When my Medical Team Told Me in 2014 that I’d Not Regain My Muscle Mass,
Health and Wellbeing – I said Watch Me – Because I Love Being Fit and Healthy.
High Achievers – The Pressure You Feel
Didn’t Start in Your Business, Career, or Relationship.
What did you love doing earlier in your life?
When I was younger, I loved playing music & sport, and I was very good at both.
The challenge wasn’t choosing between them;
it was the pressure to make the “right” choice.
Not based on what I wanted – But on what others valued.
Teachers, coaches, and mentors, who I knew weren’t invested in me.
They were invested in their subjects, agendas, results, & their idea of success.
When you’re young, your nervous system doesn’t distinguish where the pressure comes from,
parent, teacher, coach – It all lands the same way:
Pressure – Intrusion – Something being taken.
During my teens, I pushed back; I didn’t feel comfortable playing their game.
In my late teens, I pushed back harder.
I now felt like I was being treated like a child, as they attempted to force me to play their game.
Since deciding to change my identity in 2014, to become versions of myself who didn’t live with issues I’d had all my life.
Sympathetic dominance, fighting for my autonomy without awareness, at all costs.
Then, functional freeze, burnout, collapse, and the ICU, my almost complete mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual breakdown, after decades of living in overdrive, with no off switch, and an all-out lifestyle.
I’ve been honest about the part I played in many interpersonal relationships and why I would have acted the way I did.
In the last 12 years, I’ve reflected on many of the decisions I made, some of which caused mayhem, added to my sense of loss, and weren’t in my best interests, which is what the decision is when it’s being made, is for, to keep you safe – alive.
Some I would make now, because I won’t be controlled by anyone else; there isn’t one of them I regret.
I decided on many occasions to walk away from sport, music, and relationships.
But when I did walk away, I also left behind the very things that used to regulate my system.
Playing music & sports were the outlets that gave me balance, helped me regulate my system.
In their place?
Alcohol – Cars – Clothes – Travel – Money – Position
They weren’t just interests any longer,
or things I love to have … they became my IDENTITY.
Acceleration, usually with loud music,
& repeated nights out – replaced what Saturday’s competition on a field of play used to give me.
This created resistance.
Not from immaturity, but from intelligence.
The system learns:
▸ Don’t trust influence.
▸ Don’t give up control.
▸ Perform for safety.
That wiring doesn’t vanish as you age.
It follows you into jobs, relationships, and businesses.
Even when you’re “the one in charge,”
the same internal pattern is running.
You know how to succeed.
But you don’t know how to be free while doing it.
And over time, the weight of that wiring cracks the
identity you built.
That’s where I found myself, in 2014, post ICU,
I had to make a decision: to keep going as I had been, or change.
Not change what I did, the usual behaviours, habits, surface-level advice.
Change who I was by creating a vision and aligning with it, to get what I wanted in life
That meant:
Regulate my Nervous System, to move out of overdrive, sympathetic dominance, and my need for control over the external environment, to be capable of flowing with life, moving between the switched on and switched off states seamlessly, without the need for external sources.
Emotional development, where I’d paused, my emotional development would more than likely have certainly stalled after losing my grandfather at 14. What I didn’t understand was that it had happened previously in my life.
Integration of the parts I’d suppressed, it was apparent I had many unresolved emotional issues, and that I’d been suppressing my emotions for many years. I needed to start expressing and resolving them, or I would not function as a whole, which would have prevented me from growth on all levels and achieving tangible, sustainable results.
Rebuilding value without performance, I believe I had been living in alignment with my values. Most discuss that you aren’t living in alignment, and this is why you aren’t getting the results you want in life. Connection and Integrity were at the top of my list when I was collapsing, after a complete rebuild, they still are. It’s the relationship I have with myself and my values that has changed.
Living from direction, I understood I must move into creation, and away from defence, which is a state of survival, normally running on autopilot, with inputs because we are high achievers, that attempts to keep us alive, this is, physiological and psychological, it isn’t one or the other, and thankfully I understood this from the off.
And here’s why I share this –
Most high achievers are still stuck in the same pattern.
They call it DRIVE – AMBITION – PROFESSIONALISM – PRESSURE.
You are applauded by others for your ability to succeed, and succeed again, to keep going.
But underneath?
You’re still reacting to what happened decades ago,
and building your life on performance.
Businesses on compliance.
Identities on survival.
No strategy can fix that, because the tension you feel isn’t always about the business or relationship.
It might be about the version of you who built it.
There’s a way through but it doesn’t come from working harder without awareness.
It comes from rebuilding the part of you that had no space back then.
This is why the most important question I ask is.
Who must You Become to Live The Life You Want to live?
Balance, Calmness, Peace, Aliveness, Purpose, Contentment, and Fulfilment
are Positives; they Sharpen Your Edge and Bring Productivity on Your Terms.
The Conscious Edge I Insight