From Surviving to Living to Thriving

Welcome to part 5 in a 7-part blog series exploring the A.I.M. for Effectiveness© journey — told through real-life stories.

Each blog explores a different part of the A.I.M. approach — Awareness, Integration, and Modelling — and how these show up in the mess and magic of daily life. If you’ve only just joined us, you can catch up via the links at the bottom of this page.

Keep reading — these aren’t just concepts. They’re human experiences, and maybe you’ll see yourself in the stories we share.

Integration: Part 2 of Step 2 in the A.I.M. for Effectiveness© Journey

It was chaos.

The nun had left the classroom for just a moment, and the girls around me exploded into wild laughter, running around, climbing on desks, throwing books. It was as if every rule had vanished in an instant, and I was terrified.

Not because of the noise itself, but because I knew what would happen. We would get into trouble, there would be punishment - I had seen it before.

So I did what I thought was right.
I tried to stop it, I tried to protect us.

I stood up, heart pounding, and shouted: “Stop it! STOP IT!”

I was the only one shouting. The others were creating chaos, but it was my voice that broke through the noise.

I was trying to take the lead, trying to bring order, trying to prevent what I feared was coming, but then Sister Brendan burst back into the room, her face thunderous. She scanned the chaos, looking for someone to blame and her eyes landed on me.

“Who is shouting like that?” she demanded. Silence fell. My voice had stood out, and I was the one who was punished, with the ruler.

It was the first time, and the last.

By then, I had already sensed the unspoken rule: Be quiet, do not stand out, do not speak up, comply. That moment etched itself into my nervous system, like a number of other incidents in my childhood.

A protective strategy had already been in place, but this incident reinforced it. It was the last straw.

From that point on, I kept my mouth shut - even when I was bursting to speak, even when something inside me was screaming to be heard.

... and so it continued – quietly, persistently – for decades, until I began to realise: this was not really me. It was just the strategy that had kept me safe.

The body remembers

You see, our minds may forget, but our bodies remember.

We often talk about personal development as if it is all about mindset, about thinking differently, being more self-aware, but if you are living in a body that feels unsafe, none of that insight sticks because your nervous system regulation isn’t wired for success, it’s wired for survival.

What if the goal is not happiness, but survival?

Ludovic Leroux puts it bluntly in his book Nerf Vague: Adieu stress, anxiété, timidité . . .:

“The objective of people, and all living beings, is not happiness, but survival.”

It is a stark but truthful realisation. We all come into the world with a built-in survival instinct which constantly asks: “Am I safe?”

If the answer is no, your system activates a protective mode. It clamps down, it puts up walls to keep you safe. You may freeze, flee, lash out, or hide behind a smile.

This survival instinct doesn’t just shape our biology; it drives our behavioural patterns, often long after the threat has passed.

It also connects deeply with the thinking behind the Functional Fluency model developed by Susannah Temple, which focuses on the (I would say) challenges of personal functioning through three fundamental levels. These levels stem from questions deeply rooted in our survival and continuation of the species, shaping how we communicate, build relationships, and adapt to change.

Living Mode: beyond surviving

You cannot think your way into Living Mode, not when your nervous system still believes there is danger, and this is where Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory offers a powerful insight. According to Porges, your autonomic nervous system is constantly scanning for cues of safety or threat, even before your conscious mind catches up. It is called neuroception.

When the system senses danger, either real or remembered, it automatically activates protective responses: fight, flight, freeze, or appease, and that is where many of us spend far too much of our time…

But what does it mean to move beyond survival?

In Nerf Vague: Adieu stress, anxiété, timidité..., Ludovic Leroux offers practical tools to help people move from Survival Mode into what he calls Living Mode — a state where the nervous system is no longer dominated by threat, and space opens up to engage fully with life. Barry Long echoes this in Only Fear Dies, exploring how fear keeps us trapped in false identities that prevent presence and wholeness.

In Functional Fluency, we speak about the shift from surviving to thriving. When we connect Leroux’s idea of Living Mode with our understanding of thriving, a powerful truth emerges:

To truly live is to thrive.

To shift from survival patterns to conscious, effective choices.

To move from automatic reactivity to intentional engagement.

To reconnect with your full humanity.

To come home to yourself.

Bottom-up vs top down

When we are dysregulated, we default to top-down strategies — willpower, rational thinking and mindset (top down) — but lasting behavioural change begins from the bottom up, through the body.

That means tuning into physical sensations, noticing when your breath shortens, feeling the clench in your jaw, the tension in your shoulders, and recognising…

“I am not living right now — I am surviving.”

And from there, regulating yourself, through breath, movement, connection, rhythm, stillness. Only then can your Integrating Adult¹ become active again and lead you into effective behaviour.

Functional Fluency depends on nervous system safety

This is why Functional Fluency is not just a thinking framework, but a way of being. It is about the head–heart–gut connection — how our thinking, feeling, and instincts work together through the body.

When we tune into all three, we are more likely to respond with clarity and purpose. Functional Fluency supports this by helping us align our inner state with our outward actions.

You cannot fluently choose effective behaviour if your body believes it is under threat and you cannot respond with intention if your system has hijacked you into survival.

The Integrating Adult in action² depends on nervous system regulation — on knowing how to bring yourself back to safety, presence, and choice, and here is something you may not know:
roughly 80% of the messages travelling along the vagus nerve go from body to brain, not the other way around. Only 20% travel top down.

So when your body is in survival mode, it is not just a feeling, it becomes a filter, and your thoughts, reactions, and choices follow suit. This is why grounding is not optional — it’s an essential practice for emotional regulation and behavioural effectiveness.

Because you are not just a brain on legs, you are a whole being - a system, a sensor, and integration starts from the inside out.

Remember, integration isn’t a destination, it’s a daily practice. It’s the quiet work of noticing what’s happening inside you, and responding from awareness instead of old patterns.

In the AIM for Effectiveness Accelerator© journey, this is the heart of the “Integrate” step: aligning your inner experience with how you show up in the world.

You don’t need to be fixed.
You need to be met . . . with presence, compassion, and choice.
That’s where thriving begins.

Leona Bishop

^Footnotes: 

^{¹ The concept of the “Integrating Adult” was introduced by Keith Tudor and Graeme Summers in the field of Co-Creative Transactional Analysis.
² Susannah Temple described Functional Fluency as “the Integrating Adult in action”—bringing self-awareness through active reality-assessment into effective behavioural choice in the here and now.}

If you'd like to explore these ideas more personally, we've created a short reflective worksheet to guide you. You can download this fillable PDF worksheet at the bottom of the page.

It offers a simple grounding practice and a few gentle questions to help you notice your patterns and begin the shift from surviving to thriving . . . in your own time, and in your own way.