Let’s get straight to it. Anyone who says “I did this and it worked for me so it’ll work for you too” is not just wrong, they’re doing a disservice to everyone listening. That kind of advice is lazy, misleading and frankly damaging.

Why? Because we’re all completely unique. From our genetic makeup to our life-experiencings, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in health and wellbeing. And The Alchemy of Being we’re challenging this cookie-cutter approach.

Today I’m going to explore why your individuality is your greatest asset and why the do-what-I-did mentality needs to be left behind. Get ready to embrace your uniqueness and embrace experimentation to discover your own path to health and wellbeing.

So let’s deep dive into why we’re all so uniquely wired. It’s not just about our personalities or experiences, it’s rooted in our very biology. We’re going to look at five key factors. Each alone makes us unique but when you combine all five you’ll see just how truly one-of-a-kind we each are.

So firstly, let’s talk about our genetic expression. We each have a unique genetic code but it’s not just about the genes we inherit, it’s about how those genes are expressed. A field known as epigenetics. Our environment, lifestyle choices and even our thoughts can influence which genes are turned on and off. This means that even identical twins can have different health outcomes based on their experiences and choices.

Next, let’s explore our brain’s neurocircuitry. Our brains are incredibly plastic, constantly forming new neural connections based on our experiences. This neuroplasticity means that our emotional responses, our abilities to handle stress, and even our propensity for happiness can change over time. And as no one has had the same experiences as us, it means our responses will be only ours.

Third, let’s discuss the gut. Our gut microbiome, the trillions of microorganisms living in our crucial role in our overall health and even our mental state.The composition of our gut bacteria is unique to each of us, influenced by various factors. For example, your diet has a significant impact. High-fiber diets rich in fruit and vegetables promote diversity, while highly processed foods reduce it.  Our environment also plays a role. Exposure to nature and diverse ecosystems can enrich our microbiome, while overly sanitised environments limit it. Social interactions are another fascinating factor. Studies show that people with large social networks tend to have a more diverse microbiome, as we share microbes with those we spend time with. So with trillions of these microorganisms and so many influencing factors, the possible combinations are virtually infinite, making our gut microbiome a key factor in our individuality. Because so many processes that produce hormones, our metabolism, our immune system, all take place in our gut.

Another crucial factor in our uniqueness is how we respond to stress. Stress activates the amygdala, a part of our brain responsible for processing emotions and detecting threats. When the amygdala senses danger, it triggers the fight or flight response by sending signals to the hypothalamus. This sets off a cascade of physiological changes, but each one can be slightly different. Adrenaline floods the body, heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, and non-essential functions like digestion are shut down, because survival is priority. The hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, HPA axis for short, also plays a key role, regulating the release of cortisol, which influences many bodily functions including metabolic, psychological and immunological processes. But our ability to handle stress is highly individualized. Not everyone reacts to stress in the same way. Some might immediately go into flight mode, while others lean towards flight and avoidance, or even freeze. Then you’ve got the fawn response, where we try to appease the source of our stress. These varied responses are shaped by past experiences, learnt behaviours, and how our nervous system has adapted over time. The way each person’s body navigates the stress cycle, from activation to recovery, is entirely… unique. That’s why the same situation can be stressful or stress-free to different people.

Lastly, let’s not forget about our unique set of beliefs. Held in our subconscious mind and predominantly created before the age of seven, these shape our perceptions of the world and our responses to it. Two people can experience the same event very differently based on their beliefs, leading to different physiological responses and health outcomes.

All these factors interplay in complex ways, making each of us truly unique. It’s why one-size-fits-all approaches to health and wellbeing are likely to work for only a few people. So when someone says, this worked for me, so it’ll work for you, they’re not considering the intricate interplay of factors that made it successful for them.

Their success is a combination of their unique biology, their unique experiences and perhaps a bit of luck. It’s not a universal solution. When we follow generic advice, we often end up feeling frustrated and disappointed.

This isn’t because we’re flawed, it’s because we’re trying to fit into a one-size-fits-all solution. Let’s look at a couple of real-life examples of how this can lead to self-doubt, a lack of confidence in our efforts and frustration.

For instance, I was recommended to try the keto diet a couple of years back. My friend had used it and it was working amazingly for them. They looked and felt fantastic and were eating things I could only dream of. So I gave it a try. Within seven days I felt bloody awful. I had the worst headache I’ve ever experienced and it was affecting my ability to function. They hadn’t had that, although reading up some did say they had it for a while. Upon more research I discovered that when you move to keto your body needs four times the amount of water to metabolise. And as an EDS sufferer I am already dehydrated all of the time so upping the need for water made my dehydration so much worse. Keto was not for me. This made me feel shit. Like there was nothing I could do to lose weight when everyone seemed to find it easy.

I can also think of times when friends of mine have bemoaned to me how they just can’t meditate. Sitting still, trying not to think, drove them mad. They thought they were doing something wrong because they couldn’t empty their minds. Using a technique that someone promised would have some universal effect on their stress, on their sleep or even on their virility.

Feelings of failure and confusion about why it didn’t work, even though the issue lies not with the person but with the approach itself, the psychological impact of following universal advice without understanding the caveats can be profound. That sense of inadequacy that we can’t replicate someone else’s success. This is because we’re comparing our unique journey to someone else’s unique journey without considering the factors that contributed to their results and whether they apply to us.

It’s essential to recognise that everyone’s path is different and that success often involves a combination of factors that are unique to each individual. I’m sorry, but there are no silver bullets or quick fixes in life, no matter how much we would really like there to be.

Instead, it’s like creating a recipe. Each of us needs to experiment with different ingredients to find the combination that tastes great to us. Some might just add a pinch of chilli while others throw in the whole lot.

That means embracing experimentation and not judging ourselves when something doesn’t work out. It’s an adventure, this thing we call life. Trying things that do or don’t work is just part of the experience. We learn something in both outcomes.

So the key is to approach anything with an open mind and a willingness to learn from the experience. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others and start focusing on what truly resonates with us.

This journey of discovery is not only empowering, but also essential for finding what genuinely works for our unique needs and circumstances. This is why at The Alchemy of Being, we talk about a ‘Toolbelt For Life’, because we will each need a different set of solutions across the soul, mind and body spectrum to help us deal with our unique quirks and help us curate the life we desire and deserve.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what belongs in your Toolbelt. what doesn’t. Embrace your power to experiment, adapt and curate a life that’s tailored to your unique needs and desires. That’s the essence of The Alchemy of Being.

Empowering you to create yourself and build your ‘Toolbelt For Life’.

I want to talk about limiting beliefs. I’m going to tell you my personal story of how I discovered the limiting belief that was truly a key part of my illness journey and how changing it was part of my health restoration.

And then we’re going to talk about how you can identify yours and ways that you can change them.

But before that, let’s just talk about what a belief is.

So a belief essentially is a cluster of neurons in your subconscious brain that influence how you interpret and respond to experiences and situations in your life.

Our subconscious mind is predominantly created before the age of seven when our brain is in a state of hypnosis and we just interpret everything around us as being accurate and informative, and we basically just create a whole set of neural pathways based on those things without any judgment.

We don’t understand sarcasm, we don’t get irony, what is said, what is done. It’s fact. We can also do this through repetition. We can add new beliefs to our subconscious mind through repetition or through hypnosis.

And the reason why this is important is that the research has shown us that more than 74% of those neural clusters in our subconscious brain, those beliefs, are life limiting based on what in our conscious mind we are saying we want to achieve.

So what that means is we have these two minds, the conscious and the subconscious mind, and they are out of alignment. They are very imbalanced in that the things we’re choosing to say we want in our lives, the way we choose to behave, the way we choose to live our life, is not supported by the neural patterns that have been created.

So for example you might say, I want to fall in love and have a healthy relationship, but your neural patterns created when you were a young age, or from repetition and hypnosis as we said, will actually say a relationship is dangerous, being vulnerable is dangerous.

A healthy relationship is one where you’re in control. A healthy relationship or love is shown through control. Love is shown through insults. If someone’s rude to you it’s because they care about you, those sorts of things.

So you’re sitting there on the one side in your conscious mind choosing to go out and find someone, but your subconscious mind is drawing you towards a person that fits belief pattern rather than the conscious choice pattern and that’s why it’s unhealthy that’s why it’s not good that’s why they’re life limiting.

But what is great is that we have learned through the studies of neuroplasticity, through the studies of the subconscious mind that we can change these beliefs so that our conscious mind and our subconscious mind can be aligned.

As we are living based off our subconscious beliefs 95% of the time – because when your conscious mind is thinking, creating the future, talking, reading,  whatever it might be doing – your subconscious mind is making decisions for you – adjusting to the environment based on those sets of beliefs.

So, we need to get those both going in the same direction they’re both going to be making decisions that align with what you in your conscious mind have decided you want your life to be about, to look like,  and to be.

So let me tell you my story around how i discovered the limiting belief that i had. If any of you have taken the opportunity to read my story you will know that back in 2011 I was at the pinnacle of my illness after a decade of struggling with western medicine.

Eventually, through the use of some alternative practices i managed to get a diagnosis from my western gastroenterologist who gave me six weeks before i was likely to perforate my bowel with a very low chance of surviving.

So I’ve got six weeks, and I’m not ready to die,  so I have to do something.

I was working with a functional medicine doctor who had been helping me understand a lot more about how the body works and when the doctor’s test said i was fine what that really meant. One of the things he said to me was “I just don’t believe this is entirely physical I think there’s a spiritual aspect to this. I think there’s an emotional mental aspect to this. And I want to introduce you to a friend of his called Adrienne, who was a clairsentient healer”.

Clairsentience essentially means that they manifest your physical issues in their body, and then they heal themselves, and in doing so, they heal you. It’s very rare, it’s also kind of freaky.

So when I met Adrienne, it was over Skype, because we’re back in 2011, no Zoom yet, just Skype. She was in Australia, and we got on the phone, and she said, “oh my God, you must be exhausted. I’ve only had your physical manifestation for 12 hours, and the pain, the exhaustion!” And I was like, oh, I didn’t even realise I was in pain. I’d been in pain for so long.

And she then proceeded to go from the top of my head to the tip of my toes telling me everything that was or ever had been wrong with me. Including how I got scars,  operations I’d had –  all this sort of stuff and she was spot-on and everything.  I mean literally everything – at the end I was just wide-mouthed.

Then she took a pause, and she said “That’s a lot right. But then she says you know what’s really good is it’s actually all down to one issue, one limiting belief that is manifesting itself on every meridian of your body”. We have 12 meridians so essentially that meant this belief had manifested itself in 12 different ways – in each of those meridians.

She said “We heal that one problem we heal the whole thing”.  I said “okay”, but I was very sceptical and I said “what’s the belief?”

and she said that “you’re not enough” and I burst into tears.  It was like she was in my head.

I said “what do you mean you’re not good enough”?

She replied – “you believe you’re not pretty enough, you’re not clever enough, you’re not savvy enough,  it’s not enough in any way and you’ve been pushing yourself so hard to try and be enough and no matter what you do no matter how successful, no matter how endearing you make yourself,  no matter how physically attractive you make yourself,  you will never ever be enough.”

That imbalance, as we said between the conscious mind and the conscious mind.

I was like “okay”

she said “we heal that, you heal”

I said “I’ve got six weeks”

she said “We’d better get started.”

and we did, and we did it in a very unusual way. She used meditation predominantly and then we did some physical things. She’s a nurse so we did some physical things at the end of the six weeks. But for the first five weeks I meditated at sunrise and sunset using different words that held the correct energy frequency to change that.

And we did various treatments (ice therapy, enemas, nature immersion, and we talked one hour a week about me and my life and my achievements and where these beliefs came from). And we changed them.

Now moving on, 14 years, there’s a whole field of belief change modalities now – that work a lot faster. And that’s huge, there’s a lot more understanding around what the core limiting beliefs are. And how they manifest themselves and the emotional, mental, spiritual and physical symptoms that that can cause. And that’s what we want to talk about.

I believe I am here today. One, because I found a parasite and killed it. Two, because I had Ade and she showed me that not being good enough had driven me to the point of existing not living.

Because I couldn’t do anything. I was one of the youngest VP’s the history of Barclays. I was playing county tennis 13, hockey at 16. I got an academic scholarship at 13 despite being dyslexic. I’ve sung in some amazing places including cathedrals around the world. I was on the stage. I did my A-levels in a year because I had glandular fever. All these things I’d been pushing myself so freaking hard because I was trying to be enough, and it just was never going to happen.

And you get to the point where you’re like, I can’t do this anymore. I’m exhausted. I’m done. And that’s where my body got. I think when my relationship broke down and my partner got engaged within six months of our six-year relationship ending, I was just like, fuck, I’m done.

And my body just started shutting down. It was like, yeah, we agree. We’re done. We’ve been working really hard for a really long time with no thank you and no appreciation, nothing. And so, yeah, my body just started shutting down.

My adrenals had stopped. My thyroid had nearly stopped. My gut had stopped. Peristalsis had stopped. You know, my body was showing all the signs of being under intense inflammation and stress. All from one belief.

Changing it changed everything.