Belief can shift in an instant. Identity takes time.
What if the real work of transformation doesn’t start in your mind at all, but in your nervous system?
This year, I made a decision that felt both radical and necessary. I called it my year of inner transformation.
It wasn’t a neat, tidy declaration. It wasn’t the kind of New Year’s resolution that gets written in a fresh notebook and checked off by February. It was more like a vow. A deep inner knowing that the way I’d been living, working and striving couldn’t carry me forward into the life I actually wanted to live.
So, I started letting go.
I stopped chasing opportunities that looked good on paper but felt misaligned in my body. I said no to paths that were “beneath my floor,” even when they offered short-term security. I stepped away from board roles. I created boundaries to protect my time for writing, for reflecting, for the kind of work that feeds me from the inside out.
What I’ve discovered so far is that transformation doesn’t just happen in the mind.
It happens in the nervous system.
For a long time, I thought change was about belief. If I could decide who I wanted to become and hold that decision with conviction, everything else would fall into place. And to some extent, that’s true. Belief is the spark and it is often the ignition that begins the process.
But belief and identity aren’t the same.
Belief can shift in an instant. You can read a sentence, hear a truth, or have a moment of clarity that changes everything you think you know. Suddenly, you believe differently.
Identity, though, is slower. Identity isn’t just what you think. It’s how you live. It shows up in your nervous system, in your body, in the micro-choices you make every day. And while belief might say, I’m ready now, the nervous system says, Really? Prove it.
That’s the gap.
It’s not that the belief isn’t real. It’s that the body hasn’t yet caught up. Until the nervous system feels safe in the new identity, it will keep pulling you back to the familiar, because familiar feels survivable.
Of course there are moments when identity changes in a flash, a breakthrough, a loss, a revelation. But what follows is always integration. The body, the nervous system, the daily habits all need time to settle into the new reality.
This is why so many of us start and stop.
It’s not because we’re weak, lazy or uncommitted to the future we want. It’s not because we don’t want it enough. It’s because our nervous systems aren’t yet calibrated to hold what we’ve called in.
The belief can change in an instant. But identity is slower.
The nervous system is designed to keep us safe, and “safe” is another word for “familiar.” Even if the familiar is exhausting or misaligned, the body knows how to survive it. The unfamiliar, no matter how aligned, feels dangerous until it’s lived enough times to feel safe.
And so, the nervous system has to learn. It has to be regulated, expanded and resourced. This is the hidden side of transformation, the quiet work of becoming someone who can hold more.
For me, this calibration hasn’t only been personal. It has been professional too.
For years, I split myself into parts, the corporate identity of negotiation strategist and executive coach on one side, and the writer, seeker, and yes, the “woo” side of me on the other. The part that loves Human Design, Gene Keys, and exploring how energy and belief shape behaviour.
For a long time, I thought these worlds couldn’t coexist. I carried different versions of myself into different rooms, as though the part of me who loved exploring inner transformation couldn’t stand beside the part of me who trained executives to negotiate multimillion-dollar deals.
But the truth is they belong together. My corporate expertise and my so-called “woo” have never been separate. They are two ways of looking at the same thing, how humans show up, make choices, and create agreements with each other and with themselves.
And this year, something shifted.
I realised my nervous system wasn’t only learning how to hold a new personal identity, it was also learning how to integrate my professional ones.
I no longer want to be split. I no longer want to separate “the negotiator” from “the human.” Because the truth is my work in negotiation has always been about more than tactics and deals. It has been about identity, emotion, trust, safety, and the unseen forces shaping every conversation.
When I teach negotiation now, it isn’t just about how to get the deal done. It’s about mastering the conversation on the inside, with yourself, before you walk into the room. It’s about tending to the nervous system so you can hold steady, stay present, and create agreements that reflect not just value, but alignment.
This is the natural evolution of my work. I’m not abandoning negotiation, I’m deepening it with self-leadership.
And as I’ve begun to integrate my work, I’ve also had to learn a different pace for myself. Change doesn’t happen all at once, no matter how much the mind wants certainty. The nervous system moves in its own time, expanding, contracting, testing, recalibrating. There is a rhythm to it.
In the past, I tried to rush myself into certainty, to move faster than my nervous system could handle. I treated life like a race, tick the box, achieve the goal, move to the next thing. But I’ve learned rhythm isn’t about rushing. Rhythm is about alignment. It’s about knowing when to move and when to pause, when to act and when to breathe.
And as I’ve trusted this rhythm this year, I’ve started to see my experiences differently. Every start, every stop, every uncomfortable recalibration, none of it has been wasted. Even the messy moments are part of the compost that feeds the next chapter.
But it’s important to say experience alone doesn’t bring clarity. It is reflection that turns the chaos of our daily lived moments into coherence. Without reflection, everything we experience can feel fragmented. With it, the threads begin to weave together into something whole.
And of course, reflection always brings questions. Am I doing enough? Am I wasting time? Am I making the right choices?
In the not too distant past, I treated my questions like enemies. Now I see them differently. They are not proof I’m failing. They are proof I’m still listening. Questions, when answered honestly, light the path. They strip away what’s false and leave me with what’s true.
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So, when I look back on this year of inner transformation, I see more than a shift in my personal life. I see the integration of my work.
No longer fragmented. No longer split.
Negotiation. Writing. Strategy. Transformation. They are not separate lanes I’m trying to run in parallel anymore. They are one road. One integrated identity. One coherent body of work.
Because the most powerful negotiation you’ll ever have is the one you have with yourself. The one where you stop fragmenting and start becoming whole. The one where your nervous system, your beliefs, and your identity come into alignment so you can lead, create and live from the inside out.
We’re all negotiating something, with others, but more importantly with ourselves. The invitation from this week’s heart to heart is to move with your own rhythm instead of rushing, to embrace every experience as part of your transformation, to allow reflection and questioning to deepen your truth.
And from that place, to bring all of who you are into the room.
Because that’s where the most meaningful agreements are made and where your transformation becomes your contribution.
Keep going and keep growing.
Love Glin x
P.S. Three things I'm grateful for this week:
1. I’m grateful for my coaching clients this week, executive men who are not only transforming themselves internally to create external breakthroughs, but also embracing Human Design as part of learning who they are. It shows me the readiness of corporate leaders willing to step out of their mind and into their body by understanding how their unique energetic blueprint shapes how they lead.
2. I’m also grateful that I no longer work inside organisations where insecure leadership tries to control others in order to feel safe. At its heart, it’s bullying. Some of my clients are courageously navigating these dynamics, and my work is about helping them negotiate power - both externally, in the face of unhealthy leadership behaviours, and internally, as they claim the self-leadership needed to hold their own alignment. This is negotiation at its most human level.
3. I’m grateful for the space I’ve had to reflect, for the deeper understanding of what this work requires of me, and for the privilege of weaving together negotiation, self-leadership, and yes, the “woo.” This integration is what makes the work feel alive, meaningful and whole.
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