Some of us happen to be the kind of person who feels responsible for holding it together for everyone else. You are likely one of them if you notice things that others don’t: when someone has gone quiet, when the milk is running out, when the anniversary is coming up.

And you do something about it when others would not bother. You write the thank-you note, send the follow-up, bring the extra thing, check on the person who moved cities last month.

Maybe you are also an older sibling, or a sensitive or thoughtful person by nature. You were never assigned these tasks. You just took them on because some part of you has been scanning the room long before you knew you were scanning.

That part likely grew up in a home where taking care of others somehow fell on you. Maybe your caregivers were unpredictable and you never knew how they would react. Maybe there were good times and difficult times with money, or with stability, and the difficult ones did not announce themselves. Maybe someone was well and then they were not, and the whole temperature of the house could change in an afternoon.

And you learned that it was on you to protect the ones in the eye of the storm.

Which means that what you have actually been doing all these years is not being helpful.

You have been holding the ground steady.

That is why stopping feels unsettling rather than freeing. For you, watching out for others is not about being accepted. It is about stability. You don’t fear rejection. You fear the ground moving. And all the people you care for being affected by it.

The problem is, no one told you the storm was over a long time ago. Your mother, sibling, friend, can handle the situation without your help. Your co-worker will be able to survive the negative feedback without your protection. People not only can rise to the occasion, they want to do so. And so your help can go one of two ways.

People either get used to it and stop noticing because that is what people do with reliability. When someone is always all right, they stop checking whether she is. When someone always has it handled, they stop asking whether she needs a hand.

Or they start feeling suffocated because your help feels imposing rather than welcome. Most people will not tell you so, but they will stop thanking you for it. Your reliability becomes the weather. And nobody thanks the weather.

Either way, the care goes only one way, out and out, year after year, with very little coming back the other direction. So here you are holding it all together for everyone, and silently falling apart yourself.

If that is where you are, feeling depleted, or frustrated, or quietly resentful, take a deep breath and settle your nervous system. Nothing is falling apart. No one is in danger. The storm has indeed passed.

Do not sidestep this first step because a revved-up nervous system can unravel the best intentions. Once you feel the ground beneath your feet, ask yourself what is yours to bear. Maybe nothing. Maybe some things. After all, being there for others is a privilege of being human. But a strong conscience can hog the privilege all to itself.

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Often the weight isn’t the problem.

Carrying it alone is.

Which calls for a very different approach. Instead of caring less, you ask for help. And because you never learned how to ask, and others never learned how to help, it will be messy. Awkward. You may feel selfish. Or irresponsible. Others may push back, maybe even be critical. The words “can you please” can fast disintegrate in a soup of guilt and shame.

Luckily, three other words can hold you steady: I have value.

My rest matters. My time matters. My needs matter. My priorities matter. I have value is about your inherent value in your relationships, independent of what you provide or your usefulness within it. All too often, we measure our value by what we do for others, which is not a bad thing in and of itself.

But helping needs to be grounded in inherent value. Only then can we share the privilege of being human, and ask for help as an act of generosity toward the people who want to show up for us.

A prompt for you

Think of one thing this week that you feel responsible for. Is it a weight worth carrying? If yes, is it weighing you down? And if yes, who can help you carry it? Notice what happens when you do. Do you feel the urge to immediately even the score, or to explain why you asked, or to apologize for asking at all? Does it help to remind yourself that your value in the relationship is not contingent on what you do? Why or why not?

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I have been thinking a lot about parenting, and how sometimes it feels like its entire purpose is to humble us. And maybe for good reason. When children are little, they grant us godlike status. We are the answer to all their problems, the balm to all their woes. My children even made up a song called My mommy is the best thing in the world.

It is easy to get at least a little too confident about our indispensability.

And then they grow up. And mommy somehow loses her edge. Almost overnight, she can do nothing right. Her helping is annoying. Her advice is outdated. She just doesn’t get it. And for many of us this can be very disorienting.

I’ve found that those who fare well are generally the ones who know this is a phase of healthy development that almost every child will go through. They hold onto the hope that one day their frustrated or resentful child will see the light and wait patiently for it to arrive.

For the longest time, such people were my ideals, the ones I tried hard to become, especially in my moments of upset. If only I could bring their sense of disconnect to the moment, their ability to be here without being pulled in.

But here’s what I found: when we wait for our child to grow up, however patiently, however hopefully, we forget that we also have growing up to do.

Way too many of us enter our child’s adolescence together with them, and come out on the other side the same person we were when we went in. Some of us even become more certain, more rigid, more judgmental, especially if the phase was particularly challenging or has gone on too long. We shut our hearts in the name of trust and hearts become brittle when not used.

When you see people who are cynical and negative, you know they tried to meet their pain with a strong back but not a soft heart. Both are important - but the heart always comes first. It tells you what that strong back will be, because it is not the same for everyone. Nor the same in every situation or with every child.

That’s where I find myself these days. I am learning to be in the present moment with my child and not in the future of what one day will be. That future is a north star, a guiding light - but the work happens in being fully engaged with what is. And that is where listening comes in.

I used to think that listening was about talking less - because as parents and caregivers, we do tend to give advice a little too much. I had to come to terms with the fact that I did not have the answer to all my children’s challenges. Or I was not the right person to deliver it. That was humbling in itself, and it right-sized my ego.

But it did not build my listening capacities. Nor did it guide me to what was being asked of me in any given moment.

More and more, I believe this is the growing we need to do as parents or caregivers, because it is in our wiring to help. Even when we refrain from giving advice, we still feel compelled to say something that will make our children feel better.

But sometimes they are not ready to feel better. This is especially true for the sensitive ones, or those struggling with chronic illness, because they know the truth. It is not a fun world our children are living in. It gives them little hope for the future, with the added expectation that they can create magic through more structure, more striving, or a sunnier attitude. Our words of hope add insult to their injury.

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This is my kryptonite, my weakest spot. When my child is struggling, I tend to offer words of hope. I remind her of her goals. I say, in all sincerity, that things will be okay. That the universe works in strange ways and things happen for a reason even if we never know why. Sometimes I even have the audacity to show the silver lining, or how things could have been worse. Those are the moments I most regret, because comparative suffering lathers guilt onto pain.

It’s so hard to leave your child suffering without at least pointing to the hatch door at the top.

But on the rare occasion that I have managed to listen with nothing to offer except my presence, the right answer has come to me without forcing it. And the best part: I can offer it with confidence rather than the desperation that certainly does not feel reassuring to her. Even when I’m saying the same thing. Even when I’m reminding her that she has what it takes to come through this.

I do believe this. Young people today are mature in ways we never were, and in some ways still aren’t. They can find their way out of their own depths without hand-holding. They can find the right answers without being told what to do, who to be, how to behave.

That was our generation. And here we are, decades later, still looking for guidance and permission. Still doubting our intuition and listening to our fears or to the advice that works for everyone else. And intuition, like our hearts, becomes silent with disuse.

A prompt for you

Think of a moment when a young one needed your presence. How did you show up? Were you able to listen before responding? Could you uncover what they really needed from you at that moment? And were you able to provide it, or did your head get in the way? Would anything have been different if you had reminded yourself that your role was to fix nothing and make nothing better?

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Has this ever happened to you - someone asks you a simple question like What do you want for dinner? - and you genuinely don’t know? Maybe you say I’m easy, or I don’t mind. Maybe you say What do you want? as though it were a game of ping pong. Maybe you start thinking, what do they want? What did we have last week? What would be easiest? What did I suggest last time, and did everyone like it?

You finally suggest something not as a choice but as a question, leaving ample room for other people to rule over it. When dinner is finally ready, you’re more concerned with other people’s reactions than enjoying the actual food.

Or maybe it wasn’t dinner. It could have been movies, music, museums – anything where you were called to express a preference. And you stumbled, not because you’ve never had one. Because somewhere on the journey to adulthood, you learned that it is safer to give it away.

It likely began early, because a little child values connection far more than they value a preference. Connection keeps them safe. A preference keeps them happy - and survival will always dominate happiness. Some of us grew up in homes where having a wish of our own made someone uneasy. Some were told, in some subtle or direct way, that our wanting was inconvenient. And others simply concluded that our needs weren’t valuable when caregivers were silent or preoccupied or angry and we didn’t know why.

And so here we are, decades later, running a company or making strategic decisions and still unable to say pasta.

And it’s not just the minor things. It’s the coffee where a friend’s difficulty always somehow takes up the entire hour. It’s the meeting where not raising your objection had dire consequences. It’s the pain of being liked by a great many people and known by very few.

The truth is that none of us is born to be a people-pleaser. Many of us are born with a pleasing nature for sure. We may be kind, cooperative, and genuinely like making other people happy. But the only ones who do so at their own expense are the ones who believe they are inadequate in some way. Making other people’s lives easier makes them feel safe. Which is why they keep doing it even when no one appreciates how much they do.

The pleasing never feels like a choice because you cannot choose your way out of a belief. You can only notice the belief, and then find your way to what is truer than the belief. The soul truth. Pleasing is just one of four ways we protect ourselves when we do not trust that we are enough as we are. If you want to know your pattern, take this short quiz.

If something in you believes that your place depends on being easy to be around, notice what shifts when you tell yourself I have value. Not as a mantra, but the way a secure parent would say it to a child: your wants count as much as anyone else’s here. That no one likely valued them is bad enough; but not valuing them yourself is the ultimate injustice you do to your potential.

I’ve seen a lot of us, especially women, fear we will become selfish or obnoxious if we were to do so. And I understand that; we’ve all met such people and none of us wants to be like them. But trust me, we’re not wired to put ourselves at the top of our world. Those who do are simply projecting the pain of never feeling worthy of the love and attention of the people who were meant to make them feel safe.

We are wired to put ourselves at the center of our world. Because only from there can we make the best decisions that work for everyone, including us.

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A prompt for you

This week, think of the last time you could not answer a small question about what you wanted. Why do you think that was so? And what would you have said if you were deciding just for yourself?

Or think of what you would do differently in any area of life if you did not have to win approval? What if you did not have to prove yourself in a job you have already earned, or to people who already decided about you years ago? What if the constant small playing, the anticipating, the smoothing, the checking of every wish against the room was rent on a place you already own?

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We talk a lot about soul truths on this Substack. Soul truths is not a phrase I coined. But it is the one that fits what I found. When I was doing my research on self-esteem and self-actualization, I kept arriving at the same place. The difference between women whose lives are full of deep connection and purpose and women stuck in pleasing, proving, and perfecting is not effort. It is not circumstance. It is the implicit beliefs they hold about who they are and what they are capable of.

Implicit, meaning outside conscious awareness. Not the beliefs you could tell me about if I asked you. Or even the ones you uncovered in therapy or inner work.

Implicit beliefs sit deeper than core beliefs. And unlike core beliefs, their purpose is not to keep you safe. Like I wrote in last week’s post, healing was never the path to growth. But growth will certainly heal you as long as it is in alignment with your soul’s beliefs. The beliefs you were born with, because they are truer than anything you learned afterward, good or bad.

And this matters more than it sounds. The latest research on primal beliefs shows that what we believe about the world itself, and not only about the people and places in our own life, shapes our actions, our wellbeing, and our sense of fulfillment far more than anyone realized. The self is concerned with the latter, with other people’s opinions, with safety and respect, belonging and success.

But the soul – its world is way bigger than that. It believes in a world of possibility and co-creation. Its belonging is what the beloved poet Mary Oliver called “your place in the family of things”, not just within your social circles. Its success is being positively engaged in whatever speaks to your heart until the very end. There is no retirement age. The work never ends.

Which brings me to a conversation I had recently with a dear friend, because I think it highlights the importance of the soul truth we will talk about over the next few weeks: I have value.

We were meeting after almost ten years, and we had stayed in touch only sparsely, partly because she is older, and we are at different stages of life. She told me she is living alone now, and that she had just come back from a few weeks with her daughter’s family. She spoke about her three grandchildren, in whose lives she had been actively involved when they were younger because of her daughter and son-in-law’s law practice. The youngest is a teenager now, she said. The oldest has just finished college.

Even though she spoke about them with pride, I could sense an underlying sadness, but didn’t want to ask. So I waited, and hoped she would say more.

Then she did. Abruptly, the way we say the thing that is weighing on us. As though we are desperate to put it down.

“I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know how to explain it. But wherever I go, I feel like no one wants me.”

Her eyes filled up with tears. Her voice was heavy as she described what she meant. The children were out with their friends most days, even when they told her they’ll be home. When they were home, the conversations went to things she had no way into. Sometimes she didn’t even understand the words or phrases they used. None of it was intentional, she said. They were lovely kids, but their lives had moved on. And there was no place in that life that was hers.

It broke my heart. But it did not surprise me. I had heard some variation of this feeling time and again from people, and not necessarily older people.

To add value to others is a universal need. We want to know we have something to offer because it brings meaning to our lives. For most of life, that need is met through our roles. We work hard to bring value to our workplaces. As a mother, a partner, a caretaker, we bring value to our families. Many of us take up community work after retirement, so that we can go on feeling useful.

But here’s the thing: every one of those roles, eventually, stops needing us. The children grow up. The role ends. The team reorganizes. The community finds someone younger with more time.

When all your value has come from social roles, from the parenting, the workplace, the community you belong to, what you feel when they end is not inadequacy. It is much deeper than that.

What you feel is invisibility. The sense that your presence in this world has no value. That you arrived here with nothing to offer except the roles you were expected to perform. Each of us carries our own painful beliefs and finds ways of protecting ourselves from them. I’ve created this quiz to help you uncover yours.

Given that most of us will live for a very long time after those roles end, and given that even the younger generations are beginning to find these roles unfulfilling, it matters a great deal that we begin to own the value we each have, regardless of whether the people in our lives need it or not.

So many of us grew up being told to be a certain way, often by well-meaning people who wanted to see us do well. They didn’t necessarily criticize us, although some did. But they certainly pointed out all the things that would hold us back. Things that were an inherent part of who we are.

I have always been soft-spoken, thoughtful, quieter by nature. For much of my life, I was unfavorably compared to a high-spirited cousin whose energy always rattled me. Even so, I tried to be like her because I was told my personality would hold me back.

And it did. Not because being soft-spoken is a problem. But because I believed it was one.

I became the fish trying to climb a tree, never as good as the squirrel, and no longer much good in my own water either.

It was only when I stopped trying to fix the softness, and began to actually value it, that I could see where it was needed. Not everywhere. But certainly with the people who want to live on purpose, and who do not need to be shouted at or pushed around to get there. People who need someone quiet enough to hear the conversation beneath the conversation. And committed enough to the potential that already exists in each one of us.

Wonderful things happen when you fully own yourself as you are. You find that you are able to pivot as needed, because you always have a center to return to. And that center directs you to your work in the world without you having to find it. If you’ve seen the whirling dervishes, it’s a beautiful metaphor to hang onto. They spin with their right hand up and their left hand down to transfer heavenly grace through them – us living as our unique selves. And the spinning guides their path – the soul’s mystical journey toward its full expression.

When I owned who I am, I stopped asking what do I want, which is always colored by other people’s opinions and expectations, and started asking what is being asked of me? I stopped idealizing the badass woman our world encourages us to be and started researching what power truly means and how it can help us live our highest potential. And that is how our paths crossed…

The truth is you have something beautiful to offer that will positively impact someone, somewhere. You simply need to expand your container. And yes, for most of us, our social roles will likely continue to have a place in our lives. The parenting, the work, the caring may go on for a long time. And there’s nothing wrong with that; they are real sources of meaning when you bring your true self to them. That is the crux of it all. Owning what was always yours.

When you feel you don’t have value, it’s simply because it has nowhere big enough to go.

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A prompt for you

This week, spend some time with what makes you you. The strengths. The qualities. The way you are when nobody is watching.

Are there quirks you keep out of sight? A shyness, or a sensitivity, that you have been trying to fix? An old soul that has never quite found its place in this loud and certain world?

Or is there a too-muchness you were warned about, more than once. Too bubbly. Too opinionated. Too direct.

Do not assess any of it yet. You cannot evaluate your behavior at the same time as you are judging who you are. For now, embrace all parts of you because in there, you will find the light that someone somewhere desperately needs you to shine. Only then will you know what needs toning, and what needs honing.

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When we feel a sense of emptiness in our life - or what psychologists call languishing - it is common to believe that we need some kind of self-development work. Maybe we need to heal a little more. To unhook from the hurts of the past. Maybe inner work is the answer to the inner ache.

And the funny thing is that initially it does seem like it is. When you do the self-development, the therapy or coaching, maybe even a retreat or two, you can certainly feel you are finally moving in a better direction. You are steadier because you understand your patterns and can catch yourself mid-reaction without spiraling into behaviors you will regret. You can set a boundary, ask for what you want, hold your own at work because you are free of the beliefs that kept you small. For a while, the ache does feel lighter.

But then it returns, even if you manage to hang on to the changes you made to your day, your thought patterns, your ways of interacting. And sometimes it returns with more urgency and more pain because you’re no longer busy trying to prove you’re enough. This is the part that can feel so confusing and disorienting. Did I do all that work to still be standing in that same place?

If you’ve been with me long enough, you’ll know that I suffered a terrible eating disorder in my younger years. When I recovered many years of hard work, I thought I was finally free to live my life. I could eat what I wanted. I could dress how I liked. I was no longer directed and managed by the eating disorder. And it felt so good!

But the feelings didn’t last. A couple of months in, and I began to feel the emptiness of a life (and a body) that looked good on the outside but felt misaligned on the inside. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Some days I would tell myself I was being ungrateful and numb the pain with gratitude. Some days I would wonder whether this is all there is and a sense of hopelessness would settle in. Did I really fight the biggest battle of my life for this?

Luckily, I knew there had to be more. I’ve always had a certain connection with life, as though we throb at the same frequency. I feel moved when I see beauty. I cry easily when I see the goodness in people. My children give each other side glances when I read poetry. They sense the lump in my throat and fear I will start crying!

The truth is that I believe in possibility. And what I learned, after years of research, is that the emptiness is a longing for possibility. Almost all the self-development work we do is about building safety - whether it is through connection or through self-esteem. What we think is growth is actually unhooking from the fears that had kept us small. We can spin better, maybe faster. We function well because we’re no longer busy quieting the voice that said we were not enough.

But functioning isn’t the same as flourishing. And without flourishing, functioning turns to languishing because we are meant for growth.

All this is much easier to understand if you consider that in all of us, there are two overarching selves. I’m not talking about the fearful selves, or the selves that have been harmed by the past. I’m talking about who we are as human beings - a social self who wants to feel safe in the world. And a more elusive self that some call the spiritual self, some call the universe, some the divine. I call her the soul. You can call her whatever survives your cynicism, but you cannot deny her existence.

The soul is beyond people’s opinions and least interested in the social ladder. To her, power is not about feeling safe. It is about feeling alive. About being one with the world and making an impact in her own particular way, in the short time she has here. All the belonging and confidence in the world will not satisfy her because she longs for a different kind of freedom. The freedom to live in alignment with her core nature.

That’s exactly the work we need to do, because most of us are disconnected from this core nature. And for women especially, the disconnect is almost a rite of passage into adulthood, the price of a lifetime of being told who to be. Or worse, being criticized and belittled for who we are.

So the soul becomes silent. It gives way to the social self who arrives in the world half-baked. Her brain is largely undeveloped, and her sense of self grows through her interactions with primary caregivers. By around age five she has laid down a set of core beliefs that will not be easy to shift, because shifting them means building new ones from scratch. This is why healing can take years, and why it can feel like a slippery slope even then.

The soul, on the other hand, arrives already wired with what she needs to flourish. Her beliefs are not learned, they are her nature, and that nature, in the words of Carl Rogers, is trustworthy and constructive. Not in need of fixing. Not something to be managed. Nor something in need of guidance. A little child lives by that nature – until the world begins telling her what’s “right.” And so she loses her way…

So the work is simply to remember. To reconnect to what the child in you has always known about herself, the world, and her place in it. I call this our “soul truths”, deeper and truer than any beliefs you happen to carry. When you connect to your soul truths, you can build the capacities for growth, regardless of whether you were securely parented, or barely parented at all. The capacity to want something truly big. To act without a guarantee. To be seen unfinished. To receive knowing you deserve it. To rest without earning it. To fail without losing your passion and commitment.

And healing builds none of these.

We have it backwards. We believe we have to finish healing before we are allowed to grow, so we wait, and we work on ourselves, and the waiting often becomes a life. But growth is what does the healing, not the other way around.

This is the crux of the work we do here on my Substack. Starting next month, we will focus on one soul truth at a time. There are six of them that I have identified from my research on what it takes to live the highest possibilities for our life. The more you ground yourself in all of them, the more you’ll experience true power: the courage to live life on your own terms in a world that tries hard to remake us in its own image.

The soul truth for August and September is I am good.

Not I am enough. Not I am competent. Those are what the social self wants to hear. But they are too small a belief for the soul because they offer her nothing when it’s time to be vulnerable. To receive without shrinking. To give without expectations. She stays trapped in a world of give and take.

But I am good – it connects you to your intuition because your worth is no longer measured on the yardstick of what you do. You will know when the giving is enough and when the moment calls for more because your inner guidance is in conversation with the moment. Enough leaves you standing on a scale. Good brings out the best in you. This quiz on the four fear patterns will help you see where I am good will have the greatest impact on your life.

And if you want my posts to land in your inbox, please subscribe below so you don’t miss anything.

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Your prompt this week:

In the meantime, spend some time picturing the woman you would be if the ground were solid underneath you. Not a tidier version of who you are now, and not a more perfect or accomplished one. The real one. The one who is already in there, and who has been waiting for permission to grow into who she can be.

What is she doing that you are not? How does she speak, and what does she no longer explain? What is she pursuing passionately and who are the people she is surrounded with – the ones whose lives she is impacting and the ones who are impacting hers. Because the actualized life is always a both and – there is no me without a we.

Do not rush this. Sit with it. Write about it. Listen for what wants to emerge when you ask yourself: What part of my power and possibility am I no longer willing to leave unlived?

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It is not uncommon these days for women to express a feeling that doesn’t fit neatly into a word. It’s the feeling that you are not living the full extent of what is possible for your life. That you are not expressing the real power and potential that lives within you.

Usually, it comes with disclaimers. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Or, My life is great, I really don’t understand this. And so a feeling that has no real name gets misfiled as something that does.

It is burnout. So you rest. You sleep properly, you take care of your diet, you exercise. And at first it feels like you’re healing. But then the feeling creeps back in.

It is midlife. So you wait for it to pass. Or you try a new passion, a new haircut, a new morning routine. Some of it genuinely helps. But none of it holds.

It is hormonal. And sometimes, it truly is. But only partly so. The medical attention is helpful, you feel alive again – but then that aliveness doesn’t transform into something more lasting.

It is a discipline problem. So now you have an inner manager pushing you around. You wake earlier, track more, become an assembly line of the Industrial Revolution. And you burn out.

It is ingratitude. This is the cruelest one of all. The one that says Look at your life. Your health, your children, your work, the roof over your head, the friends who show up. Now you have guilt on top of the ache and you throttle the feeling instead of listening to it.

This is so sad because we are not the first generation to experience this. For at least a few generations, women have hit the same wall and each generation was given a different solution.

Our grandmother’s generation was often prescribed medication to numb it. Valium became the most prescribed drug in the United States in the early 1960s, and by 1980, something like one in four American women was taking it.

Our mothers’ generation was encouraged to walk away from marriage, as though that were the cause of the pain. And sometimes it was. But when no-fault divorce arrived, many women came to believe it was the answer, and for many it was not.

Our generation is offered a different solution – and it is one that has created an entire industry called optimization. We are told that we need to run better. Faster. Optimization rests on the puritan ideals of perfection. And more and more, optimization is becoming impossible in the lived experience of our lives. And this is especially true for women because we are deeply connected to many aspects of our lives. And when we try and reach for that impossible balance, all we get in return is the feeling that we failed.

And so here we are with a problem we don’t understand. And a solution that is harming us.

I’ve experienced this deeply – for years, maybe decades. I tried again and again to create that perfect life, to start fresh every time I failed, in the false belief that this time I will be able to succeed. Only to fail again…

It took me years of study, research, and embodying that research to understand that perfection is the false hope of a person who is trapped in a level of consciousness that is smaller than the life she longs for. Like the writer Oliver Burkeman says, it’s like “trying to pull (yourself) out of the swamp by yanking on (your) own hair.”

Here’s what this means. The longing so many of us are experiencing is not a longing for optimization. It is a longing for actualization. And it matters because optimization and actualization exist on two different playing fields which I want to talk about in next week’s post.

But for now, I want to emphasize that we do not need to run faster on the existing playing field. We need to find the one that meets us where we are. Not a nicer version of achievement. Not the same climb with better lighting. A different direction entirely, and one that cannot be reached by getting better at what we are already doing.

The new playing field is not asking you to do anything better. It is asking you to become more yourself.

So why does almost nothing tell us that?

Because optimization can be sold and actualization is very hard to sell. Optimization is marketable, measurable, and scalable. It photographs well. It is easy to talk about. It produces a before and an after that makes people excited. There is an entire industry built on the longing for a better life.

But the problem is that optimization is carried out by the woman you already are. The one choosing the goal, setting the expectations, deciding what is worth improving and what is not, is the same woman who was shaped by everything that came before. Her standards, her fears, her sense of what is allowed.

And so when you feel like you’ve failed, you really haven’t. You’re simply being called to grow. You’re being called to unpeel the masks that you wore along the way to be safe, or loved, or seen. And they are now limiting you. Your growth lies in connecting to a deeper version of who you are, so you can rise to a higher version of who you can be. Because self-actualization is inward and upward at the same time.

This is the work we’ll do together. And it’s the most important work there is – not just for what you achieve, but how you feel along the way. If you aren’t subscribed already, I encourage you to do so.

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Your prompt this week:

This week, spend some time thinking of an area or a situation in your life where you feel you have failed. Where you have done your best and ended up in the same place – maybe a little better, maybe a lot worse. This is exactly where you are being called to grow, where life is calling you toward something bigger.

What aspects of yourself do you know you need to upgrade? What capacities do you need to develop? What qualities do you need to grow? The answers are already within you. Listen with curiosity. Listen without resistance or defensiveness. Because these answers point you to the slow and steady path to freedom. The one that cannot be captured in a reel or a testimonial. The one that is neither tidy, nor perfect.

But the one that is the most fulfilling of all.

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Sometimes we keep hitting the same wall despite our best intentions. It’s not that we lack willpower or discipline - maybe we have too much of it. It’s that we don’t understand the deeper intelligence that is driving the show. The one that is trying to keep us safe. And until we can see it clearly, we will pushing and striving, with little to show for it.

I want you to know why this matters, because once you understand the why, the whole journey changes.

Here is what I know about the women I write for. You feel a pull toward something more, a fuller, freer, more alive version of your life, and you haven’t quite been able to reach it. That pull is not restlessness. It is your potential, asking to be lived.

What stands in the way is almost always a belief, and almost always, that belief was rooted in childhood. This does not mean your caregivers were bad people, or that your childhood was unhappy. Most of us grow up with parents who loved us. But even so, life has a way of quietly undermining our sense of worth, because of how we are built.

We come into this world with underdeveloped brains.

We try to make sense of our experiences with that brain.

We lock our conclusions away in rigid frameworks of who we are and how the world works.

And then we walk through life letting those frameworks decide what is and isn’t possible, in the very areas that become the measure of our worth.

It’s a cycle that feeds on itself and limits what is possible for us to create, express and experience.

Say you grew up being told how important it was to succeed, and that the corporate path was the way. Slowly, you distanced yourself from the more intuitive, relational parts of you. You set down the quiet dream of being a nurse, or a writer, or of starting your own design studio. You traded your authentic self for the self that earned praise, and your worth became tied to your success. And you likely did succeed. But it took its toll: on your health, perhaps, or your relationships, or in the emptiness you feel despite the rise.

Or say you grew up where stability wasn’t a given. Perhaps your caregivers ran hot and cold, warm one moment and upset the next for reasons you couldn’t understand. Perhaps you moved often, or money was uncertain, or your neighborhood didn’t feel safe. Your need for safety came to trump everything, even the deepest longings of your heart. You became the pleaser, the fixer, the one everyone could count on, the one responsible for everyone’s moods and for keeping it all together. The one quietly waiting for the day her real life would begin.

And it isn’t only what happens to us. It’s also the temperament we’re born with, the particular way we’re wired to meet the world. Two children can live through the same upheaval and carry very different things from it. I know this from my own life. I was born a “worrier”, and when my father’s work moved us to Senegal, that uprooting met my anxious wiring and became the catalyst for an eating disorder. I didn’t know it then, but controlling my food was my way of creating the safety that was lacking in my life. And before I knew it, the control turned on me…

Safety and self-worth are core human needs, and we each try to meet them through predictable patterns. I’ve spent years studying and classifying these patterns into what I call the four FOBRs: the fear of being rejected, the fear of being regular, the fear of being revealed, and the fear of being recognized. For most of us, one of them, more than the others, has been keeping us small. Because you cannot reach for your bigger life while your core needs go unmet, even partly so. Knowingly or not, you will still be chasing safety or approval, still choosing the sure thing over the possible one, still unable to trust and pursue your deepest desires.

If you’d like to see which of these patterns is running you, because very few of us are ever so enlightened to be beyond them, I’ve built a short quiz to help you name it. Because something shifts in the naming. You are no longer quite so inside it. You have a little more room. A little more choice. And that choice is exactly where your power lies.

Take the FOBR quiz

Next week I’ll write about why healing and personal growth, on their own, aren’t enough for the fullest expression of who you are, and all you’re here to create, contribute, and receive. If you’d like to receive that post in your inbox, please subscribe below. Remember, a fully lived life is no longer a nice-to-have. It is the need of your soul. When we service the self at the expense of the soul, we pay the price in a sense of dullness and a longing for something more.

Optimization is only a part of actualization. And my Substack is about helping you experience both.

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When I was doing the research on authentic power – the kind of power that doesn’t depend on things being right or safe – I remember reading an example that has stayed with me to this day. The paper described a little child making sandcastles on the beach. She is literally co-creating with the present moment, guided by an inner knowing that tells her if she needs more mud or more water. You see her scurrying around in her big wet pull-ups, a little busy body with fierce commitment written all over her face. Does she beat down on herself if someone else’s sandcastle is bigger? Or does she look at it with wide-eyed wonder and it becomes her source of inspiration? Does she fall apart when her sandcastle is damaged by the waves? Maybe a little! But then doesn’t she move further away and start building it all over again determined that this time the waves will not get to it?

As adults we can watch little children making sandcastles for hours because their energy is magnetic. They are unhooked by other people’s opinions, or by their previous attempts or failures. There is nothing but the joy of the act itself toward a vision that lives in their hearts.

We are all that little child in some area of our lives. Almost always, it’s an area where your worth isn’t dependent on the outcome. And almost always, it’s an area that feels like creativity or play. Like cooking. Or gardening. Or working with clay. It can also be making frameworks or organizing or cracking code or playing music - anything where all areas of your brain are in dialogue.

Think of what it is for you. Where in your life do you feel like you’re operating from a totally different part of yourself. Not from logic or reason, but from inner guidance that tells you what to do, how to pivot and improvise, when to ask for support and how to get back up when you fall.

You may also have experienced this inner guidance at a time when logic and reason totally failed you, and there was nothing you could do to control a situation. Maybe a time of illness or extreme challenge or despair. The psychologist Lisa Miller calls it operating from the “awakened brain”. That is true power because it is co-creation with life, not control over it.

I believe that the work of growth and self-actualization is building the mindsets and skillsets of this power because we’re not wired for it. We’re wired for survival. For self-protection. And in a world where safety isn’t a given, this wiring is leading to toxic power and victimhood.

I remember once reading that in the Bahai tradition, the work of life is building the muscles of the soul for the afterlife, just like the work in the womb is building the muscles of the self for this life. This is what it looks like in real life:

You learn to trust that inner voice instead of overriding it.
You repair instead of spiral and when you get it wrong.
You hold yourself with warmth instead of lowering your standards.
You give yourself permission to build ease and joy into your day.

Being powerful is about loving life and giving it all you’ve got because that is the need of the soul – of that little child making sandcastles on the beach. And yes you will fall down, make mistakes and lose direction. And yes you will also become too consumed in your commitment to life and become demanding or burnt out.

But – and this is your growth – you will find your way back by building the mindsets and skillsets of true power. This is the slow, real, deeply worth-it work of becoming more yourself.

A prompt for you:

Think of an area of life where you feel empowered and able to handle whatever comes your way. There’s no need to push, prove, or control. You aren’t operating from fear and what you experience is freedom. What is it for you?
For a day, try to be that person in more areas of your life.
And then, if you can, be her in an area where you are struggling. What will you do differently?

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One of the biggest telltale signs of power that is underpinned by feelings of insecurity is this: it speaks in commands. And it makes sense; when you believe something is inherently wrong about you, you cannot risk being seen for who you are. Your commands are about protecting yourself.

So you say: be perfect. You push, always, because perfect has no ceiling. You hold yourself to standards you would never impose on anyone else, because somewhere you believe you are bad, or undeserving of your own kindness.

You say: be strong. You absorb more than you should. You smile through things that deserve your tears. You carry weight that was never yours to carry, because somewhere you learned that needing things, showing your struggle, is weakness.

You say: be vigilant. You plan, prepare, and over-prepare. You manage every variable. You don’t begin until you are certain you’ll succeed. You do ten times the work for half the ease, because what happens if you fail? If they see that you don’t have it all together?

You say: be invisible. You hide the parts of you that feel most alive and most yours. You try to become like everyone else. You don’t talk about your dreams or your wins. You become a wonderful listener and shine the light as far from yourself as you can.

You say: be good. You shrink your needs so no one finds you difficult. You please your way through your relationships, quietly wondering if anyone loves you for who you are, or only for what you do for them.

You say: prove yourself. You refuse to rest, because somewhere inside, your worth depends on what you achieve and what others think. It lives outside of you, because inside, you believe you are bad, broken, or not quite enough.

If you recognize yourself in any of these, I want you to stop for a moment. And if you dare, put both hands on your heart and say something kind to yourself. I am enough. I am deserving. I am good. I am capable. I am valuable. Whatever it is that makes you take a deep breath and feel okay.

Most of us don’t feel okay inside. We carry scars from a time when we felt unsafe in some way. Perhaps unnoticed. Perhaps unloved. Perhaps loved only if… We learned that if we were perfect, or strong, or invisible, we would get the love and appreciation every little child wants from the people who are her entire world.

Those lessons become commands. And at some point, they outlive their value and start hurting us. The constant managing, the exhaustion, the low hum of never-quite-enough, all of it keeps us from the life that is possible.

So how do you make the shift to possibility? Give yourself the tenderness and appreciation every child deserves, but few of us fully received. Not because our caregivers were bad or uncaring. Maybe they were too dedicated, forever correcting us toward the “right” way to be. Or maybe they were carrying their own fears and stresses, and couldn’t be there in the way we needed.

But the reality is that both tenderness and appreciation are essential for a full and flourishing life.

Children who grow up without tenderness become demanding of themselves, because they carry the shame of feeling unworthy of love. I call this toxic power: judgmental, unforgiving, unable to hold space for your humanness.

Children who grow up without appreciation, without being told they are beautiful and brilliant, feel that have nothing of value to bring into this world. They feel powerless - hiding, fitting in, playing small, not asking for much.

Do either of these resonate in some way? Which feels more true for you at this time - toxic power or powerlessness? It may be different in different parts of your life because that is the nature of being untethered from who you are. I have seen clients who are controlling and demanding at work and clingy and apologetic at home. Or who are generally self-assured but crumble in the presence of one particular person.

We all carry many ghosts from the past, and a different one can decide to show up in the present depending on what you are facing. But the good news is that your past does not need to determine your life. When you build a relationship of unconditional warmth and appreciation with yourself, you own the truest version of who you are. And from there, you are free to create a life of power and possibility. To self-actualize.

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A prompt for reflection:
Where in your life do you feel stuck or powerless? How are you relating with yourself? Who do you need to be instead? Warm? Appreciative? Both? What will you remind yourself about who you truly are. Your deepest truth that is truer than whatever you learnt growing up. Because those lessons were constructed in a brain that was still developing. They were half truths. And only the whole truth can set you free :)

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For the longest time, I felt an inner resistance, almost an aversion to the kind of power we are taught to embody. The kind that looks like holding it all together, having all the answers, staying in control, and never letting anyone see the seams.

Not only did I find it exhausting, I also found it alienating – a disconnect from others and from the reality of lived experience.

To me, power was what I saw in people I genuinely admire. The ones who exude a fervent yes! to life instead of trying to fix and control it to their comfort. Who champion others instead of being the blackhole who sucks all the light and gives nothing back in return. Who show up as best as they can even when their hearts are heavy with grief or fraught with fear.

This is the kind of power I became interested in studying. And turns out, it is the only power that fulfills the longing we feel beneath the churn of our daily lives: the longing to flourish. You may have felt it too – in a silent ache, a dissatisfaction, an emptiness called languishing. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are down and out. You are likely functioning quite well. Even high-functioning.

But there is a difference between functioning and flourishing. And I know this difference in every fiber of my being…

When I was much younger, I suffered an eating disorder that nearly took my life more than once. Even when I recovered, it was half-recovery: healthy on the outside, still controlled by the eating disorder on the inside. I had permission to eat more, but not to eat what or how much I wanted. My life still felt like a prison. I often wondered if this was all there was. I often longed for the freedom of my pre-eating disorder life. But the doctors said I was recovered, and I believed them.

Luckily, I’ve always been attuned to that deeper longing to truly live this wild and precious life. I knew by then that not dying is not the same as living. So I decided to listen to that deeper longing and trust my body. It was the hardest thing I ever did because there was no guarantee of success. I was going against every piece of external advice and information. I was criticized and questioned by loved ones. I wondered whether I was destroying my body and doing it all wrong.

But I also knew I didn’t want to live a half-life.

It took over a year of tears and pain and falling down and getting back up. But through that messy and often disorienting journey, I finally got my life back.

I share this because we all live with our own version of that prison, in at least one corner of our lives. An inner patriarchy that tells us to control and push and prove and fix. To perfect. To stay on top. To try harder, and to start over every time we falter.

If you relate, I want you to listen to the longing of your heart. Maybe you feel it in a relationship or at work. Maybe you sense it in how you want to live or who you want to be. The longing is a call to reclaim your life and live in alignment with yourself. And power is your ability to do so even when there’s no guarantee of a desired outcome.

This is the power we will build together. Because the version of power we have been taught is not working. Old power is about agency. It is about creating the outcomes we want by having the right attitude, the right habits, the right belief system, even the right personality (extroverted, loud, and certain). At its core, it is a worldview of safety: do everything right and you’ll be okay. And successful – two sides of the same coin.

But think about it: how often have you done everything right – the discipline, the planning, the positive mindset – only to have life hand you something else entirely? Agency works until it doesn’t. And more and more, we’re discovering that safety is too fragile a ground to carry the weight of an actual life.

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Just last week I was talking to a dear friend who had recently lost her husband of thirty years. She was doing her best to hold her grief, to make sense of her situation, to manage the regrets we’re always left to grapple with. And through it all, she was also showing up for her children in small ways, showing up to a new day, a new conversation.

I was in awe of her strength. And yet, she said to me: “I want to be strong. But I just can’t do it.”

It broke my heart. I told her what I saw in her was true strength and that she didn’t need to force herself to be anything or anyone. She began crying. I’m sure it was partly relief. But more than that, it was the tears of a soul that finally felt valued for the strength that nobody sees.

It’s time we begin seeing it. Appreciating it. Realizing that power isn’t the “up” of domination and control, but the “up” of moral elevation. Of being human, of being messy, incomplete, broken and brilliant at the same time. Imagine how much better we will feel about ourselves. Imagine how much kinder we will be to ourselves. Imagine how much more open and able we will be to show up to life, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

New power is about meeting life as is instead of trying to control or resist it. It is receiving others as they are instead of trying to fix or change them. It is unhooking from the “fix-me” project and meeting our complex and paradoxical selves whole.

When you stand in new power, you are free of external ideals of right and wrong. Free to trust in what the moment is asking of you. And free to co-create with life because you are one with it. New power is like a tree. It is grounded in the truth of who you are like the roots. It is headed upward toward a higher possibility like the trunk. And it is in conversation with the present moment like the branches, knowing what is right for you in the moment.

This is flourishing. This is the life that we all long for, even when we don’t know it. And the good news is that it is always available. Because new power is not something we need to learn. It is something we need to reclaim.

Here’s a prompt for you:
Can you think of a time you showed up with new power? What was the situation and what made you do it? Is this your natural way of being? Or do you generally control more than you trust?

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Isn’t it true that for many of us, the fear of our dreams coming true is as strong, maybe even stronger than the fear of failure? We may not think about it as often because we’re wired for survival. Most of the time, we’re simply making sure that we don’t fail or that others are happy with us.

But in the quieter moments, our minds go to the unlived places deep within. Dreams from childhood. Aspirations out of college. Paths that spoke to our hearts before life weighed us down with responsibilities. We visit these places as though it were an imaginary world – with excitement and a sense of possibility. We imagine the impact we would make, the lives we would change, the joy it would bring.

And then, on its heels, the reality check. It’s not practical. It’s not the right time. It’s stupid and frivolous. It will disappoint people. Yes, that forever lurking fear of other people’s opinions…

I remember that even as a ten-year-old, I wanted to be the kind of person who makes people’s lives better by meeting them where they are rather than guiding them from above. I was a sensitive child and deeply attuned to people’s lived reality – the conversations beneath the words, the pains beneath the projections. In hindsight, my longing was a reflection of my nature, and longings that come from this place of truth point us to our purpose and the work we’re here to do in this world.

The problem is that these longings are like little seeds: fragile and easy to dismiss. As the author Marianne Williamson writes in her poem A Return to Love: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

We need people in our lives who value our nature and champion our aspirations, especially when we are little, and especially for the sensitive ones who are highly attuned to the words and reactions of the people they love. We need caregivers who get excited by our scribbles and tell us it the gorgeoustest painting they’ve ever seen. We need them to be wowed by our imagination and live in the castle on the moon with us. We need them to believe in our stories, so we know that our particular way of seeing the world is not just acceptable, it is needed.

The psychologist Carl Rogers called it “prizing” – a genuine, delighted recognition of the child’s particular qualities and dreams. Not just love, but seeing with appreciation. It reminds me of the poem On Children by the poet Kahlil Gibran where he is talking to parents:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Not many of us were raised by such parents. They may have been warm and kind and highly devoted. But they may also have had their ideas of what power or success looks like – and these ideas are often colored by societal norms and expectations. My parents believed that my softness and thoughtfulness were hurdles I needed to overcome. I needed to be one of the many who seem to have all the answers all the time. The ones who are always on top, always in control. So I locked my dreams away and visited them only when I felt the emptiness of a half-lived life, until it became so heavy that I decided to do something about it.

After years of study, research, and living what I learned, this I now know: when caregivers are dismissive of our gifts and dreams, we end up feeling insignificant and inconsequential to the larger flow of life. We live with the ache of not mattering, of having nothing of value to contribute, of never knowing our drop on the ocean, or never painting our dot on the canvas. It is one of the greatest regrets of the dying – not having lived a life true to oneself.

If any of this relates, here is what I want you to know. That unique something in you, maybe even the thing you feel ashamed about, or call idealistic and non-pragmatic, that is your work in the world. Yes your social self is important – it helps the world go around. But your unique and authentic self – it is needed to move the world forward.

The reality is that the universe plants gifts and longings within each of us like little seeds of potential. And it wants us to be the gardener who tends and tills them into the plants and trees they can become. That is your ultimate job – to be the gardener, the parent, the protector of potential. To value it, to grow it, and to trust the process just like you trust the work you’re given, even if you never see fruits of your labor.

So take a moment to reflect on your own life. Was your personality or capabilities appreciated? Were you told how your presence or gifts mattered? What about later in life? What are the messages you’ve been receiving about your way of being or thinking? This is especially true if you’re a thoughtful, reserved, or conscientious person. In a world where loudness, speed and even greed are amply rewarded, many of us become an invisible population, shrinking, blending in, deflecting, and disappearing.

On this Substack, we do the work of grounding ourselves in the deeper truths that exist beneath the fears. The truth that you matter. The truth of your value and goodness and belonging. Every season, we work through one of them so that we build the ground on which we can pursue the highest version of our lives. If you aren’t subscribed already, I’d love you to be. Because this work is worth doing. Not only for your own joy and flourishing, but for a world that needs you more than ever.

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When most people think of perfectionists, they think of people who are trying to impress others or gain praise or approval. But there is another kind of perfectionist – often quieter, and almost certainly more relentless – whose perfection has nothing to do with others.

Their only audience is the person looking back at them in the mirror.

Few of us understand this distinction, which is why we believe that telling ourselves that our work is “good enough,” or that we need to lower our standards should work. But if you are an internally driven perfectionist, you know that it rarely does.

The reason is that your perfection reflects a striving toward beauty and excellence, toward life and what is genuinely possible. Some psychologists call it the “flourishing gene” – a deep orientation to live life fully and to give it all you’ve got. The gene exists in all of us but is activated in only a few. You’ll know it is if you tend to feel life intensely, to be moved by a sunset, or a piece of music. If you feel elevated by the sight of human altruism or called toward making a difference in some small way. Or if you are nostalgic for times that were somehow kinder, more beautiful, more in alignment with something you can sense but not quite name.

I’ve always been that kind of person – the one who chokes with emotion at almost anything, even the sound of a firetruck! People like us tend to be sensitive, thoughtful, conscientious. Our kindness can be mistaken for pleasing, and our drive for excellence considered the tyranny of perfection, even though it’s neither. We live on a different dimension altogether: the z-axis of possibility. It is also called the axis of the soul, of the part of us that envisions a better future and is committed to making it happen.

Living on this axis is not easy because we are, after all, human. We are fallible and imperfect. We can act out of greed and jealousy. We can become afraid and impulsive in a world that is also imperfect. Which is why the two endpoints of the z-axis are divinity and disgust. When we act in ways that are misaligned with our ideals, we feel disgusted with ourselves. And disgust compels us to run away from our badness and toward the pure. The godlike. The perfect.

To live on the z-axis, and to experience the possibilities in our hearts, we must make space for being human. For only when we learn to cross, over and over, the porous and non-existent divide between good and bad, and right and wrong, do we access the truth of who we are: more than our fears and failings. We are the people who show up for what is important even when we are carrying fear or grief in our hearts, still making dinner, still making plans, still laughing and loving fiercely with a whole-hearted yes! to life. We are our soul’s longings.

Carl Rogers, who spent a lifetime studying what it means to self-actualize, believed that our basic nature, when functioning freely, is trustworthy and constructive. Not because we have earned it. Not because we have finally got it right. Not because we have reached some externally determined ideal of optimization. But because goodness is simply who we are.

This is the truth that meets the age-old ache of being human for a soul that wants to fly. Not that you will be good once the mess is finally sorted. That you are good now. Good as you are, before the fixing, before the repentance. Good even when you’re having a bad day, a tired morning, or a mind that simply can’t focus. Good even when your reply comes out sharper than you intended, or your actions hurt the person you love dearly.

So take a moment to reflect on whether you’re holding space for your humanness. For me, this has been a lifelong lesson. For almost as long as I remember, the only way I could deal with the emotional unease of mess and imperfection was to erase the past from my mind and start all over again. This time better. This time perfect.

Even as a six-year-old, I would erase my letters over and over until they sat on the line like little pearls. When I was ten, I would beg friends to restart our pretend plays every time someone went off-script. As I got older, starting over became a regular feature of my inner life. As though the next moment, the next day, the next year would somehow transform me and my life into the promised perfect version.

In hindsight, it was never really about the letters. Or the script. Or what I said or did. Or how I said or did it. It was the repentance of a self that believed herself to be bad in some undefined and overarching way. When I turned forty, I realized that the never-ending fresh starts meant I was still waiting for my life to begin. Still waiting for the day I will have sorted this messy life, fixed this imperfect self, and ushered in a new era of perfection.

I now try to live as the GPS of a car. A GPS never puts you down for missing a turn. It doesn’t tell you to go back to the beginning and start over. It simply, calmly and without judgment, tells you to reroute back to where you were headed. Except my GPS does so with a lot of compassion because not being unkind is not the same as being deeply loving. And only compassion can unlock the power and possibilities within us.

This is the work we do on this Substack. Every season, we work through one of the deeper truths, what it is, how to find the one that lives beneath your particular fear, and how to nurture it until it becomes the ground you stand on. If you aren’t subscribed already, I’d love for you to be. Because this work is worth doing. Not only for our own joy and flourishing, but for a world that needs our actualization, not our optimization.

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Have you ever noticed that some of the most confident-looking people, the ones who tend to be louder, more self-assured, or more on top of their lives than others, become the most insecure when they face failure or criticism?

I think I first noticed this when my oldest daughter was in nursery school. It was a small nursery in the basement of a church near our home with about a dozen children and one harried teacher. As parents we took turns helping out in pairs, so the poor woman didn’t have to run around with her hair on fire.

Because of everyone’s different schedules, I was often paired with a mother whose confidence, to be honest, made me feel smaller than I already felt. I had struggled with low self-worth for much of my life. Being next to someone who seemed to have their life together didn’t help; I not only felt inferior, I also felt inadequate. Needless to say, my inner critic loved her company.

Then one day, I saw a side of hers I wasn’t expecting. The teacher had planned a field trip to a new playground nearby with taller slides and larger play gyms. When we got there, all the children bolted off to the different structures as though they’d just been let loose from a cage. All but one. Her little boy. I’d known him for over two months now and I could see he was a shy kid who liked to take his time before trying new things. And once he found what he liked, his concentration knew no bounds. Even the intensity with which he ate the crackers he loved was worth watching!

The mother didn’t like his hesitation. She shouted from across the playground: “Go try the slide!” He glanced at it, then turned away and began digging the sand as though to make himself busy. I could see her facial expression change. She began muttering something under her breath, then almost as if carried by some inner demon, she marched up to him, picked him up by the hand, and lurched him onto the third rung of the ladder. “Climb!” she ordered. The poor child just stood there, frozen, a look of absolute terror on his face. The teacher saw it all unfold and came to his rescue.

When we returned to the nursery, the mother broke down in sobs. Her life was a mess, she said. Her husband was not ambitious. Her son was just like him. And she couldn’t take it. I didn’t quite know how to console her because even in her vulnerability, she was strangely resistant to being comforted. That was the last time I saw her. She changed her days on the roster. For a long time I blamed myself for not having been there for her. I now understand what happened: she had shown me a “weak” side of herself, and the shame had made her disappear.

This is what the fear of being regular looks like up close. At its heart is a feeling of being alone that likely developed early in life. When a child feels unimportant to her caregivers, either because they have little time for her, or because they are unable to meet her emotional needs, she hides the pain by deciding emotion is a weakness and cloaking herself in a garb of strength and self-sufficiency. She becomes afraid of being ordinary. Average. One of many. Unless she stands out, she tells herself, she will experience that pain again.

If some of this sounds familiar, I invite you to extend genuine compassion to the little child whose heart was shattered a long time ago. I know this will be difficult. Your mind may tell you compassion is weak. That you will fall behind or be seen as a loser or won’t be admired. After all, being strong, independent, and in control is something you value above all else, ideals that are further strengthened by the societies we live in.

But here’s the thing: compassion softens the heart. It makes it pliable, so that when it breaks, it breaks open and not apart. It makes it porous, so that your independence expands into the interdependence of relationships that lift as they rise. This is especially important for women because of our relational nature. We could have all the success in the world, but if it comes at the expense of relationships we value, we will suffer.

I’ve worked with many successful women who talk about the loneliness at the top, or in lives where there is no space for a relationship. They talk about the inability to be vulnerable, the fear of commitment, the pressure of finding the “right” person, or the heavy weight of estranged relationships.

Sometime back, I was working with a client who was desperate to rekindle her almost non-existent relationship with her adult children. She had recently sold a highly successful business that she had built from scratch, a genuine achievement, by any measure. But all she could talk about was the regrets of having missed her children’s childhood. “They don’t share anything with me now. I feel I have no place in their lives and it eats me up every day. I have completely failed as a mother.”

This black and white view of the world is stark in the fear of being regular. Life is like a see-saw, you’re either on top or you’re down on the ground. You’re either successful or you’re a failure. There is no space for being human: weak, imperfect, vulnerable. Because being human, you learned, means pain.

The good news is the pain can become the path to your biggest life if you find the place that exists alongside the pain. The place that has always existed, and will always exist. The place that reminds you that you are not alone. That you are held and supported. That needing others isn’t weakness but your deepest longing.

When you find a foothold in that deeper truth, something opens. You can relax. You can receive. You can allow yourself to be seen. And you can be received by others too, because empathy needs vulnerability.

This is the work we do on this Substack. Every season, we work through one of the deeper truths, what it is, how to find the one that lives beneath your particular fear, and how to nurture it until it becomes the ground you stand on. It’s the foundation of a power that doesn’t need to dominate to be real. If you aren’t subscribed already, I’d love for you to be. Because this work is worth doing. Not only for our own joy and flourishing, but for a world that is disillusioned by the old definitions of power.

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There is a particular kind of self-doubt that lives inside people who are, by every measure, a valuable part of any relationship. People who care, who are capable, who others can count on – and yet, who feel compelled to over-give, over-promise, over-perform, as though they need to win their place over and over again.

Not long ago, I was working with a lovely young woman who had signed up for coaching. She had been marked as “high potential” in her workplace and wanted to step into a managerial role. “I need help with my confidence,” she said, disarmingly. “I feel I’m not ready.”

I knew this readiness gap well, and I see it most often in women. It’s a gap between abilities and trust, where you keep upgrading your skills, becoming more qualified than necessary, and yet remain unwilling to take the leap. She told me that her boss didn’t want to let her go, because he said he’d never find someone like her. She was a fast learner. She took on more than her share. She made sure nothing ever slipped.

But to step up, she would have to do the very things she had spent her life avoiding: say no, delegate, make decisions, and sometimes be disliked for them. And that terrified her.

I asked her about her past, because this I know: almost always, when we feel stuck, or need to put ten times the effort for a fraction of the results, we are operating from the past. She told me she had grown up with an alcoholic mother and an absent father. Life, love, peace – everything was unpredictable. As the oldest, she had often put her own needs aside to meet those of her siblings. She had also felt responsible for keeping her mother happy so everyone felt safe. She became the good girl. The people-pleaser. The over-giver. The over-performer. The one who often ends up feeling burnt out, underappreciated, and resentful.

This pattern is common for those of us who grow up where love and safety felt unreliable. We learn that we are somehow “less than” because we are at the mercy of other people’s moods and emotions. We learn to keep ourselves small and undemanding. We learn to be good at everything because we know that disappointing others comes with a price. We value other people’s needs and dreams over ours and believe we exist to help them shine. And when we genuinely want something, we push and overwhelm ourselves to make sure we don’t fail – proving ourselves in jobs we’ve already earned and relationships we’ve already built.

If some of this sounds familiar, I invite you to reflect on your particular patterns. Do you say yes when you mean not really, and soften your opinions before voicing them? Do you do more for others than they expect – which raises their expectations of you and puts you in a double-bind? Do you work harder than a thing requires, take on more than you can carry, and end up feeling less capable rather than more?

Maybe you tell yourself the pleasing is kindness, or the over-doing is conscientiousness, or simply what it takes to stand out. And sometimes it genuinely is. That is exactly what makes this so hard to see.

But here is what I know. You cannot find clarity while you are standing on the ground of inferiority. It isn’t possible, because fear narrows the view. And fighting the fear, arguing with it, trying to fix it, is its own quiet form of gaslighting. Your fear is real. It exists for good reason. Denying it doesn’t help you trust yourself more. It makes you trust yourself less.

The way forward that actually empowers you is to find a ground that runs deeper than the fear. Not a ground that denies it, and not one that depends on it. The ground of what is also true about you.

When you stand on that deeper ground, something opens. You can hear your intuition again. You can make decisions from genuine discernment instead of self-protection. You start to feel the difference between warmth that flows freely and warmth that has become a performance you’re exhausted by. Between the diligence that is truly yours and the treadmill you can’t get off. Between the yes that means something and the yes that has quietly turned to resentment.

So take a moment to reflect: what do you value about yourself that you’re not noticing? What do you now know about yourself that the younger version of you didn’t? Look at yourself with the eyes of appreciation, and I promise you will find things that reveal the kind of power worth building. Not the power of controlling and fixing and proving. But the power of standing on the ground from where everything is possible.

This is the work we do here, season by season. We take one of these deeper truths at a time: what it is, how to find the one that lives beneath your particular fear, and how to nurture it until it becomes the ground you stand on. If you’re not subscribed yet, I’d love for you to be. Because it’s time to move from the old power to the new.

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It’s funny how that younger version of me had a wisdom I forgot as I grew older and became a paragon of a culture that loves reinvention. Every birthday, every new year, even the start of anything new became an opportunity (it felt more like a decree) to turn over a new leaf. The writer Oliver Burkeman calls it the doctrine of “fresh startism”.

The problem with constantly starting over is that it is underpinned by the belief that things should have been done better, that the achievement didn’t quite count, that we somehow fell short in some undefined way. It’s about erasing the past so that the future can be flawless. But because flawlessness isn’t possible, it leaves us feeling empty.

This realization dawned on me on my fortieth birthday. As we tend to do on major milestones, I looked back at my life. And what stared back at me was a gaping hollowness. It was as though I was still waiting for my life to begin. I remember thinking if I were to die today, I would feel like I never lived.

The horrible past, the tough teenage years, the losses and mistakes, the wins that were great if we don’t hold them up against a benchmark of perfection.

Self-actualization happens through integration, not through rejection. The painful chapters, the embarrassing phases, the versions of us we’d rather forget - they are not obstacles to the person we’re becoming. They are the material. We become more, not new.

There is no fresh start because there is no blank slate. The past will always live within us. We can hide from it, but that’s like the little child who covers her eyes so others can’t see her. It will still drive our actions.

The more we increase our capacity to hold it all with love, the better we’ll be able to cross the porous divide between who we were and who we are becoming. That is true power. To be capacious enough to contain the full complexity of a human life and rise rooted because of it all.

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More and more I believe that moral perfectionists are simply born with an overactive conscience. Perhaps our ancestors were responsible for the wellbeing of their tribes. Mistakes weren’t allowed because it was literally a matter of life and death. And so our inner critics are loud and overbearing, and they tend to suck the joy out of every goal and project, every thought and decision, every action and interaction.

I’ve been this way ever since I remember. In grade one, I would erase my writing until it was perfect. Not because anyone told me to. But because of an internal mandate of flawlessness. By the time I was ten, playdates became a challenge for everyone involved, because I couldn’t simply play. I had to organise, direct, improve. My poor friends, I’m surprised they ever came back.

Even to this day, I can be terribly hard on myself if I’m not careful. I begin editing as I’m writing. I start judging myself as I’m talking. Am I kind, funny, dependable enough? Am I creative, knowledgeable, impactful enough? Am I good enough?

The thing about this particular wiring is that it’s like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we’re drawn toward a better possibility. On the other, we’re also trapped in an age-old belief that we’re somehow lazy and unreliable.

So it’s even more important to know the truth of your human nature. And it comes from the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers, a key pioneer of the human potential movement. He found that human beings are naturally trustworthy and constructive. We don’t need to manage ourselves all the time - we simply need to hold space for our humanity.

That’s where love comes in. Because the reality is that even when we go after our heartfelt goals, we will lose motivation. We will have bad days. We will get sick, distracted, derailed. We will write the terrible first draft (and second and tenth). It’s not a flaw. It’s part of our human design.

When we hold it all with self-compassion, motivation will return with fresh ideas, and good days will have a renewed engagement with life. And those terrible drafts - they will transform into really good copy that you feel proud to share.

And then - and this is the part I love most - notice what happens when you do. Because love, when we stop rationing it, grows. You’ll notice you’re kinder with people, that you listen with your heart and laugh from your belly. You’ll look out the window and notice it’s a beautiful day, and a beautiful life. Even doing the dishes won’t be such a chore any more…

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The tendency toward productivity when there’s uncertainty or a lot is coming at us is quite universal. Somehow doing something gives us a sense of agency and makes us feel in control. And for a while it feels like power - until it doesn’t.

I know because I’m one of those people. Every time work or life feels overwhelming, my brain somehow decides it’s precisely the right moment to reorganize my files, redo my bedroom or pull out all my old clothes for the Salvation Army. I begin creating elaborate to-do lists and parse every hour of the day into a thousand pieces. And then I drive everyone around me into a state of low-grade panic and get irritated when they don’t share my sense of urgency.

Thankfully I’ve become better at identifying the tendency and stopping myself before I’ve gone too deep down the rabbit hole.

Productivity isn’t always power. Most times it’s simply the appearance of it.

The actions, the doing, the created work - they create a sensation of forward momentum. But we’re often simply spinning faster and faster in the same place.

Speed and momentum aren’t the same thing. Speed is usually about avoiding the discomfort of not knowing or the fear of inadequacy. The to-do lists and time management systems aren’t necessarily a bridge to the future. They’re ways of not feeling the present.

If you relate, here’s the question that returns the power back to you:

Is what I’m doing right now helping me move forward? Or is it helping me feel in control?

That’s where meaning comes in. Meaningful work is aligned with who you are and how you want to live your life. It doesn’t have the frenzy of productivity because it’s neither bound to a timeline, nor a yardstick to measure your worth. Instead, it’s work you’ve chosen to do because it moves you in the direction of a future that speaks to your heart.

You’ll know the difference between productivity and meaning if you can look back at your day and feel a sense of healthy pride. Not because you cleared your inbox or organized the spice rack - that’s temporary and dopamine driven. But because you wrote the thing, had the conversation, showed up for the person, took the step that mattered even though it was uncomfortable.

It’s what remains when you strip away everything that made you feel good in the moment.

Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps and went on to found a whole school of psychology around meaning, wrote that we can endure almost any how if we have a strong enough why. I think about this often. Not in the dramatic, life-or-death sense, but in the ordinary Tuesday sense. The days that feel hollow aren’t usually the hard ones. They’re the ones where I was busy but not purposeful. Moving but without a direction of my choosing.

That answer is your power principle in action.

If something came up in reading this - or in practicing it, please leave a comment. The work of becoming powerful is always better in community!

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It’s that time of the year again. The festivities are over, the socializing done, the tension of other people’s comments and opinions hopefully eased for another year.

It’s now time to shine the light of awareness on yourself where you are your only judge, guide, and hopefully cheerleader. Who will you be going into the new year? What are the dreams and longings that are calling you? What are the habits and mindsets that are ready to be updated?

Even if you’re not one for new year’s resolutions, you’ll likely reflect on these questions over the next few days. It’s called the “new start effect” when the arrival of a new phase or milestone makes us reflect on questions that are at best the backstage of our daily lives. A new year is a collective milestone that billions of us enter together - the hype around it is impossible to ignore.

And yet, for all the energy poured into planning for transformation, there’s a reason most of us end up with the same goals year after year. And it’s not lack of willpower, self-discipline, structures, support, or planners. Most of us have more than we need.

It’s because we’ve been sold the idea of instant transformation - a “new me” in five easy payments or a brand-new planner or morning routine of the rich and successful. Most such ideas are based in Puritan values of right and wrong, a top down, prescriptive approach to life also called patriarchy in the spiritual realm. At the core of the approach is the belief that we are broken and lacking in some way. Our job in life is to “fix” ourselves so we become what we are capable of being.

A matriarchal approach, on the other hand, begins with the idea of wholeness. It’s grounded in the belief that you’re imperfect and brilliant at the same time - a rich paradox that holds your magic and contribution to the world. As Maya Angelou wrote in her beautiful poem A Brave and Startling Truth:

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

[…]

We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

I spent years of my life pushing myself to turn over a new leaf on a given day (birthday, new year, end of summer break…). I tested the limits of willpower and self-discipline. I set up “fail-proof” structures, filled out planners, set up reminders - and ended up with massive exhaustion, a louder inner critic, and sometimes short-lived success that strengthened the false belief that I could’ve succeeded if I’d tried harder.

In hindsight, I was trying to run away from a deep-seated belief of lack and inadequacy. I was trying to redeem myself. But instead I was digging myself deeper into the pit of brokenness and waiting for the day I would finally be ready to begin my perfect life.

Thankfully, I’ve now learnt that a self-actualizing life is about growth and not perfection - a slow and ongoing process of transformation toward a possibility bigger than we can fathom with our limited mental capacities. Think of the acorn that grows into an oak tree, or the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. Think of your own little self who learned to walk and talk, or the experiences you’ve likely had where you trusted life and the outcome was better than you could’ve imagined.

Your highest self lives in your DNA. It’s the entelechy that calls you forth moment to moment. All you need is to be present, so you aren’t misguided by fears, false beliefs, or the noise and expectations of others who can never know you as well as you know yourself. It’s the only way you can live your best life in a world that becomes more uncertain and unpredictable by the day. So many of us wake up to a reality we didn’t see coming, whether it’s in our circumstances or our inner world. We live and work with people who struggle with their own lot and get affected by their pains and perceptions. Despite our best intentions, willpower, or plans, we will fall behind, fall off, fall apart.

The more we trust the inescapable mess and muddle of life, and build our capacity to cross, over and over again, the porous and non-existent divide between good and bad, pride and shame, fear and courage, health and illness, joy and sorrow, the more we’ll be able to return to life mid-journey with clarity and courage. We’ll be able to make tiny and concrete improvements, unburdened by any need for those improvements to usher in a golden age of perfection. And in the process, experience aspects of ourselves we never knew existed.

So as we step into 2026, I invite you to let go of the idea of turning over a new leaf and instead reflect on the questions below so you rise on solid ground with ease, grace, and joy.

Your prompt to explore:

What will you work on this year? What is the potential that is “ripe for the picking?” Is there something - a habit, a thought, a behavior that you’re ready to let go of? Is there a work, a relationship, a longing that is in season? Listen inward - the noise outside is mostly about societal expectations. Your soul has a different vision. Connect with it.

Think of the one to three small changes you can make toward the vision. No more. Energize them. How can you make them joyful, something you look forward to? How can you make them easy to remember and include them in your day to day? And most importantly, what will you do when you forget, fall behind, or face the unexpected? Who is the version of you who will pick yourself up and continue forward with grace and humanity?

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I’m writing to you today with a personal reflection on my relationship with food given Thanksgiving is around the corner and we’re reminded as always of the blessing of our daily meals and people to share them with.

For me, the blessing is always front and center of my mind. As some of you may know from my first book, I struggled with a ruthless eating disorder in my teenage years that lasted well into early adulthood. The worst of it was over by the time I was eighteen - I’d gone through in-patient treatment and was “weight restored”. My life had returned to normal, I went to college, then started working.

Even so, my relationship with food didn’t go back to what it had always been. I no longer feared it the way I did in the throes of my eating disorder, but nor did I look forward to it the way I would as a young child. I missed the sweet anticipation that my grandmother had made my favorite meal, and the thrill of finding out she had. I missed the childlike excitement of knowing there’d be an exciting lunch the day after the grand dinner parties my parents hosted for dignitaries.

Food used to be fun. And heart-warming. There were no judgements around it, at least none we took seriously at the time. But the eating disorder changed all that for me. Even post-recovery, I lived by rules around food, by shoulds and have-tos. It was easy to confuse the rules with being good to myself; our cultural obsession with clean eating and healthy foods makes it hard to know when we’re caring for ourselves and when we’re depriving ourselves of the blessings we’ve been given. And when you have a genetic propensity for an eating disorder, the rules become the eating disorder’s bargaining chip.

I thought I had recovered. I hadn’t - yet.

My relationship with food was seeping into my relationship with life. I would say no to social gatherings where I knew food won’t be served on time or there won’t be a balanced meal. I was becoming more and more rigid and controlling about most things, and a part of me was frustrated with myself. I would look at other people enjoying their food, over-eating some nights, or digging into everything at a buffet or an all-you-can-eat bar. One time we went to an all-inclusive resort and I was the only miserable person making sure I stuck closely to my regular diet.

The essayist Anaïs Nin wrote: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”. That day finally came when I was twenty-four. I was tired of my own excuses and justifications. I knew this wasn’t how I wanted to live the rest of my life. I longed for the freedom around food I had once known. But I also didn’t know who to turn to - I was apparently recovered and I felt ashamed talking about my feelings and behaviors.

The internet was a new thing at the time, and I turned to it for answers. Turned out I was stuck in “half-recovery” - weight restored, but internally my body was reeling from years of restriction. To recover fully, I would need to eat a lot more so my body could complete its inner work and my brain could rewire back to its original relationship with food. The news felt like a gift sent from the heavens. Which rule-driven person doesn’t dream of permission to eat freely and abundantly?

In reality, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, if not the hardest given how long it went on. For eight months straight, I had to eat past hunger and past fullness. I had to eat past my “ideal weight” - the weight a BMI calculator says is right for you - and experienced the very nightmare the eating disorder warns you of: Loss of control. Judgment from others. Emotional mess. It panicked - was I doing the right thing? Shame came to stay because yes people judge you. I felt angst and despair and rage at myself - why did I get into this?! But also at the experts and specialists whose misguided approach had led to my misery. There was also grief for all the years lost in half-recovery, for all the moments I said no to, for all the relationships that became strained because of my rigidities.

Even the permission to eat brought little solace. It became something to dread not because I was afraid of it, but because I was always full. Eating had become a chore, a thing to get through. Sometimes I wished I could just pop a pill and be over with it. At least it would save me the humiliation of loved ones asking whether I really wanted a second helping or suggesting I try the Greek salad. The pain didn’t let up and I desperately wished for my rule-driven life. I would likely have gone running back if not for the fact that I had come this far in the journey. If this approach to recovery was to be trusted, the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t far.

Eight months in, and I emerged out of the darkness. My appetite returned to normal (no more thinking about food even when I was full) and the weight began to drop on its own until it found its natural set-point. My body had completed its inner repair, my brain had wired the eating disorder out of my life, and the joyful and trusting relationship with food I once had rekindled itself on its own. I began looking forward to meals. They became a source of joy and connection. My life expanded again because food is so central to life.

I share this with you because nature has instilled all of us with the ability to enjoy food (and rest and ease and pleasure) without harming ourselves. Sadly though, most of us become disconnected with this inner knowing because our culture is based on puritan values of right and wrong. Food has become moral, as has productivity and discipline and restraint. We’re living as objects of other people’s dictates, with the added pain of believing we’re being good to our future selves.

Most of Greek philosophy is based on these puritan values, and this has also seeped into the self-help and self-improvement world. We feel like a good person for sticking to a certain diet or a morning routine or getting through all the items on our to-do lists. And we judge and criticize ourselves for falling behind, holding little space for the fact that so much in life is outside our control, including our emotions, bodies and circumstances.

This is why I prefer the approach of a lesser-known Greek philosopher called Epicurious who believed in honoring the soul’s love of joy over the spirit’s desire for divinity. Epicurious believed in an abundant world where pleasure, connection, and ease are the pillars on which we build a good life, not the by-products or the things we earn for being good. Because think about it, those rewards never really come from trying harder. Healthy eating leads to more stringent diets. Zero in-box leads to more stress not more ease. Discipline leads to more control and not more connection.

But when we begin with the soul, we automatically find the right answer for the situation we’re in because the soul is in dialogue with our inner knowing. We don’t need to be told what to do, say or eat. We just know. When I was six or so, my parents would take us to the neighborhood bakery once a week and we were allowed to pick any one thing we wanted. I still remember the feeling of being drunk from the smell of freshly baked pastries and dazed at the rush of activity to and from the kitchen. It wasn’t the cleanest of places - there were flies everywhere and no concept of gloves or tongs. But nothing mattered to the little girl deciding between hundreds of yummies. She knew every single time.

Somedays, on my way home from my morning walk, I stop at the little café across my street to buy something yummy, something that my inner child would love to eat. Standing in front of the glass display full of Italian pastries, I silently ask myself What do you want my little one? She always knows.

Your prompt to explore:

How is your relationship with food? Do you want to bring more joy into it? Why or why not? How can you honor your little child at every meal, or at least once a day? Can you make food prep a little more fun? Maybe put on some music? Maybe experiment with the recipe?

Is there a meal or a food that reminds you of a special moment or a childhood memory? Would you want to cook it more often? Or go where you can have it?

Is there a food you’ve told yourself you cannot have - how fully do you believe the reason you’re giving yourself?

Is there a food or foods you feel you need to “earn”? What if you ate them without earning? Would you like to see how that goes?

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Two days ago I woke up to surprise, surprise… snowfall! I’m not one to check the weather forecast so it was completely unexpected, given its not even mid-November. Yes Toronto is a cold city, but even so…

For a moment I stood there feeling frustrated. I had planned quite a few chores for the morning and now urgh! Where were my boots? Should I look for gloves? Why did it have to snow? That same old wiring of looking at the world with doom and gloom. It’s there in all of us, and more in some because of our experiences or personality. For me, it’s been a journey recognizing it and then gently shifting it to gratitude and joy and wonder. All the things that nourish us.

I didn’t even have to do so that morning. Just the sight of the snow filled air and ground did the shift for me. The world looked so beautiful, so pure and fresh. I’d woken up feeling heavy and tired from a bad night’s sleep. Suddenly I felt light and energized like a little child. I found my boots, couldn’t care less about the gloves, and rushed outside. Funny how we are little kids inside – curious, excitable, impatient.

Outside, it was even more magical. The air was crisp, the ground was light and fluffy, the leaves and branches balanced the snow like a dancer holds up a ballerina. With ease and grace. A lightness of being saturated my body. My soul felt alive, my inner child wanted to dance, my world was complete.

All those thoughts of being behind that tend to run in the background as we get to the end of the year were gone. I don’t know about you, but by this time, I start feeling burdened by everything that still needs to be done and pressured by media messages of “you can still do it”, and “finish the year strong”. In my head I know I’m not some lazy and undisciplined sloth who needs to be reminded all the time. I do get things done. But my body silently hangs on to those messages. My inner dialogue gets pushy – shoulds, have tos, even musts lose their joy. And before I know it, I’m not sleeping well, I feel stressed out, I’m on edge all the time.

The snow reminded me this is no way to live. Watching the snow fall aimlessly from the skies and feeling the soft caress of the flakes on my face, I wondered if we’re meant to live more like snowflakes. Freely. Softly. Lovingly. It reminded me of Rumi’s poem Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing. He’s talking about the place where we once were before being exiled into the world. He’s talking about the home of the soul – of abundant and unconditional love.

Children live in that home until the world teaches them they cannot. I guess it’s the rite of passage of growing older – and it’s worse for those of us whose caregivers could not make us feel safe, loved, and valued. We become further exiled from our little child, from joy and ease. From kindness and genuine engagement with the world.

Growing up is about coming back to the soul’s home. And I do believe that every so often, life invites us to it. Intimacy, joy, beauty – the snowfall – little invites scattered from the sky. Little openings into the soul. The author Susan Cain says we’re always silently longing for that place. That’s why we recognize it the moment we experience it. It’s like our hearts are full and nothing else matters. It’s like we want to take it all in because we know it’s fleeting.

Remember the common advice we’re given on how to live our best life, the one that says live every day as though it were your last. I’ve tried it, and quite honestly, it has only added to my stress because if today is the last, then I have to do everything possible to make it the best. It’s underpinned by the same scarcity mindset that keeps us trapped and small, and judgmental and unforgiving.

But when I live from the spirit of my inner child, then everything become easier and more joyful. I look at each day, each moment as if it were my first. There’s no rush because life opens abundantly before me. I feel alive, hopeful, eager to engage, even with the things that I tend to consider chores.

The snow reunited me with that child. It reminded me of the truths I’d forgotten. It brought me back home to myself.

Your prompt to explore:

If you were to live everyday as if it were your first, what would you do differently? What simple pleasures will you include in your life? What passions will you pursue? Who will you hug or forgive? What will you notice? What will you let go of? Where will you spend more of your time? How will you speak to yourself?

And before I go, here’s Rumi’s poem that I mentioned in my post – tell me if it speaks to you as well!

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

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