Drop the Scorecard and Reclaim Your Nervous System
“Fairness is a story the mind tells. Freedom is a state the body learns.” – Rita Castillo-Salese
So You “Think Life Should Be Fair” Mindset Trap
A few years ago, I sat in an audience of over two thousand people and watched our keynote speaker get carried onto the stage. You read that correctly: carried onto the stage and lifted up onto a table at its center.
He could not walk on stage that day, or any day, because he has no legs. He also has no arms. Our speaker was Nick Vujicic, one of the top motivational speakers in the world, born with an extremely rare congenital disorder called Phocomelia.
In a world full of people keeping score, Nick would be the first to tell you life isn’t rosy or fair, but it is absolutely worth living.
Now notice what just happened in your body as you read that. Maybe your chest softened. Maybe something in you exhaled. That’s the point: fairness isn’t just an idea you argue about in your head. It’s a contraction you carry in your body.
Every time you think “this shouldn’t be happening to me,” your system registers an injustice, and an injustice reads as a threat. Jaw tightens. Shoulders climb. Breath goes shallow. You’re not just frustrated; you’re braced.
Scorekeeping in a Blazer
Here’s the version nobody talks about. The high achiever who says, “Oh, I know life isn’t fair, I’m a realist.” Except they’re still silently tallying. Why did her launch take off, and mine didn’t? Why did he get the promotion, the marriage, the easy metabolism? The mouth says “realist.” The body says “scorekeeper.” The clenched jaw in the team meeting doesn’t lie, even when the ego does.
I wrote about this mindset trap back in 2020, and everything I said then still holds: believing life should be fair keeps you whiny, entitled, and stuck. But what I understand now, after years of somatic work, is that you can’t think your way out of a pattern your body is holding.
In today’s issue, I’ll show you what the fairness trap is actually costing your body, and give you 3 somatic keys to finally put down the scorecard.
Why the Fairness Trap Is Quietly Wrecking You
1. It Keeps Your Nervous System in Permanent Protest
Perceived unfairness is one of the fastest ways to flip your brain into threat mode. The moment you register “that’s not fair,” cortisol spikes, muscles brace, and your prefrontal cortex, your brain’s CEO, goes offline. You’re no longer strategizing from your wisest self. You’re accusing from a place of survival.
And because life will reliably keep being unfair, a fairness-based mindset means your system never stands down. That’s chronic activation dressed up as principle.
2. It Drains the Energy Your Purpose Needs
Every hour spent rehearsing what you deserved is an hour your body spent in contraction instead of creation. Resentment is expensive. It lives in the tight throat, the heavy chest, the 3 a.m. mental courtroom where you re-argue your case to a judge who never shows up.
Meanwhile, your self-worth becomes a moving target, recalculated every time someone else gets something you wanted. You hand your power to a ledger you didn’t write and can’t close. The body holds the score of every comparison, and it always rules against you.
3 Somatic Keys to Drop the Scorecard
1. Feel the “Not Fair” Before You Argue It
The next time “this isn’t fair” flares up, don’t go straight to the courtroom in your head. Go to the sensation first. Where does unfairness live in your body? Chest? Gut? Jaw? Get curious instead of indignant.
Take one slow, deliberate breath, not to dismiss what happened, but to give your nervous system a moment to downregulate before your mind starts building its case. This is your Power Pause. From a regulated body, you can then ask the only question that matters: is this mine to control, or mine to release?
What you do have control over: Your
- Attitude
- Routines
- Thoughts
- Next move
What you don’t have control over:
- Other people
- Outcomes
- Timing
Discernment from a settled body is freedom; discernment from a braced one is just a sophisticated grudge.
2. Trade the Ledger for Gratitude (In Your Body, Not Just Your Journal)
Gratitude isn’t a platitude; it’s a state change. Research consistently links practiced gratitude with greater happiness and better physical and psychological health. But here’s the somatic upgrade: don’t just list what you’re grateful for, feel it. Name one thing, then stay with it for thirty seconds until you notice the shift: the chest opening, the breath deepening, the shoulders dropping an inch.
Your nervous system cannot run resentment and embodied gratitude at the same time. Every time you choose to feel the good that’s already here, you’re not being naive. You’re rewiring.
3. Compare Down the Timeline, Not Across the Room
Comparison is the fairness trap’s favorite fuel. When you compare yourself to someone else, you magnify one embellished quality of theirs and minimize everything in yourself, and your body responds by making itself smaller. Slumped posture. Collapsed chest. You literally shrink.
So change the axis. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Then anchor it somatically: stand tall, lengthen your spine, take up your actual space, and name one way you’ve grown. Notice how different that feels from scrolling someone else’s highlight reel. That felt difference is your nervous system learning a new definition of enough.
Life is a river, not a ledger. Sometimes it’s slow and peaceful, sometimes it’s roaring down a mountainside, sometimes it sits at a stagnant plateau waiting to begin again. Rivers don’t owe you fairness. They offer you current.
Your work is to feel for the part of you that’s still clinging to the riverbank.
This is what clutch leadership feels like in your body.
Anyone can keep score.
Few can let it go.
The difference changes everything.
In the words of Nick Vujicic, who could not walk on stage that day or any day:
“You can’t even imagine the good that awaits you if you refuse to give up.”
tay courageous. Stay embodied.
In Optimism,
Rita
Somatic Mindset Life Coach • Speaker • Group Facilitator
Rita Castillo-Salese is a Somatic Mindset Coach, Speaker, and Group Facilitator with nearly a decade of experience working with purpose-driven entrepreneurs. Rita’s work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, somatic intelligence, faith, and mindset, helping highly driven individuals break free from patterns that got them here yet quietly keep them stuck. She doesn’t just inspire clients to think differently; she helps them lead with their health and wholeness first.
To work with Rita: ritahudgens@gmail.com