Life Philosophy

Posts about practical life philosophy you can better understand reality and live a better life.

What is Transformational Coaching for Men? A Journey into Realness

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Transformational Coaching for Realness will Help You Change Your Own Life for Good

The world is overloaded and overfilled with self-help books, motivational speakers, and quick-fix solutions – all of these things may help you to get a temporary release from the SYMPTOMS of the Void you feel within yourself – that restless ‘itch’ that something needs changing – but if you want to go DEEP and actually solve the fundamental problem which is always a disconnection from your REALNESS then you might be looking for transformational coaching.

This kind of coaching isn’t about surface-level changes or temporary motivation based on whatever hot topic is exciting you this week; it’s about a lasting and profound shift that redefines how you experience yourself, the world, and even reality itself. It works by helping you get back to your elemental self – who you really are when you take away all of the misperceptions and limiting beliefs that really keep you from life.

It works because REAL transformation doesn’t happen by adding more to your plate  but by stripping away anything unreal and leaving only the REAL to speak for itself.  It helps you to stop chasing something that’s already there (but maybe you’re looking elsewhere for it) and to realise that your REALNESS isn’t something that you need to ‘achieve’ but that you just need to RECEIVE.

From what I’ve seen working with people, this process is especially crucial for men. Many of us have been conditioned to suppress emotions, push through pain, and measure our worth by external success because of an underlying sense of SHAME that has haunted us our whole lives and whispered things to us that cause us to hold back and hesitate from being. In this state, deep down, we know something is missing and we’re right – what’s missing is our REALNESS because the shame we feel has caused us to become disconnected from it and to project this ‘lack’ out into the world around us.

All we need to start doing to get rid of the Void that this fragmented relationship with ourselves opens up is to take the REAL ACTION that leads us back home to coherence between ourselves and life – a rootedness in who we are that brings the true power that isn’t based on proving ourselves but on knowing ourselves (because the only thing that can take our power in the first place is ILLUSIONS: when we return to the truth about ourselves then real transformation is inevitable).

At its core, transformational coaching is a process of returning to wholeness – it’s about letting go of the beliefs, fears, and limitations that keep you fragmented and split within yourself. Understanding all this, we can use the practical philosophy of REALNESS to embark upon a journey of trust – trusting yourself to do your best and then trusting life to do the rest.

This journey isn’t linear, of course; we can always go deeper. But no matter where we find ourselves, three stages will always come into play: Deconstructing the Ego (Awareness), Integrating the Shadow Self (Acceptance), and Trusting Life (Action).

These stages help us move from fragmentation to a deeper sense of wholeness and this is the natural path that we all want and need to be walking if we want to feel fully alive and REAL.

Let’s break these stages down a little so you know what to expect if you decide to book a call with me:

Awareness: Deconstructing the Ego

Transformation has to begin with Awareness – if we’re not aware then we just keep doing the same things that our lack of awareness asks us to do and continue to get the same results (“the definition of insanity…”).

Most of us operate on autopilot, driven by conditioning, fears, and past wounds, repeating the same cycles because we’re blind to the patterns that keep us stuck – Awareness is essentially about acquiring the INSIGHT that will free us from these hamster wheel cycles (because insight always brings more truth and the only real ‘problem’ is always a disconnection from truth in some way).

Awareness is about deconstructing the Ego – the false self we build to protect ourselves from pain (which is almost always SHAME about who we really are because of some conditioning or self-hypnosis). It’s about recognising the thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that control you without your conscious permission.

In transformational coaching for realness, this often involves deep open questions that are designed to help you start seeing the scripts you turned against yourself:

  • What stories are you telling yourself about who you are?
  • How does your nervous system affect your personality when faced with uncertainty?
  • What assumptions do you make about life, other people, or your own worth?

Many men mistake Awareness itself for transformation, but seeing the problem isn’t enough – it’s only the first step. Awareness gives you clarity, but clarity alone won’t set you free.  That’s why you need Acceptance and real Action too.

Exercise for Awareness: Try a daily reflection practice. At the end of each day, ask yourself: What patterns held me back today? When did I feel resistance or emotional triggers? What beliefs about myself might be unreal?

The free Hamster Wheel Thought Log tool on this site can help you start figuring out where your ego is constantly holding you back throughout the day.

Acceptance: Integrating the Shadow

Once you see the common and consistent patterns holding you back from your REAL life, then it’s time to work on cultivating ACCEPTANCE.

This is also something that’s often misunderstood – it isn’t resignation or passivity but the willingness to stop resisting reality and integrate the parts of yourself you’ve rejected (emotions, qualities – ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – goals, values, beliefs – whatever)!

Acceptance of this kind is STRENGTH because it’s about finding the solid foundation of “It is what it is” in your life, embracing it no matter what, and then building with it. This gets you better results in life because you can only get results in REALITY (so if you hide then you hold yourself back).

This is where the Shadow Dance comes into play – the ongoing interplay between the Ego and the Shadow self. The short-version is that the Ego wants control and certainty but the Shadow holds the REAL parts of yourself you’ve hidden which are a ‘threat’ to the control and certainty that the Ego (thinks) it has created (really just conditioning keeping unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ at bay – shame, guilt, and/or trauma).

Real transformation requires bringing these two into conscious dialogue instead of letting them battle in the dark beyond your conscious control or awareness.

Men, in particular, are taught to reject vulnerability, sensitivity, and emotions like fear or sadness as well as some of the more ‘positive’ emotional experiences like JOY or LOVE or even ADMIRATION for others. 

These aspects don’t make us weak – they make us whole and “integrating the shadow” means embracing all parts of ourselves, not just the ones we think are ‘strong’ because we’re ashamed of ourselves or because society worships certain qualities and virtues over others (usually because of an unreal culture but let’s not get into that).

As the Buddhists said “Life is suffering” but we can suffer even more and unnecessarily by fighting what is because of ego resistance or distortion (resistance = avoiding what’s real, distortion = refusing to see it). Accepting the struggle stops us suffering and allows us to keep moving with the natural drive towards wholeness…but only if we do that: ACCEPT.

You may wish things were different; you may pray things were different – but they’ll always be exactly what it is that they are. Thankfully, the paradox of transformation is that real change only happens when you fully accept where you are now. That’s the only time you can actually do something REAL with it.

Acceptance doesn’t mean you ‘approve’ of everything or take it as a given that can’t be changed – it means you acknowledge it without resistance so you can change it in alignment with your vision if need be. Only from this place of Acceptance, will you truly gain the power to move forward. Instead of being at war with yourself, you begin working with yourself and then life works with you in return.

Exercise for Acceptance: Next time you feel resistance – whether it’s fear, frustration, or shame – pause and remind yourself who you are…Get ROOTED in your REALNESS. Instead of pushing it away, sit with it. Say, I am what I am and this is what it is. Observe what happens when you stop fighting and get into REAL life instead of being distracted with unreal beliefs caused by a lack of Acceptance.

Action: TRUST Life

Awareness without Acceptance is painful because we just keep hitting friction, frustration, and then misery as we hit one brick wall after another. At the same time, Acceptance without REAL Action is pointless – it won’t be aligned with who you really are as an integrated whole human being (though, of course, you’ll become even more integrated as you take more and more real action).

That’s why real Action comes last in the process and also finds itself rooted in trust:
TRUST yourself and then trust life: do your best and let go of the rest.

When you raise Awareness and cultivate Acceptance, you strip away your illusions and find your real POWER (because the only thing that keeps you from your power is your illusions).  In this, you also find a strength in HUMILITY – knowing your real limits but not letting them hold you back or being afraid of uncertainty because you know that life has your back (even when it might not seem that way in the short-term).

Most men act from F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”):

We chase ‘success’, ‘love’, or ‘validation’ to escape an inner void – not realising that the Void only exists in the first place because of SHAME and how it causes us to become disconnected from the TRUTH.

Transformational coaching helps you act from realness instead of this F.E.A.R so that you can become the Void and dissolve it. When you trust reality in this way, you no longer need to force life in order to try and maintain a false or unreal sense of identity (the Ego) – you flow with it instead towards a deeper sense of connection (to yourself, the world, and reality).

Action in this context means aligning your life with what’s real – there’s little point just acting for the sake of it or for the wrong reasons (fear, doubt, scarcity, etc.). It’s about choosing actions that reflect the deepest truth of who you are, rather than reinforcing old illusions, and that carry you daily through the Law of Cause and Effect towards your realest Vision (supported by action in the form of goals and habits).

Practical Actions for REAL Transformation:

  1. Start Small, But Start Real – Pick one area of life where you’ve been avoiding your EDGE (let’s say the boundary of your F.E.A.R for the sake of this article) and find ONE REAL THING that you can do today. That might mean an honest conversation, setting a boundary, or finally taking a risk you’ve been delaying. Whatever it is, get it DONE and the next step will reveal itself (“Do your best and let go of the rest”).
  2. Build Trust in Reality – Each time you take action from a place of realness, notice how life responds. Does the world collapse? Or do things start aligning in ways you couldn’t have predicted? This will give you more and more EVIDENCE that you can let go of the Ego’s need for control and resistance and to surrender to living with life instead of against it.
  3. Let Go of Control – Trust doesn’t mean passive waiting; it means engaging with life fully while knowing you don’t need to control everything. The ‘easiest’ way to do this is to figure out your GOAL but then LET GO of your emotional attachment to it and focus on the PROCESS instead – this keeps you actively engaged in life and actively responsive as things keep shifting.

    It also allows you to stay outcome-independent which means your levels of acceptance are unshakeable and don’t depend on the outcomes (which paradoxically increases your odds of reaching them).

The Evidence: Does Transformational Coaching Really Work?

If you’re skeptical about all this, you probably should be!

The self-development space – or whatever you want to call it – is filled with all kinds of empty promises, magical unicorns, panaceas, and magic bullets. 

Thankfully, transformational coaching is backed by real-world results – here’s some evidence:

  • A study from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) found that 80% of coaching clients improved their self-confidence, 73% saw better relationships, and 70% reported enhanced work performance by getting regular coaching and staying FOCUSED on their real goals.
  • Neuroscience research is starting to show that coaching helps rewire the brain, breaking limiting patterns and forming new neural connections that support lasting change.  This makes so much sense as REAL ACTION involves us deeply in the flow of life and breaks us free of fragmentation (so our brain has to make more connections for wholeness).
  • Case studies from business leaders and high performers reveal that coaching doesn’t just help with personal growth – it translates to measurable success in leadership, productivity, and well-being. This is because the process of transformational applies in all areas: Awareness, Acceptance and Action.
  • Every gold medalist has a coach – think of it like that! If you want to be that gold medal version of yourself then start to shine from the inside-out and work on growing REAL!

Unlike passive learning (reading a book or attending a seminar), coaching provides real-time feedback, accountability, and deep transformation from day-to-day (I work with all my clients in four-month blocks with daily accountability voice notes and texts etc. during the week)!

In short: it isn’t just theory – it’s a process that works because real always works!

Why Transformational Coaching Matters for Men

I’ve seen so many times men living in cycles of frustration, never understanding why change feels so impossible, and becoming ‘stuck’ when it’s ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY – this honestly saddens me because all that’s needed is a few simple shifts and maybe a little ‘push’ to turn everything around for good!

Real life is always changing so if you’re ‘stuck’ then it’s a key sign that you’re being unreal at some level! GET REAL AGAIN AND YOUR LIFE WILL TRANSFORM!

Real change isn’t about adding more strategies or forcing yourself to ‘be better’ but about dissolving the illusions keeping you stuck and stepping into the flow of reality itself.  Like I said above: it’s about receiving, not acheiving!

Transformational coaching isn’t a ‘method’ but a return to what’s real and when you operate from realness, life works. Period.  Each coaching relationship is different but the end goal is always the same: taking that path back to realise and taking REAL ACTIOn.

If you’re ready to break free from old cycles and step into a life that feels real in this way, then I invite you to take the next step.

Book a REAL CONVERSATION with me today, and let’s explore what transformation looks like for you:

Stay real out there,

Humans Gonna Human: The Power of Similarity Over Difference

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The Human Condition is the Same for All Us: Embrace it and Grow REAL

The modern world is obsessed with what makes us ‘DIFFERENT’ – whether it’s politics, culture, or the fixation with personal identity (which is really just EGO), we’ve become conditioned to focus on what separates us rather than what unites us.

Though recognising differences can help us learn and grow, it is in accepting the similarities that we find something far more valuable: connection, understanding, and ultimately, the REALNESS of ourselves and others.

The Ego, by its very nature as a fragmented filter between ourselves and real life, thrives on separation – it wants to carve out a distinct identity, to be unique, to be ‘right’ in contrast to others being constantly ‘wrong’ (so that we can try and hide from the underlying SHAME that created the ego in the first place); it thrives on the illusions of control and certainty, constructing walls between us and the world in an effort to maintain a sense of ‘safety’.

This ‘safety’ is a trap, though – it keeps us fragmented, isolated, and ultimately detached from the flow of real life because it locks us inside ourselves behind a web of judgement that gets projected out into the world as a kind of matrix that keeps us imprisoned.

If we want to live our REAL lives, we need to shift our focus from the unreal to the real:

Instead of constantly searching for differences, we need to uncover the deeper similarities that bind us all together. Because – at the end of the day – we all share the same fundamental experience of being human and humans gonna human.

When we see this clearly, we move towards wholeness, and things get way more REAL.

Let’s dig deeper:

The Ego’s Need to Divide

To protect our egos, we instinctively separate ourselves from the world and trick ourselves into believing that we’re isolated and independent from it in some way (when the truth is that everything is INTERDEPENDENT).

We look at others and think about how different they are to us because of how they look or because of what they like or dislike; we think about how they could never understand us because we’re so ‘unique’ or ‘specia’; we think about how others are the problem but we’re the solution because we’re ‘right’ and their different opinions and ideas are ‘wrong’.

This mindset is so deeply ingrained in us that we barely notice it but it’s not REAL – it’s just an unreal FILTER designed to protect us…but protect us from what exactly?

At its core, this obsesson with focusing on what’s so ‘different’ is a defence mechanism. It shields us from the discomfort of confronting our own unresolved F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”), insecurities, and – most commonly – SHAME (the belief that there’s something ‘wrong’ with us or that we’re not good ‘enough’). It also allows us to believe that the world is simple, divided into neat little dualistic categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but, again, this is just CONTROL FREAKERY designed to keep our shame at bay.

The short-version is that this perspective is a DISTORTION because reality is not fragmented; it is interconnected – we are all ‘part’ of the same whole, whether we acknowledge it or not. And when we refuse to see the similarities between ourselves and others, we only succeed in cutting ourselves off from deeper understanding, growth, and real connection.

The Illusion of Separation

Focusing too much on ‘difference’ isolates us, not only from others, but from ourselves – it encourages a defensive mindset, where we see every challenge, every disagreement, as a threat to our identity (ego).

We end up in endless cycles of argument, judgment, and debate – trapped in a mental loop that leads nowhere (if you think this describes what’s going on in the modern world, then you’re right – so many people are obsessed with ‘identity’ and it always leads to the same place: ego and pointless arguments).

The TRUTH is that, in reality, we are never truly separate:

We are interdependent, connected in ways we often fail to recognise – our emotions, ideas, and actions ripple out and influence those around us, just as we are influenced by the people and environments we engage with.

Everything feeds off of everything else and then back into it too.

When we focus only on difference, we deny this fundamental truth and end up creating artificial barriers that prevent real intimacy, real collaboration, and real growth. In doing so, we deprive ourselves of the richness that life has to offer and from the realness that is our birthright.

The Power of Similarity

If we accept that fulfilment comes from continual growth and connection – i.e. WHOLENESS instead of fragmentation – then the shift from focusing on difference to focusing on similarity is essential.

  • The first step to empathy is recognising that we all experience pain, struggle, and uncertainty. The details may differ, but the core emotional experience is the same.
  • The first step to forgiveness is understanding that we are all flawed, all capable of making mistakes. None of us are above error.
  • The first step to real growth is being open to learning from perspectives outside our current mental framework, rather than rejecting them outright.

The first step to empathy and compassion is realising the similarities between yourself and those that are suffering; the first step to forgiveness is realising that we’re all human and that we all share the same capacity for fallibility and foible; the first step to real growth is to recognise the value of things that are outside your current mental frameworks so that you can grow into them.
-Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness

We all share something fundamental – you call it “humanity”, “soul,” or even “evolutionary impulse” depending on your beliefs (though these are just an interpretation of the SAME reality we all share).

Whatever name we give it – I call it REALNESS – it’s the same essence. We are all living, breathing, striving, and trying to make sense of it all.

When we embrace this, we uncover something deeper: the TRUTH.

The Ego as a Barrier to Truth

The Ego is the greatest obstacle to true understanding because it keeps us locked inside a narrow perception of ourselves, the world, and reality. It resists change, clings to identity, and fights anything that threatens the carefully constructed illusion of separateness.

If we can loosen our grip on these false distinctions, we open ourselves to something far greater and start to see the world as it really is – fluid, interconnected, and constantly evolving into a deeper state of wholenes sand connection.

This doesn’t just apply to external relationships, btw; it’s also about how we engage with ideas, experiences, and even our own beliefs:

If we refuse to attach ourselves too rigidly to any particular viewpoint, we free ourselves from the exhausting need to constantly defend and justify outdated perspectives that only exist because of who we think we used to be, not who we actually are. Instead, we allow ourselves to grow, to change, and to become more in tune with reality.

Finding Unity in Diversity

None of this means we should ignore differences entirely. Differences can be incredibly valuable -challenging us, broadening our understanding, and pushing us to grow. Saying that, if we make differences the most important thing about us then the world will always be in a state of conflict because everybody will be defending the identities (ego) that they’ve created for themselves to uphold this ‘difference’ and keep shame at bay (though it’s only really buried in the Shadow Territory).

The healthiest, most productive, and REAL way to engage with the world is to seek common ground first and build on something solid (i.e. something true). Once we recognise our shared humanity, we can then explore differences in a way that is constructive rather than divisive and leads to political and power games.

Instead of demonising or dismissing those with different perspectives, we can approach them with curiosity (because we don’t need to be threatened by them); instead of retreating into defensiveness, we can engage in real dialogue; instead of clinging to outdated beliefs, we can allow ourselves to be transformed by new insights.

We don’t have to agree on everything to build something real but we do have to start from a place of understanding and the only thing ‘worth’ understanding is the TRUTH.

Practical Steps to Shift Your Focus

Making this shift in mindset isn’t just theoretical – it requires practice (especially in a culture that’s fixated with identity).

Here are some steps to help you integrate this approach into your daily life:

  1. Look for the human behind the difference – Next time you find yourself judging someone based on their views, background, or behaviour, pause and ask: “What do we have in common?” You’ll be surprised at how often the answer is “a lot”. Start with that.
  2. Challenge your own assumptions – If you find yourself rejecting an idea or perspective outright, take a step back. Ask yourself: “Am I resisting this because it’s genuinely wrong, or because it challenges my identity?” Again, you might be surprised because 90% (random number I chose to make a point) of our beliefs are just scaffolding for an insecure identity).
  3. Engage in real conversations – Instead of debating just to prove a point, seek to understand. Ask questions. Be curious. You don’t have to agree, but you do have to listen. This is how you learn so you can go deeper into REALNESS and not just reinforce your fragmentation.
  4. See conflict as an opportunity – Rather than avoiding difficult conversations, lean into them. View them as a chance to learn, not as a battle to win. Insight will always set you free of old patterns and programming.
  5. Practice gratitude for shared experience – Each day, take a moment to reflect on the ways you’re connected to the people around you. Recognise the shared struggles, joys, and uncertainties that unite us all. It sounds cheesy but the human condition is the same for all of us – it’s just the scenery that’s different. We’re all going through ‘it’.
  6. Detach from rigid identity – Remind yourself that you are always evolving. Your current beliefs are not set in stone. Be open to change and realise that there’s a difference between who YOU are and who you think you are.

Moving Towards Wholeness

REAL life isn’t about drawing lines between ourselves and others – it’s about recognising that we’re all part of the same whole. The more we embrace this, the more real we become.

Focusing on similarity doesn’t mean ignoring differences – it means seeing beyond them whilst still respecting what’s real about people that you don’t ‘agree’ with (because of your own ego ‘stuff’). It means recognising that, at our core, we are all the same: seeking meaning, connection, and truth and trying to make the most of all of ‘this’…whatever it is.

The choice is always there:

You can either cling to the illusion of fragmentation or step into the realness of wholeness.

Stay real out there,

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

Live in Abundance Every Day: Learning to Trust the Flow of Life

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Things Come and Things Go…That’s Just Life and its Tides (It’s Not ‘Personal’)

Abundance is often misunderstood.

We tend to think of it as something we possess – a ‘full’ bank account (though there’s always another number so this shows that ‘full’ is impossible), an overflowing table, a life free from struggle, fear, and doubt.

Here’s the reality, though:

True abundance isn’t about what we have in our hands at any given moment; it’s about the ongoing flow of things moving in and out of our lives – just like the tides.

As almost always, nature is our best teacher when it comes to this – look at the ocean, for example:

The tide goes out, but it always comes back in – it’s a rhythm, a cycle, a movement that never truly stops – unless we block it with some kind of ‘unnatural’ intervention (like a dam or something).

The same is true for abundance:

When we fight the natural rhythms of life – when we cling too tightly to what we have or become impatient about what we lack – we disrupt the flow because we use mental concepts and unreal beliefs as a kind of ‘dam’ that stops things flowing. Instead of trusting in the tide by being REAL, we try to control it because of EGO and that’s when we start to feel scarcity, fear, and frustration.

To live in true abundance, we need to stop resisting and start flowing.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Why Abundance Feels Like It Disappears

It’s a law of nature that everything moves:

Seasons change, fruit ripens, falls and then decays; the tide ebbs and flows. Nothing is ever truly static -except in our minds and interpretations about ourselves, the world, and reality.

The ego craves certainty and permanence – it wants things to stay put so that we can feel ‘safe’ within our own identity (which really is most often just a fragmented version of who we are because it keeps the Shadow Self at bay).

It tells us things like:

  • “I finally have ‘enough’ – what if I lose it?”
  • “Why isn’t what I want here yet? I must be doing something wrong”.
  • “I need to control this situation/event/thing/person so I don’t get hurt“.

But REAL life doesn’t work like that – the moment we cling to what we have or panic about what we don’t have, we shift from flowing with life to fighting against it; from trusting life to resisting life. When we do this, we cut ourselves off from the very process that brings abundance in the first place.

This is what we call a scarcity mindset, but at its core, it’s really just a misunderstanding of reality caused by the way we identify with EGO instead of our realness.

Scarcity vs. Flow: The Misperception That Holds Us Back

A scarcity mindset isn’t about how much we do or don’t have – it’s about how we perceive reality.

When we’re ‘stuck’ in scarcity, we normally do one of two things:

  1. We cling to what we have:
    • We hold on too tightly to money, relationships, status, or opportunities, fearing they won’t come again.
    • This just leads to anxiety, control issues, and a resistance to change.
  2. We become impatient about what we don’t have:
    • We focus obsessively on what’s missing and feel frustrated that it hasn’t arrived yet.
    • This creates desperation, self-doubt, and an inability to enjoy the present. It also stops us being able to TRUST ourselves and life (on a long enough timeline).

Both of these reactions take us out of reality and wholeness and cause us to cling to fragmented beliefs and ideas:

Instead of aligning with life’s natural flow, we either try to pause it (by holding on) or fast-forward it (by forcing things to happen). Both of these, of course, are absolutely impossible because real life keeps moving (these two things – pausing and fast-forwarding – are just a lack of acceptance in the form of the ego’s control freakery).

The truth is actually quite simple, though:

Real abundance isn’t something to be held or chased – it’s something to be TRUSTED.

The Secret to Abundance: Trusting the Tide

If we truly understand the rhythms of life, we stop fearing the natural ebb and flow:

Just as the tide goes out but always comes back in, abundance follows the same pattern:

  • Sometimes we have more, sometimes we have less – but the underlying process of flow that creates abundance is always there.
  • Sometimes opportunities flood in, sometimes there’s a quiet pause – but the flow is always moving and if we can TRUST and be patient then what we need will show itself.
  • Sometimes life feels full, sometimes it feels empty – but balance is always being restored as we go through natural cycles of TENSION and RELEASE.

Abundance isn’t about hoarding or rushing (both of those are symptomatic of a scarcity mindset) – it’s about trusting that as long as we stay open to the flow, everything we need will arrive in its time.

This is why gratitude and trust are so powerful.

  • When we’re grateful for what we have now, we’re flowing with the tide instead of resisting it. This is because gratitude puts us in a state of acceptance and acceptance always means that we’re seeing reality clearly (and abundance is just part of what’s real – look around you!).
  • When we trust that what we need is on its way, we stop grasping and allow the cycle to unfold naturally. Thgis means that we will reach out for the things that are REAL for us, rather than things we just think we need because of F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”) and desperation.

The short-version is this:

Life is balance in process. Go with it.

How to Live in Abundance Every Day

Understanding these ideas is one thing – living them is another; here’s how you can start integrating the flow of abundance into your daily life:

1. Pay Attention to the Rhythms in Your Own Life

Just like nature has its cycles, so does everything else:

  • Your finances will have seasons of growth and quiet.
  • Your energy levels will have days of high productivity and days of rest.
  • Your relationships will have moments of deep connection and moments of space.

Instead of panicking when something ebbs, recognise that it’s part of a cycle. The tide will return because “what goes up must come down”.

Ask yourself: Where am I resisting a natural rhythm in my life? What would happen if I trusted the process instead?

You know if you’re resisting a natural rhythm because you will feel unnatural friction.

2. Shift from Hoarding to Flowing

If you tend to cling to what you have, try loosening your grip:

  • If you’re scared to spend money, give a little away and trust that more will come.
  • If you’re holding on too tightly to a relationship, allow some space and see how the connection deepens naturally.
  • If you’re hoarding ideas or creativity out of fear they’ll run out, express them freely and watch how inspiration continues to flow.

Ask yourself: What am I holding onto out of fear? How can I start trusting the tide instead?

We cling because we don’t believe that something really belongs with us. This is almost always because we’re driven by SHAME instead of anything REAL.

3. Replace Impatience with Trust

If you tend to fixate on what you don’t have yet, practice letting go of urgency:

  • Instead of stressing about why something hasn’t happened, remind yourself: “Everything that’s REAL unfolds in its time”
  • Instead of forcing an outcome, focus on what you can do today to stay in flow. This is where you have the most influence anyway (in the process, not on the result).
  • Instead of obsessing over when things will come, practice trusting that they will.

Ask yourself: What am I trying to force? What would happen if I relaxed and let it unfold?

When we don’t TRUST ourselves or life, then we try to RUSH but life is too short to rush.

4. Cultivate a Daily Practice of Gratitude

Gratitude isn’t just about feeling good – it’s a practical tool for staying in flow by cultivating ACCEPTANCE. The more you appreciate what’s already here, the more you align with the rhythm of abundance on the way to whatever comes along next.

Try this:

  • Every morning, list three things you’re grateful for.
  • Every night, reflect on one way life provided for you that day without you even doing anything (even in small ways).
  • Throughout the day, whenever you notice scarcity creeping in, shift your focus to something you already have and are grateful for.

💡 Ask yourself: Where is abundance already present in my life? How can I tune into that more?

An attitude of gratitude keeps you in reality and out of the ego.

5. Let Go and Trust the Bigger Process

At the heart of all of this is trust – trusting that life knows what it’s doing, that you are supported, and that abundance is always flowing, even when you can’t see it yet.

Whenever doubt creeps in, remember:

The tide goes out but it always comes back .

And that’s the rhythm you were always meant to move with.

Final Thoughts: Abundance Is Already Yours

You don’t have to chase abundance; you don’t have to hoard it; you don’t have to F.E.A.R losing it.

Abundance is already part of the fabric of life – t’s in the tides, in the changing seasons, in the natural flow of everything around you.

If you trust the process and align yourself with gratitude, patience, and flow, you’ll realise that abundance was never something you had to fight for. It’s something that’s received, not achieved.

It was always there – moving, shifting, returning; all you have to do is let go and move with it.

Stay real out there,

The Shadow Dance: Reclaiming Your Unlived Life

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The Ego and the Shadow Self are In Constant Conflict: This is the SHADOW DANCE

Most of us are living what Thoreau described as “Lives of quiet desperation” – this is because we’re ‘living’ and acting out a version of ourselves that is, at best, a fragmented fraction of who we really are in wholeness:

We wear masks, we suppress certain parts of ourselves, and we become tangled in a never-ending dance between who we think we are (Ego) and who we’ve buried in the Shadow Territory (the real self we abandoned along the way because of shame, guilt, and/or trauma – check out Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World to go deeper).

This dance – which I like to call the Shadow Dance – is the internal struggle that stops us from fully stepping into our REALNESS – those most alive and purpose-driven version of who we actually are in TRUTH.

If you feel restless, ‘stuck’, or just generally full of friction and frustration – because things never seem to go ‘right’ – then here’s the uncomfortable truth that will ultimately ‘save’ you (help you get back on the track towards wholeness):

Everything you truly want, everything that would you feel whole, everything that would bring you back to a sense of deep alignment, is hidden in the SHADOW TERRITORY.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

How We Lose Ourselves in the Shadow Dance

Let’s break it down to understand how we end up in this situation:

  1. We are born real and connected to wholeness.
    As children, we don’t overthink our actions – we just are. We express freely, feel deeply, and move through life without the weight of self-judgement or societal expectations.
  2. Something happens that causes us to feel shame.
    It could be trauma, rejection, criticism, or simply an experience that makes us believe that who we are isn’t fully acceptable and causes us to feel SHAME (the most common cause of this inner split). At that moment, fragmentation begins and we start to act, feel, and/or think as other than we actually are in TRUTH.
  3. Parts of us get sent into hiding.
    Maybe we were told we were “too much” or “too sensitive” or “too wild” – whatever the case, we start suppressing these real parts of ourselves (both ‘good’ and ‘bad’), locking them away in the Shadow Territory where they remain unseen but never go anywhere because what’s real is always real.
  4. We create a mask to survive.
    In response to this fragmentation, we construct an identity – an ego– that is shaped by external approval rather than internal truth. We become what we think we need to be to fit in, to be loved, to stay safe.
  5. We identify with the mask, and the Shadow Dance begins.
    At this point, we’ve forgotten that the mask is just a survival mechanism. We think it’s who we really are. Underneath, though, there’s always a tension – a friction between the ego we show the world and the shadow self we’ve rejected.

This dance between ego and shadow is exhausting and can totally derail our lives – it keeps us playing small, living half-truths, and wondering why we feel unfulfilled, stuck, or disconnected from life.

The reason is simple: we are disconnected from life and so we need to find our way back so we can close the Void.

Why We Fear Our Shadow Self (Even Though It Holds Our Freedom)

Most of us avoid our shadow because we assume it only contains pain, shame, and darkness and, while those things might be buried in there, they’re not the full story. In fact, our greatest gifts are also locked away in the shadow:

  • Our creativity (suppressed because we were told it wasn’t practical)
  • Our real emotions (buried because they were “too much”)
  • Our authentic desires (hidden because they didn’t fit into the expectations placed on us)
  • Our power and energy (diluted because it made others uncomfortable)
  • Our connection to God, truth, and flow (ignored because we prioritised external validation over inner knowing)
  • Our ability to TRUST ourselves and life and get the REAL results we want (ignored because we grew up in a cynical world and trust is seen as being impractical).
  • Etc. Etc. Etc.

Everything we yearn for in life – passion, depth, meaning – is waiting for us in the shadows but to access it, we need to stop protecting the ego’s illusion of safety and start trusting the process of real integration.

Here’s how you can start to do so:

Breaking Free: How to Step Out of the Shadow Dance

How do we stop running from our realness and reclaim the unlived life we abandoned along the way?

1. Recognise When You’re ‘Protecting’ the Ego

The ego’s job is to keep us comfortable and so it avoids anything that threatens its identity (this is why certain events can ‘trigger’ or ‘activate’ people). The problem is, real growth is uncomfortable and so if we only listen to the ego, we’ll never evolve.

The short-version is that the ego takes us out of reality because it’s the opposite of reality. If we want results, then we need to flip this on its head because the only place we can get results is…reality.

Start paying attention to when you’re defending yourself, making excuses, or resisting change – more often than not, these are moments when the shadow is knocking at the door and you’re refusing to answer because you’re not making conscious choices but being prompted by the old conditioning of ego.

Ask yourself:

  • Am I avoiding something because it challenges who I think I am?
  • Am I afraid of stepping into something bigger but, ultimately, better for me?
  • Am I staying small because it feels ‘safer’ despite what I know I really want?

2. Reclaim the ‘Parts’ of You That Were Sent into Hiding

What did you love as a child but abandon as you grew up? What aspects of yourself have you suppressed out of fear of judgement?

A powerful exercise: Make a list of qualities, desires, and interests that you’ve ignored or denied then, ask yourself:

  • Where did this suppression start?
  • Who does this suppression benefit (if it’s not ‘You’ then you need to make a change and grow real)?
  • What would happen if I allowed this ‘part’ of me to resurface?
  • How can I start integrating this into my life again by taking REAL ACTION?

For example, if you used to be wildly creative but shut it down because it wasn’t ‘practical’ or ‘useful’, then start creating again – not for external success or validation but simply because doing so is REAL to you.

3. Merge Past, Present, and Future into One Flowing Reality

True integration happens when we bring together who we were, who we are, and who we are becoming into one seamless, flowing experience of REAL life.

  • The past: Instead of avoiding old wounds, integrate them – face them, process them, and see them as part of who you are in wholeness rather than a reason to remain fragmented.
  • The present: Live moment to moment, responding to reality as it unfolds instead of reacting from old patterns which are always EGO.
  • The future: Use your vision as a compass – not something to obsess over, but something that creates a healthy tension that pulls you forward while keeping you in flow.

When we do this, we stop being at war with ourselves and can stop the Shadow Dance from pulling us to pieces – instead, we move with life rather than against it.

4. Let Go of the Fear and Just Trust the Process

Everything we’re looking for is on the other side of letting go:

Letting go of old identities, letting go of ego-driven fears, letting go of the belief that staying safe is more important than being real (though, paradoxically, your REALNESS is the safest thing in the universe).

If you keep letting go, then eventually you’ll find the TRUTH – this is a fact. If you don’t feel stable within yourself, then it means there’s something to let go of that’s keeping you from your REALNESS. Letting go in this way takes TRUST but you will always find what you want in the end.

Despite popular misconceptions, trust of this kind isn’t passive – it’s an active surrender to the process of unfolding. The more we trust, the more we flow; the more we flow, the more we reclaim the energy we’ve buried in the Shadow Territory and can start to live our real life.

This also brings more energy because we no longer have to keep fighting reality and feeding into our illusions (ego) – and the more energy we reclaim, the more alive we become.

Final Thoughts: Living the Life That’s Really Yours

Your REAL, unlived life isn’t lost – it’s just waiting for you in the shadows. The version of you that feels whole, powerful, creative, and deeply connected is still there, beneath the layers of ego and F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”).

The choice is always there: stay ‘safe’ in the illusion or step into realness.

Stay real out there,

Check out Shadow Life: Freedom From BS in an Unreal World to go much deeper into the Shadow Dance and what you can do about it.

REAL LIFE VISION: Merging Past, Present, and Future

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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:

  1. 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.)
  2. Set three REAL Goals – Make them specific, actionable, and process-driven. Commit to REAL ACTION every day.
  3. 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.
  4. Practice self-awareness – Before making a decision, ask: Is this bringing me closer to my Realness? Am I choosing WHOLENESS or FRAGMENTATION?
  5. 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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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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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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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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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:

  1. 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).
  2. 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.
  3. 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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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

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