What would happen if you floored the gas pedal and yanked the handbrake at the same time?

Picture it for a second. The engine roaring, the smell of burning rubber, the wheels spinning and going nowhere.

You know you want to move. You roughly sense where. And however hard you try, you stay exactly where you were — and wreck the car while you're at it.

So why do you do that to yourself?

Because that's exactly what you've been doing. You know you don't want to stay where you are. You start things. You've tried many times. And something pulls the handbrake.

Day after day.

Week after week.

Month after month.

Year after year.

This is where I'm supposed to sell you some story about the secret to getting whatever you want, fast and without any effort. But other people already do that, and with better teeth than mine.

I'd rather tell you what happened to me on a mountain in Thailand, tripping on LSD, the night I realised I was more lost than an octopus in a parking garage.

For years I believed my handbrake was laziness. That I was lazy. That I lacked discipline, character, or whatever it is that people who actually finish things have.

That wasn't it.

The handbrake was the terror of being seen.

Of people seeing that I spent hours reading about astrology, Human Design and other weird stuff. That inside there was a considerable mess while outside I smiled and said everything was fine. That my parents wouldn't accept me like that. That someone, at some point, would laugh.

And as long as I didn't choose anything, nobody could judge my choice. That was the trick. That's why I wasn't moving: not because I didn't know where to go, but because moving meant being seen.

If any of this rang a bell, stop for a moment: you're not broken and you're not lazy. At some point in your life your nervous system learned that it wasn't safe to be you — and ever since, it has been doing its job, which is keeping you away from anything that requires showing yourself.

It isn't failing you. It's protecting you. From something that already happened.

And now the uncomfortable part, because I'm not going to treat you as if you were made of glass:

If you were guaranteed that nobody would find out and nobody would ever judge you — would you know what to do?

Don't overthink it. Answer fast, that's where the truth is.

If the answer was yes, then you're not missing information, or another course, or another test to explain who you are. You're missing permission.

Permission to be.

That's what I write about. Not handing you one more direction: giving you back permission to be who you already are — and doing it in front of someone, which is the only way your body ends up believing it.

I write a couple of times a week for people at that exact point. I share my stories, my failures and what I'm learning — not so you follow my path, but so you dare to draw yours in front of someone.

I'm not going to tell you what you have to do to be happy and accepted. You already have a long queue of people doing that.

And if today there's nobody in your life who believes in you, I'll be that someone. For as long as it takes, until the day you catch yourself believing in yourself.

I see you in there.