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The odds that I would achieve a perfect score on the Australian / NZ English competition in intermediate school?

The odds that I would have basically just the right amount of money to round off my RTW trip by the end of it?

The odds that Spud would have severe cow’s milk protein intolerance (CMPI) yet tolerate goat’s milk fairly well? (The numbers for this are supposedly really low… but I wonder, how accurate can these stats really be, and how are they calculated?)

And if we apply this thinking, we can wield and deploy it either way.

Believing we can beat the odds. Time the market. Be a little delusional in betting on ourselves.

Or believing there’s no point even trying. Stopping before we start. Writing it off with a defeatist sigh.

Look: maybe you WILL be the exception to the rule. What if it’s your destiny? What if the gamble pays off?

You can do your bit to reduce risk. To mitigate and anticipate headwinds and hurdles. Weigh the pros and cons. Consider the options to improve your odds of success. Try to tip the scales in your favour, weighting them towards triumph.

But let it be an informed decision. Take the time to discern, to decide just when it’s wise to bet on yourself and when to play it safe. Exactly how much you stand to gain, vs how much might be lost – the potential upside vs downside.

Consider the value. The net return, against the raw odds – as Annie Duke puts it in Quit, the expected value. What would beating the odds really mean? And truly, what is the likelihood?

Maybe if there’s a high risk of losing it all, you can design a lower risk bet, an MVP venture, something more experimental and incremental.

Low risk, high gain – that’s the holy grail.

But we’re mostly operating in the grey zone, with uncertainty about payoffs.

Annie Duke points out that you will gain new information as you act. Valuable details. Once you move, more will reveal itself.

I’ve been experiencing this a lot lately. It’s like opening up your field of vision. Rounding a corner. When you’re stuck in what I call the SWIRL – that swirly place where thoughts are rattling around your head, you can’t quite seem to grab onto any of them, you’re going in circles and treading water – the only way out is to take a concrete, tangible step. Commit to making a real move. You can always walk it back or change course. But you need to dial up the clarity available to you by making a move, and changing your viewpoint and horizon.

We have to constantly make choices without knowing the full picture. Keep stepping in the direction you want to take, and adapt as you go. That’s how you position yourself to take advantage of the odds.

I am a Cancer. It absolutely sums up my personality.

I am an ISFJ. Also eerily accurate.

I am a dragon. Growing into this – I never at all identified with it, but I’m now stepping up into some of these traits. Especially in 2024, the year of the dragon.

Over the past few years I’ve experienced and become an advocate for many body-based practices, methods, and modalities. I can personally vouch for somatic therapy, EFT tapping, hypnosis, and Emotion Codes.

When you run up against the limit of what you can achieve working on the mental and cognitive level – just look over the wall (or more accurately, below the neck) and explore what’s stored in your body.

Get out of your head and into your body.

I use tapping (which is based around acupressure points) multiple times a week to work through triggers, tough emotions, or just to recentre and calm myself. I also run through energy centre (chakra) breathing most days, and can literally feel the thrum and tingle of energy moving upward as I do.

Energy matters. I’ve seen this first hand, over and over. Witnessed the difference that acting from clear, strong, high energy makes.

While I consider myself a bit of a skeptic by nature, I cannot deny what I’ve experienced, and nor do I want to. I’m grounded AND I’m spiritual.

Where I’m going from here…

The how, I haven’t quite grasped. Maybe getting my head around it requires getting deeper into physics.

I believe, I trust, and I know, and yet I’d also love a concrete, tangible explanation for how it all works.

“You should’ve gone out with him when you had the chance.”

So said my friend, back when we were awkward pre-teens trying to figure it all out.

The gentle nerd with the soft eyes, big glasses and floppy hair was suddenly cool (I couldn’t work it out – why?) and she thought I’d missed the boat.

But, no.

As lovely as he was, I didn’t want the chance in the first place.

You can’t fake something you’re not into.

You can’t be swayed by what others think.

You can’t go far if your heart’s not truly in it.

Fuck the shoulds, the noise, the chatter, the buzz.

Trust your Knowing, as Glennon Doyle says.

Follow what feels light, bright, and expansive. Move towards it and don’t look back.

A word I’ve been using a lot lately is discernment.

Honing our sense of judgement is such a crucial life skill. Discerning what we actually want and the best way to go about getting it.

And going into 2024, I think I can boil that down to two things:

Awareness – of who the hell you actually are; how you feel and react to people and situations

Deliberation – and working toward showing up consciously every day of your life and being intentional about your actions

(Throwback here to 2016 and the 2 things I learned that changed my life)

When you know what you want, and you’re fully dedicated to making it real, things start to click into place. Next steps reveal themselves. Opportunities unfold. Things start happening, flowing, without too much pushing or forcing.

You follow a simple framework to manifest it: clarity, conviction, and commitment. Setting the vision, holding firmly onto the purposeful sense of guaranteed success, and channeling it all into consistent, embodied action.

(More on that full process here.)

Crucially, you’ve got to believe first.  The steps are be > do > have. It starts inside, within. Expanding who you are, which flows into what you do, and finally, the results.

It’s so much about how you feel and what you consciously and subconsciously believe. Leaving behind old wounds and patterns. I spent my 20s saying I didn’t care what my parents thought. I didn’t care about their judgement. I wasn’t trying to please them or earn their pride. BUT, that wasn’t entirely  true underneath the surface. That wasn’t fully congruent. I was partly trying to convince myself. Only now in my 30s am I truly starting to release that hold … and it’s just the start.

This year, it’s your time. Tune out the noise. Discern what your heart truly wants. Then, keep cutting out the shoulds, and keep attuning to what feels like it’s pulling you. Discern your next moves, one aligned decision at a time.

You don’t need to know it all right now. You don’t need to see the full journey. Who knows where the path may take you? Follow the signs and breadcrumbs. The snippets, slices, slivers of a future vision that come to you unbidden. And trust the tapestry will weave itself together.

No. Not this. No more.

Something powerful happens when you reach that point of no return. When you have finally had enough. You aren’t going to bend and accommodate anymore.

Trust. Your. Gut.

Your inner knowing and inner voice.

No one strategy works for everyone. Don’t feel like you need to follow a formula or conform.

People who insist otherwise may not be safe for you.

I think of instances when I did trust others over myself, and instances when I reversed that and chose to honour my intuition instead.

You can probably guess which served me better.

Not obeying the rigid rules and expectations of family, or playing the games a toxic work leader played.

Not chasing external metrics (one of the things that really solidified my self trust, hilariously, was the retirement of Facebook’s relevance score for ads. A colleague, and of course Facebook reps, were obsessed with getting this score as high as possible. Sure, it’s a factor – but it’s not the most important. Sometimes people need to see important information, whether they want it or not).

You don’t owe anyone explanations.

You can try once. Maybe even a couple of times. Beyond that, I wouldn’t waste your energy. The people who get it are your people. Those who don’t, aren’t.

Honour yourself even if it means disappointing others. Don’t twist yourself into knots trying to get others to understand you. Some people cannot and will not. Some are actively (though not always consciously) invested in not understanding.

You think you can help them see the light if only you land on the right combination of words, the magical example, the key that unlocks that breakthrough and aha.

Being misunderstood is inevitable. Letting others down is inevitable. What matters most is honouring, understanding, and trusting yourself. Being an upholder of what you know.

Choose yourself. Honour yourself.

Parenting has changed me in so many ways. I didn’t stand up for myself enough in hospital, but once I left, I started to build my confidence, strength and conviction.

Before I left, one sleepless night, I wrote a long explainer on the hospital feedback form. I poured it all out. I didn’t sign my name, but I figured they could pretty easily ID me. I was very open about how I felt about their approach to breastfeeding, pumping, and visitors.

My midwife asked if I would meet with the hospital to discuss what I wrote.

The old me would have agreed to meet with them. My people pleasing tendencies would have insisted. But that was a turning point. I paused and thought about it. The new me, the exhausted mother, took no shit. And she did not have the energy for that kind of interaction.

I said what I said. I stood by it. I let it stand alone.

There is a tendency for women to be written off by much of society as hysterical and emotional. I’ve definitely experienced this a lot since becoming a parent.

I feel like I would have been gaslit if I went. No, I KNOW I would have been gaslit if I went. Nicely, Logically. It would have all seemed very above board. And it would have done so much damage to me and caused me so much doubt.

Listen to your sacred NO and don’t dampen it down.

Protect your energy at all costs.

Without it, you can’t achieve in any area of life.

Choose where your energy goes. Be deliberate. Be intentional. Be selective. Instead of fixating on fears and doubts, real as they feel, direct your energy towards your intentions and goals.

And choose to trust yourself.