‘You Play As You Are’
Years ago, at a seminar, the speaker asked everyone to stand, take a note from their wallet, and walk around the room making sure they ended up holding a different note. That was the whole instruction.
For five minutes it was chaos. People snatched notes from each other’s hands. Some ended up with far less, a few with double, and many were genuinely upset. All over one simple instruction.
Then he made his point. Any of us could have calmly swapped a note of the same value and the game would have been over in seconds. Almost nobody did. ‘You play as you are.’ The way people played that game is how they play life.
How you handle money, pressure and people is a mirror of who you are inside. The hopeful part, change who you are within, and the whole game changes.
‘How am I playing the game, and is that really who I want to be?’
‘Is Change and Transformation the same thing?’
We use the words as if they mean the same thing. Change is doing something different; transformation is becoming someone different. One happens on the surface, the other all the way down at the roots.
A caterpillar doesn’t become bigger, faster or a better caterpillar. Inside the cocoon it dissolves almost completely, then rebuilds itself into something utterly new. It could never have flown as a caterpillar, no matter how hard it tried. It had to become something else entirely.
A grape ripens and grows sweeter, that is change. Crushed and fermented it becomes wine, something it could never be as a grape, that is transformation. Warm water is still water. At a certain point it turns to steam and rises into the air.
You might ask, what about the big makeovers, the star who reinvents their image, or someone who leaves a relationship and changes their whole look? That depends on what is underneath. The new look is the wings, and the real question is whether a butterfly grew them, or a caterpillar simply glued them on. A fresh image on the same person inside is change. A new look that flows from someone genuinely remade within is transformation made visible. No judgement either way.
Most of us keep trying to change: what we long for is to transform. We tinker with the behaviour and wonder why nothing truly shifts. Real, lasting transformation happens on the inside first, at the level of who you believe you are. As a hypnotherapist, that is exactly the depth I work at with people, because when the inner self changes, the outer life tends to follow almost on its own.
And this is not a judgement, there is nothing wrong with change, we all need it. It is simply an invitation to notice when your heart is asking for something deeper.
‘Are you trying to change something on the surface, when what you truly want is to transform?’
‘Anger and Shame feed each other.’
Another aspect of anger is that it is the fuel to shame.
Have you ever sat in your car outside your own home, telling yourself, "be calm, don't lose it tonight," quietly wanting a different outcome to yesterday, and to the day before that?
You walk through the door, and in no time at all, the anger comes out. Later on you sit there confused, asking yourself, "Why did I react like that? That is not who I want to be."
In my book I call it 'The Werewolf Within.'
It was never really about what happened at the door. Underneath the aspect of anger was shame, and a pile of other emotions. The shame was the fuel, and the werewolf delivered the anger.
Anger is just one facet of a diamond, that all of us are multifaceted. Turn it to the light and something softer is almost always hiding behind it.
As the saying goes, "You cannot see your reflection in boiling water." When the water calms, what might your anger be protecting you.?
'The limits of our language become the limits of our inner world.'
‘The limits of our language become the limits of our inner world.’
Someone asks how you are, and out comes “not too bad,” “fine,” “yeah, I’m good.” Someone asks what’s wrong, and the best you can manage is “I’m angry” or “I’m over it.” Not because that’s the whole truth of what you feel, only because those are the only words you were ever given for it.
We were taught spelling, maths, grammar, a thousand things about the world out there. Almost none of us were taught the language of what goes on inside us.
I know this one from the inside. I grew up in a Greek-speaking home and started school with barely any English. I was put in a special class, and I carried a quiet belief for years that I was somehow less. I wasn’t short of intelligence. I was short of words, in the one language that room counted.
Here is the thing. A whole rich inner world, disappointment, grief, longing, shame, gets crushed down into the few blunt words we have. Angry. Frustrated. Fine. It’s like trying to paint a sunset with three crayons.
And this is not a judgement. We all do the best we can with what we know today. The good news is you can grow the words at any age. The moment you can name what you feel, you can begin to understand it, share it, and heal it.
What are you really feeling, underneath the word you usually reach for?
‘Fear in its highest form is love.’
‘Fear in its highest form is love.’ Inspired by the book ‘Conversations with God.’
I had to really sit with this one today. It's such a powerful way to see fear in a different light.
We live in a world of duality we cant experience light without darkness, hot without cold. You can't truly experience one without the other. And fear is no different. Think of the stories of mothers finding superhuman strength to lift a car off their trapped child. That is fear in its highest form: pure love.
We don't need to beat fear. We can understand its role, and stop demonising or avoiding it. I hope you come to experience this way of seeing this now.
‘A crack in the render is cosmetic. A crack in the structure brings the whole thing down. What are you avoiding and rendering over?’
“A crack in the render is cosmetic. A crack in the structure brings the whole thing down.
“What are you avoiding and rendering over?”
The building metaphor here does a lot of work — it quietly signals your trade background while making the psychological point land. Here's a version tuned for each platform.
LinkedIn (professional, a touch more reflective — fewer tags)
A crack in the render is cosmetic.
A crack in the structure brings the whole thing down.
What are you avoiding and rendering over?
After 36 years in building, I learned to tell the difference between a surface flaw and a structural one. The same is true for people. We get good at rendering over the cracks — staying busy, staying pleasant, keeping up appearances — while the load-bearing wall quietly gives way underneath. The work isn't in the patch job. It's in being honest about what's actually holding you up.