunities down because I believed more would come along.

I certainly didn’t know I was beginning to build more self-trust than I’ve ever had in my entire life.

That’s the strange thing about beginnings. You don’t know they’re beginnings while you’re standing in them.

I think some of the women starting tomorrow are secretly hoping they’ll be fixed. Maybe they’ll get back to who they were before everything became so fucking difficult. Maybe 66 days will make them motivated again, calmer again, more disciplined, more like the version of themselves they think they’ve lost. I understand that. I spent years searching for the thing that would make me feel like me again. But I don’t think that’s where this goes.

In fact, I think some of them are going to be underwhelmed. Because we’re so used to transformation being sold to us as something dramatic. New body. New routine. New life. Before and after. The Promise Method can look almost laughably small beside that.

One intentional moment. One tiny promise. Come back tomorrow.

That’s it.

But the women who stay with something that small long enough are the ones I’ve watched change in ways I couldn’t have predicted.

When I first started sharing The Promise Method, I genuinely wondered whether it was a fluke. Maybe I’d accidentally found something that worked for me and dressed it up as something other women could use too. Then the feedback started coming back.

One woman called it “the quickest way out of a dark place.”

Another described it simply as “magic.”

Another told me it had “changed my life.”

And one of the things I hear again and again isn’t about becoming more productive or disciplined. It’s about becoming kinder to themselves. Giving themselves grace. Their minds feeling clearer even when life is still hard. Choosing themselves in moments when previously they would have disappeared into what everybody else needed.

They taught me something about my own Method that I couldn’t have known when I created it. Self-trust doesn’t look the same on every woman.

There is no perfect promise. There is no doing this right or doing this wrong. For one woman, choosing herself might mean moving. For another, it might mean resting. It might mean saying no. Asking for help. Going outside. Sitting still long enough to hear what she actually thinks.

Self-trust isn’t following my instructions perfectly. It’s listening to yourself, trusting what you hear and taking the next sensible step.

That’s why motivation isn’t the starting point. Motivation comes afterwards. The starting point is the smallest brave thing. And in a world that has spent a lifetime teaching women that good girls don’t take up too much space, good girls don’t make things difficult and good girls look after everybody else first, putting yourself into the equation at all can be an act of defiance.

Choosing yourself can be the smallest brave thing you do.

Something else happened to me that I didn’t expect. When survival ended and my life became quieter, I thought I should fill the space. Do more. Build something. Be useful. Be busy. I know now that when I suddenly feel desperate to be busy, there’s usually a feeling somewhere underneath it that I don’t particularly want to feel. Sitting with those feelings instead of immediately overriding them has opened up my entire universe.

That doesn’t mean I’ve become some permanently calm, enlightened woman who sits serenely with every emotion. Fucking hell, no. Sometimes I’d still much rather find a job to do, a problem to solve, an opportunity to chase or something to burn down.

The difference is that I notice, and noticing gives me a choice.

Maybe that’s what 968 days of keeping a promise has actually given me. Not certainty. Not endless motivation. Not a life without anxiety or doubt.

Choice.

So, I’m sitting here thinking, Oh right. Twenty-five women are going to be hanging on my every word from tomorrow.

This is the biggest Promise Method cohort I’ve ever had. I’m immensely proud and immensely terrified at exactly the same time, and I don’t need to get rid of the terrified bit before I do it. I know I can handle whatever comes.

That’s what I want for the women starting tomorrow.

Because on Day 66, she might still have the same body. The same job. The same relationship. The same messy house. The same people needing things from her. Life might not have rearranged itself conveniently around the fact that she’s spent 66 days choosing herself.

I don’t need any of that to change for me to believe it’s worked. I want her to know that none of it reflects her worth.

How much she gets done doesn’t dictate her worth. How useful she is to everybody else doesn’t dictate her worth. Whether she kept her promise perfectly doesn’t dictate her worth. I want her to know she’s worthy of her own love and attention without having to earn either.

Tomorrow, they think they’re starting 66 days.

They think they’re choosing a promise.

They’re actually practicing what it feels like to believe themselves.

I had no idea where that could lead when I started.

Neither do they.

The next round of The Promise Method™ starts 1 September.

66 days.
One small promise to yourself.
One WhatsApp message from me every morning.

£66. One-off.

Start the method

Today I sat down and thought, I’m tired. Not tired because I’m trying to think of things to say. That bit is easy. I pick up my phone and say what I think. I think the tiring bit is the exposure. It’s the constant opening of myself…

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If I’m honest, I still don’t know what the future of The Promise Method looks like. Five years ago that uncertainty would have terrified me. Today it doesn’t. Not because I suddenly know the answers, but because I trust myself to meet whatever comes next. I think that’s probably the biggest difference after 938 days of keeping a promise. I don’t trust life any more than I did. I trust myself more.

I’ve stopped apologising for getting things wrong. I’ve stopped believing everything has to be perfect before I share it. I’ve stopped trying to make everyone understand me. What still scares me isn’t failure. It’s not reaching my potential. It’s playing small because the little girl inside me still whispers, “Stay safe,” while the 80yr me keeps saying, “Come on. Give it everything. Time isn’t guaranteed.”

Do I still go to override myself? Every day. The difference is that I notice and stop it in it's tracks. Some people might think that means The Promise Method doesn’t work. I think it proves it does. The promise was never about becoming someone who never wobbles. It was about noticing the wobble before it became self-abandonment. It was about building an anchor instead of pretending life’s storms don’t exist.

Life still throws curveballs. I still have moments where I want to make a decision immediately, burn something down, change direction, fix everything before the feeling gets any bigger. I just don’t make decisions from there anymore. Urgency used to sound like truth. Now it sounds like my nervous system looking for certainty. Those are not the same thing.

One of the hardest parts of healing hasn’t been saying yes to myself. It’s been saying no to other people. Recently someone invited me onto a podcast. They told me how much they admired my work and then asked me to fill in an application form. Five years ago I’d have done it without thinking. This time I didn’t. Not because I think I’m better than anyone else, but because I finally respect my experience enough to know that if you genuinely want to speak to me, I shouldn’t have to audition for it.

I think 39yr old Hayley would be amazed by my life now. Not because of the followers, the views or the work. She’d be amazed that I can sit with uncertainty without believing it means something has gone wrong. She’d be amazed that my body feels more like home than it did back then.

People often assume I’ve got it all figured out. I haven’t. I’m just another capable midlife woman who’s become a little better at catching herself before she disappears into survival again. That’s all.

If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, I’d be disappointed, but I wouldn’t disappear with it. I walked away from TikTok with 7k followers because something in me knew I could build again. That part of me is still here. The self-trust would remain.

When I started this journey, I thought healing would mean never feeling anxious again. Never doubting myself. Never wobbling. Now I think healing looks completely different. It looks like wobbling without panicking. Changing your mind without making yourself wrong. Starting again without calling yourself a failure. Trusting yourself to act with integrity even when you don’t know what’s coming next.

Day 938 doesn’t feel like arriving.

It feels like finally believing that I don’t need to know where I’m going to trust myself to take the next step.

There’s something else I’ve been thinking about recently. For a long time, I think I hid behind The Promise Method. It felt safer to say, “Here’s the method,” than, “Here’s me.” I was convinced it might be a fluke. That maybe I’d stumbled across something that had worked for me but wouldn’t work for anyone else. Then one woman told me it helped. Then another. Now hundreds of women have trusted me enough to try it and told me what changed. Somewhere along the way, I stopped wondering whether the method worked and started wondering whether I was still hiding behind it.

Maybe The Promise Method was never the destination. Maybe it was the bridge that helped me believe my own voice was enough.

I don’t know the answer yet. But for the first time in my life, I’m happy not to rush it.

So I made a promise. Not because it was a method, not because I thought it would become anything, just because I needed something simple I could hold on to. Move my body every day. That was it.

At the start, it felt like I’d figured something out. Like I’d found my way through it. The trampoline, the movement, the feeling of being held. I used to rock on a rocking horse as a child. It felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain at the time, like something in me already knew how to settle there. And I remember thinking, this is it, I’ve cracked it. I’ve somehow found my own way back.

The promise became something I could rely on. When everything else felt uncertain, when my body scared me, when I felt like I was losing control, I had something to come back to. I’ve kept the promise. That was the anchor. Even on bad days, especially on bad days, I could tell myself, you’ve done this before, you’ll get through this one too.

At one point, it became something else as well. 20,000 steps. Keep going. Don’t stop. Prove you’ve got this. That was still control, just dressed up differently. I thought I was healing because I was moving, because I was stronger, because people were telling me I was inspiring. But underneath it there was still fear. If I stop, what happens then?

But over time, it softened. The promise didn’t need to be big. It didn’t need to be impressive. If it was a hard day, it could be swaying in the kitchen, sitting and rocking, just enough to stay with myself. If it was a good day, I could do more, move more, feel stronger. But the rule changed. Don’t override.

Because that was the thing I’d been doing my whole life.

The promise stopped being about fixing anything. It became something quieter. A reminder that no matter what my body did, no matter how it felt, I had already survived every bad day before this one. I didn’t need to panic every time my body felt unfamiliar. I didn’t need to abandon myself the second fear appeared.

Nobody was coming to save me. And that sounds harsh, but it wasn’t. It was steadying. Because it meant I didn’t have to keep searching outside myself for the one answer, the one expert, the one thing that would finally make me feel safe.

I already had something. Something small. Something I could keep returning to. Something that reminded me that even when I felt terrified, I was still here. And I didn’t want everything I’d been through to be for nothing.

I didn’t want those years of fear, of shrinking, of feeling trapped inside my own body, to disappear without meaning something. I think part of me needed to know that if I’d fought my way back to myself, I could leave a trail for someone else too.

So I gave it a name.

The Promise Method.

I sat on the sofa. My husband was at work. The house was quiet. There was washing to do, things I could have been getting on with, the usual list that never really ends. And I didn’t do any of it.

I made a cup of tea and watched a series. Then another one. And that was it.

I remember thinking, so this is what it feels like to sit down. It was quiet. Uncomfortably quiet.

Everything in me was used to moving, fixing, staying ahead of things. If I stopped, I thought I’d feel it all. The palpitations, the anxiety, that sense of not being safe in my own body. So I didn’t stop. That had been the pattern.

But this time I did, and nothing happened.

Not in a dramatic way. There wasn’t a release, no sudden calm, no moment of this is it, I’ve cracked it. Just… nothing.

I remember my husband asking what I’d done that day. And I said, not a lot. I just sat and watched something. And I felt guilty, like I’d done something wrong.

Because somewhere along the way, I’d learned that doing nothing meant I was being nothing.

But the house didn’t fall apart. The washing was still there. The world didn’t collapse because I’d stopped holding it together for a few hours.

And my body didn’t either.

Sometimes I could feel things more when it was quiet. A heartbeat, a flicker, something I would normally drown out by staying busy. And sometimes I couldn’t.

But either way, nothing actually happened.

I’d spent years believing that if I stopped, everything I’d been holding back would take over, that I’d lose control, that I wouldn’t be able to handle it, and that day showed me something I didn’t expect.

Nothing broke when I stopped.

I didn’t suddenly become someone else. I didn’t fall apart. I didn’t lose everything I’d built.

I just sat there with a cup of tea and let the day happen without me trying to control it, and that was new.

She asked me, “What would it look like when you did find it?” and I didn’t even have to think. I said, “I’d stop searching. I wouldn’t be looking anymore. I’d finally feel like I’d got there.” That was the whole point, wasn’t it? To arrive somewhere. To finally feel like I could stop.

And then she said, very calmly, “What if you’re already enough?”

I remember thinking, you’re fucking kidding me. I actually said something along the lines of, “Well, I wouldn’t have paid for therapy if I could just tell myself I’m already enough.” It felt almost insulting in its simplicity. I’ve got a “you are enough” sticker on my kitchen wall. I see it every day. And every day I look at it and think, yeah, whatever. Don’t believe it.

Because if I was already enough, then who the hell had I been all this time? What was all of it for? All the pushing, the striving, the searching, the constant white-knuckling through life trying to become someone. If that was true, then I’d spent my entire life chasing something that had been there all along, and I couldn’t make that make sense. It felt like it would undo everything. Like it would make all of it pointless.

So I rejected it. Completely.

I still felt like I needed more. Something to prove it. A certificate, a qualification, something that gave me the right to speak about what I’d been through so people would trust it. I wanted something, a badge,’ I could hold up and say, this is why you should listen to me. This is why I’m enough. Because underneath it all, I was still looking for certainty. Something solid. Something I could point to.

But the question didn’t go away.

It followed me out of the room. It sat with me in the quietness. It came back at the next session, and the one after that. And each time, I found myself coming back to it, almost against my will. Turning it over. Testing it. Trying to disprove it.

And slowly, not in a big, dramatic, life-changing moment, but quietly, almost reluctantly, I got a little bit closer to admitting it might be true.

“I think I am enough.”

Even saying it felt strange.

And I remember feeling almost crushed by how simple it was. That something as small as being told, properly told, at the right time, “you are enough, always, we will love you anyway, even if you don’t try,” might have changed everything.

And then my therapist said something simple. That what we find is anxiety is more of a signal than the root. I don’t remember what she said after that, because my mind had already gone.

I remember thinking, fucking hell. I’ve been focusing on the anxiety. Trying to deal with the feeling. And you’re telling me something underneath has been fuelling this the whole time?

I didn’t have language for it then. I didn’t know anything about trauma in the way people talk about it now. As far as I was concerned, my childhood was fine. Nothing dramatic. Nothing obvious. Nothing to point to and say, that’s the reason.

But something had been building, and now the lid was off.

I remember thinking I wish I hadn’t done this. Like I’d opened something I didn’t know how to close. Because these feelings weren’t like the ones I’d been managing. They were slower. Heavier. Less clear. And I didn’t know what to do with them.

Everything I’d ever done had been about pushing through. Fixing it. Solving it. Getting back on track. And suddenly that didn’t work anymore. I didn’t want to push through, but I didn’t know how not to.

So I sat. On a swing chair in the garden, letting it hold me. Then a rocking chair. Because I could feel it coming, the spiral, and I knew I couldn’t override it this time. I had to sit in it. Feel it. Ride it.

And that felt ridiculous. Like I’d gone from being someone who held everything together to someone who needed to sit in a chair and rock just to stay in their body.

Around that time, I’d been looking for something else as well. Courses. Certifications. Something to give me credibility. Something that said, here’s who you are now. Here’s the version of you people can trust.

But sitting in those spaces, listening to people talk about confidence and becoming someone else, I realised something I couldn’t unsee. They weren’t different from me. They were just performing it differently. Trying to become the version of themselves they thought would finally feel enough.

And I’d been doing the same thing, just dressed up as capability.

I remember feeling embarrassed. I had a psychology degree. I’d spent years trying to understand this, and I still hadn’t seen it. Because I’d been doing what I always did. Trying to figure it out on my own. Trying to get ahead of it. Trying to solve it.

When the thing underneath it had been there the whole time.

I thought anxiety was the alarm. Something to switch off.

It took me years to realise it wasn’t the alarm at all. It was the fire.

Cupboards stacked with food we might need. Backups of everything. Clothes for my kids bought years ahead. Plans in place. No gaps. I didn’t leave things to chance. I didn’t need to. Because I was capable.

I never asked for help. Not once. I said no before anyone had the chance to step in, because needing help meant something had already gone wrong, and that wasn’t allowed.

People said I was organised, thoughtful, that I could see what people needed before they knew it themselves, that I could be blunt but somehow carry it with empathy. I wore that like something earned. I didn’t see it for what it was.

I thought anxious people were different. Shy, quiet, struggling to speak. Not me. I planned. I anticipated. I stayed ahead. I wasn’t anxious. I was in control.

But I wasn’t. I was holding everything so tightly I didn’t even notice the grip anymore. White-knuckling my way through a life that looked fine on paper, falling apart privately and pulling it back together before anyone saw.

I learned that early. Too sensitive. Stop crying. That’s not going to fix anything. So I stopped. Or at least, I stopped where anyone could see.

Even at my worst, I didn’t break the pattern. After my first child, there were moments I wanted to jump out of a window, and I didn’t tell anyone, because I was scared they’d take him away from me. So I carried it, like everything else.

By the time the palpitations started, I still didn’t think I was anxious. I thought something had gone wrong with my body.

It wasn’t until later, when I was moving every day, getting stronger, feeling like I’d found something that worked, that it started to show itself. Because I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to, but more than that, I was afraid to.

I remember thinking, this is strength. This is me beating it. But underneath that was something else. If I stop, what happens then?

That’s when it cracked. Not in a dramatic way, just a quiet realisation I couldn’t ignore.

What I’d been calling capability all my life was the same thing I was now calling anxiety.

I just hadn’t felt it yet.

Again, I was told nothing was wrong. And something in me just went, I can’t keep living like this.

My world had got so small. I’d stopped moving. Stopped listening to music. Stopped doing anything that made me feel like me. So I made a promise. Nothing big. Nothing complicated. Just move my body every day. That was it.

It started in the kitchen. Music on. Dancing. And almost immediately I thought, why did I stop doing this? I think it was because life got too much. Children, noise, overwhelm. Music stopped feeling regulating and started feeling like more input, so I shut it down. This was me trying to get back.

Then it became the trampoline. At first it felt like relief, like something was shifting. My body felt stronger. The adrenaline didn’t hit as hard. I could breathe again. So I kept going. Every day. And then more.

Because if I kept moving, I was okay. That was the deal I made with myself. If I keep moving, I’ve beaten it.

I told myself I was helping people, and maybe I was. People were saying they were moving again, stopping addictions, getting their lives back. I told myself this was different.

But I remember asking someone, what happens when we stop moving? And she said, I don’t know. And something in me knew.

That wasn’t freedom. That was dependency.

Because stopping wasn’t neutral. Stopping meant feeling everything again. So I didn’t stop. I just got better at it. Stronger. Fitter. Louder. More visible.

But underneath it, nothing had actually changed. I still didn’t feel safe in my body. I’d just found a more acceptable way to outrun it.

I was 39. I didn’t think I was old enough to be thinking about midlife, but my body had other ideas.

I woke out of my sleep with a thud. Not a flutter. Not something I could ignore. A brick. A hit. A sudden bang in my chest that made no sense.

And then I just lay there waiting for it to happen again.

That was the start of it.

Not just the sensation. The anticipation. The watching. The constant edge of is it about to happen?

I started to wonder if it was in my head. If I was going mad.

The GP said it must have been frightening.

It was fucking terrifying!

Not just in the moment. In the not knowing. In the way it didn’t leave you once it had happened.

I had a Holter monitor and was told I had some ectopic beats, but hardly any. Not enough to be a problem. Most people have them and don’t feel them.

It was a shame I did.

That didn’t land.

Because I could feel it.

And if I could feel it, how could it be nothing?

So I bought a Kardia device.

I needed to see it for myself. Needed to catch it happening. Needed something that proved it wasn’t in my mind.

That mattered more than anything.

Not in my mind.

I remember saying, I don’t know what comes first, the adrenaline or the palpitation.

And I did know.

When your heart kicks like that, your body doesn’t wait. It just goes straight to panic. After all this heart is the thing keeping you alive.

So I got stuck there.

Watching. Checking. Waiting for it to happen again.

Most of the time, nothing showed up. ECGs clear. Monitors clear.

Which somehow made it worse.

Because if nothing was wrong… why did it feel like this?

I was told I could take beta blockers. But they would take hours to kick in. And I didn’t want the alternative of a slow, dulled heartbeat either.

I didn’t want to manage it.

I wanted it to stop.

I wanted to get out of my body. Get off the ride. Put the brakes on. But that wasn’t an option.

So I paid for a private cardiologist. £600 for 30 minutes. He told me he wished he had a heart as strong as mine.

I didn’t believe him.

I think part of me needed him to say something was wrong. Because that would have matched how it felt to live inside my body.

Instead, I was told I was fine.

And I wasn’t.

So I stopped any physical activity. Not because I couldn’t. Because I thought I needed to protect my heart.

My world got smaller.

My room became the size of my comfort. I timed my days around when my husband was home.

Just in case.

Two years like that. It’s a blur now. But I remember this. The scariest thought wasn’t that I might die.

It was that I might have to live like that forever.

There were moments I thought I would rather be dead than feel that out of control in my own body.

I was told I was fine.

But I didn’t feel safe.

Not consciously. Not as a strategy. Just… becoming someone who was easier to be. Less sensitive. More manageable. Someone who could hold it all together.

It worked. Until it didn’t.

The wake-up call came at 4 a.m. I was 39. I didn’t think I was old enough to be thinking about midlife, but my body had other ideas. I woke up with heart palpitations. No warning, no build-up. Just my body refusing.

And of course it made sense. You don’t spend decades overriding emotions, instincts, reactions without your body keeping track.

I never thought I was an anxious person. But I had tried to control everything in my life, and that’s a different kind of high-functioning anxiety.

I even took to social media thinking I was going to help other people. Looking back, it was just another form of override. Another way to stay busy, to stay in control.

I remember bouncing on a trampoline trying to hit 20,000 steps, already wondering what would happen to the anxiety when I stopped. Whether I could stop.

That’s the part no one talks about. When the thing that looks healthy is still being driven by the same pattern.

Everything shifted when a therapist said something simple. There’s a difference between doing something for pleasure and doing it for control.

I didn’t like that.

I’d spent years collecting answers. A first-class psychology degree. More understanding, more language. And still I couldn’t recognise that my personality had been shaped by survival. Still couldn’t see that what I called drive was often just fear.

I still felt broken. Still tried to think my way back to safety.

I couldn’t.

So I made a stupid promise.

Nothing big. Nothing impressive. Just something small I wouldn’t override. Once a day.

I’ve kept that promise for over 800 days now.

And something changed. Not all at once, not in a way I could explain. But slowly, my body stopped feeling like somewhere I didn’t want to be.

I’m not broken. I was just done living a life that required me to override myself to stay in it.

This has been a six-year journey so far, and I’m still finding things out. But I know this much: I’m not getting to the end of my life wishing I’d been more courageous about living it as myself.

Now I speak unscripted to midlife women who recognise themselves in this. The capable ones who still think something’s wrong with them. Who can’t think their way back. Who don’t trust themselves anymore.

There’s a way back. Not through fixing. Through keeping one small promise you don’t abandon.

I built a method for this. I’ll talk about it when it matters.