With my name spelt as ‘Nike’, the brand and iconic slogan have followed me for most of my life. I resonate with the bold, direct, and relentlessly action-oriented message in many ways. Keep going. Push harder. Do more. Be more. I’ve worn it like a badge of honour, spinning plates, chasing goals, and measuring my worth by how much I could achieve. I became Good Nike, the one who gets it done, shows up, and performs. But recently, I’ve started to question the cost of living that way. What if there's more to life than doing? What if being just being is enough? What follows is a reflection on that shift: from striving to presence, from self-improvement to self-acceptance, from Good Nike to just Nike.
We live in a world that praises multitasking and celebrates the constant accumulation of skills, adding strings to our bows as a sign of worth. I’ve long been a renowned plate spinner, priding myself on my ability to juggle tasks and meet deadlines.
“If you want something done quickly, ask a busy person,”
The familiar saying, “If you want something done quickly, ask a busy person,” has some merit in that busyness can breed efficiency. But speed doesn’t always equate to depth, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to quality. Somewhere along the line, I began to wonder: what am I racing toward? And what parts of myself am I leaving behind in the process?
The drive to achieve, to meet goals, and to give 100% was instilled in me from a young age. These values have brought me moments of success and happiness, and I’m grateful for that. But over time, through reflection and experience, I’ve come to see the limitations of relying on a single, goal-oriented approach to life. Especially in the work I do now, both personally and professionally, I’ve found myself sitting with a deeper question: Is growth always about doing more, or could it be about undoing, unlearning, and softening into what already is?
During my counselling supervision, I’ve been exploring self-actualisation versus actualisation theory, and I keep returning to this tension between becoming and simply being. It’s a theme that echoes in my own life and often surfaces in the therapy room. I’ve been revisiting Carl Rogers’ person-centred approach, his powerful belief in the human being not as a fixed entity, but as a fluid, evolving process. In the presence of empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard, people move organically toward wholeness, not because they’re told to, but because it’s in their nature to do so.
And yet… here's the quiet radical thought that’s been sitting with me: What if we’re not here to become anything? What if the very drive to "self-actualise" is, in itself, a form of conditioning? Another voice of Good Nike, whispering that I’m not quite enough just as I am?
Rogers often spoke about the “self-concept”, the internal image we build of ourselves, shaped by early experiences, cultural expectations, and introjected beliefs. In therapy, there’s often a powerful shift when someone begins to loosen their grip on that concept when they realise they’re not bound to the version of themselves they were told to be. There’s space. There’s breath. And yet even this notion of the “authentic self” isn’t that, in some ways, still a concept? Still a story?
That’s what I’ve been wrestling with lately: the idea that true actualisation may not be about becoming more, but about becoming less. Less performative. Less fixed. Less attached to a narrative. Maybe actualisation is presence. Maybe it’s not a path of improvement, but a return. A remembering.
I often find myself wondering if I should be healing, improving, growing, striving to be a better version of myself. But then a quieter, kinder voice emerges: What if I already am? I have flaws, yes. Wounds. Unresolved parts. And yet here I am, breathing, whole, worthy. Maybe I just need to be fully myself, even the parts I’m still learning to love.
This shift has changed how I show up with clients. I’m listening differently now. Not just to the parts that want to change, but to the parts that already are, the parts that have been silenced, hidden, or dismissed. I still believe in growth, in self-actualisation. But I’m beginning to see that the deeper work, the truest healing, might not be about change at all. It might be about safety. About space. About permission. About helping someone feel safe enough to simply be who they already are.
In the TV series The White Lotus, the concept of Amor Fati, which means “love of fate,” subtly emerges as characters confront the inevitable unpredictability of their lives. Amor Fati is a philosophical idea that encourages embracing everything that happens to us, whether it’s joyous or painful, as a part of our destiny. It’s the acceptance of life’s challenges and imperfections, recognizing that all of it contributes to our growth and understanding. In The White Lotus, this idea is explored through the characters’ struggles with self-identity, relationships, and the consequences of their actions. Some characters learn to embrace their fate with open arms, finding peace and growth through their experiences, while others resist, creating more tension and conflict.
Enlightenment, in its truest form, doesn’t live in striving. It doesn’t come through the pursuit of being “good,” or fixing what we think is broken. In the stillness, underneath all the efforting, I’m learning that just being Nike is enough. Actualisation isn’t about adding more. It’s about shedding what was never truly ours to carry. It’s about holding ourselves with compassion, in all our messiness and magic.
When we pause, we often find perspective. And it’s frequently after pain, loss, and failure that the truth becomes clear. Fortitude and resilience aren’t born out of perfection. They grow in the cracks, in the shadows, in the aftermath. Change is the only constant, yes. But perhaps the most profound change is the kind that brings us back to ourselves.