Most of us have been there. We have expectations of how something will go, it does not land the way we hoped, and what follows is a wave of shame, frustration, embarrassment, or anger. Sometimes proportionate to the situation. Often not. And here is what I have come to understand: the response we have to a mistake is rarely about the mistake itself. It is about the relationship we have with making mistakes in the first place. Why the reaction is almost never about the thing i

Here is something worth knowing: motivation is not something you find before you begin. It is something that tends to show up because you began. This is not a productivity platitude. It is neuroscience. What dopamine actually does Dopamine, the chemical most associated with motivation and reward, is not just released when we achieve something. It is released during goal-directed action itself. The brain rewards movement toward a goal, not just arrival at one. This is why the

The brain is an ancient energy organ. It accounts for only around two percent of our body weight and yet requires roughly twenty percent of our energy each day. It is constantly switching between tasks, processing threat, managing emotion, making decisions, all of it drawing from the same biological reserve. The less available energy your brain has, the harder it becomes to stay in your prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for clear thinking, good decisions, and emotional

"I know what I need to do, but something is still stopping me." If you have ever said that, you are not alone. And the answer is almost never about strategy, discipline, or willpower. The body keeps the score Your nervous system is designed to detect threat, real or perceived, and sound the alarm. The body prepares. The mind scans. We move into fight, flight, or freeze. The problem is not the alarm. The problem is when it keeps sounding long after the trigger has passed. Rese

When we talk about resilience, we tend to talk about the big things. Organisational change. Personal crisis. Breakdown. But adversity is both the big and the small. Monotony, that quiet, unremarkable flatness that can settle over everyday life, is one of the most overlooked forms of it. Too often we dismiss it as a privilege or as life “just is”. And in some ways, both are true. But that does not mean it cannot feel heavy. The expectations gap Mo Gawdat’s happiness equation i

Uncertainty is part of the human condition. But lately it feels more constant and less avoidable. A restructure at work. Ambiguity around your role. New technology reshaping how we operate. Changing expectations from leaders, teams, and even ourselves. It all adds up. What happens in the nervous system When the ground feels like it is constantly moving, our nervous system does not always distinguish between genuine threat and simple uncertainty. The limbic brain activates and

Open your phone, search “news,” and within seconds your sympathetic nervous system is activated. Gone are the days when we heard about events at a distance. Today, we see them in real time, with imagery, commentary, and opinion layered on top of opinion. Access to information is a privilege. It also comes at a cost. Why your brain can’t tell the difference Your brain does not distinguish particularly well between direct threat and perceived threat. This is why Virtual Reality

A lack of clarity about where we are going and who we are becoming sits beneath so many of the challenges people bring to conversations about work, relationships, and life. The questions sound familiar: Who am I becoming? What do I want next? Is this right for me? When we don’t have a clear enough vision to orient toward, everything feels harder. Decisions become heavier. Motivation fades. Even simple choices can feel overwhelming because the mind doesn’t know what it is aimi

Uncertainty is universal. We all face it. But there is a difference between understanding that intellectually and knowing what to do when it arrives all at once. What happens in the brain when uncertainty hits When we experience a lot of change at once and uncertainty creeps in, something very normal happens in the brain. It is called cognitive narrowing. When we feel overwhelmed, our attention zooms in on the perceived threat. We focus tightly as if narrowing in will somehow

Everything in life is something we are in relationship with. Our work. Our body. Our emotions. Our habits. Even the things we try to avoid, like change, grief, or uncertainty. When someone tells me they “can’t deal with change,” I don’t see resistance or weakness. I see a relationship that needs attention. It’s rarely that they can’t handle change, but that their connection with it has become fearful or strained. Through the lens of Belief, Biology, and Behaviour Belief What