notes from liguria, italy

You can have both

By Margherita Patrone - Oct 17, 2026 - 4 min read - Issue #16

Yesterday, after two weeks of travelling, I finally landed back in Italy.
And coming home felt wonderful.
But a couple of years ago, the thought of returning home brought up something else.
Fear.
After building my life abroad, was I moving backwards?
Would coming home mean giving up some of the things I had worked so hard for?
Over time, I began gently offering myself another possibility.
Four little words.
You can have both.
A voice in my headphones
Lately, I have been listening to a fascinating audiobook called The Magic of Believing by Claude M. Bristol.
First published in 1948, it explores belief, mental imagery and the power of suggestion. It is a motivational book, and I take its ideas as things to reflect on rather than scientific proof.
One idea has stayed with me throughout these past two weeks.
We think so carefully about how we communicate with other people.
How we introduce an idea.
How we offer feedback.
How we encourage someone we love.
But how much attention do we give to the way we communicate with ourselves?
That conversation follows us everywhere.
And I have been noticing how much mine matters.
What a suggestion can do
The power of suggestion covers several psychological processes rather than one single bias.
One of them involves expectations.
And here, expectation means something very simple: what we anticipate will happen.
Someone tells you a wine is wonderful.
Before tasting it, you are already anticipating something enjoyable.
The suggestion has helped create an expectation.
And, in certain circumstances, that expectation can influence the experience.
In a 2008 study, Hilke Plassmann and colleagues presented some of the same wines with different prices. Participants reported enjoying them more when they believed they were more expensive. The researchers also observed differences in brain activity associated with experienced pleasantness.
Same wine.
Different price information.
A different reported experience.
I find this fascinating.
Something outside the glass helped shape what happened when people tasted what was inside it.
What brands suggest
Brands have many ways of setting expectations.
Their packaging.
Their language.
Their prices.
The associations they build over time.
In a 2004 study of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, knowing that a drink was Coca-Cola influenced participants’ expressed preferences and measured brain responses. The researchers did not find an equivalent effect for Pepsi.
A familiar brand name brought something to the experience beyond the liquid itself.
Then think about a different kind of suggestion.
Nike’s Just Do It, introduced in 1988 as a call to act and try.
To me, those words offer a sentence we can borrow at the moment we hesitate.
You can begin.
You can give it a go.
You do not need to resolve every doubt first.
That is my interpretation of the campaign, rather than a scientific finding about its effect.
But it makes me think about how easily a brand’s words can enter our own inner conversation.
And how carefully we might choose the words we bring there ourselves.
The story I was telling myself
When I was considering moving back to Italy, I had a particular idea of what progress looked like.
Moving away.
Building a career abroad.
Continuing towards the next opportunity.
Coming home seemed to point in the opposite direction.
Yet when I listened deeply to myself, I wanted to be here.
Near the sea.
Near my family.
Connected to the place where I grew up.
With meaningful work, friendships and love.
So I began telling myself:
You can have both.
You can live in Liguria and keep growing professionally.
You can feel rooted and remain curious about the world.
You can come home and continue moving forward.
Looking back, I see this as a way of reframing the decision.
I was giving myself permission to explore a possibility I had been treating as a contradiction.
Encouragement, followed by action
There is research suggesting that self-talk can help with performance. A 2011 meta-analysis, for example, found benefits from self-talk interventions in sporting tasks. That evidence concerns specific activities, rather than showing that positive thoughts can deliver whatever we wish for.
For me, the value of encouraging myself is practical.
“You can have both” helped me ask:
How could this work?
What would I need to change?
What could I do next?
The decisions, conversations and effort still mattered.
But so did approaching them with the belief that there might be a way.
And today, back home, I feel deeply fulfilled.
In my work.
In my friendships.
With my family.
In my love life.
There is something beautiful about feeling that what I think, what I say and what I do are aligned.
Listening to my soul helped me understand what I wanted.
Speaking to myself with kindness helped me give it a chance.
This week’s experiment
This week, notice one sentence you often repeat to yourself.
“I could never do that.”
“It is too late.”
“I would have to give up too much.”
Ask yourself:
Is this a fact?
Or is it a story I have become used to telling?
Then try offering yourself a possibility that feels both kind and believable.
“I can explore this.”
“I can learn.”
“I can take one step and see.”
And follow it with something small.
A question.
A conversation.
An action.
Perhaps there is something in your life that deserves a little more encouragement.
Something you can hear when you slow down and listen to yourself.
And perhaps, like me, you will find four words worth keeping close.
You can have both.
Until next Saturday,
Margherita