In this week’s newsletter, we're reflecting on how small moments can alter the course of our lives. Moments that seem almost invisible at the time but carry an importance we only recognize much later. These moments have left me considering something fascinating, and we invite you to explore this enigma with me.

Living From Your Core Instead of Your Conditioning

NOVEMBER 21, 2025

Sometimes a single moment can change everything. It might pass quickly and inconspicuously and yet, leave an invisible mark on the inside, a sense that life could have turned out very differently.

Recently, I have had a few of those moments, and it made me consider something fascinating.Last week, I was driving to an appointment when another car pulled out in front of me without warning. I hit the brakes hard, felt the tires grip, and came to a jolting stop just in time. My immediate reaction was to look behind me, anticipating another car to slam into my trunk. Thankfully, nothing happened, and yet everything could have happened.

I continued on, the flow of traffic pushing up behind me. I could feel a wave move through me from my toes to my fingertips. First heat, then cold, and then the shaking began. My hands were steady enough on the wheel, but inside my whole body was feeling the impact of what had just been avoided.

While I was caught in the immediacy of what had just happened, I also began to think about the other possibilities. 

Fast forward to this week, when I started university again. Even writing that feels surreal. Logging into the learning portal, opening new syllabi, orienting myself to what lies ahead, I definitely felt the weight of commitment like a brick in my stomach.

Part of me is excited and curious, ready to explore this amazing path. Another part is stuck on all the reasons not to do it. The additional workload, the long study hours, and the pressure to perform on assignments is all too real. 

And again, while I am challenged this week with fear and hesitation about my future, I began to think about the other possibilities.

Yesterday I noticed it once more, standing barefoot in the grass. The ground was a little prickly, the sun was warm on my feet, and for a moment I simply paused to feel it. A few years ago walking on grass would have been impossible. After my foot injury I spent six months in a wheelchair, and the doctors told me there was only a future of living with pain.

Hearing those words, something in me refused to believe them.

I remember thinking, even in the middle of all the pain, that this could not be the end of the story. I didn’t know what healing would look like, or how long it would take, but I chose to believe there had to be another way forward.

Standing in the grass yesterday, I felt the path of that choice. Not only the relief of walking again, but also the awareness that a different future opened because I did not accept the one I was handed.

So, why am I sharing these seemingly unrelated stories? 

Because each of them holds the possibility of another life I could have lived. The car accident that almost was. The decision to start university again when it would have been easier not to. The moment I chose not to accept a future of pain. Every one of these embodied an energetic choice, branching my lived experience from the countless versions that might have been.

The Jōrni Podcast

I wonder about the lives that branch off from the choices we do and do not make.

How many versions of us are out there, shaped by accidents that did or didn’t happen, by doors we opened or closed, by the stories we agreed to or refused to take on as our own?

Science offers a way to think about this. In quantum physics, a particle can hold many possibilities until one is observed. One path becomes real, while the others fade away. In daily life, that looks less like physics and more like the choices we make. At every turn, we move from a field of possibilities onto the path we are living now.

And this isn’t just abstract theory. We catch glimpses of it in our lives every day. A chance meeting that changes everything. An email that arrives at just the right moment. A decision that shifts the entire course of our work or relationships. Each of those moments could have gone another way.

Which brings me back to why I am writing this. Because the thread running through all of it is not chance, but how we make choices. And there is a profound difference between choices shaped by conditioning and choices shaped by our core.

Conditioning has a way of bending our choices toward the familiar. It leans on approval, on safety, on the stories we have absorbed about what is acceptable. In the moment it can feel easier, even comforting, but over time it often leaves us with a sense of restlessness, as if something essential has been deleted.

Choices from the core feel different.

They are not always simple or convenient, but there is a coherence in them, a sense that we are standing inside our own truth rather than someone else’s.Sometimes the choice that changes a life doesn’t look like a choice at all. It looks like a small yes, a small no, your hand hovering over your keyboard, or a breath you take before you answer. Just an ostensibly insignificant moment that could change your life as you decide who is steering.

One direction may feel tight in your chest and send your mind racing with explanations and justifications. You consider what will be approved, what the risks are, or how this will look for you. The other direction is softer.

You breathe more deeply, and your mind is focused and acutely aware. You do not need to convince yourself. You simply know.

As you move through this week, I invite you to notice one of those dividing paths and follow the call to explore, to play, and to discover what unlocks when you embody a space that feels coherent rather than conditioned...

…and consider the infinite possibilities that will unfold from here.


Petra Brunnbauer

By Petra Brunnbauer

Petra Brunnbauer is an award-winning Mind-Body Coach, founder of The Jōrni®, host of the globally-ranked Jōrni Podcast, and author of The Functional Freeze Formula™. With a Master’s in Psychology and as a doctoral student in Mind-Body Medicine, Petra is committed to advancing holistic approaches to health and healing.


Share this post!


Tags

conscious choice, core living, deconditioning, embodied decision making, nervous system coherence


You may also like