The Way I See It
The Way I See It is a short, punchy podcast unpacking how business operates behind the scenes, hiring, leadership, performance, and decision-making - shaped by experience across global organisations and the reality of building one from scratch.
Built from real-world experience, not theory, each episode is designed to challenge your thinking, offer a subjective perspective, and leave you with something worth considering.
The Way I See It
Why You’re Not Attracting Better Opportunities
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What if the law of attraction is not really about manifestation?
What if it is about standards?
In this episode of The Way I See It, I talk about why the opportunities, relationships, clients, environments and results we attract are often shaped by what we repeatedly tolerate.
Because you can visualise success all day long, but if your boundaries are weak, your standards are low, and your actions do not match what you say you want, you are not attracting better.
You are tolerating the same.
This episode is about valuing yourself, valuing your time, and being honest about what you are giving energy to.
I cover why not every opportunity is worth the cost, why walking away can sometimes be the standard, and why knowing your value is not just something you say - it is something you prove through your decisions.
This applies in business, leadership, careers, relationships and personal life.
Because whether it is a client who does not value your service, a relationship that feels one-sided, a room that lowers your standards, or an opportunity that requires you to shrink yourself…
you have to ask:
Am I attracting this, or am I allowing it?
I cover this through the lens of business, leadership, careers, relationships and personal growth.
Because not every client is your client.
Not every opportunity is your opportunity.
Not every room is your room.
And not every relationship deserves continued access to you.
The key message:
You do not just attract what you want. You attract what you tolerate.
And sometimes walking away is not failure.
Sometimes walking away is the standard.
If this episode resonates, share it with someone who needs the reminder to value themselves, their time and their standards.
Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.
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Welcome to another episode of The Way I See It. We're on episode seven: the law of attraction. So you attract what you tolerate, but the law of attraction is really about standards. Why your standards, energy, and boundaries will ultimately shape the opportunities, relationships, and results that you attract. So I used to think the law of attraction piece sounded a little bit abstract, a little bit too just think positive and everything will work out. And I don't necessarily buy into that version because you can sit there visualizing success all day long. But if your standards are low, your boundaries are weak, and your actions don't necessarily match what you say you want, then you're not attracting better. You're tolerating the same. And that's what this episode's really about. It's not manifestation, it's not positive thinking, positive energy, but it's the idea that what you give your time to, what you give your energy to, what you're willing to accept, what you're willing to chase, and also what you ignore and what you allow will ultimately shape what comes back to you, whether that's in business, relationships, in friendships, in leadership throughout your career, and also ultimately in your own self-respect and self-growth. Because the issue is not that better opportunities are not available. Sometimes the issue is that your behavior is still aligned with things that you ultimately say you've outgrown. So there's a line that I've been thinking about recently that resonates, and it's you do not just attract what you want, you attract what you're willing to tolerate. See, that applies kind of everywhere. If you constantly give your time to people who do not give you the same energy back, you're teaching yourself that imbalance is normal. If you keep chasing clients who do not value what you do, you're teaching your business to operate from desperation. If you stay in rooms where your standards are constantly lowered, eventually your ambition starts to adjust to that room. And if you keep saying yes when you know your answer should be no, you start attracting more situations where you're required to betray yourself because your standards are not what you say they are, your standards are what you repeatedly accept. So when people talk about the law of attraction, it can often sound like think about money and money will come. Visualise the relationship and it will appear. Imagine the business and it'll happen. And I get the idea behind it because there's value in being intentional, there's value in visualising what you want, there's value in believing something's possible before it's physically arrived. But the part that often gets missed is that you cannot attract a different life while you continue to behave like the version of yourself that has accepted the old one. And that's where the real work is. It's not just about thinking differently, it's about choosing differently, reacting differently, spending your time differently, protecting your energy differently, speaking to yourself differently. And this is where the attraction becomes less about fantasy or woo and more about alignment because when your actions match your standards, your life starts to filter differently. So you stop saying yes to the wrong things, you stop feeling the need to over-explain your worth, you stop chasing people who aren't meeting you halfway, you stop building businesses around people who might not value your service, you stop confusing attention with respect and opportunity with alignment, and that's when things start to change. Really kind of relevant um personal example. I had a situation really recent where a potential client's view of value did not necessarily align with how we see our own service and our time and the level of work that goes in from our side. And to be clear, it's not a personal thing. It's not about ego, it wasn't about even being offended. It was just a moment where we had to look at the proposition and ask ourselves: is this reflective of our value? Or is this reflective of how the market is behaving right now? Because the difference. Sometimes the market might be tight, businesses can often be cautious, sometimes people are trying to reduce costs where they can. Clients will test ultimately what they can get because that's just business. But you still have to know where the line is. So in this scenario, the benchmarking exercise that we were being considered against is an average of the market. We didn't set the business up to be average. We set ourselves up to be specialists in a specialist sector. Therefore, the client's benchmarking no longer considered us as a specialist. It put us into a generic framework of what others are doing. So after a couple of back and forths, we ultimately stepped away, politely, of course, as we don't feel that the client's on the right kind of energy for us and how we want to be seen or perceived in the market. So it's not aligned with the level of service we provide, it's not aligned with the value of work we do or the standards that we're trying to build and keep or with the type of partnerships we necessarily want. So we stepped away, not angrily, not emotionally, and not with any future resentment and just with clarity, and it's a massive part of the conversation. Knowing your values, not just saying I know my worth, because everyone can say that until there's a decision to be made or money to be involved. Knowing your values, being able to walk away from something that doesn't necessarily reflect it. Now, there's an easy scenario in this one where, you know, we we could have accepted the terms because it's a new client, right? And you've onboarded a new client. But then how does that kind of what's the knock-on effect of that? Because once you've lowered lowered your standards once, once you've lowered your price once, once you've allowed to be seen as this generic kind of partner, then the special element doesn't seem that special anymore. And in this moment, the decision felt good, it felt right, and it actually gave me the same kind of boost confidence equal to winning a new client or winning a deal. So I feel like that told me everything I needed to know in that particular scenario. And this is where business owners and entrepreneurs need to be really careful. But you can also reframe this whole piece for personal life and flip it from business to personal if you want. It's transferable, but the message is ultimately the same. Because when you're building something, especially early on, every opportunity can feel important. Every client feels like proof, every conversation feels like momentum, every deal feels like a validation. And because of that, it's easy to drop your standards just to win something. But then you over-service, you undercharge, you chase, you bend your own model, you accept bad terms, you ignore the red flags, and you convince yourself that it's strategic, it's a one-off. Sometimes you might think that, but sometimes it's just not strategy. It's fear dressed up as flexibility. And the problem is when you build from that place, you attract more of it. And you attract more clients who want to push the price down, more people who don't respect the process or what you're trying to build, more relationships that feel more one-sided, more situations where you're proving, chasing, explaining, justifying. And over time that ultimately becomes your business. And not that not because it's what you wanted or what you said you were, it's because you allowed it. And that's why the boundaries are you know, it's not just personal, it's commercial. They protect the quality of work, they protect your reputation, your energy, they protect the type of people who you actually want to work with, and they protect the business you're trying to build. So, on that personal example, soon as one door closed, other partnerships have since surfaced. And you wonder if that's because of a an energy switch in that moment in that decision that was made, and don't need to fully close the door because if you're truly good at what you say you are, the client eventually is going to see the value, but you can now disattach with that because you valued yourself higher, and then other clients, business owners, etc., will probably respect you more for that decision, right? So again, it applies massively across not just business but personal life, and it's probably where most people will feel it because we've all had people in our lives where the energy is not balanced. You might check in more, they might not. You support them, they disappear when you need support. You listen to everything they're going through, but when it's your turn, suddenly they're dizzy. You make the effort, you initiate, you remember things, you show up, and after a while you have to ask yourself, are you being generous or are you actually abandoning yourself? Because there's a difference between being a good person and constantly giving your energy to people who who would never return it.
SPEAKER_00And that's why boundaries matter because boundaries of being honest with yourself.
SPEAKER_01Who drains you, who energizes you, who supports the version that you're trying to become, who only seems comfortable when you stay exactly as you are, who celebrates wins with you properly, who celebrates you properly, who competes quietly, who takes but doesn't give. And it's not negative thinking, it's just discernment, right? It's discernment that's one of the most important skills you can build. So for leaders, it matters because culture is not built by what you say, it's built by what you tolerate. And you can say, you know, you want high standards, accountability, ownership, but if poor behavior is ignored, if standards are inconsistent, or if the wrong people keep getting protected, that ultimately becomes your culture. And as a leader, you attract the environment that you demonstrate. So if you want better communication, model it. If you want accountability, apply it fairly. If you want initiative, reward it. If you want high standards, stop making excuses for low ones. And it's not manifestation, it's leadership alignment. From an employee or a career angle, your standards shape your own progression. So for employees or people in the career that, you know, work for someone else or whatever it may be, you cannot say you want more opportunity, more trust, more money, more progression, but keep showing up in a way that doesn't match it. If you want to attract better career opportunities, you need to become easier to trust with them. That means reliable, being visible, proactive, prepared, consistent. And it means raising the standard without waiting for someone else to have to force it. Because progression is not about wanting more. It's about becoming the type of person people can confidently give it to and already have made that decision to give it to.
SPEAKER_00So the key point, I suppose, is that boundaries are a success skill.
SPEAKER_01And they're not just personal, they're not just emotional. It is a skill and it helps you decide where your time goes, it helps you decide who gets access to your energy. They help protect your standards, avoids resentment. It helps you stop overcommitting to things that are not actually aligned with where you are trying to go. And I think this is where people sometimes get it wrong. They think that boundaries are about being difficult, being cold, selfish, acting like you're better than people, but it's not really what it's about. It's about clarity. You know, this they are you saying to people, this is what I value, this is what I'm available for, and this is what I'm no longer willing to keep repeating. And that applies everywhere. In business, boundaries might mean walking away from the client, as we've spoken about. In leadership, it might mean no longer tolerating behavior that damages the culture. In your career, it might mean no longer waiting passively for an opportunity and actually showing up with more ownership. In your personal life, it might mean finally being honest about who drains you and who actually supports you. Because one of the biggest reasons people feel stuck is not because they lack ambition, it's because they have no filter. Everyone gets access, everyone gets time, everyone has the opportunity to be considered, every client gets chased, every message gets a reply, every relationship gets maintained, and every request ultimately gets a yes. And people wonder why they have no energy left for the things they actually say they want, because the truth is you can't build a better life, better business, better career, better relationship with the energy constantly leaking into places that doesn't return it. So the takeaways to bring it all together, there's a few things that can take away from this. First, audit your energy, look at where your time, attention, effort's actually going, not where you say that it's going. Where is it really going? Because if energy is constantly being spent on people, clients, habits, situations that don't give anything back, you can't be surprised when you feel drained, stuck, or misaligned. Second, stop chasing what does not match you. Not every client's your client, not every opportunity's your opportunity, not every room's your room, and not every relationship deserves continued access to you. Sometimes walking away is not failure, sometimes walking away is the standard. Thirdly, know your value and behave like it. Knowing your worth's not a quote. It's not something you say when you feel confident. It's a decision-making standard. It shows up in what you accept, what you challenge, what you decline, and what you're willing to walk away from. And finally, become the energy you want back. If you want honesty, be honest. If you want a higher standard, live to a higher standard. If you want better relationships, be better in your current relationships. If you want better clients, operate like a business that deserves it. Because attraction without alignment is just ultimately wishful thinking. So you can't keep choosing the same things and expect a completely different life to appear. You attract what you tolerate, so be careful what you make what you're making space for. That's the way I see it. Is it if it resonated, share it with someone who wants to hear it.