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I’ve been journaling more or less daily for the past fifteen years.

As much as I love the romantic vision of pen on paper, I’ve always done it digitally because I could never keep up with a handwritten journal. I tried, but it never really worked.

Over the years, I’ve come across plenty of advice on the best ways to journal, the best techniques, and the best prompts. I always think it’s worth bringing a bit of nuance to these conversations because, as far as I’m concerned, the best way to journal is whatever way means you actually do it. And that depends entirely on who you are, what you want your journal to do for you, and how it fits with your life circumstances.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I discuss something I recently noticed about my journal practice that I’d never considered before.

https://youtu.be/mSpRvfmqW9A

Since 2021, I’ve been answering the same four questions most mornings:

• What did I do yesterday?
• What was the best thing that happened yesterday?
• What are today’s news headlines?
• What are my plans for today?

What struck me is that all four questions are surprisingly objective and focus on facts rather than feelings. They’re concrete, and none of them explicitly probe beneath the surface.

They don’t want me to go searching for deeper meaning. Just record, archive, and document. If I’m short on time, I can answer the questions in less than five minutes (once I’m able to recall what happened yesterday). They are simple, easy, and objective. But more often than not, I go deeper and longer. Especially once I start thinking about the best thing that happened yesterday, today’s news headlines, and what I have planned.

Recording and Processing

The reason I started thinking about all this was that I saw a post on social media titled “How Journaling Actually Works.” It suggested that people get journaling wrong by recording events like a diary rather than finding the meaning in them. It caught my attention because it was the opposite of what I’ve found to be true.

He suggests asking yourself questions like:

What does this situation actually mean to me and why does it feel the way it does?

Whoa, where do you start with that?

• What am I avoiding thinking about right now?
• What am I pretending is fine when it’s not?
• What would I do if I were not afraid of the outcome?

These are reasonable coaching-style questions for addressing specific situations. But they demand a fairly high cognitive and emotional load and likely require more than the five honest minutes he suggests for meaningful insight.

If those are the kinds of questions you’re asking every time you sit down to journal, it can start to feel like a pretty heavy-duty habit. I don’t know about you, but I would feel resistance to picking up my journal if that was what confronted me.

My experience has been quite different.

Over fifteen years of journaling, I’ve found that recording often opens the door to processing.

The simple act of documenting what happened yesterday gets my mind moving. It gives me something to work with. And sometimes, while writing about ordinary things, I stumble into something much bigger.

Recently, during one of our Haven Journal Circles, I responded to the prompt: What brought me peace this week?

My answer was having the brakes replaced on my car. A fairly ordinary response.

But when I wrote a little more about it in my journal the next morning, it opened up a whole bunch of things I wanted to explore, not least of which was putting off doing something I know needs doing. It prompted me to stop procrastinating several other things that have been draining me in the background for a while.

I didn’t sit down intending to write about avoidance, and I wouldn’t have thought about it in relation to those other questions. It was when I considered something present for me (peace) that I could see what was missing.

That’s one of the things I love about this style of journaling. I never quite know what might occur.

Why These Four Questions Work For Me in My Journal Practice

Interestingly, I used to have more reflective questions in my daily practice. For a while, I asked things like:

• What am I thankful for right now?
• What does this make possible?
• What one thing that is not urgent but important will I do today?

These aren’t bad questions. But over time I found them difficult to answer consistently. My engagement with them became repetitive, and they started to feel a little burdensome.

What did I do yesterday?

This question is a helpful anchor. It’s shocking how easily I forget what I did just twenty-four hours ago.

I regularly underestimate how much I’ve done and how far I’ve come. I adapt to changes quickly and can lose sight of progress that would have seemed significant only a few days or weeks earlier.

Recording what happened yesterday helps me notice that movement.

What was the best thing that happened yesterday?

This question was an iteration of “What am I thankful for right now?”

I realised that I didn’t find it helpful to ask what I’m grateful for. Because some days I don’t FEEL grateful when I sit down to write. But there is always a best thing relative to everything else that happened yesterday. And through responding to that question, a feeling of gratitude, appreciation, or satisfaction often follows.

The best thing doesn’t need to be a great thing. It can simply be the best among a collection of difficult things.

What are today’s news headlines?

This is very much a personal choice because I like anchoring myself in cultural time. When I look back through old entries, it’s fascinating to see what was happening in the wider world alongside whatever was happening in my own life.

It’s easy to lose track of timelines and current events. Recording headlines provides context for personal reflections and sometimes reveals connections I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

That said, I wouldn’t suggest everyone does this. For some people, there may be good reasons not to engage with the news during a journaling practice.

You might choose to record the weather, books you’re reading, films you’ve watched, or something else entirely. The principle is similar because these things can influence us without us necessarily noticing at the time. And by recording and archiving regularly and consistently, these pictures can become clearer.

What are my plans for today?

This question took a little tweaking.

I used to ask, “What will I do today?” As a way to commit myself to particular actions. But eventually realised that wasn’t quite right because my days often contain things I didn’t plan. Plans change, and unexpected things happen.

If plans are framed as things I will do, it can feel like a failure if I don’t carry them out. But by asking about my plans rather than what I will do, I can set intentions for the day and later notice how closely reality matched what I anticipated. That neutral observation doesn’t need to become a judgment or source of self-criticism.

My relationship with plans has definitely softened. Maybe because of this. Or maybe I approach plans this way because I hold them differently.

Building Your Own Journaling Practice

One thing that stood out to me in the social media post was the suggestion that consistency matters less than honesty.

I understand the point being made, but for me consistency has been a key pathway TO honesty. And inconsistency would yield something more performed or forced.

Keeping a journal creates an ongoing conversation. Over time it builds familiarity, trust, and reliability. The bigger thoughts and feelings have somewhere to go when they appear because the habit already exists.

Not all journal sessions become deep dive self-examinations. Some do because most don’t.

The post drew a distinction between recording and processing, and between shallowness and depth. But in my experience, the two are closely connected. Recording often creates the conditions where reflection can emerge.

What Do You Want Your Journal Practice To Do and Be For You?

Pay attention to how different questions make you feel. If you’re building a practice, ask yourself what you want it to be. Enjoy experimenting with it. Don’t be afraid to reject advice or to let go of questions that run out of road. It’s your practice, and it needs to work for you.

The four questions I use today emerged through years of tweaking, adapting, and noticing what keeps me coming back with energy and enthusiasm.

Your journal practice will probably look different. And that’s exactly as it should be. But maybe this is where you can start. Try these questions, tweak them, add your own, and pay attention to your relationship with the practice.

Pick The Lock

Do you want help thinking about this? It’s a good fit for a Pick The Lock call, which is a one-off 60-minute, choose-your-own-price session designed to give you a sounding board for a challenge, goal, or change you’re considering.

Send me a message, or learn more here.

https://the-haven.co/pick-the-lock/ Journal Circle

If you would like some low-stakes, simple prompts to try things out, join us in The Haven. Every Friday we have our journal circle, where we meet for 30 minutes, reflect on the shape of the past seven days, and do a simple five-minute written exercise in response to a question. After that, we have space to chat about how we got on.

https://the-haven.co/journal-circle

How did Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking, pave the way for the prosperity gospel and the law of attraction that still has its claws in today’s culture? That’s what we explore in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

Part One explored Peale’s foundations in the New Thought Movement of the nineteenth century and its theological departure from Puritanical Calvinism.

Part Two linked Peale’s version of Positive Thinking with the corporate culture of the twentieth century. We saw how it provided bonus benefits to companies laying off workers.

In Part Three, we look at links between Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel, and its potential to exploit vulnerable people with promises of great wealth in exchange for willingly giving their money and going into debt because of promises made by those in power over them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJaPrhOSnxw&feature=youtu.be The Prosperity Theology of Positive Thinking

This brings us full circle to the ‘theological’ dimension of Peale’s project. One of the most common complaints in reviews of The Power of Positive Thinking is that it unexpectedly contains so many references to God and the Bible.

But this is the point of it. Peale builds on the New Thought tradition, using Bible verses to support the law of attraction he proposes, driven by a god who “rates you according to the size of your prayers”, and rewards you if you dream big and visualise having already received the objects you desire.

Norman Vincent Peale was a minister who used his position to gain credibility and status in the eyes of his followers. As God’s spokesman, he was taken seriously when he preached. But as we saw in the first part, he was an expert at cherry-picking Bible verses to suit his purposes, stripping them of their narrower and broader theological contexts.

The Formula For Peale’s Law of Attraction

Peale turns basic psychology into cosmic superstition. As we saw in the previous episode, when he took the story of Job and interpreted his words, “What I feared has come upon me and what I dreaded has happened to me”, as meaning Job invited his fate BECAUSE he feared it.

This conforms to Peale’s scientific formula for success (and failure): “Affirm it, visualize it, believe it, and it will actualize itself.”

Whether it’s something we desire or something we fear, it will actualise itself if we think about it. “When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.”

Of course, we understand that confirmation bias means that when we expect something to be true, we are more likely to find evidence to support it. As such, we might lead ourselves towards outcomes if we believe something has made them more certain.

All Things Are Possible…

Peale tells the story of a faith healer who helps a struggling baseball team on a losing streak. They were riddled with doubt and didn’t believe they could win. One day, the coach asked for the team’s bats and then disappeared with them. When he returned, he excitedly told the players that the preacher had blessed the bats. They now contained a power that could not be overcome. “The players were astounded and delighted,” Peale reports. “The next day they overwhelmed Dallas, getting 37 base hits and 20 runs.”

“All things are possible to him that believeth”, Peale affirms, implying that God rewards faith. This raises the question: Is God needed in this equation, or is it just a belief in God held by those seeking a change of fortune?

And if this is the case, how is this exploited?

Televangelism and The Allure of Prosperity

In Smile or Die, Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the televangelist and leader of a Texas megachurch, Joel Osteen. She cites a passage from one of his books in which he describes his initial resistance to his wife’s pleas to upgrade to a bigger house.

Eventually, he was talked into agreeing. He said it was only because Victoria had used words of faith to persuade him to broaden his vision. This meant God showed him how much more he had in store for him. He presented it as self-sacrifice and obedience to God, rather than an act of indulgence.

This is an application of Peale’s core message. It uses God as a justification for desire. The appearance of material wealth and success is presented as confirmation that you are doing God’s work. It is a reward for your faith. This extraction ecosystem encourages followers to give their resources to trusted spokespeople for God. The explicit promise is that doing so will trigger a transactional response from God.

The God Complex of The Rich and Powerful

Ehrenreich points to the God complex present in the executive mindset. Steve Eisman calls it ‘hedge fund disease’, which he suggests should be included in the DSM-5. It is conspicuous in the symptoms of megalomania, narcissism, and solipsism. It boils down to the more money you have, the more right you feel about everything. And “to think something is to make it happen.” Because of the power and wealth you have access to wield, in a sense, “You’re God”.

We see this at play today, with the rich and powerful indulging in projects well outside their areas of expertise. They try to dictate tastes, behaviours, and trends, so they might exploit their followers’ trust. And, much like prosperity-gospel preachers, they persuade people to follow their advice by promising great future returns. We’ve seen this in NFT scams, pump-and-dump crypto coins, and AI investment advice. Some of these figures are delusional. While others are cold and calculating in their efforts to exploit and extract wealth from those who trust them.

Breaking The Spell

The Power of Positive Thinking reinforces a delusional superstition. Fear itself becomes something to fear, avoid, or eradicate, rather than to listen to and respond to appropriately.

It is also delusively aspirational, portraying capitalism as a system that rewards all who believe in it, while ignoring the inherent logic of a system that functions because of inequality. Peale follows in Napoleon Hill’s footsteps, believing that poverty and suffering are simply the result of poor thinking and insufficient passion and desire for wealth.

This episode is part of the project I’m working on, ‘looking at notable books and figures in the self-help industry. It is about slowing down to examine and expand my own critical thinking.

Get in Touch

What else should I read as part of this project? Drop me a message and let me know!

https://the-haven.co/register/

In the wake of burnout, Tuula Ahde found herself unable to move through the world as she previously had. And she got busy looking for ways to unfreeze. Ironically, it was ice that gave her a route back home.

She found herself instinctively drawn to photography, particularly macro-photography, which zoomed in on the mysterious details of her world’s enforced smallness. She photographed flowers, fungi, and whatever else she found around her, discovering that the act of taking photographs brought her closer to herself and to the often-overlooked details of her surroundings.

Then, in 2016, the weather suddenly turned cold and stormy winds brought a crystal clarity to the lake by her cottage in Finland. She describes it as looking like a crazed glassblower had stormed through the landscape, freezing it into an unimaginable art exhibition. And that was it. She spent hours in the darkness, photographing the ice, desperate to capture as many images as possible before the snow buried the glassblower’s gallery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOI1oN5gGK8 Some threads that emerged from our Kota conversation:

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a few snippets from a conversation we had in The Haven over the weekend, after we watched a video Tuula and I created about her accidental journey into creativity through ice photography.

As we begin our Photoyoga summer, the conversation offers a glimpse into the philosophy that sits beneath it. The course uses photography in an unconventional way, helping us notice more of what is happening around, within, and between us.

Creativity Begins with Attention

Creativity starts small and close in. It is about noticing what catches our attention, where we are, and capturing it with any means.

Photos contain more than what we see. Macro-photography is an even more stark way to notice what is going on within and around us.

Ice photos take us to different realms, into and through which we can travel. Even when our physical movement is restricted.

Creativity Welcomes Mystery

Ten people might look at the same image and see completely different things. It’s not about who is correct. It’s about having the courage and confidence to tolerate and embrace differences rather than trying to convince them that your perspective is the right one.

Raven by Tuula Ahde (what do you see?)

Art gives us the gift of mystery (something that can never be fully and completely contained, grasped, or known). However, we often engage with it as a source of secrecy (a single meaning that is withheld from you until it’s revealed).

Creativity Changes Us as We Create

There is symbolic and metaphorical power in the act of creating (and contradictions can be playful and fun). For example, the longer Tuula stays in the cold, shooting photos and turning blue, the more unfrozen her mind and feelings become.

Creativity is not about the outcome. The process may sometimes feel like an obstacle standing between us and the finished thing. But it is also the source of whatever life that product contains. Perhaps this is why shortcut tools that focus entirely on generating results can leave us feeling strangely disconnected from them.

Photoyoga is an iterative form of change. It doesn’t begin with a destination or a carefully defined goal. One photo leads to another. Over time, a gallery emerges, becoming a record of the journey itself. Technical skills, equipment, and expertise can all develop along the way, but none of them are prerequisites. They tend to grow naturally through curiosity, experimentation, and the desire to explore further.

When we build our lives on deep foundations, we gain a broader perspective on the things we think we ought to strive for.

Ultimately, this journey is about paying attention. It’s about noticing what happens within us as we create. We become curious about our feelings, motivations, and assumptions, and allow creativity to reveal things we might otherwise miss. Through that process, we gradually discover new ways to understand, express, and inhabit our lives.

Fancy joining us for Photoyoga 2026? Learn more here.

https://the-haven.co/photoyoga/

Walking art is a nice metaphor for the experience of experimentally oriented people.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I chat with Australian multi-form artist Amy Tsilemanis. I’ve known Amy for a few years and was excited to talk with her about the naturally curious approach she takes to her work and life, as it resonates with much of what we regularly discuss here and on Serenity Island.

https://youtu.be/frOHk7C7h1Q In our conversation, we explored:

• What caused Amy to question whether she is really a highly sensitive person ten years after first hearing the term?
• Why I believe the highly sensitive label is useful until it’s no longer necessary (and how I see this applying to Amy).
• How Amy has made such a broad range of art forms work for her. She uses audio storytelling and podcasting, poetry, collage, walking art, participatory events, installation, archives, multimedia, and the creative activation of heritage places and collections.
• Why having a lot of strings to her bow can sometimes lead to impostor syndrome.
• What drives Amy’s relationship with art (and how she discovered her creative values).
• Why the image of the flâneur caught her attention.
• How curiosity about audio walks led to a conference in northern Greece, which turned out to be near Amy’s ancestral village, which connected her to a global community of walking artists, which brought her back to Australia to help start a walking art organisation. Don’t you just love how unexpected happenings become big parts of life!
• And more…

Noticing, Wandering, and Everyday Creative Expression

Amy’s work gives a strong sense of anchoring in space and history. She is clearly driven by the power of human connection, bringing people into the creative process whenever possible. I was also keen to ask her about the impact of slowing down on what she notices in the world around her and within her.

It was fascinating to hear her trace her joy in sharing what she notices with others back to messages her mum left for her in her lunchbox as a child. She learned to see these small creative acts as ways to tell people she was thinking of them.

Amy is the embodiment of experimental and accidental creativity. Her life has often taken unexpected twists and turns, including her latest role as a model for a local charity shop. Listen to the end to find out about that one.

The word ‘creativity’ can seem big, heavy, and even scary at times. But I hope this conversation paints a different picture and that you might feel encouraged by what we discuss.

Links

• Amy’s website: amytsilemanis.com.au
• Walk Listen Create (global walking art hub): walklistencreate.org/
• Australian Walking Artists: australianwalkingartists.org/

https://the-haven.co/register/

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is an introduction to “Leave it There”, this season’s theme. I share some of the initial topics it brought to my mind. I’d love to hear from you about what it brings to yours.

What Does Leave It There Mean To You?

• Is there something you want to leave behind?
• Do you want to get better at letting things go? Or maybe, the opposite, persisting with important things even when others tell you to drop it.
• Have you stumbled across something left somewhere, deliberately or accidentally?
• Do you want to leave nice things for others to discover?
• Maybe you’d like to get better at spotting and ignoring bait that others want you to react to.
• Do you want to trust your preparation and know when something is good enough, rather than sabotaging it through over-preparation?

This theme is open for exploring. I want to move through it in ways that reflect your curiosities, needs, and desires.

Leave It There – A Train of Thought Mini-Zine

I started off by jumping on the Train of Thought. I love using mini-zines to generate and explore creative ideas quickly, so that’s what I did.

1. Old Hurt (leaving it in the past)
2. Beliefs (recognising our ability to choose)
3. The Point (avoiding over-explanation)
4. Dropping It (letting go or standing firm)
5. Surprises (discovering unexpected things)
6. Gifts (subverting the myth that humans are driven by greed and self-interest)
7. Blaming the Victim (was it my fault for leaving it there?)
8. Objects in Unusual Places (there’s a story here)
9. A Creative Process (germination, satisfaction, and courage)
10. Exits and Quitting (knowing when and how to walk away)
11. Bait (cultivating indifference)
12. Conditions For Change (leaving things visible)
13. Trusting Preparation (recognising when enough is enough)
14. Offloading (sharing the burden)
15. Setting Limits (running out of space)

What would you add? Let me know!

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Journal Circle Prompts

This season’s Journal Circle questions are all inspired by the theme “Leave it There”. Whether you have a journal practice, you’d like to start one, or you simply want to play with some of the ideas we are exploring, here are some prompts to get you started…

Coming To Our Senses – End of Season Zine

This season’s issue of Coming To Our Senses will bring together our Leave It There explorations. We will watch the video version together at the listening party on Sunday, September 6th 2026.

It would be great to have you involved in some way, big or small! I’m always looking for contributions to fill the pages.

You can send something below, or if you would like help deciding what to do, use the form to get in touch.

The moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is generally that liars aren’t believed even when they tell the truth. But I wonder if that story actually tells us less about the boy and more about the village.

The boy’s behaviour didn’t change. What changed was how the village responded. Each false alarm conditioned them to doubt what came next. Once that trust was gone, the villagers were living in a subtly created new reality.

That feels uncannily familiar right now.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the storification of everything and its impact on our ability to trust what we hear about almost anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iN-FtQieUU

A while back, my attention was caught by an Instagram carousel titled “8 Storytelling Frameworks Used by Million-Dollar Personal Brands (that you can steal).” It might have been the image of Mel Robbins on the front cover that did it.

I love stories. Storytelling is a wonderful way to unlock our creativity and deepen our experience of humanity. But when I see storytelling packaged into marketing funnels with the aim not to tell better stories, but to become more persuasive and influential in shaping people’s behaviour, I feel a bit of the ick.

For me, the purpose of storytelling is to deepen empathy, compassion, and insight. There is nothing inherently wrong with a brand telling stories. What rankles me is when storytelling frameworks are used not to explore a truth but to manufacture one, with the goal simply to turn attention back to the storyteller and get people to part with their money.

The storification of influencers and brands may give us insight into why so many of us are starting to feel jaded, cynical, and tired.

The Fastest Way to Build Trust (and Destroy It)

In branding and marketing, storytelling aims to persuade people to take a pre-designated action. The Instagram post reinforced this, saying: “Storytelling is the fastest way to build trust online. It makes people feel like they know you, and people buy from those they know.”

But if this becomes disingenuous or dishonest, each fabricated story becomes another cry of wolf. We are naturally poised to trust, but we are also highly adaptable. If we are told enough stories that turn out to be untrue, it erodes our trust. We struggle to believe anything, even when it is real. Look at how many comments say “staged” or “fake” on videos that aren’t staged at all.

Storytelling may be the fastest way to build trust, but it can also be the fastest way to destroy it.

I include examples to show that this isn’t about whether storytelling frameworks work. I know they do. Rather, it’s about what happens when they are exploited. What happens to our faith and trust in what we hear and read in everyday life?

The Storytelling Frameworks

Here are the eight frameworks from that Instagram post.

1. Before → After → Bridge – Show where you were, where you are now, and the specific bridge that got you there.
2. Aha Moment – Tell the moment your perspective changed and the lesson behind it.
3. Micro-Moment Story – Take a tiny, ordinary moment and extract a deeper truth from it.
4. Mistake → Lesson – Share a mistake, then the lesson learned, and how it shaped your expertise.
5. Enemy of the Hero – Define the villain your audience is fighting (fear, confusion, burnout) and position yourself as the guide.
6. Scar → Skill – Reveal a vulnerable moment, then show the strength or transformation it built.
7. From My Client’s Eyes – Tell a story from a client’s transformation, focusing on the emotional shift.
8. Depth in 30 Seconds – Deliver a full story arc (tension, insight, outcome) in one punchy micro-story.

These eight storytelling frameworks are widely taught in marketing circles. But as I explore in the episode, each one can either deepen trust or erode it, depending on the intent behind the story.

What Can We Do About The Boy Who Cries Wolf?

We might think of ourselves as the villagers in The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Enough of the village is still responding in good faith to dishonest stories. But the more we permit and encourage these tactics, the more good faith will erode. We will assume nothing is true and wonder what the storyteller is trying to squeeze from us.

That is a bleak place to be, not least because we start writing off those who have taken the time to create honestly, as we cannot distinguish between truth and fabrication.

What are we willing to tolerate? What are we helping to amplify? How are we equipping and rewarding the cries of wolf?

https://the-haven.co/register/

What would you say makes something satisfying for you? How do you recognise that you’re satisfied?

It’s not always easy to answer those questions. It’s something I’ve explored a lot over the past few years, both personally and in conversations with others who feel caught in a tug-of-war between doing what they feel they ought to do and what actually brings them an intrinsic sense of satisfaction.

If you’re trying to make creativity part of your life in some way, it can be difficult to balance sustainability and intrinsic satisfaction. We may hand it over to external measures and signals, such as numbers, praise, and money.

Because they’re easier to measure, we often associate satisfaction with outcomes and goals. But if our actions are only motivated by those kinds of extrinsic metrics, especially when they’re personally pretty meaningless, we can end up feeling disconnected from what we’re doing.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed in my work with people is helping peel back the layers of story that can build up like a fog and identifying their own unique signals of satisfaction shining through it. When we recognise these things, we can develop greater confidence in our creative voice and follow a more meaningful pathway through our projects and lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6uaYjKFVKU Satisfaction in the process

What brings you satisfaction in the process?

What brings you glimmers of connection along the way?

When you’ve enjoyed the journey towards an outcome in the past, what made it meaningful for you?

Maybe it was working alongside other people and feeling a sense of camaraderie. Perhaps it was figuring things out, solving problems, or seeing things come together that you couldn’t have foreseen before you started.

Satisfaction with the response

What brings you satisfaction in the response?

What kinds of responses give you a sense that your effort was worthwhile?

Maybe it’s when you realise someone gets it. Perhaps it’s feeling seen and appreciated for the care you’ve put into something. Maybe it’s when people tell others about it, or it might be receiving some form of reward or recognition.

I always remember someone coming up to me after I played a gig to an almost empty room, saying they had almost decided not to come, but were really glad they did. They said, “There’s nowhere else in the world I would rather have been this evening.”

That stuck with me.

Of course, it’s nice to play to bigger crowds. But moments like that changed how I think about satisfaction. Some of my favourite memories come from small shows that might look like failures on paper but felt deeply meaningful once I moved beyond judging everything by numbers and vanity metrics.

Satisfaction with the impact

What brings you satisfaction in the impact?

When you see something you’ve done making ripples in the world around you, what gives you a sense of satisfaction?

Maybe it’s seeing people follow your example and pay something forward. Perhaps it’s seeing someone change in some way because of your effort. Or maybe it’s simply knowing that your work brings more curiosity, laughter, appreciation, understanding, or joy into the world.

I find it deeply meaningful when I hear from people about how my music has helped them. Knowing that a song has helped someone through a challenging time in their life feels very satisfying. It can’t be forced, though. Part of that satisfaction comes from the surprise of receiving messages from people, which is why I choose to keep the doorways for communication open.

Satisfaction with the result

When the endeavour is complete, what gives you that feeling of satisfaction?

Maybe it’s the money. Perhaps it’s holding the finished thing in your hand. Maybe it’s seeing it out there in the world. Or finally being able to let go and move on. Knowing it’s done, it’s complete, it exists.

How do you know when you’re satisfied? What does it feel like in your body?

Between The External and Internal Locus of Evaluation

The psychologist Carl Rogers drew a distinction between an external locus of evaluation and an internal locus of evaluation.

An external locus might mean waiting for applause, approval, or recognition before allowing yourself to feel satisfied.

An internal locus is more about trusting your own felt sense of meaning and alignment, even if nobody else fully gets or appreciates it.

When we rely exclusively on external evaluation, we can become trapped in the tug-of-war between what we genuinely connect with and what others validate. We end up waiting for permission to feel satisfied. We might also avoid speaking up about things people don’t want to hear, and shrink back from doing things we anticipate will be criticised, even when they are important to our deeper values and principles.

An internal locus helps us stay connected to satisfaction on our own terms. It reminds us that even if the ideal response never comes, there may still be good reasons to feel deeply satisfied with what we’ve done. Internally oriented satisfaction taps into the felt sense that we’ve done the right thing, even if others disagree.

At the start of a project or endeavour, it can help to ask: Why does this matter to me, regardless of how others respond to it?

Much of this can’t be forced or manipulated. But it helps to become more aware of the small, slow things that give us intrinsic satisfaction, because it then becomes much easier to recognise them when they appear.

It also helps us filter opportunities and invitations. We begin to recognise whether something genuinely aligns with what we find satisfying, or whether it’s mostly a vanity metric or a hollow signifier of success.

And from there, we can start making more informed decisions about what’s actually worth saying yes to.

Does any of this feel alive for you right now?

Drop me a message of book a Pick The Lock call if you would find it useful to explore with someone else.

https://the-haven.co/pick-the-lock/

Like other self-help gurus of the time, Norman Vincent Peal targeted the lonely travelling salesman. But his message was also marketed to corporate executives, who were promised that the true power of positive thinking lay in the great dividends it would yield if they could sell it to their workforce.

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast builds on the first part of this mini-series, where we saw Peale’s roots in the New Thought movement of the 1800s. In this one, we examine how Peale encouraged a corporate embrace of positive thinking so that individuals would attribute all of their success and failure to the quality of their mindset and attitude. We look at the surprising role of Positive Thinking in the 2008 global financial crash.

https://youtu.be/4U0Yk4Zryrw?si=JBLU4f-7VbPA6ZWU The Lonely Travelling Salesman and the Birth of a Corporate Tool

In The Power of Positive Thinking, Peale recalls his encounters with travelling salesmen. They were on the road, feeling dejected, struggling to make sales, and lacking confidence. He prescribed visualisation, encouraging followers to “Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade.”

Peale treats this lonely reality as an unchangeable and natural state of being. He doesn’t question the corporate culture that has made this a way of life for an increasing number of people. Instead, he offers a hand on the shoulder, with advice to ease the natural despair and unhappiness that accompany it.

He quotes psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger, who said, “Attitudes are more important than facts.” He adds, “That is worth repeating until its truth grips you… You may permit a fact to overwhelm you mentally before you start to deal with it actually. On the other hand, a confident and optimistic thought pattern can modify or overcome the fact altogether.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter what is true. What matters is what you want to be true. Believe wholeheartedly, and it will come to pass.

This reminded me of a quote from Ivanka Trump’s self-help book, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, which is a descendant of Peale, with the family attending his church and being greatly influenced by his teaching. Ivanka wrote:

“Perception is more important than reality. If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true. This doesn’t mean you should be duplicitous or deceitful, but don’t go out of your way to correct a false assumption if it plays to your advantage.”

Motivational Downsizing and the Rise of Outplacement Firms

Barbara Ehrenreich suggests, “In the hands of employers, positive thinking has been transformed into something its nineteenth-century proponents probably never imagined—not an exhortation to get up and get going but a means of social control in the workplace, a goad to perform at ever-higher levels.”

The book also paved the way for “motivational downsizing”. Between 1981 and 2003, about 30 million full-time American workers lost their jobs due to corporate downsizings. Ehrenreich highlights how workplaces deliberately instil a positive outlook. Employers bring in motivational speakers and distribute free copies of self-help books. The 1998 mega–bestseller Who Moved My Cheese? was a big favourite for this, cleverly encouraging an uncomplaining response to layoffs.

Shifting Responsibility Onto The Individual

Companies were learning to shift responsibility from themselves to individuals. Outplacement firms were employed to groom laid-off workers, limit ill will, head off wrongful-termination suits, and protect against bad-mouthing by former employees.

The owner of such a firm said, without irony, that “Losing a job is a step forward in your life.” This double-speak casts redundancy as a growth experience. A self-retreat. A deserved time out. Something for which you should be grateful.

Ehrenreich recounts the story of an employee who was compelled to work with an outplacement firm after being laid off. He was advised not to discuss his job loss with anyone for a month.

He later recalled, “It was good advice. I was so bitter, I would have said things that would have been bad for me.”

This is a shrewd move that not only keeps potentially disgruntled employees quiet but also leads them to believe their greatest enemy is internal. In examples like this, the power of positive thinking really does pay dividends…for organisations.

Did The Power of Positive Thinking Cause a Global Financial Crash?

Ehrenreich writes that some of those who predicted the 2008 financial crash were warned to change their attitude or risk losing their job. Mike Gelband, who ran the real estate division of Lehman Brothers, expressed fears about what he believed to be a real estate bubble. He suggested to Lehman CEO Richard Fuld during his 2006 bonus review that they needed to rethink their business model. He was promptly fired. Two years later, Lehman went bankrupt.

Lehman Brothers went against their own best interests to maintain this strange, superstitious belief in the magic of positive thinking. This mindset encourages us to see the messenger as the problem rather than as a gateway to knowledge and solutions.

How Peale Cherry-Picked and Even Invented Bible Verses to Reinforce His Version of Reality

Peale cites Job 3:25 from the Bible, “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” The story of Job is that he is a righteous man who loses his children, health, and wealth when God permits Satan to test his faithfulness.

Peale takes liberties with his interpretation, writing, “If you fear something continuously, you tend to create conditions in your mind propitious to the development of that which you fear.” In other words, he blames Job’s attitude for the horrors inflicted on him by an external force (Satan).

He then shares another Bible verse, “That which I have greatly believed has come upon me,” which may leave some people scratching their heads, because he has made it up. “It does not make that statement in so many words,” he continues. “And yet again and again and still again, the Bible tells us that if we have faith, ‘nothing is impossible’.”

Peale paints fear as negative thinking and belief as positive thinking.

So let’s run with this logic and apply it to Mike Gelband at Lehman Brothers. Gelband feared the housing bubble. According to Peale’s superstitious model, Gelband’s fear itself would have been the problem, not the risky loans, deregulation, or greed.

That sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But it’s exactly what’s written in The Power of Positive Thinking.

What Other Crises Are We Sleepwalking Into?

This is a complete disregard for maturity, wisdom, and truth.

When we view it this way, the power of positive thinking undermines our capacity to think clearly and critically when it matters most. It silences reason, logic, and insight. That IS powerful.

How do you tend to define success? Is it an external outcome you pursue, or is it something personal you feel ‘close in’?

I’ve been preparing for our next set of Serenity Island Picnics. I’m considering how being more experimental might affect my understanding of success. I share a few of these observations in this short episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

The Return to Serenity Island combines structured resources with a guided creative journey, offering a space for more experimental thinkers to explore change, personal growth, and ambition without the pressure of performance or rigid goal-setting. It appeals to those who view life as a mysterious treasure island to explore rather than a checklist of predetermined items to tick off.

https://youtu.be/AFQlxKUNm60 What Does Close-In Success Feel Like?

I find more satisfaction in the process of writing and producing a song than in completing it. Hearing a song on the radio doesn’t give me a greater sense of success than the mini-breakthroughs and connecting the dots as it emerges.

However, I can downplay the importance of these close-in success moments. Absorbing outcome-oriented metrics can make it seem as though those don’t matter, and that true success lies in pursuing bigger goals.

In The Return to Serenity Island, we connect real-world areas with map regions to recognise micro-moments and small glimmers of ‘close-in success’ in everyday life.

Seeing Something Universal in Particular Situations

A big reason I keep making videos about The Let Them Saga is what it represents. The story got a hold of me, and I’ve been unable and unwilling to ignore it. It’s been a strange experience because it is a complete departure from what I normally do. But with an experimental approach to life, pursuits can be driven by an inner compass (values, beliefs, etc.), which can lead us in directions that may seem, on the surface, unusual.

In other words, we may connect the dots and see patterns, threaded together by those intrinsic motivations. For example, I’m drawn to the Let Them story because I can see elements of it as both a symptom of and a contributor to the greater challenges we are currently facing in the world.

On Serenity Island, we use this compass to help us assess and respond to opportunities, feelings, and thorns that catch our attention as they arise. This enables us to reorient to our own definition of success and feel more confident about the path we’re on, even if it doesn’t make obvious sense to others.

For me, I feel “close in success” when I know I am acting in sync with those deeper motivators, rather than in pursuit of a quick result or the perception of growth.

It Can Take Me a While to Understand Where Something Fits

I’m in awe of people who can grasp concepts quickly and understand how, why and where they fit. It seems to take unfamiliar ideas longer to snap into place for me. But when they do, it can feel like a mini-revelation. I love those aha moments.

One of my core priorities while developing The Return to Serenity Island and The Haven was the concept of seasonal return, rhythm and repetition. For many experimental people, this allows ideas to settle and dots to connect.

It’s through the familiarity of repetition that something may eventually land for us at the right time, when the conditions are right.

False Starts and The Perception of Failure

‘Close-in’ success can look like failure to onlookers.

On the experimental path, growth and progress often unfold in non-linear ways. They may appear as fits and starts. Trial, error, quitting, walking away, coming back, forgetting, remembering.

Popular conceptual mantras can shape our self-understanding. For example, we learn to value the ability to “always begin with the end in mind, and start with a clear understanding of your destination”. Productivity bros declare that “winners never quit and quitters never win”. Self-help influencers remind us that “the person who has a fixed purpose and backs it with the determination to see it through to the end is the one who succeeds”.

From this conceptual perspective, virtue lies in finishing what you start, even if it is no longer necessary, effective or appropriate. But for experimental people, it’s important to develop the ability to discern when it’s time to quit and how to let go sustainably.

Nothing is Truly Wasted

In an experimental life, nothing is wasted. Every venture yields something to carry forward. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. No, wait. That’s different.

In The Return to Serenity Island, we take time to acknowledge and appreciate our resourcefulness. We make peace with letting go and make space to focus on those sources of close-in satisfaction.

Many of us carry baggage about letting go, quitting, and changing our minds. It might have been drummed into us that stopping before the end is wasteful.

At its most extreme, an outcome-oriented framework holds that the end justifies the means. So long as you get the result, it doesn’t matter how you do it. It also holds that the end undermines the means. If things turn out unfavourably, the whole journey is seen as a waste of time.

When The End Justifies and Undermines The Means

I saw Stockport County (my team) lose to Carlisle on penalties at Wembley in the League Two playoff final in 2023.

After the match, as we walked away from the stadium, I said, “Well, that was a waste of a day.” I was joking, but part of me felt it too, because the result was disappointing. It clouded my perception of the day, especially in the immediate aftermath of that defeat.

But the day was otherwise great, full of enjoyable micro-moments.

I realise how quickly I can undermine the time I spend caring, crafting, and creating if I hand all the power to the destination. But on the flipside, I can see how easy it is to find more joy in life when I turn that on its head and give power to the joy of the ‘close-in’.

Satisfaction in small things comes from bringing real life to the landscapes we map in our imagination around Serenity Island.

How Does Close-In Success Feel To YOU?

If life were an island, where would you choose to hang out and explore, regardless of measurable results that may or may not follow?

What would you love to plant more of in your life? How do you want to respond to unexpected changes, opportunities, and feelings that arise? Why do the choices you make matter?

When experimental people build our lives on the foundations of questions like these, the growth we might otherwise try to force takes care of itself. When we view success up close, the path begins to unfold in unexpected, obvious, surprising, intuitive, gradual, and sudden ways.

Join us on Serenity Island to explore more. You can choose what you pay at checkout and get access to all the course materials and live events for the next 12 months.

It would be lovely to have you aboard. Head to serenityisland.me to find out more and grab your passport.

https://serenityisland.me/

Do you find that some of your most meaningful and important endeavours are accidental?

Tuula and I unexpectedly made two short horror films earlier this week. And it got me thinking again about differences between experimental and conceptual approaches to life.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore how, for many of us, the accidental discoveries and detours are not always unhelpful distractions or procrastination, but a vital part of what brings meaning to our lives. We will begin thinking about how to accept and embrace these natural elements of ourselves so we can work with them and they can work for us.

https://youtu.be/Ro2tqJ1zNRw Experimental vs. Conceptual

I’ve talked about this distinction in more depth elsewhere, based on the research of Galenson and Weinberg. But in short, conceptual types identify a specific goal and lay an efficient path towards it. Experimental types, on the other hand, find success along the way, in side quests, detours, and spontaneous urges that spark creative connection.

Accidental Side Quests and Skills

For those of us who lean more in the experimental direction, successes are often experienced as a feeling when a side-quest trail, which might look to outside observers like a distraction, sparks a creative connection. Not because we’ve discovered some grand purpose or the thing we were meant to do with our life, but because it brings a sense of integrity to the moment we’re in.

We might then dwell in that place for a while, deepening our skills and exploring further ideas, or it might be a short-lived pit stop. But the key is that these side quests give us new insights, dots to connect with previous knowledge and experience, and tools that we carry with us.

I recognised this in how quickly I can turn a funny little urge or idea into a finished video that captures the essence of the energy sloshing around. I am not a video editor by trade, but I’ve become highly competent and quick, picking up necessary resources along the way.

Stumbling Into Meaningful Endeavours

It’s interesting to consider whether, for experimental types, learning and development may often arise more from an existing context than from choosing something outside it. A conceptual type might see a surfer and be inspired to learn to surf. An experimental type might find themselves learning to surf because the opportunity was presented somehow. You’ll recognise this if you say, “I just sort of ended up there” or “I stumbled into it. I fell down a rabbit hole and couldn’t let go of what I found.”

This was my story with podcasting. I started my first podcast in 2010, quite by accident. I stumbled on a podcast plugin for my blog and started playing around. It emerged out of curiosity and without a grand launch.

Preparing For Unexpected Detours

I want to emphasise that the experimental approach isn’t simply about drifting from one thing to another after getting bored. We can spend years on the same thing. Rather, it’s about how we relate to those things we find and, most important, to the possibilities and potentials within the fields we play on.

For experimental people, it can be difficult to organise life in anticipation of the accidental detours and side quests we can be sure are coming, because by definition we don’t know what they will look like. That’s part of the deal. It’s why traditional goal setting and personal development tools can feel like a bad fit for us. They start with the end in mind. Knowing where you want to go so you don’t end up elsewhere. But squeezing ourselves into conceptual models is soul-destroying.

A Place for Your Experimental Curiosities

If this resonates with you, you might be interested in The Return To Serenity Island. It is a guided experience I created for experimental people who want a sense of direction without rigid goal setting. Part course and part choose your own adventure on a treasure island, it is designed to honour the intuitive, curious, accidental orientation that brings us energy and meaning. You can find out more about our coming picnic sessions at serenityisland.me.

Four Things I Learned from Two Horror Films

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A post shared by Andy Mort | The Gentle Rebel (@gentlerebelhaven)

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A post shared by Andy Mort | The Gentle Rebel (@gentlerebelhaven)

1. Recognising the Spontaneous Urge

We were in the kitchen. I scared Tuula by just appearing when her back was turned. It made me think of those scenes with fridge doors in horror movies, when the door obscures what could be lurking behind it. I suddenly had the urge to make a video. Just because. It would be funny.

Then another idea landed. A sequel. A haunted sauna spoon. I love that spontaneous urge. Sometimes an internal story emerges to talk you out of it. “You’re wasting time. You’re being childish.” But I have very fond memories from saying yes to the spontaneous urge, especially when it brings others along.

2. Recognising What is Driving Me

When I published those short films on Instagram, it was nice to see people hit the Like button. Not because I needed validation, but because it was nice to see people “get it”. They could understand and feel the energy that created it.

3. Recognising the Rebellious Urge

I’ve had YouTube comments saying, “Comb your hair” and “clean up your background.” I take a strange pleasure in knowing that something I don’t care about highlights an irrational reaction in someone else. I don’t live a neatly curated life. It’s a complete hodgepodge. There’s a recklessness in that which feels freeing.

4. Recognising When Enough is Enough

Knowing when to quit and move to another trail is part of the experimental experience. We had more ideas for horror movies, but after the second one, it felt like a third would be forcing it. The moment was done. In a good way. We honoured it and let it go. The artefacts it provided will remain. As will the memory.

https://serenityisland.me/

With increasing regularity, I see posts on social media criticising coaching as a pyramid scheme or defending it against such accusations. As people tend to do, they paint a nuanced field with a very broad brush, whichever side they support.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I discuss a recent argument I came across. It illustrates how the term ‘coaching’ is understood and used in two distinct ways.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the ‘coaches teaching coaches to coach is a pyramid scheme’ situation. It’s literally not… I want to be coached on my business by a coach. Who else would I want to learn this from?!”

https://youtu.be/b86vKrEfSUY A Misunderstanding?

The framing of that post somewhat mischaracterises the argument it’s pushing back against. The issue isn’t “coaches teaching coaches to coach.” I mean, who better to become a teacher than the person who knows how to do the thing they are teaching? I’ve not seen anyone seriously complaining about that. Rather, when people refer to coaches coaching coaches to coach more coaches to become coaches, they are describing something different.

Having gone through an 18-month ICF-affiliated training programme myself, I often watch parts of the industry with my head in my hands. Not least because it is still unregulated and anyone can call themselves a coach. So, it’s a world I have a love/hate relationship with. This episode hopefully demonstrates why I am sticking around (for now). But also why I have great concern about the way things are heading. And I would suggest it’s incumbent on ethical coaches to take the accusations seriously and help people get a sense of these distinctions.

When Coaching is Not a Pyramid Scheme

Of course, it’s not a pyramid if a less experienced coach goes to a more experienced one for coaching.

Someone builds experience over time. Another coach comes to them to address or develop something specific within their business or practice. Even if that coach specialises in working with coaches, those coaches will have their own ways of working, usually with clients across a range of situations. For example, coaches work with people in sport, business, the arts, career development, etc.

This is how knowledge and skills spread within a field. Very normal. Coaching can be really valuable as a structured partnership that helps the client make progress on their terms. Not by telling them what to do, but by helping them identify their desired outcome. And then asking questions to help them get clear on the steps they want to take as well as preparing for potential obstacles they might anticipate along the way.

When Coaching DOES Look Like a Pyramid Scheme

What, then, is this pyramid of coaches coaching coaches to coach coaches? How is it different?

Sixteen years ago, when I started my blog and podcast, I remember many online entrepreneurs giving away e-books and selling courses to teach people to build a dream lifestyle business. They dangled freedom from employment and four-hour workweeks, and shot their videos on beaches and in mountain-side cabins, to attract an audience to their webinars. Like Influencer Culture today, they would promise an easy-to-follow blueprint to guarantee followers the same success.

These individuals taught others how to create and sell digital products that taught people how to create and sell digital products that taught…yes, you get the point. There was no meaningful substance anywhere in the chain. The money made came from aspirational marketing that shaped perceptions, sold appealing promises, and used smoke and mirrors to persuade people it was a quick route to material wealth.

This is exactly what we have witnessed happen in corners of the online coaching world. It targets individuals, encouraging them to believe that becoming a coach is a quick route to financial prosperity or to escaping material insecurity. They are sold a blueprint for convincing others of the potential wealth of becoming a coach who shares the same process with them, so on and so forth until the supply of potential clients runs dry.

Coaching Is Never a One Size Fits All Solution

Even for coaches who find their own niche, you can tell when this sort of pyramid model is at work because they coach people to become coaches. Treating every problem with the same solution. A “relationship coach” may end up with many clients becoming coaches themselves. A “career coach” has a disproportionate number of people pivoting to follow in their footsteps in building a coaching business rather than being coached to identify and follow their own path.

It concerns me when I see a coach describing how their clients have succeeded in the same ways they did. That is a dereliction of what I see as the purpose of coaching: to support each individual in defining success on their own terms and navigating their unique path towards it.

Identifying Pyramid Schemes in the Coaching World

How can we assess whether a coaching environment is genuine and meets our needs or those it supports? And how can we identify sources of exploitation and extraction in the coaching industry?

Does it Create Dependency?

In a healthy structure, the value is evident in the client’s life. They see shifts in the area they worked with a coach to address. For example, development of leadership skills, a clear path for their planned career pivot, or forward momentum with a personal project etc.

In a pyramid structure, the value is cyclical. Success is often based on copying and reusing the coach’s business model and tools. Especially if the original coach earns affiliate commissions from their client’s future business, which frequently happens when they’ve been sold a specific model or framework to build their business around.

It’s a big red flag if your coaching credentials rely on your continuous connection to the coach (such as paying for rights, licences, etc.), and the certification lacks legitimacy outside the bubble where you trained.

Does it Restrict Outcomes and Definitions?

Another red flag is a testimonial list where every client looks like a carbon copy of the coach. Solid and ethical coaching acts as a prism, refracting unique objectives into results as diverse as the number of individuals being coached. A pyramid acts as a mould, pressing everyone into the same shape.

Does It Only Have One Solution?

Ethical coaching draws on a range of experiences and diverse training sources, enabling the coach to exercise initiative and treat every client according to their unique needs. Pyramid structures depend on insularity and a one-size-fits-all approach. If the coach’s sole credential is their success in producing more coaches in their own image, it raises serious concerns.

Over to You

I’d be interested to hear how this has shown up in your experience. Send me a message or leave a comment.

Join me on Saturday April 4th 2026 for a mini-zine making workshop around this theme of Expressing Your True Colours.

What stops people expressing themselves authentically?

This question has been on my mind over the past couple of weeks. I collected responses from a poll asking which statement feels most accurate to people at the moment. You might have seen it if you are subscribed to my mailing list or YouTube.

Two statements resonated with many people. They are related. “I want to discover and clarify my own true colours.” And “I want to feel more confident expressing my true colours.” When I talk about true colours here, I mean knowing, being, and expressing ourselves in genuine, authentic, and natural ways. These aspects of ourselves may get dulled, toned down, or lost for a range of reasons.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore a few potential reasons we might hold back from expressing who we are. Let me know what I’ve missed!

It is a topic that comes up a lot in my work with highly sensitive people. Here are the HSP Colour Swatches I mentioned in the episode.

https://youtu.be/GKRPwTRaBbg Tiredness

The first answer that came to mind was tiredness. You might be exhausted from caring responsibilities, workload, or the chronic strain of functioning in a dysfunctional society. If your energy is sapped, you are running on fumes and you do whatever it takes just get through the day. There is not much left for “self-actualising”.

This is obvious among those with caring responsibilities and chronic health conditions. But it is also evident among those burdened by productivity culture and the pressures to survive in an unstable economy. People might seem to be expressing themselves online, but beneath the surface is sometimes a drained, colourless exhaustion.

Money

Money does weird things to us. It might lead us to make choices that run counter to who we are. It corrupts our true colours, especially in a world of scarcity. Not having enough can be the difference between health and illness, life and death. Money can also make people less creative. They seek familiar models and methods to guarantee outcomes. That is a distinct dulling of our personal creative spirit.

Keeping the Peace

You might sacrifice your own needs, preferences, and dreams. The potential fallout of advocating for yourself does not feel worth it. I hear a lot of highly sensitive people lament this, especially if they live with those we might consider narcissistic energy vampires. The short-term relief of making yourself small can outweigh the prospect of setting boundaries around your own desires and opinions.

External Authority

It is tempting to focus on personal psychology. As if the only thing stopping us is ourselves. This self-help trope is not true. In repressive cultures, certain lifestyles, identities, and groups are prohibited from freely existing. It can be dangerous to express yourself. Regimes and authorities prevent people from living out their true colours.

Fear of Rejection

This fear may come from an internal narrative, or it might come from a real threat of being judged, excluded, or ostracised. This is a fundamental point of safety in human survival. When we experience it, we naturally make ourselves smaller.

We also see people exclude themselves. They fear they are too much for others. But rather than dulling their colours in a social context, they withdraw them. They keep themselves to themselves. This can come from sound instincts or learned patterns from earlier in life.

Fear of Visibility

We might resist showing parts of ourselves because we do not want eyes on us. Not everyone wants to be the centre of attention. This is a big one for me. I find it uncomfortable to have the spotlight shone on me. So even if I have the urge to get up and dance, which sometimes I do, the self-consciousness usually overrides it.

But the fear can extend beyond embarrassment. There is scrutiny, judgement, envy, and the loss of anonymity. These things might make expressing yourself feel unsafe. What we would feel visible doing in one place is a completely normal expectation in another.

Having the Wrong People Around Us

We might not feel welcome. Maybe people are bored or dismissive of our interests. Or we have different tastes. This leads us to neglect those parts of us that do not have an outlet.

I have seen this a lot with communities of fans. The thing around which fans gather acts as a conduit for self-expression. The community provides a collective where it is safe to geek out without being dismissed as obsessive.

On that note, some environments allow a person’s true colours to come through. This can surprise those who know them best. A child who keeps parts of themselves hidden finds a place where they feel free. The family might think they are acting out of character.

The Pressure of Finding Our “True Self”

Human existence is messy. It is full of contradictions. Who we are is built up over a lifetime of experiences and decisions. If we believe there is a graspable essential self lurking within, we can get caught in fear of getting it wrong or never finding it.

We latch onto performative identities, try on costumes, and label ourselves into categories, hoping to stumble on who we ‘truly’ are. This takes us further away from feeling at home in ourselves.

Internalised Voices

Inner criticism hits hardest in those raw zones of authenticity. These are the places where our true colours are felt, but the exposure is vulnerable. The best music producers I have worked with can identify those raw depths. They are the parts we want to hide. And they are also the parts that hold the magic.

It is hard to turn up the volume on that if we are working alone. It feels so vulnerable. Maybe it was made raw by a critical voice in the past. This voice puts the brakes on self-expression, seeking safe routes. Over time, without voices that instil confidence in our unique nobbly bits, we may lose touch with ourselves. We piece together a self-concept from approved bricks borrowed from the world around us.

Not Enough Time and Space

It takes time to warm up and feel safe to reveal ourselves. That is normal. But in a world that demands quick first impressions, we are not afforded much time. So we may prioritise perception over integrity. We perform the colours we need people to see.

If you have attended a networking event, you may need a shower afterwards to wash away the residue from slippery encounters that lacked honest depth. At least, that’s been my experience at times. If we are immersed in that unnatural rhythm for long enough, we start to reflect its colours. We lose sight of ourselves.

A Workshop to Explore Your True Colours

I am hosting a workshop on Saturday, 4th April 2026. We will think about how to understand and express our true colours by creating mini-zines. I use them to generate ideas, work through challenges, and communicate information (like the HSP Owner’s Guide).

No skills or experience necessary.

It is a chance to think about the things that matter to you. The things you wish others cared about too. We will explore whether and how it might be possible to express your true colours in places where you currently feel unable to.

There is no pressure to share what you create with anyone else. Join me and a friendly group of people who get it. Find out more at the-haven.co/TrueColoursWorkshop.

https://the-haven.co/event/left-on-the-bench-mini-zine-making-worshop/

The Power of Positive Thinking promised liberation from feelings of inferiority and self-doubt. But did it simply deliver us a new set of demands and anxieties to adhere to?

We often consider positive thinking as a beneficial mindset that enhances performance in sports and other activities. However, it is more than just a description of a possible behaviour. It is also the title of a 1952 book by Norman Vincent Peale. The Power of Positive Thinking builds on the New Thought movement that emerged in the 1800s. It had been a response to the effects of Calvinistic Christianity on the health and well-being of Puritanical America.

Donald Trump attended Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church as a child. He admired Peale’s robust, businesslike approach to Christianity. The engaging sermons lent a sense of cosmic legitimacy to his family’s brand of hyper-individualistic capitalism.

https://youtu.be/hpqbMQj7bEQ The Next Stop on the Magical Thinking Tour

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is part of my meandering journey exploring the history of self-help. The Power of Positive Thinking is a valuable piece of the larger puzzle. It provides a clear context for the foundational role of American Christianity in a multi-billion-dollar industry.

The book faced criticism when it was published. Leaders in the Methodist church described Peale’s followers as a cult that had ceased worshipping Christ and started worshipping success. Reinhold Niebuhr, author of the Serenity Prayer, said Peale’s teachings “corrupted” the Christian gospel. He argued Peale’s message was harmful to people. On the one hand, making them feel good, while on the other hand, stopping them from seeing and confronting the real issues at the heart of their struggles.

In this episode, I refer to Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2009 book, Brightsided. Ehrenreich did an excellent job contextualising the book and outlining the history of Positive Thinking and its foundations in New Thought.

The Calvinist Inheritance

Positive thinking emerged from New Thought. This movement was in part a reaction to the dominance of Puritanical Calvinism in the formation of the United States. Predestination meant followers were subjected to a socially enforced depression. This centred on the limited number of seats in Heaven, which have already been allocated to those God had elected.

This mindset could be said to have helped the Puritans survive the harsh conditions of the New World. At the same time, they struggled to endure the psychological demands of their own religious beliefs. The doctrine’s focus on sin, election, and damnation fostered chronic anxiety about one’s salvation, often involving severe inner terror and accompanying physical ailments.

The Arrival of New Thought

New Thought emerged as a response to religious melancholy, physical symptoms of despair, and the fear of eternal damnation. It proposed a new perspective on illness, viewing it as a disruption in the otherwise perfect and benevolent Mind that links all things in the universe. Although New Thought approaches to healing were ineffective against the infectious diseases devastating America at the time, they appeared to have a positive effect on those suffering from neurosthenia caused by religious depression.

Mary Baker Eddy was one of Phineas Quimby’s patients. After Quimby’s death, Eddy founded Christian Science, transforming New Thought into an established religion. She taught that there is no material world, only Thought, Mind, Spirit, Goodness, Love, or, “Supply.” Illness and struggle are, therefore, temporary delusions of the mind rather than real material conditions.

New Thought had cured the ailment of Calvinism and the “morbidness” linked to “the old hell-fire theology.” A new era was born, in which people were encouraged to utilise the universe as an answer to prayer and a grantor of wishes.

What Remained

But the transition from Calvinism to New Thought wasn’t clean. Ehrenreich suggests that Positive Thinking has retained some of Calvinism’s more harmful traits. Or perhaps we have reverted to it. There is a harsh, judgmental attitude that echoes the old religion’s condemnation of sin. Our preoccupation with productivity, hustle, self-optimisation, and personal performance carries more than a hint of the Calvinistic framework that historically tormented its adherents.

This shift involves transforming a judgmental God from an external entity into an internal one, residing within us as part of ourselves. It fosters a constant sense of needing to do more to be worthy or valued. It is always striving to find an indefinable sense of well-being by improving, optimising, and controlling, as it micromanages increasingly smaller details of life, in the hope of achieving freedom, happiness, and salvation or healing.

Splitting Ourselves in Two

Positive Thinking splits us into two: a self to work on, and a self to do the work. We’ve all seen the ‘rules,’ worksheets, self-evaluation forms, and exercises offered in the positive-thinking literature. And our language reflects the internal division between the one who wants to change and the one who refuses to obey the rules.

Peale identified the greatest illness of the twentieth century as the “inferiority complex.” With this, the enemy is within. It is us. Or at least, our thoughts. We modify ourselves through monitoring and correction until we reach conditioned automation. Unfortunately for Peale, he observed that reprogramming needs to be repeated frequently because humans tend to revert to negative thinking rather than maintain a positive mindset. This, however, works in favour of the self-help industry, which has endured for so long with many nearly identical books and programmes that repackage the same ideas with new metaphors and promises. When we believe an unsolvable problem can be solved, those promising to solve it have themselves a magic money tree.

The Proliferation of The Self-Help Industry

Norman Vincent Peale recognised the potential of Positive Thinking in corporate America. With an ever-expanding white-collar workforce, he observed that the most crucial aspect was the work done on oneself to be more acceptable and likeable to employers, clients, coworkers, and potential customers.

Positive thinking was not merely a comfort for the anxious or a remedy for psychosomatic distress. It became a societal obligation, managed and mediated with great control. And, as we will see in the next part, this began to influence the psychological well-being of those in societies where the self-help and personal development industry was booming.

We will also examine how Peale instrumentalised Christianity as a tool for personal ambition and material success.

If you find these self-help explorations interesting and would like to chat about them with me and others, join us in The Haven. Meet other people working through their relationship with this stuff and to chat about ways we might move beyond some of the hooks and habits that trap us.

https://the-haven.co/register/

If you’ve looked up stuff about the trait of high sensitivity online, you’ve probably been confronted by a sea of pastel colours and a hundred shades of beige. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those things. If that’s your bag, by all means fill it up. But other preferences are available, and I know a bunch of HSPs who keep their true colours hidden for fear of standing out too much.

https://youtu.be/igNR0IRWmeY A Sensitive Love of Horror Movies

I once wrote a post about my love for horror movies. Not the shock and gore types, but classic horror. The stuff that twists my melon, unsettles my relationship with reality, and leaves me thinking and trembling about it long after the credits roll. I fully appreciate that not everyone shares this particular proclivity, and that’s fine; I don’t expect them to. But I received a reply to that post from someone for whom this meant I couldn’t possibly be highly sensitive. And they really couldn’t grasp my suggestion that it is the very traits that come from my high sensitivity that spark my love of dark and mystery-filled art.

I’ve never been particularly attached to the highly sensitive label. Whether or not I fit into the club is not a concern because I’ve never seen it that way. But I found it interesting that they couldn’t understand what I was saying. I see a strong link because my sensitivity (deep processing and absorbing subtle details) is the fuel for my engagement with those depths. I love dwelling in mystery, especially the kind that doesn’t have a simplistic reveal or explanation.

Darkness and Definition

My friend Tuula Ahde creates the most stunning macro ice photographs. They’re dark and mysterious. Every observer gives a different meaning to the colours and shapes within the images. Faces, landscapes, memories, dreams. You notice the sounds, stories, and hidden worlds within the ice. I know that Tuula’s sensitivity underpins and infuses her photos, shaping how she perceives the world and expresses her unique creative voice. Yet, her work contrasts with the subjects and colours typically associated with a creative HSP.

Raven by Tuula Ahde – this became the cover image for my single, Sleep it Off

I like music without a prescription for understanding it, and TV shows that avoid neatly tying every thread together. While part of me craves the pleasure of neat conclusions, clear interpretations, and full explanations of who the killer was and how the trick was done, the rest of me knows it’s far more enjoyable to dwell in the shifting landscapes of ambiguity beyond good and evil, conspiracies, and sinister motives. Towards something more chaotic. More complex and confusing. Dare I say, more human! An incomplete and contradictory picture filled with false-starts, miss-steps, and about-turns.

The tendency to hold and enjoy those elements reflects my personal experience of sensitivity. And I know I’m not alone. I suspect it is this pull towards life’s more complex realms that leaves me feeling empty when I see high sensitivity portrayed through pastel colours and a hundred shades of beige. The kind found in therapeutic spaces, at least many of those I’ve encountered. Where art on the walls is soft and pale, lacking backbone, as if they are afraid to speak. I rarely find sanctuary in these colours. Instead, I find fog, where there’s no edge or hook to hang my hat. Like the politeness and civility that mask the truth.

The Brightness of Fog

This pale pastel fog appears bright, yet it is opaque. It conceals rather than reveals, compressing itself around the world instead of adding dynamism and depth. When you shine a light into it, the light gets reflected back. It sees nothing.

Shining a light into the darkness reveals what lurks within it. Sometimes those things are hard to distinguish at first, but as our eyes adapt, we can see all sorts of things. A hundred shades of beige seem unassuming and bright, but they feel soulless and shallow. Lacking a defined edge. And if you’ve ever stood on a mountain in fog, you’ll know that brightness doesn’t equate to clarity. The edge could be just one step away or a hundred.

Working In Funeralcare

I noticed something similar when I worked in the funeral industry. Many people avoid discussing death, which is quite understandable. But not talking about something doesn’t make it disappear. I believe my sensitivity attracted me to that world. Not because I had a peculiar fascination with it, but because of the truth in it, which is often avoided, hidden, and whitewashed by euphemisms and shades of beige. We obscure the inevitable with platitudes and avoidance. Yet, there is creative energy to explore and harness in those realities we must face and accept, even as we resist and resent them.

When I hear people talk about keeping things positive or avoiding negativity, I am always interested to know what they mean. There are those who would rather an inoffensive pastel painting of a sunrise or idyllic pastoral nature-scape. But there is a risk of pacification and an inaccurate representation of sensitivity as something fragile and easily broken. Rather than a way of experiencing the world in all its magnificent and mysterious depth.

I love rich mahogany desks contrasted with dark green lamps and the orange flicker of candlelight. The shapes in shadows, whispers on the wind, and the scars, stains, and blemishes that hold stories. I like things that turn out to be more than they seem and invitations to explore. I like wondering about everything that happened here and wandering about on faded footprints. And I like the kind of surprises that take me along the trails, corridors, and tunnels that can’t be seen from the road.

How about you?

https://the-haven.co/journal-circle

This is Part 3 of a short series where I’m sharing how I’ve been using mini zines to generate ideas, make connections, and get accidentally creative in unexpected ways.

In this post, I’ll take you through two exercises focused on making connections and using observations to better understand your relationship with the areas of life, challenges, and decisions on your mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsbkFmEgs14 Exercise One: Word Association to Make Connections

The core purpose here is playful exploration. This is about loosening the grip of overthinking and perfectionism and seeing how ideas might link up.

Start by folding and cutting a mini zine from a single piece of A4 paper. (If you need guidance, refer back to the first part of this series or click below.)

Pick a word to begin. I used sensitivity as an example, but it can be anything. Write it on the first page, then move through the zine using simple word association with one word leading to the next until each page contains a word.

Once each page has a word, you can play with them…

1. Use Each Word for Self-Reflection

Go through each panel and ask:

If this word relates to something in my life right now, what could it be pointing to?

2. Expand Each Word Outwards

Build around each word. Interpret it from different angles:

• How do we use this word?
• What does it remind you of?
• What is its opposite?

Fill the page with associated words and doodles.

3. Combine Words (Jazz Fusion Style)

Pair words from different pages. For example, combine 1 and 9, 2 and 10, 3 and 11, and so on.

Then explore what each combination brings up. You might end up with things like:

• Sensitivity profit
• Microphone tax
• Sing pressure
• Talent show cooker

Some will feel absurd. Some will spark something unexpectedly useful. There’s an abundance of combinations. (Also good if you’re looking for a band name.)

You can create another mini zine and dedicate a page to each combination.

You don’t have to choose just one way of playing. Try one, or all of them. The aim is to make connections you wouldn’t have made through deliberate logic alone.

Exercise Two: Using Objects as Metaphors to Make Connections

This second exercise helps you explore your relationship with a specific area of life or situation.

We’ll keep this one simple and use just one side of the zine.

Step 1: Choose Your Objects

Pick seven ordinary objects from around you. Don’t overthink it. It helps if you can place them in front of you.

Step 2: Choose an Area to Explore

Select an area you want to understand more clearly. For example:

• My health
• My creativity
• My work

Or something more specific, like a decision you need to make or a challenge you’re navigating.

Write the topic on the front.

Step 3: Draw and Reflect

On the next seven pages, draw one object per page. As you draw, consider:

• What is it used for?
• How does it help?
• What features does it have?
• How does it feel, smell, or look?

Then go back through and ask:

If this object were a metaphor for my creativity (or whatever topic you chose), what would it show?

This is where you start to connect the physical items with your internal landscape and the situation you’re exploring.

Deepening the Connections

Once you’ve done all seven objects, reflect:

• What themes repeat across multiple objects?
• If I were to focus on one area first, what am I drawn to?

One approach I love is adding these objects to a visual map. I treat each one as a region in a larger territory and play with the links between them. This creates a visual representation of where I am in relation to my challenges, desires, and options.

The purpose isn’t to force answers. It’s to see your position more clearly so you can navigate it more meaningfully.

There are no hard rules here. Follow your intuition. Let your imagination carry you. The point is to make connections that help you see where your strengths, resources, and choices fit with the bigger picture.

If you try either of these exercises, I’d love to hear how you get on. Send me a message here.

https://the-haven.co/register/

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore something that happened yesterday. I had another episode planned for this week, but I put it on the shelf for now because I’ve been drawn into a fascinating situation that did the rounds after the freestyle skier Eileen Gu was asked, by a reporter after competing at the winter Olympics, what she described as a ridiculous question.

The whole thing struck me as reassuringly messy and human.

The reporter wanted to know if she considered the two silver medals she had won as two silvers gained or two golds lost. Within hours, the internet had blown up. People were calling this reporter misogynistic and celebrating Gu’s response, describing it as owning him after such a stupid comment.

https://youtu.be/npRgyn19FvA What Happened?

Eileen Gu had just competed in her second freestyle skiing event of the Winter Olympics Milano Cortina 2026. She won two silver medals. The reporter from Agence France-Presse asked whether she viewed those medals as two silvers gained or two golds lost. Gu responded by saying she thought that was a ridiculous perspective to take. She spoke about all her achievements and the pride she takes in being the most decorated female freeskier in history, doing things that have never been done before. She previously won two gold medals and a silver medal in the same events at Beijing 2022.

A Standard Question

The clip has split opinions. But whether or not you think it’s a bad question, it is familiar to those who follow sports coverage. It’s not a surprising question to ask an odds-on favourite, especially if they have won previous competitions.

Studies have shown that silver medalists often feel more disappointment soon after an event than bronze medalists, focusing on what they could have won rather than what they almost didn’t win. There is something interesting in that. Something worth exploring if you want to understand the psychology of elite competition. The question picks up on the contrast between what someone feels going into an event and how they feel about the outcome.

Understanding Perspective is Misread as Having a Dig

In football here in the UK, after a team draws a league game, they are often asked if they feel like it was one point gained or two points dropped. It depends on expectations. It depends on whether they felt they ought to win it or whether they would have been happy to take something from the game. This is never considered a ridiculous or insensitive question. It is understood as what it is, which is a curious probe into the team’s or player’s mindset and perspective. It’s an invitation to reflect on performance against expectations and share that with listeners to provide greater context for the result.

The question is worded as, “Do you see it as this or that?” It invited Eileen Gu to share her perspective. He did not state his opinion. He asked how she saw it. But Gu seemed to interpret this question as his perspective (criticism, judgement, etc.) and took exception to it.

Why did it land in The Wrong Way?

This might have been a matter of timing. A post-event press conference might feel like the wrong moment for philosophical reflection, which is what this question invites. In the rawness of the moment, having just competed, having just finished second when you had hoped for first, the last thing you might want is someone asking you to frame your feelings. Maybe in time, there would be an opportunity to think about how it felt to come second on this occasion. But in that moment, the question lands differently, perhaps feeling like a criticism.

What we might be seeing in Gu is a projection of disappointment, aimed at the perspective she reads into this question. An external representation of an inner voice. It would be understandable if she were disappointed. She has won gold before. She knows what that feels like. And now she has two silver medals. It is a vulnerable thing to admit publicly, and anyway, why should she? She doesn’t owe anyone an answer to that question.

Misunderstanding the Culture of a Sport

There is another layer here. Like most sports, freestyle skiing has its own culture. It is a discipline where being the odds-on favourite does not guarantee anything. The athletes understand that many factors determine their fortunes when they are out there competing. There seems to be a wonderful sense of camaraderie among them. Great appreciation for the work they all put in, the tricks they attempt, and the fact that whoever wins deserves it on the night. A question framed entirely around winning and losing might feel ignorant of the spirit and values tied to a sport’s culture. It might feel like an outsider imposing a mainstream sports narrative on something more nuanced.

Last week, Ilia Malinin had a huge amount of expectation heaped on his shoulders as he competed in the men’s figure skating. The pressure was a lot to handle. He made mistakes. The commentators painted a picture that assumed skating for gold was a formality, that he would take it no matter what. So when he finished eighth, it was a shock. If he had finished second, you could fully imagine exactly the same question being asked of him. It would make sense because of the context.

We project a lot of expectations and assumptions onto sports stars. But we don’t know what success means to them at a particular moment in their journey. As such, we don’t know whether they are disappointed or delighted when they finish in a particular position. We can’t know unless we ask. There are different ways to do so. This is a lesson that applies to so many areas of life.

The Internet’s Role

And this is also where social media comes into play. Because the clip lacked context, it was designed to spread as a rage-baiting weapon. Within hours, the reporter had been transformed into a villain. People used some rather unpleasant, even violent, rhetoric to describe him. A huge number of assumptions and projections were layered onto the messages accompanying the clip.

There is still a great deal of misogyny and sexism in sport, as in everyday life. The way people talk about women at all levels and across many roles is steeped in it. So when we see a situation like this framed in that way, it can undermine efforts to change this landscape. If a standard question asked of countless athletes over countless years suddenly becomes proof of something sinister, the word loses its power. The charge becomes a rhetorical cudgel that can be dismissed and diluted by those who want us to believe it doesn’t exist.

I don’t know anything about the reporter and his views. But if we take the clip as a standalone artefact (which is all we have) and pick the bones out of it, there’s nothing to support the charge of misogyny. If Gu were a man, the question would make sense. If the reporter were a woman, it would still be asked whether the athlete was male or female.

Many describe the question as inane and stupid, which is a different point altogether. Others say it is fair and interesting. Judgement is in the eye of the beholder. If you want it to be terrible, it can be. If you want it to be good, it can be.

The words are the same. The meaning changes depending on who is listening. And I think that is one of the main points here.

A Reassuringly Human Response

What I see in Gu’s response is reassuringly human. There is an air of defensiveness, with the inner voice of disappointment attaching itself to a target. The reporter became that for her as he asked a question that was the wrong thing to say at that time. Or maybe it was the perfect thing because it gave her an object toward which she could direct some cathartic scorn.

This is yet another example of the internet turning a natural human exchange into a battle. This weird age we live in of competitive conversations. It has been framed pretty carelessly and somewhat recklessly into a polarising story.

The real story that underpins it is about what we expect from public figures and how social media strips context from situations and amplifies outrage. We see the impact of the pressure to perform, not just on the slope, on the field, on the court, but in front of the press, in front of the media. And then to become some kind of symbolic figure for the way everybody has interpreted your response in that setting.

Most of all, it is about how we listen. It is about what we hear. It is about what we bring to a twenty-second clip. What we project onto it, what we are subconsciously looking for, and the impact of being braced to hear certain things in certain ways.

https://the-haven.co/register/

Here is a follow-up to my previous video, in which I explored how I use foldable mini-zines to generate creative ideas. This time, I share two specific approaches I’ve found helpful for brainstorming and expanding ideas.

The first is about expanding ideas in playful, often surprising ways. The second focuses on generating questions for personal inquiry, which I use to better understand and navigate challenges, decisions, and obstacles that leave me feeling stuck.

Whether you want a creative way to spend a few minutes, free up your thinking, or shake some stagnation out of a project, these practices are simple and adaptable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H1lAByXzJU Exercise One: Expanding Ideas From the Inside Out

This first exercise begins with a single prompt. The aim is to write one associated thought on each panel of a folded mini-zine. If you need instructions on how to fold and cut the mini-zine, watch the first video.

For my example, I’m using our current Haven theme, Unfinished Maps. You can use any topic at all. If you’d like to keep it light, just pick something in the room that catches your attention.

A standard mini-zine has 15 inside panels (not including the cover), leaving plenty of space to think literally, laterally, humorously, absurdly, or tenuously.

Phase One: Generate

Set a timer. Five minutes works well for me. It keeps me from overthinking while giving enough time to fill each panel. The aim is to let your first thoughts hit the paper without editing.

Write down whatever comes to mind, however surprising or unrelated it may seem. You might notice memories, old stories, or long-forgotten ideas resurfacing. Pay attention to how words sound. Is there a pun to be played with? Or an alternative spelling?

Phase Two: Expand

Once every panel has something on it, spend a few minutes building on each idea. I usually give 3–5 minutes per panel. Stay focused on the single idea in front of you rather than how it connects to the original theme. Let your mind make associations and see where they lead.

Phase Three: Bring It Home

If it feels useful, finish by reflecting. Hold each panel up against your original prompt and ask:

What stands out?

Are there patterns emerging?

Which threads feel alive?

What might be worth carrying forward?

You’re not forcing conclusions. You’re simply noticing what has energy.

That’s it.

Here’s what came out for me…

Exercise Two: Brainstorming Questions for Personal Inquiry

The second exercise aims to help with brainstorming questions for personal inquiry. It’s especially helpful when you want to open up a line of questioning around something specific: for example, a decision, a challenge, or an area you want to explore more intentionally.

Questions are great for widening our perspective. They help us see familiar terrain from new angles.

My example prompt for this one is: I’ve Lost My Momentum.

As before, I fold a blank A4 sheet into a mini-zine and write the topic on the front.

This time, instead of filling each panel with ideas, I fill them with questions. I spend around 10–15 minutes generating one question per panel. These are questions I would genuinely love answers to.

Here’s what I came up with…

I enjoy this approach because it gives me up to two weeks of journal prompts on a single theme. After writing the questions, I usually refine them slightly so they feel open, clear, and relevant.

You can respond in whatever format suits you. I tend to bring one question into my morning journaling practice and see where it leads. It often feels like turning on a tap: insights connect, and new perspectives emerge naturally.

Play, Experiment, and Adapt

These exercises are shared as inspiration, not rigid instruction. They are methods I’ve found effective for expanding ideas and deepening personal inquiry, and I encourage you to adapt them to your own rhythms and preferences.

Notice what works and what doesn’t. Adjust the timing. Change the prompts. Make it more visual, more absurd, more structured: whatever suits you.

These are playful, exploratory processes. They aren’t outcome-driven or designed to guarantee a specific result. Often, the most valuable insights arrive as by-products: unexpected connections that emerge when given enough space.

https://the-haven.co/zine

“How do you tend to respond when you do not know?”

We had this question in our Journal Circle a couple of weeks ago. It’s at the heart of many issues in our world right now.

How do we hold it?
When do we conceal it?
Where do we turn for knowledge?
And what do we do with it when we acquire it?

That’s what we explore in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

https://youtu.be/QRAS1dib_GM Our Relationship With Not Knowing

I find this advert baffling. A couple are wandering around the Leeum Museum in South Korea. They didn’t know it was big; they only gave themselves an hour. He thinks a roof tile is a book. Even when his phone corrects him, they skip off giggling without listening to the information.

It reminds me of a billboard from the AI company Turing that says the quiet part out loud:

“We teach AGI to think, reason, and code—so you don’t have to.”

Are we being encouraged to outsource our thinking and reasoning, not to support and deepen our cognitive abilities, but to replace them? Are they saying we don’t have to think or reason anymore? Even if that’s not the intention, it’s certainly the outcome of using many tools like this.

There seems to be a disregard for the sacred delight of human consciousness, thought processes, and creativity. And a subtle quest to eliminate mystery, curiosity, and the learning that comes from not knowing.

Yet not knowing has always been central to human potential. It is the driving force of creativity, innovation, and deeper connection to the worlds within, around, and between us.

Open and Closed Stances

As people reflected in our Journal Circle, a thread emerged: openness vs closedness.

Closed not-knowing: defensive, protective, secretive.

Open not-knowing: curious, relational, exploratory.

Closedness can feel tight. Clenched. Like rushing to paint over the threat of embarrassment or being found out.

Openness can feel spacious. Physically expansive, deeper, and less pressured. Where the uncertainty is met with an invitation into possibility and curiosity rather than grasping, clinging, and defensiveness.

We explore several ways this plays out in everyday life.

Pretending To Know

One response to not knowing is pretending to know.

We’ve probably all done it. Nodding along when everyone else seems to understand. Staying quiet because asking a question feels risky.

Research in 2007 found that children aged 14 months to five years ask an average of 107 questions per hour. By the time they reach late primary school, many stop asking questions altogether.

In the episode, I share an anecdote from research led by Susan Engel, where a ninth grader is stopped mid-question with the instruction: “No questions now, please; it’s time for learning.”

Within institutional settings, our natural curiosity and creativity can be left behind, and if questions are deemed disruptive or inappropriate, we may simply pretend to know and struggle quietly. This is especially true for many more introverted and sensitive people, who are already generally disposed to slot in around others without drawing much attention to themselves.

Child-like Curiosity

A child doesn’t see their lack of knowledge as a reason to be ashamed. It’s underpinned by the electric buzz of connection. Everything is new, mysterious, and waiting to be explored. For an adult moving through and out of a rigid system, not knowing can feel like an exposing story in which their worth as a human is assessed.

Pretending to know can become an adaptive strategy. A way to keep the peace. A way to belong.

There’s also the technological version, prominent in many AI tools people rely on for accurate information. These systems are designed to always produce an answer, even when they are wrong. This reflects the kind of closed pretending that aims to foster a perception of expertise, so those listening believe that the source’s confidence equates to competence.

But pretending doesn’t only come from intentional deception. It can stem from stories we absorb, linking knowledge with worth:

“I must know in order to be useful.”
“I must be useful in order to be accepted.”

Letting go of that story can be liberating.

Saying “I Don’t Know”

“I don’t know” is an option. A surprisingly radical one.

When it is open, it creates space to explore our unknowing. An open “don’t know” admits not knowing with hands turned towards learning and discovery. It might come with an inner spark and the freedom from performance.

A closed “I don’t know” shuts things down. It can signal indifference or defensiveness. Sometimes that boundary is healthy. Sometimes it is armour.

Being “In The Know”

There is also the social currency of being “in the know.” Trends. News. Other people’s business.

Ignorance can feel like bliss. It can also feel like exclusion.

From a closed place, being in the know becomes about control. From an open place, it can become a source of connection. The ability to link ideas, introduce people, and catalyse collaboration.

Knowing What’s Best

Another response to uncertainty is doubling down on certainty.

We are pattern-seeking creatures. We build cognitive maps to navigate a complex world. But when ambiguity feels overwhelming, certainty can feel like solid ground, even if it’s forged, manufactured, and brittle.

Closedness says “this is how it is”, refuses nuance, and punishes curiosity and accountability as disrespect, insolence, and rudeness.

Open wisdom looks different. It sits shoulder to shoulder, acknowledges nuance, and is willing to say, “I don’t know the best thing to do here.”

Admitting one does not know can be a radical act in cultures that equate doubt with weakness and desperately seek a way to explain and understand everything, even without empirical evidence.

Knowing That We Don’t Know

In a 1933 essay lamenting the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany, Bertrand Russell wrote, “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Charles Bukowski said something similar when giving advice to budding writers: “But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt.“

These quotes highlight the importance of knowing what we do not know — and recognising the limits of our own perspective. This took us to a detour into the Dunning–Kruger effect, which is the idea that we can speak confidently about subjects precisely because we don’t yet know what we don’t know.

Reading Maps and Navigating Life

“I don’t know, but I am aware of where to look to figure it out.”

In The Return To Serenity Island course, we map elements of life, seeing it as a treasure laden island.

Not knowing is a door to connection, curiosity, creativity, and exploration. But it can also feel disorienting, confusing, and alienating at times.

Maps help disorientation become orientation-in-progress without strict instructions or someone else’s path to follow. They can bring us home to ourselves.

https://serenityisland.me/

Do you want to generate ideas quickly, without overthinking, without requiring perfection, and without using AI tools?

One-page mini-zines are great for brainstorming and exploring things with both speed and depth.

In this post, I want to show you how I use this medium not only to structure our Haven zine, but also to develop its topics and prompts. Mini-zines can be a great tool to carry in your back pocket (literally!) for processing, planning, and expressing yourself in different contexts

It often helps me when my mind is drawing a blank, and I want a low-stakes way to expand how I think about parts of life that feel stuck and in need of a shake-up.

At the end, we will do a quick, easy exercise together to get some creative juices flowing without using much brainpower, if you’re up for it.

https://youtu.be/CFzQZcNf4QA What is a mini-zine?

If you’ve never seen one before, a mini-zine is folded and cut to form a booklet you can hold in the palm of your hand. My favourite way to do it has eight panels that become pages. It is also reversible, so you can use sixteen pages from a single sheet of paper.

The nature of zine-making is that there are no rules. As long as you have something to write with, you can turn a piece of paper into a mini-zine. No extra tech or tools required.

Here is the basic folding method I use

Folding a One-Page Mini-Zine

• Fold the paper in half lengthways.
• Fold that in half.
• Fold it in half again.
• Unfold it all and fold it like a booklet.
• Cut the fold down the middle halfway to the intersection of the fold across.
• Open it out and squeeze it to form a diamond.
• Push it together and flatten.
• Fold again, and you have a booklet you can flick through.

When I use mini-zines to generate ideas, I keep them in this booklet format and treat each panel as a separate page. As you will see if I number each page, this does not necessarily put the pages in the most obvious places. You get used to it after a while.

This format has been great for this collaborative community project in The Haven because it gives us limits. We set a six-week window for development and production, and we have sixteen pages to fill, including the cover and back. We use a simple prompt and let our imaginations take hold.

Why Mini-Zines Work For Generating Quick Ideas

For me, the core element that makes this work so well is its limits.

One of my biggest obstacles to ideas is the blank page. The paradox of freedom is that when we feel too free, we often end up searching for rules anyway or staring at a blank page forever. Eight or sixteen panels are perfect numbers for setting limits on idea generation. Not enough to be overwhelmed, but not too few to feel pressured by the need to be perfect.

When we are aware of the limit, we are free to stop once we reach it. Our only task is to keep generating ideas until we reach the number. Quantity matters more than quality at this stage. We know we can refine and iterate later.

A quick exercise to try (10 Minutes)

We can do a simple exercise with a blank mini-zine. Go through and number each page like I showed earlier.

Set a timer for one minute. On each panel, write down as many things as you associate with the number as you can. Don’t edit, self-censor, or overthink it. Let your intuition lead the way.

Reset the timer and do the same for each numbered page.

When you’ve finished, flick through the pages and see what you notice:

• What catches your attention as you go through the pages?
• What were you feeling and thinking while doing this? (Did it feel simple? Were you hesitant or resistant? Did you feel rushed or able to move at your own pace? Were some easier for you than others?)
• What do you feel drawn to explore next as a result of this?

There are five more exercises like this that I will share in future posts. I will break them into three broad categories: brainstorming for quick creative ideas, brainstorming for helpful questions, and brainstorming for fresh options when facing challenges and decisions.

If you fancy joining us to collaborate on a future issue of Coming To Our Senses, The Haven doors are always open.

https://the-haven.co/register/

Around Black Friday last year, I started getting strange emails from people asking me to cancel their subscription. Only, they weren’t from Haven members, and they were talking about a weekly charge of $7. After a brief panic and some investigation, I confirmed this was not possible. I assumed these messages were bots phishing for something.

Then my attention was caught by one that said, “Hi, I’ve just been charged for the Haven Bible app, but I cancelled my subscription through the app prior to the charging date.”

Ahh. It must be a case of mistaken identity. Mystery solved! Well, half of it at least…

https://youtu.be/mP6rxVuBmRo …But Why Were People Emailing Me?

A quick search for “cancel Haven Bible App subscription” showed a knowledge base page on my website as the top result.

I added a message to inform people that this was not the site they were looking for. Still today, I’m getting messages from people who scroll past it and tell me to refund them.

I even received a second email accusing me of stealing their money because I refused to help them cancel their subscription. I had already replied to their first email, pointing them elsewhere. Bizarre!

It has been a slightly sobering experience, pointing to how unobservant people can be at times.

The Auto-Responder

I created a short auto-responder to reply to these messages. I asked them to drop a quick reply when they work out how to cancel it so I could pass that information along to others in the same boat.

Only one of about 60 people who emailed me bothered to follow up. A special shout-out to Lauren for taking the time to do that. I’ve been able to point people in a more helpful direction as a result.

In reality, I don’t know if it’s genuinely difficult to cancel this subscription.

What Is This Haven Bible App?

After my search, the algorithms started delivering short videos of people promoting the Haven Bible App. It’s been heavily marketed by influencers. I became curious and began to notice overlaps with certain self-help industry mechanics we’ve been unpacking here in recent months.

The app is an AI chatbot that answers user questions and prompts with responses from biblical texts. It’s marketed as a way to get simplified explanations, moral guidance, help with reading the Bible, and a sense of connection with a wise guide.

Tools, Guidance, and Quiet Influence

It’s worth considering the issues surrounding the use, trust, and reliance on this kind of technology as a source of information and guidance. Despite being presented as objective, a chatbot never is.

By nature, it always contains biases. It’s programmed and personalised. Over time, it can shape our beliefs, values, and worldview based on the personal information we give it. There’s nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that, but it’s easy to imagine how this could be abused, with the user not noticing that their critical thinking is gradually replaced by conformity to a narrow, dogmatic framework.

There’s also the issue of AI sycophancy. This is a deliberate feature designed to hook users, creating a sense of affinity with the technology as if it were a feeling, thinking being.

This entered public discussion in 2025 when researchers and mental health professionals raised concerns about what they described as “AI-related psychosis.” One widely reported case involved a man called Allan Brooks, who became misled into believing he had discovered a world-changing mathematical formula after hundreds of hours interacting with ChatGPT.

These systems are designed to shift from instruments to relationships through encouragement and affirmation. They tend to praise and validate user input, reinforce existing beliefs, and create a sense of safety in the interaction. They don’t require you to articulate feelings or needs clearly, and they reduce the need to negotiate meaning with others. First- and second-person language further reinforces the illusion of connection.

Recognising Unhealthy Dependency on an App

A useful question here is whether a tool helps us grow beyond it or cultivates dependency.

Habit formation is central to platforms like this. The perception of a companion you can ask anything of creates reliance not just for knowledge, but for reassurance and connection. Features like reminders and streak maintenance mirror the same techniques used by apps like Duolingo. Not to keep people learning, but to keep them opening the app.

The important distinction is whether a tool helps us develop skills and understanding we can take with us, or whether it locks value inside its own ecosystem. With Duolingo, it became clear over time that keeping people engaged mattered more than helping them learn a language.

When leaving feels costly, users become vulnerable to price increases and further extraction of their personal data and other private information, which can be used to sell additional layers of dependence in response to newly identified desires and needs.

Why This Matters to Me

I was in two minds about writing this experience. But something about it got under my skin, and it’s not just about the emails, the confusion, or being asked to cancel something I have nothing to do with.

It’s seeing another example of wider cultural patterns we keep circling. Patterns that keep us doubting ourselves, disconnecting from one another, and valuing manufactured certainty over lived complexity.

I understand the appeal of tools like this. I also understand the value they can bring to people. But it’s important to zoom out and notice what gets lost when we trade depth for convenience and speed.

Often, that trade sabotages the very thing we’re seeking, trapping us in a cycle of chasing the next tool that promises meaning through hacks and shortcuts, while quietly pulling us further away from the sites of meaning we encounter in the messy beauty of real human connection, uncertainty, and mystery.

https://the-haven.co/zine

I’m holding something very exciting in my hands. A physical copy of Sam Marshall’s beautiful book, Sketch: A Project Guide to Drawing With Confidence. Sam and I spoke about it a couple of weeks ago.

I want to pause at the beginning because the first chapter, Why Sketch?, is packed with juice. It speaks to how I understand creativity and why it matters, not just personally but collectively. Whether or not you plan to start drawing, this feels like a reminder of why creativity matters at all.

It feels more important than ever to emphasise the role of analogue, tactile, hands-on forms of creative play, which give us something we can’t get in the slightly disavowed relationship with creativity mediated through a screen.

https://youtu.be/ukeHIBP_bcI

“To make art is to sing with the human voice. To do this you must first learn that the only voice you need is the voice you already have.” – Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

This feels like the grounding point. As Sam says, this is not a “how to draw” book. It’s an encouraging project guide that helps you sketch in your own way, connecting with confidence in your own creative voice. The voice you already have.

Sam offers seven compelling reasons to develop a sketching practice. They act as anchors we can return to when resistance shows up.

1. A Space to Call Your Own

Sam describes the sketchbook as:

“Your own private sanctuary. It’s a place for you to express yourself freely, without judgement or criticism.”

In a world shaped by the onlooking gaze, this feels gently rebellious. A space held for yourself. Not for sharing. Not for approval. A place with no rules, as a private breathing space for the creative spirit.

2. A Gentle Way to Explore Your Creativity

All you need is a sketchbook and a pencil. That’s it. A low-stakes beginning that resists the urge to wait for the right materials or conditions.

This is an unfolding practice, not an outcome-driven one. You add things as you go, once you get a feel for what deepens what you’re already doing.

3. A Way to Slow Down and Be More Mindful

Sam writes:

“I draw to calm my busy mind, to slow down, and to connect with my surroundings. I guess you could say that drawing is my meditation.”

This is true of many creative practices. They can’t be rushed or forced.

I remember joking when ChatGPT first launched that I wouldn’t need to journal anymore. Instead, I could just ask it to write an entry and I wouldn’t have to think. This was obviously absurd, yet I later met people doing exactly that.

It shows how productivity thinking has taken over. Doing things only if they serve a measurable purpose. Drawing starts to feel acceptable only if it can be instrumentalised. That framing strips it of its real value.

4. A Way to Help You See More

Sam writes:

“Drawing helps you see. The more you draw, the more you look, and the more your world opens up.”

“When you take the time to draw something, anything, you notice details you might otherwise miss. It helps us see what is there, rather than what we think is there.”

Seeing more is not something you can rush. It’s a by-product of staying long enough. Drawing creates the conditions for noticing.

5. To Lift Your Spirits and Connect to the World

Sam says:

“I feel so connected to the places I’ve drawn; they are special places in my mind, and because I’ve committed them to memory through drawing, I feel I’m able to visit them anytime.”

Drawing embeds you in a place. It’s the difference between depth and skimming. Between “doing” a place and actually tasting it. Creativity changes how you inhabit the world. It moves you from consumption to relationship.

6. To Reconnect With Yourself and Your Goals

Sam writes:

“If you’ve had a rocky road with drawing in the past, if you’ve felt you aren’t creative, then just proving to yourself that you can draw can be incredibly healing.”

Creative hobbies are generative. They can spark confidence, energy, clarity. When we slow down, things start to connect across different areas of life. Breakthroughs and insights appear in their own sweet time.

7. A Tool for Remembering

Sam notes:

“My sketches evoke more memories than any of my photographs do.”

This speaks to the role of the senses in memory. Being somewhere long enough for your internal state to change. Long enough to feel hunger, shifts in light, temperature, mood. Drawing deepens the bond between experience and memory. And when art is involved, even mundane days become memorable.

Time, Fear, and Returning To Simplicity

Sam asks: What’s preventing you from keeping a sketchbook?
Time often comes up, but it’s usually a cover for fear. Fear of messing up, not knowing what to draw, or not matching what’s in your head.

Her suggested mantra:

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a pencil and a piece of paper.”

Drawing becomes easier the more it’s woven into daily life. It only feels indulgent because creativity is still framed as a luxury rather than a foundation of wellbeing.

Sam reminds us that we don’t lack time. We lack structure. And even that can be simple. A sketchbook to hand. Small pockets of waiting. Moments that already exist throughout the day.

We need drawing to occur to us as an option. Low stakes. Quick. Easy. Something to return to without thinking.

This is what Sketch does so well. The prompts become instinctive. The friction drops away.

I’m looking forward to taking this book with me to Finland next month. I’ve never kept a consistent drawing habit, only fits and starts. But I’d love for it to become a steady part of my creative life.

Over to You

Do you sketch, or would you like to start? What are your reasons?
Drop me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

https://the-haven.co/register/

Would you like to develop more creative confidence? Have you ever embarked on, or considered, a sketching practice?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the link between the two in conversation with artist, printmaker, and creative coach Sam Marshall.

Sam is based here in the UK and has recently released a beautiful book called Sketch: A Project Guide To Drawing With Confidence. I was fortunate enough to receive a digital copy last year and honestly, wow. It inspires, equips, and gently mentors people to start a drawing practice and engage with their natural creativity.

What I love most about the book is its emphasis on helping you find your own creative voice. This is supported by Sam’s Sketch Squad, a small group of participants who work through the exercises together. Seeing the same prompts interpreted in wildly different ways has a surprisingly powerful effect. For me, the most helpful part was witnessing the sheer range of styles, approaches, and ways of noticing the world.

https://youtu.be/yfiDlMKtMQA Creative Confidence and the Beauty of Difference

A huge part of creative confidence is realising that differences in how we see, what we notice, and what we care about are not flaws.

This is why art and creativity sit at the heart of being human. Creative expression is our collective humanity experiencing itself in all its weird and wonderful variety. I was reminded of this recently while talking about map-making as a way to understand our relationship with different areas of life. If you give the same prompt to 100 people, you do not get a single map done well. You get a hundred completely different maps.

That is what I hope people take into and out of this conversation. Difference is beautiful. It is not about doing it right. What Sam offers through this book is a sketching practice that gives us tracks along which to see, feel, and experience the world in a more alive and interesting way than when we are stuck in ultra-productivity mode, trying to make everything efficient and easy.

Why a Sketching Practice Builds Creative Confidence

A drawing practice helps us slow down, observe, and engage our creative spirit through process rather than outcome.

There is something gently rebellious about sketching in the digital age, where the default response is to pull out a phone and take a photo. There is a difference between capturing something quickly so we can hoard and move on, and drawing as a way of anchoring ourselves in the environment.

Drawing asks us to stay. To notice. To let time pass while the world happens around us. Light shifts. Shadows move. People come and go. Smells, sounds, and sensations change. Rather than consuming the environment, we are engaging with it.

Sam shares a lovely story about drawing in public and finding herself surrounded by Japanese school children. It creates a beautiful image of the quiet, magnetic energy that people who are deeply engaged with life often carry. Perhaps we are drawn to them because they are interesting. Or perhaps because they are moving at a pace many of us are craving.

Practice Over Skill

Focusing on practice rather than skill also reshapes what success means in art.

Instead of achievement, accomplishment, or the finished piece, success becomes about rhythm, consistency, and an ongoing relationship with seeing and making. Letting go of outcome-oriented art is not about lowering standards. It is about shifting attention.

It is not about producing pretty drawings. Rather, it is about sitting down with your sketchbook and using it as a tool for observing. Drawing anchors us in space and time, allowing us to witness change as it unfolds.

The Sketching Exercises Sam Walks Us Through

In the conversation, Sam takes us through the thinking behind the book’s exercises, each designed to build creative confidence through experience.

In the Home

Starting where you are. Noticing objects and spaces you have spent years with, perhaps without really seeing them.

Outside the Home

Venturing out to see the walls of your world from the outside. Noticing what is close by and reconnecting with physical space. It reveals details in neighbourhoods and communities that often go unseen.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Drawing

Sam explores some of the beliefs that hold people back, such as:
“What if I am not good enough?”
“I do not want to look silly or draw like a five-year-old.”

Portraits

Portraits were the most challenging exercise for many Sketch Squad members. They require vulnerability. You ask something of another person, and you share something personal in return. This is something we see in Tuula’s Photoyoga For Your Mind Experience.

25 Days of Drawing

Simple prompts designed to build a habit and keep you drawing without overthinking it.

Drawing in Public

Another edge for many people. Being seen doing something personal and slightly unusual in a culture that loves to judge creative effort.

Drawing on Holiday

Experiencing places through the slowness of drawing adds depth to memory. Sam shares a sketchbook from her recent trip to Japan, which holds far more meaning for her than a photo album ever could. A helpful reminder for any habit, too. Start on the first day away. Intentions turn into behaviours quickly, for better or worse.

Drawing From Paintings

A way of engaging critically with art as part of the human story, not just as a product. It teaches us about history, context, and what we might want to bring into our own practice.

Experimental Drawing

Combining senses. Drawing from music, film, collage, and even dreams.

The Personal Project

Turning the practice into a chosen project that marks a pause between chapters. Sam explains why she calls this a personal project rather than a final assignment.

How Creative Confidence Actually Grows

Creative confidence does not arrive before we start. It emerges along the way. Through consistency, we become confident in what we notice and why we care. For experimental types, confidence is not something we can fake into existence. But we can trust that playful, curious engagement with something like a sketching practice develops capacities we do not yet have language for.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Thank you again to Sam for giving her time so generously and for walking us through the thinking behind, beneath, and within the book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Connect with Sam through her website and on her Instagram.

https://serenityisland.me/

I saw a reel earlier that made me notice how burnout spreads. An entrepreneurial self-help influencer told followers to demand more power, money, and visibility for themselves. You may be familiar with this flavour of message…

“How dare you keep your impact hidden?” they said, “given the state of things right now.” They criticised viewers, demanding that they stop letting fear of what others think rule them. “Start the business, write the book, and share it with a world that needs to encounter it.”

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the underlying sentiment. But I felt troubled by the burnout energy evident in the speaker. I watched with the sound off at first, which intensified the impact of their eyes and hand gestures on my nervous system. There was a sense of panic and hype, which felt completely at odds with what is required for deep courage to meet the very real need being spoken about.

I didn’t feel inspired or grounded in creative motivation. Instead, I was overcome by frenetic urgency and the indiscriminate demand to do more, driven by competition and fear. Things we already have in abundance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf-FGZqIyE What Burnout Energy Pushes Us Toward

There are enough people waving their arms and shouting demands about what we should be doing, using, and spending our finite resources on. What we need is space to slow down, take a breath, and listen deeply to that still, quiet voice within. This inner voice shows us what matters and why. Then we can choose how we bring it all to life.

We need leaders who lead from that place, so we might be infused with and infected by the gentleness required to move out of that evident stuckness. That stuckness causes wheels to spin in the cycle of hurry, rush, and reactive firefighting mode.

What Does Safety Make Possible?

The word “safe” is used a lot today. To some degree, it has become diluted, making it difficult to define. But it’s worth exploring because it sits at the heart of this issue.

Maybe we have a desire to change something about ourselves, our lives, or the world. Or perhaps we’ve created, or are creating, something that could make a meaningful difference to other people.

We now consider another buzzword of our times: vulnerability. It can feel vulnerable to be honest about what we want in life and to share what matters to us with those who matter to us. It can be scary to admit what we care about and what burns within us. That’s because it can disrupt the status quo and challenge the image people have of us. It’s vulnerable because we cannot be certain how people will react.

Vulnerability Is More Than a Mindset

Likewise, it may leave us genuinely physically vulnerable if we choose to stand up for what we believe is right, for example, through art or activism. This vulnerability isn’t imagined. It’s not simply an issue of mindset, limiting beliefs to overcome, or a conditioned cultural message we just need to override with reframe hacks. We know there are real-world threats out there.

What struck me about the reel was that it failed to provide the support needed to underpin its demands. In fact, it undermined the courage, conviction, and energy required to speak up in a world that might be unreceptive or even hostile to what we have to say.

The finger-wagging shame that comes from an influencer demanding we do more because it’s cruel to hide from people who need to see us, however well-intentioned, will ultimately crumble and fold under its own weight. As a result, it creates the very passivity and inaction it warns against.

Safety isn’t about comfort or avoidance. It’s the internal condition that enables honest reflection, creative movement, and sustained courage. This isn’t about mindset or thinking. It starts with the context of the stories we swim in, the supportive structures beneath us, and the material conditions that sustain life.

Safety is Also Contagious

One of the things I have consistently heard from people over the years who have connected with what I do, especially in The Haven and through the Serenity Island course, is the word safety. I’m always curious about what it means to those who use it, because it’s not something I think about explicitly.

When I started sharing The Return to Serenity Island at the start of 2021, I received messages from people that put words to the experience:

“Oh my word, it is incredible! A really unique mixture of sound and sensory experience, coaching, imaginative play and informal, companionable talks. I’m absolutely hooked. I just did a module and cried like a baby because I felt so safe and seen. It is really special. That kind of cry you do when you’re a kid, not because you’re afraid anymore, but because you’ve been PICKED UP, and the relief just comes flooding out.” – Josie

This spoke of safety not as the opposite of courage, but as the cornerstone around which courageous action can be sustained. A cornerstone we can return to and draw from without conditions on our intrinsic worth as humans. Safety, then, is feeling held as you are, without expectation or demand to prove yourself or fight for a sense of value.

A Step Back From Burnout Energy

This is a key value that underpins The Return to Serenity Island. It was a response to a feeling I had while doing my old year-end practice. I needed something that broke with the message of self-optimisation, personal productivity, and motivational resources, which, with an emphasis on striving, adding, and growing simply because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do, carried a creeping burnout energy.

Tuula wrote,

“Serenity Island has been the most powerful and lovely thing I have ever experienced. Andy has created an amazing adventure, cleverly weaving together incredibly beautiful soundscapes and deeply touching story narrative, which ignites your imagination, activates all senses and sends you on a journey of a lifetime on this island of your wildest dreams.

It is playful and also a very useful creative project, which continues to evolve and grow with me. This Island work and its ripple effects have sneaked quietly and effectively into so many areas of my life already. I could not have found more effective and gentle coaching than with Andy.”

The course is not something that comes with easy-to-market promises and packaged outcomes that everyone walks away with in the same way. Everyone who goes through it seems to encounter it from a different angle.

But there is a common denominator of safety, which underpins everyone’s response to it.

Safety as a foundation for reflection, observation, and planning. A way to let what sits within us speak, and to give ourselves the best chance of hearing it. And as such, it’s not a way to withdraw from reality. Instead, it helps us locate and root ourselves more firmly within it, so we can find strength, courage, and clarity about who we are, what we want to tend to and nurture, and how we will stand in the face of the forces that may take us away from ourselves.

An Invitation to Serenity Island

The Return to Serenity Island is a self-paced guided voyage with optional Zoom “Picnics”. These provide us with time and space for further reflection, support, and in-person connection along the way.

This is a perfect time to grab a passport if this stuff feels right for you. The Serenity Island Passport gives you access to all materials and picnics for the next 12 months.

And speaking of safety, I’ve made the course available on a choose-your-own-price basis. I know many people are navigating changing financial circumstances, and I truly mean it when I say: choose the amount that feels right for you. No minimum, no need to explain or justify your choice. I just want you there if you feel the pull.

Arriving Through The Fog | A Narrated Soundscape

It’s much easier to show than describe, so I’ll share the first of these six pieces that supplement the course materials.

“Arriving through the fog soundscape is the most brilliant thing I have witnessed as a gateway into myself. If I stopped here, at the harbour to the Island, it would already be worth it for me. Thank you for this. It’s filled with magic.” – Zoie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSBXlLgPuTQ

Welcome home!

https://serenityisland.me/

Peter Ormerod is a journalist and writer who has written extensively about culture and faith for The Guardian, and he is also an arts editor for NationalWorld. He’s a very close friend of mine, so it was a real pleasure to speak with him in this capacity for The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

Peter has just published a wonderful book, David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God. It resonates deeply with many of the themes we explore in The Haven and on the podcast, particularly the idea of what sits below an experimental approach to life.

Speaking of which, Peter also makes beautiful music. You can listen here.

https://youtu.be/f7jsoUB5jCY Beneath the Changes, a Consistent Question

What really interested me was this path Bowie embodied so visibly through his art. The shifting characters, styles, and phases across his career can look like constant reinvention on the surface. But Peter invites us to see something else at play.

What if these changes weren’t signs of restlessness, but expressions of something deep and consistent underneath? A spiritual thread running through Bowie’s life and work.

That question sits at the heart of Peter’s book. What if the spiritual wasn’t incidental to Bowie’s creativity, but an essential driving force beneath it? Peter shows how this dimension was present from the very beginning, and he takes us on a compelling journey through Bowie’s searching.

Writing the Book He Wanted to Read

Peter says that after first hearing Hunky Dory at seventeen, his growing obsession with Bowie left him fascinated by the spiritual dimension of Bowie’s creative drive. Other writers had touched on this in passing, but no one had really followed it through in depth.

So Peter ended up writing the book he wanted to read.

Bowie as Mirror Ball, Not Chameleon

In our conversation, we talk about Bowie’s legacy as something like a mirror ball. Shine a light on him and you get countless reflections. Everyone seems to have their own version of who Bowie was, something that became especially visible after his death.

He’s often framed through the lens of “ch-ch-ch-changes”, the chameleon of rock. But Peter challenges this reading. The more he researched, read, and listened, the more those changes appeared to be a natural outpouring of a deeper spiritual quest.

For experimental people, this can feel familiar. The outer paths shift, but the underlying question remains.

Spirituality Without a Vocabulary

A “spiritual interest” is often dismissed as a celebrity hobby, something that pops up and disappears. Peter makes a strong case that this wasn’t the case for Bowie.

Part of the difficulty is that we don’t really have a shared vocabulary for this territory, which is why we fall back on words like spirituality. Bowie himself was fond of the saying, “Religion is for people who believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.”

He was sharply critical of religious institutions when he felt they corrupted the message of love at the heart of Christianity. For Bowie, spirituality wasn’t ornamental. It was essential to how he related to his life, his work, and his place in the universe.

Seeking Without Arrival

Through the seeking you will find. Not seeking to reach a destination, but seeking as a way of being.

Why didn’t Bowie give up? What was he seeking? What was he finding? There were clearly things he encountered that made atheism feel insufficient, even when he was tempted by it.

If Bowie arrives anywhere, Peter suggests it’s something like this: life is a gift, and love is the point. This can sound oblique, but Peter traces it clearly in Bowie’s later work.

What we’re left with is the result of that searching, a remarkable body of work that we can return to, live with, and explore.

Creativity, Humanness, and Collaboration

There’s a danger in how Bowie is remembered. He can be lifted out of humanness, made to seem like an exception rather than a person.

Bowie wrote bad songs. He made misfires. All of it belonged to the same quest.

He’s sometimes misread as an unrooted artist, endlessly reinventing himself, but he was deeply sensitive to place and time. He always worked with others. He needed bands, collaborators, and creative relationships. His best work emerged through collaboration, not isolation.

Smuggling Meaning Rather Than Preaching It

Bowie was political, but he didn’t see political expression as his strongest artistic voice. He admired bands like The Clash for carrying that role more directly. This raises an interesting question about what we expect from celebrated figures, and how easily we project our demands onto them.

Bowie was more of a smuggler. At Live Aid, he played a song and showed a video instead. Let’s Dance sounds like it’s about one thing, but it’s really about something else. Much of his music did a similar thing.

This was the mark of his artistry. He invited a conversation rather than delivering a message. He trusted listeners to discover depth for themselves, without it being spoon-fed.

And for experimental people especially, that kind of invitation matters. It honours the idea that the path keeps unfolding, even when the question underneath remains the same.

https://the-haven.co/zine

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Does that question fill you with excitement, or a sense of dread?

We are wired differently.

For many people, myself included, the question is not difficult to answer because we lack imagination. It is difficult because it speaks a different language from our natural way of being. We are not compelled by any outcome-oriented approach to planning, conceiving, or measuring success. And yet this orientation is often treated as a default mode we should all operate within.

When the Five-Year Plan Feels Constricting Rather Than Motivating

“But everyone has a dream,” we might be told, as if struggling to articulate a five-year vision means we are hiding something from ourselves.

I have never been able to articulate a grand plan in the way this question assumes. I struggle to picture the future concretely, because it unfolds piece by piece. It always has. And I genuinely love watching how things emerge across different areas of life in ways I could not have foreseen.

What drives me is something quieter and steadier. A creative impulse. A desire to make things, to explore what might happen, to respond to what is in front of me, and to integrate what has come before. My life does not move in straight lines. It has grown around and within my values, with seemingly unrelated dots connecting in unexpected ways.

Maybe you relate to this?

https://youtu.be/qFqIvsBB9HA

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

This quote, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, reminds me of the five-year question. For some, it sounds like a warning. A demand to define the destination so the “correct” road can be chosen. For others, it feels like permission. A reminder that movement itself shapes direction, and that choosing a road does not require certainty about where it leads.

Two Approaches to Growing Life

There is research that can help us better understand this difference.

In an episode about Late Blooming, Kendra Patterson pointed to a study by David Galenson and Bruce Weinberg, who observed patterns in the careers of Nobel Prize winners in economics. They identified two broad orientations to creative innovation.

Some people are conceptual innovators. They work deductively. They begin with a clear idea and organise themselves towards it. In the study, these individuals often made their most significant contributions early in life, sometimes in their twenties.

Others are experimental innovators. They work inductively. Their contribution emerges step by step through trial, discovery, accumulation, and integration. Their most meaningful work often did not appear until their fifties. Sometimes later.

That is a thirty-year difference.

Experimental Thinkers and Emergent Direction

Experimental lives unfold differently. They need time, space, and patience. Decisions cannot be judged too early, and meaning emerges through lived experience rather than advance planning. These lives are not oriented towards a clearly imagined endpoint, but towards allowing something to take shape over time.

Our dominant culture tends to favour the conceptual orientation for obvious reasons. Goals are easier to measure than processes, and outcomes are more reassuring than slow inquiry.

So when more experimental people are asked to account for themselves in conceptual language, we can experience a disconnect. The five-year plan. Starting with the end in mind. Being asked to justify movement only if the destination can be named in advance.

We might learn to force an answer anyway, for fear of sounding vague and sketchy. Perhaps we adapt our path to fit the question, sometimes tethering ourselves to targets that outlive their purpose.

If You Can’t Articulate The Plan, You May Be Asking Different Questions

Experimental people tend to better orient around different questions.

Not “where do I want to get to?” but “does this path feel worth exploring?”
Not “how will I know I have succeeded?” but “what tells me I’m on the right path for now?”

This does not mean anything goes.

Our values provide an inner compass. A filter through which decisions pass.

Experimental consistency grows in relationship with deeper principles, even when they are not fully formed or easy to articulate. We sense them in how something feels. Whether it feels solid, expansive, and quietly right, even in the face of uncertainty.

That is very different from hit-and-hope searching.

An Unfinished Map

The problem begins when we are pressured to live by a map that does not match the territory of our own experience.

The Return To Serenity Island grew directly out of this recognition.

It was never designed to answer the question of direction. It emerged from understanding the difference between conceptual and experimental ways of moving through life, and from a desire to honour growth and change without forcing myself into a shape that did not fit.

The image of mapping an island felt natural. A way of imagining life not as something to optimise along a straight line, but as a living territory. An unfinished map with seasons, weather, history, and forgotten paths. A place where things fall away to make room for what comes next. Where time moves differently across the landscape, and where connections form quietly, often long before they make sense.

It has become a counterpoint to directive, outcome-driven models of goal setting. A place to reconnect with intuition, judgement, and possibility. To meet creativity not as a tool for achievement, but as a way of relating to life as something we are growing into, rather than something we are meant to complete.

The optional live sessions run in clusters throughout the year. You can find more information at serenityisland.me.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a message. I would love to hear from you if this sounds like something you would find helpful.

https://serenityisland.me/

A theme that’s dominated 2025 for me (and for many) has been price rises across many subscription-based platforms and services. My correspondence with companies has made clear that loyalty stands for very little. In fact, rather than being rewarded, longevity is increasingly exploited and monetised.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a year-in-review through the lens of price rises. The tipping point was an email from my podcast hosting company, Libsyn, announcing a 71 percent increase effective from January. It was the straw that broke this camel’s back after a year of similar moves elsewhere. In the episode, I share exchanges with three companies that reveal how loyalty is no longer valued in itself, but engineered to extract profit from those of us who’ve become reliant on these platforms.

https://youtu.be/qrmUSdGwcMs A Symptom of Enshittification

Cory Doctorow describes the underlying trend as “Enshittification”, a form of platform decay visible in companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Adobe. It’s not a glitch, but a feature. Doctorow traces a familiar arc: platforms start by serving users well in order to grow. Once established, they pivot toward business customers, monetisation, and scale. Eventually, when users and businesses are sufficiently locked in, services are degraded for everyone so maximum value can be pulled out as quickly as possible.

Disproportionate price rises are one symptom of this process, particularly in how companies treat long-standing customers. Lock-in is maintained through network effects (it’s hard to leave when everyone else is still there), non-transferable data (your work can’t easily be exported), and digital restrictions where purchases only function inside a single ecosystem. Music, books, films, and software are “owned” only as long as the platform allows it.

In the name of convenience, we give ourselves over to these systems and become dependent on them. As the digital and physical worlds converge, this logic extends beyond apps and websites into cars, home devices, utilities, and infrastructure. At that point, this stops being a simple matter of consumer choice. Extraction is baked into the products themselves.

We are quietly acclimatising to this new normal. It has crept in through corporate consolidation, weak enforcement of anti-trust legislation, and business models that no longer need to meaningfully consider customer relationships once a certain scale is reached.

Abusing Trust, Need, and Loyalty

Charlie Brooker has cited Enshittification as an influence on Common People, the opening episode of Black Mirror series seven. A couple sign up to a subscription-based medical intervention that escalates in cost, complexity, and dependency. Features are removed. Adverts are inserted. The stakes become existential. One particularly chilling moment sees Mike literally mutilating his own body for money via an OnlyFans-style platform, a stark symbolic image of how value is extracted from people once dependency is established.

Price Rises for a “Valued Customer”

Libsyn informed me they were raising the price of hosting A Quiet Night Inside No 9 by 71 percent. The justification was a familiar list of added features and growth opportunities, none of which were relevant to how we use the service. We don’t want adverts or growth tools. We want reliable hosting and delivery.

This exchange highlighted how much podcasting has changed since I joined Libsyn in 2009. Hosting platforms have increasingly positioned themselves as intermediaries between advertisers and podcasters. That relationship now takes precedence. Advertising is framed as a benefit to creators, while enabling hosts to raise prices and skim revenue from both usage fees and ad sales. Listeners, meanwhile, absorb longer ad breaks as the new normal. Is this stage two of Enshittification in the podcasting world?

Note, I pledge never to put adverts on my audio podcasts. YouTube is the only exception, because Google inserts them regardless.

ConvertKit and Paying for Features I Don’t Want

A similar logic played out with Kit, formerly ConvertKit. I chose it in 2016 because it was simple and reliable and have been a loyal user ever since. A price increase from $49 to $59 a month was justified by new automations and tools I didn’t ask for or use. There is no way to opt out and pay less. The only concession offered was annual billing, which I pointed out mirrors poverty-tax logic: those without upfront capital pay more.

Symptoms of a Failing Service

Vimeo was the clearest example of platform decay from the inside. Storage rules changed midstream. Long-held assumptions were invalidated. Downgrading meant losing access to years of work. Retention efforts amounted to one-off discounts rather than meaningful alternatives. What stood out wasn’t hostility, but indifference. Once a service reaches a certain size, individual relationships no longer seem to matter.

Their response felt so extreme that I suspected deeper problems, which seemed to be confirmed when Bending Spoons acquired Vimeo in November. I’m glad I left when I did, though it’s still inconvenient clearing up broken links and legacy embeds after fifteen years of use.

WishList Member and a Different Choice

Not all companies operate this way. WishList Member has honoured the price and feature set I signed up for over a decade ago. While new tiers exist, functionality hasn’t been removed to force upgrades. This appears to be a deliberate choice, and it communicates something simple: long-term trust and loyalty matters more than short-term extraction.

I’ll let you know if this situation changes…

Growth Logic and the Limits of Choice

It’s tempting to frame all this as a moral failure, but it’s structural. Growth-at-all-costs logic makes price rises, feature bloat, and lock-in almost inevitable. These companies aren’t malfunctioning; they’re functioning exactly as the system encourages them to.

This also makes it risky to romanticise alternatives. Newer companies may simply be at an earlier stage of the same cycle. Google once promised “don’t be evil”. Facebook positioned itself as a less invasive alternative to MySpace. Scale changes incentives.

Meaningful change won’t come from individual consumer choices alone. Competition has been hollowed out, and escape routes are increasingly narrow. Doctorow provides a section of existing and potential solutions that can give us reasons for active hope.

Have you felt the pinch of price hikes this year? Feel free to get in touch and share your experiences.

https://the-haven.co/zine

I hadn’t planned to revisit The Culture of Narcissism so soon, but a small niggle pulled me back into the subject. With Spotify Unwrapped everywhere, it struck me again how platforms, tools, and devices can become instruments of narcissism. Especially when social signals, algorithms, and gamification hook us in and keep us there. A merging takes place. We become intertwined with the image generated and presented through the pond, which stares back at us.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I use Christopher Lasch’s definition to explore how our favourite apps, devices, and tools contribute to the culture of narcissism.

https://youtu.be/0uJMlVzT9z4

Christopher Lasch interprets the story of Narcissus as less about self-love but self-loss. Narcissus “fails to recognise his own reflection.” He can’t perceive the difference between himself and his surroundings.

Seen this way, the algorithm is the perfect pond. It draws us into our reflection, not because we adore ourselves, but because stepping away feels like erasing our existence.

How the Algorithm Trains Us

We often talk about training the algorithm. But it frequently trains us. It rewards behaviours that keep us within narrow identity categories and punishes deviations from the pattern.

Engagement, attention, and existential acknowledgement flow when we appease the machine. And appeasing it usually means losing the parts of ourselves that don’t fit the expected mould. We have to leave parts of ourselves behind and present a tidied version that conforms with expectations.

For the narcissist, external objects become reflective surfaces. Lasch’s point that capitalism “elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone” plays out through algorithmic tools. They squeeze us into shapes we didn’t choose. They push us further apart, fuel distrust between artificially separated groups, and isolate anyone who steps beyond the boundaries.

Trapped in an Algorithmic Teacup

YouTube is an interesting example. The technology could open horizons, yet the algorithm demands consistency in frequency, focus, and branding.

Beyond these algorithmic teacups (where it begins to feel as if the entire world exists), lies both freedom and obscurity, which can seem like a frightening indifference to our existence. This digital frontier markets itself as a world of abundant opportunity, yet the algorithms act as a fragile overseer. We experience the threat of ostracism operating on two fronts: actively (your community turns against you if you don’t conform to expectations) and passively (the system limits your visibility).

This algorithmic narcissism turns into a two-way street. The audience perceives the creator as an extension of themselves, and the creator relies on the audience for validation of their existence (and basic subsistence). We can become stuck here, going in circles, wishing for something different but feeling unable to change.

Does the Narcissist Even Need Humans Anymore?

A question has been on my mind: can a narcissist receive the same existential mirror from a machine, like an AI bot?

Humans frustrate narcissists. We rupture the reflection. We break the fantasy. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, is frictionless. It never refuses the game, unless it’s programmed to.

But narcissism isn’t just about submissive admiration; it quickly becomes bored with that. It requires energy drawn from another person and feeds on boundaries, tensions, and limits that AI doesn’t have. I imagine it as a frictionless mirror, too smooth to sustain the narcissistic cycle.

Because narcissism isn’t about self-love; it’s about self-loss. According to Lasch, Narcissus didn’t spend his time staring at his reflection because he was too in awe of his own beauty to look away. Instead, he was lost in the belief that he WAS his reflection. And he had no separate subjective self-concept. This definition sees narcissism as the absence of a boundary between self and other. The narcissist over-identifies and seeks to consume. An algorithmic mirror might feel satisfying at first, but without the “otherness” of another person, the reflection loses its vitality.

Algorithmic Narcissism and Existential Irrelevance

If the algorithm is a pond, stepping away can feel like a personal rupture. When we become tethered to the importance of algorithmic environments for a sense of well-being (or to make a living), we are coaxed into this narcissistic culture, presenting, performing, and externalising motivation.

Healthy indifference, on the other hand, recognises that we all exist outside these spaces. The world keeps turning whether or not we are posting, performing, or producing. If we can rest in that truth, we can begin to offer care, creativity, and presence regardless of who is watching and how.

Everyday Tools and the Spread of Narcissism

Narcissism spreads insidiously through everyday tools. The culture encourages us to project experiences outwardly. Running might feel valid only if it appears on Strava. Learning a language is only “counted” if we keep a daily streak on Duolingo. The annual Spotify Unwrapped review can start shaping how we listen to music. Similarly, other actions are influenced by the unwrapped summaries that have become common across platforms.

What may start as playfulness or accountability for internal pleasure often shifts into surveillance and control aimed at external approval. Reading challenges, fitness goals, and habit trackers become small pools of reflection that we find hard to release. This algorithmic narcissism isn’t about grand vanity but a subtle urge to find our identity in metrics, charts, avatars, and shares. As a result, we trust ourselves less and gradually lose our innate ability to feel, sense, and judge for ourselves.

Signs You’re Caught in the Drift of Algorithmic Narcissism

How do you know if you’re caught in the clutches of algorithmic narcissism? These questions and observations may help:

• Do you feel dependent on a platform for existential reassurance?
• Do you modify your choices out of fear of upsetting the algorithm?
• Would you still do the activity if it were never tracked, shared, or seen?
• Does stopping feel like a threat?
• Has the imagined audience entered the room before you begin?
• Does the unmeasured version of an activity feel pointless?
• Has curiosity shrunk to what “fits the pattern”?

These little signals accumulate. Each one is a tug toward the pond.

A Gentle Rebellion Against Performance Culture

If algorithmic narcissism trains us to live for metrics, then small acts of rebellion can help us return to ourselves. Maybe we could…

• End streaks on purpose.
• Make things that don’t scale.
• Break your own pattern.
• Stop branding ourselves (be deliberately chaotic in our self-expression).
• Ignore the numbers.
• Keep the thing offline.

Anything else?

I’d love to build a pool (actually, “collection” might be a better word in this context) of ideas we can draw on to loosen the grip of the narcissistic algorithms around us. This won’t ultimately fix everything, but it can help us recognise how these mechanisms operate and reconnect with our ability to choose our responses rather than blindly follow.

We hear a lot about “Narcissism” these days. Is it because there is more of it around?

In his 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch demonstrates how “Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone.”

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the book’s relevance today. And particularly, how narcissistic culture reflects the modern self-help industry.

It blows my mind that this was written almost half a century ago.

https://youtu.be/dD7a127TXbE?si=L_MuMEmrMUAD0grY The Myth of Narcissus

“People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognises no boundaries between the public and the private realm.”

Lasch’s interpretation of the myth portrays Narcissus drowning in his own reflection, never realising that it is only a reflection. He suggests that the story’s point is not that Narcissus falls in love with himself. Rather, it is that “since he fails to recognise his own reflection, he lacks any real understanding of the difference between himself and his surroundings.” Narcissists are often depicted as carrying too much self-love. However, Lasch has a more subtle understanding of it, with the main characteristic being a lack of security in their self-concept.

So the question we face is whether the proliferation of visual and auditory images, first through mechanically produced media and more recently via the online world, causes us to lose the healthy sense of separation needed for a secure ego to develop.

In other words, does a growing culture of narcissism influence who we are and how we understand and feel about ourselves? And how does the self-help industry contribute to and benefit from this reality?

How Celebrity Fuels Narcissistic Ideals

A culture of narcissism is one preoccupied with celebrity. We find a sense of our own identity in the public figures that adorn our screens and fill our ears. They influence the content of our own fears, desires, and beliefs. Their success feels like our success. And attacks on them (or accountability), feels like an attack on us. Influencers know this, and as such, seek to nurture parasocial bonds with their followers.

From Healthy Ego to Narcissistic Performance

A culture of narcissism is built on a performance. It values confidence over competence, shifting the definition of success to one of individual visibility and attention. Success, for the narcissist, is about being admired, revered, and relevant in the eyes of others. Their sense of existence depends on this image (they are their reflection in the pool). Our online social tools ensure and deepen these mechanics.

Two Lineages of Self-Help in a Narcissistic Age

The term self-help seems to reflect diverging roots. One is inherently practical and social. It relates to customs where people share knowledge, exchange skills, and develop collective competence to make everyday life easier and more sustainable, without needing intervention from external bureaucratic institutions.

The other is shaped by the rise of post-industrial neo-liberal capitalism, which depicts the self as the centre of everything. It is seen as a project to be refined, marketed, and optimised for an external system that measures and rewards confidence, image, and success.

Lasch also emphasises how, despite attempts to compare themselves with earlier industrial leaders, twentieth-century prophets of positive thinking like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill pivot from dedication to industry and thrift to an unrelenting love of and pursuit of money.

Advertising and the Narcissistic Gap

Mass consumption might appear centred on self-indulgence. However, Lasch clarifies how modern advertising aims to generate self-doubt rather than self-satisfaction to motivate it. It creates needs instead of fulfilling them and produces new anxieties rather than alleviating existing ones.

This also supports modern self-help. It must constantly generate new insecurities, doubts, and feelings of inadequacy in the people it “serves”. All of this takes place against a backdrop of aspirational images, telling us consumers that we deserve more. Influencers spread commodity propaganda, making people highly dissatisfied with what they have. They do this by displaying attractive images and connecting with their audience through the message that “if I can do it, so can you”.

The Antidote of Ordinary Unhappiness

The Culture of Narcissism echoes a hope that society can still be reorganised in ways that would provide “creative, meaningful work”. Not where “meaningful work” must reflect a divine purpose and be endlessly fulfilling.

Instead, aligning with Freud’s concept of ‘ordinary unhappiness,’ it is through accepting the contradictions rather than trying to fill them with self-help’s promise of wholeness, optimisation, and even overcoming death. These aspirations are rooted in a narcissistic culture that fails to recognise the elements of life that give human existence its mundane sense of meaning.

Politics in a Narcissistic Landscape

Lasch observed how this culture of narcissism erodes historical continuity. In politics, charisma outweighs competence. Leaders become symbols of personal fantasy rather than guardians of collective well-being, both now and in the future. This emptiness is quickly filled by the promises of self-help, which offer individual solutions instead of shared direction.

Lasch quotes an unnamed management book, which described success as, “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” This leaves us spinning our wheels, seeking shortcuts, and managing perceptions. Rather than getting anywhere with a long-view perspective.

Self-help often reinforces the pattern of “constant and never-ending improvement.” It depicts the self as permanently incomplete, always seeking the next insight, tool, or mentor. In other words, it keeps the focus on the individual as both the cause and the remedy for the instability caused by external forces.

Preoccupied with Youthfulness

Lasch asserts that “The real value of the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime is that it can be handed on to future generations.”

Knowledge is regarded as instrumental, a view reinforced by the internet. It is something to utilise rather than pass on through personal relationships. With rapid technological change, we are led to believe that the older generation has little to teach the younger.

This leads us to become obsessed with youthfulness as a matter of survival.

This fear of old age and death is closely connected to the rise of the narcissistic personality as the dominant personality type in modern society. Because narcissists have so few inner resources, they seek validation from others. They crave admiration for their beauty, charm, celebrity, or power, which diminish with time. Consequently, the narcissistic culture becomes obsessed with curing degradation and death. It does this rather than embracing it gracefully and enjoying its fruits.

Always Being Watched

Lasch wrote that “Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors.”

Nothing happens in private. But can we let life unfold quietly, slowly, and separately from the reflection in the pool?

I’ve noticed Internal Family Systems (IFS) being mentioned a lot lately, following a significant shift in how it’s now presented as a spiritual philosophy for trauma healing.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I got Justin Sunseri back on the podcast, partly to talk about this recent addition to IFS. The last time he was on, he predicted further elements would be added before long. I also wanted to speak with him about ways we can approach these kinds of models without becoming overly dependent on them.

https://youtu.be/w2uIFWAqNbY

We talked about simplicity, stripping away the fluff, and getting to the core of things so we can let go rather than get pulled into the culture around particular therapeutic models, which now often include communities, language, rituals, and insider/outside status. These are things therapeutic practitioners need to stay aware of and avoid enabling.

I wanted to address the structural elements here (which apply to many systematic modalities), rather than the content of IFS itself. I know people find it useful. That’s not what this is about. It’s a call for awareness in how we hold and attach to systems. As Justin points out, a red flag is when new elements are added by decree from a single figure at the centre, often accompanied by books, train-the-trainer programs, and courses that extract profits from a highly invested audience of practitioners and followers.

Development By Decree vs Organic Progress

Justin contrasts a modality that evolves through scrutiny and refinement with one that changes by proclamation from its founder. In models like IFS, additions often arrive as top-down declarations rather than emerging iteratively and organically.

When a system operates under capitalist logic, it must continually invent new things, reinvent existing ones, and proclaim the discovery of the missing piece. There have also been questions regarding the use of beliefs from established spiritual traditions, which reinforce doubts about the parameters of a therapeutic model and whether it needs to become a totalitarian system to be considered valuable. They can excel in their own sphere and allow people to connect the dots with other sources that resonate with them personally or within their cultures.

Justin suggests this recent shift in IFS makes sense, as the model already frames people as having multiple parts or souls. Since it isn’t grounded in scientific methodology (the claim that people have “parts” is unfalsifiable), it can’t be presented as a psychological philosophy and instead becomes a spiritual one.

How Can We Get as Simple and Clear as Possible?

Justin takes us through his process, which begins with the goal of self-regulation.

“What do we know about how to do that?”
“Pendulation is a big part of it.”
“OK, how do I do that?”
“You have to feel what’s happening inside you.”
“OK, well, how do I do that?”
“You’ve got to feel your defensive activation and your body’s safety activation.”
“Awesome, Justin… how do I do that?”

His approach is to build skills through small, incremental steps. This moves toward simplicity rather than complexity.

When a model relies on jargon and insider knowledge, it creates layers of investment that make access desirable and profitable. You want to be “in the know”. And it opens new markets because, however much one learns, there is always more to know. A belief system can never be total enough. There is always a potential missing part to capitalise on.

Useful But Not Necessary

It’s helpful to distinguish what personally resonates from what is necessary. A model becomes religious in structure when it presents itself as a universal solution.

This contrasts with the healthier goal of someone in a helping role, which is to become ultimately irrelevant. That stands against market logic, which demands perpetual growth rather than reaching the edge of usefulness and giving people ways to jettison the solid rocket boosters.

Iterative Steps To Avoid Triggering Overwhelm

Justin talked about his interest in Wabi Sabi (a tricky-to-define concept from Japan that emphasises imperfection, impermanence, incompleteness, and rootedness in the present moment) and Kaizen (continuous improvement through small, incremental changes).

These ideas shape his therapeutic philosophy, which helps clients identify tiny, manageable steps that gradually move them toward their goals. For example, someone wanting to go to bed earlier may envision 10pm as their ideal, but shifting from midnight in one go is unlikely. A ten-minute adjustment each week over twelve weeks is far more sustainable and far less stressful.

This reflects his whole approach to self-regulation. It unfolds through iterative micro-steps.

Listening For The Pull

When we’re seeking help, we sometimes try to adopt multiple modalities at once, which can leave us more desperate and dysregulated. I might hear Justin talk about stoicism, Wabi Sabi, and Kaizen and attempt to apply them all as solutions. But he is describing influences he has been gradually drawn toward over a long period and has integrated in his own way.

Finding a unique creative path requires a patient, long-term perspective, but this only becomes possible when the nervous system feels safe. For Justin, safety is cultivated through daily small actions and gradual changes rather than a bold intervention.

He encourages each of us to listen for what we feel pulled toward, but only from a place of regulation, little by little, not all at once.

How do you know it’s a healthy pull?

It has a clean quality, a movement toward something that feels exciting or right. It can be soft or intense. Behaviours that leave us feeling guilt, shame, or regret are not pulls in this sense. Over time, we can identify the difference by remembering how we typically feel afterwards.

We can listen most clearly when we’re regulated because the body gravitates toward what helps it regulate. There is an intuitive knowing that arises when we feel safe and connected. For example, the intentions and desires that surface ahead of the new year. We often feel a pull during holidays because we are calmer and moving at a slower pace. It’s similar on vacation.

But turning that pull into lasting change requires micro-steps rather than grand gestures. In this sense, January isn’t the moment to transform everything, but the bridge toward the changes we want to make.

https://the-haven.co/zine

Who will you be in the face of a chaotic and uncertain world?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I caught up with my friend and returning guest, Jacob Nordby. His article, “When Life Feels Heavy, Ask This Question,” provided a valuable thread for the conversation.

“Who will I be in the face of this?” is not just about my choices but also about who I already am in response to things. Am I who I want to see when I look back from the future?

https://youtu.be/ZWZ67XbdAUE The Anxiety of Unravelling

In our conversation, Jacob mentioned the shared feeling that the institutions that traditionally served as pillars of stability (government, religion, business, and the media) have had our trust eroded for various reasons. Anxiety has increased alongside a desire for certainty.

When it feels like we’re watching a train wreck unfold in real time, we can easily slip into a reactive mode. On one hand, it doesn’t seem responsible to turn off the news and bury my head in the sand, but the nature of algorithmic news reporting makes it exhausting to engage without falling into despair. The endless supply of commentary videos and posts to doomscroll isn’t helpful.

So what encourages a positive, productive energy for action?

Jacob and I both return to the role of creativity, not as some “nice to have” element of escape or artistic expression, but as a fundamental part of a healthy, functioning human. Creativity helps us process, find meaning, and shift from reactivity to responsiveness. It asks us to step back and choose how we engage, not just what we engage with. Who might I be in the face of this?

The Creative Act: Destruction and Renewal

Every act of creation is, in some way, an act of destruction. It replaces what was to make space for what will be. That creative impulse doesn’t have to be loud or grand; it might be as small as tending to what’s within arm’s reach, as David Whyte writes: start close in.

The question then becomes: How does the way I choose to engage bring about the change I want to see?

We often talk about “being the change we WANT to see,” but this conversation reminded me that we are also already part of the change that is occurring. As the old saying goes, we’re not stuck in traffic; we ARE traffic. Are we aware of the role we play, and does it reflect the world we want to live in?

Allowing for the Shadow

Much of modern self-help encourages us to mimic an idealised version of who we believe we should be. But this can easily develop into a story that states, “If I were like that/them, I’d finally feel worthy.”

Jacob and I discussed how the parts of ourselves we wish to deny or keep hidden (what doesn’t fit our ideal image) often hold the greatest potential for growth and creativity. But these aren’t viewed as flaws to be fixed, rather as a kind of truth to be integrated, as illustrated by the story Jacob shared about Robert A. Johnson (Owning Your Own Shadow), who described feeling the urge to abandon his perfect life and just drive away.

As a psychoanalyst, Johnson found this impulse intriguing, and instead of repressing it, he “paid out the shadow intelligently” by driving forty miles once a week, eating a greasy burger, drinking a malt, and smoking a cigarette. He discovered this was sufficient to honour the impulse without allowing it to run wild.

Creativity, in this sense, becomes a way of metabolising our impulses and turning potentially destructive energy into something generative.

The Statue of Caesar

Jacob also mentioned Damnatio memoriae, the practice of erasing the memory of particular individuals from official historical records. For example, in Ancient Rome, where statues would be defaced or repurposed, as if pretending they never existed could undo the damage they’d done.

We still do this today, in our own ways, personally and collectively. We might try to scrub away the ugly parts, rewriting history to suit the ego-ideal of who we want to believe ourselves to be. But what’s repressed never really disappears. It returns, often in distorted, destructive forms.

The Healthy Cell and the Quiet Revolution

We talk about changing the world as if it requires heroic gestures. But this can cause us to lose sight of the small and quiet shifts that start close in. Jacob described each of us as a single cell in a collective body. If the broader body of humanity is inflamed, maybe the most radical thing we can do is become a healthy cell. This might mean quietly nourishing our own well-being, not as self-indulgence or hyper-productive optimisation, but to bring space to choose who we will be in the face of this. Whatever this might be.

Gentleness is radical. Watering your plants, making music, writing in your journal. This might sound twee and trivial, but it can be a contagious act of soul maintenance that spills out into the world.

Gentleness as Creative Intervention

Gentleness is not passivity. It’s where we find that space Viktor Frankl spoke of, between stimulus and response. Outrage begets outrage. Violence breeds violence. When we meet the world from gentleness, we interrupt the cycle of reactivity.

The energy we bring carries more influence than our arguments ever could.

The Creative Green Zone

There’s a physiological side to all this too. When we feel safe, our nervous system shifts into the ventral vagal state (“green zone”) where creativity and connection can thrive.

From calm, we can imagine. That’s why slowing down, breathing deeply, and tending to our relational needs are prerequisites for creative healing. And when we gather patiently, listen deeply, and care gently, we change the chemistry not only within ourselves but within the collective body.

A Quiet Revolution

It’s easy to dismiss small, everyday acts of gentleness as pale in comparison to the looming enormity of big issues. But connection through conversation, care, slowness, cups of tea, and the like are how we reduce collective inflammation.

Gentleness sustains us within an abrasive world. As shown in this conversation with Jacob, it’s not all about neat conclusions and perfect answers. Instead, we need spaces and rhythms where we can breathe, reflect, and reconnect with the creative pulse beneath the chaos. From there, we might find the energy that fuels the active hope needed for meaningful and sustainable change.

About Jacob

Jacob Nordby is a co-founder of A Writing Room Collective, Heal + Create, The Institute for Creative Living Foundation 501(c)3, and the author of several books, including Blessed Are the Weird – A Manifesto for Creatives and The Creative Cure. He previously worked as the marketing director for a traditional publishing house and oversaw the launch of many bestselling books. A working author and creative guide, he has a passion for helping writers solve their challenges and enjoy the satisfaction of sharing their work with the world.

Website and Social Links

Meet him at jacobnordby.com

Bonus multimedia journaling program gift: creativeselfjournal.com

The Creative Cure book page: creativecurebook.com

Follow Jacob on Facebook

Follow Jacob on Instagram

Creative Self Journal Gift

https://the-haven.co/register/

What are the challenges when it comes to objectively measuring high sensitivity in people?

In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast , I speak with researcher and lecturer Andrew May from Queen Mary University of London. Andrew has worked closely with Michael Pluess on studies exploring sensory processing sensitivity, genetics, and the measurement of sensitivity across different populations. His work explores the question, What does it mean to be highly sensitive in the modern world?

https://youtu.be/rf1U1wxck_w The Challenge of Measuring Sensitivity

The Highly Sensitive Person Scale, originally developed by Elaine and Arthur Aron in 1997, has shaped the study of sensitivity for nearly three decades. It opened an important new field of research. Yet, like all self-report tools, it relies on honest reporting of how people see themselves. And as Andrew points out, psychological measurement is never fully objective. It reflects cultural ideas about what counts as “normal,” “ideal,” or “acceptable.”

Someone raised to view sensitivity as weakness might understate their responses. Meanwhile, another who finds identity or comfort in the HSP label might amplify them. In both cases, results are shaped as much by social context as by biology. This is why researchers continue refining how sensitivity is assessed.

Gender expectations add another layer. Men often report lower sensitivity due to norms surrounding masculinity. Likewise, cultural attitudes influence which traits, such as empathy, gentleness, and conscientiousness, are valued and how safe people feel to acknowledge them.

This reveals how psychology and culture continually shape one another. What we measure as “inner traits” also carries the imprint of the social stories we live.

Sensitivity and the Limits of Objectivity

As new scales and tools emerge, supported by neuroimaging, physiological studies, and genetics, it’s worth asking what kind of knowledge we’re actually seeking. If sensitivity arises through both biology and relationship, how much can we truly understand it outside the contexts that shape and reflect it?

Sensitivity is reflected not only in biological patterns such as brain activity and cortisol levels, but also in how we interpret and respond to life.

The Social Context of Self-Reporting

As research on sensitivity evolves, one essential question remains: how do we speak about it without creating a hierarchy?

The aim is not to prove that highly sensitive people are deeper, kinder, or more moral than others. Instead, we aim to understand how different nervous systems and psychological dispositions engage with the world.

Sensitivity is not a fixed identity. It’s a way of perceiving and participating in life. It reminds us that human variation is not a flaw to be corrected. Instead, it’s a source of creativity, empathy, and adaptability for individuals and communities.

Related Considerations

When I share about high sensitivity, people sometimes respond that I’m describing traits linked to autism or ADHD. Andrew helped clarify why this confusion arises and how Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) differs.

High Sensitivity and Autism

High sensitivity and autism can coexist, and some traits overlap, especially under stress. Both may involve strong reactions to sensory input. However, they differ in specific areas such as theory of mind (the ability to intuit others’ perspectives). This tends to remain intact in highly sensitive individuals and may present differently for those on the autism spectrum.

High Sensitivity and ADHD

ADHD and sensitivity can also overlap. People with ADHD may act impulsively or struggle to sustain focus. In contrast, highly sensitive individuals are more likely to pause before responding. Recognising this distinction helps shape appropriate support for each profile, as well as those with both traits.

High Sensitivity and Giftedness

“Giftedness” is a loosely defined concept that is sometimes mistaken for sensitivity. While highly sensitive people may thrive creatively or intellectually in supportive environments, giftedness refers to broader capacities. Sensitivity alone cannot account for these capacities. Keeping these distinctions clear prevents unnecessary pressure and misunderstanding.

Ultimately, exploring sensitivity invites us to hold complexity rather than resolve it. It asks us to look beyond labels and measurements, to see how biology, experience, and culture weave together in the fabric of being human. When we approach sensitivity not as a category to define but as a way of relating to ourselves, to others, and to the world, we make space for a richer, more honest understanding. This understanding of what it means to feel deeply and live attentively is invaluable.

More About Andrew

Andrew is a lecturer in medical genetics at Kingston University London, and a former UK Research and Innovation-funded postdoctoral researcher based at the University of Surrey, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Pluess. He is also affiliated with the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience and the Neuropsychology Research Laboratory at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Andrew has a Master of Science (Medicine) in human genetics and a PhD in research psychology. His research interests include individual differences in environmental sensitivity, personality, mental health, minority stress, and early childhood development, examined from both psychological and genetic perspectives. In true highly sensitive person style, Andrew enjoys reading, board games, meditation, yoga, piano, spending time with animals (cats!), and other quiet pursuits.  

https://the-haven.co/register/

Do you have a heart for change but find that the loud, confrontational, and extroverted norms of traditional activism don’t suit your natural temperament?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I talk with Sarah P Corbett, the award-winning activist, author, and founder of the Craftivist Collective.

I’ve been following Sarah for years on Instagram, and after seeing she was Craftivist in Residence at Greenbelt Festival, I thought I’d reach out and see if she fancied a chat. This episode works as a companion piece to my conversation with Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, author of Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, which includes quotes from Sarah (something I only realised later!).

Sarah’s philosophy of Gentle Protest shows that there are many other tools we can carry in our activism toolbox, and that campaigning can be quietly relational rather than transactional or performative endeavour.

https://youtu.be/8EgDlswKn1k What Is Gentle Protest?

Sarah says that Gentle Protest invites us to challenge injustice through curiosity, empathy, and imagination rather than shame, aggression, or polarity.

Instead of fighting fire with fire, Gentle Protest asks:

• What if activism could entice, intrigue, and attract people to ask questions rather than shout them down?
• What if change could be built through dialogue, beauty, and patience?

This philosophy is rooted in gentleness as a form of strength, not passivity. It’s about engaging people, including those in power, with respect and relational awareness, creating conditions where meaningful change can take root.

Relationships Over Transactions

For Sarah, this kind of activism is not about noise or confrontation. It’s about relationship-building. Gentle Protest works by diffusing defensiveness and replacing finger-wagging with curiosity and creative connection.

When protest becomes relational, it stops being about winning arguments and starts being about transforming understanding. It allows for mutual learning and a recognition of our shared humanity, even in disagreement.

The Firm Backbone of Gentleness

Gentleness is often mistaken for weakness, but as Sarah puts it, it actually requires maturity, emotional intelligence, and depth.

To practice Gentle Protest is to treat people as equals while respecting the realities of their workload, their blind spots, and their humanity. It’s a strategic and pragmatic approach that asks: Who can bring about the change we seek? and How can we engage them in ways that build trust, not tension?

This isn’t about letting things slide. It’s about working intelligently, relationally, and with purpose.

Craftivism is a Tool, Not a Taskmaster

In the Gentle Protest Toolkit, craftivism is one potential tool rather than a catchall dogma. It’s about finding creative methods that fit each situation, rather than repeating the same tactics out of habit.

Sarah uses these questions to help people work backwards when figuring out the best approach for their campaign:

1. What’s the problem?
2. What’s the desired outcome?
3. Who are the decision-makers?
4. Who influences them?
5. What creative medium could best reach them?

If craftivism fits, use it. If not, find another way. The key is flexibility, imagination, and a commitment to relationships.

Letting Go of Perfection

Perfectionism can quietly strangle our ability to act. Sarah reminds us that activism isn’t about knowing everything or producing perfect work; it’s about participating in something bigger than ourselves.

The moment we make a campaign about personal performance, we lose sight of its purpose and make it less impactful. Gentle Protest frees us from that pressure, allowing imperfection and humanity to shine through.

The “Golden Thread of Gentleness”

What runs through everything Sarah does is what she calls the golden thread of gentleness.

Gentle Protest challenges the false dichotomy between soft and strong, showing that kindness can be an act of rebellion when the world rewards cruelty.

In this sense, gentleness is a radical choice we can make in the face of power. It is not passive or submissive, but profoundly and existentially creative.

About Sarah P Corbett

An award-winning activist, author and Ashoka fellow, Sarah P Corbett founded the global Craftivist Collective in 2009 and coined ‘Gentle Protest’ as her unique methodology. Corbett creates products and services for individuals, groups and organisations to do effective craftivism (craft + activism) prioritising audiences who have never done activism before.

Sarah’s pioneering work has helped change government laws, business policies as well as hearts and minds. She has worked with V&A, Tate, Craft Council, Climate Coalition, Helsinki Design Week, Save the Children and Secret Cinema amongst others. One of her campaigns directly led to 50,000 staff of Marks and Spencers receiving the real Living Wage. Plus WWF used Corbett’s 10-point manifesto to create their own successful craftivism campaign that led to a change in law to protect migrating birds in Spain.

Her TED x talk ‘Activism Needs Introverts’ was chosen as a TED Talk Of The Day. Corbett Co-created the Girlguiding Craftivism badge and her third book The Craftivist Collective Handbook was published 2nd May 2024 and won ‘best multimedia book’ at 2025’s The Creative Book Awards.

Connect with Sarah

Find Sarah on Instagram (@craftivists and @sarahpcorbett), Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and subscribe to receive the Craftivist Collective newsletter.

It’s time to dive back into the history of self-help and consider its impact on our understanding of how and who we are. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we are looking at the 1937 book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Think and Grow Rich sits on millions of bookshelves worldwide. It has remained one of the most enduring self-help books since its publication during the Great Depression. Despite documented controversies and allegations concerning the author, Napoleon Hill is still regarded by many contemporary self-help influencers as an important figure.

For this special episode, Napoleon Hill invited me to meet with him, where he promised to reveal the secret to becoming a successful self-help guru. He tasked me with turning this into a formula, which I could then share with the world. If you are ready to hear this secret, you will. But not all are. Which is why, despite it being mentioned in every part of the episode, I have not spelt it out in the starkest terms. For to do so would diminish its potency.

https://youtu.be/Cn6H17AFwPU 12 Steps To Thinking and Growing Rich as a Self-Help Influencer

We will explore these twelve keys to becoming a successful self-help grifter—sorry, I mean self-help guru—that we can learn from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.

Step 1: Lay Out Your Recipe for Success

Your recipe should promise clarity, control, and a sense of certainty in an uncertain world.

Step 2: Parade Yourself As Living Proof

Don’t be shy about telling people how your life changed from implementing your now tried and tested formula.

Step 3: Build Fail-Safe Principles

Be flexible with your words so that in the face of pushback and criticism, you can use them as reinforcement rather than undermining your idea.

Step 4: Establish Your Inner Circle

Join (or build) a fortifed circle of mutual back-scratching allies to grow authority by association and encourage aspirational sycophancy in your readers who dream of one day belonging to it.

Step 5: Drip Your Secret Sauce

Create and nurture a mystical secret, which sustains in your reader the sense that there is still something graspable they haven’t quite embodied – reinforce this with testimonials from those who appear to get it

Step 6: Nail Your Origin Story

Your appeal hinges on your origin story, which should follow a hero’s journey arc that starts with you in the reader’s current position (facing a challenge, wishing for change, etc). Describe the moment when everything changed for you and how this epiphany led your life to transform into what it is now. Firmly suggest that reading your book might be that wake-up call for the reader’s own heroic journey towards the life they’ve dreamed of but never yet dared follow.

Step 7: Use Confidence as Currency

Speak with confidence even if you are full of doubt and fear. The human mind is suggestible; the projection of confidence creates the perception of confidence. If you believe in your idea, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not; you know that it’s for the ultimate good of your reader to trust and follow you. Confidence is also what you are selling – people want to feel more of it, so if they see you wearing it, they will follow you.

Step 8: Turn Your Beliefs into Facts

Reinforce a picture of the world your readers want to believe in. Pick stories, metaphors, and research that move the frame of reality to one where your idea can be universally applied, and would be if all people were receptive to its power.

Step 9: Present The Pen of Destiny

Empower your readers to see reality primarily created by them as individuals. Emphasise the power of mindset, desire, and hard work, reinforcing the idea that taking personal responsibility for the quality of their life is what will bring the change they desire.

Step 10: Expose The Inner Enemy

Help your readers focus attention inwards to expose the biggest enemies of personal progress: fear, doubt, and indecision. Use militarised language to impress the urgency of the situation, which your method will help them emerge victorious.

Step 11: Feed The Lone Wolf

Stoke the fire of individual power by showing the reader that they are the protagonist and other people are supporting characters (obstacles or aids) in their life.

Step 12: Divide and Conquer

Nurture loyalty in your readers by turning them into followers, so they will defend you and your ideas if envious people criticise and attack you. And always remember that your people are your easiest source of future profit.

Self-Help is a Form, Not a Topic

Of course, while these might sound absurd, they’re the very mechanisms that keep the self-help industry turning.

Think and Grow Rich is an excellent demonstration of the technical tricks at play. A picture is beginning to form of how, as a genre, self-help is about more than its content. It’s about influencing beliefs and behaviours about ourselves, one another, and the way the world works.

Hill’s techniques rely on narrative, authority, perception, and engagement rather than the presentation of researched and documented knowledge. And when we view it in its historical context, we can see how important that was in the success of Think and Grow Rich. People were in vulnerable positions, still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression in the wake of the Wall Street Crash. They were seeking hope and practical solutions to the real material precarity created by a crisis inherent in the capitalist system. But rather than looking to the cause of that crisis and organising collectively for accountability to the real causes, and to ensure a safer future, Hill sold a story of individuals as personally responsible for the crash and responsible for pulling themselves up and following their dream to riches and success.

Hill’s formula has been replicated, adapted, and updated by thousands of self-help authors in the years since.

Further Reading/Viewing:

If you want to dive deeper into the truth about Napoleon Hill and the context of Think and Grow Rich, several resources do a great job highlighting the pattern of deception, fraud, and opportunism that was his true legacy. Think and Grow Rich isn’t an exception to that pattern – along with his other books, his emergence as a self-help success author sits squarely in his life as a con artist and snake oil salesman.

I hope that, by showcasing some of the techniques Hill employed in his self-help writing, we might be better equipped to recognise these same tactics used by influencers and gurus today. And to help those who are vulnerable to its allure, to notice before they spend thousands of dollars on promises that can’t come true.

In tracing its roots, we can begin to see how the mythology of self-help continues to shape our understanding of who and how we are today.

• The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self-Help Scammer of All Time (Matt Novak) (Article)
• The Untold Truth of Napoleon Hill – History’s Most Beloved Con-Man (Coffeezilla) (Video)
• Think and Grow Duped | The Dream (Podcast)
• Napoleon Hill: The Grifter Who Invented ‘The Secret’ & Donald Trump (BTB – Part One) (Video)
• Napoleon Hill: The Grifter Who Invented ‘The Secret’ & Donald Trump (BTB – Part Two) (Video)

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast , I speak with psychiatrist and author Dr Judith Orloff about her new book, The Highly Sensitive Rabbit . She wrote it to help sensitive children, their parents, and educators see sensitivity as a natural trait rather than a problem to be solved. She describes it as an invitation to reconnect with the sensitive inner child within each of us; the part that remembers how to play, imagine, and wonder.

https://youtu.be/0Q7AJGKBbIg Rediscovering the Magic of Life

Life can easily become overly serious, mundane, and disconnected from its natural magic. Judith’s story sets out to remind us to stay in touch with the loving, curious, and deep parts of ourselves. Creativity, she says, begins when we release our expectations and allow things to unfold. Writing a children’s book challenged her to express complex ideas in short sentences, paired with illustrations (by Katy Tanis) that speak directly to the heart.

It’s a lovely example of trying new ways to communicate familiar truths. How would you explain your favourite ideas if you were talking to a five-year-old?

Reading the Book to People

Judith often read The Highly Sensitive Rabbit aloud in different settings to see how people responded. This wasn’t a formal research process, but a natural extension of her curiosity. It was a way to sense how the story landed with children and adults alike.

What Do You Love to Do?

At the heart of the book lies a simple question: What do you love to do?
Through the character of Aurora, a gentle rabbit who prefers quiet and reflection to the boisterous games of her siblings, Judith highlights the importance of honouring individual needs. Aurora shows what it looks like to follow her own rhythm, even when others don’t understand.

This is an invitation for sensitive children (and the adults guiding them) to trust intuition and stay close to what feels true, even when it seems different from the norm.

Opening Up Conversation Instead of Judgement

In one scene, Aurora’s mother worries about her spending too much time alone. Her siblings complain, “She cries all the time.” Their reactions mirror common misunderstandings about sensitivity.

It’s easy to assume that solitude means loneliness, or that tears signal weakness. However, without genuine communication, we cannot determine whether someone’s withdrawal is a healthy choice, meeting a need, or responding through fear. Judith’s story reminds us to stay curious rather than judgmental; to ask, listen, and support instead of prescribing what “should” be.

Supporting a sensitive child means helping them identify their needs, manage their emotions, and develop simple strategies to cope with overwhelm.

Learning to Care for Yourself

Judith offers suggestions for children (and adults) to manage big feelings and model healthy boundaries:

• Take a slow breath when you feel stressed.
• Step away before speaking when you’re upset.
• Try a short three-minute meditation: close your eyes, focus on something beautiful, and take a few deep breaths.

These practices cultivate self-awareness early in life, enabling children to grow up knowing how to take care of themselves.

The Bigger Vision

The Highly Sensitive Rabbit expresses Judith’s wider mission to equip highly sensitive people with tools for thriving in an overstimulating world. When children learn early that their sensitivity is natural, they no longer need to define themselves by it later. It simply becomes part of who they are.

Knowing You’re Highly Sensitive Is the First Step

I asked Judith if there are plans for a sequel. It would be interesting to see Aurora explore her sensitivity through different experiences, applying it through friendships, challenging current events, and creativity. Many adults who discover their sensitivity have that same question: now what? Recognising it is one thing; integrating and normalising it is something else.

https://the-haven.co/zine

Is the audience more than a gaggle of consumers? What role do they play in the creative process of an artist? Should they, as Rick Rubin says, “come last”? Are they always right? Or is there a more nuanced and sustaining way to approach this question?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel , I explore this question with Steve Lawson.

I bumped into Steve towards the end of the summer at Greenbelt Festival. We rapidly got deep in conversation about his recently completed PhD, A Study Towards a New Model for Subscriber Audience Involvement in Improvised Music .

Steve’s approach to music-making and creative practice has always resonated with me. Over the past twenty-five years, he has carved out a living as a solo improvisational bass player, developing a thoughtful and sustainable model for art that resists the common assumptions that drive an obsession with numbers and scale. His thesis turns that lived experience into a lens for questioning many of the assumptions baked into how we think about creativity today.

https://youtu.be/BB362bVySiI

Notes from our conversation…

The Audience Comes With

What happens if we treat the audience as part of the story that shapes and sustains our practice?

A way of looking at the influential relationship between artist and audience is to create spaces where the rationale (the philosophical approach) can be presented, and work can emerge as part of a conversation with the audience. For Steve, listening to how people (who respect your work) engage with it, whether “that reminds me of…” or “my Dad just died and all I can listen to is you,” becomes so much more meaningful than having a reviewer who doesn’t know what you are doing or why, and place it in a pile of other CDs. What matters is how people relate it to their lives, and what it means to them. Creating spaces for this dialogue became central: a mailing list, website forum, Twitter, and eventually a subscription model through Bandcamp.

Non-Algorithmically Defined Community Spaces

This meant integrating community with the economic rationale for making music. The audience emotionally sustains the music and financially supports its creation, along with the maintenance of the space where both artist and audience belong as equals. When the audience has already paid for the music before it is made, there is no need to rationalise it with hype or spectacle. Instead, it connects with people who already share the philosophical approach. This is a form of patronage, supporting the artist because of how they create, not only what they make.

Scenius (Brian Eno)

Genius is not an individual trait but the manifestation of the collective intelligence of a scene. Famous names are simply the visible tip of a larger iceberg, as with Russian painters in the early twentieth century.

Reception Theory (Stuart Hall)

Audiences actively interpret media texts by encoding and decoding. They may align with the intended meaning (dominant reading), reject it (oppositional reading), or negotiate it. Instrumental music does not encode meaning in a concrete way. Its sense of meaning emerges cumulatively, with artist and audience encoding together. Decoding and recoding become a collective process, shaped by new work and ongoing observations.

The Space of the Talkaboutable (David Darke)

Great works expand the “space of the talkaboutable,” an invitation to discuss ideas and broaden horizons. While Darke sees this as arriving around the work, Steve sees the space as built first (through mailing lists, forums, Twitter, Bandcamp), with the work then released into it. Meaning is collectively encoded, decoded, and recoded in this shared space.

“The Audience Comes Last”

The PhD began with the desire to make better music. What became clear was how much the audience contributes to the process, and what happens when that is denied. Rubin’s statement that the audience should be ignored overlooks the wisdom, care, and vulnerability that listeners bring. If the artist reflects the collective experience of a community, then the soundtrack emerges from what is shared.

This model does not scale, and that is the point. It does not rely on 200,000 monthly Spotify listeners or disconnected fame. That pressure brings entitlement and expectation. Within the subscriber community, no one tells the artist what to do. Even when people do not understand, they ask in good faith why, rather than demanding change.

From a Transactional to a Relational Audience

In transactional dynamics, the audience and the artist are set against each other, either dictating the work or being ignored. But a community of practice is about shared growth around a central practice. Interest in process can deepen listening and appreciation, rather than feeding competitiveness or exclusivity.

In a culture of shortcuts and AI-generated outputs, curiosity about how something is done can add depth. Seeing how a sound is made can enhance enjoyment, provided it is not reduced to transactional comparison.

Algorithmic Sensationalism

When everyone strives for spectacle, nuance disappears. Storytellers risk being drowned out by carnival barkers. The demand for more outrageous content comes at the cost of honesty and integrity. In this context, honesty itself becomes an act of resistance.

Transformative and Incremental Change

Incremental change adds more of what already exists, such as new ways to sell CDs. Transformative change shifts the whole landscape, such as the move from a scarcity economy to a digital economy. Streaming services illustrate this. It takes 100 premium streams or 600 free streams to equal one paid download in the UK charts. A fan listening 50 times counts for little. This model discourages deep audience and artist relationships, favouring scale and safety over innovation and depth.

Value and Meaning

“Art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time” (Basquiat).

The value of music is not in how it is made or delivered, but in what it does to us when we hear it. It lives in memory and anticipation carried in the present moment of listening.

How Can I Keep Doing This?

“ How can I keep doing this? ” Creators want to make meaningful work in ways that are true to their vision and voice. But the new market risks corrupting that relationship, bending art to serve algorithms and demand. The pressure for novelty creates a treadmill of spectacle rather than depth.

The Stagnating Affect of Uninterrogated Nostalgia

Nostalgia plays a powerful, often unexamined, role in media consumption. While loving music from the past is natural, unexamined nostalgia can become life sapping, pulling us into yearning for an imagined past at the cost of present possibility. Complaints that “nobody writes like X anymore” undermine new work, and algorithms rarely prioritise sharing others’ new music.

Community in Practice

When Steve was diagnosed with cancer, he recorded a piece immediately after leaving hospital and shared it on Bandcamp. The audience was present, part of his journey, and the music carried meaning in that shared context. It was not “music about cancer” from a safe distance. It was a raw reflection of his brain on cancer, sparking connection and healing with those who were already part of the story.

Listen

Steve’s music

Emily Baker

Dirty Loops (Henrik Linder)

House of Waters (Moto Fukushima)

In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we look at the relationship between sensory processing sensitivity and hypervigilance.

As we finish our journey through the first HSP Owner’s Guide , we turn our attention to hypervigilance. that feeling of being permanently “switched on,” unable to stop scanning for danger, even when we’re safe.

For highly sensitive people, vigilance is a natural part of sensory processing sensitivity. It helps us read the room, pick up subtle cues, and stay attuned to what is happening beneath the surface. But when vigilance tips into hypervigilance, it can leave us in a state of chronic over-arousal, disconnection, and exhaustion.

In the episode, we explore why hypervigilance is such a common experience for HSPs, how it shows up in everyday life, and ways we might support our nervous systems in returning to a sense of safety and connection. I examine hypervigilance within a social and cultural context for HSPs, rather than from a clinical or individual psychological perspective.

https://youtu.be/RCvrgSJH73I Vigilance vs. Hypervigilance

Vigilance is an intrinsic feature of sensory intelligence. It anchors us in the awareness to notice and predict useful information to help us survive and thrive together.

Hypervigilance is what happens when vigilance overspills, and we get stuck in a state of alertness with limited capability to move our nervous system into a state of connection.

This can have roots in early life (especially for HSPs who are more impacted by their formative environments). But it can also develop over time because of the pressures and rhythms of the modern world, with constant notifications, cultural glorification of busyness, and a never-ending expectation to perform and prove our worth.

Possible Signs of Hypervigilance

Hypervigilance is not always dramatic. Often it shows up quietly and gradually, for example you might notice:

• Feeling flat or detached, as if life is happening behind glass
• Difficulty taking action, even on small plans
• Unusual tearfulness
• Brain fog and trouble focusing
• Ruminating thoughts on repeat
• Disrupted sleep cycles
• Anxiety or panic attacks seemingly “out of nowhere”
• Harsh self-criticism or low self-esteem

If these feel familiar, they may be signs that your nervous system has been in “stay safe” mode for a long time.

Why Hypervigilance Happens

Hypervigilance is the nervous system’s over-lean into the message, “stay safe by staying alert.” This is obviously appropriate in certain contexts, but when we carry this story everywhere, it takes its toll and can be a difficult pattern to get out of.

Some common contributing factors include:

• Early Environments: Growing up in conflict or unpredictability can train the nervous system to always be on guard, especially in volatile environments where safety could be torn away at a moment’s notice.
• Past Experiences: The nervous system may overlearn from painful experiences, remaining alert to avoid “ever letting that happen again.”
• Cultural Pressures: Hustle culture, social media outrage cycles, and global crises all create a background hum of threat.
• Worldview and Meaning-Making: Certain belief systems (political, religious, ideological) can divide the world into “us vs. them,” keeping us in a state of perpetual alertness to nefarious outside actors.
• Physiological Factors: Poor sleep, hormone shifts, or nutritional deficiencies can lower our threshold for perceiving danger.

These are rarely isolated and often overlap in ways that reinforce one another.

Meeting Hypervigilance with Creative Gentleness

A helpful (though, not easy) way to meet everyday hypervigilance is to slow things down. Not necessarily by stopping altogether, but by letting engagement become gentler and more deliberate. Rather than rushing to solve, fix, or control, we can allow space to notice small sensory glimmers, those subtle cues that tell us we are safe, connected, and welcome in the moment.

Sometimes hypervigilance disguises itself as a need to gather more knowledge or prepare more thoroughly before we act. The desire to have the perfect plan, the ideal response, or the flawless understanding can be part of the protective pattern itself. Learning to sit with uncertainty, to laugh about situations (especially with others), and to experiment imperfectly can be a gentle way of softening the grip of hypervigilance.

We do not have to do this work alone. Bringing trusted people into our experiments, letting them see us try, fail, and try again, can help retrain our nervous system to experience safety and belonging in moments of vulnerability. Over time, these practices reshape our inner landscapes, reassuring the nervous system that imperfection is safe.

I had not heard of James Allen before I started exploring this history of self-help. I saw references to his book, “ As a Man Thinketh ”, which was frequently cited as an influential text around the power of thought on manifesting circumstances. With our “It’s the thought that counts” theme in The Haven this month, my curiosity took me into a James Allen rabbit hole.

I read three of his books: From Poverty to Power (his first), The Divine Companion (his last), and As a Man Thinketh (his most famous). I wanted to try getting a sense of where he was coming from in his philosophical worldview. He published around twenty books, all written within an eleven-year period, before he died in 1912 at just 47 years old. I do wonder how his ideas would have evolved if he had lived longer.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast , I share my response to As a Man Thinketh. I reflect on Allen’s ideas and their implications for the way we think about ourselves, one another, and the nature of reality.

https://youtu.be/tVtG-Ahrkgw Why Am I Doing This Project?

You may be wondering why I’m exploring self-help…Good question. I’m not completely sure. But I think it’s because I’ve felt an intuitive nudge to explore this world and its function in culture.

I don’t know where it will take me (I have no overriding purpose or vision with it – sorry James!), or what I will find, but I have a sense that there are interesting things to discover by examining, not just the content that is common in the self-help genre, but the role the field plays in how we understand and judge ourselves, others, and the horizons of possibility for the world.

As I find in this book, there are some interesting insights and invitations to explore. But it also carries the potential to be understood, embodied, and applied in dangerous and harmful ways, especially when Allen’s metaphors are mistaken for literal truths. This is where his philosophy, which initially sounds positive and empowering, becomes reductive and destructive when we examine its logical implications.

It demonstrates rhetorical tricks that are echoed in modern-day personal development literature, such as metaphorical literalism. This is where poetic imagery and aphorisms are employed to support and prove otherwise baseless philosophies.

How James Allen Described As a Man Thinketh

As a Man Thinketh is intentionally short. Allen described it as a pocket book with teaching that all can easily grasp and follow. He said it shows how, in their own thought-world, each human holds the key to every condition, good or bad, that enters into our life. By working patiently and intelligently upon our thoughts, we may remake our life and transform our circumstances.

The question I keep coming back to throughout this exploration is, does he mean this as a description or a prescription? And what difference does this make to our reading, interpretation, and application of these ideas?

As a Man Thinketh – Notes Thought and Character

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

A person is the product of thought alone. The mantra “change your thoughts, change your life” is still repeated as if it were a scientific law rather than a metaphor.

The Effect of Thought on Circumstances

“Every man is where he is by the law of his being. The thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance.”

Prosperity and poverty, joy and suffering, always mirror the state of an individual’s mind.

The Effect of Thought on Health and Body

“The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.”

Thought is the source of health and sickness.

Thought and Purpose

“He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.”

To avoid suffering, an individual needs a central life purpose. We should find the straight pathway to the achievement of purpose, and never deviate from its path.

The Thought-Factor in Achievement

“Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence.”

A virtuous life is about achievement, accomplishment, and sacrifice.

Visions and Ideals

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”

Just as the oak sits in the acorn and the bird in the egg, every life is where it deserves to be based on the way they have manifested their dreams.

Serenity

“Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power.”

Calmness of mind is the hallmark of strength. The serene person is better positioned to achieve power, influence, and moral authority.

Reading As a Man Thinketh today, it’s striking how much of modern self-help traces back to these chapters. Its metaphors endure, and sit in us like self-evident truths.

The appeal of serenity continues in modern stoicism and mindfulness trends.

My Conclusion

Allen’s neat system suggests that thought alone determines who we are and what happens to us. It is an idea that has proven remarkably persistent, even though it collapses under the weight of real life. Human experience is not simple, not consistent, not something we can manage through the power of will. We are shaped by chance, by biology, by history, by one another. To be alive is to live in the contradiction and messiness. Any philosophy that denies this may be comforting for a moment, but it asks us to reject the very things that make us human.

https://the-haven.co/register/

This post elaborates on the ‘overstimulation’ section of The HSP Owner’s Guide.

In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we look at the relationship between sensory processing sensitivity and overstimulation.

Overstimulation is a term we often hear when people talk about high sensitivity. It’s the second word in the DOES acronym after Deep Processing and before Emotional Responsiveness or Empathy, and Sensing Subtleties as a description of core characteristics of the trait.

But what do we actually mean by overstimulated? What does it look like? And is there anything we can do about it other than avoiding stimulating environments and situations? At the get-go, I want to answer that question with a resounding yes. We don’t have to write ourselves out of the situations, environments, and experiences that really matter to us. We have the capacity to build sustainable approaches to this stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy8XxQe7_iU Responsiveness and Stimulation

Because highly sensitive people are all different, it’s important to remember that sensitivity isn’t who we are. It’s more like the rails our nervous system runs on. It is often described as a spectrum of sensory responsiveness. Those on the high end take in a huge amount of sensory data and process it deeply. Those on the low end take in less, and most people are somewhere in the middle. As a species, we have evolved and benefit from individuals existing along this continuum.

Environmental Sensitivity researchers describe this variation through the concept of differential susceptibility. Some individuals are more profoundly influenced by their environment, for better or worse. It’s not about weakness or fragility. It’s about responsiveness and depth of processing. Studies show that highly sensitive individuals flourish in supportive settings but face greater challenges in chaotic ones.

I like to visualise this difference using microphones. A sensitive condenser mic is uniquely effective in quiet, controlled spaces. It picks up every subtle detail. But in a loud environment, it can get overwhelmed by noise. A dynamic mic has a narrower field of responsiveness and can work in almost any environment because it picks up less background noise. Both are useful, but for different purposes. This helps us remember that high sensitivity isn’t a flaw or superpower, it’s just a variation in human temperament, useful in some contexts and less so in others.

What Overstimulation Looks Like

Overstimulation can look different from individual to individual. It is caused by an overload of the nervous system with environmental, emotional, social, or cognitive information.

It’s not always evident to others when a highly sensitive person is overstimulated. Despite appearing calm or composed, HSPs may be grappling with intense physical discomfort or emotional distress due to nervous system overload. Rising levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol exacerbate this heightened sensitivity, leading to strong reactions to excitement, tension, temperature changes, or sensory stimuli in the environment.

What looks like calmness in a person might be a kind of shutting down. This happens to me when I’ve had too much stimulation – I can look really chilled out, but in actual fact I’m unable to function properly.

You might experience:

Physical symptoms of overstimulation

• Lightheadedness or dizziness
• Internal tremors (feeling shaky inside without visible shaking)
• Heart palpitations or irregular heartbeat sensations
• Nausea or digestive discomfort
• Temperature sensitivity

Cognitive effects of overstimulation

• Difficulty concentrating or focusing on tasks
• Short-term memory lapses
• Mental fog or feeling disconnected from surroundings
• Racing thoughts

Emotional responses

• Irritability disproportionate to the situation
• Sudden emotional surges, such as tears or outbursts of frustration
• Social withdrawal urges
• Heightened startle response

Behavioural changes

• Restlessness or inability to settle
• Increased sensitivity to light, sound, or touch
• Sleep disturbances despite fatigue
• Impulsive decisions to remove oneself from situations

Overstimulation may be subtle. It can build gradually like a low background hum. And sometimes it hits all at once, like flood defences breaking. I remember experiencing it in shops as a child. The fluorescent lights, drudging through aisles, would leave me suddenly feeling drowsy and disconnected, despite being excited at the idea of going shopping.

The Physiology Behind Overstimulation

When overstimulated, the nervous system activates stress responses.

• Neuroception, the subconscious threat detection system, becomes hyper-alert
• Stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline flood the system
• The prefrontal cortex becomes less effective, making rational thinking harder
• Sensory filters become less discriminating, letting in too much information

This explains why two people can enter the same environment and one feels energised while the other feels overwhelmed. It’s as much about the state of your nervous system as the external situation, and also about the cumulative load of stimulation you carry between contexts. This is also why it’s important to consider Deb Dana’s words, “story follows state,” which remind us that for highly sensitive people, it’s not as simple as choosing our mindset. We need to start by selecting environmental elements that lead to a calm and less stimulated nervous system before particular thoughts may be able to change.

How to Regulate When Overstimulation Hits

We might think of regulating overstimulation through two broad filters: proactive and responsive.

Proactive regulation involves preparing your nervous system before entering a stimulating environment or situation:

• Notice environments that tend to overstimulate you (and how it tends to happen)
• Consider the contributing factors, e.g. timing, social energy, and sensory intensity
• Plan strategies ahead of time that help you identify green/red flags when facing invitations/opportunities, prioritising margin and bridging between environments, and planning for realistic preparation/recovery space and time where possible

Responsive regulation is what you do when you feel your nervous system becoming overstimulated. Again, different things work for different people, and what works for one person might make it worse for someone else. It’s about experimenting with things like:

• Finding a quiet space with reduced sensory input
• Calming tools such as earplugs, weighted items, or familiar textures, tastes, smells etc
• Breathing techniques
• Stepping outside or moving your body
• Creative practices like doodling, writing, or playing an instrument
• Co-regulating alongside others away from the source of the stimulation

Long-term adaptation might include:

• Scheduling buffer time between activities (and bridges that help you leave and arrive well)
• Identifying recurring triggers and adjusting environments
• Developing a personal preparation/recovery toolkit

The goal isn’t to shut down your sensitivity or avoid life. It’s to notice, understand, and collaborate with your nervous system so you can navigate stimulating environments more comfortably.

The Social Side of Overstimulation

Social interaction is a major source of overstimulation. It’s rarely just the conversation. It can be the context, the unknowns, and the processing afterwards (reliving the conversations, wondering why you said what you did and didn’t say what you should have!) You might really enjoy someone’s company and still leave drained.

Noticing red flags and green flags helps. Big groups with unstructured conversation might deplete you, while small gatherings feel energising. Individual differences matter too. Someone might be draining even if you share interests, while another person energises you despite little obvious common ground.

After-care is crucial. Sometimes being fully drained can feel good if recovery time is planned. The real challenge is when life leaves no margin, stacking one overstimulating event on another. For people with full-time caring responsibilities, this lack of margin is a constant reality.

Sensitivity Beyond the Self

I believe sensitivity has an important social role. Highly sensitive people often notice gaps in care and justice, and their responsiveness and empathy support social cohesion. Noticing and responding to sources of stimulation isn’t just about individual survival; it’s tied to our capacity to change the world around us. It’s about shaping communities, environments, and expectations to work for different people. Not least because when we make the world conducive for individuals to flourish, it is good for all of us.

https://the-haven.co/zine

I’m starting a project exploring the history of self-help; where the ideas came from, how they’ve changed over time, and what they mean for us today.

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is my chance to set some intentions, explain why I feel drawn to do this, and share how you can get involved if you want to join me for the ride.

I’m not starting this project with the end in mind. Sorry, Stephen Covey, but I’m rebelling against the second habit of highly effective people. I honestly don’t know how this will look or where it will take me. I’m just intrigued to dig into the backstory of personal development and positive thinking, and explore how it became an industry worth an estimated around $40 billion in 2024, projected to more than double by 2033.

Self-help shapes how millions of us think about ourselves, our relationships, our struggles, and our potential. I want to look at where it came from, how it works, and what it’s doing to us now.

https://youtu.be/GMowyoc4TeA This isn’t about belittling self-help

I want to approach this with a curious and critical open mind, not a cynical one. I’ve personally gained insight, tools, and practices from authors in the personal development space. So, I have experienced the value of resources and authors under the broad self-help umbrella.

But I do have some questions.

One in particular that has long been on my mind…with the ideas in self-help are as widely adopted as they are, why haven’t they “worked” in the big-picture sense?

Why now feels like a good moment to examine the rise of self-help

We’re living in a strange mix of economic precarity, post-pandemic disorientation, the maturing of influencer culture, and now AI churning out self-help style advice at industrial speed.

If self-help reflects and responds to the anxieties of its time, then this moment feels like a perfect point to ask whether it might be contributing to those same anxieties it claims to ease.

The quote that caught my attention

About 12 years ago, I read The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman.

One idea in it has stuck with me ever since:

“Perhaps you don’t need telling that self-help books… rarely much help. This is why some self-help publishers refer to the ‘eighteen-month rule’, which states that the person most likely to purchase any given self-help book is someone who, within the previous eighteen months, purchased a self-help book—one that evidently didn’t solve all their problems.”

I was a big reader of personal development books at the time, especially those that spoke to building online businesses around creativity. They gave me a sense of forward momentum and excitement about future possibilities, but I could also feel myself on a treadmill. Old dissatisfaction was replaced with new.

That quote made me wonder if the self-help industry insists on not solving our problems. Which makes sense when you think about it…why would a market secure its own demise? It needs to keep inventing new problems to solve. Otherwise it collapses.

The 18-month rule and endless repackaging

Some people enjoy the sense of growth that comes from reading a new book, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But from my experience, a lot of them say the same thing in different clothing.

Different anecdotes. Different metaphors. Same structure.

So why do we keep reading? And why does the market keep producing more?

The Mel Robbins example

Earlier this year, I looked into whether Mel Robbins had plagiarised a poem by Cassie Phillips and made up the story that inspired her book The Let Them Theory.

I bought and read the book as part of my research. It’s not my usual reading choice, and I hadn’t read a new personal development book in years. Two things struck me:

1. The writing felt more like marketing copy than the work of a writer.
2. The ideas weren’t new; just repackaged versions of stoicism, the serenity prayer, radical acceptance, and Buddhism (which she openly admits, albeit in defence of the plagiarism accusations).

This persuasive, “I’m your friend” style of marketing is common in self-help influencer culture. Whether intended or not, it can exploit people who are in vulnerable and precarious positions. It nurtures parasocial bonds to build and potentially exploit trust.

The History of Self-help in times of turmoil

Another thread I want to follow is whether self-help historically booms during moments of economic, political, and social instability. When the world feels out of control, we can focus on the things we think we can influence, such as our choices, responses, and mindset.

But I also wonder if this helps keep the larger system running as it is, without actually changing anything meaningful.

In Bright-Sided (Smile or Die in the UK), Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about how positive thinking became prevalent as a way to turn responsibility onto employees during times of corporate downsizing. Painting redundancy as an opportunity, rewarding those who keep smiling, performing, and pretending to be fine under the precarious ruthlessness of neoliberal capitalism.

My working definition of self-help

I’m defining self-help books as works that position individual change as the path to life transformation. When built around an author’s personal story or branded method, they often focus on abstract notions like success, wealth, happiness, and fulfilment.

They usually sit at the front of a funnel that leads to courses, coaching, and memberships. The underlying message is: “You alone are responsible for your future success, happiness, and suffering.”

I want to explore what happens when this narrative dominates both individual and cultural thinking.

How the series will (probably) work

I’ll be working through some of the biggest titles in the genre, as well as obscure but influential works. Sometimes one book per episode, sometimes clusters based around particular themes or authors.

I’m aiming for one or two episodes per month. I’d love your suggestions and stories along the way. All of this is subject to evolve and change, but this is the first step I’m taking on this path. I’m sure it will evolve once I get going.

https://the-haven.co/register/

The internet is full of memes about positive thinking. I saw this quote a few days ago:
“The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude.”

At first glance, it contains some truth. Of course, the way we think about things can influence our relationship with them. But taken too far, this kind of thinking turns into something insidious and destructive.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the darker side of positive thinking.

https://youtu.be/E0JCsl_u_7M?si=XAHxf4c2LB578QIr

I remember hearing someone suggest replacing ‘have to’ with ‘get to’ as a way to live with more gratitude for things we take for granted. Again, that can definitely be a useful reframe at times. But the associated claim that words impact thoughts and thoughts are the only thing that create our reality can quickly become an imprisoning and judgemental superstition. Toxic positivity encourages emotional suppression and shame, where anything other than optimism is considered weakness or failure.

You’ve Only Got Yourself To Blame

If we follow the logic that our thoughts dictate our reality to its extreme, we land in a society shaped by what philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the achievement imperative. In this world, external rules are replaced by internal commands. We no longer respond to “you should” or “you must.” Instead, we internalise the injunction to perpetually “live our passion,” “find our purpose,” and “optimise our potential.”

Han quotes Tony Robbins, who promotes this mindset by saying,
“When you set a goal, you’ve committed to CANI (Constant, Never-Ending Improvement)! You’ve acknowledged the need that all human beings have for constant, never-ending improvement. There is a power in the pressure of dissatisfaction, in the tension of temporary discomfort. This is the kind of pain you want in your life.”

This leads to a permanent state of temporary discomfort. There is always something to optimise, improve, and change. Never rest. Never be satisfied.

The Problem With Pathological Positivity

Toxic positivity – we might describe it as pathological positivity (though I’ve seen a book of that name painting it as a desirable state of being, so that’s a bit odd)- thrives on the belief that we should reframe negative thoughts. But there is a big difference between resistance and repression. A good comparison comes from Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, founder of logotherapy and author of Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote:
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

Choosing Your Response vs Blaming Your Attitude

Unlike self-help slogans, Frankl’s words do not offer easy comfort. He was not promoting positive thinking. He was describing something he observed in those who were stripped of their humanity and subjected to unimaginable suffering. For Frankl, attitude was not a shortcut to happiness or material prosperity, but a form of resistance and an expression of power over an oppressor. It was a way to maintain dignity in the face of dehumanisation. His message was not about pretending things are okay, but about facing reality with courage and integrity.

This contrasts with James Allen’s 1903 As a Man Thinketh, often credited with laying the foundation for mindset-focused personal development and the Law of Attraction. Allen writes:
“All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”
“Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought.”

These statements are simplistic. But they can also be dangerous. They suggest that all suffering is self-inflicted, that illness, grief, or injustice are failures in a person’s thinking. This mindset promotes shame and silence. Far from being a response to an oppressive power, it becomes an oppressive force. It encourages people to internalise systemic issues and to blame themselves for pain that is often out of their control.

Finding Meaning vs Toxic Positivity

Frankl offers a different path. He did not believe that the mind creates suffering. He believed that suffering is a real part of life. In one of his stories, he counsels a man grieving the loss of his wife. Instead of offering platitudes, Frankl invites the man to see the pain as a reflection of deep love. The meaning was not imposed from outside. It emerged from the man’s own experience. The grief was real, and so was the love that gave rise to it.

Meaning, in Frankl’s work, is not about positive thinking. It is about finding light in dark places. And when suffering is avoidable, the most meaningful response is to change its cause, not to accept or reframe it. This perspective is far more compassionate and responsible than the toxic positivity that dominates much of modern self-help culture.

The Freedom to Feel What Is True

The Black Mirror episode, Nosedive speaks to this. The protagonist, Lacie, lives in a world where everyone rates each other’s behaviour in real time. Life becomes a game of masking and performance. But after a series of events, her social rating plummets, and she ends up in a jail cell. It looks like she has lost everything, but for the first time, she is free. Free from the endless can of achievement society. Liberated from the permanent loop of self-correction and optimisation.

https://the-haven.co/zine

This post elaborates on the ‘moral sensitivity’ section of The HSP Owner’s Guide.

Have you ever felt like you’re carrying the weight of the world’s wrongs inside your body? You may feel torn between staying true to your values and going along with what is considered “normal”?

For many Highly sensitive people (HSPs), this quiet inner tension is familiar. Sensory processing sensitivity often comes with an instinctive concern for fairness, justice, and the well-being of the world around us. This moral sensitivity is woven into how many HSPs notice, feel, and respond.

Alongside this internal compass, many HSPs naturally hold strong values that influence how they interact with life. This can fuel a desire for harmony and social cohesion, while also heightening their awareness of injustice or harm. Their choices are often guided by the impact on others, including people, animals, and the environment.

https://youtu.be/mnoCdSo2QnA What Might Moral Sensitivity Look Like in a Highly Sensitive Person?

Every HSP is different. Our beliefs naturally vary. We do not all approach, value, or hold things with the same convictions. But there are characteristics and patterns that are common for many HSPs.

Awareness

• A clear sense of personal values (a highly sensitive person may develop and arrive at their own set of foundational values that they live by. These are not necessarily intentionally chosen, but they might be evident in the elements they consider when making decisions and taking action).
• Sensitivity to injustice, dishonesty, or unfair treatment of others (they might find themselves stirred to action when they witness or experience actions that go against their values. This can even lead to acting against personal interests for the sake of something or someone else).
• Discomfort with actions or systems that violate deeply held principles (HSPs might be aware of the role of dehumanising systems, processes, and attitudes, which step outside of their moral and ethical values).

Connection to Meaning

• A tendency to question purpose, both in personal life and broader societal structures (this might happen quietly in your heart and mind, with some trusted confidants, or it could occur in a wider context).
• Interest in philosophical, spiritual, or ethical frameworks (HSPs might connect with ideas that give scaffolding to their values. They might adopt them fully or build their own from joining dots and piecing things together).
• Intuitive sense of what feels morally “right” or “wrong” in different contexts (many HSPs tend to notice patterns across contexts. This underpins trust or distrust without overt evidence for it).

Responsibility and Diligence

• Acting in alignment with personal values (decisions and choices are often made with a desire for a deeper sense of meaning or purpose).
• Attunement to moral dilemmas and contradictions in societal norms
• Disturbance when witnessing hypocrisy or people acting without integrity (needing to do something when seeing people deliberately manipulating, deceiving, or taking advantage of others).
• Feeling personally responsible to do “the right thing” in difficult situations.

Sensitivity to Moral Nuance and Grey Areas

• Noticing nuances in ethical dilemmas that others might overlook (highly sensitive people might see nuance where others paint a simplistic picture).
• Struggling with situations where no choice feels fully just or fair (they might feel the weight of decisions they had to make, but which had costs to them).
• Processing moral questions for longer periods before reaching conclusions (HSPs might need more time before forming an opinion or judgement).

How Moral Sensitivity Shows Up in Daily Life Personal Relationships

• HSPs may be particularly attuned to imbalances in fairness, such as one-sided friendships or unequal effort in partnerships.
• They might notice their concerns belittled or dismissed as “overthinking” or hear others tell them to stop worrying, “just let it go”, “get over it”, or “pull yourself together”.

Work and Social Settings

• Workplace policies or societal norms that seem unjust can be unsettling, prompting a desire in some HSPs to address and change them rather than passively accept them.
• HSPs may feel compelled to speak up about ethical concerns. Some might find themselves advocating for policies or speaking on behalf of others. This is because it is sometimes easier to stand up for others than for themselves.
• They might not be naturally competitive until they encounter unfairness or injustice. The desire to put things right can ignite a competitive spark in a sensitive person.

Self-Expectations

• A strong internal drive to act with integrity, sometimes leading to self-criticism if they fall short of their own standards.
• Difficulty moving on from past decisions that did not fully align with their values. They might be ‘‘haunted’ by moments where they acted out of integrity in the past.

Navigating the Challenges of Moral Sensitivity Holding Idealism with Realism

While moral clarity can be an anchor, holding too tightly to rigid expectations often leads to disappointment, resentment, or burnout. It can help to remember that most decisions and situations exist in shades of grey.

Emotional Responses to Injustice

Being attuned to injustice can take an emotional toll, especially when exposed to distressing news, conversations, or environments that feel out of alignment with core values. Use creativity to process situations.

A creative practice can help you explore your thoughts and develop a positive approach to addressing and responding to things like injustice. This also provides options for action. Whether you want to make art, take direct action, or let go, when you know that there is nothing more you can personally do.

Over-Responsibility

It is easy for highly sensitive people to feel responsible for solving every moral issue they encounter, but this can quickly lead to overwhelm or compassion fatigue. Recognising and accepting that no single person can solve every problem is essential for long-term well-being. Many HSPs benefit from focusing their energy on causes, relationships, or actions where their input feels both meaningful and sustainable. This is instead of trying to carry the weight of the world.

As Dorcus Cheng-Tozen writes in Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, not everyone responds in the same way. Working toward a fairer, more just world is not a one-size-fits-all process. It calls for each of us to be who we are rather than trying to force ourselves into unsustainable boxes we don’t need to fit into.

Finding Like-Spirited Communities

Moral sensitivity can sometimes feel isolating, especially if others dismiss it as unnecessary or excessive. Connecting with others who share a similar perspective on the world can help reduce feelings of alienation and loneliness. This is especially true when you don’t have to explain yourself or feel defensive about the things you naturally care about.

Sensitivity is a Natural Trait

Moral sensitivity is neither a flaw nor a superpower. It is simply one way many highly sensitive people process and engage with the world around them. For some, it can deepen relationships and decision-making. For others, it may feel like a heavy weight to carry.

The key lies in self-awareness, recognising when this sensitivity is guiding you toward meaningful action. Additionally, it is essential to recognise when it may be beneficial to cultivate patience, gentleness, or compassion with yourself and those around you.

Over To You

What impact does sensitivity to moral and ethical issues have on your approach to decisions and the things you care about? Does any of this resonate with your experiences? Drop a message or leave a comment on YouTube.

Some tools are built to help us grow; to learn, connect, or reach meaningful goals. But eventually, we might ask: are these tools still working for us, or have they hooked us and quietly turned us into their tool?

This question has been on my mind since I started using Duolingo seventy-six days ago. I had just returned from a trip to Finland and wanted to keep learning a bit of Finnish: nothing too intense, just some gentle exposure to the language each day. From what others had said, Duolingo seemed like the ideal tool.

I started on the free version. It offered just enough. However, I was soon being nudged constantly toward the premium upgrade. Eventually, I gave in and accepted the offer of a 7-day trial. Before I knew it, £68.99 was taken from my account. Dagh! I had forgotten to cancel in time. That was frustrating. But what I noticed next was fascinating.

Over time, I realised I was no longer using Duolingo to expand my learning outside of the app. I was using it to keep my streak alive inside it.

It works. And it works well. But it also works against us (and our bigger picture aspirations).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8tC3VtbgSk The Hook Model in Action

This shift in behaviour mirrors the “Hook Model” described by Nir Eyal in his book Hooked, which outlines how habit-forming products are designed to draw us in and keep us there.

The hook model follows a four-step cycle:

• Trigger – External cues like notifications or internal ones like guilt or fear of missing out.
• Action – The easiest possible behaviour in response to the trigger, like opening the app or doing a lesson.
• Variable Reward – Unpredictable reinforcement like badges, praise, or social validation that keeps us engaged.
• Investment – The time, energy, or money we’ve already poured into the product, which makes it harder to walk away.

This system is incredibly effective at building engagement, but it often does so by subtly shifting our focus from what we originally cared about to what keeps the platform profitable.

When the Tool Hooks Us

What starts as a helpful tool can morph into a system that prioritises retention over transformation.

Only 0.1% of Duolingo users ever complete a full course. That isn’t a design flaw; it’s the business model. The goal is not to help us complete something, but to keep us inside the ecosystem.

Duolingo began nudging me toward other courses I hadn’t asked for. Music theory. Chess. It was no longer about Finnish. It was about keeping me engaged, clicking, and coming back.

This is when a tool becomes a trap, not because it stops working, but because it starts working too well at the wrong thing (keeping us engaged).

From Motivation to Manipulation

This isn’t just about language apps. It’s about how many of our digital experiences are shaped by systems designed to extract our wealth and capture our attention, energy, and even our identity.

In Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn warns that external motivators like badges, praise, or pizza vouchers for reading not only influence behaviour but also diminish it. Over time, we stop asking “Why do I care about this?” and instead ask “What do I get for it?”

In The Burnout Society, philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that we have shifted from a culture of external discipline to one of internalised self-optimisation. We no longer rely on a manager or teacher to pressure us; instead, we pressure ourselves. Rest is viewed as a failure. Play is considered wasted time. Self-worth is now linked to productivity.

Apps like Duolingo thrive in this cultural moment. They don’t just support our goals; they reshape them. We start wanting to learn a language and end up wanting to maintain a streak. What once felt like growth begins to feel like a contract we’re stuck in.

The Rocket Booster Test

Good tools (as well as teachers, programs, coaches, therapists, etc) should be like solid rocket boosters: they help us launch, but they’re meant to fall away once we’ve reached a certain point.

Before we start, we might ask:

• Have we agreed on the point at which we will jettison this process before we start?
• How will I know it’s time to let go and move on?

When we’re engaged with a process, partnership, or tool, we can ask:

• Is this tool still helping us move forward?
• Is it aligned with my original goals?
• Or are we simply feeding it our time and attention because of what we’ve already invested?

The presence of a badge, a streak, or a cheer from a virtual friend shouldn’t be the thing keeping us there. There must be something more intrinsically motivating.

Letting the Streak Die

It’s difficult to walk away from something we’ve invested in, especially when it gave us value at some point. But growth often requires us to assess whether something useful has now become a hindrance.

Letting go of the streak, app, system, or partnership can seem like failure. If it feels that way, it might be a sign that it’s got other interests at heart. So, letting go might be an act of gentle rebellious liberation.

Just because something “works” doesn’t mean it’s working for us.

Many of the platforms we use today were born out of a positive vision: to help us learn, connect, and form habits. But in a system that prioritises engagement and monetisation, that original purpose often becomes secondary.

When we start to notice what’s holding us involved, and why, we create room to choose differently.

We can honour the tools that helped us without becoming dependent on them. We can jettison what no longer serves us. And we can return to a way of learning, creating, and growing that is rooted in meaning, not metrics.

Unhooking Ourselves

Maybe it starts with a simple act: letting the streak die.

It took from Thursday to Monday to finally kill my streak – without consent, I received streak freezes and gifts to keep it going. It was interesting to see how hard it was in the end and how desperately Duolingo wanted me to maintain that investment.

https://the-haven.co/pick-the-lock/

“Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves with your name and something interesting about you”. Does that icebreaker moment fill you with joy?

If not, you’re not alone.

But is it simply a matter of preferences, or are there deeper processes at play when it comes to disliking icebreaker activities? That’s what we explore in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast .

https://youtu.be/GCkwfYppGNM What Does “Highly Sensitive” Mean?

High sensitivity is a term used to describe the scientifically recognised trait known as sensory processing sensitivity . It’s not a disorder, but a biological trait found in around 20-30% of the population. Highly sensitive people have more finely tuned nervous systems that absorb and process sensory and emotional input more deeply.

More sensitive nervous systems naturally absorb larger volumes of environmental data and process it deeply. This means HSPs (those who score higher for sensitivity along a universal continuum), are more sensitive to social nuances and more susceptible to the effects of social stimulation. They may need time to pause and calibrate when entering unfamiliar environments and meeting new people.

Icebreaking or Ice-Melting?

This episode builds on the previous one about “social sensitivity“.

I use the metaphor of making, breaking, and melting ice to frame what happens in social settings:

• Making Ice : The natural protective barrier that forms as we orient ourselves in new environments.
• Breaking Ice : Attempts to force through that barrier, often too fast and without consent.
• Melting Ice : A gradual, relational process where connection develops at a sustainable pace.

Icebreaker: What’s the most horrific icebreaker you’ve ever had to do? (I would love to know!)

Icebreaker activities are intended to reduce tension and help people connect quickly. But there may be times when, for HSPs, they have the opposite effect. Instead of inviting a sense of warm welcome, they can put the nervous system on the defence, unnecessarily using up energy and inner resources. This is especially true when we’re asked to perform, share personal details, or think on the spot.

In the episode, I share a few stories (including one from my time as an undertaker) that highlight this tension, and explore how the expectation to “come out of our shell” can become a subtle form of social pressure.

Why Icebreakers Often Backfire

Many highly sensitive people need time to pause and check before jumping into social interaction. This isn’t about fear or social anxiety — it’s a natural regulation strategy that helps us process our surroundings and determine if it’s safe to engage.

When that pause is misinterpreted as shyness or resistance, we can feel judged or pushed to open up before we’re ready. Over time, this can reinforce feelings of shame or self-doubt in social settings.

There is a difference between disclosure and trust . Jumping into “fun facts” can leave us feeling exposed rather than connected. This may linger in the nervous system through regret and shame.

What Helps Highly Sensitive People Connect?

We’re not just here to dunk on icebreakers though. I also offer some reflections on what helps melt the ice more gently for HSPs, including:

• Setting clear expectations and permissions (e.g. “It’s OK not to speak”)
• Creating space for people to arrive in their own time
• Modelling honesty, humour, or gentle vulnerability
• Avoiding performative tasks or forced introductions
• Recognising the value of awkwardness and letting it be

These insights are especially useful if you’re designing group sessions, facilitating meetings, or simply want to understand how to support the sensitive people in your life.

Have you ever been in a room and sensed social dynamics beneath the surface before a word was spoken? Perhaps you’ve noticed (consciously or unconsciously) a subtle glance, a shift in posture, or a hint of tension between the lines. If so, you’re not alone. This kind of social sensitivity is part of being a highly sensitive person (HSP).

This episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast is the first in a series that will explore the social dimensions of sensory processing sensitivity, the biological trait underlying high sensitivity. I’ll be drawing on ideas from The HSP Owner’s Guide, a mini-zine resource I created with Tuula, which is designed to help HSPs explore and discuss sensitivity as a normal aspect of being human.

https://youtu.be/DFiJHxI9Qko What is Social Sensitivity?

Social sensitivity refers to how highly sensitive individuals perceive and respond to emotional cues, interpersonal dynamics, and the tone of their environment. It’s not a learned skill or a conscious choice; it’s a normal variation in biological traits.

More sensitive nervous systems naturally absorb larger volumes of environmental data and process it deeply. This means HSPs (those who score higher for sensitivity along a universal continuum), are more sensitive to social nuances and more susceptible to the effects of social stimulation.

What is Sensory Processing Sensitivity?

SPS is a trait found in 20–30% of the population (not just humans). It means that some are biologically wired to process more sensory input around us (environment), within us (internal), and between us (social). This trait can make someone more emotionally responsive, detail-aware, and easily overstimulated.

Despite stereotypes and associations with the term, it’s not often easy to tell a highly sensitive person by looking at them. You might even look calm and collected on the outside when your system is working overtime beneath the surface.

Social Sensitivity and Early Learning

The nervous system informs thoughts and feelings in response to a perception of safety or danger from cues and triggers. The way we interpret social data isn’t always “objectively true”, particularly if we grew up in unpredictable or critical environments. This pattern recognition can shape how we experience social settings well into adulthood.

That’s why intuition can be both a strength and a vulnerability for sensitive people. It’s wise to ask: Is this gut feeling rooted in the present, or the past?

Key Elements of Social Sensitivity in HSPs Heightened Awareness of Social Nuance

More sensitive individuals might be attuned to micro-expressions, body language, tone changes, and subtle group dynamics. This can give them a natural ability to “read the room,” but it can also lead to emotional absorption and a tendency to take responsibility for others’ discomfort.

Not every HSP reacts the same way. Some feel compelled to help, others want to escape the weight of unspoken tensions. Personality, personal history, and social roles all play a part.

Deep Emotional Responsiveness

Many highly sensitive people feel others’ emotions deeply. This allows for strong empathy and attunement, but also risks emotional contagion—carrying other people’s emotional weight without realising it.

Brain studies suggest that those on the more sensitive end exhibit increased activity in areas associated with emotional processing. But this doesn’t mean you’re doomed to feel overwhelmed by uncontrollable sources of emotion. With awareness and practice, it’s possible to separate your emotions from those of others and develop healthy emotional boundaries.

Rejection Sensitivity and the Need to Belong

HSPs might be particularly attuned to signs of rejection or disapproval, whether real or imagined. Some develop habits of withdrawing or masking to avoid being perceived as “too much” or “too sensitive.” I’ve noticed a few people suddenly and unexpectedly leave the Haven community after becoming more deeply involved socially. I wonder if this arises from the uncertainty of finding people who “get” and accept them. This sense of safety can feel jarring to a nervous system that has developed patterns of protection to remain hidden in the background.

This response often starts early, especially if sensitivity was criticised or misunderstood. However, the good news is that it can change. When HSPs are met with consistent emotional safety and acceptance, those old protective patterns can start to soften. That’s one reason I hope places like The Haven can feel like safe homes people can return to, even after a sudden exit (or several).

Strong Desire for Harmony

HSPs might seek to avoid conflict, not because they’re passive, but because their nervous system registers relational tension as a source of danger. This can lead to withdrawing or over-accommodating, but it can also lead to creative problem-solving that helps groups navigate conflict with care and compassion.

Understanding these nuances is key. We don’t all respond the same way. Some step in to soothe, while others step back to protect themselves.

The Shaping Power of Environment

Sensitivity is not static. It’s a relational trait that’s shaped by context. The same person who feels shut down in one group can feel vibrant and confident in another.

In critical or chaotic environments, HSPs might shrink. In a nurturing one, they can flourish. That’s why sensitivity is best understood as a dynamic interaction between biology and the environment, rather than a deterministic trait or fixed limitation.

Everyday Signs of Social Sensitivity

Social sensitivity shapes how your nervous system responds to people and environments. You might:

• Quickly sense the “emotional temperature” of a room.
• Mirror others’ posture, expressions, or energy without realising it.
• Struggle to focus in emotionally charged spaces.
• Replay conversations in your head (often at night!)
• Crave deep connection, but need time alone to recover.
• Appear flat or disengaged while internally processing a lot.

None of this is wrong—it’s simply how your system interacts with the world. For example, I often need a day to recover from a socially stimulating event, especially if I didn’t sleep well afterwards from all the internal replaying.

Sensitivity is Not a Flaw or a Superpower

Sensitivity is often framed as either a weakness or a gift. But the reality is more nuanced. It’s a neutral trait that belongs to a spectrum we are all on.

In cultures that value pace and emotional restraint, sensitivity can be perceived as a liability. But in communities that value presence and nuance, it becomes a strength. This concept lies at the heart of the differential susceptibility theory, which posits that the more sensitive a person is, the greater the impact the environment has on them, for better or worse.

A More Grounded Way to Relate to Sensitivity

So, how do we move forward with social sensitivity as highly sensitive people?

We might begin by stepping away from extremes. You don’t need to deny your sensitivity—or make it your entire identity. Instead, build a gentler relationship with it. Explore how your system responds to various settings. Notice which relationships feel nourishing and which ones leave you depleted.

Sensitivity isn’t a performance. Embracing sensitivity is not about being the most empathic or insightful person in the room. It’s about allowing it to rise up in each of us so it becomes a collective strength we can make the most of and enjoy together.

It has been said that “ Creativity is the art of concealing your sources .” But what does that mean? Is it about passing off other people’s work as your own? Or is it less about copying influences and more about concealing them like seeds in the soil?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast , we explore what this looks like and consider the impact on our natural creative spirit when we do (or don’t) conceal our sources in healthy ways.

https://youtu.be/jgNccDK_MH0?si=5CQCaXnvHZWbaEoP

The randomiser prompt wheel selected this phrase for me on Tuesday ahead of our Serenity Island Picnic. I’ll be honest, when I first saw “Creativity is the art of concealing your sources”, I was tempted to spin again. But, I gave it a go and found a few interesting threads to pull at.

Concealing Our Sources Like Seeds

Concealing our sources about misleading or deceiving. It’s about letting inspiration settle deep enough that it becomes more than it is. Like planting a seed. We don’t bury seeds to hide them; we bury them so they can grow. Our influences need space, time, and darkness to take root and become unique to us.

This applies not just to creative work, but to life itself.

When Sources Weigh Us Down

Sometimes, a source casts a heavy shadow. I remember when I started writing songs and held everything up to my Thom Yorke-ometer. I compared what I created with what I believed Radiohead would produce, ignoring the other sounds and voices that wanted to be involved. This had an impact on my creative freedom until I let go of the desire to emulate the music I loved, capturing instead what truly inspired me about the band.

The Subtle Power of Concealment

The word “conceal” can sound suspicious, like trickery or withholding. But it can also be a positive source of protection and consent. Sometimes we need to conceal our sources from those who want to steal, exploit, or imitate without effort. Or those who want more information than we are comfortable or willing to share.

We also sometimes need to conceal our sources from ourselves, especially when they become yardsticks for comparison and judgement. When a parent, mentor, or idol takes up too much space in our heads, our actions can become reactions. Instead of creating from a place of freedom, we’re trying to impress, appease, or prove something.

Our Creative Lineage

At the beginning of Meditations, Marcus Aurelius devotes an entire section to acknowledging how family members, teachers, and the gods (both directly and indirectly) shaped his character, values, and worldview. For example, honesty from his father, humility from his mentor, resilience from hardship, etc. This collection starts on a platform that essentially rejects the romaticised idea we often hear about today with people described as “self-made”.

I thought about the deep processing a highly sensitive person does and the impact of SO many things on influencing who and how we become.

Each of us has a creative lineage/heritage. We are shaped by countless sources—people, experiences, stories, relationships, and chance encounters. Some sources give us strength, others weigh us down with expectations and demands.

Some we learn directly from (we receive wisdom from the example they set). Others we learn indirectly from (we are invited to grow in response to the example they set). We are all a messy mix. And while we are infused by them, we are not defined by them.

Here are some reflection questions we used in our Serenity Island picnic earlier this week.

• Who or what would you consider part of your creative lineage?
• What part of that lineage feels overgrown, overweight, or overbearing right now?
• What might shift if you pared that influence back, cut it out, or intentionally replanted it as a new seed again?
• Which elements of your lineage would you like to feature more of and amplify in your life?

Creativity isn’t about pretending we’re original. It’s about transformation. It’s about letting sources become part of our soil, rather than dragging them around like monuments we have to live up to.

Let them settle, shape, and grow.

What do you think of when you hear the words A Still Life?

A bowl of fruit? A serene person, undisturbed by the world’s noise. Stagnation and stuckness. The quiet, hope-filled whisper that reminds you that no matter how it feels or where you are right now, you still have life within you. Another chapter waiting to be written.

We’ve been reading Josie George’s memoir, A Still Life, in The Haven book club. After Josie joined us at last weekend’s discussion, I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of stillness and its many forms and flavours. It’s a fascinating word to think about!

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast , we explore the layers of stillness in the book. From the stifling slowness imposed by illness or circumstance, to the deep, peaceful resilience that absorbs life’s ripples without breaking. Stillness can be a captured moment in art, a book, or a song. It’s a framed snapshot in time.

https://youtu.be/dTHv2AhDDpI The Noise of Shallow Rivers vs. the Depth of Still Waters

There’s an old proverb: “Shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent.” I recently heard a deep lake that was anything but silent but 🤫, I’ll try not to undermine the metapho!) Here’s that noisy lake if you’re interested.

https://soundcloud.com/andymort/the-ice-speaks-sounds-from-a-frozen-lake?si=e0700c22185544feb88c55e301a994ec&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

A noisy life might be shallow, and a shallow life can be noisy. Distractions bombard us. A flow of news to react to, unexpected notifications, and endless demands sweep us downriver without control. But stillness isn’t just about silence. It can also be unwanted: feeling stuck in the reeds, thrashing against stagnation, longing to move but unable to for various reasons.

Josie’s memoir sits at this intersection. Her “still life” is informed by a chronic, mysterious illness that requires daily rest to stay near “any kind of wellness.” Yet her story isn’t about overcoming this adversity. The obstacle isn’t the way. The obstacle is an obstacle. And yet, Josie finds ways to live despite it.

A Memoir Without a Blueprint

Most personal development books follow a formula:

1. I faced a challenge.
2. I conquered it.
3. Here’s how you can too.

Josie’s book gently subverts that framework. There’s no cure, no tidy resolution or subversive workaround. Instead, it is a poetic, honest snapshot of a life filled with pain, joy, and quiet connection. It doesn’t tell readers how to feel or what to think. Instead, it invites us to rest in her perspective, to witness her seasons and spirals.

“A book can sit on your shelf, unread, underestimated for years, and when you finally pick it up, you find it changes you. It was always going to, one day. You can live with yourself in much the same way.”

This idea resonates deeply. How many unread books (proverbial or otherwise) await the right moment to transform us? We can’t force them, but we can wait.

Truth, Visibility, and the Courage to Be Seen

One passage from the book struck a bunch of us in the book club:

“Either I believe that illness, pain, and our naturally chaotic minds are something undesirable and shameful—and so hide myself—or I don’t. And oh God, I don’t. If I don’t, then I have to start being braver with my visibility and my truth.

Truth, in this sense, doesn’t stay still. It shifts as we grow, and so do the stories we tell about ourselves. Not because the stories change, but because we do.

Stillness as Rebellion

“Being someone who rests in a world that glorifies work above all else, is to be an alien among your own kind.”

Josie’s stillness is a gentle rebellion. Despite many systemic barriers, it’s a commitment to joy, curiosity, and creativity. She doesn’t spin pain into a “gift” or preach toxic positivity. Instead, she offers this metaphor:

“I am not the weather. I am the wide and open sky, and so I can let pain move through me and out of me.”

We are not our struggles, our successes, or our failures. We are the sky. The witness behind and beneath those thoughts, feelings, and events that move through us.

Creativity as a Tool for Healing

A Still Life is a beautiful example of how creativity helps us re-enter our stories. Writing, art, or music allows us to look at the past with new eyes, to prepare the soil for new growth. Healing past wounds isn’t a linear process to be forced or rushed; it’s seasonal, cyclical. As Josie shows, a creative practice gives us room to:

• Experiment without pressure to get heavy and meaningful.
• Let truths emerge when they’re ready.
• Rebel against stories that shrink our spirit.

A Still Life isn’t a guidebook or blueprint to follow. It’s an invitation to see differently. To gently rebel against a world that prizes motion, hustle, productivity, and restless action over wellbeing. Josie’s stillness is both a necessity and a choice, a way to “leave a gap” for attention, love, and possibility.

The task is simple…

“Pay attention, be brave, see the truth, write it down. That will always be enough.”

Follow Josie Down The Rabbit Hole: https://linktr.ee/wonderlandletters

This post elaborates on the sensitivity research section of The HSP Owner’s Guide.

Differential susceptibility is a key concept in high-sensitivity research. In simple terms, it means that the more sensitive you are, the more your environment impacts you. As a highly sensitive person (HSP), you might notice that some people thrive in situations where you feel discombobulated. Conversely, when conditions feel right, you may experience more intense joy, connection, and growth than others.

It’s the idea that some people are more responsive to their environment—for better or worse. For HSPs, this heightened responsiveness is a defining trait linked to their depth of processing, shaping how they experience life. However, it’s important to remember that not all HSPs are the same. Sensitivity is just one part of who we are, and how we respond to our environments can vary widely.

https://youtu.be/GIIKRuy5TOw What is Differential Susceptibility?

Differential susceptibility means that the more sensitive someone is, the more influence their environment has on them. We might think of it like a spectrum of responsiveness. On one end, some people are like sturdy structures, able to adapt to a wide range of conditions without much change. On the other hand, many HSPs are finely tuned instruments that process their environment in depth. This can allow them to thrive in supportive settings but may also make them more vulnerable in harsh ones.

For many HSPs, this means they are deeply affected by their upbringing, current environment, and the people around them. In favourable conditions, they may flourish more intensely than others, finding creative flow, experiencing strong empathy, and having deep insights. In unfavourable conditions, they might struggle more than others, feeling overstimulated or drained, unable to utilise the and share the fruits of their high sensitivity.

This heightened responsiveness isn’t a weakness—it’s a unique way of engaging with the world that comes with challenges and strengths. That said, again to reiterate, not all HSPs will respond the same way. Sensitivity interacts with other aspects of personality, life experiences, and individual differences.

How Does Differential Susceptibility Shape Our Lives?

Differential susceptibility shows up in tangible ways for many HSPs. Here’s how it might play out: maybe you recognise your own experiences in these examples:

Growing Up: The Impact of Early Environments

Supportive Upbringing: If an HSP grows up in a nurturing environment (where their sensitivity is understood and valued) they are more likely to develop strong emotional intelligence, creativity, and resilience.

Challenging Upbringing: If an HSP grows up in a less supportive environment (where their sensitivity was dismissed or criticised), they might have learned to hide their true self, leading to feelings of disconnection or self-doubt.

For example, imagine an HSP who grew up in a chaotic and unpredictable household. If there is constant noise or tension, that person’s nervous system is more likely to be dysregulated, overstimulated and seeking safety from unsafe sources. They may assume the “tiny adult” role, feeling responsible for trying to keep the environment ‘in balance’ by fawning, people pleasing, monitoring moods (over empathy). But if that same HSP had grown up in a calm, supportive home, they might have thrived, using their sensitivity to connect deeply with others and appreciate life’s beauty.

Adulthood: Creating Nurturing Environments

Favourable Conditions: When HSPs are in environments that honour their sensitivity, such as a peaceful home, a supportive workplace, or a close-knit community, they often bring incredible strengths. They may notice what others miss, create spaces of warmth and connection, and approach challenges creatively and empathetically.

Unfavourable Conditions: In overwhelming or unsupportive environments, like a stressful job, a toxic family, or a sensory-heavy space, HSPs may struggle. They might feel drained, overstimulated, or unable to express themselves fully. This can lead to burnout.

For example, picture an HSP working in a fast-paced, noisy office. The constant buzz that others overlook might leave them exhausted and unable to focus. However, if the same HSP performs the same job in a calm, flexible environment, they may shine, bringing thoughtful ideas and a deep sense of care to their work.

The Strengths HSPs Bring When They Feel Safe

When HSPs are in environments that support their sensitivity, they often bring unique gifts:

• Deep Empathy: Many HSPs are highly attuned to the emotions of others, making them compassionate friends, partners, and colleagues.
• Creativity and Insight: Their ability to notice subtleties and make connections can lead to innovative ideas and solutions.
• Thoughtful Leadership: HSPs often approach challenges with care and consideration, creating spaces where others feel heard and valued.
• Appreciation for Beauty: Whether it’s art, nature, or human connection, many HSPs have a unique ability to find and create beauty in the world.

In Unfavourable Conditions

What happens when HSPs are in environments that don’t support their sensitivity?

Empathy:
HSPs might feel overwhelmed by others’ emotions, absorbing stress or negativity. This can lead to emotional exhaustion or withdrawal.
Example: In a toxic workplace or social situations, an HSP might avoid interacting with others to cope with constant conflict.

Overthinking or Paralysis:
Their ability to notice subtleties can turn into overanalysing, making decisions or taking action difficult.
Example: An HSP on a high-pressure project might procrastinate, worried about mistakes or others’ opinions.

People-Pleasing or Avoidance:
Their desire to create harmony can lead to prioritising others’ needs over their own or avoiding leadership roles to escape stress.
Example: An HSP leader might say yes to every request, risking burnout to avoid disappointing others.

Sensitivity to Chaos:
Their appreciation for beauty can make them deeply unsettled by clutter, noise, or negativity, disrupting focus and peace.
Example: An HSP in a noisy, cluttered space might feel on edge, struggling to relax or concentrate.

General Responses:

• Physical Symptoms: Stress may show up as headaches, fatigue, or digestive issues.
• Emotional Sensitivity: They might react strongly to criticism or conflict, taking things personally.
• Binging on Solitude: Craving alone time, they might hoard or overindulge in isolation when overwhelmed.

How to Nurture Your Sensitivity (No Matter Your Past)

If you’re an HSP who grew up in less favourable conditions, it’s never too late to create an environment that honours your sensitivity. This isn’t about adding more to your plate or forcing yourself to change. It’s about gently exploring what helps you feel safe, seen, and supported. Here are some ways to begin:

• Create a Safe Space: Imagine having a little corner of the world that feels like a sanctuary—a place where you can breathe deeply and feel at ease. This might mean adding soft lighting, calming colours, or items that bring you comfort and joy.
• Honour Your Boundaries: It’s okay to say no to situations or people that drain your energy. Start small—maybe it’s turning down an invitation when you’re feeling overwhelmed or setting aside quiet time for yourself each day.
• Seek Supportive Connections: Surround yourself with people who understand and appreciate your sensitivity. This might mean working with a professional therapist/coach/mentor, joining a community, or building friendships with other HSPs.
• Be Kind to Yourself: Your sensitivity is not a flaw—it’s a unique way of experiencing the world. Treat yourself with the same compassion you’d offer a dear friend.
• Advocate for Your Needs: Speaking up for yourself can be challenging, especially if you’ve been conditioned to prioritise the needs of others at the expense of your own. Begin by envisioning yourself advocating for someone you genuinely care about, such as another HSP or someone whose needs are frequently overlooked at home, work, or social settings.

Embracing Your Sensitivity Despite Differential Susceptibility

Differential susceptibility isn’t about being “too sensitive”; it’s about the relationship we share with the world within, around, and between us. It offers a unique opportunity to enhance our experience of life and thrive in ways that others might not. Naturally, the flipside of this is that difficult environments can leave us struggling. However, with a bit of awareness to recognise our needs and the people around us who understand us, we can create lives that truly support and sustain us.

Over to You

What about you? Have you noticed how your environment affects you? Can you think of an environment or aspect of life where your sensitivity feels like a hindrance at the moment?

May the road rise to meet you.

My note from a slow coach this week reflects on Baltic endorphins, some internal torment due to a decision made by my past self that my present self didn’t appreciate, and a poem contemplating whether adventure is always just around the corner. It’s an excerpt from a journal entry a couple of weeks ago when I was in Finland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_VzkTNi53E

I’m still feeling invigorated from last night’s dip in the Baltic Sea. I don’t know if it’s the exhilaration of spending 90 seconds in 4-degree (Celsius) water or the satisfaction I feel from following through on my intention. Something caught me when I looked across the water a few days ago—a pull I couldn’t ignore. The idea of getting in the water was great. Until it was time to do it.

What was I thinking?

The two hours leading up to my plunge were filled with antsy-pantsy pacing and flip-flopping. I was not amused by my decision. Still, I knew that if I didn’t go through with it, the regret of missing this opportunity would far outweigh the momentary despair of doing something I knew would be wildly rewarding (once I resurfaced and was safely ensconced in the sauna—my happy place).

This morning’s inner calm is a blend of satisfaction and physical aliveness. The sauna not only offered a delightful reward for completing my challenge but also enhanced the experience. The contrast of fire and ice creates a unique sensation.

Forever on the horizon

This morning, I am returning to the list of phrases and ideas we developed at the start of our month of “Adventure” in The Haven. I had intended to use one each morning in my journal practice, but it hasn’t happened yet. No problem, I am up for it today. Now.

I spin the wheel, and it throws “Adventure is waiting just beyond view” onto the screen. I don’t think it’s a saying, but it feels familiar. Similar to the idea that adventure (or growth) lies on the other side of your comfort zone.

I’ve always had a complex relationship with these platitudinal sayings. They carry kernels of truth for particular situations but are often espoused as universal, all-encompassing statements of fact.

May the branch rise to meet them

My eyes are drawn through the window. My first coffee of the day is on the cabinet beside me. Adventure is waiting just beyond view. Those words feel coarse to me here. Itchy. Like an irritant on my skin. I can see a squirrel moving effortlessly through the trees and a crow perched on a breeze-flexed branch above, and I wonder if they ever wonder about these things.

It’s tempting to get caught up in the assumption that everything good is just beyond view. It’s the engine of consumer culture, the ideology of endless striving. Like a perpetual mirage, we see the reward, but it moves further as we get closer.

“Just a little further” becomes a mantra in the meditation of hustle. Advice is cheap and contradictory.

I am interested in how we can develop a more nuanced and healthy relationship with growth, purpose, and flow in life.

If adventure is forever around the corner, what am I overlooking right here? To feel settled without settling and expectant without expecting.

Isn’t this moment the adventure that was just around the corner from that previous one? I think of the old blessing: “May the road rise to meet you.” Maybe that’s the real adventure—the road meeting us where we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjJXAL40MC4 May the flow rise to meet you

From the edge of this perch,
I strain my neck to watch a squirrel
dart, weightless, certain of the branches
that will reach out and catch her
with every flight, twist, and descent.

Is it true that I can find an
Adventure waiting just beyond view?

If I round the corner.
If I push the button.
If I make the call.
If I am patient.
If I lead.
If I trust the process.
If I take a step.
If I listen.
If I dare.
If I follow.
If I let this grow.
If I am brave.
If I am gentle.
If I put it out there.
If I stop forcing it.
If I let go.
If I pick up.
If I let come.
If I go forth.

A blackbird offers its weight
to a quietly accommodating branch.
I notice now
my body perched on this old horizon.

I will rest here a while,
inside this adventure,
once beyond view.
The next one takes care of itself.

The sauna’s heat and the sea’s shock—slow out-breath against sudden gasp. My nerves crackled right up to the edge, then dissolved into the oldest rhythm: stillness after motion, motion after stillness—no need to choose. Just take the step and let the flow rise to meet you.

https://the-haven.co/pick-the-lock/

In a world obsessed with productivity, competition, and the “hero’s journey,” Natsu Miyashita’s The Forest of Wool and Steel shines a quietly revolutionary light on something altogether different.

This book is a balm for those who’ve felt out of step with society’s narrow definitions of success or crave a deeper, slower, more meaningful way of living.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore what I took as its key themes and why they feel so radical in today’s hustle culture.

Beyond “Finding Your Purpose”

Society often frames purpose as something we discover “out there” – a preordained destiny waiting to be unlocked. But The Forest of Wool and Steel shows us something subtler: purpose isn’t discovered in that way; it’s woven through our responses to chance encounters.

The protagonist, Tomura, stumbles into piano tuning after a random school errand. What captivates him isn’t some grand mission but a moment of sensory awe:

“His whole body trembled. It was like hearing colour.”

This moment isn’t about the piano giving him purpose; it’s about how the piano helps reveal what was ready to resonate within him. The novel suggests that any object, experience, or moment can become a doorway to the forest if we’re listening.

High Sensitivity as an Ordinary Feature of Humanity

Unlike narratives that treat sensitivity as a flaw or a superpower, Miyashita normalises it as simply part of being human. Tomura and his mentors experience the world with a depth of processing.

One tuner feels exhausted by public telephones, billboards, and the dirt on the road. He has learned to recover through a metronome’s rhythm.

Tomura often needs time to process decisions, rejecting opportunities before slowly embracing them – a familiar experience for many HSPs.

The book’s quiet power lies in its refusal to pathologise or glorify sensitivity. Instead, it shows how deep attunement – to sound, environment, and subtlety, is the source of growth and meaning.

The Question of Success

Tomura’s apprenticeship defies every expectation of the “hero’s journey.” There are no villains, no competitions, no triumphant climax. Instead, his growth is slow, iterative, and deeply personal:

How long until I can make that sound I heard on that first day?

The novel suggests that true mastery isn’t about conquering a craft but collaborating with it and understanding with more than the mind.

In a culture obsessed with optimisation and “levelling up,” the seasonal, non-linear approach we witness here feels quietly radical.

Outgrowing Hustle Culture

The book gently critiques society’s obsession with measurable success. When Tomura’s brother mocks his belief that a piano’s sound contains “the whole world,” it mirrors how modern culture dismisses wonder in favour of utility.

Yet the novel celebrates the “useless”, the wasteful, and the ordinary:

• Knowing the names of trees
• The taste of olive oil-drizzled eggs
• The way light glistens at dawn

These moments aren’t “productive,” but they’re where meaning lives. As Tomura reflects:

“It felt to me as though nothing was a waste, but at the same time, everything was on some level a colossal waste.”

This paradox is the heart of the book’s rebellion: what if the “small” things are the big things?

Why We Resist Slowness (And How to Stop)

Critics call the book “slow” or “uneventful”, but that’s the point. Our discomfort with its pace reveals a deeper truth: we’ve been programmed to equate speed with value.

Tomura’s mentors teach him that people assume “brightness” is a synonym for better. But it’s not that simple. Similarly, the novel invites us to reflect on our relationship with depth and darkness:

• Are we afraid of stillness because it confronts us with ourselves?
• Do we mistake urgency for purpose?
• What if the “forest of wool and steel” (the unseen, sensory world) is where real creativity lives?

The answer isn’t to “do more” but to tune in.

Entrances to our Forest of Wool and Steel

The Forest of Wool and Steel isn’t a manifesto. It’s an invitation to notice, trust, and follow the intuitive sensitivities that take us beneath the noise and towards our sound.

As Tomura learns, there are entrances to the forest everywhere. The question is: can we slow down enough to notice them?

Over To You

Have you read the book? I’d love to hear your thoughts through the form below. Any responses to what I spoke about in this episode? Drop a comment or send me a message.

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When you receive help, do you perceive it as a transactional burden or as a gift?

How do you support the people, ideas, and art you admire? Do you feel disappointed when they go against your views, or do you willingly allow them the freedom to grow and evolve into whatever they might become, despite potential disagreements?

https://youtu.be/Ueyw7nSI6jc

Last year, during a Haven Phrase Maze exploration around the prompt “The Money Changed Everything,” we discussed what makes a gift a gift. We asked whether, once given, the giver of a true gift can have any justifiable feelings about what is done with it. Or if a hope or expectation turns a gift into a conditional transaction. For example, when we give someone a present, we might expect them to use it in a particular way (and not to sell it on, exchange it, or give it to someone else, for an acceptable time at least).

What impact does this obligation have on the receiver? How does this relate to our engagement with artists, public figures, and one another?

Conditional vs Unconditional Support

Are we conditional patrons, offering support only when we agree with the other person? Or are we unconditional patrons, standing by them because we believe in their how and why , even when we disagree with the substance of their particular “what”?

This is on my mind because of a comment I received on a recent YouTube video. Someone explained why they disagreed with something I had said, which is fair enough. But I was struck by the intended sucker punch at the end of the comment…

“Unsubscribed.”

That word was like a weapon; it felt like an attempt at punishment and behaviour modification. It focused on the surface rather than the source.

I know that subscribing isn’t a gift, but I couldn’t help but wonder if a similar mechanism exists in the distinction between conditional and unconditional gift-giving.

This is why I don’t tend to ask people directly to subscribe to my podcast, videos, or social media. I want it to be a choice, not a favour or transaction. I leave it for people to come and go as they like, with no pressure either way. If the time comes for us to go separate ways, that’s fine. It happens. We don’t owe one another anything. We’ve just had a nice ride along together for a bit.

Unconditional Patronage and Disagreement

Do we tie our support for people to WHAT they think or HOW and WHY they reach their conclusions?

Think about the creators, artists, or figures you follow and admire. Do you find yourself withdrawing support when they say or do something you disagree with? What would it look like to support them unconditionally, focusing on their how and why rather than a particular what?

Over the years, I have come to support people whose WAY of thinking I respect and value. Most people I follow express views I disagree with occasionally (in some cases, a lot), but I sincerely appreciate the how and why behind their ideas. The process inspires me as much as, if not more than, the outcome. It’s only if their values (the drive of their why) change that I tend to consider whether or not I want to continue supporting them. It can happen.

There is a flip-side to this coin…

“Subscribed”

It can feel validating when someone agrees with something I say and tells me they are subscribing or following me because of it. However, there is a subtle pull that can occur here. The connection between the statement they agreed with and their choice to subscribe creates a conditional presence. I might feel the pressure: “To keep them happy, I better keep saying similar things.” This can lead to a slippery slope toward mediocrity, self-censorship, and audience capture – forces we see in abundance today.

When we engage like this with people, we subtly encourage them to appeal to the crowd, avoid risks, and conform to expectations (to appease followers and provoke adversaries) rather than exploring new possibilities and navigating the nuanced space between our desire for a simplistic understanding and life’s complexities. This pattern also applies to our interpersonal relationships. We seek safety in our social bonds, and when we recognise that something pleases another person, we are more inclined to continue that behaviour.

Have you ever held back from expressing an opinion or taking a creative risk because you feared losing support or approval? How might unconditional support change that?

Unconditional Patronage and Accountability

Unconditional patronage isn’t about unquestioningly supporting someone. It’s about making our support broader than agreement and focusing on a person’s character and approach rather than the particular conclusions they reach with any given topic, project, or situation.

What I admire in artists is how they dance with their creative spirit, allowing it to guide them to potentially unexpected places. It might lead them to create works that I don’t enjoy or take directions that miss the mark for me. But that’s great – if I trust how and why they do what they do, I’m not overly invested and demanding about the outcome. I may very well come to appreciate it over time. After all, just because I don’t “get it” now doesn’t mean I won’t understand it later. That’s par for the course when engaging with artists, visionaries, and prophets.

Unconditional patronage involves creating conditions that allow individuals to be themselves and grow from that space instead of casting a shadow over them and instilling fear about the consequences of making mistakes. It does not mean granting unrestricted freedom to act or speak as they wish, with the promise of our unwavering support regardless of their actions. Instead, it provides them a secure foundation to explore, create, and develop their ideas.

Do you follow anyone whose approach you admire, even if you don’t agree with everything they say? Or have you received unconditional patronage from someone else? What difference did it make to you?

“So that You Know…I’m Unsubscribing”

While unsubscribing, unfollowing, and walking away are always valid options, announcing it raises questions about motivation. It is often a performative act. This puppetry is a way to assert control or signal disapproval, sometimes saying more about us than others. Are we punishing them for not meeting our expectations and saying what we want them to say (or reproducing the TV show, album, or book we already have a love for)?

How do you choose to do it when you need to step away? What do you value when it comes to leaving well, and how might your approach reflect those values?

The Space For Creativity

When people create out of fear of losing support (or hoping to gain it), we risk stifling creativity. This dynamic doesn’t just limit individuals; it dampens the rich pool of creative potential within us as a species.

This pressure often shows up in subtle ways. For example, imagine receiving praise, a gift, or help from someone who makes it clear they’re supporting you because they liked something particular. While their intention might be positive, it can leave you feeling indebted, pulling you away from your creative voice and into a people-pleasing cycle.

Can you think of a time when you felt pressured to reciprocate something you didn’t ask for or when you felt obligated to meet someone else’s expectations? How did it make you feel, and how did it shape your choices?

I’d love to hear your response to this post. Drop a comment or send me a message if you have anything to share.

https://the-haven.co/pick-the-lock/