Sarah Collins spent over twenty years as a civil engineer, building a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside, she was depressed, overthinking, and quietly waiting for happiness to arrive at some point in the future. It never did. Not because she hadn't achieved enough, but because she was looking for it in the wrong place entirely.
That realisation became the starting point of a very different life, one built around self-inquiry, mindfulness, and a slow, deliberate unlearning of everything she thought success was supposed to mean. In this episode, Sarah and I sat down to talk about that shift, and what it actually takes to stop fighting with the present moment.
The Success That Wasn't
Sarah told me something that stayed with me. She said success wasn't what society had made her believe it was. It wasn't the fame, the money, or any of the things she had been taught to chase. For years, she did the things she thought she was supposed to do, without ever asking whether she truly wanted them.
The turning point came when she began asking a simpler question: what do I actually want out of life? Not what should I want. Not what will make me look successful. What do I want, here, now.
That single shift in questioning is where everything else in this conversation begins.
The Stories We Believe About Ourselves
Sarah described a pattern she sees again and again in the people she works with, and one she lived through herself: the belief that we're not good enough as we are. That we should be doing more, achieving more, becoming someone slightly better than the person we currently are, before we're allowed to feel at peace.
The trouble, as Sarah put it, is that this future version of ourselves never actually arrives. The future simply becomes the current moment, over and over again. So if we're never enough now, we're never going to be enough then either.
This is where acceptance enters the conversation, not as passive resignation, but as something closer to honesty. Sarah used a simple example: if you break your leg, you don't have to be glad it happened. You simply stop fighting the fact that it did. That, she said, is where the relief begins.
Thoughts Are Not Who You Are
One of the most useful distinctions Sarah offered is the idea that we are not our thoughts. Thoughts arise. We didn't choose to create them, and for most of us, we can't stop them from coming. What we can do is notice them, rather than automatically believing them.
Sarah shared an exercise she uses with people: she asks them to close their eyes for thirty seconds and try not to think a single thing. Almost nobody can do it. And that, she said, is exactly the point. Meditation was never about stopping the mind. It's about noticing when you've been swept up in it, and gently bringing yourself back.
I'll admit, I smiled when she described this exercise, because I think it captures something people misunderstand about meditation constantly. The goal was never silence. The goal is awareness.
Happiness Was Never Meant to Be Constant
Perhaps the most freeing part of this conversation was Sarah's honesty about happiness itself. She doesn't believe we're meant to feel happy all the time, and neither do I. If we were, life would be flat, and frankly, a little boring.
Growth tends to come through challenge, not through comfort. The difficult moments, the sadness, the setbacks, they are not obstacles standing between you and a happier life. They are simply part of the life you're already living. Learning to let each moment be what it is, rather than resisting it or waiting for a better one, is where Sarah believes real freedom begins.
You Are Your Own Teacher
Sarah has read extensively, listened to countless teachers, and studied non-duality in depth. But her conclusion wasn't that we need more teachers. It was the opposite. Teachers, she said, aren't teaching us anything new. They're helping us remember what was already there.
I'd add to that. A teacher can only illuminate the path. They cannot walk it for you. The insight, when it finally comes, comes from within, not from outside. That's a distinction worth sitting with.
Stand Out, Don't Fit In
If there's one thread running through this entire conversation, it's this: stop trying to become someone else in some future moment, and start noticing the life you already have, exactly as it is. Not because everything is easy. It isn't. But because the fighting is often heavier than the moment itself.