I sometimes confuse being over something with no longer feeling any emotion or pain towards it. Ideally, we hope it means forgetting all about it. As that’s not always realistic, indifference will do. Peacefully detached. Pure neutrality towards the situation. The false sense of moral superiority where you can walk around with your head above the clouds.

People say there’s no timeline on pain and healing, but sometimes we want to be “over” something both for our own good, and because we feel we should be. The mistaken but common assumption that maturity looks like indifference (Oh him? What’s his name again?).

But then the anger resurfaces, and there’s a sense of self-annoyance. “Ugh, I thought I was past this.” “Why am I still here?” There’s a part of still having emotions toward something that hits the ego a little bit. Almost like we’re losing the imaginary (but somehow very real) game for still having a reaction.

Some days I really do think I’m above it. Other days I’m absolutely not. That’s when the steam comes streaming out my ears.

Some days you think about it and brush it off. Others, it cuts as deep as experiencing it in the moment — the dismissal, the disrespect, the misunderstanding — it feels like a fresh pain. There might also be a brief sting of what could have been, but it’s quickly overpowered by the feeling of being mischaracterised and diminished.

There’s a protective element in it too. Really, we’re still mad at our mistreatment, and sometimes that we allowed it. There’s a sort of embarrassment to someone having witnessed you in that situation. An embarrassment at having cared, explained yourself, shown more of your humanity than the other person was capable of holding.

That’s where we re-imagine scenarios, inserting better responses. The version where we’re sharper. Calmer. Head held high.

It’s like we think we know our standards, what we’ll accept and what we won’t. But in the moment, are we thinking about standards, or are we just wanting to be understood?

Knowing we have those expectations makes it easier to blame ourselves for not being “stronger” with our boundaries. And potentially, there’s truth to that.

They say emotions are signals. Anger is usually the one that tells you your boundaries were crossed. That you’ve stopped blaming yourself. That your pride is trying to repair itself.

And then there’s the resentment of never being fully acknowledged. The idea that they may never even recognise the hurt they caused you. The full on — “How can they walk around with no care in the world…” We all know the script.

I don’t mean getting your own back in terms of revenge, by the way, although there is a sense of satisfaction in imagining making someone else feel a fraction of what you did. I mean more in the way of restoring your composure.

That’s the part that’s funny to me. I notice how desperately we want to minimise our reactions, to keep our “self-respect” and pride, and yet in doing so we glorify the suppression of vulnerability — the very thing we usually wish had been shown to us.

The composed, detached, “cooler” response always feels more elevated. Like you’ve won something. It gives us the layer of control we lacked in the moment. A bit of emotional leverage we can hold onto and call dignity. The moral high ground of “We don’t even need to stoop to that level.”

But I wonder if often it’s just distance masquerading as dignity. As soon as someone shows us that they don’t care, we want to mimic that emotion as quickly as possible. It feels safer than being left hanging in the balance, even if the indifference is forced.

Admitting you still care when someone else doesn’t is a strength. But it can feel like a lack. As if care equals weakness. And yet, care doesn’t have to mean continued engagement. It just means you’re human. Yes, that care will have to go elsewhere eventually, but it’s allowed to still exist for a little while.

There’s a moral frustration here for me for sure — how can someone treat another person like that? Sometimes that’s quickly followed by my understanding of exactly how they could, which is even more irritating when I want to stay mad.

If you get to the point where you accept the fact that it really had nothing to do with you, and that it was a projection of their own unhealed narrative, it can offer a kind of calm.

I almost want to feel relief, because it reinforces the idea that it was their lack, not mine.

But knowing why someone behaved the way they did doesn’t change the way it landed.

Intellectually, you can see it. Emotionally, you’ve still absorbed it. And you absorb it again every time the situation replays.

Sometimes understanding even complicates the anger. You lose the clean villain. And it’s easier to move on when there’s a villain. Understanding, though, doesn’t have to mean forgiveness. It doesn’t mean weakened boundaries. It just means seeing it clearly.

You can understand someone’s motives. That doesn’t mean your body forgets how it felt. The eventual “peace” isn’t forgetting what was done or pretending it didn’t matter.

It’s just not rehearsing the same situations over and over again. It’s knowing that acknowledgement isn’t needed for your feelings to be valid. It’s knowing you’ve learnt what you needed to, and you don’t need any more resolution from someone else.

There’s something humiliating about imagining they know you still care. As if that hands the leverage back over. As if detachment is the only solid ground left to stand on. But if your power depends on them believing you’re over it, it’s not really yours.

(I even feel the need to say I’m not writing this because I still care. As if they’re even reading this.)

And maybe, if I’m honest, part of the anger was easier than a clean ending would have been. It gave me something solid. Something to push against. A clearer reason to walk away. A simple incompatibility might have left me with more questions than answers.

I realise being over it isn’t about feeling nothing. It’s about being able to sit with the ambiguity, without needing the pain to justify your exit.

Does the game even exist if I stop keeping score?

I used to (and still do) get really in my head about success. Especially with the way society is today; a big fear these days for a lot of people is the idea of ‘settling.’ Settling in relationships, careers, friendships. Settling into old versions of ourselves.

No one really wants to ‘settle.’ But what does that word actually mean? Whoever you ask, there’s a different definition. We usually hear it in motivational speeches, in videos, thrown around online to boost engagement and secure success for someone else. Maybe we hear it in conversations with our friends. “You can have it all – the dream life, the dream body, the career, the relationship. Don’t allow anything less than perfection. Don’t lower your standards for anything.”

It sounds good. It’s a lie.

The lie is that perfection exists. That once you work hard enough, raise your standards high enough, and reach that final point, the hard work stops. That you’re finally where you need to be. That from there everything comes easily and there are no more worries. It’s a glorified end destination that never really arrives.

I used to overthink the idea of ‘success’ and ‘making it’ all the time. I would FaceTime my friend and spiral for three hours, convinced that I’d never be who I want to be, and that the fear of that insignificance was too much to bear. That the world was so big, and I had no idea what my place was in it.

The strangest part is, I would think this to the point of collapse, yet not even have a defined idea of who the person I wanted to become was. It was made up of things I thought were expected of me, things I saw other people have, and I assumed that if I didn’t have those things, then I hadn’t achieved anything.

A feared ‘small’ life for me was one that was ordinary. That I could be just anyone, living a life that everyone else lives. That I could be forgotten. Leave with no impact.

Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between settling and just living in one portion of the world. One narrow slice. Is it settling if I don’t want everything? Don’t get me wrong, I want a lot of things. But my biggest tension is wanting so much that I’m never happy with anything. This idea of constantly going for more, needing more, projected everywhere under the guise of self-improvement and achievement, exhausts me. How many of these lives are actually fulfilled and aligned? What do you really gain when the goal becomes to purely want, to keep chasing and chasing?

I see this dilemma in my own life. I want a large life, of course I do. But when it comes to happiness and fulfilment, how does that fit in? When does enough become enough? And how do you move intentionally when the subconscious goal is to constantly acquire?

I think sometimes we imagine ‘not settling’ as living in a frictionless world. A world of ‘peace’ where everything goes purely our way, and we have everything we could ever need. But ‘not settling’ still means living with discomfort. It still means being unsure. It still means not always making the right decision.

I’ve delayed choosing in case something ‘better’ might exist. Especially being young – you never know what the future has in store. I’ve disguised it as alignment before, but constantly scanning for better, instead of building better, hurts.

Sometimes ‘high standards’ are just fear dressed up as self-respect.

It’s exhausting. It’s relentless. Nothing ever compares to how things are in your head. The more options there are, the harsher the feeling that I could be choosing wrong. That I’ll be trapped in a life I don’t want. That I’ll be hurting myself in some way. Lose time I could have spent doing something else. Lose who I am and not being able to get back to it. Lose opportunities and miss out. I hear the avoidance creeping out, don’t worry.

It stops me from fully inhabiting what I already have. I’m constantly searching for lack, therefore all I find is lack. In myself. In the world around me. Other people always have it better. They find things I don’t, take steps that I don’t. Live freely.

An ex-boyfriend once told me I’ll never be happy with the small things, because I’m constantly looking for things to be perfect. It resonated with me deep down, so I didn’t break up with him that day. Ironically, the one time I thought I was making the right decision – sticking with something that wasn’t ‘perfect’ in an effort to build – allowed me to tolerate less than bare minimum behaviour for another six months.

I don’t hold on to that. But it made me question what ‘settling’ actually is.

I would now define ‘settling’ as not trying. Looking for better rather than being better. Externalising your fears onto the world rather than looking inwards. Betraying yourself by opting out, or chasing for more rather than choosing what is aligned.

Choosing a corner of the world is making your scope smaller. Not your dreams, but your approach. Not avoiding the work. Not holding onto a fake version of what a dream life looks like. Staying aligned with the things you actually value.

I used to imagine having it all meant a peaceful life I no longer have to work for. I believed negative feelings would disappear, that I wouldn’t experience the friction of being human in the same way. Even my imagined bad days weren’t ‘real’ bad days. They were days where I overcame things, but with minimal struggle and emotion.

I think of how many connections, opportunities, passions we’ve walked away from because they weren’t ‘peaceful,’ and we took discomfort to mean ‘not for me.’ We used the blanket term ‘settling’ because we actually had to still work for something. Still show up. Still grow. It’s much easier to pretend you didn’t want it in the first place.

What I suspect is true about success is that it’s what you make of it. It’s what fulfils you. It’s not something you arrive at one day, but something you choose every day, through your actions and your outlook.

Life does not become permanently easy if you’re constantly growing. It becomes easy when you’re comfortable. Truly settling. Not wanting to be better than you are, but chasing distractions. Busy-ness for the sake of being busy. Achievements for the sake of achieving.

I’m a big believer that we should have it all. And we should. But that doesn’t come with ease or perfection. I can aim for the stars in my own way and still choose my small corner of the world.

This fear of not settling can make you not choose anything. Because nothing will ever be good enough.

I don’t need to conquer the whole world.

I just need to choose a part of it, and build something meaningful there.

As we approach the end of February 2026, you’d think the buzz of New Year’s would have started to cool off. Instead, it feels like it’s building again.

Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac, and people are energised by it.

There was already a lot going on symbolically with 2025, and I think we all felt it. Numerologically, it added up to nine, a number associated with completion and endings. In the Chinese zodiac, it was the Year of the Snake, all about shedding old skin, closing chapters, and releasing patterns and behaviours that no longer fit.

The Year of the Horse, on the other hand, represents ambition, drive, freedom, forward movement. Two very different energies.

It seems a lot of people resonate with this change, and if anything, it tells me that January 1st didn’t quite deliver what we thought it would. After everything 2025 symbolised, the endings, the shedding, it felt like we were owed something bigger. We were ready to put it behind us and see the magic of 2026.

But when the clock struck midnight and January arrived, nothing really transformed. If anything, the heaviness intensified. I found myself in a loop of low motivation, low energy and low hope. I was ready to write off the year before it had even properly begun, pack up my things and try again next time.

My friend and I were both feeling it. We’d message each other half-jokingly, half-desperately reassuring ourselves, ‘It’s fine!! The real new year is in February. It’s still the Year of the Snake.’ As if we could extend the grace period by shifting the calendar slightly, as if we hadn’t technically started yet and therefore couldn’t have failed.

It got to the point where you’d say, ‘There must just be something in the air.’ For those of us in the gloomy UK, the endless grey skies and constant rain didn’t exactly help. Nothing screams motivation more than waking up to constant downpour five days in a row. It’s a sound that feels permanently lodged in my mind now, even when the skies are surprisingly clear. It’s like convincing yourself you can hear the phone ring when absolutely no one is trying to reach you.

Regardless, I think that’s why this second symbolic ‘new year’ feels so enticing. We all want another chance to get it right.

And if you’re anything like me, you love the symbolism of these mythological and celestial markers. There’s something comforting about the idea that the universe moves in cycles, and that we can move with it.

Today, with the sun finally out for a few hours, it does feel like a fresh start. The air feels lighter. There’s a soft sense of momentum. Maybe change really is in the air.

But I’ve been thinking about how psychologically we cling to these dates. How we wait for a new year, a new month, a new Monday to begin again. How anxious it can make me feel, as if, if I don’t start properly, the opportunity disappears. As if a whole year can be ruined by a slow January, as if time is that fragile.

I’ve even seen people say you shouldn’t wash your hair or take the bins out on the first day of the year, like a single domestic task could tip the scales of the next twelve months. And the thing is, for people who attach weight to these kinds of things, myself included, I would genuinely believe that one act could cause everything to come crashing down.

But humans invented calendars; we didn’t invent momentum, or the process of becoming.

And that doesn’t just happen at the stroke of midnight or depend on doing everything perfectly from day one.

Maybe the opportunity isn’t wasted when we don’t ‘start correctly.’ It merely waits for us to step back into it. I love the enthusiasm around this symbolic reset. I love the idea of ambition and forward movement.

But there’s no need to wait for a symbolic marker to begin, or for a flawless first week. And surprisingly, I can choose not to write off a year just because it didn’t feel magical straight away.

Time will pass regardless, whether it’s the Year of the Snake, the Year of the Horse, or something else entirely. The only fragile thing was my belief that I had already ruined it. And if I dare to go there, maybe momentum doesn’t arrive all at once, but builds each time you decide to keep going.

I’m drawn to think of that Britney Spears perfume advert, ‘I choose my own destiny.’ Slightly theatrical, in my true fashion. But fitting.

So here’s to the Year of the Horse, whether it’s your second beginning, or your third, fourth or fifth.

Photo by Andrey Soldatov on Unsplash

Do you know how long I’ve been avoiding writing in this thing? I’ve been dodging it like the plague. That silent guilt has been there, though, sitting quietly in the back of my mind while I do literally anything else. It doesn’t interrupt or demand much attention. It just rests. And then a day goes by, and another day goes by, and suddenly weeks have passed. I begin to wonder if this is even something to go back to, or if I’ve already let too much time slip.

Someone once told me that if I’m not working on the things I want to, then I just don’t want it badly enough. Those words rang true to me in the moment. They felt sincere and motivating, like a challenge I could rise to. But now, as I sit here day after day, thinking about the same thing over and over again, I start to question that idea. Because what is this, if not desire? When something follows you this persistently, when it resurfaces in every moment, when the guilt of pushing it aside gnaws at you constantly, is that not want?

The truth is, it’s much easier to dream about things than to act on them. I love big dreams. I will dream about things all day. Everything goes well in my daydreams. I could sit there and daydream for hours, and I have. It almost takes away the need to actually do anything. The dreaming feels productive enough to stand in for the doing. Sometimes it feels kinder to myself to stay there.

Acting is different. Acting requires you to confront where you really are, not where you might end up. It asks you to start without guarantees and to be seen halfway through. Sometimes I think I almost resent that. I almost hate that I’m here again, doing things, instead of just imagining them. Imagining is so much safer – it doesn’t ask anything of you. And still, I never stop wanting more than that.

But when I do act on things, something shifts. I feel calmer, I think less, I feel at peace. My mind stops circling. My body catches up, finally, and it reminds me that movement, however small, creates its own type of clarity.

My friend is currently recovering from brain surgery.

I know this feels like a pivot. A sharp, heavy pivot. But as it would do, it’s been on my mind. I can’t even imagine the whole experience she has gone through. I know I have my own blocks around things in my life, my own moments of fear and avoidance, but she has just been through something so immediate, so confronting. Something that strips life back to its essentials. She is well, and she is recovering. I continue to pray for her safe and swift recovery. But she has seen one of the scariest parts of life up close, one you don’t really come back from.

She understands more than ever the importance of life, and the fragility of our everyday. She was always like that regardless, constantly looking at the positives, making the most of her life, but now this has added a deeper layer. Most of us understand this in theory. We’re told to be grateful, to appreciate our time. We nod along, because of course we do. Why wouldn’t we be grateful? But then the mundane of the everyday takes over. Frustrations rise over missed trains, emails that need replying to. Deadlines feel urgent until they don’t. It’s all the small, constant irritations that slowly dull our awareness. How often do we actually stop?

Today, after speaking to my friend on the phone, seeing her smile, hearing her laugh, hearing her talk about what she’s been through, something solidified in me. I felt grateful in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I was grateful for her safety. I was thankful to feel her warmth again. And I was, almost selfishly, inspired. Inspired to do better. Inspired to do more. Inspired to stop postponing myself. Inspired to take more time to just be myself. To take all the time I can to appreciate the things I’m so lucky to do without thinking twice. And yet I know how easily I’ll forget this feeling.

We spend so much time looking backwards, replaying moments we think we wasted. We obsess over the should-haves, the could-haves, the what-ifs. Then the pendulum swings forward, and we start imagining futures with hope or dread, making plans for versions of our lives that haven’t yet come to pass. We forget about the present. We acknowledge it, sure, in an objective way, but how often do we actually feel it, or register that we feel it? It’s harder than it sounds. It doesn’t last very long. It’s literally a blink-and-you-miss-it moment.

And I did miss it. Time is one of those things that feel endless until we think it’s running out. In my mind, I’m always treating time as if there’s an endless supply of moments, of love, of opportunities, so much so that I feel comfortable leaving things until ‘next time.’ I wonder how much we lose in the process. 

Today, as I took out my notepad and pen and started writing, it registered to me quietly and clearly that this was the first time I’d really been here in three months.

But it’s something worth striving for. That clarity of action, that peacefulness of presence. It makes it easy for that overwhelming gratitude of being to start to flow.

They say you never appreciate what you have until it’s gone. I say, why don’t we start?

Sometimes the scale of life hits me in stupidly ordinary moments. I’ll be scrolling through my phone in the morning, half-asleep, wrapped in the warmth of my duvet, and suddenly I’m witnessing three different realities at once. A bombing somewhere, a wedding somewhere else, someone making banana bread in a kitchen I’ll never step foot in. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet, but I’ve already absorbed more emotional commotion than my ancestors would have encountered in a decade.

It makes me wonder whether humans were ever meant to live like this, with a world so large it’s at our fingertips from the moment we open our eyes.

Our minds evolved in small groups, a hundred people, maybe a hundred and fifty at most. But they were people you actually knew: their voices, their habits, the way they laughed, the way they got on your nerves. We weren’t built to carry the tragedies of millions, or to compare your life to thousands of strangers, or to process multiple global crises at the same time. Our nervous system was designed for the familiar, not the infinite.

I think about this mismatch a lot, the biological scale vs the modern one. Even when life is objectively fine, even when I’m safe, warm, fed, unthreatened, there’s this underlying sense of dread.

Sometimes it shows up as anxiety, sometimes as numbness, sometimes as a strange guilt, like when I’m showering and feeling bad about it, aware that somewhere someone has no clean water, and here I am deciding whether I should condition twice because my hair feels dry. It’s ridiculous and human and heartbreaking all at once.

It’s like my body doesn’t know the difference between danger in front of me and danger happening nine thousand miles away. My heart still races, my stomach still tightens, my thoughts start spiralling. Almost like a constant low-level state of threat with no clear enemy to confront. Just an on-going stream of information and no way to act on most of it.

I imagine in the past there was only scope for small, solvable problems: a broken tool, a sick relative, harsh winters. There was a world with clear edges, and you knew your role within it clearly. But now it’s like the edges of these worlds have started to bleed endlessly, and we keep on absorbing everything.

We meet hundreds of people online, we hear thousands of opinions, we carry emotional stories from strangers we’ll never meet.

But my actual life is tiny compared to the world I think I’m living in. I don’t experience eight billion people, I experience maybe ten deeply, my world is shaped by a handful of relationships. The things that genuinely affect me are the things I can touch, see, hold, change.

You can care about something without being responsible for fixing it. And you can acknowledge pain without trying to personally hold it. You can be informed without letting the weight of the world replace the weight of your own life.

The older I get, the more I think that peace isn’t about simplifying the world, but about simplifying your relationship to it. There’s power in deciding where your attention goes, clarity in choosing what belongs in your emotional world and what doesn’t. There’s freedom in living intentionally in a world that pressures you to be endlessly large.

We weren’t built to carry the whole world in our hands, but we canchoose the size of the world we actually engage with. We can choose what enters our minds, what stays in our hearts, what shapes our days. We can live lives that feel proportionate to our humanity rather than lives stretched to accommodate every crisis, and every expectation.

The world will always be too big, but we don’t have to feel lost within it.

Picture that ‘ideal’ version of yourself. The one you aspire to be. Do they actually feel like you, or like a stranger you’re trying to become?

We create perfect future selves as if we’re fixing perceived flaws. We imagine them as us 5 or 10 years on, but in reality, they’re more of an idol rather than part of our identity. Closer to a mask we put on than a veritable future. Finding things to change about ourselves is as easy as breathing, but there’s a limit to how much change is improvement, until it shades into erasure.

My own ‘perfect self’ wakes at 6am, works out, eats perfectly, looks flawless before 9am, and is calm, logical, polished. That version of me feels possible in theory, but as someone who has always been terrible with routines, struggles with her appetite, is known for being emotional rather than logical and is a little socially awkward, I wonder how much of that is self-improvement vs erasure.

Strangely, thinking about that version of me does bring me comfort. Whenever I mess up, I mentally retreat to my picture-perfect self, who would never make mistakes or say the wrong thing. It’s falsely comforting, and kind of addicting. It’s like micro-dopamine – I get to feel the illusion of becoming her without actually doing anything at all.

I used to think imagining her was motivating, but as I grow, my life looks less and less like hers. Not in a bad way, just less polished. I realise I didn’t account for real emotions that can dip and swell, real life circumstances that can catch you unaware, and traits I have that will always be instilled in me.

But we’re pushed to do this, taught to change whatever we can to get as close to perfection as possible. Every movie montage before and after, life-makeover content. We get sucked into people narrating reinventions of their lives over clips of lemon water and early alarms. Countless content on TikTok and YouTube showing you how to become ‘unrecognisable’ – just further selling the idea that you need to change who you are in order to be accepted. It’s like we’re praised for abandoning our current selves and calling it ambition.

However, when your aim is to become ‘unrecognisable’ you’re trying to escape a version of yourself you can’t outrun, and one that will always be one step behind you. You cross the line into avoidance of who you are, which only resurfaces later. We really end up just hiding us from ourselves, and we try to fix traits we would appreciate in someone else.

If I saw my emotional capacity in someone else, for example, I would think it was an admirable trait. So, why have I decided it was a flaw along the way? Without it, I would no longer be me. I can’t will myself into being logical rather than emotional, as then I’ll be denying a huge part of who I am. I can, however, accept that my emotions get the best of me sometimes, and give myself more time to make decisions when I’m feeling impulsive. True improvement works with who you are, not against it.

There’s more than one way to become the person you want to be. It does start by accepting who you are now. You can’t learn to love yourself while actively sprinting from your own reflection.

The next time you picture your ideal self in your head, ask yourself. Am I trying to improve myself, or replace myself?

I don’t think the real goal is to become that perfect me at all, but maybe to stop seeing her as someone so separate from me. To give her some of my ‘flaws’ so she’s less like a barbie-fied version of me, and more like someone I can be inspired by. Someone I can actually meet halfway.

You know that little voice in your head that convinces you everything you’ve ever done is wrong? No? Just me then…

If you have an internal monologue and an inch of self-awareness, you’ve probably reflected on at least one or two of your actions. Maybe you’ve thought about a conversation gone wrong while you’re trying to sleep at two am, or thought that maybe you should have helped that old lady cross the street. If you have a more active inner voice, it can sound like constant radio chatter up there. I fall into the latter category.

It’s always stressed how important it is to practice ‘positive self-talk’ and to ‘be kind to yourself’ – well, I never said anything outright mean to myself, so I thought I had those two boxes checked off.

In fact, I didn’t realise I had a harsh inner critic until I was sat in my therapist’s office, and she was telling me I put too much pressure on myself. I looked back at her a little puzzled – of course I put pressure on myself, how else am I supposed to get things done?

So, I shrugged her off and acted as if I knew best. Still, that small comment from her gave me the slight awareness I needed to pay more attention to how I spoke to myself. I started to hear the way I criticised myself for taking a break, listened to how the voice chastised me if I did something ‘well’ but not ‘well enough’. I had never considered myself a perfectionist before, as nothing I ever did was perfect.

*Cue every therapist screaming at the screen – that’s the point!*

But, surprise surprise, I realised my therapist was right. I did put pressure on myself, because I wanted to push myself. What I didn’t understand, was that there was a fine line between pushing myself, and punishing myself.

I also hadn’t put together that by punishing myself, I was moving further away from the things I wanted to achieve. I had big goals and dreams, but I always felt like there was a block to me acting on them. I found it hard to get started on the things I wanted to work on, as nothing I could ever start with could live up to the expectations of the finished product I already had in my head.

I would compare myself to these accomplished professionals and masters of their craft, discarding the years of experience and hours of practice they put in every day, and use their ‘talent’ as an excuse for why I just wasn’t good enough. Essentially, also doing those incredible people a disservice and undermining the labour they had to put in to get to where they are.

Recently, I’ve seen a phrase re-circling the internet, particularly in regards to pop stars Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Dean – “It takes ten years to become an overnight success.”

We don’t see the process of their rise to fame / success – or rather we don’t pay attention. We can look at someone and say it’s natural talent, but of course that goes hand in hand with hard work put in every day.

Understanding that was the first step to quieting that harsh inner voice. Every time I had put pen to paper, I would be scared to write. I knew whatever I came out with wouldn’t be the best thing ever written. I will admit, that is a high standard I set for myself.

I had to tell myself repeatedly that doing something badly was only the beginning of the process, not the end. I spent too much time worrying about the end result, I never wanted to go through the process of actually trying.

I think we’re also in a society where we’re valued on what we can do and what we bring – not who we are – that it feels there’s no room for mistakes or learning. We need to be able to provide something, otherwise what are we here for?

The societal pressure adds to the already existing pressure in our minds. Everything moves so quickly – we’re constantly on the hunt for the next achievement, the next challenge.

In fact, wins aren’t celebrated as much as expected. So, if you’re not achieving, or even just standing still, it feels like a loss. No one is rewarded for trying, but revered when they ‘suddenly’ succeed.

We need to strip that mindset back and allow ourselves to work towards something and be bad at it. Not everything needs the instant gratification of success. The road may be longer, but it’s just as sweet.

Measuring yourself against everyone else doesn’t make you better — it just makes you disappear.

Comparison is the thief of joy – or so we’re told. But it feels like comparison is so natural and prominent – sometimes even encouraged.

In workplaces, in schools, even your mum telling you what Kathy from down-the-road’s daughter is doing. We grow up looking at other people, measuring ourselves against them. No wonder we get to the point where we look everywhere else but in the mirror.

Comparison can act as a guiding light sometimes, it can show us if we’re on the right track, give us inspiration – but it very quickly can spiral into negativity.

I’ve spent a lot of my life comparing myself to others. Feeling less than, more than, even on the same level. Measuring my worth based on how I showed up compared to the people around me. Oh, well, she has better eyebrows, but my cheekbones are more pronounced.

I just made that example up, but you get the point.

I feel you end up just losing all sense of yourself. I used to look in the mirror, and not even see myself, but a version of me that was relative to everyone else. It became a disease of the mind.

It’s painful. As there’s never a way to really measure up to another person, no matter how hard you try. If I were to compare myself to every person on the planet I would short circuit on insecurity and self-doubt. There’s no winning that game.

Someone will always be doing better, someone will always be prettier, have more money, be smarter. And that will kill us. And there will always be someone who is worse off than we are. And even though it shouldn’t, that gives us relief.

I feel in your 20s comparison is a lot more prominent. I talk about this in my latest podcast episode ‘Lost, Learning & Figuring Life Out – The Truth About Your 20s’ (available on my profile, hint hint).

In your 20s, everyone is doing something different. You can compare yourself against all your ex-classmates, your colleagues, whoever – in one sense or another, you will fall short. Maybe you just got a promotion, but someone else has just bought a house. Maybe you have started to settle down, but that person’s stories you obsessively watch on Instagram has just gone travelling for six months and all of a sudden, your cozy settled down life feels like a trap.

On the other hand, that person you hate has just lost their job so really, you’re doing fine. And feeling a bit smug.

It’s like we need this sense of comparison and hierarchy in a way in order to feel solidified and confident in where we are. Because really, there are no rules anymore. No guideline, no gold star at the end of the week and extra play time for good behaviour.

But what piece of mind do you get with that, constantly looking over your shoulder, looking sideways, anywhere but forward and on your own path. Other than temporary validation (depending on who you’re comparing yourself to), all it really does is distract you.

As deep down, we don’t want to admit that we’re all scared, and knowing that others are in the same boat as us is slightly less scary.

Are you in the same boat though, really? No one you compare yourself to will ever live the same life as you, so your comparisons are actually null and void. You will also never be happy with your achievements or any progress you make if someone else is doing better.

What an empty life that will turn out to be. As they say, the only person you need to compare yourself to, is the you from yesterday. Even then, be kind to yourself.

Pain isn’t proof you chose wrong, sometimes it’s evidence you chose yourself.

I have a hard time letting go.

Even when I know something isn’t meant for me, I cling to the version of my life where it did. My mind can list every logical reason to walk away, but my heart still drags its feet, convinced that loss is a sign of failure rather than evolution. There’s a particular anguish in knowing that something is right while feeling, down to the core, that it’s wrong.

I’ve let go of people I loved, jobs I wanted, and futures I crafted carefully in my head. And each time, I didn’t just lose the singular thing, I lost the entire world I attached to it. The evenings that never happened, the routines never settled into. The office I never walked into on my first day, outfit chosen, lunch spot already decided. We talk about heartbreak and disappointment like they’re only tied to real events, but often, we’re grieving the futures we imagined yet never lived. It’s the ‘almost’ that gets you.

It’s almost easier to make the decision that will change your life than living with the emotional consequences of making it. The decision itself can feel clean, sharp, empowering. But after, it’s dealing with the silence and the change where familiarity used to be. It’s day after day of feeling the absence, of late nights spent wondering if you misread something, if you were impatient, if you walked away from something rare instead of something wrong. You feel foolish for hurting over something you chose to release. We think pain means we made the wrong decision, but it doesn’t.

Letting go isn’t proof that we didn’t care, and hurting afterwards isn’t evidence that we should have stayed. You can know something isn’t right for you and still feel the sting of leaving it behind. That ache is just indication of how deeply you felt, how much you gave, and how much you believed in what could have been. We don’t grieve things that meant nothing. We grieve the things that mattered, even if they can’t move forward with us.

After a while, you’ll remember why you had to go. You’ll realise that absence isn’t the enemy, but stagnation is. And then, you’ll begin to look to the future. To really look, and encompass all the possibilities that come with it. You’ll realise that your letting go was just making space for something new, something better, something more suited for you.

There are always going to be things we desperately want to hold on to. Our minds can scream at us to let go, but our hearts adamantly refuse. Letting go of this one thing feels like leaving behind a part of your soul. Like if it were to be taken away from you, you would never be whole again. You wonder how you can survive without it. If it’s even possible.

But you forget you did it once before. And you can do it again – not because you don’t feel deeply, but because you do.

A reckoning with solitude, self-protection, and learning to be seen.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what makes me feel safe.

When I think of safety, the obvious things spring to mind: money, food, shelter. But I can have all of those, and still feel unsafe. Is it love that brings me safety? Relationships? Friendships? They contribute to that feeling, but again, even with all that present, I can feel unsafe.

Throughout the years, I’ve found my sense of safety to be unstable. When it came to expressing myself to others, I preferred to stay hidden. When it came to letting others in, I was anxious that they would leave me. Still, I searched for the safety I craved in other people. I hoped they would be able to bring me that sense of inner safety I was unable to provide for myself. Unsurprisingly, they couldn’t.

It won’t come as a shock that the more I looked for safety in others, the less I found it in myself – in fact I kept myself hidden and accepted from others what I shouldn’t.

I didn’t understand that the thing I was looking for in other people had to first be created within myself. I didn’t realise it was something I could cultivate, nurture. Instead, I chased it everywhere, and naturally, it repelled the other way.

I wanted others to trust in me, to believe in me, to be there for me, to fix things for me, to validate me, when I was unable to myself. It’s not that I shouldn’t receive those things from other people, but more it shouldn’t be my sole source of those emotions.

Now, it’s like the pendulum has swung the other way. If you were to ask me where I feel safe, I’d say I feel safe in isolation. I feel safe when I’m alone, and I’m free to be myself, without judgement from others. When I’m in my bubble, safe from external factors.

But is that safety? Or is that fear? It feels safe, as I’m protecting myself from being vulnerable. I’m ‘safe’ from rejection, opinions, judgement. But it’s also hindering me from growing.

I say I feel safe when I’m alone. But I want to be seen. I want to be heard. I want to be understood. So, what if I place my sense of safety elsewhere? Because what if the things that make me feel ‘safe’ are actually holding me back?

I wonder what my sense of safety actually is, and how much of it is really fear.

I say safety must first be cultivated within myself. But what does that mean? Is it trust, is it confidence? Is it acceptance? I try to place where I can feel safe for myself, and I come up empty. Maybe it’s a combination of things.

Maybe it’s knowing that when things get tough, I’ll be able to handle it. When I start to doubt myself, I can bring myself back up. When I look for someone to believe in me, I can turn to myself. I can allow myself to fail and keep trying. I can allow myself to push the boundaries of what feels ‘safe’ and comfortable and be kind to myself when it takes time to adjust.

In the absence of material things, the only thing I have to come back to is myself. It’s both comforting and terrifying. But that’s the complexity of being human.

Imagine a world where dreams are fulfilled, where passions are chased, and imagination leads…

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One thing I admire about the human race is our ability to dream. We’re born dreamers, innovators, creators of worlds we know nothing about. There are no boundaries to what is and isn’t possible. As we grow, we’re instilled with the ‘reality’ of how things are, and the way things should be. Suddenly, walls are built around the things we believe we can do, and that little dreamer gets buried under the rubble. Still there, but kept far away, where they won’t cause trouble.

There’s a lyric in Billy Joels ‘Piano Man’ that hits me every time I hear it.

‘I’m sure I could be a movie star, if I could get out of this place.’

I feel his yearning, his wistfulness, his hopelessness. I ponder on how many people walk around with the pain of their broken dreams in their heart, of wishes unfulfilled, goals never reached. How many people are trapped in the confines of their situations, not seeing a way out, unable to pursue the things they love, but are adamant that they could do so much ‘If only things were different.’

I wonder how many people dismiss their hopes and passions, because they don’t see a world where it’s possible. Because they’ve been let down too many times. And each time, that light inside dims further and further, until it becomes just a distant memory, never to be touched. A secret harboured, of the life that could have been. And a fake resolution they tell themselves over and over to ease the heartache: ‘It just wasn’t meant for me.’

How many people do we pass by every day, not knowing that one person’s dream was to become a painter, one’s to become an actor, another’s to re-define life as we know it.

Where do they go? The essence of these hopes and dreams. Surely, they don’t just dissipate. They must live on within us still, needing only a spark to re-ignite that once burning flame. Just something small, to get the cogs of the imagination turning again, to re-think what is possible, to live outside of the boundaries placed on them.

I like to imagine a world where these dreamers are resurrected, where passions are fulfilled, and where in the same way we’re born dreamers, innovators, creators, we die as ones too.

On the restless urge to move faster vs the strength in slowing down.

If there’s one phrase you hear most often in your twenties, it’s “you’re young, there’s no need to rush.” Yet it’s quickly followed by “it’s time to be serious, it’s time to settle down.” We’re stuck in this limbo where we’re either racing against the clock, or watching the sand fall through the hourglass in slow motion. It’s either time in abundance, or no time at all.

Look around and everyone seems to be living on a different timeline. The couple from school is engaged. Your friend from university is backpacking across Central America or Southeast Asia. Someone you know is already a CEO at twenty-five. Suddenly, everything you’ve managed to achieve feels small. You feel late for a life you haven’t even defined yet.

This feeling goes deeper than comparison, though it’s easy to scroll and feel behind. It’s the uncertainty of not knowing whether you’re on the right track at all. You keep moving because stopping feels dangerous. To pause, even for a moment, means facing the harder question: what am I really chasing?

We tell ourselves we’re working toward success, stability, a life that makes sense. But if you think too long about the details, they blur. Maye it’s just the feeling of ‘arriving’ somewhere. A job title, a relationship milestone, an income level, because that feels like safety. Maybe once we get there, we’ll feel accomplished and settled, purposeful, – we’ll feel validated.

But where is ‘there’? There’s no fixed point. There’s always a next thing. So, we keep running.

But the finish line keeps moving and the sense of safety never arrives. That’s when the urge for something drastic creeps in: quit, move, change everything to prove you’re not stuck. Sometimes change is healthy and needed. Other times it’s panic in disguise. We don’t know what will bring meaning, so we shake our lives and hope the pieces fall into a better place.

When life goes quiet, the doubts get loud. You notice everything unfinished; you feel the weight of other people’s timelines. You wonder if you’re wasting precious time. So, you push yourself to stay busy.

We also build private deadlines and use them as a measuring stick: career sorted by twenty-five, financial security by thirty, love by thirty-two, clarity by thirty-five. When we fall short, we turn on ourselves. These numbers are mostly invented, but deeply internalised.

Slowing down isn’t the same as giving up. Pausing is often the only way to see whether the path you’re on is actually yours. When you stop running, you can ask harder questions about what matters to you.

You might realise the things you’re chasing don’t line up with your values. You might also find that some of the restlessness is fear: fear of wasting time, of being ordinary, of choosing wrong.

The truth we avoid is that most milestones don’t expire. People change careers well into their thirties and forties. Love remains possible even after you thought all hope was lost. Reinvention happens slowly and over time. The pressure to be fully formed by thirty is something we place on ourselves.

Time keeps moving, but rushing doesn’t allow us more of it. It only makes the present harder to enjoy, and can also push us into choices that don’t fit, chosen simply because they were quick or easy.

If you feel caught between wanting to tear everything up and wanting to breathe, don’t be alarmed. You’re just like everyone else.

Life isn’t lost when you slow down. It’s lost when you move so fast you can’t tell whether any of it belongs to you. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop sprinting and start choosing, even if the choice is to stay where you are until the next step becomes clear.