GROWING THROUGH FEAR: REWIRING THE MIND FOR SUCCESS

I never imagined I’d reach a point where I was afraid to paint, at least in the traditional way. Over the years, I moved fully into digital art, leaving my canvas behind. The image beside is an acrylic piece I created years ago with my siblings, Vanessa Oloo and Wayne Oloo. Yet now, the simple act of picking up a brush by myself feels intimidating. I’ve been away from canvas for so long that I sometimes fear my talent has slipped away, or that if I try again, I’ll fail… as though the creativity that once came naturally might not show up for me anymore.

And isn’t that exactly how success often feels? Every time we attempt something bold, starting a new project, launching a business, posting a video, or stepping into any kind of change, fear whispers louder than confidence. It pulls us back toward self-doubt, toward what feels familiar, toward doing nothing, or even toward procrastination disguised as “not being ready yet.”

1. Your Brain’s Job Isn’t to Make You Successful, It’s to Keep You Safe

I've learned that the brain doesn’t know the difference between danger and discomfort; it just knows change, and change feels unsafe.

Every time you try something new, your brain sounds the alarm: “We’ve never done this before! Abort mission!” That’s why growth often feels like anxiety. It’s not that you’re doing something wrong… It’s that your brain hasn’t yet learned that this new path isn’t dangerous.

You will be surprised to know that many of us fear success more than failure. Success represents change, a new version of you, and your nervous system doesn’t recognize that version yet, so it resists.

2. Do The Hard Things; It Strengthens You.

There’s a small but mighty part of your brain called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, think of it as your willpower muscle. It grows stronger every time you do the hard things you don’t want to do.

Waking up early, saying no to distractions, finishing that project, these moments are tiny workouts for your brain. Studies even show that people who regularly do uncomfortable things live longer and build more trust within themselves.

Procrastination and perfectionism often come down to one thing: lack of self-trust. You don’t follow through because, deep down, you don’t yet believe your word. The only way to rebuild that trust is through consistent action, doing the hard things, even when you don’t feel like it.

Motivation won’t save you. It’s like an outfit, cute, but temporary. Discipline is built through repetition under resistance.

3. Dopamine: It’s Not the Reward, it’s the Chase

Here’s a fun fact that changed how I look at productivity: dopamine isn’t the reward; it’s the pursuit.

We don’t get dopamine when we achieve something; we get it while we’re chasing it. That’s why it feels easier to scroll endlessly on social media than to work on your business. Turns out that your brain is chasing micro-rewards instead of long-term payoffs.

Quick wins feel good for a moment, but they fade fast. Real fulfillment, the kind that lasts, comes from staying in the pursuit even when it’s hard. The slower you build it, the stronger it lasts.

4. Trauma and the Illusion of Chaos

If peace feels boring and chaos feels normal, you’re not broken; your brain has just been overprotecting you.

When you’ve gone through trauma, your nervous system gets wired for survival. You might start mistaking stress for motivation, or confusion for passion. Until you retrain your brain to feel safe in calmness, you’ll keep calling dysfunction “drive.”

Healing is learning that peace isn’t dull, it’s safe, and safety is the soil where creativity, confidence, and growth bloom.

5. You Are Not Stuck, Your Brain Can Rewire

There’s this myth that people can’t change after a certain age. But neuroscience has proven otherwise. It’s called neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to rewire itself at any time.

Every new thought, habit, and action literally reshapes your brain. That means you are never too old, never too far gone, and never too late to start again. You just haven’t repeated the right things long enough yet.

Change doesn’t happen because you understand something new. It happens because you feel something new deeply enough to make a different choice.

6. Emotion is the Teacher

The brain learns through emotion, not information. You can read a hundred self-help books, but until something moves you, you won’t act.

That’s why storytelling is so powerful. Stories make you feel, and feelings create change. Whether in business, relationships, or healing, connection always beats logic.

7. Rest Is Reprogramming

Here’s the one most of us forget: rest is not laziness.
Rest is neurological wealth.

When you rest, your brain merges memories, solidifies learning, and connects your ideas. Without it, your creativity, focus, and emotional stability suffer.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is pause, because your brain does some of its best rewiring in stillness.

Final Thoughts: Rewire, Don’t Replace

After going down the rabbit hole of understanding how the brain handles fear, change, success, and survival, one truth keeps revealing itself:

You don’t need a new life, you need new wiring.

When you retrain your mind through discipline, emotion, rest, and consistent action, the life you want begins to align naturally. Success stops feeling like danger, and growth stops feeling like a threat. Because fear and success aren’t opposites… they’re twins.
Fear shows up the moment you begin rising, not to stop you, but to signal that you’re stepping into unfamiliar territory where your next level lives.

So if fear appears when you try to grow, return, start, or change, it simply means your brain is doing its job.
But so are you.

Every time you choose courage over comfort, your brain rewires a little more.
Every step you take forward, even the hesitant ones, teaches your mind that this new version of you is safe, that you are allowed to expand.

So, I need to keep reminding myself that my brush never stopped belonging to me.
And that the creativity I worry I’ve lost has simply been waiting… patiently… for me to reach for it again.

WHEN CHANGE FEELS LIKE LOSS:

Learning To Let Go Without Looking Back!

In the last post, we discussed adaptation and how every shift in life requires flexibility. We learned that change is inevitable and that growth often requires us to step into unfamiliar spaces. But what happens after we choose to adapt? What happens when we finally start moving forward and realize that change also comes with loss?

On today's blog, we will understand the emotional side of transformation and learn how to let go without looking back.

1. The Unspoken Grief of Growth

When you step into something new, whether it’s a relationship, a job, a dream, or a new version of yourself, you’ll find that something has to be left behind. The space you once filled will eventually be taken up by someone else.

Sometimes your mind will compare, whispering thoughts like, “They’re doing it better than you.” That’s what keeps many people stuck, not because they don’t want to move on, but because they keep looking back.

We mistake loss for failure, but loss is simply part of moving forward. You can’t walk ahead while holding on to what’s behind you.

2. Change Creates Space, and Space Must Be Filled

Life doesn’t leave room empty for long. The moment you step out of one season, something or someone else will step in. That’s not something to fear; it’s simply how life keeps flowing.

The opportunities you don’t take, someone else will. The roles you’ve outgrown, someone else will fill. The space that once felt like yours will become someone else’s home.

But that doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice. It just means the world is still moving, and so are you. You can do anything you set your mind to, but not everything at once. When you try to hold on to every person, every role, and every version of yourself, you end up losing balance.

3. The Process of Letting Go

When change happens, don’t rush through it. Take a moment to acknowledge what you’re leaving behind.

It’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to sit with that sense of loss and honor the version of you that once fit so perfectly in that old space. By doing this, you release the emotional weight that might keep you trapped between what was and what could be.

Most people never take time to do that. They carry their old emotions into the new, and that’s how they get stuck. They forget why they wanted change in the first place.

So pause and ask yourself: why did you want this change? What new thing were you asking for? What opportunity were you praying for? Then focus your energy there.

4. Discipline Also Comes With Loss
I was talking about this with my younger brother the other day. We often forget that discipline isn’t something you simply “gain.” It’s something you trade for.
If you want to lose weight, you don’t just wake up disciplined. You let go of something first. You release comfort. You release convenience. You release the habits that kept you exactly where you were.

You choose not to overeat.
You choose to eat well.
You choose to say goodbye to the unhealthy foods you once loved.

Discipline is never built in comfort.
It is built in sacrifice.
It is built in repeatedly choosing the version of yourself that you want to grow into, so that you can receive the changed version of you that you’re working so hard to see.

Because every change, no matter how positive, requires letting something go first.

5. You Cannot Do Everything at Once

The image for this post shows someone sleeping while studying. It captures something so simple yet so true, even rest is a choice. You chose rest instead of study. And when you choose study, you lose a moment of rest.

You cannot hold both at the same time. Every decision takes something and gives something.
Every choice is a form of letting go.

Change often begins with this quiet truth: you must release one thing to receive another.

6. Moving Forward Without Guilt

You are allowed to outgrow people, places, and situations, and still wish them well.

You are allowed to move on, even if your old space gets filled.
You are allowed to grow, even when others don’t understand your path.

You can’t stay everywhere, and you can’t be everything. Growth needs movement, and movement needs trust. So when your mind tells you that you’re losing something, remind yourself, you’re not losing, you’re making room.

7. Trust the Process

Change isn’t chaos; it’s a divine exchange. You let go of what no longer fits so you can receive what’s meant for your next season.

And yes, someone else will take your place. But that’s okay, because the next space waiting for you has already been prepared.

You’re not falling behind, you’re evolving. Keep moving, keep trusting, and believe that even the things that hurt to let go of are all working together for your good.

When we finally let go and step into something new, we often expect peace to follow right away. But sometimes, what comes next isn’t peace, it’s fear. In the next post, we will explore why that happens and how the mind can mistake success for danger.

CHANGE IS INEVITABLE, ADAPTATION IS NECESSARY

 (A Reflection on Growth, Failure, and Forward Motion)

As an artist, especially in this day and age, it’s impossible not to think about adaptation. So much is shifting around us… new technologies, changing trends, and the ever-growing presence of AI. Sometimes, it feels like I’m being pulled in every direction by my own work and skills. Every time I find a way forward, something changes again, and I’m right back to figuring it all out from scratch.

It can be exhausting, but it’s also the truth of growth. It never stops demanding movement.

There’s a quote by John C. Maxwell that says, “Fail fast, fail often, fail forward.” It sounds harsh at first, but I’ve come to see its beauty. The faster you allow yourself to fail, the quicker you learn, adapt, and grow. But that’s not how most of us were taught to see it. We were told that success means avoiding failure, not walking through it. We were taught to plan everything out perfectly before taking a step, but that’s not wisdom; it’s fear.

When you make decisions from fear, you’re not creating; you’re surviving. You’re trying to protect yourself instead of expressing yourself. And as someone who creates for a living, I’ve learned that survival and creation don’t thrive in the same space.

Adaptation, I’ve realized, means trusting movement, even when you don’t have the full picture. Sometimes you have to run before you can fly. You can’t wait for perfection to show up before you take the first step. Every phase of creation, every stage of life, is incomplete until you move. The only way to truly learn is by doing, by failing, adjusting, and doing again.

We often paralyze ourselves because we want to think everything through before we start. We want to avoid mistakes so badly that we forget mistakes are the only way to understand what needs fixing. The truth is, the answer often lies within the very problem we’re trying to avoid. What we call “failure” might just be calibration, our minds fine-tuning themselves for alignment.

Learning without practice is labor lost. Thinking without doing, without learning through the process, becomes paralyzing. I often realize this when I catch myself overanalyzing instead of acting. Thought without action builds walls, while action reveals the path. Every step forward, even a shaky one, lessens the power of fear.

If you want to solve a problem, act. Please don’t wait for clarity; create it. Overthinking drains your energy and builds resistance. But when you move, even in uncertainty, you turn that same energy into momentum. The hands begin to do what the mind fears.

Like I had mentioned in my previous blog post, ‘Transformation takes time. Even butterflies rest before they fly.’ You don’t see the movement happening inside the cocoon, but it’s there, quiet, consistent, necessary. The same is true for us. Adaptation doesn’t always look like progress; sometimes it’s simply learning to stay steady while everything shifts around you.

Adaptation, I’ve learned, is an act of faith. It’s the willingness to evolve while still unsure. So when life feels like it’s pressing you from all corners, don’t retreat. Adjust, learn, move, and trust that every detour is shaping your wings.

Because sometimes, you really do have to run before you can fly.

 

 

THE IN-BETWEEN: ARE YOU STUCK OR GROWING?

There’s this stage in life that we don’t talk about enough, the in-between. It’s that space where you know something needs to change, but you haven’t quite figured out what or how. You feel a shift inside you, a quiet stirring, but nothing seems to be moving on the outside yet. It can feel frustrating, like being caught in a fog between who you were and who you’re becoming.

I’ve been sitting in that space lately, not exactly lost, but not fully clear either. There’s a sense that I’m on the edge of something new, yet my feet feel heavy, like they haven’t learned the rhythm of this next chapter. I’ve started to realize, though, that this in-between isn’t a mistake or a delay; it’s a transition.

Change doesn’t always announce itself with a big moment or a dramatic shift. Sometimes it comes quietly, wrapped in confusion or stillness. It starts when you decide to do something differently, maybe to think differently, to set a boundary, to stop chasing what drains you, or to start believing you deserve better. That decision alone changes the pattern. And once that happens, your entire system, mind, body, and soul, begins to recalibrate.

That recalibration is what we often call being “stuck.” But what if you’re not stuck at all? What if you’re simply adjusting to the new you? The old ways don’t fit anymore, and the new ones are still forming. It’s like when a caterpillar is inside the cocoon, unseen but transforming. The in-between is that sacred space where your old identity begins to dissolve and your new one hasn’t quite taken shape yet.

I haven’t quite arrived at my “new” yet either. But I feel it, that gentle pull toward something freer, something lighter. I’ve noticed my thoughts changing, my reactions softening, and my tolerance for certain things shrinking. It’s subtle, but it’s there. And even though I don’t fully understand where it’s all leading, I’ve learned to trust that the feeling of in-between is proof that I’m not standing still, I’m evolving.

If you’re reading this and you feel like you’re in that same space, please don’t be discouraged. You’ve already done the hardest part, recognizing that something needs to shift. Now it’s about patience, grace, and small steps. Give yourself permission to be in the process without rushing to the outcome.

You may not have all the answers right now, but every small act of faith, every time you choose rest over worry, or hope over fear, moves you closer to what’s next.

Transformation takes time. Even butterflies rest before they fly.

Therefore, take a deep breath. The in-between isn’t the end of your story; it’s the quiet chapter where your transformation begins. The in-between doesn’t last forever; sooner or later, that quiet longing turns into motion. And that’s where adaptation begins.