How many times have you said, "Why does this always happen to me?!"
As my dear departed Mum used to say, "It's not all about you, son".
She was right.
Often, things just happen for no particular reason. It is these adversities that make us who we are, not the adversity itself. In some ways, our response to these events is more important.
There is a saying that goes something like this: 'It's not how we fall, it's how we get back up again.'
I prefer to say, "It's not that we fell, it's that we got back up".
We can believe ourselves, or believe IN ourselves.
As we go through life and negative events happen, our brain places a marker in our memory as a point of reference for the future, mainly so we can avoid similar situations in the future. The problem is that the marker doesn't clarify the cause or how we got through the event; it simply records the part of the event where our emotion was at its highest.
Generally, we repeat our behaviours because our brain prefers to stick to patterns of behaviour, known as habits, which are based on neural pathways. These pathways are there to keep us safe.
Our brain is a dumb tool designed for simpler times, and although our world has developed, our brain hasn't kept pace. Sure, the brain has developed from the basic stem to one now that is more complex, yet the fundamentals remain since the earliest of times - fight, flight, or freeze.
We learn by doing, and until we have experienced something several times, we might not get things right on the first, second, or even third occasion.
Do we learn from our past, yes, but only if we go back and examine what took place to change it.
A simple technique is to start by looking for similarities:
👉 Write a list of the occasions where the same event has happened.
👉 Next, write down beside each event what was similar about each one and see if you can identify a common theme or single causal factor about them, apart from the fact that you are involved.
Was it a choice that you made, or were you drawn to the similarity for a reason? Was your judgment clouded by emotional attraction? Is there one common action that you can now learn from and change? This is how we learn: looking back, opening it up, and examining the events.
👉 To complete the process, and this is a very necessary part, look for the differences in each event. These are often more difficult to find because we are all consumed with the commonalities, the 'why me' factor.
It is the differences in each event that we realise it was not necessarily us that was the cause. It was the situation, the emotion, or it just ‘was'.
It is better to do this technique with someone else to provide perspective. Coming together with others makes us feel safer knowing that we are all very similar, knowing others have faced similar events, and knowing we are not alone.
It is what it is because it was what it was; it's what you do now that matters - I have this tattooed on my chest as a reminder.
Let's talk!
Empathy is Strength!
At school, I ridiculed people I knew were hurting.
As a teenager, I pushed away friends who got too close to me.
As an adult, I used alcohol as an excuse for erratic, irresponsible behaviour.
How many of us have looked back and wondered - why did I behave that way, why didn’t I care more, why didn’t I show compassion when it mattered most?
If I could go back, I’d choose to be kinder. To listen. To care. To help.
It all comes down to one word: empathy.
Empathy is what makes us human. It’s the bridge between ‘me’ and ‘you.’
It’s what turns judgment into understanding, distance into connection, and pain into healing.
Neuroscience tells us empathy is both wired into our brains and shaped by experience.
Deep inside, we have mirror neurons - tiny circuits that fire when we see someone else in pain, allowing us to feel a shadow of their experience.
Yet empathy isn’t automatic. It grows when we slow down, notice and choose to care. We must consciously activate it.
As children, we learn it from those around us. As adults, life humbles us as our own struggles teach us why compassion matters.
Empathy is a strength. The strength to feel someone else’s hurt without turning away.
I don’t always get it right, but I keep trying. For those I hurt. For those who hurt me. And for myself, because self-compassion is where empathy begins.
I wonder if you have ever looked back and wished you’d acted with more empathy. Or is it just me?!
Let’s talk!
Foiled By A Puddle!
You’d think that after years as the Lead Crisis Negotiator for the New Zealand Police, I’d have a brain wired for calm, clarity, and perfectly timed decision-making.
But here’s what I know - my brain can handle armed offenders, but give it a puddle and suddenly it wants to take annual leave.
A few years ago, I was driving home from Northland during Cyclone Gabrielle. Stay up there, it’s safer, I was told by my family. Ha, I’ve got this, I told myself.
Rain sideways, winds howling, trees doing yoga poses they were never designed for.
Ignore that, Google said it can get me home if I go this way, an idea from my dumb brain!
I came around a bend and drove into flooding across the road.
My professional crisis-trained mind said, “We can assess this calmly.”
My amygdala: “Send it.”
Not ideal, but if you go fast enough, the water will disperse, and another idea of my dumb brain.
I drove in, the car stalled instantly, so I went from “experienced crisis negotiator” to “man sitting motionless in a slowly floating car questioning all his life choices.”
I had to call Fire and Emergency New Zealand; I couldn’t open the door due to the water up to window height.
And here’s the best part: by the time they arrived, the water had receded so much that it looked like I’d parked slightly enthusiastically in a damp driveway.
They didn’t have to say anything, the look said it all: “Really? You needed rescuing? Here?”
I wanted to explain neuroscience - how the brain misjudges risks during sensory overload, and how the amygdala hijacks rational thinking.
But honestly, nothing excuses getting defeated by a puddle.
So, I just stood there, nodding, trying to look like someone who called emergency services for a situation that a particularly motivated duck could have walked through.
I was slightly comforted by the fact that I was saturated up to my waist as I got out of the car.
Upon reflection, maybe that’s the point of what happened to me, a reckoning of sorts to bring reality to my training.
We can train for decades, teach emotional regulation, understand human behaviour, and stay calm under real pressure.
Yet real life still finds a way to humble us.
If your brain ever overreacts to the wrong thing or fails to react to the right thing, trust me: you’re not alone.
Even crisis negotiators need rescuing sometimes. Mine just happened to be a puddle.
Let’s talk!
If the world feels heavy, be a counterweight 🙏
If the world feels heavy, be a counterweight!
Controlling Emotions In The Moment.
Possibly one of the biggest misconceptions about traumatic events is that we should be able to control our emotions in the moment.
Neuroscience shows the opposite. When something overwhelming happens, the brain takes over:
🧠 The amygdala, our threat detection centre, fires instantly, triggering an involuntary survival response.
🧠 The prefrontal cortex, the part we use to regulate emotions, temporarily shuts down.
🧠 Adrenaline and cortisol surge through the body, pushing us into fight, flight, freeze, or dissociation.
So whatever emotion you showed during the event – whether fear, numbness, confusion, or silence - wasn’t a choice.
Afterwards, the brain begins a different process:
🧠 The hippocampus struggles to organise the memory clearly, which is why things feel fragmented at first.
🧠 The stress system can stay active for days or weeks, affecting sleep, irritability, and concentration.
🧠 Biological markers like cortisol and inflammation can remain altered for months. Your body remembers the event long after your mind thinks it should be “over it.”
Expressing emotion afterwards is not only normal, but also healthy.
Research consistently shows that suppressing emotion keeps the survival system activated, while safe expression helps the brain re regulate and integrate the experience.
So, if you didn’t feel in control during the incident, that’s exactly how the human brain works.
If emotions surface days or weeks later, that’s recovery, not weakness.
If you’re still processing something months on, you’re not broken, you’re human.
I’ll share more neuroscience-backed tools for recovery in future posts.
Let me know what you’d like to see.
Let’s talk!