Who we are when it's working, and who we are when it's not.
Success and struggle will both try to convince you they're permanent. The work is staying recognisably yourself either way.
Over the last few decades of being a human, I have come to understand that most of our life isn't actually lived at the extreme edges of the human experience, but is instead spent navigating the space between them in a steady, unfolding process of daily living.
We have our distinct chapters of "heavy lifting" shall we say, we have our bright moments of success, and then we have a whole lot of normal everyday routine where we are simply making breakfast, running errands and households, career-ing, parenting, and experiencing the ordinary flow of life.
When we can accept that this blend is how a whole life naturally unfolds, I feel it brings a comforting sense of adaptability, and somehow gives us a gentle equilibrium to sit inside.
When that pendulum is moving, in either direction, struggle or success, the one thing we really have a say over is who we decide to be while it swings, and whether we can find a way to be the same person riding a high that we are when we are deep in a low.
I'd encourage you to read that sentence again, it's really quite powerful.
Making that choice on purpose, rather than leaving our character to whatever mood happens to catch us in the moment, is one of the most meaningful and grounding things we can do for ourselves.
Also takes some practice... speaking from experience.
I think it's also worth remembering that it isn't only our internal world pulling at us, because the outside world is incredibly good at pushing us toward the furthest edges of our emotions with news cycles built for friction and polarisation, and social media algorithms that painfully reward the extremes, struggle or success. There is an entire cultural machinery that benefits from keeping us either anxious or euphoric, precisely because the calm, considered, everyday version of us doesn't tend to click on things. We're all getting sick of that.
Knowing it doesn't instantly stop the swing, but it does mean you can stop blaming yourself for how hard it pulls sometimes, because struggle and success are really just two sides of the same coin.
In my twenties, I was in a chapter of struggle that was mostly invisible from the outside as these things are, since my advertising and marketing career was checking all the traditional boxes while I was navigating generalised anxiety, panic, and a sleep disorder. I used to picture those difficult mental habits quite literally as little creatures, monsters riding along in a motorcycle sidecar next to me, constantly waiting for the worst possible moments to climb out and try to grab my view.
Every single time I felt a breakthrough in therapy I thought they were gone for good, and it took me a long time to realise that healing meant figuring out who I wanted to be with them still in the cart, rather than waiting for an empty sidecar before I started living.
Ah, life lessons in the 20's.
Then in my mid-thirties, the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme during a semi-seminal year where I took my 12-month career break to walk the Camino de Santiago amongst other things. Experiencing that kind of intrinsic happiness and clarity felt like the truest success I had ever known. Coming back to my everyday life after that expansive year brought its own unique challenges. It showed me that the question of how to stay grounded doesn't disappear when a chapter changes for the better, it just changes shape as we evolve.
As I mature and get more life experiences under my human-experience belt, I am loving (LOVING) the compounding effect of both struggle and success. I can only imagine how it will feel come my older years.
Now. There is deep, beautiful work to be found in learning to regulate our nervous systems through all of life's changes, and things like therapy, breathwork, and somatic practices are incredibly valuable resources that I use myself and deeply believe in. But the reason I wanted to keep things so beautifully simple today is that we can easily spend so much of our precious time and energy overthinking exactly what we need to help ourselves.
But lately, as I oscillate between struggle and success myself, there are always a few simple, everyday touchstones sitting there, things that are entirely free, require absolutely no advance planning, and feel genuinely good.
They have helped me, and I want to share them with you in case they inspire you :)
Birdsong
Did you know that there is an instinct in us that hears the sound of birds and recognises it as a natural signal that our immediate surroundings are safe right now?
I did not, but what I do know is whether I am sitting on my balcony here in Stuttgart listening to the sparrows in the early evening, or I'm in Australia hearing magpies, lorikeets or kookaburras at a volume that could wake the dead, it always slows me down, pulls me out of the mundane and reminds me of the beauty of life. That no matter what is happening in and around me, those birds still do what they need to.
A simple invitation: Step outside for two minutes this evening and just listen!
Music & Movement
Putting on a favourite song and letting yourself move freely is one of the fastest ways to shake off stress or let a moment of genuine joy settle into your body in a healthy way. We all know that physical movement acts as a gentle release valve, allowing us to process heavy emotions rather than holding them tightly inside ourselves, but sometimes it takes time and effort that we just don't have to give. But even if you just stand with your feet on the ground and swing your arms side to side while bouncing your knees, that is so easy, and so do-able. And it helps! Music is scientifically proven to stimulate almost every region of the brain, and slower, calming music in particular lowers our heart rate and blood pressure.
Um, yes.
A simple invitation: Put on one song and let yourself move for its full length, just don't stop. One song. You can do it!
Walk (obviously)
We don't need the science to know this, but researchers at Stanford found that spending even a short amount of time walking near trees and grass significantly calms our internal alarm systems.
I love walking. I will always walk, I trust it so much. Whether it's Caminos, Sunday hikes with my husband, strolls around the city or up into the woods behind home here in Stuttgart, it just works. It's the best reset button I know, and I never ever regret it. This is available to us all in some way, shape or form.
A simple invitation: Take one fifteen-minute walk today, extra points if you leave your phone at home.
Practice Kindness
I think of humility and kindness as things we can choose to practice, rather than being parts of our personality (although of course they can be). Choosing to double down on kindness to yourself when things are hard, or staying humble and open-hearted when things are going beautifully, is to me, the ultimate and most beautiful kind of power. Propagating this to those around us takes it to whole new levels and is something I am personally very intentional about.
It's spiky out there at the moment, you know? I don't think any of us need convincing of that. Frustration and fear is sitting close to the surface in a lot of people right now, on the roads, in queues, in the comments sections. None of us can fix that from where we're standing. But our own energy, when we're intentional about it, has more impact than we give it credit for.
One genuinely kind moment can shift the vibe of someone else's entire day, and we never really know which day someone is having.
A simple invitation: Do one small, unannounced kind thing today, remember that being gentle with yourself counts beautifully too!!
None of these four things are meant to magically erase a real struggle or permanently extend a great high.
What they do is sit quietly in your back pocket, completely free and ready whenever you need a small, reliable anchor back to your own heart, in success, in struggle, and in allllll the ordinary days in between.
Are you in a chapter of struggle, or success? And what would you add to this list of free and fabulous things that flip the same coin we've been talking about all along?
Cheering for us, Alice x
