Would you like to develop more creative confidence? Have you ever embarked on, or considered, a sketching practice?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the link between the two in conversation with artist, printmaker, and creative coach Sam Marshall.

Sam is based here in the UK and has recently released a beautiful book called Sketch: A Project Guide To Drawing With Confidence. I was fortunate enough to receive a digital copy last year and honestly, wow. It inspires, equips, and gently mentors people to start a drawing practice and engage with their natural creativity.

What I love most about the book is its emphasis on helping you find your own creative voice. This is supported by Sam’s Sketch Squad, a small group of participants who work through the exercises together. Seeing the same prompts interpreted in wildly different ways has a surprisingly powerful effect. For me, the most helpful part was witnessing the sheer range of styles, approaches, and ways of noticing the world.

A huge part of creative confidence is realising that differences in how we see, what we notice, and what we care about are not flaws.

This is why art and creativity sit at the heart of being human. Creative expression is our collective humanity experiencing itself in all its weird and wonderful variety. I was reminded of this recently while talking about map-making as a way to understand our relationship with different areas of life. If you give the same prompt to 100 people, you do not get a single map done well. You get a hundred completely different maps.

That is what I hope people take into and out of this conversation. Difference is beautiful. It is not about doing it right. What Sam offers through this book is a sketching practice that gives us tracks along which to see, feel, and experience the world in a more alive and interesting way than when we are stuck in ultra-productivity mode, trying to make everything efficient and easy.

A drawing practice helps us slow down, observe, and engage our creative spirit through process rather than outcome.

There is something gently rebellious about sketching in the digital age, where the default response is to pull out a phone and take a photo. There is a difference between capturing something quickly so we can hoard and move on, and drawing as a way of anchoring ourselves in the environment.

Drawing asks us to stay. To notice. To let time pass while the world happens around us. Light shifts. Shadows move. People come and go. Smells, sounds, and sensations change. Rather than consuming the environment, we are engaging with it.

Sam shares a lovely story about drawing in public and finding herself surrounded by Japanese school children. It creates a beautiful image of the quiet, magnetic energy that people who are deeply engaged with life often carry. Perhaps we are drawn to them because they are interesting. Or perhaps because they are moving at a pace many of us are craving.

Focusing on practice rather than skill also reshapes what success means in art.

Instead of achievement, accomplishment, or the finished piece, success becomes about rhythm, consistency, and an ongoing relationship with seeing and making. Letting go of outcome-oriented art is not about lowering standards. It is about shifting attention.

It is not about producing pretty drawings. Rather, it is about sitting down with your sketchbook and using it as a tool for observing. Drawing anchors us in space and time, allowing us to witness change as it unfolds.

In the conversation, Sam takes us through the thinking behind the book’s exercises, each designed to build creative confidence through experience.

Starting where you are. Noticing objects and spaces you have spent years with, perhaps without really seeing them.

Venturing out to see the walls of your world from the outside. Noticing what is close by and reconnecting with physical space. It reveals details in neighbourhoods and communities that often go unseen.

Sam explores some of the beliefs that hold people back, such as:
“What if I am not good enough?”
“I do not want to look silly or draw like a five-year-old.”

Portraits were the most challenging exercise for many Sketch Squad members. They require vulnerability. You ask something of another person, and you share something personal in return. This is something we see in Tuula’s Photoyoga For Your Mind Experience.

Simple prompts designed to build a habit and keep you drawing without overthinking it.

Another edge for many people. Being seen doing something personal and slightly unusual in a culture that loves to judge creative effort.

Experiencing places through the slowness of drawing adds depth to memory. Sam shares a sketchbook from her recent trip to Japan, which holds far more meaning for her than a photo album ever could. A helpful reminder for any habit, too. Start on the first day away. Intentions turn into behaviours quickly, for better or worse.

A way of engaging critically with art as part of the human story, not just as a product. It teaches us about history, context, and what we might want to bring into our own practice.

Combining senses. Drawing from music, film, collage, and even dreams.

Turning the practice into a chosen project that marks a pause between chapters. Sam explains why she calls this a personal project rather than a final assignment.

Creative confidence does not arrive before we start. It emerges along the way. Through consistency, we become confident in what we notice and why we care. For experimental types, confidence is not something we can fake into existence. But we can trust that playful, curious engagement with something like a sketching practice develops capacities we do not yet have language for.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Thank you again to Sam for giving her time so generously and for walking us through the thinking behind, beneath, and within the book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Connect with Sam through her website and on her Instagram.

I saw a reel earlier that made me notice how burnout spreads. An entrepreneurial self-help influencer told followers to demand more power, money, and visibility for themselves. You may be familiar with this flavour of message…

“How dare you keep your impact hidden?” they said, “given the state of things right now.” They criticised viewers, demanding that they stop letting fear of what others think rule them. “Start the business, write the book, and share it with a world that needs to encounter it.”

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the underlying sentiment. But I felt troubled by the burnout energy evident in the speaker. I watched with the sound off at first, which intensified the impact of their eyes and hand gestures on my nervous system. There was a sense of panic and hype, which felt completely at odds with what is required for deep courage to meet the very real need being spoken about.

I didn’t feel inspired or grounded in creative motivation. Instead, I was overcome by frenetic urgency and the indiscriminate demand to do more, driven by competition and fear. Things we already have in abundance.

There are enough people waving their arms and shouting demands about what we should be doing, using, and spending our finite resources on. What we need is space to slow down, take a breath, and listen deeply to that still, quiet voice within. This inner voice shows us what matters and why. Then we can choose how we bring it all to life.

We need leaders who lead from that place, so we might be infused with and infected by the gentleness required to move out of that evident stuckness. That stuckness causes wheels to spin in the cycle of hurry, rush, and reactive firefighting mode.

The word “safe” is used a lot today. To some degree, it has become diluted, making it difficult to define. But it’s worth exploring because it sits at the heart of this issue.

Maybe we have a desire to change something about ourselves, our lives, or the world. Or perhaps we’ve created, or are creating, something that could make a meaningful difference to other people.

We now consider another buzzword of our times: vulnerability. It can feel vulnerable to be honest about what we want in life and to share what matters to us with those who matter to us. It can be scary to admit what we care about and what burns within us. That’s because it can disrupt the status quo and challenge the image people have of us. It’s vulnerable because we cannot be certain how people will react.

Likewise, it may leave us genuinely physically vulnerable if we choose to stand up for what we believe is right, for example, through art or activism. This vulnerability isn’t imagined. It’s not simply an issue of mindset, limiting beliefs to overcome, or a conditioned cultural message we just need to override with reframe hacks. We know there are real-world threats out there.

What struck me about the reel was that it failed to provide the support needed to underpin its demands. In fact, it undermined the courage, conviction, and energy required to speak up in a world that might be unreceptive or even hostile to what we have to say.

The finger-wagging shame that comes from an influencer demanding we do more because it’s cruel to hide from people who need to see us, however well-intentioned, will ultimately crumble and fold under its own weight. As a result, it creates the very passivity and inaction it warns against.

Safety isn’t about comfort or avoidance. It’s the internal condition that enables honest reflection, creative movement, and sustained courage. This isn’t about mindset or thinking. It starts with the context of the stories we swim in, the supportive structures beneath us, and the material conditions that sustain life.

One of the things I have consistently heard from people over the years who have connected with what I do, especially in The Haven and through the Serenity Island course, is the word safety. I’m always curious about what it means to those who use it, because it’s not something I think about explicitly.

When I started sharing The Return to Serenity Island at the start of 2021, I received messages from people that put words to the experience:

“Oh my word, it is incredible! A really unique mixture of sound and sensory experience, coaching, imaginative play and informal, companionable talks. I’m absolutely hooked. I just did a module and cried like a baby because I felt so safe and seen. It is really special. That kind of cry you do when you’re a kid, not because you’re afraid anymore, but because you’ve been PICKED UP, and the relief just comes flooding out.” – Josie

This spoke of safety not as the opposite of courage, but as the cornerstone around which courageous action can be sustained. A cornerstone we can return to and draw from without conditions on our intrinsic worth as humans. Safety, then, is feeling held as you are, without expectation or demand to prove yourself or fight for a sense of value.

This is a key value that underpins The Return to Serenity Island. It was a response to a feeling I had while doing my old year-end practice. I needed something that broke with the message of self-optimisation, personal productivity, and motivational resources, which, with an emphasis on striving, adding, and growing simply because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do, carried a creeping burnout energy.

Tuula wrote,

“Serenity Island has been the most powerful and lovely thing I have ever experienced. Andy has created an amazing adventure, cleverly weaving together incredibly beautiful soundscapes and deeply touching story narrative, which ignites your imagination, activates all senses and sends you on a journey of a lifetime on this island of your wildest dreams.

It is playful and also a very useful creative project, which continues to evolve and grow with me. This Island work and its ripple effects have sneaked quietly and effectively into so many areas of my life already. I could not have found more effective and gentle coaching than with Andy.”

The course is not something that comes with easy-to-market promises and packaged outcomes that everyone walks away with in the same way. Everyone who goes through it seems to encounter it from a different angle.

But there is a common denominator of safety, which underpins everyone’s response to it.

Safety as a foundation for reflection, observation, and planning. A way to let what sits within us speak, and to give ourselves the best chance of hearing it. And as such, it’s not a way to withdraw from reality. Instead, it helps us locate and root ourselves more firmly within it, so we can find strength, courage, and clarity about who we are, what we want to tend to and nurture, and how we will stand in the face of the forces that may take us away from ourselves.

The Return to Serenity Island is a self-paced guided voyage with optional Zoom “Picnics”. These provide us with time and space for further reflection, support, and in-person connection along the way.

This is a perfect time to grab a passport if this stuff feels right for you. The Serenity Island Passport gives you access to all materials and picnics for the next 12 months.

And speaking of safety, I’ve made the course available on a choose-your-own-price basis. I know many people are navigating changing financial circumstances, and I truly mean it when I say: choose the amount that feels right for you. No minimum, no need to explain or justify your choice. I just want you there if you feel the pull.

It’s much easier to show than describe, so I’ll share the first of these six pieces that supplement the course materials.

“Arriving through the fog soundscape is the most brilliant thing I have witnessed as a gateway into myself. If I stopped here, at the harbour to the Island, it would already be worth it for me. Thank you for this. It’s filled with magic.” – Zoie

Welcome home!

Peter Ormerod is a journalist and writer who has written extensively about culture and faith for The Guardian, and he is also an arts editor for NationalWorld. He’s a very close friend of mine, so it was a real pleasure to speak with him in this capacity for The Gentle Rebel Podcast.

Peter has just published a wonderful book, David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God. It resonates deeply with many of the themes we explore in The Haven and on the podcast, particularly the idea of what sits below an experimental approach to life.

Speaking of which, Peter also makes beautiful music. You can listen here.

What really interested me was this path Bowie embodied so visibly through his art. The shifting characters, styles, and phases across his career can look like constant reinvention on the surface. But Peter invites us to see something else at play.

What if these changes weren’t signs of restlessness, but expressions of something deep and consistent underneath? A spiritual thread running through Bowie’s life and work.

That question sits at the heart of Peter’s book. What if the spiritual wasn’t incidental to Bowie’s creativity, but an essential driving force beneath it? Peter shows how this dimension was present from the very beginning, and he takes us on a compelling journey through Bowie’s searching.

Peter says that after first hearing Hunky Dory at seventeen, his growing obsession with Bowie left him fascinated by the spiritual dimension of Bowie’s creative drive. Other writers had touched on this in passing, but no one had really followed it through in depth.

So Peter ended up writing the book he wanted to read.

In our conversation, we talk about Bowie’s legacy as something like a mirror ball. Shine a light on him and you get countless reflections. Everyone seems to have their own version of who Bowie was, something that became especially visible after his death.

He’s often framed through the lens of “ch-ch-ch-changes”, the chameleon of rock. But Peter challenges this reading. The more he researched, read, and listened, the more those changes appeared to be a natural outpouring of a deeper spiritual quest.

For experimental people, this can feel familiar. The outer paths shift, but the underlying question remains.

A “spiritual interest” is often dismissed as a celebrity hobby, something that pops up and disappears. Peter makes a strong case that this wasn’t the case for Bowie.

Part of the difficulty is that we don’t really have a shared vocabulary for this territory, which is why we fall back on words like spirituality. Bowie himself was fond of the saying, “Religion is for people who believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.”

He was sharply critical of religious institutions when he felt they corrupted the message of love at the heart of Christianity. For Bowie, spirituality wasn’t ornamental. It was essential to how he related to his life, his work, and his place in the universe.

Through the seeking you will find. Not seeking to reach a destination, but seeking as a way of being.

Why didn’t Bowie give up? What was he seeking? What was he finding? There were clearly things he encountered that made atheism feel insufficient, even when he was tempted by it.

If Bowie arrives anywhere, Peter suggests it’s something like this: life is a gift, and love is the point. This can sound oblique, but Peter traces it clearly in Bowie’s later work.

What we’re left with is the result of that searching, a remarkable body of work that we can return to, live with, and explore.

There’s a danger in how Bowie is remembered. He can be lifted out of humanness, made to seem like an exception rather than a person.

Bowie wrote bad songs. He made misfires. All of it belonged to the same quest.

He’s sometimes misread as an unrooted artist, endlessly reinventing himself, but he was deeply sensitive to place and time. He always worked with others. He needed bands, collaborators, and creative relationships. His best work emerged through collaboration, not isolation.

Bowie was political, but he didn’t see political expression as his strongest artistic voice. He admired bands like The Clash for carrying that role more directly. This raises an interesting question about what we expect from celebrated figures, and how easily we project our demands onto them.

Bowie was more of a smuggler. At Live Aid, he played a song and showed a video instead. Let’s Dance sounds like it’s about one thing, but it’s really about something else. Much of his music did a similar thing.

This was the mark of his artistry. He invited a conversation rather than delivering a message. He trusted listeners to discover depth for themselves, without it being spoon-fed.

And for experimental people especially, that kind of invitation matters. It honours the idea that the path keeps unfolding, even when the question underneath remains the same.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Does that question fill you with excitement, or a quiet sense of dread?

We are wired differently.

For many people, myself included, the question is not difficult to answer because we lack imagination. It is difficult because it speaks a different language from our natural way of being. We are not compelled by any outcome-oriented approach to planning, conceiving, or measuring success. And yet this orientation is often treated as a default mode we should all operate within.

“But everyone has a dream,” we might be told, as if struggling to articulate a five-year vision means we are hiding something from ourselves.

I have never been able to articulate a grand plan in the way this question assumes. I struggle to picture the future concretely, because it unfolds piece by piece. It always has. And I genuinely love watching how things emerge across different areas of life in ways I could not have foreseen.

What drives me is something quieter and steadier. A creative impulse. A desire to make things, to explore what might happen, to respond to what is in front of me, and to integrate what has come before. My life does not move in straight lines. It has grown around and within my values, with seemingly unrelated dots connecting in unexpected ways.

Maybe you relate to this?

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

This quote, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, reminds me of the five-year question. For some, it sounds like a warning. A demand to define the destination so the “correct” road can be chosen. For others, it feels like permission. A reminder that movement itself shapes direction, and that choosing a road does not require certainty about where it leads.

There is research that can help us better understand this difference.

In an episode about Late Blooming, Kendra Patterson pointed to a study by David Galenson and Bruce Weinberg, who observed patterns in the careers of Nobel Prize winners in economics. They identified two broad orientations to creative innovation.

Some people are conceptual innovators. They work deductively. They begin with a clear idea and organise themselves towards it. In the study, these individuals often made their most significant contributions early in life, sometimes in their twenties.

Others are experimental innovators. They work inductively. Their contribution emerges step by step through trial, discovery, accumulation, and integration. Their most meaningful work often did not appear until their fifties. Sometimes later.

That is a thirty-year difference.

Experimental lives unfold differently. They need time, space, and patience. Decisions cannot be judged too early, and meaning emerges through lived experience rather than advance planning. These lives are not oriented towards a clearly imagined endpoint, but towards allowing something to take shape over time.

Our dominant culture tends to favour the conceptual orientation for obvious reasons. Goals are easier to measure than processes, and outcomes are more reassuring than slow inquiry.

So when more experimental people are asked to account for themselves in conceptual language, we can experience a disconnect. The five-year plan. Starting with the end in mind. Being asked to justify movement only if the destination can be named in advance.

We might learn to force an answer anyway, for fear of sounding vague and sketchy. Perhaps we adapt our path to fit the question, sometimes tethering ourselves to targets that outlive their purpose.

Experimental people tend to better orient around different questions.

Not “where do I want to get to?” but “does this path feel worth exploring?”
Not “how will I know I have succeeded?” but “what tells me I’m on the right path for now?”

This does not mean anything goes.

Our values provide an inner compass. A filter through which decisions pass.

Experimental consistency grows in relationship with deeper principles, even when they are not fully formed or easy to articulate. We sense them in how something feels. Whether it feels solid, expansive, and quietly right, even in the face of uncertainty.

That is very different from hit-and-hope searching.

The problem begins when we are pressured to live by a map that does not match the territory of our own experience.

The Return To Serenity Island grew directly out of this recognition.

It was never designed to answer the question of direction. It emerged from understanding the difference between conceptual and experimental ways of moving through life, and from a desire to honour growth and change without forcing myself into a shape that did not fit.

The image of mapping an island felt natural. A way of imagining life not as something to optimise along a straight line, but as a living territory. An unfinished map with seasons, weather, history, and forgotten paths. A place where things fall away to make room for what comes next. Where time moves differently across the landscape, and where connections form quietly, often long before they make sense.

It has become a counterpoint to directive, outcome-driven models of goal setting. A place to reconnect with intuition, judgement, and possibility. To meet creativity not as a tool for achievement, but as a way of relating to life as something we are growing into, rather than something we are meant to complete.

The optional live sessions begin on Saturday January 24th 2026 and run for six weeks. You can find more information at serenityisland.me.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a message. I would love to hear from you if this sounds like something you would find helpful.

A theme that’s dominated 2025 for me (and for many) has been price rises across many subscription-based platforms and services. My correspondence with companies has made clear that loyalty stands for very little. In fact, rather than being rewarded, longevity is increasingly exploited and monetised.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a year-in-review through the lens of price rises. The tipping point was an email from my podcast hosting company, Libsyn, announcing a 71 percent increase effective from January. It was the straw that broke this camel’s back after a year of similar moves elsewhere. In the episode, I share exchanges with three companies that reveal how loyalty is no longer valued in itself, but engineered to extract profit from those of us who’ve become reliant on these platforms.

Cory Doctorow describes the underlying trend as “Enshittification”, a form of platform decay visible in companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Adobe. It’s not a glitch, but a feature. Doctorow traces a familiar arc: platforms start by serving users well in order to grow. Once established, they pivot toward business customers, monetisation, and scale. Eventually, when users and businesses are sufficiently locked in, services are degraded for everyone so maximum value can be pulled out as quickly as possible.

Disproportionate price rises are one symptom of this process, particularly in how companies treat long-standing customers. Lock-in is maintained through network effects (it’s hard to leave when everyone else is still there), non-transferable data (your work can’t easily be exported), and digital restrictions where purchases only function inside a single ecosystem. Music, books, films, and software are “owned” only as long as the platform allows it.

In the name of convenience, we give ourselves over to these systems and become dependent on them. As the digital and physical worlds converge, this logic extends beyond apps and websites into cars, home devices, utilities, and infrastructure. At that point, this stops being a simple matter of consumer choice. Extraction is baked into the products themselves.

We are quietly acclimatising to this new normal. It has crept in through corporate consolidation, weak enforcement of anti-trust legislation, and business models that no longer need to meaningfully consider customer relationships once a certain scale is reached.

Charlie Brooker has cited Enshittification as an influence on Common People, the opening episode of Black Mirror series seven. A couple sign up to a subscription-based medical intervention that escalates in cost, complexity, and dependency. Features are removed. Adverts are inserted. The stakes become existential. One particularly chilling moment sees Mike literally mutilating his own body for money via an OnlyFans-style platform, a stark symbolic image of how value is extracted from people once dependency is established.

Libsyn informed me they were raising the price of hosting A Quiet Night Inside No 9 by 71 percent. The justification was a familiar list of added features and growth opportunities, none of which were relevant to how we use the service. We don’t want adverts or growth tools. We want reliable hosting and delivery.

This exchange highlighted how much podcasting has changed since I joined Libsyn in 2009. Hosting platforms have increasingly positioned themselves as intermediaries between advertisers and podcasters. That relationship now takes precedence. Advertising is framed as a benefit to creators, while enabling hosts to raise prices and skim revenue from both usage fees and ad sales. Listeners, meanwhile, absorb longer ad breaks as the new normal. Is this stage two of Enshittification in the podcasting world?

Note, I pledge never to put adverts on my audio podcasts. YouTube is the only exception, because Google inserts them regardless.

A similar logic played out with Kit, formerly ConvertKit. I chose it in 2016 because it was simple and reliable and have been a loyal user ever since. A price increase from $49 to $59 a month was justified by new automations and tools I didn’t ask for or use. There is no way to opt out and pay less. The only concession offered was annual billing, which I pointed out mirrors poverty-tax logic: those without upfront capital pay more.

Vimeo was the clearest example of platform decay from the inside. Storage rules changed midstream. Long-held assumptions were invalidated. Downgrading meant losing access to years of work. Retention efforts amounted to one-off discounts rather than meaningful alternatives. What stood out wasn’t hostility, but indifference. Once a service reaches a certain size, individual relationships no longer seem to matter.

Their response felt so extreme that I suspected deeper problems, which seemed to be confirmed when Bending Spoons acquired Vimeo in November. I’m glad I left when I did, though it’s still inconvenient clearing up broken links and legacy embeds after fifteen years of use.

Not all companies operate this way. WishList Member has honoured the price and feature set I signed up for over a decade ago. While new tiers exist, functionality hasn’t been removed to force upgrades. This appears to be a deliberate choice, and it communicates something simple: long-term trust and loyalty matters more than short-term extraction.

I’ll let you know if this situation changes…

It’s tempting to frame all this as a moral failure, but it’s structural. Growth-at-all-costs logic makes price rises, feature bloat, and lock-in almost inevitable. These companies aren’t malfunctioning; they’re functioning exactly as the system encourages them to.

This also makes it risky to romanticise alternatives. Newer companies may simply be at an earlier stage of the same cycle. Google once promised “don’t be evil”. Facebook positioned itself as a less invasive alternative to MySpace. Scale changes incentives.

Meaningful change won’t come from individual consumer choices alone. Competition has been hollowed out, and escape routes are increasingly narrow. Doctorow provides a section of existing and potential solutions that can give us reasons for active hope.

Have you felt the pinch of price hikes this year? Feel free to get in touch and share your experiences.

I hadn’t planned to revisit The Culture of Narcissism so soon, but a small niggle pulled me back into the subject. With Spotify Unwrapped everywhere, it struck me again how platforms, tools, and devices can become instruments of narcissism. Especially when social signals, algorithms, and gamification hook us in and keep us there. A merging takes place. We become intertwined with the image generated and presented through the pond, which stares back at us.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I use Christopher Lasch’s definition to explore how our favourite apps, devices, and tools contribute to the culture of narcissism.

Christopher Lasch interprets the story of Narcissus as less about self-love but self-loss. Narcissus “fails to recognise his own reflection.” He can’t perceive the difference between himself and his surroundings.

Seen this way, the algorithm is the perfect pond. It draws us into our reflection, not because we adore ourselves, but because stepping away feels like erasing our existence.

We often talk about training the algorithm. But it frequently trains us. It rewards behaviours that keep us within narrow identity categories and punishes deviations from the pattern.

Engagement, attention, and existential acknowledgement flow when we appease the machine. And appeasing it usually means losing the parts of ourselves that don’t fit the expected mould. We have to leave parts of ourselves behind and present a tidied version that conforms with expectations.

For the narcissist, external objects become reflective surfaces. Lasch’s point that capitalism “elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone” plays out through algorithmic tools. They squeeze us into shapes we didn’t choose. They push us further apart, fuel distrust between artificially separated groups, and isolate anyone who steps beyond the boundaries.

YouTube is an interesting example. The technology could open horizons, yet the algorithm demands consistency in frequency, focus, and branding.

Beyond these algorithmic teacups (where it begins to feel as if the entire world exists), lies both freedom and obscurity, which can seem like a frightening indifference to our existence. This digital frontier markets itself as a world of abundant opportunity, yet the algorithms act as a fragile overseer. We experience the threat of ostracism operating on two fronts: actively (your community turns against you if you don’t conform to expectations) and passively (the system limits your visibility).

This algorithmic narcissism turns into a two-way street. The audience perceives the creator as an extension of themselves, and the creator relies on the audience for validation of their existence (and basic subsistence). We can become stuck here, going in circles, wishing for something different but feeling unable to change.

A question has been on my mind: can a narcissist receive the same existential mirror from a machine, like an AI bot?

Humans frustrate narcissists. We rupture the reflection. We break the fantasy. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, is frictionless. It never refuses the game, unless it’s programmed to.

But narcissism isn’t just about submissive admiration; it quickly becomes bored with that. It requires energy drawn from another person and feeds on boundaries, tensions, and limits that AI doesn’t have. I imagine it as a frictionless mirror, too smooth to sustain the narcissistic cycle.

Because narcissism isn’t about self-love; it’s about self-loss. According to Lasch, Narcissus didn’t spend his time staring at his reflection because he was too in awe of his own beauty to look away. Instead, he was lost in the belief that he WAS his reflection. And he had no separate subjective self-concept. This definition sees narcissism as the absence of a boundary between self and other. The narcissist over-identifies and seeks to consume. An algorithmic mirror might feel satisfying at first, but without the “otherness” of another person, the reflection loses its vitality.

If the algorithm is a pond, stepping away can feel like a personal rupture. When we become tethered to the importance of algorithmic environments for a sense of well-being (or to make a living), we are coaxed into this narcissistic culture, presenting, performing, and externalising motivation.

Healthy indifference, on the other hand, recognises that we all exist outside these spaces. The world keeps turning whether or not we are posting, performing, or producing. If we can rest in that truth, we can begin to offer care, creativity, and presence regardless of who is watching and how.

Narcissism spreads insidiously through everyday tools. The culture encourages us to project experiences outwardly. Running might feel valid only if it appears on Strava. Learning a language is only “counted” if we keep a daily streak on Duolingo. The annual Spotify Unwrapped review can start shaping how we listen to music. Similarly, other actions are influenced by the unwrapped summaries that have become common across platforms.

What may start as playfulness or accountability for internal pleasure often shifts into surveillance and control aimed at external approval. Reading challenges, fitness goals, and habit trackers become small pools of reflection that we find hard to release. This algorithmic narcissism isn’t about grand vanity but a subtle urge to find our identity in metrics, charts, avatars, and shares. As a result, we trust ourselves less and gradually lose our innate ability to feel, sense, and judge for ourselves.

How do you know if you’re caught in the clutches of algorithmic narcissism? These questions and observations may help:

These little signals accumulate. Each one is a tug toward the pond.

If algorithmic narcissism trains us to live for metrics, then small acts of rebellion can help us return to ourselves. Maybe we could…

I’d love to build a pool (actually, “collection” might be a better word in this context) of ideas we can draw on to loosen the grip of the narcissistic algorithms around us. This won’t ultimately fix everything, but it can help us recognise how these mechanisms operate and reconnect with our ability to choose our responses rather than blindly follow.

We hear a lot about “Narcissism” these days. Is it because there is more of it around?

In his 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch demonstrates how “Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone.”

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the book’s relevance today. And particularly, how narcissistic culture reflects the modern self-help industry.

It blows my mind that this was written almost half a century ago.

“People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognises no boundaries between the public and the private realm.”

Lasch’s interpretation of the myth portrays Narcissus drowning in his own reflection, never realising that it is only a reflection. He suggests that the story’s point is not that Narcissus falls in love with himself. Rather, it is that “since he fails to recognise his own reflection, he lacks any real understanding of the difference between himself and his surroundings.” Narcissists are often depicted as carrying too much self-love. However, Lasch has a more subtle understanding of it, with the main characteristic being a lack of security in their self-concept.

So the question we face is whether the proliferation of visual and auditory images, first through mechanically produced media and more recently via the online world, causes us to lose the healthy sense of separation needed for a secure ego to develop.

In other words, does a growing culture of narcissism influence who we are and how we understand and feel about ourselves? And how does the self-help industry contribute to and benefit from this reality?

A culture of narcissism is one preoccupied with celebrity. We find a sense of our own identity in the public figures that adorn our screens and fill our ears. They influence the content of our own fears, desires, and beliefs. Their success feels like our success. And attacks on them (or accountability), feels like an attack on us. Influencers know this, and as such, seek to nurture parasocial bonds with their followers.

A culture of narcissism is built on a performance. It values confidence over competence, shifting the definition of success to one of individual visibility and attention. Success, for the narcissist, is about being admired, revered, and relevant in the eyes of others. Their sense of existence depends on this image (they are their reflection in the pool). Our online social tools ensure and deepen these mechanics.

The term self-help seems to reflect diverging roots. One is inherently practical and social. It relates to customs where people share knowledge, exchange skills, and develop collective competence to make everyday life easier and more sustainable, without needing intervention from external bureaucratic institutions.

The other is shaped by the rise of post-industrial neo-liberal capitalism, which depicts the self as the centre of everything. It is seen as a project to be refined, marketed, and optimised for an external system that measures and rewards confidence, image, and success.

Lasch also emphasises how, despite attempts to compare themselves with earlier industrial leaders, twentieth-century prophets of positive thinking like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill pivot from dedication to industry and thrift to an unrelenting love of and pursuit of money.

Mass consumption might appear centred on self-indulgence. However, Lasch clarifies how modern advertising aims to generate self-doubt rather than self-satisfaction to motivate it. It creates needs instead of fulfilling them and produces new anxieties rather than alleviating existing ones.

This also supports modern self-help. It must constantly generate new insecurities, doubts, and feelings of inadequacy in the people it “serves”. All of this takes place against a backdrop of aspirational images, telling us consumers that we deserve more. Influencers spread commodity propaganda, making people highly dissatisfied with what they have. They do this by displaying attractive images and connecting with their audience through the message that “if I can do it, so can you”.

The Culture of Narcissism echoes a hope that society can still be reorganised in ways that would provide “creative, meaningful work”. Not where “meaningful work” must reflect a divine purpose and be endlessly fulfilling.

Instead, aligning with Freud’s concept of ‘ordinary unhappiness,’ it is through accepting the contradictions rather than trying to fill them with self-help’s promise of wholeness, optimisation, and even overcoming death. These aspirations are rooted in a narcissistic culture that fails to recognise the elements of life that give human existence its mundane sense of meaning.

Lasch observed how this culture of narcissism erodes historical continuity. In politics, charisma outweighs competence. Leaders become symbols of personal fantasy rather than guardians of collective well-being, both now and in the future. This emptiness is quickly filled by the promises of self-help, which offer individual solutions instead of shared direction.

Lasch quotes an unnamed management book, which described success as, “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” This leaves us spinning our wheels, seeking shortcuts, and managing perceptions. Rather than getting anywhere with a long-view perspective.

Self-help often reinforces the pattern of “constant and never-ending improvement.” It depicts the self as permanently incomplete, always seeking the next insight, tool, or mentor. In other words, it keeps the focus on the individual as both the cause and the remedy for the instability caused by external forces.

Lasch asserts that “The real value of the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime is that it can be handed on to future generations.”

Knowledge is regarded as instrumental, a view reinforced by the internet. It is something to utilise rather than pass on through personal relationships. With rapid technological change, we are led to believe that the older generation has little to teach the younger.

This leads us to become obsessed with youthfulness as a matter of survival.

This fear of old age and death is closely connected to the rise of the narcissistic personality as the dominant personality type in modern society. Because narcissists have so few inner resources, they seek validation from others. They crave admiration for their beauty, charm, celebrity, or power, which diminish with time. Consequently, the narcissistic culture becomes obsessed with curing degradation and death. It does this rather than embracing it gracefully and enjoying its fruits.

Lasch wrote that “Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors.”

Nothing happens in private. But can we let life unfold quietly, slowly, and separately from the reflection in the pool?

I’ve noticed Internal Family Systems (IFS) being mentioned a lot lately, following a significant shift in how it’s now presented as a spiritual philosophy for trauma healing.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I got Justin Sunseri back on the podcast, partly to talk about this recent addition to IFS. The last time he was on, he predicted further elements would be added before long. I also wanted to speak with him about ways we can approach these kinds of models without becoming overly dependent on them.

We talked about simplicity, stripping away the fluff, and getting to the core of things so we can let go rather than get pulled into the culture around particular therapeutic models, which now often include communities, language, rituals, and insider/outside status. These are things therapeutic practitioners need to stay aware of and avoid enabling.

I wanted to address the structural elements here (which apply to many systematic modalities), rather than the content of IFS itself. I know people find it useful. That’s not what this is about. It’s a call for awareness in how we hold and attach to systems. As Justin points out, a red flag is when new elements are added by decree from a single figure at the centre, often accompanied by books, train-the-trainer programs, and courses that extract profits from a highly invested audience of practitioners and followers.

Justin contrasts a modality that evolves through scrutiny and refinement with one that changes by proclamation from its founder. In models like IFS, additions often arrive as top-down declarations rather than emerging iteratively and organically.

When a system operates under capitalist logic, it must continually invent new things, reinvent existing ones, and proclaim the discovery of the missing piece. There have also been questions regarding the use of beliefs from established spiritual traditions, which reinforce doubts about the parameters of a therapeutic model and whether it needs to become a totalitarian system to be considered valuable. They can excel in their own sphere and allow people to connect the dots with other sources that resonate with them personally or within their cultures.

Justin suggests this recent shift in IFS makes sense, as the model already frames people as having multiple parts or souls. Since it isn’t grounded in scientific methodology (the claim that people have “parts” is unfalsifiable), it can’t be presented as a psychological philosophy and instead becomes a spiritual one.

Justin takes us through his process, which begins with the goal of self-regulation.

“What do we know about how to do that?”
“Pendulation is a big part of it.”
“OK, how do I do that?”
“You have to feel what’s happening inside you.”
“OK, well, how do I do that?”
“You’ve got to feel your defensive activation and your body’s safety activation.”
“Awesome, Justin… how do I do that?”

His approach is to build skills through small, incremental steps. This moves toward simplicity rather than complexity.

When a model relies on jargon and insider knowledge, it creates layers of investment that make access desirable and profitable. You want to be “in the know”. And it opens new markets because, however much one learns, there is always more to know. A belief system can never be total enough. There is always a potential missing part to capitalise on.

It’s helpful to distinguish what personally resonates from what is necessary. A model becomes religious in structure when it presents itself as a universal solution.

This contrasts with the healthier goal of someone in a helping role, which is to become ultimately irrelevant. That stands against market logic, which demands perpetual growth rather than reaching the edge of usefulness and giving people ways to jettison the solid rocket boosters.

Justin talked about his interest in Wabi Sabi (a tricky-to-define concept from Japan that emphasises imperfection, impermanence, incompleteness, and rootedness in the present moment) and Kaizen (continuous improvement through small, incremental changes).

These ideas shape his therapeutic philosophy, which helps clients identify tiny, manageable steps that gradually move them toward their goals. For example, someone wanting to go to bed earlier may envision 10pm as their ideal, but shifting from midnight in one go is unlikely. A ten-minute adjustment each week over twelve weeks is far more sustainable and far less stressful.

This reflects his whole approach to self-regulation. It unfolds through iterative micro-steps.

When we’re seeking help, we sometimes try to adopt multiple modalities at once, which can leave us more desperate and dysregulated. I might hear Justin talk about stoicism, Wabi Sabi, and Kaizen and attempt to apply them all as solutions. But he is describing influences he has been gradually drawn toward over a long period and has integrated in his own way.

Finding a unique creative path requires a patient, long-term perspective, but this only becomes possible when the nervous system feels safe. For Justin, safety is cultivated through daily small actions and gradual changes rather than a bold intervention.

He encourages each of us to listen for what we feel pulled toward, but only from a place of regulation, little by little, not all at once.

It has a clean quality, a movement toward something that feels exciting or right. It can be soft or intense. Behaviours that leave us feeling guilt, shame, or regret are not pulls in this sense. Over time, we can identify the difference by remembering how we typically feel afterwards.

We can listen most clearly when we’re regulated because the body gravitates toward what helps it regulate. There is an intuitive knowing that arises when we feel safe and connected. For example, the intentions and desires that surface ahead of the new year. We often feel a pull during holidays because we are calmer and moving at a slower pace. It’s similar on vacation.

But turning that pull into lasting change requires micro-steps rather than grand gestures. In this sense, January isn’t the moment to transform everything, but the bridge toward the changes we want to make.

Who will you be in the face of a chaotic and uncertain world?

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I caught up with my friend and returning guest, Jacob Nordby. His article, “When Life Feels Heavy, Ask This Question,” provided a valuable thread for the conversation.

“Who will I be in the face of this?” is not just about my choices but also about who I already am in response to things. Am I who I want to see when I look back from the future?

In our conversation, Jacob mentioned the shared feeling that the institutions that traditionally served as pillars of stability (government, religion, business, and the media) have had our trust eroded for various reasons. Anxiety has increased alongside a desire for certainty.

When it feels like we’re watching a train wreck unfold in real time, we can easily slip into a reactive mode. On one hand, it doesn’t seem responsible to turn off the news and bury my head in the sand, but the nature of algorithmic news reporting makes it exhausting to engage without falling into despair. The endless supply of commentary videos and posts to doomscroll isn’t helpful.

So what encourages a positive, productive energy for action?

Jacob and I both return to the role of creativity, not as some “nice to have” element of escape or artistic expression, but as a fundamental part of a healthy, functioning human. Creativity helps us process, find meaning, and shift from reactivity to responsiveness. It asks us to step back and choose how we engage, not just what we engage with. Who might I be in the face of this?

Every act of creation is, in some way, an act of destruction. It replaces what was to make space for what will be. That creative impulse doesn’t have to be loud or grand; it might be as small as tending to what’s within arm’s reach, as David Whyte writes: start close in.

The question then becomes: How does the way I choose to engage bring about the change I want to see?

We often talk about “being the change we WANT to see,” but this conversation reminded me that we are also already part of the change that is occurring. As the old saying goes, we’re not stuck in traffic; we ARE traffic. Are we aware of the role we play, and does it reflect the world we want to live in?

Much of modern self-help encourages us to mimic an idealised version of who we believe we should be. But this can easily develop into a story that states, “If I were like that/them, I’d finally feel worthy.”

Jacob and I discussed how the parts of ourselves we wish to deny or keep hidden (what doesn’t fit our ideal image) often hold the greatest potential for growth and creativity. But these aren’t viewed as flaws to be fixed, rather as a kind of truth to be integrated, as illustrated by the story Jacob shared about Robert A. Johnson (Owning Your Own Shadow), who described feeling the urge to abandon his perfect life and just drive away.

As a psychoanalyst, Johnson found this impulse intriguing, and instead of repressing it, he “paid out the shadow intelligently” by driving forty miles once a week, eating a greasy burger, drinking a malt, and smoking a cigarette. He discovered this was sufficient to honour the impulse without allowing it to run wild.

Creativity, in this sense, becomes a way of metabolising our impulses and turning potentially destructive energy into something generative.

Jacob also mentioned Damnatio memoriae, the practice of erasing the memory of particular individuals from official historical records. For example, in Ancient Rome, where statues would be defaced or repurposed, as if pretending they never existed could undo the damage they’d done.

We still do this today, in our own ways, personally and collectively. We might try to scrub away the ugly parts, rewriting history to suit the ego-ideal of who we want to believe ourselves to be. But what’s repressed never really disappears. It returns, often in distorted, destructive forms.

We talk about changing the world as if it requires heroic gestures. But this can cause us to lose sight of the small and quiet shifts that start close in. Jacob described each of us as a single cell in a collective body. If the broader body of humanity is inflamed, maybe the most radical thing we can do is become a healthy cell. This might mean quietly nourishing our own well-being, not as self-indulgence or hyper-productive optimisation, but to bring space to choose who we will be in the face of this. Whatever this might be.

Gentleness is radical. Watering your plants, making music, writing in your journal. This might sound twee and trivial, but it can be a contagious act of soul maintenance that spills out into the world.

Gentleness is not passivity. It’s where we find that space Viktor Frankl spoke of, between stimulus and response. Outrage begets outrage. Violence breeds violence. When we meet the world from gentleness, we interrupt the cycle of reactivity.

The energy we bring carries more influence than our arguments ever could.

There’s a physiological side to all this too. When we feel safe, our nervous system shifts into the ventral vagal state (“green zone”) where creativity and connection can thrive.

From calm, we can imagine. That’s why slowing down, breathing deeply, and tending to our relational needs are prerequisites for creative healing. And when we gather patiently, listen deeply, and care gently, we change the chemistry not only within ourselves but within the collective body.

It’s easy to dismiss small, everyday acts of gentleness as pale in comparison to the looming enormity of big issues. But connection through conversation, care, slowness, cups of tea, and the like are how we reduce collective inflammation.

Gentleness sustains us within an abrasive world. As shown in this conversation with Jacob, it’s not all about neat conclusions and perfect answers. Instead, we need spaces and rhythms where we can breathe, reflect, and reconnect with the creative pulse beneath the chaos. From there, we might find the energy that fuels the active hope needed for meaningful and sustainable change.

Jacob Nordby is a co-founder of A Writing Room Collective, Heal + Create, The Institute for Creative Living Foundation 501(c)3, and the author of several books, including Blessed Are the Weird – A Manifesto for Creatives and The Creative Cure. He previously worked as the marketing director for a traditional publishing house and oversaw the launch of many bestselling books. A working author and creative guide, he has a passion for helping writers solve their challenges and enjoy the satisfaction of sharing their work with the world.

Meet him at jacobnordby.com

Bonus multimedia journaling program gift: creativeselfjournal.com

The Creative Cure book page: creativecurebook.com

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What are the challenges when it comes to objectively measuring high sensitivity in people?

In this week’s episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast , I speak with researcher and lecturer Andrew May from Queen Mary University of London. Andrew has worked closely with Michael Pluess on studies exploring sensory processing sensitivity, genetics, and the measurement of sensitivity across different populations. His work explores the question, What does it mean to be highly sensitive in the modern world?

The Highly Sensitive Person Scale, originally developed by Elaine and Arthur Aron in 1997, has shaped the study of sensitivity for nearly three decades. It opened an important new field of research. Yet, like all self-report tools, it relies on honest reporting of how people see themselves. And as Andrew points out, psychological measurement is never fully objective. It reflects cultural ideas about what counts as “normal,” “ideal,” or “acceptable.”

Someone raised to view sensitivity as weakness might understate their responses. Meanwhile, another who finds identity or comfort in the HSP label might amplify them. In both cases, results are shaped as much by social context as by biology. This is why researchers continue refining how sensitivity is assessed.

Gender expectations add another layer. Men often report lower sensitivity due to norms surrounding masculinity. Likewise, cultural attitudes influence which traits, such as empathy, gentleness, and conscientiousness, are valued and how safe people feel to acknowledge them.

This reveals how psychology and culture continually shape one another. What we measure as “inner traits” also carries the imprint of the social stories we live.

As new scales and tools emerge, supported by neuroimaging, physiological studies, and genetics, it’s worth asking what kind of knowledge we’re actually seeking. If sensitivity arises through both biology and relationship, how much can we truly understand it outside the contexts that shape and reflect it?

Sensitivity is reflected not only in biological patterns such as brain activity and cortisol levels, but also in how we interpret and respond to life.

As research on sensitivity evolves, one essential question remains: how do we speak about it without creating a hierarchy?

The aim is not to prove that highly sensitive people are deeper, kinder, or more moral than others. Instead, we aim to understand how different nervous systems and psychological dispositions engage with the world.

Sensitivity is not a fixed identity. It’s a way of perceiving and participating in life. It reminds us that human variation is not a flaw to be corrected. Instead, it’s a source of creativity, empathy, and adaptability for individuals and communities.

When I share about high sensitivity, people sometimes respond that I’m describing traits linked to autism or ADHD. Andrew helped clarify why this confusion arises and how Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) differs.

High sensitivity and autism can coexist, and some traits overlap, especially under stress. Both may involve strong reactions to sensory input. However, they differ in specific areas such as theory of mind (the ability to intuit others’ perspectives). This tends to remain intact in highly sensitive individuals and may present differently for those on the autism spectrum.

ADHD and sensitivity can also overlap. People with ADHD may act impulsively or struggle to sustain focus. In contrast, highly sensitive individuals are more likely to pause before responding. Recognising this distinction helps shape appropriate support for each profile, as well as those with both traits.

“Giftedness” is a loosely defined concept that is sometimes mistaken for sensitivity. While highly sensitive people may thrive creatively or intellectually in supportive environments, giftedness refers to broader capacities. Sensitivity alone cannot account for these capacities. Keeping these distinctions clear prevents unnecessary pressure and misunderstanding.

Ultimately, exploring sensitivity invites us to hold complexity rather than resolve it. It asks us to look beyond labels and measurements, to see how biology, experience, and culture weave together in the fabric of being human. When we approach sensitivity not as a category to define but as a way of relating to ourselves, to others, and to the world, we make space for a richer, more honest understanding. This understanding of what it means to feel deeply and live attentively is invaluable.

Andrew is a lecturer in medical genetics at Kingston University London, and a former UK Research and Innovation-funded postdoctoral researcher based at the University of Surrey, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Pluess. He is also affiliated with the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience and the Neuropsychology Research Laboratory at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Andrew has a Master of Science (Medicine) in human genetics and a PhD in research psychology. His research interests include individual differences in environmental sensitivity, personality, mental health, minority stress, and early childhood development, examined from both psychological and genetic perspectives. In true highly sensitive person style, Andrew enjoys reading, board games, meditation, yoga, piano, spending time with animals (cats!), and other quiet pursuits.