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Hi Reader, On one of my latest jogs, I was just minding my own business. Which, if we're being honest, means I was giving myself silent pep talks. This is for a good cause. You'll feel great when you're back home. Stop whining, you literally chose to do this. Nobody pointed a gun to your head, Peggy. You know. Normal jog thoughts 😅 Then, out of absolutely nowhere… I found myself doing my best karate moves. Right there. In the middle of the trail. Because I had just run face-first into a spider web. Perfectly constructed, right across the path, clinging to the branches on either side. Invisible until it wasn't! I never actually saw the spider, but my face definitely felt every one of those sticky little threads. (I like to think it took that spider a whole hour to build. And I destroyed the work of art in about two seconds. Sorry, little friend 🕷️) Once I recovered and made sure no damage had been done to my ego (thank goodness no one was watching my very chaotic karate moves), I kept running. And I started thinking. What other invisible barriers do we walk into? Not the ones we can see, not the obvious ones we prepare for. I'm talking about the ones our unconscious mind quietly puts in front of us. The ones we don't know are there until we're face-first in them, spinning our arms around like a slightly panicked cartoon character. The beliefs we picked up somewhere and never questioned, the fears we've been carrying so long they feel like part of us, the old stories we don't even notice we're telling ourselves anymore. How do we discover barriers we don't even know we have? Here's one small thing that's been helping me… Start noticing the moments you resist. Not the big obvious ones. The small ones. The email you keep not replying to. Those little resistances are the sticky threads of the web. They're pointing at something. Usually a story you've been quietly telling yourself. "I'm not ready." The barrier isn't the task; it's the story underneath the task. And the moment you can name the story, the web starts to lose its stickiness. You don't have to fix it right away. Because we can't do anything about what we can't see. But once we can see it… we can decide. Chat next week, P.S. What's one small resistance you've been feeling lately? And what story might be underneath it? Backyard Gossip | Stories about life, business & the spaces in between |
Every week, I share a story from ordinary life that made me stop, laugh, think, or occasionally question what on earth I was doing. From running into spider webs and taking the elevator after the gym, to entrepreneurship, choices, courage and figuring out what we actually want next. No five-step formulas, no pretending I have it all figured out. Just real stories, honest observations and the occasional question that might stay with you longer than expected.
View in browser Hi Reader, Last week I left you with a slightly annoying question: if we know what we want, why is it sometimes still so difficult to make the choices that will get us there? Well, apparently I have some thoughts about that 😏 You might not know this, unless you’ve done some serious scrolling through my LinkedIn profile, but I’ve been working with NHA in the Netherlands for almost 17 years, guiding students through self-paced courses on leadership, coaching and business. One of...
View in browser Hi Reader, I’m not going to lie… I’m NOT always motivated to do the things I need to do to become the person I want to be. Wow. That was a mouthful. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t say that five times quickly in a row 😂 But then I started wondering: am I actually motivated by the person I want to become? Or am I sometimes more motivated by the person I don’t want to become? And yes, I’m sure a psychologist could explain the difference in great detail. Intrinsic motivation,...
View in browser Hi Reader, This morning I joined the Beban Parkrun again. My friend couldn’t make it this week, so I was prepared to run on my own, go slowly, and really try to stay within my heart rate zones to build more stamina. Which currently means quite a bit more walking than jogging 😏 And let me tell you, sticking to those zones while people are happily running past you is harder than it sounds. But anyway, that’s not actually what this story is about. At some point, while I was...