In autumn last year, I wrote a post about assumptions, which are those invisible stories we tell ourselves about other people that end up shaping our entire experience of them.

The post was followed by a LIVE Substack conversation with the wonderful .

Today I want to explore another layer related to this. Before the assumption even forms, something else is already happening: we’ve already decided, without realising it, what kind of person we’re dealing with. And that decision has everything to do with us, not them.

When I was reading The Four Agreements, which I mentioned in the Assumptions post, I also read a book called The Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute, as both of them were part of my Leadership programme reading assignment. I need to note that I have complicated feelings about this book, because while the framework it offers is genuinely useful, the book applies it in ways that flatten real complexity, particularly when it comes to power and systemic injustice. It is written as a real story, but it is all fictional and that is only part of the problem1. What I’m sharing here is the part that I have actually found truly useful in practice, both in my own life and in my work as a coach.

Heart at war, heart at peace

At the centre of the book is a simple distinction: we move through our relationships either with a heart at war or a heart at peace.

A heart at war doesn’t necessarily mean shouting or open hostility. It means that somewhere underneath, you’ve stopped seeing the other person as a full human being. They’ve become an object2, an obstacle, an irritant, a problem to manage, or a mirror for your own wounds. You’re not really responding to who they are anymore. You’re responding to the role you’ve assigned them.

A heart at peace is not the same as having no conflict, or pretending everything is fine. It means that even in difficulty or in disagreement, you’re still holding the other person’s humanity. You can be angry and still see them clearly. You can set a boundary and still recognise they have their own weight to carry.

The boxes are what a heart at war looks like in practice, the specific shapes it takes depending on the situation and the person.

The box

The book identifies four:

• Better than: I see myself as superior: more capable, more aware, more evolved. I don’t say it out loud, but I act from that place.

• I deserve / Victim: I feel wronged, overlooked, unfairly treated. The world, or this person, owes me something.

• Worse than / Less than: I see myself as not enough. I shrink before I’ve even tried.

• Must be seen as good: I’m performing. I want to be perceived as kind, helpful and evolved. I am expecting gratitude and admiration from this person.

The reason I find this framework useful, in a moment of conflict with someone, is that when I ask myself which box am I in right now?, I have to pause and my perspective shifts. I stop being the wronged party, or the superior one, or the helpless one, and, instead, I become someone who is making a choice about how to see.

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My own high horse

Let me give you a concrete example from my own life:

I catch myself fairly regularly in the better than box with people I perceive as less knowledgeable, less self-aware, or less mindful about things I care about, e.g. the environment, social justice, gender equality. And while I may not announce this, I stop listening properly. I dismiss what they’re saying before they’ve finished saying it. I’m already somewhere else, already certain I know more.

The irony is not lost on me. The very self-awareness I’m feeling superior about is exactly what I’m failing to exercise at that moment.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: when I’m on that high horse, I miss things, including an opportunity to genuinely connect and learn from a fellow human being. The box isn’t just unfair to the other person. It’s a loss for me too.

You can be in more than one box at once

This is something the book doesn’t make enough of, but I see it constantly, in myself and in the people I work with.

When a client comes to me frustrated with a colleague, a friend, a parent, a partner, I often ask: which of these feels true right now? And almost always, the answer is more than one. You can feel like a victim of someone’s behaviour while simultaneously feeling superior to them for behaving that way. You can feel less than someone and be performing goodness at the same time.

This messiness is the point, because we’re not one clean emotion or one clear stance. As Walt Whitman said it long ago, we contain multitudes, we’re several things at once, and naming them, even if just to ourselves, starts to loosen the grip of the things that are not helpful.

The trap inside the tool

One thing that the book doesn’t mention, but I have experiences and believe matters enormously: When you start using this framework, there’s a real risk that catching yourself in a box becomes another occasion for self-judgment. Oh, there I am being ‘better than’ again. What’s wrong with me? And just like that, you’ve climbed into a new box – the worse than box – about the fact that you were in a box. The tool becomes a stick for self-punishment.

I’ve done this and I know it doesn’t help.

The only way the framework actually works is with a degree of self-compassion underneath it. Noticing that you’re in a box is not a verdict. It’s just information. The question is what you do with it, whether you can get curious rather than critical, and whether that curiosity opens something up.

The connection to assumptions

In the post I wrote about assumptions, I talked about the stories we tell ourselves, and how naming them, even privately, can change how we move through a relationship. The boxes framework goes hand in hand with that. The assumption is the story. The box is the position you’re standing in while you tell it.

They never listen to me is an assumption. Feeling like a victim is the box that assumption lives inside. You can work on the story without touching the box, and wonder why nothing changes. Or you can ask which box you’re in, and find that the story starts to look different from a different position.

Getting out

Naming the box is already most of the work. But if you want to go further, one tool I keep coming back to is Byron Katie’s simple question, which I also mentioned in the assumptions post: Who would I be without this thought?

Applied to the boxes, it becomes: who would I be with this person if I weren’t in the better than position? If I weren’t carrying the victim story? If I weren’t performing? Often the answer is someone more present, more open, less exhausted by the effort of maintaining the stance.

Another move that works: get genuinely curious. Ask them something you don’t already know the answer to. Curiosity and contempt are hard to hold at the same time. One tends to dissolve the other.

Underneath all of it lies the self-compassion piece again. You can’t think your way out of a box while beating yourself up for being in one.

A necessary caveat

Before I close, I want to mention something important: This framework works in relationships where both people have real agency, where the friction is mutual, the dynamic is complex, and your own stance is genuinely part of what’s keeping things stuck.

This is not a tool for situations of abuse or genuine harm. If someone is hurting you in any way (emotionally or/and physically), you are not in a box for recognising that. You are seeing clearly. The victim box is about the stories we tell ourselves in ordinary relational friction, not about the reality of being mistreated. These are very different things, and conflating them does real damage.

So, if you want to use this tool, you may try it in the everyday messiness of relationships with people who mean well, or mostly mean well, and where you have the safety and the space to look at your own part honestly.

A question to sit with

Think of someone in your life right now with whom something feels stuck — a friend, a colleague, someone in your family — and where you know, hand on heart, that you’re not in danger.

Ask yourself: which box am I in with this person?

The first step is to notice, not to fix it or judge yourself. That is often enough to shift something, enough to remember that the other person is a full human being, with their own weight to carry. And so are you.

Have you noticed yourself in one of these boxes recently? I’d love to hear which one — and what, if anything, helped you out of it.

If you enjoyed this post, please press the heart, re-stack the post or share with a friend, as it helps other people discover and benefit from my work.

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If my writing resonates and you'd like my coaching support in noticing your boxes — and finding your way out of them — I'd love to hear from you. Use this LINK directly to schedule an exploratory call and see if we're a good fit.

Whether through your profession, your relationships, your community, or the causes you care about, you have tried to contribute to something larger than yourself.

Over time, however, the relationship between values, contribution, and everyday reality can become more complicated.

Perhaps you find yourself questioning decisions that once felt straightforward. Perhaps the work that once felt meaningful has become harder to sustain. Perhaps you are facing a transition, a crossroads, or a growing sense that something needs attention, even if you cannot yet name exactly what it is.

Values as a Compass is a reflective small-group workshop for women who want to pause, take stock, and reconnect with what matters most as they navigate decisions about work, purpose, and direction.

Why values?

Values are often talked about as abstract ideals—words on a list that sound good but have little connection to everyday life.

In this workshop, we approach values differently.

Rather than asking what values you think you should have, we explore the values that are already shaping your choices, priorities, relationships, and commitments. We look at where your values are being expressed, where they may be in tension with one another, and where they have become harder to live by.

When life feels uncertain or complicated, values can serve as a compass—not by telling you what to do, but by helping you orient yourself and make decisions that feel more grounded and authentic.

Who comes to these workshops?

The women who participate are often deeply committed, thoughtful people who care about making a meaningful difference in the world.

Many work in fields such as international development, research, healthcare, education, social work, climate and environmental action, philanthropy, public service, or other impact-oriented professions. Others are navigating major life transitions, care giving responsibilities, disability, illness, or questions about what meaningful contribution looks like in this phase of life.

What tends to unite them is not a particular profession but a shared desire to live in alignment with their values.

You may find yourself here if you are:

• questioning your current direction or next steps

• feeling a gap between what matters to you and how you spend your time

• carrying a great deal of responsibility and wondering what is sustainable

• seeking greater clarity about choices related to work, purpose, relationships, or contribution

• wanting a space for deeper reflection that goes beyond productivity, performance, or self-improvement

What we do together

The workshop combines guided exercises, personal reflection, and group dialogue.

Together, we explore:

• the values that are most important to you

• how those values show up in your daily life

• where there is alignment, and where there is tension

• recurring patterns in your choices and commitments

• what meaningful contribution looks like for you now

• how values can help guide future decisions

The emphasis is not on finding the “right” answer or making dramatic life changes.

The emphasis is on developing greater awareness, clarity, and trust in your own inner compass.

Format

• Small group

• Online via Zoom

• Guided exercises, reflection, and discussion

• 90-minutes duration (times suitable for different time zones)

Next cohort

The next Values as a Compass workshop is currently being planned.

If you would like to hear about future dates or join the waiting list, you can register your interest at this LINK

Everyone is looking for fulfillment, and while the idea is appealing, in practice it doesn’t necessarily work that way. We’ve been sold the idea that if we do what we love, work will no longer feel hard, and we will move through life with a certain lightness. We’ve been told that finding our life purpose, our passion, is what will make all the difference.

And yet, for many of us, this creates pressure rather than relief.

Sometimes it isn’t clear what that “one thing” is, because we’re interested in more than one thing. Or we may have found something we truly enjoy, but the market is saturated, making it difficult, or even impossible, to make a living from it. And even when we do find that thing, once we’ve “got it,” it doesn’t necessarily resolve everything. We may still find ourselves searching, questioning, wondering if there is something more.

Or we tell ourselves: when I save enough, when I get the promotion, when my kids grow up, when X or Y happens, then I will start living the life I really want. The bar keeps moving, and life continues in the meantime.

So the question becomes: what if meaning is not something that sits somewhere in the future, waiting for us to finally get there? What if there are ways to experience more meaning and even joy in the life we already have?

This month, the 3 useful secrets I am sharing may help you do exactly that.

Secret no. 1: Letting go of the idea that there is only one path to your happiness

Stanford researchers Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, authors of Design Your Life, noticed something surprising in their work. Even when people made significant changes, better jobs, more aligned choices, many still didn’t feel fulfilled.

“Fulfillment […] is a dead end […] you’re bigger than a lifetime… So the idea that one job, one role, or one version of yourself can express it all, is a dead end[…] The better goal [… ]is to be fully alive.”

There is something both confronting and relieving in that idea.

If you are “bigger than a lifetime,” then of course no single path, job, or identity will ever feel like enough. Which means the problem is not that you haven’t found the right thing yet, but that the expectation itself may be unrealistic.

Instead of asking What is the one thing that will fulfill me? we need to ask ourselves: Where do I already feel a sense of aliveness?

That might show up in moments of curiosity, when something catches your attention and you want to follow it a bit further. It might show up in flow, when you lose track of time. Or in connection, when you feel genuinely met by someone.

These moments are often easy to overlook because they don’t necessarily look grand or life-defining. But they are available, in different ways, much more often than we think.

So, Burnett and Evans wrote a second book, called How to live a meaningful life. Evans recently spoke about this and more on the Hidden Brain podcast, and the conversation is genuinely worth a listen (granted, I am a fan of the podcast). Have a listen here:

Secret no. 2: Shift from urgency to curiosity

has been living with cancer for many years, and has written and spoken openly about what that has meant for how she relates to life. She describes how the advice to “live each day as if it were your last” didn’t feel liberating to her. Instead it felt overwhelming. As if every day had to carry a kind of weight and significance that is simply not sustainable.

What I find powerful here is not just the reframing itself, but the space it opens up for possibility. Because when you relate to a day as if it is your last, there is a sense that something has to be done with it, there is a pressure to succeed, to leave a mark for posterity, there is no space for regrets. But if you relate to each days as if it is your first, there is space to notice things, to be curious, to make a mess, and to simply enjoy life.

She also speaks about what she calls “small acts of creative alchemy,” and the practice of writing down ten memorable moments from the past 24 hours and she shared that it is always the small things that are memorable.

This connects directly to the first secret. If meaning is not something we arrive at once and for all, then it is something we are in relationship with, day by day. And our attention plays a big role in that.

So this is a simple place to start: at the end of the day, write down ten moments you remember, the ones that stayed with you, as small or insignificant as they may seem at a first glance. Over time, this begins to shift what you notice, and what you value. And if ten is a daunting number, start with five or even two things. I have written about a similar practice last year:

Secret no. 3: Use your values as a compass

If the first two secrets open things up, loosening the idea of one defining path and bringing your attention back to lived experience, then the question becomes: how do you make choices within that openness?

This is where values come in.

Knowing your values is one of the most practical ways I know to create a sense of direction without falling back into rigid ideas of purpose or “the right path.” It is a tool that I keep returning to with my clients and in my own reflection around what gives my life meaning.

Values don’t tell you what to do in a prescriptive way (because, remember, values are not virtues). But they do help you recognise what feels aligned, what feels off, and what matters to you underneath external expectations.

They show up in very concrete ways: in how you relate to people, the kind of work you move towards or away from, what you choose to prioritise when time or energy is limited, what you say yes or no to, and even how you express yourself creatively. In that sense, values become a kind of steady reference point, something you can return to when things feel unclear or when you find yourself pulled in too many directions.

I’ve written more about this in the February edition of 3 Useful Secrets, where I shared a number of tools and prompts you can explore on your own.

This month, I’m taking this a step further and creating spaces where you can work with this more directly:

• I’m running a second edition of the Values as a Compass workshop for women on Sunday, May 31. This is a space to get clearer on your own values and begin to apply them in a concrete way in your life and work. You can still register at this LINK until May 29th.

  📅 May 31
  ⏱ 90 minutes
  📍 Live on Zoom
  7 pm London&Lisbon / 2pm New York
  💶 €45

• I recently co-hosted a live conversation, with the lovely , on values and brand design for Substack writers (originally aimed at subscribers of the Mastermind for Food Writers, but relevant far beyond that), where we explored how values can shape not just what you write, but how and why you write. We’re also offering a more in-depth version of this as a paid workshop (2 x 90 min- find more information at this LINK.

Mastermind for Food Writers

How To Create a Values Led Brand

Thank you to everyone who joined us LIVE today for this discussion about what it means to create a values-led brand. We discussed how values influence your voice, your messaging, your boundaries, and the kinds of opportunities you choose to pursue…

Listen now

a month ago · 7 likes · Rebecca Blackwell and Liza Debevec

What ties all three secrets together, for me, is a shift away from chasing a single and finite answer to the question of meaning. Instead, it becomes something more ongoing, something you can engage in until you draw your final breath. Living a meaningful life becomes a way of paying attention to where you feel alive, allowing space for what is already there, and making choices that reflect what matters to you. This means letting go of the chains of perfection or bucket lists. You only have to do what is possible from where you are right now.

This is it for May’s Useful Secrets. I hope they offered you some inspiration and food for thought. Let me know if you have tried any of these out in the past and what has worked for you.

If you enjoyed this post, consider giving it a like by clicking on the ❤️, write a comment and share the post with a friend, as that helps more people discover my writing.

A suspension of disbelief can be a useful thing. And with that, here are this month’s three secrets.

Secret 1: Your inner voice is an editor, not a reporter, and you can change what it writes

There has been a lot of talk about neuroplasticity lately, or at least a lot of it has been landing in my feed, on Substack, on podcasts, and on Instagram. I have been curious about it specifically as a way of helping both myself and my coaching clients deal with unhelpful negative self-talk. Yes, I too, despite being a coach and having been coached myself, struggle with this.

The basic principle is this: neurons that fire together wire together. If your inner voice repeatedly runs the same negative script (”I’m not good enough,” “I always mess this up”), those neural pathways get stronger and more automatic over time. You are not just feeling bad in the moment. You are reinforcing the architecture of self-criticism, brick by brick.

This is where Louise Hay’s mirror work1 becomes interesting, whatever one thinks of her more mystical claims. The practice of saying kind things to yourself while looking in the mirror has a plausible neurological rationale. Repeated, emotionally engaged positive self-talk may gradually strengthen competing neural pathways. The key words here are repeated (and not just 21 days as Hay would want us to believe) and emotionally engaged, because the emotion has to genuinely be in it. Positive mantras repeated flatly, without feeling, may have less impact than we would hope. The brain changes most through repetition combined with emotional salience, and negative self-talk tends to win that competition because threat responses activate the brain more strongly than positive ones. This is why a single criticism can outweigh ten compliments.

I recently came across an interview with Amir Levine2, the attachment theory researcher best known for the book Attached, in which he talks about something called memory reconsolidation. The idea, supported by neuroscience research, is that every time we recall a memory, we slightly disrupt it, and in doing so, we have a chance to rewrite it. The inner voice narrating your past is not a neutral reporter. It is an editor. And if that editor is usually harsh, it may be darkening memories each time it revisits them, not just commenting on them. The inner voice is not simply reacting to who you are. It may be actively constructing a version of you, memory by memory.

The hopeful flip side is that the same vulnerability works in the other direction. Therapy, coaching, and even some surprisingly simple writing practices can interrupt the habitual narration and introduce a different voice, a kinder one, a more curious one.

Which brings me to something I have been experimenting with recently, prompted by a tip I remembered from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. Goldberg, whose book is a wonderful guide on how to develop the writing practice, suggests that when we read our writing, our inner critic can get in the way of noticing what is good about it. But she suggests a trick and that is to read your own writing back to yourself out loud, because, as she suggests, when you are speaking aloud, your inner critical voice cannot easily speak at the same time. I tried this recently and found it to be true. There is something about physically occupying the voice, giving it actual sound, actual breath, that quiets the internal commentary. It is a small thing, but it works. And for me, as someone with a loud inner critic, this was an extremely useful discovery.

A caveat worth making here, because, as mentioned, I am not here to sell you snake oil: neuroplasticity is real, but it is slow in adults and requires consistent effort rather than occasional intervention. The wellness industry tends to promise faster results than the science supports (see above, 21 days according to Louise Hay). What does seem clear is that the direction of your habitual inner voice matters, and there is nothing woo woo about it. It is simply that repetition shapes neural defaults over time.

And here is something that complicates all of this in an interesting way: not everyone has an inner voice to begin with. Research published in 2024 by Johanne Nedergaard and Gary Lupyan introduced the term anendophasia3, from the Greek meaning the absence of inner speech, to describe people who have little or no verbal internal monologue. Just as aphantasia describes those who cannot produce mental images, anendophasia describes those whose minds are, in a sense, verbally quiet. Studies suggest these people may find some verbal memory tasks slightly harder, but they develop their own compensatory strategies and function perfectly well. There is also a published commentary4 questioning whether the research actually proves anyone completely lacks inner speech, rather than simply having much less of it. We need more research on this, but for now, it offers a great topic for discussion.

I find this fascinating for the same reason I found aphantasia fascinating when I wrote about it last November’s 3 Useful Secrets. We assume our own inner experience is universal, and it is not. If you are someone who has always wondered why the inner critic conversation does not quite land for you, perhaps this is why.

Secret 2: On seeing, feeling, and imagining, what happens in your head when you close your eyes

As I have written about before, I regularly use visualisation in my coaching practice to help clients connect with their inner leader, imagine a future life, or revisit their past. Over the last year, I have become more attentive to the fact that not everyone sees things in their mind’s eye, or at least not in the same way.

Last year, during a session with a client who has ADHD and who said they would not be able to visualise, they were still able to imagine a person or being they identified as their inner leader. I myself cannot really see images I have never seen before, but I can feel myself in places that correspond to what a guided visualisation is describing. As mentioned in the November post, my friend and fellow Substack writer wrote about her own experience with aphantasia here, and explored this here, and Erin returned to it in this podcast conversation with .

Patient. from Mary Elizabeth Williams

Close Your Eyes and Picture Something. Not Everyone Can.

Please support Patient by becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscriptions help keep this thing going, and I’m grateful…

Listen now

2 months ago · 14 likes · 2 comments · Mary Elizabeth Williams and Erin

All worth reading and listening to if this is new territory for you.

What feels new for me now is not the question of whether we can “see” internally, but a growing trust that visualisation does not depend on seeing at all. What matters is the access point—image, sensation, emotion, memory—and how the body responds.

This came into sharper focus through a recent decision to experiment with hypnotherapy, to revisit some less than pleasant childhood memories that are still shaping how I show up in the world today. The hypnotherapist took me on a mental journey to a beach and invited me to imagine meeting a childhood version of myself. I could not really see myself as a child. My mind briefly offered up two photographs I know of myself, one at around four, one at six or seven, but that was all. What I could do was feel how that little girl felt. And that was enough. The exercise worked, not through seeing, but through feeling.

If anything, this feels like a continuation of something I wrote about last year, with a slightly different emphasis: less on the limits of the mind’s eye, and more on the possibilities of the felt sense.

How do you experience visualisation? Do you see, feel, both, or neither? I am genuinely curious. Have a listen and read of the pieces linked above.

Secret 3: Joy is in the small, if you can get out of your head long enough to notice it

This morning, before starting to write this post, I went for a walk in a park and I saw a Eurasian jay, a bird I adore (and that is featured on the illustration for this publication’s banner). I spent a few minutes following it as it moved from one tree to another, and during that time, something shifted. I got out of my head. I felt connected to something that seemed bigger than whatever my inner voice was obsessed with at that moment. It made me think of what , in her book Enchantment, calls a kind of hierophany5—a moment where the sacred reveals itself through the ordinary.

I have been thinking about this kind of moment a lot lately, partly because I am preparing for a book club which I will co lead with my Korean colleague Daeun Kim, — starting May 14th — in which we will be reading Enchantment (if you are interested, send me a reply or look at our Instagram page here) , and partly because of the moon rituals I have been doing with women from my leadership circle, and the occasional oracle card I pull not to predict anything, but to ask myself a question I might otherwise avoid. None of these things are grand and none of them require anything more than a moment of attention.

There is a character in Wim Wenders’ movie Perfect Days, one of the most beautiful films I have seen in years, who photographs tree canopies. Nothing dramatic, just the light moving through leaves. The Japanese word for sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees is komorebi (木漏れ日). It describes the interplay of light and shadow, often creating a dappled effect on the ground, and represents a moment of beauty in nature. It feels like a form of devotion, or at least of paying attention, and I have been thinking about what it would mean to apply that quality of attention to ordinary life more consistently.

Awe does not require a mountain or an ocean. Sometimes it is a jay. Sometimes it is the moon. Sometimes it is leaves.

I wrote about awe in an earlier post, which you can find below, and I think this is a thread I will keep pulling. In the meantime, what small thing stopped you this week, even briefly? I would genuinely like to know.

That is it for April’s Useful Secrets. If you found something here that resonated with you, I would love to hear about it in the comments. And if you enjoyed the post, a like and a share go a long way in helping other readers find their way here.

If you are new here, or need to catch up on the previous posts in this series, you can find the seven previous posts at this link.

Spring is here, and the weather has been rather glorious so I have attended some weekend workshops and also spent a lot of time walking outside in the glorious weather we’ve been having.

I have also been listening to some absolutely fabulous podcasts and read some really good things here on Substack and so I have decided that this month, I will share three things things that are not really connected, but that have, in some way inspired me to live a better life.

Here, in no particular order, are this month’s 3 Useful Secrets.

Secret no. 1: Small hacks that can make your life better

I came across this viral note by a few days ago and I really love the simple tips the note offered. I think for me, the one about going out of the house even if it is for just five minutes is the most important one. Working from home, I can, on some days, simply forget about the outside world and then feel a bit crabby. A walk outside, regardless of the weather, always works wonders on improving my mood.

She also recommends splashing cold water on your face, which is amazing, and even more amazing for me is a cold shower. I saw another note recently, which I cannot find anymore, that suggested a number of alternatives to expensive and trendy wellness hacks and it mentioned having a really cold shower if you can’t do a cold plunge. I’ve been practicing this all my life, because I have rather low blood pressure and having a cold splash of water all over my body, at the end of the shower helps me wake up in a way that coffee never could [please note that I am not qualified to give medical advice about low blood pressure, or anything related, so this is just something that works for me].

Secret no. 2: A Masterclass in Repair in a New Podcast With & Brené Brown

I’ve been sharing my love for Brené Brown and ’s writing and podcasts for a long time and now two of my favourite leadership experts are back with a new podcast called The Curiosity Shop. The second episode just dropped today and I am halfway through it. In the first episode, which I am sharing here, Adam and Brené (can I call them by their first names, since I’ve been following and reading them for almost a decade?), talk about the falling out they had before they even knew each other properly and how Adam repaired in a way that made Brené reconsider her opinion of him and allowed them to come together in some of the most interesting conversations about leadership out there. And when I talk about leadership, I don’t mean just C-suite leadership, I mean the kind of leadership we all get to do, if we chose to, in our everyday lives. We all lead our lives and we can show up as our best selves or we can phone it in and eventually live with regret. I’d rather do the former, which is why I always learn so much from listening to these conversations. Check them out, if this sounds like something you’d enjoy:

Secret no. 3: Making Art Is Good for Your Health

I remember being ‘bad at drawing and painting’ (and at math) in primary school, which meant that I never thought I would end up sketching and enjoying it — on almost daily basis — in my 50s.

Nine years ago, I bought a book by a sketch artist called Art before breakfast. The book encouraged me to observe the world in a way a sketching artist would, and it gave me permission to spend time doing small and not so great sketches that allows me to pause, stop scrolling on my phone, focus on an activity, my brain becoming to busy to ruminate over negative things. I love not being great at this and still having loads of fun. I actually wrote about this idea of doing things we’re not great at in one of my earliest posts on Substack.

I’ve heard people say to me recently, I couldn’t do this, I am bad at it, and I will reply, I too am bad at it, but practice makes me a bit better and it is loads of fun, plus no one really cares. And if you do want to get better at it, there are gazillion free resources on the Internet, including You Tube tutorials ( I will link to a few in the footnotes1).

What is also fun, is being creative in the company of other people and there are communities here on Substack you could join for a small fee, like the wonderful Introvert Drawing Club run by the lovely . I regularly join or watch the recordings of the group drawing sessions, and while my drawings are usually truly awful, I have an absolute blast making them and that is what counts, in my book.

Here are some key reasons drawing (and making art in general) is good for your health (and brain)2:

• Strengthens brain function and focus: Drawing activates multiple areas of the brain at once: visual processing, motor skills, and memory. This helps improve concentration, problem-solving, and overall cognitive flexibility.

• Reduces stress and regulates emotions: The repetitive, absorbing nature of sketching can calm the nervous system, lower cortisol levels, and provide a non-verbal way to process complex feelings (Here is an example of how I’ve seen this work in practice: My 1st coach would make me draw for 1-2 minutes at the start of a session, so I could calm down, if I came into a session stressed or tired from a busy work day).

• Enhances creativity and self-expression: Making art builds your ability to think in new ways, tolerate ambiguity, and express ideas or experiences that are difficult to put into words, which supports both mental resilience and personal insight.

So, go one, give it a try and share some of your sketches and drawings in notes and posts, if you write here on Substack.

And finally, a shout out to a fellow coach and a friend who inspires me with her sketching and drawing and who I go to hang out with on a boat ride on the Seine while she was doing her Paris sketchbook retreat last October (you could join here - read about it here).

So this is it for this month’s 3 Useful Secrets. I hope you enjoyed the post. If you did, be a darling and click the hearth button at the bottom (or top) of the post, restack so others will find me and share your thoughts about the secrets and if you found them useful. I’d also love to hear about your ‘secrets.

If you are not yet a Subscriber, hit the button now, you know you want to.

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And if you want to know more about my coaching work, press reply and send me an email or drop a message in the DMs here on Substack. I will be delighted to hear from you. Until next time, enjoy the sun and the flowers that the spring has brought our way.

PS. No machine or human (other than me) has copy edited this post, so there may be typos. If you notice them, do let me know and I will happily correct them.

But I do admit that I may have set my goals to high and may need to revisit them. Now, you could also be reading this at the end of March 2027 and thinking, I really don’t need to know all this, and I don’t care since I never read your posts on the day they are published. Fair enough, I appreciate that you are reading this in the first place.

And now, for this month’s 3 Useful Secrets. I’ve been thinking a lot about values and how understanding our own top values can help us make sense of both moments of fulfillment and frustration, they can offer guidance when we are faced with making a difficult decision and why knowing them can make our lives easier overall.

Personal values can be defined as the principles and beliefs that guide an individual's behavior and decision-making, reflecting what is important to them and contributing to their sense of authenticity and alignment with long-term aspirations.

Values are not the same as beliefs, but they are closely connected. This article here offers more insights on the difference between the two.

Values are also not moral rankings of good or bad; they are personal priorities. What matters deeply to you may not matter to someone else, and that difference doesn’t make either of you right or wrong, it simply reflects different internal compasses.

Secret no. 1: Values clashes are often what exhaust us (not the workload, not the other person)

If you are a person who is familiar with your values, how well do you know the values of your organisation or your partner? Much of our ongoing frustration, at work and in relationships, isn’t about competence or compatibility. It’s about values misalignment.

A few clean contrasts:

• You value depth and thoughtfulness → your organisation (or partner) values speed and efficiency.

• You value integrity and nuance → leadership (or a family member) values keeping the peace or political convenience.

• You value autonomy → the role (or dynamic) requires constant approval-seeking or over-explaining.

Over time, this doesn’t just irritate you. It shows up in the body: fatigue, tightness, cynicism, withdrawal, loss of motivation.

It can be even more complicated at times, your partner and you may both put a lot of value on place of living, but she wants to live in the mountains and you prefer urban setting. This misalignment may cause stress in relationship if one of you has to give up on their preference without a conversation around the sacrifice that this may represent.

Suzy Welch, a researcher and author of the book Becoming You, has developed a detailed methodology to help you identify your values through a detailed questionnaire that will rank what Welch believes to be sixteen key values that people hold. The results show that while certain values may be important to you, you may not be able to express those values in your day to day life due to a number of constraints and that shows up as the above mentioned stress.

In a very interesting conversation with on the Happiness podcast, Welch talks about her research and the importance of knowing your values. I have found this to be a fascinating and useful resource for both myself and my coaching practice.

One thing I disagree with Welch about is the idea that one’s life purpose lies at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes and your economically viable interests. While I agree on the values and aptitudes, I believe one can have a life purpose that doesn’t make them money. Maybe people have been lucky and courageous enough to live their purpose by doing pro-bono or part-time work.

Secret no. 2: If Everything Matters, Nothing Guides You: Why You Can’t Live by Ten Core Values

Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead work offers a useful exercise1 where you narrow a long list down to two core values. That constraint is powerful.

About eight years ago, I did this exercise with my coach. He helped me narrow my list from 23 values down to three. After identifying the 20+ things I thought were essential, he made me reduce them to eight. Then he asked me to choose between the first two on the list and eliminate one. He would then add another value back in, and again, one had to go.

It was hard. At moments, I protested that it was impossible. But in the end, I arrived at three: critical thinking, justice, and integrity. I still believe these are central to who I am, though today I might name them slightly differently while meaning the same thing. I’m not sure I could reduce them to two.

In her more recent book, Strong Ground, Brown deepens her work on values. She uses the metaphor of physical training: “strong ground” is the ability to stay tethered to your values, creating a stable internal foundation that becomes a springboard for action, rather than relying on external validation.

She also introduces the idea of “inefficient muscles”, how, under pressure, leaders can default to over-controlling, pleasing, or avoiding difficult conversations instead of acting from a grounded and confident place.

As part of promoting the book, Brown sat down with organisational psychologist to discuss the importance of knowing and living one’s values.. Here is a link to the first in a series of conversation between Brown and Grant2:

Here is what I took from that conversation:

If you can’t translate a value into behaviour, it’s decorative.

If you say you value courage, what does that look like this week?
If you value freedom, what are you no longer willing to tolerate?
If you value care, where are you overextending?

Sometimes we claim to value something because it sounds good socially, not because we are willing to pay the price for it. But if we truly value something, we will eventually be willing to defend it, even when it costs us.

Secret no. 3: What your envy and your resistance reveal your values

This secret includes a practical value mining exercise that you can easily do by yourself. You will be asked to list qualities you envy/admire in other people and qualities or aspects of their lives you wouldn’t want to have. This information is revealing as admiration and irritation are emotional signals, not random reactions. What you deeply admire often points to values you long to express more fully in your own life, and what consistently irritates you usually reveals a value you feel is being violated, either in others or in yourself.

Part A: Famous or fictional people

Think of:

• 3 people you admire.

• 3 qualities or aspects of their life you envy3.

• 3 things about their life they would not want.

If you envy:

• Their wealth → you may value financial security and/or luxury.

• Their independence → you may value autonomy.

• Their intellectual rigour → you may value mastery.

• Their public voice → you may value impact or visibility.

• Their calm presence → you may value stability or groundedness.

The “wouldn’t want” list is equally revealing:

• You don’t want constant exposure → maybe privacy matters.

• You don’t want extreme pressure to be always perfect → maybe you value your freedom.

• You don’t want to travel as much as they do → maybe you prefer a routine lifestyle with as little excitement as possible.

Part B: People you actually know

This time, think of 3 people you know (friends, family members, close colleagues) and list the things you envy about their lives and what you don’t want. Look for things that resonate and things that you’d find annoying. Look for patters, more than single answers. If “freedom” shows up in different forms three times, pay attention. You may wish to use Suzy Welch’s or Brene Brown’s list of values to give your values a name. Or you want to give it a name that is purely your own. It doesn’t matter, the important thing is that you know what it represents.

And once you’ve got a list, try and do what Brown and Grant say, and get the final list down to two or three top values max. You can use this list in decisions about how you’re spending your time today, this week, this month or this year. Your values are decision filters. Once you name them, choices become clearer, and trade-offs become conscious.

This is it for this month’s 3 Useful Secrets. As always, if you enjoyed this post, please click the heart button and the recycle button as those help other readers discover my writing.

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And if you are still reading and would love to explore values beyond this post and its resources, you may be interested in signing up for a 90-minute live workshop for women,4 that I’m hosting on March 11. The focus of the workshop is clarifying your core values and using them as a practical compass for decisions.

Here are the details:

📅 March 11
⏱ 90 minutes
📍 Live on Zoom
Two time options:
– 8:00 am UK time (Europe/Africa/Asia friendly)
– 6:30 pm UK time (US friendly)
💶 €39

You can register your interest here: https://tinyurl.com/333u7482

Since I celebrated my one year Substack anniversary, last August, about a hundred new people have found their way here, which feels like a good moment to pause and properly reintroduce myself—and this space.

If you subscribed to Sharing Secrets recently: Welcome!

If you’ve been here for a while: Thank you for sticking around, I am truly grateful.

What this Substack is (and isn’t)

If you’re interested in personal growth and leadership but feel skeptical about quick fixes, fake certainty, and the more hype-driven corners of the self-help world, you’re in the right place.

I started writing sharing Sharing Secrets in August 2024, because I wanted to create a space where I could share resources, the way I do with friends in emails, WhatsApp messages or in face to face conversations. Everything I share here is shaped by lived experience, not just my work as a coach, but as a human who keeps trying new things, getting them wrong, learning, and trying again. Nothing here is generic or aspirational for the sake of it. Even when I refer to theory or research, it is really because I believe it has very practical implications for my life and for the lives of people around me.

I share ideas, resources, books, articles, and podcasts that have genuinely helped me think more clearly, live with greater alignment, and navigate work and life in a way that is aligned with my values and life purpose. What you’ll find here is honesty, transparency, and generosity. I don’t offer empty promises, and I won’t try to sell you snake oil1.

All posts are free, but I won’t lie, it makes me very happy when someone becomes a paid subscriber, and I mostly use the small amount I have earned so far to pay for Substack subscriptions to writers who are wiser than me.

What you’ll find here, practically speaking

I currently aim to publish two posts a month (and have recently decided to try and to post every 2nd and 4th Monday of the month — I am putting this here, as I really need outer accountability to stick to this). One of them is a recurring series I started in August last year called Three Useful Secrets (there are already 6 posts you can check out at this link).

Each Three Useful Secrets post is a a short post focused on a personal growth or leadership theme, where I share three resources, ideas, or practices that have made a real difference in my life recently, what worked, what didn’t, and what I learned in the process.

The intention is simple: to offer things that feel real, usable, and worth your time. What makes me really happy is when readers comment that they have tried something I recommended in the post and liked it, or if they tell me that they were familiar with the secret I shared and confirm that it is a truly useful one. Here is the most recent post in the series:

A bit about me (in case you are new here)

I’m Liza (pronounced Leeza (yes, I really care about how my name is pronounced). I’m a coach certified by the Co-Active Training Institute and the International Coaching Federation, and I also hold a PhD in Social Anthropology.

I’ve spent over twenty years working first in academia, and later in research-for-development, mostly around inclusion and equality, with a strong focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. My PhD looked at the social meaning of food in urban Burkina Faso (which is why am also part of a Substack group called Mastermind for Food Writers). Later, I worked in Ethiopia and Uganda on water governance, small-scale agriculture, participatory methods, and gender equality. I lived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia between 2010 and 2020, and just before the pandemic, I decided moved to Stockholm for a job that looked perfect on paper and felt far more complicated in real life.

In 2022, I quit a well-paid international job and started again, as an independent consultant and professional coach. After a year moving between Portugal, Spain, and Italy with my then partner, I settled in Lisbon. Ten months after moving to Lisbon, my partner and I parted ways, and since then I have been building a new life by myself, in a new place and a new language.

Learning, noticing patterns, and making sense of experience has always been central to how I work and how I live.

Why this Substack exists

Ask my friends or colleagues and they’ll tell you I’m an enthusiastic sharer of links: podcasts, articles, books, ideas. I read a lot, listen a lot, and regularly think, This would be perfect for X, or this would annoy Y but they might secretly benefit from it. I send a lot of unsolicited messages.

Once I started coaching, this habit intensified. Between sessions, I’d come across something that felt tailor-made for a client, write an email, then realised it might be useful for someone else too. And someone else. At some point, I figured that it may makes sense to start a newsletter and that way reach/help more people.

So, this is is that place. I think of it as a kind of shared notebook, or a WhatsApp group you can mute (or even archive) and return to when you actually want to read.

Safe, but not always comfortable

As I often say to coaching clients: I care deeply about creating safe spaces, but that doesn’t mean comfortable ones. Growth and transformation have a cost. We usually have to leave something behind to make space for something new.

Starting this Substack meant leaving behind a long-standing fear of making my writing public. I’m doing it anyway, in the hope of creating space for connection, reflection, and the occasional useful nudge.

A note on my other Substack

If you’ve also come across my other publication — Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales —that one leans more toward storytelling, food, place, and anthropology.

Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales

An Anthropologist’s Fieldnotes from Everyday Life in Europe and Africa

By Liza Debevec

Sharing Secrets is where I focus more explicitly on personal growth, leadership, and the inner work that shapes how we show up in the world.

They’re related, but they serve different moods and needs.

What’s coming up: a Values workshop in March

If you are still reading, thank you!

Here is one concrete thing I’m excited about: on March 11, I’ll be running a 90-minute standalone workshop on values. As always, I will run the event in two time zones to accommodated readers from different time zones. The sessions are limited to 10 participants max for each of the two sessions and they will not be recorded.

This grew out of my end-of-year reflection series, where participants were often surprised to see how clearly their values show up in daily life, and how feeling “off” or stuck is often linked to living in conflict with what actually matters to us.

The workshop is practical, reflective, and designed to leave you with more clarity you can actually use. If that already sounds interesting, you can register your interest here, otherwise, you’re welcome to reach out by replying to this email or using the messages section of the Substack app.

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And as always, if you enjoyed reading this even a bit, and would like to help me grow this space, please press the ❤️ symbol and the recycle symbol, as it really helps others discover this post. There are over 50 million people who have a Substack account, and there are just over 550 of you subscribing to this newsletter, so I would love to see this read by a few more people.

Liza

I even made a concrete New Year’s resolution to create a quarterly publication schedule for my two Substack publications. The idea is simple: one piece every two weeks on each publication, using alternate weeks, so that readers who subscribe to both get a post every week. If you are not yet familiar with my other publication,Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales, do check it out and consider subscribing.

Another part of this plan is to have at least four weeks of content ready at any given time. That has been my hope since the start of my Substack journey, even if, in practice, my publishing efforts have often been closer to the raccoon-on-meth-stacking-the-dishwasher meme than anything remotely methodical. I am, however, hopeful.

This month’s edition of Three Useful Secrets is about hope, not in a grand sense, but in the everyday sense of trying again, staying curious, and finding small practices that make life feel a little more alive.

Secret no. 1

What to do when New Year’s resolutions fail

We have all done it. We have made ambitious New Year’s resolutions to eat healthily, exercise every day, do a dry January, or in my case, a no-cheese January. And then, not very far into the month, we find ourselves on the couch with a big block of cheese in our hands, wondering who that overly optimistic person writing resolutions on January 1st was.

Last year, in my January post, I wrote about goals, and you can read about them here.

What I want to emphasise this year is the importance of preparing for failure when trying to build new habits, or for relapse into habits we are trying to leave behind. It is rarely all or nothing, even though we often frame it that way. When we aim for perfection and use words like always and never, we set ourselves up for disappointment.

A more helpful approach is to treat every day as a reset, in the way people in recovery from addiction often do. Every single day, you try to do your best, and then you try again the next day. This idea, of doing your best and starting again every day, is something I was reminded of when I read The Four Agreements, a well known book, which I somehow only discovered in spring 2025.

So when we slip up, instead of immediately beating ourselves up, we can pause and get curious about what happened. We can also try to anticipate how we might respond the next time we meet the same obstacle, whether that obstacle shows up in our health habits, our work, or our relationships.

Some of the most helpful thinking on goal-setting I have come across comes from Oliver Burkeman and his Imperfectionist newsletter, which I wrote about in last year’s post. In case you do not feel like revisiting it, here is the quote that stayed with me about minimum, target, and outrageous goals:

“For any goal you’re aiming to accomplish, this approach involves setting three levels of success: the Minimum, which you’re confident you’ll achieve; the Target, which is realistic but a bit of a stretch; and an Outrageous outcome, which you’d be thrilled and a little surprised if you could manage. (For a writer, these three goals might be a hundred words a day, 750 words a day, and 2,000 words a day.) When you do things this way, abject failure becomes rare; meanwhile, achieving your minimum goal might inspire you to shoot for the target goal, and then maybe even the outrageous one. This is the best kind of stretching yourself. Not because you’ve decided you won’t get to count as an adequate human if you don’t make the grade, but because you’ve already made the grade by meeting the minimum goal, and now everything else is extra.”

In full transparency, I’ve decided that in January I’d be spending 25 minutes a day learning Portuguese verbs. I have a funny relationship with Portuguese, which is a language I learned “on the street” and have never studied formally. So while I am able to follow most conversations, have read several non-fiction books, and can even hold a conversation on the phone with some random call center trying to locate my lost luggage, my grammar, especially my verbs, is all over the place.

And so the goal is practicing verb conjugation. And as I am writing this on January 8th (yes, well ahead of publication!), I have only managed to meet the target on two days. On several days I have done zero, and on some days I only listened to a five-minute story using the verb I am trying to master.

Using the MTO approach, I will make a five-minute story the minimum goal; the outrageous one will be 30 minutes of listening, writing, and repeating the conjugations aloud; and the midpoint will be 15 minutes (listening to a story and writing one conjugation in the present and simple past tense). Let’s see how I fare.

Secret no. 2

Take yourself out on a solo artist’s date

Elsewhere in this publication, I have written about the practice of morning pages, an almost therapeutic form of writing developed by Julia Cameron. Morning pages are the essential daily practice of The Artist’s Way programme, and another important part of that programme is the weekly artist’s date.

I have been doing both planned and spontaneous artist’s dates for years, ever since I first encountered Julia Cameron’s work through a spin-off book from The Artist’s Way, about fifteen years ago, called The Sound of Paper. At the time, I was living in Addis Ababa, where there were limited museums, galleries, or cafés where one might sit and write. I often created artist’s dates at home, or reserved them for travel to places that felt more “artsy”. Looking back, that was a fairly narrow understanding of what an artist’s date could be.

Since moving back to Europe, my artist’s dates have taken many forms. They have happened at food markets, in parks, in restaurants, in galleries and museums, and sometimes simply on a bench at a local market.

In my version, all you need for an artist’s date is a notebook and a pen or pencil. These days, my artist’s dates often involve sketching rather than writing or reading. There is no expectation of producing anything good, or useful, or finished.

Julia Cameron describes an artist’s date like this:

“An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against interlopers. You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, also known as your creative child.”

Sometimes I plan artist’s dates in advance when I notice an opportunity that sparks my interest. A few weeks after this post is published, I will be going to a rehearsal of the Gulbenkian Symphony Orchestra for a music and sketching session. I am fairly sure my sketches will not be impressive, but that is not the point. The point is listening, watching, and giving my full attention to something for its own sake. I already know my creative child will have a lot of fun.

I also hope to write about some of the places where I have taken myself on artist’s dates in my other publication, Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales, partly to encourage readers to visit places that have enchanted me, and partly to show how ordinary and accessible artist’s dates can be.

Secret no. 3

Coaching yourself with tarot card prompts

I can imagine what some of you might be thinking. She has moved over to the dark side. I thought she was a rational human being, and now she is talking about tarot. You are welcome to think that, but hear me out first.

Over the past couple of months, I have been playing with tarot in two different ways. One is through role-playing, where I turn into a tarot reader with the mysterious name of Madame Madame and read cards for friends. The other is more private, pulling cards for myself and using them as prompts for self-inquiry.

As a coach, I often offer clients an open question, one that is not easy to answer without some pondering, to sit with between sessions. The question is usually about something that increases self-awareness and helps the client reflect on what really matters to them. Tarot cards can serve a similar function. Rather than predicting the future, they often slow your thinking down and turn the question back towards you.

I used to be skeptical of tarot because I associated it with fortune telling and a high level of gullibility. The more I have learned about it, the more I see the cards as a way of asking uncomfortable or unexpected questions. They sometimes point in directions you would rather avoid, which is often exactly why they are useful.

The book I use for interpretation offers an inquiry question with every card1, and I have been challenging myself to spend time with some of these questions, even when they feel inconvenient or unsettling.

There is also something playful about tarot. I love the imagery, and lately I have been using the cards as inspiration for sketching. I will share some of the drawings I made while I was sick over the holidays and did not have much energy for anything else.

If you are curious, there is such a thing as a tarot card for the year2. This year’s card is the Wheel of Fortune. There is also a yearly card connected to every person’s birth date. My card for 2026 is the Star. If you feel like it, see here how to calculate yours. Treat it lightly, have fun with it, and see what questions it brings up. What have you got to lose?

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This is it for January’s Useful Secrets. I hope they offered you some inspiration and food for thought. Let me know if you have tried any of these out in the past and what has worked for you.

If you enjoyed this post, consider giving it a like, writing a comment and sharing the post with a friend, as that helps more people discover my writing.

The migraine

About a month ago, just as I was scheduled to do a Substack LIVE, I had a really bad migraine attack and was bedridden for about 48 hours. I’ve had migraines since my teenage years, and over the decades I’ve found ways to prevent them at times and to deal with the symptoms more or less successfully at others. Often, the only thing to do is to lie in bed and wait for it to pass.

This particular migraine felt connected to a very stiff neck, and I had the sense that a neck rub could help. But I live alone, and I was too sick to get myself to a massage specialist. And yet, I have a lovely neighbour who has become a friend over the ten months we’ve known each other. We’ve supported each other through some tough situations, and on the first day of my migraine she asked if I needed anything. I responded, no, no, I will be OK. Except I wasn’t going to be OK.

It took me another 24 hours of feeling utterly miserable, and rather sorry for myself, before I got over some sort of stubborn sense of pride and self-sufficiency and sent her a message saying: I need help. Could you come and rub my neck? I feel like it might be the source of my misery. She came over and gave a wonderful neck and shoulder rub that made me feel much better, and over the course of the next eight hours, my migraine was finally gone.

A pattern

You see, I am not very good at asking for help. I really have to hit rock bottom to believe I deserve help. I am much better at offering it. I think this is partly my co-dependent nature. I come from a line of women who take care of themselves, don’t ask for help, and help others even when that help is not wanted or needed. There is also the belief that I need to help myself—that no one else will help me, not even God. I was brought up by atheist parents who instilled in me the idea that I can only really rely on myself, and throughout my life I have taken great pride in being independent and self-sufficient. In my books, only serious, life-threatening situations merit asking for help, otherwise I better do my best to take care of it myself.

The maze

As part of a leadership programme I’ve been attending since April last year, I’ve been learning to stretch myself around asking for help. During the first retreat, we did a group exercise where our eyes were tied and we were put inside a maze, where all we could do was hold on to a rope and we were asked to find our way out. We had to find our way out while our eyes were closed, and we were told we were only allowed to speak if we were asking for help.

I was finding my way up and down the maze, holding on to the rope, as per the instructions and not getting anywhere. I would raise my hand every now and again, trying to get the attention of the facilitators. Each time, someone would come to me and ask, Are you asking for help? And I would reply, no, no, I just want to ask a question. The response was always the same: You can’t speak unless you’re asking for help.

So I spent probably 45 minutes walking around inside this maze, raising my hand over and over again, being asked Are you asking for help? and replying each time, no, no, I just have a question. When the exercise ended, out of the fourteen participants, I was one of the four or five who stayed inside the maze. The way out was simply to say, I need help/I am asking for help. Once you said that, you were allowed to exit the maze.

What I learned was that it is genuinely difficult for me to say those words: I am asking for help. I need your help.

Practicing

One of my “stretches” this year, then, has been to practice exactly that.

Since that first retreat, I’ve been practicing asking for help in everyday life. Living in Lisbon, single, in a country where I have a limited number of friends and no family who would be “expected” to help me, has made this particularly challenging. One example was when a friend offered me a heavy piece of electrical equipment that could improve my living conditions, with the small complication that I needed to transport it from her place to mine, both apartments on the third floor, with no elevator. It took me over a month to gather the courage to ask in my biodanza group whether any of the men might help me move it. When I finally asked, not one, not two, but three men offered help. I was spoiled for choice.

A few weeks later, I asked another friend to help me mount some paintings and photo frames on the walls of my apartment. It was his wife who told me he would be delighted to do it. I was skeptical, but he really was happy to help. When we talked about my difficulty asking for help, he said something that stopped me in my tracks: Asking for help makes people feel special. Honestly. After all the work I’ve done trying to understand human beings, this turned out to be one of my bigger blind spots.

Control

Because when people ask, Do you need help? my instinct is to reply, No no, I’ll be fine, don’t worry. What I am actually hoping is that they will somehow read my mind and do exactly what is needed. But let’s be realistic, how often does that actually happen?

There is also the fear of rejection. If you don’t ask, you can’t be turned down. But by not asking, you also make it impossible to receive help1. People are not mind-readers.

Another reason I struggle with asking for help is that I often have a clear idea of what help should look like. I have asked for help in the past and had people do things in ways that created more work for me, not less. Many women (maybe also men) will recognise this experience when it comes to asking one’s spouse to help with house chores. And while that frustration is real, I also recognise that my need to control the outcome plays a role here. Being a control freak does not make asking for help any easier.

One of the things I’ve decided to practice in 2026 is letting go of control and allowing others to take care of me.

Getting sick on New Year’s Eve and staying ill for almost a week while visiting my family turned out to be an effective training ground for that. Apart from getting myself to the bathroom, I was unable to do much for several days. I accepted help and let go of expectations.

Another exercise in letting go of control came when my bag went missing on my way to Slovenia and only appeared two weeks later, at the end of my stay. After several failed attempts to get Lisbon airport to send it to me, I stopped fighting it. I decided the bag would turn up when it did, and if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. In the end, it arrived. I also realised I hadn’t truly missed much from it, apart from the presents for my family, which all survived the journey, including salted cod, a story for another post.

Being held

One more practice in asking for help and letting go of control came at the end of December, when I tried watsu2. It is a form of hydrotherapy where you float in warm water while being held and moved by a practitioner. It was recommended to me by my coaching certification instructor, who is an experienced somatic coach and who has known me for over a year and said, very simply, that it was time I let someone hold me and take care of me, with no strings attached.

During the one-hour session, the watsu practitioner supports you completely. You are fitted with floaters around your knees and under your neck and head, so your body can float without effort. The practitioner holds you and moves you gently through the water. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to hold yourself up, anticipate what comes next, or adjust your body to make things easier for the other person. You are carried.

I realised how rare that experience is for me. I have rarely felt that level of care and attention, perhaps not since infancy. Some people describe watsu as floating in the uterus. I don’t know about that, but I do know that something in me softened. I felt safe, supported, and able to receive without needing to manage the experience.

All I can say is that it felt deeply nourishing, and I would happily allow myself to be held that way again.

So what am I learning about my difficulty with asking for help?

That it is not a character flaw, but a learned pattern, one I am learning to recognise as it shows up. In my leadership programme, we’re encouraged to revise statements like “I’m bad at this” to “Until now, I’ve been bad at this.” This reframing shifts the issue away from something fixed about who we are and towards something learned and therefore changeable. In that spirit, I recognise that I used to be bad at asking for help, and I am learning to get better at it.

How about you?

Are you better at giving help than receiving it?
Do you expect people to read your mind instead of telling them what you need?
Do you believe you deserve help?

I would love to hear from you in the comments.

But before I get to the three secrets I want to share with you, I want to bring your attention to a post I did at the end of last year, which contains simple steps for doing an end-of-year review and creating a vision for the year to come. This is a simple self-paced exercise that you can do over the holidays or early in the new year.

I hope you’ll find this useful:

And now for the three secrets for this holiday season.

Secret 1: My favourite chocolate cake

If you subscribe to my other Substack, Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales, you will know that I am a foodie, that I love reading and writing about food, and that I also love to cook and eat. I am also a member of the Substack community called Mastermind for Food Writers, where I host a free monthly Zoom meeting for the members who are based in Europe, Africa and Asia–Pacific time zones. The lovely , who is the mastermind behind the Mastermind group, hosts the US time-zone meetings and writes beautifully at Let’s Get Lost Substack.

And so, for the first secret this month, I want to share my favourite chocolate cake recipe from my favourite food writer, Diana Henry. This recipe comes from her book How to Eat a Peach (which is an absolutely delightful book), and I’ve been making this cake since 2020 when I first purchased the book. During the first months of the pandemic, while I was stuck in Slovenia, I made this cake regularly and then had friends come to collect their share in a socially distanced manner.

This is what the cake looks like in Diana Henry’s book. When I make it, the cake often collapses after rising to the height in this photo, but it nevertheless tastes amazing. I am sharing Henry’s recipe in its original form with some annotations from my own experience with the cake.

Ingredients
200g plain chocolate (70% dark chocolate)
125ml strong-flavoured extra-virgin olive oil (My note: it should be strong-flavoured but not as strong as the pungent olive oil that I bring from my Croatian island holidays)
200g caster sugar
2 tablespoons ground almonds or hazelnuts (My note: I prefer hazelnuts)
5 large eggs, separated

TO SERVE
Icing sugar for dusting, and crème fraîche (My note: in the absence of crème fraîche, I found whipped cream or even vanilla ice cream worked equally well)

Preparation

METHOD
Step 1
Heat the oven to 180°C / fan 160°C, then butter and line the base of a 20cm spring-form cake tin. Break the chocolate into pieces and place in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir a little to help the chocolate melt.

Step 2
Once it’s completely melted, whisk in the oil in a steady stream, then add two-thirds of the sugar, whisking to help the sugar dissolve in the heat of the chocolate. Remove from the heat. Stir in the ground nuts, a pinch of flaked sea salt, and the egg yolks (My note: if I remember correctly, eggs at room temperature worked best, not straight from the fridge).

Step 3
Put the egg whites into a scrupulously clean bowl with about one-third of the remaining sugar. Beat with an electric whisk until the whites are no longer clear, then add another third of the sugar. Continue beating until the whites have really increased in volume, then add the rest of the sugar and beat until you have medium peaks (firm with tips that droop slightly). (My note: If, like me, you’re not a professional baker, keep beating the whites — and don’t get stressed if they don’t firm up as quickly as someone as impatient as I am would want them to.)

Step 4
Using a really large metal spoon, loosen the chocolate mixture by folding in a big tablespoon of the egg whites, then fold in the rest carefully so that you don’t lose air. Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes. Test by inserting a fine skewer into the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean, with no batter attached, the cake is ready. (My note: I have not really figured out whether the metal spoon makes a difference; a couple of times I feel like I had better results with a wooden spoon.)

Step 5
Leave it to cool in the tin — it will deflate and crack a lot, but that is fine (as she says, it will deflate/collapse, but it will still be absolutely delicious). Carefully turn it out and remove the paper. Put it on a plate and dust with icing sugar before serving. This is a chic, grown-up cake — it needs nothing more than some crème fraîche on the side.

Here are a couple of photos of my version of the cake, as I took it out of the oven.

Secret 2: A Body Scan for Hard Days

During the holidays, times may be stressful, so I find that taking a ten-minute break from family and friends and checking in with ourselves/our bodies can be a great thing. Body scans are a great mindfulness exercise for anyone, but especially those who are averse to classic forms of meditation. So I am sharing a link to one of my favourite body scans available out there. It is from the On Being podcast with Krista Tippett. Krista’s guest, Christine Runyan, offered a Compassionate Body Scan that was not only super relaxing and comforting but is also inclusive in that it recognises that our bodies may differ. While I am an able-bodied person, I was utterly moved by these words when I first heard the instructions:

“And finally, I’m going to guide from my body, which I’m very grateful has two arms, two hands, two legs, two feet. I know that is not true of all bodies. So please make those adjustments as works in your body.”

Here is the link to the audio recording — I hope you’ll give it a try. Do let me know in the comments if you’ve enjoyed it.

Secret 3: Music for Quiet Evenings (During Holidays and the Rest of the Year)

Finally, what would the holidays be without some music. I am not someone who likes to put together playlists, so there isn’t one coming. But occasionally I come across a somewhat obscure album that I absolutely love. And this one comes from my across-the-street neighbour, Francisco Sassetti, whom I’ve had the privilege to hear play his compositions both in his lovely home at a couple of Secret Dinners events and also on stage at the Centro Cultural in the Belém neighbourhood of Lisbon. You could listen to this while baking your Diana Henry chocolate cake, during the end-of-year review, or while creating your vision for 2026.

80% Birthday Discount

I hope these three not-so-secret secrets bring you some joy at the end of the year. Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Also, as a form of requesting outer accountability from my readers, here is an announcement:

I’m taking a short break from Substack over the holidays to step back from screens and focus on rest and writing offline. I’ll be back on January 5th. Wishing you a gentle end of the year.

**********

If you enjoyed this post, please click like, restack, or share it with someone who might appreciate it too. Your reflections and support help more people find this space.

(If you’re commenting, please also do me the favor of hitting the heart button ❤️ for algorithmic purposes. Thank you.)

And don’t worry, the new regular monthly feature, 3 Useful Secrets, will be making its way to you in time for Christmas.

If you could have a superpower for one day, what would it be?
I would love to be able to spread love to people who are hurt and therefore angry with the world and themselves, and who act out in violence. People who hurt others, to put my hand on their heart and let them feel that they are loved and lovable, and that they don’t need to hurt other people. To heal whatever wound they have that makes them act out with violence and hate. This may sound super cheesy, but I really do believe that if everyone believed that they were loveable and loved, the world would be a better place.

Which celebrity would you swap lives with for a week?
Not sure if these people are celebrities or not (because I guess I believe there is a difference between a famous person and a celebrity), but there are three women who come to mind: Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, or Daphne Sheldrick, who all worked in wildlife conservation in Africa in one way or another. If I could live a parallel life, I would dedicate it to working in wildlife conservation in Africa, or more particularly on human–wildlife conflict (I do love both people and animals).

What book do you wish you could read again for the first time?
I honestly don’t know. I am not much of a re-reader, so I guess the answer is none.

If you could have dinner with an author, who would it be?
Either Annie Ernaux or Deborah Levy. I only discovered Ernaux’s writing in 2023, but by now I have read seven of her books. They are all rather short, but I really love her writing and her honest, raw storytelling. And with Levy, I particularly love her Living Autobiography trilogy, but I also loved Swimming Home and Hot Milk.

Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with?
I would really not want to be stuck in an elevator with anyone. As a survivor of a terrorist attack, I still have remnants of the belief that I was meant to die in a dramatic way, so I’d probably be quite worried if that happened. So it would have to be someone really calm and good at figuring out smart solutions. So maybe MacGyver. Though not if he was also a mansplainer.

Who is your favourite author?
It would be hard to choose just one. I love reading so much. I already mentioned the two women authors who kind of get my top billing. But I also love Haitian/Canadian writer Dany Laferrière, Bosnian/American writer Aleksandar Hemon, and Angolan/Portuguese writer José Eduardo Agualusa. Agualusa now lives between Lisbon and Mozambique, and his Lisbon home must be somewhere near mine, as I sometimes see him in my favourite tasca (the Portuguese name for a simple restaurant). One time I actually went up to him to say hello (I am not usually that forward or brave). He seemed pleased to be greeted, but his wife, who was sitting next to him, seemed even happier, she really beamed as I said I was a big fan.

If you could steal anything without ever getting caught, what would it be?
Nuclear codes from the White House, so I could destroy them before the crazy guy living there could use them. Or money from Elon Musk’s and Jeff Bezos’s accounts, so I could use it to help end world hunger.

If you could escape and live in the world of any book, which one would you choose?
I think probably a children’s book. Not sure which, possibly Pippi Longstocking. Or Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. I read it a long time ago, but I remember being blown away by it and wishing I could live a life that amazing.

Do you have any regrets?
Not off the top of my head. Maybe I could remember some at 3 a.m. in the morning, when all the monsters crawl out from under the bed to prevent me from sleeping.

Do you believe in karma?
Not really. I kind of wish I did, though. It would be easier to let go of some resentments if I could imagine that people will get what’s due.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
You are amazing, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. And don’t be so serious; have fun. Also, show off your great legs more, you’ll get a lot more cellulite later. I guess that could also be the answer to the regret question.

So there you go. I hope you learned a thing or two that was interesting—maybe you discovered some writers you hadn’t heard of before, or realised that I am even more of a flawed human than you thought.

The Sunshine Blogger Awards are based on the idea that I nominate 11 other people to answer my set of questions, but I am more of a break-the-chain, break-the-rules kind of person. So what I’m offering instead is this: nominate yourself, and answer the questions that Francis asked me, or answer your own questions. Don’t wait for others to give you permission to do what you really want to be doing with your life.

And if you don’t want to write a whole post on this, or don’t write on Substack, do share some the answers to the questions here in the comments- I would love to know what book you’d like to live in, for example.

People who want us to stay small, want us to stay in ‘our lane’. I am done being obedient in this way for the comfort of others.

So, with that, here are my 3 useful secrets for this month. I hope you enjoy them. And I wish for you to shine in all your multitudes and contradictions that you contain.

Secret 1: The 90-Second Wave and Why We Don’t Actually Feel Our Feelings

I love podcasts, and I’ve shared secrets I discovered in podcasts in the two previous editions of this newsletter. This month, I am sharing an insight from one of my top podcasts (probably the one I am most up to date with) — We Can Do Hard Things. It is hosted by Glennon Doyle (author of Untamed), her sister Amanda Doyle (a true intellectual powerhouse), and Abby Wambach, Glennon’s wife and a former US soccer champion.

In a recent episode, they talk about how, when we try to understand the difficult feelings we’re feeling, we often try to put words to them. And by going into our brains, we are actually stepping away from feeling the feelings. We’re trying to (over)think them, which makes us avoid the root issue, and often prolongs the suffering. Here is what Amanda Doyle says:

“A feeling, a real emotion feeling, is like a wave: it builds, it builds, it crests, it crashes, it’s done. That process, good people of America, lasts a maximum of 90 seconds. That is one minute and 30 seconds that that lasts. Why then do we stay up for two hours and 20 minutes sitting with our feelings? It’s because we aren’t feeling our feelings. We are thinking about our feelings — and that is a different thing.”

While they don’t mention the scientist behind this in the podcast, some digging on the internet helped me find that the 90-second rule is a concept popularized by neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. It proposes that the body’s chemical reaction to an emotion lasts only about 90 seconds; anything beyond that is sustained by our thoughts about the event. To use it, you pause for 90 seconds after a trigger, breathe, and allow the physical emotion to pass, without adding more thoughts. That gives you the space to respond with intention, rather than reacting impulsively.

I have found this to be true in my own experience of struggling with grief this past year. When a moment of sadness comes, allowing it to take over for a moment — just letting it wash over me like a wave — has been the most effective way of dealing with it. Not chastising myself for feeling sad again, for not doing better. Just sitting with it. And when I do that, the part of me that needs this sadness is grateful that it was allowed to show up. Then I can go about my day again, and experience other, more uplifting emotions — including joy and excitement.

Secret 2: Visualisation, Felt Sense, and What Happens When the Mind’s Eye Is Blind

Some of my most powerful coaching moments have involved visualisation, witnessing how going on an imaginary inner journey helps clients tackle issues they previously thought unsurmountable. I often use visualisation to help them connect with parts of themselves that aren’t easily accessible when they’re trying to ‘think’ their way through a personal challenge. I ask them to close their eyes and imagine a specific place (often a safe one, but sometimes also more uncomfortable, depending on the topic), and then go on a journey and see what unfolds.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of coaching, I remember that in the beginning, I struggled to visualise anything. I realise that even today, I don’t necessarily imagine new places, but revisit places I am familiar with, or sometimes experience what I believe is meant by a felt sense. Sometimes I see colours (this often happens in therapy sessions, especially when I am doing IFS work and connecting with different parts of my internal family system).

Some clients tell me they cannot visualise anything, particularly those with ADHD (not my specialisation, but recently I’ve had a couple of clients diagnosed in their 40s or 50s). Interestingly, even when they couldn’t visualise, I asked them to simply feel it in their body (embodiment is an important part of my coaching approach), and that sometimes unlocked something meaningful.

It was therefore very interesting for me to read this post by on her personal experience with aphantasia and then watch the YouTube conversation she shared. It seems that 1% to 4% of people are aphantasic, meaning they lack the of ability to produce mental imagery. As I’m sitting here, I am remembering different kitchens in places I have lived (kitchens are emotionally important spaces for me), and I can see them, I suppose in my mind’s eye, but these are kitchens I have actually been in, cooked in, eaten in. And my eyes are open. If I close them, I only see black, but somewhere, at the back of my mind, I can still “see” those kitchens.

I also have no problem remembering the sensation of how it feels to pet my dogs. But I don’t necessarily see them in my minds eye, when I think about that sensation. I do however get overwhelmingly sad, remembering them, since they are no longer alive. But instead of trying to distract myself, I do now try the above mentioned 90-second rule and just let the emotion rise and crash, and then I move on. Sometimes I can watch videos like the one below, have a little cry and then move on (or as my Ecuadorian colleague said the other day: una lloradita y a seguir - it does sound so much better in Spanish).

When I do visualisation or embodiment work with my coach, I often wonder: is my brain feeding me words, or am I really feeling the things I am verbalising?

If anyone reading this has more information — or is willing to share their own experience of what they “see” (or feel) when visualising — I’m very interested.

Secret 3: And Now for Something Completely Different — Hosting My First Food Writers Mastermind

In August, I joined a Substack group called Mastermind for Food Writers, created by , who also writes a wonderful Substack Let’s get lost where she shares spectacular recipes and stories from her nomadic life in a mobile home and on a sailboat.

After attending two of the monthly group calls and really enjoying meeting the writers, Rebecca asked if anyone would be willing to host a second group, one that would work better for Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. I jumped at the opportunity.

You may not know this, but my PhD was in the anthropology of food in Africa (well, technically it was social anthropology, but I used food/cooking/eating to understand social life in urban Burkina Faso). I write about some of that in my second Substack, which you can find here:

Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales

An Anthropologist’s Fieldnotes from Everyday Life in Europe and Africa

By Liza Debevec

And as I mentioned in the above secret, kitchens (and cooking/food) hold great emotional importance for me.

So in November, I hosted my very first Zoom call with three members from Croatia, Australia, and Poland. We had an intimate and powerful conversation about the values that guide our presence here on Substack and elsewhere in life, and about why food is political. You can listen to it here:

Mastermind for Food Writers

Recording and Notes from the November 12 Meeting

To everyone who was able to attend this morning’s mastermind meeting, thank you for being there…

Read more

7 months ago · 12 likes · Liza Debevec

Since then, Rebecca had the brilliant idea that we could continue this in a form of a collaborative post. So we’re cooking something up and hope to serve it sometime soon.

Stay tuned. And if you are a reader who is also a food writer or food-curious, you may want to join the Mastermind for Food Writers (it is run by volunteers and therefore free). I will be hosting another call on December 17.

This is it for this month’s Useful Secrets. I hope you found them interesting and/or inspiring. If you liked the post, be sure to click on the little heart and possibly share the post with a friend/fellow Substack reader. If you haven’t done so yet, please consider becoming a free, or even a paid subscriber.

This month’s Three Useful Secrets post marks that we’re well into the final quarter of the year, a time when many of us feel pulled between looking back and looking forward, between reviewing what was and imagining what could be.

We may feel the urge to get a million things done before the holidays, or wonder whether we’ve achieved anything meaningful. Whether we’re ready to celebrate or commiserate, it’s worth pausing to ask: What really matters to me?

How is what we’re hoping to achieve connected to our values?

In line with that, this month’s secrets explore how understanding your values can help you make peace with your year and create a grounded vision for the one to come.

Secret 1 — Values are the bridge between “today-you” and “future-you”

I often find myself thinking I should be exercising, earning and saving more money, or spending time learning Portuguese verbs, but I end up not doing it.

On the rare occasion that I do make it to the gym outside the weekly session I’ve already scheduled with a personal trainer (and paid for in advance —as I know that I need outer accountability to hold promises to myself), I pair my workouts with podcasts. Recently, I’ve gone back to one of my favourites: Laurie Santos’ Happiness Lab.

A couple of weeks ago, during a brief work trip, I was working out in a gorgeous location in Paris1. The gym is located on a péniche — a boat on the river Seine — and from the pool on its roof, you can see the Eiffel Tower —a great incentive for people who are as uncommitted to physical exercises as I am.

As I was working out, I listened to an episode of The Happiness Lab that caught my attention: “Does the You of Today Hate the You of Tomorrow?” This is how it was described in the announcement:

“We often do things now that will make our lives more difficult or stressful in the future. We spend money when we should save. We eat junk food when we should exercise. We agree to commitments when we should protect our free time. We act so thoughtlessly that it’s almost like we hate our future selves.”

In the episode, Santos, who, in addition to being a podcaster, is a professor at Yale University, talks to UCLA professor Hal Hershfield, whose research shows that when we connect with our future selves, we start acting more mindfully.

“People who wrote to themselves in 20 years’ time exercised nearly one and a half times longer than other participants. Stopping to really engage with our future selves, even through something as simple as writing them a letter, encourages us to treat them much better.”

As a coach, I believe the first step in this process is to understand the things that are important to us by identifying our values.

When you reconnect with your values, you reduce the distance between you and your future self. You remember what will still matter to you a year from now — and that helps your present choices align with your future wellbeing.

Listen to the episode here.

Reflection prompt:

Which of your values do you think your future self will still care deeply about?

Secret 2 — Reflection turns regret into direction

When you review your year through the lens of your values, you stop asking, “Did I do enough?” and start asking, “Did I live in a way that made a difference to me and to people I care about? Did I do things that mattered to me?”

That small shift changes everything. It moves reflection from judgment to clarity and from there, visioning starts to feel less like reinventing yourself and more like continuing a story that already makes sense.

You might also challenge yourself (as a coach, I love giving my clients challenges!) to write 50 things you’re proud of in 2025.
And yes, I know there are still two months left, but why not start celebrating early?

Gretchen Rubin talks about writing a ta-da list instead of a to-do list, a list celebrating achievements rather than tasks.

Try this:

• Take your top three values. For each one, ask: When did I honour it this year? When did I drift from it?

• Notice what you’d like to do differently in the months ahead.

Alternative:
Write a ta-da list with 50 items: from the biggest achievements to the smallest things, like regularly taking out the trash or having a shower every day.

You don’t need to win a Nobel Prize or an Olympic medal to celebrate yourself.

Secret 3 — Visioning is how your future self thanks you

Writing to your future self, or even talking to her through the MIT Future You chatbot, turns your insights into intentions.

When you write that letter, you’re not just setting goals; you’re giving your future self something far more precious, a reminder of who you are when you’re most aligned.

According to a recent New York Times article2, writing yourself a letter is a good way to identify the things in your life that truly matter, as well as those you can let go of.

Prompt:

“Dear future me, here’s what I hope you’ll still remember about what truly matters…”

If you’d like that letter to actually be sent to you in a month, a year, or even several years from now, FutureMe.org promises to do just that. Give it a try.

I hope you find these exercises and links useful.

Support my writing by donating here

And if you feel like you don’t want to do them by yourself, I’m offering something new at the end of this year. Last year, I ran a one-off session on this (which I wrote about here), but this year I’ve expanded it into a three-part event. You can read more about it here:

Coming soon: A Three-Part End-of-Year Workshop Series

If you’d like guided space to explore all this in community, I’m hosting a series of small-group reflective sessions designed to help you end 2025 with clarity and begin 2026 with renewed direction.

The workshop offers a guided journey to:

• Reconnect with your core values — what truly matters

• Reflect on your year through the lens of meaning

• Envision your future self and the year ahead with intention

What you’ll gain:

• Clarity about what gives your life direction

• A kinder, more grounded relationship with your past year

• A realistic, values-aligned vision for 2026

💶 €35 per session
🌟 €79 early-bird for all three (until 7 Nov)
After 7 November: €89 for the full series

1-hour sessions | Small groups | Held online

Morning Group (8 a.m. UK / 9 a.m. CET):
🗓️ November 26 | December 10 | January 7

Evening Group (7 p.m. UK / 8 p.m. CET):
🗓️ November 25 | December 9 | January 6

Sessions will be held online, in small groups, with time for reflection, writing, and conversation.

👉 Register your interest here

Spots are limited, so if this speaks to you, register soon — I’d love to have you join.

This was a wide-ranging dialogue, during which I also ramble a bit, and show up with no-filter (with one or two swear words) — that’s also a chance to get to know me a little better.

In a relaxed conversation centred on what it means to be alive and to flourish, we talk about my leadership journey — what it means to lead, co-lead, co-create, to create from yourself and to create from the other; about living outside your native language for a long time and who you become when you speak in other tongues; about the art of promoting your own work without cringing; about connecting with the body and leading from that place; and about owning your power and being responsible for your impact on others.

You’ll also learn how to politely tell someone in Amharic that what you’re doing is none of their business, and why, while kindness matters, women don’t need to make themselves small just to placate other people’s egos.

The conversation touches on many of the ideas and practices I draw from in my coaching and writing. If you’d like to explore some of the resources mentioned, here are a few:

• Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead — Karen and Henry Kimsey-House

• The Four Agreements — Don Miguel Ruiz — and my related post on Trouble with assumptions

• Daring Greatly and other work by Brené Brown on vulnerability and the courage to choose who we share it with

Since I also mention the Paris event I recently co-created with my fellow leadership coach, I’m sharing a few photos from that beautiful evening as well. If you’d like to attend a similar event in the future — online or in person (in Paris and elsewhere) — feel free to get in touch.

The title of this post, Flucking Flourishing, comes from Lisa’s own Substack and podcast series of the same name — a space for honest, heartful conversations about midlife, creativity, and everything in between. Lisa owns the trademark to Flucking Flourishing, and I encourage you to check out her wonderful work here:

Flucking Flourishing

Mindfully giving the middle finger to ordinary midlife as we enter our Queenager era ✨

By Lisa Bolin 🌸

I hope you’ll enjoy this different kind of post, a conversation that weaves together many threads of what I write about here and the values that are important to me: authenticity, purpose, and what it means to live and lead in alignment.

Watch or listen to the episode here (it is great for when you’re cooking a meal- as you can just listen to us and don’t need to watch me wave my hands while I speak- it does at times look like I am conducting an invisible orchestra or chasing fruit flies).

And don’t worry, the regular Three Useful Secrets feature will still land in your inbox before the end of the month.

I’d love to hear what caught your attention in this conversation.
Are there themes you’d like me to write more about here — or over on my other Substack, Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales, where I share stories about my life in Africa and elsewhere?

If you enjoyed this post, please click like, restack, or share it with someone who might appreciate it too. Your reflections and support help more people find this space.

Thank you for reading and subscribing.

Last month I introduced a new feature here — Three Useful Secrets — and I’m back with the second instalment. At the end of each month I’ll be sharing a short bundle of three things that I came across recently and which have sparked ideas that I feel my readers could also benefit from.

Some of these “secrets” may already be familiar to you, while others might be new discoveries — but all are worth revisiting. My hope is that they make your lives a little easier or at least make you stop and consider what if you did things a bit differently.

This month’s theme: Perfectionism as Self-Sabotage

Secret #1: Perfectionism is a sneaky form of self-sabotage

Have you ever told yourself something like: “I didn’t spend much time on this, as it was all very last minute, so of course it wasn’t my best, no wonder I didn’t get chosen/praised”? That’s perfectionism in disguise. We think we’re protecting ourselves from judgment, but in reality we’re lowering the bar before anyone else can, so we avoid the pain of criticism or rejection.

On recent episode of the brilliant podcast Hidden brain — hosted by — researcher Thomas Curran said1:

“When things start to go wrong, perfectionists do something really, really interesting. They withhold their effort in order to save face, to kind of preserve their image and their sense of self. […] One of the most illuminating experiments was when a colleague of mine, Andrew Hill, gave people a cycling task. Everybody worked really hard to meet the goal, and at the end he told them — no matter how well they did — that they failed.

Now what’s really interesting is that after telling people they failed, he asked them to do it again. […] People who didn’t have a great deal of perfectionism on that second attempt didn’t really change the amount of effort they put in. If anything, it went up slightly. But the people who scored high in perfectionism did exactly the exact opposite. They withheld their effort on the second attempt because the thinking in their mind is, you can’t fail at something you didn’t try.”

And here’s the paradox:

“They really are so intensely fearful of that failure that when it looks like it’s going to be a likely outcome, then they take themselves away from those situations. […] That’s incredibly self-sabotaging. It doesn’t just look like complete withdrawal, by the way. It can also come in the form of procrastination. […] All of those things are not at all conducive to performance.”

I have definitely found myself in those situations, submitting a last minute paper in grad school, a poorly edited work report, a sloppy job application that I didn’t proofread, while my saboteur voices were saying, “you won’t be the best, so best not to put too much effort into this task.” Listening to this episode I had a number of lightbulb moments that I feel could resonate with others aswell.

Listen here: [Hidden Brain episode link]

Secret #2: Oliver Burkeman on embracing limits

For an antidote to perfectionism, is one of my go-tos. His newsletter, The Imperfectionist, offers short, sharp reminders that life isn’t a productivity contest and that we’re allowed to be imperfect.

And if you want to go deeper, his bestselling book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals reframes our relationship with time itself. The average human lifespan is about 4,000 weeks — not nearly enough to do everything. Instead of fighting that fact, Burkeman invites us to accept our limits and focus on what truly matters.

Read the newsletter: The Imperfections]
Find the book: Four Thousand Weeks

Secret #3: A trifecta of tools to outsmart perfectionism

Research and wise voices are helpful, but sometimes you just need something practical to do when perfectionism strikes. Here are three simple tools to try:

• The 80% Rule

  Aim for 80% done instead of 100%. Progress beats paralysis. This principle shows up in coaching and even wellness practices like Japan’s hara hachi bu (eating until 80% full). It’s a reminder that “done” is better than “perfect.” [Interestingly, when it comes to eating, a full stomach message reaches the brain significantly later than the last bite is swallowed, with a delay of about 20 minutes due to the time it takes for hormones to travel and nerves to transmit signals about stomach fullness.]

• Good / Better / Best

  Define what “good enough” looks like, and stop there. This framework comes originally from instructional design and education, where teachers break down tasks into levels of mastery.

• The Two-Minute Imperfect Start

  Begin badly, but begin. Momentum matters more than polish. This idea is most closely associated with James Clear’s Atomic Habits (2018). He calls it the Two-Minute Rule: scale any new habit down so it takes just two minutes (e.g., instead of “go for a run,” do “put on your running shoes”).
  

And if you’d like even more ideas, I wrote earlier this year about accountability and goal struggles in Cheese, Social Media, and Morning Pages — with a couple of practices that pair nicely with these.

Wrapping up

That’s it for this month’s three secrets. I hope at least one of the secrets gives you a fresh perspective, a resource to explore, or a tool you can put into practice right away.

And speaking of putting things into practice: if you happen to be in Paris on October 9th, I’m co-hosting a women’s-only soirée — a charming, and possibly imperfect, evening of conversation and connection. You don’t need perfect French or perfect English to offer this gift to yourself (and men, you could always gift it to the women in your lives). Neither my English nor my French are perfect, and yet I’m delighted to be one of the hosts. Check it out and register here.

If you missed it earlier this month, you can also watch the recording of my Substack Live session on Assumptions — a playful, thought-provoking conversation that pairs nicely with today’s theme.

If you enjoyed this post, please press like, restack, or share it with a friend who might need a gentle nudge away from perfectionism today. And if you’d like to support my work, you can upgrade to the paid version of this newsletter.

Until next time,
Liza

This conversation was inspired by yesterday’s post which you can find here:

You may be interested also in reading ’s recent post on a related topic:

Philippa Perry

Why other people are wrong

Many of the emails I get are from people who are certain they are right and that bad other person is wrong. Now, they may well be right but perhaps it would be a good idea to run our beliefs through the following filters first…

Read more

9 months ago · 54 likes · 12 comments · Philippa Perry

Go check out and her main substack publication Flucking Flourishing.

And a shout out to who teaches Substack and who gave me a great tip about not wearing white before going on Live today. Hope y’all liked my red sweater.

But then the same person reaches out to you, suggesting a get-together. You’re busy that day, so you say no—and on their side, they jump to a conclusion: She’s holding a grudge because I couldn’t meet last time.

As a result, you may both stop reaching out. The story you each made up becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy—even though, in reality, both of you want to spend time together. But in reality, you could check to see if your assumption is true?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about assumptions—those invisible little stories we tell ourselves about other people and the world around us. I’ve noticed how quickly they slip in, shaping my reactions before I even realize it. And I’ve been learning, through the leadership program I’ve been attending since March, just how much they limit real connection.

In this program, I’m working with 13 other participants, two leaders, and two assistants. We also share daily meals prepared by the chef at the retreat centre. In every one of these encounters—whether it’s a teammate in a carefully designed exercise or the chef handing me a plate of food—assumptions arise. This happens in an instant. And it influences our interactions with others.

At our second retreat, this last July, our leaders invited us to think of the assumptions we were making about each other and notice their impact. Then, we were given a task: to clear one assumption with every single participant. The process was simple:

1. Ask the other person if they’re willing to witness (not “receive” or “accept”) your assumption.

2. Share the assumption and how it impacts you.

3. Let them simply listen. They may ask, “Is there anything more?” But there’s no defending, no justifying, by either party—because the assumption we make is about ourselves, not about them.

It was both humbling and liberating.

Snap judgments in action

Science tells us the human brain is wired to make rapid judgments, often within milliseconds of meeting someone. It’s a survival skill, but it comes with a cost.

Brené Brown has a wonderful phrase for this: “the story I’m telling myself…” (from her book Rising Strong). She shares how, while swimming with her husband, she noticed he wasn’t really paying attention to her. She started spinning a story: He doesn’t like my body anymore. He’s growing distant. When she finally told him the story in her head, it turned out he was simply worried about the speedboats on the lake and was feeling stressed. It had nothing to do with her body—or their marriage.

I notice the same thing in myself. If someone looks bored while I’m speaking, my mind leaps to: They’re not interested. I’m boring. But is that really true? Maybe they’re tired. Maybe they’re digesting what I’ve said. Maybe they’re worried about something else entirely.

Still, my assumption shapes how I continue the conversation—maybe I shrink, pull back, or stop sharing openly, or I may actually try harder to make myself interesting and likeable, neither of which would mean that I am showing up in my true essence.

The wisdom of The Four Agreements

So, if this is something we all do, how can we “snap out of it”?

One framework I turn to is Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. His third agreement is exactly this: Don’t make assumptions. The others—be impeccable with your word, don’t take things personally, and always do your best—support the same spirit of clarity and kindness.

As Ruiz writes:

But it does not have to be that way. We have a choice to react differently.

When I catch myself assuming, I can pause and ask:

• What assumption am I making about this person?

• How is it shaping my experience of them?

• What if I offered them the benefit of the doubt?

Pausing to ponder over those questions and see what the answers tell me about what is truly bothering me, what self-limiting beliefs are leading me towards these assumptions. Often just naming these to ourselves, acknowledging them can be an extremely liberating and enlightening thing.

Byron Katie’s four questions

Another powerful tool is Byron Katie’s The Work. Her method offers four questions to use when we feel stuck in our beliefs:

1. Is it true?

2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true?

3. How do I react—what happens—when I believe that thought?

4. Who would I be without the thought?

   

I find the last question to be the most powerful one. Who WOULD I be without the thought? Often the realisation is that I would be lighter, happier, more confident, more engaged and more generous. All things that I strive for but don’t always come easily when I am being led by my assumptions.

A small, practical experiment

You don’t have to wait for a leadership retreat to try out these tools. Here’s a simple experiment: before or after your next interaction with someone—colleague, neighbour, even the shopkeeper—pause and reflect:

• What assumptions am I making about them?

• How do those assumptions affect how I feel and behave?

• What would it be like to meet them afresh, without the story?
  

Sometimes the stakes are small—like a grumpy shopkeeper at the till. But even there, shifting the lens can change the whole tone of your day. Instead of assuming she’s unpleasant, what if you imagined she’s preoccupied with how to support her family with a low paying job, and still doing her best? That small act of compassion lightens your load, too.

****

What I find fascinating is how these two approaches complement each other. Byron Katie’s questions are powerful because you don’t need anyone else in order to free yourself—you can do this entirely on your own. The Four Agreements, on the other hand, open up a different possibility: not just questioning your own assumptions privately, but actually bringing them into the open with another person. When we dare to check with someone else, we often discover how far off our story was, and that act of honesty can clear the air and strengthen the bond.

***

If you want to take it a step further, try this with another person: share the story you’re telling yourself about them, and ask if they’re willing to witness it (always ask permission and don’t confuse assumption clearing with giving feedback). Often, the simple act of naming the assumption together dissolves tension and builds trust.

Beyond assumptions

At its heart, letting go of assumptions is about opening the door to real connection. It’s about meeting people as they are, not as the stories in our heads paint them.

It’s simple, but not easy. It requires presence, humility, and practice. But the reward is worth it: more genuine relationships, less judgment, and a greater sense of ease with the world.

That, to me, feels like leadership—not just of others, but of myself.

So I’ll leave you with this:

What assumptions are you carrying right now about someone in your life?
And what might become possible—for you, and for that relationship—if you dared to check whether they were really true?

*******

Why I’m bringing this to Paris

As part of our leadership program, my colleague Audrey Ghozael and I have assigned to co-create a leadership event. During the last retreat, we were practicing what it means to pause, clear our assumptions, and meet each other—and our fellow participants—more openly. What we’ve discovered is that, even with the best intentions, we women often make assumptions about other women:

• Women without children may assume mothers don’t have space in their lives for adventure or friendship.

• Mothers may assume women without children are freer and less burdened.

• Junior women may assume women in leadership roles feel confident and never doubt themselves.

• Senior women in leadership may assume junior women aren’t ready to take on bigger responsibilities.

These stories may create distance when what we long for is connection.

That’s why, on October 9 in Paris, Audrey and I are hosting Cocktail of Cultures—an evening designed for international women to gather, connect, and explore how questioning our assumptions can transform our relationships with ourselves and with others. There will be conversation, coaching, and plenty of laughter, all in a welcoming mix of French and English.

If you’re in Paris (or can hop on a quick train!), we’d love to see you there. You can register here (early bird ends October 9).

If you’d like to support my work, you can upgrade to the paid version of the newsletter. Use this COUPON for a 30% off the annual price, valid until September 4th - a special one year anniversary offer.

Beginning this August, alongside my regular monthly post, I’ll also be sharing a short piece each month with three things that have inspired me or supported my work and life lately: a book, a podcast episode (or YouTube video), and a coaching or facilitation tool.

Some of these “secrets” might already be familiar to you, others may be new discoveries — but I believe all are worth revisiting and putting to use. Think of this as a small bundle of resources to spark reflection, growth, and maybe even a good conversation.

And now, here come this month’s secrets — three things that have inspired me, sparked new ideas, or supported my work and life lately:

This month’s theme: How to Change Your Life

Secret No. 1: How to Change Your Life with the Hoffman Process — a book by Tim Lawrence

A week-long process (or this book version) that can help you release old patterns and reconnect with your true self.

You may have heard of the Hoffman Process, an intensive (and expensive) group program that addresses negative love patterns and helps you develop healthier ways of relating. In this little book — far more affordable than the full program — Tim Lawrence guides readers through examining where they are, clarifying what they truly want, releasing old issues, and adopting new behaviors. The book also explores how we can approach love and enrich relationships with friends, colleagues, and partners.

I was fortunate to do the Hoffman Process in 2018, and followed up with a three-day refresher called Q2 in 2024. The process changed my outlook on life and equipped me with essential self-awareness tools. Like any personal growth work, it isn’t bulletproof and requires regular maintenance through mindful practices:

• Check in with your physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual selves

• Practice daily gratitude and appreciation

When I occasionally fall off the wagon, life feels less meaningful. Just a few days of returning to these habits can help restore alignment with my true self and a sense of purpose.

Even if you don’t have the book, you can explore the Hoffman Process on the Oprah podcast or visit the Hoffman Process UK website.

Secret No. 2: Dare to Lead Podcast — Immunity to Change

Questions that reveal what’s blocking you from change — a guide to closing the gap between intentions and actions.

In this brilliant two-part interview, Brené Brown talks with Lisa Lahey, co-author of Immunity to Change. Lahey and Robert Kegan discovered the “immunity to change,” a dynamic that can block personal and organizational transformation. Their work helps people identify what keeps them from acting on their good intentions.

What I love about this podcast is that Brené Brown shows up completely vulnerable, sharing her own role in the challenges her team faces in achieving the goal that she has set for the team and the company. Lahey coaches her to pinpoint what might be making the situation harder. The key question Lahey asks is:
“What are the things you do and don’t do that work against that goal you just named for yourself.” Listening to Brown having her AHA moment as she admitted to the whole world how she was largely the source of her problem, was very powerful.

I haven’t read Lahey’s book yet, but I’ve listened to this podcast and other conversations with Lahey. I’ve applied these questions to self-coach myself recently on a difficult personal topic, and they’re surprisingly powerful.

Secret No. 3: TRIZ- A Liberating Structure

A facilitation method that uncovers hidden blockers and helps teams and individuals stop doing what doesn’t work.

I first heard of Liberating Structures (LS) while working at CGIAR, when Nancy Wright1 facilitated a Gender Platform event in Los Baños, Philippines. Later, another LS practitioner ran an event at our Addis Ababa campus. At the time, I didn’t fully understand LS. I actually thought it was some sort of fancy development jargon.

Fast forward to 2020: I was tasked with mainstreaming gender and equality across a large global network. I needed a method that could facilitate meaningful change and the more I looked for something that worked, the more Liberating Structures kept appearing my search results. I decided to contact Nancy and connected me with two brilliant LS practitioners based, Carolina and Fernando2, and I completed their online course in virtual facilitation using LS and led a series of successful workshops for our global team.

So, what are these Liberating Structures, you may be wondering?

According to the official website:

“Liberating Structures are easy-to-learn microstructures that enhance relational coordination and trust. They quickly foster lively participation in groups of any size, making it possible to truly include and unleash everyone. Liberating Structures are a disruptive innovation that can replace more controlling or constraining approaches.”

What’s amazing is how simple these structures seem, yet how effective they are at challenging the status quo.

The structure I’m sharing this month is called TRIZ, a three-step process:

1. Make a list of all the ways you could ensure the worst possible outcome for your top strategy or objective.

2. Go through this list and ask: “Is there anything we are currently doing that resembles this item?” Make a second, honest list of all counterproductive activities, programs, or procedures.

3. Review the second list and decide what first steps will help you stop doing what you know produces undesirable results.

Aha! Just like the Immunity to Change exercise, this process reveals things you could stop doing that would improve your situation.

*******

This is it for this month’s three secrets. I hope you found something new to explore, or were reminded of something familiar that’s still useful.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. If so, please press like, restack or share with a friend.

I’d love for this to be a two-way exchange: feel free to add in the comments any resources that have been useful to you this month — I’m always keen to learn new things. Also, are you familiar with a resource I have shared and want to share your experience with it? Go ahead, I am curious!

Leave a comment

And if one of the resources I share turns out to be especially interesting, or sparks a lot of discussion, I may come back with a deeper dive in a future post.

I started this newsletter in August 2024, originally to promote my work as a career and life coach. Since 2023, I’ve been coaching women and men in jobs aimed at making a difference in the world, mostly in the development and international aid sectors. My clients come from the US, Australia, Europe, and occasionally from Africa and Asia.

I often share resources with them, and in the absence of a proper website where I could host a curated library of tools, links, and reflections, I thought I’d write a newsletter instead, a space to share ideas, insights, and resources that might help people live more meaningful, values-aligned, and fulfilling lives.

Since launching on August 4th, 2024, I’ve posted 16 times—less than I had hoped when I imagined this would be a weekly publication. I quickly realised that four posts a month was an unsustainable goal for me. In the end, this has settled into a once-a-month rhythm (except for the unplanned break I took last month). About seven months into writing this Substack, I had the crazy idea of starting another Substack publication, Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales, which has become a home for more essayistic writing—observations from travel and everyday life, and the occasional dip into memoir. That space has its own rhythm, often messier and more exploratory, and I’ve loved the freedom it gives me. But it has also meant that I’m now juggling two creative outlets, alongside coaching work and life itself, which may help explain why this newsletter hasn’t quite followed the regular schedule I originally imagined. And so, for the first time, last month, I skipped a post altogether. July was full, and included a two week reading holiday, about which I wrote a post in my new publication:

Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales

Mastering the Art of the Reading Vacation

As this lands in your inbox, I am on my way to a two-week reading vacation on a Croatian island I first visited in 1979. While my family never owned a summer house, we’ve faithfully returned to this island for what can best be described as a reading vacation…

Read more

a year ago · 64 likes · 52 comments · Liza Debevec

a 2nd workshop in my 10-month leadership programme, which I have mentioned briefly here,

and a losing battle with the horror that is a Lisbon heatwave, which continues, in full force, this month.

What I’ve Learned
One thing this year of writing has taught me is that I need outer accountability even more than I realised. It was often when someone would ask me, “When’s the next post coming?” that I felt the nudge to publish. I’ve written about accountability before—in this post, for example—

and it’s something I continue to reflect on. Your comments, likes, and restacks make a difference. They’re a kind of gentle pressure I appreciate.

Share

Another discovery: my most successful post was also my most vulnerable. I wrote about heartbreak and my own struggles, and the response floored me: kindness, compassion, and stories shared in return.

There’s a beautiful lyric in a song by Kath Bloom (I know it from the Bill Callahan cover) that says:

When we do share sadness in a way that is genuine and not manipulative, something meaningful happens. I want to be able to show up like this in my publication, sharing both moments of joy and sadness.

On Generosity (and When It Hurts)
One thing I’ve realised about sharing ideas, links, and resources is that while I enjoy doing it, I struggle when people take what I’ve offered and promote it as if they discovered it themselves. I’m not expecting undying praise or a cut of any profit they might make. But I do appreciate a mention. A simple hat tip.

Back in the old days of Twitter (when it was still a place of friendly exchange), if I tweeted something I’d found via someone else, I’d write “HT” and tag the original source. It stands for “hat tip”—like the old-fashioned gesture men made when greeting each other. It’s a form of recognition. Or, if you prefer, like citing your sources in academic writing. It just seems like fair play, especially in a world where it’s increasingly hard to know if a post is original or just an AI-polished copy-paste job.

Not everyone shares this view. Sometimes people walk away with what you’ve shared or take over a space you first invited them into. Generosity can open doors we later wish we’d kept closed.

Sharing a space that holds meaning for me with someone who doesn’t honour that trust has been a painful lesson in protecting my heart. Learning how to coexist in public and semi-public spaces with people who don’t acknowledge you is something I’m still figuring out. And yet, I want to remain open to vulnerability and heartbreak, because the experience of having truly loved, or truly shared something real, is worth the risk.

Substack and the Joy of Community
Despite the hard lessons, there’s so much wonderful stuff that happens here on Substack. If you’re reading this only as an email, I really encourage you to check out the platform itself. It’s alive with conversations, generosity, creativity, and connection.

I’ve found a beautiful community of writers here, and I want to give a few shout-outs in the spirit of reciprocity and gratitude.
Some of these writers have offered me gift subscriptions, an incredible kindness, especially now when my income is limited. I hope that someday I can pay it back, or pay it forward.

Here they are, in no particular order, do check them out: , , , and .
Others have welcomed me into collaborative or creative experiments that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Being part of The Artist’s Way challenge with has given me the courage needed to participate in ’s The Chain have been highlights of this year so far. And I even took a brave step and published my first flash memoir piece from The Chain experiment in my other Substack publication

Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales

The Ghost of Ferries Past

This Sunday, I took part in an online writing experiment called The Chain, a summer writing collaboration series led by the wonderful Lindsay Johnstone, who writes What Now? with Lindsay Johnstone here on Substack…

Read more

a year ago · 24 likes · 17 comments · Liza Debevec

A Few Final Notes
Some things I’m especially grateful for here:

• The community and one to one conversations—in publication chats and Zoom rooms—that feel intimate and safe enough for vulnerability. The female solidarity on this platform has been a true gift. Thank you for our ‘off the record’ conversations.

• My readers: there are nearly 500 of you! Even if many of you are quietly reading, the ones who comment, like, and restack bring me real joy.

• And my three paid subscribers: I am floored by your generosity. Thank you for believing in me. It means the world.

At the moment, I don’t offer anything beyond gratitude to my paid subscribers, but please know it’s a lot of gratitude.

So, if you’ve read until here, please let me know one thing you enjoy about this publication and one thing you’d like to see more of. And remember to click like and restack the post, as that is the way other people will find me.

****************

If you are still reading and you are interested in my coaching work, reply to this email (if you receive this in emails) or send me a direct message in the app. You may also check out this offering for group coaching I am starting in September. It is open to women who are looking for a more meaningful connection with their work, one that is aligned with one’s values and life purpose. An early bird special is open until August 15.

Welcome to this month’s edition of the Sharing Secrets (And Other Useful Stuff) newsletter. If you’ve been to this neck of the woods before, you’ll know that over the last six months or so, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the practice of morning pages. I even joined a wonderful Artist’s Way challenge with and enjoyed exchanging notes and participating in Zoom meetings with other lovely fellow Substack writers.

Today, I want to zoom in on an exercise from The Artist’s Way challenge that is also a very powerful tool used in coaching—particularly in the Co-Active coaching method, in which I am trained. I am talking about the Life Pie or the Wheel of Life tool.

But before I get to spinning the wheel for you, let me provide a brief background to Artist’s way, for or those not familiar with the book or challenge. Written by Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way is a 12-week self-guided course to discover and recover one’s creative self. The basic tools for this work are:

• Morning pages: three pages of handwritten text written first thing in the morning, no rereading or editing allowed.

• The Artist’s date: a weekly solo outing designed to nurture your inner artist. This could be a walk, a fancy coffee, a trip to a museum, or a solo lunch.

In addition, each chapter of the book, one per week, has a special focus with tasks and exercises that serve as a kind of self-coaching or self-therapy.

In Week Two of the book, under Task No. 7, Cameron writes:

“Draw a circle. Divide it into six pieces of pie. Label one piece Spirituality, another Exercise, another Play, and so on with Work, Friends, and Romance/Adventure. Place a dot in each slice at the degree to which you are fulfilled in that area. (Outer rim indicates great; inner circle, not so great). Connect the dots. This will show where you are lopsided.”

This is the Life Pie tool. I first came across it sometime in 2011 or 2012, when I bought a copy of The Sound of Paper, Cameron’s collection of essays based on her experience with writing and teaching The Artist’s Way. It includes some of the original exercises from the book.

I believe I still have my original drawing, the assessment of my Life Pie, somewhere in a box, among my morning pages from that time. I encountered the tool again at the end of 2017, when, based on a recommendation by a friend I admired greatly, I decided to hire a professional coach. The Co-Active tool was called the Wheel of Life.

Given the similarity between Cameron’s Life Pie and the Co-Active coaching Wheel of Life tool, I recently did a bit of digging and found that the “Wheel of Life” is a widely used tool across different coaching traditions. Its origins can be traced back to the 1960s, when Paul J. Meyer, a pioneer in the personal development industry, introduced it as part of his Success Motivation Institute’s programs. Meyer’s version, often called the “Balance Wheel,” was intended to offer a visual representation of one’s satisfaction across key life areas—helping with goal-setting and personal growth. Some sources suggest that Meyer drew inspiration from Tibetan Buddhism.
The Artist’s Way, first published in 1992, incorporates a similar exercise, so it’s possible Cameron borrowed the concept, which may have already been circulating in the circles she frequented.

So, while the researcher in me remains a little curious—and perhaps slightly disappointed—that Cameron didn’t cite her sources of inspiration, I’m happy to see this tool made accessible to people beyond those who are open to coaching or able to afford a coach.

Since becoming a coach myself, I’ve often used this tool in introductory sessions with potential clients as a way to open up the conversation. And it truly is an amazing conversation starter.

Given that the intention of my posts is to share resources people can use freely, I want to offer a small exercise to help you coach yourself using the Wheel of Life tool.

Self coaching using the Wheel of Life tool

Draw your Wheel of life (or download one from the internet) using the following eight categories to score yourself on (note that Julia Cameron only has 6 categories in her Life Pie):
1 - Family and friends
2 - Significant other/Romance:
3 - Fun & Recreation
4 - Health
5 - Money
6 - Personal Growth
7 - Physical Environment1
8 - Career

Follow the directions in the photo below. Don’t overthink the exercise, score with a number that feels right today, in this very instant, not what was true yesterday, nor what you hope to be true tomorrow.

Once you’ve scored yourself on the different areas of your life, ask yourself: How does it feel to be at this number? Would I want to move toward a higher number? And what would two numbers higher than where I am right now look like? Reflect on these questions and consider what else comes up for you when you look at your pie/wheel.

Maybe you want to move from a three in money to a six, and are thinking that it is an impossible dream, but at the same time, if you are a writer here on Substack, you have yet to turn on paid subscriptions, or add the Buy me coffee button on your publication?

Maybe you want to have more fun in your life but always turn down the invitation to join a friend at a local choir or a dance class?

This is where I want to remind you of something I mentioned already in my January post: the 15% solution.

This is a Liberating structure used in group facilitation but easily adapted for personal use. The premise is simple: there are small steps that each of us has the freedom and resources to take. It challenges the belief that we need an abundance of time, money, or energy to create meaningful change.

For example, since I’m currently scoring low on Exercise, I could commit to just five minutes a day of “Yoga For Tired People” with the wonderful here on Substack (no subscription needed—many of her videos are free).

As for scoring low on Romance/Significant Other—being single—I could take a step toward downloading a dating app… or possibly flirt with one of the local fishermen here on the island where I’m currently holidaying. (Frankly, the app feels like the less terrifying option.)

You can find a tiny and affordable step for each of the sections, and yes, sometimes it may feel like you’re only moving forward by an inch, but in the right kind of mindset, that could be a huge step forward.

This exercise is just a toe-dip into the waters of self-coaching, but maybe something that will pique your interest—and possibly inspire you to read The Artist’s Way, explore the Wheel of Life more deeply, or even hire a coach to support your journey. Depending on your level of commitment or need for external accountability, all of these are valid paths. And if you do need outer accountability to get things done, then hiring a coach might be just the thing for you.

If you’re curious about what working with a coach could look like—or if you’re ready to get a bit more intentional about where your energy goes—feel free to send me a direct message so I can share a link for booking a chemistry session.

While you're doing your Wheel of Life exercise, I’ll be dancing by myself to some fun music—my own 15% solution to raise my score on the Fun/Play slice of the pie. Because sometimes, I need to make fun a conscious choice.

If you try the Wheel of Life, I’d love to hear what you discover.
Which slice surprised you the most? Where might a small shift make a big difference?
Feel free to share in the comments—I always enjoy reading your reflections.