REAL LIFE VISION: Merging Past, Present, and Future

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Coaching/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Personal Revolutions/Psychology

REAL LIFE VISION, REAL LIFE GOALS, REAL LIFE HABITS: HOW TO BUILD YOUR FUTURE FROM THE GROUND UP

We all have an innate sense of who we could become – the strongest, most grounded, most REAL version of ourselves, standing just beyond the present moment, waiting for us to step forward, reach out, and lean in to it.

This ‘best version’ of us is not a fantasy; it is a potential reality, but only if we actively engage with the process of becoming – a process that’s unfolding right now and is affected by the CHOICES that we make from moment-to-moment.

This is a little challenging sometimes because we exist in the space between two forces:

One of these is who we are in our REALNESS, the version of us that moves with purpose, engages with life fully, and acts in alignment with truth. This version of us is WHOLE and is moving into deeper wholeness as we take more and more real action.

The other is who think we are because of EGO, the one that resists change, prioritises ease over growth, and clings to short-term gratification. This version of us is FRAGMENTED because of our underlying emotional ‘stuff’ – shame, mainly – that stops us accepting who we really are and what we want to be, think, feel, and do.

The tension between these two selves – the real and unreal – determines the direction of our lives.

One vital key to winning this internal battle is to create and commit to a REAL LIFE VISION:

The reason for this is that a real life vision for the future creates clarity, purpose, and momentum – it also allows us to merge the past, the present, and the future, aligning our decisions and actions in a way that fosters long-term transformation.

Let’s explore in a little more detail:

Integrating the Past, Present, and Future

Most people live in the fragmentation of EGO:

They are either trapped in their past, held back by unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ and associated patterns and limiting beliefs; lost in the present, reacting impulsively and chaotically without direction; or obsessed with the future, constantly striving but never truly engaging with life and becoming too anxious to take real action as a result.

To embody our realness, we need to integrate all three:

The past must be acknowledged and integrated which means learning that we are not bound by it, but we must learn from it. Every experience ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – holds lessons that, when embraced, become fuel for growth rather than chains that hold us back.
The present is where we take action. Every decision, every moment, is an opportunity to respond to reality rather than react blindly. When we stay grounded in the present while keeping our vision in mind, we create a dynamic balance between movement and mindfulness. This helps us to feel fully alive and to keep growing and evolving.
The future is our compass. A clear vision generates a healthy creative tension – a pull that moves us forward without disconnecting us from the moment. This tension is not stress; it is energy. When harnessed correctly, it creates a flow state where we are both fully engaged in the present and moving towards something greater and more real.

Short-Term vs Long-Term Thinking

A fragmented life is often a result of short-term thinking – making decisions based on immediate gratification rather than long-term impact. This is why so many people struggle to change.

Take weight loss as an example:

If you only see yourself through the lens of who you have been, because you think that’s “Just the way I am”, you will inevitably fall back into old habits because at the level of the unconscious you are programmed to be that ‘version’ of yourself…you will prioritise comfort over growth because your self-image is tethered to the past.

On the other hand, if you see yourself as someone who is becoming – someone actively shifting towards a healthier, stronger version of themselves – then your daily decisions will start to reflect that transformation and you’ll start to see actual results.

This is the difference between being stuck in the short-term (focusing on identity/ego) and thinking long-term (focusing on real life vision).

When you adopt long-term thinking, you no longer make decisions based on who you were or even who you are now alone (because ‘now’ isn’t the end of the line) – you make them based on who you are being and becoming.

Turning Your REAL Life Vision into REAL Life Goals and your REAL Life Goals into REAL Life Habits

A vision alone is not enough – many people have dreams, but without action, they remain fantasies. A real life vision must be translated into real life goals – tangible, structured, and actionable steps that create forward momentum.

1. Clarify Your REAL Life Vision

Your vision shouldn’t be vague or abstract – it needs to be detailed and specific so that you have clarity about what you’re doing (though your vision may change as you move forward and learn more about yourself, the world, and reality). It should also be an extension of your real VALUES so that you know it’s aligned with something that really matters to you – check out this article about values for more on that: Unlocking Your Core Values: A Guide to Living Your REAL Life:

Ask yourself:

What does my Realest Self look like?
How can I make my values valuable to others?
How do they act, think, and make decisions?
How do they feel?
What kind of work do they do?
How do they engage with their body, mind, and relationships?
What do they prioritise?

This is not about constructing an idealised version of yourself – it is about recognising and moving towards the person you are capable of being based on what you’ve already experience and what you want to experience in the future.

2. Set REAL Goals That Align with Your Vision

Once you’ve created a vision for where you’re headed, it’s time to start breaking it down into the GOALS that will make it happen. At this stage, you want to find REAL goals which means that they’re aligned with your vision but also excite and energise you on the way there.

A REAL Goal moves you towards your vision in a structured way.

It should be:

Specific – Vague intentions lead to vague results. Instead of saying, “I want to be healthier”, set a goal like, “I will train three times a week and improve my diet”.
Process-Oriented – Focus on actions, not just outcomes. Instead of fixating on a target weight, focus on building the habits that will get you there. More importantly, once you know the goal itself, shift your attention to the process so that you can stay present and actually enjoy making it happen.
Aligned with Your Long-Term Vision – If a goal does not move you towards your Realness, it is probably a distraction so get rid of it.

3. Create REAL Habits to Close the Gap

Goals set the direction, but habits determine whether or not you arrive where you want to go – every major transformation is built on the foundation of small, consistent actions over time.

When you have the right and real habits in place then you will be able to navigate cause-and-effect and make progress towards your goals (almost) daily.

With all of these habits you need to be focused, disciplined, and consistent.

Here’s some examples:

If your vision is to be physically strong, your habits need to reflect that = regular training, proper nutrition, and recovery.
If your vision is to be financially independent, your habits need to include disciplined spending, investing, and skill-building.
If your vision is to be emotionally resilient, your habits need to include self-reflection, boundary-setting, and mindfulness practices.

(All just examples but you get the point, hopefully).

Every habit is either moving you towards your vision and your realness or is reinforcing an old identity and patterns that no longer serve you.

This is why habits are so important: they give the power to make a CHOICE for the real ‘stuff’ and to keep compounding your results daily.

The Power of Process Over Event Thinking

One of the biggest mistakes people make is expecting one big event to change their lives – a moment of clarity, a lucky break, or an external shift in their fortunes. Real change doesn’t happen in a single moment, though – it happens through process.

You do not suddenly become fit – you build fitness through working the right process.
You do not suddenly become successful – you build success through working the right process.
You do not suddenly become real – you step into realness through working the right process.

Again, this all comes down to knowing where we’re headed and making the CHOICES that support that over time. Ultimately, it’s about choosing the EFFECT that we want (being fit/successful/real) and living as the CAUSE that makes it happen (instead of just hoping things happen, not having a vision, and getting lost in the short-term view we take of things).

The more we embrace the process, the more we merge past, present, and future – we learn from where we have been, act in the present, and move towards what we are becoming. This is how we BUILD FLOW and start to live our REAL lives.

Merging Time: Living as the Bridge Between Past, Present, and Future

A real human being is someone who understands how to balance these three dimensions of time:

They integrate their past rather than being controlled by it (which means they face the SHADOW SELF).
They respond to reality in the present rather than reacting impulsively (which means their EGO isn’t holding them back).
They move towards a real future rather than drifting aimlessly (which means they embody the purpose of their REALNESS and TRUST themselves and life).

This is why realness is a long-term project – it is built day by day, decision by decision. It is not about perfection – it is about moving towards a deeper sense of WHOLENESS instead of FRAGMENTATION (and we can always go deeper).

How to Implement This Today

Here’s some basics to help you start living with REAL life vision, REAL life goals, and REAL life habits:

Write down your REAL Life Vision – Get clear on your values and the person you are becoming (don’t just have a to-do list but also a to-be list – e.g. more disciplined, creative, joyful etc.)
Set three REAL Goals – Make them specific, actionable, and process-driven. Commit to REAL ACTION every day.
Build one new habit that aligns with your vision and goals – Small steps compound into massive change over time. This is how you use the law of cause and effect.
Practice self-awareness – Before making a decision, ask: Is this bringing me closer to my Realness? Am I choosing WHOLENESS or FRAGMENTATION?
Let go of the past – Stop seeing yourself as who think you were; start seeing yourself as who you are becoming.

If you want to go really deep into this then check out my free 7-Day course (with 158-page PDF workbook): The 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose.

Final Thoughts: The Future is Unwritten, But You Are Writing It RIGHT NOW

You are not just being – you are becoming:

Every choice you make is either reinforcing your past self and ego or moving you closer to your future self and realness.

Are you making choices from a place of responsiveness or are you simply reacting to life?

The future is not something that ‘happens’ to you – it is something you help to shape through your actions in the present, guided by the lessons of the past.

Live as the bridge between where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going.

Stay real out there,

*Based on ‘Revolution’ number twenty two in Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness

Guiding into FLOW: You Can Only Take Others as Deep as You’ve Been Yourself (Coaches, ‘Healers’, and Mentors)

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Coaching/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships/Trust

The More You Get Into the Flow, the More You Can Guide Others Into It

This is one mainly for the coaches, ‘healers’, and mentors out there (but anybody can learn from it):

There’s a simple but powerful truth about personal growth, coaching, and any kind of guiding or ‘helping’ role we might find ourselves playing in life: you can only take others as deep as you’ve gone yourself.

This essentially means that the more you’re in the flow, the more you can help others find it too; if you’re forcing things, resisting, or stuck in your own ego-based patterns, then you’ll just end up projecting that onto others and holding them back – even if your intentions are ‘good’.

This is why the best coaches, mentors, and teachers aren’t just experts in their fields; they’re deeply connected to their own process of growth and are continuously working to GROW REAL and to do their own ‘inner work’ as the move towards wholeness and realness instead of fragmentation and ego.

Many of the best ‘teachers’ and ‘healers’ have only learned to help people in a real way because they’ve lived through the struggle, let go of their illusions, and learned to trust the natural flow of life while still taking real action (in other words, they’ve been through a PERSONAL REVOLUTION).

In fact, I’d actually go so far as to say that if you find a therapist, coach, or anything else that’s completely put together and doesn’t have any of the RAWNESS that comes from getting to the other side of letting go of their ‘stuff’ and finding something true, then you might be working with somebody who only understands things ‘conceptually’ but hasn’t actually LIVED it in experience (the scenery is different but the path towards wholeness is the same structure for all of us).

Anyway, here’s the thing:

Everybody is in their own flow, but it’s all flowing towards the same truth – wholeness. If you hold on to the fragments that stop you flowing then you might not be helping others but holding them back.

Let’s get into it:

What is Flow?

Flow isn’t just a buzzword – it’s a natural state of engagement with REAL life.

It’s the space where:

Your actions align with reality, not ego resistance or distortion.
You trust yourself and life (“do your best and accept the rest”), rather than trying to force or control things because of underlying shame, guilt, and/or trauma.
You let go of attachment to outcomes, yet still take real, meaningful action in the PROCESS of life (not just your ideas about it).
You move with energy rather than against it because you know that emotions are e-motion, energy in motion and that things keep evolving towards more WHOLENESS (there’s a natural drive towards wholeness in all of us and the main thing that makes us miserable is blocking it with ego).

Flow isn’t about passivity or waiting for life to hand you what you want – it’s about aligning yourself so fully with reality that everything starts to move effortlessly.

When you’re in flow, decisions become clearer, your work feels easier, and life seems to ‘click’ into place because the action that you’re taking is REAL ACTION (instead of unreal, ego action) and compounds on itself over time.

And the best part? Flow is contagious.

When you’re truly in flow, you naturally start to guide others into it as well:

This isn’t about teaching them a rigid system or giving them step-by-step formulas – it’s about creating a space where they can tap into their own flow and trust their own process to see who they really are in their REALNESS.

The ‘Helping’ Professions and the Art of Guiding Others into Flow

Most effective coaching, therapy, and leadership boil down to this:

Helping people build enough momentum in their own lives until they can let go completely and unblock that natural drive towards wholeness.

At its core, real transformation is about removing the mental, emotional, and physical blocks that stop people from flowing with life as it already is. When someone resists life – whether through F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”), attachment, self-doubt, false narratives, or any other form of fragmentation – they create friction.

Friction eventually turns to frustration and frustration turns to misery unless we take a pause and return to REALITY. A good coach, mentor, or guide helps remove that friction so the person can move forward naturally.

This isn’t about ‘fixing’ anyone – though there are many narcissistic peopel working in the healing professions who try to fix others to distract themselves from their own perceived ‘brokenness’ – because no one is broken (just confused, a lot of the time).

Instead, the role of a guide is to help people reconnect with their own truth and their own process of flowing back towards wholeness.

The Problem with Forcing Instead of Flowing

Many people – especially in coaching and leadership roles – fall into the trap of forcing rather than flowing.

This usually happens when:

They haven’t done enough of their own inner work and project their unresolved issues onto others.
They try to ‘fix’ people – based on their own assumptions etc. – rather than trust their own process.
They get too attached to a specific outcome rather than focusing on the journey.
They rely on rigid methods instead of adapting to what the moment requires.

When a coach (or any guide) isn’t in their own flow, they unconsciously create resistance in their clients – in other words, they push when they should be holding space and try to control when they should be trusting. This is because they have underlying SHAME that causes them to be rigid in their own lives because they’re being driven by it instead of dissolving it through REAL ACTION.

When this happens, instead of guiding someone into their own authentic path, they end up pulling them into a pre-packaged model of how things ‘should’ be based on their own assumptions and limitations projected onto the client.

That’s why real coaching and leadership start with self-mastery.

You can only help others trust themselves and life if you trust yourself and life; you can only help others let go if you’ve done it. You can only help others move with life if you’re not constantly fighting it yourself.

If you find yourself talking to a coach or ‘healer’ who has the characteristics of a control freak or who is generally rigid and lifeless then maybe think about if this is the kind of energy you want to be bringing in your own life; also, don’t work with somebody who treats you as a ‘victim’ or wraps you in cotton wool – find somebody who can meet you on a REAL LEVEL and just go as deep as you need to go in a given moment.

(This is totally shameless self-promotion but – if you’re looking for somebody like that – you can book a call with me for a REAL CONVERSATION).

Building Flow: The Key to Becoming a Real Guide

So, how do you build flow in your own life so you can guide others into it?

1. Get Into Wholeness Yourself

A simple but powerful phrase to remember is:

“I am that I am in wholeness and wholeness is in me” (from my book ‘Trust’).

This isn’t just a nice-sounding mantra – it’s a deep truth. You are already whole; life is already whole. The more you stop resisting what already is and start aligning with it, the more naturally things will unfold and you can start building flow.

2. Trust and Let Go

Most people hold themselves back because they’re afraid to trust – they fear that if they don’t control every aspect of life, things will fall apart. Control is an illusion, though, and the more you try to force things, the more you create resistance that leads to friction, frustration, and then misery.

Trust doesn’t mean being passive: it means taking action without attachment – it means doing what you need to do without outsourcing your self-worth to the outcome. This means setting goals but then taking your focus away from it, doing your best and accepting the rest, and living in the process through REAL ACTION rather than getting caught up in your head.

3. Commit to Real Action

Flow isn’t about sitting back and waiting for things to happen – that’s passivity and wishful thinking. Instead, it’s about moving with life, taking action from a place of alignment (with your REALNESS) rather than fear.

Whenever you feel ‘stuck’, the key is to take action that aligns with what’s real.

That means:

Listening to your intentions rather than your anxieties.
Doing what feels natural and expansive rather than forced and draining.
Acting from clarity rather than desperation.

4. Be an Example, Not Just a Teacher

People learn more from how you live than what you say – if you’re trying to guide others into flow (which is what all ‘healers’ are ultimately doing, be in it yourself.

Walk your talk.
Let go of your own resistance.
Show, don’t just tell.

If you’re constantly pushing, struggling, and forcing, that energy will ripple out to the people you’re trying to help. But if you’re in flow – trusting, moving, and acting from reality rather than F.E.A.R – that will naturally inspire others to do the same.

When you’re real, you give others ‘permission’ to be the same. Sometimes, you have to be the one to step up and set the tone.

5. Stay Open to Growth

Flow isn’t something you ‘achieve’ once and then keep forever – it’s an ongoing process. You’re always deepening, always expanding, always evolving.

The more you learn, let go, and trust, the more effortlessly life moves, and – the more effortlessly life moves – the more you can guide others into doing the same.

Final Thoughts: Flow is the Ultimate Guide

At the end of the day, real transformation happens when people learn to flow with life rather than fight it.

As a coach, leader, or mentor, your job isn’t to ‘fix’ people or give them all the answers – it’s to help them reconnect with their own process, build momentum, and trust the journey of growing REAL.

And the best way to do that? Live it yourself.

If you want to help others let go, let go first.
If you want to help others move forward, move forward first.
If you want to help others trust themselves and life, trust yourself and life first.

Because the more you’re in the flow, the more you can guide others into it, too.

And watching people build their own flow? That’s one of the most powerful, rewarding experiences there is.

Stay real out there,

Fate vs Destiny: Playing the Cards We’re Dealt

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Life Philosophy/Mindset/Personal Revolutions/Psychology

You Can’t Change Your Fate but Your Destiny Can Be REAL or UNREAL – It’s Up to You

Sometimes, life throws us events so unbelievably against the odds that we can’t help but feel like something ‘bigger’ is at play (and, of course, it is because there’s always something bigger):

Maybe you bump into someone at just the ‘right’ moment, an opportunity appears when you need it most, or things unfold in a way that seems so perfectly orchestrated that it must have been meant to be. In these moments, we talk about fate – as though some unseen force is guiding us.

And sometimes, it is.

There’s something very real about synchronicity – those meaningful coincidences that seem to weave life together in ways we couldn’t have planned (or, as Carl Jung described them “an acausal connecting principle” when the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds collide).

When we’re in alignment, open to truth, and moving in the right and REALEST direction, things have a way of falling into place, or at least ‘nudging’ us to show us we’re on the right track. You’ve probably experienced this yourself at some time in your life?

That synchronicity is a real phenomenon in the human experience doesn’t necessarily mean life is always following a predetermined script, though.

A mistake we often make is assuming that everything that happens is fate, when in reality, many of the events we call “fated” are actually a result of the CHOICES we’ve made.

In other words:

Fate is what we’re given. Destiny is what we do with it.

Or, to put it another way, fate is the hand we’re dealt, but destiny is how we play our cards.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Deal or No Deal: Understanding Fate

Fate is everything we don’t get to choose.

Where we’re born, our genetic makeup, the environment we’re raised in, etc. etc. etc. – these are the ‘cards’ reality deals us. Some of us might get a royal flush, others receive a mismatched mess; some are born into wealth and privilege; others start life with obstacles stacked against them. You don’t get to pick your family, your early experiences, or the time and place you enter the world. That’s fate.

And, because fate comes from REALITY, it doesn’t care whether you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ your cards or not. It just is.

The thing that trips a lot of us up and leads to those “lives of quiet desperation” that Thoreau talked about is treating this as the end of the line:

When we assume that the hand they’ve been dealt determines the entire game, we can end up resigning themselves to a predetermined story of either success or struggle. If you believe fate dictates everything, you either get lucky, or you don’t. This is a passive and unreal way of looking at life – one that takes responsibility and the power of REAL CHOICE out of the equation and brings a whole truckload of self-limiting and world-limiting beliefs with it.

Luckily, that’s where DESTINY comes in.

The Play: Creating Destiny

Destiny is not written in the stars; it’s written in the choices we make.

No matter what cards you’re holding, you still get to decide how you play them:

Some people get dealt an amazing hand and squander it; others get dealt sh*t and turn it into a diamond. That’s because destiny is not about what happens to you – it’s about how you respond and the accumulation of all the choices you make over time.

This is where synchronicity kinda starts to make sense (not that it will ever make total ‘sense’ because it’s beyond the sensemaking tools in our brain):

When you start playing your cards right – by taking bold action, trusting yourself (“do your best”), trusting life (“accept the rest), and aligning with what’s REAL – you create the conditions for the right things to happen; you start seeing patterns, meeting the right people, and noticing opportunities that were always there, but hidden from view.

It feels like magic, but really, it’s the result of moving in harmony with reality and building with you fate on a foundation of acceptance rather than ego resistance or distortion.

The problem is, many people confuse this with ‘fate’:

They assume that just because something feels significant, it must have been predestined – but what if it’s the opposite? What if these moments of synchronicity aren’t fate leading us, but signs that we’ve stepped into our destiny?

Think about some of humanity’s classic ‘Rags to Riches’ stories – many of their protagonists didn’t start life with the best circumstances:

J.K. Rowling found herself as a struggling single mother (FATE), yet she became one of the richest authors of all time by making the CHOICE to sit and write in a coffee shop all day (DESTINY). Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison (FATE), yet emerged as a symbol of peace and leadership (DESTINY).

Their fate wasn’t kind, but their CHOICES shaped their destiny.

Compare that to someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth who coasts through life without ever pushing themselves:

They had the resources and the opportunities in the world, but they never made anything meaningful of them because they didn’t make the CHOICE. They had fate on their side, but they let their destiny slip away.

The world is full of people who have amazing potential but never use it and end up lost to the Void. Why? Because destiny requires courage, REAL action, and the willingness to step beyond the script that fate has handed you and create something new by believing in the choice for something different.

The Battle: Overcoming the Pull of Fate

There’s a reason most people stick to the path fate lays out for them: it’s easier in the SHORT-TERM because it requires less effort and personal growth.

Society, culture, family expectations – all of these things subtly (or not so subtly, depending on where fate has placed you) nudge us toward conformity. The world around us doesn’t want you to break the mould – it wants you to stay in your lane, to follow the script, to accept your circumstances and not question too much.

And if you do try to carve your own path? Expect resistance, especially when you’re surrounded by others who are avoiding their destiny because of ‘fate’ too.

Luckily for us, the world isn’t reality. It’s just a bunch of collective ideas and interpretations about what’s true and what’s not.

You can always CHOOSE reality instead and start to change the game for yourself:

Either way, the moment you decide to shape your own destiny, you’re going to come up against obstacles – internal and external. F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”), self-doubt, criticism from others, systems designed to keep people in their place… These are all forces of the EGO and old ways of identifying trying to pull you back to the predictable, the comfortable, the expected

Here’s the thing, though: every REAL life is built on defying that pull.

The people who make a choice to grow REAL – the ones who shape their own destiny – are the ones who refuse to be limited by their circumstances.

They see their fate, acknowledge it, and then decide: What can I build with this?

They accept what can’t be changed (FATE) and use it as a springboard into the real life that can be CHOSEN (DESTINY).

Knowing the difference between the two is where the real power lies.

Flow vs Force: Navigating Destiny with Awareness

There’s another important distinction to make here:

Creating your destiny doesn’t mean FORCING things to happen through sheer willpower – force is always of the Ego and because it’s unreal it never works.

Nor is force about blindly fighting against everything – in fact, the most powerful way to shape your destiny is to align yourself with reality by cultivating ACCEPTANCE instead of RESISTANCE.

Think of it like this:

You’re in a river. Fate is the current, always moving and shaping the landscape around you. Though you can’t stop the current or change the river itself, you can learn to navigate it.

You can learn to work with it instead of against it…but only if you accept it.

This is what we mean when we talk about flow:

When you make conscious choices based on deep self-awareness – when you act in alignment with who you really are in your realness instead of who the world wants you to be and the Ego you created in reaction to this – you start to experience a kind of natural movement toward your highest potential.

Things start falling into place. Opportunities arise. The right people show up. It’s weird but – if you TRUST and take the action to find out – you’ll see it’s inevitable.

This isn’t necessarily because of magic or anything ‘mystical’ but because – when you’re moving in the right direction – you start noticing the doors that were always there instead of blocking your view with your focus on resisting your FATE and causing friction, frustration, and misery in your life.

That’s the difference between trying to force life to go your way and actually playing your hand in a REAL WAY:

When you try forcing the door open, it closes; when you let go, you see that it was open all along.

How to Start Playing Your Cards Right

How do you move from being a passive player in the game of life to someone who shapes their own destiny?

Here are some things to work on:

1. Accept Your Hand Without Complaint

You didn’t choose your starting point, and there’s no point wishing things were different. Accept your circumstances fully – not as a victim, but as a strategist and a creator. Once you embrace what you have in your hands, then you’re ready to BUILD something with it.

2. Identify Where You Actually Have Power

Too many people waste time worrying about things outside their control. Instead, shift your focus to what you can change – your mindset, your actions, your habits. Small changes over time lead to BIG results – you just need to be consistent, focused, and disciplined and work the process.

3. Make Conscious Choices

Don’t sleepwalk through life. Every decision, no matter how small, is a chance to move closer to or further from the destiny you want and each moment you can make a choice between your REAL life and your unreal life. Start paying attention. Even the ‘little’ things like when you’re waiting for a train or something – are you gonna doom scroll on social media and compare yourself to others (and reinforce your ‘fate’ through a lens of victim mentality) or are you going to read or learn something that can help you CHOOSE your destiny?

4. Trust Synchronicity, But Don’t Mistake It for Fate

When things line up, see it as a sign that you’re on the right path – but don’t assume it’s all predetermined. Synchronicity is real, but it’s a response to your alignment, and not a fixed script telling you to stay put. You need to take REAL ACTION to meet your destiny so keep taking it (and you’ll probably experience more synchronicity along the way as you build momentum).

5. Stay Adaptable

Destiny isn’t a straight line. Be willing to adjust, pivot, and refine your path as you go. The best players adapt to the game from moment-to-moment. That means learning to LET GO of ego and identity and keep learning who you’re becoming from day-to-day (whilst still having a vision in mind as you navigate reality).

Final Thoughts: Be the Player, Not the Pawn

Fate is real. You don’t get to pick your starting hand. But destiny? Well…that’s down to you.

When you play your cards right and take REAL ACTION, life has a way of meeting you halfway: synchronicities emerge, opportunities arise, and things start ‘clicking’ into place – not because it was all written in stone, but because you aligned yourself with what’s real.

Stay real out there,

*Based on ‘Revolution’ number twenty one in Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness

Unconscious Conscious Superconscious: The Call to Integration and WHOLENESS

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Creativity/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Shadow Life/Trust

When an Idea Won’t Let Go the GO WITH IT

There’s something thrilling about an idea that just won’t leave you alone – one moment, it’s a fleeting thought, barely graspable; the next, it’s gripping you by the collar, demanding attention, rearranging your life, and reshaping how you see yourself, the world, and reality itself.

When this happens, it’s more than just inspiration – it’s a call:

A call from the depths of your unconscious, and in the highest cases, from something even greater – the Superconscious, the Universal Mind, the Ether, whatever name you want to give it…that something that we all know is where we long to return because – deep down – we all know that it’s REAL.

When these ideas start to break through, we have a choice:

We can ignore them, try to push them back down, pretend we didn’t hear or we can listen, surrender, and trust the process. The first of these option always leads us more deeply into the EGO; the second allows us to face the SHADOW SELF and whatever we’ve been ‘hiding’ as we let this idea take us back to where we belong: a state of WHOLENESS.

But here’s the thing whichever option you CHOOSE:

If the idea is REAL, there is no stopping it.

The Ideas That ‘Choose’ You

Think about the moments when something truly creative, meaningful, or transformative has entered your life – it might have been a book you suddenly felt compelled to write, a project you needed to complete, or a truth about yourself that refused to stay hidden and so you decided to pull on the thread and unravel yourself (or, more accurately, your ego).

In many cases, these aren’t just passing whims but invitations – to grow, to express, to evolve into something more REAL.

Most recently, I’ve felt this myself with my latest book, TRUST, and before that with the Flow Builder Journal. Both started as whispers – faint but persistent…then they became obsessions.

Before I knew it, I had no choice but to follow them to completion (if I wanted to accept myself and not have to spend all day wrestling in my mind).

That’s the nature of real ideas. They come when the time is right, when some unconscious ‘thing’ inside you is ready to be made conscious.

And that’s why ignoring them doesn’t work – because the ‘stuff’ that’s ‘down’ there is often some of the realest ‘stuff’ about you… it’s just been hidden because of the great Shadow Dance between the Ego and the Shadow but – when the time is right – and it sees some cracks to send some light through to the surface of your life, well, it’s just gonna come bursting through so you better be ready.

The Conscious, Unconscious, and Superconscious Minds

Every person carries an unconscious mind, full of forgotten experiences, suppressed emotions, and unprocessed fragments of the self. Carl Jung called this the Shadow – the parts of us we’ve rejected or buried because of underlying shame, guilt, and/or trauma (that’s how I see it, anyway, and talk about in my book Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World).

When an idea emerges from the unconscious, it’s often because something REAL but hidden deep inside you is ready to be integrated.

You might not even realise it at first, but that creative urge, that itch to start something new, is more than just self-expression – it’s an attempt to bring wholeness back to yourself so you can become the real human being you were meant to be (instead of the idea of one that you may currently be identifying with).

In the highest cases, these ideas don’t just come from your personal unconscious, but from something even greater – the Superconscious, the Universal Intelligence, the deeper flow of life. This is rare but people often confuse the unconscious becoming conscious for this (I’ll write a post about how to tell the difference in the future – it’s also in my book TRUST).

When this happens, you’re not just expressing something personal – you’re bringing something into the world that’s needed to make not just yourself more REAL but the world more REAL too.

Trusting the Process: Why Resistance Leads to Frustration

The short-version of all this is that if a REAL idea comes through you, it’s because you’re the right person for it because you’re at the right place in your relationship with yourself for it to be realised. It really couldn’t come at any other time because it’s appearance depends on you being open enough to yourself to let it arise.

The problem is that the mind often resists because it’s in the service of the Ego.

This is made even more complicated because real ideas require commitment and commitment to something real is always perceived as a threat by the Ego (because the ego is unreal and the opposite of reality).

Real ideas shake up routines; they demand energy. They take you into the unknown – away from the familiar sense of ‘order’ and control’ that the Ego has carved out for you – and they force you to confront the parts of yourself that might rather stay hidden (which will dissolve the Ego once faced as the Ego only exists as a reaction to avoiding these parts and keeping them locked in the Shadow Territory).

But resisting these ideas leads to one thing: frustration.

When you try to push them down, they’ll just keep resurfacing. If you try to ignore them, then you’ll feel the unexplainable tension of the Void. This is basically because your unconscious is trying to give you something – the gift of your own realness – and you’re refusing to accept it.

This is why the only real choice is to trust and let go.

Integration: The Healing Power of Following an Idea

Following these ideas isn’t just about creativity – it’s about healing (and healing literally just means returning to WHOLENESS instead of fragmentation –“The word “healthy” comes from the Old English word hāl, which means “wholeness, being whole or sound”).

Anytime you commit to a REAL idea that’s breaking through, you’re allowing something unconscious to become conscious – you’re integrating a missing piece of yourself.

Jung believed that psychological healing happens through a process of individuation – bringing together the fragmented aspects of the self into a cohesive, whole identity.

When you follow an idea that’s calling you, you’re doing exactly that.

You’re taking something that was once hidden and making it real. As you do this, you allow some of those Shadow ‘parts’ of yourself to return to where they belong and to play a conscious role in your life so you can become WHOLE again.

You’re merging your unconscious drives, your conscious mind, and – if you’re truly receptive and the time is right- something greater than both.

What we’re talking about is the difference between chasing ideas and being chosen by an idea:

When you chase ideas, you’re often acting from a fragmented place – trying to prove something, trying to force creativity, trying to control outcomes. All of this just comes from ego rather than from your REALNESS.

On the other hand, when an idea ‘chooses’ you, it’s coming from the deeper layers of your mind, from the ‘part’ of you that knows what you need before you do.

Practical Application: How to Know When an Idea Is Real

So how do you know when an idea is REAL?

How do you separate the passing whimsy of ego from something that truly needs to be followed through to completion and integration?

Here are a few signs:

1. It won’t leave you alone

Real ideas don’t just come and go – they persist because the Shadow Self may start whispering for your attention but will start screaming for it the longer you go without listening. You might try to ignore them, but they’ll resurface again and again in different ways (including being projected ‘out’ as signs and symbols in the world).

2. It excites you and scares you at the same time

Real ideas stretch you. They force you to grow and that can be uncomfortable. If an idea lights you up but also makes you nervous, it’s probably real becuase it’s going to take you out of your comfort zone, stretch you beyond your edge, and show you who your really are.

3. It feels like it’s ‘choosing’ you – not the other way around

You don’t force a real idea – it finds you by flowing to you. You might not even know where it came from, but suddenly, it’s there, demanding attention and – upon closer examination – following it and flowing with it is the most natural thing in the world given where you find yourself at the time.

4. It connects to something deeper

A real idea isn’t just about external success or validation (ego) – it connects to your values, your truth, and your personal evolution (realness).

5. It feels inevitable

When a real idea takes hold, it feels like there’s no other choice – even if you resist at first, deep down, you know you’re going to follow it. More than that, you know that you’re going to COMPLETE it because you can trust the process until it’s DONE.

How to Follow the Idea Without Ego Resistance or Distortion

Once you know an idea is real, the next step is to follow it without unnecessary ego resistance or distortion.

Here’s how:

1. Commit to the journey

Accept that this idea is here for a reason and decide to follow it – even if it takes time, even if it’s inconvenient, commit to seeing it through.

2. Trust that it will unfold in the right way

You don’t need to force it but to FLOW with it. The idea has a life of its own and – if you stay receptive – it will lead you where it needs to go (which is more life of your own).

3. Let go of perfectionism

Don’t overthink or try to control every detail. The idea isn’t asking for perfection – it’s asking for expression through you and your realness.

4. Allow your routine to shift

Real ideas require space so be willing to adjust your habits to give it the time and energy it needs.

5. Stay connected to your WHY

Remember why this idea matters – connect it to your deeper values and personal growth and the process of the UNCONSCIOUS BECOMING CONSCIOUS so that you can become more whole (though you can always go deeper).

Conclusion: Go With It – There’s No Choice Anyway

When a REAL idea comes through, it’s not just a passing thought – it’s a process of evolution that will leave you changed forever once you’ve seen it through to completion.

It’s something breaking through the unconscious demanding to be made real and – if it’s coming through you – then you’re the one ‘meant’ to bring it to life.

There’s no need to resist; there’s no need to second-guess; there’s no need to force.

Just let go, trust, and follow it where it leads.

Because at the end of the day, there’s no choice, really. The idea has already chosen you.

Stay real out there,

Abundance Mentality, Outcome-Independence, and the Power of Flow

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Coaching/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships/Trust

Don’t Chase Anything – Just Let It Happen or Move On

If you chase it, it runs away.

This isn’t just some poetic metaphor – it’s a fundamental truth about how life works.

You might’ve even seen this truth working in your own life:

The more desperately you grasp for something – a relationship, success, validation – the further it seems to slip through your fingers…it’s kinda like trying to catch a butterfly with a net when, in reality, if you sit still long enough, it will just come and land on your shoulder without you needing to FORCE things.

Why is this? I hear you ask.

Because nothing real needs chasing and nothing unreal matters anyway.

When you operate from a mindset of abundance instead of scarcity, this truth becomes second nature – you stop running after things that don’t serve you and instead open yourself up to what naturally aligns with who you truly are in your REALNESS.

This is the foundation of outcome-independence – a way of moving through life where you no longer outsource your levels of self-worth, self-acceptance, or inner peace to external results.

And the beauty of this? Life becomes a lot more effortless and REAL.

Let’s go deeper:

The Scarcity Trap vs. the Abundance Mindset

Most people chase because they’re locked into the scarcity thinking of the Ego – the belief that whatever they’re after is rare, fleeting, and must be clung to for dear life if they want to stand any chance of filling the Void.

This leads to desperation, attachment, and anxiety, whether in relationships, business, or just personal goals in general.

Scarcity makes you believe that if you don’t grab this one opportunity, another won’t come along which just serves to create a state of tension and fear that pulls you out of the present moment and into a spiral of ‘what ifs’ and overanalysis (which just stops you taking REAL action because of analysis paralysis).

Abundance thinking, on the other hand, is about trusting in reality:

It’s knowing that there is always more because things always keep flowing – more opportunities, more connections, more paths forward. When you internalise this, you stop making decisions based on fear and start moving from a place of clarity and flow. In other words, you come at it from your REALNESS instead of just your ego.

This isn’t just a feel-good idea – it’s backed by psychology and neuroscience:

Studies on self-fulfilling prophecies show that people who believe in abundance take more risks, create more opportunities, and attract better outcomes because they’re not paralysed by F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real).

Their relaxed, open energy makes them more receptive to life’s natural flow and – because they’re not in a state of panic and confusion – they can make better decisions which makes them more likely to get the results they want from life anyway.

(As an aside, this means that having an abundance mentality is good for your nervous system and therefore your health in general).

What Happens When You Stop Chasing?

When you stop chasing, three powerful shifts tend to happen:

You become more attractive (in every sense of the word).

Whether it’s relationships, business opportunities, or creative flow, the energy of not needing something is magnetic (because if you chase things they run away).

When you stop grasping for things you don’t have or clinging to things you do, people and opportunities naturally gravitate towards you. It’s confidence, not in an arrogant way, but in a way that signals self-sufficiency and clarity – you become the kind of person people want to be around because you can be PRESENT (instead of having your ego play mind games etc. because you have a scarcity mindset and need things from people they can never give).
You make better decisions.

When you’re not making choices from desperation and scarcity, you stop settling for things that aren’t truly aligned with you and your realnesss.

When you can RELAX and let go, then cou see things clearly, and instead of grabbing the first thing that comes along, you wait for something REAL instead.

In other words, an abundance mindset makes you more patient with life so you don’t have to involve yourself with things and situations that you don’t need to be involved with.
You stay in the present and enjoy life more.

Chasing and scarcity pulls you out of reality – it makes you fixate on the future, constantly waiting for the next moment instead of appreciating the one you’re in.

When you let go, you actually experience life instead of just strategising for it. Paradoxically, SLOWING DOWN in this way SPEEDS YOU UP because you can be more responsive to what’s actually happening instead of just reacting to the disorted view of life that a scarcity mindset shows you.

The Link Between Abundance and Outcome Independence

Outcome-independence is a natural extension of an abundance mindset.

This means that your self-acceptance and internal state are not dependent on external results. In other words, you don’t need a certain outcome to feel whole or REAL because you know that you already are (you don’t just believe it).

Most people operate with outcome-dependence which is the direct opposite:

Their emotions fluctuate based on whether or not they get what they want from life (and often these wants don’t even ‘belong’ to them but are rooted in the conditioning of ego). If they land the job, get the relationship, or receive external validation, they feel good; if they don’t, they spiral into self-doubt. This is exhausting and unsustainable because it means your levels of inner stability are always at the mercy of something besides your own realness.

Outcome-independence, on the other hand, is about being rooted in reality – it’s knowing that you are already ‘enough’ and always will be and no future event can add or subtract from your realness (because what’s real is always real and the only thing you can ever lose is something unreal).

This doesn’t mean you stop caring or striving to move towards a better or more real life – it just means you move forward with intent but without attachment, expressing more and more of your real self rather than trying to outsource it in external things. You take action, do your best and accept the rest, and let the results unfold naturally.

If something aligns, great. If not, you move on, knowing something else will….and it always will.

How to Practise Outcome-Independence and Abundance in Everyday Life

1. Shift Your Perspective on ‘Loss‘

When something doesn’t work out, remind yourself: Nothing real can ever be lost. If it wasn’t meant for you, it was never really yours in the first place. If it was real, it will find its way back in another form (because the realest things are always the values and experiences etc. beyond the surface level fruits of life – they’re linked to the underlying process that allows the fruit to materialise in the first place).

2. Stop Overinvesting in External Validation

Check in with yourself: Do you only feel good when something external validates you? A like on social media, praise from someone, hitting a certain goal? If so, start shifting your focus inwards. Validate yourself first by learning to cultivate unconditional self-acceptance and let external rewards be a byproduct – not the source – of your self-worth.

3. Take Action Without Expectation

Do things because they are in alignment with your realness and your core values – not just because of the outcome they might bring. Put out your best work, show up fully in relationships, train hard in the gym – but do it because it’s who you are and because these things allow you to express that – not because you’re expecting a certain ‘reward’ (when you have unconditional self-acceptance – which is ultimately a relationship with truth – then you don’t need a ‘reward’ anyway).

4. Let Go of What Ifs and Should Haves

Scarcity thinking makes you dwell on past failures or missed chances because your ego wants you to wallow in your emotions (so your ego can stay where it is). On the other hand, an abundance mentality recognises that every moment is new and full of potential…you don’t need to mourn what’s gone when there’s so much still ahead.

5. Trust Reality

Reality is always working in your favour – just not always in the way you expect. The more you trust in what is, rather than resisting what isn’t, the more effortlessly things start falling into place. Keep running towards something REAL instead of focusing on the unreal.

Final Thoughts: Move On When Need Be – Life Is Truly Amazing

When you trust in abundance and detach from rigid outcomes, life becomes smoother, lighter, and more fulfilling. You stop trying to force things and instead allow them to unfold naturally as you learn to flow.

When you stop needing things to happen a certain way, they tend to happen better than you could have planned.

Life is truly amazing.

Stay real out there,

The Unreal Mind Games People Play: Understanding ‘Gamey’ Behaviour as a Survival Mechanism

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Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships/Shadow Life

Hurt People Hurt People

Ever noticed how some people seem to play unnecessary, manipulative, or confusing ‘games’ with you for seemingly no logical or rational reason?

For example, maybe they drop passive-aggressive comments, create unnecessary drama, or try to control situations in ways that feel unnatural – it can really flabber your gasters.

Here’s something I learned that helped me not to get sucked into these kinds of ‘games’:

The unreal games people play often seem very real to them (even though they’re not).

That’s because these behaviours aren’t always conscious choices – they’re often outdated survival mechanisms, scripts written in childhood, or past experiences that no longer fit the present reality but that people need to ‘act out’ in order to keep their EGO where it is and avoid facing the Shadow Self bubbling away beneath the surface.

Once triggered, these programs start running automatically, even when they don’t make sense in the current moment (to the person or people witnessing these ‘games’ or even the people playing them).

Understanding this doesn’t mean excusing ‘bad’ behaviour, but it does give us a powerful way to navigate the world with more clarity, less frustration, and stronger boundaries so we can stay REAL and focus on our own ‘stuff’.

Let’s break it down:

Why Do People Play Games?

At its core, ‘gamey’ behaviour is a survival response -it’s a way people unconsciously try to:

Control their environment (to feel safe – usually because they have a nervous system that’s out of regulation and they have sympathetic dominance so they’re stuck in fight-or-flight mode)
Manipulate others’ perceptions (to avoid rejection because of some unresolved pain in the past that screwed up their image of themselves)
Protect themselves from emotional pain (to avoid vulnerability and triggering SHAME – the biggest and most common problem in the world because it causes people to live in the Void)

These patterns usually stem from early experiences where someone felt powerless, unsafe, or unseen – over time, they learned to cope by developing strategies – ‘games’ – that seemed to work at the time and maybe even did for a short while.

The problem? Many of these strategies outlive their usefulness but they didn’t OUTGROW them:

Imagine someone growing up in a household where they were only shown love when they were in distress, for example – that person might develop a tendency to exaggerate their struggles or create unnecessary problems in adulthood. This is because, deep down, their nervous system equates the ‘attention’ given in times of distress with “receiving love” (for example).

The game isn’t rational – but to them, it’s seems real, because it’s a strategy they’ve been using for years to navigate reality (and because it occasionally got them what they wanted, they assume it must be true).

Recognising the ‘Code’ Beneath the Games

I used to get incredibly frustrated when I saw people playing these social games.

Manipulation, guilt-tripping, passive-aggression – it all drove me mad.

Why? Because my own ‘code’ had an aversion to being controlled, a script written by my own childhood experiences. This meant that whenever I sensed someone trying to ‘manipulate’ me, my old programming kicked in: I’d get annoyed, reactive, and sometimes even aggressive in my need to not be controlled.

The irony? That was just my own survival mechanism playing out and a sign that I needed to catch up with the life I was living in CURRENT REALITY so that I could let go, drop my projections, and become present again.

As I worked on my own ‘stuff’, I started seeing things differently; I realised that when someone is being ‘gamey,’ it’s NOT who they are in their REALNESS it’s just a script they’re running on autopilot that takes them out of reality and makes them UNREAL (and ego is the opposite of reality).

The more real I became, the easier it was to see when someone else was being unreal. And once I saw it as just a script, not the person themselves, I didn’t have to take it personally anymore, which meant I could have a better relationship with them because I wouldn’t involve my own projections and the frustrations they triggered… Instead, I could just let them get on with it without being personally affected (and removing myself if necessary because “Gimme something real or GTFO“).

Common ‘Gamey’ Behaviours and What They Reveal

Here are some common ‘gamey’ archetypes you might come across, reverse-engineered for your convenience and edification:

1. The Worry Projector

Ever had someone try to make you worry when you weren’t? They’ll text you constantly about a situation, check in nervously, and say things like, “Don’t worry” – even though worrying wasn’t even on your radar.

At first, this can feel a bit ‘off’, bizarre, or even just plain annoying but, often, they’re not actually responding to your situation – they’re projecting their own internal anxiety onto you.

They don’t know what to do with their worry, so they unconsciously try to transfer it to someone else. If you also start worrying, it validates their emotions and makes them feel less alone in their anxiety (whcih is kinda sweet if you think about it but it’s not REAL).

What’s the outdated script?

“If I don’t worry, something bad will happen”.
“Caring and worrying are the same thing”.
“If others are calm, they must not understand how serious this is” (personally, I’m vexed by this one because when we’re not calm we can’t respond to life properly and actually solve whatever problem we’re dealing with).

2. The Guilt-Tripper

This person subtly (or not so subtly) makes you feel bad for prioritising yourself:

Maybe they act ‘distant’ when you set a health boundary to protect your own realness or make passive-aggressive comments like, “It must be nice to have time for yourself” or “I guess I’m just not as important as [some REAL thing that you’re doing]”.

What’s the outdated script?

“Love = sacrifice” (the unhealthy, one-sided kind where you’re sacrificing for them but not vice versa).
“If people care about me, they will always prioritise me no matter what” (even if you’re on fire or something).
“If someone puts themselves first, it means they don’t love me” (when actually it means you have healthy boundaries because even though you need to SERVE the people you love you can’t do that if you don’t look after yourself – “you can’t pour from an empty cup”).

3. The Drama Magnet

Some people always seem to have something going wrong – usually something that requires your attention, help, emotional involvement, and the most important assets you have: your time, energy, and attention. They’ll stir the pot in social groups, overcomplicate situations, or always seem to be in some kind of conflict (which is true: they have conflict in themselves because they’re fragmented and lost to shame, guilt, and/or trauma).

What’s the outdated script?

“Chaos is normal” (which it is but they have become so used to having problems all the time that they don’t know who they are without them – it literally feels ‘weird’ when things are okay so they need to start drama to muddy the waters again and calm their ego).
“If things are calm, I’ll be forgotten” (because typically that’s the only time they’ve been given ATTENTION in the past and they’ve confused this for the love they don’t know how to give themselves because they’re lost to the Void).
“Problems make me valuable” (because it gives them struggles to talk about and they can get ego strokes form buying into a victim mentality and dragging people into the drama triangle).

4. The One-Upper

No matter what you share, they’ve done it bigger, better, or worse:

If you had a bad day, theirs was worse; if you achieved something great, they’ve done something better. If you went somewhere, they went somewhere better, etc. etc. etc.

What’s the outdated script?

“If I’m not impressive, I’m invisible” (because they are driven by shame which makes them need to externalise their own value to themselves and the world.
“I have to prove my worth constantly” (again, because of underlying shame that makes them lose touch with their REALNESS and get caught up in constant judgements of themsleves and others).
“Being ordinary = being worthless” (because they don’t know how to be REAL and so they don’t know how to ACCEPT themselves).

How to Handle ‘Gamey’ People Without Losing Your Mind

Now that we understand where some of these behaviours come from, how do we actually deal with them?

1. See It for What It Is

When someone plays an unreal game like the examples given, try to recognise that it’s just their ‘old code’ running. This doesn’t mean you have to tolerate it, but understanding that it’s not personal helps you respond from a place of clarity rather than reactively bringing your own ‘stuff’ into the equation and opening up a cycle of negativity and nonsense.

Instead of thinking, “Why is this person being so annoying/manipulative/etc.?” try:

“This is just their survival mechanism at work”
“This isn’t really about me”
“I don’t have to participate in this game”

Or the ultimate killer of such games:

“THIS IS UNREAL”

2. Set Boundaries Without Drama

Just because you understand why someone is playing a game doesn’t mean you have to engage with it – boundaries are key and help you to protect your sanity.

Essentially, a boundary is just about saying “NO” to anything unreal so you can focus on what’s actually REAL:

If someone tries to guilt-trip you, don’t defend yourself – just calmly stand your ground and do what you know is REAL for you.
If someone projects their worry onto you, you can acknowledge their feelings without taking them on and taking yourself off your own REAL path.
If someone thrives on drama, avoid feeding into it by reminding yourself that it’s not REAL.

A simple, “I hear you, but I don’t feel the same way” or “I’m not worried, tbh, but I appreciate your concern” can go a long way.

Alternatively, you can just smile, nod, and then do whatever the hell you wanted to do in the first place.

3. Stay Grounded in Reality

As we’ve been saying, people play games because – on some fundamental level – they’ve disconnected from what’s real.

The best way to counter this is to stay anchored in reality yourself by working on your REALNESS (book a call with me to get started):

Focus on facts, not emotional distortions: When someone tries to pull you into a game, stick to what’s actually happening – not the exaggerated or projected version because of your own ‘stuff’ pulling you into unreality.
Practice mindfulness: Staying present helps you avoid getting caught in someone else’s script because mindfulness keeps you in a place of wholeness but the scripts are always just somebody’s fragments.
Choose real connection over performance: If you sense someone is playing a game, try shifting the conversation toward something more authentic – ask them a PATTERN BREAKER question that brings them back to themselves (something about their real interests, their true feelings, whatever).

4. Lead by Example

The more real you become, the less gamey people around you will be – at least in their interactions with you. This is because if you work on being real and present then you set the TONE that allows unreal people to take a leap of faith and do the same thing (though some will act the other way and get more unreal as your realness triggers their Shadow Self and then ego ‘stuff’).

When you’re grounded, rooted in your REALNESS, unshaken by manipulation, and refuse to engage in drama, you subtly encourage others to meet you on the same level. They may not change overnight, but they’ll begin to realise that their games don’t work on you and so they’ll either start to look at themselves or move on to somebody they can manipulate (which is no loss to you because you haven’t lost anything real).

Final Thoughts: The Power of Reality Over Games

We all have our own outdated scripts running in the background – some of us just have more obvious ones than others. Either way, the key to navigating a world full of ‘gamey’ behaviour isn’t frustration or avoidance – it’s understanding (essentially that “hurt people hurt people”).

When we see these behaviours as unconscious survival mechanisms rather than deliberate attacks, we can handle them with greater clarity, set stronger boundaries, and remain grounded in what’s REAL.

Ultimately, the less we engage in the games, the more we create a lifewhere real connection replaces manipulation, and authenticity wins over outdated scripts.

Stay real out there,

More on this: ‘Why Do People Play Mind Games?’ – The Truth About POWER, SCARCITY, and EGO

Mindfulness for Realness: Shifting Your Attention through the Power of CHOICE

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Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology

Focus on the Trees: A Simple Trick to Escape Frustration, Anxiety, and Depression

Humans gonna human and there are certain things that we all have in common – one of those things is that life will FRUSTRATE, TRIGGER or ACTIVATE us from time-to-time (because we all have ‘juice’ inside us and life likes to show us what it tastes like by ‘squeezing’ us):

Some people lose their cool when their football team loses, others when someone cuts in front of them in a queue. Me? I’m a pretty chill person 88.8% of the time- except in two main cases:

When I encounter spiritual bullsh*ttery – the kind that disguises ego-driven avoidance, distortion, and projection as some kind of enlightened truth (seriously, check out my YouTube channel for more on this).
When I’m stuck in traffic—specifically in the UK’s finest towns and cities, where the ‘rules of the road’ seem to be more like vague suggestions rather than actual laws.

The first situation? Well, I can’t control how people distort reality, but I can keep cutting through the nonsense by staying committed to truth – questioning it, living it, and repeating the process endlessly until I find bliss and become infinitely patient (can’t wait for that to happen).

The second situation? That’s where I’ve discovered a simple yet powerful trick: focus on the trees.

I know what you’re thinking – Eww…this guy is some kind of hippy. But bear with me….this isn’t about pretending traffic doesn’t exist or forcing myself into some artificial ‘Zen’ state. It’s about shifting focus to something REAL, something constant, something that doesn’t care about my little irritations or the chaos around me.

And, as it turns out, science backs this up – let’s explore it in a bit more detail:

Why Focusing on the Trees Works (and Why You Should Try It Too)

At first, this was just a random thing I started doing to calm myself down in traffic but – after experiencing how effective it was – I started looking into why it works. Turns out, the answer is rooted (pun totally not intended) in some pretty solid neuroscience and psychology:

1. Nature Literally Lowers Stress and Anxiety

It’s no secret that nature has a calming effect on the human mind:

Studies have shown that exposure to natural environments – even just ‘looking’ at trees – can lower levels of cortisol, the primary stress hormone. This helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system which allows to us chill out (parasympathetic is also known as the “rest and digest” side of the nervous system).

A study published in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine found that walking in a forest (or even just viewing greenery) significantly reduced cortisol levels compared to walking in an urban environment. Another study in Scientific Reports found that people who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature reported higher levels of well-being and lower stress.

So, as it turns out, when I “focus on the trees” instead of the frustrating reality of UK traffic, I’m not just distracting myself – I’m actively reducing my stress response. Turns out the trees are a visual anchor that pulls me out of an anxious, irritated state and into something more peaceful and grounded. In other words, whether I’m a hippy or not, they can and do make me more REAL.

2. The Power of Mindfulness: Redirecting Attention

There are a lot of misconceptions about mindfulness – almost to the extent that some people end up using it to try and FORCE themselves to be calm (which is mad when you think about it….calmness is FLOW, not force).

A better way to look at it (in my humble opinion) is that mindfulness is about choosing where to place your attention. Anxiety, frustration, and even depression thrive when we get caught in repetitive negative thought loops – when we focus on what’s wrong, unfair, or uncertain.

This is unfortunate because what we focus on grows and so if we keep CHOOSING to focus on our problems that’s exactly what we’re going to get more of (which is why I always guide my coaching clients into training themselves to FOCUS on the REAL ‘stuff’ in their lives).

Essentially, mindfulness teaches us that we can shift focus at any moment:

Instead of fixating on the chaos of traffic (or any other stressful situation like spiritual bullsh*ttery), I choose to focus on something neutral and real – the sway of the trees, the way the leaves move in the wind, the sheer fact that these silent giants exist no matter how I feel and will still exist (many of them) once I’m done-and-dusted here on Planet Earth.

And guess what? It turns out this is actually a ‘thing’ and this technique – often called attentional control – has been shown in numerous studies to help reduce rumination, which is a key factor in anxiety and depression.

The short-version: When we deliberately shift our attention from UNREAL thoughts to something present and REAL, we break the cycle of stress and get flowing again.

3. Gratitude and Perspective: A Reality Check

Another amazing shift in perspective that often has misconceptions around it is GRATITUDE:

Gratitude isn’t about pretending everything is fine when it’s not – it’s about recognising what’s still good, what’s still real, even when things feel frustrating or overwhelming.

When I “focus on the trees”, I’m not just using them as a distraction….I’m genuinely appreciating them—acknowledging that while the implementation of human-made systems (like roads and traffic rules) can be messy and unpredictable (just like human beings), nature just is (even though it can appear to be messy and unpredicatble through the lens of human interpretations and our value judgements).

Nature doesn’t ‘try’; it doesn’t ‘force’; it’s not in a ‘hurry’ -it just exists, steady and unbothered by whatever nonsense is happening around it.

This shift in perspective is powerful becuase it reminds me that not everything in life is about control and force. Some things are frustrating, yes. Some things don’t make sense, true. But outside of that, there’s always something real and steady to anchor myself to because what’s real is always real.

Does This Work Beyond Traffic?

Absolutely – that’s just the main example of frustration in my own life that I’ve noticed.

This mindful-hippy-focus-on-the-trees approach isn’t just for dealing with road rage – it applies to any situation where frustration, anxiety, or stress threaten to take over.

For example:

Feeling overwhelmed at work? Take a moment to look out the window at the sky, the trees, the clouds moving. Let yourself see them, rather than just glance at them.
Struggling with anxiety? Instead of getting lost in your thoughts, pick something real in your environment – your breath, the ground beneath your feet, the texture of your clothes – and focus on it fully.
Dealing with a difficult person? Instead of getting caught up in their energy, ground yourself in something outside the interaction – something constant, something that reminds you of the bigger picture.

The key here isn’t avoidance – it’s presence (always the opposite of ego resistance and distortion which causes so many of the problems in our lives). Focusing on the trees (or whatever else) isn’t about ignoring reality; it’s about choosing which part of reality to engage with in any given moment so that you can feel more connected to it and become more REAL.

The Science of Reality: Why It Matters

Here’s where things get even more interesting:

As I’ve literally been screaming at anybody who’ll listen for years now, a major contributor to frustration, anxiety, and depression is a disconnect from reality – either getting stuck in our thoughts about the past or future, or getting lost in misperceptions and interpretations rather than what’s actually happening.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), one of the most evidence-based psychological approaches, often helps people by challenging distorted thoughts and bringing them back to the here and now.

Similarly, meditation and mindfulness practices – backed by countless studies now – help rewire the brain for greater emotional regulation by training attention and awareness.

The simple act of focusing on something real (like a tree, a breath, or the sensation of movement) engages the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking and emotional control, while reducing activity in the amygdala, the brain’s stress centre. This serves to calm your nervous system and slow down those unhelpful and unreal thoughts so you can shift FOCUS back onto the real ‘stuff’.

Short version: When you focus on something real, you get real and when you get real, your mind finds balance. It’s a FACT.

Try It Yourself: A Simple Practice

If this resonates with you then maybe you’re a bit of a ‘hippy’ too – try this simple exercise the next time you feel stressed or overwhelmed:

Pause: Notice the thoughts or emotions pulling you into frustration or anxiety.
Look around: Find something natural and REAL – a tree, the sky, a plant, even a small patch of grass.
Focus on it fully: Observe its details, its movement, its texture. Let yourself just be with it.
Breathe: Let go of the thoughts and let the present moment ground you.

Final Thoughts: Stay Real

“Focusing on the trees” might sound simple, but that’s exactly why it works. In a world filled with distractions, noise, and mental clutter, returning to something real – something beyond the chaos – can be a game-changer.

So whether it’s traffic, stress, anxiety, or just the general insanity of life, remember this: the trees don’t care about your frustration. They’re just there, being real. Let that remind you that you are too.

What’s real is always real, after all.

Stay real out there,

The Power of Commitment: Why Being Real Will Always Outlast Being Interested

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Coaching/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Trust

Are You ‘Dabbling’ or are You REAL?

Having an ‘interest’ in something is pretty easy because it’s fleeting, surface-level, and effortless – maybe you watch a documentary, pick up a book, attend a lecture, and think to yourself, “Dang, this is interesting. I should explore it more someday.”

But then…you don’t (or if you do it’s a firework that soon runs out of energy after the initial ‘bang’).

Here’s the thing: ‘interest’ alone isn’t going to take you anywhere meaningful. It won’t change your life, build your dreams, or get you through the inevitable twists and turns that any transformational journey asks you to navigate. It might get you started but it’s never enough to get all the way to where you want to be going.

If you want to do something worthwhile – something that matters to you deeply because it’s REAL – you need more than interest:

You need commitment.

Commitment is what separates those who just talk about doing something from those who actually live it, breathe it, and see it through to the end. It’s the difference between merely ‘dabbling’ in something versus allowing it to become a true ‘part’ of who you are.

The bottom line is that interest fades at the first sign of resistance because it really only belongs to the level of beliefs and ego; commitment digs its heels in and keeps going, even when the path gets rocky, because it’s built on an ACCEPTANCE of what’s true about you in your REALNESS.

So how do you move from being merely interested in something to being truly committed?

Why does it even matter?

This article will help you to understand and to go deeper:

Interest vs Commitment: A Matter of Depth

Let’s start with what sets interest and commitment apart:

Interest is passive; curious but non-committal. It’s an enjoyable thought experiment, nothing much more than a “wouldn’t it be nice if…” moment that we might indulge in here-and-there.

Commitment, on the other hand, is ACTIVE (and everything is about ACTION when it comes to changing your life – after you’ve raised AWARENESS and cultivated ACCEPTANCE, of course).

It’s a decision to invest the WHOLE of yourself – instead of just the fragments of ego and its comfort zone – to something, even when it’s inconvenient or challenging. When you’re committed, you don’t just think about your goals; you pursue them relentlessly because you know that you don’t really have a CHOICE (not if you want to be real to yourself anyway).

Commitment means that you SHOW UP as the person that you want to be even when it’s hard, boring, or downright unpleasant because you’re driven by something deeper than the surface-level curiosity that interest offers.

Real commitment also requires you to put your values into action because it’s fuelled not just by a clear vision of what you want but also WHY you want it:

As Nietzsche famously said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”.

When you understand the values and purpose underpinning your goals, you develop the resilience to navigate setbacks, detours, and disappointments along the way and this resilience opens a positive spiral of making you more-and-more committed.

Values, Vision, and Drive: The Foundations of Commitment

At the heart of REAL commitment are three essential components: Values, Vision, and Drive.

Without these, commitment becomes hollow, a house built on shaky foundations because it belongs to the Ego and not your REALNESS.

When you align these elements, you create a powerful force that pulls you forward and sustains you through the challenges of real growth.

1. Values: Knowing What Matters Most

Your values are qualities that make your life seem meaningful or significant that guide your decisions and define what matters most to you.

Normally, these values can be encapsulated in single words like ‘Truth’, ‘Freedom’, ‘Humour’, or ‘Sincerity’ (etc. – there are an almost infinite amount of ‘Values’ – there’s a list from my book Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness which you can access here. If you want to go even deeper, check out my free 7-Day Course which is designed to help you figure your values out and turn them into action: The Personality Transplant).

Your values can be translated into real GOALS – not the superficial goals society says you should chase, but the deeply personal ambitions that resonate with who you are at your core:

For example, let’s say you’re interested in starting a business. If your interest is driven by a superficial desire – like merely wanting to look successful on social media in an attempt to fill the Void and appease your ego – it’s unlikely to last when the reality of hard work and uncertainty sets in.

But if your desire stems from a deeper value, like freedom, creativity, or contributing something meaningful to the world, you’ll have a far stronger foundation to keep going and so the fire of your commitment will keep burning bright.

When you root your actions in your core values, you’re no longer chasing empty achievements and running on the spot; you’re living in alignment with your realness and making moves, which makes commitment feel natural and sustainable as you build momentum.

2. Vision: Seeing the Bigger Picture

We can also go deeper into commitment with a compelling vision – a clear sense of where you’re headed and why it matters. Like we said above, this vision isn’t just about the what of your goals; it’s also about the why.

For example, do you want more money so you can hoard it in a bank account or do you want financial freedom to spend your time on things that truly matter to you? Do you want to learn a skill because it sounds impressive or because it aligns with your deepest passions and purpose and will allow you to express who you REALL are?

When you clarify your vision and connect it to your values, you transform your goals from abstract ideas into something real and tangibl – you create a guiding light that keeps you focused, even when the journey gets tough.

Knowing your vision and keeping it in mind at all times is one of the ways to keep building FLOW because whatever life throws at you can be navigated in the context of where you’re headed. This makes you more resilient but it also allows you to find more peace because nothing can shake you from yourself and stop you learning and evolving.

3. Drive: Bridging the Gap Between Present and Future

The final piece of the puzzle is drive – the passion and energy that come from recognising where you are now in relation to where you want to be. The awareness of this GAP creates a powerful creative tension that propels you forward, turning your values and vision into action.

It also energises you to use the present to move into the future from moment-to-moment and heightens your relationship with life as a whole. This in turn increases commitment as you experience your own power and live life as it’s meant to be lived: in motion as you move towards a deeper sense of wholeness.

Drive isn’t about external pressure or motivation from others; it’s about tapping into your inner fire – t’s the force that keeps you moving when interest would have long since given up.

The Price of Commitment: Facing Resistance

The thing that people struggle with about commitment is that it’s not glamorous – it doesn’t come with instant gratification or a guarantee of success. In fact, true commitment often involves sacrifice, discomfort, and uncertainty – which means that it asks us to TRUST (ourselves and life).

At the same time, this is also why it’s so transformative:

When you commit to something real, you’re not just chasing outcomes or ticking boxes; you’re shaping yourself in the process. You’re becoming the kind of person who follows through, who grows through challenges, and who lives with purpose. You’re becoming less fragmented and more WHOLE.

The good news is that even if the outcome doesn’t turn out as you hoped, the journey itself will still be worth it (as cheesy and as cliched as that might sound – it’s true). Why? Because commitment is about more than achieving a specific result. It’s about living in alignment with your values, building resilience, and growing into your REALNESS.

At the end of the day, that’s the only thing really worth being committed to…

Living from the Inside Out

One of the biggest mistakes people make is living from the outside in:

They let external factors – trends, societal expectations, or other people’s opinions, etc. – dictate their choices. This just causes them to chase superficial goals that don’t even align with their realness and then wonder why they feel unfulfilled (living those “lives of quiet desperation”).

Commitment flips the script:

It’s about living from the inside out – rooting your actions in your own REAL values and purpose, rather than chasing after what’s shiny, new, or popular. When you live this way, you’re no longer pulled in a million different directions by fleeting interests because you’re able to transcend your own duality.

Instead of your goals being an extension of a fragmented relationship with yourself that could pull you all over the place, they become an extension of what’s already real within you: something whole.

This is why commitment feels so powerful: it connects you to your inner truth and helps you create a life that’s authentic and meaningful.

How to Move from Interest to Commitment

Here are some practical steps to help you make the leap from being interested in something to being truly committed:

Clarify Your Values
Spend some time reflecting on what matters most to you. What are the principles and beliefs that guide your life? Write them down and use them as a compass for your decisions.

My free 7-Day Course will really get you started with this and has a workbook with values elicitation exercises.
Define Your Vision
Think about what you want to achieve and why it matters. What’s the deeper purpose behind your goals? How do they align with your values?

Again, my free 7-Day Course will really take you deep into this.
Start Small, But Be Consistent
Commitment doesn’t happen overnight – start by taking small, consistent actions towards your goals. Over time, these actions will build momentum and deepen your commitment. Moving between where you are now and where you want to be is a PROCESS – if you stay committed to that process, you will get results.
Embrace Discomfort
Growth requires stepping outside your comfort zone – be willing to face resistance, uncertainty, and setbacks along the way but remember that what’s real is always real so the only thing you’ll risk losing in these periods are your illusions.
Focus on the Process, Not Just the Outcome
Remember that commitment is about more than achieving a specific result – it’s about living in alignment with your values and becoming the person you want to be. Of course, the more committed you are, the more likely you are to get the specific results you want (but even if you don’t growing REAL in the process is the ultimate rewared and the only thing worth truly committing to).

The Real Difference Commitment Makes

When you commit to something real – something that aligns with your values, vision, and drive – you unlock a level of focus, energy, and resilience that interest alone can never provide; you stop living on the surface and start digging into the deeper layers of who you are and what you’re capable of.

Next time you feel tempted to dabble in something, ask yourself:

Am I interested or am I committed?

If it’s REAL, it’s worth pursuing, and it’s worth committing to fully. Find something real and pour yourself into it.

The rewards – both internal and external – will be greater than anything interest alone could ever offer.

Stay real out there,

*Based on ‘Revolution’ number twenty in Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness

Finding The Edge: How to Direct Your Energy for Growth and Flow

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Coaching/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology

Are you a shotgun or a laser beam?

There’s a restless, jittery feeling that sometimes gnaws away at your peace of mind. It’s as though your body and mind are brimming with energy, but it feels erratic, scattered, or downright overwhelming.

When this feeling kicks in, you may find yourself flitting from one thing to another – unable to focus – or maybe you’ll end up pouring energy into things that just don’t feel REAL or meaningful, becoming increasingly frustrated or even drained as things continue to spiral and the call of the Void consumes you.

Here’s the TRUTH you need to know about this restlessness:

Scattered energy is often a sign that something deeper is out-of-sync because you haven’t found your Edge.

When you’re not at your edge, your energy has nowhere meaningful to go – it gets stuck, misdirected, or wasted on things that don’t matter and this just opens up a negative spiral of restlessness and jitteriness as your energy turns against you instead of being directed into a real purpose.

But what exactly is the ‘Edge’? Why does it matter so much? And how do you find it without watching your whole life start toppling over into chaos?

This article explores this vital concept, weaving in coaching theory and practical tips for channelling your energy into growth, flow, and creative momentum.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

The Edge: Where Growth and Flow Live

Your Edge is that sweet spot where challenge and ability meet each other in REALITY – it’s the place where you’re stretching yourself just enough to grow, but not so much that you’re overwhelmed.

Being at your edge means you’re operating in the Stretch Zone – a state where you’re pushing beyond your comfort zone without tipping into panic but where your ideas about yourself (ego) can meet the truth (realness) and you can find INSIGHT that frees you from old patterns that no longer serve you.

To understand this more clearly, let’s break it down using the coaching framework of the Comfort Zone, Stretch Zone, and Panic Zone:

The Comfort Zone: This is where things feel safe and familiar because it doesn’t challenge your IDENTITY (ego) in any way – you know what to expect, and everything feels manageable and within your control.

Even though it’s important to rest here occasionally, staying in your comfort zone for too long leads to stagnation because reality and life keep changing around you and when you stop moving you take yourself out of the flow.

Here in the comfort zone, energy has nowhere to go because there’s no challenge to direct it toward and so eventually this energy can stagnate and we just end up becoming passive and listless (if we stay here too long).
The Stretch Zone (The Edge): This is the zone of optimal growth because you’re taking on challenges that push you to expand your skills, creativity, or understanding.

It’s stimulating, energising, and even a little uncomfortable – but in the REALEST way because you’re always pushing just beyond what you currently know about yourself, the world, and reality and using the UNCERTAINTY that it brings to find out what’s actually REAL about you.

In this zone, your energy is focused like a laser, building momentum and flow and so you can keep moving and navigating life towards wherever it is that you know you truly belong (which is always a deeper sense of WHOLENESS).
The Panic Zone: Push too far beyond your edge, and you’ll find yourself in the panic zone.

This is where overwhelm, anxiety, and burnout live because you’re pushing yourself beyond the healthy tension of the Stretch Zone and entering a place of STRESS (which is caused by you giving your nervous system more than it’s currently ready to handle).

Instead of growing, you shut down or spiral out of control – your energy becomes chaotic and unmanageable and you end up completely overwhelmed because the stress and pressure become too much.

Finding and staying at your EDGE means recognising when you’re too comfortable and need to stretch – or when you’ve stretched too far and need to recalibrate.

This is a dynamic balancing act – which can be done daily from one-moment-to-the-next – but the more you work on being honest with yourself and looking at how near or far away you are from your edge, the better you’ll get at it.

Scattered Energy vs. Laser Focus

When you’re not at your edge, your energy becomes scattered: think of it like a shotgun blast – powerful, but spread out in every direction.

You might be ‘busy’ being ‘busy’, but your efforts feel disjointed, and your results are shallow and intermittent instead of deep and consistent. This often happens when you’re stuck in your comfort zone or lacking a clear purpose to channel your energy toward.

On the other hand, when you’re operating at your edge, your energy becomes focused – like a laser beam. You know exactly where to direct your efforts and you can go deep into your work or purpose because there’s a sense of alignment and flow where everything you do feels meaningful and connected.

This is because the EDGE keeps you locked into reality whereas the comfort zone and panic zone both take you out of it.

The difference between being a ‘shotgun’ or being a ‘laser’ often comes down to one thing and one thing alone:

Your ability to stretch yourself deliberately and intentionally.

Signs You’re Not at Your Edge

How do you know if you’re off balance and need to recalibrate?

Restlessness: You feel jittery, agitated, or bored, even if there’s plenty to do.
Scattered Focus: You’re bouncing between tasks without really finishing anything or feeling deeply engaged.
Low Motivation: Without a meaningful challenge, it’s hard to summon the energy to care about what you’re doing.
Overwhelm: On the flip side, you might feel paralysed by too much chaos and STRESS, indicating you’ve moved into the panic zone.
Stagnation: You’ve been coasting for too long and things feel too predictable or repetitive.
Passivity: You find it hard to take any action whatsoever because you’re so used to being comfortable but unsatisfied.

These feelings are signals from your body, mind, and nervous system (a combination of both) – they’re telling you it’s time to re-evaluate where you’re directing your energy and whether you need to stretch yourself into new challenges and ways of BEING.

How to Find Your Edge

Finding your edge is about pushing yourself just enough to grow, without tipping into overwhelm.

Here’s how to get started:

Reflect on Your Energy Levels
Pay attention to how your energy feels: Is it scattered like a shotgunor focused like a laser? If you’re feeling restless or disjointed, it’s a sign that you need to recalibrate.

Ask yourself:
- Am I challenging myself enough, or have I been coasting?
- Am I taking on too much and feeling overwhelmed?
Identify a Real Challenge
The key to finding your edge is to focus on one real thing that stretches you. This could be a project, a skill you want to develop, or a personal goal that excites and scares you a little. The challenge should feel meaningful and aligned with your REAL values or purpose.
Step Into the Stretch Zone
Commit to taking action that pushes you out of your comfort zone. Start small if needed, but make sure it feels like a genuine stretch. For example:
- If you’re stuck in routine, try taking on a new responsibility or learning something new.
- If you’re feeling overwhelmed, focus on simplifying and prioritising one thing at a time.
  
  Create a STRETCH GOAL for yourself that encourages you to do something you’re doing to the next level.
Recalibrate as Needed
Finding your edge is a dynamic process – sometimes, you’ll stretch too far and need to pull back; other times, you’ll realise you’re still too comfortable and need to push harder. Regularly reflect on your progress and adjust accordingly.
Use Somatic Practices to Ground Yourself
As you stretch yourself, it’s important to stay connected to your body and energy whilst having a regulated nervous system.

Practices like breathwork, yoga, or mindful movement can help you stay balanced and prevent overwhelm. These tools can also help you tune into your REALNESS and recognise when you’re truly at your edge.

The Edge and Flow

When you’re at your edge, something seemingly magical happens: flow (actually, it’s not “magic” – you’ve just tuned back into the reality of wholeness instead of all the fragmented beliefs in your mind-body that kept you from it).

This is the state where you’re fully immersed in what you’re doing, and everything feels effortless and enjoyable. Building this kind of flow is where REAL growth happens – it’s where your energy is fully aligned with your actions and you’re operating at your highest potential.

Being in flow doesn’t mean everything is easy. In fact, it often feels challenging but it’s the kind of challenge that excites and energises you, rather than draining you. By finding your edge and staying there, you create the conditions for flow to emerge and that’s where REAL life starts to happen.

Final Thoughts: Living at the Edge

Your EDGE is where real life happens and where you feel most alive. It’s where you grow, create, and find meaning. By stepping into the stretch zone and aligning your energy with a real challenge, you can overcome stagnation and build the kind of momentum that leads to true flow.

Being at your edge doesn’t mean pushing yourself to the brink of exhaustion – it’s just about finding that sweet spot where challenge meets ability, where your energy is focused like a laser, and you’re growing real.

Follow some of the tips in this article, find your edge, and watch how your energy transforms from scattered to unstoppable.

Stay real out there,

P.S. If you’re ready to find your edge and grow real then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you to put yourself back in the flow.

One REAL Thing: Calm Your Mind for Good

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Coaching/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Trust

To calm your mind you need to deal with the FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM, not just the symptoms – ONE REAL THING can help you do this.

Let’s face it: the Buddhists were probably right when they said “Life is suffering” – there’s always something that we’ve either just ‘got over’, that we’re still going through, or that’s on the way to test us and see how real we are.

Even if things are ‘good’ then there’s probably something round the corner because the nature of life – as fragmented creatures on a fragmented planet – is that things have to go ‘wrong’. We’re not omniscient or omnipotent and so things will eventually go against the grain of how we think they ‘should’ – it’s just the way it is.

When we accept that life is like this instead of fighting it, then it a strange kind of way it becomes ‘easier’, because we don’t add extra levels of resistance or frustration as we sink into a kind of “woe is me” attitude when things do unfold in ways we’d rather they didn’t.

In short, life is amazing and beautiful and strange, but it’s also a challenge sometimes – the sweet and the sour are just ‘part’ of it. It’s ALL part of the experience of being a ‘human’.

At the end of the day, we’ve all experienced the frustration of feeling pulled in multiple directions, trying to juggle conflicting priorities, or wrestling with a restless mind that refuses to settle in the context of all this to-and-fro between the ups-and-downs.

At the heart of this chaos often lies a deeper issue: duality and fragmentation:

The inner turmoil we experience is often a result of being split – torn between different parts of ourselves, between what we think we ‘should’ do and what we truly want, between the illusions we’ve bought into and the truth we instinctively know…between our ego and our REALNESS.

Here’s the good news, though: there is a way out of the maze and it’s probably more ‘simple’ than you might expect:

You just need to focus on one REAL thing.

Duality: The Source of Inner Chaos

Before we get into the practical steps, let’s unpack the problem a bit more:

Duality is the sense of division within us – a constant tug-of-war between opposing forces; it could be the inner critic battling the dreamer, the pull of comfort against the push of ambition, or the voice of love clashing with F.E.A.R (“false evidence appearing real”).

All of this is rooted in the dualistic illusion of JUDGEMENT – looking at and labelling things in terms of opposites, like ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or ‘black’ and ‘white’ – the idea that our INTERPRETATIONS of reality are the real deal.

This duality creates fragmentation and is often just a projection of an inner fragmentation within ourselves (because of shame that creates the Shadow Dance between the Ego and the Shadow Self):

Instead of feeling whole (our natural, real state), we feel scattered and restless, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite fit together. This fragmentation stems from shame, insecurities, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are versus who we’re supposed to be – over time, these internal divisions cause us to feel disconnected – not just from ourselves, but also from others, the world, and reality itself in TRUTH.

The result of all this is a restless, wandering mind and a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction. This is just the VOID of being disconnected from the truth about oneself and ACCEPTING oneself and life unconditionally. When this void shows up in our lives, it brings all kinds of symptoms that we don’t want to deal with but start to identify with and think are just ‘normal’ or who we just happen to be: depression, anxiety, a dysregulated nervous system and all of the health issues it brings, etc. etc. etc.

We might go to the doctors or even get therapy to try and deal with this void but all that tends to happen is they give us some medication or a conversation with us about our problems (the symptoms, again, instead of the fundamental problem and what to DO about it) instead of helping us to see that what we need to do is to overcome this INNER SPLIT and the void that’s opened up by duality so that we can grow REAL again.

We can start do this by finding ONE REAL THING that will start moving us back in the right (real) direction: towards WHOLENESS instead of fragmentation.

Wholeness: The Antidote

The antidote to fragmentation is wholeness and the simplest way to cultivate wholeness is to focus wholly on something real.

When I say ‘REAL’, I mean something that is grounded in truth, love, or purpose – something aligned with your deepest values and the natural drive that is within all of us that strives towards connection instead of separation.

This is not about chasing after ego-driven desires – so you can try to fill that void that can never be filled (you can only become it – see the article I wrote about this) – but about connecting to what genuinely matters: something that takes you deeper into wholeness and allows you to help others eventually do the same.

For example, this “real thing” might be:

Creating a vision of the life you want to build.
Commiting to a meaningful goal that aligns with your values.
Developing a sense of devotion to a higher power or truth.
Working on a daily practice like yoga, meditation, or art that brings you into the present moment and gets you out of your head and into your real life.

The keyword here is really “devotion“:

In the moment, give your whole self to this one real thing and – by focusing on it completely – you override the scattered energy of a fragmented mind and anchor yourself in something unshakable: the here-and-now of your actual life.

Why It Works

This approach works because it transforms your relationship with your own mind:

When your focus is divided, your mind is like a chaotic room with a hundred people shouting at once but – when you devote yourself to one real thing – it’s like asking everyone else to leave the room; the noise dies down, clarity emerges, and you regain a sense of control and flow.

In spiritual traditions, this is sometimes called ‘single-pointed focus’ or ‘dharana’ (from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali) – it’s the practice of concentrating fully on one thing to transcend distractions and connect to a deeper sense of flow.

Neuroscience backs this up, too: when you focus intensely on something, your brain shifts into a state of flow, where time seems to disappear and you operate at your best. Literally, it changes your brainwave state and the whole way that you interact with yourself and everything around you (you can go into the Alpha wave state or even the Theta wave state if you really get some deep focus going).

In other words, focusing on one real thing is not just calming – it’s transformative and can help you transcend your own fragmentation and taste the whole again.

How to Find Your “One Real Thing”

Now, you might be wondering: What should I focus on?

The answer is personal, but here are some guiding principles to keep in mind:

It Must Be REAL
Your One REAL Thing (ORT) cannot be a fleeting desire or a fantasy born of ego and the need to try and escape from life and your own unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ – it has to come from a place of TRUTH and take you to an even deeper state of truth (as you learn about yourself, the world, and reality). Ask yourself simple questions to get started: Does this align with my values? Does it bring me closer to wholeness?
It Must Be Meaningful to You
Whether it’s your family, a creative project, a spiritual practice, or a goal you’re passionate about, it should resonate deeply. If it doesn’t matter to you, it won’t hold your attention, and you won’t honour it or be able to COMMIT – not committing just increases the odds of you getting DISTRACTED by all of the unreal things in the world caused by duality and that disturb the mind in the first place.
It Must Be Grounded in the Present
The power of focusing on one real thing comes from being fully alive and REAL in the moment. If your mind is in the past or the future, you’re still fragmented. Choose something that roots you in the now and that gets you in your body more than in your head.

Practical Steps to Build Focus and Flow

If you’re ready to calm your mind and transcend that pesky duality and fragmentation then these practical steps can help you focus on your one real thing:

1. Start Your Day with Intention

Before your day gets busy, take five minutes to reflect: What is the most important, real thing I want to focus on today? Write it down. This simple act of setting an intention can re-centre you and give you clarity for the day ahead. Make sure you choose just ONE thing that is the realest focus of your day and then get it done. Keep your FOCUS locked in.

2. Use Your Body to Anchor Your Mind

When your mind feels fragmented, your body can act as a grounding force. Try breathwork (I always recommend 4-7-8 breathing: inhale for 4-seconds, retain for 7-seconds, and exhale for 8-seconds (and repeat), yoga, or simply going for a walk in nature. Physical movement helps quiet mental noise and brings you into the present moment, making it easier to focus on your real thing instead of old patterns and fragmentary ways of being, feeling, and doing things.

3. Practise Single-Tasking

Multitasking is the enemy of focus – choose one task or goal and give it your undivided attention. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the task at hand. This trains your brain to stay centred. If you struggle with this initially then use a Pomodoro timer to focus for a dedicated block of time then take a short break to do whatever (I use pomofocus.io sometimes and it’s really good).

4. Develop a Daily Devotional Practice

‘Devotion’ doesn’t have to be religious – it can be as simple as spending 10 minutes a day journaling about what matters most to you, meditating on a vision, or working on a creative project. The key is to approach it with sincerity and commitment and to really RESPECT what you’re doing by knowing your reasons for doing it (to grow more REAL).

5. Let Go of Perfectionism

Focusing on one real thing doesn’t mean you have to get it perfect – it’s about the act of showing up, again and again, with your whole self. Progress, not perfection, is what builds wholeness. This is really worth knowing because it allows you to remain outcome-independent and to not have to outsource your self-worth and self-acceptance to end results (such ‘outsourcing’ is always caused by duality and fragmentation). Instead, you can just stay in the process and keep flowing and growing REAL.

6. Reflect on Your Progress

At the end of each day, ask yourself: Did I stay focused on my one real thing? What did I learn? What can I do better tomorrow? This keeps you accountable and helps you refine your ability to stay in that real place from one day to the next.

Closing Thoughts

The world we live in often feels chaotic and overwhelming, but that’s largely because we’ve allowed duality and fragmentation to dictate how we operate.

The good news is that we can break free – by focusing wholly on ONE REAL THING, we can calm our minds, transcend inner conflict, and step into a state of flow where everything feels aligned.

This practice isn’t just about calming your mind – it’s about growing REAL and moving towards wholeness as a default state of being. It’s about reminding yourself that you don’t have to live in pieces and filter everything through a fragmented ego.

Take a deep breath, choose one real thing to focus on today, and DEVOTE yourself to it completely – the noise will fade, clarity will return, and the fragmented pieces of your life will start to give you hints of the bigger picture.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson

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