Communication
25 articles
The Power of a Stranger's Validation: What Happens When You're Finally Seen
There is something quietly radical about being seen by someone who has nothing to gain from seeing you. No shared history. No reason to be kind. No obligation to agree. Just a stranger, and their words, cutting through years of noise to land somewhere deep and still inside of you.
More tagged “Communication”
What Burnout Really Looks Like — and How to Listen to It
After one of the most challenging years of my life, I think I finally realise what burnout is. The saddest thing of all is that now I am on the right side of my experience, I watch helplessly as others around me experience the same thing but with different outcomes.
How I Finally Got My Dream Body (And Why It Had Nothing to Do With a Diet)
A Warning and an Invitation: if you are here for a quick fix, read on no more. I mean that kindly. There are plenty of places on the internet that will sell you one. This is not that place. But if you are exhausted by quick fixes. If you have tried them, lost count of how many, and arrived here with a particular kind of tired that goes deeper than fatigue, the tired that comes from fighting something for decades and not winning, then you are exactly where you need to be.
The Words & Contemplations Podcast: Conversations, Meditations and the Things We Wish Someone Had Said Sooner
There is a particular kind of company that a podcast can offer. You are driving somewhere, or walking somewhere, or doing the necessary but not particularly fulfilling task of existing in the world, and there are two voices in your ears. You don't know these people, not really. But you've grown fond of them in the way you grow fond of anyone who is consistently honest with you about the things that matter. We wanted to build that.
The Revelations Found in Astrology and Human Design
I’ve always believed that self-inquiry can be a portal. Sometimes that portal is meditation. Sometimes it’s heartbreak. Sometimes it’s travel, long and lonely and bewildering. But recently, it came in the form of something unexpected:Running my astrological birth chart and my human design through ChatGPT.
Astrology, Human Design, and the Desire to Understand Ourselves
There are times when self-understanding doesn’t come from doing more, fixing more, or striving harder - but from seeing yourself clearly for the first time. Recently, I explored both my astrological birth chart and Human Design, not to predict the future, but to understand myself more deeply during a period of transition. What unfolded wasn’t instruction or certainty, but recognition. This reflection explores what these systems are, why so many are drawn to them right now, and how they can offer permission to embrace the parts of ourselves we’ve often tried to override.
The Light We See in Others: A Story of Gratitude and Human Connection
There are moments in life when we meet people who feel like mirrors. All the qualities we long to recognise in ourselves appear so effortlessly in them. And then, as you spend time together, you realise something extraordinary: what you see in them is what they see in you. The connection becomes something rare and beautiful — a space where you bring out the best in one another, even though just days before you were strangers.
20 Reflections from The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer
I read The Surrender Experiment just days after walking away from my corporate job, twelve months into the unknown. No guarantees, no structured plan. Just a quiet knowing that something had shifted.
Meeting People With Smiles
In a world that often feels rushed and disconnected, what if the simplest gesture, a smile, could shift not only your day but someone else’s? In this reflection from Bali, I explore the quiet power of going first, of offering joy without expecting anything in return… and what happens when that joy circles back.
What I Didn’t Do in Bali This Time
Or, what happened when I threw out the itinerary and finally listened to that quiet inner voice. This isn’t an anti-blog. It’s not a rebellion against to-do lists, or a rejection of all the amazing things Bali has to offer. It’s simply an invitation to do things your own way.
Journaling Prompts: Redefining Value & Worth
Without any expectations, write the answers to these questions. Write freely and as if you are talking to yourself, someone safe and silent. See what comes up with out judgment, but curiosity see where these questions take you.
Leaving Again, This Time It’s Different
We left Bali today after two wonderful months of getting to know ourselves again. That might sound odd, but when you’ve lived in survival mode for so long, it’s impossible to know who you are beneath the armour—armour that’s protected you from chaos, but also from truth. Truth like: you were ticking boxes, going through motions, cohabiting with someone who was quietly slipping into sadness. And truthfully, the silence about that sadness made it hard to distinguish what was "normal" from what was drowning.
What Do You Truly Value?
This is a gentle invitation to explore worth beyond work and wealth, going deeper into what it means without the cultural lens that you sit behind, the one determined by your place in the world, physically, metaphorically, familiarity, etc.
Learning to Sit With Yourself (and Everyone Else Too)
Regulating our emotions is a journey. You might be someone who feels deeply. Who notices the shift in the room when someone else enters. Who picks up on unspoken tensions, unmet needs, and unsaid apologies. You might be empathetic, curious, creative—and sometimes, exhausted. You may have learned to manage your emotions with a certain grace, yet still find yourself undone by the sudden sharpness of disappointment or frustration.
How To Use Challenges To Welcome Change
As I move through what seemed in the moment to be one of the most challenging yet eye-opening experiences of myself to date, I realise that it is not that this challenge is any better or worse than any that preceded it; it is me who has altered the way that I feel it, witness it and let it control me. I feel awake, even brought alive by this challenge, more so than ever before. I realise that the challenge will soon be irrelevant and that all that has happened was always going to. All that was in my control was my choice of how to let it affect me, how I chose to respond, and how I wanted to be perceived, remembered and heard. There is true power in choice, awareness and understanding.
Is It Timing, Trust, or Divine Intervention? Navigating the Unknown
This last month marks the halfway point of my accidental transformation year, 2024 has been a wonderful journey filled with unexpected and incredible opportunities. Look for the signs, lean into the opportunities, and jump in. If you have ever heard these phrases, but dismissed them I urge you to look again.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
One day you will look back upon the things you believed and it will seem as if someone else’s voice was directing you. The voice inside will evolve if you let it, allow it the space to learn from your mistakes, and test the theories that the child version of you learned to believe. Trust, be brave and create new beliefs for yourself to live by. Once you start to listen, you’ll embark on a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you.
What Is The Meaning In A Raindrop?
When the rain drops from the sky it transforms the ground beneath it, if only for a moment, this temporary change is part of the cyclical nature of our world.
The Power of Journaling
Writing regularly is something that is said to free the mind, to process one's thoughts, to download the noise. For some, it is a collection of thoughts that were, in the moment of writing important. For others, it's a way of making sense of the hundreds of thoughts we carry every day.
Love, it's When
It’s when you truly want good things for someone other than yourself,It’s when you offer your time, unconditionally,It's when you buy something they would never buy for them self - just because.
How to Find the Right Mentor for Growth and Guidance
We look to those around us to lead, show us the way, to be our guides. But why? How many of us have a true mentor that enables us to reach for the stars and develop to our fullest potential. Just because someone holds a more senior position than you in a business does not necessarily make them the ideal mentor.
Embrace All The Facets Of You, Even When They Conflict
I was recently reminded of some advice I heard many times as a child, but on this recent occasion, it was used as an example of bad advice. ‘Pick one thing.’ I wonder how many times this phrase, suggesting that we select one area of interest and commit to it is used. This, when used with children, in theory, gets us to mastery of a skill as we reach adulthood.
The Power Of Saying- No, Thank you
Do you need to say no? Or at least consider it as an option more often. I believe what the world has shown us recently, more than anything else is that underneath all the noise and so-called ‘being busy’ we might only need a few key basics. Looking around some of these basics can be seen in the form of comfortable clothing and natural hair colour but other basics like the quality of relationship are a little more difficult to identify, although are ever more important.
Your Desired Change, Your Responsibility
It was Einstein that said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” I think we all tend to do this in some capacity. We wait for a change to happen, hoping someone or something will rescue us. We can seem powerless to take responsibility.
Communication, Lies & Labels: Unpacking the Stories That Shape Us
What is it to communicate, and do we do it honestly? Verbal is only 7% but it's how we learn, how we trust and how we talk. How much of the other 93% do we miss, ignore or filter out. Are we all listening wrong, should we be listening with our eyes, not our ears.