Hi {{ first_name | default: "there" }},

I hope you’re having a gentle transition from 2025 into 2026.

I wanted to write to you personally because, at some point, something in my Design Feeling podcast or my workshop resonated enough for you to leave your email.

It might have been a long time ago and you may not even remember it.

That’s because I never actually sent a newsletter. 🙈 Part of the reason is one you might recognise. I wrestled with the familiar questions: do I have anything useful to say, what might people think and what if I get it wrong?

So first of all, thank you for your patience.

Secondly, you’re welcome to leave if this no longer feels relevant. You can unsubscribe with one click below. No hard feelings, no questions asked.

I started Design Feeling in January 2022 as a podcast for designers, product folks and entrepreneurs who wanted to ask deeper questions about how they work and live - through conversations on self-awareness, creative courage and meaning.

Over time, those conversations outgrew “design”.

They became less about craft and more about people navigating inherited scripts, the fear of breaking out of them and the quiet discomfort of living on autopilot.

Unthinking Space is simply a bigger room for those same questions.

We live in a world full of frameworks, formulas and “shoulds”. We’re taught what to think, how to think, who to be. Over time, these become mental ruts - scripts we follow without even realising.

Unthinking Space is where we start questioning those scripts.

It’s not anti-thinking. It’s about noticing default thoughts, inherited roles and unconscious patterns, questioning whether they serve you and choosing more consciously.

Practically, this shows up as a short weekly newsletter where I share reflections, questions and small experiments from my coaching work and my own life - shared openly and still in progress.

Unthinking Space keeps circling back to three themes that show up again and again in my coaching conversations, workshops and personal practice:

Seeing yourself more clearly - your conditioning, beliefs and emotional patterns - without judgement. More clarity on what’s been really driving you. From that clarity, better choices become possible.

Acting on what feels true before you feel ready. Speaking up, experimenting and moving despite fear - not because fear disappears, but because your self-worth is no longer on the line.

The more you increase your surface area for new actions and experiments, the more data you gather on what gives you energy rather than drains it and the closer your life starts to align with what truly matters to you.

This newsletter is where we’ll explore mindsets, experiments and tools across all three from my own lived experiences and those I’ve gathered from people smarter than me.

You can expect:

If you’re open to it, hit reply and tell me which of these you most want support with right now:

If this doesn’t feel like the right season for this kind of exploration, you can unsubscribe below with one click.

If it does, I’m glad you’re here for this next chapter.

With courage,

Nirish

PS. If you’d like a more supported way to start the new year, I’m also running a small, live 3-hour workshop on Sunday 11th January (1–4pm UK time). It’s for people who want a convert their end of year reflection into meaningful action. As a quiet thank-you for being here, you can use the code believer50 for 50% off if it’s a good fit for you. No pressure at all. This newsletter is an outcome of one of these workshops. 🙂