Why Believing in Santa Then, Is Limiting Your Potential Now

As Christmas rolls around, I’ve had a bit of an unexpected realisation. And no—it’s not that I left my gift shopping until Christmas Eve again (although, also true).
It’s about Santa. More specifically, how believing in Santa as a kid may be one of the hidden reasons you’re struggling to get what you want as an adult.

I know. It sounds like a stretch. But bear with me—I think you’ll see it.

Let’s rewind the clock.

Do you remember the thrill in the lead-up to Christmas? The sheer anticipation? That giddy, tingling feeling knowing Santa was on his way? He was this magical man from the North Pole, making toys with his elves and flying around the world in one night with a sleigh full of gifts. You could literally write him a letter with everything you wanted and—voilà!—he’d deliver it. That’s what we were told, right?

But there was a catch: you had to be good.

Not just “do your homework and say please and thank you” good. You had to go the extra mile. Be polite. Do your chores without complaint. Don’t fight with your siblings, even when they absolutely deserved it.

And if you managed to tick all those boxes? You’d be rewarded with everything on your list. Magical, right?

You even buttered Santa up—milk and cookies, a few carrots for the reindeer. Maybe a cold beer if you were in Australia and it was a stinking hot night. You put in the effort. You believed. You showed up.

And then… he didn’t.

He didn’t deliver what you asked for.

Maybe he brought something completely different. Maybe you got some weird knockoff version of what you wanted. Maybe your sister got what you asked for. Or maybe what you got was broken. Faulty. Incomplete.

I remember one year, I got this doll that was supposed to sing Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. She had this little record slot in her back. Except—mine didn’t come with the record. So my mum’s workaround? I had to borrow the record that came with my sister’s doll… while she was trying to play with her gift. It was a total disaster.

I was angry and upset with the hard plastic, mute doll that I didn’t even ask for. She didn’t sing, she didn’t do anything, and after that, I couldn’t have cared less how her garden grew. I was six years old, I had been good all year, and I felt ripped off.

And honestly? That moment stucked.

Because that’s the first time I really remember feeling like I did everything right—and still got shafted. And worse—there was nothing I could do about it.

Sound familiar?

Maybe you had your own Mary-Mary moment.
Maybe you asked for the real Cabbage Patch Kid and got one that looked like it had been run over by a bus, missing its birth certificate and smelling faintly of chemical sadness.
Maybe you got socks. Again. Or a book. Or something practical and beige when all you wanted was something cool and sparkly and fun.

And what did your parents say?
“Oh well, Santa must’ve run out.”
“Maybe other kids deserved it more.”
“Maybe you weren’t good enough.”

And in that moment—your heart dropped.

You were confused. Angry. Frustrated. Hurt.
Because those weren’t the rules. That wasn’t part of the deal. No one said Santa might run out of inventory or play favourites or operate on some mysterious merit system you didn’t understand. The message was simple: be good, get presents. End of story.

Except… it wasn’t.

So year after year, you’d get your hopes up. You’d get excited. You’d do the “right” thing.
And year after year, you'd get something that almost resembled what you asked for—or worse, a cheap substitution.

You’d feel disappointed. But you didn’t have the words or tools to process it, so you’d just… internalise it.

Eventually, you realised Santa was your parents. And you pretended for a while, just to keep the magic (and the gifts) going. But something deeper had already taken root.

And now? You're an adult.
You're not waiting for Santa anymore, but you’re still stuck in the same loop.

You work hard, you follow the rules, you try to be “good”... and yet the promotion goes to someone else.
You manifest the dream partner… who turns out to be emotionally unavailable.
You finally get the car, the house, the opportunity… and it’s got missing parts, hidden fees, emotional baggage, or that one very annoying flaw you didn’t see coming.

And deep down, you wonder:

• “What did I do wrong?”
• “Why does it work for everyone else but not me?”
• “Is there something broken in me?”
• “No matter how hard I try, I never get what I really want.”

That’s the Santa story still playing out.

It’s not about Christmas. It’s about the pattern.
It’s about the paradigm you unknowingly built as a child—a collection of moments that wired your subconscious to expect disappointment, lack, and unfairness.

You started to believe:

• “I’m not good enough.”
• “Other people always win.”
• “I can’t trust life to follow through.”
• “Even when I get what I want, it won’t work out.”
• “It’s not safe to hope too hard.”

Your subconscious absorbed those feelings—those beliefs—and made them part of your self-concept.
And that self-concept? It became your internal GPS. Quietly, consistently steering you toward outcomes that match those beliefs.
Because you don’t manifest what you want. You manifest what you believe is true about you.

So now, when you try to create change—when you set goals or do the “inner work” or try to manifest something meaningful—you’re dragging the weight of disappointment behind you. You're not just working toward a goal. You're working against a deeply ingrained belief that what you want probably won’t happen, and if it does, it’ll be flawed or short-lived or somehow taken from you.

And that’s why you feel stuck.

You’re not broken. You’re not unlucky. You’re just living out an old story—one that started with a fat man in a red suit who didn’t deliver.

But here’s the kicker:
If you could create a paradigm like that when you were five or six years old without even realising it—just imagine what you could consciously create now.

That’s the magic I help people tap into.

I help you locate the original “Santa stories” that shaped your self-concept—then collapse them, rewrite them, and replace them with beliefs that actually support the life you want to live.

If this post hit something in you—if it stirred that feeling of yes, that’s me—I invite you to book a free 90-minute coaching session with me (valued at $333). We’ll unpack your internal narrative, identify what’s keeping you stuck, and map out a clear plan that aligns with who you really are—not the version of you who thinks she's cursed, broken, or destined to live a life that’s almost what she wants.

You can implement the plan on your own—or we can collaborate to create breakthroughs so magical, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this sooner.

✨ Click below to book your session while they’re still available.
✨ Let’s collapse the disappointment paradigm for good.
✨ Let’s make your success inevitable.