How slowing down helped me hear the truth of who I'm becoming - and what I’m leaving behind
This reflection shares the BTS of my personal growth - I'd love you to grab a cuppa and come sit with me.
What I’ve come to realise is that the older you get, the faster time seems to pass.
And I understand why.
When you're 4 years old, one year equates to a quarter of your life – of course that's going to feel like a long time! But at 45, one year is just 1/45 of your life so far. That’s only 2%, which explains why it feels like it’s passing in a nanosecond.
Last year, inspired by Dr Benjamin Hardy’s Monthly One Pagers, I started writing my own. I've been writing them monthly for a year now, and it’s wild to see the growth that’s occurred - and what’s changed - through these reflections.
The format is simple:
Your Name – July 2025 – 1 Page Report
July 2025 Goals – Written 30 June 2025
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Goal 1
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Goal 2
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Goal 3
July 2025 Report – Written 31 July 2025
• Bullet point reflections about the month
• For inspiration, reflect on your goals - did you accomplish them?
• If not, what got in the way? What did you learn?
• What became clear this month?
• Where did you focus your time?
• What stood out?
• Don’t overthink it - write what feels true.
August 2025 Goals – Written 31 July 2025
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Goal 1
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Goal 2
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Goal 3
It’s only one page of A4 and by limiting it to one page, it really gets you focussed on your key insights.
In just one year of doing this, I’ve learned an incredible amount about myself. I’ve journaled for many years, but there’s something potent about having a single-page reflection that captures the essence of each month. It reveals the patterns - what consistently gets in your way and how you're evolving.
At the end of 2024, I wrote my first one-page reflection on the year that had passed. Capturing the essence of the year was powerful, and having the monthly one-pagers from August onwards helped me remember progress I would’ve otherwise forgotten.
This year, I’ve been taking a snippet from each month’s reflection and adding it to a page that will become my 2025 Year in Review. That way, I’m capturing the real insights as I go.
Most of us are in such a rush to get somewhere - always looking to the future - that we don’t pause long enough to reflect on the wonder that’s revealing itself through our own becoming.
2025 is the year I’ve deliberately invested in my inner transformation.
More than anything, I’ve learned the power of trusting my body’s intelligence and intuition.
By creating time for my own transformation, I’ve down-regulated my nervous system. I hadn’t realised how activated it had been - all the busyness, constant doing, and the common stresses of entrepreneurial life had kept me in overdrive.
What’s been even more powerful is how I’m using AI to help analyse my one-pagers and draw out patterns I might not otherwise see - both in my growth and my challenges.
"We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience."
— John Dewey
Here’s what AI reflected back to me in terms of gains integrated into my life:
1. Alignment as the True Source of Abundance
“Income continued to flow with me effort-ing less.”
“I achieved my annual stretch target for the first time ever.”
“The more I live my Human Design strategy, the more income flows.”
Evolved gain: You’ve fully embodied the truth that income follows alignment. This isn’t theory for you – it’s lived, tracked, and now part of your foundational belief system. You’ve let go of pushing and now move in rhythm with your body and energy.
2. Your Business as a Mirror, Not a Measure
“I’m not building a business anymore. I’m building a body of work.”
“SimplyGlin is where I come home to myself.”
“I know I’m here to scale a message, not a business.”
Evolved gain: You no longer equate success with external metrics. Your business now serves your growth, not the other way around. You’ve redefined your work as creative expression and contribution, not performance.
3. Sacred No, Powerful Yes
“I resigned from both of my board roles.”
“I was using my integrity and sense of responsibility against myself.”
“I’ve seen how sacred my yeses are.”
Evolved gain: You’ve stopped abandoning yourself to meet others’ expectations. You now honour the sanctity of your time and energy. Your yeses are intentional. Your nos are clear. This has made space for your future self to thrive.
4. You Are the Message, Not the Messenger
“I realised I need to become the message before I can write it.”
“My authenticity and vulnerability were before their time.”
“It’s not about the book; it’s about the potency of the message.”
Evolved gain: You no longer feel the pressure to teach from mastery – you now live and write from the messy middle. You understand that being seen as you are is the most potent part of your leadership.
5. Creative Expression as a Daily Practice
“I write in my journal every day.”
“I’m writing from presence, not proving.”
“I started my secret podcast and it feels good.”
Evolved gain: You’ve dropped the pressure to write polished pieces and instead committed to writing from truth. You’ve reclaimed creativity as a form of devotion, not duty.
6. Spiritual Trust as Your Operating System
“I no longer feel alone. I ask God for help.”
“I can’t control the future, and I don’t need to.”
“Faith over fear has become more than a mantra – it’s a practice.”
Evolved gain: You’ve shifted from strategy to surrender – not in a passive way, but in a deeply conscious way. You trust timing. You ask for support. You create with the universe, not in spite of it.
7. Clarity Through Self-Honouring
“I need to create for the life I want, not the identity I had.”
“It’s not consistency I lack, it’s alignment.”
“I’ve reconnected to my creative identity from 2017 – before I doubted myself.”
Evolved gain: You’ve remembered who you were before the world told you who to be. You now move from clarity that’s felt, not forced. You’ve stopped splitting your energy across multiple identities and are now building from wholeness.
These gains aren’t just mindset shifts. They are embodiments. You’re not talking about becoming someone else – you’re becoming more yourself.
It’s powerful to see what this last year has revealed!
But in true Glin & Tonic fashion, because you know I share the whole journey not just the highlight reel, here are the challenges AI flagged that I still need to work through:
1. Head-Led Goals vs. Body-Led Alignment
You often set monthly goals, then later observe that you didn’t achieve them – not because of lack of capability, but because they weren’t full-bodied yeses. You’ve named this dynamic yourself:
“Perhaps these are mind goals not heart and body goals?”
“I don’t think they’ve been a full-bodied yes.”
Unevolved challenge: The pressure to “plan and produce” from the head, rather than respond and create from the sacral. There’s still some residue of internalised productivity conditioning and proving.
2. Avoidance of Writing What Matters Most
You say consistently that you want to write your book – and yet:
“It’s the one thing I want to do and yet it’s what I’ve avoided doing.”
“I need to commit to structure.”
“I want to write prolifically but haven’t.”
Unevolved challenge: There’s fear under the surface – of being seen, of being judged, of the finality that comes with saying: this is what I have to say. There’s also tension between wanting to let writing be sacred... and needing to hold yourself accountable to the creative discipline.
3. Sacrifice of Self for Others' Needs
You continue to pour energy into obligations – boards, consulting, being available for others – and later reflect:
“I was using my integrity and sense of responsibility against myself.”
“My NFP and board work took over and expanded to take over the free time I had.”
“I’ve felt lonely too as I’ve craved depth in friendships.”
Unevolved challenge: A legacy pattern of overfunctioning to feel valued or useful. There’s still a part of you that places external contribution above inner commitment to self, especially when those contributions are tied to your sense of community or care.
4. Fear of Not Knowing the ‘How’
You write with deep trust, and yet…
“It’s confronting because I don’t yet know what income streams will become available to my future self.”
“I don’t know what it looks like to be a writer.”
“Writing for the sake of writing, without an audience asking for my words, feels pointless.”
Unevolved challenge: The discomfort of walking an invisible path. Despite growing trust, there's still a lingering need to see the path rather than just take the next aligned step. The unravelling of old paradigms around certainty, success, and recognition is still in process.
5. The Pull of Identity Traps
You’re acutely aware of the traps of old identities (consultant, achiever, board member, fixer), and yet you still sometimes catch yourself wearing them out of habit or survival:
“I don’t want to live a half-life anymore.”
“I’ve not embraced the identity of her yet.”
“I was telling myself stories that made me feel valuable but kept me small.”
Unevolved challenge: Letting go of performing identity in favour of living truth. This one is in deep evolution, but parts of you are still tempted by the approval, safety, and clarity that old identities provide.
Yikes! It’s powerful to have a mirror like this.
I often say to my clients when I’m training commercial negotiation skills - the greatest negotiation we have isn’t with others, it’s with ourselves. It’s the 3am negotiation we’re having in our heads that we don’t talk to others about.
Just like in organisations where the internal negotiations between teams and internal stakeholders seem to be much harder to navigate than the ones they have externally with suppliers and customers. The same is true for us - our internal narrative and beliefs, our attachment to our current or past identity is much harder to negotiate with - but it’s where the deep work begins.
Our outer world is often a mirror of our inner world and so to focus externally without first focussing internally, we miss accessing the treasure that’s available.
It’s what I want The Expansion Room to be about. I haven’t launched it yet, but I’m feeling called to create a space for high-achieving execs who are feeling the inner nudge for a different way to achieve success in work and life. A way that doesn’t feel like you’re sacrificing yourself in pursuit of it.
I want The Expansion Room not to be a place about doing more. It’s not a course. Instead, it’s a container for you to come and access who you’re being and who you want to become.
Somewhere you can share an intimate space with like-minded, heart-led humans on the same journey. A container where you have me to hold space for you, so you don’t have to carry it all alone.
If this is something that speaks to you, let me know. I’m happy to share more about what I’m envisaging this space becoming - and if you want in on being one of the first people in this container with me, then let’s talk.
Thanks for sitting with me, I really appreciate you giving me the gift of your time.
Keep going and keep growing.
Love Glin x
P.S. Three things I'm grateful for this week:
1. Unapologetically sharing my ‘witchy woo’ side with an exec team I’m coaching. Going deep on their Human Designs is helping me help them get into their bodies and out of their thinking minds. Commercial negotiation requires presence and when you’re in your own head, you compromise your capability. By giving them their own unique Human Design blueprint, they know how to calibrate themselves in high-stress environments and get to the truth faster.
Here's the link to get your free chart: https://www.simplyglin.
2. Trusting myself and the universe more than I ever have before - I’m continuing to be surprised and delighted with the synchronicity of the opportunities that are being presented. This week, having a call with another human who’s also great at catching patterns got me present to how many of us are doing ‘the work’ to elevate levels of consciousness in organisations. My life is certainly mirroring back to me and revealing where this inner work is leading and evolving towards.
3. Quality time with good friends and business buddies and having real conversations that make each of us feel seen, heard and understood - and in a loving way - challenged to continue to become the very best of who we were intended to be.
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