What if the thing holding you back in business isn’t your strategy, your experience or even how hard you’re working? What if it’s something you haven’t yet learned to recognise?
Watch the whole recording here.
I’ve spent much of my career in corporate finance, consulting and business, so I understand the importance of numbers, strategy and rational decision-making. I’ve worked in environments where results matter, where problems need solving and where the expectation is that more effort and better execution will get you where you want to go.
And I still believe those things matter. Strategy matters. Data matters. Execution matters.
But over time, I became fascinated by something that conventional business thinking doesn’t always explain. Why do intelligent, capable people continue repeating patterns they consciously want to change?
You know what needs to be done, yet you hesitate. You change your strategy but somehow arrive at the same financial ceiling. You hire a different employee but eventually experience the same frustration. You change clients, partners or circumstances, yet something strangely familiar keeps returning.
This is what I call the invisible edge. The less obvious forces operating beneath our visible results.
My work today combines my business background with transformational psychic coaching, subconscious patterns, perception and energy. I’m not asking anyone to abandon logic or believe everything I explore. I’m inviting you to consider whether there’s another layer of information worth paying attention to.
One way I explain this is through the idea of resonance.
Imagine you’re a radio. There are countless stations broadcasting at the same time, but you only hear the one you’re tuned into. The others haven’t disappeared. They’re simply outside your current experience.
Now think about your internal dial.
If you’re constantly tuned into scarcity, rejection or fear, what do you notice? A prospect declines your proposal and you conclude nobody is spending. An employee makes a mistake and you decide people can’t be trusted. Someone else succeeds and instead of recognising what’s possible, you focus on what you haven’t achieved.
The world contains challenges and opportunities simultaneously. The question is which ones you’re allowing yourself to recognise.
There’s a practical side to this too. Our attention is selective. We cannot consciously process everything happening around us, so our brains filter information according to what seems relevant.
Think about the last time you considered buying a particular car. Suddenly, you started seeing that model everywhere. It wasn’t because thousands had appeared overnight. Your attention had changed.
Business works in a similar way.
Two business owners can walk into exactly the same networking event, meet the same people and hear the same conversations. One leaves believing it was a complete waste of time. The other leaves recognising an introduction that could change their business.
Same room. Different experience.
Sometimes the opportunity isn’t missing. We simply haven’t recognised its significance.
But this becomes even more interesting when we look at the difference between what we consciously want and what we may subconsciously believe.
You might say you want to grow your business, but underneath that desire sits a belief that growth means more pressure and less freedom. You might want greater visibility, but associate being visible with criticism. You might want a stronger team, yet believe nobody can do things as well as you can.
And suddenly your behaviour starts making sense.
You procrastinate. You undercharge. You micromanage. You avoid delegating. You keep refining something that was ready months ago.
Rather than immediately asking why you’re sabotaging yourself, try asking what you consciously want and what you actually believe about having it.
That question can reveal something important.
Another way I explore this is through what I call the mirror principle.
Imagine waking up, looking in the bathroom mirror and discovering a black mark across your face. Instead of wiping your face, you start scrubbing the mirror. You clean it, polish it and eventually replace it. Yet the mark remains.
It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
But how often do we do exactly that in business?
The team isn’t performing, so we tighten control. The business isn’t growing, so we introduce another strategy. A client doesn’t value our work, so we try harder to please them.
Sometimes those actions are necessary. But when the same problem keeps appearing in different circumstances, perhaps it’s worth looking at what’s contributing to the reflection.
Consider a leader who believes people can’t be trusted. They hire someone capable but continually check their work, correct their decisions and take control. Eventually, that employee stops showing initiative.
The leader then concludes they were right all along.
The external problem is real, but their internal belief may have helped create the very outcome they feared.
This isn’t about blame. It’s about recognising where we have influence.
If everything is happening because of circumstances outside our control, we’re left waiting for those circumstances to change. But if our own beliefs or behaviours are contributing, we have somewhere new to begin.
And that brings me to another important distinction. The difference between forcing and flowing.
Flowing doesn’t mean sitting around waiting for success to magically appear. It means becoming more conscious of the internal state from which we take action.
Imagine making a sales call feeling desperate because you need the client. Now imagine making that same call genuinely curious about whether you’re a good fit for each other.
The action hasn’t changed, but your approach has.
The same applies to leadership, negotiation and growth. Are you acting from fear or clarity? From scarcity or confidence? From something you need to prove or something meaningful you want to create?
Before asking what you should do next, consider who you’re being while you do it.
Of course, recognising a pattern doesn’t mean it disappears immediately.
Changing a deeply established response can take time. It’s a little like turning a large ship. You move the rudder, but the ship doesn’t instantly change direction.
You might establish better boundaries and find people initially resist them. You might increase your prices and still feel uncomfortable. You might change how you lead, while your team continues responding to the old version of you.
That doesn’t automatically mean the change isn’t working. It means you need to remain observant, keep measuring what matters and allow time for different behaviours to develop.
The final piece I find particularly fascinating is intuition and synchronicity.
Have you ever been thinking about someone you haven’t spoken to in years, only for them to call? Or been considering a business direction and suddenly heard the same idea from several unrelated people?
Perhaps it’s coincidence. Perhaps it’s pattern recognition. Perhaps there’s another explanation.
You don’t need to decide immediately.
What’s more useful is asking whether you’re paying attention.
I use a simple rule of three. If something appears once, notice it. Twice from unrelated sources, become curious. Three times independently, investigate.
Not blindly follow. Investigate.
Your analytical mind can ask whether something makes sense, while your intuition encourages you to examine whether it feels right. I believe there’s value in allowing those perspectives to work together.
So here’s something I’d encourage you to try.
Think about one thing you genuinely want. Perhaps it’s more revenue, a bigger business, greater freedom or a different relationship with your work.
Now imagine you already have it.
What’s the first feeling that appears?
Is it excitement? Relief? Fear? Pressure? A concern that you might lose it or that everything will change?
Don’t judge the response or rush to make it positive. Just notice it.
You may discover that what you feel about achieving something is quite different from what you consciously say you want.
That awareness won’t solve everything overnight. Intellectual understanding and genuine transformation aren’t necessarily the same thing. But recognising a previously invisible pattern gives you an opportunity to work with it rather than continually repeat it.
And that’s really the invitation I want to leave you with.
The next time you encounter a familiar challenge, don’t automatically reach for another strategy. Ask yourself what keeps repeating, what you believe about the situation and what those beliefs might be preventing you from seeing.
Perhaps the problem really is your strategy. Perhaps the market has changed or the person you’ve hired isn’t right.
But perhaps there’s something else worth exploring.
Because your next edge might not come from learning more about business. It might come from discovering something you don’t yet know about yourself.
If any of this has sparked your curiosity, I’d love to continue the conversation over a coffee. Sometimes a different perspective is all it takes to begin seeing something that was right in front of us all along.