What being Self-Led Actually Requires
Why It’s Rarely a Straight Line
I taught women that confidence comes from styling — the right cut to accentuate body shape, the right colour to match complexion, bringing elements of colour energy & psychology to create a style to suit individual personalities. For years, that was the work that I enjoyed teaching and sharing.
Then I went on an introspective journey that begun after being made redundant from a 9 - 5 full time role and being made aware that I was burnt out too. You could say it was the most divine timing of my life!
Covid became the catalyst that I would say pushed me to the brink of actually going ahead…….. and I did and the action I finally took was …….I stopped dying my hair!
I didn’t plan it. I didn’t announce it. I just noticed, one day, that it was absolutely pointless to keep on dying when I was stuck in lockdown. It would save me a lot of money and also damage to my scalp!
But to be honest, this was something I had secretly dreamed of doing years before, as I always found the contrast of black and white very appealing and bold, but never in a million years did I think I would let it happen in my early 40s rather than the cliche retirement age of 60??? But, you know what….deep down I was feeling that push to just do it, and covid lock downs was the initiation to do it!
So I let the greys grow out slowly and watched what happened — to my confidence, to the service I provided, to how people saw me and perceived me.
Guess what? Nothing broke. I didn’t break. The actual opposite occurred, Women complimented me on my hair and how they too wanted to stop dying, but didn’t have the confidence to do so, or they didn’t have enough grey hair to let it fully show through.
So conclusion, the confidence didn’t come from the dye, how I dressed or the full face of make-up. Didn’t come from continuously believing I had to appear in a specific way, to represent what I taught. It came from finally being honest about what I looked like without all the cover ups and the masks. Stripping away the unnecessary layers that was holding me back!
It begun to feel so natural and normal that I documented the growing out grey hair journey on Instagram (watch Grey Hair Highlights here on Instagram) with a personal sense of elation rather than embarrassment. Embarrassment would most certainly have been the emotion I should have felt… as my former self, but I didn’t. I actually felt ‘FREE’ - and Freedom is one of my biggest values (if you’re a Human Design connaisseur, then you’ll know about Gate 55 in my Core Essence - Life’s Work-personality sun). It’s all about Liberated Spirit from the struggles of victimisation.
That’s the part nobody tells you about being Self-led It’s not a belief you arrive at. It’s all an experiment, usually stemmed from doing the one thing that contradicts everything you’ve done, thought or built in the past.
I’ve learnt from all my lived experience, experimenting and never giving up, that being Self-led is not one decision. It’s a transition from one experience to another that eventually leads you to the Core Essence of your Wisdom!
The moment you finally trust yourself and stop looking outward for answers, is the turning point to let go of the old paradigm. Looking back at my own grey-hair moment, and at every woman I’ve watched become truly self-led since, I see six distinct movements. Most of us only ever talk about the first one.
1. Strip before you build.
Self-led doesn’t start with becoming someone new. It starts with removing what was never really you — the performed identity, the role built for approval rather than truth. For me, that was the styling itself or the need to be recognised as someone that I was beginning to move away from (aka, my most authentic self felt safe to come through). Trust me, nothing gets built until this happens first.
2. Trust what’s true, even without proof.
Once the performance is gone, what’s underneath isn’t a strategy. It’s a felt sense of your own truth. Not “I know my next move” — more like “I trust what’s real for me, even before I can explain it to anyone else.” That is when you know you no longer rely on outside authority - but rather are listening to your inner authority (also known as Inner Guidance)
3. Test it. Don’t theorise it.
This is the part most people being Self-led skips entirely. You don’t arrive at alignment by purely deciding. You arrive by trying something in public, watching what actually happens, then calibrating, adjusting and refining from there. I didn’t know letting my hair go grey would work out the way it did. I found out by doing it. If I hadn’t taken action, I would never have known otherwise.
4. Let yourself be recognised.
Self-led doesn’t mean self-contained. The test only becomes leadership once someone else sees it — and something shifts in them, too. If I’d kept all this hidden and never spoken about it, it would have stayed a personal choice. It became something else the moment other women saw it and recognised that they too can strip off the unnecessary baggage or perceptions holding them back.
5. Decide what deserves your focus.
Once you’ve been the pioneer of your actions and experienced first hand your own struggles, being self-led asks you ‘What are you no longer willing to defend? What old identities, old audiences, old validation patterns, you no longer have to hold on to, now that you know what’s true for You?
6. Refine it until it’s your Mastery.
Self-led isn’t a single moment of courage. It’s continuous work and practice until it becomes something you’ve mastered — People can see it’s real just by watching you keep showing up.
Why this matters for how we build together
Inside The Contribution Collective, it’s a space I’m building that recognise Self-Led Wise Women — and I’ve always meant it as more than a mindset shift. It’s this whole practice: stripping the performance, trusting your inner guidance, testing it, being witnessed, focusing, mastering. Not a belief you hold. A practice you go through.
These Self-Led Leaders may have naturally gone through the six transitions almost instinctively — and then, without being asked, naturally move into being in a role where they have created the conditions either through their own service, group, their product or community, for the next woman to move through them too. They see what the real essence of their wisdom is, in someone else’s story.
If that’s you — if you’ve always been the one who naturally guides others or the one who quietly stewards a group / community so everyone in it feels safe enough to be real and authentic — the Contribution Collective Movement may be for you. A Virtual space to help shape what this becomes.
The concept for the Contribution Collective Movement is that women in their mid - life, carry the natural qualities of Guides and Community Stewards — not as titles, but as roles the group or community itself recognises over time through how you actually show up.
If that’s resonating, I’d love for you to be part of shaping it.
👉 Learn more about the 👇🏻
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If you are that person who is already in that space where your Lived Experience (your Wisdom) is already being shared and served for your people, then I would love to hear your story and if you’re open to letting me spotlight your Contribution as a Substack Article and / or Audio, whilst tying this back to your Human Design - I would be so honoured to do that for you too!
This will be an opportunity for the people you’re here to serve and magnetise to truly see why you do what you do and how your unique Contribution serves society moving into the New Era!
Send me a DM below, I’d love to hear your story!