19th March 2026

I’m in Auckland, New Zealand this week with our team for a conference. There’s been plenty of networking, plenty of presentations, plenty of meetings and the usual mix of ideas competing for attention. You listen, you take notes, you have good conversations, and you quietly wonder which moments will actually stick once you’re back home.

But the moment that stayed with me didn’t come from any of that. It came right at the end.

So today’s What Caught My Eye is a little different…

Award‑winning journalist Jehan Casinader closed the conference yesterday, and he had me laughing and, to be honest, at one stage quietly fighting back a couple of tears. Not because he was trying to provoke emotion, but because he was doing something far rarer at a professional conference: he put himself completely out there.

Despite years of awards and media polish, there was nothing guarded about what he shared. He spoke candidly about his own journey — the ambition, the early success, the accolades, and the mental battles — while also generously shining a light on the remarkable people he’s met and learned from along the way.

What struck me most was how recognisable the life pattern was. From the outside, everything looked exceptional — high performance, the youngest‑ever presenter on Sunday (our version of 60 minutes), constant delivery, pressure, always turning up and doing the job. But beneath that surface, things were far more complicated.

One of his most confronting observations was this: mental distress doesn’t always look like falling apart. Sometimes it looks like functioning. Achieving. Smiling. Performing at a high level while carrying far more than anyone realises.

In a room full of driven, capable professionals, I reckon that landed hard.

Stories, not labels

Rather than leaning into clinical language, Jehan gently challenged the way we talk about mental health – the idea that people are either “well” or “ill”. It’s not like diagnosing a broken leg! He questioned how helpful those labels really are when there’s no objective test for so many of them, and when so much distress is a normal response to an increasingly demanding, noisy and uncertain world. It’s being human!

His question wasn’t “what’s wrong with you?”

It was: “what’s happened to you — and what story are you telling about it?”

The bit that really stayed with me

At the heart of Jehan’s talk was the idea that every one of us carries a story about who we are, where we’ve come from, and where our life is heading. That story is shaped early by childhood experiences, by the little but poignant moments, by the messages we absorb without even realising it.

He spoke about research showing that it’s not so much what happens to us that determines outcomes, but the meaning we attach to those events. Same facts. Different story. Very different impact.

As a parent of kids aged 16, 18 and 20, that hit home.

They’re all in that phase of life where they’re quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) deciding who they are, what they’re capable of, and how the world works. The stories they’re forming now about failure, resilience, worth and possibility will travel with them for a long time.

One thing Jehan said during the Q&A really stuck with me: feeling anxious, overwhelmed or stuck doesn’t define who you are. It’s something you’re experiencing now, not something you are. That distinction feels incredibly important for young people and honestly, for all of us too.

Not positive thinking, something deeper

What I appreciated most was that this wasn’t about forced optimism or pretending everything is fine. Jehan was clear: the facts don’t change. The challenges don’t disappear.

What can change is how we frame them.

He left us with a simple question he asks himself every day: How can I tell a different story, using the same facts?

Not denial. Not spin. Just a conscious choice about meaning.

As the closing note to an “Advice” conference, the message felt particularly relevant.

Whether we call it this or not, advisers are storytellers. We help people make sense of uncertainty, place today’s decisions into a longer context, and hold a version of the future that still includes agency and hope even when headlines suggest otherwise.

Two people can face the same markets, the same economic conditions, the same uncertainty but experience them completely differently depending on the story they’re telling themselves about what comes next.

What made Jehan such a compelling presenter was the way he lived them, in real time, on stage. He laughed at himself. He shared things most people would never say into a microphone. He reminded me how powerful it is when someone chooses honesty over performance.

It was a fitting way to end the conference, and a reminder I didn’t know I needed: that if we don’t actively author our own story, the world, the media, the noise, the fear will happily write one for us.

And those stories shape us far more than we realise. Don’t delve on the past, learn from it. Reframe your brain. Constantly.

Tell it the story you want it to hear.

Thanks Jehan.

For those who would like to explore the usual commentary and source material behind our observations, please contact me for our latest Falconer Advisers Research – Macro Tones.

As always, What Caught My Eye is intended to highlight the issues we’re spending time thinking about, not to predict outcomes, but to better understand the environment we’re operating in.

— Scott