Hello again. 🌿

I want to offer something this week that I think is genuinely freeing, once it lands properly.

Openness is not a fixed personality trait. It’s a skill.

This matters, because so many people quietly believe they’re simply “not an open person” — as though it’s a fixed setting, decided somewhere back in childhood and unchangeable since. That belief tends to keep old habits of guardedness firmly in place, because there doesn’t seem to be much point in practising something you’ve already decided you don’t have.

But openness behaves like any other skill. It develops through repetition, in small moments, long before it ever shows up as a fully-formed capability.

 

Weekly Focus: The Small Moments That Build the Skill

Nobody becomes a genuinely open person in a single conversation. It happens gradually, through small, repeated choices — the moment you say “actually, that was harder than I let on” instead of moving past it, the moment you let someone see you not quite managing everything, the moment you ask for help instead of quietly working it out alone.

Each of these moments feels small while it’s happening. None of them feel like the beginning of a whole new way of being. But they accumulate, the way any repeated practice does, into something that eventually starts to feel more natural than the old guardedness ever did.

In my work with people, I often notice that the biggest shift isn’t in one enormous act of vulnerability. It’s in a series of small ones, practised deliberately, until openness starts to feel less like a risk and more like simply how things are done now.

 

Client Story: Tom

Tom described himself, when he first came to see me, as someone who had “never really been a feelings person.” He was practical, capable, and had built a life that worked — but he’d noticed, particularly in his relationship with his adult daughter, a distance he couldn’t quite close.

Rather than approaching this as a wholesale personality overhaul, we started very small. One honest sentence in a phone call. One admission that a decision had actually been difficult, rather than presenting it as simple and resolved. One moment of saying “I’m proud of you” out loud instead of assuming she knew.

None of these were dramatic. But over a period of months, something genuinely shifted — not in who Tom fundamentally was, but in how much of himself he was willing to let be seen. His daughter, without any prompting from him, mentioned that their calls had started to feel different. Warmer. More real.

Tom hadn’t become a different person. He’d simply practised a skill he’d previously assumed he didn’t have.

 

Weekly Challenges — Five Practices

1. Choose one small honest moment. This week, look for one low-stakes opportunity to say something a little more honest than you normally would — about how something actually felt, or what you actually think. Just one. It doesn’t need to be big.
2. Notice the resistance before you do it. In the moment before you choose honesty over the polished version, notice what resistance shows up. Name it, even just to yourself — “here’s the part that wants to hold back” — and then choose anyway, if it feels safe to.
3. Practice receiving, not just giving. Openness isn’t only about sharing. This week, practise letting someone else’s care or concern actually land, rather than deflecting it with “I’m fine” or changing the subject.
4. Ask for one small thing. Choose one small, reasonable thing you could ask for this week that you’d normally just handle yourself. Notice what it feels like to ask, regardless of the outcome.
5. Track what happens, not just what you feel. At the end of the week, notice what actually happened in response to your small moments of openness — not just how vulnerable it felt in the moment, but what it did to the people and relationships around you.

 

Seasonal Wisdom

There’s a quality to late winter on the Sunshine Coast that suits this kind of gradual practice. Nothing bursts into bloom overnight. The wattle opens slowly, blossom by blossom. The light lengthens by minutes, not hours. Spring doesn’t arrive as an event — it arrives as an accumulation of small shifts that eventually become undeniable.

Openness tends to work the same way. It rarely arrives as one transformative moment. It arrives as a series of small, repeated choices that eventually add up to something that looks, from a distance, like a completely different way of being.

You don’t need the whole thing this week. You just need one small moment. 🌿

Notice with gentle encouragement: What’s one small, honest thing I could let be seen this week?

 

Join the Journey

I’d love to have you follow along on social media as this month’s exploration continues. You’ll find Phynix By Design ~ Life Reignited on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

And if you’d like support building this particular skill more deliberately — that’s exactly the kind of work I do with people in session. My door is genuinely open. 🌿

With warmth,
Gemma-Lee Harvey

 

About the Author:

Gemma-Lee Harvey is a Holistic Counsellor and Lifestyle Coach based on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. With a diverse background spanning psychology, business, counselling, and coaching, she creates a nurturing space for exploring one’s full potential. Her gentle yet practical approach kindles the transformative spirit within, guiding individuals through life’s challenges as they rise through empowerment.

 

Contact:

🌐 www.phynixbydesign.com.au
☎ 07 5493 6742
📱 0448 562 814
🏢 Brightwater Wellness Hub, Shop 7E 69-79 Attenuata Drive, Mountain Creek QLD 4557

Opening hearts & facilitating transformations since 2017

Phynix By Design ~ Life Reignited