Someone waves from a car, and I’m still thinking about it way past when it’s time to wave back.

In this week’s voice memo, I share how that extra processing shows up in business too. We consider all the angles, think about how people might respond, and keep revising.

That depth can bring a lot to our work. But it can also make it hard to finish.

I talk more about this in Episode 2 of Safe to Be Seen, my free three-part audio series for highly sensitive entrepreneurs.

Our HSP traits can be gifts, but when we overuse them, they can get in our way. Depth of processing helps us recognize patterns, make thoughtful decisions, and come up with original ideas. It can also lead to overthinking, indecision, and perfectionism.

Safe to Be Seen is part of the new HSP Visibility Bundle, and I’m one of 15 contributors.

It’s a free collection of resources for highly sensitive, introverted, and neurodivergent women who want to share their work without relying on social media, pushing themselves to hustle, or feeling they have to be louder to be seen.

Along with my audio series, you’ll find 14 other resources and some additional free gifts.

The bundle is available October 10–17.

Take a look and sign up here:

Sign up for the HSP Visibility Bundle

I’m hosting Safe to Be Seen, a free, three-call workshop October 13-20 for highly sensitive entrepreneurs who want to show up for their business but find themselves hesitating to post, struggling to be consistent, or overthinking after they share.

If visibility feels emotionally harder than it seems like it “should,” this workshop will help you understand what’s getting in the way and explore a more sustainable way forward.

Learn More.

You get to decide what consistency means.

Daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly, depending on the activity.

You can be consistent at any of those intervals.

Consistency is not what a random business coach labels as consistency.

It doesn’t have to mean showing up every day without fail, regardless of the season of life.

Which was part of my demise.

I tried to follow other people’s strategies.

I tried to show up consistently every single day, regardless of the season.

I carried a corporate identity of hard work and overachieving into entrepreneurship. I thought my biggest problem was that I needed to get better at tolerating a way of doing business that ignored my sensitivity.

I naively thought, “I’ll rest once it’s built.” Meanwhile, I pushed through sicknesses, ignored rest, made no excuses, and always showed up.

The words of my seventh-grade library teacher still stick with me: “Is it an excuse, or a reason?” In my mind, everything seemed like an excuse, so I ignored them all.

But adaptation is expensive. Emotionally, physically, mentally. It costs valuable time and energy because recovering from burnout is more than a weekend off with bubble baths.

I Over-Corrected

I clung to the idea of “work smarter, not harder.”

When I noticed myself overworking and pushing towards exhaustion, I protected myself by stopping.

But in trying not to repeat my patterns, I swung the pendulum all the way to the other side.

If I didn’t feel like doing something, I didn’t.

If I felt overwhelmed, I stopped.

When I experienced self-doubt, I stepped away.

When I felt lost, I paused.

I stopped doing things just to keep moving, and I stopped trying everything. I was waiting for certainty before I acted.

I demanded proof. If I was going to do something, I needed reassurance that it would work.

That kind of certainty doesn’t come with entrepreneurship.

There are no guarantees.

So I did very little, and so did my business.

I think I nailed the “don’t work harder” but didn’t quite grasp the “work smarter” part.

I wanted to enjoy building something and enjoy what I’d built. I just needed to understand how.

My Pattern

I’d experienced both extremes, and neither worked. I’d been resisting the middle because it’s boring. Slow. Uneventful.

I had taught myself to thrive in hustle and urgency, so aligned action felt painfully slow and not as worthwhile.

Write the essay. Send the email. Make the offer. Notice what happens. Tweak. Repeat.

Boring.

But sustainable.

I needed to give my work enough continuity to learn from it and enough space to keep returning to it.

I noticed my pattern: when I’d gotten impatient and restless from a lack of results, I created chaos in my business.

A new niche. A new offer. Rewrite the website.

These activities took time and energy, only for me to disrupt and change them again soon.

My consistency naturally wavered during all that upheaval. But trying harder to be consistent wouldn’t have solved what was underneath it. I was being impatient with something that needed more time.

Although changing direction gave me a sense of control, it was serving another purpose, too. Hope. It was giving me hope.

The pattern soothed my need to control and be productive, but each change interrupted the time I needed to practice, learn, and improve.

In trying to go faster, I was actually slowing myself down.

Dedication with Flexibility

My focus right now is staying with a direction long enough to learn from it. Getting better at messaging. Making small adjustments without deciding the whole business needs to change. Letting progress feel slower than is comfortable.

And learn the art of aligned action. The “work smarter” part of the equation.

Understanding the difference between a “hustle” thought and an “aligned action” thought.

For me, aligned action feels soft. Quiet. Process-oriented. The undercurrent is more curious, “What will I learn?” Results are still important, but not the be-all and end-all.

When I’m in hustle, it feels results oriented. Urgent. Hard. Forced. The undercurrent says, “You must post daily, launch immediately, and make X dollars.” Results are paramount.

I’m getting better at recognizing the difference.

Aligned action still requires consistency, but it’s a different flavour. More manageable, enjoyable, and sustainable.

As a highly sensitive person, I don’t necessarily need different tactics to build my business. I still network, guest on podcasts, reach out to people I don’t know. But I need supportive practices and more space around those things to make them sustainable. I need time to process after interactions and to feel grounded before I show up.

Seasons of Life

I’m currently in a slower season of life.

After just recovering from burnout, I experienced back-to-back traumatic events in 2025. I took some time off, and I’ve been slowly making my way back.

This is a season of building foundations. I still need more rest and recovery than usual.

So consistency looks a little different than it did in 2024. Back then, I committed to finishing things by a certain time and put in extra hours to do it. Next year will likely be different too.

I’m focused on the process and results, yes, but in the forefront is energy maintenance.

My to-do list has similar activities, but they don’t need to be completed by Friday. I chip away and prioritize my health.

And that has to be enough for this season.

I’m practicing letting go of how quickly the results come. I still want my business to grow, and I’m giving myself time to learn what helps it grow at a pace I can sustain.

Consistency, for me, isn’t the same output every week. It’s staying committed to a direction, giving myself time to learn what’s truly working or isn’t, and leaving enough space around the work so I can come back to it.

I knew how to force myself to keep showing up. Now I’m learning how to keep showing up without paying for it with my health.

What about you? What season is your business in? Does it coincide with your season of life?

Want to understand what’s making it hard to show up for your business?

If you hesitate to post, struggle to stay consistent, or overthink after sharing, I’d love to invite you to Safe to Be Seen, my free, three-call workshop for highly sensitive entrepreneurs, October 13–20.

We’ll untangle what’s getting in the way—emotional barriers, high sensitivity, business skill gaps, or needing more feedback—and explore a way forward that you can sustain.

Find out more and register here.

As a teenager and young adult, I performed in theatre, often in lead roles, and studied theatre at two different colleges.

I was accustomed to performing for small, medium, and large audiences.

When I started my business, I was excited to create content, a podcast, webinars, and do live coaching in my group programs.

I was posting daily on IG / FB – lives, posts, and reels.

I was emailing my community – although the consistency wavered (more on consistency in a future post as I have much to say about that as an HSP).

When I was struggling in my business, I joined a lot of online programs to help solve it.

But when I saw programs about visibility I thought, “that’s not my problem.”

I knew how to push through and force myself to show up and do the thing.

Even when I didn’t know my niche, I showed up and shared my own journey.

Posts on the subconscious.

Supplements.

Nervous System.

Parenting.

My spiritual journey.

Kind of whatever I was moving through.

But as I deepened my healing and my entrepreneurial journey, I discovered the layers and the levels of visibility.

I noticed my patterns.

~Performing.

~Overworking.

~Controlling.

~People pleasing.

These weren’t new.

They were lifelong patterns that showed up in more places than just work.

As a Scorpio, I’m endlessly fascinated by what’s happening beneath the surface, the deeper waters, the subconscious.

I literally cannot help myself.

It’s what people love and hate about me (I assume).

That depth led me to RTT hypnosis, where so much of my healing happened, I invested in becoming certified.

So, I know behaviors are never just about the behaviors.

Emotional eating is not just about food.

Being late is not just about timing.

Procrastination is not just about disorganization.

And…

Visibility is not just about showing up.

It’s about being willing to be truly seen.

Not without boundaries.

But without hiding behind performance.

I had been partly right: I didn’t 100% have a visibility problem ….

Buuuuttttt… I was holding a deep fear of being seen, rejected, and/or misunderstood.

Being visible like that didn’t feel safe.

I faked visibility so well, I’d even fooled myself.

Let me back up a moment…

It took me many business pivots to understand my niche, positioning, and what I was doing (and I’m still learning).

Positive psychology coaching, emotional eating coaching, RTT hypnosis, supplements, Reiki, Oracle card readings….I shifted a lot.

Nothing felt right.

But you know what?

Knowing what I know now, I DID know what I was meant to be doing.

But confusion felt safer.

Pivoting felt safer than choosing (and potentially failing).

Being palatable felt safer than taking a stand (and potentially being misunderstood).

Performing felt safer than being known (at least I was doing something – even if I couldn’t be something).

And overworking had always felt safer.

It helped me survive so many seasons of my life.

But there are downsides to performative visibility.

To playing it safe.

It burned me out.

I had to do so much more because I was trying to cover all my bases.

That – and – when the business wasn’t working, I had no idea why.

What I was slowly uncovering was the layers of visibility.

How one problem could actually involve many different things.

Was I missing a business skill?
Did my offer, positioning or messaging need work?

Did I have enough business data?
Had I tested the idea long enough to know what was—and wasn’t—working?

Was my high sensitivity shaping the experience?
Was I overthinking, reading into everything, or becoming overstimulated?

Or did I need more emotional capacity for being seen?
Did I know what to do but struggle to tolerate the possibility of rejection, failure or misunderstanding?

I realized these were the levers I needed to separate.

My actual problem was that I couldn’t tell which was which.

When they all jumbled together, I became overwhelmed and froze.

Sometimes for days.

Sometimes for weeks.

Sometimes months.

The deeper I went, the more self-aware I became, the less I allowed myself to perform.

It was costing me too much.

I stopped calling it “self-sabotage.”

I stopped oversimplifying it as “protection.”

I started to pull it apart and name each one as it was.

This is why I created Safe to Be Seen.

I spent years being visibly active without allowing myself or my work to be fully seen.

It was hard work and it got mediocre results.

I needed a more focused, authentic, and sustainable way to be visible – one that included my high sensitivity.

So I started pulling the experience apart.

Maybe you recognize yourself in some of this:

You’re a highly sensitive entrepreneur and this isn’t your first year in business.

You know how to show up, but you’re not getting the traction you want.

You pivot quickly when something doesn’t work.

You soften your message because being misunderstood feels unbearable.

Or you can be highly visible for a time, but need days, weeks, or even months to recover from it.

Safe to Be Seen is for highly sensitive entrepreneurs who know what to do – but are struggling with the emotional experience of:

Being seen failing.

Being seen trying.

Being seen changing their minds.

Being seen being a little cringe at times.

Over one week and three live calls, we’ll separate what’s happening in one current visibility struggle:

Is it a business skill problem?

A lack of useful business data?

High sensitivity?

Or an emotional-capacity challenge?

Because when you know what is actually happening, you can make a clearer choice about what needs to change.

We’re talking emotional strategy – not more visibility tactics.

We gather in October.

The first live round will be free ~ Save your seat.

It’s almost mid-August.

In the middle of Canada where I live, the air is starting to have a familiar crispness.

Before my morning stretches and meditation, I find myself turning on the lamp and space heater. I still open my window, though, to let the cricket sounds in.

We had a solid two weeks of unusually hot weather, some days feeling like 32 degrees Celsius (89°F for my American friends).

I relish the hot days when going out for a walk only requires flip flops, a ball cap, and sunglasses.

Soon it will be 40 below (-40°F) and I’ll be adding pants to my pants just to go out for a walk.

Swapping my ball cap for a toque.

I like the ease of summer dressing. Not worrying about my hair because it lives in a ponytail or under a ball cap.

I wear less makeup in the summer. I don’t know if it’s because my tan gives me natural colour, or I just can’t be bothered because the summer has different expectations.

With our 9-year-old home on summer break, I take most of the summer off work. I don’t see clients or run programs. I find pockets of time to write, create, and dream. I still feel the pull to publish, to maintain some momentum. But I’m much better at letting that pressure be there without organizing my summer around it.

I refuse to set an alarm.

This wasn’t always the case.

I used to push myself harder in the summer because I had to fight for time to work. I’d work clients in around day camps and feel the constant need to be producing something.

Breaks were a luxury I thought I couldn’t afford.

Not in the way that sounds, though.

My husband has been the primary breadwinner in our family since our son was born. For years, I’ve been ashamed to admit that.

There was still financial pressure to succeed. I could see the strain it put on my husband, even though he never intentionally pressured me. And when we needed it, we had access to financing, which was another privilege in itself.

The privilege went beyond money.

I had time.

Time to fail. Time to reflect and heal. Time to decide something wasn’t right for me and try something different.

I was also doing the inner work of trying to understand myself and unravel old patterns. Did nothing feel right because it wasn’t right, or was I just continually sabotaging myself because I was afraid?

The thing about inner work though is that it’s invisible. I had no proof of the hard work: no big social media accounts, no launches. So I felt the need to compensate for it. As if suffering compensated for my privilege. As if that was even needed.

But there was something else at stake.

My identity.

Hard work had always been a part of my identity. And in my mind, it was part of the identity of a “real” entrepreneur, too.

Entrepreneurship was supposed to be hard. You struggled. You sacrificed. You earned your success.

I didn’t want it to look like I’d had it easy.

So I worked even harder. As an entrepreneur, busy work is easy when there’s always a website to rewrite. I figured if I worked harder, my business would eventually work. Because if my business wasn’t “working,” would it prove I just had a luxurious hobby?

Did people think I was lying on the couch eating peeled grapes all day?

“Must be nice.”

I was too afraid of what not working would say about me. So even when our family didn’t absolutely need me to work through the summer, I did.

~

It’s been an inner reckoning over the years as I slowly shed those old ideas.

My son’s grief therapist once told me kids are more natural with grief because they puddle jump. They can grieve someone one moment, and the next moment be laughing and asking for a snack.

That image always stuck with me.

My own reckoning has looked a lot like puddle jumping between proving my worth and just being.

Jumping into, “Who am I without the title or the salary?”

Jump, “What does it feel like to accept support?”

Jump back to performing. Producing.

Jump into feeling good enough just existing.

Jump.

~

With September on the horizon, I’m excited about getting back to a routine, my desk, and a shift in season.

September always feels like a fresh start. A time to reset goals, take aligned action.

I’ve loved the hot days, the precious time with our son, and the break in business pace.

But I’m ready for some uninterrupted workspace.

~

Here in Saskatchewan, we get four seasons. It’s true, three of them are pretty short, but I love the natural shifts in rhythm they each provide.

I sat down to write about that.

The air getting crisp. Trading shorts for pants.

And then 800 words later, I’m writing about the shame I carried around financial privilege and questioning the identity I built around entrepreneurship.

All from wanting to write about crisp air.

I think I’m allergic to simplicity.

My son recently asked me what my favourite colour was. My husband smiled and rolled his eyes.

“She can’t answer that.”

I laughed.

I can’t!

I need context and nuance.

Is it a colour I’ll wear? Is it a colour for wall paint? Is it a colour I’d use in a painting?

All those answers would be different!

Anyway, September is coming.

I’m going to enjoy my flip flops while I still can, because I know my snow boots will be calling me soon.

If your work has gotten tangled up with your identity, this is for you: Safe To Be Seen

I thought answering my calling would come with rainbows.

I mean, not literally.

But yeah… close.

I thought there’d be ease, bliss, and joy.

Synchronicities.

Making money doing what I loved.

Followed by a deep sigh knowing I’d finally found the path I was meant to walk.

Cue the fireworks.

Except it wasn’t like that at all.

Shortly after I said ‘yes’, I found myself very alone in a very dark forest.

Wolves howled in the distance.

My eyes searched desperately for the well-lit path.

Where was it?

Why was it so dark?

I waited for daylight, but it didn’t come.

Instead, the forest just got thicker and darker.

It would take me years to realize I wasn’t lost at all.

~

The Fantasy

Years ago, trapped in a corporate job, I daydreamed how it’d look:

Waking up, excited to get to work.

Taking an early morning walk instead of rushing to a desk.

Amy Porterfield in my ear explaining the strategies that promised success.

I imagined easily replacing my corporate income doing something that lit me up.

I thought about all the clients that loved receiving my help and were better for it.

Mostly though, I thought about how it would feel.

Free.

I’d be free.

I’d work out when I wanted, take breaks when I felt like it, and go on vacation without asking permission.

I could stop asking permission.

I could get away from being under watchful, critical eyes.

That sounded like freedom to me.

~

I remembered being 20 and wanting to be a life coach. I also remembered the practical part of me saying, “maybe you should get some life experience first.”

20 years later with a divorce, three careers, theatre school, business school, and many ‘life experiences’ behind me, I assumed I’d met the criteria required to follow my calling.

As if there were criteria, like a pre-requisite to an upper-level university class.

The first few months were pretty great.

I woke up excited to work on my business.

I felt hopeful.

It was a lot of hard work, but it was working.

I shoved down the nagging feeling I was building something I couldn’t sustain. “I’ll figure it out later,” I told myself, while continuing the hustle.

On one of my many walks I was listening to a podcast from a coach I admired.

She said a coaching client had come to her after being wildly successful and retiring her husband from his career.

But she’d unintentionally built her own prison cell.

She couldn’t get out.

The opposite of freedom.

This story lodged itself somewhere deep inside me.

Secretly I’d been rehearsing that very same dream.

Retiring my husband.

I’d thought about how good that would feel.

How good that would make me look.

It wasn’t just about freedom.

It was about finally becoming someone who’d made it.

To me, that was success.

Now that success looked dangerous.

Did I really want that responsibility?

At the time, I just remembered saying quietly to myself, “I need to be careful what I build.”

I didn’t leave one prison cell just to build another.

But the story stayed with me.

It planted a warning my body never forgot:

Don’t build another prison.

At the time, I thought I understood what that meant.

From then on, every path felt like it might lead me back to another cell.

After years of doubting my instincts, I’d forgotten how to read my own compass.

I kept making new paths.

Abandoning them.

Doubling back.

I didn’t know what to trust anymore.

I was just out there alone, trying to survive.

~

The Betrayal

This did not feel like the joy, bliss, and ease I’d imagined.

The more sustainable paths I ventured into had more freedom but weren’t lucrative.

I refused to choose between happiness and money.

There had to be a way to have both.

After all, I didn’t leave one desk to be trapped at another.

Even if that desk was of my own design.

Convinced I was on the wrong path, I dismantled everything I’d built.

The podcast.

The programs.

My coaching practice.

I told myself tearing it all down would help me find my way back.

If it was truly meant for me, it would be there.

The excitement was long gone and replaced with shame, doubt, and fear.

Every morning I woke up to thick dread.

I’d force myself out of bed.

Get my kiddo to school.

My husband would ask, “what do you have going on today?”

I hated that I couldn’t answer.

I ended up just mumbling something like, “writing, building a program…”

Then I’d trudge to my office.

Stare at my computer.

Every task felt hopeless because nothing worked.

Eventually I’d slide onto my yoga mat and stare at the ceiling instead.

By the end of the day, I felt like a fraud.

Nothing to show.

I wouldn’t even remember if I’d showered or brushed my teeth that day.

Out in the world, I was terrified someone would ask how my business was going.

I couldn’t bear to tell the truth.

I couldn’t bear to let anyone see how badly I believed I’d failed.

~

I wondered how I got it so wrong.

Did I totally misunderstand my calling?

If this was meant for me, why did it feel so wrong?

Did I do something wrong?

Is something wrong with me?

I’d answered the call.

Why wasn’t it working?

~

The Maze

I was convinced the light was somewhere ahead, so I kept searching.

Maybe I needed a different business model.

Maybe a different niche.

Maybe another coach.

Maybe a completely different direction.

Every new path gave me hope for a while.

But the doubts always crept back in.

I’d question everything, convince myself I’d chosen the wrong path, and start over.

Nothing felt right.

Nothing felt like me.

~

The Return

I’d been searching externally for answers for years.

I started to wonder if every path was leading me back to long-buried fears.

I trained in theater, so I didn’t think I had a problem being seen.

But performing isn’t the same as being visible.

On stage you’re protected by the character.

You can hide behind their words.

I didn’t have that kind of protection in my business.

I had to stand behind my own words.

If people misunderstood my words, there was no character to blame.

Being looked at isn’t the same as being seen.

~

I spent years collecting more information because, as long as I was learning, I didn’t have to stand behind my own voice.

But I’d lost faith in new strategies.

No matter what I changed, I was still bringing myself with me.

At first, I wanted to understand why I felt so stuck.

That question was getting more specific.

Why does being seen feel so dangerous?

That question led me into somatic therapy, Internal Family Systems, nervous system work, and spiritual practices.

The breakthroughs were exhilarating but they didn’t last.

It looked like a few steps forward, a few back.

A little less editing.

A little more saying what I want.

A little more of me.

The process was slow and invisible, but doing something important.

It was reacquainting me with who I really was beneath everything I’d learned to be.

Gradually, I saw the patterns.

Every time I wrote a newsletter, I’d imagine an ex-boss reading it and criticizing every word.

Every time I joined a workshop on racism, I was convinced I’d say something that revealed how much I still had to learn.

Every time I got close to posting, I watered it down just in case it would be misunderstood.

Every time I got visible online, I’d remember anyone could be reading it.

I couldn’t people please my way to safety.

No amount of editing could guarantee I wouldn’t be misunderstood.

There was no version of myself I could construct that everyone would approve of.

I’d left corporate to stop asking permission and get away from watchful, critical eyes.

But I hadn’t.

I’d brought those eyes with me.

~

Home

In my effort to stay protected and safe, I’d been asking the impossible.

I’d been asking my business to keep me safe.

Safe from judgement.

Safe from looking stupid.

Safe from being misunderstood.

I’d been asking it to make me believe I was enough.

Without realizing it, I’d given my business the same job I’d once given the characters I played.

To protect me.

But no business, strategy, niche, or amount of success could ever do that.

Even if everyone had approved of me, it wouldn’t have changed what I believed about myself.

Nothing could protect me if I believed the real me wasn’t acceptable.

~

Now I could see the path.

It hadn’t suddenly appeared.

It had been there all along.

I hadn’t been lost.

I hadn’t misunderstood my calling.

I’d misunderstood what it meant to say ‘yes’.

It was asking me to stop abandoning who I already was.

My calling was calling me home.

If this essay felt familiar, I’d love to invite you to something.

Safe to Be Seen is a live 7-day group experience for highly sensitive entrepreneurs who want to become safe enough to do the work they’re here to do.

The founding cohort begins October 1.

Learn More - Safe To Be Seen

I’m highly sensitive and empathic.

I’m also wildly ambitious.

For years I thought those two identities couldn’t coexist, because every model of success I found said they couldn’t.

~

The version of success I saw rewarded people who could move fast, push harder, stay visible, and sacrifice sleep, relationships, and health.

The picture I had of highly sensitive people was the opposite.

Gentle.

Emotional.

Fragile.

Content with a smaller life.

They didn’t overlap.

I didn’t see anyone who looked like both.

I assumed I had to choose.

~

At 30, I changed careers.

I swapped numbers for people, leaving investment banking for executive recruitment.

I was good at it, so working hard didn’t feel like hard work. I threw myself into it, always going above and beyond, always trying to prove myself and my worth.

I never thought of myself as a high achiever. I was just trying to survive and pay the rent.

Meanwhile, I saw my friends less, woke up earlier to squeeze in workouts, skipped lunch breaks, and pushed myself like a machine.

In my first performance review, my boss called me a high performer.

I was shocked.

Me?

But he was right: I’d become exactly what I thought success required.

Hustle.

Push harder.

Sacrifice.

That was me. Always productive, always on. Disciplined with a capital D. Willing to sacrifice happiness and joy for success.

I tried to lean into it, to be logical over emotional. Confident and decisive. Push through the exhaustion. For years, I thought it was working.

~

I wasn’t consciously hiding my sensitivity.

I never stopped to wonder whether high sensitivity and high performance could coexist.

I was too busy overriding it in favour of success.

When I started my own business, I followed suit:

I hired the coach.

Followed the framework.

Woke up at 4am.

Hustled.

Sacrificed.

It’s not that it didn’t work; it did.

It just wasn’t sustainable.

I’d left my corporate job for more freedom and created my own prison.

I was still chained to my desk.

I misunderstood the problem as me.

I looked to the personal development world for answers.

HSPs make up only about 20-30% of the population*. It’s hardly surprising that most achievement advice has been created by, and for, people whose nervous systems thrive on speed, intensity, and pushing through discomfort.

I spent years trying to succeed inside that model.

Every time it didn’t fit, I blamed myself instead of the model.

It took me years to connect the dots:

The problem wasn’t me.

The problem was trying to pursue success through an achievement model built on speed, intensity, volume, and force instead of one built for the way I was wired.

I needed a model that honoured:

Deep thinking.

Mastery.

Meaning.

Consistency at the pace of my nervous system.

When I ignore that, my nervous system lets me know.

Migraines.

Illness.

Burnout.

I have the mind of a cheetah but the nervous system of a sloth.

~

When I first started my business, my non-HSP, extraverted (and well-meaning) husband thought I should do all the things:

Conferences.

Networking.

That’s his world.

But me?

Barf.

I did them anyway.

I networked.

I posted.

I podcasted.

I put myself out there.

I’d get momentum then disappear for a week. Sometimes two. Sometimes a month.

I called it self-sabotage.

It wasn’t.

It was accumulated nervous system debt.

Almost every course I took gave me the same advice:

“Feel scared? Good. Do it anyway.”

For highly sensitive people, that’s incomplete advice.

The problem isn’t fear.

The problem is borrowing someone else’s pace, strategy, and definition of bravery.

We pay a higher physiological price for courage when it’s disconnected from our own nervous system.

That doesn’t make us less courageous.

If anything, it makes us more.

I never lacked discipline.

I never lacked perseverance.

I was ambitious enough to do the thing.

And sensitive enough to pay for it afterward.

~

I no longer measure success by how much I can push through.

I measure it by whether it’s:

Sustainable.

Repeatable.

Authentic.

If a strategy requires disappearing for days or weeks to recover, that’s not a sustainable strategy.

That’s not a weakness.

It’s information.

Achievement culture says:

Hustle harder.

I’m saying:

Become truer.

I don’t have to choose between myself and success.

~~~

*Research shows around 20 to 30% of the population is highly sensitive. The combination of high sensitivity, deep empathy, and exceptional ambition has not yet been well studied, but appears to be relatively uncommon.

~~~

If this resonated with you, I have something special coming in September:

The Clarity Experience: Goals for Sensitive Souls

A live 7-day experience for highly sensitives who feel burned out by their goals, stuck despite hard work, or not sure what’s next.

Instead of pushing harder, we’ll create clarity that feels deeply aligned with your nervous system, your values, and the life you’re actually trying to build.

It’s an intimate, live experience, and I’m looking for six thoughtful, open-hearted souls to experience it together.

Join the Waitlist

I started my coaching practice in 2018 and tried to find a place for myself.

But I never seemed to fit anywhere.

I didn’t have a niche.

I didn’t have a program.

All I had was a Calling.

I just didn’t know what it was asking of me yet.

So, I started collecting modalities:

Positive Psychology Coaching.

Weight loss coaching.

Hypnotherapy.

Reiki.

Embodiment.

I even created my own modality: RHE (Reiki-Hypnosis-Embodiment).

But after all that, I still felt like I was trying to fit into places where I didn’t belong.

I worked online, modeling other coaches.

I joined spiritual communities.

I worked in a counseling clinic.

I kept changing environments: different healing spaces, different ways of working.

The scenery changed, but the feeling didn’t.

I was uncomfortable offering healing sessions and calling myself a healer never felt right to me.

Every time I didn’t fit, I came to the same conclusion:

I’m the common denominator.

There must be something wrong with me.

So, off I went to therapy. I uncovered stories, subconscious and generational patterns, too many to list. I learned how I coupled my worth with work and money.

No big surprises there.

But I still didn’t get clarity on my business, what I was offering, or where I belonged.

Clients would come and I’d be terrified.

I was scared someone would get hurt.

I was afraid I’d say or do the wrong thing.

I carried responsibility that was never mine to carry.

I worried about my pricing.

Too high. Too low.

I worried about my marketing.

Was it conscious, credible, and ethical?

What was my niche?

What problem was I solving?

More importantly: was I solving it, or just taking people’s money?

Eventually I realized no certification was ever going to give me what I was looking for or what I thought I needed.

I knew I wasn’t missing a modality, a niche, or a course.

I didn’t need to listen to another podcast or read another book.

No amount of therapy was going to make me trust myself.

No program was going to give me permission to clearly hear my Calling.

There was one nudge that followed me through every modality, every course, every therapy session:

Integration.

The word was everywhere.

It was treated like the final step.

“Make sure you give time to integrate.”

But no one really explained what integration was or how to support it. It felt like homework you were expected to figure out on your own.

That was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Not the breakthrough.

What came after it.

The messy middle.

The triggers.

Meeting resistance.

The body without the story.

I was tired of the story.

I’d leave a breakthrough session feeling lighter.

Resolved.

Three days later I’d be repeating the patterns I thought I ditched.

Nothing was wrong with the breakthrough.

The insight was thrilling.

But insight is not embodiment.

My nervous system needed to catch up to my experience.

The personal development industry sometimes made it feel like we operate like phones.

Install the upgrade.

Restart.

Carry on.

Humans don’t work that way.

At least, I don’t.

So I stopped chasing the next breakthrough and instead stayed with what surfaced.

I noticed resistance.

I listened to my body.

I paid more attention to physical sensation than story.

I stopped trying to fix every uncomfortable feeling and became curious instead.

Bit by bit, I trusted my own experience over someone else’s framework.

Nothing was wrong with me.

I wasn’t failing because I didn’t fit.

I was exhausted from trying.

I spent years being palatable, hoping I’d be accepted.

Waiting for permission.

But I was never meant to fit in those spaces.

Maybe what I was looking for all that time wasn’t fitting in.

I was looking to belong to myself.

The Calling had never wavered. Integration didn’t create it.

It quieted everything that was drowning it out.

We spend so much time trying to master and become the best version of ourselves.

Collecting more information, more strategies, more proof that we’re enough, ready, and certain.

But an acorn doesn’t become an oak by becoming a better acorn.

It becomes an oak by growing what’s already inside it.

Maybe that’s what integration is.

Not becoming someone new.

But creating the conditions for what has always been there to emerge.

Lately a lot of things in our house have broken and needed fixing or replacing.

Vacuum.

Vehicle.

Dishwasher.

Fridge.

Toilet.

Even our kitten is going to be neutered; or ‘fixed’ as my parents used to call it.

At 47, I’ve somehow ended up on this list too.

My sleep has been disrupted, so I try to fix it.

My body is behaving differently, so I try to fix it.

My mind wants one thing, but my nervous system won’t comply, so I try to fix it.

I’ve always felt I have the mind of a cheetah but the nervous system of a sloth.

Fix it.

It didn’t just start as I got later in my 40’s.

It started decades ago.

For as long as I can remember, the equation has been simple:

Something wrong?

Find the problem.

Fix it.

I spent so many years with different therapists, counsellors, coaches, modalities, and programs.

All with the underlying promise that I’d be fixed.

And yet, after decades of self-improvement, I still felt like I needed more fixing.

They didn’t fail.

The premise was just all wrong.

Because it’s not the pieces of me that are broken or need replacing.

I’m not a broken system.

More like an instrument that’s been tuned for survival.

Not out of tune.

Just tuned for a different performance.

That tuning favoured fear, anxiety, hypervigilance, hustle, people pleasing, and perfectionism.

It served me well in corporate life.

It earned promotions and pay raises.

But the same tuning that helped me survive one season made it hard to inhabit the next.

Running my own business.

Parenting.

Actually enjoying my life.

It amplified some notes while muting others.

Fear louder than joy.

Vigilance louder than play.

Survival louder than aliveness.

I’m tired of fixing myself.

I’m tired of optimizing my days like I’m some kind of machinery.

Lately, I’m craving something new.

Acceptance.

Wholeness.

Reorganizing what’s already there.

Because those parts I tried to fix protected me.

They helped me survive.

They’re not wrong.

They just don’t need to set the tempo anymore.

Maybe I don’t need to become the “best version of myself.”

Maybe all I need is integration.

The instrument is the same.

Only the tuning is changing.

And with it, the music.

Perfectionism was a Loyal Guardian

The rules didn’t stay tucked beside a photograph in a velvet pouch.

They followed me.

Into my goals.

Into my work.

Into the way I measured my worth.

Work hard.

Persevere.

Be respected.

Those rules governed the goals I wrote on that paper.

They promised that if I worked hard enough, proved myself enough, controlled enough, I’d be rewarded:

Joy.

Freedom.

Ease.

Authenticity.

Those rules became a way of living.

A way of earning safety.

A way of proving my worth.

The backbone of that strategy was perfectionism.

Not because I wanted to be perfect.

Because I wanted to feel safe.

Read more

It held every goal I’d written since 2008.

I had categories like family, health, love, friends, career, finances, personal development.

I wrote down things like train as a yoga teacher, become debt free, daily affirmations like ‘life is easy’, India 2012.

One day, probably around 2011, I was lying on my osteopath’s treatment bed, and he was asking me how my plans to India were coming.

Initially, I was confused.

Then I laughed and said, “I got so busy, I forgot all about my hopes and dreams.”

I still haven’t gone. Or become a yoga teacher.

At the time, it felt funny.

Looking back, it feels more revealing.

The truth was, I’d prioritized the goals that were easier to justify:

Earning money.

Getting promotions.

Going back to university for an MBA.

The dreams that nourished me were always waiting patiently for “someday.”

Read more

Inside was a folded piece of paper:

Joy.

Freedom.

Ease.

Authenticity.

And beside it, a picture of my grandmother.

I wasn’t expecting either of them to change the way I understood myself.

Or success.

Searching for Safety

After the shock of losing my mom and nephew within two months I had the privilege of taking time off work.

I wandered the house, a little lost.

I couldn’t write.

I couldn’t create.

I certainly couldn’t work with clients.

So I floated.

And watched Bridgerton.

But mostly, I wandered.

The way they had died shattered the illusion that life could be managed, that bad things could be prevented.

And for someone that loves control, this was the lesson in surrender I knew was coming but didn’t want.

Since I couldn’t control what had happened, I looked to my surroundings.

Where could I find control?

Where could I find safety?

Making Space

As I wandered the house I started reorganizing.

Reorganization gave me a sense of control.

I remember doing a lot of this kind of thing before my son was born, but then it was called nesting.

Birth and death had both asked me to prepare for a version of life that didn’t exist yet.

The first thing I did was buy a bookshelf for the bedroom and create a cozy meditation corner.

My husband had decorated most of the house. He always asked my opinion, but I rarely had strong preferences and was relieved when he did.

It made it easier at a time when I felt overwhelmed by the move, a small child, and my business.

But as I searched for shelves and imagined making the space my own, I realized something.

I’d become accustomed to fitting myself into existing spaces rather than creating my own.

My office was the one room that felt distinctly mine. I arranged it the way I wanted. I painted. I wrote. I created. I stretched.

That was my next project. I wanted my desk to face the room, not the wall.

I wanted to make space for the version of myself that was coming. One who wrote more, painted more, and moved differently.

I recognized immediately that the person that existed months before was gone.

There would be no going back.

At first, it was just a bookshelf.

Then it was my office.

Then it was my son’s closet.

Then it was mine.

My eyes landed on the boxes on the upper shelves of my closet.

An old box of keepsakes: my first roller skate key, you know, the big metal one?

A plate from Sydney when my brother traveled there.

A keychain from my first triathlon.

A CD of photos from my first trip to Vegas.

Tiny artifacts from lives I had already lived.

And then there was a box of journals.

Before we moved across the country in 2020, I had thrown away dozens of old journals, as I periodically do. I read through some and toss or burn them, whatever feels more appropriate. I do a good purge every few years, but it had now been five.

Most of my journals were oriented around business. I started my business in 2018, and entrepreneurship is not an easy thing.

My business has been through so many iterations. I’ve tried and failed at so much. There are ideas I keep returning to, not quite ready to give up.

I was living the embodiment of hope over experience.

But this time I saw something different.

Instead of seeing failure, I saw perseverance.

After all, success comes after failures, plural.

Page after page, year after year, I kept showing up.

There’s only one tiny journal I never throw away.

It holds all my goals starting from 2008.

Continue the story: Part II: The Velvet Pouch

I’m not a good acquaintance.

I think it’s because I’m not great with simplicity.

My 9-year-old came home with fraction homework, broken down simply.

It took me an hour to figure out.

I process through layered contextual meaning, not linear reduction.

Some people simplify to understand. I contextualize to understand.

Things that should be easy, like small talk, are agonizing.

Neighbours, my kid’s friends’ parents, coaches, friends that have drifted in another direction; I just don’t know what to do with them.

How often do we talk?

How much do I share?

Is this performance, or real?

Why does it feel both intimate and distant at the same time?

It’s too much for me, so my system defaults to two lanes:

1. Soul-deep connection

2. Closed gate

No middle ground.

Depth feels safer than ambiguity for me.

Ironically, total distance also feels safer than ambiguity.

The In-Between

Acquaintances are ambiguity.

They live in the in-between.

For most of my life, I treated these kinds of relationships like incomplete versions of closeness.

But what if they were never meant to become more?

Maybe they have a different purpose:

To create lightness.

Community.

Evidence that not every relationship has to become emotionally consuming to be valuable.

Which means I need to practice:

unfinishedness,

casualness,

being misunderstood at times,

and not needing to merge.

All of which feels oddly vulnerable when I’m used to depth.

Guardrails

Although I’m not a linear thinker, I do like a good set of rules, and acquaintances lack this.

They feel uncontained. Half-formed. Context dependent. Sometimes warm, sometimes absent. Sometimes oddly performative. No defined container.

When my nervous system asks for guardrails I can’t provide, it’s interpreted as ‘unsafe.’

Unlike intimacy and isolation.

Intimacy says we’re close, share deeply, and we matter to each other. We’re there for each other.

Isolation is clean. It simply says, ‘no access.’

At parties, I look for one person I can have a deep conversation with stand by myself.

When I’m out running errands and recognize someone, I hide.

It’s not personal. Grocery store interactions just feel strangely loaded to me.

My brain cycles through questions:

How long do we talk?

What’s the correct depth level for this interaction?

Questions like these make me feel like it’s my first time ever on earth.

People often open up to me quickly and in ways that feel unexpectedly intimate. And afterward, I’m never quite sure what happens next. Are we friends now? What obligation, if any, does vulnerability create between people?

What if I ignored them last time?

Sometimes I’m warm but sometimes I’m unavailable. Does that mean I’m misleading, inconsistent, untrustworthy, insincere?

Are we becoming friends?

We spent a week at a tennis camp in Spain, sharing meals, conversations, and long days with a group of adults and their kids. By the end of the trip, I was emotionally invested. Like I was ready to be part of their lives, although they lived all over the world.

But once we got home, everyone slowly faded back into their own worlds.

I know this is normal. Temporary proximity. Shared context. Human nature.

But something about it feels jarring to me.

Invisible Social Threads

My husband is a genius at all of this.

He’s a charming extrovert, happy to talk to everyone, all the time.

The other day he pointed to a couple walking down the street.

“They used to live behind us. Two houses over, a few years ago.”

“How do you remember that? Or even recognize them?”

“Because I talk to people.”

I imagine familiarity is regulating for him.

For me, it feels more like accrued obligation.

Which always makes me think about my business.

Would I be more successful if I were an extrovert? Out there talking to everyone all the time?

Maybe that’s part of why I gravitate toward online work.

I show up when I want to be seen.

But I don’t always have to stay.

What feels especially difficult for me is when an acquaintance goes through something terrible. What do I do then?

How involved should I be?

We’re connected. Doesn’t that mean something?

Doesn’t that make me responsible for caring?

I don’t experience humans casually.

Connection immediately carries ethical gravity for me.

Read more

When Grief introduced me to Hope, I was confused.

Confused is polite.

It pissed me off.

I was back in BC, this time with my husband and son visiting mom for Mother’s Day.

Things had progressed in the few weeks since my last visit. She was still home, managing pain, and going for endless tests. But when I found myself packing for a four-day trip, I braced myself. Somehow a part of me knew I wouldn’t be home in four days.

As a family we hadn’t talked about chemo, but I heard their hope in the subtext. That maybe there was a chance….

I’d heard the specialist’s voice catch when he mentioned chemo. He knew there would be no chemo. I knew there would be no chemo. But I didn’t want to be the one to say it, so I kept it to myself. I didn’t want to steal anyone’s hope, even if I didn’t have it.

The Language of Hope

I’m a practical person, but I also believe in signs. They give me comfort and remind me to broaden my perspective. There’s more to this world than just what I see or think, and I love a little mystery, magic, and whimsy. Just like my mom: a practical woman with a love of all thing’s whimsy.

~

On my many walks in BC the signs were abundant. Most notably, I was met with all representations of rainbows. Sidewalk chalk drawings, clothes on other walkers, keychains, backpacks.

This confused me. I always thought rainbows symbolized a calm after the storm and gave hope. Certainly, they didn’t belong in the middle of a storm?

To further contradict my limited thinking, I kept seeing yellow butterflies. They offered hope, optimism, transformation, and new beginnings.

My parent’s house is yellow, ironically.

But what business did symbols of hope have here? Wasn’t it a little premature for rainbows, transformation, and new beginnings?

Wasn’t hope reserved for when there’s a chance?

Because it looked like we were all out of chances.

Which led to my old belief of: isn’t hope careless at best, dangerous at worst?

Hope is for suckers.

All or nothing / black and white

I’m not proud to say my relationship with hope has often sounded more like, ‘I hope something bad doesn’t happen,’ than genuine belief in something good happening.

Disappointment always seemed to linger longer than joy ever did.

A few days after mom was admitted to hospital, my husband and son said their goodbyes and flew home. It had been four days since our arrival. Just as some part of me already knew, I was staying longer.

It was hard saying goodbye to them. Amid losing one person, I was terrified of losing more. Everything suddenly felt fragile.

I was left hoping for a swift ending. It’s true that I didn’t want her to suffer long. But it’s also true that I didn’t want to suffer long.

I wanted to be there for her last breath, but I also wanted to go home. I wanted to start healing and moving forward. I allowed myself all the uncomfortable thoughts because they are so human.

Somewhere inside all that contradiction, I started reconsidering hope altogether.

Read more

Unexpectedly losing two loved ones within two months was a crash course in Grief. It collided with a belief I didn’t know I carried: that grief was rare.

I didn’t realize then, but Grief had been patiently waiting for an opening.

Anyway, there I was, surrounded and consumed. Not just by recent loss, but a lifetime of unprocessed moments. All the times I had stood Grief up.

We could call it miscommunication. Crossed wires. Or maybe I simply didn’t know I was supposed to meet it.

It really doesn’t matter.

What became clear was this: introductions were happening now.

Old Grief. New Grief. Grief appearing in places I didn’t expect.

It reminded me of confirmation bias. I remember being pregnant and suddenly noticing childrens parks everywhere, wondering when the city had built them all.

They had always been there. My mind had just filtered them out.

Not relevant. Not recognizable. Not something I had the tools to see.

Grief was the same.

It hadn’t been absent.

Just unseen & unmet. Yet.

~

In my twenties, I worked in a busy broker’s office alongside a row of other assistants. One day, I passed a coworker’s cubicle and saw her shoving random papers into an already stuffed bottom drawer.

“What’s that?”

I was genuinely curious. My own cubicle was meticulously organized. Order felt like safety.

“That’s where I put things I don’t wanna do.”

She said it casually. Like it was obvious. Like it was allowed. Like she had permission.

I remember standing there quietly stunned. You can just…decide not to deal with something? No stress about it? No panic?

What happens to it?

I think about that drawer almost weekly, but lately a lot more.

Because that’s what I’d been doing with Grief. Closing the drawer before I ever had to look inside. Telling myself I’d get to it later, or that maybe it didn’t matter enough to open at all.

But it was still there.

Waiting.

Grief isn’t just about losing someone, but everything I never made space to feel.

HELLO, GRIEF

I vividly remember our first meeting.

Read more

When Grief arrived, I was already well-practiced in ignoring it.

Well practiced in not feeling too much.

I remember being eight, playing a board game with my family. I don’t remember what was so frustrating, but I got mad, really mad, and everyone laughed. Something in me snapped. I pushed the table over and ran to my room, slamming the door several times for good measure.

Re-entry after that incident felt shameful. I quickly adapted: anger is not allowed.

I can’t remember what made me mad. But I can’t forget the response to my anger.

This wasn’t cruelty; it was inheritance. I come from a loving, working class family. Parents doing the best they could with what they had. My dad worked, and mom stayed home for most of my growing up years. There wasn’t a lot of money, hand-me-downs were welcomed, and we were guided to treasure the sentimental over the material.

“If the house was on fire and you could grab one thing, what would it be?”

“Photos.” Things that can’t be replaced. Obviously.

I was a teenager when we lost our remaining grandparents, and it seemed like a natural course of life. We all quietly moved along without a lot of discussion.

The unwritten rule in our family was “Shhh… Keep emotions quiet and be happy, but not too happy.” Anything veering outside that guardrail was too loud, too much, and should be experienced quietly and privately.

Mom’s British lineage showing itself in quiet ways: don’t be disruptive. Be nice. Beneath it all, my great-grandfather’s generation whispering, children should be seen but not heard.

Read more

Grief is a mainstream word but not always used accurately - kind of like how people (me) misuse emigrated and immigrated; or mix up affect and effect (also me).

For most of my adult life I thought “for all intents and purposes” was all intense purposes. Which, I kind of like better, to be honest. It feels more accurate.

Also, for most of my life I thought grief was something you experienced on the rare occasion that a loved one passed away.

I’m sure, dear reader, you caught the naivety and privilege in that belief. You’re not wrong….

I could never write a guide or even recommend how to grieve. How could anyone? But still, I can’t help but write about it. Especially since I only feel we just formally met (Grief and I).

When Grief came knocking abruptly last year, I took it as a divine invitation. I wanted to grow from it, not shrink. I wanted to understand.

That meant not responding from my conditioning, what I’d been taught, witnessed, or inherited.

I needed to know what Grief and loss meant to me.

I started at the beginning by referring to my advisor, Google, and located the dictionary definition of grief: “deep and poignant distress (sorrow).”

Already I was skeptical.

I mean, it wasn’t totally wrong. It just felt incomplete. I didn’t know much, but it felt like grief was more process-oriented than a long-term emotional state, like sorrow.

That definition felt too one dimensional for the complexity. Grief is so much more texturized and personal…. isn’t it?

And don’t we all grieve differently?

So how do I define it? Embody it?

And why bother defining it? Well, for me, I can’t move through something I don’t understand.

So, I packed my emotional bags and took an intentional rendezvous with Grief.

Literally translated, rendezvous means, “present yourself.”

And present itself, it did.

And present myself, I did.

It was a beautiful coming home that was simultaneously terrifying and incredibly disruptive.

It showed me how sneakily I’d been organizing my life around perceived safety and comfort; but the scaffolding was rotting and my ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

I was building a house I didn’t want to live in.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

If you, too, also like deep thinking, meaning making, and the idea of meeting yourself, I hope there are pieces of my story that resonate, or spark something in you.

Continue the series: Part II: Safe, But Fragmented

“The problem is that you think you shouldn’t feel lost, confused, afraid, insecure or like a failure, if you are ever to create something meaningful.

That is an inverted form of dehumanization that we often conflate with self improvement.

Why is aspiring to reach a state where you are unable to feel insecure, lost or afraid, an inverted form of dehumanization?

Because it would require that you separate yourself from what makes you human… your ability to feel the full emotional spectrum, dark or light.

Doing that wouldn’t be self improvement. It’s dissociation.” - Xavier Dagba

This quote got me thinking about how comfortable I had let my life get a few years ago.

Don’t get the wrong idea - this wasn’t the “living on vacation” kind of comfort. I wasn’t comfortable with the place my work was at, or with relationships or health or money related things…. but I was having nice hot showers everyday. Sleeping in a cozy bed. Never getting too hot or too cold. Most importantly: not trying new things. Not taking risks.

It was the kind comfortability that comes with accepting what I’d always accepted. The comfort that comes with being in debt vs. having money. The comfort of complaining to myself, but not doing anything about it. The kind of comfort of “at least I know what I’m getting.”

THAT kind of comfort.

It’s like that saying “choose your hard”. Taking care of your health, eating right, moving your body, is hard; but not doing that, then dealing with repercussions later is hard too. Either way it’s hard. Choose your hard. A lot of us tend to defer the hard.

A few years ago I was very uncomfortable. New mom, starting a business, quit my corporate job, moved across the country. Then, I retreated into a period of time where I stopped going out of my comfort zone.

So much is lost when we stay in our comfort zone.

We settle.

We stop growing.

We accept what we don’t like, even though we have the power to change it.

The paradox is that it’s not actually comfort, comforting, or comfortable. Our brains confuse comfort with known.

I’ve shared many times the misconception that following my calling would be blissful. What I found was exactly what Dagba speaks of: lost, confused, afraid, insecure, like a failure.

When those emotions came up, they set alarms bells off for me.

I wish I’d known those were “correct”, “normal”, acceptable, reasonable, even welcomed responses. That it meant being fully human.

Part of the process. Not “oops, must be on the wrong path.”

To do something new IS scary, unknown, and you will have to face yourself. It does feel like you’re failing, until one day you’re not.

That wasn’t something to run from. That was something to embrace.

Embrace your humanity. The spectrum of emotions.

Let’s normalize that.

Now when I take my son to trampoline parks, climbing gyms, waterslides, the park I’ve made a contract with myself to join in, instead of just watch (may have recently pulled an arm muscle on the monkey bars).

Now in my work I do things that don’t feel cozy and comfortable. I go to the event, the lunch, I do the Live.

Granted, there was a long dark night of the soul where it was probably right to cocoon. But I’m not in that anymore.

It’s time for me to get uncomfortable in the unknown because that’s where the fullness of my humanity lies.

In my latest pod episode I share a story from a time in my journey where I was not in a place to be out of my comfort zone. If you’ve ever thought to yourself “why isn’t my business working”, you’ll enjoy this episode!

We took a short, guided hike to unpopulated waterfalls that gathered water into small, neck-deep pools.

I’ve always dreamed of swimming under a waterfall.

In my dreams these waterfalls and pools were the temperature of bath water.

Not these ones!

I’ve never cold-plunged.

I’m already always cold. Yes, even in a tropical place!

I bought the biggest winter coat I could find when we moved from Vancouver to Saskatoon, and I started wearing it in Vancouver before we left.

I got comments, but I was finally warm. I remember thinking, “I can’t wait until we move to Saskatoon where no one will judge me and my big coat.” (LOL – they still did)

Now, I’m known for wearing this coat into June (sometimes).

Stepping into the cold waterfall I thought, “it’s too cold, I’m getting out”. It was also very rocky, not the soft, white sand I was expecting.

I waded in up to my shins and quickly got out.

“It’s too cold! I don’t want my shorts to be wet all day!”

My husband teased me a little, but he wasn’t getting in either. Nor was my 7-year-old, who runs the opposite of me - always hot, always in shorts (even in -20 winters) (yes, he wears ski pants over the shorts when he’s outside, don’t report me).

The hiking group was getting ready to move on and there wasn’t time to jump back in or change my mind.

The moment had passed.

I put my shoes back on.

Something inside me was lost.

My words repeated in my head like a broken record, “It’s too cold, rocky, I don’t want wet shorts all day…”

I remembered my dream of swimming in a waterfall.

I thought about how unlikely it would be that I’d ever be here again.

How fleeting this moment was.

I got sad.

Disappointed.

We kept hiking.

I thought about all the fears and discomfort I’ve experienced in my business over the years.

All the decisions I made from fear, choosing to comfort myself by saying I was listening to my intuition.

Fear is an incredibly overwhelming feeling to feel.

It’s so uncomfortable, it creates an impulse to make decisions that bring quick relief.

From personal experience, I can say that relief is also a symptom of staying small.

When it’s overwhelming, we can’t name it, pull it apart or understand it, which is a recipe for staying stuck.

Without that awareness, we have limited choices.

It feels powerless.

---

As we hiked, we came to one more waterfall. I understood this was my last chance.

My shoes were off before we even got close.

I didn’t think about it.

I knew what I had to do.

I walked in, dipped my shoulders under, and the cold absolutely took my breath away.

Taking back my power felt incredible.

Things start to shift when you reach under the overwhelm of fear.

You could call that accepting or acknowledging the fear, or maybe you would just call it BRAVE.

The layers underneath are likely unique to your story, perspectives, and experiences.

I do have a hunch, though, that many of us share a similar root cause: low self-worth and minimal self-acceptance. Always giving our power away to external things in exchange for some sort of attachment; fitting in, disguised as belonging.

My business is taking me on a new journey, and I’ve been resisting it out of fear.

It’s not the 1:1 or group work I imagined it would be. The models I was taught.

The coaching industry has changed so much since I started, and I don’t find the old models sustainable in any way. Maybe it’s from being highly sensitive, empathic, or maybe it’s just because it simply wasn’t a sustainable model in the first place.  I’ve written more about this in previous posts – Re-imagining Work for the Highly Sensitive.

The new way my business wants to run is bringing up a lot of discomfort. A lot of what-ifs. A lot of “but it’s cold, rocky, and I don’t want wet shorts all day” kind of feelings.

This is what I was feeling before Kona.

That fear got transmuted in that waterfall that day.

I came home and it felt washed away.

In it’s wake I noticed all the opportunity, abundance, growth, potential in my new journey. I couldn’t see it before.

Then, in came the gratitude.

Then, the love.

It surprised me, to be honest.

I’ll have to write one day about my complicated experience with gratitude.

But I felt so much love for this new opportunity.

A few days after coming home I caught up with a mentor. She had two timely teachings for me around fear.

There are two ways to transmute fear, she told me.

One is slower, but effective, and it’s through a fire ceremony. We’ve done this many times together in studying the Munay-Ki.

The second is the fastest way to transmute fear.

The second way is through love.

~

The waterfall washed away my fear; however, because I’d been doing some deep healing work around fear for years, the water was able to transmute it.

Through my personal experience, I can share a possible framework of bridging the gap between fear and love; consider if it resonates for you.

First: acknowledging the feeling / sensations of fear can be incredibly overwhelming.

Second: practicing naming the sensations (Vibration? Temperature? Color? Size? Where in the body?). Maybe moving the body (stretch, dance).

Third: what is the fear actually afraid of? It helps if you can vocalize it.

-A fear of being misunderstood? 

-Not accepted? 

-Making the "wrong" choice? 

-Regrets?

-Doing something wrong, getting called out?

-Wasting time?

-Not accepting your self?

-What others will think?

-Alienating yourself?

-Fear of being seen trying or struggling or not knowing?

Sometimes fear is connected to shame, which is connected to self-worth.

Keeping a secret that you could be exposed at any moment as not good enough has the ability to create an abundance of overwhelming fear.

Naming fears is a way back to our inherent self-worth, our inner power, our authenticity. It’s a bridge.

Fear takes us out of our power.

Love brings us back into our power.

Naming fear has the potential to neutralize and disarm it, so you can cross the bridge to Love.

Or, maybe your bridge is your version of a cold waterfall.

What do you think?

What I’ve come to know is this:

With awareness comes choice, and with choice comes change; but it starts with awareness. Even if that awareness is, “holy F$%^&* this is an intense feeling” and all you can do is breathe.

What is your fear voice saying?

What’s your metaphorical bridge to Love?

You know how kids are so spongey, they believe what you tell them? How they think in black and white? They’re fully in their subconscious mind 24/7 until about 12-ish.

We have a 7-year-old and I see this in action all the time. He asks questions looking for absolute answers and doesn’t / can’t yet understand nuance or grey or “it depends.”

For example, he wants to know, “how much does a car cost?” Well, it depends. He doesn’t like the “it depends” because he can’t instantly categorize it.

Once I put a number in my phone with the wrong name. When the number called, and it wasn’t the name of the person I programmed, I got so confused! My mind only trusted what it could see, and the name on my screen didn’t match the voice. It was bad programming, but my mind struggled to accept it.

It’s useful to remind our adult brains the truth can change.

Just like my phone is only as good as the information I program in, my actions are only as good as the information I program in my mind.

The idea that truths can change is a learned adult experience that didn’t make sense as a child. As a kid, we’re forming our beliefs about the world, how it works, and we learned to categorize things in black and white. It’s true or false.

But our minds are only as good as what we program them with.

Just like our phones need updating, we need to update our adult brains from thinking all-or-nothing, black-or-white, true or false beliefs we created as kids.

Sometimes something that was true is now false, and vice versa. Ever fallen out of love with someone? Or, hated a job you once loved? Remember believing in Santa? Have a different memory than a sibling about the same event?

Believing in only true or false is not supportive for our growth because it doesn’t allow for discernment, nuance, or the gray area needed to update old beliefs. Sometimes a car costs $1M, sometimes $500. Some days we love our job. Some days we hate it. It’s all true.

The truth is slippery.

I’ve noticed something with clients about “truths” when we do memory regression. They’re stuck on one truth about a past event. They formed a belief about that circumstance in that moment, and that belief got ingrained. The brain decided it was true and is operating from that truth.

Through confirmation bias, the world reflects back all the evidence of this truth, while filtering out anything that doesn’t support it.

I never noticed pregnant women before I got pregnant; suddenly, they were everywhere. I never noticed playgrounds before having a baby; suddenly, they were everywhere. My beliefs shifted and opened new, relevant possibilities to match my new perspective.

We need to be proactive with updating our programming because what was once adaptive can become maladaptive. The belief that saved you then, can keep you from what you want now.

Feeling unaccepted and adopting people pleasing tendencies may have allowed you to fit in then; but it won’t allow you to shine in an authentic business now. Sometimes those old beliefs sabotage our current goals.

With hypnotherapy as a tool, we can review beliefs created from events with the gift of experience; we can zoom out and play with other possible truths. We can look at the whole forest, not just one tree.

We can make new suggestions to the subconscious that incorporate truths you couldn’t see before.

One client, years ago, told me of a memory from childhood that contributed to her feelings of abandonment: her mother left her in the car alone at the grocery store. When we zoomed out and looked at the whole forest, she realized her mother was just returning the grocery cart. She came back.

Through misunderstandings we can create wounds and triggers. They may be part of our lessons, but we can remember we have a voice and a choice. We’re not locked into one reaction, belief, or truth.

It’s useful to remind our adult brains the truth can change.

Because then, we can change.

With awareness, comes choice.

With choice, comes change.