The Rabbit Hole with Jacqui and Megan

What if you can read the label from inside the jar?

This week on The Rabbit Hole, we're unpacking the self-development quote, “You can't see the label from inside the jar,” and exploring what it gets right, what it leaves out, and how it can sometimes be used in ways that make us question ourselves a little too much.

And, naturally, one rabbit hole leads to another: what does it actually mean to trust yourself? If self-trust doesn't mean you'll always make the “right” decision, how do you build it... especially when you make a mistake?

In this episode, we explore:

• What “you can't see the label from inside the jar” actually means
• The difference between an outside perspective and someone else deciding what's true for you
• How a useful piece of advice can become unhelpful depending on who's using it and why
• Why trust, safety, and consent matter when receiving feedback
• The fine line between seeking perspective and overthinking everything
• How self-trust can grow through small, everyday decisions
• Why making a mistake doesn't necessarily mean you were wrong to trust yourself

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

The person who set your January goal didn’t know what was coming this year. She didn’t know what would change personally, relationally, or globally. She didn’t know which plot twists were ahead.

So if you’re sitting here in October feeling behind — a helpful question to ask is: behind what, exactly?

In this episode, we dig into the very specific flavour of anxiety that Q4 tends to serve up: the false urgency, the manufactured timelines, the feeling of being behind on something you set in January when you had no idea what the year was actually going to bring. 

We talk about what it looks like to hold goals loosely enough that plot twists don’t derail you, when urgency might be a nervous system signal vs a real deadline, and what we do IRL instead of vision boards and quarterly goal reviews. 

Mentioned in This Episode

→ Motivasian IG account
→ The Power of Beliefs by Shawn Achor 

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

Part two of quotes we actually like, and we go a little rogue…

There's poetry about exhaustion that somehow perfectly captures holding up entire skies with hands meant for flowers. There's a money quote that's more about identity. There's a question about tigers and your survival response, and whether tigers are even the right animal anymore. There's a surprise salty cameo quote, and Jacqui begs Megan to name names. And it ends, as all great things do, with "not today, Satan."

All of the quotes from both episodes (this one and the previous ep) share something: they slow you down, bring you into the present, and give you a way to work with what's happening rather than bypassing it, white-knuckling through it, or shaming yourself about it. 

Mentioned in This Episode

→ Sophia Bray
→ John O'Donohue
→ Rupi Kaur
→ The Power of Beliefs by Shawn Achor 

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

After 50ish episodes of giving quotes the side-eye, Jacqui and Megan finally sit down with a collection of quotes they actually like.

Neither one knows what the other has brought, but here’s an at-a-glance rundown (spoiler alert!):

Rupi Kaur — I'll never be this version of myself again. Let me slow down and be with her.

Megan's metaphor — A plane can't land if the runway is full.

Unknown — You were so easy to love.

Megan's quote (with a disclaimer) — When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left. And I could say, I used everything you gave me.

Frank Lloyd Wright — I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Unknown — Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

Hit that play button for our full response and analysis of each quote.

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

What if “do something your future self will thank you for” is good advice… but not quite the whole story?

In this episode of The Rabbit Hole, we’re taking a closer look at the idea of your “future self” and the pressure that can come with trying to envision, become, or make decisions for some future version of you.

We talk about:

• Why connecting with your future self can be genuinely helpful for clarity, decision-making, and everyday choices
• The pressure that can come from the expectation that you should be able to clearly visualize your future self
• What if you can’t visualize yourself in the future — and why that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong
• The difference between using your future self for big, macro life goals and using her as a guide for tiny, everyday decisions
• Megan’s Human Design perspective on why some people may naturally connect more easily with the past, present, or future
• Jackie’s experience using tapping as a way to connect with herself and access a more grounded perspective
• Why “what if?” thinking can send us into anxiety and paralysis
• A simple shift from “what if?” to “even if…”
• How your future self might be less about predicting the future and more about making choices today that create possibilities for tomorrow
• Why sometimes the most useful future-self practice is actually about coming back to the present

Maybe your future self doesn’t need you to have everything figured out.

Maybe she just needs you to make the next choice from where you are right now.

Dive deeper into a rabbit hole with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

It's September, goal quote season is upon us, and we have thoughts.

In this episode, Megan peppers Jacqui with some of the most popular goal-setting quotes floating around the internet — many of them, it turns out, on pink backgrounds — and gets her immediate, unfiltered reactions. The verdict: a lot of ew, one hard disagree, and approximately zero quotes that survived fully intact.

They get into hustle culture, girl boss energy, why fear doesn't need to be focused on OR ignored, why "never change the goal" is a rigid take, and why the self-optimization treadmill of always becoming a different version of yourself might be the most exhausting thing personal development has ever asked of us.

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

In this episode, Jacqui and Megan take apart one of the most well-worn quotes in the personal development world and find that, as usual, the nuance is where all the good stuff lives. It's not destination OR journey. It's both — and there's a version of this quote that lands a lot better than the original.

Jacqui shares the quote she actually prefers: the journey has to feel how we think the destination is going to feel. And from there, the conversation opens up into arrival fallacy, hedonic adaptation, why we self-sabotage when things get really good, and how she finally got horses back into her life after telling herself it was impossible for nearly a decade.

Plus: Love is Blind UK Season 3 mini rabbit hole continues — Jack, Faye, Find My Friends glitches, and why Jacqui and Megan have more compassion for Jack than keyboard warriors seem ready to give.

In This Episode:

→ Why "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey" feels a little harsh — and a better version of the same idea

→ Arrival fallacy: why getting what you wanted rarely feels the way you thought it would

→ Hedonic adaptation — we adapt to the hard stuff AND the good stuff, and most people miss the second part

→ Why it can be genuinely hard to relax into good things (and what that has to do with your nervous system)

→ How much joy, fun, and fulfillment can your nervous system actually hold?

→ The connection between self-sabotage and things going really well

→ Why celebrating milestones actually matters — and why skipping straight to the next goal costs you

→ How rigidity about the how turns normal life detours into roadblocks

→ The goalpost problem — and why your destination will probably change while you're on the way there

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

In this episode, Jacqui and Megan reframe self-sabotage entirely, not as something you're doing TO yourself, but as something a part of you is doing FOR you. The lens shift is self protection, and it changes everything about how you engage with the pattern.

They get into the hidden rewards underneath self-sabotage, why your nervous system sometimes prefers the certainty of staying stuck over the risk of going after what you want, and why being hard on yourself about it is the exact thing that makes it worse.

Plus: Love is Blind UK Season 3 has a personal development coach in the pods, Jacqui and Megan have thoughts, and they are not holding back.

In This Episode:

→ Why "self-sabotage" is a loaded word — and a more useful way to look at it

→ Self-protection vs. self-sabotage: the reframe that actually gives you an off-ramp

→ The concept of "parts protection" — and why one part of you might be running interference on what another part wants

→ Hidden rewards (Britt Frank's term) — how part of you is always getting something out of staying stuck

→ Why certainty feels safer to your nervous system than uncertainty, even when you desperately want the thing on the other side

→ How control plays into self-sabotage, especially in relationships

→ The stuck feeling as a key signal — and how to start working with it instead of against it

→ Whether it's ever okay for someone else to call out your self-sabotage (short answer: almost never, unless very specifically invited)

→ Procrastination, perfectionism, and overthinking as the most common self-sabotage patterns

→ What to actually do about it: EFT tapping, human design entry points, and the underrated power of just saying it out loud to another human

Mentioned in This Episode

→ The Science of Stuck by Britt Frank

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

You've seen it in a cursive font on a journal cover. You've heard it from a stage. Someone in an MLM probably said it to you once while you were on a hamster wheel of monthly quotas.

“The only way to fail is to quit.”

In this episode, we dissect one of the most popular motivational quotes out there — and find that it's doing a few things worth examining. It pathologizes failure. It pathologizes quitting. It uses the word "only" as though life is really black and white. And it tends to come from people who benefit by you not, in fact, quitting.

Mentioned in This Episode

→ Susan David — emotional agility research; "know when to quit and when to grit"

→ Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff 

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching

This week's quote arrived via Pinterest and immediately earned a one-carrot rating from both Jacqui and Megan.

Consistency beats motivation. Show up even on low energy days.

We take this one apart piece by piece — the part about motivation (actually, there's a nugget of truth there), the part about consistency (deeply overrated and kind of exhausting), and the "show up even on low energy days" instruction (show up to what, exactly, and at what detriment?).

We also get into how so many of these quotes that don't quite fit women's lives were written by men, why the 5am club nearly broke Jacqui when she had very small children, and why "consistency is king" in online marketing spaces creates unnecessary stress for people who are — in Jacqui's words — consistently inconsistent.

Plus: a Canadian food education for Megan (butter tarts, Nanaimo bars, poutine, mmmmmm!) 

In This Episode

→ Why motivation usually comes after you start — not before
→ The problem with treating consistency and motivation as competitors
→ What "show up on low energy days" actually costs — and who pays the most
→ Why Jacqui calls herself "consistently inconsistent" (and means it as an affirmation)
→ The perimenopause + over-exercising story that perfectly illustrates what happens when you push through at the wrong time
→ Why so many high-performance productivity quotes are written by men — and why that matters
→ Why "consistency is king" in social media marketing is making people feel like they're failing
→ What to ask yourself before taking productivity advice: who wrote this, what do they have to gain, and what privileges aren't being mentioned?

Mentioned in This Episode

The new Instagram account Jacqui is following

Dive in even deeper with us!

Try a free 10 minute EFT tapping session with Jacqui: https://jacquiacree.com/experience 

Pull your Human Design Chart with Megan: https://meganjohnstoncoaching.com/get-hd-chart

We’d love to hear from you!

Jacqui’s instagram: @jacqui.acree

Megan’s instagram: @meganjohnstoncoaching