Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a life and work design coach; and leadership and wellbeing coach and consultant. Finding Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: building momentum around your vision to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please leave a heart & share with others.

I recently discovered a lesser-known vital shift people make when they move from working for a company to entrepreneurship. A shift that can hold people back until they start to build these capabilities. Note: Below, I’ll use the word corporate broadly to mean going from working at a company of any type to becoming an entrepreneur.

The shift is to strengthen the part of your brain used to discover your path, a different skill than what made you successful when you were employed. Whether you are an entrepreneur or not, this skill is important for all of us to develop, in a world with increasing uncertainty.

After I published my last post, From Launching my Plan B Business to Living My Dreams, it occurred to me I left out what happened soon after. Six months after committing to my business, it fell apart when the pandemic hit. I’ll share how going through that experience connects to strengthening this entrepreneurial part of my brain.

The idea: corporate versus entrepreneur brain

In a webinar earlier this year from Be Above Leadership, a neuroscience and consciousness focused coaching training company, I learned about the idea of the corporate versus entrepreneur brain.

The facilitators spoke about the results of a study looking at how successful entrepreneurs versus successful corporate executives make decisions when the future is uncertain.

To be clear, people who work in companies versus entrepreneurs don’t actually have different brains; but have strengthened different skills in their brain. And, everyone uses both skills.

Through experiments about how participants would approach a hypothetical early-stage business problem, researchers compared how they worked through the decision-making process. Here’s what they found:

• Causal reasoning skills are strong in executives in companies: focuses on setting a goal and then using analysis, prediction and planning to determine all the steps to take to achieve the goal.

• Effectual reasoning skills are strong in successful entrepreneurs, especially in the early stages: focuses on the available means and resources someone has to shape the goals and outcomes through: taking action, acceptable risks, experimentation, collaboration and being flexible to adjust and pivot. It is much less driven by starting with a pre-determined goal.

Effectual reasoning skills are like dancing versus causal reasoning skills are like running a marathon.

Many of us have spent years or decades strengthening causal reasoning skills, which then becomes our default that we overemphasize in decision making. While both types of skills have a place in entrepreneurship, often effectual reasoning skills are underdeveloped.

So much of what I have been doing for the past seven years as an entrepreneur clicked into place. Until this webinar, I hadn’t known how to articulate this exact shift to those exploring or building a business.

Transitioning to entrepreneurship is a complete shift in how you operate, especially for those used to a set and fixed pathway in companies. It’s a discovery process. You must build and strengthen different skills in your brain to be successful, especially early on when there is more uncertainty about the future.

One miss I see when people are in the planning or early stages of building a business is treating it as an extension of how they operated in corporate. Wanting to have an exact the method to follow for success. Wanting to have the full plan, process and structure in place that they can execute against.

Alternatively, the sooner people shift how they operate to recognize entrepreneurship is a discovery process, the better.

At the essence, building a business is about discovering what you want to offer, who you want to serve and how both align with what others need. It requires a willingness to explore and experiment within your risk tolerance. An ability to discern when to keep going and when to pivot and adjust as you learn what isn’t working.

I do still believe visioning and meaningful goals have a place with effectual reasoning. Both give a starting point about the direction you want to go based on what you want to create. The opportunity is to start even if the vision feels vague and allow more of the picture to emerge as you take steps. Instead of expecting a fully mapped out plan upfront that doesn’t leave room for exploration.

It’s a shift to be open to not knowing the whole path when you start out and recognize finding and taking the next aligned step is enough.

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My story of building my entrepreneurial brain when my business fell apart:

In early March 2020, I was incredibly proud of myself. Six months after launching my business, I was finally fully booked for my then part-time consulting business. I had recently learned business development efforts take three or more months to see results. So, I was right on schedule.

And, we all know what happened in mid-March 2020. The pandemic hit.

Beginning on March 13 for the next week, one project after another was canceled or put on hold. My budding Plan B business suddenly, unexpectedly, fell apart. 90% of my work was put on hold or canceled.

My planned livelihood had evaporated. The future I had been working towards disappeared. My toddler was now at home with me full-time. I panicked.

I did not yet trust the rhythm of the beginnings, obstacles and endings in my business, a lesson I shared in my last post. Going through this experience is how I lived this lesson. Some lessons are learned in the hard moments.

I did use the challenge as an opportunity to realign with what was important to me next. Both personally and professionally.

It’s how I started building muscles for effectual reasoning, the entrepreneurial brain skills.

How I would describe the difference before and after related to building my business:

Before, I emphasized casual reasoning skills: I had developed a plan and goals for the first full year of my business in 2020 that I was taking steps towards achieving. There was some focus on effectual reasoning skills but they were secondary.

After, I quickly pivoted and emphasized effectual reasoning skills: I focused on my means and resources, connecting with many people and exploring how I might contribute in this disruptive time. I got a few small projects through my connections. I used this time period as an opportunity to expand to offer a new service of thought leadership strategy and content writing. My goals evolved and were no longer the main focal point.

I was discovering my path and shaping my future.

This unexpected pause set me up for creating the next phase of my business. A phase that felt meant for me. That would ultimately lead me to pursue coaching professionally a few years later. And personally, would lead me to return to my creative self-expression, especially writing.

On a wider scale during the pandemic, many of us leaned into effectual reasoning skills quickly without realizing it. We are all capable of building these skills.

A takeaway:

I often share that there is no one path to realize your vision and dreams. There is no one way for how you approach what’s next in your work and life. It’s based on what’s important to you.

The concept of the entrepreneur brain highlights this message. It shifts the focus to discovering and designing your path to create what’s next for your life and work.

Reflection:

• What’s an example of a time you used effectual reasoning skills? What were the results?

• How might you lean into effectual reasoning skills, i.e. the entrepreneur brain, in your decision making process?

I’d love to hear from you: what stood out to you about these two ways of thinking: the corporate versus entrepreneur brains?

Photo credit: Gerd Altmann, Pixaby

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Ways to Work with Me:

• Life and Work Design Coaching: For those who want to intentionally design what’s next while navigating changes and transitions in their life and or career, overcoming burnout or starting a coaching or consulting business.

• Leadership Coaching: One-on-one and group coaching for emerging and mid-level leaders to grow in their career and leadership, navigate change and thrive. For those with a professional development budget through their work.

• Leadership and Wellbeing Consulting: To help small to mid-sized organizations change and grow sustainably by elevating the employee experience, leadership development, and wellbeing, through programs and workshops.

Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a life and work design coach; and leadership and wellbeing coach and consultant. Finding Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: building momentum around your vision to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please leave a heart & share with others.

Launching my business seven years ago was Plan B.

I’ve recently been connecting with and coaching multiple newer solopreneurs who are in the exploration, design or early phases of creating a business. I was inspired to reflect on and acknowledge this milestone by sharing seven key learnings.

My hope is this post will be helpful to anyone who aspires to create their own path. It could apply for a business or other aspects of your life and work that don’t follow the status quo.

Thank you all for being here on this journey with me.

My story of committing to my Plan B Business seven years ago:

After becoming a mother, I left my corporate career and took a career pause. I was guided by vague vision for my life, with a blank spot about my next career. As a planner, this was incredibly unsettling to me. But I couldn’t wait until a career plan appeared.

Once I started reflecting on what I wanted, the themes that surfaced would become my non-negotiables for my future career: part-time, mid-level, well-paying and not doing work that was overly draining, given I was burned out.

Aspirational: I hoped to make a meaningful contribution doing work that enlivened me. To recover from burnout and thrive.

These combined constraints, it turned out, would both limit my options greatly and be my guide.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered part-time careers, outside of entry level, were few and far between in the traditional corporate workforce in 2019. Though there are part-time and fractional options now, these still aren’t even close to mainstream.

Based on this discovery, the two most viable options at the time were:

• Plan A: work part-time for a consulting firm or as a contractor.

• Plan B: start my own consulting business. I set up my LLC while on a career pause as a backup plan.

I went searching for Plan A. I had a few amazing options for Plan A.

Throughout pursuing Plan A, I teetered between designing what was next and second guessing myself about my Plan B of starting my own business.

Designing what was next was filled with possibilities.

Second guessing myself shut down possibilities. A couple of particularly ineffective questions included: “Would this actually work? What if I fail?” Then, spiraling about how I didn’t know what I was doing and everything that could go wrong.

I now recognize these questions and responses were driven by my inner critic, the inner voice of self-doubt and self-criticism.

In September 2019, weeks after my daughter started daycare three days a week, I received two back-to-back rejections for the Plan A options I was pursuing.

Plan B suddenly became my only option.

Committing to my Plan B business began by asking myself a different question: “How could I make this work?”

This question pulled me into taking action towards bringing my vision to life. It’s one important instance where my own wisdom, best-self thinking and curiosity, shifted to being in charge. Self-doubt took a back seat, where it belongs.

Days later, I created a one pager to describe my consulting business, which now also incorporates coaching. Next, I started reaching out to my network one-on-one to connect.

Notice how I did not yet have a website. And notice how I still started. A website is not necessarily the first step to starting.

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Seven learnings that encompass my entrepreneurial journey so far:

1. Creating your own business is a viable option to build career in alignment with your whole life.

When I began, I didn’t know if it was possible to create a viable business that aligned with my life. I only knew of a few examples of other part-time business owners. I still carried some US cultural stigma that working part-time means I’m uncommitted and employers will thin less of me. Which, I now assert is a lie.

Seven years after questioning if starting my own then part-time business was possible, I stand on the other side nodding and smiling.

Yes, it is possible to create a business in alignment with my whole life.

It is also clearer than ever: the status-quo corporate work structures do not work for so many women and caregivers.

A few years into my business, I heard the term lifestyle business, meaning building a career around the lifestyle one desires. This term does describe the business I created.

2. Define what success means to you early and reference it often. Update it as you and your business evolve.

What success means to you is going to be different than what it means to someone else. Especially if you are doing something different than the status-quo, you must determine your own version of success.

Defining what success means to you gives you an internal reference point. It gives you guidance on how to approach your business based on what matters to you.

It can anchor you if you get caught up comparing to others or thinking you aren’t far enough along. Which happens to all of us.

What success means to you will evolve over time as you and your business change so revisit it.

3. Building and sustaining a business is your own personal growth journey.

You grow so much owning a business, in the best and most uncomfortable ways. Not once but many, many times. You can grow towards being a more expressed version of yourself in your own way.

I have and continue to take a slow growth approach, meaning to focus on creating small changes consistently over time to make progress on my dreams and goals.

As someone who started my business very much in transition and hiding, my business personal growth journey has followed my own identity shift and beginnings of emergence. This has been a gift.

I’ve had many firsts and nexts with more on the horizon. I’ve created so much that didn’t previously exist in the world.

One of the unique opportunities of owning a business is in supporting your emergence and who you are becoming.

Growth does ask us to do our own inner work. To not let our own self-doubt and fear hold us back, even when it’s loud. To lean into courage to take the next aligned step when we don’t yet feel confident.

4. You will not feel ready before you start. Start anyway. You become the person who can attain your goals through the doing.

Don’t wait for the perfect conditions to start; they don’t exist. Don’t wait to feel ready first. You rarely will if you are doing something out of your comfort zone.

But, don’t confuse doing something new with starting from nothing. Own what you already bring. You are starting with years or decades of past expertise, skills, strengths and capabilities. Even if you might use what you know differently. While you will have knowledge and skill gaps, you address those through the doing.

There are costs to delaying your dreams. Not feeling ready is limiting. It’s an inner critic narrative. Because it’s scary and out of your comfort zone to put yourself out there and pursue your dreams. Especially if you are still learning and haven’t mastered what you are creating yet.

The alternative: Take an experimentation approach to build the skills needed to make progress. Test aspects of your business in small ways and build on that.

5. Trust the rhythm. Trust the beginnings, obstacles, and endings. Use challenges as an opening to realign with what’s important to you next.

There is a cyclical nature underneath the beginnings, obstacles and endings. For instance, many endings lead to the next beginnings, if we are open to them. This business cycle happens more than once, hence it’s a rhythm. The ups and downs, missteps, challenges and sometimes unexpected shifts, are part of the process. We can learn to work with them.

Examples of phases that are undercurrents in business:

• Envision what’s next and set meaningful goals.

• Take action where you have agency, aligned with your vision.

• Navigate inner and outer obstacles.

• Experiment with something new. Learn from it, celebrate what works and adjust what didn’t.

• Let go of what no longer serves you and bring in wants to emerge.

• Use business redirects and challenges to realign.

6. You need both internal and aligned external support. And you need community and connections.

Your internal anchors, meaning your vision, values, inner wisdom and wellbeing, are as important of a guide as external support.

The best external support grounds you in and compliments your internal anchors to help you find your unique path forward.

Be wary of external options that use urgency and scarcity tactics or ones that try to convince you there is only one way to get results. It’s not true. Pay attention to what resonates with you.

People are often successful when their efforts connect with their bigger picture, as in their internal anchors. They are more willing to stretch outside of their comfort zone to take small risks when it’s meaningful to them and in support of their goals. Having external support from this place can help you get where you want to go.

Entrepreneurship can be lonely. Find others you genuinely want to connect with or be in community with.

7. Owning a lifestyle business can be the gateway to uncovering and living more of your dreams, for your work and life.

Once I no longer overemphasized my career, I had space for new dreams to emerge.

My own progression started with uncovering my dreams first, after having spent years far removed from and not hearing my dreams. That led to living my dreams. The first layer appearing when I left my corporate career and started my business.

The next layer was returning to my creative self-expression and what makes me feel alive, adding creative pursuits including writing. The next, to become a certified coach, a multi-year commitment.

By doing this for myself, at my best, I have become someone who facilitates and coaches others on what transformed my life. Where I make an impact doing work that has been meaningful to me. The two top influences:

• Positive psychology and wellbeing: which profoundly improved my life while navigating infertility and burnout.

• The Playing Big Program: about being more loyal to your dreams than your fears.

In these past seven years, my business has evolved as I’ve evolved. I never ever expected my dream to create work that aligns with my life to become what I advocate for. What I’m passionate about. What I show others is possible both by living my life and coaching and guiding others.

Reflection questions:

• What does success in work and life mean to me?

• What’s one step I could take to get me closer to my version of success?

I’d love to hear from you: what lesson stood out to you? For the business owners: what’s an important lesson you’ve learned?

Photo Credit: Alexas, Pixaby

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Ways to Work with Me:

• Life and Work Design Coaching: For those who want to intentionally design what’s next while navigating changes and transitions in their life and or career, overcoming burnout or starting a coaching or consulting business.

• Leadership Coaching: One-on-one and group coaching for emerging and mid-level leaders to grow in their career and leadership, navigate change and thrive. For those with a professional development budget through their work.

• Leadership and Wellbeing consulting: To help small to mid-sized organizations change and grow sustainably by elevating the employee experience, leadership development, and wellbeing, through programs and workshops.

Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a life and work design coach; and leadership and wellbeing coach and consultant. Finding Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: aligning your vision with momentum to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please leave a heart & share with others.

How to Become a New Version of Yourself

The new beginning phase in a transition, where we embrace a new version of ourselves, can sound so magical.

But to get there, we need to go through the messy middle first, meaning to shed what isn’t working, experiment with what does, and stumble towards our new identity. As the name suggests, this phase is messy.

It truly does feel like stumbling at first.

Becoming the next version of ourselves is a process where we face both the possibilities and uncomfortableness of growth. With inner tension. Expansion on one side. Contraction on the other. Excitement mixed with hesitation and fear. And everything in between. A different kind of magical than we might be expecting.

Examples of new versions of ourselves: Starting a business. Starting a new, bigger role. Taking on a new hobby. Pivoting a career. Returning to work after a career pause. Prioritizing our wellbeing. And there are so many more.

This is based on the three phases of transitions Bruce Feiler identifies in his book, Life is in the Transitions:

1) The Long Good-Bye

2) The Messy Middle

3) The New Beginning

New versions of ourselves change our identity, sometimes significantly. Who we were before no longer fits. Even if we don’t realize it, we’ve outgrown our old identity. We are still forming who we are becoming. We are evolving.

In this post, I’ll share what it means to become a new version of ourselves and intentional ways to start.

Two truths about becoming a new version of yourself:

1. We are not currently the person who can realize our vision, dreams or goals.

While this is true, this idea can also hold us back. At times, we get caught up focusing on how we are not that person in unhelpful ways. Which limits our ability to move forward.

Our inner critic, in trying to protect us from the emotional risk involved in stepping outside of our comfort zone, can become overly active. Telling us we that whatever we don’t possess now we can never become. Saying statements like: “I’m not” or “I’m bad at.”

Examples:

• “I am not the entrepreneur type.”

• “I’m not a charismatic leader.”

• “I’m bad at promoting myself.”

• “I am not a speaker.”

• “I’m bad at marketing and sales.”

The above examples focus on all of our gaps and not what we bring.

When we listen to these inner critic narratives, self-doubt sets in. We second guess ourselves and our path. Underneath, we might be scared, potentially terrified.

While there is, as I shared, truth to the inner critic’s narratives, it’s too black and white.

The truth is much grayer.

The truth is: We aren’t yet that person. We don’t yet have these skills. We actually do have knowledge and skill gaps.

Yet is key here. Which leads to the second truth.

2. We become the new version of ourselves through pursuing what we hope to attain.

We can only become by going through the pursuit. Growth has struggle.

We can choose to believe: Becoming a more expressed version of myself is my own growth process and journey. I can take steps to do what’s important to me.

The goal is to express ourselves more fully in the next version of ourselves. To ground in our being. Our strengths. What makes us uniquely us. Our values. Our gifts. What we bring. How we can be of service to others.

It is also true that we aren’t necessarily a natural at all the ways we are being called to grow. We do have new skills to develop or strengthen. This means stretching ourselves, in service of our dreams and goals, in a way that feels authentic to us.

However, the aim is not to become someone else. So, even as you stretch, lean into your truth. Take action that resonates not that feels gross.

You can make changes in alignment with who you are. It might still feel scary, but it shouldn’t feel icky. Example: you can avoid high-pressured or transactional marketing and focus on relationship-based marketing instead.

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So then: how could we become a more expressed version of ourselves?

Here are two places to start with the new beginnings phase of transitions. For the letting go and messy middle phases, check out my last post: How Transitions Reshape Us: From Disorienting to Creating.

1. Envision the self you hope to become

There’s a concept in psychology called “possible selves,” meaning our ideas of who we can become. When experiencing changes, our future concepts of ourselves can shift. This is when it’s especially important to shape who we want to become.

Our hoped-for possible self is this next version of ourselves that aligns with bringing our vision and dreams to life. We also have darker versions of possible selves, the ones we fear, or move away from. These possible selves still need a voice, but they are not meant to be in charge.

Reflection:

• Imagine who I am becoming and reflect on the following: what might it look like for me to be a more expressed version of myself? What new version of myself could I move toward?

• What possible selves in the future am I afraid of or worried about? Name them. Acknowledge these aspects are here without taking direction from them. For more guidance, check out Uncover Possibilities for What’s Next.

• What’s one step I could take towards becoming a more expressed version of myself?

2. Make a list of your knowledge and skill gaps

It can get overwhelming when it feels like there is so much we don’t know that we think is necessary for who we are becoming. All of it swirling in our head, with the “I am not” or “I’m bad at” statements. Which can lead to wanting to or actually retreating into hiding.

First, not all of our gaps are necessary to address, at least not all at once. Next, we will feel less overwhelmed once we not only list it all out but also how we could fill each gap. Having a list also puts everything in perspective.

Exercise: create a knowledge and skills gap list

• On the left, list each high importance knowledge or skill gap separately. Focus only on the high importance ones right now so as not to overwhelm you.

• In the right column, specify what you already do know (we aren’t always starting from scratch) and how you could fill each gap.

• Which one feels most significant to focus on first? Start there.

We become a new, more expressed, version of ourselves by taking steps in the direction of who we are becoming. I hope you take the first step and the next. And keep going.

A few years ago, when I was at one of my many growth edges, I journaled, “I can either go in the direction of blooming or wilting.”

It can be tempting to want to stay as a version of ourselves we’ve already been. But, when it’s a past version of ourselves we’ve outgrown, that leads to stagnating or worse, wilting.

Energetically, we can go towards blooming. I hope you go in the direction of becoming more fully you.

It is hard to become a new version of ourselves alone. I hope you surround yourself with others who believe in who you are becoming next.

Contact me to learn more about how coaching could help you create changes aligned with what matters to you.

Photo credit: Ralphs, Pixaby

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Ways to Work with Me:

• Life and Work Design Coaching: For those who want to intentionally design what’s next while navigating changes and transitions in their life and or career, overcoming burnout or starting a coaching or consulting business.

• Leadership Coaching: One-on-one and group coaching for emerging and mid-level leaders to grow in their career and leadership, navigate change and thrive. For those with a professional development budget through their work.

• Leadership and Wellbeing consulting: To help small to mid-sized organizations change and grow sustainably by elevating the employee experience, leadership development, and wellbeing, through programs and workshops.

Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a life and work design coach; and leadership and wellbeing coach and consultant. Finding Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: turning your vision into momentum to create change aligned with what matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please leave a heart & share with others.

How Transitions Reshape us: From Disorienting to Creating

There are moments that completely reshape our lives. Where our lives fall into a before and after.

Like an earthquake, these moments shake the foundation beneath us. Some aspects remain. Others turn to rubble.

After the earthquake, the rebuilding begins.

Enter Lifequakes

In Life is in the Transitions by Bruce Feiler, he describes a lifequake as: “A forceful change in one’s life that leads to a period of upheaval, transition, and renewal.”

Lifequakes are big life and career transitions that reshape us. Through his research, Feiler found people experience 3-5 in their life. And, they can take on average four to five years (yes, truly!) for us to fully transition. This means we spend about half our lives in periods of change.

Lifequakes can be involuntary or voluntary. Involuntary means we didn’t choose them but big changes still happened, such as, death of a loved one, accident, or layoff. Voluntary means we did choose to make a big change, such as moving, leaving or pivoting careers, or becoming a parent. Divorce can sometimes feel like a mix of both, especially for those who didn’t instigate it.

We experience many small transitions too, more than we acknowledge. About every 12-18 months, we go through smaller changes, what Feiler calls disruptors: “an event or experience that interrupts the everyday flow of one’s life.”

Sometimes multiple disruptors back-to-back lead to a lifequake; other times, there’s one big change the ignites a significant shift.

One of Feiler’s findings is that people struggle with many difficult emotions during transitions. Fear, sadness and shame are the top. Guilt, anger and loneliness are also common. Unfortunately, many people think something is wrong with them for having such a hard time with transitions. Please know if you are facing a challenging transition, difficult emotions are completely normal and nothing is wrong with you.

I’ve noticed a theme recently of clients and others navigating bigger changes and transitions. That those starting something new, especially a new business, are in the midst of a transition too as I was. We cannot separate that building something new coincides with disrupting times in our lives.

So, I’m sharing key aspects of what I’ve learned from my experience in hopes it helps others experiencing transitions.

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My lifequake as a new mother on a career pause

I divide my career into before and after my daughter was born. It wasn’t only becoming a mother that splits my career into two. It’s because that’s when I left my corporate career to take a career pause without a career plan. Two large transitions coinciding at once thrust me into a lifequake, though I hadn’t yet heard of that term; it was before Feiler’s book was published.

I said it well in a personal essay that was published few years ago, Burning from the Inside: A Return to Life After Burnout:

“The clarity to leave my career came from within after my daughter was born. I cried when I told my husband I had resigned. I was overcome with emptiness. With a void. That career had become how I defined much of my life and identity. I had worked there for 10 years. I felt lost without it.”

Before leaving that career, I referred to myself as “career oriented.”

So then, what happens when you leave a career that has become much of your identity? Too much of it?

In my experience, it is highly disorienting.

Without a career, a stable and core part of my identity had suddenly disappeared. I didn’t know who I was at first. In the void, self-doubt took over.

While I chose this, while it was absolutely the right choice to leave a career that was my past and not my future, it was still so so hard at first.

And that is what I was unprepared for.

In the next paragraph of Burning from the Inside, I wrote:

“It was a time when so much of who I had been ended. A time when I wondered how I could build a life that felt more authentic to me. Being a mother would never be all of me. Neither would my next career, whatever that may be.”

From Disorientating to Creating

A key learning from my lifequake: Disruption in our lives, big or small, can be a necessary precursor to creation. When we are in transition, we can intentionally design what a good life means to us next.

Focusing on creating would pull me out of disorientation. It would be the first phase of building what was next for my life.

Creating meant I could design what was next. That I had agency about what my whole life, including my career, could look like. That any time I felt lost, I could believe in what might be possible. I could design what a meaningful life meant to me.

Even while I was designing my future, an uncomfortable question began to surface : Who was I without my career?

This is one reason major life and career transitions are so disorienting. Because when what used to be important to us is no longer, we sit in uncomfortable space. There is literally a hole in our lives we haven’t yet filled. This is the emptiness I experienced.

In my example, my career no longer mattered as much to me. Temporarily, it was even important for me NOT to have a career. Focusing on myself and my family as well as recovering from burnout had increased in significance.

The deeper question underneath was: who am I at my core? This question at heart of my transition had layers upon layers that would take years to uncover.

In my case, I needed to recover from burnout first before answers would begin to emerge. Know this process doesn’t necessarily take years. But if it does, you are not alone.

Three concepts that later gave me frameworks to design what mattered to me in my life and work:

These three concepts are what I wish I knew when I was starting my lifequake. But the books and articles didn’t exist yet. The ideas later helped me understand my experience and fill in aspects of what was missing.

1. Discover who you are without a job title.

This is the title of chapter one of The Power Pause, by Neha Ruch, author, brand strategist and founder of the Power Pause. The book is about reframing mothers taking a career pause, but can apply to anyone on a career pause. Personally, discovering who I was without a career is exactly what I was being asked to do, well before I had heard of Ruch or her book existed.

So many of us carry a false belief that Ruch describes as, “my self-worth and identity is centered around my career so I’ll be a ‘nobody’ without it.” I have painfully believed a version of this. I have heard multiple others voice similar limiting beliefs.

Instead, we can begin to embrace a new narrative “I can discover an identity even more remarkable than my job title.” It’s true, that we are all have remarkable identities outside of our careers.

2. Our identities are not static. They evolve.

As Susan David, organizational psychologist at Harvard Medical School asserts, “Our identities are not static. They are ever-changing, always subject to revision and renegotiation.”

We also are not our careers. Our careers are one aspect of our identity, out of a multitude of what makes us who we are. We prioritize and develop different aspects of our identities at different times. There is no final version of ourselves to reach. There is instead, the next evolution of who we are becoming.

3. We think we are living linear lives. But our lives are actually non-linear.

The concept that we don’t have as straight of a path as we think is from Feiler’s book, Life is in the Transitions. So much of our resistance to change is because we think our lives are supposed to be linear. They aren’t fully linear. Even if some aspects are linear, other aspects face disruptors and transitions. Understanding this concept can help us expect the messiness in which we often find ourselves during change.

Feiler shares five truths of transitions:

• Transitions are becoming more plentiful

• Transitions are nonlinear

• Transitions are autobiographical occasions

• Transitions take longer than you expect (but no longer than you need)

• Transitions are essential to life

The three phases of transitions:

The three phases of transitions give structure to something that can feel nebulous. Though the phases aren’t linear either. People typically work through the one they are strongest at first and get bogged down in the one they are the weakest in. And, we jump back and forth.

• The Long Good-bye: where you say good-bye and let go to leave the past behind.

• The Messy Middle: where you shed what isn’t serving you and experiment with what does, as you stumble towards a new identity.

• The New Beginning: where you embrace the new version of yourself.

So back to my own exploration during my career pause: who am I at my core?

The question I didn’t have an answer to at first would be key to my next evolution. Key to letting go. Key to showing up for the intensity and messiness. Key to years of stumbling towards who I was becoming.

What surprised me is who I am at my core was both and evolution and a return to myself and what makes me feel alive. At the center was reconnecting to my creative-self expression and my being, my inner state vs. what I do.

On the other side of the most disruptive lifequake I’ve experienced, I can say it’s possible to reshape your life based on what a fulfilling life means to you.

Intentionally redesigning my career and life led to building a stronger inner foundation, incorporating a holistic approach to what matters to me in my daily life. I can still feel off balance, but not to the extent I did before my lifequake, where my career felt all encompassing.

Even if I’m not there yet, even if I might never fully arrive at my ideal, my whole life is so much closer to the new beginning I once envisioned.

Reflection Questions:

• What feels disruptive in my life or work right now?

• What do I need to let go of?

• What do I want to create more space for?

• What’s one step I could take in the direction of the life and work I want?

If you want support navigating a transition, contact me to learn more about how coaching could help you create changes aligned with what matters to you.

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Ways to Work with Me:

• Life and Work Design Coaching: For those who want to intentionally design what’s next while navigating changes and transitions in their life and or career, overcoming burnout or starting a coaching or consulting business.

• Leadership Coaching: One-on-one and group coaching for emerging and mid-level leaders to grow in their career and leadership, navigate change and thrive. For those with a professional development budget through their work.

• Leadership and wellbeing consulting: to help small to mid-sized organizations change and grow sustainably by elevating the employee experience, leadership development, and wellbeing, through programs and workshops.

Photo Credit: iStock

Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a leadership, life and wellbeing coach and consultant. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: turning your vision into momentum to create change aligned with what matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please leave a heart & share with others.

Six months ago, I came across a troubling, yet unsurprising trend that has stayed with me.

Buried in a summary for Gallup’s state of the 2025 workplace was a recent new report on the world’s emotional health. The results showed how difficult emotions remain far above levels from a decade ago, with implications for global peace and health. Difficult emotions rose significantly during Covid. These results show they have remained elevated, though not as high as at the peak of Covid.

Specifically, anger, stress, sadness, physical pain and worry are all higher than a decade ago. Gallup has termed this, “The Global Rise in Unhappiness.”

To me, this signifies we are navigating more challenges and difficulties. Living in a time of greater instability and unease.

And yet, we are also surrounded by so much good.

The upside is that daily encounters of positive experiences have held steady or slightly risen in the last decade, including: enjoyment, well-rested, smile or laugh, respect, and learning something. However, they haven’t risen as much as difficult emotions—which to me is where the opportunity lies.

I’ve been reflecting on: What if we bring greater intentionality to our daily positive experiences? Might this help counteract the collective hard times?

This is where savoring the good comes in.

Savoring the good means consciously noticing, appreciating and extending positive experiences. It means staying with what’s good for a little longer.

Savoring the good should not be mistaken for the harmful concept of toxic positivity, where people feel pressured to pretend everything is falsely positive while suppressing and rejecting what is hard.

We can both allow ourselves to feel our difficult feelings and increase our experiences of what’s good.

What I’ve noticed around savoring the good as a coach: Many of us don’t find it natural to stay with what’s good. As an example, clients often briefly share a win they’ve had and then quickly move onto the next topic. I pause and bring them back to the win. I guide them to draw out what went well and CELEBRATE! The wins are often small, as are many positive experiences. They are all deserving of spending an extra minute to celebrate.

And, doing so helps us pay attention to what’s working and how we can build on progress that is going well. More broadly, focusing on what’s good enriches our lives.

Why savor the good:

Savoring the good counteracts our brain’s negativity bias and changes our brain for the better. As Rick Hanson describes it: “The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.” What’s difficult sticks to us; and what’s good quickly passes us by. Unless we intentionally remain with positive experiences a little longer.

Savoring the good is one powerful way we can make a difference in our daily lives and wellbeing. The Happiness Set Point theory states that about 50% of our happiness is based on our genetics and personality, 10% on our circumstances, and 40% on our choices. This means we have agency over about 40% of our happiness. Our choices and intentional actions impact our ability to thrive.

My Story of learning to savor the good:

Savoring the good is one of the most individually meaningful practices I started when dealing with infertility and burnout.

I recently shared the following with someone:

Over a decade ago, when I was unhappy and struggling with newly diagnosed infertility and career burnout, at first, I mistakenly believed hard circumstances = unhappiness and suffering. It was somewhat black and white.

I didn’t know it was possible that I could do something to make a significant difference. I was skeptical. But I was at a low point. So I chose to try. I took action anyway before I believed. My consistent actions led to a change in my experience and perspective. I began to believe that what I choose to do in the face of challenges does make a difference.

I would discover unhappiness versus happiness are not binary. Both can coexist. I could find and savor the good in the difficult.

Making one small change to intentionally savor the good for 15-minutes a day for a month would be the start of completely changing my life. I started with lovingkindness and gratitude practices as well as savoring the good in small ways during the day. I experienced greater positivity and my experience did improve in noticeable ways.

When so much felt hard and out of my control, savoring the good brought me many daily small moments of joy and positivity that strengthened me over time. That increased my wellbeing. That helped me cope. That brought the good into the forefront, so I could counterbalance the difficult.

How to Savor the Good:

You can intentionally incorporate this practice into your day, multiple times a day. It only takes a minute each time. This can be done with moments in both work and life.

One of my favorite practices for savoring the good is to pause and soak in the beauty in nature. The photo at the top of this post is from doing so on a hike last spring.

1. Have a positive experience:

• Current positive experiences: notice what is good in your current experience.

• Past positive experiences: reflect on and remember a past positive experience.

• Find a future positive experiences: what’s something small you enjoy, that you have agency around? How can you experience it more often? What people uplift you?

• Create a positive experience: Bring up and focus on an object, art, photo or someone you care about that’s meaningful.

2. Savor the positive experience:

• Stay with the experience to fully enjoy it for 30 seconds to a minute.

• Notice the experience with all of your senses.

• Soak in the experience, really bringing it into your being.

• Appreciate what you are experiencing.

“When you appreciate the good, the good appreciates.” ~Dr. Tal Ben Shahar, internationally renowned teacher, speaker and author in positive psychology and leadership.

Our positive experiences have a more lasting effect when we savor them. And as we do, we notice even more good around us.

It doesn’t need to take a crisis to savor the good, as it did at first for me.

If your life is going well, this practice will make it even better.

If you are navigating a change or transition, this can ground you in what’s good even if feels up and down.

If you are having a hard time, this practice will strengthen you and make what’s good a more prominent part of your day.

Reflection: What’s one way you could incorporate savoring the good into your day? I’d love to hear.

Photo credit: Rachael Gaibel

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Ways to Work with Me:

• Individual Career, Life and Wellbeing Coaching: For those navigating changes and transitions in their life and or career, overcoming burnout to improve wellbeing or starting a coaching or other business.

• Leadership Coaching: One-on-one and group coaching for emerging and mid-level leaders to grow in their career and leadership, navigate change and thrive. For those with a professional development budget through their work.

• Leadership consulting: to help small to mid-sized organizations change and grow sustainably by elevating the employee experience, leadership development, and wellbeing, through programs and workshops.

Contact me to learn more about how coaching could help you create changes aligned with what matters to you.

Subscribe now

Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a leadership, life and wellbeing coach, consultant and content writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: discovering what’s possible to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please leave a heart & share with others.

“Your failure does not mean you are a failure.” –Deborah Riegel

This was the start of Riegel’s response about what message she most wants to impart to every woman about failure. It’s based on Riegel’s new book, which she co-authored with Fiona Macaulay, Aim High and Bounce Back: A Successful Woman’s Guide to Rethinking and Rising Up from Failure.

It helped me realize how often I see themes of failure having a negative association show up with coaching clients and in myself.

Themes I’ve noticed when we internalize failure:

• Anticipating potential future failure: worried or afraid to start because you might fail

• There’s so much pressure to get it right the first time, internally and externally

• Thinking that experiencing challenges and obstacles, i.e. mini failures, means that we are doing something wrong

• The stories we make up when we think we’ve failed are not positive

• It can be hard to risk failing by doing something new once we’ve had years of success and competence (such as those in the middle or late career)

• Our tendency to give ourselves a hard time or beat ourselves up when we do fail

• Post-failure or the perception of failure can contribute to self-doubt or second-guessing future choices

But, failure doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. As a young professional, I experienced what I still refer to as my greatest failure gift. It’s shaped how I’ve looked at failure ever since.

In this post, I’ll share my failure to accomplishment story and how it applies to what I’m learning in Aim High and Bounce Back.

Make sure to check out the end where Riegel graciously imparts two reflections about themes from her book. Deborah Riegel is a keynote speaker and consultant who teaches leadership communication for Wharton Business School and Columbia Business School.

My early career story: from failure to attaining my goal

The Summer before my Senior Year of College

I wasn’t standing on stage at the summer conference. I was a sales representative for Vector Marketing corporation, selling CUTCO cutlery. As in, high quality kitchen knives and accessories. Those on stage were receiving sales awards for the highest sales from the two-week competition.

Two weeks prior, I had excitedly kick-off my goal of becoming an All American for the summer season. The All-American program was an award program for the top 50 college student sales representatives across the country out of thousands of representatives. I had started out so optimistic and told everyone in the Cutco office I was going for this goal.

And now, as I stood in the audience watching the top sales representatives get their awards, I felt defeated. I realized my sales results were far too low to have a chance to reach my goal to become an All American. Falling short of the needed sales targets, I abandoned my goal.

I knew I would need to approach the goal differently next time.

Upon reflecting later, I noticed I had made so many mistakes in the planning and early execution of that goal. The biggest mistake is I didn’t have a realistic plan. I expected everything to not only go smoothly, but to go better than typical. To double my average order size, for instance, during the competition.

The Fall of my Senior Year of College

The fall season was my last chance to meet my goal to become an All American. I wanted to do it right.

The most important change I made was to build an unwavering belief and trust in myself and my ability to attain this goal. It still amazes me that in my early 20s, I tapped into believing so deeply and fully that it was possible to reach my goal.

This time, at the fall conference, I was standing on stage. I received an award for top sales for the two-week fall sales competition. The early win set me on the path towards accomplishing my goal.

Soon after, I went back to college, away from my referral sources. My average order size dropped in half. I faced more and different obstacles than I was used to. Essentially, progress was far from smooth.

But, I didn’t question if I could meet the goal. Instead, I looked at what adjustments I’d need to put in place given the obstacles so that I could still attain the goal.

As I’ve alluded to, I did accomplish this goal! I was awarded the number 11 All American out of 50 for that fall season.

When I remember this story, what stands out the most to me are:

1. Failing first led to accomplishment. All the failure lessons I learned the first time taught me how to approach pursuing the goal in a more constructive way the second time.

2. I truly don’t believe I could have achieved this goal without failing first. Failure has the potential to lead to more grow and accomplishments in ways that being successful all the time can’t.

3. What made the biggest impact towards attaining the goal was my deep and strong belief in my goal. The belief grounded me to keep going, to meet and overcome obstacles and challenges.

A bigger lesson: our visions, goals, and/or dreams show up when they are still forming, well before we attain them. Believing in them begins to bring them to life. Failure on our journey towards what we envision can make us think what we are aiming for is not for us. A reframe is failure is part of our path and not a detour.

I share my story because it’s the clearest example I have as to why failure does not mean something is wrong with us or that we won’t later succeed. Failure can be core to attaining what we aim for in our careers and lives. When we get back up and bounce back.

Two pieces of wisdom directly from Deborah Riegel about Aim High and Bounce Back:

1. How has your relationship to failure changed through writing Aim High and Bounce Back?

Deborah Riegel: What shifted most for me is that I stopped thinking of failure as something that happens to you and started seeing it as something you have a relationship with. That relationship can be avoidant, or catastrophizing, or dismissive, or something much healthier. Writing this book helped me understand my own defaults more clearly, and gave me language and tools I now use on myself, not just with clients.

2. What message do you most want to impart to every woman about failure?

Deborah Riegel: Your failure does not mean you are a failure. Those are two completely different things, and we conflate them constantly, especially women, who have often been taught that falling short reflects something fundamental about who we are rather than just what happened. I want every woman to know that failure is data, not verdict. It tells you something useful if you’re willing to look at it without flinching. And the women I most admire, the ones leading boldly and building things that matter, are not the ones who failed less. They are the ones who learned to fail better.

Two insights that have stood out to me so far from the book are:

1. Noticing our own failure patterns.

In the book, Riegel and Macaulay identify five types of failure based on surveying over 1,000 women globally. They encourage readers to understand their own failure patterns, which is the first step to changing it. Here are the five failure types as described in the book:

• When numbers don’t lie: concrete failure. This means we aimed for something and either came up short or missed it entirely. It’s when the outcome is in such sharp contract to our hopes and expectations.

• When life happens to you: circumstantial failure. This is the failure that blindsides you. Someone else creates the mess and you’re left cleaning it up.

• When the world calls it wrong: perceived failure. This is when the world calls a decision a failure even though you know you made the right choice. It’s when others judge your decision harshly, but you feel aligned with your values.

• When you lose yourself in the process: identity failure. This is failure where you might look successful externally but feel hollow inside. Success feels empty and you don’t like who you’ve become in pursuit of it.

• When fear wins before you start: paralysis failure. When you stop yourself from trying for something big. It can happen when you don’t feel like you are “ready yet.” When you endlessly prepare but never start.

2. We all have a relationship with failure; but we can be intentional about the relationship

As Riegel expressed above, what shifted the most for her in writing the book is: “I stopped thinking of failure as something that happens to you and started seeing it as something you have a relationship with”

It made me pause and reflect too. About my relationship with failure and how I could improve to have a healthier relationship with failure.

Reflection:

• Your failure patterns: What do you notice about your failure patterns, based on the list of five types?

• What’s your relationship with failure? Unhealthy? Mixed? Healthy?

• What do you want your relationship with failure to look like?

• What’s one step you could take to get closer to the relationship with failure you want?

Do you have a failure to success story? I’d love to hear it. You can share by replying to this email or commenting.

Photo Credit: Pixaby

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Two Ways to Work with Me:

Contact me to learn more about how coaching could help you make the changes most important to you.

• Individual Career, Life and Wellbeing Coaching: For those exploring or navigating changes and transitions in their life and or career, and/or to overcome burnout and improve wellbeing.

• Leadership Coaching: For emerging and mid-level leaders to grow in their career and leadership, accomplish their goals and thrive. For those with a professional development budget through their work.

Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a leadership, life and wellbeing coach, consultant and content writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: discovering what’s possible to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

In my past corporate career, I overemphasized doing. I was rewarded for doing. I was good at doing. So, I kept doing. Doing. Doing. And what happened? Doing took charge. I became better at doing.

Over time, this resulted in becoming increasingly out of balance. Overusing Doing meant underusing Being. What started as feeling off grew to feeling disconnected from myself, though not knowing why. And, my wellbeing suffered. I got burned out.

In past posts, I’ve shared about the impact making changes to improve my wellbeing had on my life in 2015 during a challenging time. Focusing on my wellbeing taught me how to become grounded in my Being. Though I didn’t know that’s what I was learning at the time. A lesson that has served me since.

I’ve discovered that intentional Doing arises by grounding in your Being. Doing from your Being is purposeful Doing. It is the Doing aligned with who you deeply are at your core.

What I mean by Doing vs. Being:

Doing focuses on the outward actions and behaviors someone takes to get results.

Being focuses on the inner state and presence from which someone operates, based on: self-awareness, values, mindset, sense of purpose, strengths, connection to their wisest/best self, and more.

What I mean by intentional action:

Intentional action is the action someone takes in deeper alignment with their wisest/best self, vision and values.

Grounding in your Being means aligning internally first as the basis to create outer results. It’s about taking action from who you are and what matters to you.

We live in a culture that overemphasizes Doing. As a result, many of us have experienced getting caught up in a Doing cycle with no true purpose behind it. Chasing more and more execution and accomplishment. Like the energizer bunny that keeps going and going, without a reason as to why.

From experience, it can become an unfulfilling, empty cycle. If we paused to ask: why am I executing all of this? We might not be able to answer the question. Doing without connecting to our Being can lead to feeling misaligned or disconnected from ourselves. To getting increasingly burned out. As what happened to me.

No matter how much we aim to accomplish, Doing is not meant to be in charge. Our Being is meant to be in the lead of our life, decisions and actions.

The start of my Doing vs. Being Tension

I started grappling with Doing vs. Being over 15 years ago; here’s the story of where it began.

In a one-on-one meeting with my manager, I stared at the whiteboard in his office. One column said “Doing” the other said “Being,” with qualities listed for each.

My manager, while newer to managing me, was not new to the organization. He had familiarity with me and my work prior to becoming my manager. He shared that so far, he had observed I was an incredibly strong doer. He was challenging me to bring more “Being” into my work. He believed this would be critical as I began to develop as a leader.

At the time, I was coordinating or managing about 20 different HR and organizational development projects. I felt the weight of keeping the HR priorities on track as I listened to him. Being more was too much to comprehend. I had too much Doing to focus on before I could consider adding in Being.

While I left the meeting with an awareness of Being, it was, unfortunately, not something I believed I could prioritize.

So, I kept growing in my career overextending Doer strengths without a strong foundation in Being.

But there is only so much Doing one can exert before it catches up to you if you aren’t connected to your Being. By 2015, I had become a burned-out over-doer.

When I began making improvements in 2015 to show up better at work and improve my wellbeing, it was the start of focusing on Being more.

What amazes me as I look back is that I started with making one small change to connect with myself 10-15 minutes a day. That’s it. That was the beginning of what would have a profound impact on my life. Getting to know myself deeper and learning how to ground in my Being has significantly improved my life ever since.

Becoming connected to my Being is one of the most meaningful inner shifts I have made in my life in the past decade. And, grounding in my Being is a practice I have since continued. When I feel off, soon after, I often realize that perhaps I haven’t been connecting with my Being. And I remember that I can take immediate small steps to come back.

How to ground in your Being to take intentional action

Our days can become so wrapped up in and filled with Doing. Grounding in your Being comes from having a deep connection with yourself. Start by taking intentional time each morning to connect to yourself and your Being, which sets up your entire day to come from a Being place.

1. Connect to yourself on a deeper level

Make a daily practice to spend 10-15 minutes with yourself each morning for the purpose of connecting with who you truly are. Some examples:

• What’s something you love doing, simply for your enjoyment?

• What matters to you? How could you bring more what matters to you into your day?

• How could you take care of yourself and your wellbeing? A holistic wellbeing framework is SPIRE: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, Emotional

• What are your hopes, dreams and aspirations? If you aren’t clear on them, journal about what you want your life to look like.

• Enjoy reflective quiet time for yourself: for instance, meditate, yoga, journal, or spend time in nature without technology.

2. Notice your motivation for taking action

It is not about doing more, more. Identifying intentional actions takes discernment. It is about understanding:

• What actions or stuckness are coming from your inner critic, from fear or overwhelm?

• Versus, what actions are coming from your inner wisdom, best-self thinking, or are values aligned?

3. Take intentional action

Intentional, aligned action arises when you connect to your Being. This is why it’s the third step. It is the action that feels resonate and right to you. Even if it feels unconventional to the outside world. Intentional action means dropping supposed to or should types of action. Instead, it means focusing on what you believe is the right, imperfect next step for you.

When you feel connected to your Being, to yourself, ask: what’s my next step? Listen to what comes up and take that next step.

While coaching is broadly goal and action oriented, it’s also incredibly Being focused.

Clients begin coaching by getting to know themselves on a deeper level within the coaching container: What matters to you. Your why. Your vision. Your inner wisdom. What a “good” life and career means to you. What’s possible.

To make the changes most important to you begins by becoming grounded in your Being. What comes next is to start and build momentum so that you make progress from an aligned place.

Reflection: What’s one way you could connect with your Being in the next week?

I’d love to hear what practices help you connect with your Being. You can share by replying to this email or commenting.

Photo credit: Arek Socha

Subscribe now

Two Ways to Work with Me:

Contact me to learn more about how coaching could help you make the changes most important to you.

1. Individual Career, Life and Wellbeing Coaching: For those exploring or navigating changes in their life and or career, and/or to improve their wellbeing.

2. Leadership Coaching: For emerging and mid-level leaders to grow in their career and leadership, accomplish their goals and thrive. For those with a professional development budget through their work.

Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a life and work design coach; and leadership and wellbeing coach and consultant. Finding Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: discovering what’s possible to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

This is a story about when I stopped delaying and started listening to a dream that was calling me.

It’s about shifting my goal focus from immediate to long term.

It’s for anyone who has ever said “not now” to their dreams that kept showing up (as I have repeatedly).

It’s for anyone who wants to make changes in a sustainable way, without pressuring themselves to attain immediate, big results.

And it’s about a significant goal achievement I am celebrating. Of which I have incredible appreciation as it’s been a 2+ year journey to get to this point.

The goal I’m celebrating reaching: receiving my International Coaching Credential (ICF) Associate Certified Coach (ACC). More about what that means below.

My story from delaying to believing in my dream to coach

“What if coaching becomes a five or more-year career goal?” My coach asked me a few years ago.

I had come to the coaching session conflicted. I longed to start offering coaching; it was a dream I had been holding in my heart.

And yet, I had both constraints as well as objections to building coaching as a significant part of my career in that moment. The constraints related to already having a full life and career as well as the phase of life I was in, as a mother to a young child. I didn’t yet see how doing more coaching and taking a training program fit. Because I was only looking immediate and big.

But coaching kept calling me to start and give it more attention. When I did coach others, I felt like it was work I was meant to do. It felt enlivening and impactful. I did truly desire to coach more.

After my coach asked the question, I relaxed. It opened the possibility of starting at a pace that worked for me.

The pressure I had been putting on myself to figure this out and make big career changes quickly dissolved.

Her question completely changed my perspective. I connected to my own inner knowing to focus on a long-term path.

Once I began to look at coaching as a longer-term goal, I made decisions aligned with the long-term. I found and chose to enroll in a coaching program that supported this path.

I would still have my own ongoing inner work to do about the resistance and objections (driven by my inner critic and fear), but they would no longer hold me back.

I realized I didn’t need to wait until I completed the coaching program to start. Instead, I could start coaching in small ways based on the training I had already received.

One important note: I also recognized I cannot do everything. When I chose to pursue this dream, it meant this dream took priority over other ideas that would later arise. Which can also feel paradoxical; but if you say yes to one dream, you will need to say no to others or focus on them in limited ways.

During my last module through the Wholebeing Institute’s Positive Psychology Coaching Certification in fall 2024, I created a goal action plan, called a goal map, for my coaching goal after the program. I listed my coaching goal destination as: “Become ICF certified” with the target date of end of December 2025. ICF stands for International Coach Federation.

To get my ICF on the portfolio path, I would need to meet the following requirements:

• 60+ coaching education hours (completed through my coaching program)

• Receive at least 10 hours of mentor coaching over at least 3 months

• ICF approval that a recorded transcript of a coaching session met ICF requirements

• 100+ hours with 8+ coaching clients attained after starting the coaching program but outside of peer coaching within the program

• Finally, taking and passing the ICF ACC test

I didn’t yet know how long each aspect would take but a year seemed doable.

On December 16^th, I completed the last step, taking the ICF ACC test. Yes, right at the target date I had created a year earlier. It surprisingly worked out that way.

Upon getting confirmation that I passed the test and received my ICF ACC, I had a vision of the entire path that I had traversed to get to this point. It wasn’t simply about the accomplishment. It was about the journey.

What stood out to me was:

• I made progress on this goal sustainably, in a way that worked for me.

• I did it (mostly) without getting too overloaded or burning out.

• I broke down this big goal into manageable chunks. Then, I took one step at a time.

• I had been living my dream to coach others throughout this journey.

• I believed in myself and this dream and kept going towards it, even as barriers and obstacles arose.

• I enjoyed the deeper coaching learning and application. That unexpectedly includes studying for the ACC test as it connected me with what ICF stands for.

• I intentionally returned to why the goal mattered to me at different points.

• I connected to my inner wisdom (i.e. inner mentor) for guidance.

• I was reminded of the many people who supported me throughout this process.

I sat at my desk smiling and savoring the moment. Feeling grateful to myself and for all the people who supported me, directly and indirectly, to reach this goal. Grateful for the opportunity to coach so many inspiring people in the past few years. I am incredibly thankful to so many of you who have had a part in me achieving this goal.

A Slow Growth Story

This is a slow growth story. What I call slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time to make progress on your dreams and goals. As I shared previously: “Small changes we make over a long period of time have the potential to transform us.” It is an alternative to the following common goal narratives: expecting constant rapid growth or delaying dreams.

Expecting constant rapid growth: I’ve noticed so often, in the US, we expect big dreams or changes to happen quickly. Or, we feel that to get started, we must do everything now. This is not how growth and change happen.

On the other side, it’s common to delay dreams: I am intimately familiar with the “not now” approach to dreams. Pushing them off until later. Later. Later. While we can’t pursue everything at once, we can discern what dreams matter most to us and start pursuing at least one of them now.

The path of slow growth is a different way. Slow growth gives us permission to both start small now and focus on moving forward with a long-term vision. Starting begins with listening to the dream. This can be its own process to shift out of delaying and resistance and into openness and curiosity.

The magic of slow growth is that taking one step at a time will ultimately lead to rapid growth and blooming.

“People overestimate what they can do in a day. People underestimate what they can accomplish in five or ten years… The opportunity is to expand our belief in what could be possible longer term: in one, five or ten years.” ~Rachael Gaibel from How to Appreciate the Journey Towards your Dreams

I can attest both from my experience and as a coach: Pursuing the goals and dreams that matter deeply to you makes a huge difference to your life and wellbeing. They bring aliveness, fulfillment, meaning and more.

I am a proponent of partnering with clients on how they can uncover and start living their dreams and goals now. This often means finding the space for their goals or dreams within an already full life and career. And this includes starting small, especially if you have caregiving responsibilities. Tiny even. Starting an hour a week or a few hours a month. Then building from there.

Yes, there could be a time to go all in on bigger goals or dreams, but that isn’t necessary to begin. And it can still be done sustainably.

As we’re in the beginning of 2026, full of possibility, I hope you listen to the dreams and goals that have been trying to get your attention. I hope you remember to look long term. I hope you do more of what matters to you. Most of all, I hope you start living at least one of your goals and dreams now.

Reflection:

• Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths to center yourself. Ask yourself: What do I truly want for myself in 2026?

• Bring up the two concepts of starting now and taking a long-term view. What could it look like to hold both as I pursue my dreams and goals this year?

• What’s one way I could start in the next week?

If you want to explore partnering with me to create changes aligned with what matters to you in your life and work, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

Photo credit: Pixaby

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a professional and life coach, leadership and wellbeing consultant and content writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: finding possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

Recently, I’ve been hearing the word confidence come up a lot. Both with coaching clients and others. From a place of not believing that they have enough confidence now.

There is nothing wrong with confidence.

But issues with confidence can occur from these types of examples:

• When we put pressure on ourselves to be more confident

• When we think there is something wrong with us when self-doubt creeps in

• When we compare ourselves to others who seem more “confident”

• When we want to become confident first before we actually progress on our dreams and goals

• When we think becoming more confident will solve whatever challenge we are facing

Confidence tends to be overly inflated as what’s missing from our lives. I offer this alternative perspective: what if we stopped seeking more confidence? Instead, what if we grew our courage?

Because courage comes before confidence.

When I received my own courage message

It was the fall of 2018 and I was full of self-doubt. I had just left my ten-year career without a career plan, after closing out the last aspects at the end of my maternity leave.

The clarity I felt when I made the decision to leave contrasted the vagueness of not knowing what might be next. Much of my identity had become entangled within my career. As I had progressed in that career, I developed more confidence and competence. Upon leaving, that had all disappeared. I felt lost and empty.

In the void, self-doubt took over. Given my new uncertain career future, my inner critic, accompanied by fear, had plenty of material to draw upon. Though I didn’t yet realize that is what was going on.

I now know the inner critic, our voice of self-doubt, has a hard time with uncertainty and the unknown. When we leave our comfort zone, as I had done, the inner critic’s voice becomes louder and ramps up, taking over. That can happen because our inner critics are trying to keep us safe. It’s a survival mechanism. But it doesn’t serve our growth.

Here’s when the message of courage I didn’t know I was looking for arrived.

One of the first newsletters I received after signing up for Tara Mohr’s, women’s leadership coach, facilitator and best-selling author, was: The Confidence Myth and What It Means for Your Career. Arriving at exactly the right time; less than two weeks after my last day at work.

Through a survey Mohr conducted with professional women, she discovered: most respondents assume confidence is a critical element for current and future career success.

Confidence, Mohr found, is often the solution people seek to overcome self-doubt. However, she asserts: “Self-doubt is indeed part of the problem... But contrary to what we’d expect, confidence is not the solution.”

The problem with depending on having more confidence is that we spend our energy on the “very difficult—if not impossible—task: the task of becoming more confident.” This often means we wait to take action to pursue our dreams until we can gain more confidence.

If developing confidence first isn’t the solution, what might be?

Mohr found many replied that “more courage” was what would most boost their career success. This means to move forward to pursue our dreams now; while working with our self-doubt so it doesn’t hold us back.

Mohr shares (emphasis added):

Confidence is faith in our abilities and ourselves. Courage is going forward even when we don’t feel that faith...

We talk a lot to women about their finding more confidence, but it’s time we put more attention on courage, on taking action in the absence of certainty that we can do a task well... Confidence likely won’t always be with us as we forge new paths. But we don’t need confidence to do what we most want to do in our careers. We need to learn to take action in the midst of self-doubt, and we can each begin practicing that today.

Reading the article reminded me there was nothing wrong with me for experiencing self-doubt.

I realized I had left my career by leaning into courage and hope. I remembered many other past situations where I had taken action from courage first.

And courage has become a defining quality in my journey ever since. Again and again, courage has guided me to move forward in the face of self-doubt and fear.

Now, as a coach, I see the other side. In supporting clients to start taking action now in the direction of their dreams and goals, I notice self-doubt and fear often come up. This is where courage comes in.

In my past post Building the Courage to Start, I shared the idea of two different types of action when pursuing new dreams or goals:

• Preparing to do the work: the set-up, learning from experts and knowledge obtainment that is part of doing something new.

• Doing the work: building and practicing the new skills necessary to make progress on dreams or goals.

At times, people focus much of their attention on “preparing to do the work” to try to increase their confidence first. An example is spending all your time on business set-up, learning and talking to experts while delaying starting the “doing the work” type of action—i.e. practicing the actual skills needed for building your business.

But there are costs to delaying. What moves you forward is when you start using skills as you develop them. What brings you energy and aliveness is when you live your dreams and goals now. This doesn’t mean to ignore preparation; it means to focus on both types of action simultaneously. Which is possible by showing up with courage.

How ground in courage:

So, if as Mohr shared, “courage is going forward even when we don’t feel that faith” in ourselves, how can we build courage?

The best way I’ve found to ground in courage is to take values aligned action. If you take one insight from this post, it’s the importance of being clear on your values so you can take the courageous actions that matter to you.

People are more willing to get out of their comfort zones, even if it feels uncomfortable, when it aligns with a bigger purpose and their values.

If you aren’t clear on your values, check out the four steps to living your values in my previous post: What Matters to Me? Or respond to this post and I’ll provide a full worksheet to identify your values.

A deeper way to ground in courage includes:

While courage might not be your default, you can intentionally build your courage.

1. Physically center and ground yourself. Take a few deep breaths, journal, go for a walk, shake it out, or do something else to feel more grounded if you find you are caught up in self-doubt.

2. Connect with your values to take values aligned action. Your core values are what matters to you and what you find important. Aim to make decisions and take action that move you closer to your values.

3. Focus on service and impact. Shift your attention to how you can be of service and on having a positive impact. You then give less attention to your internal assessments and self-doubt.

4. Bring an experimentation mentality. Focus on taking intentional action to build your skills, iterating and what you can learn.

Reflection: Bring up a situation where you feel self-doubt or have been wanting more confidence. What action would you take next if you were connected to your values?

Yes, courage does come first when you make changes or embark on something new. This means you don’t need to wait until you have confidence first. Courage gives you agency to move towards your dreams or goals right now, exactly as you are. And confidence will come as a result of all the courageous actions you take to do the work.

If you want support to create changes that matter to you in your life and work, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

Photo credit: Vicki Hamilton

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a professional and life coach, leadership consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: finding possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

What does the idea of slowing down bring up for you?

Slowing down used to have a negative connotation for me. Early on in my career, I believed I didn’t have time to slow down, at least not at work.

I didn’t think I’d be as productive or efficient if I slowed down. I thought I had to move fast all the time.

Really, I didn’t understand the gifts in slowing down. I’ve since discovered different opportunities exist in a realm that moves at a more balanced pace. For my life. My career path. My creativity.

I don’t think many of us realize what’s possible from having dedicated times to slow down.

We live in a society continuously moving at a faster and faster pace. With more and more to do.

The result? High levels of burnout. Disconnected from ourselves. Overwhelmed nervous system. Living at an unsustainable pace.

A theme I’ve heard from coaching clients is yearning to slow down, pause, or rest. While those who bring it up want to make a shift, many also resist the idea at some level. They might feel blocked. Or haven’t given themselves the permission. Or don’t believe they have the time or know how.

It is hard to rest in a society (speaking of the USA) that doesn’t value slowing down as much as productivity at all costs. What you do and achieve is what’s rewarded. This myth is perpetuated by hustle culture. It’s not true.

In actuality, there are two sides to what makes attaining your dreams and goals possible. Being and doing. Yin and yang. Slow and fast. Inhale and exhale.

So many of us are out of balance, tilted heavily towards the doing side. Overextended. Individually. Collectively.

We aren’t meant for nonstop doing. It’s not sustainable. And, I have learned, over time, it takes a toll.

Here’s what I see: someone’s desire to slow down, pause, or renew comes from their truth. The wisest part of them knows incorporating slowness is how they can create the changes most important to them in their lives.

Integrating slowness could mean making changes differently than how they have done so before. With increased balance between being and doing. It could involve exploring a new way of operating.

My story about learning how to slow down

The first whispers to slow down came over a decade ago, during the earlier part of my infertility journey.

It began with the journaling prompt, “If your body could talk, what would it say?”

The response would forever change my perspective about slowing down. My body said I was racing and rushing too much. It was stressful not only for my body but for my mind. I wasn’t paying attention to the signs from my body to slow down. My body asked me to listen.

My heart ached when I read back the response to the prompt. I recognized how I was disconnected from what I truly needed. In that moment, I sensed the importance of listening to my body’s wisdom.

For years afterwards, building in my own nourishing times to go slower each day was enough.

And then, during a crisis of intense burnout, I needed more rest than I allowed myself. I felt like I was falling apart. All my body and mind wanted to do was rest. When I kept pushing through, it exacerbated my burnout symptoms.

Through this crisis, I learned how to integrate a deeper level of slowness into my life.

I’ve pondered why it took me being in a burnout crisis before significantly changing my life and work. I’ve come to realize when I was able to keep going by incorporating smaller wellbeing changes, of course I would keep going.

It was when I could no longer do so sustainably that making more significant changes was the only option. On the other hand, I don’t believe we have to get to crisis level first.

To be clear, I am a huge proponent of making smaller changes. Committing to small changes one at a time completely transformed my life. Also, I would never have made bigger changes without starting with smaller changes first.

My chosen post-corporate career as a coach, consultant and content writer asks me to go at a sustainable pace, to balance being and doing. Developing skills such as the ones below don’t work in a racing and rushing mode; they incorporate savoring and slowness:

• Curiosity

• Creativity

• Deep work

• Flow

• Fully listening

• Presence

Here is the contrast to how I was at my worst, when I was overwhelmed and, in a racing, rushing mode at work. I often multi-tasked during meetings, not fully listening and interrupting others. I thought I was getting more done by half paying attention to the meeting while simultaneously doing simple work tasks. I was mistaken. I would have been more effective in my work if I had been present, curious and listened.

While I currently have a more proactive and intentional relationship to slowness, I don’t have it all figured out. I teach what I too can deepen.

How to start slowing down:

Slowing down is about more than tips. It means listening to and trusting your yearning to go slower. To pause and rest. To restore.

It starts with how you view slowing down. What was your reaction to the question I asked at the start of the post? What does the idea of slowing down bring up for you?

Get curious about what it brings up for you.

I’ve found the desire to slow down often comes from our inner wisdom or body first before our thinking mind.

One way to take action towards slowing down is to create intentional time each day where you can slow down and pause. Start with 10 minutes total or more in your day. It can be all at once or 2-3 minutes a few times a day.

For ideas, consider the following as a place to start (not meant to be comprehensive):

• Take a few deep breathes or practice a few minutes of mindfulness meditation

• Walk in nature without technology

• Hug a friend or a loved one for an extra minute

• Savor something good in your life for one minute

• Pause in nature, soaking in your surroundings

• Listen fully to music you love, without distractions

Reflection:

• What matters to me about slowing down?

• What do I need to lessen or let go of to make space for slowing down?

• What’s one way I could incorporate slowing down or pausing into my day?

If you want support to create changes that matter in your life and work, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

Photo Credit: Rachael Gaibel; I took the above photo recently after pausing to appreciate nature’s beauty.

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a leadership, life and wellbeing coach, consultant and content writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: discovering what’s possible to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

There have been times I have gotten stalled and stuck when attempting to make changes to my life and career by myself. I am not alone.

It can be hard to start, build momentum or sustain changes on our own.

A few key reasons this happens is:

• Growth is uncomfortable. Change pushes us up against our growth edges. Change isn’t smooth or linear; we experience blocks and obstacles that challenge us.

• Our perception of ourselves is more focused on our current and past selves, including our limitations, than who we are becoming.

• Our self-critical talk speaks louder when we step out of our comfort zones but this voice is not our best companion for growth.

I’ve experienced significantly more growth once I realized: we aren’t meant to make the changes most important to us on our own.

Having the right support and guidance is vital to creating change that aligns with what matters to you. Coaching is one powerful avenue to encourage growth, though not the only way. As there are different ideas about coaching, I’ll share more about what I mean by coaching.

Here’s why:

Coaching supports you in moving from where you are today toward the future you want to create, based on your dreams and goals. The magic of coaching is the coach helps guide the client back to their own wisdom, clarity and sense of possibility.

Unfortunately, it’s often not our default to look internally when wanting to make changes.

Instead, so often, many of look for or are inundated with external answers.

The problem comes when external influence becomes our main source of direction for how we make decisions and live our lives.

One of the benefits of having a coach is they can help clients ground more strongly internally to find their own answers inside. External guidance then becomes a complement the individual’s own wisdom and best-self thinking.

As a coach, I believe you are the best one to make decisions about your life and career.

While one-on-one coaching is the focus of this post, a group coaching based approach is as effective.

What is coaching? The International Coaching Federation (ICF), the world’s leading organization for the coaching profession, defines coaching as:

“Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

What that means to me is: Coaching is a collaborative process that helps you connect with your truth, explore what matters most, address challenges and make meaningful progress to create the changes you seek.

Examples of how a coach partners with clients (these are meant to provide examples and are not all-encompassing):

• Sees you as creative, resourceful and whole

• Guides you to discover what’s possible for you and deepen what’s true for you

• Listens deeply and asks curious questions to help encourage awareness, new insights and reframes

• Supports you to make progress on your goals, aspirations or dreams

• Provides new tools and frameworks

• Helps you reframe and overcome barriers and obstacles

• Witnesses and reflects your light

• Holds the container for your growth

How Coaches Can Support Clients to Change: ADKAR Model as an example

A coach acts as a change agent and partners with a client on their growth process.

ADKAR, which stands for, Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement, is a model for individual change. The model is part of PROSCI’s change management process to manage the people side of change, in which I am certified.

I’ll break down each phase of the ADKAR model both from the individual perspective and how a coach can support each phase.

While change isn’t linear, the ADKAR model gives the types of phases people go through as they move through their own changes. People do often go forward and backwards through the process.

1. Awareness of the need to change

Change starts with awareness.

Individual perspective: While people who seek a coach do have awareness they want to make changes, the level of awareness can vary. Awareness that something could be different or better in their life or work. Awareness they want to pursue dreams or goals. Awareness they are navigating a transition.

How a coach can support awareness: Often, clients come with both clear and vague aspects of the changes they want to make. A coach can help individuals gain clarity and deepen awareness about their goals and aspirations and why it matters.

2. Desire to change

Desire means someone is motivated to make changes.

Individual perspective: People seeking a coach do have an interest and desire in changing. But, the level of desire can vary. Motivation is often mixed with experiencing at least some level of inner blocks such as: stuckness, limiting beliefs, overwhelm, self-doubt or fear.

How a coach can support: One reason people seek a coach is to help them harness their desire and intrinsic motivation to change. A coach can do so by supporting clients to address obstacles, limitations and blocks and guide them to connect with what’s possible.

3. Knowledge of how to change

Knowledge involves learning the skills and knowledge needed to make and sustain changes.

Individual perspective: While people seeking a coach often have a good starting point, there are usually gaps.

How a coach can support: Coaching helps clients to encourage awareness, new insights and next steps on their path. A coach can help people explore strengths and resources and facilitate creating plans to address gaps.

4. Ability to implement the new skills and behaviors

Ability means being able to actually take the steps to practice the new skills and behaviors.

Individual perspective: People are often practicing implementing new skills and behaviors during the coaching engagement, which can be uncomfortable.

How a coach can support: Another reason people seek a coach is to move from vision to action. A coach supports clients to experiment, reflect on learnings, gain momentum, have methods of accountability, and reframe challenges on the path to making changes.

5. Reinforcement to sustain change

Reinforcement means positively reinforcing the change.

Individual perspective: People often want to develop ways to sustain change during a coaching engagement.

How a coach can support: A coach can facilitate individuals to develop an action plan, structure and accountability to help them continue to make progress to sustain the change.

Examples of results clients see from partnering with a coach:

• Increased motivation

• Improved wellbeing

• Goal attainment

• Increased personal growth

• Sustain long term change

While a coach can partner with the client to help facilitate growth, it is up to the client to ultimately build the life and career they want for themselves.

Reflection: Think about a time you made a change, big or small. What conditions encouraged your growth?

Whether it’s a coach, program, community, accountability partners or something else, we could all benefit from surrounding ourselves with people who believe in our potential and inspire our growth.

If you want support to create changes that matter in your life and work, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

Note: these ideas are based on my experience and training and is not meant to be all encompassing. It draws upon the following: International Coaching Federation (ICF), Wholebeing Institute, and The Coaching Way, ADKAR model of individual change from Prosci.

Photo Credit: Joe Plenio

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, leadership consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: finding possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

Earlier this year, amid the broader turbulence and uncertainty, I felt increasingly ungrounded. When I reflected, I yearned for a stronger base.

I started noticing I had been slipping from my core wellbeing practices. Doing less that nourished me. When what I really needed was to support myself more.

Since then, I’ve heard similar stories from others. Many people have a tendency to do this when it feels hard. For instance, in trying to navigate “the chaos of the infinite work day” (Microsoft Work Trends Index), we become reactive. Putting out fire after fire at the expense of ourselves. But, if we do that for too long, it takes a toll. Stress and burnout accumulate.

In my situation, I realized I could reset my wellbeing to better ground myself.

It reminded that anchoring in my wellbeing doesn’t happen once. It happens again and again. We often need small tweaks or resets to serve ourselves and renew.

When we anchor into our wellbeing, we build the nutrients to sustain us and support our growth. We strengthen our inner resources to handle difficulties.

How wellbeing is empowering during challenging times: wellbeing gives us a positive focus where we have agency. It shifts our attention to actively nurturing what brings us meaning and fulfillment.

Here’s a testament to the power of wellbeing from my own life. One of the most unexpected discoveries of my adult life was what happened when I started making small changes to improve my wellbeing during a low point.

The discovery: I could experience growth during a hard time. Focusing on my personal growth and wellbeing made a significant difference in the midst of dealing with infertility and career burnout.

I share this example because low points and challenges are incredible times for new starts and resets. Even if they might not feel like it.

What I mean by a reset:

This definition of reset, while not a main one, is what I mean: “To start again after a period of rest or change so that you feel better able to deal with your life or with a situation.”

This is exactly what so many of us need right now. To start again so we can better navigate our whole lives amid the current individual or societal challenges.

The best example I know of a reset is from meditation. There is a common misperception about meditating that people who are “good” meditators have no thoughts the whole time they meditate. That you are doing something wrong if you do have thoughts.

It’s not true. What actually matters the most in the meditation is noticing the thought and then returning to the meditation anchor such as your breath. Essentially, it’s noticing and resetting.

This relates to a wellbeing reset as making changes to our wellbeing begins with noticing. The opportunity is to notice something isn’t working or could be better. And, to then use that as the point to begin again.

Whether it’s starting for the first time, a reset, or a deepening, we will enrich our lives we anchor into our wellbeing.

Process to reset your wellbeing:

Adapted from the process of returning to an anchor in meditation.

1. Notice: Recognize that something feels off or isn’t working. Notice you want something to be different or better.

2. Acknowledge: Acknowledge what pulled your focus away from yourself and your wellbeing without judgment. Name it.

3. Let go: Let go of what isn’t serving you any longer. Release the limiting thoughts or beliefs that contributed to focusing less on yourself and your wellbeing.

4. Return: Bring your attention back to yourself and your wellbeing. Start or return to anchoring in your wellbeing in a way that nourishes you.

How to Start:

1. Choose one area of the five elements of SPIRE that you want to give more attention to.

The SPIRE model for wellbeing provides a holistic, whole person, understanding of wellbeing. SPIRE stands for:

• Spiritual: leading a meaningful life and mindfully savoring the present.

• Physical: Caring for the body and tapping into the mind/body connection.

• Intellectual: Engaging in deep learning and opening to experience.

• Relational: Nurturing a constructive relationship with self and others.

• Emotional: Feeling all emotions, reaching towards resilience and positivity.

2. Reflect:

• What would support you right now?

• What do you want more of in your life?

3. Next, determine one small change you want to commit to for at least 30 days.

Start small, for 10-15 minutes a day. Plan ahead of time: where does it fit into your routine?

4. Create an anchor to return to.

I mean this in the most literal sense: choose a word, image or object that resonates as an anchor. Put it somewhere visible to come back to.

“How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.” –Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

We can infuse our days with what nourishes us. It doesn’t need to be huge. Small amounts make an impact.

So, start right where you are now. Do something to support yourself and your wellbeing. Reset if you notice something in your life isn’t working.

This is not to minimize that a lot feels hard right now and not in our control. That our lives can feel more challenging when circumstances are difficult.

What it is about is putting more emphasis on what we can impact. On where we have agency. On how we live our lives.

Because, when we ground in our wellbeing, we build something solid. Rooted more deeply in ourselves.

If you want support to go deeper to create change that matters, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

Photo Credit: Gerd Altmann

Check out my past posts here.

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Creating a life and career that’s aligned with what we truly want starts with grounding internally.

When we look inward, we become clearer on what’s possible. On our vision, dreams and goals. On what matters to us. There’s always discovery.

Yet, while looking inward increases our awareness, it’s not enough to create change.

What comes next is to listen. To make decisions and take actions from what comes up, in small ways. To include the right external support to help us on our own unique paths.

When I took a career break, though I was incredibly intentional to design what was next, I completely missed one aspect.

It only became clear years later in hindsight.

I want to focus this post on what I overlooked and why I believe it’s so important to creating change that matters. I have seen it both from clients and myself since.

The missing aspect: part of looking inward means connecting regularly and listening to our own inner wisdom and guidance.

My story about this miss

The first time I did Tara Mohr’s Inner Mentor visualization, which is a way to connect to your future self, as it’s referred to in coaching, I thought I didn’t get “enough” out of it. Note: the inner mentor is the voice of our inner wisdom.

I was hoping for direction for what might be next for my career. Instead, the strongest insight I received was her gift. She gave me a journal and said, “If you write, the rest will follow.”

The mistake I made is that I did not really listen at the time. I had done the visualization on my own as part of reading Tara Mohr’s Playing Big book. And I didn’t know that we often do hear surprising and unexpected answers. I didn’t understand how my inner wisdom’s seemingly unrelated answers actually related to the career changes I was seeking.

I now recognize that sometimes, it can be hard to interpret or listen to our own inner guidance without support at first.

But, our inner wisdom’s message doesn’t disappear if we don’t listen initially. It finds other ways to get our attention.

A year later, right after the pandemic lockdown started, my newly started consulting business fell apart within a week. What called to me so intensely and unexpectedly was to write. The message my inner mentor had tried to give me a year before.

This time, I listened. Both for my creative self-expression to add content writing as a consulting service. I started small.

I now know, my inner mentor’s message was completely true. Listening to the call to write was the gateway to returning to myself and making so many aligned changes to my career and life. Which have unfolded one step after another since. Including becoming a certified coach and offering coaching.

Since then, I have connected more regularly to my inner mentor and try to listen to her more. Though sometimes I resist at first or delay, especially when it doesn’t feel related to my goals (but it is always related, in it’s own way, even if I can’t see at the time). Or other times need the message multiple times. All of this is common. My own coaches have helped me deepen this relationship too.

The Opportunity

The opportunity is to build a relationship with our inner wisdom and keep connecting to this part of ourselves. To listen to our inner wisdom and take action in small ways.

Because our inner wisdom comes from a place of our wisest, truest, authentic self.

Because what comes through isn’t only about the words, it’s about the energy, the feeling sense, the visuals.

Because our inner wisdom might be expressing exactly what we need to know now about what’s next. Even if it’s surprising or unexpected.

Because our inner wisdom is showing us our own right path.

When we listen… what unfolds from that place is magic.

On the other side, I have witnessed and lived what happens when we don’t listen to our own wisdom. It could show up as a sense of something missing that we can’t quite grasp. That something feels off. Or, more extreme, a disconnection from self, a lack of self-trust, a feeling of self-betrayal.

How to Connect to your Inner Wisdom

I recently held a workshop on Connecting to your Inner Wisdom, to help participants become grounded in their own wisdom.

Many who joined want to make changes or are in transition. I led them in a visualization to meet their inner mentor, from Tara Mohr’s Inner Mentor visualization.

It was powerful to hear their inner mentor’s reflections from the visualization.

Multiple people asked how they could keep connecting to this part of themselves.

The first suggestion I offered is to make regular time to connect with themselves deeper. We have to get to know ourselves deeper if we want to create changes in our lives and work.

What I would add: Listen and take action based on what comes up. More will be revealed over time. What you hear is guiding you to the truths you need to know now. You can incorporate the insights into your life in small ways now.

I also shared the below practice, which is a way to check-in with yourself deeper. Note: you can use this check-in without having completed the inner mentor visualization.

A practice to Check-In deeper with yourself:

Adapted from Sara Avant Stover’s 4-part check-in

Use this as a 5-minute check-in. Take a few deep breaths or meditate for a few minutes before reflecting on these questions. Journal about what comes up.

1. Body: How is my body feeling today? What does my body need from me today?

2. Mind: What have I been thinking about recently? What does my mind need from me today?

3. Feelings: What am I feeling today? What are my feelings trying to communicate to me? What do my feelings need from me today?

4. Inner Wisdom: What does my inner wisdom/mentor want me to know right now? What’s my next step?

Take one small step on behalf of what comes up, which builds self-trust.

I know connecting to your inner wisdom will lead you somewhere with greater fulfillment and meaning. I hope you’ll listen.

You don’t need to figure this out on your own. A coach can help you deepen your relationship with yourself and your inner wisdom so that you create the changes that you truly want.

Want support? Contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help create change that matters.

Photo credit: Dexter Jacobs

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, consultant and content strategist/writer. Finding Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: finding possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

In March, I realized I had launched my Substack a year ago. I acknowledged this milestone to myself with a moment of gratitude and hadn’t planned anything further.

But, after reading two others’ moving posts celebrating their newsletter anniversaries, I realized: I want to celebrate this milestone in a post too!

I’ll explore what led to this milestone and what coming back to writing has meant to me. And, I want to thank you all immensely for being readers.

Three points in time that led to starting this newsletter:

1. How my Substack title Finding Possibility came to be

In the fall of 2021, one of the first pieces I wrote about leaving my corporate job without a career plan, was How to Find Possibility. This story was about “how I came to find the possibilities seeking to find me.”

My Substack was named Finding Possibility after this article. Both because it was the start of my own path post corporate career and because I see similar themes with coaching clients. Fittingly, the story begins with me not seeing what could be possible for myself.

Finding Possibility is about longing to create change that matters. It’s both about discovering what could be possible and the journey once we open to possibilities.

Even if we don’t sense possibilities at first, the hidden beauty is what’s possible is there all along. When we connect to ourselves more deeply. When we are curious and open. Then, we can see the possibilities trying to get our attention. Then, we can design what’s next in greater alignment. Then, we can make the changes most important to us in honor of our dreams and goals.

Finding Possibility is meant to be a symbiotic relationship. As you seek possibilities, you also discover and receive the possibilities seeking you.

2. Returning to Writing

In January 2022, I wrote The 8 Signs Calling Me to Write after completing my first live writing course in over a decade.

In the piece, I described a “pained longing” about writing. I believe now my longing to write felt stuck. Contracted. Blocked. I described the pain as armor around my heart. My writing so desired to break free—the act of writing and to ultimately share my voice through writing.

My biggest insight from the course: I would no longer wait to write. Writing could become a part of how I lived my life going forward. It felt like a revelation. For years prior, I said I would write when I had more time.

To be clear, when I made this commitment, I did not feel as if I had “extra” time. My daughter was a toddler, and the pandemic was still very much impacting our lives. The shift was that I would choose to incorporate what was meaningful in my life, i.e. writing, regularly. Though it wasn’t easy and there was less time for other things, I found a way to infuse writing into my life. And, I kept doing it.

3. The writing I deeply desired to share began to flow in its right time

In the first half of 2023, I attempted to write two different pieces many, many times but felt blocked. Stuck. Afraid. Each of these stories were about what I learned from past challenges and painful experiences. The thought of sharing vulnerable writing viscerally terrified me.

While writing, fear and my inner-critic kept attempting to be in the lead. Not the best writing companions. I was also going through an experience of heavy grief.

I ended up setting the writing for these pieces aside. Instead, I focused on structured journaling to help me uncover my voice. My truth. My story.

Months after first starting to write these two stories, I came back to them. One right after the other, they flowed in the fall of 2023.

These two pieces would ultimately jumpstart consistently sharing my writing:

• The first, How I started Living a Life True to Myself was the post to launch my Substack in March 2024.

• The second, How I Found the Good within the Difficult, was published in Tiny Buddha in May 2024.

10 truths I’ve learned from infusing writing in my life:

1. Listening to the call to write has been central to me coming back home to myself and what makes me feel alive. My life is so much richer and more meaning-filled when my creativity is imbedded in my life. And, surprisingly, it was the gateway to open up new possibilities for my career and life.

2. I aspire to write first for myself and for the love of it as part of my creative self-expression (though at times that doesn’t happen). And, I have felt called to share my writing and connect with others through writing. When I feel pressured to produce personal writing or lose sight of my why, it does not result in my best work.

3. I needed to go through an unearthing process to write in a way that feels true to me. To get unblocked. To come out of hiding. I no longer feel a pained longing about writing. I am experiencing elements of what I yearned for; but it’s not all bliss, see #4 below.

4. Sharing aspects of my story through writing has at times been a vulnerable and courageous act. It can feel both uncomfortable and exciting to be visible in this way. I am learning to make space for the whole of my experience. Having tools and support to work with blocks (i.e. fear and self-doubt) is still very much needed.

5. I must do my own processing, journaling, and healing first from past challenges and painful experiences before I write about them for the purpose of publishing pieces. Only then will the writing to share with others flow.

6. It is a big deal to me I’ve been posting consistently, based on an (approximately) monthly cadence that works for me. The backstory: I started this newsletter while in the middle of my coaching certification program; I honestly didn’t know if I’d be able to remain consistent during the program. But I did. I am proud of myself. This is one reason I decided to celebrate in this post!

7. The writers and story tellers who came before me with authenticity and heart paved the way for me to share my writing. I continue to learn from and be inspired by others’ stories.

8. What matters is being on the journey to live my dream of writing. I experience what lights me up frequently. I don’t need to get to a final destination. It has also taken me time and practice to love the whole of the writing process for each individual piece, even the messy parts.

9. The importance of creative discernment. Where are my ideas coming from? Are they coming from my safety instinct or ego? Or are they coming from a deeper, wiser part of me that feels called to bring an idea forth?

10. Finally, everything culminates with: being connected to and listening to my inner wisdom, truth, heart and creativity is where the treasures of my creative self-expression lie.

I hope you know prioritizing your own creative outlets matters in your life. Whether it’s writing and/or something else, explore what makes you feel alive. Connect to it. Infuse it in your life now. Your life will feel fuller, more enlivening. It may even lead to your right next steps for seemingly unrelated areas.

Thank you: Deep gratitude for being here. For reading this newsletter. For positively influencing me. For being connected. For expressing how my writing has impacted you.

And, thank you for taking a few minutes to read my reflection and celebrate with me!

I would love to hear from you: what’s something that has resonated about one of my posts?

Photo credit: Danuta Niemiec

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: finding possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

When we want to create change in our life and work, there’s tension. A tension between where we are now and getting somewhere. A tension when we envision a future that feels different, better than right now. There are times we fixate on the distance between the present and the future possibilities. Especially if we feel stuck, held back or off-track.

Instead, I want to share one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about pursuing our dreams: how to appreciate the journey.

Appreciating the journey is aspirational. Doing so is not always our default. But, in learning how to, we can be more intentional. We can enjoy our entire journey to create change and live our dreams.

This is the final post in the series on having a slow growth approach to change. One of the essential nutrients is to appreciate the journey. Slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time to make progress on your dreams and goals. This ultimately leads to the rapid growth of blooming.

Here’s an example of this tension:

July 2020: Minutes after my husband, daughter and I started our hike, our then two-year-old daughter began squirming in the hiking backpack. She demanded, “Down! See flowers!” After my typical distraction tactics didn’t work, we gave in. Hoping to take a few minutes to stop before continuing on our hike.

Once we put her down, she pointed and said, “More flowers,” walking a few feet to see the wildflowers. She lightly touched them, mesmerized. We took a few photos.

I was still in the frame of mind: this is a quick delay until we get back to hiking. I was getting impatient. Wanting to move. To hike. To get somewhere. I kept attempting to get my daughter to either walk or go back in the backpack. She had no interest.

A couple of minutes later, I looked up to see what was ahead on the hiking path. For the first time, I truly noticed the awe-inspiring scenery in Crested Butte, Colorado. With abundant wildflowers. Lush grasses. Panoramic mountain views. The post’s photo is from that view. I stood there, soaking it in. Savoring what was right in front of me.

And suddenly, it didn’t matter if we got anywhere else. Right here was enough. Right here was beautiful.

I share this example because it shows how each of us (including me) can default to wanting to get somewhere without noticing and enjoying what is right in front of us.

We tend to struggle in our journeys when there are delays or when we aren’t making the progress we want to. But, what if we could focus some of our attention on enjoying what’s right in front of us?

Appreciating the journey means balancing both having gratitude for the present with creating the future we desire.

Connecting the Journey to a Slow Growth Approach

Just as the growth process of a flower begins underground during the seed stage, when we aspire to grow, our growth progression begins internally. While the first changes we make it might not be visible, such as working with blocks and creating the right conditions for growth, they build the foundation for all future growth. The right conditions for growth are:

• Dream about what’s possible

• Connect with what matters to you, your core values

• Focus on your wellbeing

• Shift your Mindset

The next phase of the growth journey becomes increasingly visible as you take more external action, like when a plant springs forth. This phase still depends on nurturing the right conditions to take grounded, intentional action. When you start to live your dreams in small ways, it brings vibrancy and aliveness.

This phase is based on:

• Building the courage to start, with an experimentation mentality.

• Strengthening the connection to yourself to show up for yourself fully.

• Creating one change at a time to honor your dreams and goals.

• Reframing challenges you encounter as opportunities for growth.

The last phase is rapid growth, the blooming. This is where you shine your spark of light, making the changes you seek to experience living your dreams on a consistent basis.

While there is a tendency to want to know how long each growth phase will take, they don’t have set timeframes.

There are times the internal phase of slow growth progresses quickly; other times, we can be steeped in it for months or years. Additionally, rapid growth is typically not a one-time event. It has its own process and energy, like when many of the seeds previously planted begin to bloom simultaneously.

To reach sustainable rapid growth without burning out is not based on multiplying our efforts. It’s formed from taking a slow growth approach, which leads to blooming.

How to Appreciate the Journey:

1. Appreciate the good every day: Focusing on what’s good is not our natural instinct. Our brains are wired to look for what’s wrong, which is due to our brain’s negativity bias. That’s why it’s vital to have intentional practices to notice and appreciate the good in your life and in relation to your dreams. Focus on: gratitude, acknowledge and celebrate making progress, and savor positive experiences. Write it down. Soak it in. Doing so will expand your gratitude for the present.

2. Live your dreams now: The more you can experience the essence of your dreams now in small ways, the more you’ll appreciate your own journey. Take small, intentional action steps in alignment with what matters to you to honor your dreams. Additionally, as you envision the future you desire, reflect on what you could do next to bring it forth.

3. Trust the process: Not all dreams unfold at the same pace. If it feels like progress is slow, focus on where you have agency and hold outcomes outside of your control loosely. Keep doing your own inner work with blocks that arise, as inner growth could precede outer results. And most of all, choose to trust the journey is unfolding in its right time.

Reflection: What’s one small way you could live your dreams now?

To uncover your dreams, check out the reflection at the end of my previous post: How I Started Living a Life True to Myself.

People overestimate what they can do in a day. People underestimate what they can accomplish in five or ten years.

It’s common to think we should be able to do more within one day than is sustainably possible without burning out. Unfortunately, we can be hard on ourselves for not doing more, more.

What if instead we choose to believe what we do within a day is enough?

Taking small, consistent action will build over time. It’s especially important to start small if you are honoring your dreams in addition to having an already full life.

The opportunity is to expand our belief in what could be possible longer term: in one, five or ten years.

In 2022, I found my journaling exercise from 2015 where I envisioned my ideal future five years out. While I had internalized the vision, I hadn’t read it in years. I was incredibly struck that much of the vision had come to life. And, how since then, deeper layers of dreams had emerged.

At the time I completed the 2015 journaling exercise, my dreams felt unattainable. To my surprise, as I began taking small steps within my control towards my dream of improving my wellbeing, it brought greater appreciation for my whole life in the present. Even without yet attaining my dreams of becoming a mother or changing careers.

Focusing on what was in my control—my personal growth and wellbeing—helped me ground in being grateful for the present and simultaneously take a long-term view towards parenthood. Otherwise, when I got overly caught up in not getting pregnant each month, I didn’t cope as well. I suffered more.

As I shared in my last post, making one small change 10 years ago was the start of transforming my life in ways beyond what I thought possible. We often don’t know what the catalysts to for sustainable change will be. But, if we take one resonant step after another, our path towards our dreams will unfold.

I hope you know your dreams are worth pursuing for the long term.

I hope you also remember you are right where you need to be to live your dreams now.

Want support on your journey towards your dreams? Contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help create change that matters.

Photo credit: Rachael Gaibel

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: finding possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

Ten years ago, I made one small change that would ultimately lead to a path of transforming my life and work in ways I hadn’t known were possible.

If someone had told me that making a 30-day commitment to focus on my wellbeing would be a turning point for my life, I would not have believed it.

Because at the time, I had hit a low point. I was having a challenging time coping with my recent unexplained infertility diagnosis and career burnout. Internally, I constantly felt frustrated, stressed out and overwhelmed. And that was the basis for how I interacted with others. I had just received challenging performance feedback with examples of how I was showing up ineffectively.

I share more about this time in my life in my article How I Found the Good within the Difficult. For those newer to my posts, it’s the story of when I first noticed I could make changes by focusing on what was in my control to cope and show up better: specifically, my own personal growth and wellbeing.

In this post, I’ll share how the approaches I took supported me in making sustainable change.

This post continues to build on having slow growth approach. One of the essential nutrients is to make one meaningful change at a time. Slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time to make progress on your dreams and goals.

30-Day Challenges

A 30-day challenge means to commit doing one new change consistently for 30-days. Something you have agency over and can experiment with.

Since the average length to form a new habit is about two months, having dedicated focus for 30-days can give an encouraging start.

Back to my 30-day commitment: I wanted to intentionally take in the good by experiencing more positivity. Specifically, I spent 15 minutes per day on the combination of lovingkindness and gratitude practices.

I chose these practices as I had felt like my brain was caught up in what Rick Hanson refers to as the red zone much of the day, the reactive mode of the brain. The red zone characterized by fear, frustration and heartache. I wanted to strengthen the green zone, the responsive mode and home base of the brain. The green zone is characterized by peace, contentment and love.

Immediately, I fully experienced greater positivity during the practices. I began taking in the good in small ways throughout my day. After a month, I did see noticeable improvements internally and externally.

For many months to follow, I integrated the previous month’s challenge if I wanted to continue it and added a new 30-day challenge.

What I Learned

I had so many amazing conditions for growth that contributed to me continuing to make progress. These ideas can apply to others seeking to make changes:

• I already had awareness of resources and guidance as a starting point

• I was incredibly motivated to make improvements to my wellbeing and how I showed up

• Making one small change at a time was completely doable; as I later learned, science confirms this is actually how we change

• I focused on making changes within my control

• I saw noticeable progress after 30 days, which helped sustain me to keep going

• I had support from my workplace and my spouse

• I got positive reinforcement from others and appreciated my own effort

• I was excited to share what I was learning about wellbeing with friends and colleagues

• I learned how to be kind and compassionate to myself

• I built up multiple practices over time to support my wellbeing

• I continued focusing on doing the practices consistently even when it felt clunky or I wasn’t seeing improvements as quickly as I hoped

• A few months after starting to focus on my wellbeing, I would attend a program that provided greater tools and insights to nurture my wellbeing in more lasting ways

Overall, I kept learning and following the next step, and I continued experiencing personal growth. So, I kept going.

Towards the end of the How I Found the Good Within the Difficult article, I wrote:

“Within a year period, I grew more than I had in the previous five years combined. This experience of profound growth gave me something positive and exciting to focus on. Something I did have agency over, during an incredibly challenging time in my life.”

Starting with one small change and building upon it to add the next small change is what led me to transform my life.

The profound growth I experienced within the year is the first way my life changed, without changing my circumstances. The longer-term view is one reason I chose to become a certified positive psychology coach was based on the impact positive psychology and wellbeing had on my life a decade ago.

And, here’s the other side: sometimes change doesn’t flow as easefully. This isn’t a failing.

It is true some changes are harder or more complicated to make and sustain based on a variety of factors. Perhaps it’s due to feeling stuck, overwhelmed or held back. Or not knowing how/where to start. Or navigating significant challenges or obstacles. Or not feeling like enough progress is being made. Or dealing with external factors outside of your control.

During those situations in my own life, others support has been instrumental for me to create change that matters to me such as: a coach, program and/or peer group.

Start with One Small Change at a Time

The Happiness Set Point theory states that about 50% of our happiness is based on our genetics and personality, 10% on our circumstances, and 40% on our choices. This means we have agency over about 40% of our happiness. Our choices and intentional actions impact our ability to have greater wellbeing and fulfillment.

And, it starts with creating one small change at a time. This is how we start to make progress on all of what matters to us. No matter how tiny or huge the changes feel. This is how we start to transform our lives.

The bigger picture is pursuing our dreams and goals asks us to change in small and significant ways. Whether it’s changing our habits and routines, our ways of being, our structures, our work and lives or something else. Making changes asks us to let go of what no longer serves us to open to the possibilities of creating what’s next.

Reflection: What’s one small change you want to experiment with this next month?

If you want support to create changes that matter in your life and work, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

Photo credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixaby

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: uncovering possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

This post is an exploration of an idea called “your spark of light.”

“‘But Grandpa,’ I asked, ‘If the sparks of light are hidden and we cannot see them, how can we find them?’” [Asked Rachel, his granddaughter]

[Her grandpa responded:]

‘We can’t see them with our eyes.

We can only see them with our hearts.

Only your heart can see the spark of light

That is hidden in everyone and everything.

When we are kind to people

Or listen to them

Or believe in them

Or love them

Or help them realize their deepest dreams,

We help their spark grow bigger and brighter,

Until their light shines out and fills up the world again,

One spark at a time.’”

--Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, internationally recognized medical educator, from The Birthday of the World

This excerpt from a beautiful children’s book The Birthday of the World, is about a story the grandfather passed onto the author, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, when she was four.

In the beginning of the story, Dr. Remen’s grandfather explains to her what happened soon after the world formed. The light of the world broke into millions of sparks of light falling everywhere, into everyone and everything. They are still there today, hidden in everyone and everything. The story is based off an ancient teaching from the Jewish mystics, called kabbalah.

Resisting or Hiding our Sparks of Light

When I coach others, I feel incredibly honored to see their sparks of light.

The light that emanates from someone’s core, from their heart. I can see it from truly listening to others. From believing in them. From times they express their deepest dreams.

I have noticed fear tends to dance with sparks of light.

I have witnessed many clients share their dreams during coaching sessions. And, I’ve witnessed blocks, including: fear, objections, resistance, and more alongside them.

So many of us resist or hide our light. Dim down our flames.

During the “Hiding and Leaping” module of the Playing Big Facilitator’s training, Tara Mohr shared the following wisdom: “Our light is so often hidden. We often hide our own gifts or hide from our gifts. We hide from our callings.”

Hidden light. Hidden gifts. Hidden dreams and callings.

It reminds me of Mary Williamson’s quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

What frightens us most is our light.

Examples of reasons our spark of light is hidden:

• Fear, we are really scared

• Resistance

• It brings up our inner-critic and negative self-talk

• We might not realize our light is hidden

• It is vulnerable and can feel uncomfortable

• We don’t believe we are ready to shine our light yet

• We aren’t in an environment that encourages us to shine our light

It is completely normal and part of the human experience for aspects of our light to be hidden. So many of us have past or recent wounds about shining our light. Or have seen others get criticized when they shine their light.

If you notice ways you’ve been hiding, make sure to be kind to yourself. Awareness is the first step to create change. You can make a different choice and start shining your light more in small ways.

If we overfocus on our fears, we can miss out on the beauty that comes from shining our light.

Shining our Sparks of Light

In the Playing Big framework, of which I have completed the facilitator’s training, the antidote to hiding is what Mohr calls leaping. Leaping means to create experiments that are simple to complete within the next two weeks to start taking action to live your dreams now.

In essence, it is about shining your light now, in small, meaningful ways. It is encouraging: we don’t need to be any different to start shining our light. Instead, we can show up as more of who we truly are. Right now.

Returning to Williamson’s quote, a few lines later she asserts: “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Examples of what’s possible as we shine our sparks of light:

• This is how we become more of fully ourselves

• This is where our self-expression lies

• This is where we connect with others to all radiate

• This is where we access greater meaning and fulfillment

• This is where we can share our gifts and make our unique contributions

• This is how we truly bring more light into the world—our light

Hiding and shining my sparks of light

During the years I dealt with often intense career burnout, I did not have the best conditions to shine. Upon reflection, it was a time I felt cut off or disconnected from aspects of my light: aliveness, gifts, dreams, creative self-expression, and callings. It wasn’t necessarily conscious or intentional. And, I bring kindness to that past version of myself.

I shared in a previous post that burnout hampers growth. Burnout can dim our light, what makes us feel vital and alive.

Taking an intentional career pause after becoming a mother helped me renew more deeply from burnout. It is when I slowly began to come back to my own light. Which has been the most unexpected and wonderous return to myself.

And now, while I don’t have shining my light figured out, I do have a different relationship to the idea.

I am choosing to show up to the idea of shining my light, even if it feels uncomfortable. I am choosing to be on a journey to shine my light in ways that feels authentic and aligned.

It means: I notice hiding tactics quicker. I do inner work around the blocks of resistance, fear, inner-critic and limiting beliefs that tend to come up. More often, I listen to my dreams and inner wisdom’s guidance. I try to take small steps in the direction of my dreams and what matters to me.

“One spark at a time, we can change the world back to the way it was at the beginning—whole and filled with light.” –Dr. Remen, the last lines in The Birthday of the World.

In this current time of uncertainty and turbulence, particularly in the US, we can still shine our light. We can support others in shining their light. Light illuminates the darkness.

Two amazing takeaways from The Birthday of the World book:

1. Others can help our spark of light grow bigger and brighter. We can lift each other up so we all radiate.

2. Filling the world with light begins one spark at a time. Each spark growing brighter makes a difference to bringing more light into the world.

I hope you know your spark of light matters. Your dreams, gifts, callings, aliveness, possibilities matter. They especially matter right now.

Consider reflecting on:

• In what ways your light has been hidden

• Experiences where you’ve witnessed others sparks of light

• Examples when you recognize your own spark of light

• A small way you could shine your light in the next week

Working with a coach can help you shine your light. A coach can help you shift out of hiding and into connecting with your light. To connecting with your dreams and what could be possible for your life.

If you want support to shift out of hiding and into shining your light, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

What does this idea bring up for you? I would love to hear what resonates with you about the concept of your spark of light.

Photo by Pixaby

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: uncovering possibilities to create meaningful change, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

The first time in my adult life I faced long-term challenges, I did not have many tools to effectively cope. While I had dealt with challenges before, they were short term. Some stretched and grew me immensely but were more easily solved and overcome.

Until the challenges of infertility and burnout became simultaneously a part of my life for years, I had not experienced ongoing difficulties for a long period of time. I would learn to develop my own inner resources that helped me not only cope but grow.

I learned an important lesson the hard way, as is often the case. I recently wrote about it in a blog published by the Wholebeing Institute. The lesson: “What we choose to do in the face of these challenges does make a difference, often more than we realize until afterward.” (Receiving the Gift of Positive Psychology During a Hard Time)

In the blog, I share how by receiving the gift of positive psychology and mindfulness, my entire experience became much more manageable and growth filled. Which occurred by focusing on my own personal growth and wellbeing.

We all encounter obstacles and setbacks as part of making progress towards our dreams and goals. Challenges are a part of creating change. They are a part of growth. They are part of being alive.

When we struggle to meet challenges, it can lead us to stop making progress. Or alternatively, to go into overdrive trying to force something to happen. At worse, to give up.

These reactions are completely understandable. We naturally resist what we perceive as bad. Of course it’s hard when something doesn’t work as we hoped. Especially if it’s really significant.

How we meet what arises is where the opportunity for growth and resilience lies.

Reframing challenges allows us to look at them in a different way. To acknowledge they are part of everyone’s path and not a detour. To believe what we do makes a difference. To believe in the potential for growth during difficulties.

The focus for this post is about setbacks, obstacles or challenges that arise. For addressing inner blocks, check out my previous post Uncover Possibilities for What’s Next.

Note: this is about challenges or problems you encounter, not trauma.

This post continues to build on having slow growth approach, with reframing challenges as an essential nutrient. Slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time to make progress on your dreams and goals.

10 Ways to Reframe Challenges for Growth:

My blog Receiving the Gift of Positive Psychology During a Hard Time gives greater detail on five of these and could be especially helpful if facing difficult circumstances.

The list below provides a variety of tools and strategies to draw upon when dealing with challenges. The next time you experience a challenge, consider trying one new approach.

1. Pause and notice: If you experience a challenge, pause and notice how you are reacting. Is it useful or helpful? This can help you discern if it’s a place from which you want to take action.

2. Feel your difficult feelings: Challenges and setbacks typically bring up disappointments and tough emotions. Instead of resisting what’s happening, take time to process your feelings. Recognize what’s happening and allow the experience. Begin by asking: What am I feeling? What do I need?

3. Be kind to yourself: We tend to be the hardest on ourselves when things aren’t working out. Instead, that’s when self-kindness and love is most needed. Ask: How could I be kind to myself? Check out more in this post Strengthen the Connection to Yourself.

4. Check-in with what matters to you: Challenges give an opening to re-align with what’s most important to you. Give yourself space to check-in with yourself more deeply, connecting with what matters to you.

5. Focus on what you can control: Within every situation, there are always aspects within and outside of your control. If we are caught up in what we can’t control, it makes it harder to make progress. You can choose to focus on what’s in your control. For instance, you can focus on your wellbeing, your mindset, how you show up and what actions you take next.

6. Reflect on what you can learn: There are typically unknowns when setting out towards creating changes in your work and life. Challenges give us a chance to learn from what didn’t go well and make a different choice next time.

7. Take in the good: To counteract the difficult, intentionally and genuinely seek out, take in, and savor the good around you. Look for small ways to experience moments of joy, gratitude, love, humor, awe, and more.

8. Approach the situation in new or different ways: It’s common to get stuck in taking the same types of actions we think we “should” do, even if we don’t get results. Instead, brainstorm how to approach the challenge in a new or different way. What’s something new you might try next?

9. Believe in your dream(s) or goal(s): This is a time to believe even more deeply in what you truly want. Zoom out and connect with the big picture. What are your dreams truly about? Remember, even if a specific attempt doesn’t work out, it does not mean your dream or goal isn’t possible.

10. Take intentional action: Building off of #8, taking the action you think you are supposed to or should does not necessarily lead to results. Instead, take intentional action in deeper alignment with your wisest/best self, vision and values. Even if it feels unconventional to the outside world. Pay attention to what feels resonate and right to you.

The Gifts of Challenges

Challenges, setbacks and obstacles have the potential to offer gifts. Yes, gifts.

However, if you are in the middle of a particularly hard challenge, it may not feel like a gift. In my experience, I often recognize the gifts from difficulties in hindsight. For instance, I didn’t fully appreciate receiving the gift of positive psychology until much later, once the practices and concepts had changed my life.

I do believe challenges include the possibility to bring you closer to what you truly desire. Closer to your best/wisest self. Closer to what’s important to you. Closer to the life you want to live and work you want to do.

There can be good within the difficult. Light within in the darkness. If you look. If you seek it out. If you show up to the challenge.

Reflection: What’s a challenge you’ve grown from?

Photo by Jeremy Kyejo, Pixaby

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a life and work design coach; and leadership and wellbeing coach and consultant. Finding Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: building momentum around your vision to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please leave a heart & share with others.

I learned an incredibly important life lesson six years ago when I took a career break after becoming a mother, that only became clear in hindsight. It started when I set out to live differently without cycling in and out of burnout as I had been for years.

To do so, I didn’t have a proven plan. I began with what I deeply knew I needed—the space to recover and purposefully design what a more meaningful and fulfilling life and career meant to me. I focused on addressing inner blocks to find possibilities, connecting with what was important to me, envisioning what I truly wanted next, and nurturing my wellbeing.

The lesson: renewal is built upon creating the right conditions for growth.

Note: Having a career break is not prerequisite for growth, rather the qualities I drew upon from that time support growth.

I have since gone on a quest first for myself and now to support others to create change that matters specifically when dealing with burnout or blocks to growth. Through coaching training, experimenting, and my own learning, I’ve been discovering that creating the right conditions encourages people’s growth. Building off my last post, it is one of the essential nutrients in a Slow Growth approach.

Slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time to make progress on your dreams and goals.

The Importance of Creating the Right Conditions

In Slow Growth, I shared the metaphor of the entire growth process of a flower starting from when it is a seed. The seed already has the beginnings of the new plant it is meant to grow into—which becomes possible with the right conditions of water, light, temperature and food. Slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time.

Applying this idea to people, creating the right conditions means:

• The seeds are each of our dreams and hold our potential to become more fully ourselves and make our unique contributions for the good.

• The conditions are the first steps towards growth. When we nurture the right conditions, we encourage our growth.

• Similar to plants that begin growing underground, the right conditions begin with internal growth, before it’s visible externally.

Creating the conditions for growth builds the groundwork to take intentional action from a deeper place. From what we truly want versus what we think we are supposed to do.

Before sharing more about each of the conditions for growth, I’ll explore workplace burnout because burnout restricts growth. It relates to times of dormancy and destruction.

Another main growth inhibitor is the inner blocks of stuckness, self-doubt and/or fear, which I detail in my post Uncover Possibilities for What’s Next.

Three Levels of Burnout

Though the word “burnout” is used constantly, I find it’s not a fully understood concept. This section clarifies what it’s really about, including sharing lesser-known newer research about three levels of burnout.

What is workplace burnout?

In 2019, the WHO classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon. The WHO describes burnout as: “resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion

• Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job

• Reduced professional efficacy”

Chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed describes the full experience of burnout. Nick Petrie, researcher and speaker on leadership, resilience and burnout prevention, gives more nuance by differentiating three levels of burnout in his 2023 burnout research findings.

The key takeaways summarized from How to Avoid Burnout in 2023 Findings:

• Many people are working at unsustainable levels and are overloaded and exhausted.

• There is no single cause of burnout, which means there is no one-size fits all solution.

• There are individual and organizational causes of burnout, with burnout often occurring from a combination of factors. Several of them occurring at once can be the most harmful.

• There are three levels of burnout and each level requires different solutions (see more below).

Three levels of burnout explained in the article:

1^st level of burnout: a heavy period of stress, feelings of overwhelm, but continues to work effectively

• Solutions: self-care & wellbeing

2^nd level of burnout: chronic stress, feelings of fatigue along with decreasing motivation and effectiveness. Moving into survival mode.

• Solutions: mindset/behavior change: creating boundaries, putting yourself and your wellbeing first sometimes

3^rd Level of burnout: the full experience of burnout—the WHO definition.

• Solutions: Deep life changes—change of workplace, career, what you value in life, a new vision for the next chapter in your life. I’d add: incorporating a long-term focus on wellbeing.

What this research helped me understand about my own burnout experience in retrospect:

The WHO’s definition and Petrie’s research didn’t exist when I was experiencing burnout on and off from 2014-2018. Both helped me fully comprehend and learn from my entire experience with career burnout, which can apply to others.

With level one and two burnout, I was able to take action within my existing career to improve my situation and make burnout more manageable. I wrote about the personal growth changes I made in How I Found the Good within the Difficult.

With level three burnout, the WHO definition, burnout became detrimental. I felt constantly exhausted and depleted. Increasingly negative towards the career I had once loved. Not operating as effectively as I had previously. As much as I tried to pull myself out of burnout and apply solutions that had previously helped, it was consuming me. I wrote about the peak of my burnout and my later renewal, in Burning from the Inside: A Return to Life After Burnout.

Most importantly, I realized why making deep life changes during and after my career pause ultimately led to my path out of level three burnout.

Why it matters for everyone:

Burnout impacts the vast majority of us. Nearly half of the US working population is currently experiencing some level of workplace burnout, based on 2024 studies from Gallup, Deloitte and SHRM. Additionally, about 75% of the US workforce has experienced burnout previously, And, over 80% globally were considered at risk of experiencing burnout in 2024, according to Mercer.

This means most of us have past/current experience, or future risk of some level of burnout, which as mentioned previously, hampers growth. It’s important to acknowledge the risk of burnout as we aspire to grow.

By grounding in the right conditions, there is less of a likelihood to burnout given we are prioritizing our self-care and wellbeing as part of pursuing our dreams and goals.

The Conditions for Growth:

The conditions for growth provide a broad framework to creating the changes we seek. They are: to dream about what’s possible, connect to your core values, focus on your wellbeing and shift your mindset. These aspects are foundational to my coaching approach.

Your own solutions will be based on your unique situation, such as if you are experiencing one of the three levels of burnout and/or inner blocks. If you believe you are facing level three burnout, I want to acknowledge it can take a long time to recover, which was my experience. The same conditions for growth apply but on a deeper level and with longer-term focus.

1. Dream about what’s possible

What’s your vision for your best possible life and career? What’s important to you about building this?

We must start by giving ourselves the space to envision our dreams and goals. Then, we can begin taking a small steps now to honor them.

Whether journaling, sitting quietly to check-in with ourselves, doing yoga/meditation, or using a program/coach, dreaming involves listening so we can hear our deeper wisdom and truth. In the last section of my post, How I Started Living a Life True to Myself, I give suggestions on exploring your dreams.

2. Connect with your core values

Your core values are what matters to you; they are what’s important and meaningful to you.

Living in alignment with your values lights your way. Your values can help you discern the right path and action steps for you.

If you aren’t clear on your values, start by reflecting on what matters to you and identifying them. If you are, then connect with them on a regular basis to guide you. In my post, What Matters to You? I detail why and how to live your values.

3. Focus on your wellbeing

Focusing on your wellbeing gives us nutrients that support our growth. The SPIRE model for wellbeing* encompasses the whole person, with five perspectives on our overall wellbeing. SPIRE stands for: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational and Emotional:

• Spiritual: leading a meaningful life and mindfully savoring the present.

• Physical: Caring for the body and tapping into the mind/body connection.

• Intellectual: Engaging in deep learning and opening to experience.

• Relational: Nurturing a constructive relationship with self and others.

• Emotional: Feeling all emotions, reaching towards resilience and positivity.

The model provides a deeper understanding on how to attend to our wellbeing. By doing so, we have the potential to realize our greatest wellbeing. It helps us categorize our wellbeing experience into tangible areas to recognize where we want to sustain versus improve.

4. Shift your Mindset

What stories are you telling yourself about your dreams or goals? Do they involve how they might be possible? Or all the ways they wouldn’t be possible? It’s common to have self-limiting stories and beliefs that hold us back or keep us stuck. These beliefs could be from your inner critic, feel old/outdated, be based on unhelpful external sources or something else.

Recognize these inner narratives are simply stories, not necessarily true. If they aren’t serving you, you don’t have to believe them or let them have control over you. You can shift your mindset to create new more empowering and growth-oriented stories to support your dreams ang goals. Bring curiosity and openness to what could be possible.

Where to start: These are not meant to do all at once, but rather, to choose one place to start to go in the direction of your dreams and goals. And then, to build upon it. When you look at the list above, which one stands out the most right now? Choose one aspect and begin by taking a small step this week.

“I hadn’t anticipated that the wild [i.e. right] conditions would nourish me to grow. The wild stirred me, inviting me more and more into aliveness. My inner creativity burst into bloom in all directions.” ~Rachael Gaibel from my personal essay, Burning from the Inside: A Return to Life after Burnout.

The outcomes of my focus on the right conditions were surprising and transformative. I went from experiencing years of dormancy and depletion to reconnecting with aliveness, my inner creativity, and who I deeply am. I completely felt like I returned to life, the subtitle of the above personal essay.

For me, revitalizing my creative self-expression was the gateway towards my next layer of growth. Overall, it was when I uncovered new dreams for my work and life and began to move in a more resonant direction. For others, I have seen the right conditions open up the avenues most ripe for growth for them in their work or life.

If you want support to go deeper with creating the right conditions for growth, contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help.

I’d love to hear from you: what resonates about the conditions for growth? How might you use this concept this year?

*The SPIRE model for wellbeing was developed by Tal Ben-Shahar, teacher and author in the fields of happiness and leadership. It is the model that was used in my Positive Psychology Coaching Certification program.

Photo credit: Arek Socha from Pixaby

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Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: uncovering possibilities to create meaningful change, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.

With the end of the year approaching, I want to bring attention to a concept I’ve termed “slow growth”. Slow growth is a personal and professional growth process different than our typical view of successes and accomplishments.

Because, wherever you are landing personally and professionally, slow growth was likely a core part of your year. But, it often doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.

Instead, rapid growth is overemphasized. While important, while it is associated with the successes we are aiming for, it is commonly the result of focusing on slow growth.

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What is Slow Growth

Slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time—which is how we do actually make progress on our dreams and goals. Positive psychology, based on the science of human thriving, confirms this.

Slow growth sets the foundation for all growth.

Slow growth starts with slight shifts. Often internal. Sometimes they are not even noticeable or visible at first. Before the hopeful emergence or achievement.

Slow growth should not be mistaken for passivity. It is incredibly active and intentional.

James Clear, who writes about habits and continuous improvements, indicates in his book Atomic Habits: “Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—sometimes it isn’t even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding.” At the essence, small changes we make over a long period of time has the potential to transform us.

The best metaphor I can provide to show the difference between slow and rapid growth is the growth process of a flower.

Rapid growth is the process of a flower going from bud to bloom.

Slow growth is the entire growth process starting from the seed stage all the way to becoming a bud. Where the plant needs the right conditions of water, light and food to grow. The first half is underground: seed cycle, germination, and roots development. The growth process becomes visible only once the stem and then leaves form.

Going from a bud to bloom gets most of the attention. For good reason. It’s beautiful reveal. Wondrous. But, flowers don’t start as buds. They start as seeds.

We need a deeper more holistic way of looking at our own personal and professional growth. Where it begins with planting the seeds and creating the conditions for growth.

Here’s an example of the difference:

Jessica Galica, founder of Reclaim your Career and a leading authority on women’s career reinvention, shares in her book Leap: Why It’s Time to Let Go to Get Ahead in Your Career, that people mistakenly believe big career pivots happen suddenly and spontaneously. (Misperception of only rapid growth)

However, she found in the research for her book that those who successfully reinvent their careers toward greater purpose and meaning do so intentionally and strategically over a long period of time. (Slow growth which does lead to the rapid growth of making career shifts)

Problems with Expecting Constant Rapid Growth

Unfortunately, so often, we have unrealistic expectations, anticipating constant rapid growth right after getting started. Meaning we expect to bloom right after we plant the seeds. And give up when we have challenges or that’s not our experience.

It is vital to envision the dream, the success, the blooming; the problem comes from insisting we should be able to achieve big dreams and goals immediately.

The dominant approach to New Year’s resolutions in the US highlights this. Over 80% of people who create New Years resolutions abandon them by February; only about 9% achieve them.

One reason why is due to being influenced by hustle culture. Hustle culture is where overworking, pushing harder and feeling pressured to achieve at all costs are glorified. Including sacrificing self-care, rest and renewal in order to produce more and more.

When I state these hustle culture qualities outright, they might sound extreme. Though I have noticed backlash against hustle culture in recent years since the pandemic, with greater focus on self-care and wellbeing, we are still impacted by this attitude in underlying ways. Such as in the form of limiting beliefs and our inner critic. For example, if we feel off track with our goals, we might hear critical self-talk such as:

• I should be able to do more

• I should already have this figured out

• I should be further along

• I should have gotten more results by now

• What’s wrong with me

This isn’t only a discouraging way to approach growth, it also doesn’t work, as evidenced by the lack of results for attaining New Year’s resolutions.

A Slow Growth Approach

If you have felt pressured or self-critical as you’ve pursued your dreams and goals, know there are more nourishing ways to create meaningful change with slow growth. Slow growth is not an amount of time, it’s an approach to the growth process.

Essentials of a Slow Growth Approach:

• Create the conditions for growth: We need nutrients to support our growth, as plants do. The internal work of dreaming about what’s possible, connecting to what matters to you, focusing on your wellbeing and shifting your mindset, build the foundation for what wants to spring forth.

• Show up for yourself fully: Be on your own side by acting in a kind and loving way towards yourself. One of the most important ways to create changes is to fully support yourself, through the successes and challenges.

• Reframe challenges as an opportunity for growth: This is a hard one, as our initial reaction is often to resist challenges. We all encounter obstacles and setbacks as part making progress towards our dreams and goals. What you do in the face of them is where the opportunity for growth lies.

• Add one small change at a time: Identify one area you want more of in your life—to grow or improve. Commit to experimenting with a new meaningful activity or habit for at least a month before making adjustments. Consider how to add the activity to your daily routine, starting as minimal as 10-15 minutes a day.

• Appreciate the journey: While it’s not necessarily our default, we can choose to appreciate the entire journey. It starts with recognizing it’s an amazing gift to move in the direction of our dreams and goals. Notice, show gratitude for the journey and celebrate the progress and small wins you make.

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." ~Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher and author

Instead of putting pressure on ourselves to do more, constantly achieve, or rush the process, slow growth helps us flow in a more natural cycle to change, as Lao Tzu’s quote suggests. Taking 3X as much action does not necessarily lead to 3X the results. More often, it leads to exhaustion and burnout. There are diminishing returns from doing more, more, more.

Focusing on intentional action, incorporating self-care, taking the next small step that’s aligned with your dreams and values, leads to sustainable growth. To meaningful change. To the success and blooming we seek.

Reflection:

As this year comes to a close, consider appreciating and celebrating what you did do from a broader slow growth perspective.

If you didn’t accomplish as much as you hoped to this year, take a step back from the outcomes and look at it from each quality of the slow growth approach. It might be that you started to envision what you deeply want. Or that you overcame one or more obstacles. Or that you experimented with at least one new habit or activity that feels meaningful. Or something else.

If you did experience rapid growth, recognize and thank not only the success but the entire growth process, including what it was built upon. Growth begins with the seed of the idea, which could have occurred this year or in a prior year.

Ask yourself:

• What’s been your experience with slow growth this year?

• What do you deeply want in this next year? To explore your dreams further, check out the section “How to live a life true to yourself” in my previous post on Living a Life True to Yourself.

• How could you incorporate a slow growth approach in 2025?

Photo credit: Pixaby

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