I used to think manifestation was bullshit.

I didn’t have anything against it, but I just couldn’t get behind the idea that thinking about something hard enough would somehow make it appear in my life.

It felt a bit too woo-woo for me.

But recently, I’ve started looking at it very differently.

Manifestation isn’t just about visualising what you want and waiting for the universe to sort it out for you. It involves your beliefs, your mindset, your emotions and the actions you take because of them.

And I realised I’d been putting way too much emphasis on the action part.

I was obsessed with action.

What do I need to do today? How can I make more money? Who should I reach out to? What should I work on? How much can I get done?

If I wasn’t doing something, I felt like I was falling behind.

And you know the crazy part? I wasn’t even taking the right actions.

I was doing things because they felt productive. I was constantly trying to move forward without really knowing where the hell I wanted to end up.

So I’d constantly feel stuck and frustrated. I felt BLOCKED.

And the reason became painfully obvious when I sat down and tried to visualise my life 10 years from now.

My mind literally went blank.

Okay. Five years?

Still nothing.

Three years?

Nope.

And I remember thinking, what the hell is wrong with me?

Why couldn’t I picture a single thing I actually wanted in my future?

That’s when I realised I’d spent so much time in survival mode that I’d stopped allowing myself to think about my future.

My brain was constantly occupied with the next problem, the next payment, the next piece of work, the next thing I needed to fix.

I was so focused on getting through life that I’d suppressed the part of me that actually WANTS things.

That terrified me.

I’d always been ambitious, with a ton of goals, and wanting to get the most out of life.

So how had I got to a point where someone could ask me what I wanted my life to look like in five years and my brain would just go completely blank?

That’s when manifestation started making a lot more sense to me.

You need to know what you want before you can make decisions that actually take you there.

If I don’t have a picture of the life I’m trying to build, how am I supposed to know whether the things I’m doing every day are helping me get there?

And that’s where your beliefs come in too.

If you don’t believe something is possible for you, you’re probably not going to go all in on it. You’ll hesitate. You’ll talk yourself out of things. You’ll choose the safer option because, deep down, you don’t really expect the bigger thing to work.

Your emotions matter too. If you genuinely care about something, you’re much more likely to keep going when things get difficult.

All of these things feed into each other.

None of this means you can sit on your sofa, visualise a million pounds and wait for it to land in your bank account.

Obviously not.

But what’s going on in your head affects what you do in the real world. What you believe affects the risks you take. What you want affects the decisions you make. And those decisions eventually shape your life.

I’ve been so focused on being realistic that I stopped letting myself want things that felt unrealistic.

Now I’m at that point where I’m like: fuck it. I’m gonna be delulu. Why not?

Because what’s the alternative?

Keep playing it safe? Keep only wanting things I already know I can achieve? Keep taking random actions because they make me feel productive?

I’ve done that.

It got me NOWHERE.

And ironically, the fact that I thought manifestation was too woo-woo might have been one of my own limiting beliefs all along.

I don’t need to become more realistic.

I just need to let myself want bigger things, get clear on what they are, and then actually go after them.

So yeah.

I’m gonna be more delulu.

Let’s see where it gets me.

What do you guys think about manifestation?

When was the last time you actually spoke to your neighbour?

I’m not talking about that awkward little smile between the two of you when you’re both trying to unlock the front door at the same time.

I’m talking about an actual conversation.

Do you know their name? How long they’ve lived there? What they do? Anything?

I don’t.

And I’ve lived in the same area in London for YEARS.

That’s slightly embarrassing.

I studied Philosophy and Religion in school and university, so of course “love thy neighbour as thyself” came up.

The teaching isn’t literally talking about the person who lives next door. It’s about loving your fellow human beings, and there’s a lot to unpack there, which I’ll get into another time.

But for now, I want to take it literally.

I want to talk about our actual neighbours.

Because I’ve been thinking about how strange modern city life is.

You can live in an apartment building with hundreds of other people and barely know any of them.

You might know the sound of the flat above you.

You might recognise the guy who always gets into the lift at 8:15.

You might know which neighbour keeps leaving their shoes outside their door.

You might know that someone on the third floor has a baby because you can hear it crying through the wall.

But their name?

No idea.

What they do?

No clue.

How long they’ve lived there?

Couldn’t tell ya.

And you definitely don’t know enough to knock on their door and say, “Hey, how’s life?”

That would feel slightly unhinged.

I’m sure this is very different in a small village or town where people have known each other for years. Where you can’t even pop into the local Tesco without bumping into someone you know.

But cities are different.

Cities are built around anonymity.

There are millions of people living within a few miles of each other, and you can go through your entire routine without ever really becoming part of each other’s lives.

You sit next to the same person on the train every morning and never speak.

You walk past the same people on your street and eventually recognise them, but that’s about as far as it goes.

You can live next door to someone for years and still have absolutely no idea who they are.

And we’ve somehow decided that’s normal.

To be fair, I don’t think anonymity is necessarily a bad thing.

There is something quite nice about being anonymous in a city. You can go somewhere, do your thing, and know that nobody really cares who you are. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want.

But I do think we’ve lost something along the way.

We’re surrounded by people constantly, but our lives have become weirdly self-contained.

I can work from my apartment. I can order food without speaking to anyone. I can spend an entire evening watching YouTube, scrolling TikTok and messaging someone who lives on the other side of the world.

I could probably go a surprisingly long time without having a proper conversation with anyone who lives within a five-minute walk of me.

When I really, really deep it… that’s weird.

I can know more about a random person online than I know about someone who lives ten metres away.

I’ll watch someone’s YouTube videos for an hour and start feeling like I know them. I’ll know what they do for work, what their house looks like and what they ate for lunch.

Meanwhile, I could see the same neighbour in the lift every day for two years and still not know what to call them.

We’re constantly told that we’re more connected than ever.

And I suppose we are.

I can message someone on the other side of the world in about three seconds.

But that isn’t necessarily community.

I think that’s the difference.

You can be connected to loads of people without actually sharing much of your life with them.

Apartment buildings are probably the funniest example of this.

You’ve got this bizarre little ecosystem of people stacked on top of each other.

You know someone has moved in because you can hear them dragging furniture around at midnight.

You know someone has bought a new washing machine because it sounds like a helicopter is taking off.

You see people walking through the hallway in pyjamas and suddenly become very interested in your phone because neither of you knows whether you’re supposed to say hello.

You hear arguments through the walls that you absolutely did not ask to be involved in.

You share lifts, bins, entrances, parking spaces and the collective rage when the heating stops working.

And then everyone goes back behind their own front door.

Which is probably sensible.

Nobody wants to become that neighbour who knocks on your door every Tuesday asking if you fancy coming over for tea.

Although... why not?

Maybe we’d all be a little less lonely if we did.

I don’t actually think the answer is that we need to become friends with everyone around us. That sounds exhausting.

There has to be something between becoming best friends with your neighbour and pretending the other people in your building don’t exist.

And I think we’ve lost a bit of that middle ground.

We’re very comfortable living in our own little bubbles now.

We’re told to focus on ourselves, protect our peace, build our careers, optimise our routines and create the life we want.

But if everyone is living completely inside their own bubble, you eventually end up with a city full of people who are surrounded by other people and still don’t really feel part of anything.

Which might explain why loneliness in cities feels so strange.

You’re almost never physically alone.

There are people everywhere.

On the tube. In the shops. In your building. On your street.

And yet you can still feel completely disconnected from everyone around you.

I don’t think we necessarily need more deep relationships either.

We already put so much pressure on relationships to be meaningful. Your friends need to be your people. Your partner needs to be your best friend. You need to find your community.

Sometimes I think we forget that there’s value in relationships that aren’t particularly deep.

Maybe it’s just knowing who lives around you.

Recognising someone when you see them.

Having a five-minute conversation in the lift.

Knowing who you can ask to take in a parcel if you’re not home.

Being able to borrow some milk without feeling like you’ve just committed a massive social offence.

Knowing that if something happened to you, someone nearby might actually notice.

I think we’ve become so focused on finding these big, meaningful connections that we’ve overlooked the tiny ones that make somewhere actually feel like home.

And maybe that’s what I find interesting about “love thy neighbour.”

Not the theological interpretation of it. I’ll save that for another day.

Just the literal idea that the people physically closest to you are worth knowing.

I don’t need to become best friends with my neighbours.

I probably don’t even need to know their entire life story.

But I think I should at least know their names.

I’m getting older now (sigh) and I’ve been thinking more about emergency funds.

You know, the financial advice everyone gives?

“Save six months’ worth of expenses.”

Great advice.

Also... where exactly are we all casually finding six months’ worth of expenses?

Rent is offensive.

You pop into Tesco for “a few bits” and somehow you’ve spent £38.

And don’t even get me started on TfL.

Emergency funds are a must, but I do think we skip over a pretty important question.

WHERE are those funds actually supposed to come from???

And that’s when I realised I’d accidentally been building mine in a completely different way.

I’ve been babysitting for years.

It was never meant to become a thing. I definitely wasn’t sat there at 18 thinking,

“One day this will become part of my financial strategy.”

Parents just... keep messaging me.

And recommending me to each other.

Some months I make £50.

Some months it’s a few hundred.

One month I made about £1,000 and genuinely didn’t realise until I checked my bank account.

I’d just been saying yes to jobs here and there without really thinking about it.

The funny thing is, I don’t even count it as part of my income.

In my head, it’s just bonus money.

The money that pays for a weekend away, a spontaneous shopping trip, or disappears into my savings account if I’m feeling responsible that week.

I never need it to pay my bills, and I think that’s exactly why I love it.

Which got me thinking...

I think everyone should have one of these.

I don’t know the best name for it, but I think I like backup job.

It’s basically one low-pressure way to earn a bit of extra money without turning your entire personality into “CEO of my side hustle.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love building my business, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

But your girl just needs a break from being a boss babe sometimes while still making a little something, you know?

I also think the best backup jobs are the local ones, like:

• Tutoring.

• Dog walking.

• Cat sitting.

• House sitting.

• Babysitting.

• The odd shift at your local café or pub.

Basically, the kind of jobs where people know you, trust you and recommend you to their friends.

You’re not fighting for attention online or trying to convince strangers to buy something.

You’re just becoming the person people in your area think of when they need a hand.

There’s something quite old-school about it, and I kind of love that

So much of my work happens online that I actually enjoy doing something that’s completely different.

Babysitting gets me away from my laptop, I’ve met some genuinely lovely families through it, and it makes me feel like I’m part of my local community instead of just living in it.

I think we’ve become obsessed with the idea that every extra pound has to come from building another business or cool side hustle.

Sometimes you don’t need another business. You just need a little backup.

Something that tops up your savings every now and then.

Something that pays for a holiday without touching your salary.

Something that reminds you you’ve always got another option.

I still want to grow my business.

I still want to earn more money.

None of that’s changed.

But I’ll probably keep babysitting for as long as parents keep texting me.

Not because I need another career.

Just because I like knowing I’ve always got a little backup.

To me, financial security isn’t about having everything figured out.

It’s knowing that if something goes wrong, you’re not stuck.

You have a way to earn.

You have people you can turn to.

You have options.

And honestly, I think options are one of the richest things you can have.

Do you already have a backup job, or have you thought about what yours could be?

I used to think I was lazy.

Then I discovered wellness TikTok, where apparently I’m not lazy.

I’m burnt out.

My nervous system is dysregulated.

I need to regulate, rest, and probably spend 45 minutes staring at the ceiling before attempting to answer one email.

Which is great news.

Except sometimes I’m not burnt out.

Sometimes, I just wanna avoid work and revel in being a couch potato.

There have definitely been periods where I thought I needed more discipline, when what I really needed was to slow down.

I was tired, overwhelmed, and expecting myself to keep going as if I had unlimited energy.

But I’ve also had days where I’ve slept well, had plenty of time, and genuinely had the energy to get things done.

And still didn’t.

I’d sit down to work, get distracted, check my phone, and suddenly decide that literally anything else was more important than the thing I’d been putting off.

Then I’d sigh and tell myself I was tired.

Maybe I was.

Or maybe I just didn’t want to do it.

I think that’s where things get interesting.

We’ve become very comfortable calling ourselves lazy when we don’t do what we said we were going to do.

But “lazy” isn’t really an explanation.

It’s a judgement about your character.

And I don’t think the answer is to replace it with “burnt out” every time.

We’ve gone from one extreme to another.

For years, the answer was to push harder, AKA hustle culture.

Wake up earlier. Work longer. Stop making excuses.

Now, if you’re struggling to get something done, there’s a good chance someone online will tell you that you’re burnt out, overwhelmed or dysregulated.

And those things are real.

But sometimes you just don’t feel like doing your damn work.

Good luck figuring that out when you’ve already spent two hours scrolling TikTok.

This is also why I think “burnout” gets thrown around a bit too casually.

The World Health Organisation defines occupational burnout as a result of chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed.

It’s associated with exhaustion, feeling mentally distant or cynical about your work, and feeling less effective at it.

That’s quite different from having a sh*t week.

It’s different from not wanting to work on a Monday.

And it’s definitely different from avoiding an unpleasant task because you’d rather do literally anything else.

If you’re genuinely burnt out, telling you to try harder isn’t helpful.

But if you’re avoiding something because you don’t want to do it, taking another day off isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem either.

I don’t want to become someone who treats exhaustion like a personal failure.

But I also don’t want to become someone who can find a psychological explanation for every time I don’t do something I said I would.

I think the real skill is getting better at knowing when you actually need to rest and when you just need to get on with it.

For me, I think the easiest way to figure that out is to ask myself a few uncomfortable questions.

• If I had the energy to do anything else right now, would I still avoid this?

• If this was something I actually wanted to do, would I suddenly find the energy?

• Have I genuinely rested, or have I just spent the last three hours scrolling on my phone and calling it a break?

• Is the problem that I physically can’t bring myself to do this, or that I don’t want to deal with the discomfort of starting?

And maybe the biggest question:

• Is this a bad day, or has this become a pattern?

Because one lazy afternoon here and there doesn’t make you a bum.

But if you keep avoiding the same thing over and over again, or you’re constantly exhausted no matter what you’re doing, that’s worth paying attention to.

I think the bigger problem is that we’ve become very good at explaining ourselves.

We can find a reason for almost anything we do now.

And sometimes that’s useful.

But sometimes, the explanation becomes an excuse.

I don’t think the goal is to become someone who never gets tired, never procrastinates and always has their sh*t together.

That person sounds bloody unbearable anyway.

I think it’s just about being honest enough to know when you’re struggling and when you’re simply avoiding something you don’t want to face.

Because one of those deserves compassion.

The other probably deserves a kick up the ass.

Someone asked me to give an interesting fact about myself recently and I thought “Oh sh*t, I don’t have one.”

Ngl, I had a mini existential crisis.

But that was obviously a lie.

I have many interesting things about me, but I forget them!

Or worse, I tell myself they’re not interesting when actually, they’re pretty damn cool.

So to never have that feeling again, I decided to ask myself a set of questions, so that I can build up a sort of “knowledge bank” about myself that I can always read when I forget who tf I am.

Hopefully, they’ll help you discover (or rather, uncover!) some things about yourself.

You might not be able to answer all of these, and that’s fine. Some you’ll know straight away, some you won’t have a clue, and the ones you can’t answer are actually good to know too, because now you can think about them going forward.

Highly recommend writing / typing out your answers and keeping them somewhere like a Note titled ‘All About ME’.

First, some wins:

1. What are you weirdly good at that never comes up in normal conversation?

2. What’s the best thing you’ve ever made with your own hands or your own head?

3. What do people keep coming to you for, even when you don’t feel qualified to help?

4. What’s a compliment you’ve had more than once that you brush off, but secretly know is true?

5. What could you talk about for a full hour with zero preparation?

6. When were you last properly proud of how you handled something, even if nobody else noticed?

What you actually like:

7. What’s your ideal Sunday, honestly?

8. What will you always spend money on without thinking twice, and what are you weirdly tight about?

9. What actually refills your energy, versus what just feels like it should?

10. What’s a treat to you that most people wouldn’t even register as one?

11. Would you rather be slightly too busy or slightly too bored, and what does that say about you?

12. What’s the comfort film, meal, or song you go back to no matter what?

The small, specific, slightly weird stuff:

13. What’s something you do that would make zero sense to anyone watching?

14. What’s the pettiest thing that makes you irrationally happy?

15. What’s your most controversial food take?

16. What’s a weirdly specific thing you find beautiful that other people probably walk straight past?

17. What’s the most “you” object in your home, and why?

18. What’s a ritual you’d never skip, even though you can’t fully explain it?

Your opinions, and where you’ve got a bit of an edge:

19. What do you believe that you’d be a bit nervous to say in the wrong room?

20. What’s something everyone seems to love that you don’t get?

21. What advice does everyone give that you actually think is wrong?

22. What’s a hill you’d die on, even a slightly stupid one?

23. What annoys you that most people don’t even notice?

24. What did you used to believe that you’ve completely flipped on, and what changed your mind?

The honest ones, where you fall short:

25. What do you put off until the very last possible second, every single time?

26. What’s a pattern you keep repeating even while you can see yourself doing it?

27. What’s a criticism you’ve had more than once that stung because it was a bit true?

28. What do you reach for when you’re avoiding something hard?

29. Who do you find it hardest to say no to, and what does saying yes to them cost you?

Some tender ones:

30. What are you a bit insecure about that you tend to cover with humour or confidence?

31. What’s something you need that you find really hard to ask for?

32. When do you feel most like a fraud?

33. What’s a version of your life you’re a bit scared of ending up in?

34. What still hurts more than you let on?

35. What do you wish people would notice about you without you having to say it?

36. What’s something you’ve never quite forgiven yourself for?

What actually made you you:

37. What did you want to be when you were little, and what does that still tell you about yourself?

38. What’s a phase you went through that says more about you than you’d like to admit?

39. Who shaped you more than they’ll ever know?

40. What’s the hardest thing you’ve got through that you don’t give yourself enough credit for?

41. What’s a lesson you had to learn the hard way, maybe more than once before it stuck?

42. What’s a risk you took that paid off, and one you still regret not taking?

43. What’s a belief you got from your family that you’ve kept, and one you’ve dropped?

44. What would the you from five years ago be most surprised you’ve done?

Where you’re headed:

45. What do you want more of that you never admit to, because it feels a bit much?

46. What are you super curious about right now, for no useful reason at all?

47. What’s something you keep saying you’ll try but never actually start?

48. What’s a want you’ve talked yourself out of, and why?

49. What’s changed about you in the last couple of years that you’re glad about?

50. If nobody would ever know, what would you actually go and do?

Keep your answers somewhere you’ll find them again, and add to them whenever something new comes to you.

Next time someone asks you for an interesting fact, you won’t freeze.

There are probably soo many more questions I could add lol, but I’ll get to them over time.

Are there any you’d add to the list?

A few weeks ago, I posted this on Threads:

“young people are kind of boring now. nobody goes out, nobody makes plans, everyone’s in bed by 9 calling it self care. we used to actually have a laugh.”

And the internet let me KNOW.

Hundreds of comments came flooding in, and the overwhelming majority were telling me I was living in la-la land, that I clearly don’t understand the economy, that people are worried about money and safety, that everyone’s exhausted, and so what if they want to stay inside?

I read them all.

And I want to say clearly that I understand every single one of those reasons.

Life is expensive, work takes everything out of us, and the world feels heavy right now.

But after sitting with all those comments for a few weeks, I keep coming back to the same response.

So what?

Because all of those things being true doesn’t change what’s actually happening to us.

Group chats that used to be chaos every day are now just birthday wishes and the occasional meme.

Friends we still call “close” that we’ve physically seen twice this year.

Whole friendships surviving on “we should catch up soon” and absolutely nothing else.

And nobody fell out.

Nobody did anything wrong.

The friendships just went... dormant.

So this is the bit I wish I’d had space to say on Threads.

For most of our lives, friendship happened by default.

School put us in a room with the same people every day.

Then college, then uni, then that first job where everyone was young and skint together.

We never had to organise community, because the structure of our lives did it for us.

Then adult life took all of that away, and nothing replaced it.

No more built-in daily contact.

Everyone scattered across different cities, schedules, and time zones.

And in its place we got remote work, delivery apps, and endless content, a whole world engineered to make staying home the easiest option every single night.

So the default flipped.

Connection used to just happen, and you had to go out of your way to be isolated.

These days, staying home is the path of least resistance, and seeing people is the thing you have to actually organise.

But most of us never clocked that the rules changed.

We’re still waiting for friendship to just happen the way it did at school, and while we wait, we point at the tiredness and the money.

Those things are real, but they explain why connection got harder, not why so many of us stopped trying altogether.

So I want to go through the biggest comments I received one by one.

Not to drag anyone, because I have used every single one of these excuses myself.

I just think they deserve a closer look than a comment section allows.

1. “I’m too tired.”

This was the most common comment by far, and it deserves a proper answer, because modern tiredness is real.

Most of us are working longer for less, commuting, doing life admin that never ends, and carrying a low-level money stress that never fully goes away.

By evening there’s nothing left.

I know that feeling well.

But I’ve noticed something about my own tiredness.

When I’m exhausted and I choose the sofa and my phone, I don’t actually feel rested afterwards.

I lie there for three hours consuming videos about people I’ll never meet, and I get up feeling foggier and weirdly more irritated than before.

Scrolling feels like rest because it asks nothing of us, but it doesn’t give anything back either.

Your brain is still being stimulated the entire time, just by things that don’t feed you.

An evening with a good friend does the opposite.

You laugh, you offload, you get out of your own head for a bit.

It’s one of the few things that reliably gives energy back instead of just draining less of it.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve dragged myself to see someone while moaning about it in my head the whole way there, and come home feeling lighter than I had all week.

Not once have I come home from three hours of TikTok feeling that way.

And to the people in my comments who described themselves as introverts with no social energy, I say this with love: you were debating a stranger about the economy at midnight.

That takes social energy.

It’s just going to the algorithm instead of to a friend who would be genuinely happy to hear from you.

Tiredness is real.

But rest that includes your favourite people is still rest, and half the time it does more for you than the sofa does.

2. “You don’t understand the economy.”

I wrote a whole post last week about socialising when money is tight, so I’ll build on that here rather than repeat it.

The economy is genuinely brutal for our generation.

Rent eats half a paycheque, everything costs more than it did two years ago, and a “casual” dinner out is somehow £40 before drinks.

But somewhere along the line, we absorbed the idea that socialising IS spending.

And I don’t think that’s entirely our fault.

Everything we see online frames friendship as an activity with a price tag.

Bottomless brunch.

Festival tickets.

Girls’ trips.

Aesthetic little outings that need an outfit and a crazy budget.

When that’s the version of “plans” we’re shown every day, it makes sense that a tight month feels like a reason to see nobody.

But friendship never actually requires any of it.

A walk costs nothing.

Sitting in someone’s kitchen while they cook costs nothing.

Tea at yours, a phone call while you both do chores, a hot chocolate and a proper gossip, all of it costs less than the delivery fee on a takeaway.

Our parents and grandparents understood this deeply.

People turned up at each other’s houses with biscuits and stayed for four hours, and nobody’s bank account suffered for it.

So yes, money gets a say in what your plans look like, but it doesn’t get to decide whether you have any at all.

3. “So what if I want to stay inside all the time?”

Quite a few people said some version of this, and I actually respect the honesty of it, because this one isn’t an excuse.

It’s a preference, openly stated.

And in small doses, I’m fully with you.

I love me-time.

Me, my food, my sofa, nobody asking me for anything is a wonderful evening, and I will defend it.

But there’s a difference between alone time as a break and alone time as a lifestyle, and I think a lot of us have drifted across that line without noticing.

The way I think about it is this: isolating yourself is like eating junk food.

One takeaway when you’ve had a rough week is comfort, and comfort matters.

Nobody’s diet falls apart because of one pizza.

The damage only comes when it becomes the default, when it’s what you run on every single day.

Alone time works exactly the same way.

It’s brilliant as a recovery tool, but as a way of life it starts to cost you, and the cost is well documented even though we rarely talk about it.

Chronic loneliness disturbs your sleep, keeps your stress levels raised, and puts real strain on your heart.

Long-term, it does about as much damage to your body as smoking.

We simply weren’t built to run on zero connection, no matter how much we enjoy our own company.

And the scary thing is that isolation compounds.

The more time you spend alone, the more effort people seem to require, so you turn down the next invite, which makes the one after that feel even harder.

Social ease works like a muscle, and it fades when you stop using it.

Slowly, “I just prefer my own company” starts to have a bit of “being around people makes me anxious now” hiding underneath it.

So if staying in is your break, enjoy every second of it.

But if it’s somehow become your entire life, it might be worth asking what it’s costing you, because it is costing you something, even when it feels like it isn’t.

4. “It’s called protecting my peace.”

This one is the excuse of our generation, and it’s also the one I find hardest to argue with, because it’s built on things I believe in.

Boundaries are good.

Rest is good.

Not owing everyone unlimited access to your time and energy is good, and frankly, some of our parents could have used the memo.

We watched previous generations pour themselves into people who drained them dry, and we swung the other way in response.

I understand that swing completely.

But I think we’ve overcorrected, and it’s worth being honest about how.

Somewhere along the way, the language of therapy started being used to justify avoiding people altogether.

Every minor friction became “toxic”.

Every awkward conversation became a reason to cut someone off rather than talk it through.

Every request for our time started to feel like a violation of our boundaries rather than what it usually is, which is someone wanting us in their life.

And there’s an uncomfortable truth about friendship that gets lost in all of this: it has always involved being a bit inconvenienced.

Driving 40 minutes to see someone.

Hearing the same breakup story for the fourth time and reacting with the same shock at the same plot points.

Going to the birthday dinner when your bed was right there and the weather was awful.

That inconvenience was never the broken part of friendship.

It’s how people know they matter to you, and it’s how you know you matter to them.

A friend who has never once gone out of their way for you, and who you’ve never gone out of your way for, tends to stay at the level of pleasant acquaintance forever.

The going-out-of-your-way is what turns it into something more.

So protect your peace.

But check every now and then that what you’re protecting is actually peace, and not just a smaller and smaller circle that gets lonelier every year.

The part the comment section got right

I’ll give my commenters their flowers now, because underneath all the anger, they were pointing at something true.

The system really is built against us on this one.

Work wants more hours than ever.

Everything social has been given a price tag.

Multi-billion-dollar apps are literally engineered to keep us home, binge-watching and ordering in.

Even the free places where people used to just exist together, the youth clubs and libraries and cheap cafés where you could sit for hours, have been disappearing for years.

Nobody designed modern life to produce community.

If anything, our loneliness is profitable, because lonely people scroll more and order more.

But that’s exactly why I can’t accept “I’m tired and broke” as the end of the conversation.

If the world is built to keep us isolated, community has become something we have to actively FIGHT for.

Not fight as in grand gestures.

Fight as in deciding that your people are a priority, and then behaving like it in small, regular, boring ways.

Texting first without keeping score.

Sending the voice note.

Suggesting the walk instead of waiting for someone to suggest the dinner you can’t afford.

Showing up to things when your bed is right there.

Our friendships aren’t fading because we’re bad people.

They fade because somewhere along the way, we filed them under “later”, and later never comes on its own.

We have to MAKE it come.

What do you think?

What can we do to protect our sense of community even when the odds are stacked against us?

I keep hearing people say they don’t really make plans with friends anymore because of the economy. Because the price of everything’s gone up, because they just can’t afford to.

And look, things are expensive right now.

But I don’t actually think you need money to have fun and socialise with people.

Some of the best nights I’ve had have cost me almost nothing.

The last time I saw one of my closest friends, I just went round to hers.

We went for a really long walk first, one of those walks where you’re not even going anywhere, you’re just wandering and talking and then you look up two hours later wondering where the time went.

Then we spent £6 at Tesco for ingredients, came back to hers, and made dinner together.

We put a movie on, we yapped for hours, and I came home feeling so full and so happy, and it hit me that the whole night had cost us next to nothing.

So when people tell me they can’t afford to see their friends more often, I do get it, but I also think they’ve got a very specific picture in their head of what going out actually means.

A fancy restaurant, cocktails at £14 a pop, a proper night out out where you’ve somehow spent £60 before you’ve even ordered any food.

And because that’s the only version they can picture, the second money’s a bit tight they just don’t bother, and they stay home and scroll and feel a bit rubbish about it.

But it really doesn’t have to look like that, and honestly a lot of the cheaper things are nicer anyway.

Here are some of the low-budget things me and my friends do for fun:

• Go for a long walk somewhere nice. Bring a coffee, put the world to rights, and come back feeling on top of the world for no real reason.

• Have a picnic. Grab a few bits from the shop, or just raid your fridge, and sit in a park for the whole afternoon. It costs about a fiver and it feels like a proper day out.

• Go to a museum or a gallery, because loads of the really good ones are completely free, and it’s such an easy and lovely way to spend a few hours with someone.

• Have a night in at each other’s. Cook something cheap together, put a movie or a rubbish reality show on, and just talk for hours. This is my personal favourite.

• Do a little home spa night with face masks and painting each other’s nails and whatever snacks are already in the cupboard. It sounds silly and it feels amazing.

• Go charity shop or car boot hopping, where you’ll spend a couple of quid, have a proper laugh, and probably come home with something ridiculous you absolutely did not need.

• Bake something together, because it’s cheap, it’s fun, and there’s a cake waiting for you at the end of it.

• Just have a coffee round someone’s house instead of a café, because it’s the same chat and the same catch up, minus the £5.50 flat white and the guy hovering to clear your table.

None of that needs a booking or a big bill at the end that makes your stomach drop a little.

And if you budget for it, you can have one of those more expensive nights out here and there without feeling guilty.

Being sensible with money doesn’t mean you can’t have a social life.

It just means you stop thinking you need to spend loads to have a good one.

Because the minute you decide a good time has to cost something, you end up putting your whole social life on hold, waiting for a payday that always feels a bit too far away.

But if I’m being really honest with you, I don’t even think money is the real reason we go out less these days.

I think “the economy” has become a bit of a cop-out for a lot of us, because the truth is we’ve slowly stopped valuing our friendships and our little communities the way people used to, and money is just the easiest thing to blame it on.

Buuuut I’ll get into that next week, because it’s been on my mind a lot lately.

What do you actually do for fun when you’re on a budget? Send me your best cheap and free ideas, because I’m always looking for new ones 🤍

Did you ever eat foods when you were younger that you wouldn’t even think to eat now that you’re an adult?

So much of how I ate growing up has changed, and it’s largely because, as I became an adult, I learned a lot more about how different foods affect my health.

I realised what I was taught about food growing up was never really about being healthy.

It was about love.

You see, I’m South Asian, and in my family, food is the love language we use.

Growing up, my mum, aunties, and grandmas were always cooking the most DELICIOUS foods, the table was always full, and the first thing anyone asked when you walked in was ‘have you eaten?’, not ‘how are you?’

I love that about us.

But it also meant I grew up with a few eating habits that weren’t doing me any favours, and a big part of my twenties has been unlearning them.

Here are three of the big ones.

1. Eat everything on your plate.

When I was younger, I’d be sat in a circle with my siblings and cousins, and my aunty would go around feeding us morsel by morsel, one by one.

I’d be full and not want to eat anymore, and my aunty would still make me eat a little more.

She would say, “Just a few more bites, this will help you be strong and big.”

In her mind, she was making sure I was well-fed.

When I was able to feed myself, my grandmas would be borderline insulted if I didn’t finish everything on my plate, because they put so much time, effort, and love into making that plate for me.

So I ate every bit.

But when I developed this habit of eating everything on my plate, it actually led me to overeat well into my teens and even twenties.

To fix this habit, I now portion my own food (and serve myself at my grandma’s!) so that I’m not eating more than I actually need.

I’ve also been mastering the art of storing leftovers so that I don’t have to feel like I’m wasting food whenever I don’t finish everything on my plate.

It’s still a work in progress, to be honest.

2. Don’t sleep on an empty stomach.

We’ve all heard this saying.

And it’s partially correct, because being overly hungry before bed can mess with your sleep.

But generally speaking, it’s fine.

Growing up, we used to eat dinner at around 10 pm and go to bed not long after.

And the thinking behind it was that ‘the kids shouldn’t go to bed hungry’, which came from a well-intentioned place.

As I got older, though, I realised I can’t keep doing this.

I would wake up feeling sick and stodgy and skip breakfast.

Now, I generally eat at around 6 pm.

I do get hungry before I sleep, but I learned that it’s okay to be a little hungry.

I don’t have to eat every single time I feel a bit of hunger coming on.

Sometimes, it feels like hunger, but actually, I just need to down some water.

Since I stopped eating so close to bedtime, my sleep has gotten better and I feel much lighter the next morning.

3. Flavourmaxx

Growing up, there wasn’t much information about food, and maybe a bit of deliberate ignorance too, because who cares about calories when everyone’s happy?

It was all about making the tastiest food, not the healthiest food.

So all the ladies in my family would put lots of oil, spice, and love into everything, which was obviously YUM.

And it’s great for a celebration, but not so much for everyday life.

Because the things that make food taste that good, all the oil and sugar and salt, are the same things that make it heavy and easy to overeat, so it’s a lot for your body to run on every single day.

As I got older, I learned more about and started caring about the quality of ingredients.

I used to have at least one cup of tea with 2 teaspoons of sugar in my teens.

Now, I have tea here and there and use one teaspoon of single-source honey.

In fact, I’ve not bought white sugar in 5 years even though it was a staple in our kitchen growing up.

I’ve even gotten my parents to reduce how much sugar they use which is a HUGE win.

Generally, I stopped snacking so much and started eating more whole foods and being more mindful of calories.

Food is still the love language in my family, and that's not going anywhere.

Believe you me, I INDULGE in the food we have at celebrations.

But when it comes to my everyday routine, I've learned to make my relationship with food a lot healthier.

What’s a food you used to eat all the time growing up that you wouldn’t even think to eat now? Or a food habit you’ve had to unlearn?

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think, “Oh shit, haven’t seen you in a while.”

It’s weird, I know.

Even when I spend time by myself, I’m not really spending time with myself, you know? There’s a big difference.

And when I say intimacy with myself, what I really mean is slowing down enough to actually be present with myself.

To be sensual about my own life, in the most ordinary sense of that word.

Most of us live so fast, in our heads, on our phones, rushing from one thing to the next, that we barely feel anything while it’s happening.

So I’ve been learning to slow right down in the moment, and to pay proper, physical attention to myself and to whatever I’m doing.

That, to me, is what being intimate with yourself actually is.

A part of it is solo dates, taking myself out, and I want to do a lot more of that from now on.

But the things I want to talk about today are smaller and more everyday than that.

They’re a bit weird, but every single one of them is really about the same thing: slowing down and getting closer to myself.

The first is watching videos of myself back.

Not to cringe or pick myself apart, but to actually see how I talk, the faces I pull, the way I move and laugh.

That’s how we get to know everyone else.

We watch them and we listen to them, and yet it’s just not something we ever do with ourselves.

Seeing and hearing myself the way other people do makes me feel weirdly close to myself.

Then I look into my own eyes in the mirror, not to check my skin or my eyebrows or anything I want to fix, but just to hold my own gaze for a few seconds and really look, the way you’d look at someone you love and haven’t seen in ages.

It feels a bit too intense at first, and then it just feels lovely, like I’m finally saying a proper hello to myself.

I trace the lines on my palms too.

I’ll sit and run one fingertip slowly over them, feeling how warm and soft my own hand is, following every little crease and the way they cross over each other, like I’m reading a map that’s been on me my whole life that I’ve never once stopped to look at properly.

It’s such a small thing, but it pulls me right back into my own body.

I also try to take my time when I cook now.

I feel the weight of the knife in my hand, I listen to the sound of the chopping, I breathe in the garlic and the spices as they hit the pan.

I stopped treating it like a chore to rush through, and started letting it be this slow, warm, sensory thing I actually get to enjoy.

And then there’s my everything shower, which is honestly sacred to me.

It’s the fullest version of all of this, a proper stretch of time where I do nothing but slow down and look after myself.

I start by cleaning my space, because I can never really relax in a mess.

Then I steam my face, cocooned over a bowl of hot water with a towel over my head, the heat opening everything up while I just sit there with my own thoughts.

After that, I press an exfoliating turmeric mask into every little crevice of my face and let it tighten and set on my skin while I potter about.

Then comes the long shower, which is the best bit.

The water as hot as I can take it, the room thick with steam.

I wash myself slowly and go over the little parts of me I’d normally ignore, the space between my toes, behind my ears, the backs of my arms, until my whole body feels new.

I massage my earlobes and feel this incredible sense of comfort wash over me.

I work a conditioning mask through every single slippery strand of my hair, then stand there a bit longer just letting the warmth soak in.

And by the time I step out, wrapped up and soft and clean, I feel more like myself than at any other point in the week.

The slower and more sensual I get with myself, the more I actually know who I am.

The more I notice what I like and what I don’t, how I feel, what I want.

My sense of self has gotten so much stronger just from paying this kind of attention to myself.

What are the small, slightly weird things you do to feel more intimate with yourself? 🤍

I have crazyyyy Friends envy.

I love how easy it was for Rachel to just turn up out of nowhere, announce she was living with Monica, and somehow that was that for years.

She literally ran out on her own wedding, walked into that coffee house soaking wet in the dress, and within one episode she was one of them.

I love how they basically lived in that little coffee house, always parked on the same orange couch like it had their names carved into it.

I love how Monica’s flat was the place everyone always ended up, and how she cooked these massive Thanksgivings and fed the whole gang every single year.

I love how comfortable Joey was wandering into Monica’s kitchen and raiding her fridge like it was his own.

I love how Phoebe could just pick up her guitar and sing Smelly Cat in the corner of the room while everyone let her be exactly as weird as she wanted to be.

I love how they were always in and out of each other’s places like family, because that’s what they were to each other.

I love how they shared all of it together, the tiny stupid moments and the massive life-changing ones.

They argued and fell out and made up, and they showed up for each other through everything.

I genuinely sobbed when Rachel and Joey moved out and when the series came to an end.

Their bond was so real and so beautiful that watching them all move on to the next part of their lives just broke something in me.

Yes, I know, it’s all fiction.

But man, imagine having friendships like that.

I have all this envy because I don’t really have those kinds of bonds in my own life.

And I don’t think I’m the only one.

I reckon so many of us in our 20s are sitting at home watching shows like that, feeling something tighten in our chest, because the honest truth is we’re all a little bit lonely.

Now you could nitpick the Friends group all day if you wanted to.

But the reason it’s still such a comforting, feel-good show is actually really simple.

Friendship and connection just feel good, and having your own little village of people who are always there for you feels better than almost anything else.

And it breaks my heart that we don’t really have that anymore.

People just aren’t as open as they used to be.

We don’t drop in unannounced or raid each other’s fridges.

We book a catch-up three weeks out and then cancel it twice.

When I listen to my mum and my aunties talk about their 20s, they properly HAD that Friends vibe.

There were always people in and out of the house, and they had a proper little village without ever really trying for it.

They stayed on the same street for years and saw the same faces all the time.

They talk about it like it was just the normal way life worked back then, because that’s how integrated community was in their lives.

It’s not like that for us.

We’re spread out across loads of different cities, and half our lives happen through a screen.

And we’re knackered all the time, which doesn’t exactly help.

Friendship and community just aren’t on our priority lists.

So the village isn’t a given for us anymore, not even close.

I think that’s exactly why everyone’s suddenly piling into run clubs and pottery classes and bottomless brunches.

They all basically promise you a ready-made friendship group in a tidy little two-hour slot.

Part of me wants to be annoyed at how consumerist it’s all become.

You literally have to pay now just to feel like you belong somewhere.

But the reason it works, the reason these businesses make an absolute killing off it, is that they know exactly how lonely we are.

They know we’re craving connection so badly that we’ll happily book it in like a class.

But deep down, I don’t think doing this actually fixes the problem.

Because the kind of village I’m talking about isn’t something you can buy your way into or sign up for.

I realised recently that if I want that Friends feeling in my own life, I can’t just sit around waiting for it to show up at my door.

Nobody’s turning up soaking wet in a wedding dress to be my best friend.

I have to be a Friend to have Friends.

And being a Friend takes real effort.

You have to reach out first, even when it feels a bit cringe and you’d honestly rather not.

You have to keep an open mind with people instead of writing them off the second you meet them.

And you have to make the friends you already have feel like they can turn up at yours whenever, tell you absolutely anything, and always have a place with you.

The reality is, we have to put in way more effort than any generation before us to build that village.

And I know that sounds exhausting when you’re already tired.

But I’d rather put the work in than spend the rest of my life with this envy, watching fictional characters’ connections on a screen and wishing they were mine.

What I want is my own little village, the kind where people just turn up and make themselves completely at home.

And the only way I’m ever going to get it is to be the kind of friend I’d want for myself.

Love is one of the “four pillars of a happy life” I write about here every Sunday, alongside Health, Wealth, and Self.

You find love in your life through friendships, family, romance, and the little village of people who make everything feel less lonely.

And it’s so important to cherish because the rest of life is so much harder to enjoy - and can even feel meaningless - when you’re doing it on your own.

Do you have your village, or are you still trying to find yours like me? 🤍

(If you’ve actually managed to build one in your 20s, I really want to know how you did it!!)

We’ve all come across the make money online propaganda at some point, and it’s kinda tiring.

This week alone, I’ve seen:

• A TikTok of a girl in a pink lambo talking about how she makes a bajillion dollars by working two hours a day.

• An IG story from a mysterious traveler posting a screenshot of her £20K month over an image of her at the beach.

• Countless LinkedIn posts and YouTube videos where everyone’s swearing that now AI’s here, anyone can do the same.

I’ve been a freelance writer (and now a writing coach) for 4 years now, ever since I graduated.

And I can promise you it almost never actually is like what people paint it out to be on social media.

So if you’ve been thinking about starting your own online business, whether that’s selling a service or a product, here are the realities nobody really posts about.

1. You’ll have to try a few different things before anything takes off.

When you start an online business, the first big decision is what your business is actually going to do to make money.

There are LOADS of directions you could go in.

Maybe you become a content creator who makes money from an audience.

Maybe you offer a service, where people pay you to do something for them, like writing for them or coaching them.

Or maybe you create a product and sell it, like an app or a digital guide.

Whatever you go for, that’s what people mean when they talk about your “business model.”

But what nobody really tells you is that you probably won’t be doing the right business model on your first try.

The annoying thing is that everyone online will swear their business model is the one that works, because it’s the one that worked for them.

And it might work for you too.

But it might not, and that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

One business model flopping says nothing about whether online business as a whole is for you.

It can just mean that particular business type wasn’t your thing.

Sometimes you stick with the same type of business but keep changing how you do it.

Say you go for freelance writing.

At first, you’ll have no real clue who to reach out to or what to charge, and you slowly work it out by getting it wrong a fair few times.

No matter what, you need to build an appetite for true trial and error.

2. Your idea should be built on your unfair advantage.

The best idea for you isn’t the trendy one, and it isn’t the one that made someone else rich.

It’s the one that sits on top of your unfair advantage.

Your unfair advantage is just the thing you’ve already got that most people don’t.

Maybe your home is gorgeous and you find it really easy to make beautiful content in it.

Maybe you’re naturally brilliant at design.

For me, it was always writing. It’s the thing I’ve been good at my whole life, so building something around it just made sense.

When your idea is built on something you’re already strong at, the whole thing is less of an uphill battle, because you’re not starting from zero.

So before you go copying whatever business is blowing up this week, have a proper think about what your actual unfair advantage is, and build around that instead.

3. “AI does it all for you now” is a dangerous lie.

There’s a big idea floating around at the moment that you can just get AI to do everything for you and basically Claude your way through a whole business.

And look, AI does help. I use it constantly.

But the idea that you can have a crazy successful business right away as a beginner because of AI just isn’t true.

For AI to actually make it that easy, you’d need to already have something going for you.

Maybe you’re very skilled at understanding and using AI.

Maybe you already understand how business works.

Or maybe you’ve got money to throw at the right tools and people.

If none of that is true for you yet, AI on its own won’t carry you.

You still have to actually know what you’re doing, or pay someone who does.

Otherwise, you just end up with a pile of AI-made stuff that looks alright and doesn’t actually work in the long run.

4. A big social media following isn’t what actually gets you paid.

This one really surprises people.

You can completely blow up online, thousands of followers and loads of likes, and still not get a single paying client or customer out of it.

And weirdly, it works the other way too.

You can have a tiny following and be fully booked out.

I’ve seen both happen.

So I’m not saying don’t build a social media presence, because it does help.

But it isn’t the thing that actually brings the money in.

What brings it in is going to and reaching the right people (your ideal clients) directly.

That might mean sliding into someone’s DMs, or sending a cold email, or getting yourself into the right events and networking.

When I started out on Upwork, I sent out proposals to people constantly, and I got ignored or turned down way more than I ever got a yes.

That’s just part of it.

You have to get okay with rejection early, because reaching out directly is what actually gets you work (far more than chasing ‘viral’ and expecting people to come to you).

5. Your first attempts will be a bit of a mess, and that’s fine.

The first time you actually do the thing, whether that’s delivering a service or putting out a product, it’s going to be rough around the edges.

That’s completely normal and you shouldn’t let it stop you.

When I got my first proper clients, I was basically figuring it out and doing the work at the same time.

I was writing YouTube scripts as someone who wasn’t into YouTube at ALL, so I had to learn that sh*t quickly.

You don’t get good and then start.

You start, you do a slightly rubbish version, and then you get a bit better each time by doing it over and over.

It’s exactly the same with a product.

Your first version won’t be your best one, and waiting until it’s perfect usually just means you never launch it at all.

One thing I had to let go of early is perfectionism, and I recommend you do too (for both business and life).

6. Getting one big client feels amazing, but it’s risky.

When you finally get one big client paying you regularly, or one product that suddenly starts selling, it feels incredible.

But leaning on just one thing like that is one of the riskiest spots to be in.

I had one main client for a few years and got way too comfortable.

So whenever there was a slow month, I’d panic, because I had no other clients (and income) to fall back on.

During that period, my friends and family would ask, “So, how’s your business thing going?”

And my heart would drop to my stomach. I’d just smile and say, “It’s going great!” when it really wasn’t.

I was beyond stressed during those months. I was downright depressed and at my rock bottom.

The lesson I learned the hard way is that you can’t stop putting yourself out there just because things are good right now.

You have to keep finding new clients or customers even when you’re busy, instead of scrambling for them only when the work suddenly dries up.

7. There’s no guarantee you’ll make money straight away.

This is the one to take really seriously before you start.

There’s a very real chance you’ll work twice as hard as your friends and family in normal jobs and still not make an average salary, at least for a good while.

And even when money does start coming in, it’s all over the place at the beginning.

When I was starting out, I’d have a month where I made £5k and then a month where I made £200.

That rollercoaster is completely normal, and it takes time to find your footing and get to a steady, consistent income.

You might get lucky and start making money quickly.

But you have to be prepared for the very real chance that you won’t, at least not for a bit.

So be financially ready for it. Try to keep some savings behind you, and please don’t quit your job to go all in until you’re actually making a consistent income.

Going all in before then is how a lot of people end up panicking and quitting too soon.

8. The people you see winning are further ahead than they look.

Whenever you see someone online absolutely smashing it, remember you’re seeing them right now, not the years of boring, hard graft that got them there.

They almost certainly did the difficult, unsexy bit first, for a long time, and you’re only seeing the shiny end result.

And a lot of them had a head start you can’t see from the outside.

Maybe they had family money behind them.

Maybe they had really useful connections.

Maybe they’d already built a big audience somewhere else and just pointed it at their new thing.

So please don’t compare your day one to their year five.

You’re right at the start and they’re miles ahead, so of course it looks different.

9. You have to become a more disciplined person to make it work.

This sounds like a cliché, but it’s genuinely true.

Most days, working for yourself is just you and a laptop in your house.

It’s not glamorous, and a lot of the time it’s so so boring.

And there’s no manager standing over you, so if you don’t make yourself sit down and work, absolutely nothing happens.

So you have to get properly disciplined and actually look after yourself physically and mentally, or the whole thing falls apart on you.

This is the real reason so many people who are successful in business are so weirdly strict about how they structure their day, right down to when they train and what they eat.

It’s not for show.

It’s because staying focused and steady when nobody’s making you is a massive part of the job.

10. It might be the best thing you ever do, or it might not be for you.

For me, every bit of running an online business has been worth it.

Working for myself is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done.

I love that I’m building something that’s actually mine.

I answer to nobody, and I get to decide exactly how my own days look.

But that’s me.

It might genuinely not be worth it for you, and that’s totally fine!

Plenty of people would much rather have the security of a steady salary than the freedom of doing their own thing, and there’s a beauty in that too.

The real skill is being honest with yourself about what kind of livelihood you actually want, rather than chasing someone else’s idea of success and then wondering why it doesn’t make you happy.

I wish someone had told me all of this before I started, instead of leaving me to believe I was failing when really, I’d only just begun.

I try to write about things that would help younger me every Sunday on wealth, health, relationships, and self-identity. And I’m hoping that I can help you in even the teeniest bit along the way.

Have you ever wanted to start an online business or given it a shot?

Let me know, it’s nice to talk about this stuff because it can also get reallll lonely when you’re running an online business too 😂🤍

You know when you get home from a holiday and you basically need a holiday to recover from it?

You’ve had the best time, but you walk through your front door feeling foggy and sluggish and somehow more knackered than before you left.

That was me for YEARS.

My idea of a holiday used to be an all-inclusive resort and a sunbed I refused to leave.

I’d pile my plate at the buffet three times a day, and the most active thing I did all week was lowering myself into the pool to float about with a drink sweating in my hand.

It looked like the dream.

And then around day three, every time, I’d start to feel like sh*t.

I was foggy, slow, and sleeping badly even though I’d done nothing but lie in the sun.

Then I’d get home, scroll through my photos convinced I’d had the best time, and feel like absolute death.

But when I got back from Wrocław last week, I didn’t feel like that at all.

I went to bed at midnight, slept like a baby, woke up at 8AM and got straight into work like I’d never been away.

I felt genuinely refreshed and energised.

And I thought, damn, THIS is how I should feel after a holiday.

It wasn’t luck, though.

It’s down to how I travel now.

When I first started taking my health seriously, around 2024, the idea of being healthy on holiday filled me with dread.

I pictured 6AM gym alarms while everyone else slept in, saying no to anything fun, and being the boring one in the group.

You go away to switch off, and being healthy sounded like the exact opposite of that.

But it turned out to be the opposite of boring.

I changed a handful of small things and my holidays got about a hundred times better.

I had so much more energy, I was properly present instead of half-asleep on a lounger, and I actually wanted to get up and do things.

And I promise you, hand on heart, I did not suck the fun out of any of it.

The best part is how little it actually takes.

There are really only four things I do now, none of them hard, and together they turn a holiday from something I need to recover from into something I come home better for.

1. Move and make it part of the experience

I just find ways to be active that don’t feel like exercise at all, and it looks a bit different on every trip.

On a city break, it’s effortless.

In Wrocław, I did around 15,000 steps a day without even trying, just wandering the old town on foot, getting pleasantly lost down cobbled streets and stumbling on places that never make it into a guidebook.

That’s not even a lot, it just stacks up on its own when you explore properly instead of taxiing between the big sights.

And don’t get me wrong, I still Limed around doing absolutely nothing for big chunks of the day.

I wasn’t power-walking through Poland like a woman possessed lol.

Wherever I go, I also book at least one proper activity, the kind of thing you’d say yes to anyway because it sounds fun.

Last year in Morocco, I did a mountain hike and it ended up being the best day of the entire trip.

You get a full day of movement without it feeling like a workout for even a second, and you come home with the story instead of just the tan.

And at a resort, where the whole place is built for you to never move again, I lean on what’s already there.

In Turkey, I got to a fitness class or two most days (the resort put them on, which was AMAZING) and actually swam proper lengths instead of bobbing about in the shallow end.

I didn’t do this because I felt I had to, but because moving in that heat and then cooling off in the water made me feel absolutely unreal.

2. Eat well

Before anyone panics, I’m not about to tell you to diet on holiday, because that sounds miserable and I’d never.

That resort in Turkey had food going 24/7 and it was genuinely unbelievable.

I reckon I ate my way through thousands of pounds’ worth of it that week.

And I’m talking about the good things: lobster, steak, scallops, all the fancy proteins I wouldn’t cook as much at home.

With endless options in front of me, I kept drifting towards the food that actually made me feel amazing, the big colourful breakfasts, the proper protein, the fresh things, instead of just inhaling everything in sight out of habit.

I wasn’t restricting myself even slightly.

I was eating like a queen and feeling incredible for it.

And I still had the treats, obviously, because I’m not a monster.

I demolished an indecent number of warm, sugary doughnuts in Poland and I regret not a single one of them (they were unreal, btw).

But because I felt good and energised overall, the sweet treats hit sweeter.

3. Drink, drink, drink

This one sounds stupid but it might be the one that matters most, and I refuse to let it slide even on holiday.

In Turkey, I’d chug down a full litre just on the walk over to my morning step class, sweating in the heat before I’d even started.

I swapped my coffee for a green juice that tasted like someone had liquidised a lawn, (genuinely vile 🤢), but my god, the ENERGY it gave me.

And drinks-wise, I default to Diet Coke or diet lemonade pretty much everywhere now, holiday or not. The diet versions taste exactly the same to me, so I’d rather have those than load up on calories for no reason.

Hydration is so boring to talk about, I know.

But it’s boring because it actually works.

Half the time you feel groggy and rough on holiday, it isn’t the heat or the late night, it’s that you’ve had three cocktails and not a drop of water since breakfast.

So please, just drink your bloody water x

4. Depuff

This last one is so small it’s almost embarrassing, but I do it every single day, even on holiday when it would be easiest to skip everything.

I splash my face with cold water and give it a quick knuckle massage while I’m washing it with my cleanser.

I sometimes wake up a bit puffy and inflamed, especially after a travel day or a late one, and the cold water plus the massage genuinely help drain it all and de-puff me.

It takes two minutes, max, but it wakes me right up, and I walk out the door feeling fresh and properly like myself instead of half-asleep.

None of these things takes away from my holiday.

I still have my slow mornings, my treats, my whole days of doing sweet nothing, and the fun is all very much still there (in fact, I have MORE fun now).

I’ve just stopped spending the entire week running myself into the ground and then calling it a break.

Trust me, making health-conscious choices won’t ruin your holiday.

Try even one of these on your next trip and I think you’ll be shocked at how much better you feel, and at how little it actually takes.

Health is the foundation of a good life. It's the first of the four pillars I talk about every week (alongside Wealth, Love, and Self) because everything else falls apart without it. And as it turns out, that holds up even on holiday.

What’s your holiday non-negotiable, the one healthy thing you always manage to keep up when you’re away?

Or are you fully team switch-it-all-off? 🤍

I told myself I wouldn’t go travelling this year.

Last year I travelled quite a bit and I loved every second of it, but this year I wanted to stay focused, stay locked in, and put everything into building my business.

That was the plan.

But plans are there to be changed x

A trip to Wrocław came together and I ended up going for a few days.

And it just reminded me how much I love travelling, and how much it does for me every single time I do it.

I honestly think travelling is one of the best forms of self-care there is, because every time I go somewhere new, I come back knowing myself a little better than before.

There’s something about being away from your normal life, away from your routine, away from all the people and places you’re used to, that makes you more connected to yourself.

I think it’s because at home, everything runs on autopilot.

You wake up, you do the same things, you see the same people, you walk the same streets, you think the same thoughts.

And you stop noticing yourself in the middle of it.

You stop checking in with what you actually like, what you actually want, how you actually feel.

The day just carries you through and you don’t really have to think about any of it.

When you travel, that goes away.

You’re making every decision yourself, in real time, and there’s no routine telling you what to do next.

And you start learning things about yourself that you’d never pick up on at home, some of them tiny, some of them life-changing.

I noticed it in the way I packed.

A few years ago I couldn’t go anywhere without a massive suitcase stuffed with backup outfits, extra shoes, things I definitely wouldn’t need but packed anyway (because what if…?!)

This time I threw everything into one little pink rucksack, didn’t think about it again for the whole trip, and didn’t miss a single thing I left behind.

The whole process of organising the trip, sorting out what I needed, figuring out the logistics, made me feel like a proper little adult.

I noticed it when I rode a Lime scooter for the first time and fell off almost immediately, got back on, fell off AGAIN, crashed into a bush, and scratched my leg up.

And I just laughed and got back on because I was having too much fun to care.

I noticed it when I did my makeup every morning again, something I’d completely stopped doing at home without even realising, and sat there getting ready with nowhere to rush to, thinking why have I not been doing this every day? I missed this.

When I was younger, I was always the one trying random things, always up for it.

But I’d stopped doing so much of that in the last few years because I got so locked into work and routine and being productive.

Travelling brought those parts of me back, and I didn’t realise how much I’d missed them until they were there again.

I noticed it just in the way I walked around the city.

At home, I’m always on my way somewhere, always in my own head, always half thinking about what I need to do next.

But in Wrocław, I spent hours just wandering with no agenda, looking at buildings and people and taking it all in, and it turned out to be one of the best parts of the whole trip.

But it wasn’t just the small things.

Being in a completely different country, seeing how people live, the culture, the pace of life, it made me properly think about where I want to live.

I grew up in London and I’ve always just assumed that’s where I’ll be.

But walking through Wrocław, I realised I don’t have to stay tied to one place for the rest of my life.

I don’t have to stay where I was born just because I was born there.

Maybe in the long run I’ll end up back in London, who knows, but right now I don’t have to be anywhere.

And just having that thought felt massive.

And that connects to something bigger that travelling always reminds me of, which is how big the world actually is.

It’s so easy to forget that when you’re living the same week on repeat.

Your world gets smaller without you realising it, and your problems start to feel bigger than they are because they’re the only thing you can see.

But when you’re somewhere new, somewhere nobody knows your name and nobody cares what you do, everything just goes back into perspective.

And it’s more than perspective, it’s freedom.

Being somewhere completely new reminds you that you can literally just get up and go anywhere, anytime.

You’re not stuck. You’re not locked in. You have the freedom to go wherever you want and do whatever you want with your life.

And that feeling is so liberating, it genuinely turns my soul on.

I can’t describe it any other way.

It’s like your brain wakes up and goes, oh yeah, there’s a whole world out there and I can be part of it whenever I choose.

I was also the only brown person in a lot of the places I went to in Wrocław, which is not something I experience in London, ever.

I was aware of it the whole time, but it didn’t bother me.

A younger version of me would’ve felt out of place, would’ve tried to shrink.

But I was just like, I’m not from here, and that’s fine.

I felt comfortable in my own skin.

And I don’t think I would’ve known that about myself if I hadn’t been somewhere where I stood out.

Oh, and I experience time completely differently when I travel (am I the only one??)

Every hour counts.

I’m present in a way that I’m just not at home, because when everything around you is new, your brain can’t just coast through the day on autopilot.

You have to actually pay attention, and you feel so much more alive because of it.

And the mad thing is, that follows me home.

Every single time I come back from a trip, I’m more organised, more intentional, more aware of how I’m spending my days.

It fades after a few weeks (if I’m being honest), but the fact that it happens every time tells me that the version of me who actually pays attention is always in there.

She just needs the routine to break for her to come out.

You don’t need to book a flight to get some of this.

Go to a part of your city you’ve never been to.

Spend a whole afternoon with no plan.

Do something you used to love and stopped doing for no reason.

But if you can travel, even for a few days, do it.

Because there is nothing quite like being somewhere completely unfamiliar to remind you of who you are, who you’re becoming, and how much of the world is still waiting for you.

I write about four things on here every Sunday: Health, Wealth, Love, and Self.

And self is the one that everything else depends on, because you can’t build a life you love if you don’t actually know who you are.

Travelling is one of the best ways I’ve found to figure that out.

What have you learned about yourself while travelling?

Every time someone gets their heart broken, loses a friend, or goes through it with their family, I’ve seen similar advice pop up:

“You need to protect your peace.”

“Pour into your own cup, babe.”

“You do you, sis.”

And have you noticed that it’s ALWAYS that?

The advice is always to go inward, pull back, retreat, and be your own best friend.

Have you ever, even once, heard someone say the opposite?

“You had a bad experience, but that’s not what everybody is like.”

“I think you need to put yourself out there more.”

“You need to work on your relationships, not run from them.”

I never ever hear people our age give advice like this, especially not on the internet.

And I think that says a lot about our generation.

We’ve made being a lone wolf aspirational.

The girl who doesn’t need anyone, who’s built her own world, who’s so self-sufficient that nothing and nobody can get to her.

She’s thriving on her own terms and she doesn’t depend on a single soul.

That’s the goal now, apparently.

And I get why it’s appealing. Especially if you’ve been hurt. Especially if the people in your life have let you down.

The idea that you can just turn inward and be enough for yourself is comforting. It feels safe.

But I know people who’ve gone all in on that. They’ve got the routines, the solo dates, the journaling, the self-care rituals, all of it locked down.

And they’re some of the loneliest, least content people I know.

(I say this as someone who’s been one of them.)

Because no matter how good your relationship with yourself is, it cannot replace the need for other people.

That’s not a flaw in you. That’s literally how humans work.

And yet admitting that feels almost embarrassing now.

If someone says “I need to get healthier” or “I need to sort my finances out,” we respect that.

But if someone says, “I’m lonely and I need more people in my life,” there’s this weirdness around it.

Like... can’t you just be happy on your own?

No. Not fully. And pretending otherwise is making a lot of people suffer without telling anyone.

I think part of the problem is that we’ve started treating love like it’s finite, as though you only have a limited amount and you have to choose where to direct it, inward or outward, yourself or other people.

But love is not finite. As cliché as it might sound, love really is limitless.

Loving other people doesn’t take away from your ability to love yourself.

And loving yourself doesn’t mean you have to hoard all your energy and keep it away from everyone else.

We used to know this btw. Think about what people did when they were going through a hard time even ten or fifteen years ago.

They had the girls over. They called their mum. They showed up at a friend’s house with wine and cried on the sofa.

They baked and went to potlucks and volunteered and threw themselves into their community because being around people who cared about them was the thing that actually helped.

Now that’s seen as “trauma dumping,” and the alternate advice is to “work on yourself.”

When did we stop telling people to lean on the humans around them and start telling them to be their own support system instead?

Self-love and loving other people are not opposites. They actually feed each other, and they always have.

The more you know yourself, the better you are with other people.

You stop staying in friendships that make you feel small because you know what you deserve.

You stop morphing into whoever the person in front of you wants because you actually like who you already are.

You can have a massive argument with someone you love and not fall apart because your sense of self doesn’t depend entirely on them.

And your relationships teach you things about yourself that you will never figure out alone.

You learn what your boundaries actually are when someone crosses them.

You find out how you handle conflict by actually being in it.

You discover what kind of friend, partner, daughter, sister you are by showing up and paying attention to how that feels.

I’ve had friends tell me things about myself that I couldn’t see on my own.

I’ve been called out by people I love and had to sit with the fact that they were right.

I’ve shown up for people when I really didn’t want to and realised that doing it anyway taught me more about who I am than any solo self-care day ever has.

You don’t learn that from being alone with your thoughts. You learn that from being in it with other people.

And the other side is just as true.

If you don’t know who you are, you’ll lose yourself in every friendship, every relationship, every family dynamic you’re part of.

You’ll become whoever the people around you need you to be and one day you’ll look up and have no idea who you actually are underneath it.

Having a strong relationship with yourself is equally important as having strong relationships with others.

So the next time someone you care about is going through it, try not to default to “it’s time to focus on yourself.”

Try “I’m here” instead.

Try “what do you need from me right now?”

Try actually being there instead of telling them to go be alone.

And if you’re the one going through it, be honest with yourself.

Do you actually need more time alone, or have you just been told that’s what you’re supposed to want?

Because needing people doesn’t mean you haven’t done enough work on yourself.

It means you’re a person.

And the sooner we stop treating that like something to be ashamed of, the better off we’re all going to be.

Love is one of the four pillars I write about every Sunday (alongside Health, Wealth, and Self) because your relationships are one of the biggest factors in whether your life actually feels full.

You can have everything else in great shape and still feel empty without people to share it with.

What’s one thing a relationship has taught you about yourself that you don’t think you would’ve figured out alone? 🤍

There are basically three versions of a “wealthy” young woman that I see on the internet right now.

There’s the corporate girly.

She’s in finance or law, she’s got the Zara work wardrobe and the Monday morning coffee order down to a science, and she’s climbing a ladder that everyone can see.

She’s very structured, very visible, very impressive on LinkedIn.

Then there’s the content creator.

She’s making money from her laptop in Bali or Dubai, she’s got multiple income streams, a ring light, and a Notion dashboard for everything.

She talks about a six-figure passive income and freedom and building your dream life online.

And she makes it all look incredibly easy and fun and aesthetic and like she’s never had a bad day in her life (or she’ll throw in a rags-to-riches story to seem more relatable).

And then there’s the trad wife. She married well, she stays in a beautiful home, she’s soft and feminine and taken care of. Her version of wealth is being provided for.

None of these lifestyles is wrong.

If any of them genuinely fit who you are and what you want, go for it.

But what if you don’t fit into any of them?

Because I don’t.

And I think a LOT of women don’t.

And the problem is that these have basically become the only three templates for what financial success looks like as a young woman in our generation.

So if your version doesn’t match, you feel like you’re doing it wrong.

It can feel like you’re behind because your life doesn’t fit a specific aesthetic or worse, like you don’t have any ambition at all.

I know girls who picked career paths because their teachers or parents told them that’s the only way to have real stability, not because they actually wanted to do that work.

I know girls who feel guilty about wanting to be looked after by their partners because it doesn’t fit the boss babe image they think they’re supposed to have.

And I know girls who are building traditional businesses but feel like failures because it’s not Instagrammable.

We’ve turned the way you make money into an identity instead of a tool.

And when that happens, you stop asking yourself “what do I actually need?” and start asking “what does my version of success look like to other people?”

Wealth, to me, is freedom.

Not freedom in the “I quit my 9 to 5 and now I sell courses from a beach” sense, but in a more boring, practical sense.

Waking up whenever I want to start working.

Wearing whatever I want to without worrying about being told off.

Working on things I get to choose.

When I first started freelancing, I had the freedom, but I didn’t have enough to comfortably cover my basics.

And this was okay for a while.

I built my income from scratch and got to a point where I was genuinely proud of what I’d saved (and if you read my last Wealth post, you know I started from literally nothing).

And then I realised I don’t ever want to live paycheck to paycheck again.

It didn’t feel like freedom anymore.

Recently, I’ve started a business on the back of my freelancing experience, because I wanted more structure and a more sustainable income in my life, and that’s what I need right now.

My version of wealth has already changed once, and it’ll probably change again.

What feels like freedom to me might feel boring to you.

What feels like security to you might feel suffocating to someone else.

What feels like ambition to one person might feel exhausting to another.

And tbh, I think that’s how it should be.

What wealth means to you right now probably won’t be what it means to you in five or ten years either. And I’m realising that’s completely normal.

Right now, my version of wealth is independence. Doing things on my own terms.

But I know that if I have a family one day, that’s going to change.

Maybe I’ll want my husband to take care of things financially while I focus on my kids.

Maybe I’ll lean more toward the trad wife side of things, and I won’t feel even slightly weird about it, because it’ll be what makes sense for my life at that point.

Not because the internet told me that’s what ‘being feminine’ should look like.

And honestly, there might be times when you don’t even want more money.

Because more money means more responsibility, more decisions, more admin, more things to manage.

Maybe right now you’re 22 and you just want your rent covered and enough left over to go out with your friends on a Saturday.

And that’s genuinely fine.

You don’t need to be thinking about investment portfolios and side hustles at every stage of your life just because someone online made you feel like you should be.

Your version of wealth is allowed to change as you change.

It’s supposed to.

The problem is when you lock yourself into someone else’s definition and then feel like a failure when it stops fitting.

If you’ve been feeling like you’re not doing money “right,” ask yourself what you actually need to feel okay, rather than what you think would look impressive.

What do you genuinely need to wake up and not feel stressed about money?

Start there and you’ll probably find what being wealthy actually looks like for you. And it doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s version.

Wealth is one of four pillars I write about every Sunday, along with Health, Love, and Self. Because a full bank account means very little if everything else is falling apart.

What does wealth actually mean to you right now? 🤍

I don’t want to wake up when I’m 50 and realise that’s when I want to start taking my health seriously.

I want to have been doing it for decades by then.

I want the habits I’m building now to be so normal that I don’t even think about them anymore.

I want future me to look back at 25-year-old me and think, “yeah, I’m glad she started when she did.”

And I think most people in their twenties want that too, but the problem is that health has become so confusing and overwhelming and contradictory that a lot of people just aren’t doing anything at all.

Like, should I go keto or carnivore or intuitive eating or just “eat clean” (whatever that even means)?

Am I a Pilates princess or a muscle mommy?

Do I need a cortisol mocktail? What even IS a cortisol mocktail?

There’s so much information out there and half of it contradicts the other half, and I genuinely think it’s putting people off trying at all, which is the worst outcome because the one thing you really can’t afford to do is give up on your health entirely.

And I say that as someone who’s done exactly that, by the way.

A couple of years ago, I was paying £45 a month for a gym membership that included the gym, a swimming pool, and unlimited fitness classes (which was AWESOME value).

I didn’t like the actual gym because I had absolutely no clue what I was doing in there.

I’d walk in, look at the machines, panic a bit, and do something pointless on the treadmill.

Then I’d leave feeling like I kinda did something but not really, while passing the sweating, heaving gym bros on my way out.

One day, I decided to try a Zumba class because it was included in my membership, so why not?

I’d done classes many years before and remembered I didn’t mind them.

I was really surprised by how much I LOVED it.

So I decided to do more fitness classes.

I got into yoga, pilates, step aerobics, boxing, body conditioning, all sorts of things I’d never even thought about before.

And I stayed consistent for the first time in my life because I’d actually found a type of exercise that I enjoyed doing.

I was literally waking up at 6AM to go to my yoga class and anyone who knows my night owl-ass self knows that’s saying something.

I was staying consistent because I was genuinely enjoying exercise and it didn’t feel forced at all. And that’s a big part of how I lost 15kg.

But then I got injured somehow (I still don’t know how).

I got this lower back pain that came out of nowhere and my GP told me I needed to stop exercising the way I was.

I didn’t listen (obviously), went to yoga anyway, and spent the entire class trying not to cry because I was in that much pain.

So I eventually cancelled the membership because I just wasn’t going anymore.

And I’m not going to sit here and pretend I immediately found some amazing home workout routine and everything was fine, because that’s not what happened.

I just stopped. I did nothing for a while, and I told myself I’d figure it out eventually once I got better. But eventually didn’t come.

I could feel it too.

My energy dropped, my sleep got worse, my mood got worse, and I knew it was because I’d completely stopped moving my body, but I didn’t know what to do about it because the thing that had been working for me wasn’t an option anymore.

Eventually, I very gradually started following along with YouTube workout videos in my living room.

And I’ve been sticking with it ever since.

In fact, I’m probably even more consistent now than I have ever been in my life, which is kind of embarrassing considering how simple it is.

Maybe I’m a home workout warrior. Is that a thing? 😭

At the start of this year, I also quit coffee in the mornings and replaced it with a workout, and that’s been the best morning routine I’ve ever had.

(I’ll talk about that properly another time because it’s a whole conversation on its own.)

Right now, I rotate between HIIT, Pilates, and yoga, and the days I do yoga are basically my rest days.

My workouts are half an hour and cost me absolutely nothing.

Sometimes I’ll do steps on my walking pad too.

And the reason I’m telling you all of this isn’t because my routine is anything special, because it’s really not.

It’s because it took me years of trying things, hating things, getting injured, quitting, doing nothing, feeling crap about doing nothing, and then eventually trying something else before I found something that actually works for my life.

And the only reason I got here is because I never really gave up.

The same thing happened with sleep btw.

I spent years trying to be a morning person because the internet told me that’s what successful people do, and all it did was make me tired and miserable.

What actually works for me is going to bed when I’m tired and waking up when my body’s ready and not setting an alarm unless I absolutely have to.

It’s boring but I sleep much better now and actually feel like a human instead of a zombie throughout my days.

And food. Oh gosh. What a journey I’ve had with food.

I grew up in a South Asian household where we cooked with love, not calories, and the food was amazing and I was a chubby kid because of it.

I’ve tried LOADS of different diets over the years and every single one I copied from someone else lasted about two weeks because it just wasn’t built for my body or my life or my relationship with food.

What actually works for me is cooking my own meals, eating whole foods most of the time, and just not making a massive deal out of it.

With all of it, exercise and sleep and food, I had to figure out my own version.

And my own version is honestly pretty boring and not very aesthetic and nobody would make a TikTok about it, but it works and I actually do it, which is more than I can say for any of the fancy stuff I tried before.

I think a lot of people in our generation feel like if they can’t do health “properly” then there’s no point doing it at all, and that really worries me.

Because your health is the one thing that affects every single other area of your life, and what you do with it now in your twenties is what you carry with you.

So if you’ve tried things and quit and tried again and quit again and you feel like you’re going in circles, that’s completely normal and that’s literally what it looks like for most people.

And what works for you during one phase might not work for you in another phase.

Just don’t quit.

Health is one of the four pillars I write about every Sunday (alongside Wealth, Love, and Self) because I don’t think we can ever truly be happy in life without it.

So, try a chia pudding even if it looks weird. Try a random fitness class. Try something you used to love when you were younger or something your friend does that looks fun.

And if you hate it, try something else next week.

Your health is too important to give up on just because the internet made it seem too complicated.

What does your health routine look like right now? 🤍

I think a lot of people in their twenties have no personal identity anymore.

If someone asked you right now what you actually enjoy doing outside of work, what your hobbies are, what makes you YOU, could you genuinely answer?

Because I couldn’t. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

When you’re young, your identity is basically built for you.

School gives you structure. There are clubs to join and activities to try and classes that push you out of your comfort zone without you even asking for it.

You don’t have to go looking for things to do because they’re right there, already set up, already accessible, already free (or close to it). You just show up and figure out what you like along the way.

And then you leave school and all of that disappears.

If you want to try something new as an adult, you have to actively seek it out.

You have to research it, find a place, book it, pay for it, fit it around your work schedule, and then actually convince yourself to go. And most of the time you’re doing it alone, which makes it ten times harder.

So what do we do instead? We go on TikTok.

I think TikTok (and social media in general) has become the replacement for that school structure.

It’s the thing that tells us what to try, what to watch, what to cook, what hobby to pick up this month. It does the thinking for us.

And it feels productive because we’re “discovering new things,” but we’re not really discovering anything.

We’re just consuming whatever the algorithm puts in front of us and calling it a personality.

That’s how you end up with a whole generation of people who all watch the same shows, try the same recipes, do the same “aesthetic” activities, and have the same takes on everything.

Nobody’s actually choosing any of it for themselves.

And on top of all of this, you’re working and paying bills and trying to figure out your career and your relationships and your health all at the same time.

You’re putting all your energy into just getting through the week, and by the time the weekend comes, you’re either exhausted or scrolling for someone else to tell you what to do with your free time.

And then one day you look up and your entire personality is your job, your goals, and whatever TikTok told you to try this week.

I’ve been so guilty of this btw.

I was having a conversation with my friend the other day about camping, and how I used to be outdoors all the time as a teenager. I also did art, drama, netball, badminton, public speaking. I went on random side quests just because I could.

And as I was talking about it, this wave of sadness hit me because I realised that all of those parts of me had completely disappeared.

It wasn’t about the camping itself. It was the creativity, the curiosity, the willingness to just try things and see what happens. All gone. And I genuinely couldn’t tell you when it happened.

After I graduated from uni, I spent years freelancing, and I loved it.

But somewhere along the way, my work became my entire life.

I was so consumed by building my business and just getting through the day-to-day that everything else got pushed aside.

If you’d asked me what I do for fun, I would have stared at you.

I remember being sat at home on a weekend, completely free, and I could not figure out what to do with my time.

My brain threw out a few ideas, like baking, maybe, or going to the library.

But I felt frozen because every option felt like a waste of time when I had chores to do and content to plan and a business to build.

That moment scared tf out of me.

I’d become someone with goals but no personality. Like, actually no personality. I had nothing going on outside of my work and it was genuinely embarrassing.

So last year, I made a decision.

I stepped back from everything and gave myself time to just be a person again.

I travelled, I cooked, I baked, I tried things without asking whether they were productive or useful or “on brand.”

I just let myself exist without a goal attached to everything.

And it worked. I started feeling like myself again.

I remembered what I actually enjoy, what I’m curious about, what makes me feel alive.

It was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself.

But here’s what I didn’t expect…

You can’t just do it once and expect it to stick.

Because I came back from that year and went into serious ‘life’ mode again.

And within a few months, I could feel it creeping back. That same flatness. That same “I have goals but I don’t have a life” feeling.

And I was like, oh for god’s sake. Not again.

That’s when I realised that connecting with yourself isn’t a one-off thing.

It’s something you have to keep doing, consistently, even when life gets busy.

ESPECIALLY when life gets busy.

So now I’m learning to weave those moments into my normal life instead of needing a whole year off to remember who I am.

And honestly, it’s been the small things that have helped the most.

I went to a random part of London yesterday that I’d never been to and just went for a walk.

There were bathing ponds I never knew existed, and walking trails that led to a sort of hill.

And it sounds so basic, but it genuinely took me back to that outdoorsy part of me that I thought was gone.

It was just a walk in a part of my city I’d never explored before, and it felt so nourishing.

I came home and I was like, why have I not been doing this every week?

I’ve also been reading more, including Substack posts that interest me just because they interest me.

I’ve been going to networking events and talking to new people, which is something I used to love and then stopped because I convinced myself I didn’t have time.

I started a new business recently too, and it reconnected me with writing, which is something I’ve loved since I was a kid.

That one caught me off guard because I didn’t expect a work thing to bring back a personal part of me, but it did.

And none of this came from TikTok recommending it to me. I just asked myself what I actually wanted to do and then did it.

Your identity isn’t your career and it’s not your goals and it’s not what the algorithm tells you to be interested in.

It’s the collection of things you genuinely enjoy, the things you’re curious about, the preferences you’ve built up over years of just being alive and paying attention.

And if you haven’t been paying attention to any of that because you’ve been too busy surviving (or too busy scrolling), then of course you feel like you don’t know who you are.

So think about what you used to do as a kid or a teenager that made you feel like you.

The things you did without thinking about whether they were useful or productive or worth posting about.

The things you did just because.

And then go do one of them this week.

Just because you like it, just because it’s you, and then do it again next week and the week after that.

Try new things along the way.

Because building a personal identity isn’t a one-time job, it’s a practice.

The same way you work out or eat well or show up for your relationships, you have to keep showing up for yourself, too.

Self is one of the four pillars I write about every Sunday (alongside Health, Wealth, and Love) because knowing who you are is the foundation for a truly content life.

You can have the healthiest body, the fullest bank account, and the best relationships in the world, but if you don’t actually know who you are underneath all of that, something will always feel off.

So yeah. Go bake something and laugh when it comes out burnt. Go for a walk somewhere you’ve never been and absorb the moment. Pick up that instrument you haven’t touched in years.

Try the thing you keep saying you’ll try “when you have time.”

And do it because YOU want to, not because an algorithm suggested it.

What would 15-year-old you be gutted that you've stopped doing? 🤍

“Protecting my peace” is one of the most damaging things our generation has latched onto.

Walking away from people who are genuinely hurting you is healthy.

Setting boundaries when they need to be set is healthy.

I’ve done it.

I cut off a friend of 10 years last year because, after a lot of trying to make it work, I realised spending time with her was hurting my mental health.

I don’t regret it for a second.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is the toxic version of ‘protecting my peace’.

The one where people are cutting off entire friendship groups because they view emotional conversations as ‘trauma dumping’.

Going no-contact with their families because they saw the definition of ‘narcissist’ on Instagram and hate their parents now.

Romanticising being alone by locking themselves into their aesthetic flats and buying, buying, buying things to fill the void while labelling it ‘self-care'.

And everyone’s clapping for this like it’s growth.

It isn’t growth.

It’s just avoidance, and yet we pretend it’s something cute and wholesome.

Here’s the problem.

“Protecting my peace” is pushing a whole generation into loneliness.

And loneliness isn’t just a sad feeling. It’s actually making us sick.

Chronic loneliness does the same amount of damage to your body as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

It massively increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia, and early death.

We obsess over sleep, diet, and exercise as the foundations of being healthy, but community belongs right up there with them. We’re just not treating it that way.

Let me tell you about blue zones, because I think it makes the point clearer than anything else.

Blue zones are five places in the world where people consistently live to 100 and stay sharp, happy, and active right up to the end. Places like Okinawa in Japan and Sardinia in Italy.

Most wellness content about them focuses on the food, and yes, what they eat matters.

But one of the main reasons is community.

These people have known their neighbours for 50 years. They eat with the same friends every week. Their families live close by. They show up for each other through all of it, for decades.

They’re not protecting their peace by cutting people off.

They’re protecting their peace by pouring into the people around them every single day, and it’s literally keeping them alive.

And we’re over here ghosting someone we’ve known for six months because they gave us “off energy” one day and calling that self-love.

We should be worried about how lonely our generation is becoming.

But we’re not.

We’re celebrating it. We’re making content about it. We’re treating isolation like a personality trait.

So why has “protecting my peace” caught on so hard, even though it’s literally shortening our lives?

Because it’s easier than the alternative.

Real connection is hard. It takes effort, patience, vulnerability, showing up when you’d rather not, forgiving people and letting them forgive you.

Building a real community takes years of consistent showing up. Cutting someone off takes 30 seconds and one text.

I’ve come to this realisation after being on both sides.

Last year, I went through a really hard breakup with that friend I told you about.

And after the dust settled, I realised how much of my sense of community had been tied up in that one person.

I was seriously missing the presence of like-minded people in my life, and I hadn’t even realised it until she was gone.

In that moment, I could have done what the internet told me to do.

I could have said, “this is my time to protect my peace, focus on myself, romanticise my own company.”

And on paper, that would have looked like healing.

But I didn’t do that.

Because I knew what I actually needed wasn’t more time alone. It was more of the right people.

So I chose the harder thing.

I started putting myself out there, going to events, making more effort with the people I already had, and actively trying to meet new ones.

And I’ve experienced a level of genuine contentment and happiness since then that me-time alone could never give me.

Because loving yourself is important. But sharing that love with other people, and letting them share theirs with you, is just as important for your soul.

Real contentment doesn’t come from sitting in your flat telling yourself you’re your own best friend.

It comes from having people who know you, love you, and let you love them back.

We need to stop encouraging each other to disappear, and start encouraging each other to show up.

We need to stop treating community like it’s optional, and start treating it as though our lives depend on it. Because they literally do.

If you’ve been feeling lonely lately and wondering what’s wrong with you, nothing is.

You’re a person who needs other people.

The internet has just convinced you that needing people is a flaw.

It isn’t.

Find your people. Keep your people. Be somebody’s people.

That’s how you protect your peace.

This is a massive part of why love is one of the four pillars I write about every month (alongside Health, Wealth, and Self).

You can have the healthiest body, the fullest bank account, and the strongest connection with yourself, and still feel hollow if you’ve got nobody to share any of it with.

Who’s one person you’ve been meaning to reach out to? Send them a text today. Let’s normalise choosing community over isolation 🤍

I love that more girls are getting into their health and fitness. I really do.

I love that Pilates is having a moment, that girls are drinking their water, going on hot girl walks, and actually caring about what they put in their bodies.

Wellness culture has done a genuinely great job of getting people interested in looking after themselves.

But somewhere along the way, it turned into a consumer product.

Health became something you buy, not something you do.

And every few months, there’s a new version of what “being healthy” is supposed to look like, and everyone jumps on it, and the basics of healthy living get left behind because they’re not interesting enough to go viral.

And being healthy got really expensive in the process.

We’re talking £50 reformer Pilates classes, £30 spin sessions, monthly class passes that cost more than some people’s electricity bills, matching workout sets, the right water bottle, the right protein powder, the right pre-workout smoothie from the right place… the list goes on.

And if you’re not doing it that way, if you’re not doing the aesthetic version, it kind of feels like you’re not doing it properly.

And I think that’s a problem.

Not because those things are bad. I get the appeal, I get the social element, I get why taking yourself into a beautiful studio with great energy feels like exactly what you need. Because sometimes it is. It’s a treat, and treats are lovely.

But a treat isn’t a routine.

Most people can’t keep paying £50 a week for classes forever, and when they eventually stop, they stop exercising altogether because they never built a version of fitness that doesn’t cost anything.

The classes were fun, but they were never a long-term plan. They were a lifestyle experience that happens to involve exercise.

And when that becomes the main image of what “being healthy” looks like, it leaves out a LOT of people.

I’ve had friends tell me, “I can’t pay that much for spin classes, it’s not for me.”

I’ve had an aunt say, “Pilates isn’t for chubby girls like me.”

And that breaks my heart, because neither of those things are true.

But when every image of fitness you see online is a beautiful size 6 girl in a cutesy £50 class, of course you’re going to feel like it’s not for you.

That’s what the trendification of exercise does.

It makes people think health has a look, a price, and an entry requirement.

And that’s where it starts to feel really wrong to me.

Because the basics of being healthy have always been simple: move your body regularly, drink water, sleep well, eat nourishing food that makes you feel good, and go for a walk every now and then.

None of that requires a membership, a class pass, or a matching outfit.

But wellness culture has wrapped it all up in so much branding and aesthetic that the basics feel almost embarrassing now. Like they’re not enough.

Like working out in your living room in your oldest t-shirt is somehow less valid than doing the exact same movements in a studio with nice lighting and a £10 smoothie afterwards.

And I say this as someone who has done both. I’ve had the gym membership, I’ve done the fitness classes, and now I work out from home every single day for 30 minutes, completely for free, and it’s the most consistent I’ve ever been.

Here’s what I actually do: I rotate between HIIT, Pilates, and yoga, all from YouTube videos in my living room. And it works just as well.

Sometimes, I’ll hop on my walking pad and do steps while I’m engaging with you all on my phone 🫶 And as it gets warmer, I’m incorporating more walks outside.

And because the barrier to exercising is basically zero for me, I actually do it. Every single day.

Nobody really talks about this version because it’s not pretty enough to post about. But it works, and it costs nothing.

And honestly, for real consistency, for the kind of change that actually lasts, you need to cherish where you already are.

Whether that’s the grimy gym down the road from you or your living room with the mismatched furniture.

Because that’s where you’ll realistically show up every single day, and showing up is the only thing that matters.

I love aesthetic fitness content as much as the next girl, but I think we should be proud of the not-so-pretty moments, not embarrassed to share them.

Can we romanticise the red-faced, hideous, out-of-breath-on-the-floor version too?

Because that’s what consistency actually looks like most of the time.

And the consumerism doesn’t stop at exercise, by the way.

It’s the same with food.

We’ve been sold this idea that being healthy means buying the £8 açai bowl or the overpriced “wellness” salad from the place with the nice branding.

And look, I love those things, but I’ve been making a conscious effort lately to actually make my own food instead. Not to save money (although it does), but because I want to understand what I’m putting in my body.

Food is fuel. It’s not a pick-me-up from a trendy shop that makes me feel like I’m being healthy when half the time I don’t even know what’s in it.

Right now, wellness culture is really good at making healthy living look beautiful.

But it’s not very good at making it feel accessible.

And if taking care of yourself only feels possible when you can pay for it or look a certain way, then we’ve got the whole thing backwards.

Health is the foundation of a good life. It’s the first of the four pillars I talk about every week (alongside Wealth, Love, and Self) because everything else falls apart without it. And a foundation has to be something everyone can build.

What are your sweatiest, messiest workouts like? What do your ugliest healthy meals look like? Share your version. Let’s normalise it 🤍

I’ve spent a stupid amount of time trying to figure out why I’m not happy.

You know when your life looks fine but it doesn't feel fine, and you can’t put your finger on what exactly is wrong?

That's been me for most of my twenties.

And when I say I felt it, I mean I felt it in my body. Like a hole in my chest that nothing could fill.

I’d look around at my own life and feel like I was watching it happen to someone else. Like a shell of a person just going through the motions.

I didn’t feel real half the time, and that scared me more than I ever admitted to anyone.

I tried everything to fix it. Working out more, earning more money, forcing myself to be more social, journaling, meditating, watching self-help videos that told me happiness was a mindset or a choice or something I could manifest if I just believed hard enough.

Some of that helped. A lot of it didn’t.

And for the longest time, I genuinely thought I was the problem, like maybe I was just one of those people who couldn’t really be light and happy.

But I figured something out eventually. And it changed how I see everything.

A few years ago, during my quarter-life crisis, I came across a video from Tai Lopez where he talked about the four pillars of the good life: health, wealth, love, and happiness.

And I remember thinking, huh, that actually makes sense.

But I didn’t do anything with it at the time. I was in my early twenties, deep in my own mess, and I was too busy trying to survive to sit down and analyse why I felt the way I did.

But the idea stayed with me.

And over the next few years, as I went through everything I went through (and trust me, it was a lot), I kept coming back to it.

I kept noticing that every time I felt genuinely good about my life, it was because most of those areas were in decent shape.

And every time that hollow, not-real feeling crept back in, it was because at least one of them had completely fallen apart while I was too busy focusing on another.

So the framework was right. But one of the pillars was wrong, at least for me.

Tai Lopez’s fourth pillar was happiness. And I get why he chose it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that happiness isn’t something you can actually work on.

You can’t wake up and say “today I’m going to practise being happy” the way you can practise going to the gym or saving money.

Happiness shows up when the other pillars of your life are working. It’s the result, not the ingredient.

So I replaced it with something I think matters a lot more.

Self.

As in self-identity. Who you actually are, what you want, how you spend your time, what makes you feel like you. I’ll explain more about this one later, but honestly it’s the pillar that holds everything else together.

So my version is: health, wealth, love, and self. Four pillars.

And I genuinely believe that when all four of them are working at the same time, even at 50%, that hollow feeling goes away. That shell feeling. That “I’m not really here” feeling that I carried around for years finally lifts.

What replaces it is something I’ll get to at the end, because I think it’ll make more sense once you’ve heard what each pillar actually means to me.

Let me tell you what I mean by each one, because every single one of them has a story behind it that I’ve lived through. And by the end of this, I think you’ll be able to look at your own life and see exactly which one needs your attention right now.

Health

I grew up in a South Asian household where we cooked with love, not calories. The food was incredible, and I was a chubby kid because of it.

When I was about 15 and became a police cadet, I started getting into fitness properly. I was doing Duke of Edinburgh hikes, camping, caving, kayaking, physical training, a whole bunch of things that kept me active.

And at the same time, I was trying every diet and fitness challenge I could find. Keto, 30-day squat challenges, you name it. There were phases where I was obsessed and phases where I completely didn’t care.

It’s been a LONG journey when it comes to my health and fitness.

But after years of trial and error and an insane amount of research, I’m finally at a point where I know what works for me.

And more importantly, I’ve learned how to figure out what will work for me in the future, because of all the knowledge I’ve got now.

The reason health is always the first pillar for me, always, is because of what happened when I let it go.

After COVID, I wasn’t working out, I was eating like crap, I gained a lot of weight, I was inflamed, and my confidence was completely gone.

I was also broke and I probably should have been focusing on money, but I made the decision to focus on my health first instead.

I started eating better, working out in ways I could actually stick to, and learning to enjoy the process.

And my confidence came back. I had control over something again, and that discipline started bleeding into everything else.

So if you’re feeling low or lost right now and you don’t know where to start, start with your health.

Having control over your body and building that discipline does something to every other area of your life that you won’t fully understand until you feel it yourself.

But health alone isn’t enough. I learned that the hard way too.

Wealth

My mum is the reason I think about money the way I do.

We grew up financially poor, but I didn’t really feel it because my parents gave us everything we needed. My dad provided for us, and my mum was incredible with money. She scrimped and saved, and even as a housewife with four kids, she pushed for more.

She started selling sweet cones on eBay (which I now know as e-commerce lol), and I used to help her make them when I was about 10 and sell them at school fairs.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but she was planting an entrepreneurial seed in me that I’m only now fully understanding.

She went on to start a childminding business and she worked SO hard. She worked, and she worked, and she worked until she could move all six of us from a two-bedroom flat to an actual house that she could call her own.

She wouldn’t buy a single thing for herself because every bit of money went on us, on our home, on charity, on other people.

I cannot begin to explain how it feels to see her now, in her dream home, buying herself designer bags and still feeling weird about it because spending on herself doesn’t come naturally, even after everything she’s been through.

Watching my mum’s journey really affected how I see wealth. I got my degree, I was supposed to go corporate, and I went into business instead. I’ve had big failures. But I’ve survived, and I’m in a much better position now.

Wealth is financial security and the freedom that comes with it. It’s having enough that you’re not in survival mode all the time. I’ve seen what financial instability can do to a home, and I’ve seen what financial stability can do for one.

You don’t need to be rich. But you need enough that money isn’t the thing keeping you up at night.

And even then, even with your health together and money in the bank, there’s still a piece missing if you don’t have the right people around you.

Love

And I don’t just mean romantic love.

I’m blessed to have a massive family, and we’ve all lived close together, so I’ve grown up surrounded by relationships and I’ve learned so much from watching them.

I’ve learned about boundaries, about showing grace, about understanding that not every battle is meant to be fought.

I’ve also gone through intense friendship breakups and had to figure out how to actually make friends as an adult, which is honestly one of the harder things I’ve done.

With romantic love, I’ve learned that you need to be the best, most honest version of yourself to attract your ideal partner. That’s why self-love connects so directly to the next pillar.

But the bigger thing I’ve realised about love is that we literally cannot do life without it. We are social creatures and we need real relationships, deep ones, not just people around us.

That’s why centenarians in Blue Zones live so long, because they have strong communities and genuine connections with the people around them.

And that’s a big part of why I’m so focused on building a community right now, because it feels lonelier and lonelier as you get older, especially for our generation.

To be honest, that’s why I’m even on Substack, writing to you right now. I’m finding my people and hopefully being part of yours.

Self

This is the one most people completely ignore, and it’s the one I think matters the most.

When I was studying philosophy and Buddhism at uni, the ideas that stuck with me most were about self and consciousness.

Like, who are you actually? Underneath all the showing up for other people and saying yes to things you don’t care about and pretending you’re okay when you’re not, who is in there?

I’ve struggled with dissociation for a long time. Even now, I can look at a picture of myself from a few years ago and feel zero connection to that girl. Like I’m watching someone else’s life.

And that feeling, that disconnect from your own story, I think a lot of people in their twenties are dealing with it, but don’t have the words for it yet.

I was an incredible, high-achieving girl growing up. And then I lost my spark, my confidence, basically everything about myself that I recognised.

And now I’m rebuilding, and it’s extremely painful but beautiful at the same time.

I’ve been going to networking events to test myself, showing up for workouts every single day to prove to myself that I’m THAT girl, trying to romanticise life more, reading, getting lost in my thoughts in simple moments.

I used to hate being alone. But I’ve learned to enjoy my own company and that’s changed everything for me.

Having a strong sense of who you are, understanding your past, being present in your life now, and knowing the kind of future you’re trying to build, that’s what this pillar is about.

And without it, the other three don’t really mean anything. You can be healthy, financially stable, and surrounded by people and still feel empty if you don’t actually know who you are.

So that’s the code.

Health, wealth, love, and self. All four, at the same time.

They don’t all need to be perfect. But I’d rather have all four at 50% than one at 100% and any of the others at 0%.

Because that imbalance is exactly what creates the hole. That’s what makes you feel like a shell of yourself, even when your life looks fine from the outside.

And when they’re all in decent shape, even just decent, that’s when the hole closes.

You feel warm in your own skin again. You feel real. You feel like you’re actually inside your own life instead of watching it from somewhere far away.

I used to call that feeling happiness.

But I actually think it’s closer to contentment. This steady, warm, “I really like my life and I know why” feeling that sits in your chest where the emptiness used to be.

And then the bursts of actual happiness, the laughing-so-hard-your-stomach-hurts moments, the random waves of joy that hit you when you’re not expecting them, those come on top of that.

But they can only come when the contentment is already there. You have to feel whole enough to actually receive them.

And I think most of us (including me, for years) keep chasing those bursts of joy without ever asking why we feel so hollow in between.

We wonder why nothing ever feels like enough, when the real answer is that we’re pouring everything into one or two of these areas and completely ignoring the rest.

I spent years doing exactly that.

And once I stopped, once I started giving all four pillars even a little bit of attention at the same time, the hollow feeling went away.

I can’t tell you the exact day it happened because it wasn’t sudden. But I remember the first time I noticed it was gone, and that feeling was worth every single hard thing it took to get there.

Now I check in with these four pillars all the time. When something feels off, I ask myself which one I’ve been neglecting. And it’s always obvious once I actually bother to look.

When I say ‘life with Tahia’, I’m talking about those four pillars.

Because I genuinely believe you can have it all and I think you should:

Health, wealth, love, and self.

Which pillar do you need to pour more into?