I didn't set out to write about the mind.

For more than 20 years, most people who knew me knew me through pest control. I wasn't studying psychology or training to become a meditation teacher. I can't point to one exact moment when the idea began.

I'm not sure there was one moment when this started.

Some of the earliest moments I remember were during periods when I felt deeply unhappy with myself and where I thought I was in life. There were times I would end up crying, overwhelmed by sadness and by the stories I was telling myself about who I was, what I had achieved and where I thought I should have been.

One moment from my pest-control work still stands out. A successful customer casually asked whether I had more vehicles on the road and employees working for me. I didn't. I answered normally, but my mind turned the question into something much bigger: What have I actually built? Have I achieved anything at all? The customer hadn't said those things. My mind did. And the emotional response was real.

Later, rather than trying to talk myself out of the feeling, distract myself or replace it with something positive, I let myself feel it. I noticed the sadness and the thoughts, but tried not to keep adding another judgement or another chapter of the story.

Sometimes the emotion shifted. This was my personal experience, not a claim that everyone will experience the same thing. I began to see a difference between feeling something and continuing to build the story around it.

“Don't feed it” doesn't mean “don't feel it.”

Over time I began noticing the same basic pattern in smaller moments too: a craving, an urge to check my phone, a reaction, a distraction or a moment of self-consciousness. I became interested in what happens when I notice what has appeared without automatically following it.

Eventually, I wrote it down.

That became Notice it… don't feed it — A simpler relationship with thoughts and feelings. When I published the book in May 2026, I didn't realise how much more I was about to discover by deliberately living it.

The book wasn't the end. It made me notice more.

I began noticing cravings, phone habits, judgement, defensiveness, self-consciousness, listening, distraction and attention in real time.

Then I started noticing attention.

The thought wasn't necessarily negative. Sometimes it was simply taking my attention somewhere I hadn't chosen to go. Some of my most useful observations happened underneath houses, driving between pest-control jobs, talking to customers and writing reports.

Still caught in it sometimes. Just noticing it sooner.

This isn't a practice of perfection. It's a practice of familiarity. I'm sharing what I discover as the journey continues.

Life in Practice — Observations

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