This photo is from 2024, and boy is there a story behind it. Joe and I were danger close to divorcing when this was taken. The court date was set. We had separate houses, separate finances, all of it. When I told him I would be in England and Paris studying mental science, he said he would meet me on the tail end in Paris. Then we went into what I call a defining moment of identity and resistance.. and I cried the entire flight over knowing that when I returned, everything was going to be even more different.
Five days later, while I was packing up in England, I got a text from Joe, “Will you meet me for dinner tonight," with an address to his hotel in London. We spent the next few days walking through London and Paris like complete tourists and it was some of the best time we have ever had together. Our relationship has been imperfect for 10 years and I can honestly say we are both completely different people now, in the best way.
I share this because what I was doing in England in the middle of all of that is exactly what I'm writing about today. I was there because I believe that the internal work is always the work, no matter what is happening around you. And sometimes the most important thing you can do when everything feels uncertain is go deeper into understanding your own mind.
Which brings me to something I want to teach you...
A few weeks ago I was looking at a program that I knew was going to help in my business. I could see clearly what it would do and I knew it was aligned. However, the investment was steep and I told myself I would come back to it in November, six months from now, when it made more sense.
It sounded responsible and practical. BUT it was the delusional cycle of safety wearing a very convincing disguise. The delusional cycle of safety is a concept I created to describe what happens when your brain defaults to what feels safe and familiar, even when what you actually want requires you to step into something new. Your brain's number one job is to keep you safe, and what is familiar feels safe because you can predict it. So it will dress up hesitation as responsibility, delay as strategy, and stopping as wisdom, and if you are not paying attention you will believe every word of it.
Here is what it looked like for me in that moment: on the outside the decision to wait looked completely reasonable. Other people would have said, yeah just wait for now.. There was no obvious green light and yet something in me knew that waiting was not actually about the timing. There were parts of my self-concept that were not matching up with the version of me who would say yes to that investment (ahhh that even stings to write out loud). There were parts of me wanting to stay in the familiar rather than stretch into what was required next and when I got honest enough to see that, I stopped negotiating with myself and made the decision.
This does not just happen with investments. It happens when you see a role you want and talk yourself out of applying. It happens when you know you need to change something about your health but keep finding reasons to start next month. It happens when you have a business idea that keeps coming back and you keep sending it away. It happens in the mini moments you barely notice, where you lower your standard for what done looks like, adjust the timeline quietly, and before you know it you are in a completely different line from the one that was going to give you what you actually wanted.
Most of us aren't aware of the mini moments where we negotiated with ourselves. That is always how it happens. And so the question becomes: who you are being when you are not in line with what you want. Because the version of you at the finish line would not be waiting...
That is the work of our lifetime and there is a very specific science behind how to interrupt the cycle and rewire what runs underneath it.
It's all possible.
If you believe it is.
I do.
ps. Paris.. my favorite city in the world (so far). I think we walked over 20K steps that day.. every single one was worth it.
FOR THE LEADERS IN THE ROOM
The delusional cycle of safety does not stop at the individual level. It runs inside teams and organizations too, and when it does the cost is rarely visible until it shows up in retention numbers, stalled initiatives, or the same conversation happening for the third quarter in a row.
What I see consistently in high performing organizations is this: the leaders are capable, the strategy is solid, and something keeps not moving. This is because the collective identity of the team has not caught up to where the organization is trying to go. The brain's preference for familiar over new does not disappear in a boardroom, it just gets called risk management.