What Are We Really Capable Of? The Boundless Potential of Being Human with Nicola Farmer

Somewhere along the way, we start collecting words. Realistic. Impossible. Talented. Ordinary. And then we start collecting words about ourselves — I am this, I am not that, I could never. Mediumship has made me question those boundaries again and again, because most of them aren't real. They're language. And this conversation, with fellow medium Nicola Farmer, is about what happens when you stop believing them.

Somewhere along the way, we start collecting words. Realistic. Impossible. Talented. Ordinary. And then we start collecting words about ourselves — I am this, I am not that, I could never. Mediumship has made me question those boundaries again and again, because most of them aren't real. They're language. And this conversation, with fellow medium Nicola Farmer, is about what happens when you stop believing them.

Meet Nicola Farmer

Nicola is a medium I've shared a platform with more than once, and someone who's spent years thinking as hard about language as she has about spirit. She works with children on developing their intuition, she does public demonstrations and charity events, and she talks about her late sister — who, in her words, "kicked my butt" onto this path through dream state — the same way I talk about my granddad. We've both ended up here by a strange route, and we spent this conversation pulling on exactly why.

The Word "Try" Allows Failure

Nicola said something early on that I haven't stopped thinking about: the word try allows failure. The moment you're trying to connect, you've already built in the possibility of not managing it. I know that one from the inside — mediumship came easily to me at the very beginning, before I cared. The second I started really wanting it to work, I started trying harder, and the harder I tried, the less it worked.

Her fix isn't what you'd expect. "Fake it till you make it" gets treated as a cheat, but she reframed it as something else entirely — you're not lying, you're bypassing the left brain, the analytical part that wants proof and process, so the right brain, the feeling part, can actually get on with the job. Spirit doesn't want a performance. It wants you to step aside.

Tick-List Mediums vs. The Real Thing

Nicola raised something that applies well beyond mediumship: so many people — mediums included — quietly measure themselves against a checklist of what they're "supposed" to do or be, instead of just being authentically themselves. Have I ticked A, B and C? Did I hit the right beats? That expectation, she said, has probably held back more developing mediums than any lack of natural ability ever has.

It's the same trap in reverse of the one that had me, years ago, standing in front of a mirror doing daily affirmations, feeling like an absolute wally, because I was trying to become something rather than let something come through me.

Pulling My Own Strands Together

I've lived what I'd call a catch-me-if-you-can life: magician, cabin crew, police officer, recruitment business founder, medium, podcast host — and now adding platform mediumship to the pile. For a long time I saw those as unrelated chapters. Nicola calls it something better: grooming, in the most positive sense. Every job feeds the next thing you become.

My years as a police officer gave me what I can only call an anti-nonsense detector — colleagues used to say I could walk into a room and find the one thing that didn't add up. That same instinct built my recruitment business. And now I can see it was never really separate from the psychic side of me at all — it was the same faculty, just pointed at a different job. Looking back at your own chequered CV and asking "what did every one of those jobs actually teach me" is a genuinely useful exercise, whether or not mediumship is anywhere on your radar.

Language as Vibration

This is where Nicola's whole philosophy sits: every word you use is a vibrational frequency, and a limited vocabulary limits what spirit can say through you. She has her students open a thesaurus and learn five new words a day — not for the sake of sounding clever, but because you can't relay a word you don't have. I've done the same exercise myself since she gave it to me.

The single biggest shift she gave me was this: stop using the word think, and replace it with feel. "Think" keeps you in the analytical left brain. "Feel" moves you into the sensitivity spirit actually needs to work through. She does the same thing with children she teaches — she never asks them "what colour do you see," because a question forces an analytical answer. She says "tell me what colour," because it invites the answer straight from the right brain, no filtering required.

The Code Word Problem

Nicola named the single biggest challenge in mediumship, and it isn't spirit — it's the sitter's expectations. Families set up a code word with a dying loved one — "when you come through, say the word bananas" — and then sit waiting for the one word instead of hearing everything else that's actually being said. Meanwhile the person in spirit is trying to tell a whole story, and the sitter's need for confirmation is drowning it out.

Her question cuts straight through it: who do you actually work for? Her answer, and increasingly mine, is spirit — always. The sitter is the receiver, the client, someone I care about deeply and I'm there for. But the moment my head is in the client instead of with the person in spirit, the reading suffers. Working for spirit first isn't a lack of care for the person in front of you — it's what actually serves them.

Storytelling, Not Yes or No

The best compliment Nicola says she can get after a reading is someone telling her it felt like sitting in Costa Coffee with their mum having a chat. That's the standard: a flowing story, not a string of yes-or-no confirmations. When you're really in the flow of it, there's no space left for a no, because you're telling someone's whole life rather than fishing for validation line by line.

She also talked about celebrating the wins rather than dwelling on the misses — comparing good mediumship to a swan gliding across water, calm on the surface, working hard underneath. There's a story she told about a reading where she described a man as "a bit on the chunky side," instantly worried she'd overstepped, only for his two ex-girlfriends in the audience to say that's exactly what everyone used to call him. Trusting what comes through, even when it feels risky, is often exactly what makes a reading land.

Science Is Catching Up

Nicola made a point that I think is genuinely important for anyone sceptical of this work: science and mediumship aren't opposites, they're studying the same territory from different directions. She's spoken with quantum physicist Tom Campbell, author of My Big Toe, about consciousness — and her view is that mediumship isn't separate from science, it's simply operating in a level of consciousness science is only just starting to take seriously. For too long the two have been treated as enemies. They're not. They're one conversation.

How Truly Do You Know Yourself?

Nicola asked a question near the end that stopped me: how many mediums actually know who they are? I spent a long time being the Jason I thought I should be, rather than the Jason I actually was. Growing up gay in an all-boys school in Kent, I didn't want to be having the feelings I was having, so I suppressed them — and for years I tied my sensitivity to my sexuality, telling myself "I'm gay, that's why I'm sensitive," rather than just letting it be part of who I am. Other people telling you not to be so sensitive is, in a strange way, beating the medium out of you, word by word. Understanding that took me most of my life. I suspect it takes most people theirs.

Where This Leaves You

Nicola's closing message is the whole episode in one line: it's not about believing in what's possible, it's about knowing you are that possibility. Whatever you're doing — mediumship, a reading, a change of career, rebuilding a sense of who you are — the answer was never going to be found outside yourself. We're far more capable, adaptable and intuitive than the identities we've built around ourselves over a lifetime of collecting the wrong words.

If any of this has struck a chord — a sense that you've been talking yourself out of your own potential, or a pull to actually hear from someone who's crossed over — that's exactly the kind of thing a mediumship or psychic reading can open up. I'd be glad to help you take that next step.

SPIRITUAL TAKEAWAYS:

  1. The word "try" allows failure. Real connection — with spirit, or with your own potential — happens when you stop trying and start feeling.

  2. A checklist of what you're "supposed" to be is the enemy of authenticity. Whether you're a medium or not, ticking boxes gets in the way of the real thing.

  3. Nothing in your past is wasted. Every job, every skill, every hard chapter is training for what comes next, if you're willing to look back and connect the dots.

  4. Language shapes what can come through you. A narrow vocabulary limits your own expression as much as it limits spirit's.

  5. Know who you're really working for. Whether it's a client, an audience, or your own life, putting the deeper truth first — not the immediate expectation — is what actually serves people.

Nicola Farmer is a spiritual mentor, spirit, psychic and trance medium, teacher, healer and author whose work explores consciousness, human potential and spiritual development.

Nicola Farmer:
https://nicolafarmer.com

Enjoy the full conversation with Nicola Farmer on Soul Sync now by clicking play in the player above.

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