I’m a big fan of a personal development book - in fact writing my own is on my bucket list, but at some point you have to put the books down and apply the knowledge. From my experience, this can be really hard! Books tell you a whole lot of theory which is mega fluffy and it can be really tricky to know where to actually start when it comes to the ‘doing’ of personal development. As a result we find ourselves turning to more books to do more learning because we don’t feel ‘ready’ yet, or because no one has given us the 10 step system to work through our brain in a way that allows us to get rid of the ‘messy thoughts’ we feel we have to get rid of. With absolutely no intention of offending anyone with this metaphor, it’s easy to see how you can become addicted to learning and end up being like the uni student who never leaves uni and enters the ‘real world' to apply their knowledge.

A really simple way of combatting this is the concept of ‘doing stuff that helps you understand yourself’. Rather than thinking you have to understand yourself before you do the ‘things’, you can see the ‘things’ as opportunities to learn about yourself. When I reference ‘things’ I’m talking about any activity that allows you to experience and then reflect on that experience - it might be challenging yourself physically through something like running (I swear I always find a way to bring up running when writing), changing a habit you’ve done forever, trying something that seems super outside your comfort zone, or simply altering the way you do something you already do. I like to think of them as experiments.

They don’t have to be giant, they just have to be new enough to take you outside your comfort zone so you can learn something about yourself in the process. Challenge yourself to get out of the well worn groove of activities we do in our daily life by running a practical personal development experiment, follow it up with a little personal audit to find some learnings, and take those into the next experiment. Stack up those learnings and it’s like practical life lesson compounding interest. Yes I fully realise I sound like ‘rich Dad poor Dad’ dishing out personal development advice, but maybe I am going to fully lean into my parent identity since I’ve just become a Mum…I’m here for it.

If we think of life in this way, it can become just a collection of experiments, experiences, and learnings that help us keep deepening our understanding of ourselves.

And yes, I fully realise it might be ironic that one of my practical experiments is actually writing more theory on personal development…surely theres some universal learning here that I’m yet to understand, but for now I’ll continue till I learn it.

However as we age and move through life, our time spent creating each day drops dramatically, to the point that as adults it’s very common to not ‘create’ anything at all in our day-to-day lives. It’s actually quite alarming when you think about it - I’m pretty sure that the younger versions of ourselves would be mortified to hear that as adults we’re no longer creating but rather we’re just going through our lives taking the same actions everyday that once led to the results we wanted. What happened to all that active exploring, creating and playing that we used to do?

As we progress through life, our days get filled with tasks and activities, and we lose that ‘free time’ we once had when we were younger, which evidently we used to use for creativity. When we’re busy, we get very good at identifying what we need to ‘do’ in life to meet our goals, and then we do those things to tick the boxes, but along the way we stop the experimental side of creation since there’s no clear or defined outcome to be gained immediately. In simple terms, if we’re short on time and an action doesn’t gain us some kind of immediate return, we’re likely to kick it off our ‘to-do’ list quite quickly.

The trick here is that the extrinsic value of creativity is real, it’s just often just a little delayed. Creation is an exploratory process that doesn’t have a clearly defined start or end, so we to ‘muddle’ through for a bit until we find answers; and as humans we really don’t like ‘muddling’ because it’s a bit messy. We struggle to stick with creation until we’ve done enough to realise the value in it - to hone the skills we need to make our creations have external value to us and others.

In avoiding the ‘mess’ of creation, we also deny ourselves the intrinsic value of creation. Remember the feeling of getting totally lost in a project to the point where you’re not thinking at all, you’re no longer aware of time passing, and you’re just ‘doing’ the act? That state of flow is the most powerful form of presence because in the process of creation you’ve turned your thinking brain off which allows you to be, act and create without our brains narration and judgement. I like to think of it as meditation, but on steroids because we’re not only quieting our mind, but we’re also taking action that’s then not affected by our minds negativity.

There’s so much value to be gained from leaning into creativity, and for me it’s about making it a daily practice rather than something we do when everything else is done (because we all know that day never actually arrives).

Each morning before I start work I sit down with my diary to plan my priorities for the day. In an effort to bring more of a creative practice back into my life, over the past few months I’ve got into the habit of writing two questions at the top of my page, which I answer before getting into work mode, they are:

1. How do I want to feel today?

2. What will I create today?

I find this practice of checking in each morning and actively identifying what I will create for the day is a real game changer as it shifts my focus from the urgent, but less important tasks, to the bigger picture things that I actually value, and that will create impact in my life long-term. Actively identifying what I’d like to create for the day is a great way to shift into that headspace, and also create some accountability which allows me to make time for that creation, essentially valuing it as equal to all the other things on my priority list.

Now don’t get me wrong, my daily creations aren’t revolutionary - it’s not like I’m going out each day creating giant artworks or big projects, they’re often small acts of creation but when done daily they all add up. Things like:

Making a logo for my new run club. Writing little articles like this one. Editing some images I took for fun but never got around to doing anything with. Planting those plants I bought ages ago and have left to get root-bound in their pots on the deck (oops). Messaging that person to chat about that business idea I had.

For me it’s largely about reframing the idea that I am allowed to, and shouldn’t feel guilty for, carving out time for creation each day. While I’m starting with these very small, often exploratory things that aren’t going to change my world today, I’m building confidence in playing in that messy space of creation just for the practice of it. After all I think we were all put on this earth to contribute our own unique gifts, personalities, and perspectives to the world, and often we need to embrace creation to allow ourselves to discover and realise those gifts.

Happy creating!

Of late I’ve been challenging myself to shift that perspective and have found a question that’s super effective in helping me do that:

What if we realised that we’re already on the journey, and it’s all actually all working out?

For me this does two things:

1. It allows me to zoom out on the timeline of my life, and to see that todays little ‘dot plot’ on our dot graph is an important and essential step in the path of my life. This realisation that today is contributing to the overall trajectory and path of life, as opposed to being a randomly scattered dot in the middle of nowhere, connects me to the fact that my actions today have the power to actually influence my own path. From here I can take back a sense that I have influence and control in my life, and to look at what actions I’d like to take today that will add up to positive life returns in the future.

2. It also allows me to shift my mindset into a state of trust, which is really powerful. When I have the belief that it is actually all ‘working out’ how it’s meant to be, how I show up in the world and the actions I take are vastly different as opposed to when I’m acting from a space scarcity, rigidity and restriction as though I’m on the wrong track. This feeling of trust allows me to be in the moment rather than trying to rush or skip days or life phases.

It’s such a simple question but one that seems to work for me on both a mindset and a practical, action based level. The combination of connecting the big picture thinking and headspace, with the belief that my daily actions have influence, is a really powerful one for me.

When operating from a place where I respect the current moment in the journey of my life, I’m much more inclined to enjoy the moment, but also to action the seemingly small and insignificant things that all end up adding up.

I also find I’m much more purposeful in actively taking lessons from each day because it feels as though each day is in fact new, rather than feeling like a repeat of yesterday. This process of creation and reflection compiles great ‘life data’ that I can then use to inform tomorrow, next weeks, and next years decision making.

Essentially, realising that I’m already on the journey, out here doing the things that make my life what I want it to be, puts me back in the ‘main character’ feeling of my life. I feel like I can start experiencing life in first person again, rather than in third person.

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For years I’ve been trying to address the fears logically and methodically - trying to untangle them to find the root cause and 'heal’ whatever needs to be healed in order for the fear to go away. While this has given me a lot of insight into my internal narrative and what’s caused it to be that way, this method has only worked for short periods of time and with specific activities. See, I’ve worked out that fears are kinda like weeds in the garden; while you’ve been focussing on getting rid of one species, the season has changed making perfect conditions for another variety to pop up. You can weed and weed all you like, but you’ll never get any harvest of veggies if you’re just weeding and never planting.

I’ve realised, that in order to live a life driven by wants not fears, I just need to listen to the wants more than I listen to the fears. And when I write it like that, it seems pretty simple.

I’ve been waiting for the fears to go away, but I realise they’re never going to. At some point, the want to do whatever you want to do, needs to become louder than the fear of doing it. For now I think that the wants just need to start yelling a little bit louder than the fears, just enough so that I can hear and act on them regardless of the fact that the fear is still there. Overtime, the process of giving more attention to the wants will make the noise of the fears quieten down. To go back to my veggie analogy; instead of always tending to the weeds themselves, we need to plant the veggies so densely that they crowd out the weeds.

For me, this looks like tuning into my own energy daily, and creating what I want to make, from that energy. Not what other people want me to make, or what I think other people will like, or what will earn me the most money - but just creating what I feel like I was put on the earth to create.

It’s committing to the practice of writing daily, and sharing that writing. The fears get loud and chaotic on the second half of that sentence, but that’s okay. I can also feel that the want to live my authentic life and help others do the same feels like she’s also there politely waiting for attention - we’ve just got to teach her to get a little less polite and a little more demanding of attention.

We get better at what we practice daily - so let’s practice acting on our wants and callings, not our fears. No matter how small the ‘thing’ might feel, each purposeful action is a rep, and we’re building a muscle here so the goal is to consistently show up.

A thought on business

A gentle reminder that the economic state should not impact your feelings of self-worth.

I’m guilty of falling into the trap of letting the success of my business reflect on my feelings of self worth as a human in the world. It’s an easy mistake to make when you’re one of two people in your business, you’re in charge of bringing work in, you make money doing a creative pursuit, and the economy is slowing a little. Yesterday, it took a couple of email responses about ‘budget cuts’ meaning projects couldn’t go ahead, and I was very quickly not only seriously doubting my talents as a photographer, but also feeling like a failure at life. A bit of journalling at the end of the day helped bring my runaway emotions back on track, and unearthed a little mantra that helped me reframe my perspective.

“I will not let the state of the economy dictate my self worth”.

There are certain things you can control in your business, and things that are outside your control. I can control my work ethic, my creativity, my passion for my work, and how I communicate for example. Clients budget cuts and the resulting "No's" you receive from work enquiries you were excited about, are NOT a result of your doing and therefore should not reflect on your feeling of worthiness. Further than that, your P&L statement also does not dictate your value in the world, it just tells a snapshot of the current business trends and phase, and the work you were able to book and complete recently. Your work has not changed, you still create huge value for people, and you're still a cool ass human being - company budgets don’t get to decide that for you.

A thought on life

Maybe everything is happening for a reason, and the slowing of the economy is working in your favour. I’ve been keeping myself hella busy with work for quite some time now which has been a very productive and socially accepted way to procrastinate diving further into other pursuits I’d like to explore. Like writing for example.

Perhaps instead of spending my days stressing about where our next jobs will come from because I’m uncomfortable about the feeling of free time, I could lean into the spaciousness it creates and use my time to create new things from a place of alignment not desperation.

Instead of succumbing to the feelings of restriction, I realise I could flip the script and actually feel expansive and abundant during this time. While I feel like I’m on a great path with work and life, there’s always room for more alignment and sometimes we need a gentle shake up of our norm to remind us of that.

It’s a phase where nothing is really wrong, but also nothing feels all that right either. For me, it often feels like a ‘floating’ phase, where I don’t feel like I’m making much progress, nothing is really gaining momentum, and I generally go through my days feeling mildly lost. The things that used to make me feel excited or happy just don’t have quite the same effect anymore, but I’m also not quite sure what will induce those feelings.

From past experience, I’ve realised that the transition between old and new identities doesn’t happen overnight and sometimes we can just get a little stuck in an awkward little void of confusion while we work out who we’re becoming. Essentially, the discomfort we feel during this time is a symptom of growth, so I like to think of them as growing pains.

Being humans whose brains like security and knowledge that’s easy to understand, this ‘void of confusion’ can be super confronting as it challenges our sense of ‘being’, given how we identify to different activities or things has shifte

d. In our want to label ‘what’s wrong’ with us and/or get the stagnant feelings to go away, it can be easy to try rush through this phase to ‘get to the other side’. Rushing might look like trying to keep yourself busy, set new goals, find new hobbies, pivot something on the business side of things - all logical and reasonable pursuits, but it’s important to consider that the mindset you’re in while doing these things will affect the action. When we make life changes out of a feeling of lack or fear, the changes we make will be aligned with our short-term goals, rather than our long-term ones. Particularly when we’re having an identity upgrade, making decisions for the short term isn’t very helpful as it actually keeps us trapped in the awkward transition phase even longer because our actions will half align with ‘old us’ and half align with ‘new us’.

Instead, I challenge myself to have patience, slow down, and not rush the process of growth. Realising that this middle phase is actually an integral part of our long term growth, allows us to see it as an important step in the process, and to lean into it. This mindset allows me to get inquisitive about how I’m feeling, and to ask questions around what phase I’m moving into - viewing the process as a bit of a discovery. This shifts me into a place of abundance where I look forward to the growth on the other side of this phase, but don’t rush the process. I can still take action and make decisions to progress my life, but they’re done with a bigger picture view, and a sense of flow rather than a sense of force.

It’s always good to remember that Spring is a time of serious growth for all living things, so it’s pretty normal to be experiencing some of the symptoms of the ‘growing pains’ and identity up-levels at this time of year. Just remember that it’s all part of the process, and just like plants that all grow and bloom at different times, we are all moving at our own pace that’s right for us. You’ve got this!

Without limitations, we have so many options that it’s easy to find ourselves floating in a bit of a void wondering which one is the best option, rather than just picking one. Deadlines create value in that they help us to focus on what’s important, and then motivate us to take action.

As a society, ageing scares us because we have this sensation of time ‘running out’. When we view time through this scarcity mindset, we see the typical signs of wrinkles or grey hairs as negatives because they remind us that time is finite.

I think this feeling is amplified if we don’t feel we’re on track with our lives. We all have a sense of the things we want to achieve, or the impact we want to make in our lifetime. If we’re not chipping away at that on a daily basis then it makes total sense that we feel somewhat tense about the time ‘running out’ so to speak.

Yet if we spend our days well, then each day that rolls around isn’t a day that we’ve lost, it’s a day that we’ve gained. In this sense, it feels like the days add up, rather than withering away.

The problem is not the amount of time we have, it’s how we choose to use our time. See our life is the collective product of our days, so naturally if our days don’t contain the activities we want to do in our life, then we've got the recipe a bit wrong. Just like baking, if no chocolate or cocoa goes into the bowl, then you’re not going to get a chocolate cake when it comes out of the oven. It seems really simple when you look at it like that, but it’s so easy for our alignment to get thrown off because our priorities tend to focus more on the things that bring us safety and comfort, than the things that bring us fulfilment, purpose and legacy. This makes sense when we look at Maslows Hierarchy of needs:

Safety and comfort are easy to obsess about because they feel urgent, and sprinkle in a bit of ‘social belonging’ and suddenly having a big house, fancy car, and job title with the word ‘manager’ in it, feel like the most important things in life. It’s easy how these needs can be a bottomless pit that we struggle to meet because our perception of what it means to meet these needs gets so easily warped. We can get so busy trying to meet these ever changing needs that we never really get to move on to prioritising the things we feel we were put on this earth to actually do.

Maybe we should reframe that anxiety around ageing, instead letting it serve as a reminder to revisit our personal hierarchy of needs, and to re-align our days with what we feel we were on the earth to do, achieve, learn and experience.

After all, if we’re spending each day in alignment with ourselves and the energy we want to experience and put into this world, we will count each day as a gain rather than a loss.

When you’re running at your true zone 2 pace, your heart rate is low enough to be able to sustain the effort for super long periods of time; we’re talking days, and hundreds of km’s.

It’s actually hard to get right - when you start out in Zone 2, it feels painfully slow because you’re body, legs, and lungs feel so fresh. It takes more mental strength to commit to the zone 2 pace and stop yourself from trying to run faster, than it does to run in Zone 2!

I genuinely think that running in zone 2 is the biggest test of whether someone’s ego is in check as it requires you to override the loud thoughts that pop up while running slowly.

Maintaining your pace despite these thoughts is the goal, and trust me you’ll be thankful for your mind mastery when you get 40km into your run and are chugging along in your Zone 2 pace which now feels quite fast because your muscles are tired and fatigued.

Taking this concept from running and applying it to life - what if we thought about Zone 2 being a pace for doing life in. A life-progression pace that’s slow enough to be sustainable forever. It’s mildly un-sexy I realise given as humans we find big and bold action exciting, but so often I think we see people taking big actions in a flurry of excitement, only to return to walking, or even halting completely a few months down the track.

If we focussed on a consistent level of life progression in line with Zone 2 pace thinking, we’d make life decisions differently because our mindset would be around “How long can I sustain this level of action for?”, and in asking this question we’d naturally rule out a whole lot of business ideas and life pursuits that don’t fit well with our long term goals.

Zone 2 life thinking aligns our pace with our long-term goals, rather than our short-term goals. We can sprint short-term with no worries, but at some point you’re going to need to stop and have a rest if you’re sprinting all the time. If the level of effort you’re applying to your growth is requiring you to constantly stop, you’re going to make less progress than if you were to consistently maintain a lower level of effort, for a longer amount of time. Life is an ultra-marathon, it’s not a sprint.

I’m not saying not to work hard, after all, no one ever called an ultra-marathon easy. Rather it’s about focussing on the level of effort you can sustain for a seriously long amount of time, and then committing to putting that level of effort in daily. Finding the pace will allow you to go for longer than you thought you could, achieving things you never would have thought were possible.

Listening to and following my intuition. My intuition is my little internal feelings compass, and it’s really great at knowing what I want. I tend to discount her far too often when I engage my reasoning brain and convince myself that my intuition is being silly/wrong/not important. When I listen to my intuition and align my actions, life flows a lot smoother, and often I’m met with little aligned moments and suprises throughout the day. It’s like one intuitively-led action leads to another, and before we know it they quickly compile in a kind of mysterious way.

Doing things without a reason to. There’s such joy in doing things simply because you want to, instead of finding a logical reason why it’s important. I’m guilty of culling all the ‘just because’ things in my life and swapping them for productive things that will give progress in life, leaving no room for the ‘just because’ activities. I can tell you that being productive 100% of the time doesn’t get you closer to the end of your to-do list because the list is growing as fast as you’re ticking things off, and your obsessive level of productivity does not equal increased happiness. Always focussing on growth moves us into a mindset of always looking at the next thing, and never being in the moment. Yes, all the boxes may be ticked on your list but if they’re all tasks in the same category, you’re missing ticking boxes in other categories of life. I find I’m a more satisfied person if I goal-set to tick boxes in a variety of categories each day, rather than ticking everything off in just my work/progress category for example.

Allowing the discomfort to exist but not control my actions. The discomfort is my resistance to allowing myself to have what I want. The goal of discomfort is to get you to return to the engrained behaviour patterns you’ve created, whatever they may be. For example, my practice of doing what I want took me on a little mosey around town this morning, but I found myself feeling guilty for wasting time, being away from my dog, and just generally looking at things I might want to buy or eat. I practised noticing and releasing the discomfort, allowing myself to keep tuned into my own voice of wants, rather than the voice of ‘shoulds’. Twice, I walked past the cafe I wanted to go to, thinking I’d just jump in my car and go home. Once I caught myself on track to follow the guilt-based voice, I turned myself back towards the cafe, again following the ‘want’ voice. Surrounded by chatty people, accompanied by a tasty cappuccino in a cute mug, my writing is flowing and I can feel my proverbial ‘cup’ being filled.

This concept of recognising our wants seemed almost too simple to write about and honestly, it feels silly admitting how much guilt I feel for doing the things that I want, but it’s important to recognise how much of a subconscious hold they have on me. If I allow guilt to rule my actions then I’m limiting my capacity for happiness. It’s important to take responsibility for this or we can end up blaming our unhappiness on other people or things, rather than realising our habits and actions are creating it.

We have a responsibility to ourselves to meet our needs, or instead maybe it’d be more applicable to call it, meeting our wants. I’m making it a practice, and honestly, it’s pretty fun homework with instant happiness gains, once you get on a roll!

They feel like they’re at each end of the spectrum; I visualise that if they were people they’d be very different humans with different beliefs in life. I’ve always felt tension between the two concepts as though they’re conflicting.

Given they feel very different, I’ve been operating in one energy or the other depending on what kind of life phase I’m in. It’s felt as though when I’m in my ‘doing/taking action’ energy, I don’t have any of the ‘letting it flow’ energy, and vice versa. However recently I’ve realised that these ideas, while seemingly conflicting, are a duality that can, and must, co-exist.

To reference an iconic Old El Paso ad that has permanent real estate in my head, “Por qué no los dos?”, which is translated to “why not have both?”. It’s mandatory viewing:

Sorry, not sorry for the niche taco reference, but it’s applicable in so many situations!

Back to the energy conundrum, I’m realising that I work best when flowing between both concepts in different moments and tasks during the day, every day.

I need the feeling energy to tune into myself, and understand what I want, and then I apply the action energy to direct my focus on that thing. Once the action energy is applied and I’ve put something out to the world, I switch back to the flow energy and adopt a more allowing state. This means I can release the need to control the outcome of the doing, and trust that the flow is taking me where I’m meant to go.

It’s essentially a process of applying an element of control, and then releasing the need to control. See, with too much controlling energy I end up trying to wrestle or man-handle the outcome of my actions which I find restricts the flow, and essentially prevents me from being open to outcomes that aren’t exactly what I can see. If we want to be open to outcomes being even better than we can imagine, we need to let go of the need to control. After all, a sense of wanting to control generally comes from fear or lack, and I don’t want to be operating life from that space!

As humans we like concepts that are simple and easy to understand (which is pretty ironic because life just isn’t built that way), so we tend to want to be one thing, or the other. Letting go of the rigidity of our beliefs and actions, and rather learning to hold two concepts evenly, recognising we can switch between both seamlessly, is a skill that’s helpful in so many respects of life.

Happy action-taking and allowing!

Maybe our job is just to stay on the ride, to make it an adventure, and to allow the flow to happen. To resist the resistance. To go the places we haven’t been before.

Maybe we’re all more similar than we think, we’re just at different levels in the big game that is life. Maybe you just need to tune out of the external, and into your own life a little bit more. Less looking around at others and a little more listening to yourself. They don’t know the answers you’re looking for, you do.

Maybe, you’re further than you think with this life thing. If you just turned around and looked at how far you’ve come, you’d see you’re crafting your own little path and leaving a trail. Just keep going, even if you’re not sure where it’s taking you just yet, keep going.

I know one thing for sure - it is, and will always be, just a little bit messy. Life isn’t meant to be something neat and linear. There is no right timeframe, order, or way it should happen. We cannot follow a recipe because our lives have never happened before - no one has ever been you, and so your life is being created for the first time.

Let go. Release the need to control. Let it unfold.

Yours sincerely, you.

Here’s the worlds fastest breakdown of my feelings and thoughts:

I feel lower vibe in general, then I judge myself for being lower vibe, then I think I’m not doing ‘all the thing's’, so I start thinking I’m going to get left behind, and suddenly I catastrophize everything and think I’m always going to feel this way, so BAM I’m a failure at life.

Then I realise Winter has just started. Literally 3 days ago.

My Mum has always been great at pointing out that as humans are not immune to the seasons. Every time I come grumbling to her at this time of year she gently reminds me of the season we’re in and of what this season is for. See Autumn and Winter are slow months - the physical growth in trees, plants and nature slows down and in some cases even stops entirely.

All our modern-day technologies mean we think we have total control of our environment and are therefore immune to the seasons, yet we forget that we are literally also nature just like the trees. We think that even though the sun comes up and goes down hours later, we should be able to just turn our lights on and still feel energised and productive like we do in Summer. But we don’t. We feel more introverted, slightly lower vibe, and a little more stagnant. It’s not these feelings themselves that are the problem, after all they’re totally natural and in line with the seasons, but it’s our judgement of these feelings that’s the issue here.

As humans we’re programmed to think we have to be moving fast all the time. Years of societal pressure and subconscious programming of what ‘success’ should look like have made us feel that unless we’re growing at a rapid rate, we’re going backwards. Add in a sprinkling of overconsumption of social media platforms, and voila, a recipe for feeling like we’re not good enough, thoughts that we’re getting left behind, and a decision that we are basically just failing at life in general.

A little overdramatic but you get the idea.

Instead of resisting the seasons, I’m making it my mission this year to lean into Autumn and Winter, and embrace the energy of these seasons just like we naturally do in Spring and Summer.

Although it comes with a lot of ‘brain catching’ where I have to consciously pick up and change my internal narrative, I hope it will allow me to find more flow and peace in these seasons, rather than rushing through them or wishing they were over.

I’m reminding myself:

“Are you really not growing, or are you just growing slowly?”

“Regardless of how slow you’re moving, you’re still moving.”

“Ground in the feeling and accept it for what it is, remove the judgment.”

“Maybe now is the time for this work, so you have the foundations and energy for the work you’ll be doing in Spring and Summer.”

When I remind myself of these things, my whole perspective shifts. I realise I love the grey days and the stormy skies. I love the introverted nature of my work at this time of year. I love the stillness and different perspective of time that these seasons bring. When I remove my own judgment, I realise I really love the slowness of Winter as much as I love the energy of Summer.

It’s super freeing realising that it’s not actually the season that has me feeling all over the place, it’s my judgement of my own feelings which get’s me tangled. I realise that I can actually take back some emotional control simply by removing that judgement and allowing myself to ground in my feelings as they are without feeling I need to change them.

One last note - in a practical sense I find the media and social media consumption at this time of year much trickier to manage. When things are slow, and there’s less light in the day, I find myself much more inclined to scroll or spend more time on the couch in front of the tv. The result is more time to consume content from people in different seasons than what I’m in, which triggers my self-judgement at a subconscious level because I compare their online Summer highlights with my slow, unglamorous Winter reality. I’m going to set some goals around phone and screen uncoupling in order to ground in my own feeling and take back a bit more control over my time and emotional state.

Here’s to Winter!

This is normal human behaviour that stems from our past as tribes people where we sought security through living in groups. As a result, our metrics for success are often based around other people acceptance - you see, living in tribes if you were rejected or thrown out of the tribe you were in major danger so the main goal for survival was about fitting in and being accepted. Does it now make more sense why you really want everyone to like you?

Fast forward a few thousand, years, and our success metrics remain based on societal acceptance, even though our entire society and way of living has changed.

We still seek reassurance that we’re successful through the lens of acceptance and status. We like to measure success so actions and results that can be seen, heard or felt are prioritised. Things like:

• Social media likes and follows.

• Invitations to parties, weddings (cue maid of honour status) and events.

• Income or things that suggest a high-income level i.e, the car you drive, the house you live in, and whether you’re busy. 

• Compliments from friends, family or partners.

• Actions that prove we are ‘special’ or ‘different’ than other people.

It’s not bad to want these things, but if we live our lives using these as measurements of our success, we will soon find that we’re living our lives for the way we look to other people, rather than for ourselves. If we NEED these things to feel a sense of happiness, that becomes a pretty big problem too. The flow on of chasing these metrics will likely be a deep feeling of unfulfillment or unrest.

The great thing is that you can consciously decide what data you’d like to use to measure your success, it just takes some conscious re-programming. 

Alternative success measurements to be considered might be:

• Growth and personal challenge

• Peace

• Health

• Being/getting uncomfortable

• Laughter

• Daily rituals or routines

If we lived our lives using these measurements to gauge whether we were on the right path, our lives would look a whole lot different. From the job you work, the hobbies you pursue, and the friends you have would likely be very different. You might chase a more meaningful career rather than looking to scale the corporate ladder. You’d value growth over security so you’d look for ways to get uncomfortable rather than seeking compliments and needing reassurance from partners, co-workers.

A word on choosing ‘happiness’ as a measurement of success. Happiness is something we all experience but it’s a tricky thing to chase. The word happiness refers to a state where we’re high energy/vibe, relaxed, and content - all great things, however the state of happiness is not a sustainable state. Chasing and pursuing goals requires a level of discomfort, striving, and hard work - all things that bring progress and satisfaction but not necessarily happiness. To me, happiness is the product of living an aligned life, and being in the moment, and moments of happiness are signals that I’m on the right track, but I’d warn against setting ‘happiness’ as a success measurement in itself. 

It’s important to define your own measurements of success, rather than operating simply on the default settings society has subconsciously set. What changes do you need to make to align with your new personal success measurements?

I think there are two types of problems - reactive, and proactive.

Reactive problems are focused on getting the problem to go away, while proactive problems are centred around growth and progression.

Most phases in life it seems like our plate is completely full with reactive problems, so we feel like we don’t have time to work on our proactive problems. When we have time between reactive problems we feel like we need to rest to regain energy, yet I’ve got a theory that reactive problems drain us, while working on proactive problems actually gives us energy.

It feels like there will never be an end to reactive problems, which means we use all our energy looking to solve them, and then we never really feel like we’ve had enough rest and are ready to tackle new problems. When we’re reactive it feels like each day we deplete our energy more and more, and then on weekends we just manage to coast through maintaining energy but not really building it. No wonder we’re burned out, tired, and uninspired.

I think we need proactive problems to regain our energy. The boost in energy we get from proactive problems comes from reconnecting with our intuition, listening to ourselves, and acting on what we hear. Our proactive problems are aligned with the path we want to take in life, our own path, rather than with the path others want us to take, and so they re-fuel us in a number of ways.

It’s almost like we have to think about inverting our usual mode of operating which prioritises the ‘have to’ list, before the ‘want to’ list. What would happen if we started each day working on pro-active problem-solving rather than reactive problem-solving?

What if we:

• Focussed on our fitness when we weren’t unfit

• Actively pursued understanding our brain when we weren’t having a mental breakdown

• Engaged in learning about business when our business is actually going well

The trick here is that even though they’re proactive, they’re still problems, and like all problems they create work and require us to get outside our comfort zones. Since our brains have been somewhat conditioned to resent work, they may try to avoid them, so we need to apply some self-awareness of the particular pattern our brain employs to discourage us from doing pro-active problem-solving.

Start small and tackle little proactive problems daily, ideally first up. This is something I’m experiencing with, and I’m excited to see what flow on effects come from these small shifts.

*Crowd collectively groans*.

I know, I know, actually doing the work is a hell of a lot less sexy than making big decisions, but that’s really where the magic lies for a number of reasons.

Sporadic action will get you to a point, but daily practice is the magic that will blow the top off your expectations of your ability. Let me explain.

Growth is defined as “the process of increasing in size”.

Growing is defined as “becoming greater over a period of time; increasing”.

When we take what feels like big action - entering a marathon, quitting your job, announcing you’re starting a business - that can feel like growth. Essentially in doing these things you’re taking a little field-trip to the edge of your comfort zone. Without daily practice though, this can all too easily become a return trip because once the big action is done, you hop straight back on that bus and zip back to your home station.

Daily practice however, routinises the practice of going to your comfort zone and hanging out there for a bit every day, until the edge is comfortable so you stay on the bus until the next stop and in doing so, increase the size of the comfort zone - growing.

That’s a lot of theory - let’s give an example.

We are capable of a lot of things with just taking one-off big action - almost anyone could run a marathon without training for example. You take big action by entering and announcing you’re doing the marathon, oops you forget to train, and suddently it’s race day. You complete the marathon through sheer determination and in doing so tick off a big goal. You’d be crippled the next day, and it wouldn’t be fun in the moment, but you’d still get the validation that you completed it. Short term you experience growth, but post-marathon the growth and rewards/benefits from this growth stop. Will that person run much after that marathon? Probably not.

*Cue daily practice* - Consider someone who enters the same marathon but also commits to daily practice. While essentially on race day they both achieve the same goal, the one who’s practised unlocks a whole load of additional success and benefits from the daily practice. Increased physical and mental health, increased self-esteem, and possibly they found a community of like-minded people in the lead up to their event. In adding daily, consistent action towards that big goal, this person shifts their outcome from 'running a marathon’, to becoming ‘a marathon runner’. The difference here is simply in the daily behaviours between these two people. One values daily practice that’s in line with their goal, while the other only values the outcome of the goal. One person has engrained the process of being a marathon runner into their identity and aligns their days with this identity. while the other is motivated by external validation.

I’ve used running as an example here as it’s something that’s relevant to me since committing to daily practice around a year ago now. Yet regardless of the goal or activity, the take-away remains the same:

The recipe for growth calls for a lot more daily practice than it does big action.

Often when we want to make change in our lives we think it has to be big, when in reality the change is a result of the things we repeat regularly.

What small action could you include in your daily routine that would lead to big results down the track, and would allow you to capitalise on the benefits of the occasional big actions.

Writing is mine, and this was todays’ practice! Bring on tomorrow.