I’d never seen one. White, black, sometimes red, but silver? Never. Until someone mentioned it in passing, and I thought: huh, do those actually exist?
The next morning, there was one right in front of me at the traffic lights. That afternoon, another in the car park. The day after, four. Now I see them everywhere, as if half the country bought one this week.
Those cars were always there, of course. I just didn’t see them. My brain had decided they didn’t matter and filtered them out, until the moment I found them interesting. Only then did it let them in.
And that exact invisible filter, the one deciding what you do and don’t see, controls far more than which cars catch your eye. It colours how you experience your day, what you believe is possible, and who you think you are.
You live your paradigm as if it were the truth
Bob Proctor calls that filter your paradigm: the whole set of beliefs and rules laid down in you early on. Through your environment, your upbringing, the assumptions you picked up before you were old enough to weigh them. As a child, your brain was a sponge; you soaked up the rules of how life works without question, as truth.
The nasty part is that you don’t notice your paradigm. You experience it as reality itself. “That’s just how I am.” “That’s how it works for people like me.” Just like those silver Teslas: you don’t see what you don’t believe is there.
There are two layers within that. Your picture of how the world works, and your picture of who you are within it. This blog is about the second one. About your self-image. Because that’s where you gain the most.
Why understanding isn’t enough
You’ve probably experienced it: a book that moves you, a conversation that opens something up, a real lightbulb moment. And a week later, you’re doing exactly the same thing again.
That’s not down to you. Your self-image and your habits live in an older, more sensitive part of your brain, and your willpower can barely reach it. That’s why positive thinking on its own changes so little. You shift that deeper part with images, repetition and emotion. That’s the language it understands. Something you feel often enough slowly becomes your new normal.
Sometimes the old self has to break first
A new version of yourself rarely appears neatly. Often the old one breaks first. Something falls away, a relationship, a role, a certainty, and you’re left standing there with the question “who am I now, really?”
That empty feeling feels like loss. And yet it’s space: the place where something new can grow, precisely because the old no longer fills everything up. I’ve stopped patching over that emptiness straight away. Because so much of who we think we are was once simply a survival strategy. The rescuer. The people-pleaser. The one who’s “too much”. Cleverly worked out, back then, to keep you safe. But a strategy is a different thing from an identity. You are more than your role, and more than what has happened to you.
And this is where scent comes in
This is the bit I love most myself. How do you change something in that older, harder-to-reach part of your brain? Through the fastest way in you have: your nose.
Scent is the only sense with a direct line to that older brain. What you see and hear passes through a relay station first, before you become aware of it. Scent skips that and goes straight to the areas where emotion, memory and habits meet. Exactly the area you’re trying to reprogramme.
And here I like to get quite precise. An oil works here like a keyring. You link a scent to an inner state by using it at the moment you evoke and feel that state. Later, when you need that calm or that courage but can’t quite feel it, just before that difficult conversation, that presentation, that step, the scent hands you back the way in to the state you attached to it yourself.
So you’re the source. The scent is the keyring of your new identity, and that identity is the key that opens the doors to new paths and possibilities.
The ritual: become it, before you feel it
Here’s how you build that key. Three steps, a few minutes a day.
Visualise. Close your eyes and, just for a moment, be the version of yourself you’re becoming. How do they walk, how do they talk, how do they breathe? Be them now, as if it’s already true.
Write. Get pen and paper and write in the present tense: “I am someone who…” Pay attention, too, to your everyday language throughout the day. “Maybe I could possibly” is a different person from “I want to”. Reclaiming your direct voice means embodying a different self.
Anchor. Choose one scent that works for you, the oil or blend that you genuinely feel something with. That’s different for everyone, and that’s exactly what makes it yours. Apply it to your wrist and your heart area and breathe it in deeply while you sit in that state. Every day, at the same moment. That’s how that scent becomes your personal keyring, one that only opens that door for you.
And if you’re looking for something small to start with, try this: ask yourself one question every evening. What was the best part of today? It seems like nothing, but you’re training your brain to look for what’s good, and that slowly shifts your whole outlook. And with it, who you are.
My own keyring
For me, that’s the Adaptiv Touch roll-on. Every day I link that scent to the version of myself I’m becoming. And that version is very concrete:
- I guard my calm and consciously plan time for myself, with attention to my de-stress moments.
- In my work, I follow what’s truly mine. I choose the people I work with, and from that choice, the right people naturally come my way.
- I move every day with pleasure and joy, and I eat what nourishes me.
- And with everything, I ask myself one thing: does this give me energy, or does it cost me energy?
My morning starts with a ritual that does for my body what the scent does for my head. A green drink that tells my cells: there is abundance for me, not scarcity.
My morning shake
- 1 serving of VMG+ (the green superfood drink)
- 1 sachet of EO Mega+ stirred in
- a scoop of whey protein
- top up with water or plant-based milk and mix well
Every morning I repeat the same message this way, with scent, nourishment and attention: this is who I am now.
Back to the Tesla
Remember those silver cars? The moment you decide who you’re becoming, exactly the same thing happens. You start to see the evidence that was there all along: the opportunities, the people, the small moments that fit your new self. Your filter changes, and with it what you let in. And an idea only becomes an identity once you let that evidence count, until it settles from “something I’m trying” into “just who I am”.
It happens in waves, at its own pace. Sometimes something shifts because you feel seen, sometimes because you wait until it becomes clear. That patience is part of who you’re becoming.
This is your turning point
Your paradigm has brought you this far. And it doesn’t have to steer the rest of your life. Your old self is allowed to break, your role is allowed to let you go, and you can start embodying your new self daily, in small repeated steps. With a scent as an anchor, a pen, and one honest question each evening.
That full stop in GOOD. is exactly this moment. Stop hoping you’ll change. Start being who you want to be. Today.
Love, Tanja