We see a lot of these random acts of kindness online. But what about intentional acts of kindness? It seems like no one is talking about how easily kindness gets confused with being nice or generous. How keeping our emotional sympathy temperature down by being generous gets so easily labelled as kindness. I find it can often get framed either as a random act of generosity or a vibe that you can adopt so interactions stay light and agreeable. But when you look closely at the moments where kindness actually matters, it doesn’t always feel light at all. I think there’s a reason for that confusion. Niceness and generosity can both be performed. They’re visible, tangible to others and socially legible. But if kindness is not an emotion and it’s not always nice or generous, then what is it?

Its no secret that a lot of us have subconscious conversations with ourselves about needing to feel ready before we can actually step into anything that really matters to us. It just becomes the background rule because we’re meant to feel more sure of ourselves first. Until then, we hold back, observe and prepare. I recognise this pattern because I’m living inside it, telling myself I am being thoughtful and responsible, when a lot of the time I am simply postponing my involvement in my own life. Honestly, this blog in itself plays a large part in that.

I’ve really started to realise that there’s two versions of life that you can aim for. A version of life that just works or a version of life that actually feels worth showing up for. To me, they’re not the same thing. A life can be busy, structured and productive, but it can also still feel oddly thin. Not empty, just more like it’s being run rather than lived.

If you’ve ever felt a kind of tiredness that doesn’t quite line up with how much we’re doing, we’re probably on the same page.

It can feel like you’re functioning, keeping up with life and doing everything that needs to be done. Like you’re moving through full days with a sense of competence, validation and all those seemingly important things, but you still feel worn down in a way that doesn’t resolve itself no matter how much you do. Rest helps a little but never quite feels like enough. Things improve on paper, namely the to-do list, but that feeling is still there. Something underneath remains strained, like you’re constantly compensating for something you can’t fully name.

There are moments when something you have been building begins to resist you. It might be subtle at first. You begin to procrastinate or start second guessing. For me it’s this strange feeling of heaviness where there used to be energy and I can notice that what once felt meaningful now feels like performance. Thats when it becomes harder to ignore, right? The plan stops moving and the momentum stalls. Results don’t arrive and maybe even the confidence you once had begins to fracture. Most people call that failure. But I have begun to see it as something else. What if failure was turning point?

A false summit is the point on a climb that looks like the top from a distance. It’s convincing enough to carry hope and effort. But when you reach it, you realise the mountain continues. What you thought was the end is just another stage of the ascent. What strikes me is that the problem isn’t the climb. It’s the assumption that effort guarantees completion, and that completion guarantees some internal shift.

I sometimes wonder when growth can actually became surveillance and there’s a particular feeling that seems to accompany this way of relating to ourselves. A sense that you’re never quite finished or enough as you are, always one insight away from being acceptable. Even rest can start to feel conditional. Like it’s something you earn once you’ve done enough work on yourself.

I have come to believe that at its core, coaching is, in essence, love expressed through presence. That particular kind of care rarely gets named in this context. Maybe through fear of being articulated unprofessionally or misunderstood as an unethical articulation. When done well, coaching is not about improvement or performance. It is about attention. This attention, when offered without agenda, is one of the most practical forms of love we have. Not as a technique or a method, but as a way of meeting another human being exactly where they are.

Most of us live in a single room of our own mind and assume that it’s the whole house. We assume our thoughts are facts and our  predictions are reality. We can feel like our identity is fixed and unchangeable. Yet the moment we open even one new window, the entire shape of our life begins to shift. This is what coaching often reveals. Not a new version of us, but a new window. This brand new way of seeing ourselves, our story and what we believe is possible.

This blog explores a parallel that has shaped both my coaching and our understanding of human change. The Japanese arts of Kintsugi and Kintsukuroi offer a way of seeing ourselves that is both ancient and surprisingly accurate. What breaks us can also reveal us. What is missing can be rebuilt and what feels like the end is often the beginning.