The weekend before my birthday, my partner and I went out to learn to handle an open canoe together.

It started as fun

We began with self-rescues on the Saturday. Genuinely good fun, right up until the boat started to wobble and something in me took over. I felt completely out of control. The panic came in so hard that by the end of the session I refused to get back into the canoe.

I have been paddling for nine years. And there I was on the bank, asking myself why I was still doing this when I could not feel steady in the boat.

The panic was never really about the boat

That evening I called a therapist friend and we did some tapping to work out where the panic was actually coming from. It did not take long to find it. Underneath the grown woman on the water was a much younger version of me, still carrying a fear of falling in.

Here is the part that matters, because it is the whole thing. The wobble was the surface. The pattern was underneath.

This is what I see again and again in the people I work with. We try to manage the wobble, whatever ours looks like, the anxiety, the overwhelm, the snappiness, the flat feeling, by working on the surface. Breathe differently. Push through. Grip the paddle tighter. And it never quite holds, because the thing driving it was never on the surface in the first place.

The next morning

On the Sunday morning I honestly did not know if I would go back out. But I did. Before we set off, my coach asked me to set an intention, and mine was simple, to be more relaxed in the boat. My partner and I picked a point we could see, talked to each other, and paddled towards it together. Then came the test, a figure of eight, tighter and tighter, working through different strokes.

Somewhere in the middle of that, a warm feeling spread through me. I was relaxed. I felt content in the boat. Same water, same canoe, a completely different woman to the day before. Nothing about the water had changed. What changed was what I had cleared underneath.

I came away knowing this is not finished, that there is more here for me to work on. But for the first time in a long time, I could feel the difference the work makes.

So what is your wobble?

The thing that tips you off balance. The reaction that feels far bigger than the moment that caused it. The pattern you have half-noticed for years but never quite named.

Most of the high achievers I work with look steady from the outside. They deliver, they hold it together, they have built the life that was meant to be the answer. And underneath, they are quietly wondering, is this really it? Managing the symptoms has stopped working, and they are ready to understand the pattern at the root instead.

If that sounds like you, that is exactly the work I do. Book a conversation and we will start with your wobble.

Calm Mind. Clear Voice.

Jo

Photo by LOttie