The plan I meant to finish in a day
This is a story about my inner critic, my soul, and a plan I didn’t finish. I’ve been working through the Life Plan process from Living Forward by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. It’s a beautiful practice. You write your own eulogy, name your priorities, and create an action plan for each “life account”: health, marriage, family, work, spirit, and more.
The reflection was rich and clarifying. I could feel my soul leaning in.
Then I stalled. For a whole week, I didn’t touch it.
Meet Helga
My inner critic has a name: Helga. Picture an Olympic gymnastics coach, arms crossed, clipboard in hand, never quite satisfied.
If you’ve been watching season 4 of Ted Lasso, you may recognize her. Helga reminds me a great deal of Coach Alice Chilton, the new assistant coach of the Lady Greyhounds, played by Tanya Reynolds. She’s sharp, demanding, and nothing like Ted’s sunny optimism. I’ve loved watching her grow this season, and it gives me hope for Helga, too. 
Helga was furious. In her eyes, I was procrastinating. The life plan was unfinished. So was my business plan, along with several marketing projects. She even pointed out that I wasn’t keeping the commitments I had just made to my own soul. (Ouch.) I felt irritated all week.
But what was I actually doing that week?
- Seeing clients
- Caring for my body
- Connecting with my grown children
- Catching up on housework
- Getting rREST session to help Helga see her way out of her box
Honestly, life was going well, no thanks to Helga. My soul felt like it was in quiet rebellion. It wanted to follow what was inspired in the moment, not a list of shoulds, musts, oughts, and have-tos.
Around the same time, my team shared a post on my behalf asking successful people a question: Are you driven by pressure or by purpose? Are you pushed into action by the need to be busy, useful, and successful in others’ eyes, or are you acting from intention?
I had to laugh. Helga had quietly turned my purpose project into a pressure project. According to her, I was already doing it wrong, because the book suggests completing the Life Plan in a single day, and I hadn’t.
What was really happening in my brain
One framework helps me make sense of Helga: neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life (2021). Drawing on her own recovery from a stroke, she describes four “characters” rooted in the thinking and emotional tissue of our left and right hemispheres.
- Character 1 (left thinking): the planner and doer. Organized, focused, and great at getting things done.
- Character 2 (left emotional): the protector. It learned from past pain how to keep us safe, and it sounds the alarm when something feels threatening. Character 2 often shows up as an inner critic, like Helga.
- Character 3 (right emotional): the present-moment self. Playful, curious, creative, and connected to others.
- Character 4 (right thinking): the expansive self. Peaceful, grateful, and connected to something larger than us.
Here’s how I see it in my own life. Helga is the “success strategies” of my Character 2: the protective patterns that once kept me safe by keeping me achieving. Over the years, the strategies of my inner critic learned to grab the wheel and steer my Character 1.
The result is a hijacking. My capable, organized planner stops serving my higher intentions and starts serving the fear of my inner critic. A Life Plan meant to bring clarity becomes one more performance to grade. And when Character 2 is running the show, Characters 3 and 4 get shut out of the room.
This fits what we know about the stressed brain. When the threat response is in charge, attention narrows, and everything starts to feel urgent. The reflective, present, connected parts of us don’t get much airtime.
Meet Kai ʻOliʻoli
I’ve given my Characters 3 and 4, who are wonderfully integrated, a name together: Kai ʻOliʻoli. To me, Kai ʻOliʻoli is a reflection of my soul.
The name holds the feeling for me. In Hawaiian, kai means sea or ocean, and ʻoliʻoli means joy, delight, and happiness. Together they describe a calm, immense presence that expands deep and wide, filled with joy: an ocean of calm joy as far as you can see. 
Kai ʻOliʻoli is the part of me that wants to linger on a walk, savor a conversation with my grown child, and feel the gratitude of a good session with a client. She doesn’t keep a checklist. She follows what feels alive right now.
That “rebellious” week? It wasn’t procrastination. It was Kai ʻOliʻoli finally getting a say. I was living the very priorities my Life Plan was meant to protect. 
What I needed wasn’t more discipline from Helga. I needed my Character 1 back in service to my soul instead of my fear.
What I’m taking with me
My soul is clear: the value of a Life Plan is in the process, the reflection and the clarity. It isn’t in producing a perfect document. Here’s how I now see commitments, with all four characters at the table.
- Commitments work best when they support each other. They don’t need separate compartments. One nature walk with my husband nourishes my health, my marriage, and my spirit at once. That’s Character 1’s planning in partnership with Kai ʻOliʻoli’s joy.
- Commitments are as much about being as doing. A priority can be a way of showing up, not only a task to complete.
- Commitments are flexible, not rigid routines. A plan is a compass, not a cage.
- Commitments are guided by presence. Not by a template, and not by a prediction I made in the past. The question becomes: what does this moment ask of me?
Helga still shows up. She probably always will, because she believes she’s protecting me. But now, when I hear her, I can pause, breathe, and ask what Kai ʻOliʻoli knows. Dr. Taylor offers a practice for exactly this, the Brain Huddle, which invites all four characters into the conversation before we choose. 
Do you have a Helga?
If you built your success on getting things done, meeting expectations, and pushing through, you may recognize your own Helga, your own inner critic. She’s not your enemy. She’s a set of old protective patterns doing their best with outdated instructions.
And underneath her voice, there’s a part of you that already knows the way: present, joyful, connected, and wise. Whatever you call it, it deserves a seat at the table when you plan your life.
So I’ll leave you with the question that made me laugh at myself: Are you driven by pressure, or guided by purpose? 
I walk the talk. 
That week, Helga was so irritating that I traded rREST sessions with my colleague Dr. Destia Skinner. (www.Revoltionary.health) Helga didn’t need to be silenced or overpowered. She needed help seeing her way out of her box, so my inner planner could get back to serving my soul.
If you’re ready to quiet those pressure patterns at their root, so your soul can lead, I’d love to talk with you. Book a free Soul Strategy Session: rrest.drcindysholes.com/BlogOct2026
Credits: The Life Plan process is from Living Forward by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. The four characters and the Brain Huddle are from Whole Brain Living by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. “Kai ʻOliʻoli” and “Helga” are my own names for these parts of myself. Coach Alice Chilton is a character from Apple TV’s Ted Lasso.
