Author: Ryan Klette

  • The Critic that Stops Me

    The Critic that Stops Me

    What the Critic Doesn’t See

    The more coaching and therapy work I do, the less surprised I am by the invisibility of the inner critic.

    It has become so normalised that we hardly notice it anymore.

    If you don’t have one and it’s not giving you or other people a hard time, then what are you even doing here?

    It’s almost as if we show our grit and worth by enduring this harsh voice. Maybe more importantly, by taking its comments to heart.

    Recently I was coaching a woman in her sixties who works in sales. One of the consistent pieces of feedback she receives from her managers and colleagues is that she needs to slow down. She can’t keep working at such a frantic pace.

    The problem is she doesn’t know how to.

    If she is busy on the inside then she is showing her worth. And she has to keep showing her worth because somewhere along the way she lost touch with her sense of value.

    When I worked with her recently she had just been given two warnings on the same day for gross negligence. She had quoted the wrong amount to a customer which, in her position, is about the worst mistake you can make.

    What struck me wasn’t the mistake itself.

    It was the reaction.

    A double warning for the same incident can hardly be legal, but you get a sense of where it comes from. It’s not as if the critic hasn’t got a point. The mistake is far from ideal.

    But the reaction to it is almost laughable.

    Does the critic really think this is what changes behaviour?

    Because what I noticed was that she immediately doubled down on her own critic. More pressure. More vigilance. More self-monitoring. Which, ironically, made her even more likely to make another mistake.

    One of the things the critic so often assumes is that somehow the person could have done better.

    In this case she was spending every day trying to avoid mistakes like the plague. She wasn’t careless. She wasn’t lazy. She wasn’t indifferent.

    She was already trying.

    Which is why I asked her:

    “What does a good mistake look like?”

    She almost fell off her chair.

    There is no such thing.

    At least not from the critic’s perspective.

    The critic that shows up in her boss wants things done a certain way. And as much as there is value in standards, they can eventually begin to suffocate the many different ways human beings reach the same goal.

    The older I get the more interested I become in what sits underneath this voice.

    Whenever I move closer to something meaningful, something else in me often wants to move me away from it.

    Anything but that.

    Anything but the possibility of being rejected, humiliated, ignored, overlooked, embarrassed, exposed or found wanting.

    The critic, you could say, is the part that protects us from that old hurt.

    The proud defender of shame.

    Its motto is simple:

    Never again.

    Never again will we let ourselves feel that helpless.

    Never again will we feel that worthless.

    Never again will we be caught off guard.

    Never again.

    And because it is trying to protect us, it doesn’t feel like a voice at all.

    It feels like the truth.

    What it says goes.

    To ignore it can almost feel reckless.

    Of course I can’t let go of the guard rails.

    Of course I can’t trust myself.

    Look where that got me before.

    But one of the biggest blind spots of the critic is that it often doesn’t see that its own strategies don’t prevent failure.

    Quite often they rush us closer to it.

    I remember going for an interview at my third high school.

    My parents had recently divorced. I’d come back from a boarding school I loved because we could no longer afford it. I was struggling with acne, low self-worth and all the confusion that comes with being a teenager.

    I sat down in the office of the man who would become my headmaster.

    The first thing he said to me was:

    “You’re a sloucher.”

    Now to be fair, I was slouching in the chair.

    But the furthest thing I was, was a sloucher.

    I was insecure.

    I felt like I didn’t belong.

    I was trying to disappear.

    What interests me now is that I can find compassion for both the boy and the headmaster.

    The boy who did not know how to take space.

    The headmaster that did not know how to give space.

    Such is the power of the critic that in the headmaster’s mind this was probably the way young people improve.

    Point out what is wrong.

    Correct it.

    Repeat as necessary.

    Eventually they will become better.

    But that isn’t usually what happens.

    The boy doesn’t become stronger.

    He becomes smaller.

    He receives confirmation that there is something wrong with him.

    Soon enough he won’t even need the headmaster to tell the story anymore.

    He will tell it to himself.

    And that is often what the critic accomplishes.

    Not a better student.

    A more diminished one.

    My point here isn’t that critics are bad.

    In fact, some of them have probably saved us from embarrassment, humiliation and rejection more times than we’ll ever know.

    My point is that they often don’t see the cost of their own strategies.

    Next week I’ll write a little more about the different kinds of critics that show up in our lives and the roles they play.

    But maybe the even more interesting thing is that not all critics are the same.

    Parts on Paper Journalling Group: Meeting the Critic

    Over the next few weeks I’ll introduce each member of the Council of Critics and share some simple journalling prompts to help you get to know these voices.

    If this speaks to you, you’re welcome to join Parts on Paper: Meet the Council of Critics—a three-week online journalling journey. Together we’ll begin to recognise these inner critics, understand what they’re trying to protect, and find a different way of relating to them.

    The goal isn’t to get rid of your inner critic. It’s to understand it. And in doing so, remember the Self in us that’s calmer, wiser, and better able to lead.

    More information here.

  • The Addict in Me

    The Addict in Me

    I have been doing some work at a rehab centre and, in my short stay, have learned a few things.

    I look around and who surrounds me?

    Addicts.

    And I, as a non-addict, occupy a different position in their minds than they do in mine.

    If you are like me and are termed a non-addict, then when you step into a space where people are in a program that teaches them to introduce themselves with:

    “Hi, my name is Ryan and I am an alcoholic.”

    it can feel confronting.

    But I think I get some of why it’s important to start there.

    Addiction is almost always associated with deception, manipulation, denial and lies. If you don’t start by naming the problem, there’s a good chance you’ll find a way around it.

    But the more time I spend around addicts, the more I wonder whether some of these patterns belong not only to addiction, but to being human.

    Sometimes personality itself starts looking like a manipulative structure, something that will do almost anything to get what it wants while avoiding what it fears, rejects or cannot bear to feel.

    Often the suffering we experience seems tied to this push-pull dynamic. We have what we don’t want and we don’t have what we want. And so personality goes to great lengths trying to restore balance, usually by searching for relief in ways that often deepen the problem.

    The 12 Steps begin with honesty for a reason.

    Tell the truth or don’t tell the truth and pay for it.

    Research increasingly shows that chronic dishonesty is not only hard on relationships, it is hard on the body. Martha Beck speaks about this. Coming from a Mormon background, she describes becoming deeply disconnected from herself while trying to live according to beliefs and norms that were not hers.

    In order to stay connected to her community, she had to lie to herself.

    She had to become someone she wasn’t and somehow hope that belonging would make it bearable.

    Eventually she realised that if she continued betraying herself, she would become even sicker.

    But what if you are not Martha Beck and you cannot leave?

    Maybe you don’t have the strength, courage, resources or conditions to separate from your family or community in the ways you need to.

    Maybe you continue to feel there is no other way to survive than to be inauthentic.

    I keep thinking while writing:

    What’s the point of words if they don’t actually belong to me?

    At some point a substance or addiction can start to look like the only way out.

    My point here is context.

    Many of us were fortunate enough to express more of who we are and have that received and welcomed more often than not.

    But almost everyone, I imagine, has experienced moments where they felt they could not fully be themselves.

    We needed to become something else for someone else.

    Maybe this is where the lie begins.

    In those moments we are no longer ourselves.

    The only possibility is starting with being honest with yourself.

    Addiction begins making more sense to me from this angle.

    Not as moral failure, but as an attempt to survive disconnection from self, others and life itself.

    If we cannot feel connection to the life that is actually ours to live, we start searching for something else to live inside.

    At another rehab centre they told me that as a non-addict I should be careful not to imply that I am the same as the residents.

    And I understand that.

    I have not lived the consequences many addicts have lived, and I do not want to minimise the reality of addiction.

    But still, as I sit with addicts, the distinction between addict and non-addict starts falling away a little.

    I am not immune.

    Under different conditions I could have been sitting on the other side of the room.

    I too know manipulation, avoidance, denial and self-deception.

    I too have strategies for escaping myself.

    I too can become trapped in rigid patterns that do not easily loosen simply because I want them to.

    And yet I don’t think human beings fundamentally long for deceit or disconnection.

    At some level I think most of us long for honesty, belonging, peace and authenticity.

    The difficulty is that survival patterns do not disappear simply because conditions improve.

    One of my favourite addictions is busyness, and culture rewards me for it.

    The message is not:

    “You have a problem.”

    The message is:

    “You’re on the right track. Push harder.”

    As I sit with addicts, I see how my ego has the same capacity for deceit.

    I am certainly not always honest with myself.

    I have ways of avoiding myself.

    This sounds a lot like addiction to me because even when I want to change, it’s often more accurate to say the pattern is running me than I am running it.

    I could easily recite my own version of the first step:

    I am powerless over my patterns.

    This then leads me to Step Two.

    The language of “Higher Power” points to something interesting.

    Some traditions speak about this as Self, or the unbroken part of us. The part that remains intact beneath the conditioning, trauma and adaptations. The part in us that would not be possible to fully traumatise or break.

    As we begin opening to this deeper self, we start connecting to something more honest and less defended.

    Something that does not feel quite so separate from life or from other people.

    Could this be part of what we mean when we say:

    “Trust yourself?”

    Not trusting every impulse.

    Not trusting every fear.

    Not trusting every craving.

    But trusting the deeper ground beneath the trauma.

    Learning to follow the place in you that is authentic and true.

    Inviting everything in us that needs holding and attention to turn toward this more compassionate guide.

    I think this is part of what the 12 Steps are pointing toward.

    Not simply sobriety, but reconnection.

    Learning to trust something in you that stands outside the fear, conditioning and survival patterns—and learning to follow that.

    Maybe that is why these first steps feel so universal to me.

    Not because everyone is an addict in the same way, but because so many of us know what it is like to become disconnected from ourselves and then organise our lives around avoiding that pain.

    Part of me wants to join the addiction world and admit that, in my own way, I recognise myself there too, even if my forms are less visible and more culturally rewarded.

    Some addictions are simply more visible than others.

    Obviously some addictions are more destructive and extreme than others and need to be treated.

    But take something like addiction to power.

    It is often celebrated rather than questioned.

    The more you accumulate, the more applause you receive.

    Yet try asking someone deeply attached to power to stop.

    Often they can’t.

    Sometimes domination itself starts looking like addiction to me. The difference is simply where the suffering goes.

    Put one of these people through a sincere 12-Step process and, if they are willing to look, their amends list may be every bit as long as a substance user’s.

    There is maybe an even bigger problem underneath all of this.

    It is not only that many of us become disconnected from ourselves or forced into adaptation.

    It is also that this is not entirely a benign universe.

    It can be a hostile one.

    Survival has not always been easy for human beings.

    We carry long histories of danger, violence, instability, uncertainty and exclusion.

    You start wondering whether some of these traits—deception, hypervigilance, manipulation, denial—evolved alongside survival itself.

    In some conditions these patterns were closer to protection than pathology.

    Which makes the real question even harder.

    How do we learn to trust ourselves not only when the going is good, but when things fall apart?

    Maybe this is the deeper challenge.

    Because it is easy to speak about authenticity and truth when life feels safe.

    Much harder when survival feels threatened.

    And if we look honestly at the world right now, uncertainty seems to be increasing rather than decreasing.

    Economically, socially, politically, environmentally—many people feel less safe, not more.

    Fear increases.

    Instability increases.

    And with that, the pull toward old survival strategies increases too.

    It becomes harder to trust yourself.

    Michael Mead speaks about this in many of the old stories he works with.

    Often it is precisely in periods of difficulty and fragmentation that truth-telling becomes most important.

    Not certainty or performance, or pretending everything is fine. But honesty.

    The willingness to stop lying about who we are and where we are.

    Maybe this is partly why recovery spaces move me the way they do.

    Because beneath all the suffering and chaos, there is also something profoundly human happening there.

    People, often with more difficult upbringings and harsher life conditions, gathering together to tell the truth.

    And in a culture that rewards image, performance, productivity, avoidance and endless striving, that starts to feel radical.

    In that sense, rehabs and recovery centres can almost feel like strange little beacons of light.

    Places where people come to admit powerlessness, face themselves honestly, and slowly reconnect to something more real.

    That feels like a lesson far bigger than addiction.

  • The Uncertainty Meter

    The Uncertainty Meter

    I came across one of the most interesting ideas recently from Sarah Bergenfield speaking about the neuroscience of uncertainty.

    It’s not a new idea she is putting forward, but no less important for that.

    And why should we care about monitoring uncertainty?

    Because “I don’t know what to do” is one of the most uncomfortable places a human being can find themselves.

    At some level, I think most of us are trying to avoid that experience.

    We want to feel like we are managing uncertainty. We kind of like the idea of not knowing exactly what comes next, but only if we have enough confidence in ourselves to handle whatever arrives. There is nothing worse than having it thrust upon you and feeling like you don’t have enough of what you need to deal with it.

    The “in over your head” experience.

    Share

    We are right to want some control, some degree of certainty. Otherwise life would simply be too much.

    Sarah’s description of uncertainty reminded me of something Aldous Huxley wrote many years ago in The Doors of Perception.

    (I explored Huxley’s ideas in more depth in an earlier essay, Cleansed Perspective, for those interested in going further down that rabbit hole.)

    Huxley proposed that the brain and nervous system function less like a camera and more like a filter.

    Reality is simply too vast, too complex and too full of information for us to take it all in. So the nervous system narrows our experience down to what appears most relevant for survival.

    In Huxley’s language, we are each connected to what he called “Mind at Large”—a reality far bigger than the small slice we normally perceive. But for practical purposes, that larger reality has to be funnelled through what he called the “reducing valve” of the brain and nervous system.

    The purpose of this filtering isn’t truth.

    It’s survival.

    From this perspective, the brain is constantly making predictions about what comes next. Most of the time those predictions are accurate enough that life feels manageable. We know where we are going, who we can trust, what tomorrow is likely to bring.

    But when reality stops matching the prediction, uncertainty rises.

    And from an evolutionary perspective, that makes perfect sense. Not knowing what is coming next could be dangerous. Better to predict, prepare and stay one step ahead.

    The challenge is that the same uncertainty that signals danger can also signal growth.

    The nervous system often struggles to distinguish between the two.

    That being said, not knowing can also be one of the highest expressions of our creativity.

    It is in not knowing that we make space for whatever new thing life is trying to birth through us.

    A relationship.

    A business.

    A book.

    A difficult conversation.

    A new version of ourselves.

    From a mythological point of view, whatever is waiting to come into being arrives through those willing to remain an empty vessel for a while.

    None of these emerge from certainty.

    They emerge from a willingness to stand in territory that cannot yet be fully mapped.

    The same uncertainty that our nervous system experiences as danger can, at times, be the very doorway through which life is trying to move us forward.

    Uncertainty is not one thing or another.

    We want to find whatever certainty we can and rest in that while simultaneously making space for the bigger reality that life itself is a profoundly uncertain place.

    What’s even more interesting to me is that uncertainty affects us differently.

    Not only do different people respond differently to uncertainty, but our own inner world can become full of contradictions around it.

    One part may become excited.

    Another becomes terrified.

    One part freezes.

    Another immediately starts making plans.

    One part wants guarantees.

    Another wants adventure.

    Whatever the constellation of our inner experience, it seems unlikely that anything moves us quite as much as uncertainty.

    Much of psychology focuses on external triggers.

    That person upset me.

    That event stressed me.

    That conversation made me anxious.

    And of course that happens.

    But what if our state shifts are not always driven by other people?

    What if sometimes our uncertainty meter is simply running higher than usual?

    Without anything dramatic happening, we may find ourselves more tense, more contracted, more vigilant. A little more on edge than normal.

    And this inevitably shapes the lens through which we experience our day.

    Imagine you are in a fight with your partner.

    They storm out and leave.

    Your system is now not only responding to the conflict itself but also to the uncertainty surrounding it.

    When will they come back?

    Will they come back?

    What does this mean?

    The mind starts trying to close the gap.

    To resolve the uncertainty.

    To regain a sense of control.

    What’s fascinating is how much of this happens automatically.

    The question for me is not how do we eliminate uncertainty.

    The question is how do we grow our capacity to be with it without becoming reckless.

    This is where parts work becomes useful.

    Because uncertainty doesn’t land on neutral ground.

    We all have histories.

    Some of us grew up in homes where the world felt dangerous and unpredictable.

    Others grew up around chaos, where uncertainty was simply normal.

    Some of us learned to control.

    Some learned to avoid.

    Some learned to perform.

    Some learned to disappear.

    All of this influences how we respond when uncertainty appears.

    If I listen carefully enough to the voices inside me, I often hear a range of different perspectives.

    One urges caution.

    Another sees possibility.

    Another remembers what happened last time.

    Another wants to leap.

    Perhaps the task isn’t to silence uncertainty.

    Perhaps it is to listen carefully enough to hear who is speaking.

    The beautiful thing is that we are not limited to any one of these voices.

    There is something larger that can listen to them all.

    Huxley called it Mind at Large.

    Other traditions speak of awareness, presence, Self or soul.

    Whatever language we use, most of us have touched it at some point.

    The place in us that can remain open when the rest of the system contracts.

    The place that doesn’t need certainty in order to be present.

    The more I think about it, the more useful the uncertainty meter becomes.

    Not because it tells us what to do.

    But because it helps us understand what is happening.

    One of the first questions we can ask is:

    What is influencing my meter right now?

    The most immediate zone is the self.

    Our own body.

    Our own thoughts.

    Our own internal world.

    A strange pain appears in the body.

    A symptom we don’t understand.

    A sensation we weren’t expecting.

    Suddenly uncertainty enters.

    The mind begins trying to make sense of it.

    What does this mean?

    Is something wrong?

    Do I need to worry?

    The uncertainty meter starts climbing.

    From there we move outward.

    Into our immediate environment.

    The people we live with.

    The places we spend our time.

    I know someone whose uncertainty meter was constantly activated by a building project next door.

    The noise wasn’t the problem.

    The uncertainty was.

    How long will this continue?

    What will happen next?

    When will it stop?

    The nervous system struggles when there is no predictable end point.

    Then we move outward again.

    Family.

    Relationships.

    Community.

    Perhaps it is a change at work.

    A new teacher at your child’s school.

    A shift in a friendship.

    A parent becoming ill.

    Every circle we belong to has the potential to increase or decrease our sense of certainty.

    And then we arrive at the widest circle of all.

    The world itself.

    Wars.

    Politics.

    Economic instability.

    Social change.

    To whatever extent we allow the world in, it too influences the meter.

    What strikes me is that we all have different sensitivities.

    The same event may barely register for one person and completely destabilise another.

    A war on the other side of the world.

    A change at work.

    A strange sensation in the body.

    A child struggling at school.

    The uncertainty is not only in the event.

    It is in the relationship between the event and the nervous system experiencing it.

    There is no universal uncertainty meter.

    Only our uncertainty meter.

    And perhaps that is where regulation begins.

    Not with fixing.

    Not with certainty.

    But with noticing.

    My uncertainty meter is high today.

    Something in my system is responding.

    Something in me is looking for safety.

    Just naming it can create a little more space.

    A little more compassion.

    A little less identification with the stories uncertainty generates.

    Perhaps the goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty.

    Perhaps the goal is simply to become more aware of our relationship with it.

    To know when the meter is rising.

    To understand what is influencing it.

    And to remember that there is something in us larger than the uncertainty itself.

    To know when the meter is rising is already the beginning of wisdom.

    If you’re interested in exploring these themes further, I write regularly on Substack about uncertainty, parts work, identity, belonging, recovery, and the many ways we learn to navigate being human.

    Nineways Substack

    I’ll also be facilitating a small online Parts on Paper group starting on 24 June.

    We’ll be exploring many of these themes through reflective writing, conversation and a series of prompts designed to help us hear the different voices that emerge when life becomes uncertain.

    The aim is to become more intimate with the ways we have learned to survive.

    To understand the protectors, strategies and assumptions that shape our lives from behind the scenes.

    And perhaps, in the words of Suleika Jaouad, to become a little more creative with our survival.

    To discover new possibilities for responding to life beyond the patterns we inherited, learned or developed out of necessity.

    If you’re interested in joining the group, drop me an email and I’ll send you the details.

  • If there is no problem with the problem

    If there is no problem with the problem

    Fear wants to know. What happens when we stop trying to solve everything?

    There is so much to be afraid of — or is there?

    I feel myself tremendously impacted by the state of the world. Just when you think one war is over, a new one starts.

    Thanks for reading Parts and Perspectives ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

    We were sitting in church on Sunday. This particular church has the feeling that it could hold any religion or spirituality. Michelle, the minister there, holds that principle wonderfully. She is a breath of fresh air.

    It’s not unusual for her to encourage the congregation to imagine their faith without the church.

    What is your relationship with a higher power when everything else is stripped away she would ask?

    I love this question because it challenges us to look beyond the structures, institutions, and people we might feel we need in order to access something bigger than ourselves.

    I think because this relationship with life and mystery is so real for her, so alive, she is able to say it very simply.

    So when she began her sermon, and the war with Iran had recently started, she said.

    “I don’t know what to say about it. But my heart goes out to the people.”

    What a beautiful position in a world full of opinions.

    I don’t know. And I deeply care.

    I found that very comforting.

    This whole week I’ve tried to stay in that place of I don’t know.

    Because the fear can come on strong sometimes.

    And I notice how quickly my mind wants to know.

    To feel more in control.
    To find certainty.

    I can take in too much news.
    Too many images.
    Too much information.

    And the impact is big when fear is in the driver’s seat.

    Fear wants to know.

    Fear doesn’t want us to stay in uncertainty.

    But life has always been uncertain.

    Sometimes it can feel more uncertain than others. But the times when it didn’t feel that way didn’t mean it actually wasn’t.

    I worked with a young woman recently who told me about the horrific images TikTok was showing her — unasked for.

    In some ways I feel lucky to belong to a generation that is slightly behind all of this. I’m way behind on social media. And that also feels like a blessing.

    But for many younger people these platforms have become places where a sense of safety and belonging is built.

    This person told me she wouldn’t know what to do without TikTok.

    What’s strange to me is that we know we are exposed to more than we can handle — and still we reach for the content.

    It’s easy to become out of touch with the fear itself and instead move into chronic problem-solving mode.

    Especially when the world feels fragile and volatile.

    So I wanted to write about fear this week.

    And about working with this problem-solver in us — not against it.

    Without seeking a perfect existence, the question I find myself asking is this:

    What is the right level of fear to experience?

    And how do I know when I’ve moved outside that bracket?

    Loch Kelly offers a powerful invitation.

    He asks:

    What’s here when there is no problem to solve?

    Or perhaps more simply:

    What if there is no problem right now?

    Often something subtle happens when we ask this.

    There is a little more space.

    The breath becomes easier.

    The chest may open slightly.

    Even if you get a moment of this, it’s gold.

    Because you can almost bank on the fact that your system will clench up again.

    But the more references we have to this non-problem-solving state, the more capable we become of addressing the problems that are actually in our power to solve.

    It’s a strange irony.

    Fear often pushes us away from constructive action.

    When its grip is strong, we lose what Michael Meade calls our poetic relationship with life.

    The Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa once said that we live like a bundle of tense muscles defending our existence.

    And when fear is active, the mind begins running its familiar loops.

    What is going wrong.
    What might go wrong.
    How to fix it.

    Judging.

    Obsessing.

    Figuring things out.

    Have you noticed how many moments of the day are spent trying to figure something out?

    Even when nothing actually needs solving.

    If I pause randomly during the day and ask myself what is happening inside right now, I often find something subtle.

    Not exactly agitation.

    But a slightly edgy feeling.

    A kind of background sense that something around the corner could go wrong.

    And when we look closely, much of it revolves around a deep apprehension of loss.

    Loss of the body.

    Loss of people we love.

    Loss of belonging, respect, or identity.

    Somewhere deep down we know that everything changes.

    And something in us tightens in response.

    From a neuroscience perspective this tendency makes sense.

    The limbic system evolved to scan for danger.

    It’s part of what psychologists call the negativity bias.

    If you have one hundred encounters with dogs and ninety-nine are friendly but one bites you, you remember the bite.

    Fear, in this sense, is nature’s protector.

    The challenge is not that we have fear.

    The challenge is that sometimes the fear response gets jammed.

    Instead of responding to real threats, the alarm system begins firing across many areas of our lives.

    Fear takes root in the tissues.

    In our thoughts.

    In our emotional patterns.

    In our behaviours.

    And when we are fully inside that loop we enter what Tara Brach calls a kind of trance of fear.

    Inside that trance we lose access to some of our capacity.

    Sometimes the body itself becomes part of the defence.

    A bundle of tense muscles.

    The mind starts figuring things out.

    Then worrying.

    Then more details follow.

    Thoughts keep the emotion going.

    Whereas emotions in the body often move through much more quickly if we let them.

    But, what if we didn’t have a problem with the problem?

    What would it be like if the difficulties we feel so intensely under our skin were not actually as catastrophic as they seem?

    What if the need to solve them moved into a more creative space?

    The stakes are still there.

    Life still matters.

    But the urgency softens.

    There is more space.

    And maybe, if you did nothing at all for a moment, that might also be okay too.

    Crazy idea, right?

    Because often there is a part of us that will downright refuse.

    If things became that spacious, it might feel like giving up.

    Like weakness.

    Like something dangerous might happen.

    I once worked with someone who said to me:

    “Standing still would feel like going backwards.”

    But slowing down has its own intelligence.

    Slowing down comes with an echo.

    Whatever we have been doing — over days, weeks, months, or years — begins to catch up with us.

    The reverberations move through us.

    There’s really no other way.

    When we begin to contact these feelings directly, we often discover something surprising.

    Fear.

    Fear that has us clenched in ways that once helped us manage what was unmanageable.

    To meet fear directly can feel like a small death to the personality.

    Because in those moments we go against the default operating procedures that have been practiced for so long.

    And yet there is something exhilarating in this too.

    We get to do something different.

    Tara Brach describes this as attending and befriending.

    Listening to the fear.

    Feeling it directly in the body.

    And perhaps sensing the life that sits underneath all the problem solving.

    At the heart of all this there may be a deeper question.

    Can I really be who I am?

    Michael Meade speaks about this as a poetic grasp of our lives.

    Beyond the survival instinct there is also something creative within us.

    Certain things light us up more than others.

    Those are often the very things that put us back on our path.

    To follow that nature asks us to loosen our grip on the identities we built in the past.

    If we truly believe there is a problem right now, what impact does that belief have on our body and mind?

    You might pause for a moment and check.

    Right now, is there actually a problem that needs solving?

    Or is there simply breath, a body sitting here, and a mind that has become very skilled at imagining the next thing that could go wrong?

    Sometimes the more subtle problems carry the greatest weight.

    It shows up as stress.

    Tightness.

    A narrowing of our vision.

    And in that tightening we lose contact with what might already be here —

    support,

    possibility,

    even creativity.

    Things that may have been present all along.

    Waiting for a little more space.

  • Searching for Purpose

    Searching for Purpose

    We had our neighbours over this week. They come from a very different cultural world to ours — they are Zulu.

    I don’t even know where to begin speaking about cultures other than my own. As a white South African with Christian roots, their way of life couldn’t be more different from how I was raised — even though my own upbringing was more secular than anything else. I grew up in an insular home. High walls separated us from our neighbours, and we remained largely disconnected from the people around us in any meaningful way.

    My neighbour Judi (a pseudonym) is one of eleven siblings. She was raised in community. As with anything, there are highs and lows. In her world, everyone knows everyone. Privacy is scarce. Your business is rarely only your own.

    And yet, I’ve always longed for something like that — a felt sense of belonging to a larger whole. Of having many brothers and sisters, both inside and outside of family.

    What I’ve come to learn about myself is that building cross-cultural bridges is something I love. And at the same time, it reliably takes me far outside my comfort zone. I know I’m going somewhere unfamiliar, and it’s not something I rush toward.

    I think this is a built-in feature of purpose: it’s rarely something you hurry into, and there’s no obvious payoff for the ego. Something deeper inside says move. Go there. And it’s hard to explain why you would — except that not going somehow starts to feel more painful.

    In that sense, purpose may be motivated more by pain than by calling.

    At a certain point, it becomes harder to stay comfortable. Comfort itself turns into its own kind of enemy, because somewhere inside we’re longing for something beyond it.

    Oliver Burkeman puts it this way:

    “Resisting a task is usually a sign that it’s meaningful — which is why it’s awakening your fears and stimulating procrastination. You could adopt ‘Do whatever you’re resisting the most’ as a philosophy of life.”

    Life Is Expensive

    Halfway through the evening, Judi said something that stayed with me.

    “You know,” she said, “it doesn’t matter if you have anything or not. If you have food or not. You carry this expensive gift called life.”

    The word expensive stayed with me. Not precious. Not sacred. Expensive.

    It broke the usual chain of haves and have-nots. It cut across circumstance. No matter where we come from, we all carry this “expensive” gift — life — and somehow we can never lose it.

    Let’s name another feature of purpose here: a sense of rightness that arrives without effort, often without choice. Energy moves. Something aligns. And strangely, it feels less like you chose it and more like it chose you.

    And often, what’s choosing you isn’t that sexy.

    Disappearing

    Back in modern life, purpose has become one of the most seductive words of our time. Everyone seems to be searching for it.

    It’s slippery — sometimes present, sometimes gone. I might be sitting in front of a sunset, and suddenly there is no purpose at all. Just light. Just colour. Just being here.

    In those moments, purpose doesn’t feel deliberate. It finds me rather than the other way around. And when it does, it undoes me. There’s no story left. No striving. Just presence.

    Of course, we can’t rely on sunsets to guide our lives. But they reveal something important — not what purpose is, but what it feels like when we touch it.

    This brings me to another feature of purpose, following Judi’s teaching: you disappear.

    When purpose is real, your will doesn’t obstruct something larger. You become more like an empty chair. And emptiness is not easy.

    Feeling full often feels safer. We lean into what we think we know. Into opinions, frustrations, fears, desires. Into other people’s certainty. Into borrowed directions.

    But to encounter purpose, we often have to become emptier than we want to be. Which takes us right back to the beginning: emptiness touches the very thing we most resist. And, as Burkeman suggests, resistance is often the marker of where we need to go.

    I’ve seen this same quality in music.

    There’s a moment when a musician is fully absorbed — when effort disappears. It’s no longer clear whether the person is playing the instrument or the music is playing them.

    Nothing feels performative. There’s no story about destiny or importance. Just skill, presence, surrender.

    Nothing left but the music.

    That feels like the difference between meaning that inflates purpose and meaning that right-sizes it. It’s not big or small — it just is, without story attached. And yet it moves us, quietly shaping a life that feels wider, thicker, more inclusive.

    The Traps

    There is a reward for following the harder impulses. They fill us in ways short-term fixes can’t. But even here, the experience is strange. It doesn’t feel like pleasure in the usual sense.

    And still — who’s to say that going to a movie or sharing a meal with a friend isn’t part of purpose too? Sometimes those are precisely the things we don’t feel like doing — and we lose ourselves in them anyway.

    With that groundwork, I want to name some of the traps.

    We often speak of purpose as if it were a destination — something to discover, claim, and finally inhabit. In spiritual communities especially, purpose gets dressed in colour and ceremony. The shaman on the pedestal. Feathers. Symbols. Mythic language.

    If only I could live like that, we tell ourselves, then my life would finally make sense.

    Purpose becomes something close enough to feel, distant enough to chase. And that chase can become its own form of suffering.

    What’s rarely questioned is whether the way we relate to purpose actually pulls us away from the very thing we’re longing for.

    A Project of Ego

    We live in a meaning-hungry time. You can feel it in the air. Beneath productivity and self-improvement, there’s a longing — and I think it’s a valid one. Who wants to get lost in a world of superficiality?

    Mythologists like Michael Meade speak about soul-level calling — archetypal energies we arrive carrying. The idea that life has a story etched into the soul, something waiting to be lived. I resonate with that. I don’t want to live as if all this is pointless. Even if we never know for sure, treating life as meaningful feels more useful to me.

    And yet, this language can also seduce us. It can start to suggest that only a certain kind of life counts. A magical one. A meaningful one. A life with a clear arc.

    So I find myself wondering about the ordinary.
    The repetitive.
    The dry and unremarkable.

    Could that be purpose too?

    More and more, I notice how easily purpose becomes something the ego puts on. A story of specialness. A promise that the suffering will make sense later. That the discomfort is leading somewhere elevated.

    The ego isn’t the enemy. It’s protective. It wants things to cohere. Purpose gives it that — beautifully.

    And that’s where the trap sits.

    I’ve watched people step into “purposes” that weren’t really theirs. From the outside, you can feel it. They’re doing the thing because they think it will give them status, or legitimacy, or relief. Because it promises power, respect, belonging, or a way to fill the emptiness inside.

    When purpose becomes identity — role, destiny — it gives the ego something to stand on.

    True purpose, as I’m coming to understand it, is actually anti-ego. It keeps leading us to the one place the ego would rather not go. And strangely, that means we don’t have to search so hard.

    What’s Left

    So after all this, what’s left?

    I want to offer a simple working definition:
    purpose is making something with the conditions of your life exactly as you find them.

    Your purpose is to make something out of the material that’s here.

    Or, as Suleika Jaouad puts it, to be creative with your survival.

    It’s alchemy. Looking at your life like a garden and thinking the way a gardener would: What can grow here? What needs tending? What needs time?

    Your purpose is to tend that garden as a gardener would — seeing what needs doing, dreaming about the kind of garden you want to create. And a good garden needs compost. You could say all our pain and difficulty can be that compost.

    Your purpose is to trust yourself to notice the movements — and to follow them. Simple like that.