what if you curated the conversations?
on decluttering the internal chatter & how the chaos / innovation cycle is a bit like the Lego-covered floor we all dread / secretly crave
Hey, I’m Sarah, northern soul & creative midlife introvert. I help women to find, love and trust themselves using the practical magic of human design and backed up by my gently-fierce brand of coaching & accountability.
You’ll find encouragement and resources at
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’ll be honest, some weeks when I sit down to write there is SO MUCH in my head that I really don’t know where to start. This is one of them. Let me unpack…
One: I’m ready to declutter
This is a recurring pattern with me, maybe with you too. I started in earnest around 8 years ago when we first moved to a small bungalow with the intention of demolishing it the following year. It was the first time I’d really worked from home too and I couldn’t settle. A good friend gave me a copy of ‘the life changing magic of tidying’ by Marie Kondo and I was hooked. Six months later with 50% of our possessions donated, recycled or sold, I felt amazing, I’d reignited my passion for coaching and my world was a waaaaay better place. For a while I even considered becoming a professional declutterer, I loved it so much.
If you do it right, decluttering is an amazing place to actually find yourself.
Of course, life continued to happen and I accumulated more stuff, as you do. We flattened the bungalow, moving to the bigger house we just built beside it and things… expanded. I got busy with work and the next thing you know, it’s all a bit much again. I can feel the energy of it all dragging at me. I know how to start, I know the steps to take - I even created a mini-course for you that I could go back and follow - and yet I’m struggling to get going on it.
I think there’s a couple of bigger things in the way. One is that I’m kind of ready to move house again. Mostly people don’t believe me when I say this. The house we built is stunning. It was my dream project, to design and build something worthy of Grand Designs, and I absolutely smashed it. But it was never going to be a forever-home.
Something I didn’t need my human design chart for, is to see the constant cycle of chaos and innovation that is at the heart of me. No sooner have I finished something and sat down to enjoy it, than I see the next crazy project peeking around the corner… it can be a little frustrating, but it tugs at me nonetheless!
If you want to geek out with me, you can find this energy in the gate 3 which is all about the shadow of chaos and the gift of innovation. What I love about HD is that we lean into the shadow to find the gift, and then we shift our attention to owning the gift, so that 80% of the work is in the light, whilst still appreciating each time the darkness shows up as we can ask it “hey you, let’s go even deeper! What’s the gift you’re bringing me this time?” I think of the gate 3 as the playfulness of a child with a chaotic pile of lego, and the incredible new ideas she finds there.
Gate 3 is in the Sacral Centre and forms a channel with gate 60 in the Root centre. Gate 60 is about bringing ideas into reality using the guardrails of limitation, and the channel brings the energy of constant mutation & reinvention that I’ve felt all my life and gives me permission (if I need it) to really own this cyclical-ness, after all it’s what I’m here for!
What I do know is that any mass decluttering or house moves tend to happen suddenly… the Root centre is on and off in a kind of pulse, and I can’t predict when this energy will next switch on and kick start things, so watch this space!
Two: not all the decluttering is physical
Do you make up conversations in your head? I do, a lot. Sometimes they’re useful. I chat with you often, trying out ideas and paragraphs for my letters, wondering what you’d most like to read each week. Those conversations tend to go well and can be useful. But other times it’s not so much fun.
Those conversations don’t go so well and they can be exhausting. Sometimes I get unnecessarily frustrated at the person I didn’t even talk to yet, about things they didn’t say.
And sometimes I don’t even know who the person is, finding that I’m talking to the generic ‘they’ - I know you know them too, perhaps you call them ‘people’ or ‘everyone’…
“What will people say?”
“They’ll tell me off for doing this”
“Everyone knows you shouldn’t do that”
Yeah, I chat with them a lot. It’s almost always justifying myself.
Over the weekend it was about bees. Specifically justifying why I was reducing the number of dandelions in the garden, because I know the bees need them and people might judge me for digging them up. I justified it over and over again to them, in my own head. I will probably never have this conversation out loud.
Yesterday the word ‘curating’ popped out at me.
cu-rate - verb: to select (the best or most appropriate) for a purpose or presentation
Hmm. I wonder what it would look like if I started curating the inner conversations, with myself and with others.
💫What would it look like if I didn’t judge and justify myself?
💫What would it look like if I didn’t second guess what they would say?
💫What would it look like if I just stopped? Perhaps I could sing instead, or listen to the birds, or count to 20 5 in French?
Or…
💫If I really do need to talk in my head, what if the conversations went well? What if I had my own back, and I used full-stops instead of full-blown justifications?
Here’s the neuro-science bit:
Our brains can’t tell the difference between reality and imagination, so when you practice something going well, it’s as if you’ve already done it, you get all the good feelings and you build belief in yourself… and of course vice versa.
So curating the conversations and enjoying positive internal vibes is actually good for your confidence as well as your mental health!
Every week I help clients to switch up the internal chatter, discover who they are here to be and get clear on the next steps along their path - here’s a lovely note that Julie shared about our journey so far…
"I loved our session; the human design profile is so accurate of how I have lived my life and I can now see the challenges I faced through a different lens. For example; thinking that moving to a different house would help me move forwards when my sacral was screaming NO. I did it anyway and everything went wrong. I wonder now if I had listened to my sacral where would I be?
Your time, explanation and knowledge of human design blew me away, this mixed with your soft tone and encouraging comments set me on a new course of learning who I am and how to run my energy. I am truly grateful and am booking in for more now I have embedded what the first session taught me."
If you’re ready to be supported on your next steps, why not join me for a no-strings chat to find out how I can help!
Sending love & sunshine!
Sarah xx
"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