Hi Reader,

For weeks, Ria asked me the same kind of question. Should I do this. Am I allowed that. Was this okay. She wanted me to hand down rulings, and she wanted to follow them perfectly.

One day I gently turned it around. "Ria," I said, "who is the boss of your life?"

She laughed, a little unsure where I was going.

So I explained. In any kingdom, there is a king and there are advisors. The advisors are clever. They know things the king does not. They bring information, they map out consequences, they say "if you do this, here is what tends to happen." But they do not rule. The king decides. The whole point of having good advisors is to make a better decision, not to hand your crown to someone else.

Your doctor is an advisor. Your trainer is an advisor. I am an advisor. We can tell you what we see and what tends to follow. But the decision about your own body, your own day, your own life, that was always yours. It cannot be anyone else's.

This sounds obvious, and it is the single most freeing thing I teach. Because here is the trap underneath all those "am I allowed" questions. If you only eat well because someone is watching, only walk because someone told you to, only behave because you will have to report it, then your good choices are not really yours. They are borrowed. And borrowed confidence collapses the moment the watcher looks away.

Ask yourself this honestly. How long are you willing to need someone standing over your shoulder? A month? A year? The rest of your life? Because if the whole thing depends on being supervised, you have not built health. You have built a dependency. And no one ever felt confident while feeling dependent.

What we are actually after is the opposite. A woman who makes good choices when nobody is watching. Not because she was told to, but because she has decided who she is and what she wants. That is autonomy. And it is the deepest thing a human being craves, underneath everything. Nobody likes to be told what to do, not a toddler, and certainly not a capable grown woman who runs half the world around her.

So the work was never to make Ria obedient. It was to hand her the crown back.

One small thing to try this week. Pick one choice that is fully and only yours. What time the lights go off. One meal, decided on your terms, for your own reasons. Then keep your word to yourself on it. Not for me, not for anyone. Just to prove to yourself that you can. Confidence is built from small promises kept to yourself.

Strange as it may sound coming from a coach, the goal of good coaching is to make you need it less, not more. It is to put the crown firmly back on your head. That is most of what I do, quietly, with a few women at a time.

Ria was always the boss. She had just been waiting for permission she never actually needed. So are you. You were never the problem. So get your CROWN back, its yours, if you need help to get it back, thats fine too, remember kings/queens have advisiors and armies too. They dont need to do everything on their own.

Dhaval
Recovery First Method

Two ways to go deeper when you are ready:
Read the free guide, You Were Never the Problem: dhavalbhadeshiya.com/free-guide
Apply for Project Phoenix, six months of private one to one coaching: dhavalbhadeshiya.com/apply