Hello friends!

I recently turned 30 (woohoo) and it got me reflecting on the decade that's just been. How wonderful it has been.

Genuinely, I feel very fortunate to look back with fondness across each chapter: doing well at university, carving out my own path in my first graduate job, all my learnings at McKinsey, and of course... the opportunity to build something of my own with Emotional Explorations.

There's nothing I would've changed about my 20s, because all of it made me who I am today.

Except for maybe one thing.

That's what this week's exploration is about.

This week's theme:

I wish I'd gone to therapy sooner.

Life was good before therapy.

So when one of my friends first suggested the idea of me going to therapy, I rejected: "I am the most happy, optimistic, confident, mentally stable person I know of... SURELY I'm the last person that needs therapy."

But I was wrong.

We could all do with a bit more self-awareness that we cannot access ourselves. We all have blindspots that no amount of introspection can unveil.

And it's only in revealing these blindspots, that we are no longer blind to them. It's only in becoming less blind, that our horizons expand.

Through therapy and coaching, I saw my life through a more complete lens:

• The values that led me which had secretly been my fears in disguise
• The actions I declared in the name of love which turned out to be attempts for me to avoid my own pains
• The lack of emotion not as a character trait, but as a coping mechanism

(Gosh this makes younger me sound pretty timid and robotic)

Life was good before therapy.

Life was good after therapy.

But the difference was in the fullness and richness that I could bring into each moment of my life: my experiences, my decisions, and my relationships.

Therapy wouldn't have altered the objective experiences I had. It would've simply allowed me to approach them more fully.

If you'd like to explore this more...

I document my learnings from therapy into this week's video. You can watch it here:

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That's it for this week's issue of Emotional Explorations! I hope it brought you clarity and I look forward to writing to you again soon.

Best,
Eric