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Three months ago, a client told me he didn’t know how he was going to get through life. This week, he stated: “It is the most I have felt in so long. I have never felt so connected. A few weeks ago I felt like I was done. I couldn’t find an end in sight at all. And now the outcome couldn’t be more beautiful. It’s like metamorphosis into something I don’t know how to describe.” Nothing in his external world has changed to create this feeling. As an Executive his job is still demanding. The pressure is still real, in fact even worse given he’s leading his team through a geopolitical crisis in the Middle East. If anything, the circumstances around him have gotten harder. But his inner world is unrecognisable. He is sleeping well, performing at his best, and showing up with a calm and confidence he had not felt in years. What changed? Not his situation. His internal state. Most people live with a condition attached to their inner state. When I get the role, I will feel confident. When the business stabilises, I will feel at peace. When things finally go right, I will allow myself to feel good. It sounds logical. Of course you will feel better when things improve. Of course peace comes after the storm. But here is what I have seen across hundreds of coaching conversations with leaders, founders, and executives, creatives, parents, around the world: the feeling does not come after. The feeling has to come first. Not positive thinking, and not because of manifesting in the way that phrase gets misused. This is something far more foundational. It is not the external situation that creates the feeling. It is your perception of it, the story you are telling yourself about it. And that story is something you have far more influence over than you might realise. Here is something most people in this space never talk about. Many of us have been trained to think very well. We have been educated, coached, and rewarded for our analytical ability, our problem-solving, our capacity to work things out in our heads. But almost nobody teaches us how to feel well. The result is that most high achievers are overthinkers and under-feelers, living so much in the mind that they have lost touch with what is actually happening inside them. And when you are disconnected from your feelings, you lose access to your most powerful guidance system. As I write in my upcoming book, Lead From Within, your inner state is the signal you are broadcasting to life before you open your mouth, before you walk into the room, before you sit across the table from the person who could change everything. Life does not respond to how hard you try. It responds to the state you are consistently living from. Here is the distinction that sits at the heart of this: every moment, you are either a Reactor or a Creator. The Reactor lives as though life is happening to them. Their emotional state is dictated by what is happening outside. A difficult email, an unexpected setback, a conversation that lands wrong, each one triggers an automatic response. They are waiting for things to improve before they allow themselves to feel differently. The Creator experiences the same world through a completely different lens. They still face the same challenges, but they understand something the Reactor does not: that you are always using your imagination, whether you realise it or not. The question is simply whether you are using it to worry, or using it to create. If you have ever have been awake at night replaying a conversation, rehearsing what could go wrong, or running through all the reasons things are hard, that is your imagination working against you. The Creator learns to point that same imagination forward, toward how they want to feel, toward who they are becoming, before the external evidence has arrived to confirm it. Think about what you are actually working toward. The role, the business, the relationship, the version of yourself you feel called to step into. Now ask yourself honestly: what is it that you really want to feel when you have those things? It is almost always some version of calm, security, confidence, peace, aliveness. The external thing is just the vehicle. The feeling is what you are actually after. So the real question becomes: what is stopping you from feeling that now? Your inner state is shaped far less by what is happening around you than by what you are allowing to happen within you. And raising that state is less about effort than it is about letting go of what is lowering it. When you release the things that are keeping you contracted, your natural clarity begins to return. Here is how to start:
My client ended our call this week with these words: “Considering the work pressure, considering the hours, considering what I’ve experienced the last few years, it’s a lot. And there’s a big part of me that this week was like, yeah, this is really how I was before. And now it’s coming back. And it’s nice to see. It’s a proud moment.” He stopped waiting for his circumstances to give him permission to feel at peace. He chose the feeling first. And from that internal state, everything around him is beginning to shift, not because the external world changed, but because he did. You don’t wait for the world to change and then feel differently. You feel differently, and then your world begins to change. Reflection question: What feeling are you waiting for something external to give you, and what would it look like to choose it now? Regards, TOMORROW’ SPECIAL EVENT: 5 Lies You’ve Been Avoiding While Your Body and Mind Pay The Price 1) Join our next Elite Leadership Experience Circle on Wednesday 14th May 5pm GMT – Be in a powerful space (to slow down!) and uncover your blind spots with other growth minded professionals. Details and application here. 3) 🧘 Download my free guided meditation – 20 minutes to calibrate your energy and shift your state. Remember: you don’t attract what you want, you attract who you are. Download the free meditation here. 4) 📞 Let’s talk – If you’re ready to do this work 1:1 or in a group setting, book a call with me here. Know anyone who could benefit from this newsletter – forward it on! |
