Your superpower is being real.
On the train to Sheffield last week, I was reading and re-reading my notes for a workshop I was running.
Naturally nervous — but the more I tried to perfect what I wanted to say, the less real it felt.
And that’s when it landed: the heart of my work has never been about polished delivery.
It has always been about empowering authenticity. Our realness. All the aspects that make us human — the imperfection, the messiness, the learnings. The parts we often try to hide, even though they are the very things that help us connect.
Real stories
When I think about what truly stays with me, it’s always the real stories. The people who dare to be bold, who speak from the heart.
It’s never the perfected moments, but the tiny cracks where truth comes through.
I sometimes think back to being a child — experiencing life exactly as it was, exactly as I was. Asking endless questions. Not striving to “get it right,” simply being present. There was no performance then. Just curiosity, honesty, and the freedom to be myself.
Somewhere along the way, we learn to trade presence for perfection. We wear so many hats, so many roles, that taking them off can feel exposing. And yet, when we ask ourselves who am I beneath all of this? — that’s where our real power lies.
The choices in-between
As we approach the holidays, that pressure to do it all — to be everything to everyone — quietly intensifies. We try to finish the year strong, as though January 1st marks a completely new world we must enter with everything perfectly tied up.
But perfection drains our energy faster than anything else. Presence, on the other hand, restores it.
Presence invites us to let things be unfinished.To release the tension of trying to hold everything together. To remember that our impact doesn’t come from performing, but from being real.
Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, once wrote: “Life is C between B and D.”
Birth. Death. And between them: Choice.
And so, as the year draws to a close, perhaps the invitation is this:
- What is one choice you can make today that brings you back to what’s real?
- One choice that lets you finish the year with presence instead of pressure?
- One choice that allows something magical, rather than perfect, to unfold?
Thank you to all of you for reading this newsletter throughout the year, for your thoughtful messages and kind words of encouragement.
Wishing you all the gift of presence over the next couple of weeks.
