Going Viral on Instagram: The Psychology, Nervous System Impact & Business Lessons

A few weeks ago something unexpected happened.

One of my Instagram posts went viral — reaching over 36 million views and growing my audience from 8,000 to more than 130,000 followers in less than a month.

But what most people don’t talk about is what visibility actually feels like when it arrives.

In this episode I’m pulling back the curtain on the real experience — not just the opportunities that came from it, but the psychological, emotional, and nervous system impact of suddenly being seen by millions of people.

Because visibility isn’t just a marketing strategy.
 It’s something your identity and nervous system need to be able to hold.

Inside this episode, I share:

• What actually happened when my post went viral
• Why detachment is one of the most powerful manifestation principles
• The nervous system response to sudden visibility (and online criticism)
• How people-pleasing patterns show up when you’re seen at scale
• Why controversy often drives growth on social media
• The importance of consistency when nothing seems to be happening
• Why your business needs the systems and structure to hold expansion

This episode is especially for coaches, therapists, and heart-led business owners who feel called to be more visible but also feel the fear that comes with being seen.

Because the truth is:
Growth doesn’t just require strategy.

It requires the capacity to hold what you’re calling in.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Heartled Hustle with Nikki. I'm a psychotherapist, business mentor, and nervous system nerd here to help Heartled entrepreneurs build sustainable success without burnout. Each week we'll unpack manifestation techniques, ethical marketing strategies, practical business tools, and nervous system safe mindset work so that you can grow a soul-aligned, freedom-based business that actually lasts. Around here we're redefining what hustle looks like. Because when you lead from the heart, success gets to feel good. Let's dive in. Welcome back to Heartlet Hustle. It's been a little while since I've been on here. I've had a few months off because we've actually moved house. We are building a new house and we've moved in with my mother-in-law in that transition phase until our house is done. And for me, moving is always super chaotic and it can be quite emotional. So I've had a bit of a break from recording, and now I'm back for our third season of the podcast. So I hope that you have all enjoyed listening to what has been recorded so far, and I'm really excited to get into a whole new batch of topics and ideas that have come directly from my listeners. But one thing I wanted to speak about today, which so many of you have expressed a curiosity around, is that while I was on break, something really interesting happened to my social media feed. Now, about three weeks ago from recording this episode, I had a post that went completely viral. Some of you will know about this. If you haven't, you can check out the pinned post on my Instagram. I think it's nearly up to like 36 million views. I had no intention of this post going viral. It was just another one of my posts. It was something that I thought would be really fun to demonstrate selective attention, which was the theme of the reel. And little did I know that I guess the activity that I showed in the reel and the way that I expressed it would create not only so much, I guess, insight, but also so much controversy. Now, the reason why I want to share this on this podcast is because one of the things I speak about a lot on here is manifestation and in this idea of like being more visible, being more seen, and the fears that hold us back from success. And you know from listening to my previous episodes that one of those big fears for me has been the fear of visibility, the fear of being seen for various reasons. You know, my background, my upbringing, my people-pleasing tendencies, as well as my previous business failure. A lot of these things have made me feel unworthy of success, have made me feel a sense of imposter syndrome, no matter how many credentials I have or how long I've worked, and it's also made me feel like I'm unworthy of success again because I failed once before. And so I have really been working hard on this. I've been utilizing all of the manifestation techniques that I know that I teach, and if you're curious about them, they're all inside my course regulate and receive, which you can find in the show notes. But everything in that course that I have personally been practicing over the past three years when it comes to success and visibility, I've been putting into action in my own time, in my own way, but maintaining a sense of consistency every single day, noticing wherever I feel hesitation, wherever I self-sabotage, wherever I constrict and pull back, and how to find safety and how to really lean on this new identity that I want to create and this safety around being seen, using my voice, and having people not like me, basically, which is what happened with the post, right? Understanding that if I want to create more impact, if I want to be more visible, it means that some people will resonate and many won't, and that that's okay. So I've been working a lot with my own manifestation process, and at the start of this year, at the start of 2026, I remember sitting in my old house and my old office, and I said to myself, to God, the universe, you know, whatever we want to think of. And and I kind of said, you know what, I feel like I'm really ready. I feel like I'm ready to be more visible, and if I am more visible, I promise to myself that I'm gonna use it to make a good impact. And if I'm more visible, I'm gonna be able to actually help more people to create more of a positive ripple effect on humanity. And I really connected to that compassion-focused why, the why that's in my heart of actually just wanting to do this for the greater good. Because I do believe that if we are more compassionate to ourselves, if we are more compassionate leaders to others, if we know how to build things that are founded in positive intention, that are built sustainably, that are built from a nervous system that is regulated, we cannot help but rebuild a world that feels safer, that feels more intentional, and that more good people doing good things will have more money, meaning they can give back to make the world a better place. And I believe if I can, if I can have one part of that greater purpose, then that would be amazing. And I understand that in order to fulfill that, I need to be more seen. And so I kind of had this little prayer or set this little intention at the start of the year, not thinking much of it, right? Just really staying dedicated to my daily practices, my manifestation practices, working with my subconscious beliefs and my nervous system around being seen. Now we packed up the house and we moved, and I I've always maintained consistency. You guys know that I've always been consistent with my Instagram. I have like over 2,000 posts on there, so I've always maintained consistency, and it's been like this unwavering self-belief that even if there's five people watching, 400 views, 800 views, 100 people, whatever it might be, my belief and my intention has always been to at least help one of those people, right? It's never been actually to go viral. And when I set my intention at the start of the year, my how, the way that I was gonna achieve that intention was that I said to myself, okay, in order for me to achieve this, I'm gonna put myself out there to do more speaking engagements, right? I'm gonna email more membership spaces, I'm gonna email more festivals, I'm gonna put myself out there to do more online workshops, and I'm really gonna be seen again. I created my speaker profile and I, you know, actively started putting myself out there. And so in this episode, I just wanna like let you guys know what happened and what my biggest takeaways have been from the whole experience of going viral because what we know about manifestation is that a lot of the time it means letting go of the how, right? And someone like me who likes to know how things happen and like most of us likes to maintain some kind of a sense of control, it always comes as a shock as to how things come in. The same thing happened when I finally felt ready to, you know, have a partner and and to meet someone who uh I I could really create a life with, and it was interesting because I said I was ready and then nothing really happened, and then I kind of like let go of that idea, like I became okay within myself, right? And then my husband came into my life. Same thing happened with this situation. I made the intention, I was being really consistent, I decided to focus on my speaker profile, which means I actually let go of Instagram a little bit. So I actually stopped posting for a little while. Two weeks before I went viral, I went completely offline because I was trying to like focus on other areas. I was uh spending a bit of time on threads, and I was also, you know, trying to create my speaker profile and put myself out there in more uh, I guess, real, real person-to-person ways. And then I would go back in and post one thing every few days, right? Without any attachment to it, not even checking my phone. And so it's so interesting. The first thing I want to talk about is just like this idea of detachment, which I've spoken about so many times, but it's like when you have an intention, when you have a goal, being desperate for it, really, really kind of like feeling like you you need it in order to make you successful, or you need it in order to make you worthy, or you need it in order to make you lovable, or you need it in order to make you happy. That level of desperation creates like a nervous system activation that can propel or repel, I should say, your desires because it makes you more frantic and it makes your mind more frantic, and you're not in a space of being at ease, you're not thinking clearly, things that you want don't happen sustainably. And what I've noticed with all the things I've manifested in my life is that they've always come into my life when I have felt the most regulated because I've actually let go of the desperation of needing to have it, you know, like like holding on to it so desperately. And I find that it's really, really interesting because it's like when you let go of needing it, your identity up levels. And so, what I noticed about the post, and this is like a really subtle thing, so I hope I can keep you guys with me here. What I noticed about the post that went viral, and you guys might notice this as well, is that my energy was different. My energy was different in that post because I didn't really care about Instagram anymore. It's not that I didn't care about it, but I wasn't like feeling like, oh my god, I must, I must get things in through Instagram, I must go viral through this platform, I must create, you know, whatever it was. And I think I let go of a lot of my people-pleasing tendencies, I think I let go of a lot of like overthinking and over-explaining. And if you look at the reel that went viral, I was being very direct, more direct than I usually am when I when I create videos. Because oftentimes what's sitting in my subconscious is like, am I saying it right? Am I gonna offend anybody? Um, will someone cancel me for this? Like, I had these like fears of judgment, fear of being seen, fear of being criticized. That would usually dictate my previous videos. So I I'm a lot more direct in real life, but I kind of have this fear of being like that online. And if you look at that video, I was very direct, and it was my directness that actually caused controversy, and it was that controversy that made it go viral. So, what's interesting about that from a psychological and nervous system perspective is you can see in that video I let my guards down, right? I didn't care anymore, and so I just did it, I just was, and then it just happened, right? Same thing in my relationships. It's like I was really, really wanting to like find a partner, I was constantly in toxic relationship dynamics, and then I kind of decided, you know what? Like, I'm done with this. I might just I don't want to feel this way anymore, and I'm really happy just by myself, and I just want to focus on me. And I spent all my attention focusing on myself, like falling in love with my own life, falling in love with myself, really just enjoying how things were going to the point that when I did meet my husband, I was like, Oh, do I want this? You know, do I want to be in a relationship? And everything flowed so smoothly because I wasn't attached to it having to mean anything, I was just enjoying the process, and in enjoying the process, I was able to create boundaries. One of the things that I didn't have in my previous relationships was as soon as I entered into a relationship, my boundaries were like gone because of my people-pleasing tendencies and my fear of abandonment. Whereas this time, because I felt secure and safe within myself, I could set boundaries and I could see and date in a way that felt really safe and regulated to me. And that foundation that we created together set this beautiful foundation of respect that we still have for each other now, six years later. You know, so it's just it's an interesting thing to observe that when we let go of desperation, we let go of scarcity, and we kind of step into this place of like it's okay, like I'm already I'm content with what I have. How our patterns and our conditioning and our protective patterns and those kind of unhelpful coping mechanisms fall to the wayside, and our authenticity really shines, and it's that authenticity that makes us magnetic. So that's the first thing that I really noticed about how this all eventuated from a manifestation and a psychological perspective. The second thing is just letting go of the how, right? I thought it was gonna come in from speaking and it came in from this post going viral, and this happens all the time. So I think just as a side note, never feel completely attached to how something may eventuate in your life. You have no idea once you're open to something and you're truly open to it and you're not desperate for it, and you're just kind of feeling content and whole within yourself. Anything can happen from any form of opportunity. So just be really open to what you're shutting off because you just don't know where that could lead, right? So that's kind of the second point. The third thing I wanted to share is that so many people asked me, like, how did that feel for me from a nervous system perspective to go viral? And I wanted to be really honest about this because I had lots of messages from people being like, Wow, congratulations, this is so amazing. And like a few things were happening beneath the surface. Like, yes, it was amazing because it's led to some really amazing and incredible opportunities in my business. I've had some things that are kind of in the works outside of just more clients and what have you, which I'm very grateful for. I've had some really cool opportunities come in with businesses and organizations that like I genuinely feel will make a big impact in the world, and I'm really excited about those, but I can't kind of announce anything about them yet until they come into fruition. But what I wanted to speak on is like the impact it had on my nervous system because I think from the outside people can just assume that it's amazing and exciting, and to be honest, it actually wasn't to start with. So when the post went viral, I was in a little bit of a shock. I remember I was at my parents' house when it was happening, and I'd put my phone aside after posting that and I didn't really check it. It didn't go viral overnight. It took about 48 hours for that reel to kind of take off, and then it really took off. And I remember being at my parents' house, and my phone, every time I opened my phone, it was like being bombarded with with um notifications and comments and DMs, and it felt like a real violation of my boundaries. I'm not used to experiencing my phone in that way, and so that alone felt kind of confronting, and it felt it felt um, yeah, like a little bit activating in my nervous system. I didn't actually enjoy it, um, and I actually turned off the comments off the on the post because it was overwhelming my system. Now, when I turned off the comments on my post, I didn't realize that that would also have a backlash. People got offended that I turned off the comments and they started like harassing me on other reels and through my DMs, like accusing me of turning off the comments in order to silence them, accusing me of like being weak, being afraid, and it was like so weird that the post was having such a I mean it was having such a positive impact by the way of I was receiving a lot of positive messages and I was receiving a lot of like follows and and people sharing the real and people really enjoying the message of the real, but also there were many people, many, many people actually, who were messaging me really mean and hurtful things, calling me a terrible therapist, um telling me that I was tricking them and manipulating them, that I was a typical woman who was like saying one thing and meaning another, I was told to F off, I was called all sorts of names. Um, and when I turned off the comments, it escalated because people then felt of not only offended by the post, um, but also offended by the fact that I turned off the comments. And so whilst I would say the percentage of negative comments to positive comments was like significantly less, obviously, as you know, or if you've listened to my podcast, you will know that our brains do favor the negative over the positive because our brains are wired to scan for threat and to scan for risk. And so naturally we're gonna latch on to like the one negative comment, even though we've had 10 positive ones. And so this was happening, and I've never experienced this before on my social media where I've had people like canceling me or people you know calling me out or calling me names or like whatever it might be. So, once again, this added a layer on top of like my people-pleasing conditioning, right? So many of you know that one of my fears of being seen has been that fear of causing conflict, the fear of causing um, you know, making people feel uncomfortable or making them feel um angry at me or me like you know, quote unquote getting in trouble. And that's exactly what happened. So you can imagine that my inner child, the part of me that is a people pleaser, was was freaking out, right? Freaking out, feeling the need to like justify herself, to apologize. Um, you know, I wanted to delete the real. I wanted to delete the real, I wanted to like erase all the comments, I didn't really know what to do to the point that I was a little bit shaky because I was feeling quite overwhelmed, and um and so I sorry if you can hear that noise, it's just the the cicadas outside in the in the jungle are quite loud. Um, anyhow, I was I was feeling really, really overwhelmed by by that and I noticed the urge to want to shut it all down. And so I want to share this because it's really normal, even as me, even with me as a therapist, as someone who who you know preaches nervous system regulation, who tries as much to practice what I preach, I don't want to lie to you guys and say, like, yeah, it was fine and like I just evolved and everything was great. I had to once again put those manifestation tools and those identity tools into practice because I actually had to notice the urge to delete the post, I had to notice the urge to turn off the comments, I had to put my phone away for the entire day and ground myself and remind myself of who I was and that these comments weren't actually true. So I spent the day with my husband, I spent the day with my family, with my child, I played Lego, I went for a swim, I did the things that I do that remind me of who I am, and that these comments don't mean anything about me. I had to once again really practice what I preach, right? And when I could do that, I actually went in and turned the comments back on because I was like, you know what? If I'm gonna put on my business hat here, this is a great marketing opportunity. And all these people who are leaving negative comments are actually boosting this reel even more, which can only benefit me. So I'm gonna take advantage of that. So I turned the comments back on and I just stopped looking at it. I stopped looking at it and I started focusing back again on my message on how do I really like create the impact that I want to make, how do I support the people that are following me, how do I create connection with them, how do I make sure I double down on my message and my why so that people who are here know why they're here and that I'm really attracting the right types of people. So doing those things allowed my nervous system to expand around this new identity that I was creating, the identity of being more visible. And what's interesting about this, guys, is that what once felt scary now doesn't feel scary at all. And this happens all the time in life. What we're once afraid of, like even if that's having a hard conversation with someone, we catastrophize it in our minds. Our nervous system feels so scared, and then we have the conversation and we realize it was so much easier than what we thought it was gonna be, and we're so much more at ease with having conversations in the future. Like now the idea of going viral again doesn't really phase me. I'm like, okay, I can do that, I've done it before, I can do it again. I feel safe around it, I've acknowledged that I'm safe despite it. You know what I mean? So I really want to um remind you that whatever it is that you're afraid of, also remember that even though we have these fears, one of the amazing things about the human brain and the nervous system is that we are like one of we are like the most adaptable and resilient um kind of beings on the planet, right? Our ability to adapt is insane. And so as soon as that happens, if you do all the practices and and you really kind of regulate yourself around it, you just adapt and evolve. And this is what identity change is all about. It's learning how to hold what it is that you're calling in, which is obviously exactly what I teach in my membership, and it's exactly what I teach with my high-level one-to-one work, is this transition of identity and how we can't find success if we're afraid of it. If we're afraid of success, it won't happen. So, how do we expand ourselves in order to actually hold it? Now, the last point that I want to make is more of a business point, and this is around two things. Number one being consistency is so important, even if it feels like nothing is happening. The second thing being set up your business in a way so that when expansion happens, your business can also hold it. So, consistency first. Consistency is something that as I said a lot earlier in this in this podcast episode, consistency is something that I'm pretty good at. It's something that I can maintain and I really practice, you know, this this art of detachment as much as I can, showing up for what I believe in despite it being boring, despite nothing really happening, despite not having immediate gratification, right? I I really believe in what I do and I will stay consistent with that. It's the same thing with my routines and with the way I am at home. I am quite good at being consistent with the way that I am because it's just something that I value, right? So I've been really, really consistent with my posts on social media, even when I had a tiny following, even when my views like before that reel went viral, my views were so low. I was consistently only reaching like maximum 500 views per post. And like, even though that felt a little bit disappointing at times, I just remained consistent because I came back to my why of just helping one person. If I help one person, that's amazing. Now, the reason I share this is because one of the hardest parts of business is remaining consistent when things are boring. Oftentimes it's where people quit. Because our brains want immediate gratification. It wants that reward, the dopamine hit of like succeeding, of getting something back, of having someone acknowledge, of making a sale, whatever it is. And so many people quit just when things are about to take off. And what I mean by that is being consistent, especially with social media and marketing, means that you're creating trust. You're creating and compounding your message over time so that people see it, they know it, they understand it. You're creating a brand, right? People know and remember a brand because they've seen it so many times and they know what it stands for. They understand what it stands for because they've seen it repetitively and that brand has remained consistent. Now, so many people go viral, right, on social media because they're using trending reels or trending audios or whatever it might be. But there's no point in creating a trending reel if the real context itself has nothing to do with your core message or what it is that you actually stand for. Right? So I created that reel that went viral. And then those people that saw the reel, they checked out my profile. Now imagine if my profile wasn't consistently sharing my message. Imagine if people came to my profile and I hadn't posted something in six months. Imagine if someone came to my profile and everything I posted had nothing to do with the reel that went viral. My followers wouldn't have gone from 8,000 to 130,000 people in less than a month, right? It wouldn't have had that spike of followers. It wouldn't have had those followers then convert into paying customers. The reason why that happened is because of the consistency that I put into the business before the reel went viral. I was creating an entire portfolio of what it is that I do and who it is that I serve and what it is that I stand for. And so when people landed on my page, they could go through my content and they could decide is this person for me or not, right? So if you are feeling like, oh my god, nothing is happening, try to remember consistency here. Yeah, try to really lean on consistency. The second thing is even if your business is small, even if it's just growing, don't forget about your systems and structures. Don't forget that if something were to happen, if you were to double your impact, double your viewers, double everything tomorrow, if those people don't have a clear way to work with you, if your link in bio isn't clear, if your uh offerings aren't clear, if there aren't clear ways for people to actually connect with you and work with you, if you don't have payment systems set up, if you don't have like, you know, automated DMs working, especially if you already have quite a few thousand viewers, like all of these things, all of these systems and structures and processes and ways for people to access you, if that's not set up, then people come and they go nowhere. So remembering that systems and structure is just as important as your soft skills, it's just as important as the content and the creativity. I speak about this in my membership, right? The difference between masculine and feminine energy and skills in business. It's so important to have both. So just as much as you're working on your own capacity for growth, your nervous system, your subconscious beliefs, and your identity, make sure that you're also creating a business whereby the systems and structures are also expanding and creating a container that can hold whatever it is that you are calling in. I'm gonna wrap up there, and I'm so curious if you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or send me an email and let me know what you learned from this podcast. Let me know what you took away, let me know how it resonated for you. And if you have any other topics that you'd love for me to cover in this season, obviously comment below and let me know.