The Chase. Why we keep looking outside for something that lives within

There is a pattern I keep seeing in coaching conversations — and one I know intimately from my own life.

People spend years chasing the next thing.

The promotion. The relationship. The house. The luxury holiday. The recognition. The title. The version of life that finally whispers: then I'll feel complete.

And when it arrives? There is excitement. Relief. Something expands, briefly.

But it rarely lasts.

Almost immediately, the mind moves again. Toward the next target. The next achievement. The next external marker that might — this time — give us what we've been searching for all along.

Here is what I've come to see: we are usually not chasing the thing itself.

We are chasing a feeling.

Worth. Love. Safety. Validation. The simple, aching sense of being enough.

And somewhere along the way, we learned that external achievement is how you earn those things.

For some people, this shows up through material life. If I get this car, this wardrobe, this holiday — I'll feel like I've made it. For others, it lives in career and ambition.

I've worked with many people who genuinely believe the next promotion will shift something fundamental inside them. That becoming a Director, VP, or founder will finally allow them to feel seen.

But when we slow down and look underneath, the real questions are almost never about the role itself.

They're more like: Will I finally matter? Will I finally be enough? Will I finally deserve love?

These aren't adult questions. They were formed long before adulthood. In bedrooms, in school hallways, at dinner tables — in all the moments where a child was quietly learning what they needed to be in order to be loved.

I can see this clearly in my own story. And honestly, it took me a long time to be willing to look at it.

Growing up, I was involved in performance sport. I was good at it, and I worked hard. But what I remember most isn't the training or the competitions themselves — it's the feeling when I won. The warmth that appeared. The pride in my mother's eyes. The way the room felt different around me when I came home with a medal, when teachers praised me, when I was performing well.

Nobody said it explicitly. Nobody needed to.

I made the connection inside myself, the way children do — quietly, completely, without question.

Achievement = love.

But the other side of that equation was just as powerful — and far less talked about.

I hated losing. Not in the healthy, competitive way. I mean I truly could not bear it. Coming second or third wasn't something I could brush off or feel proud of — it was painful. Upsetting in a way that felt bigger than the result itself. Because on some level, it wasn't just a loss in a competition. It was confirmation of something I feared about myself.

And that meant I couldn't acknowledge myself for simply showing up. For training, for competing, for pouring myself into something I loved. None of that counted if I didn't win. The effort was invisible to me. Only the outcome spoke.

Looking back, I can see how much that cost me — not just in sport, but in the way I carried that same lens into everything that followed.

Into school, into my career, into every room I entered. I became driven, ambitious, always reaching — not always knowing why, but always chasing that same feeling. The next proof that I was worthy. That I was enough. That I deserved to be loved.

For a long time, I couldn't even see it as a wound. It just looked like ambition. It just looked like drive.

And externally, it worked. I achieved things. I was praised, promoted, recognised.

But internally, something never quite settled. There was always a quiet restlessness underneath — a feeling that I hadn't quite arrived yet, that the real validation was still one step ahead.

Because no achievement can permanently resolve something that was created inside.

Each time I reached a goal I had wanted deeply, my internal state eventually returned to the same place. The satisfaction faded. The striving came back. Another mountain appeared on the horizon, and I was already leaning toward it before I'd even caught my breath.

Seeing that pattern — really seeing it, not just intellectually but feeling the truth of it — changed something in me.

Not my desire to do meaningful work. Not my love of doing things well.

But the energy underneath shifted.

I stopped needing the achievement to tell me I was okay.

And that — more than any promotion, any recognition, any external marker — felt like the first real arrival.

Because instead of always living slightly ahead of myself, rushing psychologically toward some future moment where I finally get to feel worthy, I became more present in the actual work. When I'm in it now, I'm actually there. Not performing. Not proving. Just building, thinking, creating — without the background hum of but will this be enough?

Work became lighter. Clearer. More mine.

Achievement itself is not the problem. Creating, building, growing — these are beautiful human impulses.

The question worth sitting with is: what are we hoping it will give us?

Because if we are unconsciously asking external life to resolve an internal absence, the chase never ends. There will always be another goal, another title, another milestone just out of reach. The goalpost moves, because it was never really about the goal.

And maybe the deeper invitation — the one underneath all of this — is not to stop creating.

It is to start asking: what am I actually hungry for?

Because what we're truly looking for might not be out there at all.

Where in your life are you chasing something — and what are you hoping it will give you?

As You Are

On authenticity, the masks we wear, and the quiet return to ourselves

There is a certain quality we can all feel.

It's not something we are taught to recognise. And yet, when it's there — it's unmistakable. We feel it in people who are fully themselves. Something about their presence is magnetic, almost weightless. And we feel it just as clearly when something is... slightly off. We might not always have the language for it, but somewhere inside, we know.

We call it authenticity.

What authenticity actually is

Authenticity is often misunderstood as something we need to develop — a better version of ourselves, a more expressed or more confident identity.

But in my experience, authenticity is not something we create.

It is what remains when what is not true gently falls away.

It is not performance. Not self-improvement. Not even self-expression in the way we usually mean it. It is a state where there is no gap between what we feel and what moves through us.

The poet Rumi wrote of a reed cut from the reed bed, crying out for its origin. That longing — for wholeness, for return — is perhaps the oldest human story. And Carl Jung saw it too: "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are."

Not to become someone new. But to return to what was always there.

Why so many of us lose it

If authenticity is natural, why does it feel so rare?

Because at some point, we learned not to be it.

Not consciously. But through subtle moments where being fully ourselves didn't feel safe. A look that said too much. A silence that said not that. A relationship where certain parts of us were welcomed and others were quietly not.

So we began to adjust.

We softened certain parts. Amplified others. Learned to shape ourselves in ways that would be accepted — to be liked, to avoid rejection, to protect something very tender inside.

Slowly, without realising it, we began to wear a mask.

Not a dramatic false identity. Just a series of small, almost invisible adjustments. Over time, those adjustments become familiar. Even necessary. And what was natural becomes something we have to find again.

I can see this clearly in my own life. In general, I have always been fairly authentic — but with certain people, in certain situations, I put the mask on. And I only later understood why: I was protecting something I deeply cared about. I didn't feel safe enough to expose it. The mask wasn't dishonesty — it was a layer of protection.

What keeps people hidden is fear.

Not abstract fear — but very specific, ordinary fears. The fear that if you say what you actually feel, the person in front of you will disapprove, pull away, think less of you. The fear that if you move the way your body wants to move, you will look like a clown — and the shame that thought instantly brings with it.

I know both of these from the inside. They're not dramatic. They're quiet, fast, and almost automatic. A split-second calculation that happens before you've even consciously decided anything: adjust, soften, hold back.

And so the shield forms.

The quiet cost of inauthenticity

When we are not fully ourselves, something subtle happens.

Our energy tightens. There is a slight holding — a monitoring, a constant low-level management of how we are being perceived. It can become so normal that we no longer notice it.

But we feel it in others. Not as judgment — but as a lack of ease. A lack of flow. Something slightly braced.

And when that becomes the norm — when most people around us are managing rather than moving freely — what reality are we collectively creating? A world that feels a little muted. A little effortful. A little less alive than it could be.

And often, the same is quietly true within us.

What becomes possible when authenticity returns

When authenticity is present, there is a different quality altogether.

Energy moves. There is less effort in how we speak, move, relate. Less thinking about how we come across. A kind of inner alignment — where nothing needs to be managed in the moment.

And with that comes freedom. Lightness. Aliveness.

Not because everything is perfect. But because nothing is being held back.

There is also impact — and this is something I feel deeply. When I am authentic, my energy flows freely and it reaches people. It lands. Something in the room shifts. Openness invites openness. Truth invites truth. When one person allows themselves to be real, it quietly creates permission for others to do the same.

It doesn't always feel comfortable. Authenticity can disrupt. It can challenge expectations. It can disappoint. Some people will be unsettled by it. But it is real. And because it is real, it creates movement — inside and out.

I believe the world is made more beautiful by people who allow themselves to be fully themselves. Not just for their own sake, but for everyone around them.

Where it begins: the body

Authenticity does not begin in the mind.

It begins in the body.

The body does not know how to pretend. It only knows how to respond. And when we begin to listen to it — truly listen, without immediately editing what it wants to do — something shifts.

I experienced this recently in a very direct way.

I went to an ecstatic dance evening. For the first time, I noticed something I had never quite noticed before: how my body actually wanted to move. Not in a controlled way. Not in a way that looked good. It wanted space — a lot of space. It wanted to fly.

I moved through the room with my arms stretched wide, and I felt carried. There was joy. There was lightness. It felt like freedom when the space was given.

And then I noticed something else. I was free and fulfilled in the way I was moving — in my unique way. I didn't need to pretend to be someone else, to move like someone else. I tasted the sweetness of my own authentic movement. In the past, I would have looked around and adjusted myself to look good. I would have been thinking: how do I look from the side? Yesterday evening, that thought didn't even cross my mind.

I experienced beauty in my own movements. I felt people observing me. My movements were bold and visible in the room. I wanted to be seen — and I enjoyed that deeply. It felt like another layer coming off. Another layer of my authentic self being revealed.

It's liberating.

A quiet invitation

Authenticity does not require a dramatic change.

It begins in very small moments.

A pause before automatically adjusting yourself. A breath before saying what's expected. A willingness to simply notice what is actually true for you right now.

And sometimes, it begins with the body — with allowing a movement that feels natural, a gesture that isn't rehearsed, a moment where you don't correct yourself.

Not to become someone new. But to gently return to what has always been there.

What might shift if, just for a moment, you allowed yourself to be exactly as you are?

Touching the Feminine

She has always been an elusive form to me.

I didn’t truly know her intricate beauty and depth.

I believe one can only come to know her through experience.

I knew of the feminine qualities — softness, kindness, acceptance, sensitivity… But now they feel like garments, like something worn on the surface, after I have touched her true depth.

She has all of this, and still, she is so much more.

She is the deepest sea.

She is the darkest cave.

She is the highest mountain.

She is divine.

And I am struck by her power.

She remains elusive to me. She is here — I feel her presence. And at the same time, I cannot catch her. I cannot grasp or define her.

She cannot be owned. She cannot become someone’s property, someone’s object.

She is a wild animal. An elusive panther, with piercing eyes.

Her relaxation is infinite. Can you relax deeply enough to feel her?

She is a state of being that carries me effortlessly, allowing me to surrender fully — like never before.

There are no walls.

No armour.

She is exposed.

She is volcanic pleasure.

She is rapture.

She is electromagnetic waves — can you feel them?

Her energy is magnetising. She is a firework at its most perfect expression.

She is strong and fragile at the same time. And her fragility is intricate —woven with thousands of subtle details and patterns.

She asks to be cared for. And yet, her asking holds no need.

It is an invitation —one that feels impossible to resist.