Transformation Starts with Action
Three years ago I became slightly obsessed with a question. Why do people not do what they say they want to do? Myself included.
Eating better. Drinking less. Exercising. Starting a project. Sometimes just keeping appointments and showing up for things they planned. The intentions were real and I felt committed but then it fizzled.
Before the work I am doing now, a portion of my clinical practice focused on dependencies. Binge eating and alcohol specifically, because I could relate to them. What my patients and my training consistently showed me was this: it was never about what someone was dependent on. Some people eradicated one dependency only to have it replaced by another. The problem was always what sat underneath. What discomfort or pain was being numbed. What was being made bearable.
That became my entry point into the bigger question. To understand what was really driving behaviour, I needed to look beneath the surface, at what was happening subconsciously.
The Navigator, the Maps, and the Territory
I use this metaphor to explain the different levels of mind. The mind operates across layers: conscious awareness, subconscious processes, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. These are not located in the brain. The brain is the biological interface that processes and transmits signals. It is not the origin of mind.
The conscious mind is the navigator. It decides direction, it is logical and deliberate. The subconscious mind is the maps. Patterns and processes built from experience, belief, social conditioning, and culture, it’s habitual. The non-conscious is the territory itself. The full expanse of what is possible. Autonomous and primordial.
When each level is doing its job and all three are aligned, there is coherence. Action becomes consistent. Resistance drops. Decisions are clearer, even difficult ones. And when that alignment is present, the non-conscious has space to surface, bringing insight and opportunity you could not have manufactured.
Doing what you say you want to do becomes consistent. Not always effortless, but doable and not a battle.
The Trap: Two Kinds of Wanting
Here is where most people get stuck. Myself included.
There are two kinds of wanting and most people cannot tell them apart.
The first comes from the ego. These wants are driven by social pressure, the need for validation, love, acceptance. There is urgency to them. They are usually future-oriented: “when I get this I will be happy” “when I have that I will have enough” “I need to do this now before someone else does”. Ego wants are not inherently bad, they can generate real motivation. They are just not the full picture. Follow them without awareness and life becomes a constant hustle. Because ego wants are not truly yours. They belong to a perceived separate self that believes it is alone and finite and must fight for its place.
The second kind of wanting comes from life itself. It feels intuitive and you are drawn to it like a magnet. It could be the interest that has been with you since childhood, the thing you cannot let go of, the idea that does not make logical sense but when you sit with it, when you allow yourself to entertain it as something you actually can do, it feels like relief, for me it felt like the slow release of a pressure pot, the contraction that gave me decades of digestive issues resulting in two hospital visits expanded. Sometimes “the want” from life itself is so simple and so comfortable that it feels unfamiliar. You want to turn away from it, I couldn’t face mine for a long time. But it stayed and I allowed it in.
These “life wants” are part of why you are here. They are what life has decided it can do through you. From the outside, both can look identical. The same behaviour, the same effort, the same striving but the maps underneath are completely different.
How To Tell The Difference
Ego wants feel hard. Inconsistent. Stressful. When you achieve them they are often unsatisfying, and you find yourself immediately moving to the next target without pause.
Life wants are energising and fulfilling. Supported by synchronicity, by opportunities you could never have planned for. There is satisfaction along the way. Often no defined end goal. You feel nourished in the process itself.
What To Do With This
Pay attention to life. Notice where life is pulling you. What feels stressful, notice what feels exciting. What opportunities are appearing without you forcing them. This is how life communicates.
Bring awareness to what you are doing to please others, what you are doing because you think you should, or what you are doing to keep up with the success you think others are showcasing or what you are doing because you believe it will bring validation. That is ego.
And be careful of the manifesting industry. A billion-dollar machine that has spent decades telling people to visualise harder, affirm louder, and vision-board bigger, without ever asking whether what they are trying to create is actually theirs in the first place.
Where To Start
Awareness first. You now know that two kinds of wanting exist and that the ego can hijack desire while the conscious mind runs with it unchecked. That combination is the recipe for stress, dissatisfaction, and suffering.
Next, understand the layers. Let the conscious mind navigate, knowing that pulls will come from both ego and life. Work on the maps, the subconscious patterns, so they are current and not from childhood and that they reflect what’s actually your true “want”. Question and reframe the beliefs that hold you back.
When your conscious and subconscious minds are aligned, you create space for the non-conscious to move through you. For life to bring insights in a language you can receive. This is where you begin to access clear knowing. Your own claircognizance.
That is when doing what you say you want to do stops being a struggle and starts being natural and you flow with life.
If you’re ready to look at life from a different perspective this is a powerful place to start.
∞ Buy my book TURBULENCE
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∞ If you want help in rewiring the subconscious mind with self hypnosis you might be drawn to MindScript – its revolutionary.
