From Quantum Mechanics to Coaching
Apparently today marks the anniversary of quantum mechanics, or at least the birth of the uncertainty principle, first described by Werner Heisenberg. I was never great with dates and so this would have passed me by if it wasn’t for notification on my phone.
But learning about this feels timely as it’s led me to think about why I fell in love with physics in the first place. And why, oddly enough, that same love now shows up in my coaching work.
Not because people are particles.
But because patterns matter.
And because uncertainty isn’t a bug. It’s built in.
I didn’t fall in love with physics for the facts
I fell in love with physics at school. My teacher made it playful. It felt like mental adventure rather than mental effort. Add a steady diet of science fiction and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I was fully in.
What hooked me wasn’t facts, it was wonder.
The super big.
The super small.
The hidden rules behind visible behaviour.
I remember the quiet satisfaction of understanding why cables heat up, why planes fly, why microwaves behave oddly with dry food, how light can push matter. Small revelations, but they felt like access to the hidden truth of things.
Physics gave me calm because it revealed patterns. Beneath the mess was structure. Beneath complexity were principles.
Pattern recognition felt like peace.
Science is not a weapon — it’s a practice
One thing that continues to bother me is when science gets hijacked to serve someone’s agenda.
Quoted without context.
Used without understanding.
Wielded like a badge of certainty rather than a method of inquiry.
Science, at its best, is not an industry and not an ideology. It’s a practice. A discipline of humility. A willingness to test your assumptions against reality.
I think that’s why I was drawn to it. I wasn’t just looking for knowledge. I was looking for a calling.
These days I still am.
I’ve just changed scale: from atoms to humans.
Coaching is pattern recognition at the human level
What I notice again and again in people is this: behaviour has patterns too.
Hidden drivers. Recurring loops. Predictable reactions under certain conditions.
Most “I’m stuck” moments aren’t about lack of intelligence or lack of options. They’re about fear: usually fear of getting it wrong, wasting time, or losing belonging.
When someone says they’re overthinking, they’re often scanning for safety. It’s not weakness, it’s a need for regulation. The nervous system is asking for reassurance before it allows you to move.
I believe the real lever isn’t pressure. It’s connection.
When someone feels seen and understood, fear drops. Curiosity returns. Motion becomes possible.
That’s why coaching feels scientific to me. Not mechanical, but observational. We look for signals:
energy vs drain
openness vs contraction
curiosity vs rigidity
flow vs force
Knowledge is rarely the limiting factor. Permission and safety usually are.
Smart people have a predictable failure mode
The trap smart people fall into is the search for certainty before action.
They want the right model.
The right plan.
The right identity.
The right guarantees.
But clarity tends to come after movement, not before it.
In physics, when you don’t understand a system, you run experiments.
Small probes.
Fast feedback.
Model update.
Not ten-year plans built on untested assumptions.
Evidence beats theory when the system is complex and changing, which human lives tend to be.
Why play beats planning (early on)
Play works better than planning when you’re still discovering what matters.
Small experiments beat big decisions because they lower the emotional risk. Lower risk calms the nervous system. A calm nervous system sees more clearly.
Each tiny test produces signals:
Do I feel more alive or more drained?
More curious or more contracted?
More like myself or more like I’m performing?
That’s usable data.
If this were a lab, I’d tell you to look for sparks:
sparks of interest in you
sparks of energy in conversation
sparks of belonging in community
A few low-risk experiments you can run this week
If you’re feeling stuck:
Write out what motivates you and what holds you back (unfiltered)
Talk to one new person about an idea you’re curious about
Journal daily for 10 minutes on what gives you energy
Spend 30 minutes a day finding people and places aligned with your values
Share a rough idea publicly instead of privately perfecting it
You don’t need a better plan first.
You need better signals.
And you probably need other people.
You are much less alone than your overthinking suggests.
From uncertainty to play
The uncertainty principle, loosely put, tells us there are limits to how precisely we can know certain pairs of properties at the same time. Precision in one dimension introduces fuzziness in another.
Life decisions feel like that too.
You can wait for perfect certainty and never move.
Or you can move and let clarity sharpen through interaction.
That’s exactly the spirit behind a workshop we’re running today:
Stop Overthinking. Start Playing.
It’s for people with ideas and questions and energy but too much head noise. People who want to explore a new direction, start something meaningful, or test a calling without betting their entire life on step one.
We don’t force big leaps.
We design tiny experiments.
We build connection.
We generate creative momentum.
Turns out the opposite of overthinking isn’t recklessness.
It’s play… in good company.
Sign up to the workshop here - https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/aWKXPG_QT0CZU9fck-jhKw