With the world fixated on machine learning to solve our problems, and speed up our already blurring pace of life. When is the last time you thought about what your machine should unlearn.

By machine. Im speaking about you. Your onboard computer. Your instincts and learned bias.

Whether we like it or not, our environment from 0-16 shapes who we are, how we act and how we see the world. It is up to us to decide what we keep and what we discard.

As a kid i had tons of personality, confidence and little to no fear. By 11 fear ran my existence. It came out in many ways. Anger, hiding, embarrassment and feeling attacked. This persisted for many years and yo-yo’d in my 20’s. In my 30’s i felt sadness. Sadness that i had tried to become a version of myself i wanted but too often fell back into learned behavior. As a consequence of fear i didnt have the right boundaries in my life and i didnt know how to establish them.

Fear in of itself is not all bad. It drove me to achieve but i was chasing the wrong things. They were not my metrics of success. I was trying to prove something to others. I wanted to be enough. Something i never felt.

It was only in my 40s that I moored the ship to assess my cargo. The ship wasn’t sailing well with all of the weight. All the quotes about ‘showing up’ and ‘keeping moving’ started to feel like bad advice. 

I didn’t need a new ship. I needed to sail slower and with less non-essentials onboard.

As the star, the composer, the director and the captain of my own life I had choices to make. Notice I didnt say author as that wasnt my role. I do however have autonomy to reissue my story with full editorial licence. Act two has the same star but the supporting cast is different.

On the shoreline and on the dock, sit all of the people and things that no longer support the captain or the journey. If you are not helping you are hurting. Ive taken an axe to the frozen sea within me.

I feel alive, centred, my nervous system is humming. I look and feel younger. Its no longer a public space but a members club.

Gloria Steinem once said “the truth, will set you free but first it will piss you off”. What she didnt add, was that after you are pissed off you are free. I have cut all the strings. I am grateful to Geppetto. But I am a real one now…