Category Archives for "presence"

Are you striving or soaring?

A distinction I often explore with my clients is whether they are running away from something or running towards.Running away is what we do when we want to avoid discomfort.The impossible targets. The crappy boss or board. The relentless pressure.The tedium. The loss of connection and affection at home.The challenging teen or parent.Running away implies […]

Are you dancing on the goal line or the soul line?

Goal line: tangible, measurable goals…. That new job; the pay rise; the car; the house. Or in a wider context, completion of that community project. The charity marathon. The fitness goal achieved.All worthy, valuable and potentially fun (until they aren’t).Soul line: your emerging purpose. Being in touch with what life wants from you.The deeper question. […]

My inner rulebook just sent me a strongly worded email. I marked it as spam.

You see, I’ve been thinking lately about how many self-imposed rules we carry through our lives without even noticing.Not the explicit ones.The ones we never wrote down but somehow agreed to anyway.Rules about looking composed, sounding certain. Or looking good…Keeping the surface smooth so no one sees the questions underneath.They’re subtle, but they shape so […]

What if the universe is trolling you… lovingly?

 I’ve been noticing something curious about the moments that catch me off-guard.Not the big crises necessarily, more like the subtle disruptions, the things that don’t quite go the way I imagined. A conversation that lands strangely. A plan that unravels. Or a day that refuses to flow no matter how hard I try to steer […]

Your colleague didn’t trigger you. Your beliefs did.

The other day, I was speaking with a client who felt deeply triggered by a colleague’s response to their input.You know those moments. That comment which touches something tender inside… and suddenly it feels much bigger than it should?They’d gone from calm and capable to tight-chested and self-questioning in seconds.As we explored it together, I […]

This stopped me cold

I found myself wondering how many productive days I actually have left. Not years. Days.It’s an uncomfortable question. Almost intrusive, like a stranger leaning in too close.I did a rough calculation. Nothing scientific or worthy of a spreadsheet. Just an honest estimate of how many days I might still feel mentally alive enough to create something meaningful, to contribute in […]

No one warns you that midlife success comes with a free side of “What the £$%& am I doing now?”

See, there’s a moment in life where everything on the outside looks exactly as it should.Say your career is stable. You’re good with where your family is at. Your sense is that you’ve done well. Maybe even better than you once imagined.And yet, somewhere inside, there is a quiet point inside that isn’t so stable.You […]

Are you shrinking your value?

This often comes up with clients (and is a good one for me too)…Do you know the real value you’re creating in the world?Or are you caught managing and packaging how you present your value based on what you fear others might think?There’s this instinct many of us carry. It looks like managing other people’s feelings. Trying […]

Do you see how overwhelm distorts reality?

I’ve been thinking about how easily overwhelm distorts our sense of perspective. Almost like a pair of goggles we didn’t realise we were wearing. When they’re on, everything feels closer, louder, more tangled than it really is. When we’re in that state, clarity shrinks. Possibility narrows. We can’t see the wood for the trees. It […]

The jerk-reflex “no”

Have you ever noticed how quickly the word “no” rises in you… long before anyone else has a chance to weigh in?It’s subtle. Automatic.The other day, I caught myself doing exactly that. I was reflecting on a possibility – a small desire, really – and before the idea had space to breathe, something in me […]