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A Spark Of Awareness

A Spark Of Awareness

Written by: Sophie Vo
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A Spark Of Awareness is a weekly 15-minute reflection practice for conscious leaders to practice self-awareness. Your time to pause, and sit with yourself. No distraction, just self-listening. Every week, Sophie Vo will offer a human prompt, drawn from real transformation work with tech and gaming founders, executives, and leaders to help you step out of old scripts, reconnect with your truth, and lead from integrity, presence, and self-mastery. Sophie is a leadership guide for high-achieving and conscious leaders. With 17 years of leadership experience in the tech and gaming industry, Sophie has built and led 30+ global teams across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and has mentored over 200 executives across VC-backed startups and public companies. A four-time founder, her most recent venture scaled to six figures in its first year and evolved into ORIN, a curated global network redefining leadership for women.

riseandplay.substack.comSophie Vo Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Self-Help Success
Episodes
  • The Shadow #2 of Leadership — The Need for Variety and Uncertainty

    The Shadow #2 of Leadership — The Need for Variety and Uncertainty
    Jun 2 2026
    Welcome to a new episode of Spark of Awareness, continuing the series on the six human needs.If you missed the previous episode, I encourage you to connect with it. Each of these needs carries both a constructive expression and a shadow expression. In leadership, these shadows inevitably appear to varying degrees, and when they remain unconscious, they can hinder growth, decision-making, and long-term impact.Today, we explore the second human need: variety and uncertainty.This need reflects the desire for change, novelty, stimulation, unpredictability, adventure, risk, and new experiences. It is the drive toward what is unknown and evolving.If you recognize this in yourself, it is worth examining honestly.The Need for Variety in LeadershipPersonally, this need has been very present in my own life.I have often been drawn to new projects, new experiences, and new environments that create a sense of renewed energy. Repetition, long cycles, and sustained commitment have at times felt difficult.At its extreme, this pattern can lead to restlessness and a constant search for change. Without awareness, it can manifest in premature exits from teams, companies, or relationships — not necessarily because something is wrong, but because internal energy is pushing toward novelty.In hindsight, I can see moments where I was not responding to external reality, but to an internal need for change. Instead of understanding what was happening within me, I expressed it through external disruption.This pattern influences how things begin and end — projects, commitments, and relationships.The Shadow of Constant ChangeIn leadership, this need can become highly destabilizing.For example, in executives or founders, it may appear as constant shifts in direction — an ongoing pursuit of what feels new, exciting, or stimulating. However, what feels energizing for the individual is not always what a business requires.Organizations often need stability, consistency, and sustained execution. When leadership is driven primarily by novelty, it can create confusion and lack of grounding within teams.A key challenge is distinguishing between:* Necessary evolution* And personal preference for changeWithout this distinction, decision-making becomes reactive rather than strategic.Restlessness and the Creation of ChaosThis need can also express itself through intensity.When there is no clear channel for novelty or stimulation, it may manifest as unnecessary complexity, conflict, or even chaos. Situations become more complicated than they need to be, not because of external conditions, but because internal energy seeks movement.In some cases, this creates artificial urgency — a sense that something must be fixed, solved, or disrupted in order to feel alive.In business environments, this can be particularly damaging, especially where discipline, clarity, and consistency are required.Instability and Lack of CommitmentWhen the need for variety dominates, it often leads to instability.There can be a resistance to planning, structure, or long-term commitment. This pattern is also visible in broader society, where commitment in work, relationships, and long-term projects is increasingly fragile.In a leadership context, this becomes a barrier to mastery. Growth requires repetition, patience, and sustained focus. Without that, execution becomes fragmented.Another shadow expression is addiction to novelty: constantly starting new things while rarely completing them.This leads to scattered energy and unfinished potential.The Cost of Unchanneled EnergyAt the core, this is not a lack of energy — it is often the opposite. Too much energy.Many people with this pattern have significant internal energy, creativity, and drive. The challenge is not generating energy, but directing it.When it is not consciously channeled, it tends to fragment:* too many projects* constant restarting* unresolved commitments* loss of continuityInstead of creating value, the energy disperses.The key question becomes: how do you channel energy into creation rather than disruption?Awareness and Rechanneling EnergyThe first step is awareness: recognizing the pattern without judgment.Personally, I noticed a tendency to start many projects but struggle to sustain them. Over time, I learned that consistency itself is a discipline — not a limitation of creativity.The practice is not to suppress this energy, but to contain and redirect it.When restlessness arises, the first step is not immediate action. It is observation. Sitting with the energy without reacting to it.Often, nothing needs to be done immediately. The body may feel agitated, but the system stabilizes when the impulse is not instantly acted upon.Once the intensity settles, the energy can be redirected into something constructive:* writing* reflecting* creating* consolidating vision* refining directionThe goal is not to eliminate movement, but to transform it into intentional creation.Separating Expression from ...
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    19 mins
  • The #1 Shadow of Leadership: The Need of Control

    The #1 Shadow of Leadership: The Need of Control
    May 26 2026
    Welcome to a new episode of Spark of Awareness.I’ve been away for a few weeks, integrating everything that happened over the past months. Many positive changes took place, but integration takes time. Sometimes, making priorities means letting go and accepting that we do not always have control — a theme I’ll explore throughout this series.In this series, I’m diving into the six human needs and their shadow expressions in leadership.The framework of the six human needs appears across several psychology and coaching work. You may know it through Tony Robbins’ work, but there are many models exploring human motivation and behavior: self-determination theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and others.I’m always interested in examining how humans function through different lenses. What I find valuable about the six human needs model is its ability to reveal our patterns and shadows.The purpose of this reflection is cultivating self-awareness. Self-awareness allows us to become more conscious of what we do, how we think, and ultimately, how we act.The six human needs are:* Certainty* Variety / Uncertainty* Significance* Love and Connection* Growth* ContributionEach episode in this series explores one of these needs through the lens of leadership and self-awareness. Today, I’m focusing on the first: the need for certainty.The Need for Certainty as the Need for ControlThe need for certainty is highly present in business and leadership.If I had to translate certainty into practical leadership behavior, I would call it the need for control.When the need for certainty becomes dominant, it often turns into an excessive focus on control. In organizations, this pattern appears frequently.We try to control outcomes. We seek certainty around success. We want guarantees that we will meet our targets, grow, survive, or secure the future.This creates pressure — pressure from leadership to control markets, despite the reality that markets cannot be controlled.It shows up as controlling employees, peers, or outcomes. It can manifest as manipulation, increased dependency on systems or people, and a loss of sovereignty.The need for certainty itself is not wrong. All human needs are valid.The problem emerges when a need becomes unexamined and overextended. At that point, it turns into a shadow — a blocker to growth, personal development, and consciousness.The Shadow Side of CertaintyThe shadow of certainty is an excessive attachment to control, safety, and predictability.We want every action we take today to guarantee future success. We want certainty that effort will produce the desired outcome.Unfortunately, reality does not work that way.Effort increases probability, but it does not guarantee results — especially in business.Startup success rates alone remind us of this reality.This overinvestment in certainty often extends to teams and relationships. Leaders may try to control employees to ensure they stay forever. Similar patterns appear in personal relationships: controlling someone to prevent them from leaving, or to obtain something from them.But controlling the market, outcomes, or other people is ultimately an illusion.People do what they want to do. They often act according to their own motivations, not according to our expectations.Recognizing this is an important reminder: much of what we try to control is beyond our control.The Reinforcing Cycle of ControlThe need for certainty easily becomes a reinforcing loop.When control fails, we often respond by trying to create stronger mechanisms of control: more contracts, more legal protections, more planning, tighter agreements, reduced freedom.The question becomes:Do you notice yourself forcing guarantees in order to feel in control?The path forward is not stronger control.It is learning to release control.It is surrender.Learning to SurrenderI speak from personal experience here.The need for certainty was deeply present in my earlier life. Certainty represented safety. I wanted assurance that no one would harm me, that there would be financial runway, that my salary would keep me safe.Working in the games industry taught me otherwise.It has been an incredible journey, but also one filled with uncertainty.Teams closed. People left. Expected numbers did not materialize. I left companies I had not planned to leave.Over time, I learned — often the hard way — that there is very little I truly control.Practicing Not KnowingIf you recognize yourself clinging to certainty, especially when it prevents growth, the practice is simple, though not easy:Practice not knowing.What does it feel like, in your body, to let go of control little by little?For me, releasing control created anxiety and stress. It became a gradual practice: letting go a little more, then a little more again.What can you release and discover that nothing catastrophic happens when you stop controlling?At minimum, your body often feels different — less contracted, less tense, less ...
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    19 mins
  • Building Bridges Between Entrepreneurship and Consciousness

    Building Bridges Between Entrepreneurship and Consciousness
    May 19 2026

    In this episode, Sam Bell (host of the Natural Genius podcast) interviews Sophie Vo about bringing more of the whole human into business: heart, healing, responsibility, joy, intuition and higher consciousness.Sophie has spent more than 20 years in technology, entrepreneurship, games and leadership. Now, through ORIN and her wider work, she supports leaders and women to come back to their own truth, voice and power. This conversation explores what becomes possible when business can hold more than strategy and execution. It can also hold healing, love, self-mastery, connection and the unseen dimensions that shape how people build.

    🌿Content note: this conversation includes brief references to plant medicine.🙏 Thank you to Ludovic Bodin for introducing Sam and Sophie.This episode explores:• Joy as a daily practice• Women’s leadership, sisterhood and returning to yourself• Healing, safety and going deeper than the mind• Business as a responsibility, not only a vehicle for achievement• Bridging the physical business world with the more invisible world• Love in leadership, emotional self-mastery and conscious founders• Human Design, Enneagram, plant medicine and tools that help us understand ourselves• Vulnerability, multidimensionality and being more fully yourself in publicIn 2024, Sophie made a complete transition to dedicate herself to bringing greater consciousness into leadership and business, restoring integrity, vitality and balance to the world.Conversation references:• Natural Genius podcast • Ludovic Bodin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludovicbodin• Human Design: https://www.mybodygraph.com/• Enneagram Institute: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/

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    🌿 Next ORIN Retreat + Medicine on Sept 11-16 (Portugal) 🌿



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit riseandplay.substack.com
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    41 mins
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