What Happened When I Finally Stopped Saying “I’m Fine”

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

The first winter, I learned to lie cheerfully.

“How are you settling in?” someone would ask, and I would smile and say, “Really well, thank you.” That was the most fluent English I spoke all day.

I had left a warm, loud, crowded life and landed in a quiet apartment in a country where the cold did something to the air that made it hurt to breathe. I was a student, far from everyone who knew my name properly. I was supposed to be grateful.

And I was grateful. That was the confusing part.

People back home had pooled hope and money and prayers to get me here. My parents told relatives about me with a particular shine in their voices. How do you turn around and say you cry in the cereal aisle?

Because I did. One evening I stood in a grocery store looking for a vegetable I had eaten my whole life and could not find anywhere, under any name. Something about that small absence undid me, and I cried in front of the frozen peas like the floor had dropped away.

Then I wiped my face, bought something else, and texted my mother a photo of my “big Canadian grocery haul” with three smiley faces.

This became the shape of my days. Struggle in private, perform in public, and report home like a contented postcard. I told myself this was maturity.

It was not maturity. It was a slow, quiet disappearing.

I had an internal rulebook I never questioned. Others have had it so much harder. People would do anything to be where you are. You chose this, so you have no right to complain.

Every rule was technically true. Together, they built a small prison where my feelings were not allowed to exist, because someone, somewhere, was always suffering more.

So I kept the loneliness folded up small. I answered “I’m fine” so many times that I almost believed the words could replace the truth. They could not. The ache just went looking for other exits.

It came out as headaches and a tiredness sleep did not touch. It came out as snapping at the few people close enough to snap at, then hating myself for it. It came out as lying awake at 3 a.m., scrolling through photos of a home that was carrying on perfectly well without me.

What finally cracked me open was not dramatic. It rarely is.

A classmate I barely knew asked, “How are you, really?” and then did the thing almost nobody does. She paused. She waited through my automatic “I’m good,” and she did not fill the silence.

And for some reason, in that gap, the truth fell out of me. “Actually,” I said, “I think I’ve been really lonely. I don’t think I’m okay.”

I braced for her to look uncomfortable or to hand me a bright, useless “You’ll be fine!” Instead, her face softened, and she said, “Yeah. Me too. It’s so much harder than people admit.”

That was it. No solution, no rescue. Just one person saying, “Me too” and the prison wall turning out to be paper.

I wish I could tell you everything changed that night. It didn’t. But something small and stubborn shifted, and I started practicing a terrifying new sentence: “I’m having a hard time.”

I said it to a cousin, who admitted she had cried through her own first year abroad and never told a soul. I said it to a neighbor, who started leaving small things at my door. I said it, eventually, to a professional and learned that needing support is not the same as being broken.

Each time, the same quiet miracle. The thing I was so ashamed of turned out to be the most ordinary, human thing in the world. I had been so busy hiding my struggle that I never gave anyone the chance to meet me in it.

Here is what those years taught me and what I would gently offer you if you are pretending too.

Gratitude and grief can share the same room. You can be thankful for an opportunity and still mourn what it cost you. One feeling does not cancel the other, and you do not have to earn the right to hurt.

“Someone has it worse” is not a reason to stay silent. There will always be someone who has it worse, and there will always be someone who has it better. Neither of them is living your life. Your pain does not need a permission slip to be real.

And being seen is not the same as being weak. For years I thought strength meant needing nothing from anyone. Now I think strength is letting one trusted person see the unedited version, even when your voice shakes.

If you take one thing from this, let it be small and doable. The next time someone asks how you are, try telling exactly one safe person a slightly truer answer than “fine.”

You don’t have to explain everything. You don’t have to fall apart. You can simply say, “It’s been harder than I let on,” and see what happens in the silence afterward.

I cannot promise it will fix the cold or the distance or the strange grief of whatever you’re mourning. But I can promise this: you were never meant to carry it alone, and you were never as alone as the pretending made you feel.

The crack you’re so ashamed of might be exactly where the light gets in.

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About Hareesma Amutha Venkatesan

Hareesma Amutha Venkatesan moved from India to Canada on her own and learned, slowly, that asking for help is its own kind of courage. She now helps others navigate identity, belonging, and life transitions with warmth and zero judgment. Take her free 2-minute quiz, Is It Anxiety or Burnout?, and find more gentle resources at Hap Therapy Care.

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Why Self-Care Matters Most When You Have No Time

“Taking care of yourself doesn’t mean me first; it means me too.” ~L.R. Knost

We live in a society that celebrates pushing through; burnout is often worn as a badge of honor, and many job descriptions state bluntly, “Must be able to perform well under pressure and thrive in a fast-paced environment.”

I’m very well aware that self-care isn’t a luxury; it’s essential. “You can’t pour from an empty cup” and “You must put on your own oxygen mask first before assisting others” are two of the most well-known quotes. And while they might sound like a cliché, they are definitely true.

I’ve shared these quotes on numerous occasions, although perhaps with slightly different words, because they’ve become so familiar and overused that many people just roll their eyes when they hear them again.

As a holistic practitioner, I take self-care pretty seriously, as I am very well aware of the consequences when we neglect ourselves and our needs.

Maybe it’s also a sign of getting older—I’m in my late fifties. When I was much younger and in busy jobs I never acknowledged that I was stressed or could do with slowing down. At that time, I felt that I was having fun, although the consequences were obvious: back pain and toothache due to grinding.

Admittedly, as a woman without children, it’s very easy for me to fit self-care into my schedule, as I can organize my day, my work, and my leisure activities the way I want to. I have no caring responsibilities, like many in the “sandwich generation,” caring for children and aging parents, and my mum, although in her eighties, is thankfully fit and independent.

Well, that changed quite suddenly one day last year when my mum had a fall and needed surgery. My mum lives miles away, so initially we were only in touch by phone, and thankfully my sister happened to be with Mum at the time. But my sister’s time was limited, as her family—she’s married with two young kids—was waiting for her back home.

I promised my mum I’d be there when she left the hospital so I could support her in the first weeks at home and make the transition a wee bit easier for her. As I can work location-independently, that really was a no-brainer for me and the least I could do.

My flights were booked and my holiday canceled, and I was planning to spend eight weeks with her. Thankfully, Mum and I have quite a good relationship, we’ve always had, but I was slightly apprehensive about spending so much time together, living with her twenty-four-seven.

The last time I did that, I was attending a course over two months and chose to stay with her because it was logistically just easier. For several reasons we had a rather challenging time. Mum has her routines, I’ve got mine, and while she’s quite tolerant and I tried to be flexible, we’ve encountered some major clashes. Also—and that might be my ‘excuse’—because I was slightly stressed by my studies, as I was preparing for an exam. Hence, this time I wanted to approach things differently.

The first couple of days after my arrival, Mum was still in the hospital, and it was just joyful to see her and hear that her recovery had already progressed quite well. It was also very rewarding to see her so grateful that she wasn’t on her own.

When Mum left the hospital, thankfully she didn’t need full-time care, but there were doctors’ appointments, physiotherapy visits, phone calls to insurance companies, paperwork, home adaptations to organize, and hundreds of small jobs that somehow merged into one enormous task.

At the same time, I was still running my own business and seeing clients online from her spare bedroom. Every evening I would look at my own to-do list and realize that I hadn’t tackled much at all. The strange thing wasn’t that I was exhausted; it was that I had accepted this as normal, and I’m sure that’s the daily reality for many carers.

Like so many of us, I automatically adopted the belief that there was no room left to care for myself. It is an easy trap to fall into when faced with the harsh reality rather than an ideal-world theory.

I felt stuck in survival mode, just functioning and spinning plates to keep everything moving. From coordinating and organizing everything for Mum to seeing clients and running my practice as usual, it seemed I was on a hamster wheel with no time at all for myself—or so I thought.

But I realized something had to change, as I wanted my stay and our time together to be supportive, positive, and harmonious. This time I took my own advice much more seriously. 

While I couldn’t continue all my usual sports activities—at home I cycle and play tennis at least twice a week, which makes a massive difference for my physical and mental health—I could still find a few minutes each day for what I call my stress hygiene. Just a few minutes. That’s the advantage of my favorite self-care practice: TRE (Tension Releasing Exercises) requires very little time and can be done almost anywhere.

In TRE, we invite the body to do what it is naturally designed to do after stress: literally shake off tension it’s been holding onto. As your muscles relax, your nervous system gradually settles too, guiding you toward a state of deep relaxation and restorative calm.

I believe that’s one of the most important things each of us needs to find: a way to release stress, not just manage it. To me, managing stress often feels like reorganizing or pushing it aside. What we really want is a modality that helps us let it go, whatever that practice may be for you.

It really has to work for you in reality, because otherwise, what’s the point of just liking the idea of it? Many people say, “I know, I need to meditate, but I can’t sit still,” and they force themselves to do so. I have seen far too many people struggle, simply because their heart wasn’t in it and possibly, they didn’t believe in it, either.

But when you find the stress hygiene technique that works for you, it will be joyful to practice, you will feel the desire to do it, and you will notice the difference it can make for you, your life, and the people around you. I also believe you just know. There’s this inner feeling, your gut instinct. Most importantly, ask yourself: Does practicing it bring you joy and a sense of relaxation?

Admittedly, there are many approaches you might need to try before finding ‘the one’—perhaps a bit like kissing a few frogs before finding your prince or princess.

And here are a few suggestions. Some are more mind-based, like:

• Meditation, whether that’s guided or not
• Visualizations
• Grounding
• Writing, journaling, poetry

Others are more body-based, like:

• Something as simple as walking barefoot on the ground
• Breathing exercises
• Movement: running, walking, dancing, boxing …
• More time in nature, ideally without your phone or headphones plugged in
• Yoga, Tai Chi, TRE

Maybe you want to consider looking into gadgets like vagus nerve stimulators. They might work for you; they might end up gathering dust once the novelty has worn off, but I want to include them, nevertheless.

So, back to my own experience, I practiced whenever I could: Sometimes when I was with my mum in the garden, sometimes when talking to her, and often in bed, just before falling asleep or in the first few minutes after waking up.

Because nothing had changed and life continued to be busy, I didn’t initially recognize how much the practice was helping. But I felt more like myself again, calmer and in control of the situation. And I slept better. And often it’s the people in our immediate environment that spot the difference first.

It was my mum’s partner who told her that I seemed much kinder, and rather than reacting to his comments—we have our moments—I was listening more patiently and responded without being irritated about the little things that could have easily sparked tension.

So, here’s what I’ve learned and want to share with you in the hope you’ll find it helpful, regardless of your being a (sandwich) carer or a busy professional in a highly stressful job:

• Even if those slightly overused sayings about empty cups and oxygen masks sound clichéd, they are most certainly true.
• Keep exploring different stress release techniques until you find one that genuinely works for you. Believe me, it’ll be worthwhile.
• Just a few minutes can make a huge difference.
• If you don’t notice a difference yourself, ask the people around you. They might notice it first.

I know we are expected to keep functioning under all kinds of circumstances, often carrying invisible and emotional weights and worries, but that doesn’t have to be the gold standard. Maybe you are motivated to break this vicious cycle by prioritizing your health and well-being. This means becoming more balanced, regulating your nervous system, being kinder to yourself and others, and ultimately preventing burnout.

Burnout is real, especially for carers or busy mums and dads, whether caring is their paid profession or they do it for love. Please always remember that you deserve the same love and care you so freely give to others.

A few minutes spent caring for yourself isn’t an escape from caring for others. It’s part of caring. Not only for yourself, but for the people who depend on you, too.

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About Sylvia Tillmann

Sylvia knows that our bodies hold more wisdom than we often realize.  As a holistic practitioner and TRE (Tension Releasing Exercises) Provider, she guides people to access that wisdom, helping them release tension and more. Download her Five Suggestions to get started here and visit her at tremendousTRE.co.uk.

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Same Café, New Me: How I Found Freedom Without Changing My Life

“Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose.” ~Michelle Rosenthal”

Today I am sitting in my favorite café in Venice Mall. I got my favorite seat, the one near the water.

I have spent countless hours here. I have cried here. Journaled here. Drawn here. Consoled myself here.

There was a time when this café felt like my only refuge from a life that felt too heavy to carry.

Today I am sitting in the same seat, drinking the same tea, looking at the same water. And for the first time, I realized something. I feel good.

Not numb. Not performing okayness while something heavier runs underneath. Actually, genuinely, quietly good.

Everything outside is almost exactly the same. But I am not.

A Few Months Ago, I Would Come Here To Escape

When I used to come here before, I wasn’t really coming for the tea. I was coming to breathe.

Going out was never simple. There were always questions from parents waiting for me.

Where are you going? Why? Who are you meeting? When will you return?

And underneath each question was something heavier—the implication that I needed to justify myself. That my choices required approval. That I should feel guilty for wanting to simply exist outside those four walls.

The exhausting part wasn’t the questions.

The exhausting part was believing I needed permission to live my own life.

The Home I Grew Up In

For most of my childhood, I believed I had good parents and a good upbringing.

I had to believe that. It was the only way to survive.

What I didn’t understand then was that I had learned to dissociate from the pain. To convince myself that the difficult moments were exceptions, not patterns. Children do this when the alternative is too frightening to hold.

My mother became an orphan as a toddler, raised by a cruel aunt who treated her like a maid. She repeated that behavior with me—not because she chose to consciously, but because unhealed wounds pass themselves on.

She mocked my clothes, my choices, and even my confidence. The same qualities she criticized at home were often appreciated outside, which left me deeply confused.

She turned my father against me and cast me as the family villain. She was my first bully. I didn’t understand her manipulations then, but my pillow would be wet from my tears every night in my teenage years. How could my own mother be so cruel to me?.

For most of my life I thought of myself as a difficult, bad person because that is what had been fed into my mind throughout my childhood. Even when people showed me love and acceptance, I couldn’t receive it. I believed that if they truly knew me, they wouldn’t like me either.

But what confused me most was that she wasn’t always like this. Sometimes she was warm, loving, caring. And so I told myself for years that this was simply a complicated love—the kind many families have.

Then one night, months into my healing journey, I was lying in bed crying after she had hurt me again. And I thought, “She can’t be this evil all the time. She must have loved me sometimes.”

And a childhood memory flashed before my eyes.

I had been sick. Home alone with her. She didn’t come to check my fever. Didn’t sit with me. Didn’t ask how I was. She quietly went about her own work, unbothered.

But the moment my father walked through the door, she transformed. Warm. Attentive. The picture of the most loving, caring mother.

And in those few seconds, the puzzle of my life finally unravelled.

I never had a mother. She was just acting like one when others were watching.

Everything became clear. The bullying, the mocking, the threats—all of it had happened when I was alone with her. The loving, caring, kind mother appeared only in the presence of others. That is why my childhood and adult self was always so confused. Sometimes I was showered with love; sometimes I was crushed by her cruelty.

I was her emotional punching bag.

It took me four nights of crying to process and accept this. But since that acceptance, something shifted. Her criticisms stopped landing the same way. The hold she had over me began to loosen—not because she changed, but because I finally understood what I had been responding to.

I detached from her emotionally. I accepted that I never had a mother and never will. This acceptance alone freed me from the years of hurting and trying to earn her love. I started mothering my own inner child instead—giving her all the love I had yearned for my mother to give me. And she started healing.

My father’s story was different but left its own marks.

He came from a genuinely humble background—a brilliant student who had to start working at fourteen, studying further through distance education despite being a topper. He struggled enormously and built a respectable life from almost nothing. But he was so terrified of lack that he installed that same terror in me.

He feared my love of art and creativity. If he caught me drawing, he behaved as if I had committed a crime. He gave me material comforts but used them as weapons of shame—reminding me constantly how hard he had worked, how lucky I was, how much I owed him simply for existing in the family he had built.

Art will not get you anywhere. Earning is hard. You need to study. You need to be practical.

He never directly stopped me from doing anything. But if I chose something he didn’t approve of—going out, dressing as I liked, taking my own decisions—the guilt-tripping was relentless. Quiet, persistent, exhausting. He feared for my future, my career, and tried to make every small decision for me.

He did love me. But he never realized how much fear, shame, and self-doubt he had installed in the process.

And that child received a very clear message: she was incapable. Unworthy. Undeserving.

The Beliefs I Carried Without Knowing

I wasn’t born believing I was incapable.

I wasn’t born feeling guilty for having needs.

I wasn’t born believing I needed permission to live my own life.

I wasn’t born feeling unworthy of love.

These beliefs were installed. They felt like facts because I received them before I had the language to question them.

I could see it clearly when I looked back at my career. I had been a star student in college yet got placed last with the lowest salary package. The belief that I was incapable, that creativity had no value, that I could not make it on my own—it showed up in every room I walked into. Not in what I said. In how I held myself. In what I believed I deserved.

That was not who I was. That was what I had been taught to believe about myself.

What Began to Change

Healing began with reading. With slowly recognizing patterns. With understanding that what I had experienced as a child had a name—and that name was not my fault.

I started talking to the child I had been. The quiet, invisible little girl who had learned to make herself small to stay safe. I told her—every night, patiently, repeatedly—that it was not her fault. That she was worthy. That she was loved.

She didn’t believe it immediately.

But I kept going.

When nothing in my life was working and I was tired of the cycle of shame and guilt, I collapsed inward. That collapse became the beginning. I started understanding my patterns. Slowly, I started standing up for myself—to my parents, to the old voices inside my own head.

They didn’t like it.

But I wasn’t their prisoner anymore.

And the strangest thing began to happen.

As I changed the relationship I had with myself, the hold my parents had on me began to loosen. I cook my own food now. I go out when I want. My father’s questions no longer send me into guilt and justification. My mother’s behavior—the same behavior—I can now observe without being swept away by it.

I have detached emotionally while living in the same house. I still do what needs to be done. But their behavior no longer defines how I feel about myself. I have started knowing my worth.

And I have never been more at peace with myself.

I No Longer Abandon Myself

This might be the biggest change of all. I am aware of my feelings now.

When I feel anxious, angry, or hurt, I listen.

Earlier I would override myself. Suppress myself. Ignore what my body was trying to tell me because I had learned that my feelings were an inconvenience.

Now I ask: What is this feeling trying to tell me?

Sometimes it is an old wound. Sometimes it is a boundary being crossed. Sometimes it is simply my body asking for rest.

When an old pattern surfaces—a familiar dynamic trying to pull me back into a smaller version of myself—I notice it. I name it. I remind myself that I am safe, that I have choices, that I am no longer someone who has to absorb what others cannot hold.

And I come back to myself.

The Freedom I Was Looking For

For years I thought freedom meant leaving. Leaving the house. Leaving the situation. Leaving the people who hurt me. Maybe one day I will.

But sitting in this café today, I realized something.

Freedom arrived before I physically went anywhere.

Freedom arrived when I stopped believing the things that kept me trapped.

Freedom arrived when I stopped seeking permission.

Freedom arrived when I stopped abandoning myself.

Freedom arrived when I started giving myself the love I had been waiting for others to give me.

The people around me may still try to guilt-trip me. They may still criticize me. They may still be uncomfortable with who I am becoming.

But their reactions are no longer my prison.

The Wildflower Was Always There

Healing didn’t turn me into someone new. It revealed who I was underneath the fear. Underneath the guilt. Underneath the shame. Underneath the conditioning.

The wildflower was always there. She was simply buried beneath years of absorbed beliefs that were never hers to carry.

And now she is blooming. On her own terms. In her own colors. In her own time.

Today I am sitting in the same café.

The same seat. The same tea. The same water.

A few months ago I sat here trying to escape my life.

Today I sit here grateful for it. Not because everything is perfect. But because I finally feel at home within myself.

And after everything I have been through, that feels like everything.

If you are healing from childhood wounds, difficult family dynamics, or years of self-doubt, I hope this reminds you that sometimes the biggest transformation happens while everything outside appears exactly the same.

Other times, changing the outside environment can be the first step toward healing and taking control of your life. Only you can decide what is safest for you.

Either way, keep going. One day you will look back and realize how far you have come.

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About Sangeeta Kumari

Sangeeta writes about healing from childhood trauma, self-worth, emotional resilience, and the journey of becoming yourself after years of people-pleasing and self-doubt. Through personal stories and reflections, she explores nervous system healing, boundaries, solitude, creativity, and finding freedom from unhealthy family dynamics. She shares her writing on Substack at substack.com/@unveilthewildflower and on Instagram, where she documents her ongoing journey back to herself.

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When Your Imagination Turns Every Problem into a Crisis

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” ~Mark Twain

It started with a clogged kitchen drain. Or maybe the drain was where everything else I’d been carrying finally surfaced.

Regardless, the water wasn’t moving. It was so bad that some of it backed up in the bathroom sink. Baking soda and vinegar didn’t help. Neither did copious pots of boiling water.

I felt my jaw clench, shoulders stiffen, and breath shorten. My brain, seeing a break in my supposedly impenetrable shield, saw this as a perfect opportunity to create a disaster movie screenplay on the spot. It was titled Scenario Z.

It practically wrote itself.

“I can’t afford the tools to unclog the sink.”

“The landlord isn’t answering his texts.”

“I can’t pay for a plumber right now.”

“I’ll have to wash the dishes in the bathtub for weeks.”

Of course, none of this happened.

It Wasn’t About the Sink

This little movie wasn’t about the sink at all. It was a reaction to several events occurring at once.

One week after moving into an apartment, my project contract ended unexpectedly. Then, two of my adult children came to stay with me, adding weight to my already heavy shoulders. As my bank account dwindled, my job applications drew nothing but crickets, and the faith I’d carefully woven for myself started to fray.

One unexpected expense felt like it could topple the fragile balance I’d managed to build. It’s why Scenario Z was quickly greenlit for release. My brain decided to create a montage of suffering before I had a moment to breathe and focus on the problem.

Interrupting the Process

I briefly fell in step with my brain’s story. My head buzzing, I snapped at one of my kids. It was then that I decided I had enough. I apologized to my child, left the sinks to do what they wanted, and went to bed.

While the apology didn’t unclog the sink, it reminded me of what actually needed the first repair. My son wasn’t the problem. My fear had simply found the nearest person.

Owning the mistake didn’t solve the plumbing issue, but it kept a plumbing problem from becoming a damaged relationship.

When I woke up, after my brain replayed the feature presentation of forthcoming disasters, I took action and looked at the situation from a wider angle.

First, I checked the bathroom sink to see if there was a problem. From there, I timed how long it took the kitchen sink to fill up and drain. Once I knew that, I tried a few online suggestions.

Eventually, I pieced together a temporary solution. There was still a blockage, but the sink drained better.

I had narrowed the problem from catastrophic to annoying. In turn, I stopped it from affecting the people around me.

Meanwhile, my brain shoved Scenario Z inside its filing cabinet, overflowing with older disaster screenplays, ready to pull it out again at a moment’s notice.

My problem didn’t change overnight—my relationship to it had.

Why My Brain Did Its Thing

For me, understanding why I went down the dark path came from how I illustrated the problem.

It wasn’t: “Let me look for ways to figure this out.”

It was: “How am I going to pay for this?”

Scarcity thinking resurfaced, even though I thought I had a handle on it. Turns out, I may never get rid of this. However, now I know some tricks to keep things quiet.

I Stepped Away 

Staring at the sink, your empty manuscript page, or your tiny bank balance doesn’t magically change things. On the other hand, stepping away from the scenario can give you time to consider a new angle. It’s how I figured out the next steps to clear the drain.

I Slept

Sleep gave my racing thoughts enough time to settle. By morning, things felt calmer. The problem looked the same, but I didn’t. Rest gave me enough distance to see solutions I couldn’t find the night before.

I Let My Brain Vent

No matter how hard you try, there are some moments when your brain needs to get things off its chest. Usually, this happens first thing in the morning when your body releases stress hormones to start your day. Unfortunately, these hormones also start your brain’s engines while it switches from unconsciousness to alertness.

I let mine babble without believing every word it said. Most of what I heard wasn’t reality. It resurfaced as yesterday’s unresolved frustration, asking for one more audience.

I Reframed the Problem

Don’t try the same things that didn’t work before. Take a look at the situation from another angle.

For instance, instead of gritting your teeth and screaming, “It’s not working,” rephrase the statement. Perhaps, “What exactly isn’t working?” Or, “Let me run through the steps again to see if I missed something.”

It may not give you the right solution, but it could open another path toward resolution.

I’ve realized I’ll probably keep writing Scenario Z from time to time. Stress still hands my imagination a pen. However, I know I don’t have to produce the whole movie.

Growth isn’t pretending you’ll never panic again. It’s recognizing you need to rewrite your acting contract before you step into the opening dramatic scene of Scenario Z.

It’s pausing long enough to determine the actual problem instead of assuming what it might become.

Yes, sometimes the answer is still difficult. Sometimes the worst case really does happen.

We repeatedly rehearse conversations that never happen, pay debts that never form, and mourn outcomes that never come to pass.

Scenario Z convinces us we’re preparing for reality. What we’re actually doing is quickly exhausting ourselves before reality can arrive.

Today, my catastrophic imagination is a much easier place to leave than I once believed.

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About Richard Keller

Richard Keller is an author, humorist, and neurodivergent. He shares his insights about bipolar disorder, anxiety, and how to live a fulfilling life with mental illness to those with similar conditions. You can find his memoir on late-diagnosed bipolar disorder, Faith and Slipper Socks, on Amazon and at bookstores. More information on his works at the Laugh & Repair website.

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The Pressure to Excel: When Success Feels Like Survival

“To tie your worth to achievements is a recipe for suffering.” ~Brad Bizjack

Children don’t just learn mathematics, science, and languages in school. They also learn what success feels like, what failure means, who they believe they are, and sometimes, whether they think they belong.

When I was in primary school, my school introduced academic streaming. If there were four grade seven classes, the highest-performing students were placed in the first stream, followed by the second, third, and fourth streams based on academic performance.

On paper, it made perfect sense. Students would learn alongside peers of similar academic ability, and teachers could tailor their instruction accordingly.

There was just one catch: your place was never guaranteed. At the end of every examination period, the rankings were reviewed, and students were moved accordingly.

You could find yourself promoted to the top stream or demoted to another class depending on your performance. It didn’t matter where you had been the previous term. Every exam was a fresh judgment. The entire school knew who was in which class. If someone moved up, everyone knew. If someone dropped, everyone knew that too.

When the system was introduced, I found myself in the top stream.

Looking back, I suspect I was probably where I belonged at that particular moment. But if I’m being completely honest, I also know I spent most of my time barely holding on. Had I been placed in the second stream, I probably would have thrived better there academically. Instead, I lived with the constant fear of slipping.

To my young mind, dropping to the second stream wasn’t simply changing classrooms. It would have been public failure. I worried about disappointing my parents. I worried about what my teachers would think. More than anything, I dreaded the whispers from other students. The shame felt unimaginable, so every exam became less about learning and more about survival.

That survival shaped everything. The goal was no longer to understand the material but to pass the exam and keep your seat. If you walked into our classroom during break time, you would find most of us bent over our desks finishing assignments. Taking work home meant sacrificing precious hours that could be spent studying ahead for the next test.

The expectations extended beyond the classroom, too. There was an unspoken understanding among the teachers: you were the bright students. You should be able to teach yourself, read ahead, and grasp concepts with minimal explanation. Excellence wasn’t simply expected; it was assumed.

Even then, there was something about the second stream that fascinated me. There were students there who were clearly capable of joining the top class, yet somehow, they never quite did.

At the time, I couldn’t understand it. Why wouldn’t you want to be in the “best” class? Secretly, though, I envied them. They laughed more. They seemed less burdened by the constant pressure to prove themselves.

Looking back, it almost felt as though they had an unspoken agreement among themselves: don’t drop to the third stream, but don’t move to the top stream either. And if someone from the top class slipped, don’t make room for them to bring all that unnecessary pressure with them. Whether that pact truly existed or not hardly matters now. As a child, that’s how it felt.

As an adult, I wonder whether they understood something I didn’t. Perhaps they instinctively recognized that every achievement comes with a maintenance cost.

In the second stream, they could consistently excel. They had room to breathe. They could enjoy learning without carrying the constant fear of losing a title they had worked so hard to earn. Meanwhile, those of us in the top stream lived under a different kind of pressure. From the perspective of the rest of the school, we were the students everyone admired. Inside our classroom, however, many of us were simply trying not to become the weakest student in the strongest group.

What made the experience even stranger was that there were really two rankings. To the rest of the school, I belonged to the top class. Inside that classroom, I was often near the bottom. You could be ranked thirty-third out of one hundred and fifty students in the entire grade, which by any reasonable measure was an excellent result, yet still find yourself thirty-third out of forty-five students in the top stream.

Technically, you were among the highest-performing students in the school. Emotionally, you felt like you were failing. Teachers looked at your report and insisted, “You can do better.” My parents expected more because I was in the top class. No one seemed to notice that I was already competing against the strongest students in the school.

It was my first experience of discovering that you can occupy one of the highest places in a system while feeling as though you’re at the very bottom of it. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if I’ve been carrying that lesson ever since.

The other two streams occupied very different places in my mind. The third stream was almost invisible to me, and I suspect it was to many of my classmates as well. It simply wasn’t part of my mental map. I never imagined dropping that far, so I rarely thought about it. The fourth stream, however, stayed with me for entirely different reasons.

Before academic streaming, we had all been classmates. Some had been my desk mates. Some had been my friends. We had learned together without attaching so much meaning to where each of us stood academically. Looking back now, I often wonder what it felt like for the children who suddenly found themselves labeled as the weakest in the school. I never thought to ask then. I wish I had.

Part of the reason I noticed that class at all was because we were occasionally expected to help them. You would be paired with another student to explain a concept or work through an exercise together.

Those moments stayed with me because their classroom felt so different from ours. There were fewer students, which meant each child received more attention from the teacher. The room seemed brighter, more colorful, and, somehow, more patient.

Lessons moved at a pace that allowed questions to be asked without embarrassment. From where I stood, it felt as though those students had permission to say, “I don’t understand,” or “Can you explain that again?”

In the top stream, those words felt almost unthinkable. We were the bright students. We were expected to understand, to keep up, and to figure things out on our own.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether the greatest privilege in that school wasn’t being considered the smartest. It was feeling safe enough to admit when you weren’t.

People often ask how to get to the top. Far fewer ask what it costs to stay there. Every promotion creates higher expectations. Every successful business brings new responsibilities. Every public achievement invites comparison.

Success isn’t simply something you attain; it often becomes something you have to maintain.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether this is why positions of power, influence, or being “the best” have never particularly appealed to me. For years, I interpreted that as a lack of ambition. Now I’m not so sure.

Perhaps somewhere around the age of eleven, I began associating standing at the top with the fear of falling. I don’t know if that classroom is where that story began, but I can see how it may have shaped the way I move through the world today.

That reflection has also changed the way I think about achievement itself. As children, we assumed everyone was sitting for the same exam under the same conditions. We didn’t see the classmate who had a tutor waiting at home, the one who lived ten minutes from school while another spent hours traveling, or the child with educated parents who could help with homework every evening.

We didn’t notice who had a quiet room to study in, who had younger siblings to care for, or who arrived at school carrying burdens invisible to the rest of us. We thought the rankings measured intelligence. Looking back, I think they measured much more than that.

There was another cost I didn’t recognize until years later. Friendships rarely had the chance to grow because competition occupied so much space between us. Every exam had the potential to change where you sat, and every mark someone else gained felt as though it could become one you lost.

Without meaning to, many of us learned to see classmates as rivals before we ever had the chance to know them as friends. I sometimes wonder how many relationships were quietly sacrificed at the altar of achievement and whether any report card could ever have been worth that.

Years later, I met one of my former classmates in culinary school. He had been one of the brightest students in our class. Long before academic streaming, I remember him as the boy who could draw beautifully.

He came from what, in our young minds, looked like privilege. His parents picked him up from school in a car while most of us squeezed into public buses. He bought lunch at school while many of us carried ours from home. By every measure we understood as children, he seemed destined for a different future.

I was in culinary school because I had deferred my university admission, and my parents encouraged me to spend the year doing something I genuinely enjoyed. I loved every minute of it. Culinary school never felt like settling. It felt like an unexpected gift.

His circumstances, however, were different. We never spoke about them, and I never asked. We exchanged pleasantries, then carried on with our day. I remember noticing that he smoked and drank, but I have no idea what those things meant in the context of his life. The older I’ve become, the more careful I’ve tried to be about confusing observation with understanding.

For years, I told myself I had sensed shame in him. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps what I was really seeing was my own confusion. How could someone I had assumed would become a doctor, engineer, or architect end up in the same culinary classroom as me?

More importantly, why did that surprise me at all? Who had taught me that brilliant children follow straight lines or that certain paths are somehow worth more than others? Perhaps that was another lesson hidden within those school years: we weren’t only being taught how to achieve. We were also being taught what success was supposed to look like.

The truth is, I don’t know what became of him. I don’t know whether culinary school was his first choice, his second chance, or simply the road that made sense at the time. I don’t know whether he felt proud to be there, disappointed, or perfectly content. What I do know is that seeing him forced me to question the stories I had carried with me since childhood—stories about talent, potential, and the kinds of lives people were expected to live.

Looking back now, I don’t think this essay is really about academic streaming. It is about the quiet ways childhood shapes us. We leave school believing we have learned mathematics, English, and science, but we also carry away ideas about success, failure, belonging, and what kind of person we are allowed to become. Some of those lessons serve us. Others deserve to be questioned.

I don’t know whether that classroom is the reason I have never chased titles, influence, or the highest seat at the table. Human beings are rarely shaped by a single experience. But I do know that when I look back, I can see one of the places where my relationship with achievement began to take form.

Understanding that hasn’t made me less ambitious. It has made me more intentional. I’ve stopped measuring my life against definitions of success that leave me anxious and started building one that allows me to breathe.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of revisiting our childhood—not to blame it for the adults we’ve become, but to understand them a little better.

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About Muthoni Amran

Muthoni Amran believes that ordinary experiences often contain extraordinary lessons. Through KenyaonaShoestring.co.ke, she explores the quiet assumptions that shape our lives and invites readers to look at familiar things a little differently.

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How “Missing the Boat” Led Me Somewhere Better

A few months ago, I found myself wondering whether I had made a mistake.

It is not a question I expected to be asking in my seventies.

Like many people my age, I sometimes think about retirement, savings, and financial security. I look around and see friends who spent decades building stable careers and preparing for the future. Some seem to have arrived exactly where they planned.

Meanwhile, my own life feels harder to explain.

I have spent much of it following opportunities that interested me rather than opportunities that promised security. Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether I should have been more practical.

One morning, after falling into yet another round of comparisons, I found myself thinking a familiar thought:

Maybe I missed the boat.

The phrase stopped me.

Because one of the most important decisions of my life began while standing on a dock looking at a ship.

Years ago, I was hired to teach U.S. history, English, reading, mathematics, and study skills to Navy and Marine personnel pursuing college courses while deployed overseas. My assignment would take me aboard the USS Cleveland during a Western Pacific deployment.

I remember standing on the pier before departure.

The ship seemed impossibly large.

Cargo was being loaded through open bays. Sailors moved quickly across the dock carrying gear and supplies. Forklifts disappeared into the vessel’s steel interior. Everywhere I looked there was motion, preparation, and anticipation.

The USS Cleveland looked less like a ship than a floating city.

I stood there staring upward, feeling something I had not felt in a long time.

Wonder.

As a boy, I had dreamed of going to sea.

I was fascinated by ships, maps, distant places, and the possibility that life might be larger than the world I already knew. While other children seemed to dream of becoming something, I often dreamed of going somewhere.

Standing on that dock, I felt as if I had stumbled into one of those childhood dreams. I did not know exactly where the experience would lead. I only knew I wanted to step aboard. So I did.

Life aboard the ship unfolded within its own rhythm. Days were shaped by classes, duties, meals, conversations, and long stretches of ocean. Outside were endless horizons. Inside was a community of people living and working together in close quarters while moving steadily toward destinations scattered across the Pacific.

I taught my classes.

The sailors and Marines attended theirs.

But looking back, I realize that I was receiving an education of my own.

I learned that teaching was less about delivering information and more about paying attention. I learned that failure could be as instructive as success. I learned that people carrying heavy responsibilities were often capable of extraordinary perseverance.

Most importantly, I learned that the world was much larger than I had imagined.

The ship crossed oceans, but it also expanded my sense of what a life could be.

Without realizing it, I began following a path shaped more by curiosity than certainty.

At the time, that felt natural. Only years later did I begin questioning it.

The older I became, the easier it was to compare my life with the lives of others.

Comparison is persuasive because it usually arrives disguised as wisdom. It tells us we are being realistic. Responsible. Practical.

But comparison rarely asks whether we are using the right measuring stick.

The more I compared myself to people who had chosen different paths, the more dissatisfied I became. I focused on what I lacked rather than what I had experienced. I measured my life according to values that had guided someone else’s decisions rather than my own.

Then one day, while thinking about the USS Cleveland, I asked myself a simple question.

If I could return to that dock knowing everything I know now, would I make a different choice?

Would I tell that younger version of myself not to board? Would I advise him to choose a safer path? A more predictable future? A more secure life?

The answer came immediately.

No.

I would still step aboard.

Not because it was the smartest financial decision. Not because it guaranteed success. Not because it led exactly where I expected.

I would step aboard because it made me feel alive.

And that realization showed me something I had overlooked for years.

The problem was never that I had chosen the wrong life. The problem was that I had begun judging my life by values that were never truly mine.

The young man standing on that dock was not trying to maximize efficiency or optimize his future. He was not asking how the experience would improve his retirement. He was not calculating long-term returns.

He was responding to wonder. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that.

Like many people, I absorbed the belief that a life should be evaluated by what it produces, accumulates, or achieves. Those things matter, of course. We all need stability and security.

But there is another measure of a life. A quieter one.

It asks whether we paid attention. Whether we remained curious. Whether we said yes to opportunities that expanded our understanding of ourselves and the world. Whether we showed up fully for the journey we were given. When I think about the USS Cleveland now, I no longer see it simply as a ship.

I see it as a reminder.

A reminder that not every meaningful choice can be justified in advance. A reminder that wonder deserves a place in our decision-making. A reminder that the life we envy may not be the life we were meant to live.

Sometimes I still worry about the boats I may have missed.

But then I remember standing on that dock, staring up at that enormous ship, feeling the excitement of not knowing exactly where it would take me.

And I realize that if I were given the chance again, I would still walk up the gangway. Not because I knew where the journey would lead. But because something inside me already knew I wanted to go.

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About Tony Collins

Edward “Tony” Collins, EdD, MFA, is a documentary filmmaker, writer, educator, and disability advocate living with progressive vision loss from macular degeneration. His work explores presence, caregiving, resilience, and the quiet power of small moments. He is currently completing books on creative scholarship and collaborative documentary filmmaking and shares personal essays about meaning, hope, and disability on Substack. Connect: substack.com/@iefilm | iefilm.com

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The Power of Waiting When You Don’t Know What to Do

“Waiting is not mere empty hoping. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal.” ~I Ching 

Waiting has a bad rap in modern Western society. It’s not surprising that I had to look to an ancient Chinese text (the I Ching) in order to find a suitable quote to begin this article. We don’t like to wait! It’s far easier to find quotes on the Internet about “seizing the day” and making something happen.

I’ve been an impatient person for much of my life. I wanted things to happen to me! I had a definite agenda in my twenties: finish college, start my career, get married, and have a family. So I declared a major and started knocking off my goals. When it was “time” to get married, I picked the most suitable person available and got on with it.

I really didn’t know much about waiting. I thought it was something you did if you didn’t have courage or conviction. It was just an excuse not to take action. I know better now.

What I’ve learned since then is that waiting is one of the most powerful tools we have for creating the life we want.  

The ego, or mind, is very uncomfortable with waiting. This is the part of you that fairly screams, “Do something! Anything is better than nothing!” And, because we are a very ego-driven society, you’ll find plenty of external voices that back up that message.

The mind hates uncertainty, and it would rather make a mistake than simply live in a state of “not knowing” while the right course unfolds.

There’s a term I love that describes this place of uncertainty: liminal. A liminal space is at the border or threshold between possibilities. It’s a place of pure potential: we could go any direction from here. There are no bright lights and obvious signs saying “Walk this way.”

Liminal spaces can be deeply uncomfortable, and most of us tend to rush through them as quickly as possible.

If we can slow down instead, the landscape gradually becomes clearer, the way it does when your eyes adjust to a darkened room. We start to use all of our senses. The ego wants a brightly lit superhighway to the future, but real life is more like a maze. We take one or two steps in a certain direction and then face another turning point. Making our way forward requires an entirely different set of skills, and waiting is one of the most important.

There’s a proper timing to all things, and it’s often not the timing we want (now—or maybe even yesterday). There are things that happen on a subconscious level, in ourselves and in others, that prepare us for the next step. Oddly, when the time to act does come, there’s often a sense of inevitability about it, as if it were always meant to be this way.

Look back over your life and you’ll see this pattern. First, look at the decisions that you forced. How did those turn out? Then look for times when you just “knew” what to do, without even thinking about it. What happened then?

The key to the second kind of decision is waiting for that deep sense of inner knowing.

That doesn’t mean you’re certain that everything will turn out exactly the way you want it. Or that you don’t feel fear. But there is a sense of “yes, now’s the time” in your body that I liken to the urge that migratory birds get when it’s time to leave town. They don’t stand around debating whether to go, consulting maps and calendars. They just go when the time is right.

We’re animals too—we have and can cultivate that inner sensitiveness that lets us simply know what to do when the time is right. But to do that we have to unhook from the mind. Thinking is useful up to a point, but we usually take it far beyond the point of usefulness.

We go over and over various options, trying to predict the future based solely on our hopes and fears.

We talk endlessly with others about what we should do, hoping that they have the answers for us (and, ideally, trying to get everyone to agree).

We think about what we “should” do, based on any number of external measures: common sense, morality, religion, family values, finances, and so on.

And then usually we add this all up and just take our best shot.

A better way is to take stock of what you know (and, even more importantly, what you don’t know) and then… wait.

If there’s some action that calls to you, even if it’s seemingly unrelated to the question at hand, do it! Then wait again for another urge to move. Wait actively rather than passively. That means keep your inner senses tuned to urges or intuitions. Expect that an answer will come. As the I Ching says, wait with the “inner certainty of reaching the goal.”

This is not the same kind of dithering and procrastination that come when we want to try something new but are afraid to step out into the unknown. If your intuition is pulling you in a certain direction and your mind is screaming at you to stop, by all means ignore your mind.

There’s a subtle but very real difference between the feeling of fear (which holds you back from doing something you long to do) and misgivings (which warn you that a decision that looks good on the surface is not right for you).

In both cases, look for and trust that deep sense of inner knowing, even if your thoughts are telling you different. A friend once told me that her father’s best piece of advice to her was, “Deciding to get married should be the easiest decision of your life.” How I wish I had known that when I made my own (highly ambivalent) decision!

My head was telling me that this was the sensible thing to do, and he was a good man. My gut, however, was far from on board. I still vividly recall the many inward debates I held about whether to marry him and even the dreams I had that revealed my inner reluctance. Unfortunately, I went with my thoughts over my instincts.

Now I know this: If you have to talk yourself into something, try waiting instead. More will be revealed if you give it some time.

Ignore that voice in your head that says you need to make a decision now. Don’t rush through life. Linger in the liminal spaces and see what becomes clear as you sit with uncertainty. Learn to trust your gut more than your head. Have faith that the right course will unfold at the perfect time. And then, when the time comes, just do it, as simply and naturally as the birds take flight.

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About Amaya Pryce

Amaya Pryce is a life coach and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her books, 5 Simple Practices for a Lifetime of Joy and How to Grow Your Soul are available on Amazon. For coaching or to follow her blog, please visit www.amayapryce.com.

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Once You See the Relationship Pattern, You Can’t Unsee It

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou

The weekend started like any other family visit. Our family was in town, and it began with real excitement. Kids running everywhere, chocolate chip muffins in the oven, homemade ice cream for our guests, the ordinary, happy chaos of everyone existing in the same space.

On the second day we noticed one of the visiting kids had a runny nose and was rubbing her snot all over herself as she was grabbing our toddler to hold her. She loves babies, and we adore that about her. However, if you have kids, you know a cold moving through the whole family isn’t a minor thing. It’s weeks of sleepless nights and small miserable humans and an exhaustion that makes you question every choice that led you there.

That evening, my husband confided in me about it, and I said, “Yeah, I noticed it too.” This wasn’t the first time, though. Over the past few visits, someone had arrived sick, and once, it ran through our entire family through the course of a month and left us all very ill.

He’d always been hesitant to ask people in his family for anything because of his fear over how they would react. But this time, we agreed it was time that we shouldn’t let fear control how we engage with his family. To us it wasn’t a big deal at all. We just believed in open, honest communication so we could take proper precautions.

So my husband did the radical thing. He asked if the kid was sick. Not an accusation. Not a confrontation. A question. The kind of thing functional adults ask each other every day without incident.

What happened next was traditional behavior. The conversation didn’t come back to us directly. It went sideways and around and was discussed by others except the one person who had actually asked the question. Pretty much how everything has gone since I married into the family.

Then came the passive-aggressive text, the kind that’s heavy in energy, the kind you feel in your chest before you’ve finished reading it.

My husband reassured them it was fine. We only wanted to know so we could wash hands more and hug a little less if someone was truly sick. “No big deal,” he said.

The visit ended, and we went on with our lives. What followed was a blowup that evolved into a slow, painful unraveling that lasted the better part of a year. There was an outburst that I was a problem, how my husband and I always cause drama, and the goal was to pit him against me. My character was ripped apart, and even our marriage was called into question.

Here’s what I eventually understood. It was never about the runny nose.

The runny nose was just the latest scene in a play that had been running for years. And this is how patterns work. They attach themselves to whatever is available and use it to replay the same dynamic that was always there underneath.

Where we chose to get married. A question about a cold. Leaving for much needed naps on a vacation. Making a trip to a library to pick up books without asking before. How we should share my pregnancy. When you start paying attention, you notice the specific incident almost never matters. What matters is the structure underneath it.

Who communicates directly and who resorts to gossip without confrontation. Who takes accountability and who deflects. Who moves toward healthy resolution and who moves toward drama. Who has empathy and who is dismissive. Who owns their feelings and who guilt trips. The structure tells you everything you need to know. And in this family structure, the former never happened.

My husband and I spent nearly a year trying to explain to people that there was an unhealthy pattern that needed to be addressed. One that undeniably started way before I came into the picture. Technically it shouldn’t have even involved me. We wrote letters. We had conversations. He even brought in a neutral therapist.

We did it with real hope. We believed that people who loved us would be willing to do the uncomfortable work of looking honestly at this dynamic that repeatedly unfolded. And we went on this journey because we wanted to have better relationships with the family. Let’s just say it was received very poorly.

Eventually, there was an apology from one party because the therapist had to explain why it was needed. But it was the kind that checks a box with no change in behavior. The verbal equivalent of sweeping everything under the rug and then complimenting the rug. The main party is still in denial that the pattern exists.

And that year taught me the most important thing I know about this: You cannot change a pattern that the other person does not believe exists. You can name it gently. You can write the most honest letter of your life. You can stay calm and lead with compassion and invite in professionals.

And if the other person is committed to a version of reality where they are never the problem and lack accountability, none of it will land. Not because you didn’t try hard enough. But because you are standing in two different worlds.

The pattern isn’t a mistake they’re making. It’s a survival system they’ve been running their whole lives. And survival systems don’t go quietly. So, at some point, the work stops being about them. It becomes about you.

I had to ask myself some honest questions. And I want to gently offer them to you, too.

Are there relationships in your life where the same type of drama keeps happening, just with different furniture in the room? Where you leave almost every interaction feeling worse than when you arrived? Where people are constantly talking about you behind your back as a group and not coming to you directly?

Where you’re forever explaining yourself, justifying basic choices, managing someone else’s reaction to your perfectly reasonable existence? Where adults are constantly unable to regulate their emotions?

That’s not a rough patch. That’s not a hard season. That’s a pattern. And the moment you name it clearly and stop explaining away the evidence is the moment you reclaim yourself. Because you can’t step out of something you keep insisting is a coincidence.

Respect does not need constant coaching or explanations about why behaviors are bad and why your feelings matter. This is the part where most articles would tell you to extend more grace and try one more time, with an open heart and a perfectly worded conversation.

I’m not going to tell you that.

Sometimes the most loving and most spiritual thing you can do is to step back, not as a way to punish anyone or win some kind of argument, but simply because staying in it has started to feel unsafe in a way you can no longer ignore. And that is the part most people never quite realize—that choosing distance isn’t always an act of anger or abandonment, but sometimes the quietest form of self-respect there is.

But you are allowed to stop participating in the very thing that keeps hurting you, without guilt, even if no one around you understands the choice or gives you permission to make it. Because here is the quiet truth underneath all of it, the one that took me far too long to see: some patterns continue only because the people inside them need them to, and your willingness to keep playing your part is the very thing that keeps the whole thing alive.

And as long as you keep showing up to play your old part, writing the letters, managing the feelings, extending the olive branch again and again, you’re providing the one thing the pattern needs to survive. Your participation.

Stepping back is not abandonment or giving up. It’s the moment you stop trying to rewrite someone else’s story and start gently writing your own.

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About Laura Rosenfeld

Laura Rosenfeld has spent over a decade in management consulting and co-authored Peak Performance: Mindset Tools for Managers before founding her own business in 2024. A longtime practitioner of Kadampa Buddhism and meditation, she writes about mindset, courage, and the art of becoming the exception, marrying high performance with deep inner work. She shares essays and tools at Anomaly Method on Substack. Check out her newsletter for free: anomalymethod.substack.com

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