Everything You Want Is Already Here
What I Wish Every Client Could See Sooner
The cage was never locked.
There’s a story I once heard that has never left me.
A tiger is pacing in a cage.
Back and forth, back and forth.
It’s worn down the floor beneath its feet.
It looks tired, restless, agitated.
You can feel its hunger for freedom, its desperation to get out.
But what it doesn’t see is this:
The cage door is wide open.
It’s been open the whole time—
only not in the direction the animal has been looking.
The opening is behind it.
And because it keeps searching, pushing, and straining
in the other direction, it never finds the exit that’s already there.
I think a lot of us live like that.
We’re in emotional pain.
We feel stuck.
We analyze and brood, ruminate and loop—
worrying about the future and the past,
trying to think our way out, or wanting to fix what’s “broken.”
But what if we’re simply facing the wrong way?
What if mental freedom isn’t something we have to work toward or figure out—
but something we simply notice?
What if the door to our cage…
has been open the whole time?
Let’s start from the beginning.
Let’s start from freedom.
Everything you want is already here. Right now.
I know that might sound provocative.
Maybe even like a slap in the face if you’ve been struggling and hurting.
But I want to invite you to consider it.
Let it land—somewhere quiet inside you.
Maybe even in a place that surprises you.
The most beautiful feelings,
the most precious things in life…
they’re on offer right now.
You can have them—unequivocally—
no matter what you’ve been thinking.
Allow me to give you a real-life example.
A dear client of mine had recently made a long-held dream come true:
she’d left behind city life to settle in a quiet coastal town.
She was surrounded by natural beauty, working remotely, and finally had time and space to slow down.
At first, she soaked it in
long walks,
sea air,
a new rhythm.
But during one of our calls, I noticed something had shifted.
Her usual brightness seemed dimmed.
There was a heaviness in her voice I hadn’t heard in a long while.
I gently asked if there was something she wanted to talk about—
outside of our usual business topics.
She paused…
then said yes.
This, at its core, is what she shared with me…
She was in midlife and deeply longing for love.
Lately, she’d been worrying that it might be too late—
that she’d prioritized the wrong things.
On top of that, a recent conversation with someone she worked closely with had left her feeling unsettled.
Something about it made her question her worth, as if she might be a burden, not quite pulling her weight.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Going over it in her mind, again and again,
trying to figure out what to say—
or how to make it right.
I gently asked her:
“What if the worrying—and all the figuring out—is exactly what’s keeping you from inner peace and freedom?”
You see, she was innocently doing something I often call
“time traveling” in our mind.
She was jumping forward—
imagining a future where she grows old alone,
unchosen, with no one there to hold her hand.
Then she’d swing backward—
replaying a short conversation with her business partner
that had triggered her fear of being a burden.
Back and forth she went—
between a haunting future and a shaky past—
never quite landing in the one place where peace is always available:
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
I saw her listening, taking in my question carefully.
Of course, her circumstances hadn’t changed.
The ocean was still out her window.
The worries were still present in her mind.
But something in her softened.
And I watched in wonder as she stopped questioning her choices
and ceased chasing answers in her head—
just long enough to notice what was already present:
a quiet, steady okayness that had nothing to do with her current worries
or even her beautiful surroundings.
She took a breath and knowingly nodded
as her soul touched that deeper calm within…
the essence of life itself.
And that’s what I want to talk to you about now.
Not her story.
Not even her insight.
But what she touched—
and what’s available to all of us, all the time.
First things first...
There is something deeper than thought.
Something older than your problems.
Something alive in you, right now…
whether you feel it or not.
It’s the quiet beyond the noise—
of the world and your own mind.
The stillness that doesn’t need to be earned or chased or fixed.
It’s not a concept or a technique.
It’s not something you earn through healing or effort.
It’s what you were born with.
What you are.
The space underneath all the thinking,
all the stories, all the striving.
It’s what allowed you to laugh as a child for no reason at all.
It’s what lets you exhale when you finally stop trying.
It’s what remains—unmoved—
when the world around you spins.
And while the mind will tell you to go looking for peace,
for clarity, for love “out there”…
The truth is, they’ve been with you all along.
Sometimes we just forget to turn around.
To pause.
To notice.
To see what’s already here.
What you’re searching for isn’t gone.
It’s just quieter than the noise that’s been shouting over it.
And the moment you stop fighting for it—
stop trying so hard to earn your way into okayness—
you can feel it again.
That soft hum of aliveness.
That unshakeable peace that doesn’t need your permission to exist.
That gentle, grounded knowing beneath the storm.
And that’s what I’m most interested in showing people.
Not how to fix their lives.
Not how to change everything they’re feeling.
But how to recognize the open door.
How to remember what’s already whole.
What is alive in all of us.
Everyone can come home.
To peace.
To aliveness.
If you’ve read some of my previous articles, you’ll know how deeply I care about sharing the Three Principles in Africa.
Supporting vulnerable communities in reconnecting with their mental well-being—
healing from trauma and remembering their resilience—
has become a true calling.
It’s something I pour my heart into whenever I can.
Recently, I was creating a video for the upcoming 3PGC conference in London.
It features real voices and stories from Africans whose lives have been profoundly touched by the understanding of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought, as first shared by Sydney Banks.
One of those voices belongs to Mark Ndayizeyee.
Mark is a small man with a soft-spoken benevolence.
On camera, he radiates a quiet kind of aliveness you don’t often see.
The moment I saw him, I felt a wave of love.
Mark’s story is one of those that stays with you.
Just three days after his wife gave birth to their baby daughter,
she was poisoned by people in their community in Kakuma, Kenya.
Mark never speaks about the reasons behind it—
only that, suddenly, he was left to hold and feed their newborn child…
something he had never done before in his life.
And yet—two years later—he is smiling.
He has forgiven the people who took his wife’s life.
He teaches them.
He walks beside them as their friend.
His wife is gone, yes.
But everything he longs for—
connection, peace, meaning, love—
is HERE. NOW.
He couldn’t bring her back.
But he could stop reliving the pain,
stop circling the question,
“Why did this happen?”
The world around him was still spinning.
But inside, he had found stillness.
He had seen the open door of his cage.
And, my friend—he walked through it.
He left behind every blaming, painful, stressful thought…
because something in him was more interested in living than in being right.
More interested in freedom than in resentment.
It’s almost incomprehensible.
And yet—it happened.
To me, Mark is a shining example of inner freedom.
And that’s what I wish every client could see sooner:
That they are free.
That everything they truly want is right here, right now—
beneath the noise in the world and their own head.
I want you to see that for yourself, dear reader.
Much love,
Shailia
P.S. Maybe today’s the day you notice the open door.
And if you’re wondering: What does that actually look like in real life?
In the next piece, I’ll share personal stories—my own and others’
about how true change often shows up not through effort, but through insight.
Real transformation, from the inside out.