I’m standing on a bridge in the old part of Canterbury, about 20 mins into a walking tour of the city. (Yep, I’m a big geek!) 

The tour guide has stopped us here to look at a replica of the medieval ducking stool that that was used in the city for centuries. 

Ducking was a form of punishment - by means of social humiliation, used mostly against women between 13th and 17th century. 

A woman would be strapped in her underwear to this chair, and repeatedly dunked in to the filthy polluted water in front of jeering, abusive crowds. 

I’m told it wasn’t usually used to test for witchcraft, that was a separate process.

No, ducking was used to punish a woman for ‘talking too much’ or being a ‘common scold’ - which usually meant having been critical of those in power, whether that be her husband or other men. 

In truth, it was a way to silence all women.

Looking at the stool, I begin to feel my own throat tighten. 

Talking is a form of collective power building. (Hello ‘me too’ movement) 

Therefore, the ducking stool was intended to frighten women into silence. 

If you silence one woman in that very public way, you silence all women.

I feel queasy, an ancient contraction ripples through my body, accompanied by a hot rage, 

but the guide is laughing and joking, “and here is where unruly women would be punished … ha ha ha”

WTF? This is entertainment? Still? 

The laughter stings my ears, as all the amazing women I work with flash into my mind. 

Brilliant, talented, wise women. 

Most of whom experience terrible fear when it comes to being more visible. 

Whether it’s sharing about their business on social media, speaking up in a work meeting, offering their opinions or even just singing for fun of it. 

They all experience a full bodied clamping down in response to being more seen. 

And I know it well myself… 

The tightness in the throat, the knot of fear, the flood of adrenaline, the painful self-consciousness. 

The shutdown. 

Often accompanied by huge frustration which gets turned inwards as self-hatred: 

“What the hell is wrong with me?”

In moments like this, it’s vital we remember our shared history as women and the collective wound we carry around using our voices. 

The woman being ducked and the women watching from the river bank feeling furious, frightened and powerless. 

These women are our ancestors. 

The fear we feel in our bodies today as we go to raise our voice and visibility, didn’t start in us. 

It is an inheritance from generations past, and an attempt to keep us safe from harm. 

If we can remember this, we can step free of feeling like it's a personal failing, stop self-blaming and open into new, more creative possibilities. 

~

Cut to a few days later in the week. 

I’m stood outside the mid-terrace house where my mum was born and raised. 

There is a heart shaped wreath on the door. “The street hasn’t changed at all” she’s telling me with amazement. 

My mum grew up living next door to her grandparents: my great-Nanny and Pop. 

Next door to them was her great-uncle. 

And two doors down was Nanny’s mum and dad, so that would be my great-great-grandparents. 

This is my first time here as an adult. 

Waves of pleasurable sensations run through me, as I standing here, in the place where at least four generations of my maternal line have lived their lives. 

It’s as though I can feel them all around me, brushing past me as they go about their ordinary daily lives. 

I see them running across the road to the corner shop, playing in the street, heading off to work, calling in at one another’s homes. 

Ordinary, everyday lives. 

And something deep inside me remembers, relaxes, rests back, opens up. 

I feel weightier upon the earth somehow, more able to claim my place. 

It is the embodied opposite of what I felt on that bridge: an inheritance of love, resilience and laughter. 

Mum runs her fingers around a hole in the garden wall. “Pop knocked this hole out over 60 odd years ago” she smiles. 

Why? 

To thread a pole, that would balance a scaffolding board, and in doing so, create a see-saw for my mum, his other grandchildren and their friends. 

“Sometimes it’s the hole isn’t it?” I think. 

The part that’s no longer there. 

The place of absence.

Where so much love is able to dwell. 

And now I am travelling home, and pondering on these two experiences of ancestry, lineage and inheritance. 

There are lineages of fear & oppression and lineages of love & liberation. 

We all inherit both. 

We all contain both.

Our bodies are laced through with both. 

~

But, our current culture, has so impoverished us of our sense of time. 

Its instant gratification has eroded our ability to orientate inside of our histories. 

Today, we find ourselves reduced down to isolated individuals, disembodied from this vast web of conditions that shape our daily experience of life,

And therefore unable to navigate them well.  

~

I see this play out, especially in the coaching and entrepreneurial space, as often the complete ignorance of social, cultural and historical context.

Shared, collective issues being approached through an individual lens, which does more damage than good. 

Examples like: “you have a limited mindset, overcome your self-sabotaging, stop getting in your own way” and “just do it” can be a recipe for frying your nervous system and immobilising possibility. 

Even innocuous stuff such as “you need to build your confidence”, which may in one sense be true, but without a broader understanding of why someone’s confidence has historically been suppressed, it is simply ‘double-billing women for their own oppression’ (h/t Kelly Diels). 

And let’s be clear, there is a whole multibillion dollar industry built on doing exactly this.

Call it ‘empowerment’ all you like, but if it comes without cultural-contextual critique, it’s far from it. 

In fact, in my experience, this individualised approach can often exacerbate shame and stuckness in women, because:

It locates the problem in the wrong place. 

Inside of the woman, not the culture. 

And even the best medicine, when applied incorrectly, becomes a poison.

Therefore the correct diagnosis is vital. 

For me, that will always be “there is nothing wrong with you, there is something wrong with the culture”.

A woman is not the problem to be fixed. 

So, when I’m working with a woman who feels stuck in fear, shame or old unhelpful patterns, the first two things I’ll invite them to do are: 

1) Remember the historical, cultural context and locate themselves in the bigger picture. 

Understand that there is a lineage of oppression at work in their personal struggles today, which didn't start with them. 

This gets them out of shame and away from believing it's a personal failing, that they are broken and in need of fixing. 

When this clicks it is usually accompanied by a huge, unburdening relief and the freeing up of a great deal of positive energy. 

2) Map their lineages of love and lean into the support they offer. 

This could be literal family bloodlines and the healthy ancestors (hopefully we all have at least a few). 

And/or it could be spiritual, friendship, practice-based, place-based, culturally positive lineages of strength, support and love. 

This connects them to unseen sources of power. 

They’re no longer alone, they’re reconnected their inherited wealth, they are beloved. And it doesn’t end with them. 

On the basis of this foundation, relocated and well resourced: we are then well placed to go deeper into the embodied work that creates new possibilities. 

We can begin the exhilarating process of consciously shaping and transforming the lineages we’ve inherited, as they traverse through our bodies and into those of the future.  

And as we learn to unbind our bodies from the inheritance of fear and oppression, we become the stewards of a lineage of liberation. 

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Redefining Success for Ambitious Women: Beyond the Burnout Cycle

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embrace Your Primordial Purity: A Buddhist Approach to Self-Worth for Ambitious Women

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Last week I sat with a friend at my kitchen table in tears.

She'd been pushing herself relentlessly, squeezing every drop of herself into each day, for years.

Talented, capable and wildly creative, when her child fell ill over Christmas, she was shocked to discover she simply had nothing left to give.

So here she sat with me - empty, exhausted and frightened…

— In This Article —

• The Crisis of Perpetual Giving

• The Radical Principle: Design for Your Hardest Days

• Working With (Not Against) Fluctuating Energy

• Building Essential Energy Reserves

• What Nature Teaches Us About Rest

• Finding Abundance in Limited Capacity

  ~

This experience with my friend took me straight back to my days working in social services, when I supported people with chronic health conditions.

Back then, we taught a powerful approach that changed their lives - and later, transformed my own.

The principle was radical: design your life based on your hardest days, so the good days become a gift rather than a necessity.

Why do I have no energy left for what’s most important?

If you build your life demanding 100% of your energy every single day, you have nothing left when real challenges arise.

Yet that's exactly what most of us do, especially women.

From our earliest years, we're trained to give every last drop of ourselves to everyone and everything day in and day out.

But living constantly at maximum capacity isn't sustainable.

The daily depletion means we don’t build precious reserves inside ourselves.

Reserves to draw upon in true emergencies, and more importantly, for the spontaneous moments of delight and creativity that make life worth living!

Designing life around fluctuating energy levels

As someone with ADHD, my energy and capacity is very changeable.

On high capacity days, my focus and creativity surge - I can complete a month's work in hours, ideas flowing effortlessly.

But on low days, even basic tasks like getting dressed feel overwhelming and hard.

For years I battled against these natural rhythms.

I pushed myself relentlessly to maintain consistent high performance, using 100% effort, believing that was the only path to success.

The result? Complete burnout that forced me to stop everything.

In that painful pause, I realised I had to find a different way to live and work in the world.

Rather than fighting my changeable nature, I began working with it, supporting it.

I redesigned my entire life and business to run smoothly even when I only have 10% capacity. This means that on high energy days, rather than desperately catching up, I get to enjoy riding those waves of creativity and inspiration.

I built regular rest into my schedule. I stopped seeing my quieter periods as failure and started treating them as essential recovery. When my energy naturally ebbs, I lean into that too.

I learnt how to prioritise what truly matters and say no to the rest guilt-free.

The surprising result? Because my life and business can function well even on my lowest days, my high-capacity periods feel expansive and abundant.

I experience more creativity, more ease, and yes - more time itself.

Nature’s Wisdom

I learned this wisdom first through necessity, managing my ADHD.

But nature reinforces it every year.

In Winter, many of us are shown the true state of our reserves.

Right now in winter, the earth isn't frantically producing growth.

Trees stand bare, conserving energy. Soil lies fallow. Everything slows - gathering strength for spring's renewal.

This seasonal rhythm reflects exactly what I discovered in my own life - when I align with natural cycles rather than fighting them, everything flows more easily.

Ideas germinate slowly in the quiet.

Creative possibilities unfold at their own pace.

A richness emerges when I stop forcing, stop rushing, stop demanding peak performance every moment.

This approach isn't theoretical for me - I have to live it daily.

Building my life and business to function on my hardest days has created more space for spontaneity, pleasure and sustainable growth than constant pushing ever did.

Deep in this winter season lies an invitation to question our culture's obsession with perpetual productivity.

What if times of rest and renewal are just as vital as times of vibrant action?

What if we designed our lives to work beautifully at 50% capacity?

Imagine what might become possible when you suddenly find yourself with energy, time and capacity to spare.

What impact would that abundance have on your creativity, your relationships, your life?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Beyond Overwhelm: The Transformative Magic of Idling for High-Achieving Women

• Beyond Numbing: The Difference Between Checking Out and True Rest

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

The Overwhelm of Holiday Shopping

Yesterday I found myself frozen and spinning-out in the middle of a busy, overly hot shopping centre.

The bright lights, Mariah Carey’s whistling tone and the endless Christmas displays suddenly felt a familiar kind of overwhelming.

I rarely stray into shopping like this … only at Christmas! (Sigh!)

I took a seat and watched the crowds rush past - mostly women, weighed down with bags, looking harried. Many were probably heading home to wrap presents late into the night, write cards, decorate the house, plan festive meals.

Suddenly it struck me - if Father Christmas was real, he'd be having a good laugh at our expense.

The Santa Myth: How Women's Work Goes Unrecognised

While women exhaust themselves creating all the festive magic: planning gatherings, wrapping presents, preparing festive food, maintaining family traditions, remembering everyone’s favourite things - an old white man swoops in at the last minute and takes all the credit.

Sound familiar?

It’s not just a Christmas thing. It’s a year-round pattern that plays out from breakfast tables to boardrooms.

Women do the invisible, thankless work of holding everything together, while men reap the recognition.

The Double Burden of Ambitious Women

And, for the ambitious women I work with - the CEOs, entrepreneurs, and creatives who are breaking barriers in their work—the story doesn’t end there.

Often, the more successful women become in their careers, the more they feel compelled to double down on being the perfect domestic goddess at home.

“Betty Crocker sh*t.” as one client calls it!

The more her career had taken off, the more guilt she had felt about her success.

In a 1:1 session she realised (with horror) that she’d absorbed the unconscious belief that her professional achievements needed to be “balanced out” by doubling down in traditional roles at home.

She’s a powerful, progressive, Feminist woman …

And yet, she’d started cooking more elaborate dishes, keeping a spotless house, and made every holiday picture-perfect—all while exhausting herself.

Another client, a tech founder, spent an entire weekend hand-painting ornaments for her kids’ school fundraiser, after a challenging week at work. “I feel like I have to make up for the time I’m not home,” she admitted. “I don’t want people to think I’m not present enough as a mum.”

The more ground they break in their work, the stronger the pull to prove they can still meet all the traditional expectations of femininity.

It’s an identity struggle that men simply do not experience.

The Invisible Mental Load of Christmas

The Christmas season amplifies the pressure to do it all—often invisibly.

Women carry the mental load and emotional labour of the holidays:

• Remembering who likes white wine and who’s allergic to nuts.

• Buying and wrapping gifts for everyone from grandparents to teachers.

• Planning meals, coordinating travel, and ensuring the family traditions are upheld.

And yet, when the day comes, who’s the hero? Santa.

An old white man who does nothing but show up at the last minute with the gifts someone else (you) meticulously curated, wrapped, and labeled.

Christmas Magic is made from the unrecognised over-work and exhaustion of women.

Why Successful Women Feel Compelled to Overcompensate?

Why does breaking barriers in one area make us unconsciously cling to outdated roles in another?

Why do so many of us fight so hard against this kind of dynamic in our professional lives, only to buy into it at home?

For many, its guilt.

The narrative that a “good woman” is selfless, nurturing, and ever-present runs so deep.

Career success can feel like a betrayal of these ideals, especially when loved ones or cultural norms subtly reinforce the message:

Don’t let your work overshadow your family.

The result? Women overcompensate. They overwork, they over-give, they over-function.

They cook from scratch, curate perfect celebrations, and manage every detail of the holidays to prove that their ambition hasn’t come at the expense of their home lives.

But the pressure to “do it all” is a trap.

And it keeps women small, even as they achieve big things.

Breaking Free from Holiday Perfectionism

What if, instead of overcompensating, we challenged the idea that women must constantly prove their worth—at work, at home, and everywhere in between?

It’s cheesy - but what if we prioritised our presence over presents this year?

My Personal Journey to a Simpler Christmas

After my severe burnout and due to my (then undiagnosed neurodivergence) I was forced to simplify Christmas.

And I’m so glad I did.

I got super clear on what was important to me about this season.

How did I want to spend this time and with who?

Now, I buy a few presents, send even fewer cards, I say no to draining obligations, and let it all be imperfect.

At first, the guilt was crushing. I worried I was being selfish or letting people down, that I wasn’t being a good woman, that I was somehow failing.

But over the years, I discovered something transformative: space.

Space to actually enjoy the holiday.

Space to connect meaningfully with the people I love.

Space to savour the beauty of small moments.

The world didn’t end. Everyone adjusted just fine. And now Christmas is more peaceful and delicious for everyone around me.

Practical Steps for a More Restful Holiday Season

If you’re ready to reclaim your rest (and sanity) this holiday season, here are some simple ways to start:

• Connect with what truly nourishes you

Take a moment to feel into your body. What would genuine rest look like for you this season? What activities actually fill you up rather than drain you? Start there.

• Draw your energy back

Notice where you're over-giving or performing. Practice drawing your energy back to yourself, like gathering in scattered threads. What could you release or simplify?

• Create containers for rest

Put rest in your diary first - before all the festivities and obligations. Treat it as sacred as any other commitment. Even 15 minutes of genuine rest can resource your whole system.

• Share the load consciously

Have direct conversations about distributing holiday tasks. Be specific about what you need. When others step up - even imperfectly - resist the urge to take back control, and when they fail - don’t jump in to save the day.

• Simplify, simplify, simplify

Whether it’s store-bought cookies or mismatched gift wrap, remember that perfection is unnecessary and overrated.

• Redefine Success

Your presence is the real present. People want you—not perfectly tied ribbons or an elaborate meal.

Modelling a New Way Forward

By reclaiming rest this festive season, we're doing something deeply radical. We're challenging centuries of conditioning that tells us women exist to serve others' joy while sacrificing our own.

This feels particularly vital for those of us breaking barriers in our work. The pressure to compensate for our success by becoming domestic goddesses at home - that urge to prove ourselves through perfect presents and picture-perfect celebrations - it all stems from the same root: the belief that our worth comes from what we give, not who we are.

Each time we choose to rest instead of pushing through exhaustion, each time we say no to overwhelm, each time we put our needs at the centre of our choices - we're breaking ancient spells. We're showing that our worth isn't measured in perfectly wrapped presents or elaborate festive feasts. That we don't need to balance our professional achievements with domestic perfection.

We're creating a new story - one where women can feel fully alive during this magical time of year, where we can celebrate with our energy and spirits intact, where we can sink into the deep peace of winter rather than fighting against it.

And through our choices, we light the way for other women. We demonstrate that it's possible to lead and achieve greatly in our work while staying deeply connected to what truly matters. That we can be ambitious and successful without sacrificing our wellbeing on the altar of cultural expectations.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Beyond Overwhelm: The Transformative Magic of Idling for High-Achieving Women

• Beyond Numbing: The Difference Between Checking Out and True Rest

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Last night as the sun set on the eve of Winter Solstice, I sat by candlelight, watching the darkness deepen outside my window, and felt relief.

While our culture urges us to now celebrate the return of light, I'm drawn to linger here in this moment of stillness, like the pause at the end of a long, much needed out breath.

I don’t want to rush forwards into the light just yet.

I want to honour darkness itself as a vital force of nature.

For thousands of years now, patriarchal thinking has shaped how we view darkness. We have become a culture that is afraid of the dark.

We equate intelligence with being "bright."

We seek "enlightenment" on our spiritual paths.

We chase clarity, illumination, certainty.

Our cities blaze with artificial light, pushing back the natural rhythms of dark and day.

From a Taoist perspective though, darkness (Yin) and light (Yang) are equal forces, endlessly transforming into one another.

Darkness represents the feminine principle - that which is unknown, shadowy, mysterious, internal, and gloriously chaotic.

It's the cosmic womb, the dark earth, the mysterious abyss from which all life emerges.

Without darkness, there is no birth, no renewal, no transformation.

The last few years have been hard and there is no doubt that we are living in dark times collectively.

The world feels heavy with uncertainty and upheaval - a kind of darkness we cannot simply outrun with more efficiency, productivity or blind optimism.

My instinct in times like these is often to push harder too though, as if I could somehow force my way through to clarity and certainty.

I can often find myself on the run from what is painful, difficult or frightening.

But I've learned that racing forward towards the light only distances me from the very wisdom I need, which is found only inside of the darkness.

“Beware the myth of ascension” a Buddhist teacher once told me.

“Sometimes, the Buddha sits beneath you”.

Today, the Winter Solstice arrives as nature's invitation to embrace the dark.

As the daylight diminishes, our bodies produce more melatonin, promoting deeper, longer sleep and awakening our inner eye to the dreaming world and our imagination.

These long nights make winter the perfect season for reflection and introspection. For homecoming.

It's a time for composting and digesting, turning vital nutrients back into the soil of our beings.

For ambitious change-making women who’ve learned to measure success by forward motion, this season of stillness can feel deeply unsettling.

We fear that slowing down means losing ground, that resting means falling behind.

But Wintering is not a retreat from power; it’s a reclamation of it.

By releasing our grip on the illusion of constant progress, we regain something infinitely richer: a connection to the fertile void, where new wisdom can take root and new worlds can emerge.

Earlier this week, during a session of my Wild Idling (a space I’ve created for ambitious women to come and just BE), one woman arrived nervous at the thought of having 45 minutes of unstructured time to herself.

It’s a common experience.

‘Doing nothing’ is an invitation into the unknown, and it’s confronting - who are we without a task, a role, a goal?

She returned at the end having written an extraordinary poem.

The kind that leaves you speechless and covered in goosebumps.

What she found in the fertile void of darkness was her deeper, truer, wilder wisdom. She’d found truth.

The kind that cannot be accessed by performing or pushing or trying.

This is the paradox at the heart of winter: the more fully we surrender to darkness, the greater the potential for our truest light to emerge.

When we reach the extreme of Yin, Yang naturally arises.

This can't be forced - it’s not a ‘doing’ thing - it occurs only through softening, surrendering, sleeping, dreaming, resting, opening.

Tonight, on the longest night, I invite you to claim some darkness for yourself.

You might begin small - an evening with no screens, a morning by candlelight, an hour of unstructured dreaming time.

Create a space that feels delicious to you. Perhaps gather soft blankets, light candles, brew your favourite tea. Let yourself follow the threads of your own curiosity. Read poetry. Gaze out of windows. Draw in your journal. Or simply sit in sweet silence.

Notice what emerges when you grant yourself this spaciousness.

What whispers to you in the quiet? What dreams surface when you stop pushing? What wisdom arrives when you allow yourself to simply be?

Remember - this isn't indulgence.

This is essential nourishment for your soul and your work in the world. This is how we resource ourselves for the year ahead. This is how we tap into our deepest wisdom and most aligned path forward.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Beyond Overwhelm: The Transformative Magic of Idling for High-Achieving Women

• Beyond Numbing: The Difference Between Checking Out and True Rest

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Last weekend, a dear friend arrived at my door, shoulders tense from a week of deadlines and decisions in her full and busy London life, the beginnings of a seasonal cold brewing.

As she stepped inside my cottage, I could feel her exhale begin - the sweet release of knowing she could fully rest somewhere.

We spent the weekend in the gentlest way possible.

She curled up with her book in front of the fire, while I pottered in the kitchen. In the evenings we lay in the sauna, letting our bones be heavy. At times she picked up her penny whistle and sweet Christmas melodies drifted through the house.

No agenda.

No need to achieve anything.

Just permission to be and to follow whatever called to us in the moment.

By Sunday, her whole being had softened. Her movements became slower, more fluid. Her voice dropped into a deeper register, and her natural and abundant creativity returned - ideas and insights bubbling up effortlessly in our meandering conversations.

We solved some gnarly personal issues with surprising ease after a few hours rest!

This is what I call sacred idling - those precious pockets of time where we grant ourselves permission to simply be.

To rest in the presence of another person without any need to perform or produce.

To let our minds wander where they will.

Sacred idling has become absolutely vital to how I run my business and live my life.

My most aligned decisions, freshest creative ideas, and clearest strategic insights rarely arrive when I'm pushing myself hard at my desk.

Instead, they emerge in these deliberate pockets of unstructured time - during long baths, meandering walks, or hours spent simply being with dear friends.

Recently, a friend who works in policy-making shared something that stopped me in my tracks. "The speed at which we're making decisions these days is ruining the quality of our policies," she told me. "There's no space for wisdom to emerge, no time to let ideas mature. We're constantly reacting at a fast pace rather than deeply considering."

Technology is making us faster, but wisdom does not emerge at speed.

Winter holds particular wisdom about this practice.

While our culture races toward year-end targets and holiday frenzy, the natural world is drawing inward. Trees withdraw their energy to their roots. Animals slow their metabolisms. The earth itself grows still and quiet beneath the cold.

My own relationship with winter changed profoundly when I began paying attention to nature's rhythms. I noticed how my creative energy is deeper, more introverted in these darker months. How my body craves more sleep, more quiet, more gentle contemplation. How my mind benefits from periods of lying fallow - not pushing to generate new ideas but allowing them to germinate slowly in the dark.

The practice itself is beautifully simple.

We gather together in shared restful silence.

No tasks, no goals, no striving to achieve or become anything.

Just permission to daydream, doodle, nap, read poetry, or gaze out of the window. To follow whatever calls to us in the moment.

The power lies in the container - women holding space for each other to simply be.

In a world that constantly demands our productivity and care-giving, there's something revolutionary about claiming time for spacious contemplation. About saying: this hour is for dreaming, for wondering, for letting my mind and heart wander where they will.

Women need more time for this!

This apparent "doing nothing" is actually the most vital ‘work’ we can do - of replenishment, of reconnection, of remembering who we are beneath all our roles and responsibilities, of accessing our deeper wisdom beneath all the noise.

This isn't about abandoning ambitions or giving up on goals.

Rather, it's about resourcing ourselves deeply so we can pursue those dreams from a place of genuine alignment and sustainable energy.

When we make regular space for this ‘beingness’, our whole lives begin to feel different:

• Work flows more easily.

• Creativity expands naturally.

• We connected to ourselves and our essence more fully.

• Conversations and relationships deepen.

• Our capacity expands.

Given what might lie ahead for the world in 2025, this practice of sacred idling takes on even greater significance.

Winter asks us to slow down, reflect, and be deeply present to reality.

For me, this isn't just personal restoration - it's a form of civic and spiritual duty. My commitment to co-creating a more just and equitable world requires me to enter the new year as resourced, clear, and strong as possible.

When we give ourselves permission to stop doing and simply be, we open to the gifts that can only arrive in slowness and stillness.

Our creative wells refill. Our inner wisdom grows clearer. We remember who we are beneath all the roles we play.

Your Invitation This Winter

As the days grow shorter and winter beckons, I invite you to carve out your own sacred idling time. You might begin small - an hour on a Sunday afternoon, a quiet evening with no plans, a morning where you let yourself wake slowly and dream.

Create a space that feels delicious to you. Perhaps gather soft blankets, light candles, brew your favourite tea. Let yourself follow the threads of your own curiosity. Read poetry. Gaze out of windows. Draw in your journal. Or simply sit in sweet silence.

Notice what emerges when you grant yourself this spaciousness. What whispers to you in the quiet? What dreams surface when you stop pushing? What wisdom arrives when you allow yourself to simply be?

Remember - this isn't indulgence. This is essential nourishment for your soul and your work in the world. This is how we resource ourselves for the year ahead. This is how we tap into our deepest wisdom and most aligned path forward.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

“I thought more money meant more success. But when I finally got there, it felt empty and I was exhausted… Now I'm working from home under a blanket again, and I'm so much happier.”

I had a fascinating conversation with a client recently - a successful seven-figure business owner who shared something deeply vulnerable with me:

"When you're seeing that coach over there celebrating 100K months and flying first class, you start thinking - that's what I need to be doing to be successful," she admitted.

She described falling into the trap so many of us know: "I bought into it all - the expensive office, the growing team, the complex business strategies. I thought more money meant more success. But when I finally got there, it felt empty and I was exhausted."

What fascinated me most was how she described feeling trapped by her own success: "The more successful I became, the harder it felt to change course. I worried people wouldn't think I was credible anymore if I simplified things. I felt this pressure to keep up appearances, to maintain this image of growing bigger and bigger."

Through my own lived experience and my work with ambitious women, I've witnessed how easily we become trapped in proving our worth through constant achievement and expansion. We build careers and businesses that look impressive from the outside but leave us feeling disconnected from ourselves and what truly matters.

"It's taken me two years to finally say 'f*ck it' and burn it all down," she told me. "Now I'm working from home under a blanket again, and I'm so much happier. But I had to face this fear that people would judge me for 'going backwards' when actually I was moving forward... into what I truly wanted."

The Downward Spiral of External Success

When we get caught chasing external success, a painful pattern emerges:

• Fear of inadequacy drives us to chase external markers of success

• We try to prove our worth through constant growth and achievement

• This creates pressure to maintain an image of success

• Leading to overworking and over-giving

• Causing disconnection from our true selves and needs

• Resulting in exhaustion and emptiness

• Which shakes our confidence

• Deepening the fear that we need to work harder

Discovering a Different Way: The Sacred Success Spiral

Through my own journey and working with hundreds of women, I've discovered a different pattern - one that builds momentum through authenticity rather than force.

Rest & Resource

When we create space to truly rest and resource ourselves, everything shifts. Sarah, a longtime client, discovered this after years of hustling her coaching business. "I started dedicating my mornings to softness - gentle movement and time in nature. In that spaciousness, I could feel my nervous system settling. My creativity started flowing again. Solutions emerged naturally for problems I'd been forcing myself to solve."

Reconnect with True Self

From this resourced place, we can hear our deeper knowing. Sam had been pushing herself to take on more speaking engagements in her academic career because "that's what successful professors do." But when she slowed down and listened, she realised she deeply preferred writing and research over presenting at conferences.

"I remembered how much I love getting lost in deep study and crafting detailed papers. Now I focus on publishing and mentoring graduate students. It's so satisfying, my work energises me instead of draining me."

Natural Confidence and Authentic Expression

When we're connected to our true selves, confidence flows naturally. I learned this firsthand when preparing to speak at a major online conference. I'd spent weeks crafting the perfect presentation, rehearsing every line. My speaking coach carefully advised removing certain vulnerable parts of my story, warning they would 'undermine my credibility.'

An hour before going live, sitting at my desk staring at my polished slides, something in me rebelled. I could feel how disconnected I was from my truth, how much I was trying to be someone I wasn't. I scrapped the entire presentation.

Instead, I showed up nervous but real, sharing the parts of my story I'd been told to hide. My voice shook at first, but as I spoke from my heart, something shifted. The response was phenomenal. That talk marked the beginning of my current career - not despite my vulnerability, but because of it.

Aligned Opportunities

When we express ourselves authentically, we attract opportunities that match our true nature. This requires us to BE who we are rather than perform and over-work.

Emma had been undercharging and over-delivering for years. "When I started showing up as myself, I attracted clients who valued my natural way of being and unique approach. My income doubled, my hours reduced, and the whole thing became more relaxed!"

Sustainable Growth & Impact

Each authentic choice creates more alignment. Each genuine offering of our unique wisdom opens doors to more authentic opportunities. The spiral builds momentum naturally, without force, simply by you being yourself.

Remember my seven-figure client? She's redesigned her entire business now:

"I've simplified everything, gone back to basics. I'd rather bring in less money but have more freedom - freedom to be myself, freedom from constant pressure and worry, freedom to take a nap in the afternoon. For the first time in years, I feel like myself again and money can't buy that."

This is how sustainable sacred success grows - not through pushing harder, but through daring to be exactly who we are.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Beyond Traditional Metrics: Crafting Sacred Measures of Success

• Burning Out or Frozen in Fear? How to Heal Your Relationship with Ambition

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Last month, halfway through leading a group programme, I noticed a familiar tension creeping into my shoulders.

A participant had just shared something vulnerable, and my old pattern began to surface - the urge to step in, to fix, to hold everything perfectly.

Behind that urge lay an old familiar fear:

What if I wasn't enough? What if I failed them?

I paused. Felt my feet on the floor. Took a slow breath. Rested back. Softened.

And instead of rushing to respond, I allowed the silence to hold us all.

This moment crystallised how far I'd come.

In my early days of facilitation and running a business, my fear drove everything.

I'd leave every group session completely depleted.

I’d pour all my energy into holding everyone's emotions, anticipating every need, managing every moment - terrified of getting it wrong.

By the end of each session, my body would ache from carrying the weight of everyone's experience.

The thought of growing my groups terrified me. If supporting eight women drained me this much, how could I possibly hold space for more?

~

Over time, I began to see that the harder I tried to push through my fears, the less I was able to actually achieve and the less effective I became.

Forcing myself through my fears, caused my nervous system to go into overdrive, my creativity to freeze, and my impact to shrink.

The counter-intuitive wisdom I discovered:

Softness is the key to bravery!

~

Let me some of my mentees recent experiences as examples:

One of my mentees recently faced an intimidating meeting with senior bureaucrats, one that she’d usually find very stressful and draining.

But, with my support, she’s been learning to soften and resource as a foundational practice.

So this time, instead of spending hours rehearsing and worrying as she used to, she decided to resource herself ahead of the meeting. She arranged to meet a good friend at her favourite café beforehand, giving herself time to land in her body and connect with comforting support.

The result? She arrived at the meeting grounded and present, communicating with natural confidence. The meeting went brilliantly, and she wasn't exhausted afterwards.

By getting softer with herself first, she accessed a deeper kind of bravery - one that flowed from being rooted and resourced rather than running on adrenaline.

Hurrah!

Another mentee has discovered this as a key practice in her marketing.

She used to force herself to be visible, pushing through resistance only to end up drained, creatively blocked and resistant to showing up again.

Now, she dedicates every Monday morning to self-care - walking in nature, enjoying her body, journaling and connecting with what truly matters.

Since making this shift, she’s sharing her work more boldly, with an ease that's surprised her. She’s holding larger groups and reaching out to more collaborators.

“I’m doing all the things that I used to find so hard! And I’m enjoying them!”

This didn’t come through force, but through being gentle, resourced and following pleasure.

The Conditioning That Keeps Us Pushing

Our culture tells us that success requires constant productivity, pushing through resistance, and overriding our limits and fears. We're taught that rest is laziness, that sensitivity is weakness, that our bodies' signals should be ignored in service of achievement and forcing outcomes.

But, when we're in constant push mode, our bodies interpret it as danger.

We move into survival responses:

• Fight (overworking, proving, forcing)

• Flight (procrastination, avoidance)

• Freeze (creative blocks, paralysis)

• Fawn (people-pleasing, overgiving)

This pattern keeps us disconnected from our deeper wisdom and stuck in downward cycles of depletion (which ironically, lead to more fear!)

The key to changing this dynamic lies in resourcing ourselves before expanding.

Just like a tree draws up nutrients before growing bigger or producing fruit.

When we do this:

• Our nervous system connects to safety and support

• Our creativity and energy flows naturally

• Our authentic courage and confidence emerges

• Our capacity for visibility grows with ease

• Our impact expands sustainably and predictably.

• And it actually feels good along the way!!

So, if you want to be bolder and braver in 2025, know that it starts by getting softer and gentler with yourself today.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Beyond Traditional Metrics: Crafting Sacred Measures of Success

• Burning Out or Frozen in Fear? How to Heal Your Relationship with Ambition

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

A few years ago, I sat in my sun-filled home office, golden hour light streaming through the window, illuminating my laptop screen where I obsessively refreshed engagement metrics and scheduled posts into perfectly organised content blocks.

My laptop clock blinked 6:43 PM (I was once again running late to meet my friends) as I reviewed my quarterly figures – another record-breaking month, fully booked program, email list growing daily, every entrepreneurial metric that supposedly measured "success" proudly ticked off. Check!

That same evening, I found myself perched on the edge of my friend's worn leather sofa, a mug of mulled wine untouched in my hands. Fairy lights twinkled in the corner, familiar faces were soft in their light.

The sound of laughter and story-sharing swirled around me – tales of dating mishaps, work dramas, holiday plans – yet I sat there numb and disconnected from it all, as if watching the scene through a frosted window, my mind pre-occupied with instagram posts, my to-do lists, my next goal.

My perfectly organised planner sat heavy in my bag - haunting me even here. On paper, I was "crushing it". In reality, I felt hollowed out.

The irony wasn't lost on me – I'd left my stressful social work career to escape the tyranny of targets and outcomes, only to recreate the same grinding pressure in my own business.

My body was sending clear signals – shoulders so tense they touched my ears, nights spent staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, a constant knot of anxiety lodged beneath my ribs whenever I wasn't working – I had become so caught up in measuring metrics that I could no longer hear what my own body and soul was trying to tell me.

That moment, watching my friends enjoy themselves from behind my glass wall, became my wake-up call.

I realised I had masterfully learned to track everything except what truly mattered: connection, meaning, peace.

What if we've been measuring success all wrong?

In a world obsessed with metrics - followers, revenue, growth charts, productivity scores - I believe we've forgotten something crucial: these measurements were created for machines, not living beings.

They were designed for factories, not our human souls.

And like all tools of standardisation, they often serve systems of extraction rather than flourishing.

So, how do we measure success when we're no longer trying to fit into systems that weren't designed for us?

What if instead of tracking:

• Hours worked

• Tasks completed

• Revenue generated

• Goals achieved

We measured:

• Depth of presence

• Quality of energy

• Alignment with natural rhythm

• Sovereignty and courage in our choices

• Authenticity in our expression

• Spaciousness in our days

• Joy … what if we tracked and measured our joy?!

What if success in 2025 wasn't about reaching external benchmarks, but about creating conditions where our essence can finally flourish?

Here are some of the alternative metrics I've been exploring:

• The Sovereignty Metric: How often did I honour my natural rhythm instead of forcing myself into culture’s pace? Did I make choices from deep knowing rather than external pressure? Was I able to trust my intuition as wisdom?

• The Energy Metric: Am I offering from overflow rather than depletion? Does my work energise rather than exhaust me? Can I feel my life force expanding rather than contracting?

• The Presence Metric: Was I fully here for the moments that mattered? Did I create space to savour experiences rather than rush through them? Could I feel deeply connected to my work and those I serve?

• The Authenticity Metric: Did I allow my true nature to guide my choices? Was I able to express my voice? Did I offer my medicine without diluting it?

Maybe this isn’t about rejecting traditional measures of success.

But about expanding our definition to include what actually matters to our souls: connection, meaning, peace.

It's about creating metrics that honour our humanity rather than suppress it.

When we measure success only by external metrics, we risk missing what truly makes life worth living. We might achieve all the recognised markers of success while missing our true calling entirely.

This time of year is perfect to turn inwards and begin to craft your own sacred metrics:

• What feels like success in your body?

• When do you feel most alive and aligned?

• What conditions / environments allow your talents to flourish?

• How does your soul measure thriving?

Remember: the very qualities that make you "inefficient" by conventional metrics might be essential to your unique contribution. Your different rhythm, your need for space, your sensitivity - these aren't flaws to optimise away. They're crucial elements of your medicine.

The world doesn't need us to become better at meeting standardised metrics. It needs us to become more fully ourselves. It needs our unique genius, not our standardised performance. It needs our authentic medicine, not our optimised output.

So perhaps the most important metric of all is this: Am I becoming more fully who I truly am? Am I creating conditions where my essence can flourish? Am I offering my gifts from a place of easeful authenticity?

Because true success isn't about measuring up to external standards.

It's about creating standards that measure what truly matters to our souls.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

"What if the success you've worked so hard for is actually making you miserable? You’re not alone."

If you’ve ever found yourself staring at everything you’ve built - the business, the team, the accolades, the lifestyle - only to feel an overwhelming urge to burn it all down and run away, you’re part of a growing movement of ambitious women rethinking what it means to succeed.

Maybe you're stuck in a cycle of exhaustion, questioning if this version of ‘success’ is really worth it.

Or perhaps you’ve left behind the high-pressure career with the dream of building something aligned with your soul… only to find yourself frozen, unable to move forward and stressed as hell about it.

If this is you. You're not broken, nor are you alone.

Collectively, this is a moment lots of women are experiencing.

You're waking up to the hidden costs of traditional success—and starting to imagine a healthier, more sustainable way forward. This is a good thing, even if it feels dreadful.

Why Traditional Success Feels So Empty

You’ve done everything ‘right’.

Climbed the ladder. Built the business. Hit the milestones.

Maybe even exceeded your own expectations.

So why does it all feel... hollow?

Here’s what’s really happening: Many high-achieving women are discovering that traditional success often comes with hidden costs.

• Exhaustion: No amount of rest seems to refill your energy.

• Disconnection: You feel distanced from the passion that once lit you up, you’ve lost touch with yourself, and drifted from friends and family.

• Emptiness: Success feels like checking off boxes instead of true fulfillment.

• Anxiety: The pressure to maintain your achievements is relentless, the more successful you became, the more fearful of failing you felt.

• Misalignment: A nagging sense that something is missing - something essential. Something sacred and soulful.

~

I remember working late one night to hit a big revenue goal, only to realise I hadn’t eaten all day or called my best friend back for a week. I told myself I’d rest after the milestone, but the next goal was already looming. My ‘success’ felt like a hamster wheel I couldn’t get off.

~

This isn’t failure; it’s a signal. Your body and mind are telling you that the way we’ve been taught to pursue success - through overwork, self-sacrifice, and constant proving - just doesn’t work anymore.

You are being initiated into a new way...

When Starting Over Feels Impossible

Maybe you’ve already decided to leave that version of success behind. You’ve walked away from the grind and the toxic corporate culture to create something meaningful, aligned, and true to your soul.

But now, every time you try to take a step forward, you freeze.

You might have labelled it as “self-sabotage”, imposter syndrome, or even laziness. You’ve got the vision, the skills, and the drive, but every time you try to take the next step, something holds you back.

Here’s the truth: Your nervous system remembers the cost of previous ambition/success. It recognises the stress, burnout, and self-sacrifice that used to drive you. And it’s doing its best to protect you from going down that path again.

This “ambition freeze” often shows up like this:

• Procrastinating on projects you genuinely care about.

• Feeling overwhelmed by even simple tasks.

• Self-doubt, second-guessing decisions and struggling to trust your own instincts.

• Procrasti-learning: taking another course you don’t really need.

• Feeling shame and embarrassment that you can’t perform like you used to, worrying that others judge you, feeling like a failure.

This isn’t weakness or failure — it’s survival.

Your body is trying to tell you it’s time to redefine ambition and success in a way that feels expansive, not extractive.

~

When I left my old career to build a business aligned with my values, I thought it would be easy to dive into something I loved. But every time I sat down to work, I’d freeze. Simple tasks felt overwhelming.

What I didn’t realise then was that deep down I was so scared of falling into the same over-work & burnout patterns - that I couldn’t take any action at all.

~

What might look like self-sabotage is actually a signal from your body, asking you to pause, recalibrate, and find a healthier way forward. To re-imagine success and ambition in a more life-giving and soul-aligned way.

The Two Sides of Ambition Burnout

Right now, so many ambitious women are experiencing one of two patterns:

1. The Success Hangover

• You’ve achieved traditional success but feel exhausted, empty, unfulfilled, or disconnected.

• You’re considering dismantling everything you’ve built.

• You crave a way of being successful that doesn’t require sacrificing your wellbeing.

2. The Starting Over Freeze

• You’ve left traditional success behind but feel stuck trying to build something new.

• Your body is resisting the pressure you associate with ambition.

• You’re afraid of repeating the same burnout cycle, so you’re staying small and but feeling trapped.

These patterns may look different, but they share the same root cause:

A nervous system trained to associate ambition and success with pushing past limits, ignoring your body, and constantly proving your worth.

A New Way Forward

Healing your relationship with ambition isn’t about giving up on success - it’s about redefining it in a way that feels authentic, energising, and sustainable.

Here’s what healthy ambition can look like:

• Goals that align with your deepest values.

• Built around the lifestyle you need and desire.

• Energy that builds rather than depletes.

• Motivation rooted in inspiration, not fear.

• Growth that feels expansive, not extractive.

• Success that brings you closer to yourself, not further away.

~

The first time I redefined success on my own terms, it felt revolutionary. I let go of the arbitrary revenue goals I’d been chasing and focused instead on creating something truly meaningful. One day, after hosting a workshop that left me energised and deeply connected to the participants, I realised: this is what success feels like - alive, aligned, and true to me.

~

Practical Steps to Rehabilitate Your Ambition in Nervous System Supportive Ways.

1. Recognise the Pattern

• Notice when you’re pushing too hard or freezing up.

• Identify what triggers old success programming (e.g., deadlines, comparison, criticism, needing to impress).

• Pay attention to where your body holds this tension and stress.

~

I started noticing that I felt a wave of tension in my shoulders whenever I said yes to a project I didn’t want to take on. Tracking those moments helped me realise how often I was overcommitting out of obligation or fear, rather than genuine motivation.

~

2. Track Your Energy

• Journal about what activities leave you energised vs. drained.

• Use this data to make decisions about how you spend your time.

  
  

3. Reset Your Nervous System

• Practice small moments of safety daily (e.g., deep breathing, grounding exercises).

• Rebuild trust with your body by honouring its signals.

• Differentiate between true rest and collapse—prioritise genuinely restorative activities.

  
  

4. Redefine Success on Your Terms

• Write down your current definition of success.

• Reflect on where these standards came from—society, family, past experiences?

• Create a new definition aligned with your values and wellbeing.

  
  

Reclaim Your Ambition

Imagine this, in 2025 you wake up feeling truly rested, excited by what’s ahead in your day, feeling energised by your goals instead of depleted.

Growing your vision has started to feel aligned, relaxed, and fun.

You end each day feeling like you’ve come home to yourself a little more deeply, shared yourself and honoured your gifts a little more fully.

This is possible when you heal your relationship with ambition and commit to a new way of succeeding.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

We all know the experience - it's been a long full day of other people’s demands, time pressure and hard work, and you find yourself finally alone… scrolling mindlessly through social media or binge-watching another series.

Your body is still, but your mind is still wired, your nervous system hums, like it’s driven by a motor.

Hours pass, and somehow you feel more exhausted than before.

~ In this article ~

• The Numbing Trap: Why We Mistake Checking Out for Rest

• Understanding the Exhaustion-Collapse Cycle

• The Different Types of Rest Your Body Actually Craves

• What True Restoration Feels and Looks Like

• From Emergency Recovery to Intentional Renewal

~

The Numbing Trap: Why We Mistake Checking Out for Rest

Most of what we call "resting" or relaxation in our culture is actually numbing.

The distinction is crucial:

• Numbing disconnects us from our bodies

• True rest deepens our connection to ourselves

• Numbing creates a false sense of escape

• Rest offers genuine renewal and restoration

Why do we confuse the two?

Because numbing offers immediate relief.

It's the path of least resistance when we're overwhelmed.

It’s a clever skill our body-minds can use, to remove us from the present moment situation - sometimes this is really useful and necessary.

But it never truly satisfies our deeper needs.

And it can become unhelpful when it’s overused.

The Exhaustion-Collapse Cycle

Many of us are caught in a pattern that looks like this:

1. Push beyond our limits

2. Hit a wall of exhaustion

3. Collapse into passive numbing activities (scrolling, watching, consuming)

4. Feel guilty about "wasting time" and yucky from the experience of it.

5. Push harder to make up for it

6. Repeat

This isn't a cycle of rest and renewal - it's a cycle of depletion and numbing.

And we often don't recognise we're in it until we're completely burnt out.

The Different Types of Rest Your Body Actually Craves

There are lots of different types of rest.

And your wide body seeks a variety of forms of restoration:

• Physical Rest:

  • Deep sleep

  • Gentle movement

  • Physical stillness

• Mental Rest:

  • Meditation

  • Time in nature

  • Periods of silence

  • Play

• Sensory Rest:

  • Darkness

  • Quiet

  • Freedom from screens

• Creative Rest:

  • Appreciation of beauty

  • Exposure to art

  • Time for wonder

• Emotional Rest:

  • Authentic expression

  • Safe relationships

  • Permission to feel your feelings

And, depending on what you spend most of your time doing, there’ll be other types of rest that are necessary for you too.

For example: if you spend a lot of time around people and noisy environments, rest for you might look like introversion, however, if you live and work alone, rest might be connecting with others.

What True Restoration Feels Like

You’ll be able to tell if you’ve found true restoration, as it has a distinct flavour that sets it apart from numbing:

• You feel more embodied, not less

• Your nervous system settles and relaxes

• Your mind becomes clearer and brighter, not foggy

• You experience a sense of returning home to yourself

• Your energy builds rather than drains

• Time feels abundant rather than wasted

• You finish feeling renewed and replenished

Moving from Emergency Recovery to Intentional Renewal

The shift from collapse-based rest to intentional renewal requires a fundamental change in how we view rest itself.

Here's how to begin:

Create Restful Rhythms:

• Schedule rest in your diary first, before exhaustion hits

• Build regular restoration points into your day

• Honour these appointments as seriously as work commitments

Design Your Rest Menu:

• Pay attention and identify the activities that truly restore you

• Create different options for different rest needs

• Make these easily accessible for when you don’t have the energy to make decisions

Notice Your Numbing Patterns:

• Track when you tend to check out and how it feels

• Identify your common numbing behaviours

• Get curious about what need is actually present in these moments. You can do this by taking a pause and asking the body “what’s present here? What am I trying to avoid feeling”? Whatever arises, let it know “it’s okay, you belong here, what do you really need?” … and see what shifts.

Practice Micro-Moments of Rest:

• 30-second breath breaks

• 5-minute nature pauses

• 10-minute meditation snippets

Build Your Rest Capacity (rest is so very counter-cultural and often tricky to do without feeling guilty):

• Start small and consistent

• Gradually extend your restful periods

• Notice and celebrate the benefits

What's one numbing habit you could transform into a genuine rest practice this week?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

The way we treat the Earth mirrors how we treat our own bodies as women.

This parallel isn't just poetic - it's a crucial insight that can transform how we approach our work, our lives, and our impact on the world.

~ In this article ~

• The Problem: The Culture of Extraction

• The Solution: Honouring the Earth in Our Bodies

• The Power of Sustainable Success

• Practical Steps: Cultivating a Non-Extractive Approach

• Your Invitation to Earth-Body Wisdom

~

The Problem: The Culture of Extraction

We live in a world that runs on extraction:

• From the Earth: Unsustainable mining, deforestation, fossil fuels

• From our bodies: Burnout culture, "hustle harder", ignoring our need for rest, selling our work too cheaply.

This parallel is no coincidence.

It's a symptom of a deeper issue, and it's showing up in our businesses, our bodies, and our planet.

Does any of this sound familiar?

• Pushing through exhaustion to meet a deadline

• Ignoring your body's signals for rest or nourishment

• Feeling guilty for taking time off or "doing nothing"

If so, you might be caught in an extraction based paradigm with yourself.

The Solution: Honouring the Earth in Our Bodies

The women I work with have deep reverence for the Earth, they are socially progressive, ethically minded, conscious consumers.

And yet, most of them are stuck in patterns internally, that they would never dream of perpetuating externally, treating themselves in ways they would never treat the Earth.

So, what if we approached our bodies with the same reverence? And why not? We are, after all, part of the bigger body of the planet.

What if we saw our energy, our creativity, our capacity for contribution as precious resources to be nurtured, rather than exploited?

This shift can change everything:

• Work becomes a sustainable practice, not a drain

• Rest becomes as valued as productivity

• Success is measured by wellbeing, not just output or achievements.

When we honour the Earth in our bodies, we create a new paradigm for success - one that's regenerative and life-giving, not extractive and depleting.

The Power of Sustainable Success

Embracing this Earth-body connection in our work leads to:

1. Increased creativity and innovation (because well-rested minds are more creative)

2. Better decision-making (because we're not operating from a place of exhaustion)

3. More authentic leadership (because we're modelling sustainable practices)

4. Greater resilience (because we're not constantly on the brink of burnout)

5. A positive ripple effect on our communities and the planet.

Most importantly, it allows us to do our most impactful, inspired work without sacrificing our wellbeing.

Practical Steps: Cultivating a Non-Extractive Approach to Yourself.

Ready to shift from extraction to regeneration in your work and life?

Here are some steps to begin:

1. Body check-ins: Regularly pause and ask your body what it needs. Honour those needs as you would honour the Earth's needs.

2. Redefine productivity: Include rest, play, and "being" time in your definition of a productive day.

3. Sustainable scheduling: Structure your work in cycles that mirror natural rhythms (e.g., seasons, moon phases, your menstrual cycle if applicable).

4. Earth-inspired workspace: Bring elements of nature into your work environment to remind you of this connection.

5. Regenerative practices: For every "extractive" action in your business, balance it with a regenerative one.

6. Think of your life as an eco-system, what’s out of balance? What’s thriving and what’s struggling to survive? What resources and tending are needed?

Your Invitation to Earth-Body Wisdom

As we move forward in our work and lives, I invite you to see your body as a microcosm of the Earth.

Every time you honour your need for rest, every time you choose sustainability over short-term gains, you're not just caring for yourself - you're participating in a larger shift towards a more balanced, regenerative world.

Your Assignment:

This week, identify one "extractive" habit in your work life. How can you transform it into a regenerative practice that honours both your body and the Earth?

I'd love to hear your reflections. How does the parallel between Earth extraction and bodily depletion show up in your life and work? What changes do you notice when you start honouring the Earth in your body?

Remember, true success isn't about how much we can extract - from ourselves or our planet. It's about how well we can nurture and sustain the precious resources we've been given and support them to blossom organically into their fullest expression.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

In a world often dominated by hustle, endless striving, and the search for success through external achievement, there's a quieter, softer path waiting to be uncovered - one rooted in the body, in presence, in the wisdom that comes from within and in the connection with the more-than-human world.

As someone who thrives on critical thinking and analysis, I’ve always been drawn to examining the larger cultural systems and the structures of power that surround us.

There's something deeply satisfying for me about connecting dots, seeing the bigger picture, understanding how social norms shape our lives - it’s like seeing the matrix, breaking status quo spells.

My mind excels at this and is quick to understand complicated ideas.

Yet, there was always something missing.

Even after I had been practicing Buddhism for many years, I found that awareness alone didn’t solve the struggles I faced. Perhaps because I am so fast thinking, and cerebral at times.

Awareness helped me see this issues. - personal and political more clearly, but it was only when I discovered more embodied practice that everything began to really shift.

The Power of Embodiment: Bridging Awareness and Transformation

For years, I leaned heavily on mindfulness and Buddhist practices, working to cultivate awareness and presence.

But despite my best efforts, I often still felt stuck.

I was acutely aware of my patterns, but I often didn’t know how to change them.

I needed something more tangible than awareness alone - something that grounded me, helped me move out of my fast-moving mind and into my present experience, that took me beyond intellectual understanding, and into a pathway of tangible transformation.

Embodiment became that missing piece for me.

When we work with the body, we bring mindfulness down from the mind and into the physical.

It’s not enough to know where we’re stuck; we need a way to actually shift our states and ways of being - the body is the pathway.

For me, embodiment became the bridge between awareness and action.

It allowed me to move beyond observation and into a space of transformation.

“When you're thinking, you're a lot of different people, but when you're feeling, you're nobody but yourself.”
~ Unknown

This captures the essence of embodiment - coming back to what’s real, what’s true, what’s present in the body.

Cultural Conditioning and the Body: Reclaiming What’s Been Lost

Our bodies are shaped by culture, by conditioning, and by the stories we’ve been told about who we are and how we should show up in the world.

For many women, this means parts of ourselves - like our anger, our authority, or our desires have been suppressed, exiled, or simply ignored.

But these parts of us haven’t disappeared.

They’re still there, waiting to be reclaimed, re-inhabited, embodied, and expressed.

Through embodiment practice, we begin to transform not only ourselves but the cultural patterns that have shaped us.

It’s a powerful process of reclaiming the parts of ourselves that have been lost, whether it’s our voice, our passion, our confidence, or our capacity to be authentic in the world.

As we reconnect with these aspects of ourselves, we expand our range of possibilities, increasing our ability to make choices that align with our truest selves.

Tapping into the Body’s Wisdom: Trusting Your Inner Authority

The body holds a vast well of wisdom that the mind simply cannot access. I can’t over-emphasise this enough.

When we tune into our bodies, we uncover intuitive knowledge, insights, and truths that are uniquely our own.

This embodied wisdom reveals not only how we feel in any given moment but also what we need, what we desire, and where we’re to go next.

More importantly, this wisdom shows us our personal blueprint for success.

Unlike the prescriptive models offered by society, our bodies provide the only true roadmap for how we can live in alignment with our deepest values and desires.

This blueprint isn’t something you can find outside of yourself - it’s something you discover within.

Working with and through the body helps you to cultivate self-trust and allows you to follow the threads of your own nervous system toward a version of success that feels not only soul-satisfying but also deeply nourishing and delicious.

Balancing Yin and Yang: The Dance of Doing and Being

One of the most profound shifts that happens through embodiment coaching is the rebalancing of yin and yang energies.

Many of us, particularly women, have been taught to live in unhealthy yang - constantly pushing, striving, and doing. This can lead to burnout and disconnection from the more feminine qualities of yin: surrender, receptivity, and rest.

Deep in burnout we then get stuck in unhealthy yin - collapse, dissociation, stuckness, and can struggle to move into action again.

But when we learn to cultivate healthy yang - action that is vital, energised, and pleasurable - alongside healthy yin, everything changes.

We begin to move through life with more ease, flowing between moments of action and rest in a way that feels natural and sustainable.

This is the rhythm we were designed to follow, much like the cycles of the seasons or the ebb and flow of the menstrual cycle.

By working with the body, we can discover our unique versions of healthy yin and yang. We learn to honour the times when we need to create and do, as well as the times when we need to yield, soften, and simply be.

Your Invitation to Embodied Transformation

Embodiment coaching is about more than just improving your relationship with your body (although it will absolutely do that - I’ll share more in another blog post ) - it’s about transforming your entire way of being in the world.

Through this work, you can reconnect with the parts of yourself that have been hidden, discover the wisdom that lies within YOU, and follow your own unique path to success and fulfilment. One that won’t burn you out or leave you feeling compromised.

There is no one-size-fits-all model for success.

Your body knows the way FOR YOU, and as you learn to listen to and trust its wisdom, you’ll find that the answers you’ve been seeking are already there inside.

So I invite you to pause. Breathe. Feel your body. What does it need? What is it telling you? How can you bring more balance, more ease, more vitality into your life?

The answers are there, just waiting for you to listen.

What would success look like if it felt truly pleasurable, sustainable, and aligned with who you are?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Why are we all so exhausted? Women, overfunctioning, and reclaiming a more sacred life

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Success is not created through grinding it out and hustling harder, but by following and cultivating aliveness.

There, I said it.

Contrary to popular opinion…

The path to your most impactful work and soul-nourishing life is paved with unstructured time.

I know this sounds too good to be true, but stick with me.

I’m going to challenge everything you've been taught about success and productivity.

~ In this article ~

• The Problem: The High Performance Trap

• The Solution: Designing Around Aliveness

• The Power of Unstructured Time

• Practical Steps: Crafting Your Alive, Successful Life

• Your Invitation to Outrageous Success and a Softer Life

The Problem: The High Performance Trap

As ambitious visionary women, we've been sold a lie.

We've been told that success comes from:

• Constant hustle and grind

• Sacrificing our personal lives for professional achievement

• Giving everything we’ve got to the cause …

• Pushing through exhaustion and ignoring our body's signals.

If this sounds familiar ….

You might be caught in what I call the High Performance Trap.

It's a cycle of overworking, burning out, and then fearing slipping back into burnout so much that you hold yourself back from your desires and full potential.

The Solution: Designing Your Life Around Aliveness

I advocate that instead of designing our lives around productivity and hustle, we designed them around aliveness and unstructured time.

Wild. I know!!

Aliveness is that feeling of being fully present, energised, and connected to yourself and the world around you. It's the opposite of the drained, robotic state we often find ourselves in when we’ve been pushing too hard for too long or when we’re stuck in freeze - afraid of burning out again.

When we design our lives around aliveness:

1. We tap into our deepest creativity and intuition

2. We make decisions from a place of clarity, not overwhelm

3. We show up as our fullest, most authentic selves in our work and relationships

4. We create impact not through force, but through authenticity and alignment.

The Power of Unstructured Time

Now, you might be thinking, "Sounds great, but how do I actually do this, rediscover my aliveness and all?"

The secret weapon is unstructured time.

Unstructured time is the space in your life that isn't scheduled or allocated to specific tasks.

It's time for daydreaming, exploring, resting, or simply being.

I heard this state of being referred to as ‘Wild Idling’.

And I totally love it.

Because it is wild.

Wild in terms of feral, undomesticated, uncontrolled.

The ‘wild edge of idling’ could lead us anywhere.

And counterintuitive as it may seem, it's the key to both aliveness and outrageous success.

Here's why:

• Unstructured time allows your mind to make new connections, leading to innovative ideas

• It gives you space to tune into your body and emotions, preventing burnout

• It gives you space to reconnect to pleasure, and primary satisfactions (the things that really fill you up, give you meaning and resource you)

• It creates room for serendipity and unexpected opportunities

• It replenishes your energy, allowing you to show up fully to your art, your connections, your work

• It gives your imagination room to wander, to dream, to question, to roam outside its usual confines…

This is why it’s wild and dangerous, and suppressed by our ‘productivity, busy-as-a-badge-of-honour, 24/7’ culture, because it might lead to actual change.

A woman with wild idling time might start to feel things, question things, refuse things. She might restore her energy, reignite her passion, find her confidence and start a personal (or massive) revolution … best to keep her too busy instead!!

Practical Steps: Crafting Your Alive, Successful Life

If you want to start designing your life around aliveness.

Here are some steps to begin:

1. Audit your current schedule: Where are you overcommitted? Where can you create pockets of unstructured time?

2. Identify your aliveness activities: What makes you feel most alive? Reading, walking in nature, creative pursuits? Schedule these in.

3. Practice saying no: Every time you say no to something that doesn't align with your aliveness, you're saying yes to yourself.

4. Redefine success: What does success look like when it includes how alive you feel, not just what you achieve?

5. Start small: Even 15 minutes of unstructured time a day can make a difference. Build from there.

6. Join Rest & Receive! It’s seriously good!

Your Invitation to Outrageous Success and a Softer Life

The High Performance Trap is BS, it’s time to step into a new paradigm of success – one that honours your aliveness and gives you the unstructured time you crave.

This isn't about lowering your ambitions. It's about achieving them in a way that feels good, sustainable, and true to who you are.

It's about having both: a softer, more alive life AND outrageously impactful success.

Your Assignment:

This week, schedule some completely unstructured time. Notice how it feels, what comes up for you, and how it impacts the rest of your day.

I'd love to hear your reflections. How does the idea of designing your life around aliveness resonate with you? What changes do you notice when you prioritise unstructured time?

Remember, you don't have to choose between being successful and being alive. In fact, true, outrageous success arises from a foundation of your embodied aliveness.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

So many brilliant women I work with are living for 'there'.

That mythical future place where everything finally falls into place.

Where the to-list is complete.

Where they’ll finally have proved themselves enough.

Where they can finally rest.

~ In this article ~

• Living for 'There'

• The Cultural Conditioning

• Breaking Free from Future-Living

• A Different Way of Holding Ambition

• Your Invitation to Present Power

Living for 'There'

I used to date a guy who loved to hike.

Every weekend, we'd head out somewhere beautiful for a day of walking.

However, each time it would quickly take on the flavour of a military style exercise … 15 miles to complete, ‘Roman Marching pace’, pushing on to the next milestone before taking a break.

I don’t remember these days as joyful or full of connection - because they were so often just focussed achieving the target distance, reaching the designated endpoint.

I remember watching him stride ahead, head down, focused on the path directly in front of him and although it was kind of inspiring, he often missed the small moments - the way morning light caught the dewdrops on spider webs, the sudden flash of a deer between trees, the changing patterns of clouds above us. Everything that made the walk beautiful, was lost in his determination to complete it to ‘get it over with’.

In which case, I wonder … what’s the point?

~

How many of us are living like this though … always racing toward a destination as if the end is all that matters?

"When I reach six figures..."

"Once I finish this project..."

"After my kids start school / leave home ..."

Then I’ll ….. (fill in the desire).

I see it in almost every woman I work with - this constant sense that we're not quite where we should be.

That if we just push a little harder, work a little more, grind a little longer, prove ourselves a little further... then finally we'll arrive.

The Cultural Conditioning

'There' is an illusion. It’s a mirage that disappears as it comes into view.

It’s a cultural story designed to keep us constantly striving.

Forever reaching. Never arriving. Never feeling contented or peaceful or enough.

‘There’ a moving target. A horizon that keeps receding.

The moment we get ‘there’ we realise it’s a false peak, and another appears in the distance, beckoning us forward into more striving.

This isn't really about goal-setting or ambition. (I’m a fan of both).

But rather about the systems that profit from our constant sense of not-enough-ness.

The culture that keep us too busy rushing toward the future to notice our power in the present.

Breaking Free from Future-Living

What if, instead of constantly reaching for 'there', we dared to actually be here?
What if, instead of viewing time as something to get through, we experienced it as something to fully inhabit?
What if our worth wasn't waiting for us in some future achievement, but living in our bones right now?

How would we show up differently? How might we live? What might we do?

When we're constantly living for 'there':

• Our creativity gets squeezed into future promises

• Our natural rhythm gets overridden by future urgency

• Our present power gets sacrificed to future worthiness

• Our real life today gets postponed for a imaginary promised one tomorrow.

A Different Way of Holding Ambition

I don’t want us to abandon our dreams or dampening our ambition. Far from it.
But, I do want us to embody a different way of holding our visions.
A way that doesn't require our self-abandonment.
A way that allows us to be both in our becoming and in our ‘already enoughness’

I want us to:

• Move towards our dreams from fullness rather than lack

• Create our work from presence rather than pressure

• Expand and grow from essence rather than effort

• Build better future possibilities, while fully inhabiting our present power.

Your Invitation to Present Power

A different life isn't waiting for you 'there'.
The thing you crave isn't embedded in some future achievement.
Your power isn't in who you'll become.
It's in who you are, right now.

This is about more than just "living in the now."
This is about breaking the spell that keeps us perpetually reaching.
This is about reclaiming our inherent worth from the future tense.
This is about remembering that our magic isn't waiting for us when we get 'there' - it's alive and available to us right now.

Our task is to get present enough to claim it.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

One way I approach boundaries is through the lens of a manifesto, a set of intentions to live and be guided by.

This is my first time sharing Your Right to Be’s manifesto (which is a living document and ever evolving).

These commitments have been crucial for me building a life and business that’s both nourishing and deeply successful/purposeful.

The Your Right to Be: Sacred Success Manifesto

1. We believe that true success comes from becoming more of who we truly are, not less.

2. We reject the notion that burnout, struggle, and self-abandonment are necessary for high impact change-making achievement.

3. We embrace our sensitivity as a resource, not a weakness to be overcome.

4. We honour the wisdom of our bodies and trust our embodied intuition.

5. We recognise that rest is not a reward for productivity, but a vital part of the creative process.

6. We choose to measure our success by how alive we feel, not just by what we accomplish.

7. We commit to breaking free from cultural conditioning that tells us we're not enough as we are.

8. We celebrate the power of softness, gentleness, and receptivity in leadership and culture-making.

9. We seek to create impact from a place of alignment, ease, and joy - through the expression of our essence.

10. We understand that our personal well-being is interconnected with the well-being of our communities and the planet, we are not separate from the wider ecosystems of life.

11. We value cyclical growth over linear progress, honouring the natural rhythms of planetary and biological wisdom, of expansion and contraction.

12. We cultivate environments that allow us to unfurl naturally, like plants given the right conditions into our fullest creative expression.

13. We embrace the complexity of our full selves, refusing to compartmentalise or deny any part of our experience. We will not operate from an adversarial relationship with ourselves.

14. We commit to practices that keep us connected to the preciousness of this moment, resisting the constant pull towards an imagined future self.

15. We choose collaboration over competition, recognising that true power lies in our connectedness.

16. We trust that by nourishing our joy and leveraging our natural talents, we create sustainable, meaningful change in the world.

17. We give ourselves permission to redefine success on our own terms, outside of patriarchal, capitalist norms.

18. We give grace to our shortcomings, knowing we will fall short these high ideals many times over.

Would you like to hear more from me?

I offer several recorded talks on my website which you can sign up to gain access to watch for free.

Come and see them here.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• My Big Why

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

We’re all working so damn hard aren’t we?

And yet, as far as I can tell, true happiness doesn’t actually come with achieving more … but rather, in reclaiming the sacredness of our daily lives: our time, our bodies, and our labour.

At the heart of my work is the reclamation of the sacred.

Call it what you will - the holy, the divine, the mystery, the Truth - which resides inside us and around us, in the everyday messiness of our lives and work.

Our current fast-paced, productivity-obsessed culture, has destroyed the sacred nature of our lives.

But the fact that we exist at all, is miraculous.

To have a body that allows us to feel and touch the world, and senses that allow the world to touch us back,

To have this brief time in embodied form, in which we can smell and taste, dream and create, love and be loved back,

It's all so improbable.

That you and I are here is so unlikely, and yet… here we are.

However, I know, if I’m not careful, I rush through these precious days.

I treat my time, my body, and my life-force energy as commodities… to be optimised, extracted from, exploited.

In the adrenaline-fuelled pursuit of an imagined ‘better’ future, the next achievement/goal or an idealised version of myself, I can often miss what I long for most: presence.

To actually be here, experiencing this, connecting with you and with life inside the mystery of it all.

~

During the very early days of the 2020 Covid lockdowns, I was at the supermarket when I picked up someone's discarded shopping list.

It was a simple note.

In shaky handwriting it read: Bread. Beer. Toothpaste. Don’t forget, feet.

As I read it, something cracked open inside me. And I found myself standing in the cereal aisle with tears streaming down my face, unable to explain why.

Everything had suddenly become so achingly precious, and everyone in sight was utterly luminous. The whole supermarket took on a kind of pearlescent glow.

We all felt so fragile in that moment, our shared needs and longings so simple.

In this, the most mundane of settings, the precariousness and sheer miracle of our existence overcame me.

Through sobs, I tried to explain to my bewildered then-boyfriend, "This person <sob> has feet."

I can't articulate why this seemed so profound,
But I'm tearing up now as I recall it.

In the checkout line that day, everyone seemed to glow from the inside. And despite the enforced distances between us, I couldn’t really tell where I ended, and other people began.

Some people do Ayahuasca for this kind of Insight experience, but it really can happen in Aldi.

The sacred exists nowhere other than in the everyday: in the supermarket, in the workplace, in these imperfect bodies, in this imperfect moment.

Toxic patriarchal capitalism that has robbed us of this experience.

There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
and desecrated places
~ Wendell Berry

Toxic patriarchal capitalism has stripped the sacredness from our lives.

I know most of us ache for something more beautiful than the lifestyle we’ve been trained to accept.

A life beyond the hurried pace, the jangled nervous system, the packed schedules, and never-ending to-do lists.

Our culture has taught us to view ourselves as commodities.

Our time has become something to ‘spend’ or ‘waste’, our personalities something ‘to optimise’, we’re taught to treat our bodies like machines and undervalue our labour (our art/talents/life force energy).

Are we at risk of hacking ourselves out of our humanity?

~

The Overfunctioning Trap

As women, (especially women with change-making, culture-shaping visions) we are particularly at risk:

We live within systems that undervalue us, and which train us to undervalue ourselves.

When we’re no longer in touch with the sacred value of our time, bodies, and labour, we can easily fall into ‘The Overfunctioning Trap’.

This happens when we interpret the experience of being treated as less valuable as though it’s a personal failing, and respond by unconsciously trying to prove our worth, and leads to chronically overfunctioning: overworking, over-extending and over-giving across all areas of our lives.

But it’s a trap, it’s a game we’ll never win.

The current system runs on us not being able to prove ourselves. It’s designed to keep us continually pushing ourselves further, working harder, life-hacking and optimising every aspect of ourselves more and more - so that it can squeeze more time, energy and labour from us.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll work so hard for so long that you’ll end up building a life that relies on your constant overfunctioning.

You’ll then blame yourself for your depletion and burnout, set about working hard to fix it … and so the cycle repeats.

The Overfunctioning Trap insidiously masquerades as virtue.
We are praised for our productivity, our ability to juggle multiple responsibilities, and our selflessness in always putting others first.

But at what cost?

And for whose benefit?

~

Revaluing ourselves and re-evaluating our lives.

When we aren’t taught the value of our time, we fill every moment with activity, leaving no space for rest, reflection, or simply being. We say yes to every request and obligation, forgetting that each 'yes' to others frequently means saying 'no' to ourselves and our true desires/longings.

When we don’t recognise the true value of our bodies, we ignore signs of fatigue, stress, and illness. We treat our bodies like machines and push them to breaking point. We disconnect from our intuition, forget our deeper wisdom, lose our confidence.

And when we undervalue our labour (our gifts/skills/life-force) we give away our energy indiscriminately. We overdeliver at work, take on unpaid emotional labour in relationships, and exhaust ourselves trying to meet impossible standards of perfection in every area of our lives.

The result?

We end up depleted, resentful, and disconnected from our true essence.

We lose touch with who we are: our own needs, our genuine desires, and how we want our lives to feel.

And our contribution is less impactful, less inspired, less sustainable.

Your time is precious.
Your body is a miracle.
Your labour is a sacred offering.

Recognising this isn't selfish.
It's an honouring of the true nature of your existence.

~

Softer, more sacred living: re-weaving the world.

At the heart of my work is this vision: That as women we reclaim the sacredness of our time, our bodies, and our labour, and in doing so we reshape this toxic system by modelling a more sacred way of being in the world; together re-imagining and reweaving a new culture that’s rooted in a deep reverence for the sacredness of every human life.

The reweaving begins in the mundane, ordinariness of our everyday lives...

I imagine a world where you embrace each day as a precious, unrepeatable gift. Where you approach your time with reverence, savouring the moments of your day and discerning over your diary commitments. In this world, you prioritise only what truly matters, your relationships deepen, and your life becomes a rich tapestry of meaningful experience. You’re unhurried, leisurely, imbued with ease and spaciousness.

I imagine you inhabiting your body with pleasure. You feel deeply rooted within yourself, relaxed. You honour your body’s innate wisdom, celebrating the legacies of strength and artistry passed down through your bloodlines. You listen attentively to your body's whispers, responding with attunement and care. You trust its signals and enjoy its possibilities.

I envision you doing your work - whether it's in an office, a studio, or your home - as a sacred offering to the world. Your efforts, big and small, are infused with purpose and passion. Creating becomes an act of love, caring for loved ones is a profound expression of connection, and contributing to your community is a source of deep fulfilment. In this vision, you know your worth, and what you bring to the collective. The value of your labour extends far beyond the financial, enriching your life and the lives of those around you.

In reclaiming the sacredness of our lives, we step into a more vibrant, connected, and purposeful way of being. We become fully present, deeply embodied, and meaningfully engaged in the world around us.

This is the path to a life lived with intention, joy, and a profound sense of peace.

It is also the basis from which we step into our truest expression of our gifts, embody our most inspired artistry, and become the most impactful leaders.

It’s how we’ll re-weave culture and re-shape the very systems that harm us, so that they recognise the worthiness of all lives.

We have to live our own way into it from the inside out.

One step at a time, remembering … we have feet!

Be beautiful on the way to the answer. That is the answer.
~ Martin Prechtel

~

Blessing the Body
~ Jan Richardson

This blessing takes

one look at you

and all it can say is

holy.

Holy hands.

Holy face.

Holy feet.

Holy everything

in between.

Holy even in pain.

Holy even when weary.

In brokenness, holy.

In shame, holy still.

Holy in delight.

Holy in distress.

Holy when being born.

Holy when we lay it down

at the hour of our death.

So, friend,

open your eyes

(holy eyes).

For one moment

see what this blessing sees,

this blessing that knows

how you have been formed

and knit together

in wonder and

in love.

Welcome this blessing

that folds its hands

in prayer

when it meets you;

receive this blessing

that wants to kneel

in reverence

before you:

you who are

temple,

sanctuary,

home for God

in this world.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

• The Myth of 'There': Why Future-Living Steals Our Joy

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Understanding the Highly Sensitive Person's Inner Conflict: The Rebel, The Good Girl, and The Sensitive Soul

Growing up, I always felt like a rebel trapped inside a good girl's body.

On one side, there was my bullish, rebel father’s lineage, and on the other, my cautious, rule-following mum’s ancestry.

In me, this created an internal landscape that was equal parts "let’s burn it all down" and "dear society, if it's not too much trouble, sorry for the inconvenience. xoxo".

I had such strong feelings, opinions, and ideals - alongside incredible fears of breaking rules, speaking up, or being visible rocking the boat.

Often, it felt like the rebel was trapped, caged, and corseted by the good girl.

And the good girl? She spent most of her time stressed out and anxious due to my near-constant need to do things differently and follow my own path.

What I’ve discovered working with thousands of women, is that this internal struggle is super common, especially among those of us who are ‘highly sensitive, deep feelers’. We feel torn between our drive to make a big impact in the world and our need for gentleness and sustainability.

The Gift of Sensitivity: Discovering Your Hidden Superpower as a Deep Feeling, Highly Sensitive Woman.

For years, I thought my sensitivity was part of my 'good girl' persona - something to be overcome, a weakness in a world that values thick skin and unshakeable confidence.

Growing up I heard repeatedly:

• "Don't be so sensitive"

• "Don't let them get to you so much"

• "You need to grow a thicker skin"

But here's a revolutionary thought:

What if our sensitivity is the very reason we're so rebellious in the first place?

From Sun Allergy to Self-Discovery: My Journey with Big Feelings and High Sensitivity.

I've been highly sensitive my whole life - and I mean that quite literally.

For the first eight years of my life, I was allergic to the sun. THE SUN.

Imagine being a child who can't go outside to play without breaking out in hives.

It was as if the world itself was too much for my sensitive body to handle.

I’m a permeable being, I’m acutely aware of everything around me. The world touches me, and it does so deeply. I feel things so strongly in response:

• My emotions are high definition, technicolour.

• Love, delight, pleasure, grief, anger, sweet brushes of shyness - I experience them all very intensely.

• I'm devastated and heartbroken every day by the injustices of this world.

• I viscerally feel time slipping through my fingers constantly.

• I fall in love with life more deeply each day.

• I'm acutely aware of my impact on other people, my own inadequacies, alongside startling glimpses of brilliance.

I'm equally in awe and terrified by all of it - by life itself, as it lives through me.

It is so full on.

Unlikely Allies: How Your Sensitivity Fuels Your Inner Rebel

After a long journey of fighting my sensitivity, this is what I’ve come to know: our sensitivity and our inner rebels are actually on the same team.

And that 'good girl' part? She is a smart, protective response to a culture that told us our sensitivity was a problem to be solved, rather than a strength to be harnessed.

As I've grown and reflected on my experiences, I've come to realise that my sensitivity:

• Fuelled my passion for justice and led to a great career in Human Rights.

• Helps me see through the charades of societal norms and the corridors of power.

• Acts as my internal compass for truth and beauty.

• Serves as a finely-tuned BS radar.

• Guides me away from toxic environments and towards healthier ways of living and working.

• Is the reason I get such great results with the women I work with.

5 Ways Sensitivity Makes You a Natural Rebel and Changemaker

Our sensitivity makes us rebels because:

1. It makes us acutely aware of what's wrong in the world, in an organisation, in a conversation.

2. It compels us to seek change and challenge the status quo.

3. It refuses to be numbed or controlled by societal expectations.

4. It pushes us to create new, healthier ways of living and working.

5. It enables us to empathise deeply, compelling us to make a positive impact.

My sensitivity is the reason I cannot work in unhealthy environments. It's why I've had to carve out my own path in life and business, shaping a different way of doing things than the boss babe/hustle culture I inherited.

My body is rebellious in her sensitivity, and she will not cooperate with toxic norms. She gets sick and burned out. She says No.

My body refuses to be shut down, and will not be brought under the power of the 'rational' mind or my intellect. She is uncontrollable. Wild and rebellious by nature.

Thank goodness, because she's always showing me the healthiest, most nourishing, most beautiful way to go next.

When I am wise enough … I listen and follow her.

Integrating the Rebel, the Good Girl, and the Sensitive Soul

So how do we bring all these parts of ourselves together for the bold, balanced success we desire?

Here are some strategies I've developed through my work:

1. Embrace your sensitivity: Recognise it as a strength, not a weakness. It's your internal guidance system. For me, this has meant stopping the internal war against my sensitive nature and starting to see it as the gift it is.

2. Channel your rebel: Use the passion and vision of your rebel self, guided by your sensitivity, to create positive change. My rebel spirit, fuelled by my sensitivity, led me to challenge norms in my Human Rights career and later in how I approach business. It helps me speak up when something isn’t congruent or just.

3. Redefine your 'good girl': Instead of seeing her as a restrictive force, view her as the part of you that cares deeply and wants to contribute positively to your life and the world. My 'good girl' isn't about people-pleasing anymore; she's about creating structures that support my sensitive rebel nature, and she helps me stay in connection even when I’m being disruptive or making waves.

4. Listen to your body: Your body is a source of great wisdom, and often knows what's best. My body's reactions have become my most trusted advisor. Learning to listen and understand what your body is communicating is invaluable and is a key skill to becoming a great change-making woman.

5. Create boundaries: Use your sensitivity to identify what doesn't serve you. Your rebel’s courage can help you say no to those things, and your ‘good girl’ can help you navigate it without burning bridges. This has been crucial in shaping my business and personal life in a way that honours all parts of me.

6. Seek alignment: Look for ways to live and work that feel true to all parts of yourself. This will likely mean carving your own path rather than following conventional routes to success. I believe this is what us sensitive rebels are here to do, steward in new ways of living and working.

The Highly Sensitive Rebel: Your Path to Soft Success

As we've explored the power of embracing your sensitivity and rebellious nature, you might be wondering how this fits into the bigger picture of your life and career. This is where my concept of "A Softer Success" comes in - a core principle in my work with ambitious women (I’ve written more about this here).

Soft Success is about achieving your big goals and making a significant impact on the world, all while living a life that feels spacious, satisfying, and sustainable.

It's the antidote to the burnout culture that tells us we need to hustle 24/7 to be successful.

As a Highly Sensitive Rebel, you're uniquely positioned to embody Soft Success.

Here's why:

1. Your sensitivity gives you deep insight and empathy, allowing you to lead and innovate in more humane, sustainable ways.

2. Your rebellious spirit empowers you to challenge toxic norms and create new, healthier ways of achieving success.

3. Your ability to feel deeply connects you to what truly matters, helping you set goals that align with your authentic self.

The Softer Success Revolution: Creating a New Path to Fulfilment

When we integrate our sensitivity, our rebelliousness, and our desire to do good, we become a powerful force for change. We create success that's not just bold, but also balanced and deeply fulfilling.

This integration allows us to:

• Achieve our ambitions without burning out

• Make a positive impact while staying true to ourselves

• Find joy and ease in the process of creating change and hitting big goals

• Redefine success on our own terms

Embracing Your Highly Sensitive Rebel: Why the World Needs Your Unique Perspective

I believe sensitive souls like us are the canaries in the coal mine of our culture. We're the ones who know in our bones that we cannot continue as we are.

We feel deeply that something isn't right in how we're living, and we understand the consequences ahead if it doesn’t change.

We're inconvenient in our refusal not to feel, non-conformist in our non-numbed nature. And that's exactly what the world needs right now.

Your sensitivity isn't a liability – it's a superpower. It will allow you to lead with both strength and empathy, to set ambitious goals and approach them with gentleness and intuition.

So here's to embracing all parts of ourselves - the sensitive, the rebellious, and the caring. Here's to refusing to be boxed in by societal expectations. Here's to creating a world that values depth of feeling, that sees sensitivity as strength, and that allows us to be fully, unapologetically ourselves.

How very un-goodgirl-like of us. And how absolutely necessary.

~~~~~

If you're ready to embrace your Highly Sensitive Rebel and create a life of Softer Success, I'm here to guide you. Whether through one-on-one coaching or my group programmes (check them out here), we can work together to harness your sensitivity and rebellious spirit, in service of achieving the ambitious, balanced success you desire.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

The Rebel and The Good Girl

Hey there visionary changemaker.

Yes, that’s you - the one with big dreams involving shaking up the status quo, whether that involves healing lineages, creating art that moves people, or building a business that transforms culture.

I know the tug-of-war you've probably got going on inside you. 

I know because it's one of the key dynamics I have to work with inside myself.

It’s a battle playing out in the psyche of SO many women I work with and one I’ve spent years investigating: between the inner rebel and the inner good girl.

Understanding the Rebel: The Bold, Ambitious Visionary

If you're a woman with a change-making vision, you have a strong inner rebel. 

She's the one who wants to rip up the rulebook, follow her passion, speak truth to power (and probably eat dessert for breakfast). She whispers, "Why not?" and "What if...?" She's the creative firestarter, the risk-taker, and she has zero respect (read: active disdain) for your colour-coded google calendar.

Meet Your Good Girl: The Disciplined Strategist

Enter your inner good girl. Bless her overachieving heart, she's trying so hard. She's the one who makes sure you get to meetings on time, remembers your mum's birthday, and feels guilty for not finishing that book on your nightstand. She's responsible, she's reliable, and she really wishes the rebel would just fall in line and do as she’s told for once.

Sound familiar?

Why You Need Both: The Power of Integration

Both are essential, especially for changemaking, cycle-breaking, culture-shaping women like us.

But when they're not working together, it's internal chaos. 

Cue indecision, frustration, and missed opportunities. If left unchecked, this disharmony can seriously stall your progress and make life downright hard and unpleasant. Ask me how I know.

Signs You're Out of Balance

The conflict between your rebel and your good girl plays out in some pretty familiar ways:

Procrastination: Your rebel resists starting, even on the projects you're excited about - because as soon as they’re on a to-do list they suddenly feel like chores. Meanwhile, your good girl frets over deadlines and adds pressure. The result? You find yourself re-organising your sock drawer instead of changing the world. (Been there, colour-coded that!)

Avoidance: Your rebel wants to speak up and share your bold idea in an important meeting, but your good girl fears rocking the boat or being judged. You end up staying quiet and missing the opportunity.

Burnout: Your good girl forces you to meet every deadline, attend every PTA meeting, and please everyone humanly possible. Meanwhile, your rebel's dying for space to just be, to imagine, to play. The result? You're exhausted, but still feeling the pressure to "keep going."

Imposter Syndrome: Your good girl whispers, "Who are you to lead this project? You'll be exposed as a fraud." Your rebel wants to take charge and do it differently, but doubt creeps in. You end up playing it safe, sticking to familiar territory, and dimming your brilliance.

Resistance to Structure: Your rebel is so sick of external influences that she resists feedback or frameworks that would make your work shine. Your good girl clings to outdated familiar systems, afraid of letting go into the unknown.

It's a stalemate and the internal conflict feels like constantly hitting the accelerator and brake at the same time.

The Cultural Context: Navigating Societal Expectations

At this point, it's important to acknowledge that this internal struggle doesn't happen in a vacuum. As women, we're often caught between societal expectations to be "good" (read: compliant, agreeable, perfect) and the deep-seated desire to challenge norms and express our authentic selves.

This tension is amplified for women in leadership roles, creatives, and entrepreneurs. We're told to "lean in" and be assertive, but not too much or we’re labelled difficult or bossy. To be innovative, but not rock the boat too much. To shine but not out-shine others. It's no wonder our inner rebel and good girl are constantly at odds!

Understanding this cultural context can help us be more compassionate with ourselves as we navigate this integration process. It's not just a personal journey - it's part of a larger shift in how women show up in the world.

The key is learning to turn this tension into a power partnership.

The Demonisation Dilemma: Why Vilifying Either Side Doesn't Work

Without a sense of the bigger picture at play, it's easy to pick sides in this internal battle. We often see our good girl as the limitation police, enforcing outdated rules, stifling our creativity, and nagging us to eat more vegetables.

On the flip side, we might demonise our inner rebel as chaotic and irresponsible, a threat to all we've worked so hard for - the one who'd have us sell our stuff and join a circus. (Just me?)

But in truth we need both.

You can't make a world-shifting change without a bit of structure and discipline, and you can't make an impact while suppressing your creative fire and ‘crazy’ wisdom.

Finding Balance: Integration, Not Suppression

So if demonising the rebel leaves us stagnant and suppressing the good girl leads to chaos, what's the solution?

Integration. (Cue the confetti cannons!)

Your inner rebel and good girl, when working in harmony, form an unbeatable team.

The rebel brings creativity, vision, and the courage to challenge the status quo. She's the one who dares to dream big, to imagine a world different from the one she sees.

Your good girl, on the other hand, offers reliablity, sensitivity to others, and a deep understanding of how systems work. She knows that sometimes, to change the rules, you need to appear to be following them. She's the master of working within the system to transform it, knowing when to blend in, in order to stand out.

Together, they're a force to be reckoned with: the rebel's innovative ideas are given structure and form by the good girl's practical skills, while the good girl's considered nature is infused with the rebel's passion, daring and creativity.

This power couple can navigate the complexities of change-making with both audacity and savvy, pushing boundaries while building bridges.

They allow you to be both the visionary and the strategist, the dreamer and the doer, creating change that is both radical and sustainable.

When these two work together, it's not a compromise - it's a revolution.

A Real-life Case Study

Mia, a former marketing exec, ditched corporate life to pursue her passion for holistic nutrition. But after retraining, she found herself paralysed. Her rebel, once so eager for change, now balked at business-building tasks. Her good girl responded by imposing rigid structures, leading to more resistance.

"I felt like I was back in the corporate world, just without the paycheck," Mia said. "I began to wonder if I'd made a huge mistake."

Here's how I helped Mia transformed her business from drudgery to play by aligning the two parts of her behind one shared mission:

1. Reframed "Work": Shifted from "serious tasks" to "creative play with purpose."

2. Embraced Experimentation: Approached each task as a fun experiment rather than a do-or-die mission.

3. Introduced "Productive Play": Set 30-minute timers for energising, fun work sprints.

4. Gamified Tasks: Created competitive games with rewards for milestones.

5. Aligned Passion with Structure: Replaced rigid to-dos with "passion projects."

6. Got Collaborative: Connected with like-minded women and found a playful accountability partner.

The result? "I wake up excited to 'play' with my business," Mia shared. "And I'm actually getting more done than when I was trying to force myself to work."

"My rebel and my good girl aren't fighting anymore," Mia reflected. "They're collaborating. My rebel comes up with wild, creative ideas, and my good girl helps me turn them into reality."

Your Turn: Embracing Your Whole, Messy, Beautiful Self

If you're reading this and thinking, "Oh my god, that's me," - welcome to the club! We meet on Tuesdays and there's cake. (Just kidding, there's no meeting. The cake part is true though. Always.)

Here's a simple exercise to start integrating your rebel and good girl:

1. Get two sheets of paper. Label one "Rebel" and the other "Good Girl."

2. Think of a current challenge or decision you're facing.

3. Write a letter from your rebel to your good girl about this situation on the "Rebel" sheet. Let her express her desires, fears, and ideas freely, as you do so notice how she feels in your body. You might even get up and move as she speaks through you.

4. Now, switch to the "Good Girl" sheet and respond as your good girl. What are her concerns? What solutions does she see? What does she need? Again feel her in your body.

5. Continue this dialogue, alternating between the two, for at least 10 minutes.

6. Finally, on a new sheet, write a response from your whole self, integrating insights from both sides.

This exercise can bring clarity and often reveals surprising solutions that honour both aspects of yourself.

Final thoughts 

Here's what I want you to know: that tension you feel between your rebel and your good girl? It's not a flaw. It's not something to be fixed. Inside that creative tension lives your genius.

My hope is that you embrace it all: the structure and the spontaneity. The responsibility and the wildness. The plan and the plot twist. 

Because when we do, we step into the role of Sacred Troublemaker. And the world needs our unique blend of rebellion and responsibility.

Let's go shake things up - powerfully, wholeheartedly and sustainably.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: A Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Have you ever felt seen in a way that made you relax into your body, breathe a little deeper, soften the shame and believe in yourself a little more fully? That's the power of being recognised for your primordial purity - a concept that's revolutionised my life, and my approach to leadership and coaching.

I believe it could transform the way you see yourself and your potential too.

During my teens and twenties, I raged against the injustices of the world, and the constraints our modern culture places on women. I was angry and rebellious.

At the same time I was exhausted from the internalised effects of female conditioning: from always working so hard to prove my worth, constantly striving to be ‘better' in every aspect of my life, stuck unconsciously trying to make amends for not being 'good enough’.

I hit a crossroads: continue down the path of burnout or find a radically different way of being.

That's when I embarked on a journey which eventually led me to ask for ordination as a Buddhist.

What changed (and probably saved) my life was the Buddhist concept of primordial purity.

The Struggle: The Myth of Not Being Enough

Our culture teaches women that we're never enough - not productive enough, not successful enough, not thin enough, not good enough.

We seep in this belief so deeply that we end up:

• Overworking and burning out attempting to prove our worth

• Struggling with imposter syndrome, even when we're highly capable

• Giving away our time and energy, and neglecting our own needs

• Feeling stuck and paralysed with self-doubt.

I would feel constantly inadequate, and thought that if I just worked harder, achieved more, or became 'better', I'd finally feel worthy.

This is how women end up on the hamster wheel of self-improvement.

The Solution: Embracing Your Primordial Purity as a Path to Self-Confidence

But here's a radical idea: what if, at your core, you're already whole, worthy, and brilliantly capable?

This is a fundamental truth recognised in Buddhist philosophy and at the heart of my life and coaching approach.

Primordial purity suggests that beneath the layers of conditioning, trauma, history, doubt, fear, and limiting beliefs, there's an essence of goodness and potential within you.

It's not something you need to achieve or earn - it's already there, waiting to be uncovered, rested into and lived from.

For me, this realisation was the beginning of my liberation.

It meant I could stop trying to always fix or improve myself and instead focus on relaxing into and revealing my true nature.

It allowed me to pursue my ambitions from a place of wholeness rather than lack.

The Power of Being Truly Seen

But, just for the record: I don’t dwell here in some kind of constantly serene, enlightened state. I forget daily, hourly! I slip into old stories of unworthiness and shame all the time and it’s a constant practise to remember what I truly am beneath all the layers of conditioning the world has piled on top of me.

I am most often brought back into contact with my true nature through good friendship and contact with wise elders, who relate to me on the basis of my purity and potential, rather than my habits and fears.

When you're seen through the lens of your primordial purity, something profound happens. You begin to relax into a deeper sense of self-acceptance, self-love, even radical self-delight.

And from this place, real transformation becomes possible.

In my work with clients, I've seen time and time again how this perspective allows women to:

• Let go of shame, and old outdated limiting stories

• Take back their time and prioritise what truly matters

• Make decisions from a place of self-trust rather than external validation

• Pursue their ambitions with both drive and softness

• Bounce back from setbacks with deep-rooted resilience

• Express themselves more authentically in work and life

Practical Steps: Living from Your Innate Wholeness

Ready to start embracing your own primordial purity? Here are some steps to begin:

1. Practice self-compassion: I know it’s cliched but it really is the foundation - treat yourself with the kindness you'd offer a dear friend.

2. Celebrate your whole self: Acknowledge both your strengths and vulnerabilities as integral parts of your journey. Welcome all of yourself into your experience.

3. Create space for stillness and rest: Regular meditation, reflection and true rest can help you connect with your innate wholeness. Capitalism tells us that we are only worthy when we are ‘doing’ or being productive, but you are worthy because you are here, embodied, alive. There is nothing that needs proving. See if you can find moments to pause, and to let yourself just be. Drop the self-improvement project and rest into who you are. This can be so challenging because it’s so counter cultural, but you have a right to be!

Your Invitation to Radical Self-Delight

Embracing your primordial purity is a journey - one that can lead to a profound shift in how you experience life and pursue your ambitions.

It's about peeling back the layers that were never yours, to reveal the radiant, capable person you've always been at your core.

I believe that when women rest into who they truly are, they resource a revolution. They ARE a revolution.

By connecting with your innate worthiness, you're not just transforming your own life - you're contributing to a cultural shift towards a more equitable, just and kind world.

Your Assignment: Take a moment to write a letter to yourself from the perspective of your primordial purity. What would that wise, compassionate part of you say about your struggles, your dreams, your worthiness?

I'd love to hear your reflections. How does the concept of primordial purity resonate with you? What shifts do you notice when you view yourself through this lens?

If you're feeling called to explore this perspective more deeply, I'd be honoured to support you. My coaching programs are designed to help you connect with your innate wholeness and create a life of time richness and meaningful impact from this place of deep self-delight.

Together, we can work on slowing things down while shaking things up, allowing you to pursue your ambitions in a way that feels sustainable and nourishing.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• My Big Why

• Redefining Success for Ambitious Women: Beyond the Burnout Cycle

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

We live in a world that celebrates constant hustle and unrelenting drive.

And as so many of us have found out the hard way, this idea that we can be always 'on' - striving, hustling, going for our dreams at 110% - is just not sustainable.

We’ve been there, it nearly broke us (maybe more than once).

If you’re here, you’re likely looking for another way.

A way to honour both your wild ambitions and your need for softness and rest.

Let me introduce you to cyclical ambition - an approach that's transformed my life and work, and might just be the game-changing reframe you've been looking for.

— In this article —

• Understanding Cyclical Ambition: A New Paradigm

• The Magic of Embracing Your Natural Rhythms

• Practical Steps to Implement Cyclical Ambition

• Overcoming Challenges and Guilt

• Your Invitation to a Softer, More Sustainable Success

Understanding Cyclical Ambition: Finding Balance and Wellbeing

Cyclical ambition is about riding the natural waves of your energy, inspiration and motivation, rather than trying to force yourself to be constantly 'on'.

It's recognising that, just like the seasons or phases of the moon, we too have natural cycles of productivity and rest, inspiration and disillusionment, engagement and withdrawal.

• It's not about lowering your goals, but about achieving them in a way that feels good.

• It honours both your drive and vision, and your need for softness and space.

• It's sustainable, allowing you to play the long game in your career and life.

I discovered this approach through my own experience, at a point when I was feeling pretty rotten and self-critical about my undulating energy rhythms, beating myself up for what coaches told me was ‘inconsistency’, tired of feeling like I was failing because I wasn’t growing/expanding at the time.

I was in a season of deep rest following a very successful year in business and I was feeling torn between knowing that spaciousness and quiet was exactly what I needed and guilty for not keeping up last year’s momentum.

Then I realised, I’m cyclically ambitious!!

I have big visions, I work towards them, achieve them, then I’m done for a while.

At that point I’m in need of unstructured time, low-commitments, rest and play. At that point I’m ambitious about how much softness I can create.

Then my desire to contribute begins to call me again, the next goal takes shape and my energy (fully restored) lines up behind it.

The Magic of Embracing Your Natural Rhythms

When we start to work with our natural cycles of energy, inspiration and engagement, instead of against them, amazing things happen.

In my own life and in my work with clients, I've seen:

1. Increased creativity and innovation during rest phases

2. Higher quality work and deeper focus during active phases

3. Improved overall wellbeing and reduced episodes of burnout

4. Greater resilience in the face of challenges

5. A growing self-trust and a relaxation into their unique journey

Remember that woman who felt she couldn't possibly take a break from her work or business? When she finally allowed herself to embrace cyclical ambition, she not only avoided burnout but came back with her most innovative ideas yet.

Practical Steps to Implement Cyclical Ambition

1. Get to know your rhythms: Start by observing when you naturally feel energised and when you need rest. You’ll discover daily, weekly and seasonal patterns, all are perfectly yours!

2. Plan around your cycles: Let go of the idea that you need to be consistently ambitious to be successful and learn to ride the waves. All of our inner seasons are equally valuable, none are wrong.

3. Embrace the intensity: When you're in a high-energy, engaged phase, give yourself permission to be ambitious and driven.

4. Honour rest: Equally important is respecting your need for rest and integration. This isn't about stopping completely, but shifting to softer, more nurturing activities.

Overcoming the Struggles of Challenges and Guilt

Adopting this approach isn't always easy. Often women I work with feel guilty during rest phases, and worry they’re falling behind.

Here's what helps me:

• I really want to challenge the idea that we rest in order to be more productive, rest is to be enjoyed for its own sake, it has its own magic. And it’s essential for creativity, quality of life and long-term sustainable success.

• Your timeline is your own, there is no milestone you’re supposed to have hit by now or goal you’re behind on. Everything in nature unfurls according to its own sweet timing - and you are no different.

• By riding the waves of our rhythms we avoid the boom and bust cycles of over-work and collapse. Trust the process. By working with your natural rhythms, you'll ultimately achieve more in the long-term and live more deliciously than if you force yourself to constantly be high-performing.

Your Invitation to a Softer, More Sustainable Success

Your Assignment: Take a moment to reflect on your natural cycles. When do you feel most energised and inspired? When do you need rest and withdrawal? How could you start aligning your work with these rhythms?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Embracing cyclical ambition doesn't mean lowering your goals or diminishing your drive. Rather, it's about working and living smarter, not harder.

By aligning your ambitious visions with your natural rhythms, you create your own blueprint for sustainable success.

Your ambitions are too important to be derailed by burnout.

By embracing a cyclical approach, you're ensuring that you have the energy, creativity, and resilience to pursue your dreams for the long haul.

Here's to riding the waves of your ambition, sustainably and joyfully.

Have you experienced the benefits of cyclical ambition? What challenges do you face in embracing this approach?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

All my life, I've been on a quest to find a version of success that feels softer - a path where my ambition and desire for impact can coexist with the gentle richness of a well-lived life.

As someone with a Type A personality, I'm naturally driven. I want to achieve big things, contribute my talents to a more beautiful world, and help re-weave the fabric of our society into something more humane and just.

But I live inside a highly sensitive person’s body and need a lot of stillness and space in my life in order to actually be present for this fleeting human experience and to savour the precious moments of connection which for me make life worth living.

In our culture, we're often presented with a false choice: you can be successful, or you can have a soft life, but not both. One must be sacrificed for the other.

This idea is not just limiting - it's a form of violence against the feminine.

And I’m devoted to challenging this notion, finding a new way and redefining success so that it honours both our ambitions and our need for softness.

— In this article —

• The Problem: The Masculine Model of Success

• The Solution: Redefining Success Through Softness

• The Power of Soft Outcomes

• Practical Steps: Embracing Softness in Your Journey to Success

• Your Invitation to a Softer Success

The Problem: The Masculine Model of Success

Our culture typically defines success through a very masculine, yang energy lens. It's all about hustling, grinding, and stretching ourselves to the limit for external outcomes and validation. This version of success has left many of us, especially women, burned out, depleted and disillusioned.

• The pandemic, the Great Resignation, and the rise of 'quiet quitting' have made it clear that this relentless pursuit of more is not the source of meaning and fulfillment we were promised.

• There's a growing longing for a softer life - a life that is spacious, with unstructured time, lived at a more leisurely pace which allows for real meaning, depth and connection.

• But if women feel forced to choose between ambition and this kind of softness, it's a profound loss - not just for us, but for the world.

The Solution: Redefining Success Through Softness

I see this as a time to redefine success - not just for society, but within our own bodies, families, communities, and broader culture. We are being called to reweave pathways of success that honour both ambition and softness.

Embracing Soft Outcomes

In my past career as a social worker, I often worked with what we called "soft outcomes." These were the unquantifiable yet profoundly meaningful achievements:

• A woman who had suffered domestic violence feeling safe enough to walk home alone at night

• Teenage boys learning to cook for themselves

• Increased connection between old people and young folks in a neighbourhood.

These soft outcomes are what make life worth living. They are the moments that bring richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives, even if they can't be easily measured, quantified, monetised.

I think about this a lot in my own life and business, I don’t want to abandon my change-making ambitions but I also want to live for the soft outcomes along the way. And in the end, are they even separate?

As we uncover a softer way towards success, we are re-weaving culture, embodying a new way, creating the world we wish to see - moment by moment.

The Power of Feminine Leadership

Softness and success are not separate.

In fact, ‘soft’ skills - empathy, compassion, vulnerability, sensitivity - are what make leaders truly great. Women excel at this type of leadership, yet it's the very thing we’re often shamed for.

But this softness is our power in the world.

I see over and over again in my work that from softness comes power, and from softness comes success.

The Power of Soft Outcomes

When we embrace softness, when we soften, magic happens.

In my work with women, I've seen this time and time again:

1. Softness unlocks potential: When a woman enters a session feeling defeated and overwhelmed by self-criticism, it's softness that unlocks her next step.

2. Kindness melts barriers: When we meet harsh, driving forces with kindness, the hardness melts away, revealing a path forward that feels aligned, possible, exciting.

3. Sustainable success: Softness leads to an unfurling - a gentle and sustainable expansion of a woman's potential and capacity to hold success, impact and visibility. Grounded in gentleness, compassion, and love, a woman becomes unstoppable.

Practical Steps: Embracing Softness in Your Journey to Success

Here are some ways to incorporate softness into your pursuit of success:

• Redefine your metrics: What are the soft outcomes you want in your life? What do you want your life to look and feel like day-to-day? Today - not when you hit the next milestone, promotion or income goal, but today.

• Allow yourself moments of softening. You’re doing great. Take a moment to pause and rest, take a breath, feel the support of the chair behind you. Let yourself give 5% less effort.

• Seek kindness: Surround yourself with mentors, practices, and friends who hold you in a container of kindness and softness. Who’s company allows you to breath easier, where do you feel able to be more yourself?

• Meet challenges with love: Life has enough challenges without us adding to them through harshness and self-hatred. Resource yourself with kindness to meet life's inevitable challenges.

Your Invitation to a Softer Success

It's time to embrace the power of softness in your journey to success. This doesn't mean avoiding challenges or growth, but about resourcing ourselves with the softness and kindness we need to meet life's inevitable challenges with resilience and grace.

Your Assignment: Take a moment to reflect on your definition of success. How can you incorporate more softness into that vision? What would your life look like if you allowed yourself to be both ambitious and soft?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. How do you balance ambition and softness in your own life? What challenges do you face in embracing a softer approach to success?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: a Softer Path to Success

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Events coming up - I regularly host free online conversations and workshops - check this page to see what’s coming up.

• Work with me - explore my courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Over the years I’ve worked with thousands of soul-led, visionary women - across the fields of leadership, entrepreneurship, the healing and creative arts.

And I've noticed a recurring theme.

Often, these gorgeous, change-making women come to me stuck with a seemingly irreconcilable tension: torn between their desire to follow their calling, express their creativity and contribute boldly to the world - and the longing for a more leisurely pace, spaciousness in their days, and a greater presence in life.

They seem to be able to nail one of these, but not both.

One always seems to come at the expense of the other.

Ambitious Women's Struggle

From my experience, ambitious women often fall into one of two categories and often yo-yo between the two:

1. The Overextended High-Achiever: These women are doing incredible, culture-changing work. They're making waves, leading initiatives, and creating beautiful things. But beneath the surface, they're struggling. Their lives feel unsustainable, marked by overcommitment and overworking - they teeter on the edge of (their next) burnout. They chase the next milestone, believing it will finally bring the peace and relaxation they crave, but that moment never seems to arrive. Despite being ambitions, they can’t imagine being bolder with their dreams, how would more be possible when they feel like they’re barely keeping up or catching their breath each day?

2. The Hesitant Rebuilder: These women have experienced burnout and its far-reaching consequences, and have taken many steps to heal. They've created gentler, calmer lives and found a semblance of ‘balance’. But now, they feel a familiar pull – a new ambition, a bolder dream calling to them. As they start to envision this next chapter, fear sets in. They worry about falling back into old patterns of overwork, self-sacrifice and depletion. The fear shows up each day as procrastination, ‘self-sabotage’ or imposter syndrome, and they blame themselves for it!

If either of these scenarios resonate with you, you're not alone.

I’ve been through this loop countless times and so have most of my clients.

It’s not you!!

The Inherited Model of Success

As I've delved deeper into this issue, I've come to realise that much of this struggle stems from the models of success we inherit. Designed by and for men, it prioritises linear growth, constant hustle, and external achievement at all costs.

It's a model that wasn't created with women's wellbeing or flourishing in mind, and it keeps us working so much harder than we need to!

A New Paradigm: Success without Sacrifice

But what if ambition and success didn't have to come at the cost of our wellbeing?

What if we could contribute our gifts to the world while also feeling deeply nourished and supported?

What if we found a way to live and lead that was regenerative - for ourselves and the collective?

I believe this is possible. In fact, I've seen it happen – in my own life and in the lives of the women I work with.

What it requires is a fundamental shift in how we envision success, how we relate to our work and ultimately, our relationship with ourselves.

The Path Forward: Self-Worth as the Foundation

I believe the key to this new paradigm is not found in productivity hacks or time management strategies but rather in a radical reassessment of our own worth.

So often, incredibly talented women come to me overworking and over-functioning. Underneath all the hard work and effort, we usually uncover a deep-seated, unconscious belief that they’re not enough just as they are.

It’s a view most of us women absorb from our culture - which teaches us that we need to always be improving ourselves, proving our value, and demonstrating our worth through constant high-performance across all areas of life.

It’s exhausting. And I call BS.

We must start from a different premise.

What if we sank into a deeply rooted sense of our inherent worthiness, just as we are?

What if we knew in our bones that we were exquisitely valuable?

This isn't about just self-acceptance. That’s a great place to begin, but to me self-acceptance so often still feels like “I’m not okay as I am, but I’ll accept that”.

I’m always guiding my clients towards a much more profound sense of self-delight.

I want us all to deeply know and savour our own deliciousness, our wonderful imperfectness, our quirky majesty!

Because when we can begin to embody this kind of full bodied self-delight, we can begin to explore what we truly want to contribute to the world.

No longer from a place of needing to prove ourselves, or justify our existence -but from a place of authentic self-expression.

And this is where the most potent expression, powerful creativity and easeful impact comes from.

Uncovering Your Unique Blueprint

When we root into this place in ourselves, we begin to uncover our unique blueprint for success. This blueprint isn't about fitting into external expectations or following a prescribed path. It's about discovering how you, specifically, can share your gifts in a way that feels regenerative and life-giving.

This often looks like:

• Redefining what success means to you and what it feels like daily

• Discovering your avenues of genius so ‘productivity’ becomes a fun flow

• Embracing your unique cycles of rest and action

• Prioritising pleasure and joy in your work

• Setting boundaries that honour your needs and energy

The Ripple Effect

I see it all the time in my work, when a woman begins to operate from this place of self-worth and soul-alignment, her impact grows - within her family, her community, her work and the world.

Not because she's pushing harder, but because she's creating from a place of deep resource, peace, authenticity and enjoyment.

For me, this is what success feels like.

An Invitation to Reflect

I’m curious, what’s your relationship with success?

How much of your current approach is based on inherited models that may not serve you?

What would change if you truly believed you were already worthy?

How might your work and life look different if you prioritised joy and pleasure alongside achievement?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embracing Cyclical Ambition: a Softer Path to Success

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Why I do what I do

Honestly, when I look around and I see the state of the world, the mess of our politics, the impact of toxic capitalism on the quality of our lives and relationships, I always think “the reason we're in this mess, is because so many brilliant women’s talent, potential and healing gifts aren't being fully shared”.

I truly believe that if we're going to emerge into a new, more healthy, sane and sustainable future, it's going to be stewarded by women.

Big hearted, soulful women like you and me.

This is why I’ve dedicated myself to supporting women like you in entrepreneurship, artistry and leadership.

I see my role as resourcing a revolution, by support women to thrive as they usher in a new paradigm.

I help them build deeply nourishing lives, so that they can fully share their gifts and talents with the world - without depletion or burnout, or it costing them their health, wellbeing and relationships to do so.

The current model doesn’t work for women

Our current model of success and ambition is incredibly yang and masculine.

It doesn't work for a lot of women and it often doesn't bring our best.

I think that for a woman to really do her soul's work, to really contribute ‘the gift’ she's uniquely here to give, she needs to be deeply resourced and supported.

When I look around right now at the incredible women who are stepping up and into positions of leadership and cultural re-imagination work, too often I see women who are spread too thin - who are overextended, over-functioning and overworking.

We're often trying to emulate a version of success or ways of achieving great things that aren't of our nature.

When you're operating out of alignment with your nature, you can end up doing all the things - but you're not doing the thing - the thing that's your genius.

When you're doing the thing that's your genius, when you’re giving your gift, it's life-giving. Its regenerative, not self-extractive.

My aim with Your Right To Be is is to help women create deep, nourishing lives of rich resource, so they can do the leadership and creative work that's going to steward in a new version of society - and to do it in a way in a way that's life-giving to them - and to the collective.

Why is this so personal for me?

Over the years of self-reflection and healing, I’ve realised (like many of us) I grew up heavily influenced by “good girl” conditioning - needing to please other people, to be likeable, to not rock the boat - in order to feel safe in the world.

I learned to over-give, to prioritise other people's needs, to sacrifice my own wishes and desires. To be in auto-pilot, in service towards other people, rather than really in tune with myself.

So I spent a lot of my time growing up not really knowing who I was, shape-shifting, being all the things to all the people, but untethered from my gifts, purpose and sense of who I was.

As part of this I internalised the idea that success had to look a certain way, and that I needed to achieve particular “great things” in order to be worthy and valuable in the world.

This led to a lot of striving, a lot of insanely exhausting hard work, a lot of overextending myself to achieve what I thought was ‘success’.

So, I got great grades. I got a first class in my degree. I went on and did a master's degree. I got a great job. Built a respected and worthy career’.

There was always a feeling that when I got to the next achievement, hit the next goal … then I’d arrive, then I’d have made it, I’d be worthy. I could proclaim that I was successful, and maybe finally relax!

But no matter how much I achieved, it never quite added up - I never arrived - at the lifestyle I wanted, or the sense of fulfilment, or the meaning in life that I longed for.

It only leads to burnout

What it did add up to was a lot of burnout.

I had several periods of burnout in my twenties. The came when I was 28. It’s so vivid to me - I was sat at my desk, two coffees into the morning, and my brain just stopped functioning, it was terrifying. I walked across the road to the walk-in GP service, burst into tears and ended up needing six months off work.

I often describe myself as a Type A personality in a highly sensitive person's body.

I have so much ambition, creativity and desire to contribute, but all my life it had been hijacked and pulled out of shape, forced into a direction that I thought it had to take.

This need to prove myself and achieve traditionally recognised markers of success was in direct opposition to my soft animal body, my sensitive nature, and the seasonal, cyclical being that I am. All my life I’d been overriding this softer, more intuitive part of myself in order to achieve ambitious goals.

Goals that upon reflection, weren’t even my own!!

We need to re-evaluate

I quit that job, and began re-assessing everything.

I started wondering for the first time - what does a successful life look and feel like, day-to-day, for me?

From the inside out.

A successful life that doesn't rely on me overworking.

That doesn't rely on people-pleasing or trying to be someone or something that I'm not.

And that doesn't come from neglecting my needs.

I started asking for the first time: what do I want my life to feel like as I live it, not when I reach the next milestone or accomplishment?

In order to ask and answer these questions required untangling some of the most pervasive cultural narratives and norms, ideas that we're indoctrinated with from birth - around what success looks like, what happiness looks like, and what we should want from our lives as women.

I had to let go of so much noise, to delve into what was actually meaningful and life-giving - for me.

A huge part of my own journey of re-imagining my life has been shaped by Buddhist practice - which I discovered in my mid-twenties, along with mindfulness and embodiment.

It’s been a long journey of rediscovering who I truly am, underneath all the layers of who the world told me I needed to be. Of moving away from trying to be someone I’m not and letting go of the persona I'd created and masks I wore.

It enabled me to rediscover my own body, my own experience, and who I am when I'm not believing the lie that I need to be somehow different to be ‘successful’ in life.

It helped me to get in touch with what I truly desire, what I truly value, what really brings me to life and how I wish to live this one life of mine.

Reimagining ambition and success: without struggle and sacrifice

I'm still a very ambitious person, but the ambition (mostly) comes from a different place now.

Rather than being so externally driven or needing to achieve something to prove myself, nowadays I'm ambitious about liberating my creative expression and really offering my unique gift to the world - a gift that I alone can contribute.

The more I am in coherence with who I truly am, the more my gift shines and the easier, more satisfying and pleasurable life becomes.

If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.

As well as redefining success and ambition for myself, this is also the path I walk alongside clients in Your Right To Be.

I think I lived all of this so that I would be well prepared to support other women on their own journeys of re-imagining their own lives and ambitions.

I want all of us to be able to contribute our full selves to this world, and to the future we want to create.

Which means no long leaving any parts of ourselves out, and letting go trying to be anything we're not. It means breaking all the old rules, and creating our own.

Creating Your Right To Be

This is that path that led me to create Your Right To Be and to shape my coaching programmes.

I work with women who want to contribute something significant and meaningful to a new vision of the future, and who also want to live a meaningful, deep and spacious life at the same time.

Women who are no longer prepared to sacrifice either their ambitions, or their health, happiness and wellbeing.

I don't think we have to choose. I believe we can do both - live deeply nourished and wildly successful, on our own terms, by being more of who we truly are and less of what the world told us we needed to be.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Redefining Success for Ambitious Women: Beyond the Burnout Cycle

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• Embrace Your Primordial Purity: A Buddhist Approach to Self-Worth for Ambitious Women

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

Here’s another reframe.

In my work I often get asked “oh do you help women become bad ass b*~ches?’

I do not.

Instead, I help them move beyond that false choice and into freedom.

The assumption that underlies the question is that if a woman is not being accommodating, agreeable, or pleasing ... she must be being a b*~ch.

And that’s simply not true or helpful.

This thinking is exactly what keeps women stuck.

Forced to choose between ‘nice’ and ‘b*~ch’ - of course we choose nice.

For eons women have been forced into these dichotomies.

It’s another way women are taught to shrink to fit.

Frigid or s*~t?

Selfless or selfish?

Peacekeeper or difficult woman?

These are not our only choices.

It’s not an either/or situation.

You can be:

Big hearted AND strong boundaried

Loving AND fierce

Powerful AND kind

Direct AND open

They aren’t mutually exclusive.

The choice between them is a trap.

And you don’t have to choose.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

This is my third reframe when it comes to working with Niceness.

Niceness is a verb, we are doing it in and through our bodies.

There are a number of ways to think about the body.

1. As an object. A consequence of merely biological processes. A thing. To be bent and shaped to your will. (Until of course it gets sick or injured or old and you realise you have little control at all)

2. As vessel. As an important but temporary container for your soul/consciousness/brain. A meat taxi to be used but eventually abandoned or transcended.

3. As a vital co-creating aspect of your personality and consciousness. The storehouse of your history, a living biography intricately entangled in shaping your perception of the world and what is possible in your future.

My approach is the third. The bodymind.

Our bodies are shaped by every single one of our experiences, in our own lives, and those of our ancestors.

Our bodies are the sole witnesses to our entire lives. Everything. EVERYTHING. That we have ever experienced, has been experienced through our bodies.

And each experience has an impact.

The way I curl my shoulders in, how I tilt my head, the resonance of my voice, the speed of my walk ~ are all revealing my past to you.

The ways in which I have been harmed, the ways in which I have harmed others, the parts of me that have been shamed, those bathed in love. My suffering. My joy. My freedom. My bondage. My hatred. My love.

When you look at someone’s body, what you are seeing is biography.

You are witnessing how they have learned to cope in this impossibly brutal and beautiful world.

Not good, not bad but rather ~ shaped.

And in turn ~ shaping what's possible in my future.

Niceness is one of these coping strategies ~ it is done in and through the body. Niceness is a shaping of the bodymind.

Bring to mind a situation in which you are ‘too nice’.

What do you do in your body when you are doing niceness?

~ Do you shrink?

~ Lean forward?

~ Tilt your head?

~ What does your breath do?

~ Where are your eyes looking?

~ Is there tension/holding in some muscles?

Notice the shaping.

Now do the opposite in your body.

And notice how your experience and perception of the world changes in this moment.

Reflect on how the body had limited what it was possible for you to see, hear, feel, do ~ when you were doing niceness.

History shapes our bodies.

This shaping becomes a pattern, a habit. A well-worn groove in our being.

We get stuck in it. Identified with it.

We don’t realise we are doing it, we think it’s just who we are.

So we lose the possibility to do something different.

And history repeats and repeats and repeats.

But if you can do niceness, you can do something different.

The key is to discover and grow a different way of being - in the body.

This why just reading the books, saying the affirmations, working on communication techniques etc doesn’t work ~ the body and her wisdom is key.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

This is my second helpful reframe when it comes to starting to overcome ‘niceness’.

As women we inherit a history, a trauma, in our nervous systems from the women that came before us - that tells us ‘being powerful is dangerous’.

As we all know, women have historically been severely punished for daring to use their power - in challenging the status quo, exerting their influence or living according to their own desires.

Research is suggesting trauma may be passed down through up to seven generations.

We also see many of our sisters across the world today suffering gross oppression - denied their rights, being treated as property, even their bodies not their own.

And in our own lives as we grow up, we experience being punished in small and powerful ways, when we break the conventional ideals of femininity. We are taught not to interrupt, or be too bossy, our boisterousness is calmed, and we are praised for being polite, accommodating and placid.

This is how we are ‘good’.

So, of course in our minds we conflate power with being bad.

It’s in our nervous systems.

We see power being used abusively in the world, and decide we want none of it. Power corrupts.

And being denied access to our own sources of direct power, it gets pushed into our personal/collective shadow and projected onto others as negative.

But power is our life force.

It’s our capacity to fulfil our potential.

It’s our ability to act to bring about change in our lives/the world.

It’s what allows us to act on our values and desires.

The patriarchal view of power is a zero sum game.

If I have more, you have less.

The feminine view is that power is as a resource inside all of us, that we can cultivate to become agents of change.

As I develop my own power, I permission you to develop yours.

Power is no more or less skilful than passivity/niceness.

They are both choices in a behavioural range.

The challenge is choosing wisely, when to act and when to follow.

“Power without Love = Tyranny

but

Love without Power = Ineffective”

~ Paul Linden.

Women have been intentionally disconnected from their embodied connection to their power, no longer able to access how and where is resides in their bodies - their anger, their desire, their passion all suppressed and pushed into the shadows (more to come on the dark feminine).

Therefore, in order to have choice - we must find it again through the body.

Simple ways to start to access the felt sense of direct power:

~ Pushing on a wall

~ Lifting something heavy

~ Do a martial art

~ Walk deliberating and assertively to a clear point in the distance.

Much, much more to come on this…

What’s your response to the word power?

What’s your experience of it?

Is this a helpful reframe?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• Success and the Soft Life: Embracing Feminine Power in Ambition

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

This is a really great reframe when starting to work with patterns of being too nice.

As women we are taught to be people-pleasing, accommodating, and to stay small in order to survive in the world. I call this ‘niceness’.

We are taught that this is good and that we are good, worthy women for it. This is BS.

But niceness is not kindness.

It’s not kind for SO many reasons.

Here are some:

~ it’s based on a lie. It stems from the idea that you are less valuable than others. That their comfort, wellbeing and preferences are more important than your own. It doesn’t recognise the truth of your equal worth. It stems from and perpetuates the lie that you are ‘less than’.

~ You have to deny/disconnect from your own needs and desires in order to be nice. Which at best leaves you deeply undernourished and exhausted, and at worst is so profound that you end up having no idea who you are or what you want.

~ It doesn’t have choice in it. You aren’t choosing to put other people first, it’s all you’ve been taught/know how to do. If you can’t say no, you can’t truly say yes. That means what is given is not offered freely and leads to building frustration and resentment.

~ You’re being dishonest. Because you’ve learnt to get your needs met through relationships. Being nice keeps you showing up as the version of ‘you’ that you think other people want, rather than as who you truly are. You don’t say what you really think, you’re unable to challenge or share of yourself fully. This is a loss to you, the other person and the intimacy of the relationship.

I could go on...

This is strong medicine, but essential for seeing through the lies we have Embodied.

Go gently with it. No blame/shame.

Ask yourself regularly:

~ Am I seeing myself as equal here?

~ Am I in touch with my needs?

~ Can I say no to this?

~ Am I being honest?

~ Is this nice or kind?

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• The Highly Sensitive Rebel: How Owning Your Sensitivity can Lead to Outrageous Success

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.

I realise one of things I do is teach women to re-inhabit themselves after a lifetime of estrangement through other-focussed, people pleasing tendencies.

I do this by supporting them to bring their awareness into their bodies and begin really listen/feel what's moving and present in them.

I often frame this process as - entering the vast ocean of our being and encountering the ancient yet unfamiliar creatures there.

Creatures that are shy, creatures who have lived their whole lives in the darkness, who have developed complex defence strategies, creatures that are wonderous and strange.

The quality of awareness we bring to these parts of ourselves needs to be one of quiet consistency, deep patience, curiosity, wonder and awe.

So often when we turn towards ourselves - we have agendas, a desire to change, control, to own, possess. And yet this rich inner world is vast and untameable, and if we are lucky and approach with reverence - we are allowed a brief glimpse. The opportunity to experience moments of inhabitation through which we are enriched and sustained.

I just watched My Octopus Teacher and found it to be a beautiful metaphor for this inner work. The manner of the divers approach. His gentleness, his commitment, his limerence, his awe. These are the qualities with which we must return to ourselves.

And of course, at first there is trepidation, even fear, just as there would be entering the real ocean - so much unknown. Often, it can feel frightening to begin to sink below the surface and into this mysterious realm. We fear the wildness, the lack of solidity, the great beasts that may roam there. We fear our ocean may be empty - 'what if there's nothing there?' I often hear.

We wade in slowly. It is always teeming with life.

As I've been mulling over my talk for the Embodiment Conference - more and more I realise that one of the things I really wish for the women I work with - is for them to know their own rich inner worlds and to be able to re-inhabit and draw nourishment from them. Not through extraction but through mutual enjoyment and delight.

I'm tired of women standing on the edge of their own shores.

Ah, do watch the film. It is so very lovely in these troubled times.

I wish for you all to swim deep.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might also like to read:

• The Highly Sensitive Rebel: How Owning Your Sensitivity can Lead to Outrageous Success

• How to Achieve Bold, Balanced Success by Embracing Your Inner Rebel and Your Good Girl

Want to go deeper?

• Work with me - explore my current workshops, courses and mentoring.

• Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my latest blogs, videos, courses and workshops.