journeys inside & out

on international travel, losing my fear, finding my soul home & how all of that came about (part 1)

I’m Sarah, human design guide, writer, podcaster, mum & creative midlife introvert. And I want to tell you that you mean the world to me, reading my words, cheering me on, asking questions, sending me emails and just being you!

If you’re reading in your inbox I’m inviting you to click through to the quietly courageous blog where you can take a tour of my writing archives where you can enjoy all things self-belief, seasonal energy and of course, human design, including my new Human Design Resource Library and the Who Do You Think You Are? podcast too.

Hello you,

I’ve been away! Did you miss me?

(and it’s totally ok if you didn’t, we all need a break from time to time! I did think about prescheduling some letters for you, but honestly I love to write them in the moment, so hopefully you enjoyed the extra focus on Seasonology instead ☀️ also, this email is a long one so you might need to read the last part on the internet!)

I landed back in the UK yesterday after 3 weeks in Australia… which is not something I ever thought I’d hear myself say! To be completely honest I’m still pinching myself that I made this happen.

Byron Bay, Australia

For a long time I’ve not thought of myself as a traveler. Some of that came from scarcity and lack driven my first husband’s inability to hold onto money; I simply shut down the part of me that wanted to go away on holiday.

You probably already know, but a great way to change your identity and create beliefs is to repeat something over and again. We call them affirmations. And so I repeatedly affirmed to myself that “I don’t like going on holiday” until I really didn’t want to go anywhere. Yay! I had become someone who “didn’t travel”. It was my way of protecting myself from missing out on the kinds of holidays my friends and peers were enjoying. I actually forgot for a while that it was even an option for me.

And then when I finally could afford to travel, I continued to get in my own way, this time through fear and anxiety. Fear of travel, knowing that however statistically unlikely, something could go wrong. Accidents happen. Children go missing from resorts. What if we didn’t all make it home? Was it really worth the risk just to get sunburn and trudge for hours through airport security, arriving back shattered and way behind on work? Fear of missing out, although on what I couldn’t tell you. Fear of getting it wrong, booking somewhere awful, not making the most of it, not speaking the language. And maybe, just maybe, a fear that I might just not want to come home. 

So how did we all end up adventuring around Australia’s Gold Coast? Well you already know that human design is a good chunk of the answer, so I won’t pretend it’s not. There’s a good dose of NLP¹ coaching in there too… in fact it’s all down to exactly the kind of work I do every day with clients.

But if I know you the way I think you do, you’ll want the whole story! So here goes.

Over the last year I’ve been studying HD and getting qualified to share it with clients², thanks to an incredible warm human who’s based in Aus. When the opportunity to join her on one of her infamous retreats came up, it was a full-body YES from me! My sacral³ was giving me a big loud message to go ahead. I just knew that I had to go!

Except, hmmm, I couldn’t very well go all the way to Aus on my own, leaving hubby and son behind, that didn’t feel quite right, plus there’d be all the jet lag so I wouldn’t get the most from the retreat… wait, this is the old me just putting things in the way again… and I decided that I wasn’t going to block myself. So instead of asking myself “CAN I go?” I switched the question and asked this instead⁴…

“HOW can I go?”

It was suddenly so clear for me, exactly how I could go on the retreat 11k miles away, how the boys could come along and enjoy an amazing holiday, and how we could pay for it all too. Boom! But what about that fear?

Well here’s the thing, over the last year SO MUCH has shifted for me that I can’t actually find the fear anymore… and believe me I’ve looked! 

A lot of human design is about getting out of the mind and into the body. Something we all know we should do, but mostly we still stay stuck in thinking hard, rationalising and logical reasoning.

Last winter I started walking our pup along a farm track. It’s barely used, fairly remote and there’s an abandoned farmhouse part way along. Now if you’ve ever watched Scooby Doo, you’ll know that abandoned farmhouses are not good news and I was on high alert for generalised danger whenever I set off up the track. Mostly I didn’t go past the old house and turned round before I reached it. I was cross with myself, and frustrated too. I didn’t get to have my walk and neither did the dog. I felt cheated.

But I’d been doing a lot of work connecting with my chakras (in HD we call them centres) especially listening to what they’re telling me in the moment, and when my frustration peaked on a beautiful sunny day in November, I stopped right there on the lane and went looking for the fear. Ignoring the thoughts, I scanned my whole body. It was completely neutral. My spleen, which is in charge of physical wellbeing, safety and intuition, was saying nothing. My heart was quiet.

Wow. This was new, this deep sense of calm inside, not allowing the thoughts to become feelings.

It wasn’t a new concept though… in NLP we learn how thoughts become feelings become behaviours become interactions become thoughts… so I already knew how the cycle works and how to interrupt it… but this was a whole new level. There was an actual map for this shift!

And so when it came to thinking about flying around the world, I was intrigued what would happen, not when I was booking the tickets, or going through security, but at that moment of takeoff when I usually hold in my panic, grab a tight hold of whoever I’m sat next to and pray to anyone listening…

… nothing. Not a whisper. Turbulence? No fear. Landing? Ok, still a little weird going downhill in a plane, I can’t lie about that, it wasn’t comfortable but still no fear.

Now for someone who’s been worried about everything in the world for decades and very familiar with generalised and specific anxiety, finding myself at peace with not only travel but so much more feels like the ultimate freedom! What else you might wonder? Really simple things like asking for a late check out in a hotel, telling a cafe owner that something wasn’t actually ‘great’ and dancing at the front of the plane whilst queuing for the toilet (my son loved that one 😂) - in fact pretty much anything that in the past I’d have just not done.

You know, the things where you think, ‘oh it’s too silly to do this’, or ‘I’ll be a nuisance if I ask’, or ‘they’ll probably say no, what’s the point?’ - whenever I noticed any of these thoughts tickling away, I decided just to go for it. To see what happened. I’d love you to try it for yourself.

Because what happened was I felt like I was claiming all the things I’d denied myself for years. I felt quietly powerful, walking that little bit taller, feeling more like me than ever.

This whole HD journey I’m on is taking me places I didn’t expect and is the very best way I know to finding, loving and trusting ME. Grateful doesn’t go anywhere near covering it. And you know my diary is open if you’d like to take your very own journey with your HD too right? We can chat before you start if that feels good :)

And lastly, I did hear someone call my adventure a “once in a lifetime holiday”… My reaction? No way… I’ll be having more of that thank you! 

Sending love & sunshine!

Sarah xx

The pix aren’t in this order, but we visited: Brisbane, Noosa, Lake Weyba, Surfers Paradise, Lamington National Park & my soul home Byron Bay 🧡

"The human design system is not a belief system. It does not require that you believe in anything. It does not require that you believe in me. It is not stories. It is not philosophy. It is a concrete map to the nature of being. It is a logical way in which we can see ourselves.”

Ra Uru Hu, founder of human design

1. Neuro Linguistic Programming must be the worst name ever for something that’s as powerful and accessible as it is. It’s a collection of tools and techniques for supporting positive language and thought patterns to up level your outlook, health and work.

2. Getting qualified to share HD feels really important to me. There is so much generic stuff on the internet and anyone can share this with you. But if you want HD to make sense to you, please do find someone qualified to translate it with you, it really does make all the difference.

3. I have sacral authority in my design, which means I get an instant yes, or no, to anything I come across. I used to ignore the yes’s which meant I couldn’t find what lights me up, and I used to ignore the no’s which meant I did a lot of things that drained me. I don’t ignore my sacral messages anymore and life is a whole lot better! You can read more about authority in my Human Design Resource Library

4. This is a great NLP technique that presupposes (in this case) that I CAN go on holiday and I just need to figure out the how. Presupposing a positive outcome changes the way your brain approaches something - try it for yourself & let me know how you get on. Or message me if you’re wondering how your new flipped question would look and we’ll figure it out (for free in case you wonder if you need to book anything officially, this is just me offering a quick helping out!)