I want to let you in on something…

Because I think it’ll be useful for you this week.

Most of my deepest work is subconscious and somatic — down in the body, beneath what you can see. It’s the beliefs living in your nervous system, under the words, running the show before your conscious mind ever gets a vote.

That’s the work I love most, and it’s where the real change happens — not up in your head, but in your body, and in the places you didn’t even know were driving you.

But I don’t throw out the mind. The mind is part of the body — part of the whole — and sometimes the fastest way through is to catch a single sneaky thought and put it on the table, where you can actually look at it.

​​​​​​​So let me tell you about a thought I caught myself believing a few days ago…

I’ve been taking private lessons with Isadora — a dancer from Brazil who just walks across the floor and the whole room pivots to look. And in our last lesson, I still wasn’t getting the basic step right.

(You know by now how much that dance floor has taught me.)

Now — here’s the funny thing about Zouk: the better you get, the more your basics wobble again. You’re forever being sent back to the foundation. I know this. I teach a version of this.

​​​​​And yet this thought slid in so smoothly I almost missed it:

“I’m 55. I’m still fumbling the basics. Maybe I should just accept that I’m getting older — and that I’m never going to be able to dance the way I really want to.”

And with hip surgery coming up in a few weeks — more on that in a letter soon — the thought showed up with a whole legal case already built.

​​​​​​​Very reasonable. Very well-argued: “Your Honour, given her age, and the hip, I think we can all agree…”

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been doing this work for decades. I teach it. And I still get thoughts like this. The difference now isn’t that they don’t come — it’s that I catch them faster. That’s what I want to give you today.…

Because here’s what a thought like that actually does.​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​There’s a body of work by Byron Katie — she calls it “The Work” — and years ago it changed how I hold my own mind.

The heart of it is simple: a thought you believe doesn’t just sit there.

​​​​​​​It decides how you feel. How you show up. How you treat the people around you. And then it shapes the results you get — while you’re busy blaming everything but the thought.

So she asks a few honest questions. Let me walk you through them with mine:

Is it true? ​​​​​​​

Can I absolutely know it’s 100% true — that I’ll never dance the way I want to?

Of course not. I can’t know that. No one could.

How do I feel when I believe it?

Smaller. Deflated. Like something in me folds inward. I stop putting myself in rooms that could stretch me.

I stop looking for the teachers, the workshops, the classes that could actually help me — because what’s the point?

​​​​​​​And just like that, my world shrinks. Not because it had to. Because I believed a thought I couldn’t even prove.

Who would I be without it?

Oh — without that thought, I’m the woman who keeps showing up. Who books the lesson, walks into the workshop, throws herself in — not because she’s already good, but because she believes she can be.

Who works with her body instead of at war with it. Who remembers that going back to basics isn’t decline — it’s literally how everyone, at every age, gets better.

(The dancers I admire most? They train for hours. Of course they’re good. That’s not talent I don’t have — it’s reps I haven’t done yet.)

​​​​​​​And without that thought, I’m already dancing a thousand times better — because I’m not fighting myself the whole way across the floor.

And then comes the turnaround thought:

What if the opposite were just as true — or truer?

There are dancers in their 90s who will stop your heart. There are people who found their great loves, their boldest work, their most alive years, long after the world told them the window had closed.

That wobble in my basics was never a verdict on my age, or my ability. It was the ordinary, humbling, rather beautiful reminder that everyone goes back to the foundation.

That’s not the end of the road. That is the road.

Here’s the part I don’t want you to skip.

Once you’ve turned the thought around, go looking for the evidence that the new belief is true. Real examples.
​​​​​​​
Because a new belief with nothing under it just… floats off by morning — you believe it for an afternoon and then forget. The proof is what puts legs under the table. The tabletop is the new belief. The evidence is what lets you actually stand on it.

So here’s what I’d love for you this week.

Catch one thought. Just one — the kind that slips in with its case already built.

“I’m too late.
I’m not good enough.
Everyone else has it figured out.
I already have such a good life — maybe I should just be grateful and leave it there.
It’s probably too hard anyway.”

Ask it, gently: Can I absolutely know that’s true?

Then notice who you’d be without it, ask yourself what the turnaround thought could be — and then go find one piece of evidence that the truer thing is real.

That’s the whole practice.

It’s small, and it’s a little bit radical, and it’s the beginning of taking your mind back.

I do this at a much deeper level with the people I coach — it’s one of the great turning points.

But you can start right here, today. One thought. A few honest questions.

I’ll catch you next week — with a thought nearly all of us carry.

With so much love,

Carmen xo

P.S. — Try it this week and tell me in the comments: what thought did you catch, and what was the turnaround? I read every one. ♡

P.P.S. — This is the kind of thing I write about first (and most personally) in my letters. If you’d like them landing in your inbox, come join us. ↓

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