Introduction | Perspective is Everything

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the Episode

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Perspective is Everything

I once worked for someone whose handwriting looked like a demented spider had stepped in ink and gone berserk across the page. It was so bad that one day, I spent a really long time trying to decipher what he'd scrawled on a printout—only to then realise he'd written his notes upside down. 

I was trying to think of an example of perspective for this first unit on the Drawwing Board, and that moment came back—not just because it was funny (although it was), but because it reminded me how quickly our perspective can become skewed. How often do we look at something the same way, over and over, like I did, trying to decipher words from upside-down scribble, and miss what's right in front of us, just because we expect to see something in a certain way? 

Mind Grooves

 I’m fascinated by perspective, the way we frame and structure thought. We cling to one way of thinking, prop it up with sayings like “better the devil you know,” which essentially cautions us not to try anything new, and then call it wisdom. These sayings are designed to keep us safe. The need for safety is still deeply programmed within us, we know 'fight, flight or freeze' auto-switches still cause us a whole lot of complexity in the  21st century.  

So, it’s no wonder that when life gets complex, we default to these same old grooves in our minds. We fall back on what we’ve seen, what we've been told, or what feels safe. And nowhere is this more obvious than in how we approach sovereignty. 

Sovereignty

So you might begin to think, what is sovereignty – we never speak about ourselves in these terms, it's not common parlance. But it should be. The world is divided into two groups, those who read instruction manuals and most of us who don't. 

And perhaps that’s why there's an idea that sovereignty is innate, we don't need to go through a set up process in order to function, sovereignty is just something we just grow into. 

The problem with something we organically cobble together over time is that for some, the structure is fairly solid. For others (like me), it’s been more like Swiss cheese: functional in places, full of holes in others. 

You might be totally in command at work, yet unravel in your intimate relationships. That inconsistency signals the absence of sovereignty architecture. Which is a framework that supports self-management across the board. 

As within, so without

I used to think about “building a foundation” —something solid beneath me upon which to build my life. But, I failed in multiple ways to consistently work across the Energetic Gap—which is that liminal space between where you currently are and where you want to be.  And it was this obsession I had at finding a solution to my consistent failure and going round in endless cycles that I stripped everything back and realised that I was lacking personal sovereignty.  

Instead of thinking from the ground up, I flipped the script. I stopped thinking in terms of my “foundation” to be built upon and began working from my inner core outwards. As within, so without.  

I'm not trying to sound cheesy here, but just like turning the page around to read something properly, I had a shift in perspective and began to see things more clearly from another angle. And it truly changed my life in deep and fundamental ways.  

Because suddenly, I wasn’t building on something external to me and comparing it to what everyone else had going for them—I was radiating outwards from something internal. Which can't be compared, because it's not visual, it can't be seen, or fully related in words to someone else. Your inner world can only be experienced by you.  

By accident, I began working on myself from the inside out, rather than seeking external solutions to my internal problems. Which I had been doing for a long time by default, despite therapy and a bunch of self-help stuff. And ironically, and embarrassingly, but I'm being honest with you, a bunch of qualifications so I could help other people help themselves.  My perspective was oriented the wrong way round.   

And if you think about it, a huge proportion of the world economy is based on us all seeking to purchase a variety of external fillers for the internal Swiss cheese gaps.  

This core orientation is the essence of sovereignty. It’s not about bracing ourselves against the world, but building from our inner sanctum—the real us—and allowing life to align around that. 

No Comparison

From this vantage point, everything rearranges. You get a new view of yourself, a new way to structure your life. And structure brings self-command. 

What you are really doing with sovereignty is what is completely authentic, in the truest sense of the word, which is unearthing who you really are, not curating or rebranding a falsehood.  

We throw around phrases like “speak your truth”, “know your worth”, or “just imagine like you've manifested it already”. But let’s be honest—without a sense of self-partnership, those phrases are just sparkly nonsense.  Take the vision board, without action, it's just wallpaper.  Worst case scenario, this word salad can become an excuse for avoidance or entitlement.  

Nuts and Bolts Strategy

 What changed everything for me was strategy. Not fluff or fake vibes. Real, grounded, how-to-live stuff. Sovereignty architecture gave me that. It taught me how to self-partner—to lead myself, beginning with self-respect. To know where I ended and the outside world began. And then regulating what enters and what leaves. 

And once you’ve got that down? You self-manage. You self-create. That’s when things really start to shift. 

Think of it like a wardrobe. A well-organised one. Everything in its place, colour-coded, designated spaces, fit for purpose. Once it’s built, you’d have to go out of your way to create chaos again. You’d literally have to dump everything on the floor and ignore the structure you know is already there. And if you did that, you’d know exactly what you were doing. But, once the structure is there, even if you have a clothing paddy, you can always return to your central design, which is inner order. You’ve got your shit together. 

theDrawwing Board

So, we begin The Drawwing Board with the basics of sovereignty. Not the fluff, not the glitter—just the raw materials of self-partnership, energetic command, and the architecture of your inner being. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be drawing it out, piece by piece. Then we’ll move into balance. And from there, into building consistent movement across what I call the Energetic Gap. I hope you’ll join me. 

Leave me your thoughts on Sovereignty – do you think about yourself in those terms?  Do you have an inner structure that you use to organise how you operate in the world?  Let me know in the comments.