When you think from the future, you’re not asking yourself the question “What do I want?” but instead, “What does future me want?”.

Sometimes, it’s the same thing.

But often, it’s something totally different.

Current me wants to take today off. Future me wants to feel accomplished.

So I’m working.

But it doesn’t feel hard and I don’t resent it.

Future me? I love that gal! I’d joyfully do anything for her.

I am my own magic pill.

I know exactly what to do.

It’s working.

Our brains need specific evidence to create a belief.

Your job is to find specific evidence for why the beliefs you want to believe are already true.

With enough evidence consistently fed to your brain, it will accept anything you tell it.

No matter what you want to believe, spend your time finding evidence.

Think about your future self.

Who do you need to be TODAY for that version of you to come alive TOMORROW?

What do you need to do in your 20s to have the life you want in your 30s?

I have zero evidence that I will hit my July Goals, but I'm still certain I will.

We don’t need evidence from the past to know what we're capable of in the future.

We just need the simple decision that we're willing to do whatever it takes to make our goals happen.

When you know you'll never give up – you already know the outcome.

I was a kid when I realised that for me, balance is never going to look like a chilled out day and then watching TV in the evening.

I like to push myself to the limit. A lot.

But not all the time.

For me, balance means periods of intensity followed by periods of rest.

Former Olympic physiologist, Dr. Wells, suggests the idea “Run Fast, Not Hard.” Which I LOVE.

The idea of working 24/7 doesn’t appeal to me.

But some days, I will work all day, because I LOVE it.

Then I’ll take it easy.

Balance isn’t about even slices of the pie.

It’s about balancing a big slice with a little slice later.

Tony Robbins says “I don’t have goals, I have standards.”

And even though I’m a huge goals fan (surprise!), I love this concept.

Because when you have a standard wired to your identity, you will always hit it.

If you have a standard to always be on time to pick your kids up from school, you will.

If you have a goal to do it, it’s a target to hit or miss.

A standard is definite.

See your goals as standards to meet.

“Things aren’t that interesting to me unless the stakes are very high.”
– Jimmy Chin, Adventure Photographer

“It’s not that I don’t like being comfortable. It’s just the lowest thing on my priority list.”

– Matheson Brown, Extreme Sportman

Food for thought today.

I used to think my results were outside of my control. But it turns out that’s not true.

Situations are outside of our control.

But the results we create based on those situations are 100% in our control.

If it’s happening to us, it’s a situation. If we’re happening to it, it’s a result, caused by us.

It’s your job to get in that unshakeable, unstoppable, invincible energy every single day.

Your emotional state matters – it drives everything you do.

Deliberately craft yourself a “getting the crew together/transformational movie montage” mentality each day.

Put on music. Watch a motivational video. Play an episode of an inspiring show.

BE in a peak, unstoppable state.

Then take action.

I’ve been considering the future me a lot recently.

What does she think about?

What does she believe?

How does she do things?

What does she wear?

How does she show up in the world?

Each time I ask myself these questions, they evolve and change.

But it’s my job to keep stepping into being that version of me, now.

The thoughts that stop us from taking action are just mini, temporary thoughts.

They’re not our true thoughts. They’re not what we want the MOST.

They’re just temporary – and the more we remind ourselves of that, the less power they have.

For the last 18 months, I’ve been suffering from what I thought was a shoulder/neck/back injury.

It turns out, it was something entirely different.

In early 2020, I injured my shoulder doing my 100 push ups challenge.  Essentially, I just pushed myself too hard in one of my training sessions and spent a week in a lot of pain. I took time off my work to heal and thought it would be over after a couple of weeks of healing.

However, nearly every day since then, I’ve had pain in my shoulder. After about 6 months, it started spreading to my neck and back too.

I stopped doing anything that could aggravate it. Dancing, swimming, rock climbing, lifting things, using my laptop (switched to a desktop), sleeping on my side, even chopping up hard food with a knife.

I saw four different physiotherapists and two doctors. Everyone said it was my posture and work-from-home working conditions.

So I bought a fancy electric sitting/standing desk, and a specially-formulated chair. I had a physiotherapist come to my house to measure my body and create the perfect ergonomic working conditions.

One slightly uncomfortable movement could have me lying on my back in pain for hours, and there were certain activities (sitting, sleeping, and working on my computer) that tended to induce pain.

Fast forward to May 2021. I got an Xray (about 15 different photos) and a shoulder ultrasound, to check if there was anything going on.

Not only did the results come back normal – the physiotherapist told me they were some of the best scans she’d ever seen.

And yet I was in chronic pain that had me lying on the floor in between all of my coaching calls.

Then someone mentioned the words “Dr. Sarno and the mind-body connection.”

I listened to the audiobook version of his book Healing Back Pain, and watched his documentary, All The Rage.

Within days, without doing anything other than consuming knowledge, my pain was reduced to about 20% of what it was before.

Just from learning.

And now I have barely any shoulder, neck or back pain at all.

The book and documentary explain the theory that the mind instructs the brain to create real physical pain in order to distract the person from facing the emotional pain they are truly facing.

At first, I thought “but I’m not in any emotional pain.” Well, yes, that’s the point. Because my brain had been using physical pain to cover up my emotional pain.

It turns out, that at the beginning of 2020 when I injured myself doing push ups, the actual injury healed quickly. What remained, was a conditioned pathway of pain, a convenient place for my brain to target as a distraction from my emotional pain.

When I started doing physiotherapy and my shoulder started feeling better, my back and neck started to cause me incredible pain, for seemingly no reason.

Because the pain wasn’t related to something physical. It was my brain finding places to create pain, in order to avoid dealing with the true emotional pain I was feeling.

“Patients often report pain in a new location as the old one gets better. It is as though the brain is unwilling to give up this convenient strategy for diverting attention away from the realm of the emotions.”
― John E. Sarno, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection

Just to be clear, the pain I was experiencing was totally real. It wasn’t “in my head”. The only thing that is different about TMS is that the pain wasn’t being triggered by something physical like an injury, it was being triggered by my mental/emotional experience.

“Chronic physical pain can sometimes be the result of emotional tension. We can feel measurable, quantifiable pain throughout our bodies, he writes, in response not to injury but to emotional distress. And our minds create this pain (often by depriving certain body parts of oxygen) in order to distract ourselves from these “unacceptable” emotions, such as anxiety, anger, and fear. When unaddressed or repressed, he says, these emotions can essentially be churned subconsciously through the body to emerge elsewhere as physical pain. Unaddressed rage, for instance, can become back pain (or neck pain, or pain anywhere). “Unconsciously,” he writes, “we would rather have a physical pain than acknowledge any kind of emotional turmoil.”

One of the clearest examples I have is my friend Emily’s birthday. We all met at a nature reserve, walked around, sat in the cafe, and I had no pain at all the entire day. The moment I got home and turned on my computer, I remembered I had a task to do that was going to be incredibly emotionally uncomfortable to deal with.

BAM. Instant tension headache and back pain.

I had to spend the next hour in bed with a hot water bottle and painkillers. It came on so suddenly, and because I had just read Dr. Sarno’s book, it was abundantly clear what had happened: my brain created physical pain to avoid dealing with the emotional pain.

And it worked.

So you might be wondering, were the unconscious emotions I was repressing?

Anxiety, stress, and grief.

While I won’t go into too much detail, currently (and for the past few years) I have a loved one who is very unwell and is getting progressively sicker. I have also been working non-stop without a vacation or holiday for almost two years (I LOVE my work as a coach and that’s why it never even really realized I wasn’t taking breaks. Plus, as we all know, the pandemic kind of put a stop to vacations). I also had a terrifying experience with an earthquake a few years ago, that gets reignited every time I feel another small quake.

My mind has been holding onto a LOT of emotion, and clearly didn’t feel it was safe for me to process it.

So instead, it induced chronic pain.

That’s TMS.

The beautiful thing about TMS, is that once you diagnose it, it’s a quick path to recovery.

I AM SO GRATEFUL!

Balance isn’t always 50/50.

Balance is whatever makes you FEEL balanced.

For me, 90% masculine strategy, 10% feminine strategy is my perfect balance.

I’m GO GO GO, no BS, have a simple plan, take action, attack.

I thrive on that, 90% of my day.

And then I’ll balance it out with 10% being, allowing, flowing, letting what will be, be.

That part is important too.

But I feel my best when I’m in “unleash the beast” mode for most of my day.

That doesn’t mean my way is the only way to hit your goals. I’ve got clients who are crushing the game and they’re the most “allowing, come what may, let it be, be patient and manifest it from the universe” people ever.

You might find 60/40 is optimal. Or 20/80.

Excellent goal-getting doesn’t require you to find equal balance.

It just requires you to function at your personal optimum.

Let me know in the comments – what is your optimal masculine/feminine percentage?

The last quote in this series is actually my own.

I think “BE REALISTIC” is one of the worst things you can say to someone.

It’s basically saying “I don’t believe in you.”

Here’s what I think: Dream beyond big, and take manageable steps to get there.

But you don’t ever have to be realistic.

I used to believe that belief was important.

I’d say it was “everything”.

Now that I’ve seen what belief can REALLY do (more on that in a future post, but hint: it’s wild), I realise that no, it really is EVERYTHING.

If you believe there’s something holding you back, you’re creating it, just by saying it.