The Cast of Characters You Carry
What an old LEGO shelf taught me about the patterns we default to under pressure, and a simple practice for noticing yours before they run the show.
NOTICE
Sophia Mohammed
9/17/20263 min read
The other figures I kept are two grumpy old men - Statler and Waldorf as we know them all too well - are permanently heckling from a balcony seat. They remind me of two real mentors from my engineering years ... sharp, unimpressed by nonsense, the kind of teachers you don't fully appreciate until years later. What made them useful wasn't kindness - definitely not kindness. It was distance. They could see the whole room because they weren't in the scene, just watching it from above.
I believe that's the skill worth building: a mentor's-eye view of your own reactions.
Not to judge which character showed up, just to notice it, the way you'd notice a friend walk into a room.
'There's the loud one.' 'There's the one who's already checked out.'
Naming it is the pause. Here is where the choice lives.
I pulled my LEGO minifigures out of storage last week. Just a shelf of characters I'd kept from years of building with the kids. It was meant to be a quick, fun post. Instead I began to wonder why I kept THESE ones in particular - what was special about them?
Looking at that little crew, I realised there was nothing random about them. Each one is doing a job - and a great one too.
There's Animal up front, drumsticks mid-swing, all noise and no filter, the one who gets loud the second something's unfair.
Janice, the guitarist drifting through chaos like none of it can touch her, unbothered, letting things roll off.
There's the Swedish Chef running on instinct with no recipe in sight.
None of these are just toys.
They're characters I recognise, because I've watched myself play each role, usually without noticing until it's already happening.
Here's the part that matters for the Notice step of my coaching work: you already have a cast like this, whether you've ever put faces to it or not.
A version of you that goes loud the second you're overwhelmed.
A version that goes quiet and lets things slide because addressing it feels like too much.
A version that just puts her head down and gets on with it, whatever 'it' costs her.
None of these characters are wrong.
They're well-worn patterns, grooves your nervous system reaches for because they've worked before, or at least felt rather familiar. The problem isn't really that they exist. I think it's that most of us are already three lines into the script before we actually notice which character picked up the mic.
If you'd like a hand figuring out your own cast of characters, and what to do once you can spot them, I'd love to chat. Book a free Discovery Call and let's have a look together.
We all have a cast, whether we've named it or not
Next time you feel a reaction rising, before you act on it, try naming the character instead of the feeling.
Not 'I'm angry,' but 'there's my loud one, right on cue.'
Not 'I don't care,' but 'there's the one who goes quiet so this doesn't have to be dealt with today.
It sounds small. But, it actually isn't.
The moment you can name which character has taken the wheel, you've already stepped outside the autopilot that runs the whole thing unchallenged.
The mentors on the balcony
A small practice to try
This is exactly the practice behind the Weekly Trigger Tracker in my Calm Within Journal, if you want to work through it on paper rather than just in your head.
Naming the pattern is step one.
What you do once you've noticed it is where the real work starts, and that's the part worth having support for.
Sophia is a PREKURE certified health coach, homeschooling mum, and retired Technical & Engineering Manager. At Nur al fajr she works with homeschooling mums who are ready to Notice, Understand, and Realign, one honest step at a time.
