Recently I updated my CV and ran it through AI before applying for a few senior roles. The feedback I received was practical, logical and technically correct. It suggested – remove the yoga teacher accreditation, remove the mindset and behavioural coaching certification and remove the women’s work. Focus on the corporate experience and tailor it more closely to the role.
For a moment, I considered it. Not because I thought those things were irrelevant, but because I wanted to put forward the strongest possible application. And if a tool designed to optimise my chances was telling me those things didn’t belong, perhaps it had a point. But the more I sat with it, the more uncomfortable I became, because the things I was being encouraged to remove were the very things that feel most like me.
The yoga training taught me how to slow down and listen. The mindset and behavioural coaching qualification deepened my understanding of people and the unconscious patterns that drive so much of what we do. The women’s work has connected me to hundreds of incredible women and taught me more about leadership, courage, vulnerability and creating safe spaces than many workplaces ever have. After sitting with it for a while, I left them in, because removing them felt like editing myself.
I didn’t get shortlisted for that role.
The first part of me wanted to quietly accept it and move on. I received some generic feedback from the recruitment agent which used wording like ‘didn’t demonstrate experience at that level’. I told myself I was probably nowhere near the mark anyway, that I was likely so far out of the mix that asking for feedback might just feel awkward. There was that familiar feeling of wanting to shrink back and pretend it didn’t matter.
But a chat with a mentor encouraged me to reach out to the chair and ask for more personal feedback. Framing it from the perspective of ‘I’m here, I want to learn and I want to know what I need to do to signal more strongly that I’m serious and ready’. So I did. I put myself in that slightly uncomfortable position and this one conversation led to being referred to another opportunity that actually feels far more aligned than the original role.
I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t taken the next step. If I had let the disappointment decide for me. If I had chosen the safer option of staying quiet and licking my wounds privately. This is where the whole thing started to feel bigger than a job application. You might even think to yourself at this point, oh yeh, this feels a bit like me… because how often do we do this in life?
We edit ourselves to fit the role, the room, the relationship or the expectation. We take out the parts that might be too different, too spiritual, too emotional, too ambitious or too inconvenient. We tell ourselves we’re just being sensible or strategic and perhaps sometimes we are. But sometimes we’re slowly removing the very things that make us who we are in the hope that we’ll be chosen. Because at the end of the day, we all want to be loved and accepted. We all crave somewhere to belong and fit in.
That is the bit that got me.
Over the last few years I’ve spent my time writing, reflecting, facilitating circles, reconnecting with culture, completing yoga training, holding space for women, learning how to trust my body again and drafting the first pass of my book, The Connected Islander. And yet when it comes to stepping into certain spaces, I can still feel the temptation to clean myself up a little. To make myself easier to understand. More linear. More corporate. Less messy. But my life has never been linear and the parts that don’t fit neatly into a corporate box are also the parts that have shaped me the most.
Part of the reason I’m choosing to keep showing up in spaces that stretch me is because I know I’m not the only woman navigating this tension. The tension between ambition and intuition. Between the practical path and the meaningful one. Between building a career and building a life that actually feels like your own. I spent years thinking these things were mutually exclusive. That I had to choose one or the other. The more I grow, the more I realise I can be both. And perhaps you can too.
I recorded the first draft of The Connected Islander back in October and haven’t really touched it since. The story is there. The message is there. The part of me that knows this book matters is there. But I can also see how easy it has been to keep prioritising everything else. Work. Family. Obligations. The things that make me feel productive and useful. The things that look practical. As many of you know, I am the Queen of Busyness … but it’s not always busy doing the aligned things.
And maybe that’s another version of the same pattern. Saying something matters while not creating the space to fully back it. Saying I want to be known as The Connected Islander, but hesitating when the next step requires me to be seen in that identity more fully. Not just as a woman who runs circles and writes a blog, but as someone who helps women reconnect with themselves, their truth, their roots and their own sense of home.
Around the same time, I’ve been co-creating a Winter Solstice event with two other beautiful women that I find both inspiring and aligned with my values. Its called The Heart is the Home. As we’ve been shaping the experience, I keep coming back to the same idea.
Home isn’t just a place. It’s a feeling.
It’s the feeling of being connected to yourself. Being able to exhale, knowing you’re no longer performing or editing yourself to be accepted.
And when I look at the CV, the rejection, the feedback conversation, the book and this event, they all seem to point towards the same question.
Where am I choosing what looks right over what feels right?
I want you to take a moment and ponder that for yourself too.
Maybe your life works. Maybe you’re responsible, reliable and the person everyone can count on. Maybe people look at your life and think you’ve got it together. But perhaps there’s also a part of you that knows something isn’t quite lining up. Not dramatically wrong. Not a crisis. Just a quiet knowing that you’ve drifted a little from yourself.
Gemini season is often associated with communication, expression and truth. It’s linked to the throat chakra, but I don’t think this season is asking us to speak more. I think it’s asking us to listen more carefully. To notice which voice is driving our decisions. Is it fear? Obligation? Practicality? Or is it the quieter voice underneath it all, the one that already knows? The one that doesn’t need another podcast, another course or another sign from the universe because it has been trying to get your attention for quite some time.
So let me ask you something.
Where are you editing yourself right now? Where are you making yourself smaller, quieter or easier to understand so you’ll fit the room? Where are you saying yes when every part of your body wants to say no? Where are you waiting to be chosen instead of choosing yourself?
A life that looks right isn’t always a life that feels right.
If you’ve been feeling that tension lately, perhaps that’s the opportunity. Not to blow everything up or make a dramatic life change, but simply to get quiet enough to hear what your heart has been trying to tell you.
On Winter Solstice, we’ll gather for The Heart is the Home. Not to become someone new, but to reconnect with what is already true. To create space away from the noise, the expectations and the constant doing. To hear your own voice again. To remember what it feels like to make decisions from your heart rather than from fear, obligation or what looks good on paper.
Because sometimes we don’t need more advice, a better plan or more proof that we’re allowed to choose differently. We might simply need enough space to hear what we already know.
Live, Love & Laugh,
Tash x
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