Mental Hypervigilance is not the answer

If you find yourself constantly overthinking, worrying and never having a quiet moment in your mind, this is for you.

Hey friends,

I’m back! First of all, Happy New Year! I’m excited to be back and more importantly, as promised, Growth Spurts 2024 is going to be looking a little different. 2023 was full of trying and experimenting and as a result, I’ve got a few more answers. Namely, that I want this more like a love letter from a friend than an article you find in the magazines.

My New Plan For Growth Spurts

First up, no more scheduled articles that I wrote months in advance, we are going to make room for more spontaneity and live updates of what I’m actually going through while I’m going through it. And that might mean some weeks you get more and some you get less. I want to get more personal on here and whilst it will be still full of personal development (cause that’s just my jam!) I’m going to really lean into the fact that I was a human before I was a life coach. There will be some things, as always, that I don’t want accessible to the whole world and that’s where my paid subbies will get a deeper dive. I’m going to use the paid newsletters to also discuss things I’m pondering, unsure about or even just haven’t figured out the process in case it’s interesting or helpful to see the journey behind the accomplishment. What is for sure though is you will hear from me every Wednesday, twice a month it will be free and twice a month it will be paid!

You can’t output if you have no time for input 

Wow, it feels good to have taken a break but if I’m being honest, it was also a little worrying. Usually, when I go on a digital detox, the relief is instant. It takes a few days for the instinct to press on my phone to go away but the relief hits immediately and within a few days, my creativity well is tapped into and I’m pouring all my thoughts into the notes section on my phone. This time, I don’t think I felt relaxed until shortly after the new year which was more than a week and the part that worried me most was that my creativity was nowhere to be found. It still hasn’t really returned and writing this doesn’t feel as easy as writing once was for me. If I’m always outputting, there is no time for learning, observing, absorbing and ultimately inputting information and new knowledge. I’m taking this as a sign that my digital detox was overdue. I used to do them every month even if it was just for a weekend or 24 hours and I want that to return. Regarding my creativity, I think I’m too burned out and that makes me think I’m on one too many platforms and at least one needs to go.

The books I read over the break

It’s OK if your holiday sucked 

My holiday was a mixed bag. Finding it difficult to unwind was one hurdle. The other was that everyone else seemed to be in a bad mood. It’s made me realise that I STILL absorb other people’s energies too much and should have prioritised myself more and taken myself out of rooms that were draining me. Absorbing energies is something you learn and can be disguised as empathy because it makes you good at ‘reading a room’. There is a difference though between reading the room and becoming the energy of the room. I would love to be more in control of my energy this year. Just because someone else is in a bad mood, doesn’t mean you have to be. If your holiday sucked, the good news is we are the furthest amount of time to have to do it all over again. Also, from experience, a miserable holiday period does not in any way predict how the rest of the year is going to go.

The grass is not always greener

Singapore was not the fantasy or escape we thought it would be. We actually went there because, for the last year, we have spoken about potentially living there. The slight issue in our plan was that my boyfriend had never visited and I hadn’t gone in 10 years. Note to self: Do not spend a year fantasising about something when you’ve not even taken the first step. I love Singapore and this trip really confirmed that for me but by the end of the first day, I knew I couldn’t live there. It took my boyfriend a few more days but he came to the same conclusion. The only reason we started having this conversation was because we were starting to hate London but turns out a lot of the things we don’t like in London still exist in Singapore and Singapore might not have the same problems but it brought new ones. We’ve come back to London with a harsh realisation that the grass is not always greener. No regrets about the trip though, Singapore brought me so much joy!

Life can make your relationships harder 

This time last year, my boyfriend were constantly bickering and then we went on holiday and for a whole month there was no a single squabble and that led to the realisation that we had housemate problems, not relationship problems. Now that we have been living together more than a year, I was expecting the same relief but this time, it was almost worsened by being away. I needed a bit of a reality check because a couple in the honeymoon period are just not going to act the same as a couple in a long-term relationship. This year I would love to discuss more about the realities of a healthy relationship. It doesn’t mean no fights, it just means higher quality fights and better efforts at resolution so that fights don’t repeat. We both realised that the lack of time we had spent lately, how stressed we had both been at work and how long it had been since we had had a date night has really had an impact on our relationship. We made a plan to reprioritise us in the new year and that we can’t let life get in the way because there is always a reason to be too busy. And instead of the instant relief of going on holiday, it seems our relationship did something different this time. When we returned home on Sunday, that’s when the relief and the comfort hit. Turns out putting a lot of effort into making this house a home and being good housemates as well as partners really did work. As much as Singapore and Hong Kong were wonderful, there is no place I would rather be! A nice feeling after so much hatred of London lately.

Mental hyper-vigilance is not the answer 

One of the books I was reading over the holiday included the words ‘mental hyper-vigilance’ and it made me stop. It spoke about how if you have gone through trauma, it is easy for your body to learn that you need to be on high alert at all times to be prepared for danger. Some part of me already knew this because I do a lot of relaxing my nervous system but have you ever heard it said differently and it just resonates and you understand it to a deeper level than you ever have before? This was the answer I had been looking for. This was probably why I was so burned out and why even when social media disappeared, my stress didn’t. I am no longer hard on myself and my inner critic is quieter than ever before but now I have a new problem. My brain was just so damn loud all the time. Part of me thinks it’s because nearly every one of my thoughts results in me posting on a platform and if you act on every thought, it encourages your brain to produce more. I’m telling myself that it’s OK to just let a thought exist and disappear and more importantly, it’s OK to stop thinking. I’m making more time for stillness. Lesson learned: I’m setting a limit on my phone to turn off all social media, email, work and even video editing apps after 6 am and making a promise to myself that the first hour I am awake will be phone-free time.

My body finally crashing when given permission to.

Praise yourself for 2023

I know this time of year can bring a lot of pressure to set new year’s resolutions and to become a whole new you but instead, every year, I use it as an opportunity to much more praise myself for 2023 and all the growth that came with that year. I find I enter the new year with much better energy focusing on all I’ve already done and the more I am proud of myself for past accomplishments, the more I feel I am capable of. I tend to ask myself the same questions each year and whilst I do set new goals at the beginning of the year, that is not a New Year thing because I set goals all the time. I don’t wait for the start of a new month or a Monday to do it. I simply set goals when I feel like it. I’m quite a rebellious spirit so I don’t like doing things when I have to but more so, when the mood strikes. If you would be interested in knowing the questions I ask myself, let me know in the comments below and if you haven’t taken a moment to reflect and be proud of 2023, please give yourself a moment to reward yourself. Use the comment section now if you know you are going to forget. I find my yearly review also means that my memory doesn’t distort the year into either being a ‘good’ year or a ‘bad’ one. We can be very selective about what we choose to focus on depending on the mood so a review allows me to see the year as a whole.

I want more friends

Catching up with my friend Michelle while in Hong Kong. She likes to tell people that we are sisters (and sometimes twins!). I tell her that we are just both Chinese and we look nothing alike. Also, why would someone call both their children the same name? Her answer is always that it is easier! A reminiscence of our school days when she was Michelle 1 and I was Michelle 2, even though I arrived at the school first, she got precedence because she was the year above.

As most of you know I’ve been working on my fifth book which is all about friendship breakups but getting stuck and it’s because tbh it’s bumming me out. Writing about some of the greatest heartbreaks in my life is digging up a lot of my own shit and that’s been difficult to see the sky through the clouds. I know the final product of the book will also include the joys, fun and love in friendship - I do intend it to be a love letter about how vital friendship is and why we should value it. But first I’ve got to get through the mud and all of that has made me realise that friendship in fact should be something I focus on in 2024. It’s been a while since I’ve made a new friend and I have started to notice some gaps in my life as some friends move away, in general people get busier and also since my interests and I as a person have changed. 2024: The year I invest more in friendships.

And that’s it for this week! I would love to know if you prefer this kind of mixed-bag update newsletter style. I do think I’m going to stick to it anyway because I enjoy it more! I am happy to share some of my yearly review questions if you think it would help you too - I just might stick it in paid because my goals feel quite vulnerable!

Sending all my love,

M xx