Edwin's Corner

  What happens when your nervous system concludes before you do One of the harder things to accept is that your response to a situation is sometimes less than exemplary. Cathy had one of those mornings. It was only 9:30 a.m., which felt unfair. If your day is going to unravel, it should at least have the courtesy to wait until after lunch. A colleague had raised an issue about her work in front of several senior people. Worse, some of what he shared had come from conversations Cathy believed were private. She tried to explain herself. Her voice quivered at first, then rose as she spoke. Her boss frowned. Someone at the other end of the table seemed to smirk. Another colleague raised an eyebrow. There are moments when an eyebrow is simply an eyebrow. This wasn’t one of them, at least not to Cathy. She saw judgment. Betrayal. Disappointment. Perhaps even the beginning of the end. She defended herself, but she also acknowledged where she had gone wrong and agreed to rectify it. If you...

  Sometimes the beliefs shaping an adult life begin in moments so small that everyone else forgets them. She still remembers the price of the sweets. It was seventy shillings. Not because seventy shillings was a fortune. Not because the sweets themselves were remarkable. She remembers because she never received them. She was six. It was her birthday, and she wanted what six-year-olds usually want — to bring something small to school and share it with her classmates. A bag of sweets. A small celebration. The glorious privilege of being temporarily important because it happened to be her birthday. She asked. The answer was no. On its own, that is hardly the kind of event from which we expect an adult life to emerge. No dramatic soundtrack. No great family crisis. Just a child, a birthday, and a bag of sweets. Yet decades later, during a live coaching conversation in The Clarity Room™, the memory returned. And seventy shillings was no longer only about sweets. It was about asking. The...

Some of the beliefs running our adult lives were formed long before we knew we were forming beliefs. There is something peculiar about being an adult. You can be forty years old, hold a job, raise children, run a business, pay taxes, and possess several passwords you can no longer remember — and still find yourself reacting to something with the emotional logic of a much younger version of yourself. Someone criticizes your work. You know it’s feedback, but your body hears rejection. Someone doesn’t return your call, and although your rational mind knows they’re probably in a matatu somewhere with terrible reception, something quieter says, People always leave. Your spouse asks what you need, and you say, “Nothing” — not because you need nothing, but because you got very good, a long time ago, at needing nothing. Some of our strangest adult behavior begins there, not only with what is happening now, but with what happened then. The Questions We Didn’t Know We Were Asking Children are r...

  Why identity, not motivation, is the foundation for lasting transformation. Every January, gyms become unusually optimistic places. People arrive in new shoes, carrying new water bottles and wearing expressions that suggest they have entered into a legally binding agreement with fitness. The treadmills are full. The exercise classes are packed. Protein powder sales rise. Somewhere, someone is taking a photograph of a salad. For the first few weeks, motivation is everywhere. Then February arrives. The gym grows quieter. The water bottle spends more time in the car. The new running shoes return to their original role as expensive household decorations. The habit tracker, once filled with great enthusiasm, develops several blank spaces. Eventually, it is placed in a drawer with previous versions of ourselves. This extends far beyond fitness. We decide to save money. Read more. Wake up earlier. Become more patient. Spend less time on our phones. Build stronger relationships. Start th...

  There is a particular kind of frustration that only arises when you know exactly what to do. You know you should exercise. You know you should save more money. You know you need to have that difficult conversation. You know you should delegate. You know you need to stop procrastinating, go to bed earlier, speak up, set boundaries, launch the business, write the proposal, call the client, apologize, forgive, pray, rest, lead better, eat better, and—according to every health expert on the internet—probably drink more water. You know. In fact, you may know so much that you could confidently teach a seminar on the very habit you're struggling to practice. The people who know the most about change are not always the ones changing the most. Some of us have become collectors of transformation. We've watched the podcasts, bought the books, and highlighted entire chapters—as though fluorescent yellow were a recognized method of behavioral change. We've downloaded productiv...