That tension equals effectiveness.
That stress means we care.
That seriousness means we’re doing something that matters.

So we rush.
We tighten.
We push.

We grip life with white knuckles and call it ambition.

And sometimes we even get rewarded for it. The world applauds exhaustion. It celebrates the person who is overwhelmed, frantic, overbooked, constantly striving. Many have built entire identities around being stressed.

But I keep seeing the same thing over and over again, both in my own life and in the lives of the people I work with.

When we relax, we actually perform better.

A client said something beautiful to me recently. We were talking about how differently her days had been feeling lately. She had still been working, still creating, still moving her business forward, but she wasn’t doing it from chaos anymore. She was doing it from ease.

From a state of calm, flow, and presence.

And I shared something I deeply believe: Whatever we do, we can do from one of two places.

We can do it from tension, urgency, stress, pressure, and force.

Or we can do it from ease, joy, playfulness, and relaxation.

The action itself may look identical externally. But internally, they are completely different experiences. And, time and time again, the relaxed state produces better results.

Tension interferes. It pulls us out of presence.

When we are stressed, we often become less intelligent. Less creative. Less connected to intuition. Less responsive to life.

We move faster mentally while becoming less effective practically.

It’s like flooring the gas pedal while the parking brake is still on.

My client laughed and said something I immediately wrote down for this article. “We can do things from a state of ease or a state of disease.”

And that’s exactly what it feels like.

Because chronic tension is contraction, pressure, and friction. Friction creates heat. Heat leads to a ton of heat-related conditions, from burnout to inflammation. Disease.

As long as we feel like tension is productive and helpful, we won’t let go of it. We have to show ourselves just how ineffective it is.

Derek Sivers once shared a story that perfectly captures this concept.

For months, he would ride his bike as hard as possible along the beach in Santa Monica. Full intensity. Completely exhausting himself. Every ride ended with the same total duration: around forty-three minutes.

One day he decided to relax.

Half the effort. No pushing. No straining. Just enjoying the ride.

He was present. He noticed things he otherwise wouldn’t have. He was enjoying it (even if a bird did poop in his mouth).

When he finished the ride, it had only taken two minutes longer.

Forty-five minutes instead of forty-three.

Half the “effort.”
Ninety-six percent of the result.

And, most importantly, a completely different experience of life.

That story has stayed with me because it reveals something most of us rarely question:

How much of our effort is actually useful, and how much of it is just tension masquerading as focus?

Because they are not the same thing.

There’s a form of focus that is pure. Present. Alive.

And then there’s the kind most people live in. Contracted. Fearful. Rushed. Emotionally tight.

One creates energy.
The other drains it.

One helps us access a vast field of intelligence.
The other relies on the ego.

We’ve been conditioned to believe seriousness produces results. But playfulness often produces better ones.

Think about athletes at their best. Artists at their best. Musicians at their best. There’s looseness there. They are present. Calmly focused. Playful, even.

The best performances rarely come from rigid tension.

They come from absorption in the moment. From being fully in an activity instead of mentally strangling it.

And this applies to all areas of our lives.

There’s a reason so many insights arrive in the shower, on walks, during stillness, or the moment we stop trying so hard.

I can’t tell you how many clients of mine experience their biggest results, within them and around them, when they stop trying to get them.

The mind unclenches. And life moves more freely through us when we stop gripping it so tightly.

This does not mean doing nothing. This does not mean laziness.

Ease is not passivity.

Some of the most effective people I know move from an incredibly relaxed nervous system.

They are focused without being frantic.
Committed without being rigid.
Intentional without making everything feel heavy.

And I think that’s the deeper invitation here.

To stop making life so serious and heavy.

Because most of the pressure we experience is self-created.

We assign enormous importance to things. We convince ourselves everything is urgent. We create internal narratives that say if this doesn’t work out, something terrible will happen.

Then the nervous system responds accordingly.

But life is often asking for less force than we think.

Less gripping.
Less controlling.
Less rushing.

More trust.
More presence.
More play.

I think about this quote often, widely attributed to Lao Tzu: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Life moves with an intelligence that does not require tension.

And we are life too.

The irony is that when we relax, we often become far more capable.

And even when the results are identical, the experience becomes infinitely better.

That matters.

Because what’s the point of getting where you’re trying to go if you destroy your wellbeing along the way?

What’s the point of achievement if your inner experience is constant tension?

You do not need to rush to move swiftly. You do not need to suffer to succeed. You do not need to make something heavy in order for it to matter.

The choice is available more often than we realize.

Tension or ease.
Force or flow.
Seriousness or play.

This choice is yours in each moment.

I started enjoying Marty’s Substack a while back. It’s called Spirituality for Effective Living (the same title as his book), where he shares practical, non-religious spiritual teachings. The intention? Let go of stress and anxiety. Open to joy, love, and peace.

I loved this conversation. From the opening minute I could tell Marty genuinely lives what we shares. It’s evident in his energy, the way he talks, the way his demeanor welcomes everything.

Marty Simon is an access point to spirituality, one that invites people to directly experience the benefits of spiritual wisdom without dogma or suspended belief. The benefits of these teachings are right here, right now, which is, after all, the only place we can experience anything.

In short, this conversation opens a doorway to inner peace for anyone open to it.

Follow along with Marty on Substack here. Pick up his book here (I know I am). He has also invited any listener to reach out to him directly for more information on joining his meditation group.

Enjoy Episode 24 of The Self-Explorers Club Podcast.

And share this with anyone you think might benefit from listening.

This was an experience that embodied the essence of creativity.

This was the fourth time I’ve facilitated an art experience like this. It’s a simple and powerful model that embodies so much of why I love art, especially abstract art.

Here’s how it goes:

• An organization hires/invites me and my friend Grimaldi (also an artist) to come hang out

• We bring a big canvas and paints

• Each person in the group chooses a color and adds to the canvas

• The finished product is a collective piece of art that everyone contributed to

• This product is sometimes kept where everyone can enjoy it. Other times it’s sold/auctioned as a fundraiser.

This time we were invited by a local autism organization. The participants were individuals who this organization serves. Small groups rotated through, each person stepping up to a blank canvas with their own color to add.

No instructions beyond that. Just space.

Space for whatever wants to happen to happen.

Some people walked right in and started moving. No hesitation. No second-guessing. Paint hit the canvas in ways I hadn’t seen before. Marks that didn’t try to be anything.

Just expressions. Expressions of personalities and emotions. Expressions of play and curiosity.

You could feel it.

Some embraced the freedom with unfiltered creative gestures.

Others approached more carefully, even timidly.

You could see the hesitation. The conditioning. The habit of needing to ask. The reflex to check if they were doing it right. To ask what was acceptable.

“What should I do?”

“How am I supposed to do this?”

And I told them there was no right or wrong. I told them they could do whatever they want. I told them there were no rules here.

It was open. For some, too open, like being handed freedom without ever having experienced it before.

There was a pause. A kind of internal searching. Then slowly, movement.

And when it came, it wasn’t tentative for long. It opened up into the space. And when it opened, you could feel that too.

Relief. Joy. Expression. Something real coming through.

Something that can’t be taught or performed.

Even the staff joined in. They couldn’t help it. At some point, the line between participant and observer disappeared.

Everyone was in it. Everyone creating. Everyone feeling it.

Abstract art that makes this possible. There are no rules to follow, so there are no rules to break.

Nothing to get wrong. Nothing to get right.

No target to miss. No comparison.

And in that absence of structure, something more honest has room to show up.

And, yes, I believe this applies to the art of living as well.

Grimaldi once told me that art stands for “all rules terminated.”

I’ve always liked that.

But these experiences, especially this last one, have helped me understand it in a deeper way.

I get to live it in the studio. But here I witness it come through others, as I invite them into pure possibility.

What I saw wasn’t just creativity. It was what happens when the pressure to be correct is removed. When expression no longer has to pass through approval. When people stop trying to do it right and start allowing what’s there to move.

And what emerges from that place feels different.

You can truly feel it. Even after the fact.

When I look at my own paintings, I can tell which ones came from that place and which ones didn’t. That’s not because I remember making them. It’s because they carry a different energy.

They’re either alive or they’re managed.

This is why one of my beliefs is that the process matters more than the result, because the result is simply a byproduct of the process.

The result is what’s left behind.

A trace.

A record.

When someone is fully expressed, fully present, fully unconcerned with the outcome, something moves through them that can’t be replicated any other way.

That’s where my favorite work comes from. And I can tell right away.

At a museum, I’ll pass right by the most realistic and masterful painting of an epic historical scene only to stop and stare (sometimes for hours) at a bunch of squiggles on a canvas. Because I can feel the purity of that expression.

To me, it’s the difference between a well-edited academic paper and a raw unfiltered poem written without concern for spelling.

One is from the head. One is from the heart.

At the end of this art experience, everyone signed their names on a separate canvas. One piece, created by many hearts.

It will hang in their community center.

Something they can come back to.

Something they made together.

Every mark is a moment where someone let themselves be as they are.

Unfiltered. Uncorrected. Free.

And that’s what makes it special.

That’s my kind of art.

Oh yeah, here’s the result:

They showed him with a laptop.
No big production. No polished spectacle.

He was literally pulling up YouTube videos and singing along with them on stage.

It almost felt like an anti-performance.

Stripped down. Unfiltered. A little messy.
And very real.

I liked it.

You could feel that he wasn’t trying to impress.
He wasn’t trying to be anything other than who he was.

And people had very different reactions to that.

Some thought it was incredible.
Some thought it was terrible.

Some saw authenticity.
Others saw a lack of effort.

But that’s the interesting part.

People say things like “that was great” or “that was awful” as if their opinion is a fact.
As if their judgment of something is some sort of objective truth.

But it isn’t.

It just means it wasn’t for them.

And there’s something quietly freeing about seeing it that way.
Because it shifts how you relate to what you create.
And it frees you to create whatever you want.

If people like it, great. It was for them.
If people don’t like it, that’s fine. It wasn’t for them.

I learned that in a much more personal way.

I was in a creative writing course, because I love writing, and for my first assignment I wrote a poem about a cardinal.

It was really about my uncle, who died quite young. My grandparents thought a cardinal represented him. When they saw a cardinal, they felt connected to their son.

So this topic, this poem, meant something to me.

I turned it in to the professor, and it came back covered in red ink.
I got a D.

And, at that time in my life, I was afraid of grades that low. I thought they meant something about me.

And, turns out, I was also afraid of my poem getting dissected, scrutinized, and evaluated to bits. Because it meant something to me.

In those moments, when we outsource our self-worth to some sort of activity or opinion, we are vulnerable.

I remember thinking:

Maybe I’m not good at this.
Maybe I shouldn’t be writing.
Maybe everyone who ever said they liked my writing was lying.

That’s where the mind goes.

It takes one person’s opinion and turns it into a conclusion about your identity.

But that poem wasn’t bad.

It just wasn’t for that professor.
It was for me.

It took me years to realize that I never wrote for others.
I wrote for myself.

There’s a difference.

A real one.

Because when I stopped writing, even briefly, I felt it.

Not in some abstract, philosophical way.
In my body. In my mood. In my life.

I felt off.
Flat.

My means of expression was gone.
And the opposite of expression is depression.

A heaviness, a darkness, consumed my life.

I was disconnected from something that was natural to me.

And that’s the part that matters.

Not the feedback.
Not the grade.

The natural expression of who we are.

That’s what matters.

Yet we are trained to treat external opinion as what matters most, often very early on in life. We are conditioned to value others’ opinions about us over our own.

So we look outward.

For approval.
For validation.
For confirmation that what you’re doing is “good.”

And slowly, without realizing it, you start editing yourself.

You start shaping what you create based on how it might be received. And there’s a cost.

You lose contact with the thing that made you want to create in the first place.

Because the truth is, not everything you create is meant for everyone.

Most of it isn’t.

And when you really see that and accept that, something relaxes.

You stop trying to make universally liked things.
You stop trying to be universally understood.

You start creating from a different place. A much more authentic place. And from that place you do your best stuff.

The same way a song can mean everything to one person and nothing to another…
the same way a performance can land deeply for some and completely miss for others… your work, your expression, your way of being will do the same.

That’s not a flaw.

That’s the nature of it.

And when you stop taking that personally, when you stop becoming preoccupied with the reception of your creations, you get something back.

Access.

Access to your own voice.
Your own instincts.
Your own way of seeing things.

The part of you that knew the poem mattered before anyone else read it.

That’s the part worth listening to.

Because when you don’t, when you let one response define the whole thing, you don’t just lose a piece of work… you risk losing the part of you that created it.

And that’s a much bigger loss.

So now, when something doesn’t land with someone, I don’t rush to make it mean something about me.

I just let it be what it is.

Not for them.

And I keep going.

Because I know what happens when I don’t.

And I know what happens when I do.

It felt like a song, so I put a melody to it.
I made some structural adjustments.
I brought it to life using some production tools.

Here is the result.

This is called, We’ll be home.

Enjoy.

At some point, I stopped following the trail.

It didn’t feel like a conscious decision. More like a quiet drift.

I let my feet choose where they wanted to go. Or maybe I simply stopped choosing at all. And something in me relaxed when I did.

I wandered without an agenda. No destination, no outcome to arrive at. Just a steady flow of movement. One foot in front of the other. Floating and grounded at once.

And because of that, things began to appear. Or maybe I should say, I noticed them. But can anything appear without us noticing it?

A hawk perched.
A flower I would have otherwise passed.
A narrow path I never noticed.

It felt less like I was moving through the woods, and more like I was being moved through them.

Like something else had space to take over once I stepped aside.

The forest led me to a clearing.

I sat down in the grass and opened my book.

And, a few pages in, I landed on this:

“In the sunlight he paused. He wondered if he wished to go back to the town just now. Unable to decide, he let his feet carry him vaguely along the wagon tracks to the main road; there he hesitated for a moment, to turn first one way and another, as the needle of a compass, slow to settle, discovers its point. He believed—and had believed for a long time—that there was a subtle magnetism in nature, which, if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright, not indifferent to the way he walked. But he felt that only during the few days that he had been in Butcher’s Crossing had nature been so purely presented to him that its power of compulsion was sufficiently strong to strike through his will, his habit, and his idea. He turned west, his back toward Butcher’s Crossing and the towns and cities that lay eastward beyond it; he walked past the clump of cottonwoods toward the river he had not seen, but which had assumed in his mind the proportions of a vast boundary that lay between himself and the wildness and freedom that his instinct sought.”

This was not a coincidence. Or perhaps it was (I believe that coincidences are simply effects with unseen causes).

The same quiet pull the author describes is the same one that guided me there.

I don’t think this guidance turns on and off. I think it’s always there.

It’s subtle.

But it becomes visible when we stop insisting on our own direction. When we loosen our grip on thought. When we stop treating every mental movement as something that needs to be followed or solved or acted on.

There’s a different kind of intelligence underneath all of that.

Quieter. Wider. Unconcerned with control.

And when aware of it, even briefly, life feels less like something I’m managing and more like something I’m living.

Not even. For I’m not doing it.

It feels like life is happening through me.

No. For there’s no separation.

It feels like I am life.

I had the pleasure of working closely with Joline during my time at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where we partnered on selecting and collaborating with world-renowned Visiting Faculty members to bring the training curriculum to life (among other things).

Today, I’m honored to call her a friend. And even though we don’t stay in touch frequently, when we reconnect there is this sense that we’ve been present in each other’s hearts all the while.

Joline Seavey is a spiritual empowerment coach supporting people with embracing spirituality to live from their hearts instead of their heads. She has 18 years of experience in the mental health field as a licensed social worker (a background we share), and has worn many hats and positively impacted many lives over the course of her career, including mine.

You can follow along with Joline on Instagram @Joline.Seavey and learn more about her and her offerings on her website (JolineSeavey.com).

I love this episode. There is gold here, sprinkled throughout the conversation from start to finish.

Please enjoy Episode 23 of The Self-Explorers Club Podcast.

You can sense the depth of her spiritual practice simply from being in her presence. Her wisdom carries through her interactions, teachings, writing, and services, which invite us to return within to ourselves and live from that place.

I’ve been grateful to know Rosemary as a respected peer in this space and work with her as she has brought more offerings into this world. Last month I attended one of these offerings myself, a virtual workshops (which I’ve also sent my mother to), and got to experience her healing gifts firsthand.

Rosemary holds a Master’s Degree in Transpersonal Psychology and is a Certified Transformational Life Coach, Yoga and Meditation Instructor, and Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. With over 13 years of experience teaching yoga, a meditation-and a daily personal practice spanning more than 30 years, and over 20 years in social services leadership, Rosemary has a deep understanding of what it is to be human and how to navigate the realities of life as a spiritual being.

To hear from Rosemary, subscribe to her Substack, Awaken, Align, Come Home.

To explore Rosemary’s work and book a complimentary session with her, visit her coaching profile hosted on Zoee.

Enjoy Episode 22 of The Self-Explorers Club Podcast.

You’re afraid of your imagination.

Realize this deeply, and feel free to laugh at yourself.

You’re using your creative power against you to imagine an unfavorable future situation and then avoiding it.

That has some utility, sometimes. For instance, in the case of keeping yourself physically safe when the risk of a physical threat is high.

So when something actually threatens your life, sure. Go for it.

But most of our fears don’t threaten our lives. They threaten our egos.

The ego is built on the familiar. It’s constructed by our past. It is limited.

It prioritizes the perpetuation of the familiar, because that is the stuff it knows.

And what it knows is safe.

What it doesn’t know is unsafe. The nervous system responds to this perception of threat. The priority? Keep you safe. Maintain what’s familiar.

But what happens when what’s right for you is unfamiliar?

What happens when the perceived threat is following your heart?

What happens?

You talk yourself out of what’s right for you.

Why?

Fear of rejection? So you reject yourself?

Fear of failure? So you fail yourself?

Fear of scarcity? So you limit yourself?

And the rejection, failure, and scarcity you imagine, fear, and avoid are all your creations.

Don’t use your creative power against yourself.

Don’t live a half-lived life.

You’re a kid. You’re afraid of a monster under the bed. You’re making that monster up.

The best thing to do is to look under the bed and realize that.

Realize that it’s your imagination you’re afraid of.

Realize you’re choosing certain self-inflicted pain over possible future pain (which you are entirely capable of handling by the way).

Tell me how a potential unfavorable future circumstance is scarier than not following your heart.

Tell me.

How is a hypothetical imagined scenario constructed from the pollution of your previous life experience scarier than abandoning yourself?

May you be more loyal to your heart than to the fears steering you away from it.

You are consciousness itself.

God’s got your back.

Live like it.

If you want to experience the retreat where I met Kyle, the entire audio recording is available along with other courses and resources at KyleCease.com/courses

Enjoy Episode 21 of The Self-Explorers Club Podcast.

A man on a sacred quest. A pilgrim moving toward something holy just beyond the horizon.

There was a time when I lived as though the next book would unlock my freedom. The next teacher would reveal the path. The next spiritual practice would grant me peace. The next breakthrough would finally deliver me into the version of myself I was trying to become.

It looked like growth. It looked like ambition. It even looked like devotion.

But underneath it was a quiet assumption: I am not there yet.

There is something I do not have.
There is something I must find.
There is somewhere else I need to arrive.

Seeking implies disconnection. It is fueled by lack, even if dressed in good intentions.

Seeking implies something is missing. And I no longer believe that.

I am not a spiritual seeker.
I’m a spiritual explorer.

A Self-explorer.

Exploration is different.

Exploration does not assume absence. It assumes wholeness.

When I explore, I am not chasing something that’s missing. I’m curiously moving through what’s already here.

I am curious about the terrain of my own being. The valleys of grief. The sharp cliffs of fear. The quiet lakes of contentment. The enchanted forests of desire and doubt and creativity and love.

Nothing is missing.

It’s all right here within me.

The breath in my lungs.
The thoughts moving through my mind.
The sensations in my body.

An explorer does not walk into a forest to find something missing, but to experience what’s there.

That’s how I relate to life now.

I am not trying to transcend my humanity. I am not trying to purify myself into some enlightened abstraction. I am not climbing toward a spiritual summit where I will finally plant a flag and declare myself whole.

Wholeness is the starting point.

The invitation is not to become complete. The invitation is to Know that I already am, and live from that place.

There is something deeply relieving about this shift. When nothing is missing, there is no frantic searching. No desperate hunger. No sense that time is running out. There’s no hurry toward some illusory solution to a problem that I created.

Instead there is curiosity.

What happens if I look here?
What happens if I feel this fully?
What happens if I try this?

Exploration invites presence. Seeking invites tension. The same tension created from trying to pull a piece of fabric apart, from trying to separate something from what it already is.

When I was seeking, I was often bypassing the moment in front of me in favor of a better one I imagined somewhere else. I was optimizing my consciousness. Upgrading myself. Engineering my enlightenment. Working toward an outcome, a different version of myself. A different experience of reality.

Now I am interested in the texture of this moment. The way sunlight hits the floor. The way my chest tightens before a difficult conversation. The way my heart sparks when I do what I enjoy. The way love feels when I let it in. The way the tension from my shoulders releases when I remember I’m inseparable from God.

Exploration is intimate.

It requires courage too. Because if I realize nothing is missing, then I can no longer seek resolution in the future. I have to meet what is here in all its forms.

But that is the adventure, the one I’ve found to be the greatest of all.

Because when I stop seeking what’s missing, I realize what’s here.

And I move through my inner landscape the way an explorer does. Attentive. Engaged. Sometimes uncertain. Always curious. Often surprised.

I’m not looking for treasure. I’m playing in it.

I am here.

And what a miracle it is to be here.

I used to be a spiritual seeker.

Did I find what I was searching for,
or did I simply realize I never had to search at all?

And the things we barely think about? They show up unannounced. Effortlessly. Almost casually.

This isn’t because we didn’t visualize hard enough.
It’s not because the universe is “testing” us.
And it’s not because we’re broken or blocked.

It’s because wanting something reinforces our lack of it and puts us in a state of resistance.

Can you feel that? When we want something, we separate ourselves from it. And the more we want something, the more we resist not having it.

Let’s play around here for a bit.

Consider that reality doesn’t respond to your wants.
Consider that it responds to your state.

Consider that it doesn’t deliver what you want.
Consider that reality reflects what you’re aligned with.

I don’t claim to know the precise model of reality (if there even is one), nor do I necessarily care to. But there is a proposed model I find interesting.

Vadim Zeland describes reality as a set of parallel tracks, different versions of life that already exist. We’re on one track, experiencing one version of reality. Then there’s a ridiculous amount of other tracks, representing alternative versions. At any point, we can change tracks and tap into a new versions. Sometimes he also compares it to film reels, where the current frame is our current experience and we have the ability to swap reels, giving ourselves alternate future experiences.

In this model, you’re not creating a new future from scratch. You’re tuning into one that already exists.

Not by force.
Not by effort.
By our state.

Your inner state acts like a dial. Turn it, and the scenery changes.

This is where most conventional advice goes sideways.

It teaches people to want harder. This can actually push away what we want when we pay attention to the energetics of it.

In plain language: When you treat something as urgent, critical, or life-defining, you load it with pressure.

The more importance we place on something, the more pressure we build.

Pressure generates resistance.

Think about it in human terms.

Desperation in dating doesn’t attract. It repels.
Fixating on a problem strengthens it.
White-knuckling a goal doesn’t create flow. It creates friction and burnout.
Clinging to an outcome tightens the nervous system.
The more pressure we feel, the more rigid we are.

The harder you push, the more reality pushes back.

Not as punishment.
As reflection.

This is why a neutral state is actually quite powerful.

Calm confidence.
Quiet expectation.
Reduced importance.
Non-resistance.
Allowing.

Not because you don’t care, but because you’re no longer attached to the outcome.

When desire loses importance, energy starts to move again.

The paradox is this: The less you need something, the faster it tends to arrive.

This isn’t because you tricked reality.
It’s because your system stopped broadcasting lack.

Desperation says: I don’t have it.
Neutrality says: It is handled.

And reality tends to agree either way.

If you turn allowing into a strategy, you’ve already missed it. Because that would mean you’re trying to allow. And allowing exists in the absence of trying.

So here’s a cleaner orientation:

1. Lower the importance: Treat what you want as nice, not necessary. Remind yourself that you’ll be okay regardless. Most of all, realize deeply that everything you truly want is within you. The importance of anything you want naturally drops when you realize you already have access to what you believe it will give you.

2. Assume cooperation: Move through your days as if life is already rearranging itself in quiet ways you don’t need to supervise or control. Live as if life is unfolding in your favor. This is not only effective. It’s a ton of fun.

3. Respond, don’t wrestle: When challenges appear, don’t dramatize them. Don’t fight them. Adjust course without emotional charge. You neutralize struggle by cutting off its fuel: your resistance.

That’s it.

No affirmations shouted into the void. No pretending you don’t care when you secretly do. No spiritual bypassing.

Just self-sourced peace.

You’re not manifesting new realities. You’re selecting from existing ones.

And the selection mechanism isn’t effort, belief, or discipline.

It’s your state.

Experiment with this. Try it out and see how it goes.

And once you see, you can’t unsee.

You stop resisting reality.

And reality stops resisting you.

Next week I’m offering three complementary sessions to help you master your inner state and embody this way of life. For some people, this session changes everything. If you’re interested, fill out this brief form and I’ll be in touch.

Meet with me next week

There are so many directions I could take.

I could talk about how Michelle met me at a pivotal time in her life. I can talk about how much has changed since then. I could talk about how inspired I am by her. I could talk about the power of the path she has chosen. How she’s now helping others in similar situations. I could talk about how she’s one of the strongest woman I know.

Instead, I’ll keep this simple and let the conversation speak for itself.

A couple of years ago I decided to run an experiment.

I offered something that I had never offered before. That offer put me in touch with many beautiful souls. It elicited deep connection from several people who were following me, who I didn’t know. People who I’m now deeply grateful to know.

Michelle is not only one of those people, she was the person I selected to be a part of that experiment with me. I didn’t know why at the time. I was just listening to my heart.

And now it’s crystal clear.

I trust you’ll see why in this conversation.

To learn more about Michelle you can follow her on Instagram (@michelledcharles) and on Substack. Here’s a post she shared about our time together.

Enjoy Episode 20 of The Self-Explorers Club Podcast.

We first met about two and a half years ago when he booked a session with me. What transpired since is more than he or I could have ever fathomed.

Alejandro Arango is a health coach, father, husband, and leader. He’s a force for good in this world, who illuminates hope for many at a time when they need it most.

Alejandro’s story is the hero’s journey.

He’s turned his own experience with Type 1 Diabetes into a heart-centered mission, one that extends beyond his family and positively impacts that lives of clients around the world. From supporting his daughter to joining forces with an incredible company called Risely Health, this conversation spotlights Alejandro’s story and how he guides others through times of fear, uncertainty, and change.

I’m honored to release this episode today, on Alejandro’s fifth anniversary of being diagnosed with T1D. As you’ll learn in this conversation, that’s truly something to celebrate.

Learn more about Alejandro on his website: www.coachdediabetes.com
Follow along with him on Instagram at @coachsaludydiabetes

And please share this episode with anyone you know living with T1D or navigating a new diagnosis of any kind. There is tremendous value here for them.

Enjoy Episode 19 of The Self-Explorers Club Podcast.

The dominant operating system of modern life is avoidance.

We avoid discomfort.
We avoid silence.
We avoid stillness.
We avoid ourselves.

And not because we’re weak. Because we’ve been conditioned.

Scroll instead of feel.
Consume instead of create.
Escape instead of embody.

Outsource wisdom.
Outsource guidance.
Outsource thought.

The world doesn’t just allow this. It rewards it.

Numbness is comfortable.
Distraction is profitable.
Disembodiment keeps the machine humming.

So when someone chooses presence, real presence, it quietly disrupts the whole arrangement.

Presence slows things down.
Presence expand awareness.
Presence notices what hurts, what matters, what’s out of alignment.

Presence disrupts, if only by surfacing what was already disrupted.

Presence is a doorway.

Many think awakening is about transcendence.
About rising above.
About bypassing pain, fear, grief, desire.

I know I did.

But awakening, in practice, looks much more ordinary.

It looks like staying when you want to leave.
Feeling when you want to distract.
Listening when you want to fix.
Telling the truth when it would be easier to pretend.

It’s sitting with discomfort.

Because in trying to protect yourself from discomfort, you protect yourself from a life fully lived.

This is one of the great paradoxes of being human.

The same strategies that keep us “safe” also keep us trapped.

Emotional armor dulls sensation in all directions.
You don’t just feel less pain, you feel less joy.
Less grief, and less love.
Less fear, and less aliveness.

The nervous system doesn’t selectively numb.

It turns the volume down on everything.

So we build lives that are smooth, controlled, optimized, predictable.

Controlled.

And quietly lifeless.

We curate identities instead of inhabiting our bodies.
We manage emotions instead of integrating them.
We seek comfort where we actually need contact.

This isn’t a moral failure.
It’s a survival strategy.

At some point, usually early, we learn that certain feelings aren’t welcome.
That certain truths are unsafe.
That presence costs something.

So we adapt.

But adaptation isn’t freedom.

A fully lived life isn’t one without discomfort.
It’s one with capacity.

Capacity to feel without collapsing.
Capacity to stay without numbing.
Capacity to let experience move through you instead of pushing it away.

Awakening isn’t about becoming different.
It’s about becoming you.

It’s about removing the insulation between you and life.

Which is why it takes courage.

Because when you stop running, things catch up.

Grief you postponed.
Desire you suppressed.
Truths you negotiated away.
A self you left behind to be acceptable.

Presence asks you to meet all of it without guarantees.

No promise that it will feel good.
No assurance that it will be clean or linear or marketable.

Just real.

And that’s the point.

A life fully lived is not smooth and optimized.
It’s textured.
Uneven.
Honest.

It’s rocky.

It has edges.

And in a culture that sells ease, comfort, and escape as the highest good, choosing aliveness is a radical act.

Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Quietly powerful.

Steady.

Breath by breath.
Moment by moment.
Being with yourself.

This is the work.

The world doesn’t need more numb people pretending to be okay.

It needs more humans willing to feel, to stay, to live from the inside out.

That kind of presence changes rooms.
Changes relationships.
Changes lives.

Starting with your own.

And it begins the moment you stop protecting yourself from discomfort and start trusting yourself with life.

I wrote some articles from the most salient episodes I’ve done over the years. Yours was one of them.

It’s called The Prison of Familiarity, and it explores something I see constantly in leaders, creatives, and coaches: the quiet ways we stay loyal to identities that once kept us safe, but now keep us small.

The piece weaves together leadership, ego, nervous system patterns, frequency, and the strange comfort of suffering. It includes a story from my work that gets right to the heart of it: how freedom often feels more threatening than pain, simply because it’s unfamiliar.

If you’ve ever felt like you know you’re meant for more ease, more impact, more alignment, but keep hitting an invisible ceiling, this is worth your time.

Read the article here:
The Prison of Familiarity: Choosing Freedom Over the Safety of Suffering (Featuring insights from Zack Bodenweber)

And if you want to go deeper, just about a year ago Corissa and I recorded a full conversation unpacking these ideas and what it actually takes to exit the “survival-based” version of success.

It’s called Shattering the Upper Limit

🎧 Listen to the episode here.

This is one of those pieces that doesn’t give you tactics. It gives you a mirror.
And sometimes, that mirror shows you the key that’s been in your hands all along.

We talk about it like it is a flaw. A weakness. A psychological bug we are supposed to fix or get over. As if one day we will finally feel qualified, confident, and immune to self-doubt and then we will be ready to move forward.

But that is not how growth works.

Feeling like an imposter is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you are growing. Nothing more. Nothing less.

By definition, growth means moving from the familiar into the unfamiliar.

It means doing something you have not done before. Having a first. Entering new territory without a backlog of evidence that proves you will be fine.

And the moment you do that, your nervous system wakes up.

It says, “Hey, this is new. We don’t have a lot of data that we’re safe here. This could be dangerous. We should pay attention.”

We then interpret that signal as “imposter syndrome.”

But all that is really happening is this: you are growing.

And, again, by definition, growing means you are living at your edge.

Your edge is the boundary between familiar and unfamiliar.

So with the term “imposter syndrome” we’ve pretty much pathologized living at our edge.

It is not a syndrome. It’s not a problem. It is a protective response to the unknown. It’s a byproduct of growth.

And it’s the recipe for a pretty legendary life.

You Cannot Be an Imposter at Being Yourself

Are there times when we might actually be an imposter? Yeah, for sure… if we’re pretending to be someone we’re not. Because that’s what that word means.

But living at your edge is not pretending to be someone you’re not.

So here is the paradox that dissolves this whole thing.

If you are being yourself, you cannot be an imposter.

You just can’t.

Imposter syndrome only makes sense if you believe you are pretending to be someone you are not. But when you are operating from your actual values, curiosity, integrity, and lived experience, there is nothing to fake.

You are simply expanding your zone of familiarity.

That expansion always feels uncomfortable at first.

We need not confuse unfamiliar action with being someone else.

Imposter Feelings vs the Inner Critic

Feeling like an imposter is not the same thing as the inner critic.

The imposter feeling is fear. It is simply the sensation of being in unfamiliar territory.

The inner critic is what piles stories on top of that sensation.

The inner critic says:
You are not qualified.
You are behind.
Everyone else knows what they are doing.
You are going to be exposed.

Those thoughts are not protective. They are dramatic. And most of the time, they are not true.

The work is not to eliminate the sensation of being an imposter. The work is to feel it, appreciate where it’s coming from, and detach from the mental drama surrounding it.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

That’s courage, right? Courage can’t exist without fear.

One of my favorites:

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.” - Anaïs Nin

A Simple Reframe That Actually Works

Now, of course, I understand the inner critic will still be there. Try to silence it and it will only get louder. Instead, gain some space from it. Detach from it, so you can work with it.

When self-doubt shows up, slow it down. Reassure it.

Take a piece of paper and make three columns.

In the first column, write the thought.

• “I am not ready.”

• “I do not know enough.”

• “I should not be here.”

In the second column, write evidence against that thought.

• Your training.

• Your experience.

• Your past wins.

• The fact that you have done hard or unfamiliar things before.

In the third column, write a grounded reframe.

• “This feels uncomfortable because it is new, not because I am incapable.”

• “I am learning in real time.”

• “I am allowed to grow into this.”

This is not positive thinking. This is reality checking.

You are teaching your ego the difference between danger and discomfort.

You’re reshaping your conditioned fear response.

Courage comes first.

Confidence rarely comes before action, for confidence in something comes from beliefs we can do that thing and those beliefs are shaped by evidence that we’ve done it… and that evidence comes after, you know, we’ve done it.

This is why the first time I ever did a webinar I felt like I was going to throw up, and now I can roll out of bed and do one without even putting on pants.

It required courage at first. Now it requires little more than an internet connection.

You do not wait to feel less like an imposter and then take the leap. You take the leap, gather evidence, and then the feeling settles. Until the next edge appears.

And it will.

Because if you are on a real path of growth, there will always be another unfamiliar place waiting for you.

And then one day, you reach a point where the unfamiliar stops being something you fear at all. You start looking forward to it. And you find yourself at home in places you’ve never been.

So here’s the deal

Imposter syndrome is not a diagnosis.
It is not a disease.
It is not something to fix.

It is simply a sign that you are stretching beyond who you have been and what you have done.

The more often you feel it, the more you’re growing.

And the goal is not to make it go away.

The goal is to recognize it for what it is, stop making it mean something about your worth, and take one courageous step at a time.

That is how life expands.

That is how confidence is built.

And that is how you stop trying to eliminate your edge and start learning how to live there.

I did a whole training about this at one point. It’s 51 minutes long. If you want it, let me know and I’ll send you the recording.

Also, share this with someone who can benefit.

Much love.

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Reminders, beliefs, habits, priorities, etc. for the year ahead.

Not resolutions. Intentions.

And then I make a meditation that accompanies that guide.

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