Adults are just kids with better excuses

You wouldn’t let your child eat Haribo for breakfast,  but you scroll Instagram before you’ve even had water.
Same dopamine hit, different packaging.
Adults are just kids with better excuses.

We grow up, but the cravings don’t.
We just learn to disguise them in better language.

We call it “me time” or “unwinding.”
But half our habits are just socially acceptable self-soothing.
We don’t quit our vices; we give them Wi-Fi and call it work.

Shame is clever. It doesn’t scream; it whispers through jokes.
We say “I’m so bad at mornings,” or “I’ll start Monday.” That’s not humour, that’s camouflage.

But here’s the paradox: shame only hardens when you hide it. The moment you name it, you shrink it.
And the fastest way to name it? Humour.

Because humour is truth wearing a party hat.

If you can laugh at your worst pattern, the midnight scrolling, the third glass, the quiet resentment you call tiredness, you’ve already separated yourself from it.
That distance is where change begins.

The point isn’t to shame yourself harder.
It’s finally time to see the game you’ve been playing and choose to stop playing it on autopilot.

What’s one thing you keep joking about, but secretly wish you’d fix?

If this hit a nerve, send it to the friend who calls Instagram their morning multivitamin.
Because healing gets easier once we start laughing at the right things together.

Each week, I’ll share 3 things that have genuinely helped me, small shifts across the three pillars of ConfigurSelf: mindset, habits, and health. The kind of things that have made a real difference in my own life, and that I’d happily recommend to a close friend.

A few months ago, I started using a small device that hums quietly on your chest, the Sensate 2. It looks like a pebble, feels like a purr, and somehow convinces your entire nervous system that you’re safe again.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It felt a little absurd, lying on the sofa with a vibrating stone on my sternum, eyes closed, listening to ambient soundscapes. But within minutes, my breathing slowed. The tightness behind my ribs, that low-grade hum of tension most of us just live with, softened.

Here’s what’s happening beneath the calm: the Sensate sends low-frequency vibrations through the chest that directly stimulate the vagus nerve, the communication line between brain and body that governs stress, digestion, and mood. When that nerve activates, your body flips from “fight-or-flight” to “rest-and-digest.” Cortisol drops. Heart rate steadies. Your thoughts stop sprinting.

There’s real science behind it: vagus-nerve stimulation is used clinically for anxiety, PTSD, and even depression. The Sensate offers a non-invasive version, no wires, no medical setting, just a physical signal telling your body, you’re okay now.

Ten minutes a day is enough. I use it before bed or after long work stretches when my chest feels like it’s holding its breath. It’s not a gadget; it’s a reset button.

Over time, it becomes a quiet ritual, a private peace treaty between your mind and your body.
A reminder that calm isn’t earned through effort, it’s restored through safety.

If you try it, start small. One song’s length, phone in another room, pebble on your chest.
Let your body decide if it wants to stay in the fight or finally exhale.

This is the one I have.

I stopped drinking coffee when I was pregnant with my first child, ten years ago now, and I haven’t touched it since. It wasn’t a planned decision, just something my body quietly refused. I never went back. But every now and then, when life gets in the way and my thoughts start racing faster than I can keep up, I turn to
L-Theanine.

It’s the calm hidden inside green tea and matcha, an amino acid that brings focus without frenzy. There’s real science behind it: Theanine increases alpha brain waves, the ones your mind produces when you’re relaxed but alert. It helps your thoughts flow instead of colliding.

For me, it’s not a supplement; it’s a reset. A moment of soft clarity in a world that keeps asking for more. Sometimes I drink a cup of matcha and watch the powder swirl until the green deepens. Sometimes I just sit quietly and breathe, letting my body remember what calm feels like.

I don’t take it daily. Only when the edges start to blur, when calm feels far away, and caffeine isn’t the answer.

It’s become less about what’s in the cup, and more about what it reminds me: that clarity doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from slowing down enough to listen.. This is the brand I use.

There was a time I used to journal like I was submitting evidence to the universe. Every line is serious. Every sentence is a self-improvement plea. It helped for a while, until it started to feel heavy. So I tried something different. I began writing the truth, but with a wink.

I call it comedy journaling, one ridiculous confession a day. Nothing profound, just brutally honest observations that make me laugh at myself. “I said I’d meditate, but I actually rearranged the snack cupboard.” “Told myself I’d ‘do emails later’, it’s now tomorrow.” That kind of thing.

Something happens when you can laugh at your own chaos. The shame loses oxygen. The inner critic loses its job. Humour does what discipline can’t: it lets you forgive yourself without pretending you’re perfect.

It’s not a habit I do every night, only when I feel the noise building up again, when the day feels too full, or I’ve been too hard on myself to notice. I open the notebook, write one line, and usually end up laughing halfway through.

It’s not deep work. It’s light work. The kind that clears the static so you can see yourself again, unpolished, human, still trying, still here.

And every now and then, when I read those entries back, I realise they’re not jokes at all. They’re small love letters to the part of me that’s learning not to take her healing so seriously.

Most of my podcasts start as background noise, dishes, emails, and dinner. But every now and then, something catches me mid-scroll and actually makes me stop. This week, it was this.

If something in this email made you pause, think, or feel seen, send it to a friend who’s been quietly trying to make a change, too.
You never know what might land at the right moment. Link here.

And if you’d like early access to the eBook I’m writing, the real systems, mindset shifts, and habits that helped me lose 50kg and rebuild my health, you can join the waiting list here. “You’re not behind. You’re building, and that takes time.”