Burnout Isn't Just About Being Busy

A few years ago, if you'd asked me what burnout looked like, I probably would have described someone who couldn't get out of bed. Someone who was exhausted. Someone who had simply done too much for too long. And while all of those things can be true, I've started to realise that burnout can be much harder to spot than that.

Sometimes it looks like carrying on. You still show up to work. You still answer the emails. You still remember the PE kit, book the dentist appointment and reply to the WhatsApp messages. From the outside, everything appears to be functioning more or less as normal. But something has shifted.

The things that used to bring you pleasure don't quite land in the same way. The book sits unopened on the bedside table. The walk you've been looking forward to all week suddenly feels like another item on the list. Someone suggests meeting for coffee and, rather than feeling excited, you find yourself wondering whether you can get out of it.

Life starts to feel flatter somehow. Not terrible or dramatic. Just a little more grey than it used to. This was something that really stood out for me from my recent conversation with Dr Jillian Bybee on A Thought I Kept.

Jillian is a paediatric intensive care physician, coach, writer and mother who has experienced burnout twice herself. During our conversation she shared a thought that changed the way she understood wellbeing:

"Wellness is not a state of being, it's a state of action."

We kept returning to that sentence as we talked because it challenges one of the most common assumptions many of us carry around wellbeing. Namely, that it's somewhere we're trying to get to.

If we're honest, many of us live as though wellbeing is waiting for us on the other side of life. It's over there somewhere, beyond the busy period at work, beyond the caring responsibilities, beyond the financial worries, beyond the endless list of things that need our attention. We imagine there will come a moment when life finally settles down and we'll have enough space to focus on ourselves.

Only life has a habit of refusing to settle down. There's always another deadline, another transition, another worry, another season of life that requires something from us. And so wellbeing remains permanently postponed.

What I loved about Jillian's perspective was the reminder that wellbeing isn't something that exists outside our lives. It has to exist within them. Not when things calm down. Now. Not perfectly. Imperfectly. Not as a destination. As a practice.

One of the moments that particularly struck me was when Jillian spoke about how she now understands burnout. Rather than defining it purely through exhaustion or workload, she shared a definition from Duke University's wellbeing research that describes burnout as an inability to feel positive emotion. Which is such a powerful reframe. Because it explains something I've seen in myself at times and in so many people I've worked with.

Burnout isn't always a collapse. Sometimes it's a disappearance. A gradual loss of access to the things that make us feel alive. Joy becomes harder to find. Wonder feels distant. Connection requires effort. Even gratitude can feel strangely out of reach.

We often think of burnout as a productivity problem. We imagine the solution lies in better time management, fewer commitments or a more efficient morning routine. But what if burnout is also an emotional experience?

What if part of what we're grieving when we're burnt out isn't simply our energy, but our relationship with life itself? That idea feels particularly important because so many of us have become very good at pushing through.

We're good at functioning. Good at coping. Good at convincing everyone, including ourselves, that we're fine.

As Jillian pointed out during our conversation, many of us have learned to suppress difficult emotions because they feel inconvenient, uncomfortable or overwhelming. The problem is that emotions don't really work like that. We can't neatly push away grief, anger, sadness and frustration while keeping joy, connection and hope fully intact. Often when we numb one part of ourselves, we numb other parts too.

Which perhaps explains why burnout can feel so lonely. Not because nobody is around us, but because we've become disconnected from ourselves.

One of the stories Jillian shared was about a coaching client who felt completely overwhelmed by the demands of her life. When they began working together, the thing she felt able to offer herself wasn't a wellness retreat or a radical lifestyle overhaul. It was five minutes. Five minutes spent reading in a room where nobody could find her.

I loved that story because it feels so different from the way wellbeing is often presented to us. There was no perfect morning routine. No expensive solution. No dramatic life change. Just five minutes and a growing recognition that she mattered too.

Sometimes I think we underestimate how powerful these small acts can be. Not because they solve everything, but because they begin to challenge the story that everyone else's needs must come before our own.

Perhaps that's why I left this conversation feeling unexpectedly hopeful. Not because burnout is simple. It isn't. Not because five minutes fixes everything. It doesn't. But because Jillian's perspective offers something many of us desperately need right now: a kinder relationship with wellbeing itself.

One that isn't rooted in perfection, optimisation or achievement. One that allows us to ask a different question. Not, "How do I become the best version of myself?" But, "What would help me feel a little more like myself again?" If burnout is the gradual loss of connection to ourselves, perhaps recovery begins there too. Not in becoming someone new. But in finding our way back to the person who has been there all along.

If this resonates, I'd encourage you to listen to my full conversation with Dr Jillian Bybee on A Thought I Kept.

And if you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed or unsure what support might help, you can also explore our Wellbeing Check-Ins and coaching sessions. Sometimes we need another idea. And sometimes we need another person.

The Things We Avoid and the Things We Ache For

We all have something we've been meaning to deal with.

The email we haven't opened. The text message we haven't replied to. The work project that has been sitting in the corner of our desktop for months. The difficult conversation. The bank statement. The decision.

Sometimes it can feel as though there's a monster under the bed. We suspect it's there. We can hear it scratching around in the dark. But as long as we don't look directly at it, perhaps it can't hurt us.

So we keep our heads down. We busy ourselves elsewhere. We tell ourselves we'll deal with it next week, next month, when things calm down.

But whatever it is hasn't disappeared simply because we haven't looked at it.

And often, that's where the exhaustion begins.

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What Are We Really Avoiding?

The thing itself is not always the problem.

The unopened envelope might only take thirty seconds to open. The email could take five minutes to answer. The phone call might last less time than we've spent worrying about it.

What we're often avoiding is how we expect we'll feel.

Shame. Guilt. Disappointment. Regret. Anxiety. Self-doubt.

It's rarely just the task.

Many of us tell ourselves we're avoiding something because we're busy, and to be fair, that's often true. Life can feel relentless. There are school runs and deadlines, caring responsibilities and life admin, work demands and household logistics. We are trying to keep a lot of plates spinning at once.

The journalist Brigid Schulte describes modern life as being made up of "time confetti" — little scraps of time scattered throughout our days rather than long stretches of uninterrupted space. We might have five minutes here and ten minutes there, but not the emotional energy needed to climb the hill of something that feels difficult.

So we choose the easier path.

We check our phones. We reorganise the kitchen drawer. We watch another episode. We answer easier emails first.

For a moment, we feel relief.

But avoidance often comes with a hidden cost.

The thing remains. The emotional energy it requires remains. The quiet hum of guilt or dread remains.

And so we find ourselves carrying it around with us anyway.

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When Avoidance Isn't About Time

Sometimes the issue isn't that something feels difficult.

Sometimes it's that it no longer matters.

We can spend months trying to motivate ourselves towards something that simply isn't aligned anymore. A commitment we've outgrown. A goal that belonged to a previous version of ourselves. A project that no longer reflects what we value.

In those moments, avoidance may not be a sign that we need more discipline. It may be information. A gentle indication that something needs revisiting, revising or perhaps even releasing.

Of course, the opposite can be true as well.

Sometimes we avoid something because it matters deeply.

The novel we want to write.

The business idea we can't stop thinking about.

The course we'd love to take.

The conversation we know we need to have.

The dream that feels so important that we become afraid to touch it.

If it stays in our imagination, it remains perfect. Once we engage with it, it becomes vulnerable to disappointment, rejection or failure.

Avoidance and fear tend to keep each other company.

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What Helps When We're Stuck

One thing I've noticed is that the things I avoid often become enormous in my imagination.

The task expands. The conversation grows. The consequence becomes catastrophic.

Then I finally look at it and discover it was far smaller than I'd made it.

Not always easy. But smaller.

I've found it helpful to stop asking, "How do I finish this?" and instead ask, "What would fifteen minutes look like?"

The writer Maggie O'Farrell once spoke about writing one of the most painful scenes in Hamnet. Rather than forcing herself through it, she would write for ten minutes, walk around the garden, and then come back. Ten minutes at a time.

Sometimes courage looks less like a leap and more like a series of tiny returns.

I've also found self-compassion matters more than self-criticism. When we're already struggling with something, adding shame rarely helps. Instead, I try to remember that avoidance usually makes sense.

There is often a reason I'm hesitating. A fear. A wound. A protective instinct.

Sometimes I find it helpful to imagine speaking to myself the way I would speak to a friend:

"I know this feels difficult. I know why you're avoiding it. But we'll be okay. Let's take a look together."

Finally, I've learned to notice when avoidance moves beyond procrastination and becomes something else entirely.

There are times when avoidance can be connected to anxiety, depression, burnout or emotional overwhelm. The world becomes smaller. Opportunities narrow. Relationships drift. We stop participating in our own lives.

If that's where you find yourself, it's worth treating that experience with curiosity and care rather than judgment and getting the support that you need to help you move through this.

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On the Other Side of Avoidance

On the other side of avoidance sits something else. Wanting.

Not wanting in the consumer sense. Not the endless message that we should always be striving for more.

A different kind of wanting.

The quiet question: What do I actually want?

It sounds simple, but many of us struggle to answer it.

We're often very clear on what needs doing. What is expected of us. What other people require from us.

But what do we desire? That's harder.

Perhaps because wanting can feel indulgent. We learn early that practicality is admirable. Responsibility is admirable. Self-sacrifice is admirable. Wanting can feel frivolous by comparison.

And yet some of the most meaningful parts of life begin there.

Because I want to learn a new instrument.

Because I want to travel somewhere I've never been.

Because I want to spend more time with friends.

Because I want to make things.

Because I want to.

The aviator Amelia Earhart famously answered the question of why she flew across oceans with this simple statement:

"Because I want to."

There is something wonderfully freeing about that. Not because every desire should be followed. But because sometimes wanting itself is enough..

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Following the Threads of Aliveness

I've come to think of wanting as a signal. It points us towards what feels alive. Towards connection. Creativity. Curiosity. Joy. Meaning. Play.

Many of us spend so much time coping that we forget to ask what brings us pleasure.

What delights us.

What energises us.

What makes us feel more like ourselves.

And yet these questions matter. Not because they solve our problems. But because they remind us we're more than our responsibilities.

More than our productivity.

More than our to-do lists.

There is a life beyond coping.

And sometimes our longings help us find it.

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What Are You Avoiding? What Are You Wanting?

Lately I've been wondering whether I'm spending more energy keeping things at bay or moving towards what matters.

Perhaps that's the question I'm leaving with you too.

What are you avoiding? And what are you wanting?

Sometimes the things we're avoiding contain important information. So do the things we're longing for.

One points towards what feels difficult, uncertain or unresolved.

The other points towards what feels meaningful, alive or true.

Neither needs to be fixed immediately. But both deserve our attention.

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Explore Emotions Coaching

If you're finding yourself stuck in patterns of avoidance, overwhelmed by difficult emotions, or unsure what you want next, emotions coaching can help you slow down and make sense of what's happening beneath the surface.

Together we'll explore what you're feeling, what's driving your reactions, and how you can respond with more clarity, self-trust and choice.

Because sometimes the next step isn't about pushing harder. It's about understanding what's really going on.

Find out more about emotions coaching and book a discovery call.

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Finding the Work You Were Intended to Do

You can spend years building a life that looks successful from the outside while quietly wondering why it no longer quite fits on the inside.

Not in a dramatic, burn-it-all-down kind of way. More subtle than that. More like noticing you feel strangely flat after doing work you once loved. Or finding yourself restless in moments that should feel satisfying. Or realising that the thing you keep thinking about — the thing you dismiss as impractical, indulgent, impossible, too late, too risky — keeps returning anyway.

Maybe it arrives while you’re washing dishes. Or driving home from work. Or lying awake at 3am trying to mentally organise your entire future. Maybe it appears as envy when you see somebody else making the kind of work they were clearly meant to make. Maybe it shows up as grief. Maybe it simply sounds like a very quiet voice saying: “There must be something more true than this.”

This week on A Thought I Kept, I spoke to Natalie Lue about people pleasing, creativity, identity, perfectionism, and what it means to finally stop fighting the thing calling for your attention.

The thought Natalie brought to the conversation was this:

“Do the work that you were intended to do, and your money worries will cease.”

What fascinated me about our conversation wasn’t really the money part. It was the word intended.

Because I think many of us secretly wonder this, especially in midlife or moments of change: What am I actually meant to be doing with my life?

And beneath that question often sits another one we rarely say out loud: What if I already know?

Natalie spoke beautifully about spending years trying to make a version of work continue because she had already invested so much into it. The effort. The loyalty. The identity. The expectation. She talked about how easy it is to become attached not just to a career or role, but to being the kind of person who keeps going, who makes things work, who doesn’t let people down.

I recognised so much of that.

Particularly the idea that if we are competent, thoughtful, caring people, we often mistake endurance for alignment. We think the discomfort means we should simply try harder. Be more disciplined. More grateful. More resilient. We tighten our grip instead of asking whether the thing itself still fits who we are becoming.

And because many of us have been rewarded our entire lives for achievement, reliability, or self-sacrifice, changing direction can feel almost morally wrong. Like we are abandoning something. Wasting potential. Failing.

But what if changing is not failure?

What if a version of your life can be deeply meaningful and still not be yours forever?

One of the most moving parts of the conversation was hearing Natalie speak about creativity. About art. About the thing that had quietly kept calling to her for years while she continued showing up for everything and everyone else first. She described the strange habit many of us have of postponing the thing we most long for until we’ve finally “sorted everything else out.”

The problem is, there is always something else to sort out.

Another responsibility. Another deadline. Another financial worry. Another person to care for. Another reason why now is not the right time.

And yet the longing remains.

I think this is partly why conversations about calling can feel so emotionally loaded. Because they are rarely just about work. They are about permission. About self-trust. About whether we believe our desires matter. About whether we are allowed to evolve beyond the version of ourselves that once kept us safe.

For many people — particularly women — there is also a deep fear that choosing ourselves will disappoint other people. That if we stop being useful in the ways we always have been, we might lose love, approval, belonging, identity.

So we stay in roles, routines, relationships, or versions of ourselves that no longer fully fit because at least they are familiar.

We tell ourselves we are being practical.

Sometimes we are simply frightened.

And to be clear, this isn’t really an argument for dramatic reinvention. I don’t think most people need to quit their jobs, move countries, or become entirely different people to feel more alive. Often the shifts begin much more quietly than that.

Taking the class.

Starting the project.

Making space for rest.

Writing the thing.

Applying for the role.

Letting yourself want what you want without immediately dismissing it.

Allowing the possibility that the thing you keep returning to might matter for a reason.

I also think there is something deeply reassuring in realising that we do not have to become entirely new people to move forward. So much of modern wellbeing culture still quietly suggests that confidence, healing, or success require a total transformation of the self. But what if the goal is not to become somebody else at all?

What if it is simply to become more honest about who you already are?

Throughout our conversation, Natalie returned again and again to the idea that we are allowed to change. Allowed to evolve. Allowed to outgrow old identities without those identities becoming mistakes.

That feels important to me.

Because I meet so many people through coaching and through this work who are exhausted from trying to force certainty before they allow themselves movement. They want guarantees before they begin. They want to know the outcome before they trust the instinct.

But perhaps self-trust is not certainty.

Perhaps self-trust is simply being willing to listen when something inside you keeps whispering: this matters.

Even if you don’t yet know exactly why.

If this resonates, you might enjoy listening to my full conversation with Natalie Lue on A Thought I Kept, where we explore people pleasing, creativity, identity, self-trust, and what it means to let yourself change.

And if you are sitting with questions about direction, confidence, emotional overwhelm, or the sense that something in your life no longer fits, you can also explore our coaching sessions. Sometimes it helps simply to have space to hear yourself think again.

Thoughts Kept… About Burnout

The first sign was probably the resentment. Just a low, constant irritation that seemed to follow me everywhere. The email arriving five minutes before the end of the day that made my shoulders tense instantly. The friend asking for a favour and my internal reaction feeling disproportionate to the request. Sitting at my laptop already tired before I’d even really begun. Feeling strangely annoyed at tiny inconveniences, while also somehow too exhausted to explain why.

At the time, I wouldn’t have called it burnout. I think I imagined burnout as something more obvious than that, something involving collapse or crisis or the inability to get out of bed. But one of the things I’ve learned from the guests on A Thought I Kept is that burnout often arrives much more quietly than we expect. It can look like functioning. Achievement. Keeping going. Being capable. It can look like replying to emails, meeting deadlines, hosting meetings, making dinner, posting on Instagram, smiling at people in supermarkets, all while feeling increasingly disconnected from yourself underneath it all.

Over the past year of recording conversations for the podcast, burnout has surfaced again and again, sometimes explicitly and sometimes hiding beneath conversations about perfectionism, people pleasing, creativity, ambition, neurodiversity, work, identity, caregiving, or the pressure many of us feel to keep performing wellness while privately struggling to cope with ordinary life.

And the thing that has surprised me most is that very few people describe burnout as simply “working too hard.” Instead, they describe years of overriding themselves. Years of separating achievement from joy. Years of confusing resilience with endurance. Years of not noticing what they needed until their body eventually forced the conversation.

Listening back to these episodes, there are five lessons about burnout that I keep returning to, especially because they say something much bigger about how many of us are living right now.

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1. Burnout often begins long before we recognise it

One of the most powerful things I’ve learned from these conversations is that burnout is not always obvious while you’re inside it.

Matthew Bellringer described how many neurodivergent people become so used to masking distress and unmet needs that they can function at levels of overwhelm that would feel completely unsustainable for somebody else, until eventually “the system cannot continue doing this.” This explains why burnout can be so difficult to recognise early on. Many people experiencing burnout are still functioning. They are still showing up to work, replying to emails, caring for children, making dinners, meeting deadlines, laughing in meetings, organising birthdays, and keeping everything moving while privately feeling increasingly exhausted, emotionally numb, or disconnected from themselves.

Liana Fricker spoke about realising, after a major burnout in her forties, that she could no longer ignore what her body had been trying to tell her for years. “You can’t fight this anymore,” she said. “You’re going to have to learn new ways.” There was something in that conversation that felt deeply relevant to the moment we’re all living through now, because so many people are trying to cope with a world that feels relentlessly demanding. The cost of living crisis, constant bad news, workplace pressure, caregiving, uncertainty about the future, digital overload, the sense that there is always more to respond to, improve, optimise, manage.

It means burnout symptoms often become normalised. Which is perhaps why so many people only recognise burnout once their body, mind, or emotions become impossible to ignore.

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2. Burnout is often connected to grief, loss, and emotional overwhelm, not just overwork

One thing I’ve found myself thinking about while making the podcast is how often burnout conversations are really conversations about loss. Not only the loss of energy, but the loss of identity, meaning, connection, certainty, or the version of yourself you thought you were supposed to be.

In Hiroko Yoda’s episode, she described the period after the death of her mother as feeling as though “the flames of my soul had been snuffed” and “the world had drained of color.” Listening to her speak about grief, spirituality, and slowly finding her way back to herself through nature and ritual made me realise how many forms emotional burnout can take, particularly when we are carrying loss that hasn’t fully been acknowledged.

Similarly, Toni Jones spoke movingly about how much of her life had been spent avoiding her feelings entirely, pushing through burnout during a high-pressure media career before eventually turning toward books, reflection, and self-development as a way of reconnecting with herself. 

I think this matters because burnout is often discussed in incredibly practical terms, as though it can be solved purely through time management or better routines. But many guests described something much more emotional underneath their exhaustion. Grief. Loneliness. Emotional suppression. A life lived too long in survival mode.

And when people search for how to cope with burnout, I think part of what they are often really asking is: how do I come back to myself after a long period of disappearing from my own life?

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3. Perfectionism and people pleasing are often hiding underneath burnout

Again and again, conversations about burnout on the podcast eventually circled back to approval.

Approval at school. Approval at work. Approval in relationships. Approval online. Approval through achievement.

Matthew described learning early in life to separate what felt intrinsically rewarding from what earned praise and validation from other people.

Liana talked about slowly untangling intuition from perfectionism and people pleasing, laughing as she realised they were “three distinct balls of wool.” 

What struck me listening back was how often burnout seems connected not simply to doing too much, but to becoming trapped inside identities built around usefulness, capability, achievement, or being easy for other people to rely on.

For many people, burnout recovery is difficult because the behaviours that created the burnout were also the behaviours that earned love, praise, security, or success.

And that’s why simply telling people to “rest more” often doesn’t touch the deeper issue. If slowing down makes you feel guilty, anxious, purposeless, or unsafe, then burnout management is not just about changing your schedule. It’s also about understanding the emotional engine underneath the overworking in the first place.

Liana put it beautifully when she reflected on her repeated burnout cycles and asked herself: “What is this internal engine that keeps making me run at full speed, ultimately off a cliff?” I suspect many of us are carrying versions of that same question.

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4. Burnout recovery is less about becoming productive again and more about rebuilding your relationship with yourself

Something else that comes through strongly in these conversations is that burnout recovery rarely looks like bouncing back quickly into the old version of your life. Instead, many guests described it as a slower rebuilding process that required them to pay attention to themselves in entirely new ways.

Liana spoke about recognising patterns she now calls “burn downs,” smaller recurring cycles of depletion that eventually accumulate into something much larger if ignored. She described reorganising her calendar around her actual energy levels rather than the version of productivity she thought she should be capable of sustaining, deliberately creating more spaciousness during certain periods because she knew her nervous system needed it. 

There was something profoundly compassionate in that conversation because it wasn’t about becoming perfect at wellbeing. It was about becoming more honest. And honesty appears repeatedly across these episodes as one of the real turning points in burnout recovery. Honest recognition of limits. Honest recognition of exhaustion. Honest recognition of what no longer works.

Matthew described burnout recovery not simply as reducing stress, but as “getting something back” again. Joy. Playfulness. Meaning. Intrinsic reward. Time spent doing things that actually feel alive rather than merely productive.

That feels important because many people experiencing burnout are not simply tired. They are disconnected from pleasure, creativity, curiosity, and spaciousness, the very things that make life feel sustainable over time.

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5. People recovering from burnout are often becoming more curious, not more perfect

Perhaps my biggest takeaway from these conversations is that sustainable burnout recovery seems to involve curiosity much more than self-optimisation.

Not becoming a “better” person.
Not becoming perfectly balanced.
Not finally mastering wellness.

Just becoming more aware.

Aware of patterns.
Aware of emotional needs.
Aware of capacity.
Aware of what depletes you and what restores you.
Aware of the stories you’ve inherited about success, worth, ambition, rest, and productivity.

Liana talked about spending more time in her body rather than only in her rational mind, slowly learning the difference between intuition, perfectionism, and people pleasing.

Hiroko found herself reconnecting with the world again through tiny moments of attention to nature, ritual, and spirituality after profound grief.

Toni’s story explored what happens when we stop avoiding ourselves long enough to really ask how we are living and whether it’s sustainable. 

None of these conversations offered a perfect formula for how to manage burnout, and honestly I think that’s part of why they’ve stayed with me. Because burnout recovery is rarely linear. It is often messy, cyclical, emotional, and deeply personal. But listening to these guests has reminded me that healing doesn’t always begin with dramatic transformation. Sometimes it begins with finally paying attention.

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If this piece resonated, you might want to listen to our special playlist, The Thoughts I Kept… About Burnout, a collection of episodes from A Thought I Kept exploring burnout, emotional exhaustion, grief, perfectionism, people pleasing, identity, overwhelm, and the complicated process of finding your way back to yourself again.

And if you’re feeling emotionally exhausted, overwhelmed, disconnected, or unsure where to begin, you can also explore our coaching sessions through If Lost Start Here.

Our work is not about helping you become endlessly productive again. It’s about understanding what’s happening underneath the exhaustion, reconnecting with yourself more honestly, and building a version of wellbeing that actually fits your real life.

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More ways to explore burnout

Living on the Edge of Burnout: How to Recognise the Signs and Find Your Way Back

Emily goes quiet about twenty minutes into the session.

Up until then she’s been talking quickly, trying to explain why she booked the call in the first place. Work is busy. Home is busy. Life is busy. She keeps saying things like “It’s fine” and “I know everyone feels like this,” while also admitting she can’t remember the last time she felt properly rested. Then she stops talking altogether.

“I just don’t understand why I can’t handle all of this better,” she says eventually. “Other people seem to manage.”

I hear versions of this almost every week.

People arrive carrying so much for so long that they barely recognise the weight of it anymore. They apologise for being emotional. Or overwhelmed. Or tired. They laugh while describing how close to the edge they feel, as though softening it somehow makes it easier to hold.

And usually beneath everything else is the same hope: if I can just keep going, somehow, maybe things will sort themselves out.

I know that place well. When I think back on periods of burnout in my own life, there’s a real sense that I wasn’t fully there at all. I was moving through my days on autopilot. Showing up at work. Meeting deadlines. Replying to emails. Getting through. But I remember so little joy in those years and so little connection with myself or the people around me.

In my twenties, I was so stressed in a gallery job that the highlight of my week became buying myself a Starbucks on a Wednesday lunchtime — a surprising novelty then — because it marked the hump of the week and meant I was inching towards the weekend.

Things got so bad at one point that I remember being wheeled out of work after my body simply stopped cooperating. I had started shaking at my desk. I felt nauseous. Everything hurt. A colleague put me in a taxi and took me home, and I remember lying on the sofa in confusion and shame, wondering whether he’d noticed the awful purple Habitat throw draped across it and how I had somehow let things get this bad.

My boss’s mantra was “Suck it up.” So we did. Until people started burning out completely.

Looking back now, what strikes me is how normal it all felt at the time. The exhaustion. The emotional numbness. The belief that the problem was somehow us. That we weren’t coping well enough. That if we could just work harder, be stronger, manage ourselves better, everything would steady again.

But burnout has a way of hollowing things out quietly. It disconnects us not only from rest, but from ourselves. From joy. From clarity. From the small inner signals trying to tell us something isn’t right anymore.

And increasingly, I see people arriving in sessions already living right on that edge. They tell me they can’t switch off anymore. That they feel strangely flat. That they don’t know what they even enjoy these days. They say things like: “I should be grateful.” “Other people have it harder.” “I don’t have time to fall apart.” Sometimes they’ve become so used to overriding themselves that they barely notice they’re doing it.

There’s often a fog to burnout too. A sense that you can’t properly see yourself or your life anymore because everything is happening at full volume all at once. You’re so busy surviving the week that you lose sight of what’s actually happening to you inside it.

And because so many of our ideas about worth are tangled up with productivity, achievement and being dependable, stopping can feel almost impossible. Rest feels irresponsible. Slowing down feels like failure. Particularly in environments that quietly reward people for overriding themselves.

So where do you start when you realise you can’t keep living like this?

Honestly, I think it often starts smaller than we expect.

Not with a complete reinvention of your life. Not with a perfect morning routine or a dramatic breakthrough. But with acknowledgement.

This is hard.
I’m not coping as well as I want to admit.
Something about the way I’m living right now isn’t sustainable.

There’s something powerful about finally telling yourself the truth.

And then, gradually, there’s the process of returning to yourself by degrees.

A recent guest on my podcast, Hiroko Yoda, spoke about how she came back to the world slowly after an incredibly difficult period in her life. Through walking. Looking up. Noticing trees and skies again. Paying attention to tiny things. In Japanese culture there’s the idea of kami — spirits existing in everything — and I loved that thought of reconnecting first with the small and then with something larger than ourselves.

I think burnout recovery can sometimes look a little like that. Noticing tiny things again. Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald calls them “tiny moments of joy.” Not huge life-changing experiences, but fleeting moments that remind us we are still here somewhere underneath all the pressure. The warmth of tea in your hands. A voice note from a friend. Light through the curtains. A song in the car that briefly returns you to yourself.

And then there’s rest — which sounds obvious until you realise how morally loaded rest has become for so many of us. I’ve had to learn, slowly, that resting isn’t the same as failing. That stopping before collapse is not weakness. That backing away from burnout often involves much smaller, quieter choices than the world tends to celebrate.

Living on the edge of burnout is complicated. There’s never one single reason we arrive there and no universal way back out again. Every person I speak to carries a different story into the room with them. But perhaps this is a place to start:

To notice that burnout is here.
To stop pretending you’re fine when you’re not.
To make eye contact with yourself again instead of endlessly pushing past what you feel.

Not to fix yourself overnight. Just to begin the conversation.

*The story of Emily is not one client’s story, but a weaving together of many experiences I’ve encountered in coaching and in my own life.

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If this feels familiar, or if you recognise something of yourself in it, my coaching sessions offer a space to pause before you reach breaking point.

Together, we can gently untangle what’s going on beneath the overwhelm, make sense of what you’re feeling, and explore what support, rest, boundaries or change might look like for you — without judgement, pressure, or needing to have it all figured out already.

You don’t have to keep pushing through alone. Explore emotions coaching sessions at If Lost, Start Here.

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More ways to explore burnout

Finding a Better Way to Well Without Trying to Fix Yourself

I still remember standing in the wellbeing section of my local independent bookshop years ago, holding three different books in my hands and feeling completely overwhelmed by all of them.

One promised confidence. One promised calm. One promised a completely new life if I just followed the steps properly enough. Around me were shelves and shelves of answers. Morning routines. Better habits. Nervous systems. Boundaries. Purpose. Productivity. Healing. Manifestation. Rest. Reinvention.

And underneath all of it was this quiet but persistent feeling: if I could just find the right idea, the right practice, the right way of living, maybe I would finally feel okay.

I think a lot of us arrive at wellbeing from this place now. Not because we’re shallow or self-absorbed, but because life genuinely feels difficult. The world feels loud. Work is relentless. Relationships can be complicated. Many of us are carrying anxiety, grief, uncertainty, burnout or a low-level sense that we’ve somehow drifted away from ourselves. And when you feel like that, it makes sense to go looking for answers.

In my recent conversation on A Thought I Kept with Toni Jones, we talked about what happens when you spend a decade immersed in self-help culture. Toni has read more than 1,000 self-help books. She founded Shelf Help, the world’s first self-help book club, after burnout and a growing sense that something in her life needed to change.

What I loved most about our conversation wasn’t really the books though. It was the gentler, steadier framework underneath them.

Because Toni spoke so honestly about how messy change actually is. Not cinematic. Not linear. Not “new life in seven easy steps.” More experimental than transformational. More human than polished.

At one point we talked about the pressure that can sit underneath wellbeing culture now — the sense that we should always be improving ourselves. That wellness can become another arena where we fail, compare, strive or feel behind. And honestly, I think many people feel exhausted by that version of wellbeing, even if they can’t quite articulate why.

There’s something profoundly tiring about approaching yourself like a constant problem to solve.

What Toni kept returning to instead was curiosity.

Not: “How do I finally become perfect?”

But: “What happens if I try this?”

Not: “I must completely reinvent myself.”

But: “What if I treated this more like an experiment?”

That small shift feels important to me. Because experiments allow room for being human. They allow for bad days, contradictions, changing your mind, getting it wrong, trying again. They soften the harshness that so often creeps into conversations about growth.

And maybe that’s part of finding a better way to well.

Not turning wellbeing into another performance of goodness or discipline or achievement. But allowing it to become something more personal. More playful. More forgiving. Something shaped around your actual life rather than the life you think you should be living.

During the conversation, Toni described reading her first self-help book while completely burnt out and desperate for something to change. It was called Change Your Life in Seven Days. Looking back now, she laughs at the urgency of it. The idea that her exhausted nervous system was searching for a quick fix because she simply couldn’t carry on as she was.

I think many of us recognise that feeling.

The late-night googling. The saving of posts we never quite return to. The hopeful ordering of books. The quiet thought that maybe this next thing will finally help us feel calmer, happier, clearer, more confident, less overwhelmed.

And sometimes those things do help. Books can change us. Conversations can change us. Therapy can change us. Tiny rituals and practices can genuinely support us.

But what struck me listening to Toni was that the deeper shift seemed to come less from finding the perfect answer and more from slowly building a different relationship with herself.

One with more compassion in it.

More honesty.

More willingness to be seen.

More permission to need support.

That feels important too because I think a lot of us have absorbed the idea that wellbeing is something we should master privately. Quietly. Alone. We should hold everything together. Cope beautifully. Be low maintenance. Keep functioning.

And yet the thought Toni brought to the podcast — borrowed from Brené Brown — was this: “We don’t have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to.”

I kept thinking about that afterwards.

Because maybe a better way to well isn’t just about what we do for ourselves. Maybe it’s also about who we let sit beside us while we figure things out.

The friend who notices you’re not okay before you admit it yourself.

The conversation that helps you feel less strange.

The book club where people finally say the quiet parts out loud.

The person who reminds you that you’re allowed to need care too.

The older version of yourself who can look back and realise: things did change, slowly, even when it didn’t feel like they were changing at all.

One of the things I loved most from the episode was Toni talking about how, years ago, she felt desperate for something — anything — to change. Whereas now, after years of reflection and experimentation and self-discovery, she approaches life with more curiosity than panic. More openness than grasping.

Not because she became a completely different person.

But because she became more connected to herself.

I think that’s the part of wellbeing we don’t talk about enough. That perhaps the goal isn’t becoming somebody new entirely. Perhaps it’s becoming more honest about who we already are. Understanding what supports us. Learning what drains us. Allowing our version of wellbeing to look different from somebody else’s.

And maybe that’s why Amanda and I created the If Lost, Start Here wellbeing journal in the way we did. Not as a rigid plan or perfect prescription, but as an invitation into curiosity. Into experimentation. Into asking better questions about what actually helps you feel more alive, connected, grounded or held.

Not wellness as performance.

Not self-improvement as punishment.

Just a steadier, kinder relationship with yourself and your life.

If this conversation resonates, you can listen to my full episode of A Thought I Kept with Toni Jones, where we explore vulnerability, burnout, self-help, friendship, identity, emotional wellbeing and what it means to stop carrying everything alone.

And if you’re feeling a little lost in your own life right now — unsure what wellbeing even means for you anymore — you’re also very welcome to explore my coaching work or the If Lost, Start Here journal. Not as a way to become someone else. Just as a place to begin listening to yourself again.

How Human Connection Helps Us Through Hard Times

I think one of the hardest things about modern life is that so many of us are living right at the edge of ourselves.

You can feel it in the way people answer “How are you?” with a sigh before they even begin. In the low-level exhaustion that seems to sit underneath everyday life now. In how quickly conversations move from grocery prices to burnout to the latest terrible thing in the news.

There is so much happening at once.

There’s the pressure of work and bills and trying to hold together ordinary life during a cost of living crisis. There’s the endless churn of headlines arriving directly into our palms before we’ve even had breakfast. There are wars unfolding in real time, including the ongoing devastation in the Middle East, which many people are carrying emotionally while still trying to navigate school runs, meetings, laundry, dinner, emails, ageing parents, and the strange expectation that we should somehow continue functioning normally through all of it.

And underneath all of that, many of us are simply tired. Not dramatic collapse tired. More the kind where joy starts slipping out of reach. The kind where you become permanently a little irritated, a little resentful, a little emotionally threadbare. The kind where you keep going because you have to, but feel increasingly disconnected from yourself while you do.

What interests me about difficult seasons like these is that we often respond to them in ways that make us feel even more alone.

We retreat.

We stop replying to messages.

We cancel plans.

We convince ourselves we’re too exhausted to socialise.

We scroll instead of speaking.

We mistrust people more easily.

We compare our messy lives to everyone else’s carefully edited competence.

We assume we’re behind.

We become less generous with one another because we’re barely holding ourselves together.

And the wider culture often deepens that separation. Politics becomes polarised. Algorithms reward outrage. Conversations flatten into sides to pick rather than people to understand. We become wary of saying the wrong thing, believing the wrong thing, being judged, misunderstood, excluded, criticised, corrected.

It can start to feel safer to withdraw.

But I keep coming back to the possibility that it’s exactly in moments like these that human connection matters most.

Not in a glossy “community fixes everything” sort of way. Not because a coffee with a friend magically resolves grief or burnout or fear about the state of the world. But because connection helps us carry reality differently.

There’s something regulating about being with people who allow you to exhale a little.

Someone making you laugh when you hadn’t realised how long it’s been since you properly laughed.

Someone texting to ask if you got home alright.

Someone saying, “Honestly? I’m struggling too.”

Someone sitting at your kitchen table while life remains unresolved, but somehow more bearable because another person is witnessing it with you.

Connection reminds us that we are not machines built only for productivity and endurance.

We are relational creatures. We make meaning together. We soothe each other’s nervous systems. We borrow hope from one another. We remember ourselves through other people sometimes.

And importantly, connection does not have to look impressive to matter.

I think we can sometimes make ourselves feel worse by imagining “good connection” as being endlessly social, extroverted, emotionally articulate, always surrounded by friends or part of some perfect community.

But connection can be tiny and ordinary too.

It might be the person at the local café who remembers your order. The neighbour you chat to while bringing the bins in. Sending a voice note instead of a text because you want someone to hear your actual voice. Watching a film with your teenager and briefly entering their world. Going for a walk with someone who doesn’t require you to be cheerful. Sitting in a room with other people at yoga, church, choir, book club, a protest, a workshop, or a community garden and remembering, even fleetingly, that we are living alongside one another rather than entirely alone.

Sometimes connection is simply the experience of being real with another person for five minutes instead of pretending you’re coping perfectly.

And perhaps that’s why it can feel both comforting and uncomfortable at the same time.

Because real connection asks us to emerge slightly from hiding.

To let ourselves be seen before everything is neatly resolved.

To admit we’re struggling before we’ve found the lesson in it.

To risk not being entirely self-sufficient.

Which can feel deeply vulnerable in a culture that rewards performance, certainty, independence, and appearing fine.

But when life gets hard — and for many people, it really is hard right now — isolation rarely softens the experience. Usually it sharpens it.

Connection, meanwhile, often gives us just enough steadiness to keep going.

Not because other people save us.

But because being human was probably never meant to be done entirely alone.

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Explore the Connection Pathway

Our wellbeing journal, If Lost Start Here, includes a full pathway exploring connection — the people, places, conversations, communities, and everyday moments that help us feel more supported, understood, and alive.

Inside you’ll find reflections, prompts, and playful experiments to help you reconnect not just with others, but with yourself too.

You can explore the journal here

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How Japanese Spirituality Can Help Us Feel Less Lost

The park was the same one Hiroko Yoda had walked through countless times before. Same paths. Same trees. Same shrine tucked quietly amongst the landscape. But after her mother died, she could barely see any of it. She describes walking with her head down, shuffling through the park and back home again, where she would cry. Then repeat it the next day. And the next. Until one day she looked up.

She noticed the birds first. Then the maple trees. The shifting light through the leaves. A shrine she must have passed hundreds of times before. And in that moment, something changed. Not because her grief disappeared or because she suddenly understood everything about life or death or spirituality, but because she no longer felt entirely alone inside the world.

I haven’t stopped thinking about that since we recorded our conversation for A Thought I Kept.

Partly because I think many of us know what it is to move through life with our heads down. To become so overwhelmed by grief, anxiety, burnout, uncertainty or simply the sheer weight of being human that the world narrows around us. Our lives become logistical. Functional. We focus on getting through the day, answering messages, making dinner, remembering appointments. We stop noticing what is around us because we are working so hard to hold ourselves together within it.

And yet so much of what Hiroko shared in our conversation was about exactly that: noticing.

Noticing what remains. Noticing what connects us. Noticing the things that quietly hold us when we feel lost.

Her book, Eight Million Ways to Happiness, explores Japanese spirituality not as a rigid belief system but as something lived alongside everyday life. Something woven into nature, rituals, food, language, grief, playfulness and community. In Japanese spirituality, kami — spiritual presences — exist not just in shrines or sacred spaces, but in trees, rivers, mountains, words, objects and everyday acts of care.

I think what struck me most was how different this felt from the way spirituality is often discussed in wellbeing spaces. So much modern wellbeing culture seems obsessed with certainty. Morning routines that promise transformation. Manifesting practices that suggest we can think ourselves into a better life. The pressure to optimise, improve, transcend.

But Hiroko kept returning to something much softer and more spacious than that.

The Japanese idea of hanshin hangi — half belief, half doubt. The permission to remain somewhere in the grey zone. To not fully know. To allow uncertainty to exist without rushing to resolve it.

Honestly, it felt like a relief.

Because I suspect many of us already live there, whether we admit it or not.

We carry objects that mean more to us than they logically should. We talk to people we’ve lost. We feel calmer by the sea. We light candles. We keep rituals we cannot entirely explain. We sense that some places hold energy. We wonder whether there might be more to life than what we can immediately see or prove.

And then, often, we dismiss ourselves. We tell ourselves we’re being silly. Irrational. Dramatic.

What I loved about Hiroko’s perspective was that it made space for both curiosity and scepticism. Both wonder and uncertainty. Both grief and joy.

At one point in the conversation she talks about eating a banana at breakfast and saying itadakimasu beforehand — “I humbly receive.” And suddenly the banana stops being just a banana. It becomes the people who grew it, transported it, stocked it, bought it. It becomes weather and soil and labour and unseen connection.

That stayed with me because I think many of us are searching for meaning whilst overlooking the small moments where meaning already exists.

Noticing can become a kind of spiritual practice.

Making coffee in the morning. Opening the curtains. Walking the dog. Watering plants. Speaking kindly. Taking the long route home. Sitting quietly before the rest of the house wakes up.

Not because these things solve our lives, but because they return us to relationship with them.

And perhaps that matters especially when we feel lost.

Often when we feel uncertain, we assume we need dramatic change. A new version of ourselves. A breakthrough. A complete reinvention. But sometimes what we actually need is a gentler way of relating to where we already are.

Hiroko spoke beautifully about how Japanese spirituality allows opposites to coexist. Joy and sadness. Gratitude and anger. Light and darkness. She talked about how grief changed shape over time, how writing about her mother softened certain memories and complicated others, how healing was not neat or linear but layered.

I think there’s comfort in that too.

Because many people arrive at wellbeing feeling as though they are failing at it. Failing at being positive enough, resilient enough, healed enough, grateful enough. But perhaps wellbeing is not about eliminating darkness or uncertainty. Perhaps it is about learning how to stay connected to ourselves and the world around us whilst those things exist.

To look up occasionally, even when life feels heavy.

To notice the shrine amongst the trees.

To let a cup of coffee become a moment of connection rather than simply fuel.

To allow for half belief and half doubt.

If this resonates with you, you might enjoy my conversation with Hiroko Yoda on A Thought I Kept. We talk about grief, spirituality, uncertainty, belonging, rituals and the unseen threads that connect us to each other and the world around us.

And if you’re navigating your own season of uncertainty or emotional overwhelm, you can also explore coaching and support through If Lost Start Here. Not to fix yourself or become someone new, but simply to have somewhere to think things through more honestly and openly.

Connecting While Human

You’re halfway through a conversation and realise you’re not really in it. You’re nodding, saying the right things, keeping the tone light enough, agreeable enough. You hear yourself laugh at something that isn’t quite funny. You offer an explanation you’ve offered before, one that lands just well enough to move things on. And at the same time, there’s something else happening underneath — a more insistent feeling that says: this isn’t quite it.

You might notice it later, when you’re walking home or making dinner, replaying the conversation in your head. The bit you didn’t say. The way you softened something. The way you tried, once again, to explain yourself into being understood. And then, almost reluctantly, the thought arrives: I don’t think this is about explaining anymore.

It’s a subtle shift, but once it’s there, it tends to stay.

This is the place Jacky Power and I found ourselves in during our conversation — not just the moment of clarity that so many wellbeing conversations promise, but in what comes just after it. The part where you realise something about yourself or your relationships, and then very messily try to do something about it.

Jacky described believing, for a long time, that if she could just say things the right way, people would meet her there. That the gap between her and others was something she could bridge with better words, more careful explanations, a little more effort. It’s such a human instinct — to assume that understanding is something we can earn if we try hard enough.

And sometimes that’s true. But not always.

Sometimes what we’re up against isn’t a lack of clarity, but a difference in direction. A difference in how we see things, what we value, what we’re willing to hold or not hold anymore. And that’s much harder to resolve, because it doesn’t bend as easily.

What follows that realisation isn’t a clean decision. It’s more like learning to walk again on uneven ground.

You say something you’ve been meaning to say, and it comes out slightly wrong. Or it lands in a way you didn’t expect. You question yourself almost immediately. Was that too much? Too blunt? Not quite right? You tell yourself you’ll try again next time, maybe in a softer way, a clearer way. You adjust, you retreat, you step forward again.

Jacky described it as “stumble, trip, stumble, trip.” And it’s exactly that. Not a confident stride into a new way of being, but a series of attempts, some of which don’t go to plan.

There’s a kind of vulnerability in this stage that doesn’t get talked about much. Because from the outside, it might look like growth — becoming more self-aware, more aligned, more boundaried. But from the inside, it can feel uncertain and exposing. You’re no longer fully comfortable in the old way of relating, but you’re not yet steady in the new one either.

And that can feel lonely.

Not necessarily in the obvious sense of being alone, but in the quieter sense of not quite being met. Of noticing that the ways you’re beginning to show up don’t always fit neatly into the relationships you’ve had before. Of realising that not everyone will come with you, or understand you in the way you hoped.

Jacky spoke about this without dressing it up. That there can be grief in it. That choosing your own direction — even gently, even kindly — can create a kind of separation. Not because you want it to, but because something has shifted, and you can’t quite go back to not knowing that.

And still, there was something else in what she said that felt just as important.

That the alternative — ignoring what you’ve noticed, continuing to override yourself for the sake of keeping things smooth — comes at a cost too. A quieter one, perhaps, but one that builds over time. A sense of being slightly out of step with yourself. Of saying yes when you mean maybe, or maybe when you mean no. Of slowly losing touch with what feels true.

This is where connection becomes more complicated than we often allow it to be.

Because it isn’t just about being close to other people. It’s also about how close you are to yourself within those relationships. Whether there is space, even in small ways, to be honest about what you feel, what you need, what you see differently now.

And that honesty doesn’t have to arrive all at once.

One of the things I took from this conversation is that connection doesn’t depend on getting it perfectly right. It might be something much smaller than that. A moment where you say a little more than you usually would. A conversation where you don’t immediately tidy up your feelings. A pause where you notice the urge to explain, and choose, just for a second, not to.

It might be noticing where you feel able to do that, and where you don’t.

Because not every space will hold it. And that, too, is information.

Jacky talks about “human tricky things” — the parts of being alive that don’t resolve easily. The feelings we don’t always have words for. The experiences that sit somewhere between connection and disconnection, between being seen and staying hidden. And what struck me is that learning to connect while human isn’t about smoothing those things out. It’s about finding ways to stay with them.

To stay with yourself when you’re unsure. To stay in relationship where you can, without forcing it where you can’t. To allow for the possibility that connection might look different now — less about being perfectly understood, and more about being real in the places that can hold it.

If you’re in that space at the moment — noticing something has shifted, but not yet sure how to live it — it might help to know that this part doesn’t need to be rushed.

You’re not behind. You’re not getting it wrong. You’re in the middle of learning something about yourself that takes time to settle.

And there is a kind of steadiness that can grow here, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet. Not from having all the answers, but from beginning to trust what you notice. From allowing that to matter, even when it complicates things.

If you’d like to hear more of this conversation, you can listen to my episode with Jacky Power on A Thought I Kept, where we explore emotions, loneliness, and what it means to stay connected — to ourselves and to each other.

And if you’re looking for somewhere to think about your own relationships or feelings a little more gently, explore our coaching and resources here If Lost Start Here.

If Lost, Start Here: Our Book Is Here

Ten years ago, we were sitting on a living room floor. Two friends, babies crawling around us, talking about all the ways we felt a bit… lost. Untethered. Overwhelmed.

And more than anything, we were talking about how hard it was to know where to start to just feel better. Not because there weren’t options. Because there were too many.

Everything we turned to—books, advice, tools—often left us feeling worse than we anticipated. Like we were somehow getting it wrong before we’d even begun. And there was a version of life we were meant to be living, and we were slightly off-track from it.

So we started asking different questions.

What do people actually need when they feel like this?
What helps when you’re tired, or overwhelmed, or uncertain?
What still counts when life doesn’t look like the version wellbeing advice assumes?

That was the beginning of If Lost, Start Here. And now, our book.

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What This Book Is (And Isn’t)

This isn’t a book that asks you to overhaul your life. It’s not built on the idea that there’s a better version of you waiting on the other side of a perfect routine.

It’s more a guide for when you don’t know where to begin. A place to come back to when things feel off, or unclear, or just a bit flat.

It’s grounded in research, but it doesn’t feel like work. It’s designed to be easy to pick up, easy to move through, and importantly easy to make yours.

There’s no point in this book where you should feel like you’re failing at it. Instead, it’s about exploring.

Exploring yourself, yes, but also exploring your life. The world around you. The things that bring you back into it.

Because one of the things we kept coming back to was this: So much of wellbeing focuses on going inward.
But what about everything that happens when we go outward too?

A Guide to You And the World Around You

This book moves through ten different wellbeing pathways. Some will feel familiar like connection, creativity and nature. Others might feel like something you’ve lost touch with, or haven’t quite found your way into yet.

And that’s kind of the point.

We hear this a lot from people: “I’ve never really thought about my life this way before.”

About play, for example. Or awe. Or having a creative practice as an adult that isn’t tied to being “good” at something.

Each pathway is there as a way in. Not something to master. But something to try. Something to notice. And something to come back to when you need it.

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You Don’t Have to Do It All (Or Do It Properly)

One of our favourite things about this book is that it doesn’t need you to use it in a particular way.

You can dip in and out. You can follow it month by month. You can skip around entirely and follow whatever catches your attention.

If you’re someone who likes to think things through, you might spend longer with the essays and reflections. If you’re more of a doer, you might go straight to the activities and try things out in your day-to-day life. If you’ve got very little energy, you might just read a page and leave it there.

All of it counts. It’s much more of a “choose your own way through” than a step-by-step plan.

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Built for Real Life (Not Ideal Life)

A lot of this started with a very practical question:

What does wellbeing look like when you’re too exhausted, too uncertain and too overwhelmed to do alll the things.

We started looking at each area of wellbeing not as something you either do or don’t do but as something that exists on a spectrum.

So instead of:

“Go for a walk in nature.”

It might be:

“Can you look out of the window?”

Instead of:

“Build a strong social life.”

It might be:

“Who feels like an easier person to text today?”

We found research that backed up the fact that even very small moments still matter. That they still count. That they can still shift how we feel in meaningful ways.

And more than anything, we wanted to build something that worked with people’s lives as they actually are. Not as they think they should be.

A Different Way to Think About Wellbeing

There’s a lot of pressure in this space now. To get it right. To do more. To optimise. And it can quietly turn wellbeing into another thing on the list.

We wanted this book to sit slightly outside of that. To say: there isn’t one right way to well.

For some people, it might be running, wild swimming, green juices. For others, it might be going to a museum, painting at the kitchen table, watching live music, or finding small ways to be part of the world again.

This is about finding your way. Not following someone else’s.

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Something You Can Come Back To

Over the years, this became something we used ourselves.

When things felt off, we’d come back to it. Run through the pathways. Notice what had slipped. What we needed more of. Not in a critical way—more like a check-in.

“Oh, I haven’t so much as touched my toes this year. Maybe mind-body could use a bit of attention.”

It’s that kind of relationship we hope this book becomes. Something you return to. Something that helps you find your footing again.

If You’re Not Sure Where to Start

That’s okay. That’s exactly where this begins.

Also available on Not on the High Street and Amazon.

How to Trust That Things Will Be OK (Even When You Feel Lost)

You arrive a little more tired than you expected, the kind of tired that isn’t just about the journey but about everything you’ve been carrying before you even set off.

The train was delayed, the coffee wasn’t great, and there’s already a message waiting for you from home asking something that requires more of you than you feel you have to give. You hold your bag a little tighter as you step off, aware of that familiar hum underneath it all — the one that says you’re doing your best, and still wondering if it’s enough.

And then, slowly, something begins to shift.

You’re welcomed in, properly welcomed in, with a warmth that doesn’t ask anything of you in return. There’s a cup of tea placed into your hands, a chair that feels like it was waiting for you, and a sense — rare, and difficult to create on demand — that you don’t have to perform or explain or improve anything about yourself in this moment.

You have arrived.

This is the kind of space described in my recent conversation with Tanya Lynch on A Thought I Kept, but more than that, it’s the kind of space many of us are quietly searching for in our everyday lives, especially when we find ourselves feeling lost without quite knowing how we got there. Because feeling lost doesn’t often look dramatic. It tends to look like carrying on, showing up, doing what needs to be done while holding a question in the background about whether this is how things are meant to feel.

When Life Doesn’t Look Like You Thought It Would

Tanya’s work, through journaling, retreats, and bibliotherapy, is rooted in something both simple and surprisingly hard to practice, which is the idea that everything is welcome.

Not just the parts of life that feel resolved or hopeful or easy to share, but also the uncertainty, the heartbreak, the restlessness, and the moments where you don’t know what comes next or how you’re meant to move through them. These are the parts we’re often encouraged to fix or move past, and yet they are also the parts that tend to shape us most.

There is a phrase she returns to, one that you may have heard so many times it risks losing its meaning:

Every cloud has a silver lining.

It can feel too neat for the complexity of real life, too polished for the moments when things are genuinely hard, but the origins of the phrase tell a different story. It dates back to the 17th century, from a line by John Milton in Comus, where he describes a dark cloud revealing a silver edge when caught by light.

It wasn’t written as advice or reassurance, but as an observation, a moment of noticing that even within something heavy, there might be something else present at the same time. And perhaps that is where this idea becomes more useful to us, not as a way of reframing everything into something positive, but as an invitation to look a little more closely at what is already there.

Learning to Stay With the Hard Parts

One of the things that stayed with me most from this conversation is the way Tanya speaks about challenge, not as something to avoid or move quickly beyond, but as something that is woven into the shape of a life. There isn’t a single moment where everything resolves or becomes easier, and there isn’t a version of life that is made up only of blue skies and straightforward narratives. Instead, there are multiple moments, some expansive, some difficult, some that ask more of us than we feel ready to give, and all of them becoming part of the story we are living.

Over time, something begins to build alongside that, and it is not certainty or control but a quieter kind of trust. Not the kind that insists everything will work out exactly as we hope, but the kind that recognises we have moved through difficult things before and found our way, even when it didn’t feel possible at the time.

What It Means to Feel Held

So much of what Tanya creates through her retreats is about this idea of being held, and it’s something that feels increasingly important in a world that often asks us to keep going without pausing to notice how we actually are. Being held doesn’t mean being fixed or guided towards a better version of yourself, and it doesn’t come with a list of things to do or ways to improve. It is something quieter than that, an experience of being seen without needing to justify yourself, of being able to arrive as you are without editing or softening the edges of what you’re feeling.

It’s the difference between being asked what you need to do next and being given the space to sit with where you already are. And while retreats can offer a more intentional version of that experience, the question it opens up feels relevant far beyond those spaces.

Where in your life do you feel held, and where might you need a little more of that than you currently have?

A Way to Begin Again, Gently

If you are in a moment that feels uncertain right now, this isn’t about finding a solution or creating a plan, and it doesn’t ask you to turn everything around or see things differently straight away.

It might begin somewhere much smaller.

The next time you find yourself caught in the noise of everything you’re holding, the questions, the pressure to figure things out, the sense that you should know what comes next, you might step outside if you can and allow yourself a moment to look up rather than down. Not in a symbolic or forced way, but simply to notice what is there.

Clouds moving, light catching edges, space opening up in ways you hadn’t registered before.

This is not about convincing yourself that things are better than they are, but about allowing for the possibility that more than one thing can be true at the same time, that alongside what feels difficult, there may also be something else present that you hadn’t yet seen.

A Thought to Keep

Every cloud has a silver lining may not be something you believe all of the time, and it may not be something you want to hold onto in every moment, but it can sit gently in the background as a question rather than a conclusion.

What else might be here that I haven’t noticed yet?

If you’d like to spend more time with this idea, you can listen to the full episode of A Thought I Kept with Tanya Lynch, where we explore what it means to trust that things will be OK without needing to force that belief.

And if you are finding that you need more support in understanding what you’re feeling or where you are, you can explore our private coaching at If Lost Start Here, where we make space for all of it, not just the parts that are easy to explain.

Sometimes, finding your way doesn’t begin with knowing what to do next, but with allowing yourself to arrive exactly where you are.

Grief Disco

Perfect For

Grief Disco is for anyone living with loss and looking for a different kind of space to hold it. It’s for people who don’t always have the words, who feel isolated in their grief, or who want to be around others who understand without needing everything explained. It’s for the heartbroken and the hopeful, for people who want somewhere gentle, human and a little unexpected to go with what they’re carrying.

You do not need to be good at dancing. You do not need to be ready to talk. You do not need to arrive in any particular state. You just need permission to come as you are.

Why You’ll Love It

Grief Disco offers something many grieving people are missing: a place to feel less alone without being forced into conversation or expected to “do grief” the right way. Through music, movement and a sense of shared understanding, it creates room for sadness, joy, memory, release and connection to exist together.

This isn’t about dancing to forget. It’s about dancing to remember, to honour and to reconnect. For some people that might look like tears on a dance floor. For others, it might be a small exhale, a moment of laughter, or the relief of being in a room where no one needs grief explained to them.

What Makes It Special

So much of grief can feel isolating. People don’t know what to say, or they say nothing. We can start to feel cut off from ourselves, from our bodies and from other people. What Grief Disco understands is that grief does not only live in words. It lives in the body too.

That’s what makes this space so powerful. It offers people a way to process loss through movement, music and presence, rather than through talking alone. There is no pressure to perform, no expectation to be upbeat and no fixed script for how you should feel. Everything is an invitation.

Grief Disco also holds something many of us forget is possible: that joy and grief can coexist. That a person can cry and dance at the same time. That love, memory, heartbreak and laughter can all be in the room together. In that sense, it doesn’t just offer support for grief. It offers a more human way of being with it.

The If Lost Take

There is something quietly radical about creating a place where grief is allowed to move.

So many of us are more familiar with the language of coping than the experience of actually feeling. We know how to keep going, keep functioning, keep answering “fine” when we are anything but. Grief Disco interrupts that. It offers something softer and, for many people, more freeing: a chance to let grief be alive in the body, not just managed in the mind.

What we love most is that this doesn’t turn grief into a problem to solve. It doesn’t rush people towards silver linings or ask them to package their pain into something neat and shareable. Instead, it makes room for what is true. Sometimes that truth is sorrow. Sometimes it is love. Sometimes it is a song that opens something you didn’t realise you were still carrying.

And sometimes healing looks less like fixing and more like finding a room where you can be fully human again.

Founders Story | Co-founded by Georgina Jones and Leah Davies

Grief Disco was born from lived experience of loss and a belief that grieving people deserve spaces that feel connecting, warm and real. Co-founders Georgina and Leah created it as a response to the loneliness that grief can bring and to the sense that many of the places available to grieving people do not always make room for the body, for joy or for community. Their approach is shaped by the understanding that no one should have to grieve alone, and that music and movement can help us find our way back to ourselves and each other.

Founder’s Go-To Wellbeing Advice

“Look for the love.

Look for the tiny moments of joy that are still here, even in the hardest seasons. Keep a playlist that helps shift your energy. Let music help you move what words can’t always reach.

And remember that grief is not something to fix or get over. It is something to feel, and you don’t have to feel it alone.”

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Some Practical Details

Grief Disco is a space where people can come together around grief through music, movement and optional sharing. Some events happen in person and there are also online grief discos for people who would rather join from home. The atmosphere is invitational rather than intense: you can dance, sit, cry, talk, stay quiet, turn your camera off or simply witness. There are also small ritual elements, such as dedications and moments to remember the person or people you are dancing for.

If you are grieving and looking for support, this may be one of those rare places that helps not by asking you to explain your loss, but by giving you somewhere to bring it.

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Grief Disco

Various locations. Follow on social media and sign up for their newsletter for future dates.

Website | Instagram | YouTube

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“I’m Fine” in Midlife

You wake before the alarm, not because you’re rested but because your mind has already started. There’s a list forming before your eyes are fully open — things to organise, respond to, remember, hold together. The day begins before you’ve even stepped into it.

By mid-morning you’ve answered messages, kept something running that might otherwise have stalled, smoothed over a moment that could have turned into conflict, and made sure everyone else is more or less where they need to be. When someone asks how you are — and they do, in passing, in between everything else — you say, “I’m fine,” and keep moving.

And in many ways, you are. You’re functioning. You’re managing. You’re doing what needs to be done. But somewhere underneath that, something feels different to how it once did.

The pace is the same, or even faster, but your capacity to keep absorbing it without cost has shifted. Sleep doesn’t restore you in quite the same way. Small things feel harder. Your body speaks more loudly, even if you’re not always sure how to listen. Emotions can feel closer to the surface — or, at times, more difficult to access altogether. And yet, the expectation — internal as much as external — is often that you should still be able to carry it all.

This is where “I’m fine” in midlife can take on a particular weight. It becomes the thing that holds together a life that has grown fuller and more complex over time — work, relationships, children, parents, friendships, the quiet accumulation of responsibility, the invisible labour that sits beneath it all.

It can also hold together an identity that has been built over years. If you’ve been the capable one, the one who gets things done, the one who can be relied on, then not being fine can feel like more than just a feeling — it can feel like a fracture in who you are. So “fine” keeps you inside something familiar, even if it’s starting to feel tight.

At the same time, midlife brings its own particular pressures.

Changes in the body — hormonal shifts, disrupted sleep, anxiety that arrives without clear reason, irritability that feels out of proportion.
Changes in relationships — renegotiations, distance, new dynamics that require different conversations.
Changes in perspective — a growing awareness of time, of what has been, of what might still be possible.

And alongside all of that, a question that can be hard to ignore:

Is this still working for me?

“Fine” often steps in right at that point.

Not because nothing is there, but because what’s there feels too big, too layered, or too disruptive to fully open. It protects you from the immensity of it — grief for versions of life that didn’t happen, anger at loads that feel uneven, fear of what change might bring, longing for something more spacious or more aligned. It also protects your nervous system when things have been too much for too long.

So instead of anxiety, you might feel a kind of flatness. A functional steadiness that keeps everything moving, but leaves little room for rest, pleasure, or connection.

You can cope, but you can’t receive.
You’re productive, but not nourished.
You’re calm on the outside, but internally braced.

And over time, that can begin to feel like the place you live.

But midlife also has a way of gently interrupting that pattern. Not necessarily with a dramatic breaking point, but with a steady accumulation of moments where “fine” no longer quite fits.

Where your body asks for something different.
Where your capacity reaches a limit.
Where your desires, long held at the edges, become harder to ignore.

And this is where something else becomes possible. Not a complete reinvention, and not a rejection of everything that has brought you here, but a gradual renegotiation.

Of what you carry.
Of what you expect of yourself.
Of what you allow yourself to need.

Questions begin to surface that cut through the automatic nature of “fine”:

• What am I responsible for that I shouldn’t be?

• What expectations am I meeting that no one has actually asked of me?

• Where have I become the only one holding something together?

• What would change if I believed my needs were legitimate?

These aren’t questions to answer all at once. They’re invitations. Because “fine” in this season of life isn’t something to get rid of. It’s something to listen to. A signal that something is asking for attention, for care, for adjustment. And alongside it, there can be another version of fine — one that feels different in the body. A steadier kind of okay.

Where your mood is mostly stable, even if life is full.
Where problems feel solvable, and support feels possible.
Where you have access, even in small ways, to rest, to pleasure, to connection.
Where your yes and your no feel real.

Midlife doesn’t remove the need for “fine.” But it does offer the chance to reshape it. To let it become less about holding everything together, and more about being in relationship with yourself as you actually are — changing, adjusting, becoming.

And from there, something opens. Not all at once. But enough to feel the difference between coping… and being here, in your life, with a little more space to breathe.

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Identify the hidden emotion under “fine”

Common ones in midlife:

• Grief (for time, body, dreams, parents, versions of self)

• Anger (from unfair load, invisibility, broken agreements)

• Fear (change, aging, being alone, being trapped)

• Longing (for rest, intimacy, freedom, meaning)

• Shame (for needing, for not coping “better”)

Prompt:

• If ‘fine’ had a feeling, it would be?.

• If ‘fine’ had a message, it would be?

Find the right kind of support

• If it’s hormonal/body-based: track symptoms, consider talking to a clinician, consider sleep support and nutrition.

• If it’s relational: practice direct asks, therapy/couples work, boundary setting.

• If it’s nervous-system burnout: prioritize downshifting (rest, somatic work, less stimulation).

• If it’s meaning/identity: coaching/therapy/journaling around values and your “next chapter.”

How to talk to people when you’re FINE

Scripts to try out:

• “I’m a bit depleted. I don’t need fixing, just you to listen.”

• “I’m not ready to talk details, but I’m not okay.”

• “Can we do a low-energy hang? I need company.”

• “I’m overwhelmed. Can you take one thing off my plate this week?”

• “I’m not fine, but I’m ok.”

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If “fine” has become the place you’re living from more often than you’d like, this might be a moment to have a different kind of conversation.

In coaching, we explore what’s shifting in this season of life — your needs, your energy, your direction — so you can move forward in a way that feels more sustainable and more yours.

Book a free discovery call and begin to find your way from here.

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Moving Gently Beyond “Fine”

You’re replying to a message. “How are you?” they’ve asked, and your thumbs hover for a moment before typing, “I’m fine, how are you?” It’s already sent before you’ve really checked in. You notice it though, that slight pause afterwards, that sense that something more could have been said, but didn’t quite make it into words.

This is often how “fine” works. Not as a deliberate decision, but as a well-practised reflex. And once you start noticing it, it can be hard to unsee. Not because it’s wrong, but because you can feel both sides of it — what it’s doing for you, and what it might be costing you.

So the work isn’t to stop saying “fine.” It’s to start relating to it differently. Instead of treating it as something to correct, you can begin by treating it as information. A question, asked internally: what is “fine” doing for me right now?

Sometimes it’s protecting you from a conversation you don’t have the energy for. Sometimes it’s holding together a version of yourself that still feels important. Sometimes it’s simply buying you time — a way of saying, not now. And alongside that, another question can sit gently beside it:

What would become more complicated if I wasn’t fine?

Because that’s often where the truth lives — in the complication. The conversation you might have to have. The need you might have to express. The change you might have to consider.

You don’t have to go there all at once. Often, the smallest shift is enough. Instead of replacing “fine” entirely, you can add a little more specificity, a little more truth, while keeping the safety that “fine” was giving you.

It might sound like:

“I’m okay, but I’m carrying quite a lot.”
“I’m functioning, but I feel a bit tender.”
“I’m not in crisis, but I’m not feeling great.”
“I’m managing, but I could use some support.”

Or even more simply, noticing where “fine” is and isn’t true:

Fine at work, not fine at home.
Fine in the morning, not fine at night.
Fine physically, not fine emotionally.

These are small translations, but they begin to reconnect you with what’s actually there. And often, the quickest way into that isn’t through language, but through the body. A moment of pausing. A hand resting somewhere steady — your chest, your stomach. A question that doesn’t require explanation:

What’s here?

Tight. Heavy. Buzzing. Numb.

And alongside it, perhaps, a need:

Rest. Space. Reassurance. Warmth.

Even this — just naming a sensation and a need — can begin to shift “fine” into something more alive.

Because underneath “fine” there’s often a mix of feelings that don’t always separate themselves neatly. Grief that hasn’t had time. Anger that hasn’t had space. Fear about what might change. Longing for something more spacious, more connected, more yours.

You don’t have to untangle all of it. You can start with the smallest true thing.

And alongside that, you can begin to make small repairs — not dramatic changes, but deliberate acts that meet you where you are.

A short walk outside.
Water and something nourishing before the next coffee.
A message to someone safe saying I’m not great today.
A boundary you’ve been circling but haven’t yet set.

Because often “FINE” — the version that feels tight and effortful — comes from cumulative depletion.

You can cope, but you can’t receive.
You’re productive, but not nourished.
You’re calm on the outside, but internally braced.

A helpful shorthand can be:

Healthy fine = I’m okay, and I’m connected.
FINE = I’m okay, and I’m disconnected.

And the movement between those two states isn’t dramatic. It’s made up of small moments of noticing, naming, and meeting yourself a little more honestly. Not all at once. Just enough to feel the difference.

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Healthy “fine” (when you’re genuinely okay)

• Stable mood most days.

• Problems feel solvable; you can ask for help.

• You have access to pleasure, rest, and connection.

• Your “yes” and “no” feel real.

• You feel present in your life (even if tired).

Unhealthy “FINE” (a kind of functional numbness)

• You can cope, but you can’t receive.

• You’re productive, but not nourished.

• You’re calm on the outside, but internally braced.

• You’re “fine” because you’ve stopped expecting support.

• Your life is organized around avoiding collapse.

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If you’re ready to move beyond “fine,” even just a little, having someone alongside you can make that feel safer and more possible.

Coaching offers a space to find the words, reconnect with what’s going on beneath the surface, and take small, steady steps towards something that feels more like you.

You can start with a free call and see if it feels like the right kind of support.

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What “I’m Fine” Really Means

You’re standing in the kitchen, phone wedged between your shoulder and ear, stirring something that doesn’t need stirring quite so vigorously. Someone asks how you are — a colleague or a friend, or maybe it’s your partner calling from another room — and you answer without thinking, “I’m fine.” The words arrive quickly, almost before the question has fully landed. You keep moving. There’s dinner to finish, emails to send, a message you haven’t replied to yet. Nothing stops.

That “fine” didn’t come from checking in. It came from knowing what’s easiest. What keeps things smooth. What doesn’t require you to explain why you’ve been waking at 3am, or why that small comment earlier stayed with you longer than it should, or why you feel both exhausted and strangely wired at the same time.

“I’m fine” is often less a feeling and more a kind of agreement. A socially acceptable, low-friction answer that says: please don’t ask more right now.

And in that sense, it works beautifully. It protects relationships, keeps conversations moving, and allows you to stay in the role you know how to play — the capable one, the calm one, the one who can handle things. But when you stay with it a little longer, “fine” starts to reveal itself as something more layered.

It can be a survival strategy — a way of minimising your needs, your visibility, your inconvenience to others. A way of keeping everything steady, even if it means gradually stepping away from yourself.

It can be a kind of freeze state — not falling apart, but not fully alive either. You’re functioning, showing up, doing what needs to be done, but there’s a slight distance from what you feel. A flattening. A sense that you’re operating without full access to yourself.

And often, it’s a negotiation. Between what you can handle, what you are handling, and what you’re not quite letting yourself admit you’re handling.

Because there’s usually something underneath it.

“Fine” can sit over disconnection — from your body, your emotions, your desires, your fatigue, your anger, your grief. It can sit over roles you’ve come to inhabit so fully they feel indistinguishable from who you are: the caretaker, the peacekeeper, the high performer, the low-maintenance one, the strong friend.

If you wanted a shorthand for it, you could think of “FINE” as an internal status message:

System running on emergency power.

You’re neither broken nor in crisis. But you’re also not resourced enough to feel, to pause, to shift.

Fine shows up for good reasons. It protects your place in relationships, where being “too much” might feel risky. It protects identity, especially if you’ve been the one who copes, the one who gets things done. It protects you from truths that feel too big to open all at once — grief, loneliness, resentment, the ever louder question of whether something needs to change. It even protects your nervous system, when things have been too much for too long, and numbness feels safer than overwhelm.

So “fine” isn’t something to dismantle or push past. It’s something to understand. Because from the outside, it can look like everything is working — calm, organised, capable. But inside, it can feel like holding everything in place at once, a subtle bracing that never quite releases.

And that’s where a different kind of question becomes useful.

Not: Is this true? But: What is this doing for me?

Because when you start to see “fine” as information rather than a fixed state, it opens up something else.

A little more awareness. A little more choice. A little more room to move.

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How to recognize FINE

The emotional / mental kind

• You say “fine” quickly and automatically.

• You minimize: “It’s not a big deal,” “Other people have it worse.”

• You feel flat, bored, cynical, or strangely blank.

• You feel easily irritated—like the smallest thing is too much.

• You can’t access desire (“I don’t know what I want”).

The physical kind

• Tension in jaw/neck/shoulders, shallow breath, clenched belly.

• Exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.

• “Wired but tired,” or heavy/foggy.

• Frequent headaches, gut issues, inflammation flare-ups.

The behavioral kind

• Over-functioning: fixing, managing, planning, caretaking.

• Under-functioning in private: scrolling, zoning out, procrastination.

• Increased people-pleasing or emotional withdrawal.

• You stop initiating joy: hobbies, intimacy, creativity, movement.

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If reading this has made you pause and wonder what might sit underneath your own “I’m fine,” you don’t have to figure that out alone.

In emotions coaching, we create space to gently explore what’s there — at your pace, in your own words — so you can begin to understand what you’re feeling and what you might need.

Start with a free discovery call and see what support could look like for you.

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Why Nothing Changes Even When You Try Everything: The Missing Role of Connection

Do you ever feel so frustratingly stuck? And it’s not because you haven’t tried things. If anything, you’ve tried a lot. You’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, saved the quotes, maybe even written things down in a notebook with the hope that this time something might land. And for a moment, it does. Something resonates. Something makes sense. And then, somehow, nothing really changes.

You’re still in the same patterns. Still circling the same questions. Still feeling that low-level sense that something isn’t quite shifting in the way you hoped it might.

It can be easy, in those moments, to assume the problem is you. That you haven’t understood it properly. That you haven’t applied it well enough. That you need to try harder, or find the right framework, or finally come across the one idea that will make everything click into place.

But what if that’s not what’s missing?

In a recent episode of A Thought I Kept, I found myself returning to a simpler idea. That sometimes it isn’t another piece of insight we need. It’s other people.

Not in a dramatic or overwhelming way. Not in the sense of needing a whole new community or a complete change of life. But in the small, often overlooked ways that we are with each other. The conversations that go a little deeper than expected. The moments where someone really listens. The feeling of being alongside someone rather than trying to work it all out alone.

Because so much of what we are trying to understand about ourselves doesn’t fully emerge in isolation.

We can think about something for weeks, months even, and still feel unsure. And then, in the space of a single conversation, something becomes clearer. Not because the other person has the answer, but because they’ve asked a question we hadn’t considered. Or reflected something back to us that we couldn’t quite see on our own.

There’s something about being witnessed that changes the shape of things.

In my conversation with Laurence McCahill, we talked about the role he plays in bringing people together. A friend once told him that he was the glue in a group, the person who connected people who might not otherwise have found each other. It wasn’t something he had consciously set out to be. It was something he recognised in hindsight, something that had always been there.

And I think there’s something important in that too.

That the things that help us feel more connected, more ourselves, are often not the things we need to learn from scratch. They are the things that already exist in us, but only really come into focus in relationship with other people.

Listening. Noticing. Making space. Asking a question at the right moment. Sitting with someone without needing to fix what they’re going through.

These are not grand gestures. They are small, human ones. But they create the conditions for something else to happen. They create the conditions for change.

It also made me think about how much of modern life encourages us to do things on our own. To self-reflect alone. To improve alone. To figure things out internally before we share them with anyone else. Even our versions of connection can become structured or transactional. Networking rather than relating. Updating rather than opening up. And in all of that, we can lose something essential.

The in-between spaces where things unfold more naturally. The conversations that aren’t heading anywhere in particular. The moments where we’re not trying to get something out of the interaction, but simply being in it. Those are often the places where something shifts. Not because we’ve found a better answer, but because we’re no longer holding everything on our own.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, or like you’re circling the same thoughts without anything really changing, it might be worth gently asking a different question.

Not “what haven’t I figured out yet?” But “who might I need to be in conversation with?”

That might look like reaching out to someone you trust. Sitting with a friend a little longer than usual. Joining something where the intention is simply to be with other people, rather than to achieve or fix anything.

It might even be noticing where, in your own life, you are already the one who brings people together. The one who listens. The one who creates space for others. And considering what it would mean to allow that to be something you receive as well as give.

There isn’t a neat formula for this. And it won’t always feel comfortable, especially if you’re used to holding things on your own. But there is a different kind of steadiness that can come from it.

The kind that doesn’t come from having all the answers, but from not having to find them alone.

If this idea resonates, you might want to listen to the full conversation with Laurence on A Thought I Kept, where we explore connection, community, and what becomes possible when we do life together.

And if you’re looking for somewhere to begin, we’ve created a series of wellbeing prescriptions at If Lost Start Here that gently centre connection in everyday life. Not as another thing to get right, but as a way of finding your footing again, alongside other people.

Feeling Lost, Disconnected, Overwhelmed, or Lonely? Here’s How to Find Your Way Back to Yourself

Life can feel heavy when you’re navigating overwhelm, loneliness, or a sense of disconnection. Maybe you feel stuck in routines that don’t nourish you, struggling to find clarity, or simply wondering what’s missing. Instead of trying to force yourself into generic self-care routines, what if you could create a wellbeing practice that fits you? That’s where our Wellbeing Prescriptions come in.

Inspired by social prescribing, our approach blends Culture Therapy, carefully chosen places from our Guide to Life, and an understanding of what you actually need. Most importantly, it starts with how you feel right now. This personalised approach helps you feel grounded, connected, and emotionally well on your own terms.

What is Wellbeing?

Wellbeing isn’t just about ticking off a to-do list of meditation, journaling, and yoga. It’s about finding what genuinely supports you—mentally, emotionally, and socially.

At its core, wellbeing is about:

• Emotional health – Learning to navigate your emotions with self-compassion rather than resistance

• Mental balance – Managing stress, uncertainty, and change with more ease

• Connection – Feeling supported by people, places, and experiences that align with who you are

But here’s the key: wellbeing is personal. What works for someone else may not be what you need. That’s why our approach is bespoke.

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How We Create Your Bespoke Wellbeing Prescription

Your wellbeing prescription is built around you, using three core elements:

1. We Start with How You Feel

Before prescribing anything, we begin with your reality today. Are you feeling:

• Lost? Unsure where to go next or what’s missing?

• Disconnected? Feeling detached from yourself or others?

• Overwhelmed? Struggling to manage stress, burnout, or emotions?

• Lonely? Longing for deeper relationships or more meaningful experiences?

These sessions first help you understand what’s happening beneath the surface—so we can tailor your wellbeing prescription to what will truly help.

2. We Look at What You Need

Everyone’s wellbeing needs are different. Some of us need more space, others need more connection. Some need creativity, others need calm.

Through our framework, we uncover what’s missing or what you’re craving right now—whether it’s:

• Rest – Slowing down, prioritising sleep, and reducing stress

• Clarity – Finding direction and making sense of where you are

• Purpose – Reconnecting with what feels meaningful to you

• Play – Bringing more joy, creativity, and fun into your life

• Connection – Strengthening relationships or finding community

3. We Curate a Wellbeing Prescription Just for You

Once we understand how you feel and what you need, we create a bespoke wellbeing prescription that may include:

Culture Therapy – A handpicked selection of books, podcasts, and creative resources designed to support your emotional wellbeing.

Places from our Guide to Life – Beautiful, thoughtfully designed spaces that foster connection, creativity, and mental wellness. Whether it’s an awe-inspiring museum, a community garden, or a cosy bookshop, we recommend places that help you feel at home in the world.

Practical Tools & Practice – Small, actionable steps that fit into your life, including journaling prompts, breathwork exercises, creative rituals, or moments of connection.

One-on-One Support – If needed, we offer coaching sessions to explore emotional resilience, purpose, and how to build a wellbeing practice that feels true to you.

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Why This Works for Anyone Feeling Lost, Lonely, or Overwhelmed

• It’s personalised to you – Instead of generic self-care tips, you get a wellbeing prescription that meets you where you are.

• It helps you navigate uncertainty – Using curiosity and self-acceptance, it guides you toward what feels good for you.

• It’s practical and flexible – No rigid self-care routines—just real-life wellbeing that evolves with you.

• It connects you to the world around you – Through culture, creativity, and inspiring places, you gain experiences that nourish rather than deplete you.

• It transforms your relationship with emotions – Instead of seeing emotions as something to ‘fix,’ you learn how to work with them.

How to Create an Everyday Retreat at Home: Small Ways to Care for Yourself Each Day

Retreats, holidays, or even a quiet weekend away can be wonderful and exactly the reset we need. And for a little while everything softens. We sleep more deeply. We notice things again. We remember what it feels like to move through the day without quite so much pressure.

And then we come home. The inbox fills up again. The washing basket mysteriously multiplies. Work, care, responsibilities and the endless small decisions of modern life return to their usual volume.

That contrast can make wellbeing feel like something that lives somewhere else. Somewhere beautiful, slower, quieter — somewhere we occasionally visit rather than something that belongs inside our real lives. But what if the question isn’t how to recreate retreat conditions perfectly at home? What if it’s simply about making a little more room for ourselves inside the life we already have. Not through grand gestures or perfect routines, but through small moments that gently interrupt the pace of the day.

Sometimes that might look like taking a few breaths before you open your laptop in the morning. Or stepping outside for ten minutes of air and sky between meetings. It might be writing a few lines in a notebook before bed, or sitting in the quiet of the house before everyone else wakes up.

None of these things are dramatic. But they are ways of reminding ourselves that our days can hold small pockets of steadiness, even when life is full. At If Lost Start Here we often think of this as an everyday retreat. Not something that requires travel, time off, or a perfect environment, but something we create in ordinary spaces — kitchens, gardens, desks, walks around the block.

Moments where we pause long enough to reconnect with ourselves. Because wellbeing rarely arrives all at once. More often it grows slowly through the small ways we choose to care for ourselves inside the lives we’re already living.

One way to think about an everyday retreat is simply this: small moments of care woven through an ordinary day. The kind of day where the alarm goes off earlier than you’d like, the kettle needs refilling again, and someone has already asked you a question before you’ve even had your first sip of coffee.

Sometimes the retreat begins there. A few slow breaths before you open your email. A page of journaling while the house is still quiet. Or simply drinking your tea without doing three other things at the same time.

Later in the day it might appear as a small corner of calm. Not a perfectly styled meditation space, just a chair by the window, a step outside the back door, or five minutes sitting on the edge of the bed before the next thing begins.

Technology tends to follow us everywhere now, so another small act of care can be letting parts of the day remain screen-free. Leaving your phone on the kitchen counter while you walk around the block. Eating lunch without scrolling. Letting your mind wander for a few minutes rather than filling every space with information.

And then there are the tiny resets that help us keep going when the day becomes full again. A stretch between meetings. Fresh air after too long indoors. A quick walk where you remember that the world is larger than your to-do list.

By the evening, when the house is quieter again or the day finally loosens its grip, another small moment can appear. Writing a few lines about the day. Noticing something that went well. Letting yourself acknowledge that you carried a lot and made it through.

None of this is dramatic. It’s simply a way of remembering that wellbeing doesn’t have to live somewhere else. It can move with us through the ordinary, messy, human shape of our days.

Over time, these small daily actions will build up to create lasting wellbeing. You’ll feel more grounded, less overwhelmed, and better able to handle life’s challenges. It’s about making wellbeing part of your everyday life.

Want help making these changes stick? Join the Everyday Retreat, where we’ll explore these practices together through daily lessons and community-meet ups.

Understanding Anxiety: 10 Things I’ve Learned About This Emotion

Anxiety is one of the emotions people most often want to get rid of. When it shows up — as racing thoughts, tightness in the chest, restlessness, or a constant hum of worry — the instinct is usually to quiet it as quickly as possible. But over the years, through emotions coaching, my own experience, research, and conversations with thoughtful guests on A Thought I Kept, I’ve come to see anxiety a little differently.

Not as an enemy. Not as a failure to cope. But as information about how our mind, body, and life circumstances are interacting in that moment.

Here are ten things I’ve come to understand about anxiety that may help you see it differently too.

1. Anxiety often appears in people who care deeply

Research on vulnerability and uncertainty — including the work of Brené Brown — suggests anxiety often shows up in people who care deeply and feel responsible for what happens next.

In other words, anxiety is often the emotional cost of trying very hard to do life well. It isn’t necessarily weakness. Sometimes it’s care that has nowhere to rest.

2. Anxiety is closely linked to uncertainty

Many researchers describe anxiety as our difficulty tolerating uncertainty. We don’t always feel anxious because something bad is happening. We feel anxious because we don’t know what will happen, and our mind begins trying to predict and prepare for every possible outcome. That prediction loop can quickly become exhausting.

A helpful question in anxious moments is simply: What uncertainty am I struggling to sit with right now?

Naming uncertainty often softens anxiety’s intensity.

3. Anxiety lives in the body before it reaches the mind

Emotion scientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has shown that emotions begin with bodily sensations.

Before the mind labels something “anxiety,” the body may already be experiencing:

• a racing heart

• tightness in the chest

• restlessness

• fatigue or agitation

Your brain then interprets these sensations and constructs the emotional experience. This is why logic alone rarely calms anxiety in the moment. Your nervous system needs signals of safety first.

4. “Anxiety” is often several emotions combined

In coaching conversations, many people use the word anxiety to describe a wide range of feelings. But when we look more closely, anxiety often includes:

• fear

• pressure

• anticipation

• responsibility

• grief

• uncertainty

Researchers call the ability to name emotions more precisely emotional granularity, and it’s linked to lower anxiety and greater emotional resilience. Because when we’re clear about what we’re feeling we can create better choices about what to do with that.

5. Anxiety is often trying to protect something

One of the most helpful coaching perspectives is to see anxiety as a protective response. It may be trying to prevent:

• mistakes

• rejection

• disappointment

• loss

• uncertainty

Seen this way, anxiety isn’t random or irrational. It’s your system trying to help you navigate something that feels important. The work isn’t eliminating anxiety. It’s learning when protection is helpful and when it can soften.

6. Anxiety grows stronger in silence

Anxiety thrives in isolation. When it stays internal, it easily turns into self-criticism:

Why can’t I handle this?
Why am I like this?

But when anxiety is shared with the right people — trusted friends, supportive communities, or thoughtful conversations — its intensity often shifts. Connection doesn’t remove anxiety. But it changes how alone we feel with it.

7. Anxiety is deeply connected to the nervous system

Many experiences labelled “anxiety” are actually nervous system responses. When the body perceives pressure or threat, it may move into patterns such as:

• fight

• flight

• freeze

• flop or faun

These responses are not character flaws. They are biological (or learned) survival mechanisms. Understanding this can reduce the shame people often feel about anxiety.

8. Anxiety is often linked to responsibility and people-pleasing

Another pattern that shows up frequently is the connection between anxiety and over-responsibility. Many anxious people believe it’s their job to manage:

• other people’s emotions

• other people’s comfort

• other people’s expectations

When you feel responsible for everyone around you, anxiety becomes inevitable. Learning to set boundaries — emotionally and practically — often changes the experience dramatically.

9. Anxiety often appears during life transitions

Periods of change frequently bring anxiety with them.

• Career shifts

• Relationship changes.

• Parenting transitions.

• Midlife questions about identity and purpose.

Anxiety in these moments doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong. It can mean your life is asking new questions of you. Questions that don’t yet have clear answers.

10. Anxiety softens when trust grows

One of the most powerful shifts I see in coaching is this: moving from trying to control the future to trusting your ability to respond to it.

At first, anxiety tells us relief will come when we figure everything out. But life rarely offers that kind of certainty. What helps more is building trust:

• trust in your resilience

• trust in your ability to respond

• trust in your capacity to ask for support

That trust doesn’t eliminate anxiety. But it stops anxiety from running the entire show.

Anxiety isn’t the whole story of you

If anxiety is part of your experience right now, it doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. More often it means something matters. Something feels uncertain. Something may be asking for attention or change.

Understanding anxiety isn’t a quick fix. But it can be the beginning of a steadier, kinder relationship with your emotional life.

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Explore emotions coaching

If anxiety has been feeling overwhelming or confusing, emotions coaching offers a calm space to explore what’s happening underneath it.

Together we can look at how anxiety shows up in your life, what it might be protecting, and how you can move forward with more self-trust and steadiness.

Explore coaching options and book a free discovery call

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This post is part of the If Lost Start Here Emotions Series — an exploration of the emotions that shape our lives and what they might be trying to tell us.

Understanding Anxiety: A Kinder Way to Live With It (Instead of Fighting It)

Anxiety rarely arrives with a clear explanation. It tends to slip in sideways, disguising itself as restlessness, urgency, tightness in the chest, or a low-level sense that something isn’t quite right, even when life looks fine on the surface. You might be getting on with your days — working, caring, showing up — but underneath there’s a constant hum of worry or anticipation that never fully settles. If that feels familiar, it doesn’t mean you’re failing at coping. It often means something in you is paying very close attention.

Many people experience anxiety as though it appeared out of nowhere, an unwelcome guest that needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible. But when we slow down and look more closely, anxiety is rarely sudden. It often builds quietly over time, shaped by responsibility, change, uncertainty, loss, or long periods of holding things together without much space to pause.

Anxiety frequently belongs to people who care deeply, who think ahead, who want to do things well and not let others down. In that sense, it isn’t random or irrational. It’s connected to how you’ve learned to move through the world and what’s been asked of you along the way. The difficulty begins when anxiety becomes something you judge yourself for, rather than something you try to understand. When it shifts from an experience you’re having to an identity you feel stuck with.

One of the biggest myths about anxiety is that it means you’re not coping properly. Another is that if you could just calm down, think more positively, or gain more control over your thoughts, it would disappear. These ideas are everywhere, but they often make anxiety worse by adding pressure and self-criticism to something that already feels heavy.

Anxiety isn’t just about thoughts. It involves your whole system — your body, your nervous system, your past experiences, and your relationship with uncertainty. Often, anxiety is your system trying to prepare you for something it perceives as demanding or risky, even if that threat isn’t clear or immediate.

There’s also a common belief that anxiety is always about fear. Sometimes it is, but just as often it’s about pressure, responsibility, anticipation, or caring deeply about outcomes you can’t fully control. When everything gets bundled into the single label of “anxiety,” it can feel overwhelming and impossible to navigate. But when you start to understand the different layers underneath it, anxiety can feel less frightening and more workable.

Learning how to handle anxiety begins with understanding how it shows up for you, what tends to intensify it, and what helps it soften, even slightly. It also means recognising that anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind, which is why reasoning your way out of it rarely works when your system feels on high alert. Anxiety often grows in isolation and eases when it’s named, shared, and met with curiosity rather than judgement.

Handling anxiety better doesn’t mean getting rid of it altogether or becoming someone who never feels unsettled. It means changing your relationship with it so it no longer runs your life. That might start with noticing the early physical signs of anxiety, rather than only paying attention once it becomes overwhelming. It might involve questioning the stories you’ve absorbed about what anxiety says about you, and replacing them with something more accurate and compassionate.

It can also help to shift the focus away from certainty and towards trust. Anxiety often promises relief if you can just figure everything out in advance, but life rarely offers that kind of clarity. What tends to help more is building trust in your ability to respond, to ask for support, and to take things one step at a time without needing all the answers upfront.

Most importantly, learning to live better with anxiety means letting go of the idea that you have to manage it alone. Support doesn’t make anxiety vanish, but it can help you understand what it’s asking for and find steadier, kinder ways to move forward.

If anxiety has brought you here, it isn’t a sign that you’re lost beyond repair. It’s often a signal that something matters, that something is changing, or that you’ve been carrying more than your share for a while. Understanding anxiety isn’t a quick fix, but it can be the beginning of a more grounded way of living with yourself.

Explore emotions coaching

If you’re struggling with anxiety and want support that helps you understand your emotions rather than push them away, emotions coaching can offer a calm, thoughtful space to explore what’s going on. Together, we can look at how anxiety shows up in your everyday life, what it’s connected to, and how you can build trust in your ability to meet it with more ease and self-compassion.

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Start better understanding your emotional life today and find a way through anxiety that feels supportive, human, and even realistic.