Blog

If you are not excited and scared, are you even living?

Two weeks ago, I had my introductory call to the Summer of Love Retreat I will be attending with Kendra Cover this Summer. I also launched THRIVE that same week. What stood out in both groups was that there was both fear and excitement. All the women who will be attending the Summer of Love Retreat (including myself) and the women in THRIVE expressed that they felt excited and scared at the same time. On the Summer of Love Retreat call, Kendra said something that got me thinking. She said, “If you are not excited and scared some of the time, are you even living?”

June 9, 2026 Read more →

Reflections of an Insecure Overachiever…

In his book, Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman reasons that our hustle culture is created by the misunderstanding that our existence is insufficient reason to be happy and fulfilled. Some of us run on an often-unconscious belief that we “must prove that we are worthy to exist”. Burkeman describes it as starting each day in deficit of some productivity debt we believe we need to pay off, before we can relax. The trouble is that we never seem to be able to settle this productivity debt, because every time we achieve the impossible, reach the deadline, or finally manage to get slightly ahead, we realize that we now must keep maintaining this new standard of performance and achievement. Consequently, there is no end in sight, and we keep at it day after day, in the hopes that one day we will arrive at this elusive future where we finally feel “good enough” or like we have done enough. Unfortunately, that day is never coming, because we have set it up in a way that we can never get there…

May 16, 2026 Read more →

Do you find it hard to be who you are…?

“It is easier to try to be better than you are, than to be who you are.” – This quote by Marian Woodman struck me. So often we treat ourselves like self-improvement projects, thinking that if we could only be better than we are, then everything would be the way we want it to be. If we could achieve that elusive level of perfection, then we would finally be happy, and have all the love, joy, and abundance we are craving… At least, I know this was true for me. I started working with my coach, with the hope that it would help me figure out what was wrong with me, and that I could then fix myself. My coach was unwilling to participate in that experiment, and she kept treating me as if there was nothing wrong with me. I was baffled. And now, seven years later, I get it. None of us are broken. We are simply disconnected from our true nature. We have allowed for so much conditioning to settle into our minds, hearts, and even bodies, that we have completely forgotten who we are...

April 13, 2026 Read more →

What is driving your desire for more?

In my most recent article I talked about the drive to do more, and I questioned the desire for abundance. This may have left the impression with you that I’m saying that wanting more is bad. And that is not what I’m saying at all. Over the past three years, I have discovered that there are two kinds of desire for more…

March 25, 2026 Read more →

What does it mean to thrive?

Over the last two years I have sat with this question: What does it mean to thrive? I used to believe that if I could achieve enough outside success, then I would thrive. When I started my coaching business, I read The Prosperous Coach, in the hopes that I could figure out how to prosper – which is another word for thrive. I was longing to find the secret to thriving / prospering / flourishing / expanding. And I will be honest, initially I thought that I would feel like I was thriving if I were making more money and if I was really successful in my business...

March 4, 2026 Read more →

What is Love?

Today large parts of the world are celebrating Valentine’s Day. I find it so strange that we live in a world where we have commercialised everything to the point that even the most important things in our lives can lose their meaning and significance. I have always found the idea of Valentine’s Day a little absurd since love cannot be bought or sold. Love is not a commodity. And creating a day where we remind people of their own loneliness, disconnection, and insecurities seems like the opposite of loving to me. It seems almost cruel. I’m not saying don’t appreciate your significant other, but I am questioning why you need a reminder to do that, or why they only get to be seen and celebrated on ONE day of the year. Love isn’t a feeling either. The feeling you feel when you say that you are in love, is infatuation, desire, or lust. Love, real love, is an ACTION. Love is a way of being in the world. It’s the opposite of judgement.

February 14, 2026 Read more →

The Truth about Perfectionism

In April of this year, I did a thing. With the gentle nudging of my coach, I participated in a professional rebranding photo shoot. The photo shoot took place in the midst of tremendous grief and sorrow. I was still reeling from the shock of my father’s passing. If I’m being honest, I’m still reeling from it now. There are days where the grief of it is so intense that my heart physically aches, and the tears have a valve of their own that cannot be turned off… And yet, the photos are more real, more authentic, more true than any photos I have ever taken. They reflect someone who is more grounded, more present, more connected to herself, Life, and others. They reflect who I am without any filters or pretense. They are raw and real. They are vulnerable. They are beautiful. This photo shoot in April was not some spur of the moment, spontaneous event. It was part of a much larger agreement with my coach to start to see myself more clearly, to claim the value of the work that I do, and to realign my brand to clearly reflect that. It was part of a project called “Seeing Myself”. Why am I sharing this with you, and what does seeing myself have to do with the title of this article? Everything really. When we slow it down...

August 6, 2025 Read more →

What do you believe to be true about you?

My father died believing he was a failure. From his perspective, he had failed, because he had been unable to secure full-time employment after losing his job during the pandemic. He lost his house and had almost no money when he died. He based a lot of his self worth on external measures of success, and he believed that he did not measure up. However, that's now what I saw or believed...

June 15, 2025 Read more →

Who do you become when faced with what matters most to you?

A few weeks ago, in conversation with a client, she asked a powerful question: How do I know what my truth is? The answer to that question is multi-layered. Here’s why…

May 28, 2025 Read more →

Grief is Love in its rawest and purest form…

My dear beloved community, I have not written to you since January. In fact, I have not written much in months. And my writing today comes from a tender and vulnerable place as I choose to share what has been unfolding in my life that has prevented me from sharing my regular newsletter with you.

April 28, 2025 Read more →

What’s the difference between self-improvement and self-growth?

Usually in January we hear a lot of talk about goals, dreams, aspirations, ways that we are going to be better and do better. This time of year tends to be a time when there is a heavy focus on self-improvement. Although, I will say that this year, I feel like the energy is different. I don’t know if it’s only on my side of the world, or whether you have experienced something similar? And I’m attributing it to all that is occurring in the world at the moment – wars, elections, wildfires. One colleague said what I was thinking. He said, “It feels like it’s the pandemic all over again...” I will share that that is certainly where my fear-based mind went immediately, because I remember that there were these out-of-control wildfires in Australia at the beginning of 2020 just before the pandemic really hit. And if you are feeling less inspired and excited this January, I want to invite you to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. My sense is that in many ways, we are still recovering from the trauma of the pandemic, and that our nervous systems are constantly bombarded with more things to process. And it’s a lot. It really is. And this is why I want to discuss the difference between self-improvement and self-growth...

January 21, 2025 Read more →

Guilt is not a feeling

These past few weeks I’ve been riddled with guilt, so much so that my guilt would wake me up in the middle of the night, and I would feel my heart beating in my chest, and my mind racing with worry. So often, my clients share how they carry their own guilt for choices they’ve made, especially when others do not approve of those choices. Recently, I had a deep conversation with my coach about guilt, and I had a profound insight that has changed the way I see my guilt. And I want to share with you here what I’ve learnt about guilt...

December 17, 2024 Read more →

The Paradox of Self-Improvement

Something that we all share as human beings, is the desire for learning and growth. It’s built into our DNA to want to learn and grow. If you don’t believe me, simply spend some time with babies and you will see it. We learn more in the first year of life than in any other time in our lives. We are simply geared towards learning, because learning things helps us survive, and even once we have figured out how to survive, learning helps us go from merely surviving to thriving. If you consider the technological advancement of humanity, it becomes quite evident that we want to grow, learn, and expand. We almost can’t help ourselves. What I’m most baffled by though is how our natural instinct for learning and growth then starts morphing into a need for self-improvement and/or self-betterment, and then sometimes even morphing into an obsession with perfectionism. The idea of self-improvement has been with us for centuries. Even the great philosophers advocated for continuous self-improvement. And yet, I feel like there is a tipping point where self-improvement becomes toxic...

October 16, 2024 Read more →

How we overcome shame, is we own our story

In April, I shared with you about the launch of my private six-month coaching group called Living As If You Matter. This group is all about living as if you truly matter, or as Brené Brown would put it, wholehearted living. Today I want to talk about what gets in the way of living more wholeheartedly or living as if you matter, and the antidote to it. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown explains that the biggest thing that gets in the way of us living more fully as our true selves, or living as if we really matter, is something that we all experience – shame. Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough. It’s the feeling that makes us want to hide or run away. It’s what sometimes makes us overreact in certain situations. According to Brené Brown, “Shame is basically the fear of being unlovable… Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.”

June 3, 2024 Read more →

The Gifts of Imperfection

A while ago I wrote an article about what your perfectionism is really trying to tell you. Perfectionism is a misunderstanding that we need to earn our self-worth or prove that we are enough or worthy. The truth is that you came into this world worthy and then got disconnected from that truth over time. So, embracing your imperfections is a way that you can choose to reclaim your inherent worthiness...

April 16, 2024 Read more →

The real reason why you matter…

In a recent newsletter, Amber Krzys spoke about the true meaning of integrity, and her article really resonated with me. Integrity has been a core value of mine for most of my life. Amber shares that for most of her life, she thought that integrity meant keeping your word. Even though this is true, there is also a deeper meaning to integrity...

October 16, 2023 Read more →

How much are you “shoulding” on yourself?

I recently shared what I had learnt from watching the Barbie movie. And the key insight I shared was how we put labels on ourselves or how we identify with certain labels without considering that perhaps they are just that – labels. And the label we assign ourselves or get assigned by others, could never really fully capture who we are, because we are so much more than the labels. In that article I pointed out that each of us have a responsibility to know who we are outside the system of rules we have created for ourselves. And today I want to talk more about the rules we create for ourselves. A lot of these rules operate unconsciously, and yet, they dictate how we live our lives, so they are worth investigating...

September 19, 2023 Read more →

Life lessons I learnt from watching the Barbie movie

This past weekend we went to the cinema and watched the new Barbie movie. I was initially very resistant to watching it. I had my own story about Barbie and that it would be a complete waste of my time to watch the movie. I was not a big fan of Barbie growing up. I had some Barbie dolls at one point. And I loved dressing the dolls. And at the same time, I felt a lot of resentment towards the stereotypes that the doll’s existence perpetuates. Barbie perpetuates an unrealistic and unattainable ideal that is very hard for most women to be confronted with. My husband was very keen though. He thought it would be funny. So, we went to see it. Here is what I learnt about life from watching the Barbie movie...

July 25, 2023 Read more →

What does it mean to be a Hero?

What is a hero? Marvel and DC have taught us that heroes are special. They have incredible strength and supernatural powers, and they perform outrageous acts of courage. So, we tend to think that an average person can’t possibly be a hero. Heroes are special somehow, so they can’t be average people... We forget to be our own heroes in life. We forget that we get to create who we want to be in the world...

March 28, 2023 Read more →

Living Large: A tribute to Jeremy Mansfield

A few weeks ago, I wrote about taking up more space and what that might look like. Today I want to talk about a real-life example of that. Back home in South Africa, Jeremy Mansfield was a radio announcer and television presenter. He passed away recently from cancer. To me he was a living example of what it looks like when someone takes up more space.

November 28, 2022 Read more →

I AM: The two most powerful words in the world

My commitment to changing the level at which I live my life, deepened about four years ago when I decided to embark on the biggest personal transformation of my life. And the most important thing about personal growth and transformation, is that you never arrive. There is never a point of completion. The deeper you go, the more you start to value and appreciate the journey. You fall in love with the process, because you realise that’s all there is. So, as I write this, I’ve renewed my commitment to being 100% committed to the process and 0% committed to the outcome. I cannot control the outcome. So, there is no point on focusing my energy and attention there. I won’t get me what I yearn for most anyway. So, instead, I fall in love with the process of learning and growing, and I stay on the path towards mastery. I choose to be a student of life and I accept and embrace never arriving. For the rest of my days here on earth, I am a student of life, and I am here to soak up as much love, learning, joy, growth, awe, and inspiration as is available to me. These renewed commitments stem directly from my attendance at a Game Changer Event with the ultimate mindset coach, Devon Bandison...

October 24, 2022 Read more →

Larger Than Life

One of my favourite TED Talks is a talk by Caroline McHugh on The Art of Being Yourself. I share it with all my clients at some point, because of the power of her message, which is essentially an invitation to take up the space the universe intended for you. What does it even mean to take up space? Most of us play small. We hold on to limiting beliefs that has us playing out the same patterns over and over, and we allow fear to stop us from stepping out of those patterns. We tell ourselves stories about what we are capable of and what we are not, and we believe our own stories. We let other people tell us what should matter to us, what our priorities should be, and we spend our lives in fear of the question, “What will people think?” And very often that thought stops us from taking action on the things we value.

October 11, 2022 Read more →

Heart-Centred Listening: It’s not a skill. It’s a mindset.

ly listening to another human being feels like a lost art these days. My great-grandmother used to say that we have one mouth and two ears so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. And she was a great listener. She seldomly spoke, so when she did, I always listened, because I knew that what she had to share would be valuable... Today I want to talk about far more than simply listening for learning or for our own personal understanding. I want to talk about what it means to listen deeply to another in a way that has you both feeling seen, heard, and deeply connected.

September 21, 2022 Read more →

Redefining Compassion

During a specific phase of my PhD research, I conducted interviews with participants. One of the questions I would ask interviewees was, “What does compassion mean to you?” I would then follow up that question with a second question, “How do you demonstrate compassion in your own life?” The aim was to get a sense of what compassion really means to people and how they live compassion in their daily lives. The Oxford Dictionary defines compassion as, “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.” For me personally, that definition feels too narrow. It invites us to feel pity or concern for someone. It evokes within us this sense of feeling sorry for someone about what they are going through. And yet, pity falls short of what is needed. It simply levels compassion akin to sympathy, when my sense is that what is really needed is far more than just feeling sorry for someone.

July 5, 2022 Read more →

Dreams are for losers

I want to speak to you about a commencement speech Shonda Rhimes gave at her alma mater Dartmouth College in 2014, where she said this simple yet striking line: “Dreams are for losers”. Yes, you heard that right, she said dreams are for losers. She goes on to explain why. At almost every commencement speech someone will tell the graduates to go follow their dreams, or to never stop dreaming. And what Shonda says is that isn’t helpful advice. It won’t actually help you succeed, because dreamers aren’t successful...

June 22, 2022 Read more →

Of puzzle pieces and postage stamps

How many times have you heard the cliché, “you’re unique” and just rolled your eyes? From my perspective, it seems as if people have taken this idea of uniqueness to such an extreme that it has lost its true meaning. The truth is that you are unique. However, how that is often interpreted, is that you are special or different from others in a way that is meant to have you stand out from others. And that is not entirely accurate. You see we all share certain common traits as human beings. We are all mammals. We are all social animals seeking belonging. We are all meaning seekers and meaning makers. We all experience emotions. We are all capable of critical thought and of creativity. There are certain things that we have in common with other people because we are all human. That being said, you are still unique in the sense that there is only ONE human like YOU.

May 9, 2022 Read more →