Thriving Scholar — Executive Coaching & Leadership
Something Has Shifted Within Me
Jaineel Mistry
I’m sat here on my recliner sofa watching the fireplace and pondering on life.
They say having kids change you. I’m not sure whether this shift is attributed to that or not. But something has shifted in me recently.
I’m really enjoying the boring and mundane.
For most of my life I’ve felt like I’ve had a rocket up my ass.
Always pushing myself to achieve more. I say “pushing” deliberately. It’s been 80% push and 20% being pulled.
I don’t know where this has come from. I don’t really need to. Maybe it’s me trying to prove myself. Maybe it’s another insecurity. Or maybe it’s survival to ensure I’m in a place I can provide some form of lifestyle for my family.
In the past, I would look at others sometimes with envy. Sometimes with inspiration. But always with a sense of ‘I’m not there yet and I need to be’.
Over the last month or so, that has gone. I’ve let go. It’s hasn’t been something I actively worked on. It feels like it’s just happened naturally.
As natural as me writing this post at 21:08 on a Tuesday evening having a high temperature and feeling like I’m about to get to flu.
It’s the last thing I thought I’d be doing this evening.
I guess this is living life in flow.
I’m just acting on my inspiration.
80% pull 20% push is a better ratio.
I’m seeing a new light.
One where I’m enjoying dancing with my daughter in the mornings.
Appreciating taking my dog for a walk in the middle of the day.
Appreciating every rep I’m lifting at the gym.
It finally feels like ‘enough’.
It finally feels like joy.
It finally feels like I’m doing for the sake of it and not to get somewhere.
I don’t feel pressured to create more.
I don’t feel pressured to build a business.
I don’t feel pressured to build a ‘personal brand’.
I don’t feel pressured to prove myself in my job.
I don’t feel pressured to write in a certain way.
Just now, I was speaking to my wife and she caught me saying ‘society expects me to….’
She reminded me that society doesn’t.
It’s what I have made it mean.
The pressure was, and always is, all self-created.
Wise woman 😅
Although, I’m grateful for how I have been in past past. Maybe I wouldn’t be where I am now without it. It was the only way I knew.
But I’m also grateful for the release of unnecessary pressure.
I feel like I’m being shown a better way.
I feel free, like I can just be myself, that I’m not expecting myself be someone I’m not yet. Instead, allowing myself to flow into whoever I’m becoming.
I’m at a place now where I have deep clarity on who I am and what I want, that I’m surrendering and allowing it to unfold.
Maybe this sense of freedom is fleeting.
Maybe the pressure will come back tomorrow or next month.
I’m trying to consciously bring myself back home to my truth whenever I notice it.
Maybe it’s what I’m being taught as a father. If it is, I’m really loving it.
Here’s a picture which captures my life right now:
Hope me sharing my journey was helpful for you.
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