This isn’t one of my usual blogs.
Normally I write from the edges. Watching people, teams, cultures. Making sense of what’s going on underneath behaviour. This one comes from standing right in the middle of my own life for a month and realising I’d stopped paying attention to some fairly important things.
It felt important to share it. Not because it’s dramatic or profound, but because it quietly connects to why I do what I do for a living, and because switching off from focusing on everyone else forced me to look inward in a way I hadn’t for a long time.
We started in the Maldives, which has a way of lowering your blood pressure without asking permission. White sand that looks suspiciously fake, water so clear it feels like cheating, and days that gently stop having sharp edges.
One morning we went out to swim with manta rays.
A moment I’d been quietly looking forward to more than I let on. We slipped into the water, masks on, fins awkward, and then they appeared.
Huge. Majestic. Effortless.
They weren’t just passing through. They were feeding. Sweeping through the water in slow, deliberate arcs, mouths open, completely unhurried. A couple of younger ones stayed close, learning the rhythm, following along like apprentices.
I was in absolute heaven.
Floating there, watching something ancient and instinctive play out in front of me, I felt small in the best possible way. Lucky. Properly present.
And completely irrelevant.
They barely acknowledged us. A brief glance at best, then they carried on doing exactly what they’d come there to do. They were busy being manta rays.
And oddly, that made it better.
Nothing needed me. Nothing existed for my experience. I was just allowed to witness it, briefly, before they disappeared back into the blue.
At the time, I didn’t turn that into insight. I just floated there, quietly grateful to be ignored.
A few days later we landed in Bangkok and the volume knob snapped clean off.
From whispering waves to heat, noise, traffic and life happening loudly all at once. Bangkok doesn’t ease you in. It grabs your senses and says pay attention.
By the time we were leaving for Cambodia, I felt travel tired rather than holiday tired. We arrived at the airport feeling organised enough to be dangerous.
Check-in hall. Bags on the floor. Passports out.
I reached for my phone.
Not there.
That tiny pause happened first. The one where your brain says, don’t overreact, it’ll be in the other pocket.
It wasn’t.
Then the credit card.
Also not there.
And instantly I knew. I’d left both in the hotel car. The car that had dropped us off. The car that had already driven away
My body reacted before my brain had time to catch up. Heat. Chest tight. That sharp internal jolt of how could you do this.
“I’ll be back,” I said to Stella, already moving, and bolted back through the airport, out through the sliding doors and into the drop-off zone where cars streamed past in a blur.
I stood there scanning faces and vehicles, heart pounding, knowing full well the car had gone.
You travel every month.
You never do this.
What are you even doing.
After a few pointless minutes chasing traffic and hope, reality arrived. Tail firmly between my legs, I walked back inside feeling like an idiot.
Stella was exactly where I’d left her. Calm. Bags neatly lined up. Watching me approach with a look that said she already knew how this would end.
She didn’t ask why I’d run. She didn’t join my panic.
She just said, evenly, “Alright. Let’s slow this down.”
She asked one simple question. “Didn’t the hotel arrange the car?”
She found the number. Called them. Explained. Calm voice. Clear words. No urgency. No drama.
Ten minutes later the driver appeared at the check-in desks, smiling broadly, holding my phone and card like they were the most normal things in the world to be returning.
Problem solved.
My nervous system took longer to catch up. I felt ridiculous. Exposed. And quietly grateful.
Not because the phone was back.
Because when I wobbled, she didn’t.
Cambodia arrived with a different kind of contrast.
Ancient temples in punishing heat. Floating villages where homes, schools and daily life exist on water. Lotus farms quietly creating livelihoods without shouting about it. Everywhere, smiles.
People living in ways we would politely label “hand to mouth”, greeting us with warmth, humour and ease. Life happening without the constant edge of urgency we seem to carry everywhere.
And then, later the same day, sitting down to beautifully plated food, faultless service and five star comfort.
The juxtaposition was unsettling.
Not guilt exactly. Something messier. I didn’t know where to put myself.
We talk about privilege in abstract terms. This wasn’t abstract. It was sitting there in front of me, unresolved. Luxury and resilience existing side by side. Comfort on one side, lightness on the other.
What unsettled me most wasn’t the lack. It was the ease.
The Mekong slowed everything again.
Villages drifting past. Silk being woven by hand, patiently, without optimisation. Young monks blessing us with calm smiles. Long conversations. Long evenings.
Then Phnom Penh, and the hardest part of the journey.
Standing in S21 prison. Walking the Killing Fields. Listening to a man speak about losing his father with dignity and restraint. No bitterness. No performance.
That night I didn’t say much. I didn’t need to. Some things don’t require immediate processing. They just need space.
Christmas came and went somewhere along the river.
The food was excellent. The setting extraordinary. And yet, something was missing.
Christmas without family slowly loses its shape. It becomes another nice day rather than the day. I missed the noise. The mild chaos. The people who know you well enough to irritate you properly.
I hadn’t expected that. I thought peace would be the upgrade.
Instead, I missed friction.
Then Phu Quoc.
The exhale.
A villa above the sea. Sunrises through glass walls. Birds. Waves. Fishing boats returning home. Time slowing properly, not as an activity, but as a state.
At meals, we noticed other couples and families around us. Sitting together, phones glowing, conversations happening sideways. Present, but not quite there.
Stella and I sat opposite each other and talked.
About nothing.
About everything.
Sometimes we didn’t talk at all. We just sat, watched the light change, listened to the sea.
We didn’t seem to run out of things to say. Or reasons to laugh. Or comfort in silence.
And that’s when it landed.
We’re not just married.
We’re best friends.
Not mates. Best friends.
Friends choose each other. Over and over again. In big moments and small ones. In wobble and calm. In silence as much as conversation.
That didn’t come from grand gestures. It came from attention. From noticing. From staying when it would have been easier to drift.
As the trip came to an end, it struck me how quietly this all connects to the work I do.
Not because travel fixes you. It doesn’t.
Not because calm is permanent. It isn’t.
But because when you slow down enough, you start to notice what’s actually happening inside you and between you. How quickly we tip into threat. How much steadiness matters. How presence is often the thing that regulates us, not technique.
That’s the work. Not fixing people. Not performing insight. Just helping humans notice themselves and each other with a little more honesty.
The mantas didn’t need me.
Bangkok reminded me I wobble.
Cambodia showed me contrast without commentary.
And Stella reminded me, quietly, why this works.
Ichi-go ichi-e.
This moment. This version. This us.
Not repeatable. Not optimised.
Just here, if you’re paying attention.
And that’s why this is the first blog of 2026.
Not because it wraps anything up neatly, or because I came back with answers. I didn’t. If anything, I came back with fewer certainties and a clearer sense of what actually matters.
This year will be different. Not louder. Not busier. Not more ambitious in the way ambition is usually measured.
Different because I know myself a bit better again. Or maybe I understand myself more honestly. Where I wobble. What steadies me. What comfort dulls. What presence gives back. And how much of what I already have is quietly extraordinary if I stop rushing past.
KOAP doesn’t change because of that. It sharpens.
Because the work has never been about fixing people or giving them something new. It’s about helping them notice what’s already there. Inside them. Between them. In the moments they usually miss because they’re too busy being competent.
So this is where 2026 starts for me.
Not with a plan.
Not with a resolution.
Just with a little more awareness, a little more gratitude, and a clear intention to keep paying attention.
Because this moment, this version, this year…
I don’t want to miss it.
