If I had to describe myself, it would be the opposite of audacious. For most of my life, I’ve been playing small. I never made big demands, I never voiced strong opinions, and, this is a huge one: I never asked for anything unless I really had to. I didn’t want to be a burden or complicated or difficult. I wanted to be easy and liked. I might write a message, reread it a hundred times, decide it’s too much, and delete it.

We all know the saying that if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. I was never asking.

Because I thought I just had to wait for someone to notice and offer. Or as another famous saying goes: Be so good they can’t ignore you. I always loved that saying. It made sense to me. You just have to be so good that you don’t need to negotiate, you don’t need to promote yourself or fight for opportunities or be persistent or loud. You just have to be extremely good at what you do, and you’ll automatically get what you deserve.

Being good is not enough

The brutal truth is: you can be EXTREMELY good, and still get ignored. Because life is not fair, and you don’t always get what you deserve.

I still strongly believe that hard work and dedication pay off, but more often than not only if you make sure you do what you can to get the chance to prove it, instead of waiting and hoping it will get noticed eventually.

You have to send the message, name the price, pitch yourself, and make sure people understand what you bring to the table.

The thing I had to realise is that most doors don’t open for the most qualified, but for the ones most convinced that they are qualified.

But that’s exactly where one of the main problems with audacity comes in: differentiating someone who is audacious from someone who is entitled, arrogant, or full of themselves.

Realising that there IS a significant difference was probably the most important thing for me.

Audacity is not arrogance or entitlement

Here is how they compare:

Audacity: “Give me a shot and let me prove it.”

Arrogance: “I’ve already proven it, and you should have noticed.”

Entitlement: “I don’t need to prove it, this should already be mine.”

Believing in yourself and asking for what you deserve does not make you arrogant or entitled, which is what I’ve always feared. I actually confused selling myself short with being humble.

And THAT, I’ve come to learn, is the biggest enemy in this whole story. Because not asking for what you want even though you know you deserve it is not humility, it’s FALSE humility. Stay with me here because this next part is important!!!

False humility is the reflexive “oh, it’s nothing!!” (when in reality it really is), it’s the self-deprecation before sharing something you’ve worked on hard, it’s asking for less when you know you’re worth more, it’s telling yourself your effort and sacrifice will be rewarded at some point. Someone will notice, you just have to patiently wait for your turn.

And here’s the thing that completely blew my mind: false humility is a form of self-importance.

It’s when you believe people are paying way more attention to you than they actually are.

People don’t think about us nearly as much as we think they do

When I told myself that if they wanted me, they would have asked me, I assumed they have me on their radar at all time. When I thought I’m bothering someone or being difficult, I assumed it’s heavy enough to reshape someone’s week (which it usually isn’t, and most people actually want to be asked! Being trusted with something is a compliment). When I was convinced I’ll seem desperate, I assumed someone is keeping close track of my behaviour. Same thing with worrying that it’ll look stupid if it doesn’t work, or that I’ll seem annoying or embarrassing. No one is tracking our steps as closely as we think they do, most often actually not at all.

This thought pattern is called spotlight effect. It makes you behave like every move you make is being recorded and reviewed.

What helps me a lot to free myself from spotlight effect is to remind myself that I myself don’t follow anyone else’s life that closely. I’m way too consumed with my own life. My own fears and worries and doubts. And so is everyone else.

Accepting that you’re not that significant to anyone else’s day is so freeing, and in a way it’s what actual humility is. Because you’re not taking yourself too important. And the great news is that that makes you more audacious, not less. Because you feel much more free to ask, to try, to put yourself out there. The stakes feel much lower.

But the truth is, realising these things is most often not enough to change deeply held beliefs and over years repeated behaviours.

How to act your way into a new identity

One of the most powerful ways to rewire a belief is to act according to the new belief.

Every time I act like someone who asks, speaks up, or takes the chance, I give my brain a little more evidence that this is simply who I am now.

So what I started doing is taking small (and now also increasingly bigger) actions that feel incredibly audacious to me. A few examples:

• asking for a better table, a better room, a better seat

• saying, “Actually, I’d prefer this,” instead of “I don’t mind”

• asking someone for a favour without writing six paragraphs explaining why

• saying no without inventing an elaborate excuse

• asking someone to redo something when I’m not happy with it

• telling someone, “I think I’m the right person for this.”

• asking to be introduced to someone who could help me

• negotiating a contract clause instead of assuming it’s fixed

An important thing I want to mention is that audacity doesn’t have to involve asking anyone for anything.

What audacity means is to take yourself seriously before external validation confirms it, and act accordingly.

Publishing the piece. Starting the business. Calling yourself a writer. Charging the price. Going alone. Speaking with conviction. Acting like your ideas and opinions deserve space. Because they do.

Being good at what you do matters, of course it does. But being good and being chosen are two different things. You can’t control who chooses you, or which doors open. But you can absolutely make sure you put yourself in the best position by asking, pitching yourself, saying what you want, putting your name forward.

Not because you believe you’re entitled to a yes, but because you have the audacity to find out.

Thank you so much for reading!!

Lots of love,

Nicole

One of my favourite types of content is the one where people show their physical transformation. You first see a clip of them being overweight or completely out of shape, and then it cuts to them a few months or years later, and you sometimes can’t even recognise them because of how crazy much they’ve changed. And it’s not just their bodies but literally their whole demeanour and energy and charisma.

It’s just SOOO MIND BLOWING to see how much we’re able to change if we commit to it!!!!! But that’s not the only reason I love it. It’s also because we get to see where someone started. We get visual proof that they were not just gifted with a strong, toned body, but that they had to work for it hard. AND, even more importantly: that it took time. That the transformation didn’t happen overnight and wasn’t magical or easy breezy.

And that’s something incredibly empowering especially in today’s time where it feels like everyone has it figured out and is super successful seemingly overnight and just absolutely crushing it.

Recently it’s maybe become a bit more of a trend to also share your failures and document whatever journey you’re on from the beginning and I also think that it will come more and more, because that kind of content is trending for a reason.

People are 1) tired of the highlight reel, and 2) love to follow a journey from 0 to see the transformation in real time. But right now we’re still more likely to be presented with someone’s amazing end result without any context of where they started or how they got there.

I’m definitely not pointing fingers because I would have to point them on myself. I fall into that exact category with my content on Instagram as well. A few years ago, I started posting yoga and flexibility content. I would film my practice and show advanced poses, but only the ones I had just mastered and was extremely proud that I could do. I wouldn’t show the ones I was struggling with or couldn’t do yet, for several reasons.

First, I thought that no one wanted to see that. I thought that it’s not inspiring or relevant to see all the things I can’t do.

Second, my ego would definitely not allow it. I guess it’s a no brainer that it feels a million times better to post yourself doing something that you’re good at, than something that you’re not.

There is also a third component for me that has to do with my health background, which I’ve talked about in previous articles like this one. For years I was so ashamed of my body, that I didn’t film myself at all at the beginning of my yoga journey, because I literally could not stand to look at myself, I’m not even exaggerating. I only started once I had already made a lot of progress.

It’s one of the things I really regret, not just because it would make for amazing transformational content, but even more so just for myself. To really see how far I’ve come.

We’re terrible at noticing our own progress

Because that’s a huge one I think almost everyone can relate to. That we don’t realise how much progress we’re making or how far we’ve already come because we compare ourselves to who we were yesterday, where the progress is microscopic, because we can’t remember as well who we were a year ago. And then we of course also keep raising the bar, because our progress becomes the new normal.

I have a few pictures in yoga poses where I wasn’t as beginner anymore, but where you could still see significant progress, and whenever I post those on my instagram side by side, I get so many messages from followers who are so surprised that I hadn’t always been flexible (quite the opposite) or that it took me a long time to get to where I’m now.

We’re missing the before

When we only see the end result without any context, we assume that either people are just naturally gifted/ were born this way, OR that it came super easily and quickly to them, because it looks so effortless. It’s something the brain automatically does, because it only uses what it can see. And it can’t see the endless hours of work, it can’t see the setbacks, the struggles, the low moments.

And most of all: it can’t see the sacrifice. Whatever it is you want to achieve, there is a sacrifice you will have to make.

Talent is wildly overrated

If you haven’t read the book ‘Grit’ by Angela Duckworth, you have to start it right now. It’s such an eye opening book to the fact that talent is so much less important than we think. The thing it comes down to in the end is how much grit you have, meaning how persistent and passionate you are.

We get so blinded by the idea that it’s the most talented who succeed. Wrong. The person with less talent but a hell lot of perseverance and passion will outperform the more talented one every single time.

So having a mindset of: ‘I’ll keep going no matter what, it’s not an option to give up, I am giving this my absolute all’, is what determines most whether someone will succeed or not.

We’ve completely lost our sense of how long things take

Now the big problem with that is that in order to keep going, it’s really helpful to see progress. To feel like you’re going in the right direction and that you’re being rewarded for your effort and the sacrifices you make. And somehow, by seeing everyone online succeeding with what they’re doing, and achieving so many great things completely effortlessly (because again, we don’t SEE the effort), we’ve started to develop this expectation and almost entitlement that we, too, should be seeing results quickly, and that it shouldn’t be that hard. Because it doesn’t look hard for others?

Maybe we don’t lack motivation because progress takes too long. Maybe we lose motivation because we’ve forgotten how long progress is supposed to take.

That’s also why we always search for the magical short cut. There must be something we’re missing, some kind of secret that would get us what we want quickly and effortlessly.

The secret

The thing is, there is a secret that we tend to miss. The secret is something I personally really hate. The secret is patience and a reality check. In order to be persistent, we need to remind ourselves that good things take time.

I like to think of it as an active patience. Because somehow patience in my head is connected with waiting. But nothing comes from sitting around and waiting. Active patience means to not obsess over the outcome but trust the process. That we WILL see results if we keep going, but that it’ll take time. Yes, for some more than for others, I think that’s the brutal truth, but it’s literally impossible to not see results if you keep showing up.

It feels like nothing is happening until everything happens

The sad stories are the ones where people give up right before the big turning point. And that’s such an important reminder. It always feels like nothing is changing until, all of a sudden, everything changes.

The hardest part of any transformation is continuing to show up during the period where you have almost no evidence that what you’re doing is working.

It’s something I’m trying to remind myself of a lot, because I catch myself all the time getting demotivated because I don’t see the results that I think I should be seeing.

Maybe the transformation is the whole point

But the mindset shift that helped me the most is this: The person you’re becoming while chasing the goal is better than actually achieving the goal.

I heard someone say the other day: “If someone handed you your dream body, would you be able to maintain it? If someone handed you a big following, would you be able to keep it?”

Probably not. Because you wouldn’t have the skills and experience and learnings that the version of you that had gone through the journey would have. And that version, the person you’re becoming, is the real value. It’s something no one can ever take away from you.

I hope this mindset shift helps you as well. It’s hard not to get discouraged in a time where it looks like it’s supposed to be easy. But this saying is still as true as ever: nothing worth having comes easy.

Thank you so much for reading!!

Lots of love,

Nicole

When I look back to the girl I used to be just a few years ago, I almost can’t believe how much I’ve changed. I mean, yes, we all change, but hear me out.

I was the most insecure person you can imagine, had no opinions of my own and always just followed along. Somehow I had this really deep belief that everyone else knows better, and that I can’t trust my own judgement. I wish I was exaggerating, but I did in fact have extremely low self esteem in wonderful combination with a strong inferiority complex.

No surprise, that made me absolutely desperate for outside approval and confirmation. Whenever I was thinking about doing something, I needed someone else to tell me that it was 100% a good idea. Well, actually even more than that, I needed someone to actively encourage me and tell me how wonderful I am, especially when it was something that I was secretly dreaming about, but standing in my own way by asking: “but who am I to do this?”.

My prime example is starting an Instagram and YouTube account to share my yoga practice after I had just done my first yoga teacher training.

I would mention that dream to anyone who would listen, in the hopes that they would make me feel like I was allowed to do it, which is so crazy to say but that was literally how I felt. That I‘m not allowed to do it, because again, who the fuck am I? I needed someone from the outside to give me permission.

I remember on the very first date with my now husband, I brought up once again that dream of giving content creation a shot, and he looked at me and said: “But I don’t get why you’re not already doing it? You are clearly passionate about it, there would for sure be people interested in what you have to share, I don’t really get what’s holding you back?”

He made it sound like the most natural thing in the world, and without knowing it, gave me exactly that precious little permission slip I was so desperately seeking. From the very beginning, he always believed in me so much more than I did, and I know that without him I wouldn’t be where I am today. It sounds super romantic, but it’s actually really fucking sad. I get sad writing about it.

The person to believe in myself the most should always be me. Always.

nobody wants it for me as much as I do

Because the truth is: no one else in this world cares as much about me becoming who I want to be and experiencing everything I want from this life as I do. Not my husband, not my mum, not my best friend, not my therapist, no one. Because I’m the only one living it every second of every day. No one else.

I mean, we don’t need to talk about how important it is to surround ourselves with people that believe in us and support and encourage us.

But I strongly believe that that should be a (non negotiable) bonus. I am so grateful my husband was so actively encouraging my dreams and pushing me in the right direction (for me). But still, that shouldn’t have been on him.

while you’re waiting, someone else has already started

Because something else I realised is that needing someone to give me permission always meant I was waiting. And waiting instead of taking action is one of the worst things we can do to ourselves. The longer we wait, the more time our brain has to come up with a million stupid reasons why not to do the thing. We lose so much precious time that could have already brought us a lot further in the journey. And while we’re still over here doubting ourselves, someone else has already started.

That truth hit me like a train when I was listening to a podcast episode where two girls talked about their life lessons after building a huge media business together, and one of them said: “The best question I started to ask myself was: Why not us? Someone will create the next big thing in media, why not us?”

why not me?

Somehow, when I heard that, something shifted within me. I don’t know why exactly, but that question made me realise that I’m just as allowed and capable of pursuing my dreams as anyone else is. I used to have the repeating thought pattern of: Who am I to share my yoga practice? Who am I to share my thoughts on something? Why would anyone want to see my content? Why me?

Wrong. Why not me?

There were people out there doing what I wanted to do who were not more talented or special or capable than me, but they were one thing that I wasn’t: doers. They went for it. They took action.

And the really important thing is that they were probably still doubting themselves and questioning what the hell they were doing, but they did it anyway. And that’s probably the most important realisation I had in my life so far. That self belief doesn’t have to come first.

In fact, it almost never does.

Somehow we think that other people doing cool stuff had it all figured out when they started, knew exactly what they were doing, and felt super capable and ready. But when you hear people talk about the beginning stages of pursuing their ideas, you realise that’s almost never the case.

no one has it figured out

Almost everyone struggles with feelings of self doubt or not believing in themselves. Some more than others. But nothing, absolutely nothing beats taking action in spite of not fully believing in yourself.

I could see that so clearly after I started actively pursuing my dreams, not just thinking and talking about them. It made me prove to myself that my voice matters just as much as anyone else’s. That there are people that want to hear my opinions. That I’m just as allowed to do the things I dream about as anyone else is. The more I put myself out there, challenged myself, launched things even though I felt anything but ready, and literally just tried, the more I nourished the voice in my head that’s telling me I can do this, and starved the one trying to convince me I can’t.

Today I still notice the self doubt and insecurity creeping up. And I also notice how much I love to receive messages from followers or listeners of my podcast, telling me they love my content and how it’s making a difference in their lives. It’s a beautiful feeling, but it can so easily feed into that need for reassurance and approval.

It’s such a fine line between allowing these messages to make me happy, and allowing them to determine my self worth. I know I’m still prone to the latter, because building confidence and believing in yourself is not something that happens overnight. But I’m trying my best to enjoy and appreciate these messages (and maybe allow them to put a little spring in my step), while at the same time not basing my entire self worth on them. Because if I give the positive feedback the power to determine how I feel about myself, I’m also giving negative feedback the power to make me feel like absolute shit.

It’s not easy to find that sweet balance, but the one thing I know for sure is that I will never again wait for someone else to give me permission to pursue my dreams. I will be the one writing the permission slip in big fat ink. And I really, really hope you do the same.

Thank you so much for reading!!

Lots of love,

Nicole

I grew up with a condition affecting my right leg called mild spastic paresis. It’s a movement disorder caused by early damage to the brain, and it basically means the muscles in that leg are weaker and tighter than they should be, and don’t fully do what I tell them to. I had two surgeries as a child (which made a huge difference) and I was supposed to do regular exercises to properly recover and get the best possible outcome. And I hated it so much. SO MUCH! I dreaded every physiotherapy session and got so angry with my mum whenever she would tell me I had to put in more effort.

I think there are only few things as frustrating as not being able to do things with your body that normally shouldn’t even require effort, like walking without a limp, lifting your heel, balancing on one leg, or rotating your ankle. I couldn’t do any of these things, and working on them felt like torture, especially when it seemed like there was no real progress (with neurological issues, progress is extremely slow). But instead of gritting my teeth and fighting for my future self and having patience, I chose the much easier path of hiding it as best as I could and just kind of ignore it. I became a master at telling myself that it’s not that bad and doesn’t matter that much.

In the moment it was more comfortable to live with the limitations than to actively do something about them.

Until the day came where I reached some sort of ‘rock bottom’. I was in my early twenties and the imbalance between my right and left leg had led to scoliosis, which in turn caused excruciating back pain. I couldn’t walk for more than 20 minutes without having to take a break because it hurt so much. That’s when ignoring became no longer a viable option (unless I wanted to learn how to live with pain for the rest of my life, which, well, I did not.)

When everything started to change

It’s absolutely mind blowing what we’re suddenly capable of when staying the same becomes the less comfortable option. I realised there was no other way than taking responsibility for my health. That’s when went to my first ever yoga class (which felt like the hardest thing I’d ever done), then to my next one, and the next one, until I consistently practiced three to four times a week, sometimes even followed some YouTube videos at home, and eventually even went back to physiotherapy, the thing I hated most in life. Looking back on that time now, 10 years later, it’s so wild to see what a beautiful ripple effect came from that one decision of finally taking responsibility for my health. It literally changed my entire life. Not overnight, but over the span of 10 years (and counting). I became a yoga and pilates teacher, a certified holistic health coach, I created a community of over 400k people on Instagram through sharing my practice, got sponsored by alo yoga, recently started a podcast and went on my first brand trip with Biotherm in Barcelona.

Something I keep wondering about is why it first had to become so bad for me to finally commit to putting in the work instead of avoiding it for years.

The way our brain works

Which, to be fair, is exactly how our brain is programmed. It will always want to avoid discomfort as much as possible and choose the familiar over the unfamiliar, even if the familiar sucks. To the brain, familiarity equals safety which equals comfort and survival. And that is precisely why experiencing rock bottom (or any dramatic life altering experience) is so powerful. Why people make the craziest life changes after reaching an extreme low or experiencing a dramatic turning point. On one hand, you of course wouldn’t wish that for anyone, but on the other, I would actually argue that in most cases it can be better than being caught in the unsatisfying middle. In a place where things are not good, but also not bad enough that we are forced to do something about them, and so we don’t.

It’s not just discomfort that is holding us back from change, but also fear. And overwhelm. And shame. Oh shame, that’s a huge one. My whole life I’ve felt so much shame about my body, and even more shame for not managing to do something about it. But like I mentioned, I had absolutely mastered to make myself believe that it’s not that big of a problem. This kind of behaviour is a prime example for something called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when you do something (or don’t do something) that is in direct conflict with your beliefs. For example you smoke, even though you know it causes cancer. Or you buy something expensive even though you know you can’t afford it. Or you stay in the relationship even though deep down you know it’s not the right one. Or in my case, I avoid the exercises even though I know exactly how important they are.

For our brain, that’s torture, because it’s programmed to continuously confirm our core beliefs through our actions. So when we do something that doesn’t match with what we believe, the brain really doesn’t like it, and it does something interesting: it comes up with reasons and excuses and justifications for why it’s okay to act the way we do. Why it’s okay to smoke, okay to spend the money, okay to avoid the exercises. It’s literally a coping mechanism. You’ve had a really tough day and deserve a bit of relaxation, a little bit of smoking won’t kill you, you’ll stop soon anyways. Or: You really, REALLY need that bag right now, and you will just have to make more money in the future. And also, the bag will increase in value so it’s actually an investment! Or the things I would tell myself: Nobody notices there is something wrong with your leg anyways, it doesn’t matter if you loose your balance sometimes, you feel so tired today, you’ll just do it tomorrow, and then for real.

It’s actually quite impressive how creative our brain can be, and how effective it is at removing that cognitive dissonance and justify literally anything within the blink of an eye. It’s probably the prime example of self sabotage and standing in our own way, and let me tell you, I was an absolute master at this.

When the excuses stop working

But there was always one scenario in specific where it stopped working: when someone would approach me and ask if there’s something wrong with my leg because they noticed I’m walking funny. That happened maybe every few weeks or months, and every single time it felt like a sharp wake up call (a really terrible one where someone basically slaps you in the face, hard). It always only took this one question to bring a certain emotion that I’d been trying so hard to suppress for years, to the surface. And that emotion was the previous mentioned shame. SHAME in capital letters.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve told myself after encounters like that: Okay NOW I will definitely start to really take care of my health, and to really work on my right leg and to do the best I can. I felt absolutely determined to not accept my avoidance anymore. But it never ever lasted. I would stick to my exercises for a bit, and then experience that same frustration and hopelessness of feeling like it doesn’t really work, and - what I can see crystal clear now looking back - I wouldn’t even try to come up with excuses anymore, but just push it out of my mind entirely. Recently I learned that there is a name for that exact behaviour: defensive avoidance. It’s a coping mechanism where a person ignores facts, procrastinates, withdraws, brushes off serious issues, or pretends a problem doesn’t exist because of fear of failure, shame, vulnerability, and/or overwhelm.

You could almost say defensive avoidance is what happens when the excuses stop working. Cognitive dissonance is what the brain does with a truth it can still argue with. Defensive avoidance is what it does with a truth it can’t.

It was never about discipline

For years and years I was convinced that I’m simply not disciplined enough. I don’t want it enough. I have no willpower. It increased the shame tenfold. Now I know that that shame, combined with the overwhelm I felt especially from not seeing improvements, made my brain avoid anything to do with it in order to protect myself from a discomfort I felt like I had no way out of.

And when feelings like hopelessness, shame, and overwhelm are involved, it doesn’t help to add pressure. It doesn’t help to tell yourself to have more discipline or willpower. To be harder on yourself. To push yourself more. That pressure actually only makes it worse, because it adds fear and shame to a situation that already has too much of it.

I wish I had understood this years earlier and it didn’t have to get to a point where I couldn’t walk because of the pain I was in. But I’m strongly convinced, based on my own experience, that it doesn’t have to be like that. There is a way to break out of that cycle without having to experience rock bottom.

Not the main door, a side entrance

Without being fully aware of it at the time, I finally figured out that the way I had been approaching it in the past simply didn’t work. That’s when I went to my first yoga class. It was completely different to the physio sessions or me being alone at home trying to do some exercises. The yoga classes weren’t specifically focused on the issues I had with my leg, but targeted at least some of them (especially my back pain), and in general worked on my whole body and showed me what is possible when you stick with something consistently. The more progress I made (being able to do poses I never thought were possible for me), the more it showed to me that change is possible. That directly targeted the hopelessness I had been feeling for years.

Looking back I can see that it was a much better entry way into DOING SOMETHING instead of nothing. Because that’s the thing. When we’re avoiding something, the direct route is often the one we’re least able to take, because often it’s connected with years of failure and shame. Yoga didn’t carry any of that history for me. It wasn’t the main door, it was a side entrance.

There is this saying: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If there’s something in your life that you simply cannot manage to change, even though you want it SO BADLY, ask yourself if there is a different way you could try it. Experiment. And don’t focus on it being the most effective way.

There are still weaknesses and especially neurological issues I need to work on to this day, but it’s nowhere near to how it was a few years ago. My balance is still off, I can’t rotate my ankle, I’m still not walking perfectly normal (especially when I’m tired or carrying something) but that brings me to another thing that had to change. I had to let go of the shame. To be honest, it’s still a work in progress. But I’m proud to say there IS progress.

Shame thrives on being hidden

I’m trying to find the right words to describe shame. Maybe you can think about how you would describe it. It’s such a powerful emotion that can have an iron grip on you. And it always says the same thing: You are the problem. That’s why we try to hide it. And shame absolutely thrives on trying to be hidden. That’s what it lives off. By not hiding it anymore, you remove its oxygen. Tell someone. Say it out loud. Write about it like I’m doing right now (I’m honestly shocked by how therapeutic this feels, and I haven’t even clicked publish yet). Actively acknowledging it loosens that grip and allows you to see things as they really are. That you are not the problem, but it is yours to deal with.

You might have been born into a terrible family and endured the worst things. You can choose to either hide it and block it out and feel shame every time you get reminded of it, OR you accept that that’s the way it is, that it doesn’t say anything about your worth, and that it’s your responsibility to not let it hold you back, but maybe even to fuel you to create the best possible childhood for your own kids.

Maybe you were born with a health condition that impacted one of your legs. You can either choose to ignore it and feel shame every time you get reminded of it, OR you one day use it as a story to give courage to other people (at least I hope that’s what I’m doing here). And that’s when you finally start to realise that there was nothing to be ashamed of in the first place.

Although I have to be honest with you: I’m not writing this from the other side of it.

You know what I’m really sad about? That I didn’t film myself at the beginning of my yoga practice. I would love to have that visual comparison now, to see how far I’ve come. But I was so ashamed back then that I couldn’t bear to look at myself (defensive avoidance at its best).

Today I can film myself doing poses on my right leg that are still nowhere near where I’d like them to be, especially the balancing ones. But I’m still too ashamed to ever post them.

So no, I haven’t fully gotten there. But I just wrote an entire article about the thing I spent the majority of my life hiding. Maybe that’s the version of not hiding I’m capable of right now. And it’s still further than I’ve ever been.

Thank you so much for reading, it means the world to me.

Lots of love,

Nicole

I don’t know about you, but I’m currently flooded with content about how life changing it is to delete all your social media and go offline. I mean, digital detox has always been a thing, but it feels like there’s an offline revolution (funnily enough happening online lol), and it undoubtedly stems from all of us being sick and tired of this online world that is build around grabbing as much of our time and attention as possible while making us feel incomplete, behind, and like we’re always lacking something (to sell us things we absolutely don’t need).

I think we all know the feeling way too well of reaching for our phones, opening Instagram without even thinking about it, spending 30 minutes scrolling, comparing, rotting, and then wondering where the last half hour went, and why we suddenly feel like shit about ourselves.

BUT as with everything in life, we need to acknowledge that it’s not that black and white. Because I think we also all know the feeling of reaching for our phone, coming across a really inspiring or motivating or thought provoking piece of content and feeling super empowered or uplifted or connected or like we just learned something valuable. That does happen too, just unfortunately not that often. Which leads us to the obvious conclusion: we either join in on the offline revolution, or we do our absolute best to actively curate and select what we allow into our minds (with intentional boundaries and time limits), instead of just passively scrolling.

Definitely not an easy task, but let’s tackle it.

Who's hanging your walls

To begin with, I want you to think of a museum curator. He or she doesn’t make the art that’s being shown, but that person decides what gets wall space and what stays in storage. Most of a collection is actually never being shown, it’s only the pieces that the curator picks based on his or her expertise. So, whenever we’re merely consuming content instead of actively curating it, it’s like letting someone else hang our walls, but with different intentions than a museum curator has.

The word “curate” by the way comes from the Latin word “curare”, which means “to take care of”. This is so beautiful, because it literally means that by curating what we allow into our minds, we’re taking care of ourselves in a really significant way. But we actually keep forgetting just HOW significant it is. We still don’t realise enough just how much we’re influenced and shaped by what we consume. Even if we think we know, we sure aren’t acting like, otherwise we wouldn’t be spending so much of our time mindlessly scrolling.

We're more influenced than we realise

Did you ever hear about the mere exposure effect? It’s a psychological bias that makes us like things more the more we see them, because they become familiar to us (and our brain loves familiarity). A great example is when you hear a song for the first time and you’re like, hmm yeah it’s okay, and then you hear it again and again and suddenly you’re like omg I love this song! (And then sometimes of course you’ve heard it so many times that you start hating it lol, but that’s kind of besides the point here). The point is that the more we’re exposed to something, the more we like it, want it, desire it, strive for it. That’s by the way precisely why there is this well known marketing concept called “rule of 7”. It says you need to expose people to your product or service for at least 7 times before they even consider buying it.

But anyways, it’s a fact that the content we consume (both on and offline of course) shapes our identity, our behaviour, our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, and therefore our entire lives.

Curating social media

Okay, got it, but so how do we apply this magical skill of curating what we consume?

The obvious first way to curate is to only follow content that uplifts us, motivates us, and is genuinely good for us, and unfollow everything else. The tricky thing is that the algorithm has changed a lot in the last years, and we’re now basically being more exposed to content from accounts we don’t follow than those we actually do. The algorithm shows us what it thinks we want to see.

I think it’s still important to curate your subscription/following list (and remember there is the option to mute, in case you can’t unfollow someone because it might come across rude), but we also need to curate and “train” the algorithm, which requires willpower and A LOT OF intention. Because it’s unfortunately just way too easy to go down a path of useless reels that don’t do anything for us (or actually do make us worse), but are entertaining in the moment. And I’ve realized that’s precisely the problem. We turn towards social media when we need an escape. We feel bored, stressed, tired, or also nothing at all but reach for the phone anyways because it’s become such an ingrained habit by now that lights up our dopamine system. We do it with this expectation that it will make us relax, feel entertained, or even just numbed out. But the thing is, it’s a total catch 22, because it’s doing the exact opposite. Genuine recovery or relaxation requires downregulation to enter our parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest mode. Scrolling doesn’t do that. In fact, it tends to activate our fight or flight mode, especially when we watch stuff that is triggering, makes us compare, makes us feel behind, etc (even if that happens subconsciously).

Scrolling does not relax your brain.

This led me to the realisation that I need to change my whole approach and expectation towards my social media consumption, and stop seeing it as this thing that gives me a mental break. Instead I’ve started to approach it with a clear intention of actively seeking inspiration, motivation, and learning whenever I open it.

What I used to do especially with educational content, is that I would save it to “watch it properly later when I have time” - which is the weirdest thing ever because it wasn’t like I was busy in that moment? But my brain wanted me to continue scrolling instead of pausing and properly watch a longer reel that goes into depth about something, take some additional time to reflect on it, maybe even write down some notes. But that’s exactly what I’ve started to do, and so my algorithm has followed suit, and is showing me precisely that kind of content almost exclusively now.

This gets by the way significantly easier by creating a new account, where you can kind of start from scratch and follow only the accounts that help to elevate you, and focus on training the algorithm to only show you the content that serves the person you want to become. I want to acknowledge that it’s definitely a lot easier said than done though, because as we all know these platforms are build to suck us in and satisfy that need for escape. But that’s exactly why curating alone is not it. We still need to set time limits and restrictions for ourselves especially when it comes to short form content.

Long form is a different story

But let’s actually talk about long form now, which is what we should be prioritizing anyways, because it doesn’t destroy our focus and attention, and it can deliver a lot more value as it can go so much more in depth. The skill of curating is still important, but it’s easier because we’re more forced to make an active choice than just being flooded with one piece of content after the other. The algorithm of course still preselects the content, but we still have that moment of choice, which is exactly where our skill of curating comes in strongest. Something I like to ask myself is: does this piece of content serve my future self? If the answer is yes, great, if it’s a strong no because I know that it could increase my anxiety or comparison or just make me feel worse about myself, then I need to take care of that future self and say no to it. The tricky part is all the content that falls in to the middle grey zone, which most often is the entertaining, “numbing” kind. That’s where I try to rely on my self awareness and rationality. Having for example a show that you look forward to and that feels like a nice reward after a long day, I’d say totally go for it. If it’s something that makes me binge watch 5 episodes, go late to bed, and feel guilty about it the next day, I need to find that discipline to set boundaries that my future self will thank me for.

Real curation is contrast

Curating is not only about choosing the good, and eliminating the bad. It’s also about diversification. Consuming things that are opening up new ways of thinking, or different perspectives on things, or from a different culture, just basically completely outside our bubble. A museum curator who only hangs up similar art from one artist isn't a curator, because real curation is contrast: a difficult room next to a beautiful one, an old artist next to a new one, one piece beside something that argues with it. That’s exactly how we get new thoughts and inspiration and ideas and creativity, and it’s often also what makes us feel more alive. Because what we consume influences what we think, and when we consume the same things, we keep thinking the same things, and it can make us feel so stuck. That’s exactly why we get so much inspiration from traveling, or meeting new people, or doing something completely new.

My principle for creating diversity in what I consume is: stop asking the algorithm for recommendations and start asking other humans. Actively asking for recommendations from others, like: "What's something you've read recently or listened to that changed your mind?". I also like to listen to interviews with people who’s work or life has nothing in common with mine, or consume things that have been created more than 20 years ago. There are of course so many more ways to create diversity in what we consume, but the main thing is to stay curious and open and give things a chance, because it’s definitely a lot easier to always just revert to what we know, and what we’re comfortable and familiar with, but that’s most often not where growth lies.

The question underneath all of it

In order to be the best curator for ourselves that we can possibly be, we need to be so crystal clear about who we’re curating for. Who is that highest potential future version of myself that I want to become? The answer needs to be a clear vision that I keep on top of my mind to let it guide my decisions as best as possible (without going overboard obviously, that comfort show will not be cut off the list). But we can’t curate a life we haven’t imagined. So before unfollowing anyone or clean out anything, let’s ask ourselves: What do we actually want to be shaped by?

Thank you so much for reading, I’m sending you lots of love,

Nicole

I grew up with this very strong belief about myself that there is something wrong with me. That I’m not normal. One underyling reason was a health condition I was born with, called slight spastic paralysis, that required two surgeries and countless hours of physiotherapy across my childhood and teen years. Even though I was able to do most things in daily life, there were limits in what I could and couldn’t do (especially with sports). It continuously reinforced this thought pattern in my head that my body is not normal and hence, I’m not good enough.

In the beginning of my twenties, I set foot in my first yoga class. It was extremely challenging and I actually hated it, but at the same time I could feel in my whole body that this was exactly what I needed. It helped to strengthen my spine (I was struggling with lots of back pain), work on balance, and improve my mobility.

So I kept going. Three times a week. And additional sessions at home with YouTube. If you want to hear the full story on how this one decision changed my entire life, I’ve talked about it on my podcast Truly Well, but for the sake of time, let’s fast forward 10 years: I’m a yoga and Pilates teacher, sharing my practice and life to a community of over 600k people on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I was able to change my body a lot over these last years, the imbalance between my right and left leg decreased (and my backpain disappeared!), but the condition is still there, and I still have to work on it every single day. But you know what has changed even more than my body: my brain.

When I tell you I was the most insecure girl you can imagine, I mean it. Like I already mentioned, I was constantly telling myself that I wasn’t good enough and that there was something wrong with me. And I was walking through life telling myself: that’s just who I am, that’s just how it is!

Now I know that that’s the biggest lie we can tell ourselves.

“I’ve always been an insecure person”, “I’ve never been good with money”, “I’ve always been messy”, “I’m just not good at relationships”, “It’s just in my DNA! It’s who I am!”

We say these things constantly. It somehow feels like self-awareness, like we’re just being honest about our flaws. But it’s actually the single most limiting thing we can say. Neuroscience is now completely clear that in almost every case, it’s not true.

There’s a word for this, and you’ve probably heard it thrown around a lot: neuroplasticity. Our brain’s ability to physically rewire itself. To change.

I know this is a bold claim, but understanding how neuroplasticity works will truly change your entire life.

Because our brain is being rewired right now, in this moment, whether we’re paying attention to it or not. And this leads to the really important question: are we the one influencing and directing this change, or are we just letting it happen and be directed by our environment, our habits, our phone.

So let’s get into how we can take full advantage of neuroplasticity to create the life we want.

Here is how neuroplasticity works

When I say our brain rewires itself, I don’t mean in a metaphorical sense. I mean in a physical, structural, seeing it on a scanner kind of sense.

One super interesting example is London taxi drivers. To get a black-cab license in London, you have to pass this famous test called ‘The Knowledge’: Aspiring drivers have to memorize approximately 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks, and the preparation typically takes 3 to 4 years (!!!). When researchers scanned these drivers’ brains, they found that the part of the brain that is responsible for spatial memory (the hippocampus) was noticeably larger than in regular people. And the longer someone had been driving, the bigger it was. The brain physically grew the region it was being forced to use.

There is this really popular belief that our brains are only formed and wired in our childhood years. But we know now that plasticity continues our whole life. It’s slower as an adult than in a five-year-old, and it takes more effort, but it never stops. The window of change never closes.

And to understand exactly how it works, I want you to imagine this:

Our brain consists of billions of neurons that are connected by pathways. And those pathways are like trails in a rainforest. When you walk a trail once, it’s basically not visible. But when you walk it every single day, it becomes a wide, clear, well walked path. When you stop walking it, the jungle grows back over it and it becomes basically invisible again.

That’s neuroplasticity. Every time we repeat something, we’re walking a trail and make it a little easier to walk next time. So every time I experienced the limitations of my body when I was growing up, I was repeating to myself: “There’s something wrong with me, I’m not good enough”, so I’ve walked this specific trail thousands of times until it became the widest, fastest pathway in my brain. It became my default belief.

The really amazing news are: I can start walking a different path. But here’s the thing: Our brain does not rewire around our goals. It doesn’t care about our vision board, our intentions, or our ambitious plans for January.

Our brain is watching one thing and one thing only: what we actually, repeatedly do.

When I was younger, I wanted to feel more confident, I wanted to feel like I’m enough, and that I’m capable. But wanting is not an input our brain can use. Repeating is.

Practicing yoga several times a week even though it felt really freaking hard (I couldn’t balance on my right leg AT ALL), starting to post my yoga journey on Instagram even though it felt really freaking scary, teaching a class to a room full of people just days after I completed my first teacher training felt absolutely insane. But that’s what I did, repeatedly, for the last years.

Praciticing yoga started to feel easier, posting started to feel less scary, teaching started to feel more natural. And in turn, that’s what started to change the thoughts and beliefs I had about myself.

“Something is wrong with my body and I’m not good enough”, started to turn into “Wow my body is amazing at recovering and I’m so much more capable than I thought”.

“I’m such an insecure person and not worthy of love” started to turn into “I have something to contribute and deserve to be loved exactly as I am.”

BIG DISCLAIMER: This works in the negative, too!

Everything we’ve just discussed about the brain rewiring around what we repeat obviously also works in the negative way, too. Any negative behaviour, thought pattern, belief we have gets stronger and stronger the more we engage with it, and changes our brain in the exact opposite way than we want.

Here’s a fascinating example: Researchers looked at what happens to the brain under chronic stress. What they found is that under continuous stress, the brain starts to remodel itself. The prefrontal cortex (our center for calm, deliberate thinking and for regulating our emotions) physically shrinks, and at the same time, the amygdala (our fear and threat center) physically grows. Our brain basically just wants to be as efficient as possible, so if it’s exposed to constant stress, it makes us physically better at being stressed.

But again: it runs both ways. The plasticity that built the anxiety can also un-build it again. The prefrontal cortex has the ability to regrow, by for example lowering the load, doing things like meditation and breathwork, sleeping enough and actually resting.

How to use neuroplasticity to change your life

Action comes first, always

We cannot think our way into a new self. But wee can act our way into one. The more we repeat a behaviour, the more our brain goes like: “Ah okay, this is who we are now!”, and updates our identitiy. So it’s really true that every single rep we do is a vote for the person we’re becoming.

This is obviously a lot easier said than done, which is why I’ve put together 5 of the most powerful tips on how we can act like the person we want to become:

#1: pick a specific behaviour, not the outcome. Not ‘I want to be fit,’ that’s a wish your brain can’t act on. Instead: ‘I walk for ten minutes after my morning coffee.’ A specific action you repeat. Our brain rewires around the doing, so we have to give it a doing.

#2: attach it to something you already do, and decide exactly when and where. ‘After I pour my coffee, I do the thing.’ You’re not relying on motivation in the moment, because motivation is unreliable and it will not show up on the hard days. You’re building the pathway on autopilot by linking it to a cue that already exists in your life.

#3: protect your attention while you do it, and then actually rest. Ten focused minutes rewires you more than an hour half-distracted. And the change gets locked in during sleep. So the least glamorous neuroplasticity tool on earth is: go to bed.

#4: don’t quit when it feels hard. Expect it to feel hard well past the point you think it should be easy. And when it feels hard, remember what that sensation actually is: it’s the wiring, change is happening. Do not quit at the friction.

#5: remember that plasticity is also about subtraction. Unused pathways grow over. So you don’t only add good pathways, you starve the bad ones. Make the bad habit harder to reach, remove the trigger, interrupt the pattern early and often. You can’t win a head-on fight with a habit. But you can quietly stop feeding it until the jungle grows back over the trail (the best book on that is definitely Atomic Habits by James Clear).

You are not fixed

The thing that personally helps me the most to do the things that I know will rewire my brain in the way I want, is to constantly remind myself of neuroplasticity. Just knowing about it is so powerful in my opinion. Knowing that the brain is changing every single day, whether we want it to or not, and that we decide whether to take advantage of that to actively become the person we’d like to be, or not. The responsibility really is on us, because we have the ability to choose. And this, I feel like, is one of the most empowering realizations. We are not fixed, we have the ability to change. But we absolutely have to make use of that ability and direct it in your way.

Thank you so much for reading!! 🤎

xx Nicole

If you’ve been anywhere near Instagram lately, you’ve heard it: “You HAVE to be delusional in life!” Creators trying to convince you that the secret to your dream life is to be absolutely delusional about it.

And to be honest with you, I love this delulu trend. Believing that what you want is possible and going after it, even when it looks crazy to everyone around you. But the backlash has a point too: you can’t just believe your way into success.

So I did what I always do: I went to the research. What does neuroscience actually say about unreasonable optimism? Does it work, or is it wishful thinking with better branding? And how the hell do you actually become delusionally optimistic? Here is what I found (and it’s wild):

Finding #1: Your brain is a prediction machine, not a camera

This is something I’m still trying to wrap my head around: our brain does not see the world the way a camera does. It’s not passively taking in images of what’s around us, but it’s guessing what’s out there, and then updating it with our senses. This is called “controlled hallucination.”

There are two reasons our brain does it this way:

Speed. The signal from our eyes is slow and messy. If our brain waited to build the world from scratch every moment, we’d be dangerously behind reality. Predicting first and only processing the surprises is far faster.

Bandwidth. There’s vastly more information hitting our senses every second than our brain can process. It has to guess and prioritize.

Now here’s the part that matters: those guesses are based on our expectations. Which means — stay with me — what we BELIEVE will happen strongly shapes what you PERCEIVE happening. Let me give you a few examples:

You've searched everywhere for your keys while they were right in front of you on the table — because your brain predicted "not here" and essentially photoshopped them out of your attention.Then someone points and suddenly they’re obvious. The keys were always there. Your prediction wasn’t.

Or those images where you can’t see the hidden shape until someone tells you what it is, and then you can never un-see it. Nothing on the page changed. Your brain’s prediction did, and that changed what you perceived.

Or the way you can read a sentence with jumbled letters or a missing word without noticing, because your brain predicted what should be there and served you that instead of the actual text.

Your brain is constantly asking: “what’s most likely to happen next?” Then it starts preparing for that future.

Once you know this, imagining the best-case scenario stops sounding woo-woo and starts sounding like strategy.

Practice saying “of course it will work out!”, “of course we’ll have a good time”, “of course I’ll make it happen”, instead of doing the opposite “this is so typical this happens to me”, “nothing ever works out for me”, “I’ll never manage to do this”, because that’s literally what we prime our brain to perceive and expect.

And the research backs this up: people who expect positive outcomes persist longer, recover faster from setbacks, and achieve more than people who expect the worst.

(This, by the way, is also the neuroscience behind the “lucky girl syndrome.” When you operate on the belief that you’re the luckiest person alive, your brain starts noticing lucky situations everywhere.)

Finding #2: Self-efficacy is one of the strongest psychological predictors of action

Albert Bandura (one of the most cited psychologists of all time, and I’d say rightly so) spent decades studying something called self-efficacy: the belief that you are capable of doing the thing.

What he found is that this belief is one of the strongest psychological predictors of how much effort someone puts in, how long they persist, and how well they perform. It doesn’t replace skill. But it makes a huge difference to the outcome.

Picture two people with the exact same skill level. One believes she can do it. The other doesn’t. The one with self-efficacy will outperform the one without, every single time. Because belief is what keeps you going and stops you from giving up early. Skill alone doesn’t do that.

So the question isn’t whether self-efficacy matters. It’s how you build it when you don’t have it yet. We’ll get there at the end of this article.

Finding #3 Belief changes your biology

It’s not just that belief changes what you notice or how persistent you are. Belief literally changes your body. Your hormones. Your blood pressure. There’s a Stanford researcher, Alia Crum, and her studies are absolutely fascinating.

The most interesting and also known one is the hotel housekeepers (2007, w/ Ellen Langer). In this study, they researched a group of housekeepers. They told half of the group that their daily work (cleaning rooms, lifting, climbing stairs) is the definition of an active lifestyle and makes them burn a significant amount of calories. To the other half of the group, the didn’t say anything. Four weeks later (same work, same die) the housekeepers in the first group had lost weight and their blood pressure had lowered. The only thing that changed was their belief about what their work was doing.

But now, the honest part:

When pure delusion fails

Gabriele Oettingen has spent over 20 years studying what happens when people fantasize about positive futures. Her findings directly contradict the “just be delulu” advice:

The more vividly someone fantasizes about a dream (the job, the relationship, the body, the life) WITHOUT confronting the obstacles between where they are and where they want to be, the LESS likely they are to actually get there.

Pure fantasy actively reduces motivation. Why? Because when you vividly imagine the win, your brain releases a small version of the reward feeling. You feel a little bit accomplished. Your body relaxes. The fantasy doesn’t mobilize you, it soothes you. You end up doing less.

In one of her studies, graduates who fantasized more about their dream job received fewer offers and lower starting salaries than those who fantasized less.

So this is the part we need to be honest about: the pure “vibes” version of the delulu trend (affirmations, vision boards, sitting in the fantasy) without action, without contact with reality, doesn’t just fail to produce results. The science says it makes them worse.

But there is a fix: mental contrasting

Oettingen’s solution is a framework called WOOP. Wish. Outcome. Obstacle. Plan.

• Wish: what do you want? Be specific.

• Outcome: imagine the best outcome of getting it. Feel it.

• Obstacle: what’s the REAL thing inside you that gets in the way? Not external. Internal. The fear. The habit. The story you tell yourself.

• Plan: if-then. If [obstacle shows up], then I will [specific action].

In every domain researchers have tested (academic performance, weight loss, relationships, career outcomes) mental contrasting beats pure positivity.

Believing before there’s evidence is still powerful. But it has to be paired with action and honest contact with your obstacles.

Which brings us to the last question: how do we develop that delusional self belief if, right now, we genuinely don't think it's possible for us?

How to actually believe in yourself

1. Trade certainty for possibility. “I will get the job” bounces off because your brain can catch it as a lie. “It’s possible someone like me gets this” can’t be disproven, so it slips through. Lower the bar from definite to possible. Self-efficacy that works starts as “maybe,” not “definitely.”

2. Ask, don’t declare — interrogative self-talk. A 2010 study (Senay & Albarracín) found that people who asked themselves “Will I do this?” were more motivated and performed better than people who told themselves “I will do this.” The question opens a door and lets your brain find its own reasons; the declaration just invites pushback. So the practice isn’t affirmations, it’s interrogations. “Will I go after this?” beats “I am going after this.”

3. Build belief from evidence, not willpower. Belief isn’t something you force from the top down. Your brain assembles it from proof. So the fastest way to become delulu is to do one small thing you said you’d do and let your brain log the evidence. Action first, belief second.

4. Borrow it before you own it. If you can’t believe it about yourself yet, find proof of someone like you who did the thing. “If she could, it’s at least possible for me.” A far smaller, more honest leap than manufacturing conviction from nothing.

5. Act as if, because you can’t feel as if on command. You can’t control the feeling of confidence, but you can control what you do in the next ten minutes. Do what the woman who believed would do: send the email, walk in like you belong, and the feeling catches up.

So yes — being delusionally optimistic actually works. Our brain really does build our reality from our expectations. Belief really does change our persistence, our performance, and even our biology.

But the delulu that works isn’t the one that sits on the couch visualizing. It’s the one that believes wildly, names the obstacle honestly, and then acts on it.

Be delusional about what’s possible. Be ruthlessly realistic about what it takes. That combination, the research says, is where the magic actually happens.

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Here are all the recipes from this YouTube video where I filmed a whole weekend of delicious, high protein, and super easy meals!

You can watch the full YouTube video here:

What I eat in a weekend