When those emotions are suppressed in teams and leadership, they slowly cause stress, resentment and when unwatched, mental or physical health problems and burnout.

According to Gallup and Deloitte research (2025):

• Around 48% of employees report experiencing burnout at work.

• 82% of executives report experiencing symptoms of exhaustion or burnout

• Only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work

We can’t discard the trend. The future of work and good leadership is in the ability of managing stress and emotional health at work. But most executives and employees were never trained for it, neither in personal or professional life.

And when leaders are constantly operating from stress, that energy doesn’t stay with them. It trickles down into teams, relationships, decision-making and ultimately into what the organization creates.

When we are stressed, our nervous system moves into survival mode: fight, flight or freeze. Our thinking becomes narrower. We become more focused on protecting ourselves than creating, innovating or taking thoughtful risks.

This is why self-regulation is not just a wellness practice. It is a leadership skill.

Let me share this week two very simple practices, especially when you have a high-demand job.

1. Heart-focused breathing

The first is heart-focused breathing, inspired by the work of the HeartMath Institute. It is a simple way to interrupt the momentum of stress and give yourself a moment before reacting.

Bring your attention to the centre of your chest and imagine your breath flowing in and out through your heart area. Then breathe slowly: five seconds in, five seconds out, for around five minutes.

You can use it in the morning, before a difficult conversation or presentation, when you feel activated, between meetings, or at the end of your workday to create a transition into your personal life.

A good routine is to pause and practice the heart breathing three times a day.

The goal isn’t to make the stress disappear. It is to create enough space to choose your response rather than acting from your automatic reaction.

2. The one-minute self-awareness check-in

After the breathing, take one more minute to simply notice yourself.

What am I feeling right now? Where do I feel it in my body?

Are you tense? Angry? Anxious? Frustrated? Sad? Calm?

You don’t need to fix anything. Just notice.

Our emotional state changes the way we perceive situations. The same difficult message can feel like an attack when we’re exhausted and completely manageable when we’re grounded.

This is particularly important for leaders. Before asking “What is the right decision?”, we can also ask:

“From what state am I making this decision?”

Fear, anger and exhaustion can all influence the way we lead without us realizing it.

Come back to yourself

I believe one of the biggest challenges for leaders today is not access to information or intelligence. AI can already process more information than we ever could.

The challenge is increasingly ourselves: how we regulate, how we respond under pressure, how we hold uncertainty, and how we protect our energy and vitality.

Your team doesn’t only experience your words. They experience your state.

So for the next 28 days, try this simple practice: five minutes of heart-focused breathing, followed by one minute of self-awareness.

Do it every day. And observe what changes.

Perhaps you react differently and notice your emotions earlier.

Can you feel more space before reacting? Do you feel more grounded?

The practice is simple.

The transformation comes through repetition and new habits.

You don’t have to be at the mercy of your stress.

Let me know how it goes after 28 days 🙏

About HeartMath Institute

HeartMath Institute (HMI) is a nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to helping people build resilience, emotional balance, and clarity through practical, science-based tools and technologies.

HeartMath techniques and heart rhythm coherence feedback technologies are used worldwide in workplaces, schools, healthcare settings, families, and communities to reduce stress and support well-being in real, everyday situations.

Beyond The Mind: The Science of Plant Medicines

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As a coach, I have spent years working with leaders on strategy, decision-making, self-awareness, leadership, relationships, purpose and business.

And yet, again and again, I have seen that knowing something intellectually does not necessarily mean that we can change it. We can understand why we behave the way we do. We can talk about our fears, our childhood patterns and our limiting beliefs. We can even have a very clear vision of the person we want to become.

And still, we repeat the same patterns.

This is what eventually led me to explore another dimension of the work: the wisdom of the body, the intelligence of the heart and, eventually, plant medicine.

For this episode of A Spark of Awareness, I invited Omar M’Rabet Gomez to have a conversation about his own journey with plant medicine, what he has learned through almost three decades of working with these traditions, and why so many leaders are increasingly curious about this work. This is not an invitation to see plant medicine as the answer to everything. There are many paths to transformation. But for some people, it can be a powerful catalyst for going beyond the patterns of the mind and accessing something that has been difficult to reach through conventional approaches alone.

From the corporate world to the jungle

Omar’s story is very different from mine, but there was something very familiar in it. Born in Mexico, he grew up with a strong connection to nature and spent much of his youth seeking out indigenous communities and learning from people who had maintained a relationship with nature that modern society has, in many ways, forgotten.

Long before plant medicine became a mainstream conversation, Omar was traveling, spending time with indigenous communities and learning from them. His first experience with peyote happened in Mexico, followed years later by his first experience with Ayahuasca in the Amazon in 2004. At the time, very little was known publicly about these traditions. There were no Instagram accounts explaining how to prepare for a ceremony, no mainstream podcasts and very little public conversation about psychedelics. He entered this world through direct experience.

What happened in those early ceremonies profoundly changed him. He describes experiences of forgiveness, self-love and a deep sense of connection. One of the most important realizations for him was what he calls radical unconditional self-love.

But what struck me most about Omar’s story is that he did not immediately leave the corporate world and become a facilitator. He went back. He worked in business. He managed a law firm. He lived a very material, successful life. And yet, something was missing.

Eventually, a series of profound life events brought him back to the path he had encountered in the jungle and ultimately led him to build a healing centre and dedicate his life to this work.

Looking back, he says something that stayed with me: he didn’t build the healing centre to heal other people. He built it to heal himself.

Helping others became a byproduct of his own healing journey. And perhaps this is an important distinction for anyone working in the space of transformation:

Why are leaders drawn to plant medicine?

One of the questions I wanted to explore with Omar was why so many high-performing leaders and entrepreneurs are increasingly curious about psychedelics and plant medicine.

Because this is not only happening in spiritual communities. Omar has worked with people from all walks of life: electricians, mechanics, mothers, entrepreneurs, executives and CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies.

And according to his experience, the most powerful leaders often encounter the same fundamental challenges as everyone else. They get in their own way.

Behind the performance, the success, the intelligence and the ability to make decisions, there can be self-doubt, imposter syndrome, fear, the need for recognition and a deep attachment to control. The more successful someone becomes, the more sophisticated the protection mechanisms can become.

You can build an incredible company while simultaneously building an identity around being the person who cannot fail. You can become a CEO while secretly wondering whether you are good enough. You can have millions in the bank and still be afraid that everything could disappear tomorrow. You can become very powerful externally while feeling insecure internally.

This is where Omar believes plant medicine can become a powerful catalyst. It can help people step outside the usual patterns through which they perceive themselves and their lives. Not because the medicine magically fixes anything, but because it can create an experience where you are able to see yourself, your story and your patterns from a different perspective.

The biggest barrier is ourselves

One of the themes that came up repeatedly in our conversation was control.

Leaders are often rewarded for being in control. Control the strategy. Control the numbers. Control the team. Control the outcome. Control the risk.

But what happens when control becomes the way we navigate our entire life?

Omar shared a simple metaphor that stayed with me. Imagine holding a handful of sand. If you squeeze it as hard as you can because you are trying to control it, the sand will escape through your fingers. But if you hold it gently, it can remain in your hand.

The same can happen with life. Sometimes, the harder we try to control an outcome, the more resistance we create around it.

And this is particularly interesting for high achievers because the very qualities that helped them succeed can eventually become the things that limit them. Discipline can become rigidity. Ambition can become exhaustion. Focus can become obsession. Self-reliance can become isolation. Confidence can become an inability to receive help. And control can become an inability to surrender.

But going beyond the mind does not mean becoming passive. This was an important point in our conversation.

Being in flow is not about doing nothing and waiting for the universe to solve your problems. It is not about abandoning ambition or responsibility. It is about removing some of the unnecessary weight that we carry while pursuing what matters to us.

The backpack we carry up the mountain

Omar gave another metaphor that I loved. Imagine that you are climbing a mountain. You are determined to reach the top, but you are carrying a huge backpack filled with everything you have accumulated throughout your life: past relationships, childhood wounds, fears, limiting beliefs, negative thought loops, expectations and identities.

You can still climb the mountain. But it is going to be much harder.

Plant medicine, in his experience, can sometimes help people look inside that backpack and ask: Do I still need to carry all of this?

Maybe the goal is not to stop climbing. Maybe the goal is to climb without carrying what no longer belongs to you.

This is where I see a very interesting connection with leadership. Many leaders are not lacking ambition. They are not lacking intelligence. They are not lacking discipline.

They are carrying too much.

And sometimes the next level of performance does not come from adding another strategy, another course, another productivity system or another goal. It comes from releasing what is consuming the energy that could otherwise be available for creation.

What are you afraid will happen if you change?

There is also a deeper fear that comes up when we talk about this work: who will I be if I change?

I have heard this question many times in my coaching practice. What if I don’t want to run my company anymore? What if I stop wanting the promotion? What if I don’t care about the money anymore? What if I want to build something completely different? What if I become a different person?

For many leaders, their ambition has become deeply connected to their identity.

The fear is not necessarily of failing. The fear is of discovering that the thing they have been chasing for the last 10, 15 or 20 years is no longer what they actually want.

And that can be terrifying.

Because if you have built your entire identity around being successful, what happens when your definition of success changes?

This is where I believe the work becomes much deeper than performance coaching. It becomes a question of identity.

Who are you underneath the achievement?

Who are you when nobody is watching? Who are you without the title? Who are you without the company? Who are you without the recognition? Who are you when you no longer need to prove anything?

Plant medicine can sometimes open the door to these questions very quickly. But the questions themselves are available to all of us, with or without medicine.

Why now?

Another question we explored was why this conversation is becoming so present now.

For me, there is something happening collectively. We have never been more connected digitally, and yet many people have never felt more disconnected from themselves, from nature and from each other.

We are constantly stimulated, consuming information, looking at screens. Receiving notifications, messages and opinions. And our ability to simply be present is becoming increasingly difficult.

For leaders, this is amplified. They are making decisions in an environment of constant uncertainty, rapid technological change, AI, economic pressure and competition. The old model was already intense. The speed of the new world is even faster.

And perhaps the answer is not to make humans operate even faster. Perhaps it is to develop another form of intelligence: one that is not only analytical, but that also includes the body, intuition, emotional intelligence, presence, discernment and connection.

This is where I see the bridge between conscious leadership and plant medicine becoming particularly interesting.

Beyond the mind does not mean against the mind

One thing I want to be very clear about is that I don’t see this work as mind versus body.

The mind is extraordinary. We need strategy. We need logic. We need analysis. We need science. We need critical thinking.

But we are not only our minds.

And when the mind has reached its limit, sometimes adding more information is not the answer. Sometimes the answer is to create enough space to access another form of knowing.

This is why I have become increasingly interested in what happens beyond the mind. Some of the deepest shifts in my own life did not happen because I finally understood something intellectually. They happened because I felt something.

I felt it in my body. I felt it in my heart. And once something is felt deeply enough, behaviour can begin to change in a way that intellectual understanding alone could not create.

Plant medicine is a catalyst, not the whole journey

One of the most important points I took from our conversation is that the ceremony itself is not the transformation.

It can be the catalyst. It can open a door. It can show you something. It can help you see a pattern from a completely different perspective.

But then comes the real work: integration.

What do you do with what you have seen? How do you change your relationships? How do you lead your company differently? How do you change your habits? How do you communicate differently with your team? How do you make decisions? How do you live?

This is where the work becomes practical.

And this is also why I believe that plant medicine should never be approached casually or as a shortcut. There are risks, there are contraindications, and the context matters enormously. The preparation, the facilitator, the setting, the lineage and the integration all matter.

There is a big difference between consuming a substance and entering into a properly held process of self-inquiry.

As Omar said during our conversation, we don’t “use” the medicine. We work with it.

That distinction matters to me.

A reflection for leaders

So if you are a leader listening to this and you are curious about plant medicine, I would start with a different question than “Should I do it?”

I would start with: What am I still carrying that is preventing me from becoming who I know I can be?

• Where am I operating from fear?

• Where am I trying to control something that cannot be controlled? Where am I performing? Where do I need external validation?

• What part of my identity am I afraid to lose?

• Who could I become if I no longer needed to prove that I am enough?

Plant medicine may be one path into those questions. It is not the only one. But for me, it has been a powerful doorway into a dimension of myself that I could not access through the mind alone.

And this is the work I am increasingly bringing into my leadership practice: helping leaders go beyond performance, beyond the identity they have built, and beyond the limitations of the mind, so they can reconnect with their own wisdom, purpose and aliveness.

Because the future of leadership may not need humans who can simply think faster. It may need humans who can feel deeper, see wider, and lead from a more conscious place.

I am dreaming to see a world where more leaders operate from that place.

Beyond The Mind: The Science of Plant Medicines

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People are tired of working in tech. They are tired of working in digital. They are tired of games. And when we look at the games industry, it is no longer experiencing the same golden years that many of us who built our careers in the industry experienced.

Week after week, we read about thousands of layoffs. People who thought they were safe suddenly lose their jobs. Some find another position, only to lose it again six months or a year later. Others keep applying and eventually reach a point where their nervous system simply cannot take it anymore.

They feel exhausted. Unmotivated. Disconnected from their work. Sometimes they leave. Sometimes they are eventually let go because they are no longer able to perform at their best.

If you find yourself in this place, first of all, know that you are not alone. Probably thousands of people are asking themselves the same questions right now: Am I in the right place? Am I doing the right thing? Does it still make sense for me to spend the next ten years of my life this way? And when is the right time to change?

These are not only career questions. They are questions about identity, safety, purpose, time and energy.

You could call it a mid-career or midlife crisis, and yes, I believe it is real. At a certain point in life, we naturally start asking ourselves:

How do I want to spend my time? Where do I want to put my energy and my talent? Does what I am doing still make sense to me?

From my coaching work, I have noticed that this process tends to move through seven different stages. They are not necessarily perfectly linear, and everyone experiences them differently, but they offer a useful map for understanding what happens when you are ready—or eventually forced—to change something about your work and your career.

1. The Trigger

There is usually a trigger.

Something happens that forces you to examine whether you are still in the right place. It can be an external event, such as losing your job, a reorganisation, a company closing, or simply seeing what is happening in the market and realising that the environment you built your career in is changing.

It can also be much more internal. You start noticing that your health is suffering, that you are exhausted, that you no longer feel passionate about what you are doing, or that you are simply asking yourself whether this is really how you want to spend the next decade.

With the rise of AI and automation, there is another question emerging as well:

Does it still make sense to spend years developing skills that machines are increasingly able to perform?

I see two very different ways people respond to this trigger:

The first is to take ownership. They notice the wind is changing and decide they would rather initiate the transition while they still have resources, energy and choice. They don’t want to wait until they are forced to change. They want to own their destiny.

The second is denial.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t need to change. I don’t want to change.”

But if something inside you has already started shifting, ignoring it does not necessarily make it disappear.

Eventually, the trigger becomes impossible to ignore.

And for many people, that is when the second stage begins.

2. The Dance

I call this stage the dance because it is a constant back and forth between the old and the new.

One moment, you think, I’m ready. I want to change my life.

Then the next moment, you convince yourself that everything is actually fine.

“Maybe I don’t need to do this.”

“What if I lose my friendships if I leave this industry?”

“What if I don’t have enough money?”

“What if I made the wrong decision?”

“What if I end up under a bridge?”

I have heard all kinds of versions of these stories in coaching.

This is where the mind starts producing every possible argument against change. It is the ego trying to protect the identity it knows. Even when the current situation is no longer working, the familiar still feels safer than the unknown.

And sometimes, if you can create a little distance from these thoughts, there is almost something humorous about the stories we create to avoid doing the work.

But this dance is part of human evolution. Growing means letting something die. It means adapting, rebuilding, and sometimes creating a completely new identity. So if you are in this back-and-forth right now, it does not necessarily mean you are doing something wrong. It may simply mean you are in the middle of the transition.

Eventually, however, the dance becomes exhausting.

3. Pain, Anger and the Threshold

At some point, you get tired of going back and forth.

Your mind becomes exhausted. Your body starts talking to you. You may notice health symptoms, chronic stress, frustration, anger or a growing sense that you simply cannot continue this way.

This is often the moment when people who have been avoiding the decision are finally forced to confront it.

I have clients who arrive at this stage saying, “I’m done. I’m tired of myself. I don’t know what to do anymore, but I know I can’t keep doing this.”

The pain becomes greater than the fear of change.

And that creates a threshold.

Sometimes the trigger was enough to make someone move. Sometimes it takes years of discomfort before they finally reach this point. But eventually, something in the body says: enough.

This is also why I pay so much attention to the body in my work. When the mind has spent years negotiating, rationalising and creating arguments, sometimes it is the body that finally tells the truth.

4. The Decision

The fourth stage is the decision.

And this is a very important distinction in my coaching work: I don’t want to work against someone’s will to change. There is very little point in pushing someone toward a new direction when they have not actually decided that they want something different.

The decision creates momentum.

“I’m done with this phase.”

“I want to own my time.”

“I want more stability and financial freedom.”

“I want to feel vitality again, in my life and my work.”

Once the decision is made in the body, something shifts.

I experienced this myself in my career. Twice, I had the experience of receiving a surprise call telling me that my team was being made redundant, or that I was being made redundant, and that everything I had built would stay with the company.

The first time, I told myself I would change something, but then I let the year happen. I tried another job. And then it happened again.

That second time, I paid attention.

I remember thinking, No more.

That was the moment, three years ago, when I decided to own my time and own how I spend my energy and what I build. I did not want to spend my life knowing that someone in a company could simply make a decision one day and sweep the ground from underneath me again.

That is why I built my own business.

Today, I own my time. I work when I want to work. I don’t work when I don’t want to work. It is a gift, but it is also something I built for myself.

And this is what I tell people I work with: it starts with a decision.

It is not always a question of capacity.

It is first a question of whether you believe you are ready to choose differently.

5. Grief

But deciding to change does not mean that everything suddenly feels good.

There is grief.

Because when you change careers, a part of you is going to die.

Maybe it is a fifteen-year career. Maybe it is twenty years. Maybe it is the identity of the achiever, the successful executive, the expert, the CEO, the person who knows exactly how the system works.

Those identities often gave us something very important: safety.

When I left my corporate career, I had to go through this myself. I had been quite known in gaming and associated with big companies and big titles. I had to ask myself: Who am I when I don’t have the glow of PlayStation, Voodoo, or another big company behind me? Who am I when I am no longer the CEO or the leader?

That is a big part of career change that we don’t talk about enough.

You are not simply changing what you do.

You are letting go of who you thought you were.

And that requires grief.

6. Acceptance

After grief comes acceptance.

Acceptance that the person you were is no longer who you are. Acceptance that your lifestyle may change. Acceptance that some relationships may change. Acceptance that the way you relate to money, success, purpose and even your own identity may be completely different.

When I look back at my own transition, I also had to examine my relationship with money and status.

At one point, I was earning very well and spending a lot because I felt that if I worked that hard, I deserved to spend that money. Restaurants, expensive things, a lifestyle that was partly compensating for how much time and energy I was giving to work.

When I changed my life, I realised I didn’t actually need as much.

My relationship with money changed because my relationship with myself changed. I didn’t need to compensate for what was missing in my life by buying things or creating a lifestyle that proved I was successful.

Acceptance is also about asking a much bigger question: What am I actually here for?

Am I here to maximise profit for shareholders?

Or am I here to create something I genuinely believe is valuable for other people and for the world?

That shift can change everything.

7. The New Self

And then comes the seventh stage: the new identity.

This is where the deepest work begins.

When you strip away the job title, the company, the status, the salary, the industry, the role and the professional identity, who are you?

Many people know exactly who they are when they are employed. They know how to operate within the system. They have learned the rules. They know how money works, how status works, how to get promoted, how to relate to people and how to succeed.

But what happens when you leave the system?

Who are you when people choose to like you not because of your title, but because of who you are?

This is a place that many people fear, but it is also where the growth is.

I see this with founders who are terrified of failing their company. Sometimes they are not actually afraid of the company failing. They are afraid of having to answer the question: Who am I if this company doesn’t exist?

The same happens when someone loses their job.

Who am I if I am not my job?

And this is why we so often rush toward the next thing. The next company. The next title. The next project. The next identity.

We look for another hook to hold onto.

But deep down, we know that no job is going to save us forever from answering the deeper questions.

Am I worthy when I am not achieving?

Am I worthy of love when I am not leading a company?

Am I enough when I am not successful?

These are the questions underneath many of the career transitions I witness in my work.

To A New Value System

Once you reach this new identity, your entire value system can start to change.

You may realise that trading time for money doesn’t make as much sense to you anymore. Perhaps you start thinking instead about the value you create with your energy, your experience, your creativity and your time.

You also start asking yourself what you are actually optimising for.

Is it money? Is it status?

Is it time?

Or is it energy?

I know many people who have plenty of time and money but very little vitality. They are comfortable, but apathetic. They don’t feel inspired or excited about their lives.

And I know people who have much less money or status by conventional standards, but who have an incredible amount of vitality. They have creativity, love, connection, inspiration and a sense of purpose.

Isn’t that what we ultimately need?

When our basic needs are met, the questions become much deeper. We start looking for connection, safety, love, and a sense that our lives actually mean something.

And those are things that money cannot necessarily buy.

Where Are You on the Map?

So if you are currently questioning your career, your industry, or the direction of your life, I invite you to look at these seven stages and ask yourself where you are.

• Are you at the trigger, sensing that something is changing?

• Are you dancing between the old and the new?

• Have you reached the threshold of pain and frustration?

• Have you made the decision?

• Are you grieving the identity you are leaving behind?

• Or are you already stepping into a new identity and discovering who you are beyond the labels?

If you are somewhere on this journey, know that you are not alone.

I am very glad that I did not do it alone. I worked with a coach for a year while navigating my own transition, because I needed support to find new landmarks when the old ones disappeared.

You don’t have to know immediately who you are going to become.

But you do have to become willing to let the old version of yourself change.

And sometimes, the biggest question is not “What do I want to do next?”

It is simply:

Who am I when I stop being what I have always known?

That is where the real journey begins.

FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

After working with hundreds of founders, executives, and leaders, I have started to notice something that comes up again and again in my coaching sessions. People rarely come to me saying, “I need to understand myself.”

They come with a business problem.

I have a problem with my team.

I want to raise money.

I need to grow my revenues.

I want to feel more grounded. I feel stressed.

I don’t know what to do with my company.

And of course, those problems matter. Vision and strategy matters. Product-market fit matters. The business fundamentals matter.

But very often, they are not the real problem. They are the symptom.

From the first few sessions, we usually start moving beyond what is happening on the surface of the business and into a much deeper question: what is actually preventing you from doing what you already know you need to do?

What is preventing you from having the difficult conversation, making the decision, letting go, taking the risk, or looking honestly at ‘Why’ you built this company in the first place?

Because when we create enough space, confidentiality, and safety, something very human tends to appear underneath the business story: the unexamined truth.

And after working with over hundreds of leaders, I keep seeing the same themes.

What Are You Really Looking For Through Your Business?

The first is the need to feel safe.

Many people build businesses because they believe that having their own company will finally give them the security they couldn’t find elsewhere. They want enough money in the bank so they don’t have to worry anymore. They want financial freedom. They want to be in control of their own future.

They want to work with conditions that don’t make them feel controlled, sick or burnt out.

And I understand this deeply. But there is an interesting contradiction here: building your own business is one of the least predictable ways to create safety.

You don’t know where the next revenues will come from. You don’t know whether the market will change. You don’t know whether your company will survive.

And yet, I see people leave corporate (or being forced to) because they didn’t feel safe there, believing that entrepreneurship will finally make them feel safe.

The difficult realisation is that if you don’t feel safe internally, changing the external environment will not solve the problem. You can leave the company. You can build your own business. You can eventually make more money.

You may have millions in the bank. And the nervous system can still be asking, “But what if it all disappears? is it enough?”

There is no external place where you can permanently install yourself into safety. At some point, the work becomes learning how to create a sense of safety from within.

The second theme I see is the need to feel seen.

Some people build because they need to express something. They are creatives, builders, artists, entrepreneurs. They want to create something that represents who they are. They want to make an impact. But what’s behind, they want to be recognised.

Again, there is nothing wrong with that. We all have a fundamental human need to matter.

But what happens when there is no end to the need to be seen?

You reach a million followers, and you want two million.

You raise ten million, and the next milestone becomes twenty.

You receive thousands of likes on LinkedIn, and somehow you still don’t feel recognised.

And this is where we often return to the same place: safety. When I feel seen, I feel that I matter. When I matter, I feel worthy.

When I feel worthy, I feel that I belong. And when I belong, I feel safe.

The third theme is connection and belonging.

Building a company can give you a community. It can give you a social identity. There is a particular status attached to saying, “I’m a founder,” or “I’m a CEO.” You belong to a certain club.

At a networking event, you don’t introduce yourself as “I’m just Sophie.” You have a title. You have a company. You have a story. And there is nothing wrong with enjoying that.

But again, the question is: what are you actually trying to receive from the business?

Are you building because you have something meaningful to contribute?

Or because the business gives you something you are trying to find within yourself?

The Uncomfortable Question

This is where coaching becomes interesting.

When someone feels safe enough to really look at the deeper why, we can ask a question that is sometimes very uncomfortable:

Would you still need this particular title? Would you still need the exit?

Would you still need the millions? Would you still need everyone to know your name?

If the answer is yes. That’s beautiful. Because you are building from choice.

But most of the time, the answer is no. And that is where the real work begins.

Because if the business is compensating for something that feels empty inside, there is no amount of business success that will permanently fill that space.

You may make more money. You may build a bigger company. You may become more recognised. But the emptiness remains.

And this is not a judgment.

I have been there too.

When Fear Becomes the Culture

What concerns me is what happens when these individual patterns become organisational patterns.

If a founder is building from fear, that fear doesn’t stay inside the founder. It becomes part of the company. The pressure to grow becomes part of the culture. The obsession with market share becomes part of the culture.

The fear of failure becomes part of the culture. And suddenly everyone in the organisation is operating from the same underlying insecurity.

This is something I see particularly strongly in tech and games right now.

When I speak to people in the industry, I don’t hear anymore “I love my job. I feel creative. I feel passionate about what I’m building.”

More often, I hear, “It’s okay. I don’t know how long I’ll stay. I’m just doing my job. I don’t know what comes next.”

There is a lot of fear. Fear of losing your job. Fear of not finding another one. Fear of being left behind by AI. Fear of what happens when fifteen years of experience in an industry suddenly no longer guarantees you a place in it.

And when an entire industry enters that state, I think it is worth asking what the collective psyche of that industry looks like.

What are we creating when everyone is operating from fear?

Who can think creatively when they are primarily trying to protect themselves?

Who can create meaningful value when everyone is trying to survive?

Who Are You Without the Title?

There is another question I find increasingly important for leaders today: Who are you when you are no longer your job?

We have created such strong identities around our professional roles that losing a job can feel like losing ourselves.

“I’ve been in tech for fifteen years.”

“I’m a CEO.”

“I’m a founder.”

“This is what I do.”

But what happens when that role disappears? What happens when the company is sold, when the business fails, when you retire, when the industry changes, or when AI transforms the work you spent twenty years mastering?

These are not only career questions. They are identity questions.

And I believe we are entering a period where many people will have to answer them.

Awareness Comes Before Change

So where do we go from here?

For me, it always starts with self-awareness.

Do you actually know why you are doing what you are doing? Why did you build this company?

Why are you still in this job? Why is this particular milestone so important to you?

Are you choosing this life consciously, or are you following a survival program that has been running for years?

There is nothing wrong with being in survival mode when survival is genuinely what is required. The question is whether it is still necessary, or whether it has simply become your default.

Because once we become aware of the pattern, we have a choice.

And that brings us to the second step: decision.

Who do you want to be? How do you want to spend your time? What do you want to give your energy to?

What kind of life do you actually want to build?

This is where many leaders become stuck.

They know. They know they are self-sabotaging. They know they are not in the right place. They know something needs to change.

And still, they don’t move.

Why Knowing Isn’t Enough

The reason is often fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of losing control. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of leaving something you’ve invested years into.

We can spend months creating spreadsheets, comparing pros and cons, building elaborate plans and trying to calculate the perfect moment to move. But sometimes there is no perfect moment. There is simply a moment when you decide.

And that decision is not always a cognitive process. Sometimes it is a movement. A willingness to step out of the familiar and create enough momentum to move into something new.

That can happen through coaching, a mastermind, a community, accountability, or simply creating a container where you are no longer able to stay in the same place indefinitely.

Because the status quo is incredibly comfortable, even when it is making you miserable.

The Slow Death of Staying the Same

This is something I have become increasingly aware of in myself. I would rather feel fully alive and experience the full range of emotions that come with being alive than live in a state of neutrality.

Because when we stay in the comfort zone for too long, something slowly disappears. Not necessarily your physical life, but your sense of aliveness.

You stop feeling excited. You stop feeling curious. You are not necessarily stressed either. You’re just... neutral.

And I don’t believe that is what most of us are here for.

I would rather experience fear, grief, anger, shame, uncertainty and all the uncomfortable emotions that come with taking risks, if that also means experiencing the depth of joy, connection and aliveness on the other side.

That is a choice each of us has to make.

What Will You Do Once You Know?

So my invitation this week is not to immediately change your business. It is simply to become honest with yourself.

Where are you in your journey? Do you know why you are doing what you are doing?

Are you taking responsibility for the life you are creating, or have you given your power away to the market, the economy, your company, your boss, your investors, or your circumstances?

And perhaps the most important question:

What will you do once you know?

Because awareness without responsibility can become another form of avoidance. But awareness followed by a conscious decision is where transformation begins.

This is also where my own work is evolving. I am increasingly exploring what happens beyond the mind, and the intelligence that becomes available when we slow down enough to listen to the body, the heart and intuition.

We are entering a world where AI will process more and more information for us. I don’t believe our future as humans is to compete with machines by trying to process even more information. Our opportunity is to develop the capacities that make us human: presence, wisdom, intuition, connection and consciousness.

And perhaps the future of leadership is not about becoming better at controlling the world around us.

Perhaps it is about becoming more conscious of what is happening within us.

That is where the real work begins.

If you are ready to take action, join this Free Masterclass later today:

Join the FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

In last week’s episode, I explored the idea of survival patterns and asked a simple question:

Who are you when you’re no longer trying to survive?

As I reflected on that conversation, I realised there is another question that naturally follows.

Who are you beneath the Mask you’ve been wearing for so long?

Because surviving is only one part of the story.

The other part is the identity we create in order to survive.

I believe every one of us wears a mask. It is part of being human. It is how we learn to live in society, how we navigate relationships, and how we adapt to the world around us.

The problem is not that we wear masks.

The problem is that, over time, we begin to mistake them for who we really are.

Our authentic self slowly disappears beneath the personality we have carefully constructed to feel safe, accepted and loved.

Very early in life, we begin receiving messages about who we should be. Sometimes they are explicit.

A parent tells us we are too shy, too loud, too emotional or too sensitive.

A teacher tells us we are not trying hard enough. Children at school make fun of our appearance or the way we speak. Sometimes the messages are never spoken, yet they are deeply felt. We realise that expressing anger is not welcome. Crying is seen as weakness. Being different risks rejection.

As children, we don’t have the capacity to analyse these experiences. We simply adapt.

Looking back, it is remarkable how intelligent this adaptation is. At that age, our nervous system has one priority above all else: survival.

We need to feel safe. We need to belong. We need to be loved. If being ourselves threatens those fundamental needs, we naturally become someone else.

That is how the mask is born.

The mask isn’t fake. It isn’t manipulative. It is one of the most intelligent strategies our nervous system could create with the resources it had at the time.

The challenge comes later, when the strategy that once protected us continues running our lives long after the danger has disappeared.

This is something I observe often in leadership.

Many leaders believe they are simply expressing their personality, when in reality they are expressing a survival strategy.

The leader who always has to know the answer may be wearing the mask of the expert because knowledge once created safety.

The leader who avoids conflict at all costs may be wearing the mask of the nice person because harmony once protected them from rejection.

The entrepreneur who rejects every form of authority may be wearing the mask of the rebel because resistance once felt safer than trust.

The woman who insists she needs no one may be wearing the mask of independence because vulnerability once led to disappointment.

These masks often bring success. They help us build careers, companies and reputations. They help us belong to a particular tribe or professional culture.

Eventually, many people arrive at a point where they have followed every step they believed they were supposed to follow. They have built the company. They have earned the recognition. They have become financially independent.

And yet something still feels missing.

It is often because the mask achieved everything.

But the person beneath it was never invited into the room.

As I reflected on my own journey, I recognised several masks that shaped the way I moved through life.

One of the strongest was the rebel.

Growing up, I inherited a deep mistrust of authority. My father had lived through war, displacement and political oppression. Distrusting authority had once been a survival strategy. Without realising it, I adopted that same relationship to power.

As an adult, I questioned managers almost instinctively. I challenged institutions. I resisted teachers. Even healthy forms of authority felt threatening because my nervous system had learned that authority meant danger.

For a long time, I believed this made me free.

Only later did I realise I was still reacting to a reality that no longer existed.

The rebel had protected me.

But she was also limiting my capacity to collaborate, trust and grow.

Another mask I carried was over-independence.

For many years, I believed strength meant not needing anyone. If I could build my career, my company and my life on my own, then nobody could hurt me.

Looking back, I can see that independence wasn’t really the goal.

Protection was.

The deeper wound wasn’t about achievement.

It was about trust.

Healing that part of myself changed not only my personal relationships but also the way I see leadership today. When I first created women’s circles, there was an energy of protection. Women needed a place where they could reconnect with themselves in safety. I still believe deeply in those spaces.

But something has shifted in me.

Today, my vision is no longer about creating separation between men and women.

It is about facilitating enough healing that we no longer need separation in order to feel safe. The work is not to remain inside the mask forever. The work is to become whole enough that we can relate to one another without needing it.

That, for me, is the real invitation behind this episode.

Not to reject the masks we wear.

Not to judge them.

But to become aware of them.

Every mask once served a purpose.

Every mask protected something precious.

The question is simply whether it is still protecting you today, or whether it has become the very thing preventing you from living as your authentic self?

This is also why my work has evolved beyond conversation alone. Awareness is essential, but awareness is only the first step. These identities were not created through logic; they were created through experience. They live in the nervous system, in the body, in memories that often formed long before we had the words to describe them.

My personal journey has taken me into somatic work and, eventually, into the respectful exploration of sacred plant medicines. Not because they replace therapy or coaching, but because they sometimes allow us to reach the place where these identities were first created, making it possible not simply to understand them but to work at the root of the blockage.

As you finish reading, I invite you to pause for a moment.

What mask has served you for most of your life?

What part of yourself has it protected?

And if, deep down, you already knew you were safe... Who would you be without it?

Perhaps conscious leadership is not about becoming someone better.

Perhaps it is about having the courage to slowly remove the identities we no longer need, until the person leading is no longer the mask, but the human being beneath it.

FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

Over the past few years, I have been studying human behaviour through leadership, psychology, trauma, somatic work and, more recently, consciousness.

One question has become increasingly present in my own journey and in the work I do with founders and executives:

Who are you when you’re no longer trying to survive?

At first, it sounds like a strange question. Most of us would probably answer that we are not surviving. We have a home, a career, a salary, food on the table.

We are safe.

And yet, when I look at the world around me, I see something very different.

We live in a time where fear has become part of our daily environment. Every day we are exposed to news about wars, economic uncertainty, layoffs, political instability and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Even if none of these events affect us directly, they slowly reinforce a collective belief that the world is becoming less safe.

For leaders, founders and entrepreneurs, that feeling is amplified.

The question is no longer simply, “How do I build a successful company?”

It quietly becomes, “How do I make sure I’ll be okay?”

Many businesses today are not built from purpose or creativity.

They are built from survival.

And that changes everything.

When Survival Becomes Your Leadership Strategy

One of the patterns I observe most often in coaching is that people believe they are making strategic decisions, when in reality they are making protective decisions.

The business becomes the place where they seek safety.

Success becomes proof that they are enough.

Recognition becomes reassurance that they matter.

Money becomes certainty.

None of those things are inherently wrong. They are deeply human. But when they become the unconscious reason behind everything we build, fear quietly starts leading our decisions.

Instead of asking, “What would create the greatest value?”, we begin asking, “What will make me feel safe?”

Instead of creating from our purpose, we create from our survival.

The difficult part is that most of us don’t realise we’re doing it.

Knowing the Pattern Doesn’t Always Change It

Many of the leaders I work with have already spent years doing inner work.

They’ve been to therapy.

They’ve worked with coaches.

They’ve read countless books.

They understand exactly why they react the way they do.

And still, they find themselves repeating the same behaviours.

They continue overworking.

They continue betraying themselves.

They continue staying in relationships or businesses that no longer serve them.

It is now that they don’t know better.

But understanding is different from transformation.

For many years, I believed that if I understood the source of my patterns, they would naturally disappear.

Eventually I realised that the mind had taken me as far as it could.

The answer wasn’t only in understanding the story.

The answer was hidden somewhere else.

The Body Remembers What the Mind Has Shut Down

This is what led me toward somatic work and the study of the nervous system.

One insight completely changed the way I understand personal transformation.

The body remembers.

When we experience something overwhelming as children, our body adapts in order to survive. Sometimes it contracts. Sometimes it freezes. Sometimes it learns not to express emotions. Sometimes it becomes hyper-vigilant.

These adaptations are incredibly intelligent.

They helped us survive when we were five years old.

The challenge is that many of us continue living with the same adaptations decades later.

The situations have changed.

We have changed.

But our nervous system often hasn’t.

That is why we can intellectually know that we are safe while our body continues reacting as if danger were still present.

A growing body of research in trauma and somatic healing points in this direction. Authors such as Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk and Stephen Porges have all contributed to our understanding that healing is not only about changing thoughts. It is also about helping the nervous system experience safety again.

My Own Survival Story

Looking back, I understand where many of my own survival patterns came from.

My parents left Vietnam after the war. Survival wasn’t simply part of their past; it shaped the way they experienced the world. Safety could disappear overnight. Stability could not be taken for granted.

Without anyone consciously intending it, those beliefs were passed on to me.

I learned very early that achievement created safety.

That working harder meant being worthy.

That success meant I would be okay.

Even after leaving my corporate career and building my own business, I noticed the same program running inside me.

I had enough savings to live comfortably for years.

Nothing in my external reality suggested that I was unsafe.

And yet my nervous system kept repeating the same message:

“It’s not enough.”

“Keep pushing.”

“You never know.”

The circumstances had changed.

The survival pattern had not.

Beyond the Mind, The Next Human Evolution

That was the beginning of another chapter of my journey.

I started exploring movement, somatic practices and eventually travelled to Colombia to sit with Yagé for the first time.

I wasn’t looking for another technique.

I wasn’t looking for another framework.

I was looking for something beyond the mind.

During that journey, I experienced something I had never been able to access through thinking alone.

I could feel, in my body, layers of fear that didn’t seem to belong only to me. They belonged to my family history, to generations that had lived through war, displacement and uncertainty.

For the first time, survival was no longer an idea I understood intellectually.

It became something I could feel.

And because I could finally feel it, I could begin releasing it.

That experience changed the direction of my work.

It showed me that there are dimensions of healing the mind cannot reach on its own.

Who Are You When You Stop Surviving?

One of the biggest fears leaders have is that if they stop being driven by fear, they will lose their ambition.

I had that fear too.

What I discovered was the opposite.

When survival is no longer driving your life, you don’t stop creating.

You don’t stop building.

You don’t stop performing.

You simply stop performing to prove that you deserve to exist.

Your work becomes lighter.

More aligned.

More joyful.

You create because it is an expression of who you are, not because you are trying to outrun an old wound.

That, for me, is what conscious leadership is truly about.

Not becoming someone different.

But removing everything that fear has built around who you already are.

Reflection Questions

As you reflect on your own journey, I invite you to sit with these questions.

Where in your life are you still operating from survival rather than choice?

What part of your identity was once necessary to protect you, but no longer serves you today?

If your nervous system truly knew that you were safe, what decision would you make differently?

And perhaps the deepest question of all:

Who are you when you’re no longer trying to survive?

Closing Thoughts

Survival is one of the most intelligent adaptations our body has ever created.

The question is not whether it protected us.

The question is whether it is still protecting us from a danger that no longer exists.

Because there comes a moment in life when surviving is no longer enough.

There comes a moment when the work shifts from building a life that feels safe to building a life that feels true.

And perhaps that is where real leadership begins.

If you are ready to go a level deeper, I am inviting you to this workshop on August 11th to explore who you are without your survival patterns

FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

For the past ten years, I have worked on the wounds with my father from every possible angle.

Therapy.

Coaching.

EMDR.

Reflection. Conversations. Tons of journaling

And yet, I kept falling into the same patterns.

Especially with men.

In romantic relationships, I kept choosing partners who were emotionally unavailable. I stayed in the familiar narrative of having to earn love, just as I had tried to earn it with my father.

At work, the pattern translated differently.

I resisted authority. Because authority sent me back to my relationship with my father.

And so I distrusted management.

Or I chose to work with partners who were “nice” and who wouldn’t challenge me.

Deep down, anyone who reminded me of my father would trigger something in me, and my instinct was to stay away. And I missed opportunities for growth, and love.

That was the moment I realized something important about therapy.

Talking had taken me as far as it could.

Knowing where a pattern comes from is one thing.

Changing the pattern is another.

For me, the change didn’t lie in the mind.

It had to happen in the body.

When the Mind Understands, but the Body Doesn’t Change

That realization led me to explore movement, somatic practices, energy work, and eventually the path of sacred plant medicines.

In a world where we are constantly distracted, most of us spend our lives in our minds.

Thinking about our lives.

Thinking about ourselves.

Thinking about healing.

Talking about healing.

But rarely feeling it in the body, where the healing actually happens.

I see this often in coaching.

When I ask someone what they are feeling, the answer frequently begins with:

“I feel that...”

“I think that...”

And when I gently ask,

“What is the feeling underneath that thought?”

There is often silence.

It is not because people don’t want to answer.

It is because many of us have become disconnected from the body, and have little clue of what is really going on inside them.

Why Some Patterns Don’t Change

A growing body of work in trauma and somatic healing suggests that lasting change involves more than cognitive understanding.

Authors such as Gabor Maté, Bessel Van Der Kolk (The Body Keeps The Score), Peter A. Levine (Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma, Mark Wolynn (It Didn’t Start With You) have written extensively about how unresolved trauma is carried in the body and how healing often requires more than thoughts alone.

This resonated deeply with my own experience.

I knew exactly where many of my patterns came from. My childhood.

Yet they continued to run my life.

Because when a wound is deep enough, the body learns to protect us, even when the mind desperately wants to move forward.

The survival response doesn’t disappear simply because we understand it.

It softens when the nervous system experiences something different.

When the body learns that it is finally safe.

I was recently moved by the movie King’s Speech, witnessing the journey of King George VI who experienced stuttering problems for most of his life, and finally get to overcome his speech issues, not by mechanical technics but by healing some traumas that happened during childhood, working with what we can call a somatic healer.

The Journey That Changed Everything

That search for healing beyond the mind technics eventually led me to Colombia and my first experience sitting with plant medicine Yagé, in 2023.

For the first time, I could clearly feel something I had carried for years but had never fully been able to access.

The grief.

The weight of my parent’s sacrifice to move to France.

The weight of the Vietnam war, and the millions of families that have been destroyed with it.

The pain I had been holding in my heart. Their pain.

I could finally see how that burden had shaped my life.

It influenced the partners I chose.

It influenced the risks I avoided. To live a life with full authenticity.

It influenced my capacity to trust, myself and others.

It influenced how close I allowed myself to come to my own purpose.

Looking back, that experience marked the beginning of a different relationship with myself.

A journey of becoming more authentic.

More connected to my essence.

One ceremony did not change everything overnight, of course

But it opened a door that I had never been able to access through years of therapy alone.

Why I’m Bringing This Into My Work

Today, I work with many leaders who have already done the inner work.

They’ve read the books.

They’ve been to therapy (at least, some…)

They understand their patterns intellectually.

And yet something still feels unresolved.

They sense there is another layer.

Something beyond the analytical mind.

That has become part of my own work.

To accompany people who feel called to explore that deeper dimension, the inner world beyond the mind, with safety, preparation, and integrity.

I know many people are curious about plant medicines.

I also know there are many stories that create fear.

Some of those stories are real.

When these medicines are approached without proper preparation, experienced facilitation, or a safe setting, harm can happen.

That is precisely why education matters.

When held with respect, proper guidance, and experienced facilitators, they can become profound spaces for self-inquiry, healing, and transformation.

That is what I have witnessed not only in my own journey, but in the people I have accompanied.

Why This Conversation Matters

For the past few years, I have been deepening my work with plant medicine and recently alongside my mentor, Omar M’Rabet Gomez, who has over fifteen years of experience serving medicine and has accompanied more than 8,000 people on this path.

I want to bring more awareness to working with plant medicine, the life changing benefits, and how this could help so many leaders live consciously, and do the right thing, not only for their business but their whole life system (family, community, society).

Together with Omar, we are hosting a workshop on August 11 to share the science, history, and responsible practice of sacred plant medicines.

Register To The Workshop

The intention is not to convince anyone.

It is to offer grounded knowledge so you can form your own understanding.

If this path calls you, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about whether it is right for you, under which conditions, and with whom.

I believe these medicines have an important role to play in the future of leadership. Not as shortcuts, but as tools for deep self-awareness when approached with humility, respect, and integrity.

My commitment is to help bridge ancient wisdom with modern leadership.

To contribute to healthier practices.

To honor the traditions these very ancient medicines come from. Way before the whole pharmaceutical industry existed.

And to continue exploring how conscious leaders can reconnect with themselves before attempting to transform the systems they lead.

If this conversation resonates with you, I’d love to welcome you to the workshop.

And if not, I hope it simply leaves you with one question:

What part of yourself still cannot be reached by thinking alone?

FREE Masterclass “Beyond The Mind: The Science Of Plant Medicines”

📅 Date: August 11

🕒 Time: 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register To The Workshop

I am excited to bring this ancient wisdom to you, evolving my conscious leadership practice.

Have a wonderful week!

Sophie

We began with the need for certainty, which often becomes the need for control.

We explored the need for variety and how it can create instability.

We looked at significance, our desire to be seen and recognized, and at love and connection, where over-giving and people-pleasing often emerge.

Finally, we reflected on the need for growth and how the pursuit of constant evolution can become exhausting when it never allows space for integration.

Today, I want to close this series with the sixth and final need:

The need for contribution.

In many ways, I see this as the most mature of the six human needs.

But it is also the easiest one to confuse with the others.

What Is the Need for Contribution?

The need for contribution is the desire to create meaningful impact beyond yourself.

It is the desire to give back.

To leave something better than you found it.

To use your skills, experience, and life for something larger than your own success.

Many people describe contribution as the highest expression of purpose.

Yet there is an important question we rarely ask ourselves:

From which place are we contributing?

Because contribution can easily become another disguise for an unmet human need.

Are you contributing because you need recognition?

Then perhaps significance is still driving your actions.

Are you contributing because helping others allows you to belong?

Perhaps the need for love and connection is underneath.

Are you contributing because it helps you learn and evolve?

Perhaps growth is still leading the way.

Contribution itself is not enough.

The intention behind it matters.

When Giving Is Another Way of Receiving

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that many of us give because, unconsciously, we hope to receive something in return.

Recognition.

Validation.

Love.

Belonging.

Security.

There is nothing wrong with these needs, they are deeply human.

The invitation is simply to become aware of them.

Healthy contribution begins when the act of giving is complete in itself.

When giving is already fulfilling.

When nothing needs to come back for the contribution to have meaning.

That, for me, is where contribution becomes truly free.

The Shadow of Contribution

Like every human need, contribution also has its shadow.

One of the most common expressions I see—particularly in women leaders—is over-giving.

Helping everyone.

Always being available.

Giving expertise away for free.

Putting others first.

Feeling guilty for receiving.

The intention is beautiful.

But over time, it becomes unsustainable.

Because contribution without receiving eventually creates depletion.

Everything in nature exists in relationship.

Breathing in. Breathing out.

Giving. Receiving.

Neither can exist without the other.

One question worth reflecting on is:

How comfortable are you receiving?

Can you receive money without guilt?

Can you receive appreciation without minimizing it? Say ‘Thank you’.

Can you receive support without feeling indebted?

Many people who love to contribute discover that receiving is actually much harder than giving.

And yet both are necessary.

My Own Shift

When I look back on my own career, I can clearly see how this need evolved over time.

For many years, I worked in the gaming industry.

I loved the creativity.

I loved the innovation.

I loved building teams and creating products that reached millions of people.

I also received a great deal in return.

Meaningful work.

Recognition.

Financial security.

Growth.

But eventually, a deeper question emerged.

What am I contributing to?

The games we created generated engagement, screen time, and significant revenue.

From a business perspective, they were successful.

But I also knew who some of our players were.

I knew stories of people spending thousands of euros in games.

People whose behavior resembled addiction more than entertainment.

And I had to ask myself:

Is this the impact I want to have?

That question changed everything.

It wasn’t a judgment of the industry.

It was an honest reflection on my own values.

I realized that my deepest need was no longer growth.

Or recognition.

Or achievement.

It had become contribution.

That realization eventually led me toward coaching.

Toward conscious leadership.

Toward creating spaces where leaders examine not only what they build, but the impact they create on the people around them.

When Contribution Becomes a Different Question

At some point in life, many people reach a quiet transition.

They’ve achieved.

They’ve grown.

They’ve accumulated experience.

And the question changes.

Instead of asking:

“How can I become more successful?”

They begin asking:

“What do I want to leave behind?”

Contribution is no longer about building something bigger.

It becomes about building something meaningful.

For me, that has become the work.

Helping leaders move from fear to love.

From leading through control, ego, and survival...

To leading from awareness, integrity, and the heart.

That doesn’t happen through strategy alone.

It requires inner work.

Because the quality of what we contribute will always reflect the quality of the place we are contributing from.

Looking Back at the Six Human Needs

As we close this series, I invite you to reflect on all six human needs.

• Where do you seek certainty and control?

• Where do you constantly chase novelty?

• Where do you need recognition?

• Where do you sacrifice yourself to maintain connection?

• Where do you push yourself to keep growing?

• And finally…

How do all of these needs shape the way you contribute to the world?

Every need is valid.

Every need has a shadow.

The goal is never to eliminate these needs.

The goal is to become aware of them.

Because awareness is where freedom begins.

Reflection Questions

Take some time to journal with these questions:

• Which of the six human needs drives most of your decisions today?

• When you contribute, what are you hoping to receive in return?

• How comfortable are you with receiving?

• What impact are you truly creating through your work?

• If recognition, money, and status disappeared, would you still choose the same path?

Closing Reflection

For me, contribution is not about saving the world.

It is about bringing more consciousness into it.

Helping people move from fear to love.

From unconscious patterns to awareness.

From reacting to choosing.

If this series has taught us anything, it is that our shadows are not something to eliminate.

They are invitations.

Invitations to understand ourselves more deeply.

Because once we understand what has been driving us, we finally become free to choose a different way of leading, living, and contributing.

And perhaps that is the greatest contribution any of us can make.

I am opening the registration for a unique event on Sept 4-7, a medicinal retreat in Europe for conscious leaders ready to go to the next level.

We are curating a selected group of 12.

Book a discovery call for more information.

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Today, we’re looking at the fifth human need:

Growth.

For me, this has been one of the strongest drivers throughout my life.

Growth has shaped how I learn, how I lead, how I build businesses, and how I relate to challenges.

It has also been one of my biggest teachers.

Because like every human need, growth is beautiful.

And like every human need, it also has a shadow.

What Is the Need for Growth?

The need for growth is the desire to learn, evolve, and become more.

People with this need often love challenges.

They enjoy learning new skills.

They seek transformation.

They are energized by difficult situations because every challenge becomes an opportunity to grow.

If this is your dominant need, you probably recognize yourself here:

• You love learning.

• You constantly seek new perspectives.

• You are rarely intimidated by difficult problems.

• You often feel excited by change rather than discouraged by it.

Growth becomes a way of life.

There is nothing wrong with that.

In fact, growth is part of nature.

Everything alive is constantly evolving 🌱.

The question is not whether you should grow.

The question is how you grow.

When Growth Becomes a Survival Strategy

Looking back, I can see that my need for growth didn’t begin as a conscious choice.

It began as survival.

Growing up in a family of immigrants, I inherited a simple belief:

If we don’t grow, we won’t survive.

We came to France with very little.

Everything had to be rebuilt.

A new life.

A new future.

A new generation.

Growth wasn’t simply encouraged.

It became associated with safety.

Without realizing it, I carried that belief into every part of my life.

At school, in my career, in my leadership, in business, and personal development…

If I wasn’t growing, I felt like something was wrong.

And even today, I can still feel that pattern if I don’t pay attention.

The Shadow of Constant Growth

The shadow isn’t growth itself.

The shadow is never allowing yourself to stop.

Always learning.

Always improving.

Always achieving.

At first, this looks admirable.

But eventually it becomes exhausting.

I’ve experienced this personally.

There were periods where I was so focused on growth that everything else became secondary:

Relationships.

Rest.

Integration.

Presence.

Even joy.

Growth became another thing to optimize.

Instead of allowing experiences to settle, I was already looking for the next course, the next project, the next transformation.

Ironically, I wasn’t integrating any of it.

Hypergrowth Isn’t Always Healthy

I also see this pattern in founders and leadership teams.

Many organizations celebrate hypergrowth.

Grow faster.

Scale bigger.

Raise more.

Expand quicker.

But organizations have nervous systems too.

People need time to adapt.

Teams need time to integrate change.

Culture needs time to mature.

When leaders push growth faster than people can absorb it, exhaustion follows.

Not because growth is bad.

But because sustainable growth requires rhythm.

Just like breathing.

Expansion.

Then integration.

Movement.

Then rest.

More Learning Doesn’t Always Mean More Growth

One pattern I recognize in myself is the tendency to consume too much information.

Four courses at once, several books, multiple trainings…

Always learning.

The result?

I knew many things.

But I hadn’t embodied them.

Real growth isn’t measured by how much information we collect.

It is measured by what we integrate.

Sometimes learning one thing deeply creates more transformation than learning ten things superficially.

Depth often matters more than volume.

What Happens When You Stop?

A useful question to ask yourself is:

What happens inside you when you stop growing?

When you don’t read another book.

When you don’t sign up for another course.

When you don’t work on yourself for a day.

Can you simply rest?

Or does anxiety appear?

Many people discover that stopping feels surprisingly uncomfortable.

Not because they enjoy constant movement.

But because their nervous system has associated movement with safety.

Growth has become the way they regulate themselves.

The Leadership Practice: Integration

The practice isn’t to stop growing.

The practice is to pace your growth.

Growth also happens through: rest, reflection, repetition, integration…

Silence.

Sometimes doing nothing is part of growing.

Sometimes the deepest transformation happens when we stop adding something new and begin living what we already know.

This is particularly important in leadership.

Because leaders who never pause often create organizations that never pause.

The pace of the leader becomes the pace of the culture.

Practices for Balancing the Need for Growth

If you recognize this pattern, here are a few practices to explore.

🔵 Practice One: Integrate Before You Add

Before starting another book, another course, or another project, ask yourself:

Have I fully integrated what I already know?

🔵 Practice Two: Schedule Rest as Part of Growth

Treat rest as a discipline rather than a reward.

Integration is part of learning.

Not separate from it.

🔵 Practice Three: Observe Your Anxiety

Spend a few moments doing nothing.

Notice what happens.

If anxiety appears, stay curious.

Ask yourself:

What am I afraid will happen if I stop?

🔵 Practice Four: Choose Depth Over Volume

Rather than constantly seeking something new, spend more time mastering one thing.

Depth creates wisdom.

Volume creates information.

They are not the same.

💡Reflection Questions

Take a few moments to reflect:

• Is growth one of your strongest human needs?

• Do you associate slowing down with falling behind?

• What belief makes rest feel uncomfortable?

• Are you integrating your learning—or simply collecting more of it?

• What would sustainable growth look like for you?

Closing Reflection

Growth is one of the most beautiful expressions of being human.

We are meant to evolve.

The invitation is not to grow less.

It is to grow more consciously.

Because growth without integration becomes exhaustion.

Growth with awareness becomes wisdom.

And sometimes the greatest sign of growth is not how fast you move forward.

It is knowing when to pause.

I am opening the registration for a unique event on Sept 4-7, a medicinal retreat in Europe for conscious leaders ready to go to the next level.

We are curating a selected group of 12.

Book a discovery call for more information.

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Today, we’re looking at the fourth human need:

Love and connection.

At first glance, this need seems harmless.

Who doesn’t want love?

Who doesn’t want meaningful relationships, belonging, and connection?

The challenge is not the need itself.

The challenge is what happens when our need for connection becomes stronger than our willingness to be truthful.

What Is the Need for Love and Connection?

The need for love and connection is the desire to feel close to others.

To belong.

To be included.

To feel connected to family, partners, colleagues, teams, and communities.

People with a strong need for connection often thrive in collaborative environments.

They enjoy working with teams.

They build deep relationships and bring people together.

They care deeply about harmony.

These are beautiful qualities.

But like every human need, this one has a shadow.

And the shadow often appears in leadership.

When Connection Becomes Dependency

The shadow side of love and connection is not love.

It is dependency, over-giving.

It is people-pleasing.

It is sacrificing your truth to preserve harmony.

The fear underneath is simple:

If I disrupt the connection, I may lose it.

This fear shows up everywhere.

A leader keeps an underperforming team member because they don’t want to hurt their feelings.

A founder avoids difficult conversations with a business partner because they want to stay friends.

A coach overextends themselves to keep clients happy.

A person remains in an unhealthy relationship because leaving feels more painful than staying.

In all these situations, connection becomes more important than authenticity.

And eventually, that comes at a cost.

The Hidden Cost of Keeping the Peace

Many leaders don’t recognize themselves as people-pleasers.

The behavior often looks different at senior levels.

It may appear as:

• Avoiding difficult conversations

• Delaying necessary decisions

• Keeping partnerships that are no longer aligned

• Over-accommodating others

• Struggling to set boundaries

• Carrying emotional burdens that aren’t theirs

From the outside, it can look like kindness.

Inside, it often feels like exhaustion.

Because maintaining harmony requires energy.

And when harmony is maintained at the expense of truth, the cost is usually paid by the person carrying the burden: You.

Where Does This Pattern Come From?

For me, this pattern has roots in my upbringing.

Growing up in an Asian family, I learned very early that harmony mattered.

The harmony of the group mattered.

Keeping peace within the family was associated with safety.

Breaking harmony felt dangerous.

Being excluded felt unsafe.

Of course, as children, these adaptations make sense.

Belonging has always been tied to survival.

Our nervous system still carries traces of that evolutionary reality.

The challenge is that many of us continue operating from those old assumptions long after the original circumstances have passed.

We act as if disagreement will lead to abandonment.

As if honesty and boundaries will destroy connection.

But is that actually true?

The Leadership Practice: Boundaries

The practice is not to love less.

The practice is to love differently.

To learn that connection does not require self-sacrifice.

To learn that boundaries do not destroy relationships.

In fact, healthy boundaries often strengthen them.

A question worth exploring is:

Can you feel connected without giving everything away?

Can you maintain a relationship while saying no?

Can you disagree without withdrawing?

Many people discover something surprising:

The relationship survives.

And sometimes it becomes stronger.

Because authentic connection requires truth.

Not performance.

What Happens When Love Isn’t Reciprocated?

This is another place where people struggle.

Some people naturally give love very freely.

They are generous, open-hearted and supportive.

But not everyone knows how to receive love.

And not everyone expresses it in the same way.

When love isn’t returned in the way we expect, we often make it personal.

We assume:

“They don’t appreciate me = They don’t love me.”

But reality is often more nuanced.

People simply express love differently.

The Five Languages of Love

One framework that has been helpful for understanding this is the concept of the Five Love Languages (Resource)

People tend to express and receive love through different channels:

• Acts of Service

• Quality Time

• Gifts

• Physical Touch

• Words of Affirmation

Problems arise when we expect others to love us in our preferred language.

For example:

You may need words of affirmation.

Your partner may express love through acts of service.

You may need quality time.

Your colleague may show appreciation through practical support.

The love is present, but the language is different.

Recognizing this can soften resentment and create more understanding in both leadership and personal relationships.

The Deeper Practice

Ultimately, the practice is not about getting more love from others.

It is about cultivating enough love within yourself that connection becomes a choice rather than a necessity.

Can you feel worthy even when someone disagrees with you?

Can you stay connected to yourself when a relationship changes?

Can you remain open-hearted without abandoning your boundaries?

These are the questions that transform the need for connection from a dependency into inter-dependency.

A Personal Reflection

This need has been very present throughout my life.

But what has changed is how I relate to it.

I’ve learned that sometimes love requires difficult conversations.

Sometimes it requires saying no.

Sometimes it requires risking disappointment.

And paradoxically, those moments often deepen connection rather than destroy it.

Because authentic relationships are not built on agreement.

They are built on truth.

Reflection Questions

Take a moment to reflect:

• Where are you sacrificing your truth to preserve harmony?

• What relationship are you afraid to challenge?

• Where are you over-giving in the hope of receiving connection?

• What would happen if you trusted that real connection could survive disagreement?

Closing Reflection

The need for love and connection is one of our most beautiful human needs.

It reminds us that we are not meant to navigate life alone.

The invitation is not to need less connection.

The invitation is to create healthier connection.

Connection rooted in truth, supported by boundaries.

Connection that allows both closeness and individuality.

Because real love does not require you to abandon yourself in order to belong 💛

Today, we’re looking at the third human need: significance.

This one feels particularly personal to me.

As I’ve transitioned from leadership roles in tech and gaming into coaching and conscious leadership, I’ve had to confront my own relationship with significance. Not just professionally, but at a much deeper level.

Because significance is one of the most celebrated needs in modern leadership.

And one of the least examined.

What Is the Need for Significance?

The need for significance is the need to feel important.

To be seen.

To be recognized.

To be valued.

To know that we matter.

There is nothing wrong with this need. It is deeply human.

The challenge begins when our sense of significance depends entirely on external validation.

When we need the title.

The promotion.

The company.

The audience.

The visibility.

The achievement. The exit.

To feel worthy.

At that point, significance stops being a healthy need and becomes a shadow.

Where Does It Come From?

For many people, the need for significance is rooted in earlier experiences of feeling unseen.

Perhaps your voice wasn’t heard.

Perhaps your opinions didn’t matter.

Perhaps you only received attention when you performed, achieved, or succeeded.

That was certainly true for me.

Growing up, I often felt invisible unless I achieved something.

Recognition came through performance.

Achievement became the place where I felt valued. Where I felt loved, where I felt safe.

So I learned to achieve.

I pursued promotions.

Leadership positions.

Recognition.

Success.

I became a founder, a CEO, a leader.

And it felt good.

Because every achievement temporarily filled the space where significance was missing.

The problem is that external significance is never enough.

There is always another milestone.

Another title. Another level to reach.

An endless hunger for ambition.

How Significance Shapes Leadership

This pattern shows up frequently in founders and executives.

The company needs to be bigger.

The revenue needs to be higher.

The fundraising round needs to be larger.

The impact needs to be more visible.

When you ask why these goals matter so much, the answer is often revealing.

Only then will I be successful.

Only then will I be respected.

Only then will I matter.

Only then will I be “enough”.

This is where significance becomes dangerous.

Not because ambition is wrong.

But because the business becomes a vehicle for proving personal worth.

When leaders operate from this place, organizations often become centered around the ego needs of the founder rather than the needs of the people they serve.

Everything starts to revolve around image, status, and perception.

What looks impressive.

What gets attention.

What creates recognition — and we have seen a lot of that in the tech and gaming industry over the past years.

And somewhere in the process, authenticity gets lost.

The Hidden Cost of External Validation

I know this pattern well.

Earlier in my career, visibility gave me power.

It gave me influence.

It gave me opportunities.

But it also consumed me.

Because when significance is built externally, you become dependent on external feedback to maintain your sense of self.

The applause becomes necessary.

The recognition becomes necessary.

The visibility becomes necessary.

And eventually, you stop asking:

“Am I fulfilled?”

And start asking:

“Am I seen?”

These are very different questions.

The Real Work

The real work is learning to feel significant without needing to be significant.

Stay with that for a moment.

Learning to feel significant without needing to be seen.

Without needing recognition.

Without needing validation.

Without needing the room to acknowledge your value.

This is where internal significance begins.

The question becomes:

Can you appreciate your own accomplishments even if nobody else knows about them?

Can you complete something meaningful without sharing it publicly?

Can you find satisfaction in the work itself?

Can your own witness be enough?

This is not about hiding.

It is not about becoming invisible.

It is about loosening the attachment between your worth and other people’s recognition.

A Personal Shift

This has been one of the deepest practices in my own transformation.

As I moved into coaching and conscious leadership, I realized I could no longer lead from the same need for visibility that had driven parts of my earlier career.

I had to shift from being the expert to becoming the guide.

From being recognized to being useful.

From seeking significance externally to cultivating it internally.

It is still a practice.

But it has created far more peace than any title ever did.

Practices for Balancing the Need for Significance

If this pattern resonates with you, here are a few simple practices:

✅ Accomplish Something Without Sharing It

Do something meaningful that nobody else needs to know about.

Notice what arises.

Do you still feel proud of it?

✅ Attend Without Being the Center of Attention

Go to an event without trying to be noticed.

Practice listening instead of performing.

Observe what happens internally.

✅ Focus on Craft Rather Than Recognition

Shift attention from how your work is perceived to the quality of the work itself.

Can the process become more rewarding than the outcome?

✅ Ask Yourself ‘Why’

When you want more visibility, more success, or more recognition, pause.

Ask: What am I hoping this achievement will give me?

The answer is often deeper than the goal itself.

💡Reflection Questions

Take a few moments with these questions:

• Where does your sense of significance come from today?

• Do you only feel valuable when you are achieving?

• What would happen if nobody witnessed your success?

• Can you appreciate your work without external validation?

• Who are you when the titles, achievements, and recognition are removed?

Closing Reflection

The need for significance is not the problem.

It is one of our most natural human needs.

The invitation is simply to examine it.

Because when significance is unconscious, it drives us.

When significance becomes conscious, it teaches us.

And sometimes the greatest achievement is not becoming more important.

It is realizing that you were already enough before anyone noticed.

“I usually find men less conscious and less mature than many women I know.”

Those were some of the thoughts I got from men when sharing the idea of a men’s circles. I could feel the resistance, judgement, dressed up as an intellectual argument.

Last week, I had the opportunity to co-host a conscious men’s circle with my friend and business partner, Mike.

Fourteen men showed up.

For some, it wasn’t their first men’s circle. For many others, it was the first time they had sat in a room with so many men, sharing openly, vulnerably, and deeply with complete strangers.

The experience left me reflecting on a question:

Why do men need spaces of their own?

And perhaps more importantly:

Why do women need spaces of their own?

The Need for Dedicated Spaces

The answer, for me, is simple.

Safety.

Authenticity.

Deep self-exploration without judgment.

The need to be seen, heard, and understood.

In women-only spaces, I have often witnessed how women relax into a different level of honesty and vulnerability when men are not present.

They stop adapting.

They stop managing how they are perceived.

They share more of their truth.

What I witnessed in this men’s circle was something similar.

When men are surrounded only by other men, many of them finally feel safe enough to reveal parts of themselves they rarely show elsewhere.

And that raised another question for me:

How can women feel safe with men if men don’t feel safe with other men?

What Brought Men Into the Room?

Curiosity brought some.

Self-awareness brought others.

Some came because they wanted to grow.

Some came because they wanted to understand themselves more deeply.

Some simply wanted to connect with other men.

As someone who spends a lot of time in women’s circles and transformation spaces, it was a profound experience to witness what emerged when men were given permission to share honestly.

And yes, they are burdened by patriarchy too.

That was perhaps one of the biggest insights for me.

There is no villain in this story.

No “toxic men.”

No “wounded women.”

There is a generation carrying the legacy of patriarchal conditioning, trying to figure out—individually and collectively—what it means to be a man or a woman today.

What Does It Mean To Be A Man Today?

At one point, Mike threw a question into the room:

What does it mean to be a man today?

The room became quiet.

For some men, the question triggered shame.

The shame of being associated with the unhealthy masculine models currently visible in positions of power and leading wars.

For others, being a man had less to do with strength and more to do with vulnerability.

Feeling calm in their body.

Being emotionally open.

Allowing themselves to soften.

For some, the concept of “being a man” felt disconnected from who they were.

They simply didn’t relate to the identity.

And for others, being a man meant creating safety.

Safety for their loved ones. Safety for women.

Providing structure, clarity, and direction.

Leadership rather than control.

What struck me was that several men spoke about enjoying that role of provider and leader, while also feeling exhausted by it.

They appreciated offering stability to others.

But they didn’t want to carry that responsibility all the time.

Sometimes they wanted someone else to lead.

Sometimes they wanted to rest.

When The Conversation Turned To Relationships

The conversation naturally moved toward relationships.

Men shared that when women lead, they often feel more relaxed.

But they also spoke about how relationships can become imbalanced when one partner consistently carries the leadership role, emotional labor, or responsibility for direction.

The dynamic became less about masculinity and femininity and more about balance.

The push and pull.

The tension between independence and interdependence.

When women say “I don’t need a man.”

And yet, beneath that statement, a quieter truth sometimes emerges:

“I appreciate being cared for, but I don’t always feel safe admitting it.”

The same may be true for men.

“I want to be strong.”

And beneath that:

“I would like to be held too.”

What I Left With

What this event left me with is the realization that this is a complex question.

Men today are navigating multiple expectations.

Their own truth.

Inherited roles.

Cultural narratives.

The projections placed upon them by society and by women.

At the same time, women are going through their own evolution toward autonomy, agency, and self-sufficiency.

Together, this creates entirely new dynamics for Millennials, Gen Z, and the generations that follow.

Perhaps the most honest thing we can say right now is:

We are all figuring it out.

There is humility in admitting that.

And awareness is often more useful than blame.

More useful than pointing fingers at “toxic masculinity.”

More useful than making an entire gender responsible for our personal wounds.

At the end of the day, this work belongs to each of us.

Whether we do it alone or in spaces like these circles.

Why Men’s Spaces Matter

The men who left that evening spoke about feeling less alone.

More connected.

More understood.

Some experienced healing simply through being witnessed by other men.

For me, this is only the beginning of the conversation.

Men deserve spaces too.

There is nothing shameful about that.

In fact, I believe it is a conscious responsibility.

The relationship should not be the primary place for a man’s healing.

His business shouldn’t be either.

The emotional weight eventually impacts people who never consented to carry it.

The more men have spaces where they can process, reflect, and grow with other men, the healthier their relationships, leadership, and communities become.

I am hopeful.

Hopeful to see more men normalizing vulnerability.

Hopeful to see more men owning their healing and growth.

Hopeful to see more spaces where people can meet each other beyond roles, expectations, and conditioning.

Perhaps that is one small step toward a more balanced world.

A world where more of us can learn to lead from the heart, rather than from fear.

Reflection Questions

• What does it mean to be a man today?

• What does it mean to be a woman today?

• Where are you carrying expectations that no longer feel true?

• Where do you feel safest sharing your deepest truth?

• What part of yourself still needs a space where it can simply be seen?

If you’re interested in the transformation spaces I hold in Berlin or online, follow my newsletter or Instagram for upcoming announcements.

How to shape the stories of my life to fit what’s convenient.

How to look away from a hard reality and bypass responsibility.

How to put myself in the good role and miss my blind spots.

It was not a choice.

It was a survival coping mechanism.

One that I had to trace back to when I was 6 years old, when the situation at home was so stressful that I had to create another reality to survive emotionally.

During our child developmental years, up until around the age of 7, we need psychological safety from our parents. And when we don’t have it, we create it ourselves in order to survive.

So what were the stories I created in my psyche at that time that later followed me into adulthood and, honestly, helped me become quite successful in leadership?

When my parents couldn’t be a safe container for me—they were running a restaurant while raising us, had us young, and carried dark wounds from their own upbringing that they never healed—I started to create a story for myself:

Even if my parents are violent, it is okay. It’s not that bad. They are my parents. They did their best. I love them.

That story protected me.

But it also taught me something else: how to manipulate reality just enough to make the unacceptable feel acceptable.

And that pattern followed me into adulthood.

• A partner who couldn’t show care. I found excuses for him and stayed.

• A boss who shouted at me in an open office and humiliated me in front of colleagues. It is normal. He is the boss. I can endure it.

• Working for a company that does not care about its employees. It’s okay. That’s just how it is. It pays well.

In each situation, I told myself a story.

A story that helped me tolerate what was happening.

A story that allowed me to keep going.

That was my self-manipulation.

Not manipulation of others.

Manipulation of my own reality.

All of those situations I accepted when I shouldn’t have. In doing so, I compromised my integrity.

Because very young, I learned how to reframe a painful reality into a more acceptable one.

It was an incredible survival strategy.

But survival strategies eventually become limitations when they are no longer needed.

And today, I no longer need this one.

I am letting it go.

Today, I work in spaces of transformation, guiding founders and leaders toward greater serenity, coherence, and alignment with their purpose.

To guide them there, I needed to break free from the same trap that keeps many of my clients stuck: the illusion of doing “good” when, in reality, we are perpetuating the toxic cycles of a system that is collapsing.

The same self-manipulation that once protected me is the same mechanism that keeps leaders trapped in unconscious patterns.

We tell ourselves stories.

Stories about why something is okay.

Why we should stay.

Why we should tolerate.

Why we should not speak up.

Why we should wait a little longer.

And slowly, we lose touch with what we know to be true.

Recently, I went on a deep healing journey.

Not for comfort, but for purpose and integrity.

I had to let go of old wounds that once protected me in order to discover a new identity → the person I am when I am no longer driven by fear or old wounds.

An identity rooted in truth.

Speaking my truth without fear.

Living a life of integrity.

I owe that to myself.

I owe that to my future lineage.

I owe that to my clients.

And unfortunately, integrity feels like a rare currency in the world right now.

Most systems incentivize us to do what serves the individual rather than the greater cause.

Living with integrity therefore requires will, courage, and awareness.

The question is: why would anyone choose that path when living in an illusion is often more comfortable?

But deep down, your soul knows when something is off.

Eventually, your body will tell you too.

It is not a question I need to answer for others, nor one I wish to push upon anyone.

But I am ready to accompany those who choose that path.

Because it takes guidance to break through the matrix of consumption and hyper-individualization.

To stop manipulating reality.

To see clearly.

To live truthfully.

And I will be there when you are ready.

👁️ Reflection questions for you

• Where in your life are you telling yourself stories that are no longer true? Think about your relationships, your family dynamics, and your work.

• The harder question: What are you going to do about it?

Have a nice week,

With love.

Sophie

We are opening a special space for a medicinal retreat during Solstice.

If you feel the call to live your life with coherence, now. Come join us.

Limited spots. DM to register.

Welcome to a new episode of Spark of Awareness, continuing the series on the six human needs.

If you missed the previous episode, I encourage you to connect with it. Each of these needs carries both a constructive expression and a shadow expression. In leadership, these shadows inevitably appear to varying degrees, and when they remain unconscious, they can hinder growth, decision-making, and long-term impact.

Today, we explore the second human need: variety and uncertainty.

This need reflects the desire for change, novelty, stimulation, unpredictability, adventure, risk, and new experiences. It is the drive toward what is unknown and evolving.

If you recognize this in yourself, it is worth examining honestly.

The Need for Variety in Leadership

Personally, this need has been very present in my own life.

I have often been drawn to new projects, new experiences, and new environments that create a sense of renewed energy. Repetition, long cycles, and sustained commitment have at times felt difficult.

At its extreme, this pattern can lead to restlessness and a constant search for change. Without awareness, it can manifest in premature exits from teams, companies, or relationships — not necessarily because something is wrong, but because internal energy is pushing toward novelty.

In hindsight, I can see moments where I was not responding to external reality, but to an internal need for change. Instead of understanding what was happening within me, I expressed it through external disruption.

This pattern influences how things begin and end — projects, commitments, and relationships.

The Shadow of Constant Change

In leadership, this need can become highly destabilizing.

For example, in executives or founders, it may appear as constant shifts in direction — an ongoing pursuit of what feels new, exciting, or stimulating. However, what feels energizing for the individual is not always what a business requires.

Organizations often need stability, consistency, and sustained execution. When leadership is driven primarily by novelty, it can create confusion and lack of grounding within teams.

A key challenge is distinguishing between:

• Necessary evolution

• And personal preference for change

Without this distinction, decision-making becomes reactive rather than strategic.

Restlessness and the Creation of Chaos

This need can also express itself through intensity.

When there is no clear channel for novelty or stimulation, it may manifest as unnecessary complexity, conflict, or even chaos. Situations become more complicated than they need to be, not because of external conditions, but because internal energy seeks movement.

In some cases, this creates artificial urgency — a sense that something must be fixed, solved, or disrupted in order to feel alive.

In business environments, this can be particularly damaging, especially where discipline, clarity, and consistency are required.

Instability and Lack of Commitment

When the need for variety dominates, it often leads to instability.

There can be a resistance to planning, structure, or long-term commitment. This pattern is also visible in broader society, where commitment in work, relationships, and long-term projects is increasingly fragile.

In a leadership context, this becomes a barrier to mastery. Growth requires repetition, patience, and sustained focus. Without that, execution becomes fragmented.

Another shadow expression is addiction to novelty: constantly starting new things while rarely completing them.

This leads to scattered energy and unfinished potential.

The Cost of Unchanneled Energy

At the core, this is not a lack of energy — it is often the opposite. Too much energy.

Many people with this pattern have significant internal energy, creativity, and drive. The challenge is not generating energy, but directing it.

When it is not consciously channeled, it tends to fragment:

• too many projects

• constant restarting

• unresolved commitments

• loss of continuity

Instead of creating value, the energy disperses.

The key question becomes: how do you channel energy into creation rather than disruption?

Awareness and Rechanneling Energy

The first step is awareness: recognizing the pattern without judgment.

Personally, I noticed a tendency to start many projects but struggle to sustain them. Over time, I learned that consistency itself is a discipline — not a limitation of creativity.

The practice is not to suppress this energy, but to contain and redirect it.

When restlessness arises, the first step is not immediate action. It is observation. Sitting with the energy without reacting to it.

Often, nothing needs to be done immediately. The body may feel agitated, but the system stabilizes when the impulse is not instantly acted upon.

Once the intensity settles, the energy can be redirected into something constructive:

• writing

• reflecting

• creating

• consolidating vision

• refining direction

The goal is not to eliminate movement, but to transform it into intentional creation.

Separating Expression from Responsibility

One important practice has been learning where expression belongs.

Creative exploration, experimentation, and self-expression are valuable — but they are not always appropriate in every context.

For example, in coaching or leadership environments, the role is not self-expression, but service. The focus is on the needs of others, not internal impulses.

This separation is essential.

Without it, personal energy can unconsciously influence spaces that require neutrality, clarity, and presence.

The same applies to leadership in organizations: personal excitement should not override what the system actually needs.

A useful question becomes:
Is this decision serving the business, or serving my own need for stimulation?

If it is the latter, it may belong elsewhere.

Channeling Energy Outside of Work

When personal expression is needed, it is important to give it a proper outlet outside professional responsibilities.

This may include creative practices, movement, or environments where expression is held safely and does not impact others’ work or expectations.

This separation allows leadership spaces to remain stable, while personal energy still has room to flow.

Both needs can coexist — but they must be held in the right contexts.

Closing Practice: Working with Restless Energy

To close, I invite a simple meditation practice centered on this theme.

Sit comfortably and bring attention to your breath.

Observe your internal state without attempting to change it.

Notice where energy is present in the body:

• the chest

• the belly

• the mind

• the breath

Simply observe.

As you continue breathing, notice how the energy shifts. In many cases, it begins to regulate on its own.

Some areas soften. Some tension releases. A sense of grounding emerges naturally.

This practice does not require effort — only awareness.

When restlessness appears in daily life, return to this observation. Sit with it before acting.

Then, if needed, journal:

• What is this energy asking for?

• Where does it want to go?

• How can it be directed constructively?

Over time, this builds the ability to transform raw energy into intentional creation.

Closing Reflection

The need for variety is not a problem.

In its healthy form, it brings creativity, innovation, and movement. In its shadow form, it creates instability, fragmentation, and unnecessary disruption.

The work is not to remove this energy, but to learn how to channel it.

Next week, we continue with the third human need: significance — the need for recognition and being seen 🥇.

🌿 Next ORIN Women’s Retreat on Sept 11-16 (Portugal) 🌿

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I’ve been away for a few weeks, integrating everything that happened over the past months. Many positive changes took place, but integration takes time. Sometimes, making priorities means letting go and accepting that we do not always have control — a theme I’ll explore throughout this series.

In this series, I’m diving into the six human needs and their shadow expressions in leadership.

The framework of the six human needs appears across several psychology and coaching work. You may know it through Tony Robbins’ work, but there are many models exploring human motivation and behavior: self-determination theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and others.

I’m always interested in examining how humans function through different lenses. What I find valuable about the six human needs model is its ability to reveal our patterns and shadows.

The purpose of this reflection is cultivating self-awareness. Self-awareness allows us to become more conscious of what we do, how we think, and ultimately, how we act.

The six human needs are:

• Certainty

• Variety / Uncertainty

• Significance

• Love and Connection

• Growth

• Contribution

Each episode in this series explores one of these needs through the lens of leadership and self-awareness. Today, I’m focusing on the first: the need for certainty.

The Need for Certainty as the Need for Control

The need for certainty is highly present in business and leadership.

If I had to translate certainty into practical leadership behavior, I would call it the need for control.

When the need for certainty becomes dominant, it often turns into an excessive focus on control. In organizations, this pattern appears frequently.

We try to control outcomes. We seek certainty around success. We want guarantees that we will meet our targets, grow, survive, or secure the future.

This creates pressure — pressure from leadership to control markets, despite the reality that markets cannot be controlled.

It shows up as controlling employees, peers, or outcomes. It can manifest as manipulation, increased dependency on systems or people, and a loss of sovereignty.

The need for certainty itself is not wrong. All human needs are valid.

The problem emerges when a need becomes unexamined and overextended. At that point, it turns into a shadow — a blocker to growth, personal development, and consciousness.

The Shadow Side of Certainty

The shadow of certainty is an excessive attachment to control, safety, and predictability.

We want every action we take today to guarantee future success. We want certainty that effort will produce the desired outcome.

Unfortunately, reality does not work that way.

Effort increases probability, but it does not guarantee results — especially in business.

Startup success rates alone remind us of this reality.

This overinvestment in certainty often extends to teams and relationships. Leaders may try to control employees to ensure they stay forever. Similar patterns appear in personal relationships: controlling someone to prevent them from leaving, or to obtain something from them.

People do what they want to do. They often act according to their own motivations, not according to our expectations.

Recognizing this is an important reminder: much of what we try to control is beyond our control.

The Reinforcing Cycle of Control

The need for certainty easily becomes a reinforcing loop.

When control fails, we often respond by trying to create stronger mechanisms of control: more contracts, more legal protections, more planning, tighter agreements, reduced freedom.

The question becomes:

Do you notice yourself forcing guarantees in order to feel in control?

The path forward is not stronger control.

It is learning to release control.

It is surrender.

Learning to Surrender

I speak from personal experience here.

The need for certainty was deeply present in my earlier life. Certainty represented safety. I wanted assurance that no one would harm me, that there would be financial runway, that my salary would keep me safe.

Working in the games industry taught me otherwise.

It has been an incredible journey, but also one filled with uncertainty.

Teams closed. People left. Expected numbers did not materialize. I left companies I had not planned to leave.

Over time, I learned — often the hard way — that there is very little I truly control.

Practicing Not Knowing

If you recognize yourself clinging to certainty, especially when it prevents growth, the practice is simple, though not easy:

Practice not knowing.

What does it feel like, in your body, to let go of control little by little?

For me, releasing control created anxiety and stress. It became a gradual practice: letting go a little more, then a little more again.

What can you release and discover that nothing catastrophic happens when you stop controlling?

At minimum, your body often feels different — less contracted, less tense, less exhausted.

Because certainty and control create physical contraction. They create tension, fatigue, and when sustained long enough, chronic symptoms.

What Can You Actually Control?

This brings me back to stoicism.

Stoic practice reminds us that we control very little outside ourselves.

What we can influence are our thoughts, our perceptions, and the actions that arise from them.

How do you interpret events?

How do you speak to yourself?

Negative self-talk tends to generate actions that reinforce negative beliefs. A different interpretation creates different possibilities for action.

Your perception of a situation is something you can work with.

Acceptance as a Leadership Practice

Another practice for those heavily attached to control is acceptance.

Acceptance of what is.

When someone does not do what you want, when reality unfolds differently than expected — can you sit with it?

Can you be with your frustration?

This has been an important practice in my own life.

Because my pattern was certainty, much of my work involved becoming familiar with anxiety, uncertainty, and not knowing.

Learning that it is safe not to know.

Because trying to know everything is largely an illusion.

It rarely changes the outcome.

What changes is your internal state: you feel clearer, calmer, and more grounded in your body.

Closing Reflection

To summarize:

Everyone has a need for certainty.

In its shadow form, certainty becomes an excessive need for control and predictability.

The invitation is to practice not knowing. To move forward without guaranteed outcomes. To discover what happens when you continue walking your path without certainty.

A few years ago, I did not know I would become a coach.

I did not try to force the answer.

I focused on learning, improving my craft, listening to the market, understanding what people needed, and following the current of life.

Today, I’m in the right place.

But arriving here required surrender.

So the question I leave with you is:

How can you surrender a little more to not having control?

🌿 Next ORIN Women’s Retreat on Sept 11-16 (Portugal) 🌿

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🌿Content note: this conversation includes brief references to plant medicine.
🙏 Thank you to Ludovic Bodin for introducing Sam and Sophie.

This episode explores:
• Joy as a daily practice
• Women’s leadership, sisterhood and returning to yourself
• Healing, safety and going deeper than the mind
• Business as a responsibility, not only a vehicle for achievement
• Bridging the physical business world with the more invisible world
• Love in leadership, emotional self-mastery and conscious founders
• Human Design, Enneagram, plant medicine and tools that help us understand ourselves
• Vulnerability, multidimensionality and being more fully yourself in public


In 2024, Sophie made a complete transition to dedicate herself to bringing greater consciousness into leadership and business, restoring integrity, vitality and balance to the world.


Conversation references:
• Natural Genius podcast
• Ludovic Bodin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludovicbodin
• Human Design: https://www.mybodygraph.com/
• Enneagram Institute: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/

🌿 Next ORIN Retreat + Medicine on Sept 11-16 (Portugal) 🌿

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I haven’t been able to write these past months as I had wished. I needed time to integrate and digest everything. But now, I feel ready to write again, and to share the learnings of the past six months.

What happened…?

One retreat in the US. Another big retreat (Fire Gathering) in Portugal. I completed my training as an energy healer. I launched my first online program — a 12-week business masterclass. I went into the Colombian jungle to guide a client through a medicinal journey, I am training to serve psilocybin for therapeutic purposes in private ceremonies and retreats in Europe. And the last one, I’m exploring land in nature with my partner to build a retreat center in the forest.

When I look back, I wonder… how did I get here?

That’s what happens when you stop operating purely from the mind, from control, and begin moving through life through intuition, body wisdom, and what I would call the mystery of life. Surrendering to the unknown.

Because when you become willing to break the rigid structures of life, you begin creating what is truly needed from you, what is aligned and in harmony with the universe.

You stop creating from the Ego:
What’s in it for me?
How can I get more… to feel loved, seen, safe, recognized?

And you begin creating from the Soul:
What is required of me in this life?
What is my place in the world?
What feels right, not only for me, but for the environment around me?

And to arrive at that place… you need to heal your ego. That is the work I have deepened in through my coaching journey with clients over the past years.

Yes, we often begin with the business — the “body symptoms.” But very quickly, we arrive at the root of the problem. It is rarely the business itself. It is the person running the business. The misalignment. The lack of meaning and purpose. That is the real core.

And for me to truly guide people through transformation and realignment, I first need to journey there myself.

So much of these past months has been about healing my ego, healing the projections that still stood in the way of the integrity of my work. It is a lifetime journey, and I’ve accepted the fact that to continue to carry this work, I need to keep healing. No self-shame, just professional hygiene.

The wisdoms below are now principles that govern both my life and my practice.

Some of those may resonate with you, if you are walking a similar path toward your inner freedom (from yourself).

Wisdom #1: Stop the War

Most of my life, I was at war in order to survive.

I inherited that from my upbringing, and at the same time, I have deep compassion for my parents, who had to fight to survive and rebuild a life in France after the Vietnam War. They fought to create the first foundation for our family.

But I continued operating from that survival mode long after I had financial security, love, and a home. I became addicted to the feeling of fighting to live.

Until I felt exhausted by it.
Until life showed me that the “wars” in my gaming career, my relationships, and my work were mirrors of the war happening inside me.

And today, war is everywhere — both within us and around us.

The war with competitors to “win” the market.
The war between genders, races, religions.
The war with the “management”, with power.
The war with someone who hurt us, in our relationships and family.
The geopolitical wars.
→ The constant opposition to something.

I work with energy, and this energy of separation that we cultivate becomes the energy we embody. We create the world we see. So when we are at war internally, we create war around us.

Since the end of last year, I have deeply embodied one principle: Stay out of drama.

And as I practiced this, my life changed dramatically.

I stopped feeding debates that drained my energy and pulled me into arguments. I know I am very capable of debating. I can easily enter conflict and defend my point.

But why?

It was my ego wanting to be right. Wanting to be validated as “right.”

Maybe that satisfies the ego in the short term, but I realized it was distracting me from my path. It was taking energy away from creation, clarity, and my capacity to guide others cleanly in their evolution.

So instead, I practiced being at peace with not proving myself to anyone. I learned to hold my truth without needing validation. Without being seen.

As a result, people who once came to pick fights with me gradually stopped. There was no reaction for them to feed on anymore. Either they moved on, or the relationship transformed into something more peaceful, vulnerable, and honest.

The second shift was letting go of narratives rooted in opposition:
women versus men,
conscious versus unconscious,
good versus bad.

I began seeing beyond those polarities, understanding that everything carries both light and shadow. And through that lens, I learned to meet others with compassion rather than judgment.

That journey helped me heal a profound wound in my relationship with my father. Instead of staying in opposition to men like him, I reintegrated him — and our history — back into my life.

And that inner healing reflected outwardly.
The men I encountered changed. The men I worked with changed.
And eventually, it led me to meeting a beautiful man with whom I now envision building a life.

Today, my life feels filled with more love and lightness, feeling grateful for what every day brings.

Even when people approach me from anger or conflict, it no longer affects me as it once did. I have built an inner stability that protects my center, even when the world invites you into outrage and war.

And that is also why clients work with me.

Because I have built this inner tree — this anchor and stability — that they can lean on while they process anger, grief, fear, or confusion. They feel safe because I remain grounded in my center.

I am not just a typical coach.
I hold space for deep transformation: for what is difficult, dark, uncomfortable and need to transmute into something new.

And in business, there is often profound healing required before founders can finally build from purpose rather than fear.

That is where most of my impact lives.

Wisdom #2: Lead From The Heart

When I was deeply immersed in business, many of my decisions came from fear.

And fear is the opposite of love.

We wonder why so many employees feel unsafe and burnt out. Why founders live in survival mode — fearing competitors, investors, failure, irrelevance.

But linked to my first point: when we operate from fear, we spread fear into the world.

People stay in jobs because they fear losing security.
Founders build businesses because they fear insignificance.
Many companies are driven not by purpose, but by survival.

Can we really be surprised that so many businesses have lost their soul?

We only need to look at the emotional state of the people inside the system to understand why.

Many founders create businesses to exit, become rich, gain recognition, or finally feel free. But beneath those motivations often lies fear:
the fear of not being safe,
the fear of not mattering,
the fear of not being loved.

They are not creating from the heart because they feel called to bring something meaningful into the world. They are creating to “get” something from the world.

And that transactional mindset has become the norm in our society.

My entrepreneurial journey has forced me to face many of my own fears in order to become free enough to lead from love and purpose instead.

And honestly, most people in this world do not yet feel at home within themselves.

Some of the fears I had to confront were:

What if someone rejects me? What does that say about me?

Who am I if I am no longer successful in gaming?
Who am I if I am not at the center of attention?

Will I be okay if I earn less?
Will I be okay not knowing where I will be in 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months?

Can I truly feel safe outside of a corporate system?
Am I enough?

All of those fears required deep healing, connected to my father and mother wounds, and even generational family patterns.

That journey becomes inevitable when you truly want to be free from fear, projection, and unconscious patterns.

And this is why people choose to work with me: for the integrity and clarity.

I am not driven by the incentives of the system: status, money, fame.
My motivation is intrinsic: to live in alignment with my truth and values.

So when people in my life behave from fear — through blame, criticism, or attack — I no longer try to control or change them.

I own my part, but give back what does not belong to me.
I forgive myself , I forgive them.
And then I let go.

I do not carry the emotional residue of conflict inside me anymore. Instead, I integrate the lesson and return to my heart.

We create the reality that already exists within us.

And if I want to see more love in business and in the world, the only true place to begin is within myself.

Wisdom #3: Protect My Energy

I used to believe that making things happen only required time and money.

Now, I believe the real currency is Energy.

Someone can have all the time in the world and still remain stuck. I have witnessed founders spend months paralyzed, unable to move, decide, or create. Call it procrastination or analysis paralysis.

And I have also seen founders with money and funding, but no direction. They move like headless chickens. More money does not necessarily create freedom or safety. Sometimes it creates even more fear — fear of losing what they have.

What I truly work with in coaching is Energy.
Because that is where real transformation begins.

What used to drain my energy?
Drama that wasn’t mine. Conflict.
Other people’s stories.
Thoughts and environments disconnected from my mission.

I used to live like an open house where anyone could walk in, unload their problems, and leave. And afterward, I would feel depleted.

So I had to create boundaries around my time, relationships, and environment.

I became intentional about where I place my attention: what I consume, what I eat, how I begin my days, how I end my days, what thoughts I allow into my mind and body.

And through this process, I naturally filtered out much of the noise of news,
social media, entertainment, caffeine, alcohol, energetically heavy food — anything that clouded my clarity or disconnected me from myself (which is a big portion of modern consumerism).

As a result, many things reorganized in my life.

Some relationships naturally drifted away. Some clients did too.

But that created space for more aligned partnerships and deeper long-term work.

At one point, I thought this transition might reduce my income (and I was ready for that possibility). But the opposite happened.

My business became more aligned and more solid than before.

A different caliber of people arrived → people seeking depth, integrity, and genuine transformation.

And just last week, I closed $30K, which felt like the visible result of all the unseen inner work of the past months.

Most of my energy today is devoted to presence of how I show up in coaching sessions and retreats.

→ Because that is where transformation happens.

Some clients feel deeply changed after only one session. Not because of magic, but because of energy. I meet them where they are, feel what is underneath the surface, and guide them toward the root of what needs to shift.

More and more, I feel less like a traditional “coach” and more like a guide for transformation.

The label matters less than the outcome.

What matters is helping people move from where they are to where they are meant to be.

That is my devotion.

So what’s next for me?

A lot.

But I have accepted that my life and business move at a quantum pace rather than a linear one.

Right now, what excites me most is deepening my practice as an energy healer as a complement to my coaching work.

I also met a new life partner aligned with the vision of creating a conscious place in nature. This month, we began exploring land together with a camper van while studying plants and learning how to live in greater harmony with Nature.

I continue to love the transformational work I do with clients — witnessing their breakthroughs, their serenity, and their return to alignment.

And outside of work, I cherish time with family and friends, while continuing to explore the mysteries of our inner world and consciousness… though perhaps that is for another post, for the curious souls.

PS. I’m writing this from Brittany, my home region in France. Getting ready to enjoy the sunset after scheduling this post 🌊. Until the next time!

🌿 Next ORIN Retreat + Medicine on Sept 11-16 (Portugal) 🌿

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We explore the signals that reveal shadows in leadership, offer options to practice self-awareness, and provide actionable insights to guide you toward mastering yourself, and ultimately, your endeavors.

Conscious leadership begins from within. The path to self-mastery is not through external validation but through internal reflection and understanding. By engaging in deep inner work, you are invited to peel back layers that are not inherently ours and connect to our true selves.

What are the signals of shadows in your leadership?

🔸 Emotional Fluctuations: If your emotional state is heavily influenced by the performance of your business, it may indicate over-identification or attachment to external outcomes. Reflect on whether your self-worth is entangled with the success of your business.

🔸 Self-Sabotage Behaviors: Recognizing patterns where you might intentionally or unintentionally undermine your progress can signal underlying beliefs or fears that need addressing.

🔸 Lack of Center / Integrity anchor: Feeling ungrounded and swayed by external validations may suggest a need for a more profound self-connection.

What are the parts that any successful entrepreneur should master?

🔹Boundary Mastery: Reflect on what is genuinely yours versus what has been externally influenced. Journal daily on the origins of your beliefs and whether they serve your true self.

🔹Energy Mastery: Observe your energy levels and what activities or thoughts either deplete or replenish them. Create a routine that prioritizes regenerative practices.

🔹Self-Talk: Monitor your inner dialogue. How you think, how you talk to yourself, shapes your reality and actions. Are you caught in negative thoughts spirals where you sabotage yourself?

🔹 Self-Knowledge: Be your own historian. Understanding your background will reveal why certain patterns persist and highlight what truly resonates with you. So you can make decision with speed and sharp clarity.

Mastering the inner self equates to mastering the outer world.

Self-awareness, when practiced diligently, serves as the foundation for effective leadership. By confronting shadows, refining self-talk, and embracing our energy, you can move closer to a more aligned and purposeful existence.

Your business is just the mirror of you.

Next Monday, I am teaching the 3 mindset shifts required 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚 6-𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐥, in a 90-min FREE masterclass:

🗓️ Monday May 4, Online, 18:00 CET / 9:00 PST / 12:00 EST

Register Now

️For women who are ready to build a business with purpose, with a new playbook. Limited to 15 spots.

Setting boundaries is a recurring theme in ’s coaching sessions, reflecting a widespread challenge many leaders face. While the concept of boundaries is broadly understood, the application is often lacking.

A boundary, in its simplest form, is a clear “yes-no” delineation, a determination of what we allow into our lives and what we keep out. Healthy boundaries are crucial to defining our relationships, shaping our professional life, and managing our energy

This episode focuses on boundaries as the foundation of self-mastery: a clear yes/no that determines what comes into your life and what doesn’t: shaping relationships, money, work, time, energy, thoughts, and space. Sophie explores how default yeses leak energy and put you on other people’s agendas, and why practicing “no” can mean disappointment, lost invitations, or changing connections (sharing her own boundaries around alcohol and certain networking environments).

The episode invites listeners to curate inputs—news, conversations, environments—and offers a 28-day practice: write boundaries across life areas, track where they’re honored or broken, and iterate daily.

01:39 Why Boundaries Matter
03:35 Yes No Clarity
05:26 The Cost of Saying No
07:51 Energy Relationship Space
11:16 My Boundary Rules
14:09 28-Day Boundary Practice: Start Now
15:30 Closing Meditation
18:55 Wrap Up and Next Series on the 6 Human Needs

Welcome to a Spark of Awareness, a weekly 15-minute reflection for leaders to reclaim inner authority in a world shaped by algorithms and constant stimulation.

closes her series on emotions in leadership by naming what’s often missing in business settings: love, expressed as the courage of the heart. We mean by that self-love, and compassion, not boundaryless attachment.

Sophie explains that when love isn’t given space, fear, mistrust, and control take over, and leadership becomes rigid and less human. Through the example of a key team member leaving, she contrasts ego-driven reactions (betrayal, blame, guilt) with a compassionate approach that centers the other person’s needs, keeps the situation factual, and protects the leader’s nervous system from rumination. She shares how choosing compassion in her own departures and client work freed energy for what’s next.

A daily practice is offered at the end of the episode, to cultivate love from within with morning meditation, gratitude, prayer, movement, or music. Follow this practice for 28 days to bring your human-centered leadership to the next level.

01:39 Emotions Series Recap
02:55 Why Love Matters
04:02 Defining Healthy Love
05:32 Compassion When People Leave
07:54 Protect Your Nervous System
09:11 Personal Lessons and Letting Go
11:48 Daily Rituals to Cultivate Love
14:26 28-Day Love Leadership Activation
15:32 Heart Centered Meditation
18:42 Next Series Human Needs