Nollind Whachell

I was reflecting upon my old website this morning (which is currently archived, although I may import its content again in the future) and I realized something. So much of the best stuff I’ve researched over the years is not within it. It’s still stuck in my head.

Why?

Primarily I wasn’t in the mindset of sharing knowledge as I was acquiring it but rather I just shared when I had larger insights. Put another way, when blogging, there’s always seems to be this focus on long form writing rather than short form writing (which is more popular on social networks).

Secondly, and more importantly though, a lot of the larger insights I was having at the time, I couldn’t fully make sense of and thus figure out where they “fit into things” in terms of how to categorize them.

This second point, I think, is extremely important because it touches upon something that I’m realizing more and more, as I journey from a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind. And it relates to something Steve Jobs said.

So you often won’t make sense of things and understand them in the moment of first experiencing them but instead you‘ll make sense of them and understand them in reflecting back upon them over time.

Yet this realization pretty much goes against most personal knowledge management approaches (at least what I’ve read) and even website practices. You create categories and tags upon your website and when you add new posts, you categorize and tag them. This, however, assumes you know where the content fits into the larger context of your website.

But what if you don’t know how something fits into the bigger picture because you don’t fully understand it yet, since you haven’t made sense of it yet?

For example, before my Life as an MMORPG framework emerged, it was just bits and pieces at first. Then patterns emerged and then I saw relationships between the patterns, thus revealing the bigger picture overall.

But here’s the thing. If the sense-making and understanding occurs afterwards upon reflection, where do you keep these thoughts and experiences in the interim, until the sense-making occurs later?

In other words, these are liminal thoughts, with no solid ground or space to be contained within yet.

Yet what’s saddest of all though is that if I had written way more short form posts, highlighting these key moments of insight and connection on my journey, these would have effectively been the building blocks of my framework with which I could have connected together via links to provide a bigger picture of how my work emerged naturally over time on my website.

And in the process, it would show how things often don’t make sense going forwards, as you stumble around trying to make sense of things in the moment, almost like you feel lost in a maze, but rather by reflecting backwards.

That above anything else is what transitioning to a Self-Transforming Mind is trying to teach me about the struggles of articulating my work.

It’s telling me to let go and trust that even though things often won’t make sense in the moment, they will make sense later upon reflection, as the insights emerge over time.

Or put another way. Everything has a place and a space, even though you may not be able to see that place and space yet.

And this doesn’t just apply to what you’re working on but with regards to your very self as well. In other words, while you might feel lost now, a larger purpose can emerge over time.

BTW two examples that I think relate to this are as follows. The first relating to individual thoughts within you forming ideas and the second being individual people within society forming newer systems.

Nick Milo’s Linking Your Thinking website which relates to idea emergence occurring from small atomic notes that connect and link up, creating larger ideas.

Berkana’s Two Loops Model, created by Deborah Frieze and Margaret Wheatley, which shows how when a dominant system is dying out, a newer emerging system usually is born from individual outcasts from the older system becoming pioneers that connect up and create the new system over time.

I had another amazing conversation with ChatGPT that dives deeper into my transition from a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind (as per Robert Kegan’s work). And it was sparked by a realization that intuitively came to me but I couldn’t fully grasp it, so I asked ChatGPT about it.

Below is a summary of the questions I asked relating to this realization and a summary of the answers that ChatGPT provided in turn. To understand their context though, you’ll need to read through the entire conversation.

Letting Go of What You’re Trying to Control

“The very thing you’re trying to take control of, your life, is the very thing you need to let go of. ” Explain how that sentence relates to transitioning to a Self-Transforming Mind from a Self-Authoring Mind?

Nollind

To transition, one must confront their fears of uncertainty and surrender their need for control over outcomes. This doesn’t mean passivity; rather, it involves a deeper trust in life’s unfolding and a willingness to transform as new insights emerge. By doing so, individuals move from shaping their lives according to their existing frameworks to reshaping themselves in response to the evolving world.

ChatGPT

This realization arose because I stated before that I believed my Life as a MMORPG framework could help a person to “take control of their life.”

Yet upon reflecting upon that statement recently, I start intuitively feeling like this was the very thing preventing me from making the transition to a Self-Transforming Mind. Almost as though it was part of my old Self-Authoring Mind that was limiting my growth and holding me back.

The response that ChatGPT provided was poignant because I had been realizing that I needed to trust my deeper Self (as a player) and where I was guiding myself (as my character). This answer helped me to realize that I needed to go beyond that and even trust the universe and life as a whole.

Co-Creating Life by Letting Go of It

And how does “letting go of one’s life” allow one to shift to a Self-Transforming Mind?

Nollind

The Self-Authoring Mind constructs and operates within frameworks to make sense of life. Letting go of one’s life means recognizing that these frameworks, while useful, are limited and not absolute. It allows one to critically reflect on these systems and explore what lies beyond them.

Letting go of one’s life often entails releasing the illusion of being in complete control as an individual.

Letting go of one’s life enables the shift to a Self-Transforming Mind by dismantling the rigid structures of control and identity that define the Self-Authoring Mind. It allows individuals to embrace uncertainty, complexity, and interdependence, transforming their worldview from one of constructing control to one of flowing with life’s inherent unpredictability. In doing so, one steps into a broader, more flexible, and deeply interconnected way of being, where life is not controlled but co-created.

ChatGPT

It’s important to note that the word “co-created” doesn’t just mean with other people, valuing their different perspectives to gain a greater perspective of reality, but it means co-creating with life itself and understanding what it is trying to teach you. This will become more evident in the follow-up questions below.

What It Feels Like to Let Go

What does this “feel” like? Can you put this feeling into words?

Nollind

There’s a rawness, like being stripped of armor.

It feels like standing in a dense fog, unable to see far ahead, but beginning to trust that the path will reveal itself step by step.

This humility isn’t disempowering—it’s awe-inspiring. It feels like looking up at a star-filled sky, realizing how much you don’t know, and finding beauty in that mystery.

Over time, this surrender brings a quiet strength, a sense of being carried by something larger than oneself. It feels like floating in a river, no longer fighting the current but trusting it will take you where you need to go.

Life begins to feel less like a rigid project to control and more like an unfolding adventure to explore.

It feels like being a child again, not needing to have everything figured out, just excited to see what happens next.

Letting go of one’s life and stepping into a Self-Transforming Mind feels like standing in the tension between fear and wonder, uncertainty and trust. It’s disorienting yet freeing, humbling yet empowering. Over time, the fear of falling fades, and you begin to feel as though you’re learning to fly—not through control, but through trust in the currents of life.

ChatGPT

So many of these responses resonate perfectly with how I’ve described this before.

For example, I’ve said that transitioning to a Self-Transforming Mind is like exploring The Great Wilderness at the edge of yourself within yourself. To be able to navigate this inner terrain, one has to completely drop all of their defensive armour so as to be able to be light and agile enough to traverse the dense complexity of it.

I’ve also said in the past that as one navigates through life, one has to learn how to build bridges to crossing rivers that divide the different inner terrain one is traversing across. However as one gets to the latter stages of development, one realizes that these rivers are effectively one’s creative essence that leads to an Ocean of You much larger than your individual self. So the idea isn’t to avoid and cross them but to swim in them and float with their currents.

Stepping Into a Larger, Never-Ending Story, Previously Unseen

I’ve described these transitions before as though you were looking through a portal you wanted to step through and when you did, everything beyond it seems strange and paradoxical, perhaps even threatening. Yet when you stepped through it and looked back, everything makes sense when looking through it. Can you encapsulate what looking through the Self-Transforming Mind portal looks like from both of its sides?

Nollind

Looking Forward

Threatening: The life you’ve built—your carefully crafted identity—feels at risk of unraveling.

Disorienting: Familiar tools (logic, frameworks, narratives) seem insufficient to navigate what’s ahead.

Reflecting Back

Connection: You perceive a greater sense of interdependence, realizing your old frameworks weren’t wrong but incomplete.

The fear wasn’t of the unknown—it was of letting go of the known.

What felt like contradictions were actually different perspectives on the same truth.

The life and identity you once clung to appear smaller, like a single chapter of a larger story.

Looking back, the portal reveals its wisdom: what once seemed like chaos was a deeper order you couldn’t yet perceive.

ChatGPT

Engaging With Complexity

Can you elaborate on the following sentence you said? “You no longer feel the need to control or resolve everything; you can engage with complexity on its own terms.”

Nollind

The Self-Authoring Mind thrives on clarity, structure, and coherence. It builds an identity and worldview by defining values, setting goals, and solving problems to maintain a sense of control over life. Complexity—situations with no clear answers or conflicting truths—feels like a threat because it undermines the ability to maintain control or act decisively.

You feel compelled to simplify complex situations by categorizing, resolving contradictions, or forcing decisions. You may experience frustration, anxiety, or resistance when life defies this kind of simplification.

Instead of viewing this complexity as a problem to be solved, you see it as an integral part of reality. You let go of the need to always “resolve” complexity, allowing it to simply be. This opens the door to deeper understanding, flexibility, and creativity.

ChatGPT

Letting Things Unfold on Their Own

It’s like you’re saying that things will resolve themselves and in their own time. So it’s almost like I don’t need to force a resolution of anything or even solve anything as a problem. I just need to let things happen on their own.

Nollind

Life, like a tangled knot, often unravels more easily when approached with gentleness and time, rather than urgency and pressure.

nstead of treating everything as a problem to be fixed, you start to see situations as part of a larger unfolding process. You learn to observe rather than intervene, trusting that not all tensions need immediate solutions.

Letting go doesn’t mean ignoring problems; it means accepting that some answers will take time to reveal themselves. This acceptance transforms the discomfort of uncertainty into a calm openness.

Trusting life doesn’t mean abdicating responsibility. It means recognizing that life has its own rhythm and wisdom, and by aligning with it, you allow things to unfold as they’re meant to.

Letting things happen on their own doesn’t mean you stop caring or participating—it means you stop grasping. You no longer feel the pressure to control outcomes, because you trust that the deeper wisdom of life will lead to resolution, understanding, or transformation in its own time. This trust allows you to engage with life not as a problem to solve but as an experience to live fully.

ChatGPT

Letting Go Is Actually Active Engagement & Perception

This reminds me of two things. One is a quote from a tv show that said, “You’re task is not to control, but to see.” And the other is hexagram 64 from the I Ching.

Nollind

They remind us that letting go of control isn’t passive—it’s an active engagement with life’s deeper rhythms, allowing clarity and resolution to emerge naturally in their own time.

Seeing Not Controlling

Control narrows your focus to specific outcomes, while “seeing” expands your perspective to embrace the complexity and nuance of the situation.

Pause before acting. Observe what’s happening around you without immediately trying to fix or control it. Ask yourself: “What is this situation revealing to me?” Notice how letting go of control allows you to perceive layers and connections you might otherwise miss.

Hexagram 64: Before Completion

It’s a reminder that the journey is as important as the destination. Trying to shortcut or control the process often leads to mistakes or delays.

When faced with uncertainty or tension, remind yourself that incompleteness is part of the process. Avoid forcing premature resolution. Trust that the next step will become clear when the time is right, and focus on being fully present with where you are now.

ChatGPT

Become Aware of and Mindful of Your Mindset

Well does one even act or respond then? Or does one just let things resolve on their own? How does one know they are seeing the resolution revealed to them or they are forcing it, seeing what they want to see?

Nollind

The distinction lies not in whether you act or respond but in how and from what mindset you do so.

When you are deeply present and aware, the “next step” often feels obvious and aligned with the situation. Action then feels effortless and fluid, rather than driven by anxiety or control.

Calm Clarity: The action or insight feels like it arises naturally, without inner struggle or conflict.

Effortlessness: You feel like you’re being guided by the situation rather than pushing against it.

Openness: You’re willing to embrace outcomes you didn’t anticipate, trusting the process even if it’s uncomfortable or surprising.

Before acting, ask yourself. “Am I responding to the situation as it is, or as I wish it to be?” “Am I acting out of fear, impatience, or control?”

Approach the situation with the mindset of a learner, not a solver. Ask open-ended questions. “What is this teaching me?” “What am I not seeing yet?”

This balance is a hallmark of the Self-Transforming Mind: being engaged without clinging, and responsive without controlling.

ChatGPT

Cognitive Dissonance As a Portal to a Larger Dimension of Life

This feels like it relates to when one experiences cognitive dissonance? Does it? And how so?

Nollind

The Self-Transforming Mind learns to sit with dissonance, seeing it not as a problem to be solved but as a sign of growth.

Instead of trying to make sense of dissonance immediately, you adopt a mindset of exploration. “What does this discomfort reveal about my current beliefs?” “What might I not yet see or understand?”

It recognizes that dissonance doesn’t threaten “you” but rather invites you to expand beyond your current identity.

Pause and Reflect: When you feel dissonance, resist the urge to “fix” it immediately. Reflect on what the tension is trying to teach you.

Reframe Discomfort: See dissonance not as a failure but as a natural part of growth. It’s a sign that your mind is expanding to hold greater complexity.

Ask Open-Ended Questions: Engage with curiosity. “What assumptions am I holding onto that may no longer serve me?” “What new perspectives might be emerging here?”

Trust the Process: Understand that resolution doesn’t need to be forced. By staying present and open, clarity will often arise in its own time.

By letting go of the need to resolve the dissonance immediately, you create space for deeper understanding and integration. This shift allows you to see dissonance not as a threat but as a doorway to greater awareness and wisdom.

ChatGPT

This resonates with my Life as an MMORPG framework in that when we experience cognitive dissonance, it can feel like a portal opening up within our world. And out of that portal comes things that can feel threatening, almost as thought the world is undergoing a cataclysmic event like at the start of most fantasy stories. Yet through exploration and understanding, we eventually realize that the portal leads to a new world of possibilities, like a secret, larger dimension of life.

Your Perspective Is What’s “Wrong” and the “Problem”

This is strange. It’s almost like you’re saying that there is nothing to “fix” because there is nothing “wrong”. What’s “wrong” is how you’re perceiving the situation from your old mindset. So “your perception is the problem.” So it seems like you’re resolving the situation by not really doing anything so much as just observing and understanding it “as it is” by giving yourself time and space to do so. This relates to creativity as an act of discovering what’s already there. You just couldn’t perceive it before. So in the end, what appears “wrong” becomes “right” by you doing nothing, in terms of conventional action. But it does require you to be fully aware and open to the experience to fully make sense of it from beyond your old mindset and from within a new one.

Nollind

Exactly! You’ve captured the essence of this shift beautifully. What feels “wrong” often isn’t the situation itself but the lens through which it’s being viewed—your old mindset. The discomfort or perceived problem arises because the old mindset is trying to apply tools, assumptions, or frameworks that no longer fit the complexity of what you’re experiencing.

ChatGPT

Beautiful quote by Maria Popova that touches upon what Joseph Campbell said below.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

This touches upon my quest to help others perceive life metaphorically as a roleplaying game or MMORPG. And just like in a game, when you become so immersed and connected to the flow of life, that’s when the experience feels the most epic.

Yet again, very few of us experience this because there’s so much in the way between us and the experience, both dissociating and distracting us from the experience and the wonder of it.

Put another way, we have a lot of baggage to drop before we can truly feel like travellers on this journey of life.

Such an understanding will also make it clear that finding a guide for your journey isn’t a question of finding a special person. It is a question of becoming a special person: a traveller, a pilgrim, a person on a journey. When you have done that, the whole world turns out to be full of guides.

William Bridges, JobShift

I completely forgot about this article I had found earlier this year and when I reread it, my mind was blown again. Why? Because this is the very thing I’m struggling to create as a system to help people with their own growth and development, just like I’m trying to create it for my own growth and development first, thus embodying it so that others can fully understand it by observing it in action.

So it’s almost like I’m intuiting this need for something but not fully understanding why but then the why reveals itself later. So it feels like a process whereby you have to completely trust yourself (which I still don’t fully) so as to step into a space of uncertainty to explore something you don’t fully understand why…until it reveals itself as to why.

Here’s a quote below that highlights this.

THE DEATH OF THE ESSAY

This shift in focus—from content to process, from product to journey—is reshaping how educators approach assessment. Traditionally, evaluation has centered on the end-product: the essay, the exam, the presentation. But AI is pushing educators to reconsider this approach. “The written paper has been the queen of proofs for demonstrating learning, especially in the humanities,” Conatser notes. “But AI is emphasizing a shift from assessing purely the deliverable to assessing writing as a process, a workflow and a behavior.”

Imagine, for a moment, an assignment where the “deliverable” isn’t a polished essay, but a student’s entire revision history, including AI tutor interactions. This record would provide a window into their process of discovery and iteration, revealing the messy, non-linear reality of learning. It’s an approach that aligns with what we know about how learning actually happens—not in smooth, predictable increments, but in fits and starts, with moments of confusion followed by bursts of insight. This personalized approach to learning is one of AI’s most promising features.

“We’re not just teaching students to use AI; we’re teaching them to understand their own learning processes,” says Ben Kornell, managing partner of the Common Sense Growth Fund and co-host of the EdTech Insiders podcast. “It’s about developing the ability to learn how to learn, which is arguably the most crucial skill in our rapidly changing world.”

BTW what’s funny about this is Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle video and starting with your why when describing yourself to others. The problem with this approach is understanding your “why” can take years or even decades to fully understand (although you may perhaps grasp it superficially at first). For example, I know my why but not in an extremely intimate, deeper way yet, as I’m still discovering and learning who I truly am, as I dive deeper and deeper into myself with each adventure of self-discovery within my lifelong journey.

In other words, this isn’t just about learning knowledge but wisdom as well. And the final frontier isn’t out there but within you.

THE CURRICULAR FRONTIER

The path forward comes with its challenges. Educators face the task of updating institutional policies and persuading skeptical colleagues. But for those on the frontlines of this educational revolution, the potential rewards are too significant to ignore. They understand that in a world of constant change, the ability to learn—and to understand one’s own learning—is invaluable.

The promise of AI in education isn’t about replacing human thought, but about enhancing it. It’s about creating tools that allow us to see our own minds more clearly, to understand our own learning processes more deeply. In the end, this AI-driven focus on metacognition may be preparing students not just for the jobs of the future, but for the lifelong journey of learning itself. By teaching students not just what to think, but how to think about their thinking, we may be unlocking the true potential of education in the AI age.

Your Brain Wants to Oversimplify—Here’s How to Move Beyond Black-and-White Thinking

Binary thinking (“It’s all or nothing”) is an evolutionary habit, but in today’s complex world it doesn’t help us to only see things in black and white. Here’s a skill experts recommend for moving beyond it.

https://www.mindful.org/your-brain-wants-to-oversimplify-heres-how-to-move-beyond-black-and-white-thinking/

Binary thinking is oversimplistic. As much as we wish it wasn’t, life is complicated, and viewing the world in black and white completely ignores the nuances—the gray areas—of the big issues, and of everyday life. By relying on this default reactive way of thinking, we make assumptions that are often inaccurate and sometimes dangerous, especially when they concern an entire group of people. Failing to appreciate situational nuances can lead to tunnel vision and prevent us from seeing alternatives.

Mindfulness teacher and researcher Dr. Shalini Bahl recalls how she felt forced to choose between two outcomes during her stint as a city councillor in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some of her fellow councillors, backed by a resident majority, voted for a temporary moratorium for a large-scale solar project on private land with trees. “There was a lot of pressure to vote. It was very much an ‘either-or’ thing,” she says. “That’s when my understanding of binary thinking really came into play, during my role as a political leader.”

Instead of doing the easy thing—recusing herself from voting—Bahl tried another option. She approached the dilemma with curiosity. “There was a third way of looking at the situation that wasn’t either-or,” she says. “It’s both yes and no. We need more solar and also want to protect our forests. How can we do both?” She knew that despite not having the immediate answers, she needed to stay engaged and openminded by speaking with individuals outside of her immediate circle. Instead of a moratorium, a guide was created for implementing responsible solar development. As she writes in her book Return to Mindfulness, “Curiosity enabled me to navigate a complex decision with diligence.”

When faced with a difficult decision, it can help to shift our focus from a place of judgment to curiosity. “Generally, we’re listening with an agenda rather than truly trying to understand the lived experience of the other person,” says Bahl. “We’re often just listening to prove that they’re wrong. There’s no room for asking questions.” Mindfulness practice is also a useful tool for being comfortable with discomfort. Not everything needs an answer right away. And learning to sit with the questions we’ve asked can often help us find that nuance.

Tapping into our innate curiosity can help us better understand the complexities of each situation, increasing our resistance to making impulsive decisions. In a time where misinformation is prolific across the media, it is more critical now than ever to be able to recognize our own biases and increase our receptivity to different perspectives. Try it next time you find yourself stuck in a conflict. Pause, breathe, and in Bahl’s words, ask yourself, “What is my intention here? Who can I go to who might offer a different point of view?” You may be surprised by what you learn.

While reflecting upon my last couple of posts, I remembered this article I found the other day and I think it relates perfectly to why people often feel stuck at times when making decisions. Often we spend so much of our time choosing one approach OR another because the decision is often final and we can’t go back on it.

For example, if I’m making a decision about the structure of my website, it’s a serious decision because restructuring a website can break all of your links within it and to it.

Even having a chat with someone the other day, they kept asking me about something and said, “So what’s the right choice, the right thing to do?” It was as if there was only one path. But there’s often many. And you don’t have to choose just one but multiple ones at the same time which seems impossible.

But in terms of my website, for the longest time I thought, should I keep it as a traditional journal timeline format or should I shift it over to an evergreen notes approach? Obviously today, I’m realizing it doesn’t need to be one or the other but it can be both, with one working off the other very well.

Even in a conversation with ChatGPT the other day, it highlighted something similar to this. It indicated how people with Socialized Minds often focus on just success while avoiding failures. But ChatGPT revealed that as one grows and develops, they realize that success often occurs through failures, as those failures help us to grow in the process. So even in this instance, it’s not this OR that but instead this AND that.

Even more so though this article highlights the importance of not rushing the decision making process and giving room to see what curiously emerges from the process which also relates to how cognitive dissonance needs to be slowly resolved at more evolved stages of development. In effect, we often fear uncertainty and ambiguity, thus we want to naturally rush the process to get over this feeling of uneasiness. But we shouldn’t.

BTW just to close off and build upon what I said before, if I was now going to extract insights from this journal post and add them to my structured notes, my guess is that this relates to “vertical development” but more specifically relating to the characteristics of a Self-Transforming Mind.